Alien Nation #7 - Extreme Prejudice

by L. A. Graf

  “If it is, and it’s from Lydia—” George didn’t wait to finish the sentence. He bolted back into the plaza, rounding the corner of the refreshment stand just as the wall-mounted phone started its third ring. Grabbing it off the hook, he plastered himself back into the shadows along the wall just in case Vegas showed up. He snagged Sikes as his partner ran into the plaza after him and hauled the human into the darkness, too, ignoring his startled curse.

  A tiny, familiar voice near his chest said, “George?”

  “Susan?” George lifted the phone to his ear. “Susan, how did you get this number?”

  “From Lydia, of course.” His wife sounded tense and just a little impatient. “She and I are here at the hotel with David Jordan. He wants to know—”

  “Susan, wait.” George realized he couldn’t listen for Vegas and talk to his wife at the same time. He handed the receiver to Sikes, who wouldn’t have heard the Overseer coming anyway. “Here, tell Jordan where we are.”

  Sikes grimaced and took the phone. “At the zoo,” he growled into the mouthpiece, then hung up.

  George started to give him an exasperated look, then realized Sikes couldn’t see it and cuffed him on the shoulder instead. Sikes glared back at him but said nothing. They waited until the human’s watch had counted off ten minutes before they relaxed enough to speak.

  “I guess he’s not coming.” Sikes transferred his water gun to his left hand and flexed his stiff fingers. “Damn.”

  “He might wait for a few rings, to make sure no security guard answers it first.” George stared at the phone, remembering how loudly it rang and doing rough calculations in his head. “But it doesn’t matter. Now we know where he’s got to be.”

  “We do?”

  “Yes.” George swung away from the phone to stare at the map across the path, drawing a circle on it in his mind. “If Lydia calls him at this phone, he must be somewhere within hearing range.”

  “Shit, that’s right.” Sikes glanced around with sudden caution. “In one of these buildings?”

  George gave him an ironic look. “Tenctonese hearing range, Matthew. Approximately half a kilometer is what I’d estimate. Less, if he’s hiding in a well-insulated building.”

  “So where does that put us?” demanded Sikes.

  George pointed at the map, then remembered his partner couldn’t see it. “Somewhere in the African savanna.”

  C H A P T E R 2 3

  THE SIGN OUTSIDE the rhinoceros exhibit read: Closed for Renovation. Sikes leaned as far over the observation deck’s railing as he dared, trying to decide if he actually saw something moving through the enclosure’s deep shadows. All he could make out for sure was the outline of a huge maned lion, pacing its limited domain another enclosure away. “You really think the rhinos would let Vegas shack up here?” The squat shed attached to the exhibit didn’t look big enough to actually hide from the animals once everyone was crammed inside.

  George had already turned back for the main pathway, tugging on Sikes’s arm. “The last white rhinoceros died in the San Diego Zoo last year. This exhibit must be empty.”

  Made sense. Sikes jumped down the steps, too strung out on nervous energy to take them one at a time, and trotted ahead of his partner toward the gate to the rhino shack. A tall stockade fence lined the path, broken in the middle by a double door with a padlock as big as Sikes’s fist and another Closed for Renovation tag. Sikes yanked on the lock—just in case it was defective—and was disappointed when it held like it ought to.

  “Damn.” He glanced aside at George. “You wanna just go over?”

  George twisted the lock in one hand and snapped it in half. “No.”

  Sikes jiggled the parts loose as quietly and quickly as possible, then slipped between the heavy slats without actually pushing the gate wide open. George took a moment longer, pausing to shut the latch behind him in case one of the wandering security guards happened by. Sikes expressed his approval with a silent nod. When they were side by side again, Sikes let the Newcomer lead the way into the square concrete rhino building, but kept his squirt gun ready, just in case.

  The hinges squealed appallingly when George pressed the door inward with his palm. As dark as it was outside, the building’s dank interior was worse. There weren’t even windows to cut the gloom, just four glazed squares of glass in the ceiling that barely let in enough moonlight to find the floor. Sikes pressed up close behind George, threading a finger through one belt loop for security. Don’t get ahead of me, he pleaded silently. Don’t leave me where I can’t see. He didn’t even protest when George reached back to take his hand like a mother keeping track of her child at the circus.

