"Rabbits"
Posted: 2009-11-20 04:51pm
A very belated Hallowe'en-esque short story for a competition; I think it's about as polished as it's going to get, so I figured I'd toss it out here or it'll just wallow in editing limbo on my hard drive. It's part of a larger universe I'd been thinking of for a while; this is the most complete tale from it and captures the gist of that particular verse. Anyways, enough rambling. Here's the story; hope you enjoy.
As ever, feedback is always welcome.
~
“Fucking Sudan,” Hamish Bertold swore, putting the cigarette to his lips and taking a long drag from it. The mercenary leaned back against the side of his jeep, looking up at the stars. “Fucking Sudan.” He looked over at the rest of his unit – Frederic Pashayev, a former Chechen guerilla, who’d giving up fighting for a cause once Russian artillery landed on his wife and child. Disgusted with both the failed separatist movement that couldn’t even save his own family and by the increasing number of Islamic fighters flooding into the country, the ex-Soviet had left his nation behind. Next to him, weaving his hands back in forth in a description of an event he’d probably mentioned ten times before was Jacques D’Entremot. Always well-groomed, even in a dirty fucking country like this, the Frenchman also loved fire. Perhaps a little more than he should, but not so much that Bertold had to make sure he didn’t go burning down a village for no reason.
Sitting on the hood of the car was the fourth member of their team; Anna Lee Smith, an American. ‘Little Orphan Annie’ whenever you thought she wasn’t listening. You didn’t find many women in this kind of work, but Smith was one of the exceptions. A head shorter than Bertold, she wasn’t squat or bulky, but built and definitely tough enough to lay out any man that thought she was an easy mark. Smith was also prone to starting bar-clearing brawls whenever she thought that she was getting less than the full amount of respect that she thought she deserved.
Bertold ran a finger around his collar, desperate for even that temporary relief. It was a hot night here, so humid you could practically drink the air. “How much longer, Abdul?” he asked.
“Please, sir,” their guide offered in a voice of forced obsequiousness. ‘Abdul’ was not his real name. In the North, he was a devout Muslim convert. In the south of the country, he was an upstanding Christian by birth. For want of an actually identity, Pashayev had given him his name and it had stuck. “It will take however long it takes.”
“It better take less time than that,” Frederic commented darkly. They’d been waiting here, outside another shithole Sudanese village for the past four hours. Allegedly, Abdul had a contact here who would know where their targets were headed.
The mercenary ran a finger through his collar again. A very wealthy man had hired them after his very idealistic daughter had run off to join one of the aid agencies working in the country. A death squad had visited the girl’s camp. They had not been terribly impressed with the group’s humanitarian mission, and had objected to the dispersal of supplies, food and medical attention to the southern Sudanese. They had requested that all goods be turned over to them, as government authorities, for proper distribution. The medical personnel had not wanted to do this. The northerners had insisted. Quite strenuously.
Officially, the government knew nothing about the ‘Camp Holtisce Massacre’, where 87 southern Sudanese men, women and children were slaughtered, 7 foreign aid workers were butchered and one very wealthy man’s overly idealistic daughter was raped to death. The very wealthy man had pressured his government to take corrective measures, which amounted to a strongly-worded finger-wagging. The very wealthy man then spent a considerable amount of money to find out exactly who had carried out the Camp Holtisce atrocity and to contract, through appropriate channels, Bertold and his team. Who would, thank you, locate the team and make sure to express the very wealthy man’s extreme displeasure before sending them off to whatever lay in the hereafter.
A good job for good pay.
Bertold’s team had been tracking the northerners for some time now and were almost on them, but somehow they’d given him the slip. They’d moved into the small, out-of-the way southern town to do what they came naturally to genocidal lunatics – at least Bertold had thought so, but the notable lack of shots and screams showed a restraint that was totally out-of-character for the northerners. Either they had decided to give peace a chance, or they had figured out that Bertold and his team were tailing them and were either a) lying in wait, or b) had snuck out of the village either to escape or circle around and then ambush the mercenaries.
No matter how it went, Hamish did not like the possible outcomes. He’d fallen his unit back off the main roads far enough that they should be able to spot any flanking attempts, but there was no sign of life from the village ahead.
Abdul had gone ahead to signal his contact there, and received the ‘wait’ response. Which only made Bertold and his team more nervous.
Smith and D’Entremot had swept the area three times already; no sign of flankers and Abdul had checked with his contact again, got another ‘wait’. So, what the fuck was going on?
“This is ridiculous,” Pashenyev growled. “If they’re going to fucking come at us, then come at us already.”
“Maybe they’re bunkered down, thinking the same thing?” Anna suggested, cradling a sniper rifle that seemed two sizes too big for her.
Hamish nodded to himself. No point in waiting any more; if there was a trap, they might as well go in to spring it. “Move out, then. We’ll leave the jeep here.”
“And, you can be assured that will I safeguard it valiantly,” their guide promised.
Frederic grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and gave him a shove. “You’re on point,” the Chechen growled.
~
“Motherfucking Christ,” Smith whispered in horror as the cone of light from her flashlight played over scene of carnage.
There’d been no sentries.
No drunks loitering around the outskirts of the town, no children sneaking out of bed, no men and women carousing. There was only the stench of blood, the hissing of small, unattended fires and the crackling of glass from shattered windows underfoot. There were no bodies. Only bloodstains splashed against walls and doors, dirt and fences. Bits of bone, pieces of entrails. Drag marks leading off into the savannah.
