Homecoming

by Heath Stallcup

  “It is powered by a radioactive core. It will last for many hundreds of years.”

  “So, an inexhaustible fuel supply and a weapon that can destroy entire species?” Paul nodded to himself. “I can see why you might want such a weapon.”

  “Non, I do not want it. It is a necessary evil, I assure you.”

  “Potato, po-tah-to.”

  Rufus lowered his voice once more. “Do not be flippant. As you have said, this would be a nuclear option for us.”

  “Yet, you had it built.” Paul felt the corners of his mouth tightening against his will. “I’m thinking you had other designs in mind when you placed this order, no?”

  Rufus sat back down and turned from his brother. “I can’t imagine what you mean.”

  “Oh, come now, brother, you make a horrible liar.” Paul turned and pulled the crystal bottle of cognac from the tray. “With a weapon like this at your disposal, none would dare stand against you. Not even a vampire council.” He waited a moment while the words sunk in. “Nor the father of all wolves.”

  Rufus watched him with hooded eyes as Paul placed the snifter in front of him. “I would never.”

  “Of course you would.” Paul sat gingerly across from his brother, his realization of just how powerful he could be still settling into the recesses of his dark and twisted mind. “Whoever held such a weapon could demand that any and all fall to their knees before him.”

  Rufus sighed softly and rubbed at his eyes. “That is not the purpose of—”

  “Oh, I know it’s not the purpose,” Paul interrupted. “But you know the old saying? Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It’s not just a saying.” The smile he gave made Rufus’ stomach tighten into a knot.

  *****

  Laura did her best to sleep on the next leg of the flight. Mick had taken the newly refurbished plane to an even higher altitude in hopes of smoothing the ride and even Jennifer sat up front with her head lulled to the side. The steady drone of the engine had become white noise and combined with the darkness and gentle rocking of the plane, Laura found her eyelids growing heavier and heavier as the flight wore on.

  She couldn’t pinpoint exactly what woke her. There was no sound that she was aware of. Her eyes slowly fluttered open in the darkened interior of the plane and she slowly took in her surroundings. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t move. She took in everything that was within eyesight though and assessed the situation. Mick continued manning the controls. Jennifer was still leaning against the starboard bulkhead, her head tilted at an odd angle, obviously sleeping. Yet, something seemed amiss.

  Laura kept her breathing steady and her eyes constantly scanning. She finally noticed movement toward the front of the plane that didn’t seem ‘normal’ even though she wasn’t a trained pilot. Mick would cast quick glances toward Jennifer as his right hand punched a button on the dash. Laura had to shift her head slightly to see exactly what he was doing and prayed that he didn’t catch her movement from the back. She continued to watch him from the darkness and soon realized…he was punching a code. Morse code!

  She watched as he punched in short and long sequences. Dots and dashes. Laura nearly panicked as she tried to remember the old code from her past. At one time she had the code drilled into her mind so intently, she thought she could write her life story using nothing but dots and dashes. Her eyes focused on his hand movements and her brain raced to recall the meaning.

  .-- .. .-.. .-.. / .- .-. .-. .. ...- . / - --- -- --- .-. .-. --- .-- / .- -- .-.-.- / .--. .-.. . .- ... . / .- -.. ...- .. ... . .-.-.-to her faded memory read as: ‘will arrive tomorrow AM. Please advise.’ Laura’s mind raced as she considered who he could be signaling. Was he truly taking them to Brazil? Was he taking them to a different location? For what reason? Would he sell them out? Surely if he planned to do that, he could have just held them up at his place until Walter Simmons’ men arrived.

  Laura struggled to keep her breathing under control as she considered her options. When it all came down to it, she was trapped in an aircraft that she couldn’t fly with shape-shifting people she wasn’t sure if she could trust or not, without a weapon to defend herself. Not exactly the best of circumstances.

  She allowed herself a mental kick in the ass. At least the colonel knew that she was with the escapee and that they were supposed to be headed to Brazil. If they actually landed there and she could make contact with Pablo and his group, she could rest a bit easier. Whoever Mick was talking with, odds were not in their favor if it came down to going head-to-head against a trained Monster Squad.

