Dark Rising (33 page)

With O’Riordan still alive, Alex had no choice; he had to try to save his man, he had to engage.
Oh God, it’s gonna be bad
, he thought. He sucked in a deep breath and stepped out into the centre of the corridor.

He was wrong: it was worse, much worse.

This was the first time Alex had seen the creature clearly. In the harsh artificial light of the corridor, it was magnificent in its hideousness. It had reared up on its four hind legs, each as thick as Alex’s thigh at the top, but tapering to a black bristled point where it met the ground. Alex remembered a line from Mr Haniford’s long past literature class – ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’.
More like somewhere a lot lower than either of those places
, thought Alex.

The strange being’s upper body was flared open like a massive insectoid cobra, and it held O’Riordan tightly to its core. Its smaller thoracic legs squeezed him softly, almost tenderly, undulating up and down as if it were milking him. The mandibles in its bullet-shaped head had opened and a sharp spike protruded into the man’s neck. Though Alex could not see O’Riordan’s face, he could sense he was still alive within that revolting embrace. Even as he watched, O’Riordan’s body collapsed, wrinkled and shortened. He was slowly being turned into an empty bag of skin as the creature contentedly sucked out and digested his bodily fluids. Alex groaned in despair.

The creature’s two long eyestalks swivelled to fix on Alex, and he could see the multiple pupils in each. He tried to imagine the vision it received from those soulless triscopic bulbs. Alex couldn’t help thinking that the creature looked as though it belonged a mile deep under the ocean in some dark sunless trench, not standing in the middle of a surgically white corridor within the realm of man.

He and the creature stood only a dozen feet apart, not moving, weighing each other up. He could sense no fear from it, not even wariness, just the savage confidence of a predator over its prey.
Why shouldn’t it be confident?
It had triumphed over every human it had encountered and knew their weapons had no effect. Alex was probably just another moving bag of fluid to be drained when it had finished with O’Riordan.

Alex blinked several times as he felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time – fear. The creature had easily bested him in the cave – it was faster, stronger and infinitely more savage.
But this time I’ve got a surprise
, he thought.

The compressed packets of high energy shot out in a faster-than-light pulse from the bulbed muzzle of the laser and struck the creature in the upper body. They passed straight through its carapace, leaving several pencil-thin smoking holes. The creature, taken by surprise, dropped the shrunken husk that had been O’Riordan to the floor. Alex felt the beast’s scream of rage and pain in his head as it retracted its flared thorax, flattened its body and prepared to charge.

Though he had struck it several times, there seemed to be little serious damage at all. The rifle’s high-energy setting was deadly to humans, but against this creature he might as well have been trimming its nails. He changed the setting to the lower-energy wide beam and fired again. The explosive punch struck the creature and rocked it back, causing its sharp legs to dig furrows in the floor. Small bits of carapace splintered away as connective cartilage was smashed from its ten-foot frame. He fired once again and was rewarded by one of its eyestalks exploding off the top of its head.

The inhuman scream came again in his head, and then the creature charged. It came at him with a speed that almost overwhelmed him. One second it was twelve feet away and the next it was rearing up in his face. Time slowed for Alex as the creature shot out its raptorial claws, both heavily spiked blades moving so quickly that they actually created a shock wave in the air. Though Alex moved faster than a normal man could, all he had time to do was lessen the blades’ impact – he dropped and rolled, but not before the KBELT in his hands was sliced in two. One massive claw continued on to slash his head and Alex felt blood trickling down over his eye.

He was thankful for the creature’s slight loss of depth perception due to the missing eye. Possibly it had also underestimated his own speed and agility. Alex knew it wouldn’t make that same mistake again. After his recent run-in, he knew it was smart enough to adapt its attack.

Alex got to his feet and the creature once again flared open its thorax cavity, displaying gristly flaps and tendrils. Colour rippled over its front cartilage and abdominal plates as it finally recognised Alex for what he was – not food but an adversary. Its single eye fixed on the HAWC and its claws drew back ready to strike.

