Plague Read online

  Kel and Dada stiffened.

  “Men down?” Adnan asked, shocked. “Gray? What—”

  “It’s the twins,” Fitz interrupted. “They’re gone.”

  The room went silent, the three remaining men at HQ were stunned at the loss of Saami and Pandu.

  Adnan pushed the receiver again, speaking. “What happened?”

  “Hell if I know,” the Aussie answered. “Jan and I arrived at the site and eventually met up with the others. As we went to engage the target—the poachers—something…strange…happened.”

  “Happened?” Adnan asked.

  “Yeah, mate. It was frickin’ weird. We found them down in a hole. Dead. Only not.”

  “Wait,” Adnan said, “I’m confused.”

  “You and me both,” Fitz said, continuing. “We found a burial dating back to World War Two. It had bodies in it too, both man and animal.”

  “Men?” Adnan asked. “What men?”

  “Nazi assholes,” Fitz replied. “SS to be exact.”

  Adnan was shocked and still unsure of what to make of everything. He remembered studying about the Nazis in school at the University of Dar es Salaam, in eastern Tanzania. He couldn’t recall ever reading about them coming here.

  He was getting a degree in software engineering with a minor in history when he met a spunky Aussie named CJ Reed. She was there to lecture students majoring in the various environmentalist programs. After her visit, they stayed in touch, and she offered Adnan a job six months later when he graduated. Now, he was the I.T. guru for the most state-of-the-art anti-poaching outfit in the world. He was also the youngest on staff by quite a bit.

  Not exactly what I had in mind, Adnan thought at the time. But a job is a job.

  But now, he loved it. The Serengeti Defense Force actually made a difference in his beloved homeland and he wanted to do what he could to help.

  “What killed them?” Adnan asked, snapping back into the now. “What killed Saami and Pandu?”

  Fitz breathed in heavily again before answering. “It was the poachers. They tore them apart.”

  “The poachers?” Kel asked, finally speaking up since he and Dada were put in their places.

  “No, mate,” Fitz said. “It was the bloody poachers. Was. They aren’t poachers anymore.”

  The airways went silent for a tick, only light static could be heard.

  Adnan swallowed hard, unsure of what to ask next. But after another few seconds, he asked the only question that made sense. “What are they now?”

  The three men could actually hear Fitz laugh, but it was short lived. “Monsters, mate. They’re damned monsters.”

  Fitz’s earpiece crackled to life, almost spilling him down the rest of the entrance shaft. It would have been a nasty fall, having another twenty or so feet to climb. Mo’s voice came to life in his ear, but it was hard to hear him through the interference the metal shaft was creating.

  “Say again, Mo,” Fitz said, activating his comms system.

  “They…here…hurry,” Mo replied, the words came out choppy, cutting in and out.

  Fitz’s eyes went wide as he looked up and saw a shadow slowly appear over the opening above his head. Quickly, he slid the rest of the way down, grasping the sides of the ladder and dropping. He landed hard, but in control.

  He turned and fled, down a narrow, concrete corridor, popping out a few seconds later in front of a metal door with a sign written in German. Waschraum? He looked right and then left and saw them. Two fresh bodies lying on the ground.

  “Ah, shit,” he said, recognizing what was left of Pandu. Another booted foot could be seen farther into the darkness, but he had no qualms on who it belonged to. Saami…

  “Damn. Damn. Damn.”

  A clang of metal from behind, started his feet moving. He went right, not knowing what lay ahead of him down this hallway. He’d have to wing it and figure out where the hell he was going while trying not to die.

  17

  “What do you think is down here?” CJ asked, following her brother closely. She stepped up next to him and stopped, seeing another sign in German.

  “It says, Holding,” Jan said, pointing to the right. “And Labs.” He then gestured to the left. There were arrows as well, indicating which way was which on the metal sign. It was bolted to the wall directly across from the bottom of the staircase.

  Silently, Logan approached the T-junction and stepped right, towards the ‘Holding’ section of the underground facility. He didn’t like the sound of either of the options, but he also understood that they didn’t really have a choice. One way or another they would search both.

  “I’d assume this was where they held their captives,” Logan said, answering CJ’s question. “Most likely animals and soldiers, but I wouldn’t put it past them to test on locals either.”

  “The Nazi’s didn’t discriminate against their subjects,” Jan added. “Anyone who opposed them and was caught would eventually make it down here if Mengele ordered it.”

  Logan knew Jan was right. The Nazi’s—especially the SS—were bad news. They held every other race at an almost inhuman standard, like a family dog, or livestock. He remembered some of the horrifying things that he had learned in school and also what Jan had recently told him.

  Despicable, Logan thought. People were people. You don’t have to like everyone, but we’re still the same. Down to the very last strand of DNA.

  DNA.

  He stopped and turned to Jan, thinking about the Wohn Tod logo they’d seen upstairs. The swastika and the helix. “What was their endgame?”

  Jan abruptly stopped, almost running into Logan, at the suddenness of the question. “What?”

  Logan continued. “The Wohn Tod—what was their endgame—their mission?”

  As Jan contemplated his answer, CJ called from down the hall, another twenty feet further.

