Fiske groans. “What...”
* * *
The creature that hurls itself into the Huey is a husky-sized nightmare made from spare spider and squid parts. Its body is coated in thick, coarse hairs. Its nine tentacles rubbery and tipped with bony hooks. Its head houses seven bulging eyes arranged in a triangle—all mammalian, with whites and irises. It changes colors. Blends in with the area around it. Its jaws open and close and drip saliva.
Parker doesn’t know if it’s poisonous.
He knows he wants it dead.
The two agents in the back seat struggle against the spider-squid’s tendrils. It mewls and screeches. The sound is a cross between a hungry kitten and an enraged chimp.
It pins the agents down. They try to move. Can’t.
The nine-legged nightmare flicks taloned tentacles. Keeps mewling and shrieking.
The flesh on the agents’ throats rips and tears as the thing whips at them. Blood pours down in rivulets. The monster opens its mouth and licks the warm fluid from their wounds. All while the men cry and whimper in their seats.
Parker pulls his Glock. He puts bullets in the agents’ foreheads. Mercy.
The spider-squid lunges for him. It thuds against the back of his seat. He fires at it. Hits it twice. He ducks back against the front control panel. A hook comes at his face. He fires again. The hooked tendril explodes in a red mist. The thing howls.
Another tentacle follows. This one tears through the pilot’s jaw. It embeds itself in his face. The pilot tries to scream, but the hook cuts a trench through his skull. His throat opens. The monster yanks viciously at his skin. It doesn’t care about coming to the front seat anymore. It cares about tearing off chunks of meat.
Its seven eyes wheel and glare at Parker.
Parker puts the Glock to his head.
* * *
The chopper careens in the sky. It tilts to the left. The blades of its rotor snap chunks from pines nearby.
Swift, Ackerman and Fiske flee. They dive over a felled tree a few yards away. Then peek over to watch.
The Huey spins. It rotates in wild circles. It spins down, down, down.
The chopper hits the snowy ground. Pinwheels. It slams into the wreck of the ship. Goes up with a loud boom and a giant fireball. The ship crumples with the impact. A great gout of electricity shoots into the air like a blue volcano.
* * *
Parker’s not even sure he’s alive anymore. He can’t move. And he can’t stop the creature engulfed in flames from tearing into his chest.
Even though it’s dying, it still wants his meat.
The last thing he sees is the monster’s eyes.
He feels his face crunch.
* * *
The electric scream of the ship forces the men to cover their ears. They gasp. Drop to their knees. The auditory assault fades. But it takes two full minutes for the men’s senses to return.
Then, through the sound of the roaring fire, they hear something else—one of the creatures moaning while it cooks in fiery destruction.
Ackerman says, “Ship was carrying a goddamn alien zoo or something.”
Swift rubs his neck. “Mighta been.” He tries to think of something noble to say. Tries to think of what a leader would say.
Instead, he says: “Fuck this. We’re leaving.”
17.
The shapes watch from under cover. Behind trees and rocks. The cold doesn’t bother them. They’re used to it. It’s so much like home in the warmer times.
Three remain. The tall, thin, blue disc-headed beings. Survivors of a wreck they didn’t expect. Got tangled up in the fields surrounding this rock. Then got pelted to hell from all the garbage these creatures tossed up there in orbit.
They look to each other with worried faces.
The ship’s cargo...
They watch the pale, furry bipeds enter the ship and await screams. None come. And the survivors all think to one another: Perhaps it is not as bad as we thought. Perhaps the cargo is still trapped. The biomechanical warmachines. Meant not for this place, but a battlefield far away on another world.
Then they do hear a scream.
Then they see the furry bipeds tumble from the ship.
Then they hear the blasts from the furry biped’s weapon as it murders a warmachine cleaner. A creature designed to sweep the battlefield of organic waste.
Then they hear the bipeds’ flying contraption. They hear more shouts and more screams and more discharge from the bipeds’ weapons.
Then the crash that brings even more damage to their precious ship that howls.
They wonder if the ship’s onboard computer is trying to send signals.
They wonder: How did things go so wrong so fast?
