Shadow Box, page 17
“Whatever,” she answered, leaping past the falling figure and clambering inside the Sandcat as bullets from the heavy machine guns streaked past overhead.
Within, Brigid headed for the machine gunner’s installation. Inside, it looked to Brigid that the Sandcat had been rebuilt. Whole panels were missing, and there were a number of rusty welding spots across the bare metal floor, the upholstery stripped away.
The gunner in the dome was screaming. “I can’t see, man, I can’t see. My eyes are freakin’ burnin’,” he howled.
Raising her TP-9 once more, Brigid put the man out of his misery. “Didn’t even see what hit him,” Brigid muttered as she activated her Commtact. “Kane,” she called as the Commtact came to life, “I’ve secured the Sandcat, but I’m going to need someone to operate the top gun.”
“Little busy,” Kane’s reply came back, his voice breathless.
BACK AT THE DESERT settlement, Kane was scrambling away as a quad rider and a motorcyclist barreled toward him along the sandy thoroughfare. As the biker blasted bullets from a Ruger single-action revolver, Kane ducked between two of the remaining shacks. The bullets drilled into the wall behind him, and the biker skidded to a halt, glancing down the tight passageway that separated the shacks. Kane wasn’t there.
As the quad rider pulled his vehicle to a halt, churning up the sand, Kane reappeared on the roof, spraying his attackers with bullets from his Sin Eater before they even had time to react. “Turkey shoot,” he muttered, holding the trigger down until he was sure both men were dead.
Nearby, Domi and Decard caught another biker in their cross fire, while beams from the Incarnates’ weapons shunted the attacking riders from their saddles.
It was all over in less than three minutes. The brigands had been ill-prepared for a trained military force led by Magistrate minds.
As they were mopping up the final stragglers, Kane spotted the low-slung form of the Sandcat approaching them. Still woozy from being knocked senseless, Smarts gasped when he saw the wag approaching, wondering for a moment if it might be his salvation. That was until the driver’s door opened, and Brigid’s red mop of hair poked out.
“I have a corpse in back,” she said, sighing, “if there’s a gentleman among you who might care to give me a hand.”
Decard and one of the Incarnates made their way over to the large, blocky vehicle while Brigid sat sideways in the driver’s seat, her booted feet resting on the sand.
Just then, there was a familiar vibration in Kane’s skull, and he activated his Commtact. “Kane here, go ahead.”
Brewster Philboyd’s voice responded. “Kane, I think I’ve found your bogey. Still underground, traveling west-southwest at a leisurely pace. I guess the tunneling slows it down.”
“Yeah,” Kane agreed, his mind thinking fast. “West-southwest…? How close would this be to Grant’s current location, Brewster?”
“Less than a mile,” Brewster replied. “It’s pretty much on a collision course. What’s out there?”
“Hidden base, I think,” Kane told him. “Tell me when it gets to a quarter mile, or if it veers off. We’re on our way.”
Concluding the communication, Kane turned to Decard as the young ex-Mag carried the gunner’s corpse from the Sandcat. “Decard, we’re moving out,” Kane told him.
“We or you?” Decard asked, indicating his Incarnates.
“I’ve got a partner to protect,” Kane told him, “and I think we have a lead on the creature. Your crew has taken a lot of hits today, shown bravery in the face of danger. I think it’s time you took them back home.”
Decard looked about to object, but he stopped himself at Kane’s unflinching gaze. “Thanks for coming out here, Kane, you and your people. We’ll stay on here for a few hours, tend to the wounded, see how the infection plays out in the locals. I’ll report in to Cerberus as soon as I can.”
Kane held his hand out to the man. “You’re doing a good job out here, Decard,” Kane assured him. “I’m proud to have been a part of it.”
Domi walked past, preceded by Smarts, her Detonics Combat Master pointing at the latter’s back. “Been good seeing you, Decard,” she said as she shoved Smarts through one of the Sandcat’s open doors.
“You, too,” he agreed.
