by James Axler
He brought up his knees, pushed, kicked hard against his assailant’s stomach. His boots held their traction on cobblestone-hard abdominal muscles, though the thing was surprisingly light for its bulk. The bat-winged creature toppled backward, crashing to the ground.
With a surge, Nathan lunged for the fallen pistol, scooping it up.
Zambian response be damned, this was an abomination, a horrific being that had no right.to occupy the border between two relatively peaceful nations. Nathan’s fingers closed around the small grip of the handgun and he turned. The creature who’d lost fangs to the staff was scrambling to all fours, human-sized hind legs and gorillalike forelimbs spread on the ground, the incarnation of a giant bat, one designed with the head of a prehistoric reptile. Unfortunately for Nathan, it wasn’t alone, and a second beast leaped from a branch toward him, a third and fourth bounding from the thicket at the side of the road.
Nathan fired, and his first .45-caliber slug struck the lunging bat monster in the chest. The thing grunted, and it actually looked stunned, but the young adventurer was fully aware that the thick musculature necessary for it to take flight would be backed up by a powerful breastbone that could anchor those muscles and withstand the forces necessary to lift a hundred fifty pounds of aerial predator off the ground. The creature veered off course and tumbled, crashing into the long grasses at the side of the road.
Nathan turned toward the other newcomers and reversed the staff in his hands, its sharp point lashing out like the tip of a spear. The creatures halted, scrambling to stay beyond the slashing arc. Nathan didn’t know how smart the monsters were, but they certainly feared the weapon he held. Whether that was due to the strange nature of its material, or they just knew a big pointed stick could cause havoc in their lives, they hung back warily.
The one who’d lost teeth glared balefully toward Nathan. Yellowed eyes locked hard onto him, ignoring the gun, ignoring the stick. From the roadside, he heard the rustle of the creature he’d shot. It rose but seemed to favor its left foreleg. A quick glance showed that the beast had clamped its hand over the gunshot wound, which trickled blood.
“Round one to me, bastards,” Nathan muttered. “The long run doesn’t look so good.”
Surprise and audacity had carried him this far. That wouldn’t last. He needed to make a retreat, and that meant cutting a path. Nathan whirled toward the injured beast and aimed the Detonics. Instead of going for the muscle-and-bone-armored chest, easily capable of deflecting bullets along its sloped surface, he fired at the monster’s face. It opened its mouth wide in a screech of defiance and aggression, which allowed the .45-caliber slug to enter the roof of its mouth and punch up into the brain pan
The bat-winged horror jerked, reflexes firing in a futile attempt to protect the central nervous system, but too late. The damage was done, a fat slug having torn its way into the brain. The monster toppled, crumpling on its four limbs.
Nathan spun back, lashing out with the staff of Suleiman, the shaft rebounding off of the beak of one of the trio of monstrosities penning him in on his other flank. The blow was glancing, but it caused the creature to recoil, to back off. The others feinted, but despite the glaring hatred in their yellow eyes, they didn’t dare close in on a man who held the snake-entwined stick.
Nathan took this opportunity and spun, breaking into a wild run up the road. His legs hurt and all his limbs felt like lead, his energy sapped by the desperate chase through the forest. Still, he placed one foot in front of the other, each stride taking him closer to the bend, and hopefully, to the owners of the lights that faintly illuminated this deadly tableau.
He didn’t hear the snap and flutter of leathery wings taking flight behind him, either, he heard the punch of knuckles into the crumbled tarmac and dirt. The things weren’t interested in flying, or elsewere toying with him. A bullet to the chest wasn’t enough for them to die, so they must have realized they were better off against him on the ground. Or maybe they needed speed and space to gain flight. He couldn’t imagine that they had much room to fly through the trees or undergrowth; hence the bounding from branch to branch. Or maybe they were gliders, though the bulky muscle of their torsos and arms belied that notion.
