Primal

by D. J. Molles

  Five yards.

  The man made a decision.

  Raised his rifle. The muzzle like a black, unblinking eye, staring right back at Lee.

  Lee raised his rifle, his finger going to the trigger.

  An automatic burst came from his left, ripping through the man’s midsection and knocking him off balance.

  Lee speared him, rifle-first. The muzzle of his weapon gouged right under the man’s chin, and a fraction of a second later, Lee’s entire body slammed into him. They flew three feet through the air and crashed into the side of one of the technicals.

  For brief moment, it was all dust and whirling limbs and squirting blood.

  Lee gasped, his diaphragm shocked by the impact, but his mind ferociously intent on his task. He raked the butt of his rifle across the man’s jaw, scattering teeth. He reached for the man’s rifle, but a flurry of dust flew over it and Menendez came sliding in, seizing the rifle before Lee could and flinging it away from the man.

  Lee coughed, forced a breath into his lungs, then posted up on the man, his legs cinching tight around them man’s waist, ready for a fight.

  The man’s eyes rolled around, dazed. His hands scrambled about, and for a second Lee thought they were trying to fight him, but then he became aware of the warm wetness he felt against his thighs.

  The man tried to clutch his wounds.

  Lee reared back, and raised his rifle up to his eyes, giving the technicals a quick scan.

  All three gunners were down.

  “Get him up,” Menendez growled.

  The man beneath Lee got his voice back. No more words, English or Spanish. Just a high, panicked whine.

  Lee stood up on trembling legs. Menendez snatched the man’s right arm, and Lee took his left. They hauled the wounded man up, and Lee’s eyes shot down to where he saw the dark spread of blood soaking through the man’s white shirt and pants.

  “Get up!” Lee growled, his voice barely returned to him.

  The man’s head lolled, his mouth open and gaping at Lee and Menendez as they stood him up. But his legs weren’t supporting any of his weight. They flopped around uselessly beneath him. Either shock, or one of Menendez’s rounds had shattered the pelvis.

  Lee and Menendez traded an urgent look, and they both knew.

  They had only moments before this man bled out.

  Behind them, Menendez’s squad sprinted out of the woods. They called commands to each other that came through Lee’s scarified ear drums like he was hearing them from under water.

  Lee pushed the man towards the bunker door. “The code,” he rasped as the man’s feet dragged through the dirt and threatened to trip Lee and Menendez. “You’re gonna type in the fucking code, or I’m going to open your guts.”

  Menendez’s squad rapidly cleared the technicals for anyone that was left alive, but no one was.

  Lee and Menendez reached the bunker, their captive moaning between them. They thrust him up against the wall where the control panel sat. Lee posted his left hand up against the man, pinning him to the wall, then placed the muzzle of his rifle against the base of the man’s skull.

  “The code!” he shouted in the man’s ear. “Type in the code!”

  “Ah,” the man said. “Ah.”

  Menendez slammed an elbow into the man’s back. “Do it!”

  The man’s eyes didn’t appear to be able to focus on the panel. They kept squirrelling around, like he was drunk. His brows furrowed. He raised a blood-covered hand up to the panel. It shook, scattering drops of red down the wall.

  Menendez reached around and seized the man’s wrist to steady it, then placed it against the number pad. “El codigo, puto!”

  Lee stared hard at the man’s fingers as they traced blood across the control panel and left red fingerprints where he touched the keypad.

  One. Five. Three. Nine. Eight. Zero.

  Lee seized the mental image, and repeated the numbers manically in his head.

  A hydraulic hiss.

  “Cover!” Menendez shouted to his men, who were close behind.

  The doors to the freight elevator slid open.

  Two of Menendez’s squad took up positions to either side, rifles trained on the interior of the elevator. Only stainless steel gleamed back at them. It was empty.

  “We’re good,” Lee said, then wrenched the dying man back off the wall and let him collapse in the dirt. For a bare second, Lee considered leaving him to die.

