Joe Ledger: Unstoppable

by Jonathan Maberry

  The lead knight’s eyes cut left and right as the others moved closer. “Bring him to me!” he ordered.

  “Ghost—hit!” my master yelled.

  But I couldn’t move. I was trembling too much, drool dripping from my mouth. I wanted to respond. I always obeyed my master, but then my bladder released again and warm fluid ran down my legs onto the floor.

  The knights stared at us a moment, then burst out laughing.

  “Oh shit,” my master breathed again.

  I looked to him, ashamed, but then the nearest Red Knight was on me, kicking my side. Pain swelled and filled my entire body as I rose into the air and flew against the side of the metal case that held the bomb. I yelped as I slid down, my feet scrambling for purchase, then landed in a heap, whimpering and wincing from the pain.

  The knights laughed and laughed, red eyes staring at my master.

  He pivoted suddenly and shot the knight who’d kicked me. The bullet sliced clean through him and into a companion behind him, slicing into his thigh. Both emitted high-pitched screams as they fell, smiles disappearing from the others’ faces. And then my master let loose with his pistol, firing again and again. My mind clouded over with pain as I tried to recover, calm myself, rise and go to his aid.

  What was wrong with me? I’d give my life for him, and I had no doubt he would for me. My master needed me. Right now. If I could just catch my breath.

  Instead, my thoughts wandered again to when I’d been hurt before. Before Zan found me. At the puppy mill. I hated Red Knights as much as I feared them. I hated anyone who would abuse the innocent.…

  The sun beat down—Arizona in the throes of midsummer. Joe and I had been working since dawn, out in this miserable weather, closing in on the last link in a chain of domestic terror strikes. I’d learned over the short time we’d worked together it was impossible to follow the names. There were too many, and in some cases, there was only one threat known by multiple names. Names didn’t matter anyway. Just the “solution,” as the humans around me often called it.

  We carefully navigated around a thick tree line that bordered a sprawling estate: several small adobe cottages spread out around a large, central manor, all with red tile roofs baking in the heat. We’d run out of shade soon and be back in that miserable sunshine. Joe looked as worn out as I was. Sweat trickled down his temples and his shirt was plastered to his back. Air-conditioning would be our reward, if this guy hadn’t ditched us again.

  Joe pushed aside a branch on a small sapling and ducked under. I followed on his heels, ears pricked to catch any hint of voices or other unnatural sounds. Like, maybe, the click of a gun’s hammer. Only I heard nothing. Nothing at all. Which only made me more uneasy. Silence was never a good thing, I’d come to discover. It usually preceded total chaos, or, as Joe liked to say, all hell breaking loose.

  Before us stood an imposing iron fence. A few feet to Joe’s left, an old gate hung cockeyed on its hinges, evidently unused for some time. A gate only those who knew to look for would ever find amid these thick trees. Forgotten, maybe, though I doubted it. That would be too easy.

  A breeze stirred, rustling the overhead leaves. I put my nose to the sky, aching for just a bit of relief, a tickle of the fur, anything to cool the heat.

  Then I smelled it.

  A scent I’d thought never to encounter again. A stink of cruelty and evil that went beyond torture. Beyond even death. Feces. Urine.

  And dog.

  Not the kind of dog that prowled the ground, a vigilant sentry to all within. Not the kind of dog I’d become—a warrior and protector that could kill a man in seconds flat for the right reason.

  Multiple dogs. Washed in misery.

  My puppyhood slammed into my memories, and I couldn’t stop a growl. Joe glanced down at me, his face full of concern. I spared him only a glance, then stared at that rusty gate. I didn’t want to go in there; I knew what we’d find. Would Joe care? Or would the human threat be more important?

  He approached cautiously. I lagged behind. We’d become good friends. I liked him a great deal. I didn’t want all that to change … and I knew, somehow, that what happened when we breached this fence would alter us forever.

  Joe scowled, motioning me forward. I had no choice in this. Duty demanded I obey. I took a step closer, and caught a faint, nearby whine.

  Joe must have heard it, too. His head snapped up, his focus beyond the gate, where the backside of a long garage-type adobe building sprawled across the brown lawn. Small windows tucked against the eaves, interspersed with metal vents. I sniffed. Those vents funneled the stench.

