Traffic growled beneath us as we parked our van on the off-ramp and killed the engine. In the confines of our vehicle we did a radio check, gear check, ammo check, and a check-in with command to keep them updated. Once we were ready, we loaded our supplies into our backpacks and headed out.
It was near dark now. The sun was a faint orange sigh on the horizon, having surrendered the landscape to shadow. The traffic formed parallel strings of red and yellow and white lights tugging along in the nothingness. I took in a breath of rich, sweet air when Donovan stepped up beside me.
“Come on,” he said. “We got this bro.”
Donovan wasn’t his real name, just as my real name wasn’t Kovics, but for some measure of opsec those are the names I’m sticking with. We worked for a three-letter agency, not the one you’re thinking of, although they do keep in touch with that one. Our objective was seven kilometers northwest, up a disused municipal road that cut through the wooded hills. We could have driven our van up, but our SOP called for maintaining a low profile this close to civilian areas. We wore civilian clothes and kept our weapons and equipment concealed. If anyone asked, we were just casual day hikers. At night. With forty-pound packs. SOPs could be stupid like that.
Our trek took us from the backwoods municipal road, through the dense underbrush, to a neglected civilian hiking trail. The walk to our objective should’ve been serene, but neither of us could let our guard down. Our mission profile meant we were bound to run into trouble. Serious trouble. We were an incursion team, the ones called in when things had gone wrong. Our first bad omen came when we found a breach in the fence along the trail. The soft electric hum was gone out on this section, meaning the whole sector’s containment field was compromised. We notified command and they said they’d send in another repair team. More importantly, drone patrols didn’t find any hostiles had escaped the containment field. At least we had that going for us.
What disturbed me most about this breach was how neat it was. Snipped open and pushed aside, likely with wire cutters. The fence wasn’t electric, but it did have sonic emitters to deter anyone or anything who got too curious. Whoever did this came equipped for the job. This was the danger of keeping open civilian trails this close to our containment fence. We should’ve sealed off everything within a kilometer radius of the containment fence, but the local government complained that outdoor recreation was an important source of revenue, and if the county’s fortunes declined, more people would take up hunting for subsistence, putting more people in harm’s way. It was a hard compromise, but it seemed like a necessary one. Now I’m not so sure.
We hiked further uphill until we reached the gate for the containment fence. There were three around the perimeter, and we had to make sure only one was ever open at once. The things on the other side of this fence were like mosquitoes looking for any opening to escape and seek blood. We had to be quick and efficient. Swipe card, pass through, cover our partner who did the same, check fence integrity, radio command, proceed. It ran like clockwork.
Crossing the fence felt like crossing into another world. The trees, the hills, the sky all held dark secrets waiting to swallow us. We could no longer take our safety for granted inside the containment zone. Donovan drew and racked his HK45 pistol. I drew mine as well, not because I thought we’d need it out, but because it would calm his nerves. I needed him on point and sharp. Too many bad signs had piled up.
The tower on the dam came into view once we rounded the hillside. Originally it was an intake tower, feeding water into the dam’s turbines, but this one was much taller. Our organization bought the land, including the dam, and turned it into a monitoring outpost. The instruments on the intake tower kept track of the hostiles and fed data back to command. Building over existing structures, while preserving the integrity of the dam, took several engineering miracles, but it was necessary given the enormity of the threat we were facing.
I suppose now is as good a time as any to tell you what exactly we were dealing with. Nobody knew where they came from, how their anatomy worked, or how they multiplied. Part of the purpose of this station was to figure that out. Their official name is leucis xenopellis, but we refer to them in such affectionate terms as “Paleskins”, “Skinners”, “Skin-eaters”, or “Lima-Xrays”. Whatever the name, they’re all voracious parasites. Pallid, empty skins that glide towards their prey and envelop them completely before slowly digesting them from the outside in. While they do this, they control their host’s body and hijack their senses. There’s no way to remove a Paleskin without killing the host, though the host is usually grateful for death by then. Studies on dead Paleskins show them to all be genetically identical and biologically asexual. Our scientists don’t even understand how they move, let alone how they control their hosts.
