Dark Dragons (61 page)

His eyes returned to the chamber’s bottom in time to spot a
mutant child being birthed from a grotesque orifice on the wall of one of the
intestinal-like vessels.  Several children assisted in the birth, but it
was more like they were ripping and pulling at the newborn’s limbs, trying to
free it from the repulsive womb trying to spit it out.  Darren didn’t
think he could take anymore revulsion, and he was about to turn his head away
before he spotted one last ghastly sight he wished he had never seen.  The
Invicid had an adult woman, and several more, fleshly embedded into the side of
an intestine, but she had no limbs . . . only a bloated torso with multiple fat
breasts, her sunken eyes staring off languidly as if she were in a trance or
drugged stupor.  The slimy newborn scrambled to her and greedily began to
feed.

Darren looked up at the giant monster, curses forming in his
mind but none appeared on his tongue.

“Please God, don’t let me die in this place,” Middleton
murmured next to him.

The mouth at the front of the altar, this one much larger
than the others, began to stir.  Vega Platoon backed away, weapons coming
around.  A sickening belch burst forth, an overpowering stench of ammonia
and decay, before an enormous pink and oily tentacle spurted from the
orifice.  It landed upright on the floor and began to pulsate and conform
into a familiar shape.

The figure of a human began to take form, the tentacle
shrinking to form a small umbilical securing the being from the back of its
head to the alien mouth behind it.  The skin tightened to reveal more
detailed features: eyes, ears, fingers and toes, well pronounced muscles. 
Darren realized he was almost hyperventilating from dread. 
No . . .
please. . . .

Seconds later, Darren found himself starring flabbergasted
at who had actually morphed.

“Hey, Seymour,” Marcus Lutze said with clenched teeth. 
“I knew I could trick your ass up here.”

Shit just got real.

Towsley found himself airborne and upside down once again
before sailing through the window into the infirmary vestibule.  He landed
on a waiting room chair and struck the floor, bits of glass imbedded into his
skin.

He laughed, wiping blood from his face.  “You could
have just tossed me through the doorway you know?”

Caliban hoisted himself up onto the window sill and sat down
like a monstrous vulture perched in a tree.  The VT canister the alien had
taped to a pistol was gone.  Murder-suicide had apparently been rescinded
until later.

Towsley crawled away on his back.  A bone had snapped
just above his left wrist, and his entire arm howled.

Caliban ejected the clip from Towsley’s Beretta, cleared the
chamber, and tossed the weapon away. 
Your voice is different when it
is not sent through glass.

Incredibly, he heard the alien’s voice in his mind, and he
impulsively reached up to touch his temple.  It was as if a tiny radio had
turned on inside him.  The sound was accompanied by a soft crackling, the
voice itself rhinal, like a swarm of bees speaking English all at once. 
Towsley also recognized the change in Caliban’s syntax.  Gone was the
garbled, stereotype Indian-speak, apparently just a ruse to mask a high
intellect.  An ignorant alien was a harmless alien.

“You can understand me, can’t you?  You’ve always been
able to understand our speech.”

The alien wiggled his fingers slightly.  A sign of
amusement. 
I learned your vocabulary while eavesdropping on Dr.
Billings and his assistants during their daily visits.  He was a wonderful
pet to have.  Too bad he believed I was his.

Towsley knew he was about to suffer the same grisly death.

Have you ever read
National Geographic
, Colonel
Towsley?  Interesting magazine.  The aquatic species known as
Orcinus
orca
often tortures seals by flinging them into the air and slamming their
limp bodies into the water before inflicting the fatal bite.  Your
scientists do not know why they perform this unusual behavior.
 Caliban
landed on the floor and slowly approached. 
I think I understand, now.

Towsley wobbled to his feet and continued to back away,
helpless, heart racing.

Caliban swung, and his huge hand batted Towsley’s head to
the side, and the colonel’s body followed, up and over the nurses’ station
desk.  Again, he found himself sprawled across the floor.  That
hadn’t been a punch with a clenched fist but a hard, back-handed bitch slap,
fierce just the same.

Towsley crawled toward the door, but the alien loomed over
him before he could flee.  Caliban seized him by the ankle and dangled him
upside down like a hooked tuna.

