Armageddon

Chapter Twenty Two

Ibn Sina Hospital, Baghdad, Iraq

“These things smell dreadful. Couldn’t we have chilled them?”

“We did Doctor. Unfortunately dead baldricks appear to rot very fast indeed. As far as we can tell, its daylight that causes them to decay, not temperature.”

“Ultraviolet sensitive then? Would that tie in with reports of their sensitivity to lasers?” A doctor in the observation gallery sounded very thoughtful.

“They do seem to be sensitive to most of our technology, from ultra-violence to infra-dead.” A chuckle crossed the gallery. The baldricks were running west, with three armies in hot pursuit and another closing in from the North. Suddenly, they seemed far less frightening.

Doctor Surlethe nodded and looked at the baldrick corpse stretched out on the dissection table in front of him. “This is a big one even by baldrick standards, nearly 3 meters tall, weight 200 kilograms?”

“Before your army shot large pieces off him, yes.” Another ripple of laughter ran around the operating theater. The relationship between Iraqi and American had eased to the point where they could make jokes about each other without fearing consequences. On the other hand, the Iraqi nurse flushed slightly, even now she felt ill at ease receiving public attention.

“Let’s have a look at the X-rays.” Surlethe had them set up on the overhead displays. “Is everybody seeing what I’m seeing?”

“It’s very human.” One of the watching doctors spoke hesitantly. “Human but not human, as if it was a human body seen through a nightmare.”

“Exactly, the body is laid out almost identically to ours. The single upper arm and upper leg bones, the two bones in the lower arms and legs. The same number of ribs, of vertebrae. If we go by bone count and position, this thing is human. But, of course, we know it isn’t. The bones themselves are twisted and distorted, and there are things here that have no equivalent in our anatomy. Not just superficial things either, like the horns and tail. There’s these things as well.” Surlethe tapped the body where what appeared to be huge muscles ran down its back. They were so large they made the creature’s spine look as if it was in the middle of its body rather than its back. The creatures stunted wings stuck out of them reminiscent of broken branches from a snow bank. “50 percent of its body mass would you say?”

There was a ripple of agreement. “I thought they were muscles that allowed it to fly but they’re not. This thing can’t fly. Did histology come up with anything?”

“Doctor Surlethe, we find this hard to believe but we think they are electrocytes. The samples we took show them to be very similar to those in the electric eel but they are much larger and many times more numerous. The electric eel generates 500 volts at 1 amp, if these cells work the same way, the baldrick should be able to generate 5,000 volts at 10 amps. Almost 100 times more power.”

“That would explain much, especially their ability to fire bolts of lightning. Let’s have a look inside shall we?”

Surlethe took an electric carving knife, he’d already found from bitter experience that surgical scalpels had a very short life when faced with baldrick skin, and sliced into the dead baldrick. The smell was far worse once the skin was opened up and inside, the internal organs were already decomposing into slush.

“From what we can see here, it’s the same as with the bone structure. The internal organs are human in placement but wildly different from us in shape and appearance. We have no real idea of the fine detail of function of course. For example, this looks like a liver but is it? What else does it do? Thoughts people?”

“It is as if it was human but became corrupted.” The Iraqi nurse was speaking slowly. “Almost as if this was once human but something got at it, corrupted its DNA.”

“It’s worth noting that the other bodies are very similar to this. If this is the result of DNA being corrupted, then the corruption was done systematically. The process has created a new species.”

“Did this evolve from us? Or is it parallel evolution?” Another Iraqi doctor watching the dissection spoke. He was slightly guarded, incredibly, he’d heard that there were Americans who were still dumb enough to believe in creationist stories and deny the scientific truth that stared into their faces. It was so strange, how could a people who could create such wonders also believe in things so foolish? Still, he didn’t want to upset one of them, they had guns as well as strange beliefs.

Surlethe thought carefully. “I’d say its parallel evolution, they started out as the next-level-up version of us and something happened to them. Either they’ve been infected with something that messed up their DNA or they’ve been engineered to look like this.”

“Genetic engineering needs technology.” Yet another Iraqi doctor. “And we know they don’t have it.”

“We think they don’t Doctor. Its very probable they don’t and we certainly haven’t seen it yet. But we can’t rule out the possibility that there’s pockets of technology somewhere. However, genetic engineering doesn’t need that high technology, just patience and breeding experiments. Look at dogs, a Rottweiler and a Chihuahua were engineered from the same ancestor. These could be the same.” I wish they’d let me dissect that succubus Surlethe thought. Then we’d have something to compare this with. “Right, well, lets look a bit more before this one decays to nothingness.”

Outside Gary’s Shoe Store, Lakeview Mall, Chicago, Illinois

“But its…. una ropas de puton.” Maria looked at the top her school-friends were urging her to buy. If she’d worn it back in Honduras, her mother would beat her and old women would whisper accusations behind her back. But here?

