by N. W. Harris
Not being particularly gentle with the glazed-eyed freaks who were still chanting for blood, Shane bulldozed his way through the crowd. He helped Laura off the pyramid’s foundation. Her arm had a cut where the knife must’ve fallen, but other than that, she looked okay. The mesmerized crowds’ attention was off her now, focused on the vessel hovering overhead.
The hissing of the ship’s engine made it impossible to talk, and the wind it created ripped at his clothes. He squinted up at the gold-and-black behemoth. A horn sounded, like the air horn on a big rig, yet a hundred times louder. It was an obvious warning, telling everyone to get out of the way. He grabbed Laura’s forearm and pulled her through the throng, heading toward his team.
The hissing grew louder, and wind gushed away from the pyramid. Dust and sand pelted him, and his T-shirt blew up onto his shoulders. Shielding his eyes with his free hand, he plowed a path for Laura, knocking kids to the ground who didn’t step aside. The vessel grew significantly larger, coming closer to the ground. A third of the ancient pyramid disappeared in the dark abyss of the underside of the ship. The gold perimeter of the vessel’s bottom was as wide as a city block. If the kids didn’t get out of the way, it would crush them.
“Run,” Shane yelled as soon as he saw his friends.
The noise and the wind kicked up by the landing craft drowned out his voice, but they got the picture. They turned and sprinted a hundred yards, Steve, Shane, and Liam at the front of the squad, clearing a path. Some of the kids turned and ran with them, but others stood their ground, chanting and swaying back and forth, their wide eyes fixed on the ship.
The wind blew harder and hotter. There was a loud humph, then a blast hit him, knocking him to the sand and sending him tumbling away from the pyramid. He was blown at least another hundred yards before the ship impacted the ground, sending a shockwave through the Earth that would’ve knocked him down if he weren’t already on his face.
The wind dissipated, the ship’s engines whining to a gentle hiss. Lifting his head and shaking the dirt and sand from his hair, Shane stayed low and took a count of his friends. They were sprawled around him, their disoriented faces plastered with dust. Six of them. He hadn’t lost one yet. Laura still looked shaken, but she appeared to have subdued her panic. She flashed an appreciative smile at him that didn’t feel deserved. He hadn’t saved her. If it weren’t for the spaceship vaporizing her captors, she’d be dead.
He crawled to his feet and surveyed the surroundings. His heart thumped in his ears such that he could barely hear the coughs of the dust-choked kids around him. The cloud kicked up by the Anunnaki vessel obscured everything, and he didn’t know if he was facing Giza or the ship. A warm breeze whisked the dust away, and though it wouldn’t have done him any good, he suddenly wished he’d held on to the AK and his grenades.
Trotting away from the curtain of bodies, Kelly, Jules, and the Aussies turned onto the wide boulevard. It was a direct route that would get them to the pyramids before anyone else.
The Pyramid of Menkaure was their destination, the furthest from Giza in the necropolis. They were assigned the fastest route through Cairo, so all the teams would get to their targets at about the same time. She hadn’t minded the idea of it when she looked at the map, but she didn’t like how exposed they were now. The wide street they ran down offered little cover, and it felt like they’d be easy to spot from several blocks away.
She feared the people who’d made the gruesome curtain were camped out in buildings nearby. If they’d done that to the dead, what might they do if they found someone alive?
“This is way worse than Atlanta,” Jules said, trotting along next to her.
“Hopefully, these psychos won’t be as organized as Shamus’ gang was,” Kelly said, clinging to a thread of optimism.
While the daily runs during training had been torture much of the time, she was grateful for the peak physical condition they were in. They moved along at a decent pace, and she started to feel better once they were a couple of blocks away.
“Whoop, whoop,” came a call from the left side of the street.
“Down,” Kelly said, dropping behind a burnt-out SUV. She searched the shadows at the base of the buildings, looking for the source of the noise.
“I got movement on the right,” Ethan whispered.
