by Chris Fox
“How many of us will be dead by then? We don’t even know what killed Blair…or what’s going on with Bridget and Sheila. We should be sending your men and their guns down to find them, not sitting here waiting for them to die.” He met Jordan’s gaze.
The commander had seen this sort of defiance before. It wasn’t going to be quieted short of violence, but he had to try.
“Heeeeelp!” A woman’s shriek echoed through the ravine. Bridget. Jordan spun to face the pyramid. There was only one thing he knew of that could evoke that kind of terror. That thing had come back, or there was another one in the pyramid.
“Yuri, get the men set up with the heavy ordnance. I want the western side of the pyramid under lockdown. If it isn’t our girls, and it moves, I want it dead,” he ordered. Yuri snapped a salute, sprinting off toward the soldiers’ camp.
Jordan crossed the pavilion to a long black case he’d hoped that he wouldn’t have to open. He knelt, using his thumb on the scanner set into the front of the black plastic. It snapped open, rising of its own accord. He reached for the pieces within, assembling the rifle he’d acquired in Panama with practiced ease. Assembly took only moments, but for Jordan an eternity had passed before he slipped the strap over his shoulder and slammed the clip home.
The sniper rifle had been modeled after an old-school Barrette, but it was newer, sleeker, and—most importantly—it was automatic. It was far larger than the modified M4s the rest of the squad would be using. That made it worthless at close range, but it might let him get the drop on this thing.
“What about us, Commander?” Roberts asked. Some of the fire had gone out of him, but his stance was defiant.
“You and Alejandro head east. Get at least a hundred yards from camp and hide in the boulders,” he ordered, pulling his sidearm from its holster. He offered it grip first to Alejandro. “Take this. It’s a .457 so you’ll need to hold it with both hands when you fire it. All you have to do is flip the safety, point, and pull the trigger. Can you do that?”
“I can do that.” Alejandro nodded, taking the pistol gingerly in both hands. “It’s heavy.”
“Dr. Roberts…” Jordan said, reaching for the 9mm he kept tucked into his boot.
“I’ve never fired a gun in my life, and I’m not about to start now. She could simply have encountered a spider for all we know. You’re overreacting,” he replied, crossing his arms and leaning against a crate.
A low, deep howl echoed from the depths of the pyramid and up the ravine. It was otherworldly. Terrifying. Jordan had heard something similar in Alaska, but this was deeper and more primal.
“Run. Now!” he barked, giving Roberts a little shove. The man rounded on him, about to protest. Jordan cut him off. “Didn’t you fucking hear me? Move. Fucking MOVE.”
Alejandro was already in motion, eating up ground like a rabbit fleeing a fox. Dr. Roberts watched him go, and then turned and lumbered into a run as well. That was the best Jordan could do for them right now. His priority was downing that werewolf. More than just their lives could depend on it.
Jordan cradled the heavy rifle, sprinting into the dusk. The moon hadn’t risen yet, but he could already make out the faint glow on the horizon. He hoped it wouldn’t make the thing stronger. He circled wide around the structure’s southern face. Going this way would take longer, but he didn’t want to risk getting close. He’d seen how quickly that thing could move, and if it got the drop on him, he was done. That meant more than his life. If his team couldn’t bring the beast down, the thing could kill with impunity. The village of Villa Milagros was just a few miles north.
“Deploying now, Commander,” Yuri’s voice crackled over the com. “In position, forty seconds.”
Bridget’s petite form burst from the darkness just as Jordan rounded the southwest corner. She staggered forward a few paces, and then her ankle folded and she spilled into a dirt mound. She tried to struggle to her feet but wasn’t making any real progress. Exhausted from her flight out of the pyramid, she was helpless.
Jordan’s training took over. He dropped to one knee and set the rifle’s stock against his shoulder. He sighted down the scope, hoping Mohn’s toy had a way to track the werewolf. Night vision revealed nothing. The shot was going to be hard at this range. He wished he had another hundred yards between him and the target, but he’d just have to trust his reflexes.
