The Border

by Robert McCammon

  “What?”

  “They doesn’t care about us. They’ve found a—” Gorgon, he almost said. But he knew it was the truth. The Cyphers had sent out their own form of reconnaissance, searching the ruins of Denver for the enemy, and in this mall they had found one in human disguise who called himself Jack.

  “Found what?” the captain asked. Suddenly dark shapes appeared out of the rain and Major Fleming came through the doors with four other soldiers, all of them wearing hooded ponchos and all dripping wet.

  “Get these civilians back from here!” Fleming, his face strained and pallid, had nearly shouted it at Captain Walsh. “Away from this glass, now!”

  “Back! Move back everybody!” another of the soldiers was yelling. He was using his rifle, held sideways, as a tool to push several people away from the doors but the crush was too thick.

  Dave took hold of Ethan’s elbow. “Come on,” he said, “let’s move—”

  Ethan saw something coming through the rain. His guts knotted up, because though it was moving very fast he thought he recognized what it was.

  “It’s here,” he heard himself say, and Major Fleming spun around to look toward the parking lot, his eyes narrowed against the sphere’s glare.

  A thin black missile about twenty feet long plowed into the parking lot just to the left of the sphere. Chunks of concrete flew up into the air. A second missile came in and hit about ten feet to the left of that one, digging itself a small ragged-edged crater. A third and fourth missile sped in, hitting the parking lot so close to the doors that pieces of concrete cracked the glass and caused the crowd to fall back trailing shouts and screams.

  “Shit!” the major cried out. “What the—”

  He never got to finish that sentence, because in the next instant four thin-legged, glistening black spider-shapes, each as big as a pickup truck, scrabbled out of the rain pursued by machine-gun bullets from the watchtowers. They crashed through the doors and sent them flying, even as the crowd retreated and then turned to run. Dave pulled Ethan with him, almost picking the boy up under his arm. The major and the captain had their pistols out and the soldiers were backpedaling but firing their rifles as fast as they could. The Cypher spiders were unharmed by bullets. The claws at the ends of their legs left grooves in the tiles, and the multiple rows of sharp teeth in the crimson slashes of their mouths were searching for meat, if not Gorgon then human, for all now were at the mercy of the Cyphers.

  Which, Ethan realized as Dave pulled him away, was no mercy at all.

  “Let me go!” he said, and just that quickly he wrenched loose from Dave, found his footing, and stood before the spiders as they scuttled forward.

  “Come on! Don’t be a fool!” Dave shouted, still pulling at him, but Ethan would not be moved. The soldiers were still firing, using up clip after clip, and Ethan noted that before the slugs could hit little sparks of red jumped out of the creatures and seemed to either incinerate or evaporate the bullets. The Cypher spiders carried their own force fields with them.

  Two of the things were almost upon him, as the crowd and the soldiers drew back. Dave tried to pick Ethan up, but the boy fought free, and now Dave had to retreat too because it was certain death to stay where he was. Ethan remembered these things eating the Gorgon ship, and he recalled thinking that the claws and fangs could likely tear through concrete and metal. He heard Olivia screaming his name, and suddenly Major Fleming was beside him firing a .45, and Captain Walsh was on his other side firing a pistol, but the red sparks flared and jumped and there was no stopping these monsters.

  Ethan braced himself and thrust his right hand out, his palm aimed at the closest spider. He was his own weapon, his own force of destruction, and now in needing to destroy these things he felt the awesome power move and build within him from its secret place, only a matter of seconds, until he thought he himself would explode into flaming, bloody pieces.

  The air between them rippled, as with tremendous heat. A swarm of a thousand burning hornets shot out between his hand, and the spider he had targeted, and maybe no one else could see it, but to Ethan the thrust of deadly energy was clear.

  Every hornet was incinerated by the thing’s force field before any one of them could penetrate, and suddenly Ethan realized he was not yet strong enough to kill these things.

  They were upon him. The major had the back of his t-shirt and was pulling him away as Fleming emptied his clip, and Captain Walsh continued to fire as she scrambled back.

