by Alan Baxter
Seconds passed. He braced himself for another impact. Nothing.
Goggles, weapon.
He turned off the headlights, then climbed out through the driver’s side window, jumping to the ground. He adjusted his NVDs, tilted and swiveled his head in every direction.
There it was. Circling overhead. It started to form a tighter and tighter gyre, centered on Hatcher, spiraling downward.
Holy shit.
Through the night vision, he could see what Ivy was talking about. The creature didn’t look like some giant bat anymore, not exactly. It seemed to have the same form at its core, but its skull was long and hooked, with enormous horns curving into sharp points. Surrounding its body was a burst of snake-like appendages, tentacling outwards and writhing like antennae.
We even have RPGs in floor of the Hummer.
Hatcher launched himself into a low sprint. He looked up as his fingers hooked the latch on the Hummer’s door to see the creature in a dive bomb, wings swept back, rocketing toward him. Before he could get the door open, it flared, slamming its feet into the vehicle, talons digging into the roof. Hatcher felt the latch rip from his hand as the Hummer jumped into the air. With two slaps of its wings the thing lifted the entire carriage off the ground, a feat Hatcher could barely believe he was witnessing. Another flap, then another, until the wheels were fifteen feet over Hatcher’s head.
Hatcher snapped the M4 up, let out three bursts, followed by three more. Aiming was difficult, but he tried, picking areas to target rather than spots. The creature let go and Hatcher flung himself out of the way as the vehicle slammed onto the patch of road, part of it crunching the back of the safari truck, causing the front wheels to pop up and jounce back down.
The thing soared higher, then started to spiral into a dive.
The wings. It didn’t like getting hit in the wings.
In the UV glow of NVDs, Hatcher could see a difference between the upper wings, which seemed to be stiff, flattened arms with joints, and the lower parts, which were flexible, like leather sails. He pictured the way it had curled itself into a ball, using its arms as shields. It wasn’t just protecting its body, it was protecting the soft parts of its wings.
He looked over to the pickup truck, still laying on its side. Maybe.
The thing was swooping toward him again. He fired two more bursts, held his ground until it seemed he could reach out and grab it, then dropped to his back and fired two more. It shot past him and rounded up, banking into a tight turn. Hatcher flipped onto his feet and bolted for the truck, making a show of ditching his rifle.
This better work.
He dove into the bed, felt the creature’s talons rake his back, claws ripping through his shirt and gashing his flesh but unable to grasp. Those feet punched against the cab of the truck, talons smashing the rear glass and puncturing the roof as it clamped down.
Bursts of wind on his back. He felt the truck shift, sensed it break loose from its traction on the ground. The rear of the bed started to hang.
He slid over to the grappling catapult, spinning it around and wedging himself between it and the tailgate. The truck swung beneath him and he felt gravity go negative for an instant, sensed everything below falling away, then the truck swung back and his own weight pressed him down, trying to pin him.
Struggling against the schizophrenic g-forces, he leveled the sight of the catapult at the creature. The thing’s wings would not stay in one place, whipping back and forth, presenting a broad side for just a flash, then disappearing. There would be no perfect shot; at best, it was a Hail Mary. He pulled back the heavy spring on the charge bolt, and tugged the enormous trigger.
The mechanism snapped and the umbrella of hooks shot like a spear. Cable spun out behind it, the reel whirring. The tip tore through the lower part of the left wing, barely.
Barely was good enough.
The creature let out a high-pitched shriek. The sound cut through the ringing in Hatcher’s ears, stabbed at his brain. A second later, the thing dropped the truck. Hatcher tried to brace himself, his body light and swimming. He tucked his head, wrapping it with his arms, and forced all the breath out of his lungs. The truck crashed into the ground.
His next conscious thought was that he was still alive. He could tell by the competing pain, his hip screaming to be heard over the shouting of his ribs, his wrist hollering even louder when he went to move.
