The Devil's Claw

by Nick Pignatelli

  Either way, it was time for Cummings to move out. He raised the whistle and blew. With his good arm, he pointed toward the woods. “Go, go, go!” he yelled, moving into the thick foliage. The Centurions fell in line, Alpha leading the pack. He was astounded by how quietly they moved. Tony Bascombe and the BoDex trainers had done an amazing job.

  Cummings was getting good at manipulating the whistle and hand signals with only one good arm. He couldn’t help but wonder if he would still be able to control the creatures if his good arm got knocked out of commission.

  He came across the path they had taken earlier. Cummings thought he heard voices off to his left, none of which he recognized. He blew the whistle, pointed at the ground, and quietly said, “Stay, stay.” He continued to whisper, “Stay, stay,” as he backed away from them toward the voices.

  Cummings reached a spot near the edge of the parking lot where he could see the opposition. He took one last look at his objective, fixing in his mind the positions of the Black Hawk helicopter, the blue Humvee, the five men in black armed with MP5Ns, and the three BoDex security men. He first thought the BoDex men had arrived as reinforcements for the bad guys. But something was wrong. If they were there to bolster the opposition, then why were they lying on the ground?

  Kurt Cummings watched as one of the men in black pointed his submachine gun at a BoDex security man and kicked him in the side, shouting. He noticed the hands of the BoDex security men were bound. They were prisoners.

  There was something familiar about the man antagonizing them. It was…Collins! Collins delivered another vicious kick to the man on the ground, then walked back to his teammates, laughing.

  Cummings made his way back to the waiting Centurions. Standing before the creatures, he blew the whistle softly to get their attention. In the ensuing minutes, the Centurion project would either be a great success or meet its end in a blaze of glory. There was nothing in between. His shaking hand brought the red whistle to his lips.

  “You hear that?” Ruiz asked.

  “Didn’t hear a thing,” Perry replied, checking his MP5N for what seemed like the hundredth time.

  “Sounded like…a whistle maybe.” He rested his hand on his holstered SIG.

  “Jesus, Ruiz, we’re out in the middle of the woods. It’s probably a damn bird.” Perry slammed the magazine back into his submachine gun. “Just settle down and watch the road.” Perry wouldn’t admit it, but he was just as nervous as Ruiz, maybe more. He wasn’t comfortable on the ground. He belonged in the air behind the controls of the UH-60.

  Black approached the pilot’s access door. Schmidt sat in the right seat, a chart of the area spread out on the copilot’s seat, a list of radio frequencies in his lap. “How’s it look?” Black asked.

  “It seems that BoDex has dropped their jamming,” Schmidt replied. “We, however, are still able to jam everything in our immediate area, thanks to this little miracle of modern technology.” He tapped a gloved finger against a small electronic device Perry had installed on the center console after they took possession of the helicopter.

  Black turned, his attention drawn by someone shouting. He watched as Collins delivered a kick to a BoDex security man. This sonofabitch has gone totally out of his mind. He turned back to Schmidt.

  “Sun is setting soon. Be ready to lift off in five minutes. I’m going up to the resort and give them one last chance to hand over the civilians. If they refuse, it will be time to cut our losses and go, but not before we level that place and wipe out everyone inside.”

  Collins sauntered toward Black, laughing like a fool. When he finally stood before Black, Collins simply said, “You got a problem?”

  “Yeah, Collins, I do,” Black replied. “I’ve had a problem with your juvenile, antagonistic attitude since we got here.”

  “I was just having a little fun with the mall cops.”

  “Knock it off.” Black shoved a finger in Collins’s face. “Technically, they’re on our side, okay? Stop acting like an out-of-control cowboy.”

  Collins used the muzzle of his submachine gun to push Black’s finger away. “And if it wasn’t for this out-of-control cowboy, our buddies over there would still be holding weapons on us!” Collins’s fingers tightened on his submachine gun, his knuckles turning white.

  It angered Black to admit Collins was right. Collins had come up with a plan to overpower the men guarding them, then executed the plan with help from Schmidt, Perry, Ruiz, and himself.

  “Collins, I swear, when this is over—”

  Black was interrupted by the sound of a whistle blowing long and hard.

