From the next bedroom came a screech that could only have been from his little brother. Marcus wondered what was going on. Why is Miles screaming like a little girl? He knew he had to give him a hard time over that.
“Is this the one?” a harsh voice asked from Miles’s room. It wasn’t a voice that Marcus recognized. Who was that? Had bad guys broken into the house to hurt my family? He could hear Miles whimpering in fear now. Marcus cracked the door a little wider and saw another figure in the hallway, just out of sight.
“No, that’s the younger one.” It was a woman’s voice this time. “No exceptional qualities… just another mouth to feed. Go ahead and eliminate that one.”
Another blat came from one of those laser guns, followed by a heavy crash—as if a body had hit the floor. Marcus retreated from the door. He looked around and quickly pulled the night light out of the wall so the bad people wouldn’t see him. He dove into the messy closet and was just about to pull the door closed when the door swung open. He froze and could only see a shadow in the doorway. The shadow’s head moved as the person looked around before stopping and staring right at him. They can see in the dark, he thought. He felt his bladder let go as he cowered in fright from the shadow pinning him in place with its stare.
“And you must be Marcus,” the woman’s voice said. She switched on the light, and the scary shadow was gone, in its place a woman. She was beautiful: tall and slim, with long dark hair and eyes like a cat’s. As she smiled at him, he thought she must be one of those models he saw on the videos sometimes.
The woman came into the room and crouched down in front of him. “It’s all right, little one. No need to be afraid of anything.”
Just then, a large man loomed in the doorway with a huge, shiny black gun held in both hands. A mask covered the lower part of his face.
Marcus shrieked with fright and cowered back. The woman looked over her shoulder in annoyance. “Wait downstairs. I can handle one young boy.” The man nodded and stepped back outside. His heavy footsteps retreated back down the stairs.
“Who are you? Where’s Mom?” Marcus asked.
The woman smiled at him again. She stretched out a hand, palm up, and motioned with her fingers. Marcus eyed her hand suspiciously.
“Don’t worry about your mom. I have great news for you—your dad sent me to come and get you! You’ll get to see him soon.” Marcus realized that the woman wore the same kind of uniform as his father did. Maybe she was okay after all.
“Is Dad back from his trip already?”
“He is, and he can’t wait to see you.”
She beckoned with her outstretched hand again, and Marcus put his small hand in hers. She led him out of the closet.
“We just have to play a quick game. I’m going to carry you, so I want you to close your eyes until I tell you to open them. When you do, your father will be there to surprise you.”
Marcus was too old to be carried around like a baby, and for a second he was going to protest. But then he thought about how badly he wanted to see his dad again, so he closed his eyes and let the pretty lady pick him up. Maybe Dad will take us to the air show again soon.
His hopes would never come true, for when he finally opened his eyes, his father wasn’t there, of course. Nor would he ever be again.
***
Marcus pried open his gummy eyes. He felt numb all over and wondered why he had dreamt of that night for the first time in many years. His mouth felt as if it was stuffed with cotton. He looked around and saw that he lay on a hard cot in a large room. The building looked to be a rough-hewn stone structure. He was surrounded by the soft snores of people on a number of cots around him. Several small, dimmed lanterns provided light for the room.
At the far end of the room, four people sat at a table holding a quiet conversation. He saw a young man and woman and an older couple. A half-empty bottle of liquor sat on the table, and each of them had a glass. He didn’t recognize any of the people. Where am I? What happened? And where’s Liu?
Marcus tried to sit up but was overcome with dizziness. He put both hands to his head and felt a thick bandage was wrapped around his head. What the hell? After a moment, the dizziness passed, and he was able to sit up on the cot.
“Your Thorne man is awake,” the younger woman said.
A chair scraped against the floor, and the young man approached. “Marcus? How are you feeling?” The man sat on the empty cot facing Marcus. He had close-cropped dark hair and hard gray eyes.
“What the hell happened? Where are we?”
