The Parasite War (27 page)

In his worst nightmares, Alex had never imagined anything so monstrous. And though he had known of the neonate for days, he had seen it only through the colloids' projections. There had been moments when he had questioned whether he could kill the newborn creature, but now he knew that there was only one thing to do.

"Burn it!" he shouted.

The colloids did not intend to give it up so easily, however. They gushed in pinkish-gray streams across the granite, prepared to defend their hybrid child with the fierce passion of a mother's love.

Riquelme calmly stepped forward with the flamethrower. He didn't see the colloid until it was too late. It crawled up his pants leg.

He tried to shake it loose, dancing wildly as he shrieked. But more colloids were slurping toward him. His foot struck one and he slipped.

They were all over him, sucking the tissue off his bones. But Alex ran toward his friend in spite of the danger.

"No, Alex!" Riquelme screamed. "Stay back!"

Alex knew that there was nothing he could do for Riquelme, but he had to get the flamethrower. They didn't have a prayer without it.

Somehow, even while he was dying, Riquelme managed to roll onto his stomach and tear the tank's straps from his shoulders. While his very flesh was dissolving, he shoved the flamethrower toward the guerrillas.

Alex didn't stop to pick up the tank. He pointed the nozzle toward his friend's shuddering body and let fly a stream of fire that mercifully finished Riquelme off.

The colloids' inhuman wailing reverberated inside Alex's head, but he found that he enjoyed the sensation of their telepathic suffering. He watched with pleasure as the rippling gouts of colloidal tissue behind the body retreated, quivering gelatinous forms flowing toward the neonate.

And Alex knew that the colloids might escape if they could all join flesh on the gigantic baby. He knew that the neonate's skin would congeal and it would swim away toward Manhattan, where it would seek succor among the hundreds of thousands of infected lining the waterfront.

But Alex also knew that it was too soon for it to escape. The skin of the neonate's torso and upper extremities had not cohered, and the living tissue that was uncovered would dissolve in the salt water.

The colloids must have known that it was fruitless, too, but they flowed away from the flames and onto the inchoate body of the newborn monster. There were too many, though, and as the colloids swarmed up and down the neonate's gargantuan body, its shape became ever more distorted. Its chest grew unnaturally on first one side and then the other. One arm swelled to gigantic proportions, and a shoulder ballooned alarmingly.

The monster's face rippled and bulged. Its strange, vacant blue eyes showed no emotion as the volume of its body increased and shifted. Alex could not pity it; it was an abomination.

Despite the danger, the newborn began to climb awkwardly down the granite face. One of the rowboats was drawing up, and the neonate attempted to board it.

Shina aimed at the boat and shot some holes in it, along with the man rowing it. The guerrillas opened fire on the half dozen other boats manned by third-stage infected, making short work of them all. The third-stage infected swimmers were shot, too.

But there were still hundreds of colloids swarming over the island. Now Alex sensed that the aliens knew there was no escape for them. The best they could do was save their creation. Once again, they rushed the guerrillas.

Alex let them have it with the flamethrower, watching with satisfaction as black smoke poured out of their boiling remains. He swept the flame across the other colloids, their horrid cries echoing inside his skull like the wailing of damned souls. They backed away from him, but there was nowhere for them to go—the neonate could not stand any more weight on its newly formed bones, they could not go into the water, and the finite space of the island afforded them no place to hide.

Alex advanced slowly, sweeping fire from one side to the other, making sure that he cooked every last one of the colloids. When he was through, the island was completely cloaked in fetid smoke. What had been living creatures were nothing more than bubbling pools of black ooze.

They were all dead, all except for the horror they had spawned here on Liberty Island.

Alex turned the flamethrower toward the neonate. It stared back at him without understanding. It seemed to know nothing, as if the colloids had not given it a mind. Perhaps it was only that, like its creators, it did not possess emotions that corresponded to those of humans.

Alex didn't care. The monster had to die. He pointed the flamethrower at it. He squeezed the trigger.

"Nighty-night, snookums," he said.

Nothing happened.