Alex balanced on his toes, ready to duck or move as best he could, but he knew he couldn’t stay out of the way of those sharp blades forever. Now that the laser had been destroyed, he would have to use more conventional weapons. He withdrew his pistol and the long black Ka-Bar knife – probably useless but at least he was armed. He held the twelve-inch blade out to his side. The dark folded chromium steel of the Ka-Bar made it one of the hardest knives in the US military and it had a scalpel-sharp edge. Alex only needed two things: a lethal strike area, and an opportunity.

All living creatures had a brain or central nervous system that controlled locomotion, logic and autonomous function. This thing had a head, so Alex assumed that its controlling organ was located there. He fired twice, delivering two unerring head-shots to the epicuticle plate where the eyestalks had met. The creature didn’t react at all, even though Alex could see small creases where the copper-jacketed lead bullets had glanced off the exoskeletal skull.

It reared up to its full height and its giant alien form packed the corridor. Its subsonic scream filled Alex’s head like a thousand needles. Bands of colour pulsed up and down its body in an obvious aggressive challenge. It used one of its hind legs to scoop up O’Riordan’s lifeless body and pass it to its higher claws; then it tore the body down the middle – either to show Alex what was in store for him, or as a display of strength, the way the black mountain gorilla smashed trees and pounded branches into the earth to build its rage before it charged.

Alex’s eyes widened momentarily at the desecration of his fellow HAWC’s body. Anger filled him. He gritted his teeth, and his hand on the knife handle tightened so fiercely the leather squealed in protest.

Two powerful and deadly creatures from different worlds stood before each other, ready for battle. There would only be one survivor.

FORTY-FIVE

S
am, Rocky, Adira and Zach stood together in the DNA scanner booth. Sam looked up at the ceiling towards the gas vents. None of them had brought gas masks, as they had needed to travel light. Still, it didn’t really matter that they had no masks as many of the lethal or incapacitating gases today worked on the skin as well as the respiratory system. Gas masks didn’t save your life; they just stopped you from vomiting up your lungs before you died – which, admittedly, did leave a prettier corpse.

‘At least we have a way out,’ Lagudi said, jerking his head towards the steel door they had come through. A silver button the size of a coin was fixed on the wall at about waist height.

Sam slid back one of the recessed doors in the room to reveal some clothing, dust-coated shoes and a thermos. He thought they probably belonged to one of the technicians who would wear sterile overalls to protect the hi-tech equipment. He drew the thermos out into the bright light, held it at both ends and turned it around slowly, looking at the detail on its surface.

‘Okay, this might work,’ he said. He pulled some plastic tape from a belt pouch, tore off a one-inch strip and laid it over a section of the thermos. He pressed it down, ripped it off and then held it up to the light. ‘Ever seen a fingerprint under a microscope? The ridges and troughs make the Grand Canyon look like a dip in the road. They’re rich in dirt, bacteria and oil – and in that oil . . . DNA.’

He crossed himself twice and stuck the tape on the flat screen.

There was a hissing sound. Zach covered his face.

Alex needed to stay out of reach of the creature’s razor-sharp claws, but get in close enough to find some sort of vital organ. His money was still on the head, and probably his life too.

Alex leapt at the creature, feinting to the left and going right. His plan was to use the wall to bounce up and at the creature’s head, which was quite a few feet above his own. His speed would have delighted the scientists back in the USSTRATCOM labs and amazed his fellow HAWCs, but in comparison to a creature that could move its attack claws fast enough to break the sound barrier, he was an easy target.

While he was still in midair, the creature turned to track him with its remaining triscopic eye. It shot out its claws, striking towards Alex’s mid-section. Alex sensed the movement before he saw it and swivelled slightly, taking the blow on the remaining ceramic plates across his chest. The laboratory-hardened material shattered and his pectoral muscles were laid bare.

There was a spray of blood and he was thrown ten feet down the corridor. Small fan-like structures waved at the end of the creature’s proboscis as it scooped at the air. The released blood and fluids must have excited it. It sped forward, probably intending to impale Alex on that hideous spike and suck him dry.

