Cowboys and Aliens

by Joan D. Vinge

  Both men were knocked from their horses by the collision, flying off in different directions as the alien went down with them.

  But compared to the two men, the monster seemed barely to register the shock of the collision or its landing. It struggled to its feet again, turning its wrath and its enormous taloned arm toward the pindab to take its revenge.

  Black Knife saw his spear lying nearby and caught it up. He ran at the sky monster and drove the point through its clawed hand, burying the spear deeply in the ground before the talons could be driven through the pindab’s heart . . . repaying his blood debt to the man.

  The sky monster writhed and struggled, trying to pull free, until suddenly another spear pierced it through the slit in its chest. The monster slumped to the ground, finally dead.

  Black Knife looked up to see who—

  The pindah leader jerked the spear he held out of the dead monster’s chest, and looked at Black Knife. The man’s blue eyes were no longer on fire with hatred for him, but shining with satisfaction. Their eyes met in understanding at last, and now Black Knife fully understood the will of the gods. The sky monsters were not impossible to defeat . . . but only if the pindah and his own warriors fought against their common enemy, as if they truly were one people. . . .

  The warriors and the other pindah who had witnessed what they had done looked around at one another. Their own expressions were changing as they finally saw a monster die, and the reason for it; their desperation and helpless anger began to turn back into resolution and courage. They split up and rode away in twos and threes, working as one, to turn the battle against an enemy that had thought they had nothing to fear.

  “GODDAMMIT,” HUNT MUTTERED to the others still trapped with him behind the berm. “Look at that! There’s enough of us—we gotta do something!” Because they’d been among the first riders into the canyon, they’d been among the first to lose their horses and weapons to the aliens Jake had tried to warn them about. For once, Jake’s silver tongue had failed to do something justice. . . . Or maybe they just plain hadn’t believed him.

  “Do what?” Bronc said irritably, his hands pressing his injured leg. “We got nothin’.” Bronc didn’t even have a cigar on him, but he did have a point . . . and he had the wound to prove it. Any time one of them had tried to make a move—to grab a horse or even a rifle—he’d been targeted by an alien weapon, or nearly cut down by crossfire from guns and arrows. And every time the berm took another hit, or the brush around it was incinerated, they were left with less of the protection that was barely covering their asses.

  There was an alien demon standing near them right now, not twenty feet away. Jake was right, these things couldn’t see for shit. But there was nothing wrong with the demons’ hearing. If they made a move on this lone empty-handed one, Hunt figured that would be the last move any of them made.

  “I got an idea. . . .” Bull said. The others watched in sudden apprehension as he groped inside his shirt and pulled out a stick of dynamite.

  “Where’d you get that?” Hunt asked, not asking what he’d been saving it for.

  “Where d’you think?” Bull grinned as he fished in his shirt pocket, removing a piece of fuse cord and a match. He took out the knife he always carried in his boot. The others said nothing, afraid to speak, as Bull set the fuse and tied the stick of dynamite to his knife with extra cord. He struck the match against his stubbled cheek, and lit the fuse.

  Before Hunt or Bronc could even form words, he was up out of the ditch, running at the alien. He leaped onto its back as it started to turn, and sank the knife into its neck, or what passed for one, beneath the carapace that shielded its head. He looked back at them in triumph—for the split second before the dynamite went off, and they both disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.

  The others covered their heads as the explosion swept over the berm. When they raised their heads again, there was nothing recognizable left to see.

  “Vaya con Dios. . . .” Bronc murmured, crossing himself. “Idiota.”

  “Amen to that.” Hunt pushed cautiously to his feet. “Come on,” he said, offering Bronc a hand up. “Battle’s not over yet—let’s get in it. Ain’t neither of us was born to die in bed. . . .”

  EMMETT WATCHED THE battle spreading out below; his breath caught every time he saw a human fighter go down, or the hulking form of another alien monster. He’d read stories about heroes, about men like his grandpa—even stories about men who fought monsters.

