Forsaken

by Michael McBride

  “Don’t you dare leave me now.”

  He reached out with a trembling hand and Barnett clasped him by the wrist.

  “It’s now or never!” Barnett shouted.

  Roche let go of the rail and swung toward the girder, the horizontal posts of which blew past in a blur. He grabbed Barnett’s other hand and nearly sent them both plummeting to their deaths.

  Barnett shouted with the exertion and pulled him up through the open door. Roche braced his elbows on the floor and searched for anything he could use to drag himself the rest of the way into the car.

  Kelly threw herself to the floor beside him and tugged on the back of his coat.

  His heels clipped the girder as he tucked his legs inside and squirmed away from the door. Barnett closed it the second his feet were inside.

  Kelly pulled him to her breast and squeezed him so tightly he could barely breathe.

  “You’re supposed to be barricaded inside the power station with the others,” he said.

  “And you’re supposed to be grateful that I came back for you.”

  She kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her and reciprocated with everything he had left as the elevator rocketed away from the dark, flooded ruins.

  48

  JADE

  Teotihuacan

  Jade sprinted between two of the multi-tiered temples lining the Avenue of the Dead and immediately recognized their mistake. A vast expanse of grassland stretched out before her, the tall, wavering blades shimmering silver in the moonlight. There were spotty groves of trees in the distance, maybe even dense enough to find someplace to hide . . . if they were able to reach them. There were undoubtedly countless hiding places in the ancient city, but they didn’t dare turn back now, not with the creature that had once been Hollis Richards on the warpath. How in the name of God had it traveled all the way to Mexico, and, more important, why? It appeared to have been attempting to get at the remains they’d just liberated from the maze, but for what possible reason?

  The waist-high weeds threatened to snare her feet as she raced into the field. Anya was maybe twenty feet ahead of her and nowhere near anything resembling cover. Evans fell farther behind by the second. With the way he was favoring his injured leg, there was no way he was going to be able to keep up.

  A silhouette appeared on top of the temple above Evans. A flash of eyeshine and it was moving again, leaping down the terraced ruins through the shadows.

  If Jade really pushed herself, she might be able to catch up with Anya before she reached the thicket. They could hide within the thorny branches and pray it didn’t see them. Unfortunately, that would mean sacrificing Evans to buy them some time, which she wasn’t prepared to do.

  Before she even realized she’d made a conscious decision to do so, Jade turned around and ran back toward Evans. Took him by the hand and practically dragged him behind her.

  “Go on without me,” he said. “I’m slowing you down.”

  “Then run faster!”

  The tall weeds rippled off to her right.

  It was coming.

  She veered left and set her sights on a sparse grove of black pepper trees, maybe a hundred feet away. It offered little in the way of cover, but they had no other option. They’d be lucky to even make it that far, anyway.

  A high-pitched whine in the distance. A light appeared against the horizon to her left.

  Crashing sounds to her right. The creature tore through the weeds, barely above the ground, moving to intercept them.

  Anya tripped and vanished before Jade’s eyes. The younger woman pushed herself back to her feet and altered her course when she saw the creature’s wake knifing through the field.

  The light divided into two smaller sources that streaked straight toward them. It was an airplane. A small, private model, coming in far too low, as though it were planning to land right on top of them.

  A tug on her arm and Evans went down.

  Jade managed to remain upright, whirled, and tried to pull him back to his feet. Even in the dim light she could see that the field bandage on his leg had come open, exposing deep puncture wounds from which a seemingly endless supply of blood flowed. She knew that wasn’t the case, though. His face was stark white and his eyes appeared to have sunken into bruises. He was losing blood far too quickly and if they didn’t find a way to stop it soon, he wasn’t going to make it, even if they somehow survived the creature’s impending attack.

  “Leave me,” he said. “I’ll be fine. I’ve made it through worse.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  She reached beneath his arm and tried to lift him. Despite his best efforts, his legs betrayed him and dropped him to the ground, taking her with him.

  His eyes sought hers and held them.

  “You have to go, Jade.”

  “Not without you!”

  She grabbed his wrists and pulled—

  The creature emerged from the weeds maybe ten feet away. It remained in a crouch to minimize its exposure, but the moonlight reflecting from its eyes behind the swaying grasses gave it away.

  “Over here!” Anya shouted, and hurled a rock at it.

  Uhr-uhr-uhr-uhr-uhr-uh.

  “Don’t move,” Jade whispered.

  It ducked its head once more and advanced slowly, with only the crunching of the weeds to betray its approach.

  The whine of the airplane became a scream.

  Lights struck the field and momentarily turned night to day. She glanced back in time to be buffeted by a violent breeze, which shook the weeds all around her. The plane passed no more than a hundred feet over their heads as it descended toward the field on the far side of the Pyramid of the Sun.

  The creature reappeared from the overgrowth, far closer than she expected.

  It watched them from beneath its ridged brow and elongated head.

  “What are you waiting for?” Jade screamed.

