With Beam and Fang Ch. 03

"Okay..." Staff said, in that tone of voice that made him sound like he was both following this and taking notes. Kiwi kind of hoped that he was, because his mind was still so thrown by what was going on that...uh...he honestly wasn't sure he even knew what the word 'undercut' meant anymore. In a world of walking, talking, sexy crow women, did undercut still mean undercut?

They came to an elevator and Dr. Redfield prodded at it, then nodded. "Good, they didn't kill the elevators. Now, by outsourcing, I mean...he began to send teams to the Antarctic expanse. Meteorite impacts have been a regular occurrence there for the better part of the last six hundred and fifty five million years, giving him a broad range of potential biological vectors. The concept was to find a meteorite with microscopic leftovers, then reverse engineer it for potential monetary gains."

"...like the Thing?" Kiwi asked. Staff glared at him as the elevator door opened.

Facial expressions were weird when you had a beak. But Dr. Redfield made up for that with an icy glare that actually didn't make Kiwi's hard on even blink.

Which was, of course, helped by the fact his cock didn't haveeyes.

"No, Mr...whatever your name is. Not like The Thing." She sighed as the door to the elevator opened. She stepped in and Staff stepped on, but he didn't make any signs that Kiwi should leave, so Kiwi stepped on as well.Two men in NBC gear and a naked crow girl,Kiwi thought.That has to be the start of one of those 'walks into a bar jokes.'

"So, Project Scoop found something?" Staff asked, prompting the conversation to skim forward.

Dr. Redfield, whose clawed finger was rubbing her temple. "Correct. One of the teams discovered a meteorite that had landed as recently as 1998. It was a valuable find...essentially, it was a rough lump, about the size of this idiot's head-"

"Hey!" Kiwi said, but Staff made a 'shut up' gesture with one hand.

"-but the interior was a thickly clustered network of micro-tunnels, stuffed with the most...fiendishly complex alien biology we had ever seen. We had it contained in quarantine at the base, but three days later, we lost contact. The follow up team found the base completely empty, with a few penguin tracks nearby, but nothing human, nothing indicating what had happened to the team. The meteorite was then-"

"Don't say taken here, please, don't," Staff said, his groan clear behind his gas mask.

The door to the elevators opened and they stepped out into a white corridor, that looked as sterile as anything Kiwi had seen. It led to another set of doors, which led into a white chamber that looked like it had a load of chemical showers, and then there was another set of doors. Each of the doors were open, and at the back, there was a pedestal that had a large plastic box that closed around the top.

"Oh no..." Dr. Redfield whispered.

The box was empty.

"They took it...those idiots TOOK it!" She slammed her clawed foot into the ground, then turned her beak around to look at the two marines. "After the meteorite was taken here, the strains within were removed and studied. It is...fiendish. Imagine a highly complex bacteria like shell that surrounds a collection of...mini-viruses, of which there are atleasta thousand different strains, operating in concert to completely alter every inch of a human form. Needless to say, the military, medical, and economic impacts were...unimaginable. And so, the project was made the most vital one in Dynacore's ensemble. Then someone STOLE the experimental strains!"

"...it was built...the stuff in the meteorite, I mean," Staff rumbled.

"Almost without a doubt," Dr. Redfield sighed.

"Wait, built? By who?" Kiwi asked.

"Little green men, Kiwi," Staff said. "Little green fucking men."

"It is worse than that," Dr. Redfield said as they hurried back to the elevator. "There's no vaccination, no cure, not without the original strain to study from. Mr. Freeman, the bastard, put the building into lockdown when the vials were stolen. He left us to starve and ran off to try and avoid the bloody pandemic he created."

"This...this is bad, right?" Kiwi asked.

"Yes, Marine, this is bad."

"Right." Kiwi paused. "SHIT!"

The two of them looked at him as he looked at his wrist tab. The wrist tab was a neat and terrifying little gizmo. It basically was linked to a collection of little sensors that made his NBC geareven heavierand hotter, and when it went from green to red, there was a containment breach somewhere in his suit. Seeing it, Dr. Redfield started putting her hands all over him, leaning in and looking closely at his neck, his gas mask seals, his chest, his groin – kneeling down in the tight confines of the elevator caused her tail feathers to lift slightly, and Kiwi looked at the ceiling.

"What's wrong, Doc?" Staff asked.

"Yup," she said. "There's a breach along the seam of your pants. Sorry, Private-"

"Corporal-"

"-but you are one infected soldier-"

"...Marine..."

"And I don't think you should leave the building," she said, standing up once again.

"Join the marine corps, see interesting places, get turned into a fucking octopus, be all that you can be..." Kiwi muttered, his voice thick with growing panic.

"Marine, stay frosty," Staff said.

"Right, sorry, just remembered that I'm going to have tentacles instead of ARMS in a few...how long does this take?" Kiwi asked, grabbing his gas mask and ripping it off his head as the elevator door opened, hurling it to the ground once he was out of the elevator, yanking his gloves off with his teeth.

"Five days," Dr. Redfield said, her voice sad. A bit sympathetic.

"Great! Five days of agony! Fuck. FUCK!" Kiwi kicked the wall.

"MARINE!" Staff bellowed, in that 'listen to me or I will fucking end you' voice of his.

Kiwi stood, ramrod straight, spinning around to stand at attention.

"I don't care if you have two arms or six, if you have a spine, or if you are an undersea octopus. I don't care if you're a porcupine, a steer, a queer, or anything else on, above, or under this God's green Earth! And WHY, Corporal Erwing, might THAT be?"

