Dark Creations: Hell on Earth (Part 5) (7 page)

After all that
Melissa had been through and after all she’d seen, Jack’s cryptic words were enough to panic her.  She did not need specifics and was quite capable of filling in the terrifying blanks herself.  And while his accusations and theories would have been thought ludicrous by most, she was all too familiar with Terzini and what he was capable of.  No matter how harebrained Jack’s Terzini-clone theory seemed on the surface, she knew it could not be taken lightly.  So she sat in the back of Jack’s passenger van, wringing her hands nervously and silently praying that he was wrong about all of it.  She knew it wasn’t the nicest of prayers, but the alternative was far worse.

With knuckles whitened from twisting her hands so hard, she anxiously looked out the window as Jack directed the van off the main road they’d driven on, up a long, gra
vel driveway and onto private property.  She couldn’t help but feel shocked to see the land that had been described to her as a basecamp.  She did not know what she’d expected, hadn’t had a clear picture in her mind really, but was in no way prepared for what she saw.  The camp in front of her did not resemble a base or a camp at all.  A run-down ranch-style house sat beside a barn and looked as if a stiff wind would topple it.  Jack’s basecamp was nothing more than a defunct farm set on roughly twenty acres of land, and weedy land at that.  Over a dozen trailers had been parked on the property, littered about like giant tin cans.  Some were rusted while others were dented, but all of them contributed to make the scene stranger, more depressing.

An ugly clapboard house with a coat of white paint that had grayed during years of neglect looked to be the epicenter of the operation.  The grass was dead, and had been replaced with patchy mounds of weeds.  The sky, a sickly ashen shade, promised
to drench the flat, barren land and contributed a dismal panorama as far as the eye could see.  Melissa shivered and pulled her button-down shirt closed, wrapping her arms around her waist.  The morning was not cold, just damp.  But a chill had settled deep in her bones.  Gabriel reached an arm out and placed it around her shoulder, drawing her in close to him. 

The closeness of his body to hers warmed her.  It also made her insides hum and buzz with nervous energy.  She leaned her head against his broad, muscled chest, pictured it briefly as it had been early in the morning, before they’d left to catch their flight from New York to Duluth, when he’d sat at the kitchen table bare-chested eating a bowl of cereal.  She’d wrapped her arms around his shoulders from behind him and kissed his neck.  His skin had felt so warm, almost hot beneath her lips.  He always felt that way.  Even now, she felt the warmth of his body through his T-shirt.  She wished they’d never agreed to leave, to follow Jack to the sad looking farm in Minnesota.  She would hav
e preferred to stay and savor his heat, in the exquisite feel of his skin.

“Jeez
, this place is a shithole!” Alexandra said and returned Melissa to the present. 

She guessed Alexandra’s words reflected everyone’s opinion of the farm.  They certainly reflected
her
opinion. 

“This dump is your base, Jack?” Alexandra commented again and Melissa had to force herself not to laugh.

“Yep,” Jack drawled and a slow smile spread across his lips.  “I forgot what a wordsmith you were, Alex.”

Melissa felt the roll of a chuckle rumble at her back and was about to nudge Gabriel playfully when a n
oise sounded from the side of the farmhouse.  The distinct clicking was unmistakable; it was the sound of shotgun shells being loaded.  Every hair on Melissa’s body rose as alarm raced over her skin.  Gabriel’s arms dropped from her waist and he stepped in front of her protectively before taking her hand firmly in his.  Jack moved toward the sound and she and the others followed.  He stepped around the side of the ranch, unafraid.  Gabriel stepped cautiously behind him, still holding tightly to her hand.  What they saw was as comforting as it was disturbing.  Nearly twenty men were milling about the property.  Some were armed with large rifles while others wore holstered handguns.  Most of them didn’t look fit to wield a stick, much less firearms, and the alarm she’d felt seconds earlier intensified to full-blown fright.

“That group of the walking dead is your army, the one that you plan to stop Terzini with?” Alexandra grumbled and echoed her thoughts once again.

