Since I was just driving and getting a little unsettled, I needed something to occupy my racing brain. I knocked off the average speed to thirty miles an hour and calculated the time to Machu then. Twenty-three odd hours, with five today and a five AM start tomorrow, put me arriving there in the dark. Not only that, but Machu was a way up from the town. There was going to be some all-terraining combined with some serious hiking to get there. Best case, I was walking up the hill there tomorrow night. More likely, I was still a day and a half from reaching the device to turn it off. My palm itched at the thought, but I didn’t scratch it. There was nothing I wanted more than ending this crap, but the closer I got, the farther away it felt.
Carey stuck his head to the window crack I’d left open and his drool strung out behind us. I laughed and he seemed to think it was funny too, judging by the dog smile he showed me. It was hot; had to be over ninety degrees as the sun beat down on the roof of the rust-bucket I was driving. Gas was getting low as we cruised to the Peru border. As soon as I saw a “Twenty Miles from Peru” border sign, the engine made an awful noise, one of those sounds you know there’s no coming back from. Black smoke rose as the engine sputtered to non-functioning. By instinct, I pulled to the side of the road, even though I wasn’t going to impede anyone’s driving.
“Well, there’s another setback, Carey.” He looked at me sideways. “First we lose our friends, sleep under a tree, and then I blow up a truck. I bet this thing hasn’t hit fifty-five in a long time, and I ran it pretty hard today. Probably hasn’t had an oil change since the eighties.” I didn’t even bother opening the hood. Not only did I hardly know my way around under there, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get it going again. I did dump one of my water bottles on the engine to cool it, but quickly stopped as I realized it was making more smoke and wasting my hydration.
I grabbed our supplies, throwing a portion of Carey’s food into my sack, and we left the truck on the road, smoldering in the heat.
SEVENTEEN
The heat was getting to be too much for both of us, and after walking for fifteen minutes in the middle of the road, I moved to the side of the road where the large-leafed trees provided shade. We had to find a vehicle soon. This road wasn’t a super-used one, obviously, but someone had to be out here.
I wondered about how the ships dealt with isolated places like this. I bet there were people in the world who had no idea the ships were even here until they were being whisked away, green light summoning them into the sky. It would have been so frightening, almost worse than knowing. I also was sure that more than a handful of people had died of heart attacks when they were taken. What a horrible way to go. And what about the people in hospitals, or the ones whose lives depended on medical equipment or pills?
James’ face flashed into my memory and I missed him dearly. My closest friend, the one guy who truly seemed to understand how much Janine had meant to me. I could still hear him calling to me as he floated out of my house.
I would bring him back if it was the last thing I did. That was a promise to him. I couldn’t save him then, but I could bring my buddy back, along with my mother and everyone else.
Pwwwwing! A tree shot bark out behind me, as I heard the echo of a gun down the small valley we were in. Carey perked up and growled, his hackles raised like a cat on the prowl. I looked for the source of the shot but couldn’t see anything. I wasn’t sure what to do. Run? Drop to the ground? Head into the trees?
Pwwwing. Another tree, this time closer. I figured the aliens weren’t using rifles to shoot at me, so I took a gamble. I raised my hands in the air, and walked to the middle of the road, out in the open.
“I’m not armed! Why don’t you come out and we can talk this over?” I called out, hoping that whoever was firing at me could hear me, and wanted to speak face to face.
My heart raced in my chest and sweat ran down my face as I anxiously waited to hear a reply or get shot for my trouble. Wouldn’t that be the way to go? Travel halfway around the world to get shot in the middle of the road, miles from the Peruvian border. I moved to wipe the sweat from my face.
“Stay right there! Don’t move!” a rough, slightly accented voice exclaimed.
I tensed and raised my arms straight in the air. Carey was barking loudly and pacing back and forth between me and the voice. He was trying to protect me. If I didn’t fear for my life, I would have petted him and thanked him for caring so much.
