Ukiah - Alien Taste Part 21

His words triggered memories and Ukiah groaned aloud.

"What is it, cub?"

"Janet Haze had the remote key. That's why the Ontongard are kidnapping the FBI agents. When the key didn't turn up in police evidence, they a.s.sumed it was turned over to the FBI. But FBI doesn't have it."

"They don't?"

"I found it and didn't know what it was until now. They can't wake the sleepers. They can't control the ship.""You have the remote key?" Rennie repeated with amazement. "And you didn't realize it?"

"I didn't have Pack memory earlier," Ukiah reminded him. "I put it in a safe place until I had time to figure out what it was."

"Then there's lots of hope here." Rennie laughed. "This is the first time the Pack's got their hands on that d.a.m.n remote, and we'll make the most of it. Go smash the b.l.o.o.d.y thing, cub, and scatter the pieces in the river. The rest of you, if Hex's here in Pittsburgh making Gets, then they're controlling the Rover from somewhere in Pittsburgh, maybe from that ugly yellow building in Oakland. If we stop the Rover, then the shields stay up. Screw the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds every way we can."

"At least until the colonization of Mars starts."

"We'll fight that war when it comes. Tonight we fight this war."

Ukiah glanced up at the TV screen, and his knees almost buckled under him.

"What?" Rennie looked too at the screen where the story had changed from the lost Rover to the newest of the kidnapped FBI agents.

"Indigo," Ukiah could only manage a whisper, staring up at her photo. "They've taken Indigo.

They're going to try to make her a Get." He turned to Rennie. "You've got to help me find her."

"Cub, the FBI and the police are going to turn the city upside-down to find her. No one else but the Pack will be looking for the Rover control system. If she dies, she dies. If we don't stop that Rover, all of mankind will die."

He wanted to beg, to plead, to point out that they had three days to stop the Rover, but he couldn't.

Pack memories supplied too many details on Prime's home world, an entire race supplanted by the Ontongard. Much as he loved her, Indigo's life couldn't weigh against all the lives on the planet. He slowly nodded. "You're right."

Rennie gripped his shoulder and gave him a slight shake. "Look for her. If you find her in time, we'll come and help you free her."

Max answered the phone with "Bennett," which meant he was driving.

"Max. Where are you?" Ukiah hiked quickly across the bar's parking lot. Dusk was setting in quickly, bleeding the light from the sky.

"Wheeling."

Ukiah swore, stopping beside his bike. "Still? I need you."

"What's wrong?"

"The Ontongard, they took Indigo. I need to find her now, before they kill her."

There was a long silence from Max. "Kid, I won't be back for another two hours, even at eighty miles per hour."

"I know. I know. I'm heading downtown to get a trail on them. It might take me that long just to get a trace. I'll call you when I know more."

"Do that."

Ukiah hung up and glanced at the darkening night sky. Never before did it seem to press so close or hold so much menace.

He found Kraynak and asked to see the dead FBI agents. Kraynak refused him at first, and Ukiahhounded him out into the night, a small covered porch where the smokers practiced their habit in a smoke-free world.

"d.a.m.n it, Kraynak, just let me see their clothes. What can it hurt?"

"Lately, the mind boggles." Kraynak lit a cigarette, the match flaring in the shadows. The swirl of smoke and the glowing end marked the detective as he stood silently considering. "Okay, kid, on one condition. You said that Bennett was down in Wheeling but hauling a.s.s to get in here. If I let you in, you wait for him, because he'll be all over my a.s.s if you go off alone."

Ukiah shook his head. "I can't do that. They're playing with a type of germ-warfare virus, Kraynak.

The minute they inject her, she's dead. There's no cure. There's no hope. If they did it like they did the others, they injected her with an immune-suppression drug when they grabbed her. They'll give it time to work and then they hit her with the virus. When they do that, she's as good as dead. I can't wait."

Kraynak considered him, then slipped his PDA out of his pocket, consulted, and muttered darkly.

"There was a syringe found at the kidnapping site. Come on, kid, let's see what you can do."