Gabriel turned and shushed her.  Melissa fought hard to suppress a giggling fit, nerves and exhaustion conspiring against her.

“You mean to tell me you weren’t thinking exactly that, Gabriel?  Give me a break!” Alexandra argued.

Melissa didn’t know whether she wanted to burst into laughter or tears, or both.  The situation seemed surreal.  A farm filled with deranged looking men, some old, some middle-aged, and none looking even remotely capable of waging war against a race of super beings.  She hated to admit it, but Jack’s credibility was slipping with every second that passed.  She wondered whether perhaps her prayers had been answered, whether he’d lost touch with reality altogether, though in the deepest recesses of her mind, she intuited otherwise. 

Her intuition was challenged further
when she looked up and saw that an old man lumbered toward them, his bedraggled white beard catching the wind and fluttering wildly.  “Jack!  Is that you?” he called out.  His clothes looked dirty and disheveled as if he had not changed them in some time.  Melissa opened her mouth to speak, but Alexandra beat her to the punch.

“Holy shit, you’ve got to be kidding me.  The men in your army don’t know what you look like?” Alexandra blurted out.

A few snickers rippled through the group, but Melissa remained quiet.  The overwhelmingly anxious feeling that persisted was the only element that anchored her to her stoic expression.

“Guys, this is Ed.  He owns this farm.
I believe I told you about him,” Jack said then turned to the old man.

Jack had mentioned Ed during their flight, but the information he’d shared had been limited.  He had told them that Ed was a former sniper
in the United States Marine Corps, and that his sanity was now questionable at best.

“Hey Ed!  Yeah it’s me,” Jack said almost affectionately and extended his hand to Ed.  “This is Gabriel,” he began introducing.  “He’s the guy I told you about, the guy I left to get.”

Gabriel shook Ed’s hand and was his usual polite self.

“How the hell are you?” Ed said as he pumped Gabriel’s hand enthusiastically.  “You came to help us kill these fuckers!” he exclaimed and his face deepened in color to an unhealthy magenta.  “We’re gonna slaughter them!” he continued, visibly working himself up with each word he spoke.

Melissa cringed and glanced nervously at Gabriel. 

“Yeah,” Gabriel said
as he smiled thinly and nodded.

“Okay Ed, o
kay, let’s take it down a notch,” Jack said and patted Ed’s back calmingly.

Jack then stepped away from Ed and approached Gabriel and Melissa.  He lowered his voice so that Ed couldn’t hear him speak.

“Look I know he’s not really with it, and when I first met him I was thinking the same thing you are, but he’s not wrong about this,” he said to bolster their confidence.

Melissa couldn’t speak for Gabriel, but she certainly did not feel inspired in the least by Jack saying he’d shared the same first impression she was experiencing.  There was also the fact that Jack had explained to them on their trip that he had met Ed after reading his ramblings online about a town that had been overtaken by aliens.  He had openly admitted to them that, at the time, he had been desperate to believe anything.  He had been searching for some kind of revenge, or redemption, anything that could make him feel as though he were avenging his wife’s murder.

“Jack, are you sure you’re all right?” Gabriel asked. “I don’t want to sound like a jerk but I consider you a friend, and I have to tell you that this seems crazy,” he said and gestured to everything around him.

“After you see what we’re going to show you tomorrow, you won’t have any more doubts about me, or
the rest of us for that matter,” Jack stated confidently.

“I hope your right, Jack
, because we’ve come a long way, and took time out of our lives, even lied to be here.  I hope there is a reason,” Gabriel said.

Jack took Gabriel and Melissa aside and said, “Do you guys really think that I would drag you ou
t here if there wasn’t a reason?  Trust me, just come with me tomorrow and if I don’t convince you that everything I’m saying is true, I’ll drive you right back to the airport.”

Gabriel and Melissa exchanged looks of concern.

“C’mon, guys, it’s me.  I haven’t lost my marbles, okay?  True, I kind of lost it for a while there after Dawn,” he began but became choked up. 

