I dug through my new Army backpack, strangely reluctant to give the knife up. When I touched it, it pulsed against my fingers. I drew it out of the bag, the smooth bone handle now glowing blue, and laid it on the colonel’s open palm. The second it touched his skin, the handle went dark.
The colonel nodded slowly. “All right, that’s one of us down.” He passed it to the next guy.
The knife went around the room, to one soldier after another. It never glowed or vibrated. Finally, the last guy, a burly Green Beret with white-blond hair and black eyes, gave the quieted knife to Mike. The knife didn’t register the change, not even for its old master.
“Here you go, Chief.” Mike laid the knife on the podium, like he didn’t want to hand it to me directly.
I stared at the knife. Sheathed, it didn’t look all that scary. I reached out. My hand had barely touched it when the handle glowed blue and the knife vibrated on the table, sounding like a muted cell phone getting a call. I picked it up, feeling it buzz my arm, and glanced at the crowd. The skeptical looks had been replaced with astonishment in some cases, admiration in others.
“Guess that’s settled, then,” Colonel Black said. “Matt, welcome to the team.”
Chapter Eight
“As you can see, there’s a hole in the paneling at the back of the hut. The ‘Gator—’” Colonel Black nodded to me, “that’s the code name—was intelligent enough to pull away the wood and grab the victim from her bed.” The colonel paused to flip a slide on his laptop, projecting the image of a small wooden house with a gap in the back wall. “They’re efficient hunters. In every attack we’ve seen, they surveyed an area, then stalked their victims. We still haven’t found any dens, either. They hide themselves well. All we really know is that they’re smart enough to be extremely dangerous.”
I threw my hand up, forgetting this wasn’t school. A few of the men chuckled. “Sir, what exactly are these things? The monster we killed…well, it looked like a bear, but it didn’t, if you get what I mean. It had a bear’s fur and the same kind of big paws like a grizzly. But the face was all wrong; it was squashed and it had a bigger snout, with these tusk things, like a boar would have. Its legs and arms were longer too, built kinda like Chewbacca, except not as nice.” That got another few laughs. “Oh, and its blood was the color of spicy mustard.”
Colonel Black nodded. “That’s it in a nutshell, Matt. They seem to be hyper-intelligent, mutated animals. And they’re getting smarter at an accelerated rate.” He pulled up a new slide. “This one, taken in Peru, is of a Gator.”
The creature resembled a cross between a crocodile and a giant iguana. It had a flatter face with pointy horns along its head and back like an iguana, but its hide was thicker, with larger scales, and its taloned feet were webbed, like a crocodile’s. The Gator’s arms and legs were human-length and muscular. In the picture, the monster lay crumpled on a jungle floor, bright green blood oozing from its slit throat.
Holy Jurassic Park reject. I scooted my chair away from the screen. “Maybe you should call it a Croc. It doesn’t look like an alligator.”
Mike laughed from the back of the room. “The scientists told us that too, but we’d already named it.”
I rolled my eyes. Middle school science had taught me the difference. Shouldn’t these guys know, too?
Mike sat down behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. “No matter what we call them, the monsters hunt humans. That first picture, of the hut? The Gator took a pregnant woman. It ate her and the unborn baby.”
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, feeling truly sick. “Oh, my God.”
“Gentlemen, we’re finished for now,” Colonel Black said. “Next briefing at fifteen-hundred. Dismissed.”
Metal chairs scraped the floor as the soldiers stood. No one said a word, but once they made it into the hall, I could hear them whispering. Mike gave my shoulder a squeeze and got up to shut the door again. When he came back, his face was blank, but his muscles were bunched with tension under his BDUs.
“Matt, Colonel Black has some things to tell you. You’ve been given clearance; it’s time you knew what was going on. This isn’t going to be easy to hear.” He glanced at the colonel. “We have an idea of where the monsters are coming from.”
“You mean this isn’t some weird pollution problem?” I asked. “I figured some animals got into some toxic waste like the Joker in Batman and turned into monsters.”
