E-Branch - Invaders Part 2

And then she had to wo nder about its origin, the focus or point of emanation of this alien taint. Was it the shack - or the steel-barred, wall-to-wall cell it contained - or perhaps the night-black tunnel beyond the bars, with its as yet unseen, unknown 'creechur' ... or could it possibly be old 'Brace' himself?

There came a sound from the darker depths of the horizontal mine shaft. And just as there are smells and smells, so are there sounds and sounds. Liz gasped, aimed her torch-beam into the darkness back there, and saw movement. A flowing, gathering, approaching darkness in the lesser dark around; an inkblot of a figure, taking on shape as it came, bobbing, wafting on a draft of poisonous air from wherever and whatever lay beyond. And it had luminous yellow eyes - slanted as a beast's, and yet intelligent, not-quite-feral - that held her fixed like a rabbit in a headlight's beam! But only for a moment. Then- 'You.'' Liz transferred the torch to her left hand, dipped her right hand into a pocket and came out with a modified Baby Browning, used her thumb to release the safety and aimed it at the old man ... or at the empty s.p.a.ce where he had been.

While from outside in the night, she heard the grating of his booted feet, his now obscene chuckle, and the squeal of a key turning in the exterior screen door's lock as he shut her in.

h.e.l.l! But this could quite literally be h.e.l.l! Along with her talent - held back far too long by her desire not to alert anyone or anything to her real purpose here - Liz's worst fears were now fully mobilized, realized. She knew what the creechur in the mineshaft was, knew what it could do. But even now she wasn't entirely helpless.

Tucking the torch under her arm, she found her beeper and pressed its alarm b.u.t.ton ... at the precise moment that it commenced transmitting Jake's own cry for help!

The shock of hearing that rapid beep! beep! beeping from her pocket almost made Liz drop the torch; she somehow managed to hold on to it, held her hands together, pointed the gun and the torch both through the inch-thick bars of the cage. But as the weak beam swept the bars, it picked out something that she hadn't previously noticed; there had been little enough time to notice anything. The cage had a door fastened with a chain and stout padlock - but the padlock hung on the inside, the other side, where it dangled from the hoop of its loose shackle!

She knew what she must do: reach through the bars, drive home the shackle to close the padlock. A two-handed job.

Again she put the torch under her arm, fumbled the gun back into her pocket. Then, in the crawling, tingling, living semi- darkness, Liz thrust her trembling hands between the bars ...

and all of the time she was aware of the thing advancing towards her, its slanted, sulphurous eyes alive on her ... and the beeper issuing its urgent, staccato mayday like a small, terrified animal... and on top of all this the sudden, nightmarish notio n: But what if this thing has the key to the padlock!?

At that moment it was Liz Merrick who fel t like some small, terrified, trapped animal - but a human animal. While the thing striding silently, ever closer to her along the shaft was anything but human, though it might have been not so long ago.

It was almost upon her; she smelled the hot stench of its breath!

22.

CHAPTER TWO.

Dark Denizens Liz had squeezed her eyes shut in a desperate effort to locate the padlock. Now she opened them ...

... And it was there, it was there! Its face, caught in the upward-slanting beam of yellow light from the torch in her arm-pit, looked down o n h er! And: 'Ahhh!' It - or he, the 'creechur' - sighed. 'A girl. No, a woooman. And a fresh one. How very good to meet you here.' How very ... provident. AM!' And as simply as that his cold, cold hands took the padlock from hers, freed it from the chains, and let it fall with a clank to the dirt floor ...

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Meanwhile, Jake Cutter had proceeded maybe a hundred yards down the gradually sloping shaft, deep into the earth. The shaft was quite obviously the entrance to an old mine; the walls and roof were timbered, and there were sleepers and rusty, narrow-gauge rails in the fairly uneven floor. In places there was some evidence of past cave-ins, where holes in the ceiling and boulders on the floor told their own story. Since the surviving supports seemed stout enough, Jake wasn't worried for his safety in that respect.

But in one other respect, he was. And he kept finding himself wis.h.i.+ng that right now he wasn't somewhere but rather someone else - despite that he would usually prefer not to be! All very confusing and paradoxical, but it was something which had only ever' happened twice, and then in the most extreme of circ.u.mstances. And for the time being Jake was only Jake Cutter.

Such were his thoughts when the narrow but adequate beam of his pencil-slim pocket torch picked out the first of several side tunnels, shafts that radiated off from the main, the original mineshaft.

Until now the floor had borne a thick coating of dust and sand, much of which had settled against the walls. Towards the centre, however, and between the rails, most of this had been scuffed away, presumably by the recent pa.s.sage of several or many persons. But persons going where? Of course, the old proprietor might be using this place as a warehouse or stock room; indeed, back where the shaft opened into the shack that fronted the mine Jake had pa.s.sed a jumble of old crates and cardboard boxes, and labels on the latter had declared their contents as wiper blades, fuses, various grades of motor oil, spark plugs, and spare parts and vehicle accessories in general.

