“Here, here,” MacCormac chimed.
“Fine,” I said, “except for one thing.”
“What thing?” Clark asked. “What one more thing can possibly matter anymore?”
I turned to him. “How many of them feel the way Rusty did? How many really want to leave, but they’re so duty-bound to my mother that they’re afraid to defy her? We can’t just walk out on them.”
“I can,” Pocket said.
“Well, I can’t!” I shouted, and kept going, shouting at the air. “I’m out for humans, Mother! We have a right to exist. We’re in our own DNA war with these things. This is the next big evolutionary test for humanity!”
“The stronger should prevail.”
“We’re the stronger.”
For a few seconds, silence fell. My words actually echoed. Maybe it was just in my head.
Then my mother’s voice came again, somehow even more calm than before.
“If you are so strong, my son, and your friends are so strong, then you can live or die on your own. I withdraw my protection from you.”
For a moment we didn’t know what that meant. Then things started to shut down. The bank of monitors was first, falling dark all at once with a single bright flash before the power died. Immediately after, the projector curtain faded to black, then unhitched itself from its delicate conduit-loaded rod, and dropped to the ground in a glittery puff. Before us spread the outside world, bathed in a dangerous dawn.
The fabric of the tunnels suddenly began to snap and repeal, collapsing on themselves and returning to their original super-thin folded form. Light from holes in the rock above began to punch through the darkened anthill, as if giants were shining flashlights in at us from dozens of portals. The full dynamic of the stealth technology hiding us revealed itself as it died.
The fabric walls of the main chamber now fell around us, collapsing into thin rolls, leaving us standing in a bright rocky hole, open to the world outside.
We blinked in freakish morning light. With no place left to hide, we were being forced out.
MacCormac seized his pulse rifle, but the expression on his face was near-panic. Knowing that two Marines with rifles could never protect all of us from the multiple terrors out there, he handed me Berooz’s pulse rifle, then handed Clark and Pocket each a pistol.
“We’ve got to run,” MacCormac ordered. “Stay quiet and keep your heads down. I’ll take the lead. Carmichael, take up a position in the middle and watch our flanks!”
I pushed Clark and Pocket toward the wide-open flume, looked to make sure Bonnie was behind me, and caressed the pulse rifle.
“All right, Mother, we’re leaving,” I announced. “Hell of a way to win.”
“I hope I never see you again,” she said over the sound system, which now had a hollow quality in the open air.
“Yeah,” I muttered, “but I think you’re the one who’s weak.” I raised my voice, just in case any of the others could still hear me. They deserved to know. “Did you tell these people the truth before you brought them here?”
There was a pause. Not the good kind.
I thought she might speak, but she didn’t. By now, Clark and Bonnie, Pocket, MacCormac, and Carmichael were all waiting for her to speak. Instead, I was the one who spoke.
“Were you strong enough to be honest?” I demanded. “Did you tell them they were coming here to die glorious deaths in your holy service? Did you tell them you brought them here to be martyrs? That you never intended for them to leave this outpost alive? Did you tell them what their lives mean to you?”
I pushed a fresh cartridge into the pulse rifle and slapped it into place.
“I know I forced your hand,” I finished. “Now you be sure to tell those people that you’re taking sides with the aliens.”
With that, standing out in virtually the open, I signaled to MacCormac. “No reason to stay, Colonel.”
“Single file!” he ordered, and jogged toward the flume. The rest of us went out behind him, never to return to this man-made haven which had fallen away under us.
We broke out into the open and ran, but not too fast, not so fast that we became clumsy, that somebody fell or got hurt. MacCormac paced us from the front of the line.
Even though it was trying to be morning, much of the land was still skirted in darkness. We could barely see the path in front of us to keep good footing. As I ran, I thought about the Blue Valley, probably the only remaining pristine area on this continent. Who knew how far-flung the infestation was? Was it worldwide? Was the damage already done and could it ever be reversed? Was this planet doomed, extermination efforts or not?
