Target Rich Environment 2 Read online

  “I grew up in a city.”

  “Yeah, but you’re from East LA. I bet you got lots of fam fire hanging out the window of a lowrider spraying down the hood with an Uzi.” Moss grinned. He loved jerking my chain.

  “I was an altar boy.” That much was true. I’d hoped that maybe I could’ve learned something useful about how demons worked from the priests, but they’d been blind as everyone else. It had always been frustrating keeping my knowledge secret. I’d mostly wanted somebody to talk to that got it.

  “Uh huh . . . Sure you were, Santos.” He looked around to make sure we were alone. “They should just let me write up your psych eval and save everyone some time. I recognize your condition. You suffer from an acute case of does not give a shit. You were born to fight. Combat is where you belong. Some officers just can’t wrap their little minds around the fact that men like you exist.”

  That was a hell of a compliment.

  “Doesn’t help that you’re a scary little motherfucker. You always got this disturbing look on your face, all shifty, like you’re deciding if somebody is worth stabbing. You should try to smile once in a while.”

  I tried.

  “Jesus . . . Okay, don’t do that every again.”

  “Ooh-rah, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  “Let’s get the lockers open. Gonna be a busy day.”

  It might seem odd that they’d FAP somebody they were worried about being suicidal to work on a range with live ammunition, but this was the military. I knew of a guy in the Army that was being counseled for clinical depression and they’d assigned him to be a parachute rigger.

  Demons have a smell. It is hard to describe, and it’s been different each time I’ve found one. Sometimes like burning plastic, or dried blood, or the sickness in an old folks home . . . I think they had different species and each one had their own nasty fragrance, but there was always something underneath that just cried demon.

  This time it was like old road kill.

  It took me a moment to pick it up. Firing ranges have a strong smell to them anyway. Sweat, oil, dust, and the overpowering carbon stink from thousands of rounds of 5.56. Even on an outdoor range, if there wasn’t a breeze, it would collect and hang around you like a cloud. But even then, I could smell the demon stink.

  I’d been coaching a trainee when I took a step off the line. It was close. And then there was another, slightly different scent, and then a third, and then more. “It can’t be . . .” I’d never encountered more than a single demon at once.

  “Staff Sergeant?” the recruit asked.

  We still had two years and fifty-five days until the battle for the end of the world kicked off. This couldn’t be right. “Cease fire! Cease fire!” I shouted.

  Immediately the command was relayed and repeated down the line. Moss shouted it into his bullhorn. One last round went off a split second after the command went out, and in any normal circumstances that Marine would’ve been chewed a new asshole.

  I took my headphones off and ran down the concrete slab. The smell . . . Where was it coming from? It was so close I could taste the rot in my mouth. It was coming from the FBI side of the range.

  Moss appeared at my side. “What is it?”

  I couldn’t just say that the forces of hell were loose in Quantico, but I had to do something. “Listen . . . You hear that?”

  “What?”

  There wasn’t any yet, but I knew there would be soon enough. “Screaming.”

  Special Agent Lazarus Tombs

  Indoor Shooting Range, FBI National Academy, Quantico

  I STOOD IN ONE OF THE ACADEMY’S indoor ranges, arms folded, watching members of my class put round after round into paper targets at twenty-five feet. Ten of my class of twenty-seven were here, each of them having been personally targeted and recruited to attend this session. There should have been eleven with me, but Deputy Helen Collins from El Paso had just discovered she was expecting. My boss, Frank Shields, had passed down the mandate that starting today Collins wouldn’t be visiting a shooting range until after she was a new mother.

  Regardless, I was pleased. The world was taking the straight road to ruin, and no one seemed to really care or even notice. The Bureau needed help. Hell, the whole world needed help. Most of the Academy sessions only would net one or two cops and deputies who could take the stress of dealing with the supernatural.

  I had ten in the room with me. Ten. That meant that potentially ten more cities and towns would have a slight extra bit of help when real-life monsters began running around in their neighborhood.

