J.M. Dillard - War of Worlds: The Resurrection (30 page)

Reynolds was about to rush in to help out when he saw something—someone—coming at him through the mist. A man, a stranger. Reynolds stepped back and took aim.

The man saw but kept coming. He held an odd-looking object in his hand that Reynolds decided was a weapon: a length of thick wire, weighted at the ends with what looked like mechanical gears. The man staggered, but there was no blood on his dark clothing, only vague, indescribable filth.

"Halt!" Reynolds barked, but the man kept coming. Even in the darkness Reynolds could see there was something horribly wrong with him; his face was swollen and covered with pus-filled sores and flies. The man started to slowly swing the cable. Revolted, Reynolds fired.

The terrorist fell straight onto his back two feet from the entrance, and then, to Reynolds' wide-eyed horror, the man's skin began to bubble and pop, releasing small sprays of pus. It was as if someone had

WAR OF THE WORLDS
poured strong acid on the body; the skin melted, leaving dark red muscle and bone and gleamingly slick internal organs. Something black and gelatinous had wound itself all around the skeleton and the organs, and when the fizzling stopped, a smoldering pile of bones and nasty-looking black scum remained.

Reynolds was still gaping, stunned, when he heard the whistling sound again. Strong wire wrapped itself around his legs and arms, forcing the rifle from his grasp as he dropped to the ground. He flailed in vain, then tried to worm his way toward the M-16. He actually managed to get a hand on it, but his arms were pinned so that he couldn't raise it and take aim. From the side of the bam, another man appeared, Ms face as ghastly as the other's, an Uzi balanced on his hip.

It was the last thing Reynolds saw before the world exploded.

"Reynolds!" Ironhorse dropped the field glasses and dashed down the slope seconds before the burst of automatic gunfire.

"No, Colonel, don't-—" Harrison reached for him, but Ironhorse was already gone. Harrison squeezed his eyes shut as the man with the Uzi fired at Reynolds.

Ironhorse tore down the hill and made Ms way toward the barn, but he was too late. Reynolds' body was a twisted heap, tangled in wire and old rusted gears, a makeshift bola. "Reynolds," the colonel whis-

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pered, crouching over the young soldier. At the sight of him, Ironhorse closed his eyes. The Uzi blast had caught Reynolds in the right side of his face, now a bloody, unrecognizable mass.

"You
bastards
—" Ironhorse stood up. At the same time, the roar of an engine sounded behind him as a rider dressed all in black came speeding out of the barn on a four-wheel ATV. A machine gun was mounted on the handlebars, and the rider aimed it at Ironhorse.

Ironhorse roared with fury and fired his M-16. The rider was knocked from the ATY, which flipped onto its back, wheels spinning crazily. The rider's body began to dissolve, bubbling and fizzling, the same as the one Reynolds had killed. But there was no time for Ironhorse to watch—a man and a woman in grotesque, decaying bodies were approaching from the direction of the fannhouse. He fired again, missed; the two fled into the safety of the barn through a side entrance.

The colonel peered into the barn as the remnants of the tear gas stung his eyes, making tears stream down his face. The barn was quiet, except for dark, inhuman shapes ... if anyone from Delta squad was still inside, they weren't alive. Damn Blackwood for being right! It no longer mattered to Ironhorse if he lived or not. The way he saw it, he deserved to die with his men. He reached for a grenade on his belt, loaded it onto the attachment on his rifle, aimed it straight into the barn, and fired.

The blast made Ironhorse stagger backward; the old

building groaned and shuddered as wooden rafters gave way and collapsed to the floor, carrying other dark alien forms with them.

That's right, you bastards, DIE____

He slipped another grenade onto the launcher and began to take aim again, when his legs went out from under him, tangled in one of the makeshift bolas. An old man approached from behind the far side of the bam—not as badly deteriorated as the others, but definitely eaten away by radiation. The old gas station owner, some detached part of Ironhorse's mind realized calmly. What the hell was going on?

