Black Rain

Hawker reached him a few seconds later, shocked at the damage the thing had done. Verhoven had managed to protect his face and neck, but blood was spreading rapidly from a wound in his side and squirting in pulses from a torn artery in his forearm.

Hawker ripped a section off Verhoven’s shirt for a tourniquet and shouted for Danielle.

Verhoven looked at his arm, his eyes drooping. “Where’s the girl?”

“She made it to the temple,” Hawker said, threading the fabric around Verhoven’s arm.

Verhoven nodded weakly. “Stop,” he said.

Hawker cinched the tourniquet, and started another.

“It’s too late for that,” Verhoven said, his voice dropping to a raspy whisper. “Better to go like this … than in a home somewhere.”

Hawker paused and Verhoven looked at him, coughing up blood.

“All sins forgiven?” Verhoven asked Hawker stared at his old friend, his old enemy. The man was a ghost already. Hawker shook his head. “None to forgive.”

Almost imperceptibly Verhoven nodded. “Damn right,” he managed. Then, as Danielle came over, he reached out and grabbed Hawker’s shirt. “You finish this,” he said. “Finish this, and get these people home.”

Verhoven shook him once, as if to emphasize the order. But his grip had already begun to fail. He held on for a moment, gazing at Hawker, and then his hand fell, dropping to the dry earth. With his eyes still open, Pik Verhoven died.

Danielle crouched beside Hawker, a hand on his shoulder. Hawker stared at Verhoven, finding it impossible to look away.

Brazos’ voice reached them, breaking the silence. “My God,” he said.

Both Hawker and Danielle looked toward him. Brazos was staring at the defense console with a grim expression on his face.

Hawker put a hand out and closed Verhoven’s eyes. The black pistol Hawker had given him lay on the ground. He grabbed it, stood and walked with Danielle to the console.

Targets were showing up, at least a dozen already, gathering on the western edge once again. Their numbers were growing rapidly, as if they were massing for a charge.

Hawker looked up. The haze above them had thickened into a solid layer of darkening gray and the sun had all but vanished.

On the brink of the storm, all of them, animal and human, had run out of time.

CHAPTER 49

Hawker glanced at the computer screen; the electromagnetic radiation had almost destroyed it by now, but from what he could see the gathering at the western edge was still growing. “Get to the temple,” he said to Danielle.

She looked at the screen. “I’m not leaving.”

Hawker pointed to Brazos. “He won’t make it without you.”

She nodded reluctantly.

“Fill the trench and light it,” he added. “And do it quickly. You don’t have much time.”

Danielle grabbed Brazos’ arm and helped him stand. “Come on,” she said. They began walking and the two dogs followed.

Hawker gazed out at the tree line. The trees had begun bending from the wind, branches swaying, leaves turned inside out. In the spaces between he saw movement if not shapes. The animals were there, jostling for position, grunting and calling to one another. They seemed nervous, hesitant; perhaps it was the fires or the remaining daylight, or the death of the first animal, but something seemed to be holding them back.

Whatever it was, it wouldn’t last. The sky was growing darker by the moment and the wind had turned cold; downdrafts in the looming thunderstorm. Leaves and chaff were blowing across the clearing in a haphazard fashion. Before long there would be a tipping point, when neither the sun nor the rain was present. The charge would come then.

“Let’s see if we can give you something else to think about,” Hawker said, as he fired a quick burst into the pack and then turned and loosed a few shells at the remaining drum of kerosene, halfway between him and the western forest.

The container blew apart in a baritone explosion and the animals scattered, but they quickly re-formed, and a minute later one of them stepped through the trees.

Hawker stared at the animal in awe. The animal was a beast; the size of a Roman war horse, nine feet tall at the shoulder, broad and angled. Its jaw opened slightly with its breathing, exposing daggerlike teeth. It perched for a moment on its hind legs, sniffing the air, a hideous gargoyle chiseled from some black volcanic stone.

Down the row, a slightly smaller copy stepped through the tree line, grunting softly, the rows of bristles behind its neck moving back and forth like reeds in the wind. Its eyes went from Hawker to the raging kerosene fire, to the temple looming beyond.

Hawker put his hand on a concussion grenade, slipped it loose and pulled the ring. With his eyes on the largest beast, he hurled it toward the trees, watching as the animals tracked it against the dark sky. It exploded beside them, just as he opened fire.