The Flying Eyes. J. Hunter Holly
paused in his flight to grab Hendricks and pull him along. The reactor technician was out of his mind, his own eyes glazed, not with the healing power of the Eyes, but with madness.
The three of them ran from the stare of the Eye, and found themselves in the middle of the melee. Around them the Eyes bobbed and swooped, and the ground was slippery with their blood. But they were healed over. The men were no longer a fighting unit, but a panicked horde of individuals. Bullets rained upward, piercing their targets, and the targets shot skyward, wounded and bleeding, only to return to the fight healed. And always, there was that pull, that constant pull upon Linc that impelled him to approach.
Students bumped into him, their guns discharging uselessly. Others fired volleys at the empty air. The field had changed from order to chaos, with the cries and screams of maddened minds.
Streaming blood from one of the Eyes fell on Linc and soaked into his shirt. Close by, a student jerked straight. His body stiffened, then went limp, and his gun fell from his open hands. He walked through the mob of running, whirling men, oblivious to the noise and jumble. An Eye sailed backward before him, the sun glinting on its healing surface. As Linc watched it the pull caressed him again, and grew from a caress to a tug. Another man, a policeman, joined the zombie student, and the Eye took him, too.
Linc broke from the tug of the thing. Sweat from his own body was mingling with the now cold blood of the Eye on his shirt.
“To hell with Iverson’s orders!” he yelled to Wes. “We’ve got to fight them off!”
He dashed for the student’s abandoned gun and raised it to his shoulder, blasting away at the Eye that had now gathered four men and was leading them out of the battle toward the field beside the woods. He saw the searing tear as his shot hit home, smack in the middle of the Eye.
“Bull’s-eye!” he shouted in triumph, and let go another blast. But the Eye bobbed upward, evading, and even as it did, he saw the wound he had made in it glazing over, the flow of blood halting, the sides of the hole growing together and scarring over.
“Wes!” He swiveled to find his friend. “What are we going to do?”
But Wes didn’t hear. He was yards away, a gun raised, shooting at another of the giants.
The sound of gunfire grew less and less. The circle around Linc broke, cascading outward as men took flight. Those who did not flee stood in their places, numb, alone, unaware. Hendricks was one of them. He wasn’t muttering any more.
Linc refused to run. The battle was useless against a self-healing opponent, but he wouldn’t run. These men, these boys, were here because of him, and he had to cover their flight. He shot upward, missing or hitting, it hardly mattered which, but the hits were at least a delaying action. The Eyes were massed over him and their seepings and weepings splashed over him, in his hair, on his face, but he wouldn’t run. Men in flight went limp and shuffled away, but he ignored them. Whatever Iverson said, this was his fight, after all. The Eyes wouldn’t get him.
Wes backed into him, also fighting. Together, he and Wes would battle for the world. Then Wes’ hands were on his shoulders, shaking him, and Wes’ desperate shouts hit his ears.
“Linc! Come to your senses, Linc! It’s no use! We’ve got to get out!”
Linc heard, but couldn’t understand; then Wes’ shaking dashed sweat into his eyes and with the sting of it he came back to himself. There was no force left on the field. The battle was done.
“Where’s Iverson?” Linc gasped, frightened. Nothing must happen to the old man. “Where are the rest of our own men?”
“Iverson has gone back to the lab. Come on, Linc. Please!”
Six Eyes were circling the bloody ground; two Eyes were escorting twenty men away.
“All right,” Linc surrendered. “Retreat! Run!”
He swung in beside Wes, blind with exhaustion, and twenty steps further on, stumbled over the body of a dead boy. He was riddled with bullet holes, caught in one of the frenzied volleys of his companions. Linc scrambled up and went on. Behind him, the pull on his back told him that the Eyes were coming, giving chase over the field, eager to add to their Linc of zombies.
Collins was holding the door wide when they reached the lab.
“We’re the last,” Wes told him. “Shut it!”
Collins bolted the door. “Iverson and the other men are down in the assembly room,” he said.
“Iverson—and how many others?” Linc asked.
“I’m not sure,” Collins answered. “About twenty, maybe less.”
Twenty, maybe less, out of forty-six! Linc met Wes’ glance, then strode away. He went into Iverson’s office and closed the blinds tight to bar the scene outside. He could see the field and the Eyes hovering beyond the window, waiting.
He closed the blinds and slumped into a chair, aware of the ache in his body, of the exhaustion, and the filth that was all over him. He shuddered.
“Don’t think about it,” Wes said. “Not right now.”
“But it was such a disaster, Wes. Such a fool play. All of those boys—those men. If we could have won just a tiny victory… But as it is, their loss was senseless. It accomplished nothing. I just gave their lives away.”
“You can’t take all the blame. If you’re determined to place guilt, then I’m guilty, too. So is Iverson.”
Wes was trying to give him relief, but he couldn’t accept relief, not yet, not with the horror still so close. Collins, coming through the door, was a welcome interruption.
“What were you guys doing out there?” Collins asked harshly. “I got here and found nobody at work, and when I went outside I saw you out there. What was that supposed to be—the ‘simplest solution’? Shoot ’em up? Fight fire with fire?”
The barbs hit Linc full force. “And where were you? If you saw what was happening, why didn’t you come out and help?”
“Thanks for your usual vote of confidence,” Collins slashed back. “I saw, all right; and I saw ahead and knew what was going to happen, so I stayed here. If I hadn’t been here, Iverson wouldn’t have made it back. An Eye almost got him. I pulled him in. Maybe you think Iverson’s just another puppet to play with, but I hold him higher than that. So does the government. He’s a man who can’t be replaced.”
“So?” Linc could think of no retort. “I already know that.”
“Then why did you take such a chance with him?”
“Because we thought it would work,” Wes said. “An attack on a vulnerable eye-—we thought it would work. So did Iverson.”
“Somebody should have consulted me.” Collins was nasty. “I could have told you what would happen. I saw a guy poke a stick right through one of those things last night, and I saw the thing heal itself up.”
Then it wasn’t only a futile fight, it was a senseless fight, stabbed through Linc’s mind. He had sent men out when they didn’t have a chance, and he could have known it if he had taken the trouble to find out.
“Where were you to be consulted?” he shouted at Collins, needing to take the self-recrimination out on somebody. “You gave up last night, and went home. And then when you got the information about the healing capacity of the Eyes, you didn’t even report it.”
“Okay, so I went home. But would you have consulted me if I had been standing right next to you?” Collins’ eyes were sparking. “That’s not the way you work, Hosier. Not Lincoln Hosier. He’s the whole show, the whole department. You don’t use your assistants, and you know it. You’ve never made use of me. You wouldn’t have last night.”
“I haven’t made use of you because there’s nothing in you worth making use of! ” Linc let it come.