by Matt James
“Not sure, mate. Maybe?” Fitz replied, turning to Mo. “But we need to get in contact with someone. I’m gonna try the Bullpen and… Down!”
As Fitz turned, he saw a blur of motion over Mo’s shoulder, coming from behind Kipanga. It was smaller than the male but had the same black fur and an identical set of fiery red eyes.
Mo ducked as Fitz let loose two quick shots from his Mossberg, felling the smaller lion, a female. “Dammit, these buggers are quick.”
“And ferocious!” Mo yelled, clearly having problems hearing anything from the close quarters concussions at the hands of the 12-gauge.
He stood, shaking his head, trying to clear the ringing, but stopped. “Um…Fitz...”
Fitz looked and saw fear in the other man’s eyes. He was looking back towards the Acacia tree. He turned, joining Mo’s gaze, and backpedaled.
There were four more sets of glowing eyes staring back at them through the darkness of the night sky. Each one of them had the same menacing, carnivorous stare as the two they’d just slain.
“Shit, Mo. Run. Run now!” Fitz said, yelling to the pilot.
One of the creatures advanced, leaping into the low light of the helo’s front lamps. The two men didn’t need any more encouragement than that. They ran like hell itself was chasing them—which wasn’t too far from the truth.
“Don’t stop, mate. Get this bird off the ground fast!” Fitz stopped, spun on a dime and let loose the rest of his shotgun’s ammo. He clipped one of the advancing females in the shoulder and another one, a juvenile male, in the flank. Both beasts were knocked off balance, tumbling to the dirt, but neither were dead.
He could hear the rotors behind him powering up quickly, and decided now was as good a time as any to do what he had planned. Fitz reached into a pocket on his hip and procured a black cylinder filled with a pyrotechnic metal-oxidant mix of magnesium, and ammonium perchlorate. These components put together made up your standard issue M84 stun grenade.
He turned and held up the flashbang for Mo to see, warning him, before pulling the pin and releasing the safety lever. He chucked the explosive device towards the tree and bolted for Kipanga’s passenger door.
As he climbed in, he shut his eyes and opened his mouth, a tactic he learned while in the army. It helped reduce the pressure the concussive force of the explosion caused. A fact he was sure an animal wouldn’t know.
Halfway into his seat, a blinding light blinked to life along with a boom. If he’d had his eyes open, he’d be blind for up to a minute from the effects of the white-hot blast. Without being able to cover his ears, his hearing was shot, but it’d have to do. He could live with a little ringing for a few hours.
“Up!” he yelled, unable to hear his own voice. “Hit the lights!”
Moments later, the Blackhawk rose and the exterior lights were amped up to their full brightness… The scene below them was unbelievable.
The four remaining lions—while technically dead—were still quite alive. Disoriented, but moving. With the lights at full power, he could also see the ground and the battle that had been fought recently.
Blood covered everything. He hadn’t noticed how bad it was until now. The entire section of grass and dirt looked like the floor of an unkempt slaughterhouse. He knew his boots had to be covered as well and couldn’t wait to hose them off when they got back.
Shit, I’ll probably just toss ‘em and get another pair from my room.
The lions writhed on the ground but were slowly coming to. As they rose higher, Fitz held out his hand telling Mo to stop. “Wait, I need to see something.”
Mo obliged and leveled out the aircraft eighty feet off the ground. As the two men looked down back towards the plain, they noticed something. The lions weren’t retreating. If anything, they were more interested in the fleeing aircraft than ever.
Like a curious house cat.
“Okay, Mo,” he said, “take us back to the others. We need to figure out what the hell is going on.”
The Blackhawk began to turn and Fitz immediately saw something he didn’t like. “Aw, shit.”
“What is it?” Mo asked, concentrating on his duties. “What do you see?”
“You don’t want to know, mate,” Fitz said, his voice full of despair.
“Gray?” Mo asked, using Fitz’s first name.
“It’s the lions,” Fitz said, turning back to Mo. “They’re following us.”
