Recoil was greater than he’d anticipated and he lowered the aim quickly, striking both guards, the equipment around them, and the floor, losing a number of rounds into the ceiling before he completely adjusted. But when he turned and retreated, breathlessly selecting a new line of attack, he had acclimated. Not as bad as a 30.30, the M-16 nevertheless became quickly unmanageable on fully auto if a firm grip wasn’t applied to the stock. With no backup magazines, Hunter realized he would have to conserve rounds.
Raging, firing, cursing, and roaring, Brick was holding his own against the surviving four, and Hunter located him by the distinctive sound of the rifle. It was a louder, booming blast that by comparison made the M-16’s sound weak and wispy. Then the shooting stopped—stopped all at once to a ringing silence—and Hunter froze.
He had been halfway to his intended location when somehow, somewhere far above they heard the report of a tremendous explosion, followed by a subterranean vibration that rattled the floor and walls and ceiling.
Hunter knew it had begun.
He had to get up top.
He had to reach Bobbi Jo.
***
“No,” Bobbi Jo whispered as the tanker exploded, engulfing a third of the compound in flame.
It had finally happened, as she knew it would. The wild and erratic rifle fire of the troops had found the gasoline tank, and now the compound roared with the inferno. Night rushed over her head, sucked into a firestorm that created its own wind.
She saw probably thirty troops fully aflame, rushing blindly around the motor pool. Other soldiers grabbed them and threw them to the ground only to have their arms and legs light up from the rain of fire still spiraling from the sky. She shook her head, shocked at the carnage.
Never had she seen anything like this. This was the end of the world, a war fought in hell with the devil among them. They would die tonight, she thought. Every one of them. They would die.
Her attention was snapped awake as she saw a Herculean form striding, neither fast nor slow, from behind a Humvee, moving for the back of a soldier assisting a burn victim. She didn’t need any more to recognize that Goliath-like profile—the shaggy squared head with gray hair sweeping back—and her eye was at the scope. She had instantly flicked off the safety, sighting solid.
She knew the range by heart: 120 yards.
Point-of-aim contact.
It raised wide hands when it was ten feet away from the unaware victim ...
Bobbi Jo fired.
The incredible blast of the Barrett blinded her for a split second and she blinked. A moment later she saw the unwounded soldier already on his feet, firing his rifle at the creature, prostrate beside the Humvee. The burn victim had ceased moving, lay still in the flame.
The next explosion, from generators overheated by the burning tanker, rocked the mountains around them. Thousands of gallons of gasoline stored in the shed for emergencies went up with a small nuclear-shaped mushroom cloud of fire that scorched her face though she was three hundred yards away. The roar of the explosion continued on and on into the distant cold night, reverberating from mountain to mountain, over the world.
Bobbi Jo shouted at the secondary concussion, a breathtaking shock wave that shook the building. Blasted-out windows and rocketing antennas clattered behind her as they fell.
She was instantly up and searching, flicking on starlight illumination to acquisition the creature in the flame-lit night. She didn’t find it beside the Humvee where it had fallen. It wasn’t finishing off the wounded from the explosions. It wasn’t slaughtering the last group of unwounded soldiers huddled tightly in the middle of the compound. Struck by quick fear she swung the scope, searching desperately for that terrifying—
“No!” she screamed.
It landed with solid intent on the cab of a truck less than twenty feet away and she fired. But even as the Barrett discharged she knew she had missed and set her shoulder tight against the butt, forgoing the scope; at this range she didn’t need it.
Ten soldiers stationed on the roof opened up with her, a cascade of lead pouring defiantly down, but it leaped forward and at the ground launched itself powerfully forward, running full speed—a wild bull with the speed of a cheetah—to smash with awesome force into the steel door securing the rear of the building. Following its lightning-quick strides they tracked a devastating deluge of lead, centering on its mutated form until it burst the door from its hinges and bolts and vanished.
Soldiers on the roof, already electrified with panic at the horrifying slaughter in the motor pool, erupted in confused panic and contradictory orders. Then Maddox, fear and desperation strengthening his spine, bellowed for them to lay down a cross fire with the M-60’s—heavy-caliber, fully automatic machine guns that were the major small arms of the Vietnam era—on the single door leading to the roof.
They moved with the efficiency of action inspired by life-and-death situations. In quick time they had the door covered. If it could walk through that concentrated barrage, there would be no stopping it. Ever.
Crouching behind the short wall that hid her profile from the ground, Bobbi Jo reviewed what she knew about it, tried to remember what Hunter had told her. It was difficult to think but she concentrated, closing her eyes briefly to regain control. A few breaths, and she analyzed what it had done . . .
Would it simply come up the stairs?
Did it ever attack as they anticipated?
Flashing through every confrontation that she’d suffered with the creature, she knew that only one thing was indisputable. It never attacked like you anticipated.
“Not this time, no,” she whispered, running to the south side of the building, searching down. Nothing. She ran to the east, behind the cubicle that housed the stairway, to the warning cries of soldiers. They were simultaneously screaming at her, ten voices bellowing the same thing, colliding with each other for supremacy; “Bobbijo! Get out of the way! If it breaks the door we’ll have to shoot you, too!”
