Keeping one eye on Hank and the doorway, Chino dried off his shotgun and the Majestic revolver, which wasn’t waterproofed. He oiled both weapons as best he could but he didn’t have the time to strip and clean them.
‘Did you recognise it?’ Hank finally asked.
‘Didn’t see enough of it, you?’
Hank shook his head. ‘It was fast, though. Definitely Ceph, you think?’
Chino laughed humourlessly. ‘Man, I don’t even want to think about there being another fucked-up alien species in New York.’
‘I guess CELL didn’t kill them all after all,’ Hank mused.
‘CELL lie? Say it ain’t so.’
Hank let out a little laugh. There wasn’t much humour in it. Chino slid two shells into the shotgun to replace the ones he’d fired. He worked the slide to make sure there was a round in the pipe. He heard the whistle and looked around. Earl came stalking out of the mist.
‘What you see, what you hear man?’ Chino asked. Hank glanced around and then went back to keeping watch. Earl put a finger over his lips and then touched his ear.
Chino listened. He could hear the lapping of the water, a slight breeze through the branches of the trees outside. He started to shake his head and then he heard it. It sounded like a hiccough followed by a series of clicks. He opened his mouth to say something, but Earl held his finger over his lips again. There was an answering hooting noise coming from somewhere else but both had been close by.
‘We’re being hunted,’ Earl told him. Chino felt himself go cold. Somehow it was the more chilling because it was Earl who was telling him this. If rumours were true then Earl had spent the last ten years off the grid, living in the wilds, self-sufficient. ‘If’n we want to move then we either go up onto the roof or back into the water, those are our choices.’
‘We go onto the roof then we’ll get picked off by the guns,’ Hank said.
‘Only if we draw attention to ourselves,’ Chino pointed out. ‘If we keep hidden then we’ll be OK.’
‘And if we meet those things up there?’
‘So you want to go back into the water then?’
Hank gave this some thought. ‘Let’s head up to the roof.’
There was the sound of breaking glass from above them. The three soldiers looked at each other. Earl turned and led the way, heading back the direction he had come from, his weapon at the ready. Hank fell in behind him, the butt of the MMG nestled against his shoulder. Chino followed. Checking behind them all the way.
Three floors up they found the stairway had collapsed. Earl didn’t waste time examining it, he just opened the next door he found, taking them out into an open plan office space.
They saw half a skeleton lying close to one of the windows. Chino guessed that it had been a victim of the Manhattan Virus that had only partially liquefied. There wasn’t even much in the way of damage, though the plant life was starting to creep in and the broken windows let in tendrils of the creeping mist.
Chino thought he heard movement below them.
‘Earl,’ Chino said quietly. There was definitely movement below them. He heard a crash. Now that they knew what to listen for they had been hearing more of the clicks and hooting noises. They had seemed to be getting closer, and it sounded like they were all around them now. ‘As much as I appreciate and support your one shot, one kill ethos…’ There was a sound behind them. Chino spun around, shotgun at the ready. ‘If you’ve not fought these things before then I think you should know that it might take more than one shot…’
Chino caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He spun around but there was nothing. Something fell over to his left. He spun around and caught more movement but no viable target.
The door they had just came through slammed open. Chino spun back to it. He caught the shadow of a figure moving behind a partition. His finger tightened around the shotgun’s trigger but there was still no viable target.
Behind him Earl started firing the M14 single shot, steadily and repeatedly. Next to him Hank started firing the MMG.
There, Chino saw it! It was a tall, thin, jagged, misshapen figure, still hidden by the darkness. It looked like it was made of sharp angles. Even in the darkness, as it ran through the tendrils of mist, he could make out the swaying tentacle. It looked like a massive rubbery tail sticking out the centre of its back.
Chino squeezed the trigger. The shotgun bucked. He was working the slide already. The creature staggered, bits flew off it. Another round chambered. The shotgun’s muzzle flash flared again. The creature staggered but kept running. And again. The creature hit the ground and slid towards Chino, dead on the floor.
There were more sprinting at him. Chino shifted aim to his right, firing once, then again. The Ceph staggered with the impact of the first shot and the second shot knocked it out the window. He swung to his left. Two more of the things were trying to flank them. The muzzle flash from the MMG made the aliens look like they were caught in a strobe light.
Chino fired another three rounds and the closest one dropped. He fired two more rounds from the shotgun, one hit staggering the Ceph, the other missing. Chino let the empty shotgun drop on its sling. He moved forwards, drawing the big Majestic revolver from its holster. Aiming carefully, he squeezed the trigger. The revolver bucked in his hand. About two foot of muzzle flash leapt out of the end of the barrel. The .50 calibre compact round hit the soft part of the Ceph and then exploded.
He hung off the gargoyle one handed, his feet against the stone of the old building. He could see the flickering light and hear the sounds. The flashes threw grotesque shadows in their brief but repeated moments of existence. He too wanted to hunt. He wanted to hunt like a shikari, but he needed to find a place to worship the night sun. He wanted to see the sky burn again. He looked around at his brothers, sadly.
‘Clear!’ Hank shouted.
‘Not fucking here it isn’t!’ Chino shouted as he fired the last shot from the Majestic. Both he and Hank spun round, exchanging positions. Hank started firing the MMG again immediately. The machine gun’s rounds were blowing chunks out of the creatures as they leapt from desk to desk or just powered through them.
Chino flipped out the revolver’s wheel, grabbing a speed loader with six of the huge .50 calibre explosive rounds. It was faster to reload the revolver than it was the shotgun.
Earl let the M14 drop on its sling and fast drew the Mk. 23, already firing as he brought it up to eye level in a two-handed grip. In front of the sniper, five of the things lay dead or twitching on the ground.
Chino watched in horror as Earl’s pistol rounds sparked off the charging Ceph’s armour. He flipped the revolver’s wheel closed. He knew he was going to be too slow as the Ceph closed with Earl. It was like it was happening in slow motion. He watched the creature raise its bone-like arm blade. Earl was still firing. Chino was raising the Majestic. The alien’s bone blade took Earl straight through the centre of his head. It shot out the back of the sniper’s skull in an explosion of bone, blood and brain matter, splattering Hank. Chino all but put the Majestic up against the soft matter on the creature’s back and pulled the trigger. The Ceph bioform hit the ground, taking Earl’s corpse down with him and battering the body into Hank.
Chino wanted to cry, freak out, but he’d seen this before. He knew what happened when humans tried to fight these things up close and personal. They needed to be like Dane or Alcatraz if they were going to have a chance. If he wanted to live they needed to move. He couldn’t see an exit from this floor other than the one he’d come through, and yet more Ceph were gathering there. He fired the massive revolver twice and one of them went down, staggering and then stumbling out the window.