“Where?” Stinger demanded, and shook Daufin so hard it brought a grunt of pain from her.
“Give it to him, Curt,” Tom said.
Curt straightened up, slowly took the knapsack off. “The dynamite’s in here,” he said, and tossed it toward Stinger. It landed at Jessie’s feet.
“Take the dynamite out and let me see,” Stinger said.
Jessie picked up the knapsack and reached in. Her hand found not the last two sticks of dynamite, but a pack of Lucky cigarettes.
“Let me see!” Stinger demanded.
“Go on.” Curt’s voice had a nervous edge. “Let him see what he wants to.”
“But … this isn’t—”
“Show him,” Curt interrupted.
And then she understood, or at least thought she did. She brought out the pack of cigarettes and held them in her palm. Stinger’s eyes watched her over Daufin’s shoulder. “Here it is,” Jessie said. Her throat was dust dry. “Dynamite. See?”
Stinger made no sound. The blue Mack Cade eyes stared at the pack of Luckies in Jessie’s palm. Blinked. Then once more. Processing information, Jessie thought. Maybe searching through the language centers of all the brains it had already stolen. Would it know what dynamite was, and what the explosive looked like? A hissing sound came from Stinger’s throat. “That’s a package,” Stinger suddenly said. “Open it and show me the dynamite.”
Jessie’s hands were trembling. She tore the pack open, and held up the remaining three cigarettes so he could see them.
There was a long moment in which she thought she would scream. If Stinger had any information on dynamite, it might be the same definition Daufin knew: an explosive compound usually formed into a cylinder and detonated by lighting a fuse. The cigarettes were cylinders, and how would Stinger know any differently? She could almost see the gears turning rapidly behind the creature’s counterfeit face.
Stinger said, “Put the dynamite down. Step on it until it’s dead.”
Jessie dropped the cigarettes and pressed them deep into the slime.
A quick smile flickered across the thing’s mouth, and Stinger lowered Daufin but kept his hand clenched on her neck. “Now I feel better! Good vibes again, ya’ll! Everyone walk in front of me. Go!”
Jessie let out the breath she’d been holding. Curt Lockett had gambled on the fact that Stinger had never seen dynamite before. But where were the last two sticks?
Curt stood up. His red cowboy shirt had been buttoned almost to the throat. He followed Rick along the tunnel, his arms close to his sides and his back slightly stooped like a dog afraid of being beaten.
Stinger shoved Daufin into the muck. Hauled her up again, shoved her roughly forward. She’d already seen what was clamped between the dog’s jaws: her lifepod. Stinger grabbed a handful of her hair. “I knew the bugs would draw you out. Oh, we’re going to have a nice long trip together. You, me, and the bugs. Think on these things.” He shoved her again, and followed the others into the dark with his spiked tail thrashing.
57
Stinger Revealed
CODY LOOKED UPON STINGER in the dank light of a violet sun, and the world seemed to freeze on its axis.
Stinger—the bounty hunter from a distant planet—was a snaky length of mottled dark and light flesh. Its body shone with slime, and it moved on hundreds of small silver-clawed legs, propelling the bulk forward with wavelike undulations. Like a fat, oily centipede, Cody thought; but it had two large hinged and clawed forelegs that looked like the shovels of a living bulldozer. It was those forelegs that had dug the tunnels and smashed through the floors of houses.
Its head was a duplicate of the thing that had burst out of the horse—thick, elongated jaws and four amber eyes with thin black pupils in a flattened, almost reptilian skull. Except the jaws did not hold needle teeth. The mouth was a large, wet gray suction cup, like the underside of a leech.
Stinger’s body continued to glide into the chamber. Cords of elastic red muscle emerged from its sides and connected it to the breathing machine, which Cody figured must reel the cords in and out automatically; but it was clear that Stinger was tethered to the machine, and might even be part machine itself.
But the worst was that in some places Stinger’s flesh was almost transparent, and Cody could see what was in there: corpses, drifting as if in a macabre ballet. What looked like hundreds of ropy filaments had wrapped around the corpses and seemed to be feeding them into the organs. A horse floated in there, drifting as if on an obscene tide. Flashes of what might have been electricity jumped along the filaments, illuminating the dead in that corpse-swollen body as if by strobe lights. A woman’s pickled face pressed up against the scaly flesh, red hair floating, and then she tumbled backward in terrible slow motion. More bodies moved in Stinger’s internal currents, and there were other faces Cody recognized and wished he did not. He pressed a hand against his mouth, fighting on the edge of the Great Fried Empty.
