Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Chapter 10 Another surprise?

Caulin and Gohn winced as Terry bandaged their minced backs. She worked skillfully like a field nurse in some world war two hospital. She treated all the injuries with different chemicals that had been perfected to fight the various new diseases the mutants carried and fight any poisons that might be in the wounds. She also applied some different medicines to help the wounds to heal faster, so they would be back to normal quickly.
“These guys really have this together” I thought to myself. “Caulin and Gohn have mastered killing the mutants, Terry acts as a medic, and Scyll is the navigator. So where does that leave me?” I shook off the thought. I would prove myself useful. I had to. I felt that if I didn’t I would never really feel like I fit in here. Little did I know how soon my chance would be.
“Ok we had better head out.” Terry said after she had slapped the last bandage on Gohn’s bloody back. “If we don’t get this to the lab soon the DNA will be useless.” She added pointing to our dead mutant that Gohn carried like a trophy.
We headed out following the same path we had came from. We walked slowly through the thick underbrush, a while until Scyll stopped us. She was pouring over one of her maps and she said. “ I think that we might be able to take a short cut back.” She turned the map to show us and pointed to a point. “This ravine will take us right back to the dome. I mean if you guys are okay with that.”
The other turned to each other and shrugged. “ Sound good to me.” Caulin said. “Lead the way fearless navigator.” Scyll blushed and timidly lead us to the ravine.
As we walked down into the ravine the walls rose on either side of us. Several small waterfalls streamed down the walls, ending in small pools that drained into unseen holes in the ground. I began to wonder what we would do if something attacked us from above. I tried to shake the idea, but couldn’t help, but glance up every few minutes into the impenetrable brush above. The overgrowth created a sort of ceiling blocking out a decent bit of the sun. I continued to scan the bushes and branches overhead, but it wasn’t from above that our problem came.
As we turned a bend in the ravine we saw about twenty yards away blocking our path, a bulky mutant hunched over some dead thing devouring it greedily. The beast was about as tall as a man, but much thicker built. Its arms drug the ground like a gorilla. It had short stubby legs, but its torso and arms were thickly built. The most demanding feature of it was its hair though. The creature was covered head to toe in extremely long thick mangled hair. There were no eye discernable from it large head because of its shaggy mane. The only feature distinguishable was it massive protruding teeth that were currently ripping into some poor dead thing, so mutilated it couldn’t be recognized. The hairy beast ripped off the flesh of its prey using its three huge claws that were at the end of each of its arms, blood and gore matting the creatures odd coat.
“Nice,” Caulin said grabbing his symbiote. “ I love taking these down. Nice and easy. I‘ll have us through here in no time.”
Gohn stopped him. “ Hey why not let David handle this one?” He said. “ Like you said this one is easy. It would be a great one for him to start out on.” Caulin thought about it for a moment and then nodded in approval.
I started to get nervous. I had wanted to prove myself, but despite what Caulin and Gohn had said, this mutant didn’t look all that “easy”.
Terry noticed my hesitation. “ I’m not sure he’s ready. I mean he has only been out here this one time.” I appreciated her concern for me, but hearing her say that just made me feel even worse about the idea of backing out.
I had to do this. To prove to them, and probably more to myself that I fit in here. “No, I can do this.” I said in my best cocky attitude. I walked cautiously toward the beast. My right arm instinctively tensed up and the symbiote grew a blade about three feet long and as sharp as I could will it to be.
As I approached the hairy predator looked up from its prey. I wondered how good it vision could be considering that its eyes were lost in impossibly thick mane. I heard a sniffing sound and a low growl emerged from the monster. I stopped for a moment and looked back. The others were watching me closely. Caulin and Gohn looked excited and gave a quick signal to go for it. Terry on the other hand looked a little worried. Her brow knitted in concern.
I turned back to my adversary. I looked down at my blade and started forward again. This time the beast rose. It bellowed out a warning for me not to come any closer. I slowly took another step. Apparently, that was the last straw for it. It raised its monstrous arms and showed off its deadly foot long claws. I bit my lip and raised my claw toward it. The creature fidgeted a little, clearly perturbed at my presence, but for some reason unwilling or unable to charge. Finally, as it started toward me I realized why Gohn and Caulin had felt so unthreatened by it. It lumbered toward me slowly, having a difficult time supporting its large upper body mass with its short stubby legs. The creature was far from graceful. It seemed that all this beast had going for it was its strength and claws. It must have relied on its prey coming to it in order to get its kills. The animal it had been eating must have fallen down the ravine and hurt itself for this slow brute to catch it.
