by Frank Lauria
Fry nodded agreement. “I saw the cut marks on the bones,” she said gently. “Wasn’t a natural die-off . . .”
Suddenly, Imam moved to the door as if he’d heard something. As he pressed his ear against the door, the others gathered around him, their own ears tuned like radar. They all heard the clicking sweep restlessly past, just outside the door.
“Why do they do that—make that sound?” Audrey demanded.
Imam gave her a patient smile. “Perhaps the way they see,” he suggested. “With sound, reflecting back.”
“Echo location,” Fry said. “That’s what it is.”
More clicking cut across the gloom. The survivors whipped their lights around to find . . . nothing. Only a partially open container, about halfway down the tunnel-like hold.
The survivors glanced fearfully at each other, then at Fry. How the fuck could one get in here? they seemed to ask.
“Breach in the hull,” Fry suggested, voice tight. “I dunno,” she added, eyes locked on the open door.
The clicking seemed to come closer. Fry and the others looked at Johns. Slowly he realized they expected him to check it out. “I’d rather piss glass,” he declared.
“Well, you’ve got the big gauge,” Riddick pointed out.
Johns lifted the weapon. “Wanna rag your fat mouth?”
“Maybe it’s just their beads again,” Fry offered hopefully. “Imam, are you still—”
“No, no, no,” Imam protested, covering his prayer beads. “I do not believe—”
“C’mon, man,” Johns growled, “you’re drivin’ everybody bugfuck with those things. Why don’t you just lose the goddamn . . .”
The clicking sound grew louder, closely followed by the crash of toppling cargo.
Riddick smiled at Johns. “Big beads.”
Taking a deep breath, Johns cocked his weapon and edged toward the open container. Leading with his shotgun he leaned around the door and fired blindly. Something screeched . . . then was quiet.
Johns eased his light around the door and saw them. Two shredded, bat-winged lizards smeared across the floor like road kill.
Without warning something swept down at his head, swinging a curved talon like a scythe. The talon caught his shotgun and it discharged. In the fragmented flash Johns glimpsed an image that burned into his mind. Curved teeth inside ravenous jaws, blank, liquid eyes, and strangely pulsing ears that throbbed and twitched with constant hungry movement . . .
Hungry for my ass, Johns thought wildly as he jerked back behind the door and slammed it shut. But as Johns backed away he noticed more cracks in their little shelter.
“Very big beads,” Johns declared, when he rejoined the others. “Need to find someplace more secure.”
His report roused Paris from his terrified stupor. Deprived of alcohol, he’d hit the wall. This is real, he thought, skull screaming with fear. They’re inside with us. The plump dealer clutched his war-pick and began pulling at the main door, ready to flee into the night.
“Not staying here another—”
Fry lunged and yanked him back before he could open the door. “Christ, you don’t know what’s out there!”
“I know what’s in here!” Paris quavered, struggling weakly.
Suddenly the clicking sounds erupted all around them. Imam opened a door connecting to the other containers. “This way,” he said. “Hurry please.” Rashad and Hasan slipped inside, closely followed by Paris and the others.
Imam made sure everyone was inside before slamming the doors shut.
At first the only sounds in the dark, cramped space was the hiss of their breathers. Then the scratching noises clawed through the quiet. Johns pulled out a cutting torch and fumbled with the knob. As the torch flared he adjusted the gasses to emit a wide arc of light that illuminated the metal door. And he saw what caused the scratching.
Sharp, bladelike talons were probing the door joints; prying, raking, picking with single-minded intensity. The survivors shrank away from the door. The hairs on the back of Audrey’s neck prickled. She glanced up and screamed.
Fingerlike talons were stabbing down through a metal grate just above their heads. Everyone ducked low. Imam beamed his light at the grate in time to glimpse saw-toothed lizard tails snaking away into the darkness.
Quiet fell over them like a blanket. Johns lifted his cutting torch, throwing light around him and saw Riddick, hands crossed over his eyes.
“Can you do sumpin’ else with that?” he snarled. “ ’Sides holdin’ it in my fucking face?”
