The Warrior's Beckoning (17 page)

“The Specialist…where is he?” I asked, looking around.

“Gone,” the chief said. “Took off before we reached you.”

My vision finally cleared, and I saw that it was Mary who held me. The sounds around me drew near, and I could tell who the figures were. They had all come to me to help me.

“Thank you,” I said as I leaned into Mary’s arm. She smiled and stroked my cheek gently.

“We should get moving,” Josh said. “We’ve got to reach that facility ASAP.”

With the chief’s help, I stood up. I slung on my rifle. “OK, I’m ready.”

“Let’s do it,” Chuck said eagerly. We geared up once more and set off again for the facility. It was a good seven-hour walk—eight including brief breaks. Just outside the facility, we set up camp.

“Rest up,” the chief said, sitting on the ground. We sat in a circle, staying close to each other.

“We’ll sleep for two hours then hit the facility,” I said.

I had been asleep for less than an hour when I awoke to find the others sleeping. As I geared up, the same white warrior approached me.

“Will you enter without them?” he asked.

This feeling, one of valor, was already embedded within my heart…the feeling that I must always charge in. Another feeling, one of love, had become alien to me for years, though now it was my nature. “I will not let them die for me,” I said, looking at them.

“And if it means dying alone…with no one to witness and tell others of your noble deed?” the warrior asked, as if testing me.

“I’m not interested in glory. If I have to die alone, if that is the price that must be paid to save her, then, yes, I will pay it.” I sighed. I didn’t want to go in alone, yet I didn’t want them to have to go at all. I would not lose them.

With a nod, the white warrior stepped aside and allowed me passage. Raising my M4, I moved stealthily toward the facility. It was as dark inside as it was outside, and I detected no movement. Perhaps there were figures shifting through the darkness, but that could very well have been my imagination.

I entered through the doorway where I had first seen her and found darkness awaiting me. The light on my rifle could not penetrate parts of it, which hung in masses along the wall. Hesitantly, I touched one of the masses and found it was cold, much colder than the ambient temperature. Its texture was odd, as if a black fog had solidified into frost or loose snow. Faint whispers echoed through my mind as I touched it. Shaking off the echoes, I proceeded down the hall.

The black sludge was everywheree. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was drawing near, something…cold. I didn’t follow my tracks from before. Following the left hall, I entered a room filled with office cubicles, four in total. From one of the cubicles on the far side, I heard radio chatter. Moving cautiously around the panels, I found the cubicle with the radio. The voice shouting into it sounded increasingly desperate. I found the COM link and attached it to my ear.

“I’m under attack!” shouted the voice. He sounded young. “Can’t hold it off much longer. Unknown entity. Repeat, I cannot hold out much longer!”

“What’s your position?” I asked over the COM link.

“Near a storage room, west side. Hurry!” the voice said. Gunfire rang out.

“On my way!” I sprinted out of the room and down the hall. The sound of gunfire intensified, followed by a scream.

“It’s inside!” he screamed in terror. “It’s wrapped around me, my body…”

I was two rooms away.

“So…cold…” the young man moaned in agony, just as I burst through the door. I found a blob of the black mass consuming him. His skin was turning gray and shriveled. Our eyes met, and he began to cry. Only his face was visible as the mass absorbed him. There was no chance to save him. I raised my rifle, took quick aim, and fired a single round into his forehead.

Blackened blood sprayed the area, including me. The young man lay motionless now, his crying silenced. I fired another burst into the dark mass, but the bullets disrupted its form only briefly. It moved toward me slowly, with a cold determination. I darted down the corridor and ducked around a corner into the storage room.

The dark mass slowly crept out of the room, searching for me. I locked the door. Inside the room, I found chemicals and supplies—a metal pesticide sprayer, a jug of gasoline, and a grill lighter with a flexible tip. Twisting the top off the sprayer, I filled it with the gasoline and replaced the top. I held the lighter with the sprayer, positioning the lighter’s tip in front of the sprayer. In theory, the gasoline would pass by the lighter and a wave of fire would shoot forward, like a flamethrower. As I pumped the sprayer, I felt tense. Trapped, and not knowing if I could kill it, I wondered about my team members, my friends. Could I kill one of them if this thing got them? Could they do the same for me, to end my suffering? I didn’t know.

