Infernal Sky

by Dafydd ab Hugh

  For years I’d been asked why a rabid individualist like me had chosen a military life. Some of the people who asked that question understood that I wanted a life with honor, especially after having lived with a father who didn’t have a clue. They could even understand someone putting his life on the line for his fellow man. It was individualism that confused them.

  I became a marine because I believe in freedom: the old American dream that had defied the nightmares of so many other countries. Every Independence Day I made a point of reading the Declaration of Independence out loud.

  I loved my country enough to fight for it. Now we faced an enemy that threatened everything and everyone on the planet. Any military system that had its head stuck up its own bureaucratic ass was finished. Now was the time to adapt or die. Now was the time to really send in the marines!

  2

  “I almost brought you some iced tea,” said Mulligan, “with lots of lemon.”

  Arlene and I both grimaced. “He’s getting mean,” she said.

  “A sadist,” I agreed. We’d told the master gun plenty about our adventures, and he had fixated on the way Albert, Jill, Arlene, and I had passed ourselves off as zombies by rubbing rotten lemons and limes all over ourselves. The odor of the zombies had forever spoiled the taste of citrus for me.

  “ ’Course I could let you have one of these instead,” Mulligan continued, holding out two frosty Limbaugh brews, one in each paw.

  “The man’s getting desperate,” I said.

  “Who goes first?” asked Arlene, ready to spill the beans; and Mulligan hoped they would be tastier than the typical MRE.

  The admiral had left us. He looked like an old beachcomber as he wandered down the beach. I thought about what he’d said—how he’d tied the past and future together with these precious islands as the center of his universe. Maybe they were the center of the universe for all humanity.

  “Beers first,” I volunteered, holding my hand out.

  Mulligan looked as happy as Jill when I let her drive the truck. He passed out the brews and settled his considerable bulk back in his beach chair.

  “Once upon a time . . .” I began, but Arlene punched me so hard it made her breasts jiggle very nicely. With that kind of encouragement, I got plenty serious.

  “We had to take down the energy wall so Jill could fly out of L.A. and get here,” I began. “In the Disney Tower we located a roomful of computers hooked into a collection of alien biotech—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Mulligan said impatiently. “I remember all that. Get to the window already!”

  So I did.

  * * *

  We were too high. I’d never liked heights, but it seemed best to open the windows.

  “We took down the energy wall, at least,” I had said over my shoulder. “Jill must notice it’s gone and start treading air for Hawaii.”

  Arlene nodded, bleak even in victory. I didn’t need alien psionics to know she was thinking of Albert. “The war techies will track her as an unknown rider,” added Arlene, “and they’ll scramble some jets; they should be able to make contact and talk her down.”

  “Great. Got a hot plan to talk us down?” I asked my buddy.

  Arlene shook her head. I had a crazy wish that before Albert was blinded, and before Arlene and I found ourselves in this cul-de-sac, I’d played Dutch uncle to the two lovebirds, complete with blessings and unwanted advice.

  Somehow this did not seem the ideal moment to suggest that Arlene seriously study the Mormon faith, or some related religion, if she really loved good old Albert. The sermon went into my favorite mental file, the one marked Later.

  She shook her head. “There’s no way,” she began, “unless . . .”

  “Yes?” I asked, trying not to let the sound of slavering monsters outside the door add panic to the atmosphere.

  Arlene stared at the door, at the console, then out the window. She went over to the window as if she had all the time in the world and looked straight down. Then up. For some reason, she looked up.

  She faced me again, wearing a big, crafty Arlene Sanders smile. “You are not going to believe this, Fly Taggart, but I think—I think I have it. I know how to get us down and get us to Hawaii.”

  I smiled, convinced she’d finally cracked. “Great idea, Arlene. We could use a vacation from all this pressure.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “You’re right. I don’t believe you.”

  Arlene smiled slyly. She was using the early-bird-that-got-the-worm-smile. “Flynn Taggart, bring me some duct tape from the toolbox, an armload of computer-switch wiring, and the biggest goddam boot you can find!”

