STORM BLOOD
NEW ORLEANS; NATIONAL GUARD FIRETEAM
05:21 AUGUST 29, 2005
Rain sleeted through the predawn sky, slicing sideways through the air. Icy stings peppered Sergeant Lejeune’s exposed skin—what little wasn’t protected by her National Guard uniform. The boiling black eyewall of Hurricane Katrina was a malevolent force, watching her, even though it was eighty miles away over the Gulf.
“Get the boy!” she shouted over the gale, carefully advancing through ankle-deep water. She re-clipped the anemometer to her vest. A woman on the hood of the wrecked jeep was mangled, impaled by a shattered tree branch. Normally, Lejeune would never have left someone behind, but hell was coming and those were her orders. Though it tore into her soul, she had to choose getting her fireteam, and this child, to safety. Lejeune whispered a prayer for the dying as she fought her way back to the Humvee.
She climbed into the shotgun seat as the team got the survivor out of the hurricane. “We gotta move. We should’ve been to the Superdome half an hour ago… and the radio’s out. Great.”
Private “Inigo” Jones—nicknamed after drunkenly stumbling around barracks insisting on finding the six-fingered man—hit the gas. “We’re lucky we could even dig out of that collapse, Sergeant. Not our fault we’re behind.” The Humvee lurched forward.
“I get that. But,” Lejeune patted the anemometer, “winds have gone up fifteen miles per hour over the last hour. Water’s up by a couple of inches…”
“Check it out—kid’s got a video-camera,” Tito Mendoza interrupted from the back seat as he pried a camera from the unconscious child’s hand, working around the backpack the kid clutched with his other arm. He passed it to Lejeune.
Something pulled at Lejeune. She should help Inigo spot, but there was something… off. Her gut said to figure out what was up with this kid.
She made up her mind.
“I need you guys to be my eyes and ears while I check this out. Get us to the French Quarter, Inigo. Nevaeh, help him spot. Tito, help the kid. Get him warm. We have to find somewhere to shelter.”
The reply was a chorused, “Yes, Sarge.”
Lejeune looked over the Hi8 camera. She opened the flip screen and pressed rewind for a second before hitting play. The tiny speakers burst with static.
* * *
RECORDING TIMESTAMP: 19:42:03 AUG 28/2005
The vibrant green flora of the bayou filled the frame. A Kalashnikov fired in the background. The camera bounced. Someone’s leg shifted in and out of view with each squelching footfall. The view swung up, revealing a bald man, wearing camo, floating four feet in the air. Blood flowed from his back, coating a shimmering distortion in the air. The camera, catching the sight of more dead, panned away as his body was flung to the side.
“Yee haw!” sounded in the background as another Kalashnikov fired.
A loud snarl overpowered the second assault rifle—a basso growl so menacing it reached past the logic centers of the brain straight to the primal animal inside that screamed “run!”
“What? What the fu… No, it ca—”
Pistol shots sounded. The camera swung around and caught a gray wolf-shaped shadow as it vanished into the bayou.
“Ro, don’t stop filming. Don’t let the kid put it down! I’ll get you a head start. Don’t let us have died for nothing. This is it—what we all wanted—proof! They’ll be legends!”
The camera swung up, revealing a young man with a hipster 5 o’clock shadow. Blood poured down his face from a gouge in his scalp. He looked at her one last time, resignation all over his face. “I’ll be… well, I’ve already got what I wanted… that look in your eyes right now.”
“Jason…” The camera bounced around as whoever held it started to run again, briefly showing the dreadlocked black woman Lejeune had seen dead on the Jeep. The woman had the drawl of Haitian Creole, audible in the single spoken word.
Again, the camera found the hipster as he stood, rain coating his blood-streaked hair. He raised the gun.
“Boy, are you going to look good on film,” Jason said as he fired. Sparks jumped in midair, hitting something the camera couldn’t see.
Whatever was said after was drowned out by the unmistakable thrumming of an airboat’s fan firing to life. As the camera retreated two blades ripped out of Jason’s back, then everything was too far away to be seen. The video panned across the swampy bayou, until the Creole woman was once more in frame.
She glanced back from the driver’s seat, dreadlocks whipping in the wind. “Turn that thing off, Frankie.”
* * *
NEW ORLEANS; NATIONAL GUARD FIRETEAM 05:34 AUGUST 29, 2005
Sergeant Lejeune snapped the camera closed.
“It’s a hoax. Some film project or something,” Tito said.
