by Matt Rogers
The landscape was deceptive. What looked like hard-packed earth covered with overgrown grass had proved to be a thick layer of soft, wet dirt. It made for difficult travel. It took them ten minutes to reach the warehouse. It felt like a year. Every step closer seemed to increase the tension in Jake’s mind. But they silently crept up on the entrance without a peep of interest from anything inside.
The front wall dwarfed them, towering up into the sky. It was a huge industrial building, long abandoned. Graffiti covered every square inch of the metal, in the form of coarse slang and crude gang tags. Jake pressed his back up against the wall. He was gripping the Snowdog he had been given tight between his fingers.
Eyes wide, he glanced at Wolfe. The man was crouching by the huge double doors. They were securely locked. Felix had crept over to the other side, and Crank was waiting patiently behind Wolfe, ready to go at any moment.
Wordlessly, Wolfe extracted a grenade from his belt and tugged the pin from the top.
“Here we go,” he mouthed.
He threw it through the broken window running across the top of the doors. Jake heard it skitter across the concrete floor inside. From within there came a faint, curious growl.
The grenade detonated.
Jake jolted in shock as the entire building shook on its foundations. All the windows that weren’t yet broken exploded simultaneously. Dust and residue that had built up in the cracks fountained out of the walls. The doors creaked and groaned, pushed outwards by the force of the blast and Wolfe stood up and slammed them back in the other direction with a front kick. They burst open.
Wolfe charged into the warehouse with Crank and Felix right behind him. Jake lost sight of the trio, still crouching against the wall.
From within, the unnatural whine of Snowdog bullets sounded for the first time. The guns were firing away at forty thousand rounds per minute. The bullets were discharging so fast that there was no recognisable chatter. It was simply a deafening, vibrating hum.
A symphony of gruesome howls and roars echoed out into the night. Jake’s heart skipped a beat. It sounded like there were dozens in there. He crouched in the mud for what felt like an eternity. In reality, it was probably only a few seconds.
Then the fear was gone, replaced by adrenaline as Thorn shouted “Move!” and he charged into the warehouse.
It was chaos. Dead slayers littered the concrete floor, some still twitching and writhing in pools of black blood. Jake felt sick, yet relieved. He tallied roughly twenty dead before his gaze shot elsewhere. Stray slayers were sprinting away, into a partition of walled-up offices on the left hand side. Wolfe, Crank and Felix were all down on one knee, firing after them. At least ten made it into cover before they could finish them off.
Jake ran flat out towards the offices, legs pumping like pistons. He raised his Snowdog and aimed it at the door.
“Jake, no,” Wolfe roared.
“We have to finish them off before they regroup,” Jake yelled back.
“They’re slayers!” Thorn yelled. “They don’t regroup! They’re mindless!”
But by then Jake was through the door. He was in a narrow hallway, made up of almost ten doors that branched away into cramped office cubicles. There was a lone slayer at the end of the corridor.
It roared, baring a mouth full of bloody teeth.
He grimaced. How could he have been so stupid? He was alone now, and in danger. He was frustrated with himself, but above all else he was scared.
Jake levelled his Snowdog at exactly the same time that it pounced.
He tapped the trigger. A wave of bullets dotted across the slayer’s chest in mid-air. It slapped against the corridor floor like a rag doll and lay still.
He breathed a sigh of relief and began to turn …
… just in time to see five claws darting towards him.
He ducked. Without a second to spare. The slayer’s jab whisked over his head. One of its bony claws scraped across the top of his scalp. There was a fiery hot burst of pain and blood began to seep from the wound, but Jake barely had any time to notice, because by then he was rolling away. In his haste, he had let go of the Snowdog. It was lying next to the slayer that had attacked him, out of reach and utterly useless. He cursed.
They faced each other off across the corridor. Jake felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. The slayer was staring straight at him. Its beady eyes didn’t falter; didn’t blink. Its muscles tensed, preparing for a pounce. Jake couldn’t see a way out. There were no doors or windows close by. He panicked.
