The alien walked toward the colonel and Dex dropped his arm, stepping back a few yards to keep his distance.
Hansen muttered something in the alien tongue, and the commander plucked him from the ground, helping him roughly to his feet. “See, Hunter. I am still their number one. Without me, they would…” The sound was sickening. The alien’s massive fist crumpled the unscarred side of Hansen’s face, and the mutilated body dropped to the dirt with a thud.
A few scattered machine guns rattled off in the distance, and his ears rang as if he suddenly had a serious case of tinnitus.
The alien commander turned slowly, facing Dex, and it bellowed the most horrifying sound the hunter had ever heard in his life. The hair on his neck rose, and he nearly wet himself. The thick tendons of the Overseer’s neck flexed, his mouth opening wide, revealing long, sharp teeth.
Dex did the only thing he could. He fired at its chest. Once. Twice. Three times. And ran.
It screeched again. This time, the pitch was higher, more desperate, but Dex didn’t risk turning around to see if it lived.
His legs pumped hard as he headed toward the rubble of the west coast facility, and soon heard the footsteps following him. The sun had started to descend, and when he looked over his shoulder, the rays were bright, rendering him temporarily blind. The alien soared on powerful legs, sending Dex to the ground, knocking the air from his lungs in a whoosh.
The gun dropped from his grip at the impact and landed just out of reach. The alien crouched over him, blood pumping from its wounds, and Dex didn’t think the creature had much time left. Probably long enough to kill him first, though.
It had all been worth it. Turning to side with the Reclaimers was the one good decision of his life. He only wished he’d been given a choice earlier on. Maybe he could have made a real difference.
The alien reached down, grabbing Dex by the throat. He was toying with him, trying to exact revenge for the loss of the day, for Dex shooting him. The grip tightened, and he coughed, stars flickering in his vision. Dex punched the alien, the side of the beast’s torso feeling like a brick wall.
He hit it again, somehow finding the strength to retaliate. He couldn’t give up, not now. Not when they were so close to the end. Dex was selfish, and he had to find out what happened. Dying before he saw if the Earth was reclaimed or not would be his biggest regret. Dex slackened, pretending to be expired, and the alien’s grip loosened slightly. An opportunity arose.
He slipped a hand up, pressing his fingers into one of the bullet wounds on the Overseer’s chest. His fingernail scraped on something hard, either bone or the bullet he’d fired. Its arms flew into the air, and Dex made his move. With his left foot, he kicked off the ground, moving enough to reach his gun.
The alien’s fist swung at him, but Dex was faster. The Glock rang out, the bullet entering the thing’s oversized skull from less than a yard away. It stood there, and he feared another attack for a moment, before it fell forward directly on top of him.
With all the strength remaining in his exhausted body, Dex rolled from under the dead commander and lay there for a second, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths. It was over. The battle for the west coast had been won, even if it had all been destroyed in the process. The Reclaimers had stolen the misters and destroyed a mine.
If the Freeborn girl and Monet could really complete their side of the mission, and if Cole and the captain were able to do the impossible, Dex actually thought there might be a chance. The whole time, it had felt like they were trying to climb a ninety-degree cliff, but now, it almost seemed like they were cresting the summit.
Dex shook, his legs weak and his head throbbing. There might be more of the Overseers nearby, and he searched the area. The ship had been parked on the far side of a crop field. Wheat had been recently harvested, and the short spikey dried stalks were all that remained in the soil as he crossed the expanse of land toward the rubble where the facility had once sat.
The ground was cut up, holes and trenches dug out from the massive turrets placed on the four old-looking towers. The Overseers hadn’t seen any of it coming, and Dex had to give this Zhao guy credit. He’d thought much like the aliens. It was supposed to be a bloodbath, but for the other side.
Dozens of the aliens were on the ground, and Dex picked up one of their strange guns, hefting it in his right hand. He’d seen others powering them up on the flight over, and he tapped the side, bringing the energy charge humming to life. The cartridge blinked green, and he shoved his Glock into the holster under his jacket.
The smell was atrocious: a mixture of alien sweat and their bitter blood. He tried to avert his gaze from the wanton destruction, but it was difficult to avoid their dead eyes and dismembered body parts as he moved into the crop, trying to find any Reclaimers to aid.
There was a chain link fence along the outer edge of the field, and he moved to the mangled metal mess, stepping over the overturned barrier. More bodies lay nearby, and he stopped, scanning the corpses for movement. It would be terrible to have survived this long, only to be shot in the back by an injured alien.
When he was greeted by nothing but silence and the light rustling of leaves along the last upright oak trees in the encampment, Dex continued.
The towers were rubble, crumpled piles of stone and wood. Where are you, Zhao? Dex took the chance to move to the shadows, past the steady stream of torn apart Overseers, and found a collapsed building over what had to be a trap set by Zhao. Dex guessed there were tunnels below, and he glanced over to the west, the sun nearly beyond the horizon now.
He heard footsteps and lifted the gun, the weight heavy in his tired arms.
“Put it down,” a voice said calmly. He couldn’t see the man but felt a set of eyes or two on him. Dex did as he was ordered, setting the weapon to the dirt.
