“Search me,” the doctor replied.
“He wasn’t in the mission briefing?” the other asked.
The three of them were speaking in low, urgent whispers. The strain on the doctor’s face had increased and was mirrored in the expressions of the two soldiers.
I had no idea what was going on - which was a feeling I was rapidly getting used to.
“Is this a test? A new recruit?” Pierce said. She turned to me, eyes narrowed, “Come on, kid, what’s your role in all of this? We’ve got less than four minutes here and if the plan’s changed we need to know right now.”
This wasn’t the reaction I’d been expecting. Pierce checked her watch. The two soldiers glanced at each other nervously.
“Three minutes forty-five seconds,” she said.
I looked at the three in total confusion. There was a conspiratorial tension in the room unlike anywhere else on the base.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! What mission? What’s going on?”
“Nobody human heals that fast,” Pierce said, “Even I don’t heal that fast so what are you? Who sent you? Is there another part of the mission we need to know about?”
She was speaking in a harsh whisper, trying to interrogate me without raising her voice.
“I. Don’t. Know. What. You. Are. Talking. About,” I repeated.
“Two minutes thirty seconds,” the soldier to my left said. Beads of sweat were forming on his brow even though it was cold in the medical lab.
“I don’t like this,” said the other soldier, “I don’t like this at all.”
All three took a step back to confer. They were as confused as me.
“Could someone explain what’s going on?” I said, putting the sweater back on.
“He doesn’t know anything,” the doctor decided, “It’s a coincidence. Either that or the Commander sent him here for some other purpose. Maybe he’s supposed to be the next mole. After all, who would suspect a sixteen-year-old kid? We’ve got to carry on with the plan. There’s no choice now.”
“One minute thirty seconds,” one of the soldiers said through gritted teeth. He wiped his forehead with his hand.
Pierce frowned, her mind racing. She moved to a computer and typed something in, her fingers fluttering urgently across the keyboard.
“Kid,” she said once she had finished, “not that my word will mean anything after this but I’ve filed that there were no foreign bodies in your wounds. Nothing to see, no infection. If the Commander wants you on the inside and to keep us in the dark about it, that’s none of our business. Now I strongly suggest you stay out of the way for the next bit.”
“We’re just going to leave him here?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Three...two...one...now.”
All conversation was cut short by the sound of an earth-shattering explosion and a sudden flaring of white light coming in through the windows.
“What was that?” I yelled, backing into the far corner of the hut. The explosion had come from inside the base.
“Armoury,” the soldier said.
Another massive explosion followed, closer than the first. Windows shattered and bits of debris hit the roof of the Nissen hut we were in.
“That’s central command. Torches, now.”
The three of them pulled out hand torches and switched them on. Outside I could hear shouting, screams and boots hitting the ground.
“Kid, if you’re nothing to do with this then you’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever you see, though, you need to know this: We’re not the bad guys here.”
She paused, then added, “Not this time, at any rate.”
A third and final explosion hit, the ground trembled again. The power cut out and the lights went dead. The three torches made sense now.
“Generator,” the soldier said, “That’s it. Let’s go.”
“Wait – you stay here with the kid,” the doctor said, “Something isn’t right here and I don’t want this plan getting messed up by a random civilian. We’ve waited far too long for this.”
The soldier she’d indicated pulled a pistol he’d had concealed under his uniform and trained it on me. I held my hands up to placate him.
“Woah, take it easy there.”
“Let’s go Brooks,” Pierce said.
The soldier and the doctor both kicked off their shoes, quickly stripping down to tank tops and their fatigues. I watched their quick strip down, even more confused about what was going on - if that was even possible by this point.
Then I gawped as the two of them physically transformed in front of my eyes.
It was difficult to make out with only three torches as lighting, but both of their bodies unmistakeably changed. Pierce grew in size and bulk, adding six inches to her former five foot six stature. Her skin roughened in texture and turned a dark shade of red. Her teeth sharpened to savage points, her ears thickened and elongated. Her fingers became savage claws as her eyes turned a glowing red. Muscles appeared where there had been none before as horns sprouted from her forehead.
A demon. I was looking at a demon. There were no two ways about it.
Brooks’ transformation was different. His body twisted as he fell to the floor, black fur sprouting all over his body. His feet and hands stretched. His face contorted and pushed forward, his nose turning into a snout as his mouth warped and stretched. Like the Doctor, there was no doubt what Brooks was.
“A damn werewolf,” I whispered.
The transformed doctor opened the hut’s door. I saw flames and smoke as the door opened. The fires outside highlighted the two monstrous forms, and then they charged into the chaos outside.
“Will you please tell me what’s going on?” I said to the remaining soldier.
The soldier stood at the door, too far away for me to make any move. Even if he’d been close, what was I going to do? Knock his pistol away before he fired it?
“Kid, you’re either a brilliant actor and are just pretending you don’t understand what’s going on, or you’re one of the unluckiest teenagers I’ve ever met,” the soldier said.
“Let’s work with the second theory, shall we?” I replied.
