“Olivia!” Ethan cried out. “Don’t go back there!”
But if she heard him she did not respond; she was as much a determined wraith as the Cypher soldiers who blurred past her through the billowing yellow dust. She kept going, step after step, her eyes swollen with both desperate sadness and the rage she had pushed down and pushed down and pushed down and did not know what to do with for she could not fight these creatures from other worlds. She kept going with the smell of fire and the dead-snake smell of the Gorgon ship in her nostrils and in her lungs, and she kept going unaware that Ethan Gaines walked at her side, silent also in his anger, his blue eyes glinting like the edges of blades in a strong light.
Bloodied and staggering survivors passed them, struggling on toward the wall. A few stopped and tried to turn Olivia away from the wreckage, but they gave it up when they saw her sightless eyes. Through the dust and the smoke, she continued on with Ethan beside her, and they walked alongside the downed Gorgon ship with its mortal wounds of burnt holes and within them a glimpse of raw red meat formed into hexagonal-shaped corridors, wet and gleaming with unknown fluids. The way ahead was blocked by rubble. Olivia chose another way, and still Ethan followed. What had been a balcony was on fire. Glass crunched underfoot. A mass of timbers and a stainless steel kitchen sink lay ahead. A railing was twisted like a piece of melted licorice. In the smoky gloom the shadows of Cypher soldiers moved about as flames chewed on broken chairs and coffee tables.
“We can’t get through!” Ethan said. “There’s no way!”
But there was a way. Olivia knew there must be. Vincent was waiting for her, and he was all right, so there must be a way. She walked past the remnant of a standing wall on which still hung a metallic-looking plastic Horn Of Plenty. Ethan saw there was nothing but rubble, smoke, dust, and destruction ahead of them. Beside them loomed the dead Gorgon craft, and they passed a gaping hole from which the dark red liquid had poured to make a swamp of alien blood around the mangled belongings of men.
A Cypher soldier was standing in front of them, its weapon trained and ready.
“Go away,” Ethan said, his voice weak but carrying enough strength to be heard over the crackling of flames. The soldier did not move for a few seconds, and then it stalked off into the ruins. Ethan knew it hadn’t understood him, but what was working behind that faceless mask was the belief that the inhabitants of this world were not worth the waste of energy.
“We have to go back,” Ethan told the woman, who had begun to sob and stumble as her resolve collapsed. He reached out for her hand, caught it and held her. “Olivia. Please. We have to go back…get out of here.”
“Not yet,” she answered, weeping. “Not yet…I’ve got to…find…Vincent. Vincent?” she called, into the dark cavern of despair. And louder: “Vincent?”
And that was when Ethan saw it coming, behind Olivia.
Through the smoke and dust, through the bloody swamp, through the tangle of timbers and broken walls…
…and it was not Olivia’s Vincent.
It was crawling at first…slithering…and then it began to rise up from the wreckage, and it was not a Cypher soldier either. It moved with what might have been a serpentine grace, a strange kind of fascinating beauty, yet as it came closer a cold terror gripped Ethan’s heart and his face contorted, and though he could not fully see the thing he could see enough to know that such a creature was so alien to men that it caused fear to freeze the body and the soul, that the guts drew tight and the stomach lurched, and he wanted to run from this transfixing horror but he could not leave Olivia and she had not seen yet…she had not seen but she saw his face and she was just about to turn and see what should not be seen by human eyes lest they be burned blind.
“NO!” the boy shouted.
And his free hand came up, palm outward, just as Olivia was turning, and to save the last of her sanity he wanted the Gorgon pilot to disappear, to be wiped from the face of this earth, and just in that instant his brain seemed to catch fire and the fire whipped down along his arm and into his hand. His palm burned as if it had been splashed with a bucketful of boiling oil. Did the air between himself and the creature contort? Did it change shape, become solid like a battering ram? Did it sparkle with flames that shot between himself and the alien like a thousand burning bullets?
Maybe all those.
Because in the next second the creature blew to pieces and Ethan was thrown backward, as if slammed by the recoil of an elephant gun. He had the sense to release Olivia’s hand before he broke her arm. He went down into the debris, felt a nail go through his jeans into the back of his right thigh, felt the breath whoosh out of his lungs and his burning brain throb as if it were about to explode.
Olivia’s arm had been nearly jerked out of its socket and would have been had Ethan not let go. She was full up with pain and yet she knew something had been there that was no longer there. She blinked into the gloom as the tears ran from her eyes and her mouth drooled threads of saliva. “What is it?” she asked, clenching a hand to her shoulder. “What is it? What is it?”
She dared not take another step forward, because something terrible had been there and now it was in pieces she did not want to see.
Ethan got himself loose from the nail, struggled up and fell again to his knees. His head was pounding, he felt sick to his stomach and in his mouth was the taste of bitter ashes. With a true force of will he commanded himself to stand, and he did. Olivia stared at him, wide-eyed; she shivered and wavered on her feet, as if about to pass out. Beyond her, just at the edge of recognition, Ethan saw something else slither away through the debris. He tried to speak, could not find his voice, tried again, and said, “We have to go now.”
“Go,” Olivia repeated dully. Then: “Yes. We have to go.”
Ethan looked at the palm of his hand that had seemingly been on fire. He expected to see it either covered with blisters or as one huge blister. Was the flesh a shade or two more red and maybe swollen a little? He couldn’t tell for sure. The burning sensation was gone from his hand, arm and shoulder. He was tired, and his brain ached. He didn’t look over at the thing that had been blown to bits; he just wanted to take Olivia’s hand and guide her out of here. He realized he had the alien blood—the ship’s blood—on his clothes. It smelled of the dead snake, and he wanted to be sick but there was no time for that because maybe the Cypher soldiers could smell it on him. They might swarm after him, and no insignificant humanity could save him.
He grasped Olivia’s hand and started them back the way they’d come, and now there were other figures walking near them but they were not Cyphers or Gorgons, they were bloodied and ragged survivors picking their way out of the debris. Ethan couldn’t recognize anyone. A man carried a little boy, and a woman staggered alongside, and all of them were battered and nearly nude for the clothes had been torn off them in the storm of destruction. An older man wearing a blood-covered shirt suddenly stopped walking and just sat down in a wicker chair as if waiting for the next bus to come along.
Olivia stared straight ahead, her crying now done, her face drawn and waxy. “We’ll be all right,” he told her, but he heard his voice tremble, and it sounded like the most stupid thing that had ever been said in the world. Where was Dave? What had happened to JayDee? What about Roger Pell, Kathy Mattson, Gary Roosa, Joel Schuster, and three or four other people he had at least spoken with? He doubted very many had lived through this…but…he was alive, and so was Olivia Quintero.