  “It’s empty.” George’s voice echoed flatly off the walls. Things were so close and narrow, it sounded almost as if he had shouted, even though he hadn’t. “I can see spoor in the corner of one of the cages, though.”

  “And I smell blood,” Sikes told him. “Newcomer blood.”

  “Yes.” The warmth of George’s presence moved away from Sikes, and he shuffled hurriedly after before George could even tug on his hand. Sikes felt something cold and indistinct pass close beside him on the right, and some indefinable change in the quality of the light made him glance upward.

  “Hey, George, look at this.”

  He realized George had stopped when he bumped into his back. By then, he could almost make out the Newcomer’s profile as George tipped his head to follow Sikes’s gaze. “A broken window.”

  “Yeah.” Sikes worked his hand uneasily on the squirt gun. “You think that’s how the levpa gets in and out?”

  There was a pause in which George might have nodded. Then he said aloud, “But there’s no food in here and no heat. If Vegas is staying at the zoo with the levpa, he isn’t staying in here with it.”

  Sikes tried very hard not to dissolve into grumbles as George bumbled him in a circle, pinning him briefly against the upright bars of a cage, then pulling him forward toward the door again. “So where are we going?”

  Outside seemed remarkably bright after the eldritch interior. Sikes could almost imagine he saw the path and trees. “If he isn’t hiding here,” George whispered, “he’s staying with the cats.” He motioned Sikes to follow him back to the main path, then pushed the gate quietly closed behind them. “I’ll go check with the tigers,” he said, nodding at the stockade fence across the way. “You see if you can find him with the lions.”

  Sikes suffered a ridiculous urge to laugh. “George, I hate cats.”

  He assumed when George turned to him, it was with an expression of eloquent annoyance. “You don’t have to play with them, just look into their enclosure and see if there’s any sign of Vegas.”

  Sikes snorted, even though he already heard George padding away across the shadowed path. “Hell, I can’t even see you, you stupid spongehead.” Rubbing his thumb along the side of the water gun, he picked his way down the high fence until it swept to the right and disappeared.

  Losing the fence helped a lot. Out from under its shadow, Sikes could at least see the frost-burned layout of the artificial savanna, guessing where the boundaries must be by the placement of buildings and the alignment of trees. A huge, obviously constructed rock did a valiant job of pretending to be natural as it separated the lions from the now extinct rhinos, and Sikes tucked the pistol into the front of his pants so he could clamber up the concrete using both hands.

  It made a good vantage point. The posts that sketched the fences were easier to see, and Sikes could actually identify what had to be zebras beyond the cheetah’s pen, and the long, awkward necks of giraffes rising up side by side with the treeline. Inspired by how well the giraffes stood out against the cloudy sky, he dropped to hands and knees to try and minimize his outline.

  “A worthwhile tactic,” a deep voice commented from behind him. “But a little too late.”

  Sikes tried to roll, but Vegas was predictably faster. He snatched Sikes’s wrist in an iron-hard grip, jerking the human alm
ost upright as he pried the water pistol loose from fingers already numb for lack of blood. Sikes swung his leg at Vegas’s unprotected armpit, but without one foot on the ground to brace himself, the move only twisted him painfully in the Newcomer’s grip and gained him nothing.

  Not the least bit concerned about his reputation among the Tenctonese, Sikes shouted, “George!” at the top of his lungs and hoped it carried at least a half kilometer.

  Vegas glanced away from his inspection of the water pistol. “Oh, is he here, too? I should have guessed.”

  Smash the pistol, you bastard, smash it smash it smash—!

  Instead, Vegas pitched it negligently over Sikes’s head into the lion enclosure some twenty feet below. “I hope you won’t be offended if I tell you he’s the one I’m most concerned with.”

  Sikes growled, one hand and one foot planted futilely against the Overseer’s chest. “Oh, that’ll be a big mistake, Vegas.”

  “We’ll see, Mr. Sikes.” And Vegas stepped to the edge of the rock to hurl Sikes after the gun.

