The Lost Army

by Christopher Golden

  “No!” Anastasia cried. “Hellboy, please, you’ve got to find some way to stop him without killing him.” But she didn’t hold out much hope. The cavern people watched Arun’s change and the impending conflict with amusement. This was entertainment to them.

  Arun landed on top of Hellboy, slavering jaws snapping, thrusting toward his throat.

  “Well, boys, what do we do? I’m leaving it up to you,” Creaghan declared. “If we stay here, in the cave, we might be sitting ducks or we might just survive the whole thing. We lay down, quiet as a mouse, they might never know we’re here.”

  He scanned the small cave quickly, meeting each man’s eyes.

  “Quickly now, we don’t have time for much consideration,” he urged. “Any minute, those dead soldiers will reach this cave. Maybe they’ll come in, and maybe they won’t. But it will take away our choice as to whether we help Shapiro and his men or not.”

  One by one, the men glanced at Agent Rickman, obviously expecting him to speak for them. After a moment, Rickman lifted his head and stared at Creaghan.

  “I don’t want to die, Captain,” he said. “Neither do the rest of us, I suppose. But there are British soldiers down there, sir. The Americans and Egyptians deserve saving too, I guess, but if I sat back and let British soldiers die without trying to warn them, I don’t think I could ever look in the mirror again.”

  Creaghan studied his men. They all nodded, some mumbling encouragement.

  “It’s unanimous then?” he asked.

  “It may be suicide,” a man named Baker replied, “but it’s unanimous all right.”

  Culpepper’s boots slapped the tunnel floor as he ran down toward them, toward the cave. “Sir! We have maybe a minute, probably less, and those soldiers will be upon us. If we’re going, we have to go now!” he cried.

  Creaghan saw the fear and desperation in Culpepper’s eyes, and wondered with great interest if his men could see the fear in his own.

  “Let’s go, then,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

  Without any further signal, the seven MI5 agents followed their Captain out through the tunnel and onto the open hillside. The sandstorm whipped around them and Creaghan couldn’t imagine what it must be like on the open desert. On the other hand, he thought, the open desert might have been preferable to their current location.

  He turned and glanced up the hill. No more than one hundred yards away, the line of dead soldiers continued their descent. Flesh hung in ribbons from their bones, flayed by the sandstorm and by time, perhaps from a ghoulish resurrection that even now Creaghan began to picture in his head. He dismissed those thoughts.

  “Captain!” someone cried in the storm.

  Creaghan squinted, peering through the veil of flying sand.

  “We got lucky!” Agent Rickman shouted to him.

  He was standing by one of the jeeps. Both of the vehicles stood where they had been left. Creaghan knew they were lucky indeed. He’d thought for sure that, parked at an angle on the hillside, the jeeps would have long since been blown over and rolled down into the oasis.

  “Let’s not waste our good fortune!” he called.

  As quickly as they could, Creaghan and his men climbed into the jeeps. As he pointed his jeep’s nose down toward the oasis, Creaghan worried momentarily that they might get lost in the storm and drive into an open cave mouth. But there was nothing to be done for it.

  Behind them, the army quickened its pace. The dead were on the march.

  The jackal-man that had once been Arun Lahiri, professor of history, drove its snout again and again at Hellboy’s throat. He held the beast back, but only barely. While Arun had been a small man, of little strength, the jackal was phenomenally strong. It had knocked Hellboy down without any problem, put him on the defensive in an instant.

  But it was time to turn the tables. Hellboy solidified his grip on the jackal-man’s throat, pushed it back, and slammed his stone fist into its face. There was a crack, a noise Hellboy recognized from experience as the sound of bone breaking. Though he was fighting a creature that had been a friend not long ago, though Anastasia had pleaded with him not to harm Arun, he could not help but feel a sense of satisfaction at that sound.

  The jackal whimpered and staggered back on its deformed hind legs. It was not a man, not a jackal. It was nothing nature had ever intended to exist. A tiny, niggling thought wormed its way into Hellboy’s brain, a thought which threatened to compare him to the jackal-man. He denied it. The jackal-man was savage. Hellboy was, if nothing else, civilized.

