Stone Soldiers: City of Bones (2 page)

It had been shocking at first- surreal. A man turned to stone who could walk and talk and shake hands. Hands made of a hard, granite-like material. Eddie and his two fellow
recruits had been dumbfounded. But they'd all agreed to give it a try.

Now, four weeks later, they were men of stone as well- up to their waists in the muck and mud of a Florida swamp, carrying their rifles high over their heads as they marched along.

"You're doing just fine, gentlemen," Dr. King announced over their tactical targeting visors- the large, over-sized goggles equipped with speakers and audio pickups that each of them wore. The TTVs had augmented reality displays that somehow connected wirelessly back to base camp where the kindly old Dr. King, in his white labcoat, was monitoring their progress.

A flashing beacon showed in Eddie's field of view and he turned toward it. The tactical targeting visors had indicated an approaching helicopter.

"Hold," Commander Smith said. He was the one at the head of their line, leading the way as they marched through the most remote part of the Everglades.

>>>TRAINING IS OVER<<< scrolled across the TTVs in bright green- the Colonel's color. Eddie's color was a
light blue, while Smith was a dark blue.

>>>WE NEED TO EXTRACT YOU NOW<<<

The approaching helicopter was a UH-60 Blackhawk, coming in low- the TTVs highlighted it and scrolled out information about the helicopter in a glowing box that seemed to float in the air beside it as the helicopter approached. Long lines were being cast out of the helicopter as it approached- four of them.

"Colonel," Dr. King said over the channel, his face appearing in the large display square beside the helicopter. "The men were
almost done with their march." An older man, with graying, curly hair and a kindly smile, King wore a pair of glasses, the left lens tinted to conceal his eye.

"No time for that," Colonel Kenslir said over the audio channel as the helicopter slowed to a
hover over the team. The downwash from the rotors whipped the four lines hanging down around in the air. Eddie could see the ends were weighted and equipped with slings, like the Coast Guard used to pull divers from the water. "We have a situation in Africa."

Eddie looked around at his team, trying to gauge their reactions.

Robert Lee was the youngest of the group. A member of Marine Recon, he'd lost his leg just months ago in action in Afghanistan, rooting out Taliban insurgents. He was also the most disciplined, with less than a year of experience in the field since his training. Like the rest of the team, Lee was now a shaved-head, gray-stone man of average height with huge muscles and wide shoulders.

Tim Lawrence was a grizzled veteran soldier and form
er member of the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment, Delta- also known as Delta Force. Lawrence had lost his leg in Somalia in 1993. While not always smiling like Eddie, Tim had an unending amount of energy- before he'd become a Stone Soldier. After years out of the military, working as a therapist for injured soldiers, Tim had eagerly agreed to the transformation into a man of living stone and having his limb regrown like the others.

Lawrence and Lee, despite their very different personalities, seem
ed surprised in the abrupt end of the training exercise- although it was really hard to tell with their stone faces.

"Look alive, Cooper!" Smith barked, his sling already in place under his wide shoulders.

Eddie smiled and slipped into his own harness as Lee and Lawrence did likewise.

"We really ready for this?"
Eddie asked- yelling over the roar of the helicopter's rotors above them.

"I guess we'll find out!" Smith answered.

Once they were all secured and gave the thumbs up, the helicopter rose back up, pulling them from the thick mud and muck. They had been marching for an hour, in waist-high water and mud that reached to their knees. Their boots were long gone, and they were covered in thick brown from mid thigh down. Eddie wasn't really sure what the point of the exercise was, but as always, his new stone body wasn't tired so he didn't really care.

The helicopter banked and turned back toward base camp- a large elevated patch of raised land in the Everglades where several tents, tables and cargo con
tainers had been set up. There was still enough room for the Blackhawk to land, but when they arrived it instead lowered the men, and resumed a hover, forty feet above the ground.

As
Eddie Cooper unhitched his sling, a dark form hurtled down from above, landing heavily. It was the Colonel, wearing a combat vest over his BDUs. He had a large submachinegun strapped to his right thigh and an ammo carrier on his left. Across his back was slung some kind of rifle with an underbarrel grenade launcher.

The Colo
nel gestured towards one of the tents, then gave the helicopter a series of hand gestures. The crew aboard hauled in the sling lines, then waited for the team to get clear before settling down.

"Hello, Colonel!" Dr. King greeted as the Colonel led the way
into the nearby tent.

"The men are deploying to Nigeria," Kenslir said over the noise of the helicopter. "I'll want you back at the Tower monitoring their progress. Grab your stuff."

"Sir?" Commander Smith asked, stepping up. It was hard to tell due to the water and mud, but he and the rest of the team were wearing black combat BDUs, sleeves rolled up to reveal their thick stone arms. "Can we clean up?"

"Stow your weapons and rinse off- but make it quick," Kenslir said. "We're taking Raven flights out as so
on as we get to the airbase."

"What's up, boss?" Lawrence asked. He had already stowed his dummy rifle into a nearby rack.

"We're going into a quarantine zone," Kenslir said. "Category Ten."

"Ten?" Lee asked. He only remembered the scale reaching five.

***

Dr. Morava Nizienko checked the seals on her teams suits and patted them each on the back.

"We'll be watching your progress live," Dr. Nizienko said to her men. They each gave her a thumbs up, then walked out to the small military jeep the Nigerian Ar
my had provided.

Morava watched the men drive away, toward Gwasera a mile away. After a few moments, she turned and walked back into her United Nations tent.

The past twelve hours had been a whirlwind for her. She was the closest doctor to the site, and her team, studying the Ebola virus in the Congo, had been rushed to Nigeria with all haste.

After the oil company's people had continued to vanish at
Gwasera, a Nigerian police patrol had been dispatched. They had radioed in when they reached the site, then broadcast something about an illness. Then they had gone silent.

