Map of Sanguine Springs

  Sanguine Springs

  There wasn't much time.

  The ground shivered and buckled, pondside scrub trembling. The very dirt split open, clefts widening, sifting down a snowstorm of soil and pine needles. Brad dropped his rifle to the deck. He knelt, one foot forward, coming to rest on his back knee. Matthias's body slid forward. He cradled the unconscious man's head, letting him rest on the boards. The deck vibrated, not from his steps, but from a growing, subterranean rumble.

  The explosion. The one that decimated Jake's house. His mind flashed back through years of chaos, to the day before. The water heater was cold and he lit the pilot light. A small flame. Inconsequential. Nearby, rusted and red, sat the big tank for the fuel oil. Behind the tank was a door. A locked door. One he knew, but had not mentioned. It led to the old tunnels. Tunnels leading from her father's house to the old silo.

  Jake had laughed when he'd told him, a decade ago; said to cover it up and move on. So they had, forgetting the tunnel's existence without harm. Till tonight.

  The explosion breached the tunnels. The silo, buried under water and mud, had ruptured. Concrete meant to withstand a nuclear blast, weakened by decades of freezes and thaws, had failed under the pressure wave of a house fire.

  His front door stood ajar, jamb wrenched loose by an intruder, jagged splinters visible along the edge. He shouldered it aside, rushed in, and scanned the room. No Tony. No Allison. Brad's head ratcheted around, zeroing in on another open door—the basement, from which a tremulous sound bellowed.

  "Allison!" Brad's voice cracked as he moved to the door. "Tony!"

  "Uncle Brad?" The reply echoed hollow, bouncing off the stairwell's vaulted ceiling, followed by footsteps on the basement stairs.

  Relief hit him like a physical force. She was alive. She was answering.

  Allison emerged from the stairwell, her prosthetic hand still gripping the nickel-plated revolver, barrel pointed at the floor. Behind her came Tony Dalotto, the sash of his open robe leaving a watery trail, big belly heaving as he swallowed great gulps of air. The panting man carried a Thompson submachine gun at his hip, barrel downward, finger resting alongside the receiver. Wet, breathless, and covered in plaster, they looked like the losers in a sheetrock pie-eating contest. But they were alive.

  "Uncle Betty!" Allison shouted, wrapping Brad in a tight bear hug. Brad winced, shoulders high and elbows akimbo as the scattered armor plates grated against his bruised ribs. Gingerly he extricated himself, then wrapped his niece close in a one-armed embrace.

  "Boy, am I glad to see you, Al. I thought you were in Jake's house when it blew up."

  "We're fine," Allison said, though her voice shook. "Wait, Dad's house? Is that why your basement is flooding?"

  "Flooding?" Tony echoed. "It looks like the second tape of Titanic down there."

  "Tape?" Allison cocked her head to the side.

  "VHS," Tony replied. "I'm old, okay?"

  "Later, you two," Brad cut in. "This house isn't stable after the explosion. Get out, and get Matthias off the porch. I shouldn't have brought him up there anyway, but it's too late now. Rendezvous with Jael and the prisoner."

  "Ron day voo with who now?" Tony wrinkled his nose.

  "Prisoner?" Allison asked. "Wait a minute, where are you going?"

  Brad was already at the basement door, one foot on the flight of stairs.

  "Matthias is hurt, maybe bad. I need my med kit."

  And then he was gone, feet clattering down the stairs.

  She's alive. Now to make sure we all stay that way.

  Brad hit the basement stairs at a run. The steps beneath his feet hummed, rattling in harmony with the water surging into his home. He swung left at the bottom, water sloshing around his shins as he slogged toward the closet on the far wall.

  The overhead lights flickered. Once, twice, then held steady, but at half their normal brightness, casting jittery shadows across the flooding room.

  He should be wading waist-deep by now. Should be swimming, maybe. But the water only reached mid-shin, rising slower than it had any right to given the violence of that rumble upstairs.

  It wasn't right.

  A secondary breach. Had to be. Floods don't just stop—unless something else was in play, unless the water found another, lower place to flow.

  Brad reached the closet and yanked the handle. The door didn't budge. The frame had shifted—pinched tight by the settling foundation, the wood wedged into place like the house itself was trying to keep him from leaving.

  "Come on!" He set his feet, wrapped both hands around the handle, and pulled. His bruised ribs screamed. He pulled harder, letting out a roar that echoed off the wet concrete walls.

  The door gave all at once, swinging open with a crack of splintering wood.