He was on the ground. Breathing was a challenge, as every expansion of his ribcage sent shockwaves through his torso. He managed to sit up. The night-vision goggles were askew on his head and he fought through the pain in his wrist to adjust them back over his eyes. The scene tumbled back into perspective when he saw the truck on exploded tires a few feet away. Through the buzzing in his ears he became aware of the whirring of the reel, the cable still letting out.
Then there was a clank, the groan of metal, followed by a vibrating twang, and the truck started to move. Across the ground in fits and starts at first, surging up and crunching down, until soon it wasn’t touching the road anymore, just swinging forward, rising into the night. Dipping, jerking up, dipping, jerking up, penduluming forward, then back.
There wasn’t much time to decide. There were only two choices; go back for Ivy and Zorn, or go after the creature. That thing was too smart, too strong, not to figure out a way to free itself. And if it managed to do that before they could all get to safety, it wouldn’t end well, he was certain of it. There was too much night left.
He scrambled to retrieve the M4. No choice. He had to go after the thing, find a way to kill it. He hurried back to the safari truck, checked the ignition, the visor, the seat, found the keys hanging from the rear-view mirror on a lanyard.
The vehicle started right away, sputtering until he revved it. The transmission clunked into drive and the truck lurched forward and was moving again, doffing the NVDs and using the headlights, and tried to keep the truck from fishtailing as he sped down the road at a far higher speed than he knew was wise.
Over a mile had passed before the truck came into view. Still following the road, still swinging in spasms. Never getting higher than fifteen or twenty feet. He closed the distance, studying the tree shadows of the jungle surrounding him.
It can’t clear the treeline. Or it’s scared to try. It wants an open path.
Hatcher gunned the engine. It whined and he saw the tachometer was practically redlined, but he only needed it to last a few more minutes. Seconds, if he caught a break.
There it was. Up ahead, a curve in the road. He held the accelerator down until the hood of the truck was almost touching the dangling end of the pickup. The front end of the pickup swayed over the hood then down over the road. Hatcher bumped it a few times as he tried to keep pace.
A blink before the turn in the curve Hatcher stomped on the gas, pressing the pedal to the floor as hard as he could. The truck slammed into the pickup. The safari railing smashed through the windshield, stabbing into the upholstery, hooking itself over the dashboard and steering column. Hatcher held the wheel straight, the pain in his wrist howling curses that burned their way up his arm. He felt the front wheels lift even as he held the accelerator down until he threw himself out the door the moment before the truck impacted a tree.
He separated his shoulder on impact and tumbled almost twenty feet over the rocky dirt road. He thought he could hear the cracking of several ribs, but whether he actually did or not didn’t matter, as he knew several were fractured whether he heard them crack or not. He had a hard time finding a part of his body that wasn’t on fire in some way.
No time for a survey of injuries. He struggled to his feet, favoring his left arm. A few of the lights from the safari truck were still on, visible a few yards into the jungle. He took a step and noticed a glint on the ground. The M4. He hefted it, gingerly minimizing the use of his left arm, felt its balance, reseated the magazine and racked another round
into the chamber, just to be sure.
The walk to the truck was excruciating, each step a mix of sizzles and stabs. When he reached it, he saw it was still entangled with the pickup, both of them enmeshed in the foliage. He managed to reach through a broken window and retrieve the goggles. Only one lens still worked. It was cracked, but he was able to see through it after a few adjustments.
He followed the cable from the pickup, fighting his way through the webbed reach of plants and limbs. A couple of hundred feet later, he saw the creature. It was impaled in several spots. It had taken a long, thick bone through the stomach on its way down, and one wing was completely broken. Several other long shards of skeleton – ribs, from the look of them – had pierced it in various places. Hatcher could picture the fall, an accelerated arc swinging it down like a huge sledge hammer, pounding it through the growth. Down into a Garden of Bones.
Through the functioning NVD lens, Hatcher could see the parts of it up close, parts invisible to the naked eye. Tentacled appendages wriggling; a skull overlay that looked like a cadaverous vulture; a serpentine tail.
