Hayden nodded. “We understand.”
“We handle our own problems. Self-discipline and the control of one’s emotions is of high value here. We do not have a counterculture such as do the big cities, and we do not need western values. This is Peru. What is left of it.”
“Culture resists change,” Drake said. “My own land is a traditional place of bacon butties and fish and chip shops, but the interlopers keep trying to find a way in.”
Conde nodded, despite obvious confusion. Hayden tried to turn the conversation back around. “Can you describe el monstruo?”
“It comes shrouded by its friend, the darkness. It uses shadows for cloaks. It is silent, as silent as the seconds after death. It has little form. Do you see? Though we see signs of a body and crooked limbs, it has no face.”
“Masks?” Drake guessed.
“No masks. Only a smooth hint of nothing.”
“Fuck me.” Alicia glanced up at the mountains. “I bet you have fucking spiders too, don’t you?”
“Vampire bats as large as men.” Conde nodded, almost smiling. “And the terrible alpaca. We have many of them.”
Alicia shook herself. “Just steer me the hell away from them.”
Hayden fixed Conde’s eyes with her own, giving nothing away. “You fought these things? Did you ever hurt one?”
“Oh, they bleed. They bleed thick and red. But the place where they fall is always empty the next morning, so perhaps they cannot die. And they outnumber us. So many.”
Hayden stepped away, having heard enough and confident that Nuno was beset by the same problem as Kimbiri. And how many others? She dared not guess. The burning pyre of questions grew and raged, the flames becoming angrier. Where were the people being taken? What happened to them?
And could they cut one operation short—put it on hold even as Dahl and Kenzie fought merciless enemies across Europe to progress it—to jump right slap bang into another?
The seller was out here too though. Guarding his trove of ancient relics, what had been written about as the greatest hoard the world had ever known.
“This time,” she said. “It’s not about war, or bullets or terrorist bombs, and it’s not about us. This time, it’s about a few villagers in the mountains. And it’s just as important as all the others. Are you agreed?”
Drake’s lips turned up at the corners. “We’re right where we ought to be.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
As a ghost-ridden gloom descended across the haunted mountain range, Drake stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the craziest woman he had ever known.
“You think they’ll come tonight?” she whispered, clouds of breath escaping her lips.
“I hope so,” Drake said. “There’s nothing I’d like better than to dish out some comeuppance to a band of cold-blooded killers like these. But I do wish Dahl was here.”
Alicia made a show of staring at his groin. “Why? Did your balls fall off?”
“He’d love this. No complications. No guesswork. Just plain, old fashioned retribution and a chance to help good people out. Maybe save their loved ones.”
Hayden came up behind them. “We’re as ready as can be,” she said. “They’re armed with a mixture of farming tools, knives and even a saucepan or two.”
“Bows and arrows?”
“A few. In the right hands. And on the right roofs.”
“Then we’re ready.”
“One thing is for sure,” Hayden said. “El monstruo won’t be expecting us.”
“Don’t say that.” Alicia stared at the gathering dark, the bruised mountains, the fading shapes and the gray clouds. “They can’t be monsters.”
“You scared of men without faces, Alicia? Vampire bats? Alpacas?”
“Shit, aren’t you?”
Drake knew his face was shrouded. “A little.”
“What the hell is an alpaca anyway?”
“Imagine a llama but ten times more ferocious.”
Alicia shuddered. “It’s healthy to be scared.”
“Don’t let Smyth hear you say that.”
“He wouldn’t hear. Smyth’s a mess right now, and so is Lauren.”
“The team is split,” Hayden agreed. “In more than just a physical way. And I’m sorry I contributed to that.”
Drake shrugged. “Personal is personal, love,” he said. “We’re soldiers, cut and dried. When we go to work it’s nothing but professional.”
A chill wind rolled out of the mountains, passing through them. Drake found himself wondering what it had encountered along the way, what kind of wild creature it might have brushed past. The lofty heights of the Andes stood in perennial stillness, but the lower ranges harbored a multitude of claws, fangs and beings that wished harm on others. A deep silence hung over the village and he knew nobody would get a moment of sleep tonight.
“You hear that?” Alicia said suddenly.
“What?”
She listened. “Maybe nothing. Maybe a falling rock.”
Drake remembered Brynn’s words. They come down out of the mountains. His Glock was holstered but ready; his new H&K hanging loose at his side. They couldn’t just shoot anybody in cold blood, but he relished getting close to some of these “monsters”.
Every day some upstart met his match. Some ruthless killer got his just desserts. And some overbearing trailblazer was taken down. This was about to be one of those days and a lesson learned for all the cowards that preyed on those that could not defend themselves.
And monsters? They found equals too.
He listened hard but heard no sounds. The contrast of the vast mountain range and the arcane stillness it produced to the concrete jungles they usually fought in was immense, and off-putting. Drake had positioned himself upon the highest roof overlooking the point where the village was normally infiltrated, but lookouts were everywhere. All primed, all ready. They were crouched down, partially concealed.
Alicia squinted at the shadows that surrounded the village of Nuno.