  He was rewarded with a flash of neon. No light, but the bright orange trauma pack, standing upright on the shelf. Next to it, his bug-out bag—his old assault pack, in familiar, loathed baby-vomit ACU pattern camouflage. Thank God these weren't on the ground, Brad thought, splashing forward. He grabbed both, slinging the trauma pack over one shoulder and hooking the bug-out bag with his free hand. The packs were heavy. Reassuringly heavy.

  Then came the sound.

  A subterranean thunderclap—concrete shattering deep below, the snap and crack of rebar tearing free. The lights went out. Full dark, save for the faint orange glow filtering down the stairwell from somewhere above.

  The ground bucked beneath his feet.

  Brad stumbled, caught himself against the closet doorframe. The water around his boots shifted. Not rising now—flowing. Moving fast, like someone had opened a drain at the far end of the basement. The lake side.

  He heard it then. A deep, wet, sucking sound. Monstrous. Like a gluttonous freight train sharing a milkshake with a two-dollar tornado, all pressure and suction and the groan of the earth giving way beneath him.

  Another crack. Louder. Closer.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  The water surged, flowing faster now, pulling at his legs as it rushed toward the back wall where the lake pressed against the house's foundation.

  Time to go.

  Brad turned and ran for the stairs, grateful for the dim beacon they provided. The generator should have kicked on by now; it was probably offline, ruptured in the garage. As useless as the shattered still beside it.

  But what was that light? A fire upstairs?

  Past his stairwell and office, one of the LED panels broke loose, half-dangling from the ceiling. Its backup battery kicked on as the fixture splashed down into the water, flaring to sudden life. Light flashed momentarily, illuminating the armory and far wall in a single strobe before the water killed it forever. Only a second of light.

  What he saw confirmed the worst.

  The floor wasn't cracked. It was gone. A yawning chasm into which the water poured, draining back the way it had come as the thirsty silo drank in all it could—including the shore itself.

  Brad stumbled, toe catching on a new and unseen crack. He went sprawling, head cracking hard against the concrete. The assault pack tumbled toward the chasm. Reflexively, he wrapped his arms tight around the med pack. His leg screamed, his chest pounding. His mouth felt like 80-grit sandpaper. He raised his head from the water, tried to rise, but could not. The floor held him fast, a death grip on his boot. He could feel the steel-toed cap starting to buckle as the floor shifted again. Trapped like a rat.

  He was out of luck. Time to die, at last. To meet his fallen comrades, and his brother.

  I'm sorry, Jake. I got her out, at least.

  The basement flooded with crimson light, casting weird shadows on the rippling water. By its glow, he saw it. The angel of death. A valkyrie, hair in a halo around her head, towering above him, descending from above. The figure stretched out its hand, ready to take him home.

  "Uncle Brad, here!"

  A hand at his ankle, pulling. Strong. Unbroken. Metal. It pulled his foot free, toe knuckles scraping the steel cap as they broke free from their watery grave. The ground shivered as he pulled free, the crack compressing as the foundation recoiled. The steel toe crushed flat only seconds after his escape.

  "Come on," the valkyrie cried. Not melodious, not triumphant. Fearful. Fearful, and familiar. "Uncle Brad, please, we have to move."

  Allison.

  "Over here, Tony." Jael's voice cut through the chaos, sharp and commanding. She gestured with her free hand toward the center of the circular drive, well clear of Brad's groaning house. "Set him down. Away from the structure."

  Tony grunted, adjusting Matthias's weight across his shoulders. The younger man's head lolled, still unconscious, muttering something in German. Tony shuffled forward, bathrobe flapping, and eased Matthias down onto the gravel with surprising gentleness for a man his size.

  "There," Tony panted, straightening with a hand on his lower back. "Kid's heavier than he looks."

  "Good. Stay with him." Jael's eyes never left the prisoner. "We need Brad's trauma kit."

  Tony nodded, already kneeling beside Matthias. He glared fiercely at the hostage's back.

  Jael turned her full attention back to the captive. She kept the MCX steady, muzzle leveled at the man's head. He sat on the gravel drive, motionless in the moonlight, hands zip-tied behind him, head bowed. Alive, able-bodied, but unwilling to fight. She didn't know his name—didn't care to ask. He was just the prisoner now, one of the men who'd tried to take everything.

  Prisoner. She didn't like it. These men were terrorists, nighttime invaders come only to kill and destroy. And now? Brad had stayed her hand.

  Brad. Not her commander, or boss. Her landlord. Her neighbor. Mister "Flies a flag on the front porch." Truth, justice, and the American way? Noble—but weak.

  And now this one would be turned over to the police, no doubt. All her training, and the memories of her dead family cried out for vengeance. I know terrorists. Only death can still their hand. But why were they here?

  "Hey, Jael?" Tony asked, breaking her darker thoughts.

  "What?"

  "Where'd the girl go?"

