Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The

by Molstad, Stephen

  Miriyam stepped over the fallen body armor and led the way down the tunnel to the final door. They shouted at the top of their lungs to the men on the far side, but received no reply. On the ceiling, a small part of the crack the team had descended through extended past the door. It was no more than eight inches wide, too small to fit through.

  “Open the door!” Miriyam screamed toward the opening. Although she assumed the two men stationed in the tunnel were dead, she hoped the men on the floor above would hear. Reg brushed past her and wedged the bayonet on a rifle he took from one of the soldiers into the crevice between the door and the bulkhead. The blade bent out of shape.

  “He is coming. He is behind us,” LeBlanc warned.

  Reg took a flashlight from the soldier whose rifle he had and used it to examine the door. There was a thick band of ligament running down one side of it, acting as a hinge. With the bayonet, he stabbed into the tough, sinewy material and sliced away a small piece. But there wasn’t time to cut through it by hand.

  “Stand back!” he warned the others, then sent a spray of carefully aimed bullets into the hinge. When Miriyam saw what he was doing, she picked up the machine gun and joined in, the two of them firing until their ammunition was gone.

  Behind them, the rest of the team opened fire on the armored warrior stalking them through the tunnel. While the others held the creature at bay, Reg and Miriyam attacked the remaining part of the hinge, and the door soon gave way. There was barely time to get clear of its path before it crashed to the ground. Without looking back, the two of them stepped over the door and raced into the next segment of the tunnel.

  “Ladies first,” Miriyam said, when they reached the tear in the ceiling. Reg obliged by lacing his fingers together and boosting her up to the opening. As she wriggled through the gap, the others arrived where Reg was standing, and he began lifting them toward the opening one by one. After the second soldier escaped, Miriyam dropped a pair of fresh assault rifles, taken from the Peacekeepers above, into the opening. They arrived just in time. LeBlanc and Guillaume picked them up and sent a volley of shells flying at the skeletal attacker, momentarily arresting its progress.

  “Doctor, you’re next,” Reg said, waiting to boost the man up.

  “No,” Guillaume shouted, “you go.” He positioned himself so that Reg could climb his body like a ladder and grab the hands reaching down through the hole. The men above quickly lifted Reg out to safety. Then he turned to do the same for LeBlanc.

  A rope was tossed down to Guillaume, who grabbed it with one hand and fired with the other. As Guillaume wriggled through the hole and rolled away, a tentacle shot through the gap, trying to catch him. It wound around LeBlanc’s leg instead and yanked him roughly toward the opening. Reg reacted quickly and caught the terrified doctor under the arms, helping to resist the strength of the tentacle. Before the others could help, another snakelike appendage darted out and grabbed Reg by the ankle. Screaming in pain, LeBlanc was torn from Reg’s grasp and disappeared into the hole. Reg would have gone in behind him if Miriyam hadn’t opened fire and severed the tentacle.

  They heard the doctor screaming in pain on the floor below as more tentacles reached up and searched for more victims. When Reg hesitated, unwilling to leave LeBlanc behind, Miriyam pulled him away from the opening.

  “We can’t help him,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  The handful of survivors took off running down the rectangular passageway until they found the first opening, the one that led to the main deck of the alien ship.

  8

  A GOOD OLD-FASHIONED TURKEY SHOOT

  “Allah preserve us, it looks a lot bigger than it did on TV.”

  King Ibrahim stepped from the back of his limousine at about nine in the morning and gaped at the staggering size of the wrecked fragment of alien airship. The rest of the royal motorcade, a mile-long line of limousines, rocket-launching vehicles, and M1A1 tanks, rolled past him and parked in no particular order near the collection of tents and the scaffolded stage set up near the edge of a bluff. The king’s advance team had selected this site, a mere three hundred yards from the edge of the ship, primarily for the backdrop it offered: a view of the triangular opening half a mile away and, beyond that, the mysterious obsidian tower leaning above the curve of the dome. It had all the makings of a surreal media event: The small stage was dressed in the Saudi national colors of green, black, and white. Sprays of flowers lay in the sand around it Waiters poured out of the kitchen tent as the king’s entourage continued to arrive, circulating among the cars with drink trays. Workmen were putting the finishing touches on the bright pink bridal tent, where the wedding ceremony would be held. There was a Sikh bartender, dressed in turban and tuxedo, offering nonalcoholic champagne to the guests. Musicians had been hired, and red carpets had been rolled out.

  Mr. Roeder jogged up to the king’s limousine to begin briefing him on the preparations, but King Ibrahim had only one question on his mind. “Did you find me an alien or not?”

  The American pointed to a jeep parked a safe distance away and the gray skeletal carcass tied across its hood. Patiently, he explained the details of the predatory green plant and the high risk of infection involved in using a corpse for the photo session. He urged the king to stay away from it.

  “I came here to kill an alien. Couldn’t you find me one that was still alive? Half-alive?”

  “I’m afraid they’re all dead, Your Majesty.”

