Cold War

Chapter 26

Ligacheva tried to run, tried to leave the narrow gap between icy boulders that Schaefer had squeezed them both into, tried to go help her men. Schaefer grabbed her arm and held her back.

”Let me go!” she said. “Let me go! My God, Schaefer, look at what’s happening to them! I have to help my men fight that thing!”

”You can’t help,” Schaefer told her. “You’d just die like the others. Those things are doing what they do best, and we can’t stop them.”

Ligacheva tugged uselessly against his grip.

”Besides,” Schaefer added, “a few seconds ago ‘your men’ were trying to kill us.”

”They’re still my men!” Ligacheva shouted.

Schaefer stared at her for a moment as she realized the futility of struggling.

”Do you have any idea just how stupid that sounds?” he asked her.

She whirled to face him. “Do you have any idea just how cruel you sound?” she replied. “Isn’t there anything you care about?”

Schaefer frowned.

”I care about something,” she told him. “I care about my men!”

”Yeah, I care about something,” Schaefer said. “I care about the fact that when that thing’s done with your friends, it’ll probably find us. Do you have a knife?”.

She blinked up at him. “A knife?”

”Those things are fast enough to dodge bullets, if they see them coming,” Schaefer explained. “And even if you hit them, they’re damn near bulletproof. Knives, well… they can dodge knives, too, if they have a chance, but I don’t intend to give this one a chance.”

”There’s an entrenching tool in my pack,” Ligacheva replied. “I hear the Spetznaz use them like axes when they need to.”

Schaefer nodded. “That’ll do,” he said. “Give.”

Ligacheva tore open her pack, trying to ignore the high-pitched screams coming from the other side of the sheltering boulder. Schaefer snatched the entrenching tool from her before she could pull it completely out, and an instant later he was gone.

She blinked. Schaefer had seemed to move almost as fast as that thing.

He wasn’t invisible, though, and the monster usually was; how could he hope to find it? She stared into the darkness, trying to see.

Schaefer didn’t worry about finding the creature; he knew where to look. Those creatures didn’t just kill and move on; they liked to play with their prey even after it was dead. All he had to do was watch the corpses…

There.

Even in the dim arctic gloom he could see the faint rippling in the air above one of the dying Russians. Most people would have missed it entirely, or dismissed it as some sort of optical illusion, but Schaefer knew what to look for, and he had good eyes.

What he did worry about was how to make his attack. The entrenching tool was strong, all in one piece, not like the folding ones American forces used, and one side was sharpened to a razor edge, but the creature’s back was mostly bone, and those bones weren’t necessarily arranged like human ones. If he got a shot at the thing’s belly he’d have a better chance of doing some real damage-but of course, he couldn’t sneak up on it from the front.

He wasn’t sure he could sneak up on it in any case. His only hope was if it was too busy with its victim to notice his approach.

All the screaming had stopped. Schaefer wondered if any of the Russians were still alive.

The body the thing knelt over flipped over suddenly, and Schaefer didn’t think that movement was the Russian’s doing-the creature was getting ready to cut out the man’s spine for a trophy.

Something flickered blue, and the creature was visible, kneeling over the corpse; Schaefer wasn’t sure whether it had turned off its screen deliberately, or if something had given out in the cold. At any rate, this was clearly his chance-or at least the best he was going to get.

”Hey!” Schaefer shouted, charging at the monster with the entrenching tool raised. “Remember me?”

The alien turned, startled, just as a man would, and Schaefer swung his improvised weapon.

The sharpened edge skidded across the creature’s chest, drawing glowing yellow-green blood, but the blade didn’t bite deeply.

Schaefer took another swing, backhanded, and reached his free hand out to grab the thing’s mask. He’d tried that trick before, last summer in New York, and it had worked pretty well then…

The monster was still half-crouched, off-balance, trying to rise. It grabbed at the entrenching tool and caught it, stopping it dead in midswing – but it had caught the tool by the blade, and the razor edge sliced into the palm of the thing’s hand. Luminescent yellow-green blood dribbled slowly onto the snow underfoot.

Schaefer grabbed the edge of the creature’s mask and twisted, trying to blind it; at the same time he tried to pull the entrenching tool free.

The tool didn’t move; it was like pulling at a steel post. The mask, though, shifted awkwardly.

The thing staggered, confused. It pulled the entrenching tool from Schaefer’s hand and flung it away, then reached both hands up to straighten its mask, but before it could recover, Schaefer threw his full weight against it. It tripped over a dead Russian’s leg and toppled backward into the snow, its mask coming off in Schaefer’s hand.

Gas hissed, and the creature roared deafeningly.

Schaefer threw himself on top of the thing’s chest, his knees on its arms, pinning it. Then he raised the mask over his head in both hands and brought it slamming down edge first on the monster’s face.

”Hell, New York wasn’t so bad,” Schaefer said as he raised the mask for a second blow and saw yellow-green ooze dribbling from the thing’s hideous, multifanged mouth. “At least I could grab a hot dog when you bastards weren’t in sight.” He swung the mask again. “Siberia, though-Siberia sucks. I’m freezing my fucking ass off out here!” He drove the yellow-smeared edge of the mask down onto the thing’s eyes for his third blow and felt the creature twitch beneath him. “What the hell did you want to come here for, anyway? Go home, why don’t you?”

The thing roared again, and something whirred.

Schaefer froze, the mask raised for a fourth blow.

”Uh-oh,” he said as the black shoulder cannon began to pivot toward him. He flung himself backward, and the blue-white fireball roared up into empty space.

”Go home!” the creature bellowed, in Schaefer’s own voice, as the detective scrambled to his feet and the cannon began to home in for a second shot.

