In the dry brush he kept as quiet as he could. The dull claps and crashes that came over the ridge were muffled now, just when he needed them to be loud. Under the trees it was quieter and he was surprised to hear the rasping of the soldier breathing. The man moved slowly, rifle at the ready, the weapon looking big in the starlight. The man kept in the starlight and watched the shadows. That was smart.
The breathing got louder. Warren moved, favoring his knee. He would have to jump up fast and take the soldier from behind.
The figure came closer. Suddenly Warren saw that the man wore a helmet. To use the rock now he would have to hit him in the face. That made the odds a lot worse. But he would have to try. The man stopped, turned, looked around. Warren froze and waited. The head turned away and Warren eased forward, closing, the pain shooting in his knee. The leg would try to give way when he came up for the rush. He would watch for that and force it to hold. The air was still and heavy under the trees and the smell was worse, something from the beach. The soldier was the only visible movement.
In the quilted pattern of shadows and light it was hard to follow the silhouette. Warren put his hand out and gathered his feet under him and felt something wet and slick ahead and suddenly knew that the slow rasping laboring breath did not come from the chinless soldier but from something between them.
He felt the ground, brought his hand up to his face and smelled the strong reek he had tasted on the wind. Ahead in the faint light that fell between two palms he saw the long form struggling, pulling itself forward on blunt legs. It sucked in the air with each step. It was thick and heavy and the skin was a gunmetal gray, pocked with inch-wide round holes. Warren felt a whirring in the air and something brushed against his face, lingered, and was gone. Another whirring followed, so quiet he could barely hear it.
The stubby fin-legs of the Swarmer went mechanically forward and back, dragging its bloated body. In the starlight he could see the glistening where fluid seeped from the moist holes. THE YOUNG RUN WITH SORES. Another small whirring sound came and he saw from one of the dark openings a thing as big as a finger spring out, slick with moisture, and spread its wings. It beat against the thick and reeking air and then lifted its heavy body, coming free of its hole, wings fluttering. It lifted into the air and hovered, seeking. It darted away, missing Warren, passing on into the night. He did not move. The Swarmer pulled itself forward. Its dry, rattling gasps caught the attention of the soldier. The man turned, took a step. The Swarmer gathered itself and sprang.
It reached the man’s leg and the massive head turned to take the calf between its jaws. It seized and twisted and Warren heard the sharp intake of breath before the soldier went down. He screamed and the Swarmer turned itself and rolled over the man. The long blunt head came up and nuzzled down into the belly of the man and the sharp, shrill scream cut off suddenly.
Warren stood, the smell stronger now, and watched the two forms struggle on the open sand. The man pawed for his rifle where it had fallen and the thick leg of the Swarmer pinned his arm. They rolled to the side. The thing wallowed on him, covering him with a slick sheen, cutting off the low moans he made. Warren ran toward them and picked up the rifle. He backed away, thumbing off the safety. The man went limp and the air rushed out of him as the alien settled into place. Its head turned toward Warren and held there for a moment and then it turned back and dipped down to the belly of the man. It began feeding.
Gijan had heard the screams and would be here soon. There was no point in shooting the Swarmer and giving Gijan a sound to follow. Warren turned and limped away from the licking and chewing sounds.
He walked silently through brush, hobbling. The rifle had a bayonet on the muzzle. If a Swarmer came at him he would use that instead of firing. He stayed in the open, watching the shadows.
Abruptly from behind him came a loud hammering of automatic fire. Warren dodged to the side and then realized that no rounds were thumping into the trees near him. It was Gijan, killing the Swarmer a hundred meters or more away.
Warren was sure the Chinese did not know the Swarmers were crawling ashore or else they would have come after him in a group. Now Gijan would be shaken and uncertain. But in a few minutes he would recover and know what he had to do. Gijan would run to the beach, moving faster than Warren could, and try to cut him off.
Warren heard a light humming. He looked up between the trees where the sound came and could see nothing against the stars.