  It was also potentially ten more people that could keep an eye out for ways to fix my son’s . . . situation.

  On the far left Sergeant Tim Danielson—Reno PD—was burning through magazines at twice the speed of everyone else. He’d just been promoted for “exceptional bravery in the line of duty.” His superiors didn’t know the half of it. Danielson had responded to a domestic dispute that had turned into stopping a possessed couple on a killing spree. I was going to try to properly recruit him to work with me. Next to him was Cynthia Weber. She was trying out a smaller caliber Glock 17 and seemed to be subconsciously competing with Danielson. It was close. I wanted her for the PSD, but had a feeling she had too much love for Chicago. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t try.

  The rest were probably going to be sent back home after receiving some specialized training from myself and a few other experts at the PSD. They’d each have my direct line with instructions to call with any questions or concerns.

  I felt The Itch.

  Stiffening, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I only felt The Itch around supernatural creatures or paranormal hot spots, and it usually meant things were going to get bad.

  The muffled popping of ten sidearms was suddenly accompanied by a dull thudding behind us.

  At the door.

  The others began hearing it too, and soon they had all stopped firing and were watching the door with me.

  I took one step towards the door then froze as a portion of it bulged inward. I pulled my Glock from my holster and took aim. Something was coming through, and The Itch in my head was maddeningly intense. There was no way this was going to end well.

  The door flew inward, and a demon followed.

  Demons come in all shapes and sizes. Some were intelligent and some were dumb as bricks, but they were all killing machines. This one had a long snout like a mutated dog with red-stained teeth bristling from its maw, with skin that was red like it had just crawled out of Hell the way they describe it in church. It was also the biggest demon I’d ever seen. At least three times my own mass, and seven or eight feet tall.

  The demon smiled, then charged us.

  A continuous roar of gunfire greeted the demon’s sudden movement. The rounds—a mixture of .40 and .45—pounded into the creature, slowing its momentum, but it wasn’t enough. Bullets thudded into the demon’s black hide but didn’t cause any visible harm. The demon shielded its face, keeping me from hitting it in any of its vulnerable areas, and leapt into the line of police officers to my left.

  A cute, petite blonde—Lieutenant Alice Thompson from the NYPD—was the first to go down, ripped open groin to neck. Blood sprayed into the air and splashed onto the two deputies next to her. One froze in shock at the blood—Captain Carson from Minnesota—and had his head taken off by a casual swipe of the demon’s clawed hand. The other deputy—Blinds, from Miami—stepped forward and emptied a full magazine into the creature’s chest from three feet away. As he thumbed the magazine release, the demon grabbed him by the neck and flung him against the far wall of the indoor range. He was dead when he hit the steel trap. The demon slashed at another of the cops in the room, and the officer went down, clutching his belly to keep his insides from spilling out.

  One officer—by the name of Jorge Castilla—ran for the door. Weber screamed after him, calling him a coward as she reloaded, but I could hardly blame Castilla. Some people just couldn’t handle the
up-close violence these kind of creatures could dish out.

  The demon was slowing down. Inky, black blood was dribbling out mostly from the rounds Blinds had shot at close range. If this went on for much longer we’d all be dead. I shoved another magazine into my Glock as the demon leapt onto a cop from New Jersey, tearing out his throat with its powerful jaws. The demon jerked its head to the side and snapped the man’s neck for good measure.

  It turned its head and made a deep, guttural sound.

  Laughter.

  I extended my gun and put two shots through its left eye.

  It collapsed like a puppet that had its strings cut.

  Danielson and the other living rushed to the side of the cop holding his internal organs and tried keeping him alive. I reached up and pulled off my ear protection. Sounds of screaming through the open door to the range assaulted my ears. The scent of blood, gunpowder and sulfur were making me lightheaded and nauseous. I ran to my duffle bag and pulled out three loaded magazines—the rounds were all hollow-points and would have difficulty penetrating the hide of any demon that was more than a few yards away.

