Stinger

"Flashlight," the colonel said, and Vance gave it to him.

Rhodes bent down, his knees on the basement's cracked concrete floor, and aimed the light into the hole. There was a drop of about ten feet, and the red dirt glistened as if a huge snail had tracked over it.

"He was sittin' in a rockin' chair up there," Vance repeated for the third time, motioning toward the hole in the den floor above their heads. "It, I mean. Whatever it was - 'cause it sure as hell wasn't Dodge." He was whispering; his gut churned, and the skin had drawn tight at the back of his neck. But the flashlight beam had shown them that nothing was hiding in the Creech basement except a little green lizard over by the washing machine. "It knew english," Vance said. "Spoke it like a Texan. How the hell could it know the way we talki" Rhodes shone the light around and saw a broken pipe, slick with some kind of gelatinous excretion. a bittersweet chemical smell - not unlike the odor of peaches rotting under a high summer sun - drifted up from the hole to sting his nostrils. "I've got two theories, if you want to hear them," he said.

"Shoot." "One, that the creature monitored earth's satellites and figured out our language. But that wouldn't account for it speaking with a Texas accent. Two, that it somehow got into the man's language center." "Huhi" "It might've tapped the brain's language center," Rhodes explained. "Where an individual's dictionary is stored. That way it would pick up the accent too." "Jesus! You mean... it like got into Dodge's braini Like a worm or somethin'i" Vance's hand tightened around the loaded shotgun at his side. He and Rhodes had gone by the office to pick up the flashlight, and the sheriff also wore a shoulder holster with a fully loaded Snubnose .38 in it. Lying on the concrete within easy reach of Rhodes's right hand was one of the repeating rifles from the sheriff's gun cabinet.

"Maybe. I don't know what the process might be, but it could've read the language center like a computer reading a program." He angled the light in another direction, saw more gleaming red dirt and darkness beyond. "Whatever this thing is, it's highly intelligent and it works fast. and one other thing I'm fairly sure of: it's not the same kind of creature as Daufin." "How do you figure thati" He jumped; that damned green lizard was scurrying around again.

"Daufin had to learn our language from scratch, starting with the alphabet," Rhodes said. "The other creature - the one Daufin calls Stinger - uses a much more aggressive process." Understatement of the year, he thought. "I believe it killed Dodge Creech - or stored him somewhere - and what you saw was its simulation of him, just like that flying bastard simulated our helicopter." "Simulatedi Is that like a mutant or somethin'i" "Like a... a replicant," Rhodes explained. "an android, for want of a better word, because I think part of that weird chopper was alive. Probably the thing you saw was alive too - but just as much of a machine as a living creature. Like I say, I don't know how it works, but I think one thing's particularly interesting: if Stinger did create a replicant of Dodge Creech, it screwed up on the teeth and fingernails." "Oh. Yeah. Right," Vance agreed, recalling that he'd told Rhodes about those metallic needles and the blue saw-edged nails.

"There are probably other differences too, internally. Remember, to it we're the aliens. If somebody showed you a blueprint of a creature you'd never seen before, and gave you the raw materials to make it with, I doubt if the final result would look much like the real thing." "Maybe so," Vance said, "but it seems to me the sonofabitch has just figured out a better way to kill." "Yeah, that too." One more revolution of the light's beam in the hole, and he knew what had to be done. "I've got to go down in there." "Like hell! Mister, your head must be screwed on with rusty bolts!" "I won't argue that point." He shone the light around the basement and stopped it at a coil of garden hose hanging from a wall hook. "That'll have to do for rope." His light found a water pipe on the wall nearby. "Help me secure it around there." They got the hose tied and knotted and Rhodes threw its free end into the hole. He pulled at it a few times to make sure it would bear his weight, and then he balanced on the hole's edge for a minute until his heartbeat calmed down. He tossed Vance the flashlight. "Drop that and the rifle to me when I get to the bottom." He felt a flagging of his courage. He still had Taggart's blood up his nose and brown streaks of gore and grasshopper pee all over him.

"I wouldn't do it," Vance advised soberly. "ain't worth gettin' yourself killed." Rhodes grunted. He'd just as soon mark this off as a sorry misadventure, but Vance sure as hell wasn't going to do it; there was no one else but him, and that was how things were. His testicles crawled, and he had to go before all his courage ebbed away. "Here goes," he said, and swung his weight out over the hole. The pipe creaked ominously but remained bolted to the wall. Rhodes climbed down into the darkness, and a few seconds later his shoes squished as they touched bottom. "Okay." His voice echoed back to him, doubled in volume. "Drop the light." Vance did - reluctantly - and Rhodes caught it though his palms were already slick with sweat. He shone the light around in a quick circle. a film of pale gray ooze maybe an inch deep covered the red dirt; it was still fairly fresh and crept down the walls in rivulets. To Rhodes's right, a tunnel had been bored through the dirt and extended beyond the light's range. His mouth dried up as he realized the size of the thing that had dug it; the tunnel was almost six feet high and about four or five feet in width.

