Spore Series | Book 4 | Exist

by Soward, Kenny

  “You chased Saylor,” the girl with the Jayhawk shirt accused. “You chased him and tried to catch him.”

  “I was just worried about him,” Bishop defended himself. “And my son was, too. My son, his name is Trevor. And I’ve got a daughter, Riley. They’re both younger than Jake.”

  The girl looked at the older boy, and he nodded. “He’s not lying. Riley’s cool. She let me play zombie games on her tablet.”

  She shifted her green eyes back to Bishop. “Where’s your home?”

  “I’m, um, from Ft. Collins,” he stammered. “But we’d be going to Yellow Springs first. It’s in Ohio. There are good soldiers there, and a child named Fiona. And some doctors, too.”

  The girl’s eyes never wavered behind her smudged visor, and Bishop detected a world of pain buried deep in her expression. Maybe she’d found her parents or siblings dead, taken by the spore clouds. Maybe one of the Ugly Eight had done something to her.

  “And we’ll protect you from the Ugly Eight,” Bishop added with a louder, bolder voice. “We’ve got guns and an armored truck. They can’t get inside.”

  “Look at this guy,” Jake said, gesturing to Bishop. “He’s huge. You think the Ugly Eight could beat him up.”

  “I was a football player,” Bishop explained.

  The girl’s eyes narrowed. “Who for?”

  “I played for the University of Kentucky. I was a defensive end.” He gave a dry laugh. “Well, before I got hurt.”

  The girl twisted her lips and pulled a disappointed face, but she nodded and turned to the others. The kids huddled around Jayhawk girl, talking in hushed undertones.

  “I think they’re on board,” Bishop whispered, surprised at his own negotiation skills.

  After another minute of discussion, the girl broke away and turned to him. Her eyes remained less than friendly but had taken on a more neutral, business-like look.

  He raised his eyebrows with a hopeful expression. He didn’t know what they could do if the kids decided to stay in Salina. It wasn’t like he could chase them around the neighborhood. He couldn’t even catch one of them in a straight up race.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’re coming with you, mister. But I’m keeping my eye on you.”

  Chapter 20

  Randy, Indianapolis, Indiana

  Randy sprinted back to camp with his arms and legs pumping in perfect rhythm. He remembered his football days. Summer practice. Eight hours a day working out. Sprints. Gassers. Slamming pads and taking hits.

  He’d sometimes hated it. Practicing five days a week just to play one game seemed like overkill. But he’d grown into the sport. At first, it rewarded him for being bigger and stronger and busting his butt on the field.

  Only after his junior year did he experience the other benefits of constant practice. The discipline it instilled. The self-confidence it built in him since being an awkward seventh grader. Too bad he’d not gotten to play his senior year. He might have been pretty good, possibly winning a scholarship to Indiana or Purdue.

  But Asphyxia had canceled that last season, and he was running for a different kind of goal line now.

  His breath came ragged and pained, and he winced at a pinched feeling in his side. It felt like someone had gripped the meat between his ribs and was squeezing it.

  It didn’t matter. The Colony soldiers were coming. He had to reach the camp and warn Jenny and Tricia. He had to get them out of there!

  Randy flew past the Perch and plunged into the woods. His flashlight jerked back and forth on the scout path cutting through the trees. When he reached the other side, he drew up short, arms windmilling as he remembered David’s words.

  I make sure they know I’m out here, so they don’t accidentally chew me up with their guns.

  Taking it slow despite his brain screaming at him to hurry, Randy held up his hands and stepped out of the trees. He waved at the soldiers on the roof, eyes shut and half-expecting a barrage of gunfire to blow him away.

  When he opened them, he saw the gunmen at the top waving him on. Randy took off in another sprint, heading for the warehouse doors.

  People were already filing out, running to their scout cars and trucks. Engines revved to life. Vehicles whipped out of the lot.

  Dodger’s Tesla flew past with a brief honk. Randy waved but then another half dozen cars blasted by, spinning him in a complete circle. He staggered and lurched toward the warehouse side door only to have it thrown open in his face.

