Dave struggled to push down the feeling of vertigo that wanted to seize him.
Vince Martinelli heaved himself up slowly from where he was crouched at the edge of the bed. He stood a few inches taller than Dave and had to lean forward to speak to him when he lowered his voice. ‘You’re fuckin’ telling me, Dave? I was there. I saw it all. I was there before you got to the platform. I saw what happened to Marty and the others. And then you
. . .
I mean, what the fuck, man? What was that thing? And those other things? With the claws? And you? Everyone else who went up against those things is dead or busy dying right now. But you
. . .’
‘Vince told me, Dave. He told me what you did out there,’ said J2. ‘You’re a hero.’
No. Dave was a freak and an accident and maybe contaminated with some sort of toxic monster goo that was fucking his shit right up; that was what Dave was. He wanted to wave her away, but Vince had taken hold of his arms and dug his fingers in, shaking him a little, as if the truth might fall out.
Recalling what had happened at the hospital, Dave gently placed a hand on one of Vince’s thick forearms and eased it away.
‘I don’t know, guys,’ he said. ‘I remember everything pretty well, up until the moment I hit that thing with Marty’s splitting maul. After that, it’s all a blank till I woke in the hospital.’
He didn’t share with J2 and Vince his strange, newly acquired knowledge of the Hunn and its Fangr attendants. The navy guys had let him tell his insane story. And they’d dealt with one of those things up close and nasty personal. It had killed two of them, and they’d driven through the night with the corpse of the splatter-headed fucker roped down to the roof of their SUV. That was the sort of thing that had to make a guy receptive to a little weirder than usual storytelling. But he didn’t think Vince was ready to roll with that level of crazy. Because truth to tell and sure as hell, Dave Hooper wasn’t.
‘You saw what happened, Vince,’ he said, leaning forward and joining their conspiratorial circle. ‘You tell me what the fuck that was about. Last thing I remember from the Longreach is swinging on that
. . .
animal, whatever. And then I wake up in the hospital. A couple of hours later I’m here. I haven’t even checked in with the office yet. They probably think I’m still out on the rig.’
Martinelli eased himself down onto the cot, which creaked under his heavy frame. He moved like an old man with ground glass in his joints. J2 took up a perch on the cot across from them.
‘I’m sorry, Dave, I’m really sorry, man,’ Vince said, shaking his head in distress. ‘I tried to follow you in there. I really tried
. . .
But
. . .’
Juliette patted him on the arm. ‘You did fine, Vince. You got us off the rig. That was better than most of them. You helped get Dave out.’
Dave gave him a very light fist bump on the shoulder.
‘My man! There you go.’
But Vince wasn’t about to shake off his blue funk.
‘I fucking wimped it, man. You
. . .
you rocked those fucking freaks. I just –’
Dave cut him off as gently as he could.
‘Hey, be cool, Vince. I was there, remember? You don’t have to apologise to me. Most of the guys on that rig were clawing each other’s eyes out to get away from those things. I saw you stiff-arm a couple of them off J2’s chopper, remember? But you manned up and did the job, buddy.’
Vince had his head in his hands and looked as though he was trying to fold himself into a small ball of grief. An impossible task, given his size. Dave laid a hand on his shoulder again and squeezed, but very, very gently. J2 patted his arm and cooed meaningless nothings like a mother soothing the many hurts of a small boy. When Vince Martinelli looked up, his eyes were red-rimmed and watery.
Dave paid him off with a level stare.
‘Tell me what happened, Vince. I need to know. Come on.’
Vince took in a deep breath and gathered himself. He tried to speak, but instead he choked up a little, coughing to cover it. Another breath, and he sat up straight. J2 patted him on the back. It really did remind Dave of dealing with a child.
‘I could hear that thing in there with you. In the lounge. I could hear it
. . .
eating and, I dunno
. . .
laughing?’
Hooper confirmed that with a sombre nod.
‘Yeah, I thought so too. Go on.’
‘I knew
. . .
I knew what was around that corner, Dave. And I let you go, ’cause I just, I couldn’t.’
He appeared to slump forward a little again and lifted his head only when J2 patted his enormous suntanned neck and said quietly, ‘Come on, Vince.’
