Mother Ship

by Scott Bartlett

  His own losses were nil, and he felt good about that as he slung his safetied M4 over his shoulder and dismounted the logistics truck he’d spent the battle on. The usual drive to keep his men alive, which any good unit commander felt in his bones, was perhaps even more urgent for Ethan. In addition to being master of their craft, his men were, after all, among the last sentient people left on Earth.

  He nodded at a group of soldiers nearby, whose job it had been to let a few of the Ravagers through, pacify them, and to bind their hands and feet with cable ties. Now they stood over the captured crazies with M4s at the ready, in case one of them managed to squirm free of the bonds.

  Janet found Ethan soon after he’d left his post, and his good mood began to evaporate immediately.

  “What the hell was that, Ethan?” Her eyes burned as she confronted him near the door of the M35 where he’d made his bunk. Most of the men slept in bags on the ground, or in truck seats. Being CO had its perks.

  CO of the combat arm, that was. Within GDA’s command hierarchy, Janet outranked him. Meaning she was CO, effectively.

  “Are you referring to our total victory?”

  “The Ravagers got into the camp. I had to shoot two of them myself.”

  Heaven forbid. “So sorry to put you out of your way, Janet.”

  A couple of his men glanced over at them. One of them looked on the verge of laughter. They all knew how much they owed him for absorbing the brunt of Janet’s anger.

  A grin of his own threatened to bubble to the surface, and he fought it down. “We’ll want to break camp first thing in the morning. Won’t take too many hours of sun for this place to reek.” That brought his mind back to the Ravagers who were still alive, moaning in pain all around the camp. Shrieking, some of them. “Permission to put those poor bastards out of their misery?”

  “Definitely not. I won’t have you wasting ammo.”

  He didn’t try to suppress his frown. Janet was just as ice cold as she’d always been. Colder, actually. “They could use their knives.”

  “No. I want these men rested.” She nodded toward the captive crazies. “Now that they’ve transitioned into Ravager mode, I want them tagged right away, then released. Before we break camp. It’s time to start tracking as many as we can. With any luck, they’ll lead us to the asset.”

  They’d come up with this scheme well before any of this had happened—shortly after they’d arrived at their taxonomy for the crazies. The GDA’s behavioral psychologists had expected the alien invaders to use the Ravagers to eliminate those humans who remained sane. Any survivors who banded together would soon find themselves surrounded by Ravagers, in all likelihood.

  The asset would be among those survivors. If he isn’t, we’re all doomed.

  He sniffed. “Do you think our friends from space put in some extra effort to take us out, tonight?”

  Janet shook her head. “If they’d figured out who we are, and thought we were capable of challenging them, they’d just fly a ship overhead and fry us. No, this has to be something they’re implementing worldwide. Tweaking the parameters of humanity’s self-extermination.”

  “The beginning of the end.”

  “Oh, I think we’re further along than that.”

  26

  4 days to extinction

  Max woke next to Tara on a comforter draped over bales of hay stacked tightly against each other. Somewhere distant, a rooster was crowing, and he wondered if its call would attract any Berserkers.

  Maybe it’s on another farm. If that was the case, the bird had probably been abandoned days ago. He wondered if it was getting lonely.

  Two weeks ago, he would have considered the blanket over hay a supremely uncomfortable bed, but compared to the forest floors he’d spent several nights on, the hay bales offered the sleep of kings.

  He probably would have even felt rested, if his sleep hadn’t been plagued by nightmares of Cynthia and Peter Edwards being tortured by a woman whose face was cast in shadow. In the dream, the torturer demanded his location from the couple who’d raised him. She used pliers to pull off their fingernails, and she branded them with hot irons.

  Their screams still echoed in his ears—especially Cynthia’s. The woman he’d called “mother” for twenty years. He felt just as guilty as he’d felt in the dream. And just as helpless.