Naturally, he would have expected as much that close to the entrance.

But all these signs of recent disturbance - or of occupation?

- all this way back here? Why would anyone want to come back here , except perhaps on exploratory for ays; maybe someone who was curious about old mine shafts?

But recently? And how many someones? It was beginning to look like this might be the place. In which case he and Liz should never have split up and gone their own ways. Oh, he knew why she'd done it, all right, but now ... ... Now what was that? Jake froze.

The side shafts weren't recent diggings; they were probably old exploratory digs from the days when prospectors sought an ultimately elusive 'mother lode.' Certainly quartz was present in the walls where the subsidiary tunnels had been hewn or blasted from the rock. It was here, too, that the scuff marks on the floor - in places actual footprints - were most in evidence, and it was from the first of these lesser branching diggings that the sound had issued. A sound like a sigh or a yawn, like someone waking up.

Jake knew that by now it would be night in the valley in the Gibson Desert, dark in the outside world. But not nearly as dark as it was in here. And Liz was back there somewhere, alone with the old man. Or maybe not alone. And hadn't his 'Orstrylian' accent been a little too thick, and hadn't there been something - maybe just a trace - of the Gypsy about him?

Jesus! Jake was now aware of fumbling movements from the side tunnels - from more than one of them - and was immediately galvanized to action. But at a time and in a place such as this there was only one action he could take: flight!

Behind him, the main tunnel curved, however slightly, back towards the entrance. Setting off at a loping run, Jake played his torch beam on the ceiling in order to avoid the jagged ends of dangling timbers in a number of places where pressured beams had popped. And as he went he felt for his pager, making ready to send out his distress call. Not that he felt panicked or in immediate danger himself, but Liz might well be. If she wasn't already aware of the danger, the beeper would give her advance warning. He wouldn't use it just yet, though, because to do so would be to alert whoever she was with that he was on his way, perhaps precipitating some undesired activity.

In a matter of twenty seconds or so, when he was in sight of the bead-curtained rear entrance to the shack, Jake skidded to a halt. A figure, momentarily silhouetted by the light from the shack, had appeared on the other side of the curtain; Jake recognized it as that of the old proprietor. Switching off his torch, he flattened himself to the wall behind a support beam, took out his 9mm Browning and soundlessly armed it. And none too soon.

Grumbling to himself in his fas.h.i.+on, the old man came on through the curtains and made straight for Jake; there was no other way he could go. But as he blotted out some of the light from the shack, so Jake noticed that his movements weren't any longer those of an old man! He came on at a sprightly, almost youthful lope, and his previously dim eyes were no longer hidden in wrinkled folds. Instead they were a glowing, feral yellow, and in their cores burned red as fire!

Jake needed no furth er warning or convincing. He now knew for a certainty what this place was, if not exactly what he was up against. Going into a professional shooting stance, he took careful aim and squeezed the trigger.

But the other had seen or sensed Jake in the moment that he fired; seeming to flow to one side, he moved closer to the 26 wall. Jake knew he'd missed and got off a second shot; the bullet whined where it ricochetted from the shaft's wall, hurling sparks and splinters of rock at the 'old'

man's face and neck.

He jerked at the impact of the stony fragments, then stood up straighter and stepped out into full view. And putting up a hand to his neck under the ear, he glanced at it almost curiously and said, 'Blood?' That was all, 'blood? But his voice was no longer old, and his furnace eyes had turned uniformly crimson.

Knowing he couldn't afford to miss a third time, Jake moved forward. Behind him there was real activity now: voices calling out wailing questions, and the sounds of stumbling feet. And: 'Lead, is it?' said that low, growling, dangerous voice as the distance narrowed between them. 'Oh, ha!

Ha! Ha! Then come on, son, fire away. For as you'll discover, I've something of an appet.i.te for lead.'

'How about silver?' Jake said, squeezing the trigger again. His words were pure bravado for he was by no means sure of himself, but it was a nice line.

And perhaps in that last second the vampire sensed that his opponent had the advantage. Whichever, he once more caused himself to relocate, used that weird flowing motion to move to one side. But not q uickly and not far enough. The silver bullet hit him in the right shoulder, spun him around and slammed his back against the wall. With a gurgling cry of (Ah! Ah!' he clawed at his shoulder and fell to his right knee, and Jake leaped around him to carry on headlong through the bead curtains, taking them with him in a jangling tangle.

