Banshee Screams

by Clay Griffith

  "I think so. No one is injured. We made it to the storm cellar before the killing reached this side of town. This is my saloon." He glanced at Hickok as she let out a low sigh when the whiskey slid down smooth. "That drink's on the house."

  "Appreciate it." Hickok stared evenly at Bolley. Then she poured another and sarcastically tipped the shot glass at him. "You can put this one on my tab."

  "Is he blind?" Debbi indicated the syker.

  "I'm not blind," the syker said. "I am hiding us. It takes a lot of concentration."

  "Then you know what happened here?" Debbi asked.

  "Yes." The syker stared straight ahead. His concentration was focused elsewhere. His face was covered with beads of sweat. "There's a Skinny out there. I am trying to protect these people by blocking his probes. So far, it's worked. But I sensed his presence nearby just a moment ago."

  "He used his powers to kill a man on the street just outside."

  "He must've felt you two, but interpreted your signals to be the man on the street. You were lucky. You won't be again."

  Debbi asked, "Can you protect these people until I can get all of you out of town?"

  "I'm getting weaker. He's getting stronger."

  "Then let's go." Debbi gathered everyone together and announced they were leaving immediately. "Everyone stay quiet and stay together."

  She crossed to the door and cracked it open. The street was empty of the living and still bathed in brilliant moonlight. She slipped outside and held the door. The townsfolk filed out, peering side to side. The syker followed with Bolley holding his arm and leading him. Hickok came last.

  Debbi guarded the street in one direction and Hickok watched the other while the civilians crossed and moved into the alley. Their footfalls seemed frighteningly loud. Debbi took the lead as they threaded their way quickly through junk-strewn lanes.

  Finally they reached an alley to the main street just fifty feet from the gate. Debbi halted the procession. She signaled them to stay quiet and slipped to the head of the alley. The wind was still kicking dust around the dead bodies; she saw the dead woman and child again.

  A Skinny stood in the gateway.

  Debbi ducked back instinctively and froze. Then she slowly inched one eye around the corner.

  She had never seen a real Skinny before. It was impressive and horrifying at the same time.

  The tall creature stood unmoving. His skull-like face was impassive; his eyes putrid green slits. The wind whistled around him, whipping his tunic frantically. She noted a species similarity to Martool and her brethren with his prominent clawed-toe and the bony spike protruding from each elbow. But this thing was not an anouk. Martool's people, even full of aggression and distrust, had a humanity about them. This creature had none.

  The Skinny didn't seem to notice her. Or, if he did, he made no motion toward her.

  She slipped back to the group and crouched in front of the syker.

  "He's at the gate," Debbi said. "What can we do?"

  The syker didn't hear her. He was lost in concentration. His lips were pressed together so tight they quivered. The muscles of his jaw vibrated from strain. The bald man's eyes flared with distant focus. The proximity of the Skinny threatened to overwhelm him.

  Debbi knew scaling the walls was impossible with the children and a nearly comatose syker. The gate was the only option, and there was only the one.

  She turned to Bolley. "I'm going to distract the Skinny and pull him away from the gate. When you get an opening, move! Hickok there can lead you to her ship."

  "What about you?"

  "Don't worry, I'll be along." She scuttled over to Hickok, whose eyes were distant. "Listen up. I'm counting on you to get these people back to your ship and safely to Temptation. It's up to you. Do you understand? They're all depending on you."

  "Yes."

  "Good. And...if I don't get out, keep an eye on Ross for me. Will you.?" Debbi hesitated and then continued quickly, disconcerted that these were her thoughts at the moment. "He has a lot of respect for you and he needs someone he respects to kick his ass every now and then."

  That broke Hickok's funk. She bobbed her head slightly, stared at Debbi with sad eyes, and mumbled, "Yeah. No problem."

  "See you at the Deadwood." Debbi moved past Hickok.

  Running behind an adobe building, Debbi clambered over a fence and sidled back up to the main street. She didn't pause to let herself think about what she was doing. She counted to three and sprinted out into the open, staring only at the alley on the far side of the street. Slipping into it, she stopped and turned back to look at the gate.

