by Alan Baxter
He walked up to the corpse of a Juvenile hanging on a cross a few feet away. Every single plate of armor was gone, leaving exposed flesh and stringy muscle.
Fitz continued on with his gun shouldered. A bird pecked at the face of a human soldier near the entrance to the lab facility. It continued stripping away ribbons of flesh with its black beady eyes on Team Ghost.
Above the bird, the concrete lip of the tunnel had been etched into a bluff topped with a forest. Fitz couldn’t read the sign, but he had a feeling it said, No Trespassing. An iron-rod gate was left ajar in front of the tunnel and a pickup truck covered in snow was parked outside.
Fitz continued through the macabre display of corpses, sweeping the area with his M4. A mini-forest covered much of the foothills in this area, leaving multiple blind zones. His first scan revealed nothing but branches and frosted trees, but he could feel something watching him – something was out there, waiting to strike.
Dohi and Apollo stopped when they got to the pickup. Rico and Tanaka took up position behind the vehicle and Fitz approached the door. He glanced down at Apollo, his heart leaping when he saw the dog’s tail. It was down. For the first time today, Apollo could sense the monsters.
“Something’s watching us,” Dohi said. “In the woods.”
Fitz raised his rifle toward the tree line. He swept the crosshairs across the base of trees and the branches, but nothing moved in the winter wasteland.
Lowering his rifle, Fitz considered past missions. Back then he was just a Marine following Beckham. Now he was in Beckham’s role. What would Captain Beckham do? He had to have known when he infiltrated Building 8 seven months ago that there was something inside. But he proceeded anyway. That’s what soldiers did.
Every member of Team Ghost looked to Fitz for orders, and he felt the burn of the heavy burden all leaders carried when they led men and women into battle.
There was only one thing to say. “Stay frosty, and stay sharp.”
Fitz jerked his chin around the side of the pickup toward the tunnel entrance, trying his best to manage his heart rate and breathing with positive thoughts.
Dohi was first past the gate. He squeezed through the opening and walked into a long tunnel that stretched deep into the hills.
Fitz and Apollo went next and then Rico and Tanaka. The concrete ceiling was low, maybe ten feet, but the walls were wide enough for vehicles to pass through. Snow covered the ground through most of the tunnel. Fitz searched for tracks, but saw none.
“Dohi, you think there is another entrance to the lab?” Fitz asked.
“I’m sure of it,” Dohi said. “My guess is those things have a back door.”
Rico stopped and studied the wall to their right. “Where are all the bullet holes?”
Dohi spat on the ground and adjusted his rifle. “I’m sure we’ll find some soon.”
Fitz nodded. “Keep moving. We should be coming up on the main entrance.”
They walked for several minutes, the light and the screeching wind dwindling behind them. It felt good to be out of the cold, but Fitz had a feeling he was trading the freezing temperatures for something much worse.
He turned to check his six and pulled up his goggles just as a curtain of flesh darted on the other side of the fence. It was gone in a blink of an eye.
“What?” Rico asked. “Why are you stopping?”
“Thought I saw something.”
Dohi halted at the corner ahead where the passage narrowed. He balled his hand into a fist and waited.
Fitz glanced back at the gate once more and then motioned his team to continue around the bend. Side by side they approached a blast door that was wide open. Apollo sat on his hind legs a few feet from the steel and stared into a hallway that led inside the facility.
“What do you make of it, sir?” Dohi asked.
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Fitz said.
Rico dipped her head from side to side. “I really don’t like this.”
“Why would they just keep the door open?” Tanaka said.
“We’re going to find out. Shoot anything that moves like a Variant. “ Fitz put a hand out and touched Rico’s sleeve. “Stay close to me.”
She pulled the gum from her mouth and stuck it to her helmet. “You stay close to me, sir.”
Fitz almost grinned. Instead, he flicked the tactical light on his M4 and nodded at Dohi. One by one, beams shot out and angled into the hallway. The tile floor was covered in snowy footprints. There were boot and shoe marks as well, but the majority seemed to be bare feet.
