Black Mountain

THIRTY-FIVE

‘Stop right there!’ Logan shouted, pulling his weapon and flattening himself against a tree.

Two people collapsed into the snow at his feet: Matt Kearns and Sarah Sommers. The police chief reached down and pushed the woman’s hair back off her face. ‘Sarah, thank God you’re okay.’

Jack Hammerson, who was with them, nodded to Logan, then turned to look back up the slope. He put a hand up to his ear and spoke softly into the dark, waited a few seconds, then spoke again.

Matt got to his feet, but remained bent over as his chest heaved. He tried to speak but nothing would come, his throat constricted by fear and exhaustion. He straightened, gulping air, and pointing wildly towards slope. The words finally came out — too fast. ‘We’ve got to…’

‘What is it?’ Logan asked. ‘What’s going on?’

Before Kearns could answer, Hammerson returned to the group.

‘Can’t raise Franks,’ he said. ‘Kearns is right, Bill, you better grab your men and get these two off the mountain. And keep them in tight — there’s a freight train coming at us fast.’

Logan holstered his gun. ‘Okay, let’s get back to the boys. We’ll be fine — we brought plenty of firepower with us.’

Hammerson looked him in the eye. ‘Chief, with all due respect, if the thing that’s following us has got through Franks, it’s gonna go through your men like a shark through a school of sardines. I’m heading back up the slope to see if I can buy you some time — make sure you damn well use it!’

A gunshot bounced past them, followed by its echo.

Logan swung his head around. ‘Where did that come from? Markenson?’

Hammerson turned to Matt and Sarah. ‘Get down, and stay down. Do not move. If we’re not back in five minutes, you head down that slope — don’t wait for us, don’t stop, don’t look back until you’re in Asheville. Understood?’

Matt nodded shakily. ‘Okay, sir. Five minutes.’

Logan tried to pull his face into a reassuring smile, but couldn’t. ‘Don’t worry; we’ve got this.’

Hammerson and Logan split as they closed in on the ravine, taking up positions a few hundred feet away. Hammerson looked at the glow through the trees. A freaking fire, when they were supposed to be laying low. Real smart, boys. He shook his head and quickly checked his weapons — all ready.

He tried Casey Franks one more time; still nothing. She’d either turn up, or he’d grieve for her later. He nodded to Logan, and started to weave through the dark trees, the big police chief doing the same on a slightly different angle.

Hammerson blinked off the light-enhancement lenses as he neared the fire. The flames were leaping six feet in the air and Hammerson groaned when he smelled charred flesh. His unease was confirmed when he saw one of Logan’s men lying in the fire. Two other men lay nearby, obviously dead.

A large figure dressed in snow fatigues was holding the only remaining officer, Markenson, upright and shaking him. He pushed his ski-masked face close to the officer’s, obviously interrogating him.

Hammerson studied the man — he was big, fit, and was actually holding Markenson up off the ground. Alex? Hammerson wondered. The man’s carriage suggested military.

He saw Logan start to lift from his crouch, clearly unable to remain a spectator as his last living officer was brutalised by an unknown assailant.

Hammerson touched his ear and whispered, ‘Logan, you stay the fuck down until we’ve reconned the entire area.’

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Logan pause.

The figure in white changed his grip, now holding Markenson with just one hand. With his other, the man pulled free a handgun that was way too familiar to Hammerson.

What the fuck?

Hammerson mentally ticked off the weapon’s capabilities and schematics: rotational gas projectile pistol; multi-round air-baffled silencer; small round size but high velocity, giving a small entry hole but a punch power that would drive it through just about anything. The gun was designed for immediate kill capabilities and it was one of theirs.

A nagging seed of doubt planted itself in his gut. There was only one department that might have access to enhanced warrior stock. He knew the Medical Division was continuing its work on the Arcadian project, hoping to generate more soldiers like Alex Hunter. Had Graham succeeded — and sent his protégés to find Alex?

Hammerson hoped to hell he was wrong.

The white-clad figure held the gun to Markenson’s temple and seemed to speak again, because the dazed officer shook his head and started to struggle. The figure shrugged.

Hammerson knew the end of an interrogation when he saw it. Oh, fuck, no.

The bullet went in one side of the officer’s head and blew a giant hole out the other. The soldier dropped Markenson’s body in a heap at his feet.

‘No!’

Hammerson heard Logan’s yell as he charged, firing his weapon. The bullets from his Sig P220 smacked into the white figure’s chest, causing him to stagger backwards a step… but not fall.

Great, armoured as well, Hammerson thought.

Instead of going to the ground, the figure turned side-on and started to bring his gun up towards Logan.

Hammerson exhaled, and sighted along the barrel of his handgun. It’d be a long shot with a pistol, and in flickering light, but…

His bullet took the man in the centre of the forehead. The man’s head was flung back and the top of his ski mask bloomed red. But instead of dropping, as he should have done from a head shot, the man’s hands flew up to each side of his skull and clawed at the mask, as though trying to dig out the bullet.