  Jael stood straighter, her breath catching. She turned, gun still trained on the captive, scanning the perimeter. Smoke, chaos, and dead bodies—but no Allison.

  "You lost her?"

  "Hey, I was carrying Mister Schnitzel here."

  "And I was watching the prisoner," Jael shot back. "She was with you, salami-head."

  "Please, don't." Tony held up a hand. His face looked worn, ashy. Tired. More tired than he had looked in all the time she had known him. "Real shit's going down. We could die. I'm getting tired of this."

  "Alright, fine, sorry I hurt your feelings. But we have to find her."

  "Maybe she went back in after her uncle," Tony suggested.

  The ground trembled again, a low, uneasy shudder rolling up from beneath the pond. She felt it in her boots, in her teeth. The water level had already dropped visibly since the last big quake; the pond's edge looked wrong, sucked inward like the lake was breathing out. Every few seconds another crackle of dirt and stone echoed from the direction of Brad's house. She hated that sound. In a night of horrors, the ground consuming their town bite by ravenous bite had never entered her mind. The house's roofline was sagging, leaning noticeably toward the pond.

  It wouldn't last much longer.

  Allison missing again, and Brad was still inside.

  She forced her focus back to the prisoner, finger indexed along the trigger guard. If he so much as twitched, she'd drop him. But her eyes kept flicking toward the dark shape of the house, waiting for Brad to come out with Allison and the med kit. What was taking so long?

  Behind her on the gravel, the host of the evening's Sagra tended to Matthias's wounds. Tony's big hands moved with surprising gentleness: checking the pulse, inspecting airways, murmuring something low and steady. The older man looked exhausted, robe still damp and clinging, but he hadn't stopped. Jael respected that. She just wished Brad would hurry.

  A new sound joined the song of rumblings and water. A distant engine, growling to life. Jael squinted past trees. Headlights, up on the hill. Jael raised the rifle to her shoulder, muscles tense. If these were reinforcements, they were sunk.

  "Don't worry." The prisoner lifted his head a fraction. "He's leaving," he said, voice flat, almost empty.

  "Who? Who's leaving?"

  He didn't answer. He didn't need to. The prisoner just stared up the slope as the engine revved, tires chewing gravel and pine needles, taillights flashing like eyes as they disappeared over the hill.

  "Hey, look!" Tony pointed toward the house as the darkened doorway filled with crimson light. Moments later, two figures emerged, the slighter one leading the taller. Allison, right arm aglow with fierce red light, guiding her armored uncle from his own doomed home. Brad hobbled along, an orange bag clutched to his chest.

  Jael grit her teeth as the big man seemed to stumble; but Brad merely knelt awkwardly, scooping up his rifle, before limping away from the house and down the wooden steps.

  No sooner had he and Allison crossed the first step when the ground shook again, a new fissure appearing around the building like a moat. A muddy squelching echoed off the mountains as the entire structure slid, collapsing downward into the ever-widening mouth of a monstrous sinkhole.

  Forgetting the prisoner, Jael dropped the MCX, running forward to meet the fugitives. She slid under Brad's arm, helping him cross the distance to the base of the fallen lodgepole pine.

  Brad and Allison collapsed at the base of the fallen lodgepole, chests heaving. Brad dropped the orange trauma pack beside him, still clutching his rifle in one white-knuckled hand. Allison sat back against the rough bark, her prosthetic's crimson glow fading to a dull ember as she stared at the hole where her uncle's house had stood moments before.

  They were dazed, but okay. Alive.

  Jael exhaled hard, then turned back toward the prisoner. She scooped up the MCX from where she'd dropped it in the gravel, bringing it back up to a low ready position.

  The prisoner hadn't moved. Still on his knees, head bowed, hands zip-tied behind his back. He looked like a man waiting for the axe to fall—resigned, defeated. Accepting his fate, apparently.

  Nearby, someone groaned, shuffling against gravel and leaves.

  "Lukas?"

  The voice was thick, confused. Jael whipped her head around.

  Matthias had pushed himself up a little, one hand clamped to his temple, eyes slitted and unfocused. He blinked slowly at the prisoner.

  The bound man went rigid. His shoulders locked, then sagged as though someone had cut his strings. Color bled from his face so fast Jael thought he might drop.

  "Matthias?" The word came out strangled, barely audible.

  Jael's gaze snapped back and forth. Matthias, still dazed, squinting like he was trying to remember a dream. The prisoner, frozen, mouth hanging open.

  "Matthias?" she echoed, sharper now. She looked from Matthias to the prisoner. "You know this guy?"

  The prisoner swallowed hard. When he spoke again, it was a whisper, like saying it aloud made it real.

  "Know him? He used to lead our team."