The Tide_Dead Ashore

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  “If you can take the shots to weaken their numbers and you’re sure you won’t get caught, do it,” Dom finally said. “Otherwise, I want you back here.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Andris said. He pulled the trigger. The whoomph of the bullet leaving his suppressed sniper rifle was followed shortly by the first Skull going down. Meredith joined in, quickly leveling the first four Skull attackers.

  Andris never pulled his eyes off his sight. He aimed at the next Skull, and after a squeeze of his index finger, its chest blossomed in a spray of blood and bone chips. Bony limbs tumbled, tripping up the nearest Skull, which Meredith promptly finished off with three shots in quick succession. More Skulls trickled in from the alleys. Their cries bounced off the walls.

  Panicked voices sounded from the neighboring building. More footsteps rushed through the compound, and Andris imagined guards were being called to help defend against the imminent attack. Still, without the benefit of night vision, the defenders might as well have been blind. The moon was hidden behind a thick layer of clouds, giving them very little light to work with.

  Andris took down another Skull, then another. His body seemed to fade away, his senses attuned to what he saw through the sight. Aim, squeeze, adjust, repeat. Over and over, he knocked the Skulls out before they could get to the compound. Beside him, Meredith fired with equal intensity, her suppressed rifle whispering death into the night air. Grim satisfaction filled Andris with each successful strike.

  A rattle of gunfire called out from the neighboring roof, and rounds kicked into the dirt near a group of Skulls. Andris winced at the sound ricocheting through the streets. The defenders’ weapons were not suppressed like his. He wanted to tell them to stop, to leave this to him and Meredith. They had this handled.

  Andris redoubled his efforts. If he could just focus and take out the Skulls farthest away, then his new friends wouldn’t even have a chance to take a shot.

  And that was just what he did, plugging bullets through the monsters, one by one. He got caught up in the hypnotizing routine of firing and aiming, firing and aiming. The world seemed to grow quieter with each shot. Another Skull down, another small victory against the Oni Agent.

  When the last one was dead, he finally took his eye off his scope.

  “We did it, Meredith,” he said, a small smile on his lips. “We saved them. They better be thankful.”

  Only they didn’t seem thankful. Especially the one with a rifle pointed straight at Andris’s face.

  -22-

  Meredith raised her hands. “Don’t shoot. We were only trying to protect you.”

  The men exchanged curious glances and said something she couldn’t understand. They had surrounded her and Andris with military precision, moving like a pride of lions circling wounded prey. They remained just out of reach but close enough that there was no question they would hit their targets if they fired.

  But they hadn’t fired yet. That had to count for something.

  Andris shifted, and the men rattled their rifles, yelling at him in Arabic.

  “Everything okay up there?” Dom asked over the comm link.

  “Not exactly,” Meredith said. She opened her mouth to say something more, but the men stabbed the air with their weapons. She didn’t know what they were saying, but the gesture was clear enough. One of the soldiers peeled away and returned a few minutes later with the boy she’d seen earlier.

  “Who are you?” one of the Moroccans asked her in a thick accent. He had a bushy mustache, and a scar traced his cheek.

  Meredith’s mind whirred. If these people were allied with Spitkovsky, she couldn’t mention her association with Dom or the Hunters. Depending on how clued in they were to the global conspiracy, they might even know the name Meredith Webb.

  “We’re Americans,” Meredith said simply. “We’re on a mission.”

  “American, you claim.” His eyes were narrowed. “Why you here?”

  “To stop these monsters,” Meredith said, still unwilling to give too much away.

  The man looked to the boy then. The boy spoke rapidly, apparently translating for him. The man replied, and the boy looked back up at Andris and Meredith.

  “He means to ask why are you here, at our home? Why are you on our roof with guns?”

  “We wanted to know if you were friendly or not,” Meredith said. “Are you?”

  Another quick exchange, and then the boy replied, “We need to know how you got here. Why you are in our country.”

  “I told you, we’re trying to stop those monsters. The ones that just tried to kill you. Feel free to say thank you, by the way.”

  The boy and the man traded words again. The boy looked uncertain, but the man nodded vigorously and waved his arms at Meredith.

  “He says we are not stupid. We need to know what you are doing here, and how you got here. More details. That will determine whether we are friends.”

  The men looked to Andris for an answer, but he deferred to Meredith. His expression told her he wasn’t going to say a damn thing. He was leaving this to her judgment.

  Ah, hell, Meredith thought, might as well tell them the truth. Either they were going to string her and Andris out to dry, or they might be sympathetic to the cause.

  “We believe the men responsible for creating those monsters are planning something here in Tangier. We think they plan to release a second wave of the biological agent that turns people into those creatures, and we want to stop them. Their distribution operations may be headquartered in the port. We need to get there before they ship out these new weapons.”

  The boy appeared a bit confused by some of her words. He turned to the scarred man and relayed what she had said, an expression of uncertainty accompanying his frequent pauses. But when he finished, the boy looked back at her sternly.

  “That is interesting, but why are you at our home?” the boy asked, pointing down at the roof again. “Why are you spying on us?”

