Monster Empire Read online

  Then I remembered my men trapped in the trench, and my instincts took over. I picked myself up from the debris and brought my carbine to bear as I glanced around the side of the pillar

  I instantly wished I hadn’t looked, since bullets immediately ripped into the ancient landmark and speckled my face with tiny chunks of stone.

  As my vision cleared, I saw that three men had broken off from the main group and were heading around the back of the truck so that they could come at me from the south. The angle put their vehicle between them and my men's line of fire, so I knew I was about to have an even more serious problem on my hands.

  If I turned the corner again, it would likely be the last thing I did, so I used the cover of the pillar and the short wall to run back toward the temple. I didn’t bother looking at my watch. I knew that the Reaper was well past due, but even if it reached us now, the Air Force wouldn’t risk destroying the temple.

  I was on my own.

  There wasn’t much left of the temple aside from a chunk of square sandstone with three pillars still standing on one side, but it was enough to hide behind, so I dove to the safety offered by that bit of cover as bullets riddled the ground behind me like kamikaze metal wasps. I landed on my side, rolled, and popped up to my feet. Then I pressed my back against the sandstone and listened.

  The gunfire stopped, but I didn’t take it as a good sign.

  Then I saw it. The Reaper had finally arrived. I heard the warning cries of the men who had pursued me to the temple, and I smiled to myself.

  “You boys are really fucked now!” I yelled over my shoulder.

  “Sar'nt, get out of there!”

  Lucas’s words in my earpiece came to me about the same time as the sound of a rocket launcher firing. There wasn’t much time for thinking, so I took three bounding steps and leaped for a depression behind the temple as the rocket exploded.

  The world beneath me seemed to spin as I fell.

  My ears rang so bad, I figured that they must’ve been bleeding, and for a millisecond, some part of my brain wondered if I would ever hear again. My vision turned black, and I guessed I had just taken a point-blank blast. My body went numb, and I realized that I was probably going to die.

  But I didn’t die.

  Instead, I hit the ground hard, and the air exploded from my dusty lungs.

  I was happy to be alive, but when my vision cleared I saw that the roof of the temple was beginning to crumble. I covered my head to protect it from the falling stone and other debris, but the danger did not come from above. Instead, the ground began to vibrate, and the sand beneath my boots and knees began to disappear. I glanced back and saw that it was falling into a wide hole which had been created when the temple was hit. More sand and earth gave way, and I clawed at the nearby rocks as I tried to escape the sinkhole.

  The ground beneath me suddenly disappeared, and I was sliding down like a boogie boarder riding a wave.

  I fell a good ten feet before I slammed into a ledge, missed a hand hold, and slid off another edge. The next fall brought me another ten feet, but I managed to get my boots under me as I fell and landed on a small ledge that jutted out from the wall without breaking my neck. The shock of what had happened and the fact that I was still alive left me feeling almost giddy, but my celebration was short lived when I looked up.

  Two ISIS fighters were staring down at me from the lip of the crater and were screaming something about Allah.

  If they opened fire, I would be a dead man.

  I looked down and expected to see what was left of the temple and other debris still falling into the abyss. But to my surprise, they did not fall into darkness, but into a bright blue light. I blinked, unable to believe my eyes. About a hundred feet below me, down at the bottom of the ten-foot-wide circular pit, was turquoise blue water. It even looked like the sun shone through it, but of course, that was impossible.

  A bullet hit the wall beside me, and I realized then that the sling ripped off and I dropped my rifle. I let out a string of curses, pulled my sidearm, and squeezed off three rounds. The men ducked back from the opening, and I was safe for the time being. But if I remained on the ledge, I would be a sitting duck. My only salvation lay at the bottom of the pit, in the pristine, sunlit waters that had no right being at the bottom of a sunbaked desert.

  I couldn’t rely on my men to get me out of this one, and the Reaper wasn’t going to fire on the site of the ancient temple. All I had to do was drop into the waters below and wait out the battle on the surface, and eventually my people would drop down a rope.

