Final Days: Escape

by Jasper T. Scott

  A crowd of colonists began streaming toward the ramp to the empty storage section. Carrie went on, “Everyone else, pull your respirators out. If you don’t already have one, come to me.”

  “I guess we’re done,” Tony said.

  Val nodded and started after him, with Thomas Hartford and Eve.

  Kendra was in the middle of a group of masked, armed guards, giving them instructions. The group dispersed, and Kendra caught Val’s eye. She came running over, shaking her head. “I need you four to keep working. Someone has to check and label the supplies we’ve gathered.”

  “What for? Aren’t they already labeled?” Val asked.

  “They were, but while the reverend was in charge, her people moved everything around. We have textiles in agricultural crates, and electronics mixed in with guns and ammo.”

  “We can’t repack everything at the last minute,” Tony complained, staring at the fifty-odd crates of critical supplies.

  “No, but at least we can double-check and prioritize,” Kendra said. “We don’t want to reach another alien world just to find that we left all of our seeds for an empty crate full of packing peanuts. Follow me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tony replied.

  Val trailed behind Kendra, who popped the lid off a box, pulling out respirators and distributing them. Val put hers on and adjusted the straps.

  “You three, keep fetching supplies,” Kendra said, indicating Tony, Thomas, and Eve with her finger.

  “And me?” Val asked.

  “I have a different job for you.”

  Kendra went to another container and withdrew a spray can of red paint. “Check them. If the contents of any given crate aren’t vital to our survival, mark it with an X and ask the others to put it to one side.”

  “Okay,” Val said as she took the spray can.

  A flash of lightning lit up the world, dazzling their eyes. Thunder boomed right after.

  “Better hurry,” Kendra added.

  Val nodded quickly and went to work. Prying the lid as Kendra had done, she peered in and compared the contents to the labels on the side. Both the label and contents agreed: jumpsuits. Next up, the label said seeds, but the crate was stuffed with spools of electrical wiring. Is that vital to our survival? Val wondered, hesitating before she sprayed an X on the side.

  The rain was continuous, soaking through her jumpsuit and pooling in her boots. Mist rose in shimmering waves from the ground, curling around her ankles like a living thing.

  Another flash and roll of thunder drew her gaze to the sky, just in time to see a fork of lightning silhouette a small, dark, boxy shape descending directly overhead.

  Her heart skipped in her chest and adrenaline stabbed through her like hot knives. Was that their alien friends come to pick them up already? What about her dad? There was no way he’d be back yet.

  What if it was Hound?

  * * *

  Andrew

  Andrew cringed in anticipation of alien teeth ripping through his right arm, too. The rancid smell of the alien’s breath crept through the respirator.

  The roar of gunfire erupted, followed by a ferocious alien scream. The massive creature collapsed on top of Andrew, knocking the wind from his lungs. It took a second for him to realize that it was dead. Clenching his teeth to combat the fiery heat pulsing through his injured left arm, he struggled to free himself from the dead weight on top of him.

  After he’d slid out halfway, he yelled to Keller. “You still there?”

  “Who do you think saved your ass?” Keller called back. “Your turn! I’m stuck!”

  Andrew managed to pull his legs free and scramble to his feet. Casting about in the thick mist, he shook his head. “Keep talking! I can’t see a damn thing in this.”

  “I’m over here!” Keller said. “Come get me! Hellooo!”

  Andrew guided himself to the voice and found Keller clinging to a tree root, one arm hooked through it, the rest of him dangling in a muddy torrent. He bent down beside the flood water and reached for one of Keller’s hands with his uninjured right. “Grab on,” he said.

  The other man grabbed hold and Andrew heaved, putting his back and legs into it and throwing his weight against Keller’s. He got one foot out and stepped out of the river.

  “Now what?” Keller asked.

  Andrew shook his head, his attention switching to examine his injury. It was slick with blood that dripped steadily from half-numbed fingers. He looked to Keller. Luckily he hadn’t lost the pack in the river. “I need something to stop the bleeding. You have anything in that pack of yours?”