  The boot was the hard part.

  The screaming, grunting, scraping, mewling, hissing, roaring, gurgling, ripping, and crackling sound effects from beyond the door inspired me to speed up the scavenger hunt. Hurrying back to the window with the items, I saw Arlene leaning out and craning her neck to look up.

  “Do you see it?” she asked as I joined her. Clear as day, there was a window washer’s scaffold hanging above us like a gateway to paradise. When the invasion put a stop to mundane activities, all sorts of jobs had been left uncompleted. In this case, it meant quantities of Manila hemp rope dangling like the tentacles of an octopus. A few lengths of chain, with inch-long links, were even more promising than the rope. The chain looked rusted, but I was certain that it would support our weight.

  The tentacles started above us and extended well below the fortieth floor—not all the way to the ground, but a lot farther away from the demons in the hallway working so hard to make our acquaintance.

  Arlene used the duct tape and the wiring to create a spaghetti ladder that didn’t look as if it would hold her weight very long, never mind my extra kilos. But we needed an extra leg up to get over to the ropes.

  “Great,” I said. “This looks like a job for Fly Taggart.”

  Before I could clamber out the window, however, her hand was on my arm. “Hold on a minute,” she said. “My idea, my mission.”

  The locked door was rattling like a son of a bitch, and the thought of our entrails decorating the office made me a trifle impatient. That was one kind of spaghetti I could pass over.

  “Arlene,” I said, as calmly as possible under the circumstances, “I have absolute confidence in you, but this is no time to hose the mission. Let’s face it, I have more upper body strength and a greater reach than you do, so I should go first.” While I explained the situation, we both worked feverishly to finish our makeshift rope. Then I tied it around my waist.

  Naturally I gave her no opportunity to argue. I was at that window so fast she probably feared for my life. A good way to keep her from staying pissed. I took one mighty leap, making sure she held the other end of the lifeline, and I climbed up and over, where I grabbed hold of the nearest rope and started lowering myself, groaning a bit at the strain and reminding myself that I had all this great upper body strength. I only wished I had more of it to spare.

  Once I was on the ropes, I swung myself over to where Arlene could reach them more easily. She clambered out the window over my head and followed my lead.

  The annoying voice in the back of my head chose that precise moment to start an argument. Damned voice had a lousy sense of timing.

  Getting tired, are you? Feeling a bit middle-aged around the chest area? Old heart hanging in there? The arms are strong from all those push-ups and pull-ups, but how’s the grip? Your hands are weaker than they used to be, aren’t they? You know, you haven’t had these injuries looked at. . . .

  “Nothing a blue sphere couldn’t fix up,” I muttered.

  Medikits aren’t good enough for you, Corporal? You’d rather trust in that alien crap, huh? And how do you know that you and Arlene weren’t altered in some diabolical manner when your lives were saved in that infernal blue light?

  “I’m hanging from a freakin’ rope and you choose this moment to worry about that?” I shouted.

  “Fl
y, are you all right?” Arlene called down.

  “Okay,” I called back, feeling like a complete idiot. Normally I don’t argue out loud with the voice in my head.

  “Don’t go weird on me now,” she said. “If I fall, I want my strong he-man to catch li’l o’l me.”

  “No problemo,” I promised. “But I think we’re getting enough exercise as things stand.” Well, at least I’d convinced her I was playing with a full deck again.

  As if life had become too easy for us, the door in the office flew off with such force that it smashed through what was left of the window and went sailing in the direction of the freeway. The door was as black and twisted as if someone had turned it into burned toast and tossed it in the trash.

  The first monster to peer out the window, if black dots count as eyes, was one of the things Arlene had wisely dubbed a fire eater. It must have only recently joined the other pukes and taken care of the door problem for them. In a flash it could solve the rope problem, too, burning our lifeline to cinders. We didn’t have a fire extinguisher this time.

