“You are next,” Adan said, looking at Elvis.
“No,” Bower cried. “This is wrong. You can’t do this.”
Adan laughed. “Oh, but I can.”
He held two bullets in his hand, between his thumb and his forefinger, holding them up high so the soldiers could see what he was proposing.
Adan yelled, “What do I hear for a double? How long can two of them last? Do I hear four minutes? Is anyone going to take four minutes for the two of them? Do I hear four? Five?”
The rebels cheered and called out in response as the gambling began in earnest, with money rapidly changing hands.
“You sick bastard,” Elvis said, struggling to hold himself upright. Bower could feel him trembling. Even with his shattered arm, lost below the elbow, his bulk made him look formidable, especially as his bulletproof vest stuck out from his chest. His gruff voice sounded resolved, but Bower knew he was as afraid as she was, she could feel adrenalin betraying him. They were going to die.
Adan held out the bullets for Elvis to take, but with a tourniquet around his torn bicep and his other arm slung over Bower’s shoulder, he couldn’t hold them. Bower held out her hand, but Adan played up the incident.
“Arnold Schwarzenegger was so tough he didn’t need bullets to kill the predator. Are you our Arnold? Can you kill this monster with your bare hands?”
The soldiers laughed and jeered at them.
“Should you change your mind,” Adan continued, facing Elvis and Bower. “You will have to find your bullets.”
Adan tossed the two bullets carelessly out over the vast hole in the floor. Bower watched as the bullets sailed downward, bouncing on the mattresses, one falling to the left, the other bouncing further on and somewhere to the right.
“Fuck,” Elvis said under his breath.
Bower felt the butt of a rifle thrust hard into her back, forcing her to stumble forward toward the jagged hole in the floor. Below her, the alien monster seethed with anger, lashing out with its razor-sharp tentacles.
“No,” she screamed. “This is not fair.”
“Fair?” Adan cried in reply. “Fair? You bomb us with your Raptors, you occupy our country, you force your systems and beliefs upon us, you destroy our traditions, and you want to talk to me about fair? Ha. I say, you have as much chance down there as we do against your troops.”
Another shove in the back brought her to the edge of the abyss.
Concrete crumbled beneath her boots.
Elvis jumped out before her, clearing the torn strands of reinforced steel bars protruding from the shattered concrete. He landed on a mattress, rolling on his good shoulder as he fell forward.
Bower jumped. She had to. If she’d been shoved, she knew she would have fallen awkwardly and missed the mattresses. Breaking a leg on the concrete floor didn’t seem like such a smart idea, so she jumped. Jumping was her only option, and yet it felt like suicide.
Bower didn’t make it as far as Elvis had, and she had no idea about rolling to soften the blow. She landed on a single mattress off to one side, and was shocked to feel the jarring impact resound up through her ankles, knees, hips and spine. She collapsed in a heap, pain tearing through her body.
Elvis staggered up against the crushed remains of a wooden crate, using it to help him stand. Bower got to her feet, but her ankles ached, the soles of her feet felt like someone had been pounding on them with a sledgehammer.
“Bullets,” Elvis cried. “Get the bullets.”
Bower looked around.
From the ground, the layout looked entirely different. She swung around, looking at the pile of mattresses, trying to get her bearings. Above her, the soldiers roared with excitement. She could see Adan standing there, laughing, gloating. From his position, she was able to orient herself. She had to be within a few feet of the bullet that fell to the left.
Elvis staggered over to where the revolver lay in a pool of fresh blood, crushed bone and shredded body tissue. She could see he was in excruciating pain. His movements were coarse. His shattered arm hung by his side, nothing more than a bloody mess.
Instinctively, Bower ran her hands through her short, dark hair. She wasn’t sure why, but it helped her think as her eyes scanned the ground, looking for the bullet. Small rocks and splinters of wood lay scattered on the floor. Patches of blood marred the ground.
Her eyes darted back and forth, manic in their desire to find the bullet. Long streaks of blood and splatter patterns stained the support pillars.
Something moved in the shadows. Thousands of blades seemed to slash at the air, cutting through the darkness.
Bower looked up. Her heart raced. She couldn’t help herself. Although she knew she should keep looking for the bullet she had to see it, she had to see this alien creature from another world. There, in the darkness, she saw the faint outline of the monster, just a glimpse of spikes and tentacles as the creature moved along the far wall. Above her, the rebels were chanting, willing the creature to attack.
Elvis was on his knees, using his one good hand to pull himself on. He grabbed the gun and leaned up against a concrete support pillar. The physical toll of his injuries had sapped his strength. She could see him struggling, fighting against fatigue and shock. His gloved fingers gripped the revolver. He wiped the gun against his clothing, trying to clean it.
“Doc, I need those bullets,” he yelled again.
Bower was down on her hands and knees. She was sure this was where she’d seen one of the bullets come to rest. Her hands pushed through the debris, her fingers desperately wanting to clutch at metal and not wood or stone.
The alien roared. Within the darkened floor, there was a sound like the rush of a storm in a forest. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the monster closing in on Elvis.
“Where’s that goddamn bullet?” Elvis cried. He pointed the gun into the shadows, bluffing.
Bower moved to where she’d landed, searching frantically for the first bullet. The mattress she had fallen on had slipped off the pile and lay to one side. She was almost directly below Adan. She couldn’t see the general, but she could hear him gloating and calling out with delight.
“Get me that FUCKING bullet,” Elvis scream.
Elvis staggered. His legs could no longer carry him. He fell awkwardly, crying out in pain as he sprawled on the concrete.
Bower was manic, searching on her hands and knees for the bullet.
Above them, the rebel soldiers laughed.
Elvis rolled on his back, pushing frantically away from the alien creature as it slowly advanced on him. His boots slipped in the blood of his fallen comrade.
Adan and his troops cheered for the alien.
The creature reared up above Elvis, its tentacles slashing at the air. As the alien moved into the light, Bower got her first good look at the monster. Mentally, she struggled to process what she was seeing. Rather than a single creature, such as a lion or a tiger, the alien appeared to be a chimera, a hybrid, a combination of various creatures melded together.
What she’d thought of as tentacles were flexible blades. Bower was tempted to think of the alien as a giant sea urchin or a western tumbleweed, with an inner core like that of a basketball. Spikes protruded in all directions, but the heart of the creature was a seething mass, constantly moving, rippling and changing shape. She couldn’t articulate why, but the two concepts didn’t mesh, they seemed incongruous.
Rigid spikes rested on the ground like pikes or poles or crutches, while the upper spikes flexed like whips, giving the top half of the creature the appearance of an octopus thrashing around with its tentacles. As the alien moved, these soft, flexible fore-limbs became stiff, changing their function from what had presumably been like that of human arms to stiff legs. As the creature rocked forward, the dark, seething mass at the heart of the alien compensated for the motion, swarming and staying still relative to the rotation of the legs.