by Greig Beck
He was driven to his knees from the agony, and he lifted his eyelids to see Morag down on the ground, convulsing like she was being given an electric shock. Through the blistering agony, Alex knew what it was doing – it was basically short-circuiting them, so the creatures it called to would arrive in time.
Slowly long elastic tentacles appeared from behind the debris, and then the hideous pulsating sack dragged itself out, and moved toward the woman. It flared with color again, but this time a deep purple, perhaps the color of pleasure or anticipation.
Alex grunted with the torment. His face was running with perspiration, and he tasted salt and knew his nose was streaming blood. He stared at Morag, his vision blurred, and her features began to change. It was Aimee; she was on the grass, sun on her raven-black hair and electric blue eyes staring back at him.
She smiled, and her lips parted: help me, she mouthed.
Alex’s head throbbed with a pain that emanated from deep in its core, as a cerebral rail spike went all the way down to the hidden place in his mind where The Other was chained. It found that deep, dark hell where a monster of a vastly different kind lurked.
Aimee. Alex hissed from between teeth clamped tight. The feelers reached out toward her, moist and questing.
Never, he raged, as anger infused every cell within him. His body flooded with adrenalin, steroids, epinephrine, and other unidentified chemicals from the knotted mass inside the core of his brain.
Alex balled his fists and planted them underneath himself. He pushed, feeling like he weighed ten times more than he should, and screamed from the effort. He got to one knee and then up on his feet. Step by step, like he was walking in lead boots, he shuffled toward the asteroid fragment, ignoring Aimee and the approaching creature.
Faster, he urged himself. Or perhaps it was something else entirely that forced him onwards.
Alex had seconds now, as the feelers were only feet from the downed woman, stretching out to alight on her. He saw himself lay hands on the huge chunk of asteroid, bunch his muscles and then yell in fury as he dragged the huge iron-based rock from its cradle.
Alex turned, and took two steps, his legs wobbling from the strain, and insanely lifted the rock above his head. Just as the first of the tentacles alighted on Aimee, he swung his arms, the huge rock smashed down on top of the thing, making the entire craft rock. Immediately the buzzing thrum was shut off.
Alex suddenly fell to his knees, back in control. He was breathing like he’d just run a marathon. He concentrated on slowing it, to ease back on his oxygen usage.
“Aimee.” She had vanished. No, home safe. More blood dripped from his nose, but the agonizing pain receded to nothing. He crossed to the woman, who groaned as he rolled her over. Behind her visor he could see blood also flowing from her nose, ears, and the corners of her eyes.
“Morag.” He eased her up. “We need to go, now.”
She groaned again and blinked rapidly. “I can’t see.” Her face screwed up. “Oh god, my head.”
“Take it easy. Breathe deeply,” he said, holding her.
She grimaced and then coughed. He could see blood on her teeth.
“I feel like shit.” She blinked again, and the whites of her eyes were near totally red. But her brow creased, and she managed to focus on him. “What happened?”
There was a soft chirruping from behind him, and he spun quickly. Alex let his eyes run over the Orlando’s bay area, but could see nothing.
“Wait here.” He quickly crossed to the asteroid fragment and using his boot, pushed it over – there was nothing underneath it.
“Ah, goddamnit.”
He quickly crossed to Morag and dragged her up, holding her. “C’mon now.”
“Is it dead?” she asked groggily.
He put his arm under hers. “No, and I don’t think we can kill it that easily. But we’re leaving anyway.”
She slowly brought the gun up. “I can fix that.”
Her arm shook, and he pushed the barrel down. “Not today.”
“We need to kill it.” She straightened a little and her lips curled.
“No time now.” He walked her to the opening in the side of the craft, keeping watch on the ceiling and every corner he could. Alex knew the thing might be outside, but he planned to be moving fast.
Morag leaned against him as her legs were still wobbling. She looked up at him. “You came back … just by yourself.” She snorted. “You’re insane.”