  Something distracted him, and he pressed a finger to his ear. Then his shoulders slumped. “Copy that. Damn it.” He turned to me, his frown deep and dark. “He got the drop on us again, buddy. Looks like we came out here for nothing. Team’s reporting the main house is empty and there’s no sign of activity on the grounds.”

  He pressed his finger to his ear once more, listening to the voice in the tiny device as dread welled inside me.

  “Roger. We’ll regroup for morning.” He turned his back to me.

  No! He wasn’t going to walk away. He couldn’t. He’d heard that whine, I was certain of it. My lip curled, disgust rising before I could control it.

  “Hold position, Tevares. I’ve got something here I want to check out.”

  Check out? I blinked.

  Joe strode through the gate, his stride long and confident, though I knew he kept a watchful eye on his surroundings. He walked straight for that building.

  He wasn’t … I darted forward with a sharp yelp and bounded to his heels. He dropped a hand to the nape of my neck and ran his fingers through my hair. Another whine came from within the building.

  We turned the corner, and Joe stopped in his tracks. Not much of ordinary life startled him, and given what we encountered daily, I understood why. I’d never seen him freeze as if fear possessed him, as he did now. Only fear wasn’t the emotion rolling off him. I couldn’t put a name to it, and looked from him to the open lawn.

  Heavy-duty wire panels formed a circular ring in the middle of the yard. The grass around it had been stamped to hard-packed dirt. Blood spatters stained the ground inside the large cage, fresh crimson with a pungent scent. On the other side, against a small, gray shack, two motionless canine bodies lay in the scant shade. No scent of decay drifted from them. Only a few flies gathered on their mottled, bloodied fur.

  What had they done here? This wasn’t what I’d expected at all. My muscles tensed as apprehension and anger brewed inside me.

  Joe’s gaze cut to the long building at our left. He drew in a long, audible breath and started for the door. Glancing between him and that ring, I followed, uncertain what I should do. What I should prepare for.

  He pushed the door open. The stench rushed out. “Stay here,” he commanded as he pointed at the ground by the door.

  I sat. Joe ducked his head into the shadows.

  “Damn it!”

  Anger drove him forward, and he burst inside as if he were hot on the trail once again. Any minute I half expected him to draw his gun and fire. But the only bullets that exploded were his exclamations of profanity that tripled in volume. As they grew, concern overtook me. I couldn’t sit here and wait for something to happen to him.

  So I charged inside.

  I skidded to a halt on the concrete floor, nose to nose with a six-foot-tall, narrow kennel. In the far corner lay a dog. She lacked the strength to lift her head, and a large, festering wound covered her right shoulder.

  I knew wounds like that. I made wounds like that.

  Her eyes met mine, full of sorrow and lost hope. I looked away, helpless for the first time since I’d been a puppy. I sought Joe, and found him five kennels down, jimmying the lock on another cage. It popped with another of his exclamations, and he flung the door open, tearing at his shirt even as he surged inside.

  I trotted cautiously closer. A warning growl from the cage to my immediate
right gave me momentary pause, but as I looked, I found a dark black dog locked safely behind bars. Convinced there was no immediate threat, I followed Joe inside the kennel. He knelt beside a fawn-and-white dog and wrapped his shirt around its neck. It let out a soulful whine—the same whine we’d heard outside.

  “It’s okay, girl,” Joe murmured. “You’re going to be okay.”

  The dog rolled its gaze to him, but didn’t otherwise move. This poor female dog was harmless now. Too wounded to hurt me, or Joe. I reassured him in the only way I could. I dropped my nose to his.

  Joe pressed his earpiece again. “Tevares, get your ass down here. I’ve got a fresh dogfight—we must have interrupted them. Call Animal Control. There’s twenty dogs in here. Some healthy, some in terrible condition.”

  I stood close enough to Joe that I could hear the voice crackle in response. “Copy. Already on it. I must have the winners over here. Found four chained to barrels covered in blood but otherwise healthy.”

  “Yeah,” Joe muttered. “I’ve found the bait.”

  I glanced at the dog before us, then slowly around us. Bait. I didn’t need human intelligence to understand the role these dogs played.

  “Back, Ghost,” Joe murmured.

