Schaefer had arranged the four six-strong search parties in such a way that each contained a blend of his own men and Scott’s. After countless missions deep in enemy territory, rooting out some of the most ruthless and single-minded terrorists on the planet, it felt odd and disconcerting to be considered a novice again. But Scott was not so bullish that he wouldn’t bow to the experience of Cook and Dorantes if necessary, who had been assigned to his group, which was otherwise made up of three of his own men – Flynn, Ishfaq and Collins.
With his whiskers and wild eyebrows, Cook reminded Scott of Yosemite Sam, though fortunately it was there that the comparison ended. The old campaigner might have been a bit rough and ready, with a crackerbarrel accent to match, but he was also a damn good soldier, meticulous, cautious and patient, who treated Scott’s men not as naïve dopes, as some might have done, but as capable soldiers who were simply in the early stages of acquiring a new skill set.
In contrast to Cook, Dorantes, who at thirty-four was almost twenty years younger than his compadre, was more of a matinee idol type. Quiet, handsome, dark-haired, he was softly spoken and yet still managed to project an air of calm authority. Although Scott knew his own men were as prepared as they could be for this mission, and would therefore neither panic nor freeze if and when an eight-foot-tall alien with a face like a Halloween mask suddenly appeared, he couldn’t deny that this was a whole new experience for them all, and as such was grateful for the steadying influence provided by Schaefer’s guys.
Even though there was no way of knowing which way the surviving Hunter had gone, Scott and his party had not simply struck out in a random direction, hoping for the best, but were moving purposefully, with a definite target in mind. The area they were crossing was a wildly undulating lava field of hills, valleys and occasional crevasses from which a forest had sprung, the vegetation consisting largely of salt cedar and juniper trees, cacti, desert grasses and thick clumps of bushes. Many of the shiny black rocks and tree trunks were overlaid with vivid splotches of red and green lichen, the latter of which looked remarkably like smears of alien blood, a fact which had given Scott a couple of heart-quickening moments.
Approximately four kilometers beyond this forested area was their destination, a cave system, in which it was thought the Hunter may have holed up to rest and recuperate. Scott’s team had been tasked with checking out the cave system, and then, if it was empty, returning to the crash site via a different route, in order to cover as much of the area as possible.
“The surviving Hunter may be badly injured, or it may even have succumbed to its injuries,” Schaefer had told them, “though we have no evidence to support this, so don’t get complacent, not even if you find yourselves following a blood trail. Also, remember there may be more than one hostile out there.” He had already told the men about the empty pods. “We have no information on what the creatures that slept in those pods look like, nor what their capabilities are. But one thing we do know is that they’re carnivorous. Good luck.”
Now Scott and his team were less than a kilometer from their destination. In terms of potential places from which their enemy might launch an attack, the terrain was a nightmare, but up to now their journey had been uneventful. They had clambered up crumbling, jagged hills, keeping as flat as possible, had slipped from tree trunk to tree trunk to avoid making themselves too obvious a target, and had scoped out bush-filled hollows and shadowy alcoves, of which there were many, with every piece of technological equipment at their disposal.
The vegetation was thinning out now, which was both a relief and a concern. A relief because it meant the enemy had fewer places to conceal itself, and a concern because it left them more exposed.
“What’s the plan for when we get to the caves?” Ishfaq asked. “I’m guessing we stick together?”
Dorantes nodded. Cook said, “Remember rule number one from your trainin’, son. We’re a single beast. Six heads, twelve arms, twelve legs, and enough fuckin’ weapons to take down a herd o’ elephants – or alternatively, one plug-ugly alien bug with an attitude problem. So to repeat what was said earlier, for those that might be hard o’ hearin’ or short on memory, there are nigh on forty caves in this here system, but only around fifteen of ’em are big enough for our particular bug to have crawled into, should he have felt so inclined. So those are the ones we check first – one at a time, workin’ as a team, and keepin’ our eyes and ears wide open. I ain’t sayin’ it’s not gonna be slow work, maybe even a mite borin’ if we don’t find nothin’, but that don’t matter. Borin’s good if we still got our heads on our shoulders and our skin on our bodies at the end o’ the day. So there’s no splittin’ up into groups to hurry things along, no wanderin’ off to take a leak, or pick flowers, or admire the view. We ain’t on a timer here, so it don’t matter how long it takes. Everyone happy with that?”
