by Weston Ochse
Then Laws did something completely unexpected. He leaped from the relative safety of his perch and embraced the butterfly in midair. And Laws looked horrible. All he had on were UDT shorts, Vibram toe shoes, and blood. He grabbed the obsidian butterfly around its neck. The butterfly brought up birdlike feet and tried to claw him away, but Laws twisted around until his legs were wrapped around the creature’s midsection.
The butterfly madly beat its wings, buffeting Laws in the face with nothing more than wind.
Laws brought the pistol up and fired point-blank into the creature’s mouth.
All that happened was the butterfly fell a few feet, then caught itself.
Laws almost lost his grip. He had to let his pistol fall or else join it in a similar fate.
But it was clear that the butterfly couldn’t carry both of them. It was inexorably sinking toward the earth, the extra weight pulling it down.
All the while, Walker had been systematically taking out those Zetas arrayed around the pyramid, as well as the men in robes. They’d almost ceased firing back in favor of trying to find places to hide. Several had stacked up the bodies of the dead to form a barrier. Then came an explosive round that tore a head-sized hole through the meat, bone, and muscle of a dead Zeta middleman, revealing more of the same, huddling behind the body.
On the very top stood two of the leper sorcerers, along with Ramon and the senator. They were protected by some sort of force field.
Now that he had the lay of the land, it was time to move to help Laws. While no one was watching him, Yank launched himself, running as fast as he could with his rib biting into his body with every jolting step. He was right there as the obsidian butterfly fell heavily to the earth, its legs buckling beneath it.
Yank took a wide stance, took aim at the creature’s back, and fired. Five parabellum rounds hit and ricocheted off. He fired three at the Damascus-curved wings and the same thing happened. Fuck! How was he going to make the creature stop?
It twirled drunkenly. Laws was refusing to let go, his weight keeping it off-balance.
Yank almost laughed at the image of Laws hanging on to the monster’s chest like a baby in a harness. But the evil reality of the obsidian butterfly stilled any hilarity. It glared at him with white glowing eyes. Yank felt the gaze like a weight and wanted to run, jump away, do anything to be free from it. But he forced himself to hold fast.
Beneath the eyes was a proboscis. Even as he watched, a spiked tongue unrolled and found the back of Laws’s neck. The tongue rose as if it were its own creature, then dove, its spiked end embedding itself into Laws. The SEAL in turn flung out both of his arms, releasing the creature. Laws fell to his knees. His head tilted forward and rested against the abdomen of the creature as it sucked greedily from his spine.
Yank pulled a colored smoke grenade and tossed it toward the creature. Then he opened fire, aiming for the tongue. By some miracle he hit it. The obsidian butterfly screamed, pushed aside Laws, who still had a piece of tongue undulating from his neck like a giant leech, and stormed toward Yank.
The SEAL emptied his pistol, then turned and fled. He felt rather than heard the beating of its wings as it flung itself into the air after him. He threw himself to the earth and turned over. The creature passed above him, and as it did, a wing came down, the edge slicing his shoulder and leaving an inch-deep furrow.
As the creature landed a few feet away, Yank rolled to his feet and ran into the now billowing smoke. He loaded his 9mm as he ran, then skidded to a stop. He turned just in time to get the butterfly’s taloned feet in the chest. Instead of knocking him over, it grabbed him and pulled him up into the air.
The words OH MY GOD became the only ones he knew as he rose and rose toward the ceiling. He had no doubt that the creature would let him go, so he did the only thing he could think of. He shoved his pistol into his armor and grabbed one of its legs with his left hand. It felt like a chicken foot, only a hundred times the size. With his right hand, he reached down and pulled free his belt. He wrapped it several times around the leg, and made a simple knot.
Then he had an idea.
In the universe of ideas there are good ideas, bad ideas, insane ideas, wondrous ideas, ideas that can change the way people do things and think, and ideas that fall flat, their potential forever unknown. This was none of those. This was the singular sort of idea known as an IF YOU DO THIS YOU WILL FUCKING DIE, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING? idea.
