Warlord: Dervish

by Tony Monchinski

  “No,” Jason corrected her, firmly. “He’s right to be afraid. I’m changing…” He stood nimbly. “Watch this.” Waving his hand through the air, the others watched dumbfounded, Jason’s hand leaving transparent trails. He clenched his fist and held it still, the trails condensing in it.

  Deirdre and Bronson looked from one to the other.

  The Chinese-speaking man pointed a shaking finger at Jason, backing away from him. “Yang guizi!”

  “Chill Chan!” Bronson yelled at the man.

  “Yeah, you don’t recognize me,” Jason said to the guy, “do you? I saw Hahn,” he reminded his friends, “she’s already one of them.”

  “One of…?” Deirdre asked tentatively.

  Minute vibrations stirred the door.

  “One of the sand men.” Jason grinned at Areya. “Shaytan.” He concentrated and knew his eyes flared up. Deirdre gasped and a look of awe washed over Areya’s face. “That’s me.” Was that was he was becoming then, some type of demon? The man Bronson called Chan appeared horrified. “Give me that.” Jason swiped the backpack out of Bronson’s hands and began to rifle through it. “I’ll be one of them real soon.”

  “Does it hurt?” Deirdre’s eyes brimmed with tears.

  “No. Actually, I feel good.” The fact that she was crying for him, that touched Jason. “Tired as shit…” He rummaged in the bag, his hand closing on what he sought “…but other than that—I feel great.” A lone tear broke from Deirdre’s eye and ran down her cheek. “Come on,” he nearly whispered, reaching out faster than the others could discern, his hand brushing her cheek. “Stop that now,” he drew his hand away, her tear on his finger. He studied it, the light from the room reflected off its surface, the tear quivering on his index finger, its molecular structure apparent to him, mucus and oil, prolactin and adrenocorticoptropic hormones and lysozymes seemingly alive. He understood he was seeing this in a way they could not, in a way they never would.

  “What you doing main?” Bronson referred to the auto-injector in Jason’s hand.

  Jason smiled at Deirdre, “Thank you.” He uncapped the injector—“We got more of these around?”—and plunged it into his arm. His eyes closed and his body straightened. He exhaled from the initial rush, and when it passed, he turned his fiery gaze to his friend. “Well, do we?”

  “Yeah.” Bronson started going through the other packs, finding the auto-injectors, handing them over. Deirdre looked at Jason, a question. “Epinephrine,” he answered. “Adrenalin,” clarified Bronson.

  Something banged against the door.

  “Great.” Jason knew exactly who that was.

  The knight’s greatsword cleaved the wood and rested in plain view before being yanked back outside. Chan screamed and cowered against the far wall.

  “Areya!” Deirdre took the boy under her wing.

  “Jay, we gotta get the hell out of here!”

  Jason stood, foregoing his shirt and armor. “Grab a few of those,” he told Bronson as he popped caps off autoinjectors. Bronson stepped to the tub and took up an RPG launcher. “Areya, I’m going to need you help. Here,” he handed the boy two injectors. “You too,” he winked at Deirdre, holding out two more.

  “You can’t be serious…”

  Jason stuck himself with a syringe. His eyes clenched shut and his head shook. “Oh…fuck…yeah! Hit me kid.” Areya jabbed him in the arm. “Again. Give me another!”

  “No,” Deirdre told him when Jason turned his fiery gaze to her. “You’re going to kill yourself.”

  “It’s too late for that. Just do it.” Deirdre sniffled and pounded the autoinjectors into either of Jason’s shoulders.

  When his face finished contorting, when he stopped rising up and down on his toes, Jason began to murmur, a low, rhythmic chant.

  Bronson stood there holding an RPG, his mouth hanging open.

  “…let the bodies hit the floor…let the bodies hit the floor…”

  The knight punched a hole through the door and looked into the house.

  “Yeah!” Jason crowed, euphoric. “I love that fucking song! Come on motherfucker—” he yelled at the knight “—yeah, you motherfucker!” He grabbed the RPG from Bronson. “Everybody get down!” He shouldered the rocket. “Now.”

  No one needed to be told twice, not even Chan. The warhead streaked through the room and into the next, impacting the far wall and detonating. The explosion knocked Jason off his feet but he regained them at once, unharmed, manic.

