by David Wood
But the boy didn’t sound angry. He sounded worried. Like his now-dead mother was still alive and trying to eat him once more.
“Dad!” Jakob yanked on Peter’s arm. Then the boy punched him. “Snap out of it!”
Peter glanced from his dead wife to his son.
“They’re coming!” Jakob shouted, pointing to the field where Kristen had stood moments before. He looked and saw six Riders sitting upon their Woolie mounts, charging across the field and moving so fast, Peter wasn’t sure he and Jakob would make it to the door before the attack party arrived.
He shoved Jakob toward the door, shouting, “Go!” fully intending to follow his son, but then his sensitive ears picked up something over the rumble of the approaching Woolies. The rhythmic thud was easily recognizable to any soldier: helicopters.
Chapter 38
Ella awoke kicking and punching, drenched in confusion and sweat, surrounded by an unfamiliar living room and the smell of tension. Hands reached out, grasping her arms. Whispered voices told her to calm down, that she was okay, that she was safe, but her last memory, of being inside the gullet of some monster, overwhelmed her common sense and told her to fight.
To flee.
To get out.
The hands on her shoulders, fingers hooked around her muscles, like tendrils or claws, slipped away. She lunged to her feet, vision spinning for a moment. The wall caught her as she stumbled forward, mumbling incoherent threats to what held her.
“You’re out,” someone said. “You’re safe.”
The words were like a fingertip of balm on a third degree burn, wholly ineffective and not nearly enough. She slid across the wall and fell through a doorway, bumbling across a hardwood floor and catching herself on a small table that jabbed her ribs. The pain sharpened her senses, but fueled her flight. When something grasped her shoulders from behind, pulling her back, she swung out a backhand, striking hard and being freed. Light drew her forward, toward a large wooden door. She fell against it, hands moving over the locks, snapping them open without looking. Blinding sunlight struck her a moment later, burning the green of the world outside into her retina. She squinted and stepped back, as the sight of endless crops helped her understand where she was.
In a house.
A farm.
Not inside the belly of a predator.
Not consumed.
Safe.
Hands wrapped around her arms once more, two on each side, pulling her back. Voices urged with desperation, but she held her ground. There were fields outside, endless green, but there was also Peter. And he wasn’t alone. An ExoGenetic creature...one of the Riders...stood just a few feet away from him.
She opened her mouth to shout at him, to tell him to shoot it, but then Peter turned around. His eyes locked on hers and then twisted in a kind of fear-fueled shock she’d never before seen on his face. That was when she shifted her gaze left, past Peter, seeing the ExoGen’s face.
And recognizing it.
Despite the twisted nature of the Rider’s body and the protruding teeth and feral hair, Ella had felt the loathing fire of those eyes before.
Her heart skipped in time with her faltering limbs.
But Kristen was dead. Peter killed—
No. He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. The Peter she knew could never do that, especially to Kristen. She should have realized the truth before, but it wouldn’t have changed anything. The odds of Kristen still being alive, or even still partly herself, were slim. But this was Kristen, with her memory and her hatred for Ella, still intact. The woman’s eyes registered shock upon seeing Ella.
For a moment, Kristen looked wounded.
And then, with the suddenness of a crashing wave—rage.
Before Ella could react, she was pulled from behind, and this time she found herself powerless against the hands dragging her back. Seeing Kristen alive, standing before Peter, her still devoted husband, had sucked her will away. In that moment, she realized just how much she still cared about Peter. Her rock. Despite him staying with Kristen all those years ago, Ella had never doubted, that should some kind of desperate need arise, he would be there for her. It was why she had gone to his biodome first, when there had been others to choose from. She hadn’t known Kristen was out of the picture then, but she had believed Peter would help her.
She had hated herself for thinking it, but Kristen’s death, while tragic, had been a Godsend. She’d had Peter back. All of him. But now...
She fell back onto the hardwood floor as the thing that was once Kristen let out a savage howl. Ella strained to see what was happening, but the heavy door slammed shut. Jakob was there, looking out the window, flinching at whatever was happening outside.
