Alien Taste

  The door to Mike’s garage was down with a closed sign hanging in one of the narrow slit windows. He knocked hard on the door anyhow, hoping he wouldn’t have to waste time finding Mike first.

  “I’m closed!” Mike bellowed from within.

  “Mike! Mike, I need to talk to you!”

  The large door rattled up noisily. Mike squinted at Ukiah through his mask of grease. “Wolf Boy?”

  “Mike, I know you told me to stay far, far away from them, but I’ve got to find the Dog Warriors. It’s important.”

  “Forget it, Wolf Boy. They don’t want to be found, so you’re not going to find them. They got to stay one step ahead of the law. They don’t establish habits. They don’t have a normal hangout. They don’t stay in one place for long. Bar owners in this part of the tri-states think of them as locusts. The Pack comes to a bar, hangs out for that night only, and then they’re gone.”

  “I need to find them.”

  “Hell, Wolf Boy, they could be West Virginia, Ohio, or up in New York. They move around.”

  He considered while Mike stood in the doorway, one hand up on the garage’s rolling steel door. “So, you’re saying that the only habit they have is that they go from one bar to the next, no order or pattern, and stay there until late.”

  “Yup.”

  “So, at this time of night, if I call the bar that they are at, then I’ll catch them there.”

  “If you know the bar. There’s hundreds in the area.”

  Ukiah sighed. “Thanks, Mike.”

  Mike looked mystified. “You’re welcome. You going home now?”

  “No, back to the office. I’ve got phone calls to make.”

  On the way back to the offices, Ukiah decided to concentrate on the Allegheny County bars. If the Pack and the Ontongard were locked in battle, and the Ontongard were working in and around the city, then the Pack probably wouldn’t venture far.

  Ukiah recalled Max’s telephone calling list for small seedy bars in the local area code and started at A.

  “Abby’s!” The first number answered cheerfully.

  “Are the Dog Warriors there tonight? Any of them?”

  The voice gave a shout of laughter. “No, thank God! We haven’t seen them in months.”

  He tried the next phone number in his memory.

  He found them at Café Loco. The voice that answered the phone was less than cheery.

  “Yeah, they’re here.”

  “Can I talk to one? Rennie Shaw, if he’s there, but any of them will do.”

  He sat drumming his fingers as the voice shouted at Rennie to come answer the phone.

  “Who’s this?” Rennie growled through the phone a minute later.

  “Rennie, this is Ukiah Oregon. You know—you kidnapped me the other day.”

  “Of course I know you, cub,” Rennie snapped. “How did you know we were here?”

  “I’ve been calling bars alphabetically to find you.”

  “Ah, yes, process of elimination.” The tone of his voice lightened. “What do you want, cub?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “You’re doing that, cub.”

  “Face to face, Rennie.”

  There was a moment of silence, except for the muted background noise. “What’s wrong?”

  “The police caught one of the Ontongard. I was there when they brought him in for booking. He tried to kill me—just like you said the Ontongard would.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Where is the Ontongard now?”

  “Dead. The FBI agent with me shot him in the head.”

  “Damn. He’s at the morgue, no doubt.” The background noise became muffled as Rennie covered the mouthpiece. Ukiah could hear the Pack leader bark across the room. “Johnny, Ethan. There’s a dead Ontongard at the county morgue.”

  Oh, damn, Ukiah thought, what did I do now?

  “Rennie! Rennie!”

  The background noise returned to normal. “What is it, cub?”

  “They’re not going to hurt anyone, are they?”

  “No, they’re just going to make sure the Ontongard stays put.”

  Ukiah wished he could believe Rennie. Still, if there was a repeat of Janet Haze, the Pack members would be there to take the brunt of the Ontongard retrieval of their dead.

  “Rennie, I need to talk to you.”

  “Okay, cub, I’ll meet with you. Do you know McConnell’s Mill?”

  “Yes.” Ukiah had worked there one too many times. The first three times he found the missing person alive. His fourth case, and the most recent, he had dragged the tiny body of a four-year-old out of the dangerous undertow of the creek that ran through the park.