‘It’s all right, man,’ Dave added. ‘We’re out of it now. Keep going. The navy guy, Heath, he told me you saw it all.’
Vince shook his head. Emphatically.
‘No. Not all of it. It took me a while to get my shit together. But I did. When I heard you cussing the thing out. You called it a motherfucker. Do you remember?’
Dave didn’t and shook his head.
‘I’d seen you pick up Marty’s splitting maul. Not that I thought it’d do much good against those fucking devil things. But I knew you had it. And I could hear you cursing out that thing. And it was sort of laughing or chuckling, and anyway, I got moving again. I picked up some crowbar that was lying there. Thought maybe if I got a lucky hit in, you know? Or maybe I could just swing it and drag you back out.’
Dave encouraged him to keep going. The Hunn would have killed Vince just as surely as it had killed Marty. He knew that but kept it to himself. Let Vince keep a shred of dignity to himself. Probably wouldn’t do to let him know just how close he’d come to being devil food, too.
‘Anyways, I come around the corner just as you charged at the big one. It was sitting there. Honest to fucking God, Dave, I’d swear that thing was laughing at you. Like when Marty laughed at that college boy who called him out in Houston that time. You remember that. Fucking Marty.’
Dave remembered. Bible thumper or not, it wasn’t a good idea to upset Marty Grbac. ‘Sure. Go on.’
‘So you started swinging that thing, and there’s not much headroom in there, so you took out some roof tiles and an aluminium strut. Fucking plaster dust and shit everywhere. But that big ape’s not laughing no more. It’s looking sorta shocked and then really fuckin’ pissed at you and
. . .’
A spasm passed across Vince’s face. Like he needed to throw up.
‘It took off Marty’s arm then. You remember that?’
J2 was looking a little the worse for the telling of it, too.
Dave remembered the moment. An unpleasant memory he’d be a long time leaving behind.
‘And it’s waving Marty’s arm around like one of them conductors at the opera.’
Vince was caught up in the telling of it now. And the more he spoke, the more came back to Dave.
‘Those nasty little scissor-hand fuckers that come up the rig first; they were starting to move then, but they were too late.’
He smiled, but without any joy.
‘You got that thing right in the snout. Or that hole where it shoulda had a snout. It was looking up at you, fucking fangs everywhere, but it was too slow. Like you get late on Thanksgiving, you know
. . .
when you’ve eaten and drunk too much.’
‘Yeah. I know that one,’ Dave said, and as he said it he knew it to be true in this case, too.
Urgon Htoth Ur Hunn
had feasted well. Too well. The Hunn had found himself bloated and blood drunk just when he encountered a calfling with the horns to glory itself in
. . .
Dave shook his head, trying to throw off the
. . .
memory
. . .
someone or something else’s memory, like a spider that had crawled into his hair.
He was convinced now that he was not just recalling the encounter as he remembered but as
. . .
Urgon Htoth Ur Hunn
. . .
. . . as this fucking
Urgon
thing did.
‘What happened?’ he asked, not really wanting to know but needing to.
‘You killed it, Dave. Smashed its fucking coconut. And there was this
. . .
I dunno
. . .
like a flash or something. And I went down. Man, I was vomiting and spinning out, and
. . .
and it was like the worst fucking hangover I ever had, back in the day. But it passed quick. I got up.’
Vince looked him in the eye as though seeing Dave for the first time. J2 was staring at him in the same way. Perhaps she was scratching him off her long list of totally un-wedding-worthy assholes.
‘You were down, man. I thought you were dead.’ Vince shook his head slowly. ‘But it was dead. The monster. And all its little monster friends, too. They got a few licks on you, but they were gone too. Like they died of shock or some shit.’
09
H
eath came into the room so soon after Vince Martinelli finished telling his story that Dave wondered if he’d been eavesdropping. He looked for a one-way mirror or something like it but found nothing. The barracks hut was as spare and utilitarian as he remembered it, with tube lighting running through the rafters. The roof, he realised, was just heavy canvas. There were eight camp beds, six of them rumpled and vacant at this point. A series of cabinets and shelves ran along the back tent wall, probably stocked with medical supplies. A pair of oxygen tanks plus a quartet of what looked like military trauma bags also were stowed back there.