“Invisible men? Giant wolves?” Nevaeh Khanna made the sign of the cross. She and her husband had escaped religious persecution in Afghanistan in their early twenties, coming to America and taking new names. Her husband became a pacifist, but Nevaeh, wanting to help protect their new home, joined the Guard. “I thought such things were just myths.”
“I saw some freaky shit down in Nogales, like demon worshipping and whatnot, but not no actual demons. Gotta be a hoax.” Tito waved a hand, brushing off the idea.
Nevaeh, hands shaking, pulled a small cross from under her uniform, kissing it.
Inigo shook his head. “There hasn’t been enough time since that timestamp for someone to go all Hollywood on it…”
“Focus on driving, PFC,” Lejeune snapped as she hit rewind. Who would bother to put together such an elaborate hoax in the middle of a watery hell-on-earth? The tape clicked and she hit play again, starting from the beginning.
* * *
RECORDING TIMESTAMP: 14:11:52 AUG 28/2005
The camera focused on a G4 laptop being held by the bald man in camo. “Got the camera ready for our reaction shots?”
A voice off screen said, “Yeah, just hit play.”
The bald man pressed the spacebar. A slate appeared on the laptop’s screen. It read:
Cryptozoid Crackdown
s2e5“Running with the Rou”
What followed was typical faux-reality show opening credits, action sequences that implied danger, and scantily clad women.
I’m Darren.
And I’m the Maestro. Y’all know us from rocking out to HairForce!
When the band broke up, Darren and I stayed tight because of our mutual love of the supernatural.
Now we hunt creatures of legend; the kind only two dedicated rockers—like us—have the guts to find.
We still “Rock Till the World is Awake,” but now we travel the world seeking out impossible creatures and dangerous ladies.
Taking the music world by storm is nothing compared to rocking the very fabric of reality. We will prove these monsters exist, even if we have to climb the highest mountains…
Or cross the thickest swamps, because this is a…
Cryptozoid Crackdown!
The camera frame jerked up to catch the reactions of two men—one bald, the other mulleted, both looking like they hadn’t let go of the 1980s—perched on the front of an airboat that sped across the waterways of southern Louisiana.
“Fuckin’ A, man!” Darren said. “You really captured my essence, Jace.”
“Finally earning your keep,” Maestro echoed. “Only took a year.”
“Dude, we were number one in twelve markets last year. Cut me some slack,” the off-camera voice responded.
Maestro pointed a finger at him. “Yeah, well, we won’t stay on top if we have these last-minute shoots in backwater swamps.”
“Would you rather me pull the second unit and start over next week when this storm blows over?”
“I’d rather it was Ro behind the camera and not you,” Darren interjected. “She’s the tits when it comes to B-roll.”
Jason panned over to see the driver’s reaction. She just rolled her eyes.
They continued to banter, so Lejeune fast-forwarded until she saw the camp; it was a bloody mess of carnage and intestines, staining the watery greens of the bayou. HairForce’s front men were in frame again.
Maestro called out in an angry whisper, “Keep the boy quiet and pick up the damn camera. It could be here any moment.” He was armed and looking half-crazed and scared witless.
The camera shuffled as someone put it on the ground, still focused on Darren and Maestro.
“Hey there,” Ro said quietly, off frame. “How are you feeling?”
“What happened?” a child asked, raspy-voiced.
“Drink.”
There was the sound of sputtering.
“What’s your name?”
“Franklin. Frankie, after my da.”
Jason joined them, leaning in conspiratorially and blocking part of the shot. “Do you remember anything, Frankie?”
The boy spoke haltingly with a thick Cajun accent, words broken by sniffles. “I came with Da. Someone hired him to run around… My da is the best rougarou actor in the parish…” he choked up.
“It’s okay, Frankie. We’re here to keep you safe.”
“Somethin’ kuh…” Frankie fought to get the word out. “…killed him.”
“What?” Darren called over his shoulder in a hushed but excited voice. “What killed him? Tell me it was a real rougarou!”
The camera focused on Frankie. He was covered in the ochre mud of the camp site, and tears cut clean trails down his cheeks. He shook his head. “Something else.”
* * *
NEW ORLEANS; NATIONAL GUARD FIRETEAM 05:52 AUGUST 29, 2005
Sergeant Lejeune stopped the recording, silently daring anyone to speak.
