Authors: James Burkard
38
Grandma, What Big Teeth You Have
That pinhole suddenly gave him the memory of a little fléchette derringer strapped inside his boot. He immediately squashed a sudden burst of hope, hid even the thought that had given it birth for fear of giving away his only chance.
He felt the tongue curl back like a snake. Its tip had grown stiletto hard and sharp, preparing to strike through the soft tissue and drive up into his brain. “No-a-r-g-g-g-g!” he screamed and drove his leg up into the things belly. He felt the tongue collapse in a momentary gasp as he reached down inside his boot and pulled out the Daisy derringer. He shoved the little gun up between their clamped bodies and into her belly and clicked the safety to fire one barrel at a time.
The Susan-thing suddenly realized what he was about to do and tried to twist aside. It tore its lips away from his in a low, animal scream that cut off as a hundred miniature fléchettes tore into its stomach, exploded through its back, and blew out its spine. The strength ran out of the arms holding Harry, its tongue shriveled out of his mouth, and the body flopped back into a pool of dirty water.
Harry crawled to his knees and looked over at Susan’s body, caught in the fan of light from the open car door. She was lying on her back, the puddle of dirty water turning a deep red. Her hair was spread out around her head like a golden halo, and there was a look of surprised wonder on her face.
He heard the faint, tinny sound of two people laughing behind him. He spun around, but there was no one there. In the backlight from the open car door, he saw the little red plastic heart lying on the concrete floor. It must have fallen out of his pocket in the fight. Somehow it had gotten turned on, maybe
when they rolled over it. He could see the little holographic image of Susan and him laughing, kissing, and mugging for the camera. When they began to sing a comically romantic duet, Harry screamed in anguish, grabbed the heart, and smashed it against the concrete until it stopped.
Hot, silent tears of grief ran down his cheeks. “Oh, Sue,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.” Even though he knew the thing lying there was not Susan, it still felt as if he’d killed her all over again. His stomach suddenly turned inside-out up his throat, and he dropped to his hands and knees and threw up. Even after there was nothing left, he hung there racked by convulsive stomach cramps as if his body was trying to physically expel what had just happened.
After a while, when his stomach settled down, he pushed himself to his knees and settled back on his heels. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tried to avoid looking at Susan. That was like trying to avoid breathing. At last, he gave up and looked down at her. Fresh tears welled in his eyes. “Oh, Susan, I’m so sorry,” he whispered again. Her blue eyes stared up at him unknowing, unseeing, offering no consolation.
Then, they blinked. At first, he thought he was seeing things. Then, they blinked again, and began to change, the whites yellowing, the blue irises turning a feral green. Coarse black hair sprouted from her forehead and a long black snout began to push out of her face. A hoarse growl started deep in her throat, and yellow fangs grew out of the bloody foam of her mouth. A strange ripple passed through her body. It started at her head and passed down to her toes, and as it did, her body began to change into a large, black timber wolf. It lifted its bloody snout and howled, screaming out its insensate pain and rage.
Then it swung its head towards Harry. Spraying bloody foam and snapping and growling; it rolled over, pushed itself up on its forelegs, and began to crawl toward him, dragging its useless hind legs and the gaping, splintered wound of its shattered
spine.
Harry backed out of range of those slashing fangs and stepped into the fan of light from the open car door. The beast stopped and eyed him. The feral gleam in its eyes burned with hate and frustration. It snapped and growled and crawled towards him again, but Harry just stepped back, watching it with an odd, paralyzed fascination. This thing had never been Susan, he thought. It was nothing but an alien skin-walker that had shape-changed into a Susan body and stamped it with a Susan personality matrix. It was even possible that Susan might still be alive somewhere.
The wolf stopped and cocked its head and seemed to smile, but the smile was really inside Harry’s head. Somehow the beast had insinuated itself so deeply into his mind that Harry not only saw its smile but also felt the vicious, gloating triumph behind it. Suddenly, an overlay of Susan’s face covered that dark, smiling muzzle like a thin veil. Her eyes were filled with unspeakable terror, and he heard her voice in his mind, “Harry, help me! Oh God, please help me! Get me out of here!”
