The Devil’s Peak II, page 27
The horse slipped a little and then bounced as it cantered for a second or two, jolting the pair.
“Ouch, that’s hard,” she said.
“Sorry, horse slipped,” he said.
“No, not the horse.” She turned and smiled.
He laughed. “That’s your fault. Stop rubbing up against me.”
“You better get me home, cowboy,” she whispered.
“Yes ma’am.” He nudged the horse to travel a little quicker down the slope.
EPILOGUE
Canada, Yellowknife – the Giant Mine
The former gold mine had been abandoned for years. It was deep, and toxic as it was found to contain significant amounts of arsenic trioxide, posing both a biological and environmental danger.
Miles below the surface, the remnants of the skinless dog-like creatures had gathered there, hundreds of them, trapped above the Earth when the Father of Flies had retreated back to the underworld.
But they dug, and burrowed, and never rested. Many of them wore their claws down to nubs of bone. But already the shaft was five hundred feet deeper than it had been.
They would never stop, never cease their work, like a group of mindless army ants, working on instinct alone, they would continue until they broke through to the underworld.
And then, they would start their conquest again.
The End
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PROLOGUE
Circa 12,000 BC – what will one day become Missouri
In the cool, silver light of the full moon, the tribe watched silently as the captives were led up the stony hill to the cave entrance.
The men and women were taken during a raiding party on a distant tribe, and the chief stared blankly as the procession moved by him—men, women, and youths, all roped together with hands lashed behind their backs.
Every time the lake was swallowed by the cave after the ground shook, they needed their human stocks refilled, and they scouted out the other tribes for this precious resource.
Many wept, some still looked in shock, and a few glared back defiantly. The chief might have felt some twinge of guilt, but he knew that their god needed to be sated, and if it wasn’t these souls, then it would be his people.
At the cave mouth, one lashed man dragged the group to a stop and yelled back about angering his tribe’s god and ancestors and vowed to curse them to eternity.
The chief grunted and turned away when the last of them was jerked into the impenetrable darkness of the cave. It didn’t matter to the chief about curses and offending other deities. Because the difference between other gods and his god was that his god was real.
And their lands were already cursed.
CHAPTER 01
Syria, Idlib Province – Kurdish evacuation – 8 years ago
Captain Mitch Taylor and his team crouched as heavy machinegun fire tore up the ground just out to their left flank.
Another day in paradise, he thought.
Mitch had spent three years in med school before heeding the call and enlisting. His medical work was put on hold while he had thrown himself into his military training. He excelled and eventually tried out for Special Forces selection, where he succeeded first try. Mitch was a trained killer of evil, but if called upon, he could also heal.
A mortar exploded 100 feet from them, and he turned his head away from the falling debris. He and a few dozen Special Forces were on the ground in Idlib to assist in creating a safe corridor for the trapped Kurdish and Syrian refugees. But it was turning out to be a near-impossible task.
He lifted his head; in front of him, a few of the Kurdish YPG hunkered down, and one of them, Aiisha, turned to smile broadly back at him.
She was like a lot of the Kurdish women who fought alongside their men; they were as fearless as they were ferocious, and after he’d saved her brother’s life, she seemed to have decided she either owed him something or he was now future husband material.
“Fuck.”
Another mortar exploded, closer. He knew the Syrian army was finding their range and they were running out of time.
“They’re on us; we need to pull back,” his buddy, Henson, yelled to him.
He waved him down. “Not yet; we can do it.”
Mitch should have pulled them back, but he knew that nothing was achieved without risk. And what he needed to do would save hundreds. Mitch shook his head.
“We push through, get under it.”
Where they were was described as a blood and bone salad—there were Syrian forces, Russian Special Forces, Kurdish YPG, ISIS, Hezbollah, Al Qaida, and too many other small factions to name, all of them armed to the teeth, and all killing, screaming, and dying in equal measures.
It was no place to be a refugee, and that was why he and his unit, the Asgardian Shields, were on the ground. It was a near hopeless task, and he knew that the reward for doing impossible tasks, and succeeding, was just being handed more impossible tasks.
They had one more sniper nest to take down, and then they could begin bringing the people through. Mitch and two of his Special Forces buddies moved up to join the small group of YPG.
It was agreed Mitch and his guys would draw enemy attention and lay down suppressing fire while Aiisha and her team would advance, and then more than likely throw themselves head-first into an enemy foxhole with gun in one hand and blade in the other. This place was a mad world.
Their plans were set, and she turned to smile at him again and put a finger to her lips, and then turned the finger to face him for a moment before making a fist. He nodded and smiled in return—it meant: this kiss for you, I keep it ‘til we meet again.
His buddies weren’t watching so he did the same back. Okay, he admitted it—he liked her too.
He allowed their groups to split and Aiisha’s team advanced 50 feet, all the time staying low. But it was then that the back of Mitch’s neck prickled. Around him, the air became still and everything dropped away to silence. Whether it was a soldier’s intuition, or a premonition, he knew something was coming. And it was something bad.
Suddenly, he also knew for sure—he shoulda pulled them back. It was as if the very air became thick like honey and time slowed down. Specks of dirt seemed to float, burning cinders hung like tiny lights in the smoke-filled air, and open mouths roared things that weren’t words anymore.
Mitch could only stare as the Russian-heavy mortar, probably an M240 that fired a 286-pound shell, landed in the center of Aiisha and her group. The percussive blast blew a crater 40 feet around, and he was lifted and thrown backward to roll like a broken doll until he struck a rocky outcrop.
He remembered his face feeling hot and wet, and the flesh sizzling like steak on the grill while even as his eyes burned and his eardrums screamed, he could still hear the moans of the obliterated and dying around him.
“Don’t leave them, don’t leave them.” There was the salty taste of blood in his mouth as he yelled when hands grabbed his torn and battered body and dragged him away.
He didn’t know who it was that pulled him out of there. But his military days were over, and Aiisha, and everyone else he knew, were gone forever.
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Greig Beck, The Devil’s Peak II