"Because I am a Marine first, Staff Sergeant!" Kiwi said back, the only words that could possibly have filled his mind after that speech.

"Semper Fi," Staff responded, pacing back and forth before Kiwi. "Now, Marine, you are currently infected, and I am not going to risk any additional failure. So, you are going to police this place, keep these people safe, and learn everything you can about what is going on. Got that?"

"Yes, Staff."

"Good." Staff paused. "Sorry it had to be you, Corporal."

Kiwi nodded.

###

There was one serious upside.

He was out of that fucking NBC suit.

Kiwi leaned against the wall of the office that the other infected – the other...what had that janitor called them? Animorphs?

That was a fucking stupid name.

He heard a soft knock on his door. He had been admiring the way that they had set the office up: The desk had been cleared out, and a small cot shoved in, with a water cooler and a small bucket he could use for his business. There was enough ventilation that he didn't feel penned in, and they still had Internet, so he could goggle things and watch cheesy videos – and even log into his Netflix account. Though, the bastards had taken Burn Notice off instant cue.

"Come in."

The door knob wiggled.

"Ah, uh, Corporal, the door is locked."

Dr. Redfield.

He smiled, pushing himself to his feet, and opened the door, looking out at the crow doctor. She was carrying a small first aid kit, and sighed as she said: "Purely business, Corporal Erwing."

"Oh, of course," Kiwi sat down, sighing as she moved into the room. His eyes flicked down to her breasts and then back up. This time, he had no gas mask hiding his eyes, and she glared at him. "To be fair...you are naked."

"That's because I cannot find any clothes that fit me," she said, pulling out a syringe and pricking his neck just a bit harder than was necessary. Kiwi hissed, softly, as he felt the blood drawing out of his body, his eyes closing a bit as he tried to ignore the proximity of a naked woman – for a man who had spent a distressing amount of time over the last year in a hot place with no hookers trying to not get killed.

The needle drew out and Kiwi rubbed his neck, sighing.

"I'll examine this blood. We still have not managed to actually find any of the mini-viruses while it is in the blood stream, but I have been connected with the CDC, and their scientist, a rat girl-"

"Wait, what?" Kiwi's head snapped up and he stood, almost bumping his nose into her beak. Dr. Redfield backed up, the edge of her beak that actually touched the rest of her face turning down in the slightest hint of a frown. "The CDC is infected!?"

"Yes, it seems they had a similar breach as your NBC gear."

She didn't move to the side. Instead, she set the syringe in the kit.

"...we're screwed, aren't we?"

"It does seem that way," Dr. Redfield said, her voice prim. "Still, the infection does not appear to be overly deleterious."

"English, Doc?" Kiwi sat down, rubbing his temples. Well, at least something could dampen his horniness: Total human extinction.

"We're not hurt by it! I am as intelligent, rational, and reasonable as before. The only thing that has changed has been my body and my dietary requirements," she said, nodding. "I can subsist on considerably more insects than I used to."

"Right..."

"Come now, Erwing, don't give into despair. For all you know, you will become some incredibly massive, genitallian endowed creature, like a horse or something," she said, stepping back to the door.

"The human race is going to go extinct, Doc," Kiwi said.

She snorted. "No it damn well won't. After all, what did your bellicose Staff Sergeant say to you, after you started sniveling like a baby?"

Okay. Being hot only got you so far. Kiwi stood, his fists clenching as he turned to glare at the critical, cold eyes of the crow woman. But then he stopped, opening his mouth, then closing it. He stepped back, leaning against the wall of his office bedroom. His mind went, not to what Staff had said, but to the day he had marched past the line of friends and family, sitting on the bleacher to watch the training platoons march by. He had been wearing his dress blues...and he hadn't felt like a marine.

He had felt like a marine a few days before, crawling out of the muck and mud of Hell Week, where the DIs had looked out at them, and one of them had said: "Good work, Marines."

Marine first.

Personfirst.

Semper Fi.

"...man, I can't wait to see what the Klu Klux Klan does when they get infected. Or those crazy, uh, Golden Dawn people," he said, grinning slightly.

"That's the spirit." Dr. Redfield nodded. "Sleep well, Corporal Erwing."

"Kiwi."

She had turned to go – showing off that tight, tight ass again. Turning back, she raised one eyebrow – well, that was the best term he could think of for the ridge of slightly raised, very tiny feathers that ran above one of her amazing, golden eyes.

"My...that is, my friends call me Kiwi," he said, smiling.

"...why?" Dr. Redfield asked. "You're not from New Zealand, are you?"

He shook his head.

"You...your father, maybe?"

He laughed, grinning. "My dad's from Georgia," he said, slipping – for just a second – into how his Dad had pronounced it: Jee-oar-jaw, all slurred together.

Dr. Redfield blinked again, and looked for the life of her like she was about to tear out her tailfeathers. She fluttered her wings, ever so slightly, behind her and said: "W...Was your...mother?"

"Brooklyn!"

"...w...were you stationed there?"

He just snorted.

Dr. Redfield put her hand over her eyes, her beak opening, clicking shut, and then – in a defeated tone – she said: "Okay. I give up. Why in the bloody blue blazes are you nicknamed Kiwi?"

"Because I love the Patrick O'BrianMaster and Commanderseries," he said, his voice holding the subtext of:Duhhhh.

Dr. Redfield had moved from looking confused to just looking furious.

Kiwi grinned, broadly. "Russell Crowe is from New Zealand!"

Dr. Redfield slammed the door in his face.

Kiwi stepped back, sat down on the bed, then put his feet up against the rather nearby wall. He leaned back, his hands sliding behind his neck, then grinned.

"She wants me."