by John Shirley
“We’re all killers here, Reaper. That’s what they pay us for.”
Reaper’s hand tightened on his weapon. He wondered if he could get a shot off before Sarge did.
But he didn’t think there was much hope of catching Sarge by surprise: he was all animal wariness. It twitched in his fingers; it gleamed in his eyes.
The overhead lights blinked, and a female voice intoned from the public address system:
“Quarantine complete…All systems to normal. Elevators back online…”
The emergency lighting switched off—and with only a flutter of darkness, were replaced by the main lights, going on in sequence down the long hallways.
Sarge glanced at the ceiling. He grinned. “It’s finished. What do you say…we get some air?”
Reaper stared. What did he mean?
Then it became evident—as Sarge’s gloves split open, like fruit swelling in the heat, with the sudden deformation of his hands. The skin splitting open…Sarge going rigid with the agony of transformation…
Now, Reaper told himself. Kill him now, before he’s done changing. While he’s distracted by the pain…
But he couldn’t bring himself to shoot Sarge down in cold blood like that; like the way Sarge had killed the Kid.
“Sam,” Reaper said, keeping his eyes on Sarge, “can you get to the elevator?”
“I’m not sure…”
“Try.”
Sam got wearily to her feet. Reaper sidled between Sarge and the door Sam was going to have to go through, to cover her escape.
All the while Sarge was mutating. Growing. Muscles pushing through his clothes. Skin going raw; hands becoming talons; jaws widening…eyes reddening…
Something inside him, Reaper thought, is coming to the outside. That’s what it’s all about…The interior demon finally coming out…
Sam slipped out the door behind Reaper. The moment had come…
Sarge stopped trembling. Ducked his head like a bull, looking at Reaper from within cavelike sunken eyes. His voice was an inhuman rumble: “You going to shoot me?” Asked as if unconcerned. Almost amused.
“Yeah, I was thinking about it,” Reaper admitted.
Sarge looked at Reaper’s gun. “What have you got left?”
Reaper glanced down at the weapon. “Half a clip. You?”
Sarge checked the indicator on the big energy weapon in his hand and smiled. That smile, all fangs and sickly glisten, was a nasty sight. “Only got one round.”
One round from the BFG was like hundreds of rounds from other energy weapons, converged into one…this room was proof of that.
Sarge aimed the BFG.
Reaper leapt to one side, rolled, coming up running, as the torpedo-like bolt from the BFG flashed by him. It struck the floor, eating instantaneously through floor and wall where he’d stood a moment before—and seemed to pursue him: the destructive energy coursing through the floor, the bodies, everything between him and Sarge, trying to catch him, to eat its way through him.
But Reaper had the power of his own transformation in him, and he moved in a blur of speed, outdistancing the ripple effect of the BFG, ducking into the shadows.
Sarge lost sight of Reaper in all the smoke and energy flare.
Then a short burst from Reaper’s weapon cued him in, the rounds slapping the wall just beside his head, and he threw himself flat, tossing the now-useless BFG aside.
The air in the room undulated with heat and smoke…somewhere in there was Reaper, getting a bead on him.
All Sarge had left was his pride in his work. He wasn’t a Marine anymore; he wasn’t a Privine; he wasn’t even human. But he was still a soldier. And his whole purpose, now, was to find an adversary…and destroy him. That’s all that mattered anymore. Orders? No. Just…find the enemy and fight to the death.
If he thought about anything else, he’d have to blow his own brains out. Smash them out the way Goat had. And he wasn’t going to do that. That’s the way pussies went out.
A sound from the left…
Sarge got his feet under him and leapt to cover behind a heap of debris and bodies, then, crouched, sprinted for the door that led to the Ark chamber.
Two more shots from Reaper, somewhere in the shadows, cracking past Sarge’s head—one of them grazing his neck, doing no real damage.
The Ark. Get to the Ark…it seemed fitting to end the fight there. On the brink of the gulf between two worlds…
Reaper checked his ammo. Two rounds left. No time to scrounge for other weapons.
He got up and started after Sarge…headed for the Ark chamber.
When Reaper got there, he found most of the lights had been shot out. The room had been wrecked by some fight between imps and the half-turned. Debris and bodies here, too.
There was no sight of Sarge, big though he was, amongst the pillars in the chamber. But Reaper knew he was there. He listened and his preternaturally acute hearing picked Sarge’s breathing up, off to the left, near a heap of rubble.