  Careful not to rock the bales, he scooted to the side of the bed he’d shared with Tara and lowered himself to the floor of the hayloft. That done, he descended the ladder to the barn floor and exited, carefully closing the broad white door so as not to make any noise. Just before it met the frame, a horse whickered at him. Yago, maybe.

  He and Tara hadn’t made love. Max wasn’t confident he would know what to do in that situation, other than the basics. Besides, despite the fact they’d fallen asleep next to each other—and despite the fact she’d kissed him first—he got the impression that Tara wouldn’t let him be with her like that. At least, not until they’d known each other for a while, and maybe not unless they married each other.

  The thought of marrying Tara, and what they’d do after, brought heat to his cheeks. It also made him want to laugh, at how absurd the idea of a wedding seemed in what the world had become.

  Well, maybe it’s possible anyway. If he was going to fight off an alien invasion, he didn’t really expect to survive. But allowing himself to daydream wasn’t hurting anything, was it?

  Inside the farmhouse, he encountered a beehive of activity. The smell of bacon frying hit him immediately—apparently, the power grid was still up and running. As he squeezed through a hallway and then a kitchen packed with people, the sound of water boiling and beans bubbling reached his ears. A wood stove stood in the kitchen’s corner, though an electric stove top was being used to cook breakfast.

  Max wouldn’t have thought it possible for the farmhouse to accommodate this many people, unless they were sleeping four and five to a room. But maybe they were. They had to be.

  Gord Benson sat at one of the two benches that served as seats at the kitchen table, holding court, cracking jokes, and ribbing whoever his eyes fell on. Max’s old principal sat diagonal him, grinning at something Benson had said.

  But most people Max saw were somber, withdrawn. It made sense: everyone here had lost someone, probably in horrific ways. Nevertheless, those not busy with preparing the meal were drawn to Benson, who was clearly the beating heart of the home he’d opened to them. Some people smiled faintly at the man’s antics, and a few laughed. But mostly, people stared in something like disbelief at the strange phenomenon of good spirits in a world gone mad.

  Max pushed through to the living room, where he found Jimmy sitting alone on a piano bench, nursing a plastic mug of coffee. He was staring into the dining room, where people who already had their food were eating in methodical silence.

  “Hey.”

  Jimmy started a little, as if coming out of a trance. Their eyes met for a second before Jimmy’s returned to the people at the table. “Hey.”

  “Sleep well?”

  “As well as you might expect, wedged on a rock-hard mattress between a restless teenager and a fat man who snores.”

  Max nodded. “Apparently a lot of people here want to build bunkhouses around the property, with a turret on top of each one. But Benson’s vetoing it so far. He figures any construction would draw Berserkers with the noise”

  Jimmy frowned. “This place isn’t for me, Max. Maybe you and Chambers want to make yourselves a life here, but I don’t know how much longer I can stomach it.” He met Max’s eyes again. “Who told you about the bunkhouse idea, anyway?”

  Shit. Max searched his thoughts for an answer, suddenly feeling very sheepish as he remembered Jimmy’s plans to hit on Tara.

  A hand clapped onto his left shoulder, saving him from having to respond. But the sight of its owner’s deadly serious face quickly erased his relief.

  “Where’s my daughter, son?” Gord Benson asked, his voice hard and low. “She
wasn’t in her room.”

  Max’s shoulder strained against the weight of Benson’s meaty palm as his heart rate increased. “Uh—I—that is, she—”

  Benson burst into laughter, his face going scarlet with alarming quickness. “I’m messing with you, son. You don’t actually have to answer that question.” He slapped Max on the back before returning to the kitchen. “Come in for some breakfast in a minute. The both of you.”

  Jimmy’s face had darkened, and he stared straight ahead again, refusing to meet Max’s eyes.

  “Hey. You all right, man?” Max asked. He couldn’t quite bring himself to actually address the issue head-on, about Tara. That felt way too awkward.

  His friend didn’t answer.

  “Are we good?”

  Still nothing, except that Jimmy’s jaw tightened even more.