The clothing was a barrage of information. Death, illness, fear, dirt. They tumbled over Ukiah's senses in a rush. He picked out the shirt and handled it, closing his eyes against the room, to Kraynak's rasping, smoky breathing, to the musty air, the harsh overhead lights. He was his fingertips, and the cloth was rumpled pages of an encyclopedia. There was the blood from the head wound, fibers from a car's trunk, the crushed leaf juice from Schenley Park, the dry gray dust from the abandoned office building, sweat tainted with fear and then illness, deodorant and after shave now days old, vomit, and dirt.

Dirt.

Black oily dirt. He restlessly rubbed his fingers over the spot, then lifted it to his nose and smelled deeply, focusing only on the dirt. It was familiar. He willed the memory of it forward.

During their second year, when he was doing part-time work with Max, a child had gone missing, and he had tracked it cross-country to an abandoned lot. There, concealed by an overturned refrigerator stacked high with tires, he had found the boy's body.

On the steps up to the house, during the track across the dry, autumn landscape, and in the lot, there had been black oily dirt. It rained out of the sky from a local incinerator, so very fine that no one seemed to notice it.

He pulled himself up out of the focus and checked the other pile of clothes. Black oily dirt. He bolted for the door, shouting, "They're in Kittanning."

"How do you know?"

"There's a tire incinerator there. The dirt gets on everything."

"Ukiah, there's more than one of those things in the area."

"Then I might be wrong, or I might be right. I have to go."

"Ukiah, wait!" Kraynak shouted, but Ukiah left him behind, running down the halls of the police station.

He was out into the night and to his bike. He paused to flip out his phone and punch Max's speed dial number. It rang once.

"Bennett."

"They're in Kittanning."

"d.a.m.n, we're still over an hour out, and that's on the other side of Pittsburgh, like fifty miles out.

You've got your gun and a jacket?""I've got my gun and extra clips. There's no time to fetch a jacket, Max. I have to go now."

"Call me back when you find out where in Kittanning."

"Okay. See you later."

As he hung up, he heard a sound. He turned and made out Bear standing in the shadows.

"Kittanning," Bear nodded. "Hex is the only one that makes Gets. He'll be there. It's been a long time since we've put our teeth in his face."

Ukiah straddled his bike. "Then the Pack will be there?"

"They will have to be gathered together first."

"I can't wait for them any more than I can wait for my partner." Ukiah pulled on his helmet.

"Go. We'll be there when you need us."

Ukiah peeled away into the night. Kittanning was up the Allegheny River, a straight shot on Route 28 with only a handful of red lights the whole way. On his bike, late at night on the fairly smooth road, he could whip through the dark at 200 miles per hour if he pushed it hard. Only it left his backup far behind.

One blurred sign had read 43 miles. His speedometer read 180 most of the way. Fifteen minutes later he arrived in Kittanning. He rode the empty streets, nose to the wind, senses focused for the trace of Ontongard. When he found the building, he killed the engine and coasted into the shadows.

Max answered the phone on the first ring.

"I'm in Kittanning. They're in a building on the corner of Washington and Fifth, along the river."

"I'm still at two-hour ETA to get there, kid."

"I know. Call Kittanning and the state police and the FBI. See if you can get them out here. If nothing else, there's probably going to be some shooting."

There was silence from Max, then, "d.a.m.n it, Ukiah, be careful."

"I will," he promised and hung up. I promise to carefully get my a.s.s shot off.

They weren't expecting trouble, and so he got into the door and through the first three Ontongard with ease. He cringed as he pulled the trigger, knowing in his soul that he was committing murder. As Indigo would no longer be her true, calm, loving self, these creatures were no longer human. They had been twisted and molded against their will. But he couldn't ignore the fact that they were like Pack. They were like Rennie and h.e.l.lena. They were like himself. He chanted to himself, "Don't wake the sleepers."

Beyond the three there was a long hall and then a door opening onto a steel catwalk. He loaded a fresh clip, shoving the warm, mostly spent clip into his back pocket. He moved out onto the catwalk, his pistol braced with both hands.

Ukiah's skin crawled as the short hairs along his arms and back lifted with awareness of Hex. He was here, the Ontongard's master.

