Age of Blood

by Weston Ochse

  He picked his way free from the mess of metal and hauled himself to clear ground. He limped as best he could toward where the squad of Zetas had held their stand against him, until he’d overcome them with fragmentation grenades. He hoped that at least one of their weapons might be in working order.

  As Walker got near, he noticed one of the Zetas from the pyramid area had a similar great idea. They both reached the dead soldiers at the same time. Each grabbed a Fire Serpent assault rifle, and while Walker did a combat roll to his right, the other did a combat roll to his left. They both brought their weapons to bear at the same time and were both surprised to hear clicks instead of bangs.

  They both stared for a stunned moment at their weapons. Then, they dropped what they held, picked up new ones, and combat-rolled in the other direction with the same results.

  Click.

  Click.

  Somewhere in the great sky above Mexico City a god was laughing at them. Walker grabbed another weapon, but saw right away that it was broken. He tossed it aside, then picked up yet another.

  The Zeta had beaten him to it and brought a Fire Serpent to bear. He fired once, the round impacting on Walker’s chest plate. Walker grunted and staggered backward, then fired his rifle.

  Click.

  The Zeta grinned and squeezed his trigger again.

  Click.

  Walker snatched up the Ultimax from the ground and held it in both hands. It was a big heavy weapon, but it wasn’t anything anyone could stand against. He was prepared to squeeze the trigger when he saw that the drum magazine was empty. Then he looked up. The other man held a weapon and stepped forward. His weapon looked anything but empty.

  “Your mother sucks donkey cocks,” Walker said. He couldn’t believe that after all this, after all the creatures he’d encountered, it was a piece-of-shit narcotrafficker who would be his end.

  The Zeta sneered. “It’s your mother fucking sucks donkey cocks.”

  “Really?” Walker asked. “Is that the best you can do?”

  The Mexican’s eyes narrowed and he adjusted the rifle in his hands. “What you say, dead gringo?”

  “If you’re going to be the hero of the Mexican people for killing a U.S. Navy SEAL, you need to have a saying which inspires. Can you even imagine young kids at school learning how to say sucks donkey cocks every year on the holiday of my death?” Walker gritted his teeth and waited for the man to squeeze the trigger.

  The man’s eyes widened. Instead of simply firing, he adjusted his stance so he could bring the rifle to bear. That’s when Hoover came in low and fast. The Zeta fired but Walker had already dropped. Hoover twisted instinctively at the gunfire; then she regathered herself, shot forward again, and sank her teeth jaw deep into the Mexican’s crotch. The man’s screams were overshadowed by the staccato of automatic fire as the rifle rattled bullets against the ceiling, draining the clip at the same time his face drained of blood.

  As Walker ran toward him, he pulled a knife clear from his left leg sheath. While Hoover worked the man’s crotch like a favorite bone, Walker raked the working edge of the six-inch blade across the man’s neck. The Mexican’s arms shot out still holding the gun. Walker snatched it, freeing the man’s hands, which went to his own neck, trying to pull it back together. His horrified eyes captured Walker’s gaze for a moment, begging to get a second chance. But Walker didn’t have the power to take the man back to when he’d been a boy and decided to make a life from the sale of drugs to those who really couldn’t afford it. So much water had passed under that bridge that Walker had no feeling for the man when he stood. Instead, he loosened his mask and twisted it so that it rested against the back of his neck. Then he reached his index finger into the blood bubbling from the man’s neck and made streaks across his own cheeks.

  He took the dead man’s weapon, then found several working magazines in his cargo pockets. He jammed one into the base of the weapon, charged the handle, and let the bolt carriage snap forward. He put the others into his own pockets.

  “Hoover, come,” he said.

  One round had skimmed the dog across the side of her body armor. She’d be tender, but nothing more.

  “Come on, girl. Let’s you and me hunt us some beegees.”

  Hoover growled, the dog’s approximation of a high five.

  64

  TEMPLE FLOOR.

