Zed (The Zed Trilogy Book 1)

by C. S. Nelson

  “It’s settled then.” They both stared at the bunk above them in a comfortable moment of silence.

  “Annie?” Kevin’s voice rang from across the room. Annie shot out of bed as though she had been caught doing something, and then cursed at herself for looking so suspicious.

  “Hi,” she said.

  Zed stood up next to the bed next to her. “Hello.”

  Kevin raised his eyebrows at them both. “Uh…am I interrupting?”

  “No, of course not!” Annie laughed nervously. “This is Zed. I met him at the celebration today. He’s in his last year of school and he really wanted to see base camp, so I offered him a tour.”

  “And part of this ‘tour’ is showing him Mitch’s bed?” Kevin’s arms were crossed. Annie realized that she might actually be in trouble, and found herself unable to respond.

  “I think that I better be on my way,” Zed said, breaking the awkward silence. “Thank you for the tour, Annie, I’ll see you around.” He nodded at her.

  Annie felt her heart flutter as his grey eyes unlocked from hers and he turned away. As the door closed behind him, Annie turned back towards Kevin, waiting to be told off.

  “Who the fuck was that?” Kevin asked.

  “I don’t know. He introduced himself to me and we got along and he just sort of followed me here.”

  “You do know that citizens who aren’t rangers are not allowed in basecamp, yeah?”

  “No, I’ve actually never heard that rule before.” Annie was getting the feeling that this was not a commander or ranger issue, but a Kevin issue. “Is that because you may have made that up just now?”

  Kevin rolled his eyes. “I know you may not take it seriously, but what we do here is actually kind of important. That’s why we don’t have tours running through here twice a day. We aren’t some kind of show the Shield is putting on, we’re its protectors.”

  “Is this an issue because I brought someone here, or is this an issue because I brought a boy here?” They had gotten close over the months. Kevin was someone that Annie trusted and cared for dearly. Kevin was feeling jealous. She could sense it. She got the same feeling from Dustan when Zed had taken her hand.

  Kevin’s eyes widened. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that…”

  “Shh!” Kevin suddenly huffed. Annie was taken aback. She immediately became quiet and discovered what Kevin had hushed her for. There was a static noise coming from the office in the back of the sleeping quarters. It sounded as though a radio station was coming through, but just barely. A voice on the radio is a sound that Annie thought she would never have a chance to hear. As the human population dwindled, fewer people were attempting to contact each other. Now the radio was only kept on as some sort of comfort for the people of Earth. If anyone were trying to contact them, they wouldn’t miss it.

  Kevin ran into the office, and Annie followed him. He began to fiddle around with the controls on the radio, trying to make the signal clearer. He swore under his breath. “I’ve never tried to work one of these before.” He wiped sweat off his forehead.

  “What do you think it is?” she asked as the noise drifted in and out.

  “I don’t know.” He sighed, becoming visibly frustrated. “Nothing has come through on this radio in over a year.”

  He twisted the knobs one last time, and the static disappeared. “Hello? Please…is anyone there? Please help us!” a girl’s voice cried. She sounded so young.

  Kevin snatched up the speaker, flipping the switch on so aggressively he nearly knocked the radio off the table. “Hello? Can you hear me?” he asked.

  There was a momentary pause that seemed to go on for hours. “Yes! Yes, I can hear you!”

  “Where are you?”

  “We don’t know. We found a house in the woods. We locked ourselves in the basement. I can hear the soul suckers upstairs. It’s just my little brother and I…we’re scared.”

  Kevin locked eyes with Annie, and she knew what he was thinking. He must have known where the farm was. “How have you survived so far?”

  “Our Shield broke down. The aliens took over. My brother and I ran, I don’t know if anybody else made it.”

  “And you’re at the farm house?”

  “Yes, please come…” The talking turned into a whisper. It made Annie’s heart sink. She knew that the soul suckers were getting closer to the girl and her brother.

  “Kevin, we have to go.”

