“He just… I don’t know where he went,” Reynolds said. “We got two squirters. They… They’re just…”
Squirters was operator-talk for shooters. But O’Neil didn’t understand why two shooters, even if they had the jump on Reynolds and McLean, got the guy’s tongue so tied.
Then the canvas top of the truck tore open. Two dark shapes emerged from the truck, heads brimming with bony horns, claws arcing from their fingertips. O’Neil swung his rifle up toward them.
But they carried their own weapons. Rifles.
Nothing about that made sense to O’Neil.
The two apparent Skulls began firing right at O’Neil and Tate, forcing them to press against the side of the vehicle. Bullets sparked against the truck’s metal frame. From inside it, the voices of other beasts roared against their muzzles, their calls muffled but no less ferocious.
“Two squirters on top of the third truck,” Loeb said.
Gunfire burst from his and Van’s position by the Russian prisoners. Almost as soon, bullets lanced back at them, tracer fire cutting through the dark, forcing them behind the nearest concrete barrier.
The two Russian prisoners next to Loeb and Van surged upward. One ran his shoulder hard into Van’s chest. Van slammed the stock of his rifle against the man’s face, snapping cartilage and breaking flesh. The other man pushed past him, starting to run, hands still tied behind his back.
Loeb fired at the guy before he could escape. The second, wounded prisoner, ran toward the monsters with the guns. He seemed to be yelling at them. Loeb swiveled and fired at the man, sending him somersaulting into the asphalt, dead.
The monsters on top of the truck howled in anger and sent a wave of gunfire back at Loeb and Van, forcing them backward.
O’Neil had to stop these bastards before they tore up both Alpha and Bravo. He saw Reynolds still dragging McLean to safety at the other end of the convoy, smoke and fog swirling around him.
“Charlie, Delta, take out those squirters,” O’Neil said.
“Fog and smoke are getting too dense again,” one of the operators called back. “Can’t see clearly enough to take a shot. We’re moving to find better positions.”
Reynolds would be a sitting duck if those two squirters turned their attention on him.
“Tate, cover me,” O’Neil said.
Tate provided suppressing fire, shooting up at the beasts on top of the truck. O’Neil raced around the middle truck where he and Tate had been hiding. Made it to the other side of the vehicle, then adjusted his aim toward the top of the third truck where those hostiles had been.
One of them was silhouetted against the fog, gun pressed against his shoulders. The spikes along his back stuck up, unmistakably those of a Skull. His limbs were lean, bulwarked by plates of bony armor, and his face looked as decayed and monstrous as any beast O’Neil had ever seen.
But the monster had an AK pressed against its shoulder as if it were a well-trained soldier, no different than the Russians.
A beast that could operate a weapon. A beast that had been hiding in the back of the Russian’s truck, waiting for this moment. Operating intelligently, as if it had a plan.
Skulls were no better than a fictional zombie, mindless beasts that operated only with a simple set of instincts: kill and devour.
This thing was working like a soldier, acting like it could think ahead. Like it wanted more than just fresh protein to fill its belly. It wanted to survive. To defend itself and the convoy.
No, no, no.
O’Neil was going nuts. This had to be an illusion. There had to be an explanation.
He squeezed the trigger.
Rounds tore out from his rifle, hitting the beast, chipping away at its shoulder armor and the spikes along its back. The monster went down, and O’Neil turned his attention on the second beast. That monster spun toward O’Neil, firing as it did, forcing O’Neil back to the shelter of a concrete barrier along the side of the road.
The firing from on top of the truck suddenly stopped.
Had he hit both beasts?
He thought he’d just gotten the one, but neither were standing now. Maybe they were both just pressed flat against the top of the truck.
Then suddenly he saw a shape hurtling from the third truck where the beasts had been to the middle truck in the convoy. The monster tore into the canvas top covering the cargo bed, disappearing inside.
“Squirter in the second truck,” O’Neil said. “One still on the third.”
His aim twitched from one truck to the next, waiting to see which one a new threat would emerge from first.
In the distance, he heard the thump of the approaching helicopters. The birds would be here soon, but the area wasn’t clear yet.
“Casper, this might be a hot extract,” O’Neil said.
“We were supposed to do this clean,” the pilot called back. “We need a sample from that shipment.”
“Plans changed,” Reynolds called. “We need an immediate medevac.”
Suddenly a loud rip sounded in the fabric top of the second truck. Four shapes exploded out, all carrying rifles, their bodies covered in plates and spikes and horns just like the first one O’Neil had seen.
None of it made any sense.
All he could do was aim and fire. These creatures had the strength and speed of normal Skulls though. They tore off across the truck, firing at O’Neil and the rest of Bravo and Alpha.
He thought he hit another of the beasts. Saw the blood and bone fleck off in a spray that made the beast tumble. But it recovered just as quickly. All four beasts sprinted away, disappearing into the fog and smoke, winding between the destroyed vehicles at the front of the convoy.
“What the fuck was that?” Tate called.
“Delta, Charlie, four squirters headed your way,” O’Neil said over the channel. “Loeb, Van, cover Tate and me. Tate, rear of the middle truck. Now.”
Gunfire burst out around Delta and Charlies positions. They called out potential movers, but they sounded uncertain.
Not good.
O’Neil met Tate at the rear of the truck. He couldn’t help Delta or Charlie until he was sure the trucks were actually clear. That nothing else would be jumping out at them from the vehicles. Soon as Tate ripped open the rear canvas flap into the cargo hold, O’Neil surveyed the interior. He saw another couple of oil drums without labels or markings.
Then he saw the shackles and metal chains along the truck floor. Three empty sets.
That explained where the three new movers had come from.
“Middle truck, clear,” O’Neil called.
He and Tate sprinted for the cabin of the last one. Saw nothing inside. Moved to the rear, where Reynolds had been with McLean.
“I shot one above this truck,” O’Neil whispered. “Might still be inside.”
Tate nodded. “Let’s take that mother fucker down, man.”
As soon as the rear flap came free, O’Neil’s aim centered on a beast sprawled out on the floor of the truck bed. There was a pool of blood stretching from the monster, a rifle lying next to its body. But O’Neil took no chances. Not after what he had just seen. He planted three rounds into the monster, bullets punching into its head.
The beast jerked slightly with the shuts, but it made no move to attack him or O’Neil.
“Convoy is clear,” O’Neil said over the channel.
He heard more gunshots from the rear of the convoy where Alpha was. He and Tate rushed around the truck, pressed close against its side, rifles ready to assist Alpha.
“Prisoners tried to fight back,” Stuart said, sounding breathless. “They’re all KIA now.”
“Anyone got eyes on more hostiles?” Reynolds asked.
“Negative,” came the calls from Bravo and Alpha.
“Negative,” a Delta operator said over the line.
The fog seemed to be growing heavier. O’Neil couldn’t even see the front of the convoy anymore. Delta and Charlie’s overwatch positions weren’t going to do much good now.