Left With The Dead - 02

by Stephen Knight

  Even foot travel was difficult. Zeke ranged ahead with Nacho, scouting out the territory. Cecil was next up, cradling the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon across his barrel chest. Acheson trailed him, his AA-12 held at port arms, the FAE secure in the hard pack on his back. Chiho Hara, Julia McGuiness, and Robert Ellenshaw walked twenty meters behind him. Sharon Thompson played rear guard, holding her MP-5 with both hands. They marched across the hot Arizona landscape, counting on Zeke to provide the necessary cues; the dog relied on senses beyond olfactory, something primal, an instinctive guidance system that nature had purged from man but left in some of the so-called lower life forms. Not for the first time, Acheson marveled at the irony of it. Most animals had some natural self-defense mechanism that clued them to a predator’s presence. Against the threat posed by Osric and his kind, mankind was as helpless as a babe.

  With the exception of Robert Ellenshaw and the group he had formed, that is.

  Nacho held up his right fist as he grabbed Zeke’s harness with his left hand. The dog’s demeanor changed, and he pulled against Nacho, straining to move forward.

  “Got a shake,” Nacho said over the radio.

  Acheson and Cecil hurried forward. Acheson tightened his grip on his AA-12; behind him, Velcro parted with stitching rips as the rest of the team drew their weapons.

  Ahead, three mangy dogs stood in a semi-circle before an open mineshaft, their ribs as prominent as stripes. They bared their teeth in a growling, mindless rage. Zeke snarled a reply, straining against Nacho’s grasp. Nacho spoke to him in soothing tones, but couldn’t put the dog at ease.

  The pack advanced, snarling. Acheson nodded to Sharon, and she raised her MP-5 to her shoulder. She took aim and fired three rounds in quick succession, the retorts choked into bare pops by the weapon’s long suppressor. Before the brass cartridges had even stopped tinkling on the rock, the three dogs were dead, each with a single shot to the right eye. Flies alighted on the corpses, drawn by the smell of fresh blood.

  Zeke continued growling, his dark gaze rooted on the mine’s entrance. And with good reason, Acheson saw; several pairs of human footprints led in and out of the shaft.

  Not that they were left by humans.

  He pressed the Push-To-Talk button on his transceiver. “Three-One, Two-Six, over.” Ellenshaw approached him, staring into the mine’s dark maw while pulling a hand-held GPS receiver from a holster on his belt.

  “Two-Six, Three-One. Go ahead,” said George Sanders, who sat in air-conditioned comfort back at the TOC.

  “Three-One, we’ve made initial contact. GPS coordinates are...” Ellenshaw held the GPS unit toward him, and Acheson read the position off its small liquid-crystal display. Sanders repeated the information back to him.

  “Roger, Three-One, that’s a good copy. Stand by. Two-Six out.” Acheson motioned toward the shaft. Sharon and Julia advanced, one on each side of the opening, MP-5s at the ready. Acheson took Ellenshaw by the arm and pulled him back a few meters; the older man kept his eyes glued to the mineshaft, but didn’t resist him.

  “They’re in there,” he muttered.

  “Zeke agrees with you,” Acheson said. “Chiho, get Zeke ready. Cecil, you’ve got security. Nacho, stand ready with a flash-bang.”

  Ellenshaw remained entranced by the mineshaft’s opening. Acheson let go of him as Cecil stalked past, the barrel of his SAW pointed into the darkness. Nacho held onto Zeke until Chiho arrived and took over, keeping one hand on the dog’s harness. Nacho moved to the left and pulled a tube-shaped concussion grenade from his belt. Acheson shrugged out of the heavy pack and set it on the ground beside him.

  Chiho worked quickly, her nimble fingers attaching a small video camera to Zeke’s harness. A fiber optic cable connected the camera to a hand-held video display unit clipped to Chiho’s belt. At her signal, Acheson led the team toward the shaft. At its boundary, where darkness and light mingled to create twilight, he paused and slipped on a pair of PVS-7B night vision goggles. The NVGs would augment the available light a thousandfold, allowing him to see in total pitch conditions. Grasping the shotgun’s pistol grip in his right hand, Acheson crossed over into darkness.

  The shaft was rocky and narrow. Old rails ran along the floor, twisted and rusting from the occasional floods that marked the Arizona monsoon season. Flies buzzed. The NVGs became increasingly efficient the deeper he progressed, revealing rock and rotting wooden beams that supported the overhead. Torpid scorpions meandered sluggishly along the ground. Through the NVGs, everything was rendered a ghostly green-white. A dry breeze sidled past him, more inferred than felt.