A sharp pain in her arm brought her attention over to Anne, who stood beside her and had just landed a kick. “Are you crazy!” the girl shouted. “Do you know who that is?”
“Oh no,” Jakob said, hands snapping up to his mouth. “Oh shit! No!”
A single gunshot tore through the air.
Jakob’s arms fell. His shoulders sagged. An invisible weight pulled his forehead against the window. He banged it against the glass once, and Ella thought the boy was about to crack. Whatever had happened outside was clearly devastating. One of his parents were dead. Given the gunshot, she assumed it was Kristen. While the boy had already believed his mother to be dead at his father’s hands, this time he had watched it happen. Kristen had become a monster, thanks in part to Ella, but had still been his mother.
But then all signs of the boy’s fragility disappeared. He perked up suddenly, brow furrowed. He turned to Anne. “You hear that?”
The hallway fell silent for a moment. The sound reached them through the floorboards, first as a faint vibration. Then a rumble.
Jakob stood on his toes, looking out the window, and then, without a word, he sprang into action. He flung open the door, revealing Peter standing over his wife’s body, gun in hand, consumed by shock and grief. Jakob leapt from the porch steps and reached his father in three long strides.
The boy pulled on Peter’s arm. “Dad! Snap out of it!” When Peter looked at him, he added. “They’re coming!”
“Go!” Peter shouted, shoving Jakob back toward the door. He took one step to follow him and stopped, turning back, and then looking up.
What is he...
She heard it then. A familiar sound she’d come to know well during her time in San Francisco. But who would have helicopters all the way out here? Had ExoGen sent people looking for them? Were they really that valuable, or that much of a threat? She didn’t think it was possible, so what could motivate these people to track them down?
She considered the possibility that the approaching helicopters were not from ExoGen, but she knew it was unlikely. If there had been other large pockets of survivors—people who had completely avoided eating the ExoGen crops—she would have known about it. No, this was ExoGen, and that meant they’d be ready for war.
Adrenaline spiking, Ella climbed to her feet and shouted, “Peter! It’s ExoGen! Get inside, now!”
Her loud, ‘now!’ did the trick. He turned and ran for the house, pursued by several Woolies and their Riders, like Indiana Jones running from an Amazon tribe. She flinched when gunfire erupted from the second floor, peppering the field in front of the approaching horde. They weren’t alone in the house, but whoever had opened fire was a horrible shot.
The door slammed shut behind Peter as he entered the front hall. Jakob started working the many locks, but Peter said, “Don’t bother. They’re not going to knock.”
Peter rushed forward, and for a moment, Ella thought he was going to strike her. But he took her arm in his hand and pulled her up.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Later. Get a weapon.”
“Where?” she asked.
He let go of her arm and stepped into the living room where she’d awoken, slinging an M16 off his shoulder. “Anywhere.” He pointed at Jakob. “Kitchen window!”
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br /> As the two Crane men separated, her eyes followed Peter, and then she really saw the living room’s decor. In addition to a few pieces of furniture and old paintings hanging on the walls, there were weapons positioned under every window. With wide eyes, she turned and looked down the hallway, spotting the cabinet full of ammo and supplies.
“Here,” Anne said, tossing a combat vest at her mother.
Ella caught the armor and slipped into it, quickly cinching it tight. It had already been loaded with what looked like AK-47 magazines, a Sig Sauer P229 handgun and shotgun shells.
Gunshots rang out from the living room. Three-round bursts. Definitely Peter.
“Back him up,” Anne said in a take-charge way that the girl hadn’t displayed before. “I’ll be with Jake.”
Before Ella could agree with the plan, Anne, an M16 looking oversized in her small arms, headed for the kitchen. What happened while I was unconscious? Ella wondered, but she knew the answer to that question would have to wait. They had monsters to repel.
And then an army.