All that mattered to us was how we could kill them. Low-penetration, high tissue damage rounds worked best, which was why Donovan and I carried pistols with 45-caliber exploding hollow-points. I readied my pistol. We were right in the middle of Paleskins territory, and the bastards could be clever ambush predators. Donovan looked forward, glancing up at the sky for aerial attacks, while I covered our six and scanned the waters of the dam. Some Skinners were known to mimic the ripples of the water to slip closer.
As we crossed the dam’s rim, a crisp night wind blew by. We froze. The rustling of the trees, the rippling of the dam water, the flutter of dry late-summer leaves, all of these could serve as cover for the Paleskins to move on us. We flipped on the tac-lights under our pistols, throwing beams of icy white light over the dam. Though we both knew each other’s fear, we didn’t dare admit it to one another. Talking about it would make the abstract real.
Once the winds died down, we both nodded and picked up the pace. We’d been lucky not to encounter any Paleskins so far, but we didn’t want to test the limits of that luck. Maintaining overwatch, we half-jogged across the bridge to the tower.
As with the fence, the lack of an electric hum was disconcerting. The monotonous buzz was part of an electromagnetic scrambling system that deterred Paleskins from getting near sensitive equipment. For the tower to be this eerily quiet meant something was faulty or sabotaged. I didn’t want to contemplate the latter.
The tower was divided into two sections, the old tower and the annex. The old tower was the original structure, retrofitted and crammed with cables, battery packs, computer banks, backup generators, and a few slim lockers of backup supplies. The annex was the stark metal structure built on top of the old tower, and this was what housed the sensors we used to monitor the Paleskins.
Donovan climbed the rusty ladder first, me covering him, before I did likewise. The interior of the old tower was concrete flooring with white tile walls and rectangular windows with arched tops. If it weren’t for the scientific equipment and threat of skin-eating abominations, the place might’ve been nice to live in. The views were spectacular.
Iridescent puddles caught my eye when I reached the old tower floor, then the smell of gasoline hit me. Donovan gestured over. The backup generators. Someone had knocked them over and opened the fuel tanks, spilling them. They’d even drained the jerry cans. I shone my flashlight along the wall to find the main power cable severed, ax marks visible in the wall.
“Fuck,” I hissed under my breath.
“Someone’s pulling some Scooby-Doo shit here,” Donovan said with a sardonic chuckle.
We climbed up a fresher metal ladder to the annex. That was where the real carnage lay. Several delicate servers, monitors, and control panels had been hacked or smashed with both ends of an ax. Worse still, there were no signs of the weapon or the perpetrator. I poked my head out the annex window and shone my light up the tower side. The sensors looked intact. Maintenance techs were going to hate us, but we had to call this in.
“Command, this is Little Fox,” Donovan said. “We’ve found more signs of suspected sabotage activity in the monitor tower annex. No sign of the suspect. Over.”
“Affirmative,” command replied. “Interrogative, can you provide an exact damage assessment? Over.”
“Well shit, I didn’t bring the equipment manifest for all this stuff,” Donovan said. “I don’t even know what half these things do. How about we take some photos and send them to you? Over.”
There was a brief pause over the radio.
“Little Fox, this is command. Proceed with your plan. Send us as many pictures as necessary, then get out of there. Out.”
We pulled out our phones and took photos of the damage. Once we had what we needed, we hit “Send” and prepared to clear out. There was only one small, inane problem. The pictures weren’t loading fast enough. Our complex encryption, combined with our location in the middle of nowhere, meant we had piss-poor bitrate. Donovan suggested we head back while the pictures loaded, till I pointed out that would take even longer due to the trees and hills obstructing the signal. Worse still, we wouldn’t be able to turn on our EM emitters while the pictures were loading, leaving us vulnerable to ambush. As much as I hated it, the tower was our best and most defensible position to load these photos quickly.
With our phones balanced on the windowsill to upload, we unslung our backpacks and prepared for the worst. We took out our battle belts and attached them to our Velcro inner belts, checked our mags, and strapped on helmets. We’d considered plate carriers, but these were too heavy, and wouldn’t protect us from the Paleskins anyway. They would only work for friendly fire, and friendly fire might be needed if a Paleskin got us. The Paleskins were virtually silent, but had very high body temperatures, so thermal optics were essential. The Paleskins couldn’t see, but they did have olfactory and electromagnetic senses, similar to a shark. We had EM emitters that would scramble their senses and make it hard for them to pinpoint us, but we couldn’t activate them while the phones were uploading. We simply had to hunker down and wait.
