GRIDER

 

Friday January 10 - 2225 PST

Five days until Turbocharger activates

 

The blackened innards of the weird six legged spider splattered over the chair and the even weirder modern art sculpture in the hallway. 5.56 certainly did the trick, and the rest of the spiders picked up on it and took off. They scattered into every available open doorway and stairwell. It might have been my imagination but I thought I saw one peeking around the corner, observing us. I'd never seen animals act like this before. It was far too human and made me feel like we were the object of a safari party.

That's not a good feeling in case you were wondering.

Though we were safe for the moment I knew it wouldn't last. The odd skittering in the walls only emphasized that point. It was like the sound made by mice running back there only with mice that were the size of a Doberman.

"We gotta move." I ordered everyone. "Follow me."

And I led the way further into Gibbs's post modern house of nightmares. It wasn't so much that I knew where we were going, just that these people we had rescued were in panic. People in fear of mortal danger often times just needed a leader to follow and that's what I was providing them. Plus I knew where the danger was and we were going the other way.

The rumbling of massive hooved feet in the other hall let everyone know in no uncertain terms that something big and scary was there. I wasn't sure what exactly it was but I had a suspicion it was the thing that escaped from one of the two statues downstairs. And if it looked like the other statue then I wanted to be far away from it. Winged lion-bull-men the size of a van are probably more than my carbine can handle and so far they had been responsible for at least three decapitated corpses we'd come across.

J.T. was second in the stack behind me as I meandered through the maze of over turned furniture. He angled the muzzle of his M4 at a clattering sound coming from a wall vent. "Watch those vents. Watch those vents."

Now we just needed to link up with Adam and the three VIPs. The only problem was I had no clue how to find them. Gibbs's house was a confusing mess of sheer white interior walls, frosted glass, and odd half walls that served no other purpose than to hold up modern art paintings. We were lost in a funhouse of snobbery.

"Keep an eye out for Adam. We need to find him." I muttered to J.T.

Three muffled booms broke the stillness of my thoughts followed closely by the buzzing of three huge projectiles whizzing through the ranks of my groups. They tore through sheetrock, furniture, and shattered a floor-to-ceiling pane of glass. Most of the seven rescued were too lost in their own world of tormented panic to even realize that fifty caliber rounds had missed tearing them apart by only a few scant inches. All but one lady who began shrieking at the top of her lungs once the glass wall broke into a million piece.

I toggled my radio to the frequency Adam was supposed to be listening in on. "Cease fire! Cease fire! Your shots are flying through the whole house."

J.T. patted my shoulder and pointed in the direction the shots had come from. "Looks like we found him. Those shots came from over there."

There was no way of knowing if Adam had heard my warning. He was probably on the wrong channel. A good soldier would have been listening and acknowledged that he'd heard me. There was no telling with Adam though, he may have gone full exo on us and fired at my team intentionally.

J.T.'s hand came up and indicated a thick oaken set of doors up ahead. It was just like a hundred others in this mad house except for one detail. There was a big hole through one panel that wasn't a bullet strike. Someone or some thing had hacked a baseball sized hole through it. And brilliant violet light was shining out of it. I trusted J.T.'s judgment but this was all the confirmation I needed.

That and there was a mangled corpse in front of it. The body's chest looked like a deflated football. A huge part of it had been scooped out. The horrible wound hadn't come from the fangs of some monster, I recognized it immediately as the nasty wound dished out by a fifty cal impact. This guy was wearing a windbreaker with the local news station's logo on it. I could feel a vein on my forehead about to pop at the thought that Adam had just smoked a civilian, but then I saw shorty AKS clutched in one hand. This was no civilian. He was one of the hostage takers. And strangely, there was a sickly crimson glow coming from something wrapped around his neck. It suddenly pulsed brightly and I heard a man cry out in pain in the distance. The lion-bull-man had found someone wandering alone and lost.

Jiggling the door's handle didn't get us entry to the room. The steady red pin light underneath stared unblinking at me like some spiteful watchman, refusing me access. But I could see people inside and the source of the unnatural purple light. Adam was going hand-to-hand with what I swear was a cloud of black mist and a scythe. Someone was staring dumbfounded at the melee in that pose I refer to as "scared shitless". Even money says that his bowels had let loose at some point in the battle.

I shouted through the hole at him. "Hey buddy! Can you let us in?"

That made him jump. But when he saw a human peeping through the hole at him he calmed down a few notches. Then he came over and presented a card on a lanyard to the door and it clicked unlocked for us.

I rushed Alpha and the seven civilians inside before pulling the door shut behind us. While I wouldn't call anything I do for a living safe, this was at least one notch above the level we had sitting exposed in the hallway with giant spiders in the vents and an angry lion-bull-man on the prowl.

Then I got a good look around the vast ballroom we were in.

I take some of that back about feeling slightly more safety. There was a...I'm not sure what to call it, but a tunnel through reality to some place that wasn't on Earth.

Adam was still wrestling with the cloud of mist, yet something was going on. Blue lightning was arcing across and through them. The reticle of my M4's ACOG sight settled right on the mist thing's central cloud. It was a perfect shot for me. Not only would I hit the strange mass of mist that looked human but my shots would probably fly right through it and take out Adam as well. Two birds with one stone.

