Fight as they do, the soldiers are hopeless to match the sheer numbers near indomitability of the enemy foe. Airwave is lost to a blast of acid splashing over a wall. It came from nowhere. Connors barely missed being doused in the flesh-melting concoction.
Connors could hear the cries and random shouting all over the base, but one catches his attention.
“Major!”
It’s Hollander. “The base is lost. We’ve to get the hell out of here.”
The major cries out to the closest tower to sound the evacuation signal. The base has been overtaken. Hollander is correct; to stay and fight would be folly.
An errant shell is lobbed intended for a matter of great lethality but goes astray. The two men dive for cover, covering their heads from the noise and explosion to come. It spears the hospital building rending it open, directly down the center, like a butchered cow. The principal portion of the structure is destroyed, most notably, the cells of research subjects. Smoldering chunks of the building lay in pyramids of dust-shrouded rocks. Dust billows in fluffed curtains of brown and gray ash, choking out the sunlight. Calls and cries well up, and outward, from the broken wreckage and tangles of demolished inner-structure.
Dr. Valentine clears away the tangles of clotted wire, and shards of concrete, from where they have been strewn around the remains of the hospital. More than a few of the children have been killed by the falling debris. Tiny bodies lay twisted and dispersed across a wide area.
“Rose!” Dr. Valentine calls, “Rose!”
She throws planks of wood and debris out of her path. She spots movement to her left. A small hand. She reaches down to grab the small, blood splattered hand. It’s clawing out aimlessly. The palm is coated with small silvery hairs dotted on the ends with cloudy, yellow fluid.
“Stop! Valentine!” A muffled and raspy voice calls out, barely reaching her in all the uproar.
She takes notice just in time. It’s amazing that he caught her attention at all. She scans the debris until she finds the little hand again, poking out at her. And it’s clear to her, it’s not Rose’s hand, but the hand of another child. Nettle’s hands are a symbolic prelude to a painful and potentially deadly sting. She shudders. She’s the only child with this ability that Dr. Valentine knows of, thank God. She would have to be more careful, now that all the safety measures have been undone. She almost bought the farm, but there’s no time to be embarrassed for being so stupid.
“Nettle, it’s me, Dr. Valentine I’ll help you,” she says.
She shoves herself against a solid block of concrete, but the portion of the wall that is pinning the girl down is much too heavy for her to lift. She calls to a soldier as he’s running past. She calls to him for assistance, but he’s much too busy pissing himself to lend a hand, and he keeps right on running to wherever he was going before she called to him.
A long pipe lies not far from her. She collects it. Even though it’s kinked and warped, it’s the straightest, longest piece she can find. There’re plenty of concrete blocks scattered around to serve as a fulcrum.
After she rolls a large stone into place. A muscle in her lower back screams out in agony. She forces one end of the pipe under the wall and pulls downward. The busted wall, pinning Nettle beneath it, budges a little, but she can’t hold for very long. She’s not strong enough, and she’s soon forced to lower it back to the ground. She does it as slowly as she can so as not to crush Nettle’s skinny body beneath it.
Sweat pours from her filthy, grime-sheathed face. Her breaths come in groans and gasps. She’s mumbling to herself about how she can’t help the thing tramped under the rubble. Why had she said the “thing,” of course, she’s a child. That’s what she meant. She’s trying to fight away the thought that trying to free Nettle is hopeless. But she’s right, she can’t do it alone. She tries to lift it again, but she hemorrhages strength, and her will falters.
Something grabs her by the shoulder and pulls her violently away from where she’s standing. Times up. The wicked Briars have found me. Terrified her eyes move up to look death in its triumphant face, but finds only Shaw’s blue, bloodshot eyes drilling into her.
“Please, help me.” She stumbles, losing her grip on the pipe. Her waning strength makes her feel awkward and displaced and dizzy.
Shaw needs not to be asked again. The answer he’s been desperate to find most likely resides inside the heads of the subjects, of which not many have survived the collapse of the building. If they’re leaving Camp Able, at least one of these abominations must be brought along with them. He pries with the lever, and the wall raises, much higher than when Dr. Valentine tried to lift it.
Dr. Valentine scrambles part-way under the wall so she can reach Nettle, carefully avoiding a touch from her hands, she grabs the child’s hospital gown and drags her out from underneath.
Shaw lowers the back-breaking burden that he’s struggling to hold. It crashes down quickly. Nettle’s feet barely clear the heavy, bone-breaking block. A cloud of this dust thickens the air as the ruins settle.
“Here, quick, wrap her hands up in this,” says Shaw. He throws Dr. Valentine a handkerchief from his pocket, and a discarded oil rag he picks up from the debris field. He tells her to wrap those hands good and tight and do be extra careful doing it.
A small voice is calling to her. It’s a hoarse, choking whisper, coming from a cascading mountain of rock and smoldering, splintered furniture.
“Rose! She’s there,” Dr. Valentine points to the pile of wreckage she thinks is where the child called to her from. “Oh, God, She’s alive. Help me.”
“We have all we need,” says Shaw. “Just the one… We have to get out of here.”
“No!” says Dr. Valentine, already trying to get to Rose. “We aren’t leaving her to die here. We aren’t going to do that!”
Shaw bends down to speak to Nettle and warns her not to try anything stupid, “Stay here and don’t you dare move. Do you understand? If you move, you’re as good as dead.”
Nettle, other than bloody and dirty, appears unshaken or seriously injured, and if Shaw didn’t know any better, she’d look as normal as any seven-year-old could. She nods her head, confirming that she’ll stay where she is and not try anything stupid.
“You’re dumber than I give you credit for. Look around you. If we don’t get out of here, we’re dead.” His words aren’t stopping Dr. Valentine from moving the pile of concrete from where she’s trying to dig out, R – Zero – Five – E. He takes up the pry-pole again and shakes away his impatience. “This is the last one I’m helping to save, and then I’m leaving with or without you. And, I’m taking that one,” he points to Nettle.
Rose’s hands are bruised scraped. She’s reaching out from under a great wooden beam pockmarked with rusty nails, pleading for help. The concrete avalanche and wood cover the rest of her body, concealing it from view.
Dr. Valentine keels down, on her knees, to hold her hands. Shaw warns her to be careful and not to touch her. She doesn’t care what he has to say, she’ll do as she pleases, even though she knows he’s right. Skin-to-skin contact is forbidden, unless under the strictest scientific standards in a controlled environment, and under the watchful eye of an armed guard. All of which all in the process of trying to avoid death.
“I have to pull her out when you lift with the pole. Now shut up and lift already,” says Dr. Valentine.
The Hobbles are doing what they do best and living up to their namesake. The squat creatures, looking all the world like long-legged devil crabs, with human eyes of every color, placed on stumpy eye-stalks, are loping after fleeing soldiers, grabbing them around the legs and tying them up, with a stringy substance which they exude from spinnerets near there rear ends, so that the Wicked Briars can more easily dispatch them.