The Mulligan Planet (6 page)

Cold rain banged down on my
helmet as I crawled through the freezing mud in the isolating
darkness of midnight into position with my sniper rifle in hand.
Paranoia had finally set in and I removed the tinging helmet as I
finally made it to the top of a mound, the five Americans I was
serving with were, in their now sickly brown fatigues, looking up
at me waiting for my signal to move in from the puddle ridden
ground a dozen metres from me. I closed my eyes for a moment and
let my natural night-vision set in before looking through the scope
of my rifle immediately spotting the long winding trench that sat a
few hundred metres downhill from me. Sliding my gaze along the top
of the trench I finally got a look at a few soldiers, most were
walking around, securing posts and gazing off into the icy
blackness, but one stood out, leaning his back against a wall
without a care in the world, drawing or writing in a leather bound
journal in his hands. I quickly reminded myself that these men were
invaders, murderers and viscous attackers. Six men in the segment
of trench that I had eyes on, signifying this with my left hand to
the Americans on the ground without looking away from the writing
German. 'Drop him John, no mercy' but by the time I'd adjusted to
account for wind and distance and pulled the trigger another
soldier had moved in front of the brunette writer, spraying him
with blood. Instead of panicking the writer dropped down on top of
the other soldier, hands on his wounds, screaming something in
German, I dispatched another before looking over to the Americans,
“Move up!” They didn't need to be told twice, up on their feet and
charging as I slid down the mound, leaving behind my rifle, to join
them as they charged but before I could get close enough to the
squad George pushed me away, staring me down in an attempt to make
sure I knew I wasn't welcome, they hadn't ever liked me much in
this squad, working together for two years and I thought it'd get
better. I noticed a soldier poking his head over the lip while
taking aim with an MP18.

“Everyone drop!” I dived to my
face while the others continued on, “For the last time, we don't-”
machine gun fire sprayed over my head for a few seconds before he
had dropped down to reload. I popped up to my feet to continue
pushing up but stopped when I saw George crouched over a fallen
squad-mate, we were the only ones left, “Get up George, we've got
to clear this out!” he looked up me snarling, his buzz cut hair
splattered with blood and rain, “Shut your mouth and stop ordering
me around!” his words paced and venomous as he stood pushing me to
the ground and looking out toward the trench, grenade in his hand,
“I'm going to kill every last one of you Krout scum!” he pulled the
pin and tossed the grenade into the trench before looking down at
me, “And then I'm coming back to get you.” his voice dripping with
contempt as he turned heel and, brandishing a knife, charged the
trench, me hot on his tail after I scrambled to my feet, “Wait!” he
jumped into the smoking pit, “Georg-!” I was cut short by a single
gunshot. I picked up my pace, looking over the lip to see the
writer crawling out from under the mass of George, blood and
burning meat strewn around the trench. This man's entire squad had
just been killed, just like mine and, like me, he was now alone. I
dropped down next to the writer and waited for a moment, juggling
around a myriad of thoughts before deciding that he didn't need to
die. That he was redeemable. That maybe I was.

The next day started with the
clicks of shoes hitting hard concrete and the indistinguishable
speech of a hundred voices speaking at once. The smell of fresh
coffee and pancakes invaded my nostrils as I rolled over on my hard
floor to see Kate sitting and smiling at me, wearing a pair of
jeans which I’m pretty sure were mine and a large black shirt with
‘GEEK’ printed in bold white letters, that one I was sure I owned.
She had two coffees in a cardboard tray beside her and a plate of
steaming pancakes on her lap, “You were asleep so I ducked out for
a minute, grabbed us some breakfast.” She leaned over and kissed me
on the cheek, I was still trying to come to terms with last night.
I should explain why she’s reacting this way; vampires have very
strong emotions and seeing as we live for, well, so far it seems
forever, we fall in love very easy with other vampires as it’s so
rare to run into others like us. Unfortunately you get a bit
emotionally… deficient over time, I really didn’t know how I felt
about her yet, anyway, moving on. I smiled back as I shuffled into
a seated position, “Thank you, how’d you sleep?” She shrugged, “Not
too bad, after a few hours I jumped into your bed though, I
borrowed some clothes. Is that a problem?” I kissed her gently,
“Not at all.” I reached down and grabbed one of the coffees,
feeling the warm sensation as the heat passed through the styrofoam
cup and into my palm, the rich smell seemingly setting root in my
brain. Kate was sipping hers politely with both hands wrapped
around her cup when she stopped suddenly, her eyes widening, “Oh! I
almost forgot, Marcus wants to meet you, show you some… stuff, I
don’t know he just said for me to tell you to meet him in the
cafeteria around two… p.m., not a.m.” I finished my coffee, “Who is
Marcus?” I moved into a cross legged position, “He’s the head of
engineering and weapons, vehicle and tech development. He’s a nice
enough guy, talks a bit fast though and I’m pretty sure most of
it's not English. It’s more like some language that he invented in
his spare time.”

