Charger the Soldier (20 page)

His upgrade turned out to be unique. His
brain was fitted with not one but two additional biomechanical core
stems, which were then linked mentally to two Lycans, each with a
very different disposition.

>>>

Dart speaks to Reader:

What kind of people would volunteer to be
Lycans? Well, I'm not sure that many did. I suspect General Harris
and his underlings decided who was going to volunteer.

No, you're right, the difference between
volunteering and being volunteered is not exactly subtle. But
General Harris had a war to win and he didn't care how he did
it.

Here, I'll give you the histories of the two
Lycans, Mac and Jill, who were hooked up mentally with Charger and
you can decide for yourself what happened.

Mac wrote his will in 2025, before he was
taken from Megiddo Max to the lab where he was converted to a Lycan
as part of the military's experiments to create powerful infantry
weapons in case of war.

The world is mad, but I am sane.

This is the Last Will and Testament of Mac
von Shallow. I, Mac, do hereby bequeath all my worldly possessions
to my rat, Felix. Felix has been a good companion over these few
years in prison. I would just like to state for the record that
both Felix and I are fully responsible for all the deaths we have
caused. I would also like to take this opportunity to write down my
life story, and Felix's, too.

My grandfather was a Jew in Germany in World
War II, and my grandmother was part of the Hitler youth. She was
responsible for turning my grandfather in to the SS and he was
imprisoned until things got bad for Germany. Then he was drafted
and sent to Russia, where he was shot, captured, and placed in a
Russian prison until late 1955. He returned to Germany to find that
my grandmother had taken his only son to America.

My father was a violent man, who took great
joy in torturing and killing trespassers who unfortunately found
their way to our country property. He refused to have any contact
with my grandfather. This selfish attitude meant that not only did
I never have the opportunity to meet my grandfather, I also felt it
was my duty to avenge all the wrongs ever committed against him. My
mother was a schizophrenic, with a passion for sleeping with as
many strange men as she could find. My father was often responsible
for the deaths of these unlucky men. I finally found it necessary
to end both their lives to give myself some sense of peace.

I am however quite sane, and cognizant of all
my faculties. I have been in prison these past five years. I don't
mind, now, admitting to another crime of which I am quite proud,
killing two men in Germany. To say that these men deserved to die
for their crimes against humanity is not an exaggeration, for they
were clearly the two post guards of my grandfather's prison in
Germany. My only regret in this instance is that the hours I spent
removing the flesh from them were too short.

My years in solitary confinement in Megiddo
Max over these last few years have shown me that I am not the
monster the media has made me out to be; that I am in fact just the
opposite, a saint. I have been described in the news as unfeeling,
cold, calculating, intelligent and ruthless, but my pet Felix will
surely testify to the opposite. As for the killings of the
supposedly innocent victims in the night club, the tour bus, and
the grade school in Berlin, let me assure you that they were all
sons and daughters, or grandsons and granddaughters, of German war
criminals. As for the deaths of the three prisoners who were
responsible for having me put in solitary confinement, I will state
for the record that had they chosen not to interfere with the
library privileges that I worked so hard to get, they would still
be breathing.

As for the killing of the police officers
who, in their attempt to capture me, made the mistake of surprising
me in my home, that was simply an accident. I have no malice toward
the police. I just think that, in the future, it should be made
policy for them to knock before entering anyone's home. Finally,
regarding the death of my psychiatric officer, I would like to say
that had she run a little faster, she might have survived.

In conclusion, I freely and willingly give my
body to science in hopes that it can do good toward the liberation
of our planet from the Nazi curse and ensure the survival of the
human race.

He remembers his childhood.

"Jew boy, Jew boy, such a stupid hat for a
Jew boy," was the mildest of the taunts caterwauled by the school
kids at recess as they shoved and pushed me back and forth from one
kid to another. When I lost my footing and fell to the ground, the
kids would kick and spit on me. I never cried, never told the
teachers. Instead I would wait till each kid was alone, then seek
revenge. I often carried a small sharp rock in my pocket and, when
I had beaten the kid to the ground, would scratch a sign into his
chest or back. A sign from God that only he could understand. I
never had friends, and didn't care. As I grew older, the other kids
avoided me and often joked with each other about never walking
alone or 'Mac might get you.' My name thus became the new school
term for Satan.

He snaps.

I was fifty-five when I accepted my destiny.
It happened on a Tuesday, after coming home from work. I had had an
extremely trying day dealing with other trades people who were
unwilling to work with me in completing the installation of a
mechanical system for a new office building in Berlin. I decided to
take the next day off but, as that day arrived, so did all my rage.
It might have ended quietly but, as I drove to my favorite
restaurant in a quiet neighborhood on the west side of Berlin, a
passing driver cut me off in traffic and, when I honked my horn,
flipped me off with a finger.

I felt no emotion, I drove home, packed a
large hockey bag with weapons and sat in my car. Then I realized I
had no idea where this other driver might live. Looking out the
window of my car, I stared for some time at kids in the school yard
across the street. Then, I retrieved the bag from the car and
walked toward the school.

Jill's graduation party

"Hey, Jill, you going to the party on
Saturday?" asked Ken. Ken was the typical football jock from gym
class and really had a thing for Jill.

"I might, just depends on what my mom says,"
Jill replied, not wanting to show too much interest in Ken. There
were only a few American kids in Berlin in those relatively
peaceful years before the alien war began. Most were from military
families and a few from science families. Jill's folks were pastors
stationed there for the troops.

Ken liked that Jill seemed to have a bit of a
wild streak to her nature. She often wore dark Goth clothing and
makeup in school.