Colonel Black pulled a chair around so we huddled together in a little group. “No. They were created.”
“By terrorists? They can do that?”
The colonel shook his head. “Not by humans.”
My toes curled up inside my running shoes. Just when I thought this couldn’t get worse, it did. “Aliens?”
“No,” the colonel said. “Something equally fantastic, though.”
My face must’ve turned green, because he hurried to explain. “Really bizarre cases of malicious mischief have been occurring worldwide for the last few years. For example, one of the stone Gargoyles at Notre Dame came to life a few months ago. It flew off the cathedral’s roof and pelted the crowd with rocks. The media played it off as some kind of stunt, but we knew better. For the most part, no one has died in any of these incidents. Scared, sure; hurt sometimes, too. Never killed. The monsters represent a more organized assault.”
Too much information. My brain wanted to explode, and they hadn’t even told me the punch line. “So, where are they coming from, then?”
The colonel rubbed his hands together like they were cold. “Several months ago, we received intelligence reports that leaders of mystical religions had started conducting rites and rituals not seen for centuries—rituals to ward off evil. We wondered if the activity was related to attacks, so we sent delegates to speak with some of these medicine men, shamans, witch-doctors and priests.”
“What kind of evil?” I whispered, like if I said it louder, a poltergeist would show up.
“Every religion believes in a dark force of some kind—evil spirits, demons, and the like.” Colonel Black’s eyes never left mine. “All the leaders we spoke with said a war was coming. Seems the forces of darkness, no matter what religion you may or may not believe in, have come together to wage war on humankind.”
I looked at Mike. He stared back without a hint of a smile. Holy crap, they were serious. I wrapped my arms around my chest. “Where do the knives fit in?”
“Conventional warfare doesn’t exactly work against things that go bump in the night, Matt,” Mike said. “We tried flame throwers on the Gators, and they walked right through the blaze. We tossed grenades; all that did was stun them. Bullets are useless. Parker says the same thing about the Pandas. My hunting knife didn’t make a dent in the monster we encountered last week. Short of a bomb blast, you name it, we tried it. Nothing we have kills them.” He nodded at the blade in my lap. “It takes special tools to stop these things.”
“So why do they work when nothing else does?” I asked.
Colonel Black exchanged a glance with Mike again, then said, “When we went to Peru to check out the Gators, we met Jorge. He’s…a very unusual man.”
Another truck rumbled by and Mike got up to pace. I waited.
“He’s a medicine man to several local tribes in the Amazon—and he went to Yale.” Colonel Black raised an eyebrow. “Jorge holds a Masters in chemistry, of all things. When he was a child, some missionaries came to his tribe. One of them was a high school science teacher. Jorge said he followed the man around, learning everything he could—including English.”
Mike smiled. “The teacher was from New England, so Jorge speaks English with this very formal, clipped accent. Bit of a shock if you aren’t expecting it.”
“Anyway,” the colonel said, “the missionaries convinced his family to allow Jorge to study in the United States. He lived here for about fifteen years before returning to Peru.”
“Wait. Jorge’s got a chemistry degree, and he lives
in the rainforest?” I asked. Not what I’d do, but, okay.
“It’s his home, Matt. He chooses to live among his people and tend to their needs, as his father did,” Colonel Black said.
“So how did he get tangled up in all this stuff?”
“Well,” the colonel said, “Jorge says the monster attacks were foretold by his elders. He believes the creatures were created by dark spirits who want to cleanse the earth of the human race, and the knives are the only weapons that can stop them.”
“So Jorge says we’re facing terrors from heaven knows where?” I asked. “Until we’re wiped out?”
“It would seem so.” Colonel Black’s expression was every bit as serious as Mike’s. “The monsters are probably just the beginning. A first-strike, maybe to see how well-defended we are.”
My stomach sank. “Then why doesn’t Jorge make more knives? That’d be what I’d do if the devil was planning to open the gate to Hell.”
