The Filter Trap (36 page)

The bearantula lost the fight and went limp, firing the laser again as life escaped. Allan fell backwards.

For that instant, lying on his back, he could see smoke drifting sideways across the pink and gold clouds like the shoals of little fish that had looked down at him as his friends pulled him to the surface. Just like then, the uncommon beauty numbed his pain momentarily.

Unlike then, he had more than just a scrape to bottle up. Looking back down he saw his right leg, cut above the knee and propped over his left, similarly severed. That was a mistake. He should have listened to the dive master and looked away.

His hands at his sides felt a thick, warm liquid surround the fingers. When they hauled him out of the ocean he’d let a hand drift over the side of the boat while they stitched the hole in his thigh the octopus had bit. He wanted to get back in the water.

Something unintelligible chirped over the radio. He remembered trying to tell what the worried Thai boatmen had said as they bandaged him. Allan tried to follow the words but they kept dropping off a cliff in front of him into the cool darkness creeping up.

He turned back to face the sky, but found it replaced by a gray haze. The haze turned to pitch without stars. Someone called his name from the surface as he sank deeper.

He remembered his wife. His son and daughter. Somehow they were there with him, within him. He could feel the energy of their love swell inside until it burst forth in a brilliant white glow. Gradually, the radiance became larger until it obliterated the dark and bleached his senses. The nothingness of everything at once overcame Allan as he left the self and headed into the unknown.

“Give him a shot of morphine!” a stern voice shouted.

“Too late. Nothing else we can do for him,” another voice said, directed at Jill as they pulled her away.

Jill struggled to see through a mask fogged with tears. The soldiers pulled her along; she wanted to stay with Allan.

“You’ve still got a job to do!” Amanda yelled, reaching back and yanking her forward.

Kam stumbled blindly after her, silenced by his own fear. Allan was dead. He hadn’t bothered to befriend him in the aftermath of the Event when they were thrown together, but he’d seen the life in Allan, a brilliant mind now silenced forever. He could be next.

Amanda had to lead their ragtag group through one more crater before they’d reach the alien installation. It was easier to slide down and run across it than go around. On the cusp, Kam surveyed the battlefield. Strewn over miles to the north, hundreds of downed aircraft sent smoke signals. Between the gullies of smoke and flame lay bodies of men and beasts alike. More of the beasts poured from northern portals in the alien complex, skittering over the black surface to the sandy battlefront.

“We’re losing,” Kam whispered.

“You’re right!” Amanda shouted. “As long as that pilot is inside that damn ship, we’re failing our mission!”

“Take cover!” another shouted over the radio, as the majority of the twenty-third slid down into the crater with them.

Another missile struck just to the north and heated sand covered them.

“Go!” Amanda screamed over and over. “We’ll never get better cover without being blown to bits.”

Under the cover of the sand haze they ran to the base of the alien complex and up to the side, the infinite blackness of the surface betraying no markings to guide them. A few of the soldiers stumbled; it felt like running over nothing and the whirling sand flushed any sense of visual level.

Other platoons rallied and headed south to form a new barrier between Amanda’s group and the enemy. The portal seemed hopelessly hidden in the blackness that crawled up vertically in front of them. A laser sizzled through the front line of soldiers, the first shot from a bearantula emerging from an otherwise invisible door. The soldiers tossed grenades and stunned the enemy into submission as they ran to it.

“Hunter!” Amanda requested as they reached the opening.

A soldier moved to the front, activating a tracking device.

“If she’s still got that beacon, we’ll find her,” the soldier assured her.

Amanda grabbed the young soldier by the shoulder. “We’ll find Lieutenant Green or die trying, Private.”

“Y-yes, sir,” stammered the nervous private.

“Let’s get in before they figure out they’ve been compromised,” Amanda ordered.

The diminished troops rushed into the darkness, Kam and Jill sandwiched between them.

To their surprise, the interior passageway was as drab as any hallway at the Pentagon, gray walls sloping to meet a floor of continuous aluminum-looking material, completely absent of the magical black gunk they stumbled over to get there.

“It’s a factory,” one of the soldiers said.

“Or a prison,” another reminded them.

“You picking up anything on that tracker yet?” Amanda asked.

“No, sir,” came the dismayed answer.

