Iron Mike (30 page)

March 19.

Hershey

Hershey yawned and gave a mighty stretch, luxuriating in Kari’s musky scent and the warmth of the puppy pile on the custodian’s couch. Mike’s breathing was changing, which meant his human would be awake soon and getting up off the floor, moving in that slow, stiff way he always did after sleeping on the ground. Hershey stood, careful to only step on Kari’s soft parts, and shook himself briskly. She yelped, so he jumped lightly off of her, moving over to the doorway his humans had blockaded the night before. He waited politely, and then sneezed in disgust as Yippyface plopped off the couch, stumbled a few steps, and immediately peed on the floor. Would the fat little puppy
never
learn any manners?

Kari stretched, murmuring her good morning to Mike and the dogs. She pulled the package of useless wet wipes out of her backpack and offered some to Mike. The two of them used the almost-moist cloths to smear their perfectly good scents all around on their bodies. Hershey knew a lot of strange human rituals, but this one always puzzled him.

Hershey shrugged it off, shaking happily just to hear his collar jingle ... and also to remind his humans that SOMEbody didn’t piddle on the floor. While Kari dug in the backpack again, pulling out some of the yummy brown food packages, Mike pulled the desk and file cabinet away from the door and let Hershey bound outside, down a hallway, and through the broken glass door into the sunshine.

Hershey watered a bush, then another, then some late blooming daffodils. He froze, his hackles rising, until he found and identified the Badness. There ... way over by the trees. It was far enough from his humans that it wasn’t a threat, so he ignored it and urinated on a flagpole. Pleased with himself, he bounded back inside, his nails clicking on the smooth floor until he found the room where his humans were still moving around slowly. Mike, of course, already had his new toy out and had just finished talking to it.

“Knox soldiers took out three of the Trois,” Mike told Kari, a sound of contented satisfaction in his voice. “Hairston says morale on post has never been better.”

“That’s awesome,” Kari smiled. She frowned, a line of worry creasing her forehead. “Maybe the Old Bear will set up my firing squad for
after
the court martial then. At least I’ll get a last meal.”

“Hey, hey, none of that,” Mike said, setting his toy down and moving over to Kari, cupping her face in his hand. “It’s going to be fine, sweetheart, I promise. You’re a fucking combat vet - a war hero now! The old man can’t afford to shoot you.”

Kari laughed at his teasing, but the sound was still uncertain. Then she shrugged. “Nothing to be done for it now, I suppose,” she said, and began to change her clothes. She took off her heavily scented t-shirt and replaced it with an even more aromatic hoodie. Hershey heartily approved the choice - it wasn’t often his humans liked to smell like humans.

“Ugh, this is disgusting!” Kari scowled, rolling the t-shirt into a tight ball and shoving it deep into her rucksack. “I can’t wait to do laundry, again! And get a shower!”

“And a shave,” Mike agreed.

“And something to eat other than a goddamned MRE.”

“Amen to that!”

Kari frowned down at the tasty food packets and tossed one to Mike. “You have a choice,” she said grumpily. “Delicious scrambled egg-like substance or delicious scrambled egg-like substance.” Hershey sat down politely, but he couldn’t help licking his chops in anticipation. When Kari used that tone of voice, it usually meant she left more of the Ethiopian food for him!

“Belay that,” Mike said with happy anticipation. “Let me go check the traps. Maybe we can have Thumper over easy for breakfast this morning.”

“Oooh!” Kari grinned, a gleam of interest in her eye. “I’ll pack up the bikes while you go get us a bunny! A fat, juicy one!”

Mike headed outside with Hershey prancing happily beside him and Yippyface wobbling along behind, more interested in the scents of long-dead humans than in being a good dog. Hershey proudly pointed out the bushes and flagpole he watered earlier, but Mike didn’t seem to notice. He watched Yippyface running clumsily to catch up with them and chuckled.

“You in the mood for some rabbit for breakfast, girl?” he asked the pup, heading over to the northern side of the building.

Hershey trotted along companionably, not bothering to answer in Dog. After a moment he stiffened, a low warning growl in his throat. Mike was headed toward the thicket of underbrush where the Badness hunted for its prey.

“Come on, boy,” Mike encouraged, not slowing down.

Hershey increased the volume and sharpness of his growl, and Mike looked at him curiously. Hershey thumped his tail a few times, knowing it was one of the few Dog gestures humans thought they understood. “That’s right. I’m growling. Listen to me.”