“What the fuck is that?”
Drake cleared his throat, rather than answer. He was not a gullible man but the shape that crawled inside the shadows was not normal. Human beings didn’t move that way. It was a snap thought, but as authentic as rock, as earth, as dirt. It was a primeval truth, and triggered a primeval fear.
The closeness of Alicia and Hayden calmed him, the old training centered him, enabled him to look through more dubious eyes. But still . . .
It crawled like a spider, limbs rising sharply and then quickly creeping along. It had legs and, probably, arms. It was coated all in black, but had no real form in the dark. It moved swiftly, a hungry tarantula, causing the hairs along the nape of Drake’s neck to stand up. It scuttled along at such a rate, and unlit, that he could make no decision so quickly and now saw exactly what the villagers saw.
“Monsters.”
They came as a pack, crawling along one after another, side by side, and they made no sound, but when the villagers saw them they began to backpedal and to scream.
“Holy crap,” Hayden breathed.
“There’s nothing holy in that,” a voice said from behind them, making them start. “It is el monstruo.”
“We’re badly prepared,” Drake acknowledged. “We gotta hope that noise wins the night, pal.”
“Noise?”
Drake hefted the H&K. “You say meet el monstruo. I say meet el Kock.”
Hayden shone their meagre flashlights from the roof down into the street as those villagers that had not taken flight lit torches and put tinder to a small bonfire built in the main square. Light was their ally now.
Drake aimed at the skies.
Hayden’s flashlight lit the backs of the sneaking creatures. The extra light picked out material and glistening flesh. It picked out more form.
“I think . . . I think they may be human.”
Drake saw the creatures converge on a house, scramble around its base and then bang at the windows as if testing for an entry poi
nt. They didn’t stand on two legs, but reached up from the ground, balancing on one appendage. So far, they’d done nothing illegal.
He shrugged. Two villagers huddled in an empty doorway—a man and a woman, both dressed in thick, bright clothing—and now the man thrust the woman behind him as the creatures swarmed around and spotted them.
“You see that?” Hayden whispered in his ear.
“Got it.” He watched through the scope.
Alicia commented from another direction. “I got at least half a dozen of the mothers sneaking right below me. Looks like a trail of giant ants.”
Drake watched one of the creatures scuttle full-pelt at the man in the doorway and then leap straight for his throat. It reminded him of a documentary he’d once seen where a large spider leapt unexpectedly at a man’s face, understandably scaring the hell out of him. The creature struck the man who, despite his obvious fear and revulsion, struck out. The creature still hit however, sending him staggering back against the woman, who screamed. Drake decided enough was enough.
“Let there be noise.”
Gunfire rang out inside the village. The residents had been warned it would happen and how to take cover. Drake stitched a line in the brickwork across the top of the door and watched for the creatures’ reactions.
Bodies froze and heads rose, almost as if sniffing the air then, in slow motion, a hundred heads all turned upwards, finding Drake, Hayden and Alicia.
“Fuck, that’s creepy,” Alicia hissed.
“I can’t fire on them,” Drake said. “They haven’t done anything except look scary.”
“Well, it ain’t Halloween,” Alicia said. “And imitating giant spiders is felony enough for this girl.” She fired downwards between the creatures, her bullets chipping at the few paving flags down there or sinking straight into the earth. Instantly, the creatures broke for it, swarming around the building or up against its vertical side. Drake had a sudden, irrational fear that they might be climbing the brickwork, scurrying up to launch an attack at them.
He jerked away, then checked himself. Stop being a knob! But it was the lack of sound, the silent communications, the faceless and almost formless bodies, the horrendous way in which they moved. With tough discipline he forced himself to look down the side of the building, saw the creatures pressed up against it or banging at the wooden door.
The door splintered. This was an empty house; its occupants sheltering elsewhere for the night. Hayden walked over to the hatch they’d left open that led inside. “Shall we?”
Alicia grimaced. “I’d rather guard the roof.”
Drake made sure the man and woman were running safely and that the bulk of the creatures were heading toward their house. “Party animals are all here. Let’s do this.”
“Creature feature would be a better description,” Alicia pointed out.
Hayden walked into the house first. “Stay here, Alicia. Use the comms. We need to know if the villagers can’t handle the rest of them.”
Drake followed their boss, happy that candles still flickered to light their way. Down a short flight of stairs and into an attic, diagonal beams of wood holding the roof up and spiderwebs everywhere. A door stood open that led to another staircase and down to the first floor landing. He ran toward it, descended the steps and then froze, listening.
“What the—”
A scratching sound came from the closet to his left, fingernails or claw-tips being drawn slowly across a wooden surface. It was slow and deliberate and highly distracting. Hayden watched the landing as Drake flung the door wide open.
Darkness leapt at him, striking him hard and bodily around the upper chest. He toppled backward, staggering, losing his grip on the rifle. A slick, fleshy body landed on him, grease smearing his clothes and hands as he struggled, and giving him no grip whatsoever. The attack was soundless, but this close up, finally he knew that this was not el monstruo, not a creature born of a black pit.