It knows my name, he thought, and that almost sent him over.
Finally, Stinger’s tail slid through the portal. It had a wrecking ball of spikes, just as the horse creature’s tail had. The tail twitched with horrible life, and the hundreds of legs carried Stinger’s bloated, twenty-foot-long body across the floor with a noise like sliding razor blades.
Cody couldn’t move. The portal was clear now, though slimed with Stinger’s ooze, and they might be able to make it. But what if they couldn’t? The breathing machine was reeling fleshy cords out again as Stinger slithered toward the far side of the chamber. Cody looked over his shoulder at Miranda and Sarge; both of them were pressed against their shelter, and Sarge’s eyes had bulged with terror. He motioned for them to stay where they were, then crawled out of cover on his stomach to see where Stinger had gone.
The thing had reached the wall of geometric symbols. It reared up, eight feet of its body leaving the floor, and the legs on its lower length pushed it onward. The flesh of its belly was smooth and white, like the flesh of a maggot. It looked vulnerable in comparison to the scaly upper body, Cody thought. Like you could punch a hole in it with a good shotgun blast.
But he had no shotgun, and all he could do was watch while the thing’s small claws began to touch the symbols with blurred speed, each one moving independently. As the symbols were activated, their violet glow went out. Stinger’s head lifted, the eyes peering up, and Cody looked up too. Far above, the spinning cyclone of the force field at the ship’s apex had begun to slow its revolutions. As Stinger manipulated another series of symbols, the cyclone of light slowed … slowed … and extinguished.
The force field had been turned off. Instantly, the suspended violet sun brightened.
There was a bass grinding of machinery. The two metal arms were lowering the small pyramid to the floor. As it came down it opened, and within was a compartment that looked like a control center, full of rows of metallic levers. The pyramid settled to the floor with a slight jarring thump.
Stinger continued to touch the symbols, all its attention focused on the work. Mechanisms whined and whirred in the walls, and the entire ship vibrated with a pulse of power.
Cody crawled back to Miranda and Sarge. “We’ve got to get out now!” he whispered urgently. “I’m going first. I want you right behind me. Understand?”
“Yes.” Miranda’s face was still chalky, but her eyes were clear.
Sarge nodded. “We can’t forget Scooter! Got to bring Scooter with us!”
“Right.” Cody peered out again, marking Stinger’s position, then at the portal. The time to go was now. He tensed, about to leap up and run like hell.
Before he could, Jessie Hammond staggered through the portal. This new shock froze Cody where he was. She was followed by Tom Hammond, Rick Jurado, and …
“Oh, Christ,” Cody breathed.
His old man came in, stoop-shouldered. Right behind him was Daufin, her spine rigid and head uplifted defiantly … and then the spike-tailed nightmare that looked like Mack Cade with on
e arm and a dog’s head growing from its chest. Miranda leaned forward, saw Rick and started to shout, but Cody pressed his hand over her mouth and pulled her back behind the machinery.
Rick’s stomach lurched. He’d seen the thing standing at the wall, and he felt the blood drain out of his face. Jessie glanced quickly back at Curt; beads of sweat glittered on his cheeks and forehead. Tom took Jessie’s hand, and Daufin turned to the one-armed replicant.
“You have me now,” she said. “And my pod. Let the humans go.”
“Prisoners have no right to demand.” The replicant’s eyes were supremely confident and contemptuous. “The bugs wanted to help you so much, they can go to prison with you.” Daufin knew it spoke with Stinger’s thoughts, but Stinger was busy with the lift-off preparations and didn’t turn away from the programming console. Evidently Stinger thought so little of her and the humans that it saw no need for more replicants to guard them.
“Where’s my sister?” Rick forced himself to look into the creature’s face. “What’ve you done to her?”
“Liberated her. And the two others, just as I’ve liberated all of you. From now on, there will be no more waste in your lives. Where you’re going, every moment will be productive.” The gaze slid to Daufin. “Isn’t that right?”