The crude wooden floors of huts were splashed with dark, reeking fluid. Fingernails had curled deep scratches leading in floors, door frames and windowsills. The woman’s nose crinkled at the mingled scents of blood and urine, the actinic musk of perspiration underlying everything. Not, not just perspiration; fear.
Anna could feel her heart pounding in her chest. She didn’t know why; she’d fought on a dozen different battlefields, seen and done things far worse than this empty village but here… it was wrong. Indefinably, inescapably wrong. Something… something bad had happened, beyond even what her eyes were telling her.
They shouldn’t be here.
-run-
It was a whispering, chittering voice in the back of her skull, repeating the mantra over and over again. Run. Run. Run.
The mercenary played her flashlight over the walls of the house she was in, a squat and simple one-room hut. There; something on the walls, some kind of writing, it looked like. Smeared on the planks in a shaking hand, barely legible, it trailed off into an indecipherable scrawl as its author was dragged away:
They are watching.
Inside her, the voice grew louder, but she shoved it away and backed out of the empty house, continuing her sweep of the village, and if a shiver of movement caught her eye, it was only ever the rustling of grass or litter caught in the wind.
~
“This is wrong,” Abdul said, clutching his own pistol tightly. “Death squads leave the bodies as a warning. This is not a regime were people are disappeared. Not like this.”
“Yeah? So where are they?” Hamish demanded, playing his light over a broken bicycle. The dirt beneath it had been torn up with frantic movements, a dark stain in the dusty soil. A busted watch lay discarded in the dirt, its strap torn, the glass face broken. The mercenary knelt down to pick it up. It had stopped over six hours ago, even before the death squad had gotten here.
That was impossible. It meant-
“Ham,” Anna’s voice crackled through the radio. “Get over here. We’re in the village square.”
“What’d you find?”
“Our targets.”
~
The death squad; a dozen men armed with a variety of weapons, from machetes and hammers to AK-47s and even an RPG or two. Not that it had done them much good. These bodies were still here, left out where they’d fallen, their manner of their deaths telling a very distinct tale.
They’d come to the town to rape, pillage and murder and found it just as empty. Fanning out, to search for the villagers that they’d believed hiding, they’d been hunted down and killed themselves, picked off one by one. In houses, searching closets. In the street, standing guard, or when they’d tried to run.
One of them was slumped at the wheel of one of their vehicles, a jagged chunk of metal imbedded in his skull, thrown with considerable force and accuracy.
“Their magazines are still full,” Jacques pointed out, touching a finger to the barrel of the driver’s gun. It was no warmer than the Sudanese climate allowed for. “Whatever happened, happened fast.”
“It must have been the villagers,” Pashayev said, his fingers tapping against his submachine gun in a cadence continually increasing in tempo. He felt it too. It was in the air. Something wrong had been here. “The villagers. They decided to not to put up with these fuckers’ shit and gave a little back.” He didn’t sound like he believed it, but Bertold could see Frederic was rattled. They all were. There was something about this place
“Yeah, you think?” Smith spat, shining her flashlight into Frederic’s face. “You think a village of goat-farmers just up and killed a dozen men and then ghosted off into nowhere again like the fucking SAS? That strike you as plausible?”
“Maybe the old man hired someone else for the job,” Jacques snapped back, stroking his natty little goatee. “They just got here first. Some other merc troop.”
“No…” Bertold mused. “We would have heard. And nobody on the market is this good.”
“Then what the fuck happened here?”
“More to the point,” Anna raised her hand. “Why do we care? The targets’re dead, we’re not. Let’s go get paid. Do we really have to play the horror movie cliché of ‘explore the spooky village’?”
Jacques nodded. “I agree. Answers are for people who care to ask questions. Let’s not.” There was an edge to his voice and Bertold looked over at his companion; he was feeling it too. They all were.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s-”
“Wait,” Abdul put in. “We must find our contact.”
“‘Our’ contact?” Pashayev grunted.
Hamish pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m sure he’s fine. Just probably lit out when he saw us coming in.” Burn the village, run away run away never come back.
The Russian laughed. “Didn’t want to be mistaken for another spook in the dark.”
Whatever Abdul had been about to say in reply was cut off by a startled shout from Anna. “Movement!”
Hamish spun, lifting his gun and sweeping the flashlight beam across the empty village; there. Someone had just run between two houses. He gestured to his team, Frederic and Jacques breaking off to slip around while he and Anna moved in. Abdul remained where he was.
The clear night was starting to cloud over; only the orange glow of the small, still-burning fires and the thin cone of light from Hamish’s lamp provided any light at all as the moon’s glow was slowly devoured. He flicked off the flashlight, unwilling to give away his position. Ahead of him, he could hear raspy, frightened breathing, the scrape of feet over dirt. His nose twitched.
-blood-
The village reeked of it, stunk of fear and pain. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to listen to the gibbering voice inside him and just run, run until he no longer could and pull the ground in over him. Instead, he forced himself to take another step and then, another.
