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SNAFU: Hunters

Page 25

by James A. Moore


  “It’s completely burned out, Vida. Still smoking.”

  At Tighe’s comment, she sat up, ignoring Aio’s admonishments, and looked over at the table where the OH still lay strapped to the surface. Tighe had been literal; smoke was wafting from the edges of the belos’ chitin armor.

  “Did you get anything?” he asked, and she followed his gaze to the burns on her arms from where her implants had fried.

  Exhausted, she nodded and pulled away from Aio’s ministrations. “We have to go back to the clearing. Something else came through.” As she accepted Tighe’s hand to get to her feet, Tchaz arrived at a lope.

  “It’s Faina,” she said, wearing the porcelain doll mask that she and her sister had so perfected. But there was a note of worry in her light voice. “They’re hunting something at the rift-site. It’s not like the bugs, it’s worse. They need help.”

  “Bronze!” Tighe yelled. “Sig! Rakehall! We’re rolling out!”

  Esfir limped out from the tent where she’d been resting and leapt into the nearest truck where Tchaz joined her. The look on the girl’s face brooked no argument. Bronze rode shotgun while Sig took the driver’s seat and followed Tighe’s truck out of camp. While Tighe drove and Rakehall smoothed antibacterial salve over Vida’s burns, she told them what she’d seen.

  “It’s not random,” she said, gritting her teeth as the medic worked on her burns. “There’s a plan behind where and when the rifts are opened. They’re looking for kids specifically, so they can take them back and raise them.”

  “For what?” Tighe asked, slamming around a corner and skidding across the narrow blacktop lane before straightening out.

  “I don’t know,” she growled. “I didn’t get enough time, just flashes. As soon as I hit pay dirt the damn thing blasted me! All I do know,” she said, her voice as set and angry as she felt. “Is that they have someone like me. That’s how they’re getting so good at opening the rifts.”

  “Someone like you?” Rakehall asked.

  She nodded, pulling her hair back into a quick braid to keep it out of her face, baring the tattoos that arched over her left ear. “A human. A woman who knows the conjuration, to affect the aethyr and achieve Kalfou. Crossroads.”

  “Crossroads?” Tighe asked, not taking his eyes from the road as he floored the accelerator.

  “The rift,” she said.

  “Shit.”

  At the rate they were traveling, Tighe nearly overshot the turn onto the overgrown track. Expertly he downshifted and turned the wheel, rocking the truck onto two tires before sliding off the pavement and onto the new trajectory. Sig followed in the second vehicle, managing not to be quite so reckless and so fell behind a bit.

  “Where are they?” Tighe called into a radio.

  A moment later, Bronze replied. “Tchaz says they’re at the far southwest edge of the meadow.”

  “Got it.”

  While Tighe drove as fast as he could through the rough terrain, Rakehall handed Vida her rifle and readied his own weapons. As soon as the truck slid to a stop, they were both out and headed toward the clearing. Sig slammed to a halt behind them, and Esfir raced by the humans, a silver-grey streak amongst the trees. Bronze caught up quickly, his blade prosthesis making his gait uneven but fast.

  “There,” Tchaz called, and Vida caught a glimpse of Kai through the trees. She veered, heading for the girl with Tchaz and Sig on her heels. The other men all went past, spreading out and aiming to reach the edge of the meadow at different places.

  “Where’s Nate?” Vida asked, crouching low beside Kai when she reached her. The young girl was shaking, and there were scrapes on her hands that oozed blood. Two gashes raked her right upper arm, but she held her pistol at the ready.

  Kai nodded toward the clearing just beyond where they’d met her.

  The man stood near the middle of the meadow with his weapon seated against his shoulder. There was blood on his arms and upper back, and Faina held her ground beside him with her shoulders hunched and tail lashing. She wailed; a high-pitched warning to something they couldn’t see. Behind them on the ground was the misshapen corpse of something that had no right to have ever been alive.

