The ground moved in a blur beneath us. I noted how there weren’t any asteroid craters in the unpopulated areas. If it had been a random strike, there was no reason why asteroids shouldn’t have struck the desert, but these had never been regular asteroids. They were transportation for the Trads to get onto Earth under our radar, and it had worked, too. They’d caused chaos, and while we were focusing on the damage, they’d stolen our women.
We passed over a small town, and I stared down at the destruction in horror. Smoke rose in thick black plumes from several areas, and beneath the smoke, red, orange, and yellow flames licked across buildings. Fires were still burning several days after the event. Emergency services were stretched to their limits, many of them suffering from damages of their own, and they must have been unable to act quickly enough, or with enough manpower to stop the fires from spreading.
I’d seen the destruction when I’d been back in the city, trying to find Tara and get back to the Observatory, but for Mike, Casey, and Aleandro—who’d all been at the Observatory when the attack had taken place—this was the first time they’d seen the result of the asteroid strike in real life.
Mike peered out of the window. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he said into the headset, though I had the feeling he was talking to himself as much as us. “Those poor people.”
I looked to Aleandro, who had a mother and sisters down in Phoenix who he’d not yet been able to get hold of. I leaned over and squeezed his hand, raising my voice to be heard over the noise of the helicopter. “There are survivors,” I said, reading his mind by the tension on his face. “Lots of survivors.”
He twisted his lips. “Yeah, but how are people going to survive in this? There are going to be food shortages, and looting, and violence. These next few months are going to be just as important in their survival as them not getting killed initially.”
“And we don’t know for sure that this is over,” added Casey. “The Trads might send in a second strike if they see we’re fighting back.”
Mike sighed and shook his head. “Fighting back? We’re not fighting anyone. We don’t even know who the hell we’re supposed to be fighting.”
“We’ll find a way,” I threw in. “There must be some way of distinguishing Trads from humans. Their DNA must be different, for one.”
Casey adjusted his headset and nodded. “True, though they’re hardly going to offer themselves up willingly for us to take DNA samples from them.”
“Regular humans will,” Aleandro said. “Single men won’t want to be thought of as potentially being an alien species. I know I’d happily allow someone to take a DNA sample and test it, if it meant people would trust me again.”
I smiled at Aleandro gratefully. He was one of the good guys—they all were—and I knew he’d do everything he could to help.
“It’s not so easy though, is it?” Mike looked between us. “If they can infiltrate us, where will it stop? We can say we’ll do DNA samples, but if the person doing the testing or processing the results is a Trad, that leaves the results open to being tampered with.”
“So, we only get women to do that part of things,” I suggested.
Casey shrugged. “Women can be corrupted, too. Who’s to say one in a position of power won’t fall in love with a Trad and allow herself to be manipulated?”
My stomach knotted. I wanted to tell him women were smarter than that, but hadn’t I managed to get myself into a compromising position with a Trad only a matter of hours ago? Admittedly, I hadn’t known what I do now, but affairs of both the body and heart were difficult things to control. Sometimes, even though we knew something wasn’t right, we couldn’t quite help ourselves. Love could be a dangerous thing—ask any woman who stayed with a man who was controlling or abusive, and yet she convinces herself that he’ll change because she loves him.
“We’re never going to figure things out like this,” I said into the headset. “Let’s see what info they have for us in Washington and take things from there.”
The president would have her best men and women working on this. I was flattered she’d chosen to bring our team into it, too, though I was also a little embarrassed at my particular one-on-one experience with a Trad. But I’d witnessed firsthand what it was like to see one of the women abducted, and Mike and I had also initially spotted the asteroids before they’d even broken into our atmosphere, and we’d been able to inspect one of the asteroids the Trads had landed in. Considering it had only been a matter of days, we had plenty of experience so far and we’d be happy to do whatever we could to help.
I glanced over at the two government agents who’d remained silent during our conversation. They were from Interplanetary Security, and I imagined they knew even more than we did right now, but if they’d yet detected a way of separating Trads from humans, they were keeping it to themselves for the moment. I figured they’d been told to let the president herself brief me, and didn’t want to step on any very important toes.
The helicopter flight was going to take at least four hours, covering several thousand miles in that time. A few decades ago, we’d have needed to catch an airplane to travel the same distance in the same amount of time, and I was grateful for our improvement in transport.
As we left the desert far behind and flew over the larger cities, the tension in the small aircraft increased. Seeing the state of the towns had been bad enough, but now we were faced with the destruction of the cities.
We crossed Denver and all stared in silence out of the helicopter’s side windows down at the toppled skyscrapers and destroyed hotels and rubble-filled streets, our hands pressed to our mouths. If this was typical of every city in America, I struggled to see how we would come back from it. What it would take to rebuild just one of the cities would be insane, never mind all of them. Just as we’d seen in the towns, fires continued to rage.
