Earth Man (26 page)

“
Humanity is compassionate. Let us help, you can both be together.”

“
Help?” The alien shouted. The soldiers were not speaking; they had no intention of taking anyone or anything alive.

“
Help by letting her out of this house of pain!”

             
Five of the soldiers had their guns aimed at the Second, only one covered Danny. The creature hissed at them and sprayed black spittle in their direction. One of them squeezed the trigger as he dodged the black bile and three bullets tore into the Second’s chest. One of the soldiers yelled for the others to cease fire and Danny removed his helmet.

“
Guys you have to run this thing is not going down that easy!” Danny shouted. They flashed their lights from the creature to Danny and back, unsure of what to do. Whatever their orders had been, they had not been prepared for what they’d found and the soldiers began to move backwards. One of them shouted into a microphone on his mask.

“
Get on the ground now!” One of them shouted at Danny, clicking the safety off his gun. Danny stepped back toward the wall, the Second was beginning to move around and Danny knew it was going to attack.

“
RUN! RUN!” Danny shouted.

Danny and the
Army Captain locked eyes and Danny saw no fear or compassion. The Second began to move and blood suddenly spurted from the soldier’s neck. The other men opened fire and the room exploded with the light from their gun barrels. Bullets tore up whatever was still standing in the already ruined laboratory and Danny moved as fast as he could toward the bulletproof plastic cell. One of the soldiers moved close to stop him and Danny disarmed him quickly, instinctively using the man as a human shield. Amazingly the Second fell over, the bullet wounds in its chest sending tiny curls of smoke into the air. The remaining soldiers suddenly turned their guns on Danny and he froze. The man in Danny’s arms was more calm than Danny expected and he felt terrible using the man as a hostage.

“
Easy guys! Come on now, okay, I’m one of the good ones okay?”

Danny placed his helmet on the ground and released
his prisoner. Instead of walking away the former hostage turned and slammed Danny against the wall, twisting his arm behind his back.

“
Whoah, easy okay! Hey!” Danny shouted.

As he pushed the man off him, the Second leaped to its feet. A long tentacle wit
h a razor sharp barb on the end flew toward Danny and he moved quickly out of the way. The razor nicked his right arm and caught the soldier as it recoiled, severing the man’s head clean off. The tentacle had grown from the center of the monster’s chest and it waved back and forth as it stalked the men. Their bullets ripped through the black flesh and still it continued relentlessly toward them. Its arms had split and spread into large praying mantis style claws and it tore through the men easily with them; grabbing them and crushing them open like walnuts. Danny formed an armoured carapace around himself and lunged for the red incineration button. The cell burst into flame, blinding everyone in the room. The First began to squeal and pop but the sound ended in a split second, the fire inside was hot enough to burn the corpse to ash in moments.

The Second screamed and walked toward him but there was still one soldier left alive. The remaining soldier shot at both of them and the Second hesitated, trying to d
ecide which one of them deserved to die first. The bullets from the M16 flattened against Danny’s red body armour but he still recoiled, leaning against the now hot plastic. The Second wrapped its tentacle around the man and lifted him into the air. It pulled him into its arms and it snapped him in half, easily breaking his spine. The alien stepped over the soldier but he was still alive and Danny saw the grenade in the soldier’s hand. All he could do was drop to the floor, hoping his armour would protect him. Rather than flee, the Second rammed its arm into the soldier’s chest, pushing it in deep up to the elbow. Its face was so distorted with rage it no longer resembled anything human. The power in the building came on just as the grenade exploded.

The fo
rce blew the Second across the room and took out a large portion of the ceiling above and the floor below it. The plastic cell took a large part of the blast and Danny was safe, but the cell had exploded and the heat and fire within created an inferno when it reacted with the force from the grenade. White halogen lights suddenly flickered on. The ceiling and floor began to collapse simultaneously where the grenade had exploded and Danny pushed himself across the floor, farther away from the flaming hole that had formed. Smoke began to fill the room and the air was rich with the smell of blood. Danny looked around for the alien but he could see nothing in the smoke and flame. Danny found his helmet on the floor while searching for another exit from the room. When he’d first spotted it he’d been startled by it, thinking its black surface was a part of one of the aliens. He was tense, his nerves were rattled and his heart was racing. The helmet was only slightly scuffed up one side and he put it on. Inside it his breathing was amplified, but he managed to calm himself down and look around at the wreckage. The temperature was rising fast from the fires in the room and he could hear exposed electrical wiring buzzing somewhere.

As he made his way back toward the ha
llway, Danny spotted the Second running through the flames. They both froze and Danny looked into its eyes. If the monster had a soul it was as black; there was no trace of anything resembling emotion. It was watching him curiously and Danny felt uncomfortable, like he was under a microscope. Even though he stood inches from chemical fuelled flames, the chill the creature’s gaze sent through him numbed him to the core. Danny had connected to every living thing on the planet and there was nothing like the creature that stood before him. It wore stolen parts, watched him with borrowed eyes, but there was nothing in it but hatred. Its body had shifted into a crab form and the long tentacle still grew from the center of its chest. It whipped the sharpened, barbed appendage at Danny but he tore it in half with tiger sharp claws made of red power. The power pulsed through him, granting him a whole new level of enhanced super human abilities. It was building up and he felt justified in using it, letting it loose.

             
“I like your face, hero man.” The Second rasped.