  Frustrated, the king grabbed a pistol and took off down the hill, chased by a flock of camera crews. While he was gone, the crew of pilot heroes was ushered up onto the platform for group pictures. In addition to the foreign and Saudi pilots who had flown with Faisal from his camp in the desert, there were dozens of others who had answered to America’s call to attack. In all, there were more than a hundred men representing nineteen different countries. Conspicuously absent were English major Reginald Cummins and the lone female pilot, Israeli captain Miriyam Marx. The pilots were in high spirits, but it took them quite a while to work out the question of who would stand next to whom. Victory had warmed them to one another personally, but the photographs would be lasting documents, and no one wanted to look like he was cozying up to the enemy.

  “Say cheese!” the photographer yelled.

  He took a series of shots—looking serious, looking happy, shaking their fists angrily—or, in Tye’s case, flipping the bird at the wreckage that dominated the skyline behind them. The whole group beamed with pride. They had accomplished a hugely heroic deed, and their faces showed it. When they stepped off the podium, each pilot was handed a yellow rose and an envelope full of cash by one of the royal grandchildren. They were mingling with high-ranking Saudis when a shot rang out. In the distance, the king had fired a single bullet at the dead alien.

  He rode back up the hill in a jeep, and, when he arrived, unsettling news awaited him. An assistant pulled him aside and handed him a phone. One of his field generals was on the line. He said a Frenchman had stormed into the headquarters tent only moments before, claiming to have been attacked inside the ship. According to the man’s story, he’d ventured down into the bowels of the city destroyer with eighteen men and lost most of them to a handful of aliens.

  “How many of these stories have you heard?” the king asked.

  “This is the first one.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Yes, sir, yes.”

  After inspecting the extraterrestrial cadaver, the king had lost his appetite for confrontations with any living members of the species. Hie size and strength of the body he’d seen were alarming. He wondered if the ammonia fumes he’d breathed might be poisonous. The idea of coming out here was beginning to feel like a huge mistake. “General, send search parties inside to check this man’s story. Call me the moment you have news.” The patriarch scanned the curved dome of the ship for a moment before making an announcement. “This isn’t what I was expecting! It isn’t right. We are going back to At-Ta�
�if.”

  “What about the wedding?” asked an advisor.

  Ibrahim growled. He’d forgotten about that. He marched off in a new direction, this time to find Faisal.

  The groom-to-be had slipped a gold-trimmed robe over his uniform and was surrounded by a group of fawning well-wishers, who parted for the king when he approached.

  “Faisal,” the old man said, “I have changed my mind. Let’s return to the palace and hold the ceremony in my gardens.”

  Faisal was mortified at the idea. A ceremony in the desert was the final brilliant element of the story he was constructing for himself. When future generations recounted his heroic deeds, he wanted it to end with the storybook flourish of a battlefield wedding. …Then, after laying low the enemies of God, the warrior knelt before the site of his victory and took as his reward the most beautiful bride in all the land. The king himself performed the marriage, whereupon Faisal, in his wisdom and mercy, freed the bride’s brother after lecturing him sternly before the people… Thinking fast, Faisal proposed the compromise of dispensing with the formal ceremony. All that was necessary was for the king to stand over the couple and declare them man and wife.

  King Ibrahim wasn’t happy with the proposal, but he agreed. “Bring that Yamani girl up here,” he shouted, “so we can finish this business and go home.”

  When the bride’s chauffeur opened the door, the shrouded figure that stepped out wasn’t Fadeela. It was Faisal’s wife, Hajami. She was five years older than her husband and, under normal circumstances, a timid personality. She had been rich when she married the ambitious young Saudi Air Force lieutenant from a penniless family who had promised her that she would always be his only wife. She had given him her fortune and three male children. The night before, when she learned of Fadeela’s marriage proposal, she had argued savagely with her husband. Then, after Fadeela’s friends decided to boycott the wedding, Faisal added insult to Hajami’s injury by commanding her, under threat of divorce, to help prepare the body of his new bride. This was intimate work that required hours to accomplish: All of Fadeela’s hair, except head hair and eyebrows, had to be removed; she was bathed, powdered, and perfumed, before intricate designs were painted on her hands and feet with henna dye. The whole time the two women worked together, Hajami maintained an icy silence.

  Drums began to beat when the bride showed herself. She stepped out of the car wearing a simple white dress and flowers woven into the long braid that trailed down her back. Her face was uncovered and her feet were bare. If she was embarrassed about being seen this way, or distraught about marrying Faisal, she didn’t show it. She moved in a businesslike manner past the gawking soldiers, grinning princes, and admiring foreigners. As she passed a gray Mercedes sedan, she paused long enough to tap her fingertips against the tinted glass of the rear window. A pair of manacled hands pressed against the inside of the pane. They belonged to Khalid. Faisal had promised Fadeela that her brother would be released immediately following the ceremony.

  A few more strides brought her to her father’s car, a blue Rolls-Royce. Mr. Yamani was indignant about being forced to trade his daughter for his son and made no attempt to disguise his newfound disgust with Faisal, a man he had counted among his friends. At the same time, he was choking with fear. Despite constant reassurances that there were no alien survivors, the sight of the destroyer awakened the sense of doom that had nearly driven him insane during the previous days. When Fadeela came within reach, he clutched the sides of her face tenderly and put his forehead against hers, apologizing with tears in his eyes for failing her. Reluctantly, he began to lead her to the place where Faisal and the king were waiting.

