The Devil’s Noose

by Michael Angel

  The man’s voice swam in a sea of static. “Barely. Don’t have video feed or vitals at all.”

  “I figured as much. Okay, we’re heading in.”

  She was just able to make out the reply. “Good luck.”

  The two women walked along the mine’s perimeter for a short way until they came to the crudely blasted opening of the mine tunnel. The Cyrillic-lettered signs remained in place, looking to Austen like warnings to ‘Keep Out’ in Russian.

  A prickle emerged at the base of her neck, signaling a thought that wouldn’t go away. Something about the signs she’d seen down here. She did her best to put it aside as they walked on. The hardsuit lights mounted above their shoulders winked on, but they hardly penetrated the deepening gloom.

  “We’ve always been one step behind this pathogen’s spread,” she muttered darkly. Lelache didn’t reply, but Austen saw the woman’s brow arch behind her helmets’ transparent faceplate. “I think you know what I mean.”

  “Ah, oui,” Lelache agreed. “We have been ‘saved’ by its very lethality. It burned like a fire that runs out of kindling. Without more hosts to feed it, it perished in our modern atmosphere. Too much oxygen.”

  “Yet this bug already got out of the mine, maybe more than once. The miners must’ve encountered it while installing that second doorway to the inner caverns. They brought it up into their living quarters, completely unaware of what it could do. And it slaughtered them in a matter of hours.”

  “That’s what makes this organism unique,” Lelache breathed. “Creative. Adaptive.”

  “You sound almost…like you admire that thing down there. It killed everyone around here. It almost took Navarro.”

  A now-familiar wall of concrete-covered rock and oblong steel door loomed before them. Orange light continued to radiate from the slit window. Lelache continued to speak as Austen gripped the door’s hatch wheel in order to turn it to the open position.

  “Admire wouldn’t be the right word. How might you say it in English? To be ‘in awe’? This is a creature that’s older than the dinosaurs. Older than almost any living thing there ever was. Perhaps it was even the first ever. In which case this world belongs to it, not to us.”

  “Helen, that’s a bit…much.”

  “Is it? Humans make much of being the ‘caretakers of the world’.” The edge of Lelache’s mouth curled a bit as she added, “Besides, as fellow ‘Angels’, you and I know a thing or two about keeping things alive, don’t we?”

  Austen gave her a strange look as she swung the door open.

  “Calling us one of the ‘Seven Angels’ wasn’t meant to be a compliment,” she said sternly. “It was an insult.”

  “An insult for voting our consciences,” Lelache pointed out, as they stepped inside. “A vote to settle fate. The fate of one of the universe’s most interesting predators.”

  But Austen wasn’t listening to Lelache at that moment. Instead, another Russian-language sign caught her attention. It was the blue-on-white sign she’d seen before, still nailed to the upper half of a slightly-askew door.

  She’d tried to vainly to pronounce the Cyrillic letters: Not-ak-ba.

  Navarro had to tell her that it meant ‘Supplies’.

  The prickle that had emerged at the base of her neck returned. Then it redoubled.

  Her mind flashed back to the dying Ozrabek miner at the hospital. The miner’s voice had come out a wheeze that she could just make out.

  “Po-STAV-kha!” he had whispered.

  The two words had sounded awfully similar. Austen stepped forward towards the door. She rested her suited hand against the sign for a moment and then tugged the door outwards.

  It scraped against the ground and remained where she left it, yawing open for the world to see. As if in a trance, she stepped inside. Lelache fell silent, eyes watchful as she followed.

  Austen’s jaw dropped in a silent scream at what lay within.

  Bodies lay heaped across one another in shapeless hummocks within. Sightless eyes pinned her in place. She gasped, but no gasp of waking took her out of this nightmare. She froze, forcing her brain to move beyond its first startled impressions.

  The long, deep ‘supply’ room had been filled with hand tools and storage crates. These now lay strewn against the walls or jumbled on the floor along with the corpses. Corpses which looked horrific at first glance, curious at the second.

