The Last Line Series One

by David Elias Jenkins

The Goblin looked down at its ruined body for a few moments then up at Usher with a look of stern reprimand on its horrible face. It waved a finger at him.

  Then the Goblin waved its unsettlingly long fingers in the air and the room was filled with the choking black smoke that issued from the bullet wounds.

  Usher tried to wave it away and hold his breath but he took in a gasping lungful and fell to his knees. His head swam and he felt cold paralysis seep through his muscles. In one last effort Usher tried to point the gun in the general direction of the creature but he did not have the strength and the pistol fell from his grip onto the carpet. Within moments Usher was slumped against Seth’s bedroom wall, twitching uncontrollably and unable to move.

  Everything seemed to slow down and his brain struggled through the poisonous black cloud. As it dissipated he could see the Goblins in the corner of the room, with the bound chrysalis of webbing that contained his son slung over one of their shoulders. Another two were busy wrapping up Marie, who was wide eyed but seemingly as paralyzed as Usher. Usher moaned in despair but his lips could form no words. All he could do was sit and watch as his family were stolen by creaturesfrom a nightmare.

  When they had secured their captives, the Goblins raised their hands in the air and made some gestures towards the window, their stick thin arms bristling with spikes like the stems of rosebushes. The lead Goblin placed what looked like a lump of wax onto the wall that sank in. In its centre was a crude keyhole.

  Usher could hardly believe his eyes when a crack began to appear in the wall, spreading upwards around the flaking paint until it became a door that ground slowly open in a cloud of plaster dust.

  Beyond that there was a long stone tunnel that led far away into darkness, lit only with phosphorescent moss. Usher could see metres down this passage but knew that was impossible because that would mean it stretched into the air outside the house.

  The Goblins picked up their prizes and chattering to themselves crept off down the tunnel.

  Usher screamed as loud as he could when he watched his family vanishing away from him but hardly any sound came out. His body was as heavy as lead.

  The last Goblin was about to disappear into the passage when it suddenly turned around and regarded Usher with a curious glare. It crept over to him on crooked legs and blinked its yellow eyes. Usher stared in horror and anguish, tears welling up in his bleary eyes.

  Then the creature leaned in close to him and in stilted English whispered into his ear.

  Ours now…………

  Usher screamed and screamed until he finally passed out from exhaustion.

  1.

  Present day.

  Operation Grave Robber: Undisclosed location Eastern Europe.

  The Special Forces team Empire One was on its way to eliminate the most wanted terrorist in the world.

  A ghoulish murderer named Isaiah Argent.

  Other than the Black Ops soldiers in the helicopter and the bosses who sent them, almost no one on Earth even knew this terrorist existed.

  Their target had been creeping about on earth for over three hundred years and decapitation was the only proven way to kill his kind.

  The inside of the UH-60 Black Hawk stealth helicopter thrummed with a low vibration as it cut silently through the night sky. There were no lights illuminating its dark shape. The pilot and crew guided the helo using state of the art Quadeye night vision goggles as it skimmed low over the forest.

  The Operators of Empire One looked frightening. The soldiers wore cutting edge blink powered night vision contact lenses, their irises glowing a spectral green in the darkened cabin. Using plasma technology to enhance ambient light they gave the team the look of the very sort of monster they were trained to eliminate.

  Major Thom Usher’s ghostly green eyes flicked up as the helicopter’s navigator leaned back to address him.

  “Major, we will be over the drop zone in a couple of minutes. Are your team ready?”

  Usher glanced around at his team and gave thumbs up. All kitted up in the latest gear and armed to the teeth. All seasoned veterans that had faced things that would make most civvies piss their pants. Their unnaturally enhanced eyes were hard and focused. If any team could pull off this mission it was his Empire One.

  Still, he noticed that their top lips glistened with sweat and their jaws were clenched tight in tension. He felt his own heart beat hard in his armoured chest.

  “All good. Are we certain Argent is there?”

