The bugs traveled in groups usually, buzzing around each other like insects. They got in and out of their nest by climbing up the vines, and from a distance it looked like an army of bugs crawling up a wall. That’s why we’d started calling their homes hives. And because we thought of them as bugs that we wanted to exterminate.
But it hadn’t taken long for extermination to seem impossible, and even though I’d hated to admit defeat, I had resigned myself to the life I’d been living. Cramped into this building, living in darkness and filth with hundreds of other people. The last four and a half years hadn’t been perfect, but it had been something. Something almost resembling a life in the middle of what should have been disaster. It had been comfortable, and almost happy at times. I’d made friends.
Only now it seemed that it had all been an illusion. Somehow we had gone full circle and I now found myself asking the same question I’d asked five years ago. How do we get rid of these things?
I was terrified they’d show up in the middle of the night, so I didn’t sleep. I also didn’t leave Bryan’s side. He was dead to the world, lying on his back with his mouth open so wide that a low vibration echoed from this throat. I sat on the floor watching him sleep. My backside had gone numb, but I had nowhere else to go so I tried to content myself with shifting to another position. It didn’t seem to work.
The wick was lit and the burning scent of animal fat was almost comforting. I had clung to routine over the last five years, telling myself that it was the closest I would ever get to normal again, but it hit me that all of that could change today, because the aliens could be headed into the city at this very moment.
We had to be ready.
I wasn’t in the habit of taking things lying down. Never had been. Back when my dad died and we were struggling, I got a job as soon as I could. I babysat, walked dogs, mowed grass, and did every other menial task I could just to bring home an extra twenty bucks. When I turned sixteen I got a real job on top of all that, and when Michael and I started dating and his family treated me like shit, I didn’t go home and cry into my pillow. No, I looked him straight in the eye and told him it was their loss. If they didn’t want to get to know me because they thought I was trash that was their problem, not mine. I kept my head held high and stayed for the entire birthday party even though Michael was ready to storm out. I didn’t smile and pretend that I was okay with what they were doing, but I looked them straight in the eye with an expression that said you can’t chase me off.
And I was going to do the same thing now. I’d dropped out of the platoon four and a half years ago because it had been pointless. We’d never made any headway and the aliens weren’t threatening us anymore. They didn’t attack us unless we attacked them, so I decided that it was time to move on and start living my life. After that the platoons that were still out started seeing them less and less until the bugs had eventually burrowed into their hives and sealed themselves off. But they were back, and if they were a threat again, I wasn’t going to sit idly by and do nothing. It was time for action.
I left Bryan in my room and headed downstairs. Both his platoon and the one that had come back with them had taken serious hits, but we had people. Men and women who had settled here because, like me, they’d thought we were safe. I knew these people, had lived with them for more than four years now, and there was no way they’d sit by and let the aliens get the advantage.
I found Sergeant Anderson right where I knew he’d be, pouring over maps of the area with a couple platoon guys who had only sustained mild injuries. Alvarez was with him, and even Alex had joined the crowd in the room. He nodded to me when I walked up, and he looked as ready for action as the sergeant and Alvarez did. They weren’t the only ones either. Standing around were close to a dozen men and women I passed every single day in these halls, and most of them looked ready to bolt out the door and rip these aliens a new asshole—assuming they had assholes. We didn’t have a clue about that.
“What’s the plan?” I asked when I stopped next to them.
Anderson barely looked up. “No plan. We don’t have enough people. We’re trying to decide where we can evacuate to.”
Evacuate? He couldn’t be serious.
I looked around and saw the same incredulity on the faces of those around him, but no one argued and I realized they agreed with him because, as much as I hated to admit it, we didn’t have enough man power. We were good on weapons, we’d raided the base and every gun shop and police station within twenty miles when this all started, but we needed people to fire the guns. We needed adults who were willing to head out, knowing that they might not make it back. That was something we seriously lacked.
“They could be on their way here. There has to be something we can do,” I said.
Around the room, people nodded, and Anderson finally looked away from the map. His dark eyes held mine as he said, “What?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out.
“They’ve been here for five years and we’ve barely seen them,” Anderson said before I’d had a chance to come up with anything that might be helpful. “We still don’t know where they came from and we have no clue what their weaknesses are. Assuming they have some. Our bullets don’t penetrate their exoskeletons, if that’s what they are. Hell, for all we know they’re wearing armor. We know nothing about these things.”
“Our explosives have been known to kill them,” I argued. “Grenades. We have grenades. And we can make other bombs if we have to. We have the supplies.”
Anderson lifted his eyebrows but said nothing. He didn’t have to because I knew what he was thinking. Grenades had taken out the few aliens I’d seen killed, but in order for them to work the creatures had to be in very close range when they went off. Which required them to be holding still—or just dumb luck. But they were fast. They could scale a building or tree in seconds, and once they were up they’d blend in and disappear. Even out in the open they were hard to get because they were nearly impossible to pin down.