His head throbbed, the flush of adrenalin making his entire body shake. I know this, some ancient part of him quavered. I… remember this. Long-forgotten, buried beneath generations of human primacy, some atavistic part of him shivered in uncomprehending horror. That … there was no word to describe it. The human sense of smell was vestigial compared to other organisms and the scent of blood and death, ash and befoulment in this place was almost overpowering, but beneath it… one particle in a thousand. A million. A billion. There was no definable odour, but he could still feel it. It was everywhere. This is a bad place, that primitive voice whimpered.
Beside him, he could hear Smith, the hitch of her own breathing telling him that she felt it too. Their eyes met, each of them wanting to run, each of them shaking off the primitive instinct as nothing more than the willies. But, the little voice insisted, growing louder. You’ve seen worse. You’ve done worse. Why this place?
He remembered a tidbit he’d heard on one nature program or another. The scent of a ferret so terrifies rabbits that some die of fright before they ever see it...
Stop it! he ordered himself as he continued down the alley. A ray of moonlight pierced through the clouds as they briefly thinned out. There was a shadow on the other side of nearest house’s corner. Hamish slid sideways, cursing himself for the scuffing his feet made in the dirt. You’re better than this!
So thick in the air, he could almost feel it, making every nerve scream in primal terror, he forced the incomprehensible fear away and moved closer, adrenalin starting to make his arms shake.
As the moon’s light retreated again, he gestured for Anna to give him a little space as he whirled around the corner. There was a startled cry as he swung the barrel of the gun into the face of a terrified girl.
~
The man who, today went by the name of Abdul, swore to himself and kicked a furrow in the beaten-down dirt of the path. He didn’t like this, anything about this. Jamal should have been here waiting for them when they arrived, even if the village was like this. It wasn’t like him to play these sorts of games.
Waiting for the mercenaries to return, Abdul sighed with disgust. He headed to Jamal’s house, forcing himself to loosen his grip on his pistol, but each time he inadvertently found his hands tightening about it painfully, like a child with a security blanket worried about the Boogeyman.
He passed by a patter of red in the silhouette of a man and suppressed a shudder, recalling too many local tales of the jinns. In some tales, they were harmless tricksters. In others, they were malign spirits. Still others… Abdul shook himself. Superstitions, he told himself. That was all.
There; he was at his destination, a small chicken coop on the edge of town. Jamal’s brother owned it and it would not be out of place for his contact to be seen here; that was why they had chosen it. There was a cluttering of clucks from the hens; they were all cowering in their coop, heads cocked at Abdul, terrified eyes staring... almost expectantly.
Abdul suppressed the insane urge to scream at them, demanding that they tell him what they saw. He paused, catching some motion in his peripheral vision, but when he turned to look, there was nothing. Just another stupid bird.
He found the small shed that Jamal contacted him from, frowning as he picked out a strange shape in the dirt. It was Jamal’s flashlight. Why would it…? He turned it over in his hands, freezing as his fingers touched something sticky, warm and wet. With a suddenly shaking hand, he drew his own flashlight and shone it on the ground, revealing the thick, matted bloodstains there.
“No…” he whispered.
“Khalikh,” he heard someone call his name.
He looked up, seeing a form slip behind a house. “Over here.”
“Jamal? Is that you?”
“Over here, Khalikh,” Jamal called. “Over here.”
His heart pounding, the man vaulted over the fence, rushing to the building, and rounding the corner, but there was no one there.
“Khalikh,” the voice called, a little closer. There – in the shadows between this house and the next, he could just make out a human form. “Over here. Hurry.”
“Yes, yes. Just stay there.”
“I’ll stay,” Jamal promised. “Khalikh, come here.”
Khalikh stepped into the darkness. “What happened here, Jamal? Are you all right?” the other man did not respond. “Jamal? Are you hurt? Say something!” He fumbled with the light, almost dropping it before turning it on, a spotlight shining on the ground, catching the dried pool of blood there perfectly, a fresh drop splashing onto the crimson soil. The blood drained from Khalikh’s face as he panned the beam up over the figure. “Jamal,” he whispered, reaching up to close his friend’s eyes. Left here like a… like…
…like bait.
“Khalikh,” Jamal’s voice called from behind. “Over here.”
~
“Please!” she begged, cowering away from the mercenary. “No hurt!”
As keyed-up as he was, Hamish almost pulled the trigger anyways. “Who are you?” he demanded, his nostrils flared. “What happened here?” He could barely form the words, his breath ragged and hoarse in his throat.
The girl – her skin was lighter than that the southern Sudanese African population, pressed herself up against the wall as if trying to flatten herself against it. “Don’t hurt me! I’m afraid!” She didn’t look more than twenty years old, if that. Kill her! some part of Hamish shrieked in rising panic.
“It’s okay,” Smith tried to reassure the frightened girl, but could barely form the words. Run, her mind screamed even louder, a shriek that bubbled up from the deepest, darkest recesses of racial memory. Run from her! But even as that voice screamed and gibbered, another insisted that everything was all right, that she didn’t have to be afraid, that she just had to reach out and help the girl…
“I’m afraid,” the young woman repeated.
“You don’t have to be,” Smith tried, swallowing back her own terror, forcing herself not to retch. Her legs were shaking. “We’re here to help you.” She had to help her; the poor thing was so frightened, she had to, to get closer and…
..she took another step.
“Please,” the girl said – did her lips twitch just then? – pulling deeper into the shadows, but letting Anna approach. “I’m afraid.”
