by Kyle Noe
“Okay, so it’s safe to come out y’all!” Arnel shouted.
A dozen figures emerged from the shadows. Most were boys, but there were a few girls as well. The majority were younger than Samantha, but a few were older by two or three years.
Arnel traded looks with Samantha and pointed to the food. “We scavenge what we can. I mean, we’re working on growing some stuff, but we’re not there yet.” He reached down and grabbed a soda, tossing it to Samantha. She popped the top and took a long pull from it. Not having touched anything sugary since the invasion, the sweetness of the soda overwhelmed her and nearly caused her to swoon.
“How long have you guys been here?” she asked.
Carter pointed toward a faraway wall which was tagged by scores of white chalk marks.
“I’ve been here since the second day,” Carter said. “They took my mother and father away, so my uncle brought me here. He used to work on the second floor making these little parts for machines.”
“What happened to your uncle?” Samantha asked.
“What the hell happens to everyone,” Blake said. “He went outside and never came back.”
Arnel handed a bag of chips to Samantha along with a pouch of what looked like baby food. She had no idea what was in the pouch, but it didn’t matter. She gulped the food down in less than a minute.
“Where’d you learn to handle yourself like that back there?” Arnel whispered to Samantha. “I mean, Blake talks a lot of smack, but he ain’t no pussy.”
She looked up, using a sleeve to wipe her mouth. “My mother taught me to defend myself.”
“Your mom taught you how to hold your ground, huh?”
Samantha nodded. “She was a Marine.”
Arnel’s face fell. Samantha could read the look in his eye
“What?” she asked. “What is it?”
He looked at her, trying to decide if she was ready, it seemed, and then said, “It’s just … the Marines. I don’t mean to grief you, but they were all wiped out. Got no idea if that’s fake news or what, but it’s what we heard. I’m sorry.”
Her chest rose rapidly, her fists clenching and unclenching. She didn’t want to hear that. Her mom was alive, she just had to be. Before she could respond, a series of explosions sounded outside, close enough to shake the building. Most of the other kids squealed and darted for cover.
Blake moved toward the other end of the warehouse and Arnel, Carter, and Samantha followed. They climbed a staircase and stopped at a second-floor landing. A massive hole in the wall provided a view of an industrial area which was located on the other side of the river in the general vicinity from where Samantha had just come.
Smoke rose up from dozens of small fires and Samantha could see clusters of drones the size of cars, clattering around the sky over what looked like an old foundry. Something would move on the ground, and the drones would open fire with rockets that churned up the earth, knocking down small pods of what she could see were resistance fighters like tenpins.
“We’ve got to help them,” Samantha muttered.
Arnel shook his head. “Do we look like soldiers to you?”
“They’re all gonna die unless we do something,” she replied.
Arnel didn’t reply, turning instead and moving back across the warehouse. Samantha followed. She watched Arnel grab a few granola bars and snug earbuds connected to an old cellphone into his ears. He cranked some music and slumped against a wall, slowly grooving to the tunes. Having been on her own for several weeks, Samantha had forgotten what little manners she once had. She slapped the cellphone away from Arnel.
“The hell is the matter with you?!” he thundered. “I give your ass some food and a place to coop, and you smack my shit away?!”
She pointed back toward the far wall. “Those are our people out there!”
Arnel pursed his lips. “Maybe yours, but they sure as shit ain’t mine.”
Samantha just stared at him. “I’ve been on the run for two weeks.”
Arnel looked at the ground and twirled a finger. “Big whup.”
Samantha ignored this. “I’ve seen people die, good people, because there was nobody who was willing to do something about what’s been happening. I’m tired of running.”
Arnel looked up at her. “Have you looked in the mirror?”
“I don’t have a mirror,” Samantha replied.
“Because you’re barely five-foot-tall and maybe a hundred pounds if I tossed you in the river.”
Samantha glared at him. “You gotta punch above your weight, that’s what my mom always said.”