Dohi bent to examine one, then glanced back up at Fitz. “Looks like Variant to me, sir. Nothing human could walk around barefoot out there for long.”
“On me,” Fitz said. He had a rule: never let someone do something he could do himself. If they were walking into a trap, he was going to be the first one in.
The team entered the hallway single file, lights dancing across the ceiling and the glass windows framing the sides of the passage. Fitz had no idea what the layout of the lab was, or where the weapon they were looking for might be, but this didn’t look like any BSL4 lab he had seen.
They passed windows overlooking offices furnished with leather chairs and metal desks. The walls were white, but there was no lab equipment, and there was no entrance to the offices from the hallway. The odd architecture gave Fitz the chills. What kind of lab is this?
“Start setting the C4,” he said.
Dohi and Tanaka placed the charges on the outside of the walls and then gathered back behind Fitz.
The hallway ended at another door. He shone his beam at the steel frame and the white bars lining a glass panel window. Approaching slowly, Fitz examined the exterior. The paint had been peeled away, revealing a Swastika. Another chill raced through his body.
He stood, grabbed the handle and jerked his helmet at Rico. She took up position behind him with Apollo next to her. Tanaka and Dohi hung back, watching their rear guard.
Fitz twisted the knob. It clicked. Unlocked. He opened the door for Rico. She moved into another hallway, Fitz and Apollo right behind her.
Team Ghost slowly worked the passage with peeling paint and concrete walls. The Nazis had built this place to withstand a bombing run by the Allied Forces that never happened. It had survived all these years, buried and unknown to most of the world.
Fitz made it a quarter way down before he stopped to take a closer look through more glass windows. He directed his light inside the one on his left – a small room furnished with a metal bench, toilet, and sink. Metal bars served as a barrier between the cell and the windows. But where was the entrance?
He flicked his light toward the ceiling where a trap door was sealed shut. What in the hell?
Fitz continued to the next window. The next two rooms were the same holding cells with ceiling entrances.
Rico checked the windows across the hall and then looked back at Fitz, her eyes wide. She didn’t need to say anything. Fitz could see she was spooked.
They pressed on, nearing the halfway mark of the passage where the first sign of a battle emerged. Bullet holes dotted the ceiling and walls. Carmine stains caked the walls where the soldiers from Greenland and the EUF had perished.
“I thought this was a lab,” Rico whispered. “Looks more like an insane asylum.”
“Makes you wonder what type of weapon they were working on to kill the Juveniles,” Tanaka said. He placed more C4 charges on the walls and the windows.
At the end of the hallway lay another open door. Fitz had a feeling they were about to find the answer to Tanaka’s question. He gripped his M4 tighter, and gestured for Apollo to get behind him.
With the wave of his hand, Fitz ordered Team Ghost forward into a large space the size of a gymnasium. At the center of the room was a pit that could have been a very deep swimming pool dr
ained of water. A metal fence with razor wire surrounded the opening. Thirty feet above, a metal platform with a balcony overlooked the room. There were several steel doors on the wall, all sealed shut. It was some sort of observation post, but to observe what?
Fitz strode into the room, sweeping his rifle back and forth. Nothing stirred in the massive place.
“Clear,” he said. He motioned for his team to spread out. Apollo suddenly stopped and growled at the fence. Fitz moved his finger from the outside of his trigger guard to the trigger and focused his light on the thick chain-link fence. As he approached, a drop of liquid plummeted in front of his weapon and plopped to the ground in front of his blades.
Fitz slowly tilted his head toward the domed ceiling and angled his light. Three human bodies were suspended by their feet.
“Stevenson,” Rico said.
Fitz raked his light over the bodies. His heart hammered in his chest when he saw she was right. Stevenson dangled from the middle of the ceiling like a chandelier, a cord wrapped around his feet. The other two men were from Fox Team. From his vantage, Fitz couldn’t tell if they were alive. He put his finger to his lips to keep Rico quiet, but she didn’t get the message.
