Bounty Hunter 1: The Bounty Hunter's Revenge (5 page)

“Burke, you have that look on your
face.”

“What look?”

“The look you get when you’re unsure of
something. What are you thinking?”

“Get us upright.”

Cass responded as quickly as she could,
considering how careful she had to be with my right leg. I kept my eyes fixated
on the hunted animals outside of our shelter. Another one had fallen and the
remaining two were backing away from the dozen or so crawlers, hissing and
grunting as they did so. The crawlers seemed unperturbed, and kept on with a
steady advance, shuffling over one another as they hunted as a collective.

When I was properly on my feet, Cass
transferred control to me of everything except my legs. She steadied us and I
stretched my upper body, moving everything I could except for my broken left
arm. I could get some restricted movement out of it as long as I kept it
straight, but nowhere near enough to operate a firearm. I raised the gun in my
right hand and kept it as steady as I could considering I had only one arm to
support it.

I’m still not sure if the crawlers heard
me or saw me as I stood up, but it wasn’t long after I had my gun raised that
they changed their target. At first I thought they were satisfied with two
kills of the rat animals to feed on and moved back to the bodies. The two
living creatures retreated out of sight, and I was left watching the crawlers
writhe over to their prize; however, they did not feed and instead burrowed
back into the sand.

A few tense moments passed during which
I was unsure whether to back down and relax, or to stay vigilant for the
remainder of the night now that it was cool enough for the aliens to come out.
I knew that we were nearing the end of the planet’s night cycle, and it was a
short enough time that I could stay awake.

I was about to ask Cass to set us down
again when I heard something in the sand. The same kind of screech that I had
heard earlier came first, and I was realized with a deathly chill that it was
the crawlers that made that noise, not the rats. A mass of the crawlers erupted
out of the sand near the entrance to our building and moved so smoothly toward
me that it first appeared to be one single creature.

I raised my arm up and aimed into the
middle of the crawlers. A single bullet pierced into the heart of the group and
the combined mass of them scattered in all directions, torn apart like a shadow
when shined on with a flashlight. On the ground where they had stood was the
corpse of a single crawler that my bullet had hit, killed too abruptly to
scream. A greenish yellow substance was leaking out of it and onto the floor.

I became immediately aware of the noises
around me. The planet was usually spookily quiet, with very little wind or
other natural sounds. The crawlers invaded now in that silence, and the sound
of their legs was magnified. They moved along the concrete walls and floor,
creating dozens of clicks and clacks, almost like a hard rain falling on a thin
sheet of plastic or metal. It sounded like they were everywhere, all around me,
and with a shudder I realized that it was because they
were
.

“I need the rear display on my visor,
Cass,” I said quickly, while my eyes frantically darted around for a target.

“It was broken in the fall.
Non-operational.”

“Fuck!”

I saw one of the crawlers out of the
corner of my eye and twisted my right arm for the shot. The bullet cascaded
through its body and it exploded in a green mess against the wall. I saw
another to my left but it was gone by the time I turned with my gun. Without
free use of my legs I was slow, and the contrast of the broken display in front
of me wreaked havoc on my aim.

The sensation of something tapping its
way up my left leg snapped at my attention like a thunder bolt. I turned my
body rapidly to point my gun down at where I felt the crawler, and shot twice
at it. The first shot missed, but the second hit it well enough to carry it
cleanly off my leg and into the floor.

I immediately felt another crawler on my
other leg. From where I could feel it I knew that I couldn’t properly line up a
good enough shot. I flipped the gun in my hand and gripped it by the barrel,
turning the handle into a blunt weapon. I brought it down in a brutal strike
that crushed the body of the alien as it propelled it off of me.

I glanced up and saw more of them on the
floor coming at me, and I started firing wildly into the group. I saw that more
were climbing there way out of the sand and onto the concrete behind the rows
that I fired at. It looked like two were always ready to replace every one that
I killed.

“You need to back us up to a corner,
Cass. We can’t let them surround us.”

“Our armor can withstand almost all conventional
small arms, Burke. Do you think they could really bite their way into us?”

“If we hadn’t just nearly been shattered
from falling from near low orbit, Cass, no, I wouldn’t. Back us up.”

“Good point.”

“And let’s hope they don’t find the hole
in the helmet.”

Cass said nothing in response and I felt
the suit moving around me. She kept my broken leg straight even when I began
firing again, able to balance us on my good leg and move us toward the nearest
corner. Something crunched underneath my feet with every other step, and I had
to get her to stop more than once for me to take a swipe at one of the crawlers
that had jumped up on my legs.

When we finally made it into the corner
I saw that the floor was coated in the green yellow blood. The crawlers didn’t
see to care that they advanced on me through the remains of their own kind, and
showed no signs of stopping after I fired away my last bullet. The pile of
ammunition was across the room but I didn’t dare go near it out of the fear
that it would draw their attention to it. The last thing I needed was one of
them chewing into a grenade. They were focused solely on me, and I had to laugh
at that being the better of the two scenarios.

“I don’t see what’s funny.”

“Nothing, Cass, that’s just it.
Nothing.”

“I’ll never understand humans.”

I flipped the gun again in my hand and
held it like a hammer. I swatted down and carved my way through a cluster of
the crawlers at my knees. “Would you rather be in a robot?” I asked Cass as my
final strike cleared the last of them from my legs.

“Don’t even joke about that.”

