The soldier reaches the group, stopping a few meters away.
Macready is the first to approach.
“How are you feeling, Terry?”
The voice of the soldier sounds hoarse and slurred.
“Apart from the feeling of having been trampled by a herd of horses I would say well, sir.”
Macready in a few words updates the man on the latest events after his jumping out of the truck.
“That beast grabbed Wilford and pulled him away with such a force that his uniform was torn as I tried to hold him back. There was something monstrous in the car in which there had to be Brody and White. The last thing I remember is the sight of tentacles that plucked off the door and invaded the cockpit. The rest is confusing and foggy, but I think I fled away. I had no choice.”
The man tells Macready his experience with haunted eyes, as if in his mind he is constantly reviewing those scenes.
“You are hurt, Terry, and in poor condition. We have prepared a test that… well it isn’t a walk in a park. If you don’t want to do it, no one will blame you”, Macready exclaims. “But I’ll have to tie you anyway. We are only a few left now, we can’t allow ourselves to be complacent, whatever the cost. I’m sorry.”
“No problem. I’ll do it, sir.”
Macready looks at him for a few moments without saying anything, uncertain.
“I can do that, I’m fine”, the soldier reiterates.
The Major nods. “That’s right, man, OK.”
“Hey Matt, you who are a doctor, you should know how to do these things. You should make yourself a balls transfusion from Terry”, Hawk shouts at the doctor, who answers by showing his stubby medium finger.
Macready meanwhile, explains to McKinnock the dynamic of the test. The man nods.
“Let’s hurry”, he murmurs, as he starts wobbling towards the electrodes.
The soldier pauses, contemplating for a moment the canister with the incendiary mixture, then he shakes his head and bends with a sigh, taking the two electrodes in his hands.
At a sign from Macready, Hawk closes the contacts, and a discharge of electricity runs through the body of the soldier.
Ironside takes time, and for a moment it seems that the test will end as the previous ones.
Then something starts to happen.
The body of McKinnock is arched backward, slowly but steadily.
A surge of nervousness crosses the group of soldiers. Some raise their weapons, aiming at the white plastic canister.
“Wait! don’t shoot!”, Macready shouts.
McKinnock gives a terrifying scream, while his body bends backward, shaping an unnatural arc. The soldier’s chest swells, while the clothes are torn by the pressure of the body. For a few moments the soldiers look at the skin of his abdomen, tense up in agony…
Then a red line draws a deep horizontal laceration at the navel. The wound grows, opening into a mouth bristling with sharp teeth. The creature roars while the man’s arms are detached from the trunk. They fall to the ground and shake like lizards tails. The suit swells on the arched shoulders of what had been McKinnock, tearing with a slow noise. Fleshy protuberances grow on his shoulder blades, stretching to form two huge limbs that bend on the ground, and on which the creature stands trembling. Insects’ like eyes sprout around the mouth that has opened in the place of the abdomen.
“What are you waiting for? Burn it!”, Moore shouts.
Her voice has the effect of awakening the men, almost hypnotized by the terrifying vision.
The new limbs developed by the creature unfold at several joints, assuming the geometry of gigantic canine paws, whose skin, shiny and chitinous, somewhat resembles that of insects.
Quick blows reach the incendiary canister, causing an explosion and generating a wave of flames that engulfs the creature, stretching for some meters.
The screams are terrible, the monster stirs, rushing toward the soldiers.
Macready grabs the woman, pulling her out of the way of the screaming monstrosity. The other marines dodge.
All but one.
Blocked by terror, Matt Serum is invested in full by the creature on fire. With a quick movement the being leans on him, grabbing his head and torso between the enormous jaws and lifting it off the ground.
The man doesn’t even have time to scream. The soldiers look impotent at the scene, as the creature keeps burning, and to move randomly, with Serum’s body and the legs of McKinnock dangling like barbs from his monstrous torso.
“Get away!”, Ironside shouts.
The man has recovered one of the one gallons cans containing the incendiary mixture, removing the cap. He throws it at the creature on fire, hitting its side.
The men run to a safe distance when the napalm in the canister catches fire, engulfing the creature in violent flames.
The horror struggles for several long moments, its many appendages flailing in the air, then falls to the ground, its body burns with a violent crackling.
The sun is already high in the sky, the scorching heat starts to wrap the desolate sandy wastes.
Macready, Moore and Ironside are near the last armored vehicle, out of which comes a slight flow of fresh air.
“There’s no way to contact the outside world.” Ironside’s voice betrays how much everyone is tired. “At the Pentagon they will be wondering what’s going on here, they will send rescue teams to see what happened, actually they are probably already on the way.”
“They’ll have a big fish to fry with the diplomacy. We are surrounded by miles of desert, but we can’t rule out that some Bedouin has heard the explosions, or seen the smoke of the Boeing crash. Someone might draw conclusions”, Macready looks at the worried gaze of Moore.
The woman isn’t quiet, the situation is apparently under control, but…
“Something wrong?”, the Major asks.
“I don’t know”, she says, taking time before going on. “McKinnock… the creature, it could have fled and hidden, taking advantage of our distraction with the tests. Or it could have pretended to be still unconscious, to have fallen into a coma, until an opportune time. Instead…”
“It woke up and despite its conditions it agreed immediately to take the test, without blinking”, Ironside concludes.
“Exactly”, the woman goes on. “It could have attacked the Major when he approached…”
“And it may had assimilated Brimley when he rescued it as well, on the way to get here”, Macready adds.
“There is a possible reason for the failure of Brimley’s assimilation”, again Ironside. “I have personally seen McKinnock jump away from the truck a while after the creature had thrown its tentacles into the cockpit. He had probably been grazed, and it took some time for it to complete the assimilation. Unless it was infected earlier, at the crash site, as the two men who were driving the leading vehicle.”
“As soon as we have the support from the government we should organize a sterilization of the entire area”, says Macready. “Brody and White have spent most of their time on high ground, outside the containment perimeter. We don’t know when, how and by whom or what they have been infected. After what we saw I wouldn’t rule anything out.”
“About McKinnock”, Moore, “I think it has been a slow assimilation, during the hours in which he was unconscious. Dr. Ivanov said that the rate of assimilation is directly proportional to the difference between the mass of the creature and that of its victim. Few cells take a considerable time to digest and clone an entire human body.”
Ironside is puzzled. “The fact remains that, however, it could have come out and attacked us, and this before agreeing to take the test, but it did not…”