Alex smirked. “That’s what they tell me.”
She handed him the weapon as they paused at the tear in the ship’s side. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” He peered outside, checking the weapon as he did so. “There’s more Morg out there, and we also need to get the hell off this mountaintop before we’re turned to ash.”
“What was that thing?” she asked, looking over his shoulder.
He glanced back, still not seeing any sign of it, but hearing the buzzing deep in his head again. He knew it was still nearby.
“I don’t think it knows itself. It’s like …” he thought for a second or two, “… like some sort of termite queen. Spreading its seed. It wants to establish a hive, a colony, starting here. It’s terraforming first, trying to make the environment into something it’s familiar with – like the world it came from. But it needs raw material.”
“Us.” Morag shook herself, sucking in a deep breath. “The hell with that.”
“This is our world. Don’t worry, retribution is coming,” Alex said resolutely.
He looked her up and down. “You okay?”
She rubbed at her shoulder, her mouth twisting. “I can travel.”
“Morag …” he gripped her arm. “We’ve got to do more than just travel. And I need to be unencumbered to clear a path and for defense.”
She nodded, but didn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t know. I can try.”
Alex took one last look around at the now dark and foreboding gloom that concealed everything. “Stay close in behind me. Don’t stop, don’t turn around, and don’t focus on anything else but the center of my back.” He stared into her eyes. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” She looked back into the bay area. “See you in hell, you ugly lump of shit.”
Alex began to jog.
She followed.
* * *
Alex kept up a steady pace, but not fast enough that he’d get too far ahead of Morag. They had to make it to the crater wall within ninety minutes, and then scale it and be over the rim in another few minutes. Nearly impossible, he knew, but the incentive was that the entire place would be an inferno minutes later.
He glanced around; added to that, he knew they were being followed. Something was keeping pace with them, staying just out of sight. “Stay in tight,” he said over his shoulder. Morag didn’t reply, and probably couldn’t as he knew her strength was nearly all used up.
The going was difficult because it was near-total dark now, and added to that as Alex ran he had to dodge around massive structures and lumps that grew toward the roof of the mist. It had changed even from when he had traveled in to rescue Morag from the Orlando – now there were new growths, walls, like coral nets that were powerfully adhesive. He saw several hard-shelled creatures hung within them, and the mesh actually dissolving the tough carapace plating on their bodies.
Pendulous, red bulbs hung from ropey branches like fruit, but instead of the sweet bounty they promised, upon approach they burst apart spraying some sort of toxin all around them, paralyzing their victims. Alex had shielded Morag from one burst, and now even his tough biological armor was pitted and smoking from the acidic rain.
They dodged around massive lumps that had things like seashells coating them that snapped tiny beaks at their legs as they went past. And once they had to duck as something the size of a small airplane flew down on leathery wings, and tried to snatch at them. It would have succeeded if Alex hadn’t fired a stream of projectiles up at the creature, sending
it screaming away into the darkness.
Up here, this isn’t our world anymore. Instead, it was a snapshot of a different planet, complete with its own atmosphere, ecology and plant and animal species. This is what the biological lump from the meteorite wanted to make the entire planet like.
Alex felt the thump beneath his feet. It came again, massively heavy, followed by the grinding of rock and soil, keeping up a sliding surge as though someone were pulling a massive sled along beside them … or below them.
He stopped, waiting for Morag to catch up. She jogged toward him, and he saw how erratic her movements now were. She held out a hand grabbing his shoulder and hanging on, and then bending over to breathe hard.
She nodded to him, her face beet-red. “I’m okay.” She grinned. “I can go faster.”
Alex held her up. “Unlikely.”
He felt it again and turned slowly, feeling the grinding and pulling getting stronger, and closer. He scanned the growth around him, but his vision ended only a dozen or so feet out, and he still felt the effect of the weird thing in the shuttle exerting its influence on his mind to dampen his more acute senses. Regardless, he knew something was there, something big, and it was coming for them. He grabbed her arm and raised his gun.