“Hey, I actually snared one!” Mike exclaimed, his voice pitched with excitement and pleasure. “Check it out, boy!”

Hershey’s growls turned into panicked snarls, and he pushed himself between Mike and the snare line he was reaching for, trying to hip-check his human away from the Badness.

“Hershey, stop that!” Mike snapped, shoving the hound out of the way and grabbing the line that held their plump, meaty breakfast. “Got it! Let’s go.”

Hershey wanted nothing more than to “go,” but he knew it was already too late. When Mike tried to turn back toward the rest stop building, he realized it, too.

He had been taken by a Feeder.

Kasoniak

SET TO HANG

Mr. Daniel Tillison

March 19 at 0900

For the following crimes committed against fellow survivors of Invasion Day:

Murder - 6 counts; confession under duress

Rape - 9 counts; confession under duress

Rape of child - 1 count; confession under duress

Armed robbery - 17 or more counts; confession under duress

Criminal formally objects to the violation of his constitutional and civil rights. His confessions were given under the duress of intimidation and physical violence/torture. Criminal’s right pinky finger was broken during the interrogation.

THIS MILITARY POST IS UNDER MARTIAL LAW. The soldiers under this command will enforce a zero tolerance policy for looters, murderers, rapists, thieves and other violent criminals. This historic date marks the first - BUT NOT THE LAST - public execution to be held on New Fort Knox.

BE SO ADVISED AND CONDUCT YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY ON PERIL OF DEATH.

March 19.

Mike

Oh. Shit. Oh, holy shit, shit, shit!

Mike moved fast, bending down and unlacing his combat boots in record time. It wasn’t fast enough. As Stephen had described, his feet were locked into the bottom of the boots themselves, as though he were attached even through his the leather soles by intense suction. This was not looking good.

“Kari!” Mike yelled, careful to keep his shout free of the panic he felt whipping through him. Hershey continued to bark and snarl viciously, trying to snap at the solid ground around Mike’s feet. The dog was literally foaming at the mouth.

“Quiet, boy!” Mike snapped. "Come on, hush, let me think.”

Hershey quieted slightly but continued to growl as he paced frantically around Mike and the Feeder, panting in fear. Sharp, snarly teeth didn’t work against the Badness - he didn’t know how to help his human!

“Mike?” Kari called from near the front of the building.

“Over here!” he responded. Hershey took off, running full speed toward Kari, jumping up on her and barking frantically as she finally saw what was happening and broke into a run.

“NOOO!” she screamed as she reached the edge of the woods where Mike was stuck. Her cry was a strange blend of terror, denial, and anger. “Oh, god, what the fuck, Mike? Can you get out of your boots?”

Mike shook his head, looking down at the boots. The Feeder had already sucked him in just over the ankles, and his feet were feeling comfortably warm. Mike considered that, and then he quickly pulled on the tongue of each boot, pulling the laces taut and tying them tightly to give his feet and ankles as much protection as possible.

Kari squatted down beside Mike, tears filling her eyes and spilling down her face. “Oh, god, oh, god,” she moaned softly, rocking back and forth. “God, what are we gonna do?”

“I’m not sure what to do on this one, babe," Mike shrugged, his voice quiet and thoughtful. "Leverage won’t work - we know that from Nathan. I just don’t know anything that will. Jesus!” Mike ran a hand over his crew cut hair, wiping sweat off his forehead. It was barely past sunrise, the air decidedly chill, but stress and fear beaded his forehead with droplets of water. “Fuck! Gotta think!” he muttered to himself.

“You have more upper body strength than Nathan did,” Kari said, desperation and hope warring in her eyes. “If we can drop a strong enough limb all the way across this thing ... maybe you could pull yourself up, like getting out of quicksand?”

Mike nodded distractedly. “There’s a handsaw in with the tools,” he said, knowing as he gave her the instruction that it was a futile attempt. He felt the strength of the Feeder pulling at him whenever he shifted or tried to resist. Like a snake, the beast constricted when he struggled, tightening coils of muscle around his ankles. With a sudden lurch, the muscles coiled around his calves.

Kari ran back inside the building and grabbed the tools she would need from the sidecar of Mike’s bike. Huge, gulping sobs tore at her throat when she was out of his sight, but she took a moment to swallow them before returning to Mike. She looked around, spotting a thick sapling about twenty yards deeper into the woods and nodded toward it.

