Monster Nation(107)

Something was burning'Bannerman Clark felt the heat on his leg. He felt the hairs there crisp and curl and melt. There was only a little pain, in his chest. He looked down and wished he hadn't. A jagged piece of steel transfixed him to the side of the broken helicopter. He was like a butterfly mounted in a case. Best to not try to move, he decided. Best to just wait it out. The heat on his leg kept getting more intense and he could smell his flesh burning, but still, there was no pain.

There had been a moment after he pushed the girl out of the hatch, a single moment when it looked as if the pilot might actually get them down safely. That Vikram might actually kill the armless dead man. That they could continue the mission.

Something slithered nearby.

There had been a moment and the moment had passed. The pilot had started screaming and then he had unbuckled himself from his seat, trying to get away, trying to get away from the murderous corpse. It had only taken a few seconds after that for the helicopter to smack into the side of the mountain.

The slithering thing drew closer. Clark opened his eyes, though he didn't want to. He had some idea of what he was going to see. A dead person, a hungry dead person coming to eat him. He just wasn't sure who it would be.

It was Vikram. The Sikh Major's face was crumpled in on one side, he was missing an eye. One whole side of his body didn't seem to work. He didn't say a word as he hauled himself closer. His mouth was open, his teeth very white.

Vikram had a knife on his belt. A kirpan, more of a short sword. It was one of the religious objects he was supposed to keep on his person at all times. Clark could take that knife and destroy his friend's brain with it. That was the very least he could do.

Assuming he could lift his arm. Assuming that Clark wasn't completely paralyzed.

Vikram dragged himself an inch closer. Almost in range. Time to find out.

Something's out there' I saw it today, again, working its way through the trees. I called out but it didn't answer. Something is climbing up the mountain but I don't think it's human what is it? What is it? [Lab Notes, 3/21/05]

Nilla stopped screaming. She opened up her eyes. She was lying in something wet, something cold and white.

Snow.

Her neck could be broken. She'd hit the side of the mountain pretty hard. Sitting up could be the worst thing she could do for herself'she might tear her spinal cord.

Of course, it wasn't like anyone was coming to rescue her. Clark hadn't been trying to kill her. He'd been trying to save her. He knew the helicopter was going down. Nilla had heard it crash and clatter and fall and slide for what seemed like hours while she lay inert on the hard, cold ground, looking straight up.

She sat up.

Her bones still worked. Her ribs hurt like a motherf*cker, but her legs, and her arms, and yes, her neck were all still intact. She had fallen a hundred feet out of thin air to collide with the stony limb of a mountainside and it looked like she had made it okay.

There were some benefits, she guessed, to already being dead.

She tried to get her bearings. Trees surrounded her on every side, conifers with a dusting of snow on their needles. Straight up, between the treetops, she could see stars and the faintest sliver of a crescent moon. If there was a way to know which way was north based on the position of the moon, Nilla couldn't remember it. She was lost. Lost and alone in the middle of the wilderness in the middle of a continent full of dead things. If her neck had been broken she couldn't have been in worse shape. She sat down and tried to think about what to do next.

That was when she noticed the light. It wasn't normal light, of course, or she would have noticed it right away. It was more watery, more indistinct. She could see it better with her eyes closed. Well. There you go. It was the same kind of light she saw when she looked at living people. Golden. Perfect. Pretty much every fiber of her being was agreed. Getting closer to that light was a good plan.

Her mind, strangely enough, agreed. She had come to find the source of the Epidemic. The energy that kept her from dying like she ought to. She was one hundred per cent sure that this ethereal light that radiated right through the trees was the Source.

She got back to her feet and started walking. Climbing, in places, her hands clumsy but strong enough to grab at rocks and exposed tree roots. Her feet dug into the slippery ground, kicking through a rime of years-old snow, through the accumulation of fallen pine needles beneath, into frozen dirt under that. She hauled herself bodily up slopes, then ran, headlong, recklessly, down the other sides. She clambered over ridges of bare rock carved knife-thin by eons of wind. She crouched under endless tree branches and smacked her forehead on those she didn't see and had bushel after bushel of freezing snow dumped down the back of her thin cotton shirt.