Target Rich Environment 2 Read online

  “Your invitation has been revoked.” Franks declared in the Old Tongue. A hot desert wind ripped through the ruins, sand blasting the bloody marks from the ancient walls. The demons shrieked as the void ripped them from their newfound flesh and sent them hurtling back into the darkness.

  And then he shut the door.

  The flaming portal disappeared in a flash. Every possessed body instantly collapsed into a limp, wet heap.

  Well, that worked better than he’d expected.

  Ledger was panting, covered in blood, and surrounded by corpses. He looked to Franks, incredulous. “What the fuck just happened, Franks?”

  “Mission accomplished.”

  21

  Captain Joe Ledger

  I WANT TO SAY that it was an easy wrap. I want to say that Franks did his magic mumbo jumbo and the world became all shiny and new and cartoon animals frolicked around us.

  I’d love to say that. Just once.

  The truth was that there were still some possessed ISIL foot soldiers out there.

  Franks and I are alive right now because we earned it.

  I’m telling you this now as I sit on an equipment box in Camp Baharia in Fallujah. There are a lot of U.S. military around me. Echo Team finally arrived, so I have my own people there. In that place, with that much muscle around me I should feel secure, should be able to take a deep breath.

  But I think it’s finally hit me.

  There are demons. Real demons.

  There are monsters. Real monsters.

  We stopped a threat unlike anything I’d ever imagined could be real in this world. The gateway to Hell, or to wherever those demons came from, is closed thanks to a monster that stands alongside ordinary humans like me.

  That doorway is sealed, but when I asked Franks if that meant that demons could no longer come into our world, he did something that I didn’t think he could do.

  He laughed.

  And, brother, it was not the kind of laugh you ever want to hear.

  No, it was not.

  So I sat here, waiting for my ride out of this place, for my ride home. The night is heavy and vast. I used to think the shadows were nothing more than lightless air, that nothing lived in them, that nothing could.

  Now I know different.

  Holy God, now I know different.

  “Weaponized Hell” is one of the two collaborations in this collection, and because writers are a weird bunch, every collaboration works out differently. But to give you an illustration of what a consummate professional Jonathan Maberry is, that entire story you just read was written over just a few days. We had agreed to do this story and then had done a bit of brainstorming together, but we are both really busy with lots of active projects so the deadline for this one kind of snuck up on both of us.

  When the editor reached out to see how it was going, it was like, uh oh. Crunch time! Of the two of us, Jonathan had the more pressing schedule that week, so I hurried and wrote a rough of each of Franks’ scenes, leaving gaps where I thought Ledger bits would make sense. That night Jonathan took it, wrote his scenes, inserted a few new cool bits I hadn’t thought of, and kicked it back to me. Then we spent the last day sending it back and forth, polishing and tweaking each of our characters’ dialog and actions when they appeared in the other writer’s scenes.

  I think it came out really good.

  Agent Franks is one of my most popular characters, and Jonathan gets him. In fact a year after this story came out, I got Jonathan to write an Agent Franks point of view story for the Monster Hunter Files anthology, and he gave me a World War Two Agent Franks vs. Nazis story that was great.

  SON OF FIRE, SON OF THUNDER

  The other collaboration in this collection is “Son of Fire, Son of Thunder,” written by me and Steve Diamond, for the Crimson Pact anthology in 2011, which was edited by Paul Genesse, and published by Alliteration Ink.

  This is one of my very first short stories, and only the second piece of fiction Steve ever wrote. I did the scenes from Diego Santos, Freelance Exorcist. Steve wrote Lazarus Tombs, FBI.

  Staff Sergeant Diego Santos

  Behavioral Health Department, Main Clinic,

  Marine Corps Base Quantico

  IN TWO YEARS, fifty-six days, fourteen hours, and ten minutes I will be brutally killed by a demon.

  I’ve watched my own death in my dreams nearly every night since I was eight. I’m used to waking up because of teeth breaking my skin.