  Frustration trickled through Meredith at the language barrier, but she tried desperately not to let it show in her face. “Because we want to know if you’re with the people in the port.”

  A voice crackled over the comm link as the boy and the man conferred again.

  “Meredith, Andris.” It was Dom. “We’ve got these guys in our sights. Just say the word, and we can take them down. It’ll be quick.”

  Meredith ever so slightly shook her head, whispering a soft, “No, not yet,” into her mic.

  “Caught that,” Dom said. “We’ll be on standby.”

  The boy stared at Meredith, his eyes narrowed. “You want to stop the people at the port.”

  She wasn’t sure if it was a question or a declaration. “We do. Very much so.”

  “And you are Americans?” he asked.

  “We are.”

  The scarred man spoke through the boy once more. “Are you trying to find the other Americans?”

  Other Americans? Could that be the SEAL team Kinsey had sent out here?

  “That wasn’t our main goal,” Meredith said, “but if we can find them, that would be great. We thought they were dead.”

  The scarred man shook his head, speaking rapidly.

  “No,” the boy said. “They are not dead. At least, we do not believe all of them are.”

  A Skull shrieked somewhere in the distance. It didn’t sound like a hunting cry, but it made the mood even tenser. The scarred man said something else.

  “You must come inside,” the boy translated. “It is better to talk there.”

  “Are these guns going to be pointed at us in there too?”

  The scarred man raised his hand, and the soldiers around him dropped their weapons. Meredith’s shoulders relaxed, the tension in her muscles fading. Only slightly, though.

  “We, uh, have some friends out there.” She jerked her head across the street. “May they join us?”

  The scarred man seemed to deliberate a few moments with his men. One of them shook his fist in the air, his words harsh.
He seemed vehemently opposed to the idea, but in the end, the scarred man turned back to Meredith and nodded.

  Once again, the boy spoke for him. “They must come with weapons above their heads. If it looks like you are trying to trick us, you and this man will be shot.”

  “Deal,” Meredith said. Then, chinning her mic, “Dom, I just got us into the hippest club in Tangier. Meet us at the front door.”

  ***

  Dom hadn’t expected this night to end up with him sitting on a cushion in the middle of a decadently decorated riad-turned-makeshift-military-outpost. But all things considered, it was a hell of a lot better than where the night had seemed to be going when they rescued Bravo Team from the collapsing minaret. The other Hunters were seated nearby with the guards. In neighboring rooms, others—civilians and soldiers alike—were supposed to be sleeping. Most had been woken by the commotion and were lingering near the doorways, eying Dom and his people curiously.

  He tore a piece of bread and dipped it in some of the sauce left in the bottom of the clay pot in front of him. The food was good, and the glass of mint tea certainly helped reinvigorate his mind as it flagged from exhaustion. But every minute they spent in this place allowed the FGL to move forward with their plans. He pictured new canisters of the Oni Agent being loaded onto ships. They needed to find out what these people knew about the shipyards.

  Across from him sat the scarred man who seemed to lead this ragtag bunch. Beside him was a boy operating as a translator. The boy—maybe thirteen or fourteen, certainly no older than fifteen—had introduced himself as Hamid. He had said this group of people had saved him and his brother from the Jnun, as the Moroccans called the Skulls, and treated their burns from an encounter with what sounded like a Drooler. When Dom heard of their wounds, he ensured each had a dose of the Phoenix Compound the Hunters carried on them.

  Then the man with the mustache and the scar introduced himself as Lieutenant Jalil Lazaar. He had served in the Royal Moroccan Army, trying to defend Tangier against the influx of Skulls. But just as many militaries around the world had fallen, their own service members turning against each other in blind fits of rage, the Royal Moroccan Army had largely been scattered and destroyed.

  Jalil had kept a few squads together and established outposts throughout the city. Even now, his men were prowling the streets and rooftops, looking for civilians who needed their protection. Jalil’s hope was that they could slowly retake the walled medina—the center of the city near the port—and establish a new settlement there.

  But the men at the port had thwarted those plans.

  “They fire on us when we approach,” Hamid translated for Jalil.

  “That doesn’t sound friendly, Chief,” Miguel said. “Certainly fits the FGL’s MO.”

  Dom wanted to ask Jalil if he knew a good way to get into the enemy base, but the translator was yawning, and Dom thought the conversation might be better suited for military-minded men. “Glenn, we could use your language skills.”

  Glenn rose from where he was seated with a few of Jalil’s men. Without being asked, he’d already been talking to them about the lay of the land and gathering information in their native tongue. He joined Dom and Jalil.

  “I want to know how we can get into the port facilities,” Dom said.

  Jalil laughed when Glenn translated Dom’s demand.

  “So do we,” the man said through Glenn. “Having a boat, any means of connection to the outside world, could be our salvation. We will defend this city as long as Allah intends for us to live here, but Morocco did not rise through isolationism. We will not face this new world alone, either.”

  “That’s good,” Dom said. “But that doesn’t exactly answer my question. Let’s try this another way. What kind of defenses are around the port?”

