Lucy. Goddamn, she made him angry. This new development about the aliens was completely beyond the—
He caught himself. Stood up straighter. Wiped sweat off his brow. And he realized he wouldn’t be this angry if he didn’t like her.
Bravo, said the Paula Brown still sitting in the kitchen of his memory as a chocolate doughnut lay on the table before her. Bravo for being honest with yourself, for once.
Kelton wiped more sweat off his face and took a deep breath. His heart finally slowed down. His ears popped, and he was relieved when the tinnitus ring from fire fight stopped. He now heard water dripping in another room.
Be honest with yourself.
If he was honest with himself, then he knew his anger at Lucy was unfair. No matter what she had done in her lab, she hadn’t intended any of this. That was obvious from the way she reacted to Dr. Robertson’s news. And now she’d been abducted for her crimes. Nobody deserved that.
Kelton raised the laser rifle and went through the classroom’s back door.
***
The door led to a narrow hallway—windowless and therefore completely dark. He found another door, which led to another dark hallway. It made two left turns, and he lost his way.
He spent the next few moments bumping into walls. Broken concrete crunched under every step. So much for stealth. He held still and listened for attackers.
A voice murmured on the other side of the wall, “. . . do not have the mental capacity…” A man’s voice. But he spoke so softly that Kelton couldn’t understand any more.
He began moving again. The debris crunched under his feet as loudly as the rancor beast’s chewing in Return of the Jedi. (1983, he silently recited. Four Oscar nominations.)
As he neared a door emitting some light around its cracks, he saw the laser rifle shaking in his grip like he had Parkinson’s. So he searched his brain for additional Star Wars trivia, hoping it would calm him. But he could recall none.
Shit, I’m so fried. So scared.
The door opened into a regular hallway lined with classroom doors. He had emerged between the open entrances of two bathrooms. The one on his right was marked BOYS. A blue light reflected off the wall Kelton could see. The man’s voice, now silent, probably came from there.
Lucy’s scream shattered the quiet. It echoed from the bathroom, so much worse than the gun blasts at close range.
Kelton charged in.
He spotted Lucy, leaning against a wall. An alien man and woman knelt on either side of her, jamming their fingers into her ears.
The man looked up as he entered, so Kelton lasered him first. The blue bolt passed through the man’s chest and smashed a hole in the wall.
The woman lunged at him. Kelton shot her through the neck and decapitated her.
Lucy stared at him, face slack with surprise.
Kelton shrugged. “Sorry for the delay.”
Then he saw Inspector Harper leaning against another wall. He was alive, but blood covered his entire jaw where he’d been bleeding from his mouth. The last time he saw Harper, he and Inspector Clay had been drinking coffee at the station. What happened to him? What happened to them?
“Oh, Harper. Your face!”
Harper pointed at him.
What? No. Not at me. He’s pointing behind—
Strong hands seized Kelton’s shoulders and spun him around. He stood face-to-face with another alien man, identical to the one he just shot.
The man hissed, baring rows of fangs. He hurled Kelton across the room.
Chapter 26
STARK
Stark chased the captain down the hallway, but the big son of a bitch disappeared into a stairwell before he could draw a bead on him. Trying to keep himself from hyperventilating—and failing utterly—Stark followed him.
As soon as he started down the stairs, he slowed to a walk. Cap liked surprising his prey.
Down, down…
The similarities to the sinkhole in Iraq weren’t lost on him. Aliens, zombies, darkness, and the homicidal captain. Only this time he wasn’t rappelling.
Oh, yeah, and then there’s the matter of treason, you dumbshit. Your treason.
But would killing Colonel Edwards be ruled as treason in a court martial? War was replete with instances where soldiers blindly followed orders, only to later be prosecuted as criminals. Not that he really cared. He wasn’t here for his country; he was here to protect his daughter from a zombie apocalypse. He’d gladly go to jail for that. In the end, he felt justified in killing Colonel Edwards. And he would feel equally justified when he killed the captain.
The stairwell emptied out on the school’s first floor. A child’s old homework papers and the slime littered a dim hallway. He was on the opposite side of the building from where he entered. Unless he could find a back door, he had one hell of a fight ahead of him to escape.
The school pressed him down like a great, dark weight.
(at the bottom of the hole with the rotten egg smell, with the zombies raining from above)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder didn’t go away with time. It was only concealed with mental scabs. He read that on the Internet, and it felt true. In the bad days after he returned from his tour of duty and General Claiborne forbade him from seeking treatment—because he would have to tell somebody about the aliens, after all—Dr. Google was his only solace.
(the black passage through the rock, zombie faces lit by gun flashes, screaming)
Stark realized he’d stopped moving. He stood there with his eyes closed. Come on. He needed to screw his head on straight, or he would die here.
(down here, down in hell)
And then Min would die, eventually. His daughter deserved better than that.
A slime-covered water fountain hung crookedly from a wall. Stark took a deep breath as he stared at it.
Get yourself together.
He continued onward.
Despite the school’s outside flood lights, he still couldn’t see shit. Cap could be lurking in any one of these shadows. Stark paused to shine his shotgun’s flashlight into an open doorway on his left.
