The woman grabbed Riot again, screaming about devils and demons from the abyss.
SMACK!
Riot had slapped her across the face, so hard, it made the Trilord woman’s head turn. Riot was a Marine, not a saint. She didn’t open hand slap people often, but when she did, she had a good reason for doing so. “Control yourself. You’re making this situation worse right now. Let’s focus on the solution now, not the problem.”
The woman looked stunned, but nodded along with Riot’s words.
More and more buildings in the town center opened their doors. Now that they saw Riot and her unit were indeed there to help, they were more willing to show themselves. These Trilords were mostly elderly men, women, and children.
It seemed those Trilords in the area capable of fighting had run off to defend the city.
“That’s what was bothering me before,” Ketrick said, placing his long weapon over his shoulder. “There are no bodies.”
Riot took a moment to process his words. She scanned the area, noting the same thing. Familiar signs of struggle when a firefight opened up in a populated area like this met her eyes: scorch marks from explosions, crumbling buildings, and fires in the area. Ketrick was right, however: no corpses on the ground, no wounded.
“Keep your people inside, and stay down,” Riot told Talon and the woman in front of her. “We share a common enemy. We’ll take care of this.”
“Be careful,” Talon warned. “Stay away from its breath. It brought them back with its breath.”
Riot nodded. She turned and walked back to the rest of her unit stationed by the Valkyrie.
“What do you think that means?” Doctor Miller asked through her comm. “Stay away from its breath? It brings back the dead with its breath?”
“I don’t know, but you’d best believe we’re going to find out.” Riot placed her helmet back on her head. “Even if it does have a bad case of morning breath, I’ve never met anything that can’t be killed.”
“I can bring Vikta along,” Ketrick said, thinking of the crew’s largest member. “She’ll be more than a match for anything inside that warehouse.”
The noise came again. The low, deep sound of moaning, if moaning was done in a singsong wail, and it was unlike anything Riot had ever heard. Goosebumps raced down her arms, and a chill touched her spine like a cold finger racing down her back.
“We’ll keep Vikta in reserve until we find out exactly what’s going on,” Riot told Ketrick. “The last thing we need is our dragon caught in a situation she can’t get out of.”
Ketrick nodded along with Riot’s words.
“All right,” Riot said, reaching the rest of her unit, who had taken up defensive positions around the ship and the broken fountain that rested in the middle of the town square. “It looks like the Karnayers have brought with them some kind of creature that raises the dead.”
“You’re joking, right?” Vet looked over from his crouched position behind a broken piece of stone. “Zombies? We’re going to be fighting zombies?”
“Not zombies,” Rippa’s voice sounded over the comms from inside of her mech unit. Rizzo and Wang were stationed behind her. Rippa’s mech unit’s armor was so durable, it provided cover of its own. “A Devil’s Hand.”
“You know what this thing is?” Riot couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice. “What’s a Devil’s Hand?”
“Nothing more than a story Grovothe tell their young to make them urinate before bedtime,” Rippa answered, her voice distant as if she were willing some long-lost memory to the front of her mind. “Creatures from a planet I’ve only heard of in books. They lived somewhere near the universe’s edge but were all thought to be extinct by now. They’re large and have the ability to sing their dead victims into a state of servitude for them.”
“Well, that would make sense,” Riot said, thinking of what she had learned from Remus earlier that night. “The Karnayers must have captured one and now use it to do their will.”
“Hold up. Are we just going to skip over the fact that this monster is so scary, Grovothe children piss their pants when they hear it?” Wang asked from his kneeling position behind Rippa’s mech. “I’m not the only one who heard that, right?”
“I also heard the urinating story,” Ketrick confirmed. “It is quite unnerving.”
“Whatever,” Rippa said. “It’s the truth. We’ll see how many of these undead you take under your blade compared to mine.”
