Cancer's Curse (The Zodiac Book 4)

by Sating, Paul

  But it was still strange to march to the firing range to learn how to operate rifles. I'd only ever seen them in the movies and always thought they looked so cool. But so did driving cars on empty streets, or doing dangerous maneuvers during speeding chases, and I never saw anyone doing that during my two trips to the Overworld, including the trip to Germany where supposedly everyone drove too fast to be safe.

  At the range, the staff walked us through the functionality of our M-16 rifles and forced us to tear them down and put them back together a dozen times. Hours of breaking down and rebuilding rifles made the room smell of oil and grime. By the time we perfected that portion of our training, we were ready for chow.

  Sergeant Kelem had been honest with us about the truth behind our fast-paced training. Though it was ambiguous and frightening, I was a fan of this condensed schedule. The longer days meant we completed more training, meaning we'd finish boot camp quicker. Once we joined the mortal Army, we would have some semblance of a normal life and a taste of freedom again. Plus, the Overworld had chicken wings. Enough said.

  Smiles and quiet cheers spread across the platoon when we discovered we would not have to march to the mess hall for our late lunch. Instead, our drill sergeant had organized a delivery of meals–ready–to–eat. So we got to stay where we were and have boxed meals brought to us. Of course, it behooved Sergeant Kelem's schedule as well, since he could keep us with the arms masters, tearing down our rifles and putting them back together again, but I didn't care. Less marching was always a good thing.

  After lunch we went to the range and were walked through the safety procedures. About an hour later, the arms master, one Sergeant Halcion, a gruff, older noncommissioned officer who was still somehow serving Lucifer's Army, informed us that we would be firing.

  "Today?" asked one recruit with a gleam in his eye that made me question if he should have a gun at all.

  The arms master, who didn't care about the formalities of our boot camp training, gave a stiff nod. "Right now."

  We weren't even given the chance to entertain the thought that Sergeant Halcion was screwing with us. As soon as he gave the command, his two younger instructors spread down the line, setting small buckets at each station. When they finished, one of the pair moved to a chain on the side wall and gave it a series of yanks. A hidden mechanism above him began grinding, and the corrugated metal wall in front of the stations slowly rose, exposing the firing range. It didn't look nearly as neat and tidy as the ones in mortal movies. Instead of cool gray concrete walls and automatic trolleys that pulled targets toward shooters at the push of a button, ours was black brimstone floor and wall, with a slanted wall of crumbled brown sandstone at the far end. The range had no roof, so the elements would affect our shots. Paper targets in the shape of armless torsos swayed on cardboard in the breeze.

  "What did they just do, sir?" Bilba asked, nodding at the assistants.

  Sergeant Halcion growled. "Laying out rounds."

  A storm of high-fives, fist bumping, and other various manifestations of male bravado mixed with childish excitement sprang up around the platoon.

  "You boys know the rules, but we're going to go over them again before we begin and then in between each round," Sergeant Halcion shouted over top of the fervor, drawing our eyes back to him. "This is real, boys, not fun and games and not some contest to see which of you has the biggest balls. It's not about earning bragging points. What you do today will prepare you, the best we can, for survival in the Overworld with the human army. Don't take this lightly. Pay attention to everything we say. Don't unlock the safety unless we say so. Don't look downrange if we don't say so. Don't blink if we don't say so. And, I swear to Lucifer, if one of you even thinks to put your finger on the trigger before we say so, I'll wrap my knuckles around your lungs."

  "But lungs are internal organs, sir," Charlie said while raising his hand, his thick bottom lip falling open.

  "Exactly." Sergeant Halcion grinned without humor, stepping off the platform. Another, younger instructor replaced him. "Listen to Sergeant Pythan, boys. He's got your station assignments."

  Sergeant Pythan, all one hundred and thirty pounds of him, commanded attention by withholding the information we needed to hear.

  "Make a hole," Sergeant Halcion ordered without stopping, splitting our group. We reformed when he passed. Sergeant Pythan began reading names and station numbers and released us once all assignments were given out.

  Mine was smack in the middle of the line. "Hmmm," I moaned noncommittally.

  "What's up?" Ralrek asked.

  I waved my arm from side to side. "Stuck in the middle."

  "So?"

  "I'm not going to be able to concentrate." An ugly but true admission.

  Much had changed in my life since being gifted Creed. Subtle changes I hadn't recognized until after the failed execution attempt on the angel spy Gemini. My ability to focus on a single point, item, or demon began to slip. I didn't make the connections when we were sent to steal the Horn of Taurus. The first signs crept up during our second trip to the Overworld in Kaiserslautern, Germany. But even those were too subtle, and I excused my culpability by focusing on the stress and turmoil of our mission and the Council's betrayal.

  What began as an inherent hypersensitivity to conjuring was exacerbated by Creed's power and I'd normalized it for far too long. In the past year since Gemini, though, I couldn't. The influence of the powerful halberd extended to my core, making me more observant than those around me, as if the water tap to my brain was constantly open and it was being flooded. In that time, I hadn't yet figured out how to deal with the volume.

