Читать книгу UNHEROIC - Marcus Calvert - Страница 7

Ranger Wade Voker rode his black stallion through what was left of Copper Flats, Texas. Behind him rode a posse of eight men, all just as scared as he was – only worse at hiding it. Guns out, they warily glanced about in all directions, ready to blast anything that moved the wrong way.

Voker was stonefaced, his Colt Peacemaker in its holster and a Winchester rifle comfortably gripped in his left hand. Well into his late 30’s, Voker was well-groomed and dressed in dark-blue colors with a wide-brimmed black hat over his brown hair. A red handkerchief was tied loosely around his neck. Voker’s icy-blue eyes spotted the carrion birds as they circled over the center of town.

“This way,” he said.

Voker led them toward the town square. They rode past burned-out buildings and half-eaten horses. At the center of town, they found the corpses of roughly thirty-to-forty people – all women and children. Insects buzzed everywhere. The stench was intense under the hot July sun. Voker frowned as he raised the handkerchief over his nose and mouth, jumped off his mount, and sized up the dead.

Many of the victims were dressed in their Sunday finest. Most of them died from gunshot wounds. As Voker eyed one of the many chewed-upon horses, a sudden chill ran through him – but not from fear. It came from the town church. The plain white building resembled a barn with a steeple on top and in fair need of a new paint job. Voker quickly realized that the church was the only undamaged building left in town.

The Ranger ignored his nervous mount and signaled the others to surround the church. The posse stayed mounted as they scattered, collectively eager to get away from the rotting pile of corpses. Voker tethered his horse to a wooden hitching post. He then pulled two more pistols out from under either side of his saddle. He tucked them into his trousers, at the small of his back. Then he checked his Winchester rifle and quietly headed for the church.

With each step, it grew colder. By the time Ranger Voker reached the church door, his breath came out as steam and his moustache was starting to frost over. But he didn’t slow his pace or show even the slightest hint of hesitation. Those posse members stared in awe at his poise.

Voker kicked the front doors open and rushed in. Inside, he found the men of Copper Flats … all dead. Fifteen by his count. They sat in the front-most pews like statues. Where the preacher would have stood was a grayish, blob-like creature. Roughly the size of a stage coach, it pulsated like a human heart and generated waves of cold as it did so. Icicles and frost filled the place and covered the windows.

“Froku,” Voker scowled with irritated dread.

The Ranger wished that he had a few crates of dynamite as he deftly aimed at the blob creature and emptied the Winchester. White ichor sprayed from the blob’s open wounds as the dead men of Copper Flats screamed in unison and simultaneously rose as one. As the recently deceased turned on him, Voker could see that each of their chests had been hollowed out. Inserted in their place were smaller versions of the dying blob, newborns in the process of a rapid maturation cycle. He also noted that ten of them had pistols in their gun belts, which they clumsily drew.

The rest simply charged him with a communal rage.

The empty Winchester clattered on the hardwood floor as Voker whipped out his two spare guns and opened fire. He targeted each host’s chest and blasted away. Twelve shots rang out and nine host bodies fell. Voker winced as a bullet punched through his right leg. He scowled at the sight of greenish blood flowing from the wound. The rest of the hosts were almost on him as Voker dropped both empty pistols, went for his holstered Peacemaker … and then disappeared.

The hosts paused and looked around in confusion. At the front of the church, the dying blob creature shrieked a final cry of pain and collapsed. The hosts turned in unison and howled an inhuman chorus of grief at their mother’s death. One of the gun-toting hosts looked down and spotted a trail of green blood … which was slowly dripping toward him. Voker appeared, Peacemaker in hand, and gunned the reanimated corpse down from point-blank range. He snatched the host’s pistol from its hand as it fell. The rest turned upon him. Voker turned invisible again as bullets and angry hosts rushed toward him.

The remaining five hosts searched in vain. Then they all paused and listened. Voker’s clinking spurs echoed through the church as he ominously walked amongst them. Voker turned visible as he blasted the only two armed hosts still standing and then he kicked a third to the floor. The fourth host whipped out a Bowie knife and threw it. The blade hit Voker in the stomach just as he killed the host on the floor. Voker howled an inhuman wail as he dropped his guns. The pain of his wound shattered his concentration, causing him to involuntarily shift into his true form. Voker’s clothes ripped as his skin turned coal-black, he grew a half-foot taller, and his hair receded into his now-bald skull.

The two remaining hosts recognized Voker’s race from their brood mother’s memories passed on to them at birth. He was an Aikejov – their archrival. The Aikejovian Imperium destroyed their home world and hunted their kind to the brink of extinction. Only a few of the brood mothers – the only members of their species able to reproduce – managed to escape. When their brood mother’s ship landed here, she had hoped to turn Earth into their new home world.

Now that hope was gone.

Voker’s three lidless eyes glared at the Froku with rage, disgust, and pain. It was bad enough to be banished to this backwater world, Voker thought. The last thing he wanted was to have the Froku start a hive here. Still, he was relieved to have gotten here in time. Another half-day and the brood mother would’ve started laying eggs by the hundreds. And her drones would be fully-matured, twice as strong and dragging more humans for her spawn to hollow out.

The Aikejovian exile ripped the blade in his stomach free, charged head-long into the fourth host, and returned the Bowie knife with a vicious thrust. As Voker withdrew the knife and turned on the last host body, it did something half-unexpected. The blob shot out of its host and flew toward Voker’s chest. If it could attach itself to the Aikejov’s exposed chest, the Froku could secrete a paralytic agent and burrow inside. Then it would have a newer, superior host. Unfortunately for the parasite, Voker had killed his share of Froku and knew their tricks all too well.

He simply sidestepped and stabbed the blob’s leftmost edge with enough force to pin it to the floor. The fight was officially over but the pinned Froku still lived. As its white lifeblood squirted from the non-fatal wound, the parasitic alien shrieked in agony. Voker pulled a whiskey flask out of his torn jacket pocket and shrank back into his Voker persona as he took a sip. He winced as he slapped his left hand over his stomach and applied pressure to the wound, which he knew would heal in a matter of minutes.

He then poured the rest of the whiskey onto a wooden pew, lit a match, and dropped it. The fire caught and began to spread. Voker turned toward the helpless Froku with a sadistic grin.

“You’re probably wondering why you’re still alive,” Voker said. “Well, I wouldn’t mind getting off this miserable world. And I think your brood mother has a ship stashed around here somewhere. Where is it?”

The Froku screamed a shrill response in its native tongue. Voker shrugged and turned back to the growing flames.

“Curse me all you want, you pile of cold shit. Tell me where the ship is and I promise I won’t leave you here to burn,” Voker said with a lying smile.