The phones took interminable minutes to upload. While the phones uploaded and the sun oozed through the treeline, we ate some bars, drank some water, did some basic stretches, and peeked the windows for any signs of the hostiles. Donovan started getting stir-crazy, practicing drawing and holstering his guns over and over again, while I steadied my nerves with a few nicotine patches. Dip was a nasty habit I’d picked up in the military, and after a bad throat cancer scare, my wife nagged me into the slightly-less unhealthy habit of chewing gum and nicotine patches.
By the time the phones were halfway done, Donovan had drawn his pistol more times than John Wayne, and I was jittery from the seven nicotine patches I’d slapped on my arms.
“Kinda’ wished they’d installed a bathroom up here,” Donovan said. “Don’t want to have to go all the way to the main building.”
“Dude,” I said. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. No-one’s gonna arrest you for taking a leak out the window.”
“It’s a number two brother,” he frowned.
I heard a rustling outside the window.
“Hold it,” I whispered.
“That’s what I’ve been doing.”
“No, hold that thought.”
He realized what I meant.
Outside, I could see a lone figure walking across the bridge. Its movements were stiff and erratic, as if it were being tugged along by the invisible strings of a deranged puppeteer. I knew what it was, but not who it had been.
“Command, this is Clever Pig,” I said. “Interrogative. Are there any personnel on this detail unaccounted for? Over.”
“Clever Pig, this is command. All personnel remain accounted for. Over.”
“Copy that. We have probable ID on a Lima X-ray host. Check the local missing persons reports. Out.”
By the time I’d finished my transmission, the Paleskin’s host had gotten too close to the tower for me to get an angle on him. I told Donovan to get ready. We both could hear the thing climbing up, one halting step at a time. The ladder to the old tower was out of line with the ladder to the annex, and from our position we couldn’t get an angle on the top of the former. We could only wait for this thing to get underneath us. Donovan lit the base of the ladder with his flashlight, but no sign of it. We heard it shuffling around downstairs, then a sickly wet peeling sound, then silence.
I realized its play.
The Paleskin slid through the opposite window, right behind us. I spun around and pumped rounds through the thing as it opened up like a hungry umbrella. It collapsed, flapping and spasming on the floor, and went still.
“Shit!” Donovan hissed.
“Get the phones off the windowsill,” I said. “I’ll clear the bodies.”
While he grabbed our phones, I heaved the Paleskin out the window. It sounded trivial in this situation, but in these tight quarters any obstruction could be fatal. Up close, the Paleskins didn’t feel like skin, more like some kind of light, wet silk that slid easily off your hands. It was hard to believe something this thin and delicate could overwhelm a grown man, but I’d seen it more times than I wanted to remember.
After tossing the Paleskin I slid down the ladder to dispose of its host. There wasn’t much left of him besides bloody bones, tendon, and entrails. It was too disgusting for me to even poke with my boot. I pushed it aside with a chair and climbed back up.
“Upload’s at seventy-nine percent,” Donovan said. “This position’s getting dicey.”
“Yeah, but it’s still our best spot to upload the data,” I said. “If we engage any more, we should clear out.”
Donovan gave me my phone. I’d lost track of how many rounds I fired at that Skinner, so I reloaded. By now we were deadly quiet. I could hear the blood pounding in my head and thundering off the inside of my helmet. Between the adrenaline and nicotine patches, I was way too amped up. I had to steady myself, first my heart, then by breathing, then my hands that held the gun. I entered a kind of zen state where my senses were sharper and clearer, and my mind worked more quickly. I would need that for what came next.
There was a faint flutter like the streamers of a kite, followed by wet plops against the side of the tower. We put our backs to one another and steadied our weapons. Two more Paleskins came slithering up the tower walls. They tried to slide around the windowsill to avoid our bullets, so we fired once they’d fully entered the room. Like the previous one, these two fell flapping and twitching like leathery bedsheets.
“How are we on the uploads?” Donovan said while reloading.
I reloaded again and pulled out my phone.
“Eighty-six percent!” I said. “Just another couple minutes till…fuck.”