I felt a surge of confidence know realizing my foe’s weakness. I ran forward to attack it. The creature flailed its large claws in all directions in a haphazard attempt to filet me. I easily avoided its cumbersome attack and quickly sliced it across its chest. Blood spilled out further matting its thick fur, the blood mingling with the gore of its prey. Caulin cheered at my success. The beast swung it right paw sweeping toward my head. I ducked and cut the air above me with my symbiote’s claw, catching the beast arm and severing it with surprising ease. The mutant yelped in pain, but didn’t stop this time it struck with it teeth. It lunged attempting to sinks it’s jaws into my right shoulder. I jumped backward landing on my back and kicking the creatures oncoming head.
Each move I made seemed to flow to me from my symbiote. It was as natural as walking to me now. My senses seemed sharpened and my adrenaline flowed freely. It was exhilarating.
Another claw came at me, the beast now swinging with its good arm, I dodged and decided to severe this one to. The second arm fell limply next to the first. Blood was everywhere. The mutant stumbled away in a weak attempt to escape, but it was too late it had lost to much blood, and began to slow until it ultimately collapsed. I felt mildly bad for the awkward creature, but in this world it was kill or be killed.
I heard an applause and cheers from my friends behind me. I turned to walk back to them when I felt something heavy land on top of me. It knocked me to the ground. I rolled quickly to see what had attacked me. It was another hairy creature, it had seen me kill it’s friend from above on the ledge of the ravine, and had jumped down in a rage. It seemed, these creatures were not just a scavengers after all.
It swung it claw wildly grunting in a fury. I caught one of the swings cleanly across the face. The three enormous claw racked my flesh and cut deep. Terry screamed, Caulin was already running to me, and Gohn had his symbiotes leveled at my assailant. Scyll was still in shock.
I clutched my face with my left hand, trying to stem the bleeding. I would have expect myself to be terrified. The old me would have been, but a lot had changed in the last two days. The new me was furious. I roared in anger thrusting my blade in an uppercut straight into the monster’s chest. I rose to my feet as I push the blade in deeper. It plunged through vital organs and bones, until it erupted out the monsters back. I continued to push forward until the blade sank into the opposite wall of the ravine. The blade stuck into the dirt wall. I released the blade, and my opponent hung lifelessly from the wall I had mounted it to.
Caulin stopped dead in his tracks. Gohn slowly lowered his arms. A general look of shock was on their face. Terry ran to me. “ O my gosh are you ok?!” she cried urgently her voice full of apprehension. She quickly lead me to one of the water falls to rinse the blood off my face. I plunged my whole face down into one of the pools. The wounds stung as the water cleaned them out. After I had gotten most the blood off I looked down into my reflection in the pool to survey the damage.
My eyes widened in disbelief. As I watched the reflection in the shimmering pool. I saw the gaping cuts that spanned across my face, slowly begin to close. To my utter amazement the cuts seemed to heal. I touched them with my hands not believing the reflection I saw, but I could feel them closing, regenerating.
“What is it!?” Terry said, noticing my shock. I looked up at her and she gasped.
“How is that possible?” All the others saw too. In a few minutes everyone was crowded around me watching in amazement as the cuts vanished before their eyes. After only a few minutes they were gone completely and my face appeared to be back to normal.
I looked down at the symbiote on my arm. “ Is this some kind of side effect of the symbiote?” I asked as confused as ever.
“It can’t be.” Gohn said. “ I have never seen anything like that.” The air buzzed with excitement, amazement, and disbelief, as we debated all the possible reasons.
Finally, after several minutes Terry said. “How about we just go back to the dome. David’s blood tests should be in by now and maybe they will have something to tell us about what is going on.” We all agreed and together we started once again back to the dome.