Shaking the flamethrower, he tried to fire it again. Again, nothing happened. The battery would no longer strike a spark.

"No!" he screamed.

The colloids, squirming on the limbs of the neonate, were pleased. Flesh and bone displaced itself, writhing in relief at this unexpected turn of events.

"Jesus Christ!" Alex howled. "How could we come this far and have this happen?"

"It's all right," Shina shouted to him. "We'll just shoot the fucking thing."

"No, we can't kill it that way," said Jo. "And once its skin coheres, the water won't be able to stop it, either."

The neonate, who had been staring at Alex from eye level, began to climb back up onto the granite. It clambered awkwardly over the guard rail and stood towering over them.

Alex could see skin forming over the featureless crotch, slowly working its way up. The human hands of the third-stage infected could no longer shape the flesh, and so the monster would never be the perfect prototype that the colloids had wanted, but it was still alive.

It reeled toward them through the drifting smoke. The last few guerrillas had no choice but to fall back. Alex stood there cursing at the monster, but Jo and Shina tugged at his arms, pulled him away from danger.

"Back to the boat," Jo said. "It can't get off the island yet. Maybe we can think of some way to stop it."

As they backed away, Alex took one last look at the hated travesty of humanity. Its transforming features seemed to smirk at him, as if it somehow understood that its assailants had failed. But perhaps it was only the wriggling, unformed flesh that made it seem to express so human an emotion.

They retreated onto the decaying planks of the pier and boarded the fireboat once again.

"The kids," Alex said as soon as they hit the deck. "They were in the pilothouse." He climbed up and flung open the pilothouse hatch. There, sitting in a corner with Jack's head on her lap, was Ronnie.

"He hit his head when we crashed," Ronnie said. She wiped at a bloody cut on Jack's forehead.

"I'm all right," Jack said weakly.

"They're all dead," Alex said. "The only thing living on the island now is the neonate."

"Why didn't you kill it?" Jack asked.

"Because bullets don't seem to do the job, and the goddamn flamethrower's out of whack."

"What about that can Dick Philips was carrying?" Ronnie asked. "Wasn't there something in those?"

"Can?"

"Yeah, shaped like the gas tank on my Harley, only with bumps on each end."

"Of course! A napalm canister!" Alex was on his way out of the pilothouse as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He leaped down to the deck and fell on his ass, but got up and started looking for the canister.

Had Dick Philips carried it onto the island? Alex glanced at the piles of bodies and the black, smoking remains of the colloids—and saw nothing that looked like a canister of napalm B.

At that moment the neonate lurched around the side of the statue's pedestal, making a loud, strangled cry as it stumbled toward the fireboat. Its sudden appearance was bad enough, but as Alex looked into its face he saw something that had not been there before.

The colloids had activated all the centers of its semi-human brain now, and their intelligence shone in the monster's blue eyes. The neonate would soon receive and absorb the telepathic knowledge of millions, perhaps billions of colloids.

But not yet. It was still transmogrifying, shapeshifting before Alex's very eyes as it reeled drunkenly about the island, making its clumsy way toward the fireboat.

Where was that canister? Alex dashed around the deck, the surviving guerrillas staring at him. Only Jo knew what he was doing.

"The napalm!" she cried. "Does anybody know what happened to it?"

Polly pointed toward the neonate. Alex stopped and looked, seeing the monster crush corpses beneath its dripping feet. There, directly in its path, was a metal canister.

The slimy death's-head face of the neonate showed a glimmer of understanding. It looked down at the canister, hesitating for just a few seconds.

Alex leaped onto the pier, feeling the wood giving way under his bootheels. He scrambled for shore as the beams collapsed. The rotting wood tumbled into the frothy salt water, but he was a step ahead of the collapsing pier.

Now he was sprinting toward the canister, the neonate jerkily moving toward him. Its huge strides should have got it there first, but Alex's more practiced movements evened up the race. In a dead heat, the gap shortened to thirty, twenty-five, twenty yards. The guerrillas shouted encouragement somewhere far behind him.

