Tainted Trail

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “How is it going?”

  “The Brodys were the ones that took Alicia, but it looks like they’ve slipped through the net.”

  “I’m sorry. I hope this isn’t more bad news.”

  “It might be.”

  “Be careful,” Indigo said, and added, “I love you,” and reluctantly said, “I’ve got to go.”

  “What if this turns out to be Ontongard?” Ukiah put away his phone. “It would have been better if we never came to Oregon.”

  “You can’t fight the ‘what if’s.’ ” Max said. “You do what you think is right at that moment. Questioning it later only drives you crazy.”

  So they waited as the FBI scoured the house, collecting evidence for any eventual court case, knowing it might all be moot.

  A little after five o’clock, the first of the neighbors started to return home to find the Brodys under siege. The local police took turns answering their questions. One could watch the horror spread across their faces as the realizations hit them. Their nice neighbors kidnapped a woman and possibly killed her. The people next door most likely killed their son. The killers still on the loose knew them intimately. More than one family packed up and left for safer parts until the Brodys could be captured.

  Finally the men started to pack up, trying to move quickly in their race to find Alicia. Max got out and Ukiah followed.

  “Think they’ll let me in?” Ukiah asked.

  “We’ll check with Jared. Gear up.”

  Ukiah hated the idea of gearing up so closely to the numerous FBI agents and policemen who didn’t know him, who had no reason to believe or trust him, who could drag him off and lock him up until he answered uncomfortable questions.

  In the TV shows, it was always the police or the FBI that killed the aliens when they were friendly.

  He left his pistol in the gun safe. The FBI didn’t like armed civilians confusing matters. He could pick his pistol up later. He shrugged into his body armor and quickly disguised it with his windbreaker.

  Fortunately, the strike force started to pull out as he threaded a tracer into his clothing and hooked on his radio headset. The last Pendleton police car pulled away, leaving Jared’s county squad car as the lone marked vehicle. Ukiah locked up the Blazer and crossed the street, skirting the Brodys’ front yard roped off with yellow police tape. Until someone gave him the go ahead, he had to respect the thin boundary. He stopped in the driveway, waiting.

  The last FBI agent eyed Ukiah warily as he packed away his assault gear. Ukiah tried to look as harmless as he could, nervous under the casual inspection. The agent took in Ukiah’s windbreaker, apparently recognized him from reports, and nodded slowly. Slamming his car trunk, the agent walked around to the driver’s door and got in. Relief flooded through Ukiah.

  As the FBI agent pulled away, though, the wind changed, bringing Ukiah the scent of evil from the house.

  A growl started in Ukiah’s chest. “Rennie? Rennie?”

  Rennie had gone too far out, trying to avoid the FBI. Ukiah could no longer sense him. Max came out the back door with Jared, who looked shell-shocked.

  “They found things from the Burkes, and the other hikers, and the Coles,” Jared said. “Vivian has a brother over in Pilot Rock, and Matt has a sister up in Walla Walla. They’ve got a search warrant for both.” Jared shook his head, looking young, bewildered, and disgusted. “This is like biting into rare-cooked steak a friend served you and finding maggots.”

  “Can Ukiah look around?” Max asked, apparently not noticing the smell. How could anyone not smell them?

  Jared waved at the house in disgust. “Magic Boy might be the only one that can find her alive. Go on in, I’ll cover for you.”

  Max waved Ukiah to the back door. “It looks bad, kid. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde meet Martha Stewart! You can almost tell when things went bad by the level of grime—like whoever lived here moved away and someone else took over.”

  “I can smell them from here. It’s one of their dens.”

  Max cursed softly as Ukiah stepped through the back door into what had been a pristine white kitchen. The uppermost cabinets still gleamed from the sunlight coming through the windows. On the table, the counters, and the floors, were torn-open bulk packages of cereal and dog food. A yellow plastic tray held a well-gnawed chicken, with bits of bloody meat clinging to the still-connected bones, as if someone had ripped the package open and eaten the chicken raw while standing at the counter.

  “Chicken eaten raw, dog food, but no dog,” Max made a sound of disgust. “If you can’t get sick from the filth, why bother cleaning up?”

  Ukiah glanced outside at the neatly cut yard. “They do enough to blend in.”