  Jalil motioned to one of his men. The man nodded and disappeared into a back room. When he reappeared, he brought a torn map to their table and laid it out. Water damage and coffee rings covered the map. There were words scrawled across it, rendering it almost illegible. But all the same, Dom recognized Tangier under the scars and stains.

  “This is where their primary defensive perimeter is.” Jalil indicated a wide swathe of buildings around the port. “They do not have patrols. Instead, they have reinforced barricades with electric fences. There are several gates. Always convoys going in and out. There are machine-gun nests, but they are only manned when a gate opens or there appears to be an immediate threat.”

  “What do you mean?” Dom asked.

  “When my men were on a patrol near the port, they saw Hamid and his younger brother approach one of the warehouses for help. The guard ignored them and only reacted to the Skulls, as you call them, swarming the facility. He shot a few then disappeared back into the warehouse, telling the boys to shoo. That was it. He offered no help to the boys, and when more Skulls arrived, the man didn’t seem to care.”

  “That seems like an awfully nonchalant way to deal with those monsters,” Glenn said.

  “It’s true,” Jalil said. “They do not seem to care about the Skulls as much as we do. The creatures surround the port like sharks around a sinking ship. But the Skulls don’t attack. They just circle. I think they are scared of the electric fence and even the trucks going in and out of the facility.”

  “Afraid of the trucks?” Dom asked. He’d never heard of Skulls being afraid of anything. “What’s in these convoys?”

  Jalil shrugged. “We have no idea. They come from far outside the city.”

  Miguel scoffed, and Jalil shot him an offended look. “Sorry, it’s just that I’ve never seen Skulls afraid of anything. I’m going to guess it isn’t the fence that keeps them back.”

  “Shit,” Dom said. He guessed Miguel was right. The last time they’d seen Skulls acting strangely had been in the Congo. There, they had discovered the FGL’s efforts to control Skulls with Titans like some kind of monstrous Pied Pipers.

  Meredith guessed his thoughts. “If there are Titans here, it might explain a few things.”

  “But then why would they have machine-gun nests and barbed wire?” Spencer asked.

  Miguel shrugged. “I think you’re giving FGL too much credit. Imagine you’re one of those guards. You get bored, you want to shoot something every once in a while. Hamid and his little bro run up, followed by a pack of Skulls. Perfect opportunity to have some fun before you go back to reading porno mags again.”

  “I don’t know, brother,” Spencer said. “Still seems like an awful lot of protection if you can supposedly control the Skulls.”

  “I’m going out on a limb here, but my guess is the defenses aren’t just about Skulls,” Dom said. “They shot down a Portuguese plane with anti-aircraft fire. You don’t need AA weapons against Skulls.”

  “At least not yet,” Miguel said.

  Dom shot him a look to tell him to knock off the jokes, but judging by Miguel’s cold expression, Dom knew he wasn’t kidding. Hell, maybe Miguel was right. The Oni Agent had been responsible for Goliaths and Droolers and Titans. Why not something that wreaked havoc from above?

  He shook himself free of the dark thoughts. Those nightmarish fears weren’t going to help with the problem at hand.

  “Jalil,” Dom began again, “we need to get into that base. You said you saw the Americans who came here before us. What happened to them?”

  Jalil lowered his head as he spoke. “One of my men, Khalid, spotted them on the coast east of the port. There were several boats. Khalid tried to wave them down. He thought maybe they were searching for survivors.”

  “How did they respond?”

  “They took Khalid in for questioning. They were worried he was working for your targets, the FGL, as you called them.”

  “And Khalid made it back to tell you this?”

  Jalil nodded. “Once he escaped the Americans.”

  “What happened?”

  “The Americans went on their raid as planned. They did not succeed. The team never returned, and
those left at the camp were overrun by Skulls. Khalid said the Skulls had snuck up on them, quiet, as if they knew exactly where the Americans were and quickly overwhelmed them. No howls, nothing.”

  Dom was slightly skeptical of all this. Skulls sneaking around as if they were on a mission? Then again, he remembered how the Skulls at Quantico had adapted to stalk gulls without frightening the birds away. “How did Khalid survive?”

  “He told the two men guarding him that he knew a safe place. They ran with him when it was clear the rest of their forces were gone.” Jalil paused, and Glenn looked at him, waiting for him to continue. “Khalid found his way back to us along with the two American survivors. But before they got here, they were attacked.”

  “I’m confused. Did they make it back here or not?” Dom asked.

  “They made it back here,” Jalil said. “But they were already dead. They turned into Jnun before we could even share a meal. We had to kill them.”

  Dom pushed back from the table; he was no longer hungry. The story was getting a bit suspicious. Was Jalil taking them for a ride? “Where’s Khalid? I would like to talk to him.”

  “Captain Holland, I have already told you. He and the Americans were attacked. We had to put his body to earth, too. I only know the story because he told me these things in his last moments of clarity, before the Jnun took him.”

  “So that’s it? You don’t know anything else about the Americans or how to get into the port?”

  “No,” Glenn translated for Jalil. “I wish we could help you, but I’m afraid it is a lost cause. These other Americans didn’t succeed. You will not either.”