Chapter 2 - Lewis Fields

  After taking a minute to recover the magazine he’d fumbled, Cole swung up into the right side seat of the M-ATV and pulled the door shut. He pulled over the radio handset while Gillis wriggled back up into the turret.

  “This is Papa Four calling Papa One, engaged by hostile… wildlife. Partner force has confirmed KIA. Withdrawing to entry control point.”

  He let go of the transmitter and listened to the static on the receiver for a minute. Beside him, Brennan dropped his NODs in place and put the M-ATV in gear. If there were more hostiles—be they loyalists, Glefa Company, or Gulf-War science experiments—no sense advertising their position. Cole looked out the window and frowned. It didn’t even seem dark enough to need the night vision. The sky might have been red, sure, but it was alive with a sea of bright stars. Cole’s breath caught. The stars were wrong, too. No big dipper, no Orion, no Cassiopeia that he could see. He looked back at the others. If either of them knew any astronomy, they hadn’t spoken up.

  “Back to the entry control point,” said Cole. The SDF base wasn’t very big—though the old bombed-out oil town was still bigger than the two dozen Kurdish fighters really needed. Still, there should have been some activity. He hit the radio again. “Papa Four, radio check,” he called. No response. Maybe once they got clear of the structures they’d have better line of sight. But they’d come with three other vics in the convoy for Lieutenant Hosco to meet their SDF contact, and none of them were reporting in.

  Cole cycled through the backup, and then the emergency channels, each with no response.

  Gillis ducked his head down into the cabin. “What’s the 11-line for a wendigo attack, anyway?” he asked. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, Cole could hear the nervous edge to his voice.

  “Get back up there, Gillis,” said Cole. “I want your head on a swivel.” he shook his head. “Wendigos. I thought it was Saddam’s secret bio-weapon?”

  “It can’t be happening,” said Brennan beside him. “I mean, it disappeared, right? Maybe it was never real to begin with.”

  Cole glanced at his private’s white knuckles on the steering wheel. He reached over and put a hand on his arm. “Brennan. I don’t know what it was. But this, us out of contact less than 50 miles from a Glefa stronghold and maybe cut off from the rest of the 82nd? That’s happening. And I need you with us if we’re going to survive, yeah?”

  Brennan took a deep breath, and his hands eased on the wheel. “Yeah, Sarge.”

  “Good,” said Cole. “And Gillis?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shut the fuck up about wendigos and Saddam Hussein. This isn’t Dungeons and Dragons.”

  “Yes, Sarge.”

  Cole shifted in his seat, looking out at the wrong-colored sky again. “It’s clearly Cthulhu.”

  Brennan snorted in the driver's seat, and Cole smiled in spite of himself. He glanced at, for all he knew, the last two surviving members of the 82nd Airborne detachment. Keep them focused. Keep them present. Keep them alive. All three of them. The softly glowing carbine on his sling reminded him that there were worse things out here than Syrian loyalists and Russians.

  Brennan turned the corner and the ECP came into view, where one of the other M-ATVs was pushed against a concrete barrier, driver side doors hanging open.

  “Stop the vehicle,” said Cole. “Gillis, watch our six. See anything, don’t keep quiet about it.”

  Cole pushed open the door and checked under his feet before dropping to the sand. He shouldered his rifle and padded toward the other vehicle, ears straining for any movement. Behind him, he could see the glow of Gillis’ NODs up on the turret as he swung the M240 to cover the town they’d come from.

  Pushing up further, Cole stopped when he caught sight of a dark splotch on one of the windows, and several deep gouges in the side of the door that looked like… claw marks. Wendigos. God damn it, Gillis.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Lieutenant Hosco,” whispered Cole, edging closer. He reached out with his non-firing hand and swung the M-ATV door open, looking inside, and then immediately looking away.

  If it was his lieutenant in the front seat, there wasn’t enough left of him to identify—and Cole wasn’t about to go digging in what was left to see if he could find dog tags. He took back what he’d believed about having seen worse. And the back seat wasn’t any better. Whatever had gotten to this vehicle had gotten to them fast. There was a faint smell of sulphur and carbon over the copper tang. Cole spotted a sidearm on the deck. So, at least one of them had gotten a few rounds off in the cramped cabin. A few spots of dark blood on the inside of the door showed where they’d hit their assailant, but Cole knew first hand how little a handful of small arms rounds did to… whatever these things were.

  He backed up from the cabin. There was nothing he or anyone could do for these soldiers.

