Chương 51: Wailing

There was a satisfaction unlike any other with being able to just move through doors and walls without care for the damage. Every goddamn day I felt the lingering fear of destroying the things around me because of strength I didn't ask for. Here was the play zone. I burst through that side door like a volcanic eruption, sending splinters and dust and old memories buried within the walls flying out. Three more men. Two on my right, one on the left.

There was no way to block myself from all three while moving forward. I began to sit back and brace my shi- BANG BANGBANG VWOM Holes in the heads of the two to my right. They fell limp, arms already tensing up while their guns fell from them. A football-sized hunk of solid light slammed into the midsection of the gunman on the left. I capitalized on the opening. My braced position became the start of a charge as I rushed him down.

My shield slammed into his falling body and sent him into a corner where he curled up like he was shriveling. His shoulders heaved up and down. Breathing, labored. Alive. Looking behind me, the door in the floorplans was just brick wall. None of them would be coming in from that side. I glanced towards 1, and pointed at the wall.

"Break through?" He shook his head.

"Clear normally. Wall might be load-bearing." I nodded, and looked the other way. Another door stood across from me, and it was met with the same bulldozing as every other. The doorframe cracked and snapped as parts of my shield practically sliced through it. This room was broader, closer to a living room. One of the corners was exposed to daylight. Seven men in the room. Two in the middle, brandishing those wooden staves I saw at the last encounter I had with these freaks.

Couldn't process the others' equipment due to tunnel vision, just was able to process their movements as they spread apart. The staff-wielders leveled their wooden tools at me, as they exploded out and coiled around my shield. They wanted to take it from me, I could tell with how the shield was shuddering in my unstoppable grip. Who was I to turn down their request? I lunged to meet them in the middle as different calibers of bullet argued in the air.

They weren't ready for the pounce, as they attempted to pull back when they realized I was going to accept their demand to get up close and personal. WHAM The first one went down from a vertical slamming of my shield onto his head. He clutched at his hooded head with a groan. While my shield still pointed down, I whipped around to slam it into the side of the other staff-wielder, sending him into a wall. He splayed out against the exposed brick before falling to the ground, hugging his ribs.

My senses called back to me as I saw the other cultists were down. Some bleeding. One holding onto his hands while a red-hot glow came from his rifle that sat on the floor. 1, 2, and 3 got to work zip-tying the wrists of the ones who weren't dead or unconscious while 4 kept his rifle leveled at the door. Spectroma was staring into space, until I tapped the side of her arm. Worked for getting my attention, would probably work for her. She flinched, her eyes lighting up before realizing it was me.

"Still haven't been shot at yet, right?" Spectroma nodded.

"Told you. You're doing good. Keep it up." Felt like I was vomiting the words out. 1 called out "All set!" and I took that as a cue to keep moving. There wasn't another door this time; instead it was a stairway. The floorplan showed that another stairway back down to the easternmost rooms was that way. Second floor was necessary for first floor. Pressing my back to the wall, I pushed up along the stairs while keeping my shield ready. Wanted to keep ready for a charge. There were only two men in this room.

One immediately ran for the door, shutting it behind him. The other, carrying a staff, smacked it into his own arm as it coiled around and covered his entire right arm. Thorns and barbs protruded from it, and he took a stance. Looked almost like Jairo's boxing stance. He must have wanted to go hand-to-hand. I began approaching him, starting to bring my shield off to the side.

At the last moment, I instead whipped my arm forward, sending the shield flying into the wooden-armed man, which sent him folded to the ground. The shield clunked onto the floor, reminding me that they didn't bounce back. I picked my shield back up while 3 rushed for the shut door, pulling out a strange device that looked like a pair of boxes connected by two rods. He held it up against the doorknob, nodding to me.

"Prepare for a charge." Pulling my arm out from the grip hole, I instead gripped the brace bars while pushing myself down into my best approximation of a sprinter's stance. I heard 1's voice behind me.

"Spectroma, how many on the other side of the door?"

"Uh... four. I see four heat signatures."

"Directions? Use clock positions from Hercules."

"One at twelve o'clock from Hercules. One at eleven and ten. All the way on the left, at like nine, there's another."

"Herc, you get all that?" I tried visualizing a clock, the position of the hands. So one directly in front of me, two to my front-left. One all the way to my left. Okay, that was doable. Was nice having advance notice, this time. A blaring came through on my earpiece.

"You were tuning out, Hercules!" Sam's voice warned. On me for thinking about it too hard. Needed to abstract my thoughts better.

"Got it," I stated. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. 1 spoke again.

"Go in low and slow. We're ducking behind you. Try to maximize coverage." Thought about shapes there. The best I could do was tilting the shield at more of a diagonal position. A pregnant pause birthed the sound of crunching wood as 3 yelled "Go!" I did my best slow storming in, the door being pushed open for me as we all crabwalked in with my shield. Bullets flew immediately, but every litany of shots was shouted down by individual, louder bangs, until there was a sudden "What the fuck!?" from behind me.

That was Spectroma's voice. Looking up from my shield, it was a tree man, except human-sized. It was almost nauseating to look at when it was a normal height. Just didn't make sense at all. That revulsion pushed something in me as I immediately sprang up from my low position to charge at it. My shield slammed into it with enough force to send it flying out one of the windows. Not the wisest move, but it was pure reaction. I just couldn't tolerate its existence around me.

Wasn't sure why the large-sized ones didn't inflict that response in me. I heard 1's voice behind me.

