Monster Hunter International

Chapter 22

Hours passed as we trudged deeper into the heart of the evil swamp, yet we had not gone very far. The going was slow in Natchy Bottom. It was afternoon, and the rain had not let up. The water level had risen, and walkable land was becoming scarcer. All too often we were forced to wade through the murk, unseen things grasping at our boots, mud sucking us down. At this point we were all so coated in filth that it was becoming difficult to tell who was who.

The shorter Hunters had it particularly bad, often having to wade through water that came up over their chests, and being forced to hold their weapons above their heads. At one point Lee slipped and disappeared beneath the water, and did not come up immediately. Sam dived under and retrieved him, bringing the other Hunter up sputtering and choking. Lee swore that the roots had not wanted to let him go.

I noticed that the mood of the group had become darker and more somber. The further we went into Natchy Bottom, the more it seemed to suck at a person's happiness and will to live. It really was a bad place. I could feel that something was watching us. Unknown insects crawled or slithered inside my clothing.

"Stop," Harbinger ordered. The team complied, weapons at the ready. "This is it."

I looked around. It looked just like every other patch of gray-and-black muck and mutant trees that I had been looking at all morning. I would certainly hate to get lost in here.

"Yes. Everybody stay quiet. No sudden moves. Don't point your weapons at the Wendigo." He got on the radio. "Franks. Call a halt. This is the place. I'm going to make contact."

"This is Delta. I want my men there with you. Over." Myers' voice was distorted, and hard to hear through the static.

"Alpha, Bravo, set up a perimeter. Charlie with me. Hold up, MHI. Over," Franks stated over the radio.

"All right. My favorite person in the whole world," I muttered. "My good buddy Agent Franks gets to hang out with us." My tongue unconsciously probed the gaps in my gums from where he had smashed out my teeth.

"He ain't so bad for a bureaucratic killing machine," Trip said.

"I heard he once burned a bus load of nuns 'cause he thought there was a zombie on board," Sam added.

"No, those were orphans," Milo corrected.

"He's actually kind of cute in a psychopathic way," Holly said.

"Eww," I responded. "That's sick."

"Hey, some girls go for that side-of-beef thug look." She winked at Julie. I could tell our sharpshooter's cheeks turned red beneath the coating of grime. Personally, besides the muscles, I did not think that I looked like Franks at all. I was, after all, much better looking. Well, in my opinion at least.

"I said quiet," Harbinger admonished. The team settled down. Charlie team materialized out of the mist a few minutes later, moving like ghosts. Franks looked like Swamp Thing, coated in mud and moss. He made a few rapid hand signals and his team disappeared into the trees.

"Okay," he grunted as he knelt in the mud amongst my team.

"Y'all sit tight. I'm going over there." Harbinger pointed out a small clump of land, almost tall enough to be dry. "I'll be right back. Franks, you'd best keep your men under control."

"Don't worry," the quiet man stated. Harbinger nodded and moved quickly away, sloshing through the mud, stepping on roots and semisolid land whenever possible.

"How's your stomach?" Franks asked as he studied the terrain.

"Sore. How're your nuts?" I whispered back.

"Fine." He shifted his gun in his big hands. "I killed the last guy who tried to kick me like that."

"Hey, asshole, if we're comparing notes, I think you've hit me a lot more times than I've hit you."

"Will you two shut up?" Julie hissed.

Harbinger had reached the island. He hung his tommy gun in the branches of a tree, set down his revolver and grenades, and finally stabbed his bowie knife into the trunk, leaving it there vibrating slightly. He left his weapons behind and walked slowly up the mud hill. At the summit he sat down cross-legged, back toward us, and waited.

"Probably a stupid question at this point…" Trip whispered. "But what's a Wendigo exactly?"

"A shaman who was cursed for committing an unforgivable act, usually something cannibalistic. Doomed to walk the Earth forever, guardians of the land and its original inhabitants," Julie answered softly. "It's a horrible fate."

