One of the forms broke ahead of the pack. It was targeting them, leaping over rocks and bounding up the dirt.
Jan removed a knife from his belt and tossed it to her father. Dominik caught it, then took his glasses off and folded them neatly into his pocket. He looked so different without them, so much younger.
The bike engine came to life beneath the toes of Jan's boot. Lucja thought it would be just in time; the thing on the path was almost upon them.
“See you,” her father said. He kissed two of his fingers and held them in the air.
She reached for his hand, but then, the bike lunged forward and she was grabbing at Jan's waist, doing everything in her power to keep from falling off. It sped across the landscape, the two of them flying at break-neck speed.
Jan leaned to the left and guided the bike past a new group, a hair-raising stunt that brought their knees within touching distance of the ground. Then, he righted the bike and continued weaving through the masses. When the area opened to its widest, Jan cut diagonally across the path, leaving the crater behind and heading towards the hills as promised.
It was only then Lucja felt safe enough to look back. Mere seconds had passed since they had left her father in the dust, and she didn't know what to expect, braced herself for the worst, in fact. What she did see filled her with equal parts hope and horror. When she turned, her father was simply gone.
Chapter 23: Siege
1
The last buckle of the harness clicked into place around her waist. It was tight enough all right, but it was a weapon that had never been designed for the likes of her.
“I figure that's eighty pounds. Can you stand?”
She nodded.
“Can you walk?” When AJ took his hand away, she almost fell. He was smiling a little.
Kate took two steps and nodded again. The bigger question was whether or not she could run, and the answer to that was a resounding no. Kate remembered that she'd tried jogging with five-pound ankle weights once and found it too painful. Either way, there was no turning back. She could hear the chemical splashing around the tanks at her back, could smell the vaguely unpleasant odor of the formaldehyde around the hose. Dominik's solution had not saved him in the long ago, but maybe, just maybe, it would save them now. It was as if it were meant to be.
The snap of a rifle bolt clacked behind them, and Kate looked over her shoulder to see Dutch standing with his K98, his chest crisscrossed with ammo belts. He was white as a ghost, his new soldier's shirt stained where the bandage had leaked through. AJ rushed over to steady him. He wasn't smiling any more. “You all right?”
“Go on,” Dutch rasped. “I'll cover you.”
Ten minutes before, he'd seemed fine, but Kate didn't like the sound of his voice. She didn't like it one bit.
“We'll be back.” AJ grabbed the other man and embraced him.
Dutch coughed, pushing him off of his wound. “You're more hurt than help, you know that?”
“I'm sorry, buddy. I'm sorry I ever got you into this.”
“You couldn't have kept me away, not even if you cut me yourself.”
Kate felt herself tearing up. She leaned over to kiss him on the cheek and then nearly fell, the weight on her back throwing her off balance. Both men caught her, and she laughed, grateful to be held again, if only for a moment.
She wiped her eyes and settled for putting a hand on Dutch's cheek. “See you.”
“I still expect to get paid. Now, both of you go on and get out of here before you kill me with this sappy crap.” Turning, he began to climb the ladder to the one surviving guard tower. “I can do it, dammit.”
AJ, who'd been helping him, held his hands up in surrender. He stooped and grabbed his own two Karabiner rifles, slinging them around his shoulder, then settled for the MP38 submachine gun in his hands.
“Meet you at the front.”
After toppling the Howitzer into dirt, they'd brought out one more cannon and pointed it at the gate. Kate wondered at the toll this had taken on their wounded friend, but they had no choice; they needed all of the firepower they could get. It stood as a sentry guarding the front gate now, waiting for them. Kate walked beyond the barrel and stared upwards, the enormous black growths twisting through the space in front of her. If the entire path was like this, they'd never make it, but she didn't think it was. The space beyond look mostly open, and if they had to wipe out two or three more tangles along the way, they could do it. The docks were only a mile through the hills, maybe less. The beach route seemed to take forever, but the path across the island looked almost like a straight shot.
The reek of her own sweat assaulted her. It had soaked through her clothes, making her hands slick. She could remember running on the hottest days in DC, and she couldn't think of a single time she'd been this disgusting.
“Do it!” AJ yelled.
Her finger squeezed the trigger, and a jet of clear liquid burst from the nozzle. A soft screech came from the tentacles, the sound of air hissing and gurgling, but they didn't melt. They didn't collapse. They didn't do anything but color and tarnish under the power of the liquid.
Kate stared, feeling her breath become ragged. This wasn't what the book had said! The effect should be more dramatic, it should… it should be killing them.
It is killing them, she thought. She could see it in the way that the skin began to shrivel, the way the tentacles began to droop. It wasn't dissolving them, however, and that was a problem.
“What are you doing?” AJ yelled.
She couldn't answer. She had never prepared for the possibility that her plan wouldn't work. Her plans always worked, even from the time she was a child. But maybe that's what they were when you got down to it: child's play. She'd never needed a plan like this. Now, with her foolishness, she may have doomed them all.
A gunshot snapped her attention to the tower. She whipped her head around, seeing the gleam of Dutch's sniper scope. He was shooting at something beyond the walls.
Somewhere high up in the hills, another shriek came on the wind. It was closer than the last. Kate had a crazy memory of her father's first senatorial debate, and a word his opponent had used in his opening statement. It sounded multitudinous. Like a thousand voices joined as one.
“Flame on!” AJ yelled. “Use the flames!”
Kate looked down at her hands. The solution was so obvious, that at first, it didn't register. Had she really expected this thing to work as an eighty-pound water cannon? No, she had read the journal too literally. The things in front of her were evil, and every good conservative from the days of Isaiah to the days of the present knew what you did with evil.
You killed it with fire.
2
A jet of yellow and green flame burst from the tube as Kate pressed the igniter. AJ watched the tentacles boil and melt, pieces of flesh dropping to the ground in chunks.
He got behind the cannon, making sure a live shell was loaded and the safety valve was tight. “Fire in the hole!”
Kate sidestepped, and he yanked the firing lever.
The Howitzer thundered, the crack of the explosion so loud he thought his ears had blown. The round hit dead center, disintegrating the flaming tendrils into black mist. Shards of earth and dead meat fell from the sky. The spent artillery shell clunked to the ground behind him.
He caught movement from the corner of his eye and saw humanoid shapes clambering between the walls, storming the mutilated fence behind them. The first ones got stuck on the barbed wire, but the ones after stepped on their shoulders. They came spilling over, tumbling and rolling into the base. He counted four, then six. Half as many were stuck beneath the wire, tearing themselves apart to get free.