Indian Hill 5: Into the Fire Read online

  The Stryver either heard me or he was looking for a tool, but he turned just in time to see me standing like an idiot not more than three feet away. Something changed in less than the blink of an eye, as he caught wind of my motive. I’d like to say “plan” but we all know how well those work out for me. I instinctively went into “save-my-ass” mode and swung like I was going for the fences. Those little arms they usually have tucked up against their body shot out in a desperate bid to deflect my blow. I hit, he missed. I know I put as much force as I could behind that hit, but I, however, was not expecting the reaction I got from the Stryver. He almost immediately collapsed, that was, of course, after he projectile vomited some sort of green goo everywhere, including all over me. I was shaking from the adrenaline rush and the thought of being covered in alien bile.

  “Now what, champ?” I asked as I looked upon his slumped body. “How do we get in these messes?” I was berating myself. I couldn’t let him go now; he’d tell everyone, and we’d have an intergalactic incident on our hands.

  I put my upper receiver down and pushed down my revulsion to grab one of its legs. It was like trying to pull the Grinch’s fully loaded sled through sand. I couldn’t budge him.

  “Well, this is fucking perfect.”

  I looked around quickly and ran to BT’s door. I knocked as softly as I could but loud enough to get his attention.

  “Fuck off,” drifted out from his room.

  “Need a little help, buddy,” I said into the corner of the door.

  “Talbot? Come on, man. You can go and get breakfast by yourself, you’re a big boy now.”

  “Get out here.”

  “Are you ordering me, man? We both know I’m not playing army man with you.” He opened the door as violently as he could. He was glaring at me. “What the fu—” And then he stopped when he saw me. “What do you have all over you? Are you infectious? You smell like a pickled weasel.” He grabbed his nose. Then as he finally saw what was behind me, his eyes grew large. “What did you do? Aw, man, we’re screwed.”

  “Help me move him.”

  “Is it dead?”

  “No.” At least I didn’t think it was. “Fuck, maybe.”

  “He needs to be.”

  “Hurry up, before someone comes,” I said, going back to the lifeless form.

  “I hate you.” That was fine…but more importantly, he followed. “What are we going to do with him?”

  “My room.”

  “Your wife know about this?”

  I shook my head.

  “She’s going to hate you too.” He grabbed a leg. “I cannot believe I’m touching this thing willingly.”

  With BT’s might we got the thing to start sliding. I think the bile helped, acting like a natural lubricant as the monster slid through it. Getting the thing through the door was something I hope to never have to revisit. He was much too large to fit the traditional way. The thing either had very soft bones, or the outside of it was some sort of exoskeleton. By pushing on it with all my might I was able to compress it to make it thin enough. More than once I found myself almost completely enclosed within the folds of his body as I mashed him up. Anything less than a whole skin shedding session was not going to make me ever feel clean again. The small fibrous hairs of the Stryver poked through even the thickest of my clothing and scraped against me. This was akin to licking a port-a-potty toilet seat. Not that I’d ever considered doing that, but this was just as appealing. We had to shove the bed and our meager possessions to the side to fit him and ourselves into the room.

  “Now what?” BT asked, heavy beads of sweat on his brow.

  “I’ve got to clean that floor and myself up.”

  “That’s it? That’s as far as you’ve gotten?”

  I shrugged.

  “I should have killed you in L.A.”

  I skirted around the Stryver to get to the bathroom and grabbed all the towels save one, clean and dirty. I did a satisfactory job on the hallway. I’d never win a Mr. Clean award, but it would pass for somewhat decent out there. I shut the door and headed straight for the bathroom. I cranked the shower onto the hottest setting I thought I could take before my skin began to slough off and then turned it a fraction of a degree more. I took my boots in with me; they were the only things I did not have an extra pair off. I tried not to watch as the green filth swirled off of me and down the drain. Due to circumstances I had lost control of, I took as fast of a shower as possible and got out.

  “Any chance you could have put on some fucking clothes before you came out here? I’m already scarred for life after having to move this thing. Why are you adding to it?”

  I was just able to get my closet open and grab the only thing in there of mine, a uniform that was perfectly pressed. If Paul saw me in this, he would immediately know I was up to something. I’d have to take my chances. I laced up my boots, water squishing out of every available exit point, and then grabbed the handle to my door.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “I have to get some stuff. You need to keep an eye on this thing.”

  “Mike, this thing will kill me if it wakes up.”

  “Don’t let it wake up.” I walked through the door.

  I heard “asshole” drift through the door and follow me down the corridor.

  It took longer than I wanted, but I was back in less than ten minutes. BT looked like he’d aged a decade.

  “Did he wake up?”

  “Do I look dead?”

  “You’ve looked better.”

  “Fuck you, Mike, and how do you know it’s a ‘he’?”

  “Do you know what a spider penis looks like?”

  “I was a gang member in L.A. looking to become a cop in Colorado. At what point in all of that do you think I studied entomology?”

  “Well, you know that word, so you got a leg up on me.” I motioned down with my eyes, looking at where I figured the crotch was.

