She found the strength to shake her head. “Not ... not many. Most of them are dead, the rest are dying. Their wounds ... God, I’ve never seen anything like it ...we can’t do anything for them.” She lowered her head, fighting the pain of a possible concussion. “Where’s Hunter?”
“He’s alive,” Brick responded as if that in itself were a miracle. “But he won’t be for long if we can’t put this thing down. They’re going to go head-to-head.”
“I know,” Bobbi Jo whispered, and together they ran for the side door; it was locked. Without words they loped as fast as possible to the front and it was Bobbi Jo who saw it first, Brick close behind. What happened next was chaotic—a glimmering black monstrosity holding the ravaged body of a soldier. The victim’s entrails hung long and black and glistening, trailing into the night as the thing gloated at the feast. The soldier bore little semblance to a human form: its arms were severed at midshaft, its trunk had been eviscerated, and its shattered head fell backward on a broken neck.
It sensed their presence, turned its hulking torso.
Dropping the soldier, it leaped forward, hurling its monstrous form across the compound, the long legs covering the distance with superhuman strength and speed.
Savagely raising the Barrett with a vicious scream, Bobbi Jo fired instantly and the night was rocked by the thunderous blast. Then Brick had dropped to a knee and targeted as the massive black form seemed to stop magically in midair, held suspended above the ground, before it landed solidly. And in a space of time that had no true measurement, both of Brick’s .454-caliber rounds hit it solidly, staggering it backward.
Not waiting to see the result of the shots, Bobbi Jo had cut loose with the Barrett, the .50 shells hurled thirty feet from her position as she pulled the trigger again and again, firing from the hip, each bullet flying true to hit the pectorals before it raised gorilla arms in front of its face and turned, running with long leaps that seemed to barely touch the ground. Brick had reloaded and his third round hit it squarely in the wedged back, propelling it forward. Roaring in rage, it staggered slightly as it rounded the corner, and the ex-marshal’s last bullet pulverized a foot-wide section of cement.
Already Bobbi Jo had speed-changed clips, chambering another of the five .50-caliber magazines. She expelled a hard breath and waited for Brick to rip the smoking brass cartridges out and insert two more from the bandoleer. Then he snapped it hard and nodded. She didn’t need more communication than that.
As they began to move forward a hand snatched her from the shoulder to pull her back. Brick whirled, prepared to fire from the hip before he recognized the flame-etched profile.
Bobbi Jo leaped into him. “Hunter!”
“Come on,” he whispered, “we can’t fight it like this.”
Instantly, wasting no time on preliminaries, he crept back down the wall and Bobbi Jo asked no questions, though she recognized a fullness that had erupted in her breast at the welcome sight of his face. They edged carefully around the corner, separated only a few steps, and closed on the open rear entrance.
“We’ve got to pull back,” Hunter whispered. But his eyes, constantly scanning, never looked at them. “If we try to fight it in the open, we’ll lose. We have to trap it somewhere and then open up on it with all we’ve got. If we can hit with enough heavy rounds in a short enough period of time, we can put it down.”
Despite the sweat that masked his face and plastered his ragged mane back over his head, Hunter appeared to be suffering little from exhaustion. His words were terse and his balance and poise perfect as he led them silently closer to the steel portal.
Brick’s hoarse voice reached forward.
“Where’s Chaney?” he gasped. “And the Jap? They were securing the motor pool and back fence.”
Turning her head briefly, Bobbi Jo stared at him. “Taylor, he’s dead. I saw him go down. And then Takakura went down but I don’t know if he’s dead.” She bent forward in a sharp surge of pain before shaking her head wearily. “I ... I don’t know where Chaney is.”
“Okay, this is how we’re gonna play it,” Hunter whispered, glancing inside the doorway to note the red glare of emergency lights. He looked at them. “I’m going out there to try to find anybody that’s still alive. Did you say Chaney and Takakura were at the back fence?”
“Yes.” Bobbi Jo nodded as she wiped sweat-plastered hair from her forehead.
