Booster Gold #15 - The Hunted (★Society, Part VIII)

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Author: ScarecrowSid

Book: Booster Gold

Arc: ★Society

Set: 15

★ Now

    Gunfire tore through the night. The rattle and raucous of bullets sang out against the crescendo of howls peppering the creeping silence of the woods below. Booster Gold paced the fortifications, scanning the treeline for any signs of movement.

    “See anything?” Richards asked. The Lieutenant rifle was slung over his shoulder as he tapped a cigarette free from a pack. He set it between his lips, returned the carton to his breast pocket, and ground his lighter.

    “No,” Booster replied.

    There was a soft click, and a delicate flame lit the cigarette. Richards took a long draw, then let out an appreciative sigh and a smile, slightly obscured by smoke. “We can hold till dawn, sir, and send a scouting party down there.”

    “We could,” Booster mused. They certainly could. It was the rational choice, no matter how you looked at it. If they ventured out of the town now, whatever beasts wandered below could pick them off one or two at a time. Every movie he had ever seen spoke of the advantage of holding the high ground, and it would be foolish to abandon it. Yet, something set the hairs on the back of his neck on edge.

    “It’s the best plan.” Richards took another drag of his cigarette, then brought out a pair of binoculars and scanned the treeline himself. “Can’t see a damn thing anyway.”

    Booster sighed, nodding to Richards as he stepped away from the men and approached a building in which the men had seen fit to dig a latrine. He rounded the building after tugging on the door and allowing the hinges to draw out their whine. A few moments privacy wasn’t worth wandering into that building, not after the last time. The stench was unbearable.

    “Skeets.” Booster glanced around, hoping his friend was in range. “Buddy, are you back yet?”

    Skeets appeared a moment later, phasing free of his camouflage and hovering into Booster’s eye line. “Sir?”

    “Please tell me you have good news. How many enemies are there?”

    “A hundred or more, sir. They seemed to sense I was there, I was forced to flee before I could make an accurate count.”

    “Sense you? What sort of mystic crap is that?” Booster snarled. “Sensed you how?”

    Skeets spun in the air, displaying a series of shallow dents in his casing. “One of them climbed up a tree and bit me. I had to run.”

    Booster frowned. “You mean fly.”

    “It’s the same thing really,” Skeets replied.

    “Wolves can’t fly…” He glanced in the direction of the forest below. It was strange, to have an expectation of some attack from an enemy you couldn’t see. Booster pressed his foot firmly into the ground, then pushed off, soaring into the night sky. His borrowed great-coat billowed around him, and the buttoned front flapped against his armor. A soft hum from his goggles signaled the transition to thermal vision.

    “Where are you?” Booster muttered.

    The forest did not reply. He found only shadows, with no bright spots indicating any sort of enemy presence. Scowling, he glanced down at his men. The encampment shimmered below, highlighting two full platoons surveying the treeline from behind cover. Their discipline was admirable, especially given the pitch black conditions of everything beyond the town.

    His equipment was not malfunctioning, then. But where was the enemy? Skeets had confirmed their numbers, and he had never known his partner to lie. “Show yourselves,” he muttered, fighting the chatter building in his gums.

    Several flickers of movement caught his eye. Bright silhouettes appeared at the edge of the vegetation, men, by the look of them, carrying heavy guns over their shoulders and approaching the treeline. There were no more than a dozen, but their coming was marked by the howling of wolves. They crept out of the forest and approached the orchard which lay between them and the town. The scattered bones of young laurels lay scorched and scarred by an earlier battle, offering just enough cover for them to get in close.

    Booster looked at the men, then back at his own. No sign of wolves. No sign that Richards had seen them readying their attack. Booster cursed to himself, giving the treeline one last look as he did, before darting ahead toward the orchard. The quiet night was broken by the sudden, steady rattle of gunfire.

