Hell on Earth (23 page)

As if she sensed the danger—or maybe she knew she'd blown it and was trying to redeem herself—Jill stepped forward into the faint illumination reflected from the dragon-green sky by the pale wall of the Mexican meat market. “H-Here I am, sir,” she called.

“Are you alone?” he asked.

Jill was a trooper. “Yes sir. I'm alone, sir.”

Slowly, the man lowered his machine gun right at her small, narrow tummy. The universe became a still picture of the man, the gun, Jill . . . and my hand tightened on the trigger of my avenger.

“Take it nice and easy,” he told Jill. “You're comin' to meet the boss.”

“Who's that?” she asked, her voice firm.

“We'll get along a lot better,” he said, “if you get it through your head right now, bitch, that you don't ask the questions.”

“What if I don't want to go?” she asked.

“Then I'll drop you where you stand,” he answered. The machine gun had not shifted an inch. “Now move it or lose it,” he said.

Jill moved all right, slowly and deliberately so he wouldn't suspect anything. The gun followed her, and the sergeant turned his back to the alley; and I guess that's what she intended all along, for she took a dive as soon as his body blocked the line of fire.

I needed no second chance. Mister Mystery Ranger didn't have the proper attitude toward “little girls.” Not by a long shot.

Unloading both barrels into the guy's back got his attention. Arlene opened fire with her AB-10. Between the two of us, we gave him a quick and effective lesson in good manners.

He staggered, but managed to turn around. That armor of his was something! He started firing wildly while Arlene and Albert pumped more lead.

I slammed two more shells home into my trusty duck-gun and let them go into the son of a bitch's head.

The fancy headgear cracked like a colorful Easter egg and spilled out its contents. Surprise, you're dead!

None of us moved for at least a minute, listening for the sound of more aliens attracted by the noise. There were no footsteps or nearby trucks, but we did hear sporadic gunfire in the distance. Probably zombies.

“Jill,” Arlene called out. Jill returned with an expression that could only be described as sheepish. The girl was covered in dust but didn't have a scratch on her.

“I'm sorry,” Jill volunteered; “I feel like a total dweeb.” The apology didn't save her from Arlene.

“That was a stupid mistake! You could have iced us all!”

Defiantly, Jill turned to me, Daddy against Mommy. I didn't say a word, didn't stop Arlene, didn't change expression.
Sorry, kid—I'm not going to undermine my second just to save your ego.
I didn't think it was that dumb a mistake; she was just a kid. But Arlene had chosen to make it an issue . . . and whatever I thought, I'd back her to the hilt.

Jill started to blink, angrily holding back tears. She turned to Albert, but he was suddenly really busy wiping his gun barrel. Well—about time she learned: no hero allowances, and I guess no kid allowances, either.

“All right,” she said, voice quavering. “What do you want me to do?”

Arlene stepped close, lowering her voice so I could barely hear it. “There's nothing you
can
do. You owe me, Jill; and before the mission is over,
you are going to pay.”

When Arlene stepped back, Jill's eyes were wide. The bravado and defiance were gone. She was scared to death . . . of Arlene Sanders.

The shock treatment seemed to work. Jill focused on something more important than her own shortcomings. “God, is the mummy all right?”

While Albert and Jill went to check out our recruit from the bandage brigade, I did an inventory on the soldier with the lousy manners.

Arlene joined me. “Was he a traitor?” she asked of the inert form at our feet; “or did we just kill a good guy?”

“Or worse, A.S. Is this that perfect genetic experiment we've been half-expecting ever since Deimos?”

“If he's Number Three,” she said, “we'll have to—to give him a name.” She kicked the side of the machine-guy with her boot. “I'll call him a Clyde.”

“Clyde?” I asked, dumbfounded. “That's worse than fatty! It's just a name.”

“Clyde,”
she declared, with the really irritating tone of voice she only uses when she makes up her mind and can't believe anybody would still be arguing.

“But Clyde?” I repeated like a demented parrot. “Why not Fred or Barney, or Ralph or Norton?” I suspected that I might be spinning out of control.

