Xeno Sapiens (40 page)

“
I’m okay,” he said. Then, as if
trying to explain, he said, “he was my friend.”

Jimmy nodded
sympathetically.

“
We’ll come back and get him. Jon
needs our help right now.”

“
Right,” Alex said. He looked up the
incline, knowing Hall might be watching and waiting. Somewhere,
maybe as close as the bony cluster of vines and bushes at the top
of the rise, was a murderer.

“
Do you want me to go first,” Jimmy
asked.

“
It doesn’t matter,” Clifton said
dispiritedly. “If he means to get us, it won’t matter which one of
us goes first.”

Jimmy put a hand on Alex’s shoulder and
started to say something when a strong crackle of static erupted
from the radio. They heard a voice. Very weak, but
clear.

“
Alex,”
the voice said threadily. “This is Jon.
Can you hear me?”

Alex grabbed the radio from his
belt.

Jon,” he said harshly. “You’re
alive?
Where are you?”

“
The same place.” His voice seemed
hardly loud enough to use any breath. “I think he got Alan, but he
didn’t have the balls to take on Seth. He’s
alive
,” Merrifield said weakly. “Hall
didn’t get him.”

“
How badly are you hurt?”

“
Hard to say. Pretty bad. I can’t stop
the bleeding.”

“
I’m coming to get you.”

“
Be careful,” Merrifield warned. “I
don’t know where Hall is.”

Alex started his slippery trek up the
hill, ignoring the cold rain stinging his face, and Jimmy’s
grasping hands trying to restrain him from rushing headlong into a
trap.

“
Alex,”
Jimmy shouted from below. The roar of the
torrential rains nearly swallowed his shout. There was a brief
break in the clouds and the bright, full moon peered out, its light
flooding the land for a few eerie seconds. At the top of the slope,
Jimmy saw the gleam and flash of some metallic object. Clifton was
almost to the top of the hill when Jimmy understood what the flash
was.

“
Alex,”
he cried.
“Watch out! It’s Hall! He’s here, at the
top of the hill!”

Alex stopped. He began an instinctive
dive toward the ground. He lost his balance and executed a
half-turn before falling completely. In the brief instant of
moonlight, Alex saw Jimmy’s face, his mouth open in a shout, his
rain hood half dislodged.

There was a short sound like the
ripping of cloth. Alex saw bright flashes at the corners of his
vision. Jimmy’s face suddenly bloomed three black flowers that
exploded outward where Hall’s bullets had stitched his face. Jimmy
did not simply fall like a stone, but was shoved backward by the
force of the slugs. The moon dove behind the scudding clouds again
and Clifton could see nothing.

Alex tumbled end over end down the
slope, unable to stop himself. He had been barely able to
comprehend and assimilate Alan’s death, now he was confronted with
the death of Jimmy. The spectacle of a disintegrating head was one
which he wished not to investigate too closely. Even less did he
wish to have first hand knowledge of it.

His downhill skid was abruptly halted
by something he realized with eloquent queasiness was a body.
Whether Alan’s or Jimmy’s, he didn’t know. The flesh of his back
crawled and Alex shuddered with breathless fear that Hall’s next
burst might shatter his spine in five places. It was enough of a
jolt to rid him of the fuzziness in his brain.

Hall scrambled in the bushes above
Alex. Alex knew the only thing between him and certain death was
the fact Hall couldn’t see him. He said a silent prayer to whatever
God had allowed him to lose his flashlight in his wild tumble. He
thought of shooting, but it would be insanity to give away his
position by firing at an apparition he couldn’t see.

Alex found his footing and stooped in a
half crouch, his eyes turned toward the top of the hill. He prayed
the moon would stay hidden and the infrequent lightning would
abate. He was completely exposed and Hall would make short work of
him if he could only see him.

He groped at the body that had stopped
him. Nausea and compassion battled each other in his throat as he
searched for the wrist. He found an arm and traced it with his
fingers. Instead of reaching the wrist, he had followed the arm to
the shoulder and he felt what seemed to be bone fragments and teeth
in a sticky wetness. So this was Jimmy. Clifton removed his hand
quickly.

Hall began to shout. Alex thought it
too much to hope that Hall was standing and a blind shot might fell
him. Hall’s words were at first slurred by the chatter of rain and
Alex couldn’t understand them. When they at last became clear, Alex
felt despair so great that he was drained into total inactivity. If
Hall had wished to walk down the slope and pluck Clifton’s weapon
from his hand, he could have. Alex’s blood alternately ran cold and
boiled with fury as he listened.

“
Your monster is dead,”
Hall
exulted.
“I
cut his throat with my own hands and watched him die! Merrifield is
dead and so is the other one. The Lord is strong and has beaten
you. Show yourself so I can strike you down!”

All for nothing,
Clifton thought, dazed.
They’re all dead. How can I tell
Ingrid? How can I be sure I’ll be able to?

Clifton backed slowly down the slope,
being careful not to fall. Three times his feet hit submerged rocks
that threatened to topple him, but he held on.

Hall continued to rave, but Alex
focused only on survival. He continued his descent until he was at
the edge of the forest at the foot of the slope. Once in the woods
he could make his way back to the Alamo and safeguard Ingrid, at
least. She was the only thing of value that remained.

A tree limb stabbed his back and he jumped. He didn’t feel
safe in the least, having seen what Hall had done to trained
professionals. They had been old and out of touch, to be sure, but
not brainless. It made him wonder if God really
was
on Hall’s side.

He turned to slip quietly into the
woods when, as if in derisive answer to his question, a flash of
lightning seared the night. A deafening clap of thunder rocked the
ground underfoot like an earthquake.

