Scott Sigler - Ancestor

Silence.

“What good is Colding to me if he’s dead?”

“He’s not dead,” Magnus said. “He’s standing right—”

A gunshot roared out. Colding felt a sledgehammer slam into his chest. He instinctively jerked backward. His feet caught on a pew and he toppled into Magnus. Colding landed on his right side, then flopped facedown and didn’t move.

MAGNUS SLID HIS body half under a pew, hoping the .40-caliber bullets couldn’t punch through it. Another shot rang out—the bullet smacked into the frozen, rotted wood.

“What do you think of that, Magnus?” the loft shadows called out. “Now you ain’t got jack shit to trade, you sick fuck!”

He popped up from behind the pew and opened fire on the choir loft. The wood railing came apart in a shower of splinters. Sara popped up in yet another new spot—Magnus ducked back down just as she fired again.

SARA STAYED ON her belly, shooting between the spokes of the choir loft’s rail. The madly flickering firelight made it hard to target Magnus, who kept crawling around under the pews and popping up to spray the loft with bullets. Sara could barely breathe from the smoke. She had two shots left, maybe three—dammit, she’d lost count.

I shot him. He WANTED me to shoot him .

Colding had to be wearing a bulletproof vest; that was the only reason he would want her to do it. Shooting him had robbed Magnus of the human shield, and in a twisted way taken Colding out of danger. She silently prayed that she hadn’t somehow misunderstood his signals—that she hadn’t just killed the man she loved.

Sara pushed herself back from the loft’s edge so that she was out of Magnus’s line of sight. She rolled several times to her left. Had to keep moving. A burning feeling shot up her leg. She kicked, knocking away a smoldering piece of rafter. Flames crawled across the ceiling above her. Sara rolled a few more times, carrying her away from the hot spot. She lay flat and eased herself back to the loft’s edge.

Colding coughed. A thin stream of spit and blood landed on his chin. It felt like someone had driven a baseball bat through his chest. He slid a hand under his bulletproof vest. It hurt, hurt like a bitch, but his fingers came away without blood. The blood in his mouth, it seemed, came from the lip he’d bitten through.

He looked under the pews, the only vantage he had from his prone position. He couldn’t see Magnus. Pieces of burning rafters dropped every few seconds, little meteors plunging down. Some of the pews danced with fire, some were just smoldering. Flames wiggled across the warped wooden floor. Acrid smoke expanded through the church, choking out oxygen and stinging his eyes.

Colding rose to his knees and peeked over the pew. With this much cover, Magnus could be hiding only a few feet away. Colding knew he had to make a run for the altar and the loft stairs, had to reach Sara, but Magnus could cut him down with ease.

Behind him, the tall, heavy, double doors swung open and smashed against the inside wall, flooding the burning church with morning light. A dozen yellow sail fins rose above the pews, spreading out, moving forward.

The pain in his chest forgotten, Colding stood, rounded the pew’s corner, and sprinted for the altar.

WHEN HE HEARD the big doors slam open, Magnus peeked out from behind the altar’s thick crucifix. Through the shimmering heat haze and the growing smoke cloud, he saw a dozen nightmares trot into the church—muscles thick like lions on steroids, massive heads with jaws wider and longer than a crocodile’s, strange yellow dorsal sail fins flipping up and down in twitching anticipation.

Movement on his left. Human movement. Colding, up and sprinting for the right edge of the altar. Drop him, remove a variable, move on to the rest. Magnus brought up the MP5.

I’VE GOT YOU now, fucker .

Sara had seen Magnus hide behind the thick crucifix, then watched and waited for her shot. In a brief moment of total awareness, the world slowed and she saw everything: the monsters spreading out through the church, Colding sprinting for the stairs, Magnus coming around the cross and raising the MP5.

She squeezed the trigger. Just before it clicked home, a burning chunk of rafter fell onto her leg, pulling her aim slightly to the right…

…THE .40-CALIBER BULLET tore a huge chunk out of the old crucifix, spraying splinters into Magnus’s cheek. He ducked back, his face consumed with pain. He popped around the other side and fired a wild burst, hoping to hit Colding, but the man disappeared up the stairwell. Magnus looked to his right, back out into the church. Maybe twenty of them. Some sprinted up the main aisle, some crawled over the moldy, smoldering pews—all wanted to get him. Magnus moved out from behind the cross and shuffle-stepped toward the stairs, opening up with the MP5. The one closest to him fell hard, blood spurting from a half-dozen fresh bullet holes, but there were so many of them…

SARA FINISHED SMACKING the flames on her pant leg, then looked over the edge of the choir loft for another shot. Her eyes stung from the smoke. She fought back a cough. Magnus was shuffling to his left, toward the stairs, his attention occupied by the wave of sail-finned land sharks sprinting for him. No cover for him this time. She raised the gun, a part of her brain telling her it felt funny even as she did.

The slide had locked back.

Empty.

She holstered the weapon and ran for the bell-tower ladder.

BREATH RAGGED FROM stress and exertion, Colding cleared the final stair step. The thicker smoke up on the choir loft made him cough violently. Through the black clouds, he saw Sara at the other end of the loft, her feet on the bottom rung of a metal ladder.

“Peej, come on! Up here!”

Colding ran to the ladder and started up, hoping against all hope that Sara knew what she was doing.

MAGNUS FLEW UP the stairs, firing blindly behind himself until the MP5 clicked on empty. As he ascended he tried to pop in a fresh magazine, but the narrow staircase made it hard to bring the gun around while taking the steps two at a time. The wooden stairs shook from something even larger than he was.

He had almost cleared the last step when that something hit him from behind. His face cracked into the choir loft’s stone floor. The MP5 skidded free. The fresh magazine flew out of his hand, rebounded off the wall and skittered over the loft’s edge to fall among the burning pews below.

A slashing pain seared up the back of his left leg.

Magnus rolled to his back, cocked his right leg and kicked with all his power. He felt his foot smash against solid muscle, against skin and bone. The creature roared with anger and pain. In a single motion, Magnus sat up and slid his feet beneath him, leaving him with knees bent, fingers on the floor, weight on his toes. The big animal recovered from the kick, reared back and charged up the final five stairs. Magnus shot forward, ducking under the jaws and driving his shoulder into the monster’s throat. The impact shuddered through him, far worse than any hit he’d suffered in the CFL, but enough to keep the creature’s body trapped in the narrow stairwell. Sliding off the impact, Magnus moved to the right and locked his thick arms around the ancestor’s barrel-like neck, left arm underneath, right arm over the top. Its big body thrashed against the stairwell walls, blocking the way for the others.

Magnus let loose his own savage, primitive roar and squeezed with all his power. The muscular monster thrashed its head back and forth, trying to bring its jaws around for the killing bite, but the stairwell kept it from turning. Magnus timed a thrash left, a pause, a thrash right, a pause, then slid his left hand farther up and jabbed his thumb into the monster’s right eye. He pushed the thumb in deep and hooked it, using the inside of the orbital bone like a handle. The giant head pulled away, jaws snapping clack-clack-clack , trying to back up, but its pack mates blocked the stairs behind it.