Doom. Knee deep in the dead

     Before the Beginning. Kefiristan is about as close  as you  can come to
hell on Earth.
     I say that with authority: I've spent the last eighteen months  doing a
tour here,  trying  to keep the  Kefiri  People's Liberation  Army, who call
themselves  the  "Scythe  of  Glory,"  from  the  throats  of  the  rightist
Khorastisti, who have the backing of Azeri transplants from  the  south (who
want  to  keep  their enclaves), who  are  fighting  a  "dirty  war" against
Communist Cuban  and Peruvian meres . . .  Jeez, you get the picture. It's a
snarled skein of a million bloody threads up  here on the  top of the world,
in the northern extension of the  Karakoram  range,  between Afghanistan and
Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
     We'd just punched through the craggy pass pleasantly known as the "torn
hymen" in  the local tongue and  come across the  small, Muslim city  of pik
Nizganij, perched on a mountain peak of 2200 meters.
     I stared in horror. Even eighteen months of picking up after the Scythe
of Glory and their Shining Path buddies didn't prepare  me for what was left
of pik Nizganij.
     It was  a  Bosch canvas,  severed limbs and hollowed- out trunks--eaten
out by  animals, I  prayed--planted through the  fields like stalks of corn,
blood painting doors  and walls like  the first  Passover...  except it  was
human blood, not lamb's blood.
     Corporal Flynn Taggart, Fox Company, 15th Light Drop Infantry Regiment,
United States Marine Corps;  888-23-9912. Everyone calls me Fly, except when
they're pissed.
     Fox crept through the town, hell-shocked, trying with- out much success
to count body parts and make a  reasonable K1A guess. Fog  or  an evil cloud
rolled  across the  mountaintop, shrouding the sprightly red  decoration and
muffling  our  footsteps.  It  was like we walked along  a cotton  corridor,
tripping over gruesome reminders that war, especially the virulent hatred of
one  tribe for another, throws men back into pre-bronze,  pre-agricul- tural
savagery.  I wondered how  many victims were killed  by  the  victors'  bare
hands.
     Something moved in the mist.
     A shadow, a shape; nothing more. Gunnery Sergeant Goforth froze us with
a slight hiss... Fox is damn-well trained, even for the Light Drop.
     Gates stopped  next to me; he touched my arm, silently pointing to left
and right. I saw immediately;  whatever the shapes were, they surrounded  us
from  eight o'clock to four o'clock... we might be able to  retreat,  but we
couldn't flank.
     I watched  the gunny;  Arlene Sanders  was whispering something  in his
ear. She was our scout, the lightest of the  Light Drop. PFC  Sanders  could
fade into the night  so not even  a werewolf  could sniff her out.  My  best
buddy.
     She might have been more; once, we had--no; we were  buddies. We didn't
talk about that night. Anyway, she had Dodd, and I don't separate bookends.
     Arlene backed away, backed past me, throwing me a wink as she vanished.
She would  swing in a wide arc, ease around  behind the still-moving shades,
and report  back to the lieutenant and Gunny Goforth via a secured line. I'd
find out soon enough.
     I hadn't  moved,  and neither  had the rest of us; I could  barely hear
Bill breathing  next  to me and  couldn't hear Dodd  or Sheill at all. If we
were lucky, maybe the dinks wouldn't even know we were here; they'd just pad
right on by.
     Then Lieutenant Beelzebub came running up, de-  manding, "What the hell
is going on?" in his normal speaking voice, an irritating whine.
     The lieutenant's  name  was Weems, actually. I just  call him Beelzebub
because he's a fat, sweaty heathen always surrounded by a  swarm  of  gnats.
They like the taste of his perspiration.
     The dinks froze as  suddenly as we had; no longer moving, they vanished
into the swirling gray. We had just  lost whatever surprise we had, lost our
best chance to get out  of  this encounter without a  shot  fired... and all
because  a  buffoon  who  had been a first  lieutenant for three  years  now
couldn't figure out it was a Medusa drill!
     One of them moved; then another. They moved singly, here and there, and
we no longer had a clue where the mass of them was.
     Weems began to panic; we'd all seen it before. "Aren't we going to take
them out?" he asked Goforth, who was  frantically putting his  finger to his
lips. "Somebody should take them out. "
     Goforth put  his hand to his ear; he was  listening to Arlene's report,
trying to stifle the lieutenant with his other hand.
     But Weems saw a  ghost  to his  left, a specter to his right.  We  were
surrounded! In Weems's mind--I use  the term loosely--they  were Indians, we
were the 7th Cav, and he was Custer.
     "The lieutenant isn't going to stand for this!" snapped the lieutenant.
"Goforth, take out those soldiers!"
     The gunny broke his own drill. "Sir, we don't even know who they are...
Sanders says they're wearing robes and hoods--"
     "Scythe of Glory!" said Weems, again raising his voice.
     "No sir, just robed men--"
     "Gunny, I gave you an order... now take down those men!"
     Arlene flashed past me again. "What the hell's going on?" she hissed.
     "Weems wants us to take 'em down. "
     "Fly, they're monks! You gotta stop the crazy son of a bitch!"
     I was the second-ranking noncom; Goforth would listen to me, I thought.
I hunched  over  and  jogged  to the gunnery  sergeant. "Gunny,  Arlene says
they're monks."
     "Taggart,   right?"  said   Weems,   as   if  bumping  into  me  at  an
oyster-shucking party.
     "Sir, they're just monks. "
     "Do you know that for sure? Does anyone know that for sure?"
     "Sanders said--"
     "Sanders  said! Sanders  said! Does Sanders have to  deal  with Colonel
Brinkle every week?"
     "Sir," began  the  gunny, "I think we should recon the group before  we
open fire."
     Weems  looked him in the  face, shaking in fury. "As long as I'm giving
the orders here, Marine, you'll obey them. Now take down those men!"
     Monks. Freakin' monks!
     I snapped. Maybe  it was the bodies, or  the  body parts.  The mountain
air, thin oxygen. A gutful of Weems, Arlene's frightened, incredulous stare,
the  way  Goforth's jaw set  and  he turned to give the order--a twenty-year
man, he wasn't going to throw it away over a bunch of lousy religious dinks.
     But suddenly,  it occurred to me that if Weems were  lying  facedown in
the deep  muddy,  he  wouldn't be giving no orders. Then  we could  let  the
damned monks disap- pear, and nobody would be the loser.
     "Scuse me, sir," I said, tapping the looie on the shoulder.
     He turned,  and I  Georged  him. Full-body swing; came out of  Orlando,
where  I  grew  up.  Picked  up  speed over  Parris  Island,  hooked  in  at
Kefiristan,  and turned  off the  lights  of Mr.  Lieutenant  Weems  in  pik
Nizganij.
     Alas, they only  flickered.  Power was restored. The dork didn't have a
glass jaw; have to give him that.
     Weems sprawled messily in the mud, and a  couple of the boys were on me
like monkeys on a tree. Weems flopped for a bit like a giant spider, then he
found his  hands and  knees. He  glared at me for a  moment,  an evil  smile
cracking his face. "Later,"  he said. Then he turned back to Goforth.  "That
don't mean  crap,  gunnery ser- geant; now  take down those men--or  are you
going to frag me, instead?"
     Goforth looked at me, looked  at Weems, looked  at the  ground. Then he
clicked  his  M-92 to  rock'n'roll  and  quietly said, "Fox--take down those
men."
     I closed my eyes,  listening to  powder hiss,  bullets crack, the metal
clang  of receivers  slamming back and home. The  screams of the  dying. The
shouts of the victors.  I smelled  the  smoke from the  smokeless power, the
primer, fresh blood.
     I'm in hell, I remember thinking; I'm in hell.
     We  mopped up the enemy troops in  record time. Strange  thing; none of
them  shot back. Fact, no weapons were found... just fifty-three men ranging
from pre- teen to seventy or eighty, wearing brown robes  and  hoods, shaved
heads, a couple carrying prayer sticks.
     The  boys wouldn't  get  off  my  back. Weems wouldn't even walk around
where I could see  him, the murdering bastard, while he formally charged  me
and I opted for a formal court-martial instead of Captain's Mast.
     Jesus and Mary,  somebody should  put  a bullet in  his  brain. I could
taste  the trigger. I  didn't  know how  I was ever going to be shriven if I
couldn't feel remorse.
     1




     I didn't miss Earth, but I sure as hell hated Mars. Sitting in a  dingy
mess hall on Phobos, one of the two, tiny Martian moons, seemed  like a nice
compro- mise.
     Ordinarily,  the  C.O., Major Boyd,  would have  handed  me over to the
jaggies  for  trial; but the  day after  Weems gave the fateful  order  that
bought him a mouthful of fist from Yours Truly, the 15th  received orders to
answer a distress call  from Phobos. Fox Company was  due  to rotate back to
the world anyway; Boyd decided to mail us to Mars.
     They poured me onto the transport along with the rest of Fox; plenty of
time to  fry  my butt after we figured out what the hell the UAC miners were
squawking about this time.
     The Corps, the Corps, all  glory to the Corps!  I don't think you  know
what the Marine Corps truly means to me. It has a bit to do  with my father;
no, he was  not a Marine, God no.  Maybe something to  do with growing up in
Orlando,  Florida,  and  Los  Angeles,  seeing  first the ersatz  "Hollywood
Boulevard" of Universal Studios  East, then the even phonier real thing  out
west. Glitter and tinsel. . . but what was real?
     Everything in my life rang as hollow as the  boulevard until I found my
core in the Corps.
     Honor  wasn't  just  something you did to credit  cards.  A lie  wasn't
called spin  control,  and  spin was something  you only put  on a cue ball.
Yeah, right, you think you know more about it than  I? I know it was all BS,
even in the  Corps.  I know the  service was riddled up  and down with lying
sacks of dung, like everything else. "There is no cause so noble it will not
attract fuggheads;" one  of those sci-fi writers Arlene is always shoving at
me, David Niven or something.
     But God damn it, at  least  we  say the word honor without laughing. At
least we have  a code--"I will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate  those
among  us who do"--even if individuals don't always live up to it. At  least
it's there to reach for, even if our grasp falls far short. At least decency
has  a  legal definition, right  there  in the  Universal  Code  of Military
Justice! At least respect  means more than leaving the  other guy's graffiti
alone.  At  least we do  more crap by six A.M. than most of you civilians do
all day. At least the  Corps is the Corps, semper  fidelis--damn it, we know
who we are and why we are! Do you?
     Arlene never saw it the way  I did; hell, no one did. I was  a majority
of one.
     But you can't understand me unless you understand this much: there is a
place  in the world  where  decent men  walk the streets,  where water flows
uphill, where miracles happen  behind enemy lines and  without  air support,
and where a guy (boy or girl) will stand on the wall that divides you people
from the barbarians at the gate, take a bullet, and shoot back at the son of
a bitch what fired it.
     Unless you've been there, you'll never know. I want to take you there.
     The long trip to Mars was dull, and  the little voice in the back of my
head had plenty of  time to  ask whether I  would do  anything  different if
given the chance. I had to honestly answer no.
     Funny  thing is, I always hoped I'd go  to space  one day . . . but not
like  this. My idea was to be on a deep-space exploratory ship, pushing  out
beyond the bounds of the known solar system.  But when I scored only a 60 on
the MilSpaceAp  test,  the chances  of me receiving  a deep-space assignment
ranged somewhere between infinitesimal and "forget it." The big surprise was
that one right upper cut  to the concrete jaw of Lieutenant Weems  opened my
pathway to the stars.
     Not only would I do it over again, I'd still enjoy it!