The rest of our trip was uneventful. We hiked quickly through the ravine, and just as Scyll had promised emerged within sight of the dome. We reentered the dome through the same door we had come out. Terry gave the dead mutant specimen to one of the people that came to us and told them that she would file the report later.
We went straight to the doctors office that I had gone to originally to get the blood work done, eagerly anticipating what we would find out, when we got there.
I was especially curious. I mean when your own body starts doing things you don’t understand you begin to worry.
We all burst into the small office and Caulin immediately said. “ Do you have David’s blood tests back yet?” The doctor looked up slightly startled by our sudden and hurried entrance into his office.
“Yes of course.” He replied calmly. “ I assume you have discovered your friends unique gift.” they all nodded.
“What is wrong with me.” I demanded. Still shaken from everything. “Only a half hour ago I had some beast rip my face off and only a few minutes later its like nothing happened.”
The doctor laughed. “There’s nothing wrong with you, to the contrary there is something extremely right.” He lifted a sheet of leather sheet that seemed to have some writing on it. I assumed that was what the dome used as paper. “ The tests showed that there are several thousand abiotic cells in your body.”
“Abiotic cells? How can something be nonliving and still be a cell?” I asked getting impatient.
The doctor continued. “ They appear to be microscopic machines. They flow through your body in your blood and are constantly repairing things. They seem to break down normally indigestible food particles and use them to multiply themselves and repair damaged tissue in your body.” he paused for a moment to clear his throat. “ I assume that they were engineered back in your generation and where used in some kind of conjunction with your cryogenic sleep to repair some sort of damage you must have sustained.”
I staggered, my mind raced back to the dream I had had. Images of the accident and the voices of the doctors flooded my mind. “Nanotechnology.” I said after several minutes. They all looked at me quizzically. “ That’s what the doctor called it. It was some cutting edge technology, they wanted to use it on me to help me while I was in the coma.”
“Um.. If you were in a coma how do you know what the doctors said?” Gohn asked slightly skeptical.
I closed my eyes and bowed my head, letting out a sigh. “I don’t know.” I replied mildly defeated.
Everyone was silent as we left the office. No one was really sure what to think of the situation as a whole. Caulin looked around at everyone and then said finally, “ What’s wrong with all of you, your acting like this is a bad thing. Its not. This is awesome, David here is practically unkillable.” He laughed. “ I mean who cares if it is a little strange, and he is remembering things he shouldn’t what difference does I make. I mean this is good right?”
Everyone stopped and thought for a moment. “I hate to admit it, but what Caulin said actually makes sense.” Gohn remarked. Then he shuddered. “ That freaks me out more than David’s nano-whatevers.” He laughed as Caulin hit him in the shoulder. We all laughed and shrugged off whatever uncomfortable thoughts we were having.
I was far from settled on the matter though, but Caulin was right. This was really a good thing. I put the thought from my mind and focused on the positive. “So I really kicked butt against those two hairy monsters. Not bad for my first time huh.” I said proudly. The others laughed as the tension broke.
Caulin jumped in and started to go through the fight. “ Yea that was incredible. First, you tore up that one taking its arms off. Then you got blind sighted by the other and yet you were still able to take it down before we could help. I was impressed.”
After that we talked for a long time about the trip. We laughed and marveled at all everything that had happened. Caulin and Gohn couldn’t get over my first fight, even Scyll congratulated me on doing well. Terry just smiled she didn’t say much her mind seemed to be on something else.
After a few minutes while we were still going over the events of the day, Terry said suddenly, “ Hey I forgot something back at the office I’ll catch up with you guys in a minute.” She then turned and jogged back toward the office.”
Caulin arched an eyebrow. “ What was that about?” He shrugged and then continued his conversation about what he had thought about our fight with the squirrel beast. As he and the others continued their discussions, my mind wandered to Terry. I looked back in the direction she had left. She had seemed concerned about something. I didn’t like it. I always thought that I was sensitive to people’s motives and feelings, and Terry definitely hadn’t “forgotten anything at the office”. I sighed there seemed no end the mysteries of this new world. Finally, I shook my head and rejoined the others in their talk which had now turned to an argument about whether or not Caulin had meant to attract the other pig beasts. Me, Gohn, and Scyll all laughed as Caulin unsuccessfully attempted to convince us.

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