  At least, that was the plan.

  The enemies above me pointed their AK’s into the pit blindly and fired, and I did the only thing I could do.

  I quickly peeled off my pack, removed my Kevlar, put the pack back on, and jumped feet first into the hole.

  Bullets ricocheted through the pit, and I screamed in defiance as I fell with my middle finger held high. It wasn’t the most graceful of leaps, and I bounced off the walls like a pinball. My molle pack protected my back from the rough stone of the natural well, but I hit my shoulder pretty hard as I ping-ponged my way down, down, down.

  The drop was much farther than I had estimated. At least another hundred feet more, and I fell for so long that I had time to let out my earlier breath and take another. When I finally hit the water, the impact was jarring. One of my legs twisted to the side, and I dipped backward as I sank. I had trained for shit like this, and I remembered to remain calm and steadily swim for the surface. I could see a shimmering light above me, and for a moment I thought it must be the sun, but I was below the surface of the earth, likely in a natural underground lake, and the sun hadn’t been high enough for me to see through the natural well above.

  Whatever it was, it meant air, it meant safety, and I pumped my arms and legs. It felt like I would never break through to the surface, and when I finally did I let the carbon dioxide explode from my lungs before I took in greedy gulps of fresh air.

  I opened my eyes, thankful to still be breathing, and that’s when I saw two suns sitting high in the sky. Salt water stung my eyes, and I rubbed at them, sure that I had mistaken the two suns for something else. When I opened my eyes, the suns were still there. I forced myself upright and treaded water. To my right was a sandy beach and forest beyond. To my left was a tall, rocky cliff.

  I didn’t know where I was, but I was pretty damn sure it wasn’t Earth.

  Chapter 2

  “Gibson, do you read me?” I called on the radio. “Team one? Team two? Anyone?”

  No one answered in my earpiece, so I continued to tread water and wonder where the hell I had ended up. The turquoise water suggested the Caribbean, but the twin suns made it pretty obvious that I was no longer on Earth.

  More importantly, could I get back?

  Those and other questions rattled around my brain as I tried to stay above water. Even though my molle pack was buoyant it still weighed at least seventy pounds, but I had trained under similar conditions, and I had always been a good swimmer. The adrenaline combined with my confusion and fear of whatever might be lurking beneath the water got my ass in gear pretty quick, and I began swimming for shore.

  “Ho there!” A voice came from behind me.

  I turned around in the water to see who it was. The waves were mild, and as I bobbed up over the waterline I saw a lone fisherman in a little boat about one-hundred yards away from me. The shore was perhaps twice as far away, and I knew I could make the swim, but I figured I might as well catch a ride.

  “Ho there! I’m coming, hold on!”

  The fisherman was eager to get to me, and the urgency in his voice suggested that these weren’t waters which people swam in often, or perhaps he thought that I was being pulled out by the current. Regardless, he was coming to help, so I turned and started to swim in his direction.

  A wave began to grow in front of me, and I dove beneath it rather than crash through. I kept my eyes open when I went under the water,
and I soon wished that I hadn’t. Below me, three sharks circled. They didn’t look like great whites, or tiger sharks, or any kind I had ever seen, but they sure as hell made my skeleton want to leap out of my skin and run across the water like a cartoon character. I redoubled my efforts and tried to remind myself that sharks didn’t usually attack people unless they had mistaken them for seals.

  Or they were bleeding from tumbling head-over-ass down a rocky slope.

  With renewed vigor, I swam for my life and tried hard not to look like a seal.

  “Here, grab hold of this!” the fisherman yelled.

  He thrust out one of his oars and nearly took my head off, but I grabbed ahold of it and welcomed his help as I struggled to get my soggy ass into the boat. My fear of the sharks made me clumsy, and I crashed to the bottom of the boat and knocked over his fishing pole. I also managed to spill a bucket of minnows, and they jumped, flipped, and slapped me in the face as they fought to find water.