That was for smarter people to decide. I had one thing on my mind, and that was launching off this cursed red mirror.
The huts! There they were—we were almost to the abandoned camp.
MacCormac slowed us down before entering the camp, leading with his pulse rifle like an urban Special Forces leader. I recognized the stance and took it myself, not knowing what we were looking for, afraid of what we’d find.
“Looks clear!” the colonel called. “Carmichael?”
“Clear right, sir!” the boy called from a few paces behind and to the right of me.
Suddenly the sound of ripping paper escorted a flap of wings from over the top of a hut—just that fast—a skitter of knuckles, the whip of a tail, and Colonel MacCormac was struck in the face.
“Oh, God!” Bonnie shrieked, and ducked back.
MacCormac went down hard, clawing at the thing on his face. The parasite’s tail lashed around his throat and tied itself tight.
I turned the muzzle of my rifle on MacCormac’s head, but that wouldn’t work! I threw my rifle to Clark and tore into the animal on MacCormac’s face with my bare hands. The strength of the eight elongated fingers was unbelievable! I couldn’t budge so much as one claw.
“No!” I cried wildly, and dug my fingernails into its pulpy flesh. Its wings began to shrink, returning to that rounded state in which they were a set of clamps on the victim’s cheeks. I dug my nails into one of the wings, popped through the membrane, and ripped the wing off. I felt the sting of acid burns on my hands, but rage drove me to ignore it. I swore at the creature something unintelligible, and went after the other wing.
MacCormac struggled briefly, then went limp. His hands released the creature on his face and he fell into my arms with the malignancy locked onto his head, settling down to its wicked, pitiless work.
I let him fall to the ground and rearranged myself on my knees beside him and pulled his service knife from his belt. Damn it, I’d slice the noxious thing off layer by layer!
There was a loud boom next to my ear. My hands and the knife turned red, wet, and hot. MacCormac lay at my knees, now a body without a head, missing its left shoulder too. The remains of his head and the face-hugger were soaking into the skulch a foot away from me.
I looked up.
Private Carmichael gazed down in that awful moment after. His face was a plate of misery and resolution. I knew he had followed orders, but his expression betrayed more.
He shook himself and turned his weapon on the tops of the huts, in case any more huggers were flitting around on the wing.
Clark pulled me to my feet. “Come on, Rory.”
He kept the pulse rifle, but handed me the plasma pistol he’d been carrying. Shaken, startled, numb, and hardly knowing he was talking to me, I let him pull me along. Poor MacCormac—all he’d wanted to do was just the best thing at every step.
“Keep moving!” Pocket called from the far end of the camp. He was almost through. “It’s clear! Don’t lag!”
That was when something jumped out at him.
Emotionally exhausted, I just paused and watched, ready for anything.
Okay, anything but this.
“Rusty!” I yanked free of Clark’s grip and rushed toward Pocket, who was helping to his feet the last person I expected ever to see again on this planet.
Rusty was a bru
ised and cut-up mess, his hair all natty and his blue suit in rags, but he was here, alive.
Knotting my fists into his collar, I dragged him all the way to his feet. “You’re alive!”
“I’m alive . . . I lived . . . ”
“How?”
He pounded my shoulder in victory and said, “Survived the fall somehow. I woke up on the floor of the ravine next to that Xeno you killed! I’ve been climbing for hours! I was so scared you’d leave without me! Can I still go with you?”
“Can you? Can you!” I threw my arms around him and whooped with joy. Finally something to go right!
“I don’t want to stay here with Jocasta any more!” he babbled, looking at me and Clark with pleading eyes. “She doesn’t care about us! She only cares about those things . . . I’m so sorry I didn’t fess up right when you first landed! Those people in the huts—” He pointed at the makeshift tombs around us. “She set them up! They were the ones who didn’t like it here, who wanted to call Earth and have a ship sent for us. One by one, she arranged for them to get caught by the huggers or for their stealth tech to break down. I was the only one who knew about it, because I pretended to agree with her. Jesus, it feels good to spill the beans!” He huffed out a breath and looked around. “Where is everybody? All my friends—are they all going with you? Are they already at the ship?”