     I stared  at the two  men whose job was to guard  me, and had a strange
feeling of unreality. "Want some coffee?" one of them  asked with  something
that sounded like actual concern.  His thin  face reminded me of one  of the
monks.
     "Yeah," I said. "Black, if you don't mind." He  smiled. We'd run out of
cream back  in  Kefiristan,  and  when he  hopped up  to Phobos, the  supply
situation was no improvement.
     The guard's name was Ron. The other guard's name was Ron, too--I called
him "Ron Two," but they didn't see the humor in it.
     We  didn't  talk much.  It seemed  a  little insulting only  having two
Marines protecting such a  dangerous type as Yours Truly; but the other  men
were busy figuring out what had gone wrong on Phobos.
     After we up-shipped to  Mars Base,  we sat for a solid day,  trying  to
find out why the UAC miners on Phobos had sent a distress call--and why they
didn't  answer now. In the Marines,  you spend eternity so  bored you'd look
forward  to  your  own court-martial  as  a break  in the  tedium.  Then  an
unexpected danger  with huge,  jagged edges comes rolling  over all  the set
routines, a reminder that the universe is a dangerous place.
     The last message we received  from Phobos  was: "Things coming  through
the Gate." When something that serious hits the  fan, boredom is returned to
its proper place  as a luxury. The court-martial  of  a corporal was  deemed
less  important than  a potential threat to  Mars--and not  important at all
compared  to an  imme-  diate threat  to the profits  of the Union Aerospace
Corpo- ration.
     With a ringing cry of "sounds like they're smoking something up there,"
Lieutenant  Weems boldly led his men  into the transport. At first I thought
I'd  be left  behind on Mars Base;  but either Weems  thought  I might prove
useful to have along, or else he just didn't want a loose end. I volunteered
to go along. Sometimes I'm not very bright.
     Major Boyd did  his  best to brief us by video feed, under the  obvious
handicap  of complete ignorance.  He  made the best  of  it.  We were issued
pressure suits, in case we had to leave the immediate  vicinity of the Gate.
You couldn't stay very long outside  the pressure zone, and you'd get mighty
cold, mighty fast. But  at least the suits gave you a fighting chance to get
to a  ship  or a  zone before you were sucking vacuum.  I was pleased  to be
issued a suit; I was less pleased that Weems didn't issue me a weapon.
     While I contemplated the lethal uses of common household  articles, PFC
Ron  Two brought the promised  cup  of coffee. It tasted bad enough to  be a
strategic  weapon  of deterrence. The expression on the guard suggested that
he might  have sampled it before passing it  on to me; but maybe he was just
plain scared of the situation. I couldn't really blame him.
     A word about these  Gates on  Phobos and Deimos, the two tiny  moons of
Mars; you've probably heard about the Gates, even  though  officially it's a
secret.
     They were here when we first landed on Mars. It was a hell of  a shock,
discovering  that someone or some thing had beaten us by a million years  to
our own closest neighbor! It was  long before  I joined up, of course, but I
can only imagine the panic at the Pentagon when we found  ancient and wholly
artificial structures on  Phobos, despite the complete lack  of  any form of
life on Mars.
     It  was   pretty  clear  they'd  been  placed   there  by  some   alien
intelligence. But  what? All my  adult  life, I'd heard speculation: all the
usual UFO  culprits .  . . Reticulans, Men-in-Black,  ancient Martians--that
was the most popular theory, despite not working at all: there was no native
life  on  Mars; but try  to tell  that  to  generations  raised  on  Martian
Walkabout, Ratgash of Mars, and Mars, Arise!
     Me, I figured  it was a race  of alien anthropologists; they got  here,
said, "Hm, not quite ready yet," and left  a  "helipad" in case they decided
to return  . . . which they might  do tomorrow or a  hundred  thousand years
from now.
     Somebody decided to call them "Gates,"  even though they just sat there
doing nothing  for  as long as we've known about them. But surrounding  them
was a zone of about half Earth-normal gravitation ... on a moon whose normal
gravity is  just  this side  of  zero! In addition to the big, inert  Gates,
there  were  also  small  pads  scattered  here  and  there  that  instantly
transported  a person from  point  A to point B  within  the area, evidently
without harm . . .  teleports, if you will. I had heard about them but never
seen one; damned if you'd ever get me into one, either.
     When the United Aerospace Corporation bribed enough congressmen for the
exclusive  contract  to mine Phobos and Deimos, they built  their facilities
around the  Gates, taking advantage of the artificial  gravity .  . . except
for  those parts of the operation that wanted low gravity, which  they built
outside  the "pressure zones."  After  the big reorganization, the Corps got
the task of guarding the Gates.
     Well--it looked as though  the big  Gates weren't quite so  inert as we
all thought.
     Once we landed on Phobos, the gunny dropped me and my two guards at the
abandoned Air Base depot (in the "western" pressure zone--antispinwards) and
took  the rest  of Fox Company  on to the UAC facilities, Weems  in  tow, to
reestablish  contact  and  "secure the situation."  All my friends went with
Weems, leaving me with the two Rons for company.
     The  Phobos  facility  is built like  a  gigantic,  under-  ground cone
extending  many  hundreds  of meters  into the rock. There are  a  bunch  of
levels, I'm not even sure how many. Eight? Nine? The whole thing is built in
the center of the solar system's largest strip mine, which would be terrible
for  the  Phobos  ecology--except  that Phobos doesn't  have an ecology,  of
course; it's an airless moon of ice and rock.
     The facility was on the  opposite hemisphere from the base. Big deal. .
. the entire moon is only about twenty- five kilometers in diameter. You can
walk from one pole to  the other, except most of it is disturbingly close to
zero-g, outside the pressure zones.
     We had  the radio on in the mess hall and  were periodically picking up
messages from Weems's Weasels.  We'd about given up hope of hearing anything
from  the UAC  guys  who  used to  be on  Phobos. As I  sipped the  scalding
wake--up--call, wondering who I could sue if I burned  my tongue, I couldn't
help but scrutinize the two Rons.  Neither gave  the  impression of being on
top of the situation. They kept glancing at the closed cafeteria  doors,  at
the radio,  at each other . . .  They weren't paying much attention to their
prisoner.
     They were also having the same conversation every twenty minutes or so.
It  generally started like this: "What do  you think's happening?" one would
ask the other.
     I  was  tired  of  listening  to   variations  on  I-don't-know,  so  I
volunteered a theory: "Somehow the Gates  turned on, and whoever built  them
decided the UAC was trespassing. Maybe they were wiped out."
     "But who attacked  us?"  asked Ron One. Funny; I never thought of Union
Aerospace as part of "us."
     "They said  monsters were coming through the Gate," said  Ron  Two with
the same sense of surprise he'd displayed the other half-dozen times.
     "They  said  'things,'"  I  corrected.  Neither  heard  me.  Things  or
monsters, I had faith in Arlene and the rest of the guys.
     The guards  didn't strike me as being overly interested in the  subject
of high order physics. They had reached firm conclusions in the realm of the
biological sciences, however. They didn't believe in monsters.
     The truth is that neither did I.
     In one  respect I  was as bad  as the PFCs. There  were  questions that
couldn't be answered yet, but they wouldn't stay out of my mind. Who was the
enemy? How had they reached Phobos through the  gateways? And most troubling
of all,  why hadn't  Fox found any bodies yet?  Major Boyd  and even Colonel
Brinkle back on Earth would want answers to these questions and a lot more.
     Suddenly,  the  radio sputtered to  life,  grabbing our  attention,  an
invisible hand reaching out to choke the breath from us. It was PFC Grayson,
out front on recon, reporting to Weems, who was elsewhere in  the  facility.
The  young Marine  had  found  a  corpse.  Weems  radioed  back  the obvious
instructions.
     "ID  impossible, sir," reported Grayson, his voice tense. "It's in  too
many  pieces.  I  can positively  say  that it  was a white  male. It  looks
like--Jesus, sir, it looks like claw marks. And this body's been chewed."
     Wild beasts on airless Phobos? Judging by the sickened expressions from
Ron and Ron, it was all too evident that neither of these specimens had ever
seen combat.  I've seen my  share .  . . and all at once, the idea of living
long enough  to attend my own court-martial seemed very appealing. Even five
years at Leavenworth looked good. The fact that I  didn't have a gun crawled
around  deep inside my gut like a tapeworm. Right  then I decided to  remedy
the situation.
     The masticated body parts had been found  in  the  processing plant. We
heard Weems  over  the radio issuing orders to converge on that point when a
burst of static interfered with the reception.
     When  Grayson's voice  came in again,  it  was loud and clear. Up until
that  moment, the universe still made some kind of sense to  me.  Of all the
military scenarios  running  through  my  mind,  none  prepared me for  what
happened next: "Jesus Christ! It's not human," shouted Grayson. "Too big . .
. shaped all wrong . . . humanoid . . . red eyes . .."
     While Grayson was providing  this fragmentary report, he punctuated his
description  with  bursts  from  his  rifle.  Before he  could  become  more
coherent, we heard an inarticulate roar of animal pain from  whatever he was
shooting, and then he  shouted, "I can't put it down!"  The  next scream  we
heard was fully human.
     My whole body went cold. Jesus--Arlene was down there.
     Keep cool, keep your head--she's a Marine, damn it!
     One of the Rons looked like he  was about to throw up.  "Okay," I said,
"this has gone on long enough. We know we're in this together. Give me a gun
and let's  make some plans." If Arlene were being shot  at, God damn  it,  I
intended to shoot back! The honor of the Corps was at stake, not to  mention
my best buddy's life.
     The radio was reduced to background noise  for the  moment as Weems the
Weasel tried to control the situation.  The nervous looks exchanged  between
the  dynamic  duo  in  the  mess hall made  me  wonder  about training  that
completely destroys initiative. On  the brink  of death, all the Rons  cared
about was going by the  book--even if that book printed their own obituaries
in flaming letters.
     One  finally  generated the initiative  to  say,  "We  can't give you a
weapon!"
     I  tried  again. "Staying alive  is the objective here.  We've  all got
buddies down there. They don't court-martial the dead! You can't help anyone
or defend anything if you're dead. Now give me a piece!"
     If either  of  them  had  shown a glimmer  of  intelligence or  guts, I
wouldn't have taken the next step. But they insisted on being idiots.
     Jesus Christ! As the Godfather said,  there are men who go through life
begging to be killed.





     2




     Shut up," said the first Ron.
     "You're going  back  to detention," said the  other.  This  was a truly
pathetic spectacle. Suddenly, I had become the threat in  their eyes, simply
because I was forcing them to face an unpleasant situation head-on.
     A number of things happened at once: more screams and gunfire came over
the radio, and I thought I heard a woman scream. The nearest Ron unholstered
his 10mm  pistol and  pointed  it  at  me--then  the poor  jerk gestured the
direction  he wanted  me  to  walk. He gestured with  the  hand  holding the
pistol. With an invitation like that what could I do?
     I caught  his arm, moved the gun aside, and rabbit- punched  him in the
kidneys; the  gun slid  across the floor. The other  Ron was  still fumbling
with his holster,  so  I turned and jabbed him in the throat. . .  not  hard
enough to kill, but with enough impact to keep him busy trying to breathe.
     Sorry, Rons; Arlene PFC Sanders means more than the both of  you rolled
together!
     I turned back to the first one, who surprised me by regaining his  feet
and making a grab with his good arm. Too bad for him, he was off balance and
fell  toward me, providing another  irresistible target.  I  flat-palmed the
back of his  head, and  he  was out like  a  light. The other  Ron was still
doubled over, trying to breathe as I collected their weapons.
     "You guys aren't exactly cut out for Light Drop Infantry," I said in as
kindly a voice as I could muster.