  “Everybody okay?” he called out. Everyone was. “I feel fucking supreme!” The wall behind them was scorched black from the RPG’s backblast. “Take a couple of those,” Jason encouraged Bronson. “Do what I just did.” Bronson peered into the next room where a hole big enough for a person to squeeze through now connected the neighboring house. Jason popped the guard off another injector. “Now get out of here.”

  “Jay…”

  The knight’s gauntleted hand punched another hole through the weakened door.

  “Go.” Jason injected himself again, shuddering. “I got this motherfucker.” He flung the spent injector aside. “Me and this motherfucker, we gonna talk.”

  Bronson wormed his way through the gap, shimmying his shoulders until he was free, standing in the next house. He was in a bathroom with a hand shower, a hole for drainage in the cement floor. The ceiling light had been blown out but bulbs elsewhere in the house provided illumination.

  Deirdre passed him his M4 and two RPGs and then Areya climbed through the hole to him. Deirdre was followed by Chan. Bronson passed the Chinese-speaking man a canvas satchel brimming with RPG rounds. He made to check the safety on Deirdre’s AK. “I’ve got it,” she assured him.

  “Jason!” Deirdre looked through the gap in the wall. The thing that stood in the other house looked like Jason, yet…It’s head whipped towards her, fire in its eyes, an RPG on its shoulder. The infernos in its orbits welled and its tongue shot out. The RPG fired, obliterating the front door.

  “Fengkuang!”

  “Come on, Dee!” Sand billowed through the hole, a fierce battle sounding from the house they’d abandoned.

  “Jason!” Deirdre cried as Bronson pushed her through the house. “Move!”

  Dead bodies in various states of grotesquery were scattered about the main room and hallway, all scalped. Areya reached out for Deirdre’s hand, to comfort her. They passed a door to the street which was vibrating. Bronson moved fast, quick glances into rooms to make certain they were clear, then right to the next.

  He and Chan had passed a wooden shutter in the hallway when it burst open, a fog of sand wafting into the room, the blackened, groping hand of a dervish lunging through. Areya rushed from Deirdre to the shutter, slamming it closed. The thing on the outside forced it back open, clawing at the wood for the boy. Bronson sent a burst from his M4 into the sand and the hand withdrew. The boy and Deirdre hastily latched the shutter.

  Sand whorled from the bathroom.

  A barking dog greeted them from the top of a stairwell, its mouth foaming. Deidre’s hands were shaking as she leveled her AK at the canine. The dog made no move to attack.

  Chan yelled from the next room, pounding a wall with an open fist.

  “Get out of the way!” Bronson barked at him, taking a knee, a rocket launcher on his shoulder. “Not behind me!” He triggered the RPG. The warhead streaked through the hall, into the room and through the wall.

  Taking a rocket from the pouch Chan lugged, Bronson reloaded the launcher before handing it off to the other man. He stepped through the breach, into the next house, amid a flurry of concrete dust and plaster. Boy soldiers lay dead and dazed. Some were beginning to stir and sit up, searching groggily for their rifles.

  “Leave it!” Bronson warned one kid. Deirdre, Areya and Chan passed behind him. “Leave it I said!” Another child, bleeding from the head, pointed at Areya, cursing him. When he went for his rifle—“Fucktard!”—an abbreviated rip from Bronson’s M4 flopped the kid backwards, arms ov
er his head. He put short bursts into the others before they could regain their feet. Bronson hated that they were children, that they had left him no choice. They were killers. As was he.

  The final kid made no move for his AK. He looked frightened. “You want to live, right?” Bronson swapped magazines in the M4. “Then don’t do nuthin’ stupid, aight?” He slung the carbine across his back and retrieved a discarded AK, checking the magazine. The kid cried out. Bronson looked up as a tentacle of sand ensnared the child’s leg. The boy beat at the tendril with his hands, the serpentine feeler dragging him across the floor and through the wall, kicking and screaming.

  Bronson closed the door to the room behind himself, locking it, grateful for the door. Areya, Deirdre and Chan were stalled at a hastily erected, half-completed wall. A gap between the unfinished wall and the ceiling gave unto blackness. The woman and the boy were kicking at the bricks, prying them out. Chan stood looking scared and useless.

  “What about up there?” Bronson peered up a stairwell that turned at a small landing, continuing out of their sight. When he didn’t get an answer he joined in their efforts on the wall. Within seconds a significant portion of it had collapsed, granting them access to the halls and rooms beyond. The air past the wall was noticeably warmer and musky, an oppressive fug confronting their noses.

