Chapter 7: Missing
Field Station Delta: A paranormal military thriller.
Welcome to Field Station Delta. This novella is a paranormal military thriller that I am releasing as a serial for my readers on Substack.
Day 2, 21:45
Two Black Hawks rose from the makeshift air strip at Medicine Wheel Ranch and thundered into the night, turning towards Van Cleef, which was still overshadowed by a threatening cloud front.
Metzger and her new squad had been treated to a hasty and vague pre-mission briefing. Then they’d been forced to cool their heels for several hours, waiting for the weather to finally clear enough to allow the bulky choppers to get airborne. She was relieved to be underway, but the slapdash nature of the operation did not inspire confidence.
We’re in for a regular Air Force shitshow.
Metzger gritted her teeth. She’d figured that there would be contingency plans in place for this sort of thing. Then again, nothing at the Ranch seemed to operate “by the book.” She almost wished she was back in Salvo City.
Focus, Metzger.
She surmised that Key Master must be the key to understanding it all—the Medicine Wheel, the shadow-creatures, Sam Brewster’s wild story about orbs, the increasingly severe weather, Violet’s premonitions—and yet she knew precisely nothing about it.
The military’s obsession with compartmentalization and the need-to-know was, on a certain level, understandable. All the same, Metzger hated being kept in the dark, especially about mission-critical intel. But she was hardly in a position to raise objections.
Helen Cartwright had hovered around Colonel Nolan’s briefing like a watchful buzzard. Violet was right—on the Ranch, Cartwright called the shots. She clearly viewed the Air Force special operators as little more than glorified fixers, as muscle to bail out her Blue Shirt science nerds from whatever mess they had created.
As Metzger double and triple checked her gear, Master Sergeant Jason Phan, the squad leader, reviewed the mission parameters one last time.
After touchdown in Van Cleef, they’d conduct a house-to-house search of the main street and the surrounding farms. The second Black Hawk was currently empty of passengers. Both helos would be used to evacuate the civilians to the relative safety of the Ranch, while the squad waited on the ground for the first chopper to circle back and retrieve them.
“Simple exfil op, in and out. Shouldn’t take more than an hour,” Phan was saying. “I don’t anticipate any trouble, but stay frosty.”
Metzger thought Sarge was putting on a good show; calm, collected, and confident, as a good leader should be. But she could tell Phan was under no illusions that he’d convinced his audience.
Senior Airman Valdes broke the awkward silence that followed. “Master Sergeant, you know as well as I do that simple ceased to be a relevant word the minute we set foot on the Ranch. What do you think we’re really in for?”
“Hard to say,” Phan said. “The Colonel and Doc Cartwright were sparse on details.”
“Well, two weather anomalies have made a beeline for town in less than twenty-four hours. That can’t be a coincidence. And Metzger here says that the Blue Shirts are weirded out. That’s never a good sign.”
Everyone was staring at Metzger. She looked at the floor and tried hard not to feel like the new recruit who brought bad luck.
“Five mikes out,” the pilot called.
On Metzger’s left sat Lucy Hopko, reserved and serious as before. To Metzger’s left was Hopko's polar opposite, Senior Airman Steven Whittaker, or “Whitts,” as everyone invariably called him. Whitts was a jovial, brash Texan who seized every opportunity to insert absurdist humor into a situation, whether it was appropriate or not. Metzger wasn’t sure if she liked him yet.
She shut her eyes and tried to steady her breathing. This would be her first field mission since—NO.
Images flashed unbidden through her mind like a deranged slide show. Bodies in the snow. Pools of blood. The leering face of the Pale Man.
Breath, Metzger. Breath. She hoped that the rest of the squad weren’t still staring at her.
She couldn’t let Nuristan—that horrible night on the mountain—impair her judgement. Not today. This wasn’t the Afghan-Pak borderlands. This was Wyoming for God’s sake.
“Two mikes out.”
At that moment, the chopper bucked and shuddered in a sudden wave of turbulence from the anomalous storm. Metzger gasped, startled out of her flashback.
“Show of hands, y’all,” Whittaker said with a sly grin. “Who’s been in a genuine Black Hawk crash before?”
Metzger glared at him.
They landed at the outskirts of Van Cleef without further incident. The main street was dark and completely deserted. A single parked car, a rusted out junker, sat forlorn by the abandoned post office.
Metzger tensed. Something about this wasn’t right. No, scratch that—none of this was right. Even though the town was home to only a couple dozen inhabitants, the noise of the helicopters should have attracted at least a few curious locals.
Staff Sergeant Zachary Berg had to shout to be heard over the engines of the idling Black Hawks. “What gives? No welcoming committee?”
