Weston Ochse - Age of Blood

With one last heroic push, Holmes got his two SEALs behind the wall of monster flesh and began to check them for wounds. Both had backs made of ground meat. Laws had a strange wound on the back of his neck. Holmes pulled at a piece of what looked like tongue and felt rubbery resistance, like it was a leech or a worm. He jerked it and Laws snapped completely awake.

“What the hell?”

“Keep calm. Daddy’s back.”

“Holmes—you’re alive!”

“No thanks to you.” Holmes reached into Yank’s pouch and was relieved to find the med kit still wrapped. He opened it and grabbed two Fentanyl lollipops. He stuck one in each of the SEALs’ mouths. The pops would deliver opiate pain relief immediately to their systems. They’d replaced morphine syringes, were much more powerful than their predecessor, and were the drug of last resort.

“What’d I do?” Laws asked, sucking greedily on the pain reliever.

“I have this memory of falling. Do you know anything about that?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Laws said with a straight face. “Yank, you alive?”

Yank nodded as he grabbed two packs of QuickClot, which contained microscopic zeolite crystals as the hemostatic agent. When introduced to blood, it soaked up all the liquid, leaving only platelets and hastening clotting to an almost miraculous effect. The only downfall was that it produced heat as a by-product, sometimes in excess of 170 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Let’s put these on your backs, then you seal it,” Yank said.

Holmes looked at him and the packs, then nodded. “It’s going to hurt, though.”

“We always have the lollies,” Laws said.

Holmes opened one pack and sprinkled it on Laws’s back. Then he did the same for Yank. He could almost see it taking effect. He could also see the two SEALs biting down on their medicine, their faces turning white as the heat of the absorption began to burn along their backs.

Holmes then pulled out a pair of cyanoacrylate tubes, which were nothing more than medical superglue. He spread a tube each across the back of each SEAL. It would keep whatever blood the zeolite couldn’t get from leaving the SEALs’ bodies. The wounds on their back weren’t bad enough to stop mission, but if they continued losing blood, it would cause hypovolemia, or shock from loss of blood volume. If untreated, that could kill them as efficiently as a bullet to the head.

Then he pulled out a packet of smelling salts and waved it under each of their noses. The reaction was immediate. Both their heads snapped back. He did the same to himself, then found a bag containing six pills. He emptied them into his hand and smashed them with the butt of the pistol. He licked a third, then let Yank, then Laws do the same until the powder was gone. Specially made for 666, these Adderall-like tablets contained elements of zolpidem, dextroamphetamine, and amphetamine, and snapped each of them immediately awake to the point of hyperawareness. Finally, Holmes made them put away their Fentanyl lollipops.

Now, through the magic of modern medicine, the SEALs were once again ready to fight. Two were almost completely naked and one had lost half of his uniform, and they only had one pistol between them, but they were still U.S. Navy SEALs. Holmes’s only problem was… what were they going to do now?

Walker was glad to see the others recover behind the dead chupacabra barrier. For a while he’d wondered if he’d end up being the only survivor. The option was a terrible one and beyond comprehension. That his teammates were safe meant that they could treat each other and hopefully get back to work.

During the events that had begun when Laws had shoved the first ’cabra out of the pipe, Walker had done his best to take out as many of the beegees as possible. He’d started with those on top of the pyramid, but they’d been able to erect some sort of force field to protect themselves. When the squad with the machine guns and the Ultimax decided to try and excavate the wall he was hiding inside, he’d thought he might be in serious trouble.

Jen had been struck in the foot by a stray bullet. It was a through-and-through, with the bullet fragment ricocheting from the ceiling and tearing through the center of her foot. Stopping the bleeding wasn’t an issue, neither was taking care of her pain. He’d given her a Fentanyl lollipop that had put her in a better mood, even with her foot injury and the dozens of micro-lacerations to her face and arms caused by flying chips of stone. Walker reminded himself that when they got out of there he’d make sure she was awarded a Purple Heart, or the equivalent. If her agency hesitated even in the least, he’d give her one of his. God knew he had enough of them.

He was uninjured, as was Hoover. Hoover neither liked the smells, the sounds, nor the gunfire. She was constantly nudging him for release. But it wasn’t as if she could leap down. It was too far. Any descent would require Walker’s help and at this point, he held the high ground. He’d be stupid to give it up, especially considering that he was the only member of the team not in danger.

That the others were in dire straits wasn’t lost on him. He’d wanted to leap to their aid several times. Hell, if this had been his first mission, he would have done just that. He still remembered the stern conversations Holmes had had with him, especially the Ring Speech on a Starlifter high above the Pacific Ocean. The single thing that had been drilled into his head was to keep to his own mission. He sighted toward the mass of dead ’cabra and spied Yank, Holmes, and Laws, looking like they were about to attack.

He swung the scope toward the temple and back. Then he lifted his sight and looked in real time, trying to discover what it was the other three SEALs were about to attack.

Then Hoover began to growl.

Walker’s vision blurred and his hands began to tingle.

Oh, hell.

He shifted the scope to the other chacmool and realized it was gone. Where it had been atop the other mausoleum, the roof was now bare except for pieces of broken stone.

“Jen, honey?”

“Mmm, yeah.” She sounded high.

“You need to get back.”

“I’m okay.”

“No, really, Jen.” He spared a glance in her direction. She sucked on the lollipop with the same grin of satisfaction he’d seen on the faces of the low men sitting in the back alleys of Manila after a night smoking on the opium beds the old Chinese provided. He should have taken it away from her, but she’d been in such pain and he hadn’t had time to play medic. “You need to get back.”

He grabbed the rifle and stood. It was a good thing he did. His legs began to vibrate with the knowledge that there was a supernatural power around. Had he been prone much longer, he doubted he would have been able to stand.

Hoover’s hackles spiked along her neck. She backed toward Jen, her head low as she stared expectantly past Walker.

Scanning the rounds laid out on the ground, Walker knew immediately that he had the wrong ones in the weapon. He leaped forward on unsteady legs and grabbed the magazine with SLAP rounds. Seeing how hard it was for Yank and Laws to take down the other obsidian butterfly—and he was pretty sure that’s what was coming—Walker knew he needed something better than a regular powder-filled 5.56 round. The tungsten penetrator was the equivalent of a miniature SABOT round, using tungsten to get through the target, in this case stone, then delivering the explosive charge once inside. Of all the rounds he had, this was the only one he felt gave him the possibility.

Walker snatched it with his left hand and at the same time ejected the other magazine with his right. But that’s as far as he got.