“My arms are up,” I said as two bodies came from the trees on the other side of the road. The man was huge, sleeveless vest revealing tree-trunk-sized arms. The woman was petite but dangerous-looking. Her steps were measured and sleek, like an animal’s.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“I’m Dean. Dean Parker from upstate New York.” My arms were still high in the air, a gun still pointed at me. The woman was carrying a handgun. These folks looked like the real deal, like who the rebel faction really wanted to have turn the device off. Compared to them, Carey, Vanessa, Ray, and I looked like the peewee team. Mary could have stood with them, though. I hoped I wasn’t going to get shot before I could tell Mary how I felt. The memory of her lips touching mine, albeit for a brief second, was enough to keep me going.
“Dean, hey? Are you alone?” he asked.
“Just me and the dog, Carey.” Carey had stopped barking, but he stood angrily at my feet, and I doubted he would take his eyes off the targets for a minute.
They walked up to me, and the woman came close and patted me down. She nodded at him and he lowered the gun from my face. I dropped my arms and felt the urgent tension leave my body for a moment. The heat and fear took over and I stumbled, almost passing out. Black spots danced over my eyesight, and the man stuck his hand out and steadied me. Great, I made myself look even more like a wiener next to this monster of a man. I guessed seeming even less harmful was a way to be nonthreatening. I tried to tell myself that lie, but even my dizzy conscience wasn’t buying it.
“I’m Magnus. This is Natalia. I didn’t think I would ever see another person again. I definitely wasn’t expecting to see one walking alone with a dog, like he was on a stroll. What’s your story, fella?”
He had a slight accent and I was putting him as a Scandinavian. His light skin had a tinge of red from the sun out here. Natalia was clearly Russian, or at least Eastern European. I saw the ring on Magnus’ pinky finger, green stone tiny against his meaty hand. Natalia noticed me looking and she pointed to her ears; both had green stone earrings in them.
I pulled out my chain and showed them the pendant. They both smiled and Magnus came in and hugged me, like I was his long-lost brother.
“It is good to meet you, Dean. It’s been a long few days, and it’s really nice to see another who is joining us on our struggle. Come. We have a Jeep just a little way down. We’ll share what we have and tell our stories to each other,” he said, already moving and waving for me to follow.
I had no idea what to think about the pair, but I was on their team now.
I grabbed my knapsack and offered them a mango. Natalia accepted with a graceful nod of her head, and she was peeling the skin off with a knife that hadn’t been in her hand only a moment before. I hoped I was on the same side as these two.
Their Jeep was indeed close by and in minutes we were heading down the road, Carey hesitantly sitting in the back with Natalia, quickly warming to the woman who was scratching him behind the ears.
Magnus had insisted I sit up front with him to share stories. I asked for theirs first, just to make sure it all added up. Vanessa had turned out to be something we hadn’t expected, and these two almost-too-perfect people could have been on the wrong side for all I knew.
“I’m from Sweden. Used to be a bodybuilder. Won some serious awards at it too. Before that I was a soldier. When I decided to get out of the show business, I realized I missed soldiering. There were a lot of causes out there that I felt were unjust, and I found a mercenary group who shared my ideals. Rolled with th
ose guys for almost a decade. We didn’t fight too often, but mediated a lot of crap in Northern Africa and in the Middle East.” He turned his head to the left as he drove. “Killed when we had to kill. Anyway. One of our missions, we found a bunch of people in a container in Egypt. Half of them were dead, the other half scared out of their wits and starved. Natalia was one of them. I carried her out of that container; she weighed almost nothing. She hasn’t left my side since. Has never said a word, either. Isn’t that right?” He looked in the rear-view mirror and smiled at her. I saw her smile back, and for a minute, she let her hard exterior soften.