“Good. All right, secure this door. It’s the only door that’s open and the rest are welded shut. I’ve checked.” He gave them a moment, but there were no objections.
“So give me ten minutes or until you see that thing coming again. Then you’ve got to shut and somehow bolt the door whether I’m back or not. The bolt is busted so you’ll have to somehow wedge it and keep firing to keep it away from a rush. Weld it shut if you can. And once the door’s shut, it stays shut. Get on the radio if you can find it and call for an emergency extraction . . .” He glanced at the Blackhawk—unmolested by the beast’s rage as if it did not understand the importance of the machine—before he looked at Brick. “Unless one of you can fly that thing.”
Bobbi Jo shook her head, drawing deep breaths.
“Not a chance in hell,” Brick rasped.
“That’s what I thought,” Hunter responded, revealing no trace of disappointment or fear as he moved away from the wall. “Look sharp and use your ears. And don’t forget to keep checking the roof up there for silhouettes. It might climb up the other side and attack you from above. Look quick.”
“You’d better take this.” Brick handed him the Weatherby and bandoleer. “You got two fresh rounds. They hurt him, but it ain’t gonna put him down for the count.”
Without another word or expression, Hunter loped quickly and lightly across the yard with silent, tiger-like leaps. He did not slow down until he reached the motor pool, engulfed in darkness.
Chapter 20
Hazy lights came slowly into focus, and Dr. Arthur Hamilton stared, unknowing. He saw a white ... ceiling? ... Slender white rods ... Fluorescent lights ... Tiles ... Black pinholes in chalky white ...
The laboratory!
It came to him.
“What the – ?” he shouted, rolling painfully to a knee and reflexively reaching for something, anything, for balance. His knee and shoe crunched fragments of broken plastic, glass, paper, and other debris. He crouched like a boxer, staring in a daze. Speechless, reviewing the situation as he could re-member it before he lost consciousness, he was appalled at the carnage, understanding with raw emotion the consequences of what lay before him.
Hunter had survived!
“My God,” he whispered. “My God ...”
He turned toward the back of the laboratory. “Come out, you cowardly fools!” he called, not troubling to disguise his anger. “Come out before I come back there and drag you out!”
A moment of silence passed.
Then Emma Strait’s black-haired head peeked timidly around the corner. A male and female assistant looked out from behind her shoulders, holding onto Emma as if she were their security. Emma’s face was fearful.
Dr. Hamilton regained enough emotional control to hesitate, drawing breath. He would have to ignore the stiffness in his neck, the strange lightness in his step. Understanding that Hunter had apparently struck him across the neck, he motioned with forgiveness for Emma to step forward.
Then, to further ease her fear, he leaned back heavily on a computer terminal and rubbed his neck. And as she watched him so closely, he made a smooth display of interpreting this event as a tragic but expected occurrence. His act was polished brilliance, even without words: a madman was in their midst, and he had done this ...
Not appearing so agitated as to seem unhinged, he looked back at her and nodded. “Come, Emma, we must nevertheless deal with this unfortunate situation. Nothing can be gained by securing yourselves in the bunker. Althou
gh I’m sure it was a prudent measure at the time. Yes, we are fortunate, very fortunate, to be alive.”
On an impulse that he wished he could have avoided he glanced at the tube and saw that the creature’s coffin was shattered by rifle fire, the body disintegrated. Nothing remained but a smoking mass of liquefied flesh and starkly visible bone. Hamilton could not conceal the bitter grimace that twisted his face. When he glanced back at Emma, she had stopped in stride.
“Oh, it is nothing, Emma.” He gestured, trying to maintain a smooth manner. He tried to close his mind to the horror of all his great effort, now destroyed by this base wild man, this nobody, this tracker who would not surrender to superior forces. “I ... I was simply wondering how much damage our complex had suffered in this ... this gunfight ... which I seemed to have missed entirely.”
“You ... you missed it?” she asked.
“Oh, yes.” Hamilton made a great display of rubbing his neck: you must make her sympathetic. “I’m sure you and the others were secured safely in the bunker—I’m glad that I included it in the budget—but I was out here among them, trying to reason with them.