  In the crowd behind them, Burt Ratcoff felt a tremendous pain that began in his midsection and coursed through his arms and legs. He cried out in agony, a pain that made the tears burst from his eyes. He had a sudden vision of himself striding down Fifth Avenue in his life that used to be, happy to be alive, with his wife beside him and their son healthy and well and studying to be an insurance adjuster, and just that quickly the human being who had been Burt Ratcoff was gone and in its place stood a Gorgon-engineered weapon.

  The body burst into blue flame. The body elongated, the blue-burning clothes flying away as the people around him screamed and tried to put distance between them and a thin figure that was growing to be seven…eight…nine…ten feet tall.

  The burning, featureless giant strode forward as Ethan, Major Fleming and Captain Walsh retreated, and standing to one side of them it began to fling from its flaming hands blue spheres that exploded against the Cypher spiders’ force fields, sending blue and red sparks of energy spinning into the air. One of the spiders was overwhelmed and caught blue flame, and as it sizzled it began to turn in a tight circle of what might have been agony and panic, around and around, as the three others scrabbled past it.

  Ethan stood his ground, shaking off the major’s hand clasped to his shoulder. He tried again, summoning up power from a well he knew was full but that terrified him with its fearful depths. It was there when he needed it, and he needed it now. Sweat broke out on his face in an instant. He felt the surge of storms within him. From his fingers or from the palm of his hand—possibly from his entire body, he wasn’t sure—came thousands of the small, flaming bullet-shaped projectiles and what looked like jagged silver bolts of lightning. The force field around the spider he had targeted sparked a thousand times in two seconds and then was breached. As the creature advanced across the tiles between the remnants of a Brookstone and a Foot Locker, it blew apart into black fragments that smashed into the walls oozing ebony fluids.

  The burning blue giant had grown to twelve feet tall, as thin as a shadow, and was throwing fiery spheres past Ethan at the remaining two spider-shapes. Ethan felt no heat from them, but as they zipped past him with their soundless power, he felt the flesh crawl on his bones. One missed its spider target and punctured a hole with melting, dripping edges in the concrete wall next to the Build-A-Bear Workshop, a second, third, and fourth sizzled out in the creature’s force field, but the fifth got through and lit the thing up in blue fire. The first spider that had been hit was collapsing in a black puddle, making a tock…tock…tock noise like a machine running down.

  The fourth spider scrabbled toward Ethan; at the same time Cypher soldiers began to materialize through the walls.

  “Back! Get back!” Major Fleming was shouting to his own men. He didn’t need to issue the order twice. Captain Walsh was down on one knee emptying another pistol clip at the Cypher spider, but again the bullets were quickly incinerated. Ethan willed loose another burst of concentrated energy, which once more might have issued from the center of his body but was being directed to its target by his hand; he was aware of his runaway heartbeat, what seemed like a stream of heat flowing out of him to warp the air between himself and the spider-shape, and thousands more burning bullets and silver spears of lightning flew into the creature’s force-field. At the same time, one of the blue giant’s spheres penetrated and a dozen or more of Ethan’s flaming projectiles got through, and as the red maw opened to consume Ethan’s head, the monster burst into blue fire and then exploded into piec
es.

  Eight faceless Cypher soldiers had emerged from the walls. As one they fired their fleshy black weapons at the blue giant that had once been a human being. Fourteen orbs of white-hot flame hit the thin twelve-foot-tall figure at the same time, two missing the target and whirling over the heads of the Army soldiers, the civilians and Jack the Gorgon to blast holes through the mall’s ceiling.

  Ethan had little time to think, just to act. A swarm of the little fiery bullets and the silver bolts of energy crackled out to blow one, two, three and four Cypher soldiers to smoking shreds that smelled of grasshopper juice. Two of the white-hot orbs hissed over Ethan as he threw himself to the floor, and just that quickly he took aim with the weapon of mass destruction that his hand had become and destroyed the fifth, sixth, and seventh Cypher in spinning, burning fragments. The eighth turned, disappeared into a wall, and was gone.

  The blue giant staggered. Its flame was going out. Ethan saw the last of the blue fire flicker and go dark. Exposed there was a tall thin figure made of gray ash. With a sound like a quiet sigh, the ash collapsed into a pile, and that was the end of whoever and whatever the short bald dude had been.