“Come on, you bastard,” he muttered, conscious of Bridget’s flailing as she sought to regain her feet. He considered the options for a split second, weighing her usefulness as bait against the risk to an entire village. He didn’t have a choice. She was expendable.
Something large blurred into the scope’s field of view and then out again before he could squeeze the trigger. The creature was just too fast. His scope didn’t catch up to the beast until it paused, looming over Bridget’s cowering form like some avenging god. He didn’t waste time wondering what it was. The creature had a discernible anatomy. That was a head. He bet it needed that.
Jordan’s finger slid over the trigger, already depressing it when his brain registered what he was seeing. The beast lunged so swiftly that his finger couldn’t complete its arc in time. Blood fountained as Bridget’s shrieks were finally silenced. BaDOOOM. A foot-long streak of white tore a line through the side of the beast's silver head, lifting the entire creature and launching it into the darkness in a spray of gore. The beast didn’t rise.
Was it dead? He didn’t know. He could try approaching and helping Bridget. He didn’t like leaving her out there, but even at this distance, he knew she was beyond saving. The lowlight vision revealed a slowly spreading pool underneath her, and her neck was bent at an unnatural angle. He swung the scope back into alignment with the patch of shadow where the beast had fallen.
“You can’t be fucking serious,” Jordan said, refusing to accept what he was seeing.
The beast was back on its feet, form half revealed by the moonlight. Its head was completely whole. There was no sign of a wound other than a smattering of blood on the creature’s fur. Even more alarming were the thing’s eyes. They were human, glittering with intelligence as the beast searched the darkness for threats. It was looking for him. Methodically, like a trained soldier.
Jordan centered his sights on the creature’s thick torso. He had no idea if the beast could even be killed, but killing it was his only hope of saving his team and the villagers. He needed to do massive damage to this thing. Jordan stroked the trigger, sending a gout of flame from the muzzle and a boom through the ravine. The bullet punched through the creature’s torso, inflicting damage no living creature should survive. Most of its internal organs should have become pulp. But it didn’t fall.
The beast's gaze locked on him. He’d given away his position with the muzzle flare, and the creature had instantly capitalized on that. Jordan stroked the trigger again, but the beast flashed upwards and the shot splintered marble instead. The animal bounded out of sight, disappearing up the same trail they’d taken down into the ravine.
“Yuri, fall back to the jeeps. That thing is getting away,” he said into the com. His voice was calm in spite of his pounding heart.
“Acknowledge,” Yuri said. Jordan watched the four men who’d been skulking through the shadows to his west pivot and head back to base camp.
“Also, set up the sat link. The Director needs to know just how screwed we are.”
17
Dr. Liz
“It hurts, Dr. Liz,” Emilie whispered, a single tear sliding down the child’s cheek. She used the back of her free hand to hurriedly wipe it away, as if embarrassed by the sign of weakness. It was a sobering action for a six-year-old. They grew up so fast here.
“I know,” Liz said, deftly severing the stitch’s loose end, though she’d never done anything like this as recently as a few months ago. She reached for a cotton swab and dabbed it with alcohol before returning to the child’s wound. Emilie would have a scar, but that was a small price to pay. She could have lost the
finger. “We’re almost done. Just a little bit more, and you can go home. You’ve been so brave. I’m very proud of you.”
Liz dabbed the wound, drawing a wince from the child. Emilie’s lips were tightly drawn, but she didn’t complain as Liz finished cleaning the wound. Liz wrapped the hand in clean gauze, hoping the child wouldn’t go digging in the fields for a few days. She’d have to speak with Emilie’s mother, though she doubted it would do any good. Harvest was coming, and the family needed every hand, even the wounded ones.
“There we go. All finished.” She tousled the child’s hair. “Tell your mother I’d like to speak to her, all right? She can—”
“Dr. Liz?” a male voice called from the street outside. The bell above the door chimed as Rafael entered the clinic. “Jefe says he needs you right away. Very important. He says come now.”