The slayer pounced.
He was unarmed.
The haze of adrenaline subsided just long enough to make him realise that he had two spare pistols in his belt. He reached down and ripped one from its holster, just as the slayer slammed into him. The force knocked him over. His head whiplashed against the thin carpet. For a moment he saw stars. The slayer had been thrown off-balance by the impact and both of them were now sprawling across the ground.
Jake spun on his hands and knees and grabbed a handful of its tattered jacket. It roared in his face but he slammed its head into the wall, unnerved. It brought a claw up, but Jake stomped it back down again, now on his feet. He raised the pistol and fired a single shot into its face.
It was over.
The slayer was lying face down in a heap. Their fight had taken them to the very end of the hall. Jake felt confused. There was blood on his temple and a splitting headache had sprouted into life.
Slowly, he turned around to head back out into the warehouse.
He froze in terror.
There were at least eight slayers separating him from the corridor’s entrance. They must have heard the commotion and emerged from the offices. They watched him.
He had no escape.
“Jake!” a voice roared, distant, muffled. “Get down!”
He dropped. Just in time. A withering hail of Snowdog rounds flew above his head. The bullets churned up the wall behind, shredding it to sawdust. He pressed an arm over his face more out of instinct than anything else. By the time it was over, he had curled himself up into a ball, afraid of being hit by a stray bullet.
“Clear,” a voice said.
Jake rose slowly, still shaking. He couldn’t believe he was alive.
Wolfe was standing motionless at the end of the hallway, Snowdog in hand. Blood lined the walls. The corridor stank. The bullet-ridden bodies of the slayers were flung across the floor. Jake tried not to look at them as he made his way back out into the warehouse.
“You okay?” Wolfe asked.
Jake said nothing, simply lunged forward and held him tight. Wolfe’s hold was comforting.
“Thank you,” was all Jake could manage.
“It’s alright, buddy,” Wolfe said, clapping him on the back. “Just don’t do that again.”
They separated.
Now that every last slayer was dead, the squad relaxed. Crank and Felix were moving amongst the stragglers, finishing them off with a quick bullet to the head. Sam was surveying the scene before him with awe plastered across his face. And Thorn, Thorn was striding straight towards Jake.
“You nearly got yourself killed,” he said with undisguised anger.
“I was just trying to help,” Jake said. “I don’t want to be useless.”
“I’d rather you be cautious than dead,” Wolfe said. “It was lucky we got to you in time.”
“You’re cut,” Thorn said.
Jake looked down. Three long, jagged gashes were torn out of his combat shirt, across his chest. Blood was already seeping into the fabric. The second slayer must have nicked him when it pounced.
He propped himself up on a table. Wolfe began bandaging the wound while the other four men set to work piling the bodies into one of the corners.
“Surely someone will find one of these bodies eventually?” Jake asked. “How have slayers remained a secret so long?”
Wolfe looked up quizzically. “No-one told you?”
“T
old me what?”
“I can’t believe we didn’t address this earlier,” Wolfe said, shaking his head. “When a slayer dies, their heart stops circulating the virus through the bloodstream. It has nowhere to go. So roughly half an hour after death, the virus begins dissolving the body.”
“Bull.”
Wolfe shook his head.
“Why does that happen?” Jake said.
“Do I look like a scientist? But it’s damn convenient. If we came back an hour from now, there’d be nothing left except for piles of dust.”
Jake said nothing.
Sam strode up to them and said, “We ready to go, boys?”
“I think so,” Wolfe said. “No sign of Archfiend…?”
“Not this time,” Sam said. “We’ll get him, brother.”
Sitting there on the table, surveying the warehouse, Jake realised something seemed off. It took a few seconds for it to click.
“This place looked square from the outside,” he said to no-one in particular.
“It is,” Felix responded from the other side of the warehouse. “Same distance length-ways and across.”
“It might just be me,” Jake said, “but it looks rectangular in here.”