  Before Bronson could step through into the dark, Areya stopped him, tugging at his web belt, holding up a hand, imploring him to stop. “What is it, kid?” Bronson looked over his shoulder, the door to the room with the dead kids was vibrating.

  Areya pointed into the darkness and spoke rapidly. Bronson found his flashlight and directed its beam through the gap. The light fell on the husks of bodies—insurgents, Romans, civilians, a dog’s—variously denuded of flesh and viscera. A child’s skeleton. There was a rattling noise from the dark, a chirruping.

  “What the—?” Before he could finish his question, a giant camel spider rushed through the darkness, its pedipalps jutting through the wall, knocking Bronson over. He looked up into its black eyes, its oversized chelicerae clacking inches from his face.

  Deirdre had her AK over Bronson, firing, shell casings jangling on the floor and bricks. The rounds impacted the spider’s back and it disappeared from view, retreating to the warmth and darkness of its lair.

  “Upstairs!” Bronson led the way, the door behind them shaking on its hinges.

  They traversed a hallway on the second floor. It led to a room where the wall to the next house had already been removed. An insurgent toting an automatic rifle was intent on something in the neighboring house. Bronson raised his M4, sighted and fired, but his weapon failed to discharge. He let it fall and covered the distance between himself and the man, pouncing on him as he was turning, the clatter of the M4 having drawn his attention. Bronson’s hand rose and fell, the M7 bayonet in hand. The insurgent didn’t stand a chance.

  As he wiped the bayonet on his leg and sheathed it, Deirdre sidled up next to him, passing him his AK. “No, forget it,” Bronson took the dead man’s Kalashnikov and stepped into the next house. His heart was hammering in his chest. He dropped the magazine from its well, checking the top round, stepping unthinkingly into the first doorway he came to, the cause of the dead insurgent’s distraction.

  “Help me!” Letitia was pressed stomach down on a mattress, a bearded insurgent squatting over her, his hands cupped under her chin, pulling her head back. Tears streaked her face. Her naked breasts were pan-caked against the mattress, her fatigue top—the only item of clothing left on her body—torn open and off one shoulder. She was drawn up on her knees and another man was behind her, thrusting his hips brutally back and forth. Half a dozen more insurgents in various states of undress were standing around the room. Their rifles were stacked neatly against one wall.

  “Help me!” Letitia wailed.

  Bronson stood in the doorway and looked from the woman to the bearded man atop her. All of the men in the room were staring uncertainly back at him, at the black man standing there with the banana clip in one hand, the AK in his other. Areya and Chan ran past him in the hallway. Deirdre had her back to the wall where the insurgents couldn’t see her, AK up near her face.

  The bearded man was speaking over Letitia’s pleas, talking to Bronson, explaining something to him. A few of his friends had their hands on their trousers, wanting to cover themselves.

  “Fucking Jesus Christ!” howled Letitia. “Help me!”

  Bronson side-stepped in the hallway, out of the doorway, slamming the magazine home—

  As Deirdre turned into the room, leveling her AK and firing, a ragged burst that splattered the bearded man across the room and his friends

  —and chambering a round, Deirdre turning out of the doorway and racing past him, Bronson backing up after her, covering the doorway, knowing the insurgents were going to grab up their rifles and swarm the corridor.

  Letitia continued to scream.

  “Bronson, come on!” Deirdre beckoned from the stairwell at the end of the hallway. He turned his head briefly at her call, spying her on the stairs, Chan’s back turned to them as he descended, Areya already out of sight. An insurgent stepped into the hall, releasing a salvo from his AK, spouts of dust walking down the wall, a round striking Bronson in his leg, knocking the limb out from under him, another round punching through Chan’s back, pushing him down the stairs.

  Bronson grimaced, the AK extended in one hand. He and Deirdre fired in tandem. Blood sprayed as the insurgent jerked, the marionette of a tweaked puppeteer.

  “Bronson!”

  “Go!” He pressed his back to the stairwell wall, letting himself down a few steps, presenting less of a target should another step from the room. “Check on Chan.” For good measure he fired a long burst back at the doorway. Letitia was still howling in there.

  Bronson considered the bullet wound in his leg. Fresh blood was staining his pants leg. The bullet had bypassed his armor on his outer thigh. When an insurgent poked his head out into the hallway, Bronson shot him.

