Hellstrom's Hive

Clovis lay in deep shade beneath a madrona copse about five hundred yards southeast of the gate into Hellstrom’s farm. She could see swarms of people fighting the grass fires up by the fence and some of them obviously had guns, not those mysterious humming weapons she’d seen knocking some of her team flat. Christ! There must be hundreds of people up there fighting those fires! Blue gray smoke spiraled upward from the fires and she could smell the alkali bitterness of the smoke as some of it drifted across her position.

She held her pistol in her right hand, resting it over her left forearm to steady it. They would come from that direction, obviously. DT had worked down to the right behind her with the burp gun. She glanced back, trying to spot him. He’d said to give him ten minutes, then move back. He’d cover her.

She thought about the brief battle in the farmyard. Holy Jesus! She had never expected anything even remotely like that experience. Gawdawful, yes, but not that. Nude men and women carrying odd double-tipped weapons. She could hear the strange crackling hum of the damn things even yet. From the way her team had fallen under that weird barrage, she suspected the things were lethal.

A new kind of weapon: that had to be the answer to Project 40. Well, they’d expected a weapon, but not something like this.

Why were the people nude?

She had not yet allowed herself to ask what might have happened to Eddie Janvert. Her original guess stood. Dead, and probably by one of those odd weapons. The things had a limited range, however: about one hundred yards, she made it. Bullets from her pistol had the reach on them. The trick was to keep the attackers at a distance and look out for the few with guns.

She glanced at her wristwatch: three minutes before she could move out.

God, it was hot. Dust from the grass tickled her nose. She stifled a sneeze. Something moved on the near slope of the hillside above the fence to the left of the gate. She snapped off two shots, reloaded, heard another shot from behind her and a call from DT. He was in place already. Good. To hell with waiting out the full ten minutes. She got to her knees, turned, and sprinted out of the tree shadows in a running crouch, not looking back. That was DT’s job, to cover her back trail. The odd humming sound came from the hillside behind her, but there was only a faint tingling sensation along her spine. She wondered if it could be imagination, but fear added new energy to her muscles and she increased her speed.

A shot sounded ahead of her on her left; another, another. DT using the burp gun on single shot to slow down pursuers. She shifted course slightly to curve around behind the place where the shots originated. She still couldn’t see DT, but there was an oak tree down there and some cows running away beyond it in an awkward, bounding gait. She picked an oak to the left of the cows as her target, ran, and caught the tree with her left arm as she came to it, swung around behind it, the tree and her arc of momentum stopping her. Sweat soaked her body and her chest ached with each panting breath. More shots came from DT’s position then, but she still couldn’t see him. Six nude figures were sprinting down the open rangeland from the valley, each carrying one of those weird weapons. She drew three deep breaths to steady herself, rested her gun hand against the tree, and spaced off four aimed shots. Two of the sprinters dropped with a jolting sprawl that said they’d been hit. The others dove into the grass.

DT came into sight abruptly, dropping from the tree, and she realized he’d climbed the damn tree. Good man. He landed cat-footed and running, bore to his left, not looking back, not looking across at Clovis. A good teammate would cover for him and he had now accepted Clovis as a good teammate.

Clovis reloaded, watching the grass move where the four survivors of her fusillade had gone to ground. They were crawling, obviously trying to get within range for their weapons. The grass rippled ominously, moving, coming nearer and nearer. She concentrated on gauging distance. At about four hundred feet, she lifted the magnum and began shooting. She took her time, spacing the shots carefully. At her third shot, a figure lurched into view, toppled backward. Three others arose from the grass, charged, pointing their weapons at her. Taking her time—each of the remaining three shots had to count—she sighted on the first figure, a bald woman with face contorted into a fierce grimace. Clovis’s first shot stopped her as though she had run into a wall. Her weapon flew through the air as she fell sideways. The others dove for the grass. Clovis used her two remaining shots, putting them into the grass where the attackers had dropped. Without waiting to see the effect, she turned and ran, reloading as she went.

“Over here! Over here!”

It was DT calling from another oak off to her left. She changed course toward it, guessing he’d called because there were no more trees in the rangeland beyond. It was open grassland down there and cropped close by cattle for at least half a mile. DT caught her arm to help stop her.

“You know, that’s weird,” he said. “See how the cows have eaten the pasture down below us, but not up toward the farm. It’s almost as though the cows avoided that area. The ones I scared away from my first stand up there were real spooky, as though they’d been herded up there by something below us. I don’t see a sign of anyone down there, though.”

She took a moment to catch her breath. “You have any bright ideas how we’re going to get out of this?”

“Keep on like we are,” he said.

“We’ve got to get out and report what we’ve seen,” she said. She looked up at him, but he was keeping his attention on their back trail.

“I think you got another one of those creeps that dove into the grass,” he said. “Only one of them seems to be moving. You ready to make another run?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be. You see anything of the one I missed?”

“He’s still crawling, but he’s gonna run outa grass pretty soon. Let’s separate now. You bear a bit to your left until you hit the road, then try to follow it. I’ll hold right. The creek should be over there; you can see the line of trees off that way about a mile. We’ll give ’em two targets to chase. If I can reach the creek—”

DT had been scanning the ground toward the farm as he began speaking and, still speaking, he turned to look in the direction they would run. Clovis whirled around at the startled way DT stopped speaking. She let out an involuntary gasp. A solid line of hairless, nude human figures blocked their escape route. The line stood about five hundred yards below them, beginning far off to their left in the scrub oaks of rising ground there and reaching into the distance at the right, even beyond the trees that marked the creekbank where DT had expected to take cover.

“Jeeeesus!” DT said.

There must be ten thousand of them! Clovis thought.

“I haven’t seen that many gooks since Nam,” DT husked. “Jeeeeesus! It’s like we stirred up a whole anthill of ’em.”

Clovis nodded, thinking: That’s exactly what we’ve done. The whole thing fell into place: Hellstrom was a front for some kind of weirdo cult. She noted the pale skins. They must live underground. The farm was just a cover. She stifled a hysterical giggle. No, the farm was only a lid! She raised her gun, intending to take as many of that ominous advancing line as possible, but a crackling hum from close behind numbed her body and mind. She heard one shot as she toppled, but could not decide whether it was from her gun or DT’s.