“Didn’t know a mutie could, like, you know, mutate,” a private said hesitantly, staring at the mutilated body of the screamwing. A breeze ruffled its wings, and the man froze for a moment.
“Well, now you do,” Campbell growled, heading for the nearest building.
In a tight group, the sec men entered the old structure through a gaping hole in the wall. Most of the ceiling was still intact, but the entire floor was covered with dried leaves. Endless shelves of books covered the walls, protruding into the room as if the walls weren’t enough to hold all of the volumes.
A private ran his hand along a shelf, the books exploding into dusty smoke. Dried and useless. Anything useful had been looted long ago.
Exiting the library, they briefly checked a dirty dining room overgrown with thickets, then a small building with its second floor acting as a roof. The floor was bare ground, and a row of wooden crosses lined the walls, dusty skeletons still attached to the thick beams by rope and nails. The torso of each was intact, but the leg bones were smashed in almost exactly the same place. Tiny pieces of white cloth marked with a faded red cross still clung the skeletons, and one skull had a scalpel buried in its left eye socket. Another had a stethoscope knotted around is neck.
“Whitecoats,” a sec man growled, and spit at the skeletons.
Campbell snorted. “Locals probably busted their legs to make them chill faster.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” a private asked angrily.
“Civilians,” the sergeant agreed. “Dumber than ville boys.”
A sec man appeared in a doorway ahead of them, his face sweaty.
“Hey, Sarge,” he said, licking dry lips. “Sorry that I ran, but that mutie was”
The concussion of the handcannon boomed across the inside of the ruins, making dust rain from the ceiling. The sec man slammed into the wall and slid to the ground, a bloody hole in his arm.
“Strip the coward naked,” Campbell ordered, bolstering his piece, “and leave him alive.”
“No, please,” the man begged as the others advanced and began to rip off his uniform. He tried to stop them, but the blood loss was already stealing the strength from his body. Soon, he was nude in a pool of his own blood. “Sarge, don’t leave me like this! Please!”
A corporal backhanded the cringing man across the face. “We can’t hear the dead, Arnie,” he said, sneering, and kicked the other man directly on the wound.
The pain flared beyond tolerance, and the sec man fainted dead away. Stopping at the doorway on the way out, Campbell waited until the others were outside, then surreptitiously tossed his unconscious brother a sharp knife. Rules be damned. It was the least he could do for family.
By the time Beta team had completed a security sweep of the ruins, Adams was finished with the bear, thick steaks piled in a tin bucket normally used for drawing water from creeks. The scraped skin was attached to the outside stanchions of the LAV with short pieces of rope, the hide dripping with piss and shiny with salt crystals.
“Good job,” Campbell complimented him, inspecting the hide. “That’ll cure fine. Okay, rest period is over. Everybody back in the wag. We still got to find that dish.”
Gratefully, the sec men climbed into the safety of the APC and closed the door, sliding the locking bar with a loud clank. The driver started the diesel engines, and the armored vehicle rolled away from the ruins. Laying abandoned in the middle of the road was a reddish lump. The skinned carcass of the bear glistening in the sunlight, long black lines of insects already marching over the meat, carrying it away piece by piece. As the LAV disappeared into the thickets, a muffled cry rose from inside the ruin of the hospital, then a body hit the ground. Almost instantly, the insects began to angle toward the new bounty of fresh food.
Less than an hour later, the LAV-25 plowed through a line of thorny thickets, and the driver whooped in delight. Campbell smiled and slapped the sec man on the shoulder.