Chapter 3. The General's Motorcade

Seemingly out of nowhere a massive explosion shakes the tower as part of the roof caves in..

After the ringing dies down, Daniel screams for the boy "SILAS!", but there is no response.

He frantically looks around and finds the boy unconscious.. Unconscious but whole.. There is no blood. He must have been knocked out by the blast.

It's time to go. Daniels slings the rifle over his shoulder and picks up the boy. He carries him down the stairs of the tower as fast as he can as rockets detonate around the tower and bullets tear through the air.

Finally they emerge outside and Daniel scans the horizon for anywhere to run to. To run from an entire battalion of tanks, soldiers and heavily armoured war machines.

He carries the boy around buildings and through areas shrouded by heavy bush.. If he could make it to the edge of the forest, they might have a chance, but it is so far away and to get there means walking a long distance through a clearing..there's just no way.

He turns the corner with the boy in his arms, right into the path of heavily armed soldiers.. Their guns raised right at them. More soldiers appear at their flanks.. It's over.

A bullet tears through Daniel's throat. It came from the rear.. The bullet explodes out of the front of his neck in a spray of blood. He drops to his knees and the unconscious boy falls to the ground lying face first against the gravel.

Daniel looks up to the sky, as blood fills his lungs.. "Please dear god.. Please.. I tried my best".."but it wasn't enough.."

Time slows down...a sudden hesitation of the incoming inevitable end as the soldiers stop.

They are looking at the boy on the ground laying face down..His head has utterly separated at the back, opening up like a flower, spilling blood and exposing his brain. Black wires begin to emerge from the cranial cavity.. At first its slow, but they extend rapidly and speed out, reaching towards the soldiers as they back away in fear..

Time speeds up.

The wires spring into action quickly wrapping the soldiers in coils, squeezing their bodies and crushing their rib cages. They vomit blood, but the wires constrict further, squeezing them like balloons, so hard their intestines fly out of their mouths with a violent spray of bile and blood..

More soldiers emerge with guns drawn, but the black wiry tendrils grow new ones, planting themselves deep in the ground while hundreds of others attack the soldiers with a rage and speed that no animal's brain could possibly adjust for.

These living arms of wire are now occupying the space of an entire house, all connected somehow to the inside of the boy's head. A living thing somehow capable of producing size and force exponentially larger than its host.

Huge tanks roll into the town square where all the commotion is and the boy's body cavity breaks apart, revealing more wires that quickly grow into huge spiked, thorny arms that rush towards the tanks, lifting them right off the ground and launching them hundreds of yards away.

Rockets are sent towards the mass of wires and destruction only for them to be snapped out of mid air by black wiry hands and launched right back where they came, destroying the war machines and sending soldiers running. The monstrous entity is absolutely enraged now, pounding against machines and throwing living and dead bodies into the air, smashing them against walls, exploding in blood and organs.. Soldiers and vehicles immediately start to flee as the black dense collection of black branches and wires is now the size of the town square, sending destruction at every angle.. It is almost god-like.. Yet clearly a living thing

Moments later, as all attacking forces are either dead or gone.. The wires begin to retreat.. Slowly shrinking and retreating.. Where there were a thousand wires, there were then 500, 200.. 50.

They slowly but surely retract into what should be the dead body of a young hare, whose body cavity and head cavity are literally torn open and bleeding, but something else is going on.

As the wires retract inside, tiny little ones start pulling the body and head back together.. Soon they are fully closed and what looks like black fluid coats the wounds..

After only a minute or two, the black fluid dissipates and the wounds are gone.. Not even a scar is left, and still the boy is unconscious.

Daniel is now lying on the ground in his last moments.. Barely able to get any air into his already blood filled lungs, yet the entirety of this miracle was set before him in high resolution from beginning to end.

Daniel knew this boy better than the boy knew him, because he was there when they first found him struggling in the incubation chamber. In many ways Daniel was his father. He looked after him and guarded him with a fierceness as he watched him grow from a baby into a young man.

In his last moments he turned his attention back to the god who made him.

"Thank you god.. Thank you.. Im ready.. Please take care of her.. Please show him the way.... Please...."

