Chapter Thirty-One

THE ENGINEERS’ DISAPPOINTMENT soon faded. Ice bombs might have been rejected, but as they demonstrated how to change nitrogen tanks, they remembered their original enthusiasm. And, after a few more temperature-themed puns, all seemed well again.

Then the long wait began. Granges and Russell took up positions in chambers down the hall, lying in wait to spring a trap on the first unlucky cannibals who ventured into the ship. A deadly zeal filled the civilians, and they took up places behind the barricades. Even Robinson and Michelle heard the excitement and joined in. Matt followed shortly thereafter, though he looked like he shouldn’t be on his feet, much less preparing for battle.

Lee made the most of the opportunity presented by three new warriors and repeated his demonstration.

The hours dragged by as the cannibals prepared for another attack outside the ship, and we waited inside. After the sun set, the reddish glow of fires sprang up outside. Shadows, great and numerous, flitted about beyond the ship. The sound of song and merriment continued as if our attackers were throwing a party and not preparing for a second deadly siege.

Dusk turned into dark, and the long wait seemed to have the opposite effect on those of us in the ship. We grew quieter and more apprehensive until you could feel the tension in the air. Even the professor, who had seemed to channel his fear into overt bloodlust, started to revert to his former jumpy state.

And then it came: a wave of bodies, emerging against the backdrop of fire and night.

Caspersen and Matt were back at the gun, but they held off firing. The cannibals raced down the hall, heading unawares toward Ghoul’s pod. The door burst open, and a stream of death engulfed the attackers.

The cannibals turned to ice statues before us as easily as the moss had done earlier. Lee hollered with delight.

At the same time as our side cheered, the Keplerites had to react to both an ambuscade as well as a new and terrible weapon. A few faltered and fell. But then horror turned to fury—and that fury turned on Russell.

It was my job to make sure no one got a chance to do anything about it. Caspersen had given me her M24 sniper rifle for that express purpose, and I watched the entanglement go down through the scope.

Russell had no problem disposing of those nearest him. My focus remained on those who wielded ranged weapons—anyone with a spear or a dart who looked like they might take a shot.

Crack.

Crack.

Crack.

I worked the bolt as quickly as I could, dropping targets as soon as they came into view. The sound ripped through the air, echoing off the walls of the ship, high above the cries of the cannibals. The gun’s precision was incredible, and I made every shot count.

Russell, meanwhile, started to retreat, heading back to the barricades. The cannibals followed with a dogged determination to survive long enough to finish off the man capable of delivering a blast of icy death.

They clearly weren’t expecting Granges to spring the same trap on them because he, too, took them by surprise when he emerged from his pod. He waited until Russell and a goodly horde of cannibals had passed and then unleashed a stream of death on the crowd. Cries of surprise and horror mixed with anger.

The engineers whooped with joy as they watched from behind the barricades. The two men worked in unison, the first taking full advantage of the sudden confusion the second’s appearance wrought on their attackers. The cannibals split, some turning back to face Granges and some focusing still on Russell. Between the two, and with my own judicious application of .308s, we left no one alive.

While I maintained covering fire, Granges wove his way between the human icicles to join Russell. They’d managed to put good distance between themselves and any living cannibals and made cover long before the attackers got close to them.

That was when Caspersen and Matt unleashed the full fury of the machine gun. The horrors of these past days, and everything leading up to this final battle, had impressed themselves so deeply on my mind that the sense of unfairness I’d once felt at such sights had long since vanished. On the contrary, every instinct for self-preservation, and every blood-thirsty impulse that those instincts generated, jumped into overdrive. Fair play and sportsmanship be damned. The Keplerites meant to kill and eat us, and maybe to skin us and wear it as their own. I’d take any advantage I could against that.

Body after body dropped. Now and then, a bullet tore through the frozen corpses Granges or Russell had left behind, shattering them into a thousand, icy shards. I was numb to anything but grim satisfaction and vague hope. Every downed cannibal, every dropped foe, kept that flicker of possibility alive.

And for a while, I thought that hope might not be misplaced. The crowd thinned under fire, and reinforcements did not appear. In a minute, Caspersen had cleared the hall. No one followed.

Rodgers and Madison burst into cheering, and the professor shouted challenges to the “cannibalistic cowards.”

