Cowboys and Aliens

by Joan D. Vinge

  But it was already too late—another alien dropped down on them from behind, its savage arms slashing and impaling, and they were dead before they could even cry out.

  Far below, Hunt, Bronc and Bull found themselves unhorsed, unarmed, and bloody, pinned down behind a berm that ran along the canyon wall. Even lying flat on their bellies, the ridge of rubble and dirt in front of them barely kept them clear of the blue lightning from the aliens’ weapons, or even friendly fire.

  They’d already lost Red, when they first rode into the canyon. He’d been torn from his saddle by a demon’s long-clawed arm, and even though they’d put enough lead into the monster to kill a dozen buffalo, the alien had torn Red to pieces in front of their eyes with its talons and massive jaws. The memory of that was something every one of them would take to his grave . . . although the way things were going, soon there wouldn’t be enough left of any of them to bury.

  They were lucky to still be alive now . . . but they were trapped with no way to fight back, or even escape from the ditch; they could only lie there and curse as they watched the aliens take more members of the gang out of Dolarhyde’s dwindling troops. The aliens seemed to be invulnerable to human attack, and it was only a matter of time before one of those monsters got close enough to see them, or trip over them . . . either way, Hunt figured they’d all be dead before the day was out.

  “Diablo—” Bronc muttered, his fists knotting, as another man—they couldn’t see who—flew from his horse, torn almost in half by one swing of an alien’s powerful, deadly arm. The dead man’s rifle flew in an arc toward them, landing about fifteen feet out from where they lay.

  Bronc leaped up from behind their scant cover and ran out onto the field, going after the rifle. He hadn’t covered half the distance before a bullet meant for an alien hide caught him instead. He fell, clutching his leg.

  “Bronc!” Hunt yelled. Bull’s heavy hand caught him by the shoulder as he pushed up from their hiding place, and flattened him again behind the berm’s shelter.

  Bull shook his head: No good.

  Hunt subsided under the pressure of Bull’s hand, and stared at the ground.

  But then Bull nudged him and pointed. Looking up, they saw the townsman Jake had called “Doc,” on his own two feet in the middle of the battlefield, as he ran toward Bronc.

  Opening the medical bag he carried, Doc bandaged Bronc’s bleeding leg, so focused on his work that he never even flinched as the ground exploded around them. Finally Doc shouted, “I stopped the bleeding! Now take cover!”

  Bronc half-scrambled, half-crawled back to the shelter of the berm. As Hunt slapped Bronc on the back, grinning in relief, he saw Doc pick up his own rifle and his medical kit, and dodge into the brush in search of other wounded men who needed his help.

  “Well, knock me down with a straw,” Bull muttered.

  “I’ll be damned. . . .” Hunt shook his head, glancing at Bronc’s bandaged leg.

  “Most likely,” Bronc said, his grin pinching into a grimace of pain. “You won’t be lonely there . . . but we won’t be seeing that one.” He nodded toward the place where Doc had disappeared into the smoke and chaos.

  Hunt nodded, his face wry. He’d figured Jake called the man “Doc” because he was a useless, spectacles-wearing dead weight who couldn’t even use a gun. But the man was really a doctor, and one with more guts than any field surgeon he’d seen during the War.

  He looked out at the battleground again, thinking there was only man he really wanted to see more than Doc right now . . . Jake Lonergan, with that arm weapon of his, dealing with the aliens the way he’d taken out Dolan.

  BUT JAKE WAS otherwise occupied.

  He had no trouble leading Ella back along his escape route. With all his senses functioning normally, following the glowing meshwork of the alien’s artificial tunnel was a cakewalk.

  But as they pushed deeper into the labyrinth of tunnels, Jake began to make out a faint, blue glow ahead: the unnatural light of the hidden stronghold, welcoming him back to Hell, with the promise that this time . . .

  “No modo,” as they said in Mexico: No way out. . . .

  Jake stumbled against the wall, thrown off-balance as his memories overwhelmed his sight.

