SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror

Blackwater Neal F. Litherland

Fisher’s Cove was drowning in the fog. It pressed against the dead eyes of dark windows, laced its fingers through rotting fences, and poured itself down alley mouths. The white ghost of the Pacific possessed the seaside town until even the monotonous heartbeat of the reef’s warning buoys could barely be heard. In places, a gabled roof or weather vane broke the surface, clawing at the sky.

“And thus I came to a place where dreams and death lay down to sleep,” Frost whispered.

“Jesus Christ, you got to do that now?” Carmichael muttered.

“Might not have a chance later.” Frost readjusted his rifle sight and took another long, slow scan across what they could see of the little town.

“Giving me the fucking heebeegeebees,” Carmichael said, running one hand back over his dark, shaved scalp.

“I can’t give you anything for that,” Hernandez said. “Now if Frost gave you the clap, then I could maybe do something.”

“Cut the static,” Leo said, voice cracking like a teamster’s whip. They went silent, even CB who hadn’t said anything. “Frost, movements?”

“Impossible to say for certain,” Frost answered, fiddling with his sight again. “Fog isn’t staying steady; we’ve got a west wind pushing at it. All the buildings are dark, no movement. Visibility’s maybe ten yards once you get into the bank.”

“CB, report.”

“No chatter,” the rangy redhead said, lifting his face from his scanner’s shadowed blackout screen. “No cell or sat signals going in or out. Last confirmed contact was a big rig on the interstate testing the air waves two hours ago. No one in the town replied, no indication they knew he was there, or vice versa.”

Leo nodded. His men watched the darkness, hands on their weapons and minds on the job. Each one of them knew his role, and they knew they were not part of a democracy. If Leo said they waited, they waited. If he said they went in, they went in. If any one of them had a problem then he should have mentioned it before lacing up and gearing out. Leo unslung his weapon, and popped the long clip out of the cut-down M4. The others did the same, flicking safeties and racking slides, offering up one last prayer to the assault-rifle gods that their sights were straight and the brass didn’t jam.

“Frost, take point,” Leo said. “Carmichael, Hernandez, myself, then CB. Previous intel says the gathering’s going to be at the church, so we get in and get out quick, clean, and quiet. This place is full of sectarian nut jobs, and they may not take kindly to us stealing one of their flock. They give her to us, we walk away. They put up a fight, show them the error of their ways with strict prejudice. You get me?”

“We get you,” they said. No one called Leo sir. Those days were behind them, and they didn’t pretend otherwise. Leo slid an indigo balaclava over his head. The others did the same.

It was like a child’s game. Leo pointed, and tapped Frost on the shoulder. Frost ran bent over, his low profile a caricature of some inbred beast loping through the shadows. He slid behind cover, swept the area, and signaled the all clear. Then the next man went, and the next, and the next. Rear covered fore, then fore covered rear, all of it in total silence. Leo chose the next spot, and the whole cycle began again.

They ducked behind rusted-out cars sitting on busted rims, and slipped silently past hedges grown long and wild in the sea air. They crouched near rotting doorways with peeling paint, breathing through their mouths and squinting into the swirling night. Pot holes and cracked curbs tried to trip them up. Busted doors creaked in the night breeze, wailing and whining on rusted hinges. The place reeked of swollen, rotting wood, and when they breathed too deep a slimy, fishy scent coated their tongues. The ocean rumbled as the surf rolled in, and shushed when it went out; the snoring of some invisible giant whose dreams the shadow men had no interest in.

The town felt wrong. None of them said anything, but they all felt it. Frost stroked his finger along the outside of the trigger guard like his personal worry stone. Hernandez crossed himself every time a loud noise turned out to be the wind in the eaves rather than an alarm bell. CB blinked away thick droplets of sweat from the bridge of his nose — uncharacteristic for a cold, autumn night. Carmichael hummed show tunes under his breath.

“Mute your chute, Jukebox,” Leo hissed, glaring over his shoulder at Carmichael. The big man went silent and shifted his grip on the street sweeper he’d insisted on toting. Leo shifted his gaze to the others. “Put it on ice, all of you. You can puke your guts and shit yourselves on your own time.”

