Marcus Pelegrimas - The Breaking

Rico yelled with a haggard voice as he fired a shot into the eye of a third werewolf and jumped aside to let the fourth one sail past him. When that one hit the ground and turned around to face him, he stepped up to it and punched it in the mouth. Cole had read about Rico’s wooden version of brass knuckles in Paige’s journal but hadn’t actually seen them in action. He sure as hell hadn’t seen the big man slip them on before delivering that last blow. Spikes sprouted from a ridge of varnished wood that covered the top of his hand and wrapped around to dig into his palm. The punch shredded the beast’s face, and the multiple joints in its neck allowed its head to turn almost a full 180 degrees before snapping around amid the chatter of gnashing teeth. Before it had a chance to regain its bearings, Rico drove his fist into its jaw two more times. When the third Half Breed rushed at him, Rico pulled his fist back and willed a short blade to emerge from the outer edge of his weapon. Swinging as if gripping a dagger, Rico drove the blade into the Half Breed’s eye. It howled in pain and slumped straight down to spit its last breath into the dirt.

The Half Breed that Cole had impaled was losing steam, but not its will to fight. Even after being forced onto its side, it continued to scrape at the ground. Removing the spear with a straight pull, Cole flipped it around and dropped the forked end to trap the creature’s head. His palms were slick with blood and the thorns burrowed into him as he willed the inside of the fork to sharpen into blades. The spear shifted into a tool that nearly decapitated the creature with a few downward thrusts.

Holding the last Half Breed at arm’s length, Rico placed the barrel of the Sig Sauer against its temple and pulled the trigger. After three muffled shots the werewolf dropped for good. “God damn those new ones are tough,” he said while reloading the handgun.

“This one’s wearing a uniform,” Cole said. After looking at the other two, he added, “What the hell’s going on here?”

“Probably one of the IRD soldiers. The rest might have been bitten or came here to follow the Full Bloods.”

Judging by the way Jessup, several soldiers, and many more Half Breeds converged at the truck Rico had pointed out earlier, the escaped prisoners inside were probably dreading the day they’d left their cells. Cole took a deep breath and started running. The uphill climb had been steep, but the terrain sloped much more gradually on the other side. Dry scrub and exposed rocks covered what looked to be a wide basin surrounded by some trees and a tall fence on the far side. It was next to impossible to judge any distances since every one of his senses were overloaded with the chatter and smoke from automatic gunfire, the stench of burning fuel, and the overwhelming presence of the unnatural. That last part may have come from what some might call a sixth sense. Cole couldn’t see it or taste it, but was overcome by the uneasiness of having the real world turned upside down.

Half Breeds ran wild across the desert.

Gargoyles swarmed the sky, dropping onto the wildest prey they could find.

Cole had to hurdle dead bodies while swinging his spear to deflect incoming claws or swat a snarling face before it ripped his throat out. When his foot touched down again, it became wedged under something heavy enough to break his momentum and drop him onto his face. His ears rang when he hit the ground in a crumpled heap.

The Sig Sauer went off several times at close range, followed by the grinding rattle of assault rifles. “Get up,” Rico said. “We’re almost there.”

“I think I broke my ankle.”

The big man dropped to one knee and unceremoniously twisted the foot in question.

“Holy shit!” Cole gasped.

“It’s not broken.”

“What are you talking about? That hurt like hell!”

“If it was broken, you’d be passed out right now,” Rico explained.

“And if I would have passed out, then what ?”

“I would’ve left. You wouldn’t do anyone any good with a broken ankle. Carrying you would just get me killed too. The serum in your bloodstream will kick in and I’ll get an injection for you ASAP. Until then you’re just gonna have to rock through this shit.”

Cole drove his spear into the ground so he could use it to prop himself up. “Rock through this shit? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’ll get up and keep movin’ or I’ll crack you over the head with this rock.”

When Cole looked up, he saw that Rico indeed had a rock in his hand. Suddenly, he seemed more like the ugly asshole who’d fought and bled alongside of him in Philadelphia and Denver. He tried pulling himself up but his foot was trapped under something. Whatever had ensnared it was solid and unmoving. At first it looked like a thick, dirty root emerging from the ground. The more he tried to pull it loose, the more certain he became that it wasn’t going to budge. It only took one touch for him to realize what it was.

“This is stone,” Cole said. Grabbing hold of it, he added, “I think it’s an arm.”

Rico was already helping him up, so he placed the toe of his boot on the gray protrusion from the ground and pushed against it. “It’s really in there. Looks like a gargoyle got to it, but they usually stay aboveground. Of course, I ain’t seen a flock of them this big before.”

“You’ve seen gargoyles?”

“Yeah, they’ve been popping up in big cities, wedged in between buildings or under rain gutters. You know when you’re driving and you see all that shit hanging from trees that looks like moss or spiderwebs or that kind of thing? It’s usually more gargoyle than moss.”

“Aw, Christ. First goth girls and now road trips. Any other simple pleasures this job wants to spoil for me?”

Cole and Rico scraped at the ground to uncover the stone structure he’d found. Shots were fired from all directions and more soldiers were carried in by a truck at the bottom of the hill about a hundred yards away. When Cole uncovered a foot at the end of the stony arch, he stopped digging. Seeing that put the rest of it in context, and the knee at the top of the arch became clear.

“It’s a Mongrel,” he said after he took a closer look at the curved claws and structure of the foot. Pointing to a flat, smooth patch on the back of its knee, he said, “Looks like a gargoyle got it on the way down. Maybe it burrowed this deep before the shell hardened.”

“Damn,” Rico said. “It actually sounds like you know what you’re talking about.”

“Is that such a surprise?”

Answering the question with a noncommittal shrug, Rico patted him on the shoulder and pointed toward the overturned trucks. Since there wasn’t anything he could do for the Mongrel, and had healed enough to support his weight on his twisted ankle, Cole followed him even further into the storm.

When he heard the shrieking in the air behind him, he shouted, “Drop!”

Both he and Rico hit the dirt and felt a gust of wind as gargoyles passed above them and veered upward. The pain in his ankle spiked as he climbed to his feet, but he continued running toward the trucks. When the howling started again, it blasted through his head like a wave of napalm. One of the overturned trucks rolled onto its back and was shoved aside by a gray Full Blood who stood on its rear legs and roared up at the sky. It was Esteban, and he faced the soldiers and covered his face with both hands as all of them opened fire.

“Shit,” Rico grunted as he pressed his back to another truck. “You feel that?”

Cole took cover alongside him and willed his spear to collapse so he could tuck it into the harness and grab the MP5. “Feel what?”

“It’s like my stomach’s compressing. Makes me wanna tear through this whole goddamn field.”