But I felt, instinctively, that something was off. It wasn’t this easy; it couldn’t be. They’d already proved earlier today they wouldn’t stop, not even after heavy losses. They’d taken all day to mount a second attack. There was no chance, my mind kicked in, that they’d abandon it this easily.

“Quiet,” Caspersen called.

My heart sank. She feels it too, then. The end of the hall remained unobstructed, and for all that we could see, we were utterly alone in this ship—alone, save the dead that had fallen here and frozen there. But now and again noises, a distant thump or a metallic squealing sounded. Which meant we were not so alone as it appeared.

I couldn’t say how long this new wait lasted, although I suspected it was only a matter of minutes. At the time, it seemed interminable. The civilians, many of whom had initially believed themselves to be witnesses to a quick victory, sat quiet and tense. But no more so, I think, than the rest of us. The occasional crack, crack of Kayleigh’s nails was about the only sound emanating from our side. We all waited with bated breath.

The clangs and scrapes from the open end of the ship continued. Whatever our cannibal friends were up to, they were clearly working industriously at it.

I scanned that end of the ship through my scope, back and forth, over and over. And finally, I got a first glimpse of what they’d been up to. From one of the farthermost pods, nearest the breach in the ship, a glint of steel appeared.

At first, I watched in confusion as a three-or-four-foot-tall silvery strip grew, stretching in length until it was a good six feet long. Then another snaked out from a pod opposite it, and I noticed a clear patch running about a third of the length of the panel. Through this, I saw legs and knees, all crouched low. Glass.

“Shit,” I shouted. “They’re using the pod doors as shields.” The clanging and scraping made sense now. The pods had been designed to be easily dissembled, with quick release mechanisms wherever possible; it was how we’d been able to set up our own barricades so quickly. And these fuckers must have learned from that.

Seeing our barriers must have inspired them to take pod doors as shields of their own. And the charge we’d so congratulated ourselves on? That had been nothing more than a distraction, so a few of them could slip into the pods unnoticed.

They advanced slowly, crouched behind a set of doors designed to withstand just about anything. There wasn’t a round in our possession that could pierce them.

“Johnson, put a bullet in anything that shows itself above or below those doors,” Caspersen directed.

I nodded, watching through my scope. They were carrying the doors low to the ground and kept themselves crouched behind them. But every once in a while, the silhouette of a foot appeared in the gap between the invincible shield and floor.

I didn’t miss an opportunity. Through the slits of glass, men went down when my shots hit, and occasionally, the shields faltered. But though my hits caused plenty of podiatric pain among the cannibals, they never ran out of reinforcements to replace the downed. And the advance continued.

Caspersen, meanwhile, had sized up the situation and was reacting accordingly. “Cohen, Granges, over there. Russell, Connor, there. Their shields will have to come down when they reach our barricades, there’s not enough room to get past. Do not let them survive that. Civilians, to the rear. Stay behind cover. Engage only if they get close enough. Do not go out to meet them.”

Orders given, she turned her focus toward the gun. The Genesis rested at a downward angle, which meant that as the shield walls advanced farther down the tunnel, it exposed the rear of the cannibal force, where the elevation was higher. Because of the angle, we could see their heads and upper torsos above the pod doors, even though they kept low.

Caspersen and Matt took full advantage of that and poured round after round into the cannibal flank. I, meanwhile, did everything I could to take out the shield bearers. The rest of the soldiers and Marines joined, doing what they could with their own rifles.

But our best efforts succeeded only in slowing them.

We soon encountered another difficulty as well. We could do a little with our rifles to slow their advance, but the gun chewed through the reinforcements with a vengeance. Which was great—except Caspersen’s ammo supply had been low when we started. Before long, we heard the call we’d all been dreading. “I’m on my last belt.”

Fuck. I tried not to dwell on what we were going to do once we lost our most effective weapon. Instead, I focused on putting holes in any extremities that revealed themselves behind the pod doors. The best opportunities came when the shields reached a pile of bodies. They couldn’t be dragged along at the level of the floor but had to be lifted above the fallen. I was happy to add more bodies to those piles.

Still, the makeshift shield wall advanced, and then the inevitable click. The M60 was out of ammo. Caspersen and Matt took up battle rifles and kept pouring rounds into the incoming cannibal horde. But without the machine gun to slow them down, the hall soon overflowed with advancing bodies.

