Recon Marines III: The Marine's Doctor (15 page)

He didn’t slow or turn.
“No.”

Hector snorted with a short bark of
laughter.

Mak did stop and turn then. “There’s
nothing funny out here, Dr. Loren.”

Molly touched his arm. “He knows that,
Mak. Sometimes people laugh when they’re nervous.”

Mak narrowed his eyes, looking from
her to Hector and back again. “That makes no logical
sense.”

“
Maybe we would be less
nervous if you’d share some details of what to expect when we get
there.” Molly smiled and squeezed his arm a little.

Mak’s dark blue eyes looked black in
the dim lighting. He put his hand over top of hers for just a
moment and then turned out of her reach. They walked for another
ten minutes before he spoke. His deep voice sounded flat in the
still air beneath the trees or perhaps the emotions he suppressed
flattened his tone. “One dead subject. He built a shelter and made
a fire pit. It smells like he ate mostly meat and perhaps even
carrion.”

“
Was he as large as Andy
and Kory claimed?” Molly knew fear could inflate the size of an
enemy.

“
Close to nine feet tall
if he stood erect,” Mak said in the same even tone. “He moved in a
hunched matter like his head was too heavy. I hit him in the
forehead with a pistol round and the metal projectile bounced off
his skull. You’ll see the damage on his body.”

“
Is its head overlarge or
would you guess its brain was smaller than a human?” Molly found
the forest less oppressive when Mak was talking.

“
His head was larger than
any person I’ve ever seen, but the skull had to be very thick so I
don’t know about brain size.”

“
How did it construct its
den?” Hector asked.

Mak didn’t answer immediately. When he
did there was something else in his voice. “It wasn’t a den like an
animal makes. The construction compared to what I’ve seen settlers
on out worlds make. I’d guess the shelter has been there for quite
a while. Poles cut and tied together with smaller branches, bushes
and moss used to make it weather proof.”

“
All this time out here
alone,” Hector mumbled.

Molly understood what Hector left
unsaid. If the work of the scientists on it hadn’t driven it
insane, being alone would have made sure of it.

“
I’m not sure he was alone
all that time,” Mak said. “Quiet now. We’re almost
there.”

Molly didn’t understand why they had
to be careful when Mak said there was no more danger. She sensed he
just didn’t want to answer any more questions.

Nary a breeze found a path through the
maze of trees but the odor drifted to them anyway. Molly had
smelled her share of dead bodies before, but this rot seemed older
and deeper as if the dead had been piled on top of older dead for
years. A few more steps and the stench of an unwashed body joined
the first noxious odor.

A small clearing, not more than thirty
feet in diameter, opened in front of them. Flat stones, obviously
chosen with intent, had been piled two high in a circle on the edge
of the clearing nearest to them. Only a few steps from it rose the
hovel Mak had described. It was shaped like an upside down bowl
with a wide opening facing the fire. It looked sturdy and
weathered.

Mak walked over to the body, staring
down at it while his hand gripped the butt of his pistol. The
monster had fallen away from its home so Molly saw mostly the
bottom of its feet. She took off her pack and found her light. It
could be hung or set on a flat base. She carried it over to Mak’s
side with Hector trailing along behind.

A large dark eye stared up at the
canopy. A gaping hole filled with congealed blood took the place of
the other eye.

They’d heard the echoes of the single
rifle shot back in the village, but the evidence of Mak’s superb
marksmanship impressed her much as he had done before. She’d
thought she’d known everything there was to know about soldiers,
but this Recon Marine continued to prove her wrong. “You killed it
by shooting through its eye?”

“
Even in a protective
helmet the eye is a vulnerable spot.” Mak gestured at the body.
“Get what you need.”

Hector started with his camera, taking
a vid of the body, the shelter and the rough camp. It appeared as
if the monstrous man had lived in the same spot for quite a
while.

Mak took out his light and adjusted
its focus so it shone over the entire camp. Then he tore back some
of the branches around the hovel’s door. It rose high enough in the
center for them to stand though the roof sloped downward sharply to
the sides.

A pile of branches covered by dirty
lengths of cloth, perhaps once blankets, took up most of the area
to the left of the door. Pine needles covered the floor and
provided a soft carpet although only a small area wasn’t covered
by…stuff. Bit and pieces of equipment, most tarnished or bent out
of shape.

Hector swung the camera around,
getting it on record before they moved anything. An odor of rotting
meat, human waste and sweat filled the entire space.

If the smell bothered Mak he gave no
sign. After Hector finished his vid, Mak used his foot to nudge
aside some of the junk. A few socks, old boots and scraps of
clothing nestled amongst the tangled mess. It looked like an old
trash heap. Links of chain, a door handle and thick pieces of
safety glass mixed with shards of bone. Mak moved along the wall,
using his foot to spread out the mess while Hector caught it with
more vid.

Something snagged Mak’s attention. He
knelt and picked something up. He handed it to Molly and then dug
further into the heap, pushing pieces aside with more
care.

Molly took a few steps to the entrance
where the light would fall on the object Mak had given her. The
smooth metal cylinder, about the size of the last joint on her
little finger, had numbers engraved on it. “What is
this?”

Mak joined her, offering a handful of
the cylinders. “Identity capsules. They’re inserted into a
soldier’s body so it can be identified if his remains are too
mutilated to be known by other markers.”

Molly counted. “Twenty-three. How did
they get here?”

Mak looked at the body only a step
away. “See if you can find one in him. I’m going to look
around.”

Molly and Hector went to work after
storing the identity capsules in a sterile bag. The horrible body
odor clinging to the body added an element of disgust to the grim
job of gathering samples.

