Blowback

THREE

When the Strykers finally came to a halt in the center of the village, the soldiers jumped out and took up defensive firing positions. Though no one said anything, they were all feeling the same thing having made a complete circuit of Asalaam. There wasn’t a single living soul in sight, and it had put everyone on edge.

Justin Stokes, a young, skinny private from San Diego who had a bad habit of engaging his mouth before his brain, said, “Maybe it’s siesta time.”

“At 10:30 in the morning?” replied six-foot-four Private Rodney Cooper from Tampa. “Stokes, my grandmother doesn’t even take a nap at 10:30 in the morning.”

“Whatever it is,” said Stokes, “something about this place isn’t right.”

“It’s fucked up is what it is,” added Schlesinger. “Where the hell are all the people?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” replied Lieutenant Billings, cutting the crosstalk short. “We’re in the game now, so let’s keep communications on an as-needed basis.”

“Yes sir, Lieutenant,” the men responded as Billings walked over to where Russo was standing. He was using the reflex sight on his M4 to look for any movement at the far end of the road.

“What do you think, Jimmy?” asked Billings.

“I think it’s too quiet,” said Russo as he lowered his weapon.

“Maybe we’re looking at an ambush.”

“I don’t think so. If somebody was going to hit us, it would have already happened.”

“So what the hell’s going on, then? Where are all the villagers?”

Russo double-checked his firing selector and said, “I don’t know, and I’ve got a feeling I don’t particularly want to know. This village isn’t our problem. We’re here to check up on three American aid workers, so let’s do that and get the hell out of here.”

Billings studied the cracked, sun-baked facades of the mud brick houses up and down the narrow road, some with their doors and windows standing wide open, and agreed. “All right. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll take Alpha team to the building the missionaries were using as their health center. You and Bravo team do a house-to-house search, but no door kicking. If you find one that’s already open and no one responds to a polite knock, you and your men can go inside and look around, but tell them not to touch anything. We’ll meet back here in fifteen minutes. Got it?”

“Yes, sir. Fifteen minutes,” replied Russo, who then turned to his men and said, “We’re on. Let’s saddle up.”

One of the Strykers shadowed Bravo team along the main road, while the other followed Billings and his men as they walked a block over to a worn, low-rise building that looked like it might be a school or an administrative office.

“Provincial Ministry of Police,” said Private Mike Rodriguez, from upstate New York, as he read a faded sign above the doorway. He was the only one on the team, besides Russo, with a workable grasp of Arabic.

Billings looked at the one-sheet briefing he’d been given in Mosul and cursed. “Goddamn it. They’ve got this piece of shit map flipped around. We’re supposed to be a block over in the other direction.”

“Why don’t we take a look inside anyway?” said Stokes. “It’s an official building. Maybe there’s official information inside.”

“Which we haven’t been authorized to enter or look for,” replied Billings. “We’re here to do reconnaissance only. If we find an open door, we can go in, but if a door isn’t open, we’re not going to start kicking—”

Before Billings could finish his sentence, Cooper leaned into the flimsy, weather-beaten door with his massive shoulder and popped it off its hinges. As the team looked at him, he said with a smile, “Somebody must have forgotten to lock up.”

“The hell they did,” replied Billings. “The next person who tries anything remotely—” The lieutenant was cut short by the overwhelming stench that poured out of the building.

“Jesus,” exclaimed Schlesinger. “Don’t these people know they’re supposed to put their garbage outside for pickup?”

Billings, a man all too acquainted with the smell of death, knew that they weren’t smelling garbage. “Cooper, Rodriguez, Schlesinger, and Stokes, you’re coming inside with me. The rest of you stand guard out here and keep your eyes peeled. The shit might hit the fan very quickly.”

“It smells like it already has,” said a redheaded private from Utah as he readied his weapon and took up his watch.