Grimacing with physical exhaustion and ravaged nerves, she searched over the edge. Nothing.
“Get out of the way, Bobbi!” a soldier bellowed with concern and rage.
Sweat pouring, Bobbijo ran for the north side as—
She saw it emerge, backlit by roaring flame that reached hundreds of feet into the air, and it did not see her. And she knew; it had simply leaped, as before, clearing the twenty feet to land on the edge of the roof. It landed hulking and bent, broad bowed head glaring at the backs of those who’d been deceived. As she stopped and spun the Barrett, sighting from the hip, it noticed her and turned its head slowly.
Snarled.
What happened next could only happen to those who knew they would surely die, here and now, if they did not reach deep within, to that place where even professional soldiers rarely went, for that last measure of courage.
Bobbi Jo fired and the impact was high in its torso, slamming it back against the wall. Mentally she calculated how many rounds remained in the magazine: two. She fired the next as it leaped, and she hit it again, center chest contact. It staggered a step before it fell onto its face, folding slowly to its knees, a hand rising with a growl. Bobbi Jo dropped the near-empty clip and did a tactical reload, slamming in a new magazine of five rounds.
The rest of the platoon, well aware of its surprise attack by now and having adjusted to swing aim, opened up together. And at the irritating impacts, bruised and burned and somehow bloodied, the creature rose and ran toward Bobbi Jo.
Standing solid, Bobbi Jo frowned: there was nothing else to do,
She fired, teeth emerging in a snarl, the six-foot flame almost joining them past the long barrel. It roared, grunted, staggered, and she raised aim, hitting it again as the Barrett lit the rooftop with its devastating muzzle blast. She hit its chest, heart, placed another round to the heart, saw her last bullet tear off a chunk of its neck.
<
br /> It stood, staggered off balance, as if in shock. Apparently deeply wounded, broken, it twisted slightly away from her, placing a monsters hand against its savaged throat.
Frowning—with nowhere to retreat to, anyway—Bobbi Jo dropped the clip and inserted another in less than a second, racking the six-inch bolt almost for the sheer pleasure of letting it know what was coming. But her action didn’t get its attention. It staggered away, clutching its throat, groaning.
“Hey!” she shouted. “We ain’t finished!”
The thing staggered toward the platoon.
“Bobbi Jo!” they screamed together. “Get out of the way!”
It closed on them.
They were in each other’s line of fire. The platoon couldn’t shoot the creature without also shooting her, and she couldn’t open up with the Barrett with them so close in front of it.
Ten more steps and it would be on them.
She didn’t have time to run to the sides.
She read the panic on their faces: God help me, they have to be able to shoot. . .
Twisting her head, she glared over the edge of the roof, saw a twenty-foot drop to a rusty brown gazebo above the kitchen door. Trash cans littered the tiny area. Only for a tenth of a second did she consider the possibility of a safe descent. Then, Barrett in hand, she placed the other hand on the waist-high wall and vaulted into the night.
“Kill it!” she screamed as she was claimed by the fall.
Behind her the sky was instantly lit by strobe and roars and wounded rage. It continued as white flashed past her and she struck something hard that shattered, surrendering, and closed.
She struck again, harder.
She lay there, hair across her face.
Then darkness.
Clenching his teeth with heated emotion and adrenaline surging in his system, Hunter narrowly suppressed the impulse to rush, knowing it would be a mistake. Then, moving carefully but wasting no time, he rose and continued forward.
As quickly as the gunfire had halted it began again, Brick viciously returning as good as he got, and then Hunter had come up behind them, more worried about Brick’s unceasing wall of lead than the two soldiers yet unaware of his presence.
Just as Hunter edged carefully around a concrete pillar he glimpsed Brick’s flattop-gray image—an old, big guy with teeth clenched in rage firing a fully automatic rifle with beefy arms—erupt from behind an overturned desk. Ducking back instantly Hunter evaded the cascading round that ripped steel and plastic and buried his section of the room in rifle fire. He waited until the barrage broke, then dropped the barrel of the M-16 around the edge and fired.
One guard went down as the other turned, raising aim. Hunter ducked back again as cement was reduced to chalk, and then Brick’s enraged voice cut through the booming chaos.
“Vis a vous, darlin’!”
Hunter didn’t look but knew who had fired first. Then he peeked out to see Brick standing coldly over the last guard. Massacred by a long stream of 7.62’s fired from what Hunter now recognized as a cut down AK-47, the guard was unmoving. Brick dropped a banana clip and withdrew another from his vest, racking the slide. When he looked at Hunter, his face held no remorse, no emotion.
“I think we got ‘em all,” the big man said.
Even so, Hunter knew what he had said more by vision than sound because he was temporarily deafened. He shook his head a moment and dropped the clip from the M-16, pausing to remove a bandoleer from one of the dead guards that had another six full clips. He inserted a full thirty-round mag and racked the bolt, rising as Brick approached carrying the Weatherby. The big man snapped the breech shut as another explosion rocked the laboratory.
“They started without us.” Brick looked up, his voice low and controlled. “We’d better kick in and join the party.”
