Charger the Soldier (16 page)

Pam hurried across the lot, sparing a
fleeting thought for her past, so different from her life now.
She'd grown up as the typical, innocent, small-town girl-next-door,
wanting to be an actor and be funny, maybe like Carol Burnett. But
after putting that dream aside in favor of marriage to Dieter and
her first child, she decided that a steady job, like news casting,
would be a better career. She had moved up the corporate ladder
quickly and now was media director for one of America's largest
news networks.

She hurried through the revolving door and
stopped by the staff room off the lobby to get a coffee from the
vending machine. She didn't see, attached to the ceiling above her
head, a small gray stain that moved almost imperceptibly. The stain
slowly formed itself into something that looked like a cross
between a bat and a spider, and extruded a sharp spine-like object
from its back. This was one of the small spy organisms roaming the
war zone, relaying biological data from kills back to the alien
command bases. Pam was about to be this one's next victim. Slowly
and with great purpose, the gray wraith began sliding across the
ceiling and closing the gap between its menacing blade and Pam's
body.

While Pam's attention was focused on
retrieving change from her purse, the wraith lowered itself from
the ceiling on a glue-like film toward her shoulder, just inches
now from the kill. Pam found the final quarter she needed and
inserted it into the coffee machine. As the mechanics of the
vending machine started up, the little killer spy stopped,
seemingly confused and disoriented. As the coffee brewing
continued, the electrical frequency generated from this device,
purely by chance, began causing the wraith to deform. Reaching for
the filled cup, Pam leaned forward just as the little gray spy fell
to the ground and degraded into a fully liquid state. Pam stepped
on it with her red high-heeled shoes on her way to the
elevators.

Unaware of how lucky she'd been, Pam got out
at the tenth floor, tossed the empty coffee cup into a nearby trash
can, and walked briskly down the familiar halls to the media
president's office.

Here she stopped to reinforce her stance by
reminding herself of a brief news item from December 2015. Though
that was fifteen years ago now, the fact that the media had limited
the report to a mere twenty seconds of air time still infuriated
her. Muslim extremists had attacked a bus in Kenya, looking to kill
Christians. The Muslims on the bus had protected the Christians,
saying, 'Shoot all of us or none of us.'

That year had been a time when the far more
numerous peaceful Muslims were being attacked everywhere, by people
who believed all Muslims had the same values. The media had had the
chance to make something out of the Kenya bus story, to exhibit a
rational response which could influence events. But they had
ignored the opportunity. Well, they always had focused on the bad
stuff. Good news apparently didn't sell.

Pam took a deep breath, squared her
shoulders, and entered the president's office. She found him
sitting in a large leather chair, staring out at the ruins across
the city. He was a gluttonous waste of a man, the result of years
of self-righteous decadence. When he walked, Pam thought it looked
like his enormous belly was the main part of him and led his head
and legs wherever it wanted to go.

"Sir, it's been three days since the Germans
landed. We need to air this story," Pam said.

He just sat there, staring out at the
destroyed city.

"Please, sir, our soldiers need to know the
Germans are here to help us. There have been reports of our boys
shooting them in the back. Some are saying that the Germans are
somehow responsible for the aliens advancing. We have the whole
story here and our military needs to know."

Still no response. Pam said emphatically,
"You have a duty to inform the American people."

"Duty... duty! Don't talk to me of duty, you
prima donna!" he snarled. His gaze shifted from the window to a
photograph hanging next to the many trophies awarded him for truth
and integrity in broadcasting. The photo was of prisoners of war,
gaunt and obviously starving.

"Let those rat bastards die," the president
spat. "Let our troops shoot them in the back, then kill all the
aliens on their own, better that way." His voice sounded shrill and
insane. "I don't need any advice from the likes of you, either. I
know your family's history. Your grandmother was a Nazi
sympathizer. Don't know why I ever agreed to bring you on board
this company anyway." Words kept flowing from his mouth but they
were garbled now. His voice became more frenzied as he screamed
inanities.

Then came the sound of a small pop and the
voice stopped.

Pam's eyes filled with tears and a lump
formed deep in her throat. It was hard to breathe and her chest
heaved as she stared down at the floor where the president now lay,
blood bubbling out of his forehead.

She thought of the small sign on her desk
that said 'Pam A-OK,' a play on her married name of A'Ochay and an
unintentional signal that she cared about people. It was true; she
always tried to help if she could. New employees often quickly
became her friends because of this and she had been known as Pam
A-OK for a long time.

Had she gone too far with this shooting?
Maybe. Maybe not, if she could live with it.

Her head began to clear and she calmly put
the small revolver back in her purse. The ugly, ranting voice was
silent now, as it should be. She headed down the hall to the
elevator and, from there, to the second-floor studio where she told
the staff to air the German story. She'd added her own comments and
saved it on her pen drive, telling America that she was no longer
alone in this fight.

It was late that night when Pam pulled back
into her driveway. She noticed, for the first time, that she always
parked her car in exactly the same place, though chaos ruled
everywhere else. But she had always lived in an orderly way. No
matter how bad things were, she kept the house clean and her desk
in order.

Her hands shook as she hung up her car keys.
She had destroyed that orderliness of mind today by taking a life.
Her boss had been a jerk, a fool, but he didn't deserve to die. She
resolved, as she changed from work clothes to pajamas and brushed
out her long, dark hair, that after the war was over and life
returned to some kind of normality, she would admit her crime to
the police and accept whatever punishment they meted out.

Pam sat down at her desk and gazed at the
picture of her husband. He was a stern-looking man and the biggest
influence in her life. A man of integrity, his honesty had been
what Pam found most attractive when they first met. How long since
they'd walked together? Their marriage had been very happy until
the death of their child cast a shadow over it. He had deliberately
broken into his father's locked gun safe and stolen a gun to take
to school that day.

