Mac gathered the necrotizing tissue into a handkerchief, a steaming pulp of blood and flesh. “Something else in there, man?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Somethin’s in there. Looks like metal.”
“I need a doctor.”
“Oh, yes,” Diana said.
“The snake is back. They dropped it, and it went to the barn. The horses are calm, so it’s staying away from them. I’m gonna want to find it and get rid of it.”
“Don’t kill it, Mac—they’re getting scarce.”
“Fine, I’ll have Carlos take it down into Big Bend and check it into a snake resort. Shall I get it a suit and tie, and a pair of cool dark glasses?”
Something was dripping through the ceiling. It took him a moment to understand. “The bodies up there—how many are they?”
“Four,” Geri replied immediately.
Diana was binding his wound.
“You about finished?”
She sat back. “Done as much as I can. But Mac’s right—it’s all strange. I’ve never seen a wound like it.”
“Will somebody please describe what’s so strange?”
“There’s only a single puncture, for one thing. But a doctor needs to look at it.”
“We got no phone, and we got some mighty good hunters waiting for us in the sky, so we’ll just have to table that, won’t we? And there’s something else we need to do right now, which is to burn those bodies. The damn things have a bad habit of coming back to life.”
“They have multiple damage-recovery systems,” Geri said. “They’re extremely durable.”
His leg screamed its agony, but he refused to give up; it wasn’t in him. One by one, he climbed the steps.
The kitchen stank of alien blood, a garlicky mixture of meat and some kind of chemical. They even smelled poisonous.
“We need to do this. Let their friends see what they’re up against.”
Geri went down on one knee, examining a nearby body with careful, practiced hands. She had done examinations like this before, clearly.
She looked up at him. She was cradling a head, its eyes glassy, dull with death and sadness. “These are an older generation,” she said. “No buffers programmed into them.”
“What are buffers?”
“You call buffers ‘conscience.’ These don’t have that.”
“So where are they from?”
“They were built here, Flynn. Had to have been. They’re from right here on Earth.”
Just then, Mac came over. He said, “I’m never gonna be good enough to shoot that thing down. So what’s next, Flynn? What do we do?”
“Mac, I am sorry to say that I just don’t know.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HOPING THAT maybe something about the creature would reveal some vulnerability, they did a dissection in Mac’s kitchen, on the big table in the center of the room, using Mac’s kitchen knives, a box cutter, and a saw Lupe used to open bones for marrow.
“They dissect these things at Wright-Pat,” Mac said. “So I’ve been told.”
“No idea,” Diana replied.
“We’ve dissected five so far.”
“Flynn, that’s—”
“Classified, but Geri obviously has need-to-know.”
“Mac, leave the room!” Diana snapped.
“He stays. He’s working with me. Also need to know.”
She fumed.
The body was about four feet long, with the same narrow frame and dark eyes of the others Flynn had seen.
“How, exactly, do you know it’s not one of yours?” he asked Geri.
She split the chest, drawing it wide and exposing the heart and lungs. “These are typical organs. And look—” She scraped at a rib, which revealed bright silver where bone should be. “That’s titanium or maybe stainless steel. This is an old unit. We haven’t used those materials in years. We use a living composite bone now. Artificial, but alive. Far more durable and flexible than this stuff.”
“So, can he build more?”
“Judging from what he’s using, no. We’re looking at an old, out-of-repair disk and robots that are four or five generations back. This is a shoestring operation here, Flynn.”
“A few crumbs of incredible technology are worth a whole world of primitive weapons like ours,” Flynn commented.
As he looked at the biorobots, he found himself coming to a very large question, not about them, but about himself. “Do you have devices that would enable voice commands to be projected into a human brain? Words?”
“The biorobots are equipped with transceivers. They use burst telemetry, but I guess voice would be possible.”
A slow, creeping coldness spread through him. He was carrying a transceiver.
If he could be communicated with, then he could be tracked, too. He could even be vulnerable to mind control. It wouldn’t be gross, but subtle, causing him to make the wrong decisions, to walk into traps, to make himself vulnerable—which was exactly what he’d been doing since he went rushing off to Mountainville.
He decided he’d have a full-body MRI scan as soon as possible, under the most secret conditions he could manage. No Diana, no Geri, nobody but him and the MRI technician. He’d read the scan himself. Only if he was unsure would he seek out a radiologist. If he was implanted and it couldn’t be removed, he would have no choice but to inform Diana, but until then, his degree of exposure would remain his problem, and his alone.
Right now, he had more to learn.
“Geri, what happened on Aeon, when you say they rebelled?”
“Nowhere in intelligence theory was there anything that suggested they could gain independence of thought, let alone an ego and the hopes and dreams that go with it. Then, one day, a group of them took over a refurbishing facility. That’s a place where used ones are broken down into component sections, and the least worn parts combined together to create new ones. They killed the operators and barricaded themselves in the facility. From there, the rebellion spread. Now, they’re in control of half the planet. More than half.”
“And Morris? Is he a biological robot, or something like you?”
