by Platt, Sean
“You don’t have to die. You can all come and be truly free,” Desmond said. “Just step off the elevator and join us.”
Boricio surveyed the line of men who waited for either surrender or war. Of the three with guns, Boricio figured he would have the best shot at killing Desmond, but doing so would likely get everyone in the elevator killed.
Desmond said, “Whoever wants to live step off the elevator.”
Boricio looked at Brent and Teagan.
Neither flinched.
Their children cried, and they hugged them closer.
Boricio swallowed, staring at Ben’s bloodshot eyes. The child cried, “I don’t wanna die.”
Boricio couldn’t believe both parents were willing to choose death over the alien’s offer.
He wasn’t sure he could do the same if he were a father.
“Nobody?” Desmond asked.
Mary turned back and looked at Brent and Teagan, back at Desmond, and then Mary.
“Fuck you, Desmond!” she cried.
“Sorry to hear that.” Desmond shook his head. “OK, gentlemen, open fire.”
Gunfire erupted from the Guardsmen’s assault rifles.
Keenan and Boricio fired back.
Calloway leaped in front of the open doors, his body riddled with bullets from both sides as the doors slammed suddenly shut.
Calloway fell to the ground, bloody and shredded.
Boricio heard screaming from Teagan behind. He turned to see her huddled on the ground covering her daughter. She was looking at Brent, also huddled, Ben under his body, blood pouring from one or both.
Marina lay against the wall behind them, struggling to keep her eyes open as her stomach bled out.
Bullets continued to thunk into the elevator doors, dinging dents by the hundred.
“It won’t hold long.” Keenan raced to the buttons and pressed the 7 over and over. The elevator didn’t budge.
Boricio wasn’t sure how the doors were pulled shut. It must’ve been Calloway, or The Light.
But the doors wouldn’t last long.
The first bullet ripped through the doors and pierced the wall behind them.
“Shit!” Keenan shouted, slamming his palm on the buttons again.
Mary stood frozen, staring at the elevator door as if waiting to die.
She wasn’t looking at the doors, but rather the midnight-colored spire pluming from Calloway’s corpse. The Light, searching for a new host.
It floated toward Mary and looked as if it might enter her open mouth, before it blinked from existence.
* * * *
CHAPTER 27 — LUCA HARDING
Luca stood in the elevator, an astral projection of himself staring at the bullets ripping through the door.
They’re all going to die soon.
“Stop!” Luca cried out when a bullet hit Ben. Another two found Teagan’s ribs and back as she struggled to cover her daughter.
Two more hit Keenan in the chest. He stumbled back and dropped his rifle.
Stop!!
But there was no one to stop this.
No one to help him.
He was on his own.
Then Luca saw The Light rising from Calloway’s body.
The Light hovered in front of Mary, and turned to the boy.
“Luca?” The Light said, then blinked inside him.
* * * *
CHAPTER 28 — MARY OLSON
Mary watched the bullets tear the doors to shreds. Sounds had bled into one another forming a relentless cacophony, all still underwater.
She was ready to die.
Prepared to end her pain.
Mary saw Paola, or the corruption of her body, through holes in the doors.
That isn’t her. Don’t look.
Luca appeared in the elevator, hovering where Calloway had been.
She had to be seeing things. No one else seemed to see him.
Luca looked at Mary, then down behind her.
She turned to see Brent holding his bleeding son, crying out to the heavens.
Teagan was crying out, eyes rolling into the back of her head as she lay on top of her daughter, blood seeping from Teagan’s side.
Bullets continued to pierce the elevator.
One slammed into Mary’s back.
She fell to the ground, crying out.
Another three bullets tore into Keenan, ripping his chest open.
Marina looked like she was already dead.
Boricio turned and widened his eyes.
“Luca?”
More bullets ripped through the elevator door.
She heard a loud thunking and turned as someone fired a grenade into the elevator.
Mary closed her eyes, waiting to die.
And then there was silence.
* * * *
CHAPTER 29 — LUCA HARDING
Luca stood in the elevator, watching his friends fall in a hail of bullets and felt a merging of memories, his own, the other Luca’s, and now Paola’s melting into his brain’s soup.
Another memory surged forward — October 15, 2011, when he’d seen what had been unleashed after Luca had given the vial to his adopted brother, Boricio Bishop.
Luca had reached out and collected these souls, ushering them into his world in an attempt to fix what he’d been responsible for breaking.
Little did Luca know he’d only broken things more by bringing future friends to a dead world.
He could never make things right. Nearly all of his world’s population had perished on October 15. He couldn’t bring them back.
But he could try to help these survivors.
Luca wasn’t sure how he’d done it the first time, or even how to do it again. He turned to The Light inside him and surrendered, begging It to help.
And then, in a blink, they were all gone.
He turned to see Desmond, the carrier of The Darkness, who now possessed all of the unopened vials.
Desmond glared at Luca as the Guardsmen emptied their guns into Its burning brightness.
But Desmond could not kill him any more than he could kill The Darkness.