THE WORLD THAT WAS FALSE WORLD MADE THEM THIS WAY NOT AS THEY WERE WHEN WE KNEW THEM IN THE WORLD THAT WAS OURS THEY CANNOT SING BUT KNOW OF THE PLACES WHERE YOU SING TO EACH OTHER AND SOME NOW GO THERE WITH THEIR SORES THEY MAY BE CHEWED BY YOU BUT THERE ARE MANY MANY
Something smacked into his throat.
It was wet and it attached itself with a sudden clenching thrust like a ball of needles. Warren snatched at it. He stopped an inch short of grabbing at the thing when he caught the musty sea stench full in his nostrils. The moist lump dripped something down his neck.
He brought the rifle up quickly and pointed the bayonet at his throat and jabbed, aiming by instinct in the dark. He felt the tip go into the thing and he turned the blade so it scraped, pulling the wet centimeter-long larva out. It came away before the spines had sunk in. Blood seeped out and trickled down his neck.
He sopped it up with his sleeve and held the bayonet up in the starlight. The larva was white as a maggot and twisted feebly on the blade. One wing fluttered. The other was gone. The skin of it peeled back some more and the wing fell off. He stuck the blade into the sand to clean it and stepped on the thing that moved in spasms on the ground. Something still stuck on his neck. He scraped it off. The other wing was on the blade and some thin dark needles. He wiped them on the sand and with a sudden rushing roar slammed his heel down on them again and again.
He was breathing hard by the time he reached the beach. The fear had gone away when he had concentrated on staying away from the shadows, not thinking about what could be in them. The stabbing pain in his knee helped. He listened for the deep rasping and the humming and tasted the wind for their smell.
He hobbled out from the last line of palms and onto the white glow of the beach beneath the stars. He could see maybe fifty meters and there were no dark forms struggling up from the water. To the north he could hear faint shouts. That did not bother him because he did not have far to go. He stumbled toward the shouts, ignoring the quick, rippling flashes of yellow light from a mortar barrage and the long crump that came after them. There were motorboats moored in the shallows with the big reels in the stern, but no one in them. He took an oar out of one.
He came around the last horn of a crescent beach and saw ahead the dark blotch of the raft far up on the sand. He threw his rifle aboard and began dragging the raft toward the water. Big combers boomed on the reef.
He got it into the shallows and rolled aboard without looking back. He pushed off with the oar and kept pushing until he felt the current catch him. Speed, now. Speed.
The tide had just turned. It was slow but it would pick up in a few minutes and take him toward the pass in the reef. When he was sure of that he sat down and felt for the rifle. Sitting, he would be harder to see and he could steady the rifle against his good knee. His throat had nearly stopped bleeding but his shirt was heavy with blood. He wondered if the flying things would smell it and find him. The Skimmers had never said anything about the things like maggots with wings and he was sure now it was because they did not know about them. There was no reason the Swarmers would have evolved a thing like that to help them live on the land. And with the Skimmers driven from the lagoon by the men there was nothing to keep the Swarmers from bringing the things ashore.
He saw something move on the land and he lay down on the raft and Gijan came out onto the sand, running. Gijan stopped and looked straight out at Warren and then turned and ran north.
Warren picked up his rifle. Gijan was carrying his weapon at the ready. Was the man trying to cut him off but keep him alive? Then he should have run south, toward the motorboats. But there might be boats to the north, too. Maybe Gijan had heard the shouts in that direction and was running for help.
Warren thumbed off the safety on his rifle and put it on automatic fire. He would know what to do if Gijan would tell him by some action what the man intended to do. If he could just shout to the man, ask him — But maybe Gijan had not seen him after all. And the man might lie even if he answered, Warren knew he could not trust words from Gijan or even silence from him; they were all the same.
Suddenly the running figure dropped his rifle and slapped at his neck and then fell heavily on the sand. He twisted and brought both hands to his neck and struggled for a moment. Then he brought something out from his neck and threw it into the water and made a sound of fear. Gijan lurched up and staggered. He still clutched his neck with one hand but turned and looked for his weapon. He seemed dazed. His head came up and his gaze swept past Warren and then came back again. Gijan had seen the raft for sure this time.
