Nemesis: Book Four (4 page)

T
he wind blew
as the Georgia winter decided that it was time to make its annual appearance. Knox wore no outer jacket, but his fatigues had long sleeves, which was enough for now.

He preferred the cold anyway. He had been in hot places, places that the Devil would be jealous of. This chilliness? God was good.

And there would be enough heat here, very soon. He stood just outside the boundaries of the camp, binoculars to his eyes. He saw the white strands, closer now than when he spoke with Marks. He could see his men spreading out too, each of them holding a flamethrower in their hands and a backpack full of diesel. They would burn the shit, all of it, until they saw that green creature flying around like a new version of the Silver Surfer, and then they would retreat. Knox couldn't let this stuff spread, not like it wanted, but he wouldn’t send his soldiers on suicide missions either.

His men stood at a distance of two hundred and fifty feet from each other, going completely around the perimeter of Grayson, encircling it. They were in the woods, on the streets, and everything in between. He had made men burn through briars and cross creeks, but they were finally all in position now. Just waiting on him to give word.

Knox peered through his binoculars, as he took one hand away and brought the radio to his mouth.

“Burn it.”

T
he strands were
an interesting group of life. They were individuals, each of them capable of stopping their growth if they wanted. Each of them could refuse to grow the Bynums. None would though; none would even think of it. Their happiness depended on their spreading, on their ability to help Bynimian—though it didn’t occur to them that Bynimian, their home world, was dead.

And even though they lived individual lives, they also had a singular consciousness that each one dipped in and out of. The strands crossed each other, grew into one another and back out again. They knew each other's thoughts and also had their own. No other Bynum had this ability; it was unique to the strands, just as their job in the birthing process was unique.

The first part of the blaze didn't touch all of them at once; it couldn't have. Some had decided that they would grow tall and thick, traveling up trees and branches, then wrapping and rewrapping themselves around the trunk. Some went underneath creeks and rivers, liking the darkness because it reminded them of the Earth's core. Bynums could grow in water as easily as they could in the open air. The majority of the strands protruding from the earth were too far away from the soldiers to experience the weapons they carried. So only the strands at the perimeter's forefront felt the fire.

They had known that men were arriving, had felt them getting closer, the vibrations from their feet telling all. This was, of course, transferred to every piece of strand erupting from the core. Whether or not an individual strand had been born of the core, through the connections with others, it received its energy to grow and birth Bynums. So the further away from the heat the strands grew, and the more Bynums sprouted, the longer it took them to continue spreading. This was simply the cost of using an energy source not right next to them, and a cost that would continue to slow their growth. They would use the heat they gathered from the core and the rays which beamed off this planet's star to fuel their growth, even if it would continue slower than in the beginning. Growth was growth, after all.

They didn't know what the beings' wanted, only that their mother would keep them safe if danger came.

And when the fire erupted, the frontline knew why their mother had not shown up when these men did. Because there was no danger. Only joy.

T
he soldier stood
with his back to the base, waiting on the order from the General. He had been waiting for a solid half-hour, trying to be patient, but wanting to move forward, wanting to unleash the power strapped to his back.

“Burn it.” The voice was calm, confident, what the soldier wanted the General to sound like. The soldier witnessed what happened with the tanks, with the first group of men that showed up to attack this weird infestation. He saw them all die, die so easily that he wondered—at night, right before sleep—if they had ever been alive at all. The General obviously saw the same, and his voice speaking confidently now mattered. It said the General thought everyone would be okay, that everyone was coming back.

It didn't matter if the General meant it. The soldier needed to hear it.

He placed his left hand on the barrel of the weapon, hoisting its weight up so that it pointed at the white infestation.

Pure white, like perfect snow, long before tires and dirt mixed into it.