“Yeah,” Hunter mumbled, moving away quickly. He opened the door of the vault—a refrigerated, lead-reinforced chamber about twenty by twenty—and walked inside. In reality, it was simply a large freezer, and nitrogen-cooled mist rushed into the brightly lit room as he searched through the cold white atmosphere.
“I don’t think I’d go in there without one of them blue suits, kid.” Brick stood at a respectful distance, watching. “I heard everything, know the score. And we can take ‘em down without the serum. There’s enough proof, or there will be, once this is over. Come on,” he added anxiously, “we’re missing the fireworks.”
Ignoring Brick’s plea, Hunter located the serum module and spun the smoothly designed cylinder until he saw it: HD-66. It was surprisingly slim, a plastic bag filled to the top with an amber liquid. In appearance it was not unlike a saline bag used to rehydrate hospital patients, and Hunter slipped it in a small black canvas bag as he crossed the lab, moving for the elevator. They had used the ventilation shaft to descend, but they’d make it public when they re-emerged.
“You got anything else to do?” Brick shouted.
Frowning menacingly, Hunter walked toward the cylinder.
“Just one thing,” he said.
He stopped directly in front of it and fired the M-16 from the base of the magnificent cylindrical sarcophagus to the crest and down again. Glowing green phosphorescence exploded into the electromagnetic field and the copper coils erupted violently with electrical discharge.
The proto-human body hung for a moment before its great weight completely disintegrated the glass coffin. Hunter held aim, continued firing until the entire atmosphere was heated by the holocaust and the body pitched forward in an ages-overdue death.
It was shredded by the unceasing assault before it crashed into the copper and exploded instantly into flames, ignited by the spiraling electrical surge loosed by the short-circuited wiring.
Merciless, Hunter watched the body consumed by flames.
Turned away.
“Let’s go,” he said coldly.
Shocked at the carnage, Brick turned with him.
“Jesus, Hunter,” he whispered.
Knowing it was likely their emergence would go unnoticed as the fight raged aboveground, Hunter speed-reviewed everything he had just learned about the creature. That it had once been a man was of no use; what it had been and what it had become were as night and day. He was already familiar with its enhanced healing ability. Only the revelation that it had a life span over ten times that of man had been new, and that had no bearing on the battle.
The elevator doors opened to a night already torn with flame and smoke and colliding sounds of rifle fire. Soldiers sprinted chaotically through the blackness and, somewhere in the distance, the louder roar of something huge surrendered to an inferno. Hunter felt a brief moment of panic.
But you have what it wants ... it will come after you.
Use it ...
Brick was at the door, almost filling it with his bulk. He pressed his back pressed against the frame as he glared outside, turned his slag face to Hunter. “Can’t see jack in all this smoke!” he coughed. “The thing musta’ knocked out the power! Look, I’m gonna partner up with Chaney if I can find him in this mess! Where’re you gonna be?”
Mounting stairs that led to the roof three at a time, Hunter called back, “I’m going high to get a visual! If I can get its attention, I think I can lure it away from the complex!”
Brick barreled into the night as Hunter turned on the stairs, ascending quickly as the howls and cries of the wounded and dying followed him.
***
Stunned almost into unconsciousness, Bobbi Jo rolled slowly across something flat and hard before realizing it was a section of tin. Blindly reorienting, she reached out and felt for the Barrett, found a section of severed steel.
With a groan that emerged as a curse, she brutally forced herself to a knee. The shock of plummeting through the overhang had numbed her entire body. She knew she might have numerous broken bones or oth
er serious injuries, but was thankful that for now the volcanic adrenaline would prevent her from feeling them.
Acclimating to the reduced light, she found the Barrett and attempted to lift it, but failed.
Taking a deep breath she looked around and saw that no one else had made the jump. The roof above was silent while the grounds on the far side of the building seemed to reverberate with chaotic cries and panicked howls. Gritting her teeth, she slung the heavy sniper rifle from her shoulder, poised to fire from the hip, and racked the bolt to chamber a round.
Instantly she was moving at a fast walk, uncertain of her injuries. But she found that she could move well enough, and rounded a corner to see the storage shed in back fully ablaze.
From skills honed in a thousand training missions, she felt her load-bearing vest for the extra five clips and confirmed they were still in place. She reached the back of the building and boldly stood in the open, searching coldly for the humped silhouette. She saw nothing but scores of wounded, some with their limbs torn from sockets and rolling in abysmal pain, others clutching huge empty holes in their body where the clawed hand had struck a fiendish blow.
Eyes narrowing, she searched, but it was not there. Nor was it on the roof. But it was somewhere close; the German shepherds were frantically howling and barking, each of them confused by terror and pain and the alien creature that strode with demoniacal power and wrath among them, leaving devastation and death in its wake.
A large figure came around the far end of the complex and she swung the Barrett, finger tightening hard to—
Brick saw her outlined against the raging flame of the shed and waved hard, signaling. She ran as hard as her bruised body would allow, painfully halting before him as he gasped, “I think it may have gone ...inside.” He breathed hard a moment, face contorted with the effort. “How many still alive?”
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