by Chris Fox
Every pore burst open, silver fur forcing its way from his skin. It grew and writhed like a sea of tiny snakes, enshrouding his body. His jaw broke, unhinging as it sprouted thick rows of fangs. His nose popped and cracked as it grew into a muzzle more at home on wolf than man. His chest grew still thicker, muscles undulating as they had before. Bones snapped from sockets as his body rearranged itself. He was taller. Stronger. Faster.
He could hear the men above, chattering into their radios. He could hear their heartbeats, slow and confident. They smelled of sweat but not fear.
They do not yet know that they are prey.
Black nylon ropes dropped into view through the shattered windows. With rifles slung over shoulders, soldiers in midnight body armor descended into view two at a time. They moved with military precision, each with a patch on his or her right shoulder. The patch depicted a large green triangle with a smaller silver one set inside it. Mohn Corp.
Sleep, Ka-Dun. I will bear your will to the interlopers. They will know your terrible vengeance.
Blair relinquished control, falling into darkness.
22
Not Just an Animal
The helicopter didn’t so much as buck as both squads rappelled out the sides. Jordan had only worked with Yuri a short time, and the man’s piloting skills continued to impress him. The Russian was tight-lipped about his past but seemed awfully comfortable in Vietnam-era American hardware.
Jordan waited for both squads to reach the ground before he stabbed a blue button on the console. The winches set into the cargo bay spun, retracting the nylon ropes the men had used to descend. “Yuri, pull us up to fifty meters.”
The Russian expertly guided the craft skyward, rotor elevating in pitch to match their altitude. As they rose, the canopy tilted to afford a view of the ramshackle building below. Jordan couldn’t see anything through the now shattered windows, thanks to the cloud of dust from the fifty-caliber rounds they’d filled the building with.
They’d seen two figures enter when they’d first crested the ridge. Neither looked anything like the beast, but Jordan couldn’t take any chances. There could be a contagion at work here, and even if there wasn’t he knew exactly what the Director’s orders would be. Silence anyone who might leak word about the pyramid. Jordan wasn’t sure the man would be wrong to give those orders, given what they’d found. The very idea of werewolves being real had taken a potshot at his reality, but the fact that a woman might have survived for over ten thousand years was even more terrifying.
“Alpha, take up defensive positions in the street. Use the cars for cover. Bravo, get to the rear of the building and watch that cornfield. If it gets in there, we’ll lose it,” he ordered, shifting his attention to the large tablet hastily installed in the center console.
The touch screen lived amidst the dials and buttons in the antiquated aircraft, the old mingling not so seamlessly with new. The weld housing the tablet definitely wasn’t pretty. Not that it mattered. The burnished console around the screen was unfinished, built for function rather than aesthetics. All the old hardware was like that. It came cheap though, or at least cheaper than anything made in the last two decades. The helicopter was one of the few pieces of equipment Mohn had employed that wasn’t state of the art. It seemed oddly out of place for a company that spared no expense. For anything.
The tablet displayed all eight helmet-cams, Alpha on top and Bravo on bottom. The men’s points of view added up to a fairly detailed picture of the situation below. It supplied him with tactical data while keeping him relatively safe. That was paramount, and not just because it meant he got to live. Getting footage to base camp was vital. The troops had to know what they were dealing with.
“Alpha in position,” Williams barked, his men sprinting into cover behind the battered vehicles the villagers in Peru favored. They set up a crossfire on the building’s front, ready to cut down anything that emerged. The new XN8 rifles they used were compact but close enough to M4s that the troops had acclimated quickly. If they’d be enough remained to be seen.
The troops moved with an efficiency any modern military would have envied, because every soldier there had served in one army or another. There were eight men and women from as many countries, each with a different background but a similar set of skills. They were the best he’d ever worked with.
“Bravo in position. I don’t like this, sir. We’re too exposed out here. There’s no hard cover.”
