SNAFU: Hunters

Blake looked at the thing again. The knees weren’t broken, they bent backwards like a dog’s hind legs and the wound on its face wasn’t a wound at all. The fleshy crater that took up most of its ‘face’ above the gaping mouth was pink and ridged with frills of tissue like the inside of a bat’s ear. But whatever it was, it didn’t look damaged. It was meant to look like that, like some kind of a cross between a giant nostril and a radar dish.

“You know what happens at the center of a thermonuclear explosion?” Carroll asked.

Blake thought of the twinned horrors at the heart of a thermonuclear bomb: the first fission explosion was terrible enough, but it was only a detonator, a way of driving the pressure high enough to cause fusion and unleash the terrible forces that powered the Sun itself.

“I know the basics.”

“No you don’t. Plenty of people thought they did, thought they understood the physics, and maybe they did up to a point, but they never stopped to think whether something else was happening. Something beyond physics… something metaphysical.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The concentration of energy at the center of the explosion is too much for the universe to handle. For a fraction of a second, it’s actually enough to rip a hole in the fabric of space and time. It tears a hole in reality itself.”

“Bullshit!”

“That ain’t even the crazy part,” Carroll said with a shake of his head. “You see ours ain’t the only universe. We’re not the only game in town and when the hole opens, it allows things to cross over. When there’s a loss of life in this reality, like those killed in those nano-seconds when the hole exists, it’s like there’s a kind of suction. It’s like opening a door on a plane at thirty-thousand feet. There’s a difference in pressure. Loss of life in this universe pulls life across from the other side: new life… different life.”

“I still say bullshit,” Blake said, glancing between Carroll and Burrows. “Next you’ll be telling me that’s where Godzilla came from – just stepped through one of these holes at Hiroshima.”

“That was just an A-bomb, not thermonuclear, not powerful enough. Good job, too. That many lives lost… who knows what might have come through. Look,” Carroll said, as he calmly wiped the receiver of his rifle with an oiled rag. “I know this sounds hard to believe, but look at that thing and tell me it’s from this Earth. I hunted these things for twenty years, ever since the Bowline tests in ’69. Usually, what comes through is no bigger than a jack rabbit. We try to minimize the loss of life but we can’t clear every bird and mosquito out of the test area so there’s always some negative pressure. Hell, even the bacteria in the soil have life energy, and there’s more biomass in soil and rock than you’d think. But there hasn’t been much call for guys like me recently, not since the test bans.”

“So let me get this straight,” Blake said, trying to make sense of what he’d heard. “You’re saying these terrorists smuggled a nuclear weapon across the border and when it detonated and killed them it sucked this… this demon through from another dimension?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Sergeant…” said Williams from inside the Stryker.

“So we’re not here to gather intelligence about the bomb. We’re… Ghostbusters or some shit.”

“No. You can gather all the intel you like. This was still a terrorist attack on US soil and you need to do your job. I’m the Ghostbuster.”

“Sarge, you need to see this,” Williams repeated.

For the first time Blake noticed the ring of steel in the dust, Carroll’s motorcycle chain and the small collection of items he’d placed inside its perimeter. One of the items was a candle – four inches of white wax like the kind kept in kitchen drawers across the country in case of a blackout. This one was stuck into the sand and despite the swirling dust storm it was still aflame.

“What is it, Williams?” Blake said into the ‘com.

“Another thermal trace, Sergeant. Bigger than the last one, and hot.”

“A vehicle?”

“I don’t think so.”

Blake noticed that although the candle didn’t seem to be affected by the storm, it was certainly being affected by something. The flame wasn’t burning straight up, nor was it guttering in the wind. It was horizontal. A little finger of flame pointing northwest.”

“Williams, what’s the bearing on that heat trace?”

“Northwest, Sergeant. About fifty yards and closing.”

Carroll focused on the flame then looked out into the storm following its point. The man reloaded the Overkill with a handful of its massive rounds.

Blake heard something above the roar of the wind that set ice in his veins. He unsnapped the quick-release buckles on the sling of his M4 and raised the carbine to his shoulder.

A shadow raised itself against the back of the swirling dust – grey and huge. Carroll’s Overkill boomed in a steady rhythm. Blake wanted to see what it was before he started shooting.

Then he wished he hadn’t.