The roar of the helicopter’s engines was growing louder, though O’Neil still couldn’t see them. He was just thankful that they were on their way. Whatever the hell they had just seen, whatever they had just fought, something was very, very wrong.
Their intel analysts must have missed an important piece of data. Because unless he was going crazy, he had seen Skulls actually using weapons.
Beyond the thrum of the helicopters, O’Neil thought he heard another noise.
Howls. Shrieks.
He looked at Tate. “Is that just me?”
Tate shook his head. “No, man. That’s not just you.”
They were kneeling now at the rear of the third truck. Not far from where Reynolds was trying to cover the downed SEAL with his two other operators.
Reynolds turned toward O’Neil. “I don’t know what the hell just happened but blow the trucks. Blow them all to hell.”
O’Neil instructed his men to start placing the charges they were originally going to use to stop the convoy beneath the trucks. They gathered up all the weapons they found on the Russian soldiers, grenades, magazines, rifles, and tossed them next to the trucks as well.
Back in the Middle East and Afghanistan, they always destroyed the weapon caches of fighters after they had killed them. They left nothing behind that other fighters could pick up and use against them later.
O’Neil wondered if that was what Reynolds was thinking. That maybe the Skulls in Lithuania were somehow smarter, or the Russians controlled them, or some other equally insane shit and these weapons would fall back into enemy hands.
He still wasn’t sure what to believe about the Skulls. But he did believe that destroying these weapons was the right call.
While he set a remote detonator, the helicopters’ engines grew loud enough it sounded as if the birds might finally be above them. They would be taking it extremely slow with the crappy visibility of course, but O’Neil was relieved to finally know they were almost out of Klaipėda. Almost out of this terrible mess.
Because McLean needed help—and O’Neil didn’t want anyone else transported out by medevac tonight.
So when Delta and Charlie came back over the comms, he could not help but feel another cold rush of adrenaline and the painful bite of fear strike through his gut.
“Alpha, Bravo,” one of the Delta operators called. “We got movers. Tons of movers.”
The gunfire came a second later, flashes of light bursting in the fog. Each blast seemed to illuminate a different silhouetted beast. These didn’t carry rifles or other guns. All they had were claws and teeth.
But as O’Neil saw more and more of them slicing through the fog, he knew they were no less deadly.
-12-
“Loeb, Van, fall back!” O’Neil yelled.
As the two backpedaled toward him, they fired at the monsters pushing out of the fog. Beasts crumpled under the onslaught of cover fire.
Reynolds sent Stuart and Henderson to roll one of the oil drums off the back of a truck.
O’Neil kept shooting at the beasts as they appeared. Wisps of fog swirled around their horns and spikes, trailing from the flat fins and barbs poking out of their malformed bodies. Their screams and shrieks cut through the haze, and they barreled toward the sounds of gunfire.
Their demonic voices pierced the low, rhythmic thump of the chopper blades.
“Alpha, Bravo, Casper One, on your position,” the first Black Hawk pilot said.
The rotor wash pushed back some of the fog, clearing the urban landscape around the birds, revealing more of the Skulls tearing toward their position.
“Drop cargo nets!” Reynolds said.
A net fell from the side of the chopper as Reynolds directed Stuart and Henderson to load the oil drum, securing their cargo.
From the front of the convoy, the sounds of battle raged. But O’Neil could make out the shape of the second chopper, moving in to collect Delta and Charlie. He continued to fire at the Skulls, taking measured shots, watching their bodies tumble across the asphalt or collapse onto the vehicles they climbed over.
Shot after shot, he worked through the beasts, side-by-side with Tate. Loeb and Van had moved into a second position, helping to provide cover as Reynolds’s team loaded up the oil drum.
“Changing!” O’Neil shouted, ejecting a spent magazine, then grabbing a second.
They just needed to buy a few more seconds. Then they would have that oil drum secure, and they could load up, get the hell out of here. But that oil drum might not have all the answers. They had another lingering mystery to solve. One that made every bone in his body ache with morbid curiosity. “Reynolds, we need to load the body of that beast in the truck, too.”
“Will do!” Reynolds called back over the line.
O’Neil jammed his fresh magazine home, pulling back on the charging handle, and began firing again. The beasts were making it closer and closer.
One threw itself over a car. It was dressed in a shredded military uniform, its mouth torn open in a vicious snarl as it let out a blood-curdling cry.
For a second, O’Neil expected the beast to drag out a rifle and begin firing at them. Instead, it dropped to all fours and galloped straight at him. He planted several rounds into its body, each hitting with a resounding clunk, breaking through its bony armor. The monster tumbled headfirst into the ground, then flipped over one of its dead comrades.
Despite the sheer number of monsters rushing out from the haze toward them, O’Neil didn’t see any of the beasts trying to pick up a weapon and fire at them. They all just lunged suicidally toward the SEALs, making no effort to conceal themselves from the rain of fire.
“Loaded!” Reynolds said. “Bravo, let’s go!”
“Loeb, Van, now!” O’Neil said.
The two rushed toward the chopper. It hovered dangerously low above the last truck in the convoy. There was far too much wreckage around the convoy for the bird to land. The crew chief and medic aboard the bird leaned out the open side door, hoisting McLean into the bird as Reynolds and another operator supported him from below.
Just as they dragged the SEAL into the bird, a Skull climbed atop one of the trucks and started to sprint straight at the bird.
“Casper, look out!” O’Neil said.
He started to fire at the Skull. The beast pounced, lunging, claws outstretched as it soared at the bird.
The helicopter banked hard away, and the medic, crew chief, and McLean tumbled inside on the deck. The bird dragged the cargo net with the oil drum and the corpse over the asphalt. Reynolds fell back onto the ground, losing his balance.
O’Neil kept firing, his rounds cutting into the beast. It was dead before it hit the asphalt.
But it had been too close. The chopper couldn’t easily maintain a hover this close to the ground with Skulls approaching from every side.
Instead, the chopper moved up toward where O’Neil was. The crew chief let down two rope ladders, one on either side. Reynolds signaled for his men to climb on. O’Neil sent Loeb and Van up the other.
More and more of the beasts shot out from the haze. Some appeared to be in the early stages of transformation, their bones just starting to press against their flesh, their clothes dirty but intact. Others seemed to have been Skulls since the beginning of the outbreak, long spikes and fins blooming from every part of their body.
All barreled toward the Black Hawk in a terrifying rage.
“O’Neil, get on,” Reynolds called over the line.
O’Neil glanced back. Saw Reynolds was on his way up the ladder. Loeb and Van were loaded. It just him and Tate on the ground now.
“Go,” O’Neil said to Tate. The man began climbing up the ladder as the rest of the team provided covering fire from the bird.