Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter
When the promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath a clear blue sky?
(Pink Floyd The Wall 1978)
I could see a naked and very pregnant young woman submerged in a bath. All around the huge mottled hot-pink shell-shaped tank were potted plants of every conceivable type and size overlooking the pool of clear water, the air sweet with sap and floral perfumery so intoxicating as to be almost hypnotic.
She wasn’t moving, or breathing beneath the water.
Panic set in. I ran to the bath and pulled her head above water, her hair luxuriant and so long, and a pink color.
“Breathe!” I shouted, but there was no response.
The girl’s head flopped to one side as if breathing was the last thing on her mind.
She was in her late teens and quite beautiful, her features somehow familiar sparking recognition.
Then I saw it, the crescent moon upon her brow. I propped her upright and emptied the bath. Her eyes opened. My daughter smiled at me, as if playing possum was the most natural thing she could have done.
“Hello mother.”
“Sere, how could you! I thought you were-“
“Dead? Mother? Yes, I am to you, see?”
I screamed as she began tearing open her abdomen.
I watched in sheer terror as an amphibious thing oozed from her body, it was humanoid, with silvery-pink hair, its skin translucent sapphire.
The girl, child-changeling and pretty in a weird kind of way, the child’s huge bug-eyes taking up most of her face. She opened her small mouth and giggled, her little hands gripping her mother’s heavy milk-laden breasts; tiny claws shot into these.
I was almost sick to the stomach as blood dripped onto Sere’s hair and lap.
I was crying now. My daughter ignored me, which made it worse.
My granddaughter’s teeth like those of a raptor frightened me as she bared these. I stared in disbelief as her tiny webbed hands squeezed the milk from her mother’s breasts, drinking as if she were starving. It wasn’t long before the rich creamy milk turned a deep shade of red; the baby drank with relish.
I was in a state of shock and unable to speak.
“Mommy is going to feed you a more satisfying meal, entrée is over sweetheart. So, little one, take your fill, darling child.”
She snuggled up in Serenity’s lap and attacked her mother, who was laughing hysterically.
The creature that had exited my daughter’s womb was eating her own mother.
I screamed and almost fell out of bed.
“I need to talk to Luna on the communicator, it was a dream but it is still some kind of warning and I can’t afford to ignore it.”
Bagdad
Tetis assumed the form of a young raven-haired woman in army fatigues, her human appearance made her indistinguishable from any other member of the Bagdad insurgency. She paused for a moment reading the newspaper with Kira and Usagi’s article at the top of the page. Tetis had collected them all finding the stories well written and interesting. She was almost proud of the odango headed girl with powers unlike those of her colleagues.
She laughed aloud. “I think I may employ the Moon Child as my scribe. I’ll spare her assistant, they make a good team don’t you think, Neph? The one known as Kira is quite beautiful and may be to your liking; you have free reign to take her to your bed when this is done, or is it that senshi, Jupiter you are still smitten over, my good General?”
“Harrumph,” was all Nephrite could manage but a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “Ah, yes well then you can seduce and make love to both at once, now how sexy is that?”
“I’ve not tried making love to two women in a bed, might be fun,” he laughed.
“If you’re really good, I may take you to my bed, but you have to earn it dear boy.”
“I would be honored,” he said, then looked away, feeling the heat rising to his cheeks, Tetis in her current form was very attractive and the notion of pealing off that uniform and having his way with the most powerful and desirable monarch of Darkness was the perfect aphrodisiac. He coughed and waved a hand before his face. Tetis giggled, making him go hard.
“I take that as a yes then? Hmmm, all right, let’s focus on present matters and leave those things of a carnal nature to our victory celebrations, ne?”
“As you wish.”
Aircraft flew overhead, loud explosions punctuating the solitude of this section of the city that was hers now. She walked through the debris, the broken glass snapping under the weight of her boots with Nephrite and her other generals in tow.
Making a face, she pressed on, the rubbish piled high on the sidewalks evidence of chaos on the streets of this once bustling metropolis.
Cats and other small creatures scattered in the wake of this being they sensed more dangerous than ten packs of wild dogs vanished into shadow as Tetis continued along the deserted concourse with her formidable escort.
Like skeletons of charred pterodactyls, a network of steel girders and jaggad portions of demolished walls belonging to burnt out skyscrapers loomed overhead. Before them, the carcasses of incinerated vehicles that littered the road for as far as one could see made their silent statement of oblivion’s footprint. Bodies of soldier, resistance fighter and civilians alike strewn over the bonnet of a car or lying inside a bomb crater, on the pavement and in deserted doorways presented a tableaux of death’s finest handwriting, a signature in blood and ash.
She had ignored the bombed schools on the outskirts, the scores of dead children and teachers, the mourning who wailed long into the hell mouth of a city once their cultural cradle and anchor lamented long into the night their pitiful and endless dirge. Nobody knew what the future might bring.
Then, there were the monsters, the things in the abandoned buildings hiding in the subterranean sewer tunnels and subways, the winged daemons that swooped down on a lone unfortunate refugee, sapping the life out of their screaming victims as they soared into the darkness with their prey.
“Hello!” Tetis laughed scaring the swarms of looters scurrying off into the darkness upon her approach, “So timid are they not?”
“Agreed…,” Nephrite said deadpan, growing a little uneasy as Tetis’s power grew faster than he had anticipated but had to admit, it felt good not being threatened by Beryl every five minutes. “We shall not have any trouble setting up our foothold base, the nests are spreading throughout Bagdad’s old quarter and our armies are subsuming the population, adding to their ranks at a phenomenal rate.”
