by David Coy
The rifle discharged a short burst through the open door and into the shuttle’s cockpit, missing Habershaw cleanly. Donna wrenched the rifle out of the weakened man’s hands, turned it on him and fired. The man’s body jerked once then was still.
“Hurry!” she said. “Those shots’ll bring the whole damned nest down on us!”
They wrestled John through the door, then went back for Rachel. They dragged her roughly into the shuttle’s interior, slammed the door and hustled to the cockpit.
When Habershaw put his hand on the stick, he knew they were in trouble. One of the soldier’s bullets had passed right through the shuttle’s control device, shattered it and left a mangled mess of colored wires on one side. “We got a problem,” he said.
“What?” Donna asked urgently.
“The stick’s fucked up—bullet hit it. I don’t know if this thing’ll fly.”
“Try it anyway,” she said.
“Here goes,” he said and turned the system on. With a lurch, the shuttle began to move forward without any assistance from Habershaw. He held his hands up off the sticks for emphasis. “That’s not good,” he said.
“You’d better make this thing fly,” she said pointing out the front window. “We got company.”
Heading straight at them was a troop transporter, mud flying off its tires in a thick wake.
Habershaw pushed the stick forward.
The shuttle lurched ahead, then began to spin violently, sending Donna against the window. When Habershaw tried to stop the spin, the shuttle’s nose plunged into the mud, sending a spray of goo over the window.
“Shit! This is impossible!” he said.
He touched the stick again and the vehicle lunged forward.
Habershaw tried to get it off the ground, but the shuttle began to dart from side to side. Struggling for balance, Donna glanced over her shoulder to see John and Rachel rolling helplessly back and forth. “Christ!” Habershaw yelled. “I can’t control it!”
The shuttle continued to lurch and buck and swing out of control, occasionally speeding forward, hopping and pounding the ground.
The transport continued to roar at them, changing its course to intercept.
“They’re gonna ram us!” Habershaw yelled, struggling for control. “Dammit!” The shuttle lurched ahead in a straight and final collision course with the transport. “Shit!”
The transport and shuttle collided with a sickening crunch that buckled metal and tossed Donna and Habershaw into the window. Stunned, they fell tangled to the floor.
Donna shook her head to gain her senses and heard hissing and hot, creaking metal and the sound of gurgling in a tank somewhere. For a moment, none of it was real.
“Damn,” she said.
“Are you all right?” Habershaw asked.
“I . . . think so,” Donna said, grimacing and climbing off him. “We gotta get outta here . . . get John . . . Rachel . . . get out . . . get out . . .”
There was a sound like metal being bent and torn, and she heard heavy footsteps and clamoring in the cargo bay. Through the thick haze in her head, she thought it might have been John, now awake and coming to help them, ready to help all of them. She looked up to see a ruby-cheeked and overweight soldier standing in the doorway to the cockpit, rifle pointed at her. His shirt was parted at his mid-section from the sheer size of his gut, exposing pink flesh. She looked over at Habershaw who was propped on one elbow, trying to pry himself from between the seats. The whole thing was suddenly funny to her.
“Fuck this,” she said with a wide, sardonic grin. “Fuck this.”
The sound of a single shot from the soldier’s rifle, and the explosion of Habershaw’s head were one and the same.
Habershaw now sat slumped between the seats, his arms limp and his ruined head down, blood dripping from the gaping hole in the back of his skull.
“Nice shot,” she said.
“You want one, too?” the soldier asked menacingly. His voice was high-pitched, like a girl child’s.
“I don’t care. Go ahead, Squeaky—shoot me. I just don’t give a shit.”
“Climb out of there,” he said in his mean little voice. “Get out or I’ll drag you out by your dang hair. Move it.”
Another soldier appeared behind the first. She recognized him as the gung-ho partner of Mahoney, the guard she’d killed. In addition to killing her, she figured this one would probably want to hurt her in some special way as payback for killing his buddy. What he did next shocked her. He stepped up behind the chunky soldier and lunged forward with his rifle butt, striking him in the head. The fat soldier made a high-pitched little grunt, and then fell in a soft heap to the floor. A sweet, sweaty smell reached her as if it had been puffed out of him by the impact.
Donna was confused. Her mind raced. Why? Like a ball in a roulette wheel, the thought finally came to rest.
Great. Of course. This one wants me all to himself. “Come on,” he said offering a hand. “I’ll get you out of here.”
“What?” she asked, blinking.
“Let’s go. I’m here to help you.”
“And take me just where, soldier boy?”
“Out of here. But we have to go now. Come on.”
“What about my friends? I don’t have many—and I don’t leave behind the ones I have.”
“We don’t have time,” he said. “They’re sending another transport right now. We don’t have time. We have to move. We’ll have to get them later. I know where they’re going. They’ll be all right for a while.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“Let’s just say you’ve got a friend you didn’t know you had.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. I’m Paul Kominski, Mike’s brother.”
