Bad Stacks Story Collection Box Set (30 page)

With lighting speed, the creature grabbed Raines about the throat with one clawed hand and with the other knocked his pistol out of his hand.

He watched in shocked horror as his weapon sailed through the air and landed with a splash out in the middle of the mass grave.

It disappeared from sight before the lightning could flash again.

The creature then leaned forward and savagely bit Raines’ right ear off.

Ignoring the pain and the sudden surprise of the attack, Raines didn’t hesitate to counter. His left hand flashed out and struck the creature on the pressure point below the rib cage while his right quickly sought the combat knife strapped to his right calf.

It was a good thing the knife was where it was supposed to be, however, for the percussive strike with his left hand was an absolute failure.

Instead of immobilizing his opponent as it was designed to do, Raines found his hand buried wrist deep inside the creature’s ribcage instead.

The ghoul ignored the attack, clamping its free hand around his neck alongside the other and squeezing them both tight, trying to cut off his air.  The thing’s hot, fetid breath splashed across his face.

Raines jerked his knife free and shoved it into the ghoul’s side.

It had no more effect than the strike with his hand.

It was at that point that Raines started to panic.  The creature’s hands were slowly squeezing the life out of him.  He’d been unable to draw a clean breath for almost a minute now and in his exhausted state his vision was starting to gray out around the edges from lack of oxygen to his brain.  He had to do something quickly to break free.

Raines pulled both of his hands free and desperately struck upward at the creature’s arms.

The ghoul snarled in response, the sound like tearing fabric, but refused to let go.

Desperate now, Raines did the only thing he could think of.

He twisted sideways and threw himself, and the ghoul holding onto him, into the water-filled pit beside them.

The surprise move did what his attacks had not been able to do.  For just a second the ghoul’s hands relaxed their grip as it tried to react to its new surroundings.

That was all the time Raines needed.

He pushed away from the thing, then ducked beneath the reach of its arms and struck out for the bottom in an attempt to get away from it.  He had gone no more than a few feet, however, when he swam straight into the submerged pile of corpses the forensic team had been unable to catalogue and remove.

The pile slipped free with the impact of his body from whatever had been holding them beneath the surface.  Raines suddenly found himself tangled in a confusing whirl of arms, legs, and torsos.  He thrashed against them, trying to work his way free, only to feel a hand with needle sharp claws clamp itself around his left ankle.

The ghoul had found him again.

As he was pulled away from the drifting corpses, the ghoul struck again, this time opening a deep gash in his rib cage several inches in length.  Raines could feel the blood rushing out of his body and knew he couldn’t survive much longer.

He thrashed and flailed his arms, trying to work his way free, and quite by accident discovered that he was still holding on to his combat knife.  With strength born of desperation and a sudden overwhelming desire not to die here in the disease-infested waters of a mass grave in a country that he couldn’t care less about, Raines struck downward with the weapon once more.

This time, his aim was true.

The knife sunk to the hilt through the rotten tissue of the creature’s skull and pierced what was left of its brain.

Instantly, it let him go.

Knowing he had only seconds left to survive, Raines struck out for the surface and burst upward into the night air in unconscious imitation of the corpses the ghoul had harvested for food.

Gasping, Raines dragged himself over to the shoreline and several feet away from the water before collapsing into the mud.

Second later he passed out.

***

Raines regained consciousness in the camp infirmary, his chest and head swathed in bandages.  A nurse stood by his bedside taking his blood pressure.  When she realized he had come to, she told him to lie still and ran to get the doctor.

Lying there, Raines could see he was in a small ward.  Only three of the 10 beds were occupied, including the one in which he lay.  A man with a leg up in traction was in the last bed in the row, on the far side of the infirmary, absorbed in reading a book.  The bed directly next to Raines was also occupied, this one by a man who appeared comatose, his face covered with a breathing device.  The whine and hiss of his mechanical breather accompanied the rise and fall of his chest.

Raines’ attention was drawn away from the man by the sound of the infirmary door opening. 

“Well now, “ said the physician as he entered the room, a wide smile on his face.  “Nice to see you’ve rejoined the living.”

Raines didn’t appreciate the joke, but he was too weak to protest.  His limbs felt strangely heavy and his throat was incredibly parched.  He managed to croak out a request for water and the doctor sent the nurse to fetch a cup of ice chips for him.  After a few sips he was able to speak more clearly.

“How long?” he asked, his voice like gravel.

“Two weeks,” replied the doctor, cheerily.  “The morning after you went AWOL, a long-range patrol found you alongside the excavation at site Kilo Two Zero.  Your wounds were already filled with a raging infection, particularly that deep gash in your ribs.  Frankly, I’m amazed that you didn’t succumb to sepsis or the plague, considering where they found you.  Just what on earth were you doing out there?”

The doc’s cheery nature and casual reference to his having been AWOL set Raines self-preservation mode into high gear.  The only person who knew what he’d been up to had been Simmons; so far, it seemed as if he hadn’t talked.  Which meant that if Raines kept his mouth shut now, he could probably find a way to get out of this without any major problems.

Raines mumbled something unintelligible, dropped his head back onto the pillows, and pretended to drop back off to sleep without answering the doctor’s question.  The ruse seemed to work, for the other man stood there for a moment longer and then softly ordered the nurse to come get him when Raines had woken up again.  He had only taken a few steps toward the door, however, when an alarm started blaring from the bed next to Raines.

