The Menagerie 2 (Eden) (21 page)

Savage went in with the point of his knife directed to kill.

But Whitaker countered by unsheathing his knife, brought it up, and slashed at Savage’s blade, the knives connecting and deflecting, the initial threat gone.

The men then circled each other, sizing each other.

Whitaker, as badly as he bled out from damage that looked worse than what it actually was, maintained his poise.

Savage, however, remained equal to the task.

But then Whitaker attacked with the speed and swiftness Savage never thought any man was capable of. Whitaker came in as a blur, his knife coming across and neatly slicing across Savage’s chest with surgical precision, his shirt and flesh parting, the wound deep but not life threatening.

Whitaker then pivoted and came around with the bottom portion of his hilt connecting solidly with Savage’s temple, causing the ex-SEAL to see internal stars and taking to the floor. His world suddenly became a kaleidoscopic blend of colors, as he lay there.

When the colors evaporated, when clarity began to take hold, Savage saw Whitaker standing over him with the point of his knife directed downward, its final destiny the mark of Savage’s heart.

Whitaker was breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling, as if he labored for hours. “A valiant effort, I’ll give you that,” he said. “But like most of my opponents it wasn’t good enough.” He lifted the knife in show, the action telling Savage that he planned to plant it deep, if not to punch it all the way through until the point was driven into the floor.

Savage’s world moved with a terrible slowness. And somewhere in the back of his mind he could hear Alyssa screaming, her cries bestowing a heavy weight in his chest because he failed her. Once Whitaker used the knife on him, then he would use it on her. This he was sure of.

Savage closed his eyes, seeing Alyssa in his thoughts.
I’m so sorry.

And then he waited for the final blow.

But the strike never came.

Whitaker gagged as the Hominid wrapped its hand tightly around his throat before hoisting the man high above Savage, who lay beneath the creature’s divided legs. The Hominid took a posture over Savage like the Colossus of Rhodes.

Savage quickly scooted out from beneath Hominid’s stance and found refuge with Alyssa, who pulled him into her embrace.

The Hominid cried out in a vicious banshee wail. Its size was massive, the soldier dwarfed by the creature as it held Whitaker above the floor with his legs kicking with futility. And then they stilled, finally, the soldier’s arms falling limp by his sides as he expelled his final breath in a death sigh.

The Hominid slowly cocked its head slowly to one side in examination a moment before casting his body aside with a simple and effortless toss. Whitaker landed hard against the floor and slid to the feet of Savage, the heel of his boot coming off and skating by Savage’s hand, the flash drives there for the taking.

The Hominid stood before Alyssa and Savage and stared at them from eyes without pupils. It didn’t appear to showcase any violent tendencies toward them. It simply stood sentinel.

Its body was hard-cased in a natural shell-like armor that outlined its features similar to a well-developed man whose body was fashioned by years of rigorous weight training. Its arms were a natural development of weaponry—its right arm was a raking blade with prongs and sharp ridges, its left arm a shield. If they could have seen the color of its eyes, they would have seen a shade of deep gray.

Alyssa pressed Savage as close to her as possible, their bodies lumped into a single mass in the quasi-darkness. The Hominid took a manageable step forward, its manner far from threatening. And when it did it was clear that it had taken damage to its armor. Missing chips the size of silver dollars blemished its abdominal plating, revealing the meat underneath, the bullets from Maestro’s MP5 impacting hard enough to penetrate at close range. From its wounds blood the color of tar seeped from its injuries and traced along its groin and thighs. Yet it acted unharmed, its wounds nothing more than minor nuisances.

For a long moment their eyes met, connecting, casting a symbiotic understanding between them. It was like a mother looking at her newborn and knowing its exact needs without as much as a spoken word.

John and Alyssa attached a great sadness to it, a profound misery. If they knew that the Hominid’s eyes reacted as a barometer to its emotions, then they would have understood that gray was the feeling of melancholy.

