The Cerberus Protocol (Hellstalkers Science Fiction Horror Series) Read online

  "Cool," said Ulf. "I could deal with that."

  "You’d probably get sick of drinking it after a while," said Memphis. "And besides, you couldn’t ride your board if you were drunk all the time."

  Ulf laughed. "Wanna bet?"

  Memphis ignored him and peered through the windshield. "Can you see that sign?"

  Ulf brushed his hand against the glass and frowned. "Looks like The Fat Pig."

  Memphis nodded. "Good, that’s where we want to be." He checked the clock on the dashboard. Eight-fifty. Ten minutes early. Not bad.

  Ulf leaned back and Memphis saw the pistol a second later. "What the hell are you doing?"

  Ulf regarded him. "You know this guy?"

  "He’s ex-SAS. They pensioned him off and he came up here."

  "Why’d they pension him off?"

  "What do you mean?"

  Ulf sighed. "The Special Air Service isn’t in the business of sending their veteran warriors out to pasture. They tend to keep their wounded, maimed, and crippled on the payroll. Those guys have oodles of experience and the SAS command want them around the new guys that come in, imparting wisdom and stuff." Ulf peered through the window again. "If this guy was sent packing, I’m guessing he might not be the steadfast soldier you think he is."

  Memphis frowned. Ulf was showing his dual personality again. The skater boy was gone and in his place, Ulf the warrior sat ready to do battle.

  But Ulf had a point.

  "What do you suggest?"

  Ulf shrugged. "You make initial contact. I’ll come in a few minutes after you and sit near the bar. If you get into trouble, I’ll be there to help sort it out."

  "All right. But keep that gun hidden. I don’t want this thing escalating when it doesn’t need to."

  "Done."

  Memphis stepped out into the rainstorm and felt his barn coat soak through almost immediately. He ran for the door of The Fat Pig and pushed inside, hearing the jingly bell over the door announce his presence.

  The entire pub went quiet as they looked at Memphis. He smiled at no one in particular and they went back to drinking and talking in hushed tones. Memphis took a breath. Tough room, he decided.

  On the flight into England, he’d tried his best to memorize the picture of Colin MacIvers. He was older than Memphis and Ulf with years of experience hidden in the crow’s feet that bracketed his eyes. In his picture, MacIvers wasn’t smiling and it left Memphis feeling like the man could rip him apart without giving it a second thought.

  Memphis sat down at the only free seat at the bar - the one closest to the door. The bartender wandered over. "Whudyehavin’?"

  Memphis digested the question and then asked for a pint of ale. The bartender drew the draft and put it in front of Memphis. Then he stood there. Memphis took a sip and smiled. "I’m looking for Colin MacIvers."

  The bartender nodded toward the back of the bar. Memphis looked and saw there were some tables hidden in the shadows that were cast by a blazing hearth. As the flames danced, he caught a glimpse of the man in the photograph he’d seen in his file. But MacIvers had grown a thick, wooly beard since his time away from the SAS.

  Memphis hefted his beer and headed toward the back. He stopped well short of MacIvers’s table. "Colin MacIvers?"

  MacIvers’s eyes came up slowly, rolling over every inch of Memphis. He found the man’s gaze extremely unsettling. MacIvers’s eyes continued their assessment and then continued up to the ceiling and back even further until MacIvers had tipped back in his chair and fallen over.

  Memphis sighed. Great.

  Memphis put his pint on the table and helped MacIvers get to his feet and then back into the seat. "You okay?"

  "Perfectly fine," said MacIvers, although it sounded like all of the vowels had been stripped out of the speech.

  "You’re drunk," said Memphis.

  "I am..." MacIvers paused. "Imbibing."

  "You’re drunk."

  "And you’re not from these parts, Yank. Otherwise you’d be wearing something better suited to warding off the tears of heaven outside instead of that poor excuse for outdoors kit."

  Memphis looked at his coat. Back in the States it had cost him almost two hundred dollars. But MacIvers was right: it was not the sort of thing that would keep him dry.

  MacIvers held up his right hand and waved at the bartender. "I need another one, Davey."

