Stone Soldiers 1: Mythical (18 page)

Kenslir turned away from the giant and hurled the heart into the air. His throw carried it up and away, where it disappeared from sight.

Ketzkahtel started to spit up blood. His legs had grown numb and his vision was getting blurry. He wondered if this was what all his countless thousands of victims had felt like as they died. He extended a bloody hand toward Kenslir, as if for help.

Josie walked up, stepping past Kenslir. She stopped at the giant’s feet and extended her arm, aiming her pistol at the fallen shapeshifter. Her tears had dried up. She looked at the giant coldly, emotionlessly.

Josie began firing her pistol.

The bullets tore into the giant’s chest, punching through his flesh and bone. There was no instant repair of the injuries. Pain flared in his chest.

Josie slowly, methodically, fired, correcting her aim, and walking her shots up the giant’s body. Bullets began to tear into the giant’s neck, then his chin. He felt a round shatter his double row of front teeth, rip through his tongue and into his throat. The pain was excruciating, almost as bad as when he’d been beaten and imprisoned for millennia.

More bullets slammed into the giant. First one up his nose, then one into his eye. Two more rounds hammered into the giant’s skull, shattering bone and pulping his brain. Josie continued to shoot- five more times, before her pistol was empty.

The giant Ketzkahtel lay unmoving, his face a grisly mess, partly spread out on the overturned table behind him, along with a great portion of his brains.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

In the aftermath of the fight with the shapeshifter, the hotel had become a hot bed of activity. Military helicopters had flown in, armed troops spilling out and forming a perimeter. Local, State and Federal law enforcement had swarmed over the area, securing the many reporters and witnesses. Ambulances were everywhere, treating minor injuries and checking people for shock.

Kenslir and Josie stood by one such ambulance in front of the hotel. Kenslir now wore a Desert Oasis hotel t-shirt. He was fully regenerated, his out-dated flattop restored and no sign of injury or his battle on him.

Josie was wearing a matching t-shirt. She was getting her arm bandaged- she had cut her elbow in several places breaking the glass to get out the fireaxe for Mark. She would need stitches.

Now that it was over, Josie sat in shock, thinking about the past few days. She couldn’t believe Jimmy was gone. All she could remember was him clinging to the shapeshifter’s leg in the elevator, telling her to run. And she had. She was ashamed of herself.

Kenslir watched the girl closely. He was very impressed with her, but he worried about what she was so deeply thinking about.

Josie glanced up. She saw Mark staring at her. He had that same look of concern her mother often gave her.

“You look better with a shaved head,” Josie said, trying to smile.

“I know. But it just keeps growing back.”

Another black suited agent approached. He leaned in and whispered something in Kenslir’s ear. The Colonel’s face became very grim.

“Stay here,” Kenslir said. “I'll be back in a minute.”

Kenslir turned and walked away with the agent. They walked across the area crowded with emergency vehicles, toward the front entrance of the hotel. There, two paramedics were waiting with a gurney that held a black body bag.

Kenslir opened the bag and looked inside. It was Jimmy’s body.

The teenager’s face was frozen with a look of terror. His gray shirt was bloody, torn open, with a gaping hole in his chest where the shapeshifter had ripped out his heart.

Kenslir closed the body bag and turned to the agent beside him. He began to give the agent instructions.

Josie, her arm now bandaged, watched all this from the back of the ambulance. She couldn’t see who was in the body bag, but cold chills ran up her back.

Josie got up from the ambulance, and walked slowly toward Kenslir and the body bag. Her heart was pounding. Her throat was very dry.

Kenslir turned and saw Josie approaching. He stepped away from the gurney, holding up his hands. “Don’t.”

Josie felt sick to her stomach. “What?” she asked hoarsely. “Is that Jimmy?”

She hoped, she prayed, it wasn’t. Maybe the shapeshifter could take forms without killing people? She tried to step around Kenslir to see for herself.

Kenslir held Josie firmly by the shoulders. He turned and nodded to the agent and paramedics. They began to walk away with the gurney and body bag.

Josie struggled against Kenslir, trying to break free. He held her shoulders, his grip unbreakable, but not painful.

“Jimmy!” Josie yelled, panicked as the body was wheeled away “Jimmy!”

Kenslir wasn’t sure what to say. This wasn’t a soldier to be consoled after the death of a comrade. This was a child- a girl. And she had just lost a loved one.

“Calm down,” Kenslir said softly. This was out of his area of expertise.

Josie struggled again and Kenslir released her. She stepped away from him. Her face was red and tears were again streaming down her cheeks.

“Calm down? Calm down?” Josie said. “Jimmy's dead!”

