Rasche glanced back at the arsenal, thinking about the possibilities, .and smiled grimly.
"My pleasure," he said.
He watched as Schaefer crossed the street.
Schaefer seemed to know what he was doing," but Rasche had doubts. Yeah, they needed manpower, but recruiting off the streets like this . . .
Well, Schaefer had always had a knack for bringing out the best in people, one way or another. Sometimes it was their best effort to kill the big son of a bitch, but hey, it was their best.
The door was open a few inches; Schaefer pushed it open farther with his foot and stepped cautiously inside, shotgun ready.
The front-hall light was out, but lights were on somewhere upstairs, and the glow from the stairwell was more than enough to see by The floor was strewn with debris, the walls were painted with obscene graffiti that failed to hide the stains, and the whole place stank of human waste. A chunk of ceiling had fallen away, exposing badly corroded pipes; one pipe was dripping slowly.
"Hey, Carr!" Schaefer bellowed. He marched forward to the foot of the stairs and shouted upward, "Carr! It's Schaefer! I know you're here, you son of a bitch-come on out! I want to talk!"
Schaefer heard the crunch of plaster underfoot a fraction of a second before he heard the shotgun blast; he had started to turn around when the gun boomed, and plaster dust, sawdust, and water showered down on him.
Carr had been in one of the darkened front rooms that Schaefer had passed without checking and had fired a warning shot into the ceiling. The corroded pipes overhead had been punctured a dozen places by the pellets, and only the low water pressure kept the spray from blinding Schaefer.
By the time he had turned around to face Carr, he had heard the distinctive ratchet of a fresh shell being pumped into the chamber.
Carr was standing there, grinning. "Okay, Oprah," Carr announced, "if you want to sing in the shower, I'm game. Lose the scattergun, and we can talk." He shoved the shortened barrel of his shotgun up close to Schaefer's ear.
Schaefer dropped his own weapon, safety on, tossing it far enough that it landed clear of the spray.
"I gotta admit, you've got balls coming here," Carr said conversationally. "I've been picturing your brains on a wall since the night Lamb and the rest bought it. You got a reason I shouldn't get to see that?"
"Come on, Carr," Schaefer said. "My men didn't kill your punks. Get real."
"Oh?" Carr grinned. "Then whose men did?"
Schaefer could see Carr's finger tightening on the trigger. Carr, arrogant bastard that he was, might be crazy enough to blow him away without waiting to hear what he had to say.
"Wasn't men at all," he said. "It was something worse than men."
"Good trick," Carr said, and he closed one eye, sighting down the barrel.
Schaefer ducked, dropping below the gun's muzzle, and came up fist first into Carr's face.
Carr stumbled back, and Schaefer was on top of him, too close in for the gun to be any use except perhaps as a club; the two men fell to the floor, splashing dirty water in all directions.
After a moment's struggle Schaefer had Carr in a headlock and shouted at him, "Goddamn it, listen to me! I need your help, you son of a bitch!" He slammed Carr's head against a baseboard. "I didn't come here to fight you!"
Carr didn't bother to answer as he struggled to free himself.
Schaefer began to loosen his grip slightly, hoping Carr would listen to reason-and suddenly agony cut through his neck and up the side of his head, like a hot knife under the skin, a pressure on his throat almost choking him.
He released his hold on Carr and stumbled back.
"Aggh," he said, "it's here! Son of a bitch, it's around here somewhere!"
* * *
30
Carr watched as Schaefer staggered down he hallway toward the stairwell, looking around wildly.
"It's here!" Schaefer shouted again. "Come on out where we can see you, you bastard!"
There wasn't anything there, so far as Carr could see; Schaefer was yelling and clutching at his throat, but there wasn't anything there.
It had to be some kind of stupid cop trick, Carr decided after an instant of confusion, and he wasn't going to fall for it. He jumped to his feet and raised his shotgun.