Harry moaned, “Oh, Susan, what have they done to you?”
In the next instant, Susan was gone and the wolf lunged at him. Instinctively, Harry jumped back but was too late. The wolf should have had him but it slipped on the blood slick floor, and its fangs barely nipped the tip of Harry’s boot. The beast shook its head and snapped at the air, howling in frustrated rage.
Harry backed away slowly. “You son of a bitch!” he cried and raised the Daisy and fired. The wolf’s head exploded in a puff of blood mist and bone fragments. The howl shut off as if he’d thrown a switch.
It was too late though. It had probably been too late from the moment the car door opened, Harry thought, as he heard the answering howl of another wolf-thing somewhere in the ruins behind the building. He remembered being blinded by lightening just as the limousine door opened and then the feel of something
rushing past his hiding place. Of course, there was more than one of them. They traveled in packs, didn’t they?
A moment later, he heard the howl again, much closer. It was coming for him, and it was coming fast. Carefully, he reached out with his ka and slammed into the vision of its coming. He saw it rushing up the slime slick steps at the back of the building; saw its black pelt dirty, matted, and shiny with rain, felt its insatiable alien hunger, its insane hatred, and he knew it was coming for him.
He suddenly felt exposed and defenseless, kneeling in the light from the open car door. He glanced nervously into the darkness at the end of the hall and fumbled with the night vision goggles hanging around his neck. He started to get to his feet. He seemed to be moving in slow-motion compared to the wolf-thing closing in. Desperately, he tried to pull the goggles up over his eyes with one hand while keeping the derringer tracking across the shadowy opening to the hall with the other.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of movement. He looked down at the dead wolf lying at his feet. Its thick, black, matted wolf’s fur had turned into pasty white scales like dead fingernails while long, slow, waves rolled through its body twisting, stretching, transforming it into…
Suddenly, he heard a heavy splash and thud from beyond the darkened hallway. In his mind’s eye he saw the beast vault the hole in the floor at the entrance to the corridor and come down heavy on its haunches in the water, slipping and sliding on the slimy concrete.
Harry knew his time had run out. He stopped fumbling with the useless night goggles and moved to one side out of the light and slightly behind the car door. He squinted down the length of entrance hall. It wasn’t very long, fifteen feet, maybe less, but the light from the car petered out in a long angle of shadow that sliced across the middle of it and left the doorway at the end in darkness.
He felt rather than saw a deeper shadow move into that darkness, saw two feral yellow-green eyes blink, heard the low bloodthirsty growl just before it charged. A roiling cloud of darkness seemed to billow down the hall, rushing towards him at cyclonic speed. For a terrible moment, he felt the paralyzing fear of a small animal caught in the headlights of an oncoming long-hauler. He could hear the heavy woof, woof, woof of its breath every time its feet hit the floor. An instant later, it burst out of the hall and leapt at him. It seemed to expand, filling the whole room, its mouth a gaping maw surrounded by long, sharp, yellow fangs.
At that moment, the spell of paralysis broke. Harry whacked the car door shut with the palm of his hand, cutting off the light and dove aside. He twisted around in midair, swung the derringer up and began firing into the darkness. Two rounds exploded in bright flares against the ceiling silhouetting a black avalanche of fangs and fur rushing down at him. He kept firing as he hit the floor and smashed his head against the concrete.
Abruptly, the darkness above him blossomed red as hundreds of miniature explosions tore open the wolf’s chest and stomach. In the next instant, the beast crashed down on him. Its crushing weight drove the breath from his lungs. His finger kept pulling the trigger of the derringer even though he’d emptied all the barrels and the gun was pointing at nothing in particular.
He lay under the dead weight of the wolf’s body, drenched in its hot sticky blood. Desperately, he tried to pull the terror-shattered pieces of his mind together. After what felt like an eternity but was probably only a few seconds, he began to make sense of the world again. He realized where he was and tried to wriggle out from under the wolf’s dead weight. Suddenly, its body began twitching and jerking as nerve cells shot their last load into the darkness and dying muscles spasmed a reply.