  When the jackal came at him again, Hellboy was ready. His own tail bobbed as he dodged to one side and brought his left hand down on the yapping creature’s head again. The broken bones in the jackal’s face must have grated together painfully, for it cried out in agony and despair.

  “Hellboy, please!” Anastasia cried.

  There was so much distress in her voice, that he turned to face her.

  “I’m trying,” he said. “But it’s not like this fight was my idea!”

  Even as he turned, he discovered that the jackal had recovered more rapidly than he expected. Its teeth clamped onto his left arm, tearing flesh but not sinking too deeply. Times like this, he thought, almost made up for having leathery red hide for skin.

  With his stone hand, he gripped the jackal around its neck. He couldn’t pry its jaws apart just with one hand, but he could choke it until it had to let go. His fingers tightened, and the strength of its bite lessened.

  “Back off, Fido!” he roared.

  The jackal let go, and Hellboy tossed it toward a group of cavern people gathered around to watch the spectacle as if it were their own Roman forum. In a way, he supposed it was. But he’d be damned if he was going to be put on display like some sideshow attraction. He wasn’t about to perform for Hazred’s subterranean freak show.

  The cavern people scattered as the jackal got to its feet once more.

  “Down, boy!” Hellboy snapped, then sighed. “There’s never a rolled-up newspaper around when you need one.”

  He crouched low, his hooves wide apart, preparing for the jackal’s latest attack. The only hope he could see that he might stop Arun without killing him was to cut off the jackal-man’s air supply just enough to knock him unconscious.

  But the jackal was faster than it looked. Hellboy heard Hazred laughing both in his head, and in the cavern. The mocking sounds echoed in the vast underground complex. Then the jackal slammed into his legs and lower torso, and Hellboy felt himself going over once more.

  “Damn!” he cursed as he fell backwards, the jackal on top of him, snapping and yapping once more.

  He braced himself to hit the stone floor. But did not. Hellboy fell past the level of the cavern floor. The green light flared around him and he knew, then, what had happened.

  A fraction of a second before they hit the water, Hellboy inhaled.

  The green-tinted pool slapped his back hard, and water shot up on either side of them as they splashed down. Hellboy hadn’t gotten much of a breath, but he held out the small hope that the jackal might have gotten even less.

  The tablet Hellboy had found in the oasis lake tumbled from inside the linen shirt the jackal-man still wore. Nine inches high and four wide, it was heavier than it looked, but it fell slowly through the water, end over end, until it came to rest at the bottom of the pool. Hellboy saw it, but could not have gone after it even if he had wanted to.

  As they struggled, Hellboy could see a warren of tunnels under water, leading away from the pool. One even seemed to go up, and that was where the green light actually emanated from. It was nearly blinding in its brightness when he stared directly at it.

  He blinked.

  The jackal tore into his shoulder.

  Furious, he heaved his fist at the jackal’s body and shoulders again and again. He pummeled the creature with every ounce of the rage he’d been holding in to preserve Anastasia’s life.

  Put simply, for those few moments, Hellboy los
t his temper. It was a common enough occurrence, given the right circumstances. And after seeing what Hazred did to Lady Catherine and her people, and knowing what he planned . . . it was too much.

  Then he stopped. It was Arun, after all. Somewhere under that fur, and those fangs, was a human being. Annoying, perhaps, but not deserving of what had happened to him. Hellboy was glad they were in the water. It had slowed his punches, hindered him enough that he did not think he had done lethal damage to the creature.

  Running out of air, he shoved the jackal-man away with his hooves and whipped his tail behind him. With broad strokes, he began to haul himself to the surface. He had not realized they were so deep.

  Clawed hands grabbed his tail, pulled him back. His breath began to run out, his chest tightening. He had to reach the surface, or he would drown. Though it was rarely useful, Hellboy found a use for his tail now that it was causing him such pain. With incredible power, he whipped it back and forth in the water, the jackal hanging on with its jaws clamped on Hellboy’s flesh.

  After a few moments, the jackal’s jaws slackened and shook loose.

