The Lazarus Impact (25 page)

“Look I don’t know what I believe. Just saying don’t mock the man for his religious beliefs, and nobody’ll mock you for
not
believing in anything,” Reynolds says. “Whether or not it’s true is a whole ‘nother story.”

Ghost walks around in a stupor as they argue. He throws up in his mask and then sluggishly pulls it off to let the sick spill out onto the dirt to clear out the stink.

“Nasty dude,” Celery comments.

Ghost struggles to put his mask back on. His eyes start to roll back in his head. Then his body goes limp and he drops to the ground.

“You said the debris is poisonous. What kind of poisonous?” Celery asks.

Ghost starts to violently convulse and foam at the mouth. Vice tends to him after putting a mask on his own head, but moments later Ghost fades. He’s dead.

“Shit. He’s gone,” Vice says. He looks around at the others. “Damn it Tack, put your mask on already.”

Tackleson shakes his head. “Leaving mine off. It’s too late anyway. God’s plan can’t be stopped with masks.”

“That’s an order,” Vice says. “Seeing as though I’m the next highest rank after Davies, I’ll be taking over here.”

“I believe the order of things is God, country, corps,” Tackleson retorts.

Vice twists his face in frustration. “Yeah well until God comes down from the heavens and says otherwise, I believe putting your mask on won’t infringe on your religious duties and revelations.”

Tackleson reluctantly complies.

A gurgled growl escapes Ghost’s foamy throat. Vice looks down at him as his eyes burst wide open. “Ghost? Ghost, you okay?” Vice hooks his hands under Ghost’s arms and tries to pull him up to a sitting position. “Come on, you pasty old fuck. Let’s get you some water.” Vice puts one of Ghost’s arms across his shoulder and helps him to stand up.

“I thought you said he was dead?” Celery asks.

“Well, apparently I was wrong,” says Vice.

“He don’t look too good. Looks like a wild animal, you ask me,” Bucky adds.

“I didn’t ask you. Grab me a bottle of water, would you?” Vice commands.

Vice slowly walks him toward the hummer. Ghost turns a snarling face toward Florida’s arm. It dangles across Ghost’s shoulder and hangs down near his face like a sausage in a butcher’s window. Ghost opens his fouled mouth and gnashes his teeth with a vicious hiss. He tears off a chunk of flesh from Florida’s arm, taking bits of ripped desert camouflage into his mouth with it. Vice yanks his arm away and screams in pain as the remaining connected skin stretches and snaps from the wound. He immediately presses his other hand on the wound and backs away from Ghost, still facing him. Ghost chews at the chunk of meat in his mouth and runs after Vice.

“What the fuck?” Reynolds yells as he draws his weapon. “Hold it right there, Ghost!” Ghost keeps chasing Vice. Tackleson and Bucky train their sights on Ghost as he runs after Florida. Celery stands in shock. “I
will
shoot you, Ghost! Stand down now!” Reynolds warns him again, but Ghost doesn’t listen.

Vice backpedals, but stumbles and loses his footing on a rock along the side of the road. Ghost catches up to him and tackles him the rest of the way to the ground. A cloud of dust puffs up around them as the scuffle continues. Ghost gets on top of Vice, and Vice struggles to keep Ghost’s bloodied mouth away from him. He claws and scratches at Florida’s clothes like a wild dog.

Reynolds runs over to them. “Last warning, Ghost!” He aims his weapon at the back of Ghost’s calf. “You have ‘til the count of three! One...”

“Shoot the crazy bastard already!” Vice yells from under the beast.

“Two...”

“Don’t kill him, Junior! Don’t kill him!” Celery whimpers.

“Three!”

Reynolds fires a round into Ghost’s leg. Ghost twists his head upward and roars at him. Reynolds is shocked by the horrific look on Ghost’s face. He steps backward in fear, but keeps his weapon aimed at Ghost. Ghost stands up, focused completely on Reynolds. Florida scrambles out from under him and gets back onto his feet. Ghost drags his wounded leg behind him as he shambles toward Reynolds.

“Sorry buddy. I didn’t mean to hurt you but you weren’t listening,” Reynolds pleads with Ghost. “Stand down, soldier!”