Hammerson fired again. This time the bullet entered the back of the man’s gloved hand, passing on into the skull. The man’s arms dropped and he fell backwards onto the bloodied snow.

Hammerson grunted and got to his feet. Just like riding a bike, he thought.

As he went to step out of the trees, a zipper of small, silent explosions ran across the snow in front of Logan, then traced along his thigh, up his torso and out to his left shoulder. The big police chief was thrown backwards to the ground, blood, cloth and flesh blowing out behind him.

The body strikes were debilitating but not fatal, and Hammerson knew they were designed to put Logan out of action long enough for his assailant to question him. After which he would undoubtedly suffer the same fate as Markenson.

Hammerson had blended back into the trees, and now he watched as another white-clad figure, identical to the first, leaped down from his concealment position on the side of the ravine. Hammerson edged sideways, intending to follow the dense tree cover and get behind the man, when an almost imperceptible scrunching of snow behind him made him crouch and spin.

A third white-overalled figure, his face covered by a white ski mask, stood before him, his deadly calm almost unnatural. The hand that shot out to grip the barrel of Hammerson’s pistol moved faster than any normal man’s could. It ripped the gun from Hammerson’s grip and flung it out into the darkness, then the figure moved forward to grab Hammerson’s still-raised arm.

Hammerson rolled away, spinning as he went, and kicked out hard from the ground. His armoured boot struck the side of the man’s knee with a satisfying crunch. If a strong leg had a point of weakness, the knee was it — just sixteen pounds of sharp pressure per square inch could take it out. The leg bent at an unnatural angle, but the knee held.

Hammerson came up fast, expecting the man to grab him in a standard bear hug and maybe use his forehead as a battering ram. The soldier did just as Hammerson hoped, which made him confident that his opponent would be unlikely to anticipate higher-order combat moves. The man was military, but thankfully not Special Ops.

The HAWC commander moved his body to the side in the grip and struck once with his fist into the man’s left eye, allowing his arm to travel past the head so he could bring the point of his elbow into the soft space just behind the ear on the back swing. It was a deft strike, and should have rendered the man unconscious at minimum. Instead, he staggered back, allowing Hammerson to momentarily break the bear hug.

Standing toe to toe in the dark, the two men traded blows. Hammerson managed to block most, but the man’s speed and dumb luck allowed a few through and they struck him like a battering ram. This man was strong and fast — unnaturally so, Hammerson thought irritably. The nagging seed of doubt bloomed.

As Hammerson got to his feet after a particularly vicious punch, he noticed the man’s knee, the one he’d damaged, was now fully functional. His suspicion was confirmed: Graham was field-testing his latest Arcadian subjects. He and Logan had just got in the way. They were here for Alex, which was why they’d questioned Markenson before killing him — they wanted information about the original Arcadian.

Hammerson sucked in a deep breath, and tasted blood. Gonna be a long night, he thought, as the man closed in on him once again. Or a short and very ugly one.

Alex heard the sounds of fighting — grunts, the hard impact of blows on flesh and bone — but could sense the creature he sought wasn’t involved. Still, the glow in the distance drew him; it looked like firelight.

He sprinted on, and came to a natural gorge in the mountain that, with the fire burning within it, looked like the glowing entrance to hell. By the greasy, oily smell, he guessed that the flames weren’t feeding on wood.

He scaled the outer wall, scrambling up a rock face which at times was so steep and devoid of vegetation that he had to haul himself up using the tips of his fingers and toes of his boots. At the rim, a dense covering of trees grew out and over the ravine, which he guessed probably made it invisible from overhead. His eyes adjusted quickly, giving him all the night vision he needed, and when the moon broke through, the scene below was as clear as daylight.

The man from the photograph in Kathleen Hunter’s home was fighting a man who wore a white mask and white fatigues, and the battle was clearly one-sided. The strength and speed of the white figure was astonishing. Though Hammerson managed to get the occasional strike through his opponent’s defences, the well-aimed blows did little to slow his assailant. He seemed to simply absorb them, without any reaction or indication of pain or trauma. Alex wondered whether the mask and coveralls were some sort of body armour.

He looked over to the tree line away from the mouth of the deep green tunnel, and made out two figures concealed there, also watching the fight. At least, the man was watching; the woman was staring back up the slope. Both looked scared.

Down and to the left, another white-clad figure was leaning over a large overweight man who was obviously suffering from gunshot wounds. The white figure pulled him roughly to a sitting position and spoke to him. Alex concentrated and picked up the words.

‘Where is he? Where is the Arcadian?’

Alex frowned. The man fighting in the ravine below had called him ‘Arcadian’ when Alex had seen him in the street outside the animal hospital. Was he the Arcadian? Were these men looking for him? Why? What does ‘Arcadian’ mean?

The man being questioned groaned and shook his head, then spat into his interrogator’s face, spattering the white ski mask with blood. The masked man grabbed the other man’s head and twisted it violently. The snapping sound bounced up the rock face towards Alex. He frowned and leaned further out over the edge. Why kill the man for not knowing anything?