  “Yeah. Hang on a sec.” Keller kneeled in the mud and unzipped the pack to produce a medkit and a self-deploying tent. Before Andrew could ask, Keller walked up onto higher ground and began erecting the tent.

  “What are you doing?” Andrew asked, watching him work.

  “We’re not going to find Hound’s place in this.” Keller gestured vaguely to the mist and rain. “We need to wait it out until we can see where we’re going, and I can’t properly dress your arm with this deluge coming down.” Rain hammered from the sky, running off them in rivers as he worked.

  The tent sprang up a few seconds later, and Keller ducked inside. He gestured through the opening for Andrew to join him. “Come on.”

  Andrew ducked as he crawled in with a grimace. It was cramped, hot and humid, and the air became instantly saturated with the sour smell of their sweat and the dank river water that Keller had been dunked in. He opened the medkit and produced a disinfectant spray and a roll of compression bandages.

  “This is going to hurt,” Keller warned.

  “Just get it over with,” Andrew said.

  The other man sprayed his arm, turning the congealing blood to watery swirls as clear disinfectant mixed with it and cleaned his skin to reveal a curving arc of dark red puncture marks on both sides.

  “Barely felt a thing,” Andrew said.

  Keller glanced up with a frown. “Your arm is shredded. If you can’t feel the pain, it’s because you’ve suffered nerve damage or you’re in shock. Either way, that’s not good.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Andrew said. “Doc Hartford can patch me up at camp, or maybe the Froggers will give me a bionic replacement.” He said that last with a crooked grin, but Keller didn’t return it.

  “You still have the explosive?” he asked as he began wrapping Andrew’s arm with gauze and compression bandages.

  Andrew patted the front pouch of his jumpsuit with his right arm. “Yeah. We’re good to go as soon as the rain lets up.”

  “Assuming it does let up. We might not have time to wait. Can you lead us back?”

  “Sure. It’s on the other side of that river you went swimming in.”

  Keller froze, as if he’d only now realized what that meant. “Shit. We’re cut off!”

  “Yeah,” Andrew replied.

  “This was a bad idea,” Keller added.

  “It’s starting to look that way, isn’t it?”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Kendra

  She noticed the light the second the clouds broke above. The wind blew relentlessly, sending errant hairs across her face, and she attempted to swipe them away.

  “What is that?” someone asked, and it took Kendra a moment to realize it was her own voice asking the question out loud.

  She glanced toward Eden One where the majority of their colony was hiding. If this was their allies coming, it was going to be difficult to herd everyone through the rising mist.

  Kendra was turned around, and the truth slapped her on the cheek. The ship was coming from the wrong direction. It couldn’t be Belidar and his people.

  “Everyone retreat!” she called, but no one listened.

  Eve strode over, wiping water from her brow as she peered with Kendra toward the sky. “We’re not going to back down. Not anymore.”

  Evan was beside her, limping slightly on his injured ankle. Thomas Hartford held a strange-looking weapon at his sid
e, nodding along. Tony and Val were there, standing resolute in the face of danger.

  She was so proud of them, but whatever was coming, it wasn’t leaving without a fight. Hound was relentless, and after they’d killed two of his bodies, they were in for a battle.

  “Where’s Roland?” she asked, but either no one heard her, or they didn’t know.

  The incoming ship’s tiny blinking light raced through the dark clouds gushing rain across the entire valley, until it stopped and hovered directly overhead. Kendra could almost make out the shape of it: smooth lines and the soft glowing blue lights of the thrusters, she guessed.

  More colonists emerged from nearby, led by Carrie. They each wore masks, and had an assortment of tools in their hands. “We found another stash of respirators,” her sister told her loudly over the wind.

  “And them?” Kendra nodded at the incoming mob. They resembled a horde of farmers raising pitchforks in a storm, wanting to chase out the monster from their land.

  “They wanted to help.” Carrie smiled. Kendra didn’t. She wanted to order them inside, but it was too late, and they were going to need all the help they could get.

