He knew they were dead. It moved so fast. The weight of that thing would crush them before it ever got a chance to sink those teeth in. He and Holloway might as well be pedestrians standing in the way of a bus.
But the creature came to a hard stop out in front of him.
The woman—she’d put herself between them—stopped the massive thing in midair. She grunted with effort as her legs dug into the sand, but she didn’t break—it should have been impossible.
“I said go!” she said. “Now!”
Her words held none of his fear. She’d only raised it to a yell to be sure he’d heard her over the creature’s snarls. She held it with one hand at its throat. The abrupt stop had surprised it, jolted it unexpectedly, but its momentary hesitation faded as its feet found ground.
The monster’s white eyes left Douglas to focus on the obstruction—savage clawed hands shot out for the woman. It moved fast—faster than he could see clearly. Yet, her forearm, seemingly tiny and insubstantial, batted its claw away, intercepting it at the wrist with enough force that it seemed to hurt the monster.
What followed was a blur, what Douglas could make of their limbs moving were the brief moments when they were still. He could feel their strength, a percussion reverberating in the air when her hand clamped down on its wrist, each snap of its teeth like an alligator’s jaws slamming shut.
Realizing his rifle had clicked empty, he shook himself and swung the weapon onto his back—he doubted it was any use to him out here with these two but he wasn’t giving up the only protection he had. With both hands free he was able to grab Holloway’s forearms. This helped him move up the slope faster, but nothing was fast enough under the circumstances.
The woman was still holding the thing at bay. She seemed able to bat its predatory claws away while holding its snapping teeth at arm’s length. Suddenly, she abandoned her footing and stepped aside. The monster didn’t expect it, lost its balance, and plowed headfirst into the sand. She grabbed its wrist as it stumbled, turned in a tight half circle and loosed her grip.
Her coat whipped around her as the massive shape shot into the dark. Douglas would have lost sight of the beast entirely had a mound of sand not exploded on the opposite side of the slope. The ground shook under his feet from the impact as the monster punched into the sands to be swallowed by the desert.
He had no idea what it would take to put the beast in the ground and keep it there, but he’d seen enough to know it had only been slowed down—and would likely be all the more angry when it reemerged.
With the shake of her arm, the woman seemed to free a shaft from her coat. Longer than a knife, shorter than a sword, something steel dropped into her grip. He wouldn’t have even been able to tell that much in the dark, but the steel caught the moonlight strangely. Almost as though it were somehow reflecting more light than it could possibly be catching.
“Jesus, lady . . . good luck.”
Douglas was genuinely relieved that the woman was armed. He knew with no uncertainty that, given a choice, he’d rather be dealing with her again rather than the creature once they were done with one another.
Finally, he backpedaled to the top of the dune. He stopped, and heaved Holloway onto his back, knowing they wouldn’t get far if he tried to drag the man by his forearms all the way back to . . .
He was running away, but he didn’t know where. Back to the rocks? To the rendezvous?
The thudding of his heart was loud in his ears, but not nearly enough to drown out the massive thuds and slaps of the two titans exchanging blows behind him. He heard a clumping sound at times, as though the creature moved on all fours. Its growls chasing after him in the dark.
A roar came—a bestial sound of pain and shock.
He didn’t look back. He could only hope that the woman had delivered a mortal blow.
Then, he heard another scream a moment later—this was human. A shriek of agony.
Her voice was still piercing the night when he stopped and turned to look back. As he looked at how little ground he’d covered, he was struck by the hopelessness of what he was trying to do. Even if he dropped Holloway, no man could outrun the thing that had come out of that sphere.
Her scream stopped, and the sound seemed to reverberate with certainty in his bones. He couldn’t leave. If he didn’t do something to keep that creature from killing her—he and Holloway would be the next course of its dinner. He stumbled turning back toward the ravine. Had no idea what he could do to help her.
He had grenades . . . maybe he could hurt it—
The woman’s voice came again. Not pain and surprise, but pain and anger this time, followed by the sound of her heaving something heavy. He heard a crash, like old metal collapsing beneath a boulder.
The fuselage collapsing, he realized. Then, bright light. His feet were no longer on the ground. Hot air picked him up—Holloway with him—and threw them into the night.
Fire shot up the sand with a deafening boom, drenching the darkness away with light for the second time that evening. The blast knocked Douglas into the air and down the rise. He lost his grip on Holloway the moment it hit him. He felt his body fly through the air, then slam back into the sand.
He had little power over what happened to him as he began rolling downhill until he finally came to a stop at the bottom of the rise, the ground still shivering beneath him. He couldn’t hear anything other than a high-pitched ringing, but for the time being, there was no absence of light. Flames reached up out of the ravine to make the sky itself seem on fire. He could feel his panic, and he couldn’t breathe. He’d been short of breath from carrying Holloway, but the explosion and fall had knocked the wind out of him.
