Piercing the Veil

by Guy Riessen

  Mary said, “Got it.” She loaded one, chambered the first round then put the others that Howard handed her into the pouches on her belt.

  Derrick dropped one, fumbled with the others, and jumped back, balancing on one leg, when the old magazine in his gun fell out as he pressed the release. Howard picked it up, blew on it, pressed the top bullet to make sure the spring moved easily, then handed it back. Derrick got it into the grip, chambered a round and slid it into his holster.

  “Your go-bag is MIA, Mary. Tactical issues?”

  “We should be good without it—nothing critical, mostly sampling stuff. Be great if it turns up, but y’all just put samples in the mayonnaise jars, ziplocks, your pockets, it’s all good. I’ll accommodate any contamination on the lab-end.”

  “Oh,” Derrick pulled a small cardboard box from his bag. “I use these for parts, but these are all unused, so they should be basically sterile.”

  Mary caught the small box of three-inch-square ziplocks and stuffed it into one of her belt pockets.

  Derrick thought for a moment then he drew his knife from its thigh sheath and handed it to Sarah. “I don’t even like these things, man. Sharp edges scare me, even more than guns. I only bring it because you make me.”

  Howard was pulling M4A1 rifles from his bag and handing one to each of them along with ammunition. “There’s only one magazine of two-forty grain ammo for each of you—that’s the heavy ones with the red stripe. I’m carrying three. The other two clips are standard load. Load the heavy first since it’s the only thing that seems to fairly easily stop the Grays.”

  Sarah looked over the hood of the El Camino and said, “Any idea which way to the pit?”

  A sharp buzz and a low crack cut the air as a bullet struck the chopper body next to them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  AS ONE, THEY DROPPED to the ground by the front fender of the car. Howard went flat and moved to the edge of the front tire, sighting down the barrel of his rifle.

  There was another buzz that slammed into Derrick’s bag where it sat on the hood. It spun across the car’s oxidized metal and dropped to the ground, a ragged hole torn through it. Several broken metal boxes spilled out into the dirt. He hooked the carrying handles with the edge of his cane and pulled it closer to him. Pulling one of his boxes from the bag, he slid it onto the bottom rack mount of his rifle. When he pulled on it, it swung out with the monitor screen tilted up, so he could see it easily. He nodded.

  Howard’s gun cracked once. Derrick peeked under the El Camino and saw a headless gray body slide to a stop in the dust.

  “We need to move. The Sweeps need SWERV info on the Primary in the pit, and the chopper could blow any minute,” Sarah said, referring to Single Weapon Entity Real Vulnerabilities—basically what it takes to hurt any particular Mythos-Entity. She continued, “With all this burning shit, we can check fire easy enough, but we got anything for electricity or cold?”

  Using his cane, Derrick snagged another of the broken metal boxes from where it had spilled from the bag. “Holy moly, Sarah, it’s your lucky day,” Derrick said as he looked down at the box he salvaged.

  He flipped it over and the shattered remains of a big red button fell to the dirt.

  Howard looked back over his shoulder, “Damn, is that the EMB?”

  “In all its electromagnetic badassery ... but it didn’t vaporize itself, so it’s still charged. So, what we’ve got now is the world’s largest hand-buzzer, but if the M.E has an electric SWERV, this’ll make it sit up and take notice.” He pulled a roll of duct tape from his bag and pulled some loose wires out and capped them with a couple twists of tape and covered the hole where the button used to be.

  “We’ve got endo-grenades for cold, and flash-bangs for optical,” Mary said, tugging at her shoulder straps then feeling around her belt until she felt the grenades at the back.

  “You see the thing in the pit from the Raven when we were incoming? Freaking huge—like more than a dozen meters across, all squirmy and pulsing. Somehow, I don’t think a few grenades is going to cut it,” Derrick said.

  Howard sat up and leaned against the tire, holding a hand up.

  A figure ran by in a Sheriff’s uniform. A second later two black-clad Sweeps ran by, one fired a pistol at the fleeing sheriff. Howard rested his elbow on his knee and squeezed off a single shot. The sheriff dropped, a bloody hole at the base of his neck.

