The Beast belched forth fire randomly, trying in vain to burn the insolent human to ashes. It knew the pathetic little human was close because it could hear the beating of its little heart and smelled its musky scent of sweat and iron. The Beast licked its reptilian lips when it smelled the human’s blood. Slowly its tongue danced over each of its long knife-like teeth.
The Beast was happy that it hadn’t torched this human yet because it would enjoy pulling it apart one piece at a time, letting it watch as the Beast feasted upon its own torn appendages. Pain still thrummed through the Beast’s skull. Out of desperation, it grabbed a large rock and swatted it across the bridge of its nose, crushing the blinding light and ending the stinging pain.
The Beast's eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness that swept in around it. It watched the little human sit determinedly in the small metal craft, racing down the river towards it.
The Beast let out a boulder-churning sound that reverberated deep within its chest. You're mine now! It raised its head, issuing a roar of declaration to the heavens above as it summoned forth the fire that churned around its heart.
It turned to regard the human racing towards it. Torture is too good for you. No human in four hundred years has ever hurt me as much as you have. I'm done playing games with an insect like you! I will incinerate your contemptuous hide and then devour your charred corpse whole.
The churning power in its chest blossomed like a flower. It lowered its long neck and opened its powerful jaws, letting the fire rush out towards its prey.
McAvoy saw the Beast’s sinuous neck rise towards the heavens and snap down like a viper attacking its prey. He watched in horror as the flames formed in the Beast’s throat.
McAvoy clutched at the detonator in his hands. He knew this last part of his plan was critical and dangerous. He yanked the controls hard to port, causing the poor boat to fight against the pull of the river. He had a hunch that when the Beast belched forth its terrible fiery breath its vision would be momentarily obscured by the flames.
Time stood still as the Beast opened its jaws. McAvoy rose from his seat, holding the control stick hard to port while keeping the throttle on full. His brain screamed for him to run as he stared straight into the depths of his personal nightmare. All he could see were flames spewing out of the Beast’s jaws.
He looked up towards the sky and whispered, "Please protect my men."
He yanked the control stick hard to starboard, barely skimming the edge of the flames. The heat was intense, and he had to shield his eyes to stay on course. The dead wood in the boat immediately set ablaze when it skirted passed the dancing fires. McAvoy kept the boat rushing towards the base of the Beast’s head.
Steam hissed around him as the super-heated water on the surface evaporated. The engine of the small boat glowed bright red from the heat of the fire, which melted the casing around its fuel tank. The engine stammered and spit out three small black clouds of smoke before it burst into flames.
He was out of time. McAvoy stared into the Beast's blood-red eyes, which looked down at him in pure hatred.
"See you in hell, you ugly son of a bitch!" he shouted as he flipped open the cover on the detonator.
McAvoy jumped from the boat. As he flew through the air and into the water, he clicked the activator on the detonator. The boat crashed into the side of the Beast’s head and exploded.
The explosion lit up the night sky in a sudden and blinding flash. The concussion from the blast slammed into McAvoy, throwing him hard into a large boulder, breaking his arm. The Beast screamed in agony, thrashing all about. McAvoy struggled to keep his head above water with his one good arm.
The Beast’s wild thrashing caused its tail to smack into a massive oak tree that ripped from the ground and flew through the air towards the struggling soldier. There was no way to avoid it. The tree dragged McAvoy deep under the rolling waters of the River Roe. When he reached the bottom, he struck his head upon a rock. With his last moments of consciousness, he thought of his beautiful wife and her glorious smile. Soon, the dark tendrils of consciousness swept him away to oblivion.
With the sun high above their heads, Rick and Jacobson wearily marched their way down the old unkempt road, trying to be on guard as they walked.
The roads hadn't been maintained for years, marked by the flowers, vines, and grass growing between the many cracks. It was obvious that Mother Nature had taken back what man had stolen from her. For the few days that Rick and Jacobson had traveled across the barren Irish landscape, there hadn’t been any signs of life. And neither of them had talked much ever since they dug themselves out of the cave.
They’d waited roughly two days in the cave before trying to escape. As they dug, they hoped they'd be able to find a healthy and living Sergeant McAvoy. However, when they finally left the cave, they beheld devastation all around them. Fires and smoke covered the land in a thick blanket of smoke. They knew instantly there was no way anyone or anything could have survived, but they still took the time to search for McAvoy just in case.
Rick tapped Jacobson on the shoulder. "We need to activate the emergency beacon."
"No one’s going to come for us," Jacobson said.
"Maybe, but we have to try."
Jacobson handed Rick his tablet. "Just click on the icon down in the right hand corner. When the program boots up, it’ll require you to put in your access code. Once approved, you’ll be able to activate the beacon and relay a message."
Jacobson slumped to the ground, taking in the devastation, as tears rolled down his dirty cheeks. "How is it possible for something like that to exist?"
"I don't know." Rick said.
When Rick finished with his message, he attached it to the beacon and then activated the program.
He walked over and sat down next to Jacobson, giving him the tablet. "Here you go."
"Do you think he survived?" Jacobson asked.
"I can't say."
