The demon paused and roared at him, a sound that would have frozen him in place not three months before, but he’d come a long way in a short time. Since joining Echo he’d faced down spectres, revenants, even a cabal of necromancers with anger management issues; they’d all perished but he was still around. And major demon or not, he had every intention of surviving this one, too.
He heard Riley shout something over the din of battle and while he couldn’t make out exactly what was said he had a pretty good idea. He didn’t take the time to look, just threw himself flat and covered his head with his hands.
It was a good thing he did, too, for the jet of flame that shot out of Riley’s flamethrower passed mere inches over his head as it sought out its intended target. As if on cue, Olsen chose that moment to join the fray as well and soon it wasn’t one but two plumes of fire burning the spot where the demon had stood seconds before. Not to be outdone, Cade kept his finger on the trigger of his HK, sending a blistering stream of gunfire at the same location.
As Duncan slithered across the floor and out of the line of fire, he was confident that nothing could have lived through such an inferno.
He was wrong.
Cade gave the signal and the men stopped their attack, only to find the spot where the demon had been standing empty of any sign of the creature. If they hadn’t known any better, the evidence would have suggested that it hadn’t ever been there at all.
Into the stunned silence, a guttural voice spoke.
“Fools! Did you think me so easily defeated?”
As one the men looked up to find the girl-demon clinging to the ceiling of the cavern on her hands and feet like a spider with her neck twisted around 180 degrees so that she could look down upon them with ease. She had also grown three times her normal size, making her almost as large as Riley. Though her face had not undergone any obvious physical changes beyond the change in size, the evil that had consumed her was now plain to see in the nuances of her expression. As it hung there the demon seemed to flicker in and out of view, as if not entirely on this plane of existence, but that didn’t stop it from gloating at them.
And that voice...
“Your petty efforts would be considered nothing but simple amusements in the arenas of Hell. My drones have taken that festering warren of vermin beyond the trees and soon we shall spread beyond its borders, descending upon the rest of your people until they remember precisely why we were cast into the pit!”
That was as much as Duncan could take. Without waiting for orders he raised his flamethrower, sent a momentary prayer skyward that it hadn’t been damaged during his activities moments before, and then sent a stream of flaming liquid upward.
The demon made no move to avoid the flames. In fact, it seemed to Duncan that it actually leaned into them instead, and soon the smell of cooked flesh joined those that already occupied the cavern. Duncan kept it up until the tank all but ran dry, and then cut off the flames.
With horror he saw that the demon had not moved from its perch; had not, in fact, been damaged by the flames at all. It stared down in what he could only image was utter contempt and then began to move across the ceiling toward the tunnel through which they’d entered.
“Don’t let it get away!” Cade shouted and the Templars opened up with everything they had. Duncan tried firing his flamethrower again, getting a few weak spouts, while Riley and Olsen switched to their firearms, the boom of the former’s combat shotgun like exclamation points to the staccato chatter of the latter’s sub machine gun.
The demon shrugged off every bit of the attack, scurrying forward as if the men weren’t even in the room. In moments it would reach the entrance and, shortly after that, emerge into the outside world.
What were they going to do?
* * *
Cade watched this all unfold with genuine fear in his heart. He knew that if the demon united itself with its drones and disappeared into the surrounding forest, they’d never catch the thing. By the time they did it would be too late; it would have consumed enough souls and enriched its store of power so much that they would have to throw the might of armies at it to put an end to the horror.
He had to make do with himself and his three men.
And what good could they do, he asked himself as the demon reached the halfway point to the tunnel mouth. From the way it flickered in and out of sight almost as fast as he could blink, he could only imagine that the part of it that could truly be harmed was not in this dimension but in some other dimension beyond.
Still, his men would not quit. Cade watched Duncan’s flamethrower sputter and run dry, watched him unclick the straps that held it to his back and draw his sword, intending to chase after the creature, as much a member of his squad as Riley and Olsen, men who had been with him since he’d taken control of Echo. The blade of Duncan’s sword caught the light from his headlamp, reflecting it in a momentary beam of brilliant glory, even as Riley and Olsen drew their weapons as well.
Cade reached for his sword, intending to join them and fight to the last right there with them, when it suddenly clicked.
The demon’s flickering movement in and out of this plane.
The dazzling sparks of light glinting off the blessed blades.
Blades passed down from the Holy Father himself, blades that, unlike most other earthly weapons, were effective in both this world and the next.
... even in the Beyond…
“On me!” Cade cried, as he drew his weapon and rushed forward as fast as his feet would carry him, leaping over corpses and the remains of such, racing against time and hope to beat the creature to the entrance to the cavern while his men converged around him in a protective formation designed to help him reach his destination no matter the cost.
Luckily, the demon had already dismissed them as being unable to harm it and it paid them no mind as it made its leisurely way toward the entrance.
Cade got their first.
As one the Templar turned to face the oncoming creature.
