CHAPTER FOUR

THE END OF THE BEGINNING

As Mark ran, something leaped on his back and wrapped its legs and arms around him. The team wavered and began to turn back to help him.

“Keep moving,” he shouted, “that’s an order!”

His right arm was pinned but not his left, and he found that he could reach his combat knife. When he was young, he’d been fostered by a military couple, and Emma and Henry Walker had taught him a lot of things, including the skillful use of a knife. Although Henry was now a general, Mark had known him by his original rank, Sarge.

Behind him, he could hear Massy screaming. Despite themselves, the others continued toward the van, whereupon Mark saw a man—one of the creatures that looked like a man—leap hundreds of feet into the air and disappear out through the forest canopy.

They could damn well fly. Jesus God, what was going on here?

Teeth dug into his neck, but he got a grip on the knife and stabbed up and back. The bite deepened, then suddenly released amid a boiling glut of blood, and the creature pitched off him.

The man lay on the forest floor, writhing and gasping, and Mark, seeing the man’s skin coming off in great, looping patches as he struggled, understood that this was not a man, but a hybrid wearing the skin of a man. Beneath the skin were gleaming scales, and he felt for it the most total, astonishing, soul-shattering hatred he had ever experienced. He was not easily overwhelmed by emotion, but he stabbed and stabbed, then lifted the lifeless body and hurled it fifty yards back into the forest, where it smashed against a tree.

“Massy! Massy, get outa—”

Massy’s body had collapsed in a jumbled heap—and what Mark saw shocked him as nothing else ever had. Massy was now completely naked. Where his eyes had been were two neat sockets. The top of his head was gone, and the cranium was empty. Something like an autopsy incision ran from his throat to his genitals, and his body was sunken.

They had taken his eyes, his brains, and his organs—and more of them were coming, racing straight at Mark, about to flicker forward and surround him. He did the only thing he could do: he turned and ran.

The squad dashed among the close-growing trees, slamming against trunks, their faces whipped by branches, as the things continued to harry them.

The one that had disappeared into the treetops came speeding down on Linda, who was smashed to the ground. Mark grasped it by the neck and lifted it up, snapping it like a snake. As it squalled, its back broke with a crunching pop, and the bottom half went limp. When he threw it to the ground, it tried to pull itself away. Knots shot it in the head.

Stumbling to their feet, the three of them caught up with the others, all of whom had stopped and were returning to give support.

“Keep moving, goddamnit,” Mark snarled. This business of returning was indiscipline. No matter what, if you’re a soldier, orders come first.

Ahead, at last, was their van. Mark hoped it would protect them from the things, because if enough of them showed up at once, the entire unit was going to die the way Massengill had, and this operation would be concluded.

The sun had risen into a golden sky, and morning was steaming away the dew of dawn. Tiny yellow flowers flowed past under their feet. All of this Mark saw with the sharpness that comes to the eyes of men in battle.

Knots got into trouble, flailing at one that had grabbed his neck under the back of his helmet. Next, Milton stumbled and rolled, screaming, and the screams were buried in a great roar, as if some leviathan had opened its throat and given monstrous song to the dawn.

Mark turned toward the sound and saw, coming through the woods, dozens of the creatures. Some looked human. Most were pale and sleek, with those strange, empty eyes of theirs.

He opened his Metal Storm, extended the drum from the body, and held it up, aiming it toward them. When he pressed the firing button, there was the familiar r-i-i-p THUNK, then the shriek of the beads slamming toward them. Again Mark fired, the sound rocking the air. Behind him, the van’s horn started honking.

Once he saw that everybody except poor Massengill was accounted for, he leaped into the bay doors, shouting to their driver to get out of here.

Dawn turned to dark.

“Holy God,” PFC Richardson cried. Somehow, one of the things had survived the lethal hail of pellets and was clinging to the van’s hood, blocking Richardson’s view.

“Step on it, Pete, goddamnit!”

“I can’t see shit, Colonel!”

“Get us out of here!”

Richardson floored it, and the tires screamed and the van swayed.