  Cummings blew the whistle as hard as he could, the shrill noise splitting the air. He spat the whistle out of his mouth and shouted, “Go, go, go!” He pushed his way through the green screen of leaves onto the open gravel surface of the parking lot. The Centurions blindly followed him.

  Black and his men stood spellbound, facing the bizarre menagerie that had just burst from the woods. Both groups remained motionless, Centurions and Reapers, silently staring at each other.

  The men were too stunned to fire, but the Centurions saw the weapons. Alpha threw his arms up and roared, the other creatures followed. Cummings waved his uninjured arm toward the five men in black. “Attack! Attack! Attack!” Alpha and the other Centurions lunged at Black’s men.

  Cummings dropped to the ground as the Centurions charged Black’s force. Submachine gunfire filled the air as the men tried unsuccessfully to track the incredibly fast and agile creatures. The terrifying sight of the Centurions’ claws and teeth only added to their inaccurate fire.

  Cummings watched the Centurions; each appeared to be acting independently. Their attack seemed different from the tsunami-like approach they used to roll straight over Graham. This time they were sweeping in from all sides, lashing at the enemy, then moving away to repeat the routine. It reminded him of fighter planes making repeated strafing runs. Sonofabitch! They were learning, developing, changing tactics, and all on their own!

  “Five minutes, my ass!” Schmidt yelled as the creatures attacked. He slammed and secured his door, his hands flying across the control panels. The rotor blades began to turn but they were agonizingly slow.

  Perry stood near Schmidt’s door, firing at the attacking Centurions. “Get aboard!” Schmidt shouted. Perry fired one last volley before diving into the cabin.

  Schmidt could see Black and Collins ducking and twisting away from the charging Centurions, all the time trying desperately to get a shot. He couldn’t believe how fast these damn things could move. “Where’s Ruiz?”

  “I don’t know!” Perry yelled. “I lost him when the firing started.”

  “He’s on his own then. Grab the grenades. As soon as we get some altitude we’re gonna see if we can spook these bastards with some noise!”

  Perry tossed his MP5N aside and grabbed a small satchel lying on a passenger bench. He pulled out an M67 fragmentation grenade and yanked its pin. “All set!” he shouted to Schmidt. He crouched in the open doorway of the UH-60, holding the door frame with one hand, the live grenade in the other. He hoped the blast would confuse and frighten the Centurions enough to slow them down. Then, maybe Black, Collins, and Ruiz would have a better chance of hitting them. The UH-60 shuddered as Schmidt fought to get it off the ground.

  Kurt Cummings made his way to the three bound BoDex security guards. When the fighting started, the guards did their best to stay out of the fray by crawling under the Humvee. Cummings grabbed the closest man by the plastic handcuffs binding his ankles, and yanked him from beneath the vehicle.

  “No! Wait!” the guard shouted. “Please don’t—”

  “I’m one of the good guys!” Cummings yelled. He pulled his knife from its sheath and cut through the plastic cuffs on the guard’s ankles, then his wrists. The man scrabbled to his knees.

  Cummings rammed the knife blade into the ground. “Can you make it to the building?”

  “Yeah, I think so, if they don’t get
us first.” The Reapers and Centurions whirled around each other in a macabre dance. The deafening roar of the helicopter added to the chaos.

  “Take my knife and cut your men free, then make a beeline for the resort.” He looked back at the raging battle between men and beasts. “Don’t worry about the Centurions. Just remember this: do not point a weapon at them and they will not attack you. If they do come at you, stand still, point to the U.S. flag on your shoulder, and keep saying, friend, friend, friend. Got it?”

  “That’s the plan?” the man asked, incredulously.

  “It’s worked so far,” Cummings answered. “When you get inside, tell them what I just told you.”

  Cummings continued to watch the maelstrom of combatants from behind the Humvee after the three BoDex security men took off toward the resort, not sure if he should jump into the fight. He finally decided to sit tight, not ready to gamble his life that the Centurions could differentiate between ally and enemy in the heat of a fast-moving battle. That’s when he noticed the Black Hawk’s main rotor blades picking up speed.

  “Damn,” Cummings muttered. He hadn’t planned on them getting the helicopter off the ground in time to use it to defend themselves.