  Back in the stunned crowd, among those who had crouched down on the floor to find whatever cover they could, Jefferson Jericho looked up at Vope, who had remained standing during this confrontation. Only Jefferson had seen the prickling of small black spikes and a yellow discoloration on Vope’s hands, as if the Gorgon wanted to join the fight but was constrained by his mission. Then the spikes were gone and the false flesh color returned, and Vope looked down at Jefferson Jericho with a faint sneer of derision at the earthman’s puny lack of courage.

  Ethan felt a wave of exhaustion pass over him. He sank to his knees. He heard behind him the confusion and terror of the crowd. A hand grasped his shoulder and helped him up, but his knees were weak, and he nearly toppled again.

  Olivia had come to help him. Behind her were Dave and a little further back Nikki. JayDee was limping forward on his rebar cane, and following close behind him was Hannah Grimes. The second burning Cypher spider was still, its body crisping away. The mall smelled of acrid burnt plastic and grasshopper juice. Major Fleming was approaching Ethan. Captain Walsh and three other soldiers were standing over the pile of ashes that had once been a human being.

  Olivia looked into Ethan’s face and suddenly drew back, her own face tightening, but to the credit of her courage she kept her hand fixed to his shoulder.

  “What is it?” he asked her, because he sensed that something about himself had further changed.

  She said, as matter-of-factly as she could, “Your left eye has turned silver.”

  TWENTY.

  IN THE HOLOCAUST THAT THE WORLD HAD BECOME, IN THE BATTLE between star-faring races that had begun before memory and might last into eternity, the city of Chicago had been reduced to ruins nearly two years ago but the battle lines were always shifting, and it was not ruins that the warring races fought over but territory. They had burned Chicago and most of its suburbs to ash and melted wreckage, the great buildings fallen, the streets pocked with blackened craters and covered with the stones and shattered glass of man’s creations, now lost to the constant warfare. It was the same all over this world, one of many that lay on the line of dispute. It would so forever be, the ravaging of planet after planet, some populated by higher forms of life and others just awakening to life in whatever bizarre form it might take to crawl from the slime of beginnings.

  The wreckage of Chicago lay under pouring rain from a low sky of ugly yellow, and on this grim morning the Gorgon and the Cypher ships battled in the turbulent air and their soldiers fought amid the fallen buildings, crushed cars, human skeletons, and the few remaining mutants hiding in their holes. Whatever there was to burn had already burned, in this city that had long ago known the tragedy of fire, and yet now the flames were red and blue and created by alien minds devoted to the study of destruction. Hundreds of Cypher soldiers moved through the gloom firing their fleshy blasters at furtive, sliding shapes, and then hundreds of small blue spheres emitting piercing shrieks came flying from an unknown source and with flaming whips tore the Cyphers into pieces that gushed brown fluid and oozed black intestines streaked with yellow and red. Above the battlefield, explosions flashed in the clouds. Burning Cypher ships came crashing down, some to explode themselves in the rubble and others to sink, hissing with heat, into the fetid, lifeless water of Lake Michigan.

  After one of the shrieking spheres had passed, five Cypher soldiers climbed from a crater near where the Willis Tower had stood before it was blasted to pieces by a Gorgon energy beam on the first day of their arrival. They drifted through the rain-swept ruins, ghosting in and out, their black and featureless heads swiveling back and forth in search of the quick reptilian movements of the enemy. The human kind could not understand the communication signals sent to these soldiers, or from where, or what these creatures truly were; it was beyond human knowledge, and thus as much magic as it was technology far advanced.

  The five soldiers were identified by a small red glyph on the lower right slope of their faceplates:

  It was a symbol of great honor and equally great prowess in battle, and though no human could fully understand its meaning the closest human language could decipher it would be First Born Of The Blessed Machine. The soldier who led them had one more addition to its glyph, a second crescent beneath the first, and the nearest meaning in the human language would be: Bringer Of Ignoble Death.

