All the Wrong Moves Read Free Page B

into walls and instrumentation stands was one thing. Dodging cacti and twisty-limbed mesquite was another. My first foray in the great outdoors left me cursing and the sadistic robot I was strapped into grinning from ear to composite ear.
    Did I mention I’m a little stubborn? I hung in there. Not that I had much choice. The test parameters called for a twenty-mile run. In full combat gear. Carrying a sixty-pound pack. Someone—me, unfortunately—had to complete the run before FST-3 could write our field test report and stuff EEEK back in his crate.
    I do know my limitations, however. No way I was ready to go full battle rattle for twenty miles. Not with the temperature hovering around 110 in the shade and the August sun so vicious that not even the scorpions would come out to play. Girding my loins—literally and figuratively—I managed two miles at a springy trot. The following day I upped it to five. Before I extended the distance much farther, I decided to test EEEK’s low-light optics and terrain-following sensors.
    I set the launch time for two A.M. My team of dedicated professionals protested vociferously, but I held firm. The high desert cools off at night, you see. Not a whole lot this time of year, but enough to make the run semi-bearable.
    So come two A.M. I encased myself in composite and took off. I headed south this time, toward the periphery of Fort Bliss’s three-point-four zillion acres of test range. I sure as heck didn’t want to head north. Although my team coordinated all its activities with the Fort Bliss Command Post, there was always the possibility those guys might forget to mention a little thing like a night firing exercise of a Patriot missile battery.
    No missiles streaked through the star-studded sky. No explosions lit up the horizon, near or far. I moved slowly at first, getting a feel for EEEK’s night vision capability. To my relief, he had eyes like a bat. His infrared imaging enhancement clearly illuminated hazards like clumps of spiny cholla and cracks in the hard-baked earth.
    It also illuminated the odd-shaped hump ahead long before I picked up its stench. When the stink did hit, I figured I’d come across a dead coyote or mule deer. I was moving fast by then, too fast to swerve, so I decided to bound over the carcass and keep going.
    Bad decision. Reeeeally bad.
    I misjudged the distance in the dark and the springy foot pedal that gave EEEK its bounce caught on something, pitching me forward. Just in time, I threw my weight backward. The gimbals kept me upright, for which I’ll be forever grateful. I don’t even want to think what would have happened if they hadn’t.
    “What the hell . . . ?”
    Gagging at the noxious stink, I lifted my visor to see what had snagged my foot and found myself staring down into the bloated remnants of a face. It took me several stunned moments to realize a second corpse lay sprawled almost atop the first.
    I was up to my ankles in putrefying human remains.

CHAPTER TWO
    WHEN my traumatized brain kicked back into gear, I let loose with a screech loud enough to wake the dead. Not these dead, thank God. Decaying flesh spewed as I kicked free of the ribcage that had snared EEEK’s foot pedal.
    “OhGodohGodohGod!”
    Shrieking, I lunged a good fifty or sixty yards before I thought to lower the visor and whip around to scan the darkness behind me. No ghostly figures had risen up from the desert floor to give chase. No poltergeists flew through the night air in my direction.
    Still, I stumbled another dozen yards before I could bring myself to halt EEEK’s forward momentum. Wrenching one hand free of the control glove, I grabbed frantically for the radio clipped to my belt.
    “O’Reilly! Cassidy! Anyone! Come in!”
    “Speak to me, oh Goddess of Gadgets.” O’Reilly punctuated his reply with a jaw-cracking yawn. “Whazzup?”
    “I just stumbled over some bodies.”
    “Huh?”
    “Bodies.” My voice rose perilously close to another shriek.