They think: It is far better to stay hidden. Nothing here can be trusted. Everything wants to kill them. Better safe than dead.
But they will watch and they will work out a solution their own way.
18.
Doc tells Kong, Gordy, and Mosshart about Wiseman. How the military swooped in faster than liquid shit and locked everything down. How he’s pretty sure at least one of the cocksuckers knows he’s lying about where he’s stationed.
Doc looks the other men over. “How long since you heard from Swift?”
Kong says, “Haven’t at all. Radios are fucked. Gordy’s been trying to reach someone all day.” He stirs a pot of what’s probably stew. “In between hearing monsters on his headphones, that is.”
Gordy flips the cook a middle finger from the comm station. “Fuck you, Kong.”
“Yep,” Mosshart says. He sits at the bar next to Doc and Kong. “Soon as we finished cleanin the yard he was back on that damn thing.” He takes a swig of beer. Turns to Gordy. “You keep on that, you’re gonna give yourself cancer or something. Y’know that, right?”
Gordy says, “Listen, I’m telling you something’s—”
The radio lets loose with a mind-wrenching squeal. Gordy drops the headset. Afraid his ears will burst.
The noise makes them think their brains are melting.
Doc shouts, “Unplug the damned thing. Turn it off.” His mouth’s moving, but nobody can hear him.
He walks, half-blind from pain. He kicks the radio over. Kicks the plug out from the wall. The noise doesn’t stop. It fades. Slow. Till it’s just a quiet squelch. A dying voice. Something in pain.
Mosshart says, “What in living hell was that?”
Gordy says, “Something happened at the ship. I’ll bet you a thousand bucks. Something happened at the ship.”
They instinctively look to Doc.
Like he has a goddamn clue what’s going on.
Doc shakes his head. “Someone crack open the gun cabinet. Use a prybar or a chainsaw, I don’t care. I’m bringing the dogs inside. I’m not leaving em out in the garage, given the shitstorm of weirdness happening. We’re all gonna wait here till Swift gets back. Or the Army comes knocking at our door. We stay in one spot. Together.”
Kong says, “Hey, man. That’s unsanitary, having animals in here.”
Doc glares at him.
Kong says, “Well... The dog hair and everything...”
* * *
Half the dogs are asleep. The other half are thrilled to be in a new area.
Rubin sets his snout on Doc’s leg and eyes his master.
Doc takes nervous sips from a tumbler full of whiskey and absent-mindedly thumbs the Colt on his hip.
The other huskies who are up and about—Duster, Angel and Winston—do their best to annoy the shit out of Kong. He says, “Doc, would you get these mutts outta here?”
Doc cocks an eyebrow. “You’re making food. Human food. You’re lucky all eight of em aren’t climbing on you.”
Kong pleads. “Doc. I got a hard enough time feeding the guys.”
“All right, all right. Keep your shirt on.”
Doc nudges Rubin off his knee. He stands and saunters into the kitchen. He grabs all three dogs by their collars and leads them
to the back of the main building, near one of the heaters. He says, “Fuck” in a stern voice. The dogs sit. “Good.”
He turns to Kong and bows. “Happy?”
“Very.”
The door bursts open.
The dogs leap to their feet. Rush forward. They form a protective shield before Doc. A canine phalanx. The huskies growl as three men huff their way inside.
Swift and Ackerman enter. Between them, they pull a bleeding, unconscious Fiske.
Swift says, “Doc, get the med kit.”
Doc pushes his way through the dogs. He looks to Fiske. There’s a lot of red on the greenhorn’s jacket. Around the stomach. And the kid’s leaking from his right leg.
Ackerman and Swift pant. They’re wounded too. Cuts on their cheeks and their arms. Nothing as bad as Fiske, though.
Kong and Gordy lift Fiske from between the two loggers. They haul the kid onto one of the dining tables. Doc heads for morphine and first-aid supplies. He shoots a glance at Ackerman’s chainsaw. Chunks of something fleshy are stuck to the tool’s teeth.
The whole blade glistens crimson.
* * *
Gordy stands by the back window with one of the Remington 870s.
Mosshart watches the main door with a Winchester Model 70.
The huskies pace in a kind of doggy patrol around the room.