  “We’re coming to get you,” he told her. “Just sit tight, we’re on our way.”

  He turned the radio off. “We’re going to save them, right?” Annie asked him.

  Kevin sighed. “Get the president.”

  Chapter 11: For the Children

  “No,” the president refused. Kevin had barely told the president all of the information before the man in charge had made up his mind. Both Annie and Kevin stood, dumbfounded, for a few moments. Annie hadn’t been expecting this conversation to be an easy one, but she had anticipated that the president would have eventually given them permission to retrieve the two kids. “Honestly, I’m offended that you dragged me to your basecamp on my day off to ask this question.”

  “What do you mean, no?” Kevin asked. “There’s a little girl and little boy just outside of the Shield who need our help.”

  “You do not have my permission to go out there.” The president shrugged, staring at the radio that the children had contacted them on. “This is not a well thought out mission. You do not have back up. Today is everyone’s day off. You’re not going out there.”

  “You’re going to let two children die because today is our day off?” Kevin was shaking with anger.

  The president threw his arms up in the air. “Kevin, this is not up for discussion. If you leave the Shield today you will be punished. That’s the end of this conversation.”

  “Respectfully, Mr. President, why did you put me in charge if you intend to give me no responsibilities? I can go get those kids and bring them back before anyone even knows we’re gone.”

  “I’m sure you could, Kevin, but you won’t.”

  “You’re killing those kids.” Kevin pursed his lips.

  “I can live with that. You don’t even know that those are real kids. How do we know they aren’t a couple of soul suckers who discovered the radio?”

  “They’re smart, but they aren’t that smart,” Annie chimed in, giving Kevin a second to breath. She was only repeating what she had been told by Kevin and Commander Matthew.

  “Oh really, Annie?” The president turned towards her, and she felt the panic that had been causing Kevin to freeze up. “They’re living in our world and we’re stuck here in a bubble. So which species would you consider to be smarter?”

  “In all of Earth’s history, the soul suckers have never taken advantage of our tools. You and I both know that they avoid our inventions like the plague. They despise them. If you would just…”

  “Kevin.” The president raised his hand, and Kevin closed his mouth. “Perhaps if you cared as much for the lives of the people within the Shield as you do for outsiders, we wouldn’t be having so many casualties. I don’t want to hear another word about this. Those children are not our problem.”

  Neither Kevin nor Annie could think of anything to say in response. The president nodded, smiling at them as though they had been exchanging pleasantries. Annie’s heart hurt as the president turned on his heel and left Kevin’s office. There was a long moment of silence while Annie watched Kevin’s face. It changed from upset to frustration to anger. Kevin punched the wall, and then swore, grabbing his hand as his knuckles began to bleed. Annie didn’t know what to say. They had just been given direct orders to let two children to die. “Annie, they’re waiting for us.” They stared at each other, and Kevin’s eyes began to fill with tears.

  Annie grabbed hold of him and held him as tightly as she could. Kevin wrapped his arms around her and cried into her hair. Annie had to choke back tears of her
own. She had never seen Kevin break down like this, and it scared her. He was supposed to be the strong one. He was supposed to be the one holding the rangers together. Suddenly the tears stopped. “I’m going,” he said.

  “You’re what?” Annie asked quietly. It had been many minutes since the president had left basecamp, but she always felt as though he could hear every conversation that went on in the Shield regardless.

  “I’m going to get them, Annie.” He pulled a bag from the shelf and began stuffing water bottles and food into it. “The president thinks he can control everything that happens in here. What difference does it make to him if I go out and die trying to save someone?”

  “You’re acting commander, Kevin. You can’t die. We need you.”

  “Isn’t this what a commander is supposed to do?” Kevin asked. “Lead? Save lives? If my job isn’t to risk myself to save those kids, then I don’t really have a purpose here.” He began pulling weapons off the shelf.