“Look girl, you’re in America now. Halter tops, mini-skirts and fuck-me pumps get issued at the border. Get used to it.” Shana’s voice was severe but she was laughing underneath it.

Maria looked dubious but she could see her friends were right. Dress standards were different here. She’d only been at the school six weeks and this was her first time hanging out in the mall with her new friends. She didn’t want to embarrass herself or them. What she didn’t know was that she was far from the first new arrival from Central America who’d joined the school and all the girls with her understood how difficult the adjustment from the highly conservative lifestyle she’d come from was. The Immigration Department might run assimilation classes for new arrivals but the high school girls had their own, much more efficient program. She should have guessed from the way they were speaking, the group had two African-American girls, three Anglos and two Latinas. They were speaking in a strange mixture of Spanish and English, switching from one language to the other in mid-sentence with unconscious fluency, the whole mixed in with ebonic slang. Viewed objectively it was an awesome display of bilingualism.

She held the blouse up against herself again. In truth, it was quite modest by the standards of teenage girls at a mall and was on sale, 80 percent off. And it did make her look nice. She pushed her hat a little back on her head, trying to make up her mind. All the girls were wearing the fashionable kepi-style caps with aluminum foil built into the crown and neck, that was one thing that had changed since The Message. Now, everybody wore caps, all the time. The stores here were full of them, some cheap baseball caps with foil inserts, others much more expensive. Maria finally made her decision. She’d take the top. She took it to the counter and, as she started to pay, her friends broke out in a round of applause. She’d just done something her mother would not approve of and that was her first step to becoming a real American teenager.

“Hey man, you, like, going to get some more donuts?” One of the Anglo girls, Marcie, was speaking to Philip Phelan, the shift supervisor of the Mall security guards. He smiled a bit weakly at her, it was a joke all the rentacops on duty here had to put up with but she was a customer so her jokes were, by definition, funny.

“Fraid not ma’am. Crispy Kreme ran out of original glazed so I’m going to have to make do with Pop-Tarts.”

“Poor baby.” Marcie’s voice was sweetly consoling. “The red light comes on again in an hour so I’m told.”

“Why thank you ma’am. I’ll bear that in mind.”

Marcie watched Phelan continue his rounds, a shadow of concern crossing her mind. He was way too far over-weight and she could see him wheezing slightly. It reminded her of her father before he’d had his first heart attack. He really should be sitting comfortably behind a desk, she thought. Then she frowned slightly, there was a ripple in the air down by the food court. Something overheating? Or a fire? She was just about to call attention to it when the ripple changed to a black dot and then to an ellipse.

She’d seen what stepped out of that ellipse on news programs, on film of the fighting in the Middle East, but she’d never expected to see something like it in her local mall. A baldrick, fully nine feet tall, complete with horns, tail and trident. Eyes glowing red and small pointed beard seeming to bristle at the stunned shoppers. There was an eerie silence as people tried to absorb what was happening. A silence that was interrupted by a crack and brilliant blue flash as the baldrick discharged his trident at a woman pushing baby carriage. The crash as the woman went down, convulsing from the massive electrical shock, broke the spell.

“Run!” Shana grabbed Maria and started bundling her forward. Years of threatened shootings in high schools had lead Americans to learn a vital lesson; when trouble is breaking out, get as far and as fast in the opposite direction as possible. Maria didn’t have that inbred instinct and had to be shown. Her friends half-pushed, half-dragged her towards the exit adjacent to the mall’s Macy’s store.

Across the mall, the shoppers were dispersing in different directions, depending in which exit was nearest. The silence was replaced by the sound of screaming from the chaotic mob of people. In its midst, the baldrick grabbed another victim with the claws of one hand, ripped him open with the other and threw the disintegrating body into the mass of running people. Then, it looked around, its eyes fixed on a group running for the Macy’s exit and set off after them.

Philip Phelan didn’t run. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a gun either. The mall rentacops weren’t allowed to carry them. He did have a taser and he used it, helplessly watching the barbed metal spikes bounce off the skin of the baldrick. The monster had already carved its way through three more people, throwing their dismembered remains around and Phelan believed that his job was now to buy as much time as he could for the rest to get clear. The monster reached out for him, almost lazily, its great claws reaching for his throat. Phelan had drawn his baton and he swiped at the grabbing hand, knocking it to one side. Them he slashed back in the opposite direction, hitting the monster in the throat, causing it to stagger for a second. For one delirious moment, he actually believed he had a chance of winning the encounter, then he felt the claws on the baldrick’s other hand sinking into his abdomen. They hooked around the bottom of his ribs and the last thing that Phelan ever felt was him being hurled into the air as his chest came apart.

The baldrick watched the fat old man land in the food court on the floor below and looked around for another victim. A middle-aged woman had stopped running and was facing him, holding both hands out as if she was praying. A ridiculous idea but who knew what these humans would try. Then there were a series of bright flashes from the woman’s hands and the baldrick felt six jabbing pains in his chest. He paused for a brief second then started after the woman.

“Lady you got reloads?”