She often had to leave home dressed like a
princess, but during class hours, all bets were off. It had been
difficult at first for her to fit into the rigors of school life in
Berlin but the fact that Ken was interested in her and very popular
with the other kids did help a lot.

This was just another typical day for young
minds as they filed from one class to another, so they ignored the
strange man who entered the school just before lunch. The bell rang
and the few American kids made their way to the same table where
they always congregated, chatting about this teacher or that. Thus
it went unnoticed that this strange but ordinary-looking man moved
from door to door, closing and locking them, sealing in the two
hundred or so students eating their lunches.

Without warning, a gun shot rang out and a
student slumped forward lifeless at a lunch table. Stunned silence
followed, then horrific screams as students panicked and tried
running from the room.

As if in slow motion, the man moved from
student to student, shooting them or slicing at them with a
sinister long blade fashioned to the butt end of his rifle. He
looked like such an unassuming individual, quite ordinary in
appearance and height, but he moved calmly, taking deliberate aim
to eradicate all other life in the room. Ten, then twenty, children
fell to the floor lifeless as the remaining kids scattered in small
groups around the room, desperate to find a way to escape. Ken
grabbed Jill and shoved her into a small metal serving cart, then
pushed it to one side of the room. After only a few yards the cart
slowed and, from a small crack in the corner of the cart, Jill
could see Ken's lifeless body splayed across the floor.

Fifty, then one hundred, children fell,
bodies piling up around the room, the floor red with blood. Some
tried to defend themselves, but the man just kept advancing, kept
shooting. Most fell to their knees and cried for their lives to be
spared, but the man took no notice and, one by one, they continued
to die.

Jill watched in horror as the last few
children dropped to the ground lifeless. Her breathing almost
stopped as she waited to be discovered. Then, when the last child
died, the man served himself a cup of coffee and sat down. Leaning
back in the chair, he called out, "You can come out now, I'm
done."

Jill was silent.

"Hey, girl, you in the cart, I saw you go in
there, you can come out now."

Jill was still silent.

The man grabbed a fork from the table and
threw it at the cart, hitting the thin metal door, which sent out a
ping.

Jill screamed.

"What's the matter, Duchess, no speaky the
English?" demanded the man. "I said I'm done. You better come out,
or I will start again, on you this time."

Shaking violently, Jill slowly emerged from
the small cart and found herself surrounded by dead bodies. "I'm
American," Jill said in a voice that was almost a whisper.

"What's that?" demanded the man, staring at
the trembling girl.

"I'm American," Jill said again, crying as
she trembled.

"American, you say. Well, hell, this is your
lucky day then. Come here, sweetheart, and have a seat," the man
said, with a hint of emotion in his voice for the first time. He
was pleased that the girl was not one of those Germans he hated so
much.

Jill could not move; she was barely able to
stand.

The man said, "Damn, looks like you pissed
yourself. Better lose those leggings before the police get here. We
don't want the media to take pictures of an American girl pissing
herself." The man's face no longer held any hint of emotion.

As if in a dream, Jill did as she was told.
She removed her soiled leggings and then stood silent as if partly
dead herself. And there they remained, the man drinking his coffee
and the Goth girl, now dead inside, simply standing, until the
noise of police involvement came from beyond the lunchroom
door.

As the door burst open and police stormed
into the room yelling, the strange man turned to the still girl and
said, "Don't be like me, be worse."

Jill crumpled to the floor.

She was still in a coma when the aliens
attacked Earth, and was chosen for the Lycan program because of her
low brain activity. The conversion to Lycan was easy for Jill for
she no longer registered any feelings of pain. The day she was
revived and linked to Charger, the girl Jill was buried so deep
inside that Lycan body that it seemed as if she no longer
existed.

But what came from her body then was pure
hell on earth and, with all the muscle enhancement she had, hell
was a safer place to be.

>>>

When Charger awoke from the operation, his
first sight was through Mac's eyes. Mac was being fed in a cage and
Charger experienced it, even the feel of food in his mouth. He was
already feeling confused when Jill's view of the world came into
focus. She was running down a young trainer, and nipping wildly at
his legs. Charger staggered out of bed, disoriented by what he was
seeing, and flailed around the room. He knocked over several
sensitive machines before being held down by half a dozen orderlies
while one of them injected a sedative into his thigh.

When he awoke again, he was strapped down and
flashing between Mac's viewpoint, Jill's, and his own. It took
several days of electronic training before he could figure out
which one he was. The experience of seeing the world through
another's eyes was wild. He instantly knew things about them that
he had no business knowing. He panicked at first, nearly losing his
own mind because the Lycan minds were so aggressive, but with much
practice and pain, he eventually re-established himself as dominant
over them both, though he still got disoriented trying to move in
and out of their minds.

Too bad Dal hadn't made it, Charger thought.
He would have liked being hooked up with a werewolf.

When he was well enough to fight again,
Charger was reassigned to an Australian combat front line group, as
one of the new recruits to replace those clobbered by the three
Shillelaghs weeks before. This time it would be different, this
time he would save the humans, this time the Shillelaghs would pay
for Chang. Being bonded with two Lycans so that the three of them
formed one single fighting unit would make them invincible. "The
aliens better start running now," he thought.

Because the Lycans were always with him at
chow time, Charger was never invited to sit with the humans until
he met Ben, an ex-monk who gave up his work when he realized that
the church had lied to everyone. He told Charger that being called
German, or French, or native, or American, were just social labels,
that they were all humans, and all the same. They had the same
blood, same flesh, same dreams.

"We are the last of our kind on this planet,
and we are heading for extinction," Ben said sadly. "It's like
saying I'm Jewish, I'm Christian, I'm Muslim, you know, when the
reality is that we're all just religious, and we're still all the
same biologically. The aliens are the ones that are different."