  Riding the breeze was the fetid stench of death.

  The soles of his boots scraped against rock and twisted, pitted iron. With every step the shaft grew ever smaller. Not far ahead, Acheson could make out a jagged tumble of boulders—a cave-in. The gaps between the rocks had filled with sand and silt. At the base of the cave-in, another maw yawned, this one a yard in diameter. The smell of rot was strongest here. Keeping his weapon pointed at the aperture, Acheson knelt. He had never grown used to the stench, the fetid spoor of decay that surrounded his quarry like a cloak. For the longest time, it had made him vomit uncontrollably. Years of work in the field had hardened him to it, but his stomach still roiled. There were some things a human being was never meant to adapt to, and the smell of death was one of them.

  Acheson sidled away from the small grotto, never removing his eyes or his weapon from it. “Approach is clear,” he whispered into his headset. “Send in Zeke.”

  “Roger,” Sharon replied, her voice a distant whisper over the radio. A moment later, Zeke padded up behind Acheson, snuffling. Acheson marveled at how easily the dog seemed to withstand the olfactory assault. If the smell was enough to make him feel ill, then it should have been overpowering for the German Shepherd. Acheson reached over and checked the camera on Zeke’s harness. It was secure, and the fiber’s SC connector was snug.

  “Chiho, how’s the transmit quality?”

  “Very good, Mark.”

  Zeke stopped at the edge of the hole and peered into it. After a brief hesitation, he hunkered down and slinked in, trailing the fiber optic cable behind him.

  “Zeke’s on his way. Two-Six is outbound.”

  Acheson backed away from the hole, his jangled nerves sending phantom alerts to his brain. His dread did not diminish even when harsh sunlight from the Arizona sky overloaded his NVGs, blanking out the displays with white snow. He switched them off and pulled them from his face, allowing the goggle assembly to dangle from his neck by its elastic straps.

  Outside, he stood next to Chiho as she watched the feed from Zeke’s camera. Ellenshaw joined them while the others maintained their positions, covering the shaft entrance.

  “Did you see anything?” Ellenshaw asked. It was a virgin question that reinforced Acheson’s opinion the older man should have stayed back in the operations center.

  “No, but I smelled them.” Acheson turned his attention to Chiho’s flat screen monitor.

  The tunnel Zeke crawled down was a meter wide. The camera attached to the dog’s harness was not only optimized for low-light operation, but it carried audio as well; the small speaker on Chiho’s display unit relayed Zeke’s panting in all its tongue-lolling glory. So far, all there was to see was rock and sand.

  “How’s my boy doin’?” Nacho asked. He couldn’t see the monitor from where he stood, flash-bang and MP-5 at the ready.

  “Great, Nacho. You did a real good job with him,” Acheson said. Delgado had trained the team’s K-9 detachment, and they all knew Zeke was something special. It was a sad fact that the K-9s were usually the first ones to go when a containment operation went bad. Acheson hoped that Zeke would be around for years because he was the best scout they’d had.

  “He’s in the den,” Ellenshaw whispered.

  It was then they spotted them, lying supine in the dank darkness several meters beneath their feet. Acheson gritted his teeth when Zeke approached the
first one—a small form, rendered in gray and white. A child. Dark hair. Eyes closed. Mouth open. Fangs visible.

  “How deep’s this cavern?” Acheson asked.

  “Approximately five meters below the mineshaft,” Chiho said.

  Acheson nodded.

  The display revealed more forms, lying motionless in the dark confines of the cavern. Twenty, perhaps thirty of them. Maybe a dozen women, several men, and a handful of children. The confines were so close that Zeke must have been walking on their cold bodies. Deep in the sleep of the dead, they did not stir.

  In the middle of the menagerie lay their target. A huge casket, so dark that even the camera’s light-intensification electronics couldn’t read its detail. A growl came over the speaker, and the camera came to rest. Zeke reached his limit. He would get no closer to the casket.

  “Bingo,” Acheson said.

  “Strange...” Ellenshaw sounded troubled. “How did they get the casket in there? There must be another opening.”

  “If there’s another exit, it must be camouflaged.” Acheson pointed at the sun. “But even Osric can’t travel while it’s light out. If there’s an escape route, he’ll never be able to use it.”

