NaNoWriMo Day 3

“Easy there,” a man’s voice said when Damien woke.

“What happened?” He groaned. As his eyes began to focus, Damien saw that he was in one of the medical tents.

“Captain Kharn shot you in the chest. It only barely missed your heart,” Doctor Morris Jambers explained.

“Were you able to remove the fragments?” Damien had seen what happened to men with improperly treated gunshot wounds and did not wish to live through such an ordeal.

Morris fidgeted nervously. “Well, as to that…” he trailed off anxiously.

Phoenix answered. “Your crazy metal exoskeleton grew over and, we think, into the wound before Doc could operate on you. Whatever that thing attached to you is, it appears to be healing you.”

Damien sat up, relieved that he was not being restrained for further experimentation. “What happened after I was shot?”

“Captain Kharn got himself good and drunk with Bill when he realized there was nothing left of Matilda but some black goop. Nobody slept much, but once morning came panic really set in.”

“Panic? Why?” Damien had figured everything would be fine now that the two monsters had been destroyed.

“There was no sign Matilda or Harold’s remains. It appears that they both reformed during the night and snuck away.”

“How can you be sure the ooze didn’t seep into the ground or evaporate or get scooped up as a sample by one of the others?”

“We dug down to check the ground, this stuff doesn’t evaporate, and we searched the camp for hidden samples, but there aren’t any. That’s not the worst of it though.”

“It’s not?” Damien arched his eyebrow skeptically.

Phoenix shook her head. “Adrien has been prepping the shuttle for takeoff and trying to get everyone to evacuate, the Captain disappeared as soon as he learned Matilda had reformed, and Tobias took a group into the woods to search for him. Benji is next in the chain of command, but he’s utterly hopeless. We need you to bring some order back to the mission.”

Damien grabbed his shirt and his gun. “Get Benji in here right now. We need to find our people and get out of here.”

“Yes, sir.” Phoenix grinned as she spun on her heel to go find Benji.

“We’re evacuating?” Morris asked.

Damien nodded. “We don’t have the weaponry to face whatever this is. Guns don’t hurt it and explosions only slow it down. Go ask Adrien how long she needs to have the shuttle ready for takeoff.”

Morris did as he was told. Benji appeared shortly thereafter, very nearly being dragged by Phoenix.

“You wanted to see me?” He asked fearfully.

“You are going to give to order to pack up camp and prepare for evacuation back to the starship.”

Benji gulped. “B-b-but we still have people out there in the forest!”

“And we won’t be leaving without them. I want everything ready to go as soon as Tobias and the others return.”

“Will we be going after them?” Phoenix asked.

“I want to give them a few more hours to come back on their own. The fewer people we have out there the smaller the chances are of someone else getting infected.” He turned back to Benji. “Go and give the order now, if you have trouble come back here and get me. Understood?”

The Chief Science Officer nodded glumly.

Once he was gone, Phoenix spoke. “Captain Kharn isn’t going to leave without Matilda.”

“I know.”

“So, what are we going to do with him?”

“Whether the Captain has already been infected or he gets infected when he finally catches up with Matilda seems to be an irrelevant distinction at this point.”

“You’re going to leave him behind?” Phoenix gaped at him.

“He was going to shoot Adrien if she used her grenade on Matilda and he did shoot me when he thought I killed Matilda. Even if we did manage to bring him back without using violence, which seems impossible at this point, he would face charges for that. It’s kinder for everyone to leave him on Tappman.”

“Kinder? We’re killing him!”

Damien nodded. “That is correct.”

“Then we can’t do it!”

“And what do you propose?” Damien asked her calmly. “You said yourself he won’t leave without his wife. Do we hunt him down and forcibly bring him to the shuttle, which could end in his death as well as some of our remaining people? Do you really want to risk the lives of anyone else to force a man to do something against his will?”

“Well…”

“And remember that these are not properly trained soldiers and the Captain is an excellent marksman.”

She sighed. “It just feels like giving up.”

Damien clapped her encouragingly on the shoulder. “Sometimes retreat is the only option that will let your squad live to fight another day.”

A scream followed by gunshots sent Damien and Phoenix sprinting out of the tent. Damien cursed.

They were back.

Harold and Matilda were stepping over Larissa’s rapidly transforming body and up the shuttle ramp. Damien ran for the shuttle, but he was not fast enough. Through the cockpit window he saw Harold throw Doc Morris against the glass and hold him there as the infection spread to cover the Doctor’s body.

Then suddenly, it was as though he had gotten shot all over again, only this time he had been shot everywhere.

There was a flash of light, not a muzzle flash like last time, but a blinding burst of white light. Damien was thrown backwards, completely lifted off his feet and into the air. Finally, he heard the deafening boom of the explosion and realized that the front end of the shuttle had been blown to smithereens.

His ears ringing and purple spots flashing in front of his eyes, Damien staggered to his feet. “What the hell was that?” He shouted, or at least he thought he was shouting.

“What?” Phoenix yelled back.

“How did it explode?”

“WHAT?”

“Never mind!”

It was then that Adrien came running over yelling, “Sorry! Sorry! There was no other way!”

“You did this?” Damien moaned.

“There were going to be four of them! There was no other way!”

“They’ll just reform!”

Adrien grinned. “Yeah, but it will take a hell of a while after what they just got blown up with! I bet we have at least two days to figure out what the hell we’re going to do!”