“Just outside of Barrow, actually.”
“Oh, that’s so much more believable.”
They ducked between some houses, trying to ignore the creepy sound of feet and hands splashing and scratching behind them with no voices whatsoever.
“Hey, it’s not like I don’t travel, you know.”
“Would you two cut out the comedy routine?” Masters growled as he and Rankin threw themselves up and over a large fence. Alex vaulted off what looked like a doghouse, caught the fence easily, and then cat-vaulted the rest of the distance in a single flowing motion. “And stop showing off!”
Masters and Rankin landed solidly on the other side, now chasing after Alex, who had a lead on them. He was fast, but they were both trained to run and gun with a lot more weight than either of them were lugging at the moment, so they quickly caught back up.
“What took you?” Alex asked, pointing toward the fence that separated them from the airfield. “Over that way.”
They didn’t question him, and the trio bolted for the fence. Again, the two SEALs hit the fence identically, planting one foot ahead of them, vaulting up to grab the top, and then flinging themselves half over before swinging their bodies the rest of the way.
Meanwhile, Alex threw himself at the eight-foot fence, got his hands on the top, and seemed to levitate over it as he curled his legs up and under his body, pulling hard to assist his jump. He landed with a roll on the other side and came up running, giving him a strong lead on the SEALs.
Like the last time, though, it only took them a few minutes to catch up, and the trio ducked behind one of the hangars that dotted the airfield, using the time to get their wind back.
“They’re milling around out there, so maybe we lost them,” Eddie said after taking a quick peek.
“Won’t last.” Alex shook his head. “Vampires can sniff us out, given a little time. They can smell body heat.”
“Well that’s moderately creepy.”
“They’re vampires,” Alex muttered dryly.
“Right. Extremely creepy,” Eddie amended.
“Can the Abbott and Costello routine,” Masters growled. “Alex, where is this place you know?”
“ ‘Know of’ would be more accurate, to be honest,” Alex admitted. “It’s a lodge a few kilometers out of town.”
“A lodge? Who builds a lodge this far up in the butt end of Alaska?” Eddie asked, unbelieving.
“The Asatru.”
“Ass hat, who?”
Alex pinned Rankin with a glare. “Don’t even think of making that joke when we see them.”
Eddie raised his eyebrows, but didn’t quite know what to say in response.
“Not that I care all that much, but you might like to keep your limbs intact,” Alex finished with a roll of his eyes as he glanced around. “Okay, we’ve got to move out. It should be east of here.”
“All right, SERE drills, Eddie,” Masters ordered. “Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Seer?” Alex frowned, confused. “Didn’t know either of you had the talent.”
“What?” Masters was now just as confused as his friend. “SERE training, man. Survive, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. That’s bread and butter to us. Come on.”
“Sometimes I fully believe that you SEALs speak a different language than the rest of us,” Alex muttered, annoyed.
Rankin snorted. “Like you count as the ‘rest of us.’ The damn fool gibberish you spout half the time is enough to give me a headache.”
“Well, if you used your head for more than bashing in doors—”
“Enough. Move,” Masters ordered.
With no time left to get their wind back, the trio broke from cover and ran for the next building as they began to work their way east through the airfield. Reaching another hangar, Masters threw a long considering gaze south to the C-130 sitting on the tarmac.
“Think we can reach it?” he wondered aloud. If there was an ambush set up there, they’d have already spilled out of the plane like everywhere else in this damned town, right?
“Maybe. Why?” Alex asked, looking around.
“Ammo, for one.”
“I’m with the boss on this one,” Eddie said, tilting his weapon up. “Down to three mags, plus what’s left of the one in the receiver. Call it thirty-four rounds. Hawk’s out, and you aren’t packing.”
“What I’m packing doesn’t run out of bullets,” Alex muttered, eyes gauging the distance to the aircraft. “We can probably make it, but if we get spotted things are going to get rough.”
“Better for them to get rough with a full mag than with a badly shaped club in my hand,” Masters decided.
“Fine. Let’s do it.” Alex sighed.
“Stay low, stay fast. Don’t stop, don’t turn around, and whatever you do,” Masters ordered as he got ready to move, “don’t taunt Murphy. We need him on our side.”
Knowing that practically anything they said would violate that last order, the others stayed quiet as they readied themselves for the run. On a silent count of three, the trio broke from cover and bolted as fast as they could to the south, where the National Guard Hercules aircraft was sitting placidly.
CHAPTER 11
Captain Judith Andrews hardly knew what she was doing. Her legs were pumping beneath her and she was breathing hard, but it was all on automatic. She would stumble, catch herself or be caught by one of the others, and then continue to run.
Inside, though, her mind was focused on anything but what she was doing. Inside, she was still thinking about what she had seen, and what she couldn’t possibly have seen.
They couldn’t have been what they looked like. People in costume! That’s what it was.…It has to be, right? But why would they run toward the lieutenant commander’s assault rifle?
Of everything she’d seen, that was by far the most disturbing on so many levels.
The dead state troopers’ bodies, horrific though they were, could be explained. Perhaps they’d died another way and an animal had torn out their throats. That made far more sense than what Masters and that insane nitwit of his had been blabbering about.
Vampires.
They hadn’t even had the decency to pretend to whisper.
Vampires.
In the back of her mind she agreed with the petty officer, quite frankly. They looked far more like zombies.
But that was a part of her mind that she, along with every sane piece of her brain, was currently in the process of silencing with extreme prejudice.
“There’s the edge of town.” Jack Nelson nodded ahead of them. “Hang north — we have to head up the coast.”
They were running from monsters.
It was a thought that she couldn’t quite put out of her mind, an image she couldn’t banish no matter how hard she tried.
Is this what the admiral wanted me to discover? No, no. It can’t be. There must be another explanation.
“The admiral,” she muttered, drawing attention.
“What?” Nelson looked in her direction.
“The admiral,” she said, her voice more confident. “I have to report.”
“When we get out of this mess,” the lieutenant said, shaking his head. “For now, you run like the rest of us.”
She stared at him blankly for a moment, until a slap on her back from one of the others jolted her forward. Propelled onward again, Judith continued to move her legs automatically. The town’s homes and buildings looked like shadows thrown up by the lights still burning inside, but for her the entire world had begun to sink in on itself.
Still, having no choice, she ran with the team.
Right up until the moment a form lurched out from behind a building they were passing and grabbed her by the arm. Her reaction was thoughtless, visceral, and later she would feel humiliated by it, but in that instant Judith screamed like the helpless cheerleader in a slasher movie.