Alien Hunter: Underworld (33 page)

There were only the four of them, but they had obviously evolved yet again, because they were coming back from lethal shots in seconds, not the hours it took the one he'd “killed” in Mountainville to recover.

He drew his knife and handed it to Martin. “They have to be cut apart.”

“These are people!”

“Doctor, do as I say, or we'll all be dead—”

The fourth one dropped down onto Flynn from somewhere above. It was in the form of a strongly built, athletic man, and it threw him sideways and off the edge of the platform. He fell toward the vortex, which seemed almost to bend toward him, as if it were hungry for him.

As he dropped, he reached out and grabbed the leg of the creature that had unbalanced him, then twisted himself upward and threw his own leg over the platform.

For an instant, they were frozen, the two of them, their strength in balance.

Blood poured down through the platform as Miller cut up the one that had been lying there, cut it up and screamed out his revulsion as he did it.

Flynn's adversary shuddered. It redoubled its efforts.

But then Flynn was back on the platform, back on top.

Miller stood over the remains of the one he'd butchered, staring down at it with stunned eyes. Flynn grabbed the knife out of his hands and spun around, taking off the head of his attacker.

Then there was stillness. Flynn wasn't sure if there were some that had backed off, or if they were all incapacitated.

He ran around the machine. For a moment, he didn't understand what he was seeing. Then he did. The whole side of the thing had been laid open like a man's guts. Hanging out was a pulsating complexity of what looked like organic wiring, wet tendrils in a thousand different colors. One of the creatures lay slumped against it, its eyes glazed with what might be death. The other one was nowhere to be seen.

“Mac!”

No reply.

“Doc, how do I pull him out of this thing?”

Dr. Miller came around it. “My God.”

“Where's Mac? What happened to him?”

Miller peered into the dripping tangle of wires.

Flynn knew they had little time. The creatures were all linked. Morris would know exactly what had happened here, and would be regrouping right now. Obviously, he was low on soldiers or he would have sent more.

“Mac, sing out.”

“There's a body,” Miller said. “Under there.”

Flynn could just see it, a jeans-covered thigh under the machine. It was bulging horribly, as if the unseen part of Mac's body had been crushed.

Flynn's heart broke. At the same time, anger on a level he had not known possible swept him. This was more than rage, more than what he had thought of before as human emotion, a pillar of fire within him.

Bending down, he reached forward, thrusting his arms under the slumped remains of the machine. Using his leg and back muscles, then every muscle in his body, he lifted the thing. It was like cradling an injured man, just as intimate and sad.

“Hurry!”

“I'm trying.”

“Can't hold it.” He let it down.

Mac's leg was no longer visible. Flynn turned around. “He must have gone down into the vortex.”

“The hell I did.”

“Mac!”

He was standing beside Dr. Miller on the platform.

“It protected me. Held me like a baby. I could feel it dying all around me, but it would not let them get me.”

Flynn took his friend by his shoulders. “You got a hell of a lot of guts.”

“Listen,” Miller said.

It was a rushing sound, like a great wind or the long thunder of breaking waves.

“What?” Mac asked.

“I don't know.”

It was coming from back along the catwalk. Flynn could feel deep trembling.

Flynn went to the end of the platform, followed by the other two men. As they moved toward the door, the entire room seemed to fold in on them. Rolling out from behind them, there came a thick mass of dark blue smoke and a choking odor, sharp and hot, of some unknown fire. Flynn didn't turn; he didn't slow down.

Ahead of them, the door began closing automatically. Klaxons started, then emergency lights.

Flynn dived through the door and onto the catwalk above the portal to the jungle world. Mac and the doctor came behind, but the doctor's shoe got caught as the door slid closed.

He ripped it out, but then fell backwards and off the catwalk.

The portal appeared to be about twenty feet below them, but the doctor did not fall twenty feet. He kept falling and falling, his body twisting, his arms and legs windmilling. As they watched, he grew slowly smaller and smaller, until he was a dot moving across the green of the jungle.

