It was the first time I went through a challenge. It would not be the last.
Lins held out his lighter, and the gas-soaked rag stuffed into the bottle caught fire. Kelley took that bottle and used it to light the one in his other hand. “Awesome!” the bearded firebug shouted as he started toward the grocery store, flaming Molotov in each hand. “I’ve got them now.”
“Cover him,” Horst ordered as he ground the butt of his rifle against his shoulder. The other three got their guns up, ready to shoot as Kelley hurried down the relatively cleared path left by the crashed plow, the dump-truck end of which was visible at the opposite end of the building. Kelley was cackling maniacally as he got within throwing range.
“What if there’s some bystanders trapped in there?” Lins asked quickly, realizing that they hadn’t talked through that possibility.
“Screw ’em,” Jo Ann spat. “I’m not going in there.”
Horst scowled, but his girlfriend had a point. They hadn’t thought that far past “burn it down and shoot anything that comes out,” but listening to the racket coming from in there, the idea of survivors was doubtful. “Sucks to be them, I guess.”
Lins didn’t seem to like that, but he went back to looking through the Aimpoint on his carbine and didn’t speak up.
They’d divided up their one case of silver 5.56 ammo. Horst had bought everyone their own full-auto and then done just like that four-eyed geek Cooper had done during MHI training and yelled at them to only shoot semi-auto, and at ten bucks a pop for the Fed’s “misplaced” ammo, he could understand why MHI only used the good stuff on missions. Horst had kept his FAL, along with a few mags full of silver. 308 he’d managed to sneak out of Alabama when he’d left. Everyone except for Loco had gotten an M-4 carbine. He’d given him the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, because it seemed logical to give the biggest dude the heaviest gun.
The plan was simple. Burn out super werewolf. Hose it down. What could possibly go wrong?
Their arsonist was in range. Kelley chucked the first Molotov squarely through the front of the store. The glass shattered, and gasoline ignited across the broken shelves. Kelley had said that if they had more time he would have made up a better mix with other petroleum products, because that would have really made it stick, but judging by how fast the fire spread, there was plenty of flammable material inside there already.
With a crazed gleam in his eyes, Kelley pumped one fist in the air, then switched the other Molotov to his throwing arm. He cocked back his arm to throw this one deeper inside, but then stopped, his head jerking to the side as something startled him. Trying to see what had distracted his man, Horst squinted, trying to figure out what the tall, narrow thing coming through the windblown snow was.
It was way too tall to be a person, and unless MHI had totally lied to him, it sure as hell wasn’t a werewolf. Thin, its lump of a head bobbed rhythmically, and what looked like its baggy clothing swayed back and forth as it approached Kelley. Its pace would have seemed almost leisurely if each of its long, spindly steps hadn’t covered such a massive distance.
“What is that?” Lins shouted.
Horst had no idea. He must have gotten kicked out of Newbie training before the day Paxton got around to giant, gray, metal, scarecrow robots. “Damn if I know.” It caught up to the scrambling Kelley in three big steps. Screaming his head off, Kelley ran for it, flaming bottle sloshing dangerous and forgotten in his hand. The thing’s arms were so long that they dragged through the snow. The creature lifted one arm, and Horst could see that the block that passed for a hand ended in three big points, like a mighty garden trowel. “Shoot it! Shoot it!”
The four of them opened fire. His earlier instructions about “rapid, aimed, semi-auto” went right out the window as everybody started shooting like mad. Holes puckered in the snow, sparks flashed off the monster, and Kelley looked down in disbelief as a plug of goose-down erupted from his coat as one of his teammates accidentally shot him through the chest.
“Don’t shoot our guy!” Horst shouted, but it didn’t matter. The creature swung its metal claw, striking Kelley in the arm. The bottle shattered as he went down, showering gas all over the burning rag and Kelley’s coat. There was a flash as fire tore across their arsonist’s body. Letting out an ungodly cry, Kelley thrashed and flailed away, flopping into the snow and rolling like mad as the fire melted clothing to skin. Within seconds he was engulfed in black smoke and orange flames. The tall creature stopped to watch.
