by Nick Thacker
The dark-green heli had been hovering just beyond sight of the road, but it drifted toward them, creeping up menacingly over the treetops. Worse, he saw the sleek-black mounted gun turret hanging beneath the chopper’s nose.
“Army?” Ben asked.
“I doubt it,” Archie said. “It looks like a hack job. Black market thing. Very common in this area, but the fact that it still flies means it has been well kept. I would guess those Masons have some very deep pockets.”
“Well, they did infiltrate the Vatican,” Julie said.
“And that gun’s about to infiltrate our faces,” Ben added. Everyone in the car turned to look at him. “What? Sorry. First thing that came to mind.”
“The angle’s wrong for an attack here,” Victoria said. “It will have to back up and hit us from the road, but the road’s too twisty. And it can’t hit us from directly above — the trees are too tall.”
“So that means we’re safe?” Ben asked.
“No,” she said. “That just means they’re waiting for us to lead them directly to the other temple. Where there will probably be another clearing.”
“… where it will then be able to hit us.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Something like that.”
“Can we take potshots at it?” Julie asked.
“You can try to get one through an opening,” Ben said. “But its hull will withstand any of our rounds, and the windshield will be bulletproof.”
“So we wait and just lead them to the temple,” Julie said. “And I’m sure Garza’s going to be waiting for us there, too.”
“Garza?” Victoria asked.
“Yeah,” Ben said. “Asshole. Vicente Garza, but people call him The Hawk. Not sure why, but it has to do with his military background somehow. He runs a paramilitary security group called Ravenshadow.”
“Vicente Garza is the man who took your friends?” she asked.
Ben nodded. “And…”
He cut himself off. He met Julie’s eyes in the mirror, but couldn’t tell if she was concerned for their current situation or thinking about her past. Still, he didn’t finish the sentence as he had originally imagined it. While it would have been true, there were too many people listening in — Archie, Victoria, and Etienne, not to mention the Peruvian men. They all didn’t need to know Julie’s history. It was her story to tell, not his.
She’ll come to it in time. She’ll realize, and I’ll be there for her.
He cleared his throat, feigning a cough. “We — we’ve just got a bit of a history with him, that’s all.”
Victoria looked out her window. “I see,” she breathed. “I want you to know that I will do whatever it takes to get your friends back.”
Ben nodded. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”
“Whatever it takes.”
73
Ben
The clearing appeared before them, and the second temple complex came into view next. It looked like a mirror-image of the last; the long, rectangular building sat just off the side of the larger, rounded temple. The circus tent-shaped roof loomed over the smaller building, but it was dwarfed by the mountainous cliffs that jutted upward and into the sky.
“There it is,” Victoria said. “Archie — you were right.”
“Nonsense,” the older man’s voice sang out through the jeep’s speakers. “I just happened to be thinking along the right lines first. You would have gotten there within seconds.”
Ben shook his head and smiled. Academics. They were a weird mix of pure competitive envy and selfless humility, all wrapped up in an insecure package.
“And we have company again,” Archie added.
“I hear it,” Ben said, flicking a glance up through the jeep’s open top, trying to pinpoint where the chopper was.
“No, not the chopper,” Archie said.
“Ben!” Julie shouted. “Look!”
The temple doors were opening in the distance. Ben squinted, leaning in. The building appeared to be the exact same layout as the first one they’d been in, but Ben saw movement through the two now-open doorways. Men — soldiers — were running out of them. They ducked as they exited, then lifted their weapons, which appeared to be subcompact assault rifles. They took a moment to gain their bearings, then began running toward the jeeps.
“This isn’t good,” Victoria said. Her voice was merely a whisper.
“It’s okay — there’s only a few of them, and I think we’ve got the firepower to —”
Ben stopped talking. Slammed on the brakes. The jeep behind them swerved to miss them, then came to a dusty halt next to them.
“What the —”
“Holy mother of God,” Julie whispered.
“This… is incredible,” Archie said.
Ben saw the men running toward them, saw their hands moving to bring the rifles up to their eyes to take aim, and he knew the truth in that moment.
Those aren’t subcompacts. They’re not Uzis or assault rifles. Those are full-size machine guns.
And they are absolutely minuscule in their hands.
“Wha — what the hell am I looking at?” Ben asked. To him, it seemed that five extremely large men — men almost twice the height of himself — were bearing down on him.
Victoria’s breathing was loud enough that Ben could hear it over everything. “Those, I believe, are the Nephilim.”
74
Ben
Julie didn’t know if she should trust her eyes or if her mind was playing a trick on her. Men — giants — had emerged from the two open doors in the temple. Five of them, each carrying a rifle that looked like a miniaturized toy version in their hands. They ran, their feet pounding over the earth, toward the jeeps.
The giants were still a hundred yards away, but their weapons — full-sized machine guns that should not have been light enough for men to carry — could easily stretch that distance. As if knowing this, and assuming their advantage, they stopped in the middle of the field and kneeled.
