It squeezed again, tighter. A gush of blood ran from the man’s mouth, blood and lung tissue aspirating out onto a caved-in chest. The Alma hooted in triumph, freed the flute from the dead man’s hand and blew a single, high note on it that threatened to take the top of Banks’ head off.
But in doing so, it let the prof’s body fall aside, and gave Banks the opening he needed. He put three quick shots into its face, the last one hitting at the bridge of the huge flat nose and almost taking the top of its head off. It fell, a dead weight in the doorway, the flute giving out one last, querulous, note before everything fell quiet.
Banks’ ears rang, loud bells going off, and he only knew his squad had come up behind him when Hynd put a hand on his shoulder.
“Cap?” Hynd shouted. “You okay?”
“I’m fine, lad,” he said, hearing his words echo in the chasm that seemed to fill his head. “The prof’s had his chips though.”
The corridor stank, of death and pish and shite, but Banks wasn’t about to step outside in search of fresher air. Instead, he moved back and let the team take the doorway. McCally and Wiggins stood guard while Hynd checked on the prof. He turned and gave a thumb down, then bent to investigate the dead beast, heaving it over onto its back, and needing both hands to move its weight.
“Nice shooting, Tex,” Hynd said, without a smile when he looked down at the tight cluster of shots. The ringing in Bank’s ears was starting to subside, slowly. He heard the sarge’s words, and also the wail of misery that carried in with the wind from somewhere among the domes outside.
Banks looked past the sarge but saw no movement outside, but when he looked back, he noticed that the Alma’s belly moved, as if it still breathed.
“What the fuck is this now?” Wiggins said.
Hynd bent back to the beast.
“Careful, Sarge,” Wiggins said.
“I can see its brains, lad. I’m pretty sure it’s dead. This is something else.”
He put his hand on the hairy belly. Banks saw something move again, twice, then go still. When Hynd looked back up again at him, his face was solemn.
“I think she was pregnant, Cap. And I think we didn’t just kill her, we killed the bairn too.”
Banks didn’t answer, but another wail of misery and sorrow from outside echoed his own thoughts almost exactly.
Banks got lucky. He happened to be looking directly out of the cave doorway, just at the right time to see something soar, a darker shadow in the black of the night, coming from somewhere inside the lab. It crashed through the glass of the dome and came directly for them.
“Incoming,” he shouted, and trusted his squad to move as he threw himself backwards into the corridor. A metal tabletop, almost as large as the door itself, crashed against the outside of the doorframe, the clang and clatter as loud as any gunshot.
Banks lay on his back, feet pointing at the open doorway, and was looking down the length of his body to the door when he saw what looked like half a tree come flying out of the shadows, not from the lab dome, but from beyond that, from the aviary.
There’s more than one of them left out there.
The tree trunk fell short, but hit the ground with a splintering crash that rocked the corridor.
“Fall back,” Banks shouted. “Move away from the door.”
He shuffled backwards as Wiggins, McCally, and Hynd retreated to his position. It was a tight squeeze, but seconds later, he knelt beside Wiggins, with Hynd and McCally standing upright above them.
He shoved his rubber earplugs deep into both ears.
“Ears in, lads. This is going to get noisy.”
An aerial bombardment got underway. Rocks the size of footballs, three, four, and sometimes five at once, crashed out of the domes and smashed like cannonballs around the doorway. If one ever made a direct hit and pierced the entrance, the team was going to have to move fast to avoid being felled like skittles. For now, the narrowness of the target was saving them from the worst of the attack, although it sounded as loud and life-threatening as any battlefield. One thrown stone came close, coming in flatter and harder than the others, but it smacked hard into poor dead Waterston, causing his body to jerk, a puppet whose strings had just been tugged hard.
“Steady, lads,” Banks shouted, straining to be heard above the din, “they’ll be coming mob-handed any minute now.”
His gut proved to be right again. After a barrage of several dozen rocks and more large branches, a howl of anger rang in the domes, taken up by a chorus of voices until it rang in defiance all through the cave.
A group of Alma, ten at least that Banks could see, and all as large as the male they’d seen already, came out of the dome complex at a run, scattering glass and metal before them as if it was no more than paper to be torn. The squad’s sight-lights lit them up, giving the orange hair a ghostly pallor, pale shadows, stout as weightlifters, fluid as any big cat as they loped forward.
Still roaring, they made straight for the cave doorway.
If they’d been caught in the open by such an attack, Banks knew that they might not have the firepower at hand to hold back the onslaught. But here in the narrow confines of the cave, there was only room for one beast to come at them at a time, no matter how many were coming forward in the attack.
The squad knew it too, Banks sensed tension in them, but it was the normal readiness for action he knew they all felt. There was no fear on the faces of the team, and each man held their weapon steady, the light straight ahead as the beasts reached the doorway and the largest of them forced its way past the others to be first inside.
Banks knew the team was waiting for his order, and he was about to give it, thinking that the beast might barrel straight at them, but instead it stopped and bent over the body of the dead one. It ran a huge hand over the dead face, then down, to caress the now-still belly. It let out a wail, a whine of pain, and Banks saw tears glisten in its eyes. It turned towards the team, its pain evident on its features, pain that just as evidently turned to rage.
Its muscles tensed, ready to leap, and that was all the excuse Banks needed.
“Fire!” he shouted.
A volley of shots rang and echoed in the corridor, the cramped space filled with the smell of burning, the rattle of spent ammo and the howls of a raging beast that kept coming even as they put round after round in it. It only fell when Banks raised his sight and, like he had with its mate, put three into its head. It slumped to the floor, tried to come forward, then finally realized it had a bullet in its brain and fell, a huge hairy hand only feet from Banks’ toes.
There was already another standing behind it, coming forward.
- 20 -
The next minute felt like an age. The beasts kept coming, climbing over the bodies of their fallen, and the squad kept pumping rounds into them. Even with the plugs in, Banks’ head felt like a series of bombs were going off in it, his wrists hurt from the weapon’s recoil, and all he tasted was death and burning in a throat that felt like it was being worn down by sandpaper.
But finally the field of fire proved too much, and the remainder of the beasts retreated before it. Banks tried for one last shot on the largest male left standing, but the beast was moving away fast. He only grazed it, raising a bloody furrow along the left side of the huge skull that was the last thing Banks saw before the Alma were once again lost in the shadows of the domed complex.
They left four of their number dead alongside the pregnant female and poor, crushed, Waterston, lying with his head almost in her lap, his guts decorating the front of his shirt.