Hey all! Here's a little taste of what the good old Doctor is LOVING! We should be back to Lex and Scar next update! I've been swamped and havent had the time to get to them, so I drew this up! Until next time!


THE ENEMY'S HEART

Unknown Territories

COMPONENT:

FOUR

The Forests of Val Verde 1977 – 28 years ago

Alexa Woods thought she knew everything there was to possibly know about her family – even about her military father; a man whose life revolved around the confidences his government ordered him to keep. But the secrets of the Woods family laid far deeper than anyone could have ever imagined. Maybe if Alexander were still alive today, he would have told her about those scorching days in the Central American jungle of Val Verde. He would have let her know that she wasn't crazy – that it wasn't all a dream…that she had every right to be afraid. The question was, however: would he have told her the story before the events of Bouvetoya? Or after? Or maybe even at all? If she had known what her parents had seen before she stepped on the ice last year, maybe Alexa never would have trusted Scar – maybe the woman would have never survived the hell beneath the ice. But if she had survived, and he was still here; if he had been alive now to witness her torment, recovery, and longing, then there may have been a chance that the father would have told his daughter everything he knew…no matter how small or insignificant it may seem in comparison to her own experiences. Though perhaps he would have done everything in his power to keep her from walking down the path she currently had chosen. He would have forbade it with his very life.

Alexander wiped the sweat off of his dark jaw as his brows furrowed disapprovingly at the sight of the destroyed village before him. What had once been shacks made of straw and any other material the jungle could provide, was now nothing more than scorched and charred earth. "This makes no damn sense," the military Major mused to himself as his men searched the desolation for survivors…to no avail.

"Something's not adding up," added a feminine voice directly afterwards, causing Alexander to turn and unconsciously smile at his wife Margaret as she rose to her feet from squatting on the shore of the local river a few feet away. In her fingertips was a vial containing a sample of water – but judging from the perplexed expression on her face, he wasn't the only one completely stupefied by whatever the hell was – or wasn't – going on here.

Alexander approached his wife, fully noting the way the sweat from the Central American sun made her one piece pants jumpsuit cling to every single crease and crevice upon her stacked frame. "Care to share?" He'd had to nearly threaten to cut off a few of his team's penises on more than one occasion for giving his wife one too many lustful stares. The Major believed that Margaret couldn't be in safer hands, and that his men wouldn't dare cross ANY lines…but it still made him wish that some other biologist would've taken this mission. He wrapped an arm around her waist and gave the woman he loved a kiss at the crown of her forehead before trailing his lips into her massive, luxurious twist out curls. He prayed their young daughter – back home with her grandmother – would have hair like her mother. Margaret snickered briefly before regaining her serious expression as the rest of his team converged around them. "The water source here isn't polluted like the others were."

For the past two weeks, a group of guerrilla mercs had been traveling to countless villages and towns polluting their water sources and threatening not to repair the damage unless the people swore allegiance to their cause in taking down their government…a government drowned heavily in North American involvement. A group of American soldiers had been sent down to find the radical guerrilla resistance and silence it – but the team had been missing for the past 83 hours. That was when Major Woods and his team, who had already been in Central America 171 miles to the south, had been recruited into finding their missing comrades and completing the original mission if need be. In regards to finding out the toxin placed in the water and repairing the biological damage, Dr. Margaret Woods was sent down – requested from a Val Verdean colleague.

One of Woods' men shook his head. "I don't get it. If the water is fine, then where the hell did everyone go? Why the fuck does this place look like a battleground?"

According to their incredibly reliable intelligence, this village was where the guerrillas had made their base for the past 2 weeks. They would head out to hit their targets, but always return here. Always. But right now the village was void of all life in the most violent way.

"We've got more trouble than that," replied a man as he stepped from between the foliage covered in soot. "The fire is no longer contained."

"Fuck…"

The man nodded and Alexander exhaled in annoyance. "Direction?"

"Southeast. The winds shifted her like a bitch and she's picking up speed. If we don't like our skin fried extra crispy, we need to barrel back double time."

Margaret grabbed her husband's arm. "The villages we passed on our way here have to be warned. If the fire isn't stopped, they'll lose everything."