14
“Dammit, Logan. I really think we should leave. We need to warn someone.”
Logan agreed with part of what his sister said, but he didn’t approve of leaving. Yes, they had just re-killed two of their friends who had turned into some sort of genetically altered undead versions of themselves, but they needed to continue their search of Mengele’s facility. They needed to figure out a way to stop it.
If there is a way to stop it, Logan thought as he led CJ and Jan around the next corner. Jan suggested that he guarded their backs since his shotgun was the best defense in the tight corridors. They agreed that if they were attacked again, it would most likely come from behind.
“It’s closer to the entry shaft too,” Jan had said. “I suspect these creatures hunt by scent and sound and not by sight.”
“How do you know that?” CJ asked.
“Because,” Jan replied, “Pandu didn’t attack until he heard you speak.”
CJ just nodded her head but looked like she was going to say something.
“It’s fine CJ,” Logan said, placing his hand on her shoulder. “You didn’t know. It isn’t your fault. He would have found us eventually.”
He stepped away. “But I agree with Jan. We can see in the dark because of these,” he said, tapping on his night vision goggles, “Pandu couldn’t. It’s pitch-black down here and the human eye doesn’t have spectacular low-light capabilities.”
“As long as the virus doesn’t eventually improve that…” CJ said, worried.
“Let’s hope not,” Logan said. “Also,” he continued, looking at Jan, “how’s the head?”
Jan just shrugged. “The chest was a bruiser. Knocked me out cold when I went down.”
They walked in silence for a few seconds, but something nagged at Jan.
“What of the others?” he asked.
“Others?” CJ replied.
“Mengele’s letter,” Logan explained, understanding Jan’s line of questioning. “It mentioned mammalian subjects. If it were only human experimentation, I’d assume he would have just said as much. But he didn’t. He specifically said mammals.”
“Which means we are screwed if anything else out there gets infected,” CJ added, pointing up to the land above their heads. “There are some nasty buggers out there who specialize in nocturnal hunting.”
Logan and Jan nodded their heads. They understood what she was implying, everyone in the SDF did. One of CJ’s main duties was to keep everyone up to date on the ever-changing information that came in on the various species, primarily the predators. She was, in essence, the team’s educator and teacher.
“I’d be most worried about the leopards, to be honest,” CJ said. “They were already the masters of stealth. If they somehow get a hold of this virus—or whatever the hell it is—we could be in for some serious problems and a very long night.”
“Considering the sun just fell, what, ninety minutes ago?” Logan said, looking at his watch. “That gives us approximately eight-and-a-half hours left of limited visibility topside.”
“So, standing around here and discussing the sun’s summer habits is more than likely a huge waste of time,” CJ added with a smirk. She then turned to Jan. “Right?” The big German shrugged and looked to Logan.
Logan just shook his head, smiling at his sister. At least she’s trying to make the most of it. But he could still sense she was terrified, like him. If this had been a normal problem, he’d be his normal self. But now…
CJ then turned back towards Logan, motioning for him to continue. “Well then... Onw
ard, baby brother.”
“You’d better watch it with that shit you old bag or I’m bound to feed you to the leopards,” Logan smiled, “dead or not.”
She slugged him in the shoulder, instantly regretting it. CJ just stood there shaking her hand, muttering curses under her breath.
Both men laughed, hard, but quickly stopped after getting a hate-filled, venomous look from the much smaller woman.
Logan silently turned and continued forward, deeper into the seventy-year-old bunker. He had a sneaking suspicion that what they had found out so far would only be the tip of the iceberg.
Fifty feet later, Logan saw an aberration on the left. It wasn’t a doorway, but it wasn’t a hall either. He inched closer and peeked around the corner, recognizing what it was.
“Stairs,” he said, with dread in his voice. “There’s another level underneath us.”
“What are you thinking?” Jan asked quietly, looking back down the hall behind them, shotgun up.
“Knowing a group like the Nazis,” Logan replied, “or any other secret organization, the real juicy stuff will be down there.”
