Species II (30 page)

Starlight.

There was pain everywhere, but it wasn’t debilitating. She felt her insides shift around the pieces of metal and somehow
test
them before pushing them aside, then out. By the time all her wounds had closed and knitted together, the pain was gone and something about her cellular structure had changed permanently, as though her body had learned about the danger of bullets and now could—and would—protect itself. Experience was always the best teacher.

The fools who surrounded her never expected her to come back to life.

Eve took four of them down with one brutal sweep of her arm, then left a moaning, bleeding pile of men when the rest tried to stop her. There was gunfire again—out here these stupid humans would shoot even their own kind—but she hardly felt the bullets; now they were more like bee stings that never penetrated her skin although they did horrible damage to the terribly fragile men still witlessly trying to stop her. The gunfire was escalating but it didn’t matter; she crossed the sidewalk and street at a dead run and made for one of the HMMWVs, the military version of a Hummer, parked at an angle on the other side. Yanking the door open, she pulled out the driver before he realized what was happening; another hapless human casualty, the man’s body was decimated by his comrades’ gunfire before he ever hit the ground.

Then Eve was inside the vehicle and turning the key, listening to the engine of the well-maintained vehicle as it churned to life. It took a precious three seconds for her to decipher the markings on the gearshift knob and decide which was which of the two foot pedals. She killed the motor once and started it again, this time succeeding in her search for reverse on the transmission. She hit the accelerator too hard and the vehicle lurched backward and hit something—a quick look and Eve saw the front of the Jeep she’d just trashed. She found first, twisted the wheel, and jumped on the gas pedal. The gates were too far away and roadblocked; lights and people and the red-orange flashes of gunfire flew by as she made for the fence at the perimeter, aiming the vehicle for a stretch of it between two metal posts. It came down with a clang and the HMMWV bounced and rocked as it climbed over the twisted pieces.

Then Eve was roaring down the access road and headed for freedom . . .

. . . and Patrick.

“Y
ou want to tell me how the hell she learned to drive?” Press demanded as he hauled Laura out of the BioHazard 4 building and toward the remaining HMMWV. He shouted something at the driver and waved his identification; in return the man practically leaped out of the vehicle. The taillights of Eve’s HMMWV were just disappearing through the fence when Press, Laura and Dennis clambered into the vehicle, clawing for their seat belts at the same time that Press rammed the gearshift into drive and floored it.

“It’s not such a stretch,” Laura yelled over the screaming of the engine. They followed the path of the first vehicle through the fence, jerking over the downed section and missing having the tires slashed by a vibrating length of razor wire only because it had come loose and snapped out of their path. “Think of all the television she’s watched—that stupid
Dukes of Hazard
for starters. If you recall, Sil didn’t have any problem with a car either.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Press ground out.

“Television, huh? Well, what else can she do that we don’t know about?” Dennis asked anxiously from the back seat. Belted in, he was now fighting to keep the canisters and spray nozzles from rolling all over the place.

“It doesn’t
matter
what else she can do,” Press interrupted. His jaw was set and his hands were locked on the steering wheel as he concentrated on following the HMMWV. “She’s not going to get the chance to try.”

“How are you going to catch her?” Laura squinted through the windshield at the taillights far ahead. “What if she doesn’t stop—”

“Oh, she’ll stop all right,” Press said. The glow from the instruments on the dashboard gave his eyes and face a slightly greenish tint. “And when she does, Eve’ll be doing exactly what I want—

“Leading us right to Patrick Ross.”

“C
olonel Burgess, sir,” squawked a sexless voice over the helicopter’s radio. “We have confirmed the presence of the alien escapee in the first vehicle. Preliminary identification of the individuals in the second gives us Preston Lennox, Dr. Laura Baker, and NASA Flight Officer Dennis Gamble.”