A moment later, Kane hopped into the Sandcat beside Brigid, pulling the door closed behind him. Brigid fed power to the engine and the Sandcat began a long, slow turn before heading off into the west where the sun was beginning to sink.
As the Sandcat drove away, Decard held his fist to his chest in salute, watching the Cerberus warriors depart.
Chapter 13
With a trickle of blood running from his scalp, brigand leader Tom Carnack gazed at his adversary in astonishment as Grant sighted down the length of the Colt revolver at one of the three tall tubes of bubbling liquid.
“Are you insane? You have to realize that you’re outnumbered,” Carnack said after a moment, a little of the old cockiness returning to his voice. “There’s no chance of you getting out of here alive if you do something stupid now.”
From his position of concealment beneath the worktable, Grant’s dark eyes flicked to Carnack for a moment before returning to the bubbling tubes. “Let me worry about that,” he instructed. “What’s in the tubes?”
“Nothing important,” Carnack lied.
“So if I put a hole in them, it won’t matter, right?” Grant prompted.
“Okay, man, okay,” Carnack said in pacification. “Let’s not do anything rash here.”
“What?” Grant asked. “Is it explosive?”
“No,” Carnack replied, sounding a little downcast now. “Just…”
“Just what?” Grant urged.
“Irreplaceable.” Carnack bit at the word.
“I’ll go out on a limb and say these are cloning tanks,” Grant stated, looking them up and down. “Nutrient baths. You’ve got yourselves a portable womb here. Am I close?”
Carnack sneered, irritation sweeping over him now as his head recovered from the recent trauma it had suffered. “This stuff is priceless, you half-wit.”
“This is the little project you were telling us about back in Hope,” Grant concluded. “The baron kindergarten.”
“Why don’t you put the gun down, and we’ll figure ourselves some way that we can all get out of this intact,” Carnack suggested, taking a step toward Grant.
From the corner of his eye, Grant saw another brigand enter the open laboratory area, sneaking in with the obvious intention of flushing him out.
Grant squeezed the trigger of the Colt Anaconda once, feeling the recoil as the large-bore bullet blasted from the chamber.
Carnack ducked instinctively as the bullet raced past him, over his head, before it smashed into one of the bubbling tubes, spilling splinters of glass and greenish liquid all over the floor. Carnack looked behind him, then back at Grant, horrified.
“Gun pulls a little to the right,” Grant told him. “Now, you tell your boy there to back the hell off before I shoot another hole in your precious stock.”
Carnack turned and instructed the sneaking brigand with a quick, hushed phrase. Grant watched as the man stepped backward, anger on his features, leaving him alone with Carnack in the laboratory area along with the unconscious form of Rosalia.
“You said that you haven’t cracked the birthing process yet,” Grant stated calmly. “That changed since I last saw you?”
Carnack shook his head. “No.”
“And how much of this genetic material do you have left to experiment with?”
“Once we get it right, as much as we want,” Carnack assured him. “We can just pluck it right out of the ugly little bastards.”
“What about right now?” Grant asked.
Carnack looked shiftily around. “What you see here, man, two canisters of the goo and two nutrient stacks. Was three until you went cowboy. Whitecoats already got through five of them,” he added. “But this’ll be enough—just got to find the right, bloody expertise.”
“DNA experts are hard to find,” Grant lamented. “Especially outside of ville walls.”
“Tell me about it.” Carnack nodded thoughtfully, smearing back the trickle of blood from the side of his face. “Didn’t your lady friend, the pretty redhead, say she was a gene scientist?” he remembered.
“Why? You thinking of cutting a deal?”
Carnack looked at Grant as the Cerberus warrior crouched beneath the worktable, the gun in his hand leveled at this most precious of treasures, and he seemed apologetic. “I think we got off on the wrong foot,” he said. “There’s a ton of money to be made from this little enterprise if we just pool our talents. You with that lanky geneticist woman, me with the gunk she needs to work with. What say you, Grant, my boy?”
“A partnership?” Grant asked.
Carnack held his open hand in Grant’s direction. “Yeah, that’ll work. We break this DNA sequencing code and, well, there’ll be plenty of riches to go round, eh?”
