“Oh, boy, look at this,” Will said as he stood stunned and motionless.
They saw several more men rise up behind Guzman. Some were torn to pieces, others had bullet holes across their chests and shoulders. All were changed almost as much as Guzman.
“The hole’s big enough!” Mendenhall said as he turned away from the terrifying sight.
Henri saw Will dive next to Jack, pushing the dead man out of his way, and start tearing at the opening at the top of the debris. Everett dove in to help. Farbeaux fired the M-14 until the receiver clacked open and stayed that way. As he was starting to turn and join the flight, Jack jumped over him and dove for something Henri didn’t see, nor did he care what it was. As he turned his eyes away from Collins, Farbeaux saw something that made him stop. It was the clear jar of liquid he had almost been killed by earlier. He quickly reached out, took the mayonnaise-sized container, and shoved it into his shirt. He scrambled up and over to help Everett and Mendenhall.
Jack was searching for something in the dark when he heard Everett. “Jack, come on, we’re through!”
He continued looking on hands and knees. Then his hand brushed against it. He pulled the twin saddlebag to his chest, not caring that the dynamite inside was sweating. He turned toward the widened hole and started to scramble.
“Don’t wait on me, move it!” he shouted as the three beasts came on, slowly, all smiling.
As Mendenhall and then Farbeaux scrambled up and out of the old laboratory, Everett saw what Jack was carrying. His eyes widened and then he turned and went through the opening. He didn’t wait for Jack.
Collins made it to the cave-in and then saw the two changed men behind Guzman turn on each other. The brief attack was brutal, but both of them survived. They regained their focus and then followed their boss toward Collins.
“Kiss my ass!” Jack shouted, and then, grabbing one of the fallen M-14s, he tossed the twin saddlebags at the trio of monstrous attackers. He lowered his head, thinking that the nitroglycerine-covered dynamite would detonate upon impacting the floor, but all he heard was a laugh. He looked up and saw Guzman, his misshapen and distorted features looking down at the saddlebags.
“Shit!” Jack hissed as he scrambled to the top of the debris and entered the hole.
Just as Guzman turned away from the saddlebags, he laughed, an evil, cold sound, as he saw his antagonist’s legs vanish into the escape hole.
“You should have negotiated,” sounded the deep voice.
Suddenly Jack reappeared in the facing of the wall. This time it was he who was smiling.
“You’re right, here’s my offer!” he shouted as loud as he could.
Guzman’s larger-than-normal eyes widened, and just before Jack fired the M-14, the horrid-looking Anaconda raised his hands upward and jumped. Grabbing broken wooden beams, he heaved himself up and out of the laboratory a split second before the red-hot nine-millimeter round struck the saddlebags.
The explosion actually blew Collins backward into the tunnel as it started to collapse. As the excavated hole fell inward upon itself, a split second of fire, rocks, and smoke flew through the hole. The combination of dynamite, and its natural offspring, nitroglycerin, detonated with power triple what the original makers intended.
Everett quickly picked himself up and with his ringing out of control, saw Collins lying motionless and face down in the hard, compacted earth of the tunnel. He reached down and handily picked Jack up. Shaking him, not caring if he had a neck or head injury, Everett waited until he opened his dirt-caked eyes.
“Maybe a fuse next time!” Everett screamed.
“Remind me next time, will you?” Jack said, shaking himself to full wakefulness. Then he suddenly remembered. “Jesus, I think Guzman got out!”
It didn’t take the genius of Jack’s words to get Everett moving. He just turned, helping Collins to his feet, and then they started running for their lives.
The raid on the hacienda called Perdition had ended.
The nearly ten-mile flight from a horror none of the four men could ever have imagined had just started.
4
It didn’t take long for the men to catch up with the women who were trying to negotiate the long and dark culvert in complete and utter darkness. The only time they could see anything was when there was a break in the concrete over their heads, which allowed the rising moonlight to penetrate the blackness. Sarah had kept pushing the young girls as much as she dared. All sixteen were close to freezing up in their panic-stricken flight from the bowels of Perdition.