“Huh?” Crank said. He stood up and looked around.
“No kidding,” Wolfe said, staring intently at the walls. “You’re right.”
Jake noticed it more now that he had drawn attention to it. The warehouse was wider than it was long on the inside. It was almost like a section was simply missing.
Thorn and Wolfe crossed over to the far wall. Wolfe began to thump sections of the concrete with his fist. Once, twice, three times. Then he froze.
“Thorn,” he said, and motioned to a spot in the wall at roughly chest height.
The instructions were clear. Thorn took a step forwards and kicked out with two hundred kilograms of force, transferring all his power into the wall, which in turn gave way, sending a section of the concrete falling back into empty air. What remained was a perfectly square hole in the wall, already pre-constructed. The concrete Thorn had kicked out had just been sitting there, nothing more than a giant plug. Clouds of dust swirled back into the pitch blackness.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Thorn said.
Wolfe raised a hand. No-one moved a muscle. Jake watched them stand in complete silence. They were all listening intently. There was no sound from the darkness. He tightened his grip on the Snowdog until his knuckles were white.
Wolfe pointed a finger at Thorn, and then Jake, the two people closest to the hole besides himself.
“You two, with me,” he breathed, his voice barely audible. “If this is a trap, I don’t want us all locked in there. Crank, Sam, Felix, wait out here. If you hear commotion, follow us in. Anything that looks remotely like a slayer; shoot it.”
Everyone nodded, acknowledging the orders.
Jake hesitated. He didn’t want to go in. But he had come this far. Just like Wolfe had told him, he couldn’t back out now. He hoped it was a dead end.
“Three…” Wolfe said.
Jake checked his Snowdog had ammunition, indicated by a blinking electronic light on the side of the barrel. It did.
“Two…”
He took a deep breath.
“One…”
He raised his gun.
“Go.”
The trio plunged into the blackness.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Three flashlights lit up the space, coming alive simultaneously from under the Snowdogs’ barrels. It took Jake a second or two to get his bearings. He was in a room a quarter the size of the main area. It was as wide as the warehouse, but the far wall was much closer. The concrete wall they had come through was a partition between rooms, concealing this secret space. He passed his torch beam over the floor and gasped in shock.
There were dozens of bodies.
Human bodies.
And they were alive.
Rows upon rows of adult men and women lay unconscious on their backs, their chests rising and falling, arranged in a grid across the dusty concrete floor. Jake couldn’t be sure, but it looked like there were at least thirty. They were all in a deep sleep.
He immediately felt panic grip his insides.
“What … what the hell is this?” he stammered.
Thorn found his voice, but he ignored Jake. “Wolfe…” he started.
“This is a hive,” Wolfe said. “A mass production of slayers. Archfiend takes these people off the streets … puts them in induced comas. He worked out how to do that a long time ago. He bites them as soon as they’re brought here, and leaves the virus to slowly take over their system. By the time these people wake up they’re going to be slayers.”
“This is sick,” Jake said.
“I’ve only ever seen one of these before,” Wolfe said. “Thankfully, this one is much smaller.”
“What do we do, Wolfe?” Jake said, his panic rising. “We need to help them.”
“We can’t,” Wolfe said, squeezing his eyes shut. “They’re slayers, Jake.”
Thorn was kneeling by the bodies and feeling their necks. Finally he looked up with wide eyes.
“Wolfe,” he said again, this time much more urgently.
“What?”
“None of them have been bitten yet.”
Wolfe froze. “They’ve been brought here recently then.”
“You know what that means…”
“He’s close.”
“I’m sorry,” Jake interrupted, “but I’m new to this. Who’s close, exactly?”
Wolfe turned to him with a wild look on his face. “Archfiend.”
Several things happened at once. A sudden, inhuman roar echoed through the hive. It sounded like it came from the shadows directly overhead. At the same time, Jake saw something slide across the hole they had entered from. He spun on his heel to see a silhouette pushing a huge steel plate across the floor, sealing them in. The plate was attached to rollers that lay next to the hole. It had been a trap all along.
