The Aeschylus

1

The four figures rose from the water in the light of the dying sun. Mason knew its passage marked the birth of the winter season, but none of them would live to see it. He crawled up the beach like a spider, only regaining his full height when his boots hit solid ground. He felt taller somehow, leaner. It was as if every part of him that was not muscle and bone was being burned away.

“To me,” he said. Even his voice had changed. It was slick, serpentine.

His men slipped quietly from the water and came to stand beside him on the beach. Their skin had become splotchy, covered in those bruises that were not quite bruises. He could see the stuff had webbed through his own forearms, lacing up his skin with a varicose intensity.

Of course it had.

They had stood on the deck of The Aeschylus and inhaled the spores of the burning Carrion for the better part of an hour. Every one of them had been wounded, and so every one of them was changing. That didn't matter now, because that same damnation had saved them. It had saved them from the waters, and it had given them strength.

In some strange way, he felt he had come home. The tentacles curled about the hills above them, whispering to him in the back of his mind.

He turned to his men. There would be no speeches this time, no final words of do or die. They were here for one purpose, and it would be foremost in their minds until their minds were no more. They would need to get a lay of the land first. He thought they would start at the docks. AJ would have landed there, and they would be searching for the McCreedy woman. His old pal surely could not know she lay safely tucked behind a locked door at the base. After he took care of his old understudy, Mason thought he might have another go at her. There was no point in keeping her locked away now. They could all have fun with her, if they wanted. It was a nice thought, if it was to be their final act. Her cries would be a welcome and lustful thing.

All of this, he sensed, his men understood.

Without a word, he began walking up the shore. They would take the high ground, and they would search.

They would seek.

And they would kill.

2

When AJ stepped from the bunker, he was decked out in full black, his pants buttoned and his shirt tucked. A pair of jackboots had replaced his shit-kickers, a gun belt looped around his waist. He adjusted his cuffs and ran a hand through his damp hair, now returned to its normal fiery hue. “What do you think? Handsome?”

Kate was sitting on the ground, Indian-style. “No, creepy.”

“They had a choice of regular army or S.S. I figured I'd go all out.”

“How does it fit?”

“A little tight in the shoulders, but I'll manage.”

“I found something while you were in there.”

“Oh yeah? Just a sec.” He ducked back inside and returned with a pair of infantry rifles. He placed them on the ground, then checked the gun in his belt. Kate didn't remember the name for it, but it was one of those German war pistols you always saw in movies, the ones with the skinny barrels.

“Hurry up,” she said.

The two bodies in the supply bunker were not the only ones unaffected by the fungus. Kate had discovered a third man, this one crushed under the weight of the ceiling inside of the collapsed basement. Knowing that The Carrion hadn't wanted them after they had expired was comforting, in a way, but she was never going to get used to the sight of someone who had died in agony.

“Grisly,” AJ said when he saw it. “Is this what you wanted to show me?”

“No, look at this.”

The fallen supports had created a ramp, and Kate navigated down them, balancing herself with her hands. If the man in the hole had still been alive, she would have been adding to his misery. At the bottom, she jumped to the floor and walked over to a huge, metal cylinder. It spanned the height of the basement, touching what remained of the ceiling in the corner. Half a dozen tubes and ducts ran off of it, most of them broken. She pointed to a stain on the floor, a large splotch where one of the tubes had been shorn off.

“What is that?”

“You can't see it, but there are cages here. There's glass. It's weird, but I think they were using this stuff to kill it.”

“The Carrion?”

“The tentacles. I know how it sounds, but I just have a feeling.”

“If these things have been here for that long, I wouldn't be surprised. You think it's acid?”

“I don't know, but I bet he does.” She pointed to the skeleton on the ground. Its skin was yellow, preserved in the cold but sallowed by the years.

“Do you want to ask him?”

She picked a red notebook off of a nearby table.

“What is that?”

“A diary. It's in German, but—”

“But you can read it,” he finished.

“Yeah.”

“I knew that privileged upbringing of yours would come in handy.”

“Don't be an asshole. It might tell us something.”

“All right, bring it up. I want to show you something.”

When she had started exploring the basement, she thought he'd be a bit more respectful. There was a past here, a history. It meant something, and not just because The Carrion had claimed them.

She was about to go back up when she remembered one more thing. She picked it up off the ground and slung it over her shoulder, treading more carefully up the ramp. AJ grabbed her at the top and helped her over the final step.

“What is that, a coat?”

“You said you wanted to go all out.”

He held it out in front of him, looked at her uncertainly, then slipped one arm into a sleeve. She helped him with the other, getting the thing all of the way around his shoulders. Somehow, it seemed like it belonged.

“How do I look?”

“Significantly less prole-ish.”

“I don't know what that means.”

