So many years ago; that thought came to him.
So many good friends gone to live in Valhalla, to walk the forests and touch shoulders with the greatest warriors who ever lived.
He wondered what Mad Mike would do in this situation. Then he grinned. Charge right in and kill the bloody buggers, that what! Same with the Old Bull he had fought with and become friends with in southeast Asia.
He pushed all thoughts of old and dear and dead friends from his mind; only thoughts of survival remained. The island had been turned into a deathtrap, with booby traps every twenty steps. But Jon had spent his formative years in the jungles, facing an enemy with much more intelligence than the Links. And while the Links had shown some ingenuity in setting the traps, they were primitive, and easily spotted—if one knew what to look for. If not, one was dead.
Every ten or twelve steps, Jon would halt, silently sniffing the air, knowing the scent of their unwashed bodies and their maddened foul breath would aid him in locating his prey—and in staying alive. Also the name of the game.
The odor drifted to him. He froze. The wind, what there was of it pushing through the dense foliage, was blowing from the south. The smell was strong. And very close.
Cutting his eyes, Jon saw the foliage move ever so slightly to his right. He dropped to one knee, leveled the M-10, and pulled the trigger, spraying from left to right.
A hideous scream cut the hot junglelike denseness of the island.
Without waiting to see what his firing had hit, Jon was up and running, angling away from the screaming, but moving in a wide circle, coming up behind the howling, dying Link.
He caught another Link by surprise. The beast turned, eyes wide at the sight of the man charging him. The M-10, fresh full clip in its belly, sang its stuttering ducklike song, its slugs stitching a bloody path across the massive chest of the Link.
Jon turned, running from the Link, leaving it still twitching and kicking and dying on the ground.
He ran into a net of woven vines. He tried to hack his way through them with his machete, but he could see another net behind the first.
They had neatly and smoothly boxed him in.
He smiled grimly, experiencing grudging admiration for the Links. He could hear them coming for him, but knew they would not charge him directly, not head-on, for by now they were well aware of the power of his weapons.
He dropped to his knees, crawling under a thick flowering bush, protected on one side by a palmetto with needlelike points. He wanted to see how many of the Links remained.
But they would not show themselves. Jon could occasionally see a quick glimpse of one dashing from cover to cover, the movement too sudden for him to fire, even had he the wish to do that—which he did not.
So for the moment it was an impasse: they did not know precisely where he was, and Jon did not know exactly how many were left or really where they were.
He looked up toward the top of the vine net; the Links had attached large red flowers to the top of the net. Any movement of the vines would jiggle the flowers, giving away his position.
Cute, he thought.
Jon crawled from under the foliage and slowly made his way along the edge of the net, being careful not to touch its woven vines. He was aware of being stalked, but the Links were staying a safe distance away, and he was curious about that. It was almost as if they were herding him toward some central point.
He reached a small clearing and rolled to one side as a rock came flying at him. He was not fast enough to avoid the second rock and grunted in quick pain as the stone struck him on the fleshy part of his hip. Up on one knee, he pulled the trigger of the SMG and watched a Link’s face tear apart in bloody chunks as the .45-caliber slugs pounded into meat and bone and brain. He rolled back into the thick underbrush and lay there for a time. The actions of his prey puzzled him.
One suddenly dashed across the clearing and abruptly disappeared, as if the ground had opened up and swallowed him.
Rocks began bombarding Jon’s area and he was forced to seek shelter behind a huge oak. With peripheral vision, he watched another Link follow the first, the ground seeming to open up, taking him. The mercenary grinned as the barrage of stones stopped. Now he knew where the Links had gone and what they wanted him to do.
They had gone underground.
And they wanted him to follow them.
Jon waited, listening intently. The two or three Links still above ground were retreating, and making no effort to hide their withdrawal.
Cute, he thought. A bit crude, but cute. If I somehow manage to survive the two underground, the two or three above ground will be waiting for me.
All right.
He stood up, slowly rising to his feet. He walked to the spot where the Links had disappeared. He could see that the ground around the large hole in the earth had been recently cleared of brush. A thin flat rock, probably used as a cover for the hole, was to one side of it. A large boulder was near the hole.
You boys didn’t want me to miss it, did you?” he said aloud.
He squatted for a time, alternately peering down into the darkness of the hole and then looking around the clearing for the other Links.
He took a small flashlight from his pocket and directed the beam into the hole.
He really did not wish to go down into that hole; he would have much preferred to seal it and forget it. But Jon knew that although he had blown a number of their exit holes, he certainly had not sealed them all.
He was counting on that.
He checked his equipment: grenades, knife, compass, two full canteens, twin ammo pouch, two full clips for the .45 pistol belted at his side. Everything was in place. He filled the clip of his M-10 and jacked a round into the chamber, pushing the lever forward onto full-automatic, then setting the safety.
He stood, taking several deep breaths.
He mentally steeled himself for his mission.
Then he stepped down into the unknown.
Chapter Eighteen
The smell was indescribable; a mixture of dead rotting flesh, excrement, unwashed animal odors, and Jon thought, God only knew what else.