The man regarded him for a moment. “You were wounded in a firefight when you tried to get away from the slavers. You’re lucky to be alive, I must say. Not many people survive gunshots to the head. I’m no doctor, but I would say you have a good chance of a full recovery.”
Everything started coming back to Marcus. “The slavers! Did we escape?”
“Not exactly, but you’re safe now. We tended to you the best we could, but unfortunately, morphine was the only thing Hank and Rhonda had for the pain. Do you want some water?” Marcus nodded, and the man got up and walked back to the table. “You can call me Reznik, by the way,” he added over his shoulder.
The other three were regarding him as well. The older couple looked at him with pity while the young blond woman looked disinterested.
Reznik handed him a glass of water, and Marcus drank greedily. “Don’t drink too much, or you might throw up,” Reznik cautioned. “The other captives said they hadn’t been fed in days, and you look like you’ve missed a few meals yourself.”
“Yeah,” Marcus said. He remembered Liu falling and the weasel-faced man with the smoking gun. “Where’s Liu? Is he okay?”
Reznik shook his head slightly. “I’m sorry… he didn’t make it.” He patted Marcus on the shoulder. “You should get some more rest. We can speak again in the morning.”
Marcus just sat there, crushed at the news. Liu had been his best friend for as long as he could remember. They had grown up together in the compound, and both had become interns at Thorne Industries Bio-tech Division together. He put his head in his hands.
“I thought you might like to know that he saved you. If he hadn’t stabbed that slaver in the groin with that syringe of whatever it was, he would have finished you both off.”
Marcus nodded silently. He knew Reznik meant well, but the words weren’t much comfort.
Thoughts of the awful past few days, along with the news of Liu dying and the memories of the dream all swirled around in his head. Marcus lay back down, confused and full of sorrow. He wondered what it all meant and what would happen now.
***
“What can you tell us about these monsters, Hank?”
The older man stroked his bushy mustache for a moment. “Not a whole lot, unfortunately,” Hank said with his drawl.
Reznik thought he looked like the stereotypical cowboy: he was rail thin with a weathered face that had spent too much time in the sun and wind, a bushy mustache, and what he thought of as a Texas drawl. He seemed like a good man struggling to hold together this decimated little community. He and his wife, Rhonda, had both been grateful for their help against the slavers. The rest of the slavers that had surrendered were still chained to a post outside under Ichiro’s watchful gaze.
“They came in the night, just after dusk, and made away with our womenfolk,” Hank continued. “A lot of good men and boys were slaughtered. We fought as best we could, but our bullets didn’t seem to have much effect on those things. Our people fell back to the bunker but not before sixteen women were carried off and twenty-two men were killed or seriously injured.” He scowled and spat in his spit bottle then sat back and worked the chew around in his lip some more.
“Those monsters looked like devils,” Rhonda added. She was clearly afraid and spoke in hushed tones. “They were big and fast… like men but with blue-black skin and covered in some kind of glowing roots or something. I dunno.” She shrugged. “One of them was invisible.
”
“Invisible?” Reznik prompted.
“Aw, Rhonda, that’s a bunch of crap.” Hank scoffed. “You’ve been listening to Margaret and her gossip too much.”
“No, Hank, I know what I saw,” Rhonda insisted. “I saw some… thing… carry little Abby away. It was like some invisible giant hand just picked her up in the air and carried her off. I looked out the window when she started screaming and saw it happen.”
Reznik knew she believed she had really seen something like that. Whatever she had actually seen was unknown.
“Could be some type of cloaking system,” Rin spoke up. “We’ve encountered a few Thorne scouts with prototypes before. Maybe these attackers somehow acquired one from a scout.”
“See!” Rhonda crowed at Hank. “I knew I saw it.”
Hank just snorted but didn’t argue further.
“You say your bullets weren’t effective against them? What happened?”
“I hit one of them square in the chest, and the thing was just knocked back a step,” Hank said. “It came after me, pissed off as all hell after that. Luckily, I made it to the bunker in time.”