At almost every break in the culvert, the girls would stop, giving them the slightest break and hope at seeing the least bit of light.
“Vámonos, vámonos,” Sarah shouted from the rear as the young women stopped just under a large break in the roof of the large concrete tube. “We have to move!” she shouted as she pushed through the block of scared girls.
Sarah saw the wide eyes as the adrenalin rush of their escape had just started to ebb. She saw the fear and terror of what they had been through seeping through them like sweat through their pores. She didn’t hesitate as she grabbed the oldest-looking girl and shoved her away from the light streaming through the large hole. The woman just stared at her and then looked down the long dark tunnel.
Just as Sarah pushed the woman again, she heard the girls at the back of the pack scream and surge forward. Sarah cursed at not having a weapon as the girls crowded around her.
“Damn it Sarah, why aren’t these people moving?”
Sarah relaxed when she heard the familiar voice of Will Mendenhall as he burst around the small bend just before the break in the culvert. He angrily pushed through the crowd of cowering girls, and when he saw their panic-stricken faces, he tried his best to reassure them.
“Because damn it they’re terrified and we have no light!”
Will reached to his side and handed his flashlight to Sarah. “Get them moving! We have company coming this way, and believe me it’s far worse than you can ever know. Now let’s get them going!” Will angrily pushed two of the girls and then started gesturing for the others to follow Sarah and the light down the tunnel. He had just drawn his nine millimeter, feeling how inadequate the weight was in his hand, when more screams filled the small space.
“Does anyone follow orders anymore?” the angered voice of Collins said, echoing in the tight space. “We have a time issue here!”
Finally the girls stopped screaming when they saw the three men come into view. Sarah pulled the older-looking girl and moved off down the tunnel. The others hesitantly started to follow.
“Will, I have your MP. I’ll take the rear, you get ahead of Sarah and take the point. Captain Everett, take our French friend here, who needs to lose weight by the way, and keep these girls on the move. No stops, no rest, Jack ordered.”
Mendenhall passed Jack his last two thirty-round magazines and then pushed off to catch up with Sarah and the girls in the lead. Collins struggled out of his body armor and let it fall to the culvert’s flow of water. He knew he had at least three broken ribs and assisting Farbeaux hadn’t helped. He looked up and in the moonlight could see that Everett was faring no better as he was bleeding from at least three areas of his body from shrapnel wounds. Henri for the most part had exhausted any energy he had left.
“Give Henri the carbine.” Jack stepped up to the Frenchman as he changed magazines in the MP-5. “Cover Captain Everett, Henri, you got that? If I go down, you’re the only tail gunner we have.”
Farbeaux managed to look at Collins and then at Everett who was struggling to hold Henri and himself upright. “Yes, just tell your captain here not to drop any excess weight when the chips are down.”
“Don’t worry; I won’t let it get to that point, Froggy. The chips are already down and I want to drop you right now.” With that said Everett headed into the darkness, not feeling much different from the girls who were near panic.
Jack charged the weapon, sending a round into t
he breach of the MP-5, and then with a last look back and still wondering what sort of horror had befallen them, followed the long line of running men and women.
The group had gone close to a mile when in the rear Jack heard a far-off voice shouting down into the culvert from the spot they were just at not ten minutes before.
“I’m coming gringos, Mama sent me out for supper!”
Jack stopped and looked back into the darkness. The voice was deep and seemed as if it could never have come from the voice box of what Guzman had become. It wasn’t brutish like the changed body became. But it was filled with savage intelligence, as if he was trying to scare and panic everyone in the tunnel. Jack knew it was working—he was scared.
He turned and started forward once more, wondering if the creature that was once the Anaconda had entered the culvert. He realized then as he ran, panting hard from his broken ribs pressing on the muscles of his chest and sides, that the smart move for Guzman would be to cover ground up there and try to head them off. He sensed the change had not lessened the man’s intelligence.