  “Meet us across the gorge from the mill, down in among the rocks—in about two hours.”

  He pictured the place. “Okay.”

  “And, cub, please, no cops.”

  “No cops,” he promised.

  Max had explained once that the gorge at McConnell’s Mill had been formed by a huge wall of ice moving through the area millions of years ago. The whole concept boggled Ukiah’s mind. A wall of ice big enough to tumble house-sized boulders out in front of it?

  But there it was, in the middle of gentle rolling hills, this gash cut through stone, lined with huge boulders. Paths meandered along both sides of the deceptively small stream. Picturesque cliffs and boulders provided dangerous scrambles and tempting fissure caves. Water-smoothed slick rocks gathered on the shore. In his last case, the little boy had been hopping from stone to stone. Ukiah had sat on the last stone the boy had safely landed on and watched the water flood over the spot where the creek had hidden the body.

  Trying not to recall that day, Ukiah drove down to the bottom of the gorge, rumbled across the covered bridge, and up the steep road to the far side. There he found the Pack’s bikes parked. He pulled his motorcycle in among theirs and killed the engine.

  He pulled off his helmet to hear the ticking of his cooling engine and the creaka-creaka of tree frogs. “Rennie?”

  “Down here, cub!” Rennie’s voice floated up from beyond the cliff.

  Ukiah walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down. For a moment, all he saw was darkness. Then his eyes adapted to the night, and he could see Rennie motioning to him. Ukiah glanced about, found a slight path, and cautiously picked his way down to the foot of the cliffs.

  Rennie and Hellena were sitting together on a mossy stone, half in a niche made by the two huge boulders that formed this section of the cliff. Rennie grinned at Ukiah as the boy scrambled down to them. The smile faded, though, replaced by a frown.

  Ukiah stopped, suddenly wary. “Rennie?”

  Rennie came at him faster than he could react, a blur of motion. The Pack leader caught him by the jacket and slammed him hard against the cliff. “You reek of Ontongard and a woman!”

  “It’s been an interesting day,” Ukiah managed, his heart leaping to his throat. Anger radiated from the Pack leader, though Ukiah could not fathom why. “You might think this is funny, but I finally figured it out. We’re not human, are we?”

  Rennie’s eyebrows went up. “You didn’t know?”

  “I was raised by wolves. I had no idea that I wasn’t like normal human children because I was some kind of—hell, I don’t even know what I am. Freak of nature? Science experiment gone bad? Alien monster?”

  Rennie nodded slowly. “Prime and Hex came to Earth on a ship, a scout ship for an invasion force. We’re not of this world. We are only vaguely human.”

  “And I am the only cub.”

  “One can only pray.” Rennie grumbled dangerously, “Who was the woman?”

  Ukiah squinted at Rennie, missing the change of subject. “What woman?”

  Rennie roared and pulled him forward to slam him against the cliff again. “The woman you slept with! Who was she? Tell me!”

  Fear for Indigo flashed through Ukiah. “No!”

  “I saved your life yesterday,” Rennie g
rowled in Ukiah’s face, “but I can take it just as easily today. Tell me her name.”

  Ukiah shook his head in denial. “You might have saved my life, but I don’t trust you. I won’t tell you who she is. If I have to protect her with my life, I will.”

  “Rennie!” Hellena pulled the Pack leader back. “Ukiah, is she pretty?”

  Ukiah eyed the dark-haired Pack woman, wondering if her question was a verbal trap, but finding no harm in answering. “She’s beautiful.”

  “She is special?”

  He considered the question, found it safe, and nodded. “She looks at me and truly sees me.”

  Hellena reached out to touch his face and he flinched, remembering the test, remembering how she had learned all there was to know about him. She tsked him gently and laid the hand on his face. Do you love her?

  Hellena hadn’t moved her mouth, but the words were clear. He closed his eyes against this blatant show of their alien blood. Would she love me if she knew this?

  “Let him go, Rennie. Our little cub is in love.”

