NorthWest (John Hazard - Book II) (17 page)

One of the men removed his glasses and stepped up to the counter tapping loudly to get the girl’s attention. He flashed some kind of badge or ID, which finally got the girl to remove the phone from her ear. “How can I help you?” she chirped.

“We are awaiting the arrival of a chartered flight out of San Francisco carrying a team of college students. Do you know when they are expected to arrive?” He looked at his watch, and then the clock on the wall.

The guide walked over and broke in on the conversation. “Yeah, that’s why I’m here too. Do you know when they’re supposed to arrive? I can’t wait here all day.”

The girl gave them a blank stare then spoke into the phone, “Hang on a sec, hon. I need to check something.” At last, she put the phone down and picked up a clipboard. “It says here a plane arriving from San Francisco was expected around 12:15 to 12:30.” She glanced up at the clock and shrugged. “Looks like they’re running late.”

The clock read quarter past one, and the man in the suit was first to reply. “Right, so they are now an hour late. Is there some way you can check to see what is going on?”

She had already reached for her phone and seemed slightly perturbed by the additional request. “Well, maybe I could call somebody, I guess.”

The man, still wearing the sunglasses, stepped forward and barked, “Look, bitch, I suggest you do that. And I mean right about fucking now!” The girl’s face turned red, not from embarrassment, but in anger.

“Look, Bozo, I don’t care who you work for. You don’t come in here talking like that to me and expect me to jump just cuz you say jump!” She put both hands on the countertop and leaned forward, her head punctuating each word as she spoke. “You can just step back and take a seat and I’ll get to that in a min…” She stopped midsentence as the barrel of a Glock was pressed against her forehead.

“Pardon me, missy,” he sneered. “I said right fucking NOW!”

Caught completely off guard, the receptionist felt the room begin to spin. The guide, who had seen the man reach beneath his jacket and pull out the gun, made a break for it. He was fifty yards down the walkway by the time the girl hit the floor.

“Shit!” The man holding the gun walked to the end of the counter and lifted the panel in order to get behind it. Walking back to where the girl had hung the clipboard, he kicked her limp body as he passed her. “Stupid bitch!” He took the clipboard from the hook and looked at it, then threw it at the girl still unconscious on the floor. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he told the other man.

As they were leaving the terminal, they caught sight of the guide about a hundred yards away near the hangars still running for his life.

Thirty-Two

John wasn’t exactly sure where he was or what had happened. He could barely make out the scent of pine through the choking stench of rotting flesh, and for a moment he wondered if he might be dead. He tried to quell his sense of panic as he assessed the situation.

His shoulder hurt like hell and his body seemed to be paralyzed. He tried to move his arms and legs but found it to be impossible. His vision was somewhat blurred but he could tell that he was situated somehow in a large clearing in the middle of a stand of tall trees. Raj was there leaning up against one of the trees, maybe some twenty yards away. John squinted to get a better look.

As his vision began to clear, John could see that Raj wasn’t standing next to the tree at all, but was hanging from it, his feet about eighteen inches off the ground. He opened his mouth to yell over to Raj, but found he could only cough. He cleared his throat as best he could then rasped, “Raj! Hey, Raj! Are you alive, buddy?” There was no sign of life.

He turned his head to the left, and blinked several times. Unless his eyes were deceiving him, there was some kind of creature. He had never seen anything like it before and it was standing next to Emily. She also appeared to be hanging from a tree the same as Raj. From this vantage point, John could not get a good look at the monster. He tried to figure out how tall this thing might be. Based on his own height and the distance he guessed he was hanging from the ground, John judged the creature must stand about eight feet tall. It was one of the biggest, ugliest things he had ever seen.

It stood erect on two legs, like a man, but this was no man. John thought the thing looked more like some kind of gigantic bug or maybe a lizard, a hybrid lizard-bug. It was a grayish hue in color that alternated to brown and dark green and back to gray as it moved through the clearing to another tree. It must be some kind of continual camouflaging process he supposed.

Its back had what seemed to be a series of layered, interlocking, segmented, maybe armored plates, each overlapping the one below it. These plates formed a ridge in the center of its body that ran from the top of its head to the end of its tail, which extended to the ground and seemed to stabilize its body weight while it worked. 

The creature’s hind legs reminded John of the legs of a very large lizard but were segmented more like a grasshopper’s. He guessed it to be a four-legged creature that stood upright when necessary to use its front legs as arms. He could see as it moved around an unconscious Emily, that its ‘hands’ had three large fingers and what resembled a thumb, all tipped with sharp but relatively short claws.

As the monster turned, John noticed some type of appendage, or third arm. It was shorter than the others and positioned near the center of its chest. It bore a foot-long blade-like boney structure that it seemed to be using as a tool. Just now, the monster was using it to apply something to the tree behind Emily’s back.

Now John realized exactly what was holding him immobile against the tree. With one clawed hand, the creature held Emily firmly against her tree, while the other hand reached behind its back just above its tail where a thick black liquid oozed slowly from some kind of opening. As it deposited the goo on the tree next to Emily, it used the blade-like appendage to spread it evenly between the tree and her limp body.  Was the thing using it’s own shit as glue, to bind them?

The creature seemed able to produce the stuff at will because each time it reached back, more of the goo had been produced and was ready to be applied. With each handful of ooze, the creature appeared to be gluing Emily to the tree.

It dawned on John that the forest was eerily quiet except for the crunching sounds the creature made as he moved around the tree. As he strained to see what was causing the crunch, he saw there was a scattered pile of bones surrounding the base of the tree. Most of the bones looked as if they were from smaller animals, but about a yard away there was a human skull which had been kicked to the side.