I stopped laughing when I felt something
land directly on top of my helmet. They must have been coming from the top of
the wall after climbing from the other side. The tapping of its feet echoed
into my skull through the armor and I reached up with my right hand. I put the
blunt end of the gun onto the helmet and swiped it across the top of it, trying
to skim the crawler off. I felt it latch onto my hand instead and I brought it
back down to get a look at it.

The alien clung clumsily to my hand and
gun as I tried to shake it off. I watched it lose grip with one leg but then
grab on with another. It had too many legs for my eyes to process, and I found
myself repulsed by the thing even though it wasn’t really touching my skin. I
felt itchy everywhere, all over my body, and I had no way to scratch myself
through the armor.

“Burke, your heart rate just spiked.
Calm down. They haven’t got through to us yet.”

I continued to try to shake the thing
off of me. I moved my arm so fast that it almost hurt, and I was forced to stop
after a few minutes. I didn’t know how many of the things must have been making
their way up my legs but I didn’t care. I needed to get this one from my hand.

My eyes were focused on it when I
stopped shaking, and it opened its small mouth to display its glistening rows
of tiny dagger teeth. It plunged them down into my hand and gnawed uselessly at
the armor plates. It was still strong enough to withstand them. I was almost
relieved that I was safe from their bites when it reared itself up to my face,
opened its mouth again, and let out that human like shriek.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood
on end and I roared as I smashed my hand into the wall next to me, crushing the
crawler into a stringy pulp that left its residue on my armor. I kept on
roaring as I swiped down at my chest and legs, now seeing that they had swarmed
around me and covered me like a second skin while my attention was diverted
onto the single one of my hand.

I was able to strike off some of them,
or even crush them against the armor of the suit itself. I let go of the gun
shortly into my assault, and found that a free hand was better. I could flatten
them with the combined power of my fingers and Cass assisting with the suit.
When one of the things snatched onto the back of my hand, it would join the
remains of its friend against the wall. It wasn’t long before there were cracks
forming in the concrete from repeated impacts.

I don’t know how much time passed before
the sky began to brighten. The numbers of the crawlers that had once seemed
endless began to dwindle. As a last ditch effort, they seemed to regroup and
attack in a surge from the wall behind me. Most fell down onto my shoulders and
scratched their way down my arms. I felt a spasm of pain when a group of them
weighed down my broken arm before Cass could compensate.

A few of them landed on my helmet and
skittered down the rest of me. One clambered forward onto the visor and I was
suddenly face to face with stabbing teeth magnified in the view of my visor. I
had a moment of panic when I saw the thing claw at what looked to be the
weakest part of my armor. The cracks in the display made a terrifying,
gut-wrenching comparison next to the saliva frothing over from the crawler’s
teeth.

I hurled my right hand up to grab at it
as quickly as I could, but I found that more of the things were already
covering the outside of the armor on my hand. I smashed them furiously into the
wall while my entire vision was full of this one spider gnashing its teeth into
my face. My hand was almost clear when I felt one of its legs pop through the
hole in the faceplate, and I stupidly began to shake my head violently as if I
could twist my face away from it.

The leg cut into my cheek far too close
to my eye and I felt a hot trickle of blood run down my face. Cass was yelling
something at me but I couldn’t hear anything in that moment. I gripped the body
of the crawler from behind. I saw my hand close around behind it and I pulled.
Its leg was stuck in the hole and I couldn’t get it away from my face. I
gritted my teeth together and yanked as hard as I could. Something snapped in
the thing’s leg and I tore the body of it away from my face, leaving the
disembodied leg still rooted in the hole.

I held the crawler up above my face. I
was seething, and the anger overtook me. Adam’s face flashed in my memory and I
crushed the crawler in my fingers. I screamed with rage. Its blood fell in
thick globs onto the faceplate and I didn’t care. I threw its dead body away
and saw that the rest of the crawlers had either fled or been crushed. The room
was layered with their bodies.

The sky was brighter. The sun was
rising. I plucked the leg out the visor and tossed it aside. I realized that I
was panting and Cass unsealed the faceplate from my helmet. I had survived the
night and I was grinning like a mad man. I was so filled with hate and anger
that it hurt, as if it turned my blood to acid in my veins.

I was grinning because I knew that one
day I’d feel that same intoxicating agony when I killed Adam.

* * *

We were a few days into the second day
cycle since we had been stranded on the planet. I had been eating what I could
scavenge off the remains of the rat animals that the crawlers had abandoned
when they attacked me. I had been able to get a few meals out of them before
they began to rot. The meat and the food I had found on the thieves would last
me for roughly a month, but I knew that I would run out of water before that.

“With the suit’s supplies and what you
found, I’d say you have maybe two more day cycles worth of water. No more than
that,” Cass explained.

“And the animals? Those things? There
must be some water source for them underground, or wherever they go when the
sun is up.”

“Yes, but without the proper equipment
it’s highly unlikely that we’ll find it.”

“What about this base? How did they get
their water?”

“I don’t have that information, Burke.
I’m sorry,” Cass sounded sad. She sounded sad a lot lately.

“This base must have had some way of
sustaining itself between supply runs. A moisture condenser? Or was it built
over an underground water source?”

“I don’t know.”

I let out a frustrated growl and began
to pace around the room. Cass had recently given me full control of the armor
except for the knee joint on my right leg. It was kept rigidly straight and
shifted awkwardly with each step. I must have looked ridiculous, like a
hobbling, injured robot.

“Show me the map you formulated of the
base when I attacked it with Adam,” I uttered his name in a growl.

She lowered the visor and displayed the
map of the surrounding area. The buildings were shown as they were before the
base had been bombed.