Outside, under the moonlight, came a whole flock of Paleskins silently gliding like gossamer kites. I counted at least twenty of them coasting the winds in those disgusting undulating movements. This was unheard of. Paleskins were usually solo ambush hunters, sometimes they’d attack in groups of two or three, but this was a coordinated group attack. There were more Skinners in this flock than I’d seen in all my previous missions.
“What’s going on?” Donovan said. “Talk to me Kovics.”
“Skinners,” I roared. “A whole fuckload of them pouring out of the sky! Fuck the uploads.”
We slid down both ladders and dashed across the bridge. Several Paleskins dive-bombed us from the sky, opening up at the last second to envelope us. I fired only at the ones that were on top of us; I didn’t have enough bullets for them all. As we ran, the wind picked up and more Paleskins got blown off-course, splashing into the water on either side of us. This literally saved our skins, but also meant we had to deal with attacks from more angles.
As we neared the end of the bridge, I just noticed a patch of concrete looked cleaner than the others. It pulled out from under me, and a Paleskin reared up off the concrete floor. It opened up wide, revealing a dark red interior lined with short, splinter-like teeth and fibers. The thing was lining itself up to take me all at once when Donovan put three rounds through it. I didn’t even wait for the thing to die before jumping up and running with him.
By now most of the Paleskins had slipped beneath the reservoir water, where they could dive to avoid our bullets. They could glide and swim unnervingly fast, but on land they could barely catch up to a running human. This was even more so on rough terrain. Once we made it to the woods, they wouldn’t be able to attack from the air, and would have a harder time keeping up. Solo Paleskins could ambush us from behind a tree, but it was better than the whole swarm. We were working on least bad options now.
Donovan dispatched a Paleskin that leaped out of the water, slithered across the leaves, and lunged at us. With that, we bolted through the woods. We alternated rear guard, with one of us pivoting to fend off any Skinners that got too close. Each time we did this we sounded off. It would be too easy to lose track of one another.
We made it deeper into the woods, out of reach of the Paleskins for now. The only noise we could hear of them was the rustle of dirt and underbrush as they scrambled over it, but this was far away. Now we needed to orient ourselves.
We’d near-sprinted through the woods for who-knew-how-long, avoiding trails so we could slow our enemy’s pursuit, but this left us completely lost. Being lost in the woods at night would be bad for any civilian hiker, but in our situation it was immeasurably worse. Our phones’ navigation was spotty, there were no landmarks, and the moon and stars were smothered in dark clouds. I started to get flashbacks to my worst experience in the military; not combat, not the bureaucracy, but land-nav training. I actually wished I’d brought a goddamn compass.
I started to lose my nerve when Donovan shone his flashlight through the tree canopy. I asked him what the fuck he was doing, but he shushed me. If there was one rule we’d agreed upon, it was always respect the shush. He kept walking along, lighting up the canopy with his tac-light, until he spotted what he was looking for.
“There!” he said. “See?”
I peered up through the beam.
“Power lines,” he said. “There’s only one set of ‘em with that particular arrangement, and since we ran from the dam—”
“We follow that way. Fuckin’ nice dude. Gonna’ deliver these phones to command personally.”
We traced a straight path along the power lines, followed it, then looked every few meters to make sure we weren’t wandering off course. All the while we tried to stay one meter away from every large tree. Less risk of ambush The whole thing settled into a rhythm: walk, line check, rear check, sound off. I let my heart and breathing slow down. The flock of Paleskins that had dive-bombed us was far away now. The wind picked up, tousling the trees first, then playing with the leaves at our feet. It was a relaxing sound, almost like rain against the roof of a car. We’d made it past the danger.
Something in that breeze set Donovan in a coughing fit. I shrugged it off as his allergies. They acted up at weird times of the year. For this I gave him a pass for not sounding off several times. Through the black fingers of the branches, I could see light. There was a leg of a transmission tower with lights at its base for the maintenance techs. I figured it would be a good spot to take a breather. The trees would be cleared out at the base of the tower, minimizing any cover the Paleskins could use. I leaned against the tower and started to make my suggestion to Donovan when I realized he wasn’t behind me.
“Donovan?” I said. “Donovan? You there?”
