by Evan Currie
A silent count of three was the only warning they gave before Derek mule-kicked the door with enough force to splinter the wood around the locking mechanism and send it slamming inside. A scream was heard from within, but almost before it could be heard Mack was through the door, sweeping the area with his 417 assault rifle.
“Get down! Down! Down!” he snarled, his eyes automatically taking in the people in front of him.
Masters put his elbow through the window, then followed it with the muzzle of his Beowulf fifty-caliber rifle, adding his own commands into the mix. “Face down on the ground! Now!”
Within seconds the team had stormed the building, physically throwing several people to the ground. One of the men had to kneel on a man’s back when he tried to get up. Literally less than a minute passed before silence returned, and not a single shot had been fired.
“Clear,” Derek Hayes called softly. “Civilians, boss. Shotguns, rifles, nothing milspec…but I’m just as happy they didn’t have them ready.”
“Roger that,” Masters said as he fell back from the window and pulled Alex to his feet, heading around to enter the building.
Inside, the team had several men and women lying in a row on the floor, rifles pointed at their heads.
“Alex,” Masters said, his tone making it clear that he was giving an order.
“Right.”
Norton went to work, forcibly turning the first person, a woman, over and flashing a light in her face. He stared for a moment, then checked her pulse and forced open her mouth. One of the others civs started to protest, but the cold steel of a rifle to his head settled him down.
Norton stepped back, then looked over the others a little more briefly. After a long moment he looked up and shook his head.
“All right, step back, and let ’em up,” Masters ordered.
“Who are you fuckers?” the man who’d tried to object earlier ground out as he was yanked to his knees.
“Shut up,” Masters snapped. “I talk, you listen. I ask, you answer. I don’t have time for anything else, so you don’t have time for anything else. What’s your name?”
“Fuck you!”
Masters wanted to slam the idiot into the ground and move on to the next one. He didn’t have time for this bullshit, but the fact that he was dealing with an American citizen on American soil ground him up inside. He stepped closer and leaned in to the man, face to face.
“This is me being polite. Don’t think I won’t become very impolite if you keep fucking with my timetable,” he told the man, resting the barrel of his Beowulf rifle on the man’s shoulder. “Name.”
The man swallowed, then finally spoke up again.
“Brad Coulson.”
“Very good, Brad. Now, what the fuck happened here?”
“Why don’t you tell us?” Brad snarled, eyes flaring again.
Masters sighed.
This is getting us nowhere.
He unzipped his coat and peeled it back enough to show the emblem that was attached to his BDUs with Velcro. The man’s eyes widened as he recognized it.
“You’re with the navy?”
“That’s right, and we’re here to find out what the fuck happened to the guard unit and the state troopers who were deployed up here.”
Brad shook his head, looking around, and everyone else seemed just as lost.
“We didn’t see them, I swear!” His words were spewing out rapidly now as Masters closed up his coat. “We locked ourselves in here after the…the…”
He trailed off, lost for a moment, his eyes seeming to look beyond his immediate reality. Masters snapped his fingers in front of the man’s face, startling him back to the present moment.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. People just…went nuts,” Brad said, shaking his head. “The first thing I remember was that there was an explosion southwest of town, down by the oil rigs. We were grabbing everything we could to get down there and help out when another fire started right in town.”
He frowned, thinking hard as he spoke. “Everyone showed up to try to put the fire out or just see what was going on, but before we could do anything, some people just…snapped.”
“It was horrible.”
They all turned to see a pale Inuit woman, who was shaking as she spoke.
“What was?” Alex asked softly.
“People I…we knew our whole lives…I watched them tear their neighbors’ throats out with their teeth. It was like they were taken by the Tupilaq, but…in such numbers, it didn’t make any sense. I don’t understand.…”
Masters mouthed the word “Tupilaq” to Alex, but the man answered him with a shake of his head.
“What did they look like, the ones who were attacking?” Alex asked her.
“Like the dead. They had dried skin and some even looked rotten,” she answered. “I don’t…it was so wrong.”
“Were they strong? Fast?” He pressed, his expression confused.
“Very.” Brad spoke up again. “I watched one of them drag a man twice his size with no difficulty.”
Alex straightened up, obviously troubled as he turned away from the people and nudged Masters. Hawk followed him over to the broken door, stepping out into the cold air behind him.
“What is it?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Alex said. “The creatures they’re describing shouldn’t be here.”
“Damn it, don’t you start talking in riddles. What the hell are these things?”
“Vampires,” Alex answered, his expression unfocused. “Hawk, they’re describing vampires.”
Eddie Rankin, who had followed them, shrugged. “So? We all know there are things out there we’d rather not have exist.”
“I know they exist,” Alex snapped. “But they don’t exist here.”
“Why not? Didn’t they make a movie about vampires north of the arctic circle?” Eddie asked. “No daylight, right? Vampire heaven.”
“Actually, that movie was set here,” Hawk said, feeling edgy as he looked around, “in Barrow.”