  Everything, every fractional aspect of life, registered in my brain now. When walking through Eve's Sanctuary, I noticed the vibrant colors, heard the whisper of the wind and the rhythmic beat of insect wings. When in Old Towne, a million conversations pierced my brain, making every shopping excursion a living heaven. Working in The Book Abyss was a curse in disguise as I noticed each book misplaced by a customer who'd changed their mind. Samhain carnivals were simply overwhelming. All the demons, the shouts of joy, the rattling of death trap roller coasters, was a tsunami of sights and sounds. The nightclubs—oh, don't get me started on the nightclubs. It didn't matter where I was, Creed had plugged me into life intimately.

  Dealing with the inflow of sensory information was an incremental daily journey, and I'd become decent at hiding my discomfort and adept at faking it. Even the time in boot camp didn't reveal my struggle to process so much stimuli, impressive considering being constantly surrounded by twenty-eight other demons every minute of the day, plus a perpetually enraged drill instructor. But this, everyone firing M-16s? This might be a stretch in the best of circumstances. One I didn't expect Ralrek, or anyone, to understand—yes, yes, hard for them to since I wasn't exactly open about this developing skill, I know. Even I wouldn't know how bad this was going to be until we started firing.

  Ralrek gave me an all-knowing grin that said he didn't believe me. "You've got this. Plus, I'm sure you'll have plenty of chances to shoot again after you fuck it up."

  He patted me on the arm and walked away to take his station. I stood in front of mine and looked down range, not feeling any better.

  Sergeant Halcion and his two assistants spread down the line, each taking a third and walking us through the safety steps before having us lay prone. Step-by-excruciating-step, they led us through the tedium of eye and ear protection, loading rounds into the magazine, and inserting the magazine. Then came the time for magic—not literally, of course. We aimed our rifles at the black, armless targets.

  "Alright boys," the arms master shouted, "flip your safety switch off."

  My thumb found the ribbed metal of the safety switch. The internal spring, tight, protested at my command to flip the switch off. It lost. The switch clicked open. I had a live rifle in my hands and the same fair shot at this task as my as fellow platoon members. No magic. No folding stupid uniforms or polishing boo
ts or making the tightest bunk. This was about demon against physics, and this time no one got to cheat with their Abilities.

  The sergeant's shout jerked me out of my thoughts. "On the horn, you have thirty seconds to fire your ten rounds."

  I swallowed the apprehension. Shit was about to get real.

  The seconds hung in the air like a spotlighted cross in the middle of Lucifer's living room. My breath filled my ears inside the hearing protection.

  The horn sounded, and I forgot every instruction, like my mind had been blown clean by the blast. I scrambled to remember not only what I was supposed to do, but how I was supposed to do it.

  Pop!

  I jumped, flinching backward as the first trainee fired from somewhere down the line. His quick action encouraged everyone else as the covered gallery exploded into violent life, spraying death toward the paper torsos in the open range.

  My heart thudded. I ran through the checklist before firing. Sight the target. Curl the first knuckle around the trigger. Breathe, breathe, hold breath. Squeeze.

  But the noise was too much, even with the hearing protection. My finger didn't cooperate. I reminded myself that it had to be a slow, steady squeeze, but found myself counting the seconds. Thirty. Twenty. Eighteen. I still had not fired a single round. Soon I would have to fire one every second and a half.

  Part of me wondered if the instructors would laugh at the wild spray pattern I was about to decorate the target with. Even the two by four foot target seemed to shrink from existence just thirty feet away, dangling from the clip on the guideline. Taunting. Mocking. Just like every Fiver had over the past six thousand years.

  I closed my eyes, drew a deep breath, and sought calmness, something I'd been practicing for a few months now. The M-16, heavy even though I was prone, grounded me. The cold steel, aluminum alloy, and plastic rubber was just an extension of me. My hands, me, one with it. The distraction of hundreds of rounds being fired by my platooon mates dulled.

  My fear squeezed, my knuckle no longer feeling like a foreign object between my brain and the weapon.

  Pop!

  The rifle kicked back, surprising me. I had expected something like a firehorse kick, but the rifle's recoil felt more like a punch from a pissed off impling. Still, the force dislodged the butt of the rifle from the socket in my shoulder I'd tucked it against. Remembering that Sergeant Halcion warned us against that, I readjusted, feeling the pressure of the seconds ticking away and the fact I still had nine more shots to get off. I had to be close to the end of the allotted time now.

  Butt replaced in my shoulder socket, I adjusted my trigger finger once more, sited the middle of the target and popped off three quick rounds. They felt good. Six more to go, and the air horn signaling the end of shooting hadn't sounded yet.

  I drew a deep breath, slowing my heartbeat, and pressed my knuckle joint against the smooth, curved metal of the trigger even as I found the center of the target again. It looked much larger than it had only a minute ago. And I knocked out my last six rounds. Within a second of getting off my last shot, the air horn sounded.

  "Cease-fire!" Sergeant Halcion's voice was thin and metallic as it came through the megaphone. "Cease-fire!"