No response.
“Little Fox, this is Clever Pig,” I said over the radio. “I’m at the base of a transmission tower. Recommend we take a break here for a few minutes before proceeding. How copy?”
The radio returned sliding and squelching sounds overlaid with static. I already knew what this meant, but I didn’t want to believe it. No amount of mental preparation could have readied me for what came next.
Donovan, no, the thing controlling Donovan, shuffled into the light, a misshapen humanoid figure of rippling flesh. The thing had completely enveloped him and was eating through him with sickening undulations of that white, glistening skin. I could hear small chewing sounds like insects gnawing on wood, smell the blood dripping from the seams where the thing had closed around him. It had removed his helmet and backpack, and had probably chewed through his clothes and skin.
It must’ve attacked him under the cover of that breeze. The coughing I’d heard must’ve been him being consumed. I hadn’t even noticed. How could I not have noticed?
“Donovan?” I said. “What’s up buddy? You had a bad fall?”
I said this to fool the Skinner as much as to fool myself. The Paleskin could probably hear what Donovan heard. It could see through his now-lidless, bloodshot eyes. I moved in closer to make what came next easier.
“We all fall down sooner or later,” I said. “No shame in it. I…I guess this is it then?”
The Paleskin was too embedded to safely remove. The worst part was that he was still in there, still aware, still feeling himself getting eaten alive while being jerked around. Donovan was almost literally a dead man walking. The only questions were how long, and how painful, it would be.
“You remember our first patrol out here?” I had to keep talking so the thing eating my teammate, my friend, wouldn’t notice me reach for my pistol. “It was beautiful in the autumn. The colors were amazing. You said you could live your whole life and not see leaves like that.”
By then I’d managed to get in close to Donovan and slip my pistol from its holster. I held it at hip level, just under his, its, line of sight. My gun shouldn’t have been the last thing he saw.
“It’s been an honor.”
In one fluid motion I saluted him and fired twice. The first round punched through his solar plexus. The second went between his collarbones as he fell back, exiting through the back of his neck. He was dead before he hit the ground. The abomination eating my friend thrashed and tried to unpeel itself from its host, but I emptied the rest of my mag into it.
I looked away, took a moment to collect myself, then called it in.
“Command, this is Clever Pig. Little Fox is KIA. Repeat. Little Fox is KIA and currently irretrievable. Proceeding to exfil. Over.”
“Copy that, Clever Pig. Sending a retrieval squad to your current location. Over.”
“Copy that. Note that the Lima-Xrays have shown more coordinated behavior than before. They appear to be cooperating in groups of at least twenty. I highly recommend larger and more heavily-armed elements for operations in the containment zone. Over.”
“Solid copy. We’ll make note of that as we update procedures. Out.”
I took Donovan’s tags, keys, cards, and phone, then I ran the rest of the way through the woods. Now I had to pull double-duty. I had to keep following the power lines, scanning the trees, looking behind me. Without Donovan I had to provide my own rear security.
Donovan.
There was no time to think about that now. I did what I needed to, and whatever errors on my part led to that, I would face them later. What was most important was making sure he didn’t die for nothing.
Eventually I reached the containment fence and followed along until I found the gate. I swiped my card, exited, slammed it shut, radioed command to update them, then kept running. I probably made it halfway down the trail before I had to puke. Whether it was exhaustion, nicotine overdose, or what I’d just had to do, the nausea hit me like a fist to the gut. I ended up on all fours, retching and heaving up what little I had eaten. It took a while before I could stand up straight again. I probably needed food more than ever, but I had no appetite. Instead I took a few gulps of water and continued.
Before I could reach the van, I remembered I needed to switch back to civilian cover. A guy in a ballistic helmet and tactical gear, running full-tilt through the woods, would attract attention even out in these parts. I ducked behind a large tree, where I put my helmet, battle belt, kneepads, and comms gear in my backpack. I slid a concealed holster in my waistband, with a compact Glock to go with it, then untucked my shirt to cover it. Before I returned to the trail I checked the ammo in the magazine and racked the slide. I was done being complacent.
