Capes

by Drabble, Matt

  Like the rest of the crew, he was a man sick and tired of putting his life on the line for people who couldn’t care less. Soldiers were expendable, and he’d watched too many of his brothers be buried on the front line for a government more interested in politics than actually winning a war.

  His own personal final straw had been in Colombia when his unit had been on loan to the government forces there. Tracking a drug dealer’s entire network through the small town’s infrastructure had been dangerous work, but he’d waded through enough human misery to know that the kingpin had to be stopped.

  There were only so many children’s emotionally scarred faces living in extreme poverty that he could pass by without feeling that they were doing God’s work.

  Hector Rodriguez had been an animal, a man so obsessed with his own perception that he saw himself a god amongst insects. His favourite way of dealing with those that displeased him was to take an eye.

  Tommy had made his way through entire small villages where around every fifth person wore a scrap of material eye patch to cover the black empty hole. Sometimes, they had stolen from Rodriguez; other times, perhaps they had just looked at him in a way that he didn’t like. But they had all paid a toll for a madman’s ego.

  The days had been dangerous and the nights lethal. He’d watched men die all around him, both his own and the local army’s, but eventually, they’d worked their way up the chain until they’d surrounded a golden compound sat above a shanty town.

  They’d been preparing for a full-frontal assault on Rodriguez, and he’d been looking forward to ending the tyrant’s reign over his shitty corner of the world. He’d been planning to try and extract his own toll on the man, to take his eyes out and show the locals that their suffering was over. The trouble was, of course, that politics reared their ugly head and put paid to any of that.

  The word came through an hour or so before they were about to move in. Rodriguez had a cousin, a man with political aspirations, a man who was about to win an election, a man who was about to enter the higher echelons of the Colombian government, a man who had proven himself willing to work with foreign powers.

  As a result of some dirty backroom deal, Tommy and his forces were stood down, a small price to pay for guaranteeing some very lucrative mining and arms’ contracts for men far above a soldier’s pay grade.

  During the long hike back out of the jungle, Tommy had to endure the one-eyed stares of the betrayed. Those faces would haunt him long after he’d returned home.

  They had been sent into that hellhole to take down a monster and free his people. They had been greeted on the way in as liberating heroes, but they had left with the sobbing sound of children knowing they’d been betrayed.

  From that moment onwards, he’d promised himself that he would never allow his mission to be controlled from afar. He’d never again allow the weak to keep him from doing what needing doing. A mission had a goal, and it was never completed until it was finished. He’d left one undone in a Colombian jungle, and it would never happen again.

  Like a whole bunch of other like-minded men, he’d been recruited by Major Buckley’s private company, a black ops unit who took the missions they wanted and allowed no interference. For a soldier it was perfect: point A to point B with nothing in between allowed to block their path, soldiering in its purest form.

  This job was a simple one, a crash-and-burn operation for yet more government stooges, more political pawns who stood in the way of winning a war. The alien they called Cosmic Jones, for example. Why couldn’t he deal with the Rodriguezes of this world? Why were there one-eyed children in a Colombian village? Surely the alien had the power to wipe men like Rodriguez off the face of the earth without breaking a sweat. These people were supposed to be the heroes; they were supposed to do the saving, and yet they had all faded into some kind of retirement.

  He hated them for their cowardice, for hiding away in this base, for serving a political master who only ever feathered their own nests.

  As far as he was concerned, these people were as much a part of the problem as their overlords, and he’d been more than happy to be on this particular raid. Maybe he’d even take his own little souvenir now. Maybe he’d take a green lizard eye for himself.

  Tommy now worked for himself. The pay was fantastic and he got to be a soldier with no last-minute backroom deals to stop him from doing what needed to be done.

  He momentarily left Cribs behind as he checked around a corner, following not on sight but now on instinct, feeling that there was someone ahead of him but unable to see them.

  “Tommy? Tommy,, mate where you going?” Cribs hissed from behind.

  “Saw something,” he whispered back.

  “There’s nothing there, mate,” Cribs responded after a brief pause while he looked down the hallway.

  “Yeah, there is,” Tommy replied as he continued to push forward with his weapon up.

  Cribs followed on behind, knowing that Tommy could not be talked out of a movement when he was in the zone.

  The two of them crept down the corridor barely making a whisper on the plush carpeting.

  Tommy’s face was sweating heavily under the face mask and he pulled it down.

  “What are you doing?” Cribs hissed nervously. “Put that back on. If someone sees you…”

  “So what! You forget what the mission is? If someone sees us, we put them down. No one’s running to tell tales here, man.”

  Tommy kept moving forwards. There was still no sign of anyone. He couldn’t see, hear or smell anyone now, but he could still feel a presence.

  The heavy police combat gear was starting to weigh him down now. He was sweating like mad underneath all the garb, far more so than when he’d first entered.

  “Jesus, it’s like a sauna in here,” he whispered back to Cribs as he tugged at his collar, desperate for air.

  “You okay, man?”

  “It’s too bloody hot. What did they do, turn up the heating?” he said as sweat ran down his bright red face.