A round of nods.
“That sound good to you, Captain?”
“It sounds good,” Scott said, also nodding.
“Well, okay,” Cook said, and gave Scott what he thought might have been the shadow of a wink. “You got yourself some fine boys here, Captain.”
“I know it,” Scott said.
They began moving again, the terrain in front of them mostly rock and shale now, though stringy trees and bushes still sprouted up here and there. They were clambering up the latest of many jumbles of rocks that formed a hill whose peak loomed around fifteen meters above their heads, when Dorantes, at point, halted and raised a hand.
No one asked why he had stopped or what he had heard. As they had been instructed in their training, they simply froze where they were, weapons up, hyper alert for trouble. If Dorantes thought there was something to be concerned about, he’d let them know using hand signals. If he decided it was a false alarm, he’d give them the thumbs up and carry on.
For several seconds they did nothing but stand still and listen. Scott was amazed at how silent it was; for this moment, at least, no birds were singing, and there was no breeze to stir the trees. He looked at Dorantes, who was peering above him and to his left, brows furrowed in concentration. Scott looked in that direction too, seeing nothing but overlapping slabs of gray rock streaked with rust-red deposits, above the peak of which the sky was so bright it hurt his eyes.
Twenty long seconds later Dorantes gave them a cautious thumbs up and they began moving again. They reached the top of the peak without incident, and found themselves on the edge of a rocky valley, the bottom of which was full of scrubby bushes and spindly trees. Beyond that the slope rose again, like a frozen wave in a tumultuous sea, the rock on the far side darker and more jagged, and pitted with dark blotches.
“That’s our cave system,” Cook said.
To Scott, the caves looked like dozens of eyes, black and unblinking.
Dorantes had moved to his left and was examining the ground, bending his knees and dropping to a squat now and then to take a closer look.
“What you looking for?” asked Flynn.
Dorantes straightened slowly, still scanning the ground. “Thought there might be tracks or spoor, but there’s nothing.”
“So you heard something moving about?” said Scott. “An animal?”
Dorantes shrugged. “Could have been. Could have been nothing.”
“How big did it sound?”
“Hard to tell. I only heard it for a second. Like a shifting of gravel. Then gone.”
Collins looked nervous. “If it was the Hunter, he’d have attacked, wouldn’t he?”
“Let’s not make assumptions,” said Scott. “Let’s just stay alert to the possibility that the enemy’s out there somewhere.”
“Was maybe just a bird you heard,” Flynn said.
“You see any birds?” said Collins.
“A lizard then. Or a rabbit.”
“Guys.” Scott’s voice was stern. “Let’s not speculate, okay? It doesn’t achieve anything.”
“And let’s not hang around here any longer than we
have to,” Cook said, eyeing the scrubland below and their destination on the far side. “We’re like tin cans on a fence right here, jus’ linin’ up to be picked off.”
He started down the slope, using a zigzagging course that provided the greatest amount of cover, sparse though it was. Sometimes, Scott knew, there was no choice but to cross open territory and hope for the best, in which case you would move as quickly as you could (not possible here, because to hurry would be to invite an accident, which might result in a broken leg or worse) and crouch low, making yourself as small a target as possible.
He and the rest of the men followed Cook, Dorantes bringing up the rear this time, and reached the bottom of the shallow valley without incident. Now that the cave system was closer, looming above them beyond the kilometer or so of trees and bushes they had to cross to get to it, all Scott could see were the potential places (aside from the caves themselves) where an enemy might wait in ambush – behind high rocks, of which there were many; nestled within crevices and alcoves; crouched in the shadowy places behind jutting outcrops. A whole squad of Hunters could be hiding here; a platoon even. As he and his team moved through waist-high bushes and desert grasses, creeping from one piece of flimsy cover to the next, he imagined huge, dark figures rising from behind the rocks, each with an energy weapon in one hand and a skinning knife in the other. If that happened, no amount of combat training and jungle craft would be of the slightest use. They would be like fish in a barrel, to be picked off at will.