They made the last dash for the church as a whole, every man watching and running with his weapon socked to his shoulder; a hair-trigger phalanx with no safety just begging for a target. Nothing shambled out of the fog, slick and wet from the sea floor. No one shot at them either. They pounded up the stone steps, Leo taking up position to the right of the iron-bound double doors and Carmichael taking the left. Hernandez and CB took a knee at the base of the stairs and watched back the way they’d come. Frost stood calm and easy, halfway up with his suppressed barrel pointing at the sky.

Leo crouched, and put his ear against the place where the doors met. He stayed there for a three count, then jumped and slid back out of the doorway. CB and Hernandez swiveled, and Frost crouched down low just as the latch lifted and the door swung inward. A silhouette stepped out of a watery rectangle of light, and Carmichael swung a hard, looping right into the figure’s belly. There was a harsh gasp, and the target stumbled forward. It reached beneath its coat, and Leo kicked it behind the knees. The man went down, and a knife spun out of its fingers. Carmichael put a boot on the man’s back, and the wide mouth of his trench gun against his head.

“You make so much as one little bo peep, and I’ll smash your pumpkin all over, you get me sucker?” Carmichael growled, putting more of his weight onto the prone body. The captive didn’t speak, or even so much as twitch.

At Leo’s signal, Hernandez and CB hit the door, criss-crossing as they went through. There was silence for a long moment, broken only by the sounds of doors opening. A small eternity later each man whispered, “clear” back into the night. Frost picked up the dropped knife, and ducked inside. Carmichael looped an arm around their prisoner’s throat, and hauled him inside. Leo followed, closing the door quietly behind them.

The sanctuary was old. The boards gleamed with varnish, and the rafters were dusty with a hundred years or more of votive smoke. The walls held candle brackets, the flickering flames hiding just as much as they revealed. There were no trappings of any faith the men had ever seen before, though. In the bare places once graced by the portraits of saints sat stone shelves holding sunken, graven images of creatures whose forms were nearly unrecognizable. An altar of smooth, black stone sat on the dais, flanked by gilded statues of tumescent creatures with dozens of blank, empty eyes. A heavy, leather-bound book rested on the sea-green altar cloth, and on the wall above and behind, burnished letters spelled out the legend The Esoteric Order of Dagon. The place was otherwise empty.

Once inside, the team took a good look at who they’d sandbagged. The captive was a portly man with a shiny, bald head and a sunken chin. His long, black robe was frayed at the cuffs, and though a little too big, it marked him as a priest clearly enough. He scrabbled at Carmichael’s arm, digging pale, fish-belly fingers into the choke hold. Frost held up the knife, a wavy-bladed tool more useful in ritual than in combat, and the bald man went still. Frost patted the man down, turning out his pockets and checking all the logical places for hold outs and surprises. He didn’t find any. Frost tucked the decorative dagger behind his web belt, and stepped back out of the line of fire.

“I’m only going to say this once, padre,” Leo told the man. “If you do what I tell you then you’ll live through the night. If you try to scream, or attempt to fight me or my men, I will have that knife in your gullet before you’ve taken a deep breath. Do you understand? Blink once for yes, and twice for no.”

The prisoner stared at Leo with watery, wide-set eyes. He blinked once.

“If I have my man release you, are you going to co-operate?” Leo asked. Again the single blink. Leo nodded. “Let him go, Jukebox.”

Carmichael released his hold. He stepped back and to the side, bringing up the shotgun as he did. The man in the black robe coughed, and kneaded at his wattle. He sucked air, and gagged slightly before he managed to get himself under control. When he spoke his voice was breathy, like he was trying to talk with a hole in his lungs.

“Who are you?” the priest rasped. “What do you want?”

“Sarah Prendergast,” Leo said, ignoring the first question in favor of the second. “Turn her over, and we can all pretend this night didn’t happen.”

The priest shrugged his shoulders, hands clasped at his waist. “I do not know anyone by that name.”

