“Sergeant, you take Fox this route.” Fitz traced a line northwest through the village toward the foothills. “I’ll take Ghost to search this route and we rally here, at the target.”
“And if it’s not there?” Mapes asked.
“Then we search until we find it.”
“Weather is getting worse,” Rico said.
The light snowfall had turned into flurries. Fitz squinted at the sheets of snow in the distance. He could hardly see the house at the top of the hill.
“We rally in two hours,” Fitz said. “If you find anything, you radio it in, but otherwise, radio silence.”
Mapes dipped his helmet, slightly. Another tell.
“You got it, Sergeant?” Fitz asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Fitz directed his gaze at Rico. “You and Stevenson clear the church before we head out.”
“Sir.”
The voice pulled Fitz to his left. Dohi was there, his eyes sharp and intense. His tan skin was red from the cold, but he had insisted on not wearing any facial protection. Fitz was afraid to ask what had the big man spooked.
“Sir, Tanaka and I found something…” Dohi said. “You better come take a look.”
Flurries fell to the ground, adding a fresh layer of powder that crunched under Fitz’s blades. He followed Dohi and Tanaka around the back of the church with Apollo trotting behind him. The rest of Ghost and Fox held the perimeter.
Fitz raised his rifle to scan the gray sky and the harbor over the cliffs. The slight movement prompted a jolt of pain across his raw injury. The stitches tightened every single time. It was a small price to pay. He had walked away from the battle at the Basilica St Thérèse with his life, something countless innocents couldn’t say. Memories of Michel, the other children that had died there with their brave caretaker, Mira, were tattooed on his mind.
All it takes is all you got Marine.
He blinked away the memory and kept moving.
Ahead, Dohi pointed at a wood shed with double doors. The one on the right was frozen shut, but the left door was slightly ajar.
Using his fingers, Dohi told the story. No contacts, but there was something inside. Fitz lowered his rifle as he walked the five steps to the open door. He took in a breath to test for the rotting, sour-fruit smell of the monsters. There was a trace of sweat and saliva on his bandana, but nothing to indicate Variants.
Dohi flipped on a light and directed it inside. “Take a look, sir.”
Fitz followed Dohi and Tanaka through the opening expecting to find a stack of frozen bodies like Team Ghost had discovered in Building 8 over seven months ago. But this was not a meat locker.
They had stepped into a single tomb.
“What the fuck?” cracked a voice.
Sergeant Mapes stood behind them, staring at the same narrow, seven-foot wood cross Dohi had discovered. Instead of a crucified model of Jesus hanging on the cross there was a juvenile Variant.
Or at least Fitz thought it was. Where there should have been armor plates covering its extremities there were ribbons of exposed muscle, stretched and purple from the cold. Icicles hung from the sucker-mouth on the beast’s face. Ribs were cracked and flayed open like a grenade had exploded inside its chest. The organs, stomach, and intestines were all missing.
Fitz recalled the tape they had heard on the flight in.
There are bones and some sort of…
Had the military stumbled across something similar inside the lab?
“What the hell happened to this thing?” Tanaka said. He pulled his Katana and used the tip of the blade to raise the beast’s chin for a better look.
“Jesus,” Fitz whispered.
Empty sockets greeted them, only strings of muscle where the eyes had once been. Fitz couldn’t pull his gaze from the anatomy. He had never seen the inside of a juvenile before. What little left there was to see…
Tanaka sheathed his sword and stepped back. “This is some truly evil shit. What do you make of it, sir?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it… I mean, I have, but not from juveniles. Variants do this to one another, and to humans, but I’ve never witnessed this behavior from the offspring.”
Fitz studied Dohi for a reaction, but the man simply stroked the ice out of his silver goatee.
“We should get moving,” Mapes said. “We’re wasting time in here.”
Fitz glanced at the monster one last time, his guts twisting. Something was very off in this fishing village, and he had a feeling it all had to do with the buried Nazi facility they were supposed to find and destroy.
They returned to the church where the other team members were waiting. Stevenson and Rico stood on the front steps, weapons cradled and relaxed.
“You find anything?” Fitz asked.
“Nothing alive,” Stevenson said. “What about you?”
“Nothing alive,” Fitz replied.
Stevenson smirked and Fitz walked up the steps to peer into the church. Snow swirled inside from the gust behind him, a mini tornado whipping the grit down a row of pews and up into the rafters. A Christian cross with a model of Jesus hung above an altar at the other end of the room.
The sight made Fitz shudder. He performed the sign of the cross and closed the doors to seal the room. The other soldiers continued raking their muzzles across the terrain around the church.
“All right Ghost and Fox, we’re moving out,” Fitz said. “Good luck, Sergeant.”
Mapes simply nodded and waved Fox away from the church. His men fanned across the snowy terrain and moved northwest. Within moments the wall of flurries had swallowed them.
Fitz didn’t like splitting up, especially after what they had discovered in the shed, but one thing he had learned over the past seven months was that you never put all your eggs in one basket. It had almost destroyed the American military during Operation Liberty. They were already down a fire team, and someone had to complete this mission.
“Combat intervals, Ghost,” Fitz said. “Dohi, you got point. Stevenson, you’re on rear guard. Rico and Tanaka you stay close to me and Apollo. High and low, watch the rooftops and sky for Reavers.”
“I can’t even see the sky,” Stevenson said.
“Do your best,” Rico said.
As Dohi raised his gun and walked past, Fitz reached out to stop him. “You all right, brother? I can put someone else on point.”
“I’m fine, sir,” Dohi replied confidently. He spat a chunk of licorice root into the snow and jogged ahead. He was definitely moving slower than normal, and Fitz could tell the man’s ribs and his head were bothering him, but Dohi was the last one to ever complain. When he did talk, it wasn’t about himself.
Team Ghost set off to the northeast, following Dohi up a curving road that was hardly visible under the drifting white. There were still no signs of tracks. Even the tire marks were buried.
The whistling wind echoed as they began their hike. It rose and fell like waves slapping then receding at the beach. Fitz kept to the road where his blades sank through only several inches, crunching the gravel beneath.
Apollo trotted ahead, sniffing the snow every few feet. Team Ghost watched their zones of fire with muzzles sweeping for hostiles, moving with calculated precision. Fitz pushed his scope to his snow goggles to scan the sky again. If the Reavers were out there, he wouldn’t have much warning. The road, framed on both sides by mounds of snow and red wood houses, provided little cover. They were sitting ducks out here for the winged abominations and whatever else prowled in the quaint fishing village.
A voice over the wind snapped him from his thoughts.
“What did you see back there, Fitzie?”