She sent him an arch look. “I’m sorry, but did your significant other walk alone into the cave of a rampaging dragon and then suddenly drop all communications or is that just me?”
He smirked at the pure venom in her tone. “Not the last time I checked. I’m just saying that worrying’s not going to do you any good. If he doesn’t answer in the next couple minutes, we’ll go in and find him. I haven’t heard any screams or seen any smoke. He may just be laying low and that’s why his comms are down.”
“I don’t need theories,” Kamala grumbled, still pacing. “I need to know he’s alright and in one piece.”
“Don’t see why you’re frettin’ so much considerin’ he volunteered for it,” Snow said. “You could have told him no. He’s a loyal dog. He’d have listened.”
Kamala switched course, striding purposely towards Snow, but Fry stepped in the way. “Ah, ah, ah, ladies. Keep it civil.”
“If you want me to be civil, then tell her to keep her mouth shut unless she has something to say about Baba Yaga,” Kamala snarled. “That’s all she’s good for anyway.”
Snow aimed a cold stare at Kamala. “Watch your mouth, lass. I’m not the one who loosed a monster on the world.”
“Neither did I. The people responsible for this mess are still out there and I intend to bring them to justice with or without your extraneous commentary. Do you think I give a damn what you think about me? About Jack? Do you think anything you say will matter in the long run? Unless it has to do with this mission, you would do well to keep your tongue behind your teeth.”
“Suppose I don’t want to, Dr. Anjali. What d’you plan to do about it? Bite my ankles?”
Fry gripped Kamala’s shoulder harder as the small scientist surged forward. “Hey! Either find a mud pit to roll around in or both of you back off.”
Kamala seethed, shaking off his hand, and turned away. She stalked to the other side of the clearing and shut her eyes, journeying inward to quell her temper. Snow had angered her, but she knew it was more than that. She wanted to lash out. She wanted to vent. Jack didn’t need her unbalanced; he needed her focused and ready to act when the time came.
After a moment or two, she flattened her rage and breathed normally. Fry snorted as he stared between the two women. “I’m not a great mediator, but you two are going to have to bury the hatchet or you’ll get us killed out here. I don’t care about your ideologies. You’re here to stop a dragon. Unless you have something related to the subject, don’t speak to each other. Can you both handle that?”
“I’m not a child,” Snow snapped.
Fry aimed his cool wintergreen gaze at her. “Then quit actin’ like one. Dr. Anjali may not be combat trained, but I’m pretty sure she can hold her own in a fight. Stop poking the bear.”
He tossed his gaze at Kamala next. “And you—quit letting her bait you. She’s getting off on making you angry. Ignore her and she’ll stop. Do we understand each other, ladies?”
“Yes,” both women grunted in nearly identical tones.
Fry smirked again. “Unbelievable.”
He checked the time again and flipped the switch on his cold gun. “Alright, it’s been long enough. He hasn’t hailed us. We’re going in.”
The humor fled from his expression as they faced him. “I’ll take point. Stay close. You see something, say something. Move fast and move quiet. I want to live through this to tell my grandkids I hunted a dragon. Get me?”
Again, both women nodded. “Lock and load, ladies.”
Kamala fell in step to Fry’s left while Snow went to his right, shadowing him as he stepped into the mouth of the cave. Kamala shuddered a bit as they disappeared inside and the sunlight at her back winked out, swallowing her in the dim lighting. The temperature dropped sharply. Her breath curled up over her dry lips and against either side of her cheeks as they stepped deeper into the cavern.
Fry kept a careful pace and tried hailing Jack once more, only to be greeted with silence. His eyes flicked to the walls, the floor, and the cavern in a consistent pattern, searching for any signs of life. They continued down the stone steps and the sound of rushing water almost relaxed Kamala by reflex alone, as if it interrupted her morbid thoughts about Jack’s current dilemma. After they passed through the area, they could see the marks Jack had made with the glow-in-the-dark chalk. Kamala gripped her cold gun tighter, her pulse hammering against the side of her neck.
“What have you got on the infrared scanner, Dr. Anjali?” Fry asked quietly.
“Nothing yet,” she murmured back. “But you do hear that, right?”