Josie wanted to be angry- angry at Kenslir, but she was overwhelmed by grief and guilt. Jimmy was dead. It was all her fault for making him come along.

Kenslir considered the sobbing girl for several seconds.

“We may be able to fix that,” he said.

***

Hours later, after the scene of the shapeshifter battle had calmed down, and civilians had been removed, and the helicopters had begun leaving, a coyote came out of the desert.

Small, brown, with mangy fur, the hungry canine trotted along the road that ran past the hotel. It was some thousand feet away from the humans and all their activity. But it knew where it was- it had rummaged through the garbage cans of the hotel many times for scraps.

The coyote sniffed along the edge of the road, looking for food. Its sensitive nose caught a whiff of something and it trotted quickly away, off the road.

The coyote followed the scent. It passed small scrub brushes, its nose going back and forth from sniffing the air, to sniffing the ground. The smell grew stronger.

The coyote finally found the source of the smell- a wet lump, covered in dirt and sand, about the size of a softball. Food.

The coyote pawed at the dirty lump, flipping it over. It was a heart.

The heart beat once, scaring the coyote, who recoiled. But hunger brought it back. It sniffed at the heart, then licked it. Fresh blood.

The coyote bit into the heart. Then it held the heart down with its paws and tore a chunk of flesh off. The flesh was still warm.

The coyote, ravenous as it always was, began to tear the heart apart, gulping down mouthful after mouthful. In just a few moments it had consumed the entire heart.

The coyote sat on its haunches, licking blood off its mouth, then paws. Suddenly, it whimpered.

The coyote leapt to its feet and spun around, biting at its own side. The side bulged. The coyote was in pain now, growling and snapping at its sides as they bulged and heaved, as though something were growing inside it.

The coyote suddenly expanded, hair falling off as its skin turned red and scales began to grow. The small canine expanded rapidly to the size of a horse. Its ratty tail elongated, turning hairless and also growing scales. Wings sprouted from its back and its limbs thickened, sprouting grasping claws.

In seconds, the coyote had turned into a red, four-legged, winged dragon.

The dragon looked over at the hotel over a thousand feet away. Its eyes narrowed angrily.

With a beat of its enormous wings, the dragon leapt up into the sky and flew away.

EPILOGUE

It was a day after the shapeshifter’s slaying, and Josie found herself in a military helicopter, flying over Miami.

After the hotel, Kenslir had escorted her to a black, government SUV. They had ridden together to a small airfield, where a four-engined, private passenger jet awaited. More SUVs arrived, with suited agents loading Jimmy’s body bag, and a much larger one, into the plane’s cargo hold. Josie guessed the larger body was the shapeshifter’s.

Kenslir assured her the giant was truly, finally dead.

After takeoff, the plane had headed east. The crew all wore suits, and were very courteous to Josie. They were deferential to Kenslir. Josie quickly figured out these weren’t the Secret Service or the FBI.

A while after takeoff, a female agent had led Josie to a private room in the back of the plane. There, she was shown a shower and given a dark business suit and matching shoes to wear. It wasn’t a black agent’s suit, but rather something Josie thought her mom would wear to a job interview.

After she cleaned up, Josie went back to the passenger compartment. Kenslir was nowhere to be seen. The female agent assured Josie he was still on the plane, and offered her lunch.

An hour later, Kenslir came back. He was now cleaned up, and wearing a camouflage Army uniform. After checking on Josie, Kenslir moved to the other end of the passenger compartment and began a series of hushed telephone calls.

Hours later, the plane had set down in Florida, at an Air Force base. Jimmy and the giant’s body bags were loaded onto a military helicopter. Kenslir had escorted Josie to the helicopter as well. They sat in silence, watching two armed guards in the helicopter with them, as the helicopter lifted off.

Josie was worried during all this time. Kenslir had said very little to her. All the military people she had met were nice to her. But she was beginning to feel a little paranoid, like Jimmy would have. No one was telling her much.

She could have asked questions, but she was still puzzling over what Kenslir had said about Jimmy being dead. Could it really be fixed?

The helicopter eventually flew over a large city on the coast just before nightfall. Josie recognized it as Miami- she’d seen it on TV numerous times.

The helicopter circled a lone, black office building, about twenty stories tall, that sat overlooking a bay. They finally landed on the rooftop, where four more armed guards waited.

The guards saluted Kenslir when he stepped off the helicopter. He helped Josie out, leading her to a large freight elevator on one side of the rooftop. The rooftop guards took custody of Jimmy and the giant’s bodies, loading them on gurneys.

Josie, Kenslir, the four guards and the two bodies barely fit in the freight elevator.