  You might think that sounds like a tough break, but don’t shed any tears on my behalf. The rest of you poor saps have to live with doubt and worry and fear. You have to think about finding a career, marrying the right woman, raising kids, working hard, planning your retirement, getting cancer, and shit like that. Me? I know the exact minute when I’ll be ripped to bits.

  Just lucky, I guess.

  There’s only one downside to knowing the exact moment when your life will end horribly.

  I hate when people waste my fucking time.

  The psychologist had been asking me questions for fifty-two precious minutes. I’d finished telling him about kicking doors and fighting house to house in Fallujah, and one particular story where I’d shot a guy in the neck right when he was about to light me up with an AK, when the doctor asked, “And so how did that make you feel?”

  How was it supposed to feel? How should a normal person answer? I did my job. How’s it supposed to feel when you do a good job? I am a United States Marine and I have been trained to close with, engage, and utterly destroy the enemy, and I am extremely good at my job. I’ve deployed to Iraq three times, Afghanistan twice. As soon as I get home I volunteer for the next open billet. Better me than anyone else, I’ve got nothing better to do to prepare myself until the appointed time, and mostly because I can’t die until I’ve fulfilled the holy mission assigned to me by Almighty God.

  But that wasn’t the answer this man was looking for. He wasn’t worthy enough to understand the truth. I needed him to think that I wasn’t crazy. I had to keep the demons secret. It wasn’t time for the apocalypse yet.

  “It was very frightening, sir.”

  I watched the doctor’s face as he glanced down to scribble a note on his legal pad. Just write that I’m normal and quit screwing around. I’d always assumed that a psychologist’s office would have a couch for the patient to lay down on, but I just had a stuffed chair and he sat behind a desk. He looked up at me and it was obvious he knew I was full of it. I’ve always hated lying. It’s easier to just not say anything at all than to make shit up. “I’ve read your file.”

  They say that if a shrink declared a Marine sane, he’d be unfit for duty, but I had a reputation for crazy even by our standards. My last CO had decided that I must have a death wish, and that was how I’d ended up here, off to see the wizard. Mandatory Evaluation Time. “I would expect so, sir.”

  “An impressive list of commendations and fitness reports, but these After Action Reports . . . a complete disregard for personal safety, placing yourself in harm’s way, not just volunteering for every dangerous assignment possible but making up new ones. There are serious worries about your stability. Did I even read that last one right? Attempting to draw sniper fire?”

  “It makes them easier to spot and neutralize, sir.”

  “And the most recent incident?”

  I scowled. It would have been certain death for anyone else . . . I couldn’t tell him that one of the Afghans had been possessed. “An opportunity presented itself. I acted.”

  “You acted alone against an entrenched, numerically superior foe, after your rifle platoon had been ordered to wait for reinforcements.” He looked me right in the eyes. “Are you trying to get yourself killed, Staff Sergeant?”

  “No, sir.” My answer was completely truthful this time. I’d accepted the hour of my death. It would be blasphemous, not to mention impossible, to thwart His will.

  The doctor’s Blackberry buzzed. He picked it up and read the display. Our time was up
. “That’s it for today, but I want to schedule another session for tomorrow. Same time. We’ll pick up where we left off.”

  More wasted time. But I was stuck here, spinning my wheels until it was decided that I wasn’t a danger to myself or the Corps. “Of course, sir.”

  I didn’t wake up screaming. Oh no. I knew how to keep the screams inside. The trapped screams turn into heat, and I simply lay there uncomfortable and twitchy. I’d learned how to do that a long time ago. You didn’t want to get the reputation as the guy that woke up screaming from nightmares every single night. You might get sent in for a Mandatory Evaluation or something.

