Infestation Cubed. James Axler

and everyday struggle for life.

      Grant towered over the people who had populated the camp. Young and poorly fed, dark eyes tracking his every step, children stopped their chores to watch him closely.

      Grant was something that people didn’t see every day. Well over six feet tall, with a powerful body crammed into a suit made of skintight space-age polymers, he was an impressive sight. His skin was dark, being an African American, but his tone was even deeper than the sunburned flesh of the people who lived in the wiregrass region. The people here were a mix of ethnicities, ranging from Caucasian to American Indian, and all of them had been sun-roasted to a similar bronzed hue several shades lighter than Grant’s.

      It was the size, the easy power that he carried in his stride, that attracted the most attention. His own attention was drawn to the fact that he saw very few men.

      Demothi had said that the raiders had been persistent in attacking this particular camp, stealing away with the few men who had managed to escape the initial harvests by the Hooded Ones. Seeing the makeup of the population of the camp was still a surprise to Grant.

      Close to three hundred people were present. The raiders didn’t seem to be interested in women, which was unusual. In his dealings with pirates and bandits, Grant had never known them to pass up the chance to take females into captivity. If they couldn’t be used for easy sexual gratification, they were often easy to cow into servitude, made to do the chores that the cold-bloods felt were beneath their interests.

      Suwanee had been quiet as they walked along, her face drooped in sullen shadow. She’d only looked up to navigate particularly soft and spongy terrain, struggling to keep her balance like the rest of them. Grant had attributed that to her distrust of the newcomers among them—himself, Kane and Rosalia—but with the gender imbalance in the camp, he was starting to understand the anger seething just below her surface.

      The people here were quiet, focusing on menial tasks out of the need to distract themselves from the losses in their families. Grant could figure why Kane had been astute enough to restrain himself from opening fire on the Hooded Ones. Between the disgusting growths and the electronics attached to their heads, the men they had battled were more drones and victims than actual villains. Something was spreading an infestation among the men, creating an army that would be under long-distance control. The electronics had to be operated by cybernetic impulse, the growths some form of parasite that had either hallucinogenic or will-numbing excretion.

      Grant rubbed his brow. “You’ve been hanging around Brigid too much.”

      Kane paused, looking over his shoulder at his friend. “Thinking about what’s happening to this camp?”

      “It’s like she’s still here with us,” Grant answered. “I can almost hear her talking about mind-control secretions.”

      “You’d almost think we were capable of learning, eh?” Kane asked.

      “We’d be damned fools if we didn’t. Other than that, this is pretty grim shit,” Grant said. “I don’t see a man who isn’t as healthy as Demothi around, unless we’re looking at 12 or under.”

      “That’s what I made out, too,” Kane said. “About 300 here, we can see about another 150 men, given the adult women present?”

      “One hundred and fifty men,” Grant murmured. “That’s a lot of people wearing those funky blobs.”

      “An army,” Kane added. “Minus two, and they died because we damaged them.”

      “I know that I was looking for a real knockout past those heavy hoods,” Grant said. “What about you?”

      “I was tired of the guy I was fighting getting back up,” Kane said. “I wasn’t aiming to kill him, though.”

      “The one Rosie shot, he took a chest full of bullets,” Grant added. “I don’t think he’ll last too long. He’ll bleed out but he didn’t die.”

      Kane frowned. “Not right away, which means if they come at us in force, we’re going to need a lot of luck or head shots to put them down.”

      “You’re talking about the freaks?” Rosalia asked.

      Kane nodded. “Especially the one you tried to chill with a full magazine.”

      “Still, you two did well enough dealing with them when you weren’t trying to leave them dead,” Rosalia replied. “We can’t say that they’re unstoppable.”