Grant edged warily out of his hiding place and stood before Carnack, eyeing the brigands who stood all around, just beyond the perimeter of the lab itself. “Yeah,” he said, taking Carnack’s extended hand in his left.
Grant pulled the brigand leader close, aware that this was the only shield he had, out here in the open, under the scrutiny of the other bandits in the cavern. The deal would go sour, he knew; it was simply a way for Carnack to keep his little project—and himself—alive until he could stab Grant and his crew in the back.
“We have to get up aboveground so I can radio my friends,” Grant said to Carnack.
Carnack looked at Grant for a moment, weighing his options, before he nodded and led the way up the tunnel.
RACING ACROSS the desert in the Sandcat, Kane watched the horizon as Brigid Baptiste spun the steering wheel, pulling around a clump of towering cacti.
“Come in, Grant. You’re about to have some company,” Kane said into his Commtact, “of the big, black-skinned and mean-spirited variety.”
“Got me a monster coming to crash my party?” Grant asked over the Commtact.
“Brewster managed to tag the thing, and he tells me it’s headed in your direction,” Kane explained. “ETA—two minutes.”
“That close?” Grant said, clearly astonished.
“We’ll be there as soon as we can,” Kane reassured his partner. “We’ve got your coordinates, and Brewster will guide us to your exact location.”
“There’s a hidden entrance,” Grant replied thoughtfully. “Tiny little rabbit hole. If you’re not careful, you’ll walk straight past it.”
“We’re in a Sandcat,” Kane explained. “How small is this rabbit hole?”
GRANT SNAPPED his fingers to get Carnack’s attention. “Carnack? What other entrances are there to this place? Can we get a Sandcat in here?”
Carnack looked annoyed. “You what?” he said. “Partnership or no, do you honestly think I’m going to just let your friends drive in here armed to the effing teeth and steal my gear?”
“Now,” Grant told him steadily, “new agenda, and it’s called survival. We have got something very big and very mean and a damn sight more alien than I want to get into right now heading this way. You and your men are in trouble like you would not believe unless you wise the hell up.”
Rosalia’s voice came from behind Grant’s shoulder, and he spun to train the gun on her, holding both of the brigands in its sights. “He’s right, Tom,” she said firmly. “I saw it.”
“Welcome to the party,” Grant said quietly. “Been awake long?”
“I heard what you said about that creature coming here,” she replied. “I hate to admit it, but you and your Magistrate friends may be our only hope of surviving.”
Carnack looked at her, an unspoken query in his expression, and Rosalia nodded solemnly, long lashes closing over her eyes in resignation.
“It’s like nothing you can imagine, Tom,” she said. “A force of nature, an engine of destruction. Anger taken form and substance.”
“ETA—one minute.” Kane’s voice updated his friend.
“Time to do or die,” Grant told them.
“I’ll have you shot for what you’ve brought here,” Carnack barked at Grant.
“Yeah,” Grant agreed, “but do it after I’ve saved your butt.”
“Deal,” Carnack replied before turning to issue orders to his men.
WITH THE SUN sinking toward the western horizon, Decard stood beside the tunnel entrance that the monster had created at the edge of the little desert hamlet, his lengthening shadow stretching out behind him, across the blood-soaked sand. The tunnel was caving in on itself now, and this evidence would soon disappear as the sands were shifted by the restless desert winds.
The youthful ex-Mag looked up at a noise from the main street and, as he watched, Keb the field medic walked out of one of the three standing shacks left in the wake of the brigands’ attack, his head held low in disappointment.
“What happened?” Decard asked, walking across to speak with the physician.
Keb gestured behind him, not bothering to turn. “Died,” was all he said.
The shack that Keb had exited held the remaining settlers, Decard knew. “What? All of them?” he asked.
Keb nodded. “The woman held on for a while, drooling, not making any sense,” he said. “She was as strong as I’ve ever seen, fighting against this thing as it took her over, used her up. A hardy farming woman. But there wasn’t anything I could do there, not in the end.”
