“Happiness in servitude?”
Dashing snorted. “What were you before? College girl?”
She nodded. “Berkeley.”
“Thought so. You have the arrogance of one. Probably why you caught that beating.”
“I ‘caught that beating’ defending my family,” she said. “Defending my lord.”
“Mind your tone, lass,” he smiled. “Anyway, we’re off point. Did you know what you wanted to do? At Berkeley?”
“I majored in music.”
“You wanted to be a musician?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She had a hard time dredging up the memories; that life had been erased like yesterday’s errands. “I just wanted to work in something related. I hadn’t really figured out what.”
He pried an orange wedge from the syrupy tower and bit off its end. Hot juice squirted the table. “That’s my point. When you’re told you can do anything, you wind up certain of nothing. Where would you rather be? Dropped off in the jungle, for all its lushness? Or set down a clear, straight road?”
“Some roads are rougher than others.”
“Yeah, but at least you always know where you’re supposed to go next. That was the problem with the old world. Too many choices. With too many choices, you wind up with doubt. When you doubt, you hesitate. When you hesitate, you lose and you second-guess and regret. Everyone’s a sad sack of shit. I made millions selling houses and all I could think was ‘Jesus, I should have been a quarterback.’ That’s what we had before. Endless opportunity and endless misery.” He pointed the tines of his fork at her face. “I guarantee you, you’d be happier as one of my whores than working PR for some longhaired, guitar-toting whiner.”
“I doubt that,” she said. “My lord.”
“I’m sure you do. But consider this. You’d know when to rise, what to wear, how to rear my children. I’d give you purpose. What’s more important than knowing why you exist?”
“What about the blond boys?”
“What about them?”
“I majored in music, not anatomy, but it could be a long wait before they bear any of your kids.”
Dashing sucked pulped fish from his teeth. “Yeah, well, their purpose is their lord’s happiness. Doesn’t get more important than that.” He waved his fork in a wide circle. “All these people here, you think they’re happier when I’m happy? Or when I’m pissed off?”
Tristan considered the grain of the table. “I’m sure that’s a great comfort to them.”
“Far better than trying to make it out there. Want me to prove it?”
“I already have a lord, my lord.”
The king smiled, thumbing his crown up his brow. “And he can come rescue you, if he loves you as well as I would.”
She met his gaze. “Is this a threat?”
“It’s a talk.”
“I’m here as a businesswoman. Not a new piece of your burgeoning empire.”
“Sure. You want my boys. Strange, traveling five hundred miles for that. Did San Francisco get nuked? Or did your guys’ strain of Panhandler only hit the blonds?”
Tristan’s veins tingled. The man’s voice carried a detached curiosity, but she could see the shape of the knife inside the sheath. “Your Majesty’s reputation for wise judgment and taste has traveled further than you might think.”
“If you were here to open diplomatic channels, you would have just said so.” He speared another slice of orange. “The question, then, is what truth does the lie conceal? Does Mr. Hugo want me for his vassal? Are you here to scout the lay of the land? Report back with the weaknesses Hugo can exploit to make me his slave?”
“Your Majesty is tragically mistaken,” Tristan said. Heat rose up her spine. “My lord has no designs on you nor your empire. I am, quite frankly, shocked that a man of your stature would feel threatened by the visit of a lone woman.”
He rolled his eyes. “I sold houses, girl. I know lies like mothers know sons.”
She crossed her legs, reaching under the table for the batons strapped to her shin. “Again, my Lord, I can assure you—”
“Enough. Guards! Seize her!” He laughed, clapping. “Oh, I’ve longed for an excuse to say that.”
The two guards unfroze, circling the table. More feet pounded toward the balcony. Tristan yanked free her batons and flung herself at the nearest soldier.
25
Ness fell into the bristly grass. Another laser flicked across the night, electric blue, sizzling into a pine with a pop of boiling sap.
“What the hell’s their problem?” Shawn said, prone beside Ness. He snugged his assault rifle to his shoulder and pumped a burst into the house. “We were supposed to ambush them!”