“Jorge had enough material to make six, but didn’t, on purpose. We asked if he could make more and he told us five was a powerful magical number,” the colonel said. “Magical numbers seem to matter. The number thirteen is considered significant in many cultures. The moon has thirteen cycles per year, for example. And the Gators showed up in a pack of thirteen last fall. Then thirteen Pandas arrived in the spring.”
“But if there were only thirteen,” I asked, “then why haven’t Ramirez and Parker finished theirs off yet? I’d think they could kill off that many in just a few months.”
“You know what a lunar eclipse is?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yeah. The earth orbits between the sun and moon, which casts a shadow on the moon.”
“Right,” Colonel Black said. “Sometimes they’re partial eclipses, and don’t cover the whole moon. Other times they’re full, causing the night to be darker, under a blood-red moon. Full eclipses only come every three to four years. But when we have them, there are three in a year’s time. There was one last October—visible on every continent but Africa. Then another in April, again not visible in Africa. Finally, we had one more, last month, and this one was visible in Africa, but not in Australia.”
I raised my eyebrows. The timing couldn’t be coincidence.
“The first Gators came the night of the October eclipse last year. Another thirteen Gators came in April, in addition to some new creatures, the Pandas and Dingoes. Thirteen more Pandas and Gators came last month, after the September eclipse, and now we have new monsters in Billings and Africa, but no new Dingoes, from what we’ve heard.”
“So we ended up with thirty-nine Gators, and twenty-six Pandas?” No wonder Parker and Ramirez had their hands full.
“Yes. Our assumption is that there are only thirteen monsters in Montana, Australia, and Botswana,” the colonel said. “There won’t be another full eclipse for two years, so Jorge believes once we exterminate these beasts, they won’t return for a while.”
“Good thing.” I thought for a minute. “But why did the monsters show up in those places? Why not London, or New York City? They’d do a lot of damage in a big city.”
Colonel Black spread his hands. “Our theory is that the other monsters chose those locations because some powerful shaman lives there. Ancient, mystical religions are practiced in each of those areas. So maybe the monsters are targeting holy men that pose a significant threat, like Jorge. We think the Gators hit Peru because he made weapons that could kill dark creatures.”
“Why Montana, though?” I asked. “There aren’t any big-time shamans in Billings, are there?”
Mike winced. “Matt, there weren’t any monsters in the U.S. until I brought the knife back home.”
There was a sharp note of guilt in his voice that made me nervous. “But—”
He cut me off. “I’m the only wielder who went home. The general wanted a knife stateside while we assessed the threat, so I was released from duty while the others were sent abroad to investigate other paranormal events. Billings isn’t exactly a prime target, which leads me to believe none of this is a coincidence. I brought the magic of the knife home last spring. And then we had a lunar eclipse in September. So monsters came to Billings.”
“Then…why are they still sending you to Afghanistan? If there are monsters here, you should stay and help me.” I looked at the colonel. “Right? He can stay now.”
Colonel Black shook his head. “Major Tannen has a mission there, son.”
Mike caught hold of my arm and squeezed. “The monsters aren’t the only threat. I’m leading a small team into Afghanistan to check out some newly reported supernatural incidents. The peacekeeping effort is my cover.”
“So you can’t stay here,” I said.
“I wish I could, but I’m needed elsewhere.” Mike let my arm go, his eyes sad. “The human race is in this together, Chief. Most people just don’t know it yet, and we hope they never find out.”
I walked to the window, staring out at the traffic moving along the road. I was smart enough to understand what this meant, even if I was frightened out of my mind. Was I going to act like a scared brat, knowing more pregnant women, maybe even kids, could be killed if I begged Mike to stay?
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m in.”
* * *
Mike and I jogged along the same road we’d taken to the woods in the morning, but now it was busy, with trucks and Humvees rattling by. Squatty, gray buildings lined the street, all square and boring, especially compared to the forest and mountains abutting the base. Camo was everywhere and barked orders filled the air.
The afternoon had warmed up into the seventies so I traded the sweats for shorts and a t-shirt—all standard issue. I felt better, too. Having a plan, even in the face of total insanity, was better than curling up in a corner.
