Shadow Box, page 11
“Where?” Kane demanded, flipping the Sin Eater into his hand as he stepped into the tiny sun-drenched street.
“Northmost corner, behind the farthest house,” Domi responded. “In the corral.”
Kane was already running forward, his body held low, arms pumping as he raced along the short stretch between the shacks. He could hear Grant’s heavy footsteps just behind him as his partner followed, and he held up his empty left hand to tell the man to hold back.
A second later, Kane rounded the corner of the farthest shack, and then he saw it. The creature stood eight feet tall, its legs bent, slightly hunched, its back to Kane. Its proportions matched its height, a huge, hulking figure, with thick protrusions coming from elbows and running down its spine. Its arms and legs were as thick as tree trunks. It was wrapped in some kind of gauze material, an off-white color, stained with dirt and blood, torn in parts to reveal patches of coal-black skin, and Kane saw what he at first took to be a cloud of small flies and insects hovering around it.
Kane stood there, pistol raised, watching for a startled moment as the creature slapped the horse aside, knocking the defenseless animal across the length of the small corral until it slammed into the fencing and fell to its side on the dusty ground, kicking up sand in its frantic efforts to recover. The huge, mysterious creature remained there for a moment, its back to Kane, its shoulders moving heavily as it took deep lungfuls of air.
“Domi?” Kane whispered, activating his Commtact pickup. “Where did it come from? Did you see?”
“It was just there,” Domi said, her voice sounding worried. “Like it mat-transed in or something.”
Grant stepped forward, his voice an urgent whisper beside Kane’s ear. “Kane,” he prompted.
Kane looked and saw that Grant was pointing to the little well that sat to the edge of the settlement. Its mouth had become bigger, one side distended where the walls had caved in from heavy turmoil belowground. Kane nodded once before turning his full attention back to the beast.
“We think it came from underground,” Kane stated over the Commtact. “Burrower of some kind.”
Slowly, the creature turned, as though sensing Kane’s presence at last. Head low, it looked at the two ex-Mags where they stood beside the edge of the shack. Its face was black, like shadow, and twin green eyes burned within. Smoke billowed from those eyes, streams of rising chartreuse cloud, before dissipating just above its head. Other parts of it seemed somehow ethereal, too, now that Kane had got past his initial shock and had the chance to assess it more carefully. It wasn’t a cloud of insects that hovered about it; the dark cloud was made from aspects of the creature itself. Its face smoldered and where the gauze coverings were broken, its exposed skin flaked away like burning ashes. And yet, it never seemed to lose any body mass. The thing remained huge and imposing, staring at Kane with those vibrant, unearthly eyes.
“What the hell is that thing?” Grant muttered, training his Sin Eater on the huge creature as it surveyed them.
Brigid and the Incarnates were just behind them now, staring in astonishment at the huge figure.
“Kane,” Brigid whispered, “I think we need to get out of here.”
“Weapons up,” Kane instructed everyone loudly, not bothering to turn to look at her.
Suddenly, the creature was moving. It took three long strides in a rush, racing across the sand toward Kane and Grant at a furious pace, almost quicker than the eye could follow, and it unleashed a noise from its open mouth that sounded like a combination of a wolf’s howl and a parrot’s caw. White mist billowed from its open mouth, a cloud of boiling-hot saliva.
Kane and Grant skipped backward as the creature ran at them. “Domi,” Kane called into the Commtact, “we’re going to need backup. Get over here now.”
The hulking brute’s arm lunged toward Kane, cleaving through the air at head height, a misting rush of black flecks following in its wake like the afterimage on a motion picture. Kane ducked, and the creature’s fist sailed over his head, just two inches above him, before crashing into the side of the shack with a loud splintering of wood.
“Hostile,” Kane concluded as he continued dashing backward, his party spreading out around him, holding the monster in their weapons’ sights.
Decard was coming out of another shack now, accompanied by Keb and three Incarnates, with two more rushing down the street to take up defensive positions with their tubular silver staffs. Where Decard had opened the door to the shack, that awful, strained wailing could be heard coming from inside, the infected becoming more and more agitated.
