Fragment

6:52 P.M.

“This is Blue One. We found a survivor. Repeat, we found a survivor. Copy?” Cane’s voice quavered. Over the radio, he heard the others cheering at his words.

Andy appeared right behind the creature and opened the passenger door, and the creature, to Cane’s amazement, climbed inside the Hummer. Copepod and Andy jumped in behind it, as the others scrambled into the back, squeezing Thatcher against the window. Cane grabbed his gun from Nell’s hand and pointed it at the creature.

“Is the survivor OK, Blue One?” came a voice over the radio.

Sergeant Cane, with the radio mike in one hand and his pistol in the other, could hardly breathe as he looked at the large thing that now sat beside him and folded its multi-jointed arms and legs. Turning its long neck, it studied him with colorful, swiveling eyes and its mouth opened wide, revealing three curving teeth as wide as hatchet-blades on its upper jaw. Cane was too frightened to know whether it was grinning or snarling at him now.

“Blue One, do you copy? Is the survivor all right?”

“I’m all right, tell them!” Andy urged.

“Uh-affirmative! We… will uh…we’ll bring him back to base,” Cane managed.

Thatcher peered at the animal from the backseat, a strange chill gripping him and cold sweat breaking out on his forehead.

Rats began thudding like softballs against the sides of the Hummer. Drill-worms landed on the windows, twisting their maws into the bulletproof glass and actually leaving scratches.

“You better turn that faucet on,” Geoffrey warned from the backseat.

“That’s great news, Blue One! Great news! In that case, I’ve got a lot of scientists who want to do some specimen-collecting down here. Copy?”

Cane remained frozen as the creature began touching the roof and steering wheel with four hands while its eyes darted rapidly in different directions.

“Uh, copy that, Blue Two,” Cane muttered into the radio.

“Come on, Cane, turn the water on!” Nell said.

Confused, the sergeant set down the radio mike and opened the roof-faucet, spraying saltwater over the Hummer, keeping his gun on the creature. After a moment, the bugs scattered and the creature pointed excitedly at a drill-worm the size of a locust stuck to the windshield. The struggling worm’s three wings had popped out of the panels under its head and were pressed flat against the glass by the water’s surface tension. The writhing arthropod sprayed some kind of oily chemical from its abdomen, creating a rainbow sheen on the glass as the windshield wiper knocked it off.

The creature in the front seat nodded at Cane and made a kind of thumbs-up sign to Andy using both thumbs on four hands. It turned its head on its twisting upper body and widened its mouth at Cane, nodding rapidly. Its bristling, translucent fur flashed with stripes and dots of colored light.

“Blue One? Are you there? Copy?”

“Answer them, Cane!” Geoffrey said.

Cane picked up the radio mike. “Um… we might… uh… uh…collect some specimens, too. Blue One out.”

“Go where he’s pointing!” Andy yelled.

“What in the FUCK is going on!” the soldier hollered.

The creature hummed as its six-fingered hands traced the contours of the dashboard, stroking the words on the controls and gauges.

“I do not like this!” Cane continued.

The creature recoiled a little from the sergeant. Then it grasped his wrist with two hands and plucked the gun from his fingers with two other hands with such speed and strength that Cane was disarmed before he could even think of squeezing the trigger. With one protruding eye, the creature peered curiously down the weapon’s barrel.

“No, Hender! Here, give me that, OK?” Andy said. “Very bad!”

The creature turned its head to Andy. Then it tossed him the gun, which Andy caught nervously.

“Oh my god,” Nell murmured. “He understands us?”

“Give me my weapon!” Cane screamed as anger ignited the adrenaline in his bloodstream.

“Don’t worry!” Andy assured him, handing him back his gun.

The creature made a zither sound from the small sagittal crest on its head as it stroked the brown, tan, and green pixels of camouflage on Cane’s uniform. For an instant the pattern seemed to be projected over the creature’s plush coat.

“Come on, you guys, you’ve got to see where he lives!” Andy told them.

“Does that thing…speak English?” Thatcher asked in a hoarse whisper. He sat frozen and staring with wide eyes at the beast in the front seat.

“No, he doesn’t speak English!” Andy rolled his eyes, and smirked at the ruddy scientist. “This isn’t a Star Trek episode, dude! He saved my life, that’s all I know. And he saved Copey. He makes great chili, too.”

“No way.” Zero laughed, a wide grin fixed on his face as he videoed feverishly from the backseat. “Sir Nigel Holscombe, eat your heart out, baby!”

Cane kept his gun on the creature, which made musical noises as it investigated everything around it while continuing to look at Cane with one motionless three-striped eye.

“This animal,” Thatcher spoke with slow, quiet urgency, “is more dangerous than anything on this island.”

Geoffrey, who was only now shaking off the shock of their close call on the ledge, watched in astonishment as the creature patted the panting bull terrier on the head. “You were just saying what an atrocity it would be to destroy life on this island, Thatcher. Change your mind?”

“This is different.”

The Hummer rocked gently as a powerful earthquake rumbled through the ground.

“Come on, let’s go,” Zero said. “We shouldn’t stay in one place too long!”

The creature put all four hands on its head and its eyes retracted under furry lids.

“You guys feel that?” The voice of Blue Three’s driver crackled over the radio.

“Yeah, that was a bad one,” the driver of Blue Two answered. “Whoa, check it out!”

A piece of the unbroken rock wall on the south side of the island crumbled and crashed down, leaving a fang of blue sky in the island’s rim.

“We might have less time than we thought, guys,” Blue Two’s driver said.

“Keep on task till they call us back to base,” Blue Three crackled.

“Roger that,” Cane replied. “Out.” He turned to the others. “I’m not sure what we’re doing driving around with one of the things we’re supposed to be nuking, God damn it!”

“What?” Andy looked at Nell, bewildered.

“The President gave the order to sterilize this island, Andy,” she explained.

“Great,” he said. “But what about the people?”

Sergeant Cane was sweating visibly. “You call that… a person?” He stared warily at the creature that was examining him. “Are you sure it doesn’t speak English? I mean I swear we heard it speakin’ English back there, God damn it!”

Andy looked at Cane’s uniform suspiciously. “So is he in charge now? Are you the guy with the nukes, Commander G.I. Joe with the karate grip? How much have I missed here, anyway?”

“It’s OK, Andy,” Nell soothed. “The President also asked us to see if any life on this island could be saved.”

Geoffrey stared at her in surprise. “Change of heart, Nell?”

She looked at him as tears welled in her eyes. “This is different…”

“Come on,” Zero yelled. “We gotta check this out! This is fricking amazing! Go where he says, man! Go! Go!”

“We need to find out what we have here and then report to the President as soon as possible, Sergeant,” Nell said. “Everything depends on it. OK?”

Cane gritted his teeth. The creature’s hands ceaselessly tested everything around it, including Cane’s helmet. He closed his eyes, breathing hard. “All right. But I’m under strict orders about not allowing anything unauthorized off this island alive!”

“Does that include us?” Andy wanted to know, seething. “Are you going to nuke us, too, Commander BUTTHOLE?”

“Don’t push me, sir.”

“Yes, don’t push him, Andy,” Nell agreed.

Geoffrey nodded. “Let’s all just get along, now.”

Cane backed the Hummer out slowly and then he gunned it up the slope.

“Wheeeeeee!” the creature fluted.