In just under fifteen minutes, he was proven right.
* * *
Sarah turned to make sure the frightened women were still following close by. She decided they would have to take a break if they were to make it to the river. She saw light about a hundred yards to the front where another break in the culvert allowed moonlight to enter the darkness.
“Will, the girls are near collapse. We have to stop for a minute.”
“No, keep them moving!” he shouted from the middle of the pack. You have no idea what’s back there. Move, move!”
Sarah took a deep breath and then gently pushed the girls gathered around her forward. It took just under a minute to cover the ground to the next break in the culvert. Just as Sarah moved past the light, she heard a loud scream, followed by another, and then another. As she turned her light on the area where the screams came from, her eyes widened when she saw a large arm and hand reach into the culvert from above. It hit upon one of the girls and grabbed her hair. In her flashlight beam she saw Mendenhall step forward and start bashing at the large, brutal hand as it started pulling the girl upward, out of the culvert.
The rest of the girls panicked and started forward, blocking Sarah’s view as Will opened up with his nine millimeter. Sarah grabbed his arm and pulled his aim off for fear of him hitting the struggling girl. Then the girl was just gone.
“What was that?” Sarah screamed as girls started running by her in a blind panic.
“You don’t want to know. Now move Sarah, move!”
The panic-stricken girls were now far outpacing Jack, Farbeaux, and Everett. As they passed the open area where the young woman had vanished just three minutes before, Everett turned and saw that Jack was struggling with the wounded Farbeaux. He turned and took the Frenchman’s other arm, and together the trio started making better time.
The entire ten-mile flight was one of panic-stricken sprinting, stopping for much-needed air. Then a noise would filter down from above them and the screams of terror would start the stampeding girls off again. Sarah had to fight to keep them as bunched together as she could. She felt naked without a firearm and scared to death that the brave man she knew in Mendenhall was as frightened as the young Mexican girls he was trying his best to protect. As Sarah finally got the last girl past a small break in the upper section of the culvert, a large arm shot through and grabbed her shoulder, knocking her against the curving side of the concrete tube. Mendenhall fired five rounds, with three of them striking the thick-boned arm and wrist. He was amazed when the massive arm didn’t pull away from the nine-millimeter rounds but kept working, searching for Sarah. McIntire’s eyes widened as the hand and long warped fingers swung back and forth in its quest to grab something.
Will changed magazines, but before he could bring up the Beretta to fire, Everett shot past him and with knife poised to strike, sank his K-Bar deep into the forearm of Guzman. The large knife sank deep until it hit bone, and Carl cursed as he felt the hardened steel of the knife glance off the bone and then break off. His momentum sent him to the running, muddy water on the bottom of the culvert. Mendenhall helped him to his feet as Jack and Farbeaux ran past.
“You okay?” Mendenhall shouted as he dodged the bleeding, massive arm that swiped the empty air.
“Yeah, but I’m out of knives and bullets, so I suggest we get the hell out of here!”
As they covered the last mile to the river, Sarah managed to make her way to the front of the straggling line of girls, making each one scream as she ran past them. She knew exactly how they all felt as she was close to panic herself. Finally Sarah could see moonlight ahead of her. It was distant like the small rabbit hole Alice had fallen through on her journey to Wonderland, only Sarah knew they weren’t escaping from that magical place, but from one that had quickly become an underground hell. As the girls started to bunch up behind her, Sarah held out her arm to stop the stampede toward freedom. She had seen a shadow cross the opening, momentarily blocking the light cast by the moon.
“What’s the holdup? Let’s get them out of here,” Will said breathlessly as he caught up to the front of the pack.
“Whatever that thing was back there I think it’s ahead of us,” she said as she bent at the waist and rested.
