Shadow Dragon

by wade coleman

  Her dexterous claws grab the limb, and she inches toward me. I move onto thinner branches, and they bend under my weight. Dead twigs crunch underfoot nearby, men on the prowl. I move farther out onto the limb, bending under my weight, sending me closer to the ground. Finally, I decide to let go. More twigs crunch underfoot as several men emerge, hunting for me.

  The limb snaps back and shakes the tree, and the Hellhound drops head first into the ground, letting out a yelp.

  Sprinting for the buildings, I pass between two men a few yards apart carrying twenty caliber rifles, who fire on me instantly. Luckily, they’re trained to shoot at the center of mass where my vest protects me from the rounds suddenly pummeling my chest. The bullets are harmless, and the spider silk does its job. I’d be dead without it.

  Running into the parking lot, the sound of claws clicking on the pavement grows steadily louder behind me. The parking lot lights cast a web of shadows, and I let them pull me in, reforming nearby at the corner of a prefab hemp and plastic building.

  In the distance, the helicopters are returning with more men. I head towards shipping and receiving, where a low growl rumbles from the darkness.

  “What is it, girl?” someone says in the distance.

  I find a shadow, crawl inside, wearing the darkness like a glove. A hound approaches and stops near me, looking in my direction, and that’s when I notice just how huge this beast is. With its head up, it stands as tall as me. Looking in my direction, she sticks her nose into the darkness, sniffs and then pulls back her lips, snarling.

  Shifting deeper into the shadows, I watch the Hellhound fade like the Cheshire Cat. Her nose goes through me, warm against my skin.

  Yeah, girl, nothing to see here, just keep moving on, I think.

  The beast moves past, and I finally take a deep breath, not realizing I’d been holding it in so long. Suddenly, a man with a flashlight walks up and pierces my hiding place, the shadows disintegrating around me. Our eyes meet.

  Moving quickly, I hit him in the nose, and as he stumbles back, I grab his rifle and raise it to my cheek. Looking down the sight, I fire. With Natasha’s aid, I hit the Hellhound in the rear. She yelps, jumping in the air, then turns to face me as she comes down. The next round bounces off her thick sloped skull.

  The beast moves towards me and my next bullet chips a tooth. With the head so well armored, I decide to aim for her foot and pull the trigger.

  The Hellhound yelps again, and then leaps up at me. Taking a step to the side, I watch the hound pass in slow motion. With her legs in the air, I notice the hellhounds underbelly doesn’t have scales. I squeeze off a round, and it sinks into her hide, entering her abdomen.

  While she drops to the ground, I decide to empty the clip into the bastard. Every bullet hits the beast, but none penetrate its armor; I need a thirty-caliber rifle to get the job done.

  The beast turns to me, then bays like a wolf, calling to the rest of her pack. Dropping the rifle on the ground, I dive into the nearest shadow.

  The Hellhound rushes past, dripping blood along the way. I skulk in the shadow, listening to gunfire in the distance. For the next half hour, I hide in the shadow of a dumpster, waiting for the beast to bleed to death.

  Walking towards the main gate, I notice the third wave of troops arriving. By now, the sounds of weapon fire are sporadic around the building complex.

  On the way to the shipping and receiving building, I pass the Hellhound dead in the street. Looking down, I ask Natasha, “What is that?”

  “They’re called Hellhounds. They’re twelve feet long and weigh about a thousand pounds. According to the mission briefing, they’re smart, with an IQ of fifty.”

  I shake my head and continue walking up to the shipping and receiving building. Spotting a soldier at the checkpoint, I raise my hands, “I’m your demolition man.”

  “Give me the password.”

  “Go fuck yourself.” I chuckle.

  He answers with his passcode, “Fuck you, asshole,” and then lets me in the perimeter. Since it was a joint Army and Navy operation, they wanted to keep the passwords easy to remember for both sides, and I think they succeeded.

  A Lieutenant walks up to me, over six feet tall in tailored army camouflage pants and a long-sleeved shirt. Her clothing is armored like mine. “Are you my demolition man?”

