Luke stood with the smoking gun held tightly in numb fingers, and watched the bridge float away into the mist. He heard splashes, but no one came toward him. No one shot at him. The expended .45 shell bobbed in the water like a small boat. Luke watched until it vanished, wondering for a moment just where the fuck it was going. He wished he’d had the presence of mind to snatch Susan’s rifle.
A rope creaked, and Luke turned. A black ash stood tall in the center of the little island, its dead roots anchored in dead soil. A dozen busted pieces of wood were nailed to the trunk, and strips of ragged canvas hung from the branches like a mummy’s wrappings. A fraying, hemp rope hung from a top branch, and a rocking chair dangled from the end. Luke sighed. Seated in the chair and dressed in dusty black scraps, was a headless body. Hanging from the foot rest was a bent, dented number plate with rust around the edges. Written on it were three, simple words; Welcome to Hell.
Luke shook his head slowly. He coughed, wincing as he moved his left hand. He flexed his remaining fingers, gritted his teeth, and snapped the string holding the tip of his pinky on. Luke wrapped the warm, wet nub in a cloth, and put it in his pocket.
“Don’t mind me,” he said to the dead man. “I’m just passing through.”
Charlie nodded, bobbing his hollow neck in a wind Luke didn’t feel.
* * *
The tree was a directory of the damned. One set of splintered boards pointed toward a plank bridge anchored to the ground with steel stakes. In that direction were Gehenna, Tartaros, and Limbo. Another pointed to a stone trestle that stretched onto a shadowy patch. It said Viti, Butcher Field, and the Stalking Grounds were that way. An arrow pointed at nothing, but when Luke looked closer he saw the water was broken by rounded stones the color of infected teeth. The splintered sign claimed Sheol was down that path. Scratched into the bottom of every sign in jagged, palsied letters was the word Midian.
Luke seared the worst of his wounds, then wrapped them in the cleanest strips of cloth he had. He drank all but a mouthful of his water, and found his shovel lying in the dead, dry weeds. There was a pockmark in the blade, but it was still serviceable. He stood next to the tree, and listened. He didn’t hear anything except the dead man’s creaking rope and the shushing water all around him. He tried to orient his direction. He looked up at the moon, but it sat high in the sky with no stars anywhere to be seen. In the end he chose the rope bridge, carefully notching the post before setting off across the planks.
Luke shifted his weight slowly at first, keeping his good hand on the rough-spun rope. It prickled his skin, and after about ten feet he tied another strip of cloth around his palm. That was better, but gripping the rope still felt like he was bare-hand fishing in a nettle jar. Down in the water fairy lights bobbed like the souls of drowned children. Luke reached a pair of heavy, wooden pylons. The left said Look, and the right said Don’t Touch.
The second span dipped lower, a few of the slats nearly kissing the water below. Luke focused on the boards, and on putting one foot in front of the other. His shoulders hunched, and the cords in his neck stuck out. He was gritting his teeth, but couldn’t make himself stop. Step, creak, wait, breathe became the stuttered rhythm of his life. The rhythm broke without warning as a board snapped, and Luke’s left foot plunged into the water.
It was like stepping on a stove. A hiss, followed by a sublime moment of nothing. Then lightning coursed along his leg, and slammed into his head. Luke tried to scream, but only managed a high, mewling sound like a dog whose lungs had been crushed by a car. He threw himself forward, and the bridge shuddered under his horizontal weight. His foot came out of the water, but kept burning in his boot. Luke snatched his canteen, and dumped the remaining water over his foot. There wasn’t much, but smoke rose from Luke’s leg as the cool stream turned his boot from soaked to sodden. He fell back, breathing in little sobs as he waited for the pain to retreat.
It did, eventually. Luke moved his foot experimentally. The skin felt taut, swollen inside its leather casing like an overcooked sausage. He wiggled each toe, and felt it move even if there was a delay from his brain to his foot. He rolled onto his side, and that was when he saw it; the sleek, black stock of a standard-issue M-16. Luke blinked, but the stock stayed there, standing straight up not two feet from the bridge.