A grunt from behind caused him to spin back the other way. Two slayers fell from the parapets. They had previously been concealed in shadow but now they dropped, teeth bared. One landed with both feet outstretched on top of Thorn. No matter how strong Thorn was, taking a slayer’s bodyweight to the temple was enough to knock anyone out. By the time Jake turned, the big man was already keeling over. The slayer landed awkwardly on the floor, toppling off his hulking mass.
Wolfe was less fortunate. The second slayer dropped with its claws splayed outwards. Both of its hands ploughed into his shoulders, each bony claw sinking deep into his skin. He let out a yell of agony, dropped the Snowdog, fell to his knees. He was helpless.
Jake assessed the situation in a split second. Two men down. Backup was cut off. He was on his own.
In one motion, he raised his Snowdog and switched to single shot. He couldn’t afford to fire on full auto, surrounded by unconscious humans on all sides. He squeezed off two shots without even thinking. Somehow, they both hit home. Both slayers’ heads snapped backwards and they went limp. Wolfe grunted as the claws ripped from his shoulders. He slumped down onto his butt, in too much pain to move.
Jake was jarred by what he had done, but there was no time to ponder.
There was still the one who had closed the door.
Jake pivoted. Far too late. The slayer was there, barely a metre away. His shining lit up its features. It was almost as if it had been patiently waiting for him to finish with the other two. It struck out, hitting the Snowdog from his hands. He barely had time to register what happened. The gun spun away into the shadows.
He tried to throw a punch. The slayer caught his fist in mid-air, kicked him in the stomach and threw him to the ground. Jake collapsed, sucking in air; the kick had winded him. As he tried to recover, he noticed something was different about this slayer. It was putting barely any effort at all into the fight, moving laconically, with an aura of patience. It didn’t growl, didn’t
roar, and it seemed to be biding its time. It had disarmed him with effortless ease. Now, it was watching him. He saw that its lips weren’t curled back into its mouth. Its beady eyes were a much paler shade of red than all the other slayers he had seen.
And it radiated power.
“Y-You’re Archfiend,” Jake said, still lying on his back.
A sly grin spread across the monster’s face. It looked odd for a slayer to grin.
“And you’re Jake,” Archfiend said. His voice was soul-chilling. Like a snake had learned to talk. “Jake Hawkins. I know a lot about you.”
Jake was struck by a deep chill, a chill that cut to the bone. Archfiend knew who he was. “You do?”
“Mmm,” it mused. “I always wondered whether Wolfe would go through with it or not.”
“Go through with what?”
At that, Wolfe omitted a groan. It must have taken a great deal of effort, for he sagged further down on his knees.
“Ah-ah-ah,” Archfiend said, wagging his finger. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, Wolfe, but for now, don’t say a word.”
With that, he strode up and slammed a foot into Wolfe’s face, once again with barely any effort. Wolfe jerked back and went quiet. Jake recoiled in horror.
“Now,” Archfiend said, turning towards Jake. “Back to you.”
Jake didn’t dare move. Archfiend was staring at him. There was someone pounding against the steel plate from the other side, but their efforts were so far unsuccessful. The others were barely a few metres away, yet helpless to protect Jake. For now, he was at the creature’s mercy.
“What do you want?” Jake said. “Why haven’t you killed me yet?”
Archfiend pointed a finger. “Because the rest of your little squad is going to bust through that barrier soon, and I want to talk.”
“About what?”
“You shouldn’t be here, Jake,” Archfiend hissed. His beady eyes were unwavering. “Hunting slayers.” He laughed cruelly. “Wolfe’s pulled you into his operation, but you’re in way over your head. So you get a second chance…”
Archfiend took two powerful steps and wrapped a cold hand around Jake’s throat. He was lifted to his feet, so that they were face to face. Archfiend leaned forwards until he was within whispering distance.