“Five foot five, blond hair, blue eyes, pale,” Leo said, pointing his muzzle right between the holy man’s eyes. “Eighteen years old; runaway. Birthmark on the right cheek, and a jagged scar below her left knee. She came here seven months ago.”

“Ah,” the priest said, nodding. If he noticed the gun, or its proximity to his head, it didn’t seem to bother him any. “And what do you want the girl for?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Leo said.

The priest looked at each of them. He nodded again, agreeing with some unasked question. “I suppose not. If I refuse to assist you?”

“Then you might meet whatever gods you pray to sooner than you think,” Hernandez said.

The priest smiled, and his wide, thick-lipped mouth curved at the corners without showing any teeth. He held his hands up slowly, palms out in surrender. “As you wish. The girl you seek is down below, along with the rest of the congregation. I can lead you to her if you wish?”

“I do,” Leo said, toggling the selector switch on his rifle. “Frost, if he tries any party tricks drop him. Jukebox, you’re on crowd control. CB, Band-Aid, cover our tails and make sure no one sneaks up on us.”

The priest led them to the rear door of the sanctuary, moving with the lurching, awkward gait of someone more used to sea than land. Beyond the door was a short, dark hall lit only by spillover from a cramped, spartan office. Aside from the light the office’s only unique feature was a huge map of the western seaboard. Hundreds of red push-pins were jabbed along the coast, marking the locations of offshore reefs. The man in black pushed open another door, and they stepped into the night.

The church yard may have been well-cared for once-upon-a-time. A wrought-iron fence enclosed the small space, but the iron was warped and pitted from the salt air. The barrier leaned drunkenly too, as if contemplating a leap over the edge of the bluff. Crumbling headstones and canted crosses were half-buried by the overgrown verge. In one corner rotting vegetables gave mute, fecund testimony to a garden gone to seed. The priest followed a trampled path through the foliage, witch grass and burrs snatching at his hem and sleeves. He paid the plants no more mind than he did the men following him.

“I don’t like this, boss,” Hernandez whispered. “It’s too easy.”

“Seconded,” CB said, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “I can’t see shit in this black.”

“Just BOLO, boys,” Leo said. “Fingers on triggers, and we’re done before dawn.”

The priest paused, and fiddled with a rusty gate at the end of the path. The men fanned out into the grass, crouching low and trying to look everywhere at once. The priest grunted, and the gate squealed as it swung inward. He stepped into the void without a backward glance.

Frost sucked in a sharp breath, and Carmichael swore. The priest stood in midair a moment longer, his robe flapping in the wind from the ocean. Then he turned, and slipped out of sight.

“Do not lose contact,” Leo said.

Frost slid gun-first toward the yawning hole. “Stairs,” he said, jerking his chin to give the all-clear. A moment later he was gone, and the others followed.

A stairway was carved into the living rock. Barely wide enough for a broad man, the steps had been worn smooth by more than a century of wind, rain, and regular travel. The steps would have been dangerous in full daylight. In the dark and the fog they were suicide. They moved as quickly as good sense allowed, aware of the empty gulf on the left. Each man felt along with his boots, and kept his gun leveled at nothing. All they heard was the sound of the wind, along with the rhythmic pounding of the ocean. There was no sign of the priest.

After one hundred steps and a single switchback, the fog began to clear. Twenty yards below was a stubby shelf of black rock, worn smooth and decorated with the detritus of the retreating tide. The shelf extended out into the water; the natural rock becoming a carved bridge to nowhere wide enough for a convoy to ride two abreast. Heavy stone pylons ranked every fifteen yards or so, but there were no railings between them. Silhouettes moved in the distance, back lit by flickering orange flames and casting dark, monstrous shadows in the remaining mists. The wind blew stronger, carrying slurred consonants chanted by a congregation of ghosts. Carmichael started humming the theme to The A-Team.

“I take back what I said about this being too easy,” Hernandez said.

“Noted,” Leo said. “Assume the padre is sending company. Anything that comes our way in a black robe that doesn’t have blond hair, shoot first and ask questions when we’re out of this fucking freak show. Conserve ammo, keep it quiet if you can. Keep your poppers handy, but don’t pull the pins unless I give the word. We don’t know how strong that bridge is, and I don’t want to swim back.”