Inigo didn’t have the brains to stay silent. “I’m telling you that wasn’t faked. If it was, it woul—” Something impacted the passenger door and the Humvee skidded. It caught a curb and the rising winds outside helped it jump. The sturdy vehicle smashed into a lamppost already bowing under the hurricane’s relentless assault. The thirty-foot pole crashed into the façade of a French Quarter barbeque shop.
* * *
NEW ORLEANS; ROMILLY SIBIAN 05:53 AUGUST 29, 2005
Romilly’s eyes snapped open. She gasped in lungsful of air. The… thing stood over her, the weird shimmering effect sputtering with sparks as the torrential rain hit it. It jabbed at its forearm and became fully visible. The hood of the Jeep bit into her shoulder blades.
How was she still alive?
Why was she still alive?
This thing had taken Darren, Maestro, and Jason to pieces in seconds. She fought to find words around intense pain in her right shoulder. “I got no beef with you… Only interested in the boy. You know? The boy.”
The thing made a sound halfway between hissing and clicking, moving its face close, studying her, mimicking the word. “Boooyyyy. Ki’Sei, lou-dte kale.”
It radiated warmth absent from the hurricane, a stark contrast that she could feel across her body.
She was careful to stay still under its scrutiny. “I’m Ro.” She was at a loss for what else to say so she mimicked it. “Ki’Sei?”
Whatever the creature’s thought process, it seemed satisfied. The thing stood, towering over her, pointing toward the French Quarter. “Dtai’kai-dte.” It thumped its own chest. “Yautja…”
She stood, shakily catching her balance in ankle-deep water. The snapped tree branch had left a deep gouge in her stomach and chest, and was imbedded in her shoulder. The blood seeping from the gash was washed away by rain faster than it came out.
Focus, Ro…
Shaking her head, she pointed in the opposite direction. “Airboat’s back there a mile. I need it. This is only going to get worse.” She pantomimed steering, then pointed at the angry sky.
The thing seemed to consider what she said, then pulled a small triangular object off its forearm and tossed it to her. The corner of the triangle pointing at the French Quarter flashed every few seconds. Why had it given her a tracking device? And why was it tracking Frankie? She looked up but it was gone.
Romilly took quick stock of her injuries. She had no clue how she was up and walking, or even alive. Luck had played a part in making injuries that looked deadly superficial… but her arm wasn’t.
Gritting her teeth, she jerked out the branch-turned-stake. Her knees buckled. Her right arm tingled and pain butterflied from the hole in her shoulder. Unsheathing her boot-knife, Romilly reached into the Jeep, pulling the seatbelt to full extension. She had been an idiot not to use it before, but now it had a second shot at its job, just not the way originally intended.
She bit down on the belt and cut. After struggling she managed to slice the other end free. It worked as a makeshift sling, binding her bad arm to her chest and keeping pressure on the wounds.
Romilly pushed her dreads off her face. Insanity. All of this. She started miserably trudging toward the airboat.
* * *
NEW ORLEANS; NATIONAL GUARD FIRETEAM 05:55 AUGUST 29, 2005
The windshield was eclipsed by snarling fangs and matted fur. The gray beast from the video snarled and snapped its maw against the glass. Inigo slammed on the gas. “Ohshitohshitohshit…”
The beast, way too big to be a wolf, scrabbled for purchase, fighting the motion of the Humvee and the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina. Blue lightning arced by and the beast flinched, sliding off the vehicle, snarling as it got blown into the same shop as the lamppost.
The Humvee fought its way back into the storm.
Inigo glanced at Lejeune as he spoke over the cussing and prayer coming from the back seat. “I can’t get over twenty in this. I don’t think we’ll be able to get away from that. Whattya want me to do, Sergeant?”
Lejeune squinted, reading streets signs through the storm. “I think… maybe it’s after the kid? We need to keep him safe. Up a block and over, there’s a supermarket.”
Inigo nodded, squinting to focus through the downpour overpowering the wipers.
Everyone in her fireteam had reacted much as she had—freaked out but holding it together. She glanced back. Tito was holding the unconscious kid in place, cussing up a storm under his breath in Spanish while Nevaeh prayed.
Lejeune reached back and snapped her fingers loudly. “Focus. I don’t care what you just saw. We’re going to a defensible position and we’ll deal with that… thing, there.”
Tito blinked. “Pinche—You kidding, Sarge? Why the hell ain’t we headed to the Superdome?”
“Superdome’s out. We don’t have the time to get there. That thing might kill us, but if we try for the Superdome and the eyewall hits us, Katrina will. We go to ground.”