  But to see it with his own eyes: the men who fell covered in blood . . . to hear their cries of pain . . . the earsplitting sound of weapons-fire, the horrible screeching of the aliens; to smell the stench of black powder smoke and burning vegetation. . . . It was nothing like the stories. Nothing at all.

  His eyes stung as he remembered the times his grandfather had ridden off with the deputies, leaving Emmett behind because it was too dangerous, saying that he was too young. Always trying to protect him from the truth . . . a truth too awful for a child to bear.

  But did Grandpa really think he was such a kid that he hadn’t understood what words like that meant—that he didn’t understand that one day his grandfather might not come home . . . that he’d be left all alone?

  He’d rather have gone with him a hundred times, endured all the hardships, witnessed all the horrors, than to wait and wait at home, never knowing whether this would be the time Grandpa didn’t come back—

  Emmett didn’t know if the tears that blurred his vision were from grief or from anger. He wiped his eyes clear and turned his head. As he did the dog, lying beside him, suddenly got to its feet and began to growl. Emmett lowered the spyglass, following the direction of its stare. Oh, no—

  One of the aliens, searching just like he was, was climbing up the rocks below him.

  Emmett stuffed the scope into his shirt and put his arms around the dog, trying to pull it back down. “Quiet!” he whispered frantically.

  But the alien looked up at the sound and spotted them; it fired a light-weapon, shattering the boulder near Emmett as he and the dog scattered in different directions.

  Emmett scrambled down the back of the ridge, searching for a place to hide. He saw a small, narrow cleft in the twisted mass of rocks and squeezed into it, pulling his feet up. Holding his breath in the sudden silence, he tried to tell if the alien had followed him. Please God, he thought, as memories from the riverboat filled his eyes to brimming again, don’t let it get me, please, please. . . .

  He cried out in surprise as the monster’s face appeared right in front of him and tried to force its way in between the stones, its jaws snapping savagely.

  Emmett shrank back against the rocks behind him, even as he realized the head was too big to force its way further in. He let out a sob of fear, more than relief, as images of being trapped in the riverboat overlaid his sight . . . the demon that had almost killed him, but had killed Preacher Meacham instead.

  The alien’s chest opened, and its rubbery secondary arms began to unfold, reaching into the crevice to grab him, and drag him out—

  “Be a man,” Mr. Dolarhyde had said to him. He’d been nothing but a scared kid the last time, forgetting he even had his knife; and because of that, the preacher had died trying to save him. . . .

  Dammit, he’d been through this before. This time he was all alone . . . but he wasn’t a helpless baby. This time he knew what he had to do—

  As the grasping fingers caught in his clothing, his own hands dropped to the sheath on his belt and pulled out the Bowie knife. As the monster began to drag him from the crevice he launched himself at it, the cry in his throat turning to fury as his hands drove the knife into the exposed place between the alien’s forearms.

  The alien jerked back with a hideous shriek, dragging him with it.

  And then it fell to its knees, its head drooping forward. Its arms released him, as it slowly toppled over backwards.

  Emmett rolled off of it and crouched on the ground beside it, gaspi
ng with disbelief. The knife Mr. Dolarhyde had given him protruded from the alien’s chest, driven in up to its hilt, with green blood seeping out around it. . . . The thing was dead; he’d killed it.

  Emmett sat back, stunned, as the dog found him again, and began to lick his face.

  BY THE TIME Emmett was back on his watchman’s perch, he could see that something down on the field had changed, as profoundly as his own life just had up here in the rocks. The humans were gaining ground; Apaches and white men were fighting side by side, but in small groups now. He watched Black Knife and two other men taking on a single alien—saw one of the riders go down, as the second man leaped from his horse onto the alien’s back, slamming a war club into its skull. As it fell, Black Knife thrust his spear through what passed for its heart.

  All the aliens were beginning to fall back now, breaking away toward the shelter of their fortress-ship—scrabbling up the canyon side to reenter the ports above, because they were cut off from reaching the hidden entrance below. Shouts of victory from human throats reached Emmett’s ears, another sound of battle he’d never heard before, but one that made him blink and smile.

