The Tide: Deadrise (23 page)

“Meredith,” Renee said. “Come with me. Everyone else, stay put.”

Renee and Meredith flitted around the building, checking each potential entrance. Even the windows were barred and locked. There would be no easy way in. “Got any bright ideas?” Renee asked Meredith as they walked back to the group.

Meredith chuckled to herself. “Nope, but I bet Andris does.”

When Renee explained what they’d found, Andris grinned. “Ah, so it is time for some fireworks again!” He scrounged through his pack. “We do not have much C4 left, and I fear these doors would be resistant to explosives anyway. It is only logical, yes?”

“Makes sense,” Meredith said. “Please, tell me you’ve got something else.”

“Of course.” Andris pulled a vial of silvery powder out from a pocket in his tac vest. “Thermite. This should do the trick. Although I think our success is most guaranteed on one of the windows. Easier to cut through bars and glass than reinforced steel doors.”

“You’re the expert,” Renee said, waving Andris on.

“This is going to be a little noisy,” he warned.

“Go ahead. Meredith, Spencer, and I will form a perimeter. Kara, Sadie, Navid, I want you there.” Renee pointed to an alcove near the main entrance where a couple of tables and chairs were arranged. Meredith joined Renee and Spencer as they took lookout positions in front of the building.

“Okay, here we go.” Andris slung his rifle over his back. He poured thermite in thin lines over the bars protecting a window and set up a small blasting cap. After taking cover, he triggered the detonator. The cap exploded, and a shower of white sparks hissed as the thermite burned through the metal bars. Glass rained down onto the sidewalk, clinking and pinging. The bars came loose and fell. Their impact with the sidewalk let out a ringing thud that echoed down the street. Andris returned to the window, peered through it, and cleared the rest of the broken glass.

He made a formal bow and said, “We’re in.”

The group quickly followed Andris back to the now-open window—and not a moment too soon. Claws scratched against asphalt somewhere down the road. The rattling of bony plates bounced off the maze of brick walls. The empty streets would soon be filled with Skulls, scuttling out of their lairs like roaches to investigate the source of the explosion.

Maybe this place hadn’t been spared after all.

“Move!” Renee hissed.

She helped boost Kara, Sadie, Navid, and then Maggie into the building. Meredith and the others followed, and Glenn reached back from the window to assist Renee just as the first Skulls appeared along the street. Several wore battered, threadbare fatigues. Others were dressed in civilian clothing. A few wore only the armor plating, horns, claws, and spikes characteristic of the skeletal monsters. One Skull with horns protruding out from under a construction helmet howled when it caught sight of Renee’s legs disappearing through the window. It charged.

The group barreled through the office they’d found themselves in. Meredith led the way and opened a door into a hall. She skidded to a stop when her boots hit the tiled floor.

A hunched Skull was standing in the middle of the floor.

Its bloodshot eyes caught hers. Dried blood caked its lips and had painted its claws a dark brown. Its yellowish plates clunked together as it bent forward, squinting at Meredith and the others. Then, baring its serrated teeth, it let out a shrill howl.

––––––––

D
om pulled himself up onto the end of the dock and crept between a pair of motorboats. Miguel came up next. Water sluiced over his soaked fatigues. Jenna slipped up and crawled into position near Dom. Finally, Glenn joined the group. They checked over their rifles and grabbed fresh, dry magazines from their tac vests.

Gulls and buzzards circled overhead, drawn to the smell of death drifting in the breeze over Quantico, searching for scraps of food. But if experience had taught him anything, it was that Skulls never left behind even a morsel of meat on their kills.

The slow, rhythmic scrape of claws over wood and cement drifted over the marina. A Skull in an orange life vest was limping beside the boathouse, its right ankle bent far beyond the normal constraints of human anatomy. One arm ended at its elbow. Crooked, spiked bones jutted from the stump. Another Skull was stalking a neighboring dock wearing the soiled remains of a Marine’s dress blues. The monster had the build of a linebacker. Its bulky armor even looked a little like football gear. Other Skulls were pacing around the marina in lazy circles, as if they hadn’t had a chance to feed in ages.

The actual town of Quantico lay just beyond the marina. Dom could make out the green and red awnings over the storefronts, but many of the shop windows were broken. A restaurant facing the water had been hit hard by some kind of explosion, and its sign hung askew and half-burned.

