Keeping the speed down to 20 MPH, she crept out of the city.
It wasn’t long before she revised her opinion of just how tense she could get. Earlier, she was relatively sheltered by the buildings around her; now she felt like an ant walking across a table, exposed to the world. At any moment an alien ship would hover overhead and fry her ass, like a kid with a magnifying glass cooks an ant.
Driving 20 MPH only made it last that much longer. She decided to up her speed to 25.
She directed Joanie to keep an eye out for alien ships. If they saw some, she’d stop immediately, hopefully reducing the odds of being spotted.
* * * *
Senior Engineer ExenGla reported as ordered to the makeshift headquarters. “Sir!”
“How is the progress coming with the power units?” JesBronn asked.
“All set, sir. We just have to make all the right connections and test the system integrity and then we’ll have the barrier and other systems back online. However it’ll only be at 80% strength until we can get a few more units down here and set up. We should be back up and running in an hour or less.”
* * * *
At three o’clock, Tim decided it was time to go. If he wanted to minimize his chances of being spotted by thermal imaging, he had to move before the day started to cool.
Keeping the speed down to 20 MPH, he crept toward the barrier. Another minute and he’d be out. And while not exactly safe, he figured his odds out there were better than staying here.
Eighty yards from freedom, he stopped.
“No, no, no!”
The barrier had just flickered back to life.
* * * *
Daniels decided he couldn’t risk attempting to leave during daylight. He’d wait until nightfall to try. Maybe by then, with no more attacks coming, the aliens would relax their patrols a bit, giving him a better chance of slipping through a crack somewhere.
It seemed unlikely, this soon after the attack, but he didn’t have a lot of options.
* * * *
Julia and Joanie finally arrived at the armory a little before 5 pm. Moving at such a slow pace had added a lot of time to the trip. Julia was drained of energy and reeked from nervous sweat.
She was excited to see the other Jilt parked out front. That meant that someone else had made it back.
She raced inside the building to see who it was. Joanie followed close behind.
She found Chrissy and Suzi sitting in one of the offices, and Amanda asleep curled up in a big chair.
“Oh.” Julia’s face fell.
“Well, hello to you, too. I appreciate the warm welcome.”
“Oh, no, sorry. It’s not that I’m not glad to see that you three are safe, but I expected you would be. I was kinda hoping the Jilt outside was the one Moose had been driving. At least that would have told me someone else had survived the attack and escaped from the city.”
Chrissy nodded. “I understand. Nothing personal, but I was hoping to see Chick’s face walk in here.”
“Of course; that’s natural.”
“So, is he…?” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
“I don’t know, Chrissy. All I know is that he didn’t come back to the Jilt last night. We got stuck until this afternoon, so perhaps the same thing happened to him. Maybe he’s holed up somewhere safe.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Chrissy didn’t act like she believed it.
“Look. We don’t have anywhere to be right now, so let’s hold tight for a day or two before we start worrying about where to go from here. Who knows? He and the others may come strolling in here at any time.”
Chrissy nodded, but she didn’t appear to think much of the likelihood of that happening.
* * * *
That evening, Daniels sat by the window, watching the aliens and hoping he’d learn something useful to help him escape his cage. As he watched, he munched on a very stale peanut butter cracker and sipped tap water from a coffee mug. He chuckled to himself at the memory, all those months ago, of him saying he’d be happy if he never saw another peanut butter cracker again. And now here he was grateful to have even that much. The apartment had evidently been occupied by a yuppie who ate out a lot, because that little package of crackers was the only edible thing in the place—unless you counted the black mass in a plastic bag that used to be a loaf of bread, two years ago.
* * * *
Tim finished relieving himself for the fourth time since the attack. Each time he did so, he was terrified he’d be spotted outside of the armored protection of the Jilt. If only it had a built-in bathroom.
He was going to have to find a way out of this mess, somehow.
He climbed back inside the Jilt to think.
* * * *
Back aboard the safety of the carrier, PlevHun threw himself onto his bunk. He was drained of energy and wanted nothing more than to sleep for a day or two. He’d broken bones before, but had never felt this lethargic. It must be from the strain of the past day. And that nagging cough wouldn’t quit.
All he needed was a good night’s sleep and he’d be fine.
* * * *
The next morning, he wasn’t better. In fact, he felt worse. Maybe what he needed was a hot meal. He forced himself to get cleaned up and wobbled his way to the commissary where he shoveled food in his mouth. He hardly tasted it.
Then he started coughing again, only now, they were deep chest-wracking spasms. A few minutes later the sneezing started in earnest. Those around him began backing away. He decided it was time to seek medical help.
By the time PlevHun reached the Medical Hub, his breathing was labored and all the coughing and sneezing didn’t exactly help him catch his breath. He’d gotten strange looks from the people he passed on the way, as if he had two heads.
Drahtch rarely developed colds or other viral illnesses.