  Fire Guy wasn’t alone, either. He was the gatecrasher, bringing with him a whole monster convention. They’d be pouring down the ropes after us like molasses on a string if we didn’t do something fast.

  * * *

  I stopped the story there because I wanted to finish my beer, and because I had my eye on another can of Limbaugh. The master gun had brought a six-pack, so with the aid of higher arithmetic, I figured I had another one coming.

  “And?” asked Mulligan, fire in his eye; and the way his mouth was working you could say fire in the hole, too.

  “As the fire eater was getting ready to burn our ropes—and you can always tell an attack is coming by the way its skin bubbles and its body shimmers like a heat mirage in the desert—I swung out and then came in hard, kicking in a window with one try. In the remaining seconds I pulled the rope taut and Arlene shimmied down into my arms as tongues of flame raced after her. But we’d made it to a much lower floor. We had a twelve-story head start, so we booked.”

  “Story is right!” thundered Mulligan. “I’ve never heard so much bullshit!”

  For one grim moment I wasn’t at all sure I’d be getting my second beer.

  3

  “Hold on,” said Mulligan, guarding his small ocean of beer as the larger ocean sent armies of waves to die on the beach, “I’m not buying it. When I was a kid, I was in the Boy Scouts. I carried the heaviest knapsack on camping trips. I won all the merit badges. I was a good scout, but other kids still beat me up and teased me all the time. Do you want to guess why?”

  “Why?” asked Arlene, genuinely interested and not the least bit annoyed by the mysterious direction the conversation was taking.

  “Partly because I was a chunky kid, but also because I loved comic books. They thought I was gullible or something. They thought I’d believe damn near anything. But I’m telling you, Fly”—he turned those cold blue eyes on me—“this story of yours is bullshit.”

  “You believe the part about his starting to lose his mind while he was on the rope, don’t you?” asked Arlene.

  “Well . . .” Mulligan began.

  “I left nothing out of my gospel rendition,” I said.

  “Especially not the verisimilitude,” Arlene threw in.

  “Huh?” came the response from both Mulligan and me.

  “Still sounds bogus to me,” concluded the master gun, inhaling the rest of his brew.

  “That’s because it didn’t happen that way,” said Arlene. “I’ll give you the authentic version—for another beer.”

  “Yeah, right,” the sergeant said morosely, but he handed her a beer, and she started her engines.

  “With one mighty leap . . .” she began.

  George Mulligan groaned.

  * * *

  “Flynn Taggart, bring me some duct tape from the toolbox, an armload of computer-switch wiring, and the biggest goddamn boot you can find!”

  He looked at me like I was crazy, but he did it. The scaffold was our ticket out of there, but first we had to get over to it. It made sense for me to go first because I weighed less. The ledge was narrow and the chains and ropes were sufficiently out of reach so that a lifeline seemed like a good idea. At least it would give me more than one chance in case I fell.

  The sounds at the heavy reinforced door told me two things. First, there was one hell of an enemy out there. Second, the most powerful ones could not be in front. A hell-prince would have huffed and puffed the door down faster than a politician would grab his pension. Even a demon pinkie could have chewed his way through that door as if it was a candy bar. So the wimps were up front, and this gave us a little more time.

  While Fly was collecting the stuff, we received more evidence supporting my theory. I heard screams that I’d have recognized anywhere—the noise imps make when they’re being ripped apart. They were up front and not strong enough to break through. It occurred to me that this military-quality door dated back to the time of Walt Disney himself. I was glad that Disney had been a paranoid right-wing type, according to the biographies. A more trusting sort would never have installed the door that was saving our collective ass. But it wasn’t going to hold much longer.

  “Got it!” Fly announced, trotting back with the wire, tape, and boot. “What’s your plan?”

  I told him. I showed him. He nitpicked.

  “I should go first because of upper male body strength and a longer reach . . .”

  “I weigh less! Besides, it’s my idea. You’re going to be too busy to go first anyway.”