  All but two of the Zetas had joined the many dead along the temple floor. The survivors stood beside the Desollados on top of the pyramid. Ramon still held Senator Withers like a shield several steps down. Yank and Holmes had both been cut by the obsidian butterfly. They’d managed to shoot away an edge of a wing and one leg, but it was still mobile. And it was even more dangerous now that it was wounded.

  Ramon held a pistol in his hand. He kept it leveled at the senator’s side. The senator’s eyelids were all but shut. The beating had taken its toll.

  Hoover ran low and fast to the base of the pyramid, capturing Ramon’s attention. The dog dodged to the right and out of Ramon’s line of sight and began to move upward, careful to keep something between not only her and Ramon, but the men atop the pyramid.

  Walker raised the Fire Serpent and unloaded an entire clip at the place where the right wing connected to the obsidian butterfly’s torso. Chips and sparks flew, but nothing more. Still, it got the creature’s attention.

  As it turned toward Walker, he shouted, “Remember me? We’re not done yet.”

  He didn’t know what reaction to expect. The thing’s face seemed incapable of an expression. But by the way it unrolled its insectile tongue then rolled it back into its proboscis, it was definitely a comment thrown back at him that needed little translation.

  Still aiming at the creature, he dropped the empty magazine, reloaded a full one, then rained thirty rounds into the front of the spot he’d so recently peppered.

  “Come on you wannabe fucking Mothra!”

  He dropped this magazine and inserted another. As soon as it was in place, he let loose. The rounds were on target, but the last ten never found a home. The weapon jammed. Instead of clearing it, Walker dropped it and ran.

  He heard the swoop of the creature’s wings. He ran six more paces, then threw himself to the ground.

  It came in close, the edge of a wing just missed slicing him from hip to sternum.

  When it passed, he jumped to his feet and ran back the opposite way. Barely pausing to grab the Ultimax, he also scooped a drum from the belt of the dead gunner. Then he was diving into the entrance to the lower temple, the place of Xipe Totec. It was nothing more than an unearthed pit, the ground stained with blood and littered with skeletons of hundreds of women. He remembered the stories of all the missing women in the border towns and wondered if they hadn’t died in a similar fashion, maybe in support of some arcane power grab, maybe to fuel the excavation of this unholy place, or maybe both. The ceiling was seven feet high and pressed down upon him. It was made of new wooden beams that held up the dirt and rock. Small mounds of dribbled earth showed how tenuous the support structures were.

  A wave of nausea struck Walker like the backhand of a giant fist. He let go of the weapon and magazine as he dropped to his knees. His hands went to his helmet, which he unsnapped and ripped off. Then they went to his head.

  A man suddenly stepped in front of him from the shadows in the back, dressed in the ragged skins of dead women. “It spoke to me, your demon. We talked.” He reached out and stroked Walker’s cheek, and where the man touched, Walker felt his skin curl and crack. “It wants to come back, you know? It wants to be with you again.” The man in front of Walker chuckled, the sound of marbles inside a baby’s skull. “It wants to do the things you used to do. Remember the old man? Remember how you tormented him? Do you know that he took his own life because of you? Do you know that his last thought before he resigned his soul to hell was of you? Imagine a man who’d rather spend an eternity in hell than spend one more moment with a child. Much like your father.”

  Wal
ker felt his skin begin to necrotize, but the man’s words were like a salve, feeding him just enough so that he could reach out, grab the magician’s neck with one hand and squeeze. “How do you know it’s entirely gone from me?” He let the crazy spill into his eyes. “How do you know he doesn’t want you to join what’s left of him inside me?”

  The magician grabbed at Walker’s hand, but it was still covered in a ballistic glove. He could let go to get to a piece of skin, but then Walker would be free to throttle him. So instead, he tried to break the grip of the SEAL. But he might as well have been trying to bend an iron pipe.

  Walker brought his other hand up to finish the job. For a moment, he had two killing hands around the man’s neck. Then he changed his mind. In one blurred movement, one hand grabbed the magician’s forehead and the other grabbed his chin, and then he snapped the man’s neck.

  Parts of the ceiling started to fall.