The Nigerian Army had responded with a drone- something little more complicated than a radio controlled airplane with a camera. In the waning hours of daylight, the plane had flown throug
h the small boomtown, and over the oil field- revealing a ghost town barren of any sign of life.

Then the drone had suffered some kind of internal malfunction and crashed. It was this crash that raised alarm bells. The plane had crashed down on the edge o
f the oil field, almost at the feet of a dying cow. Before the camera on the drone went out, it broadcast a horrifying image of the cow lying on its side, the flesh eaten away from its bone in patches as it thrashed and kicked in pain.

The World Health Or
ganization had been contacted and Doctor Nizienko found herself and her team meeting the military and being rushed by truck to a checkpoint on the lone road leading to Gwasera from the main highway.

Dr. Nizienko settled down in the tent at a table with mo
nitors- one for each of her team. The biohazard suits the men wore all contained a camera and broadcast unit to relay real time what they found.

They stopped their car inside the main compound of the town, then hurriedly began discussing the car's tires.
Dr. Nizienko was surprised to see the rubber of the tires melting and flowing off, revealing steel belts and rims.

As one of the team began to take samples of the dissolving tires, another excitedly pointed out something on his biohazard suit.

The Doctor leaned forward in her seat, a cold chill racing up her spine as she watched. The rubber gloves the men wore were failing- bubbling and liquefying just like the car tires had. The gloves were vanishing before her eyes.

Then the men began screaming. They cl
awed and scratched at themselves, then fell to the ground, writhing in pain. Their helmet cameras showed the awful truth of the matter- the men's flesh was being consumed inside their bio hazard suits. Dissolving into nothingness, just like their blood. In only a few minutes, they were reduced to piles of bones.

Dr. Nizienko rewound the footage she had been recording and slowed its playback. She paused several times and watched the stills with a horrible pit in her stomach.

Dr. Nizienko then grabbed her satellite phone and made a panicked call to WHO headquarters. This was an outbreak like nothing she had ever seen. If it spread, the loss of life would be beyond imagining.

When she finally reached someone, she was told not to worry. A team had already bee
n dispatched and would be there within the hour. She and the Army forces were to retreat to a safe distance of five miles.

"You do not understand!" Dr. Nizienko shouted into the phone. "This- this is like a flesh eating bacteria. But like nothing I have s
een before! It's consuming whole men in minutes!"

A calm voice on the other end of the phone spoke quietly. "Please follow your instructions, Dr. Nizienko. I have been assured everything is under control."

***

Eddie Cooper didn't like not being in control. In fact, he was feeling just a little panicked right now. The tactical visor was displaying his altitude in rapidly scrolling numbers- counting down to zero much faster than he would have cared for.

He was lying on his back, the aerodynamic metal tube h
e was enclosed in pointed down at about a forty five degree angle, the plane it was attached to plummeting to the earth at supersonic speed.

Cooper
had been prepared for parachuting from helicopters and planes when he first volunteered for pararescue years ago. The idea of leaping out and pulling a ripcord hadn't bothered him in the least. But being put in a streamlined coffin and strapped to the bottom of something resembling an SR-71 Blackbird was as far from that as he could imagine.

The MA-12 Raven mu
lti role aircraft he and Colonel Kenslir were attached to had lifted off from Homestead just a few hours ago, accompanied by a sister plane that held Commander Smith, Robert Lee and Tim Lawrence in similar underbelly transport tubes. The two craft had climbed to thirty thousand feet, performed an air-to-air refueling operation then shot away toward Africa.

Cruising above the earth at 80,000 feet, the two planes had made the journey in a surprisingly quick time- barely long enough for the Colonel to brief t
he men on their mission.

Then, as they reached the African coastline, the two Ravens had pitched nose-down, diving toward Nigeria.
Cooper had stopped smiling.

At thirty thousand feet, his transport tube shook and
Cooper knew he had been ejected from the Raven's belly. Sure enough, the TTV showed the purple marker for each plane pulling up and turning away, heading around in a long slow circle that would take them back over the Atlantic for another air-to-air refueling.

Cooper
looked left and right, trying to see the icons for the rest of the team in his augmented reality view. They were all plummeting together now, like guided bombs. ANTAEAN- the Colonel, ATLAS- Commander Smith, PERSES- Lawrence and CRONUS- Lee's call sign.

Cooper
knew his own call sign was now HYPERION- chosen for him by Doctor King, who had given all the men pseudonyms, much to the Colonel's consternation. Dr. King had explained that the names were that of the Titans of Greek mythology- mighty beings even the Greek Gods had feared.

>>>
PREPARE FOR DROP<<< Colonel Kenslir sent out over his tactical visor. Being flesh and blood, the Colonel was able to use his TTV's cybernetic controls- tiny electrode-like pickups around the rim of the goggles, reading electrical impulses from the skin of his face. Cooper and the rest of the stone soldiers had to rely on keypads- strapped to the back of their forearms, over the woodland camouflage sleeves of their Battle Dress Uniform.

Cooper
closed his eyes and held his breath- not that he even needed to breath in his stone body. A tone sounded from the TTV and then the transport tube blew apart.

Breaking into two sections, the tube deployed parachutes so that it was pulled away from
Cooper as he continued to the ground, now moving at subsonic speed. A second later and he was swung around in the air violently as his own braking parachute deployed. If not for the straps on his M-60E2 machine gun, the weapon would have been torn from his grasp.

His speed plummeted to less than two hundred miles an hour, his
stone body resisting G-forces that would have killed a man of flesh and blood. Well, most men of flesh and blood. The Colonel seemed to have recovered and was just fine, steering his own parachute by the risers he held in each hand.