[Fiction] Purgatory's Aftermath: Cleanup

[Gryle]

Waiting. Always before the storm there must be the calm. As part of every hunt there is a stalk.

The night was alive with the patter of rain, freezing curtains of water that obscured the vision as they marched down the valley in the north of Wales. Land only suitable for grazing livestock, the nearest village was over forty miles away from this isolated valley, distinguished from it’s immediate neighbours by the small dots of light clustered at one end of the valley’s floor. Some of the lights were clearly from buildings, which could at first glance be mistaken for a farmstead of some kind. Indeed, until fairly recently the buildings had been just that. However, farming in north Wales was not such a lucrative business that farmers could afford a helipad.

There, in the distance. A noise made by Man’s ingenious machines.

Mallick grumbled slightly as he looked at his instruments, then out at the winking lights of the helipad about one mile distant, his concentration necessarily absolute in the foul weather. He hated flying in heavy rain: if the wind decided to play nasty, it could dump a lot of water very quickly into one of the twin-turbine engines powering the Hughes Airstar. The large ‘copter was a reliable people-carrying aircraft, but a good pilot never liked taking stupid chances, and Mallick liked to consider himself a good pilot. But this was a rush job: the boss was up in arms about the recent escape of their test subject, not to mention deaths of the entire research team and their nova staff. The whole remaining team was in the chopper, as was the boss, and the test subject was now a target. No more capture, the boss had said. They had a couple of doses left of the nano-agent, and they were going to use at least one on the target, then kill him. Mallick was aware of the boss leaning into the crew compartment.

“How soon till we’re on the ground.” Harold Wyman ordered, a strange light in his dark eyes. Well, the target hadn’t just killed members of the team in his escape, had he, Mallick thought darkly. He’d also killed the boss’s daughter, one of the nova hyper-brains who’d developed the nano-agent, a sweet young woman who was working to make the world a better place. No wonder the boss was a little driven.

“Five, maybe ten minutes, sir.” The pilot reported in a professional tone, letting no personal thought escape in his voice. “The weather is a little tricky in these valleys, so I’m taking it easy.” The boss just nodded.

“Good. Better safe than sorry, eh? Can’t say I blame you, young man.” Wyman smiled, a mechanical action, a remembrance of a smile. A good man, the boss. A man who had tried to help novas find a cure for their illness, and had lost all his investment in the project, all of his research, and his last remaining relative to that nova scumbag. Mallick felt the need to say something supportive as he guided the chopper down towards the pad.

“We’ll get him, sir. His own ego got him this time. He’ll never have guessed we could track him down so quickly. We’ll hit him like a torna-… Like a ton of bricks, sir.” Mallick cursed his big mouth. Tornado: right, great thing to say to the boss right now. “Sorry sir. I wasn’t thinking.” Wyman stared fixedly out of the window for a second, then shook his head and patted Mallick on the shoulder before silently retreating back into the cabin. There he sat and brooded, while the ten men also seated there checked their weapons and reflected on the friends and comrades that they too had lost to the nova called Procyon.

They come…

The chopper touched down on the helipad, the doors sliding open on the sides to disgorge the occupants before the engines wound down. The team was moving hurriedly: the target was in a small house fifty miles away, a bolthole prepared ahead of time no doubt. Clever routing on his Opnet message made it seem as though it came from Hong Kong, but Wyman had some clever people working for him, too, and had traced the true origin of the signal as here, the back-end of Wales. The entrepreneur / researcher watched as his paramilitary team headed over to the farmhouse to brief his local staff. There were fifteen more men here, giving him twenty-five to go after the nova with. Better, four of his team were novas themselves, loyal believers in his work, and would serve at worst as a distraction for the Terat. Wyman stepped down from the Airstar, planning to walk over to the farmhouse and finalise the preparations. The pilot and co-pilot also jumped down, heading over to the refuelling truck a couple of hundred metres away as Wyman set off for the farmhouse.

Wait…

A shout carried across the hissing of the rain, and Wyman looked up to see one of his men waving frantically at him from the courtyard of the large house. Seeing he had gotten his employer’s attention, the man gestured at his ear. Concerned, Wyman lifted the earpiece of his encrypted radio into place.

