Thrilled to Death

by James Byron Huggins

  “And now”—Hamilton turned his head to the guards, nodding curtly—”I am afraid that—”

  Hunter moved.

  Exploding in a violent movement not telegraphed at all, he leaped forward and collided hard with Hamilton to take them together over a computer dais—a wild and twisted tangle of arms and legs—to the other side. Paper and laboratory materials scattered chaotically at the impact and reckless descent, and Hunter was first on his feet, volcanically heaving the scientist around as a shield, his Bowie knife already at Hamilton’s throat. Before Hunter spoke a single word Hamilton’s upraised hands halted the onrushing guards.

  “Stay where you are, you fools!” he bellowed, suddenly graceless. Hunter was amazed he had swung the situation around with a single dynamic move. He pushed the old man forward, hoping to control the situation by ruthlessly taking advantage of their temporary confusion and emotional shock.

  Then the large figure of Brick erupted on the far side of a bookcase— the soundless shadow Hunter had followed so long.

  The big man held the large, double-barreled Weatherby in both hands with pistols and grenades and extra ammo attached to his brown vest. A leather bandoleer of huge bullets was slung from shoulder to hip, and in a flashing glance Hunter registered yet another rifle—some kind of semiautomatic—slung across his back.

  “Drop ‘em!” Brick bellowed and two of the guards, quicker than the rest, spun with rifles raised. But before the first guard had completed the turn Brick fired, the enormous expanding flame of the Weatherby reaching out six feet, and the guard’s chest exploded with the impact. Then Brick swung the barrel and fired again, thunderously lifting the second guard off his feet as Hunter threw Hamilton to the ground and the laboratory was ripped by gunfire.

  Chaney was becoming more frustrated as the moments passed, moving in and out of the trucks, Humvees, tankers, and transport trucks at the motor pool. The area was checkered with pits of black that could have contained anything: he had left his night-vision device in the facility, not reckoning that he would need it.

  Despite stumbling on a dozen listening posts that denied seeing Hunter—he had not chanced upon Takakura and Taylor—he was certain that Hunter said he was moving outside to check the perimeter. He was loping at a respectable gait across the yard, passing the front of the shed containing the two-ton generators that were powering the facility, when he caught a slowly moving form high in the air.

  It was a bizarre floating, grayish image—like a ghostly apparition emerging from fog. It came across the earth without touching it, hanging in the air, arms outstretched.

  Chaney looked curiously, and although he was among the most controlled of all men, shouted something incoherent.

  For, seemingly suspended, neither rising nor descending, the beast was nearly twenty feet in the air, hanging for what seemed an impossibly long time before it came down hard, its stone-heavy impact sending a gunshot effect that made a hundred heads turn together.

  So shocked was Chaney that he didn’t immediately open fire, somehow doubting against reason that it might turn and flee. Then it leaped again, angling for the domed hull of the green tanker parked beside the shed. Immediately Chaney raised the Weatherby and fired.

  He had no idea if he connected as it completed an arching descent to vanish from view, landing without sound on the grassy area between the truck and building.

  “HOLD FIRE! HOLD FIRE!” a commanding voice boomed over the intercom system. And Chaney needed no one to explain why. It would be simple for panicked troops, some having never seen true combat, to open fire in fear and accidentally detonate the ten-thousand-gallon tank. Chaney himself had recognized the threat only at the last moment and purposefully shot high, hoping to catch it in the shoulder, virtually assuring that he had missed.

  Chaney stared in shock.

  Nothing could have prepared him for this.

  For what he had seen suspended in the night air made all human conflict seem insignificant. He had almost not believed it even when it landed with such fearless intent, and cursed himself for his hesitation. For he had had one moment for a clean shot and might have caught it as it stood gloating.

  As an afterthought, remembering the hulking might outlined by the fog-shrouded skylight, he was glad he had brought the Weatherby and quickly replaced the spent round, clicking the breech closed.

