Darius turned in a quick circle to check for alternate entrances. There were a few small, circular windows, but they weren’t even large enough for Cassandra to slip through, let alone a Banshee or an adult human. “We’d better check those other doors,” he suggested, nodding to the nearest of the two remaining doors visible from the living room. He walked over and opened the first one to find what looked to be a bathroom.
Lisa opened the second door to reveal more pillows and furs. “It’s a linen closet,” she said, shaking her head.
“Not a bedroom?” Blake asked. “Where are we supposed to sleep?”
“I guess that’s what all those pillows are for,” Darius said, nodding to the pile on the floor of the living room. “Shared sleeping quarters.” With the Banshees attacking every night, that made a certain amount of sense. Privacy gave way to security.
“Well, I guess we can relax, then,” Blake said. “Slick is right. No scratches on the door means those sons of vixes haven’t ever made it this far.”
Gatticus nodded in agreement, but then abruptly stopped himself, as if something had just occurred to him.
“What?” Lisa demanded.
“Well...” he trailed off and his gaze fell to the floor. He spent a moment studying the dirty wooden floorboards.
“What is it?” Lisa asked again.
“The doors are not damaged, but that might be because they have been replaced.” He nodded to the floor. “That would explain the bloodstains.”
“Bloodstains...?” Blake said.
Suddenly Darius saw the dirty floorboards with new eyes. They only looked dirty because they were splotched and darkened with blood.
“We’re grakked,” Cassandra said.
Chapter 19
“Cass, language...” Darius intoned.
“Sorry. So now will you give me a weapon?”
An image flashed through Darius’s head: Cassandra desperately flailing a sword in front of an advancing Banshee.
“No,” he replied. “You’ll stay in there.” He pointed to the empty weapons locker once more.
Cassandra’s eyes narrowed at that.
“Here, kid,” Blake said, and handed her his sword.
“Hey!” Darius said.
Blake flashed a grin and shrugged. “She’s got a right to bear arms. It’s in the constitution.”
“Grak the constitution! We’re not even on Earth, and that document is probably lying under a pile of rubble somewhere!”
Cassandra tied the sword and belt around her waist and smiled at Blake. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” he replied.
Darius glared at him, but decided to drop it. Maybe he was right. Maybe Cassandra would be better off having some way to defend herself.
Silence fell, and they stood around listening to the distant reports of weapons’ fire and the chilling shrieks of Phantoms.
“Why do they do that?” Cassandra asked.
“Probably to scare the kak out of us,” Blake said.
“No,” Gatticus replied. “They do it to confuse us. Banshees can throw their voices to make it sound like they are coming from far away when they are near, or to sound like they are in front of you, when they are actually sneaking up from behind.”
“Fantastic,” Blake drawled. “So those distant screams...”
“Could be right outside our door,” Gatticus replied, and they all turned to stare at the door.
“What about Ghouls?” Lisa asked in a quiet voice. “We haven’t seen them yet. Or have we?”
“They look very similar,” Gatticus replied, “but they are larger and stronger, with longer legs. They do not scream like Banshees, and they are more comfortable walking on two legs than six. They are somewhat slower than Banshees as a result, but they can jump twenty feet, straight up, to pounce on their prey from above.”
Blake glanced up and poked the ceiling with his spear, drawing a solid thunk from the material. “Concrete,” he said, nodding appreciatively. “Hopefully that means we can focus our defense on the door.”
“What if they get in on the floor below ours?” Darius asked, tapping the wooden floorboards with his boot.
“They might not get in at all,” Gatticus replied. “The bloodstains on the floor do not appear to be fresh.”
Darius blew out a breath. “Good.” He walked over to the nearest window and peered out into the night. The town sprawled to all sides of them, circular windows gleaming like silver dollars in the sides of stone and concrete structures. Most buildings were only one or two stories, which gave Darius a clear view over their rooftops, all the way out to the wall—which was unfortunately only about a block away.