  Her apartment was close to the freeway so a lot of ugly light snuck around the edges of the curtains. Flat on my back, sweating, breathing hard, I stared at the ceiling for a while, remembering the feeling of razor teeth in my neck, of claws digging through my guts, the crack of my breaking bones still vibrating in my ears. It was always the same. Sometimes there were new bits, unusual clues that I’d never noticed before, small things, but there was nothing new tonight. Just me dying while a few familiar faces watched helplessly at the ragged edge of the apocalypse. I didn’t know those witnesses’ names, and I’d never met any of them in real life yet, but I knew them so well that they were truthfully my oldest friends.

  The girl stirred next to me, lifted one hand and sleepily stroked my chest. She bumped my crucifix, my dog tags, and ended up touching the Eagle, Globe, & Anchor tattoo over my heart.

  The reason I’d enlisted was because I’d seen that tattoo in my Vision. Apparently God wanted me to be a Marine, and since I had a destiny to fulfill, I’d gotten inked the day after I’d gotten out of boot camp.

  “You’re hot,” she mumbled. Her hand went flat and her palm was cold on my fevered chest as she drifted back to sleep. I couldn’t for the life of me remember her name, though she’d said she was a dental hygienist. We’d met in a bar a few hours ago, she was lonely and alive, so I’d followed her back to her apartment. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t remember her name. When you’ve got so little time, there’s no point.

  Man’s got to pass the time somehow.

  Special Agent Jarvis “Lazarus” Tombs

  FBI National Academy, Quantico

  THE CHILDREN.

  I still see them every night in my nightmares. Truthfully, I’m lucky if I have a nightmare where all I see are monsters and demons running around killing everyone. I would rather see that type of death and destruction than the eyes of those children again, haunting me.

  Tonight was the fifteenth night in a row that I got to relive a grotesque dream version of the day six months ago when I found the house of the thing—the demon—that had abducted my son. It takes no effort to recall the feeling of walking into that house and seeing the walls covered from floor to ceiling in portraits and photographs of children. There were thousands of them. The children, still alive, trapped within their own personal “still life.”

  My son was included among them.

  But my nightmare doesn’t follow the reality of the memory.

  I stand in the entryway, feeling the heat of the fire as it consumes the house. Flames spring up where the walls meet the floors. This time, the photos on the walls are utterly alive. The captured children pound on the photos from the inside, screaming silently to be let out. In the dream tears stream down my cheeks because I know I can do nothing to save them. Those tears will be on my face when I wake up. It’s the same every time.

  In my hands I hold the picture of my son on a backyard swing set. His picture too is animated, and he swings back and forth, laughing. As chilling as the screaming faces in the other pictures in the home are—in my nightmare I can somehow see every single one throughout the house—they are nothing compared to the laughter of my son. It is mocking and demonic, like the thing that trapped him in the picture.

  The flames get hotter. They now cover the walls, burning and melting the pictures of thousands of children. Impossibly, I see each child catch on fire within their pictures, dying in agony. I can hear them all saying over and over, “Lazarus Tombs has made his choice!”

  And over it all I hear my son laughing harder and harder.

  I look back down at the picture in my hands. My hands catch fire, and I know the rest of me is burning too. The picture of my son is unyielding. Nothing can free him from the photo except me.

  But I won’t free him.

  Tonight my nightmare ends the same way it always does. All the children are dead, the ashes of their pictures heaped around me in piles. Before my own body crumbles to ash, my son stops laughing and speaks to me from the photo.

  “Dad, will you set me free so I can kill everything?”

  Special Agent Lazarus Tombs

  Personal Dormitory, FBI National Academy, Quantico

  I WOKE UP gasping for breath.

  The horrifying feeling from that nightmare never dulls, no matter how many times I experience it. Wiping the tears from my cheeks, I swung my legs off the side of my bed. On the nightstand, I keep that picture of my son. I looked so hard and long for him after he was abducted, but never thought that finding him would leave me feeling like a failure. He was right there in the photo, held there by the power of an incredibly powerful demon.

