The Void

CHAPTER 22

Alex took the lead with Casey Franks. They moved in a double line, jogging this time. Sam was close to the civilians, and even though Morag felt safer having the huge warrior so close to them, she still felt a shiver run from the base of her spine up to her scalp. The mountain crater top had moved from just being weird and creepy to now goddamn deadly.

The HAWCs had their shields facing the greasy looking forest, and to Morag it felt like she was inside a locomotive, with the swirling discs of compressed air as the wheels, and the walls of armored HAWC muscle their carriage.

The ground squelched beneath their feet, and several times Morag slid as they weaved in and around the huge columns that loomed from the mist. She couldn’t determine if they were mutated trees, mud-coated rock formations, or the actual mud itself, trying to grow up and out of the crater. But the strange thing was there were more and more of them. And when she looked closer, she thought she could see movement inside them, like crustaceans and worms squirming in the soft mud of a riverbank at low tide.

After a while Alex called a halt and bent to pick something up. The soldiers immediately went into a defensive ring around him while his attention was diverted.

Morag marveled at how these Special Forces soldiers worked like a machine, every one of them knowing what was expected before it was even asked. Looking past them, she saw the muscles in Alex’s shoulders bunch for a moment as if he was straining against what it was he held, or maybe against something inside him. After another moment, the HAWC leader tossed the thing aside.

“Double time.” He waved them on, picking up his pace.

As Morag passed by the object she saw it was the missing HAWC’s helmet, torn off and cracked open, like the skin of a watermelon. She glimpsed something moist inside it, but didn’t want to look too closely because she already knew it was going to be blood.

Alex pushed his gun up over his shoulder and held up a hand. The group stopped.

“Sam.”

The HAWC jogged forward, and Morag waved Calvin with her and muscled through the group so they could hear.

Alex and Sam stared at something on the ground, and Casey Franks faced the haze, her back to them, and gun up to cover them.

“Ah, shit.” Sam’s massive shoulder’s fell.

Morag continued to watch Alex Hunter. She frowned. Oddly, his body looked like it was beginning to vibrate. On one arm, he held the swirling shield and over his back his gun. But his free fist was clenched and it shook as though he was under extreme pressure.

She inched forward to see what they had found — then wished she hadn’t. Bones. All of them stripped of meat but still streaked with red strands of gristle and sinew. The larger ones were cracked to get at the marrow. Beside them was a shredded HAWC armored suit. The super-tough plating and Kevlar weave was no match for whatever had peeled the man out of it to get to the soft flesh beneath.

Steve Knight, she remembered him — he’d been a nice guy. Her breath caught in her throat. Knight was as tough as they come — but never stood a chance against whatever had taken him.

“Oh god.” She turned away, and she heard Calvin gag. The final insult was the skull, sitting upright in the greasy mud. It, too, having anything edible — inside and out — ripped or scooped from it.

She heard a growl, deep and menacing. Morag turned back, made fearful by its proximity. Her first impulse was to back away, as she expected them to be confronted by the thing that had devoured the young HAWC. But she quickly found where the sound was coming from — Alex Hunter.

“Boss?” Sam reached out a hand toward his leader, and quickly turned to Casey Franks.

“Get ’em back.”

The female HAWC immediately spun, pushing at the civilians and HAWCs alike. She elbowed Morag, but the journalist dodged around her and continued to watch.

Sam held Alex’s shoulder, but Morag could see he was actually keeping him at a distance. He also brought his shield around to be between them.

“Pull it back, boss… fight it,” Sam urged softly.

Alex Hunter’s two armored fists came up, still vibrating for a second or two before his rage exploded.

Sam stepped well back as Alex swung the arm that held the shield into an outcrop of rock, the granite protrusion blew apart into a thousand fragments with a noise the journalist even felt up through the soles of her feet. But he wasn’t finished, with his free hand he swung back at the rock, punching it, and blasting out another huge piece of stone, which flung away into the shadowy mist.

Then, with a continuing roar, he battered the rock until the outcrop was rubble.

She knew that the HAWC gloves were armor plated, but she had to assume his hand was smashed to smithereens.

“Stop that!” she yelled. What good was he going to be to the group with just one hand?

Sam kept his distance as though waiting for the hurricane to blow itself out. Morag crossed to him, grabbing his hefty forearm.

“Lieutenant, aren’t you going to stop him? He’ll cripple himself.”

Sam looked down, staring for a few seconds, before pushing her back behind him to shield her… from Alex.

“No, he’ll be fine. He’s… different to us.” He looked back to where Alex was finishing demolishing the boulders, and whispered more to himself than to her. “He just needs to let him out.”

She looked up at him. The way he said ‘him’, made her think it wasn’t some sort of episode where he was just blowing off steam, but more like something — someone — that needed to escape. Her journalistic instincts immediately kicked in.

“Who… what, is he letting out?”

“What?” Sam said distractedly, and then quickly looked back at her. “Nothing. He’s just pissed. We all are.”

“Nothing, huh?” She repeated and looked back at Alex. More like something, she bet.

After a moment more, Alex went to his knees, and placed one hand on the severed skull of Steve Knight for a moment as though saying farewell. He let his damaged right hand dangle at his side. He rose slowly.

“I fucking knew it,” she whispered. Morag saw that his right hand was deformed from the impacts, as she expected it to be. In his gloves, she saw that the small bones of the fingers, the knuckles and the metacarpal bones in the hand were probably obliterated, and now more like splintered wood.

Idiot. Now you’re fucking useless when we need you most.

She was about to give Sam Reid a piece of her mind, when she saw Alex Hunter straighten and roll his shoulders. He held up his smashed hand, and while she watched, the bones within the gloves seemed to pop back into place, the knuckles sliding and moving, and the fingers straightening.

“What the…?” Her mouth hung open.

“Like I said, he’s different,” said Sam.

Alex took in a deep breath and rejoined them. Sam Reid placed one hand on his shoulder.

“He’s gone, boss, there’s nothing more we can do.”

Alex’s eyes were still blazing. “We can be ready next time. These things are not indigenous, and whatever came down in that shuttle is a direct threat.” He turned to the mist. “To be eliminated with extreme prejudice.”

“I hear that,” Sam said. He turned to Morag. “Let’s go.”

She let him direct her back to the group, but she turned a question gnawing at her. “Hey, I know one of the things you guys were supposed to do was search for survivors. If there was even the remote chance anyone made it down alive in that shuttle, how could they survive with those things down here?”

“They couldn’t,” Alex said.

Anne Peterson’s arms were folded tight, as she overheard. “If the fuselage was intact, they could seal themselves in.”

“Maybe, but unlikely,” Alex said. “These things seem strong enough to peel the skin of the Orlando open. Better for the astronauts if they were dead when they arrived.”

“Don’t say that.” Anne said something else, but it was unintelligible.

“It’s okay, Anne,” Scott McIntyre said, and reached out to put an arm around her, their suits chafing against each other. “We gotta keep some hope, right?” He looked from Alex to Sam.

Both had grim expressions.

“Let’s find that shuttle, and get the hell out of here,” Sam said.

Morag turned and saw Scott rub his wounded arm and grimace.