by Pete Aldin
Came Monsters
Doomsday's Child, Volume 2
Pete Aldin
Published by Pete Aldin, 2018.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
CAME MONSTERS
First edition. October 1, 2018.
Copyright © 2018 Pete Aldin.
Written by Pete Aldin.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Author's Note
Prologue
Part One: Settlers Downs
1
2
3
4
5
6
Part Two: Road Trip
7
8
9
10
11
12
Part Three: The Killing Floor
13
14
15
16
Part Four: Our Roles in Life
17
18
19
20
21
Part Five: I've Never Been a Fan of Long Hikes
22
23
24
Acknowledgements & Comments
By this author...
Connect with the Author
Author's Note
In this novel, Elliot uses a mix of imperial measurements and metric measurements. This mixed usage is due to various influences on Elliot: growing up in the USA (imperial); a career in the military (metric); more than three years of living in Australia among Aussies (metric again).
Most spelling is American since we view the story from Elliot's point of view. Other spelling (such as "Centre") is Australian for local accuracy and authenticity.
Also, in Australian cars, the driver sits on the right.
- Pete Aldin, August 2018
God lay dead in heaven;
Angels sang the hymn of the end;
Purple winds went moaning,
Their wings drip-dripping with blood
That fell upon the earth.
It, groaning thing,
Turned black and sank.
Then from the far caverns of dead sins
Came monsters,
Livid with desire.
They fought,
Wrangled over the world,
A morsel...
- Stephen Crane, Poet, 1895 CE (Christian/Common Era)
Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child who is born to survive Doomsday
Is blessed and cursed in every way.
- Children's Rhyme circa 66 PC (Post-Collapse)
Prologue
Al-Kasrah, Syria
Nine years ago ...
Elliot had complete trust in the man beside him driving the Humvee, Eames. He had complete trust in the man seated directly behind the shotgun seat, Radler. He even trusted that wiseass, McGovern, manning the tri-barreled GAU-19 mounted on the roof. Between the four of them, they made a solid fire team. Which is no doubt why the Major had sent them to babysit the final man in the party, the man in the passenger seat behind Eames, the man McGovern kept calling The Guy.
Elliot had zero trust in The Guy. He wasn't one of them. And he wasn't giving any clues as to what the hell this trip was about.
No briefing, he complained to himself. No prep time. Not even a goddamn name for our passenger. Just orders.
Simple orders, too: Get your team in the Humvee out there. Escort the passenger to this town. Watch his ass and yours while he's there. When Elliot had asked for more, the Major had repeated the same orders, but with a dozen cusswords strategically added. Elliot's response the second time had been a simple "Yes, sir."
Elliot was jolted from the memory as the Humvee hit another basketball-sized pothole in the godforsaken excuse for a highway. He jounced from his seat and came down swearing while Radler barked laughter behind him.
"Sparkles," Radler said, using the nickname the team had given Elliot, "you got to concentrate!"
Half-seated, half-squatting, with his ass in the eight-inch-wide gunner's sling seat, McGovern called down in a fair imitation of Elliot's voice, "Concentrate! It's important to concentrate!"
It was one of the two words that Elliot had drummed into his team, whether they needed that drumming or not. The other was circumspection: see everything. Elliot fidgeted, trying for a more comfortable position. "Yeah, well, maybe Eames could concentrate on the goddamn road and avoid getting us airborne."
Eames's eyes flashed his way, brief, apologetic. Elliot couldn't tell if the sweat gleaming on the Corporal's dark skin was due to the heat, the efforts of keeping the vehicle steady, or the quiet terror they all shared of IEDs. Eames raised his voice above the road noise: "More holes than highway out here."
"Damn straight." Elliot put his face to his window, scanning the Syrian badlands, checking on the second team's Humvee bobbing around in his side mirror.
"Are we there yet?" McGovern called down.
"Four klicks," Eames replied.
"Shit. Four? That's like three more minutes up here! Why am I the one always has to man the gun on long trips, Sparkles?"
"Assholes always man the gun on long trips," Elliot replied.
"Roger that," Radler said.
"Massage my feet, Rads?"
"Fuck off, Mac," Radler replied.
McGovern farted, loudly.
"Goddamnit!" Eames complained. He twisted so he could elbow Mac in the knee.
Simultaneously Radler said, "Again with this? What do you eat that we don't?"
"Keep a store of beans to eat before road trips like this, where my ass gets to be at your mouth level."
"Beans?" Eames said. "Man, I think you been eating dogshit."
"That too. How's the air in first class now, boys?"
Breathing through his mouth now, Elliot had to admit the air wasn't good.
"Will you please ask your men to shut up?" It was the first time The Guy had spoken. The first time he'd interacted with anything other than his seatbelt and phone.
Elliot turned to study him. Because The Guy wore wraparound goggles over one half of his face and a checkered bandana over the other, Elliot couldn't read any expression there. Whatever the expression was, Elliot wanted to punch it from The Guy's heavily-disguised head.
"You're a guest here," he told him.
"Then treat me like one."
