by Mike Leon
“Hit it,” Walter says.
Sid leans out to see the Condor, thousands of feet below, as it is struck by a shoulder fired missile. The explosion destroys the innermost right side engine and does enough other damage that the rest of that wing breaks up seconds later. The plane seems to disintegrate after that.
“Where’s the head?” Walter barks.
Sid drops the backpack at Walter’s feet. Walter unzips the bag and dumps the morbid contents out onto the deck. Zap picks up the head and inspects it.
“Did he turn into a lizard?” Walter asks.
Sid shakes his head.
“What about Adams?” Walter demands.
“I didn’t see Adams,” Sid answers.
“How many reptoids?”
“None.”
“Well, what happened in there?”
“I don’t understand a lot of the things I saw.”
“What does that mean?”
“There were lots of girls.”
“Yeah. He had a lot of whores. What else?”
“He had magic powers. Said he could live forever if he kept killing girls and bathing in their blood.”
“That’s some fucked up lizard shit right there.”
“I don’t think he was one of them,” Zap says, inspecting the severed head. He turns it over in his hand and shines a flashlight down the gaping hole where it was once attached to Krupp’s neck. “I’m almost sure of it.”
DINER
Tanaka enters Sam’s Truck Stop wrapped in a black trench coat to hide his sword. The glass door swings closed behind him and the jingling bell that dangles from the door handle rings. The night is quiet and cool behind him. Everyone in the truck stop stops what they are doing to look up at him. He takes in the faces around him; a man in a corner booth wearing denim overalls and a John Deere ball cap, two women with greying hair and knitting needles in another booth nearer him, the pudgy, balding cook looking through his little window over the grill line. A waitress in a pink uniform and heels, maybe fifty, with curly red hair, has frozen in the midst of her delivery of a cheeseburger to an elderly man in a brown down vest seated at the counter.
They all look at him for an uncomfortably long beat. Tanaka guesses they don’t have very many Japanese men walking into this place. Tanaka approaches the counter and has a seat on one of the tan cushioned bar stools there. He puts his elbows on the counter top and looks to either side. The man in the down vest, to his right, peeks at him as inconspicuously as possible, but Tanaka notices even the most subtle movements. Right now, he can feel and hear the tapping feet, working hands and knitting needles of everyone in the room. He must follow everyone in here. In this type of environment, anything could happen.
“You’re not from around here,” says the waitress in the pink outfit. A crass, obvious inference.
“No. No I’m not,” Tanaka says, smiling. “Name’s Wu. Scott Wu. I’m conducting an investigation for the FBI.”
His accent gives him away as a true foreigner, and not just an American of Japanese descent. He doesn’t use the same words a real American would either. If this waitress has any mind at all, she will see he does not come from the FBI. It can’t be helped. Tanaka is a master of stealth and combat, not a master of disguise.
The waitress blows a pink bubble gum bubble as she looks him over. The bubble pops.
“I wonder if I could ask you a few questions,” Tanaka says.
“Whatever, sugar. Shoot.”
Tanaka already knows the answer to the first question he will ask – at least the correct answer.
“How long have you worked at the truck stop?”
“A few years,” she says. Wrong answer.
Tanaka knew walking in here that something was amiss. According to Walter, these monsters are very good at covering their tracks, often going so far as to remove all traces of their presence within hours of being discovered. Tanaka suspected as much when he saw the brand new black top parking lot surrounding the building, a place where Kill Team One set off a chain of explosions only a few days ago, according to Walter. None of that devastation remains. No smoking craters or burnt out trailers. None of it. From his spot at the counter, Tanaka can plainly see the place where the kill team blasted through the wall with explosives. It has been bricked up and painted over of course, but the paint is just a slight bit brighter – maybe not even enough for any normal eyes to notice, but the ninja does not have normal eyes. He also sees the sparkle of crushed glass dust lining the baseboard around most of the diner, the last little bits of the shattered windows which were too fine to be swept up or even noticed by the creatures cleaning the inside.
