Operation Arcana

by John Joseph Adams

  More than fear, Whitebird felt an instinctive repulsion. He didn’t know what was going on. He only knew he didn’t want to be touched by it, or caught up in it. Turning to his squad, he screamed at them to run.

  Too late.

  The land rejected the intrusion. It trembled and heaved and folded in on itself, crushing the demons in the seams of that transition, pinching off their shrieks and wails as day turned to night. Whitebird felt himself falling without ever leaving the ground as if gravity shifted around him . . . and then the sky ignited into an unbearable glare and he was here, his squad with him, prone in the heat and the red dust of a lifeless plain, without a blade of grass or a fly buzzing anywhere around them.

  Cast out.

  No longer in the world.

  They had been delivered to a desert plain as flat as an ancient lakebed. Heat shimmers rising from the clay surface bent and blurred the air, limiting clear sight to just a few tens of meters. So they heard the first demon before they saw it—a murmuring of blowing sand though there was no wind, and then a sparking snap of electricity as a train of dust charged into their midst where it congealed into . . .

  . . . a glimmering white sword—that was the first thing Whitebird saw, a curved weapon nearly a meter long looking like the tooth of some monstrous T. rex or a slaughtered dragon. It was held in long-fingered hands, red-brown like the desert. Behind that primitive weapon was a manlike figure—if a man could be seven and a half feet tall with eyes like asymmetrical black fissures slashed into a white-bearded face with red lips around sharp teeth and its tongue a cluster of tentacles glimmering with moisture as it darted in and out, in and out, the creature wearing only a low-slung belt of what looked like human finger bones, with an exaggerated stallion dick dangling flaccid between its legs.

  The sword swung, severing Yuen’s neck, sending his helmeted head tumbling from his shoulders. Blood fountained just like in the movies. It showered the squad. Screams erupted as everyone fell back, separating themselves from the collapsing body and the long white sword. Whitebird brought his M4 to his shoulder, at the same time dropping to one knee, a move that let him aim up so his rounds wouldn’t hit his soldiers who were behind the monster.

  He put three quick shots into the demon’s chest.

  No one knew where the demons came from or what they wanted, but it was now clear that they could learn—and adapt. The creature presently looming above Whitebird was no naked warrior with a sword. It was modernized, weaponized, and far more lethal—assuming it knew how to use the carbine that it held. It hooked a finger over the trigger and started experimenting, firing a string of rounds that hit the rock behind Whitebird. Stone and metal fragments pummeled him as he returned fire, shooting it in the face. Cabuto punched holes in it from behind, shots aimed outside the protection of the armored vest it wore, hitting both shoulder joints and rupturing its neck.

  Fire erupted from every wound. Roaring, sinuous streamers of yellow-orange flame, the energy of the demon’s existence maybe, bursting into this dimension from some lower world.

  The thing arched its back in agony as the fire enveloped it. It shrieked and it shook, but it did not go down.

  They never did.

  In the twisted landscape of his exhausted mind, Whitebird was more disturbed by the demon’s refusal to collapse than he was by the hellfire, or by the creature’s inexplicable appearance out of blowing grit and vapor.

  The reality he once knew had been stolen away. The rules were different now.

  “Can you see it?” Cabuto shouted over the demon’s keening. “Is it opening?”

  Whitebird vaulted to his feet, backing away from the searing heat. “Not yet!” But it would open. “Goodfellow, get your ass over here!”

  “Sir, I—” He backed a step away. “Let Foltz go first. He really wants to go—”

  It wasn’t a debate. Whitebird had made his decision. He just hoped like Hell—

  Ah, fuck that. He needed to cut that phrase right out of his vocabulary. He hoped to God he was sending the kid home and not to Hell.

  Holding his M4 in one hand, he grabbed Goodfellow’s arm with the other and marched him up to the fire while the demon’s shrieks faded as if its voice was retreating into the distance.