  “All right, then.” Deciding his friend probably just needed some time to cool off, Max followed Benson into the kitchen.

  There was a commotion at the front door as he entered, followed by a red-haired adolescent shoving his way into the kitchen, shouting breathlessly for Benson.

  “I’m right here, Tommy. Calm down and tell me what happened.”

  Everyone turned to hear what the newcomer had to say. Before he spoke, Tommy glanced around, apparently self-conscious from the attention. “A guy in camo was checking us out from the east, Gord. He was lying on the ground between a couple oak trees with a pair of binoculars pointed at the farm. He got past our trip wires, so he must have seen them, and stepped over them. He was just a few meters away from me. Don’t know how I didn’t spot him at first—he sneaked by me, somehow. Pretty sure he was a soldier. At least, he looked pretty professional. I shouted at him, and he took off.”

  Max turned toward Chambers, who was looking at him. They both knew who that was likely to be.

  The GDA had found them. Janet had found them. Soon, she would come in force.

  Max stepped past the lookout and made for the front door. Chambers caught up to him before he could leave, grabbing his arm. “Where are you going?” he hissed.

  “Tara’s out in the barn,” he whispered back. “She needs to be in here. It’s not safe for her to be alone out there.”

  “Come right back here. Got it?”

  Max nodded. “Should we leave?”

  “Probably. But I’m not sure. I need a minute to think.”

  “Okay.” Max pulled away and went outside, heading for the barn. He eased the door open once again and closed it silently behind him.

  But he didn’t wake Tara. Instead, he saddled Yago as quietly as he could, checking over his straps as he’d seen Jimmy do.

  His pack was where he’d left it: dangling from the top of the ladder into the hayloft. Yago whickered as he climbed up to get it, but Tara didn’t stir.

  “Goodbye,” he mouthed to her sleeping form.

  With that, he climbed down and checked to make sure the Ruger was still in the bag, loaded and safetied. Then he slung the bag over his shoulders and climbed onto Yago.

  Light pressure with his legs sent Yago trotting out of the open barn door, and then across the wheat field toward the woods.

  If the GDA was near, that meant Cynthia and Peter Edwards were, too. They’d risked their lives just to keep him free of Janet. Now, he planned to do the same for them.

  It would probably be a suicide mission, and even if Chambers and Jimmy would have been willing to join him on it, he didn’t plan to let him.

  This was his business, and he would see to it.

  Yago and Max passed between the first blackjack oaks, heading in the same direction the soldier had gone, according to the red-haired lookout.

  A few meters in, he came to a stop. Ahead, a bright yellow ribbon was nailed to a tree. He frowned at it for a few seconds, puzzling over its meaning.

  Then, he saw it: a tripwire. It extended, taut, from the tree that bore the ribbon to one thirty feet away. That tree was also marked with bright yellow.

  Of course. He remembered Benson mentioning the tripwires he’d set up all around the property. They were probably part of an early warning system, in case of a Ravager incursion. To the left of the nearest yellow-marked tree, there was a meter-wide gap with no tripwire. After that, another wire stretched between two more yellow-marked trees.

  The trees were marked from the base’s side, so that occupants could identify the wires’ locations as they were leaving. But the yellow ribbons were positioned so that intruders wouldn’t see them. They’d stumble into the wires instead, triggering them.

  Max looked up into the first tree’s branches. They looked thick, sturdy. A good place for a sentry to crouch.

  If he were to set up such a perimeter, he would put sentries next to the gaps. The fact this tree was empty probably meant it was where the red-haired sentry had been, before coming to tell Benson about the soldier.

  That was lucky. The sentry’s absence meant he didn’t have to explain himself to anyone.

  “Hey!” someone called—a voice calling to him through the dense woods, from somewhere to his left. Another sentry.

  Max clucked at Yago, leading him carefully but quickly through the gap. With that, they were away.

  27

  4 days to extinction

  The crazies were keeping mostly to the roads. Ethan suspected that was less a deliberate decision and more like the unconscious probing of mold as it found the most efficient pathways to food sources.

