by Matt Ryan
“Done, but I bet you won’t like what I find.”
Her phone dinged. A text.
Zach: They are lying. Launch protocol 32 from your station.
Samantha: What?
Zach: I’m pinned down right now. The whole meeting was a setup. They are trying to take it from us. Launch 32!
Samantha: I just signed all the releases for a US distribution, Lisa gave me the list.
Zach: Who’s Lisa? 32 do it now! gtg omw
Samantha set her phone on the desk and scrambled to get her laptop open. She sent the mouse to the protocol box and scrolled down to thirty-two. Hesitating, she glanced through her glass wall at Lisa and shook her head. There she stood, holding the phone, probably ordering catering for the floor party. How did Zach not know who she was? He knew everyone.
Samantha pressed thirty-two and clicked on the confirmation. A metal shade slammed over the window behind her. Derek pushed off the wall and drew his gun. She leaned back in her chair and sighed. “I think I’m going to have to get used to you calling me Miss Samantha.”
“YOU THINK HE’S GOING TO be okay?” Hank asked, staring at the machine containing his dad.
“Yeah, he should be fine,” Harris said.
“We have to do something about Earth, Harris.”
“I know, and I’ve already set it up. We could leave now. Your dad is safe here and from the sound of it, Earth needs our help.”
Hank nodded and they discussed a rough plan while walking to the Alius stone. He’d threatened Jack with a few choice words to drive home the importance of taking care of his dad in his absence.
“Can you ride a motorcycle?” Harris asked.
HANK’S BUTT FELT SORE FROM the long ride and he looked suspiciously at the large warehouse outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico. “So that’s where they’re making the cure?”
“Yes.” Harris kneeled next to a fence and scanned the area. “Only a couple of guards. Shouldn’t be hard to find out what’s going on inside.”
A nearby shed blocked them from the guards’ line of sight. Barbed wire swirled over the top of the fence and a few blacked-out school buses were the only vehicles parked near the doors of the warehouse.
Their motorcycles were parked a few miles down the dirt road leading to the warehouse. They stuffed them behind a group of bushes and snuck up to the back of the building using the sparse vegetation as cover.
“So, how are we going to get in there?” Hank asked.
“I’m going to the back door, while you—”
Alarms blared out from speakers around the building.
They laid flat against the ground, turning their heads in every direction. Harris brought a gun out. “Something’s wrong. I don’t think that’s for us,” he whispered.
Hank’s breath stirred up dust and he breathed it in with his panting. He wanted to cough it out but refused to make a sound. A guard ran around the building’s corner and punched a code into a panel next to the door. He flung the door open and entered the building.
“They’re on lockdown,” Harris said and then froze. “Hear that?”
“No.”
“Get up.” He grabbed Hank by the arm, lifting him to his feet and pulling him away from the fence.
Hank stood, shocked at Harris’s strength, before running with him. Harris slid into a ditch and lay on the bank. Hank matched him and looked around for the danger Harris was obviously sensing.
Harris rolled in the dirt. “Get dirty, they might not see us.” Harris picked up handfuls and threw it over his clothes.
Hank rolled around, getting his clothes dirty.
Harris stopped and put a hand on him. “Do not move.”
He heard it now. The sound grew and he searched the sky.
“There,” Harris said.
Hank looked in the direction Harris was watching. A group of black helicopters flew toward them. He saw the details of the angled helicopters and the blacked out glass. He pressed his body against the dirt bank and tensed up.
“Stay still, they’re going to fly right over us.”
The helicopters roared overhead and reached the building. Two hovered, while one landed. Dust swirled around the one as men ran out of it.
Black rope lines dangled from the other two and soldiers dropped in quick succession. Hank counted a dozen soldiers on the roof with another six on the ground. The soldiers on the ground threw something on the door to the building and it stuck against it.
An explosion rocked the roof and the door at the same time. The soldiers on the roof dropped from sight, as four of the soldiers on the ground ran into the building. Two stayed in position, next to the door.
“What are they doing?” Hank searched for an American flag or any identifiers beyond the double triangle.
“Must be a militia of some sort. When you’re the only person with a cure for the world’s problems, you’ll get all kinds of unwanted attention.”
“They’re fighting with us?”
“Don’t mistake a common enemy with a friend. They’d shoot at you just the same as they would the people in that building.” Harris peered over the desert grass. “I don’t like this. Something’s not right here.”
Rapid gunfire blasted from inside the building. The two helicopters rose higher into the sky and hovered. More gunfire and an explosion, smoke billowed out from a hole in the roof. The soldiers guarding the outside rushed into the building. More gunfire and two more explosions. A few more scattered shots and then silence. The helicopters thumped away from above but not another sound of gunfire.
“Look!” Hank pointed at the door. A soldier staggered out of the door holding his chest. Blood spilled over his hand and he collapsed to the dirt near the door.
“We’ve got to help him.”
“We step out there and we’ll get shot, Hank. Stay here.”
Hank balled up his fists and hammered the dirt in front of him. He heard a scream from inside the building. Jumping up before Harris could grab him, he made a run for the fence.
