Stinger by Robert R. McCammon
“It ends here,” Daufin said. “Right here. I’ve escaped from Rock Seven twice before. Twice before they sent Stingers after me and took me back. They kept me alive because they wanted to ‘study’ me.” She smiled bitterly, and there was rage in it too. “An indignity—a needle to watch your bowels move, a chemical to malform your dreams. Nothing is sacred, nothing is private. Your life is measured in reactions to pain, freezing, and burning.” Her hands curled into fists at her sides. “You are twisted until the screams run out. And all that time of ‘studying’ you know your world is being eaten away to the heart.” Her voice cracked, and for a few seconds she trembled but could not speak. Then: “When they’re done, they’ll search for new worlds to ravage. One of them might be Earth.” She glanced at Cody and Rick, then back through the murk at Stinger’s ship. “It ends here, with my death or Stinger’s.”
“What do you mean, ‘one of them might be Earth’?” Cody asked.
She drew in a long breath, and had to tell the humans what she knew to be true. “Stinger is not only a bounty hunter of escaped criminals. Stinger hunts planets for bounty as well. When Stinger returns to Rock Seven, a report will be given on this planet’s inhabitants, technological levels, and defense systems. According to that report, Earth may be added to the list of planets scheduled for invasion by”—a translation problem—“the House of Fists. Stinger’s masters. I don’t think it will be very long before they send the first fleet.”
“Christ!” Cody said. “What do we have that they want?”
“Life,” Daufin answered bluntly. “All life but their own is repugnant to the House of Fists. They can’t stand knowing that somewhere a life form flourishes without their permission. They will come here, take prisoners for study, gather whatever minerals might strike their interest, and either introduce a disease into the ecosystem or conduct mass executions. That is their pleasure and purpose of existence.”
“Sounds like real party-down dudes.” Rick looked around, his hand on the .38’s grip. The smoke had closed in, and he could see no cars nor people anywhere. “Lockett, you’d better get her off the street. You don’t want any more surprises popping up.”
“Right. But if that damned thing can bust up through the ground, where can I take her that’s safe?”
“What is that?” Daufin pointed, and Cody and Rick saw the faint glow of the apartment building’s lights through the haze.
“The ’Gade fortress. It’s built pretty tough,” Cody said. “About the only place around here that’s worth a damn.”
“Stinger won’t like those lights,” Daufin told them. “I think that’s a safe structure.” If any Earth structure was really safe, she thought.
Rick said, “I’m heading back across the river. A lot of people over there are holed up in the church.” He looked at Daufin again; the defiant face-behind-the-face had gone away, and she looked like an ordinary little girl again. “Colonel Rhodes and the sheriff are looking for you. They were over at the clinic about twenty minutes ago, but I heard them say they were going to the Creech house. Know where that is?” he asked Cody.
“Yeah. Dodge Creech’s house. It’s not too far from here.” Without any weapons, though, he didn’t care to go cruising the streets with her. There was no telling what might slither out of one of the dark houses. “I’m gonna get her up to the fort first. Then I’ll hunt Vance down.”
“Okay. You two watch your backs.”
Rick started to stride away, but Cody called, “Hey! Hold on!” and Rick paused. “You didn’t have to come down in that hole,” Cody said. This was one of the strangest moments of his life, standing on Renegade territory after dark with the leader of the Rattlers about eight feet away and a creature from another world beside him. He felt a drifty, dreaming sensation, and if there wasn’t a puddle of slime on the Cat Lady’s porch and blood squishing in his boot from his clawed ankle, he might not believe it had ever happened. “I appreciate it.”
Thanks from a ’Gade—especially from Cody Lockett—was in its own way even more bizarre than the circumstances. Rick shrugged. “Wasn’t a big thing.” His rope-scorched hands would tell him later that it had been.
“I think it was. Hey, did you mean what you said about your sister?”
“No,” Rick said firmly. A spark of the old anger resurfaced. “You get Miranda out of your head. Understand?”
“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.” Back to business, Cody thought.
