Hell Heart

by Robert E. Vardeman

  “Captain, you hear that?” asked one of his men. “Sounds like quite a fight.”

  Allen cocked his head to one side and frowned. He heard nothing. He kept moving toward the crater, though, and a few minutes later he heard what the sharper-eared man already had. His heart skipped a beat when he thought of something happening to his meteorite.

  “Forward. Gunners, prepare your weapons. Especially you with the Rott and the Harbinger.” He took a deep breath, gagged on the heavy jungle odors and stifling heat, then took point. Allen wanted to be first at the site. What terrible luck had let those guerrillas stumble on his discovery? He had to retrieve the meteorite immediately, before the entire population of Chiapas discovered the crater.

  He stepped from the jungle to the glassy plain surrounding the crater and stopped, mouth agape. The two scouts had not exaggerated. Everywhere was chaos, a swirl of battling guerrillas and walking dead. The overpowering stench of freshly spilled blood and rotting human flesh almost made Allen lose his breakfast. He leveled his Bulldog but wasn’t sure where to point it.

  Then he saw the armored creature, hovering near the pit where the meteorite—his meteorite—lay, its brilliance dimmed. This one looked nothing like the crystalline monster he had killed earlier, but it was obviously after the same thing Allen was. This was the real threat, not the ragtag guerrillas fighting around it.

  Its allies were dead humans. This—whatever it was—shared nothing but death with them.

  “Fire!” cried Allen, locking his laser sights in on the armored monster. The Bulldog recoiled in his grip as a grenade sailed forth, followed by heavy slugs ripping toward the alien creature.

  The grenade blew up a few meters in front of the monster, but at least one of Allen’s steel-jacketed rifle rounds hit the armored zombie.

  “Get it! Concentrate your fire on it!” he shouted. Some of his squad had vanished into the jungle, too spooked to fight. Those remaining opened up with their weapons. He heard the deep chatter of the Rottweiler begin, but the gunner was taking out the dead humans and the guerrillas, not the demon Allen had identified as the real danger.

  From the armored form came a beam of energy that cut through two of Allen’s soldiers, silencing the Rottweiler.

  “Rail gun, fire! Give it all you’ve got!”

  His command went unheeded. The man lugging the Harbinger, as well as his loader, had turned tail and fled. Allen had just three riflemen left, and they shifted their aim to the creature at his order. Several guerrillas died, caught in the cross fire, but Allen barely noticed. All his being was concentrated on getting to the crater that held his prize, his mind filled with only one thought: mine.

  The creature laid down its energy cube and replaced it with some sort of projectile weapon. Fléchette darts whizzed past Allen, every striking dart exploding. Another soldier died.

  The creature shouted orders at its undead army, and a number of them broke off their struggle with the guerrillas and attacked Allen’s surviving soldiers. The area around the pit was total chaos, as soldiers and undead alike blindly attacked anything that moved, no longer able to distinguish friend from foe. Allen loaded another grenade into his Bulldog and fired, taking out three of the dead humans. They fell, the hoses to their back tanks severed and hideous fluids spilling out over the hard ground.

  Allen kept firing, working his way deeper into the battle step by step, struggling to get closer to the crater. The monster had left off its attack, content with its slaves’ progress, and now turned its attention to the thing at the bottom, intent on some alien equipment it held in its hands.

  Allen briefly froze as a luminous glow rose above the lip of the pit. It appeared to be a crystalline globe, encased in what looked like some sort of force field, its awesome energy swirling turbulently inside. Several slaves were carrying it in a rough sling. Even as Allen watched, one fell, crisped by the devastating radiation that burned through the containing force field. Another took its place.

  Allen swelled with rage. That creature was stealing his meteorite! Heedless of the danger, he began forcing his way roughly through the battling men and women toward the crater. Dimly behind him, he could hear his few surviving men calling to him to wait, but he ignored them. The guerrillas, even the animated corpses were nothing. Only the orb mattered.

  A bullet whined past his right ear. Another clipped the shoulder of his uniform. It missed the flesh, but the tug on his clothing pulled Allen from his self-absorption, and he realized abruptly how foolhardy he was being. Promotion and acclaim would do him little good if he were dead. He whirled around frantically, looking for cover—and ran smack into a thin guerrilla who looked at him with a killer’s eyes. Even before Allen had time to react, the man raised his gun and clubbed him to the ground. Dazed, blood trickling down his face, Allen looked up at the guerrilla.

  The man leaned down. “My name is Gunther,” the soldier said confidingly.

  Even barely conscious as he was, the incongruity of the introduction struck Allen, and his lips struggled to form words.

  “I just wanted you to know who is going to kill you,” the man—Gunther?—said. He leveled his rifle, pointing the barrel directly between Allen’s eyes.

  “Wait!” Allen cried desperately. “I am a friend to your people. I know a peasant girl—her name is Consuela. She can vouch for me!”

  Gunther laughed. “I know her well,” he said mockingly. “When I report back to her, I will send her your regards.”

  Allen froze. That tiny girl who had led him to his prize was a guerrilla? Impossible. How could he have miscalculated so badly?