  Black leaped out of the way as a Centurion charged. Its claws sliced through his shirt, leaving a series of deep gashes in his upper arm, not the first injuries he and Collins had suffered. Black fired a shot from his SIG, but the Centurion was gone.

  They were almost to the woods when Black heard the engines of the UH-60 start up. Schmidt was leaving them! With the helicopter gone and their route to the Humvee cut off, their only chance of survival would be to make it to the forest.

  “Collins! Break for the woods!” Black bellowed. Both men ran as fast as they could, the rampaging Centurions hot on their heels.

  When it came to fighting Alpha, fate saw to it that Ruiz drew the proverbial short straw. The biggest of the creatures had cut him off from both the helicopter and the Humvee, leaving him nowhere to run. All he had was a handgun and no spare ammunition. There had been no time to properly gear up after they overpowered the BoDex security team and took their weapons back. The Centurions’ attack had come that quickly.

  A chill ran through Ruiz as he heard the Black Hawk engines spooling up. “Wait! Don’t leave!” he screamed. In that second, Alpha was upon him. The Centurion drove his clawed arm straight into Ruiz’s throat, lifting him off his feet. Ruiz dropped his SIG and pounded the creature with both fists, kicked with both feet. Within seconds, Ruiz, still impaled on the creature’s claws, went limp, his life pooling in the gravel below. Alpha flung the dead body, Ruiz’s arms and legs flopping around.

  Cummings watched from behind the Humvee as the Black Hawk began to rise. Suddenly he saw a Centurion run out from under the helicopter. Farther off he saw two, no, three Centurions chasing two of the men into the woods. That made four. He was short one Centurion.

  “Somehow I knew it would be you, Alpha,” Cummings muttered. “Where are you, big fella?”

  As if in response, something hit the Humvee hard enough to shake it; the rocking of the vehicle’s body knocked Cummings off his knees. He rolled onto his back.

  “What the hell?” he blurted, still lying on the gravel. Liquid dripped from the Humvee’s roof, splattering his fatigues. Cummings sat up with difficulty, his wounded left arm in its sling. He touched two fingers to the wet spot on his clothing. Blood.

  Cummings gazed up as rivulets of red crept over the edge of the roof.

  “Jesus!” He scrambled to his feet as a man’s arm flopped over the side. More blood dribbled down. Peering at the top of the Humvee, Cummings stared into the dead eyes of a man in black. Alpha stood in the distance. The Centurion must have killed the man and thrown the body on top of the Humvee.

  Alpha scrutinized the hovering helicopter.

  “Not yet! I need to get higher,” Schmidt yelled. He was doing his best to get some air under the helicopter, but was struggling to gain altitude. He swung the Black Hawk around 180 degrees.

  “Hurry up before we lose all our guys on the ground!” Perry replied. He crouched in the open doorway, steadying himself. He held a live grenade in his hand and was in a hurry to get rid of it.

  “Don’t drop the grenades straight down!” yelled Schmidt. “Throw ‘em away from us!”

  “No shit!” Perry shouted. He watched as one of the creatures ran in circles under the hovering helicopter. They were only about ten feet off the ground. “Hurry up! One of those bastards is right under us!”

  The Centurion suddenly ran out from under the Black Hawk. Perry watched, thinking it was leaving to go after another man on the ground. But it stopped about twenty feet away, turned, and stared up at him. A chill ran through Perry.

  “Hurry up! I think something’s happening!” he yelled into his mike. The Centurion thrust its massive arms in the air.

  The UH-60 was now almost fifteen feet off the ground and rising faster. Perry was too stunned to utter a word as the creature launched itself through the air at an impossible speed and angle. All thought about the live explosive in his hand was gone as he ducked away to grab his submachine gun off the cabin floor.

  Perry had forgotten he put his right hand through a canvas loop strap hanging from the cabin roof. When he tried to spin away to pick up his MP5N, he was caught in the doorway, held tight by the strap around his wrist. He yanked desperately at the canvas loop, unable to free himself. He screamed, “Schmidt! Break, break!” trying to get the pilot to move the helicopter out of the way of the projectile-like beast, but Schmidt couldn’t see what was happening.

  “Say again!” Schmidt barked into his mike.