As the elevator descended, Josie finally couldn’t keep her curiosity in check anymore.

“I wish you’d tell me where we were going.”

The Colonel smiled at Josie. He was impressed the girl had been able to keep quiet for so long.

“You’ll see.”

The elevator finally stopped, the doors opening on rich marble floors in what looked like an ordinary office building. The two guards with the giant’s body wheeled it out. The doors closed.

“Where are they taking him?” Josie asked.

“For study,” Kenslir said. “We want to see what makes him tick.”

The elevator descended again. Josie watched the floors count down on the panel. They finally stopped at B-3. The doors opened and Kenslir gestured for Josie to step out.

The hallway leading out from the elevator was lined with plain tile. The walls were plain white, and the hallway seemed to have far more fluorescent lights than it needed. The light was almost too bright.

Kenslir stepped out of the elevator and began walking down the hall. Josie hurried to catch up with him. The last two guards wheeled Jimmy’s body out of the elevator and followed them.

As they walked, Josie noticed the doors of the hallway. Heavy blast doors, made of thick steel. They looked like what you’d see in a bunker.

“This is where you work?” Josie asked.

“This is where I live.”

At the end of the long tunnel, a tunnel Josie was sure had passed out from underneath the black office building, they stopped at one of the blast doors.

Kenslir held his hand up to a control panel beside the door. He pressed his hand against a glass panel. Light flared as a scanner read his palm print.

“Welcome back, Colonel,” a strange, computerized voice announced. It sounded male. Calm, almost soothing, despite its obvious machine inflection.

The heavy door popped open a few inches, then slowly began to cycle open, swinging out on hidden hydraulics. Kenslir led Josie through the door.

Beyond the door, there was a vast chamber, nearly three stories high and over a hundred feet across. It was roughly circular in shape, with concrete and steel walls, and observation booths high above the main floor. Medical equipment, cabinets, and tables were in abundance.

In the middle of the chamber, there was a large pool of water.

Nearly fifty feet across, the pool was glass-still, and surrounded by dull stone. A sort of bridge-like structure crossed the pool. On the bridge were four stainless steel tables, similar to what an operating room might have. Machinery hung over the four tables.

At least a dozen technicians were at work at stations around the room. They were all female, and wore labcoats, with holstered pistols on web-belts around their waists, under their lab coats. They all wore hipwader boots, held up by suspenders like bib overalls.

One of the technicians approached Kenslir and Josie. She had short blonde hair, was middle aged and a little on the heavy side. She had a stern look on her face.

“Colonel, I must object to-” the woman began to say.

“Doctor,” Kenslir replied. “You can object, or you can keep your job.”

Kenslir stepped out of the way and gently moved Josie over as well. The two guards in the hallway rolled Jimmy’s bodybag in on the gurney. They took it over to the pool, where there was a table and steps leading down into the still water.

“The Pentagon hasn't-” the doctor started to protest.

“The Pentagon?” Kenslir asked. “Who’s in charge of this facility again?”

The doctor’s eyes looked down, away from Kenslir’s. “You are, sir.”

“Then let’s do this.”

The guards had positioned the gurney with Jimmy’s body bag next to the water’s edge. They unzipped the body bag and pulled it down, exposing Jimmy’s body.

Josie gasped at the sight of Jimmy. His face was now slack, pale. The blood on his shirt had dried and she could see the gaping chest wound. Tears welled up in her eyes.

The doctor nodded to an assistant and walked over to Jimmy’s body. The guards stepped back, turning and saluting the Colonel as they exited the chamber. The huge blast door slowly cycled shut behind them.

“What is this place?” Josie asked.

“Well, I could tell you...”

“But you’d have to kill me?” Josie said, wiping the tears off her cheeks.

“I was thinking of offering you a job,” Kenslir said, turning back to watch the doctor and her assistant.

They were struggling to lift Jimmy’s body off the table. The doctor held him under the arms, while the assistant held his feet. They carefully carried Jimmy down the steps and into the water.

“A job?” Josie said, surprised. “I'm a teenager! I just graduated high school. What could I do?”

“How about if I thro
w in a scholarship...” Kenslir was still watching the doctor. “Of course, you'd have to take your classes over the internet. Here.”

“Are you serious?” Josie asked.

The doctor and her assistant had lowered Jimmy’s body into the water. He was laid out on some kind of metal grating floor about a foot under the surface.

Kenslir pointed back to the pool of water. Josie turned her head. The water was moving around, by the doctor’s feet. In a splash of water, Jimmy suddenly sat up, gasping for air.

“Jimmy!” Josie said, astonished.

