Ross stepped off the most recent helicopter into early-morning sunlight in the middle of nowhere. There were several other ARC gunships here at the makeshift heliport. Ross guessed that Panorama Point, Nebraska, was both high enough and remote enough to be unappealing to the forces of Hell.
The pilot chucked his suitcase at his feet and pointed to a small, matte-black helicopter with no insignia. "That's your next ride. Enjoy."
"You sure?" All the lines of the aircraft were strange, and the tail rotor looked like a computer's cooling fan.
"Yeah. Stealth bird. Less noise than a hairdryer, invisible on radar, reflects ambient light to blend in with the sky, partially solar-powered. A real beauty."
The stealth aircraft's pilot waved Ross over. It wasn't until he felt the downdraft from the rotor that he even realized the engine was running.
The new pilot scanned his retina with a special tool that looked like a penlight and read the results from his tablet. "Analyst, White Diamond clearance. Friedmann, Ross … uh, I really don't know how to pronounce the middle name. Sorry."
"Dujom."
"That's one I've never heard before."
"It's Tibetan. My mom is from Lhasa."
"What's it mean?"
Ross grinned, halfway embarrassed. "'Destroyer of demons,' believe it or not."
The pilot raised his eyebrows. "Very appropriate, considering."
"Yeah, well, my last name means 'man of peace,' so I wouldn't get your hopes up."
"And what does 'Ross' mean?"
"Horse."
"Oh."
"I got quite the variety, didn't I?"
"Sure did. Neither of us has interesting names. I'm Lieutenant Garcia, this is Corporal Thompson."
"Nice to meet you. Nobody else would tell me their names. It was weird."
The pilot and gunner shared a look. "Yeah, this little sightseeing trip is kinda confidential. Anyway, shall we get a move on?"
"Ready when you are, Lieutenant."
"Affirmative. You can have the copilot's seat. He died in the Las Vegas explosion two days ago."
"Oh, man," Ross said as he buckled in and the gunner took his suitcase for storage. "Everybody's lost someone, but it's not getting any easier, is it?"
"Certainly isn't."
The door gunner, Thompson, fitted a helmet onto Ross's head but didn't unstrap the mic from its storage position. No need for it when the inside of the helicopter was as quiet as a car.
Despite the lack of rotor noise, no one spoke for an hour as they flew over the plateau into central Colorado. Ross had traveled all night to get here, and whenever a thin pocket of air had jolted his current helicopter, he'd opened his eyes to see fires everywhere, like cigarette lighters at a concert. Here in the early morning over the High Plains, however, there was a break from most of the destruction and ash. Reports said Gore Nests were still forming at this altitude, but much more slowly than sea-level towns and cities. Denver, by all accounts, was miraculously intact. Inside the walls, that is. The suburbs and outlying towns were almost as devastated as anywhere else on the planet.
From where he was peering out the slit in the armored door, Thompson said suddenly, "I took up smoking again. Figured what was there to worry about if the monsters were going to get me before cancer could."
"I can see that, yeah."
"Then I quit again three days ago."
"Why's that?"
He smiled pleasantly. "Stick with us and we'll show you."
"You're here for Hayden's mysterious supersoldier, right?" Garcia asked as he fiddled with some controls.
"Supersoldiers? I knew they were good, but I didn't realize it's because they're an experiment."
"They?"
"Uh, yeah, the merchant marines I'm here to observe. The paramilitary specialists who've been hitting the Gore Nests."
"Specialists … plural?" Garcia shared a look with the door gunner. The gunner had a knowing smile, almost smug.
"What?" Ross asked. "What is it?"
"There's no unit. There's just one."
"Wait, it's all one guy?"
"Yep," answered Garcia.
"You mean to tell me one man has been taking out all those Nests?"
"Yep."
"Seriously?"
"Yep."
"All on his own?"
"You got it."
"Holy crap."
"I would go as far as 'holy shit,' sir."
"Are we sure it isn't a strike team that operates individually and has identical armor? I mean, surely someone has been watching the support convoy and seen more than one specialist at a time."
"He doesn't have a support convoy. Or any kind of transport."
"How does he get from place to place, then?"
"He runs."
Ross repeated skeptically, "He runs."