There was a flash of light, and Dr. Miller was much more visible again, lying on the jungle path, one shoe missing, his legs twisted. As they watched transfixed, he shook himself. He stood up. Looked around. His hands went to his head. He understood what had happened to him.

He stood there screaming silently, looking up, his eyes wild with terror, as the portal grayed and went dark. The portal shuddered like the surface of a lake, and then Flynn realized that the whole room was liquefying around them.

They ran, dashing down the catwalk and out into the staging area, stumbling and falling as the pressure door closed behind them.

The elevator was across the room, its forbidding black steel door closed.

“Can we get out of here?”

“I don't know.”

He went to the elevator and pressed the button. There was a moment's hesitation, but then it slid open. Before they could board the elevator, Flynn noticed that the Klaxons had stopped. Movement behind him caused him to turn, gun at the ready.

The pressure door was reopening.

“Jesus,” Mac said as they got closer and looked together into the now completely empty space, a large bare room, its floor twenty feet below the doorframe. It was gleaming white, lit from above by rows of ordinary LED panels. There was a faint odor of something that had burned, but a long time ago. Old smoke.

The aliens had withdrawn.

“That poor guy,” Mac said.

Flynn nodded. Dr. Daniel Miller had become the most profoundly lost man in the history of the species.

They got into the waiting elevator and returned to the surface.

The signs on the office doors were now all in English only. Here and there, a white space marked a place where a sign in some alien language had been removed.

Flynn touched a door handle. It was unlocked. He opened the door and stepped into the office of a Dr. William Richards. It was a typical office in a secret lab: There was a heavy-duty file safe, locked. On the desk was an in/out-box, which held some trivial memos about supply issues and a lighting problem. No references to aliens, nothing about what must have been taking place here just this morning.

“The parade's gone by,” he told Mac. “Let's get out of here.”

“What about that dog?”

“They'll be gone, both of them. And the aliens we saw out in the mounds. All gone. This place has been sterilized—and so has the rest of the planet, would be my guess.” He thought of Aeon's more primitive portal, a massive gravity well out near Saturn. “Probably the whole solar system.”

“And the disk?”

“Morris is still here, you can be sure.”

“Here, in this place?”

“Obviously his crew got here somehow. But he got his nose bloodied tonight, so I'm thinking that he'll pull back, at least for a time. He'd better—we have exactly two bullets left in the Bull. The Special doesn't matter, since it's not accurate enough.”

As they talked, they walked toward the main exit. Outside, the floodlights were off. The gate in the compound's fence stood open. The dog was nowhere to be seen.

Flynn tried his cell phone, but there was no coverage.

“I guess let's walk up,” he said.

“Is it safe?”

He looked up at the sky. A late moon had risen, and still hung low in the east. To the south, the faint glow of the Northeastern megalopolis created an illusion of dawn.

“Three thirty,” he said. “Hard to believe we were down there that long.”

They started up the road. Flynn was alert for any movement, any sound, but all was quiet.

The disk rose up from behind a saw grass–covered dune and was on them in an instant.

Flynn threw himself to the ground and rolled off the road, but it was too late. It had been too late since the moment they left the facility.

Morris had really surprised the hell out of Flynn this time. “He got me, Mac. The attack down in the facility was there to put me off my guard.”

He found himself looking up into the center of the disk's underside, a roiling circle of fire that would soon generate the light that would drag both of them into the hands of somebody who was going to hurt them very badly before killing them.

“Can you see that seam?”

“Man, it's dark.”

There was a dull booming sound, and the light hit them. They rolled in opposite directions, and the light followed Flynn. As he felt himself rising, he grabbed the Special and thrust it at Mac. “Don't miss!”

The gun tumbled up into the light and was gone. Flynn felt his body leaving the ground. He yanked out the Bull and made sure it was in Mac's hand. “Two shots, but get outta this light!”

He rose further, seeking as he did so for his knife—not to defend himself, but to kill himself. His mind flashed regretfully to the cyanide capsules.