  The navigator confirmed something over his radio then turned back to Usher and nodded.

  “They have an eighty five percent certainty he is physically present at the target zone. This is your chance gentlemen. Time to do the world some good then home for tea and medals.”

  Usher took a deep breath. There would be no second chance at this.

  Ahead they could see the cold dark spire of rock that jutted up from the forest. On top of that was the jagged silhouette of a castle.

  Usher smiled. He remembered the old fairy tales he used to read to his son and the irony was not lost on him. Here he was about to storm exactly the sort of castle where the evil scientist might live.

  Once upon a time, in an old castle in the forest, there lived a terrorist….

  The Stealth helicopter hovered above a clearing in the forest. Black ropes unravelled from the helo to the ground and Empire One expertly rappelled down into the trees.

  Once the pilot checked that the team were safely on the ground, he signalled down to Usher then banked off into the night, kicking up a light dusting of snow and rustling the leaves in the uppermost branches.

  Like a gathering of green eyed goblins the team huddled close. Usher gave a few hand signals and they crept off silently into the trees towards the base of the precarious chimney of rock at the foot of the castle.

  Usher slung his backpack and began to unload his climbing gear and the others followed suit.

  In an ideal world they would have just used satellite imagery and sent in drones to blow the castle and all its occupants to pieces, but Usher knew that this was far from an ideal world.

  Their target had escaped death before against impossible odds so their masters had demanded proof of kill on this one. They wanted a body.

  On top of that this mission needed to be done softly-softly. The intelligence briefing had told them that much.

  The target, despite having a severe cultural and genetic aversion to technology, was one telephone hotkey away from activating three remaining suicide squads around the world that were ready to carry out simultaneous terrorist attacks. Two had already been activated. Miami and Rome. Eighty people killed in the explosions and over two hundred injured. The other three were somewhere in Paris, Manchester and Barcelona. Security and threat levels had been elevated in these cities but there was only so much they could do, so they needed to take the problem out at source.

  It was only their trusted intelligence operator Ariel Speedman that had managed to crack the encrypted messages, follow the various dummy IP addresses as they bounced around the world and translate them from the Demontongue that this terrorist cell used in private conversation. Usher felt just a little safer knowing that they had Ariel’s brains on the other side of the radio. He tapped his push-to-talk button.

  “Half-Ear this is Exorcist. Receiving?”

  Usher heard a crackle then the familiar public school tones of Dr Ariel Speedman over his earpiece.

  “All received Exorcist. Activating headcams.”

  Usher heard a tiny electrical component activate in his ballistic helmet as the camera switched on. He looked up at the dark cliff face and heard Ariel in his ear.

  “Well…that looks…really rather horribly high, Major.”

  Usher whispered into his comms.

  “It looks a lot higher when you’re up looking down. Anything we need to worry about other than a fatal fall?”

  “Quite. Well, if that castle is a thin spot between the worlds and is our target’s long
term base of operations, all sorts of nasties might have crawled through over the years. Think of that lump of rock as a sort of mini eco system from the Other Side.”

  “Wonderful. So whichever route we take is potentially one big nature documentary?”

  “That’s about the size of it, Exorcist. If you’re taking the cliff route, I’d watch out for Crawlers. I’ll download specs to you now.”

  Usher sighed and signalled to his team. “Marvellous.”

  Empire One assembled their rigs and prepared to climb at Usher’s signal. Each man dressed from head to toe in black Kevlar, only Usher could tell them apart by their build and body language. On mission each man used his code name. Usher was Exorcist. Isaac (Fortune Teller), Brock (Viking), Stromberg (Chopper), Charlie-boy (Pearly King), Santiago (Salsa) and Jeter (Rommel) were all readied and awaiting his signal.

  Usher waited as Ariel’s message was sent to the integrated HUD display housed in his goggles.

  Intelligence Report.

  Crawlers: level two Otherkind.

  One captive test subject acquired during the 1993 Dubai tower massacre.

