Whistling Past the Graveyard by Jonathan Maberry

hadn’t even gotten his legendary kung-fu grip. I’d never played with the smaller and more sci-fi Joe characters. So I wound up getting a ton of toys and comics in the mail, and sat like a happy, overgrown kid playing with them and learning about the world of the Joes, while binge-watching the cartoons. I had a blast…and it was work related so, you know, it wasn’t me having a second childhood. Ahem.
    Max did not want kid stories, though. He wanted edgy, weird-science action thrillers. So that’s what I wrote.
     
     
Flint and Steel: A Story of GI Joe
     
     
    -1-
     
     
    “The Island”
    High Security R&D Facility
    Near Area 51, Nevada
     
    It was all coming apart. Gunfire tore holes in the night. There were screams and the constant rattle of automatic gunfire. Fires burst through the roofs of a dozen buildings sending showers of sparks into the sky so that it looked like the stars themselves were dying and falling.
    Flint ran fast and low, using hard cover instead of shadows, moving from tree to rock to wall, his pattern random and unsymmetrical. He was hurt, he knew that much. The warmth running down the inside of his clothes wasn’t all sweat. He could smell the sharp copper tang of his own blood.
    His blood and the blood of others.
    Doc. Law. Scarlett, too. God knew how many others. In his mind all he could see was blood.
    Blood…and those things.
    He ran and ran, his breath burning in his lungs.
    He stumbled and went down, hitting chest-first and sliding, tasting sand in his mouth. He came to rest in the middle of the east parade ground. Exposed, vulnerable.
    The screams began to die away. They did not fade like volume turned down on an iPod. They were cut off. Sharply, abruptly, in time with new bursts of gunfire.
    Flint felt his consciousness begin to fade as fatigue or damage took hold of him.
    “No,” he mumbled, spitting sand out of his mouth. “No!”
    If he passed out now, he knew that he would never wake up. Not in this world. They would find him. Find him and tear him apart.
    He tried to get to his hands and knees, but weakness and nausea swept through him.
    “No!” he growled, louder this time, and the harshness in his own voice put steel into his muscles. He rose, inch by agonizing inch until he was upright on his knees.
    In the distance he could hear one of them coming.
    A metallic clang, the squeak of treads.
    How far? A hundred yards? Less?
    Flint set his teeth and tried to get to his feet. No way he was going to die like this. If this was his last firefight, then by God he was not going out on his knees.
    Pain flared in his side. He couldn’t remember what had hit him. Bullets? Shrapnel?
    It didn’t matter; he forced one leg up, thumped his right foot on the ground, jammed the stock of his M5 on the ground, and pushed.
    It was like jacking up a tank.
    He rose slowly, slowly.
    The squeak of the treads was closer. All of the screams had stopped.
    Even the gunfire seemed to have died away.
    “No!” he snarled and heaved.
    He got to his feet and the whole world spun around him. He almost fell. It nearly ended right there, but Flint took an awkward sideways step and caught his balance.
    The world steadied.
    The squeak of treads was close. So close. Too close.
    Flint turned.
    It was there. Massive, indomitable against the firelit columns of smoke. It rolled to a stop ten feet away and with a hiss of hydraulics the black mouths of twin 7.62 caliber miniguns swung toward him. He raised his own gun.
    The miniguns could fire more than four thousand rounds per minute, per gun.
    He wasn’t sure he could even pull the trigger.
    Flint bared his bloody teeth in a grin that defied the machine, defied logic, and defied the certainty of death that towered over him.
    “Go Joe!” he yelled.
    And fired.
     
     
    -2-
     
     
    “The Island”―Conference Room #3
    Three Hours Ago
     
    “I’m not comfortable with this.”
    Dr. Allyn Prospero tossed the sheet of paper onto the table with a dismissive