★ ★ Now

    Booster Gold raced ahead, narrowly avoiding the rounds of heavy fire. His shield would stop them, he surmised, but he didn’t want to risk his speed for the sake of safety. Any moment now, Richards’ men would begin to return fire, and, so long as the enemy was focused on Booster, they would have no incoming shots to worry over.

    “This is pretty damn noble, charging in alone to draw fire,” Booster said to himself, grinning, then gritting, as a tight cluster of ordinance whistled past. He wondered if they had mortars, and when they planned to use them.

    Behind him, fresh shots rang into the night. Booster grinned again, looking down on two men. One manned the gun, and the other fed the rounds to it. Behind them were several other men, and one shouted into a radio set in German. Booster struck him first.

    The man yelped as Booster’s fist struck him in the jaw, then again when Booster kicked him in the groin. There was something to be said for fighting in a dishonorable manner, but this was war. And, more importantly, these were Nazis. The hell with honor. Booster took the radio set and hurled it into the air, not even bothering to line up his shot as he raised one gauntlet and fired.

    He missed the radio set entirely, sighed, and swatted away a German soldier’s strike with a long knife. His kick to man’s side was lazy, but he felt the bones crunch against his shin and couldn’t help wincing.

    “Sorry.” Booster shoved the man aside, howling though he was, and walked over to the machine gun. The two soldiers that manned it were staring at him with wide, frightened eyes and shouting in German. Their hands had left the guns and ammo, and were held tight together as they continued pleading to Booster. “I don’t speak German,” he said, stepping past them and approaching the gun. He twisted the barrel upon itself in a way he imagined Superman would, then tossed it aside. At that moment, the radio set and gravity came to an arrangement, and it struck one of the pleading men squarely at the top of his skull. The man crumpled, dead, to the ground beside his comrade

    The remaining man began clutching at the hem of Booster’s coat, sobbing softly. A single shove sent him away, and Booster turned back to Richards’ encampment. Their fire was now focused on a position directly north of this one, and a thermal sweep revealed the position of the next nest. Booster looked at the men in the nest, cowering as if he were some sort of god.

    “Do any of you speak English?” he asked. No reply, only frightened stares. Perhaps he could have been more subtle, but it really wasn’t his style. “Seriously, one of you has to speak English. How else would you interrogate captives?”

    One of the men, toward the back, shook his head and gestured toward the radio’s victim, splayed across the ground beside them in a pool of his own blood. Booster cursed to himself once again. “I really do have the worst luck.”

    His self-admonishment was interrupted by a new series of howls from the treeline, and Booster stepped past the German soldiers to examine the shadow of the woods. He could see something now, eyes gleaming between the trees, and low growls echoing into the night.

    “Sir.” Skeets hovered beside him, cloaked. “I think we should retreat.”

    “And why is that.” Skeets replied was drowned by the next round of howls, and the shadows began to charge.

★ ★ ★ Now

    Richards shouldered his rifle, checking the sights before ejecting the spent cartridge and loading a new one. Carter was gone, and if the what his men saw below was to be believed, behind the enemy’s lines beating them down with his bare hands.

    “Something is coming up the hill, Dan.” Richards glanced down the line, nodding to his boys. He hadn’t recognized the voice, but the men they had consolidated from broken companies had adopted his nickname rather quickly. He never liked being called Lieutenant, it was just too strange.

    “Can anyone make it out?” Richards asked. He peered over the barricades himself, squinting, but he couldn’t make anything out. He cursed as the pitter-patter of stray rounds forced him to shelter. “F*ck!”

    A loud, tonal chime rang out. Richards looked around wildly, confused. Where had that come from? It sounded like it came from behind his lines. Richards whirled, drawing his pistol and taking crouched, careful steps toward the disturbance.

    “Stay on the line,” Richards growled when his men’s eyes fell upon him. “Do not lose this hill.” He was met with solemn, frightened nods as they turned back to their posts. Richards turned away from them, continuing his quiet steps into the town.

    He wondered what the noise had been. Some fluke of his own hearing? There were stories of men going mad on the front, disoriented by the explosions and gunfire. Or was it some sort of German weapon? He had to give these bastards that much credit, they were clever when it came to war.