  “Hermes.”

  She shakes my hand. “I’m Lieutenant Grant. I’m putting together a team to secure the underground facilities. The brass says you’d be a good point man. Up to a dungeon crawl?”

  I smile. “Since I was ten and played Dungeons and Dragons.”

  She laughs and slaps my backside. “You’re in good company.”

  We walk over to her squad of two trolls and four men. The trolls are eight feet tall carrying fifty caliber rifles, wearing full body armor covered in plates the size of quarters.

  She gathers the men together. “Listen up. This mission is a creature feature.”

  A couple of men groan.

  “For those of you who are new, that means we’re going after someone’s idea of how to build a better weapon.” She takes a rifle from one of the soldiers. “They all have one weakness.” Lieutenant Grant fires. “Armor-piercing rounds.”

  The men raise their rifles and shout: “Hoorah!” That’s of course when I notice the lieutenant has a narrow waistline to complement her wide shoulders. Jesus, I’ve have a one-track mind, even on a mission. Still, it’s hard not to appreciate a nice figure.

  Natasha downloads the schematics of the tunnels and rooms bored into the hill. Large caverns were carved out to store food and supplies. There are two entrances. One is buried under the rubble of the command and control building. The other is in the back of an anti-aircraft bunker.

  We hike up the hill and find the bunker under camouflage. The entrance to the tunnel is sealed with a three-inch steel door. The sea air has rusted the metal, allowing a gap where shadows can pass through.

  Waiting for the soldiers to look away, I slip through the opening, reforming on the other side where I turn on a penlight. The door has been recently opened with Hellhound footprints in the dust on the floor. I release the bar across the entrance.

  “Try it now.”

  A troll gives it a shove, and the rusted metal opens. The mutants file past me, giving me sideways glances. Everyone knows there are mutants with exceptional abilities, but rarely do they get to see one in action.

  The lieutenant walks up to me and points to the hall. “Okay, Spooky, lead the way.”

  The descending tunnel was built to accommodate a standard electric cart used for hauling equipment and ammo. The tunnel is carved from solid rock with a light spaced every fifty feet. Moisture collects on the sides and runs down to the floor, making random puddles along the way. At the end is a rusted door, no match for an armored troll should one decide to investigate.

  On the other side is a concrete hangar with open bays. From here, tunnels go to storage facilities deep under the hill. Only two show any sign of activity: the tunnel leading to Command and Control, and a dry goods storage warehouse.

  The way to the warehouse leads deeper into the mountain where the temperature is a constant fifty-five degrees; perfect for storing dry foods. I spot more Hellhound tracks where the dust collects on the floor.

  The tunnel is wide enough for a flatbed truck to drive through; the doors to the facility are new. One of the Lieutenant’s men opens the back of the keypad and disables the lock on the door. A soldier opens it, and the trolls walkthrough, sporting fifty caliber machine guns.

  Inside the warehouse, plastic crates with faded labels are stacked to the ceiling on metal latticed shelves. Here is enough food for one hundred thousand people for a year. A few patches of light shine down on the warehouse.

  I switch to low light and follow the tire marks in the dust. The trail leads to the other end of the building. Nearby is a fence. Crates are replaced with rows of hairless lab rats. Their skin changes color as I pass. A
chain-link fence bulges towards the rats with additional steel posts to support the fence.

  In the corner of the warehouse sits a building thirty feet in the air held up by concrete columns. Heat sources move hurriedly behind the windows. The poles that hold up the building are linked together with steel beams. I zoom in with the goggles. There’s a pond under the building, a rotting carcass floating on top.

  Looking closely with my sharp new eyes, I can make out two halves of a cow floating the surface. That can’t be good, I think.

  Under the building is a mesh of one-inch steel rods welded together with beams every ten feet. Whatever is guarding the building above is big and strong. After seeing a Hellhound, my mind conjures the image of a T-Rex.

  I call it in, and the company moves in. While the men take position around the gate, Lieutenant Grant’s voice issues from a bullhorn. “Your compound has been taken over by the US Army! Come out, and you will not be harmed!”