“Be careful,” Mike warned, and Kari shrugged her agreement.

Mike shifted slightly to make it easier to see Kari sawing at the tree and another sucking motion pulled him knee-deep into the Feeder. He concentrated fiercely on the sensation of ... something ... pressed against his legs, muscles coiling and bunching even as his own muscles stiffened against it. He noticed something else then, something about calf-high where the heavy leather of his combat boots no longer protected his legs. The warmth was beginning to burn.

Reality hit. Kari was wasting her energy trying to saw down the sapling. Mike would be dead before she could even fell the tree. There was no way out of this mess ... not this time.

“Kari?” Mike called softly. He watched her stop sawing and swipe the sweat and tears from her face before turning to him.

“What?” she demanded, her voice sounding harsh, almost angry.

“Hey, can you come here a minute?” he asked. "I’m not exactly up to joining you.”

“Not funny,”" Kari grumbled angrily, but she set the saw down and walked over to Mike, sitting beside him at the boundary of the Feeder. Hershey and Butterball sat, too, both panting heavily.

“It’s not going to work,” Mike said simply.

Kari stared at him for a long moment, and then nodded, tears spilling from her eyes. She didn’t trust herself to speak. They remained there for a long moment, feeling the sun slowly begin to warm the spring air. The Feeder sucked again, and Mike sank from his knees to mid-thighs. Kari flinched, her face losing all color, but she met his eyes steadily.

“Standard protocol?” she asked, her voice almost devoid of emotion.

Mike shook his head. “No,” he said quietly. “I want to deviate from the mercy shot, Kari. I want to take this one out myself, just to return the goddamned favor. You douse the bitch with gasoline and hand me the flame thrower, okay? I’m going to see this thing burn like a marshmallow in a camp fire.”

“Oh, god, Mike,” Kari moaned, and she no longer cared if he saw her tears. She went to him and hugged him, sobbing on his sweaty neck and filthy t-shirt. “I can’t stand this!” she exclaimed. “It isn’t fucking fair! This isn’t how it’s supposed to end! I love you, stupid, and we’re supposed to have at least some kind of chance together, even if there is no such thing as a fucking happily-ever-after!”

Mike pulled back slightly and grinned at her. “You love me stupid?” he asked, his eyes twinkling slightly with his own moisture disguised as teasing amusement.

Kari shrugged his arms off and leaned back. “You know what I mean,” she said, a bit defensively. Then her voice softened. “I love you.”

“I know you do, sweetheart,” Mike replied, his mind once again working as he felt the Feeder pressing against his legs. The pain in his calves was getting intense, and he didn’t want it to show in his eyes as he looked at Kari.

“You know?!” Kari huffed incredulously, a touch of irritation in her tone. “You know I do? Someone says I love you, and your answer is you fucking know?”

Mike grinned. “I love you too, sweetheart. I have since the moment you slid that beautiful ass into the seat of my mom’s SUV. I was just ... thinking. Sorry, babe.”

Kari nodded, and finally let her gaze fall to the ground at Mike’s thighs to the Feeder. “Does it hurt?” she asked reluctantly.

Mike met her eyes levelly. “No,” he lied, “but it does have me thinking about things. Important things now, and things you have to do. First, the dogs. Dogs are going to be important.”

Kari blinked. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Hershey
knew.
” Mike nodded over to the pacing hound. “Hershey could tell the Feeder was there, but I was too caught up in that damned fat rabbit to pay attention to the dog. Where is the rabbit, by the way?”

Kari jerked her head in annoyance. “Over there,” she snapped, not admitting to Mike that she would never, ever eat rabbit again. “Anyway, what about the dogs?”

“NFK needs to work on finding and re-domesticating as many dogs as they can, to get them working as Feeder detectors. Hershey pushed himself in between me and the damned thing, and I shoved him out of the way.”

Kari nodded firmly. “Okay, dogs to train. Check.”

“My sister,” Mike said, his voice suddenly very husky. Kari looked up at him, her lips pressed together tightly as tears rolled unnoticed down her cheeks. “Kari, I’m counting on you for this, okay, hon? I need you to take care of Jenn for me. Promise me you’ll get Hershey and Butterball back to Knox, and promise me you won’t tell her I went down this way. Okay?”

