Tooth and Claw

by Joseph Nassise

  The two men took point, their swords out and ready. Duncan fell back behind Cade, knowing the commander would want to stay up front now.

  The group began to move, taking care to step around the bodies of the now-permanently dead ghouls.

  But they proceeded only a few meters before Moro held up a fist. Everyone froze.

  Moro turned his head back toward Cade.

  “Anyone else hear that?”

  By the time anyone could honestly answer Yes, it was too late.

  The tunnel walls to their right burst apart in an explosion of stone and dirt as dozens of ghouls silently swarmed the knights.

  8

  The melee began instantly as the men's instincts took over. The wall of the tunnel fell down and away as if it were a great curtain, and from beyond it, twelve or more ghouls lurched forward, clawed hands outstretched.

  Cade issued no orders; there were none to give. The ambush called for nothing more or less than swift defense. The men spun at the sound of the crumbling wall and reacted immediately to block the ghouls’ attack.

  One of the beasts targeted Cade. Holding his sword by the blade and the grip, the Templar fell back one step and threw out the weapon in front of him as a barrier. The ghoul bashed into it, and Cade found himself pushed flat against the opposite wall. Duncan was right, of course; these enchanted beasts had strength far beyond what logic and physics would dictate. The ghouls pressed hard against Cade’s weapon, and the knight commander readily sensed that only the holy enchantment on the blade kept him from succumbing to the attack. The people of Gales Ferry would have stood no chance whatsoever against these creatures.

  Cade’s elbows were bending beneath the assault as he struggled to keep the monster’s claws from his body. The ghoul clutched the sword with one hand while swinging wildly for Cade with the other, and the attack found purchase: it tore a sizeable scrap from his body armor. He felt the Kevlar weave letting go and the ceramic plate beneath cracking.

  * * *

  Cade distantly registered screams up and down the tunnel, but forced himself to focus. He had to deal with what was right in front of him. The ghoul’s blue skin glowed green in Cade’s night-vision scope, and he was again unnerved by the odd silence of the monster. Its jaws snapped at him and its spindly, naked arms bent and twisted like tentacles, trying to wrest the sword away. The fact that it could even touch the holy item didn’t bode well; most demons and undead couldn’t. Whoever had brought this magic to bear, he or she was exceptionally skilled.

  Brute strength was failing the commander. Cade let the ghoul push closer, closer—then he went limp and spun to his right, so the creature smashed past him and into the tunnel wall. Now at its back, Cade brought a short, hard blow to the ghoul’s skull with the pommel of the sword, then alternated to his gloved left hand to drive the tip of the sword into the creature’s kidney.

  Even knowing their silence, he still expected a scream from the ghoul, but went unrewarded. He didn’t pause to think about it; digging in hard with his left hand, he drove the sword upward, slicing a massive gash in the ghoul from its hip to its shoulder blade. The sword snapped ribs on its way up, their splintering sound vibrating the weapon in his hand.

  It was not enough.

  As the sword tore free from the ghoul’s rotten flesh, it turned around and lunged for the Templar. Cade swore and backpedaled as the ghoul tore another chunk from his armor; a piece of ceramic plating fell to the floor at his feet. Cade felt cool air whistling against his torso. But he was still mobile; the ghoul hadn’t reached his skin. Not yet. One more blow to that part of his body, though, and he’d fall motionless to the ground, helpless.

  As the ghoul barreled forward, jaws agape, Cade roared and pushed more than swung the sword toward its neck. The twelve inches or so below his chain-mail glove cut into the ghoul’s throat and then passed through, severing its spinal cord and sending the monster’s head toppling to the ground beside Cade’s lost piece of armor. The rest of its pale blue body fell with it, straight down as dead weight.

  He paused only long enough to ensure the ghoul wasn’t still animated—some creatures needed more to ensure they were finished, and after the amputated but still moving ghouls from earlier, Cade wasn’t convinced beheading them would have the desired effect.

  It did, this time. The ghoul’s arms and legs were motionless.

