He can feel his insides begin to quiver as adrenaline peters away, and he thinks about how the world has changed, how many men have died under his command, since Los Angeles.
No one could have possibly foreseen such a thing happening. The object which flew into our atmosphere and settled above the Los Angeles skyline changed everything in the wink of an eye. The spaceship sent humanity sprawling headfirst into a race for its existence.
During the first days following the disaster, Dr. Valentine had said she’d seen a crack open in the bottom of it. Something must have leaked out, wreaking destruction on a scale never before witnessed by human beings; an extinction event.
Connors isn’t for certain, but he has reason enough to believe the whole world was thrown through the windshield when this thing whatever it was stomped on the brake pedal. He and a few others rode the crest of the wave leaving L.A. which carried death along with it. He saw the rapidity of the change, the mutations of souls, now lost. He saw it in the towns and cities as the people turned into bloodthirsty savages. How bad this all is, how widespread, nobody truly knows. It could be worldwide, it could just be contained to the United States.
The night he and his ragtag convoy left Fort Irwin in Barstow, California, the countryside was crawling with the Turned. Every street, every field, everywhere… just crawling with those things. And those who hadn’t transformed, into sideshow freaks were either in the process of transforming or being dispatched by unspeakable post-human monsters.
The hellishness of what they can do is frightening, and it’s growing more powerful every day. What was that old saying? Connors thinks hard, pushing his memory to recall it… yes. He opens a desk drawer and searches a small, leather-bound book for what he seeks. Someone, most certainly, Bantam, had stashed it for safe keeping. He finds what he’s looking for, nestled right up next to a half-full bottle of scotch. He flips through the pages, and runs his finger along the printing, smudging the lines of dark ink as he goes, making faint trailing smudges across delicate, gold-gilded pages.
He reads to himself, Exodus 22:18 KJV. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. And had it not been for Merna Valentine jumping in front of that thing in the courtyard, he would have laid her brains out, right along with those other two. He would have sent the thing on a one-way elevator ride, to the front door of Hell.
Dr. Valentine was shouting something during the attack. Was there any truth to it, or was she only trying to save the thing? Was the kid trying to stop the other from screaming like a banshee? Unbelievable. How could the kid howl like that? He tugs on his thick earlobes with his fingers. Between today’s weapons fire and the Queen of the Damned, singing her swan song, he calculated how much hearing he has lost.
Someone knocks hesitantly at his door, and he calls out in response, “Come.” He slides the book back into the drawer, caressing the dusty bottle beside it with his fingertips, feeling the velvet smooth cover slide across them, before pushing the drawer closed. He rubs his fingers together to sanding away the dust.
“You wanted to see us, Major?” says Shaw.
Dr. Valentine files in behind him. Her face is pale. She’s psychologically fatigued by the day’s events; in the operating room and the courtyard. She swallows hard, her throat bulging slightly. She could sleep for a thousand years, and it still wouldn’t be enough.
Connors rubs his face with his rough hands, and squeezes his cleft chin, pinching it tightly, feeling several days-worth of stubble poke his palm. “Sit down.” chair squeaks and pops as it pivots. He says he wants some answers, and he wants them right now. He’s pointing to where the courtyard should be if he could see it clearly through the cheap, wood-paneled walls.
Dr. Valentine erupts, “He’s been keeping things from me.” She points a damning finger at her rival. “All of his research about the children. He’s been running his own experiments and keeping his finding from me… from all of us. He has no intention of saving them.”
“Those things are not children. They’re only pretending to be children… just enough to disarm you, confuse you, and then murder you. They most certainly are not children,” says Connors. His spittle flies from his mouth as he shouts in her face.
Shaw grins. He’s satisfied by the Major’s retort. He lowers his head and covers his mouth to hide his satisfaction.
Valentine, looking defeated, reiterates, “He’s been keeping vital information that we need. Information which could help us put an end to all this.”
The major shoots a questioning look towards Shaw.
“By putting an end to all this, Dr. Valentine means to find a cure for the research subjects. She believes they’re an unfortunate bunch of kiddos, and they’re being affected by a curable affliction, and this isn’t the case, Major, I assure you,” Shaw says.
“Oh, no, no, no, no,” agrees Connors, shaking his head and waving his index finger in the air before him, “What I just saw out there was cold-hearted, inhuman, twisted, and calculated. These… whatever they are… cannot be saved with medicines, or scientific mumbo jumbo. Nothing can pull those things back from the precipice. They are lost.”
“Shaw wants to kill them all… not just the Turned, but the children too, all of them!” Valentine says, almost as if she’s pleading for the major’s help. And she is.
Connors saunters to the window, spreading dust-caked curtains, he stares out, and says nothing, before stroking his face, from forehead to chin with both palms. “And he should. We should. I approve. His actions justify the means to an end. They need to all die, and the sooner, the better.
Shaw steps forward, speaking in defense of keeping the subjects alive, for now, long enough to find a solution to wiping out evil in one fell swoop. “Major, we can’t euthanize them right now. They need to be studied further. We must develop a weapon that can deal with the issue at hand, on a grand scale, once and for all.”
Shaw brings Connors up to speed on the parasite he found burrowed into Lily’s brain, looking all the world like a cabbage with legs. “It’s certainly the very same creature that most likely resides inside the braincase of all the subjects, of that I have zero doubt. It’s an alien lifeform for Christ’s sake. Can you believe it?”
Dr. Valentine has found a chair, and she’s draped over it looking nauseous and tossing, Shaw nasty stares while he babbles.
“I don’t know how to destroy it. I mean sure, I can eventually kill it, I’m sure, but not all of them, and not all at once, and that’s the goal. Taking those things out of commission one at a time isn’t at all effective nor is it efficient. No, what we need is someone who knows something about parasites or, God, I don’t know… plants. A Horticulturalist perhaps. Then maybe we might have a chance to gain the upper hand and set things right.”
Connors calls, over his radio, and a few moments later a soldier jogs into the office. “Get over to communications and tell, Airwave, to send out a call to any active base. We are looking for a…” Connors snaps his fingers at, Shaw.