Nathan cut into the jungle again, shouldering past bushes and branches, bounding over tall grass lest it snarl his legs and trip him up. He was cutting the corner, and hoped that would even the odds, slowing his enemies down. But the creatures stuck to the road, sounding like horses as they clopped along on their thick, armored knuckles.
They must have lost their taste for undergrowth during the chase.
Nathan had a glimmer of hope. There had originally been five of these things, but surely even their powerful muscles and hideous fangs couldn’t deal with the onslaught of a siafu ant horde. It might not be much, but might be one way to kill them, beyond a bullet to the brain.
Exploding from the bushes, he saw a line of light poles. There was a guard tower in the distance, 150 yards away. He couldn’t tell if it was manned, given the way the glare of bulbs cut into his night vision. It didn’t matter; he swung hard and raced down the slope toward the tower. He was able to make out a ten-foot fence with a roll of concertina wire atop it.
The power plant, or a nearby guard post.
Either way, Nathan was now running toward Zambian guns, and he didn’t know if they were going to open up on him. He gritted his teeth and kept pushing, lungs burning, each stride making it feel as if he’d hammered another nail into the soles of his feet, despite the heavy-treaded combat boots he wore. The snarls and shrieks of the winged things erupted just behind him, and Nathan fought the urge to look back, to see how close his enemies were to him.
His heart was a drum, hammering at his ears, the world fading to silence as his pulse raced, blood pumping to oxygen-starved muscles. Tears burned his eyes and rivulets of sweat stung his eyelids. Nathan had a goal, and he pushed toward it with all his might.
That pushing seemed to be for naught when one of the golden-brown monster bats galloped past him, roaring angrily. Nathan suddenly noticed that there was distant gunfire, momentarily drowned out by the roar of his pulse. The Zambians were shooting, but he didn’t feel any fresh injuries. Indeed, he was tearing along just fine.
That’s when he saw other creatures. There were more of those abominable things in the air, wings flapping. More than the three he was being hounded by. And the guard tower seemed to wear a crown of light, from the, muzzle-flashes burning in the night as riflemen cut loose against them.
Nathan skidded to a halt ten yards from the front gate.Gun in one hand, stave in the other, he saw that the three he’d been pursued by were only a fraction of the nightmare he’d spurred into pursuit. There must have been ten of them up there, plus two more that had just whipped past him on all fours, their odd loping gallop allowing them to cover two meters in a single stride. The chain-link fence buckled under their weight, and Nathan saw one, then two of the monstrosities crash to the ground as assault rifles overcame their alien flesh. Even so, Zambian men screeched in terror as they were grasped and punctured with three-inch fangs.
Those whose throats were bitten, torn out in a single mouthful of flesh, were the lucky ones. Nathan saw one of the creatures grab a man by his arms and extend its long, corded wing-limbs. Shoulders tore from their sockets, joints splitting and skin stretching before the torso between fell loose, toppling from the guard tower, only to be snatched up by a soaring bat-beast.
Nathan spied a rent in the fence torn by the insanely powerful arms of the bat creatures, and he pushed through, then dropped into a shoulder roll to avoid the charging slash of one of the winged horrors. Another pivoted on its wing and aimed at him, turning and diving. Nathan brought up the staff of Suleiman and lunged with it, using all his strength and weight. The snake-head sculptures, like the tines of a fork, speared the creature in the hollow of its throat, and for a mome
nt, Nathan felt as if he’d missed, slashing only at empty air.
An instant later, a headless body struck the ground, tumbling end over end, a deflated, boneless sack of shredded meat flowing from the stump of its neck. Lucky shot? Nathan didn’t care. He had a chance and he took it. There was an open door to a building. Zambian soldiers were shooting. One of them waved to him. It didn’t matter who Nathan was. He was human, and he’d just attacked one of the beast invaders.
Nathan once again broke into a run.
These creatures didn’t seem to mind assault rifle fire as much as a .45-caliber bullet through an open mouth. Just one more reason that Nathan was dead certain he’d struck at a decapitated body, not a living attacker.