  C H A P T E R 2 4

  SIKES’S SCREAM ECHOED off the corrugated iron of the tiger house, drawing snarls from its shadowy inhabitants. George spun and dove back through the gate in the wooden stockade, his hearts pounding with urgency. If Ross Vegas had attacked Sikes, there might still be enough time to rescue him. The human had arrested enough Newcomers to know how to defend himself against their superior strength, at least for a while. But if it had been the levpa—

  George forced himself to forget how fast Scott Free had been ripped apart and concentrated on keeping his balance as he hurtled down the sloping path. He rounded the turn that hid the rock-edged rhinoceros enclosure and saw an image silhouetted above it, clear against the cloud-black sky. Without stopping to identify it, George flung himself over the protective stone wall and vaulted the man-made ravine between them.

  He landed where he’d planned, a little above and behind the dim figure, but the combination of frost-polished stone and his own soaked shoes betrayed him. Slammed facedown by unbraked momentum, George slid clawing over the edge of the rhino enclosure. A frustrated hiss of metal whipped the air over his head. Twisting up, he saw Ross Vegas pull back a long steel pole looped with wire, the kind animal controllers used to restrain dogs at a distance. The sight of the weapon reassured George immensely. If the levpa had been here, the Overseer wouldn’t have bothered to arm himself.

  “Cha’dikav.” Vegas thrust the animal restraint at George again, this time aiming lower. Knowing what the thin wire noose could do to his unprotected neck, George tried to lunge aside and scramble up onto the rock at the same time. The noose missed his head but caught his scrabbling left hand instead. Cold metal bit deep into his wrist, and the stocky Overseer grunted in amusement. “Caught again, sansol?”

  “I may be sansol, but I’m not an animal.” Rolling to his feet, George slapped his free hand out to seize the pole and shake it hard. The wire noose loosened as it had been designed to do, opening just far enough to free his blood-slicked hand before Vegas could jerk it tight again. George turned and grabbed the restraint with both hands, then yanked the Overseer toward him before Vegas could think to let his end go.

  They collided and fell together onto bitterly cold stone, the pole jangling as it tumbled off the rock edge to their right. The momentum knocked George onto his back and gave Vegas the double benefit of leverage and weight. The older gannaum used it viciously, jamming both fists into George’s unprotected armpits. Pain seared phantom fires across his vision, but George forced himself to move despite it, freeing his legs from the untrained sprawl of Vegas’s body. He hammered one hand into the sensitive base of the other Newcomer’s spine, then took advantage of Vegas’s reflexive gasp and shudder to heave him over sideways. Still struggling, they rolled almost to the brink of the ravine before George managed to pin his opponent with a solid, arm-locked grip.

  They strained against each other’s strength in fierce silence for a moment, Vegas trying and failing to break free. His age and sedentary body counted against him now. He gave the struggle up at last and glared at George. “Monk-suit sansol!”

  “Kleezantsun vuka,” George snarled back. Somewhere high and distant, the wolf howled again and was answered by a resounding ursine roar. “What did you do to my partner?”

  Vegas grunted, his barrel chest jerking with the sound. “What humans have always done with each other for sport. I threw him to the lions.”

  A shrieking howl froze George’s blood. He lifted his head to scan the hill across the ravine but saw only an empty ledge of rock where memory told him a tawny black-maned form should have been. He felt Vegas’s chest heave again beneath him, but he was so busy looking for Sikes that he didn’t realize what the Overseer meant to do until the familiar deep-pitched bark rang through the night. Memories of planet dreams crashed over George. That was the sound that summoned the levpa.

  “Shut up!” George jammed his forearm between the Overseer’s teeth, pushing the fabric of his camel hair coat deep enough to gag him. Vegas choked, then recovered his breath to stare up at George, his eyes dark and hot with triumph. A cold wind blasted over them and brought the first blood smell with it.

  Designed to be a perfect hunter, the levpa made no sound as it approached. George tracked it, as he had tracked it on three planets before this one, by the instinctive fear it sparked in the animals around it. An elephant bellowed to their right, then the yowling cry shivered down the slope again. This time George recognized that it came from the cheetah enclosure Sikes hadn’t let him cross. After that, there was only breathless, waiting silence—until something dripped on his back.