     Now I had a problem. They weren't bad guys, but  I couldn't trust their
goodwill not to come after  me. Their fear  might be enough to keep them out
of my  hair, but I couldn't count on that, either. Nor did I  want to  leave
them  sitting ducks for the  hostile forces that were loose in this station.
So I helped  the one who  was still conscious to his feet and waited for his
glazed eyes to clear a bit.
     "Listen, Ron; we've got a situation here. So far as I can tell, we only
have  these two  sidearms  between the three of  us.  This  is not good. The
lieutenant should have left us with some weapons, don't you think?" It was a
rhetorical question, so I kept on. "I'm leaving one of these  guns with you,
unloaded."  I let him sink back  on the  floor and slid the ammo clip across
the floor. "When you feel well enough to reload, I suggest you barricade the
door better than I can lock it from the outside, and wait for orders."
     He looked sick as  a dog but nodded, and I left him to his own devices.
I  pocketed  the remaining ammo clips.  I wanted  all  the edge a few  extra
rounds could provide until  I could find an armory and lay  my hands on some
real firepower, if the factory had any.
     As I  locked the mess hall  doors behind me, I  heard the radio sending
out  useless  static crackle; no Weems, no Goforth--no Arlene. Well,  last I
heard,  we were  all going  to  have a party,  with Grayson's remains as the
Guest of Honor. I didn't like that particular train of thought so I derailed
it. Time to get serious.
     After  ten  minutes  of  humping   around  the   compound,  I  found  a
landcart--the last one. That was  thoughtful of  them. Phobos is so small, a
diameter of  only twenty-two kilometers, that I almost could hoof it  to the
factory . .  . particularly in the ultra-low gravity.  But I  might need  to
evac the survivors; and in any case, speed counts.
     Although I'm not claustrophobic, I'd lately had my fill of blank walls.
The spaceship was the worst. Traveling through a million miles of nothing in
a little cubicle just so you can reach  another cubicle at the end is not my
idea of the conquest of space.
     At least for  the one day we spent on Mars,  we had  a view.  The domes
were  made of super-thick, insulated plastic,  but were cleverly designed to
give the illusion of being  thin as a soap bubble. The only trouble was that
the view  wasn't very impressive--a blank expanse of  empty desert broken by
an equally barren, dark purple  sky. I was only so thrilled with looking  at
stars. I  liked some- thing bigger  up there. Although  we could  see Phobos
from Mars  base camp, it was so tiny it  almost  looked like  a bright  star
trucking across the sky. Not enough moon for a melancholy mood.
     But now as I crawled the land-cart out under  the black, airless sky of
Phobos, I enjoyed my  first genuine feeling of freedom since  I  left Earth.
Mars  loomed  in  the  sky, three-quarters full, larger than  any  moon  and
burning red as all the blood  of all the armies ever spilled in  uncountable
battles across the stupid, drooling face of eternity--the face of a monster.
     By  contrast,  the gray,  dull  surface of Phobos  looked like brittle,
laundry  soap or dried oatmeal; the only  variation was  Stickney, the  huge
crater that covered a quarter of the moon's surface and filled the rest with
impact striations.
     At that moment I thought that  Mars might be the last beautiful sight I
would ever experience. Ahead  lay noth- ing good. The  thought that I  might
shortly die didn't bother me nearly so much as the  dread of letting down my
loved ones . . . again.
     There weren't that many back on Earth, but there was one here on Phobos
that meant everything to me.
     Maybe I  did love her;  I couldn't  say. I  mean  that literally ...  I
couldn't say it with her hooked up with Wilhelm Dodd, the dirty bastard. But
that  didn't mean crap; if Arlene were in  trouble, then putting my life  on
the  line was the easiest  choice I'd ever made. Doing my duty didn't mean I
had  a  death wish; it  meant that I  would have  to stay  alive as long  as
possible to find her and hump her out. All right, and the rest of Fox, too.
     So with Mars looming gigantic and our sun a shrunk- en, distant ball of
flame, quickly  setting  as I crawled  toward  the  factory, I sped  through
Phobos daylight, across the terminator, and into the black night.
     My stomach  started  roiling the moment I left the zone and entered the
correct gravitational  field of Phobos--  not quite zero-g, but close enough
for a queasy stomach. I had to watch my  speed carefully here; I wasn't sure
what  the escape  velocity from Phobos was . . . probably a lot  more than a
crawling  land-cart  could make. But I sure as hell didn't want to end up in
orbit--the tractor treads didn't work too well out there!
     I  wished I could drive  the land-cart right inside the refinery, but I
had to leave it in the garage on the surface. It sure felt good  to get back
under even the half-normal gravity in the refinery zone. The  silent station
lurked below the surface, containing what was left of Fox Company.
     As I began the long descent, I promised to keep very, very quiet. Early
in a career in the Light Drop Infantry, you learn  the absolute essential of
lying to yourself. Sure enough, there was noise, and I was the source of it.
Even in the low-g, my  boots squeaked slightly. Each squeak was magnified in
my imagination as if  giant rodents nibbled  at  my heels.  The rectangle of
light beneath me grew in size as there was no turning back.
     I thought about using the  lift, but there was no  telling who I'd find
inside. The access-tube ladder looked a safer bet.
     A  popular  feature of these  permanent stations is how there's  always
light  and  air  so  long  as  the  small  reactor is  working.  Imagine  my
disappointment on climbing down the ladder into  the  hangar  when I noticed
the  first signs  that  something  was  seriously  wrong:  the  lights  were
flickering, and I didn't hear the whine of the air recirculators.
     The  light was adequate to show empty corridor stretching  in front and
behind me.  This section didn't seem to show any signs of recent conflict. .
. and no sooner did a  small part of me make the mistake  of relaxing than I
heard a sharp hissing sound. Before I had time to think, the 10mm was in  my
hand  and I had spun around into a defensive crouch.  I'm  sure I scared the
leaky pipe real  bad. At times like this, nothing  is  more welcome than  an
anti-climax.
     As  I examined  the damaged pipe,  mindful  not to  be  scalded  by the
escaping steam,  I  realized that I  might have found  something interesting
after all.  The pipe had been dented by  a blunt metal object of some  kind,
and there was a rusty stain on the floor underneath it.
     There was really only  one direction to  go, so I  went. That direction
would also take  me toward  the hangar control room, where  I  could swear I
heard low, growling noises. Somehow I didn't  feel like reholstering my gun.
I didn't like the way my palm was sweating, either.
     Taking it nice and easy, I proceeded down the corri- dor. I had a good,
long view  ahead of me. No room for surprises. I didn't hear the animalistic
noises again, but that  didn't make me  feel  any better. Finally, I reached
the control room. Right before I pushed the door open I felt a sudden shiver
on the back  of my neck and spun around, trying to look down both directions
at once,  like one of  those  crazy cartoon drawings  of  a double take. But
there was  nothing. At least nothing  I could see. No casualties yet,  thank
God.
     The  control room was  empty, but  it had  a peculiar  odor  like  sour
lemons. After months in a barracks, whether  in  Kefiristan, on  Mars, or in
space, you get used to the smell  of paint  and gallons of disinfectant. But
this was nothing like that. I didn't like it one bit.
     It took only a  few minutes to establish that all the  equipment was in
working  order--except  for the com- munications system, which  was  smashed
into nonexis- tence. Then I  had  a brainstorm. There might be  a gun locker
here,  something  left over  from when Phobos  was  an  Air  Force  outpost;
something  a  bit  heavier than a  10mm pistol  would  greatly  improve  the
adjustment to my new environment.
     I  found the locker and jimmied open the door fairly quietly; but there
were no weapons. Bare cupboard. Not even a slingshot. But so it shouldn't be
a total waste, there  was a nice selection of  last year's flak jackets; not
combat armor,  but better than skin and a pressure suit. One looked like  it
fit me, so I put it on.
     There  seemed  nothing  else  to do  but  resume my journey  along  the
corridor that must ultimately take me  into the  rest of the station.  I was
reaching that dangerous  psychological  state when you feel that you are the
only living person  in  what had been a battlefield  situation. Another word
for it is carelessness.
     Reconnoiter, you bastard!  My  little  voice was telling me to get back
with the  program. And  not a moment too soon. A human  figure came striding
purposefully in my direction from just around the curve of the corridor.
     I almost shot first, and asked  questions at some  undetermined  future
date. Reminding myself that Arlene and my buddies  were here, as well as UAC
civilians, I  relaxed the old trigger finger that crucial centimeter. But  I
kept the gun on the human shape and experienced a  sickening moment,  not of
empathy, but of reluctant understanding of Lieutenant Weems and the monks.
     When the fearsnake slithers around inside your gut, it's pretty  damned
easy to just start squeezing off at anything that moves.
     Then I recognized the shape as one Corporal William Gates.
     "Bill!" I shouted, relief flooding me at contact  with a  fellow  Light
Drop. "What the hell's going on? Are you all right? Where's Arlene--the rest
of Fox?"
     At no moment was there any doubt that this person  approaching  was the
corporal with whom I'd played poker,  drank, and told nasty jokes. We'd been
through  enough together  that I  didn't even  mind that he was  one  of the
monkeys  who  jumped  on  my  back  when  I popped  Weems.  Bill  had a very
distinctive face with eyes spaced  wide apart and a scar  that  ran from his
prominent chin into his lower lip.
     He  was walking in an  erratic manner;  fatigue,  I  as-  sumed. Men in
combat situations can get very weird, and I'd seen plenty worse than this.
     Battle fatigue  might even  have explained the strange words coming out
of his mouth, stuff that sounded like  an old horror movie. Bill was staring
straight ahead; but  he  didn't seem  to recognize  me  as he chanted,  "The
Gate--the Gate is the key--the key is the  Gate." I didn't like the  spittle
on his chin, either.
     As  much  as  I wanted to run over  to him,  I  held  back.  There  was
something really wrong here,  nothing I could  put my finger  on yet, but it
was like  that  smell  in the control room--little hints that  something was
FUBARed on Phobos.
     "Bill," I tried again. "Bill, it's your cuz, Fly."
     This time he noticed me. I could tell because he grinned  the most evil
grin I've ever seen in my life.
     Then he raised his rifle and opened fire!
     Even then, I didn't want  to believe what was happen- ing. Fortunately,
my  bodily  reflexes  were more  realistic.  Diving  behind a  pillar, I was
already preparing to return fire.
     I had to  try one  more time. "Stop firing, Bill! It's Fly, goddamn it.
Stop shooting!"
     3




     Bill  didn't stop;  he  came closer. Desperate,  feeling like  Cain,  I
returned fire. Given the half-dead  condition Bill  was in, killing  him all
the  way  should  have been  easy. The first bullet  took him in the throat,
above  his kevlar  armor.  That should  have done  the  job, but he  kept on
coming. I pumped more  rounds at Bill,  and finally  one connected  with his
head. That dropped him.
     But even as brains  and blood oozed onto the  corridor floor,  his body
continued to flop  around  the  way a  chicken does when  its  head has been
removed. Humans don't do  that . . . and  they don't have a sour-lemon smell
either, which was suddenly so overpowering that I could barely breathe.
     I stared, shaking like a California earthquake.
     I was looking--at--a zombie.
     That was  all that kept racing through my  head,  scream- ing  the word
over and over again between my ears . . . zombie, zombie, zombie! What utter
shit.  Maybe Arlene could believe in all that crap and bullroar; she watched
those damned, damned  horror movies all the--I wasn't  never going  to watch
anything like ... a freakin' zombie? I was crazy, buggin', freaked like some
hippie punk snot flying on belladonna.
