Reign of Evil

“Magerts, fire on my signal.” He let the spoon slip free and cooked the hand grenade for two seconds before tossing it through the window. He had just enough time to see the surprised expression on the lead man’s face before Ian was forced to dive to the ground.

The grenade went off, peppering the outside of the home with shrapnel. Screams were cut off by a surge of SA80s firing from Magerts’s hide site. Then a few seconds later, the rattling of the machine gun began to eat the rear of the line of men.

He pulled his last two fragmentation grenades, removed the pins, then tossed each of them across the road until they rolled beneath the shrubbery. He jerked his head back. Both went off simultaneously, throwing superheated shrapnel in all directions. When next he looked, a pair of truck-sized holes had been blown in the shrubbery. Men were picking themselves off the smoke-hugged ground. Many had hands over their ears. They never heard the machine-gun shots that took them down.

Then as suddenly as the violent confluence started, it stopped.

The machine gunner said it simply. “They’re all dead.”

“Rule number one.” Magerts laughed. “Never walk into an L-shaped ambush.”

But Ian didn’t find any of this funny. Thirty men with families had just died much like Jerry and probably Trevor. And for what? For a mythical king to come back to life? Fuck!

One of the Marines approached from behind. “First floor cleared, sir. No sign of Trevor.”

“Clear the second floor. Magerts, clear the front, and bring your men inside.”

Ian turned and walked into the main salon where his men had already zip-tied several dozen revelers. It had been an orgy of epic proportions. Many of the men were still erect, trying to edge their way closer to the nearest zip-tied woman. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture or square meter of carpet that wasn’t occupied by someone.

Some of the men still wore masks. Long beaks of birds. The mane of a lion. The whiskered snout of a rat. He pulled the rat’s mask off and recognized the man immediately.

“You looked different on television.”

The flab of the man’s midsection almost covered his semi-erect cock. The mad, lust-filled look in his eyes showed no signs of diminishing. It was either drugs or magic or both. Whatever was in these people, it wasn’t anything Ian wanted to be part of. He glanced over at the naked women and noted that they did nothing for him. In fact, he felt sadness for them. Whatever they’d had that was good had been spent. He wasn’t sure how he knew it, but he just did. Something evil had come to harvest and laid them bare.

A few shots echoed in the street out front; then Magerts and his men fanned inside.

Magerts whistled. “Now this is what I call a party.” He waggled a finger at one of his Marines. “Treat this like a museum, boys. Look, but don’t touch.”

“Pretty fucked-up museum,” one of them said.

Magerts’s face held the afterglow of battle. “We’ll follow you anytime, Lieutenant Colonel Waits. Those bastards never knew what hit them.”

Ian shook his head at the pure sadness of it. “No, they didn’t.”

It had been a little while since he’d heard from the other Marines he’d sent upstairs. He found the staircase and looked up at the landing. His heart chilled as one of the lip-sewn women stood there, her eyes glowing with power.

He felt the amulet grow hot against his chest.

Magerts began to approach, but Ian waved him back. He didn’t know what the woman had done to his men upstairs to overcome them and didn’t want it to happen to Magerts and his men. Ian alone seemed to be impervious to her powers. At least for now.

“Where are my men?” Somehow he managed to keep the terror from his voice.

She pointed at him and he felt his amulet grow warmer. He was so thankful he’d worn it.

“I’ll ask again, where are my men?” Then he laughed softly. Here he was asking a question of a woman whose lips were sewn shut. Correction. Not a woman but something that looked like a woman.

He put a foot on the first step just to see what would happen.

He was rewarded, so to speak. One of his men stepped woodenly beside her. Ian had talked to him. His name was Todd something. He had a kid who was in some Christmas pageant somewhere.

And now he stood, staring dumbly at Ian, holding a rifle, but not yet pointing it at him.

Please don’t point the weapon at me.

Ian had his hand on his pistol and was ready to draw it but hoped he wouldn’t have to exacerbate the situation.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said as much to her as he did to the Marine.

Then the Marine raised his rifle.