Reaper slipped behind a pillar, keeping to his own shadows. But if he knew about where Sarge was, Sarge knew where he was, too.
“Only got two left, Sarge!” Reaper called. Seemed only fair.
He glided to another pillar, his head low. Could be Sarge had found another gun somewhere.
Reaper kept moving, low and slow and quiet, training enhanced by his superhumanity, and spotted Sarge, suddenly, moving to the place he’d occupied a few moments before—Sarge with a big long chunk of ragged metal in his hand. A serrated club.
Reaper aimed…
Sarge seemed surprised that Reaper wasn’t there, hesitated only a second—then ducked behind a pillar as Reaper, gun set to semiauto, squeezed the trigger. The bullet smacked into the wall just behind Sarge.
“One!” Sarge yelled, rolling into the shadows.
Reaper sprinted in pursuit—and came up short. Sarge was gone.
He heard a noise behind him, spun to see Sarge coming from up high, smashing through the Ark memorial plaque, like the Ark dead demanding remembrance in person, the plaque shattered to translucent shrapnel by the inhuman force of his arrival. Skidding to a stop Sarge roared, “Semper fi, motherfucker!”
Reaper took one step back—just one, so he could plant himself for the fight.
“You and me, Reaper,” Sarge said. “Old school.”
Making himself clear, Sarge unclasped his belt, letting his knife and unloaded pistol fall with it to the floor. He looked at Reaper expectantly.
Reaper sighed inwardly. He knew he shouldn’t do this. There were bigger responsibilities here…
But he was who he was. And he couldn’t lose the chance to take Sarge out hand to hand. Not after what he’d done to the Kid. Reaper had liked that stupid kid…And all those people the Kid had tried to save. Sarge had executed them…
Besides—one bullet probably wouldn’t take Sarge out. Not the way Sarge was now…on the cusp of the dark transformation.
So Reaper fired his last round into the ceiling, then threw the weapon aside, dropped his bag of grenades, dropped his knife…
And he started toward Sarge. They circled each other slowly, taut with wariness, then moved more rapidly toward one another, tensing as they came, hands ready to grapple.
The two poles of human nature, face-to-face, fighting it out. Not so simple as good versus evil. More like unselfish versus selfish; reason versus appetite; human versus animal instinct.
John Grimm versus Sarge. They rushed each other—and Sarge caught Reaper with a hard, piledriver right, sending him sprawling. Reaper kept rolling, turned it into a movement that carried him onto his feet, spun a kick as Sarge came, catching him square in the chest and sending him flying into a wall. The wall cracked behind Sarge—but he came immediately back at Reaper…
And the two warriors began hammering on each other toe-to-toe, with more bludgeoning than artifice. Reaper’s blood was up now, his speed was almost bullet-fast, and he blocked nearly every one of Sarge’s bl
ows, landing counterblows in return. Slamming Sarge back with mallet blows to the chin, the ribs, the side of the head. Bones cracked with the impacts as Reaper drove Sarge back, stumbling back, into a pillar, close to the Ark itself.
And it was as if the confrontation triggered something in both of them—an outpouring of sheer power, issuing from their newly transformed cells.
Sarge rushed Reaper, who used the rush’s momentum and his own enhanced power to throw Sarge—and was amazed himself to see how far: Sarge was flung up to a metal catwalk overlooking the chamber. Sarge was momentarily stunned and in seconds, leaping and pulling himself up, Reaper was there beside him, grappling with Sarge, pinning him facedown against the catwalk’s tubular metal railing with such force that the railing began to bend, to crack. But it was Sarge’s neck Reaper was trying to crack, to choke, as he pressed it against the metal. Feeling Sarge gathering his strength, Reaper braced, but it was like trying to hold down a volcano as Sarge erupted, and Reaper felt himself tossed like a projectile, off the catwalk, to tumble through the air and slam to the floor below.
Stunned, Reaper looked up to see Sarge ripping off part of the broken metal railing, then leaping down at him.
Reaper got his feet under him, jumped back, set himself…
And then stared, as he saw Sarge bending the long chunk of metal in his hand, effortlessly twisting it around his lower right arm, wrist, and fist, making a gauntlet edged with ragged metal.
Reaper’s reactions were a little slow—he was still slightly stunned from the fall. Sarge was on him before he could sidestep, slamming into him with the improvised gauntlet, pummeling Reaper, throwing him against the wall, hitting him and throwing him once more, so that Reaper felt like he was inside a cement mixer, tossed back and forth between unforgiving slabs of metal and stone…
Reaper blocked what blows he could, landed in ways that protected him from the worst of the impacts, waiting for his chance—and it came when Sarge tripped, fell, blinking, black blood running from a dozen wounds in his face and neck.