  Deep breaths of released anxiety filled my ears. Every other sound of the world finally faded away behind my hearing protection as I remained prone, waiting for the arms masters to finish checking each recruit. Only after they'd insured the safety of the line did they allow us to rest the muzzles of our rifles in a wooden brace just to the side of our positions, still pointed downrange. I ensured my safety was engaged again, even though it had just been checked, and set my rifle in the brace. Standing, I smiled like I remembered having done the first time I saw a pair of breasts in a succubi magazine.

  I'd never felt power like that except in Creed. The mortal weapon was different from my halberd—less powerful, but the newness was exhilarating. The few times I used Creed's magic felt like a slow burn of energy that surged long before I needed it and well after I'd dispelled its magic. Shooting this rifle was more like a powerful punch, short and obvious. The rest of the day promised fun.

  The Private First Class went downrange to score the targets, coming back as he tallied and made notes on his scoresheet. The staff analyzed the data before working with each of us to adjust our rifle's sites. When Sergeant Halcion got to me, he did a quick glance at the rifle that seemed more procedural than necessary, set it back down and gave me a stiff nod.

  "Nice work," he said before moving on to the next recruit.

  I stood in my position, unsure what to do next. Sergeant Halcion nor his staff adjusted my rifle, though they were doing so with every other platoon member. When they finished re-sighting weapons, he returned to the megaphone and ordered us to load a new magazine. This time we were shooting fifteen rounds. As everyone prepared, a metallic clanking clicked away to the side of the line. The targets collectively moved away from us. I don't think anyone else noticed.

  "We'll be shooting at thirty yards now," Sergeant Halcion announced.

  Now heads went up to the targets I'd already spotted moving further down the range.

  Thirty yards. The black shape of a head and torso was smaller. We repeated the same processes, each step identical. They allotted forty seconds this time. When the air horn sounded, I spent the first few seconds calming my breathing and focusing on the target, pushing out the distractions of popping rifles, the spent rounds falling to the concrete all around us, and the thumping of bullets slamming into the sandstone barrier. This time I didn't take nearly as long to get off my shots. Ten seconds of peaceful assessment lay between my last shot and the air horn.

  The air was thick with sharp, acrid gunpowder.

  The scoring and analysis went much more quickly now. When he got to me for the post-round feedback, Sergeant Halcion nodded without making eye contact and moved on to the next recruit. He hadn't stopped to inspect my rifle.

  Ready for the next round, he announced that we were about to start the official qualification rounds. Now, every shot counted. This was it—the test. Sixty rounds total, broken into four stages of fifteen–round magazines at different distances. The next distance was fifty yards.

  A few recruits grumbled at that.

  The targets clanked backwards, the black form shrinking. The horn sounded. I forced the world out. Again, I emptied my magazine well before the round ended.

  We were ordered to load another magazine and a new round began. The recruit next to me shot me a nervous glance, as if the staff's neglect to re-sight our weapons and check in was the most shocking thing he'd ever experienced. I gave him a reassuring smile—I was feeling good—but he didn't look any more confident.

  "On one knee, boys. Rest the muzzle of your weapon on the stanchion to your side."

  I took the position even as I stole glances up and down the line to ensure I was doing it correctly. The two assistants corrected those who had taken an improper stance. It was awkward, kneeling like this, less steady than the prone position, but when I spread my legs further apart, I found I had a good foundation.

  "Here we go, boys," the metallic voice of the sergeant called through the megaphone.

  Even before the air horn sounded, the world fell into my forced silence and, when it did blow to signal the start, I rattled off fifteen rounds.

  And waited. And waited. Finally, everyone else finished.

  The third stage of qualification had us standing, with the muzzle braced against a thick four by four vertical beam on the side of our station. The targets moved away.

  "I wish they would stop doing that," Ralrek's muffled voice announced to my side.

  I smiled down range, almost unable to pull my eyes away from the target no longer taunting me.

  Seventy-five yards this time. This stance was the least secure of all, requiring me to use the first few seconds of the round to make minuscule adjustments. Soon enough, I found a position I could tolerate and knocked out my rounds.


  "This is it," Sergeant Halcion announced. "The last round. Take whichever of those positions we just used you feel most comfortable with."

  I figured we would do most of our shooting prone in the Overworld, and I wasn't a fan of thinking about standing when real bullets were flying the other way. So my chest met the concrete once more.

  The horn commanded us to fire.

  I exhausted my magazine with twenty seconds to spare, even though the targets seemed like nothing more than blurry shapes at the far end of the range.

  When everyone was finished, the two assistants went downrange and counted holes punched through the targets. Tallying duties completed, they collected the targets to bring back.

  Sergeant Halcion called out each individual's name as the assistants handed out their target when they came forward. When he called me, the assistant smiled and gave me a nod. I didn't understand why until I looked at what I held.

  The cardboard backing was shredded. A tight grouping of punctures in the center of the target attested to my comfort with the human weapon. In the top left, the Private First Class had written: '40/40'.

  Murmurs grew as recruits saw their scores and compared them with others. Ralrek carried his target over, with Bilba joining us shortly thereafter, his face drawn in shadow.

  "Did everyone qualify?" I asked.

  "Barely," Ralrek said with a half–laugh.