A folded area map lays on the dash against the windshield. It’s sun-bleached but still useful. He unfolds it, puts his reading glasses on, and scans it for location White Deer gave. He finds it tapping a finger on the spot. He listens to White Deer’s interpretation of what he and Private Austin discovered.
“It’s pretty good stuff: canned goods, preserves, a couple cartons of cigarettes, and a bunch of aspirin. They would’ve never dropped this stuff unless they had to high-tail it out of here in a big hurry.” Static disturbs the communication briefly. “…tracks on Lieutenant Grayson. Over.”
Connors asks the Private to clarify his last transmission, hoping that they may have found one of the runners, but unfortunately the clarification that comes is that there is no sign other than the dropped pack, of either of the runners. And that’s not the worst of it.
“We have some movement, Major, standby.”
Connors keeps to protocol, one that he wrote himself. No transmissions when there’re eyes on an unfriendly. He wipes grime and sweat from his brow, takes a swig from his canteen sitting it down near his feet to continue to wait for White Deer to send word of the situation.
Hollander’s eyes scrape like sandpaper trying to remove the peeling paint from Elizabeth Street’s empty storefronts. Five excruciating minutes pass while Connors taps his boot on the floor panel. Much more waiting will have him put a hole right through it.
White Deer whispers one word that’s wrapped in a light blanket of static, but it’s clear enough for Connors to make out something that turns the blood in his veins to a river of ice.
“—Turned—”
More static and a pause.
“We have eyes on a target moving south-southeast. Awaiting orders, sir. Over.”
“Identify the unfriendly, and give me a headcount, White Deer. Over,” says the major. He holds his breath, not wanting to hear what he fears he might, hoping the situation doesn’t go from, oh, crap, to holy shit.”
“—ked Briars, Major. We have eyes on one… no, wait… we have eyes on two, sir. Repeat, two, Wicked Briars, coming up the road as bug ugly as you can imagine.”
As bad as it is, it could be worse, for now, it’s just at ‘oh, crap’ level. Wicked Briars are bad enough. They’re hard as anything to put down and ticked off from the word ‘go.’ A human being twisted and mangled into a shape, reminding those who see it as a cross between a long-legged scorpion and a devil crab, if you can picture that.
The creatures are fearsome foes of inconceivable terror, to say the very least; engineered in the mind of a cursed soul, shrouded in nightmarish skin stretched over a shell of thorny armor.
Residual pieces of the human being it once was, slough from the Wicked Briar, leaving the scent of rotting death in their wake. Trailing shreds of carrion on the ground behind it, like dead leaves left for the buzzards to peck at. The merged human torso and head are usually the only remnants remaining, glued to the undercarriage of the exoskeleton. The human anatomy pushed back and protected beneath it. The best way to kill it is to hit the human head dangling underneath, a challenge to hit, or to completely devastate the thing entirely a well-placed explosive.
And they’re not a brainless animal moving from place to place like cattle, they’re intelligent and crafty, spinning heavy-duty strands of material into a vast network of wicked webs. Any attempt to move through the webbing is like cutting through a dense forest of briars. The webs can put the hurts on even the largest, heavy-duty vehicles; shedding tires, and in some cases piercing radiators. They cut you off and hem you in, and then you’re on the menu, plain and simple. So, it’s best to avoid’em altogether.
Still, the Wicked Briars aren’t as bad as some of the other things Connors has heard tale about. Grubs, for instance, bury themselves below ground and reach from their burrows to drag down any poor soul who steps on the wrong spot, and no one knows what they do to their victims below the earth. Connors shivers trying hard not to think about it.
And then there are the Doldrums, so far as Connors is concerned, these are still a myth, like Bigfoot, or the Easter Bunny, because he hasn’t seen one for himself, and until he does he’ll mark it as bovine excrement. A couple of reports surfaced from Laughlin Air Force Base a few months back. It said something was attacking the men who were outside the fences after dark, no one ever saw anything. The reports said, whatever it was, came from the shadows. It came out and took the men. The morning after, only blood and a few bone chips were all that was ever found of the missing.
Connors is a man, who believes none of what he hears, and only half of what he sees. He prefers to make his own judgment. That’s the problem with these, so-called Doldrums, you can’t see them, they hunt from the shadows and feed in the safety of the darkness. The world is full enough of the creepy-crawlies you can see. Doldrums, if they do exist, sound extra special dangerous, like a shark swimming up from the depths to feed on the occasional swimmer.
The thing that really takes the cake… the thing that eats him up the most… are the little bastards back at Camp Able. No one knows what they are, but they aren’t like any children he’d ever seen. Well, maybe just on the outside. Hell, no one even knows exactly what they can do either, but he’d seen those kids do some weird stuff with his own two eyes. He wants to give them a one-way ticket off the base, but Shaw insists on keeping them around for now, because he thinks he’ll find a magic potion or a silver bullet to eradicate them from the planet. I sure hope we can get’em before they get us. Connors shakes his head to clear the thoughts away. He needs to keep his wits about him and get his tail over to the men hunkering down on Fifth and South Point. There’s work to be done.
Grabbing the M41 helmets and weapons, Major Connors and Sgt. Hollander slog their way over to the last known location of his men. They stay low to the ground, slinking around buildings and abandoned cars. Playing it smooth so not to bring unwanted attention to themselves.
The sun is beating down on the men in waves of unrelenting heat. The sweat rolls off them by the pint, soaking their clothes, so they stick to their backs and legs. Every breath is like sticking your head into a brick-fired oven.
From time to time the major can hear the emerald and black cicadas, that hang in the boughs of the heat-scorched elm trees of Brownsville, Texas. They chirrup and flutter transparent, rice-paper wings in the canopy of dense treetops. Connors scours the street, the last known location of White Deer, but he nor Austin is anywhere to be found.
Where are they? He scans the area again, slower, in case he missed anything. His focus is erratic, his eyes baking in his head from the heat. He suspects dehydration. It’s a regular occurrence nowadays. His head pounds with each beat of his heart, his mouth and tongue are dry, and he can’t remember the last time he pissed. Was it last night? Not good. He left his dog soup in the truck. Rookie mistake. Thirst gnaws at him deeply, and the grit in his throat magnifies the condition if nothing more than to irritate him. Suck it up, major… you’re getting soft in your old age. Instinct drives him to the pavement, so forcefully it nearly knocks the wind from his lungs. Hollander throws himself to the ground, behind the major.
He lifts his eyes upward, dragging them across the jagged elevation of the buildings. Bingo. White Deer is hanging his head far enough over a rooftop for Connors to catch a glimpse of him. Connors and Hollander get ready to move again, checking their gear and changing position, so they aren’t lying on the broiling roadway anymore, but before they can move, a bulky form passes, and then another follows the first across the major’s peripheral vision. Both men drop again, harder this time, but without almost any sound.