Alien Collective

by Gini Koch

  Now that their attackers were captured, the guys in the dune buggy revved it up and started gathering the javelinas again, clearly with intent to have them run us over, or at least add in weight to the quicksand so that we’d all sink more. Sure, this wasn’t acting like real quicksand should, but I was pretty damn sure it wasn’t real quicksand. Not that this knowledge helped us at all.

  The latter option seemed to be the one, as more javelinas ran in and were quickly trapped. Their struggles meant they sank quickly, but they also caused the rest of us to get sucked down more, bit by bit.

  Harlie went after the dune buggy, but the damage was still done. The guys in the dune buggy, seeing the enraged, giant Poof after them, turned tail and left. Harlie chased them for a ways, but then stopped suddenly and headed back to us. The dune buggy had either really revved it up or disappeared, because it wasn’t anywhere I could see anymore.

  The javelinas were screaming for help. They weren’t to blame—they were just innocent animals being used by our enemies—they didn’t deserve to die, and certainly not like this.

  Since having Jamie and getting all those reverse-genetic powers, the one thing I’d really learned was that, in danger situations, rage was my friend. Through all of this, all the weird and danger and worse that had gone on today, I hadn’t gotten enraged. Angry, sure, upset, worried, and so on, but not enraged.

  But as I looked at the javelinas struggling in the quicksand and thought about the fact that, as usual, the bad guys were harming things weaker than themselves simply because they could, I felt the rage start. But I needed it to be a rage worthy of the term “berserker.”

  Looked at the Poofs. They were trapped, too, and they were never trapped. That meant both that whoever was doing this had something truly extra under the hood, and also that my Poofs were probably terrified. The Peregrines were terrified for sure, based on their bird screams. And everyone else with me had to be frightened. Sure we’d all faced battle situations many times, but we were far more helpless right now than I could remember any of us being before.

  All of this was probably to get Jamie, Patrick, and the other hybrid kids to time warp themselves over here to save us. Or it was just a plan to kill those of us here and then take care of everyone else who was conveniently herded into the Science Center. Or to get the Dome unlocked. Or other things I was too stressed out to come up with. The options were many. My options were few.

  One of the javelinas made terrified eye contact with me and suddenly I could talk to it. Or rather, it could talk to me. And what it was saying in javelina was easy to decipher—it was terrified and asking me to save it somehow.

  Tried to tell it and the other trapped javelinas to calm down, but even if they understood me, they were too close to going fully under to listen. Panic made animals stupid.

  And we were animals, meaning I was probably being stupid. Rage was great. Thinking while enraged was better.

  While some of us had long-range talent ability, most didn’t. And even if whoever was creating the quicksand did have talent that could be used from far, far away, he or she had to be close, because otherwise said sandshifter wouldn’t have been able to grab the Peregrines.

  And there were rocks behind us. Rocks that were above the quicksand line.

  “Jeff, Chuckie, Malcolm—I think whoever’s doing this is on the rocks behind us,” I said as softly as I could in order to be heard, which wasn’t as softly as I’d have liked. But I had to figure the animal screams would block a lot from whoever was doing this to us.

  “That’d be great if we could get out or even turn around,” Jeff said in kind.

  “I’ve managed to look behind us,” Buchanan replied, also quietly. “There’s no one there.”

  “But we know someone who can make himself and anyone else he touches go invisible.” Did my best to relax and sent a message to Harlie. The Poof roared and raced behind us.

  Because of how we were stuck in the quicksand, Jeff was on one side of me, Buchanan the other, and Chuckie was between me and Buchanan, a little behind us, but not so far back that he wasn’t in my safe viewing range.

  So I was able to see that both Buchanan and Chuckie had their guns out, and, as Harlie raced behind us, I watched both men bend over quickly, so that they were looking upside down, between their legs.

  Heard shouts and screams, from more than one person, and then both men fired their guns. While half upside down, and through their legs. If we all survived, the image would be one I could use when I needed a laugh. However, survival wasn’t a given at this time, so the Inner Hyena wasn’t at risk of coming out.