Will was about to break for the opening to clear a way for the girls when suddenly the culvert exploded inward from above, showering the retreating party with broken chunks of concrete and mud. Then to everyone’s complete and utter horror, the thing that was once Juan Guzman crashed through the hole he had just punched to land directly in front of the screaming women. Will didn’t take long to empty the nine millimeter into the torso of the hulking figure ahead of them. In the dark he was lucky to see it at all. The monstrosity bent over as the rounds entered its muscled chest and abdomen. But in the filtered moonlight Mendenhall saw it slowly start to straighten. It was so much larger than it had been just thirty minutes before that it had to bend at the waist to accommodate its size. Will frantically reached into his belt for another clip of nine-millimeter ammunition and then realized when his finger searched the empty pouch that he had just expended everything he had.
“Oh, shit,” Mendenhall said as he pulled Sarah back into the bunched-up women behind him. He quickly dropped the useless weapon and then pulled out his own knife.
The women screamed again as Everett crashed through their ranks and then slid to a stop when he saw Mendenhall ahead of him, and to his front, dwarfing the lieutenant, was Juan Guzman. The beastly apparition was standing there, taking deep breaths as it studied the small men and women cowering before it. In the bleached moonlight cascading through the new opening it had just made, Everett could swear he saw the creature smile.
“Damn!” Collins said as he pushed his way through the crowded culvert. He handed Farbeaux off to Sarah and one of the older girls and then slowly stepped to the front in between Everett and Mendenhall.
“It seems I am in possession of something that may become very beneficial to my operations,” the beast said as it raised its left arm. It examined the change that had come to it and with tilted head closed its fist.
Collins looked at the man standing before him. Then he saw a strange thing—the creature winced in pain. In the moonlight Jack could see that Guzman’s skin color as seen in the firelight back in the laboratory had diminished as the creature had exerted itself. The tough hide that had become its skin was now a sickly looking gray color and seemed to be flaking off in large chunks. It was as if the beast were starting to wilt before his eyes. Collins’s eyes followed a long tuft of hair, bunched together with water, mud, and sweat, fall from the side of Guzman’s head. Then even more black hair fell in the moonlight.
“It seems maybe you inhaled a little too much of that miracle drug, Anaconda. Feeling a little weaker than you were a moment before?” Jack said, buying as much time as he could.
Everett saw this and then grabbed the firs
t girl he could reach and brought her to his side as he spied one of the first holes in the large culvert they had come across inside the long and dark tunnel. He was just about to lift her up when the beast suddenly turned to face its rear. Something or someone had come up from behind it.
“Rescue team, hit the deck!”
Jack heard the shouted command just as Guzman reacted and charged the new threat that had come upon it from behind. He turned and threw his body into several screaming girls, sending them crashing into the muddy, running water. Everett, Sarah, Mendenhall, and even the Frenchman did likewise. Just as the last girl hit the water, a cacophony of noise erupted in the confines of the culvert. As Jack raised his head he saw Guzman take the first volley of the automatic weapons’ fire from the rear. Its body shook and the awful-sounding scream started from deep inside the Anaconda’s chest. Then even more fire erupted in the darkness and Collins could see tracers as they hit the beast. More than a hundred rounds slammed home, but Guzman still came forward one faltering step at a time. Jack winced as a ricochet slammed into his hand. He saw tracer fire as it rebounded off wet concrete and he prayed that it didn’t find any of the poor women behind him.
Guzman bellowed in anger and then three bullets finally hit the vital part of his malformed head and changed body. Its skull jerked back and Guzman spun around. With its wide eyes staring at Collins, it went to its knees. The right arm came up and then Jack saw a large man in black Nomex, its shiny material gleaming in the moonlight, step up to the back of the Anaconda and then fire two more rounds from a Walther automatic into the back of the large skull. Guzman, with one last wince of his tortured eyes, went face down into the running water.
The man who had placed the bullets into Guzman’s head holstered his weapon and stared down at the thing he had just killed. He raised a set of goggles not unlike the ones Jack and his small team had had earlier. The man looked from the giant creature that was once called the Anaconda and then saw Jack lying a few feet away. The stranger was soon joined by six others who took up station behind the first. Collins slowly started to pick himself up in the near darkness.
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