How could I tell him he was the only one who would be freed of this planet?
“No, we’re right here,” a voice said from nowhere.
It was my sister’s voice. Between two of the huts the fabric of the air began to ripple. Forms appeared, then solidified, two by two, into the missing researchers. They were hiding right here all along, in a clutch of personal blinds, probably among the first developed before they moved into the big blind.
My sister walked toward me, her face red and plastered with tears. Behind her, Tad came up close.
“It was Jocasta all along,” Tad said. “I’ve been trying to get Gracie to leave here for months. Gracie’s been protecting me from your mother. She knew Jocasta would kill anybody who betrayed her.”
I reached out to shake his hand. “You’re not betraying her by wanting your own life.”
My sister blinked at me, holding back sobs, but I could tell that for the first time in years, she was with me. And I was with her.
I touched her face and gave her a little smile. Right here in the middle of hell.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go home.”
Private Carmichael—Ken, Esquire—took charge in a manner that would’ve made MacCormac proud. He led the way as the gaggle of us fell in behind him. In tight formation we struck out through the glass forest that separated us from the landing area. Finally—seemed like years—we saw the ship.
The Vinza was as we had left it, but now the magnetic field propulsion units were on, whirring and hot from the plasma being directed through its reaction chambers. Theo had fired the ship up, anticipating that we were coming. Good!
As we approached, the loading ramp began to lower in true mechanical fashion. Clark dashed aboard first, brewing with purpose, and was instantly yelling orders inside.
“Couplers on max! Prepare for launch and deploy! Theo! Barry! Where’s Gaylord!” He kept shouting, but I didn’t care.
I stepped aside and Carmichael went to the other side of the ramp, and together we funneled the remaining researchers into the ship, every one of them more than glad to pile in.
Rusty put his foot on the ramp and turned to me, clasping my hand again. “I don’t know what to say! You came just in time!”
I grinned at him and clapped my hand to his arm in gratification. “That’s my job. To come in the nick of time.”
“I heard this horrible noise, like a factory whistle that just went on and on—and I kept running. I thought it might be your ship trying to take off without me, so I ran right through a whole swarm of Xenos! They just looked at me and left me alone! I figured it was a miracle!”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “You say you ran through them after you heard the noise?”
“I really ran as fast as I could. My legs hurt! My chest hurts! I can’t believe I made it!”
If I’d ever been sick to my stomach in my life, this was the worst. No matter how I added it up,
“Rusty . . . ”
“Yeah?”
I drew my pistol upward and aimed it at his chest. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry . . . I don’t think I can let you get on the ship.”
“Huh?” He reacted, then laughed. “Oh—funny!”
That’s when the convulsion started. Rusty coughed, gagged, and pressed a hand to his chest.
“Oh, no—” I choked. “goddamned squalid bastards!”
Horror erupted in Rusty’s eyes. He grabbed my shirt and dropped to his knees, shuddering and heaving, then pitched over backward onto the ramp. A mound appeared under his blue suit as if a bony fist were trying to punch through from inside.
Rusty pulled me down with him and snatched at the pistol. His eyes beseeched the worst favor of me. As my own lips peeled back with disgust and empathy, I drew the pistol around, pushed it against the bulge in his chest, and did the only thing I could do to ease his horrific plight. Unshrinking, I pulled the trigger.
Rusty died at my feet, along with his tormenter, still holding my arm.
“Sir, I’m so sorry,” Carmichael uttered.
With Rusty’s blood soaking into my trouser legs, I gently rolled the body off the ramp, wishing there was time to bury him decently in this indecent place.
“Get aboard,” I said.
I looked around to make sure there was no one else still waiting to board.
