Thanks for sticking with me through "Mark of the Beast"! Horse of a chapter ahead, and just a warning: the chapter here gets pretty graphically violent. Not for the faint at heart!


MARK OF THE BEAST VII: INFERNO

Three days never seemed to stretch for so long. At the first light of dawn, we ate, meditated, and packed up camp before wandering ten or twelve hours through the woods until twilight. As time passed, we left the marshy swamps and steep rock faces behind, and began crossing roads and highways in the still of the night, when headlights wouldn't find us. The first day, we crossed the Batten Kill River, which Donnie said was where the Hudson started. It was mega deep, thinking how the pine trees loomed like skyscrapers along its banks, and what the whole river would look like if the last four hundred years of human history hadn't happened. The critters' philosophy was starting to rub off on all of us, even Don.

Steele let me fool around with his bow when he wasn't using it, and after bagging my first rabbit, I was hooked on hunting. Archery had never been more than an occasional lesson under Master Splinter, but the bobcat dude told me I had a natural gift for it. After we crossed over into New York, the forest started to thin in places into pastures and farmland, and late at night, we slinked off from the rest of the pack and nabbed a whole Angus bull from almost a hundred yards away. Steele and I could barely drag it out of the pasture before other bulls came charging after us. After living for two decades off dumpster-diving and delivery pizza, I was amazed how much food the land had to offer to anyone with eyes and an arrow.

As we hauled our kill up to their hidden cabin by Lake George, we heard repeated thwacking and a thundering crash resounding through the woods. Just beyond the edge of the cabin's yard, Russet had felled a great pine tree, and was hacking it lengthwise into quarters, while Don used a funnel to harvest the resin from the center of the trunk into a tin cup.

"Your brother's staff got some nasty rot while you were swimmin'." He drawled, etching a fixed length into the trunk before splitting it on the mark. "So his new one's gonna be slathered with pine pitch, just in case you plan on spendin' another day underwater."

"We still gotta cross Lake George, right?" I gestured downhill to the great, snakelike sea completely wrapped by dense forest. "Hopefully it doesn't take all day. We don't exactly have gills."

"There's a canoe we keep stashed down by the shore." Russet panted between chops, wiping the sweat from his brow. "Assumin' rustlers didn't get to it. Then it's only fifteen miles or so til Pharaoh Lake."

The hideaway we'd be spending the night at was the first place the two critters had lived after escaping the horror movie that they'd made the Pharaoh Lake compound sound like. For a week or two every year, they came back to the closest thing they had to a permanent home, and they spoke of it like it was the Sistine Chapel, not an eight-by-ten foot log hut with an outhouse. The inside was dusty with disuse, but it still felt almost like it was human-owned. The waist-high bookshelf was packed with worn spines reading titles like 'Tao Te Ching' and 'Unto This Last', half-melted candles were littered on tables and counters around the house, and an antique radio on the mantle. Compared to their wigwam, at least, it felt like a hotel.

From the moment Raph and I sat on the front porch, and he showed me the tattoo he'd been hiding under the bandages on his ankle, I'd began to accept we'd be rolling with Russ and Steele for a while. It dawned on me by our third day with them that I couldn't think of any way to return to our old life. With the crackling AM radio describing how the government and Foot were patrolling around the city's sewers with assault rifles and attack dogs, and hysteria about aliens and mutants spreading like wildfire across the planet, it felt like the woods were the only place we were safe.

Over the couple days we posted up at the cabin, the four of us and the critters became fast friends. Leo took it upon himself to train Russ and Steele in some rudimentary ninjitsu, and more than once I witnessed the moose throwing his axe around like a hefty naginata to spar with Leo, while Raph directed Steele through the motions of open-claw boxing. Having found oil and spices in the neglected cabinet in the kitchen-corner of the cabin, I made us a banquet of fresh steak and cattails the night before we left, the plants being the lake's version of asparagus or corn cobs. The romantic rush of living off the land and self-sustaining like real beasts distracted me from ever missing my cell phone or video games.

After Leo and Don went to bed, Raph and the critters and I enjoyed a long smoke and a strong drink on the porch, hearing the tales of their travels.

"Woods keep gettin' thinner and thinner 'round here. Just wait 'til we're in the Great Smoky Mountains." Two streams of smoke rocketed out of Russ' snout. "Steamin' green forests as far as the eye can see."

"Yeah, but the hillbilly types down there ain't content with road-kill for dinner." Steele pointed a claw to the curve of his quadriceps, where one of his tattoos covered up a toughened scar. "Four years back, a twelve-gauge slug nicked me when we were trekkin' through West Virginia."

"Had to carry him on my back all the way to Georgia." Russ chuckled. "That winter's the only time I've ever hunted for meat."

"Not true." The bobcat grabbed his crotch with a lewd grin. "You've been hunting for meat practically every other day."

