What he didn’t expect was the monster he saw.
It reached up at him from the floor, raking at the air with its scythe-like claws. One of the monster’s eyes was gone, half its face a charred mess. The bottom half of its jaw was completely missing. Bloody saliva dripped from what few teeth it had left. It dragged itself across the tiled floor but couldn’t stand.
It was missing a leg.
The monster’s single eye focused on O’Neil. It took another poorly aimed swipe at him. A long breath rattled out of the remnants of its ruined mouth. O’Neil aimed straight at the Skull’s head and squeezed the trigger.
A round speared straight through the monster’s forehead, flicking its head back, and it slumped to the floor.
“Another dead,” O’Neil reported over the radio.
He and Tate moved back to the hall. A few more sporadic gunshots echoed through the villa. O’Neil paused, listening between each report over the radio of another Skull down.
When the villa was silent again, Tate paused and asked, “Hear that?”
O’Neil froze. “All I hear is the dripping water and gunshots.”
“I swear I heard growling.”
“I don’t hear anything,” O’Neil said.
“Maybe it’s in the basement level.”
“Maybe,” O’Neil said.
They finished clearing the room and headed back to the hall where the rest of Alpha and Bravo were.
“We’ll clean up the bodies later,” Reynolds said. “Let’s go finish downstairs.”
They trailed Reynolds down the stairs into the lobby. Charlie and Delta were waiting around the front desk.
“Basement is split up into two parts,” Reynolds said. “There’s the kitchen and storage, then the dining room. Delta, Charlie, you take the dining area. We’ll take the rest.”
He sent Delta and Charlie on their way toward a staircase on the east wing.
O’Neil and Tate took point down another set of stairs at the west end. Each step creaked. He could hear the quiet scratch, scratch, scratch like nails against concrete. Then he heard a soft groaning.
Tate looked at him and he nodded back.
Yeah, the guy had been right. There was something else in this place with them. Judging by the sounds of it, lots of somethings.
He gulped hard as they came to the door that would take them straight into the storage room behind the kitchens. The scraping and scratching grew louder. The groans drifting from beneath the closer door were accompanied by the unmistakable stench of death.
The rest of the SEALs lined up on the stairs behind him.
A voice at the back of his head screamed that whatever was in that space beyond needed to stay in that room. That opening that door was a bad idea.
But the last thing he would do was back down from the beasts.
Gritting his teeth, O’Neil gave the signal.
-17-
When Tate opened the door, the wave of carrion stink hit O’Neil like an avalanche of corpses. He had thought the odor up in that guestroom was bad, but this was far worse.
The room was maybe thirty by thirty feet, with shelves of cardboard boxes and crates filled with rotting food. Juice from the decaying food dripped onto the concrete floor. A few shelves had fallen at the other end of the room. They were covered in ash. Charred planks from crates were piled next to those shelves.
Part of the wall seemed to have crumbled into the storage space, leaving behind a crater with gravel strewn across the floor from what appeared to be a blast.
And between all that destruction were the twisted bodies of maybe a dozen Skulls. Most were charred, missing appendages like the beast they had found upstairs. They pulled themselves across the concrete with their damaged claws or pushed themselves toward the SEALs with their twisted legs. Their faces were mangled messes of bone and bloody flesh. O’Neil saw a couple whose guts had been torn open, their insides dragging across the floor in a wet pile.
“Oh, fuck,” Tate said.
“Jesus,” Loeb said.
One of the beasts pulled itself upright, letting out a long hiss, its tongue scraping between the teeth left on its upper jaw. The lower jaw was hanging by a stretching sinew.
“Take them down,” Reynolds said. “All of them.”
Gunfire exploded from the SEALs’ gun barrels, striking out in the dark, each blast tearing straight through the half-dead Skulls. Gore splattered from the bullet wounds, painting the walls. In a matter of seconds, they finished the massacre that someone else had started.
The smell of death and cordite and blood hung in the air. They pushed through the wreckage of the devastated monsters. One reached up toward O’Neil, its nostrils flaring. He planted a boot hard into its forehead, grinding it into the floor. The bone cracked and gave way, and the beast’s claws twitched before finally growing still.
O’Neil advanced past the carnage.
He focused on their next goal. The kitchens.
But before he and Tate could prepare themselves near the next door, something slammed into it. The doorframe shook. Dust fell from the ceiling tiles in columns. Roar after roar blasted through the door as it tremored with each heavy bang.
“Stand back,” O’Neil said.
“Alpha, Bravo, Charlie Actual,” an operator called over the radio. “We’re hearing Skulls in the kitchens.”
“Copy,” Reynolds called back. “We hear them!”
The metal door shook again. But this time, when the beast hit, dents pushed through the door toward the SEALs. A crack snapped from the wall around the doorframe.
Then in a billow of dust, the doorframe gave way. The door slammed flat against the floor, smashing one of the blackened corpses. A plume of rotten tissue and bone fragments sprayed from the impact.
The beast that emerged through that dust cloud had massive, tusked fangs curving from its jaw. Its shoulders were covered in thick bone plates that made it look like a linebacker, and its vessels bulged between the plates and massive muscles. The monster let out another deafening bellow before stomping toward O’Neil and Tate.
It hadn’t come alone.
Four more thinner Skulls rushed around it, racing toward the operators.
O’Neil squeezed the trigger, backpedaling, trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and the looming monster. The beast shrieked at them, spittle flying from between its tusklike fangs.
Rounds lanced through the monster’s bone chest plates. Each connecting round sent a shower of bony shards. Diseased flesh burst from the wounds. And still the monster charged, closing the distance in just a few bounds as O’Neil emptied rounds into the enormous monster.
He traced his aim up the creature’s body. Each shot broke into the beast’s organic armor. But whether the monster was carried by sheer predatorial hunger or momentum, he could do nothing but jump out of the way as the rest of the SEALs fired, each shot flaring in the dark room, the sound of gunfire echoing against the walls.
O’Neil landed hard on the floor, crashing down in the middle of a dead Skull, its body breaking around him, oozing flesh sticking to his uniform. Pain rocked up his elbow where it hit the concrete, and he pushed himself backward, using his feet, roving his aim back toward the monstrous Skull.
The beast crashed into Van, pressing him against the wall. it reared back with one of its claws, ready to strike down at the man.
O’Neil sighted up the monster’s head. Fired off a quick burst that drilled into the side of its head.
The monster’s claw dropped, and Van shoved it backward. It crashed into another Skull, crushing the beast as they collapsed to the ground.
While two of the other smaller Skulls had been eliminated with gunfire, the last one had reached Loeb’s position. It bit at him, snapping at his face, teeth coming inches from tearing a chunk from his cheek. He pushed it back with his rifle. The creature snapped its teeth down around the gun.