  He never heard the report of the bullet that killed him. But as it tore through his skull and into his brain, his eyes fixed despairingly on the glowing form of the orb. And one last thought took him into the final darkness: mine.

  25

  * * *

  José Villalobos slumped against the trunk of a jacaranda tree, panting for breath. The days since the Revancha defeat had tested him—and his guerrillas—more severely than he could ever have expected. In the past, his war had always been waged from hiding, with snipers and booby traps. It had been a war fought by taking one life at a time, especially if it frightened a dozen more of the enemy soldiers. He had hoped to carry the war to the next level with his disastrous strike on Revancha, but Diego had anticipated his every move and decimated his forces.

  Now, he was beset by enemies at every turn. He had escaped his brother’s pursuit only to be attacked by the reanimated corpses of his own soldiers. Consuela’s mysterious crystalline monster had seemingly vanished, only to be replaced by the walking dead, commanded by the putrefied alien the campesinos had dubbed a chupacabra. Everywhere he turned, he found only violence and death, and his forces were dwindling man by man, woman by woman.

  The battle against the zombies in the jungle had cost him several soldiers; at the pit he had lost a dozen more.

  For a while it had seemed as if the fight near the crater would finally hand him the victory he had sought for so long. Once José and the others had begun targeting the mysterious tanks carried by their undead foe, the tide of battle had begun to turn in their favor. But then that idiotic Union soldier had burst into the middle of the fight and destroyed everything. Faced with enemies from both sides—the corpses of friends at their fore and the Union soldiers firing from behind—José’s guerrillas had panicked and broken ranks.

  And he could not blame them. It was hard enough staring into the flat, dead eyes of people they had once called comrades, friends, even lovers, and seeing only enemies. His people had been pushed to the brink of their endurance by the events of the past few days, and the surprise attack from the rear had been the final straw. He looked at them, slumped nearby, and did not know what to say to them. They were exhausted, wounded, discouraged—stretched thin. And somewhere behind them lurked the monster that was enslaving their people—and José had no idea what he could do to stop it. He had lost almost 90 percent of his force; th
ey were now down to a few dozen soldiers. How could such a tiny remnant hope to defeat such a powerful force as they had witnessed at the crater?

  His hand went to his battered Kalashnikov when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, but he relaxed when he saw it was Consuela. She had returned from her mission, but he couldn’t imagine what intelligence she could possibly provide that would give them even a fighting chance. The golden-armored alien was simply too powerful to resist.

  “What happened?” Consuela asked in a shocked tone, looking at the remnants of their army.

  “We could not win,” José said, almost too tired to form the words. “The alien is too strong. We thought we had a chance for a time, but then a Union force surprised us and caught us between the alien and their guns. We had no choice but to retreat. We accomplished nothing, except to lose another dozen of our people.”

  “We have lost more than that,” Consuela said, her expression somber. She told him of the carnage she had witnessed in the village. “No matter how many of our people they enslave, it never seems to be enough for them. They will not stop unless we stop them.”

  “How are we to do that?” José asked her. “This”—he gestured at the demoralized guerrillas around them—“is all we have to fight with. I feel for the campesinos as much as you do, but I have nothing left to give them. The most we can do at this point is comfort the survivors and try to hide as many as we can.”

  “There is one other thing we could try,” Consuela said hesitantly. José raised an eyebrow inquiringly, and Consuela paused, choosing her words carefully. But before she could tell him what she had in mind, José was nearly sent sprawling by a blow to his shoulder. He caught himself and turned to glare at his assailant.

  Gunther had stormed up and was towering above the seated José. The guerrilla glowered down at his leader, his hatred hotter than the stifling afternoon air around them, and José saw that Gunther’s rage had built to unmanageable levels. The man had been briefly shaken by the sight of their dead comrades—as they all had—and had gone along with the attack on the crater readily enough. But the fresh taste of killing had gone to his head, and their defeat did not sit well with him.

  “You are scared, Viejo,” Gunther said accusingly, each word etched in acid.

  “Never,” José said coldly, rising until he could look the man in the eye.

  “Really? I never could have known that from the way you ran from our enemies.” Gunther looked around at the other guerrillas, seeking an appreciative audience, but they were too tired to pay much attention.

  “And where were you?” José asked pointedly. “I did not see you volunteering to stay behind. We were outnumbered and flanked by enemies on both sides. Retreat was our only option.”

  “We should not have been there in the first place,” Gunther snapped. “The alien is dead. The people it uses to fight with are dead. We should concern ourselves with the living. Our true enemy is the Union. We should be planning our next attack on them, not wasting our time in the jungle fighting with corpses.”

  “You are wrong, Gunther,” Consuela said, coming to stand next to José. “For years we have fought the Union, yes, but there are worse enemies out there. This alien thing is the greatest threat we have ever faced. We must defeat it before we can hope to free our people from the Union. What good is winning the people’s freedom if they are dead?”

  “I would expect you to defend him,” Gunther sneered. “But how can we fight them? Look at what our brilliant leader has done. More than half our people are dead, our battles lost. We lost fighting this creature you are so frightened of, and we lost at Revancha. The attack was poorly executed. I wonder if brother Diego knew of our plans in advance. Perhaps the two of you are working against us.”