The prey scents something on the wind, but does not yet know to be frightened. Soon…

“…repeat, this is Team Leader to all points. Do not disturb anything. The farmhouse has been attacked, sir. I count five dead bodies so far. Ground floor is clear of anything else and I have men sweeping upstairs. I suggest you head back to the chopper and take off to circle the site from a distance until we can be sure it’s secure.”

“I understand, Leader.” Wyman turned back to the Airstar as Mallick and the co-pilot drove the refuelling truck up to the helipad. “Mallick, how quickly to get fuelled up?” He asked as he started to walk back over to the chopper.

“Not long, sir. Figure five minutes to give us enough to orbit the site a little before going back to the airfield if necessary.” From where he was, Wyman could see the pilot hooking the fuelling hose up to the Airstar and giving the thumbs-up to the co-pilot. He was gripped with a sudden premonition of dread. “Mallick –!”

He was too late. The pump motor engaged, and a split-second later an orange-black fireball engulfed the truck, the Airstar, and it’s two man crew. The shockwave threw him back onto the muddy ground from sixty metres away, his arms coming up to reflexively shield his head as he rolled over onto his front.

The trap is sprung. Now to close the door…

Shouts over the radio net. Looking up, his ears ringing, Wyman could see three of his men racing towards him, one of them a nova and fast outdistancing the others as he took to the air.

One…

The nova operative had almost reached Wyman when his head exploded in a gout of blood and worse. Wyman’s shocked eyes watched as the flying man’s body plowed into the mud not five feet from him, his mind racing as it tried to comprehend the events of the last 10 seconds. The other two men dived for him, grabbing their employer and hauling him bodily towards the farmhouse. He saw the rest of his men darting inside and peering from the windows as lights were hastily extinguished. Over the radio net, the voice of Team Leader remained calm, though strained.

“Nova operatives, do not reveal any abilities until we have a positive ident on the enemy. They’re out there with a high-calibre gun waiting for that. 3 and 5, check the comms hut out back, but be careful! We’re cut off here and can’t afford any mistakes.” The team leader turned to look at Wyman as he was brought into the farmhouse’s kitchen. “Sorry sir. It appears we’ve been ambushed.” Wyman nodded, content in his shell-shocked state to let the man do his job.

They try to collect themselves, to make themselves warriors and hunters rather than scared prey. They are good, these Men. Are they good enough?

Team members 3 and 5 cautiously approached the corrugated steel and concrete comm hut behind the farmhouse. From where they approached, it was obvious that the door was hanging open. They spread out with discipline, number 3 falling back while number 5, a nova, approached the hut’s swinging door and carefully checked it for traps. Finding a wire, he signalled to the other then focussed on his node, feeling the mass of his body diffuse and lessen, becoming insubstantial as a ghost.

Slipping through the door, the nova glanced around the communications hut and was barely able to contain his reaction. He had done some service as a soldier before erupting and some time as an Elite afterwards, but he reflected that was obviously not enough to be inured to the sight of three bloody heads arranged atop the communications console as though they were ghastly ornaments on a high-tech end table. The smell of blood was thick in the air, a faint dripping sound completing the horror of the setting. Operative 5 fought the urge to retch, trying to professionally catalogue the scene. The eyes of the dead men were all open and staring at a large barrel in the centre of the room. The barrel had another head atop it, this one with the eyes removed leaving only bloody sockets, and from the labelling on the side, the barrel contained high-octane aircraft fuel from the helipad’s fuel dump. 5 traced the tripwire on the door to the barrel, and nodded in satisfaction. Clever, he thought. Someone sees the door’s open, barges in, and BOOM! It wouldn’t need a large charge of explosive: the fuel would do the work. Well, they were up against someone clever, and that was never good. But at least they weren’t too clever. Still, it paid to be careful. He solidified and clicked his radio.

“5 here, Leader. Found four heads here in the comm hut, and a nasty booby trap. Easy to disarm, though. Requesting permission to make it safe in here, sir.”

“Granted, 5.” Team Leader’s voice replied over the headset. 5 safed the tripwire, fastening it in such a way as to keep constant tension on the detonator, then took hold of the barrel and concentrated, increasing his density, and his accompanying strength, threefold. Gently, he tilted the barrel slightly in preparation to moving it, and then with a dull sense of horror felt something go ‘click’ under the barrel. His last thought was “Clever bast-“

Two…

The windows on the side of the farmhouse facing the communications hut blew in, followed by a gout of fire as the quarter-pound of plastic explosive under the drum detonated, igniting the jet fuel and spraying the burning liquid up and out, helped by the force of it’s own ignition. Men yelled as they hit the floor, one screaming and clutching at the large metal fragment embedded in his chest, another dead instantly from another white-hot metal fragment striking his head.