“Noted, Corporal,” Jordan said over the mic jutting from his helmet. He studied the building below. If the creature was inside, it could be biding its time, waiting for them to make a mistake.
“Orders, Commander?” Williams asked after a precise sixty seconds. His troops were wound tightly. They couldn’t hold that focus long.
“Put a gas canister in the building and see what that flushes out. Be ready. This thing moves faster than anything I’ve ever encountered,” Jordan replied, flicking off the mic. How high could that thing jump? “Yuri, take us up another thirty meters.”
The Russian tilted the stick, obligingly carrying them higher.
“Alpha, weapons hot. Make sure the target goes down before it reaches cover,” Williams ordered, his camera bobbing as he sprinted to another car.
“Roger that,” his squad chorused.
“Fire in the hole,” Williams shouted.
Jordan watched Williams’s feed as he lunged from cover long enough to lob a silver canister through the hole where the window used to be. Chalky smoke billowed from all sides of the building, obscuring any view of the interior. It was a calculated risk. They wouldn’t see anything until the creature emerged, but the grenade should, quite literally, smoke it out.
The ceiling exploded outward in a shower of plaster and wood. A terrifyingly familiar figure landed on the southeastern corner of the roof, its silver form shrouded by the smoke pouring from the hole the thing had created. Jordan studied it as the beast took in its surroundings. Its head swiveled from man to man, pausing on each long enough to assess it. This sort of eloquent body language was exactly what he’d expect from a highly trained soldier. It wasn’t at all what one would see from a Hollywood monster.
“It’s on the roof,” Jordan barked into his mic. They weren’t moving fast enough.
“It’s too fast to track,” Williams shot back, voice on the ragged edge of panic.
He was right. The beast had already vacated its perch. It dropped silently to the ground, bounding toward Bravo. Jewel was its first target. She fought to align the barrel of her rifle, but the beast was too swift. It raked her chest with wicked claws that sent the tiny blond woman spinning away in a fountain of her own blood. Her body was still airborne when the beast leapt, twisting over the rest of the squad and landing in the thick rows of corn. They rustled briefly, and then it was gone.
“Oh my God. Oh my God, Jewel is down. It’s in the corn. Watch the corn,” Tarkus called, backing away from his companion’s body as he slowly walked his rifle over the wall of corn.
Jordan knew with cold certainly that the man was about to break, training or no. This was going south. Bigger guns didn’t mean shit, just like he’d told the Director.
Yuri angled the helicopter without needing to be told, drifting over the corn as they scanned for the beast. It was in there somewhere.
“Sit tight,” Williams’s voice crackled. “Alpha, circle north. Let’s see if we can flank this thing.”
Williams’s group broke cover and sprinted through the wide alley between the clinic and the neighboring house. They emerged near the cornfield, breaking left in a staggered formation. The maneuver was executed with textbook precision and gave them command of the entire western edge. It was exactly the right call.
The creature burst from the corn, closing the distance to Tarkus in three massive bounds. It planted its shoulder against his midsection, tackling the hapless soldier through the building’s rear wall. The corporal’s weapon clattered to the ground as the pair disappea
red from view. The smoke had dissipated, but enough haze remained that Jordan couldn’t make out the interior. He reached for the touch screen, tapping Tarkus’s display. It filled the screen, revealing nothing but odd shapes in the darkness. Then a face appeared. It was all wolf, that face, all but the eyes. They glowed with amber malevolence, examining the camera with all-too-human intelligence.
The screen went black as the feed died. Jordan tapped the screen, returning to the entire squad. Not focusing on the black spot where Tarkus’s feed had been was difficult. Jewel’s camera was tilted at a crazy angle, by some chance having landed on her mangled form. He compartmentalized it, focusing on the larger situation. No distractions.