More than ready to leave, I put my foot on the ramp and took hold of the scissor strakes which would pull it up after I came aboard.
“Rory.”
My shoulders hunched at the sound of that voice. I turned and looked.
At the base of two large red pillars, with the morning light kissing from behind and causing a faint aurora, stood my mother—holding Bonnie by the arm. Against Bonnie’s throat my mother held a disembodied alien tail spike, sharp and strong enough to take Bonnie’s head off with a thrust.
M’am waited until she was sure I saw clearly what was going on. She held Bonnie by the arm with her bony white hand, and Bonnie stiffly complied, with the spike pressing against her jugular so firmly that I could see the grazed red welt rising.
“She belongs to me now,” M’am said. “I need her now, more than you do. As long as I have her, you will not release your poison robots. She’ll be safe here, Rory. I will take care of her. Launch your ship and go. Leave me and my new daughter here.”
They were almost beautiful there, bathed in pink light, backdropped by drapings of gray gauze. As if to punctuate the sonnet, I saw Bonnie’s pet bat hanging in the gauze behind them, confused and not knowing what to do. The little Earthling had followed us.
And so had others. In the depths of the glass forward, I saw the haunting movements of aliens moving closer. They shifted in their craven fluid way, coming in our direction, looking like dragons moving through a medieval passion play.
I stepped off the ramp and moved a few steps out into the open. I didn’t dare try to shoot. Even with the pistol’s fair accuracy, the refracted morning light through the pillars created a prism effect and ruined my aim. I could easily hit Bonnie. And as hard as my heart felt right now, I wasn’t sure I could actually shoot my own mother. I didn’t trust myself.
Instead, I put the pistol down on the black skulch. When I straightened up again, I raised my arm, holding my elbow straight. Carefully, I lowered my chin once, then raised it, and lowered my arm.
Once again, I raised my arm, but just slightly this time, with my fist knotted.
Bonnie balled her left fist, the one my mother couldn’t see. Slowly, she began to raise her arm, straight out at her side.
In the background, Butterball the bat unfolded her raincoat-like wings, flexed one, then the ot
her. The wide strutted membranes took on a Gothic grace. She dropped her grip on the gauze and was instantly flying in that neurotic nut-case batty way, right toward the two women.
“Bonnie, down!” I blared.
She dropped like a sack of sand.
The bat veered toward the now-empty spot where Bonnie’s arm had been, but there was no place to land except my mother’s head.
The bat’s enormous wings closed around M’am’s hair and folded tight around her face. She screamed inside the leather hood and beat her face with her little hands. Bonnie scrambled to her feet and ran to me.
“Get aboard.” My voice was strangely calm as I shoved her up the ramp.
Behind my mother, the ghouls drew closer.
“Rory!” Bonnie called from the top of the ramp.
“Coming,” I said.
I stretched my arm out straight to my side and raised it high, with my fist in a ball.
As my mother squealed in her panic, Buttercup disengaged her big wide wings and managed to launch from my mother’s head. My mother was on her knees now, shocked and off-balance.
Whirling once in the air, Buttercup landed on my forearm and took an experienced purchase there. She let her giant wings go limp and hang almost to the ground, adjusted her grip on my wrist, then politely folded her wings around herself like a girl at a prom adjusting her wrap.
My mother and I met gazes for a last few seconds, and for the first time in our lives I think we understood each other. She drew herself to her feet and regained her poise, just as the aliens came around the pillars to surround her.
The interior of the ship was warm and buzzing with energy. Bonnie and Clark met me in the bay as the ramp whirred and clanked closed behind me.
I stroked the bat hanging from my arm and took the piece of fruit Bonnie offered, and fed it to the little doggie face. Buttercup happily took the fruit in her batty hands and began to eat. With my other arm, I pulled Bonnie against me and gave her the kiss I’d been saving up for the right moment. “How would you like to be a really wealthy woman?”
“Rory, it’s your call,” Clark said, as he had always promised. “Do we deploy or not?”
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 46
