The shooting stopped and an almost stunned silence filled the clearing. Casey rose shakily to her feet, hardly daring to hope.
Was this it? Was the thing dead?
As the alien lay there motionless, some of the men began to emerge cautiously from hiding.
Then the Upgrade stirred, flexing one of its huge hands.
Seizing his chance, McKenna yelled, “Light him up!”
Whoever was closest to the remote—Casey thought it might have been Nettles—grabbed it and pressed the button. They all flinched back, shielding their eyes and ears as best they could from the colossal BOOM! that shook the clearing. The Upgrade’s body lifted into the air and slammed back down again, orange powder—phosphorous—settling over it. If it had been a man, Casey thought, it would have been blown to smithereens twice over. But the creature, though barely conscious, still seemed to be intact.
Like piranhas around a much larger but ailing enemy, Loonies and mercs alike closed in for the kill. They opened fire from all directions, the Upgrade’s body jerking as a multitude of bullets spanged off its armor, and maybe even off its alien hide.
Casey turned to her right to see Nebraska leap up onto the boulder he’d been hiding behind, a flare gun in his hand. Shouting at the men to stand clear, he pointed it at the prone body of the Upgrade and pulled the trigger. The projectile arced across the clearing, a mini blazing comet. Nebraska’s aim was perfect. The flare hit the Upgrade dead center, the phosphorous on its body ignited, and suddenly the alien was engulfed from head to toe in flames.
That’s it, Casey thought with a kind of wonder. It’s dead. We’ve killed it. But as though it could read her mind, and wanted to prove her wrong, the Upgrade suddenly leaped to its feet, roaring and flailing, causing men to fall back before it. As it beat at the flames that had transformed it into a fire demon, McKenna kept circling it, kept firing at it—until suddenly his gun clicked empty.
“Mag,” he shouted, and Rory tossed one across to him. He caught it cleanly, but even before he could load it and resume firing, Traeger was emerging from hiding, shouting across at him to stand back.
McKenna had barely done so when Trager faced the Upgrade and let loose with the shoulder cannon. Oh, so now he wants to be a hero, Casey thought cynically. He fired once, then again, each shot a direct hit, each shot rocking the Upgrade back on its heels.
How much more punishment can it take? Casey wondered. One thing was for sure. The Upgrade was an incredibly tough motherfucker. But it wasn’t indestructible. Because nothing was indestruct—
All at once, glancing at Traeger, Casey noticed that the left leg of his pants had caught fire. The Upgrade’s flailing had caused little fires to break out everywhere, clumps of blazing foliage flying around the clearing like dying fireworks. Most fizzled out as they landed, but one must have drifted down onto the back of Traeger’s leg and set the fabric of his pants alight. Even now, flames were licking up his calf toward his knee—and he was so caught up in the assault on the Upgrade that he hadn’t even noticed.
“Hey! Traeger!” she yelled, gesturing at his burning pants.
Distracted, he jerked his head around, saw the flames, and panicked.
Big mistake.
As his head swiveled round, so did the shoulder cannon, in sync with his movements. Only now it was pointing at the back of his skull, and the sudden surge of adrenaline in his brain was enough to trigger it. There was a whoosh! as the cannon fired, and suddenly Traeger’s head was nothing but flying offal. As the merc standing closest to him was splattered with blood and shards of bone and porridgey lumps of brain matter, Traeger’s headless body staggered sideways a couple of paces, and then tumbled forward, hitting the ground with a graceless thump.
“Fuck me!” Casey blurted, and clapped a hand to her mouth. Traeger had been a ruthless fucker with a rotten black soul, but she still felt guiltily responsible for his death. If she hadn’t pointed out that his pants were on fire…
If she hadn’t pointed it out, he’d have burned to death anyway, she told herself firmly.
She still felt bad—though it was perhaps a good thing that she didn’t have the luxury of wallowing in remorse for long. With a bellow of rage, the Upgrade, still burning, rallied again, surging to its feet like a boxer on the ropes who refuses to go down, and swinging one vast, burning arm in the direction of a merc who had ventured too close to it. The merc leaped back with a yell, the Upgrade’s clawed hand missing his face by mere inches and smashing into a tree. Sturdy as it was, the tree splintered in a shower of sparks, several of its branches shaking loose and crashing to the ground. One of them embedded itself into the soft earth and toppled sideways, its torn end coming to rest against the thicker branch of another tree that jutted out from the trunk at an almost perfect right angle. Now the fallen branch, canted sideways, resembled a ladder leaning against the side of a house. And suddenly Casey saw Baxley leaping onto that ladder and scaling it like a monkey, his face twisted demonically, nothing in his eyes but the raging desire to bring their enemy down.
No! she thought as Baxley reached the top of the leaning branch and launched himself, screaming, through the air. He looked just like Bruce Lee, or Charlie Chan, arms and legs pinwheeling as he hurtled toward the still-burning Upgrade.
She cried out as he landed on its back and scrabbled for purchase, throwing an arm around its neck. In his other hand, Casey saw, he was holding a knife, which he used to stab the Upgrade savagely in the face, burying the blade deep into its right eye.
The Upgrade howled, and thrashed from side to side, but Baxley, his own clothes and hair burning now, held on. Then the Upgrade reached round with its left arm and plucked him from its shoulder. It held him in the air for a moment, dangling and kicking, and then it hurled him away from itself as hard as it could. Baxley flew through the air, only to hit the jutting javelin of a tree branch, which went clean through his body. It entered his back and burst out through his chest, like a metal skewer through a piece of barbecued meat.
As he hung there, pinned like a burning butterfly, twenty feet up in the air, Casey let out a gasp, too horrified even to scream. She’d known Baxley only a very short time, but due to the sheer intensity of what they’d shared, and the fact they’d put their lives on the line for each other time and again, she’d grown to think of him—as she thought of all the Loonies—as a brother. They’d been under sentence of death pretty much since they met, but it was still impossible to believe that, suddenly and violently, he was gone.
McKenna was far more used to death than Casey was, but even he stared up at Baxley with horror. Then he became aware of movement to his left, and turned to see Coyle stumbling forward, eyes wide, staring up at his friend in disbelief. “Help him!” Coyle screamed. “Someone help him!”
The Upgrade took advantage of the distraction to show that, despite being consumed by fire and half-blinded, it was not yet beyond fighting back. It flicked out its wrist once again, and a split second later its lethal throwing blade was whistling across the clearing. Before McKenna, or anyone else, knew what was happening, the blade had sliced through Coyle’s left leg like a laser beam, severing it cleanly from his body. With a spray of blood, the leg toppled one way and Coyle the other. McKenna heard Casey scream, and then Rory.
Spinning round, he saw the Upgrade turn and stumble away into the jungle. Despite its injuries, it moved fast, its burning shape flickering in and out between the blackness of the trees. Accompanied by Nebraska and Nettles, he gave chase. The thing was probably three-quarters dead already, but he wanted to finish the job if he could.