The white figure pushed the dead body roughly aside and moved towards where his comrade was fighting with the soldier from the photograph. He froze mid-step and looked around the ravine, then up to the spot where Alex was concealed. Alex flattened himself to the ground. Did he hear me? That should have been impossible over the distance. There was something strange about these men; they weren’t like normal humans.

Maybe they’re like me, Alex thought.

And, if so, maybe they’d have answers to his questions about who he was, where he’d come from, and why he was capable of the things that made him so different from others.

The ski-masked man moved his head slowly, scanning the entire cliff line. Eventually, he gave up, rolled his shoulders, and continued over to where his comrade was still battling the older soldier. The older man was rapidly tiring and it wouldn’t be long before his assailant overpowered him. The new arrival stopped a few paces away, arms hanging by his side and his whole body now motionless. He seemed content simply to watch.

Alex got to his feet, his eyes fixed on the brutal scene below.

Jack Hammerson was exhausted and sore. He felt every one of his fifty-plus years as the ski-masked soldier hit him again. The armoured suit he wore had prevented any bones being shattered, but he was sure his cheekbone was depressed, and there was a gap in his mouth where two molars had been just a few minutes ago.

What was worrying him was the fact that his suit’s ceramic plating, designed to withstand anything from a car crash to a high-calibre slug, was beginning to deteriorate. Black flakes of the synthetically toughened material littered the snow at his feet.

Hammerson spat blood, and circled the man, keeping his hands up and head tucked down low. He expected to die, but he’d make it count, make Graham’s freakish creation know he’d been in a battle.

He knew that taking his opponent head-on was a waste of time — it played to his strengths rather than Hammerson’s own. The white figure looked as fresh now as when he had first engaged Hammerson in combat, while Hammerson himself was being ground down with every punch and kick he absorbed. He needed a game-changer; it was all-or-nothing time.

Hammerson pulled his long-bladed knife, expecting his opponent to do the same. Instead, the man nodded and made a come-and-try-it motion with his hands. Not the slightest hint of caution, fear or even a defensive combat stance. Hammerson suddenly felt the man was playing with him.

He feinted to the left and slashed back quickly, hoping to catch the man across the torso. Hammerson was trained and fast, but this man was unnatural. Just like Alex, he thought.

He spun back and came in again low and fast, but Ski Mask was ready. In one motion, he grabbed Hammerson’s wrist and twisted it. Hammerson felt the bones crack and the tendons stretch and pop. He tried to hang on to the knife, but his fingers went dead and it fell from his hand.

The man used his hold on the HAWC’s wrist to pull him forward and punch him in the eye. Hammerson felt the explosion go off all over one side of his head, and only his iron-hard physical condition stopped him from blacking out completely. He would have fallen, except the man reached out and caught him and spun him round. He swiftly removed a plastic cuff from his pocket, fastened Hammerson’s hands behind him, then pushed him towards his waiting comrade.

Hammerson shook his head to clear the lingering muzziness from the blow to his skull. He slowed his breathing and worked on assessing the damage to his body, mentally ticking off what worked and what was impaired. He was still armed, and while he was alive he could fight, and kill.

In the centre of the ravine, the interrogation began. Hammerson’s captor shook him roughly to ensure he had his full attention, then gripped him by his cropped grey hair.

The second man leaned in close. ‘Where is the Arcadian?’

Hammerson stared into the black slits of the ski mask. ‘Identify yourself, soldier.’

He was shaken again, harder. ‘Where is the man called Alex Hunter, the Arcadian?’

I wish I knew, asshole.

Hammerson laughed into his interrogator’s face. He didn’t see the punch coming to his other eye, just felt the blow and then a warm wetness on his cheek. Felt like a significant cut. Gonna be sore in the morning, he thought, and laughed again. The optical devices gave him some protection, but he couldn’t take many more hard blows to the eyes without losing his sight — and to a fighter, that meant end game. He’d never make another hour, let alone the morning.

The two men looked at each other, some kind of silent communication passing between them. One stood back a pace, while the other knocked Hammerson to his knees, in preparation for the execution.

A brilliant silver moon broke through the clouds and Hammerson looked up at it. Beautiful, he thought, and remembered what his father used to say. Good light, good night-hunting. But there would be no more hunting for him.

His eyes travelled along the edge of the cliff, and saw a figure standing there. The shape of the body, the strength and confidence in the stance, told him who it was. He knew the man as well as he’d have known his own son. As he watched, the figure grasped a tree trunk and began to climb down it into the ravine.

‘Arcadian!’ Hammerson yelled.

The word and its echo bounced around the small valley and travelled up the mountainside.

The white-clad men looked at each other, then one of them spoke softly. ‘He’s here.’

‘Then we have him trapped,’ the other said.

Hammerson grinned. You think you’ve trapped him in here with you? Wrong, assholes — you’re trapped in here with him.