When PlevHun finally staggered into the waiting area, he fell and was unconscious before he hit the floor.
He was rushed to an exam room, where a doctor took a look at him. The medical scanner indicated a viral infection of unknown type.
“He’s feverish. We’ll pump him full of antivirals and he should be fine in a day or two.”
Drahtch medical science was able to quickly develop targeted treatments for specific viruses, essentially wiping them out before they spread too far. But viruses are nothing if not adaptable. New variants of old viruses would pop up every few years. Within a few weeks, a treatment would be found and that would be that for a few more years.
The doctor was confident that the treatment he prescribed would be equally effective. If not, they’d have a cure shortly.
He was wrong on both counts.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
That night, PlevHun went into seizure, bleeding from every orifice, and then died.
This was unusual enough that the next morning Dr. ZemBleth performed the autopsy himself. He intended to solve the mystery of why the patient had expired.
He was shocked by what he discovered. The man’s internal organs had nearly liquefied. When ZemBleth opened the skull, he immediately sounded the quarantine alarm. No one could enter or leave the ship.
The brain tissue showed the same kinds of lesions he’d found on indigene brains.
How can that be? Drahtch biochemistry is different enough from indie that we can’t share illnesses.
And then, to his horror, he realized what must have happened.
The gene splicing he’d done to create the hyperallergy treatment fused bits of Drahtch DNA with the indigenes’. Random mutation must have created a variant that was compatible with Drahtch physiology.
It appeared the incubation period before patients became symptomatic was much shorter among the Drahtch than among the indies.
He issued a fleet-wide alert. “To all ships and ground forces: Everyone is ordered to stay where they are until we develop a cure. It shouldn’t be long. Repeat: No travel among ships or to and from the surface until further notice.”
/> He only hoped that he’d caught it in time. If it spread…
No point thinking that way. Scramble the emergency teams and stop it.
* * * *
Within hours, reports came in of people coughing and sneezing in the city below, and then in some of the ships. Before Patient Zero was treated, his coughing and sneezing had spread the virus to the soldiers and doctors in the city, and then again aboard ship. With all the travel among ships and between the ships and the surface, it had been carried everywhere before the quarantine took effect.
The virus soon was in the air vents and then it was too late.
By the end of the day, most of the Drahtch had been infected. The Medical Hubs overflowed with patients. Soon, doctors were among them.
Despite all their medical advances and targeted treatments, the Drahtch had no immunity to this super-aggressive indie virus, no effective treatment, and no time to formulate one.
The doctors did what they could, which was very little. By the next morning, most of the Drahtch were dead or dying.
A number of soldiers panicked and attempted to flee their ships in battle pods or fighters. But they’d already been infected. They either died alone in orbit, or crashed en route to Earth. Similarly, several soldiers on the ground took vehicles and fled the city, only to die elsewhere.
In one of his last acts before succumbing, GlerVenn, captain of the fleet’s flagship, sent a probe to take a message to the homeworld. It contained the declaration that most of the Drahtch had already died from a virulent plague contracted on this MemKar-forsaken planet, and the rest were not far behind. He strongly advised quarantining the planet for the foreseeable future—for the sake of the empire.
Even were the homeworld inclined to send a rescue party to the indie planet, it was already too late. It would take eighteen years for the probe to reach Draht, and as many more for the rescue fleet to arrive. However, this wasn’t the first time in the three millennia the Drahtch had been colonizing other star systems that a conquered planet had been quarantined. It had happened twice before. The Drahtch learned hard lessons each time about the dangers of returning to a plague planet.
They weren’t likely to make that mistake a third time.
As with the indies, nearly all of the Drahtch died from the virus, but a small percentage of the Drahtch were naturally immune to the effects of the plague. However, those few thousand stood no chance against several hundred thousand brain-damaged zombies scouring the ships for foods.
* * * *
A tremendous noise outside the apartment building, woke Daniels from his afternoon nap. He grabbed his rifle and rushed to the window to see what was happening. Down the street lay the flaming wreck of an alien ship.
Did someone shoot it down? If so, who? And how? His people didn’t have any more rockets or missiles and there was no one else around, as far as he knew.
This required investigating.
He had to be extremely cautious, but he also had to know.
He tiptoed down the stairs to the parking lot, opened the door a crack and peeked outside. Smoke rose from the vicinity of the wreckage. He’d expected to see a crowd gathering to help. But after several minutes of watching, he saw no one. Weird.
He took a chance and stepped outside, rifle at the ready. He walked to the corner and looked down the crossing street. No one was coming from either direction.
Another crash, somewhere out of sight, wasn’t as loud as the first; more like a car accident. Now he was really curious.
Throwing caution to the wind, he jogged down the street toward the park and the central population area. He quickly ground to a halt. Ahead, dozens of aliens lay on the ground. Some writhed, others were still. He walked toward the park. Block by block, the toll mounted.
Poison gas attack? He didn’t smell anything, but it could be odorless.
