Alien Taste (10 page)

“No,” Rennie commanded. “This was supposed to be a slash, not a grab. We don't have time to clean up the loose ends. Just strip him down, be sure to get everything, then we go.”

They pulled off his headcam and its power unit. They took his wallet and his phone, tossing them into the bushes from the sound of it. They found the tracer clipped to his jeans, ripped it free, and smashed it. He was left completely untraceable and defenseless.

“That's it,” Rennie said. “Gather the Dogs. We'll meet at the den at midnight.”

The trunk lid slammed down, entombing him.

This was supposed to be a slash, not a grab.

So he had been right. They had planned to kill him, but something had gone wrong. Something was not what they expected, but what? He searched for the reason he was still alive, for clues to keep himself alive. He recalled only a handful of unreadable looks and obscure remarks. He didn't even know why they wanted to kill him.
I'm dead,
he finally admitted to himself.
You don't get grabbed like this and survive—but at least I saved Max.

Wednesday, June 17, 2004
Unknown location

He was in the trunk for hours. There were mysterious starts and stops. Finally they drove over a rough road and stopped for good. The car doors opened and shut. The drug had worn off slightly; he could open his eyes and make a slight whimpering noise. The trunk lid was unlatched and lifted. He tried to bolt, but none of his muscles responded. He lay instead, looking helplessly up at Rennie Shaw.

The Pack leader was what Max called a Black Irish, with black hair and intense blue eyes. There was something hard and fierce about his face. His broad nose, strong chin, and sparse black eyebrows molded into something that could have been anger or hate or fear. Ukiah couldn't read him, couldn't tell what lay ahead.

It was full night and the warmth of the day was gone. By the fishy stench and soft murmur of water, one of Pittsburgh's three rivers ran close at hand. He filled his lungs with the damp air and knew it was the Monongahela. He listened hard and caught the faint rumble of roller coasters from Kennywood
Amusement Park, the happy screams of those paying to be frightened.

Behind the Pack leader stood an old warehouse. Ukiah knew the type well. It had been built when steel was king, then stood empty since the king had died. It was over five hundred feet long, essentially one endless room. Its windows were huge banks of one foot square pieces of glass, numbering in the hundreds, filthy, mostly broken.

If it was like countless other warehouses, it was surrounded by empty buildings and bordered by the river. If the drug ever wore off to the point he could scream, no one would hear him.

A woman came to stand beside Rennie. She had long black hair, dark worried eyes, and a full mouth pressed tightly shut, as if she didn't like or approve of what was about to happen.

“It's wearing off,” she said. He knew her voice. She had been the other watcher in the woods. “Should I dose him again?”

“No Hellena.” Rennie gripped Ukiah's wrist and yanked him easily up into a fireman's carry. “I want him awake. I want him scared.”

As Ukiah flopped on the large man's back, he caught a glimpse into the car's interior. Keys glittered in the ignition. A wire fence ran around the weedy parking lot, but no gate blocked the exit to a badly paved street. If he could get free, here was his way out. He forced himself to relax, to wait. Next time would be his last chance.

The Native American was waiting just inside the door. Rennie swung around toward the Native American, giving Ukiah an idea of the hugeness of the building. A circle of spotlights flooded the center, like a boxing ring, only slightly larger. The echoes
measured the darkness, bouncing back as mere ghosts of their former strength.

“Bear,” Rennie murmured quietly to the other man. “Get my shotgun from the car. You and Hellena—keep hold of your shotguns too. Make sure they're fully loaded.”

“What are you going to do with him?”

Ukiah couldn't read the inflection. Had that been a question or a challenge?

“Just fetch my gun and keep yours ready.”

Rennie carried him to the circle of lights and let him down to the floor a lot gentler than he expected. The floor was concrete, with a century of dust and pigeon droppings layering it. As Rennie rolled him onto his face, Ukiah gave a test wiggle of his arm. It moved slightly, a halfskip motion on the cold concrete. Rennie caught his wrists and snapped cold handcuffs on them.

There were others now—Ukiah could sense them in the darkness—twenty if one counted Rennie, Hellena, and Bear, moving closer. They were wary and unsettled.
There might as well be neon signs: “Bad shit going down.”