Nathan reached the door, where hands grabbed him, hauled him in. He let out a rasp as he finally came to a halt, sucking oxygen into his burning lungs.
“Who are you?” one of the guards asked. The door, a steel one, was thrown shut, an iron bar sealing him in with the Zambians.
“Nathan Longa, of Harare...” he gasped.
There were three men in here with him, but the room was large enough for more. Nathan looked over a railing, saw a stairway descending below. There was a small armory down there, as well as briefing tables, benches. He looked back at the Zambians, whose faces were gaunt and glistening with sweat.
“What are those things?” the guard asked him.
“Nightmares,” Nathan returned.
Another of the Zambians spoke up. “This is the wrong place for them.”
“For what?” the first guard asked.
“Olitiau,” the Zambian muttered.
“Never heard of that,” Nathan replied.
“That’s because you’re even farther south than we are,” the second man said. He blinked, then offered his hand. “I’m Shuka.”
“South? What’s that got to do with anything?” the first pressed. “I’m Jonas.”
“The Olitiau are said to be from farther north, in Cameroon. And all the way to the Atlantic Coast,” Shuka added. “They could also be kongamato, but those are smaller than the beasts out there...only supposed to be five to seven feet in wingspan.”
“Those are fairy tales,” Jonas grumbled, irritation making his words sound brittle.
Shuka gritted his teeth. “You were shooting at fairy tales, then. And they killed a dozen of our friends! That doesn’t sound like fantasy to me!”
“Relax, you two,” the third guard, an older man, ordered. He was cleanly shaved atop his skull, but wore a white frosting of beard that stood out in contrast to his ebony skin. “I’m Lomon. What are you doing here...now?”
“I’m trying to get to the Atlantic,” Nathan admitted. “On a quest for my father.”
Lomon narrowed his eyes, turning his attention to the staff. “The Atlantic...where these things are obviously more common.”
Nathan grimaced at the idea that his appearance herewitht the arrival of the olitiau was more than just a coincidence. “I don’t know anything about them.”
“I don’t presume you do,” Lomon stated. “But maybe they know that stick.”
Nathan swallowed. “The stick.”
“It’s got a head, and doesn’t look like any wood I’ve seen in Africa,” Lomon told him. “That thing...”
“Sorry,” Nathan returned. “I didn’t know.”
The older man shook his head. “Nobody could have predicted this. But I can predict that this door is not going to last long. You’ll need more than a pistol, and we’ll need more cover.”
Nathan nodded. Already the steel door was shaking in its frame, emitting clouds of dust around its reinforced-concrete frame.
He remembered those gorilla arms, remembered how one of the beasts had dismembered a man with a single tug. With enough of them, they’d be able to hammer even that slab of steel off its heavy hinges, and get past the thick bar across it. The door frame wouldn’t last long.
“I hope there’s a way out the back,” Nathan mused.
Lomon grimaced. “No, but there’s a way down.”
The hammering on the steel door, plus the concrete chips spilling, punctuated the urgency of that statement. The four men scrambled down the stairs.
Chapter 2
The thunderous blows on the steel door in its reinforced frame drowned out the clatter of boots as Nathan Longa, Lomon, Shuka and Jonas rushed to the power station’s ready room. Jonas lunged past the others and unlocked one of the cabinets. He quickly drew a rifle from the locker and lobbed it to Nathan.
“That might do more than that tiny little popper of yours,” the Zambian muttered. He grabbed some loaded magazines to replenish the ones he’d spent in fighting off the bat-winged monstrosities, then handed out spares to his compatriots before passing Nathan some.
“No offense,” he added.
Nathan shook his head. “None taken. Bros before strangers.”
Jonas smirked in response.
“This isn’t going to be a good defensive position. Those things obviously can handle a bump from jumping thirty feet over a railing, as well as taking the stairs,” Lomon mused as he reloaded his partially spent rifle. On a whim, he went to another locker and pulled out web gear. “Shuka, get out some of the machetes and garden stuff.”