  "Aye, Jock," came the response.

  "Jock?" asked Memphis.

  "Everyone calls me Jock, mate. And now you can as well." He sighed and leaned forward as Memphis heard the bell over the door jingle again. That would be Ulf, he decided.

  "So, you’ve found me at last, have ye?"

  Memphis smiled. "It was quite the trip, coming all the way up here."

  "I knew the buggers would never let me live," said Jock under his breath. "And now they’ve sent their errand boy, haven’t they? Told you it was too good to be true us coming here."

  Memphis leaned forward. "Sorry? I didn’t quite catch that?"

  Jock looked up. "Huh? Oh, nothing. Just get on with it, so I can return to my drink."

  The bartender appeared and placed a fresh glass of whiskey down in front of Jock. Jock took and raised it in front of him, his eyes twinkling. "Cheers."

  Memphis held up his drink and as he extended it to clink it against Jock’s glass, the old warrior suddenly leaned back and with his other hand clamped down on Memphis’s arm and yanked him halfway across the table. In a split second, there was a very sharp blade underneath Memphis’s throat and Jock’s voice growled in his ear.

  "I’ll give you one chance to answer, mate. Who the devil are you?"

  Memphis gulped. "Name’s Stone. Ex-Army. I’m here to offer you a job."

  Jock didn’t let any of the pressure off. Memphis could smell the stench of whiskey on Jock’s breath, but the amount of alcohol in his system didn’t seem to be affecting him very much. "And who...is he?"

  Memphis tried to turn his head and saw Ulf standing a pace away, the pistol leveled on Jock’s head. Memphis glanced back at Jock. "That’s Ulf. He’s with me."

  "I fucking know he’s with you, mate. As soon as he came waltzing in here I knew that." He leaned closer. "I could slice your throat and they’d bury us both out back."

  "And that wouldn’t get either of us anywhere special," said Memphis. "I meant what I said: I’m here to talk business with you."

  "You’re with Them. I can smell the stink of government on ye."

  "I’m not with anyone," said Memphis. "But I do need your help."

  "And why should I believe you?"

  "Because Ulf hasn’t shot you yet."

  Jock frowned. After a moment, Memphis felt the pressure release and then saw Jock leaning back in his chair, pocketing the knife. "Fair one." He kicked out another chair and looked at Ulf. "Put the toy away and join us for a drink, Fritz."

  Ulf glanced at Memphis and then holstered the pistol. Memphis glanced around the bar, but the encounter didn’t even seem to have fazed any of the patrons. Some town, he thought.

  Ulf sat next to Jock and extended his hand. "Ulf Schwarzwalder."

  "Jock MacIvers," said Jock shaking his hand. He glanced down and then stared right into Ulf’s eyes for a long moment. "You like helicopters, mate?"

  "Only when I’m getting the hell out of them, man," said Ulf.

  Jock smirked. "Aye, that’s the best, isn’t it?"

  Ulf nodded.

  Memphis frowned. "You guys through?"

  Jock eyed Memphis and then glanced back at Ulf. "Not one of us."

  Ulf shook his head. "Nope."

  Jock frowned. "And yet you’re with him."

  Ulf smiled. "He’s got some pretty far out things to say, man. You ought to hear him out."

  Jock looked back at Memphis. "All right, Yank. What’s your deal? Why’d you come and bother old Jock for?"

  "You miss the old days?"

  "And what’s that supposed to mean?"

  "The fighting
. You miss it?" Memphis glanced at Ulf but the skater boy persona was busy studying the menu for an appropriate libation.

  Jock chuckled. "Warriors fight, mate. It’s what we do. And when we’re told we can’t do it any longer, a part of us dies. You ask me if I miss it without even understanding what you’re asking. To you, fighting’s all about killing."

  "Isn’t that the point?"

  "To me, fighting’s all about the struggle between good versus evil, mate. And if you take a warrior out of that fight, then evil gets an upper hand, don’t he? And how can a thing like that ever be good?"

  "I’ll take that as a yes," said Memphis.

  Jock sighed and looked at Ulf. "You, I can see experience in. But this lot here hasn’t got a fucking roadmap."

