E-Branch - Invaders Part 4

42.

thoughts into the main shaft, its entrance a smoking black hole glimpsed beyond the skeletal facade of the shack. There were no true telepaths on the team this time out, no one to 'hear' her or even suspect that she was at work. But her thoughts - which weren't intended for the minds of common men - went out anyway: We're coming for you, Eruce Trennier, she sent. And if you think that what you've seen so far is hot stuff, wait till you see how hot it can really oet! We have grenades that will bring the roof down on you and your thralls, burying you forever like fossils in the earth, and thermite bombs to melt the rocks into permanent coc.o.o.ns for your molten bones. You're trapped, and no way out. So stay right where you are, hiding your face from the sun, and do your best to enjoy what little you have left of the rotten, parasitic half-life you call existence ...

It was, of course, a taunt, a challenge, and coming from a woman would be seen as even more of an insult. If Trennier answered, Liz didn't hear him. What she did hear, or more properly feel, was a sudden silence. A mental silence, a psychic serenity. Or was it more properly a sullen silence, the calm before the storm? lan Goodly confirmed that last with his piped warning: 'They're coming.'

'How many?' As the combat-suited men fanned out a little, Trask swung his ugly-looking wea pon up into the ready position and c.o.c.ked it. Goodly followed suit, narrowing his eyes as his mind read the future's secrets.

He saw men staggering, crumpling to their knees, bursting into flames! Three of them. And he saw one other- more than a man, an animal, a Th ing - leaping headlong to the attack! And: 'Three of them,' he yelped. 'On their way to h.e.l.l. And one other who looks like he was born there! That'll be Bruce Trennier.

And Ben, they're coming now!'

'Are they armed?' Trask snapped.

'No,' Goodly piped. 'But... do they need to be?'

The first three came like moon-shadows: dark and fleeting, seeming to flow with the wreathing smoke, out of the shack and into the open, so that Trask and Goodly could scarcely be sure

43.

what they were firing at - but they fired anyway. And in a matter of moments the scene became chaotic.

The nightmarish figures firmed into being as lethal silver bullets found their targets. They had been loping, flowing forwards with their arms and hands reaching, but now were brought up sh ort in the stutter of gunfire, snapped upright and hurled backwards. The feral yellow eyes of the central figure turned red as blood - overflowed with blood - in the instant that the back of his head exploded in a crimson spray. He slumped, went to his knees and burst into flames as the agent with the flame-thrower found the range and licked him with a tongue of cleansing fire. There on his knees, with his head half blown away, the vampire burned like a giant candle.

But astonis.h.i.+ngly the other thralls recovered and came on. And driving them with the sheer force of his presence, flowing like a vast inkblot immediately behind them, came the last and the worst of them. Their master.

The two in front were Trennier's s.h.i.+elds ... he cared nothing for them or their undead existence... his leech was intent on only one thing: its own survival. And for the leech to survive its host must survive, too. But Ben Trask had other ideas.

'lan, their legs!' he was shouting. 'You men, aim at their legs - smash their bones - cut the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds down!' He kept firing, his machine-pistol a stammering, jerking mad thing in his hands; Goodly's too, as he followed his leader's example. Likewise fr om the flanks: a stream of gunfire that turned the night to an uproar as the weapons of the squad spat silver death.

Yet still the three came on. They seemed to float, drifting forwards in that dreadful, dreamlike, kaleidoscopic or strobing stop- motion manner of the vampire. It was hypnotic; it appeared to be slow-motion, but in fact was lightning fasti And now they were only thirty to forty feet away. At which Trask gave a nod to one of his men on the right flank. And: 'Down!' he shouted, as the man armed and lobbed a grenade.

Jake was young and fast, and his military training came in

44.

handy; Liz had already thrown herself flat when he took Miller off his feet, covering him with his own body. Then the brilliant flash, and a bang that echoed back from the valley walls.

The entire squad was on the deck; cordite stench came drifting, and with it the mew ling of something utterly alien. Take looked up, saw Trask getting to his feet and offering his hand t o Goodly. But in front of the wrecked, smouldering shack: the scene was unbelievable.