To his surprise, it moved, not without difficulty, but enough to cause Hatcher to take a step back. The thing looked at him with eyes that burned a strange shade in the monochrome. It opened its beak-like jaws and made a grating, squawking roar, like the death rattle of a thousand souls. Maybe more.
Hatcher leveled the M4 and squeezed the trigger.
No three-round bursts this time. He unloaded the magazine in barely a second, retrieved another, then unloaded that. He seated his final magazine and moved closer. The thing was no longer trying to move, but a series of hisses and snarls were still coming out of it. He positioned himself as close as he could, held his ground as a tentacle rose like it was going to strike, and shoved the barrel into the thing’s mouth.
The sound it made drowned out the shots. Hatcher’s head felt like it was collapsing in on itself. He managed to look through the NVD as he dropped to his knees, saw a glowing phantasm tear itself from the body and rear back, a shape of flame surrounding a creature even larger than the one it had occupied, an enormous crocodilian skull sandwiched between twin spirals of horns. Just as the thing seemed to be reaching for Hatcher, ready to consume him in some horrific embrace, it flashed out of existence, leaving swirls of tiny wisps flickering like embers before they, too, vanished completely.
He lay on the ground for the better part of an hour, drifting in and out of consciousness, not fighting it either way, finally pushing himself to his feet in response to some mental clock going off like an alarm. He winced at the aches and the burns and the stiffness setting in and forced himself to start walking. He followed the dirt road back toward where the encounter had started, walking for around fifteen minutes, every other step forcing him to bite his lip, suck in a shallow breath.
Headlights. One was a high beam, mismatched. He was too exhausted to worry about whose they were. He stood in the middle of the road, let the beams wash over him, barely able to raise an arm to shield his eyes.
The vehicle slowed to a stop, audibly shifted into park. A door opened.
“Hatcher?” Ivy’s voice came from behind the lights. Then his figure cut a shadow. Before Hatcher realized he was that close, he felt a firm but gentle hand take hold of his arm. “Jesus, you look like… what the hell happened?”
The feel of support abruptly caused his legs to give. Ivy helped him to the jeep. He vaguely recognized it as having been part of the caravan parked along the road.
With Ivy’s help, he eased himself into the passenger seat. Zorn was in the back, presumably asleep. Hatcher could make out ragged breathing.
“You’re still kicking, at least,” Ivy said, settling behind the wheel. “Does that mean that thing isn’t going to be a problem?”
“Not for us,” Hatcher said. He tried to adjust himself to find an elusive position of relative comfort. Wasn’t going to happen. “Not tonight.”
“I can’t wait to hear all about it.”
Hatcher wondered how much he could explain, how much he even understood himself. Whether he even dare try to tell Ivy about the Carnates, about demons, about his tainted soul, his battles with the ruling elite of Hell and the civil war that seemed to be raging below. Or whether any of it would make sense if he did. Whether he was even able to understand himself why he was growing increasingly certain this whole thing was part of an even more elaborate plan, a plan within a plan, designed to occupy him, to get him as far away from the States as possible. A giant distraction from something he had no conception of, for reasons he couldn’t begin to imagine.
“In the meantime,” Ivy continued, “I need to get us to the LZ. Extraction is supposed to be at dawn.”
“Don’t bother. There won’t be any.”
“You serious?”
Hatcher leaned back in the seat, closed his eyes. “As a heart attack. The only thing likely to be waiting for us at the extraction point is another group of paramilitary types, all promised a bounty for each kill.”
“So, what, then? Embassy?”
“Not if we can avoid it.” Hatcher opened his eyes, looked around the interior, grimacing with each twist. “There a radio in this thing?”
“Not that I’ve seen.”
“Well, then, that’s our mission, for the moment. Just drive. I think there was a radio in one of the trucks. Two clicks or so ahead.”
Ivy shifted into drive, eased the jeep forward. “Who you gonna radio?”
Hatcher felt the breeze flow over his cheeks and scalp. It stung a bit, and he realized what a mess his face must be, but it was the closest thing to a pleasurable sensation he’d had in a while.