He illuminated an alien man’s smiling face.
The alien’s hand snapped out like a cobra and pushed the shotgun’s muzzle away. Stark pulled the trigger too late and fired harmlessly into the ceiling.
The creature retained his grip on the barrel and wrenched the gun out of his hands.
(death, death)
Now Stark drew his sidearm, but he already knew it was futile. The alien was too fast. In an eyeblink, he plucked the gun from Stark and dropped it on the floor.
Stark punched his face. It was like hitting steel.
Run!
But the captain had successfully used a knife against one of these things, so maybe he could, too. Stark backed up a step and drew his combat knife—and immediately knew he’d made another mistake.
This alien male wasn’t like the others. Oh, he looked the same, with the dark hair, white skin, and dark suit. But they must have come in different varieties, like the zombies. Some were fast; some were slow. Some flew; some didn’t.
Before he could slash out with the knife, the alien seized his wrist in one hand and his throat in the other.
The world darkened. A buzzing grew in his ears.
Goodbye, Min.
***
The next thing he knew, he was on his hands and knees, coughing and straining for air. His throat hurt like he’d had his windpipe surgically removed and then reinserted.
The alien lay beside him on the floor with a bullet hole in his temple.
Mal Levolent, the actor, stood over him. He still trained his pistol on the alien. The barrel wobbled slightly as his hand shook. “Are you okay?”
Stark coughed. “No.” He tried swallowing and decided he better not try it again. He nodded at the actor. “Thanks.”
He retrieved his two guns and combat knife from the floor. The flashlight attached to the shotgun still worked, so he shone it down the
hallway in front of them.
“Let’s go.”
I’m coming for you, he thought as he led the way. He wasn’t sure whom he addressed. The captain, his daughter, and himself all flashed through his mind. Maybe all of them.
In his imagination, he stood at the precipice of the Iraqi sink hole. His destiny waited below him in hell. He shouted down to it—I’m coming for you!—and jumped in.
***
The stench of rotten eggs wafted in from a branching hallway, so Stark followed it. He remembered the odor well. If this was like the last time, then it came from the alien space craft.
He kept his shotgun raised, ready to fire. Mal followed close behind, his pistol pointed at the ceiling like a cop in an ’80s TV show. That stance would slow the actor down if he had to fire in a hurry, but Stark didn’t have time to train him.
The smell strengthened as they passed through an open doorway marked CAFETERIA. A noise echoed in from the kitchen. Whump. Whump. It sounded meaty, like someone boxing a side of beef.
Stark entered the kitchen and stopped. At first, he didn’t understand what he saw.
All the food preparation tables and serving counters had been shoved against the walls. This made room for a freestanding swimming pool, waist-high and about a dozen feet across. Rock composed its sides. It was probably what remained of the meteorite that brought the aliens here, reconfigured for some other purpose. Cloudy slime filled it to the brim. Stark thought the smell probably came from that liquid, but he didn’t want to get close enough to make sure. The odor was so powerful that his eyes watered.
Beyond the pool, the captain straddled an alien man. It looked like they were having sex. Cap held the creature by the throat and slammed his own head into the man’s face. Whump. When he head-butted him a second time—whump—the alien’s nose spurted orange blood across Cap’s forehead.
Cap looked up at the newcomers and smiled. He let go of his dead or unconscious victim and stood.
Just like in Iraq.
Stark remembered how the captain attacked them with his combat knife, his naked body streaked in orange muck. He looked much the same now, covered in alien and human blood. Past and present folded together.
Stark cleared his sore throat and tried to focus. “End of the road, Captain.”
Beside him, Mal Levolent allowed his pistol to drop to his side. He took a wobbling step backward. Maybe he was about to faint.
Useless. Stark mentally dismissed him to fully concentrate on the captain. From this far away, the unarmed soldier shouldn’t pose any threat, but Stark knew better. Cap was one wily, ferocious beast, and he might still surprise him. This is it. This is where somebody dies.
The captain grinned. “Sergeant, I’m so glad you’re here. My investigations—” He turned to the alien on the floor. “Hey, hey! I’m getting to it.” He looked at Stark and rolled his eyes. “Chatty Cathy, over here.”
The outburst was so startling that Stark couldn’t help lowering his gun a few inches.
“What I was trying to say is that my research subjects here—” Cap paused to stomp the alien. Without looking, he twisted his foot like he was grinding out a cigarette. “They’ve revealed that they’re not too dissimilar to us. Two major points of comparison. One, they don’t enjoy having their spinal cords removed from their assholes.” Here, he made a fist and forcefully slid his other hand up the forearm to pantomime the operation. “And also, their forward operating bases come with a self-destruct mechanism. Theirs just happens to be in the form of a lever in this vat of goo.” He pointed at the pool of slime. “When activated, it’ll critically overload their ship’s power supply.”
Stark felt like he was going to faint from the rotten-egg stench. Did he just say he’s going to blow it up? Or is he spouting nonsense? He remembered how Cap babbled in an alien language as they hauled him out of the sink hole.
“What do you say, Stark? Roshambo ya for it?” As he said roshambo, he flashed the three Rock-Paper-Scissors hand motions.