Nerve agent? If so, it must work only on aliens, because he felt fine.
He kept walking. Everywhere he went, aliens were sprawled on the ground.
A shadow passed overhead and he ducked. It was an alien craft in free fall. It smashed into a building on the far side of the park.
Aliens falling from the sky and dropping dead on the ground? What the hell is this, War of the Worlds?
He continued to walk and observe. By this time, the aliens on the ground had almost all stopped moving. He approached a few of them and observed the yellowish blood on their faces.
Bleeding from the eyes, ears, and nose. I’ve certainly seen that before.
He laughed at the irony that the very virus that had seemed to doom humanity might turn out to be the agent of its salvation. Then he slung the M16 over his shoulder.
He didn’t think he’d be needing it.
What he did need was a way out of this city. He had to figure out how to shut off the barrier, and he didn’t know where the shutoff switch was, or how to use it.
He headed for a series of huge yellow boxes off to the side of the park. They hadn’t been there two nights ago, before the attack. He would have seen them. The aliens had managed to restore power somehow. Maybe that was how.
As he approached the first box he heard the last thing he ever expected to hear: the sound of a Jilt’s horn. It approached slowly, having to avoid wreckage and bodies.
The door opened and out stepped Tim, with a big grin on his face. “Damn, it’s good to see you, Sarge.” The two men hugged for a moment.
“You, too. I figured you left after the attack.”
“Couldn’t.”
They filled each other in on what had transpired over the past two days.
Tim finished with, “And there I was in a panic because a pair of aliens were approaching the Jilt. I thought I’d been made. Then one of them just crumpled to the ground. The other tried to help, but after a few minutes, he collapsed, too. I bugged out, thinking someone else would show up at any minute, but no one did. I didn’t get very far before I started seeing more bodies, and then I spotted you walking through the field of death like a conquering hero. That was the last thing I ever expected to see.”
He turned his head and surveyed their surroundings. “This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s like something out of the movies.”
Daniels nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. What say we take a quick look around and then head for the armory?”
“Sounds good. Hop in.”
They circumnavigated the immediate area around the park, eventually coming to the iridescent highway the aliens had built. It knifed through the countryside, and off in the distance they saw an equally iridescent city gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight. They would have to check it out one of these days.
The two men returned to the park and found the remarkably ordinary lever mechanism that killed the power to the barrier and everything else.
* * * *
FronCar finally managed to free his leg from the vise that had gripped it for two days. Perhaps dehydration had shriveled the muscles enough to make a difference. It didn’t matter. He was free and could seek medical treatment.
Why had no one come for him in all this time? Despite all the chaos, surely someone had seen the ship go down.
He dragged himself to the hatch, which mercifully appeared undamaged. He used the manual override to undog it and pulled himself through. The hatch fell opened with a loud clang. He fell heavily to the ground. The fall sent shooting pains up his broken leg and he almost passed out, but he gritted his teeth and kept going.
* * * *
“What was that?” Tim asked nervously. “It sounded metallic.”
“Don’t know. Let’s find out.”
They turned, rifles leveled, toward the sound.
* * * *
The impact had splashed most of the water from the shallow pond; now it was little more than a mud pit with a few inches of water remaining.
FronCar crawled though the slime to the edge of the pond and started to pull himself out when he saw the bodies. One after an
other, everywhere he looked. The sight was horrifying. What in MemKar’s name had happened while he was trapped inside the ship?
He looked to his right, toward a noise. Coming at him, weapons drawn, were two of the damned indies.
Battle Commander FronCar propped himself on one elbow and reached for his sidearm, still strapped to his thigh.
* * * *
When they neared the wreck of the downed alien ship, the men saw movement. A soldier crawling out of the mud.
“What do we do, Sarge? Shoot him?”
Before Daniels could respond, the alien reared up and drew a weapon. Both men fired almost simultaneously. The alien flipped over on its back and slid, lifeless, back down the slope into the mud.
Thus ended the war for Earth.
* * * *
Chrissy and Julia decided that they’d waited long enough. If anyone had survived the attack, they’d have been here already. It was time to move on and try to find a quiet place to live, far from here—until the aliens came for them. They would leave at first light.
Chrissy held back tears. She couldn’t afford to fall apart now. She could grieve properly once they’d found somewhere safe.
* * * *
Chrissy awoke suddenly, startled by something—a noise. She had dozed off sitting upright, but now she was wide awake. She grabbed her rifle from where it leaned against the wall.
The sound, a shoe scuffing against the linoleum floor, repeated, closer. She raised the rifle to her shoulder and placed her index finger lightly on the trigger. Zoms? Aliens?
The knob turned. She started to squeeze.
“Chick! You asshole! I almost shot you. Why didn’t you call out.”
“Sorry, Babe, I was afraid everyone might be sleeping. Most of the lights are out.”
Aliens Versus Zombies Page 33