Inigo spoke without taking focus off the worsening storm. “But, Sarge, there are like thousands of us there and only one of that thing. Isn’t that worth the risk?”
“Yeah—it just near took out our Humvee. How are we supposed to stop that?” Tito was wide-eyed.
Lejeune clenched her jaw. “No arguments. We won’t make it any more now than we would’ve ten minutes ago, let alone endangering thousands of civilians. So we find a way to stop it here. We’re the Guard dammit, so we guard.”
* * *
NEW ORLEANS; ROMILLY SIBIAN 05:59 AUGUST 29, 2005
The alien may have let her live, but Romilly wasn’t so sure Katrina would grant her the same consideration… and she could see the maelstrom around the eye, still far off. The eyewall was deadly, but even the fringes of the 400-mile-wide hurricane were drowning the streets. Just two minutes to catch my breath… She found shelter in the lee of a bus and her mind drifted.
Jason looked at her, pleading. Romilly thought he was the only one worth anything in this whole damn shoot, even if he bought into all that Hollywood crap. The two hair-banders dreamt only of fame and glory. As often as not, glory got people dead in Romilly’s experience.
Her grandma had always said the rougarou was real—that it was a messenger from God. One look at this campsite and the message was clear—stay the fuck away.
“Camera, Ro. Get everything you can. If things go badly, grab the boy and go. Don’t look back. Save him. Promise me.” Jason met her eye, begging.
Romilly grunted. “I will.”
She had given her word. She rubbed her arms furiously, warming up. Forcing herself back into the storm, Romilly fought Katrina for every inch, slogging through calf-deep water until her prize, the airboat, came into view. She limped forward until she was on the craft.
Romilly gunned the engine to life and sped onto the drowning streets of New Orleans, following the tracker toward the French Quarter.
* * *
NEW ORLEANS; NATIONAL GUARD FIRETEAM 06:17 AUGUST 29, 2005
“In there!” Lejeune pointed at the squat structure of the supermarket as the Humvee was buffeted from side to side, inching its way forward.
“Where do you wanna put the Humvee, Sarge? I don’t think we can make it through this on foot.”
“The way in is the way through, PFC. Take us through the front doors and park inside. Deep inside.” Lejeune didn’t see a safer way to get her team under cover.
“Isn’t that just gonna let the storm in, Sarge?” Tito asked.
“It is. We’ll have to deal with flooding, but that’s a lot better than what’s out here.” She pointed toward the horizon. The sky went from brownish-gray to ugly black farther away from the city. “I’m pretty sure that’s Katrina’s eye. As much as this thing is a tank on wheels, we won’t survive in this for long.”
Inigo cut through the parking lot and smashed through the supermarket’s plywood-covered glass doors. He let out a quiet “yee-haw” as they crashed into the store. He looked half-sheepish, half-delighted as he guided the vehicle through shelves, crushing canned goods and packaged foods under wheel before parking.
Lejeune gave Inigo a flat look. “Alright. Get out, do your best to fortify our entry point against the storm. Use bags of rice to build a levee; put as much heavy shit as you can behind it. I’ll take care of the kid. Go, go, go.”
Nevaeh, Tito, and Inigo piled out. Lejeune checked on the kid. He was breathing evenly, but was on fire to the touch. She climbed out of the Humvee and started tromping across the wet floor, gathering supplies. Her fireteam had already started shifting bags of rice to plug the hole.
* * *
NEW ORLEANS; ROMILLY SIBIAN 06:21 AUGUST 29, 2005
Romilly used the wind, slicing across the lightly flooded streets of the French Quarter, relying on the craft’s belt to keep her seated, having learned the “belt-up” lesson. This area wasn’t as flooded—only half a foot of water covered the street. Asphalt and pavement scraped the bottom of the airboat, but the winds channeling through the tight streets were pushing her just enough to help. She followed the tracker as it led her along the Mississippi’s welling banks.
The ominous black of the storm felt just inches away. For all practical purposes, it was. Once the eyewall hit, winds would pick up from 60 mph to over 135. The sky would open and pour down liquid hell.
The light on the tracker shifted to her left and she juked the airboat. The bottom tore as she bounced off a dumpster. Riding an airboat was a lot like skipping stones—so long as she didn’t slow down, the ripped bottom wouldn’t matter. There was a supermarket in front of her, and the tracker pulsed a couple of times every second. If she was reading it right, that was her destination.
Pulling every ounce of juice out of the craft, she skipped across six-inch deep water in the parking lot. Graffitied plywood covered the outside of the giant glass windows, but the front entrance of the market was destroyed and open. Ro squinted. Shapes moved inside—it looked like they were stacking something in the missing doors.
