by Paul Monette
“Gotcha,” Mac agreed without an instant’s hesitation. “Listen, I got a score to settle for the Bro’.”
“We both got scores to settle,” Dillon corrected him. It was as if Dillon had done some hard reflecting on his own role in this mission so far, and he wasn’t pleased at all with the deceit. True, it had been thought necessary for the highest national security purposes, but finally so what? It had also been the source of the tension between Schaefer, the team, and himself. Somehow he wanted to make up for all the crossed feelings, and he knew that wiping out the mutant creature was the one way to do it.
Silently Dillon disappeared into the jungle. Mac watched him vanish among the vine-locked boulders, then made his own way toward the target, working round the razor-sharp rocks and heaving himself through the masses of vines. It was a brief distance, but a rugged journey, trying to move quietly and invisibly through the knotted confusion of the high jungle. The place seemed more primeval, less touched by man, than any ground they’d trod so far. It was the site of some vast Darwinian nakedness, prehuman and without remorse. Mac cursed himself as a branch snapped back in his face or a vine grasped at his leg. But finally he made it to the rocky spur, settled into position, and scanned the jungle below. He could see Dillon moving off to his left several meters away, his face intense and determined.
Vague, unidentifiable sounds echoed through the clotted canyon forest as Mac pulled himself forward. Then he caught a fleeting image of movement in the foliage ahead. He began to sweat bullets as recollections of the hideous blood-red creature crowded into his mind. Was it out there waiting? He recalled the row of dead men hanging gutted, their insides spilled and their faces twisted in anguish. He forced the thought from his mind, switched the safety catch off his rifle, and reached up for another vine to pull himself even higher.
He felt a queer warm movement beneath his grip. He didn’t even have time to react as the vine began to crawl around his fingers. A second later he was horrified to see the sinewy green bark change even as he gripped it, till he was suddenly holding the clawlike hand of the alien. It ripped loose from Mac’s grip, flipped around in a swirl of flashing prehensile fingers, and grabbed the commando by the wrist.
The stunned soldier looked up in time to see the creature’s two burning yellow eyes piercing down at him like burning liquid starlight, just as its other hand swooped to his throat, its razor-sharp spur slashing through his windpipe. Mac pitched forward, instantly dead, and landed with a thud in a scatter of moldering leaves. His heart, still pumping, gushed out spurts of blood from his severed jugular. It was all done quietly, smoothly, quickly, and life ran away in a meaningless ooze, to be swallowed up by the famished jungle floor.
F I F T E E N
Nearby Dillon heard a faint disturbance, then silence. He shrugged and moved on, stalking down a narrow alley between two clusters of vines leading to the sheer rock wall. His face was utterly alert, showing no signs of fear, his weapon ready. He sensed a slight movement ahead, an undulating distortion that drifted through the hanging vegetation as if an errant breeze had passed.
The black man stopped, ears and eyes burning. The hints of movement were so slight he couldn’t be certain if his imagination were playing tricks with the steaming jungle.
It was the alien, of course, drawing out the game of stalking just like cat-and-mouse. It had won so many battles now that it seemed to take the time to savor the thrill of the chase, as if testing its own skill and mastery over this elusive creature man. But also like the cat it only appeared to be playing. In its mind, its emotionless brain, it was simply honing its wits and combat tactics, as if it would move from this border war to clash with whole worlds. It synchronized its own movements to match Dillon’s precisely, and its sounds and silences were timed to the pulsebeat with the black man’s. So that when Dillon stopped to listen, the alien froze at exactly the same instant.
Still, the soldier sensed its presence. Dillon crouched and spun around, leveling his rifle at the black-green background. Yet the path he had taken was undisturbed, silent. Nothing in the lie of the trail suggested the presence of a predator. But as he scanned the brace of rubber trees behind him he didn’t realize that for an instant he looked directly into the alien’s eyes. The creature was peering out from the crook of a tree, examining his prey. But the golden eyes were so otherworldly that Dillon didn’t even register them as he searched the jungle. He saw them yet he didn’t. They were like a pair of yellow hummingbirds or a couple of orchids or a nest of fireflies, just more of the same tropical excess. So the black man turned and moved on, and the alien resumed its prowl, continuing to match the man’s movements, footfall by footfall.