  Walker spun and saw the obsidian butterfly, bent and moving awkwardly across the dead bodies toward him. Occasionally, the point of its wing would break through the ceiling, causing rock and dirt to rain down upon it. He scanned the area around him and saw nowhere to go. The Ultimax was unreachable behind the creature, so Walker did the only thing he could think of. He led the creature on, making it take a tortuous route over the bodies of the dead women. Walker fell, his feet slipping between the bones. Each time he managed to stand and keep away from the creature as it tried to hurry more and more, wing tips ripping through the ceiling.

  Walker had managed to maneuver it so that it was at the back of the chamber. Then, in a final rush, he ran in a crouch toward the entrance. He made it and fell upon the weapon, clearing it and inserting and charging the drum in a blur. He didn’t wait for the obsidian butterfly to get to him. Instead, Walker staggered to his feet and began to rake the ceiling with gunfire, concentrating on the beams. He cut one in two and a great gush of soil began to fill the chamber. He backed into the entrance and trained the Ultimax on another beam, with the same result. Just as the drum began to whine and spin emptily, the entire ceiling collapsed.

  He turned and ran, trying to keep from being buried himself. He barely made it out of the Yopico, diving into the main chamber as a gout of dirt billowed out and up. When he got to his feet, he saw that Holmes and Yank had killed the remaining men, while Hoover was savaging the Desollados. Hoover had the neck of the one in his mouth, arterial blood pulsing into the air atop the pyramid, much as it had five hundred years before.

  Senator Withers lay gasping halfway up the pyramid. Blood poured from a gory wound in his shoulder. Walker ran to him, shouting to the others, “Where’s Ramon?” Then he heard the sound of running feet. His gaze went to the stairs that climbed up the side of one wall. He saw the man pause, throw a mocking salute, then run the rest of the way up the stairs. Walker was a thousand miles past exhaustion, but he knew what needed to be done. If they didn’t get Ramon now, he’d be stalking them until they were all dead. Walker gritted his teeth and started to follow.

  Holmes came to the senator’s aid. “Go,” he said. “Get the son of a bitch.”

  “Wait,” came a voice he hadn’t heard in a while.

  Walker spun. “YaYa—you’re alive!”

  Laws had his arm wrapped around the gray-skinned SEAL’s shoulder. YaYa had lost the arm, but the stump had been tourniqueted and bandaged.

  “What happened?” Walker asked breathlessly.

  He stepped closer but YaYa shook his head and pointed at the bodies of Ramon’s accomplices. “Necklaces. Get them.” His voice was little more than a whisper.

  Walker looked down at the two linen-suited men, then knelt. He ripped open their bloody shirts. Each of them wore gold necklaces with a small vial containing a milky substance. He grabbed them.

  “’Cabra. Drink,” YaYa said, pointing weakly toward the steps. “Chase. Kill.”

  “Drink this?” Walker asked, holding up the vial. But YaYa was out. He glanced at Laws, who looked at him with widened eyes and shrugged.

  YaYa had said “’cabra.” Would the substance turn him into one of the creatures? Walker found it hard to believe. “Fuck it.” Walker rotated his red mask from where it rested on his back, placed it over his face, and tightened the straps. Then he opened the vial. “Drink me,” he said, invoking the craziness of Alice in Wonderland and laughing a little too maniacally. He tilted his head back and let the liquid flow into his mouth. As the substance hit his system, the entire aspect of the universe changed right in front of his eyes.

  65

  MEXICO CITY. DAY.

  Walker shot up the stairs and through a door like a heat-seeking missile fired from a rabbit hole. The world was bled of color, replaced by a blur of blacks, whites, and grays. Everywhere he looked, the focus was precise and perfect, his vision capable of telescoping several hundred feet in front of him. But his peripheral vision was a blur, the world to his left and right reduced to a state of fuzzy resolution. Gone was his exhaustion, left behind in the alternate universe where SEALs couldn’t travel Mach 1.

  Through the door, he found himself inside the basement of an ancient building. Dust coated the floors. Webs held the corners together like silken flying buttresses. The walls were carved and it took tremendous focus for Walker to be able to figure out what they were. Religious motifs—but that was as much as he could make out.