Yank pulled an M67 fragmentation grenade from his pouch. He glanced below him and saw that he was now about a hundred feet in the air. He wedged the grenade into the belt, then tugged a length of 550 cord from his cargo pocket and tied it around the bottom of the butterfly’s foot. Finally, he wrapped it several times around his right hand. As he reached up to pull the pin on the grenade, he felt the bird let him go. But he was still holding on. So with a moment to spare, he pulled the pin, then dropped.
The ground began to rush up to meet him. He reached the end if the cord and held on as it tightened; then his shoulder jerked free from its socket. He screamed, but the sound was obliterated by the grenade’s explosion. A wave of pressure shoved him to the cavern floor and all breath left him. Pain blossomed into a nuclear firestorm, and then all went black.
… someone was screaming.
Blackness.
… he recognized his own voice.
Blackness.
… he staggered to his feet.
Blackness.
… his back was afire with pain.
Blackness.
… the obsidian butterfly crashed to the cavern floor.
Blackness.
… someone was rifling through his vest. They pulled something free. Laws fell on top of him. Then came another explosion. Then more blackness.
59
CHUPACABRA PILE.
Holmes watched it happen but thought it was all a dream. It had to be. No one would be so stupid as to leap onto a flying monster. But the idea must have been contagious, because another SEAL did it, too. Then the second SEAL, a young, scarred black kid whose name he knew he should remember, exploded a grenade in midair. Then, after the guy who dropped him onto the dead doggies threw himself onto the black kid, Holmes knew he needed to get involved.
SEALs were fucking up everywhere.
Holmes tried to stand, then staggered a little to his left. His left hand was mangled. The last two fingers so broken and twisted he couldn’t make a fist. He wondered how it had happened. He was in the water beside the dead beasts. They smelled of musk and offal. It made him gag as he pushed himself back to his feet. He wore body armor and UDTs. A scrap of neoprene was on each calf, as if he’d been wearing something else before he’d woken up a bruised and battered, semi-naked GI Joe.
Then a memory slammed into him like a sabot fired from the main gun of an M1 Abrams tank. Two SEALs, back-to-back, blind, bodies touching, four arms whirling with knives and pistols, inventing death in the face of unmatched odds. Pain. Glory. Screams. Growls.
He lurched forward and everything snapped into place. Glancing to his left, he spied the Aztec pyramid, men on top of it and men at the base, their attentions competing with what Yank and Laws were doing, as well as Walker, sniping at targets from his hide. Ramon using Senator Withers as a shield on top with two of the leprosos. Men were dead or dying all over the place, indicating that his SEALs had been busy while he’d been drooling in the Land of the Lotus Eaters.
Holmes snatched a length of rebar and staggered toward Laws, whose back was a mass of torn red meat. Getting down on one knee, he checked the two for breathing. Their pulses were strong. He spied the pistol stuck in Yank’s armor and dropped his metal club in exchange for a real weapon. He held it as steady as he could, sighting down the rail as he moved stiff-legged toward the once-terrible creature.
Where it had been tall and lean with beautiful slate-like wings, it was now a broken mass of sculpture. Its legs were completely gone, as was its left wing, which instead of shattering,
had broken off and was stuck in the floor like a giant knife in frozen butter.
Automatic fire opened up from across the chamber. Holmes ducked behind the dead creature, waiting for the impacts, but they never came. He searched and saw hundreds of rounds chewing away the lip of the tunnel where Walker had his sniper site. There had to be a machine gun out there somewhere firing at Walker.
Two grenades arced free from Walker’s hide site and fell toward the source of the gunfire. Although Holmes couldn’t see them from his vantage, he could tell from both explosions that serious damage was done. Even men on the front of the pyramid went down. Holmes opened and closed his mouth, trying to clear his ears from the change in air pressure.
But then he saw another grenade arcing out … this one straight toward him. Holmes opened his mouth to scream, then saw the shape of the grenade. Still, he ducked. The canister grenade fell and rolled.
Good SEAL, Holmes thought. Walker was giving him some concealment to do something rather than stand stupidly in the middle of a battlefield. Holmes spun and moved. His vision swam with the movement.