  “I am not looking for a spider dick.”

  “Fine. Doesn’t matter anyway I suppose. Do you know whether they reproduce sexually or asexually? What about the most effective way to kill them? Would a can of Raid be more effective than a bullet? Are they deathly afraid of cucumbers? That type of thing. I mean, how could that possibly be any sort of determining factor in whether or not we can beat them? I risked my life to catch this thing so we could learn as much about them as possible…”

  “Shut up, man, just shut up. Fucking cucumbers.” He pushed past me. He started moving things around, he may have even gagged a little when he reached a particularly thick patch of hair and had to part it to see through the weave of fibers.

  “I didn’t really think you’d do it. I was going to let the doctors poke around. Who looks for a spider’s reproductive organs? That’s just gross. Help me with these zip ties and rope.”

  “I’d beat you senseless if this thing wasn’t in here.”

  “Would you look for my penis while I was passed out?”

  “Waste of time, I’d never find it.”

  “That was a good one. Come on, we need to get this thing hog-tied.”

  It took us over fifteen minutes and two hundred feet of rope to get the thing so completely tangled up he wasn’t going to be able to move much more than his mandibles.

  “What the hell are you doing now?” BT asked as I grabbed the last thing that needed to be done. “You really think this is going to work?”

  “Insane people and stoners have been using it for decades,” I said as I tossed the now empty box away.

  “You probably have both of those checked off. Now what?”

  “The Stryvers are leaving. There’s only a couple left like this one, so we poke and prod it to get as much intel as we can.”

  We were in there for a couple of hours; every time the Stryver stirred, we both jumped. Whatever I’d done had messed him up pretty bad, I was just hoping I didn’t give it brain damage. It would suck if we went to question it and it just stared back at
us with vacant eyes or answered with “duh.”

  “What…?” Tracy had opened the door and immediately stepped back. I rushed out to grab her. She reluctantly let me pull her into the room so I could shut the door. “Mike…there’s a tied up Stryver in our room.” She was pointing at it like I had somehow missed it.

  “I know, I know, it’s alright,” I said in my most calming tone.

  Her eyes locked onto mine. Her confusion and fear immediately turned to rage. “You,” this was punctuated with a fist to my shoulder, “brought a Stryver into our room!” I was walloped again. “Our room!” Yup, nailed again. “What could possibly be going through that thick head of yours that you somehow figured this was a good idea? And for the love of God, why does it have tinfoil on its head?”

  “Mike thought that would keep it from being able to communicate with the other Stryvers. I told him he was nuts,” BT piped in.

  “You…you’re in on this, too?” Her wrath switched focus.

  “Hey, I’m an accessory after the fact.” He put his hands up in the air. “Your husband over there thought it a good idea to kidnap one of the deadliest predators in the universe.”

  Tracy was turning back to me.

  “Yeah, well, he was looking for its penis,” I tossed out there to see if it would stick.

  “You’re an asshole.” BT was trying to get around Tracy by staying out of her reach and not touching the Stryver at the same time.

  “Stop! The both of you. I get why you did it, Mike, but there had to be a better way. They’re going to know this thing is missing. We need to get Paul.”

  “No we don’t,” I told her. “If the commander of the Stryver vessel calls, Paul needs to be completely in the dark about it. They can kind of scan our thoughts.”

  “Are you kidding me?” BT asked.

  “Yup, so the next time you see a Stryver they’re going to know you tried to find their Stryver-hood. You’re going to be known as the human that looked for Stryver penis.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Tracy,” he said.

  “What are you talking about, BT?” she asked.

  “I’m going to have to kill your husband. There really is no way around it.”

  “You can have him when I’m through. Now, by scanning our thoughts, do you mean everything, like a databank…or only what’s on our mind?”

  “Well, that’s the thing, I’m not totally sure. My guess is that in normal conversation it would only be what we are thinking at that particularly moment, but I can’t think it’s past their knowledge to be able to delve much deeper. They can already ‘talk’ telepathically. How much more difficult would it be to root around in one’s mind?”

  “That’s some scary shit,” BT said profoundly.

  “I agree, that’s why as many people need to be in the dark about this for as long as possible, as least until we pull away from them. You can’t even be up on the bridge when they call.”

  “Why would they need to read thoughts though? With a hive mentality there would be no reason to do so. They all know what they have to do for the day, like ants,” BT said.

  “Ants? You’re comparing that thing to an ant?” I asked him.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “BT, I don’t know, maybe once upon a time that’s how they were, but they’re not simplistic bugs anymore that are just out to guard the queen and get food and make babies. They’re different from one another. Ham should be a perfect example of that.”

  “Ham?”

  “Sorry, I named one of them.”

  “Ham?”

  “I really hate ham.”

  “I hope your healthcare plan covers psychiatric visits.”

  I did my best to glare at him; he didn’t give a shit. “Whatever, but Ham had his own motivations and desires. He wanted to kill us and eat us regardless of what his commander said, and he was going to do it. That’s not acting all hivey-like. They are more complicated than just going through the basics of existence. I don’t think we can underestimate them.”

