”Shoot it!” someone barked.
”I’d hit Gunin!”
”Shoot it anyway!” the other shouted. “He’s probably dead already! “
That was Pushkov’s voice-that bastard! Gunin had never liked him. Gunin tried to open his mouth, to shout that he was still alive, but the pain stopped him-the spike was pressing against his jaw muscles.
Someone, Pushkov or someone obeying Pushkov, fired; Gunin felt burning lines of pain as bullets tore through his right sleeve and through his arm, but the pain was not bad, not enough to make him scream-the spikes had already hurt him enough to deaden his sensitivity.
The creature holding the spear seemed to sidestep the bullets easily.
Then it jabbed the spear forward, and Gunin no longer worried about spikes or bullets or anything else as the thing cut his heart out with a single quick gesture.
After that, the alien disappeared, blurring into invisibility.
The other Russians never saw what hit them, but even so, it took several long minutes for them all to die.
Chapter 26
Ligacheva tried to run, tried to leave the narrow gap between icy boulders that Schaefer had squeezed them both into, tried to go help her men. Schaefer grabbed her arm and held her back.
”Let me go!” she said. “Let me go! My God, Schaefer, look at what’s happening to them! I have to help my men fight that thing!”
”You can’t help,” Schaefer told her. “You’d just die like the others. Those things are doing what they do best, and we can’t stop them.”
Ligacheva tugged uselessly against his grip.
”Besides,” Schaefer added, “a few seconds ago ‘your men’ were trying to kill us.”
”They’re still my men!” Ligacheva shouted.
Schaefer stared at her for a moment as she realized the futility of struggling.
”Do you have any idea just how stupid that sounds?” he asked her.
She whirled to face him. “Do you have any idea just how cruel you sound?” she replied. “Isn’t there anything you care about?”
Schaefer frowned.
”I care about something,” she told him. “I care about my men!”
”Yeah, I care about something,” Schaefer said. “I care about the fact that when that thing’s done with your friends, it’ll probably find us. Do you have a knife?”.
She blinked up at him. “A knife?”
”Those things are fast enough to dodge bullets, if they see them coming,” Schaefer explained. “And even if you hit them, they’re damn near bulletproof. Knives, well… they can dodge knives, too, if they have a chance, but I don’t intend to give this one a chance.”
”There’s an entrenching tool in my pack,” Ligacheva replied. “I hear the Spetznaz use them like axes when they need to.”
Schaefer nodded. “That’ll do,” he said. “Give.”
Ligacheva tore open her pack, trying to ignore the high-pitched screams coming from the other side of the sheltering boulder. Schaefer snatched the entrenching tool from her before she could pull it completely out, and an instant later he was gone.
She blinked. Schaefer had seemed to move almost as fast as that thing.
He wasn’t invisible, though, and the monster usually was; how could he hope to find it? She stared into the darkness, trying to see.
Schaefer didn’t worry about finding the creature; he knew where to look. Those creatures didn’t just kill and move on; they liked to play with their prey even after it was dead. All he had to do was watch the corpses…
There.
Even in the dim arctic gloom he could see the faint rippling in the air above one of the dying Russians. Most people would have missed it entirely, or dismissed it as some sort of optical illusion, but Schaefer knew what to look for, and he had good eyes.
What he did worry about was how to make his attack. The entrenching tool was strong, all in one piece, not like the folding ones American forces used, and one side was sharpened to a razor edge, but the creature’s back was mostly bone, and those bones weren’t necessarily arranged like human ones. If he got a shot at the thing’s belly he’d have a better chance of doing some real damage-but of course, he couldn’t sneak up on it from the front.
He wasn’t sure he could sneak up on it in any case. His only hope was if it was too busy with its victim to notice his approach.
All the screaming had stopped. Schaefer wondered if any of the Russians were still alive.
The body the thing knelt over flipped over suddenly, and Schaefer didn’t think that movement was the Russian’s doing-the creature was getting ready to cut out the man’s spine for a trophy.
Something flickered blue, and the creature was visible, kneeling over the corpse; Schaefer wasn’t sure whether it had turned off its screen deliberately, or if something had given out in the cold. At any rate, this was clearly his chance-or at least the best he was going to get.
”Hey!” Schaefer shouted, charging at the monster with the entrenching tool raised. “Remember me?”
The alien turned, startled, just as a man would, and Schaefer swung his improvised weapon.
The sharpened edge skidded across the creature’s chest, drawing glowing yellow-green blood, but the blade didn’t bite deeply.
Schaefer took another swing, backhanded, and reached his free hand out to grab the thing’s mask. He’d tried that trick before, last summer in New York, and it had worked pretty well then…
The monster was still half-crouched, off-balance, trying to rise. It grabbed at the entrenching tool and caught it, stopping it dead in midswing – but it had caught the tool by the blade, and the razor edge sliced into the palm of the thing’s hand. Luminescent yellow-green blood dribbled slowly onto the snow underfoot.
Schaefer grabbed the edge of the creature’s mask and twisted, trying to blind it; at the same time he tried to pull the entrenching tool free.
The tool didn’t move; it was like pulling at a steel post. The mask, though, shifted awkwardly.
The thing staggered, confused. It pulled the entrenching tool from Schaefer’s hand and flung it away, then reached both hands up to straighten its mask, but before it could recover, Schaefer threw his full weight against it. It tripped over a dead Russian’s leg and toppled backward into the snow, its mask coming off in Schaefer’s hand.
Gas hissed, and the creature roared deafeningly.
Schaefer threw himself on top of the thing’s chest, his knees on its arms, pinning it. Then he raised the mask over his head in both hands and brought it slamming down edge first on the monster’s face.
”Hell, New York wasn’t so bad,” Schaefer said as he raised the mask for a second blow and saw yellow-green ooze dribbling from the thing’s hideous, multifanged mouth. “At least I could grab a hot dog when you bastards weren’t in sight.” He swung the mask again. “Siberia, though-Siberia sucks. I’m freezing my fucking ass off out here!” He drove the yellow-smeared edge of the mask down onto the thing’s eyes for his third blow and felt the creature twitch beneath him. “What the hell did you want to come here for, anyway? Go home, why don’t you?”
The thing roared again, and something whirred.
Schaefer froze, the mask raised for a fourth blow.
”Uh-oh,” he said as the black shoulder cannon began to pivot toward him. He flung himself backward, and the blue-white fireball roared up into empty space.
”Go home!” the creature bellowed, in Schaefer’s own voice, as the detective scrambled to his feet and the cannon began to home in for a second shot.
Schaefer dove sideways, but the white fire, whatever it was, tore the skin from one side of his scalp.
”Bastard!” Schaefer said as he staggered, trying to keep the blood out of his eyes. One hand flew up to feel the wound and found hair and flesh gone. “You son of a… That was a new haircut!”