The creature was already moving. It punched a new hole through the clinic, emerging in the alley behind Noelo, the last member of Alpha. The former marine spun and unloaded a burst from his XN8 into the creature’s head. It roared in pain, face a mask of blood. Then it seized the beefy man in both clawed hands, sinking a maw full of fangs into his throat. It ripped loose a huge chunk of meat, wolfing it down before discarding Noelo. The last member of Alpha tumbled to the ground like a cigarette butt, limp and lifeless. The beast blurred back to the corn, vanishing like sleep after the crack of thunder.
“Bravo, be advised Alpha has been eliminated. You’re on your own,” Jordan announced, nodding to Yuri. The Russian eased back on the stick, gaining elevation. No sense in taking chances. “The creature has reentered the cornfield. Get some distance and watch your six. It can cover fifty meters in about two seconds.”
“Roger that. You heard the man. Let’s move, people,” Williams ordered, impressively calm despite the carnage. Ever the professional, that one.
His team fell back, putting seventy-five meters between them and the field where the creature lay waiting. The move would buy them reaction time at the cost of accuracy. They formed a rough triangle, setting up an overlapping field of fire. It was textbook perfect, as always.
Ninety seconds passed. One twenty. Nothing stirred in that corn except the wind.
“Command, is this Bravo. Any sign of movement?” Williams’s voice crackled over the com. He was starting to fray, and his men were probably in even worse shape.
“Negative,” Jordan replied, scanning as the helicopter slowly circled the field. The corn was still as the dead.
The men stood frozen, each at the edge of action. Ready in the truest sense of the word.
“Request instructions. Commander, should we withdraw?”
“Negative. Hold your position,” Jordan answered, a bead of sweat trickling down his cheek. Where the hell had the creature gone?
The beast came at them sideways, bursting from cover exactly where it had entered. It blurred in a zig-zag pattern, scooping up Tarkus’s XN8 and flipping atop the clinic’s smoky roof. It crouched to minimize its profile and then looked straight at Jordan. The beast brought up the muzzle of its newly acquired weapon, smoothly aiming with one outstretched arm.
The rifle barked a hail of rounds in Jordan’s direction. They punched through the canopy, stitching a line toward his face. Horrible pings echoed through the canopy as the rounds came closer. He held his breath, wincing in preparation for the bullet. It never came. He darted a glance over the now shattered canopy. Holy shit. The beast had withdrawn the clip and appeared to be looking around for more. Jordan wasn’t sticking around long enough for it to find one.
“Get us out of here,” he ordered Yuri, tuning out screams as the helicopter limped toward base camp.
23
Wrath
The beast sifted through the Ka-Dun’s memories, plucking relevant details. The strange weapons the warriors wielded were known as guns. The Ka-Dun understood them in a conceptual sense but had never had need of them. He was a scholar, not a warrior. This denied the beast the skill to use them effectively, but they were not complicated. The gun proved remarkably easy to control, as he’d learned when attacking the angry black bird in the sky. The helicopter, his Ka-Dun knew it as.
He’d driven the machine from the field of battle, which left four warriors to deal with. That and the cleansing of the Ka-Dun’s she. That she would join the great pack was unlikely, but nothing was lost in the attempt. It must be done quickly, yet doing so would leave him vulnerable. These warriors were skilled, and while he didn’t fear their weapons, he was aware of the cost of the wounds they might inflict. Conservation of energy was critical with the sun so early in the cycle.
He sank into a crouch, testing the cool air in the alley with powerful nostrils. The troops were approaching slowly. They smelled wary. He cocked an ear, waiting for them to betray their presence. There. A boot crunched on a piece of adobe blown loose during the battle. He glanced at the building next to him, a crude structure long exposed to the elements.
A pair of wooden shutters stood open, revealing the shadowed interior. It was nearly devoid of furniture, save for a single rickety table and a set of plastic chairs around it. Interesting. He probed memories until he understood plastic. A superb material.
“Does anyone have a visual?” a voice crackled from around the corner, next to the inner wall of the house. It came through the communication device used by the warriors. Radios. Useful, but such a dangerous folly to play so ignorantly with signals.