“Ugh,” CJ said with revolt, “please don’t say juicy right now.”
“Right,” Logan said, apologetically. “Sorry…”
Jan looked over his shoulder to Logan. “I seriously doubt it’s a good idea to split up too.”
CJ immediately shook her head no. She’d have no part in separating from the two men.
And Logan had to agree. “You’re right. We stay together.”
“Plus,” CJ added, “It’s not like we have the best weaponry for this current problem.” She specifically motioned to her lighter hitting Glock. “If we all had those…” she said, pointing to Jan’s shotgun.
“We’d be deaf,” Logan quickly said. “You’re fine. Just keep aiming for their heads.” He then shook his head, not believing what he was about to say. “Zombies can’t survive without their brains.”
After an awkward moment of silence, both CJ and Jan burst out laughing at the absurdness of the thought.
“Really?” she said. “Are we really going to refer to these things as zombies?”
Logan just silently threw up his hands with a ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ kind of look on his face.
“Nachzehrer,” Jan whispered quietly. “We can call them the Nach if you’d like?”
“Nachzee-what?” CJ asked.
“The Nachzehrer was an old German folklore similar to that of vampires and zombies,” Jan explained. “Nach means afterward, and zehrer means devourer. ‘Dead eaters’ or ‘eaters of the dead,’ depending on the translation used.”
Fitting, Logan thought. The Nach—or the dead eaters—definitely sounded like what they were dealing with.
“The Nach…” Logan said, trying out the name, pronouncing it, knock.
“It’s better than calling these bastards zombies and feeling like a moron.”
Both men laughed at CJ’s comment, again releasing some of the built-up tension, but also agreeing. They had laughed a few times, but Logan knew it wasn’t on purpose. Sometimes you just had to laugh at the ridiculousness of what life tossed at you.
“Very good then,” Logan said, squeezing CJ’s shoulder. “Shall we?”
She nodded and brought up her Glock, doing her best to squelch her rising fear. “Always.”
“Down we go,” Logan muttered, looking at the set of stairs.
“And where we stop,” CJ added.
Logan moved to the first step.
“Nobody knows…”
He stopped, his foot hovering over the stair. Both him and CJ glanced back to Jan who had a ‘my bad’ expression on his face.
“Let’s hope not,” Logan said, descending the first step, leading his team deeper into the unknown.
15
He could smell them off in the distance some five hundred yards ahead. There were quite a few of them too, plenty of sustenance. The pride was quick work. Once the large male was down, the others tried and failed to avenge him.
But these were different. These were smaller and much more numerous.
Sniffing the air, Georges smiled a sickly grin. He could almost taste his next meal.
And then he heard them. It was soft, but there. The cackling of the animals off in the distance helped him zero in on their location. Northwest, he thought.
They would be in a group numbering anywhere from ten to fourteen and would be led by a matriarch, larger than the rest.
Shaking his head from the knowledge running through his head, he was thrown off by it. Where? he thought, trying to recall where he learned that.
He looked down at his blood-stained hands. The talons had grown another couple of inches after his encounter with the lions and so had the fingers themselves. It seemed that with every feeding something grew, and the more he fed the stronger he became. This is good, he thought, flexing his now prodigious arm muscles. They had almost doubled in girth and strength since he…
Georges squinted, thinking. He couldn’t remember what he was like before this. All he could do was remember his first name and waking up being this way. But something in the back of his mind itched, telling him there was more to his past.
Another bout of what sounded like laughter erupted from deeper into the darkness. He strode towards it and stopped, feeling something bothersome around his foot.
He looked down and saw it. Whatever it was covered his foot, preventing the bottom of it from touching the ground beneath. Why? He no longer understood the use for the protection. His toenails had pierced the uncomfortable material long ago. He didn’t need them.
One by one, Georges flipped off the annoyances and spread his toes, feeling the dirt between them. Better.