“I know a gal,” he said, inhaling as deeply as his ribs would allow. “Who maybe knows a guy.”
“Then what,” Ivy said.
“Then, we go home. And I track down a certain Fed who thinks he’s about to retire a wealthy man and put him through an interrogation he’ll wake up in cold sweats remembering decades from now. You’re welcome to join me, if you like. But you’d probably be wise to stay out of it and hope they leave you alone.”
Ivy shook his head. “You kidding? I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Good man,” Hatcher said, feeling himself slip into a light doze. “Good man.”
RAID ON WEWELSBERG
Seth Skorkowsky
– A Valducan Story –
31 March, 1945
Bombs erupted in the distance, crackling like popcorn in a kettle. I lifted my gaze, searching for any signs of aircraft moving across the stars. Thousands of silver contrails striped the blackened skies to the north, heading east.
"They gettin' closer?" Dennis Buckland asked beside me. The huge man nervously fingered the flanged, iron mace, Velnepo, at his hip.
I shook my head. "They're keeping their distance. Which means the Americans might be closer than we anticipated." I scanned the horizon, unable to see the castle beyond the treetops. Despite the futility of the endeavor, I searched the shadows across the road for Audrey to no avail. Good.
Dennis peered back across the empty field beside us as if expecting the approaching army. "Shouldn' we move?"
Peter Brown sucked a palmed cigarette, its orange glow welling beneath his closed fingers. He leaned against the car, his calm a complete opposite of Dennis' unease. The black SS uniform fit the American well. The only part of his ensemble that appeared out of place was the sacred axe, Glisuan, tucked at the back of his belt. His chiseled cheekbones, strong jaw, and pale eyes made him look every bit the part of Himmler's elite, although I doubted he would want to hear such a compliment. His brother had died fighting the Nazis in Italy. "I told you we should have setup closer to the castle."
"We keep to the plan," I said, ignoring Peter's remark.
We waited in silence. The bombs slowed and finally ceased, leaving only the soun
ds of crickets, breeze-rustled leaves, and the occasional artillery shell thundering in the distance.
Footsteps hurried up the road toward us. "Lady Meadows," Richard Simon said, his wool coat flapping behind him. "They're coming."
I straightened at once. "Everyone in position." My hand moved to Feuertod at my hip, squeezing the grip to calm my worn nerves. If our plan didn't succeed, the holy weapons stolen by the Third Reich might be lost forever. They were mankind's only defense against the demonic forces bent to destroy us all. While the sacred rapier could not speak, I felt his soothing comfort nonetheless. Like the war at large, only one outcome was acceptable here. Victory. Doubt was a luxury I could not afford.
Richard slowed as he neared. His bronze, Celtic sword, Saighnean, hung from his shoulder like a slung rifle. His beakish nose and small chin made him appear almost child-like beneath the flared black helmet. Appearances aside, he was one of the most capable Valducan knights I'd ever known.
Peter pulled one final draw from his cigarette before dropping and grinding it out beneath his boot. He clicked on a torch and shined it under the car's open bonnet, muttering angry curses as if the vehicle were truly broken and our approaching audience could actually see him.
The tell-tale growl of a motorcycle rumbled ahead, growing louder. It rounded the bend, its single lamp masked beneath a hood, allowing only a sliver of white light. A blocky sidecar bounced at its right like an ill-sized dance partner, its mounted machinegun reminiscent of a knight's lance. A moment later, a large truck followed, its own lights darkened.
On with the show. I stepped forward, a leather attaché clutched to my chest.
The motorcycle slowed as we came into view, our car blocking the road. The soldier in the sidecar swiveled the machinegun us at us.
"Don't shoot!" Dennis shouted, raising one hand to block the light from his eyes.
Richard stepped up beside him, palms open.
The truck's brakes whined to a halt behind the motorcycle and its lamps flipped on, bathing us in light. The machine gunner appeared to relax his grip as he noticed our black SS uniforms.