As he sensed the creature moving in for the killer blow, Alex rolled fast and came to his feet. Even his rapid metabolism would take some time to knit the chest wound, and the bleeding needed to be staunched artificially or he would lose energy. The strike and his impact on the floor had not dislodged the knife and gun in his hands, but these now seemed like a feeble armoury against a high-speed tank of an animal with two spring-loaded machetes.

In his mind, Alex could hear the creature’s squeal of triumph as it closed in for the kill.
It has too many advantages. Gotta even things up a bit
, he thought as he got to one knee and sighted along the pistol barrel.
Too many advantages, but I’m betting you hunt primarily by vision.

Four shots came in rapid succession at a target closing faster than a human eye could follow. The remaining bulb at the top of the eyestalk exploded, but Alex only had time to move slightly to absorb the impact – he was still thrown backwards.

The scream in his head now turned to one of pain and rage.
Good
, he thought. He taunted the creature: ‘On Earth we say, don’t skin your deer until its caught, ugly.’

A plume of wet-looking fans and tendrils was waving frantically from the front of its head as it tried to taste Alex’s position from the surrounding air. Alex knew he couldn’t take another impact from the creature; his energy was ebbing.
Last chance
, he thought.

He tore the shredded para-aramid suit material from his upper body and wiped as much blood off himself as he could. The creature somehow registered where Alex was and charged. Alex threw the wadded, blood-soaked material up and to the left of the oncoming monstrosity while he leapt in the other direction. As he hoped, the claws shot out and caught the clothing. It would take at least a second for the creature to relocate him and attack again – and that was all the time he needed. In midair, Alex brought his arm down in a hammer blow that combined his full weight and all the abnormal muscle strength his frame could muster. The twelve-inch Ka-Bar blade pierced the monster’s chitinous skull with a crunching brittle sound and sank to the hilt. Alex used the momentum of his leap to keep sailing past and land several feet behind the giant arthropod.

When he turned, he knew from the creature’s spastic movements that he had found if not its brain, then at least some sort of nerve junction. The creature collided with the wall with a cracking impact. It fell onto its back and its multiple legs scrabbled in the air for a while, before it righted itself and then reared up to spit its caustic venom along the corridor.

Alex had heard that the common household cockroach could survive for a week without its head, and even then only died from dehydration and starvation. Who knew how long this thing could live? He felt for the medkit at his waist – there was no time for a full workup, but enough for a quick field repair. He knelt and squirted wound adhesive into the gaping slash across his chest, then pinched the wound together for a few seconds until he was sure it would hold, all the time keeping his eyes on the mad skittering of the giant creature.

He stood and walked to where O’Riordan’s torn body lay. The tattered uniform covered the ragged mess of dried entrails, muscle and bone beneath. Alex closed the man’s eyes; there was no time for words now.

He took some of O’Riordan’s ammunition and his long Ka-Bar knife, which he placed in his own empty scabbard. He was about to stand when he noticed a single explosive spider resting in a pouch at the fallen HAWC’s waist. Alex pulled the small metal box free and looked at the creature. It was still making mad uncoordinated movements along the corridor. He stood slowly with the box in his hand and stared down at the mess that had been one of his men. The skittering came a little closer and the creature’s claws lashed out blindly, probably in a dying reflex. Alex knew he had to get back to his team . . . but there was one more thing he needed to do first.

He tensed his body. ‘For Irish,’ he said, and leaped.

He landed on the monster’s back, grabbed his knife where it was embedded in the heavily armoured skull and twisted. In his other hand he held the spider up high, battling to stay on the thing’s back as it bucked beneath him. Even with a pierced brain it reacted to the attack. Alex brought more strength to the blade as he tried to turn it again – still it held. He screamed his hatred and anger and twisted with a burst of strength that caused the creature’s skull to split open a few inches along a biological seam.

‘We own this fucking planet,’ Alex said. He pressed a small button on the spider and jammed it into the crack in the skull. The small silver legs immediately sprang out of the device and grasped the edges of the break, locking it in place.