Andris handed O’Neil the last of the Hunters’ explosives and the detonator. “Very well.”
O’Neil took the explosives, handing one to Loeb. He gave a signal to the others as they left the Hunters behind.
Ahead, he saw bodies sprawled between the crates and refuse. The concrete was slick with blood from soldiers and Skulls killed in the fray.
“This is it, boys,” he said. “Tate, Loeb, might be our last mission as SEALs. Even if we escape this, God only knows what the hell is next for us.”
Tate nodded, his eyes narrowing, looking fiendish in the flash of gunfire erupting around the base. “Man, I wouldn’t have it any other way. We never failed a mission before, and I’m not planning on starting now.”
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going back home after this,” Loeb said. “Hug my family. Then get the fuck back out here and kill some more of these assholes.”
“They already slaughtered my family,” Hassan said. “Today, we slaughter them.”
“Well put,” O’Neil said, nodding to the man who had faithfully stood beside them as a translator and ally since being taken prisoner.
O’Neil regretted that they hadn’t done anything to help Hassan’s family. Revenge was the only remedy they could offer.
“Stick close to me,” he said. “I don’t think there are any other Hybrids on our side out there, so we’re it. We’ve got to do everything we can to keep the Skulls from attacking us. Calm them down, or direct them back toward the Russians, I don’t care. We’ll do whatever it takes to get to that ship. Got it?”
The other three nodded, their faces and bodies and claws covered in blood.
And so he ran.
He scooped up a rifle from a dead Russian. A pack of Skulls about twenty feet ahead had their faces buried in the guts of another dead soldier. O’Neil sent a burst of bullets ripping through one of the monster’s ribs. Two other skeletal beasts looked up at him between the horns and bulbous bony growths erupting from their flesh. Blood dripped down their faces in crimson beards. A third tore its head up, long tendrils of hair matted to its scalp. It had a rope of intestine in its yellowed teeth.
O’Neil squeezed the trigger again. The rifle butted against his shoulder with the shots. One of the Skulls went down hard. The other two started to run at O’Neil and the others in a dead sprint.
Tate rushed to the meet them. He grabbed the first by its throat, lifting the monster off its feet, then slammed it against the ground hard. The back of its head split open. Its limbs twitched as a halo of crimson spread around its broken skull.
The other monster leapt at Loeb. He snagged its shoulders, preventing it from impaling him. Hassan sent his own claws straight through the monster’s face. The creature fell limp in Loeb’s arm, and they let its corpse drop to the ground.
Next to the soldier, Tate picked up a rifle and threw it toward Loeb. Loeb caught it as Tate found a second. Hassan scavenged his own weapon from a Russian whose skeleton was already nearly picked clean.
An explosion sounded somewhere deeper in the base. Maybe from the merc’s leader, Dom, and Reynolds. He could only hope their part of the mission had been more successful than his.
Orange balls of fire bloomed into the night, carrying with them massive black clouds of smoke. The air was thick with the odor of blood and death and burning plastic and flesh. Gunfire continued to pour from every direction, sparking against the concrete or deflecting off the shipping containers. Skulls leapt down from the tops of the walls. Screams of people and beasts rose in a symphony that would make the devil smile.
Somewhere else another boom roared from the warehouses. Fire danced across crates, casting long shadows from monsters rushing toward the confusion.
O’Neil led his team through more groups of ravenous Skulls. Fought them off with bullets and claws. Focused on sending them in a rage away from their group, hoping they could redirect the beasts toward the Russians.
But the monsters were so caught up in the frenzy, he was finding it damn near impossible to do anything but fight.
The group pushed their way toward the beginning of the pier, where the monsters were most concentrated. Three Russian soldiers were surrounded by the beasts. They fired frantically into the monsters’ ranks, but the creatures encircled them, rushing over the crates and oil drums in a bony wave of terrifying abominations.
The first Russian soldier was torn apart by the beasts’ claws. He disappeared as four Skulls descended on him. The other two soldiers had their backs pressed against each other. O’Neil only caught glimpses of them as the sheer number of beasts swallowed them beneath their masses.
O’Neil looked for another way around the monsters.
But he saw none.
They would have to force their way through the tangle of feverish creatures to get to the pier and the freighter already drifting away from port.
“Open fire,” O’Neil said.
He caught the first Skull in his sights, blasting away at its chest and head. Bone fragments sprayed away from its overgrown jaw as its head snapped back. While the beast collapsed in a gory heap, O’Neil aimed at his next target. Sent a burst of rounds that hammered into the monster’s shoulders and chest.
But just as he roved his sights over another Skull, his bolt locked back. The rifle clicked uselessly. He saw no spare magazines anywhere nearby.
“Empty!” Tate said, dropping his weapon.
Loeb squeezed off a few more shots just as the rest of the Skulls turned in their direction.
O’Neil let his rifle fall to the ground, too, ready to make a run for it through the beasts. He tried to focus on that beach in Virginia. That feeling of peace he had learned to call in. But with the booming explosions, raging fires, and the relentless odor of charred bodies, he could not concentrate.
There was no strength left in his exhausted mind to summon. No ability to stop the Skulls in their tracks.
Tate and Loeb and Hassan appeared equally spent, their chests heaving. Scratches and blood covered their bodies.
They were the last of their comrades left alive tonight. And it looked like they too would soon meet the fate that the others had if they didn’t do something, anything to stop those Skulls.
Hassan stepped forward as the first of the dozen beasts started toward them. “Let me take them. You run.”
“We ain’t going to leave you, man,” Tate said.
“You three know how to use these explosives. I do not. I will distract the Skulls. You will run.”
“That’s suicide,” O’Neil said.
“It is courage. Courage that will take me to Allah. I could not ask for a better death.”
O’Neil noticed a tear streak down the man’s grotesque face, mixing with the blood. “You’re right, my friend. I will not forget your sacrifice.”
“Nor I yours when I am with my children and wife in paradise.”
Then Hassan stepped onto a crate and cranked his neck back, opening his maw to the sky. He let out a roar that split the air, his claws cranked back. A newfound ferocity radiated off him.
The Skulls turned toward him roaring in response to meet his challenge. They started toward him. He barreled at the beasts, screaming all the while.
His raspy voice rising above the din of the insatiable monsters. “Allahu Akbar!”
He tore into the first few Skulls. His claws moved in a bloody blur. Some of the beasts fell to his strikes, but others attacked back with snapping jaws and tearing claws and ripping talons.
“Let’s go!” O’Neil said, sprinting hard down the concrete.
Hassan was still yelling and howling, doing his damndest to keep the Skulls occupied. O’Neil stole a final glance at the brave Moroccan when he passed the boiling mass of creatures all fighting to get at Hassan.