Chapter 547: 547
Honassan responded promptly and we just saw them disappear from view after a few moments. It was then that a few dump trucks drove outside from our outpost to collect the bodies we’ve put down for incineration. However, a couple of the headless ferals we secured with the harpoons would be added to our new set of specimens to be stored and sent for analysis.
The same could be said about the big one that we took down but it would be more or less taking what was left of it, figuring out which piece corresponds to which piece. It would be much harder to put it piece by piece but something congealed together would be easy enough to locate and isolate.
Before we helped with the clearing process, I picked up my radio to contact Oscar and the rest.
–
*bzzt*
“WAZZAAAAAPPP~~~”
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
[What. the. f.u.c.k. Kid, what the f.u.c.k is wrong with you?! How’s the situation on your side? I’m this f.u.c.k.i.n.g close to riding one of these boats and joining your uncle. I gave them a ring and they said they’re killing it over on their side. I want to shoot game personally but you know… fishing isn’t so bad.]
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
“Ah, I see.”
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
[What is the ‘Ah, I see.’ is for? Did you call just to check on me?]
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
“Ah, no. Just telling you that we took it down.”
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
[WHAT?! YOU MOTHERF.U.C.KER!!! YOU DIDN’T CALL WHEN IT WAS HAPPENING?! YOU GOT TO TAKE DOWN THAT DAVEY JONES LOOKING MOTHERF.U.C.KER AND WE WERE ALL SITTING HERE ON OUR ASSES DOING SHIT!!!]
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
“Heh, sorry about that. Oh! That harpoon thing you mentioned worked! We’re a little pressed on time so we only had a few traps to set up like that one. We should have something in an alley that extends the whole way. If we wanted to catch ferals alive, that would be one of the solutions.”
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
[Now you’re just changing the subject, you little shit. We should be working on more ways to make entanglement devices that are tearproof. Jay could catch sprinters with some netting that they made but I doubt it would work with the ferals. You know… them being ‘roided up and all.]
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
“Yeah, blowing their limbs off is kinda expensive.”
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
[Inefficient too. Haaa~ I’ll bring my troops over there to help with the cleaning process.]
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
“Yeah, Honassan, Chris, and Lois mentioned a few cl.u.s.ters or herds coming for us. You could take them down as a consolation but we’ll get to them as well the moment we clear a street to drive around.”
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
[Bah! Don’t f.u.c.k.i.n.g touch them! They’re all f.u.c.k.i.n.g mine!]
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
“Ehh~ First come, first serve. It would be a while if we wait for your team to clear everything. I want to go home as fast as possible so we could deal with other things.”
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
[Yeah~ Other things, eh? Sure~]
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
“Oh yeah? Aren’t you trying to hook up with Irene?”
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
[Bah! Let’s all f.u.c.k.i.n.g forget about that! It’s… It’s… nevermind, we’re wasting time here, kid!]
*bzzt*
–
Oscar stopped responding to my taunts but I was still curious as to why he immediately changed the subject. He was never like that if we talk about stuff like that but it was also a surprise at the time when he specifically asked me to contact the leader of one of our allies in Batangas. I knew the fact that he hit it off with Arturo, Irene’s brother, but it was all too weird.
‘Something definitely happened…’
In the meantime, my group started helping with hauling the bodies with everybody. I made sure to make everyone pick up whatever body part or chunk we could see on the ground so everything would be collected in one place to be burned in a huge pit. We have a few areas we could do it right now but they would still be burned in batches.
Five dump trucks later, we finally got to the big one in question.
Like a f.u.c.k.i.e.d up process of digging around a treasure, we isolated it with everything around it and it was bizarre to see it up close.
“Hmmm…”
I instinctively pulled out my knife and started ‘dissecting’ the pieces stuck to it. My actions had no finesse whatsoever as I started hacking around the ‘outer’ body, digging around its shoulder to dislodge its arm. Surprisingly, it was easier compared to slicing through a feral’s body because it felt like a normal one.
“Wh-What are you doing, sir?!” one of the soldiers exclaimed.
“Hmm? You aren’t curious to see what’s inside? We’re storing this whole pile too, better to trim the fat, or so they say.”
The soldier just nodded in kind as he continued to haul the other bodies in the immediate vicinity with the other soldiers that have walked past us. Despite that, a few of them were also curious as to what we might discover so I let them watch me as I wedged my knife deeper, cutting through its nerves and dislocating the joints to remove its left arm completely.
It was then that I noticed something peculiar so I called Mikhail and Tatiana over, making them help me hack off the body completely. We did it by Tatiana and me pulling on its head and its right hand while Mikhail swung down with force. It took a few swings with a normal machete to get around it because using his own axe would’ve hit us both and it was not made for swinging lightly.
However, as soon as we pulled the body off the main one, everyone became silent.
They all watched us in silence as we continued to hack each body off the main one and each body was the same. The only difference was that we were more careful about the next ones because of something we discovered on their backs. We found something that shouldn’t be located at that place and that something shouldn’t be that… many.
For lack of a better term, the main one, or the body in the center had made its ‘tongues’ run through the ‘outer’ bodies’ spine. Its tongue didn’t even look like a single, long muscle anymore because it started to have branches. I was thinking that it was for so that it could ‘attach’ itself to anything that it wanted to.
‘Hmm… not only that. Its legs are also… longer… and thicker… maybe to supports the outer parts? I think it just collapsed on itself the moment more and more tried climbing on top of it…’
The ‘tongue’ was too distinguished to miss because holes, where it forced itself to the outer bodies, were present and how the tip of the branches was connecting to their spines was sending all kinds of signals to everybody.
“Are those tongues or are those… veins? They…”
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no…”
“That’s enough inter- whatever this is today…”
“I should’ve continued hauling the bodies…”
“Uhhhhhhhhhh…”
I got a mix of reactions and a few even started asking questions but all we could do was to speculate. Unless we could prove what we saw could do these sorts of things, all we could do was to doc.u.ment everything that we saw. Observing them and making a hypothesis based on those observations was our bread and butter when it came to these things.
Kaley tapped me, “Do you think that its eyes could do the same thing? It kinda commands the others too, right?”
“You mean the sentries?”
“Yeah…”
“Hmm… unless we capture one alive, we’ll never know. However, this one is a little more different from that… but yeah… they do kinda do that same thing…”
It took a while but Oscar’s entourage eventually came by, adding more bodies to haul and burn. They actually drove around to get the best route in taking the stragglers down and they were still raring to go. Their fire only died down when they started helping with throwing the bodies to the dump trucks and after a while more, Honassan came flying overhead.
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*bzzt*
[Sir, we’ve caught footage.]
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
“Anything special?”
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
[I think it’s better if you see it yourself, sir.]
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
“Okay, just go home for now but leave the camera you used in my compound. Get something for your team: alcohol, cigarettes, or anything that you want because you did take this thing down. Look for Rin but if she’s asleep, just send me a request and I’ll take care of it.”
*bzzt*
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*bzzt*
[Yes, sir! It’s greatly appreciated.]
*bzzt*
–
We continued the process of clearing the bodies and after making sure that everything was accounted for, we temporarily sealed the entrances towards this area once more. It was to have the people guarding this outpost for the rest of the evening a little easier but we did leave a few more soldiers behind just in case.
We drove home when it was a couple of hours past midnight and nothing could beat a warm soak in the tub.
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