  Evans struggled to his feet, transferred all his weight to his good leg, and attempted to pull Jade behind him.

  “We are . . . not . . . done with you . . . yet.”

  The voice coming from between those wicked teeth was not that of Hollis Richards. It was deep and resonant and belonged to the monster they had narrowly escaped in Antarctica last year. This being was a drone, like the one she’d encountered in the Nigerian jungle before it waded to its death.

  “Go,” Evans said. “I’ll hold it off.”

  Jade stepped around him and stared down the creature.

  “Why were you so interested in those remains?” she asked.

  “It is . . . the body of . . . God.”

  Anya shouted and waved her arms over her head in an attempt to distract it.

  When it looked in her direction, Evans nudged Jade backward and retreated a step to match.

  The creature advanced and lowered itself to all fours, well within striking distance.

  “What god?” Jade asked.

  Were it possible, the creature smiled, its teeth knitting together like needles.

  “Death.”

  A spotlight struck the creature from above. It raised its spindly arm to block the beam and looked up.

  Bullets rained down upon it. Tore up the dirt at its feet. Punched straight through its shoulder girdle. Spattered the weeds with blood. Knocked it to the ground.

  The overlapping reports echoed across the plains.

  Four spotlights shined down at them from beneath black parachutes nearly indistinguishable from the night sky. The men wore black, too, and for an instant Jade feared they were part of the same masked group that had stalked them through the maze, until she saw the red Unit 51 insignias on their shoulders and nearly sobbed in relief.

  The creature sputtered, rolled over, and let the blood drain from its mouth. It tried to crawl away through the grass.

  “Stay back,” Evans said.

  The lights zeroed in on the creature. It darted forward through the weeds. Scurried one way, then the other, but it was unable to e
scape the circles of light, which constricted as they neared the ground.

  The creature rounded on Evans and Jade, who read its intention in its eyes.

  It crouched, issued a gurgling scream, and lunged straight at Evans.

  The men opened fire.

  Bullets tore the creature apart before it reached them. It slid to a halt at their feet, bleeding from innumerable gunshot wounds on its gray back.

  Jade stepped around Evans and crouched over it. Like the drone in the jungle, this one had been given ample opportunity to kill her and yet, for whatever reason, hadn’t done so. It attacked the other faction in Teotihuacan with unbridled ferocity and butchered them without mercy. It could have easily done the same thing to them, but had instead chosen to communicate with them.

  “Why?” she whispered.

  Its words replayed in her mind.

  We are . . . not . . . done with you . . . yet.

  The creature made a gagging sound and blood dribbled from the corner of its mouth. She could hear the air whistling from its punctured lungs.

  “Doctor . . . Liang . . .”

  Jade leaned even closer. The voice was not just weaker; it was somehow . . . different.

  “Get away from it!” one of the men shouted from above her.

  “You must . . . stop . . .”

  The voice . . . Dear God . . . it belonged to Hollis Richards.

  Some part of him had survived inside his mutated form.

  “Stop what?”

  “The end . . .” The creature contorted with spasms and bared its teeth. Looked up at her through eyes that for the briefest of moments appeared almost human. “. . . of the . . . world.”

  And just like that, Hollis Richards was gone.

  The creature narrowed its eyes, snarled, and lunged—

  A fusillade of bullets destroyed its elongated head and hammered it to the ground. This time, it made no effort to rise.

  The men alighted around them and quickly folded up their parachutes.

  Jade looked up at Evans.

  “You heard him, didn’t you?”

  Evans stared at her mutely for several seconds before nodding.

  “That was Hollis, wasn’t it?” she said. “He was still alive in there.”

  “We have to get you out of here,” one of the men said, and pulled her to her feet. She caught a glimpse of the nameplate on his breast: Morgan.

  She stared at Richards’s disfigured body as she was manhandled back toward the ruins. Two of the men blocked her view as they bundled the carcass into one of their chutes.

  “I want to examine the remains!” she shouted.

  “All in due course,” Morgan said, “but now’s not the time.”

  She ducked beneath Evans’s arm and helped him limp back toward the ruins. They passed between the megalithic temples and headed north on the Avenue of the Dead, toward the massive pyramid and the waiting Cessna. Anya caught up with them and slid underneath Evans’s other arm.

  Jade glanced back at the ruins one final time. The men with Richards’s corpse hurried to keep up with them, while the fourth man photographed the crime scene surrounding the Suburban abandoned by the masked group that had been willing to kill all of them in order to secure the remains, which, if the creature were to be believed, belonged to the God of Death.

  49

  TESS

  Surface Access Platform,

  2 vertical miles above FOB Atlantis

  The Valor materialized from the blizzarding snow and hovered above the icy landing platform. Its vertical rotors blasted the accumulation toward the power station as it settled to the ground.

  “It’s here!” Tess shouted, and ran from the window to where the others were donning the heavy arctic gear hanging from the racks.

  “The elevator isn’t back yet!” Love said from the control console.

  “How much longer?”

  “Three minutes.”

  “Then we load everyone else now and make sure we’re ready to lift off the moment they arrive.”