No way could she slow down. The airboat was basically a giant fan on a board and would get blown away, with her on it, if she let off the acceleration. Hopefully they would see her, because she couldn’t be heard over the storm. She aimed at the opening, her Haitian Creole roots at war whether to pray to Christ or to the Loa.
People inside the market jumped to the sides as the airboat rammed into the makeshift two-foot wall. Ro killed the engine and tucked into a ball, seat-belted down as the craft skipped up and the back of the fan smashed into the roof. It spun out to the side, sliding to a halt inside the store.
She shakily undid the belt and slid down. It took a moment for the world to stop spinning. As her vision focused she realized she was staring down the barrel of an M16A2.
Romilly froze.
From behind her came the spine-freezing chunk-chunk of a shotgun being cocked, the single most intimidating sound mankind had ever produced, and it did its job on her.
She slowly raised her good hand. “Not moving.”
“Hold on.” The man behind the M16A2 was Latino, barely in his twenties. He was at the ready and slowly backing up, putting a few more feet of distance between them. Careful with each step, he slid his foot back to make sure he didn’t trip on unseen obstacles. “Ain’t you the lady from the Jeep? The one with the kid and that crazy shit on the camera?”
“Frankie’s the kid’s name.” Romilly nodded, her soaked dreads dripping water down her forehead, into her eyes. “Is he okay?”
“Right. Frankie. Weren’t you dead?” The soldier looked confused, ignoring her question.
Romilly blinked. How the hell do you answer that? “Uh… no?”
“Right. You’re standing here. Okay. How did you find us, then?”
Acutely aware of the alien tracker, and the explanation she would have to give to someone already not asking the brightest of questions, Romilly opted for a simpler route. “GPS tracker?”
His eyes narrowed over the sights of the rifle, but his reply froze in his throat as a woman, a sergeant by her insignia, walked up behind him.
“What are you doing here, ma’am? And why,” she motioned to the airboat, words failing her, “this?”
Romilly scanned the store’s interior. “Following the child. I couldn’t park out there and didn’t want to make a second hole. It was the least dangerous of several bad choices. Where’s Frankie?”
The sergeant got her team moving, “Stand down. Fix that hole,” then looked back to Romilly. “The child is in the back of the store, in our Humvee. First, start explaining what the hell was on your camera footage.”
Romilly spoke. “This place… it isn’t safe. There are two things killing people. One is a wolf-like creature; it’s called a rougarou. The other is… it’s crazy is what it is.”
“We already crossed paths with the rougarou. And I saw the invisible man on the end clip. So, you have a werewolf and an invisible killer?”
Romilly shook her head. “A rougarou isn’t a werewolf—werewolves are made-up urban legends. Legend says it’s more like an intelligent giant wolf. And the invisible man… it isn’t that. I don’t know what the hell it is, other than nine feet tall. I think its name is Yautja or Ki’Sei. It isn’t killing indiscriminately though. It had me dead to rights and let me go. I think, maybe, it’s only killing things it sees as threats. Dunno…”
The sergeant watched her skeptically.
“Sorry I don’t have more for you, but you’ve watched what’s on that camera. Y’know about as much as me.”
“You’re Ro, right? Call me Lejeune; I’m not sure my team could handle hearing me referred to by my first name.”
Romilly found herself liking this sergeant. “Lejeune it is. I’m Romilly, but yeah, call me Ro.”
Both women spun in response to a loud crash.
* * *
NEW ORLEANS; NATIONAL GUARD FIRETEAM 06:32 AUGUST 29, 2005
Rain hammered through the smashed corner window, the plywood and glass lay scattered in jagged pieces across the tiled supermarket floor. A beast crouched in the wreckage, growling and snarling. Matted gray and white fur covered the bear-sized wolf. It had landed squarely between the three guardsmen.
Inigo was the first to react, bringing up his M16 to firing position, but still too slow. The motion attracted the attention of the rougarou. Fangs flashed as it snapped to the right, darting low, catching Inigo by the thigh. Blood spurted from its maw as it clamped onto his leg. Inigo screamed and his shots went wide, the M16 firing upwards as he fell back.
“Madre de Dios…” Tito froze in place, his assault rifle in the safe position.
Chunk-Chunk
Nevaeh didn’t pause. She pulled the shotgun’s trigger and the rougarou’s shoulder exploded in a red mist. The beast yelped, never letting go of Inigo’s leg.