The swamp grew still. The rain stopped. The constant croaking and chittering of amphibians and insects abruptly died. The tiny bit of light that we had been getting through the canopy went away, leaving us in near darkness. A shiver ran down my spine. It felt almost sterile and impossibly lifeless.

An eerie illumination slowly rose from the other side of the hill, highlighting Harbinger as he sat perfectly still. Something moved in the unnatural light. Something huge. Impossibly tall, but startlingly lean. All we could see was a silhouette of billowing skins, ten feet tall, with antlers like a deer rising from the center of its elongated head. An alien figure out of nightmares. It was not of this world.

The thing stopped before Harbinger. Our team leader did not move. I realized I was holding my breath.

The antlered being was motionless. Its long limbs folded tight against its body, giving us no clue as to its unnatural structure. I could not see the Wendigo's facial features, and for that I was thankful. If they were conversing we could not tell. Other shapes moved on the island, giant hulking things, bristling with hair and mud, just outside of the circle of pale light. A horrible smell drifted across the water. I gagged involuntarily.

After a few minutes of silence the Wendigo turned and drifted off of the island. The hairy beasts ambled away, disappearing into the swamp. The gray light died. The rain began to pelt us again. Gradually the light returned to its natural levels and frogs began to croak. The swamp returned to normal, or at least as normal as a place like Natchy Bottom could be.

"That was the Wendigo," Julie told us. "The other things were skunk-apes. Swamp Sasquatches. It protects them, keeps them away from our world. They are why I didn't want your people"-she nodded at Franks-"to just come in here and blow the whole place up."

"Just big monkeys," the Fed grunted.

Julie started to reply, but then bit her tongue. Arguing with Franks would be like beating your head against a block of granite.

"Uh-oh," I said, "that don't look good." Once the mysterious being had gone, Harbinger leapt to his feet and slid down the hill, grabbed his weapons, and came leaping across the water, splashing toward us as fast as he could.

"It's a trap!" he shouted in our direction.

"Alpha, Bravo. Go hot," Franks ordered.

Harbinger skidded into us, breathing heavy. He looked like he had seen a ghost. I suppose in a way he had.

"The Cursed One ain't here. The vampires ain't here. But they summoned something else. Something is waiting for us. It was a trick." He turned to Franks. "We need immediate extraction and air cover."

The silent Fed did not argue. "Delta, this is Charlie. We need immediate evac. Over."

Nothing.

Franks repeated his request. Still no response. A regular man would have looked concerned at being stuck near the crossroads of all badness, in the middle of an ambush set by creatures of unspeakable evil. He shrugged, apparently unperturbed.

"The signal isn't getting out," Julie said. "How could it be a trap? My dad told us…" She trailed off. "Oh no."

"He told us what Susan wanted him to," Harbinger snapped. He kicked a tree stump. "Damn it! I should have thought of that. We have to get out of here."

"Alpha, Bravo. Come in," Franks said. "Nothing." He stood up and pointed at some of his men. He made several rapid hand signals and pumped his fist in the air. They nodded, leapt to their feet, and sloshed in the direction of the other teams. "We fall back to the extraction zone."

"Can you call in air cover with flares?" Sam asked.

"Already done," he answered as something boomed from the direction of Charlie team. A few seconds later, red flares erupted high above us and slowly drifted toward the thick canopy of trees.

"I just hope they see them in the bad visibility," Milo said, looking up at the rain and the roiling clouds.

From the distance came a sound like the blowing of a horn, a deep rumbling that we all felt in the pits of our stomachs. The low note continued for several seconds and then trailed off. Another horn blew to our south, and then another to the east.

"Earl, what did they summon?" I asked. All I knew was that if they had been brought here by Lord Machado, they were not going to be friendly.

"I don't know." His face was streaked with mud and his eyes narrowed dangerously. "But the Wendigo said to get out. He said it's beyond his power. So it's bad. Real bad. I told him to get his people out of here. So if you see something that ain't human, shoot it."