Harry screamed. It was a high, falsetto, woman’s scream of pure terror. He thought of the other wolf-thing changing into
something else after death. He hadn’t had a chance to see it change all the way, but he’d seen enough to know what it was. He kicked out at the wolf’s body, trying to shove it as far away as possible. Then, he dug in his heels and back-peddled on his butt as fast as he could until his back slammed into the side of the grav-car. He leaned back against the side of the car with a sigh of relief.
He thought of that falsetto scream, and a classic cartoon skit suddenly began unwinding inside his head. He saw a woman jumping up on a chair, lifting her skirt, and screaming at the sight of a mouse, except he was the woman. He started giggling. The sound balanced on a knife edge between hysterical sobs and mad laughter.
That was probably why he didn’t hear the muffled sound of the approaching grav-car until it was right outside the apartment and flicked on an industrial-sized spotlight. The room was suddenly ablaze with the sharp, pitiless glare of an operating theater. The light seemed to burn through the curtain of vines and moss, leaving only faint traces of shadow on the walls. On the other hand, the limousine cast a long, solid, secure shadow. Harry hunched beside the forward grav-coil housing with his knees pulled up to his chest and waited for the next deadly cast of dice.
He didn’t have long to wait. “Harry, are you in there?” Susan called hesitantly from someplace out beyond the spotlight. “Harry, answer me,” she cried with just the right amount of fear and concern constricting her voice.
39
Caught in the Crossfire
Harry rolled over onto his knees and started to get up. “Susan?” he croaked and a big lopsided grin spread across his face. Then he looked over at the wolf that had once been Susan and was now an alien nightmare covered with dead fingernail scales and the grin faded. Instead of getting up, he ducked back behind the car, uncertain of what to do next.
“Harry, what happened in there? Please, Harry, answer me! I’m sorry I was late. Something came up…Harry, can you hear me?” she called softly.
Harry wanted to believe that this was the real Susan talking. He wanted it more than anything in the world. He wanted to be able to get up, put his lopsided grin back on, and walk out of this like walking out of a bad horror movie. He listened closely to her voice. It was Susan’s, no doubt about it, but how could he be sure it really was Susan?
He looked over at the wolf-thing lying in the pool of blood and water. Its headless body had finished transforming into the thing that had been ripped off his back and flung into the event horizon of the spin-generators at Eternal Life. It was monstrously alien and a little while ago he had been sure it was Susan.
“…Harry are you hurt?” Susan’s voice cried. “Oh god, please answer me, tell me you’re not hurt!”
He thought of the dying wolf’s parting, poisoned vision of Susan’s ka tortured and trapped somewhere and begging to be set free. The vision may have been a lie, but Harry doubted it. He thought of that vicious triumphant wolf’s smile. That smile had been no lie. “You may have killed me, it said, but look what I have, what you will never get.” No, that vicious smile of triumph had never been a lie. So where did that leave him now?
“Harry, you’re scaring me!” Susan cried. “If you don’t answer me this minute, I’ll…Ye-e-e-o-o-w-w-l-l!” Susan’s voice tore open into a terrified wolf’s howl of surprise. An instant later, the spotlight disappeared in a brilliant flash of high explosives. Harry felt the limousine rock on its grav-unit as the pressure wave of the explosion hit it. Shrapnel zinged into the apartment, pinging against the outer side of the limousine and rattling and ricocheting off the walls and ceiling of the apartment in a rain of fused plastic, metal, glass, and carbon fiber. One large flange of metal imbedded itself, like a gigantic arrowhead, in the back wall.
Harry covered his head and flattened against the side of the limo, trying his best to push his way right through its armored skin. A severed human hand still holding a machine pistol landed beside him. The stump was singed and still smoking. Outside, flames licked the night sky. He heard more explosions, men screaming, the rattle of machine guns, and the mewling beat of pulse rifles. It sounded like a full-scale war.
