Two extraordinarily loud CRACKS cut through even the roar of the storm.

  A millisecond later, the van's engine died violently.

  There was no backfire. It wasn’t a stall. The engine block simply ruptured.

  What could only be described as armor-piercing rounds punched straight through the thin sheet metal of the hood and tore into the engine bay. The first round punched through the radiator, sending a geyser of superheated coolant spraying up against the underside of the hood. The second struck the engine block itself, penetrating the cast iron and fragmenting inside, shredding pistons, crankshaft, and cylinder walls in a catastrophic mechanical failure that happened faster than thought.

  The sicario's foot was still pushed down on the accelerator as the engine whined in its final struggles and jerked the wheel to the left. The van lurched to the side—or at least it tried to—but the wheels immediately sank deep into the mud when they veered off the makeshift road. With a loud thud, the van got stuck in the mire, spraying thick Alabama clay everywhere while the transmission grinded and howled like a wounded animal.

  "?QUé CHINGADOS—!" the sicario started to scream, but his voice was drowned out by a sound that made every instinct in his body scream RUN.

  The roar of rotor wash. Close. Too close.

  One of the black egg-shaped helicopters made a sudden, aggressive landing not even fifty feet away. It’s skids basically slammed down into the mud with enough force to send up a spray of debris, but not forceful enough to disturb the wraiths as they jumped off the benches.

  And then came the light.

  Blinding, searing, white-hot illumination flooded the cabin, turning the world into a blazing brightness from all directions. Combined with the downwash from the helicopter's rotors as it lifted off again, the surroundings became too overwhelming to process.

  Regardless, the sicario had to react as his hand shot up instinctively to shield his face from the light while he scrambled across the passenger seat for the short AR-15. He knew how the Federales operated, and this was nothing even remotely similar. Fighting back was his only chance for survival; the sicario knew this was most likely a doomed effort, but he needed to at least try.

  But as soon as the sicario's hand wrapped around the pistol grip, the windshield was ripped to shreds as the first volley of rifle fire came so fast and accurate, it was almost like a buzz saw. The windshield wasn't a windshield anymore—it was an exploding constellation of spider-web cracks and holes punching through the safety glass.

  The sicario served as an excellent example of why they weren’t dealing with your typical two-bit thug. He immediately stiffened like a board the moment the volley started. The sicario's arms jerked toward his torso, and his fingers curled as his body still jerked, flinched, and shifted from rounds from every direction found their mark.

  An endless string of gunfire echoed, shattering the already broken windshield further. This time, bullets struck not only the driver. Rounds tore through the van's sheet metal door frames like paper, as if searching for any other living soul, while everyone ducked for cover.

  The repeated metallic thuds and sharp cracks of supersonic metal fragments were deafening as panic spread through the cabin. "?AYúDAME! ?AYúDAME!" the heavyset worker in the front passenger seat yelled for help, ducking as low as his seatbelt would allow.

  Shards of laminated safety glass peppered the cabin with shards, while the workers inside screamed and begged for it all to stop. But the gunfire continued—precise, disciplined, and intentional. This wasn’t spray-and-pray like in gang or cartel shootouts, but carefully aimed shots hit exactly where someone should have been if they hadn’t cowered so desperately.

  Bullets still found the Sicario's body as it spasmed with each impact, his Dallas Cowboys snapback flying off as his head continually snapped back, then forward, then back again like a grotesque marionette having its strings yanked by a sadistic puppeteer. But after a few more seconds of hell, it all suddenly ceased.

  However, not everything had gone completely silent. The rain still hammered against what was left of the van's roof as water started to leak in from the holes, and the roaring rotors of the helicopter circled outside. Inside the van, everyone couldn’t hear a damn thing, still overwhelmed by the ringing in their ears.

  During this brief moment of peace, the chubby worker realized he was hyperventilating, his breath coming in short, panicked gasps. His hands still covered his head as if that could protect him from bullets, while whimpering an incoherent prayer.

  "?CONDUCE! ?CONDUCE, IDIOTA!" The worker in the back seat started to hysterically scream for the Sicario to keep driving. "??QUé ESTáS HACIENDO?! ?MUéVETE!"