  He knew what a drunk felt like, if that drunk was also stoned out of his mind on a Mexican cocktail of uppers with a chupacabra speedball chaser. Each turn of his head sent a blur spinning across his vision. He brought his right hand to his head to still the images, but then he spied Ramon walking ahead, smoothing his rumpled pants and running long fingers through his hair, acting as if he were Mr. Cool in a land of ancient filth.

  “Ramon!”

  He turned at Walker’s call and his eyes gave away his surprise. He yanked his own vial out and drained it dry. Then he turned and ran impossibly fast.

  Walker followed drunkenly.

  When they hit another set of stairs, he tumbled up them, ending in a somersault, then popping to his feet. He’d lost ground. Ramon was already through another door and gone.

  Walker raced after him and became aware of the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. The sound took over everything and was his universe. He opened the door and spied Ramon at the end of the central aisle of a cathedral. Mass was in session and the priest was standing with both arms out toward the congregation. When Walker ran into their midst, they screamed at the red-faced devil in camo among them.

  He was out the door and into the plaza before he saw Ramon again. They were in the Zócalo once more. This time it was daytime. Ramon was running southeast. Walker chased after him, zooming past people, between groups and around those who were sitting. He was becoming used to the speed. The trick was to plan ahead. Just as he thought he was doing fine, a man pushing a cart with the words LA ROSA prominently on the side moved into his path. Walker couldn’t swerve. All he could do was leap it, or else they’d tumble in a crash. Walker jumped early, or at least he thought he did, but his speed carried him over the cart. His leg buckled when he landed and he rolled several yards before he was able to regain control and stand.

  But he’d gained ground on Ramon.

  The former hit man glanced behind and tried to speed up.

  But Walker could still run faster. The potion, if that’s what it was, seemed to work on his inherent athleticism.

  They left the square and rocketed down the center of Avenida de José María Pino Suárez. It was a one-way road toward the Zócalo, with a bike path on the left and lined with brightly blooming trees and old-fashioned streetlights. A trio of buses lumbered along it side by side and both the chased and the chaser moved to the bicycle lane.

  Traffic was moving in the next cross street and the crosswalk in front of them teemed with people. Ramon slowed and Walker did as well. Those who saw them pointed and made space, afraid of the white blur of a man being chased by the red-faced d
emon. They slid through the crowd and into traffic. A beat-to-hell Toyota pickup truck swerved, lost control, and crashed through the window of a clothing store on the southwest corner of the intersection.

  They turned down Calle Venustiano Carranza, heading east.

  Walker’s heartbeat was growing louder.

  The road cleared momentarily in front of them and they both poured on speed. They turned south, then east, then south for three blocks, moving so fast that he couldn’t keep track of the street signs. Now they were on the Regna heading east. To their front was the Mercado Central. Barely two lanes, the walls closed in on them. They had no choice but to slow down.

  A bus backed out of a park, forcing Ramon to come almost to a stop. Walker caught up to him and plastered him against the side of the bus so hard windows popped and the bus rocked. Walker punched Ramon in the jaw, the increased speed of his arm translating into increased power.

  Ramon’s head swung on his neck.

  But then the man got his balance under him and shoved Walker away.

  Walker held his ground and kicked Ramon on the top of the knee with a Kuai Lua kick, sending him to the ground.

  Ramon roared and his body began to change. He ripped through his once fine linen suit, his body growing and bulging with muscle. Within moments, gone was the gentle patrician, replaced by a werewolf whose arms and shoulders bunched with a mountain of muscles.

  Walker punched the werewolf in the face.

  The werewolf shrugged it off and grinned with too many teeth.

  Walker felt a sudden sense of his own mortality. He feinted left then leaped. Using the werewolf’s head as a step, he was up and over the bus, running toward Mercado Central.

  The roaring behind him told him that he was being followed.

  Walker ran as fast as he could, the universe a blur with a pinhole to move through.

  If he was going to defeat the werewolf, he needed silver. He’d left the magazine with the silver-tipped rounds back in the temple. His hope was that the central market would provide the necessary tools. Of course, he also hoped that he’d keep the wolf so busy it wouldn’t eat all the patrons.