“Roger,” Burgess said into the radio. He leaned forward and finally saw them far below—the first HMMWV, presumably with Eve inside it, hell-bent to some unknown destination that hopefully would bring them to Patrick Ross. Maybe a hundred and fifty yards behind it was an identical vehicle, this one carrying a team of good old American would-be soldiers determined to destroy both Eve and Patrick. Well, good for them; then he would step in and clean up the mess. Lennox would be no loss to humanity, although it was a damned shame about Baker and Gamble.

“Do not send backup except on my order. This is a preplanned operation.” He got an affirmative from the radio operator, then turned his gaze toward the pilot. “Keep your distance,” he said. “Let’s find out where she’s going first, or what she’s looking for, before we make any moves. We want to crash this little party at just the right time.” The pilot nodded and obeyed like a well-programmed robot, nosing the chopper slightly faster but higher, where they could easily track the action but not be seen or heard.

“We’re coming up on Virginia airspace, sir,” the pilot announced.

“Wonderful,” muttered Burgess. Where the hell was this alien bitch going? “Keep it steady,” he ordered. “Don’t get any closer than you have to. We’re not going down until I give the signal.”

Virginia, Burgess mused. What was it about this state that had drawn Eve?

Virginia is for Lovers.

And suddenly, he knew.

Damn it all, the information was right there in the files on Senator Judson Ross—Burgess and his crew had missed it because they’d concentrated on going over
Patrick’s
records, not his father’s. Patricia Downey—Patrick’s mother and namesake—had a summer estate that had been in her family for generations. She had inherited it at age twenty-two when her mother, Patrick’s grandmother, had died. But Patricia Ross had elected not to bother with transferring the deed to the property over to her married name, so in the computer search nothing about the place had come up under the name “Ross.” A hundred and sixty acres, a house . . . and who knew how many unused buildings?

“I know where we’ll end up,” Burgess told the pilot abruptly. “It’s an estate not far from here. They’ll probably go into the house or an outbuilding, a barn or something like it. When we get there, hang back until everyone goes inside, then take the chopper down somewhere out of sight.”

W
as she being followed? Oh, most definitely. Had Eve not been able to see the other vehicle’s headlights in the rearview mirror, she would have
sensed
it. It didn’t matter though; she had already been through the worst the puny humans had to offer, and look at how well she’d survived. Not only that, but she was
better
now, adapted to the paltry metal nuggets thrown by their firearms. Toward the end of her time back at the compound, the bullets hadn’t even been piercing her skin.

Not the quietest of vehicles, the HMMWV raced down something called the Rock Creek Parkway as Eve pushed harder on the accelerator, seeing the needle on the speedometer climb past eighty-five, then beyond. By the time the Virginia road sign flashed by, the HMMWV was quivering at over a hundred miles an hour and every nerve in her body was screaming as Eve finally neared her destination. Her eyesight picked out the shadow of the oncoming driveway much more quickly than would her pursuers and she slowed the vehicle and skidded onto the tiny side drive, the HMMWV groaning at the hard, overly fast turn. Tires spitting gravel and dust in the darkness, Eve guided the vehicle up the driveway and slewed to a stop.

This wasn’t so far away from the base, and yet it . . . might as well have been on the other side of the world. The air was clear and crisp, untarnished by the exhaust from a hundred passing military vehicles every hour. The sky was studded much more heavily with stars, testimony to the layer of haze that must’ve hung over Monroe Air Force Base. Out here the bright dots of light overhead did not seem nearly so unreachable as they had earlier, and it was too bad that her acute sense of hearing picked up the sounds of a helicopter engine running far out of sight.

It was time to get to what she’d come here for, what she’d been
born
for:

Patrick Ross.

Eve cocked her head, then let instinct take over. There, off in the farthest field behind the house, Patrick was diligently watching over the offspring he’d created thus far. She could feel them just as well as she could feel him, pulsing with life inside their sheaths of tough alien flesh, each coming toward the end of that precious and helpless chrysalis stage. They were so, so good, so
strong
. . . but the children that she and Patrick would make together would be exquisite.