  While they watched, something pulled itself through an invisible rip in the air. It wasn’t a ’ponera or belos’; it wasn’t like anything they’d seen before. It was sinuous, moving as though boneless, and three sets of appendages gripped the edge of the rift as though for purchase.

  “What the–” Sig breathed, and then the shooting began.

  Harris fired repeatedly, but the thing coming through the rift only moved faster. It squeezed through, casting to the left as another behemoth began to pull itself into the world. Tighe, Bronze and Rakehall came out of the trees then, maneuvering around Harris to fire at the monsters emerging from the portal. Esfir raced to her sister, and together the two Cobalts launched themselves at the first creature. Like dancing smoke, they evaded its tentacle-like arms, biting and clawing at its dappled black hide.

  Kai and Tchaz leaned their heads together for a moment, and Vida wondered, not for the first time, if they could communicate with each other through their links to the Cobalts. Then the girls entered the clearing, obviously going to the aid of their feline charges.

  The second thing had completely emerged, and a third was on its way through when Sig and Vida joined the others in the fray. The battle seemed like a fever dream, held as it was in the pristine meadow beneath a vault of cloudless blue sky. Vida moved her hands on her weapon to activate it, and caught back a cry of pain and frustration. The damage to her implants was greater than she’d thought; she was unable to activate the tech in the rifle. Useless, except as a club, she dropped it in the flower-dotted grass and raced toward the rift. From her belt she pulled a 1911 pistol with her right hand, a double-edged knife with her left.

  For her, the day slowed. Sunlight fell like warm golden syrup, a sweet weight against the crown of her head and the points of her shoulders. The Bani moved sedately, flashes splintering the air as bullets erupted from their weapons. The Cobalts, living sculptures of steel and brushed pewter, danced between the wide-flung limbs of the creature out of nightmare. Blood, a deep ichor more black than red, sprayed in sparkling droplets as they bit and clawed their adversary. Tighe and Bronze were shooting at the second beast, aiming for its multiple eyes, while Harris and Rakehall concentrated on the third still attempting to breach the eldritch doorway.

  Vida joined them, firing into the rift, hoping to keep the creature from coming through. The bullets seemed to have little effect, and she wished for the exploding rounds from her useless rifle. The monsters were screaming, bellowing, the sound so deep it made the ground shake. Long feet with prehensile toes dug into the floor of the meadow, keeping it from being blown back into its own world.

  “Grenade!” Bronze shouted. Harris and Vida dropped to the ground, while Tighe turned away. The metal egg hit the monster mid-chest, and it caught at it with winding pseudo-fingers. When the grenade went off, chunks of purple-black flesh and shredded dermis flew everywhere. But it cleared the rift for a moment, long enough for Vida to raise her head and look through.

  On the other side was a vast courtyard paved in rough dark stone. A cloud-covered sky hid the top of a steep mountain looming in the distance. There were more of the squid-armed monsters, and belos’, and a cohort of ’ponera. But in the center of all this was a woman. Dressed in deep red, her head wrapped in cloth to hide her hair, she held some kind of serpent-like creature with multiple heads draped over her shoulders. Her face was dark and slender, eyes like clear amber, and she met Vida’s gaze directly.

  Everything else faded to little more than background noise. The sound of gunfire became distant crackles, and the bellow of the only remaining monster that had made it through the portal was reduced to the hollow boom of a far-off sea. Vida pushed to her feet, never dropping her gaze from the woman on the other side. She drew back, throwing the blade with all her force. It flickered thr
ough the rift, nearly hitting the other woman before one of the belos’ blocked it with its own armored body.

  Her implants were fried, the burns on her arms throbbing in time with her heartbeat. It didn’t matter. Vida dropped her pistol, oblivious to the fight between her crew and the remaining invader. She took a deep breath, focused on her heartbeat, the very center of her being. Gracefully, like an exotic dance, she made the forms with burned arms and aching fingers. The last of her active implants, those above her left ear, glowed and seared her as she called more power from them than they were made to deliver.

