Species (13 page)

“Let’s go.” Press took Laura’s arm, then both he and Laura recoiled as the face squashed itself against the glass again and then shrieked, a circular mouth ringed with pointed teeth clicking savagely against its enclosure. Before they could react, there was a blur of motion from the box’s interior and something—a spike-studded tail vaguely reminiscent of the shape that had bulged from under the sleeping Sil’s sheet—snapped forward and hit the glass with a hefty-sounding
click!
Press and Laura stood, frozen, as it happened again—
click!

Jolted into motion, the two flung themselves backward as a spiked tail struck at the glass a third time. This time the box shattered under the force, and Laura screamed as the life-form, a grotesque shape similar to a bat with tentacles and a barbed tail, catapulted from the enclosure and straight at Press. He threw himself to the side and into Laura as the creature sailed over his shoulder. “Come on!” he shouted as the bat-thing fell. It struck the concrete floor tiles with a sound like an oversized rattlesnake’s tail and quickly righted itself; hissing, it sped under a wooden table at the rear of the isolation chamber.

Bubble lights at ceiling height in each corner of the chamber began to pulse red in time to an onslaught of earsplitting sirens. Fitch’s words came clearly over the speaker despite the noise, sounding professional and far too cold.

“I’ve hit the automatic clock,”
his disembodied voice said.
“You have two minutes to destroy it. If you can’t accomplish that task within that time frame, I’ll have to burn the room.”

Laura gasped and Press spun and glared at Fitch through the window. Affixed to the wall just below the video camera was a digital clock already descending from 2:00.
“What!”

“I’ll have to burn the room,”
Fitch repeated. Through the clear quartz glass, his expression was utterly bland, while Stephen and Dan were gaping at him with slack-mouthed dismay.
“You’ve got less than two minutes to kill the creature.”

“Bull
shit!”
Press stalked to the door, Laura on his heels, her gaze flicking around the chamber. “Open this door, damn you!”

“I can’t do that. It might escape. I have to follow protocol.”

“What fucking protocol?” Press roared. He hauled vainly on the door handle. “Open the door, Fitch!”

“The protocols by which these experiments are run.”

Fitch sounded absurdly patient and Press wanted to scream; more than that, he wanted to wrap his hands around the older man’s neck and see if he could twine his fingers together like he was praying.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell us that before you suggested we go in here and replace the camera?” Laura demanded through the window. “What were you thinking, anyway?”

“I think you should let them out.”
Although they could see him clearly, Dan’s voice sounded tinny and faraway, as if he’d been pushed off to the side.
“Please, Dr. Fitch—”

Fitch’s words cut him off.
“There’s nothing I can do now. You’re wasting valuable time.”
At the end of the word
time,
Press heard a scurrying sound from under the table. Laura pulled him farther away from it.

“I’m scared,” Dan said shakily.

“There are two incineration lines running to the isolation box.”
The lab worker’s frantic voice came over the speaker, overriding all other sound from the control room.
“Green is oxygen, red is gas. Disconnect the red one and try to use it as a flamethrower. You’ll get gas through it as long as you keep a finger pushing on the safety valve at the end of the piping. Hurry—you’ve only got a minute and forty seconds!”

“Fitch, you son of a bitch,” Press growled at the camera. He sprang to the box and ripped the red connection free as Laura opened the valve. Gas hissed and Press dug in his pocket and came up with a Bic lighter; he thumbed the strike wheel and a small jet of flame shot from the line. He and Laura whirled, but the life-form was nowhere to be seen. “Where the hell’d it go? Here—” He tossed Laura the lighter. “Hang on to this.” He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled forward, trying to keep the flame directed away from him. A faint hiss came from his right, then another, much louder than the sound the gas made spilling from the open line. Press scuttled backward as he saw the creature fastened to the inside of one of the table legs; at the sight of Press, it scooted along the underside, going as far back as it could.

“Don’t let it eat anything,” Laura said urgently. “It might not be all the way through its growing phase—we mustn’t let it get any bigger before we can get out!”

Revolted, Press peered under the table. The life-form was there, in the shadows at the far rear. Wood splintered and Press saw with horror that it had appendages resembling arms and was ripping away at the bottom of the tabletop. Then it got worse, as the thing’s back split, revealing another circular tooth-filled mouth. Like obscenely blooming flowers, two smaller openings unfolded on either side and the creature began voraciously stuffing the pieces of broken wood into the three openings.

Press didn’t hesitate. He aimed the flaming end of the gas line at the creature and thrust it forward, stretching as far under the tabletop as he could without actually crawling beneath it and trapping himself. The small jet of flame barely licked at the thing, and it screeched and scampered away. As Press scrambled out from under the table his gaze skipped to the LED display of the clock: 1:15 . . . and passing far too quickly.

Press yanked the table recklessly aside, but their creation was gone. “Fitch, you bastard, open the fucking
door!”

There was a pause, then Fitch’s voice came over the speaker a final time.

“I’m sorry, Press, Laura. I simply can’t do that.”

“P
lease,
Dr. Fitch,” Dan pleaded. “Look at them in there—you can’t just burn them up!”

“It’s out of my hands, unfortunately. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t like.”

