But, when it should have been locking onto new targets, it stubbornly remained motionless, its weaponry not deployed.
“The Sentinel,” she said. “Why isn’t it working?”
“Don’t know for sure,” Papa Jack said tersely. “But, at a guess, I’d say the Toads must have altered their energy signature again. It happened before, a while back. If that’s the case, they’ll be invisible to the Sentinel.”
“Why doesn’t it just shoot anything that moves?” Lukas said, a note of desperation in his voice.
“Because then it would shoot us as well, little man,” Papa Jack said. “And all the livestock in the district as well. That wouldn’t do us much good, huh?”
“So it needs to be recalibrated,” Jahni said. “The UEM can do that.”
Papa Jack glanced out his window, then at the rear-view mirror, evaluating. “They won’t make it in time. No chance.”
“What do you mean?” Jahni asked.
Papa Jack pointed past her to where a large flatbed truck was thundering across an adjoining road toward them. A blue tarpaulin had been strapped to the back, and the faces of several children poked out from underneath as it neared.
“Look, it’s the Henderson wagon,” Papa Jack said. “See? One big happy family.” He honked on his horn and waved a hand out the window, indicating for the other vehicle to slow down.
“What’s going on?” Carolyne said, panicked. “Why are we stopping?”
“There’s another train to catch,” Papa Jack said, reaching across and giving her a comforting pat on the leg. “Tickets please!”
“Toot toot!” Stanny shouted, putting on a brave smile.
They drew to a halt at the intersection of the two roads, and old man Henderson stuck his red face out the window, perplexed.
“Jack? What gives?” he called out.
“Got some extra passengers for you,” Papa Jack called out. He kissed each of the children in turn and then bundled them out of pickup. Jahni paused with the door ajar as the Henderson children assisted the others up into the back of the truck.
“Papa Jack, what is this?” Jahni said, not quite wanting to believe what she already knew to be true. “What’s going on?”
“Someone needs to recalibrate that Sentinel, Jahni. I’m the Warden, I have access. The UEM techs let me look over their shoulder the last time they worked on it. I know how to do it.”
“Let the Marines take care of it–”
“Those things will be all over the place by the time the Marines get there. You know that.”
Jahni suddenly felt hot tears sliding down her cheeks. “Your place is with us, Papa Jack.”
Papa Jack grimaced. “I know. And you know I’ll always watch over you.”
“Papa–”
“Every day across this world there’s a thousand stories just like ours, Jahni. The Argoni keep coming, and when they do, people die. But when one man falls, another steps up to take his place. That’s how it’s always been for survivors like us. Survivors. And that’s how it has to be if we’re ever to overcome these monsters. If we’re ever going to prevail.”
“But you’re the Warden–”
“Someone else will take my place.” Papa Jack’s face was as hard as flint, but there were tears in the corners of his eyes. “I know you’re ready to take care of this family, and the rest of these people as well if you choose to.”
“Me?” Jahni said, taken aback. “I can’t–”
“Take them home. I know you can do it.”
He reached across and grabbed the door frame, and his fingers brushed against hers for a fleeting moment. They were hard and calloused, but warm and comforting as well. Jahni longed to hold onto them forever. To make him stay.
Then he slammed the door and sent the pickup shooting along the dirt road once more.
Jahni opened her mouth to scream for him not to go, but she bit back on it at the last moment.
The other children were watching her. They were looking to her for guidance now.
“He’ll meet us at the shelter,” she said, swallowing her tears. She climbed up into the cab next to Mr. Henderson and his wife. “Go,” she said.
Mr. Henderson started the truck and got it moving forward at a more sedate pace, its large bulk taking longer to pick up momentum than Papa Jack’s pickup. “What was that all about?” Mr. Henderson said.
“The Sentinel,” Jahni told him. “It hasn’t activated itself. He’s going to try recalibrating it.”
“Shouldn’t he be making sure people get safely to the shelter?” Mr. Henderson said.
“That’s exactly what he’s trying to do,” Jahni said, a little more sharply than she’d intended.
Mr. Henderson shrugged. “He’s the Warden. Whatever he thinks is best.”
Jahni didn’t want to watch the red pickup as it tore across the field in the distance, the one that led to the ridge on which the Sentinel stood, but she couldn’t look away. The dark shapes of the Argoni began to close in on the vehicle, evidently attracted by the noise and the spectacle of the pickup as it jostled and bounced across the field. She felt like crying, or screaming, or perhaps both. She was watching her hero drive toward certain death, and she was powerless to do anything about it.
Take them home. I know you can do it.
With an effort, she forced herself to keep her emotions in check. She needed to remain composed for the children if nothing else. With Papa Jack no longer here, they needed someone else they could trust.
“Drive like the wind, Jack,” Mrs. Henderson was whispering beside her in an almost prayer-like fashion, her eyes also on the pickup. “Drive.”
One of the Argoni came close to snaring Papa Jack’s truck, but he swerved at the last minute and avoided its grasping claws. Two more came at him, and he used his previous tactic of taking them head on, bearing down on them at full tilt. One of them disappeared under the hood with a sound like a gunshot, and the other spun away. As the pickup turned along the ridge, Jahni saw the second Toad still clinging to the rear bumper. It began to pull itself up onto the flatbed, but then the truck disappeared around the side of the ridge, and Papa Jack was no longer in view.