Up on the wall he saw people standing and firing down, muzzle flashes from their weapons peppering the night. The wall itself was even higher than his third-story vantage point, concealing whatever hordes of aliens might be lurking on the other side.
“That wall’s pretty high,” Darius said, turning from the window to address the others—only to find them already peering out the other windows. “Looks like they’re too high for Ghouls to jump over... right, Gatticus?”
Gatticus nodded without looking away from his window. “Yes, but they could still climb.”
Darius looked back to his window and studied the sheer sides of the walls. He couldn’t tell from this distance if there were any gaps for handholds, but then he remembered how the Banshees they’d encountered had clung to the walls and floor of the Deliverance like spiders, without the need for mag boots or gravity. If they could do that, then they might not need handholds to climb.
“What are those guys doing down there...” Cassandra asked.
“Down where?” Blake replied.
“By the doors,” Cassandra said, and pointed out her window.
Darius saw what she was talking about. There were at least fifty people packed in a tight formation at the end of the street running by in front of them. Those people were guarding a black wrought iron gate that looked like it had been taken straight out of a medieval castle.
“Are they expecting something to come through?” Lisa asked.
Darius couldn’t imagine any creature breaking through that bare-handed; it was hard to tell from the distance, but given the size of the gate—at least three stories high—Darius assumed the bars of the gate had to be very thick. Surely even Phantoms couldn’t claw through that. Ripping through a quarter inch of metal plating on a door was one thing, but doing it with two or three-inch thick metal bars would be a lot more difficult.
“They’d need some kind of machinery to get through that,” Darius decided. He nodded to Gatticus. “You said they don’t use weapons to hunt us. Do they use anything else? Like... I don’t know, some kind of battering ram?”
“Perhaps,” Gatticus replied.
“Look...” Lisa said. “Something’s happening down there.”
She was right. The ranks at the gate were shuffling their feet. The tips of their spears waved, gleaming wedges of gold in the moonlight. The front line in the formation dropped to their knees and raised those spears at an angle toward the gate. The row behind them did the same thing, while the back three rows took a few steps back and raised rifles to their shoulders.
A split second later, a throaty roar split the air, followed by a ground-shaking thunder of heavy footsteps, approaching fast.
In the distance beyond the walls, the titanic trees rustled impossibly, branches and leaves sketching jagged black shapes against the golden circle of the rising moon. Winged creatures took flight, wings flailing and screeching as they disappeared into the sky.
“What is that?” Cassandra asked as the thunder of heavy footsteps drew near, and the rustling of the trees became even more violent. This time it was close enough to make the concrete walls of the building shudder and the wooden floor groan.
“That sounds a lot bigger than a Phantom,” Blake put in.
Then it burst from the trees, sprinting on two legs to reach the wall. Its head
was visible even above the wall—a massive horned and armored thing with a gaping mouth.
A shout went up from the people on the wall and everyone redirected and intensified their fire, aiming for the charging beast.
It looked like some kind of humanoid dinosaur to Darius, with two long, lanky arms and giant hands, which it used to swat away incoming laser bolts as if they were flies. It screamed continuously, no doubt in agony from those white-hot bolts of energy. As it neared the gate, the beast ducked its bony head and poured on a final burst of speed. The rearmost ranks of the warriors standing behind the gate opened fire, shooting through the gaps with a blinding tirade of crackling laser bolts. They were desperate, heedless of the risk that a shot would glance off the bars and hit one of them. The monster screamed piteously under the barrage, but it didn’t stop coming.
A split second later, it hit, and the gate flew open with a ringing bang! The gate collapsed on broken hinges, and the monster carried on with its momentum, plowing straight through both lines of spearmen. It careened through the three lines of riflemen as well, and dozens of people went flying. Some of them got kicked so high into the air that they took several seconds to fall back down. They went up screaming and flailing and came back down the same way—until they hit the ground with ominous thuds and fell silent.