“Stop talking for a minute and listen,” Alex growled. “They’re undead.”
“Yeah, so?”
“No body heat? Do you know how long a vampire would last in the open out here once the sun has gone down?” Alex asked. “Maybe ten minutes. After that you’d have nothing but a vampsicle. The only reason they’d still be mobile now is that the weather is unseasonably warm. The undead don’t last long in cold regions — they prefer equatorial places, even if they can’t survive sunlight.”
“All right, fine,” Masters said. “So what else could these things be?”
“Nothing. The only things that meet their description are the undead, and very few of the undead could take this kind of cold. Even the Draugr aren’t hardy enough to take an Alaskan winter. It’s just impossible. How would a vampire even get up here?”
“What about that Tupy thing the woman was jawing about?” Eddie asked.
“No, that’s a summoned creature.” Alex shook his head. “Nasty, but not a pack animal.”
“Fine,” Masters said. “So we need more info.”
“Yeah,” Alex confirmed.
Masters nodded and stepped back into the building. “I want you to stay in here,” he said to the civilians. “Bar the door and windows this time — put whatever you can up against them. We have to go check out the town.”
“Wait! What…I mean…” Brad surged forward, his tone desperate. “We’re being evacuated, right?”
“Not yet. We’re a scout team,” Masters told him stonily. “Until we know what the hell happened up here, no one else is coming in.”
The man sank to the ground, face slack as he processed that information, but Masters didn’t have time for him.
“Come on. We’re moving out.”
His men nodded at him, following as he walked away. Captain Andrews paused for a short time, her expression lost as she looked at the desperate people around them, but she finally sho
ok herself and chased after the team.
“What the hell is going on up here?” she asked, looking stunned as she caught up to Masters.
“That’s what we’re here to find out, ma’am.”
“Where to now?” Rankin asked as they made their way toward the main part of the town.
“Give me a second,” Masters said, keying open his throat mic. “Djinn.”
“Go for Djinn,” Nathan Hale responded.
“Has there been any movement?”
“Nada, boss man.”
“Not even around the Herc?”
“Negative. That bird is cold and dead.”
“Roger that. Out,” Masters said, frowning. He really wanted a peek inside the Herky Bird, but it was also the first place an intelligent enemy would stake out an ambush.
“Derek, you have point. Eddie, take drag. We’re going to work our way into town to look for evidence. Stay out of sight; move quickly but quietly.”
They nodded and started to move east into the town of Barrow.
CHAPTER 9
BARROW, ALASKA
There was something chillingly wrong about walking through a town and seeing no one. It was a feeling that couldn’t be explained, and it was only made worse by the cheerful lights that still blazed through the night. There were cars parked just about everywhere one would expect to see them, but then there were also some sitting abandoned in the street, the doors still open and, in one case, the radio blaring.
“Jeez. I don’t get it, where is everyone?” Judith asked softly as they crouched in the cover of a building with a sign announcing it as “Arctic Pizza.”
Masters didn’t say anything, but that was the question of the hour in his opinion.
There should be someone out here, even if it’s just the bad guys. He didn’t know what to think — nothing was adding up. All he had to go on was what Alex had said about vampires, but if there was some gang of blood drinkers walking around town, where were they?
A hundred and fifty feet deeper into town they found the first body.
Unfortunately it wasn’t the last.
A dozen corpses littered the street, rust-red halos circling them in the slush and snow. The team was silent as they walked through the grisly scene, their eyes not quite able to avoid the magnetic pull of the hideous injuries of the dead. All of the bodies had their throats torn out, and mangled and ragged strips of flesh were sometimes still connected to the chunks that someone, or something, had spit back out.
Most of the victims had other visible injuries as well, particularly on their right hands and arms, most of which had been bitten and torn all the way to the bone. They were all in uniform, guardsmen and state troopers, and there were drawn weapons lying next to each of the bodies.
“Goddamn,” Rankin hissed as he picked up an M4 and checked the action. “Fired. They went down hard, boss.”
Hawk just grunted, unsurprised.
“This one was fired too,” Derek said, tossing a pistol back to the body he’d taken it from.
“Same here.”
“Here too.”
“Christ,” Judith uttered, pale and shaken, as she forcibly restrained the urge to vomit. “If they all fired their weapons, where are the downed enemies? Hell, where’s the blood?!”
While not pure as the driven snow, so to speak, the ice and snow was conspicuously clear of blood. Only the troopers and guardsmen had bled on this ground. Hawk didn’t say anything, however. He just tapped Alex on the shoulder and nodded at a body that was slumped against a wall.
While the others stood guard, Alex knelt by the body. It was a man whose throat had been torn out, and he was still holding an empty forty-five in his hand.
“I don’t know how it’s possible,” he said as Masters stepped over and crouched down beside him, “but we are dealing with vampires.”
“So where are they?” Masters asked, glancing at the body, which belonged to one of the state troopers. He patted it down and pulled out a flip folder. “Well, Captain Jones, you had a lousy night.”
