Chapter 23

Pops had to all but carry the Lieutenant from the ship. Whatever it was that was affecting the Marines outside, Fick had caught it too, and he was deteriorating. Fast.

As the boarding party crossed the fallen trees towards the rock, Pops could see that something had gone very, very wrong.

The Marines who were on the rock that were able to had picked up their weapons, nervously scanning their surroundings. Several just sat, staring dead-eyed ahead. Mercer was on his knees beside Chaffin, staring down at the younger Marine.

That was when Pops noticed all the blood.

As they got closer, he saw that Chaffin wasn't the only one coated in blood. Most of Fulmer's upper body was covered in the stuff as well. For some reason, the rain wasn't washing it away.

"Fulmer!" Pops said loudly. "Fulmer, what happened?" The medic looked towards him, her eyes wide with fear.

"I…I don't…" She stammered. "I don't know, Gunny. Something…something came out of Chaffin."

"What?" Pops asked.

"Something. I…I don't know!" She said, clearly panicked by whatever had happened. Fick let out a rattling groan, his bodyweight all but entirely supported by Pops at this point.

"Rook!" Pops barked. The synth turned towards the Gunnery Sergeant. "Take Lieutenant Fick. Be ready to move."

"Sir." Rook said, his voice calm but determined. They did a quick handoff of the Lieutenant, and Rook took Fick over his shoulders in a standard fireman's carry. The synth's left arm held the Lieutenant in place by the man's wrist and ankle, while Rook's right arm carried his rifle by the pistol-grip.

Frank stayed closed to Pops as they approached Chaffin's body. As they got closer, Pops realized what had looked so strange about Chaffin.

The young Marine's jaw was unhinged. Broken skin and bone held the lower jaw in place, connecting it to Chaffin's head by just a few strips of bloody flesh. Pops took a knee and leaned in close. Frank, having been a Colonial Marine before making the jump to the company, pocketed the camera. Special orders be damned, he wasn't going to exploit the death of one of his brothers.

"N…nuh…" Dawes said from his seated position a few feet away. All eyes turned to him. "Nuh…meh…"

"Dawes." Pops said. "Dawes, what's wrong?"

"My…br…head…hur…hur…hurt." Dawes said, his words shaky and stuttering.

"Your head hurts?" Pops said, concerned. "Talk to me, Chris. What's going on?" Dawes opened his mouth again, then his neck snapped to the side. Dawes made a guttural croaking noise that quickly transformed into a scream. He began to violently convulse. "Shit!" Pops said, putting his hands on Dawes' shoulders to try and hold him stead. "Fulmer!" The Gunny barked. "Fulmer, get over here now!"

Dawes let out another pained wail. The marksman's hands flew up to the sides of his helmet, clawing at the hard material.

"Off! O…OFF!" Dawes managed to say through gritted teeth between scream. "HURTS! OFF!" He was pushing at the sides of his helmet, but it wasn't budging. He hadn't undone his chin strap.

"Easy, easy!" Pops said. "We'll get it off." He fumbled with the helmet clip thanks to his gloves, but undid the strap on his second attempt. "Alright, let's get that off you." Pops put his hands on the sides of Dawes' helmet and pulled.

The helmet didn't budge.

Pops looked at it in confusion and tugged again. Dawes' head moved with it.

"What the fuck?" Pops said in quiet confusion.

"OFF!" Dawes yelled, his voice slurred.

"Fulmer!" Pops called again. He looked over his shoulder to see Fulmer staring at Dawes with wide eyes. She was frozen in place, panicked. Fuck. "Liscomb!" Pops barked. "Liscomb!" That was enough to snap Liscomb from his stupor, and the Marine started towards them. "I'll hold him, you get his helmet off." Liscomb leaned down and grabbed ahold of Dawes' helmet. He pulled, but it was stuck.

"It's stuck!" Liscomb said.

"Try again." Pops ordered. Liscomb pulled again, harder this time. Dawes' head and neck moved with it. Dawes screeched with pain, but Liscomb continued to pull.

A flailing arm struck Liscomb in the face, surprising him. Dawes' body was convulsing again, and his arms were swinging wildly. The inadvertent smack had surprised Liscomb enough to cause him to take a step backwards. He blinked the spots from his vision.

