The last orange rays of the sun swim through red-tinted cirrus clouds. Stepping foot onto the flat upper level, there’s something else up here with the major. Connors doesn’t hesitate to raise his rifle and takes aim. But… it’s not needed.
The Wicked Briar he finds sheltering here is dying. Too weak to move even if it wasn’t tied down by long root-like tendrils undulating into mounded piles of dead animals, encircling it like a berm of festering roadkill. The garage was supposed to be a safe place to lay eggs and dine on the fetid tissues of dead things, serving as some sort of macabre fertilizer.
The roof-top fiend sprawls there, melded with a human torso like two candles melted into one. They’re two separate beings entwined in a ghoulish demise. Its sagging, sun-leathered breasts make it a no-brainer. This thing was once a human female, but now, what’s left of the woman cascades like a macabre clay sculpture coming to rest below the beast like discarded baggage, or a benign tumor. Sparse and straggling strands of, brassy-red hair blow, as if each strand were dying blades of grass, swaying in the late-evening winds. The eyes are clouded over with cataracts, and the tongue is swollen and black.
He moves his lips, but no sound comes out, he can count on one hand, how many times in his life he’s been completely speechless. Shaking his head in disbelief, he shrugs his shoulders. He can’t understand what he’s seeing. He has no idea what’s happening. He needs to know what this means.
What are you doing way up here? Approaching the Wicked Briar, he avoids any rapid movements and prepares himself to make a quick exit. His rifle is still up and ready to fire at any sign of aggression. Don’t get close to this thing… have I gone loony or something?
The demon recoils from his presence. He’s startled by the reaction. In fact, he nearly soils his pants. Flaps of striated flesh on the Wicked Briar’s back flare out like beetle’s wings. Black pods fall out of follicles in the ‘wings.’ When they strike the concrete, they make solid thumping sounds before breaking to pieces like charcoal briquettes.
Connors reaches into his pack. He takes out the small first aid tin. It’s empty. He keeps it on hand should anything, exactly like the thing happing now, should ever happen and he should need to take a sample back to the base for the doctors to have a gander at.
He argues with himself. He needs to get back to the truck and get White Deer to the base. Leave the sample and go. But he convinces himself. It’s best to take it back with him. The doctors may be able to figure out what it is he’s discovered. Maybe this is an important step to understanding how to get rid of these creatures. Unlikely, yes, but it could help. Even if not, it’s one more thing they can learn about the enemy. Swearing a string of obscenities under his breath, he scoops up several of the fragile pods.
The truck awaits his return, as does Hollander. Driving back to base through the occupied enemy territory, in the dark, will hopefully be uneventful. As far as he’s concerned, they must get White Deer some medical treatment, so although night has fallen, it’s back to Camp Able, a hot shower, a soft bed, and a good ol’ cup of that thick crap they’re calling coffee.
Chapter Eight
“I ran blindly through the madhouse… And I cannot even pray… for I have no God.”
A rifle-stock to the ribs knocks the air from her lungs. She’s manhandled into her section and pressed into place. Rose stands stock-still fearing what the green men might do to her if she steps out of line. They seem extra short tempered today, but it’s not much worse than any other day. As a rule, they stay angry with the children.
It’s library day. It’s not her favorite day, because her favorite day is when she can talk to Dr. Valentine in the Assessment room, but it is her second best favorite day.
Rose has noticed that Lily isn’t in line with them, nor was she in line yesterday, either. She misses Lily terribly. She doesn’t really know the girl, and though she isn’t friends with her, she thinks that maybe they could be the very best of friends. Maybe Lily will be back tomorrow, and I’ll start to make friends with her then. Maybe she’s just not feeling well, or something.
When Rose’s section arrives at the library, and everyone is released from their shackles, Rose doesn’t choose A History of Man, From Prehistory to Present Da, this time. She learned all she needed to know about Man on her last visit to the library. She wasn’t impressed.
Man, as a species, is a wild and stupid, war-faring animal, with no thoughts for anything other than itself, and what it can gain by taking advantage of other Men. Man is destructive, arrogant, and irreversibly flawed with few, if any, saving graces. Man, as an animal is greedy and everything it does or achieves in life is usually fueled by the promise of reward for itself. Man, as a creation is destructive, perverse, and small. Deep down she doesn’t feel like Man, as a sentient being, deserves anything more than what it brings upon itself, which, in the end, is usually self-destruction.
She’s studied the book from cover to back. She read every word of it, every line, absent-mindedly chewing her tongue as she does when she’s focusing very hard on a thing, absorbing it. So, no, she doesn’t need to read, A History of Man, From Prehistory to Present Day this time.
Instead, she pulls a smaller book with a cheery little cover from the bottom row of shelves. She turns her head slightly to observe the green men from the corner of her eye. They’re still safely in the cage. They’re not watching her. They’re far more interested in the infamous troublemaker, Hawthorne, but for now, he’s too busy deciding what he wants to read to cause too much trouble. There’ll be time enough for discord later.
Rose’s tiny fingers grasp the book, The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Gently she turns it over and over again in her little hands, inspecting its worn, cloth-papered cover. Little threads are poking out from the corners of the hardcover. The sight of it makes her smile, but not so much that a green man will come out of the cage and wipe it off her face with a well-placed slap.
The spine of it has come slightly loose from the pages inside, but she carries it back to her seat, the same chair she sat in before is now occupied by a boy. He doesn’t bother to take notice of her. She simply stands there before she decides to take another chair instead because one of the green men is rapping on the cage with his rifle, to usher her along.
She reads to herself, painting pictures of each scene in her mind. She’s distracted when Hawthorne whistles his favorite tune, and it’s repeated by both green men in the cage. Eyes carefully bouncing from child to child fall across the children, like lighthouses, moving back and forth searching for any signs of a potential problem.
Turning the crisp, pulped-paper pages, she assigns the characters in the book to people she’s met at Camp Able. With each turned page, Rose can imagine herself as Dorothy; the little farm girl lost in a faraway land. Dr. Valentine is Glinda, the good witch of the North. Glenda protects Dorothy from the all the evils in the world of Oz.