Under the guise of darkness, they sprinted down the hill toward the compound; they knew they wouldn't be seen or heard as the soldiers focused on the incoming herd.
The leader quickly beckoned over one of his men, instructing him to shoot a grappling hook over the wall. Prior, he had told two others to get in the vehicles and park them near the exit for a quick escape.
When on the other side of the wall, they did a slow and methodical clearing of each building.
The leader kicked open one of the doors, aiming his gun at the soldier inside the breakroom. The guy couldn't have been any older than twenty-five; his scared eyes showed through his grey balaclava.
Behind the leader, several mercenaries entered the room, each pointing their guns at the soldier.
He spoke calmly, "Where is the prisoner you're holding?"
"Uh," the soldier mumbled, "Which one?"
"The girl. The kid."
"She's being held in the tall building. The one near the middle of this place," he gulped.
"Okay, I thought so," he studied the guy, looking at his waist, seeing a ring of keys and cards attached to his belt. "You have the key to get in?"
"I-uh," the soldier looked around frantically. On the table in front of him was a walkie-talkie with a large emergency button.
"Don't do it," one of the mercenaries said from behind the leader.
"Yeah," he swallowed, "I do."
The leader motioned for someone to grab the walkie-talkie while he went to restrain the soldier.
Minutes later, the group crept down the dark metal stairway. The alarm had been turned off, but the spinning red light above them persisted.
"Which card is it?" the leader asked.
"The white one with the red streak across it."
He ripped it from his keychain, holding it up to the sensor. A light ding went off, and the light above the door changed to green, as it slid open.
Hearing the several sets of heavy footsteps enter the room, the girl quickly scooted to the corner of the cell.
"Who's there?" her voice was shaky.
"You," the leader pointed to one of his mercenaries, "Use the cutters."
"Alright," he took a metal canister from his back, attaching a nozzle to the top, twisting the nozzle until a loud whoosh came from it. He brought a lighter to the tip, and a blue flame blasted from the nozzle.
The flame cut through the thick plexiglass like a knife moving through sand.
Melody screamed at the sound, holding her pillow close to her chest.
The leader looked up, a surprised shock on his face, seeing a gold glow from the corner of the cell.
"What the…" His mouth hung agape, "What is that?"
A gold light shimmered around Melody as her wide eyes stared blankly ahead, tears streaming down her face.
Outside, the beast perked up, sensing something it hadn't felt before; whatever it was, it came from inside the compound.
The sand exploded outwards from its feet as it launched itself toward the compound. Bullets and shells whizzed past its head and fruitlessly slammed into its body as it climbed the front gates.
The leader glanced up at the ceiling of the cramped room, where the thunderous sounds of what resembled an elephant's stomping reverberated just a few feet above them.
His attention snapped to the door as it crumpled open, and the crimson creature seen earlier barged into the room.
With a single swipe, its claws dug through the bulletproof armor and ripped open the chest cavity of a mercenary. Its tail whipped at the handcuffed soldier, cleaving through his face, splattering the walls with blood as he collided with the glass and writhed on the floor.
The leader barely had enough time to aim his rifle as he sprayed the creature with bullets. The fleshy thuds of the bullets impacting its red skin had no effect as it reached out a muscled arm, wrapping its fingers around his face.
One of the mercenaries ran into the hallway through the hole where the door used to be. The sound of his leader's skull being crushed echoed through the concrete building. The creature's heavy galloping sprint soon overshadowed the sound of his footsteps.
Palmer sprinted down the stairs; his worse fears soon came true. He arrived, seeing the giant hole where the door used to be. Soon, the smell of blood and bodies hit him.
He covered his nose and entered the holding cell room.
"Melody!" He called out, wiping the blood from the thick glass.
"I'm here," a quiet voice sounded back. "What's happening?"
Palmer breathed a heavy sigh of relief, "Don't worry—an accident. You'll be safe; I promise that."
At this point, Palmer had been in the compound for many years. For better or worse, he had seen just about every nook and cranny of the place; he knew all the secret combinations, where the higher-ups liked to place the keys to vehicles…
He tapped a small button on the side of the wall; a small keypad emerged from the concrete. He typed the six-digit code and pressed the big blue button on the bottom. There was a loud grinding behind him as the thick glass slid up as if it were a garage door.
He ran into the cell, scooping Melody up in his arms, and ran out into the hallway, following it down until the concrete hall turned into a dirt tunnel leading to the outside.
The beast dragged the corpse of the mercenary back through the hallway into the room. Noticing that the room was empty of all life, it let out a howl of frustration, biting into the leg of one of the bodies.
After it had devoured everything in the room, it reared back; its eyes shot open. As it lifted itself off its front legs, it grunted as the room was filled with a cacophony of snaps as the creature's bones shifted inside.
It took a moment to steady itself, then another step into the cell. Once it reached Melody's bed, it was fully functional in its bipedal state. Sniffing the pillow, its mouth split open, finding the scent and following it down the hallway and into the dirt tunnel.