  Cabuto circled around to watch.

  The demon’s shape could no longer be seen. The fire that had consumed it became a thin sheet that expanded into a pointed arch seven-and-a-half feet high. As soon as the arch formed, it split in the middle, opening along a vertical seam, the fire drawing back until the shimmering flames framed a passage that had been burned through to the world. Whitebird could see through the passage, to home. He knew it was home because he could see the proper color of the sky. He could see figures in the distance in familiar uniforms; he could see vehicles, and helicopters circling the collapsed ruins of the outpost.

  Cabuto called it Death’s Door.

  Whitebird longed to pass through it. So did Cabuto. Everyone wanted a chance to go—except Goodfellow. “Now or never,” Whitebird warned him. “You will not be given a second chance.”

  He shoved the kid hard, and when that failed to convince him, he brought his weapon to his shoulder and trained the muzzle on Goodfellow’s face. “Go now, or die here.”

  For a second, Goodfellow was too shocked to react—but then he stepped through, a moment before the fire burned itself out. When Death’s Door closed, he was on the other side.

  Whitebird intended to get everyone out, but it was a slow, dangerous game, and it had taken time to learn the basic rules: that a door only opened if they killed a demon, and then only one soldier could pass through.

  No one knew why.

  No one knew who had made the rules: God or the Devil or an ancient magician or random chance. It didn’t matter. “We know how to get home. That’s all that matters.”

  Whitebird knew—they all knew—that the longer any of them stayed in that place, the more likely they were to die there. The demons might kill them or, worse, the demons might stop trying to kill them. If the demons didn’t come hunting them, if there were no demons to kill, there would be no passage back, and whoever was left behind would die of thirst.

  So in his mind Whitebird weighed the merits of each of his soldiers. He balanced the potential of their unknowable futures against the immediate needs of the squad, and he developed a list in his head that prioritized their lives.

  “Keller!”

  “Yes, sir,” she answered from her position on the opposite side of the little plateau. Specialist Trish Keller, who had a year-old daughter and no support from the dad.

  “You’re going home next, Keller. Be ready.”

  “Lieutenant, who goes after Keller?” Foltz wanted to know.

  Foltz was a good, determined soldier, but not a selfless one. He’d been putting himself forward at every opportunity, pushing hard to be the next to go home—but Sergeant Cabuto didn’t approve of his lobbying.

  “Knock off the chatter, Foltz! Keep your eyes on the desert. The lieutenant will let you know when it’s your turn.”

  Whitebird squinted at the glassy haze of heat shimmers rising above the dust, going over again in his head the evacuation list he’d developed. Foltz was going to be disappointed, because after Keller he planned to send Private Bridget Cobb, who was an only child. Then Private Ben Fong, who would make an excellent non-com if he lived long enough. Only after that would he let Omar Foltz go, and after him, Private Jordana Alameri, who was basically a fuckup and didn’t have much of a future to go home to. Once his soldiers had all made it back, then Sergeant Cabuto would be willing to go.

  It was a tentative schedule, subject to revision. Whitebird considered moving Cabuto up the list, ordering him to follow Keller. He didn’t want to have to get by without the sergeant, but Cabuto had a wife and three kids. Or maybe he should send Alameri next. After this tour of Hell’s suburb, she might be ready to walk the strait and narrow.

  There was only one position on the list
that Whitebird was sure about, and that was his own. He would go last, which meant that for some unknown interval of time, a few seconds or forever, he would be here alone—and what that would be like?

  It didn’t bear thinking on.

  After Yuen died and Whitebird killed the first demon, Death’s Door had opened for the first time. Foltz had been nearby. He’d seen through to the world and had tossed a rock into the passage to test the way—but the rock bounced back.

  Specialist Jacobs had a different idea. “Let’s try something from our world.” He moved in close to the searing fire, tossed a cartridge—and it passed through. The squad pressed in around him despite the heat, watching the glittering cartridge shrink with distance and then silently strike the ground on the other side, bouncing and skipping across the familiar gray grit of the desert they used to patrol.