  Cade spun, keeping his center of gravity low and his sword raised in both hands to protect himself as he backed toward the tunnel wall. He twisted his head left and right, trying to get a sense of the action around him.

  It came quickly in the form of a deep, baritone rumble, so low and ominous that Cade thought for a moment he’d imagined it. Then the rumble grew louder, and through his scope he could see the other men also stepping back and taking notice.

  Cade pieced together this new threat in a heartbeat. Summoning every shred of voice he could muster from his lungs, the commander bellowed, “Templars on me!”

  He raced forward, yanking Riley by one strap of his combat harness, propelling them both farther into the tunnel. Riley struck a critical blow on his blue-skinned adversary just as he fell in behind Cade. Moro and the others took the cue at face value and followed suit, backing away, hacking at the ghouls who pursued them.

  Then Cade’s fears revealed themselves well-founded: the roof collapsed.

  Men shouted and screamed as tons of rock and dirt crashed into the tunnel from above. It began where the ghouls had appeared, but then raced ahead along the ceiling like the great curtain in the temple upon Christ’s death, tearing stone in half as if it were paper. The Templars scrambled for safer footing in pursuit of their commander, who led the broken ranks as best he could farther along the tunnel, hoping they’d be able to outrun the collapse.

  The rumble stopped, supplanted by the sounds of heavy breathing and stray pebbles bouncing harmlessly off their massive boulder brothers.

  “Head count,” Cade said to his XO.

  Riley pushed through the men, counting. At the end of the line, right where the cave-in had stopped, he called back to Cade: “We’re down four.”

  “Ghouls?”

  “None, sir. The cave-in blocked them off, I think. We’re stable at the moment.”

  “Wounded?”

  The men murmured amongst themselves. A minute later, the cadre reported back a clean bill of health. Many of the men had lost pieces of armor like Cade, but they were otherwise unharmed, technology and skill having kept them intact.

  “Gather them up for report,” Cade said, and Riley set about the short business of arranging the Templars into neat rows in a tight U-shape in the tunnel.

  Cade stood before them. “Who are we missing?”

  One of the men standing at the back raised a hand. “Butterfield, Dixon, Bishop, and Orr,” the Templar reported. “The ghouls grabbed them, sir.”

  Cade winced. “Grabbed? Explain.”

  “They got hit with those claws,” said the Templar. “Froze ’em up like a popsicle, then another ghoul would show up from the tunnel they dug and carry ’em off the way they’d come.”

  Even with the scopes blocking much of their faces, Cade could easily read his men’s expressions. Carrying people off was not a common trait among their usual foes. And he’d already seen for himself that the ghouls were hunters, aiming to feed.

  Taken them? Where? To do what? And at that moment, Duncan’s warning came back to the forefront of Cade’s mind: They’re working in teams, sir.

  “Duncan, with me,” Cade barked. “The rest of you catch your breath, hydrate. We’ll move out in five minutes. Go.”

  Most of the men took seats in the dirt, pulling camelback-style tubes to their mouths to suck down water. Cade took Duncan several yards deeper into the tunnel. Duncan stood post beside his commander, focused down the tunnel with his scope.

  Cade tapped his jaw mic. “Kirkland, come in.”

  Kirkland responded right away, but the signal was poor. Static erupted in
Cade’s ear, and Kirkland’s voice was frequently broken by silence.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What do you have so far?”

  “Uh . . . well, sir, there are no military or Templar instal~~~ifty klicks,” Kirkland reported. “But I did find a federal build~~~miles north of here. It’s a black site, sir. And I could be wrong, I’ll have to poke around some more on the Templar mainframe~~~crematorium onsite. Plus a mighty big morgue, something you’d find~~~not out here in the boonies.”

  Cade grit his teeth at both the report and the static interruptions. “Do you have any conclusions based on your intel?”

  “That is beyond my pay grade, Comman~~~”

  The commander might have smiled any other time. “Keep digging and get back to me.”

  “Roger. ~~~guys feel that earthquake? Everyone okay?”

  “We lost four. I’m going to find them. Williams out.”