"Yep."
"All the way from Canada."
"A science team who were studying the magnetic field at the North Pole said they saw him nineteen days ago."
"The middle of the polar ice cap?"
"Yep."
"He ran. From the Arctic. To Colorado. In nineteen days." Ross tried not to sound like they were kids telling him that the dog must have eaten all the cookies.
"Yep."
"If Philips put you up to this, then ha-ha good one very funny please tell me what's really going on."
"That's the truth, sir. There is some kind of black ops supersoldier running from Nest to Nest, blowing them up as he goes. The UAC doesn't know who he is, the ARC doesn't know who he is, the government doesn't know who he is. You get the idea. They're happy with what he's accomplished, obviously, but it's making them nervous that nobody knows who he's working for. That's where you come in. Hayden says you can connect the dots where nobody else even sees dots."
"Thanks. I think."
"Hayden says this guy is like Braille that's been halfway erased. It's making him and the President very nervous."
"You guys have direct contact with Dr. Hayden?"
"All ARC personnel with Diamond-level clearance talk to him regularly. Special Operations."
"Stealth helicopter. Spec Ops," Ross said quietly. He looked at both Garcia and Thompson. "I'm never going back to Switzerland, am I?"
Thompson grinned. "Hayden said you were quick on the uptake."
"Damn. I left my gaming laptop there. Anyway, let's get back to this supersoldier. You said he started at the North Pole three weeks ago? On foot? How fast is he over open terrain?"
"About 48 klicks."
"30 miles per hour?" Ross scoffed. "Even Usain Bolt never topped 28 miles per hour. And that was for only 100 meters."
"Yeah, well, this guy does almost 50 klicks for several hours at a time."
"What?"
"Yep."
"But that'd be a two-minute mile! No human being has ever run a mile faster than three minutes and thirty seconds! And definitely not while wearing armor and weapons."
"I don't know what to tell you except that all the Diamond-level operatives north of us say this guy can run a two-minute mile in full kit for several hours."
"Look, I don't mean to rain on your parade, but whoever told you that is making up stories. Probably to give people hope, but still. Nobody can sustain 30 miles per hour for more than a few seconds. I don't care what they augmented this guy with, it's impossible for a human body. Within ten minutes, the buildup of metabolic by-products would cause muscle cramping, nausea, vomiting, disrupted breathing, abnormal heart rhythms. And after several days without a recovery period, the cartilage in the knee and hip joints would start wearing away, and then -"
Garcia interrupted. "A man in green prototype armor with three distinctive claw marks across the abdomen was seen in Billings on Tuesday and Cheyenne on Wednesday. That would take a normal person a week on foot. No one has ever seen him with a vehicle. Yesterday we kept pace with him from Boulder to Denver, going almost 50 klicks the whole time. That's 35 miles. It took just over an hour, and he was stopping to destroy minor Gore Nests along the way."
Ross was speechless.
"We could get a radar speed gun out here if you don't believe me, but you're about to see it with your own eyes."
"I really will have to see it with my own eyes before I'll believe somebody ran 30 miles per hour for nineteen days without stopping to rest. Everybody has to sleep, especially after strenuous activity."
"So far nobody's seen any evidence that he eats, sleeps, uses a latrine, or even drinks water."
"Are we sure it's not an android?"
"That was a theory for a while, but then an operative saw him take off his helmet to clean the visor. The subject is human, all right. Scars and everything."
"We're here," Thompson interrupted.
There were no Gargoyles or Cacodemons at the Colorado Springs Super Gore Nest, but that was the only good news.
A city of almost one million people, frequently named one of the United States's best places to live. Completely devoured.
Instead of a beautiful little city set among the green trees and mountainous backdrop, there was a gigantic, pulsing tumor of Hellgrowth. It had teeth. Tentacles. Ooze. And hills upon hills of skinless flesh. Ross felt queasy just looking at it. It was one thing to view photos and video from the safety of Hayden's Swiss compound, and quite another to see with his own eyes.
That abomination down there was made of people. Hellgrowth started small when a demon or two built a little Gore Nest using the bodies of their victims. But as those weird hand-like structures were fed more and more humans, the growths expanded almost exponentially. They grew hearts, mouths, appendages. They formed cavities and pathways, became a home away from home for the nightmarish creatures that had invaded Earth. And this one had swallowed Colorado Springs, all the way up to the last few stories of the highest buildings.