Captain Heath looked fresh and crisp, the same as Dave, which wasn’t natural for Hooper at all. Two men in a different type of camouflage, with name tags that clearly marked them as marines, flanked Heath left and right. Dave would have guessed they were jarheads even without the USMC tags. They were both huge and intimidatingly fit, with shaved skulls that for some reason made him think of monks from the Middle Ages. Or kung-fu movies. Yeah, definitely kung-fu movies with fighting monks. It unsettled him a little that their eyes seemed lit with the same type of crazy as the Hunn back on the rig. They were also armed, with pistols strapped to their thighs. Captain Heath apparently felt no need for a weapon.
Both Juliette and Vince appeared wary, even anxious, as the military men approached. Dave just wished he were wearing shoes. Standing there in his socks seemed to put him at a disadvantage.
‘Good morning, Ms Jamieson, gentlemen,’ Heath said. ‘You still have forty minutes to eat if you wish.’ He seemed to measure Dave’s reaction to that announcement, but the maddening hunger of the previous evening had passed.
‘You hungry, you guys? You want to eat?’ Dave asked.
‘What about the others?’ Vince asked in a subdued mutter that wasn’t like him at all.
‘Fair question,’ Dave said directly to Heath a little too loudly, overcompensating for his friend and maybe for himself. ‘Where are my other guys?’
The soldiers, or troops
. . .
was that what you called marines? He wondered about that and discovered he didn’t give a fuck. Whatever they were, Dave put them on edge. Heath had come the length of the barracks with the two guards – they were definitely guards – keeping a few feet back. The captain bent over and retrieved Martinelli’s shoes from under a camp bed. He passed them to the larger man without comment.
‘Mess hall,’ he said simply. ‘You should join them now. We have a busy day. More debriefs, tests to run. You need to get going.’
‘Tests?’ Dave asked. He hated tests.
‘Mr Hooper, you’ve all been exposed to some sort of hostile organism. You may be contaminated or infected with bacteria or viruses or some form of non-obvious toxin. We cannot safely release you back into the community, to your families, until we are sure you’re clean.’
Heath looked at Martinelli when he mentioned their families.
‘I wasn’t exposed to anything,’ J2 said defiantly. ‘All I did was fly wounded men off the rig. But you grabbed me anyway and hauled me out here in the middle of nowhere for no good reason I can think of.’
Heath inclined his head toward her, almost conceding the point.
‘Ms Jamieson, it’s true you weren’t directly exposed, but you carried casualties who were. Until we know what we’re dealing with, what transmission vectors –’
‘Transmission what?’ Vince asked in an angry tone that flared out of nowhere, causing the two marine guards to turn their cold eyes on him. It made no difference. He just pushed on.
‘This wasn’t no bug or virus. These things stood taller than me and had teeth like feral hogs. Unless one got a bite of J2’s ass, there’s no transmission vectors to be talking about.’
He turned to J2.
‘You felt anything bite you in the ass yesterday, darlin’?’
‘Not a thing,’ she replied, jutting her chin at the navy guy. ‘So I guess I can go. I got three cats to feed at home, you know.’
Dave rubbed his scalp. He was gonna need a haircut soon. That had crept up on him too.
‘Look, Heath, can you give us a second? Vince, you spoken to Gina yet?’ Dave asked.
Vince nodded. ‘They let me call her yesterday. She was a mess. And they wouldn’t let me say a fucking word about what really happened.’ He glared at the navy officer.
‘Then that’s why you’re here, J2,’ Dave said. ‘They want to keep you from going on TV and blabbing about what happened. Right?’
Heath looked unimpressed. Dave turned back to the chopper pilot, who was even more worried now.
‘But don’t you worry none, J2. There’s hundreds of people know what happened out there. Maybe they got a lid on this today, but by tomorrow it’ll be off. There’ll be no lying about what happened. I figure Captain Heath here, or rather his bosses way up the fucking food chain, are just trying to figure out what Obama is gonna say when he faces the press corps to explain how a bunch of devil-orcs just chewed up one of Baron’s’ platforms and how they’ve got it under control and there’s nothing to worry about and everyone should just turn back to the Shopping Network. Right? Ah, there they are.’