What we needed was to get inside the hive.
“They need us,” I said, holding his gaze. “Bryan told me that he saw hollowed out bodies inside the hive. Like the aliens were using us as incubators for their young.”
I could tell Anderson had heard the same thing because he didn’t blink, but not everyone else standing around was as unaffected by the revelation as he was. Alex jerked like he’d been slapped, and behind him a few people swore. Thinking about it made me sick, but I realized that it could be our best chance. If we let them capture us and take us into the hive while we were loaded down with explosives, we could set them off and wipe the whole population out. Of course, I wasn’t acknowledging how that would turn out for the people who volunteered for the mission, or the fact that it would only take out that one hive, not the others spread out all over the country.
“Diana,” Alex said after a moment of silence, and I could tell by the expression on his face that he knew what I was thinking. “Are you out of your mind?”
“No.”
The word came out so firm that everyone else seemed to get the gravity of what I was suggesting. I heard protests and whispers that I was crazy, but I never looked away from Anderson. I very well may have been crazy, but I knew this could work. He knew it too. I could see it in his eyes.
“It’s suicide,” he finally said.
“If they come here I’m dead anyway. At least this way I go out fighting.”
Anderson shook his head. “We’ll call that plan B.”
“What’s plan A?” I snapped.
“Amp up patrols. We don’t even know if they’re coming or if they’re going to try to take any of us. I know what everyone saw inside the hive, but we have no idea what really went on in there, or what we can expect to happen next. All we know is that we need to keep our eyes and ears open.”
I wanted to argue, to tell him that it was stupid to sit here and wait for the aliens to come get us, but I had to admit that he had a point.
Of course they defended themselves when the platoon blew a hole in their hive, and of course they chased the soldiers. That didn’t really mean they were coming here, and the bodies in the hive could have been anything. Bryan was only making an educated guess, and while it seemed like a good one, there was no way to prove it with the information we had on hand.
I hated feeling useless and helpless, and that was how I felt right now. Like I had been backed into a corner and had no chance of escape.
“Fine,” I snapped even though I didn’t disagree with Anderson. I pulled the gun I’d failed to turn back into Tania out of the holster on my hip in a desperate attempt to add some severity to the situation, as if we needed it. “I’m going out on patrol now.”
“You should get some sleep,” Anderson warned.
I just shook my head as I headed off.
Alex jogged to catch up with me, but I didn’t glance his way. “You aren’t going out there against Anderson’s orders, are you?”
“No.” I glared at Alex out of the corner of my eye. “And I don’t take orders from Anderson. I’m not in the militia or the home guard. Not anymore.”
“Which means you can’t get explosives,” Alex pointed out. “Only guns.”
I snorted. “Like it matters. If I’m out on patrol with this—” I waved my pistol in front of him. “—and those assholes show up, I’m screwed. I might as well be throwing rocks at them for all the good these bullets do.”
“I know, but what’s the alternative? Let people run around with live grenades?”
“I guess not,” I muttered.
Alex veered to the right, heading for the infirmary, and I followed. He was probably going in for a shift, but I wanted to check on Daisy and see how Tyler was doing.
“Going to see Daisy?” he asked, a small grin playing on his lips despite the tension still hanging between us.
“She’s still there, right?”
He let out a little chuckle as he nodded. “She is. It’s like she’s suddenly decided to be Florence Nightingale or something.”
The snort he let out was condescending enough to earn him a glare, but I had to admit that I’d never seen Daisy this attached to one of her flings before. I wasn’t sure if she really had feelings for Tyler or if it was just the drama of the situation. It was also possible that Daisy would have reacted this way if any of the guys she’d slept with came in injured. She liked to have a good time, but she wasn’t heartless.
I could hear the echoes of coughing when I was still a good ten feet from the door and it almost made me turn around. I’d seen people die from the alien flowers before and it wasn’t a pretty thing to watch. If inhaled directly the poisonous pollen would kill instantly, but it also stayed potent for a while after being released and could affect people who were a good ten feet away. In small quantities the body could fight it off, but depending on how much was inhaled, it could also lead to a very slow and painful death.
Alex and I stopped in the doorway of the infirmary. There were more people crowded in the small room than I’d ever seen before. Many of them only had nasty cuts, but there were also a few who were coughing up blood, and the urge to cover my mouth and nose came over me even though I knew I couldn’t catch what these men had. It was easy to distinguish the soldiers who had inhaled a lot of the poison from the ones who hadn’t. There were two of them. Two big guys who seemed to take up the entire bed they were laid out on, who had skin that had been drained of color and was dotted with sweat. Who had blood seeping from their ears and eyes and noses. They stared up at the ceiling like they were begging to die, but I knew it would be hours before their bodies succumbed to the poison flowing through them.