He pressed down on the trigger, his face wrapped in protective goggles.
Don't let this shit touch you
, he thought as the fire roared out of the weapon. It stretched out twenty feet in front of him, and even with the goggles and gear, the soldier felt the heat—perhaps the first
real
heat he’d ever felt. He watched as the fire touched the white, his body already starting to turn, wanting to catch as much of the growth as he could in his net of heat. Let it all burn, every single inch, until the pure white was black ash.

He squinted his eyes, not fully understanding what he saw in front of him. Perhaps the fire was distorting his vision, because what he looked at wasn't possible. Fire destroyed. Fire pushed everything back that it came in contact with. Fire didn't retreat.

The orange flames in front of him were being replaced by the white growth. It jumped up from all around, drawn to the fire like like a baby to a breast. It traveled up the flames, consuming them, and the soldier only watched, unable to believe any of it. It was like gravity had been reversed, and the strands fell upward, fell fast, all of them heading to the flames that the soldier brought with him.

The white strands ran up the fire, both inside and out of it, speeding up, until it reached the barrel of the weapon, and with a lunge, hundreds of tendrils grabbed the metal.

It only took a second for the strands to reach the soldier's hand, grabbing and wrapping around tight.

It only took a few more for them to spread across his body, fueled by the fire—the soldier
wanted
tried to release his finger from the trigger as the growth spread on him, but realized he couldn’t. The growth tied his finger to the trigger, and held it compressed, feeding more fuel to the flames.

The strands sank into him. His eyes. His mouth. The pores of his skin.

Finally, he collapsed, and the strands continued their walk across the ground in front of him.

K
nox's mouth opened slightly
.

He didn't notice.

His mind focused on nothing else but the scene his binoculars revealed. In his range of sight, he saw twenty men. Or he had. He saw them all shoot fire at the growth in front of them, all virtually at the same time—right after he gave the order. Everything going just as it should, the fire swarming out like an infinite number of violent insects, intent on destroying whatever horde threatened their nest.

And then… Knox didn't understand.

The fire shot down at the growth, and the very next second, the growth was
shooting back up
at the fire. It
grew
on the fire, like some kind of steroid induced moss across a tree. Knox watched all twenty of his men, watched as the white growth spread up their towers of fire and then as it latched onto their bodies. All twenty stood there like mummies for a few seconds, each one looking exactly like the other, and then they all fell like synchronized dancers might.

He snapped the radio to his mouth.

"Alpha Six, what's going on?" He released the button, waiting on Six to come back over the radio. He knew though, already, that no one was coming back. That what he just saw hadn't been isolated to the people in front of him.

He held the radio to his ear, unwilling to put it back on his belt. Maybe someone would come through. Maybe someone still lived.

Knox heard his Executive Officer shuffle next to him, uncomfortable, but silent. He saw it too through his own binoculars.

"What's happening?" the man said, still staring through his binoculars.

Knox didn't answer him. They both knew what happened, they just didn't know how. Everyone in front of them was dead. Knox had sent another group out against this stuff and not a single one of them was coming back. Again. Knox let the hand holding the radio drop to his waist. He took the binoculars away too. He saw all he needed from the twenty men in front of him. The white was moving again.

Knox turned to his Executive Officer. That man's own binoculars hung at his side.

"We're moving back," Knox said. "Let them know."

"Yes, sir."

Knox watched the XO walk away before finally dropping his eyes to his feet. This was insane. The whole goddamn thing. He sat here using flame throwers even after they'd evacuated the whole state. He was fighting something that no one had ever seen, and fighting it with weapons that weren't far removed from cavemen lighting sticks on fire. They should have dropped a bomb already, should have tried to eradicate this thing's presence fully and at once.

Knox normally knew what to do, normally knew what protocol to follow, and how to handle the situations put before him. Not this one. Because a madman was in charge, a madman with ulterior motives that Knox didn't understand. His hands were tied; and if he kept listening to the madman, he would keep sending young men to their death.

K
enneth Marks picked
up his phone.

He didn't care what anyone on the other end had to say, at all. His mind was singularly focused; everything else would be compartmentalized until needed.

