Dark Rising

FORTY-FIVE

Sam, Rocky, Adira and Zach stood together in the DNA scanner booth. Sam looked up at the ceiling towards the gas vents. None of them had brought gas masks, as they had needed to travel light. Still, it didn’t really matter that they had no masks as many of the lethal or incapacitating gases today worked on the skin as well as the respiratory system. Gas masks didn’t save your life; they just stopped you from vomiting up your lungs before you died – which, admittedly, did leave a prettier corpse.

‘At least we have a way out,’ Lagudi said, jerking his head towards the steel door they had come through. A silver button the size of a coin was fixed on the wall at about waist height.

Sam slid back one of the recessed doors in the room to reveal some clothing, dust-coated shoes and a thermos. He thought they probably belonged to one of the technicians who would wear sterile overalls to protect the hi-tech equipment. He drew the thermos out into the bright light, held it at both ends and turned it around slowly, looking at the detail on its surface.

‘Okay, this might work,’ he said. He pulled some plastic tape from a belt pouch, tore off a one-inch strip and laid it over a section of the thermos. He pressed it down, ripped it off and then held it up to the light. ‘Ever seen a fingerprint under a microscope? The ridges and troughs make the Grand Canyon look like a dip in the road. They’re rich in dirt, bacteria and oil – and in that oil… DNA.’

He crossed himself twice and stuck the tape on the flat screen.

There was a hissing sound. Zach covered his face.

Alex needed to stay out of reach of the creature’s razor-sharp claws, but get in close enough to find some sort of vital organ. His money was still on the head, and probably his life too.

Alex leapt at the creature, feinting to the left and going right. His plan was to use the wall to bounce up and at the creature’s head, which was quite a few feet above his own. His speed would have delighted the scientists back in the USSTRATCOM labs and amazed his fellow HAWCs, but in comparison to a creature that could move its attack claws fast enough to break the sound barrier, he was an easy target.

While he was still in midair, the creature turned to track him with its remaining triscopic eye. It shot out its claws, striking towards Alex’s mid-section. Alex sensed the movement before he saw it and swivelled slightly, taking the blow on the remaining ceramic plates across his chest. The laboratory-hardened material shattered and his pectoral muscles were laid bare.

There was a spray of blood and he was thrown ten feet down the corridor. Small fan-like structures waved at the end of the creature’s proboscis as it scooped at the air. The released blood and fluids must have excited it. It sped forward, probably intending to impale Alex on that hideous spike and suck him dry.

As he sensed the creature moving in for the killer blow, Alex rolled fast and came to his feet. Even his rapid metabolism would take some time to knit the chest wound, and the bleeding needed to be staunched artificially or he would lose energy. The strike and his impact on the floor had not dislodged the knife and gun in his hands, but these now seemed like a feeble armoury against a high-speed tank of an animal with two spring-loaded machetes.

In his mind, Alex could hear the creature’s squeal of triumph as it closed in for the kill. It has too many advantages. Gotta even things up a bit, he thought as he got to one knee and sighted along the pistol barrel. Too many advantages, but I’m betting you hunt primarily by vision.

Four shots came in rapid succession at a target closing faster than a human eye could follow. The remaining bulb at the top of the eyestalk exploded, but Alex only had time to move slightly to absorb the impact – he was still thrown backwards.

The scream in his head now turned to one of pain and rage. Good, he thought. He taunted the creature: ‘On Earth we say, don’t skin your deer until its caught, ugly.’

A plume of wet-looking fans and tendrils was waving frantically from the front of its head as it tried to taste Alex’s position from the surrounding air. Alex knew he couldn’t take another impact from the creature; his energy was ebbing. Last chance, he thought.

He tore the shredded para-aramid suit material from his upper body and wiped as much blood off himself as he could. The creature somehow registered where Alex was and charged. Alex threw the wadded, blood-soaked material up and to the left of the oncoming monstrosity while he leapt in the other direction. As he hoped, the claws shot out and caught the clothing. It would take at least a second for the creature to relocate him and attack again – and that was all the time he needed. In midair, Alex brought his arm down in a hammer blow that combined his full weight and all the abnormal muscle strength his frame could muster. The twelve-inch Ka-Bar blade pierced the monster’s chitinous skull with a crunching brittle sound and sank to the hilt. Alex used the momentum of his leap to keep sailing past and land several feet behind the giant arthropod.

When he turned, he knew from the creature’s spastic movements that he had found if not its brain, then at least some sort of nerve junction. The creature collided with the wall with a cracking impact. It fell onto its back and its multiple legs scrabbled in the air for a while, before it righted itself and then reared up to spit its caustic venom along the corridor.

Alex had heard that the common household cockroach could survive for a week without its head, and even then only died from dehydration and starvation. Who knew how long this thing could live? He felt for the medkit at his waist – there was no time for a full workup, but enough for a quick field repair. He knelt and squirted wound adhesive into the gaping slash across his chest, then pinched the wound together for a few seconds until he was sure it would hold, all the time keeping his eyes on the mad skittering of the giant creature.

He stood and walked to where O’Riordan’s torn body lay. The tattered uniform covered the ragged mess of dried entrails, muscle and bone beneath. Alex closed the man’s eyes; there was no time for words now.

He took some of O’Riordan’s ammunition and his long Ka-Bar knife, which he placed in his own empty scabbard. He was about to stand when he noticed a single explosive spider resting in a pouch at the fallen HAWC’s waist. Alex pulled the small metal box free and looked at the creature. It was still making mad uncoordinated movements along the corridor. He stood slowly with the box in his hand and stared down at the mess that had been one of his men. The skittering came a little closer and the creature’s claws lashed out blindly, probably in a dying reflex. Alex knew he had to get back to his team… but there was one more thing he needed to do first.

He tensed his body. ‘For Irish,’ he said, and leaped.

He landed on the monster’s back, grabbed his knife where it was embedded in the heavily armoured skull and twisted. In his other hand he held the spider up high, battling to stay on the thing’s back as it bucked beneath him. Even with a pierced brain it reacted to the attack. Alex brought more strength to the blade as he tried to turn it again – still it held. He screamed his hatred and anger and twisted with a burst of strength that caused the creature’s skull to split open a few inches along a biological seam.

‘We own this fucking planet,’ Alex said. He pressed a small button on the spider and jammed it into the crack in the skull. The small silver legs immediately sprang out of the device and grasped the edges of the break, locking it in place.

Alex jumped free and rolled twice to avoid the explosion. In the reinforced corridor, the blast was condensed and delivered up and down the passage. There was a rushing dry heat, and a mix of metal and biological shrapnel peppered his back and upper arms.

Alex got to his feet and smiled grimly. Where the creature’s head had been, there was just a sizzling crater, like a boiled egg with its top sliced off ready for consumption. A smell like cooked shellfish and sickly sweet vinegar filled the air. The body quivered for another moment and then lay still.

‘Now we’re done,’ Alex said.

He looked down at his own bleeding and battered body. There was a shard sticking out of his upper arm and he pulled it free – an inch-long piece of dark mottled shell, thick, extremely hard and slightly waxy. He rubbed it with his thumb and pushed it into his pocket.

Alex’s wounds stopped bleeding as he jogged back down the corridor. He ached all over but pushed the pain from his mind. The solid steel door loomed before him. Hope I’m not late for the party, he thought.