  “Guys,” she said, standing in front of what looked like a set of metal bars, “you need to see this.”

  Logan and Jan both looked towards her and continued over, finishing their discussion.

  “The Wohn Tod were obviously looking for some sort of super-serum or elixir,” Jan deduced, walking in stride with Logan. “From what Mengele’s letter said, it looked like they were close too, but they apparently hit a snag. DNA is a fickle…thing…”

  He trailed off when he stepped up next to CJ, having the air sucked out of his lungs. They were in front of a set of bars, belonging to a jail cell. A large jail cell.

  But it wasn’t the cell itself that caused the three SDF members to squirm under their uniforms. It was the body inside the makeshift prison. The dead body, long since departed from life, was huge and at one time or another…human.

  “Oh, God…” CJ remarked, the sight finally sinking in. For a moment, she’d just be staring at it, but now her brain finally caught up, fully processing the sight.

  The mostly decomposed body was seated, strapped down in a chair that resembled one used for examinations in a dentist’s office. Its wrists, all four of them, were lashed to the armrests, as were its two legs. Due to its severe decomposition, it was hard to determine its girth, most of the muscle and other tissues having been gone for some time. But the bone structure was enough. It was truly a monster in every sense of the word.

  Its mouth lay agape, revealing teeth like a lion’s, except for the fangs, they looked almost serpentine. They were small for the creature’s overall physical size, but no doubt they were sharp and just as deadly.

  The eyes were something else altogether too. First off, there were four of them, all situated across its forehead. He could picture this thing looking like Data from Star Trek at a distance. Especially if they glowed red like the Nach did here. If they did, their night vision capabilities would have been subpar, or so Logan thought. Unless the extra set of eyes made up for it...

  “It must have been left behind when the Nazi’s abandoned the facility,” Jan said, staring at the creature in front of them. “It was most l
ikely alive too.”

  “What makes you say that?” CJ asked, swallowing down her vomit. Her skin had already started to darken some, having turned a ghostly white at first seeing the behemoth.

  “If it wasn’t,” Jan replied, “why would they have secured it like a prisoner?”

  Logan, unfortunately, agreed with Jan, but it didn’t make him feel better about anything. Either way, there was a dead monster fifteen feet in front of them, seated in a giant recliner.

  Giant.

  “How big do think it was?” Logan asked, stepping closer to the barred door. “If it was standing I mean—how tall?

  Jan and CJ joined him, CJ grabbing the bars with both hands.

  “Well,” Jan started, “as of right now it’s eye level with us and its legs are fully bent at a ninety-degree angle. So, if you estimate the length of the legs and add that to our own heights you’d get—”

  “Nine feet,” CJ said, finishing off Jan’s math. “Maybe ten.”

  “Bollocks,” Logan said softly in disbelief. “Could you imagine what this thing looked like alive?”

  Both Jan and CJ shook their heads no. Logan wasn’t sure if they couldn’t imagine it or if they didn’t want to.

  “Probably had the girth and musculature of an oversized Silverback,” CJ stated, breathing out heavily, reverting back into ‘professional Zoologist’ for only a second.

  Logan could take it a step further with his child-like imagination. While CJ’s description was apt, she lacked the boyhood thought process he had. Then again… Logan was basing everything he knew about things that he’d seen on television or in a movie. This was the real thing, not the imagination of some over-caffeinated fiction author.

  The creature before them was, indeed, huge, but the skeletal structure was all wrong to look like a gorilla. Its arms, while large, were spindly for its overall size. Like a spider’s. It's neck and midsection were elongated a little too, giving it a classic alien profile. Imagine a four-armed, ten-foot tall NBA player with above average muscle tone and a ravenous appetite and you’d have what Logan pictured in his mind’s eye.

  “You see the hands?” Jan asked, pointing through the bars. “The fingernails mostly.”

  “Dammit,” Logan said, realizing where he’d seen them before. “They’re the same.” The talons were definitely similar to ones he’d seen before, but these hands only held three digits—a thumb and two fingers. The other’s held five, like a human’s.

  They were human.

  Jan nodded in silence, but CJ just turned facing the two men, not understanding. “The same…as what?”

  Logan looked down at his shorter sister and swallowed. “Saami and Pandu—”

  “And the poachers,” Jan added.

  “And the poachers,” Logan agreed. “They all had similar black claws, only they weren’t this big.”

  18

  He hunted on all fours, a predator stalking his latest prey. The last female, the largest of the group, sat not twenty feet away, nursing what he knew to be a mortal wound. Soon she would succumb to death, but it would be slow and agonizing…for them both.

  Not quick enough, he thought, snapping at the suddenness of the voice speaking into his ear. After the last transformation, he no longer remembered who he was before the initial change, and therefore didn’t understand the simple concept of inner thought. His mind was becoming one hundred percent primal—wholly animalistic—with every new adaptation.

  His name even escaped him now as did the majority of his memory of his past life. The only thing that filled his primitive mind was images of demons and devils. It’s like he had seen them in real life before, but not real. It’s like they were projected onto a white sheet inside a large room.