“Mike ...” Kari stopped, buried her face in her hands and rocked back and forth for several seconds before nodding in defeat.

They sat in silence together for several long minutes as the sun rose overhead, and the Feeder finally sucked again, dropping Mike to his waist. He hissed slightly in pain. There was no more time to do this.

“I have one more request,” he said soberly. “My last one.”

Kari looked up at him, her red-rimmed eyes and bright red nose almost distorting the beauty of her face.

“Kiss me, Kari.”

She nodded, wiping her face on the sleeve of her hoodie and moving closer to Mike. She poured her heart and soul into the kiss, taking every bit he returned until neither of them could breathe. Afterward, she stepped away and walked back into the building, swiping at her burning eyes. She pulled the flame thrower out of the sidecar, checking to ensure the fuel was mixed properly, and lugged it and the half-full gasoline can back to Mike. Her eyes burned, and her throat was raw. She also checked her sidearm while she was inside the building, ensuring that it shouldn’t jam when it was time to deliver the mercy round ... time to kill her lover and best friend.

Hershey continued to pace back and forth in front of Mike and the Feeder, but Butterball, exhausted from the work and the blossoming heat of the day, fell asleep.

Mike met her eyes levelly. “I’m proud of you, soldier,” he said quietly, “and I love you.”

He didn’t say goodbye, and neither did she.

Kari handed him the flame thrower. His hands were steady as he took the weapon, adjusting the fuel container awkwardly over his shoulder.

“Ok, slosh liberally, just don’t get any in my eyes,” he teased.

Kari snorted at him and pitched a liberal amount of gasoline onto the ground surrounding Mike’s trapped body ... the camouflaged Feeder.

The reaction was immediate and, for Mike, exquisitely painful. The Feeder’s muscles contracted and spasmed, over and over ... but they never loosened.

“Wait, stop, stop, stop!” Mike yelled. “No more, wait a minute!”

Kari waited, sobbing bitterly as Mike panted for breath, and Hershey barked hysterically, snarling and snapping again and again. His mind raced while the dog fought the impossible foe. There was something he was missing here, something important. Something Jenn would know. He held up a hand, asking for silence as he struggled to grasp a memory that danced just out of reach. Something Jenn would know ... It was almost there, on the tip of his brain.

“It’s like a snake,” he told Kari, thinking out loud and trying to list the objective information as methodically as he could. “It constricts around me. It has muscles, double layers of muscles like an anaconda. It also apparently has taste buds, and it doesn’t like gasoline.”

Kari nodded, sniffing. “One of the main components in napalm is fossil fuel. We’ve seen them react badly to gasoline before.”

“Like an anaconda,” Mike repeated, his brow furrowed in thought. “No. Not gas!” he suddenly whispered, a note of unbearable hope creeping into his voice.

“What are you thinking, Mike?”

“The Feeder reacted to the gasoline, see, but it didn’t let me go. But it did react violently, though, like a snake tasting something nasty while constricting its prey. Like that fucking six-foot long Burmese Python my friend Devon had in middle school, before his mother made him donate it to the zoo.” Mike frowned, the memory dancing ever closer. “Female snake named Clyde,” he muttered. He froze, the memory playing itself out in his mind like a scene from a movie. Jenn was seven then. Always an animal lover, she was stricken and horrified at the snake’s reaction. She had burst into tears, which pissed Mike off at his friend. Devon was a dick to let his little sister watch when he
knew
what the snake would do! Mike’s anger at the time was what made the memory so sharp now.

Devon went into full herpetology instructor mode, telling his group of friends exactly how to react if they ever found themselves in the unlikely position of being constricted to death by a python. “First, don’t panic,” he said, sounding every bit as priggish as Mrs. Quisenberry lecturing about the necessities of safer sex to a room full of hooting, jeering teenage boys. “Stop struggling. Get to your dad’s booze cabinet and pour just a splash of whiskey or whatever you got right on top of the snake’s snout. They hate the taste of booze. Watch what happens.”

He demonstrated, pouring a capful of Jim Beam onto Clyde’s nose. The reaction had been instant and violent, the snake writhing away from the alcohol and contorting itself into almost impossible positions as it backed into the corner of its cage, spilling its water bowl and knocking over its tree-bark hideout. It wasn’t constricting anything at the time, but still, the message was clear. Jenni had sobbed, almost hysterically, and Mike had almost kicked Devon’s ass.