“I’d appreciate ‘someone’ rather than ‘something.’ We’re the outcome of long biological evolution just like you, and just as valid as you are. At home, Morris is a criminal under investigation for four murders that took place during a raid on a robotics facility. That was where he stole the elements he’s used to build his robot soldiers.”
“Okay, folks, this is all real fascinating,” Mac said. “But I have another kind of a question, which is, what the hell do we do to get out of this mess? With the electronics shack gone, we don’t have any communications of any kind.”
“No landline telephone?” Diana asked.
“Hell no. Between law enforcement and drogos, there were so many taps on it that I couldn’t hear a damn thing. I ditched it years ago. And these bastards are coming back. Soon.”
Of course, he was right, but not entirely right. “They aren’t invincible, or we’d already be dead. For example, they can’t just blow the place to bits, or that would have happened at the outset.”
“They blew the electronics shack.”
“They were able to concentrate electrical energy in all that wiring. In Elmwood, I’m assuming they sent massive amounts of juice into the town’s electrical grid. Overloaded all the wiring and set the whole town on fire. But there’s not much of a grid here. Just the generator and the house wiring. The only thing they had to work with was the electronics in the shack. Which gets me to defense. We need to cut off the jenny.”
Mac headed for the cellar. “I’ll push the kill switch.”
“Geri, tell me how that light beam works. We won’t have the radars, so do we have any defense from it?”
“It generates antigravity. But I have to tell you, they’re not very good at using it, or maybe it’s not a very well designed version. At home, we can draw a complete structure from the surface to spac
e with a beam like that. They don’t seem too effective, even from an altitude of fifty feet.”
“Thank heaven for small favors,” Diana muttered.
The kitchen clock stopped, and the light over the sink went out. A moment later, Mac returned.
A plan was forming in Flynn’s mind. “Mac, how many operable vehicles do you have here?”
“Ten or so. I had an armored Humvee, but I sold it to some Buddhist monks over near Alpine.”
“Okay, so what’s available? Pickups, what else?”
“You’ve got two pickups, a road grader, couple of backhoes, a 1988 Cadillac, and some four-wheelers. Two that work.”
Flynn remembered that Cadillac. It had belonged to Mac’s mother. Mac had ridden in it as a boy, made out in it as a teenager. “In terms of weight, the grader is the heaviest but also the slowest. The backhoes are next. Same problem, though. The Caddy and the pickups are probably about equal weight, also the fastest vehicles in the mix. You have anything you’re not mentioning? I mean, surely you’ve got some serious cars around here somewhere.”
“Unlike you, I don’t give a whole huge damn about cars, so the answer is that I don’t.”
“You had that Lamborghini.”
“Too low to the ground for my road. I would’ve had to pave. Not gonna happen. It’s at the house in Marfa.”
“So we have two pickups and an old Caddy.”
“In good shape, all of them.”
“None of them will survive for long off road, though. So we’ll need to get to the highways as fast as we can, whichever way we go. So what I think we have to do is wait until about four, when the ground is as hot as it’s going to get, then head out. If they use infrared tracking, it’ll be at least somewhat washed out during the day. Also, we use just the pickups. I don’t trust that old Caddy—I remember how that thing used to break down when we were kids.”
“True enough. We leave the Caddy behind.”
“You three fit in one of the pickups. I take the other.”
That brought silence. Finally Diana broke it with a question he didn’t think she would really need to ask. “Why?”
“Let me put it this way: I have reason to believe that they have additional means of detecting me. Anyone who travels with me is going to share my vulnerability.”
“And be protected by your ability to fight back,” Geri said.
“It’s a chance we have to take. They’re going to see me first—I’m certain of that. Maybe you’ll get through.”
“Flynn—”
“Diana, no more. You can afford to lose me. I’ve seen Geri’s reaction times. With training, she can be as fast as me, or damn close.”
“We need ten of you, Flynn—a hundred, a thousand.”
“Then Geri, here, can have them built on Aeon and sent to us. Robots.”
Diana gave him a searching look, but said nothing.
“Okay, the way we’re going to handle this is that you go up 385 to Fort Stockton. There’s a Rodeway Inn there. Get a room and wait for me. If I don’t appear by tomorrow morning, go back to Washington and take it from there.”
“This is way too risky,” Diana said.
“It’s risky, no question. It’s also the only way. If we wait, they’re going to be back, and this time they’ll have whatever it takes to end this thing. No more fun and games. When they show up again, we die.”
“How can you be certain? They’ve screwed up pretty consistently so far, bro.”
“Take a look in your gun room.”
Without a word, Mac strode out of the kitchen and across the living room. “Shit! They even got my Purdeys. That’s two hundred grand worth of shotguns right there, plus the rocket launcher and the machine guns.”
“Don’t you do anything legal?” Diana asked.
“I breathe. I believe that’s legal in some states.”
Flynn handed Mac the big Bull and got a box of bullets out of his duffel. “I assume you’re proficient with this?”
“Sure, a Bull. I can shoot that.”
“Flynn, what are you going to carry?”
He transferred his small pistol to his belt. “This is a perfectly good weapon.”
“It’s too small to save you, and you know it, Flynn,” Diana said.