"Yeah, sure it is, Schaefer," he said as he marched through the spray of water to get a clear shot at his opponent. "It's here, there, and everywhere. Talk show's over, pig-say bye-bye!"
Schaefer looked up at the barrel of the gun, at Carr's finger tightening on the trigger, at Carr's grinning, maniacal face-and at the waterfall behind him, the spray from the ruined pipes, where blue sparks were crackling and crawling across a familiar silhouette. He tried to shout a warning to Carr, but it felt as if something were caught in his throat.
And, besides, the bastard was about to blow his brains out-why warn him?
And then any warning would have been superfluous, as the alien creature appeared out of thin air, its invisibility screen down for the moment, one taloned hand closing around Carr's neck from behind.
"The water . . . ," Schaefer said, his throat clear again. "Jesus, the water shorted something out."
The creature picked up the gang boss easily, and Schaefer ducked again as Carr fired; the shotgun blast went safely over his head, just as the warning shot had before.
"What in the hell . . . ?" Carr managed to say. He twisted in the thing's grip, trying to get a look at it, trying to see what was holding him up by the throat as if he weighed no more than a kitten.
"That's what killed your boys, Carr," Schaefer shouted. "Those goddamn things have been tracking me ever since. It didn't give a damn who you were, Carr-your men were all just trophies to it!"
"Oh, yeah? Trophy this, piss-face!" Carr shouted back, as he struggled. He spat, managing to hit a corner of the thing's metal mask.
"Say bye-bye," the creature replied in a close approximation of Carr's own voice of a few moments before. It reached up and placed its other hand atop Carr's head, preparing to twist.
Schaefer, looking around, spotted his own dropped gun; he dived for it, calling, "Not yet, pal!"
He came up with the gun held like a club; he swung it by the barrel and caught the monster on the side of the head.
Startled, but clearly uninjured, the thing threw Carr aside and looked at Schaefer.
The gadget on its shoulder popped up and began to swivel, and Schaefer dived sideways as a blue-white fireball blew a two-foot hole in the wall.
He rolled and brought the shotgun up, and realized the barrel was bent, the action twisted into uselessness-he'd hit the alien harder than he had realized.
A blow that would bend a shotgun would have killed a man instantly.
Well, as he'd told Carr, this thing was worse than a man-and a hell of a lot tougher.
He didn't dare fire the gun; it would probably blow up in his face. He flung it aside and looked up at the hunter from outer space.
Its expression was hidden behind its mask; he couldn't tell if it was angry, frightened, amused, or just bored-and even if he'd seen its face, how could he read those inhuman features, that mouth with the layers of fangs?
The snakelike braids, or whatever they were, trailed down across its shoulders; the ray gun, or laser cannon, or whatever the hell it was on its shoulder, was pointed straight at Schaefer's face.
It didn't fire.
Instead, the creature raised one hand, and the pair of jagged blades mounted to the back of its wrist suddenly snapped out into an extended position, projecting well past its clenched fist.
Schaefer had seen blades like that before, on the arm of the monster he had killed in the jungle, and on the monsters that attacked Eschevera's camp.
One swipe of those could tear out a man's throat, or lay open his chest.
This one wasn't shooting at him because it wanted to take him on hand to hand-more macho mano a mano shit.
And this time Schaefer didn't have any way to run or dodge, he
didn't have any surprise weapons; he'd have to fight on the creature's own terms.
Which meant dying.
Well, hell, he'd known he'd have to die sometime.
"Come on, then," Schaefer said, crouching, bracing himself. "This is what you've been waiting for, isn't it? Your chance to get the one that killed your buddy? Your shot at one of the tough ones? Go ahead, then-finish it!''
"Let's not and say we did," called a voice from the shadows by the building's front door, a good thirty feet away.
The creature started to turn.
"You're under arrest . . . ," Rasche began as he raised and sighted-in the Soviet-built shoulder-mount antitank gun he had hauled in from the van. God only knew what the Jamaicans had thought they wanted with something like that.