  "N-no puedo," the fat worker stammered that this was impossible with a voice barely above a whisper.

  He had a good look at the Sicario, and he was shaking so hard the words came out in stutters. "N-no puedo, idiotas, él... él... ?su cabeza se fue!" the worker explained that what was in the Sicario's head had basically toppled out onto the center console.

  The worker in the backer started to say something back—probably another panicked demand to drive, to run, to do something—but the words died in his throat as a new sound filled the cabin.

  Gurgling.

  Wet. Thick. The sound of someone struggling to breathe through a throat that wasn't working right.

  The skinny worker's head snapped to the side, toward the pale figure sitting next to him in the back seat, and what he saw made every drop of blood in his body turn to ice water.

  The elf was gasping.

  Not the normal gasping of someone who'd been startled or was hyperventilating from fear. This was the desperate, drowning gasp of someone whose lungs were filling with fluid, whose body was shutting down, and whose time was measured in seconds rather than minutes.

  His hands—those long, skeletal fingers that had once commanded the dead with such terrible purpose—were pressed against his chest and neck, desperately trying to stop the bleeding that should have been flowing from wounds the skinny worker hadn't even seen happen. Whether stray rounds or ricochets turned his neck into Swiss cheese, the result remained the same.

  But it was the lack of blood that made the skinny worker's mind fracture.

  By all means, those wounds should have been gushing red, but instead, there was absolutely nothing coming out. The elf was gasping and gurgling as if there were, but the only thing coming out was a strange, dark gaseous substance whose consistency was all wrong. It looked more like floating tar or crude oil than anything that should be flowing through a living being's veins, and it oozed between the elf's fingers in thick, viscous ropes that didn't drip so much as reach out like living tendrils.

  What really caught the eye was the color... in the harsh glare of weapon lights still streaming through the shattered windshield, it appeared almost darker than black. It was as if the void was absorbing the light as it struggled to slip free from the fingers blocking it.

  The elf's mouth opened and closed, trying to form words in that sing-song language, but all that came out was a horrible gurgling sound as the strange gas continued to escape. His colorless eyes—those horrid orbs that had looked at them like they were insects—appeared as if this was just an inconvenience. They were narrowed as if annoyed, with an expression of exasperation, knowing death was imminent and there was nothing to be done.

  One pale hand stretched toward the thin worker, fingers grasping and searching for help or maybe just something solid to hold onto in those final moments.

  The skinny worker recoiled so violently he slammed his head against the window behind him, a strangled scream tearing from his throat as he begged for this vile monster to get away from him. "?NO! ?NO ME TOQUES! ?ALéJATE DE Mí!"

  Eventually, strength left the elf's body, and his hand fell, too weak to hold the gesture. The awful, wet gurgling—what could have been considered a sound—slowed and became shallower as the strange gas finished seeping from the wound and spread toward the sparsely decorated ceiling. Once it reached the holes, the gas violently escaped as if being forced out, causing the entire van to shake side to side.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Absolute horror clouded the voice of the worker in the back seats. He wanted to look away, but the poor guy was unable to tear his eyes from the elf's flesh as it began to… sag. Not decomposing, at least not in the normal sense, but simply sagging. It was as if whatever unnatural force had been animating that pale skin—keeping it tight and smooth—had finally failed.

  The skin started to take on a waxy, malleable quality, like candle wax beginning to melt and hang against the skeletal frame like cloth. His features—already inhuman—became even more alien as the underlying structure seemed to shift and settle in ways that defied anatomy and it became evident that there were no organs inside.

  The elf tried to say something one more time. His mouth moved, forming shapes that might have been words in his native tongue. But all that came out was a final, wet exhale as the last of the gas vacated and rushed through the bullet holes.

  Then nothing.

  The body simply folded.

  Not slumped. Not collapsed. It folded in a manner no human corpse could rightfully settle into in death. It was as if someone had dumped a pile of loose bones into a sack of pale leather and let gravity do the rest.