“His lousy night isn’t over,” Alex said, shaking his head. “We’ve got another…four, maybe six hours.”
“Before what?”
They both glanced up to see Captain Andrews staring down at them, hands on her hips as her weapon hung from its straps.
Alex glanced over at Masters, who just shook his head.
“Right,” Alex said. “Whatever. I have to take care of this — you know that, right?”
“Do it.” Masters stood up, brushing past Captain Andrews as he rejoined the team.
Alex nodded, pulling a dagger from his boot. He patted the body on the head before grabbing it by the hair and pulling it forward to expose the back of the neck.
“Go in peace, my friend,” he whispered as he lifted the blade up.
“Hey, what are you—” Andrews started before jumping in shock when he drove the blade of his dagger into the neck of the cadaver, twisting it violently. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Shut up, Captain,” Masters said, pulling her back. “Something might hear you.”
“Something?” she hissed. “Why the hell is he doing that?”
“Don’t ask,” Masters told her. “You don’t want to know.”
“Like hell I don’t want to know,” she hissed as Alex moved on to another corpse to repeat the grisly task. “You can’t have men running around desecrating the bodies of state troopers!”
“Better than having men running around being eviscerated by the bodies of state troopers,” he replied, shouldering away from her and turning to look at the rest of his team. “We’ve got an ID on our perps, and it’s not good.”
“I think we all worked that out by now,” Rankin said, nodding at Alex, who was continuing his dark work. “The question we’re asking is, do we walk out of here? Or do we run?”
“Job’s not done,” Masters said. “I’ll let you know when I figure out the exit strategy.”
There was no forthcoming reaction from them, but then again, he wasn’t waiting for one either.
“Djinn,” he said into his mic.
“Go for Djinn.”
The sniper’s voice was low but clear, and Masters glanced involuntarily in the direction where he knew the man was camped out before continuing.
“Be advised, this op is definitely one of ours. Expert says the town crawls.”
“Roger.”
“You see anything?”
“Negative. It’s too quiet.”
“Yeah, you got that right. Stay frosty, Djinn.”
“Like I have a choice.”
Masters chuckled as he closed the link and turned around. “You done, Alex?”
“Yeah,” Norton replied, cleaning the blade of his knife on the unfortunate trooper’s pants before getting up. “But if they’re this sloppy, we’ve got a problem.”
“You didn’t think we had one before?” Derek Hayes snorted, shaking his head.
“We had a mystery before. Now we’ve got an infestation.”
“What the hell is he talking about?” Andrews asked again.
Masters just rubbed his forehead, ignoring the question that he didn’t have time for. “How bad?”
Alex shrugged. “Dunno. I do know that it’s about to get a lot worse.”
“How much worse?”
“How many state troopers and guardsmen did you say came up here? These aren’t the only ones.…”
“Oh shit.”
* * *
Judith Andrews’s first time in the field was turning into an insane roller coaster that was rapidly dropping into a level of nightmare she’d only reserved for psycho-thriller movies. Sure the admiral had handed her walking orders, and she knew that Masters was in charge, but cutting up the body of a state trooper went beyond the pale.
For that matter, ignoring her every time she asked what the fuck was going on wasn’t too nice either.
She could hear them whispering when they thought she was out of ear
shot, and the word “vampire” was pretty hard to miss. She didn’t know if it was code, or if they were just superstitious and even more spooked by the situation than she was, but in either case she was beginning to regret volunteering to join them on this lunatic’s run.
Reflexively she tightened her grip on the HK417 she was carrying, wondering if the admiral had any idea just how crazy Harold Masters really was. His Teams file didn’t indicate anything like what she was seeing, so he must have truly lost it on that last mission.
At least that explains why he was burned from the navy in the first place. God, why did Admiral Karson ever think to pull him back? What the hell kind of hold does he have over the admiral?
Whatever it was, Karson had to be in a spot to entrust a team to a lunatic like Masters.
She knew that she was in a bad spot. The men she was depending on for her life were navy rejects, who probably should never have passed the Teams’ psych evals, and for all the danger they obviously presented, it was pretty damned clear that the situation they were all in wasn’t too damned rosy either.
I’m starting to think that my mother was right, and I should have gone to law school.
* * *
Alexander Norton wasn’t too damned happy with this situation. He was known as The Black in the communities for a reason, but for all that, he didn’t like his odds right now. He knew Masters and Rankin were good guys, but they were all in over their heads.
How the fuck did bloodsuckers get this far north, in the United States of all places? These bastards shouldn’t have been able to move much past their stomping grounds in Eastern Europe. Something stinks, and it’s not just the decomposition off these bloodsuckers.
Unlike the others, he didn’t wonder why the streets were empty. The reason for that was obvious: The pack leader was keeping the undead inside where it was warm.
Unfortunately that meant that most of the town could be dead and mobile.
Dying was bad enough, but Alex had seen enough people die to know it was just the way things went. Someone dying ten, twenty, even fifty or eighty years before their time was just a drop in the universal bucket.