Luke was flat on his belly, peering at the stock. There was a deep groove along the right side, and one screw seemed a little loose, but it looked serviceable. A ball chain ran through the sling clip, and a single dog tag trailed in the water. He wondered how long it had been submerged, and if it would be possible to dry it out and get it working again. He wondered if the bayonet was still in one piece. He ran his tongue back and forth over his teeth. He tasted blood, and he couldn’t place when that had started. He swallowed hard, and reached. His fingertips were half an inch from the rifle butt when the bridge shivered. Luke froze. He looked down, and something looked back up at him.
The kid had been handsome. His hair looked like black silk in the water, and the strands billowed out to reveal a face that was all hard planes and sharp features. He had a straight nose, a strong jaw, and a single, dark eye like a polished agate. The other eye was gone, swallowed up by a black hole in the side of his skull. White bone jutted up through an alien landscape of melted fat and seared skin. He was missing a leg, and most of an arm. The rifle was driven in through his heart, pinning him down like a moth on a cork board. The eye blinked, and the mouth opened. He reached for Luke, and Luke snatched his arm back so fast he was sure he’d tip the bridge and spill himself over the side.
The mist shifted. Upstream the scarred stock of an AK-47 stuck out at a 45-degree angle. The distinct, heavy butt of an M-1 Garand rose like the mast of a sunken ship, straight and true with the broken bowline of its strap bobbing to and fro. There were more, many more, in uneven, staggered lines up and down the wide river. They shifted, shook, and occasionally a few fingers broke the surface. They scrabbled at the weapons, fingernails leaving gouges and grooves, but none of them came free.
Luke turned his eyes away, and pulled himself to his feet. He ignored the pain the ropes cut into his palms, and the protest from his missing finger. He rejected the outrage from his swollen foot or twisted ankle. He took deep, chest-stretching breaths, and looked straight ahead. He didn’t run, but only because some distant part of him knew that if he did he’d go down to join the dead men all around him.
The bridge ended, and Luke collapsed onto solid ground. He coughed and wheezed, cried and shuddered. He heaved, but nothing came up. Something burst in his boot, and thick fluid sloshed in his sock. He contemplated staying where he was until something came along and put him out of his misery. Or doing it himself. He stroked his hand along the .45 then froze. He pulled his hand away from the gun, got up, and started moving again.
Luke toured islands of madness in a quiet, uncaring sea. He passed through an orchard of gallows trees, where meat had been hung piecemeal from vines that pulsed and quivered like spider veins. He saw a place where cleavers were buried in salted stumps like axes awaiting the grinder. Another was covered in stone plinths, leaning against each other in some places, standing tall in others. Some bore dark stains, and the wind howled like the rocks had bitten it bloody. He followed mismatched footprints through gray dirt on an isle where nothing grew, and felt eyes on his back even though there was nowhere to hide. He crossed over stone arches, chain suspension bridges, twisted trees that grew from one bank to another, and made his way over fallen stones where the river gurgled and whispered with drowned secrets. He saw shapes in the shadows; hunched, bent things that watched with wide, yellow eyes as he passed. Twice they ran when he pulled his pistol. The third time he fired, and something screamed. He kept moving.
The moon was kissing the horizon when Luke crossed the final bridge and came to the walls of Midian. They were old and worn, crumbled in a hundred places. They seemed held in place by the weight of years more than by mortar. The buildings inside the city were
boxes of stone smoothed by time. The windows were open sockets, and their doors slack, stupid mouths. They were stacked a dozen high in some places, like piles of skulls at the entrances of crypts. Dusty tarps hung over some of the doors, their jungle green dusted to a colorless gray. Bent, rusting antennae jutted above a few of the roofs, and a pair of boots sat next to one doorstep like forlorn puppies. There were no voices but the mute ghosts of abandoned things.
“Hello?” Luke croaked, licking a split in his bottom lip. “Is anybody here?”
No one answered. Luke’s throat tensed up, and as dry as the rest of him was, tears welled in his eyes. His legs wobbled like sprung springs and he started to pant. He patted at his belt absently, like he couldn’t quite remember what he was looking for. That was when he looked up and saw the light. It blazed over the rooftops; a burning beacon that could be seen for miles. He approached, breath hitching in time with his steps.