Ghost presses forward, his mouth dripping with blood and saliva. His chest heaves up and down with breathy grunts and growls. He reaches his arms up toward Reynolds, his hands grasping at the air as he moves forward. Reynolds squeezes several rounds out at the ground in front of Ghost to scare him, but it’s no use. He keeps coming. He fires another shot into the same leg, this time up on Ghost’s thigh. Ghost is knocked back a step, but he limps on hungrily, unaffected by the gunshots.

“What the fuck?” Tackleson utters, completely baffled by the sight. “He’s a goddamn zombie.”

Florida steps up with his sidearm and presses it to Ghost’s temple. Ghost turns and lunges at Florida. Vice squeezes his eyes tight and squeezes his trigger finger. With one loud pop, Ghost is silenced. He falls to the ground, dead again.

“Oh fuck, Florida. You killed Ghost! You fucking shot Ghost!” Celery yells in panic.

“That wasn’t Ghost,” Tackleson says. “It was some kind of fucking hellish demon monster come back from the dead. A devil.”

“Quit talking your crazy religious shit again, Tackleson.” Bucky’s voice shakes with uncertainty. “It is crazy, right?”

“Tack is right,” Florida says. “That’s wasn’t Ghost. I could see it in his eyes. He was like a rabid animal.”

“Your arm okay?” Reynolds asks.

Florida sucks air through his teeth in pain. “Ahh, should be. Stings like hell. Burns actually. Like it’s infected.” He rolls up his sleeve to reveal a bruised, festering wound. Streaks of black extend outward on his skin from under the surface of the bite, as if the veins in his arm are poisoned with death.

“Let’s get you taped up.” Reynolds sits Vice down and dresses his wounds.

“We gotta get out of here,” Celery says after a few moments.

“We can still press onward. We have orders. We still have one humvee that’s operational. Let’s pack the remaining supplies from the crashed vehicle into ours,” Reynolds suggests.

“We’ve got wounded and dead men. We can’t just leave ‘em here. Remember ‘no one gets left behind?’ We need to get back to base and let them know the mission failed,” Rabbit says.

“There is no base. There is no communication. That means there is no command.” Tackleson adds.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Bucky responds.

“Something happened back there. No one is answering the radio. We’re safer going forward instead of backward,” Reynolds says.

“Or AWOL,” Florida blurts it out. The others look at him with screwed up faces, clearly confused by the idea. It goes against everything they believe in, everything they’ve trained for. Other than treason, it’s the worst thing they can do. It gets quiet for an uncomfortably long moment.

“What do you mean, AWOL?” Celery breaks the silence with incredulity.

“I mean I just shot a fucking fellow marine in the head. I ain’t going back anywhere. You shot him too, Junior. Twice. How we gonna explain this? You think people are gonna believe a man came back from the dead and attacked us? How the fuck are we gonna explain that? Why not any of the others?” Vice points to the other bodies that lay still. “They’ll court marshal us, and lock us up in a mental institution if not in jail for the rest of our lives.”

“That’s crazy talk,” Celery says. “We could...”

“No it ain’t,” Bucky interrupts.

Tackleson laughs and looks up to the heavens. “Lock us up? We’re already dead.”

“Tell you what, Celery. The mission is all yours. I’m leaving.” With his bandages finished, Florida stands up. “Who’s with me?”

“I am,” Rabbit says with a stony nod.

“Shit. Me too, I guess. End of the world, right? Might as well make it count,” Tackleson says. They all look to Reynolds.

“I’m not doing anything unless we all do it together,” Reynolds says after a pause. He fixes his eyes on Celery.

Celery looks around at all the carnage. His gaze stays with Ghost, and in his head he replays the horror they all witnessed. He’s made up his mind. “Shit. Alright. AWOL.”

#

They quickly bury the bodies of their fallen marine brothers in shallow cratered graves along the side of the meteor pelted road, but there’s no time for solemn words or prayers. They need to move. Reynolds speeds off with the remainder of his team, peering through the humvee’s cracked windshield and struggling to see the dirt road in front of him. When the midday sun hits it from high up, it almost blends in with the surrounding desert. But it doesn’t matter. They need to get off the road and hide somewhere. As if the meteors weren’t bad enough, there’s also the very real threat of roadside bombs and insurgent attacks to worry about. Reynolds keeps a breakneck pace heading north with the gas pedal floored.

