“Why couldn’t you stay?”
“I have to finish what I started. I need to give my people a world they can live on.”
“But it’s already raining.”
“But they need trees to make air. They need animals to fertilize the trees. There’s still so much to be done.”
“Can’t someone else do some of that?”
“I killed all the people who could do all that, remember?”
I trembled. We hadn’t known each other when the accident happened. David had made a critical error, and it claimed the lives of most of their terrestrial scientists. “But aren’t you training people?”
“Of course, but a few years is hardly enough time to learn a career’s worth of knowledge. They need me.”
A cool shiver ran across my skin. “Will you ever be done?”
“No, but in a few years everything will be running well enough that I can take prolonged sabbaticals.”
I perked up. “Like how long?”
“A few months at first, and then longer.”
“So you’ll come back to Earth?”
“I’ll need a place to stay. Is your couch still free?”
I giggled into the soft folds of his shirt. “My couch is always free.” I ran my index finger along the edge of his sleeve. “But by that time I hope you won’t want to stay on the couch.”
His grin melted me. “I don’t think that would make your father all that happy.”
“He loves you, but he will threaten your life. That’s just his job.”
David laughed—a deep belly chuckle that warmed me to my toes. “Humans are very odd.”
“But that’s why you love me.”
“Among other reasons.”
His lips covered mine. A nice, sweet, warm, very human kiss. No sparks. No alien fireworks.
He reclined on the soft cushioning. “I’m sorry. I’m really tired.”
I snuggled closer. “Me too.”
36
David’s voice itched through my dreams. “I don’t know why. Keep trying.”
I stretched out a yawn. David waved his hands over the console while Edgar scampered across the copilot’s side of the dashboard. The walls flashed yellow and David nodded.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
David twitched as he turned toward me. “Umm, yeah. Sort of. The ship is fine, if that’s what you mean.”
I sat on the edge of the couch. “You guys look really busy.”
David’s gaze fell to the floor. “Jess—”
I eased off the bed. As I stood, a big, dark circle came into view. “Is that Earth?”
“Yes,” David whispered.
“What’s wrong? Why is it so dark?” I settled in the chair beside David.
“It’s nighttime.”
An unspoken “but” hung in the air. Apprehension chittered across our bond. Confusion. Dismay.
Something had confounded him, and he wanted to hide it. Whatever it was, he was trying desperately to keep what felt like terror from seeping through our bond. I gulped, pushing the overbearing emotion back. I needed to keep strong for him, if not for me.
I leaned forward and took in the mammoth orb, squinting at the bright yellow sphere just peeking around the edges of the planet’s circular horizon. I could barely see the outline of Florida, as if the eastern shores of the United States had faded from an old black and white photograph. Yes, there was something very wrong. “Where are the cities?”
“The entire power grid must be down.” He raised his gaze. Deep ridges formed in his forehead. He lost hold, and a flood of dread shrieked through our tether, smashing me back in my chair.
“No.” Bile pooled in my throat. “We had to get here in time. We had to.”
David stood. “I’m not sure what’s going on. If the planet had been scourged deeply enough to cause the readings I’m seeing, the campaign would be over and Erescopian ships would be everywhere, but they’re not. There isn’t even any sign of encoded transmissions. I can’t say what’s going on until we get closer.”
I nodded. “Okay, so then we go closer.”
37
The sun peeked over the horizon, welcoming morning in a wave that swept over the Atlantic Ocean and kissed America’s eastern shores. A few wisps of clouds greeted us as we dropped into the atmosphere.
Silent skies. Beautiful, but I tensed as the trepidation skidding across out bond deepened. I felt it too. For maybe the first time, ever, no one was chasing us. I never dreamed I’d be praying for another ship to pop up out of nowhere are start shooting. Anything normal would be welcome right now.
“There’s a huge wind shear heading our way.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. And everything. It’s an odd wind, like thousands of ships moving at high speed and messing with the atmospheric conditions.”
I leaned closer to the windshield. “I don’t see anything.” Not like I’d be able to see wind, but— “Why would so many ships be moving, and who’s ships?”
David opened his lips to answer, staring at something on the screen I couldn’t see. He closed his lips. A helpless consternation hung in the air, pulling at me, searching for answers where their might not be any.
“Nothing seems right,” he finally said. “The planet looks fine.”
I straightened. “Well, that’s good. Maybe it was just a blackout.”
He waved his hands over the console. “I’m going to fly up the coast from that peninsula.”
We flew down toward Florida. In this ship, it would be less than a minute before we made it to New Jersey. We’re almost there, Dad. Hold on.
David shrieked and grabbed his head.
“What’s wrong?”
“Something, someone is in my brain. Manipulating.” He screamed and doubled over.
Someone was inside him?
I remembered the day we met, the intense pain when he’d taken my language and stole the vision of the actor Jared Linden to create his human appearance. It no longer hurt when we shared thoughts, so this couldn’t be something I had done by accident. But if not me, who?