She ran into the living room, and slid like she was stealing second base, stopping beneath one of the three windows where an AK-47 leaned against the wall. Before the Change, it had been the most common assault rifle on the planet, used by modern militaries and terrorists alike. The US military had no use for the gun, but it was popular with gun enthusiasts, and it wasn’t surprising to find in a home that seemed to be overflowing with weapons.
Peter fired two more three-round bursts. She watched a Rider’s head snap back, pulling up off his mount. The giant beast continued forward, oblivious to its passenger’s dismount, and it wasn’t alone. There were five more woolies, two of them now lacking Riders. But there was nothing that could be done to stop all of them before they reached the house.
Automatic gunfire erupted from above. Two shooters, she thought. And then from the kitchen. And then from Peter.
Ella popped out the magazine and checked that it was loaded. Seeing it was full to the top, she slapped the magazine back in and yanked back the rifle’s operating rod handle, chambering the first cartridge. She flicked the safety off and thrust the weapon through a wide crack in the boards nailed over the window, shattering the glass on the other side.
She squeezed the trigger, unleashing a fusillade of 7.62mm rounds. But her efforts, like those of the other five people in the house, were too little, too late. The entire home shook as a Woolie slammed into the front porch stairs, careened through them, and then the porch, and then the front door. The wall to her right bulged as the large beast smashed through the front of the house, lodging itself in the hallway. The enemy had breached the castle walls, making the fight more up-close-and-personal, which Ella didn’t mind, but it also separated her from her daughter, which ignited a fire in her gut and unleashed a kind of human rage that had yet to be weeded out by millions of years of evolution.
Chapter 39
Jakob held his fire. The shotgun he held would have little effect on the approaching creatures. Not until they were closer, at least. Anne arrived beside him with an M16 clutched in her arms. The gun looked massive in her hands. But like everything she did, Anne wielded the weapon without hesitation or fear, pushing the muzzle through the wooden planks and opening fire. Five rounds spat from the gun, the first three shattering glass and buzzing out into the open air. The last two struck the wooden barricade blocking the window as recoil punched her shoulder, sending her flying backward to the kitchen floor, sprawling atop a red-and-blue braided rug. Jakob dove to the side to avoid the spray of rounds, but didn’t make it more than a few feet before slamming into the wall.
“Did I hit anything?” Anne asked, pushing herself up and reaching for the weapon that now laid beside her.
“You mean besides the window?” Jakob moved back behind the overturned metal table and peeked outside.
“Don’t be an ass—”
Jakob flinched as a flash of brown fur filled his vision. “Holy shit!” Off balance and moving fast, Jakob shoved the shotgun barrel through the window and fired a single blast, just as the house shook from an explosive impact. The kickback knocked him back onto the floor beside Anne just as the front hallway exploded. The walls cracked. Plaster shattered. Pots and pans burst from shelves with an unholy racket.
Anne shouted in surprise, and though she’d probably never admit it, fright. Jakob did, too. His father had once described what it was like to be on the receiving end of a mortar round. As the boom receded and the house groaned, the kitchen shelves still disgorging their contents, he felt this might qualify as a similar experience. Except it wasn’t an explosive mortar round, it was a massive Woolie, its clumpy-haired body lodged firmly in the hallway, just to their left, blocking the living room door.
Jakob climbed to his feet and took a deep breath, willing the numb shaking of his limbs to stop. The Woolie, trapped partly in the floor, writhed and shook, trying to pull free of its self-imposed prison. It stopped, turning its jaundiced, bloodshot eye toward Jakob as he stepped toward it and pumped the shotgun. If it knew what was coming, it was incapable of showing it, even as Jakob raised the weapon.
He flinched when Anne opened fire behind him. His finger twitched and the shotgun punched his shoulder, sending a cloud of close-range pellets into the side of the beast’s head, folding it inward and stopping the monster’s gyrations.
Anne fired again, standing at the window, leaning into the weapon. It still nearly knocked her over, but the short burst and her stance kept her on her feet. But when she turned around, running toward the back of the kitchen, it appeared her effort had borne little fruit.