Bucky fruitlessly fiddles with the radio in shotgun. Tackleson, sitting behind Bucky, stares wide-eyed out the window at the blasted lands. Celery shakes nervously behind Reynolds. Florida sits bitch, complaining about his arm and growing dizzy with pain from Ghost’s bite.

Vice groans with agony. “It burns. Ahhhh, man it burns!”

Bucky turns from the useless radio and eyes Vice’s bandage. “Let’s see what it looks like under there.”

Vice squeals. “I ca... I can’t,”

Rabbit nods at Celery. “You do it.”

Celery shakes as he peels back the bandages that Reynolds put over Florida’s wound. A stringy yellow mucus comes up with it. He wipes the pus away to reveal a deep, amber-black bite mark with ripped, dead skin surrounding it. It’s like his arm already turned gangrenous.

“Ah shit,” Vice whimpers, seeing it for himself. His breathing quickens almost instantly, and his brow moistens with a cold sweat above his gas mask. “That’s bad, isn’t it?”

“We’re at the end. My dearest friend, the end,” Tackleson sings a popular haunting and trippy 60s hippie song as he stares off into the distance.

“Fuck off Tack,” Bucky says. Tackleson doesn’t listen.

Dust sprinkles the humvee, like they’ve pulled behind someone who’s kicking up dirt from the road in front of them. But Reynolds doesn’t let up on the gas, and moments later the dust becomes a rain of pebbles and debris. Then rocks. The road is useless. There is no road, none that Reynolds can see. He just drives, doing his best to keep the wheel steady.

“Of our special plans, the end,” Tackleson continues.

“Vice... Vice!” Celery nudges him but there’s no response. His head is tipped back, and his eyes are rolled into his head.

“Of all that ever stands, the end...”

Bucky shoves Tacklberry’s head back viciously. “Fuckin’ shut up asshole!”

Tackleson ignores it completely and keeps singing. “It pains to see you free. You’ll never be with me...”

“Fuckin’ douche bag,” Rabbit utters under his breath.

“Florida?” Celery pokes at him. “Guys. Something’s wrong. He was just shaking like crazy for a minute and now nothing.”

Vice groans and a stony stare rolls forward as he lifts his head, revealing bloodshot, bile colored eyes.

“The end of smiles and soft eyes...”

The humvee lurches down and back up, jostling everyone from their seats.

“Shit!” Reynolds yells. “I hit a fucking crater!” The dust settles for just a moment, and he sees an RPG vapor trail zipping toward them from a distance.

“The end of days, we try to die...”

Reynolds yanks the wheel hard to the left and floors the gas pedal. Florida’s head ends up squarely in Tackleson’s lap, but Tackleson still stares off with his face pressed against the window.

“We’re at the end... RPG!” Tackleson yells when his gaze fixes on the white stream of smoke darting right for them.

Vice rips a massive chunk of thigh, dick, and pelvis from Tackleson’s groin. A deafening blast drowns out Tackleson’s screams as the RPG detonates in front of the hummer. They flip into the air, and white-hot light fills the vehicle.

#

A camcorder video screen fades in from black to reveal Reynolds in his US military fatigues sitting on a rickety wood chair. Piss, shit, blood and vomit stain his desert camouflage. Rope binds his hands behind him, and a burlap sack covers his face. Behind him stand two men in ski masks wearing filthy white linens. One holds a saber and the other a banana-clipped machine gun. Behind them is a haphazardly draped banner showing the ominous symbol of their violent jihadist organization; one the free world is all too familiar with. The man holding the saber speaks Dari Persian to the camera as it sits on a tripod. He makes wild and threatening gestures. The gunman holds the barrel of his weapon to the back of Reynolds’ head.

“Allah has made himself known. He has fired his missiles down from the heavens upon the Great Satan in the places where he occupies our holy lands. The United States military has bent the knee and bowed before Islam. Allah has delivered them to us, diseased and ill. They choke upon the poisonous words they have spoken against us for so long. The desert has risen up and taken the air from them. Allah rewards the martyrs who have given their lives to the cause of Jihad. But my brothers, we are victorious! Look and see. Look how Allah has snatched the very breath from their lungs.”