The voices of the other sergeants crash in his ear, talking over each other.
Copy that. On the way, Hellraisers 3, out.
Hang on, Rod. Wait one, out.
The wall next to them begins to crumble. Through the hole they hear the buzzing of wings.
“Fall back, fall back!”
The squad turns and sprints down the hallway, their boots slamming the carpet, surrounded by an omnipresent scratching sound.
The walls are dissolving.
Rod pauses to fire his shotgun. The gunstock hums against his shoulder. Shell casings fly into the air. The bloated black bodies explode under the fusillade.
The gun clicks empty.
chk-chk-chk-chk-chk
“Go, Sergeant!” Sosa roars, shouldering his SAW and opening fire. The tracers arc down the hall into the thickly massed creatures, splattering dozens of them.
Bits of dust and paint sparkle in the air around him, almost beautiful as seen through his night vision goggles.
Rod grabs the man’s collar and pulls hard as the ceiling collapses under the weight of a pile of the things, landing on the floor with a thud. The bodies explode on impact, spilling guts and organs across the carpet.
Davis and Lynch wave the men through, shoot into the swarm and then run after the squad.
Rod sees lights flickering ahead and calls out, “Third Squad here!”
The squads almost collide at the corner. It’s Navarro and his shooters, wide eyed and gasping.
“Where’s Jake?”
“Don’t know,” Navarro tells him. “What the hell did you guys do? I’m being chased by giant flies, for Chrissakes.”
“No time,” Rod says. “They’re right behind us too.”
“If they are, we’re trapped.”
“Then we make our stand here. See to your men. We got your back.”
Navarro nods, paling. “Good luck, Rod.”
Rod hears muffled gunfire erupt on another floor of the hotel. Whatever Lieutenant Pierce unleashed is spreading through the building. With just seconds to act, he points and calls out names, positioning his two grenadiers against the walls and the SAW gunners next to them, where their overlapping cones of fire will cover the hallway with minimal shifting fire. Two riflemen kneel in the middle with Rod and his shotgun, while the other two stand behind them.
The swarm is nearly upon them when Rod gives the order to fire.
He shoulders his shotgun and squeezes the trigger, the gun booming in his hands. The grenadiers shoot their thumpers, sending multiple projectile rounds deep into the elevator lobby. The SAW gunners, lying on the floor, fire hundreds of rounds, tracers zipping downrange in blurred streams. The riflemen fire in an endless series of metallic bursts.
The corridor’s volume fills with hot, flying pieces of metal. The creatures disintegrate under the withering fire. The grenades burst, sending a thick, rolling cloud of smoke and dust surging toward the soldiers. They cough on it, blinded, and continue to shoot.
“Loading!”
Light flashes in the smoke as another grenade bursts. The building trembles. The concussion blows a fresh wave of particulates into their faces. Dark shapes swarm toward them through the dust, like ghosts.
“Loading!”
Rod empties his shotgun and reloads until he has no more full drums in his pouch. Hundreds of warm shell casings flicker in his peripheral vision and roll across the carpet to gather in piles.
One by one, the rifles click empty.
“Last mag!”
“I’m out!”
Rod orders the boys to fix bayonets as the SAW gunners empty their belts.
The last gun sputters, falls silent, leaving a deafening ringing sound in their ears.
Rod draws his knife and offers a brief prayer for his family. Around him, the firing line, emptied of ammunition and bristling with bayonets, waits for the end.
The smoke and dust dissipate, revealing a jumbled carpet of black pieces of carapace and limbs crushed into a thick layer of white slime.
“Joe, what you got?” Rod calls out.
“I can’t see shit,” Navarro answers. “But I don’t see any bugs either.”
Several creatures squirm wetly through the sticky remains, their legs broken, making clicking sounds. At the end of the hallway, near the elevator lobby, the ceiling is on fire, the flames obscured by a growing haze of smoke. Another threat. They are going to have to move within the next few minutes.
“They ain’t coming,” Arnold says in disbelief, blinking. “We got them all.”
“Kicked their ass,” Sosa says, but without force.
“Aieeyah,” Lynch answers mechanically, spitting into the dust.
Tanner slumps against the wall hugging his ribs, his body shaking. Davis lights a short length of foul-smelling cigar and sighs. Some of the other boys pass around a can of wintergreen dip.
“Hellraisers 1, this is Hellraisers 3,” Rod says into his headset. “How copy, over?”
The platoon’s private channel hisses with static.
“Do you copy, Hellraisers 1?” He glances at Navarro, who looks back at him with a grim expression. “Check the Comanche net, Joe. Outlaw needs our sitrep. Tell him the Lieutenant is down, the building is on fire and we’re coming out.” Then he tries to raise Jake Morrow again, fearing the worst.
“Rod,” says Navarro, his eyes glassy as he listens to the chatter on the company net. “It’s a shit storm. Captain Mack is wounded. We’d better get moving.”
Ray
The children walked among the trees, feeling the energy of the crisp autumn air, their sneakers crunching dead leaves. Ray knows this place; it’s Cashtown Elementary. And he is seven years old again, guiding a blindfolded and laughing Shawn McCrea.
His father, Ray Senior, got drunk and beat his wife and sucker punched his son until one day he died of a heart attack. Ray Junior adapted to a world where you were either a taker or a giver. Whatever goodness his mother had to offer was not enough. Ray had nature and nurture going against him.
People are not born greedy or violent or cruel; the world teaches them.
The children drifted among the trees, the sighted leading the blind under the watchful eyes of the teacher. The point of the game was trust. You trusted the person guiding you. It was an exciting game.
When Ray pushed Shawn face first into the oak tree, he thought he was winning.
♦
Infection rages in his blood. In his fevered dreams, the memories blur one into the next, settling on him sitting hunched over the counter at Pete’s Tavern, slowly converting his last paycheck into shots of Wild Turkey and mugs of draft. Just three years out of high school, he had already been hired and fired from Walmart, the local Exxon station and the facilities department at a local hospital. As for next week, he had no idea what he’d be doing. A friend at a moving company had said he could use him, so maybe he’d do that for a while and see how it went. Anything but the Army. Ray liked to do what he wanted, when he wanted to do it.
He glowered at his image in the mirror behind the bar.
If I see that bitch Lola again, I’m going to slap her good.
(Whatever you think is best, Ray.)
And if I ever see her little jerk college boyfriend, I’ll break his goddamn face.
(If you think that’s best, Ray.)
Damn straight.
Lola Rivera was the one good thing that happened to Ray in high school. School had been like prison to him, a place to kill time smoking in the boys’ room and terrorizing the weaker kids and thinking deep thoughts during detention. She was a good girl attracted to his unintentional bad boy charm, which smacked of honesty to her. For his part, her beauty and intelligence awed him, made him want to be a better man to give her what she deserved instead of what she was really getting.