Jimmy was bewildered. He gasped for breath as he looked around. His skin looked healthy, alive, no longer the pallor of the dead. The doctor and her assistant helped him to his feet.

Josie looked back to Mark, amazed. He nodded for her to go over to Jimmy.

Josie ran to Jimmy. She could see that his chest was healed. She stepped down into the water, and hugged Jimmy.

“Where am I?” Jimmy asked. He leaned back from Josie, looking around the vast chamber, at the lab coated techs and Kenslir.

“What is this place?”

Josie was crying, tears of joy rolling down her cheeks. She grabbed Jimmy by the ears and kissed him.                                          

“I thought you were dead,” Josie said between kisses.

“Me too,” Jimmy said. He didn’t even feel embarrassed by Josie kissing all over him while the techs and Kenslir watched. Jimmy didn’t know which was better- being alive or Josie kissing him.

Kenslir walked over toward the pool. He stopped several feet from the edge of the water.

“Don’t leave the pool, Jimmy,” Kenslir said.

Jimmy was still stunned by the kisses. He just looked blankly at Kenslir.

Josie turned around, grinning broadly. She held onto one of Jimmy’s hands tightly.

“Why?” Josie asked.

“It's what's keeping him alive.”

Josie looked around, at the stern faces of the doctor and her assistant. Down at the water she and Jimmy were standing in. It was just a pool of water. Clear water. So clear, Josie could see down into it. It was maybe fifty feet deep. Stone walls lined the sides of the vast pool. The bottom was covered in fine sediment.

“I don’t understand,” Josie said. She was getting that cold chill up her back again. “He’s not dead anymore.”

“I’m very sorry,” Mark said. “But, technically, he still is.”

Kenslir turned toward the doctor’s assistant and gestured at a small steel box on the nearby table. It had a handle on the top, and one side appeared to be hinged, like a door. It was large enough to hold a basketball.

The technician stepped out of the water and walked over to the table.

“Whaddya mean?” Jimmy asked. He was confused. Very confused. He felt very much alive.

“That shapeshifter ripped your heart out Jimmy,” Kenslir said.

The assistant carried the steel box over to him. The Colonel was careful to hold it only by the corners, and the handle.

Josie looked down at Jimmy’s chest. She ran her hand over his skin. There was not the faintest mark or scar.

Josie and Jimmy looked to Kenslir with utter confusion.

“The Fountain has only temporarily brought you back,” Kenslir said.

“Temporarily?” Jimmy and Josie said in unison. Josie gripped Jimmy’s hand tighter.

“I'm sorry, Jimmy. We can't fix you right now. But we might be able to later.”

“Fix me?” Jimmy asked, confused. “What’re you talking about?”

“Josie, let go of his hand,” Kenslir said.

The doctor stepped in and put her hands lightly on Josie’s shoulders.

Josie looked at Mark, holding the steel box in front of him. She looked at Jimmy, confused. She looked at the doctor, who nodded slowly to her.

Josie released Jimmy’s hand reluctantly.

“What? What’s wrong with him?” Josie asked.

“This won’t hurt, Jimmy,” Kenslir said. He held the box’s handle with his right hand, like a lantern. He reached his left hand up to the hinged face of the box. “You’ll feel cold. Then it’ll be like going to sleep.”

“Wait!” Josie said, stepping in front of Jimmy. “There’s nothing wrong with him! He’s healed!”

Kenslir frowned. “The water is cursed. After midnight it’ll take away from Jimmy twice what it’s given him.”

Jimmy and Josie were utterly confused. It made no sense. If the water gave him life, what could it take away from him twice? He only had one life.

Josie had a sudden revelation. “Fountain? The
Fountain of Youth
?”

“That’s what some people used to call it,” Kenslir said. “Turns out, that’s not entirely accurate.”

The doctor gently touched Josie’s shoulders again and walked her over a step, away from Jimmy.

“Jimmy, this is only temporary,” Kenslir said, opening the steel box.

Jimmy and Josie looked inside the box. They couldn’t help themselves. The doctor closed her eyes and looked away, repulsed by what she saw.

Jimmy’s skin began to turn gray. His hair grayed, even his eyes. His smooth skin became rough, pitted. His body stiffened and his breathing stopped. Jimmy was petrified- turned to gray stone.

Josie looked at Jimmy then at her own hands, which remained normal. She couldn’t understand. She looked back at the box.

In the steel box there was a head. It too was made of gray stone. The head was vaguely human, but instead of smooth skin had scales, like a snake. Instead of hair, long tendrils, also of stone, hung from its scalp. One eye was missing. The remaining eye was not stone, but flesh. It gave off a weird, yellow glow.