By that point, snappy comebacks were the only defence I had against a world that had gone completely insane. Nothing made any sense, at all. I’d been thrust into a random, increasingly dangerous chain of events that appeared to have no connection whatsoever.
That was what it looked like, at any rate. In fact it was all linked together: the monster, my powers, the timing of this sudden attack on Section 19.
Every last detail was connected.
Chapter Thirteen: Into the Fire
Twenty long, tense minutes passed. Twenty minutes of screams, boots pounding tarmac and minor additional explosions. Hearing Section 19 get torn apart was terrifying. Whatever I might have thought about the organisation, being in the middle of what sounded like a massacre was awful. There were screams of people in pain and dying. One voice cried out she was on fire and begged for help. The way her pleas abruptly stopped suggested that help never came.
After a few minutes I heard the occasional gunshot. Voices shouted commands over the roar of the fires that had erupted. The Nissen hut that I was in was in the middle of two others, so its windows faced theirs. Reflections of the fires burning nearby flickered across the panes. Twisted shadows raced across the drill yard. Other shadows leapt through the fire-lit night and savagely bore down on the soldiers, who didn’t get back up.
More gunshots. More screams.
The soldier with his pistol trained on me kept checking his watch.
“Come on, come on,” he muttered.
Later I’d call this group the ‘Monster Liberation Front’ – or MLF for short - which I thought was quite a good name. In the past six hours I’d come into contact with three separate factions in what Wilson had called ‘The Silent War.’ Victoria Pryce and her contingent which seemed intent on capturing
and studying supernatural creatures, Section 19 whose sole purpose was exterminating them, and now this murderous group.
My relatively straightforward life of fixing cars, hanging out with my friends and hoping my powers were some hormonal phase was long gone.
Eventually the door opened again and Dr Pierce, now back in her ‘human’ form, entered.
“Let’s go. Operation Mayhem worked.”
“We’ve got the files?”
“And done enough damage to keep Section 19 recovering for months,” she confirmed.
“Where’s Brooks?”
“He didn’t make it.”
“The kid?” the soldier said, waving his pistol at me.
“Not in our mission parameters, nothing to do with us,” she glanced at me on her way out, “Good luck kid.”
With that, the pair of them ran back out into the smoke-filled night.
Outside, a van revved up. Over the crackling fires, I heard the front gates being rammed and more gunshots.
Right, to hell with this. It’s time to get out of Dodge, and fast.
I didn’t care what was going on anymore. Or who was fighting who, or why. All I cared about was getting out of here. Major Wilson – if he was still alive - could go whistle. They all could.
I cautiously opened the door and peered outside. Smoke filled the square, billowing out from the fires. The armoury and the office block were ablaze. People poured out of the latter and onto the drill yard, running for cover and trying to find a safe spot. Soldiers ran here and there, but most of them didn’t have weapons. Tactically, taking out the armoury had been a smart move. With nothing to shoot with apart from some pistols stowed here and there, the soldiers had been easy targets for the MLF.
This had been a coordinated attack that had taken years of patience, infiltration and preparation. A one-off strike at the heart of Section 19 that would leave them in complete disarray.
I stepped outside. The smoke made my eyes water and causing me to cough. An eerie, low wind was blowing around the base. It kept the thick smoke low, causing it to obscure everything. The smoke, pushed around by the unnatural breeze, was so thick that I almost tripped over a body as I left the hut. A soldier lying on the floor, face up, eyes blank. His throat was sliced into ribbons, blood congealing underneath his head.
With a shock I recognised the older soldier that had been with me in the back of the Transit van. The one everyone had been joking with less than two hours earlier.
I backed away in horror. I’d never seen a dead body before, not like this at any rate. Brutally murdered. A bloody victim.
I peered through the smoke, still coughing. The three-metre high fence stood just behind the three Nissen huts. I was pumped up, adrenaline and fear coursing through my body. I was sure I could make the jump with enough of a run at it, but that meant going into the drill yard. One jump to get on top of the hut’s roof, another bigger jump to take me all the way over to the other side. There was no other choice.
I headed to where the smoke was thickest, covering my mouth with the sweater, eyes watering hard. As I stepped into the yard, a familiar figure appeared. His face was blackened with soot, his eyes filled with fury. With the fire burning behind him and his streaked face and bloodshot eyes, Major Wilson looked as demonic as anything I’d seen yet.
And he had an automatic rifle pointed directly at me.
I froze, staring down black the muzzle of his rifle.
In case you were wondering, it was around this point I lost track of how many times I’d thought ‘I’m only sixteen, that’s way too young to die!’
Chapter Fourteen: The Cage
I didn’t dare move as Major Wilson stalked towards me, his rifle looming.
“What are you doing?” he barked.
“I...”
“Never mind. You! You two men! We’ve got a civilian here. Make sure he’s safe at all costs.”
After a second I realised that Major Wilson was talking about me.
Two soldiers snapped to my side as Wilson turned his attention elsewhere. The eerie wind that had been blowing around the base stopped and the smoke from the fires drifted upwards.
“Sir, they’ve gone. The base is secure.”