Someone out there had just upped the ante, and Harry decided it was time to cash in his marbles and get out while he still could. The apartment was dimly lit by flickering firelight and the occasional flash of high explosives. He pulled up the night vision goggles from around his neck and put them on…and couldn’t see a thing. He ripped them off in frustration.
Now what? The lenses gleamed wetly in the flickering firelight. They were covered with blood. For a moment, he stared uncomprehendingly. Blood? He looked down. His shirt, jacket, jeans; the whole front of his body along with the night goggles was drenched in blood. His blood? How? Then he remembered. Not his blood, wolf’s blood. When that last wolf came down on him, he’d unzipped it from crotch to collarbone with the fléchette Daisy.
Harry gave a sigh of irritated relief and tried to find a clean spot of clothing to wipe the glasses on. Outside it sounded like
the battle was heating up. Another explosion rocked the building, and a large chunk of ceiling broke off and crashed down on the roof of the limo. Harry ducked and could hear the grav-units squeal as they took up the sudden impact. He looked up through the hole that had suddenly appeared in the ceiling and saw low-lying rain clouds scudding by, limned with firelight and the flash of explosives.
That did it. He pulled the night goggles over his head, snatched the Glock from its shoulder holster, and pushed away from the car. His vision was streaked and blurry but it would have to do. He ran hunched over, heading for the door, trying to keep the limousine between himself and the sounds of battle outside. A heavy caliber machine gun stitched the wall high up near the ceiling, spraying him with chips of rotted concrete as he entered the short hallway. He heard gunfire and fighting on the roof. There was the mewling beat of a pulse rifle again followed by the tearing screech and sonic boom of an R-gun round as another explosion shook the building.
Something soft and heavy landed on the hood of the limo. He heard sharp claws scrabbling for purchase on smooth carbon fiber but didn’t bother to look back. He knew what it was. It must have come down through the new hole in the ceiling. He felt its black shadow rushing towards him and heard the heavy woof, woof, woof every time its padded paws hit concrete. The doorway loomed in front of him. One more step and…
Someone stepped into the doorway. In the split second before they ran into each other, Harry took in the pulse rifle, the necklace of human ears, and the dirty, black, Seraphim robe and reacted without thinking. Just before they crashed into each other, he grabbed the surprised Seraphim, spun him around, and shoved him back into the path of the onrushing wolf.
As Harry stumbled backwards through the doorway, he heard a growling impact, the crunch of bone, and a short gargling scream that cut off with a wet, tearing sound.
If there had been nothing but a level plain stretching out to infinity behind him, Harry probably would have kept stumbling backwards forever. Instead, after a few feet, he banged up against the corridor wall opposite the door. For a few seconds, he stood as if super-glued to the wall, unable to move, unable to turn away, unable to not see that frenzied swirl of black fur, bloody fangs, and razor claws ripping apart something that had been human moments before. The beast growled as it worried a splinter of bone that gleamed obscenely white through a spray of blood.
Harry stared at the bone splinter in dumb incomprehension. His eyes registered it and dutifully sent the message on but, for the moment at least, there was no one home to receive it. For the moment, Harry’s mind had taken a well-deserved vacation from reality and a big DO NOT DISTURB sign hung on the door.
When his mind flew south for the winter, it left the rest of his body on auto-pilot, and sometimes, auto-pilot has to be good enough. With the slow grace of a dream walker, he lifted his arm. The pistol in his fist tracked across the opposite wall and started firing on full automatic. The heavy slugs punched into rotting plaster and concrete, stitching a pockmarked line across the wall towards the doorway.
The sound of shots exploding in the narrow hallway and the feel of the gun bucking against his hand blew away the DO NOT DISTURB SIGN from Harry’s mind, and suddenly he was back in the saddle again.
Most of the slugs he had fired on autopilot had splattered harmlessly against the wall or torn into the body of the dead Seraphim. Now, the wolf threw the body aside and leapt at Harry instead. With his back to the wall, he had no choice but to stand his ground, firing wildly until the beast fell back, snapping and yipping at its wounds. As it turned and fled into the dark interior of the apartment, he emptied the clip after it.