  “Oh, I’m not underestimating them.” BT was looking over to the captured Stryver.

  “He’s moving!” Tracy jumped back.

  She was right. His legs were twitching, at least as much as they could, and his eyes were starting to flutter, some of them anyway. That was fairly disconcerting.

  “Just kill it, Mike,” BT begged.

  I almost did, the thing was so alien that just seemed like the right thing to do.

  “Where am I?” it grumbled. I expected it to sound groggy, and it did not disappoint. I won’t lie, it made me happy knowing they could suffer just like we could. He didn’t so much say it, but his thoughts were racing and he knew he was bound. When he realized that he could not get away, he feigned unconsciousness. I was not a fan. The predator was awake and aware and was now surveying his surroundings as best he could. His disgust at discovering he was with humans was so powerful that it rippled through me and, for a moment, I was repulsed to be me; although it wasn’t the first time I couldn’t stand being by me, I was able to get over it fairly quickly.

  “Open your eyes, I know you’re awake,” I spoke. He pulled back from the sound as much as he could.

  “It’s the Talbot-thing! I need to kill it!”

  The link was more than I was comfortable with. I saw he had talked to Ham and they had set up a plan to assassinate me. It was no accident he was in that corridor. Had I walked by him he would have killed me, plain and simple.

  I smiled. “I don’t think anyone is going to come looking for him.”

  “How can you be so sure?” BT asked.

  “He’s here to kill me on orders from Ham. Nobody but Ham knows he’s here and it’s not like Ham can go to the commander and tell him his plan. I wonder if Ham didn’t come here himself because he thought I’d recognize him. Like I could tell the difference between two bugs that I’d squish under my foot.” I said that louder and punctuated it with the grinding of my boot against the ground for effect. My would-be killer got the message. I got the first inkling of something I’d yet to feel from one of them: fear. “You should be afraid. This isn’t going to go well for you. Although, the more you cooperate, the better it could be.”

  “How? It is impossible for you lesser species to hear us.”

  “That’s what you get for underestimating your opponent.”

  “You two are having a conversation?” Tracy looked like she was trying to swallow a relatively large and bitter pill with the thought of that.

  “Yeah, and he’s none too happy about it.”

  “Can you be sure, Mike? I mean, every indication I get from you is that you’re crazy. Maybe this is all just in your head.” BT was at least partially kidding, but partially not.

  “Tell him,” I said to our prisoner.

  Nothing. Complete and utter silence.

  “You still tender where I hit you?”

  Fury emanated from the Stryver.

  “I am going to hit you so hard this time that I wouldn’t doubt if one of your legs falls off.”

  Silence. Crickets chirping would have been deafening in comparison. I grabbed my rifle half and raised it above my head. I didn’t think he was going to talk. Just what I needed, a stoic Stryver. Then in one long gush he spilled the entire plan.

  “Fucking told you.” I felt vindicated as I tossed the barrel onto the bed.

  Tracy’s anger overshadowed her fear as she reared back and kicked the beast as hard as she could. “That’s for wanting to kill my husband! If anyone is going to do that it’ll be me!” She was furious.

  “Um…thanks, honey.”

  “Wow, talk about a back-knifed compliment,” BT said.

  “I get those a lot.”

  The Stryver grunted.

  “I told you the truth and still you hit me!”

  The thing was going to have a hard life to be sure, what was left of it. I could not for the life of me muster up even the slightest amount of pity. You ever feel bad for that ho
usefly you smash with the Fingerhut magazine you just got in the mail? I’m usually just mad I’ve got bug juice and excrement over something I was planning on looking at while sitting on the throne. Of course, that was all pre-invasion, not many people these days looking for overpriced electronics and dog clothes.

  “We’re enemies you and I, your species and mine. We both know it. We’re playing this game where we help each other and then, when an opportunity strikes, one of us will be sliding a knife across the other’s throat. I mean that figuratively because I’m not really sure you have a throat. Although I’m pretty sure I got the point across.”

  I was still talking when I noticed that Tracy and BT weren’t really doing much of anything. Had times not been what they were, and we weren’t in the present situation, and I had just walked into a room where they were at, I would have been convinced they’d just smoked a fat one.

  “You doing that Jedi mind shit?” I asked the Stryver. “Stop messing with their dopamine levels or I am personally going to shove a broom handle into one of your eye sockets.” I sent our prisoner a very vivid description of this action.

  “What the fuck!?” BT spun around and grabbed his head. “I hate that crap!”

  “Well, that was different,” Tracy said much more calmly.

  “Is it mind control?” I asked her, I honestly had no idea.

  She shook her head, her forehead furrowed in the cutest way as she thought. “No, not mind control. I wouldn’t call it that. He wanted us to let him go. I would not have let that happen, it was something else. I don’t think I could have mustered up the meanness to strike him again. I felt an intense peace and tranquility. It was...unusual.” She struggled for that final descriptor.

  I didn’t help when I added, “I’ll say.”