  A motor starts and the gate next to us slides open. Between me and the pond is an area the length of a football field.

  The trolls hold their Browning fifty calibers and stand next to the gate.

  “They seem friendly. I’ll go take a look.”

  The lieutenant hands me her pistol.

  “That’ll just make whatever’s in the pool mad and slow me down.”

  Walking through the gate, I head towards the building. As I approach, floodlights come on, illuminating the area, and the gate under the building begins to rise.

  I stop and walk backward, never taking my eyes off the pond.

  The water churns, and an enormous head emerges, reminding me of a dragon, only it looks more like a cousin of the crocodile with a shorter nose and a wider jaw. It just keeps getting bigger the more it comes out of the water.

  I’m still walking backward when the behemoth steps up on a ramp, his body covered in armor plates, eyes sunken behind bony protrusions, its color is Hellhound black.

  It steps towards me; his body must be thirty feet long. Massive hind legs support a tail high in the air. His back legs are longer than his front, so his head is close to the ground. His tail twitches above him like a whip.

  Like a dog scratching grass, the dragon rakes his claws on the rock, stands on two legs, and roars - the sound vibrating the ground under my feet.

  While I’m sprinting to the gate, the dragon has trouble getting traction on the smooth rock, like a dog on a tile floor. Several men poke their weapons through the chain link fence and fire. The trolls with their machine guns stand in front of the gate.

  After I run through the gate, the troll sentries open fire on the dragon. I break right and look over my shoulder. The fifty caliber rounds chip at the dragon’s armor. The beast flicks its tail, and suddenly a troll is sailing through the air, landing hard on the rat cages. The other giant concentrates his fire on a single scale, but he runs out of ammo before he breaks through.

  The dragon bites into the giant’s armor shakes him back and forth and then flings him into a plastic barrel. The old plastic cracks open and syrup is leaking everywhere in a slow, lazy chug.

  The lieutenant and her remaining men form a line and advance firing thirty caliber rounds at the beast, but the monster sweeps his tail, and more figures pinwheel through the air.

  The beast moves towards the rat cages. The dragon ignores the lieutenant’s men firing as it runs past. The troll gets to his feet, pulls out a blade and advances. He swings the blade, and it shatters on the ridge above the dragon’s eye.

  The beast ignores the troll, rips a metal cage open with his talons and begins to lap up rats like popcorn.

  “Hold your fire!” the lieutenant shouts.

  Rats squeal in panic as the beast moves from one cage to another, gobbling down rats as he goes.

  Moving away, the company forms up, passing through the gate, and heads to the overhead building.

  I climb the ladder to the raised structure. Once I’m on top, I step out onto a metal sidewalk and railing. Looking into the windows via infrared, I find no heat sources. The people inside have left.

  The soldiers climb the ladder and check for explosives on the door. Inside is a control room with screens on two walls. The hard drives are removed from the computers, taking any evidence of what they were up to.

  The back door leads to a large hallway cut out of solid rock with railroad tracks down the center. The dragon wails in the distance, the sound echoing off the stone walls.

  Walking down either side of the rails, the company advances with the trolls in front, the men checking rooms to each side.

  We come upon a fifteen-foot humanoid, lying on his back, his head half the size of mine. His legs are shorter and arms longer in proportion to a human. He’s been shot several times.

  “That was done by a mobile firing platform,” the sergeant says.

  “Prepare countermeasures,” The lieutenant replies.

  To the left is a man-sized door. Inside the room are rows of glass tanks on tables waist high with a computer monitor attached. Inside the vessels, the water is tinted red with blood, a humanoid floating on top. They have been recently shot, the smell of gunpowder in the air. Blood still seeps from bullet wounds in their chests.

  The soldiers in groups of two take a row and search the area. They find a girl huddling underneath a desk.

  I walk up and look under.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” she says.

  The lieutenant stands next to me. “Hi, my name is Amy. We’re not going to hurt you, okay? That’s a promise. Do you want to tell me your name?”