At this, Arnel smirked. “You’re crazy, girlie, you know that?”
She tapped her boot on the ground. “Runs in my family.”
Arnel rose and followed Samantha back over to the others.
“They’re using Swans,” Samantha said along the way. “The flying drones, the smaller ones. They’re called Swans.”
Arnel shot her a glance. “Swans? Who came up with that name?”
Samantha shrugged. “I just liked it, that’s all.”
“Okay, so tell me why I should care about the Swans?”
“Because I’ve seen them before,” she said, and then smiled, “and I kinda know a way to beat them.”
Samantha, Blake, Arnel, Seth, and Carter crouch-ran through the tall grass at the rear of the building. They skidded down the riverbank and stopped in front of an area of freshly turned earth. There was a chain on the ground. Arnel grabbed the chain and pulled back, yanking open a metal box that had been buried under a few inches of dirt.
Inside the metal box were several old shotguns, pistols, an axe, a crossbow, and a red, plastic container of what smelled like gasoline.
“This is all we got,” Arnel said.
She nodded, and they grabbed the weapons. Arnel hoisted a shotgun, Blake took the axe, Seth the crossbow, and Carter and Samantha the pistols.
Arnel stared at the shotgun. “You do know this is like taking a butter knife to a gunfight.”
Samantha smirked. “I’ve got a secret weapon.”
The boys’ eyes enlarged in anticipation. Samantha took out her cellphone and flashed it. Their faces instantly fell.
“Wow. Okay,” Blake said. “I mean… super chick here has got a friggin’ cellphone.”
“It’s special,” Samantha said.
“A… special cellphone,” Arnel said, sighing.
Blake looked at the other boys. “We’re all dead.”
Before anyone else could respond, Samantha pocketed the cellphone and dropped down the banks of the river, the other boy setting off after her. She spotted a wooden bridge, two sixteen foot boards that sagged across the water. Leading the boys across the river, she kept low, dropping into the kind of loose surveillance her mother had once taught her. She knew she had to assess the enemy quickly while being mindful of the limits of her assets. A few kids armed with popguns wouldn’t stand a chance against the aliens, but if she could get within range of one of the Swan drones, she might be able to seriously mess with the bad guys, just like she’d done back in Ohio.
The kids crouched behind an overturned, earth-moving machine and waited. Smoke filled the skies over the city, and the staccato report of gunfire ricocheted off the walls of the buildings that were still standing. They covered their heads when a glider shot by overhead. Gunfire from the ground rang out, and Samantha could see several resistance fighters, hiding behind a barricade of debris, firing out their weapons.
A humming filled the air, and soon, one of the smaller drones, a swan, circled by. The machine was close enough that Samantha could see the air roil as the drone’s thrusters powered it in a circular motion. The Swan soared up and then dropped down and let loose with several small rockets that hammered the resistance positions.
Blake aimed his shotgun at the drone, but Samantha pushed the barrel down. She pulled out her cellphone and powered it up.
“What the hell are you doing?” Blake sneered. “Taking a sel
fie?”
“Watch and learn,” she replied.
“You some kinda hacker?” Arnel asked.
She shook her head. “No, but I’ve got some skills.”
Samantha swiped a finger over the phone’s “Grabber App,” which was old-school, but still functioned. Samantha had been told it was the same kind of App guerrilla forces had used to bring down American drones in a war fought many year before on the other side of the world. A power bar appeared on the phone’s screen along with a ‘throbber’ icon that let her know that the phone was performing an action in the background. The other boys gathered around Samantha who gestured to the phone. “The drones have some kind of embedded I.D. and encryption codes, but they made a mistake. They didn’t destroy our satellites and they’re using their feeds to communicate,” she whispered, “so I’m gonna disconnect the Swan drone from its controller and accept the commands from me, the skyjacker,” she said.
Arnel glanced at her with expectant eyes. “Okay, I’m nodding here and just pretending like I have some idea of what the hell you’re talking about. Just wanted you to know that.”
