had done to bodies in Iraq.
“McCully is seeing double a bit, sir.” Birk reported while occasionally stealing a glance toward Ubaid. “Hodges lost a chunk of his thigh but no severed artery, so he’s lucky as hell.”
“Where are the bodies?”
“I’m sorry, sir.” Birk stammered for a moment. “We couldn’t ....”
“I will not have my people left behind in these circumstances.” Birk understood what the Commander was referring to. They will not become like them. They will not be harvested and eaten by them.
“We had no chance to get them, sir.” Birk’s head was slowly beginning to shake back and forth. He understood. Oh god, how he understood how his Commander felt. “There were a lot of them.....”
“Sir, hostiles!” A voice from behind raised the warning.
The Commander quickly looked northward on the Dixie and saw the first fleeting specters among the embers. The hunched shoulders, slow stiff walk and the animal intensity. The first one walked past the blazing Stryker and faced him in the center of the roadway. He had once been a large man. He wore a checked, long sleeve shirt that was popular among rural people. The fabric had been frayed and torn in some places like his skin. His left eye had been hollowed out and devoured long ago. A craterous black pit was in its place. The Commander watched the big man cock his head slowly at them. Was it curiosity? Perhaps he was the leader of this new pack. Did they have leaders? The Commander’s skin started a slow crawl. They always make you feel that way.
Behind the big man, slow, curious and ravenous fingers began to touch the hot metal of the burning Stryker. The Commander watched an elderly woman with a drawn face hiss in frustration as her skin stuck to the hot armor plating. With an angry roar, she pulled away her hands as her flesh stuck to the surface of the burning vehicle. It was like watching fabric being ripped away from a dress. Huge chunks of skin peeled away and sizzled on the surface. Her blackened hands were steaming in the night air as she investigated more potential openings.
They can smell what’s inside. The Commander felt rage and bile in his throat. They can smell burning, fresh meat.
Hungry fingers encircled around a smashed hatchway. Then a few more found a hold and then others joined in. There was a groan of metal on metal and then: WHOOOOOSH!!! A jet of flame roared out of the opening as the fire inside greedily inhaled the new oxygen source. The Commander watched two hostiles begin to burn. Their dry skin was easy kindling. There were no cries of pain or surprise from them. Instead, the first one stepped into the inferno of the hatchway for the salvation of his burning addiction. Hunger.......
“Get Ubaid and the rest back with the unit and head to our destination.” The Commander’s voice was angry and low.
“Sir.....’ Birk’s big dog voice was a whine now.
“You heard what I said.” The Commander tore his eyes from the desecration and leveled them on Birk. “Get moving, I’ll catch up to you.”
Birk could only nod and give the order to move out while the orderly working on Ubaid asked for more bandages. The vehicle drove away from the carnage. The driver was careful to keep an even and slow speed for his passengers. The firelight faded with distance and Birk tried to concentrate on the outlines of the vehicles he was approaching. He looked ashamed, helpless.
“Turn around, head north.” The Commander was angry and he knew it. This was pure, sickly sweet revenge. “How’s our ammo on the 30’s?”
“We’re reloaded sir.”
The Commander closed the hatch, sealed it and pulled the M151 weapons station closer. The camera scanned for a second before he found his target. He grabbed the hand grip and depressed the firing button. Inside the vehicle, there was a thrumming vibration that gently reverberated through the plexi-glass and steel body of the Stryker. The screen offered an almost antiseptic, unreal vision of the carnage.
The big man had no time to move as 30 caliber shells seemed to cut a swathe from his stomach to the top of his head. He just came apart like a jigsaw being pulled asunder. The Commander carefully turned the camera right and fired at a group of shadows in the firelight. An outline of a woman was struck in the shoulder and her arm exploded and detached from her body. She seemed to look at the shoulder stump for a second before stepping forward in a blind rage. A 30 millimeter shell found her lower cheekbone and her head exploded like a ripe watermelon. Her body, a shattered cluster of skin and bone dropped to the ground.
The Commander traversed back across his fire lane and saw a head and left shoulder crawling forward. It reared up on its one remaining limb and howled at him in defiance. It was the big man, a blackened wet mud traced behind him.
“Drive forward,” The Commander’s voice was harsh and cold. “Crush it with the wheels.”
The driver obeyed but not before taking a glance back to the Commander and making eye contact. What are we doing? The vehicles suspension system barely registered the big man’s head and rib cage being smashed and ground into the pavement.
“Sir, we have hostiles on our vehicle!” The driver spoke and then instinctively backed away a few inches from the face that was clawing at his windshield. She had been a beautiful African American woman. Now, the lower part of her face was muscle and bone. The teeth snapped away while he watched the now exposed jaw muscles working. The driver kept repeating to himself. Don’t look at it, don’t look at it.
The Commander felt the machine gun turret grow sluggish. It felt like the battery was in need of a charge. He was wrestling hard with the controls and while the camera tried to play around the scene for targets, he saw the problem.
It was leaning hard and pushing, pulling at anything that came close quarters to his fingers. A man of twenty, Caucasian with darkened blood clots for eyes dropped his jaw and hissed at the machine gun turret. The twin machine guns whirled around while the things’ fingers reached around and grabbed at metal, tubing and wires. Searching, exploring. Looking for anything to find a crevice or opening into the vehicle. Other fingers appeared and began grabbing. Pushing, pulling, wires came free........
Red lights appeared on the console.…Robotics failure....hydraulic failure....
“Damnit!” He finally swore as his hand carelessly smacked the keyboard. He felt foolish, useless. His eyes looked forlornly at the burning vehicle, his crippled machine guns pointing at the sky. They have you now, they always win. You know that. The camera played over the shadows and specters in the firelight. They were feeding now. The Commander and his modern war machine were insignificant in their eyes. A lump in his throat made his voice crack; “Get us out of here.”
He felt the wheels reverse and fingers began to fall away from the driver’s windshield. His camera played over the wreckage, the burnt husks of steel and the figures that seemed at home in the end of all things. Amid the rhythmic flames, a looped structure caught his eye as it burned fiercely. It was a bit larger than the rest of the skeletons strewn about the highway.
It was the pilot’s compartment of the attack helicopter. The plexi-glass had shattered on impact and the flames engulfed the two bodies slumped forward over the control panel. Sitting on the pilots back with her legs draped over his shoulders was a girl of twelve. Her feet seemed to dangle without a care. Like she was sitting on the edge of a dock, dipping her toes in a lake on a sunny day. The girl was feasting on a large chunk of meat, carefully chewing away with a carefree calm. The flames had burned away her clothes. She paused for a moment to extend her left hand and watch