They looked at the devastation, feeling the heaviness of the truth settle in their hearts.
Jacobson climbed to his feet and offered his hand to Rick. "Let's try one more time for the sergeant’s sake. Shall we?"
Rick nodded as Jacobson helped him to his feet. As the two searched for McAvoy, Rick reflected on how the mission had certainly cost them far too much; they had lost Wells to the sewer creature and now McAvoy to the Beast. They spent another hour wandering the river’s edge, searching for any signs of McAvoy. When they found none, they braved the ruins of Limavady.
Luckily, there was no sign of the Beast as they wandered the edges of the devastated town. They spent another two days searching the debris and rubble. In the end, they had to face fact that McAvoy was gone. They were soldiers, and they had a mission to complete, they decided they had spent enough time searching for the lost sergeant.
They returned to the cave and took the time to reseal it, leaving Wells’s body inside, as his final resting place. They packed up their remaining gear before giving a moment of silence to their fallen companions.
Jacobson was the first to speak. "We've spent far too much time here. We need to make our way away from here in case that thing comes back."
Rick agreed and the two men found a path that led them south and then west towards Ardmore.
A few paces out, Jacobson used the tablet to access the Union Forest satellites to get a bird’s eye view of the terrain in order to determine the best route for them. He noticed that the satellites had been reconfigured. He made a few adjustments via the tablet before finding the route they’d use. They would follow Baranalit Road until they reached the small village of Glenhead where they could stock up their supplies and rest before they made their way to Claudy.
Neither of them had anticipated the overgrown roads, so it took them longer than intended to make it to the small village. There, they spent the night in an old cottage and stocked up their supplies. The next day, they made good time even with cautiously navigating the plants along the roads. They use
d the satellite feed to guided them in the right direction.
Several times Rick thought he spotted something out of the corner of his eye. He turned to find nothing there and hoped they wouldn't run into any unwanted predators. However, most of the land was wide-open meadows of dried brittle grass, which allowed them to see far and wide, preventing anything from sneaking up on them.
As they traveled, they checked the tablet often to see if they had received a response from home, regarding their emergency beacon with evacuation orders. But as the days passed and no response was received, they grew discouraged. The tablet and its beacon became the men's only and final connection to their home, and if that failed, then all was lost. They continued to foster the hope that the generals back home would not forget them and would send a rescue team.
As the sun made its way towards the western horizon, Jacobson spotted an old abandoned recreation vehicle on the satellite images. The RV was about half a mile off the road they were currently traveling on, and according to the images, was in decent shape. They decided to take their chances with it.
Luckily for them, they found the RV locked with no signs of animals living inside it. Unfortunately, it had a dead battery and no serpentine belt. Without the proper equipment, they couldn’t get it moving. Both men were exhausted from cutting aside vines and branches as they traveled. Jacobson asked Rick to set up camp for the night inside the RV.
The next morning, Jacobson jostled Rick awake.
"Still nothing. It looks like we're on our own," he said as he tossed the tablet down on to Rick's bedroll before storming out of the abandoned RV.
Rick waited for the door to slam shut before he dared to pick up the tablet. His hands shook with trepidation when he reached for it. He immediately saw that the emergency beacon had been killed. When he ran a diagnostic, he found that Union Forest had terminated it.
Their superiors had declared them lost, so no rescue team was coming to extract them. Rick tried to initiate the emergency beacon again, but found that Union Forest had done more than kill it; they had remotely accessed the device and completely disabled the application so that neither of them could reinstate the beacon now or anytime in the future.
Rick jumped out of his bedroll and raced after Jacobson.
"What does this mean?" he asked.
"It means that neither of us are getting off this damnable island unless we either swim or fly or somehow find us a working boat, which I highly doubt we will. They've left us here to die. We've become collateral damage."
Jacobson grabbed a rock and threw it has hard as he could, all the while spitting out a line of profanity that would have made a sailor's mother blush. Rick tried once again to bypass the beacon lock out but failed. He then tried to access the email function on the device, but it erred out as well. Union Forest had covered all their bases.
"You see,” Jacobson exclaimed as he threw another rock, “not only have they left us here to die, but they have also cut off any possibility of us communicating with the outside world. When I saw that the beacon was down, I tried to send an email to their techs, thinking that something might be down on our end. When I saw that both the beacon and the email had been disabled, I knew what was up."
Rick checked to see what access they still had on the tablet. Thankfully, it appeared that the GPS, weather, and other satellite functions still worked. They could still receive data, but all transmission ability was gone. He pulled up a couple of satellite images to survey the area around them and noticed an old farmhouse just outside the city limits of Claudy, which was an extra thirty to sixty minutes out of town.
"Hey, I found an old farmhouse a few miles west of Claudy on the satellite imaging. Maybe we can use that as a place to crash for the night. Then in the morning we can decide if we want to set up camp there for a while so we can assess our current situation and where we want to go from here."
Jacobson snorted and flew into another litany of curses as he sent another rock soaring across the countryside.
"If we're lucky, it won't be in too bad of shape," Rick said.