The door began to splinter and crack.

Slowly but steadily the crack grew. The black mass began to seep into the room. I waited for the right moment, for more of the creature to enter. When about half of it had seeped through, I activated the lighter and squeezed the trigger on the sprayer. A wide wave of flame swept through the creature. A gurgled shriek pierced my ears, but I did not stop until the dark mass melted, emitting the strange gas that many of the other creatures had released in death.

Kicking open what was left of the door, I pursued the rest of the dark mass as it oozed away down the hallway. The flames consumed it quickly, and all was quiet…for a moment. I carried the sprayer and the lighter back the other way, retracing my steps in search of the dark mass I had previously encountered hanging on the walls. Though I believed I was alone, I could not shake the notion that I was being
stalked. I looked right, then left, and saw nothing. I knew the office area was clear, but then…a tingle…and the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.

Instinctively, I dropped to the ground quickly and sent a wave of flame into the air vent above me, just as it broke open and another dark mass poured out of it, directly into my flame. In only a few moments, it was dissolved. I stood, and I scanned the area. It was clear, so I moved down the hall to my left.

I heard a faint cough, then a moan, from a room on the right. A thin trail of blood led me to the source. Before I entered, I nestled the sprayer into my pack and shoved the lighter into my pocket and raised my M4. It was a bathroom. I found a man, bloodied and near death, leaning against the far wall.

“You…you must be the Warrior he talked about,” the man said with great effort.

“Don’t talk. Conserve your strength,” I said to him, kneeling in front of him.

“No need. I’m not going to make it. So…listen to me,” the soldier demanded, grabbing my vest. I leaned closer. “The Specialist has been taken over…by the dark entity,” he said. He had to pause to cough up blood. “He…he attacked us, slaughtered most of my team. Didn’t think I could hold on this long, but there was another… a warrior in white armor, holding me, telling me you’d come.” The soldier had to struggle to speak and was obviously in agony, but he would not give up. “He said only those close to death or born with power can see him…and he had a message for you. He said, ‘Tell him I will join him when the time is right.’ End this. Avenge us, Warrior. Don’t let this evil spread, even though we brought it on ourselves with our own evil…”

“I’ll do my best.”

He took my hand and smiled. “She loves you, you know. And she’s the key…”

With this, he gave up the fight and fell limp. I gently closed his eyelids.

He had been carrying an M4 and a .45 pistol. All of his clips were full; I added the weapons to my own stock.

I left the room, rifle at the ready, to continue my hunt. Instead of the dark mass, I found George standing in the hallway, his shotgun pointing at my gut.

“Damn! I almost shot you!” he said, lowering his weapon. He clapped me on the back. “Good to see ya, man.”

“Likewise,” I said with a chuckle, lowering my own M4.

“Looks like you’ve been partying without us,” Chuck said.

“You shouldn’t have come. It’s not safe here,” I said quickly. Christina and Mary stood between Josh and Bill.

“The only safe place is together,” the chief said. “No more solo missions. We’re stronger united.”

“I’m starting to agree with you,” I said.

“You better. Come on. We have to get to the containment room. That’s where it all began—and that’s where it’s damn well gonna end!” the chief said sharply.

We moved down the hall. The facility was unceasingly quiet. Aside from the blobs I had fried, we saw no creatures. Parts of the facility had been taken over by the dark entity, as the walls became completely black. As we neared the containment room, we found scars in the walls and floor where the tendrils had lashed out, but the tendrils themselves were gone.

“Josh, Chuck, with me,” I said. We entered the containment room and found the three bodies of the team that had gone in, their hazmat suits torn to shreds and their bodies shriveled.

Save for ghosts, the room was empty. We exited and rejoined the others.

“Is it gone?” Christina asked, staying close to Chuck. The chief and I looked at each other and agreed without a single word.

“No.” I was recalling what we’d seen that morning.

The chief apparently had the same thought. “The dark mass rising into the sky—that was the entity. And it wasn’t there when we woke up this afternoon,” he said.