I reached for him, but sat back as a wave of well-being coated me. Joy slid through our link, while David screamed on the floor beside me, not sounding joyful at all.
My eyes fogged, and the Florida coast deepened from a rich green to a smoky, dull gray.
David blinked, taking deep, labored breaths.
“Are you okay?”
He rolled his shoulders. “Maybe I came in at too steep an angle?” He stared into the console before his gaze slowly scanned to the window. “Oh, no.”
The ground below us folded up in cracks and pitches of grass and dirt. We slowed.
“What did this, a tornado?”
David’s mouth remained open as he turned to me.
“The scourge? The scourge did this?”
I scanned the area below. Flattened. The only sign of humanity lay in a door sticking up out of the ground, and a car bumper hanging out of the limbs of a partially uprooted tree. “Where are we?”
“From the latest internet records of your planet, it appears this used to be Charleston, South Carolina.”
“But there had to be hundreds of thousands of people here. Where are they?”
David grimaced. “Hopefully your United Nations evacuated in time.”
Everyone, in only a few days? A deep pain formed in my chest as David elevated the ship a few hundred feet. We followed a desolate highway up the coast. There should have been hotels, resorts, houses.
This was a dream. It had to be. Maybe I was still asleep, and we weren’t even near Earth yet.
A skyscraper peeked out over the trees on the horizon.
I nearly jumped out of my seat. “There. That city is fine.”
David nodded. “Raleigh, North Carolina.”
As we neared the structure, a fog of dust puffed up from the streets below.
A rumble echoed through the glass, and I screamed as a million tons of steel folded into the smoke. The cloud billowed up like an atomic bomb, leaving nothing behind.
“There had to be people in there,” I said. “Maybe we can help them?”
“There’s no one, Jess. I’m not getting a human life reading for miles.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. There has to be hundreds of thousands of people.”
“It looks like it’s over, Jess. There’s no one. Anywhere.”
“What do you mean no one anywhere? How far can you see?”
“The sensors are reporting back on the entire planet. Human population: approximately one million, scattered mostly on the outer lying islands that haven’t been scourged. The main continents … ”
“That has to be wrong. How many people does it show in the United States?”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Three thousand six hundred and forty-seven in a little over two thousand clusters.”
Three thousand left out of three-hundred million. Scattered. Alone. A numbness settled over me.
It wasn’t possible. It just … wasn’t. “How could we be too late?”
“Your continent was one of a handful considered a threat. They would have been targeted first. After the main strikes, they’d go back to eradicate any survivors.”
Eradicate?
His silent apology niggled across our bond.
No. This wasn’t happening. “What about my dad? How many people are left in New Jersey?”
David grimaced. “None. That was a military target. They wiped the entire area clean.”
I sat back in my chair. A pressure built in my head as if someone crushed my skull within a vise. My ears pounded.
I swallowed down the need to burst out crying. Everyone couldn’t be dead. We weren’t gone that long.
No. It had to be a mistake. I needed to keep cool. I needed to think. “Is the scourge still going on anywhere else? Isn’t there anyone we can save?”
David concentrated on digital Erescopian symbols scrolling over the desolation of the planet below. “Houston, Belfast, Stockholm, Dallas, Vancouver, Amman, Madrid, Cape Town, Philadelphia, Glasgow, Knoxville, Sacramento—all gone and everything in between them.”
“What about Australia?”
He turned away. “That was the first location marked for settlement. It would have been leveled by now.”
I let my face fall in my hands. It just wasn’t possible that three hundred million people died in a day. We did everything we were supposed to do. We found the rift dwellers. We got Ruby and the others to Mars. We made it rain. It just wasn’t fair. “There has to be someone we can save.”
“It doesn’t make sense. Where are all our ships?” He tapped his fingers over the console. “There’s no Erescopians, and barely any humans. There’s no one—wait.”
I lifted my head. “Did you find someone?
“A ship, hanging back about half a mile from us. I thought it was a distortion before, but it’s following us.”
“Maybe they know what happened?”
He dipped his pointer finger into the console. “They’re not answering our transmissions.”
I straightened. “Should we send them the ceasefire?”
David glanced at me. I knew it was too late to help most of the planet, but what about the people on the islands?
He waved over the control panel. “I’m enhancing the scanners.” The lights flashed. “Yeah, Edgar, I’m not too comfortable with this, either.”
“Why?”
“They’re just hanging there, watching.” Several Erescopian letters scanned across the screen. “And somehow they are reflecting our image back to us. It must be some new type of camouflage.” David sat back. “Wait. According to the readings, it’s another fluidic prototype.”
“What does that mean?”
“There are only three of these ships in existence. I stole one and crashed it on Mars. We’re sitting in the second one.”
“So, if that’s number three, what does that mean?”
“They are an exact match for our speed and weapons. That means no more tactical advantage.”