The eerie purple glow lit Clifton up
with horrifying clarity. He burned like a light house. He jerked
his head around and saw Josh Hall. In the clinging purple glow,
Hall’s face was split in a grin and the combination of light and
shadow on his face created dark gashes from eyes to chin like some
barbarous warpaint. His rifle was at the ready, as if he had been
awaiting just such a chance. It took him but an instant to correct
his aim and swing the rifle toward Clifton.

Alex plunged into the woods. The first branch he
encountered rebounded and smacked him smartly across the shoulder.
A violent rain of water droplets peppered his eyes. He heard the
guttural rip of an automatic weapon firing like the brutal purr of
some giant cat. Small branches snapped behind him as the bullets
sheared them off. He heard the
thwack
of other projectiles as they buried
themselves in tree trunks and mushroomed into strange
shapes.

Three of the slugs slammed into his
back like the kick of a Clydesdale. Two of the shells tore through
the muscle on the right side of his upper back. The other skirted
the bone at the bottom of his shoulder blade before carving his
right lung into lace.

Clifton was flattened to the ground. He
lay there, breathing in the wet mud, drifting in and out of the
world of dreams and the real world of nightmares.

Twice in the past ten minutes, Leon
Hursey and Joel Knish had heard gunfire crackle through the hills.
Nearly hidden beneath the flooding rains was the sound of the night
gaining strength like a savage brute springing to life beneath the
full moon.

“
Hey, Joe,” Leon called out. “Did you
hire on to stand guard in a goddam hurricane?”

Joel hurried over. Great spikes of
water splashed up at his running steps. He held his head in such a
way that he was looking almost straight down, allowing his hood to
afford him the maximum of protection. His hands were stuffed in his
pockets.

“
Did you hear the shooting,” Leon
asked uneasily.

Joel shifted before answering. The
bleary eyes of the flood lights stared hazily into the swirling
rain.

“
I heard it. Our guys only had
pistols, right?”

“
I think so,” Leon said ominously. He
stared into the darkness beyond the reach of the lights and
wondered what was lurking there, just out of sight.

“
I heard two volleys of gunfire and
that’s all. No return fire.”

“
You think Josh got them,” Joel
asked.

“
I don’t know what to think. Things
are bad. I feel beaten. I feel like I’m waiting for Josh Hall to
come up that road.”

“
He’d never do it,” Joel said. “He’d
never come down the road in plain sight.”

“
That’s what makes me nervous. He
might be sneaking around back. Hell, I’m no soldier. My conscript
was up fifteen years ago.”

“
Do you really think he’ll come
here?”

“
I do,” Leon said. “I don’t know if
I’d do a bit of good if I saw him, but I don’t like him. I haven’t
forgotten what it’s like to shoot a man. I think I could still do
it.”

“
Should we have a look around
back?”

Leon thought about it.

“
No,” he said. “Somebody has to stay
here. And for one to stay here, it means both of us would be alone.
I don’t like those odds. Not against a trained killer.”

Joel brightened. It seemed sound advice
to him.

They looked up at a sky that vibrated
with multi-hued lightning sporting just beyond the cloud tops. It
was a brilliant display, but a coming dawn would have been more
welcome.

“
Do you get the feeling that
something’s about to happen,” Leon asked. He shifted his gaze
nervously.

“
Something’s
already
happened,” Joel said. “I don’t
want
anything else to
happen. I just want to see daylight. Tomorrow. That’s all I
ask.”

Leon had struck a listening pose. “No,
no shit, Joe. I thought I heard something like footsteps out there
on the road.”

Joel heard nothing.

“
Don’t joke about shit like that,
especially tonight...”

He halted. A chill ran up his back and
he groped for the pistol beneath his raincoat.

Somewhere, just beyond the false safety of the lights,
someone was moving. He heard the obvious
’whap’
of a foot meeting wet pavement. It came
again, irregular and without pattern, as if the maker were
staggering.

“
Leon,”
Joel blurted, grabbing his arm in a grip
so tight it left bruises. “There’s somebody out there.”

Leon hunched down and peered at the
road. He, too, heard the slap-thump of plodding footsteps somewhere
in the driving downpour beyond the lights. Tonight, that territory
was traversed only by martyrs or murderers.

“
You got your pistol out,” Joel
quavered. Beads of water jiggled at the end of his nose as he gaped
helplessly into the gloom.

Leon had his gun in hand. He held it
beneath the folds of his raincoat, ready to draw it at a moment’s
notice. Whoever was out there was making steady, if erratic,
progress. It was probably just his imagination, but he could almost
see the slow, side to side sway of a man walking. He felt the gun’s
safety with his free hand and made certain it was off.

“
Is it Hall,” Joel whispered. He had
his pistol half-heartedly drawn. Rain slid over its polished barrel
and ran off in oily beads.

“
Maybe worse,” Leon said tensely, “It
might be Seth. Just make sure you don’t shoot anybody
important.”

The footsteps advanced.
Whack-slap-bang! Whack-slap-bang!
The wind rose,
whirling down the mountainside and lashing the night with a sodden
cat-o’-nine-tails. The fence rattled like the jingling of coins and
the lights swung back and forth. Shadows rocked and swayed. The
temperature plunged and snow mixed with the rain began to swirl
down from the sky.

Joel drew slightly to one side. He
blinked his eyes to rid them of the rain and when he opened them
the corpse white face and shriveled, grasping hands were almost on
him.

The figure emerged from the ghostly
downpour like a mindless, macabre ghoul and stumbled toward Joel.
The ghoul’s eyes were pale and lusterless pennies. His colorless
mouth moved but made no sound. His left arm was held out for
balance and it nearly touched Joel as the right arm hung limp and
useless at the man’s side.