One crumpled figure, a hump of broken flesh, shuddered and steamed in the flickering firelight. Another was sitting there, just a trunk with no arms. Smoke curled from his hair; his yellow eyes were dim, rolling vacantly in their orbits. But Trennier was still on his feet. And Jake thought: * This is the 'old man/ Bruce. A pitiful wreck of a man was what we saw, but this was the reality!

With his clothing in rags, blood-spattered, his awful face sliced open to the bone, still Trennier stumbled forward. Crying out his agony he came on, hands like claws reaching, blood spurting from his gums as his jaws cracked open, and open, and open! His eyes were scarlet... his great ears curved and scalloped like the wings of a bat... and those teeth, scything up through his riven gums! The man with the flame-thrower was on the ground. His weapon lay where he'd let it fall. Trask grabbed it up. And still Trennier came on, weaving towards Liz, reaching for her where she'd managed to get to her knees. 'You,' the thing rumbled, spitting blood. He see med dazed; his flickering forked tongue licked tattered lips; finally his eyes focussed and he smiled a monstrous smile.

'You, woman ... thought-caster? You thought to fool me - you even taunted me. Very well, and so you'll die with me!'

Jake was up on his feet now, and Miller was on his fat backside, scrabbling away from the horror for all he was worth. But Trennier was concentrating on Liz! He was almost upon her, his oh-so-long hands dripping blood as they reached for her!

45.

Jake caught her round the waist and ran with her, made only two or three paces before tripping and falling. But they didn't hit the ground. No, for it was as if they fell in slow motion, and in Jake's mind a voice saying: Now! The numbers - the formula! Read it! Use it! Rut his own voice, or some other's?

Numbers rolled on the screen of Jake's mind ... an endless mathematical progression displaying itself on his brain's computer. Numbers, yes, and he knew them - or someone did! Still holding on to Liz, still falling, Jake (or the unseen, unknown someone) stopped the numbers at a certain combination, an impossible formula that at once formed into a door. They tumbled through it, into a place of negative gravity, a place of nothing at all, and in another moment - or perhaps no time at all - through a second door, and only then hit the ground. And rolling in the dust full fifty feet away from where they had been, so Jake heard Peter Miller babbling his terror, Trask's cry of triumph or vengeance or both, and the unmistakable roar of the flame-thrower.

Even at that distance, still Jake and Liz felt something of the heat and drew back from it, and a moment later spied Miller where he came crying like a child, dragging his fat body along the scorched earth. Then they looked back.

Trennier danced there: the hideous, agonized dance of the true death. Vampire that he was, he beat his arms and screamed his wrath. Or was the awful sound something else? Like the hissing and popping of air- or gas-filled body-cavities when live lobsters are dropped in the pot? Maybe it wa s the nerve-rending fire-screech of the flame-thrower, or perhaps a mixture of both? Jake wasn't sure, couldn't rightly say. He didn't see how Trennier could scream - not in the airless inferno that surrounded his melting body.

His stumbling dance went on for many a long second, there in the heart of that blue-white blast of superheated chemicals, until finally he succ.u.mbed. But the Thing inside him fought on - or at any rate caused Trennier to fight on - for a while longer yet. And

46.

that was the proof, the undeniable proof, of just how long he had been a vampire.

For as his body began to melt and his legs gave way, letting him collapse onto his backside, so at last his metamorphic flesh answered the call of his vampire nature. It was one last, desperate attempt by Trennier's leech to escape the fire - by using his altered flesh and liquids to damp down the flames.

His sc.r.a.ps of clothing had drifted free of his blackened body to waft aloft on the vile updraught. Now his fingers elongated into writhing worms, and his stomach bulged and burst into a nest of las.h.i.+ng purple tentacles. And all of these appendages were like p.e.n.i.ses tha t p.i.s.sed into the fire, but uselessly. For this wa s a fire they couldn't put out. Only Ben Trask could do that, and he wouldn't until there was nothing left to burn. Or nothing left that could be considered injurious, anyway. Or at least until his weapon ran out of fuel.

But now the members of the other half-team were back from the ruins of the lesser shack. One of them had a flame-thrower; turning his liquid fire on the vampire and his fallen thralls, he finished what Trask had started ...

