The Glooming (Wrath of the Old Gods Book 1) (35 page)

Bishop fired as three of the comm operators stood up and drew their holstered pistols. The .45 caliber bullet from the governor’s gun hit Colonel Merriman in the center of his chest and he fell on top of General Williams. The governor’s Texas Guardsmen turned and opened fire on the radio operators who were trying to bring their own guns to bear on them.

As his ears were ringing from the deafening gunfire all around him, General Williams saw that the colonel’s eyes were wide open and glazed over … he was dead. Pushing back the corpse of his executive officer, the general tried to reach up to his desk and grab the headset to his radio that was tuned to NORTHCOM command in Virginia. Just as he crouched up and pushed the talk button, a bullet struck the back of his lower spine and he fell down onto the floor. Drawing on his remaining willpower, he tried reaching up for the headset one more time. A another bullet went through his upper back, bounced around a bit in his ribcage and exited from his left shoulder and he finally slumped over the dead body of his second in command.

Governor Jack Bishop got up from the floor as the smoke rapidly began to clear. He could smell blood and cordite in the air as his ringing ears heard a few distant groans and death rattles. Looking around, he noticed two radio operators were still standing with their hands in the air as his men aimed their assault rifles at them. The rest were on the ground, either dead or soon to be dead as they were bleeding out.

“Goddamn it,” Bishop muttered as he checked the communications systems in the tent. A few radios and a number of video display monitors had bullet holes in them but most looked to still be operational. “Get these people outta here and find me some replacement personnel to man this station,” he said to his men.

As the two prisoners were led outside, he pushed away the corpse of a dead guardsman from the table after realizing that the radio was still functional. While cycling through several frequencies, he started hearing a commotion outside.

One of his men ran back into the tent, his M4 rifle was dripping wet with rainwater as gunfire began erupting outside. “Governor, they’re attacking us!”

Bishop looked up from the table. “Who’s attacking? The National Guard?”

The man looked scared and hysterical. “No, sir. It’s those monsters, they’re all over the perimeter!”

“What?” Bishop said as he grabbed the pistol he had left on the table and ran outside.

The rains were getting stronger as the night sky became opaque with haze and gusts of howling winds. All around him he could see flashes of lightning as well as weapons fire. The command tent had been situated on a school parking lot and there was a chain link fence around it. Several dozen of his Texas State Guardsmen had parked their half dozen Humvees with machinegun turrets in a semi-circle around the command post.

Bishop opened the car door and then jumped into the front seat of one of the vehicles. The Humvee driver was trying to frantically switch frequencies on the vehicle’s two-way radio gear.

“Where in the hell is Colonel Sands?” Bishop said as he slammed the front seat door shut to keep out the pouring rain.

“I’m not sure, sir,” the driver said nervously. Bishop remembered his name was Blaine, a young kid who joined up just weeks ago. “He got a radio distress call from our lead unit at the outskirts of the city facing Cuevitas, so he took most of the convoy and sped off just under ten minutes ago. Now I can’t reach him.”

Bishop grabbed the radio receiver from him as he began to fiddle with the radio controls. “For God’s sake, let me do this.”

As Blaine looked out at the front windshield he instantly let out a cry of surprise. “Oh lord, look at that!” he said, pointing at the perimeter fence, less than fifty yards away from them.

Bishop looked up and instantly recoiled back into his seat, his shaking hand nearly letting go of the radio receiver. Just beyond the fence was a horde of pale-skinned skeletal creatures with jet black damp hair that hung limply down their shoulders, partly covering their flaccid breasts, just above their emasculated ribcages. Their long arms ended in black talons and they wore skirts that had shrunken human skulls hanging on strings around them. Their eye sockets were empty and sunken, as if someone had ripped out their eyeballs and left nothing but a hollow black void of nothingness with which to stare down their victims just before they would kill them.

