Authors: Riley Barton
Luna balled her hands into tight fists and set her eyes on the door. She held her breath. The thought of dying was nothing new to her, but now that she was faced with almost certain death—from an attacker’s bullet, her injuries, or from the fungus growing inside her—she didn’t think she was ready. Was this really how it was all going to end?
The door swung open, and she closed her eyes.
Please let me survive this. There’s so much I still have to do!
Nothing happened. She kept waiting for the gunshot that would end her life, but it never came. Slowly she opened her eyes.
A man dressed
in loose fitting, water-resistant clothing and pieces of rusty, dented armor stood in the doorway. Behind him, the two men who had been guarding the door lay unconscious.
The masked man held his hands palms out in the universal I-mean-you-no-harm gesture. Luna thought that his display of good intentions would be more believable if not for the crude helmet masking his face.
“It’s okay … I’m not going to hurt you.”
The words were kind, but Luna was still skeptical. She could see that the man carried a collection of blades and handguns tucked into various holsters draped across his body as well as a long, black rifle slung across his back.
“Who are you? she asked, hoping he couldn’t hear the tremor in her voice.
“Well, people around here call me Ben. As to what I’m doing here—I’m trying to save your life.”
“Oh … really?”
“Yeah, really,” Ben replied, taking a step forward.
“Just … just stay were you are, okay? Don’t come near me!”
He stopped. “I really am here to help you.”
A circular blue light flashed on Ben’s chestplate, and she was surprised to hear another voice speaking.
“With all due respect, ma’am,” the voice said, “my master is telling the truth. We are here to rescue you. And If I were you, I’d accept our generous offer. I can assure you that it will be in your best interest, and will also be far better then any offer Mr. Vespasien and his gang of hooligans can make.”
An AI unit?
Luna thought, gasping painfully.
The strange man took several steps forward and knelt down to look her in the eye. Being unable to breathe—and therefore unable to complain—Luna glared into the pair of slits cut into his armored breath-mask. Much to her surprise, the dark brown eyes beneath the mask were soft and kind.
Maybe he really does want to help me.
“Please,” he said, softly, “let me get you out of here. Let me take you back where you belong. Those guys will be coming around soon, and if they do, we’ll have one a heck of a time getting out of here alive. The choice is yours. Will you stay here—with them?” He motioned to the unconscious men. “Or will you come with me?”
Luna—who was still struggling to breathe—glanced at the still bodies then back to Ben. Despite his rough exterior there was something in the way he moved that spoke of a greater purpose, something she hadn’t detected in the other Swampers.
For reasons she couldn’t explain, she actually felt almost
safe
around him. …
Almost.
Slowly, she nodded. She whispered her reply, “Okay … I’ll go with you.”
“Okay,” Ben replied.
Rising to his full height, he addressed his AI unit, “Ed, scan her bio signs. Let me know if she can be moved.”
A beam of pale blue light erupted from the glowing circle mounted on Ben’s armor and drifted over Luna’s body.
“Scans complete. Analyses: Subject has sustained extensive internal damage from her fall. However, I am not detecting any hemorrhaging. Subject seems stable enough to be carefully moved. I believe it is safe to assume that any further damage she may receive during transport can be easily remedied with an injection of bio-aid or other regenerative compounds of a similar nature. However, I strongly advise that the subject should be admitted to a hospital as soon as she returns to her point of origin. And I would recommend sedation of subject during transport.”
“Right. Thanks, Ed,” Ben replied, reaching into one of his bandoliers for a compact med-kit. He opened the kit, and Luna watched him remove an emergency syringe.
“I’m going to sedate you, if that’s okay?” Ben asked, sterilizing the would-be injection sight with a disinfectant swab.
Luna hesitated for a moment, still not sure if she could trust the stranger. How had the AI unit known that she’d fallen? Had they been shadowing her the whole time?