“You will. Shitkicker.” They locked stares for a few seconds, like two bulldogs that refused to give an inch of ground, and then Rick backed away into the cracked street. He turned abruptly, disdainfully, and walked into the haze.
“I won’t. Spitball,” Cody said quietly. Then he glanced at Daufin. “Bet they don’t have motorcycles where you come from, huh?”
“Undoubtedly,” she answered.
“Then you can tell your people all about ’em, ’cause that’s what you’re about to ride on.” He went to the Honda, got on, and kickstarted the engine. “Climb on behind me and hold tight.” She did, nervous about the machine’s vibration and the noise, and Cody wheeled the cycle away from the Cat Lady’s house and sped toward Travis Street.
41
Blue-eyed and Smiling
“MAYBE IT DIDN’T MEAN this place,” Vance whispered shakily. “Maybe it meant somewhere else.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Rhodes spoke in a normal voice. There was no need for whispering, because Stinger had to know they were waiting in Creech’s den. He aimed his flashlight at the hole in the floor. There was no movement, no sign of life—in whatever form—down in the darkness. “What time is it?” he asked Tom.
“Almost twenty till two,” Tom answered, checking his watch in the beam of his own flashlight. Jessie stood beside him, her hair in sweat-damp curls and a fine layer of dust on her face. Rhodes had asked them to come, to see what they were dealing with, but he’d warned them not to say anything about Daufin. David Gunniston stood on the other side of the colonel, the younger man’s face still ashen with shock but his eyes alert and his hand on the butt of the .45 he’d taken from Vance’s gun cabinet. Vance had a Winchester repeating rifle, and Rhodes held the shotgun loaded with tear-gas shells at his side.
“Bastard’s making us wait,” Rhodes said. They’d been here for almost thirty minutes, long enough to drink the thermos of cold coffee they’d gotten from Sue Mullinax at the Brandin’ Iron. “Trying to make us sweat a little.”
“It’s doing a damned good job,” Jessie said as she wiped her face with her forearm. “One thing I want to know: if Stinger’s somehow making…what did you call them?”
“Replicants.”
“If Stinger’s making replicants, what’s happening to the real people?”
“Killed, most likely. Maybe stored like lab specimens. I don’t know.” He glanced at her and managed a faint smile. “We’ll have to ask when it shows up.”
“If it shows up.” Vance had backed away from the hole, and stood pressed against the wall. His shirt stuck to him like glue-dipped wallpaper, and sweat dripped from his chin. “Listen…if it looks like Dodge, I’m gonna have to be excused. I don’t think I can take that again.”
“Just don’t start blasting with that rifle. I’m not sure it’d do much good anyway.” Rhodes kept rubbing the hand-shaped bruise on his arm.
Vance snorted. “Mister, it’d do me a hell of a lot of good!”
“Colonel?” Gunniston bent down at the rim of the hole. “Listen!”
They all heard it: a thick, wet sound, like boots slogging in a swamp. Something moving through the slime-walled tunnel, Rhodes knew. Coming closer. “Get back,” he told Gunny, and the younger man scrabbled away from the edge. Vance cocked the Winchester, and Rhodes darted a warning glance at him.
The sounds stopped. Silence fell.
Rhodes and Tom kept their lights aimed at the hole. From below, a man’s voice drifted up: “Put your lights out, folks. I’m picking up some real bad vibes
It was a mellow, laid-back voice. No one recognized it but Vance, who had heard it often enough. His face bleached fishbelly gray, and his body mashed harder against the wall.
“Do it,” Rhodes said. He turned off his flashlight, and so did Tom. Now the only illumination in the room was the dusty yellow glow of the remaining oil-burning lanterns. “All right. You can come up now.”
“Oh no. Not yet, pardner. Throw them down to me.”
It can’t stand electric light, Rhodes thought. No, more than that: it’s afraid of electric light. He tossed his flashlight into the hole and nodded for Gunniston and Tom to do the same. A moment later there came the snapping sounds of the flashlights being broken apart.
