The woman lets out a cry of anguish, realizing that she has completely lost the sensitivity of the hands and arms up to the elbow. Despite her efforts she is unable to look away from the mutation in the flesh of the wounded colleague.
The eye formed in the abdomen of the unconscious soldier quickly darts in different directions, finally staring at her. It watches her for a long moment, during which she realizes that behind that eye something superhuman has just become aware of her presence. The man’s body begins to shake with violent convulsions.
In a panic, she takes a few steps backward until her back hits the infirmary door. She turns, raising her right hand to press the internal release control, but at the sight of her own hand she is petrified.
The limb is swollen and distorted. The fingers seem to have come to a life of their own and they are moving, surging and bending in such absurd angles as to tear deep into her palm.
At that moment the lights in the base go off completely, plunging the entire floor in total darkness.
A hoarse moan comes from the man lying on the stretcher behind her…
ALGERIAN DESERT
Sergeant Kain Seagull looks at the desert through binoculars, focusing the instrument on a tiny dot in the distance between the dunes. He is the first to sight the white jeep used by the raiders. “Eleven o’clock, Jeff”, he communicates to the driver, who promptly steers, heading to that direction.
Their vehicle slows to a stop about three hundred meters from the other car. Seagull inspects it through his binoculars, while on the roof of the military vehicle, Will Bailey watches the same scene through the viewfinder of his inseparable M82. The vision is shaky, due to the extreme heat of the blazing sun.
“Will, can you see anything?”
“Negative, the car seems abandoned in place. No suspicious movement around.”
“Keep your eyes wide open. Jeff, let’s move carefully, it may be an ambush.”
At that moment, electrostatic discharges emerge from their intercom. For some seconds they hear voices, but the signal is disturbed and makes them incomprehensible.
“Roger, what the hell was that?”, Seagull asks to the fourth marine, a lanky guy with traces of juvenile acne, the communications officer.
“I have a poor radio signal. I think it was the voice of Jennings, but I can neither contact him nor the base.”
“Holy shit!”, says Seagull annoyed. “Keep trying, it may be important.”
Meanwhile, the Humvee carrying the team led by Jennings jumps, while Ralph tries desperately a compromise between speed and safety, driving on a very bumpy ground made from sand and rocks.
Jennings lets out a series of expletives, while trying to establish contact with Seagull’s team.
The horrible death of Christer Black has had a profound effect on their mental state. They have experience in the field, they have witnessed previously the death of many others. However, the brutal, grotesque and horrifying unexpected episode they have just experienced brought them into a new territory. An unexplored elsewhere where the only certainty is that they are no longer on top of the food chain. A new universe of fear and uncertainty with which they have to live hoping to bring back home their skin.
The encounter with the creature was something that none of them could ever be ready for.
Sergeant Gold Jennings hoped that Major Macready could somehow have some reassuring answers.
But this was unlikely. On the contrary, while he spoke, describing what happened to Black, he had the feeling that the man on the other side of the communication system was as shocked as he was.
“Report to Seagull immediately”, Macready replied. “You have to reach the jeep driven by those men – or what the hell they have become – before they can reach inhabited areas with human beings or animals. Don’t try to catch them in any way. It’s imperative to exterminate them. Use fire, you have to incinerate all trace of them. I will send a support team with the other helicopter as soon as possible. I want updates every 5 minutes.”
Since then, Jennings team is trying to contact the other car, without success.
USA BASE CNT222
“They can’t have vanished into thin air, and they have not gone very far either. I can’t see any traces to the elevator. They are still on this floor”, says Vasquez, watching the two scientists as seeking confirmation.
Moore and Ivanov exchange a meaningful look. Both came to the same conclusion. It’s the Russian speaking, addressing the soldier and giving voice to the thoughts of both. “The tiny being that we have seen in the lab was just a fragment of the body of the boy that you held in this room. It’s not human, and it’s able to replicate the shape of his victims.” Vasquez seems suspicious and uncertain, as if talking to a fool. The eyes of the young soldier bounces between the woman’s and the doctor’s face, looking for a reflection of his own thoughts, but the face of the doctor seems to confirm that the Russian is telling the truth. The latter continues, ignoring the disbelief of the soldier. “The guards are gone, there are splashes of blood. It’s reasonable to think that it has attacked and assimilated both of them.”
“Are you saying that my colleagues, my friends, are dead, that that being has eaten them and now it’s free in the base?”, says Vasquez, pale again.
“That’s right, now it has access to all floors of the structure. We don’t know when it happened, the rooms are soundproofed and we remained in the laboratory for long enough. They could still be on this level, or they could have moved to the other floors. This means that your two colleagues are no longer human and that anyone we will meet from now on is potentially one of those creatures.”
“We need weapons, and we must act now”, the Russian scientist goes on. “Contact Major Macready. Tell him to hold and quarantine anyone who comes out of the elevator on the surface. We will have to test the blood of all. Fire is the only way to kill the creatures, are there any flamethrowers in the base?”
After a moment of hesitation, the soldier shakes his head. “No, not that I know. We are in the Sahara, there is already the sun to burn everything, what good would a flamethrower be in this place? However, there is a supply of grenades, incendiary too. They are in the armory, the deepest floor.”
“We can’t go down there, it’s a suicide”, Moore intervenes. “We must try to get out of here ASAP.”
Ivanov seems to consider various alternatives for a moment, then he nods. “She’s right. The base got compromised. There are at least three of those creatures on the loose: in a few minutes they will have infected the entire staff.”
“We must leave”, Moore adds. “We must reach the surface and seal the base, then we’ll think what to do next.”
Vasquez appears not to believe the words of the woman. “There are a lot of people down here, I know them all, they are all my friends, we can’t leave them behind!”
“Put it this way: your friends are probably dead. They will soon be chasing us, and we are unarmed.” The sharp response of Ivanov earns him a resentful look from the soldier in front of him. Vasquez leads instinctively a hand to his holster.
“That gun will be useless”, Ivanov goes on, pointing with his chin to the gun of the soldier. “You can’t kill by mechanical means something that is able to regenerate itself in real time. You require complete destruction of the cellular activity, and right now only fire can do that.”