"The rifle," he said, and caught that too as it fell.

"You see anythin'i" "Yeah. a tunnel's ahead of me. I'm going in." "Lord God!" Vance said under his breath. He felt as defenseless as a skinned armadillo without the flashlight, but he figured the colonel was going to need it more. "anythin' moves in there, you blow the bejeezus outta it and I'll haul you up!" "Check." Rhodes hesitated, looked at his wristwatch in the glare of the light. It was almost eighteen minutes until midnight. The witching hour, Rhodes thought. He took the first step into the tunnel, having to bend over only a few inches; the second step was no easier, but he kept going with the flashlight in his left hand and the rifle stock braced against his right shoulder. His finger stayed close to the trigger.

as soon as the light was gone, Vance heard the lizard rustle over in its corner and came within a bladder's squeeze of wetting his trousers.

Step by slow step, the colonel moved away from beneath the Creech house. about ten feet in, he paused to examine the substance on the walls, floor, and ceiling. He tentatively touched a drool of it and jerked his hand back; the stuff was slick and as warm as fresh snot. Some kind of natural lubricant, he decided. Maybe an alien equivalent of saliva or mucus. He would've liked to have gotten a sample of it, but he couldn't bear to carry any of it back with him. anyway, the gunk was all over his shoes. He went on, following the tunnel as it made a long curve to the right. The walls were slowly dripping and the dirt was blood red. He had the weird sensation of walking deeper into a nostril, and at any second he expected to see damp hairs and blood vessels.

The tunnel went straight for about thirty feet before it snaked slowly to the left. Was Stinger a part-machine, part-living hybrid like the dragonfly had beeni Rhodes wondered. Or was Stinger Daufin's term for not a single creature, but a collection of themi

He stopped. Listened. a strand of ooze dripped from the ceiling and clung to his shoulder.

There was a distant rumbling noise, and a slight vibration in the tunnel floor. It ceased after a few seconds - and then there it was again, a rumbling like a subway train somewhere beyond the walls. Or a subterranean bulldozer, he thought grimly. Little scurryings of fear ran in his belly. The noise seemed to be coming from somewhere to his left. Maybe it was the sound of something digging, or the sound of a massive thing moving through an already-dug tunnel. Heading where, and for what reasoni If Stinger was digging tunnels like this one under the entire town, then it was either wasting a lot of energy or preparing for a major assault. There was no way to know what its intent and capabilities were until Daufin explained why it was after her. and first of all, she had to be found - he hoped by himself and not by Stinger.

The noise of either digging or tunnel travel again faded away. There was no telling how far this tunnel went - probably all the way under the river to the black pyramid - but Rhodes had seen and heard enough. He could feel the slimy excretion in his hair, and a strand of it was sliding slowly down his neck. It was time to get the hell out.

He retreated, the light's beam spearing along the tunnel in front of him.

and the light caught something: a figure, jerking in and then out of the beam, way down at the far end of the tunnel.

Rhodes's legs locked up. The breath froze in his lungs.

There was silence, except for a slow dripping noise.

Something's down there, he thought. Watching me. I can feel the sonofabitch. Just beyond the light. Waiting.

He couldn't move, and he feared that if he did break his legs loose from their terror lock and start running, whatever was down there would be on him before he could make it the sixty feet back to where Vance waited.

Still silence.

and then a voice. an old woman's voice, singing: "Jeeesus loves the little chillllldren, allllll the chillllldren in the worrrlllld...." "Who's therei" Rhodes called. His voice shook. Smart move! he thought. Like it's really going to answer!

The singing had a metallic undertone, and it drifted past him like a half-remembered Sunday school song from a tinny record player. after a few more seconds, it stopped in midphrase, and the silence descended again.

The flashlight's beam trembled. He aimed the rifle's barrel down the tunnel.

"Praise the Lord!" the old woman's voice called. "Glory be!" "Step into the light," Rhodes said. "Let me see you." "Hot hot hot! You're a very naughty boy and you'll get a switchin'!" It occurred to him that it might really be an old woman, fallen down here and gone crazy in the darkness.

