Species (29 page)

A row of Dumpsters were pushed against the building, all overflowing, too packed to completely shut. The smell in the warm night was overpowering; he wrinkled his nose and tried to hold his breath as he passed them, then froze when something fell to the ground in the shadows between the last two.

“Dr. Arden?” He took an uncertain step forward. Colored lights washed down the passageway behind him, but not strong enough to reach all the way back here. The sound came again at ground level, louder, and his hands started to tremble. He didn’t like this at all, he shouldn’t be out here by himself. Something was moving toward the front of the trash bin, almost into the light, and he had no clue as to where Stephen had gone or if the professor was even all right.

Dan nearly yelled aloud when something scampered from underneath the Dumpster on his left and angled across the sidewalk, then paused to regard him inquisitively. Two white-ringed eyes stared up at his face, bright brown despite the darkness. A second later the raccoon was joined by its mate, chittering busily and rubbing at the fur of its face with tiny-fingered paws that made Dan remember what Dr. Baker had said about them being able to open things. For a moment man and animals regarded each other, then the raccoons raced one another to the cover of a line of low bushes planted at the edge of the sidewalk.

Relieved, Dan decided to go back inside. Better the noise and heavy air of the club than this nerve-racking seclusion. Turning on his heel, he glanced around the bushes by his feet to reassure himself that the raccoons were gone. He started to step forward—

—and nearly walked into the arms of the she-creature.

He couldn’t begin to conceive how she’d gotten up to him so quietly. She stood less than two feet away, close enough to touch, too close for Dan to let himself exhale. In human form, Sil was lovely, as beautiful as any of the supermodels whose faces and figures were plastered all over the United States and the world. Would he see her transform to her alien shape? Please God—he didn’t
want
to.

“It’s . . . you,” he heard himself whisper. He stumbled backward and she came with him, matching him step for step. Any second she would pounce on him, and when the image of John Carey, eviscerated in his own hot tub, flashed in Dan’s mind, he scrunched his eyes shut and threw up his hands in an instinctive effort to ward her off when she came toward him again.

The expected strike never came. Peering from behind his forearms, Dan saw the alien woman hesitate, as if she were appraising him. If she decided he posed a threat . . . in his head he visualized his own hand, saw himself cross his fingers for good luck. He lowered his arms slightly and his eyes locked with hers, such a clear, calculating blue, the color of an exquisite ocean with a deadly undertow. She held the gaze, fixing him in place, then abruptly dashed into the darkness.

With her retreat, Dan’s paralysis broke. “She’s here!” he screamed. “Dr. Arden, she’s
here!”
He bolted out of the side passageway, nearly braining himself on the rear quarter panel of the van where the professor had reparked it at the front to better watch the crowd. He saw Stephen sit up from his slouched position in the driver’s seat in time to glimpse Sil as she jumped into a beige-colored Cutlass illegally parked only a few car lengths away. Dan was still yelling at the top of his lungs and government agents began pouring from every doorway and corner of the old movie palace; as Sil cranked the engine of her car and jammed the transmission into reverse, Press and Laura sprinted out the doorway of the club. Panicking and unfamiliar with the vehicle, Stephen tried desperately to start the van and succeeded only in stalling the engine when he pumped the gas pedal and simultaneously turned the key in the electronically controlled ignition.

Sil’s car wasn’t the only one parked illegally. A glitzy, black-lacquer 1968 Impala low rider had squeezed into the space behind Sil’s Oldsmobile; it was older and heavier, but no one had told her that. She floored the accelerator and rammed the Impala hard, shoving it backward and onto the sidewalk with a crunch of metal and a shower of sparks, heedless of the people shrieking and scattering in every direction. Spinning the steering wheel of the Cutlass, she shoved the gearshift to drive and mashed the accelerator again; engine howling, the newly tuned auto leaped out of the parking space and sped down Formosa toward Sunset.

Mouth open, Dan watched Sil escaping. The parking lot and entrance of the ID were total bedlam: screaming people, some Hispanic guy practically in spasms over his mangled Impala, agents running everywhere while trying to decipher rapid-fire orders spewing from the red-faced, infuriated Dr. Fitch as he rushed around on the sidewalk. Somewhere a switch was flipped and the entire scene was thrown into eye-dazzling white-on-white by emergency high-illumination lights mounted in the usually dark corners of each of the ID’s second-floor windows. All those people, a dozen engines racing but hopelessly entangled in a traffic jam, doing nothing but filling the warm night air with racket and exhaust. So many soldiers to fight the war, but not a one going after Sil—

Except Press.

Dan saw him whirl in the midst of the massive confusion. Press’s expression was a perfect picture of frustration when he realized there was no way he could get a vehicle out of the mess in time to give chase. With Laura hurrying after him, Press opted for dodging the chaos entirely, both of them circumventing the cars to get to the main entrance to the parking lot. As they reached it someone was turning in and gaping toward the activity at the front of the club. The guy was older and balding, and totally terrorized when Press stepped bodily in front of the moving car and aimed his submachine gun at the windshield. The driver lurched to a stop with his mouth hanging open, white-knuckled hands griping the steering wheel.

“Get out!” Press shouted. He waved his government card in the air in front of the driver. “I need your car now!”

The man didn’t argue; in addition to the 9mm pointed at his head, there were too many blue-suited government types running toward his vehicle to bother. He clawed the door open and fell out, landing on his butt on the sidewalk and gawking at Press and Laura as they hastily climbed into the car. As the automobile roared off with Press behind the wheel, Dan saw that the guy on the sidewalk looked like he was going to cry.

