Alien Nation #7 - Extreme Prejudice Read online

  On a business trip to Pittsburgh, detective Matthew Sikes and his Newcomer partner, George Francisco, stumble on what appears to be an unusual homicide. It isn’t long before the case leads them to a frightening world of abuse and violence that set in motion the series of horrifying murders born of an unremiting hate—murders that target only the innocent.

  With bodies piling up and time running out, Sikes and Francisco must race against the clock to stop the killing—and face a terrifying monster from beyond the stars!

  Sikes hugged himself with

  both arms, shivering from

  more than the cold now.

  “We’ve got to head back to the hotel now. If I don’t get dry clothes, I’m gonna freeze. Damn.” He vented the edge of his frustration on a snowplowed ridge. “When we find Vegas, I’m gonna kick his ass. Doesn’t he have the faintest idea how much trouble he’s caused?”

  “I don’t think he had any choice.”

  Sikes turned, stilled by the odd tone in George’s voice, and saw his partner stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, staring downward. “What?” He hurried back to him. “George, what are you talking about?”

  George stooped and peeled a scrap of muddy paper off the pavement. It was almost transparent with meltwater, the jagged tread mark of one of the Purists’ shoes obscuring the pasted-together words in one comer. What it said was easily readable, though, and made Sikes itch with anger even as he thought about the three Purists who had gotten away.

  We have the slag Ross Vegas. Do like we tell you or everybody dies.

  Alien Nation titles

  #1: The Day of Descent

  #2: Dark Horizon

  #3: Body and Soul

  #4: The Change

  #5: Slag Like Me

  #6: Passing Fancy

  #7: Extreme Prejudice

  Published by POCKET BOOKS

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Copyright © 1995 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

  ALIEN NATION is a trademark of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-671-79570-8

  First Pocket Books printing March 1995

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  To Ricia—We named it after the dog,

  but we based it on you.

  Roos editors, babe.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to Margie Marks of the Pittsburgh Zoological Society for her immeasurable patience with our bizarre questions as well as her insights into the workings of the Pittsburgh Zoo. It’s nice to know that a zoo so beautiful and precious is cared for by someone so caring. Good luck with the lions, Margie, and thanks.

  C H A P T E R 1

  “MATT, FASTEN YOUR seat belt.”

  Sikes lifted the arm he’d thrown over his eyes half a flight ago only long enough to squint at Cathy and ask, “Why?” She’d opened the window’s sliding shutter, and the sharp winter sunlight hurt his eyes.

  “Because,” Cathy said, reaching across their shared armrest to tug one end of his seat belt out from under his leg, “the airplane’s landing, and the flight attendant asked you to.” She dropped the metal buckle on his lap. “And I’m asking you to.”

  The plane’s wheels thumped down on the runway, and Sikes grimaced against the engines’ decelerating whine. “Cathy, we crossed an entire continent at thirty thousand feet without wearing seat belts. How much more dangerous can it be going five miles an hour on the ground?”

  He felt her seat move with her sigh. “We’ve got to do something about this problem you have with authority.”

  “We’ve got to do something about me not getting any sleep,” Sikes compromised. “We can worry about authority later.”

  “Forty minutes? That’s impossible.” In the seat behind Sikes, George Francisco muttered unhappily to himself amidst a rattle of loose papers. Sikes resisted an impulse to unhinge his seat and let it fall flat onto the lap behind him. “How could I possibly have talked for forty minutes?”

  “Try it again,” Susan, seated out of sight beside George, suggested quietly.

  Sikes snorted a little laugh, but it came out sounding more like a groan. “George, you’ve been talking ever since we got on this plane. What I’d like to know is how to get you to shut up for forty minutes.”

  Cathy elbowed him. “Matt, hush. These talks are going to be televised all over the country, and the symposium organizers were very specific that each speaker only has thirty minutes in front of the camera.” She jerked the other half of his seat belt onto his lap. “Fasten your seat belt.”

  “You’re talking at this Newcomer gabfest, too,” Sikes grumbled, squirming upright in his seat but ignoring her suggestion as he glared at George over the back of his seat. “I haven’t had to listen to you muttering about interspecies cooperation in law enforcement for the last six and a half hours.”

  George’s alien pale eyes darkened a shade, and he pulled his lips into the thin line Sikes had come to recognize well over the last year. “Cathy had time to practice her talk before we left,” George said stiffly. “Instead of practicing, I was assigned to stakeout duty with you all last week—”

  “I know that!” Sikes broke in. “That’s why I’ve had maybe three hours of sleep in the last two days! You and your community service speech haven’t helped any.”

  “You should have slept during the flight,” Cathy pointed out reasonably. “George wasn’t talking the whole time.”

  Sikes flopped back into his seat. “When he wasn’t talking, the engines were going.” He scrubbed at his eyes as the plane finally slowed to a stop at the gate. “I couldn’t sleep through that even when I was a kid.”

  Cathy looked surprised. “I found the engine noise rather soothing.”

  “You grew up on a spaceship.” Sikes tossed his seat belt parts aside and sighed. “You’ll probably love the hotel heater, too.”