  “Sergeant!” called Gillis. “Brennan got someone on the radio!”

  “Thank Christ,” said Cole. “Who?”

  “I think it’s that Lewis Fields guy. He’s saying that—”

  A blood-stained white giant dropped from the overhang, landing heavy in the dust between Cole and the M-ATV. It was bigger than the one they’d already killed. Broader, too. Its chest was the size of an oven, and its jaws swung open sideways like an insect’s mandibles as it howled.

  “Shit!” shouted Gillis, swinging the 240 down. But Cole was faster, bringing his carbine up and firing as the creature started to charge. Blinding, blue bolts erupted from the muzzle of his M4, streaking toward the new monster and striking it in the chest. Arcs of electricity crawled up and down its body, and it locked up and toppled over. Cole jumped out of the way as its momentum carried it right past him. The M-ATV’s engine revved and his soldiers brought the vehicle up. Cole wasted no time scrambling back into the side seat.

  The strange rounds he’d pulled out of the first monster’s corpse had not only worked, but somehow stunned the creature, or tazed it or something. But tazed wasn’t dead, and the little voice in the back of Cole’s mind didn’t think it was permanent, either. He turned to his driver. “Brennan, fuck ‘im up.”

  Brennan glanced over and then gunned the engine. Cole braced an arm against the inside frame as the kid swerved to the side just enough to run the heavy tires over the tango before angling around the other vehicle. Brennan grinned beneath his NODS as he sped out of the ECP.

  “Got him, Sergeant Colton.”

  Cole pictured the looming hellish creature, all thick corded muscle where the other had been spindly. “I think this one is going to need a bit more,” he admitted. He was proven right a few moments later when Gillis opened up with the turret gun.

  “Holy shit, look,” said Brennan. Cole craned his neck and gawked at the edge of the oil village, where it looked like some sci-fi orbital laser had neatly chopped the outermost row of structures right in half, exposing their interiors.

  Well I guess that explains how that thing got inside the kitchen.

  The radio crackled, and Cole grabbed the handset. “Break, break, this is Papa 4 east ECP, returning to base, hostiles in pursuit.”

  “Papa 4… hold on… Sergeant Colton? Please verify,” said an unfamiliar voice.

  Cole hesitated, finger just off the transmitter. Broadcasting names over the radio was…

  As if the other voice had read his mind, “Son, there’s no one else listening in. No BDOC, no loyalists, no rebels, just us and the monsters. Who have you got with you?”

  The M-ATV jerked, and the road got rough. No, scratch that, the road ended. Brennan fought beside him to keep the vehicle under control through the high speed transition. They’d driven in on an old highway. It couldn’t just disappear. After a brief pause in fire, the M240 continued to rattle off short bursts.

  To hell with radio procedures. Cole needed answers. “This is Sergeant Colton 82nd Airborne, I have with me Private Brennan and Specialist Gillis, and there’s a fucking wendigo on our ass! Now who the hell are you? Are you this Lewis Fields guy?”

  Above, the fire cut off.

  “Reloading!” shouted Gillis.

  “No, listen. You’re caught in a Lewis Field crossover event. You’re not in Syria anymore. You look at the sky?”

  “Yeah, it’s all wrong.”

  “You’re driving east, yeah? See three bright stars, near the horizon?”

  Cole leaned forward in his seat, peering through the dust bombarding the windshield. Off to the right a bit, there was a trio of stars, the brightest in that area by far. “Yeah, I see ‘em.”

  “Drive toward ‘em. We see your muzzle flashes. Tell your gunner to watch his four o’clock high.”

  Cole pointed out the stars on the right to Brennan.

  “I got it, Sarge,” he said, angling the vehicle. The ground under them had transitioned to rough stone and scrub brush—terrain that hadn’t been within a dozen miles of the oil villa. Not in Syria anymore…

  Cole leaned back. “Gillis, four o’clock high!” he shouted up.

  “High? What am I looking for—oh hell!”

  The turret swung around and started thundering. Off to the vehicle’s rear right quarter, winged forms started to fall to the ground, thrashing where their bat-like wings were shredded by the heavy rounds. Cole leaned over to the window. He could see more swarming creatures in the air, and more pale figures loping across the ground on two legs or bounding on four. Definitely not Syria. Syria has way fewer monsters.

  “Sarge, dead ahead!” shouted Brennan. Cole’s attention snapped back to the front where another figure was up ahead, silhouetted by 3 glowing orbs and sprinting towards them like an Olympic marathon runner.