Deadrise (62 page)

Zack knew them to be anything but. They were hand held versions of the shuttlecrafts main particle beam cannon. Each one could fire a dozen times before needing recharging and were powered by a small nuclear cell, which in turn were recharged via the shuttlecrafts main engines.

The ship would be on him within seconds now, and with a flaring burst of speed Zack raced across the main driveway and took cover in the woods in front of the house, and not a moment too soon. The Krylok ship glided over the top of the house, a giant, black tear against the deep purple of night, throbbing with a low hum as it passed over his head.

His sixth sense flared like fingernails on a chalkboard, and he reflexively jumped backwards ten feet…the ground where he had just been standing exploded in a ball of green electricity fired from the shuttlecraft, the concussion wave hitting him while he was still in mid-jump and added a further twenty feet to his trajectory before he smashed into a tree and fell into the foliage. The shuttlecraft passed him, settling to the ground somewhere in the back yard.

Zack ran a quick bio-scan, noting minor damage from explosive shrapnel and three broken ribs from impact with the tree. His ruptured eyeball was now covered with a flap of doughy green skin that would eventually become his eyelid. His accelerated metabolism freshly charged from feeding had quickly set about healing his minor wounds, yet it would be another twenty-four hours before his eyeball was completely regenerated.

He still held one of the small Krylok pistols in his right hand, and with a deep breath he entered Mordecai Necrotura’s house through the front door, determined to make his last stand there. He had been inside and knew the layout, and with the Krylok weapon he believed he could handle four Sentinels. The Krylok wouldn’t leave the shuttlecraft, and would most likely fly away once the Sentinels were destroyed. Although they possessed an armored exoskeleton, they were cowardly, cunning and devious by nature, relying on their Sentinels for fighting and food gathering.

Zack hurried through the house to a heavy wooden door, reinforced with metal banding and locked with three heavy bolts. There was a small window in the center of the door, covered with a metal plate which he slid the plate aside and peered out.

The Krylok shuttlecraft had settled to the ground on the far side of the bonfire in the clearing near the lake. It sat on three heavy landing legs, one at the nose of the triangular craft and two at the rear. The wide entrance ramp lowered down from the bottom of the craft and down walked four Sentinels, two abreast. They wore full military body armor, web gear, helmets and boots and carried M-16 assault rifles with attached grenade launchers. He could feel their mental scans sweeping the area, but his mind block kept him hidden. The ships sensors would still be able to track him and the Krylok would relay the information to the Sentinels telepathically.

Knowing his element of surprise was rapidly fading Zack aimed the alien pistol through the small window and fired.

The baseball size blast of green energy hit one of the lead Sentinels right in the chest just as its feet touched the ground and the evil monster exploded from the waist up. The Sentinel standing beside it was thrown aside from the blast and the two in the rear leapt to the ground on either side of the ramp. Zack fired at the other lead Sentinel, but the shot went wide, exploding on the surface of the lake one hundred yards out.

The Sentinels had already recovered from the surprise attack and turned their M-16’s on the house and returned fire. Bullets peppered into the brick and wood around Zack, two bullets actually clipping him on the left arm and hip. He took a more careful aim and fired his pistol again, destroying another Sentinel. The final two charged the house at a full run, zigzagging to throw off Zack’s aim. He saw the barrel of one’s grenade launcher flash, and the wall of the house thirty feet to his right exploded from the impact of the grenade.

A hail of bullets from the attacking Sentinels chewed into the heavy wooden door, two made it through struck him in the chest, a third in the throat. He was thrown onto his back from the impact, coughing as his throat filled with his own blood.

Another grenade went off just outside the doorway, bits of shrapnel flying overhead. He rolled onto his stomach, spitting out a mouthful of blood. The two chest hits were still lodged inside his lung, but it would be only minutes before his body expelled the bullets and healed the wounds. The throat shot had entered the center of what had been his Adams apple and exited the back of his neck where it met the right shoulder, luckily missing his spinal column. That surely would have paralyzed him, if only for a few hours. As it was he was fighting with a single lung until his body could heal itself. He worked his right arm, the shoulder flaring with pain from the exit wound. He was in no condition to fight the two remaining Sentinels. He needed to buy some time to allow himself to heal.