  He turned the spyglass toward the tunnel where he’d been waiting to see the human captives being led to freedom. Still no sign of them. . . . His smile fell away; he turned back to watch the battle.

  DOWN ON THE field, Doc moved on from patching up another injured man. He pulled his pistol, cocking it, as he approached a wounded alien writhing in the dirt. He hesitated, thinking about life and death . . . picturing Maria’s face. . . . “Hold on,” he said, looking down at the alien. “I wanted to give you something before you go—”

  He fired his pistol into the thing twice, but it still thrashed on the ground, shrilling and screeching.

  Standing well out if its reach, Doc smiled grimly. “Don’t worry, plenty more where that came from—” Taking more care with his aim, he fired the pistol until the hammer clicked on the empty chamber, and the alien had stopped moving, for good.

  “I got a perfect spot on my wall for you. . . .” He studied its hideous-looking head as he reloaded his pistol. A faint smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “I’ll bet you’re probably handsome, for your kind, huh?”

  He looked up, as an eerie deep thrumming filled the air, coming from the direction of the alien ship. My God, he thought. It was getting ready to leave—

  DEEP INSIDE THE entrails of the alien ship, Ella stopped moving as she felt the vibration and heard the whine begin all around her, as the ship’s departure sequence engaged, building up power. It was happening already: The ship was getting ready to leave.

  So soon—? She had been afraid the humans fighting outside would be overwhelmed by the sheer strength of their enemies and killed before they ever saw what they had to see. . . . That they had to stand and fight together—believe that their shared humanity outweighed their individual differences—or every one of them would die, alone. . . .

  Jake— she thought, knowing that she couldn’t reach him, couldn’t touch his mind from here. But even with an entire world at stake, she couldn’t stop this willful human body from thinking of one single man, or feeling torn by memories as she left him behind . . . afraid for his life, afraid he’d refuse to leave her . . . or that he’d never understand how much she loved him, with all the heart he had given back to her. . . .

  To remember what love was. . . . He had been the one, at last, who’d given her what she needed to keep her strong, to keep her sane, to keep her from being consumed by the bitterness of her own revenge. The last man on Earth she would have expected to understand . . . the best man she would ever know . . . the one man she would hold in her memory, forever.

  Now, for the sake of the greater good, for the sake of his life and the lives of all his people, she had to leave Jake behind, forget this human body with its human heart that loved him too . . . all too soon, forever. Please, please, Jake, get out, get far away from here, while there’s still time—

  She scrambled on, moving ever forward, closing in on the brilliant light source that was the ship’s core.

  DOLARHYDE RODE TOWARD the canyon mouth near the arroyo that led to Jake’s secret entrance. Still no one there—no freed captives, no Ella or Jake. He looked toward the rocky outcrop where he’d stationed Emmett, not able to see him or hear anything beyond the ominous vibration that was coming from inside the mesa where the aliens’ ship lay.

  Just as he was about to call out, Emmett stood up on the ridge, waving his arms—the signal that the captives had finally all made it out of the cavern. “I see them!” Emmett hollered. “They went around the other side!”

  “Percy?” Dolarhyde shouted.

  “Yeah!” Emmett shouted back, and Dolarhyde almost thought he could see the boy’s grin from here.

  “What about Jake—and Ella?” Dolarhyde called. He saw the flash of the spyglass as Emmett raised it again to scan the gathering of captives.

  “No!”

  The relief vanished from Dolarhyde’s face. He turned his horse and rode toward the arroyo with his rifle in his hand.

  19

  In the shadowed cavern, the alien that Jake had hit in the side of the head with two bullets still lived, still moved, barely. Green blood oozed down the side of its skull, its breath came in harsh gasps, as it searched . . . searching for . . .

  Jake stepped out of a vapor-shrouded shadow directly behind it. He fired one shot through the side of its head as it tried to turn back; it dropped to the ground, unmoving.

