Well that certainly killed the mood. We chugged along in silence for the next minute.
In DeSoya Caverns, Susan had used the dark, the vast size of the place, and her incredible speed to her advantage. “Speaking of Milo, his faith was sufficient to knock the hell out of Susan once. Any of you guys devoutly religious?”
“I’m Catholic,” Justino said, proudly grabbing the chain around his neck and pulling out the crucifix from beneath his shirt. “Maybe I can scare her off.”
“No offense,” Nik said, “but are you like super Catholic, faith like a rock, never any doubts, obey all your commandments, stroll right through the pearly gates because you’re so righteous Catholic?”
“Uh…” Justino looked a little embarrassed as his two buddies snickered at him, and one of them mumbled something about him and a puta. “What are you implying?”
“That if you waver in your commitment, even the tiniest bit, then it’s just a trinket,” I explained. “She’ll take that necklace and choke you to death with it.”
Justino gave me and Nik a sheepish glance. “Okay, maybe not that good.”
“Don’t blame me, kid,” said Nik. “I didn’t make up your rules. I’m Hindu.”
I suppose I could’ve asked Lopes if she had a priest on the payroll, but in my experience, even professional clergy usually choked and failed miserably when they actually came face to face with a legit vampire. It’s that whole theory versus practice thing.
“Then we’ll just be doing this the old-fashioned way. Watch your angles. No incendiaries or explosives until I give the go-ahead.” Meaning that I wasn’t going to let these guys unleash hell in an enclosed space until I was sure Ray wasn’t present and I was pretty sure the roof wouldn’t cave in on us. I had a terrible thought as I eyeballed the three Portuguese guys. “Y’all speak English, right?”
Justino nodded. “They’re okay. I’m real good.”
“Then make sure Dewey and Louie get the message. No blowing shit up until I say so.” We were the distraction and they knew it, but they’d all volunteered anyway. They had guts, but smart was more important than brave. “Any vampire is deadly, but Susan will be a beast. Do exactly as I say and we’ll have a chance.”
The problem was we didn’t know anything about the caverns. Lopes’ predecessor had sent divers to sneak up to the entrance to measure it to see if their sub would fit, but we didn’t know how big it got past the entrance. If Susan had room to maneuver, she could hit us from all sorts of angles before we’d ever see her coming. If the space was tight, then we could make her approach through a wall of silver and fire.
We spent the rest of the journey going over everyone’s responsibilities. Pereira and Silva would stay with the sub. If everything went horribly wrong, they were our way out. Either that, or we’d be swimming for it. Nik had a messed-up back, so he’d be the last up the ladder. He also had our most dangerous close-range weapon, but that was okay because I needed to make sure Ray wasn’t down here before we used it.
Pereira’s idea of a short trip was anything but short, but I could tell when we got close because the groaning and popping noises changed as we went up, and the murk out the front turned blue again.
Now the hard part: steering between the rocks to get to the cavern entrance.
Our captain snapped something in Portuguese. Justino helpfully translated it for us. “He said that if we crash, don’t panic. We’re close enough to the surface we can pop the hatch and swim… But not to pop the hatch until he says to, or we all die.”
“Fantastic.”
Lopes had made it sound like they’d trained for this sort of thing, like submarine entries into underwater caverns were no big deal for ASS. But the way Pereira’s hands were shaking and by the sweat rolling down his bald head, that wasn’t the case.
CRACK!
That noise was a lot worse than all the previous sounds. It had come right through the hull next to me. We’d hit the side. Silva started shouting. I didn’t need to be fluent to tell that Captain Pereira told him to shut up.
“He says everything is fine,” Justino assured me.
“That didn’t sound fine.”
“Uh, Julie.” Bell got my attention. He gestured for me to look down.
The floor was wet. Then it went from damp, to an inch of water. Then two.
“We’ve got a leak!”
“Is fine, is fine.” Pereira waved one hand dismissively. The view out the front was our headlights bouncing off slime-covered rocks seemingly right in front of us. “Almost there.”
