James Axler - Infestation Cubed

Rosalia, on the other hand, emptied an entire magazine from her pistol into the chest of her opponent, bullets striking the marauder’s chest, seemingly without effect. Out of frustration, the olive-skinned beauty smacked her attacker in the head with the frame of her weapon. It wasn’t as hard as the concentrated knockout blows that Kane and Grant had utilized, but it was more than enough to cause her foe enough discomfort to toss her onto her back and run through the trees, clutching his head as he fled.

The other knife-wielding, hooded men, even the one whose jaw Kane had broken, scrambled away from the trio. Their flight was sudden, and they speared into the surrounding forest before fading away among the trunks like they were ghosts.

Rosalia looked at Kane and Grant, a question burning behind her eyes, yet her lips were unable to translate it to speech. Finally she gave up her struggle and just blurted, “What the hell?”

“That’s my question, too,” Grant said. “What kept you from shooting the hoodies?”

“We’re already behind the curve without Baptiste to evaluate what we’re running into,” Kane answered. “Damned if I’m not going to get a look at why these freaks are covering their heads.”

“Only the two you and Grant hit in the head stayed behind. Everyone else was in full retreat,” Rosalia said, looking around. “That and the people they were bullying.”

A young, pretty woman, a local American Indian by Kane’s quick assessment, sat up, the bright flash of steel in her hand, anger and rage in her dark eyes.

“We’re not going back to the villes, Mags!” she blurted, pointing her knife at Kane.

One or two of the others, an old man with forearms so slender they looked like bones wrapped in sagging cloth and a chubby woman, also wielded their utility knives as if to ward off the trio.

“The villes are history,” Grant replied, loud enough that he could be heard for hundreds of yards, a booming clarion call that, by all rights, should have defused the situation. But the Indians only looked more confused by the giant’s statement.

“What are you doing here then, Magistrates?” Kane’s new “friend” asked, her knife never wavering from him.

“Saving your fused-out asses,” Kane growled in reply. “I’m Kane, he’s Grant. The baronies collapsed when the freaks in charge…quit.”

Trying to explain the situation to these people would have been difficult enough without bringing in the concept of aliens who had manipulated humankind from the dawn of history through the atmospherescorching apocalypse known as the nukecaust. Though Kane had encountered both pan-and extraterrestrial opponents since his first jolt of rebellion exiled him to the Cerberus redoubt, there were times when even he wondered if he simply hadn’t gone insane when dealing with entities such as the Annunaki and the Tuatha de Dannaan, that everything he had encountered was the delusion of a drooling maniac tied up in some dungeon cell. The simplest explanation would be the best answer for now.

“Heard of you two,” the chubby woman said. She pushed in the lock on her knife, folding the blade away into its handle, then pocketing it in her jeans. “The Mags want their asses as much as they want to stifle us, Sue.”

Kane turned and looked back at the woman she’d addressed. “Sue?”

“Suwanee,” the Indian girl replied with a sneer. “Great, so we know each others’ name. Now get the fuck out of here.”

“That’s no way to treat someone who fought the Hooded Ones,” the walking skeleton interjected. He’d put his knife away, so now it was only Suwanee who kept her blade naked and held with hostile intent.

“Fuck off, Farting Gator,” Suwanee cursed. “Once a Mag, always…”

Kane was tired of seeing yet one more blade leveled at him menacingly. With a slap against the flat of the knife, he knocked the tool from the girl’s fingers, sending it crashing to the matted grass tromped beneath dozens of pairs of feet. Suwanee blinked in surprise at the suddenness of her disarmament, lips parted as her jaw fell slightly.

The Indian girl had a lot of fight in her, apparently, as she lunged to pick up her weapon. Kane grabbed her by the wrist and gave a hard yank, making her stand straight by levering her forearm to make her behave. He hated manhandling a woman, manhandling anyone, like that, but she seemed determined to put up a fight, and while it could have been easy to put a bullet into her or crush her jaw with a punch, he had come to save these people, not inflict more harm on them.

“Behave, idiot,” Kane said with a grimace. “I have a gun. If I wanted you dead, you’d have been cold meat the minute you waved that little piece of shit in my face. And you saw me fighting the hoods. You still have a hand attached to this arm. I’m being patient and nice to you, damn it.”

“Anyone fighting the villes got to be a good guy.” The chubby one spoke up. “I’m Hachi. The one she called Farting Gator…”

The old man chuckled at the reference, interrupting Hachi. “I’m Demothi. Just call me Dem.”

Kane nodded and shook the old man’s hand. As thin as he was, there was strength in his grip and his brown eyes were undimmed by age. “If I remember some of the vocabulary I learned from Sky Dog, that means ‘talks while walking.’ That’s a good idea.”

Demothi smiled. “Sometimes the oldest wisdom is the best. Gather your things and let’s roll.”

“What about the boat?” Rosalia asked.

“Shouldn’t take much to conceal it,” Grant replied. “I’ll be able to follow you.”

“By the way, her name’s Rosalia,” Kane added to Demothi.

“A pleasure, young lady,” the old man said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Rosalia replied, looking back nervously toward the boat. “I’m thinking you’re making friends a little too fast here, Magistrate Man.”

“I’d agree with you.” Suwanee spoke up, glaring at the olive-skinned woman. “But you’re the same as them.”

“Quiet, you two!” Kane bellowed. “We’ve got worse things to worry about than your petty little paranoia.”

“Like what?” Rosalia asked.

Kane pointed to one of the unconscious hooded men. He knelt and tore the man’s cowl back, revealing a dark, meshlike covering that, in the shadow of the hood, would render the upper part of his face above his lips completely invisible. It was a cheap effort that produced an unnerving effect, and Kane himself had experienced a momentary pause as he was dealing with the shadow-faced opponents. Only encounters with equally weird and terrifying opponents had given him the ability to act despite the distracting nature of their appearance.

“That doesn’t look right, even with that cloth over his head,” Demothi said.

Kane reached out, took a handful of the meshy sack and tore it off of the unconscious man. It was soaked through, which was strange as he had fallen on dry ground. But as he tugged, stringy mucus stretched between the fabric and gangrenous gray tumors that ringed his skull, the tumors themselves riddled with wires and circuits. The downed man wasn’t bleeding from his head trauma, but the crushed growths where he’d been struck were oozing translucent yellow pus that seeped into the grass under his head.

“What… Oh, God,” Suwanee began. She clamped her hand over her mouth, trying to fight off the urge to vomit, but failed, staggering to the base of a tree and emptying her stomach in an extended, noisy convulsion.

Rosalia looked at the fallen marauder and the gory mess that sloughed off his scalp. Whatever had grown there was quickly rotting, dead material collapsing into inky blue-green molasses and the wrinkled skin of spoiled apples. She glanced over toward the other unconscious man. “No wonder they cover their heads. What…”