  The ship continued to drop lower, and Kendra stood her ground, their group of fifty or so lined at the edge of the crops. The vessel’s thrusters burned from the underside of the craft, and it descended at the far end of their fields. The rain had turned the soil into a mud pit, and the vessel sank into the soggy ground, two feet of the landing gear vanishing into the soil.

  Kendra thought about everything they’d been through: about her budding relationship with Andrew, her friendship with the doctor, Roland, Evan, Tony, and her maternal connection to Valeria and Diane. They could be wiped out in an instant, but she’d done her best. She’d finally put herself out there, made herself vulnerable, and that took more courage than fighting whatever came out of this alien vessel.

  Carrie moved to her side. “I love you, Ken.”

  Kendra let the rain wash away her tears. “I love you too, Carrie.”

  A door opened across the field and a ramp lowered, splashing into the crops, crushing the sprouting spinach. Whirring noises carried with the breeze, and Valeria gasped.

  * * *

  Roland

  “It has to be here somewhere.” Roland had forgotten that Carrie had sent a dozen people to clear out the supply station. They’d only taken what Carrie had deemed imperative, including things like replacement water filters, but they’d left it a mess, rendering his bin location useless.

  He scoured the space for the device he’d seen in Hound’s office, but he couldn’t find it anywhere. Thunder boomed through the insulated hull, shaking the entire station. Roland felt around in his pocket for the familiar comfort of his pill bottle. He hadn’t thought about it in so long, but the noise, the day’s events, mixed with the pressure growing in his chest, was becoming insurmountable. He fell to the ground, turning on his side.

  He breathed deeply, trying to gather his wits, but the attack hit him with a ferocity he hadn’t felt since the week after his grandmother had died, leaving him alone in the world. He lay in a fetal position, rain pelting the sides of Eden Fifteen with such force that he thought he might be under attack. Roland clutched his head, screaming through the booms of thunder, and that’s when he spotted it.

  His vision focused, and the ache in his chest subsided as he saw the boxy device. He rolled to his back, jumping to his feet, and crossed the room, kicking some empty blue bins out of the way as he stopped near it.

  Roland bent over, using his knees to lift as he found the device far heavier than he’d expected. The fear and anxiety were gone, replaced with self-assurance and determination. He returned the mask to his face and exited the messy room, the box gripped in two hands. His gun was tucked in the jumpsuit, and he hoped he didn’t need a quick draw.

  He was far from the busy part of camp, and he didn’t see another soul over on this end. His chest tightened as he noticed the commotion on the opposite side of the colony. Blue lights glowed from a strange landed ship. It was far too small to be their allies. It had to be Hound.

  His first instinct was to turn and run into the forest, but he pushed it aside, continuing toward the others and into danger.

  * * *

  Kendra

  She gasped as the first glint of metal emerged at the top of the ramp. The floodlights illuminated half of the crops, and each flash of lightning gave them a better understanding of what was coming their way.

  Kendra used a pair of binoculars to see the entire picture. The ship wasn’t as big as she’d first thought, but the bipedal machines emerging from inside looked extremely deadly. They wouldn’t need many of them to bring an end to what remained of humanity. The first one had to be ten feet tall: long thin arms dangled at its sides, while thick legs carried it over the ramp slowly as its unusually small head turned. Instead of eyes, it had a visor that had flickering green lights dancing through it.

  The robot was a thing of her nightmares, ever since seeing a movie as a kid about time-traveling cyborgs. Everything about these human-shaped machines set off warning bells. Another came forward, then another, and soon a row of twenty stood in a straight line, flanking the ramp.

  “What are they doing?” Tom asked behind her, his words muffled by his mask.

  “Twenty targets. Each about ten feet high,” Kendra muttered.

  “Are they armed?” Eve asked. Kendra lowered the binoculars and saw the advancing squadron. They were just as imposing from a distance.

