CHAPTER 52: Need to be More
Ron pulled into the parking area of the scrapyard. The police cruisers and Sentinel Army cars were still parked there. The area was both messy and orderly for what it was. All the scrapyard’s vehicles were parked haphazardly, and its machinery was completely still. The area was unnaturally quiet, almost oppressively.
Two large men, bulging with both muscle and fat, stood in the middle of the open space, staring into the piles of sorted scrap. They wore heavy leather aprons over jeans and sweaty t-shirts. Their faces were twisted in fear, sweat pouring off them as they concentrated on something unseen. Ron’s hackles rose as he looked at them and waited for Joshua Clemens, Adam’s dad, to get out of the car.
The mission to the scrapyard had been more casual in its setup than the elf raid, mostly due to Adam’s impatience, and hours had gone by since Ron had been notified that they arrived here.
The rifts could cut off phone and radio signals, so Ron hadn’t been too concerned, however he had wondered why the communications officer that was supposed to stay outside hadn’t kept them up to date on the situation.
The lack of communication had stretched on, starting to concern him more than he expected, but after four hours of no news, Ron had received an emergency call from the manager of the scrapyard. Apparently, something bad had happened and only Adam was left. He even said that Adam might be dead, though Ron couldn’t imagine that being the case. Joshua had insisted on coming with him and loaded the car with 10 gallons of orange juice and piles of sandwiches that Adam’s mom had begun keeping ready due to Adam’s monstrous appetite. An Adam sized emergency meal kit.
“Hello,” Ron tried greeting the men several times to no response. A hand placed on the shoulder of one of the men caused him to jump higher than a man of his weight should be able to.
“Wha...buh…er…hey,” the man gasped. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”
“Sorry about that. You weren’t responding. I’m Detective Baker. You called about the situation? Can you please explain what happened?”
“Yeah. I can…yeah. I’m Earnest and this is Dale. Well, those kids and the cops went off to the invader hole. It was quiet at first, then we heard banging, like cars crashing into each other. That only lasted for a few minutes, but then there was an earthquake. Our piles shook and some even fell. Afterwards we heard a beast roaring. We were rightly terrified and got inside the crane, up tall, to hide.
“Then the pounding started. It sounded like the ground was being jackhammered in slow motion. Boom, boom, boom, right. It kept going on for hours. When it stopped, we waited awhile and then went to check it. We took a truck in case we had to run, and all the drive paths were cluttered up with scrap thrown around.
“But when we got to the hole it was crazy, like a war had happened. The hole with the black spot in it was only around fifteen feet wide before. Now it was like fifty feet. The four piles of cars around it were collapsed with cars thrown all over the place. Ground was blown up with new holes everywhere. In the middle of it was a dead body, all burned and messed up. It was scarier than a movie, I tell you.”
“Can you show us to the scene?” asked Ron.
The man identified as Dale swallowed hard. “I ain't going. You’re on your own boss.”
Earnest shivered. “As long as we don’t get too close, mister detective.”
***
The scene did look like a warzone. Holes like those from explosions, mines, and missiles, were all over. Car frames that were smashed, crushed, ripped apart, and driven into the ground made the paths difficult to maneuver through. A giant gap in the earth, looking like it had a pitch-black shadow throughout, spread wide and made it look dangerous to approach. Small fires were burning as car fluids had ignited, with metal throughout the scene being warped and melted down. A forge like heat blasted the area, causing the air to ripple, reminding Ron of a portrayal of a mirage in the desert. Then in the middle of it all was the body.
The body was on its knees, sitting on its heels. Arms were dropped to the sides and the fingers bent in all the wrong directions, nearly flapping from the heat. The skin was almost completely burned off the whole body, with muscle still smoldering in parts, fat ignited in others. Clumps of hair had burned short and other clumps had fallen out. Blood had been spilled around the body and still sat on the muscles, except it was dried up completely, all the liquid in it evaporated.
This truly was a thing of nightmares. Ron would never forget this horror. This was the closest to a zombie movie that was possible, he hoped.
Upon seeing it, Earnest turned and began vomiting and crying. However, Joshua had a different response.
“ADAM!” Joshua yelled and tried to run forward. Ron had to tackle him and try to hold him down from heading towards the body. Joshua struggled to get up, never taking his eyes off the body of his son.
While lying on the ground overtop Joshua, whose arm was twisted behind his back, Ron noticed that the body was shaking. Before he had thought it was a trick of the heat, but now he realized the body was still alive. The head tilted, and with extreme slowness it turned to look at them.
If Ron had thought the body was bad, the face was even worse. Adam’s lips were peeled back and shriveled, his nose was burned down to the cartilage. The irises of Adam’s eyes had become a milky white, looking like someone who had lost their sight. His eyelids seemed charred open with light brown crust all around his tear ducts, where the tears had evaporated.
Stolen novel; please report.
Suddenly Ron realized that Adam was sobbing, though nothing came out without evaporating. Only an airy hissing noise came from him, barely noticeable with all the visual distortions around him.
He must be in agony! This was the world’s strongest man. This was the most dangerous, threatening, and confident person Ron had ever met. His body all but destroyed and unable to even move. Ron was shocked by what he saw. Any belief that they could stand against the invaders left him.
They had been following Adam’s plans to prepare and search for invaders, but until this moment the gravity of it hadn’t hit him. They had been pretending that they understood. Only joking and teasing each other at the monsters coming. Only Adam had been stern and determined, never relenting in his message, and now he was reduced to almost a corpse.
“I NEED TO GET TO HIM!” screamed Joshua.
Ron needed to lick his lips a few times before they were moist enough to respond. The scene before him had just obliterated his reality. When he spoke, all he could muster was a whisper.