“Good. Now what did you want to show me?”

He walked back over to the supply bunker and grabbed one of the rifles off of the ground. “I want to teach you to shoot one of these.”

“Those things? You can't be serious.”

He looked at her, his eyes grim. “If we have any more trouble, we may have to use them. I don't know if I'd trust Gideon with one, but I'd trust you. Will you take it?”

“Do you know how old these are? You don't even know if they'll shoot.”

“They need to be cleaned, that's for sure. But there's some solvent back there, and I found some cloth. I'll need a screwdriver to remove the trigger guard, but I know you have one of those. It can be done.”

It took some time, but eventually, she agreed. They had nothing else to do until Dutch got back. And so, they sat outside in the dirt, AJ working feverishly to get the guns in shape. She caught him stealing glances at her, but she brushed it off, smiling to herself while they worked.

It took them half an hour to finish. When they were done, AJ went back inside and grabbed a few cans of food. She couldn't imagine eating anything that had been stuck in a can for more than half a century, but when he handed one to her, her stomach rumbled audibly. “Will they make us sick?”

“Not if the seals are intact. They've probably lost their Vitamin A and C, but they'll have the same calorie content as when they were packed.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

He opened one with a can opener from his key chain and took a swallow, then smacked his lips distastefully. “Mushy.”

They could only stomach two cans apiece, but it felt good to eat. Kate hadn't realized how hungry she had been.

When they were finished, he took the empty cans and set up a pyramid in the dirt. Then, he showed her everything about a Mauser Karabiner 98 that she could possibly need to know: how to reload, how to hold the butt against her shoulder, how to properly line up the iron sights. She'd shot plenty of pistols, but never a rifle.

When she stepped into place and fired for the first time, her shot went wide by a good two feet.

“Not bad,” he said.

The second shot was a little closer. The third shot was an utter failure, flying high and ricocheting off of a metal door behind the target. They both ducked, hearing the bullet whiz off somewhere into the sky. The fourth shot nicked the topmost can and sent it spiraling to the ground. AJ seemed impressed.

“Pretty good.”

“Pretty good yourself. I didn't know you had it in you to stay in one place and watch someone for more than five minutes.”

He smiled, but it was a painful smile. “I don't know when I started drifting, to tell you the truth. The obvious answer is when my wife left me, but I think it really started earlier, at least mentally.”

“You can't stay in one place.”

“I don't like to, no. Dutch and I have a good thing going in Puerto Aisén, but I don't know if it'll last.”

“You don't want to try settling down again? Starting a family?”

“I don't know. That kind of life… it always seems to happen to somebody else. I tried it once, and I wasn't very good at it.”

“You have to stop some time.”

He aimed his own rifle at the cans. “If it's just the same to you, I'd prefer not to stop today.”

“You know what I mean.”

He lowered the rifle. “I came back for you, didn't I?”

As she looked into his face, his eyes sparkled. She saw the man he could have been, then — the man untarnished by war, by divorce, by years of hard life in the third world. He could have been something else entirely. “Are you hitting on me ex-Security Chief Trenton?”

“No ma'am. I don't hit anything that doesn't hit back.” He raised the gun and fired, sending one of the remaining cans into the air. “Except for those cans, anyways.”

The next few shots were not as accurate, but he hit two more before the magazine expired.

“A little sloppy,” she observed.

“Dutch would have hit them all, but that's Dutch. Anyways, you're the one who needs some work.”

In spite of the terrible stress — maybe because of the terrible stress — she had a sudden devious impulse, and she took it. She leaned into him, putting her hand on his belt, letting her face slip close to his. When he tried to lean into her, she slipped the pistol out of his holster and stepped backwards. He chuckled.

Private lessons at the shooting range were a long ways behind her, but some things you never forget. And even if she couldn't fire a rifle to save her life, she damn well knew how to hold a handgun. She fired three rounds, hitting an overturned can with each shot.

AJ stared. “Huh.”

“We're not so different, Dutch and me. Maybe we'll have a little competition when he gets back.” It wasn't the time to mess with him, but she needed to laugh. Not to mention, Dutch might be more inclined to hurry if he heard the shots. Because the only thing in the back of her mind was how scared she still was, and how much she wanted to get the hell out of this place.

The shots did have an effect, but not on Dutch.

The figures in the hills took them to mean that the two men down at the whaling docks were quite a long ways from their friends. It was the only signal they needed to move in.

3

Dutch threw open the door to the machine shop and coughed, inhaling fumes of rust and old oil. Shafts of gray streamed in from high windows, colored by years of dust and disuse. He and Gideon had been about to give up when they'd found the place, but he had a feeling about it. As soon as he had seen the sliding garage door and the ramp leading out into the ocean, he had known there would be something inside.