Fry stopped. The two of them followed suit. He shut his eyes. “Faintly, yeah. Snow?”
“The hissing is a natural response to unease,” the woman said. “Wherever she is, she’s awake and she knows she’s not alone.”
“You’re saying she knows we’re here?” Fry asked.
“Aye, either us or Dr. Jackson. She can smell us long before she knows where we are.”
“I’m not feeling any impact tremors, so she’s not nearby, but she’s in the area.”
“Wait,” Kamala said sharply. “I’ve got something on infrared.”
The three of them froze. Kamala peered at the screen. “This can’t be right.”
Fry stepped back, keeping his eyes front, until the screen was in his peripheral. “What’s not right, doc?”
“These shapes,” she muttered.
“Shapes?” he asked. “As in more than one?”
“Yes. That’s not Baba Yaga.” Her breath caught. “Bloody hell. We’re not alone in this cavern. Someone’s out there.”
Fry moved in closer. The screen showed the caverns a deep violet and up ahead to one side, there were blobs of yellow, orange, and red moving towards them. As one of them neared, the shapes sharpened to reveal people wearing body armor and carrying guns.
“Agent Fry,” Kamala asked quietly. “Did someone send a second team to back us up?”
“No,” he answered, his voice soft with anger. “They didn’t.”
Kamala met his eyes. “Who are they?”
“If I had to guess,” he said, removing the Desert Eagle from its holster. “The people who made the dragon.”
“Yakuza?” Snow asked.
Fry nodded. “More than likely.”
The Scottish woman swore. “We need to retreat.”
“Bullshit,” Kamala snapped. “Jack’s still out there and he’s just as unprotected.”
She glanced at Fry. “Can we radio for help?”
He shook his head. “Signal won’t reach them from here.”
“We don’t have long before they reach us. What’s the plan?”
“Shit always goes sideways with this job,” he growled. “You two get back to the front entrance. I’ll take care of the riff-raff.”
“I am not leaving Jack out there alone.”
Fry shot a hard look at her. “This is not up for discussion. You do as I say or you’ll leave this place in handcuffs, Dr. Anjali.”
“Fine by me.”
“To hell with this.” He jerked his head at Snow.
The Scottish woman abruptly grabbed Kamala’s wrist and twisted it behind her back, slipping an arm around her throat. She started squeezing immediately, her bicep acting like a boa constrictor, and white stars burst in front of Kamala’s eyes. The smaller woman struggled, clawing at Snow’s arm as she dragged her backwards towards the steps. Snow began lifting her over the first step, Kamala planted her feet, shifted her weight, and threw the larger woman across one shoulder. Snow landed at the foot of the steps, crying out sharply in pain. Kamala sank her knee down on the woman’s throat. Snow thrashed, choking, trying to shove the scientist’s leg away, but Kamala had the upper hand.
Fry leveled the gun at her. “Let her up.”
“Go fuck yourself,” she rasped. “You’re not going to shoot me. Call her off.”
“You don’t want to test me, doc,” he hissed. “I’ve killed people for less. Let he
r up.”
“I am not leaving the father of my child to be killed by the yakuza.”
Fry froze. “Your what?”
Kamala lifted her chin in defiance, her honey eyes blazing. “You heard me.”
Fry’s hand tightened on the gun. “Goddamn you.”
Then, slowly, he lowered it. Kamala watched him for a second more and then stood. Snow rolled to one side, coughing harshly and gulping in breaths as fast as she could.
“Snow, head back to camp. Dr. Anjali, let’s go.”
He set his jaw and towered over her, his green eyes hard and lifeless. “But don’t think for a second that I have a problem throwing a pregnant woman in jail. That little one inside you is the only reason I didn’t knock you out and drag you to the campsite myself. When this is over, I will hold you accountable for your actions.”
“I am well aware of my decision, Agent Fry. Now lead the way.”
He ground his teeth and faced forward, bringing up his own infrared screen on his arm. “Three headed this way. Stay close.”
They marched towards the cavern to the left, sticking close to the wall. Darkness and cold enveloped them. Hushed footfalls were the only sound.
