Endangered Ch. 09

"Fuck me, it's huge!" Chris stood taller, gripping the ribs which would usually support the truck's canvas cover. The dark river that came into view as they drove out onto the four-lane bridge was massive, easily miles across where they traversed and even wider upstream.

The other women rose and turned to look at the spectacle, the largest Blackwater river in the world. The men in the truck with them simply shook their heads and ogled the display of shapely bottoms in dark fatigues. Only Pamela sat cautiously, her savage looking Lithgow F90 in hand. He nodded to her, approving of her wariness, he would be wise to do the same.

He partially opened his magical senses, feeling the relatively lush flow of magic wash over him. The river was veritably teeming compared to what he'd felt in the States. Out as far as his eyes could see, lush forest and river intertwined in an abundance of diversity and magic. It was incredible. If it wasn't so damn hot and muggy, he might consider moving here.

As they crested the midway point and watched a ship chug underneath, a buzzing note rumbled its low pitched way into his magical awareness.

He looked around, confused at first as to where it came from. Was it the ship passing below them? Something wrong with the truck's tyres? It was not a good sound, still faint though it was.

The far shore loomed as they began their descent to the other side of the great river, the repulsive rasping buzz growing louder. It was a frenetic, malicious note. It was a note of corruption.

"Michelle! He's here!"

"Here?!" she rounded instantly at the tone of his voice. "Now?!"

"I'm not... I don't know," he tried to find a way to describe what he was feeling as she took a few careful steps across the truck's deck and made him sit. "Something up ahead is very wrong. It... tastes like Radek."

"Fuck," Michelle rubbed her temples in concentration.

The mood in the back of the truck changed rapidly as everyone began to take note. Sam looked worried, Kat found a seat and began loading the spare box magazines for her shotgun, Pamela was cool and collected as ever.

"Are we going to continue?" Lisa asked, glancing at the now serious army men.

"Yes, yes, we absolutely have to be here if Radek is involved," Michelle said. "I just wish we were better prepared."

"We're about as prepared as we're likely to manage," Chris said grimly. "Let's go down there, see what's happening, and deal with the bastard."

"We could have air support," Kat pointed out.

"Bitch, I'm a dragon."

They rode on, mostly keeping silent as Michelle tapped frantically away on her tablet. At their feet, a small, domed satellite uplink connected her back to her support network. She typed away furiously, passing information up the chain of command. Under her skilful fingers, a web was forming.

In low orbit, three satellites were repurposed from their drug task force operations. After fifteen minutes of diplomatic fandangoing, a pair of A-1A ground attack aircraft scrambled out of Santa Cruz air force base. They would be arriving late to the fight, with little fuel, and a limited scope of operation, but they would be there.

Chris sat still, feeling like grinding his teeth as the magical discord slithered over his senses. It was wrong, stinking of decay and suffering. The dragon inside him wanted to rip, to tear toward the source of the disruption and burn it from existence.

They passed a few smaller towns, becoming ever more impoverished as they got away from the relative metropolis of Manaus. The river didn't have defined banks as he was used to. Instead, the entire area was governed by it and any structure on low land was built to float for when the rainy season came. The four lane highway rapidly deteriorated to a paved road, then to a narrow, verge-less continuous pothole.

"This is it!" Michelle warned as they turned off onto the dirt, passing a deserted roadside market made of sticks and corrugated iron. "I want a tight perimeter around Chris, do not trust sectors to be covered by our friends in green. Keep your eyes wide but stay composed. Turn your body cameras on now please."

"Yes, ma'am!" Kat shouted, racking a buckshot round into the breach.

Lisa undid the holster strap on her pistol and gave it a nervous, last minute check. Her thighs were bedecked with extra magazines. The soldiers took the serious mood to heart, checking over their heavy calibre rifles.

They passed two checkpoints on the way into the evacuated settlement. They charged through without slowing, courtesy of Colonel Otero and his radio operator in the lead SUV. As they rounded a corner, the jungle opened to reveal the village, a sprawling cluster of half-cleared land and buildings.

They rolled to a lazy stop beside a deserted soccer field, sweat trickling down the back of his neck in both anticipation and dread. A few clouds had appeared in the afternoon sky but it did nothing to assuage the tropical heat.