  “You don’t look too good.”

  Tommy turned back around and wondered how the hell Cribs could stand there in full gear and face mask when he was having trouble breathing.

  He took off his helmet and threw it aside. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and tried to stop the beads running into his eyes.

  “Tommy? Tommy, you okay?”

  Tommy could barely hear the man anymore. He felt like he was burning up from the inside out. His body inside the thick combat gear was a puddle of sweat, and he started to try and pull the outfit off of him.

  Dimly, he was aware that someone was trying to stop him. He felt hands on him and he pushed them away angrily. He was dying; he was suffocating, and he couldn’t catch his breath in the furnace.

  The heat was both hot and humid, the sort of heat that drained you of all reason and motivation, the kind of oppressive heat that robbed a man of his ability to think clearly, the kind of heat that he’d last felt in the jungle.

  A voice was trying to reach him but he couldn’t hear it. Hands were clasping at him, and now, when he turned to face them, he saw just how small the hands were: they belonged to children.

  Tommy staggered backwards as the jungle village children came for him, tiny emaciated bodies racked with hunger and misery, with faces full of vengeance. He could see now that there were more and more of them appearing out of the floor, crawling their way up from what looked like the fiery pits of hell, and all coming for him, coming for the man that had left them.

  The one-eyed children left to a monster’s vengeance were now equally balanced. Both eyes had been brutally gouged out of their tiny heads.

  Tommy had dropped his assault rifle in his haste to free himself of the bulky clothing, and now the crawling children advanced on him like spider monkeys, their small bodies twisting and writhing towards him, their black empty eye sockets devoid of sight. But he knew that they saw him… really saw him.

  He staggered backw
ards and almost fell. His heart lurched in his chest as they slithered towards him. He knew that if he did fall, they would be on him in a flash and consume him like a boa constrictor.

  His right hand scrambled for the pistol on his hip, and he fought to free it from the holster with a panicking grip.

  Something grabbed at his ankle, and in his haste to yank his foot away, he did stumble and fall. He landed hard with an expression of wide-eyed panic as they came for him. The worst part was that he knew his death would be slow and dreadful, but he also knew that he would deserve it.

  With a last-ditch effort, he managed to rip the pistol free and started firing wildly at the demon children now clawing up his leg with bony sharp fingers that dug into his flesh.

  The children were all around him now. They covered the floor, and they climbed the walls and stuck there like spiders, and more and more kept on emerging.

  Tommy fired the pistol until it was empty. Somewhere in the distance someone was yelling at him, but the children were screaming in pure rage, their mouths elongated and open and their voices deafening.

  Suddenly, something hit him hard in the chest. One of the children had climbed up his body and struck its hand hard into his chest, burying its hand into the flesh and reaching down inside for his heart.

  He gasped but couldn’t catch his breath as his heart was ripped from his body, and he saw the bloody beating organ held inches from his face just before he died.

  chapter 22

  HOME INVASION PART TWO

  Doc made sure to stay out of the line of fire until it was over. When it was done, she phased back into view and dropped to her knees in pure exhaustion.

  It had been a long time since she’d used her abilities in such an all-consuming manner – a lifetime, in fact; now her body was completely drained.

  The soldier named Tommy, that was his name, lay to her right on the floor, an emptied pistol still clutched in his hand in a death grip.

  His partner lay panting a few feet away, his chest riddled with several bullet wounds from Tommy’s gun, fuelled by the fear that she’d planted in his head.

  She watched the second man, internally debating with herself as to what to do with him. She couldn’t leave him here. He was, after all, still a potential threat.

  On the other hand, she didn’t want to take his life in cold blood. Using Tommy’s mind against him was one thing, a hunter on the prowl looking for more victims. But even then, in the end it had been the man’s sins that had done for him, images of tortured children left to suffer at the hands of a tyrant.

  While she was waiting and pondering, the second man coughed a little, his breaths coming in wet gasps. His chest hitched once, a second time, and then he was dead. His heart had given out; she’d scared him to death.

  She felt no elation, no triumph. There were two new dead people at her feet, a scene she had sworn she would never see again, and yet here she was once more.

  “Two more down.” She sent a mental message to CJ before she had to fight back a wave of nausea and a tear or two.

  ----------

  Jesus paused as CJ closed his eyes and went rock still behind him.

  “What is it?” he whispered back.

  “Doc. She took down two more,” the alien replied after a brief pause before opening his eyes again.

  “Again, that leaves what? Just two,” Jesus said, running through the arithmetic in his head. “I like those odds,” he added with a smile.

  The incursion had shocked him to his core even though it took every ounce of his being not to show it. He knew that everyone would blame him and for good reason. One thing that he had inherited from his father was a constant determination to never shift the blame. As far as he was concerned, it was his name above the door. That made everything that happened in his house his responsibility.

  The repercussions could wait for another day, if indeed there was one. The sheer length and breadth of his exclusion from the powers that be above him was yet to be finalised, but he knew in his heart that both he and the unit were done.