  Mercy, or perhaps expediency, won out.

  He put a bullet through the man’s temple.

  He whirled around, and found Menendez looking at him.

  Menendez nodded. Lee nodded back.

  One-five-three-nine-eight-zero.

  Lee put his back to the control panel. Menendez’s squad gathered outside the doors, rifles ready, eyes intent.

  “The rear of the elevator will open,” Lee called out. “We’ll have an open lane on the back and side of whoever is down there, but we’re gonna be crammed into one spot. Hug the walls. Go high and low. Hit ‘em hard, and be careful for friendly fire.”

  A round of nods.

  Menendez’s squad piled into the elevator, Lee and Menendez entering last.

  The doors slid closed behind them.

  Nine men, crammed into a tight space.

  It was as far from an ideal assault as you could get.

  Four of them against the left wall, Lee and four others against the right.

  “Going down,” Lee called, and hit the button. There were no floors or levels in these bunkers. The elevator only had two positions—up top, or down below. And they were going down below.

  The elevator jerked under their feet. Began to descend.

  The men nearest the rear of the elevator that would open into the bunker went down to one knee. Their buddies crowded close behind them, their thighs pressed against the kneeling men’s backs. The others found tiny slices of angles and put rifles there. As many guns pointed at the threat as possible.

  “Don’t stop shooting,” Menendez commanded. “We take them out first, and then we worry about the wounded.”

  And every single one of them knew there would be wounded.

  Some of them were going to die.

  Maybe all of us.

  Their one advantage was that the cartel men below them didn’t know they were coming.

  That would last for one second. Maybe two.

  It would only take one brave asshole with a grenade to kill every last man in the elevator.

  The elevator slowed.

  Stopped.

  The doors slid open.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ─▬▬▬─

  THE BUNKER

  Most of the time, when Lee was in the middle of fighting, things went very fast, and it was over before he could really think about it.

  This felt as though he were slogging through time while suspended in tar.

  Four men in front of him, their bodies angling out, each one a little further than the last, so that Lee stood nearly in the center of the elevator—right in the fatal funnel—just to get his rifle safely past the shoulders of the man in front of him.

  His body fought him. Fear clashed with determination. Wanting to kill. Abhorring the thought of a bullet finding his flesh. His vision tried to shrink, but he breathed it back open again.

  The doors slid open.

  The sound of gunfire crashed in at them like water breaking a dam.

  Through banks of gunsmoke, the figures of men were just dark shapes—wraiths slipping through fog. The shapes hugged walls and flattened themselves behind their dead friends. Weapons flashed and spewed smoke and lead.

  All of this in a split second, viewed through the window of his optic.

  A red dot in the center, seeking a life to end.

  No one had even noticed the elevator door opening.

  Lee put the red dot on the side of a man’s temple and removed the front of his head with a squeeze of his finger.

  All nine g
uns in the elevator roared, and Lee’s hearing dimmed to a hum.

  The man in front of Lee leaned out, and Lee leaned with him—his support hand gripping the soldier’s shoulder.

  They both shot the next man. A wisp of a shape that stopped moving after that.

  One of the cartel men brought his weapon to bear on the elevator. Lead projectiles clattered over the stainless steel innards. Bee stings peppered Lee’s face and neck. He flinched involuntarily against them.

  Three rifles pounded that one man into oblivion.

  The soldier at the lead of their stack crumpled.

  The man directly in front of Lee jerked, a round ricocheting off his armored side. Lee felt it strike his own armor like a hit to the chest with a ball-peen hammer.

  “You’re good! Stay up!” Lee shouted.

  Menendez’s stack inched forward. The lead man crouched, and leaned out, taking a slim angle to fire at a target Lee couldn’t see. Lee searched desperately for something moving to put a bullet into, but all the shapes directly in front of the elevator were down.

  Someone let out a muffled shout.

  Lee realized what they’d said only when the small black object rolled into the door of the elevator.