  Ulf shrugged. "Not much. But he’s got something neither you nor I have ever had. At least not yet."

  "And what’s that?"

  Memphis pointed at the knit cap on the floor. "Is that yours?"

  Jock snatched it up off the flagstones. As he did so, Memphis saw something reflecting light from inside it. "Is that lined?"

  Jock plopped the watch cap on his head and shrugged. "I may have altered the hat to better suit my needs."

  Memphis smiled. "It’s lined with aluminum foil, isn’t it?"

  Ulf snorted. "A tin foil hat? Far out, man. That’s pretty wild."

  Jock looked embarrassed. "I wouldn’t expect you lot to believe what I’ve seen with my own eyes before."

  "Try me," said Memphis.

  "They’re out there," said Jock. "Big bug-eyed creepies prowling the woods. Strange signals on my telly screen. Even my computer’s acting weird lately." He took the hat off and fiddled with it. "I don’t want them being able to read my thoughts. So I thought if I, y’know, shielded myself somehow, it would help."

  "Who are you shielding yourself against?" asked Memphis.

  Jock leaned closer to him. "The aliens, mate. They’re here already."

  "Well, you’ve got that right, at least," said Memphis.

  Jock paused and looked at him. Then his jaw fell open and a set of dentures bounced on to the table. Jock hastily gathered them up and put them back into his mouth. "Sorry ’bout that. They tend to fall out when I’m gob smacked."

  Ulf was fairly giggling now, but Jock ignored him. He continued to stare at Memphis. "Did you just say what I thought you said, mate?"

  "That you’ve got it right," said Memphis. "Yeah. You heard me right."

  "Bloody hell. A believer."

  Memphis smirked. "Oh, you could definitely say that. I’ve seen them firsthand. And they’re pretty horrifying."

  Jock continued to stare at him. "You said something about a job."

  Memphis nodded. "I’m putting a team together. We’re going to kill the bastards. Are you interested in being part of it?"

  Jock glanced at Ulf. "He’s serious."

  "Yup."

  Jock looked back at Memphis. "Who’s backing us?"

  "No one," said Memphis. "No government at least. But we’ve got resources. And money. And we can get things done that the bureaucrats wouldn’t ever be able to until it was far too late to do anything about it."

  Jock leaned back in his chair and downed the rest of his whiskey before slamming the glass back on to the table. "Well, looks like I’m going back to war then, doesn’t it?"

  Chapter Twelve

  The team assembled for the first time in the conference room at Cerberus headquarters twenty-four hours later. Introductions were made all around and then Trent brought the meeting to order.

  “By now, you’ve no doubt heard about the incident at CERN. Media sources the world over are calling it a tragic accident, saying that the start of the Large Hadron Collider caused a previously unknown fault line to shift position, resulting in an earthquake of considerable magnitude. That quake was centered beneath the CERN complex and as a result those within the complex at the time of the test were unfortunately killed.”

  Trent paused, looking them over one by one.

  “That’s a load of bullshit. Plain and simple. It was designed to keep Mr. Joe Public fat, dumb and happy, which is just the way he likes to be. And it’s working.”

  “So what did happen?” Ulf asked.

  “The activation of the LHC opened a rift, a gate if you will, between our world and somewhere else. In the process, certain otherworldly creatures entered our plane of existence.”

  He paused, perhaps waiting for one of them to object, but when no one said anything, he went on.

  “We don’t know what they want nor where they come from. What we do know is that they have a taste for human flesh, are extremely deadly, and are hard as hell to kill.”

  “And we know this how?” Alena asked.

  Trent pointed at Memphis. “For one thing, we have first-hand knowledge to draw from. Captain Stone was part of the team that was sent into the CERN complex in the immediate aftermath of the breach. Stone?”

  Surprised that he was being asked to speak, Memphis cleared his throat nervously and then spent a few minutes describing what he had faced there at CERN. He could see the open skepticism on several of their faces, especially Ulf’s, but there wasn’t much Memphis could do about it. Like before, he could only tell the truth.

