by A. A. Allsop
Agent Fettin left to make some calls. Cutters’ apprehension was growing. He radioed his men to stay on full alert and stay in doubles, and he closed the areas in the outskirts. That was not a big deal, as they usually worked in pairs, and the only distant area that was open at the moment was Area 7. The drill sites cycled activity so as not to overheat the equipment. Area 7 was only operational because the equipment manager was working the area. Cutters ordered an extra team to join him and radioed all civvies site leaders to account for every single one of their men, including those on breaks.
“I want them physically seen by your eyes, not just someone’s account of where they might be.”
They each radioed in confirmation. When he was done barking orders, he left to find the young resident tech genius, Matthew Jeffreys, known by everyone as Jeffers. As usual, Jeffers was set up in the middle of one of the most used equipment tents. It made Cutters mental, but Jeffers had insisted on the location, saying he wanted to “be in the mix, man.”
Cutters had to resist punching the kid when he said that, but at Windover’s insistence, he gave Jeffers what he wanted. It had ended up being an advantageous arrangement. Much of the equipment was new, top-of-the-line stuff that his men, who were not engineers, were unaccustomed to using. Jeffers took the time to show them how to use it—in words they could understand, no less—and they, in turn, shared gossip and stories with him. The kid loved it, and since he ended up being less underfoot than Cutters thought he would, he let the arrangement stay.
He found the kid typing away at the computer. Without looking up, Jeffers said, “Hey, did you check out the babe that arriv—oh… hi… uh, sir.”
Cutters, unsmiling, walked over to the boy and said, “I need you to look at the historical data for the seismographs for the entire site from the first day it was set up.”
Jeffers, seeming relieved he wasn’t going to get in trouble for his comment, pulled up the data without question. “’K,” he said looking up after about thirty seconds of typing. “What am I looking for?”
Cutters bent to look at the screen, but the numbers and squiggles just looked like gibberish to him. He could read a seismograph screen easily, but this conversion of those peaks and valleys into compiled data all blurred together.
“Tell me what I’m looking at,” Cutters said. “Do you see any abnormalities?”
Jeffers typed again for a few seconds, and a second screen came up. He turned one of his three monitors toward the older man and said, “Look, this figure shows the abnormality median. Every world will move a little, right? This says what is normal for this world and if there has been any activity outside that. This says the first abnormality was a week ago, which makes sense, since that is when they brought Helena in and transported her here. The next day, her systems were up and humming,” he said, “so more abnormalities.”
He pointed to another box with a graph of squiggly lines. “This factors out our equipment. This is just the earth itself, or any creatures, or unregistered equipment that might cause vibrations and tremors. This is putting it at practically zero since the camp was erected.”
“How accurate is this?” Cutters asked.
“State-of-the-art equipment. It’s as accurate as it gets.”
Cutters frowned, thinking, but was interrupted by two people entering the tent. He turned around to tell them off and then stopped. In front of him were the two people he was going to track down next.
“There you are,” said Dr. Sarah McKelling, sounding cross. “We found the problem.” The petite woman looked as though she had been in her late fifties when she died. This was the first job Cutters had worked with her, and she hadn’t exactly made the friendliest first impression. But he still preferred working with her stiff, unwavering, professional manner than some of the others he often had to deal with. People of her type were usually less fun, sure, but also less fuss and usually less trouble.
“The problem?” Cutters said, looking blank for a moment, lost in his thoughts.
Her companion, a tall black man with long white dreadlocks and a neat white beard and mustache, chuckled. “Must be a rough day if you have already forgotten about Helena’s mishap that happened an hour ago.”
Cutters cursed. “You’re telling me,” he said, shaking his head. He liked Dr. Washington. It was also his first time working with the man, but he had given Cutters the instant impression of easygoing competence, two things that did not often go together in Cutters’ experience—himself included, for that matter. No one in their right mind would ever call him easygoing. He knew it and owned it, but this man did not seem to get worked up for any reason.
“What was the problem?” Jeffers asked.
Dr. McKelling pinched her lips, but before she could answer, Cutters cut in. “I have reason to believe we have a creature or creatures hunting in the area.” Jeffers perked up. Cutters normally would not reveal sensitive information in front of the kid, seeing as he was the biggest gossip in the camp, but he had no choice. He needed the kid’s help.
“What creature can move undetected by seismographs, leave no traces that a below-terrain ultrasound would detect, and snatch men—two men at a time—without anyone hearing or seeing?”
The doctors exchanged looks, and Dr. Washington said, “Perhaps the same creature the drill wounded.”
Cutters exited the tent fifteen minutes later, noting the unpleasant change in weather. What had started off as a clear, bright morning was turning into a dark, ominous afternoon sky. He didn’t like the smell of the air or the look of the horizon. There was a storm coming, and a big one. god help his men if they were out when that hit.
He shook his head. He was pissed. How had no one known that the two men were missing? Had Windover just assumed they quit? And then he was notified late about Clover and Jackson… He was responsible for these men.