In that moment of seeing them together as companions capable of great love, the Hominid realized that they were also an ascending species capable of promoting the compassion that its kind could not. If it could express its desires, then it would have told them this:
Don’t make the mistakes we did.

And then it knew unequivocally that it was the last of its kind. Its mate and its younglings were gone. And it knew this from the moment of its release from its stasis chamber since it could not sense its symbiotic tie to them, a feeling that could not be broken by time or distance, but only by death.

The Hominid raised its head and howled in mourning, an agony so deep that Alyssa and Savage could feel its pain in their own heavy hearts.

And then its shoulders softened in defeat, its sadness overwhelming.

After carefully removing the flash drives and pocketing them with glacial slowness, Savage slowly got to his feet, maintained a cautious distance, and aided Alyssa to hers. The creature didn’t respond when they took a wide berth and carefully made their way to the collar. Its head simply followed their movement.

But then the creature’s head snapped upward, its eyes not focusing on them but at something distant, something closing.

The Hominid took a step forward to assess the situation, cocked its head and understood. And then it turned to Alyssa and Savage, raised its hand, and pointed to the Umbilical tube with a gesture that was universal.

Run!

So they did, leaving behind the weapons and the Hominid, who did not follow but stood its ground, waiting.

After Savage entered the collar, Alyssa stood by the doorway with her eyes connecting to those of the Hominid’s, and felt the sustaining sadness behind them. She did not want to leave it behind. But the Hominid raised its hand and pointed toward salvation.

Alyssa complied, though with reluctance, by closing the door and locking it, somehow feeling that she betrayed her savior.

And then she began to weep.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“It’s all right,” said Savage, ushering her away from the door and onto the walkway.

The walkway was less stable as it wobbled beneath their feet, the causeway sloping at a downward angle. And to Savage meant that the marine terrace was beginning to pull away from the crater’s wall, the weight of the remnant and the platform starting to prove too heavy. 

The thick rubber-like composite of the Umbilical tube was stretched tight to the point of pulling free from its magnetic rings. And at 2,000 feet the pressure was crushing, more than 900 pounds per square inch.

They picked up the pace. The tube around them squealed in protest as it pulled tighter.

When they got to the door at the opposite end John spun the wheel, pulled the door open, allowed Alyssa to step into the platform, and then he closed the door behind him, locking it with a couple of twists of the wheel.

When he turned he saw Alyssa facing away from him with her hands up.

Savage took a few steps forward until he stood beside Alyssa, and then he raised his to mirror her pose.

Pretty-Boy stood with the point of his MP5 leveled at them. With perfect rows of teeth and a Hollywood smile, he said, “Howdy.”

Savage just couldn’t catch a break.

#

The Hominid could
see the starburst of lights approaching as the Mist zeroed in on its position. It had seen the Mist do battle, and it knew what it was capable of. There was no competition to this creature. No way to contest it on any level. It was simply the complete and most perfect apex predator in the universe.

But the Hominid was not afraid. In fact, the creature waited with a sense of apathy towards dying because it could not feel the symbiotic reach of its mate or its younglings, realizing they had died long ago, the shell of their armors having turned to dust ages ago. And that it was the last of its kind. If anyone could have seen its eyes, then they would have seen the color of the softest blue, the color of serenity.

The Hominid stood forward and raised its arms as if in greeting, as if to embrace the Mist. And the Mist became all consuming, its smoky tendrils encircling it, then embracing it, the lights, the quality of its acid, suffocating the Hominid and eating its shell, its armor plating, with pieces flaking off in chips, the meat underneath sizzling, melting, its innards being devoured. But the Hominid, for as long as it could, with welcoming arms held out until it could do so no more, began to feel the symbiotic tie with its mate and its younglings. It was growing stronger, the warmth and pain becoming one and the same, and then a wonderful comfort in the form of glorious light.  

The Hominid was breaking down to nothing, the Mist consuming it to the last particle.

