White Shark (41 page)

Tall Man didn't move.
 
He glanced up toward high ground.
 
Behind the thing lay nothing but water, and he wasn't about to tangle
with this thing in water.
 
Not after what
he'd heard about it.

He took his knife from his belt, bent his knees and
held the knife before him, waving it slowly back and forth.

The thing hunched its shoulders, rolled forward onto
the balls of its feet, raised its arms and spread its webbed fingers, baring
claws as long and sharp as scalpels.

If man made you, Tall Man thought as he moved in a
slow circle, man can unmake you.

48

Chase removed the last of the screws from the long
mirror, pulled it away from the back of the bathroom door and set it on the
floor.
 
He measured the mirror against
himself, and guessed that it was five feet tall and two feet wide.
 
He carried it to the living room, and set it
beside the open hatch of the decompression chamber.

"It should fit," he said.
 
"Just."

Amanda slumped in a chair beside the far wall, still
shaking,
her
color pasty.
 
"You're wasting your time," she
said.
 
"That'll never work."

"I've gotta do
some
thing.
 
You have a better
idea?"

"What do you use to put animals down?"

"Anesthesia."

"Well?"

"You think you can get close enough to that thing
to give it a
shot?
 
Christ, Amanda, for all I know, it
just..."
 
He stopped, for he saw the
children standing by the living room window, trying to see down the hill, and
he didn't want to frighten them.
 
But his
mind couldn't shake the image that had clouded it ever since Amanda had burst
through the
door,
an image of Tall Man sprawled dead
among the rocks.
 
"Give me a hand,
will you?"
 
He turned to Max.
 
"See anything?"

"Not yet," Max said.

Amanda rose from the chair.
 
Chase bent down, stepped into the chamber and
turned to take the mirror from Amanda as she slid it through the hatch.
 
He carried it to the far end of the chamber
and stood it upright against the steel wall.
 
Then he backed away, checking his reflection; he crouched just inside
the hatch,
beside
the opening.
 
"What do you see?" he asked
Amanda.
 
"Remember, the light'll be
dim."

"It's okay," she said.
 
"But, Lord, Simon, a six-year-old child
could—"

"It isn’t a child; it's a thing."

"Dad!
"
Max
shouted.
 
"Dad, it's
Tall
!"

Chase crawled out of the chamber and stood.
 
Max was pointing out the window.
 
Elizabeth
stood beside him, shading her eyes from the light inside the room, straining to
see through the darkness.

Chase expelled a huge breath of relief.
 
"About time," he said.
 
"He walked toward the window.

"Thank God," said Amanda.

Far down the lawn, by the crest of the hill before the
sea lion pool, Chase saw a figure moving toward the house.
 
The movement was erratic, yawing.

"Tall looks like he's hurt," he said.
 
He was about to turn away, to got to the
kitchen and out the door and down the lawn, when how suddenly saw color in the
figure, a hue of lightness against the dark trees.

"Jesus Christ," he said.
 
"That's not
Tall
."

49

It had been wounded, it could tell from the burning
sensations in the flesh of its face, from the fact that one of its legs was
responding slowly to signals from its brain, and from
a
numbness
in one of its hands.
 
It
looked at the hand and saw that a finger was hanging by strands of sinew.
 
It tugged at the finger until the sinews
snapped, then it cast the finger away and scooped up mud, which it packed
around the bleeding stump.

It did not feel weakened by the wounds, it felt
strengthened, invigorated by an elation born of triumph.
 
It had met an enemy worthy of it — not merely
prey
but an adversary — and had conquered it.

Its wounds were nothing; it would survive and recover.

It no longer perceived the need for defense, no longer
felt caution, for from somewhere deep within itself had come a conviction that
it was now invincible.

It saw a light in the distance, at the end of this
sloping ground.
 
Light meant shelter, and
perhaps more opportunities to destroy more enemies.

Leaning into the hill, it dragged its sluggish leg up
the slope — moving slowly, veering this way and that, not concerned with
time.
 
Time meant nothing to it; it was
immortal.

50

"Why can't we just
run?
" asked Max.
 
He was
pale and fidgety, and he seemed about to cry.
 
"It can't catch all of us, not if we spread out."

"No, Max," Chase said, putting one arm
around his son, the other around Elizabeth, who trembled slightly but seemed
impassive, as if prepared to accept whatever could happen.
 
"I don't want it to catch
any
of us, especially not you two."

He went to the window, shaded his eyes and peered out
into the darkness.
 
