Scott Sigler: Ancestor

“Aw, fuck ya,” Clayton said, and held the trigger tight. Twenty-five rounds ripped out in less than three seconds. The creature’s skull disintegrated in a cloud of brain and bone and blood. It fell forward, momentum sliding the dead body over the snow until the mangled head mashed up against Ted Nugent’s front right tread.

Clayton reloaded with a full magazine and looked for a new target. The monsters now kept their distance, keeping to the shadows or behind smaller fires where the intense heat distorted their visages into shimmering, demonic ghosts. Most of the creatures stayed a good twenty yards back, feasting on the corpses of their fallen pack mates with a savage, shaking desperation.

Clayton looked up the church tower. Peering down over the edge were the joyous, shouting faces of Colding, Sara and Tim.

Colding watched Clayton crawl out of the roof hatch. The old man’s face wrinkled with agony, but he moved as quickly as he could and climbed into the rear section. Colding would have never thought Clayton Detweiler beautiful, but seeing him riding up in that lift bucket, an Uzi dangling from a strap around his neck, he could have been Miss America, Miss Universe and the Playmate of the Year all rolled into one fabulous farting package.

The bucket reached the turret. Colding reached out and grabbed Clayton’s shoulder. “You’re one mean old bastard! You saved us!”

Clayton pushed his hand away, then gave Colding the Uzi. “I’m fuckin’ done. Where’s Gary?”

“I saw him last night,” Sara said. “He took off on his snowmobile. The monsters were chasing him, but… I don’t know if he got away.”

Clayton sagged. Colding stepped into the bucket and slid under the man’s arm, keeping him up. Sara got in next, then helped the crutch-wielding Tim do the same. Four people made for a tight fit. Colding worked the simple controls, lowering the bucket to the Bv.

Ancestors darted around but didn’t make themselves an easy target. Some lurked just inside the tree line, some hid behind burning wreckage. They were smart enough to block roads, smart enough to use protective cover. He couldn’t assume they would behave like animals at all.

Sara scrambled out of the bucket and into the Bv’s open rear section, then hopped over the side and ran for the driver’s door. Colding helped Tim out of the lift bucket, across to the front section and down into the rear hatch. Clayton crawled out of the bucket on his own, but the old man’s left leg looked bad. His snow pants stuck out at a strange angle, anchored by one bloody point. A compound fracture. Colding watched him slide through the rear hatch, trying to imagine just how tough Clayton Detweiler had been to hold that pain in check long enough to rescue them all.

Movement, rustling. The ancestors, getting closer.

Colding dropped to the ground and ran to the passenger-side door. He climbed in and stuck his head out the front hatch, just as he’d seen Clayton do.

An ancestor rushed the Bv from the right. Colding brought up the Uzi and ripped off a hurried burst. Some of the bullets went wide, but at least two hit the thing in the chest. It stopped, skidding slightly, twitching like a kid just stung by a bee. Colding ripped off two more bursts as the thing scrambled off. He wasn’t sure if he hit it or not.

Clayton reached up and handed Colding a fresh magazine. “Last one,” he said. “Don’t waste it.”

One full magazine, a second maybe half empty… about forty-five rounds total.

“Hold tight,” Sara said. She drove the Nuge away from the church inferno. The town square looked like a war zone cluttered with twisted metal wreckage, every building burning bright.

Colding felt a tug on the bottom of his tattered parka. He looked down. Tim handed up a green canvas bag. Colding looked in the bag with several quick peeks, not taking his eyes off the surroundings for more than a second at a time. Two, no, three pounds of Demex. About two dozen detonators. His heart leaped when he saw four magazines, but it sank again when he realized they were for Magnus’s MP5, which was somewhere in the burning church.

Sara pointed the Bv northeast. With his head sticking out of the hatch, buffeted by the wind, the town roaring with flames and the Bv’s diesel happily gurgling away, Colding had to scream to be heard.

“Sara, where are you going?”

“The harbor! Gary’s boat might still be there. And this thing is low on fuel. We probably can’t reach the mansion, so the harbor it is.”

She didn’t wait for an answer, she just drove. She managed to avoid most of the Sikorski’s wreckage. The pieces she couldn’t avoid, she simply ran over. The Nuge bounced along as it rolled over twisted metal and through small fires.

Sara drove out of the town and onto the road, thick snow-covered woods on either side, the harbor maybe a mile away.

Three ancestors rushed from the woods on the left. Colding fired off a quick burst at the leader. The monster slowed but kept coming. He let off another three-shot burst. One of the bullets caught the ancestor in the eye. It fell to the ground, thrashing and shaking its head as if it were being electrocuted. Its two companions stopped, looked at the retreating vehicle for a few seconds, then turned and attacked their fallen comrade. Within seconds, three more creatures joined the brutal feeding frenzy. The fallen ancestor fought desperately, lashing out with long claws and drawing blood several times, but finally fell still, its corpse torn asunder and swallowed in giant chunks.

Colding had never dreamed such savagery existed. For the first time he wondered if these things could breed. And if they could, and they got off the island… well, quite frankly, that wasn’t his fucking problem. Someone with a higher pay grade could sweat it. He just wanted to get these people to safety.

The ancestors kept up the pursuit, running parallel to the Bv but staying in the trees. They were like shadows in the deep woods; a flash of white, the reflection of a beady black eye, but little more. Every hundred yards or so, one of the critters grew bold and attacked. Colding waited until they got so nerve-rackingly close he couldn’t miss. He bagged one with a lucky head shot, the bullet likely bouncing around inside the skull and ripping the brain to shreds. The other ones acted little more than annoyed at the bullets—they’d rush, take a few rounds, then turn and dart back into the woods. He didn’t need an Uzi… he needed a fucking cannon .

The wind swept in from the beach at twenty miles per hour. With the Nuge driving straight into it, Colding suffered severe windchill on top of twenty-below weather. His face stung. His ears and nose felt numb.

Sara’s steady forward progress started to outlast the ancestors’ short sprints. At the half-mile point, the monsters fell behind. That would buy a few precious moments at the dock.

They topped the dune and rolled down the other side, the wide-open expanse of a roiling Lake Superior spreading out to the horizon. Colding saw Gary’s snowmobile near the dock. He also saw the Otto II . It was at the far edge of the harbor, about twenty feet inside the north breakwall.

The Bv slowed, crunching over jagged shore ice before Sara stopped it near the dock.

Clayton screamed into the heavy wind. “Gary! Son! Are you there?” There was no answer. With the wind so loud, even if Gary was on the boat he probably couldn’t hear. Clayton hobbled out of the vehicle, then reached back inside and grabbed Tim’s crutch.

“Hey,” Tim said.

“Fuck ya,” Clayton said, and started limping out onto the ice toward his son’s boat.

Colding looked behind the Bv—no sign of the ancestors. They had made it.