"Shit," Thompson swore suddenly from the gunner's compartment. "They've got a live one."
"What?" Ross asked, twisting in his seat. "Where?"
Thompson handed Ross the binoculars. "Five o'clock, on the edge of the city. Just passing that gas station with the orange sign."
Garcia set the bird down on a hilltop for observation, and Thompson rolled the side door open. Ross searched hurriedly with the binoculars.
"Oh, God, I see him." Ross felt an immediate depression take hold of him.
The Hell Knight was dragging a man in Army fatigues by the claws it had sunk into his left shoulder. The human's body left dark streaks on the pavement as he was pulled along. If he'd been brought all the way from Peterson Space Force Base that way, most of his skin and muscle on the parts touching the ground had been worn away by now, and the contact with the pavement was scraping off more granulated tissue. 'He must be in terrible pain,' Ross thought as he saw the man's free hand twitch. 'How the hell is he still alive?'
"What do we do?" Ross asked them. "He's badly wounded, and all the way down there."
He glanced at Thompson and saw the gunner setting a silenced sniper rifle on a tripod. "That's not going to do much except make it angry," Ross cautioned, and returned the binoculars to the slow-moving demon. "Hell Knights have skull plates that are four inches thick. Denser than a grizzly bear's, and that -"
The wounded soldier's head snapped back, a neat little hole appearing in the center of his forehead. Ross dropped the binoculars in shock.
Thompson racked the bolt on the sniper rifle and caught the hot brass in his hand. "Nothing we can do except put him out of his misery, sir. Standing orders from the President."
Garcia took the binos from where they'd fallen into Ross's lap. "Sorry, Friedmann. I should have warned you."
Speechless, Ross watched Thompson take a small black notebook from his pocket, sigh heavily, and make a notation. Whatever he was keeping track of, the book was already halfway full.
They sat for another fifteen minutes in silence, watching the Hellgrowth's stolen flesh pulse obscenely. Ross tried very hard not to think about how many children had lived in Colorado Springs.
Something beeped on Garcia's console. The pilot straightened in his seat and flicked a lens down over his right eye. "Here he is," he said with notable excitement, handing the binoculars back to Ross. "North-northwest. The dust trail."
Ross found him easily. There was a running figure at the head of a rooster-tail of dust so long and high that it belonged in a cartoon. He wasn't following the road, but coming right down from Denver by the straightest possible route.
The chestplate, arms and legs were an olive green, with an orangish-bronze undersuit covering the joints and gaps between plates. Three claw marks across the abdomen. Dark green visor. Some kind of red light embedded in the left chest. A small turret in a slightly different green on the left shoulder. It was so futuristic it almost looked like a space suit.
And this marine sure did seem to be running faster than humanly possible.
"Come on," Thompson urged quietly. "Tear these bastards a new one."
"He's not slowing down," Ross observed.
"Nope," agreed Garcia.
"They've seen him."
"Yep."
The Gore Nest specialist vaulted a car like a gymnast on a pommel horse, took two more steps and leapt clear over the gaggle of Imps that had been building fireballs in their hands.
"Is that a jet pack?"
"Some kind of jump-jet booster, yeah. He doesn't zoom around like The Rocketeer, but it lets him get ten to twelve feet off the ground."
"We don't have that kind of tech."
"Nope."
The marine twisted in mid-air and landed facing the Imps before the turret shot a projectile into their center that flash-froze them like figures at a snow festival.
"What?" Ross exclaimed.
"Yep," Garcia said. He and Thompson were grinning down at the supersoldier with almost paternal pride.
He leapt again, drew back his arm, and superhero-landed in the middle of the Imps, shattering them like weak ice.
"Holy shit!"
"Yep."
"Baron. His three o'clock," noted Thompson.
"Only one," Garcia responded. "Easy."
"Easy?" Ross had seen and heard a lot of footage involving Barons of Hell, and not even the mega-mech pilots would have dared call one "easy."
"Three or four might slow him down a little, but one at a time is a cakewalk."