  She wiped the lenses, staring through the device again. “They appear to have built-in armaments.” Something akin to a machine gun was bolted to the left arms, and more weapons were mounted on their shoulders, as well as their hips. They stopped, no longer walking toward camp, and Kendra peered toward the ridge where Belidar was supposed to be arriving from. Come on, hurry up.

  Evan stepped forward with a rifle in his grip. “What are we waiting for?”

  Kendra lifted a hand. “One minute.”

  The robots stilled, and she caught movement from inside the ship. She shifted the binoculars and saw a form stepping onto the ramp. It was hideous. Four arms waved as if they were under water. Tentacles hung and writhed from its neck, and the entire creature was so pale she could see through its skin. Organs pumped and bulged beneath the surface as it walked down the decline, stopping as it stepped onto the mud. One of the arms was holding a device, and she recognized it as the voice amplifier Keller had used when they’d first arrived.

  The creature spoke, the language horrible and magnificent at the same time. It was like an echoing children’s choir under duress. It stopped, and she heard something in stilted English before it spoke again. “Welcome to Eden. I hope you enjoyed the stay. It’s time to deal with this once and for all. I gave you every chance to let it go, but you wouldn’t. Now you die, and we move on.” The arms continued to wave as the real Lewis Hound kept talking. “Drop your weapons, and perhaps I will let a few of you live. Carrie, don’t make the mistake of opposing me. You know better. You’ve seen what I am capable of. Convince the others before it’s too late.”

  Kendra looked at her sister, who was stepping toward the crops, her mouth agape. “He’s… that’s him.”

  Hound was as alien as she could have expected. Evan knelt in the mud, his scope tracking as the being moved. The shot rang out, and Kendra found the binoculars, searching for Hound, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Everyone back!” Kendra shouted as the robots began to advance. Gunfire erupted from their weapons, laser pulses shooting from their shoulders, sending shards of floodlights raining down on Kendra and the others. She covered her head and ran.

  Evan took another shot, and Kendra was about to grab the man’s shoulder to drag him away when he paused, falling to the muck. He had a hole the size of a bowling ball through his chest. A scream caught in her throat, but she powered through, picking up the dropped rifle.

  “Withdraw! We need a more
defensible position!” Kendra called, and the others didn’t need to be told twice. They ran toward the residences, mist rising all through the camp, the ground being torn apart behind them by enemy gunfire.

  THIRTY

  Andrew

  Andrew and Keller took turns watching out the entrance of the tent with their rifles, checking for signs of more alien predators creeping up on them. They had a big tree at their backs, but the sides and front of their shelter were exposed. Andrew was chilled by his sodden jumpsuit and wet hair, but it was a strange mixture of heat and cold that came and went in waves. His body itched all over from the soaked fabric clinging to him, and his left arm pulsed hotly inside the compression wrap. Some of the feeling had returned to his hand, but he could barely make a fist, and doing so hurt like hell. Apart from nerve damage, the muscles were obviously torn to pieces.

  Outside, the rain had slowed to a trickle, but the mist was still too thick to negotiate.

  “I never should have agreed to come along,” Keller said.

  “Maybe not, but there’s no point whining about it now,” Andrew replied from where he sat guarding the entrance of the tent. “The only way out is forward. We wait for the storm to abate, then find Hound’s hideout. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find that he left one of those fighters there for you to fly us out.”

  Keller snorted. “There were four. We stole one, and Hound took it back. I assumed he’s probably locked the other three down tight. We were lucky the first time that the entrance wasn’t code-locked.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky again,” Andrew suggested.

  “Is the rain letting up?”

  “Yeah, but the mist is dense as a damn sheet.”

  “We don’t have any more time to waste. We should go.”

  “Because getting lost won’t waste any time,” Andrew muttered, but Keller was right. “Come on then,” he said as he crawled out of the tent. Rain pelted his hair and jumpsuit, but nothing close to what had been assaulting them a moment ago. Andrew searched for signs of trouble, then turned to Keller as he came out of the tent. He didn’t bother trying to collapse the shelter. There was no time for any of that.