  The Skinny was gone.

  Damn it, she thought. How fast is he?

  Debbi warily stepped into the street, rifle up, searching. Out of the corner of her eye she suddenly glimpsed the Skinny on the move. He extended his hand at her. In the same instant she fell back into the alley, the corner of the building exploded. She landed hard on her back as rubble rained down on her. She rolled, scrambled to her feet, and ran. Another blast ripped through the alley behind her.

  She vaulted a low fence into an empty field. She glanced left and right, searching for the best direction to flee. As she moved, the ground erupted in a flash of lightning. She raced to her left, moving deeper into town, trying to keep the towering salt silos in sight as a landmark, drawing the Skinny as far from the gate as possible.

  As she ran out onto a back street, one of the salt silos exploded. The shattering force turned Debbi's legs to elastic and drove her to the ground. She covered her head as a hard rain of salt pellets battered her.

  The Ranger struggled to push herself up. Her vision wavered. She reached for the pulse rifle, but it flew away. She watched it skitter off as if pulled by a string.

  "Tekkeng!" The Skinny appeared at the edge of the salt pile and slid toward her, almost as if levitating to avoid straining his bony legs. The thing's weird clawed feet dragged limply through the white granules.

  Debbi was yanked up off her feet and hung suspended in the air. She couldn't help but stare at the alien creature as he neared. She no longer expected to defeat or avoid him, just keep him occupied.

  The thing stopped. His large, gray head tilted as he watched her.

  She suddenly thought of her childhood, her father and mother fighting and separating. Her father controlling her and dragging her around military bases all over Banshee. Joining the Colonial Rangers. Shipping out to the space station. The horrible memories of her mother's death. To Temptation and Ross. The Worldstorm. The monster at the miner's camp. She considered the monster for a moment, seeing it from all angles, before moving on to the undead. The chaos in Temptation. Her fear of failure. The worhul. Martool.

  The face of Martool froze in her mind.

  The Skinny stared at her with great intensity. Debbi realized he was running through her mind, rifling the catalogue of her memories. He stopped at Martool. The episode with the anouks began to replay in her head.

  The remembrances rolled past almost independent of the workings of her brain. It was like someone controlled the replay and she was standing by helpless.

  Not helpless, she realized, just not in control.

  Her hand went to her holster. She saw the Skinny flinch with a sudden realization, but her Dragoon was already out and up. Her thumb grazed the touch pad. The tannis needle raced out of the black gun and hit the Skinny square in the chest.

  Debbi fell to the ground in a heap.

  The Skinny stood as if locked in a convulsion. His hand reached out for her, and then froze. His mouth stretched wide, "Tekkeng!"

  She gathered herself and aimed at him again. His head wrenched in her direction as if on a rusted mechanism. Suddenly he was gone. But then he stood in front of her as before. She blinked to clear her eyes.

  He was gone again.

  She fired the black gun several more times into the spot where he'd been standing. Then she stumbled out of the salt pile and ran back to the main street.

/>   She staggered out the gate and fell to the sand, sucking in the desert air and slowly regaining her awareness. The thought of that thing tearing through her private memories sickened her. Her mind and body felt filthy. It didn't matter that the Skinny was probably so alien he had little concept of the personal images he saw.

  She climbed to her feet and alternated between running and quick-marching out over the desert. She pushed herself mercilessly because she craved the exertion; she wanted to sweat the Skinny's stink out of her mind. After twenty minutes, she spotted the little group of refugees moving ahead of her in the moonlight.

  She shouted and waved her hands. They stopped and turned. Hickok and another figure came running back to her. The second figure was the syker. As they came near, Debbi felt a presence tapping at the edges of her mind. It wasn't an aggressive probe, but the feeling enraged her. The presence quickly vanished.

  "My God!" Hickok offered a shoulder for support.

  Debbi was grateful. Her limbs burned like she had been through the first week of basic training. She regarded the syker furiously.

  He said from a distance, "I apologize. I had to be sure it was you."

  Debbi glared at him briefly. Then she relented. She understood, although it didn't make it feel any better.

