by V. K. Ludwig
Captured
Garrison Earth
V. K. Ludwig
Ink Heart Publishing
Copyright © 2020 by V. K. Ludwig
www.vkludwig.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events, locations, or any other element is entirely coincidental.
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Warning: This book contains explicit sexual content, violent scenes, and topics that some readers may find disturbing.
Contents
She's too much risk to be alive, but too precious to be killed.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
My female matches two Vetusians: me, and the warrior she just killed.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
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Chapter 1
Eden
I sprinted along the line of cars, my legs like dead weight underneath me. Most were haphazardly parked, each one as abandoned as the next. Trash littered the streets.
No, not trash.
Purses and backpacks. Shattered phones.
My crocs frap-frap-frapped, slapping the asphalt underneath me.
My heart matched each beat with panic.
How long had we been on the run? Ten minutes? Twenty?
The fire in my lungs indicated upwards of an hour, but there was no way of telling. That was the problem with adrenaline. It messed with your sense of time, because it meant shit when you were running for survival.
I slammed against the concrete blocks of the gas station. So did the stranger I had picked up at the Piggly Wiggly. She had tagged along uninvited. Young woman. Fast runner. Names didn’t matter right now, so none of us asked.
She brushed a dreadlock out of her face, her lips trembling, mouth panting in terror. “Where do we go?”
A brittle silence settled between us, cracking more with each deep shout hollering down the alleys. After their ships arrived, everyone just ran, leaving the obvious questions for later. What were they? But most of all, what did they want?
I curled my fingers inside my fist and peeked around the corner of the building, the bite of spilled gasoline turning me dizzy. Black smoke rose in scattered columns here and there all across the city. But other than that, the sky was blue.
No airplanes.
No helicopters.
Only their drones lifting off and returning.
Was our government doing anything to fight them off? When was the last time I’d seen a cop?
Keeping close to the wall, I snuck around the corner, waving the stranger to follow behind. A sweaty mess, I ignored the amber strands of hair clinging to my forehead, no matter how much they bothered.
“Over there,” I whispered, jutting my chin toward the Mexican restaurant across the street. “The vent is loose. We could try to lift it off and climb into the basement.”
The woman answered with a gulp.
“T’chel nja gam!”
Panic trembled my body. Where had the voice come from? Behind us? The street we were about to enter?
The woman heaved, the whites of her eyes growing wider against her dark complexion. “They’re coming.”
Spine-tingling and brutal, her words cut bone deep. How many times had I heard that exact phrase today? Running always followed, unless terror numbed the feet of the chased. In those cases, the black-uniformed soldiers with glowing irises escorted them off. Where to? I didn’t know and keeping it that way was the goal.
“Now!”
I pushed myself away from the wall and ran across the street, squatting behind the first abandoned vehicle. Ragged and hectic, loud breathing left no doubt the strange young woman had followed. Together, we worked ourselves around cars and delivery trucks, until a mere five feet remained to the black cast-iron vent hanging tired from one screw.
We tugged on it, mortar crumbling onto the sidewalk. The screw detached from the brick and clanked against the walkway. Then we carefully, silently lowered the solid monster down. Half a breath later, I dove into the blackness of the basement.
Concrete.
Dammit. My ears rang, and a taste of iron spread across my gums. The girl’s body landed much softer — right atop mine.
Minutes stretched as I lay there, my muscles too stiff, too enabled by fear and anxiety to move.
“Do you think they saw us?”
I started at her voice as if I had forgotten I wasn’t alone.
“We’ll find out,” I said, wiggling myself out from under her body. “The loose vent might look suspicious if they notice. We need to find a window. Put us in a place where we can see if they’re coming.”
They’re coming. They’re coming.
The message played between my ears like a mantra, echoing itself on repeat in a cacophony of voices. Some deep. Some high-pitched. All equally colored with panic.
With my gun held at the ready, loaded, but sure as hell not locked, I made my way toward the stairs. “You stay behind me and do as I tell you.”
I sounded like a stranger even to myself, that sudden authority palpable on my tongue. The woman wasn’t much younger than me, but the way she kept glancing at how my finger caressed the trigger told me she didn’t have much experience with firearms. Probably attached herself to me because she’d seen I carried.
Not that it was my gun.