“That’s it. You can come up,” Rhodes said.
“I can come up anywhere and anytime I fucking please,” the voice replied. “Haven’t you figured that out by now?” There was a pause. “If you have any more of these up there, you’ll be very sorry.”
“Those are all we brought.”
“They’re little pieces of nothing anyway, aren’t they? I can break them with my breath.” The voice was jaunty, confident now that the flashlights were destroyed. A quiet thud and a scuttling noise followed. Rhodes figured the thing had just leapt up and pulled itself into the basement. Then another thud, and one hand caught the edge of the hole. Saw-blade fingernails gouged into the broken wood, and the creature’s head rose into view.
Jessie gripped Tom’s hand with a strength that popped his knuckles. Vance gave a feeble moan.
It was Mack Cade’s face, blue-eyed and smiling like a choirboy. He was hatless, his thin blond hair plastered to his skull. His tan had faded to a sickly yellow hue. He pulled himself up with one-armed ease, got his knees on the hole’s edge, and stood up.
Vance almost passed out, and the only reason he did not was the knowledge that he would be unconscious on the floor with that god-awful thing standing ten feet away.
“Oh… Jesus,” Gunniston whispered.
“Everybody stay where you are,” Rhodes said, as calmly as he could. He swallowed; his insides had given a savage twist. “Just take it easy.”
“Yeah,” the creature with Mack Cade’s smile said. “Hang loose.”
In the lamplight, they all could see it much too clearly. Mack Cade had a left arm, but his right one was squashed and melted into something that had grown from his chest. It was a black-streaked lump of meat with a flat, almost reptilian head on a squat and muscular neck. In that head were slanted amber eyes, and two stubby, deformed legs dangled from the bony wedges of its shoulders.
Jessie knew what it was: a dog. One of Cade’s Dobermans, implanted in the thing’s chest like a bizarre Siamese twin.
The gold chains around Cade’s neck were now part of his flesh too, braided in and out of his skin. The cold blue eyes moved slowly from one figure to the next. The dog’s head, splotched with patterns of human flesh and Doberman hide, writhed as if in profound agony, and around the lump of its body the folds of Cade’s wine-red shirt crackled like waxy paper. “Wow,” the Cade mouth said, and lamplight sparked off the close-packed rows of needle teeth. “You came to party, didn’t you, Ed Vance?” The thing’s gaze speared him. “I thought you were the head honcho.”
Vance couldn’t speak. Rhodes took a deep breath and said, “He’s not. I am.”
“Yeah?” The eyes fixed on him. The dog’s mouth stretched open and showed more silver needles. On each paw were two serrated metal hooks. The creature took two strides toward Rhodes, and the colonel felt panic rise up like a scream but he locked his knees and did not retreat.
Stinger stopped about three feet away. The eyes narrowed. “You. I know you, don’t I?” The squashed Doberman’s head made a low groan, and the jaws snapped wantonly. “You’re Colonel Matt Rhodes United States Air Force. Right?”
“Yes.”
“I remember you. We met before, down there.” A jerk of the head toward the hole. Still smiling, Stinger lifted its left arm and extended the index finger. The arm glided forward, and the metal nail pressed against Rhodes’s cheek. “You hurt me,” Stinger said.
There was a quiet click as Gunniston eased back the .45’s hammer.
“Hold your fire.” The saw-blade edge had cut his cheek, and a drop of blood coursed slowly down to his jawline. He met Stinger’s intense stare without flinching. The thing was talking about the old woman down in the tunnel. Wherever the true Stinger was—most likely in the pyramid—it must have a direct sensory bond with the replicants, including reaction to pain. “We came here in good faith,” Rhodes said. “What do you want?”
“I want to deal.”
Rhodes knew what Stinger meant, but he wanted it spelled out, “Deal for what?”
“The superfine, high-quality, grade-double-A package you’ve got stashed somewhere in this joint.” The fingernail withdrew, taking a smear of human blood with it. “You know: the guardian. The little girl.”