He felt a shiver of horror throughout his body as his dazed mind began to comprehend that the creature was literally ‘putting up’ food. His team was obviously not the first group of humans to experience this nightmare.

John’s gaze shifted back to his right and another wave of dread passed through his body. He could barely make out Mark lying on the ground in the shadows. His legs appeared to be bent in an unnatural pose as though they had somehow been mangled in the plane crash, or perhaps crushed by the creature.

With all that was happening around him, it was the object hanging above Mark that inspired absolute terror in his soul. It looked like a bunch of translucent grapes about the size of large watermelons. Each greenish globe had dark spots that appeared to jerk and squirm every few seconds. As he scanned the entire object from bottom to top, he realized that it was suspended from some kind of web-like structure.

It hit him, finally, like an aluminum baseball bat to the head. This was a giant cluster of alien spawn and, from the way the things were squirming and jerking, it looked as if they were about to hatch!

Thirty-Three

Commercial airline pilots are in constant communication with the ground as they travel around the globe. When a plane goes missing, there is immediate action taken. Hundreds of lives are on the line and the airlines can’t afford to delay a search for a missing plane when possible survivors are awaiting rescue.

The smaller private and chartered planes, on the other hand, can go unnoticed for longer periods, especially when a half-assed cocky pilot does not file an adequate flight plan. Then, if changes are made in-flight without proper notification, a plane could go missing without anyone having a clue as to its whereabouts.

This is exactly the scenario that had played out when Mark Woo had left on this trip. In fact, for as long as he had been flying, he had never been really good at the whole flight plan thing. He had become accustomed to flying by the seat of his pants when he made his trips.

When he had taken flying lessons, he had bribed his flight instructor to keep quiet about his planning skills. A couple of thousand well placed dollars, a few phone calls, and the same instructor covered it over by doing all of the flight planning work for him. Mark considered it to be no worse than paying someone to write a term paper.

So now that his flight had gone missing, no one knew exactly where to look. He had kind of gotten it somewhat close, but even if they had dozens of aircraft covering hundreds of square miles outside of the flight path he had filed, the plane and its passengers might never be found.

If you’re searching for a needle in a haystack, you’d at least want to know where the haystack was, before you began the search.

After several hours and the plane had not yet arrived, the required reports had been filed and calls had been made. One of those calls went out to the University and was fielded by Macy’s assistant. She was asked if she had been contacted, if any word had been received about the status of the flight. She had not. She was instructed to retrieve any documents which may have been filed containing emergency phone numbers of the passengers. If any documents were located, she was to contact each of the individuals listed on the documents and prepare them for the worst.

The calls were all made before the report hit local news stations. A small passenger flight had gone missing somewhere between San Francisco and Seattle.

Thirty-Four

John heard a cough to his right and, a moment later, a shaky voice called out, “I can’t move! Somebody help me!” He recognized that voice. It was Karla and she sounded scared. “Eddie, where are you? Where are we?”

The panic was rising in her voice, and he felt sure she’d be screaming any moment especially when she realized what was happening around her. He tried to calm her. “Karla, be quiet! You’ll attract too much attention.”

“John! Is that you? Where are we?” Karla’s voice continued to rise. “What the fuck is going on?”

He spoke a little louder this time, turning his head as far as he could toward Karla. “Be quiet! Can’t you see? There’s some kind of monster here and it doesn’t look too friendly! Keep it down. We don’t want to...” John sensed something moving right next to him as he continued, “attract atten…” He turned and found himself face to face with the alien.

The creature’s head was quite wide and, as it opened its huge mouth, John could see its long pointy teeth, rows and rows of them. It breathed out a horrible stench as if it were taunting him, and then closed its mouth again. John stared into the creature’s softball-sized black eyes and saw his own reflection there. He struggled to curb the gag reflex.

He made an attempt to remain calm and employ a normal conversational tone as he spoke to the alien captor. “What are you gonna do, you ugly fucker? Eat me?” The creature tilted its head like a dog hearing a strange sound.

“Go ahead, you piece of shit. I hope you choke on my ass!” John raised his voice defiantly. He figured he had nothing to lose since he might be about to die anyway. The creature seemed almost to smile as it turned away and walked out of sight.

One by one, the others were returning to consciousness. John could hear their feeble voices as they tried to speak. “What the hell is this? Where are we?” he heard Macy cry out. Then, a virtual chorus of crying and shouting surrounded him.

“Where are we? Oh my god!”

“What the fuck? Let me go!”

“Holy shit! Somebody help me!!”

“John? John?” It was Emily calling out to him.

“Emily! Are you okay?”

“Sure! Ya think I’m just waiting here for the barmaid to bring me another glass of wine?” she said sarcastically. “What the fuck! No, I’m not okay! I can’t move and that – that thing over there keeps looking at me like I’m some kind of tasty snack!” Emily stopped and lowered her voice. “Come on, John, baby, do your rescue thing! Get us outta here!”

There she was calling him baby again. A guy could get used to that. “Give me minute to think, Em. There has to be some way to break loose.” He tried leaning forward to pull himself free, but he couldn’t move any part of his body except his head and neck.

He could swear he heard Mark moaning. Sure enough, the poor bastard was still alive! Waking up with both legs badly broken, the pilot was lying under the biggest fucking egg sac on the face of the earth. The sound of his groans and the slight movement of his upper body prompted the unwanted attention of the creature.

Mark screamed as he saw it coming toward him and used his arms to try to pull himself away. The creature shook its head and let out a low growl as if to say, “Oh, no you don’t,” and reached down to grab Mark by his jacket, dragging him screaming back into position below the giant  mass of eggs.