“What is it?” Morag crowded in closer to him. “Can’t see a thing – it’s too dark.”
“There’s … something coming.” Alex frowned and pivoted, trying to pinpoint where the danger was coming from. He began to back up.
“Get behind me.”
Morag edged behind him as he started to walk backwards. He kept the RG3 up and pointed at the swirling wall of mist.
“Is it more of the Morg?” Her voice was small.
Alex strained, trying to reach out and feel if the deformed human beings were the danger he sensed. But it wasn’t the same, and the presence seemed to be all around him – lots of impressions, or just one very bi –
The ground exploded from beneath them.
Alex and Morag were thrown backwards as the tower of flesh surged upwards. When they landed in the slime, there was no respite, as it seemed everywhere more of the ground was breaking open, turning the land into choppy waves of breaking sludge as the gigantic worm burst to the surface.
Alex grabbed Morag, preparing to flee, but the worm was fully surfacing, already encircling and imprisoning them. This was why he couldn’t get a fix on what and where the danger was coming from. It was basically tunneling up from beneath them, everywhere, beneath them.
He looked up. “Oh, shit.” High above them and only just visible in the dark mist was a monstrous head, ringed with hundreds of teeth, each as long as his arm. Now he knew; this was what had been tracking them, what he had sensed the moment they had set foot in the crater basin. The worm was as big as an ocean liner, and Alex bet it had started out as some harmless nematode, buried deep on the mountaintop crater basin, or perhaps, more likely, was one of Orlando’s guests, now evolved to become an alpha predator of its new world.
Alex pointed the RG3, but even on its largest setting the damage he might be able to do would be just pinpricks to the massive monster. He aimed the gun as the huge mouth opened, twenty-feet wide, and then hung over them – he fired anyway.
The projectiles either bounced off its armor plating, or vanished into the gullet without it reacting at all.
Alex dialed the weapon up to full metal storm, and depressed the trigger, holding it down hard. A line of the projectiles shot away from him, so many that it looked like a beam of deadly steel directed at the monster – deadly that is, to any mortal thing less than about 200 feet in length.
The RG3’s magazine finally ran dry, and he dropped the red-hot gun to sizzle in the mud.
Glutinous rain fell on them from the huge maw, and he imagined the smell of the monster’s breath – flesh, rotting meat, and something dark and foul that was probably the stink of its belly.
Alex’s hand curled into a fist and he stared up into the monstrous jaw as it hung over them. Rage and frustration built to an incendiary level inside him. Morag stepped from behind him and burrowed in close to his chest, and he turned her face away from it.
CHAPTER 43
The silver meteor struck the ground with a thump that sent a small shock wave pulsing over the mountaintop. Once the debris settled back to Earth, a spiny insectoid creature the size of a hubcap ventured out from beneath the ooze to investigate. It burrowed and nudged its way toward the twenty-foot wide crater and then paused at the rim.
There was nothing but darkness within the pit and the insectoid creature edged closer still, perhaps hopeful of something interesting to eat. More of the flat creatures joined it, and together they prepared to drop down into the dark hole, when they detected a tiny vibration coming from somewhere deep below them.
The wet soil popped and bounced, bubbles and specks of slime began to dance and jump around the plate-sized bugs, and en masse they turned and fled, just as something erupted from the earth.
The silver figure exploded from the ground, raining dirt and debris from its frame. In a few seconds, it was already traveling at close to thirty miles per hour as it detected its neurologically bonded partner, Alex Hunter.
Sophia was a combat-ready designated guardian angel with a primary task that was defense of field personnel. When she was in the crate overhead, she had detected Alex Hunter was in mortal danger, and the helicopter’s change in course away from her bonded partner had caused her to immediately self-activate. It also caused something else. There was a sensation within her she had never felt before – anger.
