Around the next corner, a lattice of thorny vines crisscrossed the path. Rhino waved Fuego back and used his serrated spear blades to carve a doorway in the spiny mat.
Fuego walked closely behind, followed by X and then Wendig. Whale held rear guard with the Minigun, watching and listening.
X wasn’t sure that even it would stop what they were hunting. The tracks in the mud were three times the size of Rhino’s. He eyed the path the creature had taken to get around the vines. Branches thicker than his arm were snapped off at seven feet above the ground.
The submachine gun that X carried suddenly felt no more substantial than a slingshot, and the spear may as well be a mop handle.
He missed Ty, and thinking of him brought back a swarm of memories of the other friends he had lost over the years. But there wasn’t time to think about those people now. He had to get the hell off this island and back to the living. Magnolia, Rodger, and Miles still needed his help.
A distant cracking sound snapped him alert, and he slowly scanned the green landscape of his night vision for the source. To the left of the road, several ruined houses, mostly just foundations and the bones of walls, stood between the trees.
Another cracking sound came from behind X, and a scorpion almost the size of Miles came skittering out of a pile of concrete. Whale split the creature in half with his axe, and the pincers clicked feebly as a pool of green blood spread outward.
Rhino ordered the team ahead, pointing with his spear. The tracks continued beside the road but jeered off on the right to avoid a section blocked by a fence of waist-high plants.
Spiked branches with suction-cup tentacles hung limp, looking almost harmless, but X knew better. Five years earlier, he had watched a pack of Sirens get tangled in them.
The barbs carried a venom that paralyzed their prey; then the tentacles sucked the victim dry. Days later, he had come across the dead Sirens. Their milky-white skin had shriveled over the bones, the flesh sucked out.
“Hold up,” X said. “We need to find a way around those.”
Rhino stopped and scanned the structures left of the road. Then he checked the tracks that diverged to the right.
Fuego raised his flamethrower and looked to Rhino.
“Wait,” X said, holding up his hand. “You want to tell every beast where we are?”
Ignoring X, Rhino gave Fuego a nod and stepped back. A jet of flames shot out of the barrel, engulfing the spiny black thicket. The tentacles came alive, squirming in the intense heat, before beginning to wither and turn to ash.
The men followed Rhino through the now-cleared path off the left side of the road, into a lightly vegetated area outside a two-story building. The concrete walls, probably built to withstand a hurricane, had withstood the test of time, and it still had part of a roof.
Framing the house on both sides were the remains of less resistant structures, now little more than foundations and basements full of dark water. X saw a V-shaped ripple cross the pool on his right and moved closer to the team.
He bumped off his night-vision goggles, relying on the glow of the burning thorn bushes behind him as he followed the others through the concrete building’s open front doorway.
Columns held up a sagging roof over the entrance. Inside, a rusted metal stairwell led to a second floor. The team cautiously made its way up the stairs and across the creaky floorboards.
Rhino motioned X into one of the bedrooms. The only furnishings that had survived were the frames of metal chairs, and the rusted springs of a mattress. A tapestry of moss and mold covered the black walls.
Wendig’s raspy breathing told X the man was in a lot of pain. He doubted they could count on him to help when they did find their target.
A roar snapped X from his thoughts.
He moved over to an empty window frame and watched the flames. Smoke rose from the smoldering plants, which continued to squirm and writhe like the giant octopus he had killed on the Sea Wolf.
Rhino moved beside X. “Hold your fire until it gets close,” he said. “Aim for the eyes.”
“Eyes?” X muttered, picturing a beast with eyes the size of a human. He watched the flames, realization setting in. The lieutenant wanted the beast to see the fire.
This was a trap. So why did X feel like bait?
Through the cracked wall between the two rooms, he could see Fuego and Whale, their weapons pointed out the windows.
X brought up his submachine gun and looked back to the flames. They were spreading into the forest across the road now, licking their way up a tree trunk to the limbs.
His eyes roved back and forth, searching the canopy and the terrain for any movement. Tree branches cracked, and X centered the barrel on a palm that jerked and then swayed from side to side. Its lavender fronds shook violently before the entire thing crashed to the ground. There came another cracking sound, like a bone being snapped.
“Get ready,” Rhino said to X. He said something in Spanish to Wendig, who moved into the other room to tell Whale and Fuego.
Rhino’s almond eye slots turned to X.
“You’re about to meet the devil,” he said. “If you can take its head, you might impress el Pulpo. He’s one of only a few men ever to kill one of these beasts.”
Though X couldn’t see his features, he picked up on the excitement in the Cazador lieutenant’s voice. It made him wonder, did these people actually enjoy fighting monsters?
Wendig came back into the room, taking the window next to X’s. Using the ledge as a bench rest, he got down on one knee and shouldered the rifle with his good arm.
The fire continued to spread into the jungle, hiding the trees and undergrowth behind a dense wall of flame. X moved his gun barrel from left to right, then back again. All at once, the foliage across the road came alive as hundreds of rodent-size insects skittered out of their lairs. The creatures were fleeing something besides the fire.
X flinched as the upper half of a flaming tree came flying across the road and through the open window in the other room. He turned just as the projectile smashed into Whale, in a shower of sparks. The biggest man X had ever seen flew backward like a straw doll.
Rhino shouted something in Spanish, then said, “I’m going to flank it.”
Before X could react, the lieutenant was running out of the room and down the stairs.
X looked back to the road just as a walking nightmare burst out through the wall of fire. Swollen muscles flashed orange across a body as thick as one of the tree trunks. The thing opened a bony jaw and let out a roar louder than thunder.
Wendig and X answered the cry with automatic gunfire. In the other room, Fuego directed his flame nozzle onto the road, coating the beast as it lumbered toward the building.
Looking through the iron sights, X hardly believed what he was seeing. Unlike the Sirens, the monster didn’t have a skin covering. And yet, the muscles didn’t appear to be unprotected, and the head was almost all bone.
The burning beast brought up black-taloned hands to protect its eyes from the gunfire and flames. X had never seen one of these before, but Tin and Magnolia had described something similar that they’d encountered at the Hilltop Bastion.
Was this the type of beast that killed Commander Rick Weaver?
The thick pectorals rhythmically flashed orange, as if in time with its thumping heart, as it reached over its back. When the creature brought its arm back down, the claws held a bony dart the length of a man’s forearm.
It threw the projectile, but X ducked just in time to avoid it. A long, sharp bone thudded into the wall and stuck like an arrow, quivering.
X rose back to his feet and waited to get a shot at the creature’s eyes, as Rhino had instructed. The monster hunched down as it ran toward the house. For such a large beast, it moved surprisingly fast, darting from tree to tree for cover.