  Hellboy surged upward, breached the surface of the pool and sucked in vast lungfuls of air.

  He turned to deal with the jackal’s latest attack. But none was forthcoming. The hirsute body of the beast-man floated idly beneath the surface, slowly rising through the green-lit water.

  “Oh, damn it,” he whispered. “Oh, no.”

  Hellboy looked up and saw the stricken look on Anastasia’s face.

  “’Stasia, I’m sorry,” he said. “I tried not to . . .”

  She nodded, but wouldn’t look at him. She understood. She knew him too well not to. But that didn’t make it any easier for her.

  Hazred stepped forward from the gathered spectators and motioned to the guards.

  “Take them, now,” the sorceror said. “It is almost time.”

  “So much for your hospitality, buddy,” Hellboy sneered. “The Plaza this ain’t.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  —

  The clearing was standing room only. Colonel Shapiro was from Cincinnati, and remembered all too well what had happened to eleven unfortunate concertgoers trying to get into a Who concert. The poor bastards were trampled. Too many people crammed in too tightly, trying to get through the same door.

  This wasn’t at all the same thing, but that was the analogy that came into his head. That one and the old saying, “stacked up like cordwood.” All around the clearing, the men in his command jostled against one another, some cursing, some joking and laughing. Even those who crowded into the back of the troop carriers, taking turns getting out of the driving wind and sand, were unruly. He was tempted to call them on their behavior, but now was no time to try to force order upon them. Chaos was the rule, that day.

  A day that was quickly waning. With the sandstorm effectively blotting out the sun but for errant rays that strained to reach the ground, it was already quite dark. But even that meager light seemed to be dimming. Afternoon faded into evening.

  Shapiro sat on the turret of a tank, surveying the clearing as best he could while shielding his eyes from the sand. It was much easier to see down among the trees, he’d found, and was bitterly grateful for the advice of that arrogant MI5 man, Creaghan. If not for him, they might not have taken cover. Shapiro didn’t want to think of it, nor of the men who had not made it to cover.

  There would be time enough for recriminations later.

  After the gore they’d found strewn among the trees on one side of the clearing — thankfully the wind was driving the stink of death in the opposite direction, for the most part — Shapiro wanted badly to talk to Creaghan, find out what MI5 were really doing there. But there might never be another chance for that conversation. They hadn’t seen Creaghan down in the oasis, and the Colonel wasn’t at all sure they would ever see him, or his men, again.

  The wind battered his eardrums until everything became white noise, yet out of that cacophony, one sound rose and crystallized. A man, shouting his name. The Colonel turned, and saw two men scrambling across the top of a troop carrier, down into a jeep, and then onto the top of the tank where he was perched. The vehicles were linked in a classic wagon circle, keeping the elements out.

  When the men reached him, they still had to shout to be heard.

  “Colonel!” the lead man barked. His name was Major Dawson, one of the higher-ranking Brits in Shapiro’s command. “We’ve got company!”

  “What’s that?” Shapiro asked, squinting and shouting back. “What did you say?”

  “We’ve got company!” the man repeated. This time Shapiro understood him just fine. “An advancing army. Thousands of them!”

  Colonel Shapiro narrowed his eyes and looked at Bryan Dawson as if he were out of his mind. He didn’t want to look at the Major that way, particularly since the young man had taken command of the British troops now that Colonel Williams had been lost in the storm. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help himself.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he cried.

  Dawson repeated himself. Shapiro stared at him. Finally, he summoned the energy to shout one word. “Thousands?”

  Dawson nodded. Shapiro’s mind was racing with thoughts he didn’t want to be thinking. Far too many to be stragglers from his own troops. Thousands. His troops, American, British, and Egyptian, had not even made it over the edge of the oasis in time to be shielded from the storm. Out in the open desert, they had probably all died. Suffocated by the wind, torn at by the driving sand . . . eroded.

  How could a man, never mind thousands of men, an entire army, have come through that storm?

  “Libyans?” he yelled.

  Dawson shrugged, wincing under the onslaught of sand. It didn’t make any sense to him either.

  “Sir!” the man with Dawson cried, and pointed out of the clearing, along the path the tanks had bulldozed through the trees.