  Research suggests that Wall-Ghasts designated ‘Crawlers’ by STG are a parasitic life form from the Unseelie side. Of low intelligence and not directly controlled by the Unseelie Court, Crawlers seem to enter our world through thin spots much like cockroaches. Natural habitat high mountains and cliff faces they have been known to nest in high rise building and construction sites, hence their presence at the Dubai Tower incident where they killed five construction workers and one STG operator. No known magical abilities but highly aggressive and dangerous when in close proximity. Conventional firearms and ballistics are effective.

  End.

  “Alright boys, you all get that? Looks like we may have to deal with some local wildlife on the way in. Keep your eyes on the nooks and crannies.”

  Isaac raised a hand. Usher nodded for him to continue.

  “Don’t let Brock go ahead of me. I don’t want to be looking at his cranny all the way up.”

  Brock turned his massive torso to his team mate. “You have to stop objectifying me.”

  Usher sighed. “Fortune Teller. Viking. Shut the fuck up and get your game faces on.”

  “Yes boss.”

  The team then began the slow careful ascent of the mossy granite rock face. It was snagged with twisted tree branches and countless fissures that made for good climbing but bad paranoia.

  Night climbing was always tough. Now they had the added fear of being attacked at any moment as they climbed. Every twisted overhanging branch and craggy hollow of the rock was a source of nerves, but the team tried to keep their mind on the objective.

  For thirty minutes they climbed up towards the castle, the trees below which had seemed so tall and majestic now were dizzyingly small and distant. The castle walls were in sight, perhaps only another ten minutes quiet climbing and the team were feeling like they were going to make it to the top unscathed, when they saw the king of all fissures that they now had to climb past.

  It was in all respects a cave, as wide as three men and more than fifteen feet high. It tapered off into the gloom and even with their night vision they could not see its farthest limit. They climbed up as far as they could to either side but the way was blocked by a nasty overhang.

  There was no way around it. The lead climber would have to enter the cave to ascend the inner wall in order to fix the guide rope, and then the rest would have to haul themselves up a rope hanging directly in front of the abyss.

  Usher steadied his breathing and shook out his hands, wringing away some of the tiredness in his fingers and getting the blood flowing again. His heart was pounding in his chest but he wouldn’t let the rest of the men see his fear.

  There was nothing as scary as what you couldn’t see, as the thing you imagined was waiting for you in the dark. There was nothing as primal and frightening as peering into a deep dark cave that could have a monster waiting inside.

  Usher found three good points of contact then used his legs to thrust himself up into the fissure. He crouched there, his green tinged eyes peering back into the tapering depths. The night vision contacts gathered as much ambient light as the technology would allow, transforming the night into day, but still the furthest limits of the cave were in gloom. Shadows played off the rock walls and Usher imagined he could see the silhouettes of spindly legs flexing and contracting. At his side Usher had a Glock pistol loaded with specialized ammunition, and across his back was strapped a supressed Heckler and Koch MP7. Usher desperately wanted the security of a firearm in his hands but he knew that successfully pulling off this mission meant moving to the target as close to silent as possible.

  Slowly he drew the specialized fighting knife that was sheathed down his left thigh.

  The blade issued to the Empire Team operators of the Special Threats Group was given to them along with their simple aquamarine beret when they graduated from selection, or Ghost Hunter Academy as it was colloquially known. Their Soulblade was a symbol of how hard they had worked, pushing themselves to the limit physically, psychologically and emotionally in a selection and training process like no other on earth.

  Usher gripped it tight, the rubberized surface of his contact gloves adhering well to the handle. Inside the cave, Usher allowed himself the use of a small torch. He held it up and pointed it into the darkness of the cave. He rested the Soulblade on his shoulder preparing for a killing strike if needed. Then he took a deep breath and switched on the torch.

  A circle of bright white light illuminated the rear of the fissure. Shadows danced, jutting rocks seemed to show leering faces. Only rocks. No monsters.