    “Get it together, Dan,” he muttered. “There’s a man out there, this is just another hunt… Don’t imagine things, you f*cking--”

    He stopped dead in his tracks at the sound. Richards turned again, pistol raised. The sound had come from his left, near the latrine.

    “Who’s there?” he called.

    “Are you Lieutenant Richards?”

    Richards squinted in the direction of the voice, spotting a faint point of red light glowing in the otherwise dim camp. It was floating there and he couldn’t see that the man had feet, or arms… just a head, floating there with a single red eye.

    “What the f*ck are you?” Richards asked. The sound came again, he winced. Was it a weapon?

    “Skeets, I’m a…” It paused. “I don’t have time to explain that, not right now. You should get back on the line and prepare for a full assault from the enemy. Michael says he’ll lead them around as long as he can, but you need to get your men ready to fire at will.”

    “I… who is Michael? Do you mean Captain Carter?”

    “Yes, now hurry! They’re coming!”

    “Who’s coming?” There was no reply. The point of light blinked into darkness, and Richards swallowed, finding his throat dry. He drew the sign of the cross upon himself, then turned and jogged back to the line.

★ ★ ★ ★ Now

“Get off!” Booster kicked at the thing’s mouth and felt the press of another’s teeth sink into his shin. The suit prevented a puncture, but the force behind the jaw was more than capable of snapping his bone if left unchecked. “Off!”

    Booster interlocked his hands and brought both fists down hard on the wolf’s head. There was a wet pop as the creature whined and fell away, limp. Booster kicked at it, and it was surrounded by other members of the pack. His scanners counted just over two dozen surrounding him, and no telling how many had made their way up the hill.

    “I hope you got to him, buddy,” Booster said, arms at a guard position as the pack circled. These were no ordinary wolves. They were too smart, too strong, and too big. Each was twice as large as any wolf he had ever seen, real or otherwise; close to a horse than a wolf, really. Richards and his men would be taken by surprise, and these damn things would be over their barricades with little effort.

    A snapping sound signaled the next charge of the pack, they moved in unison, charging from all sides, as Booster brought up the interface for his shield. The field around him began to shrink, becoming something more suited for physical combat than deflecting projectiles. It was like a second, or in this case, third, skin, and offered some protection against their fangs. Not a second later was he met with the angry bite of a half dozen wolves upon his arms, legs, and side. One dove over the others, ruby eyes flashing as its jaws sought his neck. Booster met those jaws with a quick dash of his head.

    The wolf’s jaws didn’t so much as crack as they did shatter behind his reinforced blow, and the creature leaped back, whimpering. Booster held his feet, then shot into the air and spun violently until every wolf was shaken loose and sent soaring nearly a hundred yards in every direction.

    “Goddamn things.” Booster inspected his suit, there were no signs of damage. There was blood on him but it wasn’t his own, that became apparent when he glimpsed the unnatural glow of it. It looked like fresh magma that was beginning to cool, and the earlier stains had already dried into a flaky stone that fell away when he brushed at it.

    He brought up his thermal view and inspected the battlefield. It appeared that Richards had received his warning, as there was now a concentrated force on one side of the village, overlooking the hill in the direction the wolves were coming. With any luck, bullets would slow them down.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Now

    Richards caught one between the eyes, watching it fall as ducked behind cover to reload. These things were fast and large, and wholly the work of some devil. They were too damn big to be wolves. He stared at one that had broken through their lines ahead of the pack, it lay in a crusty puddle of its own shimmering blood. The damn beast had ripped one of the lads apart without any effort whatsoever, shearing through bone as if it were paper.

    “Dan!” someone shouted. “Dan! There’s too many! We have to fall back!”

    “I give the goddamn orders, son,” Richards shouted back, his rifle ready as he took the stock in his shoulder and set the barrel on a ruined stone. He pulled the trigger several times, seeking at legs, hides, and eyes. “We hold!”