Getting into the base wouldn’t be easy. But given the state of the ghost town before them, Dom wondered if there would be anything left to find.

“Remember. Quiet as possible.” Dom tapped his smartwatch. “We’re headed here first. Center of the town.”

The Skull in the life jacket started walking down the main dock in their direction.

“Radio silence,” he whispered. He gestured for the others to crouch and stay hidden. Every nerve in his body tingled with anticipation. Gently, he placed his rifle at his feet. His knife gleamed in the sunlight as he pulled it out from his thigh sheath. He coiled his muscles, preparing to spring. Soon, the Skull would be at the intersection on the dock in front of him. He flexed his fingers.

The scraping and scratching stopped. Dom waited, looking at the spot where he had expected the Skull to appear. But it
didn’t
appear. He counted the seconds. Surely the Skull had moved by now. Dom crawled closer. He could see the edge of the creature’s shadow on a boat opposite him. The sharp lines and jagged edges of its spikes and horns were clearly visible, but he didn’t know which direction it was facing. No matter.

Dom stepped from around the boat. The Skull was gazing at the sky. Saliva was dripping from its mouth. He didn’t bother to figure out what the monster was looking at. Instead, he wrapped a glove over its cracked lips and stabbed the knife into the flesh where neck met chin. The Skull jolted out of its transfixed state and struggled in Dom’s grasp. The monster’s single clawed hand flailed, threatening to tear into Dom’s skin. It swung its half-arm in circles, which was equally dangerous with the sword-like growth protruding from where its forearm should be.

The monster shook its head back and forth. Using his body weight, Dom yanked the Skull backward. They fell onto the dock together. The blade dug deep into the creature until it was buried to the hilt. The Skull’s violent shaking and twisting subsided, and Dom lowered the corpse slowly.

He glanced up briefly to see what the Skull had been looking at. Had it seen another survivor across the river?

Then he spotted it: a gull swooping low over the docks. It soared on the updrafts and flapped its wings as it adeptly dove and climbed again and again over the boats. He imagined the Skulls clumsily diving after it, only to have their claws come up empty as the birds took flight. The Skulls here must’ve stopped howling and clamoring after they’d learned the birds were beyond reach.

The thought that the Skulls could learn anything, no matter how seemingly innocuous, frightened him.

But he couldn’t dwell long on their mental capacities. The former Marine was approaching now. It too gazed lazily into the sky at the flock of gulls. Dom rushed to another slip. A sailboat was moored there, obscuring him from sight. Dom lunged behind the monster as it walked past. He wrapped his hand around the Skull’s snapping jaw to clamp it shut as before. With his other arm, he swung the knife to deliver the killing blow.

The Skull’s arm came up at the same time. Its claws raked the air, trying for Dom’s flesh but instead knocking the knife from his grip. The blade skidded along the dock and teetered at its edge. His grip tightened around the monster’s neck, but the former Marine was far stronger than the Skull in the life vest had been. Dom grunted as he struggled to pull the Skull backward. It twisted side to side and bucked. He tried to flip the Skull onto its back, but the beast headbutted him instead.

The thud resonated through Dom’s head. Snowflakes sparkled in his blurred vision. He thought he heard a second set of footsteps running down the dock, but he couldn’t tell if it was a Hunter or another Skull. The effects of adrenaline assuaged the pain of impact but did little to right his muddled senses.

The Skull growled in Dom’s face.

Dom saw everything as if it was in slow motion. The creature’s lips curled back in a snarl. Its eyes widened, displaying the full intensity of the bloodshot orbs. Spit sprayed from its mouth as it prepared to let out a howl that would draw all the Skulls to the Hunters’ positions. Dom did the only rational thing he could think of in his head-aching state.

He headbutted the creature.

The snap of his helmet against its mouth cracked and splintered the monster’s teeth. It stumbled backward, dazed. Shaking its head, its body wavered back and forth as if it were dizzied.

Slightly disoriented himself, Dom pressed on with a jaw-breaking uppercut. The Skull’s mouth slammed shut. More teeth broke, and intense pain shot from Dom’s knuckles through his wrist and arm. He shook it out and delivered a side hook with his left hand. The Skull’s neck twisted farther than the limits of its skeletal plates would allow. Several of them fractured with an audible crack. Dom used the Skull’s confusion to his advantage. In one fluid motion, he swept up his knife and brought it down hard through the Skull’s eye. Blood sprayed around the wound, splashing and staining Dom’s sleeve.

