Page 66 of Them

He sat up, readjusting his aim, but before he could pull the trigger, the Scorpion’s stub tail hammered into his stomach, sending him careening through the air. He had just enough time to think This is what flying feels like before he crashed to the ground like a discarded rag doll. Something snapped in his left forearm as the wind fled his lungs. The pistol skittered away into the darkness, jarred loose by the impact. He gasped for air and tasted blood.

He figured he had two, three seconds before the Nightwalker struck again. Fleeting time to save his own damn life. Gritting his teeth, he sprang to his feet, prepared for fight and flight alike. His injured left arm dangled limp at his side as he raised his right hand in a fist.

But the Scorpion was gone.

Lane stood there in the falling rain, blinking his sweat-stung eyes, certain that he was hallucinating. Maybe he was already dead. But then his neck did a slow, painful turn over his shoulder, and he spotted the turbulent blue glow bounding off behind him, toward the White House.

Goddammit, he thought. It’s hell-bent on finding Tim. Can smell that we were inside even through all this rain. Just incredible.

Not bothering to search for the pistol, Lane sprinted across the lawn and into the bioluminescent wake of the three-legged serpent. Even in his prime, he’d have been pitifully slow compared with the injured titan. The Nightwalker had covered the length of a football field in just a handful of seconds; earthly creatures were not meant to keep up. By the time Lane was a third of the way there, the Scorpion had already begun to work.

It leapt for the Truman Balcony, leading with two poised claws and an open maw. The obsidian missile vaporized the stone columns on impact, then exploded into the building. The roof tumbled down in minivan-sized concrete chunks, but the creature brushed them off as easily as if it were the rain.

If Tim’s still in there…

No. He can’t be. He got out. He’s safe. He must be.

Because I have a job to do.

The Nightwalker marched forward, eviscerating the presidential residence, shoveling out heaps of furniture and drywall as it dug deeper, deeper, searching for the wicked scent that had wounded it. Searching for the creature it could not forgive.

Lane ducked as a metal filing cabinet soared over his head, its contents scattering in the breeze. To his surprise, Lane felt pangs of regret and anger as the hallowed building was picked apart. Plucks on heartstrings he thought he cut loose long ago.

“KKKKRRRRAAAAAAARRRRRRKKK!!!” the Nightwalker roared as it threw a piece of foundation into the Oval Office, erasing it in a matter of seconds. Zeus hammered the boulders of Olympus together, yet even his best efforts faltered compared with the raging beast below him. That old god of thunder would have fared better had he two Scorpion skulls instead; he may have deafened the world.

Lane limped toward the destruction, dust rising in the rain. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the round object he’d taken from his knapsack earlier.

Hidden in the overgrowth, shielded by rubble and rain, Lane crept beneath the obsidian tower that dwarfed him. Its leg alone must’ve curved twenty feet into the air. Despite the rest of the body’s rampage, the leg remained eerily still. In awe, he reached out and ran a hand along the sharp inner edge, tracing it as a chef would a cutting knife. The Nightwalker paid him no mind, as if it didn’t even notice him. A gnat on its back. Invisible. Inconsequential.

Rivulets of steaming rain streamed down the creature’s leg blade, trickling onto the back of Lane’s hand. An immense, pulsating body heat radiated out from the beast’s exoskeleton, like waves of warm ocean wind over a sun-blasted shore. He thought he could see his reflection in the shell. An equal and opposite reaction. Hate. Fear. Love. Beauty. Like directions on a compass.

Lane took another step beneath the beast’s underbelly and lifted the round object in front of him. His injured arm slowly reached for the grenade pin, and just as it was halfway there…

“LANE!”

Both he and the Scorpion whirled around in time to see a pistol flying through the air. Lane lunged forward and snatched it with one hand, only able to catch it thanks to the Nightwalker’s jack-o’-lantern eyes.

In front of the derelict water fountain, standing fifteen feet away, his clothes smeared in rat shit, shotgun in hand, stood Tim. “Don’t even think about it, old man!”

The Scorpion let loose a furious screech as it set its gaze on Tim and worked to free its javelins from the wreckage. “K’ORK KURRAA! K’ORK KURRAA! K’ORK KURRAA!!!”

Ears ringing, Lane ran out from under the anchoring leg as it began to spin and contort. The biological armor plating connected to the stalk turning and twisting as the molten flesh beneath it moved.

Tim fired at the Nightwalker’s head, buckshot haplessly exploding against the biometal.

“What’re you doing here?” Lane shouted with equal anger and confusion. Kid must’ve circled around the Treasury building. Concealed his scent with that same trick. “I told you to run!”

“Like you said…” Tim boasted a grin that was deliriously human. “Old friends have a way of turning up again.” His eyes suddenly flashed wide. “Duck!”

Lane hit the dirt as a scatter of pellets flew overhead and blasted into the crystal scabs over the Scorpion’s right eyes. The wound shattered, oozing with an alien ocean shimmer that lasted for but a second in the downpour.

The now-two-eyed alien swiveled and fixed Tim in its gaze… then it yanked itself free from what debris was left of the White House… and attacked.

The Nightwalker closed the gap in seconds. Tim sprinted away and threw himself to the ground as the Scorpion’s bladed leg clawed over his head, missing by mere inches.

“Run, dammit!” Lane shouted. Tim was maybe thirty yards away now, the Scorpion and the old fountain standing between them. “Just get the hell out of here!” Lane screamed, emptying the pistol’s magazine toward the final eerie lantern eyes. It didn’t matter if the tail deflected every bullet; he just needed to divert its attention.

Tim sat up and pumped another shell into the chamber. His presidential sweatpants were streaked with mud and wet rat feces. Long, soaked hair nearly covered his face. The wounds on his arm were bleeding again, red blossoms blooming in the bandages. But his hands were steady. And that was good.