  He stepped back as John himself pushed out followed by a dozen of his soldiers, all dressed in black and carrying rifles and heavy weaponry. More filed outside, gathering in the parking lot, their numbers growing to four dozen in the space of twenty seconds.

  John stepped up to Randy and gave him a once over before meeting his eyes. “You’re wounded. Can you fight?”

  He was aware of wetness soaking the bottom part of his shirt and his jeans, but he’d not bothered to look down. It wasn’t the worst pain he’d ever felt, but his ragged, rattling chest gave him the impression it was more than a graze.

  “I need to find my sister and Tricia,” he gasped. “I need to make sure they’re--”

  “They’re on the evacuation trucks,” John said through pursed lips. He raised his rifle and charged it, staring past Randy toward the woods. “If they’re not already gone, they soon will be.” His eyes shifted back, their green color gleaming magnetic in the darkness. “We need to hold off the Colony troops and give everyone a chance to get out alive.”

  Randy glanced at the warehouse door and then back to the camp leader.

  John’s jaw clenched, and he brought his hand down hard on his shoulder. “If you’re wounded, see a medic. If you can fight, join us now. But if you decide you’re neither of those, my advice is to get far away from Indianapolis. I don’t want to see you again.”

  With that, the camp leader called out to his people, and they began a slow jog across the parking lot toward the woods. Randy took a deep, painful breath and shook his head. His eyes looked beyond the warehouse to the school where the camp citizens were evacuating.

  He had no reason to mistrust John’s word. It made perfect sense for Randy to stand and fight with the rest of them. Despite them assigning him forklift duty for saving Kim Shields. Despite them laughing at him for his paranoia over Kirk, which he should have directed at David all along. Maybe he owed Kirk an apology, but Randy had been at least half right.

  Bullets rattled off in the distance as the fight got underway. He turned in a circle, looking around as a strange image struck him. His parents stood at the edge of their corn field. Cordy Tucker loomed over Anita, his tall form with his arm thrown across her shoulder. They wore farm clothes, dirty from the fields, jostling and joking with each other as they often did.

  Their faces held wistful smiles, bearing a mysterious wisdom he couldn’t begin to fathom. And while his father’s lips never moved, a thought projected into Randy’s head. It told him to help John. To protect his sister. To continue to do the right thing no matter how hard or painful the task.

  His heart stirred, and his eyes glazed over with tears.

  He opened his mouth to respond to his father, but the words choked in his throat. He couldn’t shake the feeling they were watching and protecting him. Randy blinked, and the image disappeared from his mind. He didn’t believe in visions or miracles, but something had just moved him.

  The sensible part of him figured he must be bleeding out, or maybe the poisoned air had caused the illusion. Either way, it sounded like good advice.

  He raised his eyes to the sky. “I’m on it, Dad. I’ll see it done.”

  The rooftop guns erupted, sending him into a crouch, arms thrown over his head. Sputtering bursts of staccato fire rattled the sky. Huge brass casings fell, clattering on the concrete like metallic rain.

  Randy raised his eyes to see tracers shooting to the west where the Colony troops approached. The enemy returned fire from somewhere he couldn’t see. Thick lead
rounds chewed across the edge of the building to send fragments of stone crumbling away. Someone fell from the roof and tumbled to the ground, landing with a thud.

  He clenched his fists, gathered his courage, and ran after John’s crew.

  *

  “This way!” John hissed. He directed a group of twelve soldiers to the edge of the treeline near where David had climbed up the Perch. “Get down!”

  Randy was one of them, and he pressed up against the embankment, crawling to the edge and peering across the road. The Colony troops crouched behind their five armored vehicles comprising three Humvees with mounted guns, a transport truck, and a tank.

  An actual tank.

  The monstrous weapon turned his insides to liquid. It creaked and groaned as it moved, its mechanized sounds echoing through the urban sprawl.

