Hell on Earth (22 page)

Digging into her pack, Jill produced that small, portable computer, the CompMac ultramicro, more compact than any I'd seen before.

“Where'd you get that?” asked Arlene.

Jill answered with a lot of pride: “Underground special—built by the Church. You can get inventions out fast when you don't have to worry about FCC regs and product liability lawsuits.”

She called up her safe-house program and then told all of us to look away. I doubted that I'd turn to stone if I didn't comply. Anyway, I complied . . . and listened to her type in about thirty characters—her key code, obviously. When she was finished, I looked at her again as she scrutinized her screen.

She nodded and pressed her lips firmly together, a sure sign in my book of Mission Accomplished. “There's a safe house about a mile from here on Paglia Place,” she said. Then she called up a map of Riverside and showed the rest of the route the program suggested.

“I see a problem with part of this,” said Arlene.
“The route goes within a couple of blocks of an old IRS field office where I used to deliver papers while I was a courier.”

“Courier? What for?” asked Jill.

“For two years of college.”

“Whadja get?”

“Minimum wage. Fifteen per hour, OldBucks.”

“No, I mean what degree!”

“Oh. A.A. in engineering and computer programming,” answered Arlene, embarrassed. I could imagine why. Arlene's degree must seem awfully trivial compared to what Jill had picked up on her own.

Jill nodded. “Hip,” she said, without dissing my pal, for which I was grateful. The gal was a pretty grown-up fourteen-year-old, astute enough to recognize that Arlene was very touchy about only going to a two-year college. She couldn't afford any longer.

We followed the revised route Arlene traced.

I had some advice that nobody wanted to hear: “Fly's prime directive is not to use firearms unless ab-so-lute-ly necessary!”

Jill was the first critic. “But Fly, it's not like they're human.”

“Using martial arts might only entertain them,” Arlene added. “I'm not even sure a shiv would bother them, assuming you can find their ribs to stick it between.”

“Is everyone finished?” I asked, a bit impatiently. “I'm not getting all liberal; I mean the wrong noise at the wrong moment could bring down a horde on our heads.”

“Oh, why didn't you say so?”

I wished there were a quick course I could take in monster aikido; failing that, I'd settle for learning where they kept their glass jaws, so a quick uppercut could do the trick.

We padded up dark alleys and narrow streets,
trying to stay out of the sun. After a couple of klicks, Arlene suddenly stopped cold. When the Marine taking point does that, it's time for everyone to play Living Statue. We froze and waited.

Jill, for all her fighting instincts, didn't have the training. She started to ask what was wrong, but I clamped a hand over her mouth. Arlene continued facing forward but gestured behind her for the rest of us to backtrack. We did it very slowly; whatever it was hadn't noticed us yet, and I aimed to keep it that way. We backed up about a hundred meters before she let out her breath.

“Remember the fatty we saw back at the train depot?” she asked. “We just bumped into its older, wider brother.”

We'd been so busy that I never got around to getting her to name that mobile tub of lard; but I instantly knew the creature she meant. I'd hoped that maybe the thing was an exception to the rule, an accident rather than a standard design. I preferred fighting monsters that didn't make me sick.

“I thought it was a huge pile of garbage,” Arlene whispered intently.

Blinking into the darkness ahead, I finally made out a huge shadow shifting among the other shadows. The thing roused itself with the sound of tons and tons of wet burlap dragged across concrete. It stood to a height of two meters, only my height actually, but weighing at least four hundred kilos. The density and width of the thing was incredible.

The fatty—if we lived through this one, I hoped I could talk Arlene into a better name—made slush-slush sounds as it moved. It was probably leaving something disgusting behind it, like a snail track. In the massive, shapeless, metal paws that encased or replaced its hands, the fatty held some kind of weird, three-headed gun.

The thing wasn't facing us. It stood sideways, trying to figure out from which direction had come the noise disturbing its repose. Then it turned away from us, giving us an unobstructed view of its mottled, disgusting back. It made a horrible, rasping noise that I guessed was the sound of its breathing.