  Ella put a hand on his arm. He looked down at her, felt her sharing his fear, sharing everything he remembered . . . until he couldn’t tell whether the fear in her eyes belonged to him, or was only a reflection of what lay in her own mind and heart. But he saw her determination, too—never to surrender; not to lose her sanity, or her soul, to the enemy. . . .

  Jake straightened away from the wall, nodding. No turning back. He fixed his eyes and his resolve on what lay ahead. “This way—”

  They followed the branch tunnel that opened on the vast underworld of the main cavern. Jake felt waves of dry heat washing over them, glimpsed the strange clouds, the sulfurous glow from the pits that filled the immense space with fog, making it impossible to tell how many aliens were still inside.

  But before they reached the tunnel’s end they came on a side cave, shut away from the main area by a wall of stone. Jake stopped at the entrance, looking in as the light falling across their path struck his eyes.

  They’d already found what they’d come for. The captives taken by the alien flyers were all there, inside . . . the ones who hadn’t been used yet for experiments, or food.

  Jake swore under his breath. At first glance, it looked like the prisoners had all been hanged—their heads fallen back, their eyes open and staring, their bodies suspended from the ceiling by the same cords that had pulled them up into the flyers. But then he looked down and saw their feet still resting on the ground. Not dead—or anyway, he didn’t think so.

  Undead. He remembered, now: Unable to speak, to move, to do anything but stare at—

  “Jake!” Ella caught his arm. “Don’t look up at the light. Only look at the people. Get the people free . . . and hurry.”

  He nodded, not understanding what she meant about the light, but obeying without question. Time was their enemy now, as much as the aliens were. Ella headed for the far end of the cave, checking as she went to be sure they weren’t surprised by anything non-human, while Jake moved toward the nearest captives.

  The metal spider-fingers that had stolen the prisoners from their lives and loved ones still held them captive, in an obscene embrace that made him want to look away. He forced himself to stare at the prisoners’ faces while he pried loose the clutching bola bands, trying to ignore how their eyes reflected the light like marbles made of milk-glass. . . .

  Jake moved from one victim to the next, seeing Maria, Doc’s wife . . . Percy Dolarhyde . . . Sheriff Taggart, Charlie Lyle, and members of his gang . . . mixed in with two or three dozen strangers: townsfolk and Apaches, men, women, and children. He began to pull them free faster as he got the feel for how to do it; prying people from the grasping lifeless hands, one after another.

  But even after he released them, the captives didn’t come back to life; they still stood listlessly, their eyes wide open, gazing upward. He tried not to think about it, not to wonder what they were seeing . . . not to believe there was something familiar about those eyes, as he went on pulling them free. Don’t look up. Ella had warned him about the light. She’d know how to help them, what to do next. . . . Don’t look. It didn’t matter what they were staring at, all that mattered was getting them free—

  Dammit, they weren’t dead—why didn’t they react? He looked up, finally unable to face another pair of empty, undead eyes without seeing what it was that still held them all prisoner. Overhead he saw the source of the flickering white light, a formless, pulsing . . . thing, not any kind of lamp he’d ever seen. He counted two, three of them, clamped to the ceiling like the cocoons of some unimaginable insect . . . like glowing masses of . . . of. . . .

  . . . Like moths to a flame. . . . He remembered, now . . . himself, Alice . . . nothing he could do . . . nothing anyone could do, not even look at each ot
her. . . . The living dead, imprisoned in a cold dank meat locker, where brilliant white light flickered like a frightened heartbeat, and they couldn’t look away. . . . Nothing . . . he was nothing, an insect held captive by a flame; unable to move . . . unable to think or even—

  A gun went off; the light that held him mesmerized exploded and went out. Phosphorescent slime fell from the ceiling in clumps and long glowing strands, covering the floor below. Ella fired twice more, putting out the other lights forever.

  Jake shook his head, shaking off his stupefaction, and looked back at her, grateful again. He wondered how she’d known the secret of the light; forced himself to remember again that she wasn’t human—knowing he’d never really convince himself. Maybe her people didn’t react the same way. They’re learning your weaknesses, she’d said. . . .