“Have you seen any unusual things here lately?” Tanaka asks.
“Not unless you count Big Larry in a cheetah print dress,” the waitress sneers, “but that’s hardly even a secret anymore.”
“Has there been any violence here?”
“Some lot lizard got roughed up last week. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Have you seen any gun fighting or explosions here?”
“In here? Mister, who’d you say you’re working for? I’m gonna need to see a badge.”
In the far corner of his eye, Tanaka sees one of the women with the knitting needles as she stands up and walks to the door. She closes the dead bolt to lock the door and pulls a raggedy string to click off the neon open sign.
This charade has already gone on too long.
Tanaka throws a shuriken through the throat of the woman at the door and draws his sword on the waitress at the counter. She changes faster than he expected, even after Walter’s dire warning not to blink in front of these monsters.
The creature in front of him is a tall green-scaled humanoid with a long tail swinging from under that tacky pink button up dress. The monster leaps up on top of the counter and whips that tail at him, but Tanaka is a gale wind and slices that tail from the beast’s body in a single flash of his blade. He runs his blade through the thing’s belly and picks it up on the end of his sword. Sensing the man in the John Deere hat approaching his back, Tanaka spins and flicks the waitress monster from his blade to launch her sailing into her accomplice.
The remaining knitter comes at him with both knitting needles thrusting and stabbing in blind madness. Tanaka takes both of her hands off with one swipe and follows up by removing her head. The head tumbles to the floor and rolls to the feet of the old man in the down vest, who cowers under his bar stool, whimpering.
Tanaka approaches the man in the John Deere hat as he tries to push himself from under the bulky carcass of the lizard waitress.
“More monsters,” Tanaka says. “I grow wary of things like you.”
He touches the point of his centuries-old katana on the end of the man-thing’s nose.
“You will tell me where they have taken Kill Team One.”
The man in the John Deere hat opens his mouth to answer, but rather than words, a jet of green soupy mass erupts from his mouth directly at Tanaka’s chest. The ninja lurches to the side and barely avoids it. He watches the stream of steaming vomit splatter in a long line on the floor, trailing back to its point of origin in a ten foot line. Whatever it is, it is already melting through the floor. It even melts the creature in places where it spilled on his person, eating through clothes and flesh in seconds.
Tanaka cannot interrogate this thing. It is simply impossible. He could tape its mouth closed, but then it would not be able to answer his questions.
“Hail Lord Sobek!” the creature says.
He sees the monster sucking in air and it looks like it might vomit another stream of corrosive sludge so he slices off the top of its head like chopping through a melon. The John Deere hat falls to the floor and half the cranium goes with it. One of the eyeballs flops out and rolls down the monster’s chest. The bottom half of its head sits as a perfect cross-section of brain and nasal passage. Such is the ninja’s skill in cutting, and such is the edge of his master crafted blade.
; “Bakemono,” Tanaka says as the body slides to the left and comes to rest on the floor. The bottom half of the brain slushes out onto the tile.
Tanaka looks around the room and verifies that nothing remains alive for him to question. This is not good. These creatures may have been his only lead.
He begins the process of searching through their belongings. He lays the bodies out on the floor behind the counter before he begins stripping them and searching the pockets of their garments. The door is already locked, so no unwary patrons will be walking in to interrupt his search, but the front of the diner is mostly glass and he must keep the bodies hidden from anyone peeping in the windows.
He starts with the waitress. She seemed to be the leader of the group. Her body has become a vaguely human thing, a limp monster covered in tough scales, and it smacks against the floor as he drops it down behind the counter. As he tears off the clothes from the creature, he is no longer able to identify it as female, only some sort of animal thing. Inside the apron it wore, he finds a cheap cell phone, not one that flips or slides or has any special features, just a simple stick of plastic with nine number keys. Tanaka rifles through the call log on the little device. He can run these numbers through a backwards phone directory and determine if they are attached to any physical address. He learned this during his years in America, years spent playing with computers and smoking hookahs with men who compared unsavory skills for glory.