The supersoldier blasted the Baron with some kind of shoulder-mounted flamethrower, used a shotgun with a bizarre harpoon-thingy to bring him in close to its face, punched the damn thing so hard that some of its flesh came off, then wrenched its head to the side by its horn and drove a huge switchblade up from under its jaw through the top of its skull.
Ross could only make noises of disbelieving gibberish.
"Hayden's code name for him is The Slayer. Not sure how he came up with that, but it fits."
Ross got his voice back. "Maybe Hayden's a fan of that old TV show with the vampires?"
Thompson said, "This guy's no hot blonde chick, but beggars can't be choosers."
This "Slayer" produced a chainsaw seemingly out of thin air and sawed a Carcass in half, right down the middle. Except for movies, Ross had never seen anything like this. The soldier plowed his way through several more heavy demons and disappeared into the caverns of the Super Gore Nest. Ross wished with every fiber of his being that he had a video drone to send in after him.
It was a long forty minutes, but then the tallest building poking up out of the fleshy mass spewed long streamers of fire from every window opening and the entire Nest began caving in on itself. Thompson readied the sniper rifle.
Ross sat up straighter. "Is he still in there? I'm not sure even he could survive several hundred tons of flesh collapsing on him."
"He'll be almost out by now, or so the other Diamonds tell us," said Garcia. Thompson began picking off a few of the demons escaping the catastrophic failure of the Gore Nest, skipping the ones with too much armor or bone plating. "With the Heart destroyed, the military will fire-bomb this place tomorrow to speed up decomposition. They're concerned about what would happen if wildlife eat too much of this demonic meat."
Ross gulped, thinking about bull-horned bears and bipedal wolverines. "Let's hope that's overkill." Out of the southern end of the Gore Nest sprinted the supersoldier at full speed. "Wow, he really doesn't get tired, does he?"
"Not that the ARC has ever seen."
The "Slayer" -that dramatic title was going to take some getting used to- slowed a fraction and aimed a scoped Heavy Assault Rifle straight at them.
"Can he see us? I thought this thing was stealthed."
"It is. I think he's got some kind of tech in his visor that cuts through all that. Plus we've got the side door open a bit, and the light reflection doesn't cover open air."
"Is he going to shoot us?" Ross asked with a hint of panic.
"Nah. He locked onto us with a rocket launcher yesterday as we flew overhead, but he didn't fire. I don't think he's interested in taking down things that aren't demonic."
Sure enough, the Assault Rifle vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.
"Where is he stowing his weapons? I don't see a rocket launcher. Or the UAC Heavy Assault Rifle. Or the chainsaw, for that matter." Only the harpoon-shotgun was visible on his back.
"Nobody knows. One minute they're there, and the next they're gone. They always come back when he needs 'em, though."
"Where does he get all the ammo for those different weapons? That belt can't be holding very much."
Thompson was grinning. "No idea. Isn't it great?"
Ross was having trouble maintaining his skepticism. "Got to be something to do with that strange armor," he wondered to himself.
"Prep for liftoff," Garcia said. "We've got orders to keep him in sight, sir."
"No arguments here. I can't resist a good mystery."
They kept a few hundred yards' distance from the running figure.
"50 klicks," Garcia announced, bringing Ross's attention to the speed gauge.
"Damn, he really does move that fast." It was incredible. It didn't even look like it was particularly demanding of his energy reserves, either.
Ross made a decision.
"Let's pick him up."
"What?" The pilot sounded just as incredulous as Ross had been a few minutes ago.
"Let's offer to take him to his next target. See what he says. We might at least find out if he speaks English. That'd narrow down which countries he might come from. Have you got a bullhorn on this thing?"
"External speakers, yeah. Use this handset right here."
Thompson helped Ross turn it on, and Garcia drew a little farther ahead of the marine on his right side.
"Uh, excuse me, sir. Excuse me." Ross's soft tenor was amplified much more than he'd expected.
The soldier turned his head slightly but didn't slacken his pace.
"Pardon me. I hate to interrupt, but could we give you a lift?"
The Gore Nest specialist stopped so suddenly that he sent up puffs of dust. Garcia brought the bird down to hover a few feet off the ground.
"Most people seem to think you're going to NORAD next, but I think it's Pueblo. Am I right?"