  “Well, yeah, you certainly couldn’t ID Brody on sight.”

  There was a splatter of blood beside the chicken bones. Ukiah brushed fingers over the dead blood cells. Matt Brody’s genetic pattern existed as a thin top layer, and underneath was another—alien—code. The blood was from several days earlier. “Brody must have been one of the people in the truck that hit me. He was wounded when he ate this chicken. Either Sam or Kraynak must have shot him.”

  “Why couldn’t you tell that Brody was Ontongard from his hair?”

  Ukiah considered the hair he had found, snagged in the tree branches. It reported only human DNA; a big, blond man. “The hair had been snapped off. The part I found was only old, dead cells. He must have been converted recently, the hair closer to the root would have told me he was Ontongard days ago.”

  Max cursed again. “Sam said the kid drowned June thirtieth. We killed Hex and his Pittsburgh Gets the third week of June. We reduced the Ontongard population in Pittsburgh, so Hex’s Gets here kick into overdrive to replace them. They infect whole families, using fire and drowning to cover the fact that a huge number of people are dying from viral infection.”

  “And they pick up drifters, hikers, anyone that won’t be missed.”

  Max swore. “Oh, damn. Alicia.”

  “They would have infected her the first day they had her.” Ukiah had been braced for them to find Alicia dead for so long, he thought he’d feel nothing now. With his words, though, it was if someone wrapped a hand about his heart and yanked it out of his chest, leaving his ribs wrapped around a hollow ache. Every breath brought pain to that empty spot. “It’s been a week. She’s gone. Either the injection killed her, or she’s one of them now.”

  “Let’s find Rennie, tell him what’s going on and get the hell out of here. There could be hundreds of them here by now. Anyone could be one.”

  “We should warn people.”

  Max caught Ukiah’s shoulder and spun him around to face him. “And what do we tell them? Aliens from space are inhabiting the bodies of townspeople and now the Pack is going to kill them all?”

  “I’ve got to tell them something.” Ukiah pulled away. “Warn them. Both Sam and my family should know.”

  Max glanced sharply at him at Sam’s name, and remorse filled his face. “Okay, we’ll tap Jared on the way out, take him someplace quiet, and—I’ll figure out something to say to him. Then we’ll warn Sam.”

  “Thanks, Max.”

  They went out into the summer dusk. Jared’s lone squad car sat at the far corner, facing them. The sheriff stood talking with a tall, thin, sloppily dressed young man. Apparently another neighbor was learning the truth about the Brodys’ crimes. Ukiah trotted toward them to arrange a private meeting with Jared.

  Communication had made the Ontongard effective as a species. Inside one body, the individual cells communicated to keep the whole body functioning. Swap function. Repair this first and leave that damage until later. Change into this creature so that we can survive outside the host. As the Ontongard spread across host bodies, they retained the link in a telepathiclike ability.

  The Pack and Ukiah kept those telepathic abilities. They could speak mind to mind at a limited range. They could share memories mentally. If they focused, th
ey felt each other at a distance, a prickly awareness across the skin.

  And they could feel the enemy.

  Jared and the stranger turned. Jared said, “This is Dennis Quinn, he lives next to the Brodys,” and the enemy was there, looking at Ukiah.

  Ukiah felt Ontongard awareness wash over him, recognize him as non-Ontongard. The hair on the back of his neck went on end and he slammed to a stop. Oh, shit! His body realized its danger, and reacted instantly with fear, as if terror was poured from a bucket over him, drenching him suddenly and completely! Ontongard! Kill it! Run! It will kill without hesitation! What was one cell to a full body? Or one body to a creature spread across many beings? So unlike a man, who would only fight while his own survival seemed likely, the Ontongard instantly fought to the death.

  Ukiah started backpedaling, growling. Jared frowned at Ukiah’s reaction. With inhuman speed, Dennis Quinn reached out, caught hold of Jared’s service pistol, shoved it slightly forward and pulled it out of the holster. Ukiah caught the Ontongard’s thoughts. Kill the witness. The gun swept up to point at Jared’s chest.

  “No!” Ukiah leapt toward him with a howl of fury. “Don’t hurt him!”

