Resistance (25 page)

Lucille thrummed in his hands, but he ignored her needs for the moment, quickly bending to the freshly turned soil and gathering two flat, fist-sized river stones. One he slipped into a pocket, the other he held as though to skip it across the surface of the Platte River. Then he took off again, accelerating to within twenty yards of the raiders, where he took aim at the unprotected heads of the outriders bringing up the rear. He threw the first stone, reached into his pocket and sent the other one after it. Then he charged the glacially slow-moving tableau.

At first he thought he could hear the wind roaring in his ears, which hadn’t been the case on the run up from the river; a deep, sonorous tearing sound which grew and grew until it pounded at his head with physical force. He was only ten yards, a few strides, from the rear of the pack when the first stone struck and he understood. The skull of the rangy, loping daemon at which he’d aimed exploded in an extravagant shower of foul organic gruel. The next stone wasn’t nearly as well aimed and struck the scout daemon in the small of the back. The creature’s upper torso blew apart as though hit with a small missile and Dave understood that what he’d been hearing was a sonic boom as the rocks ripped through the atmosphere at something greater than the speed of sound. They took the Sliveen scouts unaware and obliterated them. Dave felt the blowback shower him with spots of ichor and offal.

He didn’t slow down. Lucille was singing now, a mad high aria of chaos and slaughter. The human champion, the Dave, was upon them, performing a dark duet with her. The air screeched with the violent silvery arcs of the enchanted splitting maul while he cut at legs as thick as tree trunks, slicing through armour with great fantails of white and yellow sparks. Bone shattered with terrible crackling reports like the felling of old redwoods. Lucille’s edged metal head cleaved through muscle and meat with sick wet chomps. Dark daemon blood geysered and boiled and misted in the air.

He split the skull of the Lieutenant Grymm carrying Emmeline. Lucille’s axehead drilled deep down into the thing’s chest and opened it up like a poison flower. Dave wrenched on the handle, freeing the steel with a deep sucking noise. The Grymm was already toppling, slowly, slowly, slowly, and would surely crush Ashbury beneath its great bulk. He jabbed at the elbow joint, lightning fast. The blow atomised the bones and caused the monster to lose its grip on her. Emmeline’s face was contorted by terror and rage. One tiny fist was still clenched to beat at the Grymm’s studded breast plate. Her knuckles were scraped bloody and raw. Dave stole her away, like intercepting a pass in college football. He took the time, so much time, to lay her gently on the soft soil a few yards away.

When he turned back he yelped and had to swerve to avoid a bolt that seemed to come at him with incredible speed, even in his accelerated state.

Spaaang!

He raised Lucille – or more correctly she flew up of her own accord – and bunted the missile aside. Seven of the daemons lay in their own entrails and organs. But two Sliveen yet lived and, as slow as they were to him, the bolts and arrows they sent his way left their bows and dart slingers like fastballs from a decent minor league pitcher. He felt Lucille grow lively in his grip and gave in to her, letting the weapon go where she would in ever more blurred arcs. His arms and shoulders ached and his hands felt as though they might cramp. He could feel himself grow hot with the inhuman rate at which his metabolism was burning energy, but there could be no slowing down. Not yet. He found more reserves and drew upon them, increasing his velocity as he charged at the threat, making straight for the nearest scout. As soon as he was within range he swung for the bleachers and the solid steel wedge smashed into a hammered metal breastplate like a small comet punching home. The Sliveen flew apart with a concussive roar. Dave could only follow the momentum of the blow, giving Lucille her head. It was almost like tales he’d heard of water diviners. The wooden grip went where it went, not as he chose. He was merely a channel.

Turning a full circle after destroying the third Sliveen he described a huge figure eight with the head of the sledgehammer, building power, letting it lift him off the ground. He sailed through clean air and brought the blunt steel fist down into the nasal cavity of the scout’s long, insectile face. Just as he had done on the Longreach with Urgon. Something deep within him shifted and seemed to settle with an approving murmur.

But still more Grymm lived. He cut the legs out from beneath the two nearest to him, and their strange, drawn-out shrieks poured into the mad, caterwauling derangement of war shouts, death rattles, roars and, beneath it all, the screaming of two women.

Only two.

The third he ducked as the Grymm warrior which had been carrying her swung the woman’s body like a soft club. Dave, still running in hyper-time, had plenty of opportunity to see her coming, to see the wounds she had already suffered. They had been eating her as they hurried across the fields. Probably tossing the poor kid between one another as each took a bite. He ducked under the slow, sweeping blow and drove Lucille up under the chin of the giant. Its head snapped back and a piece of broken fang flew out from the point of impact, turning with perverse beauty, like a jewel in the starlight. Dave flipped the maul around and drove the butt of the handle into the overlapping iron plates guarding the daemon’s midsection. Monster and happy meal both flew backward.