  Dutifully, I backed off ten steps. Joe stepped over the dog, moving behind it, then carefully slid his hands beneath. When she offered no sign of protest, he eased her into his arms. Another whine slid free. Blood seeped beneath his makeshift bandage to stain the patch of white fur around her throat.

  As he stood, three men tromped into the building.

  “Joe, that dog could turn on you,” one of them cautioned.

  Joe shook his head. “Don’t really care. She’s not going to make it if we wait for help. Lock this place down. Get these dogs out of here. Find the cats. Or rabbits. Or whatever else they’re using for training bait. I’m taking this girl to the closest vet. Call me if you run into any problems.”

  As Joe started for the sun-baked outdoors, I stared after him, caught momentarily by surprise. He hadn’t turned away. Man. Dog. Cats. Rabbits. He cared.

  And I was part of his world. He was part of mine. I had never thought to respect a human this much. In that moment, he wasn’t just Joe, he wasn’t just my partner. He was my master, and I would willingly give my life for him. I bounded after, more proud than I’d ever been.

  My master’s screams jarred me from the memory.

  The smell of rot and death surrounded me again as I heard laughter, cackling knight laughter, and my eyes focused. My master was pinned inside a pile of splintered crates, jagged edges cutting into his flesh, his clothing torn. Blood seeped from various wounds, and I spotted his knife lying out of reach on the cavern floor, his pistol clasped limply in one pinned hand as he struggled to free himself.

  And the knights were sneering, laughing, their snow-white leader leaning over him with a look of triumph. I sensed it then: a predator preparing for the kill. My master needed me. Strength surged as blood and adrenaline poured through my body. My legs stiffed, a growl rising inside me.

  I’ve got this. I’m right here! my mind shouted even as I pushed to my feet and launched myself at the pale, undead leader. My growl became a howling, primal declaration for all the world that they were hurting my master and I was going to hurt them, make them pay for it with all I had.

  I leaped into the air and struck the lead knight like a bolt from the sky, turning his laughter into a terrified shriek as I tore at him again and I bore him back into the darkness with all I had. My howling mixed with his shrieking into a mournful serenade that only energized me further. My master had screamed, so this one would scream worse.

  The knight slapped and punched at me, hands and feet flailing in vain attempts to dislodge me from atop him. My teeth sank into flesh and ripped chunks free—a finger—I shook my head, sending it flying in a trail of blood. Then another.

  He screamed for his companions, begging for help, pure desperation.

  I ripped at him again, tearing flesh from his arm, spitting it out, and going for more. The fear that had consumed me had been replaced by fury and focused determination. You. Don’t. Hurt. My master.

  The knights around us moved then, rushing to assist him, and my master’s hand clamped around his pistol as he cocked it and aimed, then thunder exploded around us.

  A whole line of Red Knights closest to my master shuddered and fell in heaps. Others spun, eyes seeking the threat, and then many of them died, too, bullets ripping into their faces, chests, arms, limbs.

  More shrieks joined those of my target as I continued tearing at him.

  My master joined the firing as a deep, leathery droning sound filled my ears—fuzzy at first, then becoming clearer: “Echo! Echo! Echo!”

  And I smelled the scent now: Khalid, Lydia, Bunny, Top, Violin—our team had arrived. I knew then we could do it. We would kill them all. Destroy them as they’d tried to destroy us. I howled in welcome, then went back to tearing at my victim. Any dwindling trace of fear was gone now, replaced by hunger, instinct, an unquestioned focus on killing every target in reach.

  Then our team joined the fight, filling the cavern with echoing bullets, the smell of sweat, powder, adrenaline, and knights’ blood. More dead. More dying. Rotted dead flesh. Bodies. I looked over to see my master pulling free of the crate, shooting back, fighting alongside me.

