Alien Hunter (Flynn Carroll) (32 page)

He stopped just out of view of the ranch to check his weapons a last time.

The HK was in good shape, and you wouldn’t expect a weapon this durable to have any problem with a little fall down a cliff. All the magazines were there.

He stuffed the AMG into the pocket of his jeans and transferred the extra machine-gun magazines to his belt. Not the most secure way to carry them, but it was what he had. His most critical moments would be during exchanges. He’d trained with an HK and knew that he could pull and set two magazines in just under three seconds. Good time, but maybe not good enough.

He pulled the vehicle forward until he could see the compound. The house appeared quiet, the lights out. Beyond it, the barn was also dark. To every appearance, the place had been abandoned.

He took deep breaths, cleared his mind, and concentrated his attention on the world around him. He saw, just for an instant, some camouflage in motion about two hundred yards away. Somebody was in among a stand of mesquite, using the mottled shade as cover against the moonlight.

If he’d seen them, they could see him. He put the truck in gear and began moving toward the house. He drove quickly. There was no way for him to know whether or not they had realized it was him in the truck. He also didn’t know how many people here were capable of putting up a defense, let alone what form their weaponry might take, except that it would be exotic and it would be devastating.

He took the HK in his left hand and steered with his right. He passed the house, heading toward the area beside the shed that covered the entrance to the underground chamber.

Methodically, as he prepared himself, he tried once again to put aside his policeman’s confrontation training. He could not announce himself. He had to just do this.

He got out of the truck and held the HK ready.

As he’d driven across the compound, there had been no movement from either the house or the barn.

Something hit him in the right shoulder with such force that it spun him around. A flash of pain shot down his chest and up his neck, but he regained his balance, turning to face the direction the blow had come from.

There was no nearby cover. He looked farther, and there, in the shadows of a cedar thicket, he saw a darker area that a careful observer could see had a human outline. He must be using some sort of stun weapon.

Just briefly, Flynn squeezed the HK’s trigger. It blared out a burst and the figure sank. Just that quick. That impersonal.

Four shots, so twelve still in the magazine.

He moved closer to the shed, preparing for a reaction to his burst of machine-gun fire. But nobody moved in from the perimeter and the house and barn remained quiet.

He considered going down the ladder into the storm cellar, but decided to explore the shed first.

The door was unlocked, so he pushed it open.

This was probably an old well house. Before entering, he looked up at the grandeur of the sky. This was probably the last he would see of the world. He hoped that there was some sort of afterlife. That was all, hoped.

He entered the shed. Again, absolute quiet. There was an old stove pushed against one wall and a wooden trapdoor in the floor. Beneath it, there had to be opposition. That was fine by him. Just as long as he got to Morris, he didn’t care whether he survived or not.

He lifted the ring, then hefted the door slightly. It wasn’t barred from below. No, this was obviously the path they wanted him to take. The guy in the thicket had probably been out there to incapacitate him with the stun gun and carry him down.

When he pulled it up, the door made no sound. Well-oiled hinges, lots of use.

He climbed down the old ladder to what had once been the root cellar, then took a narrow spiral staircase, much newer, that led deep.

The closer he got to the bottom of the narrow space, the stronger the odor became of blood and burned flesh, of burned hair and another stench that cops come to know. It doesn’t have a name, but it’s the smell of things that have gone horribly wrong, that clings to places where violence has taken place. It’s made up of sweat and blood and shattered lives, mixed together as the odor of fear.

The room glowed with soft fleshy light that came from the walls themselves. It was not a normal room, not a human room. Like the village, like all the rest of this place, it was an outpost of another world.

There was also a sheen of blood on the floor, and the stink of the place was so powerful that he had to fight hard not to gag.

Again, he heard the distant pulsation. He began moving toward it.

Machine gun at the ready, he went deeper. The pulsation became more and more distinct. Now it didn’t sound so much like a boiling pot as a thumping assembly line.

Ahead there was a figure, short, quick, dressed in black, opening a box of a familiar kind.