Why did the kids of her son's generation find
taking weapons to school so attractive? The sorrow surged back into
her heart and she closed her eyes, wishing she could hold her
husband's hand and get some comfort from his strength.

After a few moments, she opened her eyes and
noticed that her computer was blinking to tell her that she had new
e-mail. Pam's e-mail account was always on, always connected to
what was happening in the world.

Shortly after yet another crisis in the
Middle East had flared up and Europe's mounting debt and inflation
threw that area into chaos, the international media agreed there
was a need for a special news server that could never be silenced.
Dedicated lines were placed, linking all points of the globe to one
central news outlet, to ensure that no country could stop the world
from finding out that atrocities were being committed in silence.
Information flowed constantly, so that the planning necessary to
keep the people of the world safe and organized into resistance
against evil could easily be done. However, access to the server
was limited, and so information was still sometimes difficult to
get out.

As Pam flipped through her e-mail, one
message caught her eye. It was from Dean, an old friend, asking if
she could meet him as soon as possible regarding the military's
experimental soldiers. She replied that they could meet tomorrow
and then went off to bed, wondering when Dieter could snatch some
leave and come home for a little while.

>>>

Her sleep that night was fitful and Pam awoke
grumpy and stiff. Her conscience weighed on her like a heavy rough
stone. But, finding an e-mail response from Dean, she dressed and
drove to meet her friend. Life had to go on.

"Now, Pam, you must understand, the military
wants to be forthcoming about this experiment, but they're not sure
of the public's reaction, or even how to tell the public," Dean
said. He was a mousy little person, possibly gay, but Pam never
asked about his personal life. She was satisfied with knowing he
was a good friend and confidant, and that she could always trust
him. "That's why I wanted you involved. I've seen what they're
working on and, to be honest, this is even weirder then our planet
being invaded by aliens." Dean's voice shook ever so slightly, as
if he were nervous.

"Not sure if anything could top aliens, Dean,
but I'll take your word on that," Pam replied.

They walked up the steps of the large
military building and were greeted by a grizzled old general.

"You will not take any recording devices
beyond this front entrance," the general said. "You will not speak
to anyone working here unless I give you permission. You will not
enter into any areas not sanctioned by me, and you will not reveal
to anyone what you see here, unless I give you authorization to do
so. Is that clear?" Before Dean or Pam could reply, the general
snapped, "I have little tolerance for your types. In fact, I have
found most humans to be a complete waste of oxygen. If this was not
important, I would just as soon run both of your asses out of
here."

From that point on, Pam welcomed General
Harris's silence. After many corridors and doors, their escort of
guards and the general finally entered a white room with a few
chairs and a large mirror on one wall.

"Sit!" the general said, then turned and left
the room with the guards. Some time passed before the door opened
again and a young woman with an armful of office files entered the
room and sat down.

"Do you know what stems cells do?" she
asked.

"Yes," Pam replied.

"We used a biologically created type of
sterile stem cell to introduce specialized DNA strands from certain
individuals who retain remnant Neanderthal typologies. We cross
those with aggressive strands from some animals and beneficial
viruses to create a morphological genotype strand that when
introduced into subjects through a manmade embryonic cell, can
cause physical changes to their body plan."

Pam opened her mouth to ask a question but
the young woman continued.

"Once we understood the nature of the DNA
strand, and the importance the junk DNA represented to the eventual
output of the few bits of code that make up all the structure of a
finished organism, we realized that by activating the controller
strands, those in turn sent signals to the switching strands. We
could reactivate those few bits of DNA code to again reanimate the
organism to rebuild itself."

Pam's eyes began to glaze over. She glanced
at Dean. He was in the same condition.

The young woman pressed on. "As with the
development of an organism in a fetal stage, we needed to
essentially kill the subject in order to induce a fetal reanimation
of an organism suited to our own needs. Put more clearly, we
reintroduced our test subjects to the fetal stage of their original
development artificially, to reconstruct their body plan to fit our
design of a Hyborg soldier, a cross between a hybrid and a
cyborg."

"These changes would normally happen over
several generations, but in our present situation, of course, they
needed to be accelerated. We used a rare genetic human condition
that creates rapid aging in certain individuals in order to induce
rapid physiological changes in our test subjects."

Pam was getting more and more frustrated by
the rapid delivery. She noticed Dean open his mouth, then close it
again.

"Only through intense radiation therapy and a
hybrid steroid regimen, have we been successful in mutating our
volunteers into an almost catatonic state, making them invulnerable
to the mist the invaders produce, and yet they are larger and
stronger than any normal human could ever be. They have slightly
slower reflexes then a normal human, due in part to their almost
death-like state, but be assured, we have found it almost
impossible to terminate any of the successful candidates. This is
because of their ability to continually repair damaged tissue
through the continuously forming stem cells."

The young woman took a breath. "Any questions
so far?"

"Holy shit," Pam said. "I think I liked the
general better. I could at least understand him."

There was a long uncomfortable pause. The
young woman stood up and said, "Maybe it's better if you see this
first." She motioned them to look at the wall mirror and, with the
flick of a switch, the mirror became a window onto a lab room.

"Oh, my God," Pam said softly. "Are those
things alive?"

"Technically yes, but the low functioning of
their organs means we need to introduce certain body fluids to keep
necrosis from setting in," the young woman said. "We used a virus
as a container for specific DNA that we designed and that virus
penetrates the cells where we want the changes to take place. This
creates an almost catatonic state that we regulate with a regimen
of advanced drugs grafted into their armor."