  The torso crumpled inward on itself, and the ribcage—if it even had one—offered no resistance, allowing the skin to just drape over whatever skeletal structure remained. The head tilted forward at an impossible angle for anything with a spine, until it folded completely in half. The arms bent where the joints should have been, twisting at the elbows as if there had been none.

  The only way to describe this was as if someone had removed every ligament, every tendon, and every piece of connective tissue that was supposed to hold bones together, leaving behind just a skeletal puppet with its strings cut. Such a thing never looked as if it had ever been alive in the first place.

  "No, no, no, no, no..." The wiry worker's voice cracked, rising in pitch with each repetition as he pressed himself harder against the interior wall, as far from the corpse as the confined space would allow. His eyes were wild, unfocused, seeing but not believing. "?Esto es obra del diablo! ?El diablo está jugando! ?Nos está castigando! ?Dios mío, nos está castigando por nuestros pecados!" he continued, knowing that this is the devil's work. The devil is at play, and he was punishing them for their sins.

  The overweight worker in the front seat wasn't listening. His mind had completely broken, and his survival instinct took over everything else as his hands shot up above his head. "?ME RINDO! ?ME RINDO!" he screamed in submission at the blinding lights, his voice raw with terror. "I GIVE UP! PLEASE DON'T SHOOT!"

  His shaking hand reached over and fumbled for the door handle, smacking against everything until it finally found it after three tries. When he shoved the door, however, the stubborn thing didn’t budge and bounced back against his shoulder, riddled with buts. He pushed again, harder, and the door swung wide as he started to climb out, still screaming, still begging.

  "I GIVE UP! ?POR FAVOR! PLEASE DON’T SHOOT—"

  The sound of gunfire echoed from multiple angles as precise shots hit him in the chest mid-movement just as he tried to exit the vehicle. His body jerked violently before crumpling to the ground like a sack of potatoes. One leg remained inside the van, twisted painfully, while the other slipped into the mud outside as his torso slammed against the ground hard enough to knock the air out of any grown man. But the worker simply screamed. He let out a high, keening wail of pure agony and horror that pierced through the rain and the spinning helicopter rotors.

  More shots rang out as he twisted his body, screaming louder and more blood-curdling than that which would put the fear in any man. It was a death wail that no longer sounded human, just raw vocal cords pushed beyond their limits as his body spasmed and twitched.

  Then, with a few more pulls of the trigger, the man’s head jerked, and the screaming ceased.

  The rotund worker’s body went still. And this time, blood—real blood—was flowing out, not that tar-black substance. Actual blood pooled beneath him, mixing with rainwater and engine oil in a spreading slick that caught the harsh weapon lights.

  Inside the van, the only surviving worker—the wiry guy who sat next to the elf—curled into a ball in the back seat, as far from the sagging corpse as he could get. His arms wrapped around his head, knees pulled up to his chest in the fetal position to make himself as small as possible. I shut his eyes tight as if that could somehow make him disappear. The worker thought that if he just compressed himself enough, no one would find him.

  "Dios te salve, María, llena eres de gracia..." he whispered a broken prayer between gasps and sobs. "El Se?or es contigo... perdóname, Padre, porque he pecado... perdóname, perdóname, perdóname..."

  Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.

  But even though his eyes were tightly shut, he could hear them—the squelching footsteps of death approaching. Heavy. Deliberate.

  The wiry worker's breath came in short, panicked hyperventilations that made his chest hurt. His whole body shook so violently he could hear his teeth chattering as he continued to desperately pray. Every instinct screamed at him to run, but there was nowhere to go. There was no escape, there was no running from the inevitability.’

  The squelching was closer now.

  "...Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores..."

  The passenger sliding door suddenly ripped open with enough force that the whole van rocked on its suspension, and the wiry worker's eyes snapped open involuntarily, his body's survival instinct overriding his desperate attempt to hide from reality.

  And there they stood.

  Two figures framed in the doorway, completely silhouetted by blinding white light so intense it felt like staring into the sun itself. The light burned into his retinas, turning everything beyond those two shapes into pure, searing brightness that wiped away all detail, all definition, all sense of the physical world.