  Cade reloaded his MP5 out of habit as he relayed the intel to Duncan. “Mean anything to you?”

  Duncan frowned, keeping his eyes trained on the darkness of the tunnel before them. “Nothing in particular. Could just be a medical examiner’s building, someplace the armed services bring their boys and girls from overseas while they prepare them for burial.”

  “It wouldn’t need to be a black site to do that.”

  “No, sir. So maybe it’s for all the secret agent types instead. CIA and FBI and whatnot. You ever see the memorial wall for undercover agents at Langley? No names for the dead, just the acknowledgement that they gave their lives in service. Maybe a place like that is where the bodies go.”

  “A federal building that’s a black site with what might be a large morgue,” Cade said. “Most likely any bodies they have on ice are the bodies of people who were trained in some way.”

  “I agree, sir.”

  “People used to following orders,” Cade said.

  “Indeed, sir. If so, that makes what we’re facing down here a lot worse.”

  “If they’re connected.”

  “Yes, sir. If they are connected.”

  In his heart, Cade already knew they were. By the look on Duncan’s face, the lieutenant felt the same way.

  “If there’s a connection, maybe that’s to our advantage,” Cade mused. “If these ghouls are former military, former trained operatives, that means they have some semblance of tactics, and/or they’re following some type of orders. Maybe that’s a weakness.”

  Cade checked his tactical watch as Duncan’s expression shifted to one of deep concentration. “That’s five,” the commander said. “We need to move.”

  “Sir,” Duncan said, and moved back to put the men in formation.

  Ghouls that think, Cade wondered as the men formed up. Ghouls that might well be able to execute a plan. It was unheard of in Templar lore, as far as he knew. And it damn sure meant someone was up to something very, very wrong. The possibilities were endless, and none of them ended well.

  The Templars gathered behind him in under thirty seconds. Cade faced them.

  “Clearly, we’re moving forward, unless you all want to start digging.”

  No one volunteered.

  “These things took four of our guys, and I don’t know why. We need to find out, and I want our boys back. We’re also going to have to hope there’s another way topside, so, you know—keep an eye out.”

  The men laughed. Black humor was always an appreciated tension breaker.

  “Let’s stick to swords, but keep your MPs handy in case something new shows up. Move out.”

  Moro and Riley took point with Cade and Duncan close behind. “Are we in too deep, sir?” Duncan asked in a low voice.

  “One way to find out,” Cade replied, as they plunged into the darkness.

  9

  Echo Team moved smoothly down the tunnel, weapons at the ready, night-vision monoculars throwing everything before them into stark green and black relief. They’d started passing multiple tunnel branches, but the one they walked now was larger in circumference; it seemed to have been dug as a main artery. That realization did nothing to quell Cade’s growing certainty that Duncan was right; these were not everyday ghouls out for a quick lunch on civilians. Maybe they weren’t constructing skyscrapers or jumbo jets, but they should not have been capable of this kind of deliberate engineering.

  Cade estimated they’d made it about three hundred yards when Riley and Moro raised fists at almost the exact same moment. Cade passed the signal on, and Echo Team stopped.

  No one spoke. And after a moment of hard listening, no one had to.

  The ghouls were coming.

  A lot of them.

  From every direction.

  While the creatures themselves made no noise, no banshee shrieking or groaning of the dead, their bare feet still made contact with the ground. They made footsteps just like any biped, and those footsteps were becoming louder. The ghouls also had a tendency to click their long claws together when they were moving, and those disturbing clacks rebounded off the tunnel walls, sounding a bit like old typewriter keys.

  Cade tightened his grip on his sword. Any second now, the ghouls were going to pour forth from subsidiary tunnels they’d just passed, and also from in front of the team. The undead were executing a basic but standard ambush.

  Cade rammed a palm into Riley. “Run! We gotta get ahead of them up front, go!”

  Riley took off, and the team followed as fast as possible without ramming into one another. On the plus side, they weren’t weighted down with eighty-pound rucks; but trying to get so many men all moving top speed in a constrictive tunnel while using night-vision monoculars was no easy thing.

