The Last Enemy by Eric Meyer

Author:Eric Meyer [Meyer, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Swordworks
Published: 2024-04-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

“Murphy?”

The was familiar. Dan Kelly, how come? Had he been sucked down into this terrible place? Or had he come looking for him? Dan, the one man he could always rely on.

“Kelly, can you get me out of here before it’s too late?”

“Where are you?”

“In hell.”

He heard a man crawling toward him, and then a flashlight came on. “Lt, what happened to you?”

“I…uh… don’t know. I don’t know how I got here. Something…happened.”

He heard a chuckle. “I know how you got here. I saw you tumble down the hillside, and I thought you were in trouble, so I went after you. When I got to the bottom of the slope, there was no sign of where you’d gone. I spent the past three hours searching, finally came upon that opening in the ground, and climbed down. I had a feeling you’d fallen in. Are you hurt?”

He was fully awake now. Kelly’s arrival had restored hope he may yet get out of here, and the morphine had worn off. “I’m good, but this place is giving me the creeps. I thought…”

“You thought what?”

“Nothing. I heard something, a voice I didn’t understand. It made me think of what Loony Lawson said. You know, about the spirits of Roman soldiers and German tribesmen who’d died in battle and were still waiting to be buried. Just hallucinating is all.”

Kelly grunted. “I guess so. What did this ‘ghost’ say?”

“I didn’t understand, it was probably some ancient Germanic dialect. I must’ve dreamed it. ‘Yob tvoy mat,’ or something like that.”

He chuckled. “That wasn’t some ancient Germanic dialect. That’s a Russian curse. ‘Fuck your mother.’ I worked as a longshoreman for a time, unloading ships, and the Russian crews used to say all the time.”

“Russian? Are you sure?”

“No question. Lt, you found them.”

“Sonofabitch. They’re already here, and that must mean Richter can’t be far away. Do you know the way back to the shaft?”

“No sweat, it’s about fifty yards back.”

“Get me back to the platoon. We have work to do.”

They reached the outside, and it was still dark. Kelly led the way back to the platoon. They shook the men awake and returned to the shaft. Since the morphine had worn off, Murphy’s head had cleared even more, and he insisted on going down first. The men followed, clustered at the foot of the shaft and waited while he followed Kelly to the place where he’d heard the voices. They stopped and listened. Heard the voices in the distance. They weren’t far away.

They crawled back to the men, and he described what they were up against. “I estimate there’s between six and ten of them, and the voices were fading, so they’re moving away. We need to get after them.”

Rooker asked him the sixty-four-dollar question. “When we find them, what are the rules of engagement, Lieutenant? I mean, Russia is an ally. Isn’t it?”

“They shouldn’t be here, and they know they shouldn’t be here, so we give them one warning to go back to their own sector.

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