They were picking us off.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Just like that. Borden was dead. Moreno and McAndrew were, too. What was I doing here?
The knife, stowed in a diver’s sheath tied to my thigh, burned so hot it seared my flesh through the rubber suit, telling me it was time to avenge the fallen. Its rage filled me, and I took off swimming, my brain an electric mess of shorted-out wiring.
Patterson shouted for me to wait, but I ignored him and flicked on my night vision scope. That thing killed Borden. It wasn’t getting away. The water turned gray-green on my scope’s screen, and something brighter green swam in front of me—something with a long tail. I surged after it, sucking down air through my snorkel. The Gator moved fast, but it was pulling Borden’s body and that slowed it down.
I paddled hard to catch up and managed to stay right behind it. The monster led me to a vine-covered rock jutting out from the bank. But it wasn’t a solid rock; the Gator struggled through the vines with Borden’s body and they floated back into place over the mouth of a cave. They’d been weighted down with large pebbles to keep them from floating in the current. It was camouflage.
I’d found the Gators’ den.
The entry was submerged. I detached my snorkel and dove down. My chin scraped bottom, but I continued to follow the monster. I broke surface about four feet up, arriving in a low-ceilinged cave, and poked my head up cautiously. Tunnels had been dug into the dirt of the bank on either side of the cave. That was how they were getting around without being seen. They weren’t ghosts; they tunneled. And they were very good at it. Support beams rimmed the entrances to the tunnels, and they looked too smooth to be hand-dug. Scary how intelligent these things were. Seeing a Gator pop out of a hole in the middle of a village like an unpleasant Jack-in-a-box had to be about the worst thing I could imagine.
The beast was busy dragging Borden deeper into the cavern, so I climbed the rock ramp, knife in hand. Pebbles slid loose under my feet and fell into the water with a plop.
The Gator turned at the sound. “El niño.”
I froze. My Spanish wasn’t great, but I was pretty sure it hadn’t said “a boy.” It’d said “The boy.” Did it know who I was?
Without pause, it dropped Borden on the floor and darted toward me. I slid back into the water, pushing off the rock-ramp with my feet. Once out of the cave, I surfaced and got one good breath before it snared me. The Gator wrapped me up in its long legs and rolled me over and over. My mask slipped off. Choking, half-blind, the blurred image of massive jaws snapped by my head. My back pressed into the bottom of the stream. I couldn’t go any deeper to escape. The Gator gave me a squeeze and I gulped down a mouthful of muddy water.
Somehow I got my knees under it and pushed it back, then kicked its jaw. It let go long enough for me to wrestle the knife free of its sheath. Stabbing up, I slashed through its chest with my blade. Dark smears flooded the water around me and its hold released.
The knife flashed; its contentment rolled over me, then was gone. I shoved the Gator’s body away, letting the current take it. Wet and shaking, I paddled to the bank. I’d floated far enough downstream that the sounds of battle were lost. No Gators around either. I was alone in the dark. I climbed out of the stream and sat on the bank, coughing up what seemed like a gallon of dirty water.
The Gator knew me. They knew who I was. My teeth chattered and I put my head between my knees. How did it know who I was?
A nearby splash startled me. Patterson pulled himself out of the water and threw my lost goggles down on the bank. “You scared the crap out of me, Archer. When you got that head start, I couldn’t see you through the mud. Don’t lose me again, understand? Knife-wielder or not, you stick close, or else.”
He had a point. The buddy system seemed like a really good idea after my near miss. “Okay.”
Patterson shined his flashlight on my hands. “Kid, you hurt?”
Dark mud was smeared all over my palms. Blood, too. Some from a scratch on my arm that I hadn’t noticed getting. Some from the slaughtered Gator.
Red and green and black.
The dream I’d had in the jet ran through my mind. Visions, Ramirez had called them. Had I seen the future? The world slanted sideways and I had to put my head between my knees again.
“Hang tight, Archer,” Patterson said. “We need to get you back to base.”
“Wait,” I gasped. “I know where the den is. It’s empty. Do you have any charges?”
That earned me a grim smirk. “I could blow up half a city block with what I’m carrying. Think you’re up to taking me there?”