I had to hand it to them—nobody panicked. Their eyes were wide. They were breathing fast. But nobody freaked out inside our metal coffin as the water slowly rose up our boots.
Silva stood up, flipped down a lever, and peered through a viewfinder. I realized that he was looking through a periscope. “Chegamos!” He began giving Pereira more detailed instructions.
“Going up.” Pereira began to giggle like a madman as he flipped a switch and turned a knob. The passengers went from clenched-up terror to all smiles. “Preparem para abrir a portinhola, tres, dois, um.”
At his signal, Justino popped the hatch.
Actual air came in. It was like Christmas.
CHAPTER 24
The Portuguese Hunters went through first. Pride demanded that. Even burdened with ammo and carrying machineguns, they scrambled up the ladder like it was nothing. They might not be that experienced at hunting in general, but they had at least gotten a lot of practice playing with their stupid death-trap submarine. I went next.
Outside, I took a gulp of cool, clean air.
Actually, the air smelled like salt water, rot, and death, but it was better than being inside that metal tube.
Everybody had a powerful flashlight mounted on their weapon, and there was a spotlight on the top of the sub. We’d come up inside a cavern. The top was ornamented with magnificent stalactites which were way closer than I’d been expecting. I’d have to be careful not to crack my head.
The sub was rocking and slowly drifting toward one side. I got to my feet and immediately regretted it, because the top of the sub was really slick. Bell shoved my borrowed weapon up through the hatch. I grabbed hold and hoisted it the rest of the way. It weighed a ton.
Okay, not a ton. Even with the giant plastic ammo box on it and other crap bolted onto it, the gun was only like thirty-something pounds, but still, at that angle, an MG 3 is one serious chunk of steel, and it made me regret that I’d been neglecting the gym since I’d had the baby.
Anuncio was wading toward a shelf of visible rock while his buddies covered him. I turned the flashlight on, worked the charging handle on the German beast, and got ready to help. It was awkward as could be, but half of us were carrying big old belt-feds like this, because I hadn’t been joking when I said that I wanted Susan to approach through a wall of silver.
My guys were hurrying up behind me. Anuncio shouted as he found the tunnel that theoretically would take us to the mansion. As the sub bumped against the shelf of rock, I leapt across, fast, because if you’re going to do something stupid, it’s best to do it fast.
Susan might not have sensed us underwater, but I was certain she knew we were here now.
I’d really wanted to be on the helicopter. I should have been the one roping down onto the roof and smashing out those nursery windows to let in vampire-roasting daylight, and then going through to grab my baby…but the sub team was the distraction to draw Susan off. She might have ignored anyone else, and left Saturnino or his minions to deal with them, but she wouldn’t be able to ignore my presence. She’d also leave Ray behind because she’d try to keep him from danger.
Or so I hoped. To beat Susan, I couldn’t just think like a vampire, I had to think like a motherly one.
As my guys crossed over to the tunnel, I grabbed my bulky radio to report to Lopes. The Portuguese radios weren’t nearly as good as MHI’s. They would’ve been state of the art when I was in grade school. No integr
ated hearing protection earpieces either, so we were all going to be deaf shortly. But with all the rock overhead, all I got was static.
The sub had a bigger radio, so I shouted back that way. “Hey, Captain. Can you reach Lopes? I’ve got nothing.”
He stuck his head up through the hatch. “A little. I told her. She never listens to anyone, but I told her.”
She needed to wait until Susan was down here before swooping in. “Then I’ll relay the go signal to you, and you tell Lopes, got it?”
“Got it.”
Anuncio had more guts than sense because he’d already started up the tunnel by himself. Fucking amateurs. “Back him up, damn it!”
Justino hoisted his big HK21 and ran after his stupid friend. Then it was Coelho, and then it was my turn. At least the space was narrow. The vampires wouldn’t be able to flank us after all. The short guys were okay. I had to crouch and shuffle along behind.