Was the gas station owner,
he corrected himself grimly. At least his hands were still free. He fired the grenade right at the guy's chest when he was still several yards away.

The old man caught it in his bare hand like some martial arts expert. Ironhorse knew then he had to be hallucinating. This whole thing was some weird, unbelievable dream—the grenade should have torn the man's hand off, or at least taken a few fingers with it—but here the guy was holding it. The old man studied the grenade curiously, as if he'd never seen anything like it before.

The colonel covered his head with his arms and turned away just before the explosion.

"Wait here," Harrison said to Suzanne. He couldn't stand by and watch Ironhorse get killed too.

"Oh no you don't." She shot him a dangerous look. "You're not going down there. And you're not leaving me alone."

"Look at him!" Harrison pointed; Ironhorse was struggling to untangle his legs without success.

"But you don't even have any weapons." She hesitated, then said, "I'm going with you."

"No way. One, you've got the kid to think about; two, you've got the camera. You alone can convince Wilson, and you know it. You've got to survive or we can all kiss our asses good-bye."

"Harrison—"

But he was already making his way down toward the battle.

"God damn you, Blackwood!" But at least she stayed put.

He had just made it to the bottom of the hill and was headed for the barn, watching as Ironhorse finally managed to free his legs. But at the same time, the colonel was entirely unaware of another man— grotesque, rotting—coming from the barn. The man aimed an Uzi right at Ironhorse.

"Colonel!" Harrison shouted, falling to the ground. "The barn!"

Ironhorse wheeled around and fired just in time. The man staggered backward and collapsed inside the old building. Harrison started toward the barn again; before he had taken three steps, the colonel was on the ground again, tangled not in one, but two of the aliens' weapons, unable to raise his arms to fire his weapon. A man and a woman were coming toward him out of the barn; a second man approached from the side near the farmhouse. All three were armed with automatic weapons.

Harrison swallowed hard. He didn't consider him-

self a particularly heroic individual, and at the moment it seemed like retreat was the sanest solution. But he couldn't watch another human being—even if it was the despicable Ironhorse—be killed without doing something. He looked around desperately, and spotted the ATV resting on its handlebars.

He dashed for it without realizing he'd already made the decision to do so. His heart was hammering so hard he couldn't get his breath, but somehow he managed to heave the thing upright and get it started.

Ironhorse was still flailing in the tangle of bolas. Harrison roared up beside him, painfully aware that the three ghouls had spotted him and were slowly taking aim.

"Cut me loose!" Ironhorse bellowed, but Harrison didn't bother to respond, just hooked the weighted end of one of the bolas over the back of the ATV and took off. Ironhorse screeched curses behind him as the terrorists fired. Harrison never looked back, not even when the bullets whined past his ears, until they made it up to the top of the incline, back into the safety of the forest.

"God almighty," Ironhorse swore after they'd stopped, and held still while Harrison cut the wires restraining him with a jackknife. "My backside is bruised to Kingdom Come and back."

"Then we're even," Harrison answered grimly, cutting the last strand and helping Ironhorse free.

"Look .. ." The colonel put a hand on Harrison's wrist. "Bruised or not... thanks for saving my ass."

"Forget it." Harrison shrugged and did his best not to smile. "Doesn't mean we have to be friends or anything. Come on, we've got to find Suzanne." He ran back toward the place he'd left her.

The colonel rose stiffly to his feet and followed. Harrison ran through the forest until he found the area he remembered: there was the boulder Suzanne had sat against; there was the hollow where he'd napped . .. but there was no sign of life. "Suzanne!" he called.

Ironhorse came up behind him and unhooked a flashlight from his belt. Harrison turned to him worriedly. "This is the area, isn't it? It's gotten a lot darker since we left, but I could have sworn—"

"This is it." Ironhorse switched the flashlight on and swept the beam over the area. "There," he said suddenly.

Harrison looked. The light hovered over the Geiger counter and the video equipment, smashed and lying in pieces atop a blanket of pine needles. Fighting off a sickening sensation of fear, he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted.
"Sue—!"