  Hickok said, "You beat a Skinny?" She had never known anyone to take on a Skinny and live. "Did you kill it?"

  "I don't know. I guess so."

  Behind them in the distance, the sky exploded with green lightning. The area around the dead town of New Hope lit up with a ferocious display of energy.

  Debbi felt herself deflate. "I guess not."

  Lightning poured down on all sides of Tekkeng. Structures exploded all around him. Craters blasted into the ground.

  He didn't see any of it. Now that the shock had worn off, his powers of concentration were directed inward. Thanks to Coltrane's demonstration of the black gun's power, Tekkeng knew what the Ranger had used on him. A being of lesser power would have been incapacitated for considerably longer, but Tekkeng was strong. However, he knew there was a dangerous sliver of polluted tannis in him and he searched for it. When he finally sensed the minute black object inside his body, he began working to remove it. He contracted muscles and tendons with his mind, sliding the hateful needle along. He operated slowly and deliberately. It was agony, requiring a level of concentration he hadn't exerted in many years. Minute by painstaking minute, Tekkeng drew the object out until the insignificant needle fell into his hand.

  "Tekkeng!" he screamed with relief.

  Tekkeng smiled as best he could. Coltrane had given him this town for his own purposes, but he had been lulled into a false sense of superiority by the ease of the massacre. This embarrassment at the hands of a mere girl was a welcome warning to tread carefully. He was just glad Coltrane hadn't witnessed it.

  He dropped the needle into the dirt. A human female had bested him. Tekkeng would enjoy hunting her down and flaying her mind. All things in due time, however.

  He took a deep breath and welcomed the charred stench that filled his nostrils. If there was one consolation for such humiliation, it was the acquisition of vital information. A lost adversary had been found.

  He had seen Martool in the pathetic Ranger's mind. The anouk shaman was hiding in the wreckage of the Red River fortress. It would be fitting that he would destroy her there.

  He was suddenly aware that the vicious backlash from his intense concentration had reduced New Hope to an expanse of smoking rubble. A psychic "sneeze" with the power of a UN gunship.

  Tekkeng laughed.

  Chapter 30

  "Any word from Ross?"

  "No, Dallas," Ringo said. "He hasn't called in. And we've tried to reach his Hoss a couple of times. No luck. But I wouldn't worry about it. Ross and Olivares are old hands. They might be halfway to the Toxic Jungle by now trailing some bad guys. You know Ross."

  Debbi gave the kid a tired, lopsided grin. "Yeah, I know Ross."

  She filed her report on the mission to New Hope on top of the pile of zombie incident reports and extermination squad figures that were mounting on Ross's desk. Ross had been gone for four days with no word; she'd been back from New Hope for two days. She longed to go look for him, but logically, she couldn't spare anyone from town now. And after all, like Ringo said, this was Ross and Olivares she was talking about. Between them they had as many years of Ranger experience as all the rest of the Temptation crew put together.

  She closed the door to Ross's office and sat at one of the desks in the squad room where Stew and Ringo were working. Debbi closed her eyes.

  She suddenly opened her eyes, disturbed and wary, a sense of urgency inexplicably filling her.

  Ringo and Miller worked quietly. They looked over at her. Ringo smiled. Stew arched an eyebrow.

  Debbi glanced at the clock. She'd lost an hour.

  Stew said to her, "Why don't you take a few hours? You can be back before sundown when the batrats come out."

  "No," Debbi responded. "I'm fine. I slept on the way back from New Hope." She rubbed her face. "And now here."

  Stew muttered, "Yeah, if you don't get a good fifteen minutes, you're cranky the whole day."

  Debbi rummaged through her cobwebbed mind for something sarcastic to say, but the front door opened.

  A very angry Donald Fairchild, followed by a concerned Lester Atkinson, stormed into the office. Debbi stood immediately and met them to keep Stew and Ringo out of it.

  "We'd like a word with you," Atkinson began.

  "Word, hell!" Fairchild boomed. "We got a mind to start pulling badges right now!"

