Age of Blood

59

Holmes watched it happen but thought it was all a dream. It had to be. No one would be so stupid as to leap onto a flying monster. But the idea must have been contagious, because another SEAL did it, too. Then the second SEAL, a young, scarred black kid whose name he knew he should remember, exploded a grenade in midair. Then, after the guy who dropped him onto the dead doggies threw himself onto the black kid, Holmes knew he needed to get involved.

SEALs were fucking up everywhere.

Holmes tried to stand, then staggered a little to his left. His left hand was mangled. The last two fingers so broken and twisted he couldn’t make a fist. He wondered how it had happened. He was in the water beside the dead beasts. They smelled of musk and offal. It made him gag as he pushed himself back to his feet. He wore body armor and UDTs. A scrap of neoprene was on each calf, as if he’d been wearing something else before he’d woken up a bruised and battered, semi-naked GI Joe.

Then a memory slammed into him like a sabot fired from the main gun of an M1 Abrams tank. Two SEALs, back-to-back, blind, bodies touching, four arms whirling with knives and pistols, inventing death in the face of unmatched odds. Pain. Glory. Screams. Growls.

He lurched forward and everything snapped into place. Glancing to his left, he spied the Aztec pyramid, men on top of it and men at the base, their attentions competing with what Yank and Laws were doing, as well as Walker, sniping at targets from his hide. Ramon using Senator Withers as a shield on top with two of the leprosos. Men were dead or dying all over the place, indicating that his SEALs had been busy while he’d been drooling in the Land of the Lotus Eaters.

Holmes snatched a length of rebar and staggered toward Laws, whose back was a mass of torn red meat. Getting down on one knee, he checked the two for breathing. Their pulses were strong. He spied the pistol stuck in Yank’s armor and dropped his metal club in exchange for a real weapon. He held it as steady as he could, sighting down the rail as he moved stiff-legged toward the once-terrible creature.

Where it had been tall and lean with beautiful slate-like wings, it was now a broken mass of sculpture. Its legs were completely gone, as was its left wing, which instead of shattering, had broken off and was stuck in the floor like a giant knife in frozen butter.

Automatic fire opened up from across the chamber. Holmes ducked behind the dead creature, waiting for the impacts, but they never came. He searched and saw hundreds of rounds chewing away the lip of the tunnel where Walker had his sniper site. There had to be a machine gun out there somewhere firing at Walker.

Two grenades arced free from Walker’s hide site and fell toward the source of the gunfire. Although Holmes couldn’t see them from his vantage, he could tell from both explosions that serious damage was done. Even men on the front of the pyramid went down. Holmes opened and closed his mouth, trying to clear his ears from the change in air pressure.

But then he saw another grenade arcing out… this one straight toward him. Holmes opened his mouth to scream, then saw the shape of the grenade. Still, he ducked. The canister grenade fell and rolled.

Good SEAL, Holmes thought. Walker was giving him some concealment to do something rather than stand stupidly in the middle of a battlefield. Holmes spun and moved. His vision swam with the movement.

The grenade began billowing red smoke.

He grabbed Laws and pulled the SEAL to his feet. He was alive and ambulatory, just barely conscious. Yank was moderately better. He was awake, but in incredible pain. That he still had his pouch meant that they might be able to make things better. Holmes dragged Yank upright. Holding on to the both of them, like a clumsy six-legged man, they tripped and fell toward the water. Just as they made it to the pile of dead ’cabra, the gunfire resumed, rounds sizzling into the water right next to them.

With one last heroic push, Holmes got his two SEALs behind the wall of monster flesh and began to check them for wounds. Both had backs made of ground meat. Laws had a strange wound on the back of his neck. Holmes pulled at a piece of what looked like tongue and felt rubbery resistance, like it was a leech or a worm. He jerked it and Laws snapped completely awake.

“What the hell?”

“Keep calm. Daddy’s back.”

“Holmes—you’re alive!”

“No thanks to you.” Holmes reached into Yank’s pouch and was relieved to find the med kit still wrapped. He opened it and grabbed two Fentanyl lollipops. He stuck one in each of the SEALs’ mouths. The pops would deliver opiate pain relief immediately to their systems. They’d replaced morphine syringes, were much more powerful than their predecessor, and were the drug of last resort.

“What’d I do?” Laws asked, sucking greedily on the pain reliever.

“I have this memory of falling. Do you know anything about that?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Laws said with a straight face. “Yank, you alive?”

Yank nodded as he grabbed two packs of QuickClot, which contained microscopic zeolite crystals as the hemostatic agent. When introduced to blood, it soaked up all the liquid, leaving only platelets and hastening clotting to an almost miraculous effect. The only downfall was that it produced heat as a by-product, sometimes in excess of 170 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Let’s put these on your backs, then you seal it,” Yank said.

Holmes looked at him and the packs, then nodded. “It’s going to hurt, though.”

“We always have the lollies,” Laws said.

Holmes opened one pack and sprinkled it on Laws’s back. Then he did the same for Yank. He could almost see it taking effect. He could also see the two SEALs biting down on their medicine, their faces turning white as the heat of the absorption began to burn along their backs.

Holmes then pulled out a pair of cyanoacrylate tubes, which were nothing more than medical superglue. He spread a tube each across the back of each SEAL. It would keep whatever blood the zeolite couldn’t get from leaving the SEALs’ bodies. The wounds on their back weren’t bad enough to stop mission, but if they continued losing blood, it would cause hypovolemia, or shock from loss of blood volume. If untreated, that could kill them as efficiently as a bullet to the head.

Then he pulled out a packet of smelling salts and waved it under each of their noses. The reaction was immediate. Both their heads snapped back. He did the same to himself, then found a bag containing six pills. He emptied them into his hand and smashed them with the butt of the pistol. He licked a third, then let Yank, then Laws do the same until the powder was gone. Specially made for 666, these Adderall-like tablets contained elements of zolpidem, dextroamphetamine, and amphetamine, and snapped each of them immediately awake to the point of hyperawareness. Finally, Holmes made them put away their Fentanyl lollipops.

Now, through the magic of modern medicine, the SEALs were once again ready to fight. Two were almost completely naked and one had lost half of his uniform, and they only had one pistol between them, but they were still U.S. Navy SEALs. Holmes’s only problem was… what were they going to do now?