The end of the game, and the human side had lost.

What in hell could he expect?

The glowing maw of the thing was just above him now. He spread his arms and legs, and was just able to catch himself on the edges. Immediately, though, he began to slip inside.

A shot rang out. He heard the bullet whine off past his head—passing so close, he could feel its hot slipstream. The fingers on his left hand lost their grip. His arm thrust up into the thing. Hands, cold and strong, grabbed at his wrist, then clutched it.

His right leg went in. It also was grabbed.

“I'm goin'!” he screamed. He who was never scared was scared now—he was scared sick. It was going to end like this for him, in this monstrous machine, being cut to pieces, dying in his own vomit and in agony.

There came a tinkling like the laughter of children, cruel children.

A sharp sound followed, but in the distance. A shot? He was unsure.

There was a rush of air, then a flash of agony. Then there was darkness.

The darkness gathered him into itself. It was nice. It was good and kind and he belonged to it. Then he saw something that at first he didn't understand: a circle of fire overhead, slowly spinning.

There was a flash like a million suns, which left them both night blind. The flash was followed by a chest-slapping shock.

There was a silence.

“Are we still alive, Flynn?”

“Mac?”

“Are we?”

Flynn realized that he was on the ground, not in the disk. He said, “I'm thinking that we are.” He tested himself, moving first one leg and then the other, then his arms. “I've got an issue with my right hip and arm. Must be my landing.”

Mac sat up. “You fell a long way.”

“I'm good at falling. I've practiced.”

“The machine worked. I could shoot that fisherman over there right between the eyes.”

Flynn looked around. “We're in the middle of the island.”

“Look due south. See that little piece of water?”

“No.”

They both got to their feet. “There's a boat that's got three guys on it. Two of 'em are asleep, the third one's got a line in the water.”

They were both hurt bad, which became clear when they began trying to resume their hike up to the main building. They moved along arm in arm, leaning on one another.

“How in hell did I break my leg?”

“What's that wet stuff? That goo?”

“That's blood, Mac. You damn well shot yourself.”

“I did not!”

“Yeah, you did. You winged your own leg with the first shot.”

“Aw, shit.”

Lights bore down in their faces, hard, bright rows of them.

“Is it another disk? 'Cause the gun's empty.”

“It's the security patrol.”

“Hey, we need help down here!”

A shadow moved out from behind the lights, an unrecognizable silhouette. The hands went up. A voice called out, “Flynn? Flynn Carroll?”

“Diana!”

She came closer, breaking into a run; then she was there before him. She threw her arms around him. He swayed against the weight of her, then inhaled the scent of her, and her sweetness made him dizzy with relief and desire.

“What the hell happened down there? I thought you were being examined by Dr. Miller.”

“Morris got into the facility. Miller was— Oh, Christ, Diana, do you know what was down there?”

“Some advanced machines is what I heard.”

“It's clean now. You could eat off the floor.”

Diana and a number of the security personnel helped the two of them into the back of two of the carts, and they went together back up to the main building.

“Mac got the disk,” Flynn said on the way.

“The wire is gone. Geri is gone. She left the way she came, from Area Fifty-One.”

“I wonder if she made it.”

Diana didn't reply, and Flynn didn't pursue it. There was no reason to speak more about Aeon. The planet had sealed its own fate, and would disappear into the history of the universe.

“Did you get Morris?”

“He wouldn't have been on the disk, but his assets are gone.”

“Then that's the best we can hope for. A good result.”

Diana wasn't happy, and Flynn knew it—and why would she be? Morris was their mission.

As he thought about that, he tried to put himself in Morris's position, to see matters from his enemy's viewpoint. He would know exactly why they were here, and how dangerous Mac would be to him if the bioedit was allowed to complete. Thus the logic of sending some of his last few entities into the facility where they would meet certain destruction. They might be destroyed, but so would the bioeditor, hopefully Mac, and ideally Flynn.