  “Shit, my bad.” I tried to round up the minnows, but then I knocked over the fisherman’s tackle as I flailed around his small boat.

  “It’s alright, son. Never mind them. Was done for the day anyway,” the fisherman assured me. He tugged on my molle pack and helped me to sit on the seat at the helm of the small rowboat.

  “Thanks,” I gasped as I tried to catch my breath.

  “Name’s Torrance,” the fisherman said as he extended a hand. It, like his face and the rest of his exposed skin, was dark brown and leathery. It suggested a life spent working outdoors beneath the sun.

  Or in this case, beneath two suns.

  “Sergeant Ken Jewell,” I said as we shook hands. “Thanks for the help.”

  “You’re welcome, friend,” said the fisherman with a kind smile.

  Torrance had a firm, rough grip, but an easy smile and kind brown eyes. He watched me with mild amusement and more than a small dose of curiosity. I noticed that he studied my camo, and his eyes squinted when he read the tags on my left shoulder.

  “What’s a sapper, Sergeant Ken Jewell?”

  “You can call me Ken,” I said and glanced around at the foreign landscape. This guy could read English, so I started to think that maybe I was still on Earth. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Where the hell am I?”

  He squinted at me and was probably trying to gauge if I was looney. “Why, you’re in my boat.”

  “I know that. I mean what is this place? And how the hell did I get here?”

  “As for where we are,” he said and waved a hand toward the land. “We are in the Bay of Mer, about three miles north of Hamstead. As for how you got here, well, you just kind of fell out of the sky.”

  “I fell from the sky?” I looked up, and expected to see some sort of shimmering portal or maybe even a UFO, but I saw only faint clouds, blue skies, and the twin suns that enforced the fact that, there was no way in hell, I was on Earth. Their rays burst through the clouds at different angles and chased a mean-looking thunderhead inland.

  “Yep,” he said. “I was sitting here fishing like I do every day. The fish bite best when both suns are out, you know? And then I heard your screaming. I looked up and saw you falling into the water.”

  “Did you see anything else?”

  “I don’t catch your meaning,” he said.

  “Did you see … like a shiny metal craft or maybe a shimmering, uh, portal?” I inquired and realized quickly how insane I sounded.

  “Portal, like a magic portal?” He scratched at his two-day beard and considered that. “Didn’t see one, but that might explain things. You anger a witch or something?”

  “A witch,” I repeated with a nervous laugh. But he was serious, and I cleared my throat and shook my head. “Not that I know of, sir.”

  “Well, a witch would explain things. Could have been that or a fairy,” Torrance said matter-of-factly.

  I rubbed my salt water stung eyes, squeezed the bridge of my nose, and tried to figure out what the hell was going on. This place seemed real, and Torrance seemed as real as anyone I had ever met, if a bit strange.

  I thought about my men and wondered what had happened to them. The drone most likely took out the fighters around the truck that fireteam one had locked down, and with that team freed up, they had most likely rushed to the aid of team two. I hoped so anyway. My conscience wouldn’t let the nagging questions rest, so I tried to focus on the problem at hand. No matter what had happened to my men, I couldn’t do anything about it at the moment. I needed to concentrate on my own predicament.

  “You look like you’ve had a hell of a day,” Torrance said and he began to row toward shore. “How about we go back to my farm and eat us some of this catch, and maybe then we can puzzle out what happened to you?”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I craned my neck around to study the beach. There were no palm trees or any of the other trappings of the Caribbean. Instead, thick green grass littered the sand dunes, and farther inland, a tall forest of pine surrounded the bay. On the other side of the bay was a long shelf of stone that created a sheer cliff at least one-hundred feet high that jutted out from the earth like a colossal finger.

  We made landfall, and I helped Torrance pull in his fishing boat. Then we dragged it across the beach, and I secured it behind one of the dozen or so sand dunes while Torrance collected his catch. Five red fish about a foot long and a pair of crustaceans that he had caught in a net. They looked like a cross between a crab and scorpion, but I would have eaten anything right about then.

