The creature drew back, swatting at the air with its foreclaws. From its cavernous mouth beneath the bony battering ram came a shriek that started loud and grew in high-pitched intensity until it broke the windows in the SUVs and caused everyone in the garage to drop their weapons and clasp their hands to their ears. A couple of the soldiers fell to their knees. Ethan too had to protect his ears; the sound was mind-stunning, an aural assault that could break the will of any human to stand before it. When the sound ceased the weapons were grabbed up again and the firing continued, but two of the soldiers and three of the other men had fallen to the floor and lay there in dazed shock.
“Fire! Fire! Fire!” Winslett shouted. Even to Ethan the man’s voice was muffled, his ears still ringing with the creature’s sonic weapon.
The beast’s flesh was oozing dark fluid in a hundred places. Its tail lashed out and knocked one SUV into the others. Facing the humans it let out a second shriek that again drove aural spikes of pain into the head and overpowered the senses. This time Derryman was driven to his knees, and Winslett staggered back with his hands clutched to his ears. Jackson tried to withstand it and keep firing but he couldn’t; the pistol fell from his grip and he went down also. Ethan was staggered too, his hands to his ears and feeling as if his entire body was enveloped in searing flame. It came to him, even in the midst of this torment, that the creature’s sonic shrieks were not only at a mind-stunning pitch and volume but triggered the area of the human nervous system that registered pain. He fell to his knees and then onto his right side, his teeth clenched and eyes involuntarily squeezed shut. In spite of all the power he commanded, he drew his knees up against his chest, and his body shivered as agony beat at him in vicious waves.
H
Dave had felt a vibration in Room 3A and so had the man with the automatic rifle who’d been stationed there to guard him. “What the hell was that?” he asked. An alarm was still going off, after the sound of a gunshot which a few moments before had caused Dave to emerge from the bathroom where he’d gone to get a drink of water.
“Saber Four Eight,” the man said into his communicator. “What’s happening, Jonesy?”
“We’re at Code Red on Level Two,” came the terse and nervous answer. “Some kind of breach. Sketchy yet.”
“Do tell,” Dave said.
“Can’t talk, I’m gone,” said the man on the other end of the communicator, and Dave’s guard replied, “Copy that.”
“A breach?” Dave felt the floor shudder again. “Whatever’s gotten in, it’s big.”
“Just relax. Our orders are to sit tight.”
“Relax? Are you crazy? When do I get to see somebody who’s able to listen to me?”
“Sir, now is not the time to—”
“It is the time.” Dave took a step toward the door and his guard swung the rifle’s barrel up into his face. Dave looked into the barrel with disgust and then into the man’s eyes with the same expression. “I’m going out to see what the hell is happening. If you want to go, fine. If you want to shoot me, go right ahead because that’s the only way you’ll keep me in this room.”
“Sir, my orders are clear.” A finger went to the trigger.
Once again a vibration came through the floor. The alarm was still wailing. Dave said, “Shoot me if you have to.” He reached out to turn the door’s lock the guard had engaged and the young, hard-faced Secret Service agent stepped in front of him with the rifle still aimed at his head. Dave had the urge to throw a punch, but he thought as soon as he drew his fist back he would likely be shot, not a killing placement but one to the leg or shoulder that would instantly drop him.
A voice came from the man’s comm device: “Mike, Code Red on Level Two! They need guns! Get down there, stat!”
“I’m watching one of the new arrivals!”
“Scrub that! Leave ’em locked in and get down there!”
“You’re not lockin’ me in!” Dave said. “No way! I’ll kick that damned door down!”
“Copy that.” The agent lowered his communicator but kept the rifle aimed. “Step back, sir.”
“I’m going through that door one way or the other. I swear I’ll kick it down. Shoot me now, if you have to.”
The young man paused, his well-scrubbed face impassive. Then suddenly it became contorted with conflict. “Damn it!” he said. “You must be human, to be so fucking stubborn!” He unlocked the door. “I may be put in the brig for this, but come on and stay out of my way!”
They went into the corridor, where they found that Jefferson Jericho had used his skills to also talk his guard into letting him out of 1A. Jefferson and the young man were just coming through the door. Dave figured Jericho’s guard had been informed of the need for guns too, and the slimebag didn’t want to be left in that room while it felt like the place was falling to pieces.
The two guards rushed on along the corridor to the stairs. “What’s going on?” Jefferson asked Dave over the noise of the alarm.
“Some kind of breach downstairs.”
“A breach? What’s gotten in?”
“Don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s making the floor—”
Dave caught a strange movement, like a disturbance of air to Jefferson’s left and about eight feet further toward the stairs. Dave felt the skin on the back of his neck crawl. Above the shrill noise of the alarm something made a sound whose echo came up the stairwell and along the corridor and made both men wince with pain.
From the shimmer of air, a body formed.
It was a large man, square-built and broad-shouldered though his cheekbones and small ebony chips of eyes were hollowed out from hunger. He had a tangle of shoulder-length black hair and two month’s growth of beard. He wore a dark blue t-shirt, gray trousers and dirty black sneakers.
Vope said, tonelessly, “I have come for the boy, but I have been given permission to know ecstasy in killing both of you first.”
H
When the monster ceased its aural attack, Ethan got to his knees. His body was aflame, it was hard to focus beyond the pain and the feeling that his brain was about to explode. He saw the creature stalking toward them, crouched under the ceiling. Its triangular head shattered some of the light tubes, and the forked tail swept back and forth across the concrete, now hitting the oil drums and sending them flying into the shelves where the batteries were stored.
The soldiers were paralyzed, unable to pick up their weapons. Jackson was on the ground and so were Derryman and General Winslett, all of them in agony. There were other men on the stairs. They stopped where they were to fire automatic rifles at the beast, and though the bullets drew puffs of alien blood, they did nothing to halt the thing’s advance.
Before the creature could deliver another assault the peacekeeper took aim, both hands outthrust. With a concentrated thought that cut through the pain, he sent bolts of crackling energy and a thousand fiery projectiles that only he could see toward the monster at nearly the speed of light. The beast was hit in the chest, which burned black in an instant and caved in, then burst into flame. The thing staggered backward, the tail crashed into one of the SUVs and sent it tumbling end-over-end into the opposite wall not a dozen feet from Ethan and the others. As its chest burned, the monster let loose another sonic scream, the power of which was nearly a physical force that flung Ethan backward to the floor and stopped all firing of rifles from the men on the stairs.
Through the haze of pain and pressure, Ethan saw the beast lurching forward once more, its chest dripping chunks of flaming meat. It was coming to crush him and the other men, and Ethan could not focus on fighting back with this unearthly scream pounding him down. Still he tried to get to his knees, to turn his power upon the oncoming monster, and still the shriek went on, exploding more of the light tubes along the garage’s roof.