The Flying Eyes (4 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

Dawn had climbed two hours up the sky, and the sun slanted through the east windows of the lab. The assembled men were restless; forty of them, shifting about, fingering their rifles and shotguns with eager hands. Linc waited close to Wes for Iverson to join them and give the final word. The excitement inside him was a bubbling, a churning in his stomach.

This morning would be his. A real fight, a hand-to-hand battle—this kind of action he knew backward and forward, and the feel and taste of it, the pending wildness of it, were spurs that made his feet want to stride outside on their own will, made his voice want to come up shouting.

“I think we're going to do it,” Wes's voice was thick with enthusiasm. “Look at those men, Linc. They're like tigers, every one of them. I think we're going to do it this morning.”

Linc glanced over the forty men again, a frown edging between his blue eyes. “Some of those kids are so blatantly kids. Nineteen, twenty. I wish Iverson could have enlisted some seniors, at least. I worry about them.”

“Don't,” Wes said. “They're eager. They'll be your best men this morning. Just wait and see.”

Iverson's entrance interrupted them. “Are we all set?”

“All set,” Linc nodded.

“Good. Then we'll move out in ten minutes. You men will go out in a group, so that we can lure the Eyes simply by our show of numbers. The police first, and then the students.” He lowered his voice and addressed Linc directly. “We'll follow behind, at a safe distance.”

Linc glanced up quickly to meet the old man's gaze. “What do you mean, safe distance? You've got this all wrong, Doc, if you think I'm here to be an observer, or some back-line general. I've brought my gun, and I'm going to fight.”

Iverson shook his head. “You're not going to fire one shot. The lab needs you; if this doesn't work, then who knows, maybe the whole town needs you for another try. However it is, you're not going to join the fight. No one from the Lab is to engage in combat. And for once, I won't stomach any arguments. Argue, and you're out altogether. Understood?”

Iverson stepped away before Linc could protest. He faced the men and began to outline the plan.

“I don't like this,” Linc said to Wes. “I don't like to be counted out of something I planned myself.”

“We have no choice. Who knows—” Wes tried to joke the scowl off Linc's face—“maybe we can get rich by selling our observations to the Sunday magazines.”

A moment later, the quiet was broken by the sharp shuffling of eighty feet. The men were moving out. Linc reached for his gun, but Wes' hand closed over his arm, and he laid it back down. “Okay,” Linc grunted, “so I'm out—put to pasture—an observer. Let's go. I guess our battle group is forming over there.”

He indicated Iverson and the knot of lab men who had formed around him. None of them had guns, and their empty hands were nervously clenching and unclenching. The morning was warm, the Indian summer sun lying on Linc's shoulders like a sweater. He stayed beside Wes, walking along the concrete of the parking lot, then across trimmed grass, through the crackle of fallen leaves. The students and police were well in advance, already off the lab grounds, onto the brushy weed growth of the open meadow.

A woods loomed one thousand feet ahead of them, and a pheasant took flight at their approach, its bright head glinting metallic green in the sunshine. Everything was strangely quiet. Somewhere in the forest, a flicker sounded its jungle cry, warming up for its journey south to tropical forests.

Fifteen minutes had passed, and the guns in the hands of the men had dropped from the ready position. Conversations had sprung up, carried to Linc's hearing by the breeze that rustled the leaves and parachuted others to the ground.

“I guess the Eyes are late sleepers,” chuckled Myers, “and just can't get themselves open this early.”

Linc winced at the levity; yet he felt an answering laugh within himself. Relief? He didn't know. There was as yet nothing to be relieved about. Maybe the battle wouldn't be fought and no men would die this morning; but there would be another morning.

With a whir of wings that shattered the morning stillness, the forest suddenly erupted, spewing forth birds of all sizes. They soared up from the trees, a cloud of them, noisy flaps that were crows, and whirring flutters that were warblers. Joining in a crowded sky, they drove straight over the approaching men and off toward the lab. Their calls were loud, and the men stopped still, startled by the sudden activity.

Squirrels which had been nibbling along the edge of the woods suddenly were dashing headlong into the dimness, making for cover, and rabbits leaped after them.

