by Matt James
Damn. He sighed. The Jacuzzi tub would have to wait, but his aches and pains couldn’t. He’d need to pop a few Advil before he got too engrossed with whatever Adnan needed him for.
Must be the Americans. He glanced down at his watch, estimating their time of arrival at just over an hour or so.
Hopefully less.
The lift smoothly slid by the second floor, passing the room where his heavenly immersion awaited him. The image of himself relaxing was quickly replaced with that of terror, as the memory of Dada being torn in half replayed in his head. Another of his men had been killed. Brutally.
As he continued up, he caught a glimpse of where Mo and Jan would undoubtedly be headed, sitting at the bar behind the sofa. They would then clink their low-ball glasses together, and say cheers to each other in their own native tongues. It was like clockwork for them.
The sofa…
He looked back to the couch, his body screaming for the cool leather and his mind weeping for just the basic sensation of lying down. He could even feel the relief—the tension leaving his lower back as he relaxed his muscles and gave into sleep.
As much as he loved leading his team, Logan understood that regardless of what his inner ego driven, testosterone-imbued manhood believed, he was, in fact, human, and sooner or later his body and mind would shut down… He just didn’t know which one would fail first. As a rule of thumb, he always assumed the body would relinquish itself before his will. As a former SAS soldier, he was trained to never give up.
“Never give up. Never give in,” Logan said, mumbling the lyrics to an obscure punk band from America. Florida, I think. He remembered showing Gray the band back when they were in the army—before joining the ranks in the SAS. God… What was it, fourteen years ago? He and then eventually Fitz were the only ones that he knew of who had heard of Middle Class Chaos in Australia, but they both liked them. Something about the simple, yet catchy rhythm, always appealed to the two men.
The elevator clunked to a stop, startling Logan’s eyes open. He hadn’t even realized he’d closed them. Right, he thought, gonna need some coffee too.
He stepped out onto the third story landing, quickly and forcibly cocking his head to the side. The vertebrae audibly realigned in his neck, popping loudly, releasing only a fraction of the stress and pressure he felt. Better than nothing. He then breathed in deep and continued into the Observation Deck. He was as ready as he could be to do the whole leader thing all over again.
As soon as he entered the room he had a voice yelling at him from across the spacious interior.
“Logan?” the voice asked. “That you, brother?”
“Yeah…” he replied, half-heartedly. “Give me a sec, will ya’?”
He headed straight for his desk and opened the small mini-fridge each of them had at their stations. They also had a large communal refrigerator in the living room of the second floor, but only had their smaller cousins on the top floor.
Logan opened a drawer and retrieved three pills, popping them into his mouth. He followed the chalky painkillers with half the ice-cold water bottle. He then took a breath and drained the rest, tossing the empty bottle in the garbage can next to his desk.
Next, Logan unslung his rifle and gently laid it on the work bench lining one of the many storage shelves. He then did the same with his Desert Eagle. Cleaning and reloading the guns would have to wait. He would first check on CJ and Adnan and see what the rush was, then he’d see to the weapons.
“Logan?”
He turned and found CJ leaning against a rack full of handguns, prepped and ready to go. It was where she shopped from most of the time.
“You okay?” she asked, noticing his dreary exterior.
“Fine, Cass,” Logan said, lying. “Just spent is all.” Before she could call him on his bluff, he continued. “What’s going on?”
As she started the explanation about the initial conversation with the Americans at Manda Bay, Logan slid the SCAR to the side, foregoing the strict clean and store rule he had set in place years ago. He was going to do it after he talked to his sister, anyway. But now… He was too damn exhausted.
He then selected another identical rifle from a nearby rack, earning a reaction from his sister.
“Are you even listening to me?”
He half-turned, only letting her see his sly smirk. “With that voice?” He let the jab hang in the air, getting the textbook eye roll from CJ. “Loud and clear, Cass.”
“What’s their ETA?” he asked, wanting to double-check.
She looked at her watch. “Just over an hour…give-or-take.”
He nodded at the confirmation.
“Anything on the cameras from around the park?” He had hoped they’d be clear, but if they weren’t…
“Yes,” CJ replied, deflating his hope. “Most of the Nach are moving away from us.”
This wasn’t what he thought he’d hear. He assumed another wave of the monsters would come banging down their door… And then another… And another.
“What do you mean?” Logan asked, shocked.
She shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea, but I have a theory.”
Logan just lifted his eyebrows, coaxing her to continue.
“You’re not going to like it.”
Now it was Logan’s turn to shrug. “Do I really have a choice?”
She bobbed her head, agreeing.
“Fine,” she said, trying to force the words from her lips. “I think they are attempting to spread the virus further into the park—build their numbers.”
Logan’s surprised expression wasn’t lost on his sister who explained her hypothesis more.
“They aren’t mindless monsters.”
“Who aren’t?” Logan asked, confused.
“The Nach.”
He hopped up and sat on the table next to his discarded weapon, giving her his full attention.
“And you know that how?”
She fully entered his workspace and propped herself onto another of the workbenches, her legs dangling from the table like a child in a too-tall chair.