And they were probably highly trained at how to shoot their target out of the sky.
He glared at me, lips pursed.
“Sorry, stray thought.”
“It’s all right. It’s the truth.” He tapped the panel above him. “Keep scanning, Edgar. We’re heading north.” He turned to me. “Let’s see if we can find your dad.”
The walls flashed yellow, then red.
David checked the console. “I see them.” He waved his hands over the controls. “The other ship is advancing. Fast.”
The clouds in the windows whisked into a blur. I leaned forward, but my chair grabbed me from behind, forcing me back and immobilizing me.
Thomp.
The sound echoed through my soul, streaming up memories of the alien weapons that tore apart the surface of the planet the first night the Erescopians landed. That was two years ago. We were supposed to be at peace. Friends. How could all of this have happened?
We rumbled, banking to the left. “Edgar, did they just miss us?” David narrowed his eyes. “Either we are finally getting lucky, or whoever is driving that thing is a worse pilot than I am.”
Thomp.
We jolted.
“That time they didn’t miss, but I think it was only a warning.”
“Why are they shooting at us?”
“I don’t know. They’re not talking.”
The smoking landscape sank beneath my sight. I held on as we blasted straight into the sky.
“Are we going back into space?”
“Haven’t really figured that out yet.”
Edgar scurried out of the floor and jumped onto the panel.
Thomp. A flash of orange grazed the top of our hull.
Edgar chattered and clicked.
“Yeah, I know. That’s not good.”
“Why? What?”
“That was a short-range scourge weapon. Whoever’s in there obviously wants us dead. Thank goodness they’re a lousy shot.”
But who hated us that much? One of the Caretakers? But they already had what they wanted. Humanity was all but wiped out. What could destroying us possibly—
Thomp.
We jolted forward. Edgar slammed against the thin bar between the two windows and fell back onto the panel.
Thomp.
Our ship jarred to the side. Edgar’s limp form slid to the floor.
This was insanity. We’d been through so much. There had to be a way out of this!
The ship shuddered, and our ascent slowed. My body rose from the chair, weightless, before my restraints tightened. I gulped down bile as the pull of gravity drew us down.
David released his restraints and sunk his arms up to his shoulders into the console. “We lost propulsion. Hold on!”
The ship rolled over. Now facing down, we raced toward the tops of the clouds. An orange glow encircled the room.
“What are you doing?”
“Using the last of our power to set off our scourge weapon.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to die. They’re right behind us.”
Whomp.
The vibration of our own defenses riddled through me. Was this it? Had it all come down to a game of cat and mouse with weapons designed to destroy civilizations?
Thomp.
And they fired back. Was it because I was on board? Were they here to obliterate the survivors? Did they need to get rid of me to make sure humanity was completely wiped out?
Whomp.
I gritted my teeth, holding on.
David jumped back to his seat. He reached out, his right hand grasping mine. “That’s all I can do. We’re about to blast them with everything we have.”
“Can we get back control of the ship?”
&nb
sp; His silence gave me my answer.
Our hull hummed, then flexed. A deep whomp echoed through the chamber, the sound instantly overcome by a louder thomp.
David’s eyes widened. They fired, too!
A scream tore through the ship, followed by a rocketing explosion. Heat and flames blanketed the windows. We tumbled and jarred in a mad frenzy. Holding on for my life, I closed my eyes and whispered a prayer. Tears welled in my lashes. It couldn’t end this way. It just couldn’t.
I held my breath, willing the ship to stay together a few more seconds. Would I burn alive, or fall to my death? Would it hurt? Would Mom be waiting for me? Dad?
David’s grip on me tightened, and I returned the pressure. Somehow, I always imagined us having a happy ending. I mean, why not? Books ended that way. Two teens up against impossible odds, always somehow or other making it through to save the day. Why couldn’t I have that? Was the fairytale too much to ask for?
The shaking stopped, but the flames continued to flap across the windows as if the glass were on fire. We spiraled out of the clouds, plummeting toward the sea and coastline below.
We didn’t explode!
Holy crap, it must have been the other ship! The other ship exploded, not us!
My chair rattled, constricting until I could barely breathe.
“David!”
His grip on me tightened more. “We’re still falling. There’s no power.”
Flames continued to lick the outside of the window as we twirled toward the ocean below. The detonation of the other ship hadn’t saved us. It only gained us a few extra moments. I suppose it was something. A few more seconds to remember life, love, and home.
I’m here. David’s voice soothed me, taking some of the fright.
I’m scared.
I know.
For some reason admitting I was scared freed me. It was probably better this way, dying quick rather than sifting through the ruins with the survivors. There was no one left for me on Earth, anyway. Dad, Mom, Maggie, Matt … all gone.
Even my passion: photography. Gone.
After all, I couldn’t be much of a photographer when there was no one left to look at my pictures. David was probably all I had left to live for. At least he was here to share my last moments.
Embers in the Sea Page 27