Wyman had never experienced anything like this. The explosions, the yells and the screams of the wounded man were like something from a nightmare. He huddled on the floor, terrified and confused, as his team collected themselves and acted, two moving to render aid to the wounded man whilst the other three doused the small fires that had started in the kitchen.

“Get ready to pull the metal out.” Barked number 8, the nova healer on the team, to the one assisting him with the thrashing injured man. He concentrated, a faint glow forming around his hand, then took a deep breath and nodded. “Now!”

Two things happened at once before the shocked gaze of the others present. The team mate screamed as the hot metal was pulled out of the wound, blood gouting after it. But before the healer could bring his hand to the wound, there was a sickening fleshy sound and the remains of his head sprayed across the room. Immediately following the noise of 8’s death was the whipcrack of a bullet, loud in the enclosed space as it plowed into the wooden floor, throwing up splinters.

Three.

The kicking and screaming of the wounded man was louder now, his death throes upon him. The other men were shocked and shouting. It was too much for Wyman. He scrambled to his feet and burst for the nearest door, ignoring the shouted order from the team’s leader. Plunging through, he encountered empty space and screamed in shock as he fell down some steps into the kitchen cellar. He lay there for a moment, groaning in pain and clutching at his left arm, dimly hearing the sharply given orders from Team Leader above. Orders that were cut off suddenly by another scream; a scream accompanied by a terrifying gravel-throated roar. He heard the chattering of his men’s weapons and their startled yells. But the yells turned to screams, then were cut off one by one. And all the while the shouts and gunfire were punctuated by spine-chilling snarls of bestial fury. Harold Wyman listened as he heard the last survivor start to plead, then try to run from whatever it was up there. He heard a heavy thud as whatever it was caught up with the last man, then his final scream dying off into a bubbling death rattle. He heard it all, and sobbed quietly. His men were dead. His daughter was dead. All killed by monsters. All gone now-

His thoughts were cut off, his mind shrinking further on itself as he heard a hideous baying roar of triumph from above, then silence. He whimpered, barely aware of the pain in his arm now as he heard an even more terrifying sound: the slow creak of the cellar door opening. There was a sudden glare as the lights were switched on, and he heard footsteps descending the stairs he had fallen down. He considered lying there, huddled, and just waiting for the end, but some grain of Harold Wyman remained, and he rolled over to look up, fearful of what he might see.

“Good evening, Mr Harold Wyman.” The voice was… average. So was the man standing at the foot of the steps. Average height, average build, hair a light brown colour, eyes indistinct in the light. He was dressed in dark green camouflage fatigues, soaked in a dark liquid that glistened obscenely in the dim light. The man squatted next to the terrified businessman, his hands dangling off his knees as he tilted his head to one side and regarded Wyman as though he was an interesting rock. Wyman noticed, while wishing he hadn’t, that the man had blood around his mouth. And now the man was closer, Wyman could see pinpoints of red and blue light dancing in his eyes, swirling and hypnotic.

“Who…?”

“Gryle, Mr Harold Wyman.” The figure said offhandedly, as though introducing himself at a party. “My name is Gryle. It is a pleasure to meet you. I was afraid you might die in one of the traps. I am happy to see you alive… for the present.”

Gryle reached down and grasped Wyman’s clothing, hauling the man up as though he were a rag doll.

“I know what you were attempting to do, Mr Harold Wyman. You wanted to find a cure for novas. As though we were a disease. And all you have striven for is gone now. What I want to know is this: how does it feel, to know that all that you are, all that you have done, is nothing? That at the end of your life, all you are is meat for the beast.” Wyman’s eyes widened as he saw Gryle’s face ripple and start to change, teeth sprouting from the no-longer human mouth.

“Not that it really matters to you, but I do like my food to be as fresh as possible. There’s nothing like fear to flavor the meat.” Gryle’s voice was a growl now, and Wyman saw saliva drip from the long fangs that were barely a foot from his face. “I’ve gotten quite hungry waiting for you to show up, Mr Harold Wyman.”

With that, the nova lunged his head forward at an angle, and Harold Wyman’s last sensations were of hot, searing pain as his head was forced back.