The remaining men scattered between the buildings, and the monster carried on at a more leisurely pace. It stumbled in a circle, its mouth gaping at an odd angle. Four giant black eyes blinked, and wide slits in the sides of its neck flared with billowing snorts of hot white steam. It looked oddly lost and confused, somehow pitiable, as if it hadn’t meant to come here at all.
Then the men on the walls turned and fired down on the beast while the remaining riflemen on the ground fired up. It thrashed and screamed in time to each burning white laser bolt. Long arms flailed desperately and the monster lashed out to sweep people off the wall. They fell screaming to the streets and rooftops below, and the density of fire quickly diminished. The beast reached out again, more leisurely this time, and scooped some of the remaining people up in giant hands, only to dump them into its gaping maw and swallow them hole.
A loud shrishhh sounded and two bright flares lit up the night as a pair of rockets leapt out toward the creature. They hit and exploded with a flash of light and thunderous boom.
In response to that, the creature screamed so loudly and in such a sharp register that Darius had to clap his hands to his ears.
There came another two flares of light and another explosion, and the beast fell over with a ground-shaking boom that put the rockets to shame. The monster just lay there motionless, a silent, smoking mountain of charred meat. A cheer went up from the wall—
But it was short-lived.
People crumpled left and right, soundlessly, and for no apparent reason, as if their throats had all been simultaneously cut.
Anxious murmurs bubbled up from the people on the ground, and someone called out—“Ghouls!”
“Where are they?” Lisa asked. “I don’t see anything.”
“Look again,” Gatticus said.
That was when Darius saw it: shadows flickering on the walls, flowing down them like water. His heart thundered in his chest. The Phantoms were inside!
All but a scattered few of the town’s guardsmen were dead. They weren’t even firing anymore, but maybe that was because they couldn’t see the Phantoms to shoot at them.
“We need to get out of here,” Blake said.
“And get picked off on the street?” Lisa demanded. She shook her head vigorously. “Maybe they won’t come inside. Maybe they won’t know we’re here.”
A stampede of booted footsteps sounded from the street below, followed by a roar of collective voices, and Darius saw a horde of humans and aliens—hundreds of them—flooding down every street, their swords and spears flashing with golden slivers of moonlight.
The flowing shadows reached the bottom of the wall and rushed toward the townspeople in a blurry mass. The townspeople roared again, stomping their feet and banging their shields with their swords.
The distant screams of Banshees added to the tumult. Or maybe not so distant... Darius thought, remembering what Gatticus had said about them throwing their voices.
Just before the camouflaged Phantoms reached the assembled masses of spearmen and swordsmen, fully half of the blurry shapes leapt up and sailed over their heads. People called out in alarm, and then the Phantoms fell upon them and their voices were drowned out by the muffled sound of swords and claws striking flesh. Soon after that, wails of terror and agony rose from the crowds below.
Thankfully they were too far away and it was too dark for them to see much, but even so, Darius could still recall vividly what the Phantoms had done to the crew of the Deliverance. If that was any indication, then these people were in the process of being disemboweled and dismembered.
“This happens every night?” Lisa asked. “How is this town still standing?”
Gatticus shook his head. “Something must be different tonight. They are not observing sustainable hunting practices.”
“I’ll say,” Blake snorted.
Thud. The sound was close.
“That didn’t come from outside,” Lisa whispered.
Everyone turned from the windows to stare at the door.
Darius traded a look with Blake and pointed to one side of the door. The other man nodded and they crept toward it together.
“Dad...!” Cassandra said, and latched onto his arm, using her weight to hold him back. “Don’t.”
Thud. They all froze. The sound was close, but it wasn’t coming from their door.
Then came the muffled sound of a baby crying, trickling to their ears from across the hall. Nothing happened. For a long moment, all they heard were the baby’s cries.
