by Morgan Rice
“What do we do now?” Kevin asked, expecting to hear the details of the invasion. He had no doubt that the world ship could capture somewhere like this easily.
“Now,” Purest Lux said, “we destroy it.”
CHAPTER NINE
Luna woke to the sound of snuffling and whining. For a moment, she thought it was some strange dream, and that eventually it would change into the sound of her mother trying to wake her up because she was going to be late for school.
Then she remembered that her school, and her mother, and just about everything else on Earth, was gone, and the sheer pain of that thought was enough to propel her into wakefulness, her eyes snapping open to take in the interior of the storm drains, the morning light coming in at their edge.
She saw the coyotes there, yapping and dragging something, their mouths bloody. It took her a moment to realize what was going on.
“Coyotes! They’ve got Bear’s body!”
She ran forward, trying to scare them off, because she’d heard somewhere that coyotes were usually pretty frightened of people. That might have been the case normally, but maybe the end of the human world had made them bolder, or maybe they were just too hungry to leave a potential meal alone, because they growled and snarled at her, one snapping at her hand.
The pain as it bit her was excruciating, and Luna jerked back, which only made it worse. The bikers were coming forward now, striking at the coyotes with whatever weapons they had, clubs and knives rising and falling. Cub was at their heart, kicking at one of the coyotes to try to make it back away. Luna saw it twist toward him, biting his leg just as it had bitten her hand. She saw Cub wince, but he didn’t cry out. Instead, he struck down at the coyote, and Luna waded in, adding her own kick aimed at the side of one of the creatures.
Finally the coyotes turned and ran, obviously realizing that there were too many humans to take on. Luna saw Cub turn toward the remains of his father, looking horrified by what the coyotes had done. She pulled him back as gently as she could.
“You shouldn’t look,” she said. She didn’t want to look either, but somehow, it seemed wrong to look away. This felt like a world now where they didn’t get the luxury of ignoring the things that were wrong.
“We need to bury him,” Cub said. “We don’t have time but…” He rounded on the other bikers, and although plenty of them were older than him, they still flinched back. “You were supposed to take him deep into the tunnels where this couldn’t happen!”
“It’s not their fault,” Luna said. “It’s not anybody’s fault except the aliens’. If they hadn’t come, then none of this would have happened. There’s nothing they could have done. Nothing you could have done.”
That was the lesson that this world seemed to have for them now: that sometimes it didn’t matter what they did; bad things would happen anyway. To Luna, it seemed like a really harsh lesson to have to learn at their age. It seemed more like the kind of thing to put off learning as long as possible, or even ignore completely.
“I will ignore it,” Luna told herself.
“What?” Cub said.
Luna shook her head. “Nothing.”
She would though. She wasn’t going to accept that there was nothing she could do about the world. If she really believed that, then she might as well sit down, wait for a week, and fade back into control by the aliens. She had to think that there was something they could do if only they got to LA.
Luna knew they weren’t going to be able to go anywhere until they’d buried Bear, though. They might only have a week, and that was assuming that they could get the rest of Ignatius’s vaccine, but she wasn’t going to argue about whether they had enough time for this. Looking at Cub’s face, she knew that no one was.
***
They buried Bear as deep as they could in the hard, rocky ground. Luna took her turn with the digging, although now she didn’t have the strength or the immunity to pain that had made it so easy to do the heavy work of pulling Sedona apart before. Cub kept working until Luna pulled him back, knowing that he would probably work until he dropped in the heat.
“Let the others finish the digging,” she said, as Ignatius and the bikers kept going. The man who had saved them seemed to be working as hard as anyone, as if hoping it would make up for his failure to come up with a more permanent solution.
“He’s my dad,” Cub said.
“That’s why you should think of something to say about him,” Luna said.
“Me? I’m just—”
“I’m pretty sure you’re in charge now,” Luna said. When Cub had started giving orders last night, the bikers had done everything he said, in spite of him being only a little older than her. She reached out to take his hand. “I know it hurts. My parents aren’t dead, but I don’t know where they are, and when I realized that they’d been transformed…”
She half expected Cub to say that it wasn’t the same, and she guessed that it wasn’t. They had hope now that there might be a way to change people back, and maybe that meant that she would see her parents again, and everything would be okay, and…
No, things would never be the same as they were.
“I don’t know if I can do it,” Cub said. “I don’t know if I can stand there and just say goodbye.”
“I’ll be there with you,” Luna promised him. “It doesn’t have to be much, but I think it will be better if you say something. I think you’ll regret it if you don’t.”
“I’ll try,” Cub said.
They waited there for the bikers to finish the grave, lowering Bear’s body into it carefully, with the kind of reverence that said that they were all hurting doing it. Most of them looked drawn, and like they were holding back tears, trying to be tough even though their leader was gone.
Cub looked at Luna as though her hand on his arm was the only reason he was able to get up in front of them. She hoped he would be able to do this. Most of the world hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye to anyone; it felt right that he should, at least.