It seemed like it took only seconds to reach the barn, and Eve paid no mind to the slack-jawed corpse of an old man lying out front. How . . . quaint, she thought as she fingered the wooden door with its brass hasp and saw light leaking from between a thousand cracks in the old boards. Not nearly as efficient as concrete or metal and twice as useless at keeping her and her kind out—how could it when it didn’t even prevent unwanted humans from getting inside?

Eve went through the two-foot space between the door and the barn wall and stopped for just a moment to let her eyes adjust to the brightness of the single lamp sitting off to one side. Gleaming chrysalises hung everywhere, their forms shifting and trembling while the nearly grown brood inside went through the final throes of change prior to rebirth. As miraculous as it was, however, Eve had other things on her mind.

Just a couple of floors above was Patrick—Eve could sense him, could feel him sensing
her.
Finally, she was about to meet her destiny—

—and mate.

20

“W
hat is this place?” Laura asked. “It looks like a farm.”

“Haven’t a clue,” Press answered. He spun the steering wheel to the right and the HMMWV skidded to a stop.

“I know where we are.”

Press and Laura turned to look at Dennis. He sat in the back seat looking ashamed, like a small boy remembering something he should’ve known all along. “It’s the old Downey summer plantation—Patrick’s mother’s place. He mentioned it once or twice a long time ago, but he said they hardly ever came out here since his mother died, always used the cabin in the mountains instead. There’s a skeleton staff of servants in the house, but not much more than that since she passed away. I’ve never been out here before.”

Press’s mouth was a hard slash in the darkness. “Ah, the perfect place. So this is where we’ll also find Patrick—I knew if we stayed with her, Eve would lead us right to him.” He threw open the driver’s door. “Let’s grab the gear and go.”

“Oh boy,” Dennis said unhappily. Nevertheless, he handed the spray canisters out to Press and Laura, then clambered from the HMMWV.

“What do you think?” Laura asked. She eyed the house dubiously. Except for the faint glow of lamplight toward the back, it was dark.

“No,” Press said. “It’s too public, too close to the road. There must be something else—look here.” He pointed at the ground, where a path had been beaten in the gravel. It led off into the darkness. “I’ll bet if we follow this we’ll find a shed or a barn, someplace a lot more private. Come on.” The others started to follow him, then Press stopped and looked up at the star-spilled sky. “Do you hear that?”

“What?” Laura looked at him, then at the sky, but it was clear that she was missing whatever Press had picked up on.

When Press looked to Dennis, the man shook his head. “Don’t hear a thing, buddy. You’re just jumpy, and I can’t say I blame you.”

“I guess it’s nothing.” Press shrugged but the expression on his face said he didn’t believe that for an instant.

“Ready when you are,” Dennis said. He hefted the canister of toxin that Laura had assembled.

“Let’s go get this over with, Press.” The moon, a full one, had finally risen high enough in the sky to illuminate Laura’s white face. “I’ve got bad memories of the first time and I don’t expect this to be much better.”

Press nodded and motioned for them to follow. The gravel path ended where the pasture began, its crop long gone fallow. Waist-high weeds and wildflowers gleamed in the white shine of the moonlight, and the broken edges of the greenery clearly showed where the path had been recently used. They didn’t bother trying to stay quiet; they all knew the aliens would hear them coming—unless they were otherwise distracted, and Press didn’t want to think about that before he had to.

In the daylight, the ancient barn was probably visible for a hundred feet, but at night Press thought it seemed to pop up out of the ground without warning, despite the light spilling from the cracks in the old wood. Three stories high with a hayloft at the top—the damned thing was
huge.
Dark and weathered by God only knew how many winters without care, it looked like the last place in the world he and his two companions wanted to enter, and the beams of light coming from within only made things worse—it was like some sort of strange, golden explosion was taking place inside.