  There was a nervous catch in Jacob’s voice when he announced, “You know what? I’m going home.” Then he stepped through.

  Whitebird had been badly startled. He’d grabbed at Jacobs, tried to catch him, to pull him back out of harm’s way, but Jacobs was already on the other side, a distant figure seen in utter clarity as he turned to look back at them. His mouth moved with words Whitebird could not hear as he gestured emphatically for them to follow—but Whitebird could not follow. The passage pushed at his mind and he could not move his limbs in any way that would take him through it.

  “Foltz, go!” he ordered, and Foltz was willing.

  He pushed past the lieutenant and tried to push on into the passage, but it was closed to him too. When he realized it, he turned on Whitebird in an explosion of frustration. “Goddamnit, Lieutenant! What the fuck is going on? Is this some kind of crazy experiment? Yuen is fucking dead. What the Hell did you get us into?”

  Jacobs was still looking back at them from the other side when Death’s Door closed.

  What did you get us into?

  Whitebird had no answer for that or any of the other questions the squad lobbed at him:

  What is this place?

  Why are we here?

  Is this Hell?

  “I don’t know!”

  They clustered around him, Cobb and Goodfellow weeping, Keller praying quietly, her folded hands pressed to her forehead, the rest clutching their M4s, their gazes flitting from him, to each other, to the heat-blurred horizon—scared, suspicious, angry.

  Whitebird forced himself to use a matter-of-fact voice: “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why we’re here, but we are going back. Sergeant Cabuto!”

  The sergeant stepped up, stern, determined. “Sir!”

  “Set up a perimeter guard.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  Foltz still had questions. “I don’t get it, sir. Why the hell did Jacobs get to go back? He did go back, didn’t he? It looked like he went back.”

  “He went back,” Whitebird confirmed. He was not going to allow doubt on that—it was all they had to hold on to—but the question that really mattered was, could they do it again? Could they send someone else back?

  He put Keller to work inventorying their supplies, and then he helped get Yuen’s head and body wrapped up in an emergency blanket. When that was done, he conferenced with Cabuto. “If it happens again, we need to be ready.”

  “Agreed, sir.”

  They pulled Private Lono aside, selecting him because he was their strongest man.

  Whitebird asked him, “If the chance comes, are you willing to try it? To follow Jacobs?”

  “Roger that, sir. I sure as fuck don’t want to die here.”

  Whitebird nodded. “I want you to carry Yuen’s body with you when you go. We’ll follow if we can.”

  Out on the open plain Whitebird felt too vulnerable, so he directed the squad to make for the nearest plateau. They would take turns carrying Yuen’s body.

  They’d been walking only a few minutes when the second demon came. The soldiers out front started shooting when it was still churning sand. That drove it back, but only briefly. It charged in again, congealing into existence only inches from Fong, who fired his M4 point-blank at its belly and then fled as fire erupted. The passage back to the world opened just like the first time, and Lono escaped with Yuen’s body. But though Keller tried to follow, she could not.

  The next demon came just as they reached the rocks and it got LaBerge.

  After that, two demons came together. One was killed. Fernandez used its death to return to the world with LaBerge over his shoulder. After he left, Cobb got all weepy, claiming she’d seen LaBerge’s soul seeping through the passage— “Like a glowing light cleaner and brighter than daylight” —which convinced Whitebird that she was full of shit because there was nothing clean and bright about LaBerge’s soul.

  But that didn’t mean he’d deserved to die here, halfway to Hell, with his head cut off by a lunatic demon.

  They spread out once again around the top of the small plateau, waiting for another demon to appear. Five minutes crept past, and then ten before Cabuto spotted a sand plume, far out on the desert and barely discernible above the heat shimmers. It churned up against the wall of another low plateau a kilometer and a half away, and disappeared.