  “That’s absurd!” Consuela flared. “No one has done more for the Zapatista cause than José.”

  “Spoken like his lapdog. Or is that his whore?”

  Consuela started for him, and José held up a restraining hand. “Gunther,” he said quietly. “Now is not the time to tear ourselves apart. We must stand united, regroup, and plan how to fight another day. Should we kill each other instead of our enemies?”

  “You have gone soft, Viejo,” Gunther taunted. “Old and soft in the heart and head. You take us away from the battle. That is cowardly. Like I would expect from your brother.”

  José merely stood looking at Gunther with a mild expression on his face that he knew would drive the man wild. Gunther had obviously decided the time had come for the Zapatistas to acquire a new leader—himself. The man was trying to goad José into a fight so he could assume leadership. Which would be disastrous. Gunther would get all of the guerrillas killed within days, and that would mean the death of the Zapatista movement. Gunther lacked everything a leader needed—especially a way to hold his murderous nature in check.

  “This is not the place to decide such important matters,” José said finally. “We are too exposed.”

  “Yes,” Gunther said. “You are exposed. For a liar and a coward. You are no better than your brother.”

  José had fought Diego for years and considered him an enemy. Gunther was not saying anything he himself had not thought a thousand times. But for some reason it stung hearing Gunther brand Diego as craven.

  “José is not a coward, and neither is his brother,” Consuela said fiercely. “I saw him with my own eyes, fighting to save the campesinos from one of those mummy creatures. Where were you while he was risking his life?”

  “I was killing one of his officers,” Gunther boasted. “That foolish man who attacked us at the crater—he will not live to kill any more of our people.”

  “So while he fights to save people, you fight to destroy them,” Consuela said with contempt. “This is indeed a great day for our movement.”

  “You saw Diego, chica?” José asked in surprise.

  “I fought beside Diego,” she replied. “I had not thought him to care so much for the people as to risk his life defending them. I think we have been wrong about him in the past, José. I think perhaps he is a man beside whom we could fight with honor.”

  “He is my brother—I cannot trust my own judgment about him,” José admitted. “But I trust yours. What are you suggesting?”

  “That we join forces,” Consuela said. She hurried on before anyone could interrupt her. “Alone, neither of us can hope to defeat these monsters. They are too strong—you saw that at the crater, I saw it at the village. But together, we might stand a chance. Your brother said it himself—it is human against alien. It is our responsibility to put aside our past differences now. It is the only way we can save our people.”

  José hesitated, torn. Deep down, he knew Consuela was right. But he had spent too many years thinking of his brother as the enemy. It was hard to change that now.

  Gunther had been growing steadily more enraged during their conversation. He hated being ignored—now he interrupted. “I cannot believe you are considering this!” he shouted. “That man is our enemy—we cannot trust him. Unless I was right, and you have been working with him all along!”

  “Do you really think we can depend on him, chica?” José asked Consuela, paying no attention to his furious lieutenant.

  “He could have killed me in the village. He did not. I think if he will agree to work with us, we can respect his word,” she replied.

  José hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. “Do it,” he ordered curtly, inwardly quaking but outwardly showing no doubt. A leader had to appear confident before his followers. “Go to Diego and propose an alliance—a temporary alliance,” he emphasized. “We will work together until we have driven off this menace, and then we will see where we stand.”

  Consuela nodded, relieved. José calmly turned back to face his troublesome lieutenant.

  “I was right,” Gunther spat. “You are a traitor!”

  Without a word, José punched him so hard in the face that Gunther stumbled backward and fell heavily to the ground
. The other guerrillas stared, shocked.

  “I am the leader of this army,” José said, speaking as much to them as to Gunther. “If you disagree with my decisions, you are free to leave. But I will not brook mutiny.”

  “Traitor!” Gunther shrieked, losing the last shred of self-control. He clawed for the pistol at his waist, but before it even cleared his holster, José had dived for his Kalashnikov on the ground beside him and shot him point-blank in the chest. Gunther died without another word, a look of surprise on his face, the front of his fatigues quickly reddening with his heart’s blood.

  There was dead silence from the others—none would look up to meet José’s eyes. But Consuela did, and her gaze held warm approval and confidence.

  “It was bound to happen sooner or later,” she said quietly. “You did what had to be done.”

  “It is time for all of us to do what we have to do,” José said, then raised his voice. “Zapatistas! Assemble and follow Consuela. We will go to Diego and see whether he will agree to an alliance. And if he does, we will fight together to defeat this menace. But we will not give in, and we will not give up hope.”

  Slowly, the guerrillas began to rise and gather their weapons and equipment. They still would not meet his eyes, José was saddened to see, but they would obey. For now, that was the best he could hope for.

  He took a deep breath, and for the first time in three years, he prepared to meet his brother face-to-face.

  * * *

  “That’s all the firepower we can deliver?” Diego said, swallowing hard at Lieutenant Travis’s report. “Only one SPEAR missile?”