"Out!" Michelle ordered as soon as they'd stopped.

The soldiers snapped to, putting down the tailgate and hastening to get out of the way. Chris' boots hit the red dirt first out of their little group. Instantly he could feel the source of the wrongness. His eyes snapped eastward, through several houses to the spire of a church rising above the surrounding houses.

"Help me down, would you?" Sam asked from above him, drawing his attention back. "I don't want a broken ankle in the first hour."

Distracted as he was, he simply hoisted her under the armpits as she turned to use the handles to dismount. She let out a startled grunt at his apparently effortless manhandling but made no further complaint as she straightened her backpack and the heavy plasticized case of forensics equipment slung over her shoulder.

The others didn't need his help to dismount, except Pamela, who handed him a padded canvas gun case. Whatever was in there was long, heavy, and he suspected it packed a big punch. She took it back off him on the ground, holding it in her left hand as she shouldered her compact rifle to a ready position with the other.

Otero stopped them as they moved toward the dirt street leading further into the village. Apparently, he wasn't happy that Michelle had been throwing her weight around on their little journey. The NSA agent took it stone faced, nodding along but internally cursing the man for his need to show off in front of his men.

It was Kat who seemed more likely to do something rash, bouncing on her toes as she looked over the dishevelled buildings with disdain.

"If you're done," Michelle calmly turned away from the red-faced colonel to address the translator. "Tell your commander that I called in backup because we think the Jack of Diamonds himself could be here."

The man visibly paled before his translator had begun talking. Apparently, he understood enough English to recognise Radek's military codename.

"Now," she continued steadily. "We're going in there and we're taking point. If you decide to come along, from this moment onward, you answer to me. Or the dragon."

As she pointed to Chris' towering figure and the translator spoke, the old military dog swallowed his pride and nodded his agreement. Turning to his assembled men, he barked a few orders which had them forming up into five-man squads and spreading out.

Kat and Pamela took point, covering their advance through the settlement. Their eyes darted between dark, open doors, checking for adversaries. On either side of the raised road, a half foot of water was all most of the houses had for yards. Shacks might have been a better descriptor, but Chris was too absorbed trying to shield himself from the sickening magic to notice the distinction.

If the magical dirge was so grating on him, it could be affecting his team members. They showed no sign of adverse effects, but he didn't want to take the chance. His awareness spread out to envelop all of them, holding them close. Only Michelle turned to him questioningly as a tiny shiver ran over her skin.

A savage barking came at them from the left, startling them all as a chained bulldog exploded at them from around the corner of a low wall. The crazed whites of its eyes and the frothy saliva at its muzzle barely registered with Chris before a single cracking retort silenced the poor creature. Pamela rose from her knee, the barrel of her rifle still covering the twitching body of the hound.

"Damn, right between the eyes," Kat murmured appreciatively. "You really can shoot that thing one handed."

"Let's keep moving," Michelle pushed them forward with a look to their rear to make sure none of the following soldiers were spooked by the gunshot. This could turn into an absolute cluster fuck if they lacked fire discipline.

The first body welcomed them with its putrid stench at the crossroads in front of the church. The poor soul had collapsed underneath the little events notice board, their hand outstretched in plea. A pained snarl locked on their lips as they stared lifelessly up at the blue sky.

Lisa, Pamela, and Kat took up covering positions as Sam and Chris took a closer look. Otero moved up to stand beside Michelle in stoic silence as he watched.

"This happened last night?" Sam queried as she put on a pair of disposable gloves.

"Yes, sometime around four pm we think," the translator provided, breathing through a handkerchief. "Most of the villagers were gathered in the church. The others fled when the screaming began."

"That can't be right, the decomposition is too advanced, even for this climate."

She reached to open the bloated corpse's shirt.

"Don't touch it!" Chris snatched her hand back harshly.

"I'm wearing gloves, Chris," she scolded, reaching back toward the body.

"Seriously, don't," he stopped her again. "There's something wrong."

Ignoring the stares, he looked around for a big stick. In the end, he ripped a long white paling from the church's fence, glancing warily at the magically menacing structure as he did so.