  Ukiah felt Quinn’s recognition of the oncoming danger. He welcomed the pain as Quinn spun away from Jared to fire at him. The bullet caught Ukiah in the bulletproof vest with a force that smashed him to the ground backward. A second bullet whined across the cement by his cheek as he rolled over and started to scramble to his feet. A third hit him in high in his back, still on the vest but barely, just inches from taking out his spine. It slapped him flat onto the street, knocking his human mind unconscious.

  As the awareness that thought of itself as “Ukiah” blacked out, the collective whole—the independent yet interconnected cellular creatures that made up his body—took over. Not guided by human thought and operating solely on instinct, the colony scrambled to its feet.

  Jared grappled with Quinn, trying to disarm him. While the county sheriff outweighed the Ontongard Get by fifty pounds, the alien shrugged Jared off. Max dove behind the rental car, shouting to Ukiah.

  The colony intelligence ignored Max and dashed across the yard of the nearest house. As he ducked through a breezeway that connected the house to its unattached garage, a bullet splintered the trim of the garage’s clapboard siding.

  Jared staggered to his car and shouted into his radio. “Officer needs backup, shots fired. Armed suspect is firing at unarmed civilian. Suspect is Dennis Quinn, male, Caucasian, six-five, a hundred sixty-five pounds, brown and brown, wearing dark jacket and blue Levi’s. He’s chasing . . .”

  Then Ukiah was out of earshot, half-tumbling down a steep hill to the interstate with Quinn in close pursuit. He came to running, the interstate somewhere behind him and the Ontongard on his heels.

  Any normal man he could have outrun. His alien biology gave him an endurance no human could hope to match. Quinn had his every advantage, in addition to a thorough knowledge of the area and an unknown number of allies. Ukiah sent mental shouts to Rennie as he ran, hoping that the Dog Warrior was near.

  Quinn chased him through the stillness of the summer dusk, running footsteps matching his, yet seeming fractions closer every moment. It was all, he suddenly realized, a matter of stride. Quinn was tall, longer-legged than him. He couldn’t win.

  He veered off sharply to the right, onto a street he all but passed, hoping Quinn would overshoot it. He sensed that Quinn, still fifteen feet behind him, made the turn easily and even gained distance in the move. He turned left and then right blindly, unsure where the streets led, no clear plan in mind. The last lone Ontongard that attacked Ukiah did it in a police station, chewing through a dozen police officers to get to him. Indigo saved Ukiah with a bullet to the Ontongard’s head—the only person willing to shoot the man to save Ukiah. In Pendleton, he was the outsider. The police probably would shoot him, and then it would be to the coroner’s office and an autopsy—or worse, into the hands of the Ontongard.

  Where could he go? Where would he be safe? Silence was coming from his headset, as if it was only so much plastic. Jared’s siren sang far off, nearing only to grow distant again, as if Jared searched down random streets for them.

  “Rennie!” he screamed.

  “You stupid little puppy.” A stranger’s thoughts were in his mind. “Your packmates aren’t here. I’m going to cut you down to bits and burn you.”

  Then the distance between them was a matter of two feet, and Quinn reached out and shoved him hard on the shoulder. Off balance, he went tumbling. As he came up, he stared into the muzzle of the pistol.

  A woman screamed in rage. Quinn was smashed sideways even as he pulled the trigger. The muzzle flare nearly blinded Ukiah, but the bullet whined harmlessly past his ear. Quinn was turning, blood streaming from his forehead, to face his new attacker. It was Cassidy, swinging a baseball bat hard for second strike.

  “Leave him alone!” Cassidy struck solidly on Quinn’s upraised arm, which broke with a crack. “I’m not going to let it happen again!”

  The pain and shock as the arm broke would have stopped a human. From just above the wrist, Quinn’s right hand dangled at a strange angle. Quinn dropped his pistol into his left hand as Cassidy stepped toward Ukiah, thinking she had stopped Quinn.

  “Watch out!” Ukiah knocked her aside, leaping for Quinn even as Quinn fired. Cassidy fell as Ukiah tackled Quinn to the ground, clamping both hands on Quinn’s unbroken wrist, trying to keep the gun aimed away from Cassidy.

  They were outside the hardware store, Ukiah realized as he grappled desperately with Quinn. In the deepening dusk, Main Street was weirdly deserted; all the stores were closed and dark. Where was everyone? Cassidy lay on the sidewalk, the smell of blood blooming from her. Had the bullet hit her? Was she dead? Was she bleeding to death? Someone, anyone, had to help her! But no one was coming.

