So much for a quick, clean kill, he thought.
Only the sound of his heavy breathing filled the pipe for many minutes as he rested, utterly spent. Finally, he disentangled himself from the monster, rolled to the side and heaved up a bellyful of sour bile. Oh lord, but these things smelled bad. And now he had the stink all over him, along with about a quart of fluorescent goo. He wasn’t sure if it was blood or some other weird bodily fluid.
I must stink as bad as these things, he mused. Then he wondered, Could I use their smell as camouflage?
Buena Vista neighborhood
North of Station Nineteen
2:00 A.M.
Tiffany awoke to the feel of cold tile pressed against the side of her face. The next sensation was twin burning pains from the meat above her shoulders, like someone had poured molten metal down her back. Then the stench hit her and she gagged. Vomit welled up in her throat and exploded from her nose and mouth. She choked and retched and slowly sat up, dizzy, disoriented, blinking in the darkness.
She saw the ring of glowing eyes surrounding her and tried to scream, but found her throat had now clenched up tight. She was sprawled on the kitchen floor in one of the abandoned houses to the north of the station. Behind one of the creatures, a window gaped, boards torn loose and hanging. Through it she could see the side of the station across an expanse of waste ground choked with thigh-high weeds.
The circle of creatures made no moves, but merely regarded her with cocked heads. Oh my god, the stink! She gagged again and brought a trembling hand to her nose. The creatures watched her with rapt curiosity. Slowly, they brought their hands up to their faces, covering their noses. She stared at them and her mind slipped several gears. She dropped her hand and watched as they lowered theirs. Her stomach plummeted in cold fear.
One of the creatures shuffled forward. Its long arm snaked out, reaching for her. She let out an uneasy moan and retreated a few steps. The creature stepped back, turned to the others, and the group hissed sibilantly among themselves. She swore they were having some sort of discussion. The same creature stepped to her and prodded her with a long, clawed finger, poking her again, gently, as if to see what she would do.
She cried out, “Please, don’t!” and twisted to avoid the probing digit.
They pulled back as a group and hissed in low tones. Then the arm reached for her again, and she yelped, “Help! Please, help me, somebody!” and then subsided into sobbing
The creature that had touched her turned to the others. It growled, clearing its throat, and then said, very tentatively, in an obscene parody of her voice, “Please…help…somebody…help…me.”
She felt her sanity slipping. This was too much. This was just too damned much. “Oh my god,” she cried and suddenly they all gave it back to her, “Oh my god!” a shrill explosion of sound.
“No!” she cried, shaking her head. Tears streamed down her face. This wasn’t happening. This could not be happening. It wasn’t possible. “No,” she whimpered.
“No,” they said, shaking their heads.
It was hellish, unreal, beyond a nightmare. Tiffany tried to run, to break through the ring of reptilian bodies, but they stood firm and she shrank back before making contact. Why didn’t they just kill her?
“Go away!” she screamed.
“Go away!” came the chorus of reply.
It was too much for her mind to bear. She relinquished her hold on sanity. She fell to the floor, laughing hysterically, the laughter morphing into sobs, and then back into laughter again. The creatures watched her with interest.
She rolled and hooted, calling out for mercy. She directed her pleas heavenward, begging for the nightmare to end, praying, cursing and crying.
The creature that had touched her stepped close and arched its back. The tail whipped over and the tip slammed into her chest, skewering one of her breasts. She slumped to the floor with a deathly sigh. The creature settled down on top of her, lowered its head, sank its fangs into her throat, and began to drink her blood.
Station Nineteen
2:10 A.M
Minaberry’s fists clenched at his sides and he turned from the window and looked at Rogers desolately.
“Our Ops center…” he began. “This is unprecedented. I’ve never seen them in such numbers before.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out his recorder. “If memory serves,” he said feverishly into the little device. “The maximum number of chimeras in one group was fifteen…eliminated in the Matamoros cluster. That has now been surpassed.” He paused, contemplating what he’d just seen. “Greatly surpassed,” he added.
He paced the vestibule, stepping blithely over the bodies of the dead Sheriff’s deputies. “Their socio-biology continues to evolve. They show signs of observational learning…”
Rogers was with the two soldiers at the front door. He indicated the crate blocking the entrance and the white soldier moved it aside. Rogers cracked the door and poked out his head.
“Burton,” he said in an authoritative tone as he scanned the parking lot. “I want you to return to the truck and see if you can get those remaining lights back on.”
Burton, the white soldier, looked at him for a long time. “Is that an order?”
“What?” Rogers asked mockingly. “Are you afraid?” He stepped back and held open the door. “Get out there and Be All You Can Be.”
Burton gave him a derisive snort and then unlimbered the nozzle of the flamethrower and held it in front of him like a divining rod. “Showtime,” he muttered and stepped outside.
The lawn had been reduced to ash. Gnarled and blackened palm trees sagged limply over the clumps of charred yucca plants lining the walkway. Everything smoldered, sending up willowy strands of white smoke. A thin layer of ash coated the walkway. Burton’s footsteps crunched, muffled, like walking in freshly powdered snow.