Another image popped up on the phone. The word “Encrypted” blinking red, and then Samantha looked up to see the drone arcing around, toward her position.
“It’s coming back,” Carter said.
Samantha focused on her phone. “Relax.”
Blake white-knuckled his shotgun. “Relax my ass, I’m gonna take that thing down!”
“You can’t!” she replied.
“Better than sitting here and waiting to die!”
Arnel nudged Samantha, whispering to her, “You do know what you’re doing, right?”
“Kinda,” Samantha replied.
“Kinda?!”
She nodded as Arnel groaned. “If you get me killed, I’m gonna be seriously pissed at you.”
A grim smile tugged at her lips, and then the phone’s screen blinked green, a line appearing through the word “Encrypted.” Animation appeared on the screen next, an image of a video controller. Samantha tapped the keys on the controller, and the drone immediately broke off its attack and veered away.
Arnel grinned, not believing his eyes. “Holy crap.”
Seth laughed. “She’s got control of it!”
Samantha maneuvered the drone away, and the other boys could see that she was flying it now. She tapped the phone, energized, watching the drone accelerate. The screen flashed red, and she knew from before, from the time when the resistance fighter named Carroway had schooled her on how to hack the drones, that the alien craft was fighting to regain control over itself. There were only seconds before she lost command over it, so she did the only thing she could do. She powered the friggin’ alien machine up and flew it down and directly into the other drone that was strafing the resistance position.
CRACKBOOM!
The two drones impacted and disappeared in a fireball that smeared across the ground. Debris flew into the air, including a hunk of metal that landed near Samantha’s boots. She paused and then grabbed the metal and slipped it into her backpack which was filled with some clothes, a few meal replacement bars, photographs, and a toy robot with detachable, oversized fists she’d nicknamed Zeus. Samantha had never taken to glitzy toys, preferring instead to play with robots and dinosaurs when she was younger. She closed her backpack and looked up to see the other boys staring at her. “What?”
Arnel pointed at Samantha’s cellphone. “I need to get me one of those!”
Samantha blew imaginary smoke from the cellphone, twirling it like a six-shooter as a man shouted, “What the hell are you kids doing up there!”
Samantha looked up to see a haggard resistance fighter plodding toward them. The man was carrying a rifle and was clad in urban camouflage. The other boys tensed as the fighter drew up on them.
“You hear me?” the fighter said. “Haven’t you looked around? It is life and death serious out here. You could get yourselves killed, so best go off to your mothers and fathers.”
Blake stood up. “Where you been, man? Mothers and fathers are in very short supply around here.”
Carter nodded, gesturing to the sky. “The beetles took them all away.”
Samantha held the fighter’s gaze. “Besides, it wouldn’t matter anyway. We’re not kids anymore. We’re fighters.”
The resistance fighter laughed wearily. “Yeah, that’s cute, little lady, but you need to leave the serious stuff to the big boys.”
Arnel gestured at the drones. “You don’t understand, Mister. She took those suckers down.”
Blake nodded. “She downed the drones. She saved your asses.”
The resistance fighter cocked an eye at Samantha. “What’s your name, young lady?”
“Sam.”
“I’m Detwyler,” the fighter replied. He gestured at Samantha’s cellphone. “Mind telling me where you got that from?”
She smiled back. “At the place where such things are gotten.”
Samantha and the other boys were escorted by Detwyler to a resistance enclave, the basement of a municipal organization that used to oversee such things as the city’s sewers and gas pipes and water. They dropped down a stairwell, passing rusted fallout shelter signs. There was a guard standing watch before a thick fire door that swung open to reveal underground rooms and passages.
The procession moved deep down into the ground, toward a multipurpose room of sorts that was short, but wide. A generator hummed somewhere in the distance, the overhead lighting flickering. Samantha saw twenty or thirty resistance fighters planning, reviewing what she assumed was intelligence, or readying weapons and gear for various operations. Some of the fighters looked up, surprised to see a bunch of kids. One of them, a muscular woman with short brown hair, cast a look in the direction of Samantha and the others.