Harris yelled for him to stop, but he couldn’t just sit by and watch the man die. Hank reached the fence and threw his jacket over the barbed wire. On his climb up, he felt a hand grasp his ankle. He kicked it off and lunged his body over the fence, striking the ground. He turned back to see Harris cutting a hole through the fence with a laser pen.
“Could have given me a second.” Harris pushed the cut fence in and stepped through. He ducked next to the shed and Hank settled in behind him. Harris peeped around the corner and came back. “That guy’s dead. Sorry, Hank.”
“This may be our best way to get into that place,” Hank said.
“This chaos has formed a nice distraction. We make a run for the building and we have a chance of not getting shot from above. How fast can you run?”
Hank shrugged. “I don’t know, pretty fast I guess.”
Harris nodded, looking like he’d expected a more precise answer. “Three, two, one.”
The smell of smoke hit his nose as soon as they entered the door, and he thought of the burnt building in Ryjack. He remembered carrying Poly to the stone and getting her home. It felt so distant. A building in another world, a place he could escape. But this was Earth.
“Stay close,” Harris whispered and pulled out two handguns.
Hank matched Harris step for step. They walked over a fallen soldier; his frozen, dead eyes looked shocked. Smoke wafted by and the light from the hole in the roof shone down on a cluster of dead soldiers. The long room was too wide for a hallway, with doors on one side. Each one marked with a number. Bullet holes riddled the walls, smears and splatters of blood caked every surface. But it wasn’t just blood, there were splatters of black mixed in with the rest.
“Those aren’t gunshot wounds.” Harris looked at the dead men. “They have cameras on them.”
Hank stared at the slice wounds on one of the soldiers and felt his anger rising. Slain like animals at a slaughter house.
The loud sound of
the helicopter blades took off. Dust blew past the door and down the hole in the roof. Hank watched as the hovering helicopters flew away.
“Retreating,” Harris explained, looking through the hole. “But I bet they’ll be back. Let’s get what we came for and get out of here.”
Hank picked up a rifle off the concrete floor and pointed it at the doors down the hall. Whoever attacked the men, must have come from one of the doors.
Harris raised a hand, stopping to look at the ground. Hank looked around him to see what he was staring at. A long dagger with a curved blade and golden hilt stuck out of one of the soldiers. He knew that blade, seen it many times on another planet.
All of the doors to the hallway flung open and Arracks poured into the space. There was no rush to their movements as they slowly walked toward the two in a seemingly never ending supply. Many carried the long curved daggers in their hands.
Seeing their faces brought back a flood of horrible memories. Hank had watched their leaders die from the cloud that covered their planet. He swallowed and wondered if any of these Arracks were there that day. Would any of them recognize the delivery man?
Harris’s back bumped into his. “Don’t move.”
Both stuffed their guns away and held up their hands. Hank glanced from one set of yellow eyes to the next. The idea of Arracks on Earth choked out any rational thought. As they got closer, some sniffed the air and cocked their heads at the visitors. Many hissed out words Hank didn’t understand.
“I’m sorry, Hank,” Harris whispered.
“Don’t be, I got you into this mess,” he replied.
“Maybe, but if they know who we are, we’re both dead.”
IT’D BEEN TWO HOURS SINCE the announcement came across the radio. The US was getting the cure. Joey stared out the side window. Many people on the freeway had left their cars and now danced in the spaces between. Music blared and the whole freeway seemed to have turned into an impromptu party.
But not everyone was partying.
They also passed piles of dead bodies. People who had got the Cough early were cast out of their cars by the roving groups of people Lucas called the Death Squads.
Joey wanted to be happy for the cure, but wondered if they could truly come back from it all. He thought of the back room at the gas station and shook his head. He never thought his world could get close to the horrors of Ryjack, but in a brief moment, Earth had been transformed into a post-apocalyptic nightmare. Could a person come back from doing such atrocities? Could people forget what they saw and move on with a normal life? Based on watching people from the military come home from wars, he guessed some could and others couldn’t, but everyone would be changed.
Lucas honked the horn and waved at people to get out of the way. Many people walked in between cars, giving them strange looks as they were one of the few cars going the opposite direction. They wanted to get out of the city while the rest of the country would be crowding into every major city, awaiting a shipment of the cure. Julie figured the traffic would lighten as they got away from the city; they had yet to see evidence of it.
The car’s AC blew on Joey’s face, but the noon sun blared down on his black shirt and he felt the heat. He blinked to moisten his eyes, watching a man wearing a face mask drag a body toward another small pile of bodies.
Marcus had killed them. And what made it worse was that he had her. He might even be with her right at that very moment. It dug deep that Samantha chose him over them. Could he really blame her? Joey would have been happy for her to find a man. At this point, he would’ve liked it if she’d rubbed it in his face, but she picked a man set on destroying their world.
Samantha fell for a man who had wrecked all their lives and killed their parents. It was painfully clear she didn’t see that man; he saw the look in her eyes. She really cared for this Zach guy, and it blinded her to what she should be seeing.
He should have tried harder to include her back into the group. How could they be the Preston Six with one of them missing? The Preston Five didn’t feel right. Even knowing Hank was safe in Preston didn’t help the fact they were separated. Joey didn’t feel complete without Samantha in his life. He wanted her as his friend.