“Priority goes to quiet takedowns,” Fry whispered. “If I fire the hand cannon, they’ll know where we are.”
He reached into a slender pouch at his side and presented her with a stiletto knife. “You are only to interfere if I become incapacitated. Aim for visible skin or soft targets. If that’s not an option, use the cold gun. If the dragon appears, you are to leave the area. Do you understand me, Dr. Anjali?”
She accepted the knife. “Yes.”
“Don’t hesitate. You’ll die if you do. Mask up.”
He tugged the suit’s hood over his head and switched on the night vision goggles. Kamala did the same. The once-dark cavern became splashed with an eerie whitish-green all over and the infrared looked even stranger through the lenses.
The pair came to a long S-curve in the cavern. Fry held up his forearm and made a fist. Kamala stopped and crouched behind him, her breath light and shallow as she watched the three men approaching from around the bend.
Fry flattened himself against the wall and tucked the Eagle in its holster, instead palming the nozzle of the cold gun. He shut his eyes and listened to the whisper-quiet boots on the cave floor.
The men were a couple yards away when he struck.
Fry whirled around the corner and let loose on the cold gun.
The result was spectacular, to say the least.
Kamala hadn’t known what to expect from first firing the cold gun. Rather than a cloud of powder like a fire extinguisher, a silvery-white liquid splattered over the faces and upper torsos of the men. It behaved like a thick, viscous gel as it landed on their masked faces and then immediately hardened on contact into white chunks much like dry ice.
The men shrieked in pain and surprise, but the sound didn’t carry far; the substance had frozen their mouths shut. They flailed, trying to raise their weapons towards their attacker, but their hands were glued to the firearms, which had also gotten coated as well.
Fry didn’t waste a single second. The instant after the mixture hardened, he rushed in low and tackled the man nearest to him, slamming his head into the stone floor. The man went limp.
Fry kicked the legs out from underneath the second man and delivered a vicious uppercut to the third man. He brought his heel down hard on the second man’s forehead and dodged as the third man swung his half-frozen arms at the back of his skull. He backpedaled as the man bum-rushed him, but couldn’t get out of the way in time. He hit the opposite wall with a grunt and brought his forearms up as the man tried to bash his head in with his immobilized limbs.
Just as he was about to draw the Eagle, the man stiffened and then slumped to one side. After he did, Fry saw Kamala standing behind him with the butt of the cold gun where the man’s head had just been. She eyed the three unconscious yakuza carefully before offering Fry her hand. He eyed her right back and then took it. She hauled him to his feet.
“Not bad, doc,” he grunted, crouching next to the closest man. “Keep an eye out, will ya?”
Kamala faced the direction the men had come, checking the infrared screen on her suit. “No one’s coming yet.”
Fry dug through the man’s pockets, his voice low. “No I.D., but that’s not surprising. Military grade vest and gear. They’ve got short wave radios, not that it’s going to do them much good, hence why they were traveling in a pack.”
He lifted the man’s arms and squinted at what he could see of the assault rifle. “I’m betting they’re carrying .50cal ammo, same as us. Behavior suggests they’re mercs, not yakuza. The average Mook would have run as soon as I shot him with the cold gun, preferring to save his own ass than to carry out the mission, even at the risk of being punished by their oyabun. The last guy didn’t even hesitate. They’re professionals.”
“Makes sense,” Kamala agreed. “Ordinary yakuza aren’t going to volunteer for a mission to take down a rampaging dragon in a haunted forest.”
“Smart,” Fry said, and then he tore the man’s sleeve up to the elbow. “Shit.”
“What?”
“This guy’s Red Fist.”
Kamala glanced over her shoulder at the tattoo of a fist clutching a dragon’s heart on the man’s forearm and spat out a curse in Hindi. Fry checked the other two and found the same tattoo in the same place on each of their arms.
“It just keeps getting better and better,” he said with a sigh as he removed extra clips of ammo from the pouches on their legs. “So not only do we have Baba Yaga to worry about; now we’ve got dragon-hunting mercenary fanatics waving .50cals in our faces.”
He stood and brushed some of the substance’s residue from his suit. “And yet somehow this still isn’t the worst mission I’ve ever been on. Come on. Let’s go find your baby daddy.”
