A Season For Slaughter Part 63

Dr. Shreiber started to say something. Without looking at her, I shoved one hand down over her mouth.

Dwan looked scared. She looked paralyzed. I knew exactly what was happening.

The virtual-reality experience was confusing her. She wasn't sure where she was or who she was. It was too real. Overwhelmingly real. In a moment, she'd go into overload-I squeezed her hands. Hard. "It's me, Jim. Remember? I'm right here. It can't hurt you."

"I'm's-scared, s.h.i.+m."

"it can't hurt you!"

"I c-can't d-do this anymore."

"Yes, you can."

"N-no, no, I c-can't."

"Dwan! You can do this. I promise, you can do this."

Dwan's expression crumpled, and she began to cry. "Please d-don't make me!"

Shreiber protested from beneath me. "Stop hurting her!" Without thinking, my hand curled into a mallet and slammed the side of her head. Hard. I held my fist in front of her eyes so she could see it.

Dwan was blinking at me. Suddenly wide awake and terrified. "You have to do this, Dwan!" I said. "It's very important. It's for Lizard."

Sobbing, Dwan shook her head. She choked and gasped for breath. A gamble. I slapped her face-not hard; but hard enough. "If you don't do this, Dwan, I'm going to hurt you, very hard. I will hurt you worse than the worm. The worm can't hurt you, Dwan. I can. I'm a lot meaner than the worm, remember that!"

Abruptly, she stopped crying. She stared at me- hard. "You's-son of a b-b.i.t.c.h,"

she said thickly.

I ignored it. "Where are you?" I demanded.

"I'm in the c-corridor. The w-worm is staring at me. It's chittering. I think it w-wants to rear up, b-but there's no r-room."

"All right, good-now, listen carefully. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to think about your teeth. You have big mean grinding teeth, don't you?"

"Uh-yes, I have manda-manda-manda-b.a.l.l.s," Dwan said.

"Okay, good. I want you to use your manda-b.a.l.l.s. I want you to chew the worm up as hard as you can."

"Chew the w-worm?"

"You can do it. Lieutenant Siegel would want you to do it. Do it for Kurt, okay?

Just chew the worm up. This is all the bad worms in the world, and you can chew him up just like a cookie. Just leap forward and start biting. He can't hurt you, but you can kill him. Go ahead, now. Ready? One, two, three-"

Dwan's expression tightened in concentration. Her mouth worked ferociously.

She looked like she was biting into something horrible. She looked like she was sucking and spitting. Wet gurgling noises came from her throat. She squinched up her face in a horrible grimace; her eyes were tightly shut.

"Pretend it's a banana." I said For a moment, I couldn't tell what she was doing. I thought that she was choking or sobbing. Then I realized that she was laughing, giggling. "It tastes like b-b.u.t.ter,"

she said. "Only p-purple. It's all hairy inside."

"You're inside of it?"

"Oh, yes. It't-tried to eat me, so I c-climbed down its throat and chewed m-my way all the way to the b-back. I th-think it's d-dead." She laughed. "I c-came out the other end. That was f-fun. Can we do it again?"

"If we find any more worms, yes-first we have to find Lizard."

"She's right here."

"What!"

"The w-worm was trying to g-get her out."

"Out? Where is she?"

"She's c-caught way up in the c-corridor. It's all twisted's-sideways and b-bent.

She's jammed in."

I didn't want to ask. I had to. "Is she alive?"

"I c-can't tell. I have to g-get closer."

"Okay. Now, listen. I want you to be very, very careful. Can you pull the walls apart?"

"Yes, b-but-I'm afraid she'll f-fall."

"Go slowly, Dwan. Take your time."

"It's.okay. I th-think I c-can do this."

Dr. Shreiber levered herself painfully up. "Is she warm?" she asked. She pushed at me in annoyance. "Okay, McCarthy, you've won, G.o.ddammit. Now, let me up.

Let me do my job." I had to trust her. I rolled my weight off her.

"I th-think so. She d-doesn't look very g-good."

"Is she conscious?" Shreiber.

"Yes. I c-can hear her. She's crying, I think."

Crying? That's a good sign, isn't it?

"Sh-she's really j -jammed in there," Dwan reported. "I'm g-going to't-try pulling some of these p-panels out of the way." After an endless moment, Dwan reported back. "Sh-she sees m-me."

Dr. Shreiber said to Dwan, "Think real hard, Dwan, have you got any medical supplies inside you?"

"Uh-no. I have some water though. And a nipple-feeder."

"Can you reach General Tirelli?"

"I'm g-getting there. Yes. I c-can reach her n-now. She's t-talking to m-me."

"What's she saying!" I demanded. My heart was pounding.

Dwan frowned with the effort. "'It's about f-f.u.c.king t-time. G-get m-me th-the h-h.e.l.l out of here!' And she wants a drink of water."

"Okay," said Shreiber. "Give her a little water, but only a little-" She pushed me gently aside. "You, lie down. Let me handle this part." She took Dwan's hands in hers.

I fell back on my stretcher, relieved. Lizard was found. Lizard was alive. She was going to be rescued. Everything was going to be all right now!

I lay back and let tears of relief flood my eyes.

Gastropedes have been observed tracking and feeding on caribou herds in Alaska, buffalo herds in Wyoming, and cattle herds as far south as Texas. There are unconfirmed reports that Chtorrans may even be capable of herding humans.

This leads naturally to a most perplexing question. If the gastropedes are predators in their natural state, then what is their natural prey?

Some have suggested that we are the natural prey of these creatures; that they have been specifically tailored for the job of clearing the neighborhood before the new tenants arrive. Certainly, this is a possible explanation.