“Negative,” another voice crackled back. All but one had been male so far. Strange, but fortunate. She’s were the fiercest, cunning and deadly.
The beast gathered on its haunches, leaping over the lip of the window and rolling to its feet on the dirt floor inside. Its eyes adjusted instantly to the dim light, and it cocked its ears as it prowled toward the wall. Crunch. A boot fell just on the other side of the wall. The warrior’s body was pressed against it. A fatal mistake.
It lunged forward with all its considerable strength, punching a hole that belched a cloud of plaster into the hapless warrior’s face. Before the man could recover, the beast's hand closed around his helmet, wrenching him back through the hole the creature had created. The violent motion widened the hole, ripping away much of the wall as the warrior thrashed in the beast's grip. The effort was futile.
The beast clenched its fist, crushing both the black helmet and the skull beneath. The twitching stopped. It seized the corpse with both hands, ripping loose a hunk of flesh from the neck and shoulder. It lacked the time to feed properly, but even small morsels would fuel its strength.
The beast was already moving before the corpse tumbled to the floor, gliding soundlessly through the front door onto the muddy track outside. Even the Ka-Dun didn’t consider this a proper road, though his memories showed many places in the world where such a primitive way of life held sway. The world had changed much. Lost much.
The beast darted across the mouth of the alley, making it to the ruined face of the clinic without incident. The other three warriors would be cautious, and that would give it the time to cleanse the Ka-Dun’s she. It ducked through the gaping hole in the front of the clinic, rolling over debris and landing near the she’s limp form.
She was covered in blood and plaster, the life having already fled from her. Time was fast vanishing. The beast knelt next to her body, gently exposing her shattered neck. Bone jutted from ruined skin. The wounds were hideous. No matter.
The beast fed. Even if the she did not rise, her flesh would provide sustenance.
“Target acquired,” a voice crackled at the edge of its hearing. The beast rose, but it was too late.
Bullets punched through the walls, tearing into its thigh and shoulder. The wounds throbbed, but the pain sharpened its senses. It rolled backward, dropping prone amidst the dirt and debris. Energy flowed to the wounded area. Within moments both bullets were expelled from its flesh, falling to the ground with tiny clinks. The wounds sealed, and the beast was whole.
“Is there movement?” another voice crackled, closer than the one before. They were approaching. It would show them movement.
The beast leapt straight up, through the ho
le it had created earlier. It landed lightly atop the corner of the structure, wooden beam groaning under its considerable weight. The three warriors were in a triangular formation, already bringing their weapons to bear.
It leapt toward the closest, clawed feet punching through the man’s chest. The beast bore the warrior to the ground, crushing the fool before he could cry out. The other two warriors spun to face it, one quickly enough to align his weapon. The black rifle expelled a hail of slugs, ripping into the beast's midsection and sending it staggering backward.
The beast roared its pain and anger, leaping nearly a dozen feet into the air. It landed behind the warrior who’d attacked, raking him across the throat with razor-sharp claws as the man spun to face it. The warrior was flung violently backward in a fountain of his own blood, limp body rolling across the ground to land at the feet of his companion.
The final warrior stared, trembling. His will was broken. He turned and ran. It would not save him.
24
Need a Drink
Blair heaved another body into the pit, already brimming with butchered villagers. He leaned against a stunted poplar tree, but not because he was winded. It was the weight of all those deaths. Neither the frigid wind nor the rapidly sinking sun accounted for the deep chill that coursed through him.
Those people had been slaughtered by the strange consciousness imparted by the statue; he was convinced of it. He stared down at them, the ragged remains of the living, the once vibrant natives. Dozens of them. The pile now included eight soldiers, all with the grey and green triangle emblazoned on the shoulder of their rumpled black uniforms. The same uniform Jordan had worn. Mohn Corp. It gave Blair something to hate. A target. The resulting rage was the only thing keeping him moving. It smoldered within him, warm and vigilant.