Schaefer dove sideways, but the white fire, whatever it was, tore the skin from one side of his scalp.

”Bastard!” Schaefer said as he staggered, trying to keep the blood out of his eyes. One hand flew up to feel the wound and found hair and flesh gone. “You son of a… That was a new haircut!”

The alien was on its feet now, and plainly in control of the situation again; the cannon stayed up and ready, but didn’t lock on or fire again. Instead, the creature advanced deliberately toward Schaefer.

It was bleeding from a gash across its chest, and one hand and its mouth were dripping greenish goo-Schaefer was able to see that much, even dazed as he was. At least he had hurt the thing.

In fact, it looked angry. It was so alien Schaefer couldn’t be sure, but he thought something about the eyes looked really seriously pissed.

”Come on, stud,” he said, struggling to stand upright and meet the thing head-on. “Give us a kiss.”

The creature didn’t say a thing as it stepped toward him; it just raised its right fist.

With a click, those double blades on the back of its wrist snapped into place.

”You!” someone shouted.

Schaefer blinked away his own blood in time to see Ligacheva leap forward as the creature turned its head. The thing had been so focused on Schaefer it hadn’t seen the Russian…

Or her weapon. Ligacheva had an AK-47 in her hands, and when the monster turned to face her she thrust the muzzle into its open mouth and fired.

The specifications for the AK-47 say it fires six hundred rounds per minute, but the standard magazine only holds thirty rounds-three seconds at full auto. Standard use is two- or three-shot bursts, to conserve ammunition.

Ligacheva, just then, didn’t give a shit about conserving ammunition; she kept the trigger jammed down tight until the full clip was expended.

That was perhaps the longest three seconds of Schaefer’s life as Ligacheva emptied the weapon into the monster’s face. The creature didn’t budge; it stood and took it as glowing yellow blood and shredded yellow flesh and fragments of white, needle-sharp teeth sprayed out the back of its skull.

One clawed hand reached toward the heavy gauntlet on the opposite wrist, as if trying to reach some of the controls on the wristband, then fell limp. The black tube on the left shoulder rose up and began to swivel.

Then, at last, as Ligacheva’s finger clicked uselessly on the trigger of an empty weapon, before the shoulder cannon could lock on to its target, the creature tottered and fell, toppling forward onto the lieutenant, knocking her flat on her back in the snow.

The shoulder cannon jerked and fell still.

Schaefer cleared his eyes of blood as best he could and staggered over to where the two of them lay. Ligacheva, trapped beneath the thing, stared up at him with terror-filled brown eyes.

”Is it dead?” she asked unsteadily, her breath little more than a gasp due to the weight on her chest.

Schaefer bent down and heaved the thing off her, rolling it to one side.

”It’s not exactly dancing,” he said. He sat down abruptly, not caring that the action split the seams on the thighs of his snowsuit, spilling yellow goo a few shades lighter than the stuff smeared all over the dead alien.

At least the stuff from the suit didn’t glow in the dark, he thought.

Then he looked over at Ligacheva, who was sitting up now, staring down at her dead foe.

”Nice save,” he said. “Thanks.”

”Is it over?” she asked. “Was this what killed all my men and the workers at the station?”

Schaefer looked around carefully before answering, peering both ways down the canyon.

”I get the feeling that old Lunchmeat here was just a security guard,” he said. “A sentry, keeping an eye on things. If there were more right here we’d probably be dead by now, but I’d bet there are more of them down the road there, just where your scientist buddy’s map says the ship is.”

Ligacheva got to her feet, brushed glowing slime from the front of her overcoat, and looked down at the dead creature. “If it is as you say,” she said, “its friends will not be happy when they learn this one is gone.”

Schaefer smiled humorlessly and wiped blood from his face again. “I’d say you’re right, and that suits me just fine,” he said. He spotted his dropped blanket and recovered it, wrapping it around his head as much to stanch the flow of blood as for warmth.

Maybe it was the loss of blood affecting his senses, or his recent exertion, or maybe the ravine blocked the wind, or maybe it was something else, but right now he didn’t feel the cold quite as much as he had.

”Are you all right?” Ligacheva asked.

”I’m fine,” Schaefer said. “You mentioned this boy’s pals,” he said. He parodied a bow, then pointed down the canyon toward the alien ship’s location. “Shall we take a little hike and give them the bad news?”

”Yes,” Ligacheva said. “Let’s do that.”

She ejected the magazine from her AK-47, then picked up one that someone had dropped during the massacre. She rammed it into place, then looked around at the bodies of her men-or rather Yashin’s men.

She stared at the dead monster again.

”Should we strip this one?” she asked. “Its equipment might be useful.”

”If we knew how to use it,” Schaefer said. “Sure, the science boys would love to have it, but let’s pick it up on the way back, shall we? There might be booby traps, and I’d rather not worry about them until after we’ve had a look at whatever’s around the bend here.”

Ligacheva hesitated. She reached down toward the monstrous corpse.

The shoulder cannon swiveled toward her.

She froze, staring at the black tube. Carefully she pulled her hand away, preparing to fling herself sideways if the cannon fired.

The tube did not move again. She waited and watched, but it remained motionless.

She didn’t know whether that final movement had been caused by some final twitch of the creature’s body, or some unfinished task the device had been performing, or some sort of automatic protective system. She decided she didn’t care-Schaefer was right, the body might be booby-trapped, and stripping it could wait.

She straightened up slowly, watching the black tube. It never moved.

She stepped back, away from the body, then turned to face Schaefer.

”Let’s go,” she said.