“For Clyde Barrow,” she explained . . . and I still didn't get it. “You know,” she continued with the cultural-literacy tone of vice, “Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow—Bonnie and Clyde!”

“Oh,” I said, finally ready to surrender. “Jesus H., that's really obscure!”

At the precise moment that I invoked the name of the Savior, good old Albert decided to rejoin us, reinforcing a theory I've had for years that if you call
on the gods, you are rewarded with a plague of believers. Not that I was thinking of Albert as part of a plague just then. The plague was out there, beyond us, where it belonged—in the heart of Los Angeles.

I
thought you had a Christian upbringing,” said Albert, annoyed at Yours Truly for the blasphemy.

“Catholic school,” Arlene answered.

“Oh, that explains it,” said Albert, which
I
found a bit annoying.

Further discussion seemed a losing proposition. So I resumed investigation of the Clyde. Which reminded of the earlier discussion about nomenclature. “Hey, Jill,” I called out. “We decided to name this bastard a Clyde.”

“A
Clyde?”
asked Jill in the same tone of voice I had said “Jesus H.”

“Yep.”

“What a dumb name!” I decided to put her in my will. Make fun of
my
religion, will they?

I went back to my close study of the Clyde. As I'd noticed before, he appeared fully human, if a bit large. Frankly, I didn't think he could be a product of genetic engineering; the results had been too crude up
to this point. Most likely, he'd been recruited by the aliens.

I was sorry the man was dead, because I'd like to kill him again. It made me furious that any human would cooperate with the subjugation of his own race. I kicked the corpse.

Arlene was a good mind reader. “You think he's a traitor,” she said.

“What else could he be?”

“You already suggested it.”

“What's that?” asked Albert. Jill was all ears, too. The time had finally come to lay all the cards on the table.

“We've been considering the possibility that the aliens might be able to make perfect human duplicates,” I told them.

“He could be one,” said Arlene, pointing at the man. “Maybe the first example of a successful genetically engineered human. First example we've seen, anyway.”

“I don't buy it,” I said.

“But what makes you think it's even possible?” asked Albert, obviously disturbed by the suggestion.

Arlene took a deep breath. “On Deimos we saw gigantic blocks of human flesh. I'm sure it was raw material for genetic experiments. Later, Fly and I saw vats where they were mass producing monsters.”

“In a way,” I interrupted, “even the boney and the fatty are closer to being ‘human' than the other genetic experiments—hell-princes, steam-demons, pumpkins.”

“And now they've succeeded,” said Arlene, looking down.

“Hope you're wrong,” I said. “It's too much of a quantum leap, Arlene. Even the clothes are too good!”

“You have an argument there,” she admitted.
“Those stupid red trunks on the boneys were awful.” We looked at the spiffy uniform on the man.

“He talked like a real person,” Jill observed. I hadn't thought about it before, but everything about his manner of speaking rang true, even the threatening tone at the end. If he hadn't been such a total bastard, I wouldn't have enjoyed killing him so much. Making a monster was one thing; cobbling together a first-class butthead was a lot harder, requiring tender loving care.

“OK,” said Albert. “He looks, walks, talks and smells like a human being. So maybe he was one.”

“Whatever he was, he's good and dead; and that's what matters right now,” I tried to conclude the issue.

The way Arlene kept looking at the man meant that she couldn't shake the disturbing idea that he was a synthetic creation. I didn't doubt that they could do stuff like this in time. My objective was to prevent them having that time.

Arlene shuddered, then shook her head hard, as if dislodging any nasty little critters that might have snuck in there. “Well, if they did make him, he's only a staff sergeant. There's a lot of room for progress before they hit second lieutenant and start downhill again.”

Albert laughed hard at that. She gave him an appreciative glance.

In a way, it was kind of strange to nit-pick over which was more likely to be true: human traitors or human duplicates. Either possibility was disturbing.