“
Come on and fight you ugly little bastard.” Danny retorted.

The creature scrambled to the right, looking as if it was going to charge. Instead it leapt sideways and smashed through the soft ceiling panels
. It was digging its way up and out and Danny was too slow to stop it. Something exploded in the room and the sealed windows blasted outwards. Danny could see the sun and he headed for it, letting the creature go its own direction. He caught a glimpse of fire fighters below before flying straight into the air, high over top of the burning building. Hitting the quarantine bubble, he swore to himself and prepared to tear through it. Then he realized there were people below, innocent people. The monster had escaped and it could have gone anywhere. The Growth was on the loose again in San Diego.

             
Danny continued to pull energy up from the Earth, invisible to anyone else but visible to him as a twisting bright red umbilical cord. It flowed up and around the building and washed over him. Floating on the energy wave, he closed his eyes and raised his left hand. As he spread his fingers open wide he pushed outwards with his power, sending his mind out into the city below him. The anger and frustration boiling inside him pushed his power to new levels, letting him connect and control it far better than he ever had before. New ideas raced through his brain, new ways of manipulating the life force he connected to.

Suddenly he could see through the eyes of every animal in the city and each of them looked for any glimpse of the Second. Hopping from body to body,
animal to animal, Danny saw every inch of the city. He thought he might have glimpsed it once or twice but it was too inefficient, most of the animals were hiding or comfortable at home. As useful as it was, they were not watching, not on guard, so Danny would have to find the alien another way.

Frustrated he opened his eyes and considered a simpler plan. He k
icked himself for not thinking of it sooner and then dived back into the burning building. The Second had left a big enough hole for him to drop back through and he scanned the room quickly. Flying above the flames, the entire place seemed considerably less unstable and dangerous than he’d thought it was just a moment before.

             
He borrowed the sense of smell from every animal in the city, finding the most natural level of power he could handle. Just as the influx of scents began to overwhelm him, he picked up the scent of the alien corpse still smouldering on the floor. The Second would smell identical to its mate, or at least as close as anything else on the planet would. It was easy enough for Danny to sniff it out; the air was rich with the scent of its burnt body. He opened the visor on his helmet and breathed in deep through his nose, getting as close and as low to the ground to the remains as he could. With all the dead bodies in the room and the burning toxic fumes Danny reached the limit of what he could tolerate and he raced back out of the building. The smell was oily and sickly, like fish and rotting tomatoes, it made him feel dirty to have it in his nose. As he flew out of the hole in the roof he just missed being doused by water as the building sprinkler system finally kicked in. The burst of steam that came out of the building helped push the scent up and out to him and he found the Second’s trail easily. It was so clear it was almost visible to him, like a trail of vapour suspended in the air. The Second had climbed down two stories and re-entered the building though another window. Danny flew into the window, the splintered broken glass barely scratching his leather outfit. There had been no attempt by the alien to be subtle; it had torn straight through the building offices and straight out the far wall. It had even tore a hole through the quarantine bubble, probably by leaping from the window and slashing straight through it. Danny flew through the torn tarp and out into the city.

             
Five blocks was as far as he got before a vision slammed into his mind. He’d experienced it twice before, but this time it was different, it had crept up on him slowly and then slammed full force into his conscious. Danny spun out of control, crashing into a building air conditioning unit. He’d felt the tingling as soon as he left the building but it struck so fast he was not prepared for it. As he lay curled upon the rooftop, he clutched his head in shock. It did not hurt him, not in the way it had before, but it was strange and unnerving.

Drawing his power inward, he tried to push back the images that were forcing themselves into his mind.
It was not the Earth communicating with him; it was the Growth. Somehow Danny had absorbed fragments of what was left of the dead alien, not just the scent but the essence of the creature itself. Even though it was clearly burnt to a husk, some spark of life had passed on through the cells and skin of it. When he’d breathed in the scent, he’d inhaled pieces of the monster and its memories were downloading into his brain. It had taken just a few minutes for his body to absorb it into his bloodstream and send it up to his brain. Yet it did not hurt him and Danny stopped fighting it, taking a breath as he sat against the air conditioner. Scanning the skyline to see if anyone was watching him, Danny sat firming with his back to the cold metal and he used his power to ease the vision in slowly. Using his Earth powers to control the flow Danny let the flood of memories through, witnessing the life of an alien who had come to destroy the human race.

Africa.
The two aliens were nothing more than separate parts of the same intelligent virus, slowly descending toward Africa inside burning meteorites. The heat did not bother them, not when they had no flesh. They were no larger than a snowflake, nothing more than spores floating through space. They had travelled together for a long, long, time. A species that shared one mind began to change into separate but inseparable entities.  Each of them began to think of the other as an appendage of itself; two beings amongst a species of millions were left alone and became a union of their own.

They landed together in a small village caught in the throes of a violent
uprising. By moving up the food chain they were able to get close to the humans who seemed to dominate the globe and then they had the bodies they needed. Armed men ran from hut to hut, dragging people out and murdering them in the night. The First managed to take the body of an injured woman as she lay face down in the mud. As the First merged with the dying human, it picked up her rage and anger and unleashed it on everyone within reach. Taking a human hostage, the First held the body while the Second infected him. Together they travelled Africa, biding their time, watching humanity at its most terrible. They watched massacres and murder occur with cold, silent fascination. African men and women tore each other apart in a variety of ways and the Growth watched and remembered it all.