Swift and Ackerman both down their shots.
Kong helps Doc dress Fiske’s wounds.
Swift tells em what happened at the crash site. The walking flytrap that ate the dead. The creature that brought down the Huey. The way the ship erupted with a blue electric discharge.
Then he and Ackerman tell them about the burrower.
“We were on our way back,” Swift says. He pours himself more whiskey and stares into the amber fluid. “We’d been walking for... I don’t know. Maybe we covered four miles. Pretty close to camp. We’re going at a good clip and then Fiske says he hears something.”
Ackerman says, “So we stop. Perk up our ears. After that fuckin flytrap on the ship, we weren’t gonna doubt the kid’s ears.”
Doc reaches into the laceration on the greenhorn’s leg with a pair of forceps. There’s something in the meat of Fiske’s thigh. Yellow. Stuck there like a thorn. Hell, it even looks like a thorn. Hooked and sharp and nasty. But the chunk is two inches long.
Kong wipes the bleeding wound with a rapidly dwindling supply of gauze.
The thorn slips from Doc’s forceps. He tries to get it again.
Swift says, “We hear it. Behind us. The sound of a hundred feet tapping the ground. And a chitchitchit sound. We can even see the brush moving about fifty yards out. But we can’t see it.”
“So we run,” Ackerman says. “Never been so reminded how outta shape I am.”
Swift says, “We run till we can’t. The noise is still there. Following us.” He takes a sip of whiskey. “Sam fires up his Stihl.”
“I’m thinking, shit, at the very least, I can take a swing if it gets too close,” Ackerman says. “Or maybe scare it by revving the saw.”
Swift says, “That doesn’t happen. What happens is the ground explodes in front of us. This...burrower bursts out. Thing looks like a giant centipede with a cut-up worm face. It shoots up fifteen goddamn feet in the air.
“It comes down like a falling tree and then the front part of it rears up. That’s what it looks like. And the whole time, these awful little legs along its sides are clicking. And it’s got a set of big arms too, like, big. With pincers or something. That’s how it grabbed Fiske.”
Doc clamps his forceps around the yellow thing in the meat of Fiske’s leg. He fights to pull the serrated thorn out. Gentle as possible. He’s afraid he’ll do more damage to the kid’s leg if he screws up. Tearing an artery would be...bad.
Swift says, “So it grabs Fiske. It holds him up like a ragdoll. It shakes him and he’s screaming. A bunch of the little legs start, I don’t know. Jabbing at him. Into him. I unload with the Browning. And I’m hitting it. But it doesn’t care. Then it’s lifting the kid toward that split worm mouth.”
Ackerman does another shot of whiskey. His hand shakes. “I run at it with the chainsaw. Bullets weren’t doin it so I figured—” He shrugs. “I shove the Stihl into its side. The blade’s chewin through all the little legs. I bury the Stihl to the hilt. An the whole time the saw teeth are chewin, chewin, chewin at this thing. There’s a flood of this red stink goo. Turns the snow a different color. The—” He motions to Swift “—burrower, that’s as good a name as any. The burrower drops the kid. I turn the saw up and start pushing it. Vertical. I pretend like it’s just this squirmy tree. Not something that wants to kill me.” Ackerman takes a minute to touch the bloody gash on his arm.
Swift says, “This thing...It took so long to kill.” He pours himself another drink.
The thorn comes free with a wet shlick. Doc holds it up in the light. The inside is a wet red sponge. Even dead, the thing was trying to feed on Fiske.
Swift pours more whiskey. “But that ain’t even the worst part. I swear. I swear it was trying to talk to us at the end. When it knew it was really fucked.” His eyes water. “It tried to plead with us. Communicate. It didn’t want to die. I heard it. In my head. These aren’t just dumb animals.”
Doc watches Swift for a minute. Wonders if the site manager’s cracking up.
By now Gordy and Mosshart have crowded around. Doc’s got no idea how long they’ve been standing there. He’s been too engrossed in trying to take the vile yellow thing outta Fiske and make sure the greenhorn stays alive.
Doc says, “All right.”
Mosshart says, “How long’s the kid gonna be out?”
