The violence shocked Parrish out of his paralysis. He jumped back inside the cabin and fumbled with the lever that would pull the door back up. The steps lifted with agonizing slowness, folding flat against the door before rising like a drawbridge to seal him inside the plane.
He sagged against the hatch as if the weight of his body would be enough to keep the creatures from getting in. After a moment, he realized that the pilot and co-pilot were staring at him from the cockpit, their wide eyes and shocked expressions confirming that the nightmare was real.
Suddenly the fuselage shook with an impact. Parrish spread-eagled, but there was nothing to hold onto. The deck tilted crazily, and he was thrown against the opposite bulkhead and then rolled back against the door. The plane rocked back and forth a few times but there were no more jolts. Then, for several seconds, there was only silence. Parrish crawled to the nearest porthole window and cautiously peeked around its edge.
He saw ghostly white shapes, eyeless faces streaked with blood. Elongated torsos hunched over, standing on long spindly legs, milling about as if looking for their next meal. Windigo or Huitzilopochtli, Beltran had met his god at last, and paid dearly for the privilege.
Parrish eased forward a little more, expecting to find a scene of carnage, with the creatures hunched over the remains of Beltran and his men, gnawing on their bones and slurping down their entrails.
What he saw instead was much, much worse.
48
At a signal from the loadmaster, the Chess Team trundled down the ramp and leapt out into space. There was nothing fancy about the jump. No wing suits or ram-air canopies. No oxygen bottles, full face masks or thermal jumpsuits. No pre-breathing for high altitude, and no long free-fall or drift to the surface. They jumped from a rather unimpressive 1,200 feet, static lines opening their chutes right away, and they dropped unceremoniously groundward.
The brief conversation with Sara had left King cautiously optimistic. That she had responded at all was nothing short of a miracle. She was alive and Anna Beck was with her, which was more than he had allowed himself to hope for. The possibility of a treatment or cure was even better. Sara believed that the means to stop the spread of the wendigo infection would be found at the site of an old native refuge on the mainland, only a few miles from Roanoke Island. But reaching her location—about a mile northeast of their designated drop zone—was not going to be a walk in the park. Sara had also revealed that the island was crawling with wendigos.
As they drifted down beneath the mushroom-dome canopies of their T-11 round chutes—standard issue for the Army’s airborne divisions—King surveyed the landscape below. Roanoke Island looked serene, perhaps a little too much so. It took him a moment to realize what was missing: there were no cars moving on the highways and streets.
“King, this is Deep Blue, over.”
King was still trying to get used to hearing Lewis Aleman identify himself as Deep Blue. This was not the first time that Aleman had taken on the role of remote handler, but the fact that he was using Duncan’s callsign was still disconcerting.
Their callsigns, even that of Deep Blue, were not just nicknames. The designations were like positions on a sports team: quarterback, center, coach. You couldn’t play without someone in each critical position, and if a player had to leave the field, someone else took his place. But there was a difference between substitution and replacement. Although Aleman had not gone into great detail about what had happened at Endgame—King got the impression that there were things he was not at liberty to disclose—the fact that Aleman identified himself as Deep Blue was ominous. It meant that Tom Duncan was not coming back.
‘Duncan did this to protect you,’ Admiral Ward had said. Evidently, that umbrella of protection did not extend to Duncan himself.
They had adjusted to Asya in the role of Bishop—well, were adjusting anyway—and they would get used to having someone else as Deep Blue, but it wasn’t going to happen overnight. Of course, if Rook was correct—and King thought he probably was—this would be their last mission as Chess Team, so the issue was moot.
“King, here. Send it.”
“Be advised. A civilian aircraft just violated the no-fly zone. They made an unauthorized landing at Dare County airfield.”
“Where’s that?”
“A few miles northwest of your drop zone.”
King turned his head in that general direction but he was already too low to make out anything in the distance. There was probably an innocent explanation for the violation, but King had long ago stopped believing in coincidences.
“Find out what you can about that plane,” King said. He glanced down. The vast green expanse of the soccer field they had chosen as a drop zone stretched out beneath his feet. Just a few seconds to touchdown. “I’ll get back to you when we’re secure. King out.”
The ground came up fast. The T-11 chutes were strictly minimalist, designed to put large numbers of troops on the ground in a hurry. The chute slowed the descent, but landing still felt a little like jumping off the roof of a one story house. As soon as his feet hit, he threw himself sideways into a roll designed to spread out the impact and avoid injuries. There was a stab of pain in the ankle he had injured the day before, but that was both expected and unavoidable. He recovered quickly, pulling in his chute from a semi-prone position before the wind could catch it and drag him across the field. Then he jumped up, rifle at the ready, scanning for a target. For a moment, all he could see were collapsing bubbles of pale green silk.
“Report in.”
Queen was close enough that he heard her reply without the aid of the radio. A second later, her message came over the net. Satellite lag, King thought. One more thing we’ll have to get used to.