Up until he'd spoken, Elliot had thought The Guy might be local. The skin on his hands, neck and forehead was tanned like the Syrians. The one time he'd put his cell to his ear, the voice on the other end had spoken exclusively in Arabic. At the time, Radler had pointed to him and mouthed Terp?, but Elliot considered it more likely he was CIA than an interpreter. Maybe private contractor. His ballistic vest was US military issue. And his accent was now identifiable as educated American.
CIA, then. It wasn't the first time they'd played taxi service to one of them.
Certainly not a journalist, he thought and flipped The Guy the bird. That gesture provoked a mild headshake before the man turned his head away.
Elliot cuffed Eames to get his attention, then he mouthed the word Spook. Eames curled a hand into the shape of a pistol and mimed popping the man through the back of his seat.
A burst of chatter babbled from the commo gear in the transmission tunnel between Elliot and Eames. A weather report for
the region, broadcast to all units. Same as yesterday and same as today: hot and dry.
"Three klicks to destination," Eames called to McGovern.
For a moment, Elliot thought he saw movement outside, but it was only a dust devil, wind whipping up dirt. He pressed against the window, looking up and around for the drone he knew was overhead. It wasn't visible; that put it behind them somewhere. This was supposedly clear territory, so the threat of ambush or IED was as low as it could be in this part of the world. Three kilometers. They'd made it this far. What was it about, though? What was it for?
He turned in his chair so he could see their passenger clearly. Loud enough for all the men to hear, he said, "Hey, boys, you know those things called briefings? They take the team sergeant into a tent where a senior officer talks through the mission with them?"
"Heard of them," Eames said. He kept his eyes on the country ahead, being circumspect. But he was smiling, playing along.
"Well, that's good," Elliot continued. "I was starting to think I'd dreamed about those."
"Wait a darn minute, Sergeant." Radler's surprised tone was wonderfully theatrical. "Are you telling me that we have embarked upon a trip into god-knows-where without a briefing?"
"Without a briefing. Without intel."
Radler released an exaggerated groan. "Gosh darn it! That is reprehensible. You are the team leader, for gosh darn sakes."
"Insulting, right?"
Eames pretended to shoot the spook through the seatback again. "Just plain rude, you ask me, Sergeant."
"Shut the hell up, ass clowns." The Guy's accent was definitely New England. It was an educated voice, a nasal voice, but it carried ... and it carried authority. "It's not a difficult mission. No secrets. You take me to Al-Kasrah to pick up a friendly. We put him in the other Humvee. We go back. Your Major said you could handle that." He adjusted position, sitting forward to get air to his back beneath his vest. "I'd appreciate it if we could drop the play-acting."
"I'd like to know what's in Al-Kasrah before we get there." Radler was all seriousness now. "In fact, our sergeant shoulda known that before we even got in this vehicle."
"Nothing to worry about," The Guy said, settling back. He stuck a finger in one ear, digging at wax or an itch.
"Nothing to—?" Something banged Radler's window, no doubt his elbow. Elliot couldn't see it, but he smiled when The Guy jumped a little.
Elliot said, "Maybe you're new, mister? Plenty to worry about round here, I'd say."
The spook withdrew the finger, checked it over. "Dial it down. This is very friendly territory, I vouch for that. Discussion over." He pointed the ear-mining finger at the windscreen. Elliot turned forward to see a row of sand-colored buildings come into view over a rise.
"If this territory is so friendly," he asked The Guy, "then why are you wearing a vest?"
McGovern laughed above them. "Burn!"
"That's why we call him Sparkles," Radler replied. "Coz the man has a sparkling wit and the sparkling personality to match it."
⁓
The smells of cooking wafted from the middle of the busy market square they'd pulled into—burning fat, spices, onions, meat. Elliot's fire team stood in a rectangle, watching the angles, their slice of pie. Each had their own corner of the vehicle, Mac the corner where The Guy had sat. Thirty meters back by the gates to the market, the second team stood in identical arrangement around their own vehicle. The spook leaned against the Humvee's hood, speaking hushed Arabic into his cell. Apart from the cooking smells, the area stank from their own vehicle exhaust and the piles of dung baking in the stifling heat.
Eames pointed to some of the animal droppings. "Hey, McGovern. Lunch."
"Hey, Eames. Bite me."
"You fellas frosty?" Elliot said. A bright flash drew his attention across the marketplace to the top floor of a building, but it was only a woman opening a window to hang washing from the sill.
"We're snowmen, Sparkles," McGovern replied.
When he'd exited the Humvee, Mac's 1970s mustache had been turned up in a sneer of distrust for their surroundings. Elliot couldn't see Mac now through the vehicle between them, so he didn't know if the man still wore that expression. Knowing Mac, he probably did.
Elliot felt the same distrust. Locals milled, keeping their distance, conducting their business with their own suspicious eye on these intruders. Were any of these people insurgents? Extremists? Informants for the enemy? Lookouts?
McGovern added loudly, "Is it cliché to say I don't like this?"
"It absolutely is," said Radler. "Mainly because you never like anything."
"You don't even like my coffee," Eames said. "Best in any unit and you won't drink it."