“Could be weak in here; we don’t know what this stuff is made of,” Amanda reminded them. “Keep going, search everywhere.”

“Sir!” a soldier hollered. “Our orders are not to touch anything.”

“Look, but don’t touch, unless on my orders,” Amanda confirmed. “These things don’t have hands, so I expect to find some sliding doors, or something like that.”

Low ceilings forced the soldiers to stoop as they took cautious steps. No doors appeared, sliding or otherwise, just endless connected passageways of gray. Occasionally a trio of cartouche-like symbols appeared at what might have been the eye level of the aliens, but demarking what it wasn’t clear.

“Nobody home?” one of the soldiers asked eventually.

“What’s procedure back on base for a facilities breach?” Amanda asked him rhetorically.

“So where are they hiding?” another voice came back.

“We’ve been walking for twenty minutes and not seen anything but hallway,” said another.

“A trap?” warned a third.

“We could be skulking around in their janitor’s closet, for all we know,” Kam said.

“Stop!” a soldier yelled after seeing Jill take her gloves off.

“These signs are genetic markers, gene configurations,” Jill said.

The soldier grabbed her arm, but it was too late. Jill pressed her hand to the right of one of the cartouches on the wall. The wall faded to a nearly transparent sheen, the interior almost as horrific as the battle outside the ship. The light coming through the sheer wall activated something, and the room, coated with organic material, came alive.

A viscous rambling tube of undulating purple and silver wrapped around the room several times, supported by a series of hooks, or perhaps legs, attached to the ceiling with hardened mucous. Every few seconds a piece of the tube would shiver or shake like a dog coming out of the water and dispense a mass of silvery, three-legged organisms. Each, the size of a human hand, flexed three legs culminating with a crude beak.

A few of the soldiers vomited inside their helmets.

“Do NOT take your masks off!” Amanda warned them.

The tripods struggled to take first steps after descending to the floor on a long stringy cascade of material birthed along with them. Once on the floor the creatures learned quickly how to run, struggling over each other in a quivering race to escape the room’s other occupant.

When the tube broke, a much larger creature stretched on long wiry legs nearly to the ceiling. It flexed a lithe frame covered in a patchwork of metallic woven cloth while unfurling a long tendril from its jaw. Feet and hands, covered in webbing, spread to the walls and maneuvered to the ceiling, where it pulled the rest of itself upward.

It hung with a wide eyeless face toward the soldiers, while lashing the tendril at the terrified tripods. Each sting inflicted a toxin, freezing individuals from the insectine mass so two of the four large hands could grab and break apart the beaks. With the only hard part disposed of, the smaller creatures were ingested through an opening on the side of the large, upside-down, eyeless head.

“Horrific,” a soldier said.

“Another hostage,” Kam said.

“Then Lee can’t be far off,” Amanda said. “And alive. Everyone take off your gloves and open these windows.”

“But they said not to touch anything. The microbiome is-“

“Just do it!”

They crept down the passageway, peeking into the cages of an intergalactic zoo. A few sported local Earth wildlife, a desert tortoise, a red-tailed hawk, and a band of coyotes.

“They must not be completely malevolent,” Jill said. “Taking specimens means they’re interested in alien biology.”

“How do you know that interest isn’t malevolent?” a soldier asked.

Jill stopped offering opinions.

“Found her?” Amanda asked a soldier standing mesmerized by one of the rooms.

“I’ve found
something
. . .” the soldier’s voice trailed off.

Inside the room another hominid kept an odd position, on its knees, bent forward in prayer with fingers too long to be human pressed together in front. Slowly the being looked up and put the hands down, letting a dirty robe fall away at the elbows, revealing too-long forearms. It turned slightly, revealing an elongated skull with pools of deep teal. The eyes held the soldier transfixed. Above them elaborate horns twisted in intricate designs.

“It’s telling me something,” the soldier said, as a few others crowded around.

“I don’t hear anything,” another said.

“Not language. Emotion.”

The being moved on long double-jointed kangaroo legs, quickly covered by the flowing robe. It turned and sat on the small bench in its drab cell, unable to stand in the low room.

“I feel sadness, but also hope. It’s going home after a long absence.”

