Stinger

by Robert R. McCammon

  “Listen to me, both of you.” The urgency in Cody’s voice stopped Sarge’s whispering. “I’m gonna slide my arm out through the bars as far as I can. If I can’t keep steady, they’ll burn my arm up real quick. Sarge, I want you to hold my legs. If my arm catches fire, I want you to pull me back as fast as you can. Got it?”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Because you’re a lot stronger than Miranda, and because she’s gonna be keepin’ an eye out if Stinger comes back. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Sarge answered, in a small voice.

  Cody pushed the belt ahead of him between the bars, and the buckle on the other end went over the edge. Then Sarge grasped Cody’s ankles as Cody slid forward with his face only inches from the beams. Slowly he eased his hand through, then his wrist, then up to the forearm where the hairs had been burned away. The buckle was lying on the floor just underneath the cage; now the trick was flicking his wrist to snap the buckle against the control box.

  His face was right up on the beams, and he could hear their deadly hum. Now was the time to try it if he ever was. He snapped his wrist upward. The belt buckle scraped along the floor, stopped two or three inches short of the pyramid. He drew it back and flicked it forward again; once more, the buckle fell short.

  Cody strained his arm another quarter inch between the bars. There was about enough room for a toothpick to fit in between them and his skin. A few hairs sparked and crisped away, in pinpoint flames. His heartbeat was making his body tremble. Steady…steady, he told himself. He flicked the belt forward. Still too short. A drop of sweat rolled into his right eye and blinded him, and his first impulse was to wipe it out, but if he moved without thinking, either his face or his arm would go into the bars. He said, “Sarge, pull me back. Slow.”

  Sarge hauled him away from the edge, and Cody kept his arm rigid until the fingers had cleared. Then he rubbed his eye with his other hand, got on his knees, and pulled the belt up. “It’s not long enough,” he said. “We need another couple of inches.” But he knew there was nothing else to be used, and he was about to toss the knotted belts aside in frustration when Miranda said, “Your earring.”

  Cody’s hand went to his earlobe. The skull earring hung down a little more than two inches. He took it off, knotted the small chain to one of the buckles so the silver skull had as much play as possible, then gripped the other buckle and said, “Sarge, let’s try it again.”

  Working slowly and carefully, Cody dropped the buckle with the tiny skull dangling from it over the cage’s edge and let its weight pull the rest of the belt down. Then he slid forward, Sarge grasping his ankles again, and negotiated his hand, wrist, and forearm between the violet bars. When he was set and ready, he snapped his wrist upward. This time he thought the extension would reach; again it just barely fell short of contact. He had to push another quarter inch of skin through.

  He started sliding his arm forward, millimeter by millimeter. Beads of sweat were heavy in his eyebrows, and one of them popped and sizzled as it touched a beam. A little more, he thought. Just a little more. The hairs on his arm were afire. A little more. Now he could see no room between his skin and the bars. A fraction more, that’s all…

  There was a soft whuff as a lock of his hair grazed the bar before his face and caught fire. The flames crawled toward his scalp. Miranda cried out, “Pull him back!” He felt Sarge’s hands tighten on his ankles, and at the same time Cody flicked the belt with a quick jerk of his wrist.

  He heard it: the metallic, almost musical tring of the silver skull hitting the control box. But whether that was contact enough to trip the switch he didn’t know, and in the next second Sarge was hauling him away from the bars and Miranda was plucking away burning hair. The muscles in his forearm cramped rigid, and as the belt came up over the edge it wandered into one of the bars and was sliced in two as cleanly as by a white-hot blade. He lay on his back, rubbing the cramp out of his arm, the buckle still clenched in his hand.

  And then he realized, with a start, that the cage was descending.

  He sat up, a stubble of burned hair still smoking above his left eye. The pyramid glowed violet. The cage settled gently to the floor, and the circle of bars went dark.

  55

  Stinger’s Realm

  MATT RHODES WAS THE first down the rope into the hole beneath Sonny Crowfield’s house. The bull’s-eye lantern was tied to his waist and a fully loaded automatic rifle from Crowfield’s arsenal was strapped around his shoulder. As soon as his shoes squished into the ooze at the bottom, he took the lantern off and aimed it into the tunnel ahead. Nothing moved in there but the slow dripping of gray slime. He looked up, saw Rick Jurado’s light about twenty feet above. He pulled on the rope, and Rick started down.