At the bottom of the steps he paused, glancing left and right and then quickly up into the sky. The meteor showers were intermittently sending streaks across the canvas of night, but nothing else filled the heavens. The fireworks had died down.
So far, so good.
He clumped his way across the burnt lawn to the parking lot, moving awkwardly, weighed down by the eighty-pound tanks of the bulky flame unit on his back. He crouched by the two smashed cars, taking refuge behind the crumpled orange Nova. He peeked over the smashed hood. He saw the truck across the parking lot, thirty yards away from his position. There was no sign of the creatures.
He jumped up and ran the remaining distance until he reached the back of the truck. His feet crunched on the broken glass from the shattered light panels. He poked the nozzle of the flamethrower ahead of him and took a few cautious steps up the loading ramp.
There was blood all over the place. He craned his head, listening. He could hear something from inside the trailer, something faint and mechanical. At the top of the ramp the slight noise turned to an audible crackling. Burton recognized the sound as static.
The lab stretched out before him, a jumble of smashed computer consoles and ravaged corpses. Picking his way carefully through the debris, he counted seven dead technicians, including the one with his head torn off sitting at the communications console, the radio whistling in front of him like a tea kettle. Burton reached past the headless corpse and flicked a switch. The radio’s steady hiss died.
At least some of the electronics are still working, he thought. He moved to another work-station, found to his dismay it was a shattered mess of exposed circuit boards and broken plastic. He found the controls for the lights in the same condition.
“Shit,” he muttered.
Noise at the back of the truck spun him, flamethrower up and ready. There they stood, at the top of the ramp, a writhing mass of hunched reptilian bodies. The glow from their eyes lit the interior of the truck with a ghostly light. The sudden realization hit him. They waited. They waited until he’d boxed himself inside the truck before moving on him.
Clever.
Too da
mned clever.
Almost like they’d set a trap.
It was the last thought he would ever have.
A pile of them sprang through the air, leaping over the rubble and mobbing him like a pride of lions taking down a gazelle. He never had the slightest chance of getting off a shot with his flamethrower.
Station Nineteen
2:20 A.M.
Minaberry, Rogers, and the other soldier, Griffith, knew that Burton was dead. They had heard him scream once, and then an awful silence descended in which they could hear only muffled bumps and pounding noises coming from the trailer as the creatures presumably tore him apart.
Minaberry was near panic but Rogers remained unruffled. “We just sit tight until sunrise,” he said when the doctor asked him for the ten-thousandth time what they were going to do.
“What if they try to attack again en masse?”
“The flamethrower will keep them at bay.”
“Now we have only one,” complained Minaberry. “You should’ve had Burton leave his here with us when he went out to the truck.”
“One should be enough.”
“I am not so sure about that,” said Griffith, figuring now was the time to put in his two cents worth. “This place has got too many entry points to defend.”
He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder. “These folks blocked the stairs, which means they couldn’t hold the top floor.” He paced back and forth as he spoke.
“I’ve checked, and there’s a broken window in the office down the hall, one in the restroom down the hall from that, and one on the other side of the vestibule in the back by the cells. That’s too many points of entry spread over too many different locations in this building for us to cover effectively.”
“No it’s not,” Rogers countered. He indicated Griffith. “You can watch the front door.” He walked to the booking counter and picked up one of the shotguns and checked to see if it was loaded. “The professor can watch the back.” He tossed the gun at the pale man. Minaberry shrieked like a little girl as he fumbled to catch it.
“I can’t!” the astonished man sputtered. “I’ve never fired a weapon before in my life!”
“There’s nothing to it.” Rogers pointed to the barrel of the Remington in the skinny man’s hands. “Point that end at the chimeras and pull the trigger. You can’t miss. Not with a shotgun.” He paused, before adding snidely, “Not even you.”
He picked up the other shotgun and pumped it to chamber a shell. “Now post up.” He watched with satisfaction as Minaberry moved to obey, then turned to Griffith. “You can cover the front door and the first office in the front section of this hallway. I’ll be at the end of it watching the stairs and the bathroom.” He gave the soldier a reassuring smile. “All we have to do is wait.”
And hope those things don’t take this place in a rush, Griffith thought bitterly. He didn’t have any confidence that the three of them could hold this position against a superior force. They didn’t have enough ammo. The doctor would go jellyfish on them the first time the creatures came calling. That would cut their strength down to just two. Two! It was not enough to hold off an ungodly horde of who knows how many ravening, fast-moving, predatory animals.
But that was life in the government service. You went where they sent you and did what they told you to do. And if that meant dying, then so be it. Tough shit. Good luck. There it was. Griffith turned to keep watch on the front door, thinking, Ain’t this a bitch?
««—»»
Mootz and Love and Juanita had given up on retrieving the keys from the dead sergeant’s body. There was simply no way to reach him from their cell. If they’d had a mop, or a broom, or a length of wire, anything, they might have been able to achieve something, but the holding cells were as bare as the rest of the station, even more so. They’d never held anything but ill-fated human flotsam in the first place.
Mootz slumped dejectedly on the floor next to Love and Juanita. The kid sat on the bunk beside Vega. From time to time, they all glanced nervously at the broken window across the walkway from them, wondering when it would admit a pack of angry monsters.