“I can’t believe how bad this is.” Casey pushed his hand through his blond hair. “I mean, we saw the video footage on the computers, but it’s not the same as seeing it for yourself.”
“We’ve got a bird’s-eye view of it from up here as well,” Mike said. “So we can see how wide the destruction is spread. It might not feel as bad if you’re down in the middle of it.”
I remembered my time driving through the city, trying to find Tara. “It is as bad. In fact, it’s probably worse.”
The outskirts of the cities appeared not to be as badly affected—the height of the skyscrapers having taken the worst of the asteroid strikes—and I only hoped people had opened up their homes to those struggling in the inner cities. It was a small blessing, but at least it had happened during the middle of the night instead of the day, when many of the office buildings would have been filled with workers. Of course, I knew the same wasn’t true across the globe, and other countries had suffered the hit while their populations were awake. I only hoped the asteroid strike was the one and only time the Trads were going to make their landing. I wasn’t sure how we’d cope with a second attack. If they took out our communication systems and power, we’d be reduced to sheer survival.
Sudden anger burned up inside me.
“Those fucking bastards!”
The men looked to me in surprise at my outburst.
“What gives them any goddamned right to do this to us? So their race is dying out, so they decide to come and destroy ours instead? What the fuck makes them think they’ve got more right to life than we do?”
Casey reached out to offer me comfort, but I jerked away. I didn’t want comforting right now. I was furious, and I preferred my anger to the sense of absolute grief and desolation I’d been experiencing before.
Aleandro shook his head and pressed his lips together. “It’s like any situation where one person has something else the other person needs. If they’re bigger and stronger, they just go in and take it.”
“And it’s not as though we were ever going to just give them what they wanted,” Mike pointed out. “The Trads were never going to get a
good response if they contacted us and told us they needed our women, and did we want to send a few thousand volunteers to act as breeding machines for their males.”
An image of the Trads jumped into my head—those perfect faces and muscular bodies, and come-to-bed eyes—but I quickly pushed it away. It didn’t matter about their appearance. They were murderous bastards who’d destroyed our towns and cities, and kidnapped our women. They might look like every woman’s dream, but they were forcing us into a nightmare.
The pilot leaned back from the cockpit. Since the helicopter was self-flying, there wasn’t much he needed to do up there, but he was still present in case something went wrong and we needed to go back to basics and fly manually. “We’re going to take a comfort break shortly, folks.”
The helicopter might have been capable of getting us all the way to Washington, but we were still human and needed to eat, and drink, and use the bathroom. The size of the chopper meant those facilities weren’t on board.
Nerves flipped in my stomach at the thought of landing. I assumed we wouldn’t put down anywhere near one of the cities. It would be too dangerous. We’d be protected in Washington, but not out here.
I didn’t want to think of my fellow humans as enemies. We were working to protect them, and the idea that someone might try to hurt us for any reason went against my beliefs. But we were in a survival situation now, and I’d already witnessed what had happened back at the Observatory when the civilians had shown up. If it hadn’t been for me and the guys, the military would have left them all out in the desert.
Survival did crazy things to a person, and even the most peaceful type might end up getting violent if it meant them or someone they loved living through the day.
We’d left Denver far behind and were approaching Kansas City now. I assumed we’d land before we reached the city. Even though we were heading to Washington, it was obvious the cities were the most dangerous places to be right now. Buildings had either collapsed or were on the verge of collapse. Fires still raged. The survivors would be desperate and scared, which was not a good combination. They might even try to climb aboard the helicopter in the hope it would take them to safety. Besides, it would be harder for the chopper to find somewhere to land in a built-up area compared with the wide open fields out here.
I was right.
We hovered over a small town that appeared to be untouched by the asteroid strike. I leaned across Mike to get a better view. The place was made up of a handful of streets, and what looked like a couple of stores, including a gas station. We weren’t going to need to refill or anything, but the place would have bathrooms and snacks.
The helicopter hovered above a field on the south side and gradually descended. The wind from the blades blew the crops growing in the field horizontal. I imagined our arrival would have drawn some attention by now. Everyone would be wary after what had happened, and the noise of the chopper wasn’t something that could be missed.
I glanced anxiously at each of the men. Aleandro gave me a smile of reassurance. Mike threw me a wink, and Casey nodded as his way of saying it was going to be all right. Both the government agents wore stern expressions, and, as the helicopter bumped to landing, and they stood to open the doors, I caught sight of the flash of weapons beneath their jackets. Aleandro had been armed as well but had given me his gun when I’d been searching for Tara. In all the confusion, I had no idea what I’d done with the weapon. Had Aleandro taken it back? If he had, I highly doubted they’d let him anywhere near the White House while he was armed.
The helicopter doors opened, and we followed the agents out. Mike jumped out first and then offered me a hand to climb down into the field with him. Casey and Aleandro followed. I stretched out my arms, working free the stiffness in my back from sitting, cramped up, in the same position for the last couple of hours. Around me, the men did the same thing.
