Bunny twisted under it and slammed an elbow into the monster’s side, and squirmed out from under. He was drenched with blood. I didn’t know how much of it was his own.
“Cap!”
I turned at the yell and saw Top being driven backward against the wall. He had his M4 jammed sideways and pressed against the chest of a creature whose face was something out of nightmare. The eyes were human, but that was all. Its face was covered with thick scablike plates, some of them overlaid like dragon scales, others standing alone on otherwise human skin. The nose was nearly gone, flattened against the armored face, and the mouth was a lipless slash surrounded by wriggling antennae. It was naked to the waist, the rags of fatigue pants hanging from its spindly legs.
Before I could close on him and offer help, Top pivoted and chopped out with a low, short side-thrust kick that shattered the creature’s knee. As it reeled back, he came off the wall and swung the M4 in a tight upward arc, crushing its chin with the stock of the rifle. The blow was so powerful that the telescoping stock cracked and bent, but the thing that had once been a soldier flipped over backward and crashed down on the ground. Top stamped a foot onto its chest and put two rounds into the misshapen skull.
I had my own troubles. Three of them swarmed at me in a three-point close. They tried to run me back against the wall, and if they had I’d have been trapped and torn apart. They were so close that I only had enough room to bring my M4 up and hit the closest one with a burst to the chest. The impact flung him back, but the creature to his right lashed out and swatted the rifle out of my hands. It was a hugely powerful blow, way too strong for a man of his size. Whatever the doctors had done had amped up his strength. Or maybe he was mad with horror and rage and was pumping adrenaline. The rifle sling kept the weapon from flying away, but I lost my hold on it and the creature reached for my throat with gnarled black fingers.
I parried and ducked and came up on the far side of his arms, then shoved him hard into the other attacker. They crashed into the wall, which gave me a short second of breathing space, so I grabbed at the rapid-release folding knife clipped to the edge of my pocket. It was positioned to release right into my hand and I gave it a flick and felt the blade lock into place even while my hand was moving. There was a flash of green fire and then the second of the monsters was spinning away, trying to staunch the flow of black blood from his throat.
The third one growled at me, his voice filled with clicks and hisses, and he slashed at my face. I ducked and felt his iron-hard nails tear through the fabric cover over my helmet. I didn’t wait. I drove in low and hard and put my shoulder into his chest, driving him back against the wall. He hit with a crunch that tore a howl from his throat. I used a flat palm to knock his head against the wall and then moved in to let the knife do its work.
He fell and I pivoted, switching the knife to my left hand, drawing my pistol with my right.
And froze.
There was James Collins right in front of me. I knew immediately that it was him. Three of the fingers were missing from his left hand. He crouched ten feet away, legs wide to straddle the body on the ground.
Bunny.
Collins bent low so that he could touch Bunny’s throat with the fingers of his right hand. The fingers were long, the nails thickened into talons, and from where each tip dented Bunny’s throat thin lines of blood leaked down the side of the big Marine’s neck. Around us the alarms rang and the lights flashed, but nothing and no one moved. Collins raised his horror-show face and I could tell, even with those dark and alien eyes, that he knew as well as I did that we were all sliding down a steep slope into hell.
I raised my pistol and put the laser sight on Collins, right over the heart. He looked down at it for a moment, and his fingers pressed more deeply into Bunny’s flesh.
“Cap’n,” murmured Top from a few yards away, but I ignored him.
Even though Goldman and Halverson had told us what to expect, I could feel a scream bubbling in my gut. This was wrong, and it was ugly, and it was scaring the living shit out of me. Sweat ran down inside my clothes and my mouth was as dry as mummy dust. If I could have run, I would have.
I said, “Collins.”
The creature’s head jerked up and his slit of a mouth worked for a moment. All I could hear were clicks. His face was covered with the same platelike scabs as the others. It wasn’t precisely an insect face, but it was too far away from human. There were tiny fibers or stubby antennae around his mouth, and they twitched like stubby fingers. God only know what sensory information those appendages fed that tortured mind.
“Listen to me,” I said, and my voice cracked a little. I cleared my throat and tried it again. “Collins…listen.”
In the shadows, the other creatures clicked and hissed at the sound of my voice.
“I know you’re in there. I know Corporal James Collins is still in there.”
His mouth and throat muscles worked. Rasps and clicks, a stilted flow that was so alien and unnatural that it was painful to hear.
“J-J-J—”
I kept the red dot steady, my finger inside the trigger guard. I had my trigger adjusted to a five-and-a-half-pound pull and I had about four pounds on it. Bunny was trying not to breathe, trying to sink into the floor, and he looked every bit as terrified as I felt.
“J-J-J-Jimm…J-J-Jimmy,” said Collins.
My breath caught in my throat.
“Holy mother of God,” Top whispered behind me.
“Jimmy?” I asked.
The misshapen head bobbed.
“You’re Jimmy Collins, is that right? Jimmy, not James?”
Another nod. There was a light in his eyes. Fear. Anger. Maybe—relief?
“The docs,” I said “Jimmy—the docs said that you signed up for this.”
His eyes hardened. The others hissed.
“They said that you knew the risks.”
“Risks,” he snarled and I knew that just framing the word had to hurt his throat. He used his maimed hand to touch his face. “Not…this.”
“No,” I said emphatically. Almost a shout. “Not this. There’s no way they told you that this would happen. But did they tell you what might happen?”
He tried to answer, but emotion—or whatever was left for him to feel—stole what little voice he had. Eventually he managed to get it out. Two words.
“They…lied.”
“Yeah, brother, I pretty much figured that. That sucks more than I can describe, but listen to me, Jimmy….I can’t let you hurt my man there. He’s a good man. A friend.”
“A—Army?” Collins said.
“No. He’s Gyrene like you are. End of the day, though, he’s another pair of boots on the ground in someone else’s war.” I eased off of the trigger and slipped my finger outside the guard. He watched me do it. I didn’t lower the gun, though; and he saw that, too. “I know you never signed up for this, Jimmy. Who would? They think that because you enlisted and because you signed a piece of paper that they own you, that you’re just a lab rat to them. If that’s the case, if that’s what we’ve all been fighting for, then God help the United States. Or maybe God help us all, because someone’s missing the whole damn point. You with me on this, Jimmy?”
He paused, then nodded. It was impossible to read his face, hard to know if he was agreeing with me or giving me permission to keep talking.
“You want to know why I’m here? Why me and my team are here? The docs who did this to you called Homeland and said that this facility was being overrun by terrorists.”