  “We have to make sure.”

  Acheson smiled grimly. “We’ll make damn sure, Robert.” He stalked back toward the mine’s opening. “Let’s get it on, folks! Nacho, call Zeke out of there. Sharon, Jules, get the FAE ready.” He pressed the PTT button on his transceiver. “TOC, this is Two-Six.”

  “Two-Six, TOC, go.” Static.

  “We’ve verified the infestation is at these coordinates. We’ll be smoking the hole in two minutes. Stand by.”

  Sanders’s voice was all business. “Roger, Two-Six.”

  Nacho whistled into the shaft twice. “Is he coming out?” he asked Chiho. “Can he hear me?”

  She nodded, still staring at her display. “Yes, he’s—ah!”

  Inside the mineshaft, Zeke snarled and howled. His snarls trailed off into a series of yelps. Everyone froze.

  “Gud damn it!” Cecil muttered, his first such exclamation in at least an hour.

  “Is he all right?” Nacho shouted.

  “One of them was awake,” Ellenshaw said, staring at the display. “It was waiting for him. A woman. On the cavern ceiling—”

  “Impossible!” Acheson said. “They’re dead when it’s daylight!”

  “Evidently, Osric is more powerful than we thought.”

  “You mean they took out my dog?” Nacho said. “Motherfuckers!”

  Cecil looked back at Ellenshaw. “Holy shit Doc, are you sayin’ they can come outta there?”

  “They won’t get the chance,” Acheson snapped. “Nacho! Throw that flash-bang!”

  “Motherfuckers,” Nacho muttered as he pulled the pin and hurled the grenade into the mine. A second later, the gut of the mine was briefly illuminated by a bright flare. A single, thunderous report echoed throughout the shaft.

  Acheson advanced toward the mineshaft opening, his gait unwavering. “Cecil, you’re with me. Sharon, you and Julia get the weapon ready. Cecil and I will secure the hole. Nacho, give them cover as they bring in the FAE.” He glanced at his shotgun’s firing configuration, then looked over his shoulder at Chiho. She stood next to Ellenshaw, and Acheson pointed at him.

  “Chiho, keep him out of the way.” He waved the others toward the shaft. “Let’s move it, people!”

  Acheson stopped at the mineshaft’s threshold and slipped on his PVS-7 night vision goggles. Cecil did the same, trailing his boss by a few yards and off to one side.

  “It’s gonna be tight in there, man,” Cecil said. “You keep well to the left, okay?”

  “Roger that,” Acheson acknowledged. “Fight’s on!”

  Acheson charged into the opening, slowing just long enough for Cecil and Nacho to catch up. He hugged the left wall of the shaft, while Nacho stayed to the right. Cecil’s bulk filled the center. He coughed from the dust the flash-bang had kicked up.

  A chill descend upon him despite the Arizona heat that penetrated even through the dusty rock. The black scorpions were no longer torpid, and they flitted about beneath his feet. He crouched as he walked, reducing his silhouette; scorpions crunched beneath his boots. Cecil was a few steps behind him.

  Ahead, the hole in the floor of the cave grew larger through the NVGs. Despite the sophisticated gallium-arsenide arrays that augmented the light and allowed for visibility in the near-darkness, it remained black and enigmatic.

  Chiho’s voice whispered over Acheson’s headset: “Two-Five and Two-Seven entering the shaft. FAE armed and ready.”

  “Rog—”

  A shape burst out of the hole with such speed that Acheson’s fire went astray. The flurry of silver-jacketed anti-personnel shot missed entirely, burying into the rock right above the hole. Jolted, Acheson took a step back.

  The vampire clung to the wall like an ungodly insect. As Ellenshaw had reported, it was female—a Latina teenager. Its long, raven-black hair was dusted with rock sediment, and its clothes were spattered with fresh blood. It watched the three men draw near with dead eyes. Silver irises stood out in sharp relief against black scleras, and wide slitted pupils lent a feline look to them. As he drew near, it opened its mouth and hissed, revealing two pair of fangs. Traces of Zeke’s blood still lingered on its serpentine tongue. Acheson brought the shotgun up. The vampire stared at it and grinned wildly.