  Usher sighed and sheathed his blade. He leaned back and peered down at his teammates and gave the thumbs up. He could see that hulking frame of Brock signal back and then braced himself while Usher roped in and ascended.

  Usher found a couple of good finger holds and then hoisted himself up, hugging the rock wall and hanging almost horizontally. He felt the burn in his forearms and wrists as he searched for a good place to lock in. Then he spotted an ideal crack in the rock wall and climbed up past the fissure. He reached into his equipment and brought out a spring loaded camming device. Looking back over his shoulder to check on the team, Usher fought the adrenalin that surged on seeing how high up they were.

  Then he placed the camming device into the crack and activated it, securing him to the cliff face once more. He leaned his dusty sweating face on the granite wall and breathed a sigh of relief and waited, catching his breath while the rest of Empire One clambered up to join him.

  Looking up, they could see that there was only fifteen feet or so left until the turreted wall that led into the castle courtyard. They gathered there for a few moments, on a mossy ledge no wider than a bookshelf, and focused their minds on the attack.

  Usher’s teammate Isaac looked down at how far they had climbed and nodded. He turned to Usher and shrugged.

  “Well, so far so…”

  Usher’s Soulblade whooshed down an inch from Isaac’s head and cracked into something that split like a coconut and oozed thick white pus. A green crustacean-like limb twitched on Isaac’s shoulder then came to rest, its long course hairs brushing his cheek. Isaac hardly dared to move and his eyes glanced sidelong at the dog sized creature that had been lowering itself down the rock wall behind him. The creature’s stinger was still moving and dripping venom as Isaac slowly pulled himself out from underneath it. He turned and used his own blade to sever the dead Crawler’s spiny leg and let it fall soundlessly to the forest below. He turned back to Usher and nodded, silently cursing himself for missing the threat.

  “Thanks boss.”

  The rest of the assault team had also drawn their blades when they saw the creature, but Usher had been closer and faster. More wary now, each team member scanned the remaining rock face for threats.

  Usher gave the signals and Empire One ascended the remaining few metres and then sl
ipped deftly over the wall into the castle. Surprise was still on their side.

  As the team crouched behind a wall and drew their supressed MP7 submachine pistols, Usher got on comms.

  “Half-ear this is Exorcist. We are on site and heading to target area.”

  “Roger that. Satellite feed showing heat signatures from eight sentries, so presumably all human, but caution still advised.”

  Usher signalled his team to move and they crept in the shadows up to the servant’s entrance. Every member of the team had memorized the blueprints and layout of the buildings and practised in a mock up for over two weeks so they moved with practised efficiency.

  They knew that the personal protection in the compound was made up of human cultists rather than Unseelie. Their target had apparently fallen from favour this past year since his failure to unleash hell on the world and had been abandoned by his own kind. The Unseelie were an unforgiving breed and did not tolerate failure.

  Two sentries stood at the doorway, smoking cigarettes. They wore body armour and their heads were shaven save for a long topknot. Usher didn’t stop to question that these were humans and not Unseelie. As far as he was concerned they had thrown their lot in with a force that sought to eradicate mankind. They’d picked their side.

  Usher felt the soft thwap on either side of him as Jeter and Stromberg knelt and fired two supressed 4.6mm rounds into the foreheads of the sentries. Neither man knew what hit him and apart from a sudden expulsion of breath and a crack of bone as they hit the cobblestones there was hardly a sound.

  Jeter, the steely eyed German assaulter, slung his weapon and moved forward to the fuse box on the wall near the castle entrance. As Isaac and Usher covered him, he took out some bolt cutters and cracked open the box before preparing to cut the power supply.

  Charlie and Stromberg moved to the doorway and placed their charges and then waited for Jeter to make the cut.

  The instant the lights in the castle flickered out, Charlie and Stromberg blew the door inwards with a sharp crack and bright light. Santiago threw in two flash bang grenades and then the team stormed the interior of the castle.