  Rick had the second of Crowfield’s rifles, as well as one of the flashlights they’d gotten from people at the fortress. When Rick made it down, the rope was hauled up and a few seconds later came down again tied around the device Daufin had suggested they make: four of the bright battery lamps wired together and with a wire handle like a basket of light. It illuminated the tunnel with a powerful white glare, and Rhodes breathed a lot easier when it reached the bottom.

  Jessie climbed down next, carrying a flashlight and the Winchester strapped to her shoulder. Tom followed, with Daufin clinging around his neck. The last down was Curt Lockett. Hanging at his chest was a hiker’s backpack, brought from the hardware store, that held the five sticks of dynamite and the hogleg Colt.

  Tom set Daufin down. The tunnel that stretched before them was about seven feet in height and another six or seven feet wide. In the muck around them were pieces of the house’s floor, a mattress, and a broken-up bed. Crowfield was probably lying in it when the floor split open, Rick figured. He unstrapped the rifle, propped its stock against his hip, and kept the flashlight’s beam pointed ahead. Rhodes gave his lantern to Tom and took the bundle of battery lamps. “Okay,” Rhodes said quietly, his voice echoing. “I’ll go first. Daufin behind me. Then Jessie, Tom, Lockett, and Rick brings up the rear. Lockett, I don’t want you throwing those sticks without my order. Got it?”

  A flame flared. Curt lit a Lucky with the Bic lighter. “Got it, boss man.”

  “Rick, make sure you watch our backs. And everybody keep as quiet as you can: we want to be able to hear anything digging.” He swallowed thickly. The air was wet and heavy down here, and the rotten-peaches odor of the gray ooze stung his nostrils. The slime hung from the ceiling and sides of the tunnel like grotesque stalactites, pools of it shimmering an iridescent silver on the floor. “What’s this wet shit all over the place?” Curt asked. It was about two inches deep underfoot, as slick as engine grease.

  “Stinger digs these tunnels,” Daufin answered. “It sprays them with lubricant so it can move faster.”

  “Lubricant!” Curt grunted. Little ants of fear were running figure eights in his belly. “Stuff looks like snot!”

  “One thing I want to know,” Rhodes said. “Does the power source that runs the replicants come from Stinger or the ship?”

  “From Stinger.” Daufin peered down the tunnel ahead, alert for any sign of movement. “The replicants are expendable, meant to be discarded after their use is finished.”

  The replication process must be incredibly fast, Jessie thought. The creation of living tissue bonded with metallic fibers, the inner organs, synthetic bones—all of it was too much for an earthbound mind to comprehend. Her own questions about what Stinger looked like, and how it created the replicants from human bodies, would have to wait. It was time to go.

  “Everybody ready?” Rhodes waited for them all to reply, and then he started into the tunnel, careful of his footing in the slime and trying very hard not to think about the size of the monster that had drilled through the Texas dirt.

  Rick shone the light behind them. All clear. Before leaving the ’Gade fort, he’d knelt down beside Paloma and held her hands between his. Had told her what he had to do, and why. She’d listened silently,
her head bowed. Then she’d asked him to pray with her, and he’d rested his cheek against her forehead as she begged God’s mercy on her grandson and granddaughter. She’d kissed his hand and looked at him with those sightless eyes that had always seen to his soul. “Dios anda con los bravos,” she’d whispered, and let him go.

  He hoped she was right, and that God did indeed walk with the brave. Or at least watch over the desperate.

  Since leaving the apartment building, they’d seen neither the creature that had grown out of the horse nor any of the human-sized Stingers. They’d found two fifteen-foot lengths of rope at the hardware store and had come across the bridge, where Rick’s heart had sunk when he’d seen the battered remains of Cody Lockett’s motorcycle still burning. He didn’t know if Cody’s old man recognized the machine too, but Curt Lockett hadn’t made a sound.

