by J. Thorn
He looked over the dashboard and into the sky, trying to locate the alien craft that had attacked them, but he saw nothing.
Reynolds stopped firing.
“Did you get it?” John asked.
Reynolds was silent.
“Did you fucking shoot it?” John asked again, raising his voice this time.
“Shut the fuck up!” Reynolds said.
Reno heard a mechanical whirring noise. He glanced out the side window and saw a light in the distance. The beam grew in intensity as it raced across the ground and headed right for their vehicle.
But it wasn’t a laser. This seemed to be a tracking device, which Reno realized as soon as he saw the object following it. A flying alien.
It swarmed toward the JLTV as Reynolds screamed and fired the rifle again. Reno glanced over to see the bullets bouncing off the alien’s armor like it was rubber. Regardless, Reynolds kept firing.
They came over a hill and Reno saw the exit sign for Fort Campbell.
The alien fired its laser beam before flying back into the sky, missing the JLTV as Reno continued to swerve across the highway while flooring the gas.
Reno followed the signs to the base as he made several quick turns, eventually coming to a long stretch of road with the base at the end of it.
“If you can get to the base before it dives again, the alien won’t be able to see us,” Reynolds said.
“What? How do you know that?”
“Trust me. Just keep the pedal to the metal!”
Reno pushed down harder, feeling as though he might punch his foot right through the floorboards.
Now they were only a quarter of a mile from Fort Campbell’s gate, the alien changed its flight trajectory and came around to the driver’s side. Reno looked up, seeing the creature’s armor-covered body. The hard, green, scaly plates sat beneath tubes that pulsed from within. Before he could blink, a laser beam appeared on the alien’s right side and cut through the darkness, the point of it blinding Reno.
“Hang on!” He slammed on the brakes as the alien fired. The beam missed, blowing away another abandoned vehicle instead. Reno then punched the gas again as the creature circled around for another dive at the vehicle.
Ahead, the front gate to Fort Campbell opened, and the brightest spotlight Reno had ever seen hit him in the face. He covered his eyes with his left arm while keeping his right hand on the wheel, hitting the brakes as soon as they had driven through the gate.
Once stopped, Reno moved his hands from the steering wheel to his ears as the sound from the sky threatened to blow out his eardrums. It had to have come from the alien, the scream sounding like a wounded lion and an alley cat combined. When he looked out the side window, he saw the spotlight following the alien’s now erratic flight pattern. The creature seemed to be writhing in mid-air like a helicopter without the rear blades. He watched it all unfold in the spotlight’s beam, and that’s when it all clicked.
They can’t take the light.
That was why they’d domed Nashville and darkened it from the inside out, to keep out the light.
The alien’s scream faded as it flew into the distance. When it was gone, the spotlight shut off. Reno saw spots in his vision, but he also saw two headlights getting bigger as a vehicle raced toward them.
A JLTV matching their own approached and pulled up beside Reno. A man with black hair and the shadow of a beard sat in the driver’s seat.
“Y’all okay?”
“We’ve got an injured soldier in the back,” Reno said.
“All right. Follow me back into the compund. And welcome to Fort Campbell.”
20
24 hours earlier
Maya turned the nut again with the rusty wrench, but it was no use. Smoke billowed outward from the engine, and despite her mechanical skills, there was no fixing the truck. She stood and sighed, kicking the chrome bumper.
“You can’t fix it?” Cameron asked. “I thought you were good with this kinda stuff.”
“Not unless you’ve got a spare radiator in that overpriced handbag of yours. And Gerald wondered why I didn’t want him picking our kids up in this piece of crap.”
Cameron stuck out her arms and looked around. “What are we supposed to do now? Look where we are!”
“Yeah, well, maybe you should have listened to me and taken the interstate.”
Cameron had insisted on taking back roads. She’d said it was faster, and that they’d be able to stay out of trouble by taking less traveled roads. She’d been right on that, as they hadn’t encountered anyone, human or alien. But Cameron hadn’t accounted for the fact that back roads also put them in the middle of nowhere if something went wrong.
As Cameron continued to whine, Maya ignored her and opened the passenger side door to pull out her bag. She threw it over her shoulder, then grabbed Cameron’s pack and handbag, tossing both over to the other woman. She caught the handbag, but the other bag fell at her feet.
“What are you doing?”
Maya rolled her eyes. “What do you think?”
“We’re gonna walk?”
“Well, I don’t think AAA is going to come out here and save us. So, yeah, we’re walking.”
“Do you know how far that is?”
Maya stuck out her arms and tilted her head as she glared at Cameron. “I don’t. But what does it matter? We don’t have any other choice.”
Maya slammed the door and started off down the highway. Cameron cursed before picking up her own bag and running after Maya. She came up beside her, adjusting the backpack on her shoulders.
They walked down the shoulder of the rural highway for several minutes without speaking to one another. Maya looked around, feeling an odd peacefulness enveloping her. The birds sang, and she could hear them without the din of city life or the rumble of an 18-wheeler shaking the ground. The breeze felt gentle on her face and the sun warmed it. In any other circumstances, she would have enjoyed this walk.