Eventually it was over, and Trask wanted to know: 'Were there no weapons? Why didn't they have weapons?' Now that it was done he seemed half-mazed, drained, as if there had been fires in him also, and they, too, were now extinguished.

'Weapons?' The second team's leader answered him. 'There's a small armoury in the mine shaft behind the lesser shack! Maybe they didn't think they'd need guns, against just two humans. Anyway, we've set charges well back inside the mine shaft. Thermite, too. When that blows, the whole place will go with it. If there's anything still in there, it won't be getting out.'

'Good!' Trask gave himself a shake and took a deep breath. And to the leader of the first team: 'Let's get to work on this end, too. I want the main shaft rigged good and deep. Okay, gentlemen, let's move it. The night's not over yet...' But it soon would be. By

47.

then, too, Trask would be his old self again, hard and businesslike. At least on the surface ...

Within the hour the charges were triggered. The ground trembled underfoot, and the deep rumble of man-made thunder sounded from the mouths of the mine shafts. And even though the team's members were standing safely back from the face of the knoll, still they felt the flurry of hot air that rushed out of those night-dark pits, and smelled stenches other than those of chemicals.

Then there were clouds of dust, erupting as from blowholes, as the shafts gave way to countless tons of solid rock and lesser debris that came avalanching from on high. But even then it wasn't quite over, for now the effect of the thermite was seen: white gases escaping in high-pressure jets, and smoking liquid that filled even the smallest crevices, running over the rocks to seal them.

Finally someone said, 'In there, right now, it will be much like a blast furnace - the entire mine, cooking itself. I would sooner take my chances in a cellar in World War Two Dresden than in there!'

To which no one gave argument, or even made reply...

The back-up vehicles started to arrive and secondary clean-up could now commence. An old man, apparently plagued by rheumatism, hobbled here and there, examining the ashes of fires that were already cooling. Like Trask and Goodly, he wasn't especially protected; he wasn't wearing a gas mask, seemed to breathe freely (which indicated the abse nce of nose-plugs), and didn't appear too concerned with contamination. His only weapons were a wicked-looking machete, hanging in its sheath under his left arm, and an antiquated hand-fas.h.i.+oned crossbow. While this final phase of the operation got under way, Jake and Liz waited for Trask's instructions. By no means fully recovered from the night's events - lost in private and personal thoughts - they leaned against the side of the Land Rover where Jake had driven it back up onto the elevated shelf

48.

to clear the way for the articulated ops vehicle. And they were mainly silent.

But finally Jake shook off his mood of introspection - a worrying, morbid train of thought where he questioned his sanity and pondered the seeming unreality of certain things that had happened and were continuing to happen to him - and fixed his attention on the hobbling old man, who apparently had more than a little authority here. Limping between the flame-thrower teams, he appeared to be pointing out areas they had missed in their 'scorched earth' mission.

'Burn here,' Jake heard him growling over the hiss and roar of searing lances of fire. 'And over there, too. Oh, it's charred, I'll grant you that, but charred isn't enough. It must be burned right through. Then, when it's smoke and ashes drifting on the wind ... then it's done with. Not before.'

His accent was strange, hard to place: European Mediterranean area, though, definitely. Italy, Sicily, Romania? There was something of a Romance language in it, anyway. But in fact Jake couldn't have been more wrong. Or rather, his conclusion was too 'mundane' in the literary sense of the word.

'Who is he?' he asked Liz. 'The old boy there? Look at him. He reminds me of nothing so much as a bloodhound... the way he stops every now and then to sniff the night air! The only thing / can smell is smoke and fire ... and death. And what about his clothing? Just what does he think he is: some kind of frontiersman out of the Wild We st?

' And for a fact the old man might well have been a frontiersman - and was, of sorts - but from a wilder west than any Jake might have imagined.

'You know,' Jake went on, 'I got the impression that there was something of the Romany, something Gypsyish about the vampire, Bruce Trennier? Well, now I have the same kind of feeling about this fellow. h.e.l.l, he even jingles when he moves!'