“There’s a steep shoulder, sir. I can’t risk going over.”

As Richardson spoke, the van tipped sharply to the right. He turned into the skid, recovered, and seemed to gain traction. The hybrid was reaching around into the cab, trying to grab the steering wheel.

From behind Richardson, Louis leaned forward and fired his pistol out the window and into the thing’s head.

As it fell away, visibility returned—revealing that the van was headed straight into the river that they had crossed on the way here. Richardson hit the brakes, causing the clumsy vehicle to slide in the gravel, but not to stop. They were going in.

“Brace,” Mark shouted.

The edge of the bridge shot toward them and beyond it the water, black and fast. And then Richardson got the van stopped. For a moment, they sat motionless.

Linda sobbed. Other than that, there wasn’t a sound.

Richardson threw it into reverse, backing away from the water’s edge. He drove up the shoulder and proceeded across the bridge. They went speeding down the country road, under the broad, overhanging trees, past the blue-flowering vines that trailed along the roadside, and the green fields and harvested fields beyond.

Just like that, they’d gone from hell to heaven.

A couple of boys were running the tractor they’d heard earlier.

“Stop the van!”

“Sir!”

As they rolled to a halt, Mark reached back and opened the rear bay. The sweet scent of a country morning replaced the stink of sweat and terror. He looked behind them, looked to the sky, saw blue morning, that was all. The woods appeared to be at peace, the deep green of the thick pines conferring a darkness he found ominous, or perhaps that was because he knew what they concealed. Cursed woods.

Linda came out behind him.

“Those kids probably go back in there all the time,” she said. “They’re bound to.”

He had always known that there would come a day like this, when the civilian world began to be involved. His soldier’s mind kept repeating, We have no defense, we have no defense.

In the distance, he watched the boys cutting their hayfield.

“What do we do?” Linda asked.

He said the only thing he could say: “We return to base, report, and await orders.”

“Oh, good. So then we come back out here after lunch, maybe, and gather up the little-boy skeletons?”

“This needs a division, Linda. At least. It needs Delta Force or more.”

She bowed her head, acknowledging just how profoundly the situation had deteriorated.

His phone lit. Gina.

“Go ahead.”

“What was that about, Colonel?”

“You saw it?”

“I saw discharges, a lot of them. What’s wrong down there, Colonel?”

“We have a casualty. Charles Massengill is KIA.”

Short silence, then, “Okay.” A world of shock and sorrow in the tone.

“There are civilians in close proximity to what I think is some sort of hostile infestation, and it’s damned aggressive.”

“Listen, Mark, I want you people out of there.”

“What about this farm?”

“We’ll stage a quarantine and send in the local health department to evacuate the family.”

“When?”

“Just get out of there.”

“We need to take these kids with us.”

“You have your orders, Mark. There are now just six people left in the world who have even a slight idea about how to handle this.”

“We have no idea how to handle it.”

“Okay, let me put it another way. You’re the only person the army has ever found who can even begin to track these things, and your unit is trained around you. So do not put yourself or your people in harm’s way. That’s an order.”

“What’ll you do if I disobey?”

“Brig you!”

“You’ll brig a corpse?”

For a moment, she was silent. When she spoke again, her voice was low and intense. “Just get out of there.”

He closed his phone. “She said to return to base.”

Linda started to head for the kids.

Mark blocked her way. “It’s the right order and you know it.”

Rage made her tremble.

“We return to base and regroup, Linda.”

“They’ll kill those boys, Mark.”

He was silent.

“Yeah,” Louis muttered. “They’re just kids, Colonel.” Louis had boys of his own, just like Massy, who’d had two.

“People, this is no job for a reconnaissance unit. Somebody else will be out here to help those kids.”

“Ten and twelve,” Knotty said.

Mark looked at Knotty’s punch-twisted face. He’d been tortured in an Iranian jail. Then Mark looked along the seats at his crew. Of course people like this would want to save children.