“There’s a gas station a couple of blocks from here.” Agent Faw, the older of the two, was forced to raise his voice to be heard above the rotor blades, which still hadn’t fully fallen still. “We should be able to get what we need from there.”
I nodded my agreement.
“Stay close,” he told us. “And keep your eyes open for any sign of trouble.”
Goosebumps crawled up my skin. Everything seemed quiet so far—perhaps a little too quiet.
Moving as a pack, with Agent Faw leading the way, and Agent Miller bringing up the rear, we stalked through the field and out onto the road. From there, we trotted at a steady jog, heading in the direction of the gas station.
“Where is everyone?” I hissed, feeling like I needed to keep my voice down, though I wasn’t sure who I thought might hear it.
“Hiding away, most likely,” Aleandro said from my right.
I liked having him beside me. He was like a big wall of muscle, and I felt safer just by being next to him.
I gave a grim smile. “Everyone is frightened.”
People weren’t getting up and going to their jobs as normal. Children were staying home from school. Everyone was terrified, but we couldn’t let this go on for too long.
“We need to figure out a way to make people feel safe again,” I said, slightly breathless now. “If we don’t, we’re going to be our own worst enemy. We still need industry to continue where it can. Children are still going to need an education. Food and power still needs to be produced.”
“It’s early days yet,” Casey said, overhearing the conversation. “Give people time to adjust.”
I knew he was right, but I could see us spiraling into disaster. We needed to be strong and resilient if we were going to come back from this, and hiding away in our homes wasn’t going to achieve anything. But then I chided myself and remembered how anxious I’d felt stepping outside of the Observatory that first time after the strike. It had been hard for me, and I’d at least had some idea of what was happening—some illusion of control. I imagined being one of the civilians and knowing only what they’d seen on the news or the internet, about how we were under attack and now our women were being abducted. I’d be frightened, too. Hell, I was frightened.
We slipped down one of the wide roads, single-story houses bordering on both sides. They were regular American homes with mowed lawns, porches, and kids’ toys out front. But there was no sign of the children who played with them.
I spotted a curtain twitching in one of the houses, the inhabitants watching us pass by.
“People are home,” I told the others. “They’re just not coming out to welcome us.”
Mike cocked his eyebrows. “Can’t say I blame them.”
We must have seemed like an intimidating gang, moving at a slow run down the street like this. And the two agents couldn’t have looked more like government officials if they tried.
We reached an intersection and turned east. A little farther on, we came to another intersection, and on the corner was the gas station we’d spotted from the air. I’d expected to see the place locked up, but to my surprise it seemed to be open.
“Well, looks like someone showed up for work this morning,” Mike commented.
I glanced over at him. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
“Good.” Agent Faw nodded. “That makes things a bit easier.”
We headed toward the entrance. There were no cars in the lot. It was strange seeing everything so silent and still during daytime.
“Hello?” Faw called as we stepped inside. “Anyone around?”
No one responded, and no movement came from between the rows of shelves.
“Maybe the place was open when the strike happened,” I suggested, “and whoever worked here upped and left everything as it was.”
The agent pressed his lips together and frowned. “Hmm. Possibly. Though I’d have expected the place to be looted by now if someone left with the door standing open.”
I shrugged. “This place wasn’t affected like the cities.”
“True.” He nodded toward the bath
room signs at the rear of the building. “Use the facilities and then help yourself to whatever you need. I’ll make sure the owner is reimbursed for whatever we take.”
I exchanged glances with the others, and then, with my bladder suddenly making itself known to me now I was in the proximity of a restroom, I stepped forward. But I didn’t get far.
The horrifyingly familiar chi-chick of a shotgun cocking came from behind us.
“Put your hands in the air and step away from the woman.”
Chapter Three
The male voice came from behind us, and my heart lurched. I put my hands up and slowly turned around.
I was faced with a man in his early thirties, a shotgun held in his hands and pointed directly at us. “You heard me,” he said again. “Move away from the woman.”
Agent Faw stepped forward, looking more irritated than worried. “Sir, we’re from Interplanetary Security. We’re taking this young lady and her colleagues to Washington on urgent business. Please don’t make things difficult for us.”
The man’s gaze darted between us. “How do I know you’re not all fucking Trads and you’re stealing her away?”
So, word had gotten out quickly. I wondered who had leaked the news. I guessed it was spreading all over the internet now, otherwise how the hell would this guy have found out about it?
“They’re not.” I jumped in. “We’re scientists who work out of the Las Vegas Observatory. We’re just trying to get to Washington.”
“How do you know they’re telling you the truth?” he asked, directing the question at me. “Did you know these guys before the Trad landings?”
Her Resistance: Planet Athion Series (Darkest Skies Book 2) Page 2