The other Texas State Guardsmen had seen them as well. The gunners who were stationed on the vehicle turrets immediately turned their swivel-mounted M2 Browning heavy machine guns and opened fire. As the massive .50 caliber rounds began streaming into their direction, the demons immediately leapt up into the sky, and within seconds had landed on top of several Humvees as they began tearing and ripping into the hapless men sitting on the open turrets. The men on the ground began to run and fire in all directions, some of them even started to run away.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Bishop screamed. Blaine immediately shifted gears and floored the vehicle’s accelerator since the engine was already idle. The Humvee accelerated forward as it drove past the carnage and out into the rainy street. The city was mostly deserted due to the standing evacuation orders, so the Humvee skidded along the wet pavement as Blaine fought for control while trying to compensate for the adverse weather conditions as he accelerated.

Visibility was less than twenty feet as the Humvee drove through the sheets of rain that kept pouring relentlessly from the storm clouds above. As the initial adrenaline and fright had started to wear off, reason and logic had both begun to reestablish themselves, Blaine began to slow down as he sensed the danger was left behind.

“Goddamn that was close,” Bishop said as he slumped back into the front seat.

Blaine kept his eyes on the road as he made a turn along a deserted intersection. “What the hell were those things, sir?”

Bishop closed his eyes as he remembered reading the reports from the Department of Defense. “Some sort of Aztec demons. Apparently, those stupid wetbacks in Mexico must have done something to awaken those monsters, and now they’re making their way up north to us.”

“Demons?” Blaine said nervously. “How in the hell do we fight that?”

“I don’t know,” Bishop said as he felt a drop of rain on his cheek. As he wiped it away with his hand he looked at Blaine. “Is there a leak in this vehicle? I’m starting to get wet.”

“No sir,” Blaine said. “Private Calhoun was on the turret gun so maybe you ought to ask him.”

“Huh?” Bishop’s eyes widened as he realized the Humvee actually had a gunner stationed on its turret. He quickly turned around, then let out a gasp a split second later.

As he looked up at the turret in the back area of the Humvee, Bishop saw that Calhoun had already been torn in half, only his lower torso and legs were left standing under the open turret. The governor could see bits of entrails and blood all over the back seat. It was then that he noticed that one of those demons was actually sitting on top of the vehicle and then used its claws to climb in through the open turret to sit right behind them. Its leering mouth filled with jagged sharp teeth was now inches away from Bishop’s terrified face.

Both men screamed as the demon began to tear at them with its claws. Blaine’s throat was sliced through and his dying hands let go of the steering wheel. The Humvee swerved sideways and then fishtailed into the side of an abandoned building.

Arabian Desert

They had been driving across the desert for almost two days now. The grey dust of Iraq had now given way to the vermillion sands of Arabia. Patrick Gyle kept his hands on the steering wheel of the Toyota Land Cruiser while Ron Boland rested in the back seat. Both of them had barely escaped the attack in the Green Zone. They had jumped into the Tigris River and made their way south after stealing a sedan from a terrified Iraqi man who was prostrate on the ground, begging the ancient gods of Babylon to spare him and his family. They didn’t come out of it unscathed though, as Boland’s left leg was horribly mangled when a winged demon landed on it before flying off again. Gyle had fashioned a makeshift splint for him. He wanted to leave Boland at a local hospital when they made it south to Najaf ahead of the sandstorm, but Boland refused. He made the painful decision to go with Gyle, because he told Boland of the dream he had about an ancient man sitting in cave who had been calling out to him. They weren’t sure about the significance of Gyle’s visions, but it was enough motivation for them to try and head southwards, across Saudi Arabia, with the hopes of finding that man. Boland theorized that with everything that had happened, he needed to find more intel before he could report back to Washington. The last thing he wanted to do was to return in disgrace.

The car’s windshield was caked with dust as Gyle took another swig of the water bottle that lay beside him in the front seat. The Land Cruiser was brand new and still smelled faintly of factory synthetic leather mixed in with their sweat. They had made it into a car dealership in Najaf City. The sympathetic owner had given them the car keys and his blessing. He told them to take the vehicle and do with it as they pleased. Boland had later told him that the man who owned the dealership was in fact a courier for the Israeli Mossad. He could be counted on as an ally when Gyle had wondered why the man gave up the car so easily. After quickly loading it with water, rations, and jerrycans full of diesel that Gyle had placed at the back, they immediately sped off towards the south until they crossed the invisible border as his visions led the way.