Melissa reached out a hand and placed it on Jack’s arm.  She gave a gentle, supportive squeeze.  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

Jack placed his hand over hers, his pain still so raw it was palpable.  “I’ll never get over losing my girl,” he said and looked at her with glassy eyes.  “She was my whole world and I had so little time with her.”  He paused to wipe tears from his cheek with the back of his hand then sniffed several times.  “I was a mess for a while, but I swear I didn’t bring you here without a reason.”  He held her gaze for a moment before dropping it to the ground, embarrassed.  In that moment, though, she felt his conviction and became truly terrified.

Gabriel felt it, too.  He looked at her solemnly before saying, “Let’s get back to the others.”

Ed could be heard regaling the rest of their group with a war story long past.  Even Alexandra stood, rapt.

When Ed saw Jack, he lost interest in his own story and returned to random rambling.

“You ladies are going to help us kill them Martians, too, right?” Ed asked with a crazed grin tugging both cheeks.

Alexandra smacked the palm of her hand to her forehead
, making a loud slapping sound.  “Just when I was starting to like this guy,” she mumbled under her breath.

“They’re not Martians
, Ed.  We’ve talked about this many times,” Jack said in an almost fatherly tone.

“Then what the hell are they?” Ed asked with a confused look on his face.

“They are genetically altered humans, created by a madman,” Jack calmly stated.

Ed stared at Jack
and cocked his head to one side.  “Huh?” he asked and looked genuinely confused.

“Jack, you got to be kidding me with this shit,” Alexandra said and the tone of her voice had become completely serious.

One of the armed men who patrolled the land had approached and edged his way into their conversation.  He smiled and Melissa immediately noticed his was a cruel smile, one with overlapping brown teeth, jagged and sharp looking.  One cheek bulged as if a baseball were being stored inside it and the meal she’d eaten on the plane threatened to come up on his muddy boots when a stream of foul juice spurted from his tight mouth. 

“Well, well, well, who do we have here?” he said and licked his lips as he raked his eyes over Melissa’s body.

His stare crawled over her skin like the legs of innumerable spiders and she felt Gabriel’s body tense then turn from hers to face the man who’d spoken.

“This is my fiancée
, Melissa, and I’m Gabriel,” Gabriel stated and stared directly in his eyes challengingly.

The man spit a generous stream of chewing tobacco again, this time inches from Gabriel’s boot.  The nasty liquid splashed onto the toe of Melissa’s boot instead.  She gagged reflexively and covered her mouth with her hand.  She hadn’t wanted to.  She did not want to incense Gabriel’s already simmering temper, but did so involuntarily. 

“Umm, umm, you get to warm your nights with this pretty little thing?  I gotta say, I’m jealous ‘cause she is tasty lookin’,” the man said lewdly.

“You better watch your
damn mouth and show her some respect,” Gabriel said and took a step toward the man.

Melissa’s heart lurched and her pulse follow
ed suit.  She was dizzy, terrified a fight would ensue.  She felt a modicum of relief when Jack stepped between them and put his hand on Gabriel’s chest.

“Whoa there,” Jack said.  “This is Ace.  He was just messing with you.  He does that a lot when he shouldn’t,” Jack said and shot a threatening look Ace’s way.  “He has a
stupid
sense of humor.”

“You can say that again,” Melissa heard herself say and wondered where such a bold comment had come from.  A second earlier she thought she’d faint and now she was talking tough, feeling the urgent need to feign strength w
here none existed.  She hoped she hadn’t pushed too hard.

Ace turned his grimy looking face her way then smiled, revealing his grotesque, sharp teeth. He narrowed his beady black eyes
and said, “I don’t get it Jack. This stupid group of kindergarteners was who you needed to go and get?”

“They know more about this than we do,” Jack replied. 

“They don’t know shit!  Except maybe how to become prom king or queen,” he said and chuckled.  “Ain’t that right, sweetheart,” he said and leaned in close to Melissa, his rank breath hot on her face.

“I’d back off if I were you,” Gabriel growled through his teeth.