  A third Sweep stopped at the El Camino and leaned down and said, “We’ve got multiple human targets. Part of a summoning group responsible for the Veil tear. Aside from the sheriff there,” he said, and pointed his gloved hand toward the figure and the two Sweeps leaning over the body, “There’s also a deputy nearer the pit. Also shot. Not by us, though. Several others are also shot in various outdoor locations. We may have a mole, or maybe a cultist with second thoughts—did MARC inform your team about anything?”

  Sarah said, “Nothing about a mole, so I don’t think it’s ours.” Referring to a possible undercover plant in the cult.

  The name stitched above his pocket said McMullen, the low-visibility rank on his sleeve and shoulder indicated Captain.

  “Could be a sacrifice that wasn’t happy to play the role, Captain?”

  “Maybe. Right now, all we know is there may be more factions beyond the Entities and the summoners. Any SWERV?”

  “Nothing specific yet. The Grays don’t stop even from massive trauma, but dismemberment slows ‘em the hell down. Primary Entity is unknown,” Howard said.

  “You guys got your ATs?” the Sweep asked.

  Derrick leaned over, “Yeah, they’re built in to our earpieces. Your weapons should identify us as Anti-Targetable.”

  The Sweep raised his gun up and the sight flashed red. “Yeah, you’re lit.”

  Howard punched Derrick in the arm, “Damn, in the earpieces? Nice one. You’re rockin’ it.”

  Sarah got her legs under her in a crouch. “We’ll get you a SWERV if we can. Otherwise call an air strike in twenty, and just bomb the shit out of the pit.”

  “If it’s explosive replicable or exothermic triggered?” McMullen asked.

  “That’s pretty rare, but we’ll deal with it if we have to. From the air, it looked like it was coming rapidly through the Veil split.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” The Sweep ran off to join the others now moving around the helicopter.

  “Jeez, our next stop is gonna be the pits,” Derrick said.

  “Oh my god, Derrick, I will hurt you if you keep that up,” Sarah said over the commlink.

  “Be here all week,” Derrick said.

  They began to move through the billowing smoke that washed across the open area. Overhead the sun was a dirty orange in the haze. There was a flash as their Raven’s fuel ignited. No explosion but a big ball of flame rolled skyward.

  Their rifles roamed back and forth as they moved forward. Howard took the front, then Mary and Derrick. Sarah brought up the rear, every few steps she rotated her gaze and gun in a full three-sixty.

  Derrick spun as he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and a small black canister dropped to the ground to the left of the group.

  “Grenade!” He shouted, as there was a thunderous crump. Derrick felt his body thrown to the right and forward as if smacked by a giant fist. The world tumbled end over end and went black.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  DERRICK CRACKED HIS eyes open, but everything was still black.

  “Everyone all right?” He asked.

  There was no answer.

  He tapped his earpiece, and it crackled. “Hello?” he said.

  Nothing.

  He rolled over and realized he could see the ground next to his face, but the air was black with smoke. He coughed and spat on the dirt.

  No blood, that’s good.

  He thought for a second then amended, That’s no bloody good.

  His chuckle came out as a grunt and he started coughing again. He dug in one of the pockets on his belt
and pulled out a small T-shaped air filter with a soft silicon bite guard meant to be clenched between the user’s teeth. He pressed a button on the side that activated the tiny battery-powered breath-assist fan and a green LED on top flashed twice.

  “Hey guys, you reading me, or what?” Derrick tried one last time, hacking several coughs at the end. Then he shrugged and placed the filter into his mouth, using the bite guard to keep it in place. The tiny fan made it as easy to breathe as it was without the particulate and chemical filtration.

  His eyes were burning and watering, and he blinked furiously. He made a mental note he needed to create something on par with the air filter, but for eyes.

  He swept his arms around in a circle along the dirt, feeling for his cane or his rifle, either one would be a great start.

  His hand dragged across his rifle and he picked it up, drawing it close. Looking down he saw the front of his vest was lit by a tiny red dot.