  John twisted and looked up and down the line. “Fire and retreat. Like we trained.”

  Randy nodded along with the rest of the soldiers, but no one had trained him, unless his forklift work counted. He pulled David’s rifle off his shoulder and got ready to do business.

  They watched as the guns from the warehouse rooftops fired again and the Colony soldiers took cover. The Humvees sat spread out across the road, the nearest one less than sixty yards away.

  On their left, a group of John’s people appeared from behind a gas station and opened fire on the enemy troops, clipping some who hid behind the armor.

  Men screamed and fell, and Randy felt a brief sense of elation. Then one Humvee rotated its gun at the gas station and ripped off several bursts of rounds. The bullets chased the harassers away, shattering glass and tearing chunks of brick out of the walls.

  “Now!” John shouted.

  The group rose from their positions, climbed to the edge of the road, and opened fire. Randy squeezed the trigger five times, hammering five bursts at the troops hidden behind the transports. He saw sparks fly off the armor, though he couldn’t say if he hit anyone.

  “Back!” John shouted as the Humvee guns turned on them.

  Everyone reeled and dove into the woods with Randy just a fraction behind them. Bullets tore through the air above his head as he hit the ground, able to feel the heat from hundreds of rounds.

  “Crap.” Randy’s tone was incredulous as bits of leaves and wood fell gently on his head, followed by a light dusting of fungus.

  Just like that, the barrage stopped.

  “Let’s go!” John shouted.

  Randy got to his knees and stood, staying crouched down with his shoulders tensed. He followed behind a woman as she jogged through the woods back toward base. They melted into the trees without taking any casualties, but he knew they couldn’t stand up to that kind of firepower for long. The Colony troops radiated power, training, and a single-minded determination.

  Stickers swatted at him, branches smacking him in the face as he tried to keep up with the rest of John’s group. The ache in his chest kicked up a notch, and Randy fell behind. Had David shot him through? Did he have a bullet lodged inside him?

  He didn’t know, but he shoved all worry aside and kept running, sprinting as fast as he could.

  More gunfire echoed in the night sky followed by shouts and screams. What he thought might be helicopter rotors vibrated off in the distance, another threat slowly approaching.

  He kept his eyes on the woman in front of him, glued to her in their frenzied flight. They finally reached the edge of the woods and staggered into the warehouse parking lot to catch their breath. He looked around, waiting for directions from John as their people gathered.

  A disconcerted feeling fell over him, and Randy swung his rifle up as warning shouts rang out. Something smacked the woman in front of him, and the top of her head disintegrated into a fine haze of blood. A tracer zipped past Randy’s face, moving right to left across his vision.

  Everyone hit the ground, but he dropped a fraction of a second behind the others with a wide-eyed look of shock. He saw John roll on his left side and return fire back to their right. More fighters mirrored his move, and Randy mindlessly curled up on his left shoulder and raised his rifle.

  He started to squeeze off a round but relaxed his finger when he realized he’d almost shot one of his own people in the back of the head. He shifted positions, spitting gunfire at a group of Colony soldiers approaching on their right flank.

  Rounds flew in both directions, smacking concrete and sometimes flesh. He wasn’t sure how they did it, but they sent the Colony troops into a backpedaling retreat. Then one of the big warehouse guns pointed down at the sneaky enemy and opened up. Three soldiers were hit and fell. The others broke and ran.

  Randy rolled to his knees, mostly to relieve his pain on that side but also because he’d learned that he needed to be faster to survive.

  Three of John’s people lay sprawled on the ground, shot dead by the ambush. Still, a handful who remained cheered at the troops’ retreat.

  Their joy was short-lived when a tremendous boom shook the night sky. The concussion rattled Randy’s teeth. A fraction of a second later, something struck the warehouse near the top floor, shattering brick and windows, and sending a storm of debris raining down.

  The warehouse guns fell dead.

  When Randy looked up and saw the gaping hole, he knew it was a tank shell that had split the place wide open. What else could it have been?