"Stand back," he warned, carefully pushing the wood under the body and lifting.

A foul sound and a small explosion of rank air were the reward for his effort, but the body rolled onto its grossly inflated stomach. A few disturbed carrion beetles scuttled away from the sunlight, following their feast as it rolled.

"Oh my god, I think I might be sick," Kat almost retched at the stench.

"Look," Chris pointed to a charred circle of cloth on the man's upper back with his stick. "Can we get that off somehow?"

"I've got a pair of scissors," Sam provided. "If I'm careful I wouldn't have to touch him."

"Do it, very carefully," Michelle ordered, leaning over the ex-detective with a small camera raised to her eye.

The shutter clicked away in staccato as Sam cut down from the collar of the cheap flannel shirt, across the scorched section at the base of the neck.

"What the fuck is that?!" She dropped her scissors and scuttled backward as the corpse's brown skin was revealed.

Chris nudged the fabric aside, exposing the fading red imprint of a hand. It glowed very softly with a faint crimson light, the flesh inside perfectly preserved while everything around was charred black and crispy. His dragon's sense of wrongness went off like a Geiger counter.

"It's only got three fingers," Michelle frowned. "The thumb is too far down, the fingers are too long. That... that isn't a human handprint."

The translator made the sign of the cross but Otero slapped the young man on the back of the head, scolding in Portuguese as he pointed toward the church.

Chris knelt beside Sam who was breathing hard, her caramel brown skin beading with sweat. Her dark eyes were wide and darting as her scissor wielding hand twitched uncontrollably.

"Did you touch it?" he asked worriedly, taking her by the shoulders.

"I... No, I don't think so," she squeezed her eyes shut hard, willing the terror she'd glimpsed to vanish. "I saw something... awful."

"Shit," Chris muttered as he began pulling her away from the corpse. "Sam, hold still, I'm going to flush your system with magic. I don't know what's going to happen, but just hold on."

The dragon guided his effort, his magic flowing through her shaking body limb by limb. He saturated every part of her with his own energy until finally he isolated the tiny red spark in the index finger of her right hand. He pounced, metaphorically at least, tearing the evil little coal to shreds. With soothing energy, he washed it away and out of her body.

Samantha felt everything he did to her, felt his immense magical presence. His spirit, his goodness, his care and concern, she felt it all as he flooded through her. Nerves around her body began a random, lazy firing, creating a confusing mixture of pain and pleasure. A breathy moan left her lips unbidden with his final flood of magic.

"Damn," Lisa looked on as Sam's body shook and she clung spasming to the large man. "That almost looks like fun."

"It's not," Chris took off his backpack and let Sam use it as a pillow as she regained her senses. "Tell the men not to touch any part of the body, especially not the hand print. They'll suffer the same fate as these poor bastards, only slower."

The colonel stepped cautiously away from the corpse to confer with his squad leaders.

"Do we need hazmat, Chris?" Michelle asked. "What are we supposed to do with the bodies? There are going to be more in the church."

"We burn this entire village to the ground."

The inside of the church was a scene of absolute horror. Flies buzzed lazily from corpse to corpse, their eggs long since spent but their instinct telling them to try again and again in the rotting glut.

Kat was sick, her lunch left dribbling across a wooden pew and onto the packed dirt floor. They had to proceed slowly. Rotting bodies littered the aisle and Chris had to carefully push them to the sides with his piece of stolen fence so they could pass without danger of touching one.

Otero followed them, hand on his service pistol. Behind him, he practically dragged the young translator by the ear. He left his men to form a perimeter around the church, but his own orders were to never let the Americans out of his sight. With tenacious determination, he forced himself to follow them into that hell-hole. This uniform would need to be burnt, the stench of that much cadaverine and putrescine would not wash out. Even if it did, these would never feel clean again. What on earth would do such a thing to this peaceful village?

"Chris, we can't stay in here," Michelle almost choked through the cloud of decay fumes. "Some of these gases are dangerous in high doses."

"We have to get up to the altar!" he shouted, hating every breath he took of the putrid air. "There's still magic here."