“Did he say why?” she asked, removing her latex gloves and dropping them into the waste bin. She hated the residue they left behind. The white powder made her feel like some nerdy doctor, which, regardless of the title they gave her, couldn’t be further from the truth. She slipped on her prescription sunglasses. Her regular ones had broken almost three months ago, but being in a remote Peruvian village made replacing them nearly impossible. At least she could see outside. During the day at least.
“No, but he asked Rufi to gas up the jeep,” Rafael said, holding open the door for Emilie as the child darted through. “Esperanzo came down from Villa Milagros. He was white, like he seen something bad. Don’t know what. Jefe ain’t told nobody.”
Liz followed him out to the town’s one road, muddy furrows from the rare car still drying from the storm that had passed through sometime the previous night. The black clouds blanketing the southern horizon threatened to do the same tonight. She and Rafael hurried up the side of the road. A battered Ford truck bulging with chicken cages rumbled by so close they had to press themselves flat against the adobe walls of the clinic.
“Slow down, chupa,” Rafael yelled at the vehicle’s retreating form. He gave up with a half-hearted shake of his head. “Old fool’s going to kill someone one of these days. Michela needs to take his keys away.”
They picked their way down the muddy road, past a dozen familiar buildings. The street was hardly crowded, but there were perhaps twenty other villagers, from old Tia to a few children chasing a soccer ball. The pace was so much slower than it was in the states, neighbors chatting and people enjoying the afternoon from battered wicker rocking chairs on porches.
“Dr. Liz, when you gonna stop by?” Sanchez called from the back of his mule on the far side of the street. His grey hair fluttered in the wind like an overgrown hedge as he delivered a gap-toothed smile. “You can try my tequila. Best in Peru.”
“She’s not interested in your tequila, or anything else you’ve got,” Rafael said, interposing himself between Liz and the skinny old man. “Jefe needs her right away. We got business, you old letch.”
“What kind of business?” Sanchez asked, jerking the reins of his mule to get it to slow. The mule had other ideas. It kept plodding down the road, unconcerned with its master’s insistence on turning it around.
Liz couldn’t help but chuckle as they quickened their pace and left the old man behind. He was one of the reasons she loved Villa Consuelo. Everyone here had such personality, and they all knew each other. This place painted life back in the states with an impersonal brush. In the states, you could feel like you were alone even when surrounded by people. This was community.
They passed Luca’s Café, the town’s only restaurant and the last structure before the north road. Jefe was waiting in the jeep. He wore his signature uniform, a pair of faded blue jeans and a black leather jacket. His salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back, reminding Liz of The Fonz, from that old show Happy Days.
“Liz. Get in, please. We have much to discuss. Rafael, go down to the station and tell them I want a patrol sent north. Turn back anyone heading up to Villa Milagros. No access. Tell them it’s quarantined,” Jefe commanded. She’d never met someone with such a confident air. His demeanor was something the entire village relied on. He was part mayor, part police chief.
“Yes, Jefe,” Rafael replied with a quick bob of his head. He hurried back into town at a fast walk while Liz slid into the passenger side of the battered jeep. The door gave a groan of protest as it slammed shut, spattering her white shirt with mud.
“Great.” Liz flicked off what dirt she could.
“You’ve heard I served in Desert Storm, right?” he asked as the jeep lurched up the dirt track. The locals called it a road, but Liz disagreed. Roads were paved. This was more like a goat trail, and calling it that was being generous. It jounced them about like a horse trying to shake its rider.
“Yes, I’d heard that,” she called back, over the roar of the engine. Jefe hadn’t ever discussed his past with her. Something big must be going on for him to let his guard down even this much. “Is that why your English is so good?”
“It is,” he admitted, resting a commanding gaze on her before shifting back to the road. “I saw a lot of really bad things there, things I won’t ever talk about. This is worse. I must ask your forgiveness for showing you this horror, but I don’t have any idea what killed these people. I need you to tell me what did this.”
