"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 other 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 fir 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?"
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 rag
e, 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?" lie 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 remember 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. Although 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.
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