“Domi, get over here,” Kane repeated into the Commtact, conscious that she hadn’t replied to his previous request.
Domi’s response sounded woozy, as though she had just been woken from a nap.
“Kane,” she slurred, “we have a second problem. The Mexican and the girl just slugged me and the guards here. Our rabbits are on the run!”
Chapter 9
Kane rushed backward on light feet, gun at the ready, eyes never leaving the huge creature that loomed before him. Behind him, Grant, Brigid and the Incarnates rushed in all directions, taking up defensive positions, finding what meager cover they could in doorways and between the ramshackle buildings.
“Domi?” Kane called over the Commtact. “Repeat message. Did you say we’ve lost the prisoners?”
“Worse than that.” Domi’s voice still sounded strained and sleepy. “They’ve taken the interphaser.”
“Damn,” Kane cursed. “Can you see them? Do you know what direction they went in?”
As he spoke, the hulking creature took a slow, wary step down the street toward Kane and the others, its head low as its burning green eyes surveyed them. Closer now, Kane could see that its legs featured a reverse knee, like a grasshopper’s or a horse’s hind legs, and it seemed to totter forward as though set to overbalance at any moment. Its coal-colored face looked up the street, calculating the scene that it was presented with. Then it unleashed another of those terrible wolf-parrot cries, the noise reverberating off the walls of the shacks to either side, before it began running toward them once more, arms out and back as it prepared to swing for Kane.
Kane was listening to Domi’s report over the Commtact. “They took two chariots and headed off to the west, I think. Trying to locate—”
Suddenly, Grant’s voice snapped Kane back into the present. “Kane, head in the game, stat!”
Kane spun backward, dropping low as the monster’s right arm rocketed toward his throat, a cloud of black flecks left in its wake. Kane found himself stumbling, falling to the hard-packed sand of the street as the creature continued swinging its mighty arms at him. He looked up as the creature towered over him, tossing its head back and unleashing another of those unearthly banshee wails, a cloud of misting saliva bursting from its open jaws. This close, Kane could see a pattern on the creature’s face and exposed skin—ridges of scales like those of a fish or reptile. Then it turned back to look at Kane on the ground as he scrambled to get away.
A loud report came from off to Kane’s right, and he watched from the corner of his eye as Grant pumped a stream of 9 mm lead at the monster from the barrel of his Sin Eater. The creature turned, momentarily staggered as the bullets slapped its chest and shoulder.
Behind Kane, Decard and the Incarnates joined Grant in unleashing a barrage at the creature. From all sides of the tiny street, beams of energy zapped toward the huge beast as the Incarnates fired high-density energy beams from their silver-colored staffs. Once the Incarnates’ weapons were engaged, a familiar tickling sensation came to Kane’s eardrums, a slight buzzing like an insect’s wings.
The energy beams were almost invisible in the sunlight, just lighter streams across a watcher’s vision, like sunspots playing across the eyes. Decard, too, was using his weapon—a reconditioned Sin Eater handblaster similar to those carried by Kane and Grant, his old weapon of office. He crouched on one knee to steady himself, his free hand under the muzzle of the compact weapon as he drove shot after shot into the monster’s abdomen.
Under the barrage of fire, the hulking creature reared to its full, impressive height—eight feet of solid, jet-black muscle. It struggled against the onslaught, shook momentarily as though flicking raindrops from its skin, then turned its gaze on the multiple attackers, its fierce eyes smoldering.
Still lying beneath it, Kane drew his Sin Eater pistol up and targeted the creature’s chin, between jaw and neck, where its soft palate should be located. As he took aim, he heard scrambling, and then Brigid Baptiste was in the sand next to him, pulling him away.
“What are you doing, Baptiste?” he raged at her. “I can make the shot.”
“You’re too close, Kane,” she chastised him. “Let’s put some distance between us and that monster before it’s too late.”
Fuming, Kane struggled to his feet and followed Brigid down the little street as the Incarnates, Decard and Grant covered his back, holding the monster at bay with their continuous barrage of fire.
“I was about to turn that to my advantage. I could have done it,” Kane argued with Brigid as they rounded a corner at the far end of the street.