Dillon made it to the granite outcrop expecting to find Mac in place. He signaled with a whistle very like Schaefer’s. No response. Then he turned cautiously from left to right. “Mac . . . Mac,” he whispered eagerly, beginning to get a bit anxious about being alone.
As he moved closer to the rock wall he literally stumbled over Mac’s face, which was staring up at him with a ghastly pallor, eyes frozen wide in death. Dillon cringed, then spun around as if expecting the alien to be right behind him. But again he was faced with the blank solid wall of undergrowth and no sign of the attacker. He looked from one side of the path to the other. Then something iridescent among the vines caught his attention, and he stared hard at a fall of tree moss.
For a moment the afternoon sun and forest shadows blended at the perfect angle for Dillon to catch a flash of the alien’s yellow eyes. As quickly as they materialized they disappeared, but at last there was no mistaking them for any other aberrant bit of lushness. Dillon pulled up his rifle, sighted it swiftly and let go a rapid round into the tangle of moss where the eyes had teased him. The vegetation exploded into fragments, but already it was too late.
The alien had leaped aside, and as the dust and leaves were flying in a hundred directions it activated its weapon, seeming to erupt it from its arm, then hurling the spear at Dillon. It slashed easily through the black man’s upper arm, severing it above the elbow. The bloody appendage, its nerves tingling as if it were still attached to his body, landed on the ground ten feet away. It flinched and jerked, and the hand still gripping the trigger fired a last round of bullets into the sky.
Dillon screamed in agony as blood gushed from the stump left dangling from his shoulder. Yet with his good arm he still managed to fire the second gun, shouting crazily as he swung it in the direction of the creature. Yet his vision was blurred by the pain, and like Hawkins before him he hit nothing but trees. Even as he fired uselessly the alien recoiled its weapon and hurled it at Dillon’s abdomen, which burst open as if sliced by a samurai sword. Eyes popping, with one last gasp of frustrated rage, Dillon lurched over dead. His smooth manicured bureaucrat’s finger uncurled from the trigger, and no one at Langley would ever know that their desk man had died in heroic combat.
As Dillon was being slaughtered Anna led the three commandos along the rocky slope leading down the canyon from the camp to the river. Schaefer followed behind with Ramirez hoisted on his back while Billy covered the three of them as he walked slightly above on the ridge, the radio strapped to his back. Other than a rifle for each man and a few piddling rounds of ammunition they were down to machetes and a couple of grenades. They knew it would never be enough firepower for a confrontation.
The water was deep and treacherous, so they dragged a log to the river’s edge to try to make a partial bridge for getting across. But they froze as they heard the burst of Dillon’s gunfire. They all looked at one another like grave and desolate children playing a macabre game of musical chairs.
“C’mon,” Schaefer decided quickly. “Let’s at least get Ramirez across before anything else happens.”
The alien was racing through the jungle at full speed now, leaping, tearing, flying from tree to tree in a mad triumph and leaving a wake of churning jungle heat as if a meteor were soaring by. It arrived at the river just as the four surviv
ors were about to shove off. Billy was closest to the shore at the foot of the log, providing cover. As the alien drew closer the Indian knew the enemy had arrived, though he couldn’t see it yet, and he stood and turned to face his ancient destiny.
Stripping down to his raw warrior heritage, he shrugged the radio off his back and let it slip to the rocky riverbed. Several dials smashed on the stones, but the Indian didn’t notice. They were beyond radio help now. Billy was totally focused on his encounter with the creature. It was as if he understood he had a score to settle for all the hundreds of ancestors the alien had slaughtered long ago. A Sioux defending his ancestors died the noblest death of all.