Indigo was there too. They had her tied to a support beam, one arm free to facilitate the injection.

She wore only his black T-shirt and faded jeans; they had taken her from her home, sleeping and waiting for his call. The one long lock of hair spilled forward, screening her face from them. She was still and seemingly fearless.

Ukiah spotted Hex as he reached the stairs leading down into the vast factory floor. He wore a white silk shirt, its left sleeve rolled up, and one of his Get was tying a tourniquet about the bared arm. TheGet watched Ukiah come. Without looking himself, Hex drawled, "Get that dog. Do it as quietly as possible."

Instantly the Get rushed toward him, a wave of bodies. There were too many of them. He emptied his gun as they flooded toward him and went down hard under their a.s.sault. A moment later they had him pinned on the ground, one pushing a shotgun over the others' shoulders to wedge the barrel tight to his head.

"Wait." It was a quiet, calm command, but his attackers froze instantly, as if every muscle had locked in their bodies. Footsteps rang in the sudden silence and Hex came into view.

Hex was tall, thin to the point of gaunt, weirdly shaped about the head and face. His eyes were a solid black, no iris, no whites, just blackness. His hair hung black and straight, but it was stiff, as if it were of bristles instead of normal hair.

He studied Ukiah, then looked up to scan the catwalk, the building, maybe even the streets outside.

"You're alone. The Pack doesn't hunt alone. What are you doing here?"

Ukiah panted, trying to think and not to think at the same time. Pack memory told him that Hex might be able to read Ukiah's thoughts. A plan came to him and he shunted it away quickly, before it could be discovered.

The shotgun was c.o.c.ked by one of his Gets, but Hex spoke as if he had the gun in his hands. "I'm told that this hurts immensely."

"We know what you're up to," Ukiah growled. "And we know you're screwed royally. We've decided to add to your misery."

Hex sniffed, finishing tightening the tourniquet as if he were straightening a necktie. "You're bluffing."

Ukiah forced himself to laugh. "She can't get it for you. The FBI doesn't have it. They never had it."

Hex stopped, his head lifting to stare at Ukiah. "What are you talking about?"

"You screwed yourself good this time. You were so sure that the FBI had your toy that you've done everything but paint a bull's-eye on yourself. G.o.d, we've gone so long as your whipping boy, but now you've done it good. The FBI knows about you now. They hate you and they'll hunt you down like the monster you are."

The Ontongard leader turned and walked away.

Ukiah thrashed against those holding him, straining to get closer to Indigo, to place himself between her and Hex. "You can make her into your Get, but she won't be able to fetch it for you."

He risked a glance at Indigo. Her face was steeled to neutral. Her eyes flared with emotion when his met hers, pain that went deeper than any emotion he had ever seen register on her face, and then was gone, controlled and banished.

Hex returned, carrying a length of two-by-four in his hand. The Get holding Ukiah heaved him suddenly up and forward. "Doesn't have it?" He struck Ukiah with a casual backhanded blow across the face with the two-by-four. "Can't get it?" Again the two-by-four struck. "My toy?" A whimper of pain leaked out of Ukiah with the third blow. "Stop dancing around the p.r.o.noun and give the name."

"The remote key. Janet Haze had it in the woods and lost it. Only she couldn't remember that, could she? You killed her because she screwed you to h.e.l.l and back."

The Ontongard leader stood looking at him, still holding the b.l.o.o.d.y two-by-four. It was quite possible, Ukiah realized suddenly, that he was about to be beaten to death with it. His eyes wanted to steal over and look at Indigo again, but he controlled them. He mustn't let Hex know how important she was to him."Shaw was in the park. He found it, didn't he?"

Certain that Hex could spot a lie, Ukiah kept to the truth. "For the first time the Pack controls the key."

Hex looked down at him with what might be a glare. The all-black eyes made it hard to read. Into that silence Ukiah's phone chirped. It had chirped a second time when one of the Get pulled it from Ukiah's pocket and pressed the answer b.u.t.ton.

"Talk," Hex commanded.

He almost said his name, but swallowed it. "Yes?"

It was the Pack leader. "Where are you?"