  She hesitates a moment but finally speaks. “Kathy.”

  Amy reaches under, takes Kathy’s hand and brings her to her feet. She is five feet tall, slight breasts, legs and arms thin. She clings to the lieutenant with her long and narrow fingers, trembling violently.

  “Where are the people?” Amy asks.

  “They went in the tunnel to the surface. We’re not allowed up there.”

  “What do you do down here?” Amy asks.

  “Me and my friends cook and clean. Have you seen my friends?”

  “No, Kathy, I haven’t. Why don’t you stay here while I go look for them?”

  “No-No-No!.I’m staying with you.” Kathy won’t let go of the lieutenant.

  “Kathy, Amy has to go to work. You can hold my hand, okay?” She lets go of the lieutenant’s hand and grabs mine, her grip desperately tight.

  Heading to the surface, we go up the tunnel wide enough for a forklift. After a few minutes, an alarm goes off.

  “There are explosives ahead,” a soldier says.

  “Fall back,” the lieutenant commands.

  While jogging back down to the freak factory, a shock wave hits us from behind, knocking us to the ground. Kathy is ripped from my grasp. Our armor protects us from the blast, and soon we’re on our feet again. The air is filled with dust. I look for Kathy and find her several feet away. Turning her over, I check for a pulse, but there is none. The company stands around her body.

  “I don’t know if I should be sad or relieved she’s dead,” a troll says. He points to Kathy with his rifle. “Her kind were made to replace mutants. I have a bad feeling about how this is gonna turn out, guys.”

  “Ladies,” the lieutenant says. “We don’t have time to stand around and chat. We have a freak factory to secure.”

  With my goggles, I spot what looks like a giant daddy longlegs spider, but it’s a machine, the central mass an array of eyes and machine guns, the legs made of silk and carbon fibers. They stand on the railroad tracks where the spur meets the main line.

  A soldier fires a large projectile weapon; the shell opens into a colony of fireflies circling the machines. The spider sentries shoot at the lights. The troops take careful aim, firing, disabling the machines.

  Following the spur, we split into two groups, one on each side of the tunnel. The rooms are filled with more glass vessels filled with dead humanoids. Walking to the end of the
line, we encounter a solid wall of rock. Reluctantly, the company turns and heads back.

  Back at the storage warehouse, the dragon is crouched with a barrel of syrup between its talons. He laps at the maple syrup, too involved in what he’s doing to look in our direction.

  Finding our way to the surface, we’re all revived by the fresh air and sunshine, but below us is a beehive of activity at the facility.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  We walk down the hill and the lieutenant checks in with headquarters located near the shipping and receiving building.

  Coming back, she says, “Spooky, I’m to escort you to a helicopter and make sure you get on.” I feel her hand on my shoulder, leading me to the landing site. “It seems the brass doesn’t want you to disappear and go poking around this facility.”

  I point my finger at my chest and give her my “Who, me?” look, and she laughs.

  “I’ve heard stories about you.” Amy hands me a piece of paper with her number on it. “Call if you want to try your moves on me.”

  “I don’t believe she’s talking about an exercise program. You should call her.”

  I get in the helicopter and wave to the lieutenant as it takes off.

  “I know her type, dangerous and strenuous. It’s nice to be noticed, but I need to be fully rested before tackling her.”

  “I’ll save her number…for when we’re rested.”

  Over the bay, I watch Navy fighters flying over Frisco. One thing for sure, the bad guys are not using an airplane to disperse the virus. As we approach the navy base, I spot the Enterprise is leaving the harbor.

  Once we’re on the ground, I step out, and fresh troops begin climbing aboard. The helicopter takes off again. The crew chief directs us to the terminal. Men in uniform sit in chairs, using their duffel bags as footrests, rifles at their sides.

  Everyone’s eyes are fixed on the TV showing the LA hospitals filled with plague victims. A news reporter mentions that the Governor has declared martial law and activated the California State Guard. Then he ordered the military to stand down. The navy base commander defies the Governor and enforces a no-fly zone in a fifty-mile radius around Frisco.