  Ukiah could feel Quinn’s arm reorganizing, healing the bone break at a speed that amazed Ukiah—far faster than any of the Pack would heal. In a few minutes Quinn would have full use of the arm.

  They rolled up against the street curb, on the steel grating of a storm drain. An inch beyond the gun was the open slot of the drain.

  A memory surfaced. Hex’s will pressing against Ukiah’s mind, making him nearly spill out secrets he’d sell his soul to keep. Ukiah clenched hard at the hand holding the gun and thought desperately, “Release!”

  And the hand obeyed him. The gun teetered on the edge of the storm drain, and then dropped into the wet darkness below.

  “Ha!” Ukiah cried and then yelled in shocked surprise as Quinn spun under him and kicked him through the hardware store’s window. Ukiah crashed through the plate glass, a stand of cheap Pendleton Roundup pennants, and landed hard beneath the stuffed moose head, which gazed at him sorrowfully.

  Quinn came through the window and landed lightly among the shattered glass.

  Ukiah scrambled backward, up the narrow aisle of the hardware store. He needed a weapon. Unfortunately, there were many at hand. Even as Ukiah snatched up a curve-bladed sickle, Quinn picked up a six-foot-long steel bar, flattened at one end into a narrow, sharp-edged wedge. Ukiah’s moms used such a bar for clearing rocks and roots from postholes and ditches. The nearly twenty pounds of forged carbon steel smashed the blade through packed earth, gnarled wood, and stones with ease.

  For a moment Ukiah hoped that Quinn wouldn’t be able to handle the posthole digger with his broken arm. The Get, however, lifted the bar easily, holding it like a quarterstaff. Quinn’s arm had already healed, a fact that filled Ukiah with despair. How could he win against this creature?

  “You can’t,” Quinn hissed. “You fight the very essence of yourself. That’s Prime’s madness in you, denying the truth that we’re many yet one, and one yet many.”

  “When we’re done, you will be none.” Ukiah slashed with the sickle, aiming under the bar for Quinn’s groin.

  Quinn dipped the posthole digger to catch the sickle.
Ukiah slid the curving blade up the length of steel, hoping to cut Quinn’s left-hand fingers. Quinn realized the danger, and twisted, yanking the top of the bar back, disengaging the sickle, while swinging the bottom at Ukiah’s side.

  Ukiah dodged the blow, turned his wrist to backhand at Quinn’s face. Quinn jerked back, and the tip of the sickle cut a shallow furrow along the Get’s cheekbone. Quinn struck Ukiah hard in the head, making him reel, and then in the chest with a blow that threatened to crack ribs.

  Ukiah stumbled backward, and Quinn pursued. The bar gave Quinn twice the reach as the sickle. Ukiah grabbed things at random off the shelves with his free hand—hammers, pliers, and screwdrivers—and flung them at Quinn’s head. Quinn dodged them with frightening ease, thrusting at Ukiah with blows Ukiah could barely duck.

  Ukiah came to the end of the aisle and ducked around. As Quinn rounded the corner too, Ukiah leapt at Quinn, pinning the bar uselessly between them. They went tumbling backward, snarling, out the back door to store’s loading dock.

  The buildings neighboring the store hemmed in the area to make a large, nearly enclosed courtyard. A huge woodchipper sat in one corner, a mound of woodchips stacked beyond its exit chute. Cassidy’s pickup sat parked beside it, the tailgate down, ready to be loaded with woodchips.

  Quinn came to his feet first, swinging the steel bar like a long baseball bat. Ukiah ducked the swing, and swung the sickle, laying open a foot-long cut across Quinn’s chest. Quinn swapped his grip on the bar cocked up over his shoulder. His left hand reached high on the bar, and with the full weight of his body, he rammed the pointed tip high into Ukiah’s chest.

  The steel cleaved under Ukiah’s collarbone, clipped the top of his lung, and punched its way out his back. He felt the bar bite deep into the wood of the wall behind him, pinning him.

  Leaning his weight against the bar, Quinn kicked the woodchipper on. It roared to life, its blade ringing.

  “I don’t know which Pack dog made you, puppy,” Quinn said. “But I’m going to unmake you.”