I pointed in the other direction . . . but just then we heard stomping feet approaching up the block that way. A troop of monsters. Just what we needed!

They were led by a bony. If we didn't know how dangerous it could be, it would seem sort of funny, leading them with that jerking-puppet gait.

There was nothing amusing about being trapped between a fatty in front and the Ghoul Club behind, between hammer and anvil, with no side streets or doors to duck into.

Albert sighed. I watched his shoulders untense. He unslung his weapon with casual ease, as though he had all the time in the world; which in a way he did. He was ready to die for the “cause,” whether that was us or the rest of whatever.

Me, I was ready to live for mine.

Jill's face went utterly white, but she didn't give any indication of bugging. After the flatcar, she was a seasoned vet. Like the rest of us, she had that special feeling of living on borrowed time. She clutched the ultramicro to her chest, more upset about failing than dying. She contemplated our mummy with regret; she'd never get the hack of a lifetime!

Arlene whispered “Cross fire” a nanosecond before it occurred to me. Darting into the middle of the street, we had the bony in our sights. It stopped and immediately bent at the waist and fired its shoulder rockets. I hit the deck and Arlene dodged left. The rockets sailed over my head, one of them bursting against the big, brown back of the fatty.

Enraged, the fatty located the source of this scurrilous, unprovoked attack. It raised both arms and fired three gigantic, flaming balls of white phosphorous at the bony.

The center ball hit, but the other two spread, striking other members of the bony's entourage, frying them instantly.

The surviving members were no happier than the fatty had been earlier; they opened fire, and the bony forgot all about us, firing two more rockets at fat boy.

Meanwhile, my crew were very, very busy lying on their bellies and kissing dirt for all they were worth, hands over heads. All except me: I kept my hands free and rolled onto my back, shotgun pointing back and forth, back and forth, like a fan at a tennis match.

I didn't want to call attention to our little party, but neither did I want us to be noticed by a smarter-than-average monster who wanted to spill our guts to celebrate its position on the food chain. I wished it were still night.

The bony ran out of rockets before the fatty ran out of fireballs. The bone bag blew apart into tiny pieces, white shards so small they could be mistaken for hailstones, were this not Los Angeles.

The fatty kept firing. There were plenty of troops left to take out, and the walking flab seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of pyrotechnics. Maybe he got his stuff from the same shop used by the steam-demon.

At last, any troops left intact were no longer moving. The fatty kept firing for a while into their inert bodies.

When it stopped, nothing moved anywhere in sight—assuming those little pig eyes could see very far. We lay as still as we could; I wished we could stop the sounds of our breathing. A lump of congestion
had settled somewhere in my head, and I wheezed on every second breath, but I was afraid to hold my breath for fear I would start coughing.

Of course, the monster's hearing might not be any great shakes. I could see small black holes on either side of his lard-encrusted head. If those were ears, they seemed minuscule. I lay still, rationalizing and wheezing, hoping the thing would do anything except—except exactly what it did next.

The fatty was badly shot and cut up, like a giant, spherical hamburger patty that had fallen apart on the grill. It rumbled and began to shuffle directly for us. If the monstrous thing stepped on one of us as it passed, it would be a messy death.

I
decided if one of those massive feet were about to descend on any one of us, I would open fire. There might be a military argument for letting one of us die if the others were passed over, anyone but Jill, but—forget it. Not like that!

As fat boy stumped slowly in our direction, I realized with a sinking feeling that it was another genetic experiment copying the human form. The whole design was clearly functional, another killer-critter. But if they could make creatures this close to
our basic body type, then they could do copies of us in time.

As these thoughts raced through my mind, the thing took one ponderous step after another, coming closer and closer—allowing for inspection of its nonhuman qualities. The skin was like that of a rhinoceros. Feed this lumpkin an all-you-can-eat buffet (with a discount coupon), and it might top out at half a ton. The bald head looked like a squashed football; the beady eyes took no note of us as it came within spitting distance. It
had
to be nearsighted. Now, if it were deaf and unable to smell, it might just miss us.