Billy cast away his rifle and stared intently into the trees. He reached into his cargo pocket and withdrew a small grease-paint tin. Without looking down he dipped his finger into the black paint and wiped a thick streak under each eye and then another vertically down each cheek. Then he took a last dab of warpaint and made a symbol on the skin above his heart, three stroked lines like a stalk of wheat. Now the tin was useless as well, and he let it fall to the stream. It caught the current, floated a few feet, and then sank to the pebbles below, rippling in the sun like a holy Mayan agate, lost like a hundred tribes of gold.
Pulling out his combat knife Billy grasped the medicine bag around his neck and yanked it free. Then he twisted it around the hilt of the knife, binding the two together. He raised his head and closed his eyes as if in a trance and began a low mournful chant.
Schaefer and the others had been busy scrambling to the other side of the river, and they didn’t notice that Billy had stayed behind consumed in ritual. The major labored up the opposite riverbank, Ramirez still on his back, before he turned and saw the Indian.
“Oh, Christ,” he uttered. Then he shouted. “Billy!” But the Indian didn’t hear a thing as he faced due north, the direction of the oncoming predator, knife raised like a holy sword. “Billy!” Schaefer called out again, but it was useless. Billy was as beyond the earth now as the alien.
The major hefted Ramirez higher onto his back and hauled up the hill. Anna waited at the top. Billy was crouching low now on the opposite bank, his knife extended in a fighting position.
Schaefer scrambled up the last of the slope, bringing the wounded Ramirez to relative safety at the top of the ridge overlooking the river. Just as he gently lowered the Chicano to the ground and drew down his rifle he heard a long piercing scream from the north bank of the wide river. It was Billy Sole’s final stand. The alien had taken him in a flash, its weapon slicing through the Indian’s jugular and then zigzagging down his chest and belly like a mockery of some tribal blessing.
The loyal scout hadn’t the ghost of a chance, armed as he was with nothing more than a hunting knife and a thousand faded years of Indian heritage. Schaefer spun around helplessly at the sound of Billy’s cry, too late and too far away to help him. Ramirez, Billy’s most loyal friend, struggled to cock his rifle, but even as he went through the motions he had an aching dread that he’d never fight again.
Before the Chicano could release a single round the alien’s deadly weapon shot up the hill toward him like a laser, the impact hurling him backward. The spearhead lodged in his neck, pinning him to the ground as if he were a butterfly frozen in a collector’s display. Spouts of blood gushed from the mortal wound—it seemed impossible he could still bleed after the grave wound he’d received before—and his legs and arms twitched hideously in the seconds before death brought release.
In the melee Ramirez’s MP-5 flew through the air and landed at Anna’s feet. Shocked yet stubbornly functional, she moved toward the rifle, as if some rebel instinct still fought to keep her alive. But the alien was operating now at an inhuman pace—it could outdo in action what a man could not even think to do. With dazzling speed it roared uphill toward the girl, its livid skin pulsating with glints of gold from the midday sun. Seeing that Anna was going to land directly in the alien’s path, Schaefer spun about as she dived for the rifle. He lunged, kicking the weapon out of her reach to distract her, at the same time bellowing: “Run! Get to the chopper! Now!”
Then he opened fire at the onrushing monster, bullets flying everywhere, the barrel raking back and forth across the predator as Anna stumbled to her feet and ran for the jungle.
With a speed that all but made it a blur in Schaefer’s eyes the predator attacked, hurling its weapon at the major with a wild triumphal shriek. The razor head of the spear sliced through the wooden stock of the gun, narrowly missing Schaefer’s hand, severing the trigger guard and breech. Sparks flew as metal clashed on metal, steel on starstone.
With a last roar of adrenalin Schaefer took full combat command. “Stay low!” he ordered the fleeing girl, his last surviving commando. And as he scrambled for a defensive position himself he could feel the alien back away and turn to go downhill. But it wasn’t fear, and it wasn’t retreat. The major knew that the alien simply could take its own sweet time. It didn’t need all its bodies at once. It was enjoying its earthling war and seemed to want to prolong the pleasure.