     There are no goddamned zombies! This is the real world, this is--"
     Gates flopped some more, then stiffened up  so  quick, it was like he'd
been dead  for hours. Scared, but  drawn  toward him like iron  filings to a
magnet, I crept forward and touched his corpse.
     Billy Boy was ice-cold. This meat was decidedly not fresh.
     I gagged,  then turned aside and vomited. He  was blue.  His  skin  was
tough, like leather.
     Private Gates was a  freaking zombie. Walking dead.  They'd killed him,
then sucked the life out of his  body, so that in just half an hour,  he was
many days dead.
     Arlene . . . !
     I knew what I had  to do next. I was crying while I did it. I hoped I'd
find  some  magazines  to  go  with  my  new  acquisition,   a  10mm,  M-211
Semiautomatic Gas-Op- erated Infantry Combat Weapon (Sig-Cow, we called it).
Bitch of a way to get one.
     Gates only  had  a single spare mag, and the one in the rifle was dead.
Still shaking, I reloaded  the  rifle, dropping rounds left  and right,  and
crept on, wondering who would come running at the  sound of  me murdering my
dead chum.
     Leaving  Gates's body, I started walking  fast, then a  little  faster.
Suddenly I was running . . . not in fear, but sick rage. The little voice in
my  head that usually keeps me on track was screaming about  discipline  and
strategy and  keeping my cool. The voice wanted me to make a nice, practical
analysis of the evidence.
     I had  every intention of listening to  reason, but  my feet and  brain
stem had  other ideas. They were running from  the face of a man who used to
be a human being; running toward the bastards who reworked him.
     I've  always  had  good survival instincts. They'd  never  abandoned me
before, not even in the worst firefights in a  career that had seen its fair
share  of combat. But here and now,  in a dull, gray cavern under the craggy
surface of Phobos, my body was betraying me. If I could just stop seeing the
slack jaw,  the dead eyes, I could get  control again. But the face wouldn't
go  away;  even  the character- istic twitch of the right  eye  that used to
annoy me  when Gates was alive unnerved the hell out of  me  now. I couldn't
stand to be winked at by a zombie.
     Yeah. Zombie. Putting the word to  it helped. At least I was  running a
little slower and  started paying  attention to  my surroundings. I  saw the
walls of the  corridor instead  of a phantom  mask of death; and I heard the
loud echoing  of my  footsteps, my labored breathing . . . and the shuffling
noises of other feet.
     Four of them were waiting for me around  the  bend-- four zombies. They
stared at me with dead, dry eyes . . . and one of the zombies was a woman.
     I didn't know her; UAC  worker. Thank God  it  wasn't  Arlene. I didn't
even want to think  about Arlene with  gray flesh and  a  sour-lemon  smell,
sneering and pumping bullets at me without any recognition.
     I felt a rage I'd never felt before;  my blood was on fire and my  skin
couldn't contain  the boiling, liquid anger. I shook from  hate so deep that
military training could never reach it.
     I didn't want to shoot these travesties of human life. I wanted to  rip
them apart  with my bare hands!  They  shuffled  toward  me,  fumbling their
weapons and pump- ing shots like their rifles would never run dry. What  did
I do? I staggered directly toward them,  raising my own M-211 and taking one
of the walking dead in its shoulder ... a useless shot.
     It was the girl that broke the spell. Some little piece of who she once
was  must have been  left in  her brain, a faint echo or resonance  of human
thought. She didn't charge blindly like the other three; she turned and fell
behind cover to plink at me.
     My higher  brain functions  kicked in. I shook  my  head, then  strafed
while  sidestepping  to  a pillar; once behind cover, I  aimed a  shot  into
Zombie One's  head.  It roared,  then  danced like  a headless  chicken  and
collapsed. I got the message:  only head  shots got me any points. Just like
in the movies.
     The citrus  stench almost overwhelmed me. I snuck a quick glance at the
zombie I'd just smoked  .  .  .  some-  thing  squirmed  inside  its  brain.
Swallowing nausea, I took a bead on Zombie Two.
     The zombie-girl chittered, and the  other two headed jerkily toward the
console  behind which  she crouched.  I caught Zombie Two before it  made it
halfway; but  the other one took a  position behind  cover,  and both it and
Zombie Girl returned fire.
     A  standoff. I  was  trapped behind the pillar, two zombies  behind  an
instrument console  marked UAC and covered with  sticky-pad notes, the three
of us separated by no more  than twenty meters. Swiveling  my head, I stared
wildly around, trying to spot something useful.
     Five  minutes deep into  the  Phobos  facility, and I  was  pinned down
inside  a mortuary in hell.  A  dozen bodies sprawled on  the floor from the
open control room in which  I stood  all the way to a curve in  the corridor
beyond which I could see no farther. Recognizing a  few of them didn't do my
stomach any good. The others were probably UAC workers.
     I thought I'd seen war in Kefiristan.
     The undead and I  played a game of tag around  the pillar; I popped out
to fire off a shot, and  they sprayed my position a moment after I abandoned
it.
     There wasn't much time to appreciate the fine details; the third time I
popped around for  a shot, I slipped on  fresh  blood.  Even as a kid, I was
good  at turning mishaps into advantages; special training merely  augmented
my natural instinct for survival.
     I hit the floor  on  my knees, then dropped to my belly  to aim  a shot
while  braced against the floor. The third male zombie rose  to fire down on
me, and I caught it in  the throat,  knocking  it backward; before it  could
reacquire its  target, Yours  Truly, my next shot  took Zombie Three in  the
right eye.
     The female wasn't wearing a uniform or armor; I realized she  must have
once been a UAC  worker, not a soldier . . . which might account for her bad
aim. She fired off a couple of rounds that missed by a wide margin.
     I can fight this war forever, I  thought, rage starting to  creep back.
Then it struck me:  I  could fight  this  war forever, at least  until I was
finally blown away,  and never  even come  close  to  figuring  out what had
happened here at Phobos Base.
     I had to take one of bastards "alive," if that was the right word.
     The plan  flickered through my head between one shot and the  next; and
now that I finally had a plan, I was Light Drop Infantry again!
     Quickly, before she  could adjust and acquire me, I  bolted  around the
pillar,  head-faked to the left, then cut right and hopped over the console.
Zombie Girl swiveled the  wrong direction, and before she could turn back, I
swung the butt of my Sig-Cow into her temple.
     She  dropped like bricks on  Jupiter.  The rifle  sailed from her hands
across the floor. I slung my own M-211 across my back, flipped her  over and
shoved my pistol in her mouth.
     "What the hell's going on?" I demanded.
     "Mmph hmmpb  rmmph,"  she said. I pulled the gun out of  her mouth, but
she kept talking as if she had not  even noticed it.  "--is the key. Gate is
the key. Key is the gate. Coming. Kill you all."
     Zombie  Girl's  eyes  shifted  left and right; she was  preternaturally
strong .  . . but not as  strong  as big Fly Taggart.  My hand drooped  as I
stared at her, and she snapped at it like a rabid dog, trying to bite me.
     Abruptly, I realized why the zombies' eyes were so dry and their vision
so bad: they never blinked.
     I pushed the  pistol against her forehead. "If  there's any piece alive
inside of you,  you know  what this thing will do to your shriveled,  little
brains. What the hell is coming through the gate?"
     "Great. Ones. Gate ones." She focused her eyes on me, seeming to see me
for the first time. She didn't answer, but for  a moment her face was filled
with such torment that I could no longer stand the interrogation.
     I  cocked the  hammer; her eyes  rolled up, looking over  my head. "You
want this?" I asked.
     Zombie Girl closed her eyes. It was the only kind of prayer left to her
by the reworking that made her what she was.
     I closed my  own eyes when I squeezed the trigger. The  gunshot snapped
me awake again;  I  jumped up, slid  the Sig-Cow  into ready  position,  and
backed away from the undead dead.
     What the hell was going on? I started to  think  I had an answer  . . .
part of an answer.
     "Who built the Gates?" The question endlessly on everyone's lips  might
be about to be answered. Maybe. But were the "Great Ones" coming through the
Gates the ones who had built them? Or had the builders already been  overrun
by some even more powerful, horrific critter, who was now joyfully following
Gate  after Gate, finding and overpowering all the colonies of the builders'
"empire"?
     Neither thought was  pleasant: humans were either  trespassers who were
about  to be run off the property  or  dessert after a main course  of  Gate
builders.
     I got the shakes, real  bad. I backed into a dark corner, M-211 pointed
toward the corridor, the unknown, the way I hadn't been yet. I had not  seen
a particular body  I'd half dreaded, half hoped to find.  Christ. Arlene was
still Somewhere Out There, one way or the other.
     I prayed she was lying dead on the  deck, not  stumbling toward me with
dry, unblinking eyes and a sour-lemon smell.
     I might soon be the only  living  human on  Phobos,  I  realized. I had
little faith  in  the guards I'd  left back in the mess hall.  First contact
with zombies, and they'd role over and, to coin a phrase, play dead. I could
imagine  a rotting corpse  that used to be Lieutenant  Weems telling them to
get with the zombie program; the Rons would salute and "Yes sir!" themselves
straight to hell.
     The old survival mechanism was definitely starting to kick in for Yours
Truly.  I'd  never been completely comfortable as a team player. I could see
myself doing the job of zombie exterminator until  I was the only biped left
standing on Phobos. These living dead characters weren't very good soldiers.
Yeah, I could dust them all. Except for one little detail.
     I couldn't bear coming up  against what used to be  Arlene Sanders. No,
that wasn't  very appealing at  all. It's not  like she was my girl; she had
her Dodd, and  it seemed to satisfy  her. Dodd and I didn't really like each
other, but we tolerated for Arlene's sake.
     Not love, I swear. It's just that Arlene lived in the same world I did,
and I  mean a lot more than just wearing  the  same uniform. She wasn't like
any other girl I'd been ... I mean, any other girl I'd known.
     Arlene remembered being awakened by a D.I. heaving a trash can down the
hall, same as me. She remembered the jarhead getting all over her; "on  your
face, down-up- down-up-down-up--you keep pumpin' 'em out until I get tired!"
She  knew  about  reveille at  0500, PT (Physical  Training), or  a  dainty,
eight-mile run at 0505.
     Arlene knew the smell of disinfectant. She knew  all about scraping two
years of  accumulated crud off a wall with a chisel so  the  next guy  could
slap on a quarter-inch- thick splash of anti-corrosion paint.
     She'd spent just as many months as I wrestling a goddamned floor buffer
up and down a corridor, while already  dog-sacked from hours of PT, obstacle
course, combat  training, small-arms, endless, mindless instruc- tion on how
to break  down and reassemble a Sig-Cow  while blindfolded, and  lectures on
the exotic venereal diseases of Kefiristan, Mars, Phobos Base, and Ohio .. .
hours that always seemed to add up to twenty-six or twenty-eight per day.
     Arlene figured out a lot about me in  record time. She was bright,  and
just as committed to a military career as any other man in the outfit. She'd
become my best buddy in the platoon.
     As I sat  there,  wiping blood and crud from my face  in the eye  of an
impossible  hurricane,  it  helped  to  think  about Arlene.  Recalling  her
features drove  the  monsters from my  mind.  I  played a little  game  with
myself, not letting the horror rise up and engulf the picture I was drawing.
     I  don't  think  I've  ever  seen a  better-looking woman  than Arlene,
objectively considered. She wasn't drop- dead  gorgeous in  the conventional
sense. To  use an older phrase from a braver age, she was  "right handsome."
Five-ten  and compactly built, she worked out  more than anyone  else in the
platoon. She had beautiful, well-cut muscles.