  The tunnel veered to the right. The lamps revealed an intersection of three passages, all going in different directions. Rhodes chose the center of the tunnels, which continued in what he thought was the way to the black pyramid, and Daufin nodded when he looked at her for reassurance. They went into it, their lights glinting off the wet walls. In another moment they could hear a steady pounding ahead, like the beating of a huge heart.

  “Stinger’s ship,” Daufin whispered. “The systems are charging.”

  Rick kept his flashlight aimed behind them. And it happened so fast he had no time to cry out: a hunchbacked figure scurried into the beam about twenty feet away, lifted its hands before its face, and quickly retreated to the darkness.

  Rick stopped. His knees were rubbery. He’d seen the weaving tail, and the thing had resembled a mottled eight-legged scorpion with a human head. “Colonel?” He said it louder: “Colonel?”

  The others had gone on a few paces, but now Rhodes halted and looked back. “What’s wrong?”

  “It knows we’re here,” Rick answered.

  From in front of them came a woman’s Texan drawl: “I wouldn’t come any closer if I were ya’ll.”

  Rhodes swung around and held the lamps up. Twelve or fifteen feet ahead, the tunnel wound to the left and he knew the creature must be standing around that turn.

  “You bugs sure like to live dangerous,” Stinger said. “Is the guardian with you?”

  Daufin took a step forward. “I’m here,” she said defiantly. “I want the three humans set free.”

  There was a cold little laugh. “Lordy Mercy, was that an order? Honeychild, you’re in my world now. You want to come on and give yourself up, I might think about lettin’ the bugs go.”

  “Either you set them free,” Daufin said, “or we will.”

  That brought another giggle. “Look behind you, honeychild. You can’t see me, but I’m there. I’m in the walls. I’m up over you and down underneath. I’m everywhere.” Anger was creeping in. “I’ve got your pod now, honeychild. That’ll be good enough for my bounty. Plus I’ve found a whole world full of bugs that can’t fight worth a damn, and I ought to thank you for leadin’ me here.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “No? Who’s gonna stop me?”

  “I am.”

  There was silence. Daufin knew Stinger would not rush forward into the glare. And then Stinger hissed: “Come on, then. I’m waitin’ for you. Come on, let’s see what color your guts are!”

  “Get down,” Curt said quietly, and he touched the fuse of the dynamite stick he was holding to the red tip of his cigarette. The fuse smoked and sparked, began to burn, and Rhodes shouted, “I told you not to—”

  “Fuck it,” Curt said, and hurled the stick toward the bend in the tunnel.

  Rhodes grabbed Daufin and threw both himself and her into the muck. The others hit the ground and two seconds later there was a blast like a dozen shotguns going off. The tunnel’s floor shook, chunks of dirt flying through the air and showering down. Rhodes sat up, his ears ringing. Daufin struggled out from underneath him and got to her knees. She looked back in amazement at Curt, who was already on his feet and taking another puff from his bent cigarette. “That’s what dynamite is,” he said.

  Stinger’s voice did not return. But from around the bend there was a terrible gasping sound, like air being drawn into diseased lungs. Rhodes stood up, cocked his rifle, and held it as steady as he could, then began walking forward. He crouched and rounded the bend, ready to open fire.

  Something was on the tunnel floor, trying to crawl away through the ooze. It had one arm, the other a blackened mass lying several feet away, and its head was a misshapen lump. In the torn face, the mouth full of broken needles gasped like the gill of a bizarre fish, and the single remaining eye flinched in the light. The spiked tail had risen from its backbone and thrashed weakly from side to side. The thing’s hand started clawing frantically at the dirt, trying to dig itself in.

  Rhodes held the bundle of lamps closer to its face, avoiding the twitching tail. The awful ruined mouth stretched open, spilling gray fluid, and the eye began to smoke and burn in its socket. A charred, acrid chemical odor hung in the air. The eye popped open, melted in a rivulet of ooze, and the body shuddered and lay still. The tail thrashed once more before it fell like a dead flower.

  Electric light burns out the thing’s eyes, Rhodes thought. And once they were blinded, Stinger had no more use for the replicants—which were, in essence, walking and talking cameras—so the power source that animated them was simply turned off. But if all the replicants were in some strange way part of Stinger—powered perhaps by Stinger’s brainwaves—then it was likely Stinger could feel pain: the impact of a bullet, or the blast of dynamite. You hurt me, he remembered the creature saying to him in Dodge Creech’s house. All the replicants were Stinger, and Stinger was vulnerable to pain through them.