I put on my mask. “Yeah. But…Borden’s body is in the cave. Let me pull him out first, okay?”
“We’d never leave a man behind,” Patterson said softly. “Let’s go.”
Tired but determined, we headed back to where we’d entered the stream. Patterson had hidden his equipment bag and radio behind a large rock there. He retrieved the charges, then I led the lieutenant along the bank, taking him to where I thought the lair might be. We searched underwater until we found the vines, and I moved up the rock ramp with caution. Still no activity. Borden lay in a heap, like a piece of trash, in the corner. The guy who’d helped me save the baby was gone. I still had a hard time believing it.
The roof was too low for us to stand, so Patterson crawled to the body. He picked Borden up and, shuffling on his knees, brought his body to me. Borden’s head hung at unnatural angle—broken neck. He had bite marks on his shoulder and thigh, but was otherwise unharmed. I had a sickening thought. The Gators had just eaten Moreno and McAndrew. Was Borden leftovers for tomorrow? I breathed in through my nose and out my mouth to calm my stomach. Every time I thought the situation couldn’t get worse, it did.
Patterson finished attaching charges. “They remote detonate, radio trigger. We’ll need to go upstream a ways to be safe.”
We swam, carrying Borden between us, and made it back to the surface. After heaving the body onto the bank, we climbed out of the water. Patterson picked Borden up again. We hiked about a hundred yards upstream, then the lieutenant tucked Borden behind a boulder at the water’s edge. He pulled me behind another one. With an almost crazy smile, he held out a black box.
“Fire in the hole!”
He smashed a button. There was a weird, gurgling rumble, then a mighty whoosh. Water plumed upward, spraying in all directions. Mist rained down on us. As we peered from behind our rock, the bank crumbled and chunks of dirt and rock fell into the water. Two long troughs, six-inches deep, headed out from the bank for at least forty feet. The tunnels had caved in, wiping out the Gators’ underground advantage.
“Yeah!” I shouted, forgetting we were in the middle of a war zone. We scored one for Borden. Now it was time take out more Gators for Moreno and Smith.
“Glad you liked the fireworks show. Let’s get out of here before the lizards come storming after us,” Patterson said. “We also need help taking Borden to base.”
We ran to the edge of the tree-line, closer to the team. Things were strangely quiet. Patterson ducked behind a large palm, then pulled out a map to check our position with his flashlight. He cupped his hand around the beam to hide the light.
“Where’s the team? We gotta be close.” He clicked his radio. “Mission accomplished, red team. Please advise location.”
Static. We stared at each other. My heart pounded. We couldn’t be alone, we just couldn’t. They weren’t all dead, were they?
“Come in, red team,” Patterson said. “Mission accomplished. Advise location.”
More static.
Then, “Good work, blue team. Return; staging area two. The remainder of the enemy has fled. Planning pursuit.”
With a relieved nod, Patterson stood, pulling me up with him. “Let’s—”
It happened so fast.
A taloned hand whipped from a tree branch over our heads and slashed Patterson across the chest. His face was drawn with surprise as blood spurt
ed out of his dry-suit. He fell to his knees, then crumpled to the ground. His flashlight, still on, dropped next to his head, revealing pale skin growing whiter by the second.
I went into overdrive, stabbing wildly at the claws with my knife. The Gator howled in the shadows as I cut two of its three fingers off. It slithered down the tree trunk with a snarl, its long snout open, snapping its jagged, uneven teeth. I swung at its head, but missed. The monster pressed forward, crawling on all fours like a croc, and it moved much faster than I would have expected with a wounded hand. I scrambled away, but backed right into something hard and scaly.
Terrified, I turned around and looked up.
Another, much larger Gator leaned over me, standing on its hind legs. Its long, spiked tail whipped back and forth as it let out a rattling growl. I stabbed at its chest, but it caught my wrist, twisted my arm behind my back. Somehow, I hung on to the knife, or maybe it clung to me. Everything was confused—snarls, shouts, pain in my shoulder. Patterson bleeding out.
While the big one held me still, the smaller Gator rushed forward to smack me on the side of the head with its good hand. I fell hard and something sliced my right side. The pain took my breath away–I couldn’t even yell for help. I craned my head to see what had happened. Blood seeped through my suit along the side of my rib cage. The knife twinged my hand. I lifted it.