Chunk-Chunk
She pulled the trigger again, this time hitting its neck. Inigo stopped screaming and his limp body slid around the floor as the creature savaged him. The rougarou wasn’t going down. While the shotgun blasts were hurting it, the weapon just didn’t have enough power to pierce the beast’s thick hide. That didn’t deter Nevaeh.
Chunk-Chunk
The floor ran red with blood, diluted by Katrina’s rain howling in through the shattered window.
Chunk-Chunk
The rougarou finally let go of Inigo’s limp form, tossing the guardsman’s leg to the side with a final wrench of its deadly jaws. It spun on Nevaeh, snarling. Red dripped from its fangs. Lejeune and the Creole woman slid to a stop next to the shotgun-wielding guardswoman. Lejeune snapped her rifle up and started firing.
Chunk-Chunk
The blast hit the rougarou’s leg, and it had finally had enough. It sprang to the side, smashing through another boarded window, vanishing back into the hurricane.
Lejeune sprinted to Inigo, crouching by him. “Tito. Get the damn medkit from the Humvee! Now.” She placed two fingers against Inigo’s throat and paled. “Fuck.”
Rain and wind pummeled the inside of the store. Katrina had found an opening and was exploiting it. Cans rattled and water washed away the red. Lejeune looked up at Romilly and Nevaeh, her decision made for her. “We’re leaving and finding somewhere more secure.”
* * *
NEW ORLEANS; NATIONAL GUARD FIRETEAM 06:41 AUGUST 29, 2005
“Sarge, I dunno if we should really be smashing through the front doors of a church…” The wind buffeted the Humvee around and everyone held on for dear life.
“Can it, Tito. We’re doing a hell of a lot less property damage than the hurricane is, and I’ll take us through every front door and wall in New Orleans if it keeps us alive… And technically, we’re going through the back door.” She clutched the steering wheel in a death grip, gas pedal to the floor as they fought the wind and the incline. The Humvee won out, though. Its low center of gravity and heavy frame had been designed for terrain and conditions even more adverse than this, if such existed.
Trees along the levees guarding the French Quarter from the Mississippi’s raging flow bent under the hurricane’s wind. A couple of blocks in, everything dropped to below sea level. Their best chance was to stick as close to the levees as they could, so that if they did—God forbid—break, water would flow past them instead of drowning them.
She hooked a sharp right on St. Peter Street and drove through the center of Jackson Square to avoid the trees and other flying detritus as Katrina intensified. Straight ahead was the massive, and more importantly, solid structure of St. Louis Cathedral. She swerved into Pirate Alley, taking off both side mirrors as she squeezed the Humvee through a too-tight space. The second she was through, she hooked hard to the right, and the whole vehicle lurched.
Protected from the winds by the cathedral, she managed to get the Humvee up to thirty before crashing into the building’s door. Had the door not been inset into a several foot decorative wooden frame, they wouldn’t have made it in. Pews were crushed as the vehicle came to a halt.
“Out.” She killed the ignition. “Secure that door, Nevaeh. Tito, get the front doors, make sure they’re barricaded!”
* * *
ST. LOUIS CATHEDRAL; ROMILLY SIBIAN 06:44 AUGUST 29, 2005
Frankie’s eyes fluttered open. Romilly put her hand against his forehead. “Morning.” He was running a severe fever.
His eyes darted around till they settled on his backpack. He weakly reached out and clutched it, struggling briefly to pull its weight into his embrace.
Frankie rolled away from her, arms wrapped around his backpack. His shoulders shook.
Romilly frowned. She tucked the blanket around him and spoke quietly. “Stay put in here, okay? It’s dangerous outside.”
“’Kay.” He nodded but didn’t look at her, hugging his pack.
Romilly slid out of the Humvee and looked around. The Guard fireteam had dropped flares as they worked, but the cathedral was still eerily dark. Shadows danced, gluttonously swallowing the flares’ light, catching the eye with ghost motions. She shook her head, ignoring the tricks her mind was playing. Lejeune was at the back door with Nevaeh. Tito, having secured the front doors, which faced the levees, was walking toward her.
Everything slowed as Tito raised his rifle, pointing it at her. Romilly felt her head tilt. What was he… She dove to the side as her reflexes processed what her brain wouldn’t.
“Get down!” he yelled as he sprinted forward and pulled the trigger.
