The sounds from outside stopped. I tensed up, stepping back to the stairs. What now? A screech of metal and a gunshot from above, followed by a yelp. I heard a wounded alien fall down the shaft and land with a thud. Apparently, the elevator doors weren't holding. We should have welded them too. I shrugged it off and concentrated on my position.
I jumped at the sound of creaking wood outside and immediately felt foolish. Oh, horror! A tree creaked in the woods, stop the presses! Then I heard a roar from the outside, it was coming at me. I started to move back when the garage door collapsed inward, plowed through by a boat. The gate was torn out of its nest and a gaping hole appeared at the center of it. The boat dashed across the rather small garage and smashed into the wall right next to the stairs.
More screeching metal and raining glass. It's a wonder that it didn't explode on the impact. When the machine hit, I felt it with my whole body and threw myself back at the wall. For a moment, I imagined that the house would topple on itself. When nothing followed, I scrambled to my feet and raised the rifle.
The door was gone. The ragged edges of the remains opened up like petals of a flower. Cool night air entered the room and touched me. I looked into the blackness beyond, expecting… I didn't know what. Pushing fear away, I came down.
The boat was smashed into junk. I had a pretty good idea who was behind the wheel. Rustling came from inside the cabin. I aimed. Rustling moved to the exit, and then a bloodied hand touched the frame. Heap pulled himself out of the cabin and hit the side of the boat. He overturned and smashed on the floor. The alien also had a black circle on his face and wore a flak vest. Alas, he forgot about the helmet. His head was smashed, the face literally caved in. Nevertheless, he still clutched to his machine gun.
I stepped forward, and he began to twitch. The old alien jerked his whole body, turning to me. There was that dumb hate in his eyes, probably the only thing that kept him alive. He had pride, after all. Heap tried to raise the weapon and even managed to lift the muzzle, but nothing more than that. The machine gun hit the floor with its black body. Heap hissed something and died at the feet of a human.
THUD. I looked up. A thick beam lay on the edge of the hole. I heard a creak and another one joined it. Alabaster fingers clutched the edge of the improvised ladder. When the head appeared, I shot it, and the body was thrown backward. In its place, a wooden shield appeared. The next bullet lodged itself in the wood. The aliens were coming in, first wave covering with shields, the second crawling under their feet. All wore bulletproof vests. Clever fuckers.
I couldn't hold them off with a rifle alone. My gaze dropped on the machine gun in Heap's hand. My rifle clicked on the floor as I abandoned it for a mightier weapon. I snatched it out of the old alien's hand and lifted into the air. It was heavy as fuck and I dropped the weapon down on the floor, collapsing on top of it.
The aliens were coming, the shield line had already appeared around the entrance. Something needed to be done and quick.
I grabbed the business end of the machine gun and threw it over Heap's body. I prostrated myself on the floor, using his corpse as a base for the weapon. My left hand steadied the barrel, and the right hand found the trigger. The aliens had assumed a semblance of formation and moved in on me. Though they were standing over me, it didn't matter. Their legs weren't covered, and there was still a few feet between us. I opened fire.
The rattle deafened me. The heat burned my face. The machine gun raged in my hands like a rabid dog on a leash. The white flower bloomed around its muzzle, I could barely see the enemy through it. The bullets undercut them like trees. Their ankles literally exploded. The warriors fell down, lifting their shields, and were mowed down. A spear scraped the floor and fell beside, but I barely noticed it. Another one struck the stairs and slid down. I kept shooting, I was in a frenzy. And then it all stopped.
The empty magazine clicked near my head, but I didn't hear it. The white flower disappeared. My world was a constant honk. Dazed, I got to my feet and looked at my work. The attackers were dead, every single one of them. Their torn bodies lay on top of each other, flak vests and wooden shields didn't help. I thought of the sawmill and felt satisfaction. When I counted the bodies, it was gone.
There were no more than fifteen of them. A tiny fraction of what R'lok could throw at me. I had used all of the machine gun and couldn't reload it, for there were no cartridges here. I leaned for my trusty rifle when the next wave started coming up, their shields waving in the air. Holding the rifle between them and me, I retreated to the stairs. After all, the rifle is a long distance weapon.