He had lost today, big-time, and he did not like to lose, and he felt the choking helplessness of anger that could do nothing. He’d need to write Pamela Massengill a letter about her husband. Of course, the army would do its thing, but he had an obligation, too.

“Willoughby,” Richardson called over his shoulder. They’d arrived back in the town they’d staged from.

“Break out of your carries,” Mark ordered, and everybody dropped away their complex packs and weapons, the noise of it briefly filling the stuffy panel van. “Put us down at the motel,” he told Richardson.

“Got it.”

There would be no eulogies, not today. They’d all lost a friend and a hell of a soldier, and that hurt, and they were in the middle of a battle, and there was no time for the dead, not right now.

Mark saw that Knots was twisting his hands between his huge knees. “Hey,” Mark said softly, to telegraph his concern without embarrassing him.

Knotty smiled, but then his eyes stared into nowhere. Mark could imagine the thoughts of defeat, the sense of helpless rage. When that rage turned to apathy, and it would if they took many more hits like this, a good man would need to be rotated out.

The first of the hybrids had showed up in a photograph taken by a nine-year-old boy near Copco Lake in far northern California. He’d been hiking with his father, and they had put the image of the tall, paint-white man in the tan body suit up on their Flickr site over the caption “Space alien at Copco?”

Eventually, the picture had come to the attention of Gina Lyndon, one of the CIA’s most skilled imaging specialists.

Mark and his team had been tracking the hybrids steadily, but it was a strange track. For example, they’d left the California-Oregon border, but then where had they gone? There were never any tracks out of their encampment. A nest of them would be sighted, then it would disappear. Mark had ordered ground-penetrating radar units, but they were not due for a week yet.

Ahead and around the van, the little town bustled in its charming morning, tall trees shading the sidewalks, shopfronts glittering with goods. Not too far away, a church bell tolled. Was it Sunday? Mark had no idea.

Milton said, “Aw, shit,” a bitter, sad comment made for them all.

The van came to a stop outside the Sixteen Mo-Tel. It was a study in western kitsch, its sign a neon lariat, its long row of identical rooms each fronted by a log hitchin’ post. The restaurant was called the Hitchin’ Post.

“Breakfast’s still on, people,” Robertson said, “if you wanna eat.”

With their camouflage overalls and their carries stowed, they were now dressed casually. Robertson had become a wiry man in a green polo shirt, Mark a muscular blond. On the van’s doors in neat black lettering were the words FIRST CHURCH OF GOD CHOIR, MAYNARD, CALIFORNIA.

“Pastor” Robertson, however, had a rough sort of a choir, four men, no smiles, all dense muscle, and a striding woman.

The neon lariat was turned off now, but that did nothing to increase the appeal of the place. Mark followed the others through the swinging door into the restaurant. Pictures of cowboys and bandits were on the walls, and a yellowing image of an Indian chief that was labeled Sitting Bull. He was standing.

Mark pulled up a steel chair as the waitress came over. They all knew her. She was the only waitress and had served them from their arrival yesterday. They’d discussed what might be living in her hairdo, a great pile of brown streaked with gray, which bounced slightly as she walked. Linda called it a hair system.

“Where’s Massy?” Gloria asked. She’d enjoyed chatting with him and he’d enjoyed watching her.

“His day’s been ruined,” Mark muttered.

“Oh, gee, I’m sorry to hear that. He’s sick?”

“Sick, yeah, you got it.”

“I’m gonna close the buffet in ten minutes,” Gloria said.

One by one, they went to the steam table. It was mess-hall food, maybe a little worse. But given that they normally operated far from any kitchen at all, it was better than what they were used to. No matter what happens in battle, if you survive, you will want to eat.

So they ate everything that was left, all the eggs, all the bacon, all the sausages, every Corn Pop and every bagel half, and drank all the coffee and all the juice and all the milk, and then they maneuvered their muscular hulks off to their dim little motel rooms, and everybody who saw them wondered the same thing: What kind of monsters are they, those sullen giants eating everything in sight?

It is the soldier’s fate to be feared by those he offers his life to protect.