“We should call ahead next time.” Ness pulled the trigger. The stock juddered into his shoulder; he winced away from the bang. “Make sure we’re all on the same page.”
Another laser flashed overhead. Shawn returned fire. “I’m only counting two points of contact. What say you circle around to the front door and hit them from behind?”
“You do it. It’s your brilliant idea.”
“Then we should make sure I stay safe enough to keep having more.”
Ness fired blindly through the grass. His shots thunked into the wood of the outer wall. “I wouldn’t even know what to do.”
“Pretty simple, man. If the door’s open, sneak in. If it’s not, kick it down. I’ll keep ‘em so busy they won’t even notice.”
“Why can’t you do it?”
“Damn it, Ness, you spent years hanging out in this house!” Shawn shot another burst and crawled on his belly toward a tree. Lasers strobed in the darkness, smoldering the grass, filling the night with hot and bitter smoke. “Anyway, chances are you flush them straight into me. You want to be in my place then?”
Ness followed him through the half-dead grass. “Why don’t we just stay here until we hit them?”
“Because that gives them the time to act first. You ever wondered why all the shit I pull works so well even when it’s dumb as hell? ‘Cause I make them react to me.” He fired again, then hurled a pine cone as if it were a grenade. The lasers ceased. “Now get up. Act. Make them fuck up.”
Ness wanted to scream. It was like his brother could switch off his brain whenever he pleased. Well, Ness couldn’t. He could see all the ways he could fail. Rush inside and meet a whole hive of aliens. Miss his most crucial shot. Get his head boiled by a blue bolt until it burst like a microwaved tomato.
He could see all these things and a dozen more. Yet he crawled from the tree and circled around the house.
The autumn rains had revived the grass. It flattened beneath him, dew soaking his elbows and jeans. Shawn’s rifle roared in three-round bursts. Blue lightning lit the way in regular pulses. He wasn’t sure what had spurred him to move. His brother’s faith in him? Being so close to the proof of the lie keeping Nick and Kristin in slavery? Or just inborn familial stupidity? Whatever the case, his fear remained, but his hesitation melted like February snow in a southern wind. He crawled around another corner. The lights of noise of battle faded. Ness faced the front door.
Shawn had been right about one thing: Ness knew the house well. Sleeping over as a child, he’d made countless trips through the dark to the fridge, afraid that a single light or creaky step would send Mr. and Mrs. Rogers flying from bed to shriek in his face and call his mother to come pick him up. By the time he turned twelve, he knew the house well enough to be able to rise without waking Tim, slip into Tim’s older sister’s room (while she was out, of course; not to say he hadn’t thought of going in while she slept and—kissing her? Seeing if she slept naked? His thought process had never made it beyond entering the darkened room), and examine her things, as if seeing a teenage female’s natural environment would unlock his understanding of how such creatures worked.
It had been years since they graduated high school. Ness hadn’t slept over more than a handful of times since then. But childhood memory ran deep. He
could find his way from front door to back with his eyes closed.
He switched out his rifle for the shotgun. The door was unlocked—who knew if aliens even knew what locks were. The foyer was dark. Blue light flashed from the family room in sharp and jarring bursts. Ness curled around the doorway, sweeping his shotgun across the entryway where he used to stomp off the snow and pry off his boots. The boards along the wood-paneled wall were sturdy and hardly ever squeaked. He crossed to the linoleum kitchen. Shawn’s rifle boomed. Plaster sprayed in puffs from the family room wall. Glass shattered, spraying the floor. Tentacles rose from the couch and wriggled like tapeworms exposed to the air.
Ness stalked forward. He moved in perfect silence, but two fat limbs climbed to face him. A bulbous head popped up from behind the couch, fist-sized eyes goggling. Ness shotgunned it. Mucosal blood globbed the curtains, thick and yellow. A second alien swung out from the cover of the couch, slashing its blue laser across the room. Ness ducked, the beam sizzling into the wooden side of the counter behind him. He fired back. A tentacle spun across the room. The beam jerked upward, burning through the ceiling. Ness pumped, fired again, hulling its body. Kelpy organs slithered to the shag carpet, the guts off-yellow and quivering. The thing staggered. Ness shot it again, dispersing its head across the coffee table.