"Agreed," replied the Major – waving his fingers around in a circular motion as indication to round up and head out. "I want everything salvageable, every piece of incriminating information, loaded up in the trucks."

The scout took Margaret by her hand and gently helped the biologist up into one of the transport vehicles they'd ridden here before facing his commanding officer. "There's a back road we could take, though 'road' is a liberal stretch. It's rough as sasquatch's ass, but the vehicles can take it. It'll save us some time in getting back as well."

"Lead the way," ordered Alexander as he paused and focused his eyes on the tree line up ahead. His strained against the light and shadows, trying to decipher something odd that had caught his attention.

"Major?" asked the Scout, following the officer's gaze curiously.

Alexander paused for a moment longer before relaxing and shaking his head in exhaustion. "I thought I saw movement in the trees. But maybe it was my mind. No one could scale that high up without some rigging…" He'd convinced himself that it was all in his head, and as the group climbed in their vehicles and departed from the desolate scene, he was starting to believe it. Until…

As the three military transports bounced and stumbled through the dense, barely there "road", something large and heavy slammed onto the hood of the second car with such force, one would think the sound could be heard all the way in New York. Margaret gasped as the vehicle swerved from the unexpected contact. The windshield had shattered under the gravity of the object's fall, and Margaret let out a shrill scream at the realization of what had collided with them.

Flesh, tall flesh with two arms and legs, covered in a thick red ooze of a wet and dried bloody mixture. "OH SHIT!" hollered the driver with a gurgle as vomit projected from between his lips. The wheel whipped and the front of the truck slammed into a tree trunk, the right tire bouncing off a large boulder. Gravity barreled against them with pure rage as Margaret found herself propelled violently against the passenger window as the world tilted, and crashed, and fell, and repeated over and over again before settling with a crunch on its head.

She hung there limply, her seat belt constricting the very life out of her. With a frightened groan, Margaret reached and unfastened the belt, sending her smacking against the roof of the car with an agonizing slap. Smoke poured in gentle wisps into the broken glass as a red glow illuminated the background. At first she thought the car had caught fire, but quickly realized that the fire was originating from outside the transport. The fire had caught up with them. The fire had started randomly about 7 hours ago. No lightning, no dry season, nothing natural in the cause department. There was no reason for it to start, but one thing was for certain: it wasn't stopping. The group had managed to avoid the burning tendrils successfully for quite some time, but now it had caught up with them. Margaret coughed. Well, her.

The sounds of the world were all jumbled around her as the biologist struggled to regain her senses. She crawled out of the exposed windshield slowly, feeling every screaming ache in every joint and tendon. Her trembling hands reached out and gripped something…large. It felt like an ankle? She froze. Margaret raised her head, her eyes finding nothing physical, and yet the sensation of her hand said something was there. The sound of her terrified husband from up the road who had been in the vehicle behind her reaches her ears. That's when she heard a strange purring sound…and when she saw it – the flutter, the disruption of the air in front of her. The outlines of a silhouette barely made themselves visible to her eyes, and yet there they were. She looked up and saw, for a brief moment, a flash of eyes gazing down at her.

And then fire collided with the "thing", causing it to roar and wheel backwards. A blur dashed forward with ignited sticks, and Margaret could see it was a shirtless man waving around the large burning sticks like he was performing some kind of rite of passage display. Alexander was suddenly at her side, hollering in profanities as he pointed upward and the gunfire of his men rang out into the trees. He'd seen it too – if only for a brief moment. But brief was long enough, and the last thing Margaret remembered was the sound of gunfire.

When Margaret awoke the next day, she was in a hospital room. Later she would discover that both she and the driver survived the accident of the vehicle rolling down the embankment. She would hear of the man who was the sole survivor of his team that had been sent down to stop the guerrillas. She would hear that the object that had collided with their car was one of those team mates…skinned. She would hear how that man started the fire because he said it "blinded them". She would hear that the thing she'd touched, who had watched her carefully, was a local legend known as "El Chameleon" who locals said dwelt within the jungle, and killed all who defiled it. Margaret would hear all these things, and notate them…and it wouldn't be the last time…

To be continued…