  “Let’s go, people!” John shouted, and he sprinted north.

  Everyone followed him, heads down and running hard. Randy could have passed them easily but for his injury.

  They left the warehouse lot and entered an apartment complex. The building doors magically opened, and fighters flowed out to join them. The group grew to fifty or a hundred black-clad figures armed to the teeth. Surely, they weren’t going to counterattack the Colony forces.

  To Randy’s relief, they continued moving north, and by that time he’d lost track of John. He simply followed the flock of soldiers.

  They angled to the west and ran into another group of black-clad figures standing near an intersection. It was a wide, four-lane highway bisected by a two-lane road.

  To Randy’s surprise, five dead Colony soldiers lay in a line near a Humvee that had crashed into a tree. The headlights remained on, casting light on Randy and his black-clad friends. The engine smoked as if it had been shot or blown up.

  A group of fighters brought three captured Colony troops forward, and John stepped out of the crowd and spoke with them.

  Randy filtered through the assembled men and women to get a better look. A few of the camp leaders shouted orders, and a dozen people sprinted across the road to the north.

  He’d had no idea John had so many soldiers at his disposal or what they were doing. He tapped on someone’s shoulder, and a woman with dark brown eyes turned and looked up at him. Her hair was a close-cropped mess sticking out around her mask straps. She carried a rifle and wore head-to-toe black.

  “What’s going on?” Randy asked. His voice had a raspy quality, like he couldn’t quite get all his wind.

  The woman jerked her head toward the crashed Humvee. “They tried to surround us, but we captured them.”

  “What’s John asking them?”

  The woman shrugged. “Who knows? Probably trying to find out how much of their force is back at the Colony.”

  Randy nodded, then his head ticked to the side. “Why would he want to know that?”

  She never got a chance to respond, because John jerked his thumb, and the captured soldiers were taken away. Then he raised his hand and made a circling gesture, and everyone jogged off across the two-lane expressway.

  As they left the range of the Humvee lights, Randy was forced to blindly follow the dark forms in front of him once more. He suspected they weren’t joining the camp evacuees but were part of some other plan.

  They funneled down a rocky driveway into a dirt lot, stopping at the edge of a wide gravel parking lot. A large crowd filed into the area, and Randy stood with them, wi
ncing as he looked for John.

  A line of headlights switched on, bathing the crowd in incandescent light. Engines started, and a row of black vans edged forward, doors thrown open as men and women waved the soldiers in.

  Fighters began to load in, but where were they going? What would they do when they got there? Randy pushed between two vans and came out the other side. He gazed back and forth down the line, unsure which van to get in or if he should get in at all.

  Then he remembered John’s words that if he didn’t fight, he shouldn’t stick around. Despite that, Randy didn’t know what the next ten minutes of his life would be like, he selected the fifth van from the end and started walking toward it.

  Someone reached out of the darkness and grabbed him by his sleeve. Randy stumbled back, turned, and knocked the hand off with a scowl.

  “Get off me,” Randy said, then he paused when he saw who it was. “Sorry, John. What’s going on? Where are we going?”

  The camp leader stood off to the side in the shadows. A black van idled behind him, separate from the others in the lot. Six fighters milled around the van, casually checking their weapons. Randy recognized them. They were John’s toughest people. His bodyguards.

  “It all must seem pretty crazy to you.”

  “Yeah, man.” Randy’s raised voice brought another jabbing pain to his side. He softened his tone. “I was out on patrol with David. I saw him signaling the Colony troops. He betrayed us, John. I heard him say--”

  “I know what happened.” The green-eyed leader patted him on the shoulder and gave him a wide grin. “We’ve been preparing for this for a long time. We thought Kirk was going to trigger the attack, but it was David.” John laughed.

  “Good thing you caught it and warned us. Man, you know how many lives you just saved?”

  Randy shook his head, but he looked past the leader to see the other fighters nodding respectfully in his direction. “So, what’s next?” He stared after the last three vans pulling out of the parking lot. “Why aren’t we going with them?”