“You would have been dead,” Brigid told him angrily.
Kane bit back a curse as the redheaded woman checked around the corner of the building, her TP-9 pistol in hand. Kane followed her, watching as the translucent beams from the Incarnates’ staffs blasted into the monster, tentatively holding it in place.
“Did you hear Domi’s report?” Kane asked.
“Yes,” Brigid snapped. “One problem at a time, Kane.”
“No, we need to get after them,” Kane argued. “Smarts and Rosalia are our only lead to Carnack’s gang, and they have our interphaser now, too.”
“They’ll never get it working,” Brigid told him as she watched the creature from the cover of the shack’s wall.
“Oh, sure,” Kane growled. “You can build another one, right? You and Brewster.”
Brigid looked at him, eyes narrowed. “Kane, can we just deal with the monster first?”
Kane stepped back, holding a hand to one ear to better hear his Commtact over the ruckus all around him. “Tell me if it gets close,” he instructed Brigid before hailing Domi once more.
“Domi, I need you to go after the duo right now,” he told her.
A LITTLE MORE THAN one hundred yards away, Domi was wincing as she rubbed at a bump that was forming on the back of her skull. Three of the Incarnates who accompanied her now lay unconscious, while the fourth had removed his bird-faced helmet and was using water from his leather drinking pouch to rinse a bloody cut just above his eye. Her head felt like cotton wool, and she tried to blink away the sensation of nausea as Kane’s voice came in, all too loud, over the Commtact.
“Domi,” Kane was instructing her, “I need you to go after the duo right now.”
“No need to shout,” Domi muttered.
“What’s that?” Kane’s voice came back, still too loud to be comfortable. “Domi, we’ve got a lot going on here right now….”
“I’ll get on it,” she agreed, cutting him short. “It’s just my head, y’ know?”
“Don’t let them get away,” Kane instructed. “How are the Incarnates?”
Domi looked around, gasping at the renewed sensation of pain as she turned her head. “We’ve got three unconscious and at least one wounded here, not including myself,” she replied. “Kane, I swear to you, that girl moved like lightning.”
“I’ll send backup to follow you as soon as I can,” Kane promised.
At that moment, Grant’s voice piped over the Commtact, his breath coming hard as he continued to pump the trigger of his Sin Eater. “Hey, people,” he said, “I can double back and join Domi in two minutes.”
“Sounds good,” Kane agreed.
“Stay where you are and I’ll pick you up, hotshot,” Domi said playfully as she ran to one of the untended chariots. She leaped aboard, flipping switches until she found the engine ignition.
A moment later, the chariot was kicking up sand as Domi swung it around and steered it toward the east flank of the little hamlet where the rest of her teammates were battling the monster.
THE INCARNATES continued to blast the tall creature with energy beams from their staffs, and it reared back, then seemed to shrug, flicking the beams aside like insects. Its head bowed once again, and Grant, who had taken a position close to the beast, tucked inside the doorway of one of the roughly constructed shacks, warning everybody to get back. A moment later, the monstrous thing bellowed once again as it began to charge down the short street.
Sand was kicked up in the wake of those huge feet as its powerful legs drilled it across the ground at an unbelievable pace. Grant pulled his weapon back and withdrew into the shelter of the doorway as the creature rushed past him, a trail of black flakes of skin floating on the air behind it like ashes. It ignored him, and it ran straight past Decard as he followed the same procedure, ducking between buildings as the monster raced at its attackers.
The Incarnates danced away, rushing to their own shelters as the creature charged them. The two at the far end of the street remained, attempting to hold the monster at bay with the energy lances of their staffs. To the side of the street, Kane and Brigid ducked back as the black-faced monster lunged into view. Its huge left arm, still wrapped in gauze bindings, swung out, driving through the side of the far building. The roof began to cave in, the whole structure compromised, but the creature had already passed. Its other arm reached forward as the two Incarnates ran for cover, and it snagged one of them by his crocodile-styled helmet, sweeping him backward and off his feet. The Incarnate screamed as he fell and was dragged across the ground toward the huge creature.