He walked until the detritus of the one-time occupiers was behind him. He crossed ancient aqueducts, and stepped past dried-up fountains filled with flat stones. He turned down crumbling boulevards and ducked between the shadows of the too-close ruins. He continued until the city grew humble, with the eaves cut at sharp angles so the houses bowed toward the center.
The heart of Midian was a colossus that dwarfed the rest of the city. Built of the same stone as everything else, it was a tapering pyramid that brushed the low-hanging firmament. The plateau of the lowest level was higher than the tallest of the surrounding structures, built from blocks bigger than they had any right to be. They were cut with short, narrow stairs. He saw no other way up, so Luke started climbing.
The stairs were deceptive. The first dozen went by easily, and he barely noticed the dozen after that. They seemed designed to strain the ankles and torture the feet of climbers though, and they were cut at such an angle that Luke had to lean into them like a man in a high wind. Sweat streamed down his skin, burning like battery acid as it cut through the dirt and seeped into his wounds. He stepped wrong and almost fell, pin-wheeling his arms as he tried to reclaim his balance. His shovel slid off his belt, clanking and spinning off into open air. He crawled from that point on.
Dragons guarded the first landing; huge, serpentine things with hollow eyes and empty mouths full of sharp teeth. They reared out of the walls like they were trying to escape the stone. Ball chains had been hooked around their jaws, and dozens of dog tags swung below their maws like grisly souvenirs. Luke stared at them, trying to get his breath back. Slowly he pulled his tags off, and took them apart. He hung the long chain on the left, and the short chain on the right. Then he started climbing again, looking back every few steps to be sure the dragons weren’t following.
There were others. Graven demons with no eyes; carved forests with men’s faces along their branches; and giants who stood the full height of several blocks. Some of the guardians hurt Luke’s eyes to look at; creatures who seemed to be made of light with thousands of eyes that lived inside ever-dancing flames. He left his spare magazines, his empty canteen, his pistol, his equipment belt, his shirt, his boots, and even the stump of his little finger behind as he marked his own, bloody trail up the side of mountain.
In time he reached the summit, shaking and shivering like a newborn. A fire burned brightly, but it gave off neither heat nor sound. It was like someone had torn a hole in the night, and the light that lived behind the sky was looking in. Luke stared at it until his muscles ceased trembling and his breath came clear again. He stared until his pains quieted. Then he looked up, and nearly fell back down the way he’d come.
Something sat on the other side of the fire. A shroud covered its face, the threadbare cloth imploding as it breathed deep, and billowing as it breathed out. Ichor dripped from its chin and pooled in its lap. Two legs were crossed under it while the other two sat splayed out. Its cock dangled, barbs glistening with something too thick to be sweat. Antlers and horns curled above its distended head, framing it like a predator’s smile. It sat on a throne of meat that heaved and breathed, sweated and shitted. It dragged talons over the shivering cushions, and chittered as the blood ran from the pulped, palpitating flesh. Luke’s chest cried out, and his vision went pale as he clutched at his chest. His hands came away bloody, and the thing laughed a hissing laugh. Its breath smelled of corruption and cordite.
It had many names; Lord Flatline, King Cancer, Old Man Darkness, Mourning Glory, The Great Beast, Baphomet, The Pale Rider, and others. There were more, many more, but they didn’t matter. Luke had heard them whispered at family funerals, and in evac choppers, in med tents and on burial duty. Every man was born with a death, and one day he’d have to look it in the eye. Luke stood, and stared. The thing lifted its veil. Luke pulled his cross over his head with his bloody hand, and kissed it once. He threw it at the king’s feet and it tinkled like a broken bell. Luke took a single step forward, and fell into the fire. He had enough time to wonder if he’d pissed himself, and then he was gone.
Show of Force
A Jack Sigler / Chess Team Novella
Jeremy Robinson & Kane Gilmour
“Show of force operations are designed to demonstrate resolve.
They involve the appearance of a credible military force
in an attempt to defuse a situation.”