Finally, the demon noted their unwillingness to surrender when it was not only more prudent but convenient and it intended to make them pay for their transgressions.
A cracking-crunching sound filled the air and multiple legs burst outward from the thing’s torso, spider-like and covered in dark, damp hair, allowing it to swing partially down from the ceiling to engage the man who dared defy it.
Cade waited until the last second, glanced down at the pool of fresh blood on the floor in front of them, blood that reflected the light from the headlamp he wore and for a split second became a sort of reflecting pool.
Without hesitation, Cade stepped into that pool, into that reflection, and slipped the bonds between this world and the next to enter the Beyond.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The demon hung there before him, just as he’d known it would, its true form impossible to hide in the mists and phantom eddies of the beyond.
The multi-eyed, multi-legged creature didn’t resemble anything particularly earthly and so Cade had a hard time looking at it, his mind constantly trying to fill in the blanks of what wasn’t there and driving himself slowly mad in the process.
He had not left the world of the living and the people it contained behind to replace them with a world full of creatures like this one.
It was time to finish the job.
The demon was startled to see him there, in the Beyond, the land between the souls of the living and the land of the dead, and as it reared it up in shocked dismay, Cade brought his sword up over his head and brought it slashing down on the thing that very well could have gutted the world of its humanity, both literally and figuratively.
The sword cut through the demon’s hide like softened butter, cleaving the creature in two in one fell stroke.
* * *
Reinforcements arrived just as the sun was breaking over the forest. The two combat units the Seneschal sent scoured the surrounding countryside, eradicating any of the drones that still
lived. Many had perished with the demise of the master-demon that controlled them. The trauma team rounded up the survivors and began to treat their injuries.
The men of Echo watched them while resting beneath the overhang of a nearby building.
“What happens to them now?” Duncan asked, nodding toward the dozen or so individuals, including Father Nils, who had survived the night.
“The Order will give them a long-deserved vacation, caring for them and helping them through the ordeal. The physical danger might be over and their wounds will heal quickly enough, but their minds will be filled with trauma for a long time to come,” Cade replied. “We’ve got people who can help them deal with that. Eventually, if all goes well, perhaps their souls will heal and they can get on with their lives. If not, they can always join the Order.”
There was something in Cade’s tone that caught Duncan’s attention.
The question slipped out before he could stop it.
“Is that what happened to you, Commander?”
Cade turned away, staring off into the distance for a long moment, long enough that Duncan thought he might not answer at all.
But then...
“Hearts and bodies heal often enough, I suppose,” the Echo Team leader told him, “but the soul... the soul can be another matter entirely.”
Tarzan Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Weston Ochse
“Me Tarzan. You Jane.”
– Johnny Weissmuller,
Tarzan the Apeman,
1932
The earth was rent as if a leviathan had burst free to sail the galaxy for better worlds to chew. Four miles long, hundreds of feet at its widest point, and more than a thousand feet deep, the Sonoran Rift was one of a hundred that had cleaved the Earth in the past three years. No one knew where they came from nor why they happened. Most had been kept a secret, but those like the Baltimore Scar and the Edmonton Crater couldn’t be ignored. But the Sonoran Rift was the largest of them all, and if it hadn’t been for a disenchanted soldier spilling his guts to the network, no one would have ever had an inkling about it.
Andy’s network had tried four times to get someone near enough to corroborate the unbelievable statements the dying soldier had made, and each of their reporters had failed to return. The idea that another rift existed would be a news coup for the network that could garner millions in advertising.
“Do you think what they say is true?” asked Leon, who rose from checking one of the seventy claymore mines in their sector.
That there are monsters in there? Andy didn’t even want to give voice to the thought, so he just stared.
“Hey vato, I’m talking to you.”
“I don’t know what to think,” Andy said.
“This isn’t a test, maricone. I was just asking your opinion.”
Looking at the way the sun sliced into the Rift, then met an impenetrable wall of shadow, Andy Friarson would have to say that yes, if there was anywhere in the world where monsters existed, this was the place. He’d been to Baltimore, Edmonton and even the tiny crack in the earth in France they called the Vallée de la Mort. All of them were interesting, but they lacked the sense of foreboding the Sonoran Rift had. There was a feeling about it that reminded him of the time he was in Croatia, hiding in a ditch with his camera clutched to his chest while Serbians lined up an entire village, shot them, and shoved them into a mass grave. Andy had known that at any moment he would be found out and added to the ditch. When one of the killers had turned to stare directly at his hiding place, Andy had known the end was near. He’d closed his eyes and waited to die, unwilling to meet it face to face. He’d inexplicably survived that day, but had been left with the memory of the certainty of death he’d felt — which he felt again now, walking so near the place where monsters were born.