  Perry turned back to the open doorway just in time to see the creature dive through the opening, muscle-bound arms and claws aimed at him like two fur-covered bundles of razor-sharp arrows.

  Perry’s mouth opened wide, but no scream came as the Centurion’s claws tore into his midsection and punched through his back, killing him instantly. The man hung dead from the canvas strap while the creature thrashed, trying to free its bloody arms from Perry’s body. The Centurion’s massive weight and momentum violently rocked the UH-60. Schmidt fought to control it, having no idea what had happened in the cabin.

  The grenade slipped from Perry’s lifeless fingers, rolled across the cabin floor and dropped out the opposite door, where it fell straight down.

  The force of the blast drove the tail of the UH-60 up sharply, pushing the helicopter’s nose down. Schmidt valiantly wrestled with the flight controls, but he was unable to raise the nose of the helicopter fast enough to prevent the tips of the main rotor blades from striking the ground. The long rotor blades shattered, the windscreen in front of Schmidt blew inward in an explosion of gravel, dirt, and rotor blade fragments. The Black Hawk leaned over drunkenly and crashed, coming to rest on its left side. The main rotor assembly was still spinning, the damaged rotor blades continuing to break until all that remained were short, jagged stubs. The rotor assembly ground to a halt as the engines died.

  “Sonofabitch!” Cummings stared at the crashed helicopter lying on its side. If he had not witnessed the Centurion leaping up and into the Black Hawk, he would not have believed it. He saw it all and he still didn’t believe it. And then there was the explosion that sent the helicopter nose-down into the ground. He peered over the hood of the Humvee at the wreckage. Alpha stood there, just looking. The Centurion didn’t flinch when the helicopter crashed in front of him.

  Cummings surveyed the battlefield from behind the vehicle. Alpha turned slowly, the creature’s eyes meeting his. Cummings froze.

  Alpha approached the wreckage, stopping when he reached the cargo cabin. The lower half of the Centurion that had killed Perry stuck out from beneath the helicopter, crushed, lifeless. The creature must have been hanging half out of the open door when the UH-60 crashed. Cummings wondered if these creatures were capable of feeling the loss of one of their own.

  Cummings craned his neck
. He heard a noise from the cockpit of the helicopter. Someone was still alive.

  He took one last look at the body lying on the roof of the Humvee, grabbed the man’s arm, and yanked him down. The body landed on its back. He looked at the man’s eviscerated neck.

  With the exception of Alpha, the battlefield was now deserted. Cummings felt it was safe to step out of hiding. He crept toward the wrecked Black Hawk and the Centurion. As he got closer, he was shocked to see the number of bloody bullet wounds on the creature. In spite of all his wounds, Alpha was still functioning and, Cummings sensed, still deadly.

  The creature growled a low warning at Cummings, who immediately stopped. Alpha turned back to the helicopter.

  Although he stood some distance away, Cummings was now able to clearly see the front of the crashed Black Hawk. The pilot was desperately struggling to extricate himself. With the UH-60 resting on its left side, he was hanging by his harness from the right seat, hacking at the restraining straps with a knife. Alpha stood in front of him, staring through the void where the windscreen had been.

  “Get back!” the pilot screamed. “Stay away from me!” The man suddenly displayed a pistol, waving it around.

  “Put the gun down or he’ll charge you!” Cummings yelled. “Put it down now!”

  “Go to hell!” Schmidt shouted back. He fired.

  Even though he didn’t have a clear shot at Alpha, it didn’t matter. Alpha saw the gun and heard the shot. That was all it took. The Centurion rushed the nose of the UH-60 and pounded on it, roaring savagely and grabbing at the wreckage. Whatever debris the enraged creature couldn’t tear apart and throw, he bent and twisted out of the way in his mad attempt to get at the trapped pilot.

  The pilot’s knife finally cut through the harness. Schmidt dropped from his seat, losing his weapon. He struggled frantically to crawl into the cargo cabin, out of reach of the Centurion’s deadly claws. When he squeezed himself between the pilot and copilot seats, he ran right into Perry’s dead body. Alpha’s roar erupted from behind. Schmidt pushed his way further into the cabin, trying to crawl over Perry.