A moment later, something that looked like a glowing fireball sizzled into existence immediately above the body inside the box, which was a young woman, very pregnant. She was motionless but she did not look dead or even asleep.

Certain insects, he recalled, paralyze their prey so it will remain fresh for use later.

Her face was in shadow, but when he saw it clearly, he was confronted by such beauty that he gasped.

Immediately, the creature in attendance turned toward him, its movements snapping fast, like those of a quick snake.

There was a flash and for an instant Flynn saw in black outline the skeleton of the young woman and the skeleton of the baby inside her. The fetus moved its hands toward its face in surprise.

The light filled the room with a brightness like thick, glowing milk.

An instant later, the light was gone and his eyes were dazzled, and someone was standing in front of him. He felt hands on the machine gun and knew that in a moment it would be gone.

He didn’t wait for his eyes to recover. He didn’t wait for anything. He pulled off a burst and the creature flew backward, its arms flailing, its mouth and eyes wide with surprise.

Four more shots. The magazine was now half empty.

He stepped into the fight, moving quickly to aim the gun at a second creature. Had it been fully human, its face would have been the sort that cops see late at night, a whore’s face, worn and tired and profoundly lonely. As it was, the great blue eyes were not only sad, they were tired. Also uncaring. He thought that it didn’t care whether it lived or died.

Flynn did two shots, no more needed, and the figure flew backward into the wall, then slid to the floor.

He went to the young woman, whose eyes were now so glazed that he feared the worst for her. Working quickly, he performed CPR, but he couldn’t get a pulse.

Light glared from behind him. As he threw himself to the floor, he turned into its glare.

“It’s over,” Jay Elder said.

If you have a gun, best to let it do your talking. Flynn depressed his trigger and the last burst on this magazine brought a brief shout, then Jay Elder disintegrated.

Replacing the magazine as he rolled, Flynn pushed the table over, creating a shelter for himself behind it.

Immediately, a stun weapon smacked the table, causing it to jerk back into his face. Four more of the creatures from the village rushed him. Another burst took them out.

Silence fell. The air was thick with the sickly stink of cordite, the powerful reek of blood, and a strange odor, the same cross between sulfur and cinnamon that had filled Oltisis’s space.

When there was no more fire directed at him, he took out his small, powerful LED flashlight and aimed it around the darkened room.

Elder was on the floor, his chest a mass of blood. Lying against the spiral stairs was one of the creatures from the village, also dead. In front of him there were the remains of at least six more of the creatures.

Flynn pulled out the empty magazine.

There was a whisper of movement in the dark.

A light came on, and suddenly he was face to face with the narrow, gleaming face of Morris. “Don’t reload, Flynn,” he said, “this is finished.”

Flynn said nothing.

“You’ve cost me,” he continued. “I can still make some use of her, but not much. And the infant is already sold along, so that means a refund. I don’t like to do refunds, Flynn.”

“What in hell does that mean, sold along?”

“I’m just a businessman trying to make something work in an out-of-the-way place that happens to contain some nice genetic material. This is a mean little planet and it’s dying. I want to get some of what it has to offer before you’re all gone. That’s all.”

“But it’s a crime where you come from, doing this. That’s why your cops are after you.”

“In some parts of our world, it’s a crime. Not in all.”

“You’ve turned yourself into something that can live freely on Earth. And you’re struggling making more. That’s why your helpers look like that.”

“They aren’t ‘helpers.’ That’s a work gang, nothing more. When they’re used up, they’ll be terminated.”

They were slaves, as Flynn had suspected. He realized why they’d been made to appear so strange. It was so they couldn’t walk the streets and therefore couldn’t escape.

The ability to manipulate life had created a whole new type of crime.

“What are you, Morris? You’re not like Oltisis, are you? Not the same species?”

“Consider this a living costume. It’s not pleasant and, thankfully, it’s temporary. But to answer your question, I’ve been a lot of things in a lot of places.” He gestured at the carnage around them. “This is costly. You’re going to have to pay.”

“What happened to my wife?”