Tucking their noses into their tactical vests, Billings and his men stepped inside. After clearing the vestibule, Cooper kicked in the door of the pitch-black main office, and the rest of the team button-hooked inside. A chorus of “Clear — Clear — Clear” rang out from the different members of the team as they swept through the room, guided by the beams of the SureFire tactical flashlights mounted on the Picatinny Rails of their M4s.

The reason the room was so dark soon became apparent. The windows had been completely covered with heavy wool blankets.

Rodriguez shot Schlesinger a puzzled look and whispered, “Are those supposed to be blackout curtains?”

Schlesinger traced the edge of one of the blankets with the beam of his flashlight and shrugged his shoulders in response.

“Why would these guys want to block out light here in the middle of nowhere?”

“Maybe they were trying to hide something.”

“Or hide from something.”

Billings didn’t care what the blankets were for. “Tear them all down,” he ordered, “and let’s get some light in here.”

Stokes and Cooper stepped over to the windows and began pulling the blankets down. Light flooded the room. As it did, Schlesinger glanced up, and his voice caught in his throat. “Holy shit.”

In unison, the rest of the team looked up and saw what Schlesinger was looking at. Suspended from the ceiling were at least fifteen decomposing corpses.

Cooper, the biggest and until this point one of the bravest members of the squad, recoiled in horror. Stokes made the sign of the cross while Rodriguez and Schlesinger instinctively raised their rifles and swept them back and forth along the length of the ceiling, ready to fire. “What the fuck is going on here, Lieutenant?” implored Schlesinger, the fear evident in his voice.

Billings had no idea what the hell they were looking at. The bodies had been tied flush against the ceiling, and the heavy timber braces had completely hidden them from view when the team had first entered the room. Billings was about to say something, when a voice crackled over his radio. It was Russo.

“Alpha One. This is Bravo One. Do you copy? Over.”

Billings, his eyes still fixed on the gruesome scene above him, toggled his transmit button and said, “This is Alpha One. I read you, Jimmy. What have you got?”

“We’ve found somebody, Lieutenant. He appears to be one of the village elders. It looks like he hasn’t eaten in a week, but he’s alive.”

“Where’d you find him?”

“He was hiding behind one of the houses we were checking. My guys think he was foraging for food.”

“Does he know what happened to the rest of the villagers?”

“He says all the survivors are hiding in the mosque. That’s where we’re headed now.”

“Wait a second. Survivors?” repeated Billings. “Survivors of what? And what do you mean they’re hiding in the mosque? What are they hiding from?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out. The old guy keeps repeating some word in Arabic I don’t understand.”

Billings motioned to Rodriguez and then said into his radio, “What’s the word? I’ll see if Rodriguez knows it.”

There was a pause as Russo asked the old man to speak directly into his microphone. Then it came — an intense, raspy voice that sounded like a set of hinges in serious need of oiling, “Algul! Algul! Algul!”

“Did you get that?” asked Russo as the old man backed away from his radio.

Billings looked at Rodriguez and noticed that the soldier’s already ashen face had lost what little color was left. The bodies strapped to the ceiling had gotten to all of the men, but they had to hold it together.

“You ever play Xbox, Lieutenant?” muttered Rodriguez, his eyes still glued to the grotesque forms hovering above them.

“No,” said Billings, who failed to comprehend any connection between a video game and their current situation.

“Algul was the first Arabic word I ever learned. I learned it playing a game on Xbox called Phantom Force.”

Anxious for answers, the lieutenant demanded, “What the fuck does it mean?”

“Loosely translated, it’s a horseleech or a bloodsucking genie, but usually it’s used to describe a female demon who lives in the cemetery and feasts on dead babies. When there are no babies left, it moves on to whoever is left in the village and keeps feeding until no one is left alive. I’ve also heard it’s a derivative of an Arabic word which means living dead and devourer of women and children. However you slice it, Algul is Arabic for vampire.”

Billings was about to tell Mike Rodriguez he was full of shit, when one of the bodies strapped to the ceiling above them opened its mouth and covered the soldiers with a fine mist of bloody froth.