"Hello?" he said.

"Whatever the hell is out there, whatever that growth is, it just killed another few hundred soldiers."

"Tell me what happened." He didn't care, not in the slightest, but it might be important later. He wanted something very specific from Knox and only one thing right now. He would wait though, to hear this, and then sweep it all away to make a path for his own plans.

"We used fire, spread out around the perimeter, trying to push it back—just like we agreed. It thrived on the fire, sped up, and buried the men under itself as it kept growing. We're approaching nearly a thousand dead right now, in two meetings with this
thing
. I'm not sending anyone else out there to die. We need to consider Presidential pass-codes."

Knox asked no questions, only made declarative sentences. Kenneth Marks smiled. Jenna saw it, riding in the front seat of the car, but looking back in the side mirror. Kenneth Marks looked into her eyes and her back at him, his smile genuine. She didn't look away, didn't shirk from his toothy smile or glinting eyes.

Kenneth Marks hoped she made it through this. He still had his doubts, but Jenna was a lot more like him than anyone else in this operation. Certainly more than the man on the phone.

"Sir?" General Knox said.

Kenneth Marks didn't answer. This bored him, heavily, but he still had to deal with it. The vocal patterns, the sentence structure, all of it said that Knox was on the verge of doing something unwise. Kenneth Marks had a few ideas about what that might be, and he couldn't let any of them come to pass.

"I understand. I'm on my way to you now, and when I get there, we will assess all options and figure out the next course. How does that sound?" He still smiled, though his voice portrayed none of it. His voice said this was a grave situation, and one he was deeply sorry for, one that he wanted to amend.

"When will you be here?"

He simply couldn’t appease this crowd.

"In the next hour."

Silence came back over the line. It was time to move on to the real situation, the one that Kenneth Marks was traveling to Grayson for.

"Now, General Knox, I have some good news for you. We've assessed that it's safe for us to make contact with Will."

More silence.

"He's on his way out, and he has an important message for us. I need you, or someone you trust, to go get him—” He paused as a rare thought crept up on Kenneth Marks without him knowing it. He didn't know what this creature would do when they took it into custody, so sending Knox might be a bad idea. Despite his charged up anger at the moment, Kenneth Marks didn't want him dying unless Kenneth Marks decided it was necessary. "Actually, General, I'd prefer it if you send someone else."

"Why?"

Kenneth Marks' smile died, quickly and quietly like a geriatric taken in their sleep. The challenge didn’t bother him, he could deal with disrespect—what might grow from that disrespect bothered him, a coup, perhaps; and Kenneth Marks couldn't have that. He would kill this General before he allowed someone to disrupt his fun. Because the real fun was on the way, so close now.

"General Knox," he said, then pausing for a few seconds. "I think you may have forgotten how our relationship works, but as any good leader would do, I'll remind you. I don't owe you answers. It doesn't goddamn matter why I want you to send someone else. If I told you to send someone else, and have them walk on all fours while they did it, then have Will ride them like a horse all the way back, you'd fucking do it. I'm not going to sit here and ask if you understand, because I think I've made myself clear enough."

Silence came back over the line, a deep silence that Kenneth Marks was completely in tune with. Things hinged right here in that silence, things that would make Kenneth Marks continue forward with his plans or move a different direction if Knox needed to be relieved of duty.

"Yes, sir," the general said.

If the military was good for anything, anything at all, it was drilling hierarchy into people's skulls, drilling the art of following as if it was the highest virtue one could achieve.

"Alright. I'll see you soon. Send someone for Will."

M
urder possessed Knox
. It took over the same as an invading government when it conquers a foreign nation. Killing everyone in power, and silencing dissenters on the sidelines.

He leaned against the desk in front of him, his hands in fists, his knuckles white. He had said "Yes, sir," but nearly bit his tongue off in the process. He goddamn knew why Marks wanted someone else to go out there, he just wanted to make the man say it. Knox was too valuable to send in, especially with whatever 'message' was being brought out. Marks was sending another sacrificial lamb to that goddamn animal out there.