Then, up and over the highest elm came the skin and ball of a giant Eye. It sailed up in a great swoop, clearing the forest, and arcing down for the field.

“There's another one.” Wes grabbed his arm. “To the west.”

They came in a steady dive, now, eight of them—oval obscenities, wide-open, staring in a challenge that sent quivers of gooseflesh down Linc's back. They banked and rolled and settled groundward with a swaying motion from side to side.

“When are the fools going to open fire?” Hendricks cursed. “They'll come right through to us, if they're not stopped!”

The Eyes were nearly over the heads of the fighting force, and just as Linc opened his mouth to scream orders, the guns jerked up and spat orange fire into the morning. The simultaneous explosion of forty guns was a thunder in his ears.

The Eye Linc was watching shot upward twenty feet in a convulsive jerk, hung there for an instant, then started a wobbling descent. There were two holes in it. It skimmed the heads of the men, coming for Linc's group. Tears streamed out of the corners of it, dripping to the ground like a trail of rain. And as it neared Linc, blood started to come, seeping from the holes, mixed with fluid.

Wes was pulling him down, trying to make him crouch with the rest of them, but the sight of the Eye bearing down, bleeding and dying, held him frozen. It halted fifty feet away, ten feet above the ground, soaking the land and the leaves beneath it with red. A glaze came over it as though it had drawn into itself, and as its life ebbed before him, he cursed it, eager to watch it die.

But the glaze that spread across it reached the bullet holes and the blood congealed on the edges of them. The glaze continued to spread, and before his horrified sight, the sides of the holes firmed up, drew themselves together from a gaping hole to a red line, and then the line changed color, the fresh purple of a scar fading to a gray that softened out until it was gone from sight.

The Eye was whole again—healed and whole—and it gazed at him with the same empty, alien expression he had seen before. He stared back, into the iris that was bigger than his head, accepting its challenge. There was a pull upon him, a bodily pull, drawing him closer to it, compelling him to walk into it. He wanted to rip it apart with his hands; he wanted to rid the world of the sight of it. He stepped forward.

“You idiot!” Wes was upon him, knocking him down. “Get away from here. You haven't got a gun!”

Linc regained his feet and ran with Wes, sidetracking to go around the Eye. As he passed Hendricks, he heard the man muttering to himself, “They heal themselves. They congeal and heal, repeal the hole and make it whole.”

Linc paused in his flight to grab Hendricks and pull him along. The reactor technician was out of his mind, his own eyes glazed, not with the healing power of the Eyes, but with madness.

The three of them ran from the stare of the Eye, and found themselves in the middle of the melee. Around them the Eyes bobbed and swooped, and the ground was slippery with their blood. But they were healed over. The men were no longer a fighting unit, but a panicked horde of individuals. Bullets rained upward, piercing their targets, and the targets shot skyward, wounded and bleeding, only to return to the fight healed. And always, there was that pull, that constant pull upon Linc that impelled him to approach.

Students bumped into him, their guns discharging uselessly. Others fired volleys at the empty air. The field had changed from order to chaos, with the cries and screams of maddened minds.

Streaming blood from one of the Eyes fell on Linc and soaked into his shirt. Close by, a student jerked straight. His body stiffened, then went limp, and his gun fell from his open hands. He walked through the mob of running, whirling men, oblivious to the noise and jumble. An Eye sailed backward before him, the sun glinting on its healing surface. As Linc watched it the pull caressed him again, and grew from a caress to a tug. Another man, a policeman, joined the zombie student, and the Eye took him, too.

Linc broke from the tug of the thing. Sweat from his own body was mingling with the now cold blood of the Eye on his shirt.

“To hell with Iverson's orders!” he yelled to Wes. “We've got to fight them off!”

He dashed for the student's abandoned gun and raised it to his shoulder, blasting away at the Eye that had now gathered four men and was leading them out of the battle toward the field beside the woods. He saw the searing tear as his shot hit home, smack in the middle of the Eye.