  “Yeah, come and git sum, motherfuckas!”

  Over Letitia’s cries, men in the room were shouting back angrily.

  “Oh yeah? Come see what I got fo’ ya here, main! Ahhh…” A ripple of sand seeped into the hall.

  Another man stepped from the room, leading with his blazing AK. Bronson hunkered low on the stairs and returned fire, his bursts ripping through the wall, driving the insurgent back inside.

  A loud explosion detonated below. They were either all fucked, Bronson thought, or Deirdre had blown out another wall.

  As though it possessed a consciousness all its own, the sand drifted through the hall and abruptly turned into the room with the insurgents and Letitia. Their shouts and her cries intensified, punctuating the barrage of AK fire.

  Deirdre yelled to him from the bottom of the stairs and Bronson forced himself up, onto both feet, his leg shaking under him. Flesh wound, he tried to convince himself. Ain’t shit.

  The hallway downstairs was dusty and they were all coughing as they pushed through into the neighboring house, Areya and the wounded Chan in the lead. They entered a long hall that bisected the house, rooms on either side. Areya and Chan passed each room without drawing fire and Bronson offered a silent thank you.

  A ruckus behind and above them as the things in the sand storm clashed with the insurgents in the rape room.

  Deirdre and Bronson were passing a doorway when the Dyshka emplacement inside came alive, three insurgents in the room behind sandbags. Red tracer rounds spit through the doorway, barely missing the man and the woman, impacting the hallway wall opposite, gouging chunks of concrete.

  “Fuck!” Bronson poked the barrel of his AK through the doorway and fired back until the weapon was ripped from his hands by 7.62mm rounds. “Go on!” he yelled to Deirdre, drawing his pistol.

  Areya and Chan passed a stairwell similar to the ones they’d seen in other houses.

  Bronson fired the M9 blindly through the d
oorway, tracer rounds zipping past. He fired out the pistol and immediately drew his hand back, dropping the spent magazine, inserting a fresh one.

  Excited voices sounded and blood spewed from Chan’s shoulder as a rifle fired, knocking him down. Insurgents piled down the stairwell. Deirdre brought her AK to bear, her rounds tearing a ragged line in the stairwell wall and the first man to step into her line of fire. Bronson broke from his position beside the door, covering the space to the stairwell in a few hops, his M9 up, one hand gripped in the palm of the other, firing the pistol two-handed, the insurgents yelling and struggling to bring their rifles around as his rounds punched through them.

  A scrabble of feet on stairs as men retreated. Deirdre turned to Areya, who was trying to get Chan back on his feet. One of the men from the machine gun room broke into the hall and raced towards them, triggering his AK. Bronson turned and fired, the remaining rounds of his M9 catching the man in his shoulder and arm. The insurgent lost his grip on his AK but continued forward, ramming into Bronson, who clubbed his adversary over the head with his emptied pistol.

  A thunk-thunk-thunk as Bronson bludgeoned the man and a grenade rolled off the stairs, spinning on the floor. Areya snatched it up and tossed it into an empty room at the very moment that Bronson propelled the dazed, wounded insurgent inside after it. The grenade detonated, peppering the man with shrapnel, killing him.

  Assuming his grenade had killed or incapacitated those below, the insurgent who’d thrown it leapt down the stairs. Bronson plunged his bayonet through the man’s back and the guy dropped his rifle, staggering about. He futilely reached behind his back, trying to grasp the hilt of the blade jutting from his shoulder blades, cursing at Bronson while the soldier reloaded his M9.

  Areya and Deirdre were dragging Chan out of the hallway and into a room.

  A second grenade plunked down the stairs and rolled to a halt in the middle of the corridor. Bronson pressed his pistol to the chest of the knifed insurgent and triggered it three times in rapid succession—the man’s body bucking—tossing the man on top of the grenade, turning away before it exploded, launching himself towards the floor, the blast muffled under the insurgent. Bronson clenched his teeth and hissed, hot shrapnel in his back, noise and motion behind him. He flopped over on his side, aiming down the hall over his head, another insurgent from the machine gun braving the hallway, firing his AK, a rash of bullets sending horizontal geysers of concrete and dust from the walls. Bronson fired out his M9 and the man sank, the barrel of his rifle rising, firing out into the ceiling.