“How did you get the anti-alien beam gear?” I asked, truly curious. Their story was quite a lot different than any of ours over in the States. Of course, there would be others on the same mission from around the world. Maybe we would even get close only to have someone beat us to the punch. I realized I would be okay with that. I sure wasn’t doing this for the glory.
He smiled. “A few years ago, we had two people contact us to join the group. They came with glowing recommendations from the British army. A man and woman, both strong as oxen. We let them in and they proved to be invaluable. They got us out of some tight situations and were quite often great at negotiating out of other situations that should have gotten sticky. We grew very close, like a big family. Natalia here trained so hard with us, and she became one of our own. More deadly than most...a hunger to prevent the darkness of her life from becoming anyone else’s path.”
He paused and took a drink of water; beads of sweat dripped down from his close-cropped hair. “Our new friends each got sick. Really sick. The woman was dead a few months later; the man not far behind. He asked for Natalia and me to come to the hospital to see him, just the two of us. He told us a tale of such imagination, either he was an author, or it was true. I’d felt betrayed, but days later, I felt I understood his reluctance to tell us from the start. They were recruiting people around the world. He said some were doing like them, getting into groups like ours, or the military. Others were recruiting by marrying prospective targets. I imagined any betrayal I’d felt would be so far amplified for those who had married someone to find out they were being used.” He paused and looked at me, unsure which side of the fence I was sitting on.
“Go on,” I urged instead of answering his questioning eyes.
“Sure. So he told us about the device that they’d planted all those years ago, and how it was the only chance humans had of survival. That if we brought them back, the race would leave us, looking for easier plunder.” Another drink of water. “I don’t feel like we’re getting the full story here. Either these guys recruiting us were just naïve, or what? Say this device does bring back our people. What then? The invaders just leave us be? Maybe they don’t have any weapons.”
“Oh, they have weapons. One of the ships ripped a massive trench across the landscape for miles to slow us down. A red beam, the same size as their green abduction ones, shot out and destroyed the ground on touch,” I said.
His eyes went wide. “You’ve seen ships since that first day?” He sounded like it was impossible.
“Yeah, a few times. It was like they were hunting us from the start. I saw them in New York, then the lasers outside of Washington. I swear they were there when we got hit by a storm in the sailboat.”
“Sailboat? I can’t wait to listen to your story. We didn’t know they were here still. Honestly, we’ve been moving as fast as we could. We had to come from Russia, and have been on a full tilt, twenty-four-hour schedule to get here. Took copter as far south as we could go, then a damn boat across the ocean non-stop to Colombia. Just landed last night and here we are,” Magnus said.
Without the worry about being spotted by the ships, they made it all the way from Russia in four days’ time. I was impressed by their ingenuity. They were obviously good choices for recruitment.
“You may have been lucky, then. I was with my group until yesterday. I was in the lead with Carey in my own Jeep, and a ship hovered directly before me. I didn’t think it spotted them, since they were just another stopped van on the road. I bolted and drew its attention away for a while. I went back the next day and the van was still there, but they weren’t. I’m hoping they kept going and was thinking I might be able to catch up,” I said, the words sounding desperate as they left my mouth.
We arrived at the Peru border, and it was larger than the Panama one. Cars were parked everywhere, and the pass was open. There was a small town on the other side. Magnus elected to push the cars out of the way where needed. The Jeep had a large grill bumper and I was surprised to see how easily we made it through. Where I would have tried to get around, a big man like him just pushed his way through.
“Tell us your story, my friend,” Magnus prompted.
I started from the beginning. About the day the ships arrived, my adventures to get the pendant; about James and being left alone. I told them how I went and got Carey from Susan’s house, and I noticed Carey look at me when I said his name in the story. I added the parts about Janine, her getting sick, and the deathbed promise I made. I kept some of it private; moments between me and my wife. I went on to my challenges of getting into New York, Yankee Stadium, then finding Ray near Central Park. Magnus seemed surprised by the bank’s safety deposit box. He said he knew the details of the location already, trusted to them by their friend before he died.