“Like annihilate a couple of people innocently following your instructions?” Stephen asked furiously. “You sick bastard, you’d do it and stand here and
watch
? Where’s the damned button for the door?
I’ll
open it. You can say I forced you—”

A scream from the intercom made them all suck in their breath. The window showed a view of most of the room and they could see the life-form, now nearly two feet long, clinging to the front of Laura’s dress at thigh level, the rims of its mouths pulsing as it clawed its vaguely tadpole-shaped body upward with newly developed pincers. Press vaulted over the upended table and wrapped a hand around its tail without faltering, slipping his fingers neatly between the razor-edged tips and its main body. He wrenched it off Laura and rolled with it, hollering as the thing’s claws and mouths snapped viciously at his face and the spiny tail whipped in every direction.

Every time Press managed to push it off, it came back, each time a little stronger; he’d dropped the gas line when the creature had gone for Laura, and now she picked up the line and used the Bic to relight it. Forcing the safety valve down, she tried to track the erratic path Press and the life-form made around the room in a vain attempt to burn it without charring Press in the process. Hissing fiercely, the thing went for him again; bellowing, Press finally got another decent hold on the tail and flung it as hard as he could across the room. On the screen, the three men in the observation room saw a fish-eye view of Press and Laura’s predicament as the creature skidded across the concrete floor and hit the wall, stunned. When the couple sought the clock on the wall, they seemed to be staring beseechingly straight into the main camera. Then the alien squirmed across the floor again, and both Press and Laura leaped out of its path as it inflated something around its neck—a flesh sac of some kind. The sudden pouch made it appear four times its original size.

Nine seconds to go.

“Get out of my way, Fitch,” growled Stephen. He stepped toward the console, then stopped short when Fitch pulled a pistol from his pocket and aimed it at him. Stephen found himself looking down the barrel of a small, stainless-steel AMT .45 Backup. Only about six inches long, it was formidable enough to make him freeze. On the other side of the window Press used the end of the extinguished gas line to stab suddenly at the life-form. With only a few feet between it and them, the rigid metal tube sank deep into the inflated pouch, popping it with a sound like a dud firecracker. The creature howled in pain and backed up half the width of the room, then began to advance again, spitting and clicking its teeth.

“Stay there, Arden.” Fitch’s face clearly finished the sentence:
Or I’ll shoot.
A single bead of sweat made a crooked path down the doctor’s left temple.

Six. Five—

Dan looked around wildly. So many buttons on the console! Which one opened the door? Professor Arden knew, but Dr. Fitch wouldn’t let him do anything. Paralyzed with indecision, he saw the LED display drop to four, then three. He was horrified when the older man moved his free hand to a position over a bright red button. That button could only be one thing—death for Press and Dr. Baker—but Dr. Fitch was carefully watching both the screen and Professor Arden. Michelle Purdue stood to the side with the dazed grimace of a woman in shock.

Two . . .

“No—you shouldn’t!” Dan slammed into the older man just as his hand was descending. His larger size gave him an advantage and the two men bounced off the console and crashed to the floor; the doctor’s .45 went spinning harmlessly across the floor, well out of reach. Still, the smaller man must have had some kind of martial-arts training in his past; he freed himself from Dan’s clumsy grip easily and tried to scramble across the floor, headed back to the console and the incineration button.

He made it to the edge of the table and got a hand at table height before Dan charged him again, this time using all his weight in a simple wrestler’s body drop that successfully pinned the man to the floor. With Dan’s second rush, Stephen sprang to the console and found the switch that released the door to the isolation chamber. He flipped it and the door slid open.

“Come on!” Stephen screamed into the microphone on the console.
“Get out of there!”

Press and Laura tumbled through the doorway and Stephen hit the switch again. The door closed, and above the harsh sound of Press and Laura breathing, they all heard a muffled thump as the life-form collided with the other side of the fireproof steel door.

“Enough of this shit,” Press snarled. He stepped over Dan and Fitch and swatted the incineration button; for a second nothing happened, then the views through the window and on the monitor went an eye-blistering orange red as the interior of the isolation chamber was engulfed in flames.

“God, that was so
close,”
Laura managed. She hung on to the side of the control table, gulping air.

“You okay?” Press asked her as he extended a hand to help Dan to his feet. His breathing was still fast and audible, but the cool demeanor had already returned. “Everything in working order?”

Laura sucked in a healthy lungful of air and held it, as if she were intentionally heading off hyperventilation. At the beat of four, she released it and smiled widely at Press. Her hair was a vivid, shining strawberry blond in the light of the inferno coming through the quartz window, and Dan gawked at her, a little dazzled by the transformation. “Yeah. Just peachy.”

Press was still holding on to Dan’s hand, and now he squeezed it harder and clamped him on the back. “In your whole life, Dan,” he said seriously, “if anyone—
anyone
—ever treats you badly, I want you to call me. You understand? You’re one helluva guy, Mr. Smithson.” Dan beamed at the praise, then flushed as Laura nodded enthusiastically.

Fitch slowly climbed to his feet under the glares of all four team members. Press’s face twisted and he balled his fists and took a menancing step toward the scientist. “Get a grip on yourself, Lennox,” Fitch said quickly. “I hope you all understand that I had no choice. Because of Sil’s escape, protocol dictates that I was to burn the room in two minutes if something—anything—went wrong that might endanger the rest of the complex again.” He walked across the room, picked up his pistol, and slipped it back into his pocket without comment.

Press started to say something pointed, but Dan’s soft question silenced him. “Protocol?” Dan looked questioningly at the doctor, his boyish face bewildered.

“I didn’t know protocol meant killing the people on your own side.”