Enemies From Beyond by Keith Laumer

Author:Keith Laumer [Laumer, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Aliens, Fiction, Media Tie-In, Science Fiction
Amazon: B000DEMYPM
Publisher: Pyramid Books
Published: 1967-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter FIVE

It was two hundred feet to the sagging marquee over the hotel entry. Running with the girl’s terror-stricken cry echoing in his ears, the distance seemed to David to be ten times that―a nightmare run, through the syrupy medium of fear; fear not for himself, but for the helpless girl who had trusted him. His eyes swept the scene for the charge of a great sea-monster, or the death-dealing pounce of a flying killer―and almost missed the bristled thing, the size of an orange-red tennis ball, that bounded high, striking for his face. Instinctively David threw up his arm, felt searing agony as the midget’s needle-like fangs stabbed through his sleeve, speared deep into the muscle of his forearm. It clung, shredding the tough cloth of his shirt with its claws, until he stumbled to a tree, slammed the leechlike thing against the trunk. It dropped to the ground, whipping and scrabbling at the bricks beneath it with the same diabolical ferocity that had characterized its larger cousins.

Bleeding freely from his lacerated arm, David ran for the entry, leaped the steps, burst into the mildewed lobby as Doria, the stand of a lightless floor lamp in her hands, aimed a roundhouse blow at another of the bristled horrors. The heavy metal rod struck it squarely, sending a spatter of vile-smelling, yellowish fluid across the floor. Even with its body crushed, the thing continued to crawl toward the terrified girl, its talons rasping splinters from the floor, until David brought a boot down on it, stamped it into a tangled pulp.

“Oh, David!” Doria threw herself at him, clutched him, sobbing. “I was so . . . so frightened!”

“Not too frightened to fight,” he said gently. “That’s quite a swing you’ve got there.”

She managed a ghostly smile. “I’m a tennis player,” she said―and broke off as another of the demoniac beasts skittered through the open door. David dodged its rush, slammed the heavy panel, catching another of the tiny killers as he did. He kicked the other away as it charged him again, dropped the bar in place, the trapped creature still keening and clawing, with its body almost cut in two. Doria, running up with her lampstand, smashed the surviving animal with a well-aimed blow.

“The windows!” David called, and ran to tilt a heavy table against the nearest barred opening, glimpsing as he did half a hundred of the kitten-sized monsters, swarming across the inn-yard. One bounded high, struck the bars, clung, raking at the table, sending splinters flying.

“It will hold for awhile,” David called to Doria, frantically stacking chairs before the other window flanking the entry. “Long enough for us to find a better defensive spot! Come on!”

Together, they ran for the stairs, emerged on the second floor to find the invaders there ahead of them.

“They must have come up via the trees,” David said, sending a viciously charging creature spinning with a kick. They retreated back onto the landing, where David held the door against the sledgehammer impacts of the bristled bodies hurling themselves against it from the opposite side.

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