  Oh man, laser sight?

  Dropping flat, he rolled, tapping at his earpiece. He could see the laser cutting through the smoke, a direct line slightly to his right, and he scrambled to get his own rifle up, flicking the QQTV sensor on.

  The screen blinked to life, and he pointed his rifle along the same axis as the laser beam. On the screen, he could see a figure with a rifle, kneeling at the edge of the trees across the clearing.

  The dot slid left then right then dropped and vanished. The figure on the screen stood and backed into the trees, disappearing.

  Derrick lowered his rifle back down to the ground and felt for injuries. There was a single tear at the back of his vest, and some blood from a small wound on the back of his left thigh.

  Derrick used the rifle to help himself stand, then hobbled in a widening circle until he found his cane. One hand on the cane, he used the QQTV sensor on the rifle to scan the tree line, house position, and helicopter wreckage, picking out exactly where the pit would be, based on his mental map from the helicopter view.

  The world kept swaying. He figured his inner ear was probably messed up from the overpressure from the grenade. The pressure change caused his ears to ring, and while he could feel the wind and see smoke and dust blowing past, he couldn’t hear the wind at all.

  He felt the pouches on his belt. The rifle ammunition was still there, an extra pistol mag, and his pistol was still in its holster. A pouch on the opposite side was torn open and empty. That normally held iodine pills for radiation exposure, two morphine autojects, and two compression bandage rolls. Further back he could feel the cylinder of the super-compressed-nitrogen endothermic grenade and next to that a thermite grenade.

  He pulled them out one at a time and checked them. They both looked undamaged.

  He removed the filter from his mouth and said, “You guys reading me?”

  No response.

  He continued, “If you can hear me, I’ve got endo- and exothermic grenades. I’m headed for the pit to visit the Big Bad and see if I can find out what makes it hurt.”

  He stuck the filter in and drew a couple breaths, then pulled it out and added, “Actually, I’m headed for the pit even if you can’t hear me.” His chuckle turned into a cough. “And if you guys are chillin’ in the kitchen while I’m out here, I’ll be bringing the hurt on you when I find you. Just sayin’.”

  Derrick stuck the filter back in his mouth, held the rifle barrel out, tight between his elbow and body, ready to do his best to hit the broadside of a barn, if one happened to pop up. He adjusted the sensor, so he could see the screen. Then he leaned down and grabbed his cane and limped further into the smoky darkness, toward the pit.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  AS DERRICK NEARED THE edge of the pit, the air was clearing. Dust and grit still blew across the landscape but the smoke from the pile of tires and the burning helicopter was behind him. He looked around for the team and asked again, speaking around the breather, “Hey guys? I’m at the pit, can anyone hear me?”

  The edge of the pit was relatively smooth and clean. Although there were wet slick spots from blood, water, or other fluids, the edge where Derrick stood was dry. Beginning to his left, there was a ramp down that curved around the pit’s circumference.

  Across from where Derrick stood, about a third of the way around the hole, there was a huge commercial propane tank. Beyond the propane tank there was a set of aluminum and wood bleachers with a few people sitting on them, but by the way they slumped, Derrick was sure they were dead. A few bodies had rolled off the bench seats and hung caught by arms or legs underneath the structure. Two of them had no heads.

  Like the Raven pilot.

  Derrick moved a little closer to the edge, trying to stand tall enough to peer into it as far as he could.

  He saw the ramp winding down, spiraling into the pit until it disappeared into the black glistening mass that filled the pit. What looked like hundreds of human arms protruded from the writhing bulk in all directions, some long and thin, others short and fat, all grabbing and pulling at the walls, pulling sheets of dirt and rock down into the pit. The surface of the creature blistered, bulged, and twisted. Derrick realized it was sinuous and wrapped around itself, like a massive pile of contorted snakes slipping and twining with human arms grasping and yanking its own gelatinous flesh along in never-ending motion.

