The Void

CHAPTER 19

Shit! Sam bared his teeth as he stared out into the soupy air, trunk-like legs planted, and hands so tight on his gun, they started to ache. Whatever those things had been they were no dumb animals. They had used a frontal attack as a diversion, so they could then come at them from the rear — a simple and effective tactic.

With all their tech, they were still nearly blind… and he didn’t like it. He turned and let his voice boom over the group. “HAWCs, armor-up — two-tier.”

The HAWCs edged back, forcing the civilians into a tight bunch — some went to one knee and the others stood at their shoulders. Then with an almost imperceptible whirring sound, the air began to swirl and condense in front of each of them as they deployed their shields. Over the top of each of these, the HAWCs had their guns pointed out at the surrounding mist, creating a double layer of gun barrels and shields. If anything came at them, they couldn’t help but hit it.

Sam’s teeth remained grit — they’d underestimated the things, and they just damn well paid for it. He waited, watching, and straining to hear anything over the small and insistent background whine. He turned to look over the group — the HAWCs were like a single interlocked machine. Good. Behind them, the civilians huddled. The camera guy, Renner, tried to film, but his hand shook so violently that after a moment Morag reached up to ease it down.

“It’s okay.” She smiled, lopsidedly. “It’d just be Bigfoot shots with that shaky hand, right?”

Renner nodded and tried to smile, but his fear made the attempt look more like a frightened chimpanzee.

Sam turned back to the alien landscape. The mist swirled and they all became statue-still, their focus intense. Behind him, he felt Morag get slowly to her feet behind the ring of warriors.

“Have they gone?” she asked him softly.

After a moment Sam nodded. “I think so; after the captain, I bet.” He half turned, seeing his man losing blood. “Dundee, put a damn patch on that wound and seal your suit.” He looked to the NASA man, Scott McIntyre, nursing a hand that was also showing red through his biohazard synthetic material.

“Bad?” he asked.

McIntyre shook his head. “Nah, just spiked on something.”

“Good, then for now, just patch the hole, put pressure on it, and we’ll worry about blood loss later.”

“Yeah, yeah.” McIntyre pressed the wound, and Russell Burrows pulled some plastic tape from his pack and helped him seal the rip, binding the arm tightly.

Sam saw Dunsen still watching the mist. “Now, Dunsen.”

“Yo.” Max Dunsen looked down, seeming to finally remember that his arm was dripping thick blood to the ground. Sam saw that, oddly, where it fell, the blood quickly vanished as the slime closed over it, or worse, consumed it.

Sam shook his head. This place gave him the creeps. He watched as in a practiced motion Dunsen pushed his gun up over his shoulder, and opened the forearm sleeve, exposing the wound. It was a ragged rip that welled blood. He then reached into a kit and took out an adhesive patch, which he slapped over the wound.

Dunsen saw Morag watching and he grinned. “Med patch, got all the antibiotics, adrenalin and steroids to kill anything nasty and promote rapid healing.” The wound immediately stopped bleeding. “See, better already, darlin’.” He winked at her and rolled down his sleeve, affixed the suit to his glove, and flexed his fingers.

“Kills anything nasty, huh?” Morag pulled in a cheek. “Anything nasty, that we know about,” she said.

He looked up sharply, but then snorted. “Yeah, well, the rest is up to the angels then, right?” Bravado and body intact, he fell back into the HAWC line.

“What now?” Russell Burrows asked Sam.

“We wait,” the HAWC said evenly.

“How long?” McIntyre asked.

Morag scowled. “Jesus, you guys, give Alex a—”

Russell spun at her. “I wasn’t asking the press gallery.”

“Asshole,” Morag spat back.

Russell’s lip curled. “Should have let them leave you beh—”

“Shut it,” Sam growled as he looked out at the fog from under lowered brows. “We wait until the captain comes back in. End of story.”

“We’re running out of time.” Russell made a hissing sound between his teeth. “Do you know why we’re here, Lieutenant?”

Sam’s head came up slowly but he didn’t turn. Russell put his hands on his hips, and turned to Morag.

“We are both here to find the Orlando Space Shuttle Orbiter module. Accepted it’s for different reasons, but still, that is both our priorities. Please remember, you are here because of us, we are not here because of you.”