The story repeated itself. As they made another formation at the entrance, I fired at every naked spot I could find. I shot one through the knee; he fell and caught the next bullet with his teeth. His shield was immediately picked up. Damn it! As I continued to fire, the natives were making slow but steady progress toward me. No matter how many I shot, reinforcements kept coming. A dart fell at my feet. I was already moving up to the landing.
A giant fur snake with a wooden head wreathed in the room below me. I needed two shots to kill one enemy; a heavy price. Between the shields, I saw flashes of snarling faces, a black circle painted on each. I decided to use my trump card.
As they reached the first step, I pulled out the flare gun and lifted it, aiming over their heads. They raised their shields as one. I dropped my hand and fired at their feet instead. The flare whistled down the stairs, hit the floor and bounced up into their midst. There was a shriek of fear, and then it exploded. The alien snake lit up from inside, casting shadows around it, sparks showering the floor, and their formation broke.
Welcome to the shooting gallery. I lifted my rifle and fired into the crowd. They twitched and flailed, shaking off the flames. I searched out their weak spots and fed them bullets. They seemed to have forgotten me in the chaos.
The flare burned out and I was out of ammo. The survivors looked at me, and I at them. There was just one stairwell between us. I clutched the rifle and dashed to the left, upstairs, where the engine room was.
An alien reached the landing behind me with a single bound; I could feel the heat of his body on my back. I turned, butted him in the face without even looking and ran. Another joined him. I ran up the endless stairs as fast as I could, imagining an ax embedding itself in my back any second. I stepped on my own hedgehog. The nail didn't pierce the sole, but I rolled on it and fell. They rushed in at me. I looked down at their square shapes and up, at the engine room. I was almost there. The tripwire! I yanked on it and pressed my head down.
A steel spear whistled over me.
I climbed up on all fours and looked back. My pursuers were impaled and pinned to the wall, three in all. The metal spear went through them at the shoulder level, making the vests useless. If we angled the rod lower, it would have gotten stuck in the hard linen. But we were lucky, and now three invaders got pierced through necks and faces.
The bodies created a jam, and at least for the moment, no more were coming through. I stood up and leaned against the wall separating the stairwells. I whipped out a new clip and reloaded the rifle. Shots rang out from above.
Hang in there, Ort!
I relished a minute's rest before I heard thumping coming up the stairs. I jumped out and collided head-on with an alien.
I shoved him back with the rifle and shot him in the neck point-blank. Yellow blood spurted from the wound, and he fell backwards onto his ascending comrades. The tip of one long spear rushed past him, nearly missing my face and catching my hood instead. The aliens holding the other end heaved, and I felt myself lifted into the air.
I threw the rifle aside with one hand, unzipping with the other, and slipped out of my raincoat.
Free of my weight, the spear hit the ceiling and the aliens clutching it stumbled back. I dropped on the floor and slithered sideways to reclaim my rifle. The moment I grabbed the handle I heard thumping coming from behind me. Those guys sure were determined. I turned, at the same time p
ushing myself away from the wall between the two stairwells, and fired.
I got him in the hip, and the alien fell down on the floor. Our eyes became on the same level, and we looked at each other. Oblivious of the wound, the alien lunged forward with his ax. It had a metal blade. I snaked my body up and threw myself into the stairwell going up. The ax hit the floor with a dull clank. Lying along the steps, I crawled backwards and up.
Another one came at me, swinging his ax and barely missing my stomach. I fired at him, but my bullet hit the vest and got stuck in it. The warrior was thrown backwards and grabbed his chest, coughing.
The first one was still on the floor before me. He grabbed me by the foot and dragged me down. I watched the ax rise. Desperate, I kicked him in the neck with the other foot. The alien jerked his head to the side and then pounced on me. I jammed the barrel into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
The bullet passed through his flesh, spraying yellow blood across the floor, and rested in the generator, leaving a nifty hole. Something flashed inside, and the lights went out. A signal sounded, and the emergency lights came on.
Wonderful!