When his vision cleared, he saw that Dawes was bleeding from his eyes and nose. He also noticed that Dawes' eyes were facing in different directions, as if the Marine had an extreme case of lazy eye. Liscomb's mind flashed back to a nature magazine he'd read as a kid, which had been filled with articles of chameleons, and how they could look in two different directions at once. Weird. Liscomb thought.

"Somebody help me hold him steady, god dammit!" Pops barked. Dawes was thrashing and bucking so hard that he threatened to throw the Gunnery Sergeant from him. If that happened, there was a good chance that both Pops and Dawes would end up tumbling down the mountain.

Then Pops noticed that Frank was beside him, using his bodyweight to try and keep Dawes steady. It made controlling Dawes' convulsing body a tad easier. Frank was rewarded for his efforts with a face full of blood-laden vomit. To the man's credit, he didn't recoil.

Both Pops and Frank were almost thrown when Dawes' body contorted, bending his spine in a way that didn't seem humanly possible. Both men held, feeling the muscles in Dawes' body contract all at once as the man let out another long, pained scream. The scream was cut off when there was a loud, wet squelching sound.

Whatever it was must have been stopped by Dawes' helmet. It had grown and expanded in his head, which had trapped the man's skull inside the protective device. With nowhere else to go, it went forward. Dawes' face expanded, ballooning his features before skin and bone split. Gore, viscera, and bits of brain exploded forth, showering both Frank and Pops.

"Jesus!" Pops exclaimed, falling backwards. Frank looked on in stunned silence.

Having had its birth delayed by the helmet's obstruction, the creature within Dawes' head was fully awake and perturbed. Legs with impossibly-strong muscles propelled it from its birthing place. Its metabolism had kicked in and it was already beginning to grow. To grow, it needed to eat. And it was hungry.

It landed on Frank's face.

The man fell backwards in surprise. Surprise turned to terror and he screamed in pain as claws and teeth began gouging out chunks of his face.

"Get it off!" Frank screamed. His voice went up in pitch as a rapidly-growing hand grabbed his left eyeball and pulled it from its socket. The wet mess that had been an eye was quickly chewed between gnashing, extended teeth. "It's eating me! Get it the fuck off!" He yelled, trying to grab ahold of the thing that was savaging his face.

Pops saw this and raised his rifle. Between Frank's panicked movements and the thing's small, thrashing frame, he couldn't get a clean shot. He paused for a moment and blinked, wondering if his mind was playing tricks on him. The thing looked like it had grown in the few seconds that Pops' rifle sight had been on it.

"HELP ME!" Frank yelled, stumbling backwards. Pops ran forward to help. His gloved hands struggled to grab ahold of the blood- and rain-slicked white flesh. His struggle to grab the thing came to an abrupt end.

The creatures' barb-tipped tail whipped around, spearing Pops through the throat. He let out a choked gasp, blood spurting from the through-and-through wound. His hands went to his ruined neck and he took a step backwards. He looked down at his blood-covered gloves, and tried to say something. All that came out was a strangled, wet gurgle. Training and muscle memory took over, and Pops clamped a hand over where he thought the wound was while the other dug for his med-pouch.

Frank had gone silent, the thing having torn out and eaten his tongue. He took another step backwards and tripped over Chaffin's body, sending Frank and his attacker spilling over the edge of the rock. The man landed on his back, hard. He felt something snap, but no pain registered. The pain of having his face eaten had overridden everything else, and all he could do was make pathetic gasping noises that would have been screams had his tongue and vocal cords still been intact.

Liscomb looked up from trying to stop the arterial bleed that was spurting from Pops' ruined neck just in time to see Frank go over the edge.

"Wait here!" Liscomb said to Pops, who was busy trying to secure a pressure bandage over the wound that the thing's tail had inflicted. Liscomb ran to the edge of the rock and saw Frank lying twisted on the ground. The pale being that had erupted from Dawes' face was now the size of a small dog, and sat perched in a crouch atop Frank's face. Liscomb shouldered his rifle and flicked the safety off. The first shot hit Frank's head, killing the man instantly. The next one might have winged the creature, but he couldn't be sure. The fact that it was covered in blood and viscera made it impossible to see if it was bleeding or not.