  Lee started toward the grenade, his eyes wide, his throat stinging as it sucked in burnt propellant. One of the guys in his stack slid out, like a soccer player slide-tackling an opponent, and booted the grenade out.

  Everyone in the elevator pulled back, as one. Heads went down. Arms covered faces.

  Thunder smashed the air.

  Lee felt the sharp spike in air pressure like a blow to his nose and ears.

  When he opened his eyes, his vision swirled and danced with stars.

  The man who’d booted the grenade was crawling back inside, one of his legs mangled, the boot hanging from the end of his ankle, barely attached.

  Lee leapt out of his stack, going low underneath everyone else’s line of fire. He snatched the shoulder straps of the wounded soldier’s armor and hauled backward in one great heave of movement, pulling the man out of the doorway, and sending both their bodies toppling into the back of the elevator.

  Menendez yelled. Lee couldn’t understand it. But a glance showed Menendez waving his hand in front of his face, palm out.

  Cease fire

  The soldier in Lee’s grip writhed, clutching at Lee out of pure reflex, and then bending at the waist, reaching for his wounded leg.

  Lee rolled the man over, then straddled him with one leg. He pressed the man’s torso to the ground, shouting, “You’re okay! You’re okay!” even though he knew the man wasn’t. Wide blue eyes stared up at him in pain and panic.

  The man’s hands gripped Lee by the wrists. Lee wrenched himself free.

  His shaky vision scoured across the wounded man’s armor. A dirt-covered black Combat-Application Tourniquet, strapped to the webbing above the man’s spare magazines. Lee ripped it free and snapped it open.

  He spared a glance over his shoulder. Muddled sounds began to make it past his damaged ear drums. The two stacks of men hugged the walls of the elevator now, and Menendez was in the center, leaning towards the open doors and shouting something into the smoky ruins of the bunker.

  A distant clatter of gunshots answered and Menendez flinched back.

  Menendez whipped around to Lee, his eyes wild, and he spoke. Lee stared at his lips, and discerned the gist of what Menendez was trying to communicate.

  They think we’re cartel.

  There was nothing Lee could do about that.

  He grabbed the soldier’s wounded leg and pulled the open tourniquet up over his flopping boot, shouting at Menendez as he did, “Keep calling to them!”

  Menendez went down to one knee. He was far enough into the elevator that whoever was still shooting at them from down the main hall of the bunker wouldn’t be able to get an angle on him—yet. He cupped his hands over his mouth and began bellowing: “Friendly! Friendly! Friendly!”

  Some of the soldiers in the elevator began to take up the chant with him.

  Lee blinked, felt something trickling down his face. He dragged his cheek across his shoulder, felt a painful rasp, and when he glanced at his shoulder saw a smear of red from where the bullet fragments had chewed him up.

  It wasn’t the first time that’d happened. Lee’s face was pockmarked with old spalling scars.

  He pulled the tourniquet up below the man’s knee, and pulled it tight, then began to wrench at the windlass. The soldier below him recovered himself and grabbed onto Lee’s shirt sleeve with both of his hands and groaned.

  The fire from down the hall tapered off.

  Menendez gulped smoky air and continued his shouting, his voice cracking and going hoarse.

  One of those calls must have finally fallen upon a pair of ears capable of hearing them. The gunfire came to an abrupt halt.

  Menendez made the call twice more, and then wilted.

  Lee put one more crank on the windlass and then strapped it down. He ripped his arm out of the wounded soldier’s grip, gave him two strong pats to the chest, and stood up.

  There were two other downed soldiers in the elevators, their buddies hovering over them and working on their wounds. Lee took one look at their dead eyes staring at nothing and knew it was pointless. He kept it to himself.

  He stepped up behind Menendez.

  The sergeant had his rifle hanging from its strap, and both hands protruding out from cover, showing his palms to the men down the hall, waving them back and forth.

  Lee edged around him, gaining a sliver of view down the main hall of the bunker. Numerous doors led off from the main hall, and through the choking pall of gunsmoke, he saw men crowded in these doorways, weapons still addressed down the hall towards the elevator.