He hurried deeper into the house, finding the central stairwell and descending to the basement. To the north end of the house were the prisoner cells where his earlier hunt for food had revealed half a dozen victims who had been prepped for crucifixion. Raped, tortured and subjected to countless psychological horrors, they were little more than zombie's themselves, destined for sacrifice and praying for the merciful release of death. He’d considered feeding on them at the time, but his Humanity had won. If he survived he would free them and turn them over to Matt, Susan and the others.

Only if you survive!

Zack turned away from the north wing of the basement, heading south instead. He had chased one of the four remaining Templar’s back this way and had killed the man as he was opening a secret door in one of the pantries. He entered the pantry and looked down at the white robed, hollowed skull corpse where it lay on the floor, the
Beast
reveling in the memory of the mans fear and screams of terror just before he’d killed him and fed on his brains. He’d paid no attention to the passage then, his mind consumed only with feeding.

But now he needed a place to hide.

It was solid cement on all sides and illuminated by small electrical lights set into the ceiling. Zack closed the secret door behind him, feeling the shockwave of a grenade explosion inside the house above.

The Sentinels would be entering the mansion upstairs any second now. Zack knew the Krylok aboard the shuttlecraft would not be able to track his life signs now that he was underground. Now if only he knew where this tunnel would take him?

He had tried reading the minds of the Templar’s as he drank their brains, but had picked up only the static white noise generated by the implanted microchips. A memory of the Overlords flared, reminding Zack how much the inability to read the Templar’s minds had troubled the Krylok. The Overlord had puzzled over how Mordecai Necrotura’s followers could shield their minds from him so easily yet at the same time communicate telepathically with one another, and now Zack knew the answer.

Another memory of the Overlords surfaced in Zack’s brain, a memory of recognition. The presence of great evil he had sensed earlier when he had first come to this estate, that had been the master of this hellhole, the leader of the New Humanity, Mordecai Necrotura. The history of the connection between Mordecai and the Krylok raced through Zack’s mind, shocking him. The Overlord had not been one of the aliens to first contact Mordecai Necrotura, then Walther Jennings; both of those Krylok had been killed shortly after arriving on earth. Instead the Overlord had been involved in the pacification of the
Lupen
homeworld in the Star System of Sirius, but had remained in contact with the Earth scout ship via astral projection, and knew all about the young psychic Walther Jennings. His betrayal of the Krylok in the 1960’s bubbled to the surface of Zack’s memories, as did his betrayal less than an hour ago, the memory of his powerful psychic attack and the fight in the den upstairs. Stronger than all of those memories, was the Overlords burning hatred for Mordecai Necrotura.

A second grenade blast from upstairs, this one definitely inside the house, jarred Zack from the Overlords memories and back to the present. He felt his breathing was coming easier, and looked down to see the two mangled 5.56 M-16 bullets had been expelled from his body and fallen to the floor. He ran a hand across his wounded throat, feeling that the ragged bullet hole already knitted shut. His lung had yet to repair and re-inflate itself, but it was working on it. His right shoulder was still healing, but some of the stiffness had gone.

This concrete tunnel ran straight for over three hundred feet before ending in an iron banded heavy wooden door. A north/south passage intersected every one hundred feet with a single, powerful light set into the ceiling every fifty feet. Zack could also see several heavy wooden doors scattered along both sides of the passage. Zack hurried along, pausing at each intersection to peer down either way before continuing on. He was surprised at the vast tunnel and storage network that had been constructed. He wished he had time to explore the contents of the all the nooks and crannies.

He came to a halt before the iron banded wooden door at the end of the hallway. He grabbed the handle and twisted, expecting the door to be locked. To his delight it was not. He stepped through the door into a 20'x20' room. A narrow staircase hugged the far wall, ascending to a small trap door while several large wooden crates lined the floor to either side. Zack checked one of the crates, inside were half a dozen AK-47’s. He checked another and it was full of loaded magazines for the AK’s.