     (Once, when for  a few days she  thought she might be "with child"--not
mine--Gates had said, "She's such a man, I bet she got herself pregnant." He
didn't say it loudly.)
     I liked how she looked at everyone  through slitted  eyes, giving her a
hooded serpent look. She was not to  be trifled with, as one skank found out
when he thought it was funny to sneak up behind her and pull down her pants.
     The rest of us were certainly  interested in seeing all we could of her
well-shaped posterior; but we  weren't  idiots.  Without turning around, she
backhanded him perfectly and  broke  his nose. At the time all I could think
of was how much I enjoyed seeing her move. We're talking ballet here.
     Of  course, there was a lot more to Arlene; she  had a brain. Those are
in short supply in the service, even in Light Drop, and  I hated  to see one
go to waste.  I took her to Corps music  concerts, and she dragged me to old
sci-fi movies. We got drunk together sometimes. We played poker, too; but my
only chance against her was when I was stone-cold sober.
     One night  we got so drunk that we fumbled our way into a kiss. It just
didn't feel right. We were buddies, not lovers.
     Arlene  and  I reached an unspoken agreement where we didn't talk about
that night.  As if to prove what a pal she  could be, she started setting me
up  with dates. She had girlfriends who were always first-rate in one way or
another,  and  they liked  to oblige her by  hanging with her pal. I  didn't
kick. I just didn't seem able to return a commensurate favor.
     Arlene told  me once how  she wanted to save  up some  money and go  to
college someday. I didn't hold that against her. I wished the best for her.
     The best. That thought shot down my reverie in flames. What  could  the
best be for her  now,  in this place? Death, I guessed;  anything  would  be
better than gray flesh, dry, unblinking eyes, and jerking limbs.
     "No," I heard myself talking to no one, "she'd  never allow herself  to
be turned into one of those."
     But what if this reworking took place after death?
     Swallowing  hard,  I stood up  and decided to  get back to business.  I
needed ammo; a  wild  shot had destroyed the magazine and receiver of one of
the Sig-Cows; the only thing a zombie could use it for now would be as a war
club, so I left it on  the floor. Nobody had a select fire weapon, which was
too bad; I sure  missed the  luxury of launching  three or four rounds  at a
time toward a zombie head .  . . much better chance  of a bull's-eye. On the
other  hand, if they had  had one  of the two select-fire  M-220 Dogchoppers
that a squad carried, I might not be alive to pick through the weaponry.
     I shoved  some  magazines  into  my  ammo  pockets and  loaded  up both
weapons. No sense carrying another Sig-Cow. I really wanted to get  my hands
on  the  riot  gun that Dardier  usually  carried, though--except  it  would
probably  mean ripping it out  of her twitching fingers after blowing a hole
in her pretty, blond head.
     I followed  the trail of  corpses another two  bends  of the  corridor,
taking  as  much  ammo  as I could  carry  without  rattling like a medieval
knight. We  were all supposed  to carry head-talks, so  we could communicate
...  but  I  didn't  find any,  which  was  pretty  suspicious.  No ELFs  or
MilDataBuses, either: nothing whatsoever that  might be used to  communicate
what the hell was going on.
     And I always made time to check the faces. So  long  as one, particular
face wasn't there ... I knew I could stand it.





     4




     I almost felt relief when I  ran into two more zombies. Now that I knew
what to do, it was just some sickening sort of exercise. I only "killed" one
of them; the other, I just popped its  rifle, then shot  out  its  knees and
hips; I wanted it alive, maybe to answer some questions before I  smashed in
the curling mouth with the yellow teeth.
     I didn't  recognize this one; it  was a former UAC worker, used to be a
man. It  didn't have even as much  mind left as had Zombie  Girl;  but  this
time, I let it babble for some time:
     "Big, coming through, big,  Gate is the key, killing, killing,  all the
killing,  coming through, coming to  kill you all, the Gate is  the key, the
key, hell and damns is the key, coming through the Gate . . .
     "Phobos! Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear!
     "Coming to Phobos, coming from Phobos, crossing the Styx,  pickup Styx,
Styx is the key."
     I  waited until it started repeating itself; after  a mo- ment, a chill
crept down my neck: the thing was  repeat- ing  itself  exactly, like a tape
loop.  Suddenly more  scared than I had been  in hours, I put it  out of its
misery (and mine).
     I backed up into a dark alcove, praying nobody had a  light-amp glasses
or an infrared sensor. I needed to think this through.
     A single  strip of  hellishly bright  luminescence flickered off and on
high in the center of the ceiling; a  bare sun bulb was all that was left of
the  lighting system.  The  strobe effect made shadows  look  like monsters,
creeping toward  me. But I didn't smell any rotten citrus, and heard none of
the  characteristic zombie  gibbering  . ..  just  a strange clicking  sound
ahead, like a dolphin with laryngitis. I figured I was safe for the moment.
     Phobos was pretty obvious; they were here, at Phobos Base. They came to
Phobos  .  . .  but what did  the  thing mean saying they  were coming  from
Phobos?
     I  started  feeling nauseated. My  skin began to  creep up  and down my
bones  . . . If the zombie didn't distinguish between  yesterday, today, and
tomorrow, then maybe it was telling me that Phobos was not the final  target
of the invasion;  they were going to cross the River Styx,  the river of the
dead in Greek mythology.
     And what was  on the other side?  Well,  hell, I  supposed. Hades.  But
wait--if you were starting from hell, then "crossing the Styx"  took you  to
...
     I  swallowed the  nausea  back  down. Sweat dripped  down  my forehead,
stinging my eyes.
     The target was Earth. Terra mostly firma. Home sweet hovel.
     I accepted the fact that I was a dead man. After four years of Catholic
school, run by Father Bartolomeo, Society of Jesus, I had  always  thought I
was pretty much "prayed out." Certainly, even after four years in the Corps,
the last three in Light Drop Infantry, I hadn't had a word to say to the Big
Guy, if He were even listening.
     But now, for  the first  time, after a cumulative seven-  teen weeks of
actual  combat  intercut  into  four  years  of  military  life,  I  finally
understood that  stupid line about there being "no  atheists in foxholes." I
didn't  use  the words that  the Jesuits  taught me,  but  I  know who I was
talking to, begging for the guts and skill not to hose up.
     "Suicide mission"  was a weak term for what I was doing. I'm as  afraid
to die as the next  jarhead; but goddamn it, I didn't want to be damned as a
walking dead!
     I told the Big Guy what I'd done wrong in the last, ah, seven years and
promised him a lifetime of penance if He'd just forgive me  and send me into
battle shriven. It  was a hollow offer, I knew; that "lifetime" was probably
measured in hours. Thank God it's the thought that counts.
     Taking  a breath, I swung  my rifle around,  finger outside the trigger
guard, and stepped out of the alcove. I continued around a corner toward the
clicking noise.
     Suddenly  I  saw what looked like a  working radio! Hurrying  over--too
quickly for caution's sake--I saw that only the front part  of the mechanism
remained. The back was ripped out in a way that showed clear sabotage. Up to
that  moment,  it  had  seemed  possible  that  the  radios  were  destroyed
accidentally, casualties of  battle; but this was clear evidence of at least
human-level tactics, far beyond what I'd imagine the zombies could do.
     There was somebody else wandering around here. If I hunted long enough,
I figured I'd find it... if it or they didn't find me first.
     Turning a  corner in the corridor, I saw  more evidence of some kind of
strategy: on  the wall,  a map  to the installation  had been  burned beyond
recognition, while the space around  it  was only slightly  singed.  Whoever
that  other  something or somebody was,  it knew  that more of us  would  be
coming after it; it didn't want us to be able to find our way.
     Ahead  was a hatchway, the  door open.  The  light directly over it was
broken; but a steady,  green glow  emanated  from beyond the narrow opening;
the glow did not come from any electrical source I could think of. Even as I
moved toward the entrance,  I knew I wanted to  be anywhere else but here. A
new odor assailed me,  far  worse than the sour lemons. This was the loving,
sweet  aroma  of  something that should  have  been  buried,  or better yet,
flushed. It literally burned my nostrils.
     I fumbled  for the  mask  that  accompanied the combat armor.  Jesus, I
thought, what I wouldn't give for a working environment suit! My hands shook
as pulled it over my mouth and nose, wondering what  horrible, toxic fumes I
was breathing.
     The surge of air from the suit augmented the bad air; but it did little
good.  The  molecules  of  the toxin  were  evidently  smaller  than  oxygen
molecules and didn't  react to  any of the filters; I could still smell them
right through the mask.
     Every warning klaxon in my body was screaming; my skin tingled, and the
proverbial hair on the back of my proverbial neck jumped up and did some PT.
I took a few tentative steps farther in, then I came up short; I'd found the
light source.
     Pools of thick, green liquid bubbled on both sides of me. The stuff was
luminescent,  probably radioactive.  It  looked  like boiling lava  on Saint
Patrick's day. I wasn't going to stop and  run any experiments; but I had no
doubt the  gunk would eat  right through my  combat suit, given enough time.
The prudent decision was to stay as far away from the green slime as humanly
possible.
     No sooner had this thought crossed my mind than a ton of bricks slammed
into me from the right, knocking the 10mm pistol out  of my holster and into
the green toxin. Something had decided to run the experiment after all.
     The 10mm  made a hissing sound as it disappeared  from  view.  I didn't
care. I had problems of my own.
     Flipping over, I struggled to get to  my feet and bring my big  Sig-Cow
into  play,  if  I could  figure  out what the hell  hit me. The  impact had
blurred my vision. I stood up, dizzy,  shaking my head. The figure that  had
hit  me  so  hard stood just out of sight,  in the shadows. I assumed it was
another zombie, but a stronger one than I had encountered before.
     Then it cut  loose with a  hiss, and  more of that clicking sound I had
been hearing. Well, one little mystery solved.
     The strength in this--zombie?--inspired greater cau- tion.  I rolled my
M-211 around and skated to the side, waiting for the creature to come to me.
He did.
     As the large body moved into sight,  I saw brown,  leathery skin, rough
like alligator hide, with ivory-white  horns sticking out from chest,  arms,
and  legs. The head was inhumanly huge, with maddened slits of red for eyes.
It was a monster!
     It was a demon.
     5




     My  first reaction  was to  laugh. This was  a  childhood  nightmare, a
bogeyman. The part of  me that had worked  so hard to grow up just  couldn't
believe in something that looked like this.
     Only trouble was, the damned thing didn't appreciate its own absurdity.
It took a few steps toward  me where the light was better. Movement made the
figure less ridiculous. Shadows played across its rough hide, and I saw that
the wrinkled flesh under the eyes were wet.  I hated to admit that it really
was  flesh.  The eyes flickered with an angry red light. The worst  features
were  the lips  curling back to  reveal  ugly,  yellow canines. This  was no
Halloween mask with a rigid grimace. Inhuman as this monster was, I couldn't
confuse it with an animal.
     Just an alien bastard, I told myself over and  over; I  was a lot  more
comfortable  with  the   idea   of  an   alien,  even  an  alien  soldier--a
cosmic-grunt. Not a ... a demon.
     The extraterrestrial stopped advancing. It turned  its head at an angle
no human could copy, but kept its eyes fixed on me. Mexican standoff.
     Despite it  having attacked me first, I couldn't shake the thought that
it was my responsibility  to  try to make  contact.  No communication seemed
possible  with the hollow shells who  used to  be my buddies or UAC workers;
the  most I could drag out of them  was simple parroting of  what  they  had
heard, before or after death.
     But this one was different  . .  . this  one was--how could I fire up a
conversation  with an alien "demon" whose interest  in  humans seemed purely
nutritional?