She eyed the syringe. It
looked
authentic enough … but unless she miraculously developed x-ray vision and the ability to identify chemicals with her mind, she had no way of knowing for sure. Still, if Ben had wanted to kill her he could have easily done so a long time ago. After all, why go through all the trouble of earning her trust just to kill her via lethal injection?
She sighed and nodded, “Go ahead …”
“Okay. It’ll be all right..” She felt the hot prick of the needle sliding under her skin. “Just try to relax. You’ll be safe when you wake up—I promise.”
“Uh-huh …” Luna muttered weakly.
“Just try to relax,” Ben’s voice sounded alien and strangely distant. “If you feel tired, then sleep. Don’t try to fight it.”
Luna smiled slightly and allowed her eyes to drift shut.
She felt him remove her IV and was vaguely aware of her helmet being secured over her head. Then everything went dark.
Chapter 12
Several hours of trudging through thick swamp muck hadn’t improved Keith’s overall condition. Now everything hurt.
To make matters worse, the storm Terence had been tracking nearly four hours ago had blown in, forcing the battered three-man team to take cover beneath the scraggly canopies of a long dead pine forest.
In the hours since they had left the wreckage of their Stratocruiser, the agents had only covered a mile and a half: less then a tenth of the distance between their starting point and what Keith guessed would be Luna’s location. Without the help of an AI unit or a portable scanner to track her with, he had no way to know for sure. All he could do was cross his fingers and hope for the best. That, and squat in the mud with his men, silently cursing the storm that had kept them bogged down for the past hour.
“This is
ridiculous
,” Agent Rush muttered, wiping the muck off his gun. “If we sit around here much longer we’ll become
part
of this blasted swamp!”
Keith couldn’t help but agree with Rush’s assessment of their situation. He pushed himself up and turned to his men, “All right, agents, Rush is right. Let’s go.”
The two other men glanced at each other then struggled to their feet.
“With respect, sir,” agent Patterson said, “do you think that’s a good idea? I mean, I can’t even see my hand in front of my face.”
Keith nodded, “Yes I know it’s bad, and no, I don’t think it’s a good idea. But until Perkins gets through to HQ, it’s the only option we have left. Look around you. This storm isn’t going to blow over anytime soon, and we’re just wasting time sitting here in the mud.”
He checked his weapon, and then switched on his LED light. “As for not being able to see—try switching your heads-up display to night vision or infrared. That usually helps.”
Patterson chuckled, but Keith could still hear the weariness in his voice.
“Yes, sir. Switching to infrared now.”
“Okay, stay close,” Keith said, scanning the misty swamp ahead of him. “This storm has probably oversaturated the ground, which means we’ll have to be on the lookout for mud pits and deep water.”
“You mean
more
than we were already?” Agent Rush commented dryly, falling in behind Keith who was already beginning to slog out of the thick quagmire surrounding their shelter.
“Hey, hold up guys,” Patterson said, sweeping the area directly to his left, “I thought I saw something moving out there.”
Keith stopped in mid stride and looked back over his shoulder, “You sure? I didn’t pick up anything on the motion tracker …”
“I swear I saw something! Wait! There it is again!”
A single red dot flashed on Keith’s HUD then quickly faded. He couldn’t deny it this time.
Something
was shadowing them.
“Patterson, Rush,” he said urgently, lowering himself into a painful crouch, “you guys saw that too, right?”
The two men nodded slightly, raising their weapons.
“Yes, sir,” Rush said, “but the target is no longer registering. I have negative feeds on both infrared and night vision as well. Whoever—or whatever—is out there is doing a good job of hiding …”
“My status is the same, sir,” Patterson said, slowly. “I’ve got nothing.”
“Something’s not right.” Patterson muttered, and Keith agreed, feeling the adrenaline coursing through his veins.
It had been almost seven hours since the initial attack—five hours since Luna fell—and the possibility that they could encounter more of the Swamper terrorists had crossed his mind more than once. He’d seen and heard enough about Swampers to know that they knew the deep swamp better than anyone—they could become almost invisible if they wanted to. Keith combed the area, his keen eyes searching the fog for the slightest movement.