    It was too damn dark to see them until the beasts were a few hundred feet away from camp, their howls betraying them. Most of these boys would be fine killing men, but they didn’t know how to fight monsters.

    “Reload!” someone shouted down the line.

    “We’re out!” someone else shouted.

    “Where’s the damn boy with the supplies?”

    Richards popped his head over the barricade as the sounds of fire died down. The wolves were gone, and a pile of corpses lay just ahead of their position. He did a quick count, guessing there were at least thirty of the creatures dead across the hill. Richards sighed as one of the lads approached him, looking nervously toward the town.

    “Sir,” he repeated.

    Richards looked up at him, “What is it?”

    “Heard something, sir, it didn’t sound right.”

    The red-eyed creature from before, no doubt. Richards nodded to the boy, then spoke down the line. “You all hold the damn line, I’ll be back.” He handed the boy his rifle and set off toward the village.

    He prayed that was the whole of them, and there would be no further attack. Where was the boy with the ammo? Richards would have to reprimand him, this was no time for dereliction of duty.

    As he strode toward the latrine, something caught the corner of his eye. It moved between the shadows, and Richards scowled. “Enough with the damn theatrics,” he said. “Are there more coming?”

    No reply came. Instead, he heard the low snarl of a wolf. Richards stared at the beast, half crouched, and reached for a rifle that wasn’t there. He cursed to himself, then drew his sidearm. The pistol would work well enough, provided he didn’t miss. There were barely two dozen feet between himself and the wolf, but it moved faster than he did. There was every chance that he would miss. There was every chance that he would die.

    He could call to the men, that would work. “No,” he muttered. “They would leave the line in a disorganized mess. He didn’t have a reliable sergeant in the bunch…

    The wolf seemed to smile as he held the pistol aloft, glaring at it, then meeting his eyes. Monster may have been an understatement, this creature was something straight out of myth. It would tear through his men in moments if given the chance.

    His first shot flew past the beast as it darted aside, then ahead, and sunk its teeth into his arm. Richards howled in pain, feeling his bones shatter and his arm freeze as shock set in. The chill swept through his blood and found his heart, but his free hand darted into his boot of its own accord. It brought a knife down on the creature, sinking deep into its right eye. It howled at him, and he howled at it as he retrieved his pistol when it crept away and shoved it in the wolf’s mouth. Three shots rang out, then three more.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Now

    Booster approached the barricades, stepping over the corpses of wolves, and frowned. The men behind them were haggard, and they had only taken out about thirty of them. Booster himself had only seen to a dozen, and that meant the majority of their pack was intact.

    A boy raised a rifle in his direction as he approached, shouting for him to “Halt!” He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, at a guess.

    Booster raised his hands, grinning at the boy. “Just me, soldier. May I enter?”

    “Sir,” the boy replied, giving a half salute.

    “Where’s the Lieutenant?” Booster asked.

    “Being patched up, sir. He killed one of those things,” the boy gestured to the wolves with the muzzle of his rifle, “with his bare hands.”

    “Impressive,” Booster remarked. As he took a step closer, the boy and all the other soldiers on the line raised their weapons in his direction. Booster sighed. “We’re on the same side, guys. Can we cool it with the guns?”

    They did not reply, and the hard look in their eyes told Booster they meant to kill. He frowned and looked questioningly at the boy.

    “Behind you, sir,” the boy said.

    Booster lowered his arms and turned around, hoping this wasn’t some ploy to shoot him in the back. He found a man standing a hundred feet away, clad in a heavy suit of armor more suited for the crusades than a 19th-century war zone. There was a large, ruby red cross across the portion of his helmet that covered his forehead, and silver chain mail draped around his neck that rested atop his shoulders. He carried an odd battle axe in his hands, held in a position ready to attack.

    “Who the f*ck are you?” Booster asked.

    The man raised his axe high, and set his back and knees before smiling in Booster’s direction. A glow, bright blue against the night, erupted from the axe's edge as he swung down, hard. The earth around Booster rumbled and shattered.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

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