This was Andrew’s first mission. His heart thumped as his months of basic came rushing right back. He had plenty of early morning wake-ups from the sergeants, countless hours around the track, and plenty of sweat to make for work.
None of it could prepare him for this anxiety.
“CDR-4, this is Command. Do you read? Over.”
Yang cracked a cold energy drink before she answered. “This is CDR-4, we hear you loud and clear. Over.”
The car made a hard right turn. Yang almost dropped the phone, as liquid sloshed from her can. “Damn it, Gutierrez!” she yelled.
“My bad, sar’nt. We got a bit of a situation.”
The walls thumped in the rhythm of a machinegun. Even Andrew, with his limited experience, knew he was being shot at. Part of him wanted to panic, but no one else was. So this was safe, he supposed.
The radio cackled. “CDR-4, looks like you are in a hotzone. Recommending immediate dismount. Over.”
They could hear the sound of human yelling from all around. From the looks of it, they were ambushed in the middle of the road. “Fucking hell,” Smith muttered. “Gutierrez! This ain’t fucking Mexico! Were you trying to get us in the middle of a killzone?!”
Gutierrez didn’t respond. He climbed into the rear with the rest of the team as Sergeant Yang took the phone again. “Understood, command. CDR-4 is dismounting and equipping apes. Out.”
Everyone quickly took to the APEs sitting in the back of the vehicle. With more fire pounding against the side of the truck, the team equipped their freshly cleaned sets of armor. “And the knights come back once more,” Gutierrez chuckled.
Andrew was given the sixth, almost rusted set. It was fit to his proportions, but still had the strange feeling that it didn’t belong to him. Especially because he didn’t etch that pentagram on the chestplate.
“That was Wade’s suit,” Singh told him. “Don’t bleed all over it.”
As soon as everyone was suited up, the sergeant had everyone stack up by the rear door. Yelling could still be heard outside as they prepared it like a breach. “Gutierrez, you’re up.”
The Mexican sighed as he readied his foot. “And we just fixed the door,” he said in a disappointed sigh. He kicked it right down with his supercharged strength.
Machineguns blasted all around as the CDR team moved like human tanks. Bullets blasted all around, mostly ricocheting off of their armor, as the CDR paved their way through the terrorists.
Andrew didn’t know what to expect. Moving around in the APE suit, just as he had done in basic, felt like playing a video game rather than being in the field. From his visual interface, he could only see who was warm and who was cold.
Targets were warm. Bodies were cold.
But the visuals also helped him distance from another thing: the gore. Andrew saw and felt his weapon fire in his hand with little to no recoil. As such, he felt no physical remorse as he watched his weapon cut a guy in half with lead. Only psychological.
It didn’t take long for the remaining targets to retreat themselves back into their original building. Earlier, the police had supposedly “secured” the area, but they had underestimated the strength of the force inside. As such, the terrorists’ planned ambush went accordingly.
Still, the definition of “terrorist” didn’t seem to cut it. They didn’t wear hoods; they wore cloaks. “What the hell?” Smith scoffed on comms. “Are these guys cultists or something?”
Kang was already saying some biblical incantation. “Even as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,” he muttered, “for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
“Team,” the sergeant called. “Looks like we got a change of plans. SWAT teams are right now unsuccessful in punching through. Looks like we’re gonna have to be the spearhead in this.”
“The fuck?” Singh protested. She could even be heard spitting more dip fluid into her suit straw. “Cops can’t cut it, so they want us to do their work? We’re supposed to fight demons, you know!”
“Demons are apparently inside,” the sergeant added, though part of her tone showed that she didn’t fully buy it either. “In any case, they gave us our orders. We’ll have to carve our way through with standard operating procedure.”
She chose the brick wall to the side, where there were few windows. They did the same procedure as usual: team stacked along the walls as Gutierrez squared himself at the front. “Always getting the Mexican to do the work,” he jokingly grumbled. “Shit doesn’t change, even outside of America.”
One kick—the bricks came crashing down.
Inside, the cultists turned to find the team of red-eyed iron men staring back at them. While the cultists still had their weapons laying all around, the CDR team had their guns trained right for them. In a word, bang.
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Blood pasted onto the walls as lead showered downrange. The CDR fired on the move with methodical steps. Quick enough to take ground, but slow enough to notice a tango to the right.
“Stairs,” Smith called. One burst, and the body came tumbling down before it could even pull the trigger.
The team operated as one, moving room by room to clear out any stragglers. It went like earlier: a clear wipeout with hardly a scratch on the APE suits. “You know, we usually don’t work like this,” Singh yawned. “Since we’re usually trying to trap a demon, we move in pairs rather than a whole team.”
Andrew was surprised to hear that. Even in basic, the sergeants made sure to emphasize the need to move as one. But, to be fair, it’s not like the field of demon-killing has existed for long enough for the perfect set of tactics. Everything has a trade off, he supposed.
That being said, they were supposed to be killing demons. After clearing a couple rooms, no demons had yet to be found.
So where were they?