He was turning to take on the remainder of the pack when something sandbagged him from the left and he was catapulted through the air.

‘Oof,’ he grunted as all the air was driven from his lungs and stars burst behind his eyelids. The world turned around and around, slowly, but not because he willed it. It was uncontrolled. It was vulnerability and danger and the end of things.

He hit the ground and rolled and rolled, dirt in his eyes and mouth. The long, dull, distant freight train roar of the world heard from the slipstream of hyper-time now became the all-too-real roar and clash of the remaining monsters coming at him with great swords and axes and mauls of their own. He tried to stand, but one knee gave way beneath him. Lucille lay a few feet away, wailing it seemed, somewhere in the back of his head. Crying for him. Dave had time to note that the other girl, the waitress they hadn’t eaten yet, was crawling toward Emmeline. He tried to accelerate toward them to carry them away as he had before with Heath, but it was like turning a key on a dead car battery.

Nothing.

The Grymm war band came at him like a flying wedge, a solid mass of snarling fury and edged metal, nine or ten foot high, and three or four times that across. The leader raised a cleaver that looked as big as Dave
. . .

. . . he disintegrated.

They all did, the whole tightly packed mob of armoured hide and monster flesh just flew apart as twin streams of painfully bright, hot human fire – tracer fire – poured into them, disassembling the last of the raiding party in a wet storm of flesh and bone. Stupefied, Dave could only shake his head as the helicopter roared over him and then he realised the voice in his head was not Lucille or Urgon or his own cries of horror but the oddly flat and alien tone of Ghostrider One-Eight.

‘Come in, Persuader. Are you reading us? Come in, Persuader, are you reading us?’

Dave raised a shaky hand to his headset, which he’d completely forgotten about. It hung around his neck, bent out of shape. In the air above him Dave could see two of the Blackhawks hovering above with a pair of the meaner-looking Apaches to either side.

‘Persuader,’ he said, almost choking on a mouthful of dirt. ‘I mean, yeah, it’s me, Dave. Thanks for that, Ghostrider. I
. . .
guess I owe you one.’

20

Dave woke up on a cot in a large green tent that smelled of old canvas, mould and disinfectant.
His ribs hurt a little where he’d taken the body hit, but they didn’t feel broken, or even bruised. When he raised a hand to prod himself gingerly, looking for damage, an IV needle and tube came with it. The needle was plunged into the back of his hand, delivering a clear fluid. He had no idea whether it was a saline solution, or some sort of nutrient mix, or painkillers or antibiotics. But he felt fine. Great, in fact. So the needle came out.

He watched, fascinated as the small wound healed itself.

‘Man, that never gets old,’ said Dave.

The medical tent was large. It had to be some sort of MASH, or whatever they called them now, because of all the bodies laid out, hooked up to drips just like his. He counted nine of them, including a Cracker Barrel waitress in the bed next to his, and Emmeline on the far side of her. He recognised the girl from the field
. . .
when? How long had he been out? She was the one who’d crawled over to Emmeline. The one who had lived. She was pretty badly banged up now, covered in dressings and hooked up to three drips. But she looked peaceful and Dave felt the warm inner glow of a job well done. He’d rescued a girl. An orderly who was dressing the wounded leg of a soldier or SEAL on the other side of the tent noticed him as he stood up.

‘Hey! You shouldn’t be up. Dr Limbaugh!’

Dave felt as though he’d been caught out at something, and almost climbed back into the cot. Then he saw Emmeline stir and lift herself up on both elbows, blinking at him as though clearing her head. He was glad she’d woken up before the other chick. She might be able to tell him what had happened after he blacked out. Then she scowled.

‘You.’

She didn’t sound pleased to see him. Or to be alive. Because, you know, he’d rescued her and everything.

‘Er, yeah. Me. You okay, Prof?’

‘Oh, I’m fine,’ she said in a tone that let him know Professor Emmeline Ashbury was a good week’s journey from being fine.

‘So. What’s happening?’ Dave asked cautiously.

An army doctor, in camouflaged scrubs appeared at the tent flap, summoned by the orderly. This Limbaugh, presumably. Dave wondered if the man really needed the stethoscope or whether it was just to announce to everyone that he was the doctor.

‘Mr Hooper. You took out your drip. It needs to go back in right now, sir. And to stay in until I say otherwise.’