He gasped and choked as his eyes searched frantically for his friend. He saw the shape of a man, not too far away. Holloway, still unconscious, face down in the sand—likely unable to breathe.
Douglas found he could not will his body to its feet any more than he could command his lungs to breathe the way he saw fit. Still, he forced himself to roll and crawl down to the man. As he made slow progress, the sky began to fall all around them. He couldn’t hear it, but he felt it when a large chunk of the fuselage hit ground around him.
He kept moving, something could land on him or Holloway any second and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He called out to the man, but his ears were still ringing so hard that he couldn’t hear his own voice. When he finally reached Holloway, it was all Douglas could do to pull the man over. As soon as Holloway’s face was toward the sky, he saw the man’s chest rise and fall as Holloway took a long unobstructed breath. Relieved, Douglas collapsed onto his back and focused on his own breathing.
He lay there panting, occasionally opening his eyes to look at the bonfire in the sky. He didn’t know how long he was there before it occurred to him that if nothing had landed on them by now, then at least that wasn’t going to be how they died tonight.
That, and it seemed the nightmare creature hadn’t crawled up from the ravine to eat them.
As his breath steadied a smile began to form. He couldn’t hear it, but knew he was laughing the sort of maniacal laughter one only experiences after nearly being eaten alive to find they came out of it all with a few bruises and a ringing ear.
What the hell had been in the fuselage? Military grade explosives? Old bombs from a past war?
He found himself wondering, if an explosion goes off in the middle of the desert, and the Libyans aren’t there to hear it . . . does Command still blame Douglas Tibbs?
Finally, his ears reported something other than ringing. He thought he could hear the flames still burning.
Then he realized his hand was wet.
He held it up in front of him—for a moment he thought it was just the red of the flames, but the longer he looked the more a new fear took hold. His smile drained off his face. Blood—too much to be from anything minor.
He didn’t feel injured, was it even his? He bolted up on his hands and knees, was about
to check Holloway, but stilled in place as he reached for his friend.
The woman.
She was alive, stumbling toward him from the top of the dune with smoke wafting off what remained of her clothing. One of her arms was gone—severed at the shoulder. That length of strange steel she’d pulled on the beast—it was sticking out of her now. Its tip looking as though it had been stabbed through her back and out the front of her chest. The steel was still hot, blood sizzling as it cauterized on its surface.
While all of that was enough to still him, there was a light beneath her clothes. A radiant energy wisping away from her from lines embedded across her chest. Those lines were bright but flickering as though struggling to remain on.
She fell to her knees beside him, blood trickling into the sand. Douglas stared wildly into her eyes, and they flashed blue before she spoke. “Captain Tibbs . . . I need your assistance.”
At dawn, Turner and Evans awoke beside one another. The events of the night were unclear at first, but after some time, they both came to remember enough. Tibbs had given them the order to investigate a potential attacker.
Evans didn’t feel it, but Turner was sure they had been drugged. Said it was like his limbs were weighed down, the same feeling he sometimes had when he took a pill to help him sleep.
Figuring out their location didn’t take long. Standing up and looking around, it was as though they had been left propped up against the side of a rock only a short distance from the horseshoe where they had stopped to rest the night before.
When they returned to the camp, they found their bags still there, along with Holloway’s and Tibbs’. But no immediate signs of either man. So, they set about trying to piece together what had happened. Eventually, they found one set of footprints that had survived the desert’s efforts to erase them. Footprints heading east.
They had lost too much time, were going to be late to the rendezvous, but they knew Holloway and Tibbs wouldn’t have left them behind. Their Captain missing, command fell to Turner, and he wanted to head east to see what they could figure out. Evans didn’t need an order, he expected nothing less.
They grabbed the missing men’s packs and had not been walking long when they saw a figure cresting a dune. Soon, they recognized Douglas coming toward them. When they reached one another, they could see his clothes were covered in blood and sand.
“Captain, are you alright?” Turner asked.
“It’s not my blood,” Douglas said.
He sat in the sand. He was exhausted, like he’d spent the entire night running for his life. Evans and Turner didn’t rush him for an explanation. They suspected they knew the answer but waited for him to speak of Holloway.
Eventually, Douglas took a long breath and raised an open hand to show a set of dog tags, wordlessly confirming their fears.
“The body, we’ll need to carry it out?” Turner asked.
Douglas only sighed and shook his head. “There isn’t anything left.”
EAST COAST | 2003
What had made Peter stumble through his last few steps, Rachel couldn’t tell, but he had stopped to steady himself at the edge of the sidewalk. He looked as though he’d been lost in a daydream and was now trying to remember just exactly what he was doing outside of his apartment complex.
He sighed loudly and spun to look in Rachel’s direction. She leaned back, just in time to hide behind the corner of the building.
“Come out, Sis, I know you’re there,” Peter said.
How does he do that? she wondered, having been certain he hadn’t seen her.
He didn’t always realize when she was there, but when he did it was like this—as though he just knew exactly where to look.
Annoyed, she stepped out into the open.