  Annie stood there for a few moments, confused. The president would know, regardless of whether or not Kevin was successful in his mission. Either he would return with two new citizens, or he would never come back. It was possible, as well, that after all this conversation the children were already dead. “I’m coming with you,” she said, imagining him entering an old house surrounded by soul suckers. He wouldn’t make it back by himself.

  “No, you’re not,” Kevin replied quickly, without looking at her. He zipped up his jacket and slid his arms through the straps of his backpack.

  “Kevin, you aren’t going out there alone.” Annie pulled a backpack off the wall and began strapping knives to her legs and guns to her back, feeling his dark eyes on her.

  “You’ll be punished.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Kevin smirked, stepping up to her, holding her face in both of his hands. He leaned in and kissed her forehead, leaving a tingling feeling that cascaded from her face all the way down to her fingers and toes. “Thank you, Annie,” he whispered.

  She swallowed hard, unsure of what to say. But it didn’t matter. He let her go and grabbed her a jacket, wrapping her up in it snuggly. They both grabbed pairs of gloves, and before they had spoken another word, they were leaving basecamp and on the way to the edge of the Shield.

  Two rangers leaving the Shield by themselves was, and had always been, a suicide mission. In training, they had been told never to leave the Shield with less than six people. One on one, the humans didn’t stand a chance against the aliens. They were stronger, faster, harder to take down. There was a reason that when they decided to attack the human race, everyone died so quickly. If more than a couple of the soul suckers came across Kevin and Annie at one time, they wouldn’t make it.

  But Annie felt no panic, even knowing that it was unlikely that she would return to the Shield. The longer she worked for the president, the more times she saw Summer speak to the population, the less human she felt. They were lab rats in there, being controlled in any way that the president saw fit. She didn’t understand how Kevin hadn’t snapped before now. Annie had only been in the working force for a couple months now and she was already sick of it.

  They stepped into the Shield, pushing through to the other side, where big fluffy snowflakes had begun falling. Annie had never felt the snow fall. She had watched it from her room, landing on the Shield, which was always slightly heated compared to the life on the inside. It was something that Annie was certain Henderson hadn’t thought about when inventing their safe-haven. She was sure it was only luck that the Shield was heated from the inside, otherwise it would have accumulated snow and permanently blocked out the natural light during the winter.

  She held her hands up as they walked along, crunching the frozen grass beneath her feet. Snowflakes fell gently into her glove, and she blew them away. “It’s beautiful,” she said. Her voice carried across the field. Other than the crunching of their footsteps, it was completely silent. Annie stuck her tongue out and felt the cool crystals land and melt in her mouth.

  “What are you doing?” Kevin laughed.

  “It tastes so fresh.” Annie grinned. Bottled water had run out long before Annie had been born. She had never tasted anything that hadn’t come from the lakes or streams around the Shield. This snow tasted as pure as it looked.

  Kevin laughed, catching gently falling snowflakes in his gloves above his head. “Sometimes this job is alright,” he said, his voice echoing across the field. “Wait, have you ever done one of these?”

  Kevin dropped his gun and backpack into the snow and lay down on his back. “What are you doing?” Annie smirked, intensely watching her acting commander. His tan skin appeared even darker against the white snow. His brown eyes sparkled with gold as he looked up at her.

  “It’s called a snow angel. Kids from before the Hunt would make them for fun.” He swung his arms and out kicked his legs together a few times, and Annie couldn’t help but giggle at how silly he looked. Kevin was laughing too, and for a brief moment they forgot about the danger that surrounded them and had fun in the snow.

  Kevin stood up and they both looked down at the imprint he had made. “I can see the angel,” Annie said.

  Kevin shook the snow off his back and shivered. “It’s colder when you lay in it.”

  Annie opened her arms and Kevin hugged her. She could feel her face blushing as he pulled her close to him. No one had touched her like this since Dustan. Kevin pulled away slightly and looked down at Annie, locking eyes.