He fell to a crouch, sweeping the shotgun across the starlit room. A piece of glass fell from the window frame. Ness jerked so hard he fired the shotgun into the wall.
“Shawn?” he called.
“You in there, buddy?”
“I got them!” He leapt around the couch, clearing the space between it and the wall. Cold wind gushed through the broken sliding doors. “What now?”
“Cover the front door. Hang on.”
Ness turned to face the front of the house, straining into the darkness. Outside, feet whispered through grass and crunched over glass. Ness glanced back to the shattered windows. Shawn stepped high over the jagged glass in the bottom of the sill.
“Holy Moses, it stinks like yesterday’s crab legs in here.” He gazed over the fallen aliens, laughter barking from his throat. “You ruined these sons of bitches. ‘Mad Dog’ Hook. That’s what we’re gonna call you.”
“No we’re not,” Ness said. “Shouldn’t we be clearing the house?”
“Yeah, if you don’t feel like getting shot.”
Shawn went room to room, sweeping his rifle around corners like a SWAT officer. They found no more aliens. Just various tools, spindly and metal; small metal bits stamped with icons, like the pieces of a strange game; a few displays and touchpads. Ness’ heart leapt. Alien computers?
“We’ll worry about those in a minute,” Shawn said. “Right now we got to bring the jeep around.”
They jogged down the steep mountain road, following it to the base of the mountain. They found a couple of bikes in a house on the main road and raced around the mountain to Moscow. The jeep was still waiting by the crater in the road. Shawn nosed the car around the hole and drove straight on back to the gravel road to the Rogers’ farm. There, he climbed into the turret of the .50 cal and watched the house until he was certain nothing had shown up in the hour they’d been gone.
Together, he and Ness hauled the first body to the jeep. Its tentacles were as rubbery as they looked. Its pincer-limbs wore a foamy layer over the hardness of their chitin.
“I think they’ve got some kind of sixth sense,” Ness said. “Either that or eyes on the back of their butt. I didn’t make a noise and one still sensed me coming.”
“Maybe it could smell your fear,” Shawn said. He grunted and leveraged the body onto the hood of the car, stew-thick blood spattering from its gunshot wound. “Give me a hand here.”
Ness gaped. “This isn’t a trophy buck. This is proof of the alien presence on Earth. You don’t just sling it over your car!”
“You want to prove these things are real, right? What’s more convincing than riding into town with a goddamn alien tied to the hood of your jeep?”
Ness shook his head, failing to find a counterargument. He helped push the sagging body up the jeep, where Shawn tied it down with bungee and extension cords. As a compromise, they loaded the other corpse into the back. Ness bagged up the two lasers along with several of their tools and knickknacks, carefully wrapping the devices he suspected were computers in Tim’s old shirts.
Shawn rolled his eyes. “You even find a way to make a gunfight nerdy.”
“Two kills under my belt,” Ness said. “How many you got?”
Shawn chuckled and started the jeep. The dash clock read 3:53 in the morning. His adrenaline long gone, Ness slept most of the drive back to Hanford, woken often by the wind’s cold grasp and the slap of tentacles against the hood of the car.
Shawn shook him awake for good. The dash said it was nearly seven in the morning. The eastern hills showed hints of dawn. Dust spewed behind the jeep. Shawn banged across the bridge, the river a black band beneath them, and skidded to a halt in front of the picnic tables. Coleman lanterns painted hard white light across workers blinking over the steam of their breakfasts.
“Behold!” Shawn leaped from the car, sweeping his hands at the alien tied down to their car. “Holy fucking shit!”
A few workers edged closer, asking how Shawn killed it, where he’d found it, whether there were more. Most people kept their distance. Strangely quiet. Suspiciously undisturbed by the abrupt delivery of an interstellar cadaver.
“No big deal,” Shawn said, frowning at Ness, tracking the same train of thought. “I mean, here we got E.T.’s bloody corpse, but whatever. I’m sure you’ll remember to scream once you’ve had a little more coffee.”