It is then that the one with the shuriken through its throat gurgles to life. The creature still maintains its human form, though its skin is shredded and sloughing away in layers. Its mouth opens, accompanied by squirts of blood on each spoken syllable.
“Blood Drinker will make quick work of you human,” the creature says.
“Blood Drinker?”
The monster forces a smile upon its dying lips.
“Our commander is a champion even amongst those of Thule. His power cannot be defeated by your primitive weapons.”
“Your leader will fall by my blade if he gets in my way.”
“He will stop you human,” it responds, hacking up a pint of gore in one cough. “He will tear your flesh from your bones and feast on the most tender meat of you. He cannot be killed. No. You will die…”
The monster gives one more cough and then ceases to breath. Tanaka stabs it through the head with his sword to be sure. He searches the other bodies, but finds nothing of interest, not so much as pocket lint. The lack of belongings is more incriminating than anything else except the dinosauroid features of the transformed creatures. No set of real adult humans could possibly be so devoid of personal items unless they were trying to hide something.
Tanaka calls back to Graveyard to ask for assistance in criss-crossing the phone numbers in this old cell phone. Walter had instructed one of his men, Sergeant Brockie, to provide any sort of supplies or resources Tanaka requested in his search for Kill Team One. Brockie tells Tanaka he will run the numbers through the system and get back to him within the hour. In the meantime, Tanaka decides to take his search outside.
He begins at the point where the wall was shattered by explosives and he spirals outward from there. He moves through the lot and cars, through a small patch of shrubs and over a pile of shattered glass. He continues to move out from the diner until he has found a place on the pavement a block away, a place where the concrete is charred and broken on the ground. He knows an explosive was detonated on this spot, a place the monsters missed when they were cleaning the scene of evidence.
Tanaka feels the presence of death here, much death, but it is not for him. No. He must continue. This is his charge and his curse. His father promised oneness, perhaps redemption through this quest, but Tanaka wonders more and more if death and redemption are the same thing for him. Maybe. Just maybe.
SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD
Walter clanks his way down the iron spiral stairs to the sub-basement. He has enough hate for ten men right now and he will not stop until he reaches the cause of it. He stomps down the hallway to the cell where they are holding their prisoner.
Zap follows behind him, still holding the severed head of Henry Krupp that was retrieved by Sid Hansen. The head still maintains its intact human appearance.
“All of the previous bodies began to shed their human skin rapidly after they were killed, and that’s only the most obvious evidence,” Zap says. “At least three of Krupp’s teeth were veneers. He had a hearing aid and a contact lens in one eye. I’m assuming the other came out from the spasms.”
“You’re sure about this?” Walter growls.
“None of the specimens we recovered so far had any sort of dental appliances, fillings or artificial implants. The hearing aid is disconcerting as well. These creatures live for hundreds of years, maybe indefinitely. An organism with a life span like that can’t have ears that go bad in half a century, or teeth that fall out and don’t replace themselves.”
“I hope you’re wrong.”
Ahead of them, Walter sees Sergeant Leroy Mullins keeping watch outside Novak’s holding cell. The operator sits on a metal folding chair with an unusual weapon sitting across his lap – a Daewoo USAS-12 automatic shotgun with a twenty round drum magazine. It is a peculiar sight, even in this business. Guns like that are designed to fire thousands of lead pellets that spread out for maximum devastation at short range, very good for blasting a man-sized target to bloody kingdom come, but it spends the entire magazine in about four seconds and the rounds are too big to carry in large numbers. Taking it into a sustained fire fight is practically suicide. You can turn one guy into absolute paste, but then you have nothing left to deal with his buddies.
Walter doesn’t stop to ask Mullins why he has the ultimate overkill boomstick in his hands. He already knows.