Zack sprinted up the stairs, crouching near the top as he reached for the trap doors latch. He had a good idea where he was going to emerge…and he was correct. The trapdoor opened up in the floor of the boathouse, less than ten feet from the spot he had watched the crucified victims lowered into the zombie horde less than twenty-four hours ago.

A plan suddenly came to him, but he knew he had to be quick. Now that he was above ground the shuttlecrafts scanners would be able to detect him. Gripping the Krylok pistol tight, he exited the boathouse through the rear door. In the yard before him, less than fifty feet away, was the Krylok shuttlecraft. Its nose was pointed away toward the house, leaving the large, multi-faceted back end jutting at him like some giant crystalline insect abdomen. There was no throbbing hum coming from the craft, which meant they had powered down the main engines. The entrance ramp was still lowered to the ground, and no sign of the Sentinels. They must still be in the house looking for him. With a rattling snarl he bolted for the shuttlecraft. He was still weak, his lung not even halfway repaired, but he would not get another chance like this.

Just as he reached the base of the entrance ramp the engines came alive with a pulse of energy and the distinct throbbing hum. They had detected his life signs. Without hesitating a second Zack charged up the ramp. He looked over his shoulder toward the house before he disappeared inside the belly of the spacecraft, and to his dismay saw one of the Sentinels emerge at a full run.

The ramp led to a large central cargo bay. Zack called upon his stolen memories and the layout of a shuttlecraft imprinted in his mind. He turns toward the cockpit in time to see a black robed Krylok standing in the open hatch pointing one of its weapons at him. Zack dove wildly to the side and heard the Krylok’s blast sizzle past him, feeling the charges particles buzz in the air beside him. It exploded into the cargo bay hull, the energy dissipating harmlessly into the material. He landed badly on his healing shoulder, feeling the knitting flesh tear open anew. But he gritted his needle sharp teeth against the pain and rolled up onto his feet, shooting blindly at the Krylok. His blast missed by several feet but was close enough to force the Krylok back into the cockpit.

In the same instant Zack propelled himself with superhuman speed across the cargo hold toward the open cockpit hatch. The Krylok saw him coming and made to close it but the alien creature was clumsy with fear, whereas Zack was amped with rage. He fired from his pistol and hit the Krylok right in the face, causing its entire upper torso to explode inside the black robe as the creature was thrown back across the cockpit into the second Krylok who sat at the pilot’s controls.

Zack dove to the deck and slid headfirst across the floor toward the small cockpit door. His arms, head, body and most of his legs made it in before the cramped quarters halted him, leaving his lower legs, from the knees down, protruding from the cockpit hatch.

The Krylok at the pilot controls brushed the corpse of its dead companion from its shoulders and peered at, eyes blazing. Zack raised his weapon but the Krylok was quicker, slashing out with one of its claws, putting a large gash across his gun hand and sending the weapon sprawling across the cockpit. With a sadistic hiss the creature used another clawed hand to push the cockpit hatch control. With a low pneumatic hiss the cockpit door snapped closed, driving into Zack's legs, pinning them to the wall and finally severing them at the knees.

The pain hit Zack like ice, so shocking and sudden that it took him a moment to register what had actually happened. For once the
Beast
was completely silent, his hunger completely gone. His stubs of legs kicked behind him, spraying gouts of dark blood across the cockpit hatch and deck. Zack tried to push himself into a sitting position, but the Krylok slashed him across the top of his head with one of its three right arms, knocking him flat onto the deck.

"Insolent whelp! Did you truly think you could escape your master’s leash?" It hissed in its native Krylok tongue. It raised its hand and slashed him again, raking several long gouges in his chest. Zack slumped motionless against the deck, his eyes closed, ignoring the scorching pain from his legs, ignoring the Krylok’s slashing claws, focusing all his energy inward, shielding his mind and preparing for one last, final lunge at the Krylok.

After a few more rakes with its claws the Krylok ceased its assault on Zack and extricated its insectile body from the pilot’s seat, standing over Zack’s motionless body.