Ironhorse clamped a hand firmly over Harrison's mouth and looked anxiously behind them. "Easy! You'll give away our position."

Harrison did not struggle; slowly, cautiously, the colonel removed his hand. "Come on, Doctor, we can't risk hanging around here. They're probably following. We've got to put some more distance between ourselves and them."

"No." Harrison shook his head stubbornly. "We're not leaving without Suzanne. She
has
to be here somewhere."

Ironhorse looked hard at him. "Blackwood, you saw

what they did to my armed, trained men. If those things have her, there's nothing we can do. Dying ourselves won't help to bring her back." He reached out to grab Harrison's arm, but the scientist pulled back. "Come on!"

"For God's sake," Harrison cried as desperation filled him, "we can't just leave her!"

"Forget her, Blackwood!" the colonel snapped, and then, more softly: "She's had it." He caught hold of Harrison's upper arm with a viselike grip.

This time Harrison let himself be led away, looking back over his shoulder the entire time for any sign of Suzanne.

TWENTY-ONE

The next several hours spent hiding and shivering in the cold, dark forest were as nightmarish as anything Harrison had ever experienced. He and Ironhorse kept moving, pausing at times to hold perfectly still as the aliens passed by with soft, slithering rustles and the clumsier sound of human yet inhuman footfalls crashing through the underbrush. Without Ironhorse, he would not have made it, in his near delirium, unable to distinguish alien forms from the ominous black shapes of the bushes. The colonel remained calmly watchful, and somehow managed to keep Harrison moving long after he wanted to give up.

By dawn their trackers had given up and passed out of the forest, and Harrison realized Suzanne, too, was nowhere to be found in the woods. Ironhorse had circled back and led them to the place where they'd left her, but there was no sign of her. Discouraged, they rested, Ironhorse crouching on the ground but keeping one eye open, Harrison sitting on the rock where Suzanne had sat. He was exhausted beyond reason from fear and chill and exertion, and his back ached where Ironhorse had struck him the night before.

One scene played over and over like a B-grade melodrama in his mind: Mrs. Pennyworth with one arm around a fair-haired girl, and Harrison, the heavy, saying:
I'm sorry, Debi, but your mother. . .
He couldn't find the words, but it didn't matter; Debi understood all too well.
You killed her! You killed my mother!
the girl screamed, clawing at him while Mrs. Pennyworth did her best to hold Debi back. But the girl broke free and grabbed hold of him.

Someone shook his shoulder. Harrison opened his eyes to see Ironhorse standing over him. Amazingly, the colonel looked no worse for wear. "They're still gone," Ironhorse said. "I'm going down to the house and check for survivors."

"Suzanne—" Harrison began and broke off, confused, not knowing exactly what it was he meant to say about her. He rubbed his face.

Ironhorse removed his hand from Harrison's shoulder and glanced down into the valley. "It's possible she decided to go down there," he said, but Harrison heard the doubt in his tone.

He knows she's dead. He just wants to see if any of his men are still alive.
Harrison got shakily to his feet. "I'll go with you."

Ironhorse stood up, raising a coal-black brow. "No offense, Blackwood, but you don't look up to—"

"I'm going with you," Harrison repealed firmly, shaking his arms and legs to get the stillness out.

"Then we'd better do it fast, before they figure out where we are and head back this way."

Harrison nodded and took a few staggering steps. If Suzanne wasn't down there, at least he'd know for sure that the aliens had her, and that she was dead . .. or worse. He limped down the hill behind Ironhorse, every step aggravating the pain in his back.

Down in the valley, the air was still faintly acrid; the house and barn still smoldered.

"Here." Ironhorse paused to remove the rifle that hung on a strap around his back, and offered it to Harrison. "I'll use this." He patted the pistol in his side holster.

Harrison shook his head. "No thanks." He disapproved—in theory anyway—of the damn things, and right now he didn't feel he deserved to protect himself.