  Both men cursed while the javelinas freaked out even more.

  “Not sure if we hit anyone,” Chuckie said as they straightened up. “But if we did, no one’s visible.”

  “We didn’t hit the Poof,” Buchanan added, before I could ask. Harlie stayed on the rock, growling.

  Could have sworn I saw someone running and another shimmering off in the distance, but before I could really tell if it was Siler’s chameleon look or just wishful thinking, I was distracted by the princesses urgently calling my name.

  “We are about to be under new attack,” Rhee called.

  “We believe,” Rahmi amended, sounding worried. “Something is coming.”

  “Now what?” I asked, undoubtedly speaking for everyone, as we all used the binoculars to see what they’d spotted.

  Something new was heading down from the road in the mountains, the same road the dune buggy had come from. Only this made far less sense to be here than the dune buggy had. Spotted what might have been a shimmering behind it, but it disappeared before I could be sure.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Tim asked.

  “I’m not sure what I think that is,” Gower said.

  “It’s something that really shouldn’t be here, not in this particular area. It’s a combine harvester. Used in farming. Which is not something Home Base is particularly noted for.”

  And, of course, said combine—blades merrily spinning—was heading right for us.

  CHAPTER 41

  “OKAY, WELL, killing us is certainly today’s plan.”

  “Who the hell has a combine harvester out here?” Tim asked, sounding as freaked out as I was pretty sure the rest of us felt. “Is Old Macdonald living on the other side of these hills?”

  “There are facilities in the mountains,” Reader said, “but none of them are related to farming, storing farm equipment, or hoarding javelinas.”

  “Why a combine harvester, for God’s sake?” Tim wasn’t giving this one up. “Won’t something that big sink in this stuff, too?”

  “Yeah, but the blade is gigantic enough that it might not sink in. And even if it did sink, it would just make the rest of us sink faster.” Mostly because it would likely be on top of us, slicing our heads off or dicing us up while shoving us under with no hope of getting out.

  “This was planned out,” Chuckie said, voice taut. “I’m sure the only thing not going according to plan is that Vander and Serene are still alive and not caught in this with us. So, glad you sent them back, Kitty.”

  “I wish I’d sent all of us back.”

  “I still can’t get free of this stuff,” Christopher said. “So if the Poof and the shooting scared off whoever’s doing this, either they just moved where we can’t see them, or their work here is done.”

  “That’s it,” Jeff said, as he reached over and grabbed the back of my jeans. Mahin was close enough on his other side that he could grab her with his other hand.

  “Jeff, don’t! It’ll shove you under!”

  “I don’t care,” he said calmly. “But I refuse to let my wife and the other non-warrior woman under my protection die, especially not in the way our enemies have planned.”

  With that he pulled. Hard.

  Jeff was big and brawny, and while he wasn’t bodybuilder muscled, he was definitely Greek God muscled. I could see his biceps bulging as he strained against the quicks
and. But the quicksand didn’t have that special Surcenthumain boost.

  For a moment I was really sure my clothes were merely going to come off in his hands, but Levi’s were made tough. And apparently, Armani was as well, because Jeff grunted and then, with a sound that was reminiscent of the biggest, sloppiest slurp in the world, Mahin and I flew out of the quicksand.

  Practice meant I was able to land in a roll and jump to my feet. Mahin didn’t land as smoothly, but she wasn’t hurt. I pulled her to her feet and spun around, to see the rest of our team now sucked down a whole lot more.

  Reader, Tim, and Christopher were in the quicksand up to their chests. The princesses, Gower, White, Buchanan and Chuckie were in quicksand to their waists. The animals were all down, most of the javelinas and Peregrines barely keeping heads above the surface, and Tito and Jeff, because he’d done the pulling effort for me and Mahin, were in the quicksand up to their armpits.