18
Paul drove the armored transport down the road at least two kilometers; and when he was sure they wouldn’t be seen, he picked a level spot with not too many trees and turned into the jungle. The powerful transport’s six tires crunched through the thick foliage as if it weren't there. He didn’t go in far, just enough to be hidden from the road.
“This’ll do,” he said. “They’d have to be looking for us to see us in here.”
“But won’t they be?” Donna asked.
“Maybe, but I doubt it. They’ve got what they want.”
“You mean Rachel and John, don’t you?”
“Yes. Rachel especially. We have specific orders to take her alive.”
“Why?”
“Jacob. He’s obsessed with Rachel. She’s not to be hurt—not so much as a scratch.”
“I don’t get it,” Donna said, shaking her head. “What is his fascination with Rachel?”
“He’s evil.”
“He’s dead. That’s what he is,” she said with a snort of satisfaction.
“Dead?”
“That’s right. Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what? He’s not dead.”
Donna blinked. “Of course he is.”
“You’re mistaken. He’s as alive as you or me. I saw him this morning.”
“You’re sure?”
“He’s not the kind of man you’d confuse with somebody else. Oh, it was him all right—limping around, whispering orders like always.”
“John must have just wounded him,” she said. “And thought he was dead. Shit.”
What was the use? She was so tired. All she wanted to do was get her family back. She wanted John and Rachel and Eddie and herself together again. She wanted to build a nest, safe and secure and well-feathered. She wanted a fresh start, a simple fresh start without the burden of hatred or the fear of tyranny. It would be hard enough to live on this planet without a stream of supplies from Earth. The hideous human baggage they’d brought with them from their home planet only made it worse.
“Tell me. Where are they taking them?” she asked. “Tell me what they plan to do—these bastards called The Sacred Bond.
“They’ll take them to a cell abou
t midway down corridor and stash them until Jacob is ready.”
“Ready? What do you mean, ready?”
Paul looked at her and wondered if he should go on. “What?” she asked. “Keep talking.”
“Jacob and the Council’s scientists are using the alien technology to make things—horrible things.”
“Yeah. I know that part.”
“What you don’t know is why. I got this from a Council member’s concubine. She used to be a lab tech, but she couldn’t stand what they were doing and quit. It almost got her killed, but the Council member protected her. So this comes from a pretty good source.”
“How do you know her?”
“We had a relationship. It didn’t last very long, but long enough for her to tell me all about what they’re doing in there.”
“Speak.”
“Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Yes.”
“She says Jacob has this idea that a man and woman should be literally glued together forever, cleaved is the word she used because that’s what they call it. Cleaved one to the other— something like that. She says Jacob is completely obsessed with these things. They somehow modify the brain’s pleasure centers to run at full speed, out of control. Then he . . . he . . .”
“Mates?” she offered. “Is that the word you need—mates with these creatures?”
“Well, something like that.”
“Something like that—the polite way to put it?”
“Yeah.”
“God . . .”
“The problem is that until now, the things didn’t live very long.”
“You said until now. What’s different?”
“She says they’ve reached some kind of breakthrough. She says they’ve found a way to combine two or more people into one and keep them alive. She says Jacob wants to be one of the first to try the new procedure and that he wants to be joined to your friend Rachel. That’s why he’s so fixated on her.”
“For how long?”
“How long . . . what?”
“How long can they keep them alive?”
“Forever. She says they’ve found a way to keep them alive forever.”
Donna’s hand went up to her mouth as if she’d just heard the worst, the most sickening thing imaginable. To be physically, surgically, joined to Jacob No Name in some obscene sexual union—forever—like profane Siamese twins . . . it was too ghastly to contemplate. Her mind refused it further entry. “No,” she said dimly.
“No, what?” Paul replied.
“No. It can’t be true.”
“Well, there’s more,” he said tentatively.
Donna closed her eyes. Of course, there is. There’s always more hideous news. “What?”
Paul sighed. “She says that once they’re joined, they can make babies one after another. Drop one, have another. Drop that one, have another one. She says that’s what they want. They want to cement people together like that so they can breed and breed, you know, like machines. Then, according to her, they can use them for whatever they want.”
Donna suddenly felt frantic. The feeling rose up from her feet, making her want to move, to run, to do anything. She started to squirm in her seat. “We have to do something. We have to stop this. We have to make it go away.”
We have to kill all of them, she thought.
The first pupae dropped onto the top of the transport with a boink sound—just like any number of things, living or dead that can drop out of the canopy. When the next five or six bounced off the roof and windows in quick succession, they caught Donna’s attention, and she thought briefly that the tree under which they’d stopped was shedding its breeze-loosened seeds.
* * *
Rachel lay with her head against something hard, but she couldn’t tell what it was. When she felt it move and heard him groan, she realized it must have been some part of John, perhaps his knee. She felt his hand grope her face and hair and the awkward, spastic movement was strangely reassuring and almost funny to her, though she didn’t feel like laughing. Over the next few minutes, she managed to get her own limbs working and, finally, when she thought she could do it without falling down, she slowly stood up.
