“I’ve shown you this before,” Esteban said in a Spanish accent that gave each of his words an exotic curl. “And still you continue to oppose us. Perhaps you need a closer look.”
“Stop it,” Adderson said. Even though he knew he was speaking to an animal, he pleaded, “Stop what you’re doing, you piece of shit!”
One of Esteban’s eyebrows rose as it he was taking a small bit of amusement from the automatic fire chattering through the air and the small explosions thumping all around him. “You would rather they die than be turned? That is more honorable than I would expect from a human. Usually, the rats would rather live no matter what that life entails.”
Behind Esteban, more soldiers dropped. The first ones to go down writhed on the ground as their bodies were reshaped and their teeth were knocked out by the tusks that grew in to replace them. In Adderson’s ear, a pilot announced, “Raven Two has a shot.”
“Take it, Raven Two,” Adderson said, before struggling to put as much space as possible between himself and the Full Blood.
The gunner in the helicopter opened fire. Large caliber rounds pummeled the ground in a path that led straight to Esteban and hit with enough force to push the creature back. Esteban dropped to all fours, put his thick back to the NH-90 and stared at Adderson with pure white eyes. The moment he closed them, the helicopter started to wobble. Adderson once more heard screaming through the radio as the pilot’s humanity was peeled away to become the broken, knotted form of a Half Breed.
“Deploy explosives!” Adderson commanded on the open channel.
Esteban clenched his eyes shut even tighter, looking more on the verge of a climax than amid so much death. The soldier in charge of detonating the charges that had been meant to turn a group of Half Breeds and hopefully the Full Blood into pulp was turned before she could even acknowledge the order she’d been given.
“Now that I am so close to a fresher source, all I need to do is reach out to them,” Esteban said, “and they fall. The wretches can be controlled, and if not, at least they won’t become filthy cockroaches that sully the world with their machines.”
Another helicopter went down. The pilot of Raven Three swore he could recover, just before losing control of his limbs and taking a nosedive into the ground.
The Full Blood stalked toward Adderson. “Watch and tell the others what is happening here.”
“What makes you think they don’t know what’s happening?” Adderson asked while struggling to reload his assault rifle. “There’s no place to hide.”
“We are not hiding. And if you told the rest of your army how hopeless your battle truly was, you would have all found better places to run to. Perhaps a better message would be sent if you were to be found scattered across this field.”
Adderson slapped another magazine into the AK and chambered the first round. “The more you kill, the harder we’ll come after you.”
“No,” Esteban growled as he rose up to stand well over seven feet tall. “Not you.”
Adderson tightened his grip on his rifle and steeled himself for one last burst. If he was going to be sent to hell, he wasn’t about to go without doing some damage. Esteban lunged at him with speed that was a surprise even for someone who’d been monitoring Class One movements for months. He barely had enough time to squeeze his trigger, and when his shots cracked through the air, they hit nothing.
A split second before the first bullet sped down Adderson’s barrel, something else plowed into Esteban’s side. All Adderson could see was a dark blur intersecting another blur. A gust of wind blew across his face and the earth rumbled beneath him. When the rumbling stopped, something other than the Full Blood was within his line of fire. Standing between him and the hulking beast that had been ready to kill him was a third, smaller creature with light brown fur and a more compact frame. Adderson was still trying to pick his target when the smaller of the two creatures that had just appeared looked to him and snarled, “Run!”
There was only one helicopter and a fraction of his men left, so Adderson took the creature’s advice. Along the way he keyed the long range radio and prayed that some of the equipment in one of the helicopters was still working. “We need that air strike now!”
“Negative, Major,” the voice on the other end replied. “F-18s are RTB.”
“Why are they returning to base? Who the fuck is this?”
When the voice responded, it was too tired to bother with official protocols. “They made three passes on two separate targets, Major. That’s three apiece. Each time, the shifters scattered before the bombs hit the ground. Pilots say the packs were scattered even before they fired a shot. Analysts think they knew they were coming.”
“What? Are you telling me those things have spies informing them of our movements? They’re fucking animals!”
“Not spies, sir. Looks like they saw the planes coming. Maybe smelled them. Either way, all the planes did was burn civilian structures and run up collateral damages. They’re RTB until we can figure something else out. Do you need transpo to get you out of there?”
Steeling himself while surveying what was left of his men, Adderson said, “Negative. We’re staying.”
Since the human could barely move at a snail’s pace, the Mongrel put herself between Adderson and Esteban. She was a lean feline with more bulk than normally found on others of her breed. The ground shifted as diggers burrowed to get a good position around the Full Blood. Esteban had dealt with Mongrels before, but was more intrigued by the tall man who stood beside the Mongrel.
“I heard the reptiles had emerged from their swamps, but hadn’t seen any for myself,” Esteban said. “Your kind have been hiding for so long, I’ve forgotten your scent.”
“Good for us,” Frank replied. His pants were cut from the same material as those worn by the IRD soldiers, but his chest was covered only partially by a harness that held two pistols, a knife, and a few other pieces of equipment.
“So you come out of hiding for this?” Esteban mused. “To protect a bunch of humans who are already dead?”
“They’re not dead,” he told him with absolute certainty. “Won’t be dead today.”
“If not today, then tomorrow.”
Esteban moved slowly as soldiers continued to scream and thrash around him. The first ones to drop were already climbing onto wobbly legs and yawning to stretch newly weaponized jaws. “If you don’t wish to die along with this Mongrel trash, then step aside and be dealt with when the fight is over. I’d say it won’t take long for that day to come.”
“There have been others saying similar things. We won’t allow this to continue. My people, the Mongrels, the humans, we will all stand against you. Things need to go back to the way they were.”
“Oh child,” he said through a wide, horrific grin. “It’s far too late to hope for that. Now that the Torva’ox is flowing, getting rid of you is the only way the rest of us will get what’s rightfully ours.” With that, Esteban jumped. He stretched out both front paws and opened his mouth as a wild sheen glinted within his milky white eyes.
The Mongrel tried to jump at him as well, but was intercepted before leaving the ground. Esteban was double her weight, and all of that muscle was put to use once she was wrapped up in his embrace and rolling on the ground with him snapping at her face, neck, and shoulders. Her instincts took over then and soon she was returning his attacks in kind. Once they both got their claws involved, the blood started to fly, until both creatures broke away and began pacing around each other.