  Jake looked at the captives again: Ella had already started pulling off more harnesses, freeing other prisoners. Jake joined her again, freeing people, making sure they got their balance . . . moving on, until they were all standing on their own two feet, alive.

  “Sheriff?” Jake stood face to face with Taggart, who was still staring at nothing, like all the rest. He figured seeing the Scourge of the Territories ought to wake the man out of his trance as fast as anything.

  But the sheriff only gazed blankly at him; as if Taggart didn’t even remember his own identity, let alone Jake Lonergan’s. He looked like he’d dropped out of the sky. . . .

  Jake suddenly realized that all the captives still looked the same way, even after they’d been freed from their bonds and the light.

  Shit. How were they supposed to get these people moving—? “How long they gonna be like this?” he asked Ella.

  She only shook her head, as she moved from one freed captive to the next, placing her hands on their temples. “—each one is different. . . .”

  An energy beam exploded against the wall that only half shielded them from the main cavern. Jake saw two aliens emerge from a cloud of vapor, running toward them; his demon gun came alive as another bolt of energy struck the wall.

  “Go!” Ella shouted. “Hold them off while I get the others out.”

  He moved to the edge of the opening, positioning himself to give her covering fire. “You’d better hurry—”

  Ella motioned to the group of captives. To Jake’s amazement and relief they all followed her, disappearing after her into the tunnels. He wondered how the hell she did that kind of thing.

  He didn’t wonder long, as another energy strike cut a gouge in the wall just above his head. He ducked under better cover and raised his arm, taking aim: The weapon was ready to fire; to save him, or itself. Do it— he thought, and let the damned gun do what it seemed to enjoy the most—try to destroy its creators.

  “CHARGE THE LEFT flank!”

  Outside on the battlefield, Dolarhyde fought a holding action, trying to keep his remaining men alive and together in the midst of chaos, in the middle of more and more death and destruction. The explosions from the weapons the aliens used as handguns were worse than cannon fire, tearing up the already treacherous earth, endangering his shrinking force all the more.

  “Rear rank, close up!” Looking back over his shoulder Dolarhyde didn’t see the alien that came at him, and slammed sideways into his horse. Dolarhyde went down with the falling animal, barely managing to kick free of his stirrups before it crushed his leg. He landed hard on the ground beside his floundering mount, scrambled backward as the alien leaped toward him, stabbing its lethal claws into the ground where he’d just been. It lunged at him again, too fast—

  Nat Colorado swerved his horse and charged the alien, pulling his rope from the saddle as he came. He spun out the loop at its end and dropped the lasso over the monster’s head like he was bulldogging a steer. His horse stopped dead on his signal, already backing up while he pulled the rope taut. The alien screeched in fury as its striking talons missed Dolarhyde by inches.

  But before Nat could hitch the rope tight around his saddle horn, the monster’s taloned hand gripped the line between them and yanked him from the saddle. The alien was on him the minute he hit the ground; its fanged jaws opened, and it sank its teeth into his shoulder. Nat screamed in pain.

  Dolarhyde emptied his pistol into the alien’s body, all the bullets striking home, staggering it—but still it refused to go down. It turned toward him again, raising its massive arm.

  A bullet struck the alien in the face, shattering its left eye—a direct hit, through a vulnerable spot. The alien toppled and crashed to the ground, finally taken down by the group attack.

  Dolarhyde looked up, dazed, searching the canyon’s slope for the shooter. He saw Doc perched in the rocks above him, Meacham’s rifle still up against his shoulder after the surgical precision of his kill shot.

  Doc glanced up at the sky, “Thank you for the steady hand, Preacher,” he said, and smiled.

  Dolarhyde got to his feet with a heavy sigh of relief. Turning back, he saw Nat lying on the ground, in a widening pool of red. “Doc!” he shouted. “Get down here!”

  Dolarhyde kneeled by Nat’s head, pulling off his coat to try and stop the bleeding. “Come on, boy—” he murmured, as Nat’s eyes opened, looking up at him, “easy now, easy—don’t move. . . .”

  He wiped away enough blood to get a glimpse of the wound, and saw an artery spurting. He pressed his coat against it, trying to use the pressure of his hand to stanch the relentless blood.