Max Dunsen began to chuckle. Sam Reid turned fully toward Russell then, who looked up at him. Though Sam didn’t step out of the line, he straightened to his full height and loomed high over the NASA engineer. His voice was measured.

“Without us, you’d all be dead in an hour.” He lowered his head to look the man in the eye. “We will stay until I say so. Clear?”

Russell stared.

“CLEAR?”

The roar even made Morag jump. Russell nodded quickly and turned away, suddenly finding something else to do. Sam glared for a moment longer and then went back to watching the impenetrable speckled clouds pressing in on them. Sam knew his job right now was to keep everyone alive, and everyone under control… and he’d damn well do it.

He couldn’t tell how much time passed, as each and every second seemed an eternity of held breath and jagged nerves. But then, just as he felt he might need a new plan, a solitary figure walked out of the mist.

“Shields down,” Sam said, relief washing over him.

The circle of discs vanished and their group parted as Alex Hunter strode into their center. He threw something to the ground, and they all stared.

“Knight?’ Sam asked.

“Gone.” Alex shook his head. “They’re too quick. I followed but the tracks just seemed to vanish.”

“What — the fuck — is that?” Casey Franks’ scarred lips managed to curl even more in disgust.

The something was a claw, four fingered, or three and a thumb. The digits were thick, brutish and mottled green, and each ended in a cruel-looking talon.

“Well, Dundee, now you know what slashed you,” Sam said.

Dunsen crouched, and drew his long hunting blade, lifting the claw slightly. He whistled. “It looks like it’s from a big, bad ass bird.”

Russell Burrows and Anne Peterson also crouched beside it. “May I?” Russell took Dunsen’s knife and poked at it. “It’s certainly not from a bird, Mister Dunsen; this thing has got an opposable thumb.” He looked up. “And you say this came from the thing that attacked us?”

“One of them.” Alex nodded and turned to Sam. “It was big, a biped, and at least seven and a half feet tall, and probably around 500 pounds. One came at me, so I cut that off it.”

“Good, means we can hurt them.” Sam squared his shoulders.

“Looks like a hairless bear claw,” Monroe said. “Except for the number of claws or fingers or whatever they are. Maybe it’s a mutation.”

“Bears don’t have opposable thumbs. In fact, trapeziometacarpal articulation is primarily confined to higher-order creatures like primates and us.” Anne looked up momentarily, but her vision seemed turned inwards. “Us,” she repeated softly.

Russell rested his forearms on his knees as he crouched. “I would have said simian morphology for sure, but it seems to have a type of scaling, like a reptile.” He tapped it with the knife. “Weird, maybe not scales, more like a hard shell like the chitin you see on crustaceans. What do you think, Anne?”

The woman just stared down at the thing.

Russell leaned closer. “Anne?”

“I don’t know.” She looked up, and her face was bleached white behind her visor. “I don’t know.”

Alex stared at the women, confused. He felt she was hiding something. “Anything you can tell us will help, Anne.”

“He’s right. Come on, this is more your field,” Russell said. “Up close, it does look more like crustacean segments.” He angled his head. “But I can see there are bones inside as well as the endoskeletal protection.” He sat back. “This must be one tough sonofabitch.” He turned to raise his eyebrows at her. “Anne, c’mon, tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I, I just don’t know anymore,” she stuttered and looked distracted.

“Then just guess,” Russell pressed.

She grimaced behind her visor. “Uh, obviously some sort of resident mutated organism of unknown definition.”

Casey’s lips pulled back in disgust. “Mutated organisms, yeah, Morgs for short. Perfect.”

“Works for me,” Dunsen added.

“But resident?” Scott McIntyre scoffed. “There’s nothing like these creatures, resident or otherwise, anywhere that I know of.”

“He’s right.” Russell looked skeptically at Anne.

“We don’t know that.” The female NASA agent stood quickly and walked away a few paces.

“Jesus,” Scott said, watching her.

“Hidden all the way up here in the mountains, it could be like a Yeti thing,” Dunsen said.

“A Yeti?” Monroe snorted.

“I’m just thinking out loud here, okay?” Dunsen snarled back.

“Yep, I’ve seen one — about six-four and speaks with an Aussie accent.” Casey reached out to punch Dunsen’s shoulder with the back of her hand. “Just messin’ with ya, big guy.”

Alex stared at it. “I also don’t buy that these things are resident. This creature looked like it had evolved to adapt to this type of environment — it could see in the mist, breathed the gases, moved fast in this damn slippery mud, and was strong as hell.”