  As if inspired by Sikes’s actions, the overhead seat belt light blinked off, and a trio of soft chimes sounded through the cabin. “Welcome to Pittsburgh International Airport. The local time is 1:57 P.M. The temperature is a brisk twenty-nine degrees, with snow and . . .”

  “Come on, sleepyhead.” Cathy half stood in the window seat, computer case in hand, and nudged Sikes toward the aisle. “I want to get out of here and stand up for a while.”

  Sikes didn’t fight her, knowing from experience that it was useless. Catching his overnight bag between his feet, he dragged it into the open, then fumbled his way into the aisle while trying to pull his heavy peacoat from under the seat. At the hotel, he promised himself. I’ll get some sleep once we’re at the hotel. If he survived that long. He felt like he was going to keel over and start snoring as soon as he stood still for more than a few minutes.

  Which might be a problem sooner than he expected. By the time Sikes had worked clear of his seat, the aisle was clogged with bodies. He turned sideways, leaning back against an empty armrest with his bag and coat bumping his knees, and looked at the people sharing this plane with him for what felt like the first time. A shiver of weirdness went through him. He pretended distraction with the zipper on his travel bag to try to hide his reaction.

  The plane was filled with Newcomers, jostling about just like human passengers, squirming to join Sikes in the aisle, struggling t
o open the overhead compartments or free their luggage from under adjoining seats. Their smooth, spotted heads looked unreal against a backdrop of airplane windows covered with falling snow, and the soft click and hush of their excited words sounded like some Japanese recording played backwards and very slow. A rail-thin Newcomer female, her spots as fine as leopard skin, skittered into the aisle ahead of a tall, broad Newcomer male who was probably her mate. The male squeezed past Sikes without seeming to notice him, but his wife offered a thin smile in apparent apology before being hustled away. Sikes smiled back at her, then looked away.

  It had never occurred to him that getting used to the aliens in L.A. didn’t mean he’d be used to them everywhere. It had seemed so self-evident—they were a thing unto themselves, and their location shouldn’t have mattered to his reactions or feelings. Still, here he was, pressed chest to back with them in a too-warm, gamy-smelling airplane, the only human in sight, and he was overwhelmed with a feeling of threat and revulsion just like what he’d felt the first time he’d waded among a crowd of them as a cop, sent to help break up a riot in the Little Tencton district of L.A. The revelation embarrassed him. Six years ago he’d been a rookie detective, trying like hell to make ends meet from the losing end of a bad divorce. Then, he’d have laughed at anyone who suggested there was life on other planets. Now . . .

  “You’re blocking the aisle.” Cathy slipped her free arm around his waist, tugging at a belt loop on his blue jeans with the other. Her pale eyes glowed above her puckish smile. “Don’t you want to go to Pittsburgh?”

  Sikes felt a rush of color and heat into his face and nodded awkwardly. “Yeah, sure.” He brushed the back of his hand against her temple without thinking about it and was both touched and ashamed of his earlier thoughts when she leaned her cheek into the caress. “Let’s go,” he said softly, and took her hand in his before following the chain of displaced Newcomers down the aisle and out the hatch.

  A blast of cold air caught them at the seam where the off-loading ramp met the door. Sikes squinted against the sudden chill, and Cathy’s hand seized tight on his, hurting just a little. He pulled her up next to him as they moved into the tunnel beyond, fitting her under one arm in an effort to relieve her shivering. “I told you it would be cold here.”

  Cathy nodded. “But this is terrible!” He touched the side of her neck, and she was as cold as the plane window glass. “Can humans actually go outside in temperatures like this?”

  He disentangled himself from her just long enough to shake out the long peacoat and drape it across her shoulders. “Believe me, humans can go out in temperatures a whole hell of a lot worse.”

  She shuddered, her hands closing whitely at the throat of the coat. “That’s amazing . . .”

  Sikes grinned and pulled her aside as they cleared the gate into the terminal. “At least there’s something we do better than you,” he said, fastening the heavy buttons for her. “You know, I really ought to just give you this thing—you wear it more than I do.” In fact, L.A. weather gave him little opportunity to make use of the heavy wool mantel. Cathy, on the other hand, bundled up inside it whenever the sky clouded over or the temperature dropped below sixty.

  “That’s okay,” she said, rewarding him with a little touch of her forehead to his. “I’ll just take it for the weekend whenever I can’t keep warm close to you.”

  He smiled and turned up her collar. “You’ve got a deal.” The softness in her eyes filled him with a warmth more than equal to any comfort the coat might have provided.

  George and Susan joined them inside the terminal. They both looked at least as uncomfortable as Cathy, their grips overtight on their luggage handles, George’s lips pressed with worry as he chafed one hand against Susan’s arm in silent sympathy. Sikes shook his head, sighing. “We’ve gotta do something about getting coats for you people.” He sandwiched both of Susan’s hands between his and was startled at how thin and frigid her fingers felt against his palms. “Didn’t you listen to a damn thing I said about the weather out here?”

  “I brought a coat,” Susan said between shivers.

  “Where is it?”