“The intruders, apparently renegades from this hunting party, surreptitiously stole in here to either injure us or acquire something. The guards caught them, and I attempted to negotiate, in order to avoid senseless injury. Then one of them—this madman called Hunter—struck me unconscious. I suppose I am fortunate to be alive.” He grimaced. “Yes, I need medical attention, but now is not the time. A cursory examination will have to suffice as long as we remain under his attack.”
Emma, followed closely by the rest, had cautiously moved closer to him. But Hamilton attempted to make it seem of no importance, as if saying, “Of course you would stand beside me. Why not? Have I not protected you thus far? Am I not your colleague? Your teacher?”
He gestured to indicate that he had no doubt of their loyalty. “Now we must discover if any of the data have been stolen.”
Bending to indicate pain beyond what he truly felt, Hamilton continued, “Please run a file check, the times and user, to determine what has been examined in the past three hours. Then do a physical inventory of the vault, and determine if any materials have been removed.”
Unmoving, they stared.
“Well, come on!” Hamilton used his authoritative tone, knowing that by now they had been properly prepared; their suspicions were dulled, their fears assuaged by his honest appearance of his own pain and shock. He added more angrily, “We have work to do!”
Swarming like worker bees who knew their responsibilities without instruction and were willing to drive themselves to death in order to fulfill their roles, the crew assumed their shattered work stations. Some of the terminals were still smoking, and the ten-man technical team immediately initiated undamaged backup systems housed in adjoining rooms.
Hamilton’s last orders were all but lost in the activity as he turned to Emma.
“Please contact Mr. Dixon on the NSA satellite immediately,” he instructed calmly. Then, as an afterthought: “And, just in case, have someone lock the entrance to this level. I believe it is time to secure the vault.”
***
Hunter moved stealthily and silently, knowing the creature would be forced to track by scent in this chaos. Frowning, angry and fearless now, he’d make it work.
Hesitating beside the body of a dead soldier, he reached out and touched the man’s gaping wound, feeling compassion. Then he rubbed the blood on his boots and continued moving, crossing the path of a dozen more slain soldiers, repeating the procedure, mixing his scent with the scent of the dead.
It was impossible to remain in the darkness because blazing orange light from the inferno of the tanker and disintegrating shed threw dancing diagonal shadows across the motor pool. So he kept loping, going high over the roofs of trucks and descending to the ground again.
He held the Weatherby close as he threaded a path through an army of dead men. But he saw nothing, heard nothing, sensed nothing. Then, heart flaming, he heard a low moan and whirled, searching with narrow eyes.
In the distance, perhaps thirty feet away, he saw a hand weakly raised in the air and loped easily toward it, all the while alert to any movement or sound beside or behind him.
It was a young soldier. Almost a boy.
Hunter almost groaned at the sight, and knelt beside him.
A slashing blow had torn away part of the boy’s chest. Blood had matted in the wound, concealing its depth. He grasped Hunter’s hand weakly, and Hunter knew he could do nothing for him. The creature’s blow had torn away ribs, leaving the chest cavity exposed; it was a matter of moments.
Gasping, the boy spoke.
“Did we ...get it?”
Hunter grimaced. “Yeah, soldier. You got it.”
There was almost a smile, then the boy took another breath and was gone. Slowly, Hunter stood, staring down. His rage was channeled now, and he stood like a monument of judgment. It would die for this, he swore to himself. As surely as he lived, it would die.
Hunter gazed about, knowing exactly what had happened, though he had seen none of it.
It had chosen its terrain well, using their fear, and they had fallen into the trap. If he had been here, he was certain, this never would have happened. At least not on this scale. But they had allowed themselves to get caught up in the chase. Had lacked the patience to pick their terrain more carefully and wait with infinite patience until the prey was close and vulnerable. He shook his head.
Here, with shadow and light crossing like a chessboard, it had been able to move only a step before it disappeared, only to re-emerge from complete blackness to kill with a blow before moving on, vanishing again into darkness, stalking.