Good news and bad: if fat boy continued walking a straight line, it would miss us all. Alas, Jill's ultramicro lay directly next to her, and the fatty was about to step on this critical piece of equipment.

There wasn't time for anyone to do anything, except for Jill. All she had to do was reach out with her right hand and grab it. I saw her raise her head and start to move her hand, but she froze. What if it saw her!

With only a second to spare, she worked up her nerve and yanked the computer out of the way before the monster would have crushed it flat. By waiting so long, she solved her problem—the fatty couldn't see its own feet. The bulk of the vast stomach obscured Jill's quick movement.

Fat boy slogged on without further mishap.

I was ready to heave a sigh of relief, clear my throat, maybe even enjoy a cough or two. Jill started to get up. Arlene and Albert weren't moving yet, waiting for the all-clear from Yours Truly. I almost gave it when a blast of machine-gun fire erupted behind the fatty.

I was too damned tired to curse. We could use a short rest before taking on new playmates!

The fatty wasn't happy about the turn of events
either. It screamed with a sound more piglike than the pinkie demons.

The bullets sprayed in a steady stream, so many that some were surely penetrating that thick hide to disrupt vital organs—however deeply those organs were hidden underneath a stinking expanse of quivering flesh.

As the machine gun cut the monster to ribbons, I heard bug-wild, crazy laughter, the kind made only by a human being. The laughter continued, the bullets continued, until at last the fatty made the transition from hamburger to road kill. It made a wet, flopping sound, collapsed into itself and died.

We weren't playing statues while this was going on. Guns at the ready, firing positions, we faced . . . what looked like another human being. A very large human figure.

I almost called out, but I checked myself. Despite my gut-level joy at seeing another human, my innate suspicion held me back. After all, some real, live humans
cooperated
with the alien invasion. Sure, this guy shot the fatty; maybe he was on our side. But we couldn't be sure of that; and if he didn't come into the alley, he wouldn't see us. The alley was in deep shadow, hidden from even the pallid green light of a reworked sky.

Unfortunately, Jill was not a Marine. She was a young girl, and like most teenagers, she sometimes acted on auto pilot.

“You're human!” she yelped. Then she stopped suddenly, hand over her mouth, as if trying to push the words back inside. She realized what she had done. As to the consequences, she'd learn those in the next moment. So would the rest of us in the black alley.

The figure lifted a hand to its head and flipped back a visor over its helmet. The face underneath seemed
human enough, from what I could see. He wasn't smiling. Jill made as if she might run, but she was thinking again. She wouldn't lead him back to us.

“It's all right, little girl,” he said, scanning, trying to locate her. “I won't hurt you.” He took a tentative step in her direction, and she held her ground, not making another sound.

Silhouetted against the light gray wall of a carniceria, he was an impressive sight. But whose side was he on? This deep into enemy territory, we couldn't let anything compromise us, not even common sense or basic instincts.

Fighting monsters was so black-and-white that there was something clean about it. This man was not a monster. Were we about to have the firefight of our lives, a new ally, or a Mexican standoff?

He didn't have a flash; probably figured he wouldn't need one in the daylight, such as it was. In the dark alley, however . . .

Silently, slowly, I slid my pair of day-night goggles out of my webbing and slipped them on, flicking the switch as I did so.

Now I could make out more of his gear: .30 cal machine gun, a belt-fed job; backpack full of ammo; radio gear; a flak jacket that screamed state-of-the-art body armor; and a U.S. Army Ranger uniform, staff sergeant. “Come on out, little girl; let me see you. It's all right.” He raised his hand as if scratching his chin stubble . . . but a crackling sound followed by a rumbling voice made it clear that he was talking into a handheld mike.

I also saw one more twist: he had a pair of distended goggles himself on his helmet—night-vis goggles, they had to be.

When Jill said nothing, he reached up for them. My heart pounded; as soon as he put them on, he would see all of us crouched in the shadows.