  Trent picked up the thread. “In addition to Captain Stone’s report, we also have in our possession certain material that discusses a similar incident from the past.” He went on to tell them about the Ahnenerbe Summoning, as it was known to those involved with the project.

  “But don’t take Stone’s word for what he saw, see for yourself.” Trent pushed a button on the conference table in front of where he sat and a large flat screen slid down smoothly from the ceiling.

  “What I’m about to show you is the video feed from the helmet that Captain Stone was wearing that afternoon at CERN.”

  Now Memphis was really confused. He’d seen the tapes; he knew there was nothing on them. Why on earth was Trent showing those?

  The scenes began to unfurl on the screen in front of them and Memphis found himself growing tense all over again. Something about the creatures touched a nerve deep in his primeval self and the lizard part of his brain reacted as he would expect it to react to an overwhelming threat, sending signals to his brain and the rest of his body telling him to get the hell out of there. He had to fight the urge to get up from the table.

  They reached the point in the video where Memphis and his squad were first attacked and the others were surprises when they saw him responding to...empty air.

  “As you can see, the standard cameras attached to Captain Stone’s helmet were not able to pick up the creatures he was easily able to see with his normal eyesight. We’re not sure why that is yet, but by experimenting with different frequencies we were able to coax the images from the tape.”

  The touch of another button and all of a sudden the gaping maw of one of the panther-like creatures filled the screen as it lunged at Memphis.

  Trent froze the video, letting them all take a good, long look.

  “That, boys and girl, is a Grendel. Or, at least, that’s the name our forefathers gave it in 1945. They are extremely fast, utterly vicious, but not much more intelligent than your average German shepherd.”

  “In our parlance, it’s a Class One intruder. It can be harmed and even killed with conventional weaponry but it isn’t going to be easy and the more firepower you have at your disposal the better.”

  Ulf tore his gaze away from the screen to look at Trent directly. “How many classes of these things are there?”

  “The material we seized after the interruption of the Ahnenerbe Summoning indicates that the Nazis believed there to be five separate and distinct classes of intruders. Class One, of course, being the easiest to both summon and contain.”

  “And the Class Five bastards?” Jock asked. “What about them beasties, mate?”

  Trent paused. “Are you familiar with the writings of HP Lovecraft, Sergeant? With his descripti
ons of the Great Old Ones such as Cthulhu, Hastur, and Shuy-Nihl?”

  Jock started. “You’re not telling me that those things are real now, are ye?”

  Trent shook his head. “Sadly, no. A Class Five intruder makes Cthulhu look like an ill-behaved three year old.”

  He let that statement hang in the air a minute.

  Someone, Memphis wasn’t sure who, audibly gulped.

  Heck, he might have even done it himself.

  Trent went on. “Make no mistake, what we are doing here is vitally important not just to those unfortunate enough to run into one of these things, but to the health and safety of every man, woman, and child on this planet.

  “While we are still trying to confirm our findings, we believe the CERN event acted as a kind of event horizon from beyond which we cannot return. We’ve had reports that two other rifts have opened in other places around the globe since the CERN incident. In both cases the rifts spontaneously closed before anything could come through, but we do not expect our luck in that regard to hold for long.

  He looked at them all, as if weighing their readiness to do what needed to be done. “When a rift opens, and something comes through, it will be our job to stop it.”

  Trent’s smile held no humor in it.

  “Welcome to my world. Welcome to the HELLstalkers.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Three days later.

  Memphis stood near a long table in the laboratory wing of the compound in Maine along with the other team members. On the table in front of them was an array of weaponry - both pistols and assault rifles.

  Jock stood nearby appraising the submachine guns. "Always been a Heckler & Koch man, m’self. MP5s if you please."

  Ulf pointed at the pistols. "Those are H&K. U.S.Ps. They’re pretty tight. Sweet for suppressed work, too."

  Alena sniffed. "The pistols are too large. For close work, you only need a .22, if you know how to handle it properly."

  Trent walked in the room followed closely by a very tall and very thin man. When they drew closer to the table, Trent turned. "This is Henderson. He’s our armorer. If you’ve got a question about the guns in front of you, or if you need something customized, this is the man I want you to talk to."