* * *
ST. LOUIS CATHEDRAL; NATIONAL GUARD FIRETEAM 06:44 AUGUST 29, 2005
Nevaeh didn’t have a chance to react. There was a flash of gray in the doorway against an ugly brown sky outside, then the guardswoman was falling back, blood and intestines spilling from her eviscerated body. As she hit the floor, her corpse slid one way and her shotgun the other. Her cross lay in a pool of blood between them.
Lejeune snapped her rifle up, squeezing off a three-round burst.
The rougarou yelped as it lost an ear, then spun on her.
“Get down!” Tito yelled in the background, then started firing.
The rougarou crouched, snarling, slowly advancing.
Behind them, across the pews, a large stained-glass window exploded inwards in a concussive spray of flying shards and metal slivers. In the center, a humanoid shape, built to the same scale as the rougarou, flipped through the opening. It landed in a crouch on the altar. The wood cracked beneath its weight.
Water dripped from the Yautja as it raised its head.
Three red lights flickered on, tracing ghostly lines between the thing’s shoulder and the rougarou. The lights tracked up until they rested on the entry the rougarou had burst through.
A high-pitched sound, like a record being scratched in reverse, echoed through the cathedral and a blue pulse shot out. The wall over the rear door exploded, masonry tumbling down, trapping the rougarou in the building.
“The fuck?” Tito spun around and fired. “Die, you Neanderthal-looking motherfucker!”
The Yautja leapt as the altar splintered under the gunfire.
Lejeune, on the other side of the cathedral, never let up on the rougarou. Even with the collapse around the doorway, water poured into the cathedral, making her footing tricky. The rougarou snarled and launched itself at her.
Tito swung the M16A2 around, never letting off the trigger. The alien hunter landed wide of him, tucking into a roll, then launching itself low, right at the guardsman. Tito overcorrected his aim, sending a spray of bullets into the shadows.
The Yautja landed in front of him and slammed its fist into his chest, batting aside the assault rifle with its other hand. Twin blades punched through Tito’s chest and he blinked in surprise. Blood poured down his back. Snatching a combat knife from his boot sheath, he stabbed at the alien’s shoulder, scoring a deep gouge that bled green. The blade fell to the ground from Tito’s lifeless fingers.
The Yautja tossed the corpse off its blades, then spread its arms wide, tilted its head back, and screamed a basso roar of challenge. It charged down the aisle between the pews.
Lejeune slipped in the rising water, falling to one knee but never letting off the trigger, as the rougarou bore down on her. There was one thing she hadn’t tried yet…
Lejeune jerked one of two flashbang grenades off her harness, pulled the pin, and threw it at the beast’s head. A fist smashed into her ribs, breaking them, and the world spun as she went ass-over-teakettle to the side. She felt more ribs break as she impacted the pews and her vision went bright white as the flashbang detonated. The back of her head cracked into another pew and pain overwhelmed her. Her stomach rebelled and she vomited, spewing bile over her own chest.
* * *
ST. LOUIS CATHEDRAL; ROMILLY SIBIAN 06:44 AUGUST 29, 2005
Romilly pushed herself up to her knees. The Yautja smacked Lejeune aside with casual disdain then charged the rougarou as a flashbang went off. Romilly stopped and took a deep breath, rubbing her eyes. Not thinking was stupid, and stupid got you killed. She looked around. The wolf-beast and the alien closed in on each other, the alien raining blows on the rougarou’s head while the beast snapped its fearsome maw at the hunter.
Weapons were easy. Both Tito’s and Lejeune’s rifles were reachable, but neither of them had seemed to dent the two combatants. Her eye fell on the Humvee. Frankie’s face was pressed against the glass and he had the camera open and filming from his vantage.
The Humvee…
Romilly sloshed through the rising water to the Humvee, but paused before opening the door. The alien was holding the rougarou by the neck, fighting to keep the beast off while hammering the hand wielding the twin blades into the beast’s shoulder and chest. The problem was one of size. The rougarou outweighed the alien by a couple hundred pounds, and the blades just weren’t penetrating far enough through its tough hide.
The rougarou snapped massive jaws over the alien’s face, ripping the mask free. It savaged the piece, shaking its head back and forth. Romilly’s eyes went wide. Whatever she had thought might be under that mask, the truth was far more alien. It had four mandibles, both upper and lower, and a wide serrated ridge making a V over a bony forehead. Its skin was ivory with red markings.
The rougarou dropped the mask and snapped at the alien’s face, scoring a deep gouge between its mandibles. Green blood spurted from the wound.