  They had only gone a few steps when shouting erupted among the soldiers. A battered truck was climbing onto the bluff and speeding directly toward them. Warning shots failed to slow it down. Just as the soldiers took deadly aim, the driver slammed on the brakes and jumped out. It was Reg. His uniform spattered with blood, he came running toward the entourage, shouting like a wild man. Miriyam was right behind him. They’d dropped Guillaume at the Saudi army’s headquarters tent on their way past. The pilots who recognized them ran forward to hear their news. Reg shouldered his way past the men, screaming at everyone to run for their lives.

  “You’ve got to get out of here! Turn around and go!” In his fury to make them understand, he manhandled a prince or two, physically pushing them toward their vehicles. “Where’s the king? Let me talk to the king!”

  Instead of the king, he was confronted by half a dozen muscular Saudis, who blocked his path. Reg knocked two of them over and kept going. But a moment later he was tackled from behind and subdued by many pairs of hands. With both arms twisted to the breaking point behind his back, Reg was led through the murmuring crowd and then roughly thrown facefirst to the ground.

  “Major Cummins, I’ve been expecting you.” Faisal was grinning down at him, as unruffled and smugly confident as ever.

  “Listen to me,” Reg snarled, his heart still pounding, “I’ve been inside the ship. They’re alive, many of them, hundreds, maybe thousands. They’re going to attack.” He pointed toward the breach. “They’re going to ambush us.”

  Faisal wasn’t buying it. He figured Reg had ulterior motives for disrupting the marriage. “They must be very friendly, these aliens of yours. How nice of them to explain all their terrible plans to you.” His easy smile changed to an expression of disgust, and he ordered his men to take Reg away. Before they could, the king intervened.

  “Major, what happened to you?” he asked.

  Faisal yelled. “It is a trick. He only wants to interrupt our celebration.”

  “Silence! Let him answer.”

  Reg shook free of the guards and began telling his story, The bloodstains on his uniform were still moist, and there was a wild urgency in his voice. It didn’t take long for him to convince the king he was telling the truth. Before he had told everything, the king had ordered his assistants to begin turning the caravan around.

  “One more thing, Your Majesty,” Reg said. “They know you are here. When they attack, they’ll look for you first.”

  Faisal snorted at Reg’s melodramatics. “He’s making this up! How can he possibly know these things?”

  But King Ibrahim was already on the move. He hurried back to his limousine, got in, and screamed at the driver to take him away at once. Faisal walked over to Reg and leaned in, menacingly close. “You’re a dead man, Major,”

  “And you’re a lying coward, Commander.”

  Shots rang out in the distance. Screams spread through the entourage as everyone turned to face the destroyer. The first alien had come out of the ship.

  The lumbering, top-heavy beast pushed through a narrow opening near the triangular breach, moved a few strides out into the sand, and stopped. Ignoring the machine-gun fire, it made a 360-degree scan of the area. The flaring shell of its upper body rose to a pointed tip, and its heavily muscled arms reached almost to the ground. The bullets nicked away pieces of the exoskeleton until the shell cracked and caved in. A moment later, the whole wretched mass toppled over facefirst.

  Soldiers and civilians stopped in place and looked on in stunned silence. As the king’s limousine sped away, they watched foot soldiers move toward the fallen alien, guns at the ready.

  While they were examining it, a second creature emerged. This one never hesitated. It hit the ground running and sprinted across the sand. Hugging the curve of the ship, its path took it directly in front of the royal entourage. It moved awkwardly across the sand and rocks, having evolved in some very different environment. The feet were hooked forward in such a way that the creature moved along standing atop its toe knuckles. The effect was something like a circus bear mincing forward on its hind legs. Still, the beast scurried along at surprising speed, twice as fast as a man.

  A cheer went up when the machine-gun fire snapped the creature in half. Its waist was nothing but an exposed spinal column. When it broke, the torso went fly
ing in one direction while the legs went in another. But the thing didn’t die. The alien riding inside this suit of armor commanded the arms and tentacles to dig. Within seconds, it built itself a shallow foxhole.

  New aliens began appearing every few seconds. Some ran zigzag patterns through the open desert until they were gunned down and killed, but most of them sprinted between the entourage and the massive outer wall of the destroyer, like ducks in a shooting gallery, trying to reach the foxhole. Almost none of them made it. The soldiers at the edge of the bluff began firing larger weapons, and the crowd cheered each time one of the skeletal bodies exploded. Some of the limousines began leaving. Many more were pinned in by parked cars and couldn’t move. Drivers leaned on their horns, adding to the noise of the gunfire.

  As the alien death toll climbed, the sense of panic abated. They had seemed invincible in the air but appeared helpless on the ground. It looked like the tables had turned. Some people climbed atop their vehicles to watch as others wandered closer to the action. Everyone wanted to see the monsters pay for the atrocities they had committed against humanity.