An hour ago, I’d taken it off a corpse, but that didn’t change the fact that I knew how to use it. That was the good thing about having a dad in the military. Got an air rifle for my fifth. We spent Christmas Day behind the house at the range. But only four times since because he was usually deployed.
Dad might have yelled at me right about now.
Never keep your finger on the trigger unless you intend to pull it.
But desperate times called for desperate measures, and if anything threatening lurked behind the basement door, I’d blow it to smithereens first and ask questions later.
Willing my free hand to stop trembling, I reached toward the door handle. I held my breath. I yanked it open.
Nothing.
The door led into an empty h
allway with filthy gray tiles. Silver and black stickers on the door marked the two bathrooms for guests, while the third one spelled private. Kitchen probably.
In any case, it was silent.
We made our way into the restaurant, the dust-covered dark wood blinds hiding us from outside view. Spilled salt crunched underneath our soles, and I pointed at the floor to make sure the woman wouldn’t step on the broken plate or slip on a stale burrito.
Laminated menus littered the tiles, along with the occasional rice grain. Large, red shells surrounded it all, though the owner of the shotgun was nowhere to be seen. Only remnants of the action remained, with clusters of holes decorating the wall beside the entrance.
A squeal made me swing around.
The woman held her hands in front of her mouth as if to muffle herself, her eyes wide, staring at whatever she had found behind the bar.
I walked around the counter, the trail of dark red smeared across the tiles leading in one thick line toward a pair of black-uniformed legs. One stretched out. The other slightly angled.
Panic scattered my thoughts.
What now?
Why me?
He stared at me from blue eyes with a faint glow to them, his head tilted back and hanging to the side, as every blood-choked gulp made his Adam’s apple bob.
Blood welled from his lips as they parted, forming little bubbles that popped as he rasped one drowning word. “Help.”
Even in that one word, I detected a slight accent.
The woman wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s one of them.”
As if his eyes didn’t make that clear.
I raised my gun and pointed it straight at him, stepping closer while avoiding the red, slippery smears. His black uniform hid it well, but the frayed fabric left no doubt he had met that shotgun. Right in his guts — if they were in the same place as ours. Which, given his humanoid resemblance, might have been the case.
“What are we going to do with him?”
Good question.
He held a hand pressed tight against what I presumed was another injury. The other rested pale on his thigh. I didn’t know what this guy was, but a threat he was not.
Used to be.
Not anymore.
Not for much longer anyway.
I had pulled enough night shifts at the ER during full moon to recognize a fatal wound. Or a dying body.
His luminous gaze trailed between my eyes and the barrel of my gun, his speech a wet gurgle. “Help.”
“He wants you to shoot him.” The woman’s voice came from behind me, closer now.
I took my finger off the trigger, locked my gun, and shoved it back in the waistband of my pants. “Yup. I bet he’d like that.”
“What do you mean? Are you really going to leave him like that? He’s dying!”
As if that was a bad thing.
I stared over this… guy.
I watched his expression change from hope to resolve as his lips pressed tight in pain. There might even have been a slight nod coming from his head.
He understood full well there was no help for him or his kind. Not from me. And he seemed to have accepted it with a terrifyingly stoic posture of acceptance. His voice as thin as the thread his life hung on, he mumbled something else in a language I knew for a fact wasn’t from Earth. Anam ghail? Maybe?
Didn’t matter.
I ignored it and busied myself with the stainless-steel drawers, rummaging through them and taking inventory on the potential provisions.
The woman paced back and forth along the short wall, holding herself in a tight hug as she shook her head. “I can’t just watch him die.”
“Then go sit over there where you don’t have to see him.”
She threw me a what-the-fuck kind of glance, but luckily didn’t voice another complaint, and sat down in the blue booth.
I walked over to her shortly after, brushing someone’s lunch leftovers aside with a bunch of napkins before I put two bottles of pink lemonade on the table. “What’s your name?”
“Makena.”
“I’m Eden,” I said, pointing at her pinky, which stood up at a funny angle. “You broke your finger. I can try to set it once I find their first aid kit.”
She lifted her hand and stared at her pinky, turning the limb as if she had to see it from all angles to believe it. Then she gave me a questioning stare.