  I left the officers behind and walked out into the bright late-morning light. To my left two more demons were playing tug-of-war with Jorge Castilla. A small mercy was that he was already dead from a dozen slashes and bites. I leveled my gun and fired in one motion. The rounds thudded into the left demon’s torso, and I was rewarded with a shriek of pain. The two monsters dropped Castilla’s corpse and started in my direction, smiling.

  “Tombs! Tombs! Tombs!” the one on the right rasped. It sounded . . . delighted.

  They knew me.

  Staff Sergeant Diego Santos

  Rifle Range, Marine Corps Base Quantico

  I’M A STAFF SERGEANT. It isn’t like I can order around very many Marines in the grand scheme of thing, but luckily for me, the chaotic noise of battle coming from the FBI side of the range was unmistakable. I reacted first, but the others caught on pretty quick. Moss got back on his bullhorn. NCOs dragged their men off the line, and one sharp lieutenant decided that somebody needed to go investigate.

  Since I’d already taken a vest in my size off the range display, thrown it on, and was shoving loaded magazines into the pouches, I must have looked like the logical choice. Once again, just lucky I guess, because I was going anyway. Moss, God bless his ready-for-violence soul, had done the same thing, though surely he was thinking it was a terrorist attack or something. Two other vets were just as on the ball and the four of us were ready to go within a minute of the first inhuman bellow drifting across the fence from the FBI side.

  Armed with range loaner M-16A4s and M-4 carbines, we took off. Even the PT stud had a hard time keeping up with me. I always seem to move faster when demons are around. Just motivated, I suppose.

  We were scouts, but I already knew what we would find.

  This was the only part of the base where the Marines bumped up against the FBI Academy grounds. It made sense to share a backstop. The smell was stronger here. Men and women were shouting and there were random bursts of gunfire. We crouched behind a concrete bulwark at the boundary.

  Moss about had a heart attack when he saw his first hell spawn. This one was seven feet tall, red, with muscles that seemed to be constructed out of living strands of barbed wire. It was too busy yanking some poor dude’s entrails out to notice the four men in MARPAT watching it. Moss ducked back down. He actually turned grey for a second and I thought the hardened Marine was going to puke. No matter how tough you are, demons always had that effect on people their first time. “Easy, Gunny. They feed on fear. Makes them stronger.”

  “What the fucking fuck—What is that?”

  “Demon.”

  “Demon?”

  I risked a quick peek. I’d seen one like that back in LA on leave last winter. God had shown me where it slept so I’d beaten that one to death with a pipe wrench. “Shoot for their eyes, mouths, soft bits. Try to engage from a distance. They’re super fast and their claws are nasty.”

  Moss was shaking his head, but not in disbelief. There was no way he could delude himself about what he’d seen. There’s something about the sight of a demon that slugs you deep in your primal instincts. There was no denying the sheer, unearthly wrongness of them.

  “Take it out,” Moss ordered.

  We rose and opened fire. I’d zeroed the Trijicon on the loaner M-16A4 myself. The chevron landed on the red beast’s head and I stroked the trigger. The scope bobbled a bit, then settled back down, and I popped another 5.56 into its face. It took a several more hits before black sludge erupted from between the strands of fleshy wire. The demon took two awkward steps on its goat legs, and fell over. One of the lance corporals put a few extra into it to be safe before we ducked down.

  “They’re not so tough!” the lance corporal shouted.

  I changed mags and stowed the partially spent one. “That was the weakest kind I know of. They’re quick, but not durable. The others will be worse. Especially if they’ve got any of the ones that can look like people . . . You know, these feel like they just got here. They’re disoriented. If we can pop the son of a bitch that brought them in, we can stop this fast.”

  “How can you tell who that is?” Moss hissed.

  God will show me. “I just will. He’ll be close.”