Our van was still parked on the off-ramp, passing cars lighting its silhouette. In my state, that van might as well have been a cozy house with a hot meal. I pulled out the keys to unlock it, the lights blinked. What they showed made my stomach drop. The flashing interior lights showed ax marks on the hood, the headlights, and the windshield. I felt along the side of the van to find the tires had been axed as well. They looked to be the same size as the ax marks in the dam tower.
I drew my pistol. Whoever did this couldn’t be far. First I had to secure the perimeter before I updated command. I pied each corner of the van, expecting the saboteur to be behind it. What I hadn’t thought was to peek underneath.
A white hand shot out from under the van and yanked my foot out from under me. I slammed into the asphalt, fireworks and bolts of pain shooting off in the back of my skull. Someone scuttled out from under the van, dragging an ax. The assailant raised the ax and brought it down between my legs as I scrambled out of the way. He brought it up again, much faster than a normal human could. I raised my pistol but my head was still throbbing. I couldn’t steady my sights before he swung again, but I could roll away.
This failed attack put him closer to me, and I closed the rest of the gap. I got up, got inside his reach, and jammed the ax up against his neck, but he shoved me back with shocking force. As I stumbled back, trying to keep my footing, the man lunged, preparing to take a baseball batter’s swing. The next move would be the last for one of us. I exhaled and fired. The man crumpled at my feet, his skin rippling and convulsing as I stepped away. I kicked the ax aside. Collecting myself, I checked my one magazine for this gun. Three rounds left, plus one in the chamber.
There was no time to pull out my radio to relay this to command, so I used my encrypted cell phone instead. This area had decent cell service and could finally finish uploading those pictures. I texted them my situation, along with pictures of the ruined van. Opening the hood revealed the battery was destroyed and the timing belts cut. There was no repairing this thing, not out here.
Command was definitely alarmed to learn that Paleskin hosts were not only outside the containment zone, but were actively sabotaging equipment. They had me check the inside of the van. Luckily the host hadn’t breached the door, so the equipment hadn’t been compromised. Still, it was too dangerous to stay here, and I couldn’t risk civilians or Skinners uncovering this. I set thermite charges to the engine block, the equipment, and the fuel tank, then detonated.
The thermite engulfed the van in a fireworks display of white flames, hissing sparks, and smoke. The ignited gas added an extra orange plume to the angry white sizzle. It was a beautiful and terrifying spectacle, and at any moment it could spread beyond my control. A stray spark could burn the whole forest down, which to me wouldn’t be too bad an outcome. When the flames died down, I ran down the ramp to flag a passing motorist. There weren’t many cars on the road now, and the few that were would definitely notice this.
A few cars passed me out of annoyance, but one slowed down to pick me up. It was a black hatchback with rust on the wheel wells and a busted taillight, but it ran. The driver was a wiry middle-aged woman with faded blonde hair and too much eye makeup.
“Car trouble?” she said.
“Something like that,” I said, grateful I didn’t have to invent a cover story. “Name’s Kovics. Yours?”
“Janice,” she said. “Janice Willows. Hop in.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You can drop me off at the next exit after this.”
“You’re welcome.”
I threw my backpack in the back seat and got in the passenger seat. She took off down the highway. While she drove, I leaned away from her and texted command. The plan was to get dropped off, walk to the nearby town, then lay low until a rescue squad could pick me up.
“You come from the woods?” she said.
“No,” I said. “Was driving a shipment of fireworks for the county fair. Lost control of the brakes, so I had to slow down with that off ramp. Guess it wasn’t enough to save the fireworks though.”
“Heh, that must have been rough.”
“Sure was. Now I’ve got to explain to my boss and the organizers what happened. They’re going to have my ass for this.”
“Sure sounds rough.”
The more Janice spoke, the more I realized something was off. Her tone was flat and stilted. She glanced at me every time she spoke, with unblinking eyes. I had a niece who was on the spectrum, and while she could sound a bit monotone, this was different. She sounded more like some kind of malfunctioning animatronic imitating human speech. I was glad our trip was short. The warmth in the car was getting stifling.
My phone buzzed with a new text from command. They’d run their analysis, and found three missing persons cases reported in the last five days. Their names included Robert Bales, Jimmy Lee, and Janice Willows.
Janice Willows.