This was a country of short people. Even their smuggling tunnels were too short. Sure enough, I hit my head. On missions like this, MHI usually used a lightweight hockey-style helmet just to keep from braining yourself. But ASS had either big ballistic helmets, which was kind of cumbersome and pointless if nobody was shooting at you, or berets—nothing in between. It’s hard to crouch and gracefully carry a gigantic gun that was totally never intended to be used in enclosed spaces, so by the third time I hit my head, I was really wishing I’d grabbed one of those Kevlar helmets anyway.
I made sure my guys were moving up behind me, and then I started climbing. The tunnel went up and it was steeper than I’d expected. This might have been Saturnino’s emergency escape route. It was so slick with wet moss that I bet even the vampires rarely went all the way down to the sea. It was only wide enough that maybe two people could squeeze in side by side.
I tested that theory when Coelho’s boots slipped and he went tumbling down the rocks. He slid about four feet until he crashed into me. Thankfully he was enough of a professional to keep his finger away from the trigger so he didn’t accidentally kill us all, though from the way his weapon-mounted light blinded me, he’d failed to control his muzzle. I used my free hand to grab the wall. He outweighed me by quite a bit, but I managed not to lose my footing when we collided. “Watch it.”
“Sorry.” He then kind of in slow motion kept sliding past me, while his now slime-covered gloves tried to grab hold of something. While he got his shit sorted out, I stepped over him and kept climbing. I had a baby to rescue.
Anuncio’s shouted warning echoed down the hole. He’d heard something. We had company.
Our point man was armed with a paratrooper Galil, a much more compact and more maneuverable weapon than mine, which had made sense since we didn’t know how tight this place was going to be. “Anuncio, move back. Justino, let him by.”
Thankfully, Huey and Dewey didn’t argue with me. Anuncio made his way back and squeezed past the two of us with heavier weapons, while Justino and I got side by side, braced our machineguns as well as possible, and got ready to meet the welcome wagon.
Our lights revealed that the tunnel was a straight shot for about thirty yards, sloping upward at about a thirty-degree angle. It was like the dictionary definition of fatal funnel.
I flipped open the bipod and went prone. We were using frangible silver bullets. Lopes had said they’re the same brand the MCB buys.
There was a noise coming our way, a sort of wet shuffling. It must have been what Anuncio had heard. Kid had good ears. Then I almost gagged as I smelled them. Unfortunately for me I had a good nose.
That was the stink of undeath. And I wasn’t talking pretty and well-groomed vampire undeath. I’m pretty sure I knew what happened to all those people who’d disappeared in this region over the years, and it explained why ASS had never found any bodies. Why drain somebody and dump the body when you could drain them and just use necromancy to turn them into an undead guard force? Luckily for Hunters everywhere, only the strongest of vampires seemed capable of doing that. Sadly for us, right now we were dealing with a strong vampire.
I don’t know how I knew. It wasn’t like I could feel the tremors of their footsteps. It wasn’t like I could tell volume of bodies by the smell. But somehow I knew that there were a whole lot of monsters heading our way.
“Everybody listen. We’ll lay down fire. When we run dry, we’ll slide down, next shooter takes our place… Repeat. Reload. Take a turn. Don’t shoot until I say so!”
And that’s when the wights started moving into the tunnel.
They’d been human once, but what was left was rail thin, with bones sticking out in places. They were dressed in filthy rags or buck naked. Their fingers ended in blackened claws. Their mouths were jagged rotten holes filled with black teeth. Their eyes reflected our flashlight beams. The tunnel slowly, painfully, began to fill with them.
They were so hideous and torn up that your institutive reaction was to just start blasting as soon as you saw them. “Hold your fire, Justino,” I ordered.
“But…but—”
“Hold.” I wanted as many of them as possible in this tunnel before we started shredding them. I raised my voice so the whole team could hear. “Wights. Don’t let them touch you or you’ll be paralyzed. They’re tough. You’ve got to completely tear them to pieces before they’ll stop.”
They were shaped like people, but they no longer moved like people. The creatures began to scramble up the walls and along the ceiling, suspended somehow, like their hands and feet were sticky. They were taking their time, investigating, a sort of glacial crawl of spider-crawling rot. They were all jagged edges and twisted limbs.