The grenade began billowing red smoke.
He grabbed Laws and pulled the SEAL to his feet. He was alive and ambulatory, just barely conscious. Yank was moderately better. He was awake, but in incredible pain. That he still had his pouch meant that they might be able to make things better. Holmes dragged Yank upright. Holding on to the both of them, like a clumsy six-legged man, they tripped and fell toward the water. Just as they made it to the pile of dead ’cabra, the gunfire resumed, rounds sizzling into the water right next to them.
With one last heroic push, Holmes got his two SEALs behind the wall of monster flesh and began to check them for wounds. Both had backs made of ground meat. Laws had a strange wound on the back of his neck. Holmes pulled at a piece of what looked like tongue and felt rubbery resistance, like it was a leech or a worm. He jerked it and Laws snapped completely awake.
“What the hell?”
“Keep calm. Daddy’s back.”
“Holmes—you’re alive!”
“No thanks to you.” Holmes reached into Yank’s pouch and was relieved to find the med kit still wrapped. He opened it and grabbed two Fentanyl lollipops. He stuck one in each of the SEALs’ mouths. The pops would deliver opiate pain relief immediately to their systems. They’d replaced morphine syringes, were much more powerful than their predecessor, and were the drug of last resort.
“What’d I do?” Laws asked, sucking greedily on the pain reliever.
“I have this memory of falling. Do you know anything about that?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Laws said with a straight face. “Yank, you alive?”
Yank nodded as he grabbed two packs of QuickClot, which contained microscopic zeolite crystals as the hemostatic agent. When introduced to blood, it soaked up all the liquid, leaving only platelets and hastening clotting to an almost miraculous effect. The only downfall was that it produced heat as a by-product, sometimes in excess of 170 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Let’s put these on your backs, then you seal it,” Yank said.
Holmes looked at him and the packs, then nodded. “It’s going to hurt, though.”
“We always have the lollies,” Laws said.
Holmes opened one pack and sprinkled it on Laws’s back. Then he did the same for Yank. He could almost see it taking effect. He could also see the two SEALs biting down on their medicine, their faces turning white as the heat of the absorption began to burn along their backs.
Holmes then pulled out a pair of cyanoacrylate tubes, which were nothing more than medical superglue. He spread a tube each across the back of each SEAL. It would keep whatever blood the zeolite couldn’t get from leaving the SEALs’ bodies. The wounds on their back weren’t bad enough to stop mission, but if they continued losing blood, it would cause hypovolemia, or shock from loss of blood volume. If untreated, that could kill them as efficiently as a bullet to the head.
Then he pulled out a packet of smelling salts and waved it under each of their noses. The reaction was immediate. Both their heads snapped back. He did the same to himself, then found a bag containing six pills. He emptied them into his hand and smashed them with the butt of the pistol. He licked a third, then let Yank, then Laws do the same until the powder was gone. Specially made for 666, these Adderall-like tablets contained elements of zolpidem, dextroamphetamine, and amphetamine, and snapped each of them immediately awake to the point of hyperawareness. Finally, Holmes made them put away their Fentanyl lollipops.
Now, through the magic of modern medicine, the SEALs were once again ready to fight. Two were almost completely naked and one had lost half of his uniform, and they only had one pistol between them, but they were still U.S. Navy SEALs. Holmes’s only problem was … what were they going to do now?
60
SNIPER HIDE.
Walker was glad to see the others recover behind the dead chupacabra barrier. For a while he’d wondered if he’d end up being the only survivor. The option was a terrible one and beyond comprehension. That his teammates were safe meant that they could treat each other and hopefully get back to work.
During the events that had begun when Laws had shoved the first ’cabra out of the pipe, Walker had done his best to take out as many of the beegees as possible. He’d started with those on top of the pyramid, but they’d been able to erect some sort of force field to protect themselves. When the squad with the machine guns and the Ultimax decided to try and excavate the wall he was hiding inside, he’d thought he might be in serious trouble.