  The bodies had been stripped either to the waist or all the way down to a set of standard-issue gray underwear. They were all male, all in their twenties, and all bore a single type of wound.

  Each had a bullet hole placed in between their shoulder blades or in the back of the head.

  These men hadn’t fallen to Nostocales Diabolus.

  They’d been executed.

  PART FOUR: THE STORM

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Village of Atagarak

  Breakaway Region of Ozrabek

  Central Asia

  Navarro sat on the corner of the Russian UAZ 4x4’s bumper and watched Amy Zhao lead General Votorov among the ruined buildings of the small village. A pair of the General’s guards watched and waited at a discrete distance. The village lay up a slope to the right of a rutted dirt road, surrounded by the ever-present pine forest.

  The sun had finally broken out from haze around noon. But it didn’t boost the temperature a jot. In fact, the chill added a strange hush to the scene broken only by the occasional thump of distant artillery.

  Colonel Chelovik half-reclined on the opposite corner of the bumper. He fished out an already-opened pack of cigarettes and offered one. Navarro refused, so the Kazakh officer shrugged and lit up, exhaling jets of smoke that hung in the still air.

  Chelovik had spread out his men to form a loose protective screen around the area. He’d been dead set against the idea of using Motte and Bailey’s people to form part of the outer cordon. But Votorov had disagreed in part, so October and Mendez’s squad dismounted their truck in the center of the column. They kept an eye on Zhao’s movements with their high-powered binoculars.

  There wasn’t much to see. The General, perhaps in an effort to impress the young woman, had managed to procure his own hazmat suit to join her as she examined the environs. Yet after an hour spent looking at empty buildings and bagging test swabs, it didn’t seem like any new conclusions were coming to light.

  Navarro looked over the scene carefully on his own, as if walking through what might have happened here. Finally, he stood, walked a few steps to one side, and waved to October. His friend jogged up to the lead vehicle.

  “What do you make of those burn marks?” he asked, pointing to a couple of the charred roofs on the still-standing buildings.

  October squinted. “Is mark of a fire. Why?”

  “How do you think it was set?”

  He could hear the shrug in October’s voice. “Could be torches and poured petrol. Or poor man's grenade.”

  “Molotov’s cocktail? That’s what I thought at first.” Navarro lowered his voice. “But look over there, by the base of the hill.”

  October didn’t say anything, but one of his bushy eyebrows rose in response. “You think?”

  “Maybe. Stick around, I may need you to ask about something for me.”

  Zhao and Votorov took turns spraying disinfectant on their suits before removing the head pieces on their hazmat suits. A bleach-like smell hung about them like noxious cloud as they drew closer.

  “Not much to say about the environment here,” Zhao reported, in a resigned tone. “I need to examine a body. Animal or human. Something.”

  “That’s a good point,” Navarro said. “Nostocales hasn’t left us a single long-term survivor yet. So, what happened to the villager’s bodies?”

  “They were disposed of. Burned.” The General responded, as he shuffled out of his hazmat suit and approached the 4x4.

  Votorov’s guards turned and fell in step behind the man as he spoke. Navarro still wasn’t sure what bothered him
about that, but he pressed on with his question.

  “How exactly were they ‘disposed of’? I mean, how were they burned?”

  Zhao moved up next to Votorov, wearing a puzzled expression.

  “He told me that Chelovik’s men just poured gasoline on the bodies,” she said. “Why? What does that matter at this point?”

  “It matters,” Navarro insisted, “because there’s a long, drawn-out burn mark on the grass at the base of the hill. That’s the mark of a flamethrower, and no one’s said a damn thing about using those on civilian structures. Or civilians.”

  The General’s brows knitted together in an angry frown. He barked a set of orders at Chelovik as he marched up to the vehicle. His two guards finally gave their odd little salute.

  Navarro’s breath caught in his throat as he finally put everything together.

  The ill-fitting uniforms. The sloppy adherence to military protocol that kept bothering October. Weapons carried in the wrong configurations. The salutes that kept coming a second or two late.