“You ever hear of anything like these monsters?” Reznik asked Rin.
She shook her head. “There’s talk of these so-called ‘Burned Ones’ straying out of the exclusion zone from time to time, but those things are barely more than animals. They are sad, misshapen creatures that are barely alive—surely not powerful or even intelligent enough to stage a coordinated attack on this town.”
“Nope, weren’t none of those Burned Ones,” Hank said. “One of them wandered up here to the wall a few months ago, so we put it out of its misery. Those things are slow and kinda shamble about. I don’t think they are aggressive even, but we didn’t want to take any chances of people getting attacked or irradiated by the thing.”
Reznik didn’t know what to think. If they were going to have to go after the women—and it seemed they would since Anna had been among the women carried off—then he wished he knew what he was dealing with. He didn’t doubt these people had been attacked by something that wasn’t quite human, but he had no idea how to prep for something like that either. “And you’re sure Anna was with the women that were kidnapped?”
Rhonda nodded. “Yep. She went running out there with a shotgun to help the men fight them off. I saw her getting carried away right before the order was given to secure everyone in the bunker.”
“Damn shame—she’s a good woman. And we desperately need her skills with all these wounded.” Hank gestured around the room. “She used to be an ER nurse back before the Cataclysm. Why are y’all so interested in finding her, anyway?”
Reznik nodded his head toward the street. “Our big metal friend out there needs her help. It’s one of the conditions of his helping me that we bring her back safe and sound.”
“Ooooh…” Rhonda breathed conspiratorially. “Maybe that’s where she goes when she leaves for a few days. She never talks about it—just that she tends to someone that is in need a few hours from here. We all just figured she has a man she sees from time to time. But a robot?” Rhonda looked confused.
“I believe she goes to visit Ichiro,” Reznik replied. “It’s a long story, but he controls that robot.” He drained the rest of the whiskey from the tumbler and slapped it down on the table. He looked at Hank and Rhonda for a moment to gauge their reactions before he changed the subject. “If I was interested in contacting Red Royce, how would I go about doing that?”
Hank looked at his tumbler of whiskey and swirled the liquor around. Rhonda looked away. Reznik raised an eyebrow as he watched them. Finally, Rhonda sighed and met his gaze. “Abby would know how to contact him.” Hank gave her a sharp glance, but she ignored him. “That little darlin’ got carried away by those damn monsters.” Rhonda sniffled and wiped at her eyes.
“So that would be two good reasons to go after the women,” Reznik said. “How does Abby know him?”
“He’s her uncle,” Hank replied. “Abby’s father was a good man, but he caught sick and died about a year ago. Royce told her if she ever needed anything to let him know and he’d be there for her. Too bad he can’t help her now.”
“I was just thinking the same thing. Their help would be useful in this situation.” Reznik wondered what kind of mess he was getting himself into now. It was Hank’s opinion that the mutants or monsters or whatever they should be called had come up from the exclusion zone to the southwest. Reznik had no reason to doubt that and planned to go out scouting in the morning to see if he could find any tracks or signs of their passage. He pushed his chair back and stood. “I think I’ll hit the rack. It’s gonna be a busy day tomorrow,” Reznik said. He just wondered how long this would take since his time was starting to run short. 03:20:13:22, according to the timer on his HUD.
Chapter 12
The First surfaced from the glowing pool, the warm water streaming off his bald head and over his massive shoulders. His bathing was a daily ritual that he needed to keep up in order to prevent his flesh from decaying. The life-giving water always relieved the infernal itching of his dried skin. He cupped the water in his large hands and took a deep swallow, savoring the metallic taste as it soothed his throat.
He grunted in satisfaction and rose to his full seven-foot height. The water dripped off his naked, hairless body as he strode out of the pool. His brothers and sisters waited, crouched on the banks of the cavern, eyes gleaming in the soft glow as they awaited his permission to enter and partake of the soothing water.