Warren wished he could read the man’s face. Gijan hesitated only a moment. Then he picked up his weapon and turned to the north. He took some steps and Warren relaxed and then there was something about the way Gijan moved his arm. Warren aimed quickly, with no pause for conscious thought, and Gijan was bringing the rifle around. It made a bright yellow flash, firing on automatic, as Gijan swept the muzzle, fanning, and Warren fired a burst. It took Gijan high in the shoulder and then in the chest, spinning him. The flashes stopped coming from Gijan’s rifle and Warren was startled by the loud chatter of his weapon but kept it on the toppling figure, rolling him over and over until he was a loose bunch of rags and blood.
Warren slowly put down the rifle, panting. He had not thought at all about killing Gijan but had just done it, not stopping for the instant of balancing the equation and seeing if it had to be that way, and that was what had saved him. If Gijan had gotten off another few rounds it would have been enough.
He peered shoreward again. Voices, near. There was some sea still running against the ebb but now the tide was taking hold and carrying him out. The pass was a dark patch in the snarling white of the combers.
He had to get away fast now because the men to the north would be coming toward the gunfire. Hoisting the sail would just give them a target. He had to wait for the slow steady draw to take him through.
Something thumped against the bottom of the raft. It came again. Warren stood and cradled the rifle. The boards worked against each other as they came into the chop near the pass. A big dark thing broke water and rolled hugely. Eyes looked at him and legs that had grown from fins kicked against the current. The Swarmer turned and wallowed in the wash from the passage and then sank, the great head turning toward shore. The lagoon swallowed it.
Warren used the oar to turn the raft free of the rocks. The surf broke to each side and the deep bands of current sucked the raft through with a sudden rush. Behind him Warren heard a cry, lonely and harsh and full of surprise. The warring rumbled beyond the ridge and was lost in the crashing of the waves running hard before an east wind, and he went out into the dark ocean, the raft rising fast and plunging as it came into the full sea swell.
A sharp crack. A motorboat was coming fast behind. Warren lay flat on the raft and groped for his rifle. Another shot whispered overhead.
They would get him out here for sure. He aimed at the place where the pilot would be but in the fast chop he knew he would miss. There came a short, stuttering bark of automatic weapons fire. He heard the shots go by, not close. They did not have to be accurate though if they had enough ammunition.
The raft slewed port and the boat turned to follow. Warren crawled to the edge of the raft, ready to slip overboard when they got too close. It would be better than getting cut down, even with the Swarmers in the water.
The boat whined and bounced on the swell, bearing down. He lifted the rifle to take aim and knew the odds were damn long against him. He saw a muzzle flash and the deck spat splinters at him where the shots hit.
Warren squeezed carefully and narrowed his eyes to frame the target and saw something leap suddenly across the bow of the boat. It was big and another followed, landing in front of the pilot and wriggling back over the windshield in one motion. It crashed into the men there. Shouts. A blue-white shape flicked a man overboard and knocked another sprawling. The boat veered to starboard. From this angle Warren could see the pilot, holding to the wheel and crouched to avoid the flicking tail of the Skimmer. The boat bucked and slewed in the chop and its engine roared.
A hammering of the automatic weapon. The Skimmer jumped and slashed at the man with its tail. Warren leaped up and rocked against the swell to improve his aim. He got off two quick shots at the man. The figure staggered and the Skimmer struck him solidly and he pitched over the side. The pilot glanced back and saw he was alone. The Skimmer stopped thrashing and went still. Warren did not give the man time to think. He fired at the dark splotch at the wheel until it was gone. The boat throttled into silence. Nothing moved.
Distant shouts came from shore but no sounds of another boat. The boat drifted away. Warren thought of the Skimmer who lay dead in it. He tried to reach the boat, but the currents separated them farther. In moments it was gone in the darkness and the island itself faded into a mere looming shadow on the sea.