  That last bit was the key. Salutes showed respect or deference to a military commander. The base’s troops had been saluting the man who walked just behind and to his side when touring the base. Colonel Chelovik.

  Navarro’s insides turned to ice as he remembered one of DiCaprio’s final warnings.

  Not everything is as it seems.

  The Colonel hadn’t moved. Votorov continued to approach, his face contorting in anger. His voice went up a notch in pitch and volume.

  “He demands to know,” October rumbled, “who was authorized to use flamethrower.”

  Finally, Chelovik got up.

  He uttered a single phrase in Russian. “Ne imeyet znacheniya, ty uzhe mertv.”

  It was one of the few that Navarro knew: Why would you care, for you are already dead.

  Instantly, Chelovik and the two guards moved.

  The Colonel pulled an eight-round Makarov pistol from one of his overcoat’s pockets. He pressed it to the base of Votorov’s throat, and pulled the trigger. A bang, and the nape of the General’s neck erupted in a spray of gore. The man landed on his back and quivered like a freshly landed fish.

  Time slowed to a blur as Navarro groped for his own weapon. Votorov’s two guards had stepped to one side. They’d begun firing even as Votorov fell.

  Navarro’s pistol fell into his hand. With blinding speed, he got two shots off. One blew out the back of the first man’s head, while the other merely ruffled the second man’s jacket sleeve.

  Bullets whizzed past his head as he dove for the cover of the command vehicle. October let out pained unfs! as he was struck in the chest once, twice. The big man spun completely around with the force of the impacts and landed face-down in the dirt.

  With a skin-rippling BOOM, the truck at the center of the convoy exploded in a scarlet fireball. Navarro saw two of his men vanish in the explosion. Another was cut down by the murderous fire from the soldiers that poured out of the last truck.

  Mendez staggered away from the wreck, his clothes and beard alight with flame. Still, he managed to get a single burst off as he stumbled away from the wreck. Another of Chelovik’s people went down before the Mott & Bailey man fell.

  Something cold and hard slammed into the side of Navarro’s head. His vision blurred as he tried to bring his gun up. A second blow turned the blur nearly black. He squeezed his hand and a shot went off blindly into the air.

  Shouts in Russian now. Chelovik grabbed him with one hand. With far too much strength for someone so stocky, the Colonel body-slammed him against the hood of the car.

  “Let go of the weapon,” Chelovik said, in perfect English. “I can stop pistol-whipping you and just put a bullet in your brain.”

  Navarro’s gun clattered on the rocky ground. Someone kicked it away.

  His consciousness swam in and out for a moment. He slid into a crouch, feeling the cold hardness of the car’s metal at his back. Navarro could feel the side of his head swelling, threatening to squeeze one eye shut. His vision was watery, and his ears throbbed from the force of the explosion.

  A single piercing tone cut through the crackling fire of the destroyed truck. He looked up and saw that the sound came from Amy Zhao. The young woman wore a speckled coat of Votorov’s blood. An unending shriek came from her throat.

  Her nerves snapped and she ran blindly down the road, gasping in terror. And in full view of Chelovik and his men.

  “Don’t!” Navarro said desperately. “Leave her alone!”

  Chelovik’s remaining guard spoke in Russian. “Nuzhna li ona nam?”

  Do we need her?

  In answer, Chelovik motioned for the man to keep his rifle trained on Navarro. Then he brought up his pistol. He sighted carefully before compressing the trigger.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The distinctive pok! pok! of the Makarov cracked through the air.

  Amy Zhao’s hair flew up in a black tangle as the bullets hit home. She fell into the tall grass on the side of the road and lay still.

  “You son of a bitch!” Navarro snarled. “She wasn’t a threat!”

  “No, she wasn’t a threat,” Chelovik admitted, as he lowered the gun. “But your mercenaries were, which is why I was willing to blow up one of my own trucks to make sure I eliminated them. And you are too, but you may be useful to us.”