“Are you ready for the freak show, boss?” Mullins asks, but Walter doesn’t hear him. Walter is too angry to hear anything right now. He passes Mullins and grabs hold of the door handle. He turns the deadbolt on the outside of the door and stomps into the cell.
“Mr. Stedman?” Zap says, following Walter inside. “It may not be safe.”
In the tiny room, General Novak stands with his back to Walter, seemingly gazing into nothing but the concrete wall opposite the door. He turns around and Walter is greeted by a twisted horror.
Novak’s face is a mess of peeling white crust. It is not unlike a molting snakeskin. His eyes are pale red and milky as though blind and dead. His flesh has turned grey like a zombie. None of it is enough to scare Walter.
“Hail Lord Sobek!” Novak exclaims.
“It wasn’t Krupp, you shit packing cocksucker!” Walter yells as he uncoils a haymaker into the bastard’s rotting face. He leaps on top of Novak and takes him to the floor. Walter clubs him in the face with his knuckles again and again while Novak laughs and spits blood.
“Who is it?!” Walter screams in the damn thing’s face. He hits it again. “Which one of them is it, you disgusting prick?!”
He punches Novak until he’s out of breath and his knuckles are bleeding profusely. Then he rolls over onto the concrete floor and holds his fist.
But Novak isn’t done yet. He reaches for Walter’s face with his flayed hand, leaving a trail of blood prints on everything it touches. Then the hand isn’t a hand anymore so much as a set of claws. Walter grabs it and rolls around to arm bar the scaly reptoid that Novak has become. He cranks until Novak’s arm snaps at the elbow, but then the son of a bitch rolls over on top of him and punches him with his good hand. The monster doesn’t hit any harder than a man.
“You punch like a twat!” Walter says. Then he hits back and knocks one of Novak’s pointed lizard teeth flying.
This one isn’t like Blood Drinker. He isn’t huge or equipped with a maw of razor teeth. No. This is one of the small ones. Walter thinks he looks more like a human than a reptile.
Novak grabs Walter’s throat and tries to choke him with his one good hand, but Zap grabs the reptoid from behind and drags it away in a
full nelson.
Walter brings himself to his feet. He is dizzy, maybe from the three shots of Jack he had before he came down here, or maybe the scaly bastard hit him harder than he thought, or maybe some combination of the two. He goes after Novak’s exposed front. Walter hammers away while Zap restrains his enemy.
“Go ahead, monster,” the monster says. “Break me! Kill me! Nothing can take away hope from my people!”
“Your people can fuck off and die!” Walter says, as he punches the monster again.
“That’s already happening, Walter. Because of the factory you destroyed, hundreds will starve. Thousands more will be killed trying to find food.”
“As if you lizard fucks aren’t already building another one somewhere?”
“We do what we must to survive.”
“You murder babies on an assembly line?”
“The children are unwanted.”
“No children are unwanted.” Even in the moment, Walter isn’t sure that is true.
“But we must eat. We must drink of your blood. Else we…”
“You what? You start to fall apart?” Walter picks at a piece of the lizard’s dangling skin and yanks it away. “Is this what happens when you don’t eat human meat for a while?”
“My people are dying!”
“And I’m just getting started, dipshit! And when I’m done, there won’t be a single one of you scaly fucks left on this Earth. I’m gonna hunt you down in every attic, every cave. I’ll shoot you down, cut open your children, and make omelets out of your eggs.”
Novak’s face turns to a deep frown as he tries to break loose from Zap’s grasp.
“Zap, do they lay eggs?” Walter asks.
“Uncertain. Probably,” Zap answers.
“We’ll find out,” Walter says. He kicks Novak in the guts quite hard. The lizard only spits blood back at him. Beating him is useless. Torturing him did nothing either. Walter needs something else. He needs to find some other way to break this bastard.
“Novak has a family?”