I kicked the dead alien away from me and scrambled to my feet. In doing so, I spiked my left hand on a hedgehog. Fuck! The damn things seemed to work only against me. I threw it behind me and jumped to the next landing. My pursuers didn't hurry to follow. Nevertheless, I'd lost the engine floor faster than I'd have preferred. I hoped that Ort was doing better than me.
The air was filled with the haze of gun smoke. The flashing emergency light directly above my head intermittently illuminated the bottom of the stairs with its crimson glow, grabbing them out of the blackness. I could see the dead man lying there below me. And the one I got in the chest, he stood nearby, his ax gleaming with each red flash. I wished the natives would be scared off. No such luck. A dark silhouette emerged from the side. Another joined him. In bloody rotoscope, I watched the aliens flow up at me.
Moving slowly, but steadily, they crept up the stairs, as if they had all the time in the world. As for me, I stood there like a moron and waited. I felt so tired… They kept on coming and coming, one snarled face changing the other. I couldn’t win. An ax hit the wall with a metal clank, and I shook off my stupor.
Shots crackled, one after another.
One body fell on the stairs, sprawling down, while another just swayed. A fur ball jumped at me. I thrust the rifle upward with both arms, and the ax's wooden handle stuttered against it. An alien face was inches from mine. He tried to bite me, his teeth clattering in the air. Warm breath scorched my sweating face. I shoved with my whole body and threw him down the stairs, then ran up, into the living room. I jumped over another tripwire, turned, and aimed down the stairs. Nobody followed me.
I stood there for endless seconds, aiming down the empty stairwell. Sweat was pouring down my forehead, and I had to shake my head to keep it out of the eyes. I knew that the moment I looked away, they would come. I took one step back. Another. I was behind the barricade. I sat behind the overturned couch and listened. No sound from below. Nor from above. Fear gripped my heart; what if I was the only human left? What if I had already lost and just didn't know about it? I couldn't bear the thought.
'ORT! Are you alive?' I screamed on top of my lungs. Silence. Then a strained voice came.
'Yes. Are you in the living room?'
'That's right.'
No more words were said.
I waited, hammers pounding in my head. I lost any sense of time, leaning against the barricade, aiming, waiting, my nerves on edge. The red emergency light continued its slow strobe. When would this nightmare end?
A yelp from upstairs and the stumping of feet. I jumped at the sound and fired. The bullet ricocheted in the pulsing darkness. I listened, not daring to move. If I abandoned the barricade, the living room would be lost. But, maybe there was nobody downstairs to lose it to. And maybe Ort was dying upstairs.
Then I saw some furry shape move on the landing below. At first, I thought that it was just more warriors. Just. Then, in the pulsing light, I saw that the shape was wrong. It wasn't humanoid. Then I noticed the gleaming eyes. Then I heard the low rumble. Then I watched it come forward on all fours, the tusks shimmering.
A taj. A taj. A taj. A TAJ. A FUCKING TAJ. THE FUCKERS SOMEHOW BROUGHT A TAJ HERE AND PUSHED IT UPSTAIRS!
I froze. I couldn't move. My fingers felt numb, and the rifle nearly dropped out of them. I'm dead, I thought. The taj, meanwhile, had reached the top of the stairs, and its head and the front paws entered the living room. I saw long fingers with claws scrape the floor and touch the tripwire. The counterweight rustled, and the second spear jumped into the darkness. Alas, it flew over the beast’s head. The taj didn’t even pay attention to it and looked straight at me, and I looked back.
'ORT!' I screamed. 'ORT! ORT! ORT!' I couldn't think and organize my thoughts into something more meaningful, so I just repeated his name.
The taj must have thought that I was trying to intimidate it and roared. My body started to shake at the sound. The beast crouched. I knew what would happen next. When it pounced, I stood up and opened fire. I pulled the trigger mindlessly, without even aiming. Anything to stop it, to keep it away for another minute. To postpone the inevitable. The taj stumbled in mid air and dropped on the floor. At least some of my bullets got it. The animal stopped mere feet away from me and snarled. I fired again, and the rifle clicked. It was empty.