“Killed?” Liz repeated, numb from the weight of the words. Her hair whipped in the wind as the jeep reached an alarming pace. “People are dead? How many? How did they die?”
“All of them. Except one,” Jefe replied flatly. The man was stone, as unconcerned by the hazardous drive as he was by the murders. “He’s still alive, and we don’t know why. We haven’t been able to wake him. I’m hoping you can, because if you can’t I’m not sure we’ll ever know what happened. I think he’s an American, maybe European. Blond hair.”
“What can you tell me? Is it sickness?” she asked, unaware of any disease that could wipe out an entire village in so short a time, unless some sort of chemical warfare was involved.
“No, not sickness.”
“But you told Rafael that Milagros is quarantined,” she said. The jeep ground over a steep rise, nearly toppling backward. Jefe just kept driving.
“Because I don’t want anyone seeing what really happened. These people were murdered, Liz. Violently,” he explained. His tone was as dispassionate as if he were counting bushels of corn.
“By who?” she asked so softly she wasn’t sure if he heard. The jeep jounced another fifty paces before he finally answered.
“No by who. By what,” he said, gunning the engine. The muffler belched a cloud of acrid exhaust as it labored up the trail, burning her eyes. “It looks like some sort of animal, like a bear or a lion.”
“But we don’t have either here. There isn’t anything capable of killing a man, let alone an entire village. There isn’t even a zoo for a couple hundred miles,” she replied, her mind working furiously to conjure something that could have killed so many.
“You begin to see why I brought you. Nothing I’ve ever heard of could do something like this,” Jefe said, shifting into a low gear as the jeep angled up a slope no sane man would attempt to drive over. She clenched her eyes shut, gripping the seat for all she was worth. This was the spot Liz hated the most on the road to Milagros. “If it is an animal, then we must find and kill it. If it is a man, then we must find him, though I do not see how such a thing could be possible. No man could do this, no matter how evil.”
They fell into silence as the jeep lumbered up the hill, dense foliage pressing the trail from both sides. A cloud of green macaws burst from one of the trees, winging their way north in a riot of noise and color. The birds were beautiful in a way she knew she’d never find back home in California. She wished she could share the sight with Trevor. He was so serious most of the time, but she knew the flock would have brought out one of her brother’s boyish grins.
“We’re nearly there,” Jefe said, rather unnecessarily. She could clearly see the r
amshackle houses in the distance. Villa Milagros was even more poverty stricken than Villa Consuelo, and she always had a difficult time coming up here.
Normally both parents and children would be in the cornfields by now, weeding and pruning to ensure the best harvest possible. The rows of corn on three sides of the little town stood empty, untroubled save for the slight summer breeze. There was no sign of anyone moving between the homes, in and out of the town’s shops, or even around the bar. Marta’s little Honda Civic was parked outside her house, and Sandoval’s tractor stood idle next to his field. Until she got closer, Liz thought the place looked deserted. Then she saw the shattered doors hanging in frames, the spatters of blood on dirty windows. There were furrows in the mud where something heavy had been dragged.
Jefe parked the jeep just outside town, close enough to see where the carnage had apparently taken place but far enough away to not smell the blood. It was still closer than Liz would like, and she was thankful that the breeze was coming from the south, blocking whatever unwelcome odors filled the town. No longer caring about the mud spattering her t-shirt, she exited the vehicle. Mud seemed so trivial in light of the tragedy that had befallen these people.
“Gonzalez has been gathering the bodies into a grave,” Jefe said, his voice subdued for once. He started up the road, pausing long enough for her to catch up. “I’d like you to examine them before they are buried. Just to see if you can identify the wounds. Then we will take you to the survivor and see if you can wake him.”
The pair walked in silence as they navigated the dirt road through the town. Like Villa Consuelo, the town only had one road, so they passed every house and business as they walked. All had been damaged. Doors kicked in or a window shattered. A few had bullet holes, though those were rare. Who had been shooting? And at what?