But this wasn’t a Sunday morning stroll. Maya kept thinking about her kids. She felt so close, yet so far away from them. If only Gerald’s damn truck hadn’t broken down. Thinking of her ex-husband shifted Maya’s thoughts to Reno. He’d been proof that there were still good people left in the world. He’d stuck with her through the early days of this madness, but when he’d realized he was a liability, he’d told her to go on without him. She’d hated leaving him behind, and hoped he’d survived the explosion inside of the dome.
“You’re right. He’s an asshole.”
The words shook Maya from her thoughts. She turned to face Cameron. “Why didn’t he take you with him?”
Cameron’s eyes filled with tears. She wiped her face with her forearm, then looked over at Maya.
“I don’t know. But when we get there, I’m going to demand an answer from him.”
Maya nodded and Cameron sniffled. She couldn’t ever imagine being friends with someone like her, but given the circumstances, Maya realized they probably needed each other to survive.
They’d been walking for several miles when a boom echoed in the distance. Maya turned to face the noise, watching the tops of trees swaying in what had just a moment before been perfectly calm air.
The ship appeared first as a black dot, and Maya thought it was a hawk or a large crow. But the noise intensified, and the inky blackness of the ship tore through the blue sky. It had wings like a fighter jet but had to be twice as big as a 747. The nose of the alien craft turned.
It was coming toward them.
Cameron stared at the ship, her mouth open. Maya grabbed her by the arm and pulled her off the road. She stumbled as Maya led them off the gravel shoulder and into the nearby trees, where they ran several yards into the woods and came to a large rock with an overhang that jutted out far enough that they’d be able to hide beneath it. Maya threw her bag down beneath the overhang and slid inside.
“Hurry, Cameron.”
The woman tossed her bags to Maya and then slid in next to her. Maya
could smell her shampoo—and the fear coming off the woman.
“W-was that…”
Maya put her hands on her ears as the ship passed above them, emitting a cyclonic howl so loud that Maya couldn’t understand what Cameron was saying or hear her even when she appeared to be screaming.
When the noise subsided, Maya took her hands off her ears and looked back at Cameron. The woman sat with her knees pulled up to her chin, her entire body shaking. Maya wrapped her arms around her.
“We’re okay. I don’t think it saw us.”
Cameron’s lips quivered, her body shaking. She looked up at Maya.
“We’re okay?”
“Yeah, we’re fine. We need to get going if we have any hope of staying alive.”
“No.” Cameron sat up. “We need to stay here. It’s too dangerous out there.”
“And do what? We have no food, no water, no supplies.”
“I don’t want to go back out there.”
“We have to. The longer we wait here, the more likely it’ll be that one of those ships finds us.”
Finally, Cameron nodded, uncoiling herself to slide out from the rocks, and then standing up. She grabbed her bag and walked toward the road, saying nothing.
Maya wanted to say something else to comfort the woman, but she decided against it. Cameron would have to learn the hard realities of this new world just as Maya had.
For now, they just needed to keep walking.
21
The mid-afternoon sun beat down on the women and the highway opened up, now devoid of abandoned or burnt out vehicles. Only a few cars had passed, and none had stopped even though Cameron had tried waving them down. One of the vehicles had been a tow truck with two men wearing gray mechanics shirts and baseball caps. Maya wondered how bad things must have gotten if blue-collar guys like that wouldn’t even slow down for two attractive hitchhikers. For the next half hour, not a single vehicle passed them. They’d come across two intact cars on the right shoulder, but the first had been out of gas and the second, a couple of miles further down the road, had refused to start when Maya had tried it, even with the key in the ignition.
They kept walking, Maya leading Cameron and neither of them speaking. The sun baked the asphalt to the consistency of warm brownies which sucked at their heels with every step. The air shimmied in the distance, heat pooling like floating water. A quarter-mile ahead, Maya spotted a steady incline. Her calves ached already, and she could feel the raw rub of blisters on her feet. The last thing she wanted to do was walk up that hill, but she’d power through it if that’s what she had to do.
But Cameron was another story.
The woman walked with her head down, dragging her feet along and wobbling from one leg to the other. She let her arms dangle, and her hair covered her face as she stared at the road while she walked. Cameron hadn’t said three words since they’d started walking again after the near-miss with the alien ship.
“How much did you know?” Maya asked.
Cameron looked up and swatted a tangle of hair aside, the bags under her eyes a charcoal smudge. “What?”
“About the invasion. The way you looked at that ship back there, it was like you hadn’t seen one anywhere.”
“I wasn’t exactly looking to grab a selfie with one.”
“Not on television, or outside your house?”
“If one had come over our house, I don’t think the house would have been there anymore.”
Good point.
“And as far as the television, Gerald’s too damn cheap to have cable. And our piece of shit antenna wasn’t picking up much of a signal beyond a couple of snowy channels. After Gerald left, I basically curled up in my bedroom. I didn’t even want to walk outside.”
Maya nodded.
“It didn’t seem to faze you too much.” Cameron had picked up her pace, matching Maya stride for stride as the conversation distracted them both from the beginning rise in elevation.