Jacobson threw more rocks while condemning the overpaid, finely dressed Union Forest execs to die in painful and horrible ways. Rick sat there, letting the specialist vent. After a few minutes, Jacobson calmed down. Finally, he turned to pick up his equipment and nodded his thanks to Rick for not interrupting him. They slung on their packs and headed in the direction Rick had suggested.
The small pawn tipped on its side as the boat once again crested a wave. Henry groaned and picked up the chess piece, placing it on the board. The old grizzled sea captain sitting across from him smiled. He checked the time on his pocket watch and took a long pull on his pipe.
"Be patient, my friend," he said while exhaling several small puffs of smoke that smelled of cedar and hickory.
"How in the world am I supposed to be patient when my brother's out there, facing Lord knows what, and these stupid chess pieces keep falling over?"
Henry brooded as he watched the captain tenderly place the pocket watch back into his jacket. It had been three long days since Lenny let Mr. Perkins kill Rick's emergency beacon. He didn't know if Rick was still alive, but he hoped he was, and if he was still alive, he was sure that Rick and his team had freaked out over the loss of the beacon.
Henry had wasted no time in seeking out his old contacts in Brest. Overall, everything had worked out in their favor until he tried to find a ship that would take them to Ireland. The task had been more difficult than Henry would have liked. No one in their right mind would take them across the Celtic Sea to Ireland. Many of the locals were calling the island L'île de la Mort, which translated into The Island of Death.
Honestly, Henry couldn't blame them for not wanting to take the risk, but he had to get across the sea. Eventually, they found an old weathered sea dog by the name of Captain Cod Durand who was willing to take them.
Cod was in his late fifties. He was gaunt, had blue eyes, a salt and pepper scraggly beard, and had a long, battle-scarred history as a fisherman. He knew the sea in the area well and wasn't afraid of a flying Beast. Since he regularly dealt with the temperamental mistress that was the vast and dark ocean, he was willing to take the two men across the Celtic Sea in his boat, The Sleeping Princess. However, the price of the ride was steep due to the dangers his crew would face.
When they had set off, Henry had asked to speak with the captain in private. Once alone, Henry told him he and Lenny were on their way to save his brother and his team, all sent there by Union Forest. Cod’s old eyes misted up, which he had to wipe several times with a handkerchief, as Henry told him his story.
Cod understood all too well the bond between brothers, and Henry's need to rescue him. He informed Henry that he was willing to trade in exchange for the passage over to the island. Thrilled that Cod would do such a thing, Henry gave him their military sonar detection devices, the system that controlled it, and eight grenades at Cod's request. He wasn't exactly sure what Cod would do with the grenades, but he had to get to Ireland, and this was his only chance.
When the ship crested another wave, another of the chessboard pieces tipped over. Henry cursed, and Cod let out a belly laugh.
"My friend, if you keep this up, you'll drive yourself insane before we reach the coast of Ireland."
"How can you be so calm?" Henry asked.
"With that outside, you mean?" he asked as he pointed with the end of his pipe towards one of the ship’s windows. "The sea and me have been old lovers for decades now. Every now and then she gets temperamental, but on her good days, she's pretty good to me."
Henry shook his head. "I thought you said the trip to the coast would only take us fourteen hours."
"Normally it does. But how could I account for this storm?"
Henry looked up at the clock on the wall to check the time. They had been sailing for over a day with no sign of the coast in sight. Henry's patience was growing thin, and he could feel the tension knotting in his neck. H
e knew, of course, that Cod was right. There was no way he could have predicted this storm.
The winds battered the small boat slowing its progress to a crawl. All Henry could do was wait out the storm. He moved the pawn to the intended square. Cod laughed as he moved his knight into position, taking Henry's pawn.
"Are you sure you've played this game before?" he asked for the hundredth time.
Rick and Jacobson arrived on the outskirts of Claudy. It didn't have much more than a few hundred homes, some small businesses, a handful of schools, a couple of churches, and a college named St. Patrick's and St. Brigid's College, according to the information showing on the tablet Rick held.
Rick was surprised at how well the village held up after the last five years. It seemed the Beast's influence wasn’t as strong in this small village because most of the animals, especially the chipmunks and squirrels, were normal sized and ran around the town as if it didn't matter that this was the first time they had seen humans in over five years.
The plant life in the town was a bit overgrown but hadn't gotten so out of control that it had reclaimed the village. Many of the windows and doors to the homes and businesses were still intact, helping to keep out smaller animals and plants. Rick and Jacobson felt unsettled peering nervously into every shadow as they walked around surveying the village.
"Is it me or is the silence here creepy?" Rick asked.
"Yeah, it’s downright creepy. I swear we've walked into one of those zombie flicks I used to watch as a kid, where the people would wander into a town like this, and everything was dead quiet. Then they would turn a corner and bam!—a giant horde of zombies. Next thing you know, they are running for their lives."
Rick kicked at an old bike tire near his foot. "I keep waiting for someone to come running out, thanking us for coming to rescue them, or some kid coming out to play. This doesn't seem normal."
"Other than the sounds of the birds chirping or the squirrels quarreling about whatever squirrels quarrel about, this place is a ghost town."
The Shadow Above The Flames Page 18
