Monster Planet(98)

She had no choice. 'Take us down, Osman,' she said, her eyes fixed on Ptolemy's face. 'Get us about a mile's clearance from that column and then find a flat spot we can set down in.'

Ptolemy did not chastise her. She'd made a decision, which was the main thing. They would go on foot from here. They really had little choice. The gorilla in the hot rod had a whole pile of Stingers ready to go. The one advantage Sarah had possessed, air superiority, had transformed into a liability.

It took a while for Osman to find an acceptable landing site. Even then it wasn't perfect'a rough hole in the trees where a limb of unbroken rock stuck up out of the side of the mountain. It had little cover and it provided no kind of access at all to the road. Had Sarah considered the possibility earlier they could have brought rappelling gear and hot-roped down into a better spot. But she hadn't thought of that. She hadn't thought of any possible problems. Her plan had looked so good she'd forgotten to make sure she had prepared for contigencies.

Ayaan would have slapped her, she thought, and rightly so.

The mummies jumped down from the crew hatch. She tossed them their firearms from the weapon rack and slung her own over her shoulder. Before she left the aircraft she turned around to look at Osman. He was frowning and drumming his fingers on the instrument panel as if he was counting down the seconds until he could lift off again.

Her father started pulling at his crash webbing and she shot him a nasty look. 'You're staying here. Guard your freaky skull thing or whatever,' she told him. Her anger had yet to subside from when he had tried to forbid her from undertaking this mission.

'Sarah. Please. Just be safe,' he pleaded with her. He kept trying to unbuckle his straps.

She leaned across him and pulled his chest straps tight. With a look of total dejection on his face he let his hands fall to his sides.

'I'll be as safe as I've ever been,' she told him. 'Which is not very. At least I have this,' she said, brandishing her Makarov at him. 'Your generation made sure we had plenty of these.' Rage had pooled in her stomach. It started surging up her throat and she knew she was about to say something horrible. Her insecurities, though, her fear and her panic and her general misery were fueling a really colossal explosion and she knew she couldn't fight it back. What came out of her mouth was going to be fiery and acidic and mostly just cruel.

'Don't go,' he begged. 'As your last remaining parent I'm asking you, please. Stay here.'

She exploded. 'My parent! My guardian! You can't get enough of this power trip, can you? Can you?' She stabbed one finger in the direction of Gary, who failed to move at all. 'You've been his guardian for twelve years. You must have loved that.'

'It was my sacred duty,' he told her. His voice was very soft.

Almost soft enough to stop her. 'Yeah, well, that's one f*cked up duty you have there. Spending twelve years alternately smashing and healing a dead human brain. Wow. Way to keep the eternal flame alive, there, Dad.'

His face'what was left of it'fell. He understood instantly what she was saying. He'd always been a smart guy. Smart enough to think he knew what was best for everyone else.

Something changed inside of her. A chemical reaction that froze her rage and turned her volcano of anguish into a glacier of pure hate. When she actually heard her voice she sounded cool and passionless. 'Ayaan was my parent,' she told him. 'You're just my father.'

Osman's fingers on the panel drummed faster and faster. His agitation filled the cockpit like a bad smell. Sarah stepped backward once, and again, and her foot hit solid rock. She ducked down and gestured for the mummies to stand back as the helicopter lifted from the ground, its rotor beating thunderously at the air.

When it was gone Sarah was alone with the mummies. Ptolemy stood near her but facing slightly away. Ready to accept orders without expressly demanding anything. The others studied their weapons. She'd given them shotguns, M1014 military-grade shotguns with gas-operated actions and short blocky buttstocks. That's right, focus on the details. It kept her heart from jumping out of her mouth. The mummies possessed a little more manual dexterity than garden variety ghouls but their bandaged hands and desiccated eyes just weren't enough for precision firearms. The shotguns were a perfect balance between stopping power and ease of use.

She inspected them, her squad, before moving out. Six of them, the entire contingent who had once been on display in an art museum in New York. Two of them had painted faces like Ptolemy, though the renditions were pretty crude by comparison. The rest were truly ancient mummies, their tattered wrappings stained with bodily fluids and rotten with time. Here and there a length of withered forearm or a gruesomely dried-out glimpse of cheek poked through their unkempt linen.