But, the grim thought pushed into his brain, I am about to find out what else.
He removed a pocket-type fluorescent lantern from his shirt pocket—broken. He tossed it to the cavern floor with a clatter. He took a quartz torch from his rucksack; that would burn for hours, but the beam was narrow.
Above him, the light from the open hole suddenly went dark, plunging him into an abyss totally void of light. He dropped to one knee, spinning, the muzzle of the SMG up and ready to spit death.
A barrier of some type had been played over the hole, effectively closing off that exit; probably that boulder he had seen off to one side. The blockage didn’t worry Jon; he had enough high explosives with him to dislodge the rock if he had to do that.
He turned and walked on, occasionally using the quartz torch. His senses told him the rock path was, every so gradually, sloping downward. Every few yards he would stop to listen for any alien sounds.
God knows the smell was alien enough.
That and just bloody awful, he thought.
In the darkness, Linda’s image seemed to come to him, wrapping her silkiness around him.
As lovely and as delicious as her image was, he reluctantly pushed her from him, forcing thoughts of her out of his mind. Have to be free of her here. Only survival matters here, he cautioned himself.
He sensed the charge before he actually heard the Link coming at him in the narrow passageway.
The M-10 spoke as if with a mind of its own. Fearing ricochets, Jon hit the stone path a quarter-second after the burst, before the flashes and the immense noise had yet died. He was motionless and holding his breath as he lay on the hard damp surface of the cavern floor. The Link screamed once. Jon heard the huge beast shudder as life left it.
He waited.
Far down the dark corridor he could hear the other Link running, its
footsteps fading.
But what if all this had been a setup? Jon silently pondered. Yes, I saw two Links enter the hole, but what if there were others already down here?
Waiting for me.
He pushed that thought into the back of his mind. He had to go forward. He had no choice in the matter. He used his torch to pinpoint the location of the dead Link, sprawled in bloody, stinking death. It had shit while dying, the defecation steaming in the coolness of the cave.
Somehow the darkness only served to heighten the brute’s awfulness.
Jon stepped over death and defilement and slowly pushed on.
A rock came singing toward him, bouncing off a curve in the narrow passageway. Out of pure spite, Jon picked up a rock and hurled it at the Link. He heard the beast howl as the rock bruised its flesh.
The Link began hurling stones at Jon with a savage vengeance, the rocks making little sparks in the darkness as they struck the cave walls. Jon could tell by the grunting sounds that the Link was moving closer with each throw, hissing out its frustration as it sensed it was being bested by its human adversary.
Crouching behind a boulder, Jon leveled the M-10 and held the trigger back. Fire leaped from the muzzle. The sound was enormous in the darkness.
The rocks ceased their bouncing. Silence greeted the mercenary.
He used his torch, its single beam illuminating the cavern floor. Carnage shone wetly on the floor and walls, dripping crimson and bits of bone and guts and gray matter. The big .45-caliber slugs had literally torn the Link to bits.
Jon looked ahead into the darkness. Now there remained only one minor problem.
Getting out.
He walked straight ahead, into the unknown.
Using his torch, he studied the cave walls and the worn floor. The path, its rocks angling downward, had been used often. Jon struck a match. The flame flickered for only a few seconds before the steady puffs of breeze blew it out.
So fresh air—if one could call it that—was coming in from far below. But the air was sickeningly stinking.
Put one boot in front of the other, Badon, he told himself. Move out.
Using the torch sparingly, just quick flashes so he would not walk off a ledge, Jon proceeded slowly, his M-10 at sling, across his chest, in the most stable position.
He walked for several hundred yards, always downward, before one boot slipped in something soft and mushy and he instinctively put out his hand to cushion his fall.
Jon fought back sudden nausea as he realized what he was in and what was above him; he was over his ankles in bat shit and he knew there must be hundreds of the creatures above him. He stopped, listening hard, hearing tiny squeakings from above him and the movement of almost-paperlike wings.
He knew he could not stand in the stinking muck any longer, for there were beetles who grew and fed on the droppings of the night creatures, and the beetles could bite; their scavenger bites were painful and highly infectious. Jon also knew, if his memory served him correctly, that approximately one out of every three bats was rabid.
All in all, he grimaced, I’m in one hell of a fix. If I thrash about or use my torch, the bats will wake up and zero in on me, attacking.
And I certainly can’t stand here ankle-deep in bat shit forever.
Summoning all his inner courage, Jon walked ahead, through the deep mushy mire, each step deliberate. The stench of the pesthole filled his nostrils with putrid odors. He fought back the hot bile that threatened to explode from his churning stomach. He had no choice but to plunge ahead, for that was the direction of the breeze—the way out.
A man has a job to do; he does it. No big deal.
Keep thinking those words, Badon, he reminded himself. Just lift one boot and follow it with the other.
He wondered if the gaseous cloud of stink was poisonous. He decided it probably was.
Bat shit plopped on his head and shoulders and face from the creatures hanging upside down above him, but he could not hurry, for to do so would arouse the bats, and he did not want them attacking.
