Monster Planet(4)

Sarah stared at the boy standing on the flatbed. He looked like the soul of calm. The fusillade of bullets hadn't even ruffled his thin white hair. There was something, something not quite right about his energy. It was dark, of course, the boy was undead, a lich among liches and his energy swallowed light like a black hole, but... what was it? Sarah couldn't quite decide. But something was wrong.

Bullet holes appeared in the floor of the helicopter and Leyla hurried to throw a armored blanket of rubberized Kevlar across the deck plates to give the soldiers a little protection. As the helicopter swung out and away from the flatbed and beyond the range of the remaining machine gun Sarah clipped her safety line to a tie-down on the floor and tried to grab Ayaan's arm. 'Whoa, whoa,' she said, trying to roll with the helicopter as it banked, hard, 'there's something'' she shouted, but her poorly-fitted helmet had gone askew on her head and she couldn't hear her own voice over the engine roar. 'Ayaan!' she shrieked.

Ayaan wasted no more time. On the third pass she switched her weapon to full automatic and emptied a clip into the Russian boy, her arms tracking him with the precision of the machine. The wooden flatbed around him splintered and spat dust but he didn't even glance at Ayaan. No, his eyes were still fastened on Sarah's. He was still looking at her. Into her.

In the cockpit lights blared on Osman's control boards and a bell clanged urgently. The machine gunner on the flatbed had scored a real hit, blasting open one of the Mi-8's fuel pods. Automatic fire control systems and self-sealing bladders in the fuel system shunted into action and kept the helicopter from exploding but blue flames lit up the starboard flank of the fuselage and burning spatters of kerosene leapt into the open crew cabin.

'Ayaan, he's not'he isn't'' Sarah had trouble concentrating on the words. The boy's gaze compelled her, made her look at him again. She saw so much intelligence in his cheekbones, so much sorrow in his bluish lips. He was hypnotizing her, she knew it, and she knew how to fight it but it made it difficult to talk.

She looked up and saw that Ayaan had picked up an RPG-7V from the weapons rack. She slammed a bulbous rocket-propelled grenade into the launcher and lifted the optical sight to her eye.

Sarah glanced behind her and realized that the port-side crew door was still closed. If Ayaan discharged the RPG inside the helicopter the exhaust blast would blow back against the door and fry them all with super-heated gas. Focused so completely on her target Ayaan had transcended such concerns.

Unclipping her safety line Sarah pitched across the width of the cabin and pulled hard on the door release just as Ayaan acquired her target and squeezed her trigger. Exhaust bloomed out of the conical jet at the back of the launcher and blew away on the wind. Sarah looked down through the open door and watched the grenade jet toward its target. Finally the boy looked away from her, instead turning to face the projectile. He raised his wand as if he could ward off the explosive. It didn't work.

A brown cloud boiled up off the surface of the flatbed, a welter of splinters and debris. One of the machine gun mounts went flying, spinning end over end away from the flatbed. The dead men still tirelessly turning their cranks spasmed in place as debris peppered their bodies and threw them against their chains.

When the smoke cleared a meter-wide hole could be seen in the top of the flatbed, a gaping crater where there had been solid wood. Standing in the middle of the hole was the Russian boy. His cheeks weren't even smudged with soot.

No, Sarah realized, he wasn't standing in the crater. He was floating above it. He hadn't moved, literally'he was floating in mid-air even though the flatbed had been blown out from under him. Sarah studied him with her occult senses and breathed an oath. She struggled to get her helmet back on straight. 'That's not him'it's a projection, Ayaan, a mental projection! Just an illusion.'

'Seelka meicheke,'Ayaan swore. She threw the launcher down to the deck of the helicopter with a clang. Osman backed off, out of firearms range, though the remaining machine gun on the flatbed was spinning free and unattended. Every eye in the helicopter looked to Ayaan.

'Alright,' Ayaan said, after a moment. 'Osman, set down on top of that dune.' She pointed at a rising swell of the desert maybe a kilometer away.

The women in the cargo bay looked at each other and some of them gasped. Fear gripped Sarah too tightly in its sweaty grasp to let her utter a word. If she could she would have asked Ayaan if she had suddenly lost her mind. The helicopter provided the only real advantage the living possessed against the dead'the ability to fly away. If they put down now, with an army of the dead within striking range...