  I was right where I belonged.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Bryan Thomas Schmidt is an author and Hugo Award–nominated editor of adult and children’s speculative fiction. His debut novel, The Worker Prince, received Honorable Mention on Barnes & Noble Book Club’s Year’s Best Science Fiction Releases of 2011. His short stories have appeared in magazines, in anthologies, and online and include entries in The X-Files, Predator, Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International, and Decipher’s WARS, among others. As book editor for Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta’s WordFire Press, he has edited books by such luminaries as Alan Dean Foster, Tracy Hickman, Frank Herbert, Mike Resnick, Jean Rabe, and more. He was also the first editor on Andy Weir’s bestseller The Martian. His anthologies as editor include Shattered Shields with co-editor Jennifer Brozek, Mission: Tomorrow, Galactic Games, and Little Green Men—Attack!, and Monster Hunter Files with Larry Correia (all for Baen); Infinite Stars and Predator: If It Bleeds (for Titan Books); Beyond the Sun, and Raygun Chronicles: Space Opera for a New Age. Find him on Twitter @BryanThomasS or via his website at www.bryanthomasschmidt.net.

  After years of working in fantasy game design and Web development, G. P. Charles traded in computer programming for fiction writing and escaped the nightmare of missing semicolons and infinite loops. Now, instead of daydreaming about throwing the computer out the window, G.P. finds every day an exciting adventure. When not writing, downtime is spent at home on the farm, raising horses, chickens, and two boys who are too intelligent for their own good but a constant source of joy. To learn more, check out www.gpcharles.com.

  NO GUNS AT THE BAR

  BY AARON ROSENBERG

  “On my mark,” Bradley “Top” Sims declared over the comms. He stood to one side of the front door, pistol out and at the ready. Beside him, Lydia “Warbride” Ruiz nodded, her own gun also out.

  “This is Bunny, copy that,” Harvey “Bunny” Rabbit acknowledged. He and Montana “Stretch” Parker were stationed by the back door, while the team sniper, Sam “Ronin” Imura, covered them from the neighboring rooftop. Ronin checked in as well, and Top nodded.

  “Echo Team, let’s do this,” he called out. “Go!”

  With that he aimed a heavy kick at the front door, splintering the flimsy lock and sending the cheap wooden barricade smashing inward with a cloud of sawdust that filled the air around them. On the house’s opposite end, Bunny did the same. The four team members barreled into the small dwelling, scanning the rooms they’d entered but finding nobody.

  “Clear!” Top shouted. Bunny responded with the same, and both pairs moved on to the next
rooms. In under a minute they’d covered the entire one-story building and found it empty.

  “Well,” Bunny commented as they regrouped in the living room, “that was a bust. And not the kind we figured.”

  Stretch rolled her eyes at the bad pun. Warbride snorted. Top just ignored it. “Cowboy, this is Top,” he called in. “Nothing here. Looks like a wash.”

  “Roger that, Top,” their boss, Captain Joe “Cowboy” Ledger, replied. “Head on back in.”

  “Copy that.” Top reholstered his pistol. “Pack it up,” he told his team, and they all nodded.

  “Feels weird, not shooting anybody,” Bunny remarked as they all made for the front door. He brushed some sawdust from his sandy-blond hair, scattering it all around him.

  Walking just ahead of him, Warbride swiveled around to eye him warily. “Don’t get any bright ideas,” she warned. “Friendly fire or not, you draw and I’ll put you down.”

  “Would I do that?” Bunny asked, plastering what was probably supposed to be a wide-eyed look of innocence on his broad face. The two of them laughed as they exited the building. Top didn’t. The DMS had been in plenty of ugly scrapes, and he should have been relieved to have something turn out completely innocuous for a change.

  Instead, it had him worried.

  * * *

  “Must have been bad intel,” Ledger commented. Echo Team had returned to the Pier, their DMS base, and Top had just been debriefed. “Not sure how I feel about that.”

  Top nodded. He and Ledger had been working together for a while now—Ledger had been the original head of Echo Team, and Top and Bunny had both been in it with him since the beginning—and they often thought alike, so he knew his superior was feeling the same unease he was. The DMS didn’t always have all the details, and sometimes they missed stuff just like anybody else. But to be completely wrong like this? That’d never happened before.

  “Tip was plausible,” Top remarked. And it had been. They’d heard that a terrorist cell had taken up residence in that nondescript little house on the outskirts of Dallas and had been working to fashion a bioweapon of some kind. And that they’d been close to activation. The DMS had dealt with plenty of bioweapons in the past and knew just how deadly those things could be, so they’d immediately jumped all over this. Only to find an empty house with no signs of activity at all, much less the marks of a terrorist group.