No one appeared out of the mist by the time the squad reached the shelf. A quick sweep turned up seaweed, some smooth pieces of bottle glass, and what was left of the priest. The left side of his head was bloody, and he’d had the misfortune of slamming chest-first onto a log. The driftwood had splintered, punctured his lungs, and pulped his ribs. The body stank, the trademark scents of freshly voided bowels mixing with the digestive juices in a ruptured stomach. Hernandez did a cursory check, and shook his head when he didn’t find a pulse. Leo swore.

“This change anything boss?” Frost asked, keeping his muzzle trained on the bridge.

“No,” Leo said. “We get in, get the girl, get out.”

Up close the bridge was more than stable. A solid, stone structure, it looked as if it had been carved by hand and smoothed by a millennium of ocean currents. The support pylons stretched a full ten yards above the bridge proper. Roughly six feet in diameter, the shafts were inscribed with faded pictograms of sea creatures, men, and things which were a little of both. At the pinnacle of each pillar perched statues of bulbous, black creatures; things with glassy eyes and distended mouths atop rounded bodies with flabby bellies and lithe, powerful limbs.

Leo gestured, and they formed a staggered line. There was no cover except the thin mist, the darkness, and the sounds of whatever the Dagonites were conducting. If anyone glanced back across the bridge their cover would be blown. The men advanced, stepping carefully across the slick rock with their shoulders hunched low and their weapons trained on the flickering shadows that grew more distinct all the while. The bridge ended a hundred yards into the ocean, terminating in a huge cul-de-sac. Pylons ranked like standing stones, and beneath each one stood a young woman with her arms chained above her head. Dozens of robed people stood in a crescent facing the ocean. Flames leaped from a central pit, painting the scene like a fresco on the wall of a chapel in hell. The chanting rose higher, then higher still; a single cry from a hundred throats shrieking up at the clouded stars like a signal beacon.

Suddenly the chanting ceased. The wind died. Even the waves, which had pounded toward the shore, calmed to a gentle lapping. The squad split to either side, crouching and blending their bodies with the outlines of the pylons. They listened. For several moments there was nothing but the sound of the ocean and their own nervous breathing. Beyond the fire, something splashed out of the ocean, and hauled itself onto the platform with the meaty slap of flesh on stone. The stink of fish oil, and the heavy, acrid smell of brine wafted on the breeze. The water parted again and again as others broke the surface and clambered onto the temporary shore. In moments the newcomers outnumbered the congregation, standing in the spaces between the pillars at the very edges of the firelight. The chorus moaned, and there were no words in it; just a raw, animal sound of elation and anticipation burbling into the darkness. Someone screamed; a high-pitched shriek only a young woman in abject terror could manage.

“Shit” Leo snarled, surging around the pylon. “Go, go, go!

They rushed the platform, and the last of the mist parted like rotting silk. The congregation whirled, robes open shamelessly as they stared at the interlopers. Flesh drooped from their bones, hanging in pallid folds the color and texture of pale cheese. Their long-fingered hands bore delicate webs, and thin, watery drool ran from the corners of mouths grown too wide to close completely. Stooped and hairless, they were a world apart from the women hanging from the pillars all around.

“Nobody move,” Leo said, raising his voice along with his rifle. “Just stay where you are and — ”

Something moved. Darkness parted, and firelight danced over something out of a scuba diver’s nightmare. The thing had a jaw set with the thick, curving teeth of a barracuda, the pebbled, monotone skin of a shark, and the black, empty eyes of a predator. It stared at the invaders, flickers of too-human curiosity in its dark gaze. It sucked a heavy breath through the thick, fleshy flaps along its ribs. It opened its mouth, and the back of its head erupted in a spurt of gore, punctuated by the muted crack of a single rifle shot.

Time slowed.The first creature flopped to the deck, and its fellows rushed to its aid; a phantasmagoric wave of upended evolution that was all claws and teeth, suckers and tentacles. The beak of a mollusk snapped beneath the deflated, slitted remnants of what might once have been a nose. Hands gone boneless and rubbery reached out from the ends of arms that bore bony fins and spiny spurs. Voices that could once have spoken the words of men howled animal defiance, and were answered in kind.