Kelly glanced to the side of the street to which their backs were exposed, adrenaline flooding her veins and clearing her mind. At least ten kids crept out of a fast food restaurant that had all its windows busted out.
“What are they wearing on their faces?” Jules asked, a tremor in her voice.
“No way,” Ben whispered. “Those sickos are wearing skin masks.”
“I think I’m gonna chunder,” Joey said, but he held his rifle at the ready.
The crazies approached the edge of the sidewalk and hovered cautiously, studying them as if to assess whether they were accomplices or victims. Kelly’s heart thumped in her ears so hard it hurt. More crazies were coming out on the other side of the street, also wearing the peeled off and dried faces of adults as masks. Their eyes were hidden in the shadowy eyeholes. The mouths of the mask were distorted, open in ghastly expressions from the drying process, and revealing the chins and necks of their wearers.
Closest to Kelly, a skinny girl who was wearing a bearded face from what must’ve been a fairly large man, reached slowly to the back of her belt and produced a chef’s knife. Its blade was soiled, caked with blood and dirt. The sun glinted off the girl’s otherwise unseen eyes, and Kelly sensed that she was smiling beneath the rotting beard face.
“We need to run,” Kelly said in a calm and quiet voice.
“Agreed,” Jules whispered.
“Go!” Ethan shouted.
They pivoted and ran down the street at full speed, dodging wrecked cars. The crazies cheered and gave chase. Nothing in the simulations prepared them for this. Though terror had a firm grip on her, her experience and training helped Kelly keep her head. She looked back and could see that the scrawny teenagers, whose brains had come unhinged from the slave gene, were in nowhere near the physical condition that her team was. Already, there was a football field between them.
Although he was the shortest, Ben was able to out-sprint any of them. He was leading the group, running with his gun held across his chest.
Kelly thought she saw something move between cars she passed. Quickly dismissing it as her imagination, she dodged left and followed Jules around a large panel truck.
“Up ahead,” Ben yelled, stopping them and taking aim with his AK.
Fifty yards down the boulevard, a small group of skin-masked teens popped up from behind cars. One had a rifle, and the others had makeshift spears and bats. The shouts of the crazies pursuing them grew louder. They were corralling Kelly and her team, closing them in on both sides.
“We can’t stop,” Ethan said.
He raised his gun and fired a shot over the disturbed kids. As Kelly expected, they didn’t scatter. More kids wearing skin masks stood up from behind cars, like they’d been hiding and waiting in ambush.
“Okay, this won’t do,” Joey said frantically.
He fired a shot, and the boy holding the rifle dropped dead. His counterparts shrieked, seeming as if they’d lost the ability for speech. Their brains were completely scrambled. These poor teenagers had devolved into something less than human but far worse than any animal. Kelly charged forward with her team, the sight of her rifle aimed on only those who blocked their way. They were terrifying, but she also knew it wasn’t their fault they were acting this way. One of the kids closed in on her, a knife in his hand. She hesitated, her finger on the trigger.
“Move out of the way!” she yelled at the boy in Anunnaki and then Arabic.
Ignoring her, the crazy and his friends came at Kelly, Jules, and the Aussies. They raised their crude weapons, coated with the gore of countless other kills they’d made. Reluctant to take their destroyed lives to the last moment, Kelly’s finger ea
sed back, and the AK made a loud pop. The skin-masked boy was thrown onto the hood of the car behind him, and the powder burns around the bullet’s entry wound testified to how close he was before she’d fired. Hoping to be merciful, she’d shot him through the center of his heart, giving the poor boy death before he rolled off the car to the ground.
The discharge of her weapon seemed to act as a signal to the rest of the team. The bloodthirsty shrieks of the crazies were drowned out by the sound of gunfire. A mob materialized in front of them, and they were forced to stop. Ethan lobbed a grenade, blasting a path forward.
“Keep going!” he shouted, sounding calmer than he had before the fight started.
