Prey

by Jon F. Merz

  Mick's gun barked twice. Two holes blossomed in the creature's forehead.

  It dropped dead.

  "We can't stay here!" Mick had to shout over the wail of the alarm. "We have to leave!"

  A bright bolt of laser came flashing into the room. Mick ducked as it caromed off the wall and exploded among bits of machinery. Julia looked back toward the doorway and saw two more dinocreatures aiming some type of weapons.

  "Watch out!"

  Mick swung back and opened fire on them. More shrieks filled the air. Bullet casings flipped out of the ejector port on Mick's M16 and tumbled to the ground, clanging off the floor.

  Julia ran toward him, her feet cold suddenly.

  Mick squeezed off another round at the doorway. "Wish I had another gun for you. I could use some help."

  Julia pointed. "What about those laser guns they're using? Maybe we can get our hands on them."

  Mick nodded. "Worth a shot."

  "If we stay here they'll pin us down."

  Mick looked at her. "You ready?"

  "Yeah."

  "I'll cover you. Run for the area next to the doorway and wait there."

  "Okay."

  Mick popped his head out and back. Another laser bolt zoomed over his head. "Get ready."

  He poked the barrel back out and shot off three more rounds. "Go!"

  Julia felt her feet slip on the floor but then she got purchase and scrambled for the side of the doorway. Mick's gunfire poured past her. She reached wall and stopped, turned and waited for Mick to join her.

  She could hear them outside the door. Moving around. She could hear chirps. Were they coordinating their attack? Did they know how to get in there without risking death at Mick's hand?

  A sudden barrage of laser bolts came through the door. Julia winced at their ferocity.

  Mick had ducked back down and when the lasers stopped flying past the doorway, Julia saw him fire at the doorway again and then get up and run toward her, continuing to fire as he did so.

  He reached the doorway and slammed into the wall next to her. His breathing seemed only slightly labored.

  Julia shook her head. "Doesn't anything faze you?"

  He smirked. "You without any clothes on."

  She punched his arm. "What now?"

  "First," said Mick. "I need more ammo." He dropped the spent magazine down into the cargo pocket of his pants and then slammed another one home into the M16. He jerked the charging handle and nodded.

  "Okay. How many do you think are out there?"

  "Maybe a dozen?"

  He frowned. "That many?"

  "I don't think they're too happy about you coming in unannounced."

  More lasers shot past them, still aimed at the gurney. Mick smiled. "They still think I'm pinned down there. Good."

  Julia watched him pull out a fist-sized ball from his other cargo pocket. "What is that?"

  "Grenade."

  "From the cache?"

  "Yeah."

  "I didn't see any of those there."

  Mick nodded. "Yeah, well, sometimes, it's better to have a surprise or two, don't you think?"

  "How many other surprises do you have?"

  "We get out of this alive, I'll be happy to tell you about all of them. How's that sound?"

  "Better than dying here. Throw that thing already."

  Mick popped the pin and waited for a brief lull in the firing. He leaned past Julia and let the handle slip off the grenade and then tossed it out in the corridor beyond the door.

  He leaned back and hugged Julia close. She could smell the perspiration soaking through his shirt. It smelled wonderful.

  The explosion rocked the room. More shrieks filled the air.

  Then silence.

  No more lasers cut through the air. No more chirps beyond the door.

  Mick looked at Julia and held up his hand. He pushed off from the wall, brought his gun up into his shoulder and then eased around the doorway.

  After a moment, he motioned for Julia to come out and follow him.

  Blood streaked the hallway. The smell of charred flesh filled the air and Julia felt like puking again when she saw the mass of entrails and torn limbs decorating the corridor. Scattered bit of dinocreature littered the expanse of the place.

  Mick bent low and picked up what looked like some type of space age gun. He handed it back to Julia. "Watch where you point that thing."

  The gun felt remarkably light in her hands. She brought the butt into her shoulder and she and Mick kept moving down the hall, Mick against the left side of the corridor and Julia hugging the right.