And then the Hominid felt peace that was complete and absolute within the Light.

#

“Now something just
ain’t right here, if you know what I mean.” Pretty-Boy kept his weapon steady. “Now I know you good folk ain’t Captain Whitaker and his team.” And then the veneer of his smile was gone. The Hollywood demeanor, gone. The hometown country kindness, gone. Even the accent was missing. “Now you want to tell me why you’re standing here and they’re not.”

Savage jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “He’s inside,” he told him.

“That’s not what I asked. Where’s Whitaker?”

“He’s gone. Everyone’s gone. There’s no one left of your unit.”

“Are you telling me you’re it?”

“That’s exactly what we’re telling you,” said Alyssa.

“And there’s something behind us,” added Savage.

Pretty-Boy looked at the door. “Like what?”

“Just . . . something.”

Pretty-Boy examined them with all the apathy of examining an insect under a microscope, with indifference. “The information?”

“There is no information,” Savage lied. “We’re running for our lives here.”

Pretty-Boy looked puzzled. “From what?”

“We don’t know,” she answered.

“You don’t know what you’re running from.” Pretty-Boy said this as a statement rather than a question.

“Please, we have to get out of here,” stated Alyssa.

“No we don’t,” he said. “
I
need to get out of here. You, on the other hand, will have to stay.” Pretty-Boy nosed his MP5 in the direction of the four engineers lying side by side, their bodies neatly situated with their arms by their sides, dead eyes staring ceilingward. “Got my orders,” he added. “No one comes out but my team.”

Savage nodded. “The hidden agenda.”

Pretty-Boy nodded. “The hidden agenda.”

“Whitaker made it very clear to us that no one but the Tally-Whackers was to make it out alive. Apparently everybody else was expendable.”

“Then you’ll understand why I have to kill you both. Since keeping national secrets is a priority.”

“There
are
no secrets,” said Alyssa, stepping forward. “Everything’s gone. There’s nothing left.”

Pretty-Boy looked at the door that led to the Umbilical collar. They could all hear something strange, like fat sizzling on a griddle.

Pretty-Boy redirected his weapon. “Apparently there’s something left,” he said.

And its coming our way.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The Hominid had given John Savage and Alyssa Moore time, seeing hope in an ascending species, and hopeful that they would ascend to a level its kind could not achieve. To provide salvation to the weak, comfort to the sick, and order to the masses. By dying it had passed the mantle on to them, hoping their kind could create something utopian where many others had failed. The Hominid had viewed them as infants beginning to leave their cradle, to explore and learn the wonderments of life.

In its heart it had hope.

Right up until the time it dissolved beneath the unyielding grasp of the Mist.

Leaving no trace evidence that the Hominid ever existed, the Mist moved forward, eventually finding itself at the doorway of the Umbilical tube. It could sense something beyond the door, more life forces.

It meandered about, searching for a way in, its lights popping off in colorful display, its wispy tendrils lapping at the metal door, the metal sizzling against its touch. And then it converged with the door and began to break it down, the acid eating the metal with ease, the metal drippings pooling at the door’s base. When it ate a hole through the door the size of a manhole cover, the Mist tightened itself into a pointed mass and entered the tubing that led to the platform.

The thick rubber skin of the Umbilical tube began to bubble and boil, the Mist moving down the cylinder to the opposite door, slowly, the heartbeats becoming stronger, more powerful, and getting closer.

When it reached the magnetic ring and the door, which was similar to the other door, it had the reasonability to understand that this door could be easily breached as the last door. So it spread out over the metal, consuming it, the door giving way beneath its acidic bite.

And just like fat on a griddle, it began to dissolve away.

#

They stood watching
the door, waiting.

Savage, however, wanted to react, to move and get away, as did Alyssa.

But Pretty-Boy seemed somewhat enamored with the idea of catching a glimpse of what was on the other side.

“Look,” said Savage. “The sub’s right there. We need to—”