Towsley coiled his other leg back and slammed his knee hard
into the alien’s jaw.  Caliban screeched, momentarily stunned, and
snatched Towsley’s other leg before he could kick him again.  This time,
Towsley remembered Caliban’s soft spot under his armpits akin to a human’s
solar plexus, and punched the alien as hard as he could.

Caliban gave out a horrendous squeal, almost like a
shrieking bird, and dropped him to the floor.  The alien wrapped his arms
around his sides and went to his knees.  He inhaled a huge gulp of air,
and his eyes nearly rolled back into their black sockets.  Towsley wasn’t
done.  He gathered his entire weight into one leg and kicked the creature
under the jaw.  Caliban’s head went up and his body backward.

“You’re right!” Towsley shouted.  “I think I also
understand the unusual behavior of
Orcinus
”——he kicked Caliban in the
head——“
orca
!”

Suddenly, Towsley lost touch with his soul.  It came on
fast, like boiling mud from a volcano.  He balled both fists together into
one hammer and brought them down into Caliban’s abdomen where the growing fetus
lay peaceful in its womb.  The alien reacted and kicked Towsley out the
door.  He fell on his ass and sprawled across the floor like a rag doll.

Go!
  He was up and running for the
stairwell.  “Geils!”  Behind him, he heard Caliban roar, a savage
sound, a beast in rage.  “Geils, answer me!”  He saw a single Nike
shoe at the foot of the stairwell.  Geils had already fled.

He took three steps at a time and swung the door open to
Level Two - Hangar Deck.

“Geils!”

“I’m here!” a voice called out from down the corridor near
the Response Team Quarters.  “I got lost!”

Towsley looked back into the stairwell and saw a bouncing
shadow against the wall, felt the floor trembling.  He ran to his
right.  “Geils!  Get to room A-7 and open the closet!”

“What?  Eighty-seven?”

“A-7!  Open the closet!”

Behind him, Caliban put his weight into the door, rending it
off its hinges, and slammed it against the opposite wall.

Towsley felt his senses let go as he tried to run
harder.  The child inside him screamed.  The hallway narrowed. 
Glue spread across the floor, and he couldn’t sprint faster.  He heard
Caliban hiss with every leap like a crazed Rottweiler.  Ragged pieces of
Towsley’s body would be flung from one end of the corridor to the other.

Towsley spun around the corner and stormed into the Response
Team Quarters ready room.  Giels stood outside room A-7.  He had
something in his hands.  Arm-length, black and metallic.  Geils had
found Major Forrester’s pride and joy——a SPAS12 shotgun with folding stock and
8-round magazine.

As Towsley snatched the bulky weapon out of Geils’s hands,
he pushed the kid back into the room and spun on his heels to face the enraged
demon behind him.

But Caliban had disappeared.

*

Marcus looked like he had been partly digested.  Had
the Invicid decided to eat him rather than transform him?  His
linebacker’s physique was gone, his entire body a pasty white.  He had no
hair anywhere remaining, and his eyes had sunk deep into their sockets. 
One crazy eye even wandered to the side, and his right arm had developed a
Parkinson’s twitch.  When he smiled, his teeth rolled forward.

“We didn’t think you boys took the bait,” Marcus said. 
“Until you showed up here.  Nice sneaky entrance by the way.”

He even sounded wrong, Darren thought.  His voice had a
heaviness to it.  Hollow.  Like he was broadcasting from somewhere
else, another dimension, his body only a transmitter.

“My little plan actually worked,” he said.

“And what plan would that be, Marcus?” Darren asked.

“You actually know this bloke?” Middleton asked.

“Yeah, I know him.  He’s the designated school asshole,
four years running.”

Marcus smiled, but it resembled that of a leering child
molester.  “It really came down to Vanessa’s play.”  As the result of
some twisted ability he now possessed, Vanessa’s frantic voice emerged from
Marcus’s mouth.  “‘Darren, please, they’re going to do it!’  I bet I
had you all twisted up, didn’t I?”

“Where is she?”

He did not answer the question.  “We know about your
bomb.  Our VI sensors detected its plutonium signature the moment you
entered the lower tiers.  We’ll have a battalion of crack hover knights to
deal with that soon.  Don’t concern yourself with warning your squad . . .
you may have already noticed that comms don’t work here.”