“I don’t really know what to say,” he said while Luna stood beside him. “My dad… you all knew what he was like. He was the strongest person I ever knew, and the toughest, but he always tried to do the right thing. He taught me… he taught me just about everything,” Cub managed, and to Luna, it felt as though he was about to break down, but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe they all needed time to mourn.
Luna found herself thinking about Bear and the help that he’d given them, but she also found herself thinking about Kevin and Chloe, about her family, and about everyone else they’d lost. In that moment, she didn’t let tears fall only for the big man who had helped them to get through to the alien ships; she cried for the whole world that was gone.
She and Cub stood there while the others filled in the grave. It wasn’t the kind of funeral that was normal, but maybe it was the kind of thing that was right for now. Luna wasn’t sure what she could say to Cub that might make it any better, so she just put an arm around him and stood there while the bikers and Ignatius put back the red earth and leveled off the ground.
They stood there for what seemed like the longest time, and although Luna didn’t want to be the one to force them to go, she knew that she would need to be. The other bikers all had too much respect for Bear, Cub obviously didn’t want to leave his father’s grave, and Ignatius wouldn’t want to risk saying anything when the others already disliked him. That left Luna.
“We need to go,” she said, gently.
Cub looked over at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But we have to. We only have a week.”
Cub was quiet for a moment or two, but then nodded.
“You’re right,” he said. He looked out to the others, raising his voice. “We have to go. Get your stuff. We need to start walking.”
***
They set off walking, trudging together in the direction of LA, and Luna could feel the heat beating down on her with every step. They kept Sedona at their backs, no
t daring to go toward it.
“I wish we’d been able to get the bikes,” Cub said, as the other bikers marched along in a long line.
“If the aliens are looking for us anywhere, it will be in Sedona,” Ignatius replied. “Besides, my stash of vaccine is more important.”
“If it works,” Cub snapped.
Luna put a hand on his arm, keeping the peace. She didn’t like Ignatius much more than anyone else, but at least he’d done his best to save them, risking himself to do it. That had to count for something.
“The energy blasts probably mean the bikes aren’t even there,” she said.
“Yeah,” Cub said, looking downcast. It occurred to Luna just how much those bikes probably meant to them.
“How much further to where you left the vaccine, Ignatius?” Luna asked, trying to distract Cub.
“Not far,” he said. “I put it in an old scrapyard where I would find it. Of course, I counted on being able to just drive back to it, rather than having to walk through a desert.”
“Stop complaining,” Cub said.
They kept walking, the heat of the day growing around them. Luna was sweating already, and she wanted something to drink almost more than anything in the world. Almost; she would have taken Kevin and Chloe coming back ahead of any of it.
They slowed as the heat grew, the effort of walking making it seem as if they wouldn’t be able to keep going much longer. Luna felt as though she had to concentrate just to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Much more of this and they would have to stop. They would have to.
“There,” Ignatius said, pointing.
Luna saw the shine of metal in the distance, although on second glance it wasn’t very shiny. She could see the colors of rust and dust, metal stacked on top of metal in mound after mound, a scrapyard just sitting there behind a chain-link fence.
The sight of it was enough to draw them on, making them hurry forward. It was far enough from the city that it still seemed untouched by the aliens, left silent and still in the desert heat. It seemed like only a short time before they reached the chain-link fence there, large signs proclaiming the consequences for anyone who trespassed.
“There’s no one here,” Ignatius said. “I checked.”
He led the way inside, opening a gate where the chain holding it shut had been cut open. Luna guessed that he’d been the one to do it. He led the way through the scrapyard to a spot where a metal plate stood at the side of a pile of rusted metal pipes. He pulled it away, coming out with a large ice box, from which he started to take vials of blue liquid.
“Here,” Ignatius said, tossing one to Luna. “Drink this.”
Luna caught it, opening it carefully. “This is the vaccine?”
“We’ll see if drinking it helps concentrate the dose.”
Luna didn’t like the idea that Ignatius didn’t know what it would do. Even so, she drank it slowly, ignoring the horrible taste as best she could. Ignatius passed around more of the vaccine to the others and they drank it, not looking happy about it.
“It’s going to be a long way to LA, walking and drinking that,” Cub said.
“Maybe we should look round the scrapyard,” Luna suggested, “see if there’s anything we can use.”
“There isn’t anything,” Ignatius insisted. “I took all the food and water the first time, and the cars are all broken.”
“How broken?” Cub asked, in a thoughtful tone of voice.
“What are you thinking?” Luna asked. There was something about the way he’d asked it that made her hopeful.
“I’m thinking that pretty much everyone in this club has worked on cars and bikes. If we can find some tools, maybe some welding gear… Spread out,” he ordered the others. “See what you can find. Luna, do you want to come with me?”
Luna nodded. “It’s definitely a better idea than walking.”