I let my mind wander over the uncertain terrain where treason sprouts like an ugly mushroom. If U.S. armed forces were cooperating with the aliens, were they under orders from the civilian government? Had Washington caved in immediately to become a Vichy-style administration? And what could the aliens offer
human collaborators that the humans would be stupid enough to believe?

I didn't doubt for one second that the enemy intended the extermination of the human race as we knew it. Zombie slaves and a few human specimens kept around for experimental purposes didn't count as species survival in my book.

I must have been carrying worry on my face, because Albert put his hand on my shoulder and said, “We needn't concern ourselves over the biggest possible picture. One battle at a time is how we'll win this war. First, we destroy the main citadel of alien power in Los Angeles. Then we'll stop them in New York, Houston, Mexico City, Paris, London, Rome—ah, Tokyo. . . .” He trailed off. Already quite a list, wasn't it?

“Atlanta,” said Jill.

“Orlando,” said Arlene. “We must save the good name of the mouse on both coasts!”

“You know,” I mused, “I wonder how much of the invasion force Arlene and I destroyed on Deimos.”

“Oh, at least half,” boasted my buddy; but she might not be far wrong. We killed a hell of a lot of monsters on the Martian moons. Each new carcass meant one less demonic foot soldier on terra firma.

“You know,” said Jill, her voice sounding oddly old, “I could kill every one of those human traitors.”

“I'm with you, hon,” I agreed; “but you've got to be careful about blanket statements like that. Some were threatened, tortured. Hell, some could have been tricked. They didn't go through what we did on Deimos! They might have been told that the mass destruction was caused by human-against-human and now these superior aliens have come to Earth with a plan for ultimate peace.”

“I'll bet you were a pain in your High School debate
society, Fly Taggart,” said long suffering Arlene. “But you know damn well what she means!”

“Put it down to my practical side, if you want,” I said. “I like to know the score before I pick a play.”

Albert added a note. “Anyone can make a terrible mistake and still repent before the final hour.”

“It's possible,” I said.

“I'm sorry I made that crack about your growing up Catholic.”

The two atheist females acted suitably disgusted by our theological love-fest. “The girls don't believe in redemption of traitors, Albert,” I said.

“I'll pray for anyone,” he said; “even traitors.”

“Fine,” said Arlene. “Pray over their graves.”

While we failed to resolve yet another serious philosophical issue, Jill squatted over the corpse. In a very short time she'd become hardened to the sight and smell of carnage. Good. She had a chance to survive in the new world.

“Are you all right?” Arlene asked.

“Don't worry about me,” Jill said, following my example and kicking the corpse. “They're just bags of blood, and we've got the pins. It's no big thing.”

No one was joking now. Arlene looked at me with a worried expression. This was no time to psychoanalyze a fourteen-year-old who was doing her best to feel nothing. This sort of cold attitude was par for the course in an adult, a mood that would be turned off (hopefully) in peacetime; but hearing it from a kid was unnerving.

The words just out of her lips were the cold truth we created. Do only the youngest soldiers develop the attitude necessary to win a war? Until this moment, I wouldn't have thought of Arlene and myself as old-fashioned sentimentalists; but if the future human race became cold and machine-like to fight the
monsters, then maybe the monsters win, regardless of the outcome.

Recreation time was over. Jill went to the cybermummy and started to lift him; he was really too heavy for her to do alone, and we got the idea. Albert helped her, and Arlene and I returned to battle readiness. The next goal was obvious: find the safehouse. We couldn't make good time sneaking through the dark carrying a mummy.

We were only ninety minutes away. All we ran into along the way was a pair of zombies, almost a free ride. I popped them both before Arlene even got off a shot.

“You have all the fun,” said Albert. “This guy is starting to weigh!”

“You don't hear Jill complaining, do you?” asked Arlene. Jill said nothing. But I could see the sweat beading on her forehead and her breathing was more rapid. Arlene noticed, too. “Jill, would you like to switch with me?” she asked.

“I'm all right,” she said, determined to prove something to someone.

Jill managed to hold up her end all the way to the door of the crappiest looking rattrap in a whole block of low rent housing. She heaved a sigh of relief as she finally put down her burden.