“Secure,” the Major repeated with a bitter tone, “Pursuit?”
“They took out all the vans, sir. We’re on foot until help arrives. And, sir, we captured one. The werewolf. We got two bullets into him. It’s Brooks, sir.”
“Where is he?” Wilson growled.
The soldier pointed towards the cage.
Brooks was on his knees in front of the metal square, his arms bound behind his back. He was bleeding from gunshot wounds to his leg. Wilson’s eyes narrowed. He made a sharp ‘follow me’ gesture with his right hand. The two soldiers and I walked behind Wilson as he stalked towards the cage where Brooks was restrained
The command centre was still burning, the tech staff that had survived the blast were huddled in a group far away. Some of them were tending to the injuries of others. I tried not to look too closely, wondered how many had made it out alive. All the power was out and the floodlights were down. The base was being lit by the hot flames of the three buildings, some torches and moonlight.
Our shadows danced and twisted in the flames as we reached the prisoner.
Brooks was back in his human form, two guns trained to his head. His eyes were glazed, his face expressionless.
Major Wilson squatted down and placed his hand on Brooks’ head, lifting it up to stare into his eyes. Then he let go and Brooks gazed vacantly at the floor again.
“I’m not going to ask why,” Wilson said, his voice soft. Clear. Dangerous.
All around him his men stood to attention. Despite the murderous violence of the last half an hour, the surviving soldiers had recovered and fallen into line.
Major Wilson stood up.
“I just want you to send a message,” he said.
Brooks looked up, startled. There was a glimmer of hope in there for a second. My stomach felt sick as I realised what was about to happen. Wilson’s words up on the roof came back to me.
The cage always stays empty.
No matter what.
“No!” I shouted, “Don’t!”
Major Wilson took a pistol from a soldier, stood behind Brooks and shot him twice in the back of the head.
Brooks’ corpse fell to the ground.
“You didn’t have to do that!” I shouted.
I ran towards Wilson, outraged at what he’d done. Despite everything I’d seen and heard, this cold-blooded execution was somehow the worst of it. One of the two soldiers tasked with protecting me grabbed my arm. If I’d been an ordinary teenage boy, that would have been enough to hold me. It wasn’t. I batted his restraining hand away, sending him spinning back. He grunted in surprise.
I ran the four steps towards Wilson and took a swing at him, aiming right for his jaw. I was ready to hit him with all my strength. If I’d connected, I would have broken his neck.
Wilson stepped to one side. I stumbled past him, my fist failing to get close. I turned, ready to take another swing. Wilson’s pale grey bullet eyes bored into me.
“You didn’t need to kill him!” I yelled.
Brooks’ fallen body was right beside me.
“You need to calm down, son,” Wilson said.
I stood trembling with rage. Wilson’s tone was calm. He ignored the fact I’d taken a swing at him and was ready to do so again.
“Don’t you see what we’re fighting? Are you so blind? Look around you, son. I’ve just lost thirty good men and women. Maybe more. Don’t you see the animals we’re up against?”
“You didn’t have to shoot him!”
As furious as I was, there was no way I would be able to hit Wilson. He was a combat trained military veteran. Me, not so much.
“You could have...”
“Could have what?” Major Wilson spat, his voice raised. For the first time since I’d met him, he betrayed an
actual emotion: Anger, as deep as mine was at that moment, “I could have interrogated him? Locked him up? Kept him in a cage for the rest of his – its – miserable life? Do you know what a werewolf is, son? Have you got any idea? It’s a savage beast that will kill you, your friends and your family without a second’s hesitation. And those it doesn’t kill it will infect and make one of its own and believe me that is worse. Brooks was a good man. He must have been infected at some point. Turned. Once you’re turned, there’s no way back - and he knew it. He isn’t the first man I’ve lost and he won’t be the last.
“You might not like it, you might hate me, but I make the tough choices so that civilians like you don’t have to. I’ve told you before, son. This is war. And if you don’t believe me, then look around you. Look at the dead. Look at the injured. Look at what less than half a dozen of these things did in half an hour to a military base.
“Now imagine if they were let loose in the world. Imagine what would happen if the public found out they existed. Imagine the chaos, the death, the mayhem. It wouldn’t just be them against us. We’d turn on each other in panic and fear. Everyone would suspect everyone else. There’d be blood on the streets. Think about it. Just think about it, you sanctimonious little shit!”
It wasn’t just the words he said that stopped me. It was the sheer pent-up anger behind them.
I unclenched my fists, immobilised by Major Wilson’s tirade.
As abruptly as it had begun, his speech was suddenly over. I realised it had been as much for the benefit of his men as for me. He wiped the soot and grime from his face. He looked tired.
No, that’s not right.
He looked exhausted.
“I know it’s hard, son, but I’ll do whatever is necessary to keep the people safe,” he said, his voice calm again, “I hope that maybe one day you’ll understand that.”
He turned to walk away, back towards the still burning central building. I think only I heard the next thing he said, it was so quietly spoken. I don’t know if he even meant me to hear it.
“And maybe one day, God will forgive me,” he whispered.
Personal Demons Page 6
