Chapter Forty-four
Staring down at the revolting, badly injured creature, Mandy discovered she couldn’t take pleasure in his defeat. Quentin had been a loser and a bully, but he’d once been human.
Jeff slumped to the floor, dejected. “He’s right. We may have beat Quentin, but we’re too late. Mom and Dad are zombies. And we’re all going to be mutants, if they don’t just kill us.”
“Except for Mandy,” the Quentin-creature taunted, gasping for breath. “She’s going to be Mrs. Q. She’s going to bear my children. Of course they won’t be human children, will they, Mandy?”
“What’s he talking about?” cried Luke. He was still sitting on Quentin, holding him down, although the badly injured creature had lost most of his strength. “Get me some cord,” Luke said to Jeff. “We’ve got to tie him up.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Mandy urged. “I know what he planned to do. As soon as they finished gassing the town they were going to drop off the skinheads with implant guns, to make slaves out of everybody,” she explained hurriedly.
As she helped tie Quentin up, he hissed and spit. “She lies! Untie me and I’ll show you the truth!”
Mandy ignored him. “But invading the town was really only a diversion,” she continued. “The Others are supposed to find the slaves, the humans, and wipe out Greenfield, giving the dyzychs a chance to set up an ambush.”
Luke gaped at her. Jeff did, too.
Quentin cackled hideously. “You forgot to mention that the ingenious idea of an ambush was mine, all mine!”
Mandy ignored him although even the sound of his weakened voice roused murderous feelings in her. “So the plan is complete,” she said. “The dyzychs are lifting off.”
Luke jumped to his feet. “We’ve got to stop them.”
“We’d better take him,” said Jeff, indicating the tied and bound Quentin. “We need to keep him where we can see him.”
Mandy ran on ahead to reconnoiter while Jeff and Luke carried Quentin. Dyzychs still lay in the hall and cafeteria, seemingly as sick as ever.
That puzzled her. How was the ship starting up without them?
Another blast of noise shook the spacecraft.
Light spilled from the command module. “Blasting system go,” she heard.
In English. A woman’s husky voice.
Cassandra.
“Come in, Mandy,” she called with almost no change in inflection.
Mandy started. How had she known? She couldn’t have heard her, not with all this noise. Mandy walked forward, her heart thudding painfully.
Inside, a pale dyzych worked beside Cassandra. Even as Mandy watched, it doubled over in pain.
Mrs. Grundy lay moaning in a corner. The other mutant and skinhead were gone.
“I have some mild talents of my own,” said Cassandra, without looking away from her computer dials. “Nothing like Quentin’s, of course, but they didn’t know about him when they chose me.”
She laughed, a sound as silvery as the dyzych garment she wore. “Just goes to show we all make mistakes, even the dyzychs.” She raised her voice. “Come in, boys. I have good news. For some of you.”
Luke and Jeff appeared, Quentin propped between them. He smirked. “Tell these puny creatures what lies in store for them,” Quentin said, a spasm of pain crossing his face.
Mrs. Grundy raised her head, let out a horrible shriek like an angry cat. “You!” she screamed, pointing with a shaky, boneless finger. “It was you two troublemakers.”
Luke realized she meant him and Mandy.
“You poisoned our food. You have been nothing but a nuisance since the day you were born.” Another spasm shook her and Mrs. Grundy subsided back into a heap on the floor.
When he grasped what they’d done with the rat poison, Quentin looked at Luke with bleary-eyed hatred. “I should have guessed,” he said, with outraged amazement.
Cassandra smiled, pressed another button. Another roar sounded.
“You and I will be departing this planet in a few minutes, Quentin,” she said crisply. “These people will be staying. I have aborted the dyzych mission.” She looked at Mandy. “The gas has been dispersed. No one will ever remember passing out.”
“What?” Quentin’s eyes bulged. He coughed and a spot of green slime appeared on his distorted face. “The dyzychs will have your liver out for that.”
“I don’t think so,” Cassandra said confidently. “The dyzychs need us now more than ever. They are recovering, but without proper food they can’t be expected to fight. You and I and a few of your half-breeds will be doing the fighting for them.”
“Fighting?” Quentin sounded puzzled.
“Yes. After you and the dyzychs recover, we’ll meet the Others in space and battle them there. As the dyzychs should have done from the start.”
Cassandra pressed a button and a hatch opened. Outside the hatch it was night. The barren limestone landscape spread before them like the loveliest spot on Earth.
Cassandra looked at Mandy, Luke, and Jeff.
“I’ve already freed Quentin’s other stooges. The ones who were still human,” she said. “You’ll have to find a way to work with them if Earth is to survive. No one else will believe you. Now, go, please.”
Quentin struggled against his bonds. “Let me out!” he demanded. “I’m human!” he cried desperately. “I’m better than human. I belong on Earth!”
“Sorry,” Cassandra said. “You made your choice, Quentin. Now you’ll have to live with it.”
She turned to Luke and Mandy. “I wish I could say you’ll be free of us from now on, but I’m afraid Earth is just too rich. The invaders will return.”
Mandy tugged at Luke. She wanted out of here before spooky Cassandra changed her mind.
Quentin remained on the floor, moaning and muttering to himself as his tentacle stumps quivered.
Luke reached for his brother’s hand. They all stepped out of the spacecraft together.
“Whoever wins the war in space will return to Earth,” Cassandra called out to them. “Be forewarned.”
Luke put his arm around Mandy as the ship slowly lifted off. Mandy slipped her arm around his waist. She lay her head on his shoulder and watched the glistening spacecraft recede into the distance.
Luke thought he’d never had a better moment in his life.
“We’ll beat them,” Jeff vowed, shaking his fist at the sky. “We will.”
With his other arm, Luke drew his brother in. For once Jeff didn’t fight him.
The three friends stood together and watched the ship until it was only a tiny red dot in the sky.
“They’ll be back,” Jeff reminded them.
“And this time we’ll be ready,” Luke and Mandy said together.
About the Authors
Rodman Philbrick grew up on the coast of New Hampshire and has been writing since the age of sixteen. For a number of years he published mystery and suspense fiction for adults. Brothers & Sinners won the Shamus Award in 1994, and two of his other detective novels were nominees. In 1993 his debut young adult novel, Freak the Mighty, won numerous honors, and in 1998 was made into the feature film The Mighty, starring Sharon Stone and James Gandolfini. Freak the Mighty has become a standard reading selection in thousands of classrooms worldwide, and there are more than three million copies in print. In 2010 Philbrick won a Newbery Honor for The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg.
Lynn Harnett, who was married to Rodman Philbrick, passed away in 2012. She was a talented journalist, editor, and book reviewer, and she had a real knack for concocting scary stories that make the reader want to laugh, shriek with fear, and then turn the page to find out what happens next.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, charac
ters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1998 by Rodman Philbrick and Lynn Harnett
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8534-5
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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EBOOKS BY RODMAN PHILBRICK AND LYNN HARNETT
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Abduction Page 19