  “In our checked baggage.” Before Sikes could do more than snort, she added, “I thought we’d have time to get it out before going to the hotel. I didn’t think it would be so cold inside!”

  It wasn’t, but Sikes didn’t think it worth pointing that out right now. “All right, let’s see if there’s a gift shop or something on the way to the baggage claim. We’ll get you some souvenir jackets for the trip.” Meanwhile, he pulled his own sweater off over his head and tried to ignore the chill prickling up his arms when he was left with only a short-sleeved sport shirt for warmth. “It ought to fit over your head,” he commented, handing it to Susan.

  She looked dubious but took it anyway. “I don’t see why they had to have a business conference for Newcomers all the way out here, anyway,” she said as George helped her tug the heavy sweater on.

  “Because when eastern businessmen want somebody else to pay for a party, they hit up other eastern businesses,” Sikes told her. “And the radio station or TV station or whatever it was that agreed to pick up the tab is here in Pittsburgh. I guess it’s cheaper to ship all of you out here than it is to fly all their people and equipment to L.A.” Besides, he had a dirty suspicion that even the most open-minded event organizers subconsciously wanted reassurance that the ‘spotted menace’ stood no chance of expanding into their own backyards. He kept that opinion to himself, though. “Come on—let’s go find that gift shop.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for the symposium organizers?” George followed along behind while Sikes herded the women toward a cluster of lighted signs a few gates away—shops and eateries, apparently, wedged between gates at the end of a long moving walkway.

  Sikes kept them off the conveyor, not wanting to encourage human rudeness by putting the Newcomers in too close a proximity. “I’m not taking them to Shanghai, George. We’re just going to the gift shop.” He flicked a glare at a staring woman on the walkway, and she hurriedly looked away. “Besides, they know how many of you they’re supposed to have. They’re not going to leave without you.”

  “It isn’t a matter of being left behind,” George said. “It’s a matter of principle, of what sort of image we want to project as serious professionals—”

  “Anal, George,” Sikes cautioned him. “Here—” He threaded a path between two clusters of human travelers, his eye caught by a headless, armless mannequin sporting knitted black and gold. “This joint has sweaters.” Even if they were kind of ugly sweaters. “We can always get you something better at the hotel.”

  “Oh, Matt,” Susan chided him, swatting him lightly on the arm, “I think they’re lovely.” She slipped past Sikes to close in on one of the hanger-filled carousels, pulling George behind her with one hand. “I should probably get one for Emily, too.”

  Cathy joined Susan and George at the sweater rack, and Sikes paused inside the doorway to lean against the window. Watching the startled gift shop cashier and the trickle of curious people in the hallway outside both at the same time almost proved too complicated for his sleep-deprived brain. He hadn’t really lost that feeling of being crowded when he left the airplane, only now it was the overwhelming presence of human people that made his back itch and his jaw clench. Maybe he was just antisocial, he decided. Or maybe he’d just been a cop too long to expect anything good out of anybody, regardless of which planet they were from. Not wanting to deal with either issue, he closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the window glass while he listened to the Newcomers’ quiet chatter.

  “Susan, look—puffins! I didn’t know they had puffins in Pittsburgh.”

  “I think that’s a penguin, George.” A rustle and click of plastic hangers underscored Susan’s thoughtful comment. “This must be a team sweater for another of those social warfare equivalent bonding groups, like the Pillagers.”

  “Pirates,” Sikes told her, sig
hing. “The Pittsburgh Pirates. The Penguins are a hockey team.” He decided it was probably best to avoid explaining the rules of chasing little black pellets all over indoor ice. “Can we just pick the sweaters and come on?” He wanted to sleep so bad he could taste it. “We’re gonna miss our escort.”

  “I’ll pillage,” Susan said brightly.

  Cathy laughed with her. “I’ll puffin.”

  “Pirates,” Sikes corrected, and George remarked, “I don’t believe ‘puffin’ is a verb.”

  I shoulda shot myself in the foot, Sikes thought wearily, scrubbing at his eyes. Then maybe they’d have let me stay home.

  “ ’Scuse me . . .”

  Sikes startled upright when someone brushed past him, blinking his eyes into focus on the curly blond head passing in front of him. The man was taller than Sikes by maybe a handspan, but thinner, with a look of whipcord meat on his bones. Something about the frown that creased his narrow nose combined with the dark intensity of his stare and made Sikes’s stomach crimp. He caught the blond man by the waist of his pants. “Where’re you going?”

  The blond skidded to a stop, reaching back to catch at Sikes’s hand with a glare. “Do you mind?”

  Sikes shrugged but didn’t let go. “That depends.” He flicked a glance across the shop at where George counted bills into the cashier’s outstretched hand. “Why don’t you just let them buy their stuff and get out of here so you don’t have to look at them anymore?”

  “What are you?” the man asked, jerking free. “A slag lover?”

  “You want to spend the rest of the holidays in a body cast?”

  The man shook his head in disgust and disbelief. “I should have known.” He waved at someone out of sight behind Sikes, and it occurred to Sikes with a thrill of anxiety that the man was here with friends. “I hear it takes two guys to do it to them. Which one are you—the one who does it or the one who helps?”