– Joint Publication 3-0, Joint Operations
1
The helicopter set down a half mile from the raging storm, which made the desert look as if it were being sucked up into space. A twisting cloud of dust, sand, dirt and snow spiraled into the sky and covered a region that stretched for miles, engulfing most of the so called ‘Great Gobi B Strictly Protected Area.’ Six bodies slipped from the rotary-winged vehicle and began a fast march toward the howling blizzard.
The region had been set aside as an International Biosphere Reserve in 1991, but in practice, that just meant there was very little there. Mongolia had agreed to the classification of the rarely-used land in exchange for developmental aid. Stretching over 3000 square miles, the place was a combination of drab-colored desert steppe and low, craggy, arid mountains.
The paramilitary team arrived at the leading edge of the storm, and was swallowed by the blinding whiteout conditions. Bursts of sand and ice particles, propelled to 100 mph by roiling winds, blasted across the landscape in thick, nearly solid slabs, buffeting their bodies. Unwavering, the soldiers pressed on. The radio earpieces and speakers inside their helmets, hidden beneath hoods, blocked external audio unless they were switched on. Without that block, they wouldn’t have been able to hear each other over the mechanical, high-pitched whine of the rampaging weather.
When the gusts of the storm periodically cleared, they could see each other in their full-body, white environment suits, trudging across the patchy scrub-grass-coated ground. The suits looked like the bastard children of environmental hazmat suits and yetis. With full-plate face masks, and tight, fur-coated hoods, they might have easily been mistaken for small polar bears missing their snouts – polar bears with plastic-coated automatic weaponry. The synthetic fur on the exterior of the suits repelled the sand and snow. Each member of the team also wore a tactical climbing harness that covered chest and pelvis, which could be used for rappelling or climbing, but more often was used for attaching equipment to the body. Underneath the outer suits they wore gel-heated full-body wetsuits to help maintain a comfortable internal body temperature.
Outside the environment suits, the mercury would be hovering around -40 degrees Fahrenheit, without the wind chill. Scrubbing filters could provide exterior air if their self-contained tanks ran out, but they anticipated being on the ground for less than twenty minutes.
The land was barren rock and jutting hardy grasses – until unexpectedly, it wasn’t. The hard ground gave way to treacherous sand dunes, and then just as seamlessly merged back into more crumbly rock and clumps of pale-green vegetation.
“Charming. Like New Hampshire in the spring,” one of them said, breaking the silence
on their internal comms.
“Nah,” the burly man in the lead said. “Spring is mud season. It would be like this, but we’d be caked in mud, too.”
The slightest of the group groaned and said, “Golf alpha romeo.” It was shorthand for ‘get a room.’ It was a common thing for the man and woman to bicker while in the field, but the other team members all knew how they really felt about each other.
“Hold up here,” the slim man in the rear said. He squatted, and the others paused in their march without protest, dropping into similar crouches. They all held specially-designed, plastic-coated FN SCAR rifles, capable of withstanding the grit from extreme sandstorms. Even the weapons’ muzzles were covered in a thin layer of plastic that would be ripped away once they opened fire, should it come to that. But they expected it wouldn’t. This mission would be a cakewalk compared to what they normally faced.
The slight man, carrying a simple M-21 sniper rifle, also wrapped in white plastic, approached the thin man who had called a halt. He squatted and brought his weapon up in the direction his leader was looking, straight into the thick maelstrom. “King, you see something?”
The team’s leader, King, stayed motionless for another full minute, before he replied. “No, Knight. Sorry. Just getting used to the complete lack of visibility and exterior sound. We don’t know what’s out here, so everyone stay sharp.” Jack Sigler, callsign: King, stood up and headed out, into the howling storm.
Named for pieces on a chess board, each of the other members – designated Chess Team – stood and followed. The team was formerly with the US Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment – commonly known as Delta. Then, for a time, they had operated as part of a freelance organization, Endgame, stopping threats that politics and time constraints prevented other Delta groups from engaging. Now the Chess Team were fugitives from the US government, but they still fought the good fight across the globe. Each member of the team played a different role, and their callsigns designated those positions.
SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest Page 29