A furniture delivery truck blocks the far end of the alley. Austin looks for an alternate route. There’re none to take. Time’s ticking down for him. Prayers are running through his head, rapid-fire. The Wicked Briar slows to conserve energy. Signals being sent to its brain that victory is near. Or, perhaps it wants to prolong the gut-wrenching fear that’s going through the quarry’s mind.
Austin backs away from the Turned until his back presses into something hard. He draws his sidearm. Doom, in the shape of a radiator grill, impedes his way to freedom. The sidearm falls to the ground. It lands with a crunch on the rough gravel, at his feet. Reaching into a pouch connected to his web-belt. He feels the rough sensation of the egg. It teases his fingers. The oblong object emerges from his waist bag. It looks like a pinecone, with a key-pin hanging from its top. The words “Hail Mary” are written on it, in white paint.
He squeezes his finger through a tiny loop, connected to a pin on top and holds the small trigger lever down with his palm. His hands shake nervously. Sweat drips. He shakes his head but catches himself and stops. He won’t beg, like a pathetic excuse for a man, as if he could beg for his life anyway. He’ll go out like the United States soldier he is. The killer coming for him can’t be reasoned with. It moves like a cat stalking its prey.
The beast shakes with anticipation. Thick, concentrated slobber run in ropy lines bleeding out between serrated teeth. Rearing up on its spindly hind legs it stabs out in hopes of spearing dinner. Opening its mouth wide fills the air with stench, and two ducts inside its mouth, each casting out fluid; one stream is red; the other is mucus yellow. As the two streams merge the liquids reconstitute into an unquenchable orange acid. The acid drenches Private Austin. He’s already dead where he’s standing, a dancing skeleton. The flesh of his hand melts away. The tendons underneath the flesh give under the weight of the heavy egg and snap apart like dried rubber bands. The grenade rolls and bounces, tumbling end over end until it comes to rest at the foreclaws the beast. Four short seconds later it explodes taking the creature to the deepest bowels of hell. Stalemate.
Connors, White Deer, and Hollander run for their lives. Connors naturally falls into the rear position, covering his men, and firing blindly over his shoulder, not even looking to see if he’s hitting anything, what does it matter? It’s not long before he hears the tale-tale clicking; out of ammo. The men head south, then east. The setting sun roasts their faces. An hour of sunlight stood between them and complete darkness.
White Deer turns. He braces himself. He sprays flame at the demon closing for the kill. The flame keeps the thing from tearing White Deer to pieces. It wails and arches away.
Hollander runs ahead, while Connors pulls at White Deer’s arm, signaling for him to follow. The three men make another direction change to head down Old Hardesty Road, only to find the way has been barred by a jumble of spiked webbing. Hollander pulls his bayonet and hacks away at the unforgiving and nearly indestructible barrier. The web resists the edge of the blade chipping the oil-hardened edge, making it appear saw-like after the hacking is abandoned.
A booming explosion from half a mile away rocks the desolate streets. It’s not a good sign. Private Austin always kept his Hail Mary close by for the ultimate sacrifice and would only use it as a final sayonara and a final offensive hand gesture to whatever got one over on him. Connors ticks off one man from tomorrow’s roster, hoping the base won’t have to fill several empty spaces on the list. He, Hollander, and White Deer may be facing the final moment here, but they won’t go down easy.
The Wicked Briar taunts the men. It must believe that it’s all over for the humans and that they’ve been bested by a superior lifeform. Crouches down, it prepares to leap and deliver a devastating attack. A mouth gleaming with rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth grows wide. It shakes its hindquarters readying for a victorious leap. It jumps. All four of its legs leave the ground, and White Deer tosses flamethrower’s fuel tank. The bulky reservoir lands directly in the cavernous, fang-filled hole.
The Wicked Briar, irritated by the intrusion, bites down with hundreds of pounds of force per square inch, breaching the tank wall, spraying fuel out everywhere. The liquid accelerant spews under pressure from multiple holes in the tank casing.
White Deer bounds toward the beast, firing his handgun at every step, and finally again, at point-blank range. It takes two shots before a slug scrapes a spark off the tank. The resulting fireball consumes the beast, incinerating most of it and broiling the rest. White Deer is thrown clear, landing with a bone-breaking crunch, against a stone retaining wall. His skin sloughing off, bubbling, and blistering.
Guts and limbs fly everywhere. Connors isn’t sure if it all belongs to the Wicked Briar or if some of it belongs to Private White Deer. They must sift through the gore to find his body, and when they do, they find him seriously burned from his head to his feet.
White Deer’s face is blistered and waxy from the explosion. Vacant, bloody holes substitute for his eyes which were blown out, leaving scant dribbles of vitreous humour to run from the empty, orbital sockets. What’s left of his clothes are smoldering rags. The acrid smell of burned tissue assaults the senses and triggers the gag reflex.
The streets rest in eerie repose in the post-battle haze. Except for incoherent moans of anguish spilling from White Deer’s melted lips, there is only silence.
Hollander removes the med kit from his backpack and injects White Deer with a shot of morphine. The large-gauge needle drills deep into his upper thigh. The little spit of opiate can’t squash the intolerable burning.
“We have to get him back to base, Major. He’s bad. Real bad.” The sergeant exams White Deer’s condition again, and adds, “Oh, God, we gotta get’im back to the docs, Major.”
“We’ll carry him back to the truck, but I’m coming back to get, Austin before we leave, and I want to get a look at whatever the hell those two Turned were up to, over at the garage before we leave. You’ll stay with him and do what you can. Let’s go.”
Within the hour White Deer has been carried to the truck. He speaks of things neither Connors nor Hollander understands, rambling in disjointed sentences and crying out in torment. The sergeant pulls the drapes from a post office window. He fashions a litter of sort, which makes the return trip to the bomb service truck far easier than carrying him alone.
Connors helps Sergeant Hollander lay White deer in the bed of the truck. This time he grabs his canteen full of dog soup and takes a generous swig of the water inside before heading back for Private Austin.
He steps softly on the ground, moving quietly to the point where he believes the explosion came from. There’s nothing but a shallow crater, the parameter of which is splattered with bones chips and blood. One boot and a pair of dog tags baring Private Austin’s name and information lay a few feet away from the epicenter of the blast. Connors pockets the tags for safe keeping, all the while chewing the inside of his cheek hard enough to keep from screaming in rage at the tops of his lungs. Lifting his face in the direction of the garage he approached it for the second time today.
The trip up to each level is less eventful than last time. Visions of Wicked Briars lurk behind every vehicle and lurk in the unseen recesses of the building. He climbs the last ramp, stepping harder, but no less quietly. This is the ramp which will lead him up to the topmost level. The smell of putrid death overpowers him immediately. He wretches, but nothing comes up. Bloated, black horseflies buzz around him, landing on his hands and face, and on his sweaty, salt-caked fatigues.