Something’s not right. Hamish realized, pulling himself out of his stupor. He grabbed his radio. “Jacques, Fred – come in.” There was nothing; only static. “Abdul.” No response. “Anna, let’s-” Smith was reaching for the girl. Yes, that was the thing to do. Run! Don’t be afraid. Never stop, never stop! Hamish grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
“The fuck, Bert?” Anna demanded, but the mercenary captain’s eyes never left the young woman in front of them, his gun still shaking in his one-handed grip.
“Don’t hurt me,” the girl sobbed, so small and frightened. “Please. I’m afraid.”
The moon returned, filling the entire village with cold, clear light. It lasted only seconds, but that was enough. The shadows vanished and Hamish could see the dark stains covering the girl’s clothes, the dried blood around her mouth… and the green cats-eye gleam of her gaze. She was beautiful, but… wrong somehow, her near-Arabic features perfect; too perfect. As if someone had tried to sculpt a human, but didn’t quite realize what one should be. Her eyes glittered with reflected light and she smiled, exposing a too-wide mouth full of gleaming teeth. “Please help me,” she begged in the same pleading tone. “I’m hungry.”
Shoot her! Shoot her shoot her shoot her now! Hamish’s mind shrieked, but he couldn’t make himself pull the trigger. It was all he could do not to run, his heart pounding in his ears like thunder, his entire body shaking. He backed away from the girl, pulling Anna with him, each step an effort not to throw the woman at the thing in front of him and flee in blind panic.
There was a flicker of motion and the girl was gone, as if she’d only been his imagination.
~
“She was there,” panted Smith. “She was there.”
“Yeah,” Hamish nodded, checking behind them. “Yeah, she was.” He grabbed his radio. “Abdul, Jack, Fred. Where the fuck are you?” Christ, her eyes. Her mouth. Was that just a… a trick of the light? He almost staggered as faded, washed-out memories threatened to overwhelm him. No, not memories. Not really. No faces. No images. No sounds. But they were there, a terrifying recognition. His knees buckled, but he kept control of his stomach, clutching the radio as if it were a lifeline to sanity. His conscious mind struggled to make sense of atavistic memories, interpreting them as fragments, scenes played out over and over so many times that they’d imbued themselves directly in his genes. A warning, dormant for generations but now shrieking as strongly as any other primal instinct.
-screaming, dragged off into the darkness-
-gleaming green, eyes in the dark, Cheshire grins of sharp teeth-
-the scent of them filling the air, nostrils flaring, hooting in rage and fear, a fist clenched in panic-
-they are watching, always watching-
“We’re here,” Jacques answered, his voice crackling through the radio, pulling Hamish out of his spell.
Bertold pulled himself back to his feet, trying to calm himself, but he was still shaking, that fear was still there, eating away at him. He had enough firepower to kill this village himself and he’d gotten the shakes over a ninety-eight pound waif? What the fuck happened here? What were those things? “Christ, you assholes take a vacation or something?” Focus on them. On them, nothing else. We’re getting out of here, that’s what matters.
“We’re here. Are you coming?”
“Fuck you,” Hamish growled. “We’re pulling out. Now. I can’t raise Abdul. You seen him?” Yes run run run run.
“No.”
“Too bad for him, then. I’m not waiting. We’re leaving.”
“Where are you?”
“We didn’t go far, jackass,” Hamish snapped. “You?”
“Over here.”
“Thanks. Very helpful.” Bertold had reached the village square again, the dead death squad still laying where they’d fallen. He staggered and almost fell; looking down, he saw what had tripped him. The flashlight from Frederic’s uniform. There was a spot of red liquid on the lens. Hamish picked it up, the blood draining from his face. “Jacques… let me speak to Frederic.”
“I’m here,” Pashayev’s Russian burr growled through the comm. “Are you coming?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we are…” Hamish said, acid bubbling up his windpipe. Just like the girl.
From behind them, he could hear a soft, flowing melodic cry. The girl. She was crawling over the thatched roof of the nearest house, arms and legs moving like a spider, feet dug in, ready to spring. She was staring at them, her eyes shining green in the reflected firelight, the blood around her mouth glistening wetly. There was no malice in her expression, just… intensity. She opened her mouth and sang again.
Something nearby answered her, a hushed, taunting whisper in Jacques’s voice: “Over here.”
Hamish let the flashlight fall from his hands, looking to Anna for… what, he didn’t know, but the woman was gone. He looked back up at the girl, watched as a long, bifurcated tongue ran over her lips and the blood there. It was fresh.
Her expression never changed as she continued to stare. Patient. Wary. Hungry. Name. My name is Hamish Bertold, he told himself. “I know what you are,” he said; barely a whisper, his mouth was dry. “I know what you are!” I have… I have survived worse than this. I have killed dozens of men. I am a human man, top of the food chain and I am not afraid. I am not afraid. I have a gun and all she… they have is… is…
I know what you are, she seemed to say, his imagination filling in her part of the conversation. And it is simple. Prey.
It was only the smallest gesture, really. The girl slid her tongue out towards him, a beckoning gesture. His courage failed entirely and Hamish threw his gun away, running for all he was worth. His lungs burned as he ran, his heart thudding so hard it felt as if it would explode, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter where he ran, just as long as it was away.
Rabbits and ferrets…
There was a rush of movement behind him and he looked over his shoulder, he had a glimpse of green and white as he tumbled to the ground, flailing, shrieking and gibbering in blind panic as warm breath blew over his face and sharp teeth closed on his throat.