“I’m with you.”
“Is that so? Why did you just come from their ship?” The man stepped out. He was covered in dust, his arm bleeding, his shirt sleeve torn. He was bald, sweat beads drew lines in the grime over his forehead.
“If you saw that, you saw me blow a hole in one of their faces.” Dex didn’t want to spend any more time here than absolutely necessary. “Where’s Zhao?”
The man’s eyes flickered with something… and Dex knew. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
The man nodded. “Gave his life for this place.”
“I can’t believe you did it. What’s your name?” Dex asked.
“Scott. There’s not many of us left… leather jacket, dark hair… you must be this Dexter guy the Masons told me about,” Scott said. He lowered the weapon, and moved with grace and efficiency. He was older, probably military or law enforcement from the old days, when those things existed.
“That’s me.” Dex sighed. “Where are the others?”
Scott whistled, and people began to emerge from the disaster that had once been a safe haven for thousands of people. Dex tried to imagine what the place might have looked like before, with tree cover, actual gardens, and food sources, water at their disposal. It felt like it could have been a real home, but now it was nothing but a graveyard for their enemy, and hundreds of Reclaimers willing to offer their lives for the cause.
Soon there were about ten of them, each looking as bad off as the next.
“Stay close, Dex. Some of the Overseers are hiding out.” Scott began walking around the fallen tower, heading north.
“Where are we going?” he asked, grabbing the alien weapon from the ground.
“To our new home.”
Dex was free of the Occupation for the first time in his life, but he still felt the shackles on his wrists. He rubbed his sore neck and walked behind Scott, entering the forest toward a new future.
Chapter 23
Cole
Living in a cave lost its glamour on the second day. Both Cole and Soares were showing signs of physical discomfort, but they seemed to make it a matter of pride not to complain about it in front of the other.
>
They knew from the data recorded by the tracking dart that the journey from the mine to the Gateway took two days, which surprised Cole. He’d asked about the slow progress and Soares reminded him that they witnessed the loading of what they guessed was over two thousand tons of raw material.
“That kind of weight’s gonna affect your mileage,” he muttered, shaking his head in dismissal when the young man opened his mouth to ask what he meant. “Never mind. We’re assuming it went through the Gate; either that or the tracking system decided to shut down close to the facility in Detroit.”
They spent that fourth day watching again, and Cole’s pain at having to lean up to use the binoculars made him regret his choice of weapon. The scope on the rifle Soares had given him would have made the job of observing far less taxing on his neck and shoulders.
“They seem a little on edge to you?” Soares asked in a low voice.
“You surprised?” Cole whispered back. They had both crowded to see the tablet over the last few nights, reading the reports of the battle in Spain. From all accounts and messages, their enemy had their noses well and truly bloodied by his brother and their allies.
None of this would have been possible if not for Tom’s sacrifice.
He’d asked if he could send a message to Lina, but Soares had apologized and explained that he didn’t even know if they were able to receive any signals where they were. Being somewhere thousands of miles out to sea—under the sea—was a terrifying concept to Cole, who had only viewed the ocean a handful of times in his life. That his need to make contact with her might put her life in danger cut him with a cold stab.
He had to hope that she was well, that she was safe, and those thoughts occupied a few hours of the uncomfortable day spent watching the nervous sentries at the mine. It appeared the enemy had suddenly grown nervous since his brother’s attack in Spain.
Cole wished he could strike. He wished he could kill them and fantasized about how he would do it.
“No way,” he said when Cole raised the suggestion of taking out the aliens while they had the opportunity. “It’s vital that we get on that transport totally undetected. If we know it’s going through the Gateway, we can just set the bomb on it. If we waste it all on killing a few low-ranking aliens here…” He trailed off, shaking his head in disappointment, but Cole wasn’t upset by his words. Instead, he frowned in thought.
“How do we set off the bomb?” he asked. “No remote detonator will work if the bombs on a different planet, and I’m pretty sure we didn’t bring enough wire…”
“Timer,” Soares told him, patting a fat cylinder in its drab green carrying case taken from the secure storage at the safe house. “Remember the bomb on the train? That had a failsafe—a timer set to detonate the charge—in case the direct activation failed.”
“I don’t understand that either,” Cole complained. “Why pack a train with all those chemicals if we had stuff like that thing?” He pointed at the device Soares fussed over like it was either very precious to him or highly dangerous and he was scared of it. Cole suspected it was the latter.
“We don’t have stuff like this, we have one of these. One. You know how hard it was to even find this, let alone store it safely without wiping us all out by irradiating everyone?” Cole stared at him, wearing a blank expression as he usually did when Soares forgot the younger man grew up in an entirely different world than his own.
“If the damn Roamers had bothered to reach out or answer us, we might’ve had a better chance to make the first plan work,” Soares grumbled.
“Or,” Cole answered carefully, “we’d have lost that along with a lot more people than we already have.”
“Huh,” Soares huffed. It wasn’t a question or an acknowledgment of Cole’s logical response, merely a noise to signify his frustration with everything.