“I found one of your company’s black-ops guys. Before he died, he said that the dark entity had taken over the Specialist,” I said. “He was already strong when I met him; now his powers will be far beyond my own.”

“Well, we can’t just punch out and go home. We came here to fight, didn’t we?” Bill said with a chuckle. “I say we charge.”

Josh remained silent for a moment, then said, “Damn right. This thing’s going down.”

“There is a force of light at work here. Some sort of guardian or knight. I’ve seen him, and he told the dying soldier to give me a message,” I said. “He said, ‘I will join you when the time is right.’ That means I’m charging and you guys are covering.”

“So while you wrestle with the big bubba, we handle the small fries?” the chief asked.

“Yup.” I grinned.

“Works for me,” George said, cocking his shotgun.

The ceiling above us ripped apart.

“I will never get used to this stuff,” Josh said, raising his rifle and firing at the rupture. Soon, the room’s ceiling crashed down around us and the dark energy descended.

“Fan out!” I ordered. The others began to move. “Stay within ten feet of each other and twenty feet away from me.” They took their positions.

The vaguely familiar form of the Specialist appeared before me. His face bore some resemblance to the man I’d seen, but his body was completely changed. His eyes glowed with dark power, and he was shrouded in darkness, just as the dark entity we had encountered before had been.

“I will toy with all of you…for a time,” he said, his clear voice fused with that of the echoing entity. I opened fire with the M4. The
others followed suit. He laughed as the bullets pierced him. We kept it up, though the bullets seemed to do very little damage. He roared, throwing his arms out to the side and sending a dark energy wave all around him. It knocked us to the ground.

I recovered quickly and charged him, firing on full auto at his face. He laughed as I slammed the butt of the rifle into his chest; then he grabbed me by my vest and hurled me ten feet away. Before he could follow and attack again, the chief and his men fired, moving closer. Phasing, the Specialist vanished from their line of fire and appeared behind them and then struck them to the ground with another wave of dark energy.

Chuck moved at an angle while George rushed the Specialist, both firing at the same time. The Specialist seemed to stumble slightly when we pressed our attacks from multiple positions but not enough to halt him. With a blinding speed, he charged them, slamming into each. He focused dark energy into both of his hands, ready to hurl balls of black flame at them. I fired at his hands; he roared as he lost focus. He sent what energy he had left toward me; I jumped out of the way, firing into him at the same time. Seething with rage, he rose into the air.

“Now you will suffer…” he said from high above us. Dark energy surrounded him, forming a round shield. We fired into it, knowing that it would probably do little good.

“Regroup!” I yelled. We stood and ran to each other. Soon, a column of blackness burst forth from the shielding orb and crashed into the ground; in its wake stood a demon nine feet tall, massive, and clad in black, serrated armor. Spikes rose from its shoulders and wrists. The spikes on its shoulders, two on each side, were long and thick, rising in an arch. The ones on its wrists, smaller, extended from what would be the veins, had it been human. Its face was hidden by a helm, which covered all but its glowing eyes with a layer of plate. The armor itself gave off an illuminated gas, the same as the creatures. It
had a long tail, like that of a monitor lizard, and wings like a bat. It was truly frightening to behold as it rose to full height.

“Open fire!” I cried out, firing at the new form. The others followed, but our bullets seemed to merely bounce off his armor. “Disperse!” I yelled, though I remained in the center. George and Chuck ran to the left; the chief and his men went the right. Mary and Christina, armed with pistols, followed Chuck and George. We were spread out far from each other, so that he could not wipe us out in a cluster, and we could attack from all sides. Everyone continued to fire as it charged me.

Rolling to the side, I dodged the massive sword that it wielded—the Hatred sword. Hatred was beyond the power of my flesh. The creature withdrew to stand ten feet from me. We took the chance to reload. It raised Hatred to the dark sky; a column of dark energy struck it. The dark energy dispersed throughout the surrounding area, which echoed with the shrieks of all the creatures we had encountered. The team fired into the surrounding attackers, while I focused on the behemoth before me. The entity scoffed.