For never-ending seconds the two marines, soaked in a cold sweat, are unable to look away from the screen of the tablet.
“Jump forward, maybe there’s more”, exclaims Jennings at one time, with a dry mouth. The other obeys, with a trembling hand. The video starts running thrice as fast.
Then there’s a flicker.
“Wait, go back!”
After some second the footage resumes, and the heartbeat of the soldiers freezes as they see the raiders heading silently toward the remaining jeep, strangely unharmed, albeit with tattered clothes.
Thoughts flow quickly and messy in the minds of the two witnesses, while they see a fifth person, accompanied by the dog tha t follows him wagging his tail until the man takes place on the jeep: the old survivor, unscathed and with both legs healthy. The jeep is set in motion, and with a quick maneuver it moves out of sight. The only living being left on the screen is just the dog, who crouches on the ground, motionless, with his eyes set on the c amera, almost as to look at Stu and Jennings through the lens. The footage cuts off after a short while.
“You gotta be fucking kiddin’…” says Stu in a trembling voice. “Please tell me, is this a fucking joke?”
Despite the shock, Jennings’ reaction is immediate.
“Stu, take care of the memory card. Upload the video to a safe place and send a backup to the base ASAP. Call Seagull immediately and get him in contact with me. Ralph, where the hell is Black?”
The other is unaware of what they have just seen, but he notices the urgency and concern in Jennings’ voice.
“I left him near the vehicle, he has found a dog.”
A dog…
“Jesus Christ!”, shouts Jennings, as he rushes towards the Humvee, followed by Stu first and then Ralph too.
Meanwhile Black got distracted, playing with that mischievous dog that always gives back the stone a few meters away from him, thus making him gradually walk away from the car and his friends, without him noticing.
“That’s enough, boy, this is absolutely the last launch, okay?”
The soldier crouches down to take the long stone from the mouth of the dog, but he seems reluctant to let it go.
“What’s up now? Come on boy, what’s wrong?”
Only then he hears the excited loud shouts of his friends who call him from afar. The soldier turns, seeing his colleagues running in his direction, their shapes distorted by the heat of the desert.
In that, he realizes that the dog is not putting up resistance anymore.
A-ha, you’ve given up then…
Black turns to the animal.
At a first glance, he doesn’t understand what he is looking at.
The stone in his hand still has the narrow dog fangs holding firmly on the other end. The gums, however, fade into a kind of reddish bowel, corrugated on its surface, which snakes for about half a meter, before disappearing deep into the animal’s mouth, wide open in a weird diagonal angle. The disgusted boy lets the stone go, leaping to his feet. The stone floats in the air, waved by the snaking tentacle. A sound reminiscent of the wings of a multitude of insects, and the crunching sound of bent fingers starts raising from the dog’s body. Black is a salt statue, as he watches petrified the beast standing on his hind legs. Reddish appendages sprout out of the brown fur on its chest, they seem like earthworms which burst out from the animal’s skin.
Jennings is about ten meters from Black who, overcome by terror, watches helplessly at the metamorphosis of the creature.
“Black, for God’s sake, Black! Come away, get away!”, shouts Jennings while pointing his gun at the animal, quickly opening fire. The shots hit the beast in the chest, but new tentacles pop out of the holes, and they start whipping the air with a whistling sound. With a hideous noise of fabric that tears apart, the dog’s chest rips in two lengthwise. White ribs protrude from the reddish meat and spread out like the leaves of a giant carnivorous plant. Something stirs inside, an amorphous mass that is constantly changing, vaguely resembling a human head with horrific proportions. That twisted mouth emits a long and terrifying whine. Black seems to rouse for a moment, and he hints a half-step back, but the creature is faster than him and it jumps on the soldier. The ribs of what was formerly a dog lock on themselves, trapping the top half of the man in a deadly embrace that knocks him to the ground.
Stu and Ralph join Jennings, who stretches his arms as if to keep them at bay.
“Stay back, stay back, damn it!”
“Black!”, shouts Ralph while loading the bullet in the chamber of his assault rifle. “Black!”
“What the fuck is that thing?”, the voice of Stu is keen with terror.
Black’s legs flap like shaken by electric current, a hoarse gurgle emerges from the writhing obscene mass. Awful eyes open on its surface to stare at the three survivors.
Aware of the ineluctable fate of their mate, the party opens fire, targeting the abomination with their weapons.
The monstrosity shakes, letting out chilling verses from the many mouths and cavities that appear continuously on its back, out of which the head of a dog starts to form. It takes shape like a plant growing in real time.
A yellowish liquid stream hits the ground a few centimeters in front of Jennings’ boots, which pushes the other two soldiers back.
“Get away, these weapons won’t work! They won’t fucking work!”
The three men step back while keeping shooting at the monstrosity that is constantly changing in front of their astonished eyes.
“Let’s see how you like this, you bastard!”, shouts Stu while throwing an incendiary grenade to the creature. The bomb bounces on the monster’s back and falls close to the only still visible leg of Black. The limb of the soldier keeps struggling on the ground, stretching and twisting like a snake, raising puffs of sand.
The soldiers dive to the ground, just before the grenade explodes into a flaming cloud that ravages the body of the beast, enveloping it in a deadly embrace. The screams issued by the shapeless burning mass are chilling.
The creature stirs for long moments, violently writhing in the sand. Then its movements become slowly less frantic, until it collapses and stays motionless.
Suddenly, just silence is left, broken by the nervous crackle of the flames that devour the remains.
The three look at the scene as if hypnotized.
Jennings is the first to rouse, turning to the others. “Stu, get in contact with Seagull, now! Ralph, see if you can contact the base, let’s hurry to join the others!”
USA BASE CNT222
Emily Moore has just finished updating Alexander Ivanov on the results of her analysis of the blood of the young Ahmed and of the wounded soldier. “I think that’s all”, she concludes.
Ivanov just nods, staying silent and watching her with a faraway look. After a while the silence between them starts to become awkward, so she turns to store the vials containing the liquid sample in a freezer. At that moment he seems to wake up from his cogitations. “You’re very smart, Dr. Moore, you made a good job. However due to this particular situation, your analysis may not be… enough.”
Ivanov goes on before she can answer. “I would take another test which, although not orthodox, is nevertheless effective enough, given the nature of the being with which we are probably dealing with. Let’s start with the boy, since he entered the crash site’s area first. If his blood is positive to the infection – God forbid – we have two big problems to handle.”
That said, the man puts on a pair of protective gloves, then he moves his hand towards the scientist, taking the vial containing the blood taken from Ahmed. He takes out a tiny quantity with a syringe, then he pours immediately the liquid into a glass Petri dish. “Stay sharp now.”