For the first time in his AfterLife, he wondered if he was in the wrong industry. He had never considered a life outside this, but after this shit show of a gig and The Community’s inevitable “No thank you,” he might seriously consider opening a bakery or something. Anything but this shit. Anything but the monsters.
Cutters frowned at the horizon one more time as he headed toward his ATV. This was not looking good at all. The storm was much closer than he originally had thought. “Fuck it,” he said out loud. He was not losing another person today.
“Shut down the camps,” he said into his walkie. “Bring everyone home and do another head count at command.”
The wind started picking up, and he blinked little grains of sand out of his eyes. He pulled up his goggles and grabbed his wind mask out of his ATV’s storage. He was going to catch an earful from Windover, he knew, but his gut was telling him it was the right move to make, whole day’s income loss or no.
“Alpha and Beta teams,” he said into the walkie on his elite teams’ line, “assist in the EVAC and then gear up for search and rescue.”
Ten bumpy minutes later he was parked in Area 3, pointed in Axe’s direction, who paused his EVAC duties to jog over to Cutters. In the short ride, the wind had already picked up quite a bit. He was glad he listened to his instincts and started clearing out the camps. As it was, they might not all make it into the mess hall, which doubled as a bunker, before the storm broke in earnest.
“You pulled the tracker’s info, right?” Cutters asked, raising his voice above the rising wind.
Axe nodded. “Course. I sent out a vehicle to the spot where the trace disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” What the hell? “You mean you found their trackers somewhere?”
Axe shook his head. “No, we looked. The spot where the trace disappeared kinda looked blackened and a little messed up. I mean the ground looked weird. I had the men take pictures. I texted ’em to you.”
Frowning, Cutters pulled out his phone and flipped it open. “What the hell?” he said again.
Axe looked over and saw Cutters’ screen flashing in and out. “Phone must be
messed up ’cause of the storm.” Axe frowned too, looking up at the sky. He pulled out his own phone to show him the pictures.
At first, Cutters didn’t see anything unusual. He pulled the phone out of Axel’s hand and looked at it closer, enlarging the image which enabled him to see the unusual patterns in the sand. It looked like sand that had been on the surface of something that had been vibrating.
“Where was the location of the trace?”
Axe looked up the coordinates on his phone and groaned, hitting the side of his phone impatiently while it loaded. He shook his head and squinted up at the sky. “We need to be able to communicate in this storm. Never seen a storm affect our cell signal this early before. I’ll give you the exact coordinates when it loads, but they were way off course.”
“How far abouts?”
“About a mile,” he answered, “but they were on foot for most of it. They abandoned their vehicles. We picked them up, had the dogs sniff ’em. Got nothin’.”
He looked worried. Dropping all pretenses, he leaned in, dropping his voice. “None of this makes any sense. Those men were professionals—one was ex-Special Forces, the other a retired Marine who did police work for a decade. I’ve never been on a gig with ’em when they’ve abandoned a post like that ’afore.”
Axe threw his hands up. “Chap’s a tracker, right? So, he does his thing, checks out the spot, and says that—clear as day—they calmly park their vehicle and walk casually ’til they get to this li’l pond, then, poof,” he said, “suddenly they vanish.” He shook his head in wonder. “We checked the pond with our gear, and one kid even climbed in ’cause he don’t trust all them new computers they have, and nothing. It’s a tiny li’l pond too, ’bout ten feet deep and that and half again as wide.” He sniffed and threw out his hands. “I mean, what were they thinking? What were they doing?”
Cutters said nothing, and Axe went on, “And Chap checked for hanky-panky—he checked for it all. Them tracks would have shown it. He can tell by how deep the footprint is on the heel versus the toe whether or not they were running, or standing, walking, or fucking.”
Cutters nodded. He wasn’t liking the sound of any of this. “No other prints or tracks?”
“’Sides that weird stuff with the sand, nah.”
Cutters looked at the picture on the phone one more time. “Try sending this to Jeffers, along with the coordinates when they come up. He is working with the repo team leads to see if they can figure out what creature might be nearby.”
He dismissed his friend, who headed back to his EVAC protection detail, leaving Cutters alone with his thoughts. Cloverfield and Jackson had been casually walking a mile outside the check zone? Axel was right. Had it been anyone but those two, he might have believed they were ditching their post to drink, get high, or whatever, but those two were straight and professional.
Still… men could change over time, he supposed. Maybe one or both were going through a breakup no one knew about. Heartache could make people do stupid things. He had learned that firsthand with his ex. Maybe they went to find their stash of pot, got high, and then were attacked by something? But why leave their ATVs that far away? Doubtful they wanted to go on a casual stroll. Leaving the vehicles had to have served a purpose. Maybe they saw something they didn’t want to disturb with their vehicles. But if that were the case, they would have called for backup… unless they tried to.
He looked at his useless phone, trying to quell the growing apprehension he was feeling.
On the fast side of things, clearing the camp would take at least an hour. But given the size of the camp and what was involved, realistically, it was going to take closer to two. The equipment needed to be safe-locked against the elements and loaded into the Big Boys, which were sturdy, slow-moving haul-away trucks meant for pulling heavy loads in uneven terrain.