After a long, restful night's sleep, we packed up countless knapsacks with heavy furs, grains, and other winter supplies we'd need in Georgia. Down at the shore, a tired-looking canoe was lashed to a stump by the water, and by morning light we crossed Lake George, water nearly up to the rim from the weight of all our gear. Off into the untamed wild we trekked, darting across only two roads over nearly fifteen miles. Pharaoh Lake was buried deep in what most people knew as a state park, mainly underground and cast far from any roads or trails. The final leg of our journey to 'the complex' held the hilliest terrain, bringing us straight over rocky hills and down through streams and bogs until, nestled deep into a cleft of the mountain by the namesake lake, we could make out a menacing fence topped with rusted barbed wire.

The critters led us to a hole in the fence, where the chain links had corroded away, and we dipped through, passing the weathered sign reading 'Pharaoh Lake Joint Military Compound – No Trespassers'. Surrounded by only the sounds of birds in the trees and the crunching of leaves underfoot, the whole scene felt ominous. Everything within the fence seemed eerily still, as the forest took back the land from humans and sent trees sprouting up through guard towers. Russ had been right; it gave me the impression we were walking through a graveyard.

Wordlessly, we stopped as Steele sniffed and curled his nose up.

"Smoke." He muttered, and our eyes shot to the treetops, where sure enough, a dark haze was creeping into visibility against the white backdrop of sunlit clouds.

"Ain't had rain in weeks." Russ gasped. Leaving a cloud of dust in our wake, we started sprinting downhill toward the lake, but before we could cross back through the fence, the shrubs around our path rustled to change shape in a semicircle. Shaking the moss and branches off their granite-like armor, a couple dozen soldiers gripped their rifles and began to stomp in our direction like animated stone statues. We skidded to a stop and turned on our heels, in a mad chase uphill as fast as our backpack-saddled bodies could carry us. Where the mountain started to flatten into a tabletop, we found a sun-bleached hangar overlooking a crackled runway, its doors barely secured by rusty chains and padlocks. While Russet hastily chinked away at the loops of chains with his axe, I turned to see a ring of blazing trees spitting smoke into the sky, stretching around the mountain as far as the eye could see. Only a few hundred yards away, fire closed in from both sides around the path we'd followed like heavy curtains splashing shut.

"They're trying to smoke us out!" I bellowed out to the others.

"Cooking their own soldiers?" Raph snarled. "That's low, even for them."

"Unless…" Don muttered, and from the path of fire that crept closer, the soldiers marched through, unscathed by the inferno around them as they moved at the same trudging pace. "The stone! Karai finished her research on Winters and his generals!" The moose wedged his body under the hangar door and heaved upward with his back, audibly snapping the locks on the inside until it burst fully open.

We darted inside, and Steele slammed the door shut behind us as Russet wedged his axe handle through the tracks of the door to secure it. Ahead, the hangar's lone inhabitant was a slate-grey behemoth of a jet, two cannon-like engines perched on its tailfin looking down at us like dark, menacing eyes.

"An A-10 Warthog…" Don ran to its nose, caressing the cool metal. "With a thirty millimeter anti-tank gun."

"Happen to know how to turn it on?" Russ asked, eying the drums of jet fuel in the back of the building. "'Cause I think I got a plan."

In a minute, my brothers and I were perched high up in the scaffolding, Don toward the center and the rest of us right over the door. With the force of a car wreck, the first rocky punch landed on the hangar door. Russ looked back from the cockpit, to see Don flash him a thumbs-up, before reaching around the bobcat on his lap to flick on all the switches, and attempting to latch the safety belt of the plane's lone seat around the both of them. I clapped my hands over my ears as the engines came alive with a roar. The door was bulging with dents, and the force of the engines started to whip air ferociously past our heads. When the first crack of red light penetrated the door, Steele squeezed the trigger, and the gun began to spin in the plane's nose.

Just as two stone hands burst through the crack and ripped it apart with superhuman strength, bursts of light and smoke erupted from each of its seven barrels in quick succession. The whirring hum of bullets firing made my teeth rattle, and I looked on as the first soldier's armor chipped and shattered with each bullet's impact. It revealed his flesh underneath, which was nearly vaporized as the armor-piercing rounds ripped through him and sent him stumbling backward while his comrades opened fire on the plane. Jostling the yoke from side to side, Russ was able to swing the nose of the plane back and forth as it crept toward the door. Soldier after soldier fell, even before the wings cleared the hangar door and herded those still standing down the runway. As smoke began to sputter from the bullet-riddled engines, Russ flicked one final switch on the control panel, and the two critters soared as the ejector seat propelled them fleetly out of view.

Six of the rock-soldiers marched into the hangar cautiously from the sides, and Leo screamed fiercely as he leapt from the scaffolding, drawing his swords like an eagle. The heel of his foot landed on a soldier's outstretched wrist, knocking the gun to the floor as Leo landed gracefully. As the other five turned in their sluggish way to fight off Leo, Raph and I jumped down in attack mode. Knowing I wasn't strong enough to crack a rock, my only goal was to get the weapons out of their hands. Wrapping my nunchaku around the statue dude's wrist and forcing it to the ground, I pinned between his glove and his arm plate, squeezing like a nutcracker, and hooked a kick to where his abdomen plate met his codpiece. His gun dropped and rolled across my shoulders, as I caught it and stepped back to squeeze the trigger. Arms jerking from the recoil, I emptied the whole clip on the bastard. He staggered forward, bullets ricocheting off him like spitballs.