“I told you to stop this.”
Rachel acted as though he’d simply said hello.
“How do you do that?” she asked.
Her brother smirked. “Wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me then.”
“I’m psychic.”
Rachel glowered at him.
“Hey, I’m not explaining myself,” Peter said. “You’re the one skulking around.”
“Skulking,” she scoffed. “I call it being proactive, this way I’m not surprised when my idiot brother finds a new way to sabotage himself.”
“I get that you worry, but the spying isn’t helping anyone,” Peter said.
He began to walk away, and she was quick to catch up to him. “Where are we going?”
“I’m going out, you’re going to take a hint.”
She pretended to consider this for a moment. “Nah, I know a cry for help when I see one. You need my company.”
After two more blocks passed mostly in silence with Peter poorly hiding his irritation, he seemed to accept he wasn’t getting rid of her.
“How’s Dad?” he asked.
“Who knows? If the Pentagon doesn’t have him traveling, he’s sitting in the dungeon he calls an office reading reports.”
“And Jack?”
“Pokémon and Hot Wheels,” Rachel said.
While that got Peter to smile, Rachel wasn’t fooled by any of this small talk. Sure, her brother cared about their family, but when he got done asking after everyone else, he’d finally get to his estranged fiancé. Rachel figured she’d save him the trouble.
“Nut up,” Rachel said. “Ask me about Val.”
Peter winced, but he didn’t try to pretend she wasn’t on to him. “I assume she hates me.”
“No, not yet. She’s still too confused and worried to hate you,” Rachel said, shaking her head. “But if you don’t do something to fix this soon, she will get there.”
“It would be easier for her if she just moved on,” Peter said.
“Yeah . . . but that isn’t really how love works, dumbass,” Rachel said. “See, when someone you love just leaves, refuses to give anything close to an explanation . . . your imagination starts trying to fill in the blanks. And that sucks, Peter. Because your imagination can come up with some pretty scary stuff.”
He looked away. She could see he wasn’t immune to her words, but Peter hadn’t really spoken to anyone in months without being forced. No amount of guilt would change his mind, but it still stung him.
He cleared his throat, “You sure we’re still just talking about Val?”
That got him a glare—but she didn’t pretend he was wrong.
“Would it help her move on if you told her I met someone else?” Peter asked. “That . . . I’d been cheating on her the whole time we were engaged?”
“I’m not lying to her for you. You’re not seeing anyone. You hardly even leave your apartment.”
Peter stopped and stared at her. She realized her words had given away the extent to which she’d been watching him—and it was more then he’d previously assumed. He looked as though he was trying to channel outrage into an explosion about boundaries, but something distracted him.
He looked up, and for a moment it was as though he forgot she was even there as he searched the faces of strangers coming and going on the sidewalk.
“So, no, I’m not gonna lie. You’re gonna have to tell her the truth.”
He didn’t act as though he’d heard, his attention still scanning the crowd. She took a moment to try and see what he was looking at but there was nothing of note about the pedestrians around them.
“Peter?”
“What?”
“Val,” she said, frowning at him. “The truth.”
Her brother shook his head, looking annoyed that his attention was being divided. “It’s not about the truth, there’s just no future with—”
He cut himself off. Already regretting that he’d let his guard down.
“No future?”
He shook his head. “I misspoke.”
“Don’t do that, Peter. Are you sick? Is that what this—”
“No,” he cut her off. “I’m fine. Healthier than ever. Don’t go reading
something into nothing.”
Oh, nice try, Rachel thought, as she studied Peter, who was starting to walk away again and still barely paying attention to her.
“Look, Sis, I meant it. I really don’t want company right now,” Peter said. “I’ll call you when I get home tonight.”
Rachel gave him a sardonic smile. “Right, because I don’t remember the last three times you said that.”
“I’m just going grocery shopping,” Peter said. “Do you plan on following me up and down every aisle?”
“That going to be a problem?”
She could see his teeth clenching as he started moving faster, soon she was power walking to keep pace. He was still searching for someone—maybe something—given how his gaze often seemed to search the rooftops at times.
“Peter, what the hell are you looking for?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Just, thought . . . I recognized someone.”
“On the roof of that radio shack?”
Peter pulled his eyes back to the street.
“Who?” Rachel said.
He shook his head, then pointed at the grocery store. “I need to make a phone call. I’ll be a minute.”
She almost argued—almost. A ten-year-old would have known he was lying, given how gracelessly he was going about it. She suspected that whatever distracted him had made him nervous. That he wanted to do something about it but couldn’t while she was there watching.
“Fine,” she said, and turned toward the store. “But don’t try to disappear on me, this conversation isn’t over.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said.
As she walked toward the grocery store, she watched his reflection in the sliding glass doors. He took his phone out, made a poor show of perusing his contacts while he waited for her to be out of eyesight. As it had played out, Rachel only had to bluff for a few seconds before circling back.
The Never Army Page 3