  Rennie kept him pinned to the wall, a growl rumbling down in his chest. “We missed this woman. There might have been others, all of which he loved.”

  Hellena glanced back up at Ukiah. Have there been others?

  No.

  “Rennie. He’s too human not to seek someone out. Let him go.”

  Rennie dropped him and stalked away. “I hate this—this not knowing. Is he or isn’t he? Is this the true cub or a careful lie? Are we doing the right thing or are we throwing it all to shit because of some wolf instinct we can’t ignore?”

  “Am I or am I not what?” Ukiah snapped. “What is it you think I’m going to do? Why are you trying to kill me half the time, then treat me like your child? How can I lie to you when I don’t have a clue to what is going on? Until a few hours ago, I thought I was a fairly normal, twenty-year-old human. Could you for once stop and explain something—anything—to me?”

  Rennie eyed him. “Well, for one, you’re not twenty years old. You were conceived the first week Prime was on Earth. That was several hundred years ago. We’re not sure of the exact date. Coyote was Prime’s only Get, and his grasp of time is very weak.”

  Ukiah reeled. He couldn’t be that old, could he? He thought back to his time with the wolves, how he had never been able to count the seasons and tally to some reasonable number. He had thought it many times—it felt like he had run with the wolves since the beginning of time. Miserably, he nodded his head. Yes. This was the truth. “So, Coyote is my brother? No, you said only Get. Where do I fit in?”

  Rennie shook his head. “You’re Prime’s child. A Get is totally different from a child. A Get is something you make. It’s an ugly evil thing.”

  “You make a Get? How?”

  “You inject your genes into a human, usually using a syringe filled with your blood.” Rennie looked ashamed as he explained. “Your genes act like a virus, spreading throughout the person’s body. All of their cells are replaced, one by one, with nearly duplicate cells containing your genes. It hits them hard, like the black plague. Their immune system fights the whole way. Out of a thousand times, maybe one person lives. Most burn themselves out before hitting the threshold—the point where your genetic material can keep the body alive while it stamps out the last of the host’s DNA.”

  Ukiah’s mind flashed to the used hypodermic syringes tipped with Wil Trace’s blood. “This is what the Ontongard are doing to the FBI agents. They did it to Janet Haze.”

  Rennie nodded. “We think they’re using the immune-suppression drugs to increase the odds of the host surviving.”

  Ukiah gave him a sharp hard look. “Host? That makes you sound like parasites.”

  “The worst ever imagined. Prime’s people overpopulated their home world and spilled out into the universe, going from world to world, replacing all life with themselves. It was what they intended to do to Earth, until Prime intervened.”

  A million questions flashed through Ukiah’s mind. He fought to ignore them, to stay focused on the issue at hand. “I don’t understand. Why are the Ontongard interested in making the FBI agents into Gets? Why did my father make Coyote?”

  “Making Gets is all Hex cares about,” Rennie snarled. “It’s why he came to Earth. It’s why we fight him. If he could, he would cover the world with Gets.”

  “Prime was about to be killed by Hex,” Hellena added in a more patient tone. “He was wounded and desperate. He infected everything he spotted in hopes that one creature would survive, would remember, could fight on after he was dead.”

  Ukiah shook his head. “I still don’t understand. If your genes replaced all of the host DNA, then the person basically becomes a copy of you.”

  Rennie nodded solemnly. A copy slaved to you. You’ve wiped away most of its memories, its hopes and dreams, and given it all of yours. How can it be free if all it knows is your desires?

  Ukiah got the impression that Rennie spoke to him mind to mind to reinforce the concept that one Pack member could affect the other’s thought. Mental slavery seemed frighteningly possible when thoughts other than your own echoed in your head.

  “And my father did this to Coyote?” Ukiah flashed back to his trial with Coyote shouting, “You’re my Get!” He turned to stare at Hellena, appalled. “Coyote did this to you?”

  “We were all once human,” Hellena said quietly. “Now we’re thinly disguised copies of Prime.” She smiled wistfully at him. “Which makes us all your parent.”