‘I’m fine, Doc,’ said Dave. ‘Seriously. Whatever you gave me. It worked. I’m good to go.’

He became aware of sounds outside the tent. Heavy vehicles, choppers in flight, the shouts of men and women issuing orders and acknowledging them. But he had no sense of impending doom or unravelling chaos. So things were cool then.

‘Sit,’ ordered the doctor.

He sighed, but he sat back on his cot which creaked under his weight. He wondered where Lucille was and realised with a start that she’d have to be back out in the field where he’d dropped her. Nobody else would have been able to pick her up. He smiled, even though part of him felt like he’d lost a child at the mall. He smiled even wider at that, but the grin died on his face when he saw the thunderous glare levelled on him by Emmeline. Dave took cover in submitting to Limbaugh’s examination. The surgeon attended him, doing the things those guys always do: pulse, blood pressure, lights in the eye.

‘Turn your head this way. Good. Now back. Good. Raise your left arm. Okay. Now your right. Good.’

He pressed in on Dave’s ribs, frowning, and pressed in again, a little harder.

‘No pain? No sensation of scraping when you breathe?’

‘Nada.’

Limbaugh frowned again. ‘Remarkable. You came in here with four broken ribs.’

‘And thanks to your expert care I got over it, Doc.’ Dave smiled. ‘Can I go now?’

‘No.’

The doctor stood up and moved a few feet away to consult with the orderly in hushed voices that Dave’s Spidey senses had no trouble at all picking up. Limbaugh wanted more X-rays, an MRI and blood work in addition to what they already had, plus
hourly monitoring of all the vitals and
. . .
Dave tuned out. That wouldn’t be happening. He was ready to roll.

‘So, you’re really okay?’ he asked Emmeline, who was still frowning at him, but at least she’d dialled down the furious scowl. She looked pretty badly banged up too, bruised down one side, with fresh white bandages wrapped tightly around one arm and a large dressing taped to the back of her head. Her eyes were blackened and bloodshot and she looked even paler than normal. Dave wasn’t really asking if she was okay. He was wondering if
they
were okay.

Turned out they weren’t.

‘It doesn’t even dent you, does it? You never get a bloody scratch.’

‘Sorry.’ He shrugged. ‘Not my fault.’

‘But it is your fault!’ she hissed with such vehemence that Dave backed away a little and the two med staff broke off their discussion to turn and stare at them. He felt as though everyone in the tent was suddenly staring, although the other casualties were all deeply sedated.

‘Piss off,’ said Emmeline, pleasantly enough, to Limbaugh and his orderly. They walked away, taking their discussion out of free-fire zone.

Dave had recovered enough of his balance to be feeling a little put out now.

‘Hey. Twisty McKnickers. You notice you’re not dead? Not even a little bit? Perhaps a simple, thanks, Dave, for saving me from the blood pot?’

She eyed him like he was a toilet that needed cleaning. When she did speak, she didn’t sound grateful. She sounded even angrier.

‘Thanks, Dave. For saving me from the blood pot.’

‘Well it was
. . .’

‘It was a fucking cock-up, is what it was.’

Dave felt something not unlike going over the top on a roller-coaster. His skin grew electric as the heat built up on his face. He was just about finished with this hero crap.

‘Really? Saving your life was a cock-up was it? Would you like me to put you back on the next bus to Monsterville?’

‘Don’t be an idiot. You’ve already proved you can do that. It’s time to move on.’

‘The fuck you say.’

He was a few seconds away from just storming out of the tent before the red mist at the edges of his vision began to close in. He’d find Boylan, and catch the first ride out of town. They could make Vegas in time for dinner and a show. LA if they pushed it and he didn’t have to stop to kill anything. But Emmeline, he could see, made an obvious effort to rein in her own anger. She sat up in her cot, leaned back against a tent pole and crossed her arms protectively. Or tried to. The bandage made it difficult and uncomfortable and Dave got the impression she held the awkward pose it forced on her only because she didn’t want to look like she couldn’t. Her face flushed with colour for the first time.

‘How many men do you count in this tent, Hooper?’

‘Seven,’ he said, without checking. He knew the figure the same way he knew he had five fingers on each hand.

‘Yes. Seven men. And three in the tent next door, and four in emergency surgery in Omaha, and five dead.’

His skin felt even warmer. And prickly.

‘How’s Compton?’

‘Missing. There’s four missing by the way.
He’s one of them.’

She fixed him with a stare that made him feel like he’d been mounted on the long pin of a butterfly collector.