She didn’t answer. She knew what lay ahead of them: a torture of “tests” and, finally, dissection.
“You’re going through there.” The single claw motioned toward the portal on the chamber’s other side. “Move.” He reached out to shove Jessie.
Rick knew they were dead. All of them. Miranda too. There was nothing left for him to lose, and he’d rather die on Earth than in outer space or some prison world beyond the stars. His decision was made in an instant, and it freed him from the terror that had locked around him. He drove his hand into his pocket. His fingers closed on the object there, and he wrenched it out.
His other hand seized the creature’s wrist.
The Mack Cade face twisted toward him, mouth opening in a gasp of indignation.
At Rick’s side, the honed blade of the Fang of Jesus clicked out. “Eat this,” Rick said.
He’d always been fast. Fast enough to grab the knife from under a sidewinder’s snout. And now he brought the Fang of Jesus up in a blur of motion and drove the blade into the replicant’s left eye with all his strength behind it.
It went in up to the hilt. Gray fluid spurted from the wound over Rick’s hand. The creature gave a grunt of surprise and the body staggered back, tail writhing, but Rick dared not let either the wrist or his knife go.
Across the chamber, Stinger’s head turned, its claws still darting over the geometric symbols. It made a wet, enraged hissing sound, and its brainwaves directed the Mack Cade replicant like a master puppeteer.
Rick pulled the knife out, struck for the other eye. The thing’s head jerked to one side and the blade ripped across the cheek. The dog’s jaws opened wide, dropping the pod to the floor, and its needle teeth snapped at Rick’s ribs. They caught a mouthful of shirt and tore the cloth away. Rick held on to the replicant’s flailing arm with grim determination and kept knifing at the thing’s face, cutting away chunks of false flesh.
The dog’s neck strained, its teeth about to pierce the skin on Rick’s side.
Tom lunged forward, latching his hands around the dog’s throat. The neck had tremendous strength in it and the head thrashed, its jaws snapping at Tom’s face. Tom hung on, even when its stubby forelegs came up and the two hooked claws raked bloody ribbons out of his arms.
The three figures staggered across the chamber. Daufin saw the pod bounce twice and roll in Stinger’s direction. She ran after it, scurrying over the tendrils that delivered Stinger’s encoding signals to the replicating machines, leapt onto the pod, and snatched it up.
Stinger was lowering itself from the programming console. One pair of its eyes still monitored the combatants, but the other pair was aimed at Daufin. Explosions of electricity flared inside the monster, and with a noise like a steam engine building power, the corpse-swollen body began to undulate toward her.
The replicant’s spiked tail rose up over Rick’s head, about to smash his skull.
But Cody had already shot from his hiding place and was sprinting forward. He reached up, grabbing the tail just below the ball of spikes. Its power lifted him off the floor, but Cody’s weight stopped the blow before it fell. The replicant roared with anger, trying to shake Cody off.
The others saw Cody grappling with the tail, but there was no time to find out where he’d come from. Everything was happening too fast: the replicant’s claw was flailing Rick from side to side as he kept stabbing right down to the metallic skull. Tom’s arms were streaked with blood, savage pain thrumming through him, and he could only hold the dog’s head a few seconds longer.
Jessie had run to Daufin’s side. She picked her up, holding her protectively, as a mother would any child. Stinger was coming at them, gathering speed, the silver claws skittering across the floor.
Someone shoved her aside. Curt Lockett touched the lighter’s flame to the first of the two dynamite sticks he’d taken from the knapsack and clasped under his arms. His face was bleached, a pulse beating rapidly at his temple. He saw his own death coming at him, and his legs shook but he stood facing the onrushing beast as the dynamite’s fuse sparked and caught.
He hurled the stick. It fell short, but Stinger went over it like an oozing train.
There was no blast. Fuse got crushed, Curt thought. “Get back!” he shouted to Jessie. “Move your ass, la—”
His voice was drowned out by a hollow whuuummmp! like a huge shotgun going off in a mass of wet pillows. Stinger shuddered, its tail slamming against the wall. At the same instant, the mouth in Mack Cade’s knife-slashed face bellowed with pain, and the dog’s head howled. The Fang of Jesus slammed into the mouth and sent needles flying.