One of the bodies suddenly clung to Andrew’s foot. Blood spewed from his lips as he looked the kid in the eyes. “The Seven Beasts…” he muttered. “They won’t spare a single one of you…”
The wall crashed down as a single figure emerged with its hand around Andrew’s neck. It had a jaw that extended from cheek to cheek, skin that exposed fresh muscle, and a red-bone spear in its hand like a reincarnation of Ares.
“Holy shit!” Smith screamed.
They fired at the demon, but stopped as the demon waved him around like a human shield. No low-level demon had the capacity to think like that. Whatever they were fighting was something they couldn’t even consider.
For a second, everything seemed to freeze. Andrew felt time slow to a crawl as each second felt like an eternity. For a bit, he could feel the true grip of the hand around his neck. It wasn’t just the hand of some monster that could kill a guy, or even a dozen.
It was a demon. Something that was never supposed to be here.
Suddenly, the demon crashed to the ground and the grip released. Andrew looked to find Sergeant Yang in a hand-to-hand fight with a demon she had just met. Her knife repeatedly stabbed into the demon’s neck, before the beast threw her off to the side.
Not before she could give a command: “Light him up!”
Bullets hailed downrange, including from Andrew who had just grabbed his machinegun. The rounds thwacked against his body as the demon extended his right arm which grew into a shield. After that, the bullets were more like bbs.
The bloody body from earlier laughed, even as it was his last burst of energy. “That’s what you bastards get…” he coughed. “Man was never supposed to rule the world… so tell me how it’s like to face the Beast of Wrath.”
“It’s whatever, ese.” Gutierrez fired a single round into the guy’s skull. No more long speeches.
The beast walked down the CDR as his shield absorbed the suppressive fire. Sergeant Yang pulled Andrew to the rear with one arm and kept firing with the other. “The center of the shield is strong! Aim for the left-most edge!”
They took turns reloading and firing into the shield. They watched as fragments slowly flaked off, like wood from a chipper. Eventually, they had a nice little hole for them to shoot into. “Concentrate fire!”
Suddenly, the spear lunged right for Andrew’s head. Yang barely managed to pull him to the side as the tip stabbed into the wall. Little need to be said on its power, as the bricks came crashing down.
The beast bashed its shield against Singh—she was thrown to the side, coughing on her own dip. “Fuck!”
Smith grabbed the beast’s spear arm as Gutierrez went for the shield arm. But the beast shook them off as quickly as they tried grabbing them. “Smother him!” Yang ordered them. “Run now, and he’ll skewer you!”
Too close for flashbangs to work, Yang resorted to reloading her weapon with a belt of armor-piercing rounds. Andrew had the feeling she kept them in reserve for special moments like this.
She opened the feed, removed the brass, laid the new belt in, and closed the tray. With a good cock, the weapon was back in condition I. “Gutierrez! Smith! Get the fuck down!”
Yang unloaded the machinegun into the beast to devastating effect. The bullets streamed right through the shield, and right through the demon’s natural set of armor. It slowly staggered back as the other CDR officers took cover on the ground.
Taking this respite, Kang rushed over to Singh. “Are you alright? You took a heavy hit there.”
He helped her to her feet as she grumbled on her comms. “Damn, I think I swallowed the dip…” She coughed some more, though it was more like a gag. “I’m definitely gonna be vomiting later.”
Yang kept up her fire as the ammo counter ran closer to zero. “The thermite!” she screamed. “Use it now!”
Seeing everyone preoccupied with taking cover or recovering from earlier hits, Andrew realized that Yang was talking to him. It was strange. Not even a couple hours earlier, and she was basically ignoring him. Now she was giving direct orders. “Hurry!”
He grabbed the grenade from his belt, removed the pin, and threw it just as he did in training. It landed right in front of the beast’s feet.
Boom.
The fiery explosion engulfed the beast in a chemical blaze. CDRs typically reserve the thermite for when the demons are defeated, and have no chance of getting back up like a running fireball. Here, Yang was taking a gamble.
It was a poor bet.
The demon stood there with its entire body blanketed in flames, yet it didn’t do so much as move a muscle. It actually embraced the heat, like a child embracing his mother’s warmth. Its eyes stared into the meek humans like a god staring down at ants.
Then it was gone. Disappeared, like a magician in a show.
All that was left was a pile of randomized ash, cultist bodies, and a set of confused CDRs. Yang took a quick headcount. “Everyone okay? Any casualties?” she asked.
There was a second of silence. Then Singh removed her helmet and threw up all over the ground. “The fucking dip, man!”
Everyone chuckled, as if they didn’t just fight for their lives. “Was it as spicy as the curry?” Gutierrez laughed. “Dinga dinga dinga ding!” He made the Bollywood head movement and everything.
“Oh fuck off, Taco Bell!”
The CDRs cleared out the area just as the cops poured in. They kept smiling, even as they knew the paperwork for this fuckup was going to be enormous. The Seven Beasts are unknown, the Beast of Wrath is still on the loose, and now there’s a band of demon-loving cultists.
The chief is gonna tear us a new one.