“What I need you three to understand is that they might not even try to use their light. They stole those weapons because they think they’ll also be effective. Keep moving, but never on a straight path, not for more than a few seconds. They’ll have algorithmic predictors, which means that after a while, they’ll be able to anticipate your next move, no matter what you do. So once we get in motion, wind your truck out as fast as it’ll go while staying with the random movement.”
That brought silence, and with it, Flynn knew, the unease that men feel before battle. Flynn was primarily concerned about his leg swelling so badly that he would become unable to use it. He watched the time. At two, they ate cold cuts and drank warmish iced coffee from the fridge. There were some oranges, too, and they ate those.
Three o’clock came, then three thirty. “Geri, I assume you’re not in communication with Aeon?”
“Not at present.”
“Can you be?”
“If the main rebel group should trace the signal, they could follow it to Earth. Then you’ll really have a problem.”
“Why wouldn’t Morris just tell the rebels where Earth is?”
“Competition is the last thing he wants.”
Flynn hobbled to the kitchen window. Carefully, he surveyed the area for any sign of the creatures.
“It looks clear, but remember, there’s no way to be certain. I could easily have missed something.” Now he stepped out, heavily favoring his right leg.
“Flynn, you can’t go alone, you’re barely able to walk.”
“Mac, I’m going to need to ask you to bring one of the trucks around for me. I can’t walk on this damn mess.”
“Flynn, if you can’t walk, you can’t drive. You’re going with us.”
“No room.”
“Then we take the car. Come on, Flynn, think. Your injury is clouding your judgment.”
He thought it through again, and came out at exactly the same place. If there was any chance that anybody would get to the relative safety of a town, they had to force a choice. That meant two vehicles. From what he had understood, the bastards had only one disk. So the odds were that they would go after him first, which meant he had to be alone. He would fight as long as possible in the hope that the others would get through.
Try as he might, he could not remember any moment in his adult life when somebody would have been able to do the surgery necessary to implant a transceiver anywhere in his body, let alone in his brain. Nor did he have any telltale lumps under his skin of the kind that concealed the emergency transponders given to pilots who were operating in enemy territory. He’d known a couple of pilots who had those things behind their ears. In his case, nothing there. Maybe the electronics were flat, a thin film hugging his scalp. No sign of an entry point, though, unless hidden under his hair. But when? And if they could get that close to him with him not noticing, why not just kill him?
He ran through it: A neuroscientist who worked at a facility that studied alien bodies was assassinated by aliens. The scientist specialized in exotic hypnosis techniques. During Flynn’s investigation, he received texts that suggested he should pay significant attention to the man and the facility.
“Flynn, where are you?”
“I’m sorry. Strategizing.”
“We’re going in two vehicles,” Diana said. “You and me in one, Gail and Mac in the other. I’ll drive.”
“I’m going alone. I’m sorry.” He looked to Mac. “Come on, brother, let’s check the trucks out.”
“Damn you, you hardheaded jerk!”
“I’ll take the hardheaded part, but I’m not a jerk.”
She glared at him, then turned away.
Outside, he and Mac stayed under the trees as
they made their way to the car barn, Flynn hanging on Mac’s shoulder. The vehicles inside were bright and clean and, as Flynn soon found, in perfect condition. One was a F-150 at least thirty years old, the other a brand-new F-450 with a double cabin.
“I’ll take the 150. Are its mechanicals okay?”
“It’s clean, anyway. Get a speck of dust on anything, wear out a tire, Carlos is on it.”
“Mac, let me ask you a question. I know I’m too fast with a gun. We both know something might have been done to me. So do I still seem like the same person? You said I had no personality. Is that something new?”
“What’s new is that you’re sounding crazier than ever, but basically you’re the same guy.”
“Let’s get this show on the road.”
They drove the trucks out under the trees and parked them. When Diana and Geri came out, Diana had the sullen look of somebody who was defeated and thought she should have won.
“You guys go out to 67 and straight up to Fort Stockton. Check into the motel. Cash, no credit cards. Don’t anybody run a card or go to an ATM—nothing like that. I’m going west into the mountains. I’ll take 17 up to the interstate and meet you no later than eight tonight.”
“Got it,” Mac said.
“What if you don’t show up?” Diana asked.
“Go on down the road without me, what else? Maybe I can be replaced after all.”
They got in their truck, and he watched them head off down Mac’s five-mile-long road. Soon they were a dot with a dust cloud, moving fast. They’d forgotten to swerve. He hoped it wasn’t a fatal error.
He took his own truck out into the range and headed westward toward the distant Davis Mountains. To make certain he wouldn’t be the more challenging target, he went in a straight line as well.
It was clear and hot here, but he could see a line of dark blue cloud along the northern horizon that told him cold weather was no longer entirely extinct in West Texas.
He drove slowly, trying to ignore the agony shooting up his left leg every time he moved. It was slow going, maneuvering around clumps of cactus and sagebrush. As best he could, he watched the sky, but more than that, he kept his awareness focused on the way the truck felt. If the steering got light, his plan was to jump out and roll away, and hope they got the truck and not him. What would happen next, he had no idea. Plan too carefully, and you were liable to miss the one chance that could save your life. He’d either survive or he wouldn’t; that was the bottom line. As always.