Shuka didn’t pause for a moment, but immediately complied. “Rifles are having a hard time with them. What makes you think a few feet of sharp steel’s going to work?” Despite his doubt, he drew a machete, gave it an expert twirl, then hooked it onto his belt, before handing others out. He paused when he got to Nathan, who was holding the bloody staff. “You need one?”
Nathan glanced at the dripping serpent heads tipping his rod. “They don’t like it.”
“So why are they chasing it down?” Jonas asked.
Nathan frowned. “To stop it from getting where it needs to go?” He shrugged. “All I know is that my father suffered a fatal mauling from some kind of creature. It ran away, but I sure as hell didn’t get any glimpse of bat wings.”
“It was dark, right?” Lomon muttered.
Nathan nodded.
Lomon nodded toward another set of doors, which Jonas opened. Beyond them was a stairwell that seemed to descend down into the cliff.
Nathan gazed around assessingly. “This is the power station, right?”
“We thought it was,” Shuka stated.
There was a sudden crash. Nathan glanced up and saw claws skittering around a bent corner of the steel door. Cracks emanated from the brackets that held the draw bar in place.
“Thought it was?” Nathan repeated, distracted by the horrors above.
“Let’s go!” Lomon shouted.
Jonas and Shuka unlocked the two big doors at the other side of the ready room, and Nathan peered into the cavernous tunnel behind them. He studied the doors themselves and noted that they looked to be thick, at least four inches deep. As soon as he and Lomon were through, the other two swung the doors shut, and they moved effortlessly on their hinges. There wasn’t even the squeak of metal on metal, which meant that they must have been gliding, nearly weightlessly on oiled bearings.
The two doors slammed shut with a reverberating thunder. Latches were thrown and more draw bars pulled.
“Now we can talk,” Lomon told him. “Those should be good for a while. Maybe even years.”
“What is this tunnel?” Nathan asked.
“This is the Zambian National Storage for our charged batteries,” Jonas told him. “Bank vault thick and tough.”
“This is for batteries?” Nathan said doubtfully.
“It was built long ago. We’re just using it for safe storage,” Lomon returned. “And that safe storage is going to keep us alive, at least for a little bit.”
“I don’t think they’re that strong,
” Shuka muttered. He still gripped the handle of his machete. “This was built originally as some kind of bomb shelter.”
Nathan nodded. “Looks as much. But who’d need a bomb shelter here?”
Jonas shrugged. “We don’t know. This place has been cleaned out for decades, maybe even the whole past two centuries since the northern hemisphere went boom.”
“Cleaned out,” Nathan repeated.
Lomon waved them along and they continued down the corridor. Nathan felt good in the company of armed Zambians, with the heavy vault doors at his back.
“Do we call for help?” Shuka asked. “I mean, we barely had a chance against them.... Could a patrol deal with those things?”
“Or would they even do more than pick up the pieces of our dead friends?” Jonas added. “Let alone possibly lead those bastards back to the city...leave them open for attack.”
“I don’t know,” Lomon said. “But if we can get to the command center and take a look through the cameras, we’d at least have a chance to talk about it, to plan it out.”
“So we came into a hole in the ground with no other exits, and an enemy at our back, with no plan?” Shuka asked.
Lomon glared at the younger guard. “Yes, because the other door wasn’t doing so well. Remember?”
“So that we’d get to a secure area. One more defensible than outside,” Jonas pointed out.
Nathan found himself nodding at the older man’s assessment. He stopped the moment he realized it. He was an outsider here. A guest.
A refugee.
He didn’t feel as if his opinion would have much worth with these three, even if they did trust him with a loaded gun. They outnumbered and surrounded him, and were certainly keeping their eyes on him, just in case he was an enemy, a spy. They didn’t seem to believe he was a member of the winged horde of horrors, but Zambia and Harare were tentative friends. If there could be an advantage gotten, it would come through the efforts of spies and duplicity, but not to the point where the nations would go to war.