Stark lined up the shotgun sights with Cap’s chest. “I’m pretty sure I’m gonna pick gun.”
His heart thudded. Time stretched out to become a tunnel between him and the captain. He should pull the trigger and end this. But he knew from the bunching muscles in Cap’s shoulders what the crazy bastard intended to do.
Stark had only a second to decide.
Let him. Let him do it.
He held his fire.
The captain shrugged. “More for me.” He leapt into the vat and splashed white slime everywhere.
Time sped up again. The actor covered his mouth. “To clarify, he’s going to destroy the hive we’re standing in?”
“Looks that way.”
A second later, Cap surfaced in the vat. His hair and part of his upper lip had melted away, and he was covered in his own blood.
He screamed something, but it was impossible to understand him with his face disintegrating. As they watched, bloody holes opened in his cheeks like paper burning in a campfire. The skin dripped off his face.
Cap sunk into the vat and disappeared.
How much time do we have before this place blows up?
Stark fled the room. He hoped the actor was smart enough to follow.
Chapter 27
LUCY
As she watched Kelton and the Eros twin grapple, Lucy fought to regain control of her body. She still felt like she’d been up for three days straight, courtesy of the telepathic remote control Eros used to bring her here.
Kelton screamed as the alien man hurled him across the room. He collided face-first with a wall and collapsed.
Meanwhile, another of those longhaired female aliens entered the room. The police detective—Kelton had called him Harper—stood up and tried to punch her. She caught his arm and twisted it.
Lucy looked at the wooden handle poking out from the blankets. Gathering all her strength, she heaved herself to her feet.
The Eros twin picked up Kelton and slammed him against the wall again. He wrapped his hand around Kelton’s throat and began to squeeze.
Kelton raised his laser rifle and managed to fire. The alien diverted the muzzle at the last instant, so the shot only grazed his face. A flap of cheek fell open like the side of a carved turkey, exposing black skull.
The alien knocked the rifle out of Kelton’s hand and resumed choking him.
Have to save him. Have to save somebody.
Black stars appeared behind Lucy’s eyes as she staggered to the axe. Please let it be an axe.
It was. Lucy pulled it out from the blankets and turned around. It felt like it weighed a million pounds.
Harper still wrestled the alien woman. She hissed and bared her fangs as he pinned her against a wall. She bit his arm.
Kelton’s face turned purple. He used both hands against the one choking him, but it was no use. His feet dangled a couple inches off the floor as the alien pushed him farther up the wall.
He was going to die because of her. One more death on her conscience.
No.
Lucy swung the axe. She didn’t have the strength to lift it completely overhead, but her blow was powerful enough. The blade connected with the alien’s head. It let go of Kelton, and they both fell to the floor.
Seeing the orange blood pouring from the fresh scalp wound gave Lucy the strength for another swing. This time, she hit its chest. Orange blood spurted onto the floor.
Kelton crawled out of the way as she swung again. This time, the blade sank into the alien’s neck. The head came partially off the body to hang by a thread of gristle.
One more blow, and the Eros twin’s head rolled away.
Kelton aimed his laser rifle behind her and fired. The alien woman screamed and fell over dead.
Silence.
Lucy, Kelton, and Harper blinked at each other. The men looked exhausted. Shocked to be alive, maybe.
Lucy closed her eyes and swayed on her feet. But she didn’t drop the axe. She vowed she would never drop
it. She wouldn’t put it down until she corrected this entire, awful nightmare she and Alice created. Repaying Kelton for saving her life just now was only the beginning.
She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “Glad you’re all right.”
“You, too.”
Harper kicked the dead woman on the floor. “Bitch,” he said, but his lack of a tongue made it come out as bish. He stooped to retrieve a handgun, and then spun the cylinder to count the remaining bullets. He nodded that he was ready.
Kelton was distracted rubbing his sore neck, so Lucy decided to take the lead. Maybe she should take the lead for now on. This was her mess, after all.
She assumed a firmer grip on the axe. “We can go now.”
She marched out of the bathroom.
***
She didn’t know where the alien power source was, but it was time to start thinking about escape. For now, she had to protect her friends. If she was smart enough to get Nilbog into this predicament, then she might be smart enough to get Nilbog out of it—but only later, in safety.
They found a stairwell and descended. Lucy still felt clumsy and exhausted. She had to concentrate to avoid going down what Grandpa used to call the fast way.
Thinking of him made her want to give up, so she pushed those thoughts from her mind. Why hadn’t she seen Grandma yet? She was buried today, after all.
Don’t think about it. Focus.
An alien man leapt at her from a classroom doorway. Lucy reflexively used her axe handle to push it away.
She cried out when she got a look at his face. Although he wore the same dark suit as the others, the similarities ended there. This Eros twin didn’t wear human skin. His face was a cross between an insect and a reptile—black scales interleaved with white carapace.
Kelton and Harper raised their guns, but she was already charging him. She felt like a mama bear protecting her cubs. She swung her axe straight overhead and down, like when she used to split wood at Grandpa’s mountain cabin.
Plan 9- Official Movie Novelization Page 25