  Laura closed her eyes and tried to convince herself to sleep even though she knew it couldn’t happen. Not with what she knew now.

  *****

  Apollo went over the details of his plan for the assault on Tinker methodically. Using satellite imagery, he used X’s and O’s to indicate good staging areas and places to use for cover when on approach. He then switched to his own hand drawn internal diagrams. Many of the men for the assault team found it hard to believe that the old beaten down hangar could be as state of the art on the inside as Apollo was describing and even more disbelieved the levels built underneath the curved metal shell.

  “Oh, it’s there, Sheridan can vouch for that.” Apollo pointed to Sheridan who simply nodded. “All of the primary systems have secondary redundant backups. If you cut the power, there’s now a secondary source located onsite that can keep the place running for days. If you try to cut the water supply, they have their own well. Data is backed up to servers located on site. Hardly nothing goes out through the web and even that is wireless.”

  “It sounds like the moment we come close, they’re going to know it and they’ll be ready to repel borders.” Apollo didn’t look up to see who asked. He didn’t really care as he wouldn’t be leading this team.

  “They’ll know, and yes, they’ll be ready to kick your ass.” He slapped the diagram hard with his pointer. “That’s why you got to blind them and cut off their communications.” He pointed to the three small dishes outside the hangar and the single large one behind the building. “Sharpshooters take out the smaller dishes and either blow this sucker up or run it over with a truck? They’re blind and deaf.”

  “What about telephones?” another voice asked.

  “No hard lines. They can be tapped.” Apollo turned back to his diagram. “Here on this wall? This box? This is the fire system. There are two different kinds in the hangar and the floors below, water and Halon. Both are controlled through this box. Probably the one thing that doesn’t have a backup. Take this sucker out and the whole place can and will burn.”

  “Suppressed sniper fire for the dishes, RPG for the fire control box. The rest is what? Close-quarters battle?”

  Apollo shrugged. “That’s up to you, man. I ain’t running this show. I’m just showing you what you need to do to cripple them the hardest. If you want to hack at ‘em with swords, I don’t give a shit. If you want to drop a bunch of poison gas into the ventilation system, that’s your call.” He turned off his projector and placed a stack of copies of his diagrams on the table. “If it were me, I’d stage on either side of the stairwells in the main hangar once I cleared it and mow ‘em down as they came out. Two ways down, two ways up. Drop some tear gas down the elevator shafts and wait for the rats to abandon ship.”

  The wolves looked to each other with evil smiles and murmured their agreement. “Well, this is my show. I’ll be calling the shots on it.” Bigby stood up with his chest swelled. “Sherry’s going to be out of this one, lads, so it’s up to us to make sure we leave a big enough mess that they can’t recover. We’ll stay long enough to make sure the fires can’t be put out and whoever is trapped below…” He chuckled to himself. “Well, let’s just say they should have called in sick that day.”

  “Tinker has fire crews. Won’t they respond?” Apollo’s back was turned so he didn’t see who asked the question. He finished wrapping the overhead projector up then turned to address the crowd
again.

  “Y’all need to start thinking. Somebody needs to call the base first and give them a BS story. Tell them you’re doing your own fire training at that location first. Tell them there’s going to be drills using blanks and simulated explosives.” He shrugged again and shot them a sarcastic grin. “Hell, tell them you’re all werewolves and you’re there to kick their asses. I don’t give a shit what you tell them. Just tell them something so that if anybody calls in weapon’s fire or smoke or explosions, they’ll be expecting it.”

  Sherry finally stood up and limped to Apollo’s side. “No worries there, boys. I’ll be with you, even if I’m not in the fight. And Apollo’s right. We’ll have to do a few things to make sure the base doesn’t send support in before we’re done. I’ll take care of that, and I’ll do my best to field any calls we get trying to verify what we’re doing. You just make sure that you’re in and out as quickly as possible. We have enough weaponry and manpower to overthrow a third world government I think we can handle one hangar full of overstuffed military brats, don’t you?”