This irked me a little, that Janine didn’t feel she could tell me everything, but maybe I would have forgotten the details, or just not followed through. I told them about hearing someone on the CB radio and eventually meeting up with them. I retold the rope story, trying to pull Ray up, and Natalia’s eyes were wide as I shared the story about Vanessa sniping that man down at the pier. Then I talked about the boat, the storm, and landing in Panama. From there we caught up to the ship finding us on the road, and my racing down the mountain with a ship in tow.
“And then I found you,” I finished.
“That’s quite the story, my friend. You’ve been through a lot. What of Vanessa? You’re saying she is one of them? An alien?” he asked.
“From what I understand, she’s a hybrid born in a lab. They all were, even my wife, I suppose. They were bred to be able to live on Earth for a time period and recruit people to help. Vanessa told us that something about the equator was poison to them. Their job was to get people invested enough to save. She said there were around a hundred of them brought here close to a decade ago.” The thought that my wife had been one of these hybrids really hadn’t sunk in until I said it aloud.
I think Magnus could see the pain, and he patted me on the arm with his right hand. “It’s okay, Dean. It’s all about the greater good here now. You were chosen to help save the planet.”
Should I tell him? I wasn’t sure. I did anyway. “I wasn’t the one,” I said quietly. “He was a military guy. She was meeting him on a blind date that night at the Boathouse when I met her. She chose me, I suppose, but they didn’t.”
He smiled to this as we drove through the small town. “That’s even better. She did love you and gave her life to save our planet. Will you do the same if you have to?” he asked as he stopped the Jeep.
Would I? My thoughts went back to my instincts to save the others when the ship surprised us, and I realized that I was ready to give everything up to help them and to save the world.
“Yes, I will.” The words came out louder than I’d intended.
“Good. Let’s get some supplies and gas while we’re here. I have a siphon pump kit in the back. Do you mind? Natalia and I will grab some food. Anything in particular you want?”
I got out of the Jeep and Carey hopped over the console and onto the seat I had been occupying. “Anything but mangoes,” I answered with a laugh.
They headed to a small market and I ran the siphon line from a car beside our Jeep. In a couple minutes, fuel was transferring through the tube, and I hit the valve as soon as some gas dripped back and down the side of the Jeep
. Carey was nowhere to be seen.
“Carey!” I called out. He didn’t come running to me; no bark to tell me where he was. I packed up the hose in its bag, sealed it, and put it back into the Jeep.
“Carey, where are you?” Still nothing. I glanced back to the market, and Magnus and Natalia wandered around filling up paper bags. The street was dusty, vendors’ carts lining the side of the street. They would be used to tourists coming from Colombia into Peru, and here they sold maps, magnets, authentic Peruvian food, and anything else you could think of to make money. Peru’s flag waved all over the place too, two solid vertical red stripes separated by a white stripe in the center.
I crossed the street, wondering if Carey had found some sort of food source, but he wasn’t behind any of the food carts either. I heard a distant bark down the road, and that turned into a cacophony of barks from all around the small town. No doubt there were countless outdoor dogs around here. I only hoped we could get their owners back soon, and that they all had a water source. But that first bark had sounded distinctly like my little friend.
The side street was littered with overflowing garbage bins, and a grease bin from the restaurant out front. I heard his bark again and called out to him, jogging down the cramped alleyway. My shirt was already unbuttoned, and still it was stuck to me everywhere. The heat was getting to me and I wished that the dog could have just stayed put.
I heard something behind me. Footsteps. I turned and heard more steps come from where I’d just been. I was surrounded. They looked just like the man who’d been shot at the pier by Vanessa: identical twins. The man at the waterfall, who’d called to me after chasing me down in his smaller ship, looked just like them too. Maybe one of these was that man. They were tall and thin, with matching brown hair that looked like wigs. It was a seriously peculiar sight.
The Survivors Box Set Page 12