“How is it possible you’re here?” Darren asked.

Marcus smiled in a way that seemed to hurt him, and he
exhaled sharply through his nose.  “I went to your place that night . . .
to kill you . . . in your own house.  No shit.  But that’s when they
captured me.  They thought I was you.”

“Tough luck.  Should have stayed home in your cute
leather outfit and whacked off with your two boyfriends.”

Marcus’s face twitched, and Darren caught just the slightest
look of rage and a move toward him before something restrained him.  The
slimy pink umbilical attached to the back of his head pulsated.  His eyes
fluttered.

“Easy, Marcus,” Darren said.  “You don’t want to piss
off your new mommy . . . or daddy . . . or whatever it is.”

In the distance, the Invicid’s gelatinous body quivered, and
the huge legs dangling underneath wriggled with more fervor.  Darren
detected the psychic hiss in his brain heighten, making his hair stand up, and
fade back quieter once more.  The creature was agitated.

“It’s beautiful isn’t it?”  Marcus’s gaze had slid down
to the floor of the chamber and the alien version of Hell on display. 
“Shadow spawn . . . the next step in human evolution.”

“Sure,” Tony said.  “Does your daycare center use
sleepy time towels after practicing their beheading skills on their teddy
bears?  I want to make sure my child gets plenty of rest if I sign up for
the late afternoon rate.”

“You dumb bastard, you don’t even understand the absolute
brilliance of what you’re seeing.  The destiny of your children . . .
their calling.”

“Whatever, dude.”

Captain Middleton cleared his throat.  “What in the
hell is that monstrosity anyhow, and what is it doing exactly?  And most
importantly . . . why?”

“I see you have pleasant manners, too, Captain Trevor
Middleton who has two ripe kids named Jasper and Kylie living with your ex-wife
in Dorchester, so I shall tell you.  The Proscions got caught playing with
fire and got burned.”

Darren took note of this unknown label. 
Proscion
is what the Vorvons apparently called themselves.

“They thought they could experiment with interdimensional
constructs and quantum doorways, but they wound up opening a portal they wished
they had never exposed.”

Darren had been cognizant of six very large machines on the
sides of the chamber since they had entered.  They resembled radar dishes,
all of them pointing toward the center where the Invicid hung from the ceiling
like some living chandelier.  The machines continued to bellow the strange
sound they had heard earlier down in the catacombs.

“The Invicid was rather . . . proportional . . . from whence
it came, but when the Proscions accidently sucked it into our universe . . .
well . . . as you can see, our paltry four dimensions don’t exactly do it
justice.  I’d be pissed off, too, and wanting to take out my anger on
every civilization within reach.  And that’s exactly what it’s been doing
for the last five thousand years.

“So . . . for their sin and folly, the Proscions suffered
the disgrace of enslavement.  You hear that hiss in your head?  That’s
the sweet sound of slow, psychic indoctrination.  The Proscions succumbed
one by one.  The Old Race never stood a chance.”  Marcus pointed to a
spot above and behind them.  “The Invicid kept a few living trophies on
display.  For purely scientific reasons, of course.”

Everyone turned around.  Darren had not been aware of
what lay behind them since entering the Invicid’s life chamber, his heedful
attention focused solely on the horror in front of him.  Thousands of
transparent stasis cells lined the wall of the chamber in several rows behind
the altar, a quarter of them occupied.  He put his pulse rifle’s scope on
them to get a better look.

The “Vorvons” sleeping in suspended animation here had pale
skin with a powder blue sheen, not sadomasochistic-looking glossy black
leather.  They did not have hideous fangs jutting out from lipless mouths
nor bony protrusions on their shoulders or heads.  Their faces had color
and a radiance of grace.  Most noticeably, these Proscions of evolution’s
original mold had two genders.  Several of the creatures had petite
breasts and supple bodies compared to the larger, broad shouldered
specimens.  They were beautiful, alluring creatures actually . . . unlike
their current brethren who had their bodies broken and their DNA violently
shredded and altered within the bowels of a cantankerous jellyfish . . . thing.