Poly touched his arm and offered a smile.
He placed a hand on hers in exchange. She refused to look out the windows, choosing to look at the floor or straight ahead. He thought it endearing she wasn’t numb to it all, she still felt for those around her. Joey felt some of the shock wearing off as they drove by a dead child on the side of the road. Not long ago, it would have rocked their worlds to see such a horrible sight. Now, it didn’t even make idle conversation. He wanted back his innocence, but life had other plans, and it played for keeps.
His hand shook in hers and she gave it a sharp glance. She couldn’t get used to his shakes, no matter how much she tried to hide it. “I’m okay.” He willed it to be a small shake and after a minute it stopped shaking all together.
“With this traffic, we’ll be back in Preston a month from now.” Lucas leaned back and sighed. “Get out of the way.”
“Just chill,” Julie said. “They should be happy, the cure is being delivered to the world.”
“Should they? They have no idea who is delivering it to them.”
Joey would have been happy as well, but Lucas was right, the person delivering it is what caused trepidation.
“I have an aunt in Miami, I hope she gets the cure,” Poly said out loud to herself. She kept her attention on her hands in her lap.
“How many cures do we have left?” Julie asked.
“Eight,” Poly said.
Julie popped the glove box and pulled out a cure box with the ZRB logo on it. “Let me see a vial.”
Poly pulled one from her bag and handed it up. Julie opened the box and held the two vials in sunlight. The one from Vanar was clear, the one from ZRB had a yellow tint to it.
“Looks like urine,” Lucas said.
“It’s different,” Julie mumbled to herself.
“Yeah, probably a different process or something,” Poly said.
“What if it’s a different cure?” Julie paused and set the vials on her lap. “If I had an analyzer attachment to my Pana...” She turned and looked back at Poly and Joey. “On the surface, it looks like he created this Cough and plans to swoop in as the hero of the world and cure it, right? I mean it’s pretty obvious.”
“Sort of like someone kicking you in the balls and expecting a thanks when they hand you a bag of ice,” Lucas interjected.
Julie continued, “I feel there are other motivations at play here. Why change his appearance when we are the only people on the planet who would have any clue who he is? Why take on Samantha? Or is this Zach guy even Marcus? Could we be dealing with some psycho equivalent?”
“To mess with us,” Lucas answered.
“Could it be so petty?” Poly asked. “I mean, look at us. We all jumped aboard, thinking this Zach guy was Marcus, and now, who knows. I agree with Julie, why do this whole production if so few people have any idea who you are?”
“Everything I read on Marcus told me how unpredictable he was; how he’d mastered the art of misdirection. He was able to clear the table of all competitors with his unorthodox tactics. Maybe he is planning something terrible for us. He may hate us in some very real way, but I doubt we are the bigger picture here. We might just be a heckler in the crowd, watching his grand opus.”
“Yeah, but our blood saved him. Why would he be so spiteful to the people who saved him?” Joey asked and rubbed his arms.
“I’ve thought on that and what if we killed the one person he loved?”
Lucas coughed. “That thing was just a computer program.”
“No, it was much more than that. He transported her entire consciousness into it. To Marcus, that program was his mother.”
“And I killed her. . . .”
“A computer version of her, and I suspect he made a copy of her and brought it to Earth wit
h him.”
Lucas sighed. “She tried to kill me, I really didn’t have a choice.”
Joey perked up at the information. Lucas had never spoken of what happened in the bunker with Alice and he didn’t appear to be adding any more to the mystery. He respected Lucas’s privacy. Joey kept his own secret about Unitas. He couldn’t even bring himself to discuss it with Poly.
“We should have killed him on the tarmac,” Julie said.
“We aren’t like that, Julie,” Poly said.
“Really?” Julie asked.
“You haven’t had to deal with killing someone. I’ve killed, Lucas has killed, Hank has killed, and Joey has killed . . . only you have the luxury of a clear conscious.” Poly forced the words out, but it showed on her face she was holding much more back.
“Clear?” Julie turned around and looked at Poly in the backseat. “I’ve been in the same shit right next to you.”
“You didn’t have to stick a knife into a man’s neck and have him cough blood on you—twice—now did you?” Poly was at a near scream. “Nor did you have to stare a man in the eyes while life left them.”
Julie faced forward and crossed her arms.
Joey watched Poly glare at the back of Julie’s head. He took her hand and shook his head. She pulled her hand away and looked out the window for the first time in a long time.
Lucas gave two light taps on the horn. A person slapped the hood of the car and then ran off into the stagnant traffic. “Where is Samantha?”
Julie unfolded her arms in a huff and pulled out her Pana. “She’s still at ZRB headquarters.” One of the few things they got out of the meeting with Samantha was her cell phone. Julie tagged it and now they could track her. Julie’s fingers tapped the screen and she leaned in closer. Her face scrunched up in a mystery.
“What is it?” Poly asked. The malice had left her voice and Joey felt relieved. He hoped Poly and Julie’s squabble wouldn’t last.
“Something’s strange. Her signal is very weak. I think something is trying to block the signal.”