“Running a daycare now, Detwyler?” the woman asked.
Detwyler mimed a laugh. “I found ‘em back a ways, Janey. The girl here claims she downed those two drones with her PDA.”
The woman motioned for Samantha and the kids to draw near, and they did.
“Who are you?” the woman asked.
“Concerned citizens,” Samantha replied. The boys smiled at this, the woman did not.
“My name’s Jane, and I’m a One-Zero around here, one of the people in charge of this outpost. Now, I know you folks are young, but I’d appreciate some answers. I’ll ask it again. Who are you?”
“We’re all orphans, lady,” Arnel replied. “I’m Arnel, that’s Seth, Carter, and Blake. And the girl’s name is—”
“Samantha,” Samantha said. “But you can call me Sam.”
Jane nodded. “I’m sorry to hear about your folks, but what we’re doing here is very serious. We’ve got no time to change diapers.”
Arnel gestured at Detwyler. “Don’t know if you heard it not or yet, Ma’am, but we just took down two of those drones.”
Samantha held her cellphone out. “I got that from a resistance fighter. Before he was killed, he showed me how to use it. There’s an App you can use to snag the aliens’ signal, but only for a little while. Somebody told me the aliens didn’t have their own satellites so they gotta use ours to communicate. Pretty sure it’s an oversight on their part.”
Jane perused the cellphone, and Samantha. “How old are you, Samantha?”
“Old enough to know not to answer that,” Samantha replied. “And like I said, it’s Sam.”
Detwyler and Jane shared a look. Detwyler nodded, then turned to the kids. “Here’s the quick and dirty. We’ve barely got any ammunition left and hardly any food, but if you wanna stay and work your way up, you’re welcome to bunk here. We’ve got plenty of space down in the tunnels which are blastproof and safe, at least for the moment.”
An hour later, Samantha and the boys were milling about at the back of the multipurpose room, helping to stack ammunition crates and bags of rice and powdered eggs. Arnel and Blake finished stacking several crates and then Arnel sauntered over t
o Samantha. He could barely look her in the eye. “You’re not staying, are you?” Samantha asked, appraising him.
“How’d you know?” Arnel asked.
“I been around enough people who left me that I know the look.”
Arnel nodded. “Me and the boys decided that we’d rather rule over in our little kingdom, rather than serve here.”
“Besides,” Carter said, walking over, “the other kids back at the warehouse are really young. They’re counting on us.”
Samantha nodded, and Arnel threw a mock jab at her. “What about you, boss?” he asked, bobbing his head at Jane and Detwyler. “You gonna throw in with us, or stick around with the dinosaurs?”
She smiled. “Think I’m gonna hang for a while. Somebody’s gotta make sure they don’t get killed.”
Arnel laughed. “You always got a place with us across the river if things don’t work out.”
“You worried I can’t handle my business?”
“That is the last thing I’m worried about,” Arnel replied with a smile.
Arnel held up a fist, but Samantha ignored it and hugged him, hugged all of the other boys including a reluctant Blake. Then the boys vanished back down a corridor, and Samantha was left with the resistance fighters. She saw Detwyler shrugging on a tactical vest before grabbing a large rucksack.
She moved in front of him as he tried to exit the room. “You leaving?”
“Going out on a LRP,” Detwyler replied. “Long range patrol.”
“Care for some company?”
“You just got here,” Detwyler said.
“I get antsy, Mister Detwyler. My mother said I’ve got a bit of ADHD.”
“She really say that?”
Samantha conjured up a high-wattage smile.
“Give me one good reason why I should let you come along with us,” Detwyler said.
“Because I’m looking for my mother, and I figure I don’t stand much of a chance finding her at the bottom of a bunker.”
Detwyler looked around, then chewed on his lips. “I guess there isn’t an age requirement for being a bullet stopper. You wanna come with us, that’s your decision. Just be sure to bring that cellphone of yours.”