“The giant leopard that killed…” She couldn’t say it. The wounds were still too fresh. “It stalked you back to the Pen. It hunted you and the others. It didn’t give away its position and charge in guns blazing. It thought out its course of action and then it struck.”
Logan understood where she was going with this, but he wanted to hear it from the animal expert’s mouth. Especially someone who primarily focused their work on carnivores. He knew basic information on the more common of the creatures, but CJ knew everything there was to know about them.
“It showed intelligence and patience,” she said. “I’m actually very curious to know what the virus does to the mind over a prolonged period of time. Does the subject’s brain continue to deteriorate? Or does it eventually heal and become usable again?”
“Like… Does the thing gain back its self-control after a certain amount of time?”
She nodded.
“If so, then the leopard would have been infected a while ago, only now revealing itself as it changed, as were Saami and Pandu…” She choked back the words. “They didn’t have time to redevelop their minds. They were only a few minutes into their reawakening.”
Logan didn’t want to accept it, but he understood her theory. What if these things were allowed to live long enough for the working parts of their brains to reform with the God Blood fully infused? Would they think of themselves as the same as before, or would they believe themselves a monster—or possibly a god? That much could be said for a human recipient, but what of an animal? What kind of change would their minds have? Would they gain a more human-like conscious?
Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.
39
She sat on her bed and wept, not being able to contain her fright and bottled-up grief any longer. CJ had always put on a good front, showing the boys that if a woman could handle the struggles of living out here, then they shouldn
’t have a problem either.
But that was before people started dying, she thought, looking at the picture she had of the entire team on her wall. It was a large panorama of the Serengeti sunset. The ten of them were standing in a line on the Bullpen’s roof, backs to the horizon. It had been taken a couple years ago, but she remembered the moment like it was yesterday.
They had just taken down a large-scale poaching operation to the south. They didn’t have Kipanga or the Rhino yet, so it was a huge deal to them…and their supporters.
A really big deal.
One of their benefactors had a chopper fly in a special dinner, complete with four cases of a VERY expensive champagne. The note had congratulated them on a job well done and said to take the weekend off and enjoy themselves.
So, they did, which was completely out of character for the SDF—Logan especially. He wanted it to be a seven-day-a-week undertaking, with everyone rotating shifts, but he had quickly come to understand that not everyone was built like him. Not even Fitz. He was the first one to speak up against Logan’s over-the-top schedules.
“Come on, mate,” Fitz said. “We aren’t the bloody help—we’re your friends. You’re gonna burn out the others before they even realize they’re burnt.”
“We need to keep a tight grip on things out here,” Logan countered. “One mistake and they’ll get what they want.”
Fitz shook his head. “You really think you can save them all?” Fitz stepped closer but was still a few inches shorter than Logan. “Well, I got news for you, Captain… It ain’t gonna happen!”
Fitz cut off Logan before he could respond. “Right now, as you and I are having our little scruff, dozens of them are dying out there—and there is abso-fucking-lutely nothing you or I or any of them,” he pointed to the floor, meaning the team downstairs, “can do about it. So, lay off!”
Logan sneered at Fitz, but gave in, dropping his head to his chin.
“Logan?”
He looked up to see CJ standing outside his room where he and Fitz were having their…discussion. Tears were streaming down her face. He’d seen her cry plenty of times before, but never like this.
“Please, Logan. Gray is right.”
It was the last time she had ever seen Logan and Fitz stare each other down like that. Logan never realized how hard he was on them until he saw the emotion radiating from his sister’s face. She was exhausted and mentally fried. It had reached a boiling point and it almost destroyed the SDF.
The next morning, they made fourteen arrests and confiscated a truckload of illegally obtained goods. Some were caged, alive. Some weren’t. The dead were properly cataloged and then respectfully incinerated. It was the only consistent way to destroy the poached. Burying them wouldn’t do any good. More would just come to the graves and dig up the wares.
Like tonight, CJ thought. If the Nazis had only burned the dead…
She glanced back up to the picture. It showed all ten of them smiling ear-to-ear, as happy as ever. Logan and her. Fitz and Jan. Mo, Adnan, Kel…Dada…Saami…and Pandu. It’s why she wept. Three of her friends were dead. All of them brutally killed by something they couldn’t fight.
And she believed that.
Logan, Fitz, and even Jan were trained to battle a human enemy. This wasn’t anything anyone could win against. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they would all die out here. The red eyes would come for them and then—
“You okay?”
CJ flinched, the voice from her doorway scaring her. She looked up and saw Jan standing there, staring at her. His face—while normally a stoic, steadfast rock—was uncommonly…
He’s worried, she thought, wiping away the tears.
“I’m…” CJ said, sniffing. “I’m…”
What—fine? Jolly? Just dandy?
“Scared…”
And she was.
Jan stepped forward, hand outstretched, inviting her into his embrace. They had stolen away a night together here and there but had yet to really take their feelings for one another to the next level.
Was it love?
CJ didn’t know, but dammit it felt right.
She let him guide her into his arms where they remained for what seemed like an eternity. His arms were powerful, yet, gentle. His scent was rugged but soft. Jan was her perfect yin to her yang. She made the giant laugh and he helped her keep her shit together.