Some of Stinger’s claws had crisped, and yellow flames gnawed at the underbelly flesh. A pool of liquid was spreading across the floor, and as Stinger writhed and rose up like a quaking mountain Curt saw a three-foot-long gash with charred edges on the soft white flesh. Inside, electricity sputtered along the veins and organs.
But Stinger kept coming, trailing slime and some of its guts behind it. Curt retreated, pulling out the last stick of dynamite. Jessie still clutched Daufin, and was backing away too. Curt flicked the lighter, touched the fuse to the flame with shaking hands.
“Hold it! Hold it!” Rick shouted to Tom, but the man’s arms were scored with gashes and the dog’s head got away from him. As Rick dodged the snapping jaws, the replicant flung him aside. It strode toward Curt, Cody straining against its tail. The dynamite’s fuse was smoking, and Curt cocked his arm back to throw it.
“Dad!” Cody screamed. “Watch out!”
Curt whirled around. The replicant was upon him, its face hanging in tatters and the single eye glinting with fury.
The thing’s claw flashed out in a vicious arc. Shreds of Curt’s red cowboy shirt and pieces of flesh flew into the air, followed by streamers of blood. The dynamite’s fuse popped a flame, but Curt’s hand lost it and the stick fell to the floor. The replicant kept slashing at the ruins of his chest, and Curt tried to fight it off as blood clogged his lungs and welled up into his mouth.
Cody frantically jerked back on the tail, his own injured ribs driving agony through him. He hauled the monster back a few feet from his father. Curt went down, and the replicant’s tail threw Cody from side to side but he gripped tight and held on.
Stinger loomed over them, the undulations of its body opening wider the charred and torn bellyflesh.
Cody saw the dynamite, its fuse sizzling down toward the cap. It lay less than ten feet from him, but he dared not let go of the spiked tail.
Daufin struggled loose from Jessie’s grip; she hit the floor running and picked up the dynamite stick. A pair of Stinger’s eyes twitched toward her, and almost simultaneously the replicant turned away from Cu
rt Lockett and rushed at her. No! Cody thought. Can’t let it get her! He dragged against the tail, his teeth clenched and tears of pain in his eyes; the replicant’s aim was jarred, and the metal-nailed hand whipped past Daufin’s head.
Daufin stood her ground as Stinger began to rear up before her.
She had a quick mental image: the pitcher in that mathematical game of safes and outs called baseball. Saw the pitcher’s arm cocking back, then flashing forward again in a miracle of moving muscles, bones, and sinews. She cocked her own arm back in imitation of that pitcher, and with a split-second calculation of angles and velocities she threw the sizzling stick of dynamite.
It flew across the twelve feet between her and Stinger, and landed in the wound on Stinger’s soft belly, exactly where she’d aimed. She dropped to her knees as the replicant’s claw flailed where her head had been a second before and Cody strained to hold the thing back.
A heartbeat passed, as long to Daufin as an agonizing eternity.
Stinger’s flesh quivered, its body contorting like a question mark; there was a hollow boom that made Jessie think of thunder caught in a bucket. Two things happened at once: a shower of sparks seemed to jump from Stinger’s organs, and the monster’s flesh swelled and stretched like a grotesque sausage about to burst apart. The tear at its belly split wider, rimmed with yellow flames, and as Stinger thrashed wildly, burning coils of intestines spilled out. Flares of electricity exploded within the body, as if the double blasts had set off an internal chain reaction.
The replicant with the ruined face of Mack Cade made a strangling, moaning sound and lurched to right and left, the claw swiping at empty air as Daufin scrambled beyond its reach. The dog’s howling was hoarse and full of pain, its teeth gnashing so hard the needles were shearing off. Jessie bent down and pulled Daufin close to her, their hearts pounding in unison.
Stinger’s head reeled; it began backing away, its sucker mouth oozing drool, and beneath its body was a spreading circle of ripped organs, things that looked like dark red matter with needle-teethed mouths. The organs themselves gasped and twitched like misshapen fish as they came out, and when Earth air hit them, they ignited with yellow flames and shriveled into leathery ashes. Stinger stretched upward, as if reaching for the violet sun. Something exploded with white fire inside it. The split widened further, more tides of thick inner matter streaming out. The upper portion of Stinger’s body crashed to the floor.