More horns sounded. Now they were all around us. Several rang out between us and the way that we had come from. "Sounds like they're not going to let us retreat." Julie snapped her M14 to her shoulder and scanned through the scope. The MHI staff began to fan out, weapons at the ready, looking for defensive positions.

Deprived of his radio, Franks started to bellow orders to his men. "Dig in. Claymores. Hit them when they come for us. At my signal push through to the south." That was our end of the diamond. "Your men up to being the tip of the spear?" he asked Harbinger.

"Of course," our team leader answered with far more confidence than I felt. Ed's swords flashed silver in the low light as he pulled them smoothly from their sheaths. The blades were short and thick and wickedly sharp. He cracked his neck and vertebrae. The rest of us were armed with a variety of firearms, plus each person was packing along some form of heavier ordnance: RPGs, grenade launchers, and Milo had some sort of homemade lightweight flamethrower. It hummed ominously when he switched it on, heavily pressurized with napalm.

"Find cover," Harbinger ordered. "We don't know what they are, so hit them with everything." The squad complied. To our left, Charlie team dug down. To our right was Alpha. Bravo was behind us. Franks moved amongst his men, giving orders. Pointing out problems. Assigning areas of responsibility. Offering reassurance while the rumble of unnatural horns sounded in the distance. He may have been a violent bloodthirsty scumbag, but he was a good leader.

"Get lower, Trip," Harbinger suggested as he paced amongst us. "Holly, you have a clear area behind you, so you can use the RPG if we need it. Lee, don't hug right against that tree, it limits your mobility. Step back a bit and you still have cover." We had a great leader as well. "Looking good, Hunters. It ain't gonna be nothing we can't handle."

"I hate the part when you don't know what the bad guys are," Sam said quietly as he pressed his bulk behind a mound of tree roots. The low rumbling horns stopped. The rain slapped against the water.

"Harb Anger," Skippy grunted. The orc swiveled his head from side to side as he sniffed the air. "They come."

"What are they, Skip?" Julie asked.

"Not know," he answered. "Smell… smells not from… here."

The ten of us were spread out over a forty-foot area, holding low behind trees, roots, logs and mud. Each of us was scanning the swamp for threats. The rain and mist made it difficult to see very far. My area of responsibility was a confused mass of light and shadows, vines and trees, moss and mud. Nothing moved. The swamp was quiet except for the noises of small animals and the occasional bubble of mysterious organic gasses creeping to the surface.

Gunfire and explosions erupted to the north. Bravo team had made contact. Some of the Newbies jumped at the sounds and began to turn.

"Hold!" Harbinger shouted. "Watch your area! That's their problem. Deal with yours!"

I forced myself back into position as the supersonic cracks of rifle bullets and the duller whumps of high explosive filled the air. Bravo team was unleashing hell upon something. After several seconds the initial salvo died down until there was only a sporadic firing of weapons. Then nothing.

Franks' deep voice drifted through the trees, shouting orders and commands to his men.

"Bah. Whatever they are, they ain't so tough," Sam said as he spit into the water.

Harbinger held up his hand for quiet. He closed his eyes and listened intently, almost as if he was meditating. Suddenly he stiffened and swore quietly.

There was a whistling noise from the direction of Bravo. Then another, and another, until the swamp echoed with dozens of the strange sounds, and then the damp thuds of hundreds of separate impacts. Wails of pain and human agony followed.

"What was that?" Lee blurted, a hint of terror in his voice.

He did not get an answer. Harbinger snapped his tommy gun into position and squeezed off a long controlled burst into a patch of black water. The. 45 slugs tore into the muck and geysered upwards. The surface exploded under the impacts as something sprang upward through the mist.

I got a brief glimpse of the first creature before it was torn to pieces in the storm of hot lead and silver, orange fluids spraying into the surrounding foliage. It was about the size of a man, only hunched and misshapen. Insectile in its joints and extra limbs, the creature seemed all unnatural angles and claws, with two sets of interlocked jaws, and dozens of red eyes set into a blunted skull of a face. It ruptured open as the bullets pierced its carapace, almost as if its internal contents had been under great pressure. The torn thing thrashed about, falling backwards into the muck, finally lying still.