“I’m a nurse.” The pink lemonade clenched my jaws, locking the joint in place as it sloshed across my dehydrated gums. “Let me check the street real quick, and then I’ll search for their first aid kit. They’re usually in the kitchen.”
I took the bottle with me, taking one small sip after another as I slowly approached the large blind, lowered down until it had bunched against the table. Dust blew up and floated around me as I leaned in closer, trying to get a sideways glance through the tiny light-filled gaps.
The streets were empty, aside from the abandoned vehicles, dropped purses, and grocery bags, which had spilled red bell peppers and packs of crackers across the asphalt.
I held my breath and listened intently.
Police and fire sirens had gone still hours ago. Not sure if I’d seen a single soldier or national guard ever since they’d attacked. But I might just have missed them. Your mind doesn’t pay attention to that stuff when you’re clasping to your freedom.
No, there was only silence out there, interrupted by intervals of their message blaring across the city. Surrender and help us avoid casualties during this transition.
It reverberated in the same sequence. English. Spanish. Some Asian language. Chinese maybe? And something which sounded Arabic. Then English again.
“I think they’re gone,” I said, keeping the for now to myself.
Makena didn’t strike me as someone who could handle all the questions I had soaring through my mind. Should we stay here? How long? Was it safer outside the city? But how would we get there?
“What do they want?” Makena asked.
Right. The million-dollar question.
The one nobody had an answer to. Except…
I grabbed my gun once more, walked behind the bar and pointed it straight at the invader. “Why are you here? What are you?”
His eyelids lifted in slow-motion, only to show how his eyes rolled into the back of his head unchecked. Even if he spoke more English than help, chances were slim he had enough life left in him to answer any of our questions.
He was clearly a soldier. His uniform neat but roomy, with symbols I couldn’t make out embroidered atop his shoulders and the right side of his chest. Black, fastened with what appeared to be smooth metal clasps, his combat boots went halfway up his calves.
“They look like us,” Makena said, voice shaky.
And they did, if it wasn’t for that unnatural sheen woven through their green or blue irises. Or the fact that they were a good foot taller than our average men. They bled red, too!
For a whole second, I considered touching him. Trying to see what we were up against here. Then the two semesters I took on infection control screamed at the back of my mind. But the truth was, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know.
“Can’t you shoot him?” Makena’s voice startled me as she shoved herself carefully along the line of stainless-steel drawers and fridges, her eyes fixed on this soldier. “He’s suffering.”
A hollowness grew inside my chest, and I fought the growing sense of pity for him. He didn’t deserve to die easily. None of them did after how they had invaded here. Capturing everyone they could grab. Rounding people up in the streets like cattle. Killing those who resisted.
“So? Let him suffer. What do I care?” I turned away so I could finally track down that first aid kit. “I sure as hell won’t waste a bullet on him. They might hear the shot and find us. And I will not risk my freedom so he can die quicker.”
His pupils returned from the back of his skull, immediately locking with mine. “Anam ghail.”
His faint voice almost made m
e stall mid-movement. Almost. But I pushed through the motion and toward the kitchen, oblivious to the fact that his words would change my life two weeks later.
Chapter 2
Eden
“I can’t eat those,” Makena said, watching me stack tortillas. “Did you see some corn ones? I’m gluten intolerant, and that stuff will bloat me and give me a rash.”
I pointed at the commercial fridge beside me. “Check that one. I left the aluminum foil over there if you need it.”
Grabbing the zip-loc bags filled with rice and beans, I shoved them to the bottom of the backpack I’d found in a booth. What had contained a fancy MacBook Air and a map of the subway, now swelled with provisions. The first-aid kit went on top, creating a sturdy surface for those few bottles of Coke I squeezed in without the zipper ripping.
Makena blew out a sharp breath, staring at the two popsicle sticks pointing out from the makeshift cast on her pinky. “No luck. Guess I’ll have to deal with stomach cramps and itchy red dots across my arms.”
“Still better than having a probe up your ass,” I said, part inappropriate joke, and the rest appropriate fear. “We have tortilla chips.”
She muffled a cough into her sleeve. “Most of them have gluten.”
I closed the zipper and leaned the backpack against the wall. “Well, avocados then. It is what it is, Makena. We can’t take any of the meat, and onions don’t get you very far. The soda is the most important thing for now anyway.”