In another swift movement, Dom caught the Skull as it slumped, lifeless, before it slammed onto the dock. He guessed the Marine had weighed a solid two hundred twenty pounds of muscle prior to his run-in with the Oni Agent. Now, with all the dense plating and overdeveloped muscles, it probably weighed almost twice as much. He strained to lower it gently and noiselessly until Miguel jumped forward to lend a hand.

“Could’ve been here a bit sooner,” Dom said.

“Thought you had it, Chief,” Miguel said. “Didn’t want to steal your kill.”

“When it comes to these bastards, feel free to steal as many kills as you want.”

Miguel carefully unwrapped his gloved fingers from around the Skull’s bony limbs. “Truth is, I was running to help. But I didn’t make it in time. When you threw those punches, I had to get the hell out of the way.”

Jenna and Glenn snuck down the dock and joined them. Dom flicked the blood off his knife and sheathed it. At Dom’s signal, they ran into the open boathouse.

Inside, several boats in various stages of repair were dry-docked. A lone Skull meandered between the vessels. Its shoulder blades stuck out like ornate axes, and its claws were longer than most other Skulls they’d seen. Each was nearly a foot long, but they seemed almost delicately thin.

Miguel nodded to it, claiming it as his mark. Dom gave him the go ahead. He was still recovering after his last bout. The Hunter crept around the hull of a speedboat and pounced on the Skull. He twisted his prosthetic, and the concealed blade whipped out. With a swipe, Miguel cut into the creature’s throat. Blood bubbled out of the gash in its throat and between its lips. Miguel tried to disengage his blade—but it had caught in one of the long, thin plates armoring the creature’s oddly graceful neck. He jerked his arm, but the prosthetic was stuck.

The Skull’s thin claws scythed out. Miguel ducked under the bony blades, but they cut through the artificial skin of his prosthetic, already marred by the Drooler’s acid from a prior battle. The covering came off in tatters, and the claws dug in between the wires and servos. The monster tried to withdraw, but they were firmly embedded. Skull and Hunter circled each other, bound and deadlocked.

“Miguel, duck!” Glenn grabbed an oar from the wall. His muscles tensed and then exploded as he swung it in a wide arc.

Miguel lowered his head just in time. The oar slammed into the Skull’s temple, shattering its antenna-like horns. Despite the head trauma and the wound in its neck still bubbling blood, the deceptively delicate-looking Skull continued to fight ferociously. If Miguel didn’t get free, it was only a matter of time until one of its strikes landed.

“Jenna, Glenn, on me,” Dom said. He waited for a moment when the Skull’s claw was drawn back again. At his signal, the trio lunged. Between the three of them, they grabbed the Skull’s flailing limbs and dragged it to the ground. It writhed and thrashed against their weight. They didn’t let up. Blood pooled around it. At last it gave a final tremble before lying still.

Dom worked to free Miguel’s prosthetic. Once he had chiseled away the final bit of broken bone, he helped Miguel leverage his blade from the Skull’s throat. It came out with a sickening slurp.

“Not quite as smooth as I expected,” Miguel said, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Nope,” Jenna said. “Not your finest fight.”

Dom gave them all a minute to recover before leading the group to the rear of the boathouse. He tapped on his smartwatch to display the map of what lay beyond the door. “Our target should be just down the block,” he said. “Ready to move out?”

The Hunters acknowledged the statement with silent nods. They tightened their grips around their suppressed rifles.

Dom slowly rotated the door handle and then peered out. An olive-hued jeep was parked nearby with the letters MP emblazoned on its door panels. A charred Honda sat in the middle of the road. An SUV’s front tires were planted on a smaller car’s hood as if the SUV driver had realized the vehicle wasn’t a monster truck halfway through the car-crushing maneuver.

Ignoring the vehicular carnage for the moment, Dom scanned the storefronts lining the street. The front windows of the bookstore had been blasted out, and shredded pages fluttered in the wind. Shops had been burned or looted, and a few of the buildings had been completely destroyed. Then he saw what he was looking for: Quantico Dive Shop. The wide front window was cracked from a few stray bullet holes. Dom could make out the shape of a mannequin in full SCUBA gear behind the fractured glass.