Dave spied his own shoes and pulled them on, not waiting for a reply from Heath. He took his sweet time easing his foot into each new Nike and then methodically tying the laces, partly to exert some control over the situation but mainly so that he didn’t have to ask for a new pair of laces.
‘Infected, bullshit. So much for pathological honesty, Heath. If we were infected,’ he said, looking up from his shoes to frown at the officer, ‘you wouldn’t be taking us to your mess hall or standing there without even a face mask. You’d be all tricked up in one of those biohazard suits, like in some virus movie. So yeah, we’ll come and get some breakfast. But you can stop bullshitting us right now, too. Why are we being held here, and what is happening out on the rig?’
The two guards stiffened almost imperceptibly behind the one-legged captain, but Dave found he had no trouble discerning the tension that tightened their shoulders just a notch. Heath smiled.
‘You’re not just a dumb cracker, are you, Mr Hooper?’
‘If by that you mean a rednecked moron, no,’ Dave answered. ‘So you can lay off treating me like one or like one of your toy soldiers there. And J2 and Vince as well. All of us. Just ’cause we get our hands dirty at work doesn’t mean we’re shitkickers or shit-eaters. We work hard, and some of us party hard, and we make good money. But the company as a rule doesn’t hire morons. Not below C-level executives, anyway.’
‘Yeah, what he said,’ J2 added with as much wounded dignity as she could muster in her bright pink training pants.
Vince couldn’t help grinning just a little.
Heath nodded. ‘I have my orders to follow, Mr Hooper. But I prefer honesty. It is refreshing. Corporal, you are dismissed. Why don’t we talk things over on the way to the mess?’
The marines didn’t argue; they just barked an acknowledgement and stomped out of the room in perfect time.
Man
, Dave thought,
if only I could get those assholes on the rig to obey me like that
. Then he remembered that a lot of those assholes were dead, and he felt bad about thinking it.
They followed Heath out of the medical tent, stepping into the humid morning, a thin fog hovering over the campsite. Dave idly wondered if they were still in Louisiana. They were definitely in the South. The campsite appeared to be fairly basic, with a Hummer here, a truck there. Generators ran in the distance, and there was the faint, oily metallic bite of diesel exhaust in the air. No one went running by in formation shouting songs or screaming for blood. Instead, they went about in groups of two and three, talking as calmly as if they were at a corporate retreat.
There were salutes, though, which the captain kept up without even pausing when those who passed him said, ‘Good morning, sir.’
Strange, Dave thought. So unlike his world. But this was where his little brother had chosen to live. And it had killed him.
‘Ms Jamieson, Mr Hooper, Mr Martinelli,’ Heath said, ‘we still have no idea what happened out on the Longreach yesterday. I told you that already, and it was no lie. The only way we’re going to find out is with your cooperation. But whatever happened out there, I’m sure you’ll agree, does not come within the acceptable definition of normality.’
Vince Martinelli stepped sideways to avoid a mud puddle and then spat into it.
‘It doesn’t come within a thousand fucking miles of normality, Commander,’ Vince said. Dave was certain Vince took some pleasure in purposely getting the rank wrong, but he also noticed that Heath didn’t seem to care.
He made a note of that.
Vince, however, had recovered some of his balance and was warming up to half power with his rant. ‘Something out of
Hellraiser
comes up on the rig without us even knowing and gets to chowing down on half the crew. Dave here, yes, this man right here, opens a can of whup-ass even I didn’t know he had, makes out like fucking Thor on their asses, and next thing we got Agent Nick fucking Fury spooking us away to his top-secret HQ fuck knows where. Only thing we’re missing is the Helicarrier. Are we going to see one of those pop over the trees in a bit? ’Cause that’d be cool. What do you say, Admiral?’
‘I see,’ said Heath, stepping around another, larger puddle near another khaki-coloured frame tent, ‘that you’re quite an Avengers fan.’
‘My oldest girl,’ Vince said, easing off the throttle some. ‘She’s got all the comic books. Real paper ones too. Not some fucking app crap. But they’re just comic books. This is real. What are you? Really? You’re not navy or even Special Forces, I bet. You CIA or something like those
Men in Black
guys? But you know, for real?’
