Age of Blood

by Weston Ochse

  “Hoover,” Walker said in a low voice.

  The dog padded over, wearing a rakish smile and half a gallon of blood. Together they cleared the remaining rooms, finding them empty.

  The entire team met back at the stairs just as all hell broke loose on their coms.

  “Ramon—he’s back,” J.J. screamed. “And there are others! They’re changing … they’re—”

  “What the fuck?” came the Draganflyer operator, now witness to something that would require a nondisclosure agreement and a week of debriefing.

  Holmes linked the team into the surveillance feed. They watched from the vantage of a hovering Draganflyer as the bodies of Ramon and two other men in front of the asylum remolded, bones snapping, hair shooting across skin, mouths lengthening and fangs descending. But what came next surprised the SEALs.

  Instead of turning and converging on the asylum together, the three skinwalkers launched themselves at each other. Then Walker saw it. Not each against the others, but two on one. The two slightly smaller and lighter-haired skinwalkers were attacking Ramon, who rose on his hind legs, much like a human, and slashed one of his assailants across the face.

  “What do I do?” J.J. asked breathlessly.

  “Nothing,” Holmes said.

  Walker agreed. Ramon wasn’t one of them. It might be because he was a born traitor and an assassin, either of which shared qualities with the lowest examples of humanity. How could the SEALs trust someone whose loyalty came from being a traitor to someone else? It just didn’t feel right. And even as he thought it, Walker added to himself that it was more than the feelings generated by the man’s supernatural ability to walk in the skin of a Mexican gray wolf.

  One of the smaller skinwalkers circled around behind Ramon and leaped on the back of his neck, trying to bite down and crush the spine with his massive human-wolf-beast jaws. But Ramon, who already had one talon-tipped fist around the neck of the other skinwalker, grabbed the creature on his back and flung him bodily over his head and onto the ground.

  The skinwalker landed, stunned. Ramon brought both hands to bear on the skinwalker in front of him. He adjusted his grip from the neck and placed both hands on the side of the beast’s head. Even from the top down vantage of the remote-controlled helicopter, Walker saw the talons pierce the skin and skull of the smaller skinwalker. They all then watched as Ramon’s muscles bunched impressively and in one quick move, he snapped the neck of the beast. But it didn’t stop there. Ramon roared into the sky, the sound carrying both through the feed from the Draganflyer as well as in real time, echoing up the stairs. Then he twisted harder, ripping the head from the body. Blood exploded from the force of the manual decapitation.

  The second smaller skinwalker had made it to his feet, but instead of fighting, he fled, hunched over and afraid.

  Ramon roared after it, shaking the head of the first skinwalker, then hurling it after the creature who wouldn’t dare face him.

  Yank shifted nervously.

  “Steady,” Laws said.

  “What if it comes up the stairs?” Yank asked.

  “Then we kill it,” Holmes said.

  Yank nodded. “Good.”

  Ramon turned toward the asylum. His arms hung at his sides, each talon seemingly longer as it dripped blood. His head was down and his eyes and mouth were hidden. Walker remembered a cover of a Golden Age Batman that had a similar creature in a similar position, shrouded in shadow, but somehow darker than the darkness.

  Then someone from inside opened fire. The camera on the Draganflyer caught several muzzle flashes coming from the open door to the asylum. Los Desollados had finally decided they were tired of all the noise coming from outside.

  The rounds caught Ramon in the chest but had little effect other than to knock him backwards.

  “On me, Triple Six,” Holmes commanded.

  He moved downstairs and the others followed, stacking down. They surprised three beegees wearing other people’s skin who were converging on the stairs, looking down as if trying to figure out what someone could be firing on. The beegees should have been looking up, because the stack of SEALs didn’t even pause as they put rounds into the men, sending them crashing to the floor before they knew what hit them.

  As they approached the first floor landing, they saw four beegees, two barely wearing any skin, alternating fire at Ramon. Holmes ignored them and moved down the left hall. The others followed suit.