It was only because of my hearing protection, and its electronic amplification of sound, that I was able to hear Julie talking to herself. She sounded terrified and shaken. Julie Shackleford did not scare easily.

"Not them. Not again."

"What was that thing?" Holly shouted. None of the experienced Hunters answered. I lifted my cheek from my stock, looking over at the others. Milo blinked slowly, as if in disbelief. Sam stared silently into the distance. Julie had begun to shake uncontrollably. Harbinger changed magazines, looking down at his weapon instead of us. In the background more screams and random gunfire erupted from Bravo. Finally Harbinger pulled the bolt back, regarded it solemnly, and finally answered us.

"It's the things from the Christmas party."

"God help us," Milo said.

"This time we're armed, though," Sam answered. "It was hand-to-hand then, now we got guns."

"So do they," Harbinger replied sadly. "So do they."

"Incoming!" Julie shouted as she fired into the swamp. Orange-and-red shapes appeared from the murk or came charging out of the fog. Once again I heard the whistling noise, only this time it was closer, much closer. Something impacted the mud inches from my face, spraying my goggles. It appeared to be a long bone spine, dripping in dense orange fluid. I aimed at the source, a hunched insectoid demon thing, and stroked the trigger, blasting a slug through its thorax. More spines flew into our position, thudding into our cover like a volley of medieval arrows. The creature I shot stumbled, righted itself, hunkered down, pointed its crest in our direction, and launched another spine, cracking it deep through the bark of the tree I was hiding behind. I hit the creature with two more rapid shots, bursting some sort of internal fluid sack, and sent it back into the mud.

Spines landed all around me, each one impacting like a spear. The demons bobbed and crawled through the trees, closing the distance for their primitive weapons. They appeared to have no concept of fear, charging straight into our position, bodies exploding and breaking, limbs tearing off and being left behind, alien eyes pushing onward.

"Milo! Light 'em!" Harbinger ordered. Milo dropped his rifle onto its sling and scooped up the flamethrower. He fired a ten-second burst through the swamp, igniting the creatures, engulfing them in flames, sending them crackling back into the water. Some of the creatures reappeared, still burning, the water not being able to extinguish the lethal chemical mixture. They thrashed about, launching spines randomly until they expired.

Then it was still. There were no more moving orange shapes, only exploded and burned husks, charred and opened like overmicrowaved hot dogs. In the distance horns sounded as the demons regrouped, preparing to attack again.

"Everybody okay?" Harbinger shouted. One by one we shouted back in the affirmative. Somehow our team had gotten through the skirmish uninjured. Judging by the cries coming from Bravo's position, they had not been as lucky.

"They ain't so tough," Sam bellowed angrily as he shoved more massive shells into his. 45–70.

"Sorry, Cowboy. Those were just scouts," Harbinger answered. "They were just probing us."

"How do you know?" I asked. "You don't even know what these things are."

"I can just tell. The ones we fought in '95 were just workers or drones. Mindless things with just claws and teeth. These things are the soldiers. They're gonna come again. That was just a test."

Explosions rocked from the direction of Alpha team as their position was attacked. We waited in anxious silence as the battle raged on without us. Sure enough, after a few minutes of fighting, Charlie team was attacked in turn. A stray bullet pulped a tree branch above my head. Other bullets whipped around us, sounding like angry bees.

"Watch your field of fire, you derelicts!" Sam shouted uselessly.

"MHI! I'm coming in," Franks shouted as he splashed toward us. He pushed his way to Harbinger's position and squatted in the mud.

"How's it going?" our leader asked.

"Two dead. Two wounded. One critical," the stoic man answered. He did not bother to ask about us. "We need to push out. Head for extraction."

"Negative. They can breathe under water. We could walk right into an ambush. If they get in close, those spear chuckers are gonna own us," Harbinger stated flatly. "We need to hold here."

"They are feeling us out for a rush."