  A dinocreature ran across their field of fire and Mick picked him off cleanly with a headshot. The creature dropped.

  Julia found her breathing coming in quick spurts now. She felt nervous about potentially hyperventilating. Mick looked over once and smiled at her, which seemed to do a lot for calming her down.

  They passed more doors on their left and right sides now. Julia frowned. What was this place? Where were they? All of this built into a mountain? It didn't seem possible. It was some sort of engineering feat to say the least.

  A laser pulse flashed past Julia's face making her scream. Mick shouted at her.

  "Get down!"

  Another laser shot over her head. Julia fell to the floor and aimed the laser rifle down toward the end of the seemingly endless curving hallway. She could just vaguely see heads moving about down at the end.

  Mick kept firing his gun but the bullets almost seemed to fall short of the targets. Julia found the trigger on her own gun and squeezed.

  A bright pulse of laser shot out of the end and streaked down toward the end of the hallway. She heard a loud shriek and saw one of the creatures fall dead.

  "Keep shooting!"

  Julia took a deep breath and kept finding her targets. One after another she shot and took out each one that came into her view.

  "We can't stay here!"

  Julia nodded, shooting another round down. "Where?"

  Mick pointed to Julia's side of the hallway. "There's a door about fifty yards ahead. Make for that!"

  Julia got to her feet and ran ahead. She kept firing, hoping the stray blasts would take out another dinocreature or at least make them keep their heads down. How many of those things were there anyway?

  She reached the door.

  "Mick! Come on!"

  He ran for the door.

  A bright laser blast caught him high in his right arm, spun him, and he landed on the floor in the middle of the corridor.

  "Fuck!"

  "Mick!"

  Julia ran back for him, firing another volley down at the end of the corridor. She reached Mick. The laser wound looked like it had already cauterized itself. There was black char on Mick's right shoulder. The M16 looked useless, blown apart by the laser blast.

  "You okay?"

  He nodded but she could see his teeth were gritted against the pain. "Just get me to the door."

  She had to use one hand to help him while she kept trying to fire at the other end. More laser bolts came at them now.

  "They're getting closer," said Mick. "We need to get out of here."

  The door hissed open and they fell through it. It slid shut with an equally sinister hiss.

  Julia collapsed. She felt exhausted.

  Mick was breathing hard next to her. "Cripes this hurts."

  She looked at the wound. "It doesn't look all that bad to be honest with you."

  "Lucky I had the M16 up or it would have taken my arm off," said Mick. "The poor gun took the brunt of it."

  "They'll come for us," said Julia.

  Mick looked around. There was a lot of sweat staining his forehead now. The pain must have been extreme.

  Mick pointed. "Two doors off of this one. You got any psychic inclinations about which one will lead us out of here?"

  "Is there a way out of this complex?"

  Mick looked at her. "Complex?"

  "This place. Whereve
r the hell we are."

  Mick smiled. "We're on a ship, Julia."

  "A ship? You mean a space ship?"

  "Yeah. Why do you think it took me so long to find you? This thing is huge. It's the entire mountain."

  Julia's mind reeled. "The entire mountain? That doesn't make any sense."

  "Think of it as camouflage then. They disguised an entire spaceship to look exactly like a mountain. The tunnel we were in, the jungle, it's all a part of the greater vehicle."

  "My God."

  "It's huge," said Mick. "Took me hours to figure my way around it, and that was only using the main corridors. They'll have those cordoned off somehow."

  "And you don't know any other ways off this thing?"

  Mick grimaced. "Shit that hurts." He looked at her. "No. My AAA membership didn't have a map for this place."

  "Don't be sarcastic." Julia glanced around. Two doors. One or the other. One might lead them off this ship and back into the cold of Antarctica or it might lead them deeper into the spaceship.

  Some choice.

  Behind them, a sudden flurry of noise sounded beyond the door they'd come in through. Mick pointed at the control box next to the door. "Better fry that thing or we'll have company real soon."

