work.
“Ready?” she whispered as the monstrosity came fully into view.
“Wait,” Janea said, holding her arm.
The reason for the pause was apparent as a second entity wriggled from the ground. The two stopped in the area in front of the cave, their tentacles writhing and twisting together in what might be silent communication.
Then a third joined them. And a fourth. And a fifth.
As a sixth started to emerge, one of them turned its attention uphill. And they all began to climb towards the two women.
“Uh-oh,” Janea muttered.
“Graham!”
Graham’s head came up at the sound of Barb’s voice. Except for a regular “Nominal” it was the first time she’d communicated all night.
The FBI team had been augmented by more personnel from area offices. The investigation was beginning to have all the aspects of a war zone. Washington had admitted that, given the level of threat, they were considering calling in the military, at least covert portions thereof. The problem being that every cover story they could come up with was almost as bad as the reality. Clearing four hundred square miles of American territory and having a mini- war with an alien, or possibly metaphysical, army was going to require quite the cover story.
But at present they had twenty special agents on duty, both to keep the press away from the crime scene and as potential backup.
He got the feeling from the sound of the normally unflappable Mrs. Everette’s voice that they might be a bit short.
“Go,” he said, waving to Randell to turn on a speaker in the command van.
“We are headed down the hill!” Barb said, then cut off. “Sorry, I tripped. This is Old One large force. Say again, large force. At least eight Old Ones are in pursuit! FLIRs seem to reduce the horror aspect. Recommend all agents don night vision gear and prepare for assault.”
“And please don’t shoot us!” Janea added. “We’re the ones with legs running away!”
“Shit,” Randell said, grabbing his M-4 and piling out of the truck. “We have incoming hostiles! All agents, form a perimeter behind the house! Friendlies on the way in. Don night vision gear! Do not look at these things with your naked eyes!”
“We’ve got you covered,” Graham said, calmly. “Come on in.”
“Damn,” Janea said as she tripped and bounced off a sapling.
“Come on!” Barb shouted, grabbing her hand and pulling her to her feet. “We don’t have time for your horror-movie antics!”
“I’m figuring all I have to do is stay ahead of you,” Janea said, sprinting down the hill.
There was a seven-foot wooden privacy fence that separated the lawn of the Boone household from the forest beyond.
Janea hit the wall and grabbed on, frantically scrambling at the slick wood to try to climb over.
Barb boosted her over then took a running jump. Grabbing the top, she somersaulted over and landed on both feet.
“Show-off,” Janea said, running across the lawn to the line of agents.
“Lazy butt,” Barb panted.
“Where are they?” Randell asked as the two skidded to a stop.
“You know those nightmares where something’s right behind you chasing you, and if it catches you, you die?” Janea asked.
“Don’t have them,” Randell answered.
“Well, that’s where they are,” Janea answered, pulling around her MP-5.
“No, they’re not,” Randell said.
“Listen,” Barb said.
It was a rustling, nothing more. Randell had hunted deer before joining the Marines, and to him it sounded, at first, like just a big herd of deer.
But if so, it was a really big herd.
Then the security fence started to rattle as something pulled at it, pushed at it, thumped along a thirty-foot section. And then planks started coming down.
What flowed through the openings was hard to see with infrared. The things were the same temperature as the background. Perhaps fortunately, because even what he could see made something in the back of his head start to gibber. Tentacles and eyes and mouths all flickering in movement as the things, in awful silence, glided across the lawn.
“Oh my God,” one of the agents muttered. “Oh, dear God in heaven.”
Another screamed and pulled the trigger, and then the whole group opened fire.
Barb fired short, controlled bursts from the MP-5 and watched in fury as they seemed to have no effect.
There was an effect; even with the FLIRs, she could see ichor flying through the air, but the wave of blackness was barely slowed.
“These aren’t heavy enough!” Barb said as she ran through the end of her thirty-round magazine. The things were nearly on them, and she flipped the MP-5 over her shoulder and drew her H amp;K, firing carefully targeted single shots into the creature closest to her. Which shuddered to a halt and began to deliquesce.
“Larger rounds!” Barb shouted. But by then it was too late as one of the agents was yanked off his feet, screaming.
Barb holstered the pistol and whipped out her katana, taking a cat stance.
“Lord,” she muttered. “I think we’re going to need a little help here.”
Randell continued firing burst after burst into the monster that was closing on him, backing up as he realized he was coming in range of its tentacles. But the high-velocity 5.56-millimeter rounds didn’t seem to have any effect.
As he ran out of his second magazine he, too, drew his sidearm, an issue. 40 Sig Sauer, and began pumping rounds into the beast. Finally, it stopped.
“Right again,” he muttered, dropping the magazine and inserting another. He stepped forward to try to help the other agents, when his FLIR suddenly blazed in white-out.
Barb waded into the mass of creatures, the five-hundred-year-old katana slicing through tentacles, eyes, mouths and bodies like a blender.
Two agents were down, one of them clearly dead. Wondering why the firing had stopped, she charged across the lawn to the fallen agent and sliced the creature that was on him in half, narrowly missing the agent himself.
Spinning in place, she saw that most of the line was shielding its eyes and backing up.
“Lord help them,” she muttered. “I hoped the FLIRs would work.”
Hers was working fine; the backyard of the house was lit like midday. Which was why she saw Janea dragged off her feet and towards the cave by one of the creatures.
Janea was trying to hack down one-handed with her axe, but the thing simply wrapped her arms and legs in tentacles and carted her off on its back.
“Oh, that ain’t happening,” Barb said. “ Shoot these things!”
But the remaining creatures clustered around her, blocking her way, no longer attacking the FBI agents and concentrating entirely on her. She suddenly found herself beset by a flood of the monsters, tentacles closing in from every direction.
“Fine,” she said. “Let’s dance.”