  The men laughed and hooted agreement before Apollo brought his hand down on the table hard enough to startle most of them silent. “Don’t for one second underestimate any of these men.” His voice was low and menacing. “That’s the easiest way to get yourself killed.”

  “Now hold on there, gov. I think we can—” Bigby didn’t get to finish his interjection as Apollo stood up straight and squared his chest.

  “Any of you dogs ever been trained by the best? You ever been pushed to your absolute limit and come out stronger for it?” He turned a menacing eye to Bigby, warning him that now was not the time to chime in. “Yeah, some of you might have been, but not all of you have. If you think for one minute that you’re just going to stroll in there and start shooting fish in a barrel, you got another thing coming. These boys are the best there is, and they will fight back. You’re taking this to their home turf and nobody gets meaner than when somebody comes kicking they door in and swinging a gun in they face.” He paced the room and stared each man in the eye as he tried to drill his point home. “Make no mistake. You about to crawl your happy ass into the belly of the beast. You about to go face-to-face with the meanest of the motherfuckers there is. These are men all trained to be just as bad ass as I am, except you going into their house and you pissing on their carpet.”

  “True, but they aren’t expecting it,” Bigby added. “We have the element of surprise.”

  Apollo nodded. “True. But you won’t have that for long. So you better play it smart. Use every dirty trick you got. Play every advantage you can. Because if there’s an opening, you can damned sure bet they gonna pull it from your hand, shove it up your ass and break the handle off.”

  *****

  “Holy mother of…” Ben gasped as the figures shook the treetops.

  “Now that’s a troll.” Dominic stepped aside and began backing up. “Let’s clear a path, gentlemen. These thing are large and in charge and dumber than a bag of dog shit.”

  Another yell came from deep in the woods and the men turned their attention in unison toward the noise. “That sounded like the old Godzilla movies,” Mac stated as the sound finished echoing off the nearby hills.

  “Yeah.” Dominic continued to stare toward the source of the sound. “And if I didn’t know better, I’d think that it didn’t come from these two here.”

  “What’s the ETA on the drones again?” Hammer asked sarcastically.

  Static filled their collective earpieces for a moment, “Team Leader, OPCOM. We’ve commandeered a drone that’s closer. It’s not a Reaper, but the Predator is armed and inbound.”

  “Copy that, OPCOM. ETA?” Dom began waving his men further back up the hill, attempting to put as much room between them and the creatures about to enter the clearing.

  “Twenty minutes, tops. Fifteen if the winds are with us,” the static-filled reply stated.

  “Peachy.” Dom turned and double timed up the hill. “You heard the man. We have to hold these things until the Predator can pull our fat from the fire.”

  “Can we call in a couple of Apache gunships to go with that Predator?” Marshall didn’t sound like he was joking as he ran alongside Dominic. “I’d feel better knowing we had a little more air support than a remote-controlled unmanned aircraft with extremely limited armament.”

  Dom shrugged. “You never know ‘til you ask.” He keyed his mic, “OPCOM, requesting additional air support.”

  “Go ahead, Team Leader. What type support are you requesting?”

  Dominic jumped over a large outcropping of rocks then fell in behind them and set his carbine up downrange on the tree line. “How about some nuclear tipped Tomahawks? I’m no expert and we haven’t verified anything on thermal yet, but my mark 1 mod 2 ears have detected at least one other tango, and it sounds even bigger.”

  There was brief delay while administration tried to verify Dom’s report. “We’re scrambling air support now. Try to hold them in your area, Sierra One.”

  “Copy that, OPCOM.” He turned to his men who were staged directly behind him and on either side. “How many heavy rifles do we have out here?”

  Mac held up his SCAR 17. “308 here, boss.”

  Marshall and Hammer both held up their SCAR 16’s. “556 on this side.”