  Soldiers in teams of ten and thirty ran past him, taking lateral and frontal positions on the motor pool. Officers bellowed commands to compete with the roar of the generators, and Chaney ran down the line of Jeeps and trucks, hoping for a glimpse. Whatever it was, they had it cornered in the twenty-acre lot of automotive vehicles.

  A hideous scream that rose in volume erupted in the night for a split second, then died abruptly. A wild rattle of M-16 fire was followed by another and even shorter shout of panic. Then silence. Chaney knew what it was doing; it had located the first listening post situated in the pool, killing both soldiers like lightning.

  One platoon, close and tight with weapons ready, moved into the south end of the motor pool. Two more teams of thirty, one in the center and one on the north end, moved with them, a hundred men spreading into a skirmish line as they crossed the first line of vehicles.

  Carefully, alertly, they moved forward, the instructions of sergeants and lieutenants to “look sharp and fire on acquisition” repeated over and over in the semi-darkness.

  Chaney scanned the vast acreage, and in the distance, at the eruption of another frightful scream, saw a brief blurred shape of black moving left to right in a frenzy. Chaney’s teeth came together in frustration and rage: two more down.

  It was moving quick, slaughtering methodically.

  The skirmish line had covered about a third of the distance when more screams echoed violently in the night. Chaney remembered Taylor and Takakura. He keyed his throat mike and tried to raise them, repeating their designation in order to warn them.

  But they didn’t reply.

  Taylor glanced up and saw Takakura’s sweating face silhouetted by a stadium-like display of floodlights. The Japanese was bent, sword in hand and a .45 pistol in the other. His eyes were feral, staring with rage, and his teeth shone white in the pale light that made his dark face glisten. He stared high and then dropped, silently searching underneath the truck beside them. When he rose he shook his head in frustration, snarling as he spoke: “It is working its way to the north end, away from us. It is methodically working its way through the listening posts.”

  “You wanna go after it?” Taylor asked, tightening the bandoleer so it wouldn’t slide from his shoulder in violent movement.

  Takakura shook his head sharply. “No ... I don’t think so. Then again, it will find us soon enough. As it has found the others.” He calculated, his eyes blinking hard and quick. “Yes, it will find us. But not as it found them.”

  “You wanna set an ambush?” Taylor whispered.

  “There remains one more listening post between us and the creature. If it continues to kill methodically and is not somehow deterred, it will finish them next.” His face hardened, dark eyes narrowing into slits. “It will be our only chance. It will be upon us in moments.” He wasted a single second. “Do you believe those depleted uranium slugs will penetrate its skin?”

  “I don’t know. It’ll penetrate the armor of a tank. But I don’t know if these magnum shells give ‘em the velocity it’s gonna take. I’m damn sure it’s gonna feel it, but to kill it ... I don’t know.” He shook his head, sweat dripping from his scarred face as he took a breath.

  “It will have to suffice.” Takakura crouched, peeking around the front of a transport.

  Frantic rifle fire tore through the night at the other end of the field, a wild continuous blaze of at least twenty rifles on full automatic. A bestial roar rose above it all, and there were the horrifying sounds of men dying in fear, and then the firing became w
ildly unorganized and sporadic. Even from a distance Takakura could tell from the white muzzle blasts that some of them were firing in all directions or into the air, lost in war madness and fear.

  “Now is our chance,” he rasped. “While it is engaged we will take up a flanking position near the right listening post. If it comes for them next, then perhaps we can make contact with it before it hits. We must move quickly.”

  Forsaking greater stealth for speed because the far end of the field still thundered with rifle fire and an occasional bellow that could only have come from a man knowing death was upon him, they located the listening post without being sighted and took up a discreet flanking position. Takakura laid the M-14 across the hood of a Humvee, turning on the starlight scope. And Taylor angled across to the back, securing himself inside the rear of a tent-covered transport truck with a thirty-foot clear range at the probable area of contact.

  Startlingly, the next chaotic cries and rifle fire erupted behind them, near the front of the lot.