And that was it. Daniel was no longer of this world. Whatever god or force directs the stars and galaxies took him away to a new place. And it's okay.. It is.. Natural.

The boy lays unconscious, but in his mind he dreams.. He is running through a grocery store trying to find his mother.. He is a child again.

"Mother.....mother are you there?"

He runs down the aisles to the last place he knew she was, but the aisles keep extending as he runs. He cannot reach the edge. Reversing direction he runs to the beginning of the aisle and turns the corner, only to see more aisles..

"Mother!. Mother im scared..." More and more and more and more.. The grocery store has fractalized into infinity reducing everything to nothing.. There is no reason to move.. No purpose.

Out of nowhere, a mist settles just above waist level.. It is black and growing thicker. It coalesces along the aisle shelves, changing from to hundreds of thousands of tiny black wires.. Almost metallic and mechanical, yet clearly organic..

"No.. no no noooo.... Mother MOTHER!!"

The wires extend towards him en masse, reaching towards his body.. Snagging his fur and curling around it in a clinch.. They start to pull, but not as if to bring him towards itself, but rather to bring it towards him..

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" He screams and screams in terror, shrieking like a little girl.

As the mass of wires leaves the shelves, connected to his body like velcro, it arranges itself in front of him, slowly into the shape of a body like his own, black, organic, made of tiny wires constantly moving like tiny fractals.. The black shape stares at him as it moves forward.. Absorbing itself into the boy's body.. It feels so cold, like the bitter bite of frozen metal.."stop.. Please.. I can't breathe.. I can't breathe.. I CANT BREATHE!"

Air rushes into the boy's lungs as he awakens violently from his nightmare sitting up and opening his eyes.. His thoughts and memories flood back into his brain, but looking around, all he sees is devastation.. The torn, bleeding and dead bodies of many great hogs.. Soldiers and officers, upturned tanks and other war machines split into many pieces as if detonated from within.. Fire raging, burning spilled diesel fuel.. The air is toxic.. There is black smoke everywhere.. The ground is covered in deep pools of blood and entrails from what appears to be hundreds of dead bodies ripped apart like Christmas wrapping..

The boy tears off a part of his shirt to use as a breathing filter as he scans the area for.. DANIEL..WHERE IS DANIEL..

He frantically searches, moving over body parts and hot metal.. "DANIEL!" he cries. "DANIEL WHERE ARE YOU!"

It doesn't take long for him to happen on a site he did not want to ever see..

Daniel's body is lying up against the wheel of one of the broken war machines. His eyes are wide open, but there is no life in them.. There is a huge wound on the front of his neck that had bled profusely all over his body and ground around him.. He looks like he has been dead for some time..but how long, the boy did not know.. There was the oddest subtle smile on Daniel's dead face..

The boy sank to his knees.. Tears welling up in his eyes.. His head sinks

"No no no.. no.. why...why" "god.. Why would you.. I can't be alone.. Please no.." but the boy knows there is no one listening, or at least if there is, it's not anyone who gives a damn..

The boy curls up in Daniel's lap like a child...

Camera pans out centred on them to reveal the full extent of the devastation

Fade to black.

Back at the motorcade the destruction is far less severe, but some of those heavy calibre rounds found purchase. In the back seat of the motorcade vehicle number four, the doctor lies bleeding. Bullets whipping through the hull of the armoured car had ripped through his left arm, nearly tearing it right off. Another taken through his lower right rib cage. He is certain it tore into the lung as he is coughing up blood.

"It's not fatal.." He choked and sputtered.. Which is better luck than the guards who had accompanied him. There was nothing left of the guard's head who sat to his left, and the one on the right took it directly in the centre of the chest, obliterating his heart, killing him instantly.

Whoever planned this attack had exceptional skill with a rifle, and these were clearly weapons of the Leadership as no one else could construct something with such precision.. He thought to himself.

Tearing off fabric from part of his sweater with the other arm, he manages to fumble it around the upper part of the destroyed arm, forming a tourniquet.

Good.. The bleeding has stopped there at least. Blood flow from the exposed ribcage is slower.. He should have enough time to get back for real medical attention if any of the other guards outside were left standing..

