The Aeschylus (42 page)

“Step away from the bike.”

When she looked at her new companion, she saw that Jan was not the savior she thought him to be after all. He was pointing the gun at her father.

“What are you doing?” she barked. “Jan, what the hell are you doing?”

His eyes were brimming in the dim light, but they were resolute. “That bike only holds two.”

“What?”

“We're not going back to the base. It's too late for that, now. I think I can get us to the shore if I cut through the hills, but only two of us are going to make it.”

“We'll fit three. We have to! I don't weigh very much, I—”

“No,” Jan said.

She looked at the man, and then she looked at her father. For the past week, he had been a man possessed. He had plans within plans, he had a will as hard as stone. Whenever she and Ari had faltered, he had been there to pull them out of the rut. So when she saw him there, his expression low and knowing, she didn't understand.

“Can you drive a motorcycle?” Jan asked.

Her father shook his head.

Jan lowered his weapon. “Then it's decided.”

Lucja was sure her father would pounce on the man. He would wrestle him to the ground and take his weapon. Or he would pull out some magic powder and blow it in the man's face, blinding him. And she would help him. She would be right there by his side to make a daring escape, maybe circling back around once for Ari. Because as grateful as she was to Jan,
if she had to choose sides... well, there was no choice to be had.

As the seconds ticked by, it became clear her father wasn't going to do any of those things. Instead, he took a step back, letting Lucja hold the bike alone. It was not heavy once it was upright, but holding it meant she could not step away.

Jan threw a leg over the seat. It was only then, in that gesture, that Lucja realized the gravity of what was happening.

“No. No! You can't do this!”

“I love you,” her father said. “And you have to go.”

“Not without you!”

Dominik stepped to her and put his hands on her cheeks. “The man is right. I can't drive a bike. So it can't be me who saves you this time. I'm too late, Lucja. I'm always too late.”

“Then I'm not going.”

“Yes you are!”

When he looked at Jan, the man grabbed Lucja by the scruff and hoisted her onto the bike behind him. For some reason, she didn't fight. She felt paralyzed from the neck down.

“I'll be all right,” her father said. “Now go!”

There was so much she wanted to say, so many reasons why it couldn't happen like this. She wanted to tell him how much she loved him. She wanted to tell him how sorry she was for being angry, for doubting him, for blaming him for what had happened to her mother, Magdelena. She wanted to tell him that what happened to Zofia wasn't his fault. When she opened her mouth, however, nothing came out.

One of the forms broke ahead of the pack. It was targeting them, leaping over rocks and bounding up the dirt.

Jan removed a knife from his belt and tossed it to her father. Dominik caught it, then took his glasses off and folded them neatly into his pocket. He looked so different without them, so much younger.

The bike engine came to life beneath the toes of Jan's boot. Lucja thought it would be just in time; the thing on the path was almost upon them.

“See you,” her father said. He kissed two of his fingers and held them in the air.

She reached for his hand, but then, the bike lunged forward and she was grabbing at Jan's waist, doing everything in her power to keep from falling off. It sped across the landscape, the two of them flying at break-neck speed.

Jan leaned to the left and guided the bike past a new group, a hair-raising stunt that brought their knees within touching distance of the ground. Then, he righted the bike and continued weaving through the masses. When the area opened to its widest, Jan cut diagonally across the path, leaving the crater behind and heading towards the hills as promised.

It was only then Lucja felt safe enough to look back. Mere seconds had passed since they had left her father in the dust, and she didn't know what to expect, braced herself for the worst, in fact. What she did see filled her with equal parts hope and horror. When she turned, her father was simply gone.

The Island:

Present Day

The last buckle of the harness clicked into place around her waist. It was tight enough all right, but it was a weapon that had never been designed for the likes of her.

“I figure that's eighty pounds. Can you stand?”

She nodded.

“Can you walk?” When AJ took his hand away, she almost fell. He was smiling a little.