He then examined the rest of his body and felt the same irritation he had before. He recalled waking with all this…clothing—that’s what it was called. His body was covered in it, but he couldn’t remember what it was for.
He made quick work of the itchy fabric entangling his chest and arms with two quick slashes. Each one of the strikes cut into his own flesh, but he didn’t mind. He felt no pain and he only bled a minuscule amount.
He grinned again, but this time it was the sight of his naked form. Muscle rippled underneath his jet-black skin, teeming with veins—veins that glowed red beneath his skin. If he was his prey, he would be frightened as well. He remembered the looks on the human’s faces when he and the others emerged from the pit. Not only was he camouflaged within the darkness… He was the darkness.
He blinked and noticed something else had changed. He lifted his hands in front of his face and saw four of them. He tilted his head to the side, confused. He didn’t have four arms. Then something in his mind’s eye told him to focus on the two he knew he had. So, he listened and concentrated as his vision slowly normalized.
He blinked again, feeling the other set of eyes for the first time. He now sported four of them instead of two and his night vision had enhanced some as well. His peripheral vision had widened as well, allowing him to see almost 180 degrees from side-to-side. Georges actual eyesight got better too, being able to see just that little bit better, and further, in the pitch black of the African night. He grinned. This just keeps getting better.
The scent of his prey hit him again and he sniffed, drawing the final inhalation in deep. They were just ahead and waiting for him. By the agitated sounds of their calls, Georges knew that they recognized something was close, but they had no idea what was coming.
Me, he thought, flexing his arms again.
He squatted, bending his legs, and dug his front claws into the ground. It didn’t feel as awkward as he figured it might. It almost felt natural.
Launching himself forward, the form that was once the poacher, Georges Boluva, sprinted on all fours. From a distance, he would’ve looked like some demon-man hybrid, pounding through the night like a feral beast.
And that’s what he was. He was in every sense of the term, a super pre
dator.
16
“Don’t land!” Fitz yelled as the wind whipped through the rear hold of the Blackhawk. “I’ll drop a line to the top of the kopje and try and find Logan and the others! You go back to the ‘Pen’ and get help and restock! Bring every heavy-hitting piece we have. We’ll take the Land Rover back if we have too.”
Mo nodded as Fitz clipped on and leaped from the open side door, armed with his Mossberg shotgun and plenty of spare slugs. Fitz hoped he could find his friends before the remaining lions did. He and Mo had barely gotten away alive.
He landed quickly, straddling the entry point to what Logan thought was some sort of World War Two era Nazi military bunker. He could plainly see the twin lightning bolts of the Nazi’s SS but had never heard of them reaching this far south. The northern countries were under Axis rule once upon a time, but not here.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said to himself. “I need to find the others and figure out what the hell is going on.”
Signaling to Mo that he made it safely, Fitz detached the drop line and started his descent. As his boots clanged against the metal ladder, he thought back to the dumbfounded reactions the men back home had.
“You find something out in the bush and smoke it?” Kel asked, laughing at Fitz and Mo. “You guys fog out Kipanga?”
Kel and Dada laughed hard, but Adnan held back. The desperation in Fitz’s voice was unnerving. Not once in the four years he’d known the man had he ever seen the ex-Special Forces soldier nervous, let alone afraid.
“Shut the fuck up you wankers!” Fitz cursed, shouting over the radio. “Or so help me, I’ll feed you to the lot of ‘em!”
Adnan quietly walked over to another station and pushed the talk button, commandeering the conversation. “Fitz, this is Adnan. Say again, please. What happened?”
Kel and Dada gave Adnan an annoyed look, but they let him speak. Both men just leaned back and listened, waiting for something else to laugh at.
“Adnan,” Fitz said, his tone calming down slightly. “We have men down and Logan, CJ, and Jan are MIA. Mo is going to come and get Kel and Dada. They need to be ready in thirty for pick up. Dress heavy. I repeat. Dress…heavy.” He breathed heavily and continued. “Adnan, stay put and keep the Bullpen operational. Lock down everything until we get back.”