The approaching shadow loomed larger. If that shadow was a creature, it was massive, the size of a great white shark. Cold concrete pressed against my back. I held my gun in both hands. I wished now I’d called Holly and asked her to return and pick me up. I should never have stayed here.
The shadow slowed, and as I watched, it spit out more shadows from its sides. Four of them—no, it was at least six. It took a moment for me to register what I must be seeing. Realization came with a tiny fraction of relief. I wasn’t witnessing a monster spawning young. The original looming shadow was a truck or tank. It wasn’t a single living thing. But it had been full of smaller shapes, and now they approached us in a rush.
Without hesitation, they began to step through into our world. It took them several seconds to make the crossing. I stared as they grew ever more distinct. At first, I thought they were human, but as the figures stopped rippling like open flame they coalesced into what I now knew to be Gray Men.
McKesson fired first. He didn’t cry out a warning or a challenge. He didn’t say anything at all. The first Gray Man didn’t even get his weapon up, which appeared to be a strange, shotgun-like device. There was a stock and a handle at his end, and a muzzle that pointed in our general direction. But unlike a shotgun, the device had a circular disk of dark metal built into the middle of it and a bulb at the business end instead of an open barrel. I was reminded of an old-fashioned Thompson submachine gun. Whatever it was, he handled it like a weapon.
McKesson put three rounds in him. The Gray Man never even pulled the trigger. He sagged down and I almost felt sorry for him, ambushed like that. I wondered right then, for the first time, if I was helping to start a strange new war.
“Shoot them the second they look solid,” McKesson shouted at me. “It takes them a bit to get their bodies to operate properly after they come through.”
The second and third came through together, but these guys knew the score, I could tell. They had their weapons up and were firing even as they unblurred and formed into solid masses before my eyes. Gouts of blue light flashed out—no, it wasn’t light, exactly. It was some kind of ice-cold plasma. It was as if they fired glowing, smoky gushes of frozen flame. The shelf full of wine bottles beside me came apart at the touch of this released energy. Century-old bottles were frozen solid, but others that were only touched by the plasma popped and drenched me in freezing wine. The smoky cold liquid burned my head and back. I howled in pain.
McKesson returned fire, and I joined him. The stairway took another hit from the blue plasma, splintering the wooden steps and icing them over instantly. The Gray Men weren’t able to aim properly the moment they stepped through, but they damn sure could pull their triggers.
We cut the two down in a fusillade of shots. I fired four times, putting two rounds into each of the alien men. My cheeks and back were burning in streaks from the supercooled wine. Broken green glass rested on my head and my scalp was cut under my hair. I didn’t dare do so much as reach up and wipe away the blood. We were in a fight for our lives, and there were a number of dark shapes still on the other side.
But then the Gray Men stopped coming for a while. Instead, they hung back in a growing cluster. They regarded us. I wondered briefly how they saw us, how we might look to them from their side. Three shadows on the far side stared at us, two defenders on the home front. They knew we had the advantage. If I could have heard their thoughts, I was sure they weren’t wishing us well.
“Can they shoot through?”
“Neither side can,” McKesson said. “Only slow-moving objects can pass through.”
“What if they push a bomb into the room with us?”
“Then we’re screwed,” he said.
I swallowed but kept my gun trained on the shimmering forms. “What are they doing?”
“Probably hoping we’ll come through to their side.”
After a minute or so of hesitation, they must have decided we weren’t dumb enough to walk into their weapons. They merged again with the big, dark blur, which I was now convinced was some kind of vehicle. For a second, I thought they might try to crash through the opening and pile out of it on our side—but they didn’t. They drove away and disappeared.
McKesson got up from his crouch, holding his pistol out in front of him. He walked forward cautiously to the three bodies that were piled up and bleeding on the concrete floor. I noticed for the first time that although their blood was indeed red, it was darker than our blood. Almost black. It seemed thicker too, like a tarry substance. I supposed my own blood might look like that after it had lain there and dried to a thick and sticky puddle.
He gave each of the Gray Men a hard kick in the ribs. One stirred, but was clearly helpless. He aimed his pistol at its head.