"You saw how fast they move. We can't ditch them through the swamp, and with no cover, they're gonna tear us up."

"We have to fire and maneuver," Franks insisted.

"Listen, we're not fighting people. This ain't the army," Harbinger insisted. "We move out and we're dead."

"We're moving with or without you," Franks said. "Two minutes. We'll send up flares." The federal agent swiveled and moved away. "You can stay if you want."

Harbinger watched him go. "Shit."

"Earl? What do you wanna do?" Sam asked.

"We ain't got much choice. Without them, we get flanked and we're dead. We have to stick together." He changed the tone of his voice so that we could all hear. "Okay, team. When we see the flares, we move back the way we came. Lay down fire on anything that looks suspicious." He tried to rally us. "We can do this. We are the best. We've beaten these orange bastards before. I'm on point, then Skippy and Ed. We have the best senses. If we fire on a position, follow suit, it means we saw something." He switched magazines. "I'm loading tracers. I'll mark it, you kill it. Everybody get ready."

Flares rose into the rain-drenched sky. A cold weight shifted in my gut. The swamp before us was vast with shadowed hiding places.

"Move out!" Harbinger ordered.

We set out toward safety, moving as fast as possible in the unforgiving terrain. Mud sucked at us, clung to us, increased our weight and tried to drag us down. The muscles in my calves burned at the exertion of double-timing it through the syrupy surface. To our sides and slightly behind us, the Feds moved through the trees. Even with their impressive physicality and despite their intense training, they could move no faster. The rain increased in intensity, hammering us, bouncing from the water below until it seemed as if it was raining from two directions.

It was still bone-numbingly cold, but we were all overheated and labored with the exertion of trying to move quickly through the muck. I did not take the time to brush the mammoth mosquitoes from my face. They were not the only things after our blood.

We crossed through the steaming carcasses of the destroyed demons. A closer look showed that the internal workings of the creatures were totally different than anything from this world. Their insides appeared to be a complicated series of bags and tubes, all orange, yellow or bright red. I stepped quickly over one creature, its two mouths open in a final death snarl, rows of jagged teeth and extra tongues hanging out haphazardly, a dozen dead eyes open and collecting rain.

I could feel a dark presence in the air. Not just the alien, skin-crawling sensation inherent in the haunted swamp, but rather an oppressive heaviness that seemed to further burden us. I recognized it.

The Cursed One was watching us.

His physical body was not here, of that I was certain, for surely I would have known it. But, rather, he watched us from afar. Somehow his presence was here amongst us, watching the trap which he had set encircling his enemies. Son of a bitch was enjoying this.

The evil signature of the accursed ancient artifact was on this endeavor. I did not know what the demon things were, but I knew that they had been ripped from their home world and brought here through its power. The artifact was the key.

We had made it less than three hundred yards before we made contact again.

Harbinger moved quickly, faster than the rest of us, somehow able to find traction where none of those following could. He froze in place, snapped his archaic subgun to his shoulder and fired a burst of tracers into the water below a fallen tree, splashing up gouts of water. Before the rest of us could react, he had aimed at another spot and fired more bright streaks into it.

The line of Hunters erupted. I lifted Abomination, aiming at the first spot. The hidden demon leapt upwards, intersecting with my buckshot, tearing its body asunder and taking its life. Other creatures rose beside and behind it, and I struck them down as well, Abomination merely a flawless extension of my killing will.

Then all hell broke loose.

Orange shapes tore through the pounding rain, scurrying at us from every direction. Insectoid horrors were coming out of the gnarled tree branches, erupting from the mud, launching their deadly missiles at us, trying to close the distance to use their claws and dripping teeth. Our advance stopped, the federal agents bearing down around us into the streaming horde of orange and red. The scene was utter chaos.

I emptied my shotgun, learning quickly to aim for the point where the creatures' heads intersected with their hardened bodies. It was a weak point, and beneath was some sort of fluid bag that would burst like a water balloon, putting the demons down hard. I dropped the spent magazine and instantly slammed a new one home. A spine whistled through the air, missing my face by inches. A Fed stumbled in the muck beside me, firing his FN into a charging monster. The. 223 bullets punctured the body, but did not drop the creature.