Justino was breathing so hard I was worried he was going to hyperventilate. Oddly enough, I was cool. No matter how bad it got, Ray was just on the other side. “Hold.”
The wights heard my voice. Every undead head simultaneously turned right toward me. Their eyes glowed as they reflected the beam of my flashlight. I couldn’t even tell how many there were, they were bunched in so tight.
Their creeping was done. There was an explosion of movement as the undead charged.
“Now!” I squeezed the trigger.
The roar was deafening as both 7.62 belt-feds opened up. My vision was filled with orange fire as I worked the muzzle back and forth across the narrow tunnel. Justino was screaming incoherently as he fired. Hot shell casings and the disintegrating metal links that had held them together were raining down on me.
The Rheinmetall MG 3 was a crazy-fast bullet hose. The Germans had used this thing’s predecessor during World War II. It was the one the GIs at D-Day had described as making a sound like ripping cloth because of how fast it ran. It had so much cumulative recoil against my shoulder that it started sliding my body across the moss.
The tunnel was packed so full of rotting meat above us that we literally couldn’t miss. MCB ammo was made out of compressed powdered silver. At close range, delivered in a heavy bullet going this fast, they pretty much exploded on impact. Against the emaciated wights, that meant tearing off limbs and chunks. Heads exploded. Jaws flew off. Just what we needed.
Wights fell from the roof. They bounced off the walls. Destroyed bodies rolled and slid toward us. Gun smoke and vaporized blood filled the air.
And then I was empty. One hundred and twenty rounds in one continuous burst.
Yet the wall of meat was still coming.
“Backing up!”
I hadn’t realized, but there was so much foul black blood leaking down the tunnel that it had basically turned into the world’s grossest water slide. All I had to do was pick up the machinegun, roll over onto my back, and gravity did the rest. As Justino and I slid down the tunnel past Anuncio and Coelho, those two started shooting. Only their guns held a whole lot fewer, smaller bullets than ours had, so it wasn’t nearly as impressive.
“Nik, move up,” I shouted as loud as I could, hoping to be heard over the pounding gunfire.
Either he’d heard me or he knew what to do an
yway because he climbed up past me, grimacing because of the heavy weight on his injured back and the canvas straps digging into his shoulders.
Levering around the heavy-ass machinegun, I started to reload. I hinged the top open, then I ripped open the Velcro top of the bag at my side to get out another ammo belt.
Multiple eyeballs blinked inside the bag. “Now, Cuddle Bunny?”
“Not yet, thank you,” I told Mr. Trash Bags as I squished him to the side to grab more ammo.
Radick and Bell were shooting now as Coelho and Anuncio retreated. Somebody screamed as a wight managed to touch him. I looked back. It hadn’t even been the whole wight. Just an arm that had gotten blown off. But it had rolled, thrashing down the tunnel, and had sunk its claws into Coelho’s leg. That was enough to paralyze him, and when he fell down the hole, it was as an out-of-control mess. Most of my guys managed to get out of the way, but he crashed straight into Nik. With the heavy tanks on his back, our doc never had a chance to keep his feet. Both of them fell, rolling, until they landed clear back next to me.
And the monsters were still coming. How many bodies had Saturnino collected down here?
They might have overwhelmed us then, except an angry, ear-piercing shriek filled the cave. It was a terrible, inhuman noise, but there was a tiny bit of it there that reminded me of my childhood, when me or my brothers had done something horrible which had really pissed our mom off.
“You’ll never have him, Julie!”
The sound made the remaining wights freeze in place: missing limbs, black blood pouring from the dozens of fresh holes just punched in their bodies, but still dangling from the walls and ceiling.
“He’s mine now! I know what’s best for him. I won’t let you hold him back!”
She was getting closer. I grabbed my radio and mashed the transmit button. “Come in, Pereira. Tell Lopes she’s here. She is here!”
Monster Hunter Guardian Page 32