He could see the
thing more clearly now, a ghostly shape against the black.
 
How much time did they have?
 
Chase couldn't tell, for the thing was moving
slowly, veering left and right, almost aimlessly... almost, but not quite, for
with every brief tack it advanced a few feet closer to the house.

"Let's do it," he said.
 
He turned to Amanda.
 
"Are you sure you've got the sequence
down?"

"Positive.
 
But I still—"

"Good."
 
Chase took the children's hands and led them to a small closet behind
the decompression chamber.
 
"It'll
be dark," he said, "but you can handle that, right?
 
Amanda'll be with you."

Tentatively, the children nodded, and stepped into the
closet.

Chase held out his hand to Amanda, moved close to her
and whispered, "If anything goes wrong — anything — take the kids and head
for the Mako.
 
You should have plenty of
time; the least I can do is stall the goddamn thing."

"Simon..."

Impulsively, Chase kissed her.
 
"In you go," he said, and he
ushered her into the closet and closed the door.

He went to the control panel on the wall, pushed the
master button that activated the decompression chamber.
 
There was a hum as the machinery engaged, and
a hiss as the pressure tanks buried in the walls began to fill.
 
He turned the lights out in the room, all
except the pressure-shielded pink bulb inside the chamber.

The he climbed through the hatch and crouched down,
waiting.

51

It was closer
now,
it could
see movement in the house, dark figures against the light that shone through
the windows.
 
It was neither wary nor
alarmed, but challenged.
 
They might see
it, they might not, but they could not stop it.

Then the light was gone, vanished as if sucked up by
the night.

It halted, to assess the change, to reassure itself
that the failure was not in itself.

No, it could see forms — the dark lump of the house
against the black slate of the sky.
 
As
its eyes adjusted to the darkness, it even saw a pink glow from somewhere
inside the house.

It resumed its march, and soon it was by the side of
the building.
 
It circled slowly,
deliberately, seeking entry.

It found a door, a thin thing of wood and glass, and
drew back an arm to destroy it.

52

Over the hum of the machinery, Chase heard glass
breaking and wood splintering, then a low, guttural sound.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

It crossed the threshold into the large room, focusing
on the faint pink glow.

It heard machine sounds, and saw a big rigid object in
the center of the room.
 
The glow came
from inside it.
 
It shuffled over to the
object, moved to the end where a round door hung open and bent down.

In the dim light, it saw at the far end of the object
a human, like the one it had recently vanquished, but slighter, weaker,
frightened.

Prey.
 
Easy prey.

It stepped inside.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Chase smelled sourness and salt and rot, heard a
footfall on the steel.

He didn't dare look down, didn't dare make any
movement that would alter his reflection in the mirror.

The thing passed him, and now he could see the
hairless ivory flesh of its legs and buttocks, the webbing between its toes,
the curved steel claws clotted with blood.

Chase's legs began to cramp.
 
He willed himself not to move, and begged the
thing to keep going.
 
Two more steps, he
thought, just two more, then he could... the thing stopped.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

It was confused, something was wrong.
 
The human was there and then not there, and
it saw something else, something it did not recognize.

Suddenly it knew.
 
It was seeing itself.

With a roar of rage, it turned.

53

Chase heaved himself off the floor of the chamber and
dove through the open hatch.
 
He landed
on his knees, turned and reached for the chamber door.
 
It was heavy, heavier than he remembered.

The creature took a step toward him, and lunged.

Chase swung the door and leaned against it.
 
He saw a hand reaching for him, growing
larger and larger.

The door slammed with a resonant clang.

"Now!
"
Chase
shouted.
 
"Now!"
 
He spun the dogging wheel, and a red light
blinked on, signaling that the seal was complete.
 
He felt a thumping against the steel door.

He heard the closet door open, and Amanda's footsteps
as she hurried to the control panel.
 
He
had preset the dials; all she had to do was push the buttons.

There was the sound of compressed air rushing into the
chamber through a dozen vents.
 
Cold and
dry, when it collided with the warm air already in the chamber, it became fog.

"Take it down," Chase said to Amanda,
"as far and as fast as you can."
 
He moved around to the side of the chamber and looked through the
porthole.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

It had abandoned the unyielding steel door, sensing
that it had been trapped, searching for an escape.
 
It saw a hole covered with glass, and drew
back a fist to smash the glass.

Pain suddenly assaulted its head, pain such as it had
never known, like fire, as if its brain were being crushed into a molten mass.

It pressed its hands to the sides of its head and
shrieked.