  “Damn it, Santos . . .” Moss looked at the two hyperventilating lance corporals. I had to hand it to them, they were doing okay. I’d peed my pants the first time I’d seen a demon, but then again, there’s a lot of difference between a scrawny eight-year-old and a Devil Dog. “Kerchek, Whitney, haul ass back. Tell the LT everything Santos said . . .” and when he realized how strange the report would sound, he added, “Convince him.” He looked at me next. “Your crazy ass is with me.”

  The other two got up and ran.

  Moss’ hands were shaking, but he was a Marine, which meant that no matter how awful or terrifying it was about to get, he was programmed to kick serious ass. “How do you know—”

  “Altar boy. Remember?”

  “Now you smile? Stop. You’re freaking me out.”

  We moved out, crouched but quick, weapons shouldered. Combat waddle they call it, but it’s normal for your body to crouch when it thinks it is about to get hit by something. One of the mottled green bastards with a head like a triceratops came out from behind a cinderblock wall. I swiveled at the hips, the Trijicon moved over and I blasted the fucker. POP. POP. POP. Moss moved up beside me. POP. POP. Sludge splattered all over the wall and the dinosaur-headed thing went down hard.

  I could feel the source up ahead. I knew from His holy wisdom that these were just slaves. Their master was here, whipping them on. I’d run into assholes like this before. How any human being could heed the call of the darkness, I would never know. “This way, Guns.” He looked up from blasting one of the red ones long enough to grunt an affirmative.

  Terrified men and women ran past us, wearing the khaki pants and blue polos of the FBI Academy trainees. Some were fighting, and most of those were being torn apart. Arms, legs, heads, organs . . . body parts were everywhere. There was so much blood that my Danners were leaving tracks in it. It was a slaughterhouse. “That way. Go that way!” Moss waved the survivors toward the Marine line.

  We kept on dropping monsters. The movements were practiced and mechanical, moving and shooting, dropping mags and reloading while the other Marine provided cover. Heat waves shimmered over the barrel of my rifle, but they just kept on coming. We’d picked up a few armed FBI on the way, and the knot of us made our way forward.

  Twenty yards away, two of the big, gangly dog-faced demons had just got done pulling some poor bastard in half, and now they were loping toward another Fed. He was shooting a pistol at them, but they were shrugging it off. I’d never heard one of the inhuman looking ones speak before, but one of these was repeating the word “Tombs” over and over again.

  The Fed looked familiar . . . “Dios mio!” He was in my Vision
! He was one of the witnesses to my death. I recognized him easily. I’d known that face for twenty years. The demon was almost on him. There was no time. “Guide my hand,” I whispered as I fired, and He did. The demon tilted its hideous dog face just in time to catch a 5.56 up one nostril. The bullet must have fragmented perfectly because half its skull disintegrated into a cloud of rapidly expanding fragments.

  The second one looked right at me, dodged to the side as I fired again, then turned tail and ran. Surely going to its master, probably to warn it that a Vengeful Sword of the Lord had arrived to send them all back to the festering pit. The Fed went after the demon. Of course he did. He was like me. He couldn’t fall until his appointed hour.

  Moss on the other hand, far as I knew, was imminently mortal . . . “Gunny!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Could you stay here and wait for the others?” He outranked me and you do not tell a Gunnery Sergeant what to do. “Please?”

  Moss growled at me. “You seem to know what the fuck’s going on here, Staff Sergeant.”

  “I do.”

  “Go and fix it then!”

  I went after the Fed. He disappeared around a concrete wall and I followed. I was more excited than I had been in years. I’d found one of the witnesses! I was making progress. This was proof that I was following the Lord’s path.

  Special Agent Lazarus Tombs

  FBI National Academy, Quantico

  THE DEMON on the left cocked his head as if hearing something. Then its head exploded.

  I don’t think I’d even seen a demon with a look of shock on its face before, but I guess there was a first time for everything. The demon wiped away its companion’s brain matter that had splattered everywhere then looked toward the origin of the shot. I followed its gaze to the far left where a Marine was sighting down a rifle. The demon threw itself to the side as the rifle boomed, then turned and sprinted in the opposite direction.