Chris Randolph - Stars Rain Down

Albright caught on. She drew her survival knife and started tearing strips from a canvas sheet, then handed them to Jack, who balled them up and jammed them in the tops of the bottles. The Molotov cocktail was a weapon as old as the hills, and he’d seen first hand the kind of damage they could do to people. With any luck, the exterminators were just as susceptible.

“You’re not planning something stupid, are you hero?”

“Me?” Jack asked. “Hell no. I just want a fallback if things turn from bad to worse.”

“Roger that.”

She bounced off to scrounge a couple bottles of her own. Meanwhile, Jack peaked through the window, and could just see Hartnell and Cozar rushing through the building across the street with their rifles in hand. Jack grumbled that they needed to get down, and as if by remote control, they did.

An alien walker strutted up to their settlement and stopped at the far end of the street, beside the building where Jack’s team had been just moments before. In the distance, he could see other walkers had broken formation, and were milling around the other pockets of buildings.

The nearby walker bent its long legs and lowered its small body to the ground, which then split open down the middle like a pea-pod and released its contents. Jack counted eight rhinos and ten jackrabbits flooding into the street, just as he expected. The creatures split up once on the ground. That was out of the ordinary, according to briefings. The exterminators always worked in packs.

The empty walker lifted back up to its normal height and began to pace the perimeter of the neighborhood. Albright returned around that time, hunched over an armload of various glass bottles. “What’s going on out there?” she whispered.

“Not sure. I thought they were after us, but this is way too much for seven sets of boots and a jeep. That doesn’t look like a combat formation, either.”

“Just a coincidence then?”

“Maybe. Dunno.”

“Christ, we have the worst luck.”

Each of the exterminators entered a building alone. If they knew about unfriendlies on location, that might work as a search pattern, but it was a reckless one that would rack up unnecessary casualties. Jack had trouble believing they were that careless. Never underestimate the enemy, and all that jazz.

Then he waited. The thump of the rhinos’ massive feet echoed through the streets, and the jackrabbits made their strange tittering noises. Jack figured it was some kind of language, but it sounded like random clicks and yelps to him. Maybe there was still a linguist somewhere who could make heads or tails of it.

The exterminators started to return after half an hour. They came with armloads of something Jack couldn’t quite make out, and then would head back out to search for more. Their bounty was bright and colorful, whatever it was, and they built a pile where they’d been dropped off. He could only imagine the same was happening all over the Gaza Strip.

He suddenly realized he’d lost track of the walker, and found it again as it passed within feet of his window. Both he and Albright ducked and silently lipped curses as the alien vehicle filled their view and lumbered casually by. That was the closest look he’d gotten at one of their vehicles, and every feature reinforced the feeling that it was a living, breathing creature of its own. Jack had no idea what to make of that, so he filed the thought away for later.

He considered using the Molotov while the walker was in range, but put the idea out of his head as quickly as it appeared. With the way his luck had been, the walker would shrug off the flames, and then proceed to tear him to pieces with its anti-infantry guns.

He raised his head up for another look around and caught motion from the corner of his eye. It was Cozar standing in the window across the street, waving his arms like a madman. He was trying to get Jack’s attention. When Jack signaled back, Cozar pointed down toward the ground floor and mouthed some words. Jack wasn’t too great at reading lips, but managed to pick out, “Get down. They’re coming.”

It clicked. Jack grabbed the back of Albright’s poncho, scrambled across the floor and slid into the pile of parts and debris. They found a small hollow and pulled a loose ventilation grate down for cover. It was only a few seconds before they heard footsteps in the stairwell, and then one of the jackrabbits marched into the room.

The little bastard looked left and right carefully as he entered, then hopped and slowly walked across the floor. For a second, he looked like he was about the turn and leave, but then he saw the two rows of Molotovs sitting on the floor.

Jack cursed his stupid rookie mistake. As quietly as he could, he clicked his rifle’s fire selector over to fully automatic, and got ready to gun the creature down.

The jackrabbit crouched down and looked at the bottles. He put his ornate long-rifle behind his back where some kind of clamp automatically latched onto it, then he picked up and examined one of the bottles.

Jack had never been one for prayer, so he hoped Albright was gripping her crucifix for both of them.

Then the jackrabbit lifted up his black mask and revealed the all-too-human face beneath. His mouth and nose were small, angular and elegant, in contrast with the huge, expressive eyes that took up half his face. He lifted the bottle to his nose, took a sniff and winced, then put the bottle back down and replaced his mask.

He took one more look around the empty room and left.

“Son of a bitch,” Jack said. He’d been holding his breath the whole time.

Albright said, “I coulda killed him. Knifed him. It would’ve been easy.” The little doctor was always full of surprises.

“And when he didn’t return, we’d have to deal with the rest of the pack.”

“True.”

They waited another ten minutes before climbing back out of their hole, during which time Jack didn’t hear any gunfire, screaming, or any activity what-so-ever. It was a good bet his people were still alive.

The exterminators’ strange hunt went on through the afternoon, and at the end they sorted their findings into stacks. Jack and Albright watched from the safety of their high window the entire time, only occasionally forced to duck as the walker again strolled by.

Then, as dusk approached, the aliens loaded their bounty into the lowered walker, mounted up and left. Two rhinos and a single jackrabbit stayed behind, probably to make space for the cargo and wait for the next ride.

Jack had no intention of staying overnight.

A couple minutes past sundown on the Gaza Strip, the sky was blue-grey and the last shred of light was in its death-throes when Jack heard the jeep’s horn in the distance. There were two quick honks and then silence. A cattle call.

The three exterminators at the far end of the street reacted immediately. The two rhinos made short, deep grunts between each other. The jackrabbit’s long pointed ears pricked up, then it pointed one of its long, clawed fingers across the fields to the East.

The exterminators conversed for a few, then turned and headed to investigate, with the jackrabbit bounding out ahead and the rhinos lumbering behind. They disappeared into the distance, and several seconds passed before a rifle shot rang out, followed by a pained and plaintive cry.

Jack and Albright hit street-level and scurried from cover to cover, Cozar and Hartnell meeting them along the way. They moved down one side of the street with their weapons at the ready, and returned to the three story building that’d previously been their camp.

There, they found Nikitin on the top floor with his back against the wall, next to the hole that had been his lookout. “Stay down,” he said, “They didn’t see me, and I aim to keep it that way. I clipped the little one, but it wasn’t a kill.”