Maybe he should have stayed to finish the job. Certainly he would have if he had been that someone else - or half of someone else - but despite the danger Jake wa s s till only Jake Cutter; he hadn't yet reached that point of uttermost desperation.

Free of the curtains he crashed through the makes.h.i.+ft bar and sent the plank flying from its barrel supports, and without pause he rushed out into the night, wheeling left to go sprinting towards the second shack. That was where the alleged 'creechur'

28 was, and Jake could scarcely doubt but that was where he would find Liz, too ...

where the lying, scheming, undead proprietor of this terrible place had left her. As he went, so he reached into his pocket to activate his pager ...

The thing's cold hands on Liz's hands ... the beeper continuing to issue its endlessly repeating mayday (or its cry of warning, she couldn't say which, but in any case the latter was far too late now) ... and this thing from her worst nightmares, smiling at her through the stout iron bars. But bars that might as well be of paper, because the door in the cage stood ajar.

The creature freed her right hand, pushed at the door. Liz stood frozen; she let him get that far - but in the next moment was shaken from her paralysis on hearing Jake's shout of, 'Liz! Liz! Where in h.e.l.l are you?' He was dead right: that was exactly where she was! But she guessed he already knew that.

All was total darkness now, all bar the glow of her monstrous adversary's eyes.

Off-balance as the door swung squealingly open on her, carrying her with it, still Liz managed to s.n.a.t.c.h the Baby Browning from her pocket. Ramming it between the bars, she gritted her teeth and fired.

'Gah!?' said that shuddersome voice, sounding mildly surprised. And as the thing released his hold on her, she slammed the door shut again on its rusty hinges, and on him, turned and groped fumblingly towards the inner door to the shack. She came across it, found the doork.n.o.b and yanked it open. But the creature was behind her; she could feel its hot, fetid breath on her neck, its oppressive strength gathering in the darkness. Then: 'Liz?' came Jake's voice again. He'd heard her shot, came to a hal t beyond the locked screen door. She heard him cursing, rattling the lock, until: 'Stand back!' he called out.

She should stand back? When right behind her something was rumbling, 'Urgh - ah! - argh!' even now? And: 'Christ!' Liz said, quickly turning and firing again, and then a third time. Until the grotesque black shadow of the creature

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was lifted from its feet and hurled bodily away, flailing its arms and spitting blood, back into the shack's more na tural shadows - where it collided with yet more shadow s that Liz hadn't been aware of until now/ Her shot had come simultaneously with Jake's as he blew the lock off the outer door. And a moment later she was out of the place, stumbling into his arms.

He steadied her, breathlessly told her, 'This place. This is it!

It's what we were looking for.'

'Do you think I don't rucking kn ow that?' she gasped.

And then they were runni ng, both of them, heading for the 'Rover, for safety, and for sanity. But as yet safety, and especially sanity, seemed a long way off. Behind them, the smaller shack was spewing stumbling, dazed-seeming, zombie-like figures into the night. A handful of them, four or five at least. While ahead of them ...

'G.o.d almighty/' Jake breathed with difficulty.

The moon was up, a waxing moon that gave good light.

Likewise the stars, very bright in a sky that was now black as jet and banded with varying degrees of purple on the hills. And so by moon and starlight the pair saw what waited for them close to their vehicle.

'We're in it up to here,' Liz panted, choked. And: 'G.o.d, I can't breathe/'

'Me neither,' Jake told her. 'But don't panic and keep the plugs in. This isn't over yet. Our beepers will have been heard by the others. They'll be on their way.'

'We ... we can't run forever/ she answered, veering away with him towards the track back to the r oad. 'How'11 we get to the 'Rover with those d.a.m.ned things waiting for us?'

'Split up,' Jake answered. 'You head for the road ... keep running like h.e.l.l, north... I'll try to lead the bulk of these b.l.o.o.d.y monsters on a wild goose chase.'

Behind them the vampires were taking it easy. They weren't running; they ambled, arms hanging loose, some with their

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hands in their pockets, eyes aglow, kicking pebbles aside as they followed their intended prey. There was no great hurry - nowhere out here to hide that couldn't be sniffed out. The girl would be easier to handle when she was tired; they wouldn't have to damage her in order to have her one by one - or maybe two or three at a time - before they had her blood.

As for the man: his blood would be good, strong. But he'd caused Bruce Trennier no small amount of pain, and Bruce would be wanting him first. Oh, this one would be missing an arm or leg or both, before Bruce gave him up to the rest of them. And the would-be 'Lord' Trennier would wax fat on meat and marrow, while the hole in his shoulder slowly but surely healed. But: Silver! came Trennier's voice in their minds, where they tracked the humans across the false plateau at the foot of the knoll. These people are more than they appear to be. Their Indicts are silver, which could mean danger for some of us in the short term, and for all of us in the long. Which in turn means I have to talk to them, question them. So be sure to take them alive, and do it quickly! There was pain in his mental voice, quite a lot of it.