Bear appeared with two shotguns. Rennie hauled Ukiah up to his knees, tripoding him with his hands cuffed behind his back. Once he was sure Ukiah wouldn't pitch over, he took one of the shotguns. He backed up, leaving Ukiah at the center of the lights and the watching eyes.

“Coyote!” he bellowed, reminding Ukiah of a monster summoning in a B-rated movie. “Coyote! I've got Prime's son down here!”

Son?
They knew who his father was? They wanted to kill him because of his father?

Footsteps sounded from above, where a finished loft area must be hidden by the lights. Hinges
creaked. Ukiah felt instead of heard the body jumping. The presence raised the hairs on the back of his neck. With the slightest of sound, the one they called Coyote landed just inside the circle of light.

He was a tall man, corded muscle, hair short and grizzled. He stared at Ukiah with gold eyes, and Ukiah could feel the hatred like a wave of heat. In his hand Coyote held a fire ax; and plain as if he spoke, his thoughts were of hacking Ukiah's body into small pieces and feeding them to a roaring fire.

Every fiber in Ukiah's body tried to bolt. His torso jerked backward and his legs heaved him halfway up before the drug weakness sent him sprawling onto the concrete. He managed to land on his side, at least, instead of his face. Instantly he tried squirming away, but his muscles were all noodles again. Coyote shifted his hold on the ax and stalked forward. Again his thoughts were clear—on his side, Ukiah was in the perfect position for a beheading. Ukiah whimpered in fear, too scared to be ashamed of the weakness.
Dear God, don't let him near me!

There was a loud boom and the concrete between Ukiah and Coyote smoked. Behind Ukiah, Rennie chambered another shell into the shotgun. “We need to talk, Coyote.”

The man lifted his eyes briefly to Rennie. “I told you to kill him where he stood. If you don't have the heart for it, I'll do it gladly.”

“You might be wrong about this. Or you might be right. He might be what you fear. If he is, we'll do what you plan. But I think you're wrong. The Pack should decide.”

“I'm not wrong. He must be killed. There is no deciding, there is only doing.”

“We say there is,” Rennie snapped and was
immediately echoed by Bear and Hellena. A growling agreement rippled through the others as well.

Rennie is for not killing me? There's a chance?

Coyote circled Ukiah, and Rennie moved at the same time—keeping the helpless boy between them. “What is the question here? Is there any question that he's the one? Is there?'

Apparently not; the Pack remained silent. A spark of hope that had lit with Rennie's apparent mutiny was quickly dying.
They are all madmen.

“You know as well as I that Prime didn't want to make this child in the first place.” Coyote continued, his voice a deep rumble. “You know he planned to destroy it while it still was growing in its mother's womb. You know that he thought it would be killed when he blew up the ship.”

So his father was a madman too.

“I know. I know,” Rennie agreed. “But do you know what strikes me most about our Prime? He was an asshole. He panicked easily, he acted without thinking, and he never thought things the whole way through. Look at the mess he's made of us. On the one hand, here, we've got honest concern, a possible monster is in our midst and we should kill it before it spawns. On the other hand, the Pack is all that is left of Prime, and that makes us the boy's father. Prime assumed that his child would be a monster—but was he right?”

Coyote waved Rennie's argument away. “The possible dangers outweigh the chance we might be wrong.”

“What danger? He's been in this city for three years that we know of. Three years under our noses. What has he done? Nothing!”

“You offer this as proof?”

“No, I don't.” They continued to circle Ukiah
slowly as he lay sprawled in the dirt. “This I offer as proof. He knew what we came for. He read us right away, and he knew. You could feel his terror. Did he beg for mercy for himself? Did he plead for his life? No. All he cared about was the safety of his partner. You know what Hex would have done! You've seen his work from here to Oregon. There's no Ontongard in the boy. You're wrong about this child.”

“Boy! Child! You know how old he is.”

“Look at him! Just look!” Rennie cried, pointing at Ukiah with a stiff angry finger. “He's a boy, a teenager maybe, but not an adult. He's still gangly limbed and smooth-skinned. It will be years before he reaches his true height and weight. He's just a boy.
A Pack cub!
I know what Prime expected to crawl out of that girl's womb. I've had nightmares about it since I joined the Pack. But this isn't it.”