They separated and CJ looked into Jan’s crystal blue eyes. “What are we going to do?”
Jan’s expression changed from worried to determined, all with the time it took her to ask the question. He stood tall and smiled.
“We fight,” he replied, glancing to the panorama. He then looked back down to her. “We win.” He nodded to the picture. “For them.”
CJ nodded, another stream of tears falling down her cheeks. Then, a large finger lifted her chin up and another set of lips pushed up against hers.
The kiss only lasted a second, but it was enough. It was the reassurance she had desperately needed. CJ opened her heavy eyelids, meeting Jan’s gaze.
“And for us.”
“Ahem...”
They both spun at the sound of someone behind them.
It was Fitz.
Busted.
“Logan wants everyone upstairs for a briefing of what he wants to do next.” He turned but stopped. “Oh, and by the way...” He smiled. “You two can come out of the closet. We all know you’ve been banging each other for months now.”
CJ’s cheeks instantly flushed and Jan’s eyebrows narrowed. He looked like he wanted to kill the much smaller man. But then Fitz started laughing.
“I’m just yankin’ your crank!” he said, cracking up. “But seriously, I share a wall with jumbo over here.” He motioned to Jan. “Logan doesn’t know yet, but he’ll eventually hear CJ’s moaning all the way back to Melbourne.”
Jan stepped forward, but Fitz turned and quickly scampered back down the hall, turning left when he hit the catwalk, heading back upstairs. CJ’s faced flushed again, but she started to laugh too. Fitz had a way to cheer anyone up, even if he really wasn’t trying to.
Placing a gentle, reassuring hand on her shoulder, Jan coaxed her to head in the direction Fitz did. They needed to put together a response, or at the very least, plan out a better defense until the Americans arrived.
CJ stopped after only a couple of steps and looked up to Jan. “Do I really moan?”
Now it was Jan’s turn to blush.
He just shrugged. “I do good work.”
She slugged him in the chest. “Jerk.”
They both continued forward towards the staircase to the third level. As they moved off, a small, shadowy shape, long and low to the ground, slid through the hallway, entering CJ’s room where it would wait until she returned. It's black nails made the quietest of clicking sounds on the hallway’s hard floor.
CJ spun, but saw nothing, playing off the obvious paranoia on her overly emotional state and lack of sleep. Delirium, she thought. Most of them had been up for twenty-four hours by now. She turned back to Jan, and hand-in-hand they climbed the stairs to meet her brother.
The creature silently waited. It just needed to be patient. It would feed soon enough.
40
There were bodies everywhere. Pieces mostly. Shetani watched as his ancestor tore into another of the Nach—a zebra hybrid—ripping a large chunk of meat from its neck, swallowing it whole. It had eaten parts of six now and had quickly regained its girth, standing a foot taller than Shetani. Its body, however, was something else.
It was maybe half the bulk as Shetani was, tall and slender, with a neck that was two times too long. It had four eyes that glowed…green.
That’s what unnerved Shetani the most. The green eyes. They glowed like some alien lifeforms would. Like all his jumbled thoughts, Shetani couldn’t remember why he knew what that looked like. But like those things, he just assumed it was right.
Its head was small in proportion to its size too, an
d it had no hair like him. Its bald head was covered with…scales, whereas his was skin. His ancestor lacked the pulsating veins as well.
The body of the zebra sailed into the hallway, hitting the adjacent wall with a wet crunch of bone and viscous fluids. It was followed by a low growl as the much older beast emerged from its prison once more. But this time it was plenty strong enough to support itself.
Shetani watched as it stepped into full view, barely clearing the ten-foot ceiling as it stood. He looked over his ancestor, seeing the same veins he had, minus the red plasma. They weren’t raised like Shetani’s either. They were set into its body, glowing, illuminating the walls and ceiling around it.
It stretched its arms—all four of them—hitting either side of the corridor. Its wingspan was larger than it should have been as well—maybe fifteen feet. Shetani specifically watched its hands open, revealing the large three-clawed digits. Each one of the two fingers was over a foot long—half of it being claw. The third digit was something of a thumb, half the size, but having the ability to fully close.
Shetani regarded his own colossal hands. It would be able to grasp like he could, except his hands were thicker and contained five fingers. His fingers weren’t as long either.
Regarding the older newcomer, Shetani snorted, acknowledging it, getting the attention of his taller relative. It looked down to him and returned the snort with a hiss. It ever so slightly opened it's smaller, yet still, undoubtedly deadly mouth, revealing its needle-like teeth.
While Shetani was brute strength, killing with sheer passion, desire, and muscle, his counterpart was leaner and would most certainly be quicker. It would strike with the same quickness as a serpent and would be extremely efficient in the act. The fiendish look it had when its mouth hung open made it almost smile as if it knew something he didn’t.
The way it stood also confused Shetani. While he stood, hands flexed, muscles taut, ready for a fight. This one stood with its arms to its side, relaxed, almost daring him to attack. He could sense its cunningness. He’d have to be careful.
Where?
Shetani stepped back. Had it spoken? Its mouth barely moved. It could speak?