“They’re getting ready to fire!” Ben shouted, revving the jeep once again. He put it in gear and released the clutch, slamming the vehicle forward just as the rounds began ripping through the air. The two men on the outsides of the line of giants had reached their destination first and were now sending 50-caliber bullets their direction.
Ben looked over at the second jeep, driven by one of the Peruvian men, just as one of the soldiers in the backseat glanced back at him. Ben was about to shout an order over the close-range radio — head back to the trees and get out of the jeeps — when the man’s head simply vanished, a tiny cloud of red dispersed in its place.
Etienne Sharpe screamed.
Ben panicked.
He yanked the wheel the opposite direction, causing him and the rest of his passengers to sail sideways until their belts stopped them mid-flight, and he pulled the jeep harder to the left. The trees were closer on this side, and — more importantly — by moving away from the other jeep they might be able to split the giants’ fire.
He was right, but it didn’t matter. There were still three of the five giants firing at them, and two of them were even walking closer as they drove. The trees were twenty yards out.
Then ten.
And then one of the jeep’s tires blew out. The jeep careened to the right, and Ben tried to pull it back and decelerate, but they were moving too fast. The vehicle bounced, landing directly on top of a small boulder. Ben’s teeth clamped down, removing a small piece of his tongue with it.
His mouth was immediately filled with blood, and his vision doubled. The jolt had shaken them all, and he heard Julie groan from the back seat.
He smashed the gas pedal once again, but the car was high-centered. The rear tire, the only one left that hadn’t been shot or mounted atop a rock, flinging dust and rocks up as it dug into the soft mud of the valley floor, but it couldn’t find enough purchase to launch the heavy jeep off the rock.
The gunshots continued, and Ben didn’t need to turn around to know that the two g
iants who were walking toward them had halved their distance by now. Another gunshot took out the second back tire, and then another pinged into the back hatch panel.
“Time to go,” he shouted, holding his mouth with one hand as he unbuckled his seatbelt with the other. The words slurred, coming out sounding like he was drunk. Victoria and Julie were already moving to unlatch theirs, but the soldier next to Julie hopped up and over the side of the jeep and crouched beneath the side of the car.
The gunfire from the giant men picked up in intensity, and Ben winced, waiting for one of the massive rounds to remove an equally massive section of his body — or, like the poor man in the other jeep — his entire head.
“Move!” he shouted. Then: “move to the woods and get behind a tree,” Ben said. His voice was low, and he could barely understand his own words. Blood was gushing out around his hand, but the pain had become a dull throb.
They ran together, Ben jumping over another boulder half-sunk into the forest floor, Julie and Victoria weaving left and right around fallen tree trunks that had slid past the edge of the rainforest. The smell of the dense, rich fauna hit Ben’s nose and replaced the taste of blood.
He wasn’t sure who he was yelling at — no one else needed his instructions. The forest, their only hope at finding cover, was directly in front of them, merely feet away. No one needed to remind him of the literal monsters chasing them, and the monster-sized weaponry they were chasing them with.
Three bursted rounds from a machine gun. Three basketball-sized explosions in the dirt next to his feet.
He was only a few feet from the trees when he realized that the 50-cal rounds they were firing wouldn’t have any trouble at all smashing through the foliage.
They were sitting ducks.
And they were going to die.
He looked over at Julie as he hurdled the last boulder and was about to enter the woods. Her eyes met his, and they shared a silent sentence between them.
No way out of this.
He nodded.
“I love you.”
“I love —”
Julie’s body disappeared.
One moment she was there. The next she had ceased to exist.
Ben stood, shellshocked. He tried forming words, a scream, a tear, anything. Nothing. His body seemed to be locked in place.
Unbelieving.
“J — Jules?”
He heard Victoria’s voice. Distant. Far away.
The soldier, in the corner of his eye. Saw the man lift his weapon, aiming at him.
No.
Aiming next to him.
The weapon bounced slowly in the soldier's hands as he fought back. Ben didn’t hear any of it. The rounds flew out of the barrel of the rifle in a surreal, silent volley of fire.
Julie! He couldn’t hear his own voice. Had he even yelled? Was it all in his head? Is this all in my head?
He turned around, slower than he would have liked, but his body was unresponsive. It took an eternity.
He saw the giants walking toward them, firing blasts of high-powered rounds into the world around him.
He saw the jeep, on fire.
What was left of it. What the hell? It was still perched on the rock, all four tires still intact, but two of them flat. The top half of the jeep’s frame, including the seats, steering wheel, doors, and windows were all gone. Smoke billowed out from underneath the vehicle.
“Ben!”
He heard the voice, pounding through his skull. Or was it just the gunfire? It was like a song, trance music, pounding out the beat of the bass and kick drum.
“Ben!” the voice again. “Come on!”
Victoria was at his side, and the soldier poked out and around the tree again and fired a few shots, protecting them all.
Covering fire.
Ben didn’t look back, but he hoped that meant he had a few extra seconds to get to cover.