  Which, in a way, was good. Because that was the last little thing required to flip me into the level of blinding rage I needed. Even with the fact that everyone had their hands in the air and were essentially waving them like they just didn’t care, I wasn’t able to focus on much other than the fact that my husband, friends, pets, and other helpless animals were all going to smother soon.

  We couldn’t risk getting near the quicksand, because if the sandshifter could grab the Peregrines, he could also grab me and Mahin again.

  “Mahin, get onto that rock with Harlie. I have no idea what to tell you to do, but have the vibrations slowed down enough that you can do something?”

  “Not really,” she said. “Kitty, have you noticed that there’s nothing on us, or on Harlie? None of that stuck to us, which is technically impossible.”

  Looked down. Sure enough, there was nothing on us. We weren’t even damp. Come to think of it, the quicksand hadn’t felt damp, or icky, or even grainy. It had felt smooth.

  “Tell Chuckie about this. Keep them occupied and not moving. See if Harlie can calm down the other animals somehow.”

  “What are you going to be doing?”

  Pulled my iPod out, put my earbuds in, and hit play. “What I always do. Improvising and going with the crazy.”

  As I took off for the combine “Blow Me (One Last Kiss)” from Pink came on. Great, it was a good song, good beat, angry lyrics. Just hoped it wasn’t Algar being prophetic and telling me I’d never see Jeff alive again.

  When I was this enraged, the skills flowed perfectly. I was as good a fighter as Rahmi and Rhee, as fast as Christopher, and almost as strong as Jeff. So I reached the combine in a matter of moments.

  The two guys from the dune buggy were driving it, which figured. On the plus side, this hopefully meant there weren’t a million more people with dangerous farm equipment on their way.

  It was a John Deere combine, and it was gigantic, with nasty blades on a very wide track—if it reached my friends and family stuck in the quicksand, it would only need one pass to turn them all into mincemeat.

  Ran around the blades and jumped onto the side. The driver and his passenger were inside a glass-enclosed cabin. Grabbed onto one of the side-view mirrors and part of the roof and swung my lower body forward and kicked the glass as hard as I could. It cracked, and I kept on. It broke soon enough.

  Swung again and kicked the passenger in the head, which knocked him into the driver. This caused the combine to swerve, or really, since this wasn’t the most nimble of vehicles, to slowly change course.

  Now I swung into the cab. I was moving so fast that I was able to grab the passenger and slam him back against the cab a couple of times until he was obviously unconscious.

  Unfortunately, the driver was still driving and he started hitting at me. I hit back. I also grabbed the wheel and cranked it hard to the left, to hopefully pull the combine off course even more.

  I was winning this particular battle until someone else joined the party. Two someones. Siler and some guy I’d never seen before both jumped in. Once inside the now very crowded cabin, Siler hit the other guy with a sucker punch, grabbed me around the waist, and yanked me out. We fell onto the ground, and he rolled us away from the combine. We ended up several yards away, with me on my stomach, him on top of me.

  “I’m really going to kill you, you jerk!”

  Siler pulled out one of my earbuds. “Glad you’re making it look good,” he said quietly in my ear. “But I don’t think we’re being observed anymore.”

  “What the hell—”

  I’d have asked him what he meant and what was going on, but the combine exploded.

  CHAPTER 42

  SILER GOT OFF OF ME, and I scrambled to my feet. He was nowhere I could see, but I couldn’t take the time to look around much, since I had to run away from the explosion and flying metal.

  Having run track all through high school and college, I’d learned to never look behind me when running like crazy. Sprinters who look behind them lose the race, so I went by the philosophy that what was behind me didn’t matter. The few times I’d broken that rule had only proven why the rule was a good one.

  So I didn’t look back, I just ran like crazy away from the combine. Stopped when I reached the base of the northern mountains and turned around. Parts were still flying through the air, but none were going to have a shot of coming near me—I was far away from where I’d started.

  Fortunately, the combine had been in the middle of Groom Lake when it exploded, so the others weren’t at risk of being hit with debris, either.