Jen had been struck in the foot by a stray bullet. It was a through-and-through, with the bullet fragment ricocheting from the ceiling and tearing through the center of her foot. Stopping the bleeding wasn’t an issue, neither was taking care of her pain. He’d given her a Fentanyl lollipop that had put her in a better mood, even with her foot injury and the dozens of micro-lacerations to her face and arms caused by flying chips of stone. Walker reminded himself that when they got out of there he’d make sure she was awarded a Purple Heart, or the equivalent. If her agency hesitated even in the least, he’d give her one of his. God knew he had enough of them.
He was uninjured, as was Hoover. Hoover neither liked the smells, the sounds, nor the gunfire. She was constantly nudging him for release. But it wasn’t as if she could leap down. It was too far. Any descent would require Walker’s help and at this point, he held the high ground. He’d be stupid to give it up, especially considering that he was the only member of the team not in danger.
That the others were in dire straits wasn’t lost on him. He’d wanted to leap to their aid several times. Hell, if this had been his first mission, he would have done just that. He still remembered the stern conversations Holmes had had with him, especially the Ring Speech on a Starlifter high above the Pacific Ocean. The single thing that had been drilled into his head was to keep to his own mission. He sighted toward the mass of dead ’cabra and spied Yank, Holmes, and Laws, looking like they were about to attack.
He swung the scope toward the temple and back. Then he lifted his sight and looked in real time, trying to discover what it was the other three SEALs were about to attack.
Then Hoover began to growl.
Walker’s vision blurred and his hands began to tingle.
Oh, hell.
He shifted the scope to the other chacmool and realized it was gone. Where it had been atop the other mausoleum, the roof was now bare except for pieces of broken stone.
“Jen, honey?”
“Mmm, yeah.” She sounded high.
“You need to get back.”
“I’m okay.”
“No, really, Jen.” He spared a glance in her direction. She sucked on the lollipop with the same grin of satisfaction he’d seen on the faces of the low men sitting in the back alleys of Manila after a night smoking on the opium beds the old Chinese provided. He should have taken it away from her, but she’d been in such
pain and he hadn’t had time to play medic. “You need to get back.”
He grabbed the rifle and stood. It was a good thing he did. His legs began to vibrate with the knowledge that there was a supernatural power around. Had he been prone much longer, he doubted he would have been able to stand.
Hoover’s hackles spiked along her neck. She backed toward Jen, her head low as she stared expectantly past Walker.
Scanning the rounds laid out on the ground, Walker knew immediately that he had the wrong ones in the weapon. He leaped forward on unsteady legs and grabbed the magazine with SLAP rounds. Seeing how hard it was for Yank and Laws to take down the other obsidian butterfly—and he was pretty sure that’s what was coming—Walker knew he needed something better than a regular powder-filled 5.56 round. The tungsten penetrator was the equivalent of a miniature SABOT round, using tungsten to get through the target, in this case stone, then delivering the explosive charge once inside. Of all the rounds he had, this was the only one he felt gave him the possibility.
Walker snatched it with his left hand and at the same time ejected the other magazine with his right. But that’s as far as he got.
The creature rose like a Soviet HIND-D helicopter and Walker was all out of antiaircraft missiles. His entire body trembled with the proximity of the creature. He thought back to the time of the Grave Demon and time-shifted forward through every creature he’d ever noticed, some rendering him a weeping shell of a human being.
But those times were long gone.
He’d been practicing.
He brought the magazine filled with SLAP rounds to the Stoner, jammed it upward, and missed. The magazine’s edge caught on the lip of the receiver and slipped from his fingers. He reached out as it began to fall, the universe sinking in his stomach, and watched helplessly as it hit the tip of his fingers and fell to the floor of the tunnel.
Bent over with no ammo, he looked up and saw the terrible visage of the obsidian butterfly. He’d always had a sneaking suspicion that butterflies were up to no good, always holding on to his hand like it was a drummet and they were hungry. Now, confronted with a seven-foot-tall version with Damascus wings, taloned feet, and an alien face, that feeling was reaffirmed. This beast meant him incredible harm and if it got the chance, Walker absolutely knew it would treat his entire body like it was the last drummet at an all-you-can-eat SEAL fest.