  Julia shot the panel and watched the circuitry pop and fizzle. She turned back to Mick. "I don't know which one to choose."

  "There's another reason we have to get off this thing," said Mick.

  "Why's that?"

  "Because if they feel we're too much of as threat, they might simply lift this thing off and take us home with them."

  "Home?"

  "As in other planet."

  Julia pulled Mick to his feet. "I've already got a home. And I want to get the hell back there."

  "Which one?" asked Mick.

  Julia looked at the two doors. Both of them looked the same. Which one to choose?

  More activity behind them made her yank Mick toward one of them. She held him up. "You trust me?"

  He smirked. "Only a little bit."

  "That's enough," she said.

  And then pressed the button to trigger the door on he right.

  It slid up and she pushed them both through it, praying it was the right choice.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Darkness enveloped them.

  "I can't see a damned thing," said Mick.

  Julia shushed him. Something felt odd about the room. There seemed to be some sense of foreboding about the place, even if she couldn't actively figure out why that was.

  "You hear something?"

  Julia listened. Breathing? There seemed to be long inhalations coming from somewhere over on her right side. Should she go to it and see what it was? Maybe she should just shoot the laser rifle and see if that lit anything up.

  "J-Julia?"

  The voice sounded like a sick whisper. Low. Gravelly. As if someone had coated the speaker's vocal chords with thick syrup.

  "Who's that?"

  Mick tensed next to her. Julia could feel his muscles harden. His hand gripped hers.

  "Wilkins."

  Jesus Christ, she'd forgotten all about him in the attempt to escape. But wait - where had Wilkins disappeared to? When Mick rescued her, Wilkins wasn't in the room anymore. He wasn't held in the cylindrical tube. Had the visitors removed him? What had happened to him?

  And now he was here? In this room? But why?

  "Are you okay? I lost track of you when Mick rescued me."

  Wilkins voice sounded stronger now that he realized friends were in the room with him. "They took me out when they started doing things to you. I thought they were going to let me rest or something."

  "They brought you here?"

  "Not at first. But eventually." Wilkins cleared his throat. "Is Mick with you?"

  "I'm here," said Mick.

  "Glad you made it."

  "Me, too. Are there any lights in this place? We can't see shit."

  "I don't know. I'm strapped down on some kind of table. I can't move. I can't see anything, either."

  "But you knew it was us?"

  "I...smelled something that reminded me of Julia. Then I heard the voices. I don't know, I guessed. Hoped I was right."

  "Hang on, pal," said Mick. "We'll find some lights and figure out a way to get you out of here."

  "We don't have a lot of time," said Julia. "Did you see anything about this room when they brought you in here?"

  "I think I was unconscious," said Wilkins. "When they took me out of your room, I felt light headed all of a sudden. I saw all these memories flash before my eyes. I started...reliving them, I think. It felt so good to be back in them. So far away from this place. So calm and inviting. I don't know. Then I woke up in here. It's been dark the entire time."

  "Okay, we'll find the lights somehow," said Julia. Obviously, the visitors had used the mental manipulation on Wilkins as well. But what for? What had they done to him?

  "Feel so strange," said Wilkins.

  "Keep your voice down," said Mick. "Those dinocreatures will be looking for us and I'd rather them not know we're in here with you."

  "..so weird..."

  Julia nudged Mick. "Can you take the left side of the room? I'll search the other."

  "Yeah." Mick grunted. "Damned shoulder."

  "Don't lean on it. Just do your best."

  "Yeah."

  Julia pushed off from him and put her hands out in front of her. She walked into a machine of some sort, its hard edges bit into her thigh and she yelped slightly. "Damn."

  "You okay?" Mick's voice came at her from the other side of the room.

  "Bumped into something. I'm okay."

  "I'm at the wall."

  Julia put her hands back up. It felt like she was back home playing two minutes in the closet with Tommy Wilson at the first boy-girl party she'd ever gone to when she was twelve. The way she'd reached out in the darkness for him. The way his hands had groped at her, fumbling in the dark. The way she'd inadvertently poked him in the eye resulting in his running from the closet to the bathroom with a dislodged contact lens.