When his eyes adjusted, he stopped dead in his tracks. In the middle of the warehouse, suspended perfectly on an elevated ramp, was a ship. It was no whale catcher, but a pre-war fish tugger with a glass bottom and a gasoline-powered motor. No lead acid battery either, but a full on pull-starter with a rope as thick as his thumb. His nautical history was next to nothing, but he would have guessed it was brand new for the time, and he would have been right. He was so surprised that he felt his mouth hanging open. He shut it.

“Hey Doc! Doc!” he yelled. “Get in here!”

Silence hung in the air, and he called again. When nothing happened, Dutch felt his fingers tightening around the flare gun, but then, Gideon appeared in the doorway, carrying an old gas can. It was faded and red, shaped vaguely like a kettlebell.

“What, man?”

“Come over here. Look at this.”

“It's a boat.”

“It's a boat that could get us out of here.”

“Oh,” Gideon said, as if the thought hadn't occurred to him. “Well, I found some more gas. It's got to be eighty years old.”

“No shit?”

“Give me a lighter.”

Dutch tossed him one. The doc tipped the can, and a thick sludge the color of old coffee spattered onto the cement. He flicked lighter on and held it to the puddle.

“No, don't!” Dutch yelled.

But Gideon gave him a toothy grin and lowered the flame. Nothing happened. For all of its practical uses, the stuff might as well be old coffee.

“You crazy sonofabitch,” Dutch said.

“Bet I can fix it.”

“Why?”

Gideon pondered, and for a moment, he looked almost sane. “Well, there was no such thing as unleaded gas when that engine was built. I don't think it will matter, but I'm going to mix our gas with some of this stuff just to be sure. I got to filter the old shit first. Well, obviously, right?”

Dutch looked at him warily. “As long as you know what you're doing, Doc.”

“Assuming the gas works, can you fix the rest? I mean, it looks corpsed.”

Dutch was no deft hand with engines, but he knew a little, and even if he couldn't fix it, AJ could. “Is a frog's ass watertight?”

“Yes, it actually holds its sphincter closed, or it wouldn't be able to float.” Gideon didn't laugh, but he was wearing another goofy face that made him look soft in the head.

“Get the hell out of here. Find me a wrench.”

The man returned with one a few minutes later, and Dutch began taking the old engine apart. It turned out to be a lot easier than he thought. When he had been a teenager — in the long ago of Arizona, this had been — he had liked to work on old cars. He had never been very good at it, but the basics were still bumping around in his skull. He flushed the fuel lines, cleaned the spark plugs, and drained the oil.

As he worked, Gideon found a handful of unused engine filters and went about setting up a filtration process for the old sludge. After a few passes, the gas looked almost clear, and Gideon ran another flame test on a small puddle. It was slow to catch, but it burned, all right. He added some of the new gas to the kettlebell, then handed the container up.

Dutch filled the motor. “Time for the real test. I'd step away from the propeller, if I were you.”

The blade lay suspended above the ramp, the engine tilted at forty-five degrees. Gideon actually poked it, giving it a spin with one hand, then trotted off to have a piss. Dutch hoped he would have the decency to find some clothes while he was outside, but he didn't think he'd be that lucky. Dutch himself had picked up an old trench coat from the docks. He felt like a Central Park flasher with just his tighties underneath, but it was better than nothing.

He climbed up to the deck, grabbed the starter, and pulled it. The engine coughed. He pulled again, hearing the starter flub and whistle without turning over. He found the primer button and pumped it, pushing gas into the engine, then tried the pull again. Nothing. Nothing for the next six tries, either. He gave it a rest, his arm aching.

“Doc, give me a hand with this!” Where was Gideon this time?

He greased his palms and gave it one more go. The engine turned over with a belch and a roar, coughing up clouds of black smoke. The sound was immense, at least three times louder than any boat he'd been on.

“Hot damn!” he shouted. “The Dutch boy comes through again! Gideon, where you at?”

If the man said anything in reply, he didn't hear it. The noise was too goddamned loud. He figured he'd let it run for a few minutes and then cut it. Now, if they couldn't patch the other boat, they'd have a Plan B. AJ would be proud.

Dutch squinted over the top of the boat to the open door, oblivious to the figure creeping onto the platform behind him.

4

Mason crept along the deck, as silent as the dark. He paused just long enough to pull his knife out of its sheath. No guns had survived the journey through the water, but his blade had made the trip just fine.

“Gideon! Where are you?” the man called.

He could taste the sweat on the air, could feel the other man's heart beating in his chest. His own chest felt as if it were on fire, burning with the need to strike.

“Doc! You're making me nervous, Doc!” Dutch bent and grabbed something off of the floor. It looked like a flare gun, but that couldn't save him now.