Jahni had seen enough. She was not going to look back there again.
As she held back a sob, she turned to the road ahead. The shelter was less than a kilometre away, nestled in a rocky gully that lay beyond a couple of gentle hills on which the dirt road undulated. As they reached the peak of the first hill, she lifted the scopes she had taken from Lukas and peered at the gully. Something in the distance caught her eye. She reached out instinctively and clutched at Mr. Henderson’s arm.
“Wait,” she said. “Slow down.”
Mr. Henderson did as she asked, and the truck began to coast. “What is it?”
She pointed through the windscreen ahead of them as she stared through the scopes. “Bad news. Look.” She handed the scopes to him. “Do you see them?”
Mr. Henderson adjusted his glasses and squinted through the scopes across the darkening countryside. “Is that…?”
“Yeah,” Jahni said. “A whole bunch of Argoni between us and the shelter.”
“Do they know about the shelter?” he said.
“Nothing would surprise me, but… maybe this is just bad luck.”
“Maybe we should head to the next shelter,” Mrs. Henderson suggested. “Down by Rover’s Creek.”
“There’s no time,” Jahni said. “Every minute we wait, more of those things are going to be crawling across the fields.”
“Then we ram them!” Mr. Henderson said.
“No,” Jahni said immediately. The image of the Toad clinging to the bumper of the pickup was still fresh in her mind. “Not against that many. The children are unprotected in the back. It will only take one Argoni to grab hold, and once it climbs aboard, there’ll be no chance for any of them.”
“So, what else is there?” Mr. Henderson said, sounding pa
nicked.
Jahni glanced about, searching for ideas. She was still thinking of the pickup.
Then it came to her.
***
The Hendersons and Jahni’s siblings watched from their hiding place in the roadside ditch as she finalised her preparations in the cabin of the truck. A part of her was still telling her that she was crazy and that this was never going to work, but she kept thinking of Papa Jack’s pickup bouncing across the field, drawing the Argoni to it like a magnet.
Those things were attracted to vehicles; that was plain to see. And that could be the only ace Jahni had up her sleeve.
She sat in the driver’s seat and accelerated gently, turning the truck away from the road. She was safely hidden from the view of the Argoni by the hill that lay between them. When the truck had turned far enough to point directly out into the vacant fields, she drew to a halt. Then she slipped off her belt and tied one end to the steering wheel and the other around the headrest of the seat. Her mother had shown her this trick years ago during harvest. It was a workaround for when the harvest drones’ spatial detection systems were on the fritz—something that was not uncommon among the older units. By pulling the belt tight, she could keep the vehicle pointed in a straight line indefinitely—without being aboard.
She slipped the truck out of gear. Then, taking a wedge of rock she’d found on the roadside, she jammed the accelerator into the forward position. The engine roared like wildfire. She propped open the door, slipped the truck back into gear, and dropped easily to the road as it rumbled forward and churned dirt as it headed out into the paddock.
“Jahni, come!” Stanny hissed from the ditch.
She waved placatingly to him. Then she kept low, almost crawling on her belly as she reached the crest of the hill. She lay in wait, watching the Toads through the scopes. The Argoni weren’t stupid; she knew that much. They wouldn’t fall for an obvious ruse. However, with the truck angled away, the driver’s compartment was not visible from the Argoni’s location. And with the tarpaulin obscuring the contents of the flatbed, it could be reasonable to assume that they would believe a load of humans were inside.
At least, that’s what she hoped.
For a few moments, the Argoni down by the rock gully did not react, continuing to hunt around the area for prey. However, one by one, they slowly turned to see what the commotion was about as the truck rattled across the paddock. For a horrible instant, Jahni thought they would ignore the vehicle and that they might see through the trickery after all, but then they began to lope after it.
Her heart leapt.
They had a chance after all.
Slipping back down the hill, she returned to the others in the ditch and beckoned for them to follow her.
“Come on,” she said. “It’s time.” As the children moved forward, she gathered them around her and sank to one knee.
“What’s happening?” Stanny said.
“We’re going to have a race,” she said, looking at each in turn and forcing a smile. “I want to see all of you with your best running legs on, okay? First one to the gully wins a prize.”
“What prize?” Lukas said.
“You’ll have to make it there first to find out.” She got to her feet. “Ready?”
***
There were only a few hundred paces between them and the shelter, but it felt much longer to Jahni. As Stanny fell behind, she’d stooped to pick him up, and her lungs burned over the final stretch. She kept turning her head in an attempt to keep track of the Argoni. Her view was limited, but it looked as though several of them had reached the Henderson’s truck and were crawling over it.
They’ll realise they’ve been tricked. They’ll come back.
As she turned to the gully again, she saw that the older Henderson children had already made it to the large, rounded steel door of the shelter. Some other folk from the district were already inside, and they stood on the threshold, waving at the newcomers to hurry. She recognised Hank McCormack among others.