Such a loss ...
It was a battlefield, a graveyard of dead men that might have won, but for want of his direction. He cursed himself silently as he heard a sound.
Whirling, he had the Weatherby centered.
Takakura ...
The Japanese commander was holding his chest, sword in hand. And his face was slack, sweating, while he stared down over the boy, as if the soldier were somehow different from the multitude surrounding him, or if he somehow epitomized the score of dead. Then the Japanese simply shook his head, bowing wearily to lean on the hood of a Humvee.
“Come on,” Hunter said, not wasting time on questions. He put his arm under Takakura s shoulder, supporting him, and they began to move.
“We’ve got to get inside the building before it finds us. Which it’s going to do fast enough.”
Takakura, a true soldier, merely frowned at his injury. He asked no questions as he stumbled alongside Hunter, his sword dragging a narrow trail in the dust. Hunter knew the Japanese was badly wounded but never asked how or where; this was no time.
A cacophony of explosions erupted in an area near the shed and Hunter froze, lifting his head. He saw blasts of gunfire and heard heated shouts from the glowing devastation. The gun blasts continued, broken only by short pauses of cursing before they resumed once more.
Hunter glimpsed a distant silhouetted figure moving back and forth and saw it raise a rifle, firing two rounds that were followed by a heated curse that carried across the compound. In the next moment the figure ran to the right and vanished.
Hunter leaned Takakura against the front grill of a troop carrier. The big truck easily supported the Japanese, although Takakura’s head was bent forward in exhaustion and shock. Hunter pushed him back and spoke close to his face.
“Takakura!” Hunter pointed to the installation. “Can you make it to the building? Bobbi Jo and Brick are at the side door! All you have to do is get to the building! It’s not that far! Do you understand me!”
A slow nod. “Hai.”
Grimacing stoically, he pushed Hunter’s hand aside and staggered forward. Hunter moved toward the place where he had
seen the gunfire. He glanced back once to see Takakura moving slowly and slightly off balance, but with determination. It might take him longer to make it alone, but Hunter believed he would. And, although Takakura was easy prey in his wounded condition, Hunter didn’t think that the creature was an immediate danger to him. No, he was confident that the man at the far end of the motor pool, the one firing the gun and raging at the night, had sighted the thing and was trying to finish the fight.
Hunter had a good suspicion who it was before he ever reached the liquefied remains of the tanker.
Even 150 feet away, the heat was blistering, and Hunter glanced to the far right to see Chaney raise the Weatherby against a shoulder, firing twice. Obviously getting more skilled with the double-barreled rifle, Chaney had ejected the spent rounds and inserted two more in the blink of an eye. As quickly as Chaney had performed the action, he might as well have been firing a semiautomatic.
“Chaney!” Hunter yelled from behind the protection of a Humvee. As enraged as Chaney was, Hunter was taking no chances that he might accidentally shoot him.
Chaney paused before he called out, “Hunter?”
Instantly Hunter was out from behind the Humvee running forward, searching the area where Chaney had been shooting. And they began the conversation long before they stood face-to-face, Hunter alert to everything, close shadows on the right, distant shadows beyond flame on the left. He raised an arm briefly against the tidal wave of heat pouring from the ruined tanker and shed.
“What do you have?” he shouted to Chaney above the roaring inferno.
“I near tripped over the thing!” Chaney yelled back. “Somebody finally hurt it! I don’t know who! It was on the ground and I just shot it point-blank!”
Hunter knew before he even asked. “Did you kill it?”
“Hell, no!” Chaney glared at him, sweating. Hunter saw that he had used about a third of the cartridges on the bandoleer. “But I sure got it mad.” He grimaced, catching his breath. “I hit it again as it got up off the ground and then it was gone! I chased it across the compound, hittin’ it every chance I got! Then it vanished over here! I got a glimpse of it a second ago and sent two over there!” He pointed to the far side of the flames, shook his head. “Haven’t seen it since!”
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