Red blood shone on the blade in the glow of Patterson’s fallen flashlight.
I’d stabbed myself.
Patterson lay panting on the ground. He gestured at his radio. “Help’s coming…” Foamy, pink bubbles stained his mouth and his eyes rolled back in his head as he lost consciousness.
Men thrashed through the trees to our right, shouting our names. I tried to scream, get the team’s attention, but the sound wouldn’t come. I stared up at the nightmare around me. The big Gator gave a long, low, gravelly-sounding call and two other Gators glided through the trees to join us.
“Vamanos,” the leader croaked. “Rápidamente. Debemos llevarlo a una tierra sagrada. Entonces vamos a sacrificarlo en el maestro.”
I didn’t understand them, but “sacrificarlo” sounded a lot like sacrifice.
One of the new Gators reached down, grabbed my left ankle in its taloned fingers and dragged me deeper into the jungle. The rest of the pack followed. Too late for help, now. I shoved the knife into its sheath, out of sight. Maybe I’d get one last chance to use it.
A twig scraped me as we started to move. I grabbed it and broke off the end. Holding it in my fist, I dug a trench in the damp ground as the monster dragged me along. The team could probably follow the blood trail with their night-scopes, but this would help. Then Ramirez could find my body. Take me home to Mom. The thought made me sick, for what this would do to her.
The Gators whispered together as they pulled me through vines and trees and past strange flowers I didn’t have names for. The flowers shimmered in a diamond haze in the weak moonlight. Everything did, even the Gators. Their scales changed patterns before my eyes. Rocks cut into my back. My head bumped along the ground and got slapped by my captor’s tail. I wasn’t able to hold it up, and I didn’t feel like trying anymore. All I could do was drag my stick and hope it would all be over soon.
Images zoomed through my head. Mom cooking dinner. Brent texting at the kitchen table. Mamie crying in the airport conference room. Will’s grin as he gave me a fist bump over our lunch table. Uncle Mike, his hair covered in icing, laughing his head off.
Ella.
A hundred pictures of her. Smiling, crying, laughing, angry, about to kiss me….her hands behind her back, two fingers pointed up, three down…
My heart pumped hard. I still had the knife in my pocket; the handle vibrated, as if it was begging me to keep going. So tired, though. Cold, too. A rock scraped against my wound and I moaned, but it was like someone else did, like the sound came from far away. One of the monsters wheezed out a laugh.
We stopped in a tiny clearing surrounded by tall trees dripping with water, everything smelling of mulch and reptiles. Dampness from the ground soaked into my hair and I shivered despite the heat. The Gator finally dropped my foot. I lay limp, grateful to be still, pulling in shallow breaths, each one piercing my side with fire. Blood stained my side, my hand, the ground; my life seeped away with each throb of my pulse.
The halo of shimmering light around the monsters grew wavier, until the spikes on their heads moved like grass in the wind. Another Gator arrived, carrying a fallen beast in its arms.
The one I’d killed in the stream.
Growls and hisses and snarls. All five of them closed in on me. The big one squatted over me, teeth bared, talons out.
My eyes wanted to close, not to look, to sleep before it happened. The knife hummed urgently, but my fingers were too numb to pull it free.
“Ten cuidado,” a soft Gator voice croaked. Snorts of agreement. “El muchacho es muy peligroso.”
I couldn’t look away. I wanted to, so badly, but I couldn’t, even if a monster was the last thing I’d see. The big Gator flexed its hand and raised its claws over my chest. God in heaven, let it be over quick.
The Gator chuckled. My body relaxed—time was up. Fast…please…
A strong voice cried out words I didn’t understand. Not Spanish. Not anything I knew. A flash of lightning, then all the Gators backed away. The knife shot a current through my thigh as the blur of a small man ran into view. The monsters scattered into the jungle, but not before the strange man jumped on one’s back.
Shouts, machine-gun fire. The team had found me.
Chaos reigned. Boots stomped all around. Ramirez stormed by with his knife clutched in his right hand. It glowed green.
