Doctor Who_ Illegal Alien - Mike Tucker [49]
She looked down at Sharkey. Suddenly he felt the blood leave his face.
The dead thing in his pocket had twitched.
Mama looked down in annoyance at the drain cover in the middle of the sloping floor. It always rattled in heavy rain, but this was
'What in the name of '
The drain cover exploded upward, hitting the stone roof above. From the drain poured ... bugs. Little metal bugs. By the dozen. By, the score.
Sharkey was yelling. 'Cybermats!' He leapt to his feet and screamed. The one in his pocket was biting into his thigh. A ring of razorsharp metal incisors had harpooned through the lining of his jacket, through his clothes and embedded itself in his flesh. He tore at it in terror. It came away, still holding a lozenge of skin, blood, and muscle tissue.
Cybermats? Ace leapt onto the table. So that's what they were.
Sharkey collapsed on to the floor in pain. Staring, terrified, at the silver army erupting from the ground, he crawled back, further and further under the tables. It was Him. The little man had been right. Madness, ever to dream of defying Him. He knew every thought that was had in this city. Sharkey's head hit the wall. He had crawled on his back into a corner.
'Sharkey!' Ace yelled. She strained to see him beneath the tables, He was dead down there, she knew.
On the ground, equidistant between the whimpering, prostrate man and the advancing host, the broken, clingingtolife Cybermat wasn't that what he'd called it?
squirmed and writhed. It seemed to be trying to crawl towards its arriving swarm. They closed on it. They tore at it with their metal mandibles until nothing remained of their brother.
Then it began. Like a feeding frenzy. Scuttling and leaping, they swarmed across the bar. Sharkey screamed as a carpet of Cybermats flowed over him, tearing him to pieces.
Ace leapt from table to table, trying to reach the cover of the heavy wooden bar. She could see in a blur customers falling, screaming as the Cybermats attacked. Charlie Parker on the jukebox died with them.
Behind the bar Mama swore under his breath and reached down for his baseball bat. A Cybermat sighted him at two yards and gathered itself to leap. As it launched itself across the bar he swung, sending the little killer flying across the room and„ into the far wall
Mama spat into his hand and crouched ready for the next attack.
'Let's play ball,' he muttered.
Another flew at him. He swung. Another home run. A third And then he heard a chittering to his left. A Cybermat was sitting on the bar next to him, gathering itself.
'Get out the way!' Ace leapt a good five feet from the last table on to the bar. Her feet skidded on the tatty flag spread across it; the flag nicked, and Ace shot down the length of the bar on her back. The Cybermat swung round in time to see her feet cannon into its face. With an electronic squawk it shot off the edge of the bar to the floor.
Ace collapsed behind the bulkhead of the bar, her fingers clinging to the edge of the flag.
'That's it, missy,' grinned Mama. 'You jus' take shelter behind the good ol' Stars 'n' Stripes.'
She hauled herself to her feet as a Cybermat hit the floor behind the bar. Before it could leap, Ace flailed at the rainfilled bucket on the bar. Barely gripping it, she swung it down, mouth first, on top of the Cybermat. She scanned the bar momentarily before hurling herself at the nearest beer keg and toppling it over on to the rattling bucket.
'I need a gun or something.'
'Under here,' Mama nodded down at the bar. 'I jus' got it for show, 'cause I'm a lousy shot. It's loaded, though.'
Ace grunted. A shotgun. She had never used a shotgun before. It would do. She swung the twin barrels out into the centre of the room, where the largest cluster of Cybermats was still concentrated, put the stock of the gun against her shoulder, and pulled back on both triggers. The pool of Cybermats scattered. All seemed momentarily confused.
Mama let out a whoop. Quickly Ace scanned the bar.
Perhaps a dozen people were dead. Others had succeeded in running into the night. Many still crawled