Jack wasn’t afraid of the dark when he was a kid.
He was afraid of the dark…in the wilderness.
His father Richard had decided the two of them should go camping for the weekend. When Jack had asked why his mother Edie wasn’t going, his father had winked at him and said that they had to do a few things that were just between “us boys.” It turned out it had been code for his father teaching him to hunt.
They’d ridden out into the woods on a four-wheeler at sunset and made a campfire after they set up the tents. That part had actually been fun—making a concoction of carrots, ground beef, potatoes, and cream of mushroom in aluminum foil, drinking sweet tea from their thermoses, and then eating a large number of Smores that they’d never get away with if Edie Jackson had been in the vicinity. The whole while, Jack’s focus had been on his father, and so he thought nothing of the enclosing darkness around them.
Until they went to sleep.
Jack lay wide awake, his brown eyes darting around at the edges of the tent while his father snored peacefully at his side. He didn’t know how the older man had managed to sleep when the sounds were all around them. Owls. Crickets. Frogs. Squirrels. He could hear things moving in the darkness and it tightened his chest until he felt like he was having an asthma attack. Worse still, the moon cast light in through the top of the tent, so the spindly hooked claws of tree limbs stretched out over the blue vinyl like skeletal monster hands. He buried himself deeper inside the sleeping bag and tried the block out the harrowing chorus of the creatures around him, but the noises burrowed into his ears like the eel from The Wrath of Khan. The next morning, he put on a brave face for his father, pretending he’d slept like a baby. From then on, Jack snuck his Walkman into his duffel bag and slipped it on at night, listening to Pink Floyd to block out the world of the unknown as he slept.
Running from Baba Yaga in the dark caverns beneath Aokigahara reminded him of that feeling times infinity.
His booted feet pounded out an insane, frantic rhythm underneath him as he raced into the cavern across from Baba Yaga’s den
at a dead sprint. Pieces of dragon dung flew off him and hit the ground behind him in miniature chunks. He didn’t dare look behind him to see if the dragon had risen from the ground yet, but the deafening hiss that assaulted his ears meant she’d woken up. Icy claws of fear squeezed his heart with every breath as he ran, relying on the night vision goggles, the glimpse he’d gotten of the map, and his own instincts to figure out where to go.
Jack raced around one corner too sharply and slipped on a piece of dung, crashing hard on his right side. He gasped as it knocked the wind out of him and gritted his teeth, his mind screaming at him to get up and run, run, run. He pushed onto his knees, nursing what felt like bruised ribs and a sprained wrist, and then paled as an unmistakable sensation traveled up the arm he’d used to push himself up.
Impact tremors.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom, boom, boom.
Baba Yaga was coming.
Baba Yaga was hunting him.
Jack forced himself up onto his feet again, stumbling backwards and fumbling for the tracker. He got it switched on to see an ominous blob approaching from the right. He’d gotten a good lead on her—maybe a few hundred yards—but he had no way of knowing if he’d eventually run into a dead end. He couldn’t hide down here forever. He needed to get topside to join the others so they could take her down.
Jack blocked out the rising crescendo of Baba Yaga’s hissing and pictured the map again. A mile up to the right had a man-made exit that spilled back up to the forest. The only problem was that it was a long passage. If Baba Yaga followed, there was a good chance she could catch up and roast him like a marshmallow. He could try to lose her in the twists and turns of the cave system, but there was a good chance he’d get lost, and Baba Yaga’s superior senses meant it would only be a matter of time before she found him. It came back to the most basic survival tactics: run or hide.
Jack switched off the tracker and stuck it in his pocket, his voice ragged and shaking, but solid. “You aren’t about to die in this forest, Jackson. Move your ass.”
He barreled forward into the passageway to the right in the wake of Baba Yaga’s ominous, bubbling warning, barely suppressing a groan as a spike of pain lanced through his chest from his bruised ribs. The adrenaline would only hold for so long. He could make it about halfway there before it ran out. Cold sweat plastered the mask to his face and ran down into his eyes. The tunnel stretched onward forever before him. No sunlight in sight. Had he been wrong?
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