  The XO cussed as he led them past another side tunnel, but he did not stop. Cade glanced down the tunnel as they went, and saw he’d been right: his monocular lit up about a hundred yards in the pure, unforgiving darkness, and half that distance away, four ghouls were scrambling forward, claws clicking in anticipation.

  “Contact!” someone shouted.

  Gunfire sounded behind Cade, dulled by a suppressor but unmistakable.

  Cade turned his head. Ghouls had appeared behind the team as he’d feared, and now the rearward men were in a fight for their lives. The men opened up with their MP5s. The ghouls weren’t yet within sword distance, and the rear four men were doing their best to keep them from getting that close.

  But the knight commander could see past the initial clutch of ghouls, and he saw dozens more coming. Their dead eyes glowed green in his night-vision.

  Riley took a knee and raised his weapon. “Contact!”

  He fired short bursts from the gun, pointed ahead of them in the tunnel. Whipping around to assess the situation, Cade saw several of the beasts closing in from the direction the team was heading.

  There were three points of contact from where they stood: front, rear, and the four or more ghouls they’d just passed in the side tunnel, which at any second would be bursting into the center of the team.

  Cade pulled an infrared beacon from his tactical harness, as he rushed backward through his men. “On me! Single file at the beacon!”

  He reached the rounded arch of the side tunnel, activated the IR beacon, and dropped it to the ground. The tunnel was suddenly alight—to anyone wearing a mono, anyway. The beacon emitted a signal invisible to normal sight, but bright as hell in the infrared spectrum. Cade slung his MP5 up to his shoulder and began laying down suppressive fire into the side tunnel at the four ghouls he’d seen coming at them. They were less than ten yards away now…and screaming.

  Cade smiled grimly and aimed his targeting laser at the ghouls’ throats. The IR beacon had been a gamble, but a small one with a big potential payoff, and he’d come up rolling sixes. The ghouls had to have had some means of maneuvering in pitch black. It looked like their vision fell in the IR spectrum, and they were none too pleased at the blaring “light” now searing into them from Cade’s beacon.

  The 9mm slugs tore into the first two ghouls, splittin
g their necks open. Cade kept his fire sure and consistent in short bursts as he kept moving forward in an operator’s crouch. His first target on the left lost its head; the ghoul’s skull proved too heavy for the tear in its throat, and its head fell backward then tore off completely, jaws snapping. Cade emptied his magazine into the ghoul on the right as the first one fell, but was unable to render a killing shot.

  The ghoul would be on him in moments.

  He knew he’d have to handle these three monsters on his own; there simply wasn’t enough room for help from the cadre. The ghouls could barely stand shoulder-to-shoulder but at least they couldn’t surround him. The tight quarters were going to make the next part of his plan hard to pull off.

  He had to clear these three, fast, or risk losing the whole team.

  Cade dropped the empty weapon to the ground and pulled his second IR beacon with his left hand while unslinging his sword with his right. He activated the beacon and held it out before him like a holy symbol, wincing against the infrared light that blared in his mono.

  The ghouls reared back and screamed. The sound pierced Cade’s skull, but he relished it; it meant he was hurting them. They could make noise after all, a high, keening wail that reminded him of angry bats in a cave.

  The three ghouls backed away, throwing their clawed hands up in front of their faces. Cade took it as an invitation, and rushed forward with his sword cocked back in his hand.

  His sword stabbed straight into the neck of the first beast. With a bellow, Cade tore the weapon from the monster’s flesh, only to ram it forward again into the next ghoul, which promptly fell on top of its comrades.

  One left. This ghoul decided to face the pain of the IR light, throwing its shoulders back defiantly and releasing a screech that made Cade’s teeth ache.

  “Shut up!” Cade snarled, and gave the undead thing one solid boot to the chest.

  The ghoul flipped backward over its fallen brothers, and Cade leaped, twirling his sword so that it pointed down, and jammed it unerringly into the ghoul’s right eye.