  Dom stared down at the smaller P90 he chose to bring on this op. He silently cursed himself for not having been better prepared, but with the intel that they had, he truly thought that the lighter weapon would be more than sufficient. “Fine. Mac, take up a high ground position. Dave, you and Neils find flanking positions that will give you as clear a shot to their melon as you can find.”

  As each man broke off from the group, the trees shook and some crashed to the ground as the first of the two beasts broke into the clearing. Ben Charmichael slid in next to Dom and motioned toward the monsters. “Looks like the party started.”

  “Keep down until we figure out where they’re headed.” Dom flattened himself to the rock and sighted down the short barrel of the P90. The two men watched as the first creature slowly stepped into the clearing and bellowed into the night air, great clouds of mist escaping from the wide mouth as it smacked its lips afterward. The wide side eyes seemed to search the clearing for movement and finally settled on the still form of the much smaller troll lying in the grass.

  The much taller beast paused and sniffed the air before bellowing into the night once more, a long, low, mournful sound that reverberated off the hills and nearby trees. It slowly stepped forward, followed by its compatriot. The first of the two trolls approached the still body and bent to retrieve the body.

  “Wonder if that milky snot will burn them, too?” Ben whispered.

  Dom shrugged but kept quiet as he watched the beast easily pick up the dead troll and lift it gingerly to its face. It took a long, deep sniff of the still body then dropped it unceremoniously to the ground. The troll’s mouth tightened into an even tighter line and its eyes darted about the clearing looking for whatever could have taken the life of the smaller beast. Tilting its head back it let loose with another longer, louder and deeper cry that nearly had the men holding their ears.

  In the distance, much further away, the squad heard a reply and a sudden crashing through the woods. Whatever was coming, it was in a hurry. Dom slipped a hand up and keyed his throat mic. “On your toes. It’s about to get ugly.”

  A series of clicks came as replies as each man targeted the monsters across the clearing. Their scopes set on the softest part of the monster’s skull…the eyes. Experience had taught them all that trolls had some of the thickest skulls out there and often times, even depleted Uranium shells had difficulty puncturing them. When they did, they rarely if ever flattened and usually made surgical punctures, leaving the tiny brains intact. The orbital sockets were where the skulls were the thinnest and these things had huge, bulging eyes. Each man prayed that those huge red eyes would be their Achilles heel, their weak spot th
at could be exploited.

  The second creature that emerged from the woods sidestepped the first one and sniffed the air as well. It noticed the dead smaller troll on the ground and scooped it up, mimicking the actions of the first troll. After sniffing the lifeless body, this troll extended the widest tongue any of the squad members had ever seen and ran it down the side of the slime coated body. Shaking its mighty head, the troll scraped its tongue across its wide lips and spat away the milky slime coating the body before tossing it aside. Dom watched the action in stunned amazement and fought back a grin. Apparently they could smell ‘death’ but not the acidic slime that the body oozed out. How it kept from burning their skin, he couldn’t be sure.

  The crashing in the woods grew closer, and although Dom couldn’t see the beast yet, it almost sounded like multiple creatures stomping through the underbrush. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, his red dot centered on the closest bulging red eye. “Hold fire until they advance.”

  Mac’s voice broke through on the coms. “I’ve got a lot of thermal activity on my scopes. There’s more than one coming through the woods, boss.”

  “Copy that. Do you have an exact count?”

  “Negative. But they appear smaller.”

  Dom contemplated the potential shit storm that a swarm of acid sweating smaller trolls could toss into this well-oiled fuckfest. He suddenly felt outgunned against a brainless enemy. It fully reminded him of a particular zombie horde that they weren’t expecting in lower Alaska a few years back. “Get me the number ASAP.” He continued to watch the larger trolls who kept cocking their heads and scanning the clearing.

  “They’re about to break through,” Mac reported.

  “Number?” Dom nearly shouted.

  “Too many. Their heat signatures are crossing over each other. It’s just one big wave of…wait one.” Mac switched to another piece of hardware then came back on the radio. “I’m switching to Active IR.”