The doctor appeared at the end of the hall clutching a shotgun. The kid stood up when he saw him. “Watch out, Dr. Frankenstein is packing heat.” He moved to the bars. “What you doin’ with that scattergun, you skinny bastard? Have things gone south on y’all?”
“Shut up!’ hissed Minaberry. He couldn’t take his eyes from the broken window. It looked huge to him, impossible to keep anything from coming through. “You idiots need to keep quiet.”
“Eat a dick, you pencil-necked geek,” Mootz snarled at him. “Come over to these bars and I’ll twist your head off and shit down the hole.”
“For God’s sake, keep your voices down,” the doctor whispered harshly.
Mootz and the kid settled back, muttering under their breath. After a minute they lapsed into silence. And that’s when they all heard it.
Tiffany’s voice, high, thin, and pleading. It drifted through the night, wavering on the hot breeze, and made everyone in the cell sit up.
“That’s Tiffany!” cried Juanita. Her eyes grew large and watery. “Oh my God! She is alive!”
Mootz smacked the bars with his hand, rattling the door. “You’ve gotta go get her, man.” His knuckles were white. Minaberry wouldn’t look at any of them. Outside, her voice kept up, a haunting cry, “Help! Help me, please! Somebody!”
“Listen,” moaned Juanita. “She needs help.”
Love looked at Minaberry solemnly. “You need to go get her.”
Minaberry shook his head. “Not on your life.” He didn’t reveal that he’d been the one to send her outside. He didn’t tell them about the pheromone he’d placed on her. He didn’t mention that she was an irresistible lure to the creatures. “I am not setting foot outside this building until sunrise.”
“You cowardly turd,” Mootz taunted him. The others joined in, heckling the scientist. “You can’t leave her out there!”
“You’ve got to help her!”
“She’ll die out there!’
“You are a piece of shit, man. You know that?”
Minaberry clutched the shotgun to his chest with one scrawny arm and waved his free hand at them frantically. “Be quiet, you fools! You are making too much noise!”
They increased their racket as soon as the words left his mouth. Their clamor became so great it drew Rogers. He strode into the hallway, barking, “What in the name of jumped-up Jiminy Cricket Christ is going on in here? Are you having a goddamned town meeting?”
They began jabbering at him to send someone out to save Tiffany, begging and pleading, making a big production out of it. The situation merely annoyed him. He’d been listening to the voice as well, but it didn’t bother him in the slightest. On the contrary, if that damned woman was still alive, Rogers was going to have to do something about it. Why didn’t the chimeras just kill her? They had become very unpredictable. No telling what they’d do next. He shouted the agitated prisoners down to silence and then said, in a quiet, icy voice, “You people don’t seem to get the picture.”
He drew his pistol and poked it through the bars. He aimed the barrel at Mootz, and quickly squeezed off a shot that took the prisoner square in the chest, hammering him back against the wall, an ugly red splotch blossoming on his orange tunic. The sound of the gun in the enclosed space was enormous. Smoke hung in the air. Love, Juanita, the kid, and Vega all froze, staring in stunned horror.
“I didn’t want to do that,” Rogers said. “I may need that bullet.”
He moved back from the bars, in case Love got any ideas and decided to get heroic. “No, I didn’t want to do that.” His blue eyes roamed the cell like the barrel of a gun, ghosting each occupant. “But your ceaseless bitching has now forced me to squander a valuable resource.” Those eyes were as cold as January snowflakes. “You’ve witnessed things that you were not meant to see. None of you can walk out of here.” His voice became as chil
ly as his face. “It’s in the interest of national security. It can’t be helped.”
He walked to the doorway and then paused and turned to Minaberry. “If they make any more noise, kill them.”
Minaberry looked unhappy. He didn’t want to kill anyone. Well, at least not directly. He nodded to show he understood and then leaned against the broken doorjamb with the shotgun cradled against his thin chest.
Outside, the forlorn voice continued to call.
Sewer Pipe
2:45 A.M.
Torres heard it too. It was that scaredy-cat blonde gal. She was outside, above him somewhere, no doubt frightened out of her mind, and calling for help. Her voice had a desperate edge to it that sliced through him like a boning knife. What in the hell was she doing outside? What was going on up there?
It had taken him a long time to reach the entrance to a large storm drain, four blocks from the station, traveling through a maze of pipes. Many times the pipes narrowed down to a width that he was unable to traverse and he was forced to backtrack and find another way.
Now he was staring at the storm drain above his head, wondering if he could fit his body through it, and if he did—what would he find up there?
He heard a rustling noise from the darkness behind him. He decided to take his chances up top. He jumped for the bars of the storm drain and caught them with his strong hands. Muscles bulging, he pulled himself up and twisted his shoulders sideways to slip through the bars. He reached out a hand and felt dust and gravel under his fingers. Pulling with his other arm he got his chest through the bars. Wriggling madly, he hauled his way out of the drain, twisting his hips, adjusting his center of gravity to finally pop his waist through. He found himself in the gutter of a deserted street.
Siege of Station 19 Page 10