The taj lunged at me with one paw. Its two long fingers left claw marks on my chest. It burnt as if hot iron touched me. I stumbled back and grabbed my rifle by the barrel like a club. I swung it in the air before its nose. The beast hesitated and tried to catch the irritant. I saw movement behind it and felt hope for the first time this night. Ort was coming at the beast with the shotgun.
Ort ran up to the taj and put a load into its back. The fur ruffled, some blood came out, and that was it. Ort managed to pump the weapon just once before the beast retaliated.
The taj launched its front into the air and doubled over. The beast knocked the weapon out of his hands with the left paw. The strike was so hard that the shotgun propelled through the air, struck the wall and rolled somewhere downstairs. As for the right paw, its long fingers bored their claws into Ort's neck. Then the beast jerked itself back, dragging the big man behind it, pinning him to the floor. It all happened in a matter of seconds.
I watched in horror at Ort lying under the animal, his neck and chest bleeding. I screamed and struck the taj on the head as hard as I could. It caught the rifle with its mouth and clenched its jaws. The rifle bent in two and crumbled like it was a toy gun.
I stepped back, trying to get the pistol, my last weapon, out of its holster. The fingers wouldn't obey me. The taj lunged at me, pushing the barricade away like it was nothing and dragging suffering Ort across the floor. He moaned from the pain. I stumbled and fell on my back.
The fanged maw hung before me. Then something glistened under it. Ort managed to pull out his bowie knife and started to madly shank the beast's chest. It wouldn't die. The taj roared and turned to him, ready to finish the ranger. At that moment, my hand struck something. I turned and saw the two-handed ax.
'HEY!' I screamed and kicked the taj in the head. The beast turned to me.
The stone blade entered its head between the eyes and came out through the palate. Yellow blood bubbled from under the blade and rained out of its mouth in a stream. The taj looked at me, moved its black lips and then dropped down. Dead at last.
I let go of the handle and got to my feet. My knees were shaking. I walked to Ort. He looked bad. I sat beside him and pulled the claws out of his flesh.
Ort looked at me. 'Help me here.' He grabbed the taj from below, and I pushed from the side. Together, we freed him from this burden. I put Ort's heavy hand on my shoulder and helped him to get up. The big man literally hung on me.
'Let's get upstairs.' He said in a weak voice.
The alarm kept pulsing it
s crimson light. Propping each other up, we walked to the stairs and ascended to the last level of the cabin.
The crow's nest looked like a battlefield. The elevator doors were bent inward, sprayed with yellow blood. The furniture was overturned, alien bodies everywhere. One hit the computer and broke the screen. Many of the aliens had chopping wounds. The broken machete lay on the floor. I looked over the room, and my heart was clenched in pincers. I led Ort to the place at the wall that it was equally distanced from the stairwell and the elevator shaft. When I put him down, I knew that it would the place where we would die.
I took out the pistol and sat next to Ort. He was breathing hard, pressing the wound on the neck with his palm. I wanted to say something meaningful, but didn't have the words. There was stomping on the stairs. I aimed.
One head appeared, and I shot it. Others picked up the body and carried it forward as a shield. I fired nevertheless, trying to get them in the uncovered parts. One of them tripped the wire. The last spear launched into the aliens and they fell down the stairs. I watched it indifferently and dropped the hand.
'They'll return,' I said.
'Yes.' I could barely hear him.
And they did. Up the stairs. Down the elevator shaft. Alabaster faces with black circles painted onto them. They appeared around us, and then started to close in on the last humans. Slowly. They could clearly see that we wouldn't get anywhere.
The chest burned. I tried to shoot at them, but my head began to swim, and the gun fell out of my hand.
'We lost,' Ort said. 'Too civilized…'
And then it all collapsed. Whether it was a conscious effort on their part or just an accident, the engine room exploded.
At first, I felt a silent hum, a surge travel through the building and my bones. Then I heard the metal scream. Blue fire rushed out of the shaft and the stairwell, engulfing the aliens. With total indifference, I watched them burn. Then the floor heaved. The living room was destroyed completely. In the crow's nest, the explosion caused the floor to bulge upward. I could see it rise with my own eyes.
Under the Canopy Page 18