"Aim for the neck!" I shouted as I chambered another round. He aimed higher and the creature exploded in a shower of gore. The body splashed into the water only a dozen feet away.

"Thanks!" the nameless man shouted. He raised his gun to engage another target, but stopped, looking down curiously at the alien spine embedded through the armor of his chest. "Shit!" he shouted before another spine nailed him squarely in the face, killing him instantly.

I caught the falling body and knelt behind him. It would be a lie to say that I did so to help, but rather it was an instinctive need to find cover as more spines sailed toward us. The limp form fell against me, heavy with sodden murk and spilling blood. I found the demon hunched down, launching spines at us. I aimed over the dead agent's shoulder and fired at the creature until it was dead. More creatures took its place, swarming over the fresh carcass and charging toward me. I fired my grenade, striking a tree and tearing three of the creatures asunder in the blast of hot shrapnel.

More spines struck the agent's twitching body. Abomination clicked dry. I dropped it onto its sling and grabbed the Fed's unfamiliar bullpup carbine. I raised it one-handed and sprayed the rest of the magazine in the direction of the creatures, the empty cases flying out the front of the weapon. When it was empty, I dropped it, sprang to my feet, and ran, searching desperately for cover, reloading my shotgun as I went.

Julie was kneeling behind a log. I dived over the top and splashed facedown in the mud next to her. I came up choking and spitting out the fetid taste. I rolled over and joined her. With each supersonic crack of her rifle, another demon went down. She hunched behind the log. "Reload!" she shouted as she searched for a fresh magazine. Spines impacted into our cover with wet thuds. I went over the top, spotted the demon hurling bits of itself toward us and swiftly killed it. More and more of them were pouring through the gray trees, a garish swarm of Mardi Gras color.

The tableau disappeared in a wall of brilliant flame as Milo ignited the swamp. "Clear out! Keep going!" he yelled at us as he put down a blanket of destruction. I knew that his portable weapon only had so much fuel, and demons were already closing from other directions, flashes of bright color betraying their positions all through the swamp.

Something shifted behind Milo. A single point opened in the rainy air, almost as if a giant hand had pulled back an invisible zipper. The sky on the other side was a dusty red, and flames licked the air when the alien atmosphere touched our own. A single demon dropped through the rift and splashed down. The opening snapped closed, leaving only pale sky. The creature raised a multijointed limb over its head.

"Milo!" Julie screamed as she fired at the creature. The bubble under its lower jaw exploded, sending it sprawling, but too late as its claws came down. Milo Anderson grimaced in pain as the sharpened bones pierced and shredded his arm. He went to his knees in a shower of crimson droplets.

Julie and I leapt to our feet, struggling forward. I grabbed Milo and hoisted him up. He kept the flames spraying into the swamp, beating back our foes. The intense heat washed over me and scalded my eyes. I could see flashes all across the terrain as other portals opened briefly and more creatures dropped into our world.

We were in a running battle against an endless foe, and there was only one possible outcome.

I pulled the bleeding and shaking Hunter across the water. The flamethrower sputtered and died. Julie was by my side, firing at the onrushing horde. She reached to her webbing, pulled a grenade and tossed it into the trees. The resulting blast shook me to my teeth. I made my way toward the rest of my team as fast as I could.

"Duck!" Harbinger shouted as I approached. I did so without thought, pushing Milo and myself down. He fired over our heads, cutting down the creature that had gated in beside us. The heavy husk fell on my back, a pointed, superheated, squishy weight. Pushing myself up, I kicked the segmented body aside.