“Yeah, well, in my line of work, you have to learn how to keep your cool and make sure your head is clear. People’s lives are on the line.”
“I don’t know how you do it. Some asshole pinches my ass after I deliver a pitcher of watered-down beer to his table, and I wanna claw his eyes out.”
Maya laughed, imagining some drunkard getting smacked around by this scrawny woman. Cameron laughed along with her after a moment, shaking her head and staring back to the horizon.
“To be honest, Cam, I don’t think I’d be able to stop from kicking his ass in that situation.”
Cameron stopped and shot an exaggerated look at Maya’s backside. “Yeah, well, I’m sure it’d happen to you every night with as ass like that.”
Maya playfully slapped at Cameron’s arm and the younger woman leaned on Maya for a moment as they kept walking.
Cameron stopped laughing, but then threw a wide smile at Maya. “Thanks.”
Maya huffed. “For what?”
“For protecting us. And for getting me out of that damn house.”
“It’s not like you gave me much choice on that.”
“True. But at least I gave you some interesting company.”
Maya grinned and nodded. She could almost forget this was the woman Gerald had wrecked their marriage over. The cheap stripper of a white-trash bitch who had stolen her husband. But, like many things in life, this seemed to be more complicated than what she had originally thought. Maya had seen another side of Cameron. Hell, this was the only side she’d seen.
They’d been chatting for so long that, when Maya looked ahead again, they had reached the top of the hill. She stopped. Cameron had been breathing heavy for the last several minutes, her legs getting sloppy again. Maya couldn’t carry the woman, and if Cameron passed out, she also wouldn’t be able to leave her behind.
“Hey, you wanna rest here for a few minutes?”
Cameron shook her head. “We don’t have to. I know you want to keep going.”
“It’s okay. We can sit here and eat, and then get—”
A faint voice came from around the bend, about fifty yards ahead. Maya glanced at Cameron, who kept slogging along.
“What?” Cameron asked, her head tilted and her eyes tight.
“You didn’t hear that?”
“Hear what?”
Maya put her finger to her lips, signaling for Cameron to be quiet. She stood still, her eyes closed. There it was again. She looked at Cameron, and saw that the woman’s eyes were big, her mouth open.
“People,” Cameron said with a breathy whisper.
She moved to begin hurrying toward the bend in the road, but Maya grabbed her arm to stop her. Cameron looked back and shrugged.
“What? Let’s go.”
“We need to be cautious. Yes, the people might be friendly, but they might not be. It’s a different world out here now.” Maya thought about the people they’d found in the old tunnels beneath Nashville, and then some of those who she and Reno had encountered at the warehouse, as well as the women held hostage at the school.
Maya put her finger to her lips again, then gestured to the bend as she headed for the shoulder of the road and the tree line. Cameron followed, both women silent and walking from heel to toe. When they came closer to the bend in the road, Maya turned and whispered to Cameron.
“Wait here.”
With that, Maya stepped over a guard rail and dashed from one tree to another until she was far enough around the bend to see the road, her body concealed by the trunk of a massive oak.
Several people stood in the middle of the highway about thirty yards away. They had lined up to face each other, every man wearing jeans and black leather jackets with black boots. They looked like a motorcycle gang having a club disagreement.
Maya turned and waved at Cameron. She followed Maya’s steps, keeping herself hidden from tree to tree.
“What’s going on?”
Maya shook her head. “I’m not sure. Looks like they’re about to fight.”
A man with the group on the left stepped forward. Although Maya couldn’t see much from this distance, she could see he had a long, white beard and matching ponytail. The sun sparkled off the black lenses of his sunglasses. He’d begun shoving his finger into the chest of a man with the group on the right. This guy had a red bandana over his face like a cowboy out of an old western. But he wasn’t saying anything—just standing there while Grey Beard continued yelling and thumping Bandana’s chest.
Maya saw Bandana fall a split second before she heard the sound of the pistol fire. Grey Beard had pulled a handgun, placed it on Bandana’s forehead, and pulled the trigger. The men standing with Grey Beard drew weapons, and Maya could see the cold steel in the sunlight. The men who had been standing with Bandana put their hands in the air.
Cameron started to cry beside her, and Maya immediately reached over and covered her mouth with her hand.
Another round of gunfire erupted as Grey Beard’s men mowed down their rival crew even though they’d clearly raised their hands to surrender.
Maya tried to take a deep breath, but was distracted by the sobs rising from Cameron’s chest. The woman started to whimper and then broke into a good cry. Maya looked back at the scene of the massacre as Grey Beard’s crew hovered over their dead enemies, stripping them of anything valuable. They walked toward a collection of motorcycles and pickup trucks, and Maya felt her heart beating in her chest. She looked around, seeing only a few trees bordering a wide, open field.
“We have to move. Now.”
Maya turned away from the tree, grabbing onto Cameron’s shirt. The woman stood slowly as Maya pulled harder. The bikers revved their engines and then the first truck pulled onto the highway, heading toward them.
Holding Cameron’s hand, Maya ran. She saw a culvert near the guard rail and took two steps before diving into it, pulling Cameron along.
“Get low!” She put her hand on the top of Cameron’s head and shoved her down.