There’s no way a Swamper team can disappear out here … there’s nothing to mask their heat signatures,
he thought, starting to feel a bit uneasy.
“I’m moving up. Cover me,” Keith said. He would find whatever was out there, assess the situation, and deal with it accordingly.
“Yes, sir. Covering,” Patterson replied.
Keith began inching forward into the murk. It was too dark and rainy for him to see much of anything, so he relied on his HUD’s overlapping infrared and night vision settings instead of his naked eye. Everything
seemed
normal. No heat signatures. No detectable movement except his own. The swamp seemed abnormally peaceful—despite the storm.
“Everything looks clear,” he said at last, breaking comm silence. “It was probably just a bird or something—”
Just then his motion detector flashed again. This time the target was much closer. He thumbed off his weapon’s safety and turned around. The bright LED light fixed to his gun cut through the fog and reflected off a pair of unblinking red eyes staring back at him from no more then twelve feet away.
He shouted, firing a series of three round bursts as the massive bull alligator lunged from its watery lair, clearing the distance between hunter and prey in a single bound. Keith saw his bullets striking the gator’s armored body—saw half of them penetrate—but knew that the 9mm slugs wouldn’t even slow down the massive reptile.
The alligator’s huge jaws parted, and Keith backpedaled wildly, trying to get as far away from the gaping maw as possible. He knew that an adult alligator the size of the one trying to devour him could easily reach sprinting speeds of up to thirty miles an hour overland: much faster than an agent in full environmental armor could ever hope to run.
Before he’d taken more then two steps, Keith’s feet caught in the thick mire, and he toppled backwards. An instant latter the huge, twenty-foot-long alligator was on him, snapping him up in its toothy jaws.
Keith screamed and twisted, feeling himself being dragged toward the water. The giant reptile had grabbed him around his torso, leaving his arms and feet free to kick and punch—which he did in an attempt to free himself from the unbearable pressure slowly crushing his chest. That was the one thing his suit
couldn’t
stop: slow, steady pressure.
“Keith! What’s happening?” agent Rush shouted.
Keith gasped and groped for his weapon, “Alligator!
A
big
one! I need assistance!”
He raised his gun and fired it point blank into the alligator’s snout. The huge animal hissed in pain, releasing him for a fraction of a second before clamping down again.
The gun toppled from his grasp, and Keith cried out as he felt bones give way under the alligator’s powerful bite. He grabbed the alligator’s jaws, trying desperately to pry them apart so he could breathe.
His helmet’s bio-monitor blared a sonic warning: he was being crushed. Water washed over his faceplate and he felt the cold grip of panic tearing at him. He was unarmed and unable to breathe. His men were too far away to help him, and now he was being pulled under water.
He’d seen enough natural history vids to know what was coming next. First the alligator would try to drown him—which would fail as long as his suit remained intact. Then it would try to rip his body apart in a violent death roll—during which time Keith would most likely still be very much alive.
Is this really how it’s going to end?
Through his comm. Keith could hear his team shouting in confusion,, and he silently wondered if they would ever find his body, or if he would join the endless ranks of the MIA.
The black water washed over him, and he fixed his eyes on what he was sure would be his last look at the stormy sky. His strength was gone—his body pinned between the gator’s jaws. There was little he could do now but hope that it would all be over quickly.
Suddenly the alligator lurched and started clawing at its head.
“Continue firing!” Rush’s voice blared in Keith’s ear. It was his team!
He had to fight. He could feel his body surging with renewed energy.
The alligator writhed under the steady rain of bullets then turned and began swimming out into deeper waters—outside the range of the agents’ guns. He had to do something fast.
His weapons were gone, but he still had his fists. Without hesitation, Keith clawed his hand and thrust it into the alligator’s eye socket. The massive reptile shook its head violently.
Keith coughed up a mouthful of foamy blood, gritted his teeth, and pulled with all his might, ripping out the alligator’s eye.