Leo fired a burst into the over-developed chest of a thing with a squid’s head and scapula like a manta ray’s wings. Carmichael blasted buckshot into something that looked like the love child of a flounder and a puffer fish whose guts stank like rotting kelp. CB and Hernandez stepped into the gap, firing short bursts one after the other until the rapid-fire chatter blended into a single, continuous snarl. Frost squeezed his trigger, and every round carved a .30 caliber trench through a target’s brain pan.

It was over in seconds. Shell casings littered the ancient stone, and cordite clouds hung thick and blue as cigar smoke. The creatures, whatever they were, didn’t need silver bullets or mumbo jumbo to make them stay dead. Blood ran in not-quite-red pools, and two dozen bodies lay in twitching, leaking heaps. The worshipers lay alongside the fish men, caught in between men and monsters even in death.

“Reload,” Leo called. His voice was calm, but his hand shook. It took him two tries before he popped his empty clip.

“What… what the fuck?” Carmichael demanded. His eyes were very wide, and his nostrils were flaring as he took shallow, rapid breaths. “Leo, what the fuck?”

Leo took two fast steps and slapped Carmichael hard across the face. The big man stumbled, and wheeled around. Carmichael brought his weapon up, but when he squeezed the trigger the hammer made an empty, hollow click. Leo held his gaze, and Carmichael looked away. He took a shaky breath, and swiped a thumb beneath his balaclava.

“Shit,” Carmichael said. “I’m bleeding.”

“Bleed on your own time,” Leo said. The words were barely out of his mouth when the ocean around them erupted. Water spumed up, and something in the darkness howled. The howl was taken up, until the very sea keened. “Find the goddamn girl! We lose her, this whole thing goes tits up!”

They ran, adrenaline and purpose kept them moving. Some of the girls were dead, their nude torsos punched through with bloody holes. A few others had been slashed by the creatures, their glazed gazes contemplating the carnage with vacant curiosity. Three of them were still alive, and one of them was Sarah Prendergast. She stood on the balls of her feet, every muscle trembling with the effort of holding completely still.

“Get them down, and let’s get the fuck out of here,” Leo said.

Frost drew his sidearm and fired. It took seven shots, but in seconds the survivors were free. A dark-haired girl sobbed and ran past them, slipping through blood and bodies as she headed for the shore. The second girl stumbled forward, lips trembling. Her skin shone like obsidian, slick from the ocean and tight with goose flesh.

“Who are you?” Sarah asked. Her voice was airy, and her tone politely curious.

“Your father sent us,” Leo said.

Before he could say anything else Sarah launched herself at him, scrabbling for his sidearm. Her eyes blazed, and she bared her teeth in a horrible rictus that wiped away any beauty she had left. It was a look that said she belonged here, in spirit if not in body. Frost holstered his pistol, and in the same motion drew a small stun gun. The girl was wet, and she went down like a sandbag.

“Christ almighty,” Leo grunted, re-adjusting his pistol. “Frost, carry the girl. Carmichael, take point. CB, back him up. Band Aid, you’re rear guard.”

“What about me?” the other girl asked. Her accent was hard to place, but it probably had roots south of the equator in Africa.

“Run,” Frost said, snugging a pair of restraints around Sarah’s wrists and ankles.

They ran. The sea boiled and writhed as the keening creatures gave chase. White caps pounded like breakers, and the putrid denizens of the deep rode those waves like war horses. Bipedal eels slithered up the pylons, lashing at the runners’ legs and snapping at their faces. Men with the faces and fingers of toads leaped onto the bridge, only to be torn to pieces by steel-jacketed hornets. More came, and more after them, with hoary skin and hard shells, with eyes on stalks and with earless, wall-eyed heads.

Carmichael howled and stumbled, his shotgun rending a swimming shadow into chum. He kept firing, but he stopped running. There was a long, spiral spine jammed straight through his left thigh. CB ran past, clearing the way with short, three-round bursts. Frost followed, nostrils flaring as he carried Sarah and emptied his pistol into anything that got too close. Hernandez knelt, and Leo covered them.