The rest of the team called in, reporting no injuries and a fully ready status, then Rook’s voice sounded again. “I’ve got movement. Something coming out of the trees to the west.”
“Damn,” King muttered. He had hoped for a little more time on the ground before contact.
“One hundred yards, but closing fast. Oh, you are one ugly son-of-a… Correction, make that a lot of somethings. Here they come.”
“Rally on Rook,” King called, sprinting forward. “Maintain sectors of fire. Do not let them get within fifty yards.”
He could see them clearly now, long sinewy limbs, flesh the color of squirming maggots, heads and bodies that looked like the distorted reflection of a funhouse mirror. They were not exactly as he remembered them. Despite their height and speed, the creatures appeared sickly and weak.
“Light them up,” he shouted.
Rook unleashed the 240. He was practically sniping with the machine gun, triggering short bursts with deadly accuracy. Tracers arced across the open field. Pale bodies burst apart in eruptions of red. One wendigo after another went down, as the 7.62-millimeter rounds shredded the leading wave.
Knight’s rifle sounded a loud report, and as King turned to see what he was shooting at, Queen and Bishop opened up with their SCARs. Each team member was facing a different direction, which meant there were targets coming in from every side. King stood in the center of the formation, turning like the second hand of a clock, backing up each of the others in turn, providing covering fire while they reloaded. Queen and Bishop had already discovered that single shots weren’t effective at stopping the creatures, so they were firing in burst mode, three rapid shots with each trigger pull. Sometimes it took several bursts to finally put a wendigo down. Soon, they were surrounded by an ever-shrinking ring of bodies, far too many to count, some as close as twenty yards, and the number of creatures emerging from the tree line was growing.
“There’s too many,” Queen shouted. “The noise is bringing them in.”
King knew she was right. They were going to have to find a more defensible position to deal with the mass attack, or risk being overrun. He spotted a small concrete structure—a maintenance shed or possibly a restroom—about a hundred yards away. “Pick up. We’re mo
ving to that building.”
Without turning away from their respective sectors of fire, the team made their way across the field, avoiding wendigo carcasses as they might landmines. When they got within ten yards of the building, Knight scrambled up onto the roof and ran to the opposite edge to ensure that no wendigos were lurking on the blind side. When he signaled that the coast was clear, they all clambered up to join him.
There were now wendigos moving in from all directions, bounding across the open field to converge on the building. The tumult of gunfire was almost constant, yet they kept coming, drawn magnetically to the noise of battle and the prospect of fresh meat.
The team had already killed dozens of them. How many more would they have to kill? Hundreds more? Thousands?
Was there anyone left on the island to save?
“I think we may have packed too light,” Rook shouted, as he slapped a fresh belt of linked ammunition into the machine gun.
King looked at the scattering of brass cartridges that was beginning to accumulate around their feet, and he knew that Rook was probably understating the situation. He keyed his mic. “Blue, we’re going to need resupply, and soon. Some air support might be nice, too.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Hang in there.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bishop step to the edge of the roof and aim almost straight down. There was a flash from her muzzle, then another, and another. “A little help here.”
King raced to her side and started firing, point blank, into a veritable sea of grasping arms. He fired out his magazine, reloaded and kept firing. And still they kept coming.
Then something changed. He was so focused on repelling the attack that he almost missed the abrupt shift. For no apparent reason, the wendigos stopped their attack and began retreating. As they scuttled away, several more dropping from well-aimed shots, King realized that the creatures were all moving in the same direction: northwest.
“Hold your fire!” he shouted. The ringing in his ears was so loud, he could barely hear his own voice, but he augmented the command by waving his hand in front of his face, the universal gesture for immediate ceasefire. It took a moment for the message to break through the fog of war, but by the time all their guns fell silent, there was no mistaking what was happening: the wendigos were in full retreat.
“Okay,” Rook said. “What just happened? Did we scare them off?”
“They’re all going the same direction,” Queen observed. “I don’t think they’re running away from us, but toward something else.”
King shook his head uncertainly. The museum where Sara and Beck were holed up lay to the east. While there was no way of knowing what had drawn the attackers off, they could not let this window of opportunity close. “Let’s get moving.”
They cautiously descended, threading their way through the tangle of unmoving wendigo bodies. King noticed that Knight was particularly hesitant about making the traverse, probably because of his impaired depth perception. The disability had not been a limitation during the battle; Knight’s performance had been the very essence of the unofficial sniper motto: One shot, one kill. Yet, even with both feet solidly on the ground, Knight moved with almost excessive caution until he was clear of the fallen wendigos.
Before he could inquire about Knight’s odd behavior, Aleman’s voice came over the net. “Thought you might want to know. I ran the tail numbers on that mystery plane that violated the no fly zone. Give you one guess who owns it.”
“Beltran.”
“His holding company anyway. It looks like you were right about him being involved. His restaurants have been shut down, and all his assets have been seized.”
King was less than sanguine about the news. “Too little, too late. What Beltran wants is here. It’s always been here.”
“What exactly is it that he wants?”