Staring after the car that Press had commandeered, Dan realized it was a silver-gray 1995 Jaguar XJS.

35

S
il didn’t know anything about automobiles other than the basics of operation and that they need fuel in order to run. The one she was driving had been damaged when she had forced her way out of the parking place in front of the nightclub but that was to be expected, and while the rear underside of the car was making a lot of noise, it still seemed to perform the same. She was, however, quite taken aback at the blatant difference in the power and maneuverability of the vehicle pursuing her and the one she was driving. Scowling as she whipped the car north onto Nichols Canyon Road and left Hollywood Boulevard behind, she could easily see that while she had to fight to keep the Cutlass stable around the curves of the roadway, the sleek, silvery car tracking her had no problem hugging the twisting ribbon of concrete. She swung far too wide around a curve at the intersection by Delzuro and obliterated the glass-and-metal telephone booth on the corner; the resulting damage to the left fender and the front end made her wonder anxiously if the car was too crippled to continue. The only thing that kept her pursuers from swinging around and cutting her off was the traffic on the opposite side of the roadway. But she had to hurry; soon they would barricade the entire area, close it to outside traffic, and then those small diversions would be gone.

In spite of the scenery hurtling past the car and the spiderweb of cracks that marred the windshield, Sil recognized the roadmarks. Above the squealing of the tires, the heavy sound of search-and-destroy UH-60L Blackhawk helicopters buzzed the roadway not far above. It didn’t matter; she was close enough to the substation now to believe her plan was going to work. With her left hand holding the wheel and never taking her gaze off the road, Sil reached back with her right and unscrewed the filler cap on the plastic container of gasoline she’d filled up at a service station this morning. Tossing it aside, she tipped the can forward and let it wedge itself upside down in the space between the front and the backseat. Gas fumes immediately permeated the car’s interior.

The Olds almost lost it on the last curve to the right before Sil’s destination; the two Blackhawks that rose above the ridge on the highway ahead of her startled her enough to nearly make her turn too soon. Fighting her own reflexes, she headed straight for the lead one and was practically blinded for her effort by the high-intensity spotlight that snapped on directly into the windshield of the Cutlass.

As the helicopter pulled up, banked and headed back toward her, Sil stomped the brake and twisted the steering wheel to the right, intentionally leading the Olds into a turn that made it skid off the road and careen down the embankment, ripping its own path through the heavy brush. With the vehicle bouncing down the side of the canyon, she shoved the driver’s door open, then reached over and hauled Marlo Keegan out of the cramped passenger-side floorboard. Leaving her arms and legs tightly wrapped with the heavy duct tape, Sil snatched at the square of adhesive covering the woman’s mouth until it came off. Her captive immediately started screaming, but with the crunching of metal, the grazing of the heavy branches along the sides of the car, and the hammering of the helicopter blades, her long shriek was just one more little noise amid the pandemonium of the chase.

“W
e’re about a mile up Nichols Canyon Road,” Laura hollered into the microphone of her small radio. “She just took out the telephone booth at Delzuro. You’ve got to try to cut her off on Mulholland. Don’t let her get to a more crowded street!”

“Jesus!” Press swerved to avoid the shards of glass and twisted metal spraying the roadway, the remains of the telephone booth. Aptly named, the twelve-cylinder Jaguar clung to the road like it was digging claws into the street surface. “I don’t know how many times I could’ve gotten around her and forced her to the side if it wasn’t for oncoming traffic.”

“Don’t give up,” Laura said stonily. “We’ll get her.”

Press’s short laugh startled her as the XJS swung right, then left again. “Give
up?
I’m sorry—I don’t think I know what that means!”

They shot around another curve and Laura pointed. “Look out—she’s losing it!”

The car in front of them had been a cream-puff early-model Olds before Sil had slammed it into the Impala in back of her at the ID; now it was beat to hell, its trunk permanently smashed closed above a back bumper Press was sure would let go at any second. They couldn’t see the front where it had smacked into the telephone booth at Delzuro, but he was sure she’d hit it hard enough to cave in the right front fender and probably loosen that bumper, too. It was amazing that all four tires were still intact, but now she seemed to have lost the remains of whatever driving skills she had acquired during her short period of freedom. For no apparent reason, the brake lights flashed and the Cutlass went into a skid that sent its front end plunging at full speed through the heavy foliage on the right side of the road. Sliding, the car plummeted down the incline.

“What the hell!” Press hit the brakes and downshifted to first, leaving a trail of rubber behind the car as it screeched to a stop a couple of yards beyond the hole in the underbrush. Yanking his seat belt free, he leaped from the car and ran to the edge of the street, then almost lost his balance on the edge of the sharp drop-off. He backed up a few steps and squinted down the slope; he could hear the metal grinding and trees breaking, but seeing anything was impossible.

“Should we follow her?” A half-dozen other vehicles skidded to a halt around the Jaguar, and Laura had to shout to be heard over the noise of racing engines and the helicopters diving at the tops of the trees below. Press opened his mouth to reply, but before he could get the words out, they heard a crash and saw blue-white sparks erupt somewhere in the black tangle beneath them. There was a series of harsh sizzles and the sudden, acrid smell of burning transformer oil swirled up, followed immediately by the deafening sound of the car as it exploded. Every streetlight in sight went dark.