At his permissive gesture, the rest of his kind hopped into the pool and began bathing. The water churned around their splashing, misshapen forms as they delighted in the life-giving liquid.
The First sat on his stone pedestal and watched his brothers and sisters. They numbered only two dozen—too few in number to repel the soldiers for very long. The soldiers had slain a large number of their lesser cousins, and it was only a matter of time before they would turn their sights on the rest of them. Their cousins were burned, mindless creatures that were no match for the guns and technology of the soldiers.
The First and his people would have been a much tougher challenge except for the fact that their numbers were so few. He knew that if the soldiers continued their intrusion, they would soon capture or kill his people. That was why they had needed to obtain fresh breeding stock in order to increase their numbers. Experience had shown that they needed untouched women for the breeding as their own females were infertile. The fallen star provided many blessings, but they came with a cost.
Already, fourteen of the women’s bellies were swollen with offspring. Two of them seemed to be infertile, like their own females. The First himself would give them his seed in one last attempt to impregnate the women. If his attempts proved fruitless as well, he would feast on the women’s flesh with his brothers and sisters.
His gaze lingered on the fallen star where it protruded from the depths of the pool. It illuminated the massive cavern with a soft, green glow. The pitted metallic surface of the meteorite was mottled with a green substance that provided the illumination. It was the size of a small car, and the water that trickled through the walls and into the pool gave it its life-giving properties.
The First knew first-hand of its beneficial properties since he remembered the day the earth’s crust had been torn apart by the fallen star. It had been the day the scientists had talked about for months—the end of the world. He wasn’t normally one to reminisce, but his thoughts began to wander as he sat and watched his brothers and sisters bathe.
***
In his former life, The First had been an ordinary man named Bobby Colson. Bobby had been trying to escape to higher ground like the millions of other people jamming the highways that day. He had left the St. Louis Sprawl the day before the impending meteor strike with his girlfriend, Bernadette, and was heading east along 64 to try to get away from the Mississippi River valley flood plain. The authorities had been warning people
to get to higher ground for days now, but there had always been so much to do, and before Bobby knew it, time had run out.
The two of them had tried to hitch a ride for several days but had been mostly unsuccessful. They had hiked through wilderness for most of the day before coming upon a sparsely traveled country road. Both of them were sore and tired and starving. In growing desperation, Bobby decided they would take a vehicle by force. He was a large man and could be very intimidating—qualities he had learned to use to his advantage during the frequent brawls he found himself in while growing up in the dangerous slums.
They crouched in a small ravine off the side of the road and waited while the car approached. It looked to be a wealthy family from the luxury emblem on the vehicle’s hood. When the car was within a hundred yards or so, Bobby ran out in front of the car, pointing his old shotgun at the windshield.
“Get out of the car right now!” he demanded and pounded the stock of the shotgun on the hood, putting a nice dent in the smooth sheet metal. As the family stared wide-eyed in fright, Bernadette smashed in the passenger’s window with a rock and grabbed the shrieking wife by the hair, attempting to pull her out the window. Bobby yelled at them again and came around to the driver’s side of the car to haul the man out. He pulled on the door handle, but it was locked. He glanced over at Bernadette and saw she was still trying to wrestle the clawing woman out through the window.
The loud bang of a gunshot rang out. Bobby felt a punch in his gut and saw that the driver’s window had a hole through it. He staggered back, eyes locked with the wide-eyed husband. Smoke curled from the barrel of the man’s pistol.
After a moment, Bobby’s legs went weak and he staggered and fell onto the pavement. He fired the shotgun, but his aim was off, and he blew out the back window. A child’s shrieks inside the car blended with the wife’s screams. Bernadette had frozen after the gunshot, and the wife had managed to free herself and climb back inside the vehicle. The husband punched the throttle, and the vehicle took off like a bat out of hell.
Extensis Vitae: The Shattered Land Page 10