  It was difficult to tell whether the savages stumbling along in front of his Escalade would be classified as Berserkers or Ravagers. Maybe they were something in between. They staggered at angles, colliding with each other often. Sometimes scraps broke out, and every so often a savage was left bleeding on the asphalt, incapacitated or killed by whatever blunt implement his or her attacker happened to be wielding.

  But the average of their many directions was forward.

  Ethan nodded at them through the windshield. “I think they’re headed to the same place we are.”

  Janet looked up from the paper map spread across her lap. Unlike Chambers, neither of them had spent weeks memorizing Google Maps.

  Maybe we should have.

  Janet was giving him one of the only two looks she ever gave him: annoyed or disgusted. This time, it was annoyed. “We already know they’re headed to Harper. Seven of the thirty we’ve tagged so far are already in the town.”

  He shook his head. “I mean I think they’re headed exactly where we are.”

  “To the armory?”

  “Yes. They’re attracted to anywhere survivors are gathering, right? What better place for survivors to go than an armory? Plenty of weapons, ammo, food.”

  She frowned, seeming to contemplate the idea. Then she lifted her radio to her mouth, with the push-to-talk button held down. “Head to the armory on 8th Street. I want to know if there’s a concentration of Ravagers there.”

  Ahead of the Escalade, two men tried to occupy the same space, their heads coming together in a painful-looking way. One of them dragged some nailed-together wooden contraption he’d probably hauled out of a trash heap, and now he attempted to swing it at his adversary.

  The other man easily intercepted the ridiculous weapon, heaving it away before going at the other guy with teeth and nails. Ridiculous Weapon Guy was quickly vanquished, his lifeblood pouring out onto Route 160, and Bitey continued on with the herd.

  Ethan cursed under his breath. In following the crazies, he’d learned it was a good idea to stay at least a hundred feet behind. Otherwise, the Escalade attracted unwanted attention. One or two crazies he could just swerve around, but if they came at the SUV in any number he’d have to drive through them. Or over them, as the case may be. Janet would make him do it, too.

  Her radio crackled, and she snatched the handset to her ear. “Go ahead.”

  Ethan could hear a muffled voice saying something, but he couldn’t quite make out what.

  “Acknowledged.” Janet turned towar
d Ethan again. “Take the next right, onto Berlin Road. After that, take the first left. That’ll bring us to Route 2, which feeds into Harper.”

  “They found something?” The radio call had come just in time: Berlin Road was upon them, and Ethan turned down it, grateful to be clear of the plodding savages. He gave the engine more gas.

  Again, Janet took a while to answer him. “Apparently you were right,” she said. “They’re converging on the armory.”

  He did his best not to seem smug. “Then there are probably survivors in there. Do you think the asset might be with them?”

  Janet’s lips tightened into a white line. “I hope he wouldn’t be stupid enough to hide out in a town. That said, we’ll have to investigate. It’ll be a good opportunity to resupply, regardless.”

  “Wait. If there are survivors, won’t they need those supplies?”

  She twisted in her seat to face him. “So?”

  “You’d take supplies from a group of innocent survivors?”

  “To save humanity? You better believe it.”

  Ethan tried to work out how Janet had managed to connect robbing civilians to saving the species—and he succeeded.

  Damn it. I’ve been around her for way too long.

  To find the asset and make sure he made it to Colorado, the GDA would need to continue operating as a cohesive unit. That meant locating and procuring supplies as efficiently as possible. Who better to gather the needed supplies in one place than fellow apocalypse survivors?

  With a clear road ahead and no speed limit to keep him in check, Ethan got them to Harper in just over five minutes, taking the armored Escalade around corners fast enough to earn another look from Janet. They found the town crawling with Berserkers.

  Or are they Ravagers?

  Ethan’s own radio squawked. “Sir, we’re mustering with the others at 12th and Hickory—just southeast of the armory.”