“Please,” even over the sound of his own screaming he heard someone speaking in Anna’s voice. “I’m hungry.”
As ever, feedback is always welcome.
Rabbits
Hungry.~
“Fucking Sudan,” Hamish Bertold swore, putting the cigarette to his lips and taking a long drag from it. The mercenary leaned back against the side of his jeep, looking up at the stars. “Fucking Sudan.” He looked over at the rest of his unit – Frederic Pashayev, a former Chechen guerilla, who’d giving up fighting for a cause once Russian artillery landed on his wife and child. Disgusted with both the failed separatist movement that couldn’t even save his own family and by the increasing number of Islamic fighters flooding into the country, the ex-Soviet had left his nation behind. Next to him, weaving his hands back in forth in a description of an event he’d probably mentioned ten times before was Jacques D’Entremot. Always well-groomed, even in a dirty fucking country like this, the Frenchman also loved fire. Perhaps a little more than he should, but not so much that Bertold had to make sure he didn’t go burning down a village for no reason.
Sitting on the hood of the car was the fourth member of their team; Anna Lee Smith, an American. ‘Little Orphan Annie’ whenever you thought she wasn’t listening. You didn’t find many women in this kind of work, but Smith was one of the exceptions. A head shorter than Bertold, she wasn’t squat or bulky, but built and definitely tough enough to lay out any man that thought she was an easy mark. Smith was also prone to starting bar-clearing brawls whenever she thought that she was getting less than the full amount of respect that she thought she deserved.
Bertold ran a finger around his collar, desperate for even that temporary relief. It was a hot night here, so humid you could practically drink the air. “How much longer, Abdul?” he asked.
“Please, sir,” their guide offered in a voice of forced obsequiousness. ‘Abdul’ was not his real name. In the North, he was a devout Muslim convert. In the south of the country, he was an upstanding Christian by birth. For want of an actually identity, Pashayev had given him his name and it had stuck. “It will take however long it takes.”
“It better take less time than that,” Frederic commented darkly. They’d been waiting here, outside another shithole Sudanese village for the past four hours. Allegedly, Abdul had a contact here who would know where their targets were headed.
The mercenary ran a finger through his collar again. A very wealthy man had hired them after his very idealistic daughter had run off to join one of the aid agencies working in the country. A death squad had visited the girl’s camp. They had not been terribly impressed with the group’s humanitarian mission, and had objected to the dispersal of supplies, food and medical attention to the southern Sudanese. They had requested that all goods be turned over to them, as government authorities, for proper distribution. The medical personnel had not wanted to do this. The northerners had insisted. Quite strenuously.
Officially, the government knew nothing about the ‘Camp Holtisce Massacre’, where 87 southern Sudanese men, women and children were slaughtered, 7 foreign aid workers were butchered and one very wealthy man’s overly idealistic daughter was raped to death. The very wealthy man had pressured his government to take corrective measures, which amounted to a strongly-worded finger-wagging. The very wealthy man then spent a considerable amount of money to find out exactly who had carried out the Camp Holtisce atrocity and to contract, through appropriate channels, Bertold and his team. Who would, thank you, locate the team and make sure to express the very wealthy man’s extreme displeasure before sending them off to whatever lay in the hereafter.
A good job for good pay.
Bertold’s team had been tracking the northerners for some time now and were almost on them, but somehow they’d given him the slip. They’d moved into the small, out-of-the way southern town to do what they came naturally to genocidal lunatics – at least Bertold had thought so, but the notable lack of shots and screams showed a restraint that was totally out-of-character for the northerners. Either they had decided to give peace a chance, or they had figured out that Bertold and his team were tailing them and were either a) lying in wait, or b) had snuck out of the village either to escape or circle around and then ambush the mercenaries.
No matter how it went, Hamish did not like the possible outcomes. He’d fallen his unit back off the main roads far enough that they should be able to spot any flanking attempts, but there was no sign of life from the village ahead.
Abdul had gone ahead to signal his contact there, and received the ‘wait’ response. Which only made Bertold and his team more nervous.
Smith and D’Entremot had swept the area three times already; no sign of flankers and Abdul had checked with his contact again, got another ‘wait’. So, what the fuck was going on?
“This is ridiculous,” Pashenyev growled. “If they’re going to fucking come at us, then come at us already.”
“Maybe they’re bunkered down, thinking the same thing?” Anna suggested, cradling a sniper rifle that seemed two sizes too big for her.
Hamish nodded to himself. No point in waiting any more; if there was a trap, they might as well go in to spring it. “Move out, then. We’ll leave the jeep here.”
“And, you can be assured that will I safeguard it valiantly,” their guide promised.
Frederic grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and gave him a shove. “You’re on point,” the Chechen growled.
~
“Motherfucking Christ,” Smith whispered in horror as the cone of light from her flashlight played over scene of carnage.
There’d been no sentries.
No drunks loitering around the outskirts of the town, no children sneaking out of bed, no men and women carousing. There was only the stench of blood, the hissing of small, unattended fires and the crackling of glass from shattered windows underfoot. There were no bodies. Only bloodstains splashed against walls and doors, dirt and fences. Bits of bone, pieces of entrails. Drag marks leading off into the savannah.