"Look," Sam pointed as Chris rolled another body out of their direct path. "That's the third one that something large has chewed on."

Chris couldn't bear to think about that possibility other than to wish it had been a large local predator rather than the nibbling of whatever had orchestrated this atrocity. He had to force himself onward, even though his instinct told him to run from the waves of dark magic emanating off the altar. The buzzing was horrendously loud, drowning out his senses. It was all he could do to hold his awareness around those who followed him. If his protection of them faltered now, who knew if they would succumb in the same manner as the poor souls decomposing on the floor?

Despite the aisle of bodies they'd just waded through, the scene at the steps up to the altar was worse. At first his mind couldn't make sense of it, the dark piles of burnt matter didn't even look like bodies. They were too small, like the bodies had been burned to greying ashes rather than left to rot. It didn't compute until he saw a pair of tiny pink sneakers protruding from one of the dusty remains. Their Velcro straps had melted, blackening under the radiated heat of their owner's combustion. He only hoped it had been quick for the girl.

Lisa let out a choked sob, drawing his eyes to a different but no less sickening scene. Four corpses, better preserved and yet more severely burnt than any of the others. They were slumped on their fronts, marked repeatedly with the preserving alien handprint. So covered were they that they let off an evil red glow. The feminine shape of their bodies was preserved only by the repeated grip he'd taken on their hips, flanks, and buttocks. He looked away, unwilling to acknowledge the heinous act.

They stepped up past the gruesome crossing into the tiny chancel. The small alcove was thankfully free of corpses but Chris' sense of dread peaked as he past the wooden pulpit and looked down on the face of the cloth covered altar.

A thick sheet of... hand crafted paper? It looked right back up at him.

"What is it?" Michelle whispered beside him, breaking his staring match with the malevolent thing.

"I don't know. Look at the writing," he drew her attention to the tiny, alien script that scrawled across the entire surface of the brownish, almost leathery stuff.

"Did it cause all of this?" she breathed, fearing noise would somehow stir it into action as she snapped off a few pictures. "That's the same handprint, right?"

"Yeah, what about all the smudges though?"

"Look!" Pamela pointed to something on the floor with her booted foot. "There's more of it."

Sure enough, when Chris and Michelle squatted lower, they saw a much smaller sheet of the fibrous stuff sticking out from under the altar's discarded ornate bible. Michelle nudged the holy book out of the way with the short barrel of her submachine gun.

Beneath, a piece just the perfect size to contain the red handprint blinked evilly up at his magical awareness as if angry for his disturbance. It was much thinner and smaller than the other, no writing or dirty smudges. Only the three fingered handprint, faintly glowing its red, sickly light.

"Any ideas?" Michelle looked to him for answers, the disgust and horror of what she'd seen that afternoon written clearly on her face. "We've got to get out of here soon."

"Sorry, this is out of my league," he frowned, standing back up. "It's obviously linked to what's happened here. How or why, I have no idea. I suspect that's a good thing. This is the worst kind of magic. I think they were... they were harvested."

"Could we take a sample of it back to Reyla?" Sam asked tentatively.

"Absolutely not!" he rounded on her. "We're dealing with this right now before it somehow spreads."

"Fire?" Kat asked hopefully.

"Damn straight," Lisa agreed.

"Okay, everyone pack in behind me," Chris motioned them all into the corner of the chancel as he looked out across the bloated congregation from the altar.

First priority was to figure out what to do with the little piece. It would be his guinea pig.

Otero mumbled something to his translator who cleared his throat softly and spoke, breaking Chris' train of thought.

"Are you going to free their souls?" the man asked reverently.

"What? No. I don't..." Chris saw the terror on the men's faces and realised that they were probably Christian themselves. "Sure, why not. Yeah, I'll give it a try."

Fire, aye? He gave it his best shot, focusing over the cloying stench to summon a glowing, crackling orange orb in the palm of his hand. He put his rage, disgust, and indignation into the flame, his sorrow for the burned children, the raped women. It flashed purple, suddenly giving off an intense heat that seemed to burn the stench out of the air. The intensity surprised him as it swelled larger, now the size of a small melon. With a dragon's low growl in his throat, he flung it down on the paper.