They were moving across a stretch of relatively open ground the size of a cornfield, the feathery desert grasses almost up to their chests in places, when Scott, second in line behind Cook, thought he glimpsed the grass twitch around ten meters to his left. He might have heard rustling too, though with Cook ahead of him and the rest of the men creeping through the grass behind him, it was hard to tell. Just as Dorantes had done up on the ridge, he halted and raised a hand, and realized that ahead of him Cook had done the same.
Catching Cook’s eye, Scott nodded toward where he had seen the grass twitch, and Cook nodded. So at least it hadn’t been his imagination. He didn’t know whether to be comforted by that or concerned by it.
The rest of the men had stopped now too – but so had the movement he had seen.
Was there something waiting there? Crouched down among all that virtually motionless grass? If this had been a cornfield, with perfectly ordered rows of gently swaying corn, it might have been easier to tell. It was hard to lie in wait in a field like that and not give yourself away by bending some of those stalks out of shape. But here the grasses grew every which way. The stalks were of different lengths, and had weeds and cacti and small bushes growing among them.
Maybe it was a rabbit. Or a snake. Or a rat. He edged closer to Cook, feeling like a fly trying not to set off a vibration in a spider’s web.
“What do you think?” he murmured. “Should we check it out or just keep going? We’re only—”
That was when the animal erupted out of the long grass and sprang toward them.
Scott had to hand it to his men. Their reflexes were excellent. The animal was still in mid-leap when they started firing, hitting the creature with round after round, the barrage of sound from their rifles tearing the stillness of the day apart.
When the animal leaped, Scott’s first thought was that the creature was a cat of some kind – a jaguar, maybe. But if it was a jaguar, it was a big one, a massive one; a jaguar on steroids. It moved so fast that at first he only registered its general size and shape. Then it opened its mouth, and it was like an electric shock sizzling through his body. The thing didn’t only have jaws and teeth, it had fucking mandibles!
Not a jaguar – a Hunter! Or at least something that looked like a Hunter. It was a fucking alien attack dog, if such a thing was possible.
Even as these thoughts were racing at breakneck speed through his head, his body was reacting instinctively, honed by years of training. Like his men, he blazed away at the creature, stepping back and to one side as it came at them. The sheer number of bullets hammering into the beast would have felled anything on God’s earth, and indeed, Scott saw flesh and fur and green blood bursting up from the creature, flying in all directions.
But it kept coming. It kept fucking coming. Its jaws were stretched wide in both directions, revealing a gaping square of frothing pink flesh and rows of shark-like teeth – teeth from which bullets were sparking as if the damn things were made of the most durable metal imaginable!
Scott didn’t realize Flynn was standing directly in its path until the thing hit him. One second he was blasting bullets down its throat, eyes wild and teeth clenched, the next he was flying through the air as if a truck had smashed into him. Scott got a brief, confused impression – one he would see again and again in his mind – of Flynn and the creature hurtling past him, locked in a deadly embrace. Flynn was underneath the creature, on his back, staring straight down the creature’s gullet, and the alien dog was on top of him with its paws on his shoulders, and its neck muscles rippling as its head lunged forward, as if about to give him a kiss.
Only it didn’t give him a kiss. While the two of them were still airborne, the monster enveloped the front of Flynn’s skull with its jaws, bit down with its massive teeth, and with a hideous, splintering crunch, ripped Flynn’s face clean off.
Then the two of them hit the ground with another bone-splintering crunch (Flynn’s ribs giving way, Scott guessed), and the impact separated them. As Flynn’s dead, crushed, but still jerking body hit the deck and lay where it had fallen, the alien dog flipped up and over him, executing an ungainly somersault through the air. It hit the ground headfirst, its limbs sprawling and kicking. Even now, following its trajectory with his gun, Scott was pumping bullets into it, his mind half focused on his task and half full of such horror and rage at what had happened to Flynn that he had no idea where the other guys were or whether they too were still pumping bullets into the monster that had killed his friend.