He reached the trees, fully enclosed the relative safety of the foliage — at least for a moment. But his own safety was the last thing on his mind.
“Ju — Julie?” he looked around. His head darted back and forth. “Julie!”
“Right there,” Victoria said, pointing. He followed her finger. Down, aiming toward a pile of massive leaves that sprung up and outward from a huge bush.
And there, just at the base of the bush, was Julie.
He ran over, his ears still ringing. She was in a heap; her legs curled back underneath her backside, her arms splayed out sideways. But her eyes were open, and she was mouthing words he couldn’t hear. There was a gash on her forehead, and her eye looked bruised.
He crouched beside her. “Julie! Are — are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Hit this big, squishy tree on the way in.”
“On the —” he didn’t understand, then it came to him. The jeep. The explosion. Julie had been right in front of the jeep when the giants had hit it, and she must have been thrown into the forest.
“It’s actually kind of nice,” she said. “But damn if the ride wasn’t scary as hell.”
He reached down and began to feel around her arms and shoulders, trying to determine whether she had any broken bones. She swatted his hand away. “I’m fine,” she said. She pulled herself up, using Ben’s outstretched arm as a support.
He paused, taking a breath. The gunshots had slowed. Did the other guys make it out? he wondered. Did Archie get them to safety?
“You okay?” Julie asked. “You look like you bit half your tongue off.”
Ben shrugged. “Maybe a tiny little piece of it. But it hurts like hell. Probably worse than yours.”
“I’ll call the wambulance,” Julie said.
“Mr. Bennett,” the soldier said, breaking into Ben’s attention. He whirled around and looked at the man still guarding the entrance to the trees.
“What’s up?” Ben asked. But he followed the man’s gaze and saw exactly what was up.
The giants — the five men, larger than life, carrying their larger-than-life weapons, were heading directly into the forest.
The forest on the opposite side of the road, where the other jeep was parked.
The giants had changed their strategy. They’d decided to regroup and send in their entire force, rooting out Archie’s team.
The first giant in the line raised his machine gun and started to fire. The rounds blasted out from the tip of his gun, shredding the foliage at the edge of the forest as the man moved.
The second in line followed suit.
“They’re too far away to fight back,” Victoria said.
The third and fourth giant lifted their weapons as they drew near to the tree line. Ben held his breath. Please, Archie, tell me you’re no longer there. Tell me you moved deeper into the woods.
He spotted movement. One of the Peruvian men, moving into position.
No.
The man was close — too close.
He saw more movement in the trees. This time two men.
Archie and Sharpe.
They didn’t appear to be armed, and they didn’t seem to know that all five giants were nearing their position.
Move, Archie.
Ben wanted to get the message to him. His walkie-talkie was within range, but he didn’t want to risk alerting the enemy to their exact location.
Archie and Sharpe stayed put.
The five giants were now all firing, their rounds cutting the forest down as if they were a lawnmower moving through tiny wisps of grass. Only a few seconds before they would find the first soldier, then Archie and Sharpe.
Only a few seconds until…
The chattering sound of another machine gun, this one twice the speed, reached the clearing. Then the sound of rotor wash, the beating of the massive flying machine betraying its position.
Ben caught sight of the helicopter just as it fell beneath the tree line and into the open valley.
The Masons are here.
75
Julie
The ch
opper sailed into the clearing, its front-mounted gun hot as it sprayed 50-caliber rounds into every square foot of space between it and the giants. It flew forward, impervious to the giants who had abruptly tried to change their target.
The first and second giant were ripped in half. One man’s arm fell to the ground, the machine gun falling with it, while the other half of him fell to the side. The second man imploded in on himself, his intestines spilling to the ground moments before the rest of his body followed suit.
Julie’s mouth hung open.
I’m watching a battle between a helicopter and giant-sized men welding 50-caliber machine guns, she thought. I don’t think I would have imagined this in my wildest dreams.
“Come on!” Ben yelled.
Julie took off running, wiping at the open gash on her forehead as she lunged over a felled tree. Ben was fast, but he was big, and she caught up to him in the clearing and ran next to him. Victoria and the soldier were close behind.
There was no communication. No explanation of what Ben’s plan was. She didn’t need one. She knew him well enough: someone was in trouble, and he was going to try to help.
Those things didn’t always go as planned. But from the day she’d met him, the day she’d stumbled upon Harvey Bennett sitting cooped-up in a corner in a Yellowstone ranger cafeteria, his hair a mess and his eyes bloodshot, she’d known that he was the sort of person who rushed toward danger when innocent people were involved, not away from it.
He’d tried to save his ranger friend, Carlos Rivera, from falling into a gaping wound in the earth after a devastating thermonuclear explosion. He’d tried to save his own brother and father after a brutal grizzly attack in his youth.
And he’d tried to save her…
Julie stopped.
What is happening?
She was suddenly somewhere else. She’d been transported to… where?
She knew this place. She’d been here before.
“Jules!”
Ben’s voice echoed in the gymnasium. That’s where I am, she realized. A gym. In… Philly.