Johns turned away. He compressed the flame to a blue-white point, and began cutting through the common wall to the other containers. The moment the torch began slicing metal, a violent rattling noise filled the chamber.
Imam skimmed his light across the ceiling and saw a large grate shaking furiously as if something was pounding on it, trying to smash it. Behind them the talons attacking the door were sawing it apart—literally tearing it open.
Working intently Johns burned an outline on the wall and kicked it open. Audrey speed-crawled between his legs and found herself in the freezer unit. The chaos was worse in there, with the rattling, scratching, clicking suddenly amplified. As the others crawled inside the scuttling on the metal ceiling seemed to pursue them. Suddenly a pressure tube overhead exploded. Sharp talons jabbed wildly through the white cloud of ultracold gas filling the chamber. More bladelike talons cut through the soft pressure tubs, spewing fumes everywhere.
Shivering, Riddick peered through the freezing gas and saw Johns burning another exit in the wall. Then it dawned.
We’re being herded, he realized with a flurry of panic. But it was too late.
Johns cut through the wall into an oversized container. When Riddick stepped inside he saw there was no ceiling grate, and it was large enough to enable them to move comfortably. Immediately Hasan and Rashad started muscling heavy cargo in front of the hole.
Riddick stood where he was, circling slowly. He sensed something was wrong.
Johns heaved a crate against the opening and glared at Riddick. “What union you belong to?” he rasped. “How about a fucking hand?”
Riddick ignored him. He was looking at the pepper-shot pockmarks on the wall with growing suspicion. He moved away from the gathered handlights into the darkness.
“Where is he?” Audrey whispered urgently, the first to notice.
Riddick turned and felt something squish under his foot, something soft and oily. He slipped off his goggles.
It was a dead hatchling, its bat-lizard body ripped open by a shotgun.
Johns’ shotgun. An icy finger of fear jabbed his belly. We’ve been herded back where we started, he thought numbly.
Then he sensed it. The energy. Slowly, very slowly, Riddick lifted his face to the darkness above him—and saw it. A live hatchling squatted atop some cargo. Its fanged jaws were devouring something clutched in its talons.
As Riddick stared he realized it was one of the hatchlings Johns had shot.
Vicious fuckers eat their own, he noted with disgust. As if stung by the insult, the creature paused. Cocking its hammer-shaped head, it swept the area with inquisitive clicks. At the same time its ears twitched incessantly.
Then the creature’s ears went rigid.
Alarmed by the alien sounds Fry peered through the gloom and spotted Riddick. She started closer, then stopped short, belly churning with raw terror.
Riddick was in a stare-down with an alien predator. Jaguar eyes gleaming, he stood motionless as the creature’s razor tipped wings enfolded him in an unholy embrace . . .
Hasan was intent on blocking the burn hole.
The burly pilgrim stacked a heavy crate then went off in search of another. He didn’t bother with his handlight as he rounded the corner. First mistake.
A steely grip squeezed Hasan’s skull like a vise.
“Don’t,” Riddick whispered, “move.”
Hasan rolled his eyes and saw the creature perched in front o
f them. His limbs went limp. If Riddick didn’t have him in a headlock, Hasan would have collapsed.
But Riddick wasn’t concerned about the creature in front of them. It was the hatchling descending from the ceiling that had him worried.
This one wanted to touch.
Riddick held his breath, hands tight around the pilgrim’s head. He kept his gaze fixed on the creature in front of him, but Riddick was uncomfortably aware of the bony talon probing the top of his skull. To make things even more uncomfortable, the creature facing him folded its wings tighter. Closed inside, Riddick’s senses were assailed by a foul stench that curdled his belly with nausea. The clicking became louder.
When the talon stroked Hasan’s head, he wet himself, urine soaking his socks and running over his shoes in a foaming yellow stream of pure fear. A shudder convulsed his body and he felt a blinding pain as Riddick’s hands squeezed his skull tighter. The clicking sound rose up in his brain.
Unable to breathe he began to lose consciousness . . .