The neonate, hunched and horribly determined, stretched its oozing fingers toward the canister as it came within ten yards of its goal. But Alex was close now, so close that he feared that man and monster would reach their mutual destination at the same instant. The madness welled up in him, threatening to blow him apart if he didn't get there first.

He dived and rolled the last twelve feet, and came up like a fullback in the end zone. Holding the heavy canister, he scrabbled to his feet and tried to run, but something held him back.

The monster had him, one of its gigantic, oozing hands on his shoulder and the other closing around his waist. Alex struggled, but he could not free himself. The neonate lifted him high into the air, as easily as if Alex were the newborn and it the adult.

No matter how much he squirmed and kicked, Alex was powerless in its awesome grip. It held him in one hand and lifted him up to its eye level. Its crawling features split in a demonic grin, long sticky strands stretching across its spade-like teeth, as it expressed the delight of all the colloids feeding its awakening brain. Their nemesis was in their grasp, literally.

Alex had only one option. He must drop the canister and immolate both the neonate and himself. He had no desire to become a martyr, but it was the only way. Surely it would be quicker than what was in store for him otherwise. If the detonator worked, the canister of napalm B—magnesium casing and all—would go up, consuming him and the monster almost instantly.

A loud pop sounded over the creature's gurgling voice, as its head whipped back. For a moment Alex thought that he had dropped the canister.

But now he saw that the monster's right eye had been shot out. Viscous, black glop issued from the socket as it howled in anguish. Alex could see its vocal chords working, like the strings of a violin. Its fingers convulsed, almost crushing him, and then relaxed.

Alex fell to the hard granite, his body cushioning the canister. In spite of the mania, he was overcome with pain. He felt as if his back were broken, and he didn't seem to be able to move his legs. He stared straight up into the face of the wailing monster. Its huge hands covered its empty eye socket as it howled like a hurricane. It scooped up the black goo running from its exploded eyeball and stuffed it back into the socket.

As Alex watched, the eye began to reshape itself.

Dazed, he felt hands on him again. But these were not the neonate's; they were human hands. They helped him to his feet, and he saw that they belonged to Jo.

"Hurry, Alex," she said, "inside the statue."

He was barely able to walk, but with Jo's help he began to limp toward the immense pedestal. The monster, preoccupied with restoring its damaged eye, did not follow them. It didn't even seem to notice that they were gone.

A metal door at the base of the statue was ajar. Jo guided Alex toward it, and they somehow made it inside.

"Gotta close it," Jo said.

Still holding the canister, Alex put his shoulder against it, and so did Jo. The rusted door didn't budge at first, but then it groaned and moved a fraction of an inch.

The monster cackled triumphantly, its eye completely healed. It cast about, looking for Jo and Alex. Instead, it saw Stubbs, who had just climbed up onto the pier.

Stubbs glanced at the monster fearfully, and turned to try to get to the fireboat. But the demolished pier seemed too much for him, and he hesitated. At that moment the neonate lurched and stretched out a hand, scooping him up like a steam shovel.

Stubbs screamed and kicked, but the monster held him fast. Then, as casually as a child might pluck the petals of a daisy, it pulled off his right arm. Wailing as the blood sprayed out of the empty socket, Stubbs flailed with his left arm. But the neonate caught that one, too, and jerked it off with ease.

"Jesus Christ!" Alex said as he strained at the sheet metal door.

The neonate tired of Stubbs's pathetic cries, and, grasping him by the torso, wrenched him in two. Casting down the bloody halves, it turned its attention back to the search for Alex and Jo. As they nudged the door an inch or two further, the sound attracted it, and it turned toward them.

Letting out a terrifying roar, it advanced. Alex and Jo redoubled their efforts to shut the door, but the salt air had done a good job of locking it in place. Still, they moved it by increments as the creature stalked steadily toward the Statue of Liberty. The sweat stood on Alex's brow as he strained. But the monster was looming larger and larger through the opening. With a tremendous effort, they closed it a few more inches. But it was still far from shut.

The neonate was at the door now. It pounded on the metal, each blow slamming the door back with a resounding clang. Its free hand reached inside, dripping sausage fingers groping for them.