Kate took two steps and nodded again. The bigger question was whether or not she could run, and the answer to that was a resounding
no
. Kate remembered that she'd tried jogging with five-pound ankle weights once and found it too painful. Either way, there was no turning back. She could hear the chemical splashing around the tanks at her back, could smell the vaguely unpleasant odor of the formaldehyde around the hose. Dominik's solution had not saved him in the long ago, but maybe, just maybe, it would save them now. It was as if it were meant to be.

The snap of a rifle bolt clacked behind them, and Kate looked over her shoulder to see Dutch standing with his K98, his chest crisscrossed with ammo belts. He was white as a ghost, his new soldier's shirt stained where the bandage had leaked through. AJ rushed over to steady him. He wasn't smiling any more. “You all right?”

“Go on,” Dutch rasped. “I'll cover you.”

Ten minutes before, he'd seemed fine, but Kate didn't like the sound of his voice. She didn't like it one bit.

“We'll be back.” AJ grabbed the other man and embraced him.

Dutch coughed, pushing him off of his wound. “You're more hurt than help, you know that?”

“I'm sorry, buddy. I'm sorry I ever got you into this.”

“You couldn't have kept me away, not even if you cut me yourself.”

Kate felt herself tearing up. She leaned over to kiss him on the cheek and then nearly fell, the weight on her back throwing her off balance. Both men caught her, and she laughed, grateful to be held again, if only for a moment.

She wiped her eyes and settled for putting a hand on Dutch's cheek. “See you.”

“I still expect to get paid. Now, both of you go on and get out of here before you kill me with this sappy crap.” Turning, he began to climb the ladder to the one surviving guard tower. “I can do it, dammit.”

AJ, who'd been helping him, held his hands up in surrender. He stooped and grabbed his own two Karabiner rifles, slinging them around his shoulder, then settled for the MP38 submachine gun in his hands.

“Meet you at the front.”

After toppling the Howitzer into dirt, they'd brought out one more cannon and pointed it at the gate. Kate wondered at the toll this had taken on their wounded friend, but they had no choice; they needed all of the firepower they could get. It stood as a sentry guarding the front gate now, waiting for them. Kate walked beyond the barrel and stared upwards, the enormous black growths twisting through the space in front of her. If the entire path was like this, they'd never make it, but she didn't think it was. The space beyond look mostly open, and if they had to wipe out two or three more tangles along the
way, they could do it. The docks were only a mile through the hills, maybe less. The beach route seemed to take forever, but the path across the island looked almost like a straight shot.

The reek of her own sweat assaulted her. It had soaked through her clothes, making her hands slick. She could remember running on the hottest days in DC, and she couldn't think of a single time she'd been this disgusting.

“Do it!” AJ yelled.

Her finger squeezed the trigger, and a jet of clear liquid burst from the nozzle. A soft screech came from the tentacles, the sound of air hissing and gurgling, but they didn't melt. They didn't collapse. They didn't do anything but color and tarnish under the power of the liquid.

Kate stared, feeling her breath become ragged. This wasn't what the book had said! The effect should be more dramatic, it should... it should be killing them.

It is killing them
, she thought. She could see it in the way that the skin began to shrivel, the way the tentacles began to droop. It wasn't dissolving them, however, and that was a problem.

“What are you doing?” AJ yelled.

She couldn't answer. She had never prepared for the possibility that her plan wouldn't work. Her plans always worked, even from the time she was a child. But maybe that's what they were when you got down to it: child's play. She'd never needed a plan like this. Now, with her foolishness, she may have doomed them all.

A gunshot snapped her attention to the tower. She whipped her head around, seeing the gleam of Dutch's sniper scope. He was shooting at something beyond the walls.

Somewhere high up in the hills, another shriek came on the wind. It was closer than the last. Kate had a crazy memory of her father's first senatorial debate, and a word his opponent had used in his opening statement. It sounded
multitudinous
. Like a thousand voices joined as one.

“Flame on!” AJ yelled. “Use the flames!”

Kate looked down at her hands. The solution was so obvious, that at first, it didn't register. Had she really expected this thing to work as an eighty-pound water cannon? No, she had read the journal too literally. The things in front of her were evil, and every good conservative from the days of Isaiah to the days of the present knew what you did with evil.