  Rhodes led the others past the burned shape on the ground, his pace faster. Daufin glanced only incuriously at the thing, but Jessie didn’t let herself look at it. Curt tapped his ashes onto the mangled head, though he moved past as rapidly as everyone else.

  And they were about ten feet past the dead replicant when dirt exploded from the tunnel wall to Rhodes’s right. A hunchbacked shape lunged for the lamps, its tail breaking loose from the dirt and slamming into the ceiling. Rhodes twisted toward it, but the thing was on top of him before he could fire. He heard gunshots: Rick and Tom’s rifles firing almost point-blank, and then his shoulder was hit by what felt like a runaway power saw and he was lifted off his feet. He was knocked against the other wall with a force that almost broke his back. Jessie screamed, and then there was more gunfire and Rhodes’s knees were sagging, warm wetness spilling along his arm. He went down.

  Rick saw the thing’s face: dark eyes and gray hair—the face of Mr. Diaz, who owned the shoe repair shop on Second Street, on a scorpion’s body. He thrust his rifle’s barrel into that face and blew its lower jaw away. The creature reeled backward, one arm rising to shield its eyes from the light. Curt fired one of his four bullets, shot a chunk out of its head, and dark wormy things boiled from the wound. Its tail swung, narrowly missing Tom’s head. Then the replicant turned and dove into the hole it had emerged from, scurrying back into the dirt and disappearing within seconds.

  Gunsmoke drifted through the tunnel. Jessie was already on her knees beside the colonel, and she could see the glint of bone down in the wound on his shoulder. There was a lot of blood. Rhodes’s face was ashen. He was still gripping his rifle and the lamps’ handle in white-knuckled hands.

  “Bastard clawed me,” Rhodes said. “Trying to break out the lights.”

  “Don’t talk.” Jessie tore the shirt away from the ripped flesh. The wound was deep and nasty; slashed muscle tissue clenched and relaxed.

  Cold sweat had welled up on Rhodes’s face. He smiled faintly at Jessie’s frown of concern. “Lady, talking’s about all I can do right now. I’m a mess, huh?”

  She looked up at Tom. “We’ve got to get him out.”

  “No! By the time you do… Stinger wi
ll have taken off.” Rhodes’s arm was, thankfully, still numb. He clasped his hand over the wound and gripped tightly, as if to hold back the pain before it hit. “Listen to me. If you want to get Stevie back…and the others too…you’ve got to do it for yourselves. I’ve gone as far as I can go.” He found Daufin, who was standing next to Rick and watching him intently. “Daufin…you said you could lead them. Here’s your chance.”

  “How bad’s he hurt?” Daufin asked Jessie.

  “No major artery’s cut. Mostly muscle damage. It’s the shock I’m worried about; he’s already suffered too many traumas tonight.”

  “So who hasn’t?” Rhodes was getting cold, and he felt unconsciousness pulling at him. “Leave me here and go! We’ve come this far, dammit! Go!”

  “He’s right,” Rick said. “We’ve got to go on.”

  “I’m gettin’ my boy out of there, by God,” Curt vowed, though his stomach fluttered with fear. “No matter what.”

  “We have to go,” Daufin agreed. The rhythmic pounding of the ship’s systems drawing power from the reserves was getting louder. She knelt down beside Colonel Rhodes. “Stinger may come for you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yep. Here.” He pushed the lamps toward her. “Somebody give me a flashlight.” Tom did, and Rhodes propped the rifle up beside him with a bloody finger on the trigger.

  “And dynamite too,” Daufin suggested. Curt gave him a stick, lit a cigarette for him, and put it between the colonel’s gray lips.

  “Thanks. Now I’m loaded for bear.” Rhodes looked into Daufin’s face. He no longer saw a little girl. A being impassioned and proud was kneeling next to him, and she had ancient eyes that had endured a world of pain but still had the shine of courage. “You’re okay,” he told her, in a weakening voice. “I hope you get back to your…” How had she put it? “Your tribe,” he remembered. “I hope you teach them that life is worth fighting for.”