  “J.J., take them out,” Holmes said.

  “Do I have to? I’m having fun watching them try and figure out why their rounds aren’t working.”

  “Just do it.”

  The sounds of the automatic weapons fire faltered as Walker’s Stoner opened up from where J.J. was situated on the roof.

  Triple Six stopped at the door to the room that held the remaining prone form. On the count of three, Laws kicked it in and the SEALs charged inside. The thing on the floor was a man, his own leprosotic flesh revealing muscle, bone, and in one place on his arm, tendon. He didn’t need a suit to be a leper. He was a leper.

  He sat up and growled and Holmes put a single round through his head. The beegee fell back on his pillow.

  “What now?” Laws asked.

  “We search the whole fucking place until we find something,” Holmes said.

  They moved out of the room and were confronted by an immense skinwalker. Walker remembered now—Batman #255. Moon of the Wolf.

  The SEALs snapped their weapons up and aimed them into the face of the great beast. Hoover stood her ground and growled. The beast was easily a full head and shoulders taller than Holmes, the largest member of Triple Six. J.J.’s words echoed through Walker’s head. Having fun watching them try and figure out why their rounds aren’t working. Yeah, the rounds wouldn’t work. They were made of lead, not silver. It seemed that some of the legends were true. He thought of his grenades and his knife and began devising a plan to slice and stuff, hoping that silver or not, an internal explosion of the TNT sort might do enough damage.

  Thankfully he didn’t have to get that desperate.

  Unfazed by their weapons pointing at his head, the skinwalker pointed toward the floor. “Down,” it said in a voice that came from the roots of the earth.

  Holmes stared at the floor. “Damn. The basement.”

  31

  ASYLUM BASEMENT.

  Yank gaped into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. His throat was dry enough so that he had to repeatedly swallow to keep his airway open, but the skin beneath his body armor was soaked with sweat. Room clearing a building full of hajjis was one thing, but the continual aromatic and visual affront of the men in other people’s skins was something else entirely. He’d seen bodies blown apart, shot, knifed, gutted, hit with cars, trucks, trains, and even a tank. He’d become used to the multiple sensories of death. He’d reached the point where it was funny, in that gallows humor way only those in the military can appreciate. But there was nothing funny about someone walking around in another person’s skin. Laws had tried to explain to him that it was an homage to being reborn, like a snake shedding its skin, but the difference remained that a snake shed its own skin and not some other snake’s.

  Of course, what was completely strange was that he was more concerned about the propriety of skin ownership than he was about the presence of a werewolf among them. A werewolf. Teeth. Hair. Tail. Howling at the moon. He felt himself coming to terms with the idea that such things were ordinary for Triple Six. Still, he was happy the wolf hadn’t joined them.

  “Let’s go. And remember, we’re live,” Holmes said, meaning viewers from Dam Neck to Coronado to the White House could be tuning into this episode of SEAL Team 666 Kills Monsters.

  Yank was first, followed by Laws, Holmes, and Walker. The sniper was last because of the loss of his body armor. Holmes had initially ordered him to remain upstairs, then changed his mind and placed him at the back of the stack. So in the back of Yank’s mind was the reality that if there was danger, he had t
o put himself between whatever it was and his team member if it came down to it.

  Halfway down, he paused. “Switching to infrared.” Yank’s vision suddenly flipped to a world of contrasting grays. The bottom of the stairs was still cloaked in darkness, but as he switched on his helmet IR light, it added texture and depth to the image so the different levels of black were discernible.

  He continued moving, stepping with his toe and letting the heel of the same foot down before taking another step, reducing the potential for creaks and groans from the aged wood of the stairs. Three steps from the bottom he stopped, holding up his left fist. Almost to the landing, he could see that the stairs opened to the right. To the left was a wall.