"I'm Colonel Matt Rhodes, United States air Force!" he said. "Who are youi" The silence stretched. He sensed a figure, standing just beyond the light. "God don't like naughty boys," the old woman's voice answered. "Don't like liars, neither. Who's the guardiani" It was the question that Vance had told Rhodes the Dodge Creech creature had asked, and now the colonel knew for sure it was no crazy old lady down there in the dark.

"What guardiani" Rhodes asked.

"God chews up liars and spits 'em out!" the voice shouted. "You know what guardian! Who is iti" "I don't know," he said, and he began to back away again. The ooze squished underfoot.

"Coloneli" It was Vance's voice, echoing through the tunnel from behind him. "You okayi" "You okayi" the awful voice in front of him mimicked. "Where you goin', Colonel Matt Rhodes United States air Forcei Love thy neighbor as thyself. Put out that hot wand of hell and let's have us a tea party." The flashlight, Rhodes realized. It's afraid of the flashlight.

"Naughty, naughty boy! Gonna switch you good and proper!" The thing sounded like a demented grandmother on speed.

He kept backing away, moving faster now. The thing didn't speak again, and all Rhodes wanted to do was to get out of this tunnel, but he dared not turn his back and run. The light was holding it at bay; maybe something in the wavelength of electric light, he reasoned. If alien eyes had never been exposed to electric light before, then... He stopped. Why wasn't the thing still taunting himi Where the hell was iti He glanced over his shoulder, quickly shone the light behind him. Nothing there. a bead of sweat crawled into his eye and burned it like a torch.

and in the next instant there was the crack of earth splitting open and he whirled to see a flurry of dirt erupt in front of him and two gaunt arms with metallic saw-edged fingernails coming up from the floor. The thing scuttled up like a roach, white hair red with Texas dirt and flower-print press hanging in slimy tatters, the old woman's face slick and shining. Needle teeth glinted like blue fire in its mouth as Rhodes thrust the flashlight right into the dead and staring eyeballs.

"Naughty boy!" the thing shrieked, throwing up one arm over its face and the other swinging viciously at Rhodes.

He backpedaled and fired the rifle. It bucked against his shoulder and almost knocked him flat; the bullet tore a gash across a gray cheek. He fired again, missed, and then the creature that looked like an old woman was charging him, an arm still covering its eyes and its head thrashing with what was either rage or pain.

The thing's other hand closed on his left wrist. Two metal nails winnowed into his skin, and he knew that if he lost the light he was finished. He heard himself scream; the hand had a terrible, crushing power in it, and his wrist felt as if it was about to break.

He jammed the rifle barrel right up against the crook of the thing's elbow and pulled the trigger. Pulled it again. and again, and this time wrenched his arm away from her. There was a roar coming from the creature's mouth like air through a cracked steampipe.

The thing abruptly turned and, its eyes shielded and back bowed with a dowager's hump, scurried away from Rhodes down the tunnel. It flung itself to the floor, began to frantically dig itself down with feet and fingers, throwing damp dirt backward upon Rhodes. In about five seconds it had burrowed halfway into the earth.

Rhodes could stand no more. His nerve snapped, and he fled.

Vance had heard an old woman's shout, the sound of rifle fire, and a scream that had made the hairs on the back of his neck do the jitterbug. Now he heard someone running down there - shoes squishing on that shit in the tunnel - and then the choked thunder of Rhodes's voice: "Get me out!" The rifle was flung up, but Rhodes held on to the flashlight.

Vance started hauling up the hose, and Rhodes climbed up it as if the devils of hell were snapping at his ass. The colonel fought upward the last three feet, grabbed the broken concrete, and pulled himself out of the hole, scrabbling away from it on his hands and knees; he lost the flashlight, which had been clamped under his arm, and it rolled away across the floor.

"What happenedi God a'mighty, what happenedi" Vance reached down for the light and turned it on the colonel's face; it was a mask of chalk with two gray-ringed cigarette burns where the eyes had been.

"I'm all right. all right. I'm all right," Rhodes said, but he was cold and clammy and the sweat was running off him and he knew he was one giggle away from the funny farm. "The light. Doesn't like it. Nope! Shot it. Shot it, sure did!" "I heard the shots. What were you shootin' a - " His voice clogged and stopped. He had seen something, there in the light, and he felt his stomach heave.

Rhodes lifted his left arm. a gray hand and forearm was hanging on to his wrist, two metal nails dug into his skin and the other fingers clamped tight. at the end of the forearm, where the elbow's crook had been, was a mass of torn tissue that oozed pale gray fluid.

"Shot it!" Rhodes said, and a terrible grin flickered across his mouth. "Shot it, sure did!"