  It was incredible; the thing had traveled the entire expanse of the twenty-acre pool in fifteen seconds, effortlessly bypassing a thirty-man platoon securing the center, to launch an attack on troops searching the south end.

  “God help us,” Taylor whispered. It seemed incredible that they had survived it in the mountains—unless it was becoming stronger, more cunning, and more powerful as it continued to mutate.

  Broken rifle fire over a hundred yards behind them erupted, as if they couldn’t acquire the target and were simply firing into the darkness. Then the truck, a ten-ton rig with a twenty-foot wooden bed suddenly tilted toward the hood—silence, staring, not moving, staring—and with lionish velocity and grace the massive manlike shape sailed over Taylor’s hidden form, landing fully ten feet from the fender, hurling itself forward as it struck the ground.

  Almost before Taylor could rise to his knee and fire, it had struck the first man in the listening post, a sweeping blow from a taloned hand that finished the scream. But the second man managed a quick shot that went wide before the same hand struck his chest, smashing through the Kevlar vest like straw and—

  Taylor pulled the trigger.

  The blast was blinding. Taylor leaped from the truck to see it leaning back against the door, holding a hand to its shoulder. It gazed at him in anger, but without pain, and opened a fanged mouth, unleashing a roar that felt like a hand pressing against Taylor’s armored chest.

  Taylor roared and pulled the trigger again, only dimly aware of distant shots that told him backup was coming fast. But not fast enough.

  As the bestial image of death rushed forward on horrible bowed legs, arms outstretched beneath glaring red eyes, Taylor pulled the trigger again and again, focusing all his skill, all his will, all his training and experience to make certain each of the twelve rounds hit solid. He sensed rather than saw Takakura’s leaping shape as he emerged from behind a Humvee and dropped to a knee, instantly sighting and firing. Then the creature was upon him.

  Taylor fired his last round.

  He saw a depthless wall of gray might that blocked out the night and sky and stars and light; taller, inhumanly massive and indestructible with awful glee glaring from the purest bestial fury. Then it seemed to angle left, its right arm raised high, and Taylor leaped into it, roaring in rage as he reached for his Bowie knife to—

  “NO!” Takakura shouted as Taylor, standing for a strange moment, fell back before the beast. In the shadows Takakura saw that a wide portion of the commando’s chest had been torn cleanly away, leaving half a man falling backward to the ground. The creature tossed a black mass to the side, and turned its grotesque face toward Takakura.

  Fangs parted in a menacing smile.

  Takakura saw the other soldiers converging on the site—twenty seconds—and dropped to a knee, firing all that remained in the thirty-round clip at the creature as it strode slowly forward. So contemptuous was it of the Japanese and the rifle that it did not rush at all, but came with thundering, remorseless strides that closed the distance in horrible certainty.

  Somewhere in the last few rounds Takakura understood its inhuman pleasure at a slow kill and spaced the bullets, firing the last one—it was still moving slowly—when it was five feet away. It opened its fanged mouth in an explosive roar.

  Gambling that it would expect him to react as the others had reacted at its horrific image and approach, Takakura lifted the rifle in a frightened stance, feigning shock. Gloating, growling, it raised its right hand high, fangs wide with a hellish smile.

  Takakura moved.

  With the speed and skill perfected from a lifetime of kendo he dropped the rifle and quick-drew the long katana, angling the sword through a cross-body cut with all the strength of his back and arms and wrists. The entire movement, from the time his hands left the gun until the momentum of his cut carried him to the side, had lasted less than a second.

  A normal man would have been cut cleanly in half through the hips. But the thing staggered forward a space, glaring down at the deep gash torn in its chest, blood already descending in dark rivulets. Then it turned slowly in a tight half-circle, staring at itself, then at Takakura with an odd mixture of shock and anger.

  Takakura knew he would not be so lucky next time. He had deceived it with its own pride. But now it knew it could be injured by the katana. It would not make the same mistake twice.