Thankfully, Tyler wasn’t one of those men. He was at the other end of the room with Daisy at his side. She was holding his hand and chattering away, and to my relief he looked much better than he had when I’d seen him only a short time ago. He’d stopped coughing as far as I could tell and had regained some of the color he’d lost. He must have only inhaled a tiny amount of the pollen.
I tore my gaze away from my best friend and turned to face Alex. “He’s going to be okay?”
“Yeah. His lungs sound clear already and he’s stopped coughing up blood.” Alex’s expression darkened when he looked toward the other two men, the ones who were struggling to breathe as their lungs slowly filled up with fluid. “Not everyone got so lucky.”
“Why the hell weren’t they wearing masks?” I muttered.
“Cocky bastards,” Alex said, as if that explained it all.
Of course, that was his answer for everything the militia did. He’d never been in on the fight, not even back in the beginning, and his arrogant dismissal of the men and women who chose to be in the militia irked me sometimes. I’d given it the old college try, which meant that I’d earned my right to be cynical.
I’d signed up for the militia right off. Had learned to shoot and fight and had put myself on the front lines even though I’d been less equipped for it than Alex had. He at least had been in shape, because before all this he’d been obsessive about going to the gym and running every day. I’d been a teenager who hadn’t lost all her baby weight and had never run more than a mile in her life.
Alex’s medical training had been his excuse for not putting himself on the front lines, and while it was a good one—we needed doctors—I couldn’t help wondering if there wasn’t more to it. If the macho persona many of the soldiers exuded made Alex feel inadequate and insecure somehow. If he was projecting his hate from a previous life onto these men when it wasn’t necessary. Most of these guys, like Bryan for example, hadn’t been in the military before. Most of them would have created very different lives for themselves if they’d had a choice, but they didn’t. None of us did anymore.
“Maybe,” I mumbled.
Alex’s brows lifted and I could see the disappointment in his eyes. Typically I was in a hurry to agree with him about how idiotic the militia was, but things were different now. Now we knew that even though the bugs had been quiet, they hadn’t been totally inactive. They were a threat, and I was starting to think the militia had been the smart ones while those of us in the settlement had been in serious denial about what was really going on.
Daisy spotted Alex and me standing in the doorway and waved to us. I pushed off the doorframe and headed across the room, but he didn’t move.
“Are you coming?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at him.
He shook his head. “I need to do my rounds.”
We both glanced at the two men who were slowly being killed by the poison. There had been dozens of times over the years when I’d been glad I wasn’t Alex—like when he’d had to perform an emergency C-section with less than ample lighting, or when someone came to him in horrible pain and he had nothing to offer—but this one topped them all.
“I’ll see you later,” I whispered.
He only nodded in response.
I left Alex behind and headed over to join Daisy and her man candy. She was on the edge of the bed chattering away like a bird, and I could honestly say that I’d never seen her this dedicated to a man. Even when she and Alvarez had their fling few people had known about it. They’d barely spoken during the day even though she’d spent every night in his room for weeks. I’d only found out by accident when I caught her skulking down the hall at the crack of dawn, walk of shame style. Not that Daisy had ever been ashamed.
“Look Tyler, my bestie came to check on you.” Daisy flashed her ridiculously white teeth at the man on the bed beside her.
I rolled my eyes. “Bestie? How old are you Daisy?”
“There are some things that never change, even during the apocalypse, and asking a woman her age is one of them,” she retorted.
I rolled my eyes yet again because I knew she was only twenty-five, but Tyler just laughed. The sound came from deep in his chest and seemed to match his physique, which was broad and solid.
“How’s Bryan?” he asked when his laught
er had faded away.
“He’s worn out more than anything, I think.” I paused and looked down. “And mad at himself. He put everything he had into saving Hendrix and a couple others, but he failed.”
“Those things were everywhere.” Tyler’s face scrunched up like he was going to spit or swear, but his eyes darted toward Daisy and his expression softened. “Foster likes to think he’s a god, but he’s not. Nobody could have done it.”
“He puts others first. That’s the sign of a good man.” The look Daisy shot me said don’t screw this up.
“I put others first,” Tyler said defensively.
“Oh, I remember.” Daisy grinned down at him. “In fact, once you’re all nice and healed you can spend a little more time putting me first.”
Tyler chuckled again. “I’m the one who’s hurting. Maybe you should put me first this time.”
“You make a very convincing argument,” she purred as she ran her fingernail down his arm. “In fact, you rest up enough to get cleared to leave, and I’ll be sure to take special care of you.”
“All of me?” Tyler asked.
“Every. Single. Inch.”
I rolled my eyes and took a step back. “And that’s my cue to leave.”
Neither one of them looked at me as they muttered their goodbyes. This was something I wasn’t used to seeing: Daisy actually putting herself out there. She was great at flirting and had no qualms about making a big spectacle of saying goodbye to her most recent partner, but making promises was not her thing.
The Blood Will Dry Page 10