Reaper set himself for a final, killing blow, planning to dropkick Sarge’s head into the pillar behind him.
Then Sarge looked up at him, holding Reaper’s eyes with his. Making him hesitate that fatal split second…
And Sarge grinned as he said: “Welcome to the new school…”
Reaper stared, fascinated, as Sarge began to change—the transformation that had begun in him thickened his skull, deepened his eyes, turning them demon-yellow; his hands grew claws.
Reaper knew he had to take the offensive, and he lunged at Sarge—but Sarge reacted with superhuman speed, catching Reaper’s fist in his claws, digging his talons into his wrists, pushing back…
And they held the pose, straining there, the two warriors, human and inhuman, going eyeball-to-eyeball. The two of them struggling to overbalance the other, turning like dancers—so that the Ark, with its ever-shifting mercurial droplet, hung in the air right behind Sarge. Reaper reached deep inside himself for strength and braced, then threw Sarge to one side—just long enough to reach over and stab the buttons activating the Ark.
Reaper turned to see Sarge twisting a piece of metal on his gauntlet into a spike, and he lunged at Reaper, who sidestepped, but not fast enough to avoid a slash from that improvised dagger. He threw a hand out to block it and Sarge plunged the raw blade into Reaper’s right hand—and through it. Reaper reeled with pain, as Sarge pressed the blade, and Reaper’s hand, back toward Reaper’s head, his other hand clamping Reaper’s left…
Reaper tried to put all his strength into his left hand, but it was like he was trying to stop an onrushing rhino.
A voice spoke from a nearby comm screen:
“ARK ACTIVATED…”
Reaper had one second and in that one second, one chance. “Like the Kid said, Sarge…Go to hell!”
He shifted to his left foot, pivoted, ignoring the pain, and body-kicked Sarge hard with every ounce of strength left—so hard that Sarge was propelled backward, the spike and Sarge flying back…
And Sarge was swallowed up by the Ark.
Reaper stared at his injured hand—the change in him had already absorbed much of the injury, and the pain was fading.
He smiled thinly, then reached into a pocket, pulled a grenade, activated it—and tossed it into the Ark after Sarge.
Roaring with rage, Sarge spun and whipped and plummeted between worlds, falling and flying both…to tumble, at last, into the Ark facility on Olduvai…on the planet Mars.
Sarge, at the other end, leapt to his feet, roaring with fury at Reaper’s success. He was blind with rage, looking for his enemy.
Then he stared at something that clattered from the Ark, following him through from Earth, rolling to a stop right in front of him. Inches away from his foot.
Reaper’s grenade, pin missing.
Sarge opened his mouth to curse, but the curse was already spoken and the grenade exploded, consuming Sarge and the Ark in a ball of flame…that only got bigger. And bigger.
The chain reaction grew exponentially in heat and velocity, a quantum–fusion reaction expanding to culminate, to fulminate, in the power of an unleashed thermonuclear warhead.
The wormhole chamber on Mars, the atrium, the entire facility—all traces of Carmack’s experiments—were consumed, vaporized in the growing fireball. It was a white-hot fiery roar of rage, a conflagration that seemed to express, all at once, the horror and fear and anger at what had taken place here: a blinding light of thermonuclear catharsis.
Instinct, enhanced psychic sensitivity, led Reaper to his sister. She was only dimly conscious as he picked her up, murmuring to soothe her, carrying her to the elevator. It rocketed upward, carrying them to the surface of the facility at Papoose Lake, to the glorious open air of the Nevada wilderness. The explosives he’d set would destroy the last of the genetic demons.
Looking up through the open top of the elevator, he could see the sunlight reaching down to greet them.
He looked fondly down at her. The sunlight streamed across her face.
“Almost home, Sam…” he said.
She smiled up at him—safe in her brother’s arms.
About the Author
JOHN SHIRLEY is the author of numerous novels, including Crawlers, Demons, and Wetbones, the recent motion picture novelization of Constantine, and story collections including Really Really Really Really Weird Stories and the Bram Stoker Award–winning collection Black Butterflies. He also writes scripts for television and film, and was co-screenwriter for The Crow. The authorized fan-created website is www.darkecho.com/JohnShirley and his official blog is www.JohnShirley.net.