Jessie’s heart kicked. Vance shivered; the thing had Cade’s slick salesman’s drawl down to perfection.
“What little girl?” The drop of blood fell from Rhodes’s chin and hit the green scrub shirt with a soft plop.
“Don’t shit me, amigo.” The dog’s head growled hoarsely, its neck straining. “I’ve been…like…asking around, if you get my drift. Kicking back, seeing the sights. You’ve got a real trippy world here, dude. But I know the guardian’s a little girl, and I know she’s somewhere close. I want her, and I mean to take her. So do we deal or not?”
Rhodes knew dangerous ground lay ahead. He said, carefully, “Maybe we know who you’re talking about and maybe we don’t. If we do, what do we get from the deal?”
“You get to keep your asses,” Stinger said, the eyes bright—almost merry—with the prospect of violence. “That clear enough?”
“You’ve already killed quite a few people. That’s not good business.”
“Sure it is. My business is squashing bugs.”
“A professional killer?” Rhodes’s throat felt dry enough to crack. “Is that what you are?”
“Man, you people are dense! Ugly too.” Stinger looked down at the twitching mass hanging from its chest. “What is this shit?”
“I’d like to know where you came from,” Rhodes pressed on. “What planet?”
Stinger hesitated, the head cocked over to one side. “The planet Moondoggie, in the constellation Beach Blanket Bingo,” the thing said, and cackled. “What the fuck does it matter? You wouldn’t know where it is, anyway. Face it. man: I’m not leaving without the guardian, so you might as well hand her over and let’s be done with it.”
Jessie could stand being silent no longer. It was the wrong, stupid thing to do, and she knew that, but it burst out of her anyway: “No! We’re not giving her up to you!”
Rhodes twisted around and his stare burned holes through her. She got control of herself again, but the damage was done. The counterfeit Mack Cade face watched her impassively, while the dog’s jaws snapped at the air as if ripping off hunks of fresh meat. Stinger said quietly, “Now we’ve got it clear who we’re talking about, so we can quit dicking around. First off, I know my bounty’s here. I tracked her ship to this world, and my sensors are picking up the pod’s energy. Exactly where it is, I’m not sure—but I’m narrowing it down, and I know she won’t be too far from it.” A metallic smile flashed. “Technology’s a great thing, huh?”
“What do you mean, your ‘bounty’?” Rhodes asked. “Are you being paid for this?”
“‘Paid’ is a relative term, man. I’m being rewarded for carrying out a mission.”
“To find her and kill her?”
“To find her and take her where she belongs. She—” Stinger stopped, a grimace of annoyance rumpling the face. “You don’t know a damned thing, do you? This is like trying to talk to my asshole and expecting it to”—there was a pause and a slow blink, and Rhodes could almost see the thing searching at mind-boggling speed through the man’
“Sorry we’re so uncivilized,” Rhodes said, “but we’re not invading other worlds trying to kidnap children, either.”
“‘Invading,’” Stinger repeated after a few seconds of reflection. The eyelids had slid down to half mast. “There’s another relative term. Listen, I couldn’t care less about this dump. I’m just passing through. As soon as I get my prisoner, I’m history.”
“What makes her so important?” Tom spoke up, and the creature’s head twisted toward him.
“I see the problem around here,” Stinger announced. “Too many chiefs and not enough ensigns…engines… Indians,” the thing corrected itself. “You ought to know ‘she’ isn’t what you’d call female. And she’s not male, either. Where she comes from, that doesn’t matter. All the screwing on her world’s done by the tides or something. ‘She’ could just as easily take a man to be a guardian; the guardian’s a shell for her to walk around in. But since I don’t find any description of the creature in your lingo, I guess it’s okay to call it a ‘she.’” Stinger sneered the word. “And for her to take a little girl as a guardian is a real laugh, because she’s as old as dirt. But she’s smart, I’ll give her that much, and she’s sure run me a chase.” The thing’s gaze slid back to Rhodes. “It’s over now: where is she?”
“I never said we knew who you’re talking about.”