He only stopped shooting when the beast hit the ground and lay still. For several moments he could hear nothing beyond the hissing in his ears, could see nothing beyond the tunnel-vision sight of Flynn’s mutilated body and the huge animal lying in a splayed-limbed heap beyond it. The creature was pockmarked with bullet holes, its sleek, dark gray fur slimy with green blood that looked like toxic waste. Closer to, Flynn was lying on his back, arms spread as though basking in the late summer sunshine, booted toes upturned. Scott had a sudden image of him standing on a table, grinning, beer slopping out of his glass as he threw his arms in the air, yelling, “Haaapppy New Yeeeeaaar!” and he swallowed, burying his grief for now beneath anger and thoughts of revenge.
Someone appeared beside him, clamped a hand on his shoulder. Scott turned his head and saw Cook. The old soldier was a tough guy, who expected the men around him to do their jobs whatever happened, but there was an infinity of understanding in his eyes. As Collins and Ishfaq started to stumble toward the creature, as if in a daze, Cook left Scott’s side and hurried toward them, raising a hand. He shouted something – presumably a warning not to get too close. But Scott couldn’t make out the words. His ears still felt as if they were stuffed with cotton wool.
Cook’s advice was right on the mark. No sooner had Ishfaq and Collins come to a halt than the creature first raised its head, and then lurched groggily to its feet.
It was injured, no doubt of that, but it still looked ready for a fight. As it swung its massive head toward them and once more unhinged its vast jaws, Scott again swung up his gun. Ahead of him he saw Ishfaq and Collins, mirroring his action. Cook, though, raised a hand: Hold your fire. He took a few steps closer to the creature, and as he did so, Scott saw him take something from a pouch on his jacket.
He didn’t realize it was a grenade until he saw Cook pull the pin. Almost casually, the old soldier tossed the grenade toward the alien dog as if offering it a tasty snack.
The creature evidently saw it that
way too, snapping the grenade from the air and swallowing it. Scott needed no encouragement to throw himself to the ground and cover his head. Seconds later there was a mighty BOOOOOM! that made his still-clogged head feel as though it was swelling and bursting like a boil.
Then debris began to rain down on him. It felt wet and chunky, like lumps of mud.
The shower continued for several seconds, then stopped. Scott gave it another couple of seconds before raising his head. Pieces of alien dog were everywhere, and green blood was spattered over a wide area, dripping from trees and rocks and bushes. The stink of hot, rancid meat was incredible, and didn’t dissipate even when he stood up and chunks of the creature slid down his back and plopped to the ground.
The other guys were rising now too, Collins more slowly than the others. Was he injured or just shaken up? Scott was about to ask him if he was okay when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something huge and dark suddenly rear into view on top of a rock, a few meters behind Dorantes, and then, as he yelled out a warning, spring through the air.
It was a classic tactic, the old one-two. Hit the enemy hard, and then, before they had time to recover and regroup, hit them again. Scott swung his rifle up, but before he could pull the trigger the second beast had landed on top of Dorantes, knocking his rifle from his hands. To fire at it now would be to risk hitting Dorantes, who was screaming and thrashing, protecting his face and throat with his upraised left arm while ineffectually pummeling the side of the creature’s boulder-like head with his right fist.
Already Cook was running toward Dorantes, his revolver in one hand and his knife in the other. Wishing he had responded as quickly, Scott followed his lead. Neither man, though, had reached their target when the creature brought its jaws together in an almighty crunch, then yanked its head back. Dorantes’ screaming rose to an almost unbearable pitch as his left arm was torn away just above the elbow.
Then Cook was there, positioning himself to the right of the creature and calmly firing his revolver into the side of the monster’s head from point blank range, while using the knife in his other hand to hack at its throat. A second later Scott was beside him, firing his revolver into the fold of flesh between the back of the thing’s skull and the top of its spinal column. Meanwhile, Ishfaq and Collins rushed forward and grabbed Dorantes by the shoulder straps of his body armor, and hauled him clear from beneath the creature’s body. No more than a second after they had done so, the beast shuddered, its legs buckled, and then, Dorantes’ mangled forearm still in its mouth, it crashed to the ground.
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