David barely touched her and somehow, her head was in his lap again. Then Claire was lifting the back of her shirt, dabbing at her hip, sending fresh waves of pain coursing through her. She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to breathe deeply, trying to breathe at all. "We will go back," David said, and his voice seemed to be coming from far away, from the top of a well that she was falling down. "But we have to wait for the helicopter to leave, assuming that it will – and you'll need time to recover…"
If he said anything else, Rebecca didn't hear it. Instead, she slept, and dreamed that she was a child, playing in the cold, cold snow.
Desert!
There weren't any animals in sight, they had to be on the other side of the dune, but Cole thought he knew which ones belonged to Phase Two. Before John or Leon could get even a step away, before Cole's ears had stopped ringing from the Dacs' terrible cries, he started babbling at them.
"Desert, Phase Two is a desert so it must be the Scorps, scorpions, see?"
John was pulling a curved magazine from his hip pack, scowling into the artificial sunlight that beat down from above. It had to be at least a hundred degrees in the room, and between the white walls and glaring light it felt a lot hotter. Leon scanned the shining sands in front of them, then turned to Cole, looking as though he'd just eaten something sour.
"Wonderful, that's just great. 'Scorps'? Scorps and Dacs… what are the other ones, Henry, do you remember?"
For a single second, Cole's mind went blank. He nodded, wracking his brain, all of the sweat on his body already evaporated in the bone dry heat.
"Uh – they're, they're nicknames, Dacs, Scorps… Hunters! Hunters and Spitters, the han– dlers all had these nicknames…" "Cute. Like Fluffy, or Sweet Pea," John inter-rupted, wiping his brow with the back of one hand.
"So where are they?"
All three of them looked across Phase Two, at the massive sand dune that towered in the middle of the room, glittering beneath the giant grid of sunlamps overhead. Twenty-five, thirty feet high, it blocked their view of the southern wall, including the door in the far right corner. There was nothing else to see. Cole shook his head, but he wasn't telling them anything; the Scorps were elsewhere, and they'd have to cross the bright and burning sand dune to get to the exit.
"What were the other phases, mountain and city? Have you seen them?" Leon asked. "Three is like a, whadayacallit, a chasm, on a peak. Like a mountain gorge, kind of, real rocky. And Four is a city – a few square blocks of one, anyway. I had to check the video feeds in all of the phases when I first got here."
John looked up and around, squinting against the harsh light. "That's right, video… do you remem-ber where they are? The cameras?"Why would he want to know that? Cole pointed left, at the small glass eye embedded in the white wall some ten feet up. "There are five in here; that's the closest…"
With a huge grin, John held up both hands and extended his middle fingers to the lens. "Bite it, Reston," he said loudly, and Cole decided that he liked John, a lot. Leon too, for that matter, and not just because they were the only ticket out. Whatever their motivations, they were obviously on the right side of things; and the fact that they could still joke at a time like this… "So, we got a plan?" Leon asked, still looking at the wall of yellow-white sand looming in front of them. "Head that way," John said, pointing right, "and then climb. If we see something, shoot it." "Brilliant, John. You should write these down. You know, I…"
Leon broke off suddenly, and then Cole heard it. A chattering sound. A sound like nails being tapped on hollow wood, the sound he'd heard when he was fixing one of the cameras only last week.
A sound like claws, opening and closing. Like man-dibles, clicking…"Scorps," John said softly. "Aren't scorpions sup– posed to be nocturnal?" "This is Umbrella, remember?" Leon said. "You have two grenades, I've got one…"John nodded, then said, "You know how to work a semiautomatic?"
The big soldier was watching the dune, so it took Cole a second to realize he was talking to him.
"Oh. Yeah. I haven't ever used one, but I went target shooting a couple of times with my brother, six or seven years ago…" He kept his voice low as they did, listening for that strange sound. John looked directly at him, as if sizing him up -
– then nodded, and pulled a heavy-looking handgun out of his hip holster. He handed it to Cole, butt first.
"It's a nine-millimeter, holds eighteen. I got more clips if you run out. You know all the gun safety rules? Don't point it at anyone unless you mean to kill, don't shoot me or Leon, all that stuff?"
Cole nodded, taking the gun, and it was heavy and although he was still more scared than he'd ever been in all his thirty-four years, the solid weight of it in his hand was an incredible relief. Remembering what his little brother had told him about safety, he fumbled through checking to see if it was loaded before looking at John again. "Thank you," he said, and meant it. He'd lured these two guys into a trap, and they were giving him a gun; giving him a chance.
"Forget it. Means we won't have to worry about covering your ass on top of ours," John said, but he wore a slight smile. "Come on, let's move out." John in the lead and Leon behind him, they started east, walking slowly through the changeless environ– ment. The sand was really sand; it shifted underfoot, and with the blasting heat, it made for a real workout. They'd only gone a short distance when Leon called for a halt. "Thermal underwear," he muttered, bolstering his handgun before pulling off his black sweatshirt and tying it around his waist. He wore a thick, textured white shirt underneath. "I didn't realize we'd be hitting the Sahara…"
They all heard it, only a second before they saw it -
– before they saw them, three of them, lining up at the top of the dune. Tiny rivers of sand trickled down from beneath their multiple legs, each as thick and stocky as a sawed-off baseball bat. They had claws, giant pincing claws that were narrow and black, serrated on the inside, and long, segmented bodies that dwindled to tails, curling up and over their Backs – and tipped with stingers. Wicked, dripping stingers at least a foot long. The trio of sand-colored creatures, each five or six feet long, maybe three feet high, started to chatter -
–the slender, pointed, tusk-like projections beneath the rounded arachnid eyes tapped against one another,
beating out the strange tattoo of clicks that they'dheard before…… and then all three of the creatures, the monsters, were sliding down toward them, perfectly balanced, scuttling through the moving sands with ease. And at the top of the dune, another three appeared.
FOURTEEN
"SHIT," JOHN BREATHED, NOT EVEN AWARE that he'd spoken as he raised the M-16 and open– ed up. – bambambambam -
–and the first of the scorpion-things let out a strange, dry, hissing sound, like air being let out of a giant tire, as the bullets hammered into its curled body. A thick white fluid burst from the wounds that had opened in its insectile face, a face of drooling tusks and spider's eyes, a face with a black shapeless hole for a mouth. Writhing, claws raised, it fell on its side and twisted wildly, digging its own shallow grave in the hot sand. Leon and Cole were both shooting, the thunder of the nine-millimeter drowning out any more hissing, producing even more of the pus-like blood in the second and third of the Scorps. The white liquid spewed out in glurts, like puke, but there were three more of the creatures coming down…… and the first one, the one that John had drilled full of holes, was getting up. Getting up unsteadily, but getting up all the same. The openings were oozing with that viscous white goo – and even as it took its first step toward them, John saw that the liquid was hardening. Plugging the wounds as efficiently as plas– ter filled a hole in a wall. "Go go go!" John shouted as the other two crea-tures, taken down by Leon and Cole, started to move, their wounds already scabbing over. The second threesome was halfway down the dune and closing fast.