Riddick remained rock-still as more blade-sharp talons descended, and began moving over his body like surgical instruments. One talon test-sliced Riddick’s shirt, grazing his skin.
Then he heard Fry’s voice. “Riddick?”
Bad time, sweetheart, he noted grimly. He managed a two-word reply.
“Keep. Burning.”
Johns heard him and understood. This is the open container. Frantically, he started burning through the next wall.
“Hasan?” Imam called out.
But the pilgrim couldn’t answer. Reeling from the stench, and convulsed with terror, he wheezed breathlessly as a talon stroked his chest. The talon lightly test-sliced Hasan’s skin, drawing blood. As the blood welled up, all clicking ceased.
Instinctively Hasan knew why the noise had stopped. Cold dread shriveled his genitals. Without thinking, he bolted.
Second mistake. Game over.
Focused on the baleful eyes of the creature in front of him, Riddick felt the pilgrim wrench free. “No!” he yelled as Hasan yanked apart the leathery wings and began running.
He didn’t get two steps before the predators were on him. Hasan vanished behind a blurred fury of raw hunger. Even his death scream was cut short, devoured by the ravenous intensity of ripping talons and fanged jaws.
Glimpsing a window of opportunity, Riddick jumped. But the moment he moved, another predator loomed up, blocking his path.
Reflexively Riddick darted around a stack of cargo and sprinted for the escape hatch. But as the screeching predator swooped after him Riddick knew he’d never make it.
A sudden glaring explosion blinded him. Howling in pain, Riddick stumbled forward, bony talons raking his neck.
As he dove through the hatch, Fry’s light beamed past Riddick’s shoulder, hitting the raging creature behind him. Amazingly, the light produced a similar reaction.
Screeching, the predator scrambled back.
Fry stood stunned, the light beam drilling through the empty darkness. Was it really me that stopped it?
In answer, a shotgun blasted past her ear. Startled, Fry dropped the light. As she scrambled after it, Johns pushed her aside and began shooting shadows. Jacked up on primal fear, he fired round after round.
“Stop it!” Fry yelled. “STOP IT!”
Finally he stopped. “ ’Sokay, ’sokay, I killed it,” he assured breathlessly.
The others exchanged knowing glances. Johns had snapped.
Suddenly a carcass slammed wetly to the floor, like some huge black manta ray with thorny wings. Everyone leaped back in a quick splash pattern.
“Christ,” Paris said in a hushed voice. “He did kill one.”
Fry retrieved her light and beamed it on the carcass. Wherever the light touched it, the flesh charred and bubbled, sending up fumes.
“There . . .” she said. “Look!”
“Like the light is scalding it,” Paris affirmed, his confidence returning.
“It hurts them,” Fry announced triumphantly. “Light actually hurts them!”
A sudden chittering frenzy swept out of the darkness as the voracious predators fought for what scraps remained of their prey.
“Is that . . . Hasan?” Imam’s question hovered above the nightmare sounds.
Johns moved first. “We’ll burn a candle for him later,” he muttered, igniting his torch. “C’mon.”
Audrey was born again.
It had happened exactly twice before. The first when she’d emerged, wailing in protest, from her mother’s womb. And the second when she stowed away on the space freighter.
Only this time around she wasn’t so tough. This time she was helpless; a frightened little ewe, lost in an alien slaughterhouse. And it had the others worried. Until now, the runaway’s brash courage had been an inspiration—as if her innocent valor could save them.
But the bubble had finally burst. For all her bravado, Audrey was just a child.
Poor kid can’t handle the horror, Fry reflected, hugging her knees. Nobody can.
It was true. The survivors had taken refuge in a small container, and sat huddled in the protective glow of a single lantern. To prevent the group from falling into apathy, Fry roused herself and called for a weapons check.
“I’ve got one cutting torch, one handlight here,” she droned, like an auctioneer. “At least one more in the cabin.”
“Spirits,” Paris offered, his courage refueled by a slug of cognac. He patted the case he’d just discovered. “Anything over forty-five proof burns well.”
“How many bottles?” When Paris hesitated, Fry added, “If you got a receipt?”