* * *
The relief battalion had met in an old silver mine east of Bisbee, Arizona. There were three hundred of them. Many were ex-convicts, with the rest ex-military, fresh from the war but unable to stop killing. With the promise of $100,000 for six months’ work and the opportunity to protect the sovereignty of America, they showed up in droves. The advertisements were posted on the internet, Field and Stream, Gun and Rifle, and Soldier of Fortune. Everyone was vetted in Phoenix first. With the help of Sheriff Arpaio, the Network created a criminal history for Andy, and with it, a desire to get out of Arizona. With a faked military record, his bonafides fit right into the model of a modern redneck protector the US government was arranging to guard the Rift and the American way of life.
* * *
Everyone had their own responsibilities. Andy and his partner, Leon Batista, were in charge of maintaining the landmines in sector six, an area just north and east of the Rift and one of twenty-two sectors. The mines were the last line of defense. If anything or anyone fought its way free of the Rift, it would encounter seven rows of ten claymore mines, positioned far enough apart so that each row could operate independently, creating a cataclysmic explosion of ball bearings traveling at 4,000 feet per second if detonated.
But if anything got to the claymores, they were all in the shit. Andy had been issued an automatic pistol with the reminder that the bullets would be best used on himself so that when he was eaten, he wouldn’t know, or care.
The first lines of defense were right along the edge of the Rift. There was evidence where they’d tried to cap the crevice. Some of the steel webwork remained. But all attempts to cover the mighty hole had been stopped by the monsters. It seemed that as soon as anyone got within a few feet of the darkness, creatures would stir and come out to feed. Andy had been offered a tour of the area, but even his professional craving for information couldn’t defeat the fear that locked his joints and filled his guts with lead-heavy dread.
Many of his network colleagues thought he was a coward. He’d returned from Croatia three weeks into a three month assignment. He’d tried to explain to them what had happened, but they didn’t want to listen. They were reporters, they’d told him. Their job was to go into the mouth of hell itself and report what the devil was having for dinner. If you weren’t willing to do that, why be a reporter?
Why, indeed.
Towers with Vulcan Cannons were interspersed a hundred meters apart along both sides of the Rift. If anything tried to escape, the cannons could create a deadly web of interlocking fire. Each 20mm pneumatically-driven, six-barreled, air-cooled, electrically-fired, Gatling-style cannon was capable of throwing 7,200 depleted uranium rounds each minute into anything that moved. Each tower had their own specified field to fire within, which kept the gunners from aiming directly at another tower. The very idea that anything could survive such a fusillade was unimaginable, but as Andy reminded himself, this was only the first line of defense. By definition that meant the tactical experts who’d created the Rift Defense System planned on things getting through.
Above the towers flew Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with laser targeting for the offsite medium range missiles, as well as video cameras capable of operating in Forward Looking Infra-Red (FLIR), Starlight, optical spectrum and radioactive modes. As another line of first offense, each carried three AGM-114K II Hellfire missiles with High Explosive Metal Augmented Charges.
Satellites were rumored to be on station even farther above, capable of reigning down Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles if they became desperate. Andy occasionally found himself glancing skyward, but he could no more prove the existence of satellites than he could prove the existence of God. Still, he hoped that all the conspiracy theorists and evangelists were right and there was something watching over them other than the hot desert sun.
* * *
That night Andy dreamed of his childhood. Tarzan cavorted through the trees high above a forest, where he swung from vine to vine. Beneath him the earth was rent in much the same manner as it was in Sonora. But where in Sonora the darkness hid everything from the visible eye, Tarzan’s gaze pierced the shadow, revealing converging armies of A
nt Men, Golden Lions, Leopard Men, Snake People and Winged Invaders, just as they’d appeared on the covers of his old, cherished paperbacks.
These creatures, first introduced to Andy from Edgar Rice Burroughs books and the unauthorized Barton Werper volumes, glittered in the darkness as they stared back at their Lord of the Jungle nemesis. But fear found home in their eyes. Tarzan was too much for them. He’d done battle with each of their ilk and cast them back into the dusty confines of their paperback prisons long ago.
Andy turned in his sleep and groaned happily, safe with the knowledge that as long as Tarzan watched over them, he’d be safe.
Then he awoke to screams.
He twisted free from his blanket and crashed from his upper bunk six feet to the concrete floor. The claxons and emergency lights had sent everyone into frenzy. He scrambled to his feet, grabbed his boots, and struggled into them as he tried to hop and run at the same time. The door to the bunker had been left open to let in the breeze. As he approached it, he bumped into the guy in front of him who’d stopped to stare at the sky.
A hundred black silhouettes shot from the Rift into the night, tracer rounds from the Vulcan cannons stabbing them as they rose. Great black insects with glowing orange wings; each was as large as a World War II Japanese Zero. Rising, falling and slashing sideways, they twisted and twirled to get away from the fusillade of angry rounds fired from the air-cooled Gatling cannons.
Transfixed by the aerial death match, everyone jumped as a Predator drone strafed the action, unleashing its payload of three Hellfire missiles that exploded in awesome tornadoes of orange, red, and green fire.
SNAFU: Heroes: An Anthology of Military Horror Page 7