Other types of demons were appearing now, smaller, swifter things, without any sort of distance weapon. They moved effortlessly across the terrain, faster than a human athlete could on dry ground. I watched as one leapt onto the back of a Fed, tearing at the man with its bone claws. Instantly, three other creatures were on him, pulling and biting. He disappeared in a shower of blood and limbs. A third kind of creature appeared, heavier, with platelike bones covering its vulnerable joints. These beasts lumbered slowly through the swamp, pausing to spit balls of green material from their upper mouths. A ball impacted at the feet of another Fed, exploding in a shower of horrible acid. He dropped his weapon and clawed at his Kevlar-covered legs, screaming in pain as it burned through to his bones.

They were everywhere.

We struggled toward a patch of higher ground. It was only a clump of mud, but it was the most defensive position we had. Milo began to shake horribly, as if he were having a seizure. "Poison," he said through gritted teeth. "Drop me."

"No, you can make it!" I shouted.

"O-O-wen. D-d-drop me," he ordered. His beard was running red with the blood coming from his mouth and staining his teeth. The powerful poison was tearing him apart. I did as I was instructed. Milo fell against a tree, and slid to the ground, pulling up his rifle. "Tell Shawna I l-l-love her," he gasped.

Julie tried to turn back for him, holding out a hand, pleading for her friend. I grabbed her by the arm and continued toward the high ground. There was nothing that we could do. Milo raised his carbine one-handed and fired, keeping the monsters at bay so we could escape. His AR emptied, he tossed it aside, shakily drawing his 1911. We kept moving as the shots echoed behind us. Several fast-moving demons descended upon the red-bearded man, and the last I heard was a thunderous chain of explosions as he detonated the grenades on his vest.

"Bastards!" Julie screamed as she stroked a demon to the ground with the stock of her rifle. I put my boot on its carapace and forced it down, as she put a finishing shot into the struggling thing's throat. We were both sprayed with yellow bile.

I passed Albert Lee's dismembered body, killing the distracted monster that was tearing at his flesh with a single shot to its pulpy brainstem. I loaded a fresh grenade and launched it into the horde following us. It killed four of them and barely made a dent.

I saw Skippy disappear under a pile of the creatures. His brother Edward jumped in to save him, blades singing through the raindrops. I had never seen any living being move with such fluid grace and deadly speed. Claws and heads were severed away in a remarkable dance of destruction, spraying orange fluids high into the air. Edward screamed an unearthly battle cry as he hacked through the beasts, spinning, ducking, always swinging and killing. The severed limbs and twitching corpses began to pile up.

Finally a spine appeared in Edward's back, and then another in his thigh. The orc began to falter. I fired a magazine into the fray, killing a demon with each shot, but it was too little, too late. Edward kicked a monster off of Skippy's body, and stood over his brother protectively. Shouting at the onrushing creatures, he slashed at them until finally he was washed away in a tide of crimson bodies.

The brothers died with great honor.

We reached the high ground. Our Alamo. Our Thermopylae. A twenty-foot pile of mud and sticks. There were only a handful of humans left. I could actually hear Lord Machado's laughter.

But the damned die hard.

CRACK. BOOM! A pile of the thick-set armored demons exploded as Holly's RPG struck amongst them, throwing heavy limbs and bone plates high into the sky. "Take that, you miserable sons a bitches!" she shouted as she tossed the spent launcher aside and pulled a grenade from her vest. She pulled the pin and hurled it into the swamp. At this point the enemy was so thick that we did not need to aim. It erupted in a shower of sparks and fragments.

A nearby Fed was pulled from his desperate hiding place in the crack of a tree trunk. He was dragged screaming into the horde, and violently pulled apart. He spasmodically jerked the trigger of his rifle. The stray bullet struck Holly Newcastle in the forehead, yawed and tumbled violently through her brain tissue, and exited at the base of her skull. She fell to the ground in an instant lifeless heap.

I crawled up onto the mud, shooting the closest demons, blasting a fast mover as it leapt toward us. Julie was still by my side as she struggled to her feet and tossed another frag. I instinctively shot an incoming acid bomb out of the air as if it were a clay pigeon. The remains showered down amongst the creatures. Julie began to pull and toss grenades from my webbing as I kept shooting.