  Across the rift, the woman in red nodded, turned away and disappeared among the disparate monstrosities that surrounded her. The rip in the air burned, first electric blue and then white hot, twisting like a rising cinder from an unseen fire. Then it closed, a scar upon the fabric of reality, and was gone.

  The last creature fell, only yards from its fellows, and rank fluids from its dying body soaked the clean earth of the meadow. Vida saw it fall, saw that the Cobalts and their girls were still whole, that the rest of the crew had survived. Then the darkness that had filled the other side of the rift drifted over her, and she knew no more.

  * * *

  The world was soft and warm, and rumbling. Vida opened her eyes, feeling as though she’d slept for a year. She was stiff and immobile, for a moment thinking she’d been restrained. But no, it was the Cobalts. One lay on each side, wedging her between them, and their contented purring made the camp bed she lay on vibrate.

  “She’s awake.” The light voice belonged to one of the girls. Vida wasn’t sure at first which one, until Tchaz leaned over her. “Welcome back.”

  “Where?” Vida asked, her throat dry and voice hoarse.

  “Hope, Idaho,” Kai said from the other side of the bed. She smoothed her hand over Faina’s flank, and smiled at Vida. Her right arm was bandaged from shoulder to elbow, and a colorful bruise was just beginning to fade from her jaw. “We’ve been here three days.”

  Rakehall appeared then, bringing her a cup of water. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like death warmed over,” she replied, taking the cup gratefully.

  “Slowly,” he advised. “I’ve had you on IV fluids, but there’s nothing in your stomach. Don’t push it.”

  “How long was I out?” She forced herself to sip the water, instead of guzzling it the way she wanted.

  “Six days,” Tchaz answered. “You sealed the rift without any tech. Aio was afraid you wouldn’t recover.”

  Vida glanced at her arms. The burns were well on their way to healing, but she could feel that the implants had been removed. She felt… lighter. “Why here? Idaho?”

  “It’s a good, quiet place to regroup,” Rakehall said, taking her now-empty cup and filling it again with fresh water. “No new rifts since that day. No sign of any OHs. Tighe decided to take advantage while it’s clear.”

  “The calm before the storm,” Vida mused, and pretended she didn’t see the way Tchaz and Kai exchanged looks.

  Later, when she’d managed to talk her way out of bed rest, and eaten a little to fill her empty belly, she sat in a camp chair on the shore of Lake Pend Oreille. The air was calm, the sun low above a bank of clouds, and birds flew over the water on perfect curved wings. She sat in the quiet, listening to the soft slap of wavelets on the narrow rocky beach.

  “Mind some company?” Harris asked, joining her with a second chair.

  Vida shook her head, but didn’t look away from the lovely view.

  “How are you?”

  She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Alive. We’re all alive. So, good.”

  “I wanted to thank you.”

  That surprised her, and she turned to look at him. There were thin scratches along his temple and cheekbone, more on his neck that disappeared beneath his collar. He’d had blood on his back when last she saw him, in the clearing fighting the ’nychoteuth – that was the name Tighe had assigned to the latest monstrosities they’d encountered. Nate had certainly proved his mettle, and his ability to be a member of the Bani.

  “You saved my life. All our lives.” He reached over, and very lightly touched her hand. “You’re a hell of a woman, Vida Calder.”

  “Maybe,” she said, and she didn’t return his touch, but didn’t pull away from it, either.

  He was silent beside her. She could tell by the way he pursed his lips that he had questions, something he wanted to say to her. But perhaps he felt this wasn’t the time, because he kept the words to himself.

  “Do you know why I volunteered for the Bani?” she asked after a while. The sun had fallen behind the clouds, and bright ribbons of topaz and saffron streamed across the sky. “When I was a child, my father was away. And one day, a doorway opened into the world between our house and the sea, like the air was a curtain and it was pulled aside. Something, some horrible thing came through and reached for me. But my manman intervened. She stopped it from getting me, and so instead of taking me, it took her. I was eight years old, and a monster like something from a nightmare stole my mother.”