“Please, I will make my own enemies urinate themselves when they see me coming.” Ketrick bristled. “I’ll kill many more of them than you—”
“Okay,” Riot said, lifting her voice over whatever Ketrick was about to say. “We’re not doing this now. I want Vet and Doctor Miller on over-watch on the right side of the buildings. Vet, choose a spot and have the doctor watch your six.”
“Roger that.” Vet nodded, motioning for Doctor Miller to follow him.
“What? What am I supposed to do?” Doctor Miller looked from Riot to Vet. “That whole thing in the Zenoth hive was a one-time deal. I don’t know what came over me. I’m a non-combatant. I mean, I don’t even like killing spiders!”
Vet must have switched their comm lines to a different channel because Doctor Miller’s voice disappeared for the time being. Riot turned to the rest of her unit.
“All right. Ketrick and Vikta will be the cavalry. Once we check out what’s going on in that warehouse, we’ll signal them to flank the enemy. We need eyes on the target before that can happen. That means myself, Wang, Rizzo, and Rippa will take the left side of the road to the warehouse.”
“We’ll be ready,” Ketrick said, starting to walk over to the Valkyrie where Vikta stood on all fours, her long snout sniffing the air. Ketrick looked over his shoulder a moment later. “Vikta says to be wary. Whatever is in that building is not of this world.”
Thanks for the words of encouragement, Rizzo wrote over everyone’s heads-up display. Ironically, Ketrick was the only one who wouldn’t get the message, since he refused to wear a helmet.
“Let’s go.” Riot checked her Villain Pulse Rifle for the dozenth time. The Marines had turned her into a creature of habit, always checking and rechecking her weapons and equipment. “Rippa and myself in the lead; Wang and Rizzo bringing up the rear.”
Riot vaulted over the waist-high debris they had been using for cover. Rippa matched her quick stride with an easy gait of her own. Her mech was twenty feet tall, which meant taking slow strides to keep in formation with the others.
For the moment, Riot pushed everything out of her mind besides the pulsing white light that showed through the cracks of the doors and windows in the large warehouse building. In the interim, the wailing alien noises had subsided.
“Anything else you can tell us about this Devil’s Hand?” Riot asked as she led her unit to the left side of the road. She hugged the buildings, welcoming any cover they could provide.
“I wish I could remember more,” Rippa answered. “The stories were always horrifying. A monster from the depths of Hell, one that not only consumed your soul but brought your empty husk of a body back from the dead to serve it.”
“All of a sudden I’m wishing I didn’t ask,” Riot said only half teasing.
The four members of Riot’s team made their way down the road. Fifty yards from the building nothing had changed. There were no lookouts, no guards hiding to ambush them as they approached.
The stars overhead and the fires in the city were the only things that gave off light. Riot could switch to her night vision mode on her heads-up display, but there was no point. She would be made aware of any threat via the scanners in her helmet, and when they did get to the warehouse, the pulsing light coming from it promised enough illumination.
Twenty yards from the warehouse, Riot called a stop. There was an open road between them and the building. The pulsing light continued to glow off and on, but there was no noise. The entire city was as silent as a crypt.
“I vote sending
Rippa to knock,” Wang whispered in his comms. “She’s got a tank built around her.”
“Geez, thanks,” Rippa muttered. “What a gentleman.”
“I’m just saying,” Wang said. “You’re the best equipped for the present task.”
“There’s a window on the left side of the building about two stories up,” Riot said as her heads-up display searched for access points to the large structure. “Rizzo and Wang hold here. Rippa, you’ll give me a boost when we get there. Let’s see what a Devil’s Hand looks like.”
Riot took off down the street, still sweeping to see if there were any hidden enemies lurking in the shadows. There were none. At the moment, Riot wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Rippa followed quietly alongside. She took long strides, carefully placing her foot down onto the ground with every step. Despite her massive size, she was as quiet as Riot. Her armored mech moved like a human.
Riot reached the side of the warehouse in no time. A better view of the building told her exactly what she had expected. It looked like a massive warehouse with a slanted roof. Two giant double doors were closed in the front, with a line of slender windows near the roof the only other access points.