“No.” She wailed, looking at the monster bearing down on her.

“Run!” The man speaking had another handgun out. One a lot bigger than the woman’s little Kel-Tec. 32. He was in the correct position, M1911A1 in both hands, right hand pushing, left hand pulling and his nine shots made a perfect group on the baldricks chest. Then, his slide locked back on empty, he followed the woman running for the exit, the baldrick now streaming green blood from the wound in its chest, closing rapidly on them.

They were saved by the shoe salesman in Gary’s Shoe Store, who had been a mighty athlete in his day. As the baldrick crossed in front of his store, he ran out and took it in a perfect football tackle, slamming it off its feet and into the guard rail. The railing, more decorative than ornamental, cracked free of the floor and for a moment looked like it might give way under the impact, but it held and the fighting human and baldrick bounced off it back onto the floor. The baldrick managed to tear at the human’s face with one hand and that gained him enough of an advantage to throw him off. The shoe salesman was blinded, crippled by the injury and didn’t have a chance of evading the slash that tore out his heart. By that time, the man and woman who had shot the baldrick were safely away.

Out in the car park was a Ford F-150 pick-up truck, covered with NRA stickers. More significantly, both its driver and passenger were hunters who had come in for some supplies at the Northwest Face store before going off on a trip. Bill Redfield saw the people pouring out of the exits and managed to stop one as he ran past the truck.

“What’s going on?”

“Baldricks, in the mall. They’re killing everybody.” The man tore himself free and continued running.

“Can’t get in though the doors Jim, too many people coming out. Like running into an avalanche.”

“The Cafe.”

“Hit It.”

The Coffee Cup Cafe was on the ground floor level with the car park and, better, it had a terrace and windows that were a rare interruption in the otherwise blank mall walls. Jim Caldwell slammed his truck into gear and floored the accelerator. He was doing over 60 miles an hour when his truck ploughed through the terrace tables and smashed open the windows beyond. Redfield and Caldwell, and their truck, were in the mall. A few seconds later they were running into the main concourse holding their hunting rifles.

“Escalators, up.” The screaming said the baldricks were on the top floor. They sprinted up the escalator in time to see a single baldrick, there was only one, tearing a man apart outside a shoe store. The baldrick stood up and started to close in on the people struggling outside Macys but Caldwell dropped to one knee and took aim. He had an old Garand, sporterized and fitted with a scope, across the width of the mall it was murderously accurate. He squeezed out his eight rounds of. 30-06 and heard the characteristic ‘ting’ as the clip was ejected. The baldrick staggered with the impacts, obviously finding it had to stay on its feet, but it was still obviously determined to get into the crowd of humans. That wasn’t bad tactics either, once mixed in with humans, the usefulness of the hunting rifles would be much diminished.

Redfield stopped that happening. His favored game was elk and moose and he had the rifle to match. A Weatherby Mark V Deluxe chambered for. 416 Weatherby Magnum. With its scope, it had cost him almost $3,000 and his wife had given him the silent treatment for three months after she’d found it in the gun safe. He dropped flat and took careful aim, squeezing the trigger and feeling the brutal recoil as the rifle sent the heavy bullet tearing down range. He didn’t stop to see what the result was, he was working the bolt to feed the second round into the chamber. By the time he got his eye back to the scope, the baldrick was sitting down, the wall behind it splattered green with its blood. Redfield fired again, seeing the baldrick jerk as the bullet ploughed into it. There was no doubt, it was down for good but he still had a single round left in his rifle and the thing was still moving. He worked the bolt again then took careful aim at the monster’s head. It burst very pleasingly as the bullet struck home.

Redfield straightened up, pleased with himself despite the pain in his shoulder. Caldwell was looking at him. “Remind me never to poke fun at that cannon of yours again,” he said.

Across the concourse, it was hard to believe it was over. The baldrick lay dead barely ten feet from where Maria stood crying. She was in shock, from terror and the deafening explosions that had brought the monster down. She and her friends had been at the back of the crowd trying to escape and they would have been the first to die if the baldrick had reached the crowd. Maria knew it but all she could think of was that in the panic she’d lost the bag holding her new blouse. Now she’d lost it, it seemed enormously important to her. Behind her, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey Maria.” It was Kelly, one of the Anglo girls with Maria’s shopping bag. “You dropped this. Second lesson on being a mall rat, never, ever, let go of your loot.”

Across the mall concourse, two men in hunting clothes stood up. There was silence for a second, then an eruption of cheering. One of the men waved, the other held his rifle above his head. The cheering redoubled.

Maria found a microphone stuck in her face. “KVTW News. What did you see?”

“I saw the devil coming to kill us and an old security man attacked it with a stick. It killed him but he saved our lives. Era el hombre mas valiente que nunca haya visto.”

The television reporter turned to another person, a woman who was staring at a tiny semi-automatic pistol in her hand. “Ma’am, what do you think?”

She looked dazedly at the camera. “I need a bigger fucking gun.”