“Help me!” Gideon's form came hurtling through the open doorway. His body hit the ground and rolled, coming to rest in front of the spinning rotor of the engine. A metal container clanged next to him, spilling from his hand in the tumble.

The game was up.

“Gideon!” Dutch called.

Mason slid in behind and thrust with his knife. Dutch spun at the last moment, but it was too late. Too late!

But it wasn't.

Instead of hitting the man's kidney, the blade sliced between his ribs. Dutch rolled with the cut, and Mason felt something smack into his head. He reeled. Dutch slammed his wrist and then kicked him in the thigh. One-two. The knife clattered to the ground, gliding further down the deck and out of reach.

Quick! He was quick!

With a cry, Mason lunged, tackling Dutch and driving him to the ground. He put a knee on the man's chest, then smashed him with his fists. He pounded his face, his skull, and when he covered up, Mason hit him in the ribs.

He chanced a glance over the rails and saw St. Croix stalking Gideon, grinning like a monkey. He picked the skinny man up and embraced him just beneath the boat, biting at his neck.

Then something heavy and metallic slammed into the side of Mason's head. He stumbled, looking down towards Dutch and seeing the man had picked up a wrench. A goddamned wrench!

“Gideon! Hold on!”

Dutch kicked the engine, dropping the propeller parallel to the floor. He didn't know it would work, he couldn't know that it would work… but suddenly St. Croix was howling, his skull shredding and crunching in the tilt-a-whirl of the blade.

Mason roared. “No!”

His two other men emerged from the shadows and ran at the doctor. Gideon was still holding Peter in a weird embrace, shrieking vengeance as the blade chopped through his head.

Vy grabbed Gideon and slammed him onto the ground, ignoring St. Croix's body and the spinning blade behind it. Melvin jumped after, and then the two of them were digging into the doctor with their fingernails, hacking at him with their teeth. Gideon screamed as his body shook, blood pooling beneath him.

Mason jumped towards Dutch, driving his knee into the man's groin. The man dropped to the deck, and Mason kicked the wrench away. Before Dutch could escape, Mason grabbed him and hauled him over his head like a power-lifter. A fresh gout of blood drained from his bullet wound, but he felt alive! Alive!

He tossed the puny man over the rails, and Dutch hit the concrete with a thud. Mason wondered how long this guy—this fucking tough guy—would survive when he fed him feet first to that propeller.

Beneath him, Gideon had managed to crawl to the object he had been carrying.

“Finish him,” Mason yelled. “Finish him now!”

Gideon unscrewed the cap on the gas can. Even with the weight of two men on top of him, he was able to tip it over. The liquid splashed out onto his thighs, onto his stomach, onto the two men who were hacking and biting him. The man was crying, laughing, howling as he did it. In another life, it would have been a sight to fuel Mason's nightmares, even with all he had seen.

The sound of a metal click snapped his attention back to the other man. On the ground, Dutch had uncurled.

He was holding the flare gun.

5

“Do it!” Gideon yelled. “Do it!” He was laughing as he yelled it, laughing as they tore him apart.

Dutch didn't know which gas Gideon had been carrying: the good stuff, or the inert sludge. If it was the latter, he was dead.

It wasn't.

A red ball shot from the tube and hit Gideon in the leg, the flame catching before it even made contact. A ball of orange fire engulfed the entourage, spreading up and over the ground.

Mason leapt from the deck of the ship and grabbed Melvin, pushing him out of the way as the fireball exploded. Christian was not as lucky. He was at the nexus when it hit, the fireball washing over him in a giant puff. He stood as a flaming pillar, then lumbered towards the exit, his arms thrashing like a B-movie caricature.

On the floor next to him, Gideon's body burned without a sound, and Dutch knew he was dead.

Poor Gideon.

He found his feet and ran, following Christian's howling figure out the door. The burning man made it to the beach and fell into the water, dousing himself with a terrible hiss. Later, Dutch would ask himself why he hadn't finished Christian right there and then as the man lay helpless, but that was no mystery. Henry Jones, elite sniper and security guard, was scared. He was scared out of his mind, and he was hurt. Blood still flowed from between his ribs, the spot where the knife had cut him. He needed to find help, and fast.

Behind him, Mason was stripping off his clothes, peeling burnt cloth and skin from his back in layers. When he tried to run after, he stumbled, his wounded leg finally giving out beneath him. He howled with rage, staring at the fleeing man with hatred in his eyes.

Dutch didn't look back. He ran on, his mind reeling with terror and confusion.

How? How, how had they survived?

But he knew the answer. They were them now, their skin blackened and their minds twisted. Now, they would stop at nothing.

As he made his way along the beach, jogging up the coast towards the fortress, he looked up to the sky and saw the sun had finally fallen below the horizon.