You killed it with fire.

A jet of yellow and green flame burst from the tube as Kate pressed the igniter. AJ watched the tentacles boil and melt, pieces of flesh dropping to the ground in chunks.

He got behind the cannon, making sure a live shell was loaded and the safety valve was tight. “Fire in the hole!”

Kate sidestepped, and he yanked the firing lever.

The Howitzer thundered, the crack of the explosion so loud he thought his ears had blown. The round hit dead center, disintegrating the flaming tendrils into black mist. Shards of earth and dead meat fell from the sky. The spent artillery shell clunked to the ground behind him.

He caught movement from the corner of his eye and saw humanoid shapes clambering between the walls, storming the mutilated fence behind them. The first ones got stuck on the barbed wire, but the ones after stepped on their shoulders. They came spilling over, tumbling and rolling into the base. He counted four, then six. Half as many were stuck beneath the wire, tearing themselves apart to get free.

They were almost on him when he fired, taking them down in a single burst from the MP38. One more broke free of the fence and charged. Dutch caught it below the chin, its head coming halfway off as its body dropped.

The K98 was in AJ's hands a moment later, the submachine gun dropping to the ground. He fired all five shots, taking the remaining two shapes stuck beneath the wire.

At the gate, Kate let loose another jet of flame, and a moment later, a figure came tearing through the entrance. Its head was spouting fire, its skull smoldering and popping as it
charged. AJ dropped one rifle and grabbed the other. He could barely see for the tunnel-vision, fear and ice running through his veins. He had the rifle cocked when Dutch fired again, and the figure's flaming skull exploded.

AJ spun in a circle, scanning for any signs of movement, but there were none. The MP38 beckoned, and he picked it up, spending precious seconds to eject the magazine and slap in a spare. He didn't have time to reload the second Karabiner, so he took the loaded one and started for the gate. Kate was jogging ahead of him, but he passed her at the fence, stepping under the canopy of melting fungus. “Stay with me!”

The darkness swallowed them as they moved up the path, the torchlight dying behind. Above, AJ could see the moonlight glinting off of tentacles as large as redwoods.

There were two flares left, and he decided to use one. He grabbed the gun off of his waist and shot a round upwards, barely slowing. All at once, he came to a screeching halt. Kate, who was moving slower, almost knocked him over.

“Why are you stopping?” she panted. Then, she saw.

The crater loomed before them, its vast reaches dropping into the earth. They had almost tumbled straight in.

“Back up,” he said. “Slowly.”

She did. A moment later, they discovered the path around it and found another overgrowth of tentacles.

Kate squeezed the trigger again, her sweat shining in the light of the flare. She cut a path through them, disintegrating each one in turn. AJ watched as two human shapes fell from within one of the tentacles, hissing as they melted. He waited for more to drop, called by the pain and the heat of their brethren.

Kate spun. “AJ, behind you!”

They were not coming from the tentacles; they were coming from the pit. A dozen huddled shapes came slithering over the stones, crawling up the sides of the crater like bugs. He pulled the trigger of the MP38 and heard only a dry click.

It was jammed!

He was knocked to the ground before he knew what was happening, but not by The Carrion. Kate pushed past him, thrusting the hose of the flamethrower in front. A wave of emerald fire flashed from the hose, coating the shapes rising from the dark. The figures seemed to twist in slow motion, falling back into the abyss in a viridian agony. One of them almost made it, but AJ regained his feet and smashed it with the butt of his gun, sending it toppling into the pit.

When he was sure they were gone, he took the clip out of the MP38 and tested the cocking handle. He pulled it back, then forwards, clearing the jam. Then, he put the clip back in and fired a test shot.

“Fixed?” Kate asked.

He nodded. “Thanks for that.”

“Are they gone?”

He walked along the side of the crater, looking for signs. The edges were glowing, the flames sticking to the rocks. They flickered eerily in the dark, portending shadows of things that were not really there. There was something else in the darkness though, something he couldn't see. It had come from the base, following their trail through the gloom.