“We’ve got to get a tourniquet on this,” Hernandez said.

“Just go!” Carmichael snarled, reloading. His fingers shook, and his lips were going a light shade of blue. “We won’t make it if you slow down any more. Go!”

Leo clapped Hernandez on the shoulder, and sent him on. When the medic was running, Leo hung an extra grenade on Carmichael’s belt. “Don’t let them take you.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

Leo nodded, and ran. The steady thunder of Carmichael’s pump gun rolled almost until they rest of the squad reached the beach head. Four seconds after the heavy gun stopped firing, a fireball went up behind them. The bright light in the darkness tore stone from the bridge and splintered shrapnel from the nearest support pillars. The school parted around the blast, darting away from the explosion with instinctive fear. That hesitation bought the pursued enough time to make the stairs.

They climbed into the sky, and in less than a minute were again lost in the fog. The thick cloud blotted out the sight of the horde, but it also distorted the things’ howls and wails. They sounded closer, then farther away, eventually reduced to noise on the wind. The squad slowed, climbing by feel as they focused before and behind. Nothing came at them from below, and nothing descended on them from above. An adrenaline-fueled eternity later CB pushed the iron gate wide and the others ran back onto solid ground. As soon as everyone had cleared the threshold Leo slammed the gate closed and rammed the stock of his weapon against the latch until he’d deformed it into a meaningless hunk of immobile slag.

“Status?” Leo snapped, turning to the others.

“The girl’s out cold, but breathing steady,” Hernandez said, crouching over Sarah. He withdrew a pre-loaded injector and pressed it against her bare shoulder. “Basic sedative ought to keep her out. If it doesn’t I doubt she’ll be able to do more than drool.”

“She’s your responsibility now,” Leo said. “CB, Frost, sweep the church. We’re going out the way we came in, and I want to be sure one of those fucking things didn’t sneak up here ahead of us.”

Frost reloaded his pistol, and vanished through the door right after CB. Leo turned to the other girl who was hugging herself and shivering in the damp. Leo shrugged off his jacket and handed it to her.

“You got a name?” He asked.

“Dikeledi,” she said, slipping into the jacket and buttoning it quickly.

“Dikeledi, you’ve got two choices,” he said. “You walk off now and go your own way, or you come with us. You come with us, I’ll do my best to get you out of here, but you do what you’re told when you’re told to do it until we’re clear, you get me?”

“I understand,” she said. She kissed the palm of her hand, and pressed her fingers to Leo’s forehead. “Thank you.”

A low, sharp whistle sounded from the doorway, and Frost was gesturing them into the church. Hernandez lifted Sarah in a fireman’s carry, grunting as he headed toward the church. Leo followed, Dikeledi on his heels. Leo jerked his sidearm and offered it to the girl.

“You know how to use one of these?” he asked.

“Well enough,” she said, taking the weapon.

“Safety’s off, and there’s one in the pipe,” he told her. “You see one of those things, kill it.”

The church was just how they’d left it. Leo slammed the door, shot the bolt, and kept moving. Hernandez was handing Sarah over to Frost, and the girl’s head was lolling. There was blood on her lips, but not very much. CB had his scanner out, and at Leo’s look shook his head.

“Dead air,” he said.

“Don’t jinx yourself,” Hernandez said, taking a deep breath and reloading.

“CB, take point,” Leo said. “Frost, you and Dikeledi are with me. Hernandez, keep an eye on the back trail, but don’t get lost.”

“We leap-frogging again boss?” Frost asked.

Leo shook his head then cracked his neck. “We hit the door and don’t stop moving until we’re pedal to the metal. Due east, fire at will but do not stop to engage.”

They nodded, and took their places. CB set his feet, and took several, deep breaths. He gripped the knob for a long moment, and listened. Without a word CB rushed the darkness, and the others charged into the blackness.

