The squad came to a halt. Dutch signaled for his men to spread out. Ahead of them, their trailblazer, Billy, stood in open ground, peering into the jungle with a kind of stoicism, clutching the pouch hanging from his neck, his rifle limp at his side as if the totem was a superior ward against whatever was out there than the Colt automatic. "What's got Billy so spooked?" Dutch asked Mac, who leaned into the ridgeline, chewing tobacco as sweat dripped down his face. "Can't say, Major. Been acting squirrely all morning. That damn nose of his. It's weird."
Dutch stepped out of the canopy cover, approaching Billy with his weapon level and ready. "What is it?" No response. "Billy?" Dutch jerked the scout by the shoulder, which stirred him from his trance. The wide-eyed paranoia in how he looked at Dutch unsettled him. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"There's something in those trees," Billy said. The pair stared for a long time, scanning the lush expanse of greenery, an impenetrable maze of intertwined vines and towering trees. It was badass bush that made Cambodia look like Kansas, stretching without end. Billy sighed, "I guess it's nothing, Major." He walked on ahead, still obviously rattled in a way that unnerved Dutch.
This hold up gave their captive, the girl, opportunity. She wacked the nearest man, Poncho, in the face with a branch and tore off through the jungle. Dutch whistled and the radioman, Hawkins, gave chase. He caught up to her, tackling her in a patch of dried leaves. As she struggled, cursing him in Spanish, an inhuman clicking sound and a rippling distortion preceded a scream and spray of blood as Hawkins was cut down and dragged off by the heel.
Poncho was first onto the scene, finding her stunned, huddled, and drenched in crimson spatter. He let her be for the moment, looking for his squadmate, but finding only a trail of blood leading off into the trees that ended in remnants of radio gear and a mess of gore that made him want to retch. "Major, you better take a look at this."
"Did you find Hawkins?"
Poncho's voice was weak. "I… I can't tell."
Interrogating the woman gave them no relief. Her answers were hysteric. "She says, 'the jungle… it just came alive and took him,'" Poncho translated between nervous breaths.
"Bullshit! That's not what she said," Dillon barked, "What she said doesn't make any sense." An argument about the sappers dogging them broke out, the men hurling uneasy rationalizations at one another.
"Hold it," Dutch broke them up, hand in the air. "Why didn't they take his radio, or his weapon? Why didn't she escape?" he said. Dillon paled, the gears of grim revelation turning as he put it together. The same damn thing had happened to Jim Hopper.
Dutch had to be proactive, keep ahold of himself and not let the men unravel despite the mess this had turned into. He said, rationally, cooly, like he had all the answers and confidence: "I want Hawkins' body found. Sweep pattern. Double back. Fifty meters, let's go." They fanned out into the undergrowth.
Blain carried Ol' Painless at the ready. With electric powerpack rig and ammunition, the minigun was more than a hundred pounds of hurt, able to spew lead downrange at startling speed. Something moved out there and caught his eye. "Come on in, you fuckers. Come on in," he said, thumbing the trigger button. He never had a chance. A crackle whipped through the air as a burst of blue-white energy struck Blain from behind, his torso erupting in a geyser of viscera before he crumpled to the earth. Mac, closest to Blain's sector, scrambled to his friend's side in time to catch sight of a shimmering silhouette, too tall to be a man, and two glowing yellow eyes that faded like will-o'-the-wisps into the foliage. "Contact!"
Mac screamed, unloading blindly until his own M60 ran dry, taking up Ol' Painless and sweeping the tree line with reckless firepower. Everyone else took his lead, joining in with a front of suppressive fire. Bullets raked the tree trunks, the overwhelming rain of gunfire shredding vegetation and cutting down stalks. Pulped plants flittered on the gunsmoke-filled wind as the explosions of grenades shook their teeth.
They carried on, reloading one magazine after another, pumping rounds relentlessly with steely-eyed determination until it seemed certain that nothing in that general direction could have possible survived. When the guns finally fell silent, smoke curling from every barrel, Mac was visibly shaken, whimpering with his fingers curled around Ol' Painless, which clicked empty, barrels dry spinning.
"What happened?" Dutch said.
"I saw it."
"You saw what?"
"I saw it," was all Mac had to offer, slack-jawed with a desperate, pleading kind of expression plastered on, trying to reckon with whatever "it" was. Dillon knelt to inspect what was left of Blain. A hole had split his chest apart like a cannonball had torn clean through him. His charred innards were still smoldering.
"No powder burns. No shrapnel," Dutch said.
"The wound's all fused and cauterized. What the hell could have done this to a man?"
"Mac. Mac! Look at me. Who did this?"
"I don't know, goddamnit. I saw… something."
Poncho came back reporting, "Not a thing. Not a fucking trace. No blood, no bodies. We hit nothing!"
Fear was starting to seep into everyone, Dutch included, but this was no time to let it get the best of them. "Dillon, better get on the radio. Mac… Sergeant!"
Mac met Dutch's eyes, not quite snapped out of it, but lucid enough to take orders. "Yessir?"
"I want a defensive position above that ridge, lined with everything we've got." The men set about building a perimeter of claymore mines and tripwires, anything to give themselves a fighting chance. Dutch needed something more concrete than jumping at shadows to get them out of this intact. He snatched the girl by the shoulders. "What did you see? No more games."
Dillon shook his head. "You're wasting your time."
She hesitated, searching the muscular man's face before she answered, in English. "I don't know what it was. It… it changed colors, like the chameleon. It uses the jungle."
Dillon scoffed, "You're saying that Blain and Hawkins were killed by a fucking lizard? That's a bullshit psych-job! There's two or three men out there at the most. Fuckin' lizard…"
"What's your name?" Dutch asked.
"Anna."
"Anna, this thing is hunting us. All of us. You know that?" He drew his knife and she winced, expecting the worst. Instead, he snipped the plastic binding her wrists.
"The hell do you think you're doing?" Dillon said.
"I need everyone."
"I'm taking her back. We're out of here in five minutes."
"You're not going yet."
"Look, the rendezvous is ten to twelve miles away from here. You think the chopper's gonna wait?"
"Dillon, we make a stand now, or there will be nobody left to go to the chopper."
"There's something else," Anna said. She produced a frond splattered with a strange neon green liquid. "When the big man was killed, you must have wounded it. Its blood was on the leaves."
That was the best news Dutch had heard all day. "If it bleeds, we can kill it."