He turned to fully face the helicopter. Ross gestured Garcia to set down. They were less than a hundred yards from him.
"It's a long way from Pueblo to Santa Fe. If you're looking to hit the Super Gore Nest in Santa Fe after you're done in Pueblo, we can get you there much faster."
The armored head cocked slightly to the right.
"You can make it to Pueblo in about 90 minutes, give or take, but after that it'll be almost nine hours to Santa Fe. You're fast, but you're not as fast as a helicopter. Especially not a state-of-the-art stealth aircraft that can go … how fast is this bird, Lieutenant?"
"260 miles per hour."
"260 miles per hour," Ross repeated into the mic. "We could have you at Pueblo in six minutes instead of an hour and a half, and then Santa Fe in one hour instead of nine."
The marine simply stood there.
"Look, we just want to help. It's in everybody's best interest that these Gore Nests don't get any bigger. I'm sure you know this already, but at critical mass they open a permanent Hell Gate and then demons have unrestricted access to that area."
He didn't leave, but he wasn't approaching them, either.
"If it makes a difference, we're from the Armored Response Coalition, not the military or UAC."
The Slayer abruptly began striding toward the helicopter. Ross had the spine-tingling sensation of standing on railroad tracks with a freight train bearing down on him.
Ross put the handset back on its cradle as the supersoldier drew closer. "Shit, he's big. Is he even going to fit in one of these harnesses?"
"Not with all that armor and weaponry on. He'll probably stand."
Ross found himself holding his breath as The Slayer stepped into the gunner compartment. His weight made the aircraft rock a little on its skids.
The marine said nothing.
"So …" Ross began, suddenly feeling vulnerable without the bullhorn's amplification. "Pueblo?"
The supersoldier nodded and grabbed one of the ceiling loops. The gunner edged around him to slide the door shut. Garcia lifted off immediately.
Thompson, the special operations sniper who'd euthanized a man without even blinking, said in a schoolboy voice, "Can I just say what an honor it is, personally, to, uh, meet you?"
"Same," Garcia added.
The Slayer did not react. His visor was such a dark green that his features were barely distinguishable.
"Are you black ops?" Ross asked. Might as well get started investigating.
There was no reaction.
"Special Forces?"
Nothing.
"Military?"
The silence became awkward.
"Can we … get you anything?" Ross finally asked. "Water, rations, batteries?"
He shook his head. Not much of a talker, then.
"Ammo?" Thompson offered.
This time the marine did look at him.
Encouraged, Thompson said, "We've got belts of 50 cal for the GAU-21, subsonic 308 for the Barrett, and 12 gauge for my personal Mossberg."
With his free hand the supersoldier pointed to the ammo boxes with the 12 gauge rounds.
Thompson nodded vigorously as he gripped his own ceiling strap. "Absolutely. Help yourself."
Garcia must have been red-lining the engine, because they were at Pueblo in five minutes. The Gore Nest here was significantly smaller than Colorado Springs, but still bustling with demonic activity.
The Slayer thumped the ceiling twice with his right fist, and Garcia began to set down obligingly. The marine slid open the door when they were still 20 meters in the air and simply jumped out.
"Whoa!" Ross shouted. "What the hell? Did he just jump down six stories?"
Thompson held on to The Slayer's abandoned strap and leaned out. "Looks like. He's fine, though. Off and running."
Neither Ross nor Garcia had anything to add.
They had only to wait ten minutes before the center mound of the half-built Super Gore Nest blew skyward in a grotesque fountain of blood and flesh.
The Slayer sprinted back to the aircraft and grabbed the first ammo box of 12 gauge rounds. He stuffed them into a belt pouch two at a time, far more than should have been able to fit in there. It was like Mary Poppins's bag from that old movie.
"I should be taking notes," Ross said softly to himself.
After shoving three ammo boxes of shells into his impossible belt, the marine slid the door shut, grabbed the strap again and thumped the ceiling twice with his fist.
"Uh, yes, sir," Garcia said. "I guess this is what we're doing now." He gave Ross a wide-eyed look that said he wasn't at all upset about this turn of events.
"Santa Fe, please, Lieutenant," Ross asked.