“This thing, this Morg, looks more hatched than born.” Sam looked down at the talon. “If they can be hurt, they can be killed. We take ’em down.”

“Always my plan,” Casey said.

“No, we don’t know they meant to kill us.” Anne spun back at them. “For all we know, they think we’re attacking them.”

Alex saw the woman’s eyes go wide, showing real fear, but for what and who?

“Whatever,” Casey said. “They’re fucking dead.”

“They coordinated their attack on us, even though we outnumbered them,” Alex said. “Out there, they tried to encircle me. They’re not dumb animals — we can’t afford to underestimate them again.”

“Jesus, Alex,” Morag said. She turned back to the claw, disgust and fear twisting her features. “I’ve reported on some strange stuff, but I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”

“No one has. That thing isn’t indigenous… and I mean earthly indigenous.” Sam straightened, gripping his gun even tighter.

“Wait, what?” Calvin Renner scoffed. “You mean that thing might have come down in the fucking space shuttle?” He gave Morag a hard look. “Jesus Mags, we’re out of our depth here. We need to call this off, and just get the fuck out of here.”

“Settle down. It didn’t come down in the shuttle. It’s probably like Monroe said, some sort of deformed…” Morag shrugged. “I don’t know what.”

Casey nudged it with her boot. The claws clacked together. “This high up, and so remote; maybe Dundee is right… for once.”

Dunsen snorted. She glared at him for a moment before turning at Alex. “Remember those things up at Black Mountain?”

“I remember.” Alex shook his head. “But I don’t think that’s what it was.”

“There’s something else that’s weird.” Russell used his probe to turn it over. The huge clawed fingers curled, and he pressed one out flat. “I think this thing has fingerprints.”

“What?” Anne immediately pulled a small smart phone from her pocket and photographed the claw tips.

“Seriously?” Renner pointed. “What are you going to do, see if it’s got any outstanding warrants when you get home?” He looked on the verge of panic.

Morag shrugged. “Take your pussy hat off and put your news one back on, Calvin. This thing is the find of a century.” She looked at Alex. “Can we take it with us?”

Alex looked back down at it for the moment. “No. No excess weight. Also, these things are meat eaters.”

“How do you know that?” Anne demanded.

“I just… know it,” Alex responded, still staring at the claw. He had seen the jaws and teeth; they were used for ripping and tearing flesh. And he had felt the hunger coming off the things in waves — they wanted him for the meat on his bones, he could sense it.

He straightened. “I don’t want anything catching the scent of that piece of bleeding meat and come looking for it.” He turned again out at the mist. “Speed is the key… now we know there’s more than just Russians out there.”

Anita Erikson nudged Max Dunsen. “Bleeding meat, that’d be you.”

“Yeah, and I’m all beef.” He winked at her.

“Knight?” Sam asked.

Alex turned back to the ominous fog. “Yeah, we need to track and find him.”

“How?” Russell Burrows asked. “You said yourself, there’s no trail.”

Alex kept his back turned.

Anne walked closer. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Captain, but we should leave these things alone. You know our priority is the downed Orlando shuttle. It’s vitally important now.”

“She’s right.” Scott McIntyre shrugged. “You and your men knew the risks, and we can’t afford diversions. Leave him; time is critical.”

Faster than Morag could even comprehend, Alex Hunter was in front of the man, his hand around his throat and lifting. McIntyre was not a small man, but his feet left the ground, and amazingly the HAWC leader didn’t even seem to be straining.

The things were meat eaters, and they had taken his HAWC. And then this guy wanted to cut him loose in a blink. Alex pulled McIntyre real close, visor-to-visor, so close McIntyre would be able to see every spot, line and scar on the HAWC leader’s face.

Alex teeth were grit. “And if it was you snatched by one of those creatures?” Alex pointed the man’s face toward the huge claw. “Would you want us to leave you alone with that?”

“No.” McIntyre’s voice was little more than a squeak.

Alex let him go, dropping him to the slime, and turned away. “Form up.”

The HAWCs fell in around him, and Morag noticed that the civilians crowded in closer; even Scott McIntyre.

Alex’s head turned, looking along his team. “We find our HAWC.”

“HUA!”

He raised a clenched fist. “And we show them who the real killers are.”

“HUA!”