  The other platoons now reached the site and opened fire. Takakura ducked away as they unleashed hundreds of rounds at the creature. Glaring back in the deafening smoke-choked atmosphere Takakura could see the lead impacting against the thick skin, bouncing or flattening and utterly failing to penetrate.

  Yet its rage ran deep, for despite the concentrated attack it came for Takakura again, who stood sword in hand. Takakura knew it would kill him this time; if his first masterful blow had not been enough to finish it, then he could not kill it at all. And although the Japanese moved as quickly as he could, far quicker than most men, it was on top of him as he hit the ground, rolling under a thirty-ton Dooley.

  Charging at the last, it struck the gigantic transport vehicle in the door with its shoulder—a thunderous impact that shattered glass and half-lifted the Dooley from the ground—and a split second later Takakura saw the wide steel door ripped away and hurled into shadow.

  It reached beneath the cab to snatch him and Takakura scampered to the far side, narrowly avoiding the reach of that colossal arm and rending talons.

  But he knew he couldn’t keep up the game; sooner or later it would get him. Then the entire night was a wall of rifle fire, illuminating everything—the Dooley, tires, vehicles, lights, the fence, and the creature, screaming and roaring in the apocalyptic night. And with a hideous bellow it charged fully through a line of soldiers, hesitating only a heartbeat to kill anyone in reach, and was lost.

  Stunned, breathless, and shocked, Takakura rolled onto his back, feeling his chest, checking for injury. As caught up as he was in battle, he knew he could be hit in half a dozen places and not notice. After a moment, as scattered fighting continued to rage—the creature continuing to play its game of devastating guerrilla attacks—he rolled out from beneath the truck and wearily gained his footing.

  He searched for his rifle, saw a dozen slaughtered troops in the smoking opening. Then he staggered forward as an invisible fist whistled in from the darkness—a rocket he did not see but sensed—and an unseen baseball bat hit him hard in the chest, fully flattening him back against the ground.

  Groaning, rolling, fighting violently for breath, Takakura knew what it was: a stray .223 round had found him. He had not been the target, but so many rounds fired in so small a place would eventually find friendly casualties.

  Breathless, dazed, and nauseated, he managed to detach the bulky load-bearing vest, dropping it to the ground. Then, eyes blurring, he ripped away two of the Velcro straps securing the bulletproof vest
, feeling his sweat-slicked chest beneath.

  He groaned, too tired to feel relief.

  No, it hadn’t penetrated.

  As he struggled to rise, he felt the night whiter, lighter, warm, and hazy. He took one staggering step ... two ...

  Blackness rushed up.

  ***

  Hunter heard Brick hurl the elephant rifle violently across a desk and began to rise when, on impulse, Hunter whirled, swiping with the speed of a leopard with the Bowie. The butt of the hilt caught Hamilton, also attempting to rise, square on the cluster of nerves located midway up the neck, and the physician fell limp to the tiles.

  Reorienting, Hunter saw the second guard’s rifle lying close but still too far to reach without exposing himself. So he risked a quick glance and saw that the other four had opened up on Brick’s position with fully automatic fire, apparently forgetting him in the presence of an armed and obviously very dangerous intruder firing upon them.

  Launching himself forward, Hunter dove and snatched up the M-16 as he sailed over the cleaved body of the second soldier. Then he hit the ground and rolled, instantly finding cover behind a thick metal desk as one of the guards glimpsed the bold move and fired, bullets tearing through the steel panels.

  Moving quickly, Hunter rounded half a dozen corners and threw his back against the wall as he ripped out the magazine. Shaking his head to clear his face from the sudden eruption of sweat, he saw that it held thirty rounds. So he set the selector switch on fully automatic and chambered a cartridge, insuring that the safety was off. Holding the rifle close, he angled back to the firefight.

  Brick had obviously hurled the Weatherby aside after the first two thunderous rounds—there had been no time to reload—and was using the semiauto. Listening and catching quick glimpses of desperate black shapes outlined by a strobe of gunfire, Hunter targeted two of the guards. He lowered the barrel around a corner, taking time to adjust for elevation, and pulled the trigger.