  “To ‘us’?” Navarro shook his head to clear it. A cold breeze picked up, which helped. It carried the smell of burning gasoline and charred human flesh. “Who are you people?”

  “I think you should have figured that out by now.”

  “All I know is that you’re not Votorov’s soldiers,” he groaned. “That’s why none of your uniforms fit, for starters. You’re not Kazakh military, you’re the Ozrabek rebels.”

  Chelovik’s almond-shaped eyes creased with amusement.

  “Very good. My professors at Oxford would have given you a ‘B’ for that answer,” he said. “In truth, I am exactly who I claim to be – a Colonel with the Kazakh military. A son who went abroad as a child, only to come home and make good.”

  “Come home to make good? Or to subvert the government?”

  “Oh, there’s more to it than that! I came back home to help rebuild our legacy after the Soviets had stamped us into the earth. But they never saw the truth: that the Mongol God of Death and War, the followers of the Daichin Tengri, were only biding their time. I let my fellow Daichin into the base to slaughter and replace the soldiers here. When Votorov was assigned here, vodka kept him occupied and fake artillery fire unaware of my deception.”

  Navarro didn’t know why Chelovik wanted to talk, but he kept at it. Every second helped him re-establish his equilibrium more. And he had another reason.

  Chelovik and his remaining man were focused on him. The other soldiers were scattered about at a distance, examining the remains of Mendez’s squad. None gave thought to the body of the big Russian that lay only a few yards behind them.

  And October was moving.

  It was slow, so slow that Navarro had first thought that he’d imagined it. His friend’s hand had been thrown out as he’d fallen. But now it slid smoothly across the muddy ground.

  All he needed was a little more time.

  “So, you came home…and joined a cult?” Navarro asked, in a disbelieving tone. “That’s unusual. But not unheard of. Most guys who do it are just trying to get laid.”

  “You Westerners,” Chelovik spat. “Always making light of things. Daichin Tengri is why you are alive. We respect the strong, the determined. I’m giving you the chance to help us.”

  Navarro sobered up quick. “Help you do what?”

  “Help us capture the rest of the scientists and doctors you brought here. No one else needs to die. If we can keep the news about the bacteria – the ‘Devil’s Noose’ – quiet just a little longer, then we of the Daichin will have the bargaining chip we need.”

  “That’s what this was all about, then,” Navarro said, as h
e slowly stood back up. “You found out about this bug down in the mine, how deadly it was. You don’t have the know-how or equipment to research the thing, to figure out how to grow or handle it.”

  Chelovik’s eyes lit up with a cold fire as he spoke. “But the WHO and CDC did. And they’ve already given me the keys to that particular castle. I’ve got a brood tank ready to grow my samples of the deadliest strain. Soon, it will be spread across the globe if the nations of the world don’t give us our own country. Our own space to resurrect our people’s empire. To return to our place in the sun!”

  “They might not believe that you have such a weapon,” Navarro warned. His eyes flickered over October’s movement. His hand headed down towards his belt.

  “Then they shall die. Only the strongest shall survive. It is as I learned at my father’s knee: only those who are strong are worthy. Only the worthy shall impose their will on the lesser.”

  Chelovik’s guard half-turned towards October. Navarro raised his voice, grabbing the man’s attention. But the emotion he felt was very real.

  Navarro jabbed his finger towards the scar that ran down the side of his face.

  “My father gave me this scar with the edge of a broken bottle when I was seven years old,” he gritted, and the words came like hot lumps of coal down a chute. “He’d come home drunk. He’d finished beating my mother into submission before turning on me. I fought back. I lost.”

  “He was stronger,” Chelovik agreed.

  “But he didn’t impose his will on me because he was worthy,” Navarro said, and his voice came out in an angry hiss. “He did it for the same reason anyone with power tortures another: Because they can.”

  October’s hand emerged from his belt with an object clenched in his fist. He opened his palm and made a flicking motion with his fingers. The pin to the flash-bang grenade gleamed from where it hung around his middle finger.

  The grenade rolled down the slope and came to a stop between the remaining guard’s feet.