Page 17

His eyes lingered on each soldier as he spoke. “We’ve been tasked with monitoring the rear wall as second defense to the perimeter guards. I want everyone spread out, but within hearing range of each other. Send up a flare if your section has been breached.” He pointed to his helmet, then to his gun. “Remember, cranial region for kill shots. Let’s move.”

I touched my breast pocket to where a flare rested and tried to find the tank in the distance one last time, but it was gone. Hunter with it.

I put my head down and followed my team.

The base was quiet, our footstep-patter too loud in the night as we jogged single-file, stopping twenty feet away from the rear wall.

Spreading out away from the others, I situated the butt of my rifle inside the pocket of my shoulder, aiming at the top of the wall to the dark mountainside beyond.

It felt good to hold a gun again. The weapon an extension of my identity.

Three weeks without one had been too long.

The sirens still wailed in the distance as I focused on the wall in front of me to where a parapet walkway lined the top, with guards walking back and forth, their eyes trained on the woods beyond. Fifteen feet high and made of concrete, the wall would be difficult to scale, if not impossible, without any grooves in the smooth surface. Yet, if the creatures wanted to scale it, they’d likely have zero issues. The wall had been constructed to keep people out, not otherworldly beasts.

What felt like hours passed, my eyes growing tired from lack of sleep and my neck aching from the added weight of my helmet, before I saw any movement.

I lifted my hand, garnering the attention of my teammates to the left and right of me, and pointed two fingers toward the mountainside, before repositioning my gun that had slipped down my shoulder.

The first scream came from a guard on top of the wall to the left, along with a red flare to signal distress.

From my position, I could see a claw protruding from the soldier’s back, speared straight through his chest.

“On the left!” I yelled.

A creature slung itself over the wall, its claws grating against the concrete, and tossed the impaled soldier toward me, their body hitting the ground with a loud thud. Another soldier nearest the creature didn’t have time to raise their weapon before the creature sunk its claws through the soldier’s eyes, the tips of its claws shooting out the back of the soldier’s helmeted head.

Everyone on my left began shooting wildly toward the beast, while my eyes darted repeatedly left to right, then right to left.

A second creature breached the wall directly in front of me, and I pulled my trigger, shouting warnings to anyone who could hear me, my voice lost in the chaos.

The creature made it halfway down the wall, my bullets ricocheting off its scaled armor before I got a good shot, my bullet striking the beast clean through the eye.

A moment of confidence surged through me as its body fell the rest of the way down the wall, until three more crawled over the parapet and down.

“Retreat and regroup!” someone shouted, as I emptied all my bullets into a blur of black and purple, the creatures shredding through my team.

I felt a hand on my arm as Niall shouted in my ear, “We need to move, now!”

He pushed me toward the center of the base, urging me to run.

I broke into a sprint, with Niall on my heels, but it was no use. Two creatures had descended on either side of us, herding Niall and me together.

Niall pressed his back against mine as I lifted my gun and said a prayer.

I aimed straight at the face of the creature staring me down, its eyes almost beautiful this close to it: deep violet irises with a churning neon glow, black membranes like a reptile’s sweeping across the violet when it blinked.

The beautiful violet exploded, my bullet hitting it perfectly.

Niall must have gotten a good shot on the creature facing him as well, because it sat clawing at its face, wailing in agony.

“Let’s go!” he yelled, right before the wounded creature lunged at him, and Niall’s guttural screams filled the air.

He grabbed at his chest, a claw buried deep inside.

“Niall!” I screamed, scrambling to get to him as he was carried away by the creature, his feet hovering over the ground.

He looked down at his chest with surprise, then up at me, mouthing for me to get down.