“Bull's-eye!” he shouted in triumph, and let go another blast. But the Eye bobbed upward, evading, and even as it did, he saw the wound he had made in it glazing over, the flow of blood halting, the sides of the hole growing together and scarring over.

“Wes!” He swiveled to find his friend. “What are we going to do?”

But Wes didn't hear. He was yards away, a gun raised, shooting at another of the giants.

The sound of gunfire grew less and less. The circle around Linc broke, cascading outward as men took flight. Those who did not flee stood in their places, numb, alone, unaware. Hendricks was one of them. He wasn't muttering any more.

Linc refused to run. The battle was useless against a self-healing opponent, but he wouldn't run. These men, these boys, were here because of him, and he had to cover their flight. He shot upward, missing or hitting, it hardly mattered which, but the hits were at least a delaying action. The Eyes were massed over him and their seepings and weepings splashed over him, in his hair, on his face, but he wouldn't run. Men in flight went limp and shuffled away, but he ignored them. Whatever Iverson said, this was his fight, after all. The Eyes wouldn't get him.

Wes backed into him, also fighting. Together, he and Wes would battle for the world. Then Wes' hands were on his shoulders, shaking him, and Wes' desperate shouts hit his ears.

“Linc! Come to your senses, Linc! It's no use! We've got to get out!”

Linc heard, but couldn't understand; then Wes' shaking dashed sweat into his eyes and with the sting of it he came back to himself. There was no force left on the field. The battle was done.

“Where's Iverson?” Linc gasped, frightened. Nothing must happen to the old man. “Where are the rest of our own men?”

“Iverson has gone back to the lab. Come on, Linc. Please!”

Six Eyes were circling the bloody ground; two Eyes were escorting twenty men away.

“All right,” Linc surrendered. “Retreat! Run!”

He swung in beside Wes, blind with exhaustion, and twenty steps further on, stumbled over the body of a dead boy. He was riddled with bullet holes, caught in one of the frenzied volleys of his companions. Linc scrambled up and went on. Behind him, the pull on his back told him that the Eyes were coming, giving chase over the field, eager to add to their Linc of zombies.

Collins was holding the door wide when they reached the lab.

“We're the last,” Wes told him. “Shut it!”

Collins bolted the door. “Iverson and the other men are down in the assembly room,” he said.

“Iverson—and how many others?” Linc asked.

“I'm not sure,” Collins answered. “About twenty, maybe less.”

Twenty, maybe less, out of forty-six! Linc met Wes' glance, then strode away. He went into Iverson's office and closed the blinds tight to bar the scene outside. He could see the field and the Eyes hovering beyond the window, waiting.

He closed the blinds and slumped into a chair, aware of the ache in his body, of the exhaustion, and the filth that was all over him. He shuddered.

“Don't think about it,” Wes said. “Not right now.”

“But it was such a disaster, Wes. Such a fool play. All of those boys—those men. If we could have won just a tiny victory… But as it is, their loss was senseless. It accomplished nothing. I just gave their lives away.”

“You can't take all the blame. If you're determined to place guilt, then I'm guilty, too. So is Iverson.”

Wes was trying to give him relief, but he couldn't accept relief, not yet, not with the horror still so close. Collins, coming through the door, was a welcome interruption.

“What were you guys doing out there?” Collins asked harshly. “I got here and found nobody at work, and when I went outside I saw you out there. What was that supposed to be—the ‘simplest solution'? Shoot 'em up? Fight fire with fire?”

The barbs hit Linc full force. “And where were you? If you saw what was happening, why didn't you come out and help?”

“Thanks for your usual vote of confidence,” Collins slashed back. “I saw, all right; and I saw ahead and knew what was going to happen, so I stayed here. If I hadn't been here, Iverson wouldn't have made it back. An Eye almost got him. I pulled him in. Maybe you think Iverson's just another puppet to play with, but I hold him higher than that. So does the government. He's a man who can't be replaced.”

“So?” Linc could think of no retort. “I already know that.”

“Then why did you take such a chance with him?”

“Because we thought it would work,” Wes said. “An attack on a vulnerable eye-—we thought it would work. So did Iverson.”