C12 Chapter Twelve

“Cease fire! Cease fire!”

Cade’s voice could be heard clearly even over the din of the gunfire and the two sergeants reacted to his command, pulling their fingers from the triggers and lowering the muzzles of their weapons. In front of them, the “enemy” was lost in the darkness, the mysterious strobe light suddenly winking out with the arrival of the rest of the team.

Cade pushed between Duncan and Riley, staring ahead at the strange tableau, lit now by only the thin beam at the end of his weapon. “Lights!” he called, “we need some light up here.”

Flashlights were handed forward. In their high powered beams, the identity of their assailants became immediately obvious.

It was D Squad, 3rd Platoon.

Jackson’s missing teammates.

Cade stepped forward, moving amongst the bodies. Closer examination showed that they had been tied upright to the posts that served as handholds throughout the train car, their arms extended and secured to the horizontal crossbar. They’d been tied so tightly that not even the onslaught of Echo’s bullets had torn them loose. With the strobe light flashing behind them, their positioning had given the illusion that the bodies were lurching forward.

It was an eerie spectacle, shocking in its blatant use of the dead. Just what had their opponent hoped to achieve with such a display? What was the value of dragging the bodies down here into the dark and arranging them like life-size puppets that no one would ever see?

Unless, of course, it had known that they were coming.

“Freakin’ weird sense of humor,” Ortega said quietly from the back of the car and the comment struck Cade between the eyes. Could that be it? Could this have all been some kind of a sick joke? An attempt to get under their skin and play with their emotions?

There were nine bodies in all, which meant that the entire platoon was now accounted for, if you included Jackson. Cade shone his light on the various corpses, searching for one in particular. When he found him, he pulled his knife and carefully cut the ropes holding him in place. By the time he had the man free, Duncan and Riley were there beside him, helping him lower the body gently to the floor of the tram car.

The nametag on the front of the man’s uniform read Stoddard. From his review of 3rd Platoon’s personnel files, Cade knew this was the lieutenant that had been in charge of the patrol. He’d been young, 28 or 29, if memory served, but you wouldn’t know it looking at him now. His face was shrunken, collapsed in on itself, the once smooth skin now grey and wrinkled. His eyes bulged from their sockets and his mouth remained frozen in an “O” of surprise or fear, Cade wasn’t sure which. Even stranger was the fact that the man’s hair, once jet black, had now gone completely white.

A quick glance at the rest of the bodies showed that they, too, were in a similar condition.

“What do you think, boss?” asked Riley, while keeping watch on the shadows around them. “Could it be a wight? Or maybe a nest of Chiang Shih?”

Sitting back on his heels, Cade shook his head. “There hasn’t been a wight sighting in the continental U.S. for more than fifty years. Besides, this isn’t the right environment for them. I’d be inclined to think it might be the Chiang Shih,” he said, referring to the vampire-like creatures of Chinese origin, “except for the fact that the eyes are intact and they’re always one of the first things to go.”

“Which leaves us back at square one,” said Flynn.

Turning his attention back to Stoddard, Cade searched the man for injuries. There were a variety of bullet wounds, but from the lack of blood it was clear that all of them were post-mortem. Duncan’s and Riley’s handiwork, no doubt. But aside from these, that was it. There were no other obvious injuries that could have caused the man’s death aside from the strange condition of his face. It was as if the very life force had been sucked out of him.

What could do that to a man? They’d already eliminated the known candidates. Could it be a new species, something they’d never encountered before? He was tempted to take off his gloves to try and use his Sight, that psychometric power given to him during his encounter with the Adversary several years ago, but knew it would be pointless. The bodies had been down here for over forty-eight hours; anything residual information the corpse might have held was now long since out of reach.

Movement to his left caught Cade’s attention. Duncan had drawn his combat knife and was moving toward the rest of the bodies, seemingly intent on cutting them down as well. Cade stood quickly and grabbed his arm, stopping him. “We don’t have time,” he said. “We’ve got to keep moving.”

“But we can’t just leave them here like this!” the young sergeant protested.

Cade gently turned the other man around so that he was facing away from the corpses, forcing him to pay attention to what was being said. “We have to. I don’t have the manpower to watch over the bodies and we can’t spare the time to take them back through the tunnel to the surface.” Duncan opened his mouth to protest but Cade shook his head, silencing him. “It’s only temporary, Duncan. I promise you. We’ve got to focus on the mission, to complete what we came here to do, but we’ll be back to give these guys the proper respect and care that they deserve. You have my word.”

Reluctantly, Duncan nodded. He knew the commander was right; they didn’t have any other choice. But that didn’t mean he had to like it.

Conscious that the dead men had been fellow knights, Cade ordered Flynn to collect their signet rings. He would turn them over to Captain Mason as evidence of their fate, just in case something happened to the bodies before they could return.

Once that had been accomplished, the team continued their advance, moving through four more cars without incident before coming to the end of the train and exiting out through the service door in the rear.

The tunnel stretched on before them in the darkness and they continued on their way, this time with Flynn and Cade on point.

Behind them, in the darkness of the tram car, one of the slumped “bodies” sat up and got to its feet. It walked to the end of the train and stared out into the darkness of the tunnel in the direction Echo Team had gone moments before. As it did the flesh of its face began to twist and turn, features forming and then fading away again only to be replaced by a new incarnation seconds later, the skin melting and reforming like toffee in the hot summer sun, until at last it made up its mind and a new face emerged in place of the old. Two eyes, one steel grey, the other milky white, stared out of a face made of harsh planes and sharp angles. A wide band of angry scar tissue wrapped around the right side from the ear to the chin and was only partially covered by the long hair that covered the top of its head.

Satisfied with his new appearance, the lord of Eden stepped down off the train and began to follow the men of Echo Team back into the darkness of its temporary lair.