Berg’s stereotypical Brooklyn accent reminded Metzger of her friend Marty Chavez. She quickly shook that thought out of her mind. She wasn’t in the mood for another harrowing flashback at the moment.
“They probably all took cover from the storm,” said Staff Sergeant Monica Harper, a sturdy African American woman from St. Louis, Missouri, or thereabouts. She was looking up dubiously at the baleful sky. “Shit, if this ain’t perfect twister weather, I don’t know what is.”
The empty street and the storm clouds brooding above the town reminded Metzger of one of those post-apocalyptic disaster movies. Livid flashes of lightning occasionally lit up the night, and a chill wind whipped its way across the flats.
“Uh, guys, I think we just missed the Rapture,” Whitts said. No one laughed.
The team huddled under the flickering glare of a lonely streetlamp by the old post office. “All right folks, let’s move,” Sergeant Phan said. “Berg, take Valdes and Metzger to search Heller’s store—he’s got a large storm shelter with an entrance ‘round back. Harper, Hopko, and Whitts, you’re with me; we’ll recce the surrounding farms. We’ll all rendezvous back at this spot in twenty minutes. Stay alert and keep in radio contact.”
Metzger followed Berg across the street to Heller’s shop. To their surprise, they found the front door was forced in, wrenched half off its hinges. In the stark glare of their flashlights, the two Airmen could see that the place was in shambles. They entered cautiously.
Several isles of shelves had fallen over like toppled dominos. Tin cans, glass jars, bottles, and various dry goods were scattered heedlessly about the floor in all directions. The heavy antique cash register lay busted in a corner, as if it had been picked up and hurled off the countertop.
“What the hell?” Berg said.
“Hello! Is anyone here?” Metzger called out.
Valdes trotted in behind them. “The shelter’s empty. What d’you—” Suddenly he took stock of the devastation around them. “Madre de Dios! What happened here?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Metzger said. She was examining the damaged cash machine.
“Mr. Heller?” called Valdes. He stepped carefully over broken bottles, loose food, and other debris. “Ms. Bonds? Is anyone here?”
Berg emerged from Heller’s office. “The safe in there’s intact,” he said.
“No money’s been taken from the register,” reported Metzger.
Valdes swept the beam of his flashlight across the store and shook his head, his face a study in bewilderment.
“What d’ya think?” said Berg. “Maybe Harper was on to something. A twister coulda hit the town.”
“No way,” said Metzger. “Even a small tornado would have shattered the front windows. And there wasn’t any debris in the street.”
“Metzger’s right,” said Valdes. “There was no damage to the outside of the buildings at all. It looks more like the store was ransacked by an angry mob. What’s going on?”
Berg got on the radio and filled in Sergeant Phan about the situation. They made a quick sweep of Brewster’s repair shop and found nothing. Phan and the others soon joined them outside the post office.
“You didn't find no one, Master Sergeant?” asked Berg in surprise.
“No signs of life at all. The homesteads all looked as if they’d been broken into. No valuables seem to have been taken.”
“Just like Heller’s place,” said Valdes.
Phan’s expression was grim. “The people of Van Cleef have vanished without a trace.”
“Almost without a trace,” said Hopko quietly. “We did find this.” She held up a small rectangular object—a cell phone. Its screen was cracked in several places, but the device was still mostly intact.
“At least that’s something, right?” said Berg. “Whose phone is it, d’ya know?”
“The lock screen has a photo of a tropical beach,” put in Staff Sergeant Harper.
Valdes looked startled. “That’s Mary Bonds’ phone! I took that photo last year at a family reunion in Key West. I shared it with Mary because she’s always wanted to travel to Florida…” Valdes went quiet for a moment and then swallowed hard. “Was… Was there any blood?”
Harper shook her head. “No human blood. But we found some dead animals. Or what was left of them. Three dogs and one cat, a few chickens. They were all… mutilated.”
“Yeah,” said Whitts. “Left Behind meets Pet Sematary.”
“Shut the fuck up, Whitts!” snarled Valdes, “Is everything a joke to you?”
“That’s enough!” said Phan. “We’ve got to get back to HQ and debrief—stat. With any luck, the Blue Shirts can pry some clues out of Mary Bonds’ phone.”
“They could still be alive,” said Hopko, hopefully. “Alive but—”
“Taken,” Metzger finished. Her voice seethed with suppressed fury.
This wasn’t how things had played out in Afghanistan. The Pale Man had seemed to kill for amusement, like a demented child pulling the wings off butterflies. This felt different.
Her thoughts abruptly returned to the mysterious words of the shadow-creatures.
Release them. Or your kind shall suffer.
Well, now innocent people were suffering, and Metzger was helpless to do anything about it. She needed answers. She had all the clues; she just couldn’t piece them together yet.
I fucking hate riddles, she thought bitterly.