The alien tossed Ramirez’s body aside as if it were a bag of trash. It was determined and focused now, all its otherworldly hunter’s tactics and cunning raw and ready. The raging water posed no obstacle to the creature, and it sailed across like a hydroplane, barely breaking the surface even where it was five feet deep. As it arrived at the north bank of the river it churned up rocks and dirt with its spurs as it strode to Billy’s body. It bent and began to pull the Indian apart, its narrow yellow optic nerve centers pulsing as it searched out the fading heat patterns of Billy’s cooling organs.
Huddled among the rocks Schaefer only realized now that he’d been wounded. The force that had ripped the gun from his grip as the diamond head of the alien’s spear shattered the rifle had gone on to slash deeply through Schaefer’s shoulder, laying open the flesh almost to the bone. With his gun broken and useless, the major saw no alternative but to make a break down the canyon in the wake of the girl and run for his life.
Dutch wasn’t accustomed to any sort of retreat, let alone running like a helpless fugitive headlong down a mountain, but he saw no other choice. Getting away was all he could think to do. Then if by some miracle he got clear, maybe he could buy a little time to regroup and make a final stab at fighting back. He barreled out of the rocks, ran through a tunnel of trees and past the sprung trap, and scrambled over the lip of the canyon and onto the steep downhill trail. He leaped over a fallen log, stumbled, struggled to his feet—running now on pure pounding adrenalin, his wounded shoulder oozing blood and stinging with a painful burn. His eyes were red and glazed with terror, he who had never feared anything in his life. Behind him he could hear the crunch of the alien’s feet breaking twigs and crushing gravel as it jogged along in his wake.
Schaefer imagined that he could hear, almost feel the alien’s heavy breath on him. The heat and panic and the steep trail had made him light-headed. He had to see how close the enemy was, so he turned his head without slowing his pace and saw the creature steadily bearing down the slope, Billy’s heart and brain bloody in either hand. Schaefer had a wild desperate look of hope on his face as he saw a few more yards between them than he’d anticipated. Even as he turned back, ducking an overhanging limb and racing on, he didn’t seem to realize that the alien was enjoying the chase—savoring the final confrontation with the leader.
As Schaefer felt the alien closing the space he ran like a madman, crazy to find a position from which to fight and knowing in his heart that the jungle would give no quarter to an unarmed man. He was losing ground and knew it. A shot of pain flashed through his shoulder, and for a moment he thought it was the alien’s weapon entering him again. He looked up into the muggy birdless sky as if to rage a final goodbye to the world in which he had lived as a warrior.
Then by some queer glitch of fate the ground beneath him collapsed, and he disappeared from sight.
In a shower of leaves Schaefer crashed throu
gh the trees at a blind cliff edge, freefalling into space. He’d crossed an overhang of turf that looked secure but was only a thin layer of roots and moss that balanced above the canyon floor a hundred feet below. With a sickening crash he hit the top branches of a tall fir, then fell again through one canopy after another, desperately grabbing for limbs and branches to break his fall.
Finally he dropped to the floor layer of vegetation, his chest catching on the wide lower limb of a cottonwood, the impact knocking him near unconscious. Head whirling, vision blurred as if drugged, he teetered a few long agonizing seconds on the limb, then slid free, his numb fingers digging fruitlessly into the bark as he fell another ten feet to the swift churning river below.
He struggled to stay afloat, but the task was nearly impossible between the roar of the rapids and the weight of his soaked boots and clothing. As he was driven under by the force of the water he had the sudden lucid presence of mind to reach down and untie one boot, then the other, as he somersaulted along the savage bottom rocks. He kicked the boots free, and the thirty-pound advantage allowed him to struggle to the surface, where he ripped off his mottled shirt and pants and began to swim for shore, stroking furiously with his one good arm.
The alien peered over the edge of the cliff where Schaefer had fallen. It hesitated only a moment to lay aside the relics of the holy man. Then it dived over the edge as if it still harbored within it the glory of the hawk. It tore through the thick canopies of branches, agile and quick, bounding from limb to limb, soaring across twenty yards of space till it reached the low-hanging branch of a sycamore next to the river. It scanned the near jungle with its heat vision, seeking the telling yellow-red patterns that always revealed the frail form of man. But no man was there.