  Ukiah glanced from Hellena to Rennie. “But why are you different looking?”

  “If you replace its diamond with cut glass, the ring will appear almost the same. The fairly simple human cells are replaced with a complex cell structure that can mimic being human. Over time, our appearance drifts toward Prime. Coyote is the oldest of us, and at one time he was a wolf.”

  “A wolf?” He almost didn’t believe, then remembered Coyote’s weird golden eyes, his wolf eyes.

  “The Pack is still a mess from that little twist,” Rennie muttered as he sat down on a stone ledge. “You retain a shell of yourself, ghost memories, like extended déjà vu. If you’re left alone to rediscover yourself, you can become independent of your creator. Most of the Pack have recaptured themselves.” Rennie put an arm about Hellena’s slim waist and pulled her close, glancing up at her. He received a sad smile.

  “We prize our humanity over our lives,” Hellena whispered. “Hex holds his Get tight. They’re just shadow puppets moving for their maker.”

  “So where does this leave me? If I’m not a Get but a child, why aren’t there any other children? Why did Prime want to kill me? Why do you keep trying?”

  “There are a hundred or so Pack members made by Coyote. We abhor what we are and don’t create many Get. Hex, while he focuses on creating Get, has only a thousand or so—we think.” Rennie grinned. “He empties his veins often for little or no return. When we can track down a Get, we kill it.” Rennie caught Ukiah’s shocked look. “The human it once was is no longer alive, and each Get represents a possibility for a thousand more. Luckily, it seems that Hex is worried about creating another Prime, a rebellious Get with information enough to destroy everything. He limits himself to what he can keep close at hand, and normally doesn’t allow his Get to create others.”

  “He tried it once, let all his Gets create Gets of their own last century,” Hellena added. “Millions of humans died. They thought it was an extremely virulent strain of the flu. So many dead for a handful of Get.”

  “The biter is that it took so much time to track down the new Gets that they had grown too independent for his taste. He burned them all.”

  “What does this have to do with being the only child?”

  Rennie came to stare into Ukiah’s eyes. “Only one in a thousand lives because the alien genetics triggers the body’s defenses immediately. The war begins at the injection site and death comes before the alien genes can keep the body alive. There’s a wa
y around it. You create a blending of parasite and host. This new genetic material will be accepted by the host until it’s too late—when the immune system starts to reject it, the threshold has been reached.”

  Ukiah was chilled suddenly to his core. “You make a child—an alien father, a human mother.”

  Rennie nodded. “It required a delicate, sophisticated machine that humans haven’t even come close to matching. The machine did the egg extraction, fertilization, genetic manipulation, and implantation. It held the host mother inactive for the period of gestation, suppressing her immune system so her body wouldn’t miscarry the half-alien fetus, yet kept her alive for the duration of the gestation. It was a huge machine. On the scout ship, there was only one.”

  Ukiah started to pace, wrapping his arms about himself, but the cold horror stayed in him. “I was born to take over the human race?”

  “You are a weapon of destruction wrapped up as our one and only child. Is there any wonder that we love you yet fear you?”

  “Why? Why did Prime even make me?”

  “We don’t know.” Rennie sat watching him pace. “For us, memory is genetic. We’re encoded with our creator’s memories. Only Prime was badly hurt when he made Coyote and we lose recent memories when we are wounded. It’s like someone made paper dolls out of War and Peace, and now we’re trying to figure out the plot line from what’s left.”

  “Rennie!” Bear came scrambling down the rocks to hold something out to the Pack leader. “The cub’s got fleas.”

  Rennie took a dark speck of plastic from Bear’s hand, sniffed, and grimaced. “He sure does. Scatter the Pack.”

  “Fleas?” Ukiah came to look into Rennie’s hand. The plastic encased a wafer thin computer chip, small battery, and smelled of hot plastic. “What is it?”

  “Something with too much to do for as little as it is.” Rennie dropped the plastic speck into Ukiah’s hand. “It’s got to reach all the way up to orbit and tell a spy satellite where a certain Pack cub is going.”