My finger only left the trigger when the last shell plinked to the ground, and the last gun had been snatched from their hands. They had pushed us to the center of the room, where the three of us lingered as they stomped nearer to close us in. Allowing them within inches of me, I rocketed into the air to flip over their heads just in time. Don let a barrel of jet fuel fall from the rafters, landing right in the middle of the circle to splatter all six soldiers. Like asphalt splashed with gasoline, their rocky shells began to sizzle and crumble from the head downward. Like bugs molting their skin, the whole exoskeleton peeled off of them in pebbly chunks. The one in front reached their hands up to peel the slick crust off their face, and I squinted to make out the face underneath as the others retreated outside.

"Karai?" Leo asked curiously, and she let a shuriken fly up to make Donnie dodge it, sending him hurling to the floor to land on his feet as she followed her soldiers out. The first to make it to the runway looked up, as if he registered a faint sound, but was stopped in his place as an arrowhead burst through the back of his neck. Riding Russ' shoulders like a kid on piggyback, Steele sent a hail of arrows down as they parachuted back to earth. Already maxing out the parachute's weight limit, their speed of their descent raced faster as a sidewinding shuriken sliced each of the cables linking Russ' backpack to the canopy. It billowed off like a sheet in the wind, and eyes wide with panic, Steele released his hold on Russ' upper body and landed in a roll, standing up with a groan from the tough impact. Russet, on the other hand, spent the last few moments of their fall like a lead ragdoll, unable to find his balance before he crumpled to the earth right beside the plane knees-first.

Watching the whole scene unfold, Steele rushed toward his partner with inhuman swiftness. He gripped the moose's limp body by the shoulders, shaking it with tender vigor as the soldiers closed in on him. Head peering up to meet their gaze with teary eyes and quivering lips, he cast his bow and quiver to the ground and bolted forward, arms bounding on the ground and teeth baring as if he were feral. He pounced onto the nearest soldier before there was time to react, sinking his claws into the neck and pushing himself off as streams of blood poured like spigots. Like a furry bolt of lightning, he leapt to the next soldier headfirst, sinking his teeth into their throat as the force of his paws forced them to the ground. We rushed toward him to intervene, but from on top of his prey, he growled at us, and out of fright I took a step back. He jerked his head from side to side like a starving scavenger ripping the throat of its prey out, but Karai unearthed a katana from under the remnants of her armor and swung dangerously close to his head.

Steele peeled himself off the body and rolled backward from the swing, batting his claws at her torso as he skidded to a landing. The reach of her sword stretched longer than his arms, and in a lopsided dance they inched closer to the plane with every dodge and stab. Ducking back in a deep fake, the cat snatched up Russ' axe and swung it from side to side, forcing the ring of soldiers that pinned him behind the plane's wing to falter back. Karai stepped forward as he struggled to recover the hefty axe, grazing his midsection laterally with the tip of her sword.

Snarling in anguish, he brandished the axe over his shoulder and bulged his muscles to hurl it forward. It lodged in Karai's upper arm with an audible thwack, and she dropped her sword with a shriek. Rather than lunging at his vulnerable opponent, Steele broke the flint shard off its cord on Russet's belt, and scraped it on the hull of the jet like nails on a chalkboard. Right beside him, jet fuel trickled out of the fuselage where bullets must have hit the gas tank. The crackle of sparks was the last thing we could see before the shimmering fumes in the air roared as they caught ablaze and sent shrapnel flying.

We covered our eyes and ducked our heads where they wouldn't be hit by the shards of the exploding plane, and were a heartbeat away from rushing back to the hangar, when a body thudded to the ground at our feet. Unconscious and losing blood rapidly from the gash in her deltoid, we hesitated for a moment, before Leo grabbed her by the leg and dragged her toward the building as the air heated up around us and the wildfire inched ever closer. Running as far back as the hangar stretched, we could feel the metal walls beginning to warm up and make the air inside sweaty and smoky. Surrounded and pinned in an oven, three of us shared a look of hopelessness as Leo tore a strip of fabric off Karai's singed clothes to bandage her wound. Her eyelids fluttered open.

"Turtles…" she croaked, not fully with us.

"Listen, Karai." Leo barked. "Whether you make it or not…whether any of us make it or not, this is the last time you're seeing us ever again. Understand?" Just as quickly as she'd woken up, her eyes rolled back and blinked shut. Beads of sweat started trickling down my brow, and I jumped back from the wall as it started to singe my hand when I touched it. Boiling over with frustration, Raph shouted ferociously as he buried a flurry of fists in the stack of wooden crates beside us. Splintering apart after a few moments, he panted and took a step back. Behind the boxes, a well-rusted door marked the wall.

Leo picked Karai's limp body off the floor and slung her over his shoulder as Raph hooked his sai in the door's frame, prying it open without touching the sizzling metal. A dusty stairwell, filled with cobwebs, led down into darkness, and a gust of cool, stale air rushed past us. With no other options, we filed one by one into the black abyss and slammed the door shut behind us.