“It killed Robb!” Jo Ann shrieked.
By the time Horst’s gun was empty, Kelley had quit screaming. The monster watched for a moment, as if assessing whether Kelley was dead or not. When it was obvious that stop, drop, and roll hadn’t worked out, its misshapen head swiveled up on its too long neck and it emotionlessly started toward them.
Everyone else had run dry except for Loco, because he had a two-hundred-round belt in the SAW and was actually firing it in short, controlled bursts like he’d been told. Even with one eye, Loco was the only one that seemed to actually be hitting the monster. “Reload! Reload!” Horst shouted as he struggled to get another magazine out of his pocket.
The creature was closing fast. Its giant legs pumped methodically, leaving a trail of huge, three-toed, birdlike footprints behind it. Most of their panicked shots were missing, and the ones that did hit didn’t seem to have much effect.
Closer now, its head was round, featureless. It had no eyes, no nostrils, just a long slit from one side to the other that had to be a mouth. The neck was abnormally long, and the front of its neck swung back and forth with a jiggling mass of loose skin. Parts of it seemed to be made of a rough metal shell, but the joints looked like gray meat. What he’d thought had been loose clothing was actually skin, swaying rhythmically. It was like an obese man that had lost tons of weight, way too fast, leaving a skeleton inside a sack of drooping skin, and then the devil had crammed the whole mess into a suit of rusting metal armor. “Slow down and aim!” he shouted. “Aim for the soft bits!”
Taking his own advice, he put the sights on the bulbous mass of a head. Horst had used guns his entire life, mostly cheap ones fired out car windows while driving past the homes of people who owed his uncle money, but it was MHI that had actually taught him to aim. Turns out that he was pretty decent at it.
The bullet hit the monster right between the eyes, or would have, if it’d had eyes. It stopped, a plug of meat dangling from its face, leaking green slime. Jo Ann stepped past him, shouting, “How you like that! Huh? How you like that!” as she shot at its head.
She got her answer a second later when the creature lumbered over to her, its gash of a mouth stretching wide open. Its two huge hands landed on her shoulders, trapping her. Jo Ann’s head disappeared into its mouth as its metal hands scooped her up. “Holy fu-” she screamed as the creature lifted her and reared its head back. Her lower half was visible as it choked her down, her feet kicking wildly. The flap of loose skin under the monster’s neck stretched, like a pelican eating a fish, as it swallowed her whole. Her shoes disappeared as she travelled down its long throat. The skin stretched in places, Jo Ann’s body visible through the slick membrane as she rolled around and fought inside the pouch.
The creature lowered its head and closed its mouth gash. It rumbled around, towering over Horst. The skin stretched madly as Jo Ann kicked, like a kid playing under a blanket. Her muffled cries could barely be heard as the now-full pouch dangled across the front half of the creature’s body.
A giant, chicken-footed, faceless, scarecrow, robot, pelican monster had just eaten his girlfriend. “Fuck this. Retreat!” Horst said as he turned and ran like mad. Lins was already twenty feet ahead, sprinting for the road.
Fury boiled Earl’s blood. Nikolai landed on him, teeth taking a chunk of meat and pale hair from his snout. Earl swatted him off, and one claw cut Nikolai’s nose in two. They clashed again, both reaching for the other’s throat, hind claws searching for soft guts to pull out, teeth snapping for jugulars.
They crashed through the human garbage, spilling blood. Earl was weak from before. His muscles quivered. His body was a furnace, burning itself to stay alive. Moving so fast. Apart again. Circling. Attacking again. Slashing. Earl’s chest was torn open, but not deep through bone. Nikolai’s claw flashed again, but Earl was ready. His teeth pierced flesh!
The taste of blood. Nikolai’s arm ripped open, his wrist torn, and he retreated. Weak.
Nikolai attacked, his teeth grinding on bone, but it’s shallow. Earl’s claws opened Nikolai’s guts. He retreated, fell. Earl bit again but missed the neck, snapping bones in Nikolai’s shoulder. Claws raked Earl’s back. Claws slipped on his guts. He could taste his own blood.