  Stew rose slowly from his desk, his eyes glued on Fairchild, who was armed. Ringo stared at the scene from the back of the squad room, sliding over to place his back against the lockup door where Peck and his fellow dilettante occultists still resided.

  Fairchild started past Debbi. "I want to see Ross. Now!"

  Debbi stepped in front of him. "He's not here. He's out on a mission."

  "Out?" Fairchild glared at Debbi. "How can he be out under these circumstances? Where is he? Call him back in! Now!"

  "What is the problem, Mr. Fairchild?" Debbi tried to keep her voice steady.

  "The problem is Ross! We know about Nicolai's offer! We know that he can stop all these problems we've been having! And Ross turned him down without even listening! Without consulting us! He doesn't have that right! This isn't a police state!"

  Fairchild grew red in the face, leaned forward, and jabbed his meaty finger at Debbi, though he didn't quite connect. He remembered all too well the last time he had laid a hand on this Ranger.

  Watching Fairchild closely, she said, "We're in a dire emergency situation. Ross has authority over public safety."

  "Hell no he doesn't!" Fairchild shouted. "We haven't voted any emergency measures! And Nicolai was here a week ago. Why didn't Ross come and tell us? We had to hear it from a couple of militiamen that the Reapers were outside our gates! You didn't think the Town Council needed to know? Of course not! Because we might try to carry out the law instead of the Rangers' whims! Lady, if Dave Ross thinks he's going to run this town out of his holster, he better think again!"

  Debbi said, "Mr. Fairchild, Mr. Atkinson, I was there when Ross talked to Nicolai. The Reaper offer was a ridiculous ruse. Nicolai has no power over anything in Temptation. He was just playing on our fears, hoping we would just give him what he wanted, so he didn't have to pay the price of trying to take it. Ross called his bluff. Nicolai left. End of story."

  "That's not the point!" Fairchild slammed his fist on a desk. "The point is Ross can't make decisions like that! He doesn't have the right! And you should've told us about it! It's your obligation as a Colonial Ranger to uphold the law."

  Debbi paused. Her breath hissed loudly from her nostrils. She pressed her lips together, trying to form rational words in her head when all she really wanted to do was knock this man on his ass.

  Stew said to Fairchild, "Why d
on't you two go do something useful for a change? The Rangers have organized daylight exterminator squads and we're happy to have qualified volunteers to root out the batrats."

  Debbi waved Stew to silence and said in a low voice, "Listen to me, Fairchild. I shouldn't have to tell you this, but I am. One time only. Every Colonial Ranger in this command has put their life on the line for the people of this town countless times over the last few weeks. In the face of completely unknown threats, all of these brave men and women have responded with diligence and honor. We have one Ranger, Boston Fitzpatrick, over in the infirmary now with his arm amputated. And we have another Ranger, Lyle Cassian, who."

  She stopped. Her lips quivered. She refused to look away or give him the opportunity to interrupt. Her words came quick and sharp, reflecting the loathing she felt for Fairchild. "Lyle Cassian is dead. He was a man who gave more years to this town as a Colonial Ranger than either of you have been alive. So how dare you stand there and tell me about upholding the law! Dave Ross has held this town together by himself in the face of horrors none of us could have conceived of two months ago! And you have the nerve to come in here with your feeble quibbling about parliamentary procedure? I do not have time for this. Gentlemen, fair warning, leave this office now or I will arrest you for obstructing lawful Ranger operations and you can convene the Town Council in the lockup with your colleague, Mr. Peck. Do I make myself clear?"

  Atkinson took a step toward the door. Fairchild stood his ground and narrowed his eyes at Debbi.

  "So it's a coup?" the Mine Administrator said. "You're taking over the government. You understand the ramifications of your actions, don't you?"

  Atkinson gasped audibly. "Oh no, Donald! That's not what she means at all! She's just busy. Isn't that right, Ranger?"

  Fairchild looked up at Stew and Ringo. "The rest of you Rangers follow this? You with her?"

  Stew and Ringo stood without a word, straight and high-headed.

  Debbi stared at the burly man and worked her jaw from side to side. "Take it up with Ross when he gets back. If you want my badge, you can have it then. Until then, get out and stay out."