“Get back!” she shouted, sprinting around the table.
Jakob followed her without question. If she was running, there was a reason. Had he hesitated even a moment, the following impact would have knocked him to the floor and left him crushed beneath the body of a behemoth Woolie. The corner of the house bent inward and shattered. Wood and plaster flew, smacking Jakob’s back and shoving him to the ground. He had a fleeting image of what the impact would have done if he wasn’t wearing the tactical vest. The image wasn’t pretty, nor was it long lasting.
He turned around onto his back while Anne took hold of his vest, trying to drag him back like some wounded soldier on the battlefield.
“C’mon!” she shouted.
But Jakob’s attention remained fixated on the snorting and bloodied Woolie, which was pulling back out of the house. He could see the bit in its frothing mouth, the reins and the mount, but the Rider was nowhere to be seen. It got off before the impact, he thought. And as the Woolie inched back out of the house, he realized they were about to get company.
As the bulk of the monster slipped backward, the corner of the home’s second floor dipped down with a groan. The building couldn’t take much more abuse before caving in on itself. As daylight squeezed past the Woolie, Jakob scrambled to his feet and ran with Anne, heading toward the back of the house. They stopped at an intersection. Straight ahead was the biodome with its glass walls and vegetables for cover, not to mention Misha’s corpse. To the right was the back end of the home’s main hallway, giving them access to the second floor stairs. Brant and Alia are up there, Jakob thought, and a lot more weapons. He shoved Anne into the hall and shouted, “Up!”
There was a moment of annoyance at being pushed around, but Anne charged up the stairs, taking them one at a time in rapid fire, while Jakob took two at a time. They reached the metal door at the top together, pounding on its cool surface, neglecting the secret knock.
When Jakob shouted, “It’s us! Let us up!” his words had the same effect as the knock. Locks snapped open and the metal door swung away. Anne ran through, followed by Jakob. Alia stood next to the door, somehow looking both mortified and determined. She moved to shut the door, but then froze. And screamed.
Jakob spun around.
A single, male Rider surged up the staircase. His arms were coiled back, fingers open and hooked, jaw w
ide, brows furrowed, wild hair flailing. Here was a demon, straight from the pits of hell, charging up to consume them whole. Jakob shouted and pulled the shotgun’s trigger. The shotgun echoed strangely in the stairwell, stabbing Jakob’s ears. The pain sharpened the pitch of his shout, but it was pain replacing fear, which had diminished when the Rider’s body lifted up off the stairs and flew backward.
The airborne Rider slammed into the back wall, knocking down framed photos and leaving a splotch of blood where the hole in his torso struck the wallpaper. He crumpled into a heap at the bottom of the stairs. Jakob stood, looking at the man, remembering the similar scene of his mother being gunned down in the front yard. The event had shaken him to his core, but he also understood it, and he knew that his father had no choice. Not when he let her live the first time, when he’d been doing what he thought was right. And not when he shot her today, when he was doing what was necessary. Jakob didn’t think he’d ever have the fortitude to shoot someone he knew, but these horrible Riders? He could live with that.
Alia shouted again and slammed the door shut. Jakob caught a glimpse of three Riders rounding the corner below and scrambling up the stairs. She managed to get a single deadbolt in place before the door was struck from the far side. Jakob helped her lock the remaining three and turned around to find Anne, hands raised, staring down the barrel of an assault rifle.
“They don’t belong up here,” Brant said, a wild look in his eyes, sweat oozing from every pore on his face.
“Dad!” Alia shouted over the pounding on the door behind her. “Stop it!”
“Your mother doesn’t like company,” he said. “They’ll wake her.”
Wake her? The noise booming throughout the house, from the door, and from a continued assault on the structure from outside, was enough to wake the dead. Jakob almost said so until he remembered that Misha was actually dead.
“They’re our friends,” Alia said. “They’re here to help. To protect Mom!”
Anne stepped forward, lifting her M16 without pointing it at Brant. “We’ll keep her safe.”