“Where does that leave us with Isha?” Decard asked, referring to the infected Incarnate who had worn the crocodile mask.
Keb looked at him as they stood in the open street amid the wreckage of motorcycles and quad bikes. “He’s got perhaps two hours,” Keb admitted darkly. “Unless we…quicken it for him.”
Decard looked away, the phrase echoing through his mind as he watched the wisps of cloud float languidly overhead. Finally, irritation marring his features, Decard turned back to Keb. “And there’s nothing else we can do?” he demanded.
“If there’s a cure to this thing,” Keb proposed solemnly, “I’m not going to find it in the next two hours. Not under these conditions.”
Decard nodded, taking in the information and hating every word.
Keb spoke quietly, not looking Decard in the eye. “I don’t like to see a friend suffer.”
“Me either,” Decard agreed, flinching his wrist tendons to bring the Sin Eater pistol back into his hand. He stood outside the shack that held his loyal Incarnate, looking at the pistol in his hand for a long time.
“It can run its course,” Keb reminded him as he stood at his elbow, “if you prefer.”
Decard shook his head, pushing open the door to the shack. “If it comes for me, attaches itself to my brain, my body, I want you to do the same,” he said. Then he instructed the Incarnate guards to depart, leaving him alone with the altered warrior strapped to the bed.
CARNACK HAD LED Grant to the shadowy section of the cavern, farther than the hanging lightbulbs reached. Grant followed, strapping on his Sin Eater and the wrist holster once more, after Rosalia had handed them back to him in preparation for the forthcoming battle. Standing beside Carnack, Grant peered into the darkness and saw metal highlights glinting from several vehicles that were stored in the shadows.
“It’s a little hangar,” Carnack explained, “just land vehicles. The Sandcat can come in through the entrance there.” He pointed.
Grant could see a winding tunnel that disappeared around a sharp bend. “What’s it look like outside?” he asked.
“Camo netting. You’d never see it.” Carnack smiled. “But my guys will open it up,” he added, instructing two of the brigands to do just that.
Even as he spoke, one of the cavern walls, just eight feet from where he stood with the brigand leader, crumbled inward as a mighty black claw smashed through it. As the talons burst through the wall, the brigands took aim and began unleashing a wealth of gunfire at the intruder, Rosalia among them, armed with a little 15-round pistol—a Smith & Wesson Sigma. She had found herself something larger, too, Grant observed, a compact submachine gun based on the old Heckler & Koch MP-5 K design. The submachine gun was shoved into her waistband, its abbreviated nose creating a square lump along her hip, bulging beneath the silk pants.
With a loud crash, the rock wall fell in and the hideous monster stood there as the wreckage of the wall showered the ground. The gauzelike material that had covered the creature before appeared to have been sloughed off, and Grant watched as the hideous thing surveyed the cavern, ignoring the bullets that slapped against its coal-black carapace. The green smoke continued to billow from its eyes, and Grant wondered how such a creature could see. How would it see?
Head low, the creature stepped tentatively into the cavern, a stream of bullets smacking off its armorlike body. And then, like a flash of lightning, it was in motion, its speed uncanny on those strange, reversed knees, a hand covered in bony protrusions snapping out and grabbing one of the brigands by his head, picking him up like a doll.
Grant held his fire, watching the magnificent creature move, seeing those strange, ashlike flecks pouring from its body with each motion.
INSIDE THE SANDCAT, Kane, Brigid, Domi and their prisoner, Señor Smarts, were still over a minute from Grant’s location. As Brigid pumped the accelerator, urging more speed from the heavy wag, Smarts raged at Kane from the seating behind him. “Am I to understand that we are to go into the belly of the beast? You are crazy, Señor Kane,” he cried.
Kane glanced back at the tied man sitting in back of the wag. “My partner’s in there,” he said, “and so are yours.”
Smarts nodded his acknowledgment, looking annoyed. “I do not like to do this,” he said. “I have seen this monstrosity in action once. I have no desire to do so again.”