Romilly clenched her fist and forced herself into the Humvee. The keys were hanging from the ignition. “Frankie, get down!” she yelled as she gunned the vehicle.
Outside the Humvee, the Yautja slammed the blades into the rougarou’s throat, though they just skipped off its tough hide. The beast clamped its jaws down over the alien’s wrist and the thing howled as its back arched and its mandibles flared.
Romilly backed the Humvee away from the two, and Lejeune—an avenging angel covered in blood and bile—rose next to the retreating vehicle. She pulled a steel cable from the Humvee’s winch and paused, nodding at Romilly as she clipped the hook to her vest.
Lejeune ran at the combatants and jumped on the rougarou’s back. It released the alien to snap at her. She looped the cable around the beast’s neck, losing skin from her palms as she caught it in a makeshift noose.
The Yautja hammered a fist down, the blades slicing through Lejeune’s leg, pinning her to the wolf-beast.
In a moment of clarity, Romilly understood Lejeune’s plan and hammered on the gas. The Humvee lurched forward as the guardswoman reached to her chest then threw the last flashbang in front of the rougarou from her perch on the beast’s back. The beast flinched and sprang back to the rubble blocking the door.
Romilly sped through the fiery pews and slammed the grille of the Humvee into the rougarou. Rubble sprayed out of the church, immediately lost in the maelstrom of Katrina. The rougarou, Lejeune, and the alien hunter followed, caught by the howling gale, tumbling along the ground like a twisted kite. The weight of the three jerked the Humvee to the side as the winch cable pulled taut.
Romilly sprinted out of the cab to the front of the Humvee and hit the retract gear on the winch box. Barely visible through the hurricane, she watched as the alien jerked the cable off the rougarou and smashed its blades through the beast’s eyes. Lejeune was blown to the side by the hurricane as the hunter’s biceps bulged in effort. The Yautja tore the rougarou’s skull and spine free of its carcass. The alien had trouble standing against the gale-force winds, but managed to hold up the trophy momentarily before being forced to plant its blades into the flagstones to anchor itself.
Lejeune’s body bounced in the wind as Romilly reeled her in.
For a fleeting moment, the alien locked gazes with Romilly. It clicked its mandibles together as it held eye contact with her, then it was gone, vanishing into the hurricane.
Romilly finished pulling Lejeune in. Somehow, the sergeant was alive. Exhausted, Romilly tended to her wounds, praying to the Loa that they would all survive the night.
* * *
NEW ORLEANS, THE AFTERMATH; ROMILLY SIBIAN AUG 30, 2005
Romilly hooked her arm through the hold-bar in the Coast Guard Dolphin’s doorway, squinting against the sunlight’s glare, as the rescue helicopter swung up and away from the cathedral. The Hi8 camera was tucked into the sling the emergency responders had put her mangled right arm into.
She stared into the watery grave of New Orleans, absently watching the reflection of the Dolphin below. The corpse of the rougarou would be lost in the devastation Katrina had left behind, just more decayed meat and bone by the time the flooding was cleared. Questions spun through her mind. Why was the rougarou after the boy? What was that alien hunter? Have we only been bait, was that why it let us live?
Romilly carefully held the camera, thinking about the footage. There were some things that were too dangerous for the world to know… some things that would get them all locked up in some government lab. She pulled out the tape and snapped it in half, dropping it into the flooded ruins.
“Some questions are better unanswered,” she mumbled.
Frankie huddled in the corner of the rescue vehicle, clutching his backpack. Everything was a frenzy around keeping the army lady alive and no one was bothering to watch him. He unzipped his backpack and looked in, remembering.
“Hey, Frank?” The 2nd unit director called out to Frankie’s dad. “Can you stop that yipping? I’m trying to get some establishing shots.”
His dad looked at him sternly. “Give that thing to me, Junior.”
Frankie handed the found puppy over and his dad stabbed its shoulder with a dart.
The animal went limp and Frankie’s eyes went wide. “Da! You didn’t have to kill it!”
“I didn’t. I used a tranq dart. We’ll figure out what to do with it later. Now, go set it someplace away fro—”
He was interrupted by screams and spun around. “Oh shit. Frankie! Hide in here!”
Frankie blinked back a tear and reached into his backpack, stroking the ears of a battered puppy. Dried blood matted fur that stuck to an emaciated frame. It stared out at him, something more than just animal behind its eyes. “I told you when I rescued you in the bayou I’d save you,” Frankie whispered.
The rougarou cub weakly raised its head and licked his palm.