It seemed like Thompson wanted to stand the whole hour like The Slayer, but eventually he had to sit down and strap in. The supersoldier remained upright. A massive man in equally massive armor, he made Ross, and probably the ARC soldiers as well, feel a bit underdressed in their simple helmets and bulletproof vests. The gunner compartment had seemed big when Ross had originally boarded, but this marine took up the space of two people and had an even bigger presence, making the area seem crowded even with only him, Thompson and the 50 cal machine gun in it.
Ross was fairly bursting with questions, but somehow he sensed now was not the time. Instead he was making a mental list of things he wanted answers for -where were all the explosives, ammo, and other weapons he seemed to have; how the hell did he run 30 miles per hour without breaking down like a normal human; where did he get that harpoon shotgun- but first and foremost 'Who is he working for?'
His bulky suit was extremely detailed and futuristic, but looked almost rusted in some places. It couldn't be very old, though: Ross had access to most of the classified information on the planet, and no one had anything like this. The suit had no country insignia, just a very faint white D22 on the front of his right shoulder. An organization that used the Roman alphabet and Arabic numerals, like most of the Western Hemisphere. Did that mean twenty-two suits, or twenty-two supersoldiers? Because if there were two dozen Slayers running around out there, surely more people than the ARC and UAC would have noticed. And humanity would be faring better in this nightmare of a war.
The Santa Fe Super Gore Nest was smaller than Pueblo. It took him three whole minutes.
"Holy shit," Ross whispered to himself. Garcia and Thompson nodded silently.
When the supersoldier stepped back into the helicopter, Ross asked, "Albuquerque?"
He nodded yes.
Albuquerque took considerably longer than Colorado Springs. Ross was beginning to worry. Then the monstrous eye-claw-mouth structure in the middle came apart like it had been unzipped by an invisible hand, and the rest of the Gore Nest followed suit. He breathed a sigh of relief. It was startling how quickly Ross had gotten used to witnessing a victory. 'Hope is dangerous,' he reminded himself. 'It flips too quickly into despair.'
"Off to White Sands Missile Range?" Ross asked brightly when the marine hopped back into the helicopter.
Surprisingly, The Slayer shook his head. A definite "no."
"Uh … NORAD?"
No again.
"Phoenix?" He was really curious now. Why was his theory falling apart?
No.
"Stop playing twenty questions and just show him a map, Friedmann."
"Oh, right." Thompson handed Ross a laminated map of the western United States, and he unfolded it for The Slayer's inspection.
The nameless supersoldier looked it over, and pointed.
"Back to Denver? Why?"
The Slayer said nothing, just staring Ross down through that murky green visor.
"Denver it is. Garcia, take us up, please."
This time he thumped the ceiling when they were still over Aurora, part of the Denver metro area but still outside the Fortress walls.
"Um, all right, then," Garcia acknowledged, setting the aircraft down in what turned out to be Aurora Hills Golf Course.
The Slayer hopped out and casually shot down a few Prowlers who loped at him out of the treeline. Then he turned and pointed his shotgun at the helicopter.
"W-what's he doing?" Garcia asked. Somehow Ross suspected he was more concerned about his billion-dollar stealth vehicle than he was for himself.
"Uh," Ross guessed, "I'd say that means, 'Take off and don't follow me.'"
Thompson saluted The Slayer in acknowledgement and rolled the door shut. Garcia lifted off with haste.
"So what do you think, Mr. Friedmann?"
"Call me Ross. I think you're right and he's a one-off. Not part of a group. Although I do want to know why his armor has D22 written on the shoulder. It's extremely advanced technology. Dr. Hayden knows everyone worth knowing in the field of experimental armor and weaponry, so if he doesn't know …"
"Yeah?"
"I've got some ideas, but … I'm pretty sure Hayden will want this classified at the highest level. Sorry, guys."
"No problem, Ross. Just try to get us assigned as your crew if they send you out again."
"You got it." Ross looked over his shoulder. "You're awfully quiet back there, Thompson. Something wrong?"
"Just thinking," Thompson said quietly. He was looking down at an unopened pack of cigarettes in his hand. "If humanity has even just this one supersoldier … maybe we're not all going to die."
He slid the side door open a crack and tossed the cigarettes into the void.