Knox closed his eyes, trying to reign in the emotion running rampant through his whole body. He had to gain control and right now, or else more people would die. He had to decide who the hell to pick….

And at that moment, as he wrestled with the emotions threatening to completely overwhelm him, it was like someone put a needle to his temple and pressed down on it, releasing something strange in his brain, a new thought—one that he couldn't remember thinking, perhaps, since the beginning of his career.

He didn't have to listen to Marks.

He had an hour before the man would be here, and even if he got here early, Knox's men would lie for him if necessary. Knox didn't have to send anyone else out there, and if he went out there and died? He didn't want to, but he wouldn’t knowingly send someone else into another death trap. The first time he didn't know; the second time he had been stupid; this time would be immoral. It needn't happen, though. Knox could begin to control some of this, if he simply
stopped
following Marks' orders. Hiding it, of course, but stopping all the same.

"I can go," he said with his eyes still closed.

He opened them, reaching forward and grabbing the tablet in front of him. He zoomed out and saw the tiny blinking dot that was Will's location, and sure enough, he was moving out toward the perimeter of the town, which meant the white growth that just ravaged Knox's men wasn't doing the same to Will. Or if it was, then Knox wouldn't be picking up Will, but a dead man walking.

He'd wait for him at the edge of the white, and if something happened to him, then fine—but fuck Kenneth Marks.

T
he tablet sat
on Knox's lap, the blue dot on it blinking slowly. It moved in a straight line, heading directly to Knox's Humvee. Marks hadn't been lying about something coming out, Knox just really hoped it was Will.

You know it's not. Not completely. He didn't walk in there and come out simply with a message. The message would have been sent over the goddamn head gear.

That's why you're out here, and not someone else, because the message might not be one communicated through words.

He looked up from the blue light, knowing what he would see when his eyes fixed on the road.

Will. The same man he had dropped off. There were no white strands growing across his body, no blood, no wounds. A man wearing the same clothes, minus the headgear, that he wore when he exited this same Humvee hours ago.

Knox couldn't pull the vehicle any closer, he wasn't going to risk the white shit grabbing hold of the Humvee because that really would be all she wrote. He had already backed up the vehicle twice, watching as the shit below him grew at a pace no plant on Earth could match. A good ten feet separated him from it now, but in another ten minutes?

Nothing grew on Will. Not a single strand so much as climbing an inch onto his shoes. He walked on the white growth like Jesus walked on water, without worry.

Knox watched as Will stepped across the expanding perimeter, the one that separated pavement from… something not of this planet. Will walked on, seeming not to notice the fact that he just walked miles across something that ate men alive just a few hours ago. Perhaps he didn't notice. Perhaps this wasn't Will at all.

His hand reached for the Humvee door, but even in that movement, something was horribly off. Knox hadn't spent a lot of time around the man, maybe a little over an hour, but Will had moved… gracefully. He moved like a man that could strike quickly at any moment; his movement said he might have been a pretty good—bordering on excellent—athlete when younger, and to someone like Knox who understood the underlying meaning of such movement, he looked deadly. The man that opened the Humvee door looked nothing of the sort.

He wasn't robotic, necessarily, but more like a child first learning to walk. Jerky. Uncoordinated. Certainly not as bad as a toddler, but the resemblance was there.

Will sat down without saying a word. He closed the door but didn't look at it as he did. He didn't look over to Knox, didn't look at anything besides the windshield, and whatever he focused on outside didn't show at all on his face.

Knox looked at him, though part of his mind still thought about the strands growing toward him, constantly trying to find something new to grab hold of. He couldn't completely pull away from that piece of survival instinct, but the majority of his mind rested on this stranger sitting in his passenger seat.

"Will?" he said. He sounded scared, like a child checking on a sick parent—curious but not wanting to upset anyone.