But even if we accept that thesis as a condition of the infestation, it still does not answer the original question. The gastropede has been demonstrated to be both voracious and fecund. Even the most severe predator-toprey ratio requires a mult.i.tude of prey animals to support one family of predators, and we simply have not seen any Chtorran life form to fill that niche.

So the question remains: what is the natural prey of the gastropede?

-The Red Book, (Release 22.19A)

Chapter 81.

The Last Flight Out "Life doesn't mean anything. People do."

-SOLOMON SHORT.

She was weak, but she was alive. She looked like h.e.l.l. She was bruised. Her red hair was matted and her face was dirty. There was blood caked on her forehead. She was hungry and thirsty and her voice was so hoa.r.s.e, she was barely audible. She looked like the survivor of a mine collapse-but she was alive. And the first thing she said as they brought her stretcher down out of the wrecked airs.h.i.+p was, "Where's Jim?"

"He's all right," they told her, but that wasn't good enough. She insisted on being brought straight to me. They lay her stretcher next to mine, and while Dr. Shreiber tried to clean her face, tried to tend her wounds, she turned her head and stretched her hand out to me. I reached for her at the same time. Our fingertips barely brushed.

I stretched over as far as I could and I grabbed her hand in mine. Lizard squeezed back as hard as she could. I could feel her trembling, but it didn't matter. She was alive. We just held on to each other, thrilled and amazed, lost in each other's eyes, laughing and weeping and trying to talk all at once in an impossible flush of joy, relief, and sorrow.

"I was so scared," I gasped. "I was afraid I'd never see you again. I was afraid I'd never get a chance to tell you how much-I love you."

"They told me-" She stopped to swallow. It was hard for her to speak. "-They said it was you who rescued me."

"It was really Dwan," I said. "And Randy Dannenfelser. And even Dr. Shreiber.

Sweetheart, don't talk. We're both alive and we're getting out of here and that's all that counts. We're going home!"

She nodded her acquiescence and just lay there resting, looking up me and smiling in happy exhaustion. "I love you," she mouthed. She was so beautiful, it hurt.

Dr. Shreiber wrapped a silver med-blanket tightly around Lizard. "We're pulling out now. Hang on, okay? You're going to be fine."

But when they came to take her stretcher to the chopper, Lizard refused to go.

"No, no-" She protested frantically. "-I have to stay with Jim." She wouldn't let us be separated again. "I'm a general, G.o.ddammit!" she rasped. "And that's a G.o.dd.a.m.n f.u.c.king order!" She wouldn't calm down until Dr. Shreiber guaranteed we'd both be on the same flight out.

In the distance, the sounds of battle were getting closer. The choppers were roaring overhead in a constant stream, and there was a steady bombardment of explosions and flames just beyond the treetops. "Okay, okay!" said Dr. Shreiber.

"But let's get out of here-" And for once, I agreed with her. Things were getting a little too purple.

They lifted the stretchers and ran. We b.u.mped across the clearing. A Navy Dragonfly EVAC-s.h.i.+p came whispering down to meet us, stirring up dust and pebbles. The chopper was playing music-Bach! "Little Fugue in G Minor" on industrial synthesizers! First Lizard, then me-both stretchers were shoved roughly into the s.h.i.+p. We looked at each other and grinned. The stretcher bearers climbed in with us and lashed us down. Two torchbearers and a corpsman climbed in after.

The corpsman leaned forward and patted the pilot's shoulder twice. "All clear. Let's go."

The pilot flashed a thumbs-up signal. The engine whined. The music swelled. The chopper jerked up into the air. And we were away.

AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID GERROLD.

* I suppose the first question to ask is the obvious one. Why do the books in the Chtorran cycle take so long to publish?

Because they take a h.e.l.l of a long time to write. They're work. If I had known just how hard this series was going to be, I certainly would have thought twice about the investment of years it was going to demand.

On the other hand, it's a very exciting challenge to work on a canvas this large.

I've always wanted to read an epic scale science fiction novel. This is the story I wanted to read, but no one eIse was writing.

* Do you have a clear ending in mind? Are you working toward a specific resolution?

Absolutely. It may take a while to get there though. There's a lot of story between the beginning and the end. And I keep discovering new things that I want to spend time with. The good news is that there is a definite end. I know exactly where the story has to go. The bad news is that we have to go through a lot of h.e.l.l to get there.

Somebody asked me once why I had given my hero such a big problem, why was I making things so tough for him? Wasn't that unfair? And he was right. It is unfair-but so is life. Fairness is a concept invented by human beings. Nature doesn't believe in it.

And I'm not sure fairness is all that dramatic in a story. What's a fair problem?

One that's just your size? How interesting is that? How heroic do you have to be to solve a little problem? What's interesting is when you tackle a problem that's bigger than you are, and then force yourself to grow big enough to handle it. The biggest heroes in life are the ones who take on the biggest challenges. In fact, it's the challenge that makes them so big. I think that's how you define how big a person you are-by how big a challenge you're willing to accept.

This is an important part of what the series is about. Where do heroes come from? Heroes aren't born. You have to grow them. What I'm doing here is following the process of on-the-job training for a hero. I don't think it happens easily. Jim McCarthy starts out just like anybody else; he's an angry, resentful, almost-untrainable young man who still hasn't recovered from his own adolescence; but as we follow him through the books, we can see what he's learning and how it's affecting him. You can't push a human being through these kind of events and have him come out the other side unchanged; so this story is really about the process of human transformation. It's a lifelong process.

* How many books will there be in the series?

All of them.

At this point it looks like there will be at least seven. This is the longest d.a.m.ned trilogy I've ever written.