Then he smelled it. The unmistakable odor of carrion left to rot in the sun for weeks. The scent of the Skulls.
He could see the silhouette of the horns brimming around the beast’s head.
Was this thing in fact waiting to ambush them?
He held up his fist. Tate came to a halt.
Slowly, he centered his aim on the beast’s forehead. Maybe the thing was dead. Maybe it was—
Suppressed gunshots burst from the pool house. The muffled gunfire was loud enough to ricochet off the front of the villa. A handful of birds took flight from one of the palm trees, squawking, their wings beating at the air.
“Skulls in the pool house,” Reynolds reported. “Two. Advanced stages of infection. Both dead.”
O’Neil waited a second more, hoping that he wouldn’t hear those words again.
Eagle down. Eagle down.
He prayed that even if those Skulls had surprised Reynolds, the operators had avoided so much as a scratch from the beasts.
“Pool house clear,” Reynolds said. “Headed toward the villa now.”
“Copy,” a Delta operator said. “Southern approach clear. Ready to clear the villa on your mark.”
O’Neil let out a breath of relief and pushed forward toward the sedan again. The Skull inside hadn’t made a single move, despite the gunfire.
In all likelihood, it was dead.
“Possible contact,” he said. “Investigating.”
But O’Neil wasn’t taking any chances. He was close to the door, but there was no way he would just open the vehicle and risk that thing lunging out.
He aimed at where its head should be and fired. The driver’s side window fell away in a rain of glass pebbles. He heard the punch of a bullet tearing through bone and meat, that sickening wet sound he had heard so many times.
Then he pulled open the door.
The beast toppled out over the pavement, bone plates cracking against the drive. Flies burst from the monster’s body in a buzzing cloud. The smell hit O’Neil stronger than before, making his eyes water. Black fluid leaked from the hole in its forehead where O’Neil had hit it.
But the monster didn’t so much as twitch. He kicked the beast in the chest, turning it over.
A haggard hotel concierge’s uniform clung to its body, the cloth soiled and tattered. Long claws curved out of its fingers, and its cheekbones jutted out of its gaunt face. Its eyes had long-since been devoured by some creature or perhaps the maggots squirming over its body.
“Chief,” O’Neil called over the radio. “I got a dead one.”
“You killed it, or it was already dead?”
“Already dead.” The beast’s grotesque body was being slowly devoured by all manners of slimy, squirming insects. There were five bullet holes in its chest and abdomen, where what was left of the flesh was slightly puckered, sticking up through the tears in its clothes. “Someone killed this monster. With a gun.”
“Recently?”
“This thing has been dead for at least a few days. Maybe weeks. Not really sure.”
“This might mean we’ve still got RAMF activity in the area,” Reynolds said. “Or Russians cleaning house. Look out for potential squirters.”
Reynolds’s team joined O’Neil’s at the front of the villa. Their goal was to clear the second floor while Delta and Charlie cleared the first. They would regroup to retake the basement level before calling the clear.
O’Neil and his team stacked up at the entrance to the villa, Alpha stacking behind them. The front door to the villa was already open a few inches, and O’Neil could smell the odor of mildew and mold. Just from his vantage, he could see the front desk. Blood splatters stained the wall behind it.
“All teams, move,” Reynolds said.
O’Neil led his team through the lobby. In one corner, lay scattered, cracked bones. Bloodstains darkened the ornate geometric patterns of the Moroccan rugs covering the floor. Across the walls, between paintings and photographs in shattered or tilted frames, bullet holes punctured the wood paneling. The glimmer of moonlight through the grimy, dusty windows fell on bullet casings spread over the floor.
Delta and Charlie teams filtered in through the door opposite O’Neil. He gestured for Tate to take point as they moved toward the curved staircase to their left. Their boots smacked against the sodden rug, each step squeezing out water.
At the top of the stairs, they found more bullet casings. O’Neil scoped the walls down the corridor. Between the numbered doors, he saw more bullet holes and casings across the floor. Puddles of dark water spread between those rooms.
O’Neil treaded careful down the hall with Tate, doing their best not to splash too much through all the water. The teams split up, working in two-man groups to clear each of the hotel rooms. Tate and O’Neil stacked up by their first door.
Pausing a second, O’Neil sniffed the air. The odor of the mildew and mold was ferocious, overwhelming. He thought he could detect the smell of rotting meat, too, but wasn’t sure.
Only one good way to see if there was a Skull behind that door.
He signaled for Tate to push it open.
O’Neil swept his rifle across the room, taking in the disheveled bed with its crumpled blankets. Dark stains covered the wrinkled fitted sheet that had been pulled back to a mattress that looked just as soiled.
The door to the balcony was wide open, letting in a cool breeze. Maybe that was the cause of the flooded upper floor.
He and Tate cleared the rest of the room, checking the closet for any lingering creatures. Then they moved into the bathroom.
“Shit,” O’Neil said.
While the porcelain sink was still there, cracked and tilted sideways, there was no shower or bathtub where he presumed there should be. Instead, broken pipes stuck out of the blackened walls like torn blood vessels. There was a hole cut into the ceiling of the bathroom where O’Neil could see the stars. He took a step forward. The floor creaked and snapped as if threatening to break.
There was another hole in the floor, and the mangled remains of the bathtub had fallen into the reading room on the first floor directly beneath this one. While he looked around the bathroom, he saw fragments of bone and fanglike teeth in the corners.
“Whoever was killing Skulls in this place packed more than guns,” O’Neil said. “We’re looking at a grenade blast or some other explosives.”
He heard footsteps below on the first floor. An IR laser cut through the darkness. A Charlie operator looked up at him through his NVGs and gave a brief wave.
O’Neil and Tate retreated to the hall. Entered the next bedroom where they found a similar scene of destruction. What once had been an opulent room for luxury travelers was covered in bullet casings and blood.
He noticed a boot sticking out from behind the bed, then signaled to Tate. They rounded the bed.
There was no body.
Only a single leg ending in shredded, leathery tissue, surrounded by a dark stain in the rug beneath it.
The boot appeared to be military issue. Like something he would expect on an RAMF soldier. What remained of the pants looked like pieces of a blotchy camouflage uniform.
He and Tate crept to the bathroom door. Claw marks scarred the wooden doorframe and wall. Half the door seemed to have been chewed through.
That smell of death only grew stronger the closer O’Neil got to the door. He couldn’t hear anything beyond the creaking of the villa and the persistent dripping of water, but he was almost certain that something was beyond that door.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. His body tensed, as if ready for a fight. Those instincts buried in him from years of training and experience in the field seemed to know what to do even before his mind did.
So when Tate opened the door, he was ready for a Skull to come out swinging and biting.