“What’s that?” Rippa asked as she crouched in her mech near Riot. She pointed with a massive hand to a wet spot pooling from the entrance to the warehouse.
Riot followed the fat, metal finger of Rippa’s mech to the spot where she was pointing. Liquid was pouring out of the warehouse between the door and the ground. Riot zoomed in on the fluid, confirming her worst fears. It was blood.
“Let’s just get this done.” Riot bottled the fear she felt and reminded herself of the warrior she was. “The longer we wait out here, the more time we have to second-guess ourselves.”
“I agree.” Rippa lowered her mech farther to the ground, crouching so that Riot could climb onto her mech’s left shoulder. “If fear was an option, I might be feeling it right about now.”
“Good thing neither of us are the feeling type,” Riot said. She slung her rifle across her back where her warhammer sat. Riot knelt on Rippa’s mech unit’s left shoulder. With her right hand, she held on to the mech’s helmet, and with her left, she grabbed the mech’s shoulder armor where the upper arm connected to the torso.
Rippa gently moved to a standing position, then placed herself along the side of the warehouse. Riot’s height standing on top of Rippa’s mech was perfect. The window Riot looked through was grimy and streaked with smoke. She gently wiped away the coat of ash to see inside the warehouse. What her eyes found next was enough to chill her to the bone.
79
If Riot let fear get in the way of doing what had to be done, then this would have been the time. Riot studied the inside of the room, sweeping her gaze back and forth. She knew what she was supposed to be doing—counting the enemies’ number, searching for entrance points, gauging their weapons—but with what was going on inside the building, it was nearly impossible.
An army of bloodied Trilords stood shoulder to shoulder. Wounds ranging from severed arms to half of their faces missing told Riot these were warriors who were supposed to be long dead. Something very unnatural was keeping them alive.
And Riot could make an educated guess as to what that unnatural thing was. To the left of the window at the back of the building, a beast out of her nightmares stood on a raised platform. The closest thing Riot could relate the Devil’s Hand to was a giant bull mixed with a crocodile. Horns sprouted from the monster’s head, and it was covered in dark green scales, with a strong tail. It was roughly the size of a short bus. Its huge, bulky body made it clear it was not going to be taken down easily.
All of the zombified Trilords stood still, eyes looking at the creature as if they were somehow communing with the beast. Next to the monster stood a small group of Karnayers—six Karnayer soldiers dressed in black armor and carrying pulse weapons, and a seventh that Riot recognized.
Remus’s brother, Alveric, stood with his hands clasped behind his back, grinning. His tall frame and the long, white hair that cascaded down his black robe familiar to his race was easy to pick out. Riot had only seen him once before while she talked to him over her ship’s display screen, but she was positive it was him.
From out of nowhere, the Devil’s Hand opened its giant maw, revealing rows of sharp teeth that reminded Riot of a shark’s mouth. Out of its throat came the noise Riot had heard so many times already—the bass-like howling of a whale.
The Trilords in front of the beast had to number in the hundreds. They swayed from side to side as if the sounds somehow promised them peace.
Everything all right? Rizzo asked over Riot’s heads-up display.
“Of all the words I could choose for this moment, ‘all right’ would be really far down the list. Like you showed up to the DMV without an appointment down the list,” Riot said, realizing she was dealing with the moment by making light of the situation and not caring. “I’m going to link my heads-up display to everyone’s so you can see what I’m seeing. Just expect the worse, and then double that. You’ll be close.”
Riot pressed a button on the control panel built into the backside of her left forearm. A light blinked off and on in the upper right hand corner of her screen designating, that everyone was now able to see what she was seeing.
“Holy mother of Moses,” Doctor Miller inhaled. “Are they … are they dead?”
“Never mind the army of zombies, look at the thing,” Wang’s voice reached everyone over the comms. “It looks like Godzilla got shrunken down to a miniature size and Cthulhu gave him horns.”