  Jake eased past the enormous body and went on, barely aware of the rising noise and vibration coming from the ship. He could only focus on Ella, somewhere inside it, and what she intended to do: to finish her mission, to save a world of strangers . . . to give the demons another dose of payback.

  He thought about Alice, who’d only wanted to live in peace. His own mission wasn’t complete yet, either; not until he found Red Scar. Not until he’d taken revenge for her . . . and killed his own personal demon—

  INSIDE THE SHIP, Ella had reached the inner limits. She forced herself in through the opening to the most claustrophobic crawl space yet. Her human body shuddered as the intestine-like surface of the walls clung to it, afraid of suffocation, in what looked to be an impossible, impenetrable trap, with no way back, no way out. . . . No other way but through, she told it, as she forced it to continue wriggling and ripping through the gelatinous gut, into the belly of the beast. . . .

  The ship’s systems were still building up power, but she could tell by the sound that they hadn’t committed a hundred percent of it to liftoff yet. They were probably still trying to suck in as much gold as possible—the riches they had stripped from a barren land, stolen from the people who struggled to survive there. Their greed—their insatiable, remorseless, predatory minds—would never think any other way, even as they were forced to flee by the very people they had wronged and underestimated so badly.

  Like a monkey with its fist stuck in a candy jar. The peculiar image that human saying had put into her head had made her laugh the first time she’d heard it. Now it seemed all too appropriate. The enemy had made that mistake before, and lost more than a handful of gold. . . .

  She held the flashing weapon clutched in a death-grip as she tore at the membranous barrier, as the gun’s mindlessly quickening pulse of light and sound continued counting down to the moment, not far off now, when its self-destruct would trigger.

  JAKE MOVED CAREFULLY around yet another blind corner in the maze of alien machinery beneath the keening, vibrating ship . . . and froze.

  There in front of him were the two rack-like operating tables from his dream, spotlit by a flood of harsh blue-white light.

  Here—it was still here, the torture chamber, just as he’d seen it in his nightmares. . . .

  He stumbled as his feet caught on something, and he looked down. He was standing in a pile of human belongings, a vast tangle of clothing stripped from the aliens’ victims—from settle
rs, from Apaches . . . gunbelts, rifles, high moccasins and boots, dresses and jackets, shirts and pants . . . a hundred different gold-plated pocket watches, gold-colored spectacles and keys . . . children’s toys.

  His mind tried desperately, and failed, to keep reality and nightmare from merging . . . as he saw himself pinned down, helpless, ready for dissection . . . Alice, unmoving, staring through him, as the monster that had tortured her to death turned her mutilated body to ash . . . left to the wind, until no trace of her existence remained . . . while the demon moved on, to him. . . . A scalpel cutting him open, the blade of burning light. . . . A beam of light in his own hand, carving a gouge across the alien butcher’s face. . . .

  Oh, God. . . . He remembered his first sight of Red Scar this time, as he realized why it looked familiar: How it had looked back at him like it remembered him, too. . . .

  And he didn’t have the demon gun anymore. He began to tremble, the way he had when he’d lain on the table; his nervous system felt like somebody had cut the telegraph wire to his brain. He couldn’t look away from the tables, couldn’t stop seeing double, seeing phantoms . . . Alice . . . himself. . . .

  No, no—stop it, he had to—

  Everything in his sight tilted crazily as heavy arms seized him from behind, jerking him off his feet. Light and darkness smeared together as Red Scar lifted him into the air and slammed him down.

  He landed on his back on the dissection table. Red Scar’s taloned hands pinned him there. Jake struggled like a fish thrown onto dry land, until one of Red Scar’s finger-claws came to rest across his throat, as its hand circled his head. One move, and his throat would be slit clear to his backbone. The alien was too big, a living weapon, impossibly strong . . . there was nothing he could do.

  No modo. . . . no way out. . . .

  Red Scar hovered over him, its pupilless red eyes gazing down into his, as if it could actually see the terror he couldn’t control . . . God, as if it was enjoying this—Fury pushed up through his fear, but it was no more use to him now than fear was, or pain.