  The sheer fact that someone had the balls to attack them at their base, at their home, without seemingly fear of either repercussions or even interruption, spoke volumes. But for now, he had to concentrate on simply getting his people out of here alive. Tomorrow, he’d deal with the retribution.

  There were more bodies in the hallway and he had to swallow the anger he felt at the sheer cowardice of the attack and murder. Emotion was the biggest enemy on the battlefield, his father had always taught him.

  “I could teleport us out,” CJ offered. “The others, too?”

  “No,” Jesus fired back angrily before taking a deep breath to keep himself centred. “This was …is our home. When we leave, we’ll walk out the front door, not sneak out the back.”

  CJ reached out for him then. He’d never know if it was a gesture of support or if the alien was about to teleport him out against his wishes, as just then, a large chunk of plaster exploded from the wall at the side of him, close enough to send splinters into his face.

  He ducked and rolled to the side as more gunfire rained down on them. CJ had moved in front and was now holding his hands out in front of him, projecting a purple wave of electricity that was catching the bullets in its mesh.

  Just because someone up above appeared to a have an odd sense of humour, at that very moment, the fire alarm started to sound and the sprinkler system overhead suddenly burst into life and opened up.

  The water fell, making visibility difficult as the drops of water fell onto CJ’s electrical shield, causing a cascade of tiny sparks.

  Jesus stared through the falling water and the light show and could see that their attackers were wearing what appeared to be official SCO19 combat gear, but he had no doubt that they were fakes. These were soldiers, not police. There had been no warnings, no attempt to arrest or detain – this was a straight up execution mission.

  CJ was holding up the purple electric mesh which meant that no bullets could get through, but that was a two-way street; it also meant that Jesus couldn’t shoot the other way either.

  “I can’t keep this up forever,” CJ hissed.

  Jesus was more than a little stunned. He’d seen the alien perform feats of incredible strength and endurance back in the day, but now he was straining after only a few moments of being a bulletproof shield. It wasn’t a good sign.

  The two soldiers had now stopped firing, knowing that it was pointless. Instead, they were advancing with weapons up but not wasting ammo.

  The four of them were in a temporary stalemate, and CJ was fading fast. Jesus knew that he had to make a move.

  “Pick and roll,” he whispered to CJ.

  “Cairo?” the alien hissed back with a weary voice.

  “Exactly.”

  Jesus counted to eight in his head, and the second he hit the magic number, he shut his eyes. CJ’s hands grew purple in colour and intensity as the electricity crackled until it exploded with a bright bang exactly on the count of ten. CJ’s electric mesh then disappeared and he sank to his knees.

  The explosion temporarily blinded the soldiers, and Jesus opened his eyes and tensed his shoulder to catch the rifle’s recoil as he fired two quick bursts, one per man.

  It had been a while since he’d been on the range and longer since he’d fired a gun in the field. His first burst rose too high and struck the man in the shoulder before rising into the wall above.

  He adjusted the rifle for the second man, and this time his aim was better with a line of hits running up the man’s chest until a couple exploded through the man’s mask and then out the back of his head.

  The first man was sitting slumped on the ground holding his shoulder and groaning softly in pain.

  Jesus stepped forwards but was suddenly aware that CJ hadn’t sprung back to his feet as per the usual movement.

  “You okay?” he asked, looking down through the still pouring sprinkler water.

  “Just… give me
a moment,” CJ panted back.

  “Are you hurt? What the hell, man?”

  CJ stood up slowly and it took him a few seconds before he seemed to be okay again.

  “Seriously, man, what the hell is wrong with you?” Jesus demanded. “A bullet mesh and you’re done?”

  “Maybe I’m getting old,” CJ replied.

  As per usual, it was impossible to tell if the alien was joking or not, such was his deadpan delivery.

  Any further discussion was then rendered moot as a bullet struck Jesus in the back of the shoulder and blew a chunk of flesh and blood out through his gear, managing to avoid his Kevlar vest.

  With his back to the downed, but not incapacitated, shooter, all Jesus saw was a flash of purple energy from CJ’s clenched fist swiftly followed by a wet splat.

  “Goddamn it!” Jesus cursed himself as he checked his bleeding wound. “Maybe we are too old for this crap.”

  He turned to check on the soldiers and saw with no little disgust that the downed man now had a smoking hole burned through his chest exposing his dripping innards.

  “I believe that is the last of them,” CJ said.

  “You okay? I mean, you’re looking a little… well…, green to be honest… ill, I mean,” Jesus clarified.

  “I feel… well to be completely honest, I feel a little…”

  “What?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You kind of trailed off there, big guy. What the hell’s wrong with you?” Jesus asked, concerned.

  CJ looked up at the ceiling and then around the hallway, his reptilian yellow eyes widening and then clouding over. He shook his head a couple of times as though trying to focus, just as the sprinkler system finally shut off along with the deafening alarm bells.

  Footsteps came rushing around the corner then, and Jesus swung his rifle up as best he could with only one working shoulder. CJ didn’t say anything about the newcomer, so Jesus fired as soon as the body moved into view.