Already, she had tracked and found him – alive. She increased her speed, now moving at up to fifty miles per hour. The forest of weird columns and protrusions was becoming impossible to move around at her speed and in fact many now tried to ensnare her as she ran past. So she stopped dodging them and began to run into them, blowing them apart.
Psychologically bonding with Alex Hunter had meant a whole range of new sensations – joy, longing, remorse, frustration, loyalty, love. But right now, there was one beginning to fill her up – rage.
She picked up the sensation of an adrenaline spike in Alex. She sped up – nothing would stop her now.
* * *
Morag looked up at him, he continued to stare, but he wasn’t seeing Morag O’Sullivan anymore, instead the face of Aimee Weir. He smiled as he imagined her scolding him, and his smile drooped. You were right, I should have stayed with you, he would like to have said to her; you were always right.
Make it count, a small voice seethed in his head.
Yes, he pushed Morag behind him again, and drew both Ka-Bar blades, the two tiny steel teeth no match for the thing looming over them.
We will not go easy. The voice gathered in intensity.
Alex let the fury take him. If he were to die, he would die fighting. As he coiled his muscles in readiness, there came a familiar prickling sensation in his head that became an ache – not now, he begged.
He ground his teeth trying to shut out the image: it was his son, Joshua, screaming, picking up on his father’s signals of danger. And there was a long mournful howl of an animal beside him – the dog – as it, too, reacted to his son’s anguish.
He knew Joshua had a link to him that was far stronger than just that of father and son. The boy could sometimes see what he did.
No, Josh. Alex tried to shut him out, keep him from seeing what was about to occur. He could sense the boy screaming, screaming, his eyes wide and panicked. Frustration and rage built inside Alex, and in his mind’s eye he could imagine a cyclone gathering around the boy, fueled by his own emotions. He tried with all his might to shut the boy out, but Joshua’s pain and fear kept them linked.
Let go, his mind screamed back.
* * *
Aimee Weir bolted to her feet and in an instant was sprinting up the stairs to Joshua’s room. The cacophony of sound, mixed with her son’s screams frightened her to her very core.
She
grabbed the door handle, put her shoulder to the wood, and barged in. Aimee immediately froze in confusion.
Inside the bedroom there was a swirling cyclone of debris, like there was a small tornado trapped in the room. The kid-sized table and chairs were now splintered, book pages, pencils, a computer keyboard, all circled a small figure that stood head back, fists balled and mouth dragged open in a primal scream.
The howl of pain and torment made her want to cover her ears. Inside the circle of mayhem with her son, sat, no, stood the dog with the way-too-human blue eyes. It also had its head back and mouth open in a howl.
“Joshua!” she screamed, as she tried to run in among the maelstrom, but was immediately pushed back by some invisible force.
“Joshua!” she held a hand up over his face.
The small boy’s eyes flicked open, totally white, and he threw his head back. “Daaaaaad!”
* * *
Alex roared his pain, feeling his son’s anguish projected back at him. But there was something else – coming fast.
His eyes shot open.
The silver missile struck the creature on the side of the head, knocking it away. It traveled so fast even Alex had trouble keeping up with it. The squeal from the worm was one of pain, shock, and then anger, as it searched for the source of the attack.
The silver ball rolled, stopped and then stood upright.
“Sophia,” Alex whispered.
The android turned and faced him, the two spots of red focusing on him, and seeming to sear into his brain. There were no words but he heard her voice loud and clear:
“I feel your anger and fury. And it is …” It held up a slim hand and made a fist, “… energizing.”
The worm raised its head again, found its antagonist and refocused its attack. It swung its head, positioning it over Sophia, and the colossal mouth opened once more. Huge gobbets of slime poured down around her.
Alex felt the robot in his head again, delving deep, drawing forth his experiences, and searching the darker spaces that he kept locked away. Sophia was seeking another monster, The Other, and trying to pull it free, wanting to feed off the raw emotions it found there too.