Standing just six feet away, Kane leveled his Sin Eater between the monster’s shoulder blades and held down the trigger, blasting a stream of bullets into its back. Sparks of fire spewed up as the bullets struck the monster’s hard carapace, but it didn’t even seem to react. Instead, it continued to pull the crocodile-masked Incarnate toward its face, lifting him high off the ground. Its grip tightened, and Kane watched in horror as the Incarnate’s elaborate wooden mask splintered, collapsing in on itself. Beneath the shattered helmet, the Incarnate was screaming.
The other Incarnates had emerged from their hiding places and began to blast at the monster with their powered staffs once more, smothering it with energy beams.
At the far end of the street, Decard was shouting orders to his men to pull back, not to get too close to the monster. Too late for that, Kane thought sourly.
Kane turned to Brigid, his expression fierce. “We have to do something,” he told her. The pair of them were now the closest to the attack.
Brigid nodded once, taking a two-handed grip on her TP-9 before stepping away from the wall of the shack to get a better aim at the hulking brute.
Just then, Kane heard a low whining coming from down the street, and a blur of wood and reflected sunlight raced past, before plowing into the monster. It was Domi, riding one of the Incarnates’ solar-powered chariots at top speed. She had to have doubled around the tiny ville to get her speed up, Kane realized as the athletic albino woman leaped from the vehicle and away from the monster.
There was a loud crunch as the chariot slammed into the thick legs of the black-faced monstrosity, the top of the chariot reaching roughly to its waist. The monster held it in place for a moment, and the chariot’s engine whined louder as it tried to drive forward before bouncing back on crippled wheels where the axle had split. Then the huge beast staggered, a brief three-step dance across the sand, before bellowing another of its banshee wails, boiling saliva pluming around its face.
Kane watched in horror as the monster threw the crocodile-masked Incarnate to one side, and the man tumbled head over heels before slumping to the ground, covered in sand. At the same time, the monster itself seemed to spin in place, its reverse-hinged legs kicking up great clumps of sand, moving faster and faster.
A blur, and then nothing. The creature was gone.
Kane rushed over before Brigid could stop him, ignoring her pleas to be careful. There was a hole in the ground now, a roughly circular tunnel that appeared to go straight down. Kane could hear scrabbling down there as the nightmarish creature disappeared from view, and he kept his Sin Eater trained on the opening in the sand for a long moment, debating in his mind whether he should follow.
“Whatever it is, it’s gone, Kane.”
Brigid’s voice was close to his ear. Kane turned and saw Brigid standing beside him, with Grant jogging up the street toward them, his blaster held high in the standard ready position. Incarnates were checking themselves while Decard helped Domi up from her tumble on the sand where she had leaped from the moving chariot.
“If we don’t follow it, we’ll lose it,” Kane stated, preparing to make his way into the tunnel.
“Forget it,” Brigid told him. “Our weapons weren’t doing anything. You’ll just get yourself killed.”
Kane stood at the edge of the tunnel for a few seconds before tensing his wrist tendons and sending his Sin Eater back into its wrist holster. “You’re right, Baptiste.” He nodded. “We need a battle plan.”
Just then, the shouted voice of one of the Incarnates came from across the sand. “Medic!”
All eyes turned and saw that the crocodile-masked Incarnate was lying like a rag doll, his limbs at awkward angles, blood streaming over the cracked plates of his ornate helmet.
FIVE MILES AWAY, two stolen chariots leaped over the dunes as Rosalia and Smarts raced away from their captors.
Smarts was still trying to comprehend what had occurred. One moment, they were standing with the petite albino woman and four of the animal-masked guards watching as something humanoid yet inhuman attacked the tiny ville barely one hundred yards from them. The next moment, Rosalia’s lips peeled back and she let out an earsplitting whistle. Even as Smarts turned, the deadly Rosalia was already a flurry of motion. She had bent and spun, reaching behind her and pulling the arm of the closest of the Incarnates, a man in a stylized bug mask. The bug-man was tossed over her shoulder, landing on his back with a whoop of expended breath, and Rosalia kicked the back of her bare heel into the man’s nose through the mask, destroying it in an explosion of blood.