The steady advance of the pod doors picked up its pace as the stampede increased behind it. Our attackers hadn’t reached them yet, but they were close to our barriers now.

And then their progress stopped all of a sudden, and half a dozen forms darted upward, launching dark, oval shapes with them. They resembled tiny footballs, hurtling toward us.

Someone called out, “Grenade.”

The shape made sense then, and I wondered at how the cannibals had acquired weaponry of that sort. The wall resumed its advance even as my eyes traced the progress of these projectiles. One fell short, its trajectory arrested by a bullet that reached its thrower a second before release. Caspersen and Matt fell back as another angled for the machine gun nest. A third headed in my direction, flying high enough to pass over me but not high enough to pass by the civilians.

“Kayleigh!”

She’d taken cover below one of the pod doors we’d erected as a barrier, and right now, she was directly in the path of the grenade. Instinct rather than conscious thought propelled me to my feet. I reached her a second before impact and threw the full force of my weight against her.

She went sprawling back, and I felt the grenade land against my back. I had the fleeting thought that she would be safe, and I would take the brunt of the explosion. And then pain ripped through my sides and back, like a thousand jabs of flame.

But no explosion came. I registered the professor yelling. I couldn’t see much of anything. Pain blinded me, and I tried to crawl away. Then the sound of a pressurized spray came somewhere behind me. A blast of icy wind, far too close for comfort, chilled me to the bone.

“Nikkole…” Kayleigh had reached me.

At the same time, I was vaguely aware of the professor cackling with delight, “Take that, you fuckers.”

“Nikkole, are you okay?” Kayleigh said again.

I found, to my surprise, I hadn’t died. I was still very much alive and in a considerable amount of pain. “What the hell was that?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“Some kind of nest, it looks like,” she said. “Like a hornet’s nest. Are you okay?”

“They’re dead now,” the professor added. “Froze the little bastards.”

My back still felt like it was on fire, but I tried to push myself up. The first attempt failed, and I would have face-planted on the floor if not for Kayleigh catching me. The second time, I got to my feet. “Stay back,” I warned, again through my teeth.

I ignored the concern in her expression and headed back to my post, past the now crystallized nest and the dozens of frozen insect bodies lying beside it. The cannibals had dropped their shield now, and a great flood of them washed over our barriers. Most of the military had switched to ice throwers. I drew Death from its holster and pressed forward to provide supporting fire.

My back and shoulders protested with every movement, and more than once, my vision clouded from the sheer intensity of the pain. I had a vague fear I might pass out and be left alive when the cannibals overran us. I gritted my teeth and focused on finding targets.

Cohen and Russell were in the forefront, their two ice throwers working in unison to stop anything that got near them dead in its tracks. Spears and other ranged weapons flew past them though. As before, I turned my attention to those attackers.

I ran through my first magazine, and then a second. Cohen and Russell fell back to swap out tanks; Connor and Granges took the lead.

Still, the cannibals showed no signs of stopping. It didn’t seem to matter how many of their fellows turned to ice before their eyes, or how many, screaming and terrified, found limbs suddenly frozen and inoperable. It didn’t matter how many lost their lives to gunfire or dropped with gaping holes punched through.

They kept coming, line after line.

They were near enough to see their faces now, to see the light of the moons and the fires outside reflected in their wild eyes. Caspersen and Matt, I could see, were still firing; I was running out of magazines.

I picked up my own ice thrower and pressed forward. We were slowly retreating. Despite our best efforts, the cannibals had been advancing faster than we could kill them.

The pain that had started in my shoulders and back had reached throughout my body, and my head throbbed with agony. My senses seemed dull, my thoughts lethargic. I knew one thing, and not much more than that: I—and all these people—were not long for this world. I had come here frozen and lost, and now I would leave it in a fever of agony.

Frankly, it pissed me off.

I turned on a jet of liquid nitrogen and drove forward into the cannibals. I wasn’t going to go out afraid and retreating. I wouldn’t wait and watch them turn to ice as they came at me. I’d bring death straight to those fuckers. They weren’t going to put me on the menu without working for it. No, when I went out, it would be with my boots on, taking out as many of them as I could.

I pushed past the frozen forms and made my way through the bodies at my feet. I think I was screaming as I went. I heard someone call my name, but I picked up my pace. I knew Caspersen and the rest of the team would try to stop me. But I couldn’t allow myself to be stopped.