My initial hope was that she didn’t know who I was and would just drop me off. I could report this to command and they’d send a hunter-killer squad after her, it. When she blazed past my exit I realized that wasn’t the case. As long as I was trapped in a running vehicle, she had control. I gauged my options. If I shot her, she could flip the car and kill us both. A bad outcome, but not the worst. The worst would be letting her drive me off somewhere she could control. I could wait for her to stop, then shoot, but she had a full tank of gas and that could be a while. A third option crept into my head. It was crazy, stupid even, but it was the only way I could regain the initiative.
I seized the steering wheel and ran the car off road, grinding against the guardrail to a stop. The thing that took Janice didn’t even scream. Instead she glared at me, eyes turning bloodshot, and tried to grab at me. I kicked out the passenger side window, but before I could get out, she grabbed me and wrenched me out the other side. Once again, I was flat on my back, on the pavement, with a Paleskin host looming over me. I drew my pistol, but she slung me against the side of the car before I could fire.
As I lay coughing and gasping on the ground, the Paleskin host went back to Janice’s car to get something from the glovebox. It pulled out a gleaming Taurus nine-millimeter with a hot pink frame. I was the one who’d decided against bringing body armor, and now I was going to die to hot pink garbage.
The trigger clicked several times. The Paleskin didn’t seem to realize it had to chamber a round first, but I’d chambered mine. I fired twice, grazing the thing’s shoulder. It stumbled behind the car, putting the engine block between me and it. I could hear that sickening unpeeling sound and knew what would come next.
Before I could right myself, the Paleskin flowed under the car and latched on to my arm. Every part of my skin it touched was consumed in burning needles. I screamed and bashed the thing with the heel of my pistol, to no avail. I should have shot it but I wasn’t thinking clearly anymore, just panicking. Fear, hunger, fatigue, and my injuries were all taking their toll now. That, and the nicotine patches.
Nicotine patches.
The Skinner crept further up my arm until it hit a nicotine patch. The patch came off in its grip, then it spasmed and unpeeled itself from my arm. There was no time to process what this meant. While the Paleskin thrashed on the ground, I put my last two rounds through its center. It continued flailing and lashing out at me, even with all those bullets through it, so I grabbed the pink Taurus, racked the slide, and pumped another five rounds into it. It gave a final spasm and went still.
I leaned against the wrecked car, thinking how much I would’ve wanted a smoke or a chew right about now. Instead, I could only slap on another few nicotine patches. They’d saved my life twice now. I could now claim to be the only person to have survived a Paleskin infestation.
My hitchhiking days were over. I texted command and waited at the side of the road with my backpack, that lady’s pink handgun my only defense in case more Skinners showed up. When a rescue squad pulled up in a nondescript van, I actually wondered if they were Paleskin hosts too. It took the EMT drawing blood from her finger to convince me otherwise. Only then, after all that, did I let myself be helped.
They bandaged my partially-flayed arm, took samples, and treated me for broken ribs. That, and of course nicotine poisoning. The three missing persons were recovered and repatriated back to their loved ones, their deaths ruled homicides by an at-large serial killer. In that sense, they’re right. They found Donovan’s partially-consumed remains and repatriated them back to his family. They told them the usual, that his death had been quick and he’d died serving his country. The truth was both better and worse. His death had been slow and agonizing, one of the worst imaginable, but he had died in service to something far bigger than any flag. His service was to humanity.
Since that incident, we’ve made radical changes to our containment protocols. The hiking trail is now closed off. Sentries now regularly patrol the containment fence. The backup generators are now solar-powered. Incursion teams like the one I was in are no longer pairs, but five-man squads with rifles, shotguns, and body armor. They’re currently working on a topical nicotine ointment to deter Paleskin predation.
Things changed at home too. I spent weeks at home recovering after that Paleskin partially flayed my arm. It needed skin grafts and an experimental regenerative therapy, but the external damage slowly healed. I don’t know if the internal damage ever will. The atmosphere in the house became tense for a time. Part of it was my fault. I still grappled with what happened to Donovan. To my wife I was a different person after that night. I had to dig deep into myself to dredge up some of who I was before all that, but it was hard.
The thing that saved our relationship was working out compromises. I swore I would never argue with my wife about nicotine patches ever again. I was committing myself to getting off all forms of tobacco. In exchange, we no longer use white sheets at home.