Who is this man?
The answer to the question posed by the Ironside’s thoughts isn’t long in coming.
The guest freezes, his smile fades slowly away, but he still has his eyes fixed on him. A feeling of primal fear begins to make inroads into John Ironside as he watches the man, whose hand lets the glass fall and shatter at his feet. The stranger starts trembling, slowly at first, but soon those shakes turn into heavy muscle spasms. Bystanders withdraw from the man who, now shaken by violent convulsions, arches his back backwards and lets a yellow-greenish drool bursts out of his mouth, like a wicked fountain.
Ironside wants to intervene, he shouts to the people to get away, to escape. He starts to move, but his body responds slowly. His limbs are stiff, as entangled in mud. No sound comes from his mouth but a hoarse and faint moan.
He can only look with increasing dismay…
The unknown guest moves awkwardly like a drunk, stumbling and struggling to stay upright. His head deforms, stretching into a grotesque mask while red tentacles tear his skin and clothing, whirling in the air like angry snakes in search of their prey.
People shout and run in a panic. A woman stumbles and hits the ground. Her face contracts in pain and terror.
Ironside looks at his daughter Darla. The child stays still, paralyzed with fear, crying only a few meters from a mass of flesh and malformed limbs that has nothing of human.
Alien howls, in addition to roars and other sounds made by throats that are not of this earth.
Taisha, the faithful companion of his life, sprints to get the child and get her away from that crawling chaos…
Some of the tentacles reach the woman, grabbing her legs.
My God, no!
Other deformed appendices reach the slender body of the child.
Ironside can only look at his dearest people being dragged by that monstrosity while he is crushed by the sense of helplessness.
The sound of their shattered bones reaches him like a hammer straight into his stomach.
Their eyes show that mixture of terror and amazement of those that are suddenly torn to pieces, while he is there and can barely breathe.
Their screams tear apart his terrified soul, like ice blades that slash through a canvas…
USA BASE CNT222
Emily Moore looks at one side of the corridor, right after the door of Philip Redmond. The wall is broken through. The woman swallows, holding her breath. Her senses stay alert while she tries to find the courage to approach and check. Somewhere beneath her, the noise of collapsing walls echoes suddenly, along with vibrations that seem like small earthquakes. After a little while, the silence comes back again.
She approaches slowly to the breach. No noise seems to come from within, and the only audible sounds are her anxious breathing accompanied by the beating of her heart. She bends down to enter the room, firmly holding the last Molotov bomb in her hand.
There are no traces of blood or other fluids inside Redmond’s apartment, but everything there is messed up upside down. The place is devastated as if a gang of thieves had searched everywhere looking for something. In the flickering light of the fluorescent tubes, Moore can see another deep gash in one of the side walls. It’s the side that borders to the last room: Macready’s.
A terrible thought starts making its way into her mind. With the slowness of a sloth, the scientist approaches the fissure, through which she can see the other room.
Inside it, the chaos is even worse. Here too, no trace of blood nor other traces that reveal the presence of the creature and a possible assimilation. Everything is messed up. The mattress presents deep parallel lacerations, as if a clawed hand had dug in its interior. Lockers are empty, various stuff and papers are scattered on the floor.
The scientist moves cautiously toward a door at the end. The noise of a falling drop is amplified by the unnatural silence that reigns supreme. She reaches the threshold and operates slowly the white plastic handle, feeling it cold to the touch. There is a small bathroom inside. Clear signs of violence are visible here too. A wall cabinet balances on the sink, kept in place by a single nail.
The initial doubt becomes certain: someone or something has been here in search of who knows what.
A small dark rectangle, half-buried by the chaos of objects that lie scattered on the floor, draws her attention. Moore picks it up. It’s an old leather briefcase, with worn edges. The woman opens it in search of a badge, but all that it contains is a picture.
It’s an old Polaroid, with yellowed edges and faded colors. Two men are in the photo. The first is barely more than a boy, in whose features she recognizes a youth version of the same Albert Macready. The second is taller, has long hair and a full beard. With his right hand he’s holding a Texan cowboy hat on the boy’s head and his left hand holds aloft a bottle of J&B as a toast to the photographer.
Something makes its way into her heart, as she watches the old photo which seems to emanate a sense of humanity and family warmth, which seem far away now. The smile of the two, the soft and yellowed colors, the grasslands behind them, the sky that appears without clouds. Many little things that paint a world and an inner state that are light years away from the despair of her current situation.
The image seems to fade slowly from her sight as tears veil her eyes. The woman brings instinctively the old picture to her chest, as if to put those feelings in her soul.
She stands still for a moment, breathing deeply as in an attempt to find a basis of quiet on which to develop coherent thoughts.
Suddenly she hears a noise that makes her blood freeze, recalling her to the tremendous reality.
The unmistakable beep of electronic locks.
Somewhere in the corridor, a door has just opened.
ALGERIAN DESERT
“Sir!”
“You okay, sir?”
“Sir!”
The voice of Lieutenant Philip Redmond, and the firm grip on one arm, recall Ironside to reality, pulling him out of the murky mists of his vision.
The soldier looks at him with a worried face.
John Ironside tries to swallow, but his mouth is completely dry and kneaded. He nods, turning a tarnished look behind him, toward the men crammed in the helicopter. One of the soldiers is looking straight at him, but it only lasts a moment, and after giving a nod he turns his gaze elsewhere.
Multiple perceptions alternate in Ironside’s mind. The sounds and scenes lived a few moments earlier are still vivid into his heart. A too realistic vision, a sick lucid dream, even though the host’s identity is the only detail that he can’t focus on. A man with dark, bushy hair, with an affable smile over a face slightly too big for his narrow and sagging shoulders.
Who the hell is that man?
It’s as if someone, or something, was projecting a movie into his mind, purposely missing that so important particular. Halfway between a threat and a kind of induced nightmare. A hideous vision of a possible future.
“Excuse me, sir, you seemed to have dozed off. I didn’t want to bother you, but you almost immediately began to moan in your sleep.”
“How much time did I…?”
“Not much, sir, not even three minutes, as I said, I’m sorry…”
“No problem, lieutenant, thank you. The last forty-eight hours have been hard to everybody. What about the troops on the ground?”
“That’s also why I allowed myself to bother you, sir. We have received a communication from the boys who were with Major Macready, where the helicopter crashed. They split. The Major has returned to the base with two men to investigate the radio silence. Others converge in our direction to join us along the way, we will meet them soon.”