  “Guns can’t kill us, little man,” it said, its voice low and murky as air pushed through dead vocal chords. Acheson grimaced. Apparently this one had been a vampire for quite some time. Only the older ones could speak. The newly Undead were barely more than animals, ghouls the master vamps controlled and trained until they eventually returned to sentience. The vampire facing him could have been a dozen years old. She turned her pale face toward Acheson, and her eyes glinted in the dark like a cat’s. Even through the NVGs, Acheson could sense their power. A small voice wormed about in his mind...

  Give up. Do not resist. Come to me.

  Acheson returned the smile and pulled the trigger. The AA-12 bucked in his hands as the shot exploded from the muzzle with a brilliant flash. The three-inch magnum shell ejected automatically. Most of the vampire’s head disappeared in an eruption of ropey black ichor. The body fell to the ground and thrashed about madly.

  Acheson fired three more rounds into the creature. One blast decimated one of its taloned hands. The other two penetrated the creature’s thorax, bursting it like a balloon. More foul-smelling ichor boiled forth, thick as hot tar. The thing continued to thrash about, but with waning vitality. Already it was shutting down, entering its recuperative cycle, where over the course of time it would heal itself completely. If the job was left undone, the creature would stalk again.

  “Cover the hole!” Acheson shouted to Cecil. His ears were ringing from the gunfire in the confined area, and he could barely hear his own voice. He stepped forward and slammed one of his boots against what remained of the vampire’s throat as he reached into his knapsack with his right hand. His fingertips brushed against the smooth wooden surface of a stake carved from ash. He plucked it from the knapsack and, gripping it tightly, knelt over the vampire and slammed the stake through its ribcage with all his might. The resistance offered by undead skin and bone was minimal, and the stake passed through without any trouble. The vampire went into a death knell, its legs and remaining arm slashing through the air with enough force to break Acheson’s legs had he not already scuttled out of range. A gurgling rasp came from its ravaged throat before the vampire fell silent.

  Through the hole in the mineshaft floor came a chorus of snarls and howls, accompanied by the slithering sounds of vampires hauling themselves out of the cavern below.

  “Clear!” Acheson reported as he crawled over the corpse, not wasting a second. Ahead, another ghastly figure emerged from the hole like a trapdoor spider. Acheson saw, to his horror, that it was the first child Zeke had crawled over. Her whey-c
olored hair was limp and dank, framing a face that was gaunt and angular. Death had made her no more beautiful than Acheson reasoned she’d been in life. Fangs glistened as she hissed through a wide-open mouth, tongue flailing.

  Acheson raised his shotgun...

  ... and the vampire leapt toward him like an arrow launched from a bow. He pulled the trigger prematurely. The blast succeeded in disintegrating her left foot, an injury that didn’t slow her in the least. The vampire batted the weapon out of his hands with a lightning-fast move and descended upon him like a locomotive, driving him into the ground. It hissed and spat and slashed at his ballistic armor, its talons shredding the tough fabric that covered the Kevlar beneath. Acheson went for his MP-5, but it was trapped beneath him. He grabbed the creature by the throat and rolled over onto his back while struggling to keep its fangs away from his neck and face.

  “Shoot it, Cecil, shoot it!” he shouted. Despite his frantic attempts to maintain a distance, the vampire grabbed hold of his armor and pulled itself toward his neck. Undead physiology overwhelmed living almost immediately. The vampire’s jaws parted wide, dislocating like a snake’s...

  Crack! The vampire’s head snapped back as a nine-millimeter round from Nacho’s MP-5 drove a furrow through its skull before exploding out the back. The ghoul hissed and reared back, just in time to receive the full brunt of Cecil’s drawn stake. The vampire released a keening wail as Cecil gored it before collapsing backward like a sack of potatoes. It thrashed once, then stiffened.

  “You all right, man?” Cecil yelled, advancing toward the hole. He didn’t wait for an answer and instead began firing bursts down the dark maw. Every fourth round was a tracer, and they flashed through the mine like lightning.

  “FAE, now!” Acheson cried into his headset, rolling to his feet. He straightened his NVGs, then swept up his fallen shotgun and fired two rounds into the hole with one hand. He’d regret it later. The shotgun’s kick would leave an ache in his wrist that would last for days. With his left hand, he pulled a white phosphorous grenade from his belt. He dropped the shotgun and ripped the pin free with his right hand while clamping down on the can-shaped explosive’s safety spoon with his left. As Cecil pumped grazing fire into the hole, Acheson hurled the grenade. It went off with a muted thump that reverberated throughout the mineshaft. Acrid smoke boiled upward from the darkness, and carried on it were the howls of demons.