But the oldster had spotted them even as Jake spoke, and he came hobbling in their direction. Ben Trask came, too; probably

49.

to make introductions, Jake thought. And meanwhile Liz was answering at least one of his queries: 'You said he reminded you of a bloodhound,' she said. 'And you're just about right.

A human bloodhound is exactly what he is. What you've seen tonight, he's seen so many times he can't count them. So I've gathered, anyway. His name is Lardis, sometimes called the Old Lidesci/ 'Liz,' the old fellow nodded his greeting and smiled a gaptoothed smile ... but in the next moment he was frowning, stepping closer, turning his head on one side to look up in to Liz's face. Then: 'Huhl'he grunted, spitting in the dirt. 'No plugs.' What, and are you imp- imper- er, imperv...' 'Impervious?' she helped him out.

'Yes!' he snapped, pointing an accusing finger at her. 'And you, too!' He turned to Jake. 'Cutter, is it? Jake Cutter?'

'We were wearing plugs,' Jake answered. 'Then we got involved in a lot of activity.

My plugs were knocked out of me, but Liz had hers to the end. And anyway, who the h.e.l.l-?'

'Decon ...I' the other abruptly cut him short. 'Er, decontam- contain...'

'-Decontamination,' Liz said.

'Right!'the old man snapped, jerking his thumb in the direction of the command truck. 'Both of you. Now!'

'Who on earth-?' Jake started again. But by then Ben Trask was there to stop him.

'Jake Cutter,' Trask said, 'this is Lardis Lidesci. I heard you asking who on ea rth? Well, n.o.body on Earth, actually. Originally he's from ... oh, a different place entirely.' Trask had almost let something drop, stopped himself at the last moment. 'Lardis was in the Greek Islands with another team/ he changed the subject, 'When they didn't find what they were looking for, I asked that he be sent here. He came in this afternoon by choppe r from Perth.'

And turning to the Old Lidesci, he said 'Well? How about it?'

Obviously there was something between the two of them that Jake and Liz weren't privy to.

'Him?' Lardis looked at Jake, frowned, gave a shrug. 'Can't say. Could be, I suppose. Fit and young ... and stubborn! Won't listen to good advice, and doesn't respect his elders too much, either! Makes him a funny choice if you ask me. But if it's so it's so, and who are we to fathom the ways of the Necroscope?'

'Nothing certain, then?' Trask seemed disappointed.

Lardis shrugged again, and said, 'Well, the proof could be right here in the slime and the stink where these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds burned ... that's if you really want to test your theory?'

Trask knew what Lardis meant even if Jake didn't. He shook his head, said: 'No, he's not ready for that yet. And probably not for quite some time to come.'

Jake had been studying Lardis. The Old Lidesci was short, barrel-bodied, almost apelike in the great length of his arms. His lank black hair, beginning to grey now, framed a leathery, weather-beaten face with a flattened nose that sat uncomfortably over a mouth that was missing too many teeth. As for the ones that remained: they were uneven and stained as old ivory. But under s.h.a.ggy eyebrows, Lardis's dark brown eyes glittered his mind's agility, denying the encroaching infirmities of his body. Jake guessed he'd been a leader, and rightly so.

If Jake examined Lardis Lidesci, it was certainly no less of an inspection that the old man was giving him. And suddenly, feeling uncomfortable, Jake went on the defensive. Frowning, he said, 'I wish you'd talk to me, you two, instead of about me! I mean, you were talking about me, weren't you?'

'About you and about someone else,' Trask told him. 'We're talking about the fellow that you think-and that we think-might be in your head. Talking about a man called Harry Keogh.'

'I never heard of him,' said Jake, but wondered if in fact he had. The name did seem somehow familiar ... and felt familiar, too, in a weird sort of way. Which only serve d to confuse him and make him angry. 'Anyway, what has he to do with me?'

Trask rubbed his chin, said, 'There's something he used to do that... well, that you seem to do, too. When Liz was under threat, you... you moved her away from Trennier. And I know I don't need to remind you that that's how you first came to our attention. It's how you brought yourself to our attention: by moving in on us.' Jake shook his head. 'That wasn't deliberate/ he said. 'I mean, I didn't have anything to do with it. It wa sn't me.' 'Exactly,'

Trask told him.