  Devil, he thought as the horrific images flashed through his mind. Shetani… The word came and went as quick as the breeze did.

  Shetani, he thought again, concentrating on the word, turning back to his dying quarry. Devil...

  The spotted animal no longer laughed into the night sky. She only moaned, licking her wounds, dying. But he knew better. She still had some fight left in her.

  The jet-black demon smoothly and slowly approached the matriarch hyena. He no longer needed to implore his expert stealth. This one wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  Shetani now stood eight feet tall and his sizable frame blotted out the moonlight when it showed itself. The shadows made him look like the cloaked Grim Reaper himself—and that’s what he was. Death in the flesh.

  Stretching his arms out wide, Shetani attempted to intimidate his foe but glanced down to his right wrist. He saw the puncture wounds from the injury sustained by the powerful jaws of the female. She had even punctured a few of the luminous veins just under his thick armor-like skin.

  Normally, she would have been able to crush bones, delivering a bite at over a thousand pounds per square inch—one of the strongest in the animal kingdom—but Shetani’s limbs were thicker and tougher. They could stand up to the crushing force of her premolars with very little effort.

  Why he knew such things about the mammal eluded him, but Shetani enjoyed the facts nonetheless. He would use such information to his advantage.

  Circling the bleeding animal, he sized her up for one last attack, but stopped and roared in pain as something in his back pulsed with pain. Shetani glanced over his shoulder and saw something solid protruding from where the shoulder blade should have been. Now, instead of the flat, plate-like bone, there was a knob…

  The bone continued to grow, pushing and stretching the skin further until finally piercing it with a quick gout of blood. But, just as quickly as the wound started to bleed, it stopped, the large laceration cauterizing around the still advancing bone. It continued to slip out of Shetani’s skin, advancing higher.

  Once it and its twin, which was currently following suit on the other side, grew to five feet in length, they cracked in unison and bent. Thick sinews and what could only be musculature then formed, wrapping themselves around the bare-bones of the new appendages.

  He roared in agony as the searing hot pain continued, causing its entire body to quake. They grew faster now, draining him of strength and energy. He could even feel himself losing weight and mass from other body parts in order to feed the new growth.

  But, Shetani knew it was a good change—a needed change. So far, the other changes had been for the better… Why not these? They had made him into a supreme killer.

  The tips of the five-foot-long bones broke, splintering. The portion between the two sections, thickened. Then, each bone formed what looked like another knob on their ends. Tendon and muscle grew next, covering the freshly formed joint. As the second half grew, it curved away, becoming...

  Shetani smiled when he realized what they were, but as the growth slowed, he realized he wouldn’t be using them for their higher function just yet. He would need to feed again and regain his strength.

  Convenient…

  Shetani tried to move the newest additions to his body, but all that did was cause him more pain. They weren’t ready. So, like his brain’s involuntary command over his arms, he subconsciously told them to flex and rest against his back. They listened, operating like they were part of his original body.

  As the discomfort subsided, he looked up to the wounded animal. He bent his large legs—and just as he was about to pounce—the hyena chirped, but this time it wasn’t in anger or fright…it was in…recognition. Then, something strange happened. The one-hundred-fifty-pound female, the largest in the region, tilted her head as if in thought, her eyes slowly turning a deep shade of red. Seconds later, they grew brighter, glowing in the darkened sky.

  The hyena stood, completely forgetting about the large bite marks across her left flank. They had stopped bleeding upon her eyes changing color. She had been bitten when she locked onto her attacker’s arm.

  Instead of engaging the much larger adversary, she turned and fled, cackling the whole way until she finally disappeared deeper into the S
erengeti.

  Shetani just stood there dumbfounded, wondering why she didn’t try to attack him again. Confused, but satisfied with the latest events, he stretched his larger, better form, and howled into the night. This wasn’t a cry of agony, though. This was a shout of triumph.

  He could have pursued the hyena, but something in the back of his mind told him to wait for a fresher meal. Something about the lack of blood the female offered him was a turnoff. It wasn’t appetizing to him in the least.

  So he would wait.

  He looked straight up, his hypersensitive hearing had picked up something back in the direction he came, miles back. The droning of machinery maybe, but in the air. In the air?

  He shook his head violently at the irritation, like something was cupped over his ears, but then uncupping itself rapidly. A whup, whup, whup sound.

  Shetani reached his massive hands and covered his—they were gone! He no longer had ears. Then again, he couldn’t remember if he ever did. He had no recollection of having them. All that was there now was a set of small holes, one on each side of his head.

  He shook his head at the annoyance again. It would need to be dealt with.

  Turning, Shetani backseated his insatiable hunger for the time being and decided to investigate this new threat.

  19

  Fitz ran as fast as he could down the hall of the bunker. Well, as fast as he could without making a racket. He knew his footfalls would sound like gunshots in the quiet, empty space to those pursuing him.

  If they hear me, then I can guarantee gunshots, he thought as he passed a door on his right labeled in German.

  He skidded to a halt and backtracked, opening the door, quickly peering inside. There were rows and rows of what looked like canned goods and rotted out boxes.

  A Nazi storehouse.