Murphy dropped to his knees next to me. “We gotta stop the bleeding. This is gonna hurt.”
He pressed a bandage to my side. Black shadows of pain clouded my vision. Barely able to draw breath, I whispered, “It’s too late, Murphy.”
Just before the darkness took me, I saw it. The big Gator stood in the trees, watching us.
It was laughing.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Matt, stay with us, kid.”
Voices faded in and out, not letting me rest.
“…so much blood, sir, I don’t…”
“Murphy…patch job. Gotta get him out of…”
“Sir, movement, eight o’clock…”
I floated on a bed of incandescent pain. Flames seared my side, my lungs, my heart.
“…with me. I may be able to heal…”
“…carry him?”
Someone picked me up. Hurt. Bad.
“Go, go, go…”
Finally, sleep.
* * *
When I came to, I was lying on a pallet on the dirt floor of a straw hut, covered with an Army blanket. The cut-up remains of my dry suit had been tossed into one corner. A man, maybe forty with brown skin and crazy-scary eyes, peered intently at my face. He was small, with short, black hair and ropy muscles on his arms. He wore a rough white tunic and khaki field pants, with a bunch of necklaces made out of rocks and bones, and had a knife sheathed in a rope belt at his side. His feet were bare.
“Are you the medicine man?” I whispered.
He smiled. “Yes, I’m Jorge. You need rest; we will talk later.”
* * *
Johnson’s voice shook. “His temp is one-oh-three. I told you we should’ve medevacked him with Patterson and Toldan. Three KIAs are bad enough. We have to call his mother, get him to the States.”
Patterson wasn’t dead? Good news, but I couldn’t seem to make my eyes open. My body felt like it weighed double and I was freezing.
“Fever is good. Fights off infection,” the medicine man said. “It’s the perfect biological defense mechanism.”
Mike hadn’t been kidding. Jorge sounded like he’d been born and raised in the northeast—slightly nasal, clipped. And formal, like someone on a yacht somewhere. The accent didn’t match the guy at all. He also talked like
a doctor or some other egghead.
Then again, I might’ve been hallucinating the whole conversation.
Cool hands probed my side. I groaned, forgetting about everything but the pain that burned my ribcage. It hurt so much, tears leaked from the corners of my eyes.
“The wound is closing much faster than I expected,” Jorge said. “Quite miraculous, to be sure.”
“He needs to go home, Jorge. A fifteen-year-old with a slashed up body needs his mama,” Johnson growled.
An amused snort from Jorge. “Give me one more night. Tomorrow it will look better. You will see.”
“Johnson, he’s right. His medicine is better for this kind of wound,” Ramirez said.
“Mpfth.” Darn it, that was supposed to be “Listen to Ramirez.” My tongue wouldn’t move anymore, though, so I just laid there like a pile of jelly.
Johnson blew out a long breath. “Tomorrow morning. Then we call his mother and medevac him to the States for treatment.” A pause. “I promised his sister that I’d be personally responsible for keeping him safe.”
Johnson’s shadow left me as he stomped away.
“He is safe, lieutenant,” Jorge whispered, pressing a wet cloth to my forehead. I felt the vibration of my knife through the pallet. It must have been close by and it agreed with Jorge.
Continuing to hum, the blade lulled me to sleep.
* * *
“I’ll see if he’s awake,” Johnson said.
I managed to open my eyes. A little sunlight streamed in through the cracks in the walls and the straw roof. When I tried to sit up, my entire body rattled with a chill. I flopped back down.
“Don’t move so much, Matt. You’re better, but let’s not rush things.” Johnson rested a satellite phone on the dirt floor and knelt next to my pallet. He tried to smile, but worry lined his dark eyes. He pulled my blanket back over my chest.
“Good idea,” I whispered, still shaking.
“Think you can talk to Mamie?” he asked. “She’s worried sick.”
“Does she know…that I’m hurt?” My throat scratched when I talked.
“Yeah, she knows. When you didn’t check in with her on time, she called Colonel Black every hour for nineteen straight hours.” Johnson chuckled. “Takes a lot to wear that man down, but your sister did it in less than a day.”
Matt Archer: Monster Hunter Page 22