  The thought of food made my stomach growl. I had skipped breakfast that morning, since I didn’t want to take a dump while on duty, and all I had eaten during the mission was a energy bar from one of my MRE’s. Cooked fish sounded pretty damn good.

  “Let me help you carry something,” I suggested, but Torrance shook his head and shouldered his gear.

  “Nonsense, you’re my guest. Besides, it looks to me like you’ve got enough on your shoulders.”

  I glanced back at my molle pack. “I’m used to it.”

  He nodded agreeably, and I watched as his eyes move over my utility belt and the M17 handgun holstered on my hip. He didn’t seem to recognize it as a weapon, and he gave me another smile as he gestured away from the boat.

  I took a better look at his clothes and gear as we moved out of the trees. His fishing pole was nothing more than a long piece of bamboo with a line twisted around it, and the knife holstered on his thigh looked like an ancient artifact. His brown trousers appeared to be made of hemp, and his leather jerkin and sandals seemed to be handmade. Either he was a hippy, or I had landed in a world with technology a few centuries removed from Earth.

  “What you lugging around in that big bag of yours?” he said as he started down a well-worn trail.

  “Supplies,” I said as I followed close behind him and surveyed the land like I was still in enemy territory.

  For all I knew, I still was.

  “Where you from?” he asked.

  “Uh, a land far from here,” I said as I reminded myself not to give too much info. I liked the guy, sure, but I didn’t know him or this place. Any information I gave him could potentially be used against me, and until I knew I could trust the man, I didn’t want to give him too much info.

  “Oh?” he said and waited for me to elaborate. When I didn’t, he continued the conversation. “Well, wherever you’re from, it ain’t no place I’ve ever been. Never seen clothes like yours, and I can’t place your accent. But a man has got a right to keep his own secrets, eh?”

  “I suppose so.”

  He nodded to himself and glanced back. “You a married man, Ken?”

  “Nope, not married. You?”

  “Was.” He made some sort of sign in the air with his right hand like a big S. “Her name was Mildred. Lost her to a kobold raiding party a few years back.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you right,” I said as I reached a finger in m
y ear to clean out some of the water.

  “A kobold raiding party,” he repeated.

  “Kobold? Like the creatures from Dungeons and Dragons?”

  “We have both dungeons and dragons,” He said with a shrug. “Or are you talking about a place? You seemed kinda confused.”

  “Uhh, yeah,” I said, just because I realized that a fisherman from another world wouldn’t know about the tabletop game.

  “I ain’t never heard of that land, but they were kobolds alright. I told her not to go out that night, but her sister was sick, you see, so she left as soon as she got word. Was the last time I saw her alive.”

  I stopped in my tracks and glanced around. I thought for sure someone would pop up out of the tall grass and tell me I was on a hidden camera show, but no one did, so I hurried to catch up to Torrance.

  We came out on a well-worn dirt road on which the tanned fisherman headed west. At least I thought it was west. I retrieved my lensatic compass from my utility belt, and the needle pointed away from the ocean, toward the forest of pine. Which confirmed that we were, indeed, headed west. I glanced at the suns to confirm our direction, and one looked to be four or five hours from setting, but the other trailed a few hours behind the first.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I told Torrance.

  “She’s in a better place now,” he said. “At least where she went there ain’t no monsters, on account of the beasts not having souls.”

  “You mean there are other things besides kobolds in this land?” I said as I realized that he had not only been serious about the witch, but the fairy as well.

  He stopped and turned to regard me with confusion again. “You telling me that, where you’re from, there ain’t no monsters?”

  I didn’t want to seem more foreign than I must have already appeared, so I shrugged and said, “Sure, there are monsters, but they’re rare.”

  He nodded. “Well, you’re a lucky one then. This country is crawling with monsters. There are entire cities of the beasts down in the underdark. I guess it’s a blessing that they only come out at night though, on account of not being able to tolerate the suns.”