  They weren't men. Not anymore. Not in his mind.

  They were reapers.

  “Los segadores...” He muttered as he saw the harvesters of souls. Satan's own angels sent to collect what was owed.

  For a fraction of a second, the Cartel worker reflected as his life flashed before his eyes. This was it. This was the punishment he'd always known was coming, but had convinced himself would never arrive. This was divine retribution made manifest, and there was nowhere left to hide.

  The worker couldn't even claim ignorance. He couldn't say he'd been led astray or deceived or corrupted by forces he didn't understand. No, he had seen what they were doing. He watched that pale monster reanimate corpses, saw dead flesh twist and merge into abominations that violated everything God had made. He transported the plants that drove men mad, turning human bodies into vessels for something unholy. He packed the jugs filled with liquids that defied nature, glowing with colors that shouldn't exist.

  He had seen it all. He knew it was wrong. He knew it was evil. He knew in his soul—in the part of him his grandmother had raised to fear God and respect the Church—that what they were doing was an affront to everything holy, and he helped anyway.

  And now the bill was due.

  "N-no… No, please!" the wiry worker blurted out in broken English, his hands shooting up above his head so fast he nearly punched himself in the face. “Please, I’m sorry ?Por favor…!—"

  Even with a suppressor, the muzzle flashes were impossibly bright in the confined space of the van's interior, strobing like lightning as the rifles barked their mechanical roar. The wiry worker's body jerked once, twice, three times, then he simply collapsed, sliding down against the seat until he crumpled into the footwell, hands still raised above his head in that final, futile gesture of submission.

  Silence fell again, broken only by the rain and the distant rotors.

  The operators kept their rifles trained on the bodies inside for a few more seconds, scanning for any signs of movement. When none appeared, they shifted their aim slightly to examine what was left of the elf's corpse. Outside, two other operators maintained overwatch with their weapons pointed at the fat worker's body, still hanging halfway out of the front door, and simply ignored the driver after noticing what was missing from his head.

  A few more shots rang out as they put a few more rounds into the heads of the cartel corpses before shifting to inspect the interior of the van, clearing angles and checking the cargo area for any additional threats. Everything the operator did was purely economical, the kind of muscle memory that comes from doing this exact procedure thousands of times in training and hundreds of times in real situations.

  "Clear," one operator said, his distorted voice barely audible through his gasmask and over the rain.

  The other operator reached up to key his push-to-talk while his rifle was still trained on the crumpled body in the footwell. "Voodoo," he said, his voice calm and professional, as if he hadn't just executed three people in the span of thirty seconds. "All hostiles neutralized and package secured."

  Static crackled in his headphones for a moment, then a voice responded—distant, filtered through encryption and radio interference. "Good copy. What's the status of the cargo? Over."

  The operator glanced into the back of the van, his rifle's light illuminating the strange plants in their makeshift terrariums. There, he saw all the film-wrapped bricks of conventional narcotics serving as packaging for things that were far more valuable and far more dangerous. They were going to need a full CBRN team out here.

  "Cargo is intact. We've got the anomalous plants and one deceased HVT in the back seat. Looks like he took stray rounds during the interdiction." The operator sending traffic and acting as control said.

  A brief moment a silence extended before a reply finally came. "Copy that. Stand by for SSE. They're three minutes out. You’re cleared to begin documentation."

  The operator lowered his rifle slightly—not all the way, because you never knew when a "dead" body might suddenly not be dead anymore—and started detaching his EUD. “Get your camera out. Command's gonna want pictures of everything before anything gets moved.”

  His partner nodded, slinging his rifle and removing his own EUD attached to the chest of his plate carrier. The screen lit up, casting a white glow across his face as he began documenting the scene. They both turned their helmet lights on, illuminating the space and sweeping through the entire interior.

  As the rain continued to fall, the two exchanged a sideways glance toward the pile of skin and bones in the back seat. They knew there was a very slim chance of capturing their target alive, but they also knew there would be more opportunities to catch this fucker.

  He… or it was still out there… somewhere.