  Tess ran back to the frosted window. The side hatch of the tiltrotor slid open and a man in winter fatigues hopped out, raised his rifle, and advanced toward the building through the blowing snow. The copilot climbed from his door and covered him, the rotor wash buffeting him from behind.

  “We have to go!” Tess shouted.

  She waited until the first man from the Valor was nearly to the door before shoving aside the tool cabinets and chairs they’d used to barricade the entrance and disengaging the locks. The wind pushed the door back at her as she opened it and admitted the storm.

  “How many of you are there?” the man shouted.

  “Eight in here, with an unknown number on their way up from below.”

  “Where’s the director?”

  “Hopefully about to arrive on the elevator.”

  The man brushed past her into the room.

  “Everyone!” he shouted. “Form a single-file line. Hold on to the person ahead of you. Head straight for the Valor and start filling the seats from back to front.”

  “Two more minutes!” Love yelled.

  “Go!” the man shouted, and herded the survivors out into the darkness, where the copilot covered their approach from the platform fifty feet away.

  Tess glanced at the elevator console. The inset monitor showed a red beacon rising rapidly toward the surface beside numbers counting down the vertical feet and time until arrival.

  “I’ve got this,” Love said. “Get out of here.”

  The shaft was little more than a deep black maw in the middle of the floor. The cage surrounding it allowed the cables to pass through the roof to the crane-like mechanisms that added additional power to the traditional counterweights. The surrounding machinery chugged and clanged, and the pipes provided a constant rushing sound.

  Love stepped away from the console and faced the cage. She seated her rifle against her shoulder and aimed down the shaft.

  “Come on!” The man pulled Tess toward the door. “I need you on that plane!”

  She glanced at the console one last time and rushed down the aisle between the steaming pipes to catch up with the others. They were already halfway to the Valor, six silhouettes in fur-fringed hoods, hunched against the brutal storm. The copilot hurried to meet them and guided them to the open side door of the tiltrotor. He suddenly stopped and pointed his rifle straight at them.

  Not at them, Tess realized with a start.

  Above them.

  She turned around and looked up at the roof of the building behind her as two reptilian shapes, their feathers ruffling on the wind, arched their backs, lowered their heads, and screamed down at them.

  Skree!

  The copilot opened fire.

  Tess instinctively ducked, cradled her head in her arms, and ran toward the waiting aircraft.

  Bullets whanged from the power station. She couldn’t risk looking back to see if any of them had found their targets.

  More gunfire, only this time from behind her.

  Tess blew past the copilot, whose attention remained focused solely on the sightline of his rifle. His barrel flashed with discharged gasses as he continued to shoot at the roofline behind her.

  She saw the expressions on the faces of the men and women piling through the sliding door and recognized the severity of their predicament. Someone had to take charge before the situation spiraled out of their control.

  “Get inside!” she shouted.

  She urged the stragglers into the Valor and toward the closest empty seats. Climbed in behind them. Looked back out across the windswept tarmac toward the power station.

  The emergency lights diffused into the storm, through which she could see more and more dark shapes pouring over the building. The copilot and the man standing directly beneath them in the open doorway of the power station could only fire up at them in the hope of stalling their advance.

  “Everyone sit down and buckle up!” the pilot shouted back over his shoulde
r.

  Love screamed from inside the building.

  “There are still more people coming!” Tess yelled.

  “If they’re not on board by the time those things reach us, we’re taking off without them!”

  Tess leaned out the door and shielded her eyes from the blowing snow.

  “Come on . . .”

  50

  KELLY

  120 vertical feet below the Surface Access Platform

  A shadow sliced through her peripheral vision. Kelly spun, but could only see the steel-reinforced walls blurring past. She furrowed her brow and glanced at Roche.

  “Did you see someth—?”

  Clang!

  She looked up at the roof of the elevator and screamed.

  The creature scurried over the side and struck at them from the outside of the cage, banging its snout into the wire mesh over and over in a futile attempt to reach them.

  “Stand back!” Barnett shouted.

  He jammed the barrel of his rifle through one of the holes and pulled the trigger. The report was deafening in such close quarters.

  The creature contorted its serpentine body and slithered back up onto the roof. The clattering of its nails cut through the ringing in her ears.

  More movement.

  “They’re coming up the walls!” she screamed.

  Roche pulled her to the center of the car, away from the sides.

  Something bumped against the floor from underneath.

  “How much longer?” Roche shouted.

  “We’re almost there,” Barnett said.

  “We have to radio ahead. They need to seal off the shaft before these things get out.”

  “There’s no way to seal the shaft.”

  “Then we’re all dead.”

  The creature scurried out from under their feet and raced up the back wall.

  Roche shot at its exposed belly, but it was already past him. Its feathered tail whipped the elevator as it climbed onto the roof with the other one. The impact caused the entire car to wobble.

  “We could take the elevator back down,” Kelly said. “It would at least buy the people up top some more time.”

  “It’s too late for that,” Barnett said.