She turned around as if she were standing on slick ice and looked down at John. He lay there flexing his hands, arms and mouth at the same time, trying to get any of them to work properly. He must have gotten a stronger dose of the gas than she did, because he had a ways to go before gaining anything like coordinated motor control. She rubbed his arms and legs vigorously, trying to stimulate them into working. “Thank you,” he croaked.
“They’ve got us,” she said, working his thigh. “They’ve got us good.”
“But I’ve got you,” he said, trying to smile.
She looked at his drug-warped smile and touched it with her fingertips. He had come for her, risked his life to save her. She blinked back a tear. “Yes, you do. You’ve got me good,” she said.
She didn’t know if this was the right time to tell him, but if she didn’t do it now, she might not get the chance. She took his hand and placed it on her belly then covered it with both of hers. “Do you feel that?” she asked.
“Feel what?”
“That’s you in there. That’s you and me growing there.”
John let the words sink in. “You’re pregnant?”
“Yes. I’m pregnant with your child.”
A swell of brief joy raised him up, but reality brought him down with a thud. Barring some miracle, they’d never live to see the child. He pressed his hand a little tighter against her womb, feeling the warm resilience there. Under normal circumstances, he could have thought of no more secure place to nurture and sustain a developing child. Rachel was strong and her body inviolate. But now her womb was not a warm and secure place, but a prison within a prison. Now three, not two, had been captured.
“I love you,” he said.
She looked at his handsome face through a mist of tears.
“Now ain’t that sweet,” a mean voice behind her said.
Rachel turned around to see a disheveled soldier standing on the other side of the cell’s bars. He was leaning against the wall on one arm, legs crossed, the very picture of smug superiority. He turned Rachel’s stomach. He’d obviously heard their conversation.
“What do you want?” she asked, wiping at her tears with a fingertip. You can’t see these. These are John’s.
“Don’t matter what I want,” the man said. “It only matters what the Council wants. You got a surprise coming.”
“Really?” Rachel said. “Well, life is one big adventure.”
“Too bad you’re so damned pretty,” he said. “If I were you, I’d be wishin’ to be real ugly about now.”
“Fuck off,” John said, trying to get up.
“Go back to sleep, buster,” the soldier said. “You’re gonna need your rest.”
The soldier walked away from the door, running his thumb around under the rifle’s sling.
“Bastard,” John said.
“It’s okay,” she said. “He’s gone. Forget it.”
Rachel stood up and looked around. They’d put them in what looked like a storage area of some kind. It was new to her. “I don’t recognize this cell,” she said.
“One you missed?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
There were piles of ancient clothing that crumbled to the touch, and some other very odd items laid out around the cell’s walls. There were two very strange chairs with bent aluminum arms and legs that had woven material stretched between them. There was a pile of ceramic dishes and actual glass drinking glasses. There were several cracked and crumbling plastic carrying baskets, and inside them were the crisp and dried remains of packaged foods. She picked up a tubular container, its surface cracked and peeling and shook it. It rattled.
“This stuff is very old,” she said, puzzled. “It must have come from Earth. Look at this stuff.”
Propped neatly against the w
all was an antique knapsack, dark green in color. When she bent down and touched it, the material, stiff and dried, cracked under her touch. She took hold of the zipper and tried to work it around the seam, but it broke and fell to pieces. She gently tore the weakened seam with her fingers and looked inside.
She pulled out a pair of antique binoculars, the lenses dulled by the out-gassed resins of the pack’s contents. When she turned the focus knob, it cracked in two in her hand. There was a plastic bottle, stiff and cracked, its contents long-lost. There were two glass jars, their labels cracked and crumbling, filled with a material she didn’t recognize. The cement-like contents didn’t give when she shook them. She read the labels, printed in old English. One had been filled with what was formerly peanut butter, the other with grape jelly.
Stuffed into an inside pocket was a paper notebook with a faded blue cover and a springy, coiled binder. It was permanently bent and dented by the binoculars that had pressed against it for eons.
Rachel took it out, very gently, and as if turning the petals of a dried flower, opened it to the first page. The ink had separated from its base, leaving yellow halos around the letters, but the neat printing was still legible. She cocked her head and smiled at the misspelled title printed in big block letters on the first page.
Tracing the edge of the paper gently with a forefinger, Rachel began to read “Bailey’s Dairy.”
19
Jerome Ehrlich liked his job. It was challenging and made him the center of attention besides. No one could do what he did quite as well as he did. He was always the best. He always had been. It was in his genes.
It was Gerome Ehrlich who had discovered how to operate the plasticizing equipment in the first place. It was he who had figured out how to use the cutters and gluers and burnishers and how to trigger the very fine tips of the micro-nippers. The hardest part was figuring out how to turn on the plasticizing applicators and how to apply the chemical catalysts. Released from the organ above, they blended the plastered area into one seamless joint. It was the catalyst that allowed the foreign tissues and nerves to grow together as one. By using them, one could glue anything to anything. They’d even named the organ that produced it “Ehrlich’s Body” after he figured it out. That’s how smart he was.