As I reloaded, I saw Trip curled up near the summit. Torn and bloodied from dozens of claw marks, he jerked violently as the poison in his body finally stopped his great heart. I screamed in vain, flipped my shotgun to full-auto and sprayed the onrushing horde. Out of 12-gauge shells, I dropped Abomination and pulled my STI.

Sam Haven stood at the top of the hill, roaring like a berserker, a Fed rifle in each hand, pointing in opposite directions and firing downward into the throng. He was surrounded by a cloud of spent brass and a stream of profanity so creative and vile that it was destined to travel up to the heavens and pervert whole other worlds. The brave cowboy was silenced in the flash of an acid grenade.

Harbinger appeared out of nowhere. He flung his empty tommy gun aside, hard enough to shatter the head of an armored demon. "Julie!" His eyes flashed yellow. Multiple spines had been driven deep into his back and sides. "Julie!" He drew his revolver, dropped six monsters in less than a second, and reloaded another moon clip in a blur of motion. He fought his way toward us, batting aside a leaping demon with a bare fist. "I'm sorry!" he shouted as he reached us, a veritable wall of monsters at his heels.

"Don't worry about it, Earl," she answered with a slight smile as she tossed our last grenade into the alien horde. "I always figured it would be something like this."

Harbinger only nodded. He dodged under a swinging talon, grabbed the demon by its lower jaw and wrenched its head until the twin spinal columns snapped. Hurling the dead thing back into the crowd, he roared for more.

Franks pulled himself up to the top. Blood was streaming down his lacerated face, and his armor was smoking and burning with acid. A spine pierced his bicep. With no display of emotion he grabbed the shard and wrenched it free in a splash of red. The injured arm hung limply at his side. He drew his Glock and nodded at me. "Die with dignity," he stated simply. Behind him the last of his men looked around in panicked bewilderment, put his pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Franks cringed as his last charge died. "Not like that." The dark Fed fired into the masses, dropping onrushing demons with unflinching accuracy.

There were only the four of us left.

Lord Machado laughed. His physical body was hundreds of miles away, but his spirit, his presence, his consciousness was there with us. He laughed in triumph. He gloated. His pride swelled at the defeat of his greatest enemies.

We drew back to back at the top of the little mud hill, stepping over the lifeless bodies of our friends. Franks' slide locked back on his Glock. He calmly dropped the magazine, placed it in the crook of his lifeless arm to hold it, grabbed another mag, inserted it, snapped the slide closed, and went back to shooting. A launched spine struck him in the wrist, traveled up his arm, and exploded out his elbow, opening his forearm like a gutted fish. The gun dropped from his deadened hand.

"Oh well," he said, both arms hanging limp, drizzling blood, at his sides. With no hesitation he charged downward into the horde, kicking a monster back with his heavy boot, then shattered another's mandibles with his forehead. He kicked another in its package of eyes, but a lashing claw opened up his inner thigh and femoral artery. He fell on his back and was dragged under the orange horde.

I emptied the STI into the demon wall, sending a beast back to hell with each shot. But for every one that I dispatched, another flaming hole would open in the sky, dropping another creature into the back of the throng.

I am sorry, Boy. This is end.

I speed-reloaded and continued shooting. I felt Julie by my side. She was also down to just her handgun. Time was running out. Acid exploded nearby, and scalding droplets scorched us. I heard an inhuman scream of rage from behind me as Harbinger ripped into the demons with his bare hands, crushing their alien bones, and flinging their husks back into the mass.

"I love you, Julie," I shouted as my slide locked back empty and I went for another mag.

"I love you, Owen," she answered.

Too bad I was about to die.

A demon hunched down directly before us, a subcutaneous membrane opening on its back, spines aligning to launch at Julie's chest. I stepped in front of her.

The alien spear pierced through my armor just above my sternum, shearing through the top of my heart and piercing out the muscles of my back. Incomprehensible pain slammed me, heat and pressure beyond all imagining. I fell to my knees, and rocked backwards in the mud.

I looked upwards at Julie as my life blood flooded out of me and onto the ground. Rain poured down into my unblinking eyes.