  Harris nodded once, understanding in the movement.

  “And now, I have to figure out what to do,” she whispered, closing her eyes on the tears that welled and slipped down her face.

  When her hand turned to hold his, he returned her firm grasp; she was sure he could feel her trembling.

  “Because regardless of how they originally broke through to our world,” she went on, “They have someone else to open their doorways for them now. Someone who can do it almost effortlessly. I saw her through the portal, and I recognized her.”

  “No,” Harris breathed.

  Vida knew he’d seen through the opening before she’d closed it by sheer will, but had he seen the woman’s face?

  “I don’t know why. I can’t imagine any reason good enough. But my mother is helping them. I have to stop her.”

  Harris squeezed her hand, and she turned to look at him. Already the light was fading from the sky; from behind them the lights from base camp were shining. When her eyes met his gaze, he gave her a promise. “I’ll help you.”

  Hungry Eyes

  -A Valducan Story-

  Seth Skorkowsky

  15 July, 2009

  “The second one is coming up now,” I said into the radio. From my vantage point, crouched behind a rooftop wall, I watched an orange basket stretcher emerge from the manhole. It stopped as it reached the tripod straddling the opening and swung there, dangling above the pit. Blue-uniformed officers carefully pulled it out and began unstrapping the black body bag secured inside. Colored lights flashed atop the response vehicles, parked to shield the grisly work from the view of onlookers pressing against the nearby barricades. Shouts in French echoed up from the crowd and the police trying to contain them.

  Nick’s voice came through my ear bud. “Colin, you in position?”

  “Aye,” Colin answered.

  “Mal, keep us posted, but stay out of sight,” Nick ordered, his Armenian accent muddling the words.

  “Roger that.” I wiped the sweat from my forehead, wishing a cloud might block the summer sun. Below me, the men lifted the bag and set it down on the concrete beside the first.

  “They’re going for the third one.” I tucked lower behind the wall as the men sent the now empty stretcher back down into the abyssal hole. In the distance, the distinct nee-noo-nee-noo of a police siren echoed through the Paris streets. The line running from the tripod stopped.

  Two minutes later, a worker flipped the tripod’s winch and the spool began to coil.

  “They’re reeling it up,” I radioed.

  “Let’s get ready, people,” Nick said.

  Nervous excitement tingled across my shoulders as I watched the spool grow larger and larger. Finally, the orange stretcher emerged from the catacombs sixty feet below. “It’s up.”

  “Distraction coming in fifteen seconds.”

  I tightened my jaw, fighting the urge to
ask, but knew better. Nick loved his surprises as much as he loved reminding me that I’m the new guy.

  “Ten seconds.”

  The workers pulled the stretcher onto the ground. The crowd behind the barricade pushed harder, cameras flashing as they strained to see. Police stepped between them and the body, forming a human shield.

  “Five.”

  I held my breath.

  A loud boom thundered two blocks away. Car alarms erupted, accompanied by screams. Another boom sounded a moment later.

  The police and medical workers shot upright, peering in that direction like startled meerkats. White smoke billowed from the direction the sounds had come, filling the narrow street.

  Several police and paramedics charged in that direction as others ordered the crowd to disperse. It didn’t take much to persuade them, and then the police ran after their companions. One stopped, just beyond the far barrier, his back to the bodies and ear to his radio.

  “Clear,” I said. “Still one nearby.”

  “Keep an eye on him,” Colin said. He slipped out from between a pair of emergency vehicles and hurried to the bagged bodies, his copper hair hidden beneath a dark ball cap.

  Licking my lips, I watched the lone policeman. I stole a glance to Colin to see him peel open the first bag, recoil at the unleashed sight or stench, then lift his camera.

  Shouts continued down the street as the thickening white cloud spread. What the hell had Nick done? Was anyone hurt?

  “One.” Colin zipped the bag and moved to the next.

  The lone officer shifted back and forth on his feet but hadn’t turned. One by one the shrieking car alarms began to silence.

 

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