  The combine being blown up was great, in that it couldn’t kill everyone. But Jeff and the animals were still close to suffocating in the weird quicksand, and I couldn’t see anything clearly from all the way across the salt flat.

  However, what I could see was that nothing and no one was coming out of Home Base. Considering we’d already had two big explosions, Christopher had gone to get binoculars and supposedly put them on alert only a few minutes ago, and considering there had been a stampede, a dune buggy, and a combine cruising around in a highly restricted area, by now someone at Home Base should have been taking an interest.

  Figured this meant that we were indeed infiltrated in some way. Meaning no help could be expected from anyone there. As I contemplated my next move beyond running back and trying to pull everyone out at once—which I had to admit was going to be impossible—I shoved my other earbud back in and the music changed. “Firestarter” from The Prodigy hit my personal airwaves. Chose to take this as a suggestion from Algar.

  Parts of the combine were burning. So there was fire. Maybe fire would destroy the weird quicksand that wasn’t real quicksand. Worth a try.

  However, how to get the fire over was the question. My brain nudged—the same people who’d just blown up in the combine had been driving a dune buggy earlier. So, where was it? And what else would I find if I found that vehicle?

  Reader had mentioned facilities in the mountains. I actually knew where those were. Not because I’d memorized Home Base’s layout and surrounding areas or anything responsible like that, but because Jeff and I had snuck off there to be alone in the early days of our relationship. There was a road that led into them, and that same road also connected to the smaller road that went over a pass between the mountains, the road the dune buggy had herded the javelinas through.

  Took off running, but I didn’t bother with the roads. I was going so fast that going up the small mountain was no big deal.

  Crested the top and sure enough, there was the dune buggy. I was faster than it, though, so that wasn’t what I wanted. Searched the area.

  There were no people in evidence, and it wasn’t a hard area to search, considering it consisted of four stationary satellite dishes and a couple of small bunkers. One of which was marked as Supplies. Wrenched the door open to see a nice selection of weapons including a flamethrower. Grabbed it, then wrenched the door of the other bunker open. It still held a fully functioning radio transmitter setup. Might be useful later.


  Put the flamethrower on, then took off, back down the mountain and across the Lake. Took the time to run around the remains of the combine. Saw people parts within the wreckage and decided a full examination could wait for later.

  Arrived as the music changed to “Let’s All Go (To The Fire Dances)” by Killing Joke. Clearly fire or similar was going to do something positive. Or else Algar just wanted to watch the world burn.

  Thankfully, everyone’s heads—persons and animals—were still above the surface. In fact, most of them hadn’t gone down too much lower than when I’d left. Other than Jeff. He was up to his neck and his arms were under as well. Good or bad, the rage left me in a whoosh, to be replaced with fear. This wasn’t a good change.

  “How goes the offensive, Missus Martini?” White asked calmly. Focused on the fact that he was calm and tried to relax somewhat.

  “I think Animal Man and the sandshifter, along with their driver, are dead. Pretty positive Home Base is infiltrated or in some kind of other trouble we’re going to hate. What’s going on over here?”

  “Mahin’s keeping us up,” Chuckie said. “Don’t distract her.”

  “Jeff, are you okay? Why are you lower down than when I left?”

  “Chuck and I figured out how to keep the animals all up. It moved me lower. I’m fine.”

  “Do I want to know?”

  “Probably not. I’ll ask you about the exploding tractor later. Why do you have a flamethrower, baby?”

  “Um, I think I can burn everyone out.”

  “Are you serious?” Tim asked. “You’re going to save us by flambéing us? That’s your plan?”

  Couldn’t tell them why I thought this was the right thing to do. Not only could I not mention Algar, but no one was going to be excited that I was taking direction from my iPod. “Um . . .”

  “It’s not real quicksand,” Mahin said through gritted teeth. Everyone looked surprised, so I figured Mahin hadn’t mentioned it earlier. Decided I’d berate her for not following orders later. Like when we were all still alive later.