  Lee cupped his own hands over his mouth. “Sergeant Menendez! Captain Harden! Hold your fire!” His throat felt raw and phlegmy. He coughed when he was done shouting, then looked down at Menendez. “I’m gonna step out. You ready?”

  Menendez nodded.

  Lee put his hands out first, like Menendez had done, and then stepped out of the elevator, and into full view of the men down the hall.

  His body was locked, his jaw clenched, waiting for some scared private down the hall to put a bullet in him. He was fully prepared to jump back into the elevator at the first sound of gunfire.

  There were some murmurs from the other end of the hall that might’ve been full voices—it was hard for Lee’s ears to understand anything but a shout.

  But gradually, one of the figures stepped out, and stood in the center of the hallway, dipping their head to see under the skein of gunsmoke that still drifted around the ceiling.

  It was Breckenridge.

  The man’s eyebrows arched. “That really you, Captain Harden?”

  Lee held his hands up—something of a shrug. “Yeah, it’s me, Breck. Hold your fire, I got Menendez and—”

  A bark tore Lee’s concentration in half.

  At the other end of the hall, Breckenridge reacted to it as well. He straightened from peering under the fog of smoke, and stepped aside.

  There was a clatter of claws across the concrete floor of the bunker.

  A small, brown and tan shape emerged from around a huddle of soldiers.

  Lee didn’t move. He stayed locked in that same position, with his hands held up at his side, and he stared without expression. The figure didn’t run to him. It only hobbled. One of its rear legs was held up off the ground. The lupine face regarded the soldiers around it, until it slipped passed them, and then its golden eyes locked onto Lee, and it quickened its pace.

  The tail even gave a tiny wag.

  Lee felt a shudder work through him, and realized for the first time how goddamned cold it was down here, compared to the heat of the outside that he’d grown so accustomed to. His teeth gave a tiny chatter inside his head. He clamped them down.

  He watched the dog approach. Its body language showed guilt, but also pleasure—
just to be in the presence of someone that it knew.

  Deuce had never been a fan of strangers.

  Breckenridge followed the dog down the hall.

  Deuce stopped, right at Lee’s feet, and he thought he saw something like terminal exhaustion in it. Or perhaps Lee was projecting that feeling.

  Have you ever run, just as far and as fast as you could possibly go? And when you stop, you think that maybe you could’ve kept on going for a little longer, but the second your feet stop pounding the ground, you can’t pick them up again.

  Inertia seizes you. Your momentum is lost.

  Your body in motion has ground to a halt, and it will now take ten times the effort simply to lift a foot, than it would have to go on without stopping.

  That is what Lee felt in that moment.

  He felt himself grinding to a halt.

  All of this manic momentum, driven by a fuel sourced entirely from the blackness of his hatred, pumped up and refined by grief and loss—it all ran out suddenly, like a fuel tank that doesn’t have a gauge, and you don’t know you’re running dry until you stop dead in your tracks.

  He found it hard to take a breath. His armor felt suddenly huge, the weight of it on his chest insurmountable. He felt like he might not be able to continue to stand, but then, he couldn’t possibly lower himself to the ground.

  He forced air into his lungs.

  Swayed on his feet.

  Deuce put his head between Lee’s knees, and didn’t move. His low-hung tail gave another, tiny wag. Blood oozed out of a hole in his right, rear thigh.

  Lee gradually became more aware of people moving now. People calling out. People shouting. There were wounded down there. Wounded soldiers to care for. And here Lee stood, staring at a dog, briefly unable to move.

  His father’s voice in his head: “You just ran until you could barely even move anymore, and then I’d have to carry you back, crying, because you’d run the skin right off the balls of your feet.”

  But now he’d run himself empty, and there wasn’t anyone to carry him.

  He would have to carry himself.

  Focus. Compartmentalize.

  Don’t get dragged down. You still have work to do.