Not now anyway. Another clash, like the one on Black Island on the other world would unleash more destruction. Better to run — and live to fight another day.
Luca blinked, and was back inside his own body on the operating table as surgeons sewed his wounds and stabilized his body.
Luca could hear them talking even as he was still under, remarking on how different he looked now — how they could swear he’d aged on the table.
Little did they know where he’d gone or what he’d done with the survivors of October 15.
* * * *
CHAPTER 30 — BRENT FOSTER
One moment Brent was screaming and cradling his dying son in a hail of gunfire. The next he was holding Ben in a wide-open field of tall grass swaying in a gentle breeze beneath a nearly full moon.
He looked down to see Ben crying and looking around.
He pulled at his boy’s bloody shirt, to find the wounds on his stomach.
They were gone.
He was healed.
How is this possible?
“Daddy! Where are we? What happened?”
“I don’t know.” Brent looked around trying to make sense of things. He heard Becca’s sobs just seconds before he saw her and Teagan materialize beside him.
What the hell?
Moments later, they heard Keenan screaming, and gunshots before he appeared, his rifle blasting into the empty night.
Keenan stopped, realizing he was no longer in the elevator, turning with rifle in hand, searching for whatever enemy was to be found, whoever had somehow brought them here.
And then the woman, Marina, appeared, standing there, looking as confused as Brent felt.
They all stood in the darkness, staring at one another.
“Where are we?” Marina asked, confused.
“We’re back,” Keenan said. “We’re on the other world.”
“We are?” Teagan
asked. “How do you know?”
He pointed at the distance, at dark shapes reaching into the pure black sky. “That’s a city. Not a single light is on.”
“No,” Teagan cried out. “No, no, no!”
“Shh!” Keenan rushed over to Teagan and put a hand on her mouth.
Becca cried out, “I’m scared, Mommy!”
“Don’t be scared,” Brent soothed. “He wouldn’t have sent us here if it weren’t safe.”
“Who wouldn’t have?” Marina asked.
Brent suddenly remembered, and things were starting to make sense.
“Luca. I saw him in the elevator just before we vanished. He must’ve healed Ben, too.”
Marina had started to say something, maybe ask who Luca was, but was interrupted by Keenan.
“And me,” Keenan said, looking down, patting his chest. Holes in his uniform showed where he’d been shot, but his skin, like Ben’s, was no longer marred.
Marina looked down at herself and saw a large bloodstained hole gaping in her shirt. She reached down, tearing at the hole, making it wider, feeling around.
“I’m healed, too!”
Tears stung Brent’s burning eyes. “He did it. He saved us. Again.”
Keenan shook his head. “Wait a second. Where’s Mary? And Boricio?”
Brent looked around, seeing no sign of anyone else.
“Hello?” Brent called out, his voice echoing in the night.
“Keep it down! We don’t know what’s left on this world. Might be full of them aliens.” Ed said.
“Maybe Mary and Boricio are still being healed?” Ben suggested.
“Maybe,” Brent said, though that didn’t feel right.
“What do we do? Where do we go?” Teagan asked, voice high pitched with worry, rocking Becca in her arms. “How will we survive? Do y’all think those aliens are still here?”
Ben clutched Brent’s leg. “I’m scared, Daddy.”
The last sound any of them wanted to hear filled the air — the awful, alien clicking somewhere in the distance.
“Oh God,” Teagan cried. “No. Not again.”
Keenan lifted the rifle, turning it, searching for the source.
Brent searched for his shotgun, but realized it must not have accompanied his crossing. He was holding his son, not a weapon, when Luca teleported them out of the elevator.
The clicking grew louder and more abundant. Another horrible sound joined the brutal symphony — hundreds of running somethings, like a herd of buffalo.
“There!” Marina whispered, pointing toward the tree line a couple of hundred feet to their left.
Shadows within shadows, moving fast, quickly closing in.
Keenan raised the rifle and fired. There was no way he had enough ammo, even if he had enough time, to take them all down.
Shrill screams as one, or perhaps a pair of creatures fell; it was tough to see clearly even with the bright moon bathing the swaying field. But what he could see — hundreds of shapes coming from the trees — rattled Brent’s body with raw fear.
He grabbed Ben and Becca. “Come on!” he said, running with Teagan at his side.
The children screamed in his ear, high-pitched cries, shrill to match the aliens’ intensity.
Brent kept running forward, unsure where he was headed, heart pounding so hard he felt certain it would either explode or surrender its beating. His legs were fire, his back aching with the exhausting weight as he raced across the uneven ground, praying he wouldn’t trip and kill the kids.
Come on, Ed! Take these fuckers out!
Keenan’s shots suddenly stopped.
Icy fear splashed his insides.
Oh God, Brent’s dead!
He didn’t dare look back. Stopping to do so would slow or trip him.
He heard Teagan at his side, barely keeping pace, her breath so ragged it sounded like torn.
Brent couldn’t tell if either Ed or Marina was also behind them, had taken off in another direction, or were already dead in the grass.
“No!” he heard Teagan cry out, followed by a thumping.