But... silver bullets? That took something of the arrogance out of the pursuit, while the rest of Trennier's sending served to speed it up.

Liz had almost reached the top of the ramp. Cut from the side of the plateau, the ramp would take her down to the road. But one of her pursuers had somehow managed to flank her, was drawing ahead. He would get there first, and the way was simply too narrow to avoid him. She cut right, heading for where she'd last seen Jake.

Meanwhile someone - or something - back at the shack had started up the Land Rover. Its lights came on, cutting a bright swath through the darkness as it b.u.mped over the rough terrain.

Whoever was at the wheel, Liz guessed he'd be looking for Jake. Since hiding or disguising her talent was no longer of benefit, finally she opened her mind to seek her partner's thoughts and perhaps discover his whereabouts.

Liz couldn't send, could only receive, but she knew that other minds - and especially enhanced vampire mi nds - might be able to detect her presence if not read her thoughts: this was a result of the germ of telepathy that was present in a majority of them. Thus vampires were frequently 'spotters.' Indeed, the best (or worst) of them could smell out an entirely human being in much the same way as could a great hound. But what the h.e.l.l... they already knew she was here.

Jake's mind was immediately accessible: f.u.c.k! he was thinking. Oh, Jesus, they've got the vehicle! They're after me! And yet even now there was very little of any real panic in him. He'd been in too many tight spots before.

But: Do it! Liz tried to send, to will him into action. Do it now, for Cod's sake! (Or if not for His sake, for Liz's, most definitely.') He couldn't hear her, of course not, but surely the other Jake, that other facet, would have to emerge now? Well, apparently not. And behind Liz her pursuer's footfalls sounded loud and clear, as did the clatter of pebbles squirting out from under his pounding feet.

She put on speed (one final burst, for her strength was on the wane now), took in great gulping draughts of air through her mouth, headed in the rough direction of Jake's thoughts, where they had led her to believe he was ...

Jake, too, was feeling stressed, but obviously insufficiently as yet. The nose plugs were killing him, but he'd been warned about the dangers of removing them. All well and good, but his throat was raw from drinking in dry, dust-laden air, and since he'd probably been splashed with blood it seemed likely he was already contaminated. G.o.d, how he could use a beer now, even a warm one - except he probably wouldn't have time to drink it!

The 'Rover was on his tail, right behind him, when Jake saw a flat-topped boulder. He spun to one side and the vehicle skidded and threw up a cloud of dust as its driver hauled the wheel over. Jake knew that if he had failed to get out of the way the 'Rover would have hit him. Not hard enough to kill him, maybe, but hard enough to put him out of business, certainly.

This big boulder was his only chance. Leaping onto the rim of the rock, he scrambled to its flat surface as the Land Rover came to a halt. There were two men in the vehicle; he could think of them as men, anyway. One seemed a little dazed: he must be a recent convert, recruit or thrall. But the other, the driver ... that one wore a grin like Satan himself. A lieutenant? Jake couldn't even even hazard a guess. This was Jake's first time. In at the f.u.c.king deep end!

The driver was out of the vehicle in a flash, ducking and disappearing beneath the rim of the boulder before Jake could get a bead on him. The other was slower and Jake's first shot hit him in the head. Well, who or whatever he was he wouldn't be getting back up on his feet again. As for Jake: Even with his record, still he felt sick knowing that he'd killed another man. Except this one hadn't been a man, not any longer. But the sight of the vampire's head exploding like that - the red wet spray, and whatever other colours there had been - just so much black slop in the moonlight...

... And then Jake asked himself, what moonlight? A cloud, just one d.a.m.n cloud in an otherwise clear night sky, had drifted across the moon's three-quarters grimace. Just as quickly as that, the night was black as pitch, and the 'Rover's headlight beams were pointing the wrong way. Darkness favours the vampire, and Jake knew he must make his move now.

There was room for just two short paces along the flat surface of the boulder. Jake took them, lifted his feet and hurled himself up and outwards towards the 'Rover, his arms stretched forward for balance. But even as he cleared the boulder's rim a powerful arm and hand shot up, grabbed his left foot. Jake's impetus carried him forward, his balled-up body turning like a pendulum at the end of that oh-so-strong arm. And when he hit all the wind was knocked out of him. He felt his nose plugs eject, trailing

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streamers of gritty snot, as his Browning flew from momentarily nerveless fingers.

Then that nightmare figure was standing over him, leering down at him, going to one knee and reaching for his throat with long, mantrap hands. 'That's it/ the thing that had been a man said. 'The fun and games are over, friend. Well, yours are, for sure/ With which he drew Jake effortlessly to his feet.