“What I don’t get,” Cole said, changing the subject in the hope of bringing the older man to a conversational level, “is how nuclear stuff can be a bomb and a power source, like the submarine…”
“Me neither, kid,” Soares said tiredly. “Then again, I don’t know how to make a rifle, but I know how to use it.”
Lina
The problem with the forward ballast tanks took over a day to repair, and Gerard tried to excitedly explain what the actual issue was and how his crew had worked on their ingenious idea to fix it.
Gerard recognized that getting them back underway as fast as possible to keep within the mission timeline was imperative, and told them so.
“Until the next thing on this deathtrap goes wrong,” Monet added, meaning it as a joke just letting it come out sounding a little too sour and offending the old sailor.
“Is there time to watch the sunset?” Lina asked, guessing what the answer would be but using the interruption to change the subject rapidly.
“I’m afraid not,” Gerard told her. “Listen,” he said when he saw her disappointment. “We pull this crazy shit off and I’ll personally sail you out here so you can sit on deck for a week.”
“Deal,” Lina said with a smile, thrusting out her hand to shake on it and making Gerard smile with how easily he’d been trapped by his own words.
At breakfast a few days later, Gerard invited both of them to join him in the control room where maps were scattered on a table under harshly bright lights. They were four days out from Shanghai, and Gerard didn’t want to tempt fate, but he was secretly impressed that they’d suffered only a single major malfunction, even if it had threatened to be catastrophic.
“So, four days,” Gerard said. “What happens after that?”
Lina and Monet exchanged confused glances.
“You don’t know?” Lina asked him, earning the response of a shrug and a shake of his head.
“Nope. I was following orders up until this point.”
“We’re going to break into the factory where the aliens mix up the chemicals to make their mister things, and drop a bucket of poison in it,” Monet said flatly.
“How many are going?” Gerard asked, getting to the particulars.
“Us two,” Monet answered. “Any more will make us too obvious and easy to locate. Do you think you can get us to shore quietly?”
“Miss Monet,” Gerard said, putting on an accent that oozed charm and manners, “moving quietly is what a submarine was made for.”
Chapter 24
Alec
“Have you been able to reach them?” Alec asked Izzy as he entered the communications room.
She shook her head, resting her forehead on a palm. She looked tired, but Alec wasn’t about to tell her that. They all needed some sleep, but there was too much to prepare for. They’d spent the last week fortifying the base in Northern Norway, and the sheer volume of people here astounded Alec.
“The lines are dead. We’ve lost contact with everyone at this point.” Izzy held a tablet up and showed Alec there was no possible way to send any messages through their operating system.
“They found out how we were doing it. Probably from Spain. We also know they were attacking the west coast group… I need to hear how they’re doing,” Alec said, plopping into a squeaky old desk chair beside Izzy. The hydraulics were shot, and it sat a good half foot lower than hers.
“My dad had more defenses there than he’d let on. He’ll have blasted their alien asses back to Detroit.” She said it with confidence, but Alec noted the gulp in her throat and the shake of her hand.
“I’m sure he did. I just hate sitting around, wondering where everyone is. Monet should be close to China, and Cole and Captain Soares have to be in the container now.”
If they’re alive. He kept that thought to himself. He felt that if he said it out loud, it would gain power.
The room hummed with the clunky old computers running from their solar panels, and Izzy closed a few programs before kicking away from the desk, rolling in her chair toward the exit. The space had no windows, and Alec hated being underground. He wanted to be outside, without f
ear of an attack from the damned Overseers. He was so tired of it all and was happy that, one way or another, the end was coming.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she offered and he hopped to his feet, jogging for the door.
“Gladly.” The corridors were long, and people hung about, members of the Barony mixing with the few Reclaimers, and the French resistance, who claimed to have no name to go by; no powerful moniker of denial or rebellion. Alec appreciated that. Their only focus had been surviving all these years, and judging by the three thousand bodies the ships had transported to Norway over the last few days, they’d done it well.
The lights flickered off, and the emergency ones kicked on.
“Power’s down,” Daniel, Jack’s right hand man, said as he stepped out of an office. Jack followed and nodded at Alec.
“Gotta go outside and see what’s caused it. You two want to join me?” Jack asked.
“Sure.” Izzy smiled at Alec, like this was some great adventure for them. Really, Alec wanted to have something to distract him from all the unknowns culminating around their group.
“How long ago did you start this place?” Alec asked the older man as he led them through the corridors toward the steps to the exit.
“Ten or so years ago. We kept close surveillance on Norway. The buggers didn’t seem to give a crap about the snow-covered landscape here, and it seemed like the logical plot to set roots, don’t you agree?” Jack scratched at his beard, smoothing it out, and winked at Alec as he opened a large metal locker unit imbedded into the wall before the stairs.
He pulled out three sizeable parkas, each dark blue with faux fur-lined hoods. Izzy smiled as she slid into hers, and Alec found the jacket heavier than he’d expected. He hadn’t been outside much, the others not letting him risk his life transporting people from France to Norway.
Rise | Book 3 | Reclamation Page 15