  Neither male nor female, neither truly born nor wholly constructed in the weapon pods, the First Born moved through the wet rubble with the careful stealth of ancient warriors. Behind their faceplates worked calculations, soundlessly and rapidly, in no mathematics that could be fathomed on Earth. Distant sensors sparked pinpoints of light on floating grids, marking the proximity of kindred forces and the despised enemy of all that was correct and true. Above them a huge battleship of that enemy emerged from the clouds and began to fire its destructive beams at another target on the ground. Explosions, dust, and debris plumed into the dirty air some leagues distant. The First Born moved on, seeking enemy contact and fully aware that their foes were masters of camouflage, had learned the art of becoming one with any surface that afforded a hiding place, and that this foe had also learned to trick the spatial sensors by projecting a multitude of false images.

  Through the rubble they went, silently calculating in their alien mathematics built on the geometrics of the tenth dimension. The First Born entered the dark hulk of a fallen building, where sheets of gold-colored glass had shattered on the stones. Human bones, skulls and ribcages lay scattered about, some bearing teeth marks. The First Born recognized them as the interior foundations of the denizens of this world. They did not know they were walking in what used to be an international bank, and underfoot were hundreds of pieces of paper currency from many nations of the world, now moldering in puddles of diseased rain.

  Deathbringer suddenly stood still. The creature was receiving a message from the high command. The other First Born stopped as well, standing motionless on a floor of broken tiles.

  The language was also mathematics. Behind the faceplate it pieced together an image of a burning blue giant throwing spheres of enemy fire at crawler weapons as seen through the viewpoint of a podmate…and then a denizen of this world attacking other podmates and destroying them with what seemed impossible ease.

  The orders came. The nearest proximation of human understanding would have been: Capture this specimen. High altitude tracker on station. Begin immediate deployment.

  This was surely a task to heighten the honor of the First Born of the Blessed Machine.

  Deathbringer’s faceplate grid showed a concentration of enemies at a measure of what would have been two hundred yards in human distance. The count of enemy soldiers might have had different root structures, but there appeared to be twenty of them.

  Therefore when the monsters erupted from the cracked gray wal
ls all around the First Born, exposing themselves as having been disguised by the stonework, Deathbringer was not caught unaware because this creature had seen the pulsing, wet red oval of the camouflage organ in many field dissections. It was a mystery yet to be conquered.

  They knew no fear, neither First Born nor the reptilian attackers with their scaly flesh of yellow banded with black or brown, or black banded with yellow and red, or brown banded with black and yellow, no two exactly alike. To an inhabitant of the earth this would have been a hypnotic beauty, as God might have created the serpent before cursing it to crawl on its belly after the Fall of Man. Yet their quick and slithering movements and the visage that was too close to that of a king cobra was terror beyond terror, and to be caught by the slitted red pupils in narrow eyes that never blinked was more than enough to paralyze a human being.

  The weapons of these soldiers were simple. They had been bred for this war. Beyond the claws, fangs, and speed to tear their enemy apart at close range, at long range some could spit spears of acid that would eat through any earthly material short of tungsten steel. Six of the twenty had been bred as creations that could extend their upper appendages a length of seven feet in human distance, and their claws would transmutate into any number of deadly implements according to the creature’s braincore.

  Instantly the First Born pressed back-to-back. They began to fire their double-barreled weapons as they spun in a rapid wheeling motion. They turned so fast they were ghostly imprints, nothing solid about them but the white-hot gouts of energy streaking out across what used to be a refined lobby of commerce, now a battleground where reptilian forms exploded into burning pieces.

  Still the enemy darted forward, diminished now by half their force. The spears of acid came sizzling through the air at the First Born. They blurred out almost as one, and yet acid hit a faceplate before all had displaced themselves. The one struck lost its distortion and vibrated back into focus, its faceplate being melted away and beneath it a sparking of red schematics. An elongated yellow-and-black arm with a spinning yellow spearhead for a hand pierced the chest and a black-and-brown-banded arm that ended in a dozen crimson spikes drove into the lower body and tore loose a slide of glistening black intestines. As the dying creature crumpled to its knees, its acid-burned head was ripped from the neck by the brute strength of a reptilian commander with a growth of three thorny spikes on each shoulder. The remaining four First Born blurred back in across the chamber behind their enemy. Their weapons cut apart another six of the hated foe. Four enemy soldiers were left, among them their commander. There was no retreat; all knew this was a battle to the death.