“Not sure,” Paris sighed. “Ten?” He kept one bottle for medicinal purposes and pushed the case toward her.
Fry glanced at Johns. “And you have some flares. So all right, maybe we have enough light.”
Something in her tone alerted Johns. “Enough for what?”
She turned and regarded him with steady blue eyes as if the answer was obvious.
It was. But Johns didn’t like it. “Oh lady, if you’re in your right mind, I pray you go insane.”
Fry ignored him, appealing to the others. “We can stick to the plan,” she announced, eyes sweeping the small circle. “If we get four cells back to the skiff—we can lose this boneyard.”
Four power cells, Paris thought ruefully, might as well be a hundred. He shook his head. “I hate to kill a beautiful theory with an ugly fact—but that Sand Cat won’t run at night.”
“We’ll have to carry the cells,” Fry declared. “Drag them, whatever it takes.”
The suggestion drew a troubled silence. The idea of hauling heavy cells through the raging death-gauntlet outside had a suicidal ring. But both Imam and Riddick noticed the lantern on the floor had become a shade dimmer.
Audrey slowly lifted her head. “You mean . . .” She searched for the word, “tonight? With all those things still out there?”
For once Paris agreed with the little urchin. “Oh sure—why not? Sounds like a hoot.”
“Back up,” Johns snapped. He pointed at Fry. “How long can this tonight last? Few more minutes, few more hours . . . ?”
Fry glanced at Imam, who shrugged. He had done preliminary calculations on the Orrery. The mechanical planetary system was both intricate and simple. As a mathematician and engineer, Imam grasped the principle. But he didn’t have time to work out the details. “I had the impression . . . from the model . . . that the two planets were moving as one.”
He looked around. The faces were still hopeful. “That there would be . . . a lasting darkness,” he explained regretfully.
“The sun’s gotta come out sometime,” Johns scoffed, jaw set in a stubborn scowl. “And if these . . . beasts really are phobic about light, we just sit here till dawn.”
Fry shrugged and turned away. “I’m sure that’s what someone else said. Locked inside that coring room.”
It was a persuasive image. Fry, Riddick, Imam, Rashad; all eyes swung
back to Audrey. Johns pounced on their concern like a politician.
“Look, we gotta think about everyone now—the kid especially. How scared is she gonna be out there?”
Fry felt like throwing up. “Oh, don’t use her like that!”
“Like what?”
Innocence wasn’t his strong suit, Fry noted. “For a smokescreen,” she said, voice barbed with contempt. “Just deal with your own fears.”
Johns’ face reddened. “Hey, why don’t you just rag your hole for two seconds—and let me come up with a plan that doesn’t involve mass suicide, okay?”
Fry waited two long seconds before she spoke. “How much do you weigh, Johns?”
“What the hell’s it matter?”
“How much?”
“Seventy-nine kilos—why?”
“Because you are seventy-nine kilos of gutless white meat. And that’s why you can’t come up with a better plan.”
Johns had killed men for less. But as he swung his shotgun Riddick stepped between them. Hands shaking with fury, Johns prodded the underside of Riddick’s chin with the weapon.
“Think about that reward, Johns,” Riddick reminded calmly.
Johns’ finger tightened on the trigger. “I’m willing to take a cut in pay.”
“How about a cut in your gut?”
The question pierced his mindless rage. Johns looked down and saw Riddick’s shiv angled against his belly, poised for the quick slice that would spread his intestines across the floor. The blast might knock him back, Johns calculated, still nose-to-nose with the goggled killer.
“Please,” Imam implored, stretching out a hand between them. “This solves nothing . . . Please.”
Soon, very soon, Johns promised silently, lowering his shotgun. As he stepped back there was a collective intake of breath.
Fry knelt beside Audrey. “They’re afraid of our light,” she explained gently. “That means we don’t have to be so afraid of them.”
Imam joined them. “Are you certain you can find your way back to the skiff?” he asked quietly. “Even in the dark?”
“No, I’m not,” Fry admitted. “But he can . . .”