  She touched wall.

  "Julia?" Wilkins was talking again.

  "What?"

  "Did you...did you find Nung?"

  "No. I found Kendall instead."

  "Kendall? They didn't get him?"

  Mick's voice sounded loud. "What about Kendall?"

  "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," said Julia. "Turns out he masterminded this whole thing. This whole expedition and everything that's befallen us was one of his little tricks."

  "How is that possible?" asked Wilkins.

  Julia found a panel on the wall. There were knobs and buttons. She stared pressing them hoping that none of them were some type of alarm or location device that would bring hoards of those dinocreatures coming for them.

  "We're all abductees," she said.

  "Abduct-you mean like aliens?"

  "That's exactly what I mean," said Julia. "Only Kendall figured it out long before any of us. And he made himself genuinely indispensable to our intriguing hosts."

  "How so?" asked Mick.

  "He offered them us in exchange for some of their mental power."

  "Mental power?"

  "Yeah. They communicate telepathically. Kendall can do that. I think he can do more, too, but he wasn't exactly into detailing his newfound abilities. He was too busy staring at me naked."

  "Lucky you," said Wilkins.

  Julia sniffed. "Is that luck?" She kept pressing some more buttons. Nothing seemed to be working. "I found a panel over here Mick but I can't make of these things work the lights."

  "I haven't found shit over here," said Mick. "Keep trying."

  "So," said Wilkins, "if we're all abductees, then what's the purpose of this whole affair? To take us forever or something?"

  "Near as I can figure," said Julia, "they want to cross-breed us with members of their race. An alien-human hybrid."

  "How clichŽ," said Wilki
ns. "That's been done to death already. Couldn't they figure out something original?

  Julia laughed. "Good to see you've still got your sense of humor, Wilkins. We might need some more of it before too long."

  "Glad to oblige."

  Julia bumped into another piece of machinery. "Dammit."

  Mick's voice came from across the room. "I found a panel on the wall. There are buttons and stuff. I'll give them a try."

  Julia found a corner and started working her way down another wall. "So, anyway, Kendall there even arranged for me to be placed in charge of this expedition. Can you believe that?"

  "Piece of shit," said Wilkins. "I'd like to kill that fucker with my bare hands. I get a shot at him-"

  "You'll have to wait in line," said Mick. "I want a piece of him, too."

  "You guys play after I get my turn," said Julia. "I got shafted the worst. Kendall says the aliens wanted to use me to crossbreed some new strain of them. This one is part-human, alien, and dinosaur."

  "Dinosaur?"

  "Yeah. That's what they did to Nung."

  "Shit," said Wilkins. "That's right. I remember seeing them do something horrible to him. What was it, limbs or something like that?"

  Julia pushed away the visual reminders flooding her mind. "Yeah, something like that."

  "How the hell are we going to save him?" asked Wilkins.

  "One thing at a time," said Julia. "Let's get you squared away first. How you coming on that panel, Mick?"

  "Nothing. None of them seem to work."

  "Great." Julia felt her way down the wall toward another corner. How big was this room? There had to be some sort of light switch in here somewhere.

  Her fingers stumbled across another panel. "Got another one here."

  Mick's voice sounded closer to her now. He must have felt his way over toward her. "Where are you?"

  "Sounds like you're close."

  "You feel this?"

  She felt his fingers brush hers. "Hey.'

  "Hey yourself. I found some clothes and a pistol."

  "Clothes are good," said Julia. She started pulling them on and then Mick pressed the pistol into her hand.

  "Keep it under your shirt, okay?"

  "Okay."

  "Uh..." Wilkins cleared his throat. "If you guys are done getting all cozy over there, I'd appreciate some light on the subject."

  "Sorry," said Julia. She pushed Mick's hand away and felt the knobs. One of them seemed larger than the rest. "Got one. Hang on."