Sensing the threat, the thing took off. It was impossibly fast, and Liscomb couldn't keep up with it, much less lead it for an accurate shot. Just as the one that had come forth from Chaffin had, this one disappeared into the thick forest.

Liscomb whirled around to see Pops had slumped to the side. The blood that had been spurting from the Gunny's neck had slowed to a weak trickle that pumped with his waning heartbeat. There was no saving the man.

"Alright, listen up!" Liscomb said. Having taken action and firing at the thing that had killed Dawes and been eating Frank had snapped him back to reality, and he realized he needed to take charge. "Gather up the wounded and let's start back towards the dropship! Move!" He looked and saw Rook standing there, Lieutenant Fick still across the synth's shoulders. "Rook!"

"Yes?" Rook said.

"Get the Lieutenant back to the dropships, ASAP. Tell Captain Bartz what happened. We'll meet you there!" Liscomb said, helping a still-stunned Fulmer to her feet. Rook nodded, then took off at a run, synthetic legs propelling him along faster than any Olympic-class runner could hope to achieve in their lifetime.

With that done, Liscomb looked around to see the few unaffected Marines helping those who were suffering from whatever the hell those things were up to their feet. He whirled around to help Sergeant Mercer to his feet. They made eye contact, and he froze in place.

Mercer had a pistol in-hand. The Sergeant had removed his helmet, and trembling fingers were wrapped around the grip of his handgun.

"Sergeant Mercer." Liscomb said quietly. Mercer didn't respond other than taking a reggae, shuddering breath. "Troy, come on man. Let's get you up and out of here. We'll get you back to the ship and they'll take care of you." Mercer shook his head and blinked. Tears of blood flowed from his eyes.

"Go." Mercer croaked. Liscomb stood there, unsure of what to do. "Go!" Mercer said again, almost managing to yell. Liscomb didn't move. Mercer shrugged, then raised the pistol.

"No!" Liscomb said. The pistol fired.

Mercer's head snapped sideways. Blood and brain matter sprayed the rock beside him, and Mercer's corpse slumped over to the side.

"Fuck!' Liscomb yelled. "FUCK!"

Upset by its final moments of rest being cut short by its host's untimely demise, the creature inside Mercer began its emergence.

Two albino spikes shot from within the back of Mercer's ribcage, piercing through muscle, skin, and uniform. Liscomb watched as the back of Mercer's combat top stretched, drenched in blood as Mercer's back split apart. He didn't give it a chance to get out.

Liscomb shouldered his rifle and opened fire, dumping the remainder of the thirty-round magazine into the creature pulling itself from Mercer's back. The small body twitched and spasmed, and it let out small, high-pitched shrieks as the bullets hit home. Liscomb stepped forward as he reloaded the rifle.

Stuck between its host's ruined body and the fabric of the combat shirt that Mercer had been wearing, the wounded thing struggled to escape. Liscomb's bullets had torn through its small body and shattered slender limbs that would have otherwise propelled it to safety. He raised a boot and stomped down on the thing. It squealed, thrashing beneath the thick-sole of his combat boot. He gritted his teeth and pressed all of his body weight down, relishing the thick crunch that greeted him as he crushed the offending creature.

With that done, Liscomb turned to see that most of the Marines had cleared out from the rock. Those who hadn't been infected were supporting who they could. Those that were infected moved down the hill in a strange, loping run. Others had stumbled and fallen, and Liscomb saw one soul who'd given themselves to the force of gravity and was tumbling down the route they'd ascended.

Doing one final check to ensure they'd left no one living behind, Liscomb's eyes lingered on the dead Marines that were sprawled on the rock. While the rain had washed a good amount of blood away, it did nothing to cleanse the scenes of gore and horror from Liscomb's mind.

Pops, Mercer, Chaffin, and Dawes, all splayed out in obscene fashion by those things that had come from them. Frank was somewhere below, out of sight. Liscomb made a silent promise to them that he wouldn't leave them behind to rot in this miserable place.

Then he took off, running to catch up with the remainder of the platoon. He had to make sure the Marines he still had got out of here in one piece.