     "Who are you?" I asked. I figured it  wouldn't know English, but  might
at least guess  from  the tone what I  had asked. But it threw me a curve by
smiling wide and  silently mouthing the same question,  Who are you, seeming
to mock me.
     I  tried again:  "Human  being,"  I  said,  tapping  my armored  chest.
"Understand? Do you talk?"
     Nothing.  Nada. I took a calculated risk: I wasn't about to put down my
weapon; but I slowly extended one hand, palm forward,  in what I hoped was a
universal symbol of nonaggression.
     There was  a response but I  didn't quite know  what to make of it. The
grotesque  humanoid  slowly lifted  its  right  hand  up to its shoulder and
stroked  the white protrusion  of bone, allowing its thumb to  linger on the
sharp point. The  sight was  very strange and it  did  not  suggest peaceful
intentions. Definitely a Mexican stand- off.
     I suddenly got nervous about leaving my hand ex- posed. The sharp teeth
suggested a healthy appetite. I became  acutely aware of my environment. The
bubbling, green sludge behind me  burbled louder, and for the first  time, I
thought I heard the monster breathing.
     The breathing stopped.
     Pure  instinct took over. Soldiers sometimes  take a sharp  breath just
before  attacking . . .  some  hold  their  breath  as  the floodgates open,
releasing enough adrena- line to turn coward into hero.
     The monster attacked so  quickly I couldn't have gotten a shot off even
if my Sig-Cow hadn't jammed.
     Whatever the thing was, it was not  stupid. It charged me,  clawing for
ray throat with one set of nails while the other hand fended off my bayonet.
     That was the only good news; if it was afraid of my blade,  then surely
the alien would bleed if I stuck it.
     If...
     I stopped pushing and suddenly pulled  with  the  mon- ster, instead of
against  it.  I fell backward, and four hundred pounds of leathery skin  and
iron muscle dropped on top of me--and right onto my bayonet. With an inhuman
scream that nearly ruptured my eardrums,  the  demon died, convulsing  a few
last times before instantly stiffening into what felt like a stone statue.
     I  was mighty damned glad  to learn that demons did  bleed, at least on
Phobos. I was relieved for some reason that the blood was red.
     I was less pleased  to feel the stone weight of the monster crushing me
into  the  floor. Jesus and  Mary, did I  wish I  could turn  off the Phobos
gravity generator, just for a moment!
     Years spent in Catholic school came back to  me;  I remembered  an  old
penguin, Sister Beatrice, who  was obsessed with the biblical injunction  to
avoid unclean things. Unclean things!
     My stomach heaved; shaking the body off  me with more strength than I'd
ever  experienced before,  I  almost vomited  on the  very  spot where blood
pulsed out of the alien's belly wound.
     Jumping too quickly to my feet, I slipped in the slick, red  goo--right
next  to one of the  bubbling  pits of green sludge.  Heat poured  from  the
boiling, green liquid waste. I  didn't want that stuff any closer to my face
than it  was  already; I had a feeling  the luminescence was  not harm- less
phosphorous, and this didn't seem the time to run any tests.
     I  took  a  moment to catch my breath.  It had been difficult enough to
accept the fact of people--buddies!-- turned into zombies; but this thing at
my  feet  meant  anything  could  happen  next.  I  didn't  want to  let  my
imagination run wild. Reality was bad enough at the moment.
     Not  since childhood  had I really felt  a  desire  to pray.  The first
monsters of my life had been stern nuns refusing to answer the questions  of
an inquisitive mind. But now I felt a need for God, if only  to have a power
big enough to swear an oath on.
     "I'll  stop you,"  I promised, "whatever  you are,  howev-  er many you
are." It helped to say the words out loud, even if one of the bastards heard
me. Hell,  they could hear my footsteps, anyway. "If  there is a God, please
let me live just long  enough to stop  these  monsters from dropping ship to
Earth!"
     The small voice of  reason was growing smaller all the time; scientific
knowledge! Physical law! Like the song says, biggest lie you ever saw.
     Survival  came  first;  killing lots  of monsters.  Learning  something
useful about the enemy was just fine,  so long as it came  third. And  there
was  the problem  of  how I would communicate any useful  discovery;  and to
whom.
     Ahead were the remains of yet another smashed radio. A human hand still
touched  the  controls.  The  hand  was  not attached to  an  arm. The  best
explanation  was that the body probably lay dissolving at the bottom  of the
pool of green slime.
     Making my way out of  this  section seemed the  most important move for
all three goals, if only to get away from the hot, green liquid. The monster
had thrown me  off. I couldn't  help imagining  the creature from the  black
lagoon, or green lagoon, waiting at the bottom of every toxic pool.
     If I  could meet one  two-legged nightmare,  I  could  meet more. And I
don't just mean more like the ones I'd  already fought; there could be worse
things,  anything! What  were  the  laws for  monsters? Thoughts  of horrors
crawling around  on the bottom  of radioactive sludge pools gave way to even
more unlikely scenarios.  How about  creatures that could exist outside  the
domes,  in airless  space? And if they  didn't need to  breathe, maybe those
aliens didn't bleed, either.
     I made myself stop. If I kept this up, I wouldn't need to be picked off
by the enemy; I'd be saving them the trouble.
     I heaved a sigh  of relief to leave the toxic-spill room, clearing  the
jammed brass from my Sig-Cow receiver; it made little difference--I only had
two or three rounds left and nowhere to stock up.
     As if being rewarded for  a bad attitude, there was another  collection
of inanimate  dead  just through  the  doorway, awaiting inspection. For the
first time since this nightmare began I actually felt relief at the sight of
human corpses. At least they were human. Not zombies, not  monsters. If  I'd
been more careful--or paying more attention to my imagination--it might have
occurred  to me that one of  the zombies could be pretending to be a corpse.
But somewhere  in the  back  of my brain I had already figured out that  the
zombies were no-brainers. They weren't about to pull tricks.
     There was something very reassuring  about  thinking  about things that
weren't possible (or at least not very probable). Sure beat  the hell out of
imagining  super- monsters that could do  anything! As I surveyed  the  dead
men, the damaged weapons,  the  lack of  ammo,  and for  dessert, a  smashed
radio,  I finally understood what must have been going through the minds  of
these soldiers as their lives were ripped out of them.
     I understood why they hadn't  done the intelligent thing and withdrawn,
regrouped, reported: they'd been so overcome with revulsion, just like Yours
Truly, that they'd simply charged into the mob (of zombies? mon- sters?)  in
a  berserker  fury, killing  anything  that got  in  the way.  They  stopped
thinking and started reacting instead --and were cut down, one by one.
     A heavy rumble from  behind grabbed my attention. Setting a new  record
for  spinning  around,  I  realized  I  had  to  go  back  into the  blasted
toxic-spill room to check this out.
     So I did.
     The  latest  surprise:  when  I killed the  monster, it evidently  fell
across a lift lever I hadn't noticed. I arrived at  this conclusion  because
of  the large, metal platform which finished lowering itself right in  front
of my nose. Beyond the lift was a brand new corridor I hadn't seen before.
     To  enter or not to enter? That  was as good  a question as any I'd had
all day. Staying  behind  meant facing inconceivable danger and unimaginable
odds.   Whereas   going  forward  meant   facing  unimaginable   danger  and
inconceivable odds. Or something.
     The corridor ahead had two appealing features: there were no slime pits
and  the light was brighter. The latter  decided me. There had to have  been
some good reason to make the choice I made.
     I backed up and  took a flying leap; fear lent  my feet wings . . . but
not jet engines, unfortunately. I landed short  and teetered on the edge  of
the  biggest  pool of green crud in  creation. I windmilled my arms ... if I
hadn't stepped back, I would have fallen back.
     For a second all my foot felt was icy, icy cold, as if I'd stepped into
liquid nitrogen. Then the pain struck. I tried to yank my foot  free, but my
muscles wouldn't respond!
     My  leg was on fire from toe to thigh. I lurched forward, falling on my
face; my foot was free of the toxin, but I shouted through clenched teeth.
     Fighting  a suicidal impulse to  grab my  still-wet foot, I  wrapped my
arms around my gut instead. If a zombie or monster demon had stumbled across
me  then, it could have snuffed me with my blessing. It  was minutes  before
the throbbing pain in my leg subsided. I scraped my foot against the  floor,
rubbing off as much of  the toxin  as I could; but  my leg swelled tight and
angry red inside my ruined boot.
     But at least, thank God, the pool was behind me.
     The new  corridor seemed  antiseptic  and clean  after  what  I'd  just
stepped in. If there were unpleasant odors, they didn't penetrate my visor.
     I followed the corridor until I came  to a room on the right. Something
made me  hesitate  about going in. It wasn't a sense  of danger or  anything
like  that. Maybe  it was  because the  door was closed. Mostly  they'd been
open. I don't normally credit  sixth  sense stuff or  mysti- cism;  but I've
learned  in combat that  you ignore your instincts at  your peril. There are
human "predator senses" that normal, civilized life pretty much  breeds  out
of us.
     I had my weapon at the ready even though two shots from now the Sig-Cow
would be nothing but a fancy spear.
     Kicking the door was easy; looking  into the room was  hard.  There was
one lone body on the floor, female, her back to me.





     6




     For a cold-gut  second, I  thought she might be Arlene. The  impression
lasted only a few seconds; then I saw it was Tij "Dude" Dardier. We'd fought
together pretty closely in Kefiristan,  and you get so you recognize a buddy
from behind, especially females in a crack fighting unit.
     Her  face was  unmarked, still cute, still a little girl with  red hair
who had  a big  surprise  for any  man who  thought she was easy pickings. I
wondered if a monster  or zombie had gotten her.  The ugly wound was in  her
stomach.
     There was something funny about her  posture; she lay as if she  had  a
secret.
     I  stared for a  moment, coaxing  her  dead body  to  talk to me Then I
figured it out: Dudette was lying on top of something, shielding it from dry
zombie eyes.
     I  touched her  gently,  then gingerly  slipped  over her  corpse. Dude
Dardier was  lying  on top of the pump- action riot gun I'd been wishing for
earlier--her death- day present for Yours Truly.
     I  felt  like a ghoul, but feelings were a luxury. With a shotgun in my
arsenal, my survival rating took a big leap up the charts.
     I  checked  the bore and  found no  obstructions. There were plenty  of
shells  in the  bandoleer  around  her body. I  thanked Dudette for  being a
Marine to the end . . . semper fi, Mac.
     Back in  the  corridor, I  found remains of a map on the  wall. The Bad
Guys  evidently  followed  a  plan,  proven  by  destroyed  radio  gear  and
vandalized wall maps. But this time there was just enough left of the map to
figure out the basic direction  toward  the  lift,  which I prayed was still
working. Being properly armed did wonders for my psychology; I decided maybe
I would do well to generate a tactical plan.
     There is no north or  south on Phobos, but I oriented  myself along the
facility's major  axis.  Getting to  the  nuclear plant was the next logical
move; it had the largest concentration of equipment. . . and perhaps even an
untrained engineer like me could jerry-rig some gear into a working radio.
     I found the lift without further molestation; naturally, it was broken,
shot to hell--the  hydraulics leaked  away from  numerous gunshot holes. But
the manual  escape hatch still  worked. Placing myself back  into a  narrow,
confined  space  was  about  as  appealing as  it  sounded,  and  my  damned
imagination started bugging me again at precisely the moment duty called. My
imagination was not very patriotic; it needed six weeks of boot camp.
     There was a dim light in the shaft, very,  very dim. Every  square foot
of the base was supposed to be constantly lit, bright as day, except for the
barracks. Someone in charge must have been mugged by a  flash- light when he
was a kid and wanted  nothing  more to do with them. Maybe  I shouldn't have
complained; light was light.