  Blood ran from Nat’s mouth, and he began to choke. Dolarhyde cradled Nat’s head on his knees, trying to help him catch his breath . . . recognizing all the signs he’d seen too many times before. But not like this time, never like this—

  “Did we . . . get one?” Nat asked, his face unafraid, burning with the need to know.

  Dolarhyde felt like his heart was being pulled out through his eyes. A thousand things it was too late to say crowded each other for space in his mind. He managed a weak smile. “Yeah,” he said. “We got one.” Looking up again, he shouted “Doc!”

  “How bad is it?” Nat whispered. His eyes were glazing over with shock.

  “You’re gonna be alright. . . .” Dolarhyde laid a hand on Nat’s forehead, stroking his hair the way he had long ago, when Nat was still a grieving boy whose nightmares woke them both. “I’m here with you.” His voice barely held out for long enough to speak the words. He tried to control his expression, the only thing left in the universe that he had any control over—to keep it calm and reassuring, while Nat’s lifeblood ran out through his fingers.

  Nat looked up at him, and for a moment his eyes cleared as memory shone through. “I always dreamed . . . of riding into battle . . . with you.”

  Dolarhyde broke the knot of grief that kept him from words, finally able to say, only now, the one thing that he’d needed to say since forever. “I always dreamed of having a son like you.”

  Nat stared up at him, his face stunned, as if he couldn’t believe he’d heard those words outside of a dream. Dolarhyde took his hand, held it tightly in his own. He felt Nat’s hand close around it with the last of his strength. Dolarhyde held his adopted son’s gaze, as he held his hand, willing him to believe.

  Nat smiled up at him, and at last there was no trace of the lost soul that had been there behind his eyes through so many long years, when Dolarhyde had never been able to see it. Now there was only peace, as if this final moment of connection was all he had ever really wanted, or needed. “Go . . . get Percy. . . .” Nat whispered, and his eyes closed.

  Dolarhyde kneeled on the earth, still holding Nat’s body, although Nat was no longer there to realize it; unable to let him go. He wasn’t certain why his own heart was still beating, when it seemed to him that it had taken a fatal wound along with his adopted son.

  The fighting went on around him, but the sounds seemed far away, the world beyond touching him as he protected Nat . . . until he could bear to acknowledge at last that Nat’s soul was gone from this field of battle, this world o
f pain and sorrow.

  Doc was standing beside him as he looked up at last. Doc’s face was filled with compassion, all that he could offer; because it had always been too late to do anything for a wound like that.

  And beyond Doc, Dolarhyde saw Black Knife standing, with his warriors gathered around him. Black Knife raised his upturned palm to the sky, acknowledging Nat’s passage to another plane.

  Dolarhyde stared at him, as he saw the sorrow, the profound comprehension of his own loss, on the nantan’s face; emotions he never would have seen there—or been able to recognize if he had—before this moment.

  The Apaches loved their children, too. Slowly Dolarhyde realized what had drawn the Apache leader and his warriors down onto the field of battle at last . . . and what it implied.

  He laid Nat’s head carefully on the ground, and rose to his feet. Black Knife offered him a rifle. Dolarhyde accepted it, with a nod. They mounted their horses, and rode back into battle.

  This time, he knew, human beings would truly be fighting as a united force at last. The aliens weren’t invulnerable; to be united was all they needed to be, now, to win this fight—

  18

  Ella led the freed captives to within sight of the tunnel entrance, where they had the genuine light of day to guide them to freedom. Keeping so many confused people moving in the same direction, the right direction, had taken longer than she’d expected. She glanced back, sensing no signs of pursuit, and still no trace of Jake.

  “We have to keep going,” she said again, to remind herself, as much as to make it clear to the others. She had given her word to the humans fighting and dying outside that the captives would be freed, and she would not go back on it. But that wasn’t her final duty here. . . .

  Sheriff Taggart looked at her this time as she spoke, and a trace of recognition showed in his eyes. “Do I know you?”

  “Yes, Sheriff,” she said, smiling her encouragement, “you know me. Emmett is waiting for you—your grandson.”