The crude wooden floors of huts were splashed with dark, reeking fluid. Fingernails had curled deep scratches leading in floors, door frames and windowsills. The woman’s nose crinkled at the mingled scents of blood and urine, the actinic musk of perspiration underlying everything. Not, not just perspiration; fear.
Anna could feel her heart pounding in her chest. She didn’t know why; she’d fought on a dozen different battlefields, seen and done things far worse than this empty village but here… it was wrong. Indefinably, inescapably wrong. Something… something bad had happened, beyond even what her eyes were telling her.
They shouldn’t be here.
-run-
It was a whispering, chittering voice in the back of her skull, repeating the mantra over and over again. Run. Run. Run.
The mercenary played her flashlight over the walls of the house she was in, a squat and simple one-room hut. There; something on the walls, some kind of writing, it looked like. Smeared on the planks in a shaking hand, barely legible, it trailed off into an indecipherable scrawl as its author was dragged away:
They are watching.
Inside her, the voice grew louder, but she shoved it away and backed out of the empty house, continuing her sweep of the village, and if a shiver of movement caught her eye, it was only ever the rustling of grass or litter caught in the wind.
~
“This is wrong,” Abdul said, clutching his own pistol tightly. “Death squads leave the bodies as a warning. This is not a regime were people are disappeared. Not like this.”
“Yeah? So where are they?” Hamish demanded, playing his light over a broken bicycle. The dirt beneath it had been torn up with frantic movements, a dark stain in the dusty soil. A busted watch lay discarded in the dirt, its strap torn, the glass face broken. The mercenary knelt down to pick it up. It had stopped over six hours ago, even before the death squad had gotten here.
That was impossible. It meant-
“Ham,” Anna’s voice crackled through the radio. “Get over here. We’re in the village square.”
“What’d you find?”
“Our targets.”
~
The death squad; a dozen men armed with a variety of weapons, from machetes and hammers to AK-47s and even an RPG or two. Not that it had done them much good. These bodies were still here, left out where they’d fallen, their manner of their deaths telling a very distinct tale.
They’d come to the town to rape, pillage and murder and found it just as empty. Fanning out, to search for the villagers that they’d believed hiding, they’d been hunted down and killed themselves, picked off one by one. In houses, searching closets. In the street, standing guard, or when they’d tried to run.
One of them was slumped at the wheel of one of their vehicles, a jagged chunk of metal imbedded in his skull, thrown with considerable force and accuracy.
“Their magazines are still full,” Jacques pointed out, touching a finger to the barrel of the driver’s gun. It was no warmer than the Sudanese climate allowed for. “Whatever happened, happened fast.”
“It must have been the villagers,” Pashayev said, his fingers tapping against his submachine gun in a cadence continually increasing in tempo. He felt it too. It was in the air. Something wrong had been here. “The villagers. They decided to not to put up with these fuckers’ shit and gave a little back.” He didn’t sound like he believed it, but Bertold could see Frederic was rattled. They all were. There was something about this place
“Yeah, you think?” Smith spat, shining her flashlight into Frederic’s face. “You think a village of goat-farmers just up and killed a dozen men and then ghosted off into nowhere again like the fucking SAS? That strike you as plausible?”
“Maybe the old man hired someone else for the job,” Jacques snapped back, stroking his natty little goatee. “They just got here first. Some other merc troop.”
“No…” Bertold mused. “We would have heard. And nobody on the market is this good.”
“Then what the fuck happened here?”
“More to the point,” Anna raised her hand. “Why do we care? The targets’re dead, we’re not. Let’s go get paid. Do we really have to play the horror movie cliché of ‘explore the spooky village’?”
Jacques nodded. “I agree. Answers are for people who care to ask questions. Let’s not.” There was an edge to his voice and Bertold looked over at his companion; he was feeling it too. They all were.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s-”
“Wait,” Abdul put in. “We must find our contact.”
“‘Our’ contact?” Pashayev grunted.
Hamish pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m sure he’s fine. Just probably lit out when he saw us coming in.” Burn the village, run away run away never come back.
The Russian laughed. “Didn’t want to be mistaken for another spook in the dark.”
Whatever Abdul had been about to say in reply was cut off by a startled shout from Anna. “Movement!”
Hamish spun, lifting his gun and sweeping the flashlight beam across the empty village; there. Someone had just run between two houses. He gestured to his team, Frederic and Jacques breaking off to slip around while he and Anna moved in. Abdul remained where he was.
The clear night was starting to cloud over; only the orange glow of the small, still-burning fires and the thin cone of light from Hamish’s lamp provided any light at all as the moon’s glow was slowly devoured. He flicked off the flashlight, unwilling to give away his position. Ahead of him, he could hear raspy, frightened breathing, the scrape of feet over dirt. His nose twitched.
-blood-
The village reeked of it, stunk of fear and pain. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to listen to the gibbering voice inside him and just run, run until he no longer could and pull the ground in over him. Instead, he forced himself to take another step and then, another.
His head throbbed, the flush of adrenalin making his entire body shake. I know this, some ancient part of him quavered. I… remember this. Long-forgotten, buried beneath generations of human primacy, some atavistic part of him shivered in uncomprehending horror. That … there was no word to describe it. The human sense of smell was vestigial compared to other organisms and the scent of blood and death, ash and befoulment in this place was almost overpowering, but beneath it… one particle in a thousand. A million. A billion. There was no definable odour, but he could still feel it. It was everywhere. This is a bad place, that primitive voice whimpered.