  He opened his mouth to ask what I meant, but the shredding of the door provided the answer. Talons appeared like little metal helmets, leaving furrows behind them as they sliced through the last barrier between us and them.

  Grabbing his Sig-Cow, Fly started blasting through the door before the first one even appeared. I saw that my buddy wouldn’t be able to help with the makeshift rope so I tied one end to a heavy safe and the other around my waist and clambered out the window pronto.

  Luck was with me. Fly and I disagree about luck: he thinks you make your own; I think you’re lucky or you’re not. The ledge was so narrow that I couldn’t imagine Fly negotiating it. The stupid little lifeline came apart before my hand was on one of those beautiful, thick, inviting ropes.

  I shouted my patented war cry, based on all the westerns I’d seen when I was a kid, and jumped the rest of the way. I knew I’d better be right about luck.

  I swung far out and heard a long creaking sound overhead, which was fine with me as long as it wasn’t followed by a loud snap. Just a steady creaking, as the rope settled into supporting my weight. I didn’t waste a moment swinging over to a sturdy-looking cable chain. I didn’t trust the chain, so I tested it out. The damned thing snapped, and I hung over L.A. like an advertisement, glad for the rope. My left hand was covered with rust. I would have thought that the chain would outlast the rope, but maybe some of the links were caught in a random energy beam.

  A lot of stuff raced through my mind. I filed most of it for future reference—if I had a future. The stuff overhead reminded me of the last time I was aboard ship—on the ocean instead of in space, I mean. The only reason I wasn’t splattered all over the street below was that the window-washing equipment was securely attached on the roof. I hoped no alien energy burst had done any damage up there.

  “Fly!” I yelled.

  “Coming, coming, coming!” he shouted back. There was no double entendre in either of our minds. My bud would either be a fly on the wall out here or a squashed bug inside.

  He chose fly on the wall.

  I made like Tarzan, or maybe I should say Sheena of the Jungle, and swung over toward the window. The scaffolding held. Fly held on. As he leaped out the window, a red claw the size of his head missed severing his jugular vein by an inch. I couldn’t believe I used to feel sorry for the Minotaur trapped in the lair until Theseus came to put him out of his misery. I’d n
ever look at those old myths the same way.

  We started down. The ropes wouldn’t get us to ground level, but half a loaf is better than none. If we could descend below the monsters we might have a chance to hoof it down to the street before they could catch up with us. I was counting on their habit of getting in each other’s way and tearing each other up when they should have been focusing on us instead.

  Fly had it tougher than I did because he was hanging like a piece of sacrificial meat directly outside the window where the enemy was massing. He was holding the rope with one hand, leaving the other free to fire repeatedly at that rectangle of horror and doom.

  “Fly, I’ll cover you if you climb lower,” I promised. Grateful for the time I’d spent rappelling down cliffs in my high school days, I maneuvered so that the rope was wrapped around me like a lonely boa constrictor, freeing my gun hand. As I started firing thirty-caliber rounds at the window, Fly slung his weapon over his shoulder and used both hands to lower himself.

  When he was safe enough—safety being relative when you’re playing tag with all the denizens of hell—he yelled, “My turn to cover you!”

  I made like a monkey and headed straight for certain death. Fly kept up a barrage that was truly impressive. The odds were at an all-time low, but as I made it past the window, I was ready to rethink my position on God. Fly and Albert had God. I had luck . . . and a fireball that came so close it singed my hair. Well, my high-and-tight needed a trim.

  Fly ran out of rope and I joined him just in time to see his very special expression, the one he only wears when Options ’R Us has closed its doors permanently.

  I couldn’t help myself. I looked up. There is no mistaking a fire eater. And this one was getting ready to fry everything it could see.

  The only hope was to break one of the windows, get inside the building quicker than a thought, and then haul ass down to the street. We had one chance. Fortunately we’d brought along that really big boot.

  * * *

  “Aw, gimme a break, you two,” begged Mulligan, thoroughly beaten. “I don’t care how you escaped from the tower. It’s none of my business. I’ll never ask again.”