“Between the injuries and the morphine, I can’t say. Why?” Doc checks the sewing job he did on Fiske’s stomach. Nothing too bad there. Lotta blood, but it looks worse than it is. He threads a needle to deal with the greenhorn’s leg. That is pretty fucked up. Muscle damage. It’s gonna take some time to heal.
Mosshart says, “Cuz I’m thinkin if a monster like that wants to get in here, it’s gonna.”
Old man’s got a point.
“Wait,” Gordy says. “You sayin there’s more of those things?”
Ackerman says, “You didn’t see the size of the ship. Better’n a quarter mile big. The fuck knows how many nasties were in there.”
Gordy suddenly looks incredibly depressed.
Mosshart says, “So what’s the plan?”
The men look to Swift. Then they look to Doc.
Doc and Swift eye each other.
They both think: Haha! Plan?
* * *
Mosshart sits in front of the rubble that used to be the radio. He wishes Doc hadn’t been quite so enthusiastic about shutting it off. But under the circumstances, he can’t really blame the man.
Mosshart pulls the cracked casing off the receiver. The circuit board’s a mess. But it’s salvageable.
He thinks: When I was a kid, I was worried about the Russians. Cuba. Kept being told by my parents and teachers that hiding under a desk was gonna save me if the Commies nuked the States. Oh, sure, like that was gonna work. Knew it was bullshit. Did it anyway.
Now there’s new monsters.
So Swift says. And Ackerman. And Gordy.
Might not be bullshit. That’s the scary thing.
Mosshart puts the radio down. He’ll work on it later. It’s nonessential. The generator, though. That he needs to check. It goes down, they’re screwed. Cold has a habit of killing slow. And no electricity means no lights. No lights means they can’t see.
If one of those things...
An idea pops up in Mosshart’s mind.
Electricity.
* * *
Doc drinks and smokes.
Swift sticks to booze.
Doc says, “We can’t leave now. Can’t stick Fiske in the back of a truck. Or on the sled. Not in his condition.”
“I know,” Swift says. “But we gotta make it to Wiseman. Staying
here is asking for trouble.”
“Still gotta wait till the kid wakes up.”
“And we don’t know how long that’s gonna be.”
“I dosed him when we laid him down. But he was in shock. It’s been two hours. Had he not been in shock, he’d be waking up about now.”
“You better not kill that boy cuz you drugged him while he’s all fucked up.”
Doc rolls his eyes. “It was a low dose. Enough to keep him down while I patched him up.”
“Still glad you’re not my MD.”
“Fair point. But it always works fine on the dogs so—”
“I don’t wanna sit here overnight while those things get closer to us.”
“Don’t have much choice.”
Mosshart taps Swift’s shoulder. “I have a plan.”
Outside, there’s a roar.
The only equivalent Doc can come up with is a whale song. Low. Powerful. Mournful. A bellow born from the lungs of something enormous. But wholly alien.
The noise comes from far away. All of the men stop and stand. So do the dogs, who start to piss in fear and anxiousness.
The men’s bladders aren’t far behind.
“That’s new,” Ackerman says.
Swift says to Mosshart, “Your plan better be fuckin phenomenal.”
* * *
Gordy and Ackerman drag the backup generator from the garage into the main building. It’s only meant to power the camp if the primary fails, but Mosshart has another idea.
He says: “I got to thinkin. You said bullets didn’t do much to the big things. Maybe the flytraps. But what we gotta worry about is the big things.”
“The burrower,” Swift says.
“Yeah. It took Ackerman’s chainsaw to really finish the thing. Maybe if we had some flamethrowers, we’d fare better. But we don’t. So I’m thinkin we need a weapon with more—” He chuckles “—more spark.”
Doc hauls in a roll of chain-link fence. Leftovers from building Dogtown.
Mosshart nods to it. “I wanna surround the main building with that. Put up quick and dirty posts all along it. Staple in the wire. Doesn’t need to be pretty. Then run leads in to the backup genny. We got enough juice going through the wire to nuke anything dumb enough that gets close. It’ll be loud and we’ll need to feed the exhaust outdoors, but it should work.”
Stranded Page 6