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Colonists poured into the main boulevard outside the clinic. Robes and pajama bottoms still being pulled on, bare chests and legs or fully armed and dressed perimeter guards, they sprouted out of the darkness. Steps pounded behind her. Terry grabbed her arm. "What--?"
The metal wall of the veterinary shack cracked wide. Something screamed. The sound locked every muscle in her body. They're not crazy at all, she thought, and, It's come. The crowd scattered as the metal sheeting peeled back farther, distended, and something black smashed through the opening.
Terry's grip was like a vise. "Oh migod. He was right--!"
"Cadma
It moved too quickly for Sylvia to get a distinct picture. Dark! Too damned dark! And the searchlights swiveling to cover it were woefully inadequate, jerking spastically around the yard.
For a moment the monster was halted by a ring of colonists with sticks and guns. It stood at bay against the shattered remains of the veterinary-clinic wall. Handlamps, then the searchlight from the watchtower swung toward it. Sylvia saw eyes the size of oranges with huge black pupils. In the same moment those pupils closed to pinpoints. It hissed. Blood sprayed from a dozen wounds that ranged from neat punctures to raw craters, a red brighter than arterial blood. The massive tail smashed at the sheet metal. The screams smashed at the ears.
For just that instant it was contained, and then—
The pupils opened slightly. The creature shook the blood from its eyes and moved. Sylvia gasped. A good racing car might have accelerated that fast. Terry pulled hard on her arm and they were both falling backward as the monster smashed through the line. Two good men flew away like dry leaves in an autumn whirlwind, and one kicked Terry across the forehead as he flew over, all before Sylvia hit the ground.
She crawled behind a huge reel of insulated wire.
The great tail swung. There were spikes on the end—and Barney Carr flopped helplessly along the ground, spiked through the leg, as the monster whipped this way and that. Barney's head cracked into the corner of a building; his face disappeared in a smear of blood. The creature shook him loose and he lay still, only his hands clenching and unclenching spastically. Zack Moscowitz appeared from the shadows to stand over Barney. Tears streamed from his eyes. "Damn you!" he screamed. The creature turned.
Terry staggered up, muttered, "It's killing them!" He looked about wildly, then jerked an iron rod from a stack of fence stakes leaning against a shed. He glanced back at Sylvia, just one frightened flicker of his eyes.
"Terry—"
He turned away, turned to stand between hell and his wife and unborn daughter.
"Terry!"
He was already part of the melee.
The creature was big, larger than a large crocodile, and built like a tank: compact, invulnerable. It shouldn't have been fast—but, wounded and bleeding, it moved faster than anything ever bred on Earth. It leaped from the circle. Armed colonists ran to surround it. Others fired when they could see nobody behind it. Even as they ran it moved again, and again, so that they couldn't surround it.
Sylvia had never seen, never heard of anything that could move like that: streaking across the dirt, losing its balance and skidding to a stop; waiting, then blurring aside from a scattered volley of bullets. Move, stop, warily scan its enemies, see their intentions and move again—Thank God that it seemed more interested in escape than destruction, but even as it thrashed blindly it left death behind.
Red silk kimono and pale blond hair flagging behind her, Jean Patterson ran for her life. Before she could reach the safety of her hut she met the flailing spikes of the monster's tail. Her truncated scream was a barking sound in the night, and she skidded and flopped along the ground to crumple close by Sylvia's concealing coil of wire.
"Jean!"
She stared up blindly, her head twisted far around. Too far. The spine was crushed. Dr. Patterson thrashed without feeling.
Jon van Don ran to intercept the monster and haplessly blocked its way as it fled toward the road. Instantly the monster was on him. It crushed him to the ground and left him behind, but its claws had pierced and dug, ripped through jacket and pajamas and skin, snapped bone and drove jagged ribs into lungs. The searchlight slid over him to show pink bloody froth at his mouth and nose. His screams never stopped.
Sylvia clapped her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. It wasn't enough. She couldn't shut out the sounds and flashes of light: the shots, the screams, the slap of feet, and finally, the wave of heat that tore her from her cocoon. She couldn't help it, she peered through her fingers—
Greg. Somehow he had roused himself from drug-induced slumber. He staggered, legs mere rubber, but his face was a mask of rage as he advanced on the creature. On his back, slung skewed with only one of its shoulder straps buckled down, was one of the flame throwers that had been used to burn the bramble bushes from the plain. Its nozzle spewed a twenty-foot stream of liquid hell. Flame licked at the monster's bloody hide, and it reared in shock.
He was shouting something. She couldn't really hear his words over the roar of the flames, the human sounds of anguish and terror, the bellow of the creature. But she knew: Greg was screaming obscenities, the things she would be saying if her own wife and child—
Husband?
"Terry?" She couldn't see him, but there were bodies everywhere, people crawling and sobbing, and the B-movie monster skittering around the quad trying to find a way back to the darkness—the river?--its tail to the power shed now. It hissed as Greg advanced.
It sat there for a moment, and then with the speed of a flea jumping from a complete standstill, it leaped at Greg.
Greg didn't even flinch, too far gone with grief and rage to care. A tongue of flame lanced out and met the thing in midair with a horrific whoosh! that stole the dark and chill from the night. It hit the thing squarely, in one eye-searing moment converting it into a thrashing blur of fire.
But that wasn't what saved Greg. Sylvia had seen the creature's bullet-torn hind leg collapse as it leaped. It was sideways to Greg as the flame caught it, and it dropped in front of him, burning, motionless.
It was dead. It had to be dead—nothing could possibly survive the bullets, the fire—and Greg sent a steady tongue of flame licking into it. Flame rolled up from its body and exploded against the shack behind it, jellied gasoline spattering everywhere.
Then it moved. Without any warning sign at all the damned corpse was moving again. George Merriot leaped away, too slowly; the creature brushed him and he was aflame.
The burning man thrashed on the ground, arms flopping, trying to put out the jellied gasoline sticking to his jacket and pants. Rachel Moscowitz was battering at him with a blanket. Bobby Erin whipped off his robe and slapped it onto George, totally unconcerned by his own resulting nudity. All eyes were on the monster.
The monster had gained twenty meters toward the river cliff in the blink of an eye, and once again was motionless.
The smell of fuel and burnt flesh boiled up from it in nauseatingly dense clouds of oily smoke.
It moved. Its tail was a sudden blur, and then an impossible living fireball streaked for the river, fifteen good meters this time. Through the smoke and flame she could see its head wagging slowly, agonizingly, as if trying to orient itself. Its tail lashed mindlessly.