‘Your. Fault. Dave.’

‘But I
. . .’

He trailed off. The smell of the temporary ward was making him sick. Disinfectant. Blood. Faeces. Pus. The hot tingling just under his skin turned cold again and left him dizzy.

‘They didn’t get him? Igor and Zach, they’re
. . .’

‘Alive. And in one piece. Igor put down half a dozen of the things with that ridiculous cannon of his. I understand Chief Allen killed some sort of monster with a knife.’

‘Wow. That’s cool. And Heath?’

‘Not cool. Not happy.’

The look she gave him was complex. Somewhere between accusing, grateful, sympathetic and
. . .
guilty.

Before he could stop himself, he asked, because maybe it would lead him out of this mess.

‘You feeling like shit because you’re alive and they’re not?’

He knew it was a dumb thing to say even as he was saying it. All the higher centres of his brain went into turbo-drive, trying to get him to shut his dumb mouth, to say something else, or even just to trail off mumbling. But when Dave Hooper was of a mind to run off at the mouth like a dumbass, he could take a gold medal at the dumbass Olympics.

‘You fucker,’ she said, without any hint of anger, which was worse. Her voice came out thin and broken. ‘How fucking typical that a man with absolutely no insight into his own weakness should see so bloody deeply into someone else’s. Of course I feel guilty. If you hadn’t done exactly the wrong thing all of those men would be alive. Compton would be
. . .’

At the mention of Compton’s name Dave felt the red mist close in around his vision.

‘Fuck Compton and the jackass he rode in on. You’re worth two of him.’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry. Did the middle of my sentence interrupt the beginning of yours?’ She shook her head then, looking utterly lost. ‘You don’t understand, Hooper. You’ve never understood. Just because Compton’s an arsehole it doesn’t mean he’s a useless arsehole. Unlike me.’

‘Oh come on, Em
. . .’

‘Don’t. I’m not looking for a sympathy fuck. And I’m not saying I’m an arsehole. I know my blunt manner and funny accent don’t always make you Americans comfortable.’

‘But you’ve got your thing, your autism.’

‘It’s Asperger’s, you tosser, and it’s not an excuse. I’m at the very mild end of the spectrum. I’m blunt, and focused. And increasingly irrelevant to the concerns of this operation. I’m an exobiologist, Hooper. Not a professor of medieval monster studies. I write papers about extremophile bacteria on the moons of Saturn and around deep ocean flumes in the Pacific. It’s what I was known for before Compton took me on and made sure all the really interesting research I’d ever do would never be read in public again.’

She had turned inward, and was talking less to Dave now than to herself. An unworthy part of him was glad to have escaped the spotlight of her attention and anger. Like Emmeline, he was dressed only in a hospital shift. He started to look around when her eyes were off him, searching discreetly for some clothes he could change into.

‘We thought the Hunn and Fangr you killed were xenomorphs. Aliens. That why I took the lead on the Longreach. And why Compton was such a surly git. He hates to play second fiddle, as you Americans say.’

‘I never say that,’ Dave muttered, and she focused back in on him again, as though she’d forgotten he was there. Some of the anger was back too, unfortunately.

‘But it became quite obvious quite quickly that we weren’t dealing with space bugs. We were dealing with some Dark Ages civilisation that somehow crossed over into our own, possibly via some sort of dodgy passage or portal between separate quantum bubbles of the multiverse. And that, I’m afraid, is where Compton shines. Not in quantum theory. But in civilisational conflict. Don’t you see? He’s the ranking authority from OSTP on this matter. Heath is the muscle. Compton, quite rightly, is the brains. I’m surplus to requirements. And you’re the fucking clown who just upended the manure cart and spilled everybody out. Killing a lot of my colleagues in the process.’

There was no escaping it. Something must have gone badly wrong with the SEAL teams Heath had sent after Compton. Maybe an ambush? Maybe it was just a bad idea for tiny, vulnerable human beings to mix it up with the Horde? But there was no escaping the discontent stirring behind Dave’s own guilt.

Fuck Compton.

These pinheads might rate him as some sort of genius but to Dave he was just a puffed-up sphincter.

‘Well,’ he said, climbing to his feet. ‘I apologise for saving your life. Perhaps when that girl in the cot next to you wakes up, you could pass on my regrets to her as well. I’m sure she’ll understand why she counted for nothing.’

‘When I get though writing letters to the next of kin of the SEALs who died,’ she said coldly.

He turned away from her then and strode out of the tent with as much dignity as possible, holding the flaps of his hospital gown closed over his bare ass.