  I had two choices. I could say a specific phrase given to me by the demon and set my son free. But if I did, all the power that demon held would take over my son. He would lose his identity and become that demon reincarnated. And then I would have to hunt him down and kill him.

  Or, I could leave him in the picture until I came upon a solution that would allow me to free him without consequences. The reality is that I constantly question whether or not the demon was telling me the whole truth. Why should it? What if its threat was nothing more than a bluff? A way to torture me with doubt and temptation?

  And tempted I am. Every minute of every day.

  The hope of a solution was what brought me to one of the dorms of the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Usually I taught classes here every other year, but this time I was here as a counselor for the classes of cops and deputies that were invited to the National Academy. As a counselor I ate with the attendees, went to classes with them, shot with them, and watched for the ones that had potential. Every cop sees weird and scary stuff out there in the world, but these days the weird and scary were getting worse and worse. My division at the FBI, the Paranormal Sciences Division—or PSD—kept track of all paranormal activity, which was on the rise. Significantly. We needed recruits who could deal with the paranormal, and at the very least we needed eyes and ears out in the world that could keep us updated. The FBI National Academy was a perfect cover. We invited those that had some promise or who had actual paranormal experiences.

  I reached over and picked up my son’s photo. Six months and no real leads. I’d hoped that some of the attendees this year might have something, but I knew I was grasping at straws. A deputy from Sacramento had called me with a rumor about phoenix ashes. But how do you find a phoenix, if one even exists?

  It would take a miracle to save my son from his current fate, but believing in miracles isn’t out of the ordinary for a guy like me. How can I not believe in them considering I’ve died and come back from the dead twice already?

  My thoughts cut out as the photo warmed unnaturally in my hand. This happened every now and again. What did it mean? Was I running out of time?

  I put the picture back down, more than a bit unnerved. I needed a distraction. My clock read 8:00 a.m. As my father always said, it was never too early to get some shooting in. It would get my mind off the nightmare, and it would be a good time to get some time in with some of the cops and deputies. One had hesitantly mentioned encountering a sandman before. Another potential recruit who was here at the Academy, a girlie cop from Chicago, killed a demon in a meth house. Her hair and nails threw me at first, but Detective Cynthia Weber was one of my top prospects of the year.

  I was out the door before my cloc
k read 8:05 a.m.

  Staff Sergeant Diego Santos

  Rifle Range, Marine Corps Base Quantico

  “GOOD MORNING, Staff Sergeant Santos.”

  “And a good morning to you, Gunnery Sergeant Moss.”

  Moss was a solid, tough, bald, mean bastard with a lazy eye. I was rather fond of him. Fleet Assistance Program had put me working for him while I was under Mandatory Evaluation. We got along because Moss liked anybody that had a reputation for being good at shooting people, and I helped him keep the range squared away. Moss was a no BS, get-the-job-done sort of Marine. I wished I could tell him what was out there, waiting, but God hadn’t picked me to be a prophet. He wanted me to be a warrior.

  “You look shittier than usual, Santos. Late night?”

  “Of course, Gunny.”

  “Was she pretty?”

  I shrugged. “Enough.”

  “Are you trying to be a stereotype? You know it isn’t mandatory for you young guys to have every bad habit. With the diseases that’s out there, that sort of behavior will kill you one of these days.” Moss was happily married with half a dozen kids. I just enjoyed the crappy range coffee and finished off my morning cigar. “If smoking don’t get you first.”

  PT studs like Moss always frowned on the smokers, which was understandable, but it wasn’t like I cared about my long term health. “What’s today?”

  “Training wheels, baby steps, hurt feelings. The short bus should arrive soon.” That meant we would be working with the newly minted officers. To be fair, by the point the butter bars got to Moss’ range, they were usually disciplined enough not to do anything stupid. There were bound to be some prior service Marines in the mix to make my job easier. Range work was nothing like combat. We both knew that, but you had to start somewhere. “Watch the city boys. They’re usually the worst. Don’t know shit about shooting.”