  Kiss me, she thought, surprised by her own feelings. She tilted her head back and held her gaze. Kevin’s lips turned upward into a mischievous smile, then he let Annie go. She stumbled a bit without his weight to hold onto. She hoped that Kevin hadn’t noticed; if he had he didn’t say anything.

  Kevin cleared his throat and picked the backpack and gun up off the snowy ground. “We should hurry up and get those kids.”

  Oh, right, the kids. There was an awkward tension that filled Annie's chest, and she could tell that Kevin felt it as well. Did she have feelings for him? She wasn’t sure, but she could barely look at him now. Annie swallowed hard, and followed him into the forest. Get it together, she thought, turning a full circle to make sure no soul suckers were surrounding them. Now isn’t the time for a schoolgirl crush.

  “You know what else people did before The Hunt?” Kevin asked after a few moments traveling through the woods, cutting through the awkward silence. “Built snowmen.”

  “What are snowmen?” Annie asked.

  “You roll the snow into three balls, a big one, a medium one, and a small one. You stack them up on top of each other, use stones to make a face, and sticks to make arms.”

  Annie scooped some snow off a lip in a tree branch where it had collected, and mashed it together with her hands. “Like this?” she asked, throwing it at Kevin. It exploded on impact into a hundred white crystals.

  Kevin turned, raising his eyebrows. “Did you just throw a snowball at me?”

  Annie’s fingers tingled from the cold left behind by the snow. It was as though they weren’t on a mission at all, as they walked through the woods, letting their guns hang from their hips. It was foolish; if anything snuck up on them they wouldn’t have made it. But it was nice to walk around feeling carefree. This may have been the first time since Annie had joined the rangers that she was completely relaxed.

  They walked through the woods quietly, but Annie didn’t mind. She swore that she had never been surrounded by complete silence before. It was as though the snow had captured every sound and had smothered it. Eventually, Kevin grabbed Annie’s arm, and pointed to a clearing on their left. There was an old rundown wooden house that was barely standing, with an old silo next to it, and a fence that at one point had probably held in animals. “I’m really hoping they’re in there,” Kevin whispered, pulling his gun from behind his back and cocking it. Annie did the same. “This is the only house outside of the Shield that I know is still left standing.”
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br />   “What’s the plan?” Annie asked.

  Kevin shrugged. “Go inside. Find the kids. I don’t know, I’ve never gone on a two-man mission before.”

  “Back to back?” Annie asked.

  “Back to back.”

  With that, Annie ran towards the farmhouse with her gun pointed in front of her. This mission was so different, and she wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was knowing that she didn't have five other people watching her back. But this time, Annie felt no fear. And as she kicked the front door open, aimed her gun, and shot a soul sucker between the eyes, all she felt was adrenaline. Kevin turned from behind her and fired shots past her shoulder. They had caught the creatures off guard, for the first time ever. It was easy, Annie realized, to take out a sucker when they weren't expecting it. The four aliens were lying in a lifeless pile on the floor before Annie had even taken a breath.

  “Good job, Annie,” Kevin said, giving her a pat on the back. Annie smiled at him warmly. They moved in with their guns cocked, turning into every room ready to aim.

  “Hello?” Annie called out in a loud whisper. “We’re here to rescue you!”

  She walked upstairs slowly. The house was uncomfortably quiet. She began slowly opening creaking wooden doors. Annie pulled open the linen closet door at the end of the hallway, and there sat two terrified children. They were dirt stained and bruised, with knots in their dark hair and tear streaks down their faces. The older girl clutched onto the small boy protectively, and Annie was reminded of Anthony for a moment. She lowered her gun and sighed. “You’re safe now.” She smiled.

  The boy cried on the floor as the girl stood up and nodded. She was small, about chest high on Annie, and she was terribly thin. “How do we know you aren’t one of them?” she asked, her voice shaky.

  Annie pulled her knife out, and put a thin slice into her finger, pressing on either end of the cut until a drop of blood drew out. “Red blood, see?” The little girl smiled at her. “Can you be brave, and do that for me too? So that I can make sure we’re all safe?”