“I shall delight in the public execution of Metalia, as a traitor. My rule will encompass this world and the entire galaxy by the time I am through here. First, I need to build our forces, and then clean up the garbage, soon a new kingdom of darkness unparalleled shall supplant Beryl’s domain of which I will absorb into my own and we’ll be unstoppable.”
“Beryl is preoccupied attacking the senshi of Tokyo, and they are without their leader who is here, my Queen.”
“Yes, and one of my newest recruits was destroyed by that child.”
“Correct my queen but she had help from an Outer Senshi; I’ve not seen the like since the Silver Millennium.”
“Get used to it Neph, they’re all coming back if they aren’t on this planet already.”
“I know, I think the legions numbering in the millions will stop our little short-skirted Sailor Soldiers in their green-eared tracks.”
“Don’t be too confident, that was Beryl’s downfall last time and will be again, the senshi are not the central problem. I have a plan for them and they will come around, trust me on that.”
Nephrite grinned at the wicked glint in Tetis’s eye; he liked where this might be going, and smacked his lips.
“I have not told her of our plans, she knows of the mutants, but thinks Metalia is behind these. That sucker possesses Beryl, a fatal flaw in her make-up. Ironic really, as I was genetically altered, but I hold the advantage in this instance, Lord Nephrite. She, does not.”
---
A blood red sunset cut the throat of this waning day of heavy fighting on both sides, a feast of depravity and death; such is war.
Tetis paused and held out her hand, palm up, a crystal sphere began to glow and the sounds of growls moved like a tidal wave into the market sector of east Bagdad.
Thousands of the creatures marched en masse towards the city administrative building where Tetis and her Shitennou general stood flanked by their high-ranking soldiers and youma.
“Perfect, everything is going as I planned. Now to make my bid for the throne; Beryl won’t know what hit her.”
---
The city was in lock-down, it made it harder for enemy operatives to function but even more so for the local population and the allied forces were not excluded. Food was in short supply although there were groups smuggling vital supplies and water into those portions of Bagdad without these amenities.
The city was gradually falling into NATO hands, that was, at least until the plague struck down allied and enemy ground forces in the region. The city’s eastern sector and those to the south were in the hands of the mutant armies and the combatants were forced to pull back and fight beyond these quarantined areas. People were fleeing the capital in large numbers to escape. The outbreak according to reports coming into the international compound didn’t discriminate between insurgents and coalition forces.
Two days later the fighting ceased, both sides having to deal with packs of mutants and their numbers were growing exponentially.
“Ami, what do you think?” the field surgeon asked, preparing more slides to be photographed and fresh tissue samples to be analyzed.
“I’ve never seen anything like this, their DNA is being re-written, and it is some kind of retrovirus. I can tell you though that these cells are incredibly robust, in other words, they can withstand severe heat, cold, their ability to heal themselves is phenomenal. One of the soldiers had his arm blown off and was not responding to treatment, but after he’d gone into a coma, the arm started regenerating.”
“Thank you Ami, yeah, they’re the perfect super soldier and near impossible to kill.”
“I need to talk to my colleagues; can I leave you with this for the moment?” Ami said getting ready to leave the lab to speak to Usagi and Setsuna.
“Not a problem, go for it.”
“Susan, Have you anything on those brain scans yet?”
“We’re still examining the data, but early indications are that they’re losing all traces of their humanity.”
---
Setsuna entered the room in a hazmat suit and began asking questions.
“Gulf War Syndrome?” one med-tech asked of another.
“I wish, this is out of my league, but somebody has to find out how this thing ticks, and you guys are it. Colloquially we’re dealing with loose cannon, and it is winning the war now. Let’s see if we can change that.”
Week # 2 of the conflict
The modified missiles were cloaked and fired into another city. The monster armies were expanding their reach.
“I want to try something Usagi; can I take a blood sample?”
“Ami, you know how much I hate needles!”
Stepping away, she stared in horror at her friend as if she’d just grown two heads.
“Now come on Usagi; doctor knows best,” Ami giggled.
“Do you really need me to do that?”
“Silly, I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it important. Now, please, hold out your arm. You will hardly feel a thing.”
“Ouch!”
“Baby, now, come on that wasn’t too bad. I have taken my own sample and those of the compound survivors after the last attack.”
“So, what do you have in mind?”
“I’ll let you know, now we need to leave the city, at least be outside the quarantine zone, two thirds of the capital are controlled by the monsters.”
“Eep, I hate bugs, Umino loves them, can’t understand why but he’d be in his element out here, okay. Jake is driving people to the new base, helping the other marines in the evacuation effort. Are you going to be okay here? I mean, what if these guys change into a full-blown flying bug humanoid what-ya-ma-call-it?”
“Go Usagi, we’re protected here, gas masks, P-90 and other heavy weapons. If anything comes within a hair’s breadth of the place it will be blasted into dust, so stop…, worrying woman and go!”
“All right, but if you need…”
“I’ll call you on my communicator; see you later and bye the way, thanks.”
The USS Kennedy Aircraft Carrier
“Hello Mr. Chiba, you’re with doctors without borders I see,” a pert young female ensign who reminded Mamoru a lot of Usagi smiled.
He grinned like a loon and sputtered, “Y-yes, I am actually, glad to be of service. I am with the Japanese contingent.”
“Yes you are too, please Mr. Chiba, follow me!” the girl blushed and recovered herself as several others from his group joined him, one of these his best friend Motoki and his fiancé, Reika.
“Well buddy, here we are,” Motoki said, smiling at Mamoru and back at Reika.
TBC