“We have to cut them down.”
Fitz cursed under his breath, glared at her, and then flashed hand signals to Dohi and Tanaka. They were already looking for a way up.
Apollo stalked toward the fence surrounding the pit, continuing his low growl. Fitz approached cautiously and peered through the chain links into a pit thirty feet deep. Metal spikes the size of buck knives lined the walls like barbed cobwebs.
He directed his light toward the bottom. On the floor next to a metal bench rested a bowl and a bucket. He glanced back up at Stevenson and the other two soldiers hanging from the ceiling. Why not keep them in one of the rooms or even the pit if they were prisoners? Why hang them up there?
Nothing made sense, why would… Fitz shook the questions away as Tanaka climbed a ladder to the balcony. Dohi had frozen on the floor beneath the balcony.
“Back!” he shouted just as the doors on the top level swung open. They disgorged furry figures onto the platform; joints popping like the branches back in the frozen woods.
A thud behind him made Fitz’s heart leap again. The exit to the room had been slammed shut. He twisted and yelled, “Ghost, on me!”
They came together in the center of the room as the platform filled with the creatures that had killed every soldier that had set foot in this cursed place.
Fitz focused on the silhouette of a thick man that stood in front of Team Ghost’s exit door. In his right hand he held a long spear, and in his left he gripped a shield made from a Juvenile torso. More of the rigged armor lined his extremities, chest, and genitals.
“I killed you…” Fitz whispered, a memory of the Bone Collector Alpha rising in his mind. “I blew your fucking head off.”
The creature strode into the light of Rico’s rifle giving Fitz his first glance at the monster. This beast was not the Bone Collector – this was something far worse. Body parts hung from a tangled beard. It flexed barreled chest muscles and snorted at Fitz as it studied him with a yellow slotted eye and one blue one.
This wasn’t a lab. This was a prison where the scientists had used some sort of weapon to infect the local Inuits, turning them into monsters that hunted Juveniles and, apparently, humans.
But for some reason they weren’t attacking. The dozen creatures on the balcony remained in the shadows, staring down and holding weapons: knives, spears, even a bow and arrow. All of the blades were angled at Team Ghost.
“Hold your fire,” Fitz ordered his team.
“What?” Rico muttered. “You crazy, sir?”
“We’re surrounded,” Fitz said. “There’s no fighting out of this one. Maybe we can reason with these things.”
“That sounds like a bad idea, sir. Variants, don’t reason.” Rico stepped in front of Fitz, but he pulled her back. Tanaka and Dohi flanked them as the Alpha lumbered forward, snorting again and scanning Fitz and his men. It pounded its chest and raised the spear, but didn’t throw it.
“Finally,” the beast said with a snort. His voice was almost human, but the voice box seemed atrophied, like the man had smoked cigars his entire life.
“I’ve been watching you. Watching you all.”
Fitz swallowed hard, and said, “What do you want?”
The beast pointed the spear at Fitz and grinned with yellow, jagged teeth.
“Finally I have a worthy opponent. Even if you are just half a man.”
Fitz almost raised his rifle to shoot the beast, but gritted his teeth instead.
“Sir, I highly recommend…” Rico began to say, but Fitz raised his hand to silence her and took a step forward. Apollo barred his teeth, snarling at the creature, but Fitz would not be deterred.
“You win, and you get to leave with your friends,” the creature said. “I win, and… we eat you.”
Fitz glanced up at the balcony. More of the hybrid monsters had emerged. They weren’t just hunters looking for prey. They were cannibals, too.
“Let us fight,” Dohi whispered.
“We can take ‘em, sir,” Tanaka added.
“I agree,” Rico said.
“No,” Fitz said. Team Ghost had enough firepower to get out of here, but not without taking casualties. It would require trusting the beast. If he fought it and won, then they would all get out of here alive. If he didn’t accept the challenge, and fought with his team, then several members of Ghost would die. He couldn’t let that happen.