King looked in the direction the wendigos had gone. Northwest. The same direction as the airport where Beltran’s plane had landed. “I have a feeling we’re going to find out sooner than we want.”
49
It was not his reduced eyesight that prompted Knight to exercise what seemed like an excessive degree of caution as he made his way across the field strewn with wendigo carcasses, but a limitation of an entirely different sort.
He wondered, not for the first time since King’s explanation of the threat they faced, if he should reveal his concerns. He had kept silent on the plane because King would have almost certainly sidelined him, and he was not about to stay behind now—not with Anna in danger.
Besides, he wasn’t even sure that there was a problem. The immunosuppressant drugs that he was taking to prevent his body from rejecting the now defunct ocular implant made him vulnerable to ordinary infections, and King had indicated that this disease was something else altogether.
But what if he was wrong?
It was a chance he had been willing to take when contemplated from a distance, but now that the battle had been joined, now that the full scope of what they would have to do had been revealed, he realized that he had let his confidence override good judgment.
Would there be any warning? Would he have enough time to put a bullet through his brain before he lost all control of his body and transformed into one of those demonic creatures?
He pushed the idea out of his head. There were a lot of ways to die on the battlefield, and being overly fixated on one threat was the surest way to get blindsided.
They reached the highway and moved at a fast walk along the pavement. There was no need for stealth, but they maintained situational awareness. Everywhere they looked, they saw the footprint of wendigo activity. Houses with doors left wide open, front porches streaked with blood, driveways littered with scraps of torn clothing. Half a mile from the soccer field, they found a car abandoned in the middle of the road, doors open, engine still running. Black streaks on the pavement showed how the vehicle had skidded to a stop. There were dents in the fenders and smears of blood on windows, but no sign of the driver.
Rook nodded at the car. “Finders keepers, right?”
Knight fixed his gaze on the empty space behind the steering wheel. “What do you think happened to the driver?”
Rook rolled his eyes. “Jeez, I was kidding. We’ll give it back.”
“Taken or turned?” Knight said, ignoring him.
King got within a few yards of the car. “The blood is on the outside. It looks like the wendigos stopped this car. The driver probably tried to make a run for it on foot.”
“If that’s wendigo blood,” Knight said, “then the car is contaminated.”
Rook laughed. “You worried about cooties now?”
“Knight’s right,” King said. “We don’t need to take any chances. Leave it.”
Rook accepted this without further comment, and they resumed their trek.
They found survivors, too, people who had been awakened by the emergency alert and followed the instructions to lock themselves in their houses and wait. A few came out to meet them, wondering aloud if the crisis was over, or in some cases, volunteering to join the fight. King urged one and all to return to the safety of their homes and continue waiting for further guidance from the authorities.
Managing the survivors slowed them down considerably, and it was nearly half an hour before they crossed the narrow bridge that led to the island where the Lost Colony Festival Park was located. As soon as they were within sight of the main building, Sara Fogg burst from the entrance as if shot from a cannon. She made a beeline for King.
The two embraced as if they hadn’t seen each other for years. Knight turned his head slightly, giving them the privacy of his blind side, and in the process he glimpsed another figure approaching with considerably more restraint.
“Anna!”
Beck smiled and quickened her pace, but refused to run. She was too much a soldier to let her guard down, even for a moment of joyful reunion, and that gave Knight time to notice the dark stains on her clothes, the
streaks of blood on her face, and most conspicuous of all, the entrenching tool she hefted in her right hand.
He threw up his hands, palms out. “Stop!”
Confusion immediately registered on her face, giving way to concern. “Dae? What’s wrong?”
“Don’t come any closer.” He could see by the look in her eyes that the warning stung her as much as it did him. King and Sara were still locked in an embrace like something from a romantic movie, while he was telling Beck to keep her distance.
“It’s the meds, Anna.” He kept his voice low, a futile effort to preserve his secret a little while longer. “The immunosuppressants. They might make me more susceptible to this.”
She gave a cautious laugh, amused but nevertheless fraught with worry. “I’m not contagious, Dae. Tell him Sara.”
“You might not be, but there’s blood all over you.”
At the sound of her name, Sara pulled away from King, and Knight realized that everyone was looking at him. “Actually, Dae-jung is right. I’m afraid in all the chaos we kind of threw bio-safety protocols out the window, but it is possible for a person to be a carrier without becoming symptomatic.”
The explanation did not put Beck at ease. “So I’m a carrier now? I can’t ever touch my boyfriend again?”
“Of course not,” Sara was quick to say. “A disinfectant shower should take care of it.” She turned to Knight. “My gut says that you’re not at any particular risk… You haven’t eaten at Mr. Pig, I hope.”
Knight shook his head.
“Well then you probably aren’t at risk.”
Beck gave a weak shrug and looked away. “Better safe than sorry, I guess.”
The words felt like a gut punch, but King came to the rescue. “Okay, break’s over. We’ve got to get to the refuge site.” He keyed his radio. “Blue, we need pickup from this location.”
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