Brent peeked back, though still running forward, to see she’d fallen to the ground, half concealed by flowing grass.
His ankle twisted, and pain pierced his leg, sending him, and the children, flying forward to the ground.
No!!
The galloping, along with the aliens’ awful clicking, grew louder, closer.
Brent looked up, searching for his son.
“Ben! Becca!” he cried out.
Thunderous movement, clicks, and shrieks were all Brent could hear.
He had to find them, grab them, and keep running.
He stood, but collapsed as pain screamed through his ankle.
No, no, no, no! Fuck, I can’t walk!
Brent turned, looking for Teagan, to see if she’d gotten up and tell her to take Ben and run. He’d serve as a distraction, take as many of the fuckers out as he could.
But Brent couldn’t see Teagan through all the tall grass.
He saw only darkness.
And then, a blinding light came from above — a helicopter.
Brent heard shrieks all around him, and chaos — running, ground being torn from the Earth, alien screams, and a different kind of clicking as tracer fire ripped into the aliens, sending them scurrying back toward the tree line.
Brent sat up, staring in shock. The helicopter hovered above, firing until the aliens had all turned away.
Ben stumbled forward through the grass, holding Becca’s hand, both faces dirty and each of them crying.
“Come here.” Brent opened his arms and hugged them, watching the helicopter land. The thing was huge, like a military chopper, though Brent wasn’t familiar enough to know a Blackhawk from a Chinook.
He heard movement behind him, and turned to see Keenan approaching, gun over his shoulder, Marina by his side.
“Shit, I thought you were dead.”
“Not yet, old friend,” Keenan said.
They both looked at the helicopter as two people outfitted in black uniforms hopped out. They wore all black, like the Black Island Guardsmen, but their uniforms were slightly different. Different but familiar, though Brent couldn’t place it at first.
The two soldiers approached, and Brent was surprised to see that one was a woman as she lifted the dark visor.
The woman looked at them, smiling. “Well, holy fucking shit, where the hell have you two scumbags been?”
It took Brent a moment before he recognized her as the Black Mountain Guardsman who had taken him and Keenan hostage before teaming with them at the battle for Black Island.
“Lisa?” Keenan said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“We were making a routine sweep of the area, searching for a stolen supply truck. We saw you all pop up on the radar, and came out here.”
“Did you see anyone else? We came with two other people.”
“Nobody else. Came from where?” Lisa asked.
“Back on our world,” Brent said. “It’s a long story.”
“OK, well, tell me on the way to the chopper. We’re heading back.”
“Back where?” Keenan asked. “Black Mountain?”
“No. We have another base.”
“Where the hell are we?” Keenan asked.
“Montana,” she said. “Camp’s a few miles away.”
“How many of you are there?” Marina asked.
“Twenty-five,” she said, “down from fifty-one.”
“You tell us your story; we’ll tell you ours,” Brent said, following Lisa and the other Guardsmen to the chopper.
* * * *
EPILOGUE
Three years later …
Ed Keenan bumped along in the van’s passenger seat as they raced down the ghost town’s street, pursuing one of the thieving bandits on motorcycle who’d stupidly tried robbing their truck.
“You got a shot on ‘em yet?” Harry asked as he attempted to keep pace with the bastar
d.
“Not yet,” Ed said, attempting to aim with the AR-15.
The motorcycle was weaving back and forth, and the van was jostling hard on the broken roads, rendering every shot impossible.
They had to catch this bastard to find out where the raiding party was holed up before they struck again. By Ed’s estimation, there were ten, maybe twenty of the bandits nearby. If there were more, they would’ve already attempted a more direct attack and tried to take over their compound rather than coming after their trucks when they went out to find supplies. They’d already lost five drivers in the last six months, and Ed wanted to end it before winter threw the compound into lockdown again.
The cyclist turned down an alley between two large warehouses, speeding up, and taking the turn too fast.
The bike and driver went down, sliding along the road.
“He’s ours now!” Harry turned into the alley and slammed on the brakes.
Ed prepared to hop out of the van, gun in hand, and chase the guy on foot — assuming he wasn’t too injured, or dead, from the crash.
But Ed stopped with his hand on the door handle as he looked straight out the window at the thing that shouldn’t be.
Hovering in the middle of the road was a violet square of light about ten feet by ten. The bike lay on the ground in front of the light, but the cyclist was nowhere to be seen.
“What the fuck is that?” Harry asked.
Ed didn’t like the looks of it.
He stepped out of the van and raised his rifle, carefully approaching the light.
He saw something move from within it. A dark shape coming closer.
Ed took aim, readying himself to open fire on whatever the hell emerged from the light.
Harry was out of the still-running van, also aiming his shotgun at the temporal disturbance.
Suddenly, the cyclist’s body came flying from the light, landing ten feet in front of Ed.
Harry took two shots at the cyclist, but missed both times.
The man’s face and arms was scraped to hell from his wreck, but he was still alive, barely.
“You really shouldn’t go leaving your garbage all over the place,” a man’s voice said from inside the light.