The skull was think, the neck short,
as Mak had said. Hector used a small drill to work his way through
the cranium and take a brain sample. A clotted wound on the thing’s
forehead marked where the pistol shot had ricocheted off the bone.
Molly tried to think of it as a man despite its grotesque body. He
was even bigger and with heavier muscles than the man they’d seen
in the vid at the start of the mission. His hair, though matted
with dirt, appeared to have been chopped short recently. The dead
eye held no emotions but surely it had once upon a time. Molly
looked back at the crude shelter and thought of those piles of
junk. An attempt to hold on to something from the past, a childish
interest in shining things, or something more
disturbing?

The armored vest protecting the man’s
torso gave way reluctantly. Hector pried open enough dirt crusted
hooks to pull the front apart. They did measurements and then used
long needles to take samples of heart muscle, stomach contents and
liver tissue. The dead man also wore thin, holey pants, so filthy
the color was indeterminable. Most of his long, yellowed toenails
were cracked and torn. He’d chewed or ripped his fingernails down
to his fingertips.

Hector used a portable imaging device
to scan the body. A few bones showed the thickening indicative of
old breaks. Two pistol rounds nestled in the thick leg muscles
where they apparently hadn’t slowed him much. They found the
identity capsule in the thick muscles capping his right arm. Hector
took on the task of digging it out.

Molly jumped in alarm when Mak stepped
out of the shadows behind Hector. She hadn’t realized how tense
being around the dead man made her.

Mak lifted his eyebrow. “Are you done
here, doctors?”

Hector dropped the metal tube in a bag
and stowed it away. “We are.”

“
Bring your stuff and come
with me.” Mak retrieved his light and led them onto a faint trail
behind the shelter.

Molly shrugged when Hector gave her a
questioning look. They followed the silent marine for about a
hundred yards. Mak stepped aside and gestured them forward. “You
might want some vid of this.”

“
Holy hell,” Hector
muttered as he dropped his backpack and dug for his
camera.

Molly couldn’t speak at all. Bones lay
in a jumble. Human bones. Skulls, long bones, rib cages and broken
bits not so easily named. Three bodies with some flesh still
attached stank to one side. The missing villagers. Her feet dragged
as she approached them, but Mak stopped her with a hand on her
arm.

“
You don’t have to look at
them, Molly. They died of blood loss.”

She tugged but he didn’t let her go.
“What don’t you want me to see, Mak?”

“
This.” Hector held up a
femur, the long thighbone. “There are teeth marks on
this.”

Molly looked around at the thick woods
surrounding them. “There are wild animals around here?” Perhaps
that was why this place raised the shivers along her
spine.

“
They’re human bites.” Mak
applied more force and pulled her away from the dead. “He fed on
them.”

Bile rose in the back of her throat.
She had seen many terrible things as a scientist and doctor, but
cannibalism hadn’t been heard of in centuries. “All these
people?”

“
The old bones are from
the other soldiers who were experimented on.” Mak led her to the
other side of the stack. “Get some samples if you want.” He walked
away into the forest.

Molly looked across the way at the
villagers, trying to remember who they’d been. If she and her group
hadn’t come to investigate the lab, would the monster have
eventually eaten them all?

Hector worked on taking scrapings from
various bones, picking the skulls so they would know they were from
different individuals. The craniums showed the same distortions as
the dead one back in the clearing. A few of the skulls and many of
the other bones showed severe fractures, some horrid enough to have
caused death.

Reluctant to dig through the morbid
pile, Molly told Hector to stop when they’d collected from thirteen
different skulls. Noise from the pathway announced Mak’s return. He
dragged the dead man by his feet. Mak’s leg muscles bulged with
each step as he pulled the heavy load. When he neared the pile of
bones, he dropped the feet and walked around to the
head.

“
Grab his feet, Dr. Loren,
and help me lift him onto the rest.”

Hector handed the vid to Molly and
scurried to obey. Both men grunted a bit as they picked up the load
and flung him on top of the bones. Mak bent down and rubbed his
hands in the dirt as if to clean them.

Molly dug in a side pocket of her pack
and took out the sterilization spray. “Hold out your
hands.”

Mak and Hector both allowed her to
spray a liberal amount of the solution onto their hands. Mak rubbed
his together, over and over, as if the filth went deeper than his
skin.

After Hector and Molly shouldered
their packs again, Mak pulled a small ball out of a pocket on his
weapons belt. “Start back to the campground.”

Hector led and set a pace betraying
his desire to leave the graveyard behind as much as Molly did. She
heard a whoosh of sound behind them and soon the scent of smoke
caught up to them. They found the camp, the hovel now less a
curiosity than the scene of horrific crimes.

Mak entered the camp as soundlessly as
usual. “Are we done here?”

Molly nodded, too many terrible
thoughts running through her head to think of anything else to do.
But after Mak led them half a mile through the forest, one thought
separated itself from the fog of horror. “We can’t tell the
villagers that their friends and family were eaten.”

Mak paused but then nodded without
turning. “I understand.”

“
How should we say they
died?” Hector asked.

Mak answered. “Tell them he broke
their necks, quick and painless.”

“
Were their necks broken?”
Hector asked.

Molly didn’t want to know but Mak
answered before she could stop him. “They died of blood loss due to
being eaten alive.”

She turned aside and threw up. Hector
patted her back until her stomach stopped cramping. When she
straightened up Mak watched from a few steps away.

“
I’m sorry. Maybe I
shouldn’t have told you either.” Mak looked away. “I’m not
accustomed to lying.”

“
It’s fine. I would have
wanted to know.” Molly forced a smile. “But it would have been
better to know when we were a few thousand miles away from
here.”