Then he got a good look at the creature and said, "Aw, screw it."
He pulled the trigger, and the rocket tore through the intervening distance in a fraction of a second.
Still, Schaefer thought the alien might have been able to dodge; it was fast enough, he'd seen that, but it didn't dodge. Maybe it was too surprised.
The thing's body shielded Schaefer from the worst of the blast, but the entire building shook, and the walls on either side of the hallway buckled outward; plaster and shattered wood showered down. The flow of water was abruptly transformed from a scattered spray into a steady spill down one broken wall as the remains of the pipes above the passage vanished completely in the explosion.
When the dust had mostly cleared, Schaefer climbed to his feet, took one look at the condition of the building, and ran for the door.
He almost tripped over the dead alien, but he didn't stop to gloat; he could hear wood creaking ominously.
Rasche was waiting on the stoop; he'd been farther away from the blast but unshielded, and his forehead was bleeding where a bit of shrapnel had nicked him; plaster dust had powdered his hair and clothes.
Together, the two detectives ran into the street, back toward Rasche's van; they were about halfway across when Carr stumbled from the wreckage, a yard or so ahead of a great crash of masonry as a wall fell in.
All three men turned at the sound and stood staring.
"Anyone else in there?" Rasche called.
Carr shook his head. "None of mine. We were moving out-I was just back here checking. Schaefer here got lucky with his timing."
His voice didn't have its usual sardonic edge; he sounded shaken.
"You saw that thing, right?" Schaefer asked.
Carr nodded, backing down the stoop as Schaefer came up beside him.
Rasche was back at the van, rummaging for something.
"Any of this sinking in, then?" Schaefer asked. "Or are you twice as stupid as you look?"
"Oh, I get the picture," Carr said. "And okay, maybe your cops didn't trash my men and take out Lambikins, but that thing's pieces, right? So it's over."
Schaefer shook his head. "That was what I thought the first time."
Rasche, emerging from the van with the alien mask in his hand, called out, "It's not over, Carr, like the song says, we've only just begun."
He held up the mask, scanned the streets with it, then turned his attention to the dark skies above. He growled, then handed the mask to Schaefer. "Over there," he said, pointing. "Coming this way. "
Schaefer looked, tracking the approaching ship's movement, and nodded. "They're not going to be very happy when they find what's left of their buddy," he said. "That's two down and counting." He handed the mask back to Rasche.
"What are you two looking at?" Carr demanded. "There's nothing out there!"
Rasche ignored him; he was watching the red-gold shape coming in over the rooftops, coming toward them.
It was coming in low, and descending even farther.
"Not very happy at all," Rasche said. "Shut up and run, Carr!"
He took his own advice and sprinted for the van.
This ship wasn't just cruising over the city-this ship was diving for them in what looked for all the world like a strafing run.
"Get down!" Schaefer shouted as something flashed.
The three men dived to the pavement as the building behind them erupted into white fire and flying brick.
Rasche rolled over and looked through the mask.
The ship had veered off and was looping back for another pass; the building's facade had a ten-foot hole in it where the door had been a moment before, a hole full of dust, firelight, and clattering brick fragments.
"Come on," he called, leading the way toward an alley that he hoped would provide some shelter.
The ship came back for its second run, and it was immediately obvious that the first had been a sighting shot-this time the thing laid down a deafening barrage of blue-white fire that cut the entire building to bits.
The three men stared, dumbfounded.
"Jesus," Rasche muttered as the ship ceased its fire-it was past the building now, no longer had a clear shot. "So much for urban renewal," he said. "No yuppie's ever gonna gentrify that place!"
"And no one's going to salvage anything of that dead one," -Schaefer said grimly, "They're making sure no one makes a trophy out of one of their own!"
"What the hell?" Carr shrieked. "What did that? What are we up against? I still don't fuckin' see anything!"
"Here, have a peek," Rasche said, thrusting the mask in front of Carr's face and directing his gaze.
Carr stared up at the departing spaceship.
