Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel by Edward M. Erdelac

line from his red lips.
    “How did you get away, Jeffries?”
Manx asked. His voice was very hoarse.
    “I didn’t. They…let me go.” His eyes
widened for a moment. “They did somethin’ to me.”
    The Rider looked over as Cord
returned with a pair of orderlies bearing a field stretcher and Milton bringing
up the rear in his undershirt. Milton looked terrible. The dark rings under his
eyes had deepened. As he watched, Milton’s bag popped open and his instruments
spilled on the ground. He stopped to pick them up, and the two orderlies put
down their stretcher and knelt to help him.
    “What are you talking about?” Manx
said, taking an uncertain step back. He looked over across the parade ground
and spotted Milton and the two orderlies fumbling with his bag. Cord stood over
them, watching.
    “Cord. What the hell are you doing?
Help them!”
    Cord nodded and eased to his knee,
obviously a little stiff from the beating he’d sustained.
    Then Jeffries began to gag and shake
in Quincannon’s arms.
    “Lay him down,” Weeks told
Quincannon. “He’s havin’ some kinda fit.”
    “I can’t!” said Quincannon. And he
couldn’t, for Jeffries was holding onto his arms for dear life, his hands
clawing into the corporal’s sleeves.
    “The hell,” said Weeks. He nudged
the man nearest him. “Help him.”
    The trooper stooped down to help pry
the trembling scout loose.
    A sound built up deep in Jeffries’
throat, and it erupted from his lips as soon as the trooper laid a hold of him.
    It was a horrible, agonized scream,
such as no one thought a hard man like Jeffries capable of.
    What happened then caused everyone
gathered around to freeze in place.
    Jeffries’ eyes bulged almost
imperceptibly for half an instant, before they burst in their sockets,
splattering Quincannon full in the face with not only blood and eye jelly, but
a strange, dark green substance.
    Quincannon fell back, gagging, but
the blind scout continued to grasp him, screaming. Each of his ragged, empty
eye sockets sprouted some sharp, black, tapered growth, spotted with quivering
quill-like bristles that twitched nervously as they extended ten or twelve
inches past Jeffries’ face, to bend at knotty joints.
    Jeffries’ voice was choked off
wetly, but Quincannon took up his scream, scrambling to disengage himself from
the shuddering man. But his shrieks were muffled, as if the green resin that
covered his face was solidifying. He gave up trying to break away and began to
claw at the slime on his lips. Jeffries’ hands were locked onto his sleeves,
and every motion made the scouts’ corpse gesticulate like a shaken doll.
Quincannon fell on his back, eyes rolling wildly, seeking help.
    Weeks procured a hip knife from the
nearest man and advanced to help his comrade.
    They heard a series of loud cracks
then, and Weeks jumped away, startled. Jeffries’ head began to swell and bulge,
as if his skull were suddenly malleable, or had broken apart. His face sagged,
features stretching like some kind of bizarre mask. Blood poured from his ears
and nose and bubbled from his grotesquely distorted mouth.
    The Rider backed away from the
unreal scene, pulling the dumbstruck Belden with him.
    Kabede turned and looked at them,
his lips parted, face screwed up in an expression of incomprehension.
    “Get back!” the Rider yelled.
    Kabede moved.
    All the soldiers began to move away,
stumbling against each other.
    Jeffries’ elastic face, stretched
now to the breaking point, split in two with a wet, audible tearing, and a pair
of jagged saber like protrusions erupted from the space, opening and closing
with a loud click clack. The man’s ruined visage fell away, and a bulky black
object from which the waving feelers, and what looked to be great serrated
pincers, emerged, shining with gore in the sun. In the middle of the domelike
thing the Rider saw three gaping wet slashes in a pyramidal arrangement
smacking hungrily. On either side, two glossy black insect