“If I go down, you fight,” Fitz whispered. He reached out toward Tanaka. “Give me your Katana.”
“Sir…”
“That’s an order,” Fitz said as he set his rifles on the ground.
Tanaka unsheathed the blade and reluctantly handed it to Fitz.
The beast’s grin widened, and it twirled the spear and took a step backward. It motioned for the creatures on the balcony to lower their weapons, and Fitz nodded at his team to do the same.
Taking another step, Fitz gripped the Katana in both hands. It felt light, but he knew the blade could cut through Juvenile armor. He had seen Tanaka do it back in France.
“Be careful, Fitzie,” Rico whispered.
“Good luck, sir,” Tanaka said.
Dohi let out a grunt and then said, “Kill this bastard.”
Fitz took a deep breath, doing his best to suppress his fear. He was used to fighting with his rifle, not a sword, but with the lives of his team on the line, he had no other choice.
All it takes is all you got!
With the blade out in front, Fitz lunged at the beast. The creature parried the attack with its shield, deflecting the sword. Then it swung the spear at Fitz, the shaft smacking him in the shoulder before he could duck. He screamed out in pain, the stiches in his shoulder tearing.
Stumbling backward, Fitz regained his balance and then swung the blade wide. This time the tip sliced the creature in the leg. It roared in pain, and went down on one knee. Fitz raised the blade above his head, bringing it down as hard as he could like a hammer.
The creature lifted the shield and once again deflected the sword. The clank echoed through the room. That got the monsters above excited.
Animalistic panting sounded from the balcony above as Fitz stumbled backward again, his fingers numb from the vibration. The Juvenile torso was strong, but the Katana blade was stronger. It had chipped a groove into the shield.
The beast pushed to its feet and twirled the shaft above its head, blood dripping from the slash in its thigh. In a quick movement it swiped at Fitz, but this time he ducked beneath the spear. He went down on one knee and lunged with his sword again, striking the monster in the armpit.
He yanked the blade out, a guttural scream reverberating through the room.
Fitz struck the shaft of the spear, splintering the wood as the beast struck him in the face with the shield.
Pain lanced up his nose and stars broke across his vision. He slashed with his blade to keep the creature back while he blinked away the fuzz. Bringing a hand up to his face, he felt the warm sticky blood pouring from his nose. It was broken, no doubt about that.
Something hard hit him hard in the chest a moment later, and he crashed to the ground, gasping for air. He blinked again and saw the creature toss the shield away. It used its knee to break through the middle of the spear like a toothpick. Holding the two pieces in each hand, it strode toward Fitz.
“Get up, Fitz!” Rico shouted.
“Come on, sir!” Tanaka said.
Grunting and shouts sounded from the balcony.
Fitz winced and pushed himself up. He sliced through the air with the sword as soon as he was on both of his blades. The sword hit one of the shafts, sticking into the wood, but the beast used the other to smack Fitz in his helmet. The rattle shook his brain, and he backed up, blinking away another flurry of stars and fuzz.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” the creature said. It let out a bellowing laugh. In that moment everything froze, and although Fitz couldn’t see he could hear the creature preparing to strike.
Blind and desperate, Fitz ducked just as the blade whooshed above his head. Then, with all of his strength, he lunged. The blade cracked through armor, and then sunk into flesh.
Warm liquid peppered his arms, and a scream so loud it hurt his ears followed.
Part human, part monster.
Blinking rapidly, Fitz’s vision finally cleared. He had impaled the beast right through the heart.
The other creatures and Team Ghost fell into silence.
Nothing stirred in the massive room.
Fitz winced again, the blood rushing in his ears. He stood and pulled the sword from the beast’s chest, a crunching sound echoing. The hybrid man dropped to both armored knees, staring at Fitz with one monster eye and one human. A grin still on its face, the creature crashed to the ground. Blood pooled around the body, spreading toward Fitz’s blades. He took a step back and glanced up at the monsters on the balcony.
