She finally decided that it must be because Reza’s grip had tightened with every step. It was a gauge of the little boy’s fear. But her own senses registered nothing at all.
Reza moved forward, about half a step ahead of her, one hand clinging to hers, the other probing ahead of him through the murk. He knew he had seen the alien warrior. But as his fear grew, so did his self-doubt. Maybe I was wrong, he thought.
Behind them came a scraping sound like a knife against a sharpening stone. Snowden whirled around, pushing Reza to the ground behind her with one hand while the other brought the rifle to bear.
“Hell!” she hissed. A fiber optic connector that had been part of the house’s control system dangled from the ceiling, the cable scraping against the wall. She shook her head, blowing out her breath. Don’t be so tense, she told herself. Take it easy. “Reza,” she said, turning around, “I think we better head back to the others. There’s nothing–”
She stopped in mid-sentence as she saw a clawed fist emerge from the wall in front of her, the alien flesh and sinew momentarily merging with stone and steel in a pulsating mass of swirling colors. The hand closed around Snowden’s neck with a chilling snick. The alien warrior’s hand was so large that her talons overlapped Snowden’s spine. Gasping in horror, Snowden was forced backward as the Kreelan made her way through the wall and into the dark hallway.
Snowden’s mouth gaped open, but no words came. There was only a muted stuttering that was building toward an uncontrollable ululation of terror. She dropped her rifle, the tiny gap between her body and the alien making it as useless as a medieval pike in a dense thicket. Desperately, she groped for the pistol strapped to her lower thigh, her other hand vainly trying to break the Kreelan’s grip on her neck.
His mind reeling from the horror in front of him, Reza backpedaled away, his mouth open in a scream for help that he would never remember making. He watched helplessly as the warrior’s sword, free from the wall’s impossible embrace, pierced Snowden’s breastplate. It burst from her back with a thin metallic screech and a jet of blood. Snowden’s body twitched like a grotesque marionette, her legs dancing in the confusion of signals coursing through her severed spine, her arms battering weakly at the enemy’s face. The pistol had fallen to the floor, its safety still on.
Satisfied that the human was beaten, the Kreelan let go of Snowden’s neck. As the young woman’s body fell to the floor, the alien warrior pulled the sword free, the blade dragging at Snowden’s insides with its serrated upper edge. She was dead before her helmeted head hit the floor.
Reza bolted for the main room, his scream of terror reverberating from the walls and battered ceiling.
“Reza!” Solon cried as his son burst into the room to fall at his father’s feet. “Where’s Snowden?”
“Solon,” Camilla whispered, slowly rising to her feet as she saw the dark shape silently move from the hallway. A burst from down the street lit the thing’s face with a hellish glow, leaving no doubt as to its origin.
The Kreelan stopped just beyond the hallway. Watching. Waiting.
Enrique reacted first. Instinctively he brought up his rifle, aiming it at the alien’s chest.
“Bitch!” he cried, his finger convulsing on the trigger.
Solon saw her arm move like a scythe in the eerie display of his helmet visor. The movement was accompanied by a strange whistling noise, like a storm wind howling against a windowpane.
Enrique suddenly grunted. Solon saw the gunner’s eyes register disbelief, then nothing at all as they rolled up into his head. His body sagged backward and the gun discharged once into the ceiling before clattering to the floor at his side. Solon saw a huge wet horizontal gash in Enrique’s chest armor that was wide enough to put both fists in, as if someone had split him open with an ax.
Camilla reached for her rifle, propped against the wall behind her.
“No,” Solon said softly. “Don’t move.”
She stopped.
Reza lay face down on the floor, his body pointing like an arrow toward where his father now stood frozen. He blinked away the tears in his eyes, his entire body trembling with fear. He felt something sharp under his right hand, and without thinking he closed his fingers around it: a knife. He clung to it desperately, for he had no weapon of his own. A brief glance told him that it was his father’s. He knew that his father always carried two, but must have somehow lost this one in the rubble during the fighting. Reza held it tightly to his chest.
“Why doesn’t she attack?” Camilla whispered, terribly tempted to reach for her pistol or rifle. The sight of Enrique’s gutted body stayed her hand. And then there was Snowden. Undoubtedly, she lay dead somewhere deeper in the house.
“I don’t know, but…” Solon hesitated. He suddenly had an idea. “I’m going to try something.”
Before Camilla could say a word, he drew the long-bladed knife he carried in his web gear. It was an inferior weapon to the Kreelan’s sword, but it was all he had, and he didn’t know where his regular combat knife had disappeared to. Then he slowly moved his free hand to the clasps that held his web gear to his armor. With two quick yanks, the webbing that held his grenades, pistol and extra weapon power packs clattered to the floor.
“So far, so good,” he muttered. Sweat poured from his brow down the inside of his helmet. “Now you do it,” he ordered his wife. “Draw your knife and drop the rest of your gear.”
“What about Reza?” she asked, her eyes fixed on the alien as she repeated what Solon had done, her own equipment rattling to the floor around her feet a moment later. “Solon, we’ve got to get him out of here.”
Crouching down slowly under the Kreelan’s watchful, almost benevolent gaze, Solon reached down to where his son lay.
“Reza,” he whispered, the external helmet speaker making his voice sound tinny, far away, “stand up, very slowly, and look at me.”
Reza did as he was told, his body shaking with fright.
“Listen carefully, son,” he said, tearing his eyes away from the Kreelan to look at his son for what he knew would be the last time. He fought against the tears that welled up in his eyes. “You must do exactly what I tell you, without question, without being too afraid. You’re a young man, now, and your mother and I need you to help us.”
“Yes, Papa,” Reza whispered shakily as he stared into his father’s dirty helmet visor. But instead of his father’s face, Reza saw only the dull reflection of the apparition standing behind him, only a few paces away.
Holding his son by both quivering shoulders, Solon went on, “Not far from here, there used to be a really big schoolhouse, the university. Do you remember?”
Reza nodded. His father had taken him there many times to show him the great library there. It had always been one of his favorite places.
“Our people have built a big, strong fortress there,” Solon continued. “That’s where I need you to go. Tell them your mother and I need help, and they’ll send soldiers for us.” He pulled Reza to him. “We love you, son,” he whispered. Then he let him go. “Go on, son. Get out of here and don’t look back.”
“But Papa…” Reza started to object, crying now.
“Go on!” Camilla said softly, but with unmistakable firmness. Her own body shook in silent anguish that she could not even hold her son one last time. Fate had held that last card from her hand, an alien Queen of Spades standing between her and her child. “Go on,” she urged again, somehow sensing the Kreelan’s growing impatience, “before it’s too late.”