Once she overcame the struggle of making that first shot, and realized there was no option but to fight their way out, Kelly settled into the battle. They’d fought so much in training that she felt more focused once the bullets started flying. She hated that they were taking lives, but at the same time, there was a sense of control, something she didn’t feel when they were on the retreat.
“Behind us,” Jules said.
Flipping her gun over to that direction, Kelly fired into the fifty charging crazies. She fished out a grenade, pulled the ring with the pinky finger of her gun hand, and tossed it into the mob. Then she followed it with well-placed shots into those closest to her team.
The explosion launched bodies into the air. One fell at her feet, his mask separated from him in the blast. He was dead, his chest and neck bloody from shrapnel but his face undamaged. The Egyptian boy’s slack expression made him look so innocent that it filled her with sorrow. This was just a kid—someone’s brother and someone’s child.
Seeing their counterparts killed did not deter the unhinged teens. They rushed in to take the others’ places, determined to sink their nasty weapons into Kelly and her friends. Feeling like this had to be a strange and horrible nightmare, she fired her weapon again and again, keeping the insane kids back. Their disgusting masks and animal screams weren’t enough to completely dehumanize them. Kelly was painfully aware that each shot she fired killed another innocent. She blamed the Anunnaki, and her lust for revenge swelled even more.
“We gotta get out of here,” she said, determined to take as few lives as possible. She also worried about their limited supply of ammunition, fearing there were more crazies closing in than they had bullets with which to stop them.
“This way,” Ethan yelled, pointing toward a side street. It was dark and narrow, and she hadn’t noticed it before.
Relieved to see an exit, Kelly took up the rear, running backwards alongside Jules. The team crossed the boulevard in pairs, able to hold off the mob pressing in on either side. Ethan led the way into a narrow street just as the crazies came close enough to use their spears.
One made a thrust at Kelly, and she whipped her AK sideways to deflect the spear, then swung the barrel around and put a bullet in the kid’s chest. Running backwards and dumping rounds into the crazies, they moved deeper into the alley. The buildings on either side forced the skin-faces tighter together, preventing them from surrounding Kelly and her team.
“We got more on the other side,” Ethan yelled from behind her.
“Aw, come on,” Kelly groaned, glancing over her shoulder.
Kids were charging in, most of them armed with guns. A fresh wave of fear came over Kelly. They were trapped, and she had only one grenade left. The whole team was going to die in this alley, and the mission would be over before it really began. Failing meant the Anunnaki would be one step closer to getting Nat. She couldn’t let that happen. Fishing the last grenade out of her vest pocket, she pulled the pin.
“Kelly!” Jules shouted.
She lobbed the grenade into the skin-faces and at the same time saw a makeshift spear flying through the air. Time seemed to freeze, at least long enough for her to make out the details of the crude missile. It was composed of the wooden handle of a broom or a rake, and had a large kitchen knife lashed on at its tip. In that frozen moment, she could see dried blood and little chunks of flesh on the blade and the wooden shaft.
Diving and twisting her body to avoid the spear, she couldn’t move fast enough. Its gory blade slid deep into her shoulder above her left breast. She felt the tip pierce through her, burying itself in the underside of her shoulder blade. She was more horrified at the idea that she’d be taken out of the mission—that she’d no longer be able to fight for Nat’s safety—than at the notion of being killed by the disgusting weapon. As she crashed to the ground, the handle of the impaled spear smacked a car’s hood and she yelped in pain.
The golden spaceship materialized through the dust, resting over the Great Pyramid of Khufu and looking way too big to ever take to the sky. It was similar to the one Shane had seen in the simulation, but much larger. Also unique to the command ship was a spire rising from its peak, reaching higher than any skyscraper. The reflective exterior of the ship glowed brighter than the last light of the setting sun. Although he couldn’t help being frightened, he was in awe of the vessel. It represented technology beyond his wildest dreams, and a species as old as time.
