Nightmares and Monsters

Part 4

Chapter Four

Somewhere in the Desert of Qatar - A full day after the Attack on SOCCENT Base.

Lennox's squad had been walking at a fast clip for a full day into the desert of Qatar, and already a few of the squad were complaining about the lack of water and food they had on what packs had been salvaged from the base whilst they were escaping from the destruction that that huge robot-thing had caused.

They were moving between the sand dunes and large boulders, guns at the ready as they tried to find a safe spot to rest, that had some shade and water. Finally after four hours of scouring the sand and boulders they made it to the top of a large sand hillock with an old disused tank sat on it, those who could find shade from its hulking mass did so, whilst Epps, Lennox, Caliene and Burke were talking and keeping watch out around the base of the tank whereas Fig was sat on the top keeping lookout from the high part of the remaining part of the turret.

"I've never seen a weapon's system like this. The thermal shows this weird aura around the exoskeleton like it's cloaked by some sort of invisible force field." said Epps as he finished looking through the shots he managed to get of the robot-thing before handing it off to Lennox.

"That's impossible. There's no such thing as invisible force fields except in, like, comic books stuff, right?" commented Donnely as he glanced down at us from his spot on top of the tank with Fig.

"Hey Donnely? Where the blazes do you think the writers got the ideas from in the first place? Think about it, the Government and Military have been working on secret stuff out in Area 51 since the mid-40's and onwards, how do you think we got the stuff we got now?" answered Caliene as she reached for the camera from Lennox.

Donnely just looked at her slack jawed and then snapped his mouth shut after shaking his head as if trying to grab what she had just told him. Surely she was kidding right? Instead of replying he just sat back down and kept lookout with Fig, whilst trying to wrap his head around everything.

Fig decided to speak up at this point. "I don't know, man. My mama, she had the gift, you know? She saw things. I got the gene, too and that thing that attacked us? I got a feeling that it ain't over."

"Yeah, I understand Fig. I keep getting the sense that we're being watched but we can't see them, who or whatever these things are." Caliene added as she smiled up at Fig, at least until Donnely put his two cents worth in.

"How about you use those Voodoo powers and get us the hell out of here, huh?" Caliene glared at Donnely after he said that,

"Don't joke about Voodoo, Donnely. There are things that you don't wanna mess with and joking about Voodoo and any other type of religious magic is just wrong, it may come back to bite you in the ass." she told him as she reached beneath her shirt and pulled forth her Triquetra and showed it to him watching his jaw drop once again, before he turned away and mumbled something about witches and Voodoo crazy people.

Meanwhile Epps and Lennox were still talking about the camera shots.

"When I took that picture, I think it saw me. It looked right at me." said Epps as he shook his head as if trying to shake the idea from his brain and having nightmares about the big terrifying robot-thing attacking the base.

"All right, we got to get this thing back to the Pentagon right away. They got to know what we're dealing with here." said Lennox as he handed the camera back to Epps for safe keeping.

"My radio's fried. I got no communication with aerial at all, and I bet ya all the other radios are out of commission too." said Epps as he took the camera and placed it in his pack on the sand.

Lennox walked over to where Mahfouz was stood looking around. "Hey, Mahfouz. How far do you live from here?" he asked the boy as the rest of the squad got ready to leave the tank behind.

"Not far. Just up that mountain." was the lads reply, and when Caliene and Epps looked at the direction Mahfouz had pointed in, they sighed, more hiking and climbing to come and hopefully it wouldn't be too much since they were very quickly running low on water.

"Do they have a phone?" asked Lennox, at which point the others smirked knowing that Lennox hated phone calls that weren't to his wife, or friends. "Yes." was the response he got from Mahfouz and Caliene then thought about it.... The military should make Satellite Phones mandatory for any Squad out here for emergencies where radios would not be beneficial.

"All right, let's hit it." said Lennox and everyone picked up what they had brought with them, which wasn't at all much, and headed out on the hike to the mountains in the distance where Mahfouz's family lived and hopefully a working phone to contact the Pentagon with their info of utmost importance.

End Chapter 4