Cutters left Chap to oversee the camp packing up and walked over to his ATV. He knew his men would be vigilant. Although the storms brought out all kinds of different animals, they also masked their presence. Add in the heightened activity of a camp pack-up and… he didn’t want whatever was hunting his men to get lucky again today.
In spite of the dangers he was leaving his men in, he needed to scope out the location of the pond before any of the evidence was blown away, if it wasn’t gone already. When Axe was finally able to pull them up, Cutters typed the coordinates into his GPS, revved up the ATV, and headed for the spot where his men had vanished. The closer he got, which was at full length only about a ten-minute drive, the more messed up his GPS system became. He pulled out his phone to call Jeffers and cursed when the phone couldn’t get a signal again. This was definitely not normal.
Everything about what had been happening lately felt off somehow. Why had those protesters come to this specific location when it was brand-new and unannounced? Maybe one of the crew told them? I guess it’s possible… he thought as he got off his vehicle and bent low to examine a faint footprint. He was beginning to think he was being hunted by something other than an animal. Cutters was starting to regret his interest in The Community. Had he doomed these people? Had they started picking off his men to see how he would react?
Axe said there had been no other tracks—no other vehicles, no footprints from man or beast, no other evidence that the two men had taken a casual stroll and then disappeared into thin air.
He looked up again. Could someone have grabbed them from a helicopter? No. The wind from the chopper would’ve made different patterns in the sand. Then again, he reminded himself, he was dealing with the most elite group of mercenaries in AfterLife. They could have made the scene look like anything they wanted. Then, with a sigh of relief, he remembered that he had been hired after the disappearance of the first two men.
But… had they known he would apply to join them ahead of time? Then a more chilling thought hit him… had they forced Windover to hire him?
Suddenly, his financier’s offer of a referral seemed more nefarious, and the man’s current absence from the dig site, though typical, seemed even more ominous.
It was very crowded back at command. The mess hall had already been converted into a storm safe haven. The building, though mobile, had reinforced steel beams almost two feet thick. It weighed more than all the rest of the mobile buildings combined.
The other trailers were also built to survive the storm, with slick roofs designed to push the wind over the building and anchors that drilled into the bedrock, as well as an automated system that would open watermelon-sized holes for the wind to pass through if the building threatened to fall apart or get blown over. They weren’t safe enough to protect people during the big storms, though. Cutters had once come out after a storm to find too many of those trailers knocked over with people trapped and hurt inside.
In spite of the strange weather outside, the tone in the hall was excited and festive, as it had been earlier that day. The men were enjoying their time off and passed around banned bottles of liquor slipped from waistbands, and shots were poured into cups of coffee and juice—or directly down throats. Technically, the crew was supposed to be ready to go after storms, which on these planets tended to be as bad as they were short.
But Cutters let them be. He had more pressing things to worry about.
He saw a frowning Agent Fettin shouting into her phone. She spotted him before he could duck away, and she beelined for him. Great, he thought. Just what I need, a pissed-off agent to interrupt my work. He geared himself for a fight. He had shit to do, which would, as a matter of fact, help her stupid investigation. Anyway, she had no right to be pissy with him. She couldn’t have expected him to just lounge around waiting for her to summon him again.
When she reached him, she said, “I can’t get my men on the comms.” Cutters’ angry retort died in his throat, and he stared at her blankly. “My men,” she repeated impatiently. “The team that was helping me investigate,” she said, looking at him like he was intentionally being dim.
He shook himse
lf and nodded. “Happens in the storms, sometimes,” he said, praying that was all this was. “Let’s talk to Jeffreys and see if he can locate them.”
“Sir, sorry to interrupt,” said a man Cutters thought was named Greg. “I was just moving stuff to the trailer here and Matt stopped me and told me to tell you it was urgent.” He pointed at Jeffreys, who had erected a temporary office in the corner of the mess hall. He was typing on the computer and looking agitated.
Cutters nodded curtly and walked over to Jeffreys. Without preamble, Jeffreys said, “We have a distress signal that just came through.”
“Is it my men?” Celestine asked, worried.
“Not sure…” He looked uncomfortable. “I think it might be. The signal just came in on my end, but it looks like it was sent out about twenty minutes ago.”
Cutters cursed. “Why so long?” Then he answered his own question. “Signal delays?”
Jeffers nodded, looking serious for the first time in Cutters’ memory of him. The kid said, “OK, the signal originated from here. It’s lucky that I even found it. Honestly, if I didn’t know that your team was out there,” he nodded in the agent’s direction, “I might not have gone through the lengths I went to find this. Usually the distress signal pings off the comms tower and out to all communication devices out there, but it didn’t this time. I found it by accident because I was tracking the progress of our team that is still in th—”
“Spit it out, Jeffers,” Cutters growled.
“Right,” he said, sounding a little flustered. “I found a weak signal—so weak that it usually means nothing. We call it a ghost signal because it is caused by whatever energy that, you know, witches and stuff feed off of, but when I looked closer, it was actually a distress signal being covered up or… I dunno… distorted.”