“So when do I get my Class B uniform?”
Mike snorted. “When you’re eighteen, and then only if you enlist. I’d prefer that you go to college first and come in as an officer. For now, though, let’s just focus on keeping you alive that long, okay?”
I hoped he was kind of joking about the keeping me alive part, but I didn’t think so. “Sure, okay.”
We headed for the woods at a gentle trot. Now that I wasn’t totally freaked and alone in the dark, I could appreciate the juniper and pinyon trees, along with a scattered aspen here or there. My Plant Science merit badge came in handy sometimes. As the branches swayed, the warm afternoon breeze filled with the sharp scent of pine. Sagebrush grew up along the trees, covering the ground, its grayish-green fronds poking out in all directions. It was a relaxing scene when you weren’t expecting an ambush.
At the trailhead, we met up with a soldier I recognized from the meeting this morning.
“Oy, Major. So, this is the wunderkind.” Master Sergeant Schmitz was the smallest member of the team, only about five-eight, but totally spit and polish. His hair was a faint, dark smudge on his skull, and his brown eyes darted constantly, like he expected enemies to leap from the bushes at any second. “Hello, Mr. Archer. Just so you know, I’m here to teach you something.”
Mike dragged me past him, following the narrow dirt path we’d run on in the morning. Surprised we didn’t even stop to say hello, I asked, “Aren’t we gonna wait for the Master Sergeant?”
I turned back to ask Schmitz what I’d be learning. He was gone. Poof. Like a ghost. “Whoa! He was right there!”
“Who was right there?” Mike asked. “I don’t see anyone.”
“Schmitz, you idiot. Where did he go?”
“Careful or I’ll make you drop and give me fifty.” Mike grinned, then cupped his hands around his mouth. “Schmitz!”
“Sir,” he called, from somewhere in front of us.
“How did he move so fast without us seeing him?” I hadn’t seen or heard a thing, but in thirty seconds he’d gotten past us.
Mike yawned. “That’s what you’re here to learn. I’m going to take a nap. Major’s privilege.” After a sly glan
ce, he turned toward base. “You can come back once you find him.”
“Oh, that’s just great!” I kicked at the ground. “Find a ghost in the forest. Great.”
Schmitz called out—now behind me to the left. “Have a good nap, sir. This’ll be a while.”
“Can someone tell me why I’m hunting the invisible man in the woods?” I thrashed through the sagebrush along the trail, not finding anything but moss and a few crickets.
“Because if you can learn to move the same way I do, you’ll be able to sneak up on monsters,” Schmitz said, breathing down my neck.
I jumped in surprise and spun around to find him right behind me. “That was seriously awesome. Can you really teach me how to sneak like that?”
“If you listen to me, by Friday even the Major will have a hard time finding you out here. That’s what we’re working toward. A little de-mon-stray-shun.” Schmitz bobbed his head as he spoke.
A grin spread across my face. “Excellent. Show me how.”
Chapter Nine
Most of the week passed in an exhausting, non-stop whirl of early morning runs, brush-crawling, learning how to track monster prints in the dark, and equipment training. I went through four sets of sweats in the first three days, ripping holes in the knees or elbows, and I was constantly filthy, sweaty or bloody. Usually all three at once.
My favorite part of the training turned out to be hand-to-hand combat exercises. I spent two hours every morning getting my butt handed to me in a small gym with stark-white walls and a worn wooden floor. Fighting equipment, including staffs and practice swords, were on racks bolted to the walls. Serious work went on in this place. Lucky for me, thick, red mats padded the hard surfaces, otherwise I would’ve been sporting some broken bones.
Lieutenant Johnson, my fighting instructor, was a huge black guy with a deep voice and a lot of patience. He was well over six feet tall, and broader than a bus, so he had to stoop to square-off with me. Which didn’t make me self-conscious or anything, especially since I was supposed to be trying to hit the guy.
“Archer, feint right, more weight on your back leg, so you’re stable.” He chuckled when I moved. “Your other right.”