"Wild, huh?" Rasche asked, glancing at Carr. "Just like War of the Worlds."
Schaefer snorted. "They all died of a cold in that one, Rasche, but I didn't notice that thing reaching for a tissue, did you?"
Carr grunted, and Rasche took the mask back.
"The feds are scared of them," Schaefer said, "so it's going to be up to us to bring them down, let them know they aren't welcome here." He looked around. "We have to get off the streets, find some place to make a stand."
Rasche nodded. He scanned the sky quickly. "I don't see it right now," he said. "Let's get in the van and move, talk, while we drive."
"They can track me," Schaefer said, gesturing toward his neck.
"I know that," Rasche said, "but maybe not that fast. Come on."
Schaefer nodded, and the three men ran for the van.
Rasche took the driver's seat, Schaefer took shotgun, and Carr climbed back between the seats-and saw the weapons.
"Jesus," he said. "You've got more stuff back here than I have in the whole goddamn city!"
"That's the point," Schaefer said. "When those things have swept up what's left of their pal, all hell's going to break loose, and we're gonna need all the manpower we can put on the streets if we want to still be standing when they're done. That's what I came after you for in the first place, Carr-we want you and your boys to help us."
Carr stared at him for a moment."
"Why us?" he asked. "I mean, we aren't exactly your buddies, Schaefer-I always figured you'd like to see me dead. Hell, I know I'd like to see you dead."
"Yeah, well, I need manpower, and your people may be scum, but at least they've got some guts," Schaefer said. "So I'm offering a truce, just till these alien geeks are gone-after that it's back to business as usual."
"I'd have figured for something like this you'd call out the goddamn army, not come looking for me."
"The army's scared," Schaefer said. "They figure to let the aliens do what they want, and when they're done, they'll go home. Rasche and I don't think that way-if those things are having fun, why would they leave?"
"So here you are, talking to me."
"Here we are. With the guns back there."
"And you'll let us use all this hardware?"
Schaefer nodded. "That's the deal just for the duration. I don't know if we can take out their whole damn fleet, I don't know how many of them are out there, but maybe we can make it a little less fun. So what do you say, punk? Feel like a little rock and roll?"
Carr grinned. "You got it, S
chaefer. Cops, aliens, I don't care who it is-nobody off's my men without some serious payback. You supply the guns, and let me handle the rest!"
* * *
31
Traffic was light as Rasche headed uptown. He wasn't sure just where he was going, but there was more of the island uptown than down, so he'd turned north.
Behind them they could hear the alien spaceship making a third pass at Carr's building, but Rasche figured by now they were just making the rubble dance-there wasn't anything still standing.
He pulled onto FDR Drive at Houston Street, looking to make better time, and for a few moments the breeze through the van's windows cut the stifling heat.
The air was heavy with humidity; Rasche felt as if he could almost touch the moisture, and off to the west, between the towers of the city, he could see dark clouds on the horizon and distant flickers of heat lightning.
The damp air seemed cooler, and the clouds had the look of an approaching storm-he thought the heat wave might finally be about to break.
The lightning reminded him of distant artillery, though, and he remembered the spaceships-he couldn't use the mask while he was driving, but they could be up there, anywhere, watching, scanning for the thing on Schaefer's neck, and the van was exposed up here on the elevated highway, an easy target.
And besides, where the hell was he going that he needed to make time?
He got off onto Twenty-third Street and headed west, then turned north again on Third Avenue.
The police radio Rasche had installed in the van was chattering-Carr's building was gravel by the time anyone got there, gravel that was still churning.
McComb came on and said that was settling, but McComb wasn't there-the officers at the scene said it looked like something was shoving debris around, searching for something.
They stayed the hell away--settling or searchers, it didn't look safe.
Rasche thought that was a good idea. The movement would be the invisible aliens, on the ground now, recovering the body of their fallen comrade. Anyone who got in their way would be hamburger.
Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Predator 01 Page 19