Then came the sound of claws raking on wood, splintering it, and a woman screamed: “Help! Someone help me! I have a baby!”
The scraping, splintering sound intensified, and Darius traded a horrified look with Blake.
“We have to help her!” Lisa said in an over-loud whisper. She drew her sword with a scrape of sharpened steel, and ran by them to reach the door. Her heedless footsteps were too loud, rocking and creaking loose floorboards as she went.
Thud. The door shivered, and the wooden beams barring it rattled.
Chapter 20
The scratching at the door began a split second later. Lisa sheathed her sword and ran to pick up her spear. All four of them stood in a line behind the door with their spears pointed at it.
Across the hall the baby continued to cry while his mother screamed for help. Darius gritted his teeth and steeled himself against her pleas. There was nothing they could do.
“We have to do something,” Lisa said again. Their door shivered and shook under the assault of alien claws.
“Forget about it, Blondie,” Blake replied. “We’ll be lucky to make it through this ourselves.”
Ragged splinters appeared, bulging along the inside of their door.
Darius’s heart raced in his chest and he tightened his grip on his spear.
“Dad?” He felt Cassandra’s hand on his arm.
Darius’s whole body went cold, and he rounded on her with a scowl. “Get inside the closet, Cass! Now!”
The scratching at the door intensified, and Cassandra stared in horror at the door, her face as pale as freshly-fallen snow.
“Cass!” he bellowed. “Snap out of it!”
She nodded once, quickly, and then ran for the nearest of the three open doors—the bathroom.
As soon as he saw her shut herself inside, he turned back to the door. It was already shredded. As he watched, long gray claws flashed through the door over and over again, until a splintered hole appeared and an entire, muscular brown arm reached through—brown, the exact color of the wooden door. That arm reached up, feeling around blindly for the heavy wooden beams barring the door.
Blake roared and jabbed h
is spear into the arm. A gout of black blood spurted out, and the Phantom let out a high-pitched scream. The creature withdrew its arm from the hole in the door. A moment later, the gray claws reappeared, scratching at the splintered wood around the edges of the hole to make it wider.
Once the hole was big enough for a small child to climb through, the arm reappeared. Gatticus stabbed it this time, and drew blood once more. The alien shrieked again, but this time it didn’t withdraw; it grabbed the spear and ripped it out of Gatticus’s hands, wrenching him off his feet in the process.
The spear went clattering down the hallway, and a giant alien head appeared in the hole, grinning with a wide mouth full of six-inch gray teeth. Darius was reminded of the pug-like faces of the Banshees, with their four squinting black eyes, but this face was slightly different. It was the face of their bigger, uglier, longer-toothed cousins—the Ghouls.
“Fek off!” Blake screamed and thrust his spear at the creature’s face. It ducked out of the way and grabbed his spear. The wooden handle squealed against Blake’s palms as he fought to hold onto the spear, but he only ended up getting dragged along with it toward the door.
Darius and Lisa both stabbed the creature with their spears before Blake lost his grip entirely, or came within reach of the Ghoul, but the Ghoul grabbed their weapons in its free hands, dragging them both in closer as it tried to take their weapons. Lisa lost her grip almost immediately, and her spear flew away down the corridor beyond the door, clattering as it went. Then a second hand grabbed Darius’s and Blake’s weapons, but before the Ghoul could yank their spears away, too, Gatticus ran in with his sword drawn and stabbed the Ghoul right in its grinning mouth.
The alien roared in pain and let go of their spears. It clapped three hands to its giant mouth to staunch the torrent of black blood bubbling from its curling gray lips. Blake and Darius backpedaled quickly, breathing hard.
“Kak, that was close,” Blake said.
The Ghoul ducked away, and another one appeared in its place. This one had to double over to peer through their door, and its head was as big as a boulder. Four giant black eyes the size of Cassandra’s fists squinted at them through the door, and the alien gave a low snarl.
Broken Worlds- The Complete Series Page 12