“There are aliens,” Nick said. “We know.”
“What do you mean, you know?” Ness flung his hands wide. “When we left last night, you guys were denying their very existence.”
“That’s when they came by to let us know.” Nick nodded off to the side. In the shadows of the nearest longhouse, four men with machine guns watched the proceedings. One lifted a radio to his mouth and murmured into it, eyes locked on Ness. Nick gazed in disgust at the alien body. “Daniel said he’d just heard the news. Someone took down the mothership, man. The aliens, they’re toast.”
Ness stared blankly. “How? All of them?”
“I don’t know. Somebody kamikaze-crashed the ship into L.A. No survivors.”
Shawn spat and swore. “Somebody could have thought to mention that before we rushed off to get our asses barbecued.”
Ness could only go on staring. He was still trying to figure out what to do when Roan arrived from across the river to arrest him for treason.
III:
PREDATORS
26
She rushed the first guard, a smooth wooden baton in each hand. She swept the first stick through an outward arc, intercepting the tip of his rifle, then drove her hand forward, leveraging the gun away from her body. It fired, bullet banging past her. She rammed the other baton end-first into the knight’s solar plexus.
She was not a large woman. She hadn’t weighed herself in months, but she doubted she cracked 120 pounds, meaning the man she was currently reducing to a moaning heap outweighed her by half as much. She hadn’t practiced with a live partner in nearly as long as she’d last stepped on a scale. Not since Alden’s abduction. After so much static practice, adjusting to the reactions of a living, breathing opponent wasn’t too different from trying to swim on dry land.
All these things worked against her. Working for her, she had surprise and madness.
The man fell with a groan. A second rifle swung toward her chest. She cracked her right-hand baton into the soldier’s knuckles, splitting them to the bone. The rifle boomed, the round going hopelessly wide. She jabbed her other stick straight up into the soft hollow beneath his jaw. His teeth clacked. He staggered back into the wall, grasping his throat, rifle forgotten, lungs rasping as he fought for breath. Tristan whirled on King Dashing. His deep eyes rounded. He bac
ked up, banging into the table.
She didn’t see the blow that dropped her. Her beating was more gentle than in Flagstaff. When they finished, they dragged her to a bare room and laid her on a futon. Lady Winslowe gazed out the dark window as a young woman with a long brown braid tended to Tristan’s wounds.
Tristan watched her, too exhausted and aching to rise. “I’ll kill any man you try to put on me.”
Winslowe rolled her eyes. “Please. His Majesty is no savage. His stock must have teeth.”
“Then why are you cleaning me up? Why not put a bullet past what’s left of my dentistry?”
“Because Lord Dashing needs servants to tend to his stock.”
Tristan stared at the off-white ceiling. Cobwebs grayed one corner. “And you expect me to serve. And not run, flee, or commit regicide.”
Lady Winslowe smiled in bemusement. “You’ll serve. That’s what Yvette here is for.”
Tristan eyed the brown-haired woman washing the blood from her body. Yvette was no older than Tristan herself. Thinner and lighter, too. If Winslowe thought this waif was going to hold Tristan down, she was deluded.
She soon learned what Winslowe really meant. Tristan was put to work the next day. Ribs aching, face puffy, she followed Yvette room to room through the harem on the upper floor, removing dirty dishes from dressers, stripping stained sheets from the beds, emptying trash bins spilling over with wadded tissues. Everywhere she went, Yvette went with her, brown eyes following Tristan’s every move. Meanwhile, armed knights slouched about the lounge, playing pool and flirting lazily with any woman allowed downstairs.
Despite the presence of Yvette and the knights, Tristan tried her first escape that afternoon, making a run to the patio while Yvette peeled potatoes with her back turned. The rumble of the sliding door gave Tristan away; Yvette screamed out before she hit the grass. Two knights rode Tristan down just as she caught sight of the fence: high fieldstone topped by three lines of barb wire.
The riders returned her to her room without comment or harm. Lady Winslowe arrived minutes later.
The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers Page 132