"That's coz tastes like battery-acid. It burns my eyes just thinking about it."
"Says the man with the dogshit-farts," Eames replied.
"I'm with Mac on this one," Radler added. "It's so thick, we keep wondering if you filter it through your dirty shorts."
"Fuckin' barbarians, the both of you. It's Turkish coffee. It's a goddamn luxury."
"It's a goddamn travesty," McGovern said.
"Hey, what's my buzzwords, fellas?" Elliot said.
"Trust me, we're heeding them buzzwords, Sparkles," said McGovern.
Radler added, "We are concentrating circumspectly."
The only people in the whole square who didn't seem at least a little on edge were the children. There were a dozen or more of them in among the stalls, kicking a soccer ball, helping their parents, watching adults work. There were always kids. Living and working and playing in the midst of danger. Their faces were carefree, happy, though they must have felt the anxiety of their elders; anxiety was elemental here; everyone in this goddamn country swam in it.
The Guy cleared his throat, turning Elliot's head. Sun bounced off the man's desert goggles. The bandana still covered his lower face. "All right. What comes next is so simple, even a child could do it. So perhaps it's good I have you." His right hand was on the butt of his sidearm, belying the calm in his tone. He pointed with his left hand across the market to an alley opening. "We walk that way to meet my friend. We escort him back here."
"Because it's such friendly territory," Elliot replied.
Eames asked, "How far?"
"Fifty meters down that laneway."
"Babysitting." Radler spat in the dirt as he came around the Hummer.
The goggles turned his way. "You think you can handle that?"
Radler bristled, but Elliot stepped in. "Let's just get this over with, CIA-man. You're in the middle of our diamond. Eames, you have point."
"Why me?" Eames mock-complained, but the spook started off and Eames had to jog a little to get ahead of him.
"McGovern, you're left. Radler, you're right. I'm at the rear."
"So you can stare at our asses," McGovern said and set off in a fast walk, swinging left and closest to the market stalls. To their right was open ground all the way to a wall of apartments. Windows. Flat roofs. A hundred places for a sniper.
"Much prettier than your faces," Elliot called after him and got a chuckle from Radler headed right.
Elliot turned and signaled the second team leader to watch his Humvee. The sergeant gave a thumbs-up and told his driver to wander over. Civilians were always surprised to hear that military Humvees required no key to start them and had no door locks. The instructions for starting the damn thing were right there on the dash for anyone who read English, along with the switch labeled Start, Run, Stop. Elliot gave the vehicle a last pat on the hood. He said, "See you soon" and started off.
There were several other vehicles in the marketplace besides the Hummers: battered, sand-scoured cars that wouldn't have been out of place in a wrecking yard. Ahead of Eames and close to where the team's path would take them, a rust-riddled Mercedes had its trunk up while three men leaned over it and all talked at once. Elliot tensed, fingers tightening on his rifle. Eames and McGovern were watching it too.
"Go
d, I hate cars in the Middle East," Elliot muttered.
One of the men brought out an old boom box stereo, nodding and smiling over it. His companion paid the third man from a roll of notes.
"Shit," he breathed. "Don't these people have eBay?"
At least four other vehicles were parked amongst the stalls with trunks open like the Mercedes. Any of them could contain an IED. The spook had said this area was friendly. The map the Major had pointed to agreed.
"But the twin towers were in friendly territory too," Elliot said to himself.
He tensed at movement near Mac: a kid detaching from a market stall, chattering Arabic, offering something from a basket. Mac flashed the kid a grin and called, "Very hungry!" in bad Arabic.
Elliot barked, "On task!"
A brief scowl of disappointment from Mac over his shoulder, but he waved the kid away as instructed.
Rather than return to his stall, the kid came toward Elliot. He was close enough now for Elliot to see he was a boy, maybe four, maybe six, maybe somewhere in between. The basket contained dried fruit, dates. Elliot hated dates. And he hated distractions. But ...
Another careful three-sixty. A scan of the roofs, the windows, the cars. The kid chattered faster as he neared. Elliot could give this boy a lucky break. The mood in the market had relaxed a few notches since the Americans' first appearance. Locals had turned their focus fully to their trading, their banter. He took a hand from his weapon to pull two US dollars from the pocket where he kept them folded. For moments like this.
"Here." He stopped walking, aimed, and flipped the money into the basket, judging wind direction so that it landed dead center. The boy cooed, lifting the basket to his face as if to smell the notes.
A shout. Elliot stiffened. All his men were looking past the Mercedes. The man who'd sold the boom box was marching after his buyers, a hand in the air and waving the notes they'd given him. The two buyers sent him screw you gestures and started running. The seller sped off in pursuit.
"Assholes," Elliot said.
"A soles," the boy said in mimicry.
Elliot relaxed a notch, told the kid to spend his money wisely, started forward again as he realized he'd drifted back from the team. There was a girl nearby, a little older than the boy, crouched beside one of the car-trunk stalls and staring at him with hard eyes. A spotter's eyes. But she wasn't anyone's spotter. She was just a kid, like the boy, watching an alien creature in full battle rig walking through her world and—