No answer.

For the first moment since he made the decision to take one of his men's place on this errand, Knox felt fear. His decision had been primarily intellectual, with an undercurrent of emotion. Intellect left as Will stared straight ahead, looking out the window as if they were on the last leg of a fourteen-hour road trip.

"Will, can you hear me?"

M
orena opened her eyes
.

Her aura spread out ten feet in every direction, though she hadn't noticed it happening. She had been deep—perhaps the deepest she ever went—in her Knowledge. Throughout her life, she rarely dove into it, though her mother recommended she keep up her practice.

It may not be natural for you, Morena, but you can strengthen it
, she had said.

Morena did most of what her mother advised, but when it came to Knowledge, she skimped. And now she regretted it. She wanted to use it to see what it could tell her about the creature she felt. She made it about halfway to Bryan's house before she decided to see if her Knowledge could show her anything, and stopping in what used to be the middle of a street, she went to it. Something resided in it, something moving deep beneath the surface, large but with no definite shape. Yet she couldn't see it.

She pulled herself away from it now, though, because she had to handle things here on Earth.

The creature she sent in search of Kenneth Marks was finally with someone and being asked questions. The whole thing had been on…
autopilot
… that's the word that Bryan or Thera would have used. Autopilot wouldn't work anymore, so she had to postpone her search for the other.

"Will?"

Morena heard the word in her own mind, though she still looked out of her eyes instead of the host's. She closed her eyes again, and then was staring outside the window of a vehicle. The car was different than anything she rode in before, nothing like Bryan's. It didn't matter; the underlying architecture of such a contraption was still too primitive to make any difference in the world that Morena was bringing.

"Will, can you hear me?"

Morena turned her host's head so that she could see the man speaking to her. Short, gray hair. Wearing clothing that was a mixture of black, brown, beige, and green. She quickly rifled through Will's mind, finding the word she wanted. Camouflage.

Morena no longer cared what anyone around her knew or thought. The time for hiding ended out there in those woods; she wouldn't try to hide behind the facade of humanity any longer.

"Will isn't here," she said.

The man's eyes widened.
His name is Knox. He's part of the government.
And his hand moved slowly to the weapon on his hip. He didn't pick it up, only rested his hand on it, though his whole body resembled a predator moments before pouncing.

"What is this?" Knox said.

Morena didn't have time to explain anything to this creature. She had no time for any of them, because there were more important things that needed to be done than sit in this vehicle and answer questions that wouldn't matter to anyone in three days time.

"Kenneth Marks," she said, turning her head back to the window in front of the car. Morena needed to go back to her Knowledge and continue searching for the other, but she didn't want to risk this man doing something stupid, or not taking her where she wanted to go. When she came back to reality, she needed to be in front of Kenneth Marks. "Bring me to him."

W
ill was cuffed
with actual metal, no zip-ties. Knox didn't know what spoke to him in the Humvee, only that it wasn't Will. He didn't know if what used Will's body was strong or smart. Knox knew virtually nothing—though most likely the creature in green that devastated Knox's first attempt at containment now possessed Will. The thing spoke the truth when it said
Will isn't here
, and Knox acted accordingly.

Knox wanted to kill him, kill
it
, the moment it spoke, but he managed to keep from drawing his weapon. The thing turned Will's head back to the front of the car and said nothing else, not when Knox pulled the cuffs from his belt loop, not when he strapped them on either. Indeed, the entire time the thing acted as if it was in a coma, though with open eyes.

Knox didn't try speaking to it again. He didn't want to hear anything else from its mouth—sounding like Will, but yet, speaking in the same jerky fashion with which it moved. Knox knew that Will didn’t control his own body, but whether or not he still existed at all, Knox didn't know. So he cuffed the thing, and then put zip-ties around its feet because he was all out of metal. If he could do what he wanted, Knox would have attached an anchor to the goddamn thing's foot.