“Come quick!” Hank called. “We have to close up again before they get back!”
Jahni’s legs were heavy; her breathing was laboured, but the end was in sight. A few steps more and they would be safe–
“Heads up!” Hank called. “Jahni, look out!”
Jahni turned to see an Argoni emerge from the far side of the gully with its broad, powerful body coiled. It turned to face her, and those black eyes sent a chill down her spine. She cried out in dismay and came to a halt, clutching Stanny tighter to her chest.
“Shut the door!” she screamed. “Don’t let it in!”
“Not on your life,” Hank called back. “You’ll make it!”
But Jahni knew that she wouldn’t. The Argoni was between her and the shelter, and there was no way around it.
No. We came so close. It can’t end like this…
The Argoni advanced, growling horribly, and Jahni saw a bony appendage snake out from its wrist—something that looked like a blade or perhaps a saw.
She held Stanny close to her as it moved in. There were no weapons at her disposal, and there was no way to stand against the strength of the creature.
Maybe if she drew it away, Stanny could still make it to the shelter. The thought of letting go of him at that moment turned her blood to ice, but she couldn’t think of any other way to get him to safety.
She was about to place the boy on the ground when suddenly a flash of blue light snapped through the cool evening air. Jahni stumbled back, and the Argoni screamed. The upper half of its body seemed to disintegrate, spraying bits of blackened bone in all directions. Then it slumped to the ground, unmoving.
Jahni gasped, not really understanding what had happened. The thing had been ripped apart before her very eyes, like it had been struck down by a bolt of lightning–
She turned to the ridge to see the Sentinel glowing brightly, very much alive. It pivoted, searching out its next target, and then it fired another blast of energy out into the adjacent field.
Papa Jack, she thought, almost collapsing with relief. You made it.
She kept going, stumbling across the gully toward the doors, and Hank guided her inside. He tugged on the steel door, and it slammed shut with a resounding thud.
Jahni placed Stanny on the floor and staggered against the wall, finally allowing a sob of relief to escape her lips.
They’d reached safety. Somehow, they’d gotten here in one piece.
But a part of her despaired. She wondered if, despite the Sentinel coming back online, she was ever going to see Papa Jack again.
***
The battle raged above through the night while Jahni and the others huddled in the underground shelter as the earth shook with bomb blasts. At times, she thought she could hear the fizz of blaster rifles and the shriek of Argoni warriors. The thought of the battle caused her fantasies to run away with her. She imagined the Argoni winning the fight, cracking open the protective shielding that surrounded the shelter, spilling inside, and running amok within the dim confines. She thought of how lost she would be if any of her siblings were hurt or killed somehow.
And she thought of Papa Jack over and over throughout the night.
At some point, she fell into a restless sleep.
She was dreaming of him in the early hours of the morning when she woke.
Outside, things had gone quiet. Around her, others in the shelter were beginning to stir. Not long after, a communication came from above—the Marines had won and were cleansing the area of the Argoni and destroying the primary spore. The UEM had prevailed and were conducting their final sweep, making sure the district was safe.
After that, Relief and joy were within the shelter. People began singing anthems and songs of defiance. Jahni continued to hold Stanny, Carolyne, and Jakob tight, savouring their warmth and kissing each of their heads more times than she could count.
Just after dawn, the Marines gave the all clear, and t
he door to the shelter opened. Jahni and the others began to stream out. The landscape had taken a beating, with great gouges carved out of the farmland where munitions had pounded the soil. Marines patrolled the area in hundreds, tracking down the wounded. Medic ships hovered as they prepared to carry the wounded off-site.
Jahni allowed the children to go ahead, and Mr. Henderson broke away with a grim look on his face from where he’d been speaking to one of the Marines. He stood before Jahni and shook his head helplessly, as if struggling with what he had to tell her.
“I know,” Jahni said, fighting for composure. “He’s gone.” She had tears to shed for her grandfather, many of them, but she would not allow them to come. Not yet. Not here.
Mr. Henderson nodded. “I’m so sorry, Jahni. They found him up by the Sentinel. It looks as though he ended up taking them on with his bare hands.”
Jahni nodded, feeling numb. “I’d expect no less.”
“Such a loss,” Mr. Henderson muttered.
“He didn’t die for nothing, Mr. Henderson. All of us will live to fight another day because of him.”
Mr. Henderson wrung his hands together as he looked out across the carnage. “Yes, I understand. But what are we going to do?” he said, a note of despair in his voice. “These things are going to keep coming. There’s nothing we can do to make them stop.”
Jahni narrowed her eyes as she beheld the rising sun. The world looked a little different to her today, she decided. Or was it her that had changed somehow? Perhaps that was it. Perhaps she wasn’t the same girl who had stepped across the steel threshold last night at all. Was it possible for a person to change that way? Could the shelter have acted not just as a source of protection, but also as a kind of cocoon that initiated a metamorphosis of her spirit?
Whatever the case, as she looked around at the bleary-eyed folk emerging from below, she realised that the fear and uncertainty she had felt last night had been replaced by something else… determination, a desire to make her grandfather proud. To carry on his legacy.
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