Gyle checked the Land Cruiser’s dashboard computer. The GPS display was indicating that they were less than twenty miles north of Ha’il, a small city in northwestern Saudi Arabia. He had marveled at their luck since the GPS maps had already been preloaded by the resourceful Iraqi car dealer, so all he had to do was to manually adjust their current position by triangulation. He was pretty much being guided by his feelings now, as if the old man in his dreams had been calling to him. He drove in the direction where he felt was the right way and he had been doing this for days now, only stopping for a few hours in the night to rest and refuel the vehicle’s gas tank.

Boland began to cough dryly as he opened his eyes. Gyle glanced back in the rearview mirror to see if he was still okay. As their eyes met, Boland silently made a thumbs-up sign with his hand, and then promptly closed his eyes again while slumping back into the seat.
The man must be in a lot of pain because of his busted leg
, Gyle thought.
And yet he insisted on going with me. That takes a lot of guts.

Although he was mostly driving off-road, there were times when he went along the highway. But even then, both the roads and the areas they passed through were mostly deserted, except for the occasional car, or a gaggle of Bedouins on their camels heading southward. Gyle would cycle through the radio for any recent news. From what they heard it was obvious that Iraq had fallen to the supernatural gods and demons of the blowing sands. Even though the Saudis proclaimed that they would defend their borders, Gyle did not see a single Saudi military unit the moment they crossed through. English language news reports on the radio had intercepted top-secret government cables that revealed the Saudi government and their military units had retreated south towards Mecca, the holiest place in Islam. That would be the city where the Muslim faith would make its final stand, as the Saudi government implored all those loyal to the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed that they would form a ring of steel around their holiest shrines, and defend it with their lives. Gyle scoffed at the ridiculousness of it all. He knew they were worshipping the false god because the real ones were in fact just up north and coming this way.

As he turned the car into the highway near As-Sufun, Gyle glanced at a ring of mountains to his right. His hands began to tremble as a warm feeling began to cascade over his body. This was it, the old man was nearby. Taking his foot off the accelerator, the car slowed down as Gyle began to bring the vehicle towards the base of the small mountain range. There were dry riverbeds called wadis that cut along the mountains. Gyle began to drive the Land Cruiser through them, the vehicle kicking up small clouds of dust as its wheels turned slowly on the loose sand. He had seen a glimpse of the city of Ha’il a few miles away on the horizon, but he noticed there was no movement or vehicles near the outskirts, so he guessed that the whole place must have already been evacuated. He drove on for another hour, as he twisted and turned along the wadis until the hairs on the back of his neck were so electrified they seemed to run a current through his spine.

Turning off the car ignition, Gyle turned around to look at his CIA case officer. Boland lay stretched out in the backseat, the makeshift splint on his right leg was straightened out to keep his injured limb steady. “Ron, I think we’re here,” he said to him.

Boland opened his eyes again and pushed at the seat cushion in order to sit up. “Where are we?”

“About a few klicks west of Ha’il. That city looks deserted by the way.”

Boland took out his own plastic bottle of water from the rear compartment, and took a sip to moisten his dry throat. “Are you sure this is the place?”

“I can feel the tingling all over my body,” Gyle said. “I know what I’m saying sounds far-fetched, but the man with the answers is somewhere here, I can feel it.”

“After everything I saw in the Green Zone,” Boland said softly. “I can pretty much believe anything now.”

Gyle had a Beretta M9 pistol on his hip that he took off a dead soldier that was lying in the Green Zone a few days back. He did a brass check by slightly thumbing back the slide to make sure there was a round in the chamber. “You want to come with me?”

“With this blasted leg I’d be only slowing you down,” Boland said as he popped a few aspirin tablets into his mouth before sipping more water. “I’ll guard the vehicle.”

Gyle thumbed the safety of the gun and gave it to him butt-first. “Keep this, then.”