  Yank let his HK hang on its sling and dug into his right cargo pocket. He brought forth a rolled metal tube. He screwed one end into his QuadEye, and held the other end in front of him. He depressed a switch on the night vision device and his vision changed from the ninety-five-degree image of the landing to a much more limited fish-eye view of the same. He stepped down and fed the metal tube around the corner, bending it to allow it to see around the angle. An image crystallized through his QuadEye, broadcast to all members of Triple Six and their external viewers, of a room with no furniture. He swept the camera back and forth to allow him to take in the entire area. For all intents and purposes it appeared to be empty … except that every now and then he’d catch a hint of movement. On each occasion, he tried to find it again, but it was as if whatever he was seeing knew he was looking and was ducking just out of sight.

  “Do you see it?” Laws asked.

  “Something, but I can’t make it out,” Yank whispered, aware of his closeness to the source of their concern.

  He moved the device in a star-shaped pattern and was able to make out a figure far across the room, facing him. Once he caught the image, he stopped, pinning it through the darkness. The image didn’t seem to be moving at all now, and was just standing there with impossibly long arms, twice the length of its legs and an angular monkey-like face with fangs. Yank wondered if the creature could see him. Then the image across the room did something unexpected. It reached out, grabbed the device, and tugged it. How could it reach all the way across the room? Yank didn’t understand, unless it wasn’t across the room, and instead right in front of the—

  His head slammed against the wall as the creature grabbed the mechanism and pulled. Yank let go and wrapped his hands around his head to keep the QuadEye from being torn free, or worse, his head going with it.

  “The fuck!” he yelled.

  “Dude!” Laws shouted.

  “Homunculus!” Walker cried.

  Once, twice, three times Yank’s head hammered against the wall before he was able to twist the device free from his QuadEye. The image of the creature disappeared with the feed and the SEALs keyed back true-life IR.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Holmes commanded. “Walker and Yank take high. Laws and I will take low. Hoover will attack from the ground. And for God’s sake, no one shoot the dog.”

  “But there’s just one,” Yank said, tried to shake the butterflies free from his noggin.

  “There’s never just one,” Walker said.

  “Then what are they?” Yank asked.

  “Fucking Freddy-Krueger-Chucky-Stretch-Armstrong serial killers, Yank,” Laws whispered. “Watch your field of fire and shoot them. Shoot them all.”

  Yank’s already bad feelings crescendoed as he felt the others’ anxiety. They hadn’t been worried about the leprosos, nor had they been worried about the werewolf, but these homo-whatever-they-were-called creatures unnerved the hell out of them. He didn’t have time to ask and he figured he wouldn’t have to. After all, he was about to be in the shit.

  Holmes counted to three then ordered, “Ready … move!”

  Yank and Laws spun around the corner, one high and one low, sighting through their QuadEyes into an IR-lit darkness. The stark outlines of basement walls shot into geometric patterns. A table rested against one wall. But the homunculi were nowhere in sight. A shadow detailed a turn of the basement, promising the possibility of something farther in.

  “Clear,” Walker said.

  “Moving.” Laws stepped with him as they moved in a hurried crouch to the next corner.

  Laws ducked his head around the corner for a split second, then reared back. “Seven.”

  “Of them?” Holmes asked.

  “Roger. All at floor level.”

  Walker could feel his breath come quicker behind his mask. He became acutely aware of his missing armor plate and remembered how the homunculi had chowed down on the FBI agent in a similar basement beneath a certain Chinese restaurant in Imperial Beach.

  “Ready…,” Holmes said. “Go!”

  All four SEALs spun around the corner, ready to fire—only to find an empty room. They adjusted their fields of fire, barrels traversing, trying to find a target. But there was nothing. It was as if there had never been anything there at all.

  Walker felt a tingling sensation.

  Hoover growled and crept with them.

  The rectangular room ran about ten meters, then doglegged to the right. There was no evidence of a way out until the wall to their left suddenly jerked aside. Little homunculi poured out of the opening with Olympic speed.

  Hoover leaped and caught one in midair, jaws around its throat. But even as they fell to the ground, the diminutive creature with the impossibly long arms wrapped its own hands around Hoover’s throat. They rolled, locked in a battle of who could kill who first.