Beside him, he could hear Smith, the hitch of her own breathing telling him that she felt it too. Their eyes met, each of them wanting to run, each of them shaking off the primitive instinct as nothing more than the willies. But, the little voice insisted, growing louder. You’ve seen worse. You’ve done worse. Why this place?
He remembered a tidbit he’d heard on one nature program or another. The scent of a ferret so terrifies rabbits that some die of fright before they ever see it...
Stop it! he ordered himself as he continued down the alley. A ray of moonlight pierced through the clouds as they briefly thinned out. There was a shadow on the other side of nearest house’s corner. Hamish slid sideways, cursing himself for the scuffing his feet made in the dirt. You’re better than this!
So thick in the air, he could almost feel it, making every nerve scream in primal terror, he forced the incomprehensible fear away and moved closer, adrenalin starting to make his arms shake.
As the moon’s light retreated again, he gestured for Anna to give him a little space as he whirled around the corner. There was a startled cry as he swung the barrel of the gun into the face of a terrified girl.
~
The man who, today went by the name of Abdul, swore to himself and kicked a furrow in the beaten-down dirt of the path. He didn’t like this, anything about this. Jamal should have been here waiting for them when they arrived, even if the village was like this. It wasn’t like him to play these sorts of games.
Waiting for the mercenaries to return, Abdul sighed with disgust. He headed to Jamal’s house, forcing himself to loosen his grip on his pistol, but each time he inadvertently found his hands tightening about it painfully, like a child with a security blanket worried about the Boogeyman.
He passed by a patter of red in the silhouette of a man and suppressed a shudder, recalling too many local tales of the jinns. In some tales, they were harmless tricksters. In others, they were malign spirits. Still others… Abdul shook himself. Superstitions, he told himself. That was all.
There; he was at his destination, a small chicken coop on the edge of town. Jamal’s brother owned it and it would not be out of place for his contact to be seen here; that was why they had chosen it. There was a cluttering of clucks from the hens; they were all cowering in their coop, heads cocked at Abdul, terrified eyes staring... almost expectantly.
Abdul suppressed the insane urge to scream at them, demanding that they tell him what they saw. He paused, catching some motion in his peripheral vision, but when he turned to look, there was nothing. Just another stupid bird.
He found the small shed that Jamal contacted him from, frowning as he picked out a strange shape in the dirt. It was Jamal’s flashlight. Why would it…? He turned it over in his hands, freezing as his fingers touched something sticky, warm and wet. With a suddenly shaking hand, he drew his own flashlight and shone it on the ground, revealing the thick, matted bloodstains there.
“No…” he whispered.
“Khalikh,” he heard someone call his name.
He looked up, seeing a form slip behind a house. “Over here.”
“Jamal? Is that you?”
“Over here, Khalikh,” Jamal called. “Over here.”
His heart pounding, the man vaulted over the fence, rushing to the building, and rounding the corner, but there was no one there.
“Khalikh,” the voice called, a little closer. There – in the shadows between this house and the next, he could just make out a human form. “Over here. Hurry.”
“Yes, yes. Just stay there.”
“I’ll stay,” Jamal promised. “Khalikh, come here.”
Khalikh stepped into the darkness. “What happened here, Jamal? Are you all right?” the other man did not respond. “Jamal? Are you hurt? Say something!” He fumbled with the light, almost dropping it before turning it on, a spotlight shining on the ground, catching the dried pool of blood there perfectly, a fresh drop splashing onto the crimson soil. The blood drained from Khalikh’s face as he panned the beam up over the figure. “Jamal,” he whispered, reaching up to close his friend’s eyes. Left here like a… like…
…like bait.
“Khalikh,” Jamal’s voice called from behind. “Over here.”
~
“Please!” she begged, cowering away from the mercenary. “No hurt!”
As keyed-up as he was, Hamish almost pulled the trigger anyways. “Who are you?” he demanded, his nostrils flared. “What happened here?” He could barely form the words, his breath ragged and hoarse in his throat.
The girl – her skin was lighter than that the southern Sudanese African population, pressed herself up against the wall as if trying to flatten herself against it. “Don’t hurt me! I’m afraid!” She didn’t look more than twenty years old, if that. Kill her! some part of Hamish shrieked in rising panic.
“It’s okay,” Smith tried to reassure the frightened girl, but could barely form the words. Run, her mind screamed even louder, a shriek that bubbled up from the deepest, darkest recesses of racial memory. Run from her! But even as that voice screamed and gibbered, another insisted that everything was all right, that she didn’t have to be afraid, that she just had to reach out and help the girl…
“I’m afraid,” the young woman repeated.
“You don’t have to be,” Smith tried, swallowing back her own terror, forcing herself not to retch. Her legs were shaking. “We’re here to help you.” She had to help her; the poor thing was so frightened, she had to, to get closer and…
..she took another step.
“Please,” the girl said – did her lips twitch just then? – pulling deeper into the shadows, but letting Anna approach. “I’m afraid.”
Something’s not right. Hamish realized, pulling himself out of his stupor. He grabbed his radio. “Jacques, Fred – come in.” There was nothing; only static. “Abdul.” No response. “Anna, let’s-” Smith was reaching for the girl. Yes, that was the thing to do. Run! Don’t be afraid. Never stop, never stop! Hamish grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
“The fuck, Bert?” Anna demanded, but the mercenary captain’s eyes never left the young woman in front of them, his gun still shaking in his one-handed grip.