Hey, mistakes happen in battle sometimes.

As my finger eased in on the trigger the two monsters sidestepped and put General Basser right in the line of fire. I let up on the trigger. There was no way I could explain fragging a flag officer accidentally. Today wasn't my day apparently.

Then something roared in the hallway outside the double doors. It wasn't the roar of a lion, the baying of an angered bull, or the howl of a pack of a wolves. This was much worse. No matter what anyone in the room was feeling, their complete and undivided attention was drawn to the doors. All except Adam and the crazy mist creature. They were still tangoing in a dance of death.

The thing on the other side of the door rammed into it so hard the walls shook. I could hear the studs in the walls flexing with strain. The door frame creaked as the hinges were almost ripped out. Those thick oaken doors were strong, but they wouldn't hold out long against the monster on the other side. We had to get out and the guy who knew this place best would be my best shot at showing us to escape.

"Gibbs" I said shaking Warren Gibbs's shoulder to grab his attention. His eyes were still glued to the door. So I shouted at him. "Gibbs! How do we get out of here?"

That seemed to snap him out of his daze. He pointed a shaky finger towards a set of tall windows with curtains drawn over them. "Th-there's a balcony out there."

Drawing one of the curtains aside I could see that it wasn't a window but a French door and it led to a balcony just like Gibbs had said.

"C'mon! Everyone over here." I shouted while forcing the door open.

J.T. began herding the civilians over while the rest of my team covered their approach. Adam was still grappling with the mist horror, the portal was still pulsing brilliant lavender light, and the walls boomed again as the other monster outside tried battering its way inside.

My earpiece came to life with the voice of C.J. from the CTOC. "Alpha Zero-Six, come in please."

I clicked the transmit toggle and waited for the beep. "Tell me you have some good news."

Because I had plenty of bad news already. "We have updated intel on one of the transients. The large exo is a Category 3 Tetramorphic Quintaped. Also known as a Lamassu. These are used as guardians that remain dormant until a transient threat is detected. Then it becomes active to combat the threat."

As C.J. explained I could hear Jay and Gary talking as they cleared the balcony outside.

"This is a dead end." Gary said as the civilians milled around him. "We got nowhere to go."

Jay pointed over the glass railing. "Yeah we do. There's a pool down there."

Gary shook his head. "Just how many fuckin' pools does this guy have?"

As C.J. finished her explanation I opened up the channel again. "Thanks for the update, Iron Shack. Does this mean it won't attack us?"

Please tell me yes.

While I waited for them to get back I looked over at J.T. "Start sending people over the side. We're not sticking around."

Jay didn't wait and landed in the pool with a splash. Then called up for the team to send civilians down. They didn't need much prompting. Getting out of the kill zone was on their minds as much as it was mine. Getting wet and ruining their formal evening wear was a small price to pay for living another day.

After a long pause C.J. responded. "Zero-Six, I have bad news. It appears the Lamassu will attack any and all beings it does not recognize unless controlled by a high priest."

Of course it wouldn't be that easy. "We're fresh out of those at the moment. Any idea how we can kill it?"

I watched J.T. struggle with an old lady who wasn't keen on jumping off a balcony into a pool. He eventually had enough and scooped her up before sending her plummeting into the comfortably heated pool. Down below I could see the others climbing out of the water and scrambling across the perfectly manicured greens of Gibbs's huge yard.

My ear piece crackled to life. "Our best guess is a massive ordnance blast will be the only way to kill it."

I hated it when they guessed. But when your only source of intel is thousand year old manuscripts written in a dead language using flowery words and talking about mysticism, it was hard to get an exact answer.

But to their credit, the CTOC did arrange a fighter jet stacked with bombs for us to use. I switched to the team's radio channel. "Jay, get on the horn with that F-16 and get him set up to hit the ballroom we just vacated. But don't drop ordnance just yet. Wait for my word."

I wanted to be out before the bombs dropped. But if I timed it right we could take out the Lamassu, the portal, the mist monster, and have Adam as unfortunate collateral damage. He'd die a hero—again—and everyone would be happy.

Jay's voice responded in my ear. "Roger that."

As the last of the civilians splashed into the pool. I patted J.T. on the back. "You need to go next. I'll make sure things are wrapped up here."

Then the light from the portal dimmed. We both looked over and saw some massive shadow sweep in over the alien vista on the other world. Something awful had arrived.

"Go-go-go!" I pushed J.T. toward the balcony while also clicking the radio. "Jay, get those bombs on target now. Things just got really hairy up here."

"Sir, we still have people inside." And by people Jay meant Adam. I know the two of them had become friends, which was unfortunate. But it was better this way. It would only hurt more once Adam turned on us, like every exo we'd ever come across. He was just too young and idealistic to see it. He would get over it though.

"Do it, Jay." I had no choice but to make the hard call. Too many evil things were in that ballroom to hesitate. If we didn't level it now then the whole area would be open to attack from this alien world and all the evil things running around inside already. I wasn't about to leave my country or my planet vulnerable like that.