     As  I  climbed  down the  long shaft, it occurred to  me to think about
something cheerful, a silver lining that must exist somewhere in these storm
clouds. There had to be something.
     And there was. I hadn't  found Arlene's  body yet ... and  so long as I
didn't know what had happened to her, there was hope.
     I  figured the  nuclear plant must  be at least six stories down.  Just
keep climbing, that was all I could do. Climb.  Hope.  Watch out for demons.
Real simple. I preferred thinking about Arlene.

     I remembered the  day  she  showed up from Parris Island and joined the
real Corps, the fighting Corps. I looked  up from monkeying  with the sticky
belt-advance on a  .60 caliber  auto-stabilized, and  I saw a brutal babe in
cammies,  spats,  webbing,  and  sporting  a  newly  shaved  high-and-tight.
Catching her eye told me all I had to know. She knew what she was doing, all
right. The Corps is protective of its haircut, flat on the top and shaved on
the sides.  We're talking a sign of distinction, a challenge thrown at every
other service.  God help the Navy, Army, or Space Force puke who shows up on
one of our bases in a high-and-tight! What happens afterward is why God made
Captain's Mast.
     But Arlene was no innocent. She wore her cut high and proud, and wore a
single, red, private's stripe.
     Lieutenant Weems (pre-punch)  took one look  at Arlene Sanders, a long,
hard look, and curled  his lip. He watched  her hand her packet to PFC Dodd,
who stared at her  like she had two  heads.  So far as  I know, that was the
first  time they ever met,  they  who were destined for ...  well, not love,
exactly; extreme lustlike. (After about a year of ignoring him with  all her
might, then  another six months of despising him, she shamefacedly confessed
to me that she'd spent the night in his fiat.)
     All in all, not the best-foot-forward on this  first day for  the first
woman in Fox Company.
     Of course, the  opinion  of  Lieutenant Weems  was  already  a  debased
currency by this time. But the opinion of the other men mattered. And no one
could  express  that  company opinion  with more  eloquence  than  Gun- nery
Sergeant  Goforth, the company's "grand old  man." Hell, he was  in his late
thirties, an eighteen-year Marine, the last ten in Light Drop.
     Goforth  looked like Aldo Ray  in those old John Wayne  movies. He  was
heavyset, muscular  but not fat;  he shaved his head but  would probably  be
bald anyway. Goforth was a Franks tank with legs, a few  freckles  mixed  in
along with the Rolled Homogenous Armor.
     The gunny made a big deal  of sauntering over to Arlene  and  let loose
with  his  thick, Georgian drawl:  "Hooo-eeee! Where'ud the lay-dee get thuh
purty "do?"
     She looked him in the eye. That was  all. Not a bad answer, really, but
I thought that under the  circum- stances a few words of reason might  be in
order.
     I volunteered myself for the task. Partly because I  liked a woman with
guts;  partly  because  I  respected  the  men  in the Corps-and  felt their
position  could be expressed in a more thoughtful manner  than Gunny Goforth
was likely  to manage. But mainly  I spoke up because at some  deep level  I
hate all rules, symbols, rituals,  fighting  words,  gang  colors, routines,
decorations, medals, trophies, badges . . .  and anything else that suggests
one  human being  is  to be taken more  seriously than another  in  a  given
situation  simply on the basis of plumage. Besides,  I was making no headway
with the damned .60 cal.
     I was sitting on the mess hall table and felt very much above it all as
I  said,  "Private, a high-and-tight is not a fashion statement.  You  gotta
earn it."
     That seemed a nice ice breaker. She  must have agreed because she spoke
to me, not  Goforth.  "I'm  as much a  Marine as  the  next man," she  said,
glancing at me before returning her steady attention back to the gunny.
     The first retort that crossed my mind was to take a big bite of the red
apple that happened to be in my hand. The longer it took to chew and swallow
the piece of apple,  the  more  profound  would be  my clever  rejoinder, it
seemed to me.
     So  I did. And  Goforth  took a  step  closer to  Arlene,  deliberately
breaking her space. Arlene stood her ground, not budging an inch.
     In between  bites  of the  apple,  I  thought  I  would  essay  another
arbitration. "You know," I essayed, "a high-and-  tight is not mil-spec  for
ladies."
     "It's  not regulation for men, either,"  she  shot back. There  was  no
arguing with that, but there was plenty of apple left to crunch.
     Gunny Goforth didn't have an apple. "Any Muh-reen  who wears thet 'do,"
he said, "sure as hell is gonna earn it, missy." I thought the "missy" was a
bit much.
     Arlene Sanders  leaned  forward into  his space, close enough to either
kiss him  or bite off his round knob of a nose. Instead, she said two words:
"You're on."
     Goforth was just  as  stubborn. He was native to Geor- gia but might as
well have  been  from  Missouri  when  it came  to  matters of proof. "Every
Muh-reen is a rifleman fust," he  said. "If'n you want to  spoht thet thang,
missy,  then you had best  pick up yer cute lil'  buns and follow me tuh the
rifle range."
     She  gave  him  a curt nod. Challenge accepted. They  started to leave,
then Goforth noticed my juicy, red apple,  which had tasted much better than
the discussion, far as I was concerned.
     "Hey, Fly," he said, "howzabout grabbin' thet sack o' apples?"
     As I  hoisted the apples and made tracks,  I could honestly  say that I
didn't have a clue what old Goforth was up to.
     The range  was  a short walk. Every man who  had been  present for  the
exchange of words  followed along. No  one  wanted to miss  entertainment of
this high a caliber, no pun intended.
     Goforth walked on  over to Arlene  and said, "Private, you need a whole
helpin' o'  guts  to  wear thet 'do. Takes more'n jes'  a steady rifle hand,
thet it do!" At least he didn't call her "missy" this time.
     Holding up his hand, palm toward me,  he shouted, "Fly, toss me one  of
those  apples.  Ya'll watch a  history  lesson."  Now that I finally had the
idea, I was none too happy, but Arlene just smiled--a little, thin  smile. I
think she guessed what the gun' was scheming.
     I slapped the apple into the gunnery sergeant's paw. He casually tossed
and caught it a few times, then asked Arlene: "Yuh lak historee, lil' lady?"
He was laying the accent on so thick I could barely understand him.
     "Let me guess," she said with a thick grin. "You like William Tell."
     Goforth  looked crestfallen  that she had outguessed him, stealing some
wind from his sails. But if verbal teasing wouldn't do the job,  he was more
than ready to push this thing  on to the  real thing. I could see it in  his
face; there was no humor left.
     When I had  first joined Fox Company, Goforth  went out  of his  way to
make me feel welcome. About the worst he did was to tag me with the nickname
Fly. He didn't bag on me the way he was doing to Arlene, He gestured to Dodd
to bring over  the artillery, and  Dodd  brought a .30-99 bolt-action sniper
rifle, top of the line.  Goforth flashed Arlene a  big,  soapy grin; but she
held her ground.
     Made me wonder, not just about the gun', but the other guys, who leered
and  chuckled unpleasantly. Plen- ty of  men are solid guys,  decent fathers
and husbands, but revert to Wolfman when confronted by physical prowess in a
woman.
     As Goforth  lived up to his name and went forward with the William Tell
bit, I was getting panicky  ... but  I kept it  to myself. She was going  to
play this one out to the bitter end. I figured that from the way she planted
her feet, put her arms behind her and said, "Go for it!"
     Abruptly, everybody stopped laughing. Gunny  Goforth noticed but wasn't
about to back down with eight, I'm sure it was, eight guys watching. With an
almost delicate concern, he carefully placed the apple on her head.  Then he
took  the .30-99 and slowly backed away from her. He aimed just as carefully
and said, in a voice  that had lost all the sarcasm, "Last chance, honey." I
thought "honey" sounded better than "missy."
     Arlene didn't move, but  I could see that  she  was  trembling  ever so
slightly beneath her  bravado. I sure as hell didn't blame her. Goforth took
a deep breath and said,  "All right, darlin'...  I suggest in  the strongest
terms thet you don't flinch none."
     I was the one who jumped when he squeezed off a shot--and damned if the
apple didn't  split perfectly down the  middle, each  half falling on either
side of her head! Everybody let out his breath, and a ragged cheer erupted.
     "Way to go, Gunny!" said one man.
     "Fox Company ichiban!" said another.
     We'd forgotten one  item. We'd forgotten that Arlene had  put her skull
on the line. The drama wasn't over until she said it was.
     As Goforth basked in  his  moment of glory, the boys all praising  him,
Arlene walked toward him. Her hands were behind her back and she was smiling
sweetly.
     I saw what she was carrying before the gun'  did. She  held an apple up
until he saw it; then she tossed it to him.
     Silence  again;  nobody  moved. Then just  as smoothly  as you  please,
Arlene Sanders picked up  the  .30-99 from the table, staring expectantly at
Goforth and cocking one of her eyebrows.
     I never doubted  what  Goforth would do. His  basic  sense of fair play
could  be counted on;  and  he had  guts. He wasn't  about to lose his men's
respect. Not Goforth! So, in the words  of the old-time baseball player,  it
was deja vu all over again.
     He put  the apple on his head,  his  icy eyes boring into Arlene's. She
watched him  just  as intently; no  lovers were  ever  more  focused  on one
another.
     She cocked and raised the rifle, which wasn't even fitted with a scope,
just iron sights. A few of the men backed farther away from the cone of fire
surrounding the  gunnery sergeant. That pissed me  off,  so I deliberate- ly
took a few  steps  closer to the  duel. Something  about  this girl inspired
confidence that  she was no  more  likely  to blow away a spectator than the
gunnery sergeant.
     Goforth had  his own concerns: "If you have to miss," he said so softly
that it  didn't even sound  like him, "please  tuh make it high?"  He smiled
with an effort. The request seemed reasonable enough.
     Arlene said nothing. She  lifted the  rifle nice and  slow.  She didn't
make us  wait; she pounded out a shot, and the apple was blown off Goforth's
head. Corporal Stout  ran over and picked it up. It was still  mostly in one
piece, but there was a gratifying furrow a little high off the center.
     After a long moment, during which no one said a word, Goforth walked up
to  Arlene  Sanders.  Putting  hands on  his  hips, he  made a big  show  of
inspecting her high-and- tight, while we all held our breath.
     Goforth  bent down,  examined her right side, left  side,  back, front,
then looked  her evenly in the  eye, winked and nodded. "It's you, Private,"
he said. And  I was pretty damned sure  he wouldn't  be calling  her "missy"
again. She didn't miss, you see.
     Some of the boys took to calling her Will, though.
     7




     The odds against Arlene's survival in this hell-
     ish maelstrom were astronomical; but then, so they were
     against mine. Hope that she might have made it kept me
     going; fury at the thought of her death spurred me to
     action. Maybe just when I was running out of steam, the
     need for revenge would inspire Yours Truly.
     As if to test my newfound resolve, Phobos threw some
     more at me. Glancing down, I saw that the access shaft
     did not descend the full six stories required to reach the
     nuclear plant. The ladder ended in a few ragged shreds of
     metal; an explosion had cut off the rest of that route.
     Of course, I could always get to the nuclear plant level
     really fast, so long as I didn't mind the sudden stop at the
     end.
     "Damn, I knew this was too good to be true," I said
     out loud. Just before running out of ladder, I saw a thick,
     metal hatchway leading to the next level down.
     It looked solid, heavy; a pressure lock held it shut; I
     would have to spin the wheel to open the door, a happy
     trick when the ladder ended a couple of rungs above the
     hatch.