It was human.
Skull, face and neck were covered by a thick, stretched balaclava with the tiniest of eye and nose holes, the rest of the body naked save for a pair of shorts, and covered in some kind of filth or gunk or oil. It slithered all over him, stinking, panting, striking and smashing at him. He pushed it away, but like an attack dog it was tenacious. Its fingers had some kind of material attached that gave helped them grip, same for the feet probably. Drake swiped out and caught a wrist that was quickly snatched away. But not before he saw the oddest thing.
“Hayden, it has . . .”
More then scuttled up the stairs, running low and fast—a nightmare swarm that belied human movement. They were trained, sticking together; they were violent, raised with cruelty; and they were driven. Somebody made them like this.
Drake punched swiftly, forgetting the grappling which clearly wasn’t working. These things felt pain then. His opponent flinched away, grunting.
Drake kicked out at what he assumed was the head, feeling relief when it smashed against a rail and then stopped moving.
Hayden faced the swarm. Drake shuffled to her side and the two stood together, filling the landing, as the creatures came up. Then they were scuttling and jumping, rearing off two feet and launching themselves through the air. Drake tried to bat one aside but the body was too heavy, smashing him to his knees. Hayden met another head on, striking it with her elbow and crying out herself with pain. But the blacked-out body fell away, not moving.
It was instantly replaced with another.
Drake felt a punch and then a two-fingered jab to the throat. When he caught the wrist he flinched again. The two-fingered jab had been done for only one reason.
This thing only had two fingers. The previous attacker had only four. Signs of battle? Another flailing about at Hayden did so with the stump of a wrist. A fourth appeared to possess only half a foot, but maybe that was an optical illusion.
This day just gets weirder and weirder, he thought. Not because of the missing body parts but because every single attacker was missing body parts.
He swiped another away, sent a creature tumbling back downstairs and taking another four out with him. Arms and legs waved, and greasy black stains marked the bare wood and walls. Drake found his Glock and fired another warning shot. This also had no effect whatsoever. Did they even know what guns were? Shit, that was not a good thought. Hayden fell back as a fist slammed her face. The figure jumped but Drake hit it bodily out of the air with his shoulder, sending it over the landing and crashing below. Bones snapped. Finally there came a noise, a scream, exploding from one of them; a high-pitched keening whine as if metal were being put through a wood-chopper. Drake saw blackened bodies shooting away from the screamer. He blocked another attack, fired the Glock again.
No response.
He kicked another down the stairs. Alicia’s voice came across the comms. “About eight of the mountain-spider-things are converging on the house where we stashed most of the bloody villagers. Shit, we need to move, guys.”
Drake stared hard at the crush of bodies and then nodded at Hayden. “Going through now. Come right down and join us, love.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Securing his weapons, Drake waited half a minute and then began to barge right through the middle of their attackers. The grease that coated their bodies, and an odor of stale sweat filled his nostrils immediately; their quiet grunting only accentuating his distaste. Hands and feet jabbed at him, each missing a finger or a toe. A tight black mask came down fast, striking his cheek, the features beneath flattened and obscured. The man might as well have had no nose.
Hayden came behind, flinging others aside and trying to keep up the momentum. They needed to be fast and hard, move without mercy to get through the crush. Alicia cried out as she raced across the landing and then hit the last of the climbers, fighting them for the first time and making her own characteristically loud impressions.
Drake winced as he reached the halfway point down and faced a woman, her right arm missing from t
he elbow. She swung it at his face, missed, and he threw her at the wall, seeing blood and oil spurt in an erratic pattern across the paintwork. He kicked the next man in the chest, using his height advantage; picked up another and upended him over the bannister. Hayden followed at his heels, clearing the way for Alicia who ended her opponent’s day with sharp, precise jabs, knees and kicks.
Around the bottom of the stairs and the crawlers were exiting rapidly. Like a swarm they poured out the front door, a few steps ahead of Drake. Revulsion stuck in his throat, but he knew what these things were now—just not what made them the way they were.
An errant creature rose up on two legs, black and jabbing like a rearing, threatened arachnid. Drake dove in with an elbow and was then rolling outside, into the street, among them. An elbow struck his face, a knee glanced off his ribcage. One of the figures crawled right over him without stopping. Drake rolled and rolled until he hit the grass verge on the other side.
Alicia, on her feet, offered a hand. “Playtime done for today?”
“Aye, love. How’s it looking?”
“There’s too many of them for this rough and tumble shit. We need to start tying ’em up or something.”
“Should have known you’d come up with that. What position do you prefer?”
Alicia ran at his side as they jogged quickly toward the supposed safe-house. “Oh, Drakey, don’t tempt me.”
Hayden caught them up. “No way could these guys have known which house we chose,” she said, catching her feet as the path sloped. “No goddamn way.”
Alicia made a squeaking noise. “Mountain spider!”
Drake kicked out at a black figure that sprang at them from the shadows, all raised elbows and knees, hands jabbing like fleshy daggers. “Fuck’s sake, Alicia. Stop calling ’em that. Makes it worse.”
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