  Along the edge of the far side, one end of the creature terminated in a mound of wriggling tentacles that jabbed and penetrated the earth. A headless human body fell into the pit near the writhing appendages and as one, the tentacles twisted toward the form that lay broken on its heaving mass.

  The probing members slipped around the body, pushing into the torso, neck, and limbs. Blood spurted out from the stump of the neck and around ragged holes that the tentacles tore through the flesh. In moments, the body burst from the inside, sinuous appendages writhing outward from the soft tissue of the gut. Ripping and tearing, what looked like tiny mouths lining the tentacles reduced the entire body to fragmented bits of bone and sinew in seconds.

  Derrick looked up from the horror to see two of the gray creatures, shaking their fists above their heads, step back from the edge. At first, they moved back toward the bleachers undoubtedly to get another body to toss in to feed their master, but first one then the other stopped. Their heads swiveled toward him, and their bloody, hollow eye sockets seemed to bore right into Derrick.

  “Uh-oh!” Derrick looked for Howard to make his “Now that’s an understatement if I ever heard one” quip, but of course Derrick was alone, standing at the edge of a pit of horrors with nowhere to run ... even if his leg was working.

  The gray creatures began to lope around the open hole toward him.

  “OK, Derrick. You totally got this,” he muttered under his breath. He lifted the rifle and checked the magazine to make sure it was securely in place. “OK, and pull the operating rod back,” he said, then peered into the side to make sure he saw a cartridge in the chamber. He let the rod snap into position.

  The creatures were moving far faster than they should be able to on their stumpy bowed legs.

  “Crap, OK, and safety off and move to uhm, fire mode. Uhm, laser sight on.” Derrick clicked the switch.

  He couldn’t see the laser anywhere.

  Derrick squeezed the trigger. The rifle fired once. He couldn’t see where the bullet hit, and the creatures were still running toward him.

  “Darn, OK, uh,” Derrick started, then he leaned on his cane and lowered himself to the ground. He brought his good knee up and set the rifle on it, so he could sight down the barrel. His rifle had a one-to-one sight, and it had a red dot he had to line up with the target. Easy-peasy ... not. Howard had Derrick go with him to the range once or twice a week and lining up the dot with the target usually worked there. Usually.

  He put the red dot on the leading creature ... as best he could. The dot seemed to jump every time his heart beat and his hands were shaking like he was playing Livin La Vida Loco on the maracas with Ricky Martin.

  H
e squeezed the trigger.

  The lead creature dropped in-place like it caught a trip wire across the chest.

  “What the...DAMN! Yeah!” Derrick shouted. He looked around briefly to see if Howard was there to see, but he was still alone. The other creature was getting closer, but hey, he hit something he actually shot at!

  Then the first creature got up again, there was a massive hole torn through its chest. Fist-sized entry wound at least, the exit must have been at least two or more times as large. Dark blood poured down the creature with every halting step it took, and it was moving slower, but it didn’t stop.

  And its friend was moving fast and getting closer.

  “Oh shit!” Derrick said, as he ran through the assault rifle prep again. Switch from fire to auto, pull back the slide ...

  “We’re coming, D!” Came Howard’s voice. “Finally figured out the QQTV-sensor-thing again. That’s you sitting down, right?”

  “Jeez, man, it doesn’t get much easier than turn it on and point it! But, yeah that’s me ... hurry!”

  The creature was almost on top of him. Derrick lined up the red dot then squeezed the trigger. He saw puffs appear at the forest edge behind the creature. The rifle stuttered loudly. Despite Derrick’s efforts to pull the barrel back down toward the creature, the puffs of debris seemed to rise along the tree line. Boughs cracked and shattered in the distance, tumbling down.

  The creature leaped, its claws hooked and ready to rip out Derrick’s throat.

  An arm flashed over Derrick’s head, cocked at the elbow. Feet kicking up dust, the rest of Sarah flew into view. The crook of her left elbow slipped right over the creatures extended arms and hooked its neck directly under the chin. The momentum of the creature’s body lifted and swung the entire lower half of its body and legs completely forward until it looked like it was lying flat in the air. Its head snapped back with an audible crack.