  A jeep — two jeeps — were lurching over shattered tree limbs and navigating the stumps, coming straight for them. Dawson drew his weapon immediately. The other man wore an SA-80 across his back, and he swung it forward in one smooth movement, which Shapiro envied. He wished his own men were that fast.

  The jeeps had gotten a lot of other attention now. Perhaps two dozen weapons were pointed in the direction of the advancing vehicles. Nobody fired. Most of them looked up to Shapiro, waiting for his signal to fire. Others merely waited. Thus far, none of them knew about the advancing army.

  Shapiro glanced at Dawson, eyebrows raised.

  “They were all on foot, sir, as far as I could tell!” Dawson cried. “And much farther away. I don’t know who . . .”

  The rest of the Major’s words were taken by the wind, but Colonel Shapiro had already turned back to look at the advancing jeeps. He could make out the passengers now. Four per vehicle, it looked like.

  “Creaghan,” he muttered to himself, voice colored with just a little bit of wonder. Not quite astonishment, but in the neighborhood. Colonel Shapiro scrambled forward on the tank turret and slid over the edge. He dropped down directly in the path of the pair of jeeps. Seconds later, the lead vehicle, with Creaghan at the wheel, rumbled to a halt several yards from where he stood.

  The MI5 man jumped out and ran to greet the Colonel. Shapiro was smiling, actually glad to see the man had lived despite their previous animosity. But when he saw the look of panic on Creaghan’s face, he recalled Dawson’s report. An advancing army. What the hell was going on around here, he wanted to know. And whose remains had been hanging in the trees when they arrived, now nearly gone, torn away and buried somewhere by the storm?

  “Creaghan, we’ve got a . . . ,” he began, but Creaghan wasn’t waiting. Creaghan wasn’t even looking at the Colonel. He was looking past him, at the tank, and the circle of vehicles in the clearing.

  “Jesus!” Creaghan shouted. “This is bloody suicide! But there’s no time for . . . all right, listen!”

  He rou
nded on Shapiro, the two officers eye to eye. Shapiro thought the Captain had lost his mind, but with an unknown enemy on the march, there wasn’t time to investigate.

  “Captain, I’d advise you and your men to take cover!” Shapiro shouted over the howling gale.

  “Are there any openings in your circle?” Captain Creaghan demanded. “Any holes in the blockade?”

  Shapiro pointed to his left, past the tank and a troop carrier, to indicate that in that direction, there was a gap in their defensive circle. Creaghan turned and motioned to the rear jeep to follow along outside the line of vehicles. The jeep bumped over two thin, downed trees and tore open a tire on a stump. The tire fell flat instantly, but the jeep rolled on. Colonel Shapiro saw the same desperate expressions on Creaghan’s men that the Captain himself wore.

  “Captain, I . . . ,” he began, but once more Creaghan cut him off.

  The MI5 officer stepped closer to the American Colonel, close enough to inhale his breath, if it weren’t for the storm. He shouted, and at that proximity, Shapiro heard every word.

  “Listen quickly, and maybe a miracle will happen!” he roared. “You know Hellboy’s reputation. You know what he does! Accept it now, or we’re dead.”

  That last was almost a question, and Shapiro shrugged in response to indicate that he was noncommittal, but that Creaghan should continue.

  “You Americans always talk about the Alamo,” Creaghan yelled. “Here’s your own personal Alamo, Colonel. Get all your men on and behind those vehicles with their weapons ready. Turn the tank turrets out. We’ve got a killing circle, quickly closing in. Nearly fifty thousand men if I’m correct.”

  Shapiro blanched. “Fifty thousand? We don’t have a chance! What are they, Libyans?”

  Creaghan’s eyes narrowed. “No, Persians!”

  “What? There aren’t any more Persians, you lunatic!” Shapiro shouted.

  “Look here, we have one chance!” Creaghan told him. “They don’t have any projectile weapons! No guns! Just swords, axes, and the like. If we can hold out, hold the circle, we might survive. But you can’t take any prisoners, Colonel, and they won’t surrender. You’ve got to destroy them all!”