They started to look around the yard, seeing the piles of cars, the flattened wrecks, and the long-destroyed engines. The first piles weren’t very promising, looking as though no one in the world would ever be able to get them running again.
Then they rounded one of the stacks and Luna saw it.
“It’s perfect,” she said, staring.
“If it will run,” Cub said.
The school bus sat in the middle of it all, big and solid looking, intact except for some of the glass, and looking as though it was only a little way from running down the road.
“It might have problems with some of the cars in the way,” Luna said.
Cub pointed to what looked like the front of an old snowplow, although why something like that was in a scrapyard in the middle of the desert, Luna couldn’t imagine.
“We can fit that to the front,” Cub said, “maybe take some panels and make some armor for the sides.”
“We can make our own tank,” Luna said with a smile. “I like it. If we can do it.”
“We can do it,” Cub promised. “Over here, everyone!”
The bikers came over, and plenty of them had found tools. One of them had a welding rig, while others had grinders and jacks, wrenches and hammers.
“I think whoever owned this liked to work on the better cars,” one said. “What do you want us to do, Cub?”
Cub explained the plan, and if the bikers thought it was a lot, they didn’t say anything. Instead, they swarmed over the bus, getting to work on rebuilding it and reshaping it. They grabbed parts from the scrap heap, cutting at them and placing them, finding ways to make them work. Luna got the feeling that they were happy to have something to do that would actually help.
Luna decided to join in, and even if she wasn’t able to help rebuild parts of the engine or weld things together, she could find pieces of armor plate for it, and help the others to drag metal from the heaps.
Slowly, the bus came together. It looked like the kind of bus kids might have used to go to school in the middle of a war zone, armor covered and hardened against anything that might get in the way. Luna tried to ignore the time that it took to do it; it wasn’t wasted, because once it was done, it would be far quicker than walking.
Even so, it seemed to take forever to come together, but slowly there was less and less to do, and more and more of the bikers stepped back from it. Finally, Cub stood in front of it, a broad smile on his face.
“Is it ready?” Luna asked.
Cub nodded, looking satisfied. “It’s ready.”
CHAPTER TEN
They made Chloe walk down to the flesh factories, ignoring her attempts to pull free of the large, armored hands that held her, treating her attempts to talk to them with contempt. Or maybe just not understanding; after all, the great transformed creatures that led her down there didn’t exactly seem like the cleverest things that had ever been put together.
“Put together” was the right way to think about it, because as they made her walk down through the interior of the factories, she saw creatures literally being constructed, like models being built by some kid ready for painting. She saw a space where red hot armor was being pushed into place onto giant, hairless things that looked like bloated cousins to the Purest. In another spot, things with blades for hands grew in giant glass canisters.
“Where are you taking me?” Chloe demanded. “What are you planning to do with me?”
She tried not to let any of the terror she felt show in her voice. She wanted to be brave, and she didn’t want to give these creatures the satisfaction of knowing just how much this place scared her. She’d learned a long time ago that for some people, seeing fear just meant that they treated you worse. When she’d run away, she’d learned not to show any weakness, and before that…
No, she wouldn’t think about before that. It was even better to stare at the things going on around her than to think about the times before that. At least this was being done by actual monsters, not the kind who pretended to be nice, and normal, and kind in the moments when they weren’t doing worse things.
So she stared
at the horrors around her, refusing to look away, refusing to let them see the way it scared her. That wasn’t easy, though, because there was something truly hellish about that place. There were benches with people and aliens strapped down, screaming as creatures ate their way out of their bodies, being born into the world through the carnage. There was a room where a lizard-like humanoid was pinned to a wall, and a pair of aliens were apparently cutting it open and then waiting while its body healed, faster than Chloe could have believed. There was another room where the only purpose of anything within seemed to be to cause pain, testing and retesting the limits of the people and creatures within.
“I know what you’re doing!” Chloe said defiantly. “I know that you’re trying to scare me, and it won’t work!”
Then she saw the room with the chair in it, and she screamed.
“No! No, I won’t let you take me there, I won’t!”
The room ahead was broad and featureless at ground level except for a chair that reminded her of a dentist’s chair: shining metal and obviously designed to recline flat if needed. There were no straps or restraints on it, but Chloe didn’t let that fool her; she’d already felt how easily the Hive could use gravity itself to hold their victims in place.
Three of the Purest stood near the chair, dressed in long white outfits that reminded Chloe of doctors’ coats. The blank, disinterested way they looked at her as their creatures brought her forward was bad enough. The rest of the room was worse.
Around the room, arranged in tiers that stretched upward, there were seats, so that the chair was at the center of a bull’s-eye of them, allowing those in the seats to look down at everything that went on. More of the Purest sat in those seats, along with some of their lesser creatures, which hung back on the higher tiers, away from their rulers. Chloe had seen a picture of a Victorian dissecting theater once, where doctors had performed autopsies for people to watch and learn from. At the time, she had thought that it was creepy, but kind of cool. Now, it just seemed creepy.