  The SEALs opened fire on the others, their HKs double tapping and missing as often as they found a target.

  Walker felt one wrap around his leg. He brought the butt of the rifle down hard on its head and crushed it. He was barely able to get the barrel back up in time to fire and hit another attacker point blank in the forehead, sending it tumbling backwards.

  Soon the SEALs were back-to-back.

  Hoover joined them, limping, but as badass as ever.

  Walker became aware of a sound as he searched for and fired upon the creatures that moved into his line of sight. He was finally able to tune it in about the same time Holmes ordered Yank to be quiet. The FNG had been chanting in a barely audible way, Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, over and over. Walker grinned beneath his mask, remembering when he too had felt the same way.

  Laws screamed from beside him. Twisted his barrel toward his own leg and fired. Luckily he missed his leg. If he hit anything else, he didn’t know.

  Then there was nothing.

  No movement.

  No sound.

  Nothing except the heavy breathing of four SEALs and a Belgian Malinois. Hoover began sniffing at the bodies.

  “Team, ready,” Holmes commanded.

  Walker eyed the room that had been revealed by the moving wall. Try as he might, he couldn’t plum its depths. He didn’t like it. Although they couldn’t see in, it was entirely possible that whoever or whatever was in the room could see them.

  Laws pulled two flash bangs and tossed them into the room.

  “Eyes,” he said.

  Walker dialed his QuadEye blind until the concussive bangs ate the silence. He returned his sight as the light died and in that moment he saw several figures with weapons, raising them. He grabbed Laws and tumbled to his left.

  “Beegees! Weapons!”

  The men in the room suddenly opened fire.

  Holmes took three rounds in the chest and one in the thigh before he was able to dive clear. Yank had already cleared himself and pulled the team leader the rest of the way, where the SEALs crouched to the left of the opening. Hoover leaped away just as a dozen rounds chewed the pavement where she’d stood.

  Walker pulled two fragmentation grenades from his vest, freed the pins, cooked them off, then tossed them into the room. The detonation was immediate. Two grenades going off at eye level eviscerated sight and sound. The concussion was fifty times greater than the flashbang, the 3.5 o
unces of explosive in the M67 sending the composite pieces of the grenade into the faces and bodies of all who were arrayed before them.

  Walker counted to three, then peeked around the corner. The room dripped with pieces of what used to be the men who’d planned on doing them harm. Chalky smoke and almost-evaporated concrete and wallboard filled the room in a haze, making it almost impossible to see.

  “Light,” Holmes commanded.

  Every SEAL flipped their QuadEye up and locked it in position atop their helmet. Then each switched on the Maglite attached to his helmet and the light attached to his rifle. Eight high-intensity beams pierced the grenade-created gloom, dipping and moving as each SEAL turned to examine the carnage. Red, pink, and even orange pieces of meat dripped from the ceiling and slid down the walls. Torsos and AK-47s from four men lay absolutely demolished in the center of the room. Random boots and hands were scattered around and barely recognizable amidst piles of even more unrecognizable steak-sized pieces.

  No one was hurt except Holmes. The body armor had absorbed the rounds, but one had also wounded his thigh, just missing his armored thigh pad. He bandaged the wound by wrapping gauze directly over it.

  Hoover entered the room and began to sniff at the remains. She moved to a particular pile that had a few fingers, and squatted, leaving a thin trail of urine. When she was finished, she looked back at the team, but before she could receive any direction, she snapped her head forward, planted her feet and growled, low and deep.

  A man stood slowly. He’d been sitting in the back of the room the whole time. Covered in white plaster dust, he appeared to be unscathed, which Walker found incomprehensible. The room had been a damnation alley of shrapnel and supersonic death, and no one could have remained uninjured. Yet here this man stood. Or was it a man? Perhaps he had been hurt. His skin hung in putrid lengths. And it was his skin. Unlike the others who’d clearly been wearing suits, this man, this being, had skin which was as rotten as the skin of the suits.