Before he even finishes the thought, the side door of the car is flung open. A helmeted face appears.. "SIR.. SIR ARE YOU ALRIGHT!"

The doctor's mind starts to swim.. Losing oxygen.. He starts to black out as huge guards lift his body out of the car and beckon for others to bring the stretcher.

Before he completely blacks out, he looks up at the village area near the church.. Thick black smoke rises from the area and buildings are blown apart.

"What happened.. How? Who?" He thought to himself.

Lights out.

He awakens again. Back at the base in the infirmary. He is on the operating table. Tubes running in and out of his body.

He looks over at his arm, but it is no longer there. Instead, a mechanical attachment is fixed to the stump.. He has seen these many times. They connect to a fully mechanical arm. One of the many tech advancements left over from the days of the scientists. Being the right hand man of the Leader himself, the Doctor managed to persuade him to maintain the technology as it would help them win the war. As such the Doctor had access to everything he desired to run his experiments. "Spare no expense" the Leader had said.. "Crush the enemy by any means necessary..".

Whenever the Leader spoke to the Doctor, all pretense of the state religion disappeared. And this was only for him. Whenever the Leader spoke to guards, soldiers or civilians, his religious mask was donned, and he became this charismatic, humble man of the people.. Often praying in public to the deified slain girl who was now patron saint of.. Everything.. Her statues were in every town square. Her image on tapestries and banners on every state building.

The doctor knew it was an act and he fully supported it. By any means necessary was a code he himself lived by. The people were too chaotic and stupid to be trusted with real information. It was squandered on fools.

Anger wells up in the doctors chest for the attack that victimized him and his men. "Who could possibly have the audacity to attack me, and so close to the capital. And who possessed the means to do so so effectively. None of the old scientists remained.. They were wiped out or imprisoned in the earlier days of the war"

But those guns were our technology. It must have been stolen.. Yes.. There had been periodic raids of guard outposts over the last few years. But who?

Black

A few days later, the Doctor is walking around now. He had regained most of his strength though there was still a lot of pain. His new mechanical arm functioned better than the old one, so there was no real loss there. The injury to his pride and confidence was the real injury.

He set about putting a team of medical investigators together to go back to the site of the attack and hunt for clues. They would be accompanied by guards and snipers this time. He was going to be very careful moving forward.

"And when I find out who led this attack.. Who pulled the trigger.. Well. There are no words for the joy that will fill my heart as I extract my vengeance on them , their families, their children, their homes.. Their everything."

That afternoon the Doctor and his militia arrive on site. Armed to the teeth. No chances are being taken.

They survey the destruction up close, looking under every piece of warped burnt metal, turning over every body. Collecting blood samples from every pool.

The Doctor is mystified however.. This spectacular level of destruction is something even he would have a hard time replicating.. It doesn't make sense.. "Who or what could possibly tear apart reinforced steel designed to sustain a direct rocket attack.. Nothing except... wait.. No no no," he has seen this before.. Well not to this extent of devastation, but the overall patterns are the same..

"It cannot be"..He marvels to himself.. That this could be the very same force the Leaders used to win the war from afar.. The same life force dropped into village after village to utterly destroy the residents... The very same force they found long ago in that walking corpse that came out of the deepest parts of the Grandfather Mountains..

A coldness runs through his body. He wasn't prepared for this possibility. He isn't prepared for this possibility. This life force could very well be the most powerful and destructive force on earth, but until now, only the Leadership wielded this power. It. Can't. Be.

"Wrap it up men!", He commands. He then orders one of the assistants to swab the torn armour laying all over the ground. "Let's get these samples back to the lab for immediate DNA testing". He does not reveal any other thoughts. There are big questions that need answering.

Two hours later they are in the laboratory and the samples they collected are now sitting in petri dishes.

After all the testing comes back, all the DNA are identified.

The dead guards of course.. But he knew that.

Two more results came back that struck the doctor as if he was stabbed in the stomach with it.

Species 2: Project X (unknown mutation)

Species 3: Hare

Before the shock has a chance to reverberate through his mind, it is immediately replaced with a rush of anger and his countenance grows dark. "Hare"

Fade to black.