He glanced at the kids who’d been chanting until the gust created by the ship knocked them down and blew them out of the way. They were changed, appearing to be under a deeper level of hypnosis. Some rose to their knees and bowed, while others stood staring at the vessel with slack expressions. Aside from coughing, no one uttered a sound.
“We’d better mimic them,” Shane whispered, a tremor in his voice. “We have to get inside that ship.” As realistic as the simulations had been, he was more confident before seeing the actual vessel towering in front of him.
He adopted the expression of the entranced kids around them, slumped shoulders, a loose jaw, and eyes wide open. The sky grew darker, the last of the sunlight fading. The three massive pyramidal ships emitted a soft, yellow glow, illuminating the necropolis. He wondered how Kelly was doing with the Australian team at their pyramid, resisting the urge to break off from this crowd and run to try to find her. Something told him she was safe, at least for now.
There was a loud whoosh, like a seal being broken. An opening the width of the side nearest them formed on the bottom edge of the ship, rising from the ground.
The hull flowed upward, revealing the stark, white interior that looked like it belonged to an ancient Greek or Roman palace. In the center, the wide escalator rose up to the city somewhere high above. This ship was so much bigger than the ones they’d trained in. Its city must be like the capital of this armada and in proportion with the vessel’s size. No doubt its coliseum would put the others to shame. Faces peered down off the balconies and over the railings, hundreds of Anunnaki looking out at the kids. Shane imagined those same faces sitting in their flying stadium, laughing and cheering as they looked down upon the slaves, who they forced to fight to the death. His anger boiled.
Most of them wore white clothing and some even had on togas like the statues adorning their courtyards. Such an odd garb for these advanced space travelers, though it did fit the interior design of their ships. It struck him that the marble inner pyramid of the vessel could be equated with Mount Olympus, and he reckoned these bastards must think of themselves as gods. The alien spectators pointed and chattered with each other, appearing excited about the human livestock gathered on the sand below.
Soldiers in red armor holding plasma rifles across their chest lined the lowest terrace of the inner pyramid and spilled out on either side of the opening, contrasting sharply with the white and gold. Most of these soldiers had no emblems on their armor, indicating they were lower ranking Anunnaki. Shane spotted a couple of the elite Shock Troops, which Jones had warned them to avoid. With only his jeans, T-shirt, and no gun, he felt vulnerable and weak. Glancing at his team, he tried to convey this was the most delicate part of their mission. They couldn’t be discovered, at least not until they got hold of some weapons.
A distinguished looking Anunnaki man with silver hair rode
the wide escalator down from higher parts of the ship, stopping thirty feet above the crowd. Shane could see his face looked much younger than his hairstyle let on. Most of the spectators appeared to be of similar age as Lily and Jones, around thirty years old. Of course, he knew the rebels had crashed on earth well over twice that many years before. Just how old they were, he had never really speculated. For all he knew, they might be hundreds of years old. Older. The spaceman’s gold cape caught the desert wind and floated out beside him. Otherwise, he was clad in white pants and a long-sleeved, white shirt.
“Kneel,” he boomed.
The kids who weren’t on their knees dropped, their eyes cast down as if they suddenly feared looking upon these supposed gods who would turn them to stone. Although it disgusted him to do it, Shane copied them.
“Rise.”
A shuffle of commotion erupted across the crowd, everyone coming to their feet. And then total silence pervaded.
“Kneel,” the alien ordered once again.
It was a test. If someone didn’t do what they were told, the slave gene must not be working in that teenager. Then the Anunnaki soldiers would dispose of them. Thousands of kids dropped to their knees once again.
“Rise.”
Everyone snapped to their feet and stood motionless, staring up at their Anunnaki master. There was applause and cheering from the spectators on the ship. Shane’s hands started to close into fists. These aliens had no respect for humans, were looking down on them like they were property and not people. He was to be the one to teach them some manners, and he couldn’t wait to get started. Forcing himself to relax, he took a deep breath. He’d have to keep his anger in check for a while longer.