Raines opened his eyes slightly and watched as the doctor and his nurse rushed over to the patient.  It appeared to Raines that the man had gone into cardiac arrest and the arrival of the defibrillator moments later confirmed that suspicion.  The fight to resuscitate the man went on for over 20 minutes, Raines surreptitiously watching all the while, but eventually the staff gave up their efforts and left the man’s body, and Raines, alone.

In the quiet following their departure, Raines actually did fall asleep, his injured body not yet fully up to the task of keeping him awake.  His sleep was full of uneasy dreams.

When he awoke again, it was night.  Except for a few small utility lights and the illuminated dials of various pieces of medical equipment here and there about the ward, the room was dark.  Surprisingly, Raines could still see fairly well.  The injured soldier down at the end of the ward was fast asleep, blissfully snoring away.  The body in the bed next to Raines was still there, though now a sheet had been used to cover it with the exception of one errant foot that had somehow slipped out from beneath it to hang limply over the side of the bed.

Raines lay awake for several long moments without moving, trying to gauge how he felt.

The long wound in his side where the creature’s claws had torn through his flesh was tender and sore, but did not hurt as much as he had expected it to.  The skin around it itched horribly, however, and he wondered if he was having some adverse reaction to the anti-infectants they must have spread liberally around the wound.  He resisted the urge to scratch for only a few moments and then gave in to the need with a deep, perverse pleasure.  His fingers dug into the flesh around the wound and left several long scratches in his skin, but he barely noticed.  He was too intent in finding some relief from the itching.

He noticed a small washroom in one corner of the ward and decided to see for himself just how bad things were.  Using the bed’s handrail, Raines pulled himself into a sitting position and then swung his legs out from under the sheet and over the edge of the bed.  The floor was cool on his bare feet.  He waited a moment, double-checking he was up to this so soon after awakening from what was obviously a coma-like sleep, and then carefully pulled himself to his feet.

When he didn’t immediately collapse in a wave of dizziness, Raines headed across the room with a slow, shambling gait.  He managed to reach the doorway of the room without too much trouble and stepped inside, closing the door behind him.  Only then did he turn on the light.

Excruciating pain surged through his eyes and into his brain.

Instinctively, Raines squeezed his eyes shut and smashed his fist through two of the three fluorescent bulbs that provided lighting inside the room.

In the dimmer light, the pain slowly faded.

When he felt he could stand it, Raines opened his eyes and looked at himself in the mirror.

Most of his head was covered with a wide set of bandages, no doubt protecting the open wound on the side of his head where his ear used to be.  His eyes seemed to reflect some of the light from the remaining fluorescent lamp and had a yellow tinge to them that told Raines he’d lost a fair share of blood.  What was most disconcerting to him, however, was the fact that his skin seemed to be jaundiced as well.

Could he have contracted some weird disease from that water as the doc had said, he wondered, staring at himself in the mirror.  Is that why he felt so queasy?  Or was he having some kind of anaphylactic reaction to the medications they been pumping him with while he’d been in the coma?

He didn’t know.

A sharp sting of pain shot through his mouth and Raines was surprised to find he had bitten his tongue without realizing it.  If he kept this up, he’d never recover.

It was time to get some rest.

He turned off the light and opened the door to the ward.  With slow, careful steps, he made his way back over to his bed.  As he was getting ready to climb back up on the mattress, he noticed that errant foot sticking out from beneath the sheet covering the corpse in the bed nest to his.

He froze where he stood for several long moments, staring at it

Then, with a quick jerk, he pulled the sheet down further so that it covered that foot as well.

THE END

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###

OUTSIDE

By Kealan Patrick Burke

The morning bleeds a feeble light better suited to dusk.

Early birds have forgotten worms and instead shriek their protests into the vermilion sky. Winter is gone and the grass flushes with unhindered vitality, a new emerald hue lending a freshness to this time of the season. Around Alec Martin’s garden, a still-naked ring of trees join spindly arms, engaged in some fraternity he cannot hope to understand, lost in the gentle song of morning.

The house is quiet.

He stands by the window, gazing out at the burgeoning morning and the odd light hanging in the air like a secret mist. In contrast, his thoughts are lucid, unobstructed for once by the chatter of the dawn people on the small radio which sits atop the counter. Silently. A flick of the switch when he first entered the kitchen, earned him nothing but white noise and a shifting, undulating wave of gibberish he was quick to mute.

The house is quiet.

Shadows stretch and waken and crawl towards the house from the bottom of the garden. Alec sips his coffee. It scalds his tongue. He winces. It will be a lingering hurt for the rest of the day. Much like thoughts of Maury. He touches his tongue, feels it recoil.

He will be okay. Has to be. On a team with only one player, spirits must remain high. Peristalsis forces away the bile-like taste of betrayal and he shivers off the chill he imagines has snuck unseen around the spaces in the front door. He turns away from the display of nature and pauses, the coffee cup frozen inches from his scalded mouth. The belated image registers of something moving in the garden, something low, pale and slender emerging quickly from the trees at the bottom of the garden. Like a deer, if deer were limbless and crawled.