"One subject escaped, looks like tree man. North side. Keep an eye out." In the seconds it took us to post up by the next door, a BANG rang out through the air. Our earpieces followed that up with the voice of another person. By process of elimination, I guessed 6.

"Intercepted."

"Copy," said 1 before he spoke to Spectroma again.

"Anyone?" Looking over at her, I saw her shake her head.

"N-no. No. But I didn't see the tree guy, so be ready. Maybe have L- Hercules break through just in case?" My gaze moved back towards 1, and he nodded.

"Herc, you're on wrecking crew. Go for it." No heat. The tree men were like the clowns. Not alive. Were they just naturally like that? Were they just being controlled by something el- BOOM! No one else reacting to the sound. Was just in my head.

"Saw another zone out. You doing okay, Herc?" Touching my ear, I spoke.

"Yeah. Yeah, was just thinking about the tree men. Spectroma didn't see heat. They might not be alive." Silence. Suddenly, Tancred's voice broke out.

"Clear to engage tree men with lethal force, Hercules. Rip 'em apart if you see them. They healed the first time you fought them anyway, right?"

"Yeah," I answered.

"Then you're clear. Go nuts. You're on wrecking crew." I nodded to no one in particular, before slipping my arm back into the shield's grip... tumor, I guessed was the best way to describe it, and rushed for the door. Brick and wood shouted in pain as I defaced it through sheer force. No one in the room. No people at least, but a lingering thought was in there that penetrated my mind. There were windows, doors, floors, walls. But where were the mounts for the utilities?

This was a home, people lived in it until about sixteen years ago. How much was razed, and how much was simply taken out? I didn't even see signs of power outlets. I blinked, realizing that no time had passed. The revelation simply decided to possess me in that moment. Couldn't dwell on it. The stairwell was there, and I descended back to the first floor, my shield raised. Nothing on the following floor either.

"The rest might have ran out," I guessed. 1 spoke up.

"Possible. There's that house in the back that's not on the floor plan. Maybe the basement too. Spectroma, can you check for heat all around?" Silence as Spectroma looked around, her arms wrapped around herself in a hug that probably failed to soothe her.

"Nothing. But the basement might have some concrete surrounding it. That blocks infrared." Thought about her little college library trick.

"Try the electromagnet-whatever. You can see people that way too, right?"

"Shit, yeah, let me..." A pregnant pause. Her jaw dropped, and her body began taking steps back like she wasn't even aware she was moving.

"Oh... oh my God." 1 spoke first.

"Talk to me, Spectroma, what's going on?"

"It's everywhere. Electromagnetic frequencies everywhere. Like the kind you usually see from heartbeats. It's everywhere, under the house." That's what was buried. Fuck.

"Out back, I see a big bundle too. There's too much for me to make out individual presences. Oh my God." I brought a finger to my ear.

"You getting this, Tancred? What do we do?" Tancred's voice came up sharp and quick.

"You guys need to focus on finding if there's any hostages or anything like that now. That's your job. You're gonna make sure the only presences in this location are ADU who've signed on for the job. Then after that, we're calling in a Patriot Project agent to get rid of this place." 1 snapped out a response.

"No, you said no fucking SIT on the job. You promised me, Tancred."

"I did promise you, when we thought it was just cultists with guns. This is a significant event. I need to report this, and we're going to need Agent Juneau." Stomping. Looking over, 1's body language completely changed.

"God damn it, no! This is a fucking forest. If Juneau shows up the entire place is gonna go up in flames. We have someone who does fire in a more controlled fashion. Let us find if there's any arterial points first. If we can't do that, then call him in because we're fucked anyway." Another pregnant pause. Spectroma looked like she was staring at her own gallows. The mask on 1's face kept his expression obscure, but I didn't need to read his face to know he was furious. The auditor's voice came back on.

"Find and confirm weak points, then disable them using Spectroma's powers and your DU rounds. You have twenty minutes before I bring SIT on. That's the most time I can give you."

"That's plenty, thank you," 1 stated before looking to the rest of us.

"Okay. We're going to check the house addition first. Any sign of Wyrdwood, we break it open and burn it. Any questions?" I shook my head. The others did as well. We knew what we needed to do. Spectroma and I didn't need to know who Agent Juneau was to know that we needed to do this ourselves. Threat of wildfire or not, we needed to prove we could clean up our own shit.

A door by the stairwell led us to what was likely a way to get some fresh air in the house, with torn-apart mesh windows and half of a door remaining. We could clearly see the little white addition behind the manor, bridged by a porch. Vines and roots penetrated every inch of it. It looked almost like a veiny organ when it was like that. Moving out from that remaining portion of door, we got a better look at the back yard. Lush with a green that was more comparable to gangrene than normal plant life.

They were plants, and they were everywhere, but they looked sick. Loose vines hung from the back of the manor. The air was silent, besides a loose sizzling. I looked towards the source of that noise, only to see the limp "body" of the human-sized tree man, with smoke still coming out from a large bullet hole in its back and chest. Good to know their bullets worked. We slowly approached the door of the addition. I brought my shield up, and spoke.

"Spectroma. Any heat you can see in here?" A few seconds later, she answered.

"No heat sources whatsoever. Doesn't mean there's no one." Hate that I had to agree to that. The tree men had no signatures. I braced for war. And I braced for Hell. I was ready. Crashing through the door, I was met with something worse than war. I smelled a sickly rot, and heard the wailing and moaning of lost human souls. And at that moment, I realized this was worse than Hell.