I started on one of the
pancakes, it was by far the best pancake I had ever had. It was
soft yet had this slightly crispy exterior, sweet, yet not so sweet
I couldn’t add maple syrup to it, “What time is it now?” she
shrugged, “11:30… ish, you remember where the cafeteria is?” I
struggled to remember anything before knocking on Kate’s door, “Um,
yeah, sort of…” Kate giggled, “That’s a no then, once you’ve
cleaned up I’ll take you there, the others will be out and about
soon.” My body was quickly adapting to waking up during daylight
hours, but I was still confused as to why we did, “Why do we wake
up during the day here?” Kate finished wiping the remains of her
pancake off her face, “Well, we don’t really, I mean, normally we
sleep during the day, but when we don’t
have
to go outside
for a while we try and spend time with the other guys, the mortal
ones. It kind of maintains the peace if they know we aren’t going
to kill them in their sleep.”

“Ah, right.” I stood and helped
Kate to her feet, only just really realising I was still in the
same clothes as the night before, “I’m just going to have a shower,
make yourself at home.” I said with a smile, she smiled back as I
walked toward the bathroom. There sat the tiled room, where it
always had, the small sink and one person shower encased in a
rectangular box of glazed glass in the far corner. I quickly and
clumsily stripped off and slid into the shower, turning on the hot
water as fast as I could, feeling it hit my tender flesh, I leaned
on the glass wall and watched the blood from last night pool and
swirl down the drain around my feet. It felt magnificent to finally
wash up, I enjoyed the feeling of my hair as the conditioner left
it, the soft and silky quality.

Once I was confident I was clean
I almost skipped out of the shower, grabbed a towel from underneath
the sink and proceeded to dry off while I watched myself in the
mirror, my clean cut curls matting on my forehead, my brown eyes
staring back at me, realising this was the first time I’d seen
myself in almost a week felt odd, I’d grown a mess of stubble which
I quickly rid myself of with my razor, but I had a fresh scar on my
forehead and cheek. I was well aware they would clear up before the
day’s end, but the fact they were there at all and I hadn’t seen
the initial wound was slightly unnerving. My hair combed back, my
face cleanly shaven and a towel wrapped around my midsection I felt
as if a massive weight had been lifted off of me as I stepped out
of the door and into my room to see Kate sitting cross legged on my
bed reading a comic of mine, “You’re a bit of a nerd aren’t you?”
she said with a giggle, I shrugged and smiled, “Well yeah, you
spend a few years without companionship you take up a few hobbies.”
I started getting dressed. A black long sleeve button up shirt with
a black tie, a pair of jeans and black canvas shoes, I started
rolling up my sleeves, “So, could you tell me more about Marcus?”
Kate continued to read the comic, “Well, he’s been here since the
beginning back in the seventies, he's mostly human, but he had an
encounter that he doesn't talk much about, so his aging rate is
somewhat slow. He was originally a computer engineer for the NSA,
living in the US for the better part of his life but he’s natively
Irish although it rarely comes out, unless it’s Saint Patrick's
Day, or if he’s absolutely sloshed any other time of the year. He’s
always been into new tech and blowing stuff up, so he is really
quite useful around here.” I looked over at the digital clock and
saw the numbers click over to 12:17. An hour and forty three
minutes to kill, “Can I meet Mink’s squad today before Marcus, just
for a bit?” Kate appeared to be mulling it over, “Yeah I suppose,
they’ll probably be in the cafeteria around twelve thirty, one
o’clock, they’re pretty cool, fun enough. You want to head up there
now?”