     For a moment I was stymied. I could just barely reach
     the wheel by hanging one-handed from the last rung; but
     I had no leverage ... I couldn't turn it to save my life. I
     took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and thought for
     several seconds.
     Jesus--what am I, stupid all of a sudden? I rotated
     around the ladder, lowered myself until my lower legs poked through the
last hole, then slowly let my body down until I  dangled upside down from my
knees. Now I had the leverage; all it took was muscle.
     I cranked the  wheel  clockwise,  loosening it until it spun freely.  I
wrestled open the door--and now for the hard part.
     Holding  tight to  the  wheel  of the  now-open door, I straightened my
legs, dropping heavily  as the  wheel  spun. I clung  to it grimly, swinging
back and forth until I finally stopped swinging.
     I edged around the door,  caught the  corresponding wheel on the inside
and  swung myself  up and into the shaft.  I  lost nothing  but any desire I
might have had to  take my name to heart  and become a Human Fly as a career
path.
     The access shaft led me into a tunnel where the light was crappy again,
flickering  on and  off  like some sicko  nightclub.  It was tall  enough to
stand, and I did.
     After   five  meters  I  decided  this  was  the  weirdest  stretch  of
architecture yet. The  light was  lousy, but it was good  enough to make out
the walls--plain and gray with an oddly rough-hewn surface, as if hacked out
of the rock with a magic ax.
     Large, rectangular designs everywhere  gave the  feeling  of a colossal
cemetery. More than anything  else, the strong impression of something truly
ancient  and evil permeated  the narrow  corridor. Alien,  and  yet familiar
somehow.  It was as if I'd  been  cast  inside  the oldest  labyrinth in the
universe and would spend the rest  of my life  trying to find my way through
the maze.
     Damn  imagination acting up again .  .. memory was better; at least  it
gave me something to hold on to. A link to the past, a better past.
     Then I saw old Gunnery  Sergeant  Goforth, walking down the corridor in
my  direction. The  failing light made it difficult to make  out skin tones;
but  the smooth, purposeful way  he walked made  me  think he couldn't  be a
zombie.
     It was Gunny Goforth--and he was alive!
     "Gunny!"  I shouted, ecstatic to have finally found another live one in
this nightmare.
     He didn't answer; my God, that should have told me something.
     He raised his old .30-99 and aimed it right at my chest. I threw myself
to the floor just as the bullet seared over my head.
     "Damn you  to hell!" I shouted, outraged that  the universe had decided
to  foist a  new,  improved  zombie on  me. Too late;  I'm sure  he  already
was--and me with him.
     This new horror seemed even more unfair than that crazy  brown  monster
with the spikes. I'd settled into a nice, predictable pattern about  what to
do with zombies. No fair changing the rules now!
     Hey, Gunny, you're still a pal.
     He marched straight  for me, no  deviations,  no duck-  ing, no turning
sideways to make a more difficult  target.  An  obliging guy in  his way. Of
course, he was working the bolt on his sniper rifle, trying  to blow my head
from Phobos back to Earth.
     I  didn't  just lie  on  the floor,  waiting  for that  unaccepta-  ble
outcome. I had plans of my own.
     In life,  Gunny Goforth could shoot--hell, could  shoot the apple off a
young  Marine's head. In death, he shot better than all  the other  zombies.
And he blinked.
     I rolled back and forth, waiting until he was ten  meters away; then  I
shouldered the riot gun and squeezed.
     It was the biggest mess I'd made on this godforsaken rock of a  moon so
far. The splatter was sort of an artistic statement. But  I must have gotten
something in my eye. I kept blinking, but it wouldn't go away.
     Somebody was laughing, sort of a crazy, whacked-out cackle.  "Shut up!"
I screamed at the jokester, wiping my cheeks. The laughter stopped, and only
then did I realize the mirth was courtesy of a poor jarhead named Fly.
     This  was  no good.  I  had  to get a handle on the  situation. Running
multiplication tables in my head helped me chill while I scavenged Goforth's
pack for ammo. My breathing slowed  to something sane, and my heartbeat took
a licking but kept on ticking.
     In fact, I was so calm I barely blinked when a whirring, metallic skull
sailed past my head.
     This time I was sure  my imagination was off  on a wild toot. I'd never
done hallucinogens as a kid, and it  just wasn't fair for my  imagination to
suggest a giant, white skull had gone flying past (on its way to the demonic
head  shop,  no  doubt). So  I made a deal with my imagination: if it didn't
throw any more Halloween balloons at me, I'd give it a break  when it wanted
to go traipsing down memory lane. I can be fair.
     I ran  like a  madman  up  the  corridor,  jogging  a  couple of times.
Whatever it was, I'd lost it for now.
     Emerging into  a big open room  made me feel more claustrophobic.  That
might  sound fairly  nutty but you'd  have to see this place for yourself. I
wasn't  bothered  by the incredibly high, arched ceiling,  supported by gro-
tesque pillars that would  be more at home in some ancient  palace in India.
No,  what  bothered me  was that  this huge room was full of barrels of that
noxious, green liquid I thought I'd left behind--and good riddance.
     The  empty,  cavernous room was  a perfect  place for a congregation of
Halloween  goblins  and all species of  zombie, fast and slow, dull  and the
cognitive elite.
     No sooner had  this  unpleasant  thought crossed  my  cranium than  the
floodgates   opened  and  they  started  pouring  into  the  room  from  all
directions.
     I shrank back into the shadows, trying to look  dead and  mindless;  it
worked for a few moments .. . none of the zombies seemed to notice me.
     There really wasn't time for  a  sanity  check, but  I ran  a quick one
anyway.  I'd read  about a mental condition or a philosophy (I forget which)
called solipsism: you think of something, and  it happens. The ultimate case
is  when you think you're all that exists, and  the  whole universe  is your
dream. Man, I was ready to buy  into that, if only I could dream  away these
monsters as quickly as I seemed to be filling up this room with them!
     Well. . . what  can I  lose?  I closed my eyes  and concen- trated real
hard, wishing away the bogeymen.
     While I was thus  occupied, I was blown off my feet by an explosion and
searing heat right  over my head.  Opening  my eyes to excruciating  pain, I
discovered I wasn't alone  on the floor:  whatever had blown me down got the
nearest few zombies as well.
     I decided that solipsism was a load of crap.
     And when I looked up, my old friend was back, the crusty, brown monster
with ivory-white  spikes . . . and he'd brought his buddies. They watched me
stagger to my feet, and they laughed.
     Then one of them wound up  and threw something, some sort of mucus ball
that burst into  bloodred  flames as  it left the  creature's  hand. I dived
across a burned zombie, and the flaming phlegm spun me buttocks over boots.
     I  looked for a weapon,  a glint of metal, a  tube, something! But  no,
these demons were actually produc- ing the  fire with their bare hands . . .
and their aim was deadly.
     The monsters hissed, pointing directly at Yours Truly; then the zombies
noticed  me  for  the  first  time  and  began  shooting.  They weren't  too
particular about  innocent zombies  getting in the way, either--and whenever
one zombie would shoot another, or a demon would pelt a bunch with a flaming
mucus  ball,  the  monster  victims  would turn  on  their  monster  allies,
completely forgetting about me. While I  ran screaming  from one side of the
room to the other, I  filed that  little datum somewhere in the  back  of my
brain for future use.
     Now  the room was really filling up with at least  a dozen  zombies and
three leathery  demons . . .  and again I  dived to  the side as a whirring,
screaming hunk of steel buzzed my helmet. This time there was no mistake: it
was a goddamned flying  skull  with flaming rocket ex- haust spewing out the
back.  It  turned and  banked, trying to  mow me  down and chew me  up  with
razor-sharp, steel teeth, like one of those wind-up "chattering skulls" gone
mad.
     But the  fireballs  were the main  problem; the brown demons were a lot
tougher than the zombies.  Suddenly, I was  grateful for  the pillars;  they
provided cover, at least. Making a mad dash for the nearest, I fired off the
shotgun at the remaining zombies.
     Catching my breath, I  risked running to the  next pillar. This time  a
fireball almost fried me. There was just no  way  I could get to  the demons
from here without being toasted . . . and the shotgun range was too short to
pop them where I crouched.
     While I  dithered, I heard a whirring behind me,  then  a  harsh,  iron
screech.  Sure  enough, the flying skull had sailed  around  the pillars and
spotted me again.
     I can take care of you at least, you F/X reject! I whipped the riot gun
around and fired from the hip, not even taking time to aim.
     It was the best mistake of my life.
     The  little bugger skittered out  of the way;  I  tried  to track  as I
fired, and I popped one of the toxic barrels instead.
     It exploded  with a terrific concussion, kicking  me  in the body armor
like a mule and tearing off a chuck of my kevlar vest. The skull vanished in
a spray of metal gears and exploding JP-5.
     Almost  immediately,  my bruised eardrums were as-  saulted  by another
explosion, then another and a fourth.  Five or  six more barrels touched off
in rapid succession. All I could think was thank God I was on the other side
of the pillar.
     An acrid cloud of blue smoke  swirled around the  walls and floor . . .
residue from  the explosive  oxidation of the toxic goo.  Gasping, I  peeked
around the pillar at a scene of astonishing carnage.
     Zombies and  demons alike had  been torn to shreds and strips  of  gray
flesh,  their  parts  mingling in  a hellish mulligatawny.  The stench  of a
thousand  sour  lemons  permeated  the room, even driving out the  horrible,
burning smell of the toxic  fumes. Jesus, I thought,  I hope the cameras got
the shot.
     I climbed shakily to my feet and padded toward  the door,  chastened by
the awesome  destructive power in those forty-gallon drums. At  the  edge of
the room I found the only other survivor.
     The demon  crawled  along the  ground  with  its  hands,  one leg blown
entirely off and the other twisted into a crazy angle. It leaked yellow pus,
globules that burst  into flame  as soon as they  dripped off  the monster's
body.
     I leveled my shotgun at its head. "Die, you dumb animal," I said with a
smile.
     "Aaanimaaal," repeated the demon, "not. . ."
     I paused,  startled.  I  didn't know they could talk. "You're right," I
prodded, "at least animals kill you clean or leave you alone."
     It twisted its head  all the way around  to stare up at  me while lying
belly down on the floor. My stomach turned at the sight. "You--are aanimaals
when we fix planet."
     I curled my lip, but my heart  leaped. Which planet was that?  Mars? Or
did  the aliens' plan include Earth?  "We'll  mow you down  as fast  as  you
bubble up out of the sewers, you piece of filth."
     The  alien monster laughed,  opening its mouth wide enough to swallow a
man's head. "Weee throw rocks . . . big rocks."
     The  image was ludicrous;  but I got a premonitory  shudder. Somehow, I
guessed the emphasis was on the word "big."
     8




     Despite my better  judgment, I was too intrigued for the moment by  the
sound of pure evil pleading its case. "Why  haven't the others spoken to me?
Can you all talk?"
     It opened  its  mouth wide, exposing gums full of  squirming  cilia and
teeth  that  rolled and shifted position. "Not... all ssssame, like you-mans
not sssame."
     The  alien  crawled  on  a bit farther. I don't think  it was trying to
escape; it knew that was impossible. I began to worry that it was leading me
toward something. Ahead of me was a greenish stone wall carved in bas relief
with a  hideous,  demonic face. Somehow,  I  doubted  that  was  an original
furnishing in the Phobos base of the Union Aerospace Corporation.
     "How aren't we the same?" I prodded. I felt in my gut that I was on the
verge of something important.
     "Ssssome  . . .  fear," it gasped. Its face showed no sign of distress,
but I  knew from the shudder that wracked  its  body that it  was very  near
death. "Othersss sssstrong . . . you ssstrong."