The large eyes shifted away from the first soldier to regard the others. Folds underneath turned up the way a human face might smile, but there were no lips, nor mouth, to deliver it.

“I’ve got her!” shouted one of the soldiers at another window down the passage.

The soldiers rushed to the other window. They banged on the wall, hoping Lee’s emaciated body was immobilized only from sleep. She didn’t move and the soldiers began to fear the worst.

“Stand back!” Amanda ordered.

The soldiers instinctively got low to the ground and turned away as Amanda took out her Desert Eagle .44 Magnum. She aimed high for an angle that would ricochet down the passageway if it didn’t stick.

It didn’t stick and it didn’t shatter. Instead, the bullet’s force was absorbed, bouncing to the ground as the transparent wall bowed and reverberated.

Lee stirred and looked over, confused.

The soldiers were ecstatic, until they realized that Lee could not see them. Amanda fired two more times. Lee sat up in wonderment.

“Can we use Morse code?” Jill asked.

“No, use tap code,” Amanda said. “Let’s hope they still teach pilots about the Hanoi Hilton.”

Amanda turned her gun towards the ceiling and banged it in the same spot on the wall once, then three more times for “L,” then two times followed quickly by another two for “G.”

Lee thought for a minute, lowering her eyes.

“C’mon!” the soldiers were saying as Amanda made the taps again.

Then Lee recognized her initials and ran to the wall, running her hands up and down. She pointed at her face and smashed it against the surface.

“We have to put our faces to the wall,” Kam suggested. “It’s body heat activated.”

Amanda, despite her earlier staunch warning to the contrary, removed her mask. The methane heavy air made her cough as she put her face up to the glass. Lee jumped back a foot. They could see, but not hear, each other. Lee jumped and shouted with joy before Amanda put her mask back on.

The wall turned gray again, cutting them off. The lights flickered and the walls began to glow along the floor in a pulsating yellow pattern.

“How much time on that clock, Major?” asked one of the soldiers.

“Fuck!”

“As in ‘we’re fucked’,” translated one of the soldiers lowly.

“We’re not leaving without her!” Amanda shouted.

“Um, I think we’re not leaving at all,” Jill noted, pointing back down the passage.

The walls closed in successive sphincters, collapsing in on each other, the metallic-looking floor dropping away before the walls met for a vertical seam.

“They’re forcing the air out, compressing the passage. Getting rid of empty pressurized enclosures. Preparing for space flight,” Kam said.

“We have to find the pilot and stop this,” Amanda ordered.

“It’s probably an automated system,” Jill said.

“Then we shoot a computer,” Amanda said.

The passage disappearing behind them, the group ran deeper into the ship. At the end of the passage they entered a gangway with transparent walls on either side. Geometric shapes, stamped with more strange cartouches, jostled in mesh fabric affixed to the walls.

“More zoo animals?” a soldier asked.

“Supply depot,” Jill answered.

“Then if they’re anything like us the kitchen can’t be far,” Amanda said, “and from there every major artery in the ship.”

She was right. Another minute of running brought them to a room with long benches in rows.

“Mess hall?” a soldier guessed.

“Where is everybody?” another soldier asked.

“They know not to eat thirty minutes before takeoff, I’m sure,” snapped a snide soldier.

A tiny clink echoed from the far side of the low-slung room. Behind the long table was a bearantula. It cowered, hiding from the alien infiltrators. It was even smaller without its fur suit. Greenish-yellow pale skin stretched tight over eight gaunt appendages that fused back into four near what must pass for an elbow. The many eyes bulged from a variegated core as if they’d fall off if you shook it. Despite losing its fur, it wasn’t naked. Black strands ringed its pock-marked appendages to form a sort of hodgepodge clothing.

“Is it sick?” a soldier asked, observing the mottled, bruised-looking skin. Boils covered the bare sections of the long arms.

“They
do
have fingers,” another realized, seeing the few stringy digits curled back against its body in a protective gesture.

It plastered itself against the far wall at the back of the room, twisting side to side looking for an escape as the soldiers came closer.

One of the soldiers poked it with his rifle.

It looked up and growled, spreading the oval mouth much larger, though now devoid of teeth and less menacing.

“It’s not a leader, or even a soldier,” Amanda told them. “The others had colored fur, and no fear.”