Page 368 - Hunter - The Vigil

For a moment, all he could see were the bodies. They were everywhere, piled in heaps
around the edge of a central spillover reservoir. A thick miasma of decay hung in the

He didn’t see the ghoul until it reared up beside him with an ear-splitting
dank air.

The monster lunged for him, reaching for his throat with broad, powerful hands. Vince
screech.
screamed, hurling himself backwards. Claws tore open the front of his jacket.
He brought up his M-16 and opened fi re. The ghoul staggered, outlined in the strobing
orange fl ashes of muzzle fi re as the high-velocity rounds ripped through its torso. Vince
held the trigger down and walked the burst upwards until a bullet punched through the
underside of the monster’s chin and blew out the back of its skull.
As the ghoul’s body toppled to the paving stones, Vince felt a change come over him.
Fear gave way to a cold, hard certainty.
The tables had turned. He was the hunter now.
Jack and Andrea rushed past him, up to the edge of the pit. A pistol cracked; Dean
ducked low and fi red a burst from his rifl e. Screams rose from below.
Andrea let out a bestial snarl and sprayed the pit with fi re.
A dark shape scuttled out of the pit like a spider, off to Andrea’s right. Raimundo
ran past Vince and fi red from the hip, hitting the monster again and again. It writhed
and snapped its jaws at the fusillade of shots, then fell back over the edge.
Gabreski gathered his wits and rushed forward, clambering over the bloated bodies
strewn in his path. Men were screaming in the pit now, begging for mercy in broken
English. Something screeched in defi ance, but the sound was quickly lost in another

storm of automatic fi re.
Vince reached the edge of the reservoir. The Russians lay among their shrouded
sacrifi ces, their corpses adding to the charnel house they’d helped build. One ghoul
remained, glaring hatefully at the humans who had invaded its lair.
The creature’s jaws gaped in a hissing snarl — then it turned and ran for the mouth
of a nearby passageway.
The three detectives opened fi re at the same moment. A storm of high-velocity rounds
tore the creature to pieces. Vince, Jack and Andrea fi red until their magazines were

dry.

They found Darnell’s body along with the rest of the illegals at the fl oor of the
reservoir. It looked as though he’d put up a fi ght, for what it had been worth. Gabreski
shut the man’s dead eyes and said a small prayer, as if it maybe mattered.
Vince counted the bodies of the ghouls they’d killed. He found only fi ve. This hunt
wasn’t over. A small voice inside him asked, will it ever be over?

The snow was still falling as Gabreski and the others emerged into the early-morning
light. As the others made their way back to the van, he dug out his cell phone and made
a call. It was answered on the fi rst ring.

“Agent Carver.”
“You set us up,” Gabreski said. The cold wind on his face matched the ice in his
veins. “This had nothing to do with the illegals. You were sending us after the ghouls
“I told you this assignment required some very special talents,” Carver replied.
all along.”
“I’m glad to hear you were up to the job.”
“Who do you really work for, Carver? You’re not Homeland Security.”
“No. I’m part of something…deeper. A Joint Task Force created a long time ago by
the United States government. And we’re always on the lookout for good people like

you and your team.”