Even after the gun clicked on empty, he kept his finger
pressed against the trigger. Finally, he got the message and let his arm drop. His ears rang with the echo of his own shots. The narrow hallway was laced with trailers of smoke and the air was thick with the smell of blood and spent gun powder. He leaned his head back against the wall and took a couple of deep, steadying breaths.
He heard the sounds of battle. They were all around him. It sounded like there was a minor war going on up on the roof. He heard the sighing whump of an incoming mortar moments before it hit, shaking the building and blowing shrapnel and debris through the waterfall hole at the end of the corridor. He wondered briefly who was fighting who. He’d seen the black wolves of the Norma-genes and he’d seen Seraphim. Could they be fighting each other? According to Chueh, they were allies, or at least trading partners. But even allies can disagree.
The Seraphim were big on demanding respect and guarding their turf. They were also paranoid fanatics. Maybe when the Norma-genes and their black wolves came down here to pick up Harry, the Seraphim took exception. If so, maybe he had a chance to slip away while they were busy cutting each other’s throats.
He popped the empty clip out of the gun butt and slapped in a new one from his jacket pocket. He racked the slide, chambering a round, and then started down the hall towards the back stairs and the picket-runner. It was his only chance of escape. According to the navigation display on his wrist phone, the picket runner was still parked where he had left it. As he slipped and splashed down the hall, he called it for a status report.
When he reached the first apartment, he hugged the opposite wall and did a slow shuffle past the empty doorway. He kept the Glock pointed straight-armed at it even though he saw nothing but firelight flickering through the curtain of foliage that hung down to the dark water pooled over the collapsed floor. Once past the open doorway, he gave the car’s status report a cursory
glance. Everything looked clear. Now, all he had to do was get past that goddamn hole in the floor and down the back stairs.
The sounds of battle seemed to be moving down the block away from him. He could hear the characteristic projectile scream and sonic boom of a rail-gun blowing big holes in a nearby building. For the moment at least, everyone seemed to have forgotten him. He was less than fifteen feet from the hole in the floor and the back stairs and thinking he just might make it when he heard a rattle of stones and the heavy thump of something dropping into the hall behind him.
He spun around with the Glock automatically tracking down the hall. In the green low-glow of his night goggles, he saw the ghostly figure of another Seraphim. He was in a crouch and still off balance after jumping down through the waterfall hole. In the split second between sighting the man and firing, Harry thought, of course, I should have known. The first Seraphim had to come from somewhere and where there’s one…
He squeezed the trigger just as a tremendous explosion rocked the front of the building and his shot went wild. For an instant, he and the Seraphim stared down their weapons at each other but neither fired. They were both listening to the high-pitched, tearing squeal of a grav-unit losing its containment field. It was going critical, and they both knew what that meant. The Seraphim started to throw himself flat on the floor while Harry lurched towards the opposite wall in a desperate attempt to get out of the way of the coming blast. Neither of them quite made it before the grav-field, expanding at trans-light speed, tore a nanosecond hole in space-time.
Harry hit the opposite wall just as the shock wave blew out of the doorways of the first and second apartment in a blinding flash of a sun gone nova. He never saw what happened to the Seraphim as the rocks blocking the last two apartments blew out into the hall like corks from a bottle. The front half of Susan’s limousine was blown through the back wall of the apartment and
crashed into the hall as the shock wave from the blast ripped Harry off the wall and threw him down the hall like a fly in a cyclone.
He slammed into the nest of broken steel and concrete surrounding the hole in the floor and was impaled on a rusty reinforcing rod. It drove deep into the back of his thigh and then immediately tore loose as a plasma fueled firestorm rushed down the hall after the shock wave and blowtorched him down through the hole. He cracked his head on a jagged concrete outcrop, his hair was on fire, and his clothes burst into flames. Just before his back hit the water, the headline, FALLING STAR GOES OUT IN A BLAZE OF GLORY, flashed crazily through his mind.