  Fong spotted another, but it too failed to come after them.

  It had been six hours since the squad dropped out of the world, but there was no sign of nightfall in this place and the heat remained constant. They’d been low on water from the start. Soon it would be gone and then they’d have only a few hours before they succumbed to dehydration. They needed to find more demons before then.

  Whitebird turned to catch Cabuto’s eye. “We’re moving out. The dust bunnies didn’t have any trouble finding us on the plain.”

  Cabuto turned to look again at the next plateau, a black island rising from the shimmering red-brown flat. “We saw one disappear over there.”

  Whitebird nodded. It was as good a direction as any.

  They made their way down from the rocks and then set off across the hard clay surface. Every footfall sent a puff of fine red dust into the still air. Sweat leaped off their skin, evaporating as soon as it formed. Whitebird sipped at his remaining water, but the relief it brought was wiped out by the next breath of hot, dry air.

  They stayed ten meters apart. Whitebird and Foltz marched in front, Cobb, Alameri, and Fong formed a second rank, and Cabuto and Keller held the rear, keeping watch behind them.

  They couldn’t see far. Hot air rose in shimmering columns, reflecting distant plateaus while hiding what was really there so that again, like the first time, they heard the demon before they saw it. “Three o’clock!” Whitebird called out, turning toward a faint rustling white noise.

  “I can hear another,” Cabuto warned. “Five o’clock.”

  “Fucking two dust bunnies?” Alameri grumbled. “Again?”

  “Two tickets home,” Whitebird reminded her. “Fall back if they materialize between us—and stay alert for more.”

  “I see it!” Foltz shouted. “Three o’clock!”

  “Fall back!”

  “Incoming from behind!” Cabuto warned.

  The two plumes of sand and vapor churned past their outer ranks, converging in the middle where Cobb had been standing. She tried to get away. She plunged right through one of the sand plumes, but the other curled around to cut her off. Both demons transformed. Giant figures, they stood back-to-back, dressed in desert camo and armed with carbines. Cobb was caught between them as gunfire erupted from all sides.

  Whitebird dove for the ground. Bullets chewed through the hot air as demon howls broke out, competing with the racket of the weapons. The demons had been hit. Whitebird rolled, coming up on one knee to see the two creatures on fire, their weapons burning and useless in their hands—with Cobb sprawled and bloody on the ground between them.

  “Cease fire!” he screamed. “Cease fire!”

  The shooting ended, and Whitebird charged toward the two flaming figures. As he did, he saw Foltz move in the corner
of his eye. “Foltz! Help me get Cobb!”

  “But, sir—”

  “Now!” He crouched beside Cobb. Her jaw was shattered. Blood soaked her right arm and thigh. Grabbing her pack strap, he dragged her away from the fire.

  Goddamn. Goddamn.

  The demons couldn’t have shot her where she’d been standing.

  “Foltz!”

  Whitebird looked up to see Keller, Fong, Foltz, and Alameri, all waiting near the flames.

  “Keller goes next!” Whitebird ordered. He strode into their midst, grabbed Foltz, shoved him away, shoved Alameri. “And you, Fong, go.”

  Foltz and Alameri looked mutinous, so Whitebird kept his finger just above the trigger of his M4 and watched them until Keller and Fong were gone.

  Foltz cursed into the quiet that descended. “Goddamn shit. Why the fuck do I have to stay here? Why? We are going to fucking die here.”

  From somewhere behind Whitebird, Cabuto spoke. “Lieutenant, Cobb’s not going to make it.”

  “I know that.”

  “I can’t get a heartbeat. We’ve lost her.” And then, “Holy shit. Lieutenant, you have to see this.”

  Whitebird turned.

  Cabuto was backing away from Cobb as a black shadow, utterly dark, seeped up from the ground beneath her body. It spread out to surround her, and as it did, Cobb sank into it, her shattered corpse dropping slowly away—into some place worse than this one?