Connor and Granges followed, the three of us charging the advancing cannibals. Spears flew all around us. Here and there a bullet tore through a Keplerite in our path, indicating that Caspersen and Matt hadn’t slacked off at all.

I was aware of being ghoulishly delighted with the destruction my ice thrower inflicted. I think I had half a mind to run all the way through the hall, freezing everyone in my path. I wasn’t entirely sure, though, because I was definitely more than half out of my mind at the moment.

Which was why I missed a rather glaring flaw in my plan—I would run out of liquid nitrogen long before I reached the end of the hall. Which, in the event, was exactly what happened. The stream of pressured nitrogen dwindled and then petered off completely. And my pain-induced euphoria turned to fear, and fear to panic.

Whipping Death out again, I started emptying my last magazine into the cannibals as I beat a hasty retreat. I was just about to take to my heels in flight when I saw that Cohen and Russell were barely three steps behind me.

“Swap your damned tank,” Ghoul shouted, brushing past me to deal with the descending wave.

Whether it was the rush of adrenalin at realizing how close I’d come to death, or if the hornets’ poison had finally started to clear, I don’t know. But something in the encounter roused my brain from its lethargy. I fell back to swap out tanks, more than a little amazed I’d survived such a bout of idiocy.

The engineers, as it happened, already had a refueled ice thrower ready, and trading this for my own, I returned. Cohen and Russell had fallen back to our first barrier, where we were better positioned than we had been in the midst of the hall.

Several of the civilians—inspired, I’m ashamed to say, by my recklessness—followed me to this barricade. Among them was the professor.

For a minute, he ducked behind the pod door, shaking at every shot, jumping every time a spear or dart flew overhead. And then, as if having mounted the requisite courage, he leaped to his feet, screaming wildly and spraying a steady stream of liquid nitrogen in the general direction of the cannibals.

He didn’t stop until he had emptied his tank—which was rather sooner than he should have, as he’d cranked the valve to its most open position. Then, after throwing the tank to the ground, he pulled his pistol.

For all of his enthusiasm, the professor’s real effectiveness lay with the liquid nitrogen rather than pistol. Still, he managed to take a few cannibals down before he ran out of ammo.

Even then, though, he hadn’t finished. Darting for the nearest spear, he seemed intent on leaping over the barricade to throw himself into the midst of the fray. And he might well have done it had not Connor caught up his arm and said, “Jesus! Easy. Get some more nitrogen.”

Working together, civilians and military alike, we managed to hold the first barricade for some time before sheer force of numbers drove us back to the second. During this retreat, Russell took a full hit from a Keplerite spear.

Kayleigh dragged him behind cover to do what she could. The rest of us were so intent on surviving we hardly noticed, except to register we were now down in numbers. We’d spent most of our ammo and gone through quite a number of the nitrogen tanks.

And somewhere in all of this, day had started to break. A dim light filled the ship, illuminating the grim reminders of what it had cost to stay alive so far—what it had cost and what our own eventual fates would be.

Still, the battle raged on. The cannibals poured into the ship as eagerly as they’d ever done, cutting through the frozen remains of their companions, when necessary, in their haste to get to us.

We hadn’t admitted defeat yet, but they had won. They knew it, and we knew it.

Still, as far as I was concerned, these sons of bitches were going to have to work for their meat today. Not even I anticipated just how hard though.

We all heard it at about the same time, some ten or so minutes after Russell had been wounded—a high, loud sound from outside, like a martial chorus. Our party recognized it vaguely, but the cannibals seemed to know it immediately.

Indecision struck our attackers, with some at the rear of the ship spinning around to vacate the premises. Even those who didn’t turn to leave threw a furtive glance toward the outdoors before continuing the assault. All at once, the swarm of bodies that had been pouring through the entry to our ship vanished.

We fought with renewed vigor at this, sensing some inexplicable shift in the winds. Explanation was not long in coming, for the strange chorus we’d heard gave way to the sounds of battle.

Or, more precisely, less battle, and more massacre.

Nor did the cannibals miss it, or the import. Those who remained turned tail and fled. In the course of a few minutes, we’d gone from facing certain death at the hands of cannibals to seeing our attackers run for their own lives. What this portended for our survival, however, was a mystery. Who—or what—was attacking our attackers, and what did they have in mind for us?