Gasping, the boy spoke.
"Did we…get it?"
Hunter grimaced. "Yeah, soldier. You got it."
There was almost a smile, then the boy took another breath and was gone. Slowly, Hunter stood, staring down. His rage was channeled now, and he stood like a monument of judgment. It would die for this, he swore to himself. As surely as he lived, it would die.
Hunter gazed about, knowing exactly what had happened, though he had seen none of it.
It had chosen its terrain well, using their fear, and they had fallen into the trap. If he had been here, he was certain, this never would have happened. At least not on this scale. But they had allowed themselves to get caught up in the chase. Had lacked the patience to pick their terrain more carefully and wait with infinite patience until the prey was close and vulnerable. He shook his head.
Here, with shadow and light crossing like a chessboard, it had been able to move only a step before it disappeared, only to re-emerge from complete blackness to kill with a blow before moving on, vanishing again into darkness, stalking.
Such a loss…
It was a battlefield, a graveyard of dead men that might have won, but for want of his direction. He cursed himself silently as he heard a sound.
Whirling, he had the Weatherby centered.
Takakura…
The Japanese commander was holding his chest, sword in hand. And his face was slack, sweating, while he stared down over the boy, as if the soldier were somehow different from the multitude surrounding him, or if he somehow epitomized the score of dead. Then the Japanese simply shook his head, bowing wearily to lean on the hood of a Humvee.
"Come on," Hunter said, not wasting time on questions. He put his arm under Takakura s shoulder, supporting him, and they began to move.
"We've got to get inside the building before it finds us. Which it's going to do fast enough."
Takakura, a true soldier, merely frowned at his injury. He asked no questions as he stumbled alongside Hunter, his sword dragging a narrow trail in the dust. Hunter knew the Japanese was badly wounded but never asked how or where; this was no time.
A cacophony of explosions erupted in an area near the shed and Hunter froze, lifting his head. He saw blasts of gunfire and heard heated shouts from the glowing devastation. The gun blasts continued, broken only by short pauses of cursing before they resumed once more.
Hunter glimpsed a distant silhouetted figure moving back and forth and saw it raise a rifle, firing two rounds that were followed by a heated curse that carried across the compound. In the next moment the figure ran to the right and vanished.
Hunter leaned Takakura against the front grill of a troop carrier. The big truck easily supported the Japanese, although Takakura's head was bent forward in exhaustion and shock. Hunter pushed him back and spoke close to his face.
"Takakura!" Hunter pointed to the installation. "Can you make it to the building? Bobbi Jo and Brick are at the side door! All you have to do is get to the building! It's not that far! Do you understand me!"
A slow nod. "Hai."
Grimacing stoically, he pushed Hunter's hand aside and staggered forward. Hunter moved toward the place where he had seen the gunfire. He glanced back once to see Takakura moving slowly and slightly off balance, but with determination. It might take him longer to make it alone, but Hunter believed he would. And, although Takakura was easy prey in his wounded condition, Hunter didn't think that the creature was an immediate danger to him. No, he was confident that the man at the far end of the motor pool, the one firing the gun and raging at the night, had sighted the thing and was trying to finish the fight.
Hunter had a good suspicion who it was before he ever reached the liquefied remains of the tanker.
Even 150 feet away, the heat was blistering, and Hunter glanced to the far right to see Chaney raise the Weatherby against a shoulder, firing twice. Obviously getting more skilled with the double-barreled rifle, Chaney had ejected the spent rounds and inserted two more in the blink of an eye. As quickly as Chaney had performed the action, he might as well have been firing a semiautomatic.
"Chaney!" Hunter yelled from behind the protection of a Humvee. As enraged as Chaney was, Hunter was taking no chances that he might accidentally shoot him.
Chaney paused before he called out, "Hunter?"
Instantly Hunter was out from behind the Humvee running forward, searching the area where Chaney had been shooting. And they began the conversation long before they stood face-to-face, Hunter alert to everything, close shadows on the right, distant shadows beyond flame on the left. He raised an arm briefly against the tidal wave of heat pouring from the ruined tanker and shed.
"What do you have?" he shouted to Chaney above the roaring inferno.
"I near tripped over the thing!" Chaney yelled back. "Somebody finally hurt it! I don't know who! It was on the ground and I just shot it point-blank!"
Hunter knew before he even asked. "Did you kill it?"
"Hell, no!" Chaney glared at him, sweating. Hunter saw that he had used about a third of the cartridges on the bandoleer. "But I sure got it mad." He grimaced, catching his breath. "I hit it again as it got up off the ground and then it was gone! I chased it across the compound, hittin' it every chance I got! Then it vanished over here! I got a glimpse of it a second ago and sent two over there!" He pointed to the far side of the flames, shook his head. "Haven't seen it since!"
Another time Hunter might have congratulated him, but there was no time for praise. Then a voice roared from the flames on the other side of the shed.
"Hunter! I know your name! I will kill you for this!"
It was the beast.
Still alive …
Hunter debated a reply, and shouted back, "Then come and kill me! Do it now!"
"No! Not now! But soon! Soon! You think you have won but you have won nothing! Because I am more than man!"
Hunter snarled, "You're an animal, Luther! An animal! You'll always be an animal!"
"Tell me that when I eat your heart!"
Chaney shouted, "Eat this!" and fired the Weatherby blindly toward the voice before Hunter grabbed his arm.
"No!" he said. "We've got to get back to the building. It's our only chance. We can't stop him with these weapons. Come on! Let's move! We gotta get everyone into the building and wait for it to come to us!"
Frowning with anger, Chaney raised his head to search briefly over the flames before he grimaced, turning. Hunter saw that, as fired up as Chaney was with the close combat, his fever had not overridden his tactical judgment.
"All right!" He loped forward, holding the Weatherby. "Let's get back!"
Holding his heart, Professor Tipler sat on the edge of the bed, bathed in red light flooding out from the corners. The emergency lights had kicked on and he had heard the roar and clash of battle in the motor pool, the howls of wounded men, the screams of the dying.
Even from this great distance, secured within cement walls, he had discerned frantic orders, endless gunfire. And now that the gunfire had ceased, except for scattered resistance, he presumed the battle had been lost.
Standing monolithic in the gloom, Ghost filled the narrow entrance of Tipler's cubicle. True to his loyalty and love, the great black wolf had not left Tipler's side since the ordeal began. Like a great unsleeping spirit of flesh and fang cloaked in black, he fearlessly stood his ground.
Tipler smiled. He knew Ghost would never leave his side. Not until Hunter gave the word. And he wondered what would happen if he told the noble wolf to find his master. Tipler closed his eyes as the possibility entered his mind that Hunter had been killed by the beast. Again, he shook his head; so little an old man can do…