  Behind him, the tiger shelter exploded with roars. George quivered and jammed his arm more fiercely into the Overseer’s face to keep him from making any noise. Nostrils sticky as wet paper snuffled up his coat, then paused to drink in the smell of his left hand. A broken edge of bone scraped across his exposed skin, and George shuddered again, feeling drowned by the smell of blood.

  Damp nostrils hovered over his fingers, ignoring the bleeding slash around his wrist. It wasn’t until the beast nosed at his knuckles, though, that George realized it was smelling the minute trace of Sikes’s jacket, left when he’d thumped his fist on the human’s shoulder. Confused by the predominant smell of George, the levpa lifted its head at last with a disappointed whine, then waited in silence for the hunting order that should have followed its master’s call.

  Vegas heaved under him unexpectedly, dislodging George’s arm with a violent jerk of his head. The levpa sprang back from the struggle with a startled patter of feet. Hoping to drive the air out of the Overseer’s lungs and silence him, George braced his arms under him and slammed his full weight down on Vegas. The knowledge that one croaked word could bring the levpa into the fight made him more ruthless than usual with his strength. He heard a muffled crack, then felt the flutter of released tension along Vegas’s long chest bone as the lowest ribs broke away.

  The Overseer choked over the word he had been forming and began to fight for breath. George leaned on his shuddering rib cage and gave him only enough air to survive. “Call your levpa off,” George growled, hearing urgent splashes from across the ravine. “The signal that means the chase is over—give it to him now.” He tightened the pressure a little when Vegas merely glared at him. “Do it, kleezantsun, or I will kill you.”

  The Overseer held out until his face darkened from lack of oxygen, then choked and nodded reluctantly. George eased his arm out of the quivering rib cage and let Vegas recover his breath, keeping just enough pressure on him to make sure the Overseer knew he could crush him breathless again in a moment. Beside them, the levpa stirred out of its waiting stillness and turned its head toward the next enclosure. A frenzy of growls from that direction had suddenly crested into a roar.

  “Roos!” Vegas spat the word out before George could stop him, turning it into a bone-deep growl. “Roos nema!” The last words rode a gasp of
pain as George shoved his arm down against disarticulated ribs, but the levpa must have heard. With a hushed padding of hairless feet against stone, the beast leaped down toward the sound of a human yell.

  C H A P T E R 2 5

  SIKES TRIED LIKE hell to twist over in midair. He had a vague memory of deep concrete moats running the edges of these enclosures, and the fear of broken limbs commanded his actions more than any conscious thought. Still, something caught at his leg as he fell, wrenching it at a dangerous angle, and he registered that it was the ground slamming into him too hard and too early just as his knee gave way in a sickening wash of agony.

  Only the force of him landing kept Sikes from crying out. He didn’t even have the air to breathe, much less scream, and the uneven knobs of grass and rock beneath him dug into his rib cage like angry fists. Overhead, pushed into the distance by pain, he could still see Ross Vegas silhouetted against the sky, looking after him. The damned bastard had thrown him past the moat and into the enclosure proper. Sikes didn’t know whether to be terrified or laugh.

  A hoarse, angry roar from behind and above him quickly answered that dilemma. Heaving up to his elbows, Sikes dug one hand into the scrubby grass and flung the other across him in search of a handhold with which to turn himself over. The answering splash of pain from his knee nearly made him vomit. He ignored it, just like he’d ignored hurt from the first time his old man had beat him as a child, and lurched unsteadily upright. The lion stood on its flat, rocky perch, head low, tail lashing.

  “Aw, hell . . .” Sikes staggered in an uneven circle, balancing on one leg and bracing the knee on the other with both hands. Of course there was no exit, just a wide expanse of moat and a tall stone wall. If the lion couldn’t get out, neither could he.

  “Zoos suck,” Sikes muttered, stumbling toward an outbuilding a dozen yards away. “They should leave the animals out in the fucking wild where they belong.” The animal keepers had to get into the enclosures somehow, if only for medical care and feeding. The metal and concrete shacks, like those they had inspected at the rhino exhibit, seemed the only possible entrance. Gasping meaningless curses, Sikes limped for the building without bothering to look back at the lion. Either it would kill him or ignore him, he didn’t know enough about lions to determine which.