The breeze grew stronger and he plodded on, but with a faint smile on his lips, which he kept pressed tightly together, not wanting bat shit for lunch. The bat droppings dripped from his face.
The slanting grew a bit more upward, and the mushy slop under his boots lessened, then was gone.
He was out of the bat sanctuary. Far above him he could see dim light filtering through a hole.
Stopping, he washed his face with a bit of water from his canteen, then washed his mouth out.
He silently chuckled. He had come very close to losing his nerve back in the bat cave. Entirely too close. Jon concluded he was simply too old for this type of nonsense. He had spent almost thirty years of his life in combat, of one type or the other, and after this, by God—it was over.
Providing, of course, he thought, he didn’t first die of infected bat shit. Or, the possibility came to him, the Links waiting outside the cave didn’t do him in. Bashing his head in with a cosh of some sort.
The climb grew steeper, and his boots were slipping on the smooth rock, losing traction because of the shit oozing from the leather and the soles.
About fifty feet from the opening, Jon stopped and rested for a time—and waited. He was good at waiting, a master of that game. Probably, he felt, as good at it as the Links. So if they were up there, and he was sure they were, he would wait them out; make them initiate the first careless move.
A half-hour ticked by, the luminous hands of his watch recording its slow passage. No sound save that of nature came from above. Jon slowly and noiselessly began the climb up toward the opening in the earth. Just as he reached the opening, a tiny bit of dirt trickled down. Jon froze. Waited. Quiet breaths. A tiny bit more earth fell. He made no sound as he slipped against the rock wall, under a small overhang just below the hole which was no more than two feet above him. He hid in the shadows of the overhang. He heard a soft grunting, then an answering grunt. No more sounds. Two of them Jon thought—at least. But . . . now what.
Then he smiled.
Softly, making no sound and using as little movement as possible, Jon slipped a grenade from his web belt and pulled the pin, holding the spoon down.
Then he moaned. Moaned as if in great pain. He waited.
A series of low grunts from above and the light from the hole darkened. Jon could see the outlined shadow of a Link staring down into the opening. Its long hairy arm dangled down, the hand open, searching. Jon released his grip on the grenade and the spoon went flying. He slapped the grenade into the paw of the Link and the hand instinctively closed, jerking upward.
At a four count, the earth above him shook as the grenade exploded. Jon bunched his leg muscles and lunged forward, out of the hole and into smoky daylight. He hit the ground rolling, and came to his knees behind a tree, the M-10 at the ready. He looked at the carnage before his eyes and lowered the SMG.
Both young Links were dead. The one holding the grenade must have been standing right in front of his companion when the charge blew. It had blown both of them backward, yards apart, in opposite directions, spreading open their chests and tearing their heads apart.
It was over.
Almost.
At a pool of water, Jon washed the bat shit from his hair and face and then backtracked his way to the boat, using his compass heading. Karl was sitting on the ground by the beached craft, an odd expression on his face.
You stink of shit,” the German said.
That’s what I’ve been wading in,” Jon told him.
You must remember to tell me about it sometime,” Karl replied. In about thirty or forty years.”
We’ll both be dead by then.”
Yes, that’s why I suggested that time frame.” Karl held out a piece of paper.
Jon took it, looking at it. A map had been drawn, an X marking a location. The printing was neat. HERE, it read. IF IT MUST BE, LET IT BE YOU.
Jon’s look was skeptical. A Link brought this?�
�
No,” Karl said softly. Sheriff Saucier did.”
Chapter Nineteen
An old male stood on the bank of the small knoll of ground watching Jon and Karl motor up to it. The old guard offered no resistance as Jon beached his boat and climbed onto land. Then he pointed toward the center of the small island and Jon waved him forward with the muzzle of his M-10. The old Link grunted and complied, walking ahead of the humans.
Neither Karl nor Jon was prepared for the sight that greeted them.
My God!” Karl said.
Sheriff Saucier stood by an old female, her paw in his hand. My mother,” he said.
The sheriff of Fountain Parish was weaponless.
About twenty Links were all that were left. Most of them were young, four or five years old, Jon guessed. They were in various stages of human development. Two were almost pure human. The sight of those was disturbing enough. It was the other sight that churned his guts with unfamiliar emotions.
Three white women, one black woman, all with babies in their arms. Two sets of twins. Human. The others were pure Link. Animals. Beasts.
The women’s hair was matted and dirty, and what clothing they wore was made from vines woven into loincloths and bras.
It’s amazing!” Karl whispered.
We are waiting for you to kill us,” Mike said. There is no need to be alarmed. This is not a trap. My people are nonviolent. My mother told me if we are to die, she would like for it to be done by you, for you are a warrior—a hunter—and you would do it quickly, without pain and torture as the others have done.”
You can communicate with them?” Jon asked.
Of course. I’m one of them. So was Joe, although we never discussed it. Lots of descendants around the three-parish area.”
We found a ... clan of Links and humans dead this morning,” Karl said. It looked as though they had taken part in a mass suicide. If so, why?”
A Crying Shame Page 24