“If you go out now you’ll die. The heat is coming from Adam. He needs to turn it off.”
“Right. Right.” Joshua repeated himself and stopped struggling. Ron let him go and they both stood up. Earnest had already fled the way they had come.
“Adam! Son. It’s your father,” Joshua shouted to him. “You need to turn off the heat if you can. We can’t help you until it’s gone.”
Almost imperceptibly, Adam’s head went up and down, barely different than the previous quivering. It took two and a half minutes before the heat radiating off him calmed. The area didn’t cooldown immediately. The two slowly moved towards Adam. The heat was like sitting in a sauna, but at least it wouldn’t set them on fire now. Ron felt the soles of his active dress shoes softening from the head that remained in the ground.
Once they were standing in front of Adam, Joshua had tears rolling down his cheeks.
“Oh, my son. What happened to you?” Joshua wept.
Adam’s jaw shivered as if to open, but no sound came out.
“What can we do for him?” Joshua demanded as he turned to Ron. After thinking for a moment, Ron answered.
“Didn’t he say he regenerates? How do we trigger it?”
“That’s right! It happened after he drank that elf’s blood.” Joshua pulled an elven blade from his belt and almost sliced his whole hand off trying to cut it. Blood squirted out as he squealed, so Ron grabbed his arm and pulled the wound to Adam’s mouth. Eventually most of the dripping fell into Adam’s mouth, though when Joshua started swaying, Ron pulled him away and used a zip tie in his belt as a tourniquet to slow the bleeding on the oversized wound and keep Joshua from passing out.
Looking back to Adam, he noticed that some of his skin had grown in. There was a lot of surface area still to go, so it would take a lot more blood. This was going to be awkward.
Ron left Joshua sitting wobbly with Adam and then headed back to his car. Once there he radioed dispatch and requested an ambulance for a blood transfusion, saying that the patient was too hurt to move. Then he waited at the entrance for them.
The paramedics thought he was crazy, and yelled about wasting it, when he snatched a blood pack and ripped it open into Adam’s mouth. Questions of how he could even still be alive disappeared as the blood dissolved into Adam’s mouth and triggered the regrowth of his skin. It took six more blood packs before Adam looked alive, although he still looked mortally wounded.
The paramedics, freaked out by it all, had taken some video and were making calls. Ron got the pants from a spare uniform and tried to give it to Adam, but noticed his fingers still flapped around broken and Adam lacked the strength to stand.
“Food,” Adam whispered breathily, using all the energy he had.
His dad went and brought him two jugs of orange juice. The paramedics had to cut some medical tubing to use as a straw so Adam could drink it…and drink it he did.
“There isn’t enough room in the human body for that much fluid!” exclaimed one of the paramedics.
“That is what you are complaining about after watching his skin regrow?”
“Wait! You're giving him sandwiches after that much juice?!”
Joshua hand fed Adam the sandwiches, which he had to chew very slowly, just enough to make it a swallowable size. More juice and some water would wash it all down as they went. It was slow going, but after twenty minutes Adam seemed strong enough to talk. Ron began the conversation.
“Adam, are you ok to talk now?” Ron asked him. After a small nod from Adam, still chewing and looking like a ghost, Ron continued. “We need to know what happened. Where is everyone else?”
Before he even finish, Adam was in tears. It was the first time Adam had looked like a child to Ron, and he felt heartbroken for the burden that Adam was carrying. Sitting there naked, filthy, hands so broken he couldn’t even hold a sandwich. Adam didn’t cry due to the pain he felt, but for the loss of his companions.
“They’re gone. We were dumb. I thought they would use the same trap as the elves, allowing me in alone. Instead, they did the opposite. I was locked out and they expanded the rift to force everyone else inside.”
“Then what is all this mess here? They must have been a really high level to give you this much trouble.”
“They're called Testudinates. They were level 7 and would be easy kills if not for a shell of armor that resisted all weapons we had. Freaking slow ass weaklings hiding in strong shells. They escaped after I managed to kill one. But that armor repulsed everything. I wasn’t strong enough to get through it. I wasn’t strong enough to keep them safe. I need to be more…” Adam’s words scrambled together as the sobs hit his body. The paramedics were so concerned they came over to check his vitals as he shook.
“Then everyone else is in the rift?” Joshua asked.
“No, dad. They can’t hurt the Testudinates. It’s been so long since they were pulled in. I'm too weak to beat the barrier. I couldn’t protect them. I can’t protect anyone. I’m so weak…” The paramedics tried to get Ron to back off as they put sensors and straps on Adam, connecting them to portable machines, but Ron didn’t stop.
“Adam, then how do we stop them? We need to be able to stop them, or at least try to rescue your friends.”
“They were so slow,” Adam cried as he looked to the sky. “So easy to attack and outrun, but no attack could get through. No Earth weapons can break the armor. Look what happened to my hands just from hitting it over and over.”
“If no attack from Earth can get through, then what can? [System] skills? Magic? Weapons we can buy from the rift shop?”
“I don’t know,” he sobbed. “All I’ve done is meaningless if I can’t even help my friends…” An injection from a paramedic went into Adam and his body shuddered. Then he slouched backwards, lowered to the ground by the one who injected him.
“What did you just do?!” Ron shouted at the paramedic.
“I-it was a sedative. His vitals were impossibly high. We need to get him to a hospital immediately,” concern but uncertainty was evident in the paramedic's words.
“He regrows his body from drinking blood, and you think a high heartbeat is dangerous to him?” Ron turned to Adam. “Adam! Adam, are you still awake? We need to come up with a plan. We need a way to stop the invaders!”