Leo, the wildlife researcher, paused, putting his ear to the ground. 'Yup, the rumbling is mostly gone,' he thought. "Hey," he said aloud to his two colleagues, "we don't have far. I think things are about to get a little interesting, though, so keep up."
"There it is," Yahd said, nudging Kalimba and nodding into the distance. "That light and silhouette up there. That's it."
"Ooh," Asher said, leaning between the seats to get a better look. "Doesn't look too bad," he said optimistically.
"Look at all those animals down there," Kalimba pointed down the side of the hill.
"Are they sleeping?" Zoe asked tentatively, peering through the dusty Jeep window.
"No," definitely not," Asher said, almost whispering. "They got a lot of them. Normally, I'd say 'score' because of all the food I can cook from that…but this…"
The jeep lurched to a stop, "Hold on," Yahd said, taking night vision goggles from the center console and stepping out of the car.
He walked to the hill's edge, studying the compound a few miles below. 'That thing looks like a mess. I don't want to jump the gun, but it honestly looks like we could walk right inside and be fine,' he thought. Yahd sat back inside the jeep, telling the others what he saw.
"Nice," Asher grinned. "I had a feeling this was gonna be pretty easy. I was tellin' Damon that he really didn't need to worry about any of this."
"Woah," Kalimba warned, "We can't be too careful, alright? We can't put our guard down."
"If we go around back and scale the wall, it we should be fine," Yahd said.
They watched as Yahd blasted small holes in the concrete wall, each a small distance apart, deep enough for one's hand to grab as a hold.
Once the pink aura dissipated from around Yahd, he said, "Alright, let's hurry," and started climbing, "I'll sit up here and scout," he said once he was at the top, straddling the concrete wall.
Mitani looked to Zoe and gestured at the wall, "After you."
Once they all scaled the wall, a green aura flowed around Asher. "He said a basement, right?"
"Yeah," Kalimba said.
Asher closed his eyes and raised his hands in the air. Several small glowing creatures flew from his aura; each resembling a firefly, they zipped away, each searching a building.
After a minute, one returned and dissipated once it made contact with Asher's aura. His eyes shot open, "Alright, the basement is in that one," he pointed to the short building across the compound.
"Do you know if there's anything we need to worry about down there?" Mitani asked.
"I have no idea. That's not how my ability works. I can send messages, or figure out a general layout of an area, or make a 'phone call' with people."
"Oh goodness," Kalimba's voice caught in his throat. He peered down the metal stairs, seeing a pool of blood and the destroyed door. He was about to warn the others, but he heard a crackling inside the room. A constant drone of static.
"Yeah, the girl is gone," a muffled voice said from inside the room. "There's a bloody mess in here." He paused; Kalimba guessed he was listening to whoever was on the other side of the walkie-talkie. "Yeah, the glass was opened, so she could've somehow managed to escape or she's been splattered on the walls."
The group swiftly descended the stairs. Kalimba made sure to not make any noise as he crept up behind the soldier.
He gasped slightly as Kalimba jumped on his back, wrapping his arm around his neck and performing a blood choke on the man—cutting off the circulation of blood to his brain, knocking him out in seconds, compared to what would take minutes if he were to constrict the man's oxygen.
In under thirty seconds, the soldier was out, lying in a puddle of blood on the floor.
Zoe kept her eyes trained on the ceiling as she entered the room. However, it didn't last long as she felt the squish of something wet under her black combat boots. She controlled the urge to dry-heave. 'The girl isn't here. I wonder if she's one of these piles of…' she stopped herself from following that train of thought.
"You sure this is the right basement?" Asked Mitani. He poked a jagged piece of bone left on the damp floor with his foot.
"This is the only building here with a basement," Asher shrugged.
"There's some weird footprints that go down this hall," Yahd mentioned, pointing outside the room. "Maybe that'd be where she is?"
"We can't exactly go back to Damon with nothing," Zoe monotoned.
Using their auras to light the way, they sprinted down the concrete hallway, quickly turning into a dirt tunnel.
Eventually, they found themselves inside the mouth of a cave.
Zoe looked down, noticing that some of the footprints before had disappeared, and a single pair of tire tracks led out into the desert before them. Also, the other prints—they were massive, double the size of her foot, and looked to be a combination of a bear's foot mixed with hooves.
"If I had to guess, someone took the girl and drove away," Zoe pointed to the tire tracks. "I don't know what the others could be, but our best bet is to follow those. It's not windy enough to blow away the tracks, so we should be able to follow them."
"Hold on," Yahd walked over to a large object that was covered in a grey plastic tarp. He ripped it off, revealing a dusty doorless jeep. "Hm, this is almost perfect," he looked back to the others.
"Can we scratch off the logo there," Asher asked, using his fingernails to scrape the decal on the car's hood. The image was slightly faded but was a black-and-white picture of a skeleton in a tuxedo holding a pistol in one hand and a martini in the other.
"Alright," Kalimba said. "We don't have any other option. Can you hot-wire it or something, Yahd?"
Yahd smirked, "Yeah, of course."
After about five minutes, the jeep flew from the cave entrance, following the tire tracks in the cold sand.