“What’s our move?” Rippa said with an unwavering tone. “I say we blow the entire warehouse to the next life and let the Allfather sort out the souls.”
“I don’t really disagree with you there,” Riot said, considering her options. “All right, let’s get back to the shi—”
“Can they see you?” Vet interrupted her in a very unlike-Vet way. “I think that one Karnayer over there is pointing at you.”
“What?” Riot asked. “No they haven’t seen—”
Riot looked over to the group of Karnayers standing next to the Devil’s Hand on the raised platform. One of the black-armored soldiers was definitely pointing in her direction with panicked motions of his right pointer finger.
“Oh, I think you might be right,” Riot said, scratching the idea of blowing the whole warehouse to Kingdom Come and already forming plan B.
In the space of a heartbeat, every single head in the warehouse, Karnayer, zombie Trilord, and the Devil’s Hand, all swung in her direction.
“Yep, yep, you’re definitely right,” Riot said, doing the only thing she could at the moment. She waved. “They see me, and I’m waving back to them right now.”
At once, the silent, stunned trance everyone in the warehouse seemed to have erupted into an avalanche of chaos. The Devil’s Hand bellowed. The army of Trilord undead woke from their stupor and ran for the building doors. The Karnayer force lifted their weapons and opened fire on Riot.
Riot ducked just in time as green blaster fire shattered the window around her, sending sharp shards of glass over her, and Rippa’s mech below. Riot slammed the button on her heads-up display to remove the shared viewing option.
“Wang, Rizzo, Vet—you’re weapons free on whatever comes out of the warehouse. Rippa, get us back to the rest of the unit. Ketrick, get ready to bring the cavalry.”
Rippa turned her mech slowly enough for Riot to keep her balance but fast enough to make her grab on for fear of falling off. With long, even strides, Rippa made the trip back to where the rest of the unit had taken up defensive positions in the cover of the building.
BOOM!
The warehouse doors exploded outward, releasing a horde of undead Trilords. Nearly all of them still had their weapons intact. Yellow fire from their hybrid staff and blunt force weapons showered the back of Rippa’s mech. Riot dropped into a crouch. Despite her
efforts to remain unscathed, a blaster round struck her in the back of her right shoulder.
Her armor held, but it felt like being hit with a baseball bat. A numb sensation raced across her right shoulder as she focused on not falling off of Rippa.
Rippa moved her mech into a tight alley right in front of where Rizzo and Wang pumped round after round into the coming zombie horde. Rippa knelt once more, allowing Riot to jump off.
“What’s the good word, Wolves?” Riot shouted to be heard over the firing weapons. She swung her pulse rifle off her back and moved to peer around the building’s corner.
“These zombies aren’t going down,” Wang shouted back. “I’ve hit a few, center mass, and they shrug it off like I’m shooting a marshmallow gun at them.”
Riot took a knee and stuck her head and weapon around the corner. Wang was right. An ocean of Trilords was less than a hundred yards from their location, and closing fast. When any one of them got hit with a round in the torso, they stumbled backwards for a moment, then continued on.
Riot aimed down her sights and tested a few rounds of her own on different body parts of the oncoming Trilords. She took one in the kneecap. The Trilord fell, but instead of writhing in pain, it continued to crawl forward.
She took one in the arm, with no result, and the final one in the head. The unlucky target was having one hell of a day. One second, the overweight, shaved-headed Trilord was lowering his blaster, which looked like a spear; the next, his head erupted in a shower of blood and gore. The body stumbled once, then remained still.
“Surprise, surprise, boys and girls,” Riot shouted as she ducked back around the corner she used as cover. A hail of yellow blaster fire pinned her down for the time being. “The way to kill a Trilord zombie is the same way you kill any other. Plug them in the head. Oohrah! Let’s light ’em up!”
The thumping sounds the Trilord weapons made were contrary to the loud booms of traditional fire the Marines used. It was a cacophony that covered the battlefield.
War Wolves: Boxset 1-3 Page 39