“Don’t hurt me,” the girl sobbed, so small and frightened. “Please. I’m afraid.”
The moon returned, filling the entire village with cold, clear light. It lasted only seconds, but that was enough. The shadows vanished and Hamish could see the dark stains covering the girl’s clothes, the dried blood around her mouth… and the green cats-eye gleam of her gaze. She was beautiful, but… wrong somehow, her near-Arabic features perfect; too perfect. As if someone had tried to sculpt a human, but didn’t quite realize what one should be. Her eyes glittered with reflected light and she smiled, exposing a too-wide mouth full of gleaming teeth. “Please help me,” she begged in the same pleading tone. “I’m hungry.”
Shoot her! Shoot her shoot her shoot her now! Hamish’s mind shrieked, but he couldn’t make himself pull the trigger. It was all he could do not to run, his heart pounding in his ears like thunder, his entire body shaking. He backed away from the girl, pulling Anna with him, each step an effort not to throw the woman at the thing in front of him and flee in blind panic.
There was a flicker of motion and the girl was gone, as if she’d only been his imagination.
~
“She was there,” panted Smith. “She was there.”
“Yeah,” Hamish nodded, checking behind them. “Yeah, she was.” He grabbed his radio. “Abdul, Jack, Fred. Where the fuck are you?” Christ, her eyes. Her mouth. Was that just a… a trick of the light? He almost staggered as faded, washed-out memories threatened to overwhelm him. No, not memories. Not really. No faces. No images. No sounds. But they were there, a terrifying recognition. His knees buckled, but he kept control of his stomach, clutching the radio as if it were a lifeline to sanity. His conscious mind struggled to make sense of atavistic memories, interpreting them as fragments, scenes played out over and over so many times that they’d imbued themselves directly in his genes. A warning, dormant for generations but now shrieking as strongly as any other primal instinct.
-screaming, dragged off into the darkness-
-gleaming green, eyes in the dark, Cheshire grins of sharp teeth-
-the scent of them filling the air, nostrils flaring, hooting in rage and fear, a fist clenched in panic-
-they are watching, always watching-
“We’re here,” Jacques answered, his voice crackling through the radio, pulling Hamish out of his spell.
Bertold pulled himself back to his feet, trying to calm himself, but he was still shaking, that fear was still there, eating away at him. He had enough firepower to kill this village himself and he’d gotten the shakes over a ninety-eight pound waif? What the fuck happened here? What were those things? “Christ, you assholes take a vacation or something?” Focus on them. On them, nothing else. We’re getting out of here, that’s what matters.
“We’re here. Are you coming?”
“Fuck you,” Hamish growled. “We’re pulling out. Now. I can’t raise Abdul. You seen him?” Yes run run run run.
“No.”
“Too bad for him, then. I’m not waiting. We’re leaving.”
“Where are you?”
“We didn’t go far, jackass,” Hamish snapped. “You?”
“Over here.”
“Thanks. Very helpful.” Bertold had reached the village square again, the dead death squad still laying where they’d fallen. He staggered and almost fell; looking down, he saw what had tripped him. The flashlight from Frederic’s uniform. There was a spot of red liquid on the lens. Hamish picked it up, the blood draining from his face. “Jacques… let me speak to Frederic.”
“I’m here,” Pashayev’s Russian burr growled through the comm. “Are you coming?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we are…” Hamish said, acid bubbling up his windpipe. Just like the girl.
From behind them, he could hear a soft, flowing melodic cry. The girl. She was crawling over the thatched roof of the nearest house, arms and legs moving like a spider, feet dug in, ready to spring. She was staring at them, her eyes shining green in the reflected firelight, the blood around her mouth glistening wetly. There was no malice in her expression, just… intensity. She opened her mouth and sang again.
Something nearby answered her, a hushed, taunting whisper in Jacques’s voice: “Over here.”
Hamish let the flashlight fall from his hands, looking to Anna for… what, he didn’t know, but the woman was gone. He looked back up at the girl, watched as a long, bifurcated tongue ran over her lips and the blood there. It was fresh.
Her expression never changed as she continued to stare. Patient. Wary. Hungry. Name. My name is Hamish Bertold, he told himself. “I know what you are,” he said; barely a whisper, his mouth was dry. “I know what you are!” I have… I have survived worse than this. I have killed dozens of men. I am a human man, top of the food chain and I am not afraid. I am not afraid. I have a gun and all she… they have is… is…
I know what you are, she seemed to say, his imagination filling in her part of the conversation. And it is simple. Prey.
It was only the smallest gesture, really. The girl slid her tongue out towards him, a beckoning gesture. His courage failed entirely and Hamish threw his gun away, running for all he was worth. His lungs burned as he ran, his heart thudding so hard it felt as if it would explode, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter where he ran, just as long as it was away.
Rabbits and ferrets…
There was a rush of movement behind him and he looked over his shoulder, he had a glimpse of green and white as he tumbled to the ground, flailing, shrieking and gibbering in blind panic as warm breath blew over his face and sharp teeth closed on his throat.
“Please,” even over the sound of his own screaming he heard someone speaking in Anna’s voice. “I’m hungry.”