Ukiah cringed inside at the image Rennie was painting.
What are they talking about?
Just as he thought he understood them, the conversation would cant at some odd angle.

“I can't allow him to live.” That was clear enough. “He will not leave this place alive.”

“Coyote!” Hellena was equally adamant. “You harm him against our will and we'll tear you apart. We can feel his fear, and we will not let you hurt him.”

“You are my Get!”

There, the conversation tilted again.

“And there are days,” she growled in return, “I would gladly tear your throat out for that alone.”

“So you're willing to risk everything on the smell of a cub's fear?”

“First and foremost, he's Pack,” Rennie started. “We'll test him like any other new Pack member. If
he passes, he lives. If he fails, he dies. It's the way the Pack has always been.”

There was a roar of approval for this plan. Coyote growled, then nodded. “So be it. Hellena, you're best at this. You do it.”

Hellena handed her shotgun to Rennie and walked to Ukiah, sprawled helplessly on the floor. He watched her come, trying not to show the fear skittering inside. She caught him by the shoulders and righted him back onto his knees. For a moment he thought she was going to undo his handcuffs, but she left his hands locked behind his back.

Sure that he was stable, Hellena cupped his chin with her right hand, cocking his head back to look up at her.

“Take a deep breath,” she commanded, brushing his bangs out of his eyes with her left hand. Her dark eyes locked with his, her dark hair spilling forward as she looked down at him. “Again.”

Together they took a breath and released it. He felt a slight tickling on his forehead, as if a spider had landed there. He thought for a moment it might be her left hand, but it was cupping the back of his head.

“Now, this is going to hurt.”

It was all the warning he got. The tickling point became a knifepoint of pain that lanced into him. He screamed and bucked, but she held him firmly, her eyes locked on his. He couldn't shut his eyes. He couldn't look away. The knifepoint reached bottom and twisted and . . .

. . . it was late summer, the stars sharp and clear as they ran down an elk. He ran easily behind the alpha male. He had no tooth or claw to take down the buck, but he could herd it as well as . . .

. . . he was faint with hunger but the grizzly still was
at the foot of the tree. Currently it had overturned a rock bigger than his whole body, and was foraging for ants under it . . .

. . . Mom Jo gasped, her breath turning to clouds in the cold. “Oh my God, it's a boy! Jesus, he's naked.” . . .

. . . “Ukiah!” Mom Lara clearly was between anger and laughter. “Where are your clothes? It's snowing out there. Get in the house. We wear clothes outside. No, no no, you only do that in the potty” . . .

His mind was a television with a billion channels. Flip. Flip. Flip. Memory after memory. Those dark eyes locked on his were gone. The room was gone. Reality was his memories, as if he was living that moment over again. He felt the sharp pain of Crazy Joe Gary's bullet again. He burned in rage as a wolverine stole his dinner. His life went forward and back, moving at a furious rate.

He could sense the Pack, distant, watching, somehow reliving these memories with him. Vaguely he realized that the woman was searching for something, could sense in a moment that she hadn't found it and would flick away the unwanted memory, pulling up another.

. . . Cally's face appeared, framed by the window in his bedroom. She was crying and lifted up a still furry body. “Miss Pretty Lightfoot is sick!” . . .

Ukiah's heart jerked at the memory of that day. He expected to flick to the next memory, but they stayed on this one.

He rubbed at bleary eyes to focus on his sister's beloved pet. Obviously it had tried to corner around a stone wall at high speed and failed. Part of its scalp and skull had been lifted away, as if by a rough-toothed rasp. Its tongue protruded through its sharp teeth, and its eyes were dull. “Oh Cally, I'm sorry. Miss Pretty Lightfoot is dead.”

“Dead?” She looked at the rabbit, puzzled. “She has batteries? Can you get her new batteries?”

“No, no, pumpkin. Bunnies don't have batteries.” What a day to be stuck baby-sitting. Why couldn't his moms be here? Oh yes, they went to the hospital for—but the thought aborted, avoided completely. “Miss Pretty Lightfoot is like Miss Marker, your Sunday School teacher. Do you remember, she died and we buried her at church?”

Cally stared to cry. “I don't want to bury Miss Pretty Lightfoot and never see her again.”