“Your wife?” He looked over toward the dead woman. “That’s your wife?”

The realization that he had not the slightest memory of Abby made Flynn’s anger flare.

“You will go where she has gone,” Morris continued. “Or you will die right here, right now.” As he spoke, he slipped a rod into in his hand, blunt and black and thick. It’s end glowed like a coal. He waved it toward Flynn.

Searing agony. The machine gun flew from his hands as he grabbed at his chest, tearing the cloth away from his burning skin.

But he wasn’t on fire.

The HK clattered to the floor.

“If I put a charge in you, you’ll feel that pain for hours, until you die of exhaustion. Or you can come with me.” He sighed, and Flynn knew it as a player’s sound of satisfaction, a sound that comes when the trump is laid down or the queen trapped.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Inside himself, Flynn fought for balance. He had to restore his mission, so he had to get past this checkmate, and he would. The only checkmate he would accept was death.

Morris said smoothly, “It’s not going to happen your way, Flynn. It’s going to happen my way.”

Flynn eased his foot toward the machine gun on the floor.

Morris kicked it away. “You need to understand that you’ve never come unhooked from my line.” He gestured vaguely. “The life you have known is over.”

Flynn still had the pistol in his shoulder holster.

“The pistol, too. You can’t win, Flynn, I’m sorry. I’m smarter than you are.” He glanced around the room. “I oughta just burn you, you bastard.” The stout little device in his hand hissed and its spark grew brighter. Morris smiled. “Fascinating, isn’t it? Come on, we’re going over to my factory.”

Morris directed him to ascend the stairs. He was caught, no question, but he concentrated on every detail as it unfolded. He needed not only to get an opening, but to see it. He’d watched many a fugitive miss a wide-open path to safety.

Outside, moonlight silvered the world.

“Get in,” Morris said, gesturing with his weapon toward the GMC. “Elder was a good man. Making off-the-scale money. I can pay at that level, you know. Gold. You join me in this little, insignificant business I have going here, Flynn, and you’ll be a billionaire in a year.”

Flynn said nothing.

“I’m just sayin’, Flynn, the money is serious.”

As they entered the vehicle, Morris was careful with his weapon, keeping it constantly ready. “At home,” he said as he started the car, “the equipment is better.”

“Where is home?”

Morris didn’t answer for a moment. He began driving across the grounds, heading out into the brush. “You know, I don’t think I can explain that to you. It’d be like explaining this car to a chimpanzee. Can’t be done.”

Flynn thought, “So the truth is, it’s somehow vulnerable.” He would not forget Morris’s inadvertent admission. If he lived.

They drove along a rough pasture track to the village.

From this perspective, the structures were really amazingly well camouflaged. They appeared to be a few piles of brush, the sort of thing left behind when cedar is cleared. Only from overhead could you see that it was organized around a central path.

Flynn had been watching Morris carefully, looking for an opening. So far, there had been none.

“Now, what’s going to happen to you in there is that the contents of your mind—all of your experiences—are going to be taken out for sale to people who don’t have the rich opportunities that life on Earth offers.”

It probably wasn’t bullshit, but he couldn’t say that he understood it.

“Your body will be dissolved and reduced to recoverable stem cells, which will be sold on the black market.” He laughed a little, and in that laugh Flynn heard a very human sound, the glee of a psychopath. He regarded Flynn with wide, avid eyes.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You’ve caused me extraordinary trouble. I won’t deny it.” He smiled his soft, haunted smile. “I just want you to know how it’s done. What was done to your wife.”

A searing flash exploded into the car and, absolutely without warning, half the village burst into flames. Instinct caused Morris to whirl away from the blast, in the process dropping his weapon.

Instantly, Flynn reached out and grabbed it, and by the time Morris had looked back, it was pointed at him.

Morris’s face told his story. He was horrified and he had no idea what was going on. Neither did Flynn. Opening the door with his free hand, he backed out of the vehicle—and found himself three feet from the tiger. From inside the truck, there came a sharp burst of laughter. Morris began to get out the other side.