The town was alive. Shadows swarmed out of the ocean below, slithering through gutters and darting across buckled roads. The nightmare mass rolled in like a flood tide, suggestions of shapes and bodies of two separate worlds mingled into a hideous whole. The creatures raised their heads like hounds sniffing the air, or dragged themselves along the ground to taste the man scent. They called out in garbled, incomprehensible voices, and made ear-piercing shrieks as they swept closer. The pursuers moved slowly, but there were a lot of them and they were gaining.

All at once, everything went silent. The shambling foot beats ceased, and the dread chorus stopped. No doors slammed, no shutters creaked, and even the endless drone of the ocean seemed to fade away. The squad stopped, chests heaving as they tried to look everywhere at once. Their ears strained at nothing, and their eyes scrabbled at the fog, desperate to see what they couldn’t hear.

“Boss?” Frost panted.

“Quiet,” Leo said.

Frost sucked in a breath, but before he could say anything CB started shooting. He ran into the fog, howling loud enough to be heard over the quick, staccato bursts of his weapon. Bullets smashed glass, and thudded into brick and steel. The others ducked, eyes darting back and forth. Nothing came at them. CB kept firing, moving further and further into the fog until first his footsteps, and then his shots vanished.

“Go,” Leo said, and they ran for the trees.

Their retreat was a graceless, disorganized run through the underbrush. Roots snatched at their feet. Low-hanging branches rasped at their sleeves and across their faces, but the forest was just a forest. Beneath the wet, low-hanging limbs the shadows were nothing but patches of darkness. The fog stayed silent, and they didn’t look back.

The van was right where they’d left it, stashed beneath a mottled, indigo tarp and out of easy sight. Leo snatched the tarp, and Hernandez got the back open. Frost got Sarah onto the medical bench, and cut the restraints. When he realized he’d used the padre’s kris knife he threw it out into the trees. Hernandez strapped the girl in, crouching down and checking her vitals. Leo climbed behind the wheel, and Frost got into the passenger seat. Dikeledi slid into one of the rear-facing jump seats, fastened her belt and watched out the window. She never let go of the pistol. Doors slammed, the engine rumbled, and minutes later they were on the highway.

The silence stretched thick as midnight. Leo drove with both hands on the wheel, eyes flicking from the road to the mirrors and back again. Frost took long, slow breaths. His fingers moved almost of their own volition, as if he was playing a piano only he could see. Hernandez coughed and shuffled, clicking a pen flash into Sarah’s eyes and checking her pulse. He coughed again. Then a third time.

“What’s your malfunction, Hernandez?” Leo said, jerking the wheel into the fast lane and stepping down on the gas.

“Nothing,” Hernandez said. “It’s just the girl.”

“What about her?”

“Her vitals are off,” Hernandez said. “No immediate problems, but I can’t put my finger—”

“She is pregnant,” Dikeledi said.

Leo swerved. Frost swore. Hernandez lost his grip, and banged his shoulder against the wall before falling onto the floor. The van coasted. Frost turned around slowly, looking at Dikeledi.

“Pregnant?” he repeated. “Pregnant with what?”

The girl wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at Sarah, and her face may as well have been carved from the same, dark stone as the bridge. Then without a word Dikeledi raised Leo’s pistol and fired two rounds into Sarah’s belly. The gun roared, deafening in the tight confines, and blood fountained as the hollow points ripped through the girl’s innards. Before Dikeledi could fire a third shot, Frost put a bullet in her head. The gun fell from her hand, and she lurched against her safety harness.

Leo drove, and his leather gloves creaked as he gripped the wheel. Hernandez tried to staunch Sarah’s bleeding, alternating between praying and cursing. Frost slid his sidearm back into its holster, and stared through the windscreen.

“Dammit, Frost, get back there and help him,” Leo said.

“No.”

Leo went still. He slowly turned, and looked at Frost. “What do you mean, no?”

For a moment Frost gave no indication he’d even heard. He kept staring out into the night, his fingers keeping time with the broken, white lines. When he spoke his voice was very soft. “Where do you think all those things came from?”

“What does it fucking matter where they came from?” Leo said. “There’s no time for this—”

Frost looked at him. His eyes were bright, and glacially cold. “She’s pregnant Leo. Pregnant with what?”

Behind them, Hernandez started screaming.