Captain Heath stopped just outside the door to the mess hall. Dave had to admit he was interested in the answer, too, and happy to let Vince have his head. Heath didn’t seem in the least bit fazed. If anything, he was amused.
‘I’d very much like to have a Helicarrier, Mr Martinelli; that would be outstanding, but I suspect Congress would balk at the cost. Besides, something about them strikes me as impracticable. But that doesn’t really apply to your question, so I’ll answer it as honestly as I can.’
He took a deep breath and adopted a measured, serious tone. ‘As I explained to both you and Ms Jamieson yesterday, I work for JSOC: the Joint Special Operations Command. There is no X-Files unit. Agent Fury does not work here. It’s like Secretary Rumsfeld once said: “You go to war with what you have.” And right now JSOC is what we have in theatre, and even then only by accident.’
‘Bullshit,’ Vince said.
‘Hollywood is half a continent away, Mr Martinelli,’ Captain Heath said. ‘Langley is half a continent in the other direction. The navy doesn’t do accidents on purpose. We try to prevent them or fix them. We don’t use them as excuses.’
‘Gulf of Tonkin notwithstanding,’ Vince said.
Dave scratched his head. ‘I think that was LBJ.’
‘Gentlemen,’ Heath said.
‘Well, you’ve used this one as an excuse to keep me from my kittens,’ protested J2.
‘Ma’am, if it please you, I will assign a lieutenant junior grade to go straight to your apartment and feed your kittens for as long as the United States Navy has need of your cooperation.’
‘Really?’ said J2. ‘I could get me a handsome lieutenant that easy?’
‘Easy, tiger,’ Dave said before addressing Heath. He couldn’t keep the scepticism out of his voice, but he made a point of getting the rank right. ‘Captain, my business is oil. Your business is war. You think we’re at war now?’
It was Vince who spoke first, who said what Dave wanted to say. ‘But those things weren’t soldiers. They were
. . .
monsters.’
Heath didn’t answer; instead he merely raised an eyebrow at Dave who shifted uncomfortably as he pushed away thoughts of legions and Hordes and the BattleMaster calling itself Urgon Htoth Ur Hunn. Vince had seen the thing, but he hadn’t talked about
any
of that stuff. But Vince hadn’t killed the thing, either. Vince hadn’t thrown a guy across the room with a flick of his wrist or punched another monster to jelly on the road last night. Vince didn’t have a head full of insane monster stories
. . .
‘Mr Hooper?’
Captain Heath interrupted Dave’s fugue state. Martinelli was looking at him as well.
‘You all right, buddy?’ Vince asked. ‘You sort of checked out on us there for a minute.’
‘Sorry,’ Dave mumbled. ‘Guess I’m still a bit out of it.’
‘Maybe some waffles,’ said J2, who seemed much happier at the idea that she might soon trap a handsome young naval lieutenant within the confines of her apartment.
Dave chanced a look at the navy man, getting nothing but a hard, searching stare in return. He agreed he was feeling pretty hungry and some waffles would be a good idea. ‘I should also check in on the others,’ he said to Vince. ‘They’re going to want to know that the company’s got their back.’
‘Does it?’ Vince asked pointedly.
Captain Heath turned and opened the door to the mess hall for them. ‘We have contacted both Baron’s and the nominated family members for each of your colleagues. Some have spoken to their families already. Baron’s is cooperating with our investigations and with operations on the platform. As of this morning all the crew who could be accounted for are listed as being on duty. You’re still drawing a pay cheque, Mr Martinelli. You, too, ma’am.’
‘Better not be coming out of my vacation pay,’ J2 said.
They stepped into the mess, a larger frame tent on a permanent foundation, similar to the one they had slept in overnight. The room was full of uniforms and a few civilians, though none from his rig. Everyone stopped talking and looked at them.
No, correct that
, Dave thought.
They were all staring at him.
He tried to ignore it and asked Captain Heath what he meant by ‘operations’. Heath answered directly, or at least appeared to.
‘FEMA has now declared a ten-nautical-mile exclusion zone around the platform, enforced by the coast guard and navy. The fires on the rig have been put out, and after-action teams are doing the SSE.’