“Yes please.” she climbed off
the bed, “Is it alright if we head over to my place? Just so I can
get changed.” I nodded and soon after we were walking through her
door, “Oh, Kate, just quickly, what should I do about my
door-knob?” we stepped into her lounge-room and she gestured for me
to take a seat on her couch, “Don’t worry, I called maintenance
this morning, they said they’ll fix it in a few hours.” She
disappeared into her room, “The guys in maintenance are relaxed
around here, don’t ask questions, just fix stuff.” I started
drumming a little tune on my knee with my fingers, a few minutes
later she emerged still wearing my jeans but a tight tie-dye shirt
in place of my baggy one, she’d also donned black boots and her
hair was tied back in a ponytail loosely. She smelled of cherries
and mint as opposed to smelling like my apartment-house thing. I
stood and walked over to her, “Lead the way.” she walked toward the
door and I followed, we walked most of the way to the cafeteria
without saying anything, just occasionally smiling at each other,
“Where’d you two run off to last night?” I spun around to see
Wolfgang a few feet behind us jogging, slowing down to a walk once
he was next to me and we continued toward the cafeteria, Kate
shrugged, “Thought I’d show him how to get to town, then we made
our way back to his place.” I would have sprayed my drink if I’d
had one; Wolf looked at me and smiled, “You lucky duck, she never
seemed to get attached to anyone around here.” I was desperately
trying to see if behind ‘you lucky duck’ hid ‘I’m going to separate
your flesh from your bones’, but didn’t find any semblance of anger
or sarcasm, it appeared to be a genuine congratulatory gesture. I
smiled back politely after realising that I’d been staring, “Well
thank you, she is pretty magnificent.” Kate giggled and began
looking at her feet.

We reached the cafeteria and it
was reasonably empty again, there was one table occupied by a
serious looking guy with headphones in, he had jet black hair in a
braid down his back, long features and pale olive skin that suited
the grey t-shirt, jean and combat boot combo that he was wearing.
Another table had three guys sitting and laughing about something
one of them had said, the one closest to me had well-kept curled
red hair, freckles and a slightly chubby face, the one to his right
was blonde and had a buzz cut, his button nose complemented his
small mouth, and the one furthest from me had thick brown hair that
hung just above his neck, his wide set jaw and high cheeks made me
think of an elf I’d seen in a movie a few years before, they all
wore white t-shirts and blue jeans. I nodded in their direction,
“That’s Mink’s team?” Kate nodded, “The red head is Kyle, the
blonde, Steven, the brunette, Mikael and that guy over there on his
own, that’s Gabriel, he’s a good guy, he recently lost his father,
cancer, he’s coping in his own way.” I found myself very interested
in Gabriel as we wandered over to the table where the group of men
sat.

“Hey, can we take seat here?”
Kyle looked me up and down in distaste, “Hey Wolfgang, Kate. Well,
that depends, who are you?” he sounded like he was from somewhere
in south America, maybe New Orleans, Wolf’s voice cut in, “This is
John, your new commanding officer.” Kyle’s face drooped, “Sorry
sir, I didn’t know, um… yes sir, feel free.” We grabbed seats and
arranged them around the table, “It’s not a problem. I take it
Jason has filled you guys in?” I said with smile that must’ve been
convincing as the faces around the table relaxed a bit and they
nodded in unison. “You have any input?” in unison, again, they
shook their heads; it was like being surrounded by robots, or those
creepy horror movie kids, “Guys, you can relax, really, I’m just
another guy.” They looked unsure, Steven shot out his hand, “Great
to meet you, I’m Steven, I’m the pilot and driver.” He said in a
noticeably New Yorker accent, I took his hand and he shook it
firmly, “Nice to meet you, and you guys are?” Mikael was the next
to offer his hand, “I’m Mikael, close quarter combat and tech. I
can crack pretty much anything.” His Scottish accent seemed to
reverberate in my chest, Kyle’s hand extended more warily than the
others, “Kyle, explosives, nice to meet you sir.” I smiled at him
and he replied in kind weakly. I pointed over to Gabriel, “And what
about him?” Mikael looked over, “That’s Gabriel, he’s our sniper
and scout, he’s quick and personally I wouldn’t get anywhere near
him if he has a knife on him. He’s nice enough. He’ll be ready for
the mission.” I nodded, I really found this guy fascinating. “So
what’re you guys up to today?” Mikael shrugged, “Eh, not much,
we’ll probably get drinks tonight. You’re welcome to join us.” It
was my turn to shake my head now, “No thanks, I’m meeting Marcus
soon, I don’t know how long that’s going to go for yet.” Mikael
nodded knowingly, “Ah, I get you, well we’d better get going, you
have yourselves a good day.” The three stood, nodded at each of us
and left. Kate shuffled closer to me and started holding my hand. I
looked over and smiled at her, then I felt someone grabbing my
other hand and turned to see Wolf smiling slyly and winking at me.
I immediately shook my hand free, “Come on Wolf, you ruined it.” We
all laughed together.