by C. S. Nelson
Scott scoffed. “You’re telling us to believe your word over a member of the most powerful family known to man?”
Annie opened her mouth to speak again, and then stopped herself. What was she supposed to do? Tell the rangers that their beacon of hope, a ship promising to bring them back to Mpho, to keep them safe for the rest of their lives, would actually be going to another distant planet? They would have no purpose. Nothing to fight for. What would Annie have left to motivate these people?
She couldn’t tell them. Her mouth was hanging open, trying to think of what to say. Trying to think of a reason she had come running down the hill begging for help. What excuse could she have for having gone missing for weeks, for being wanted by every breeder in the Shield?
“I knew it.” Scott was still in her face. “She has nothing. Are you scared, traitor, now that the Shield is down? Scared you won’t be able to defend yourself alone against the things that go bump in the night?”
Annie scowled at him. She was offended. She had come here to help them, to warn them of what to expect in the near future. “I heard there’s a reward,” Turner said from behind Scott. Annie took a couple of steps back, realizing very quickly that the rangers were not ready to back her. She needed to be ready to bolt, if one of them made a move to grab at her. “If you bring her to Summer alive, you get something.”
“I just want us all to make it to the ship arrival,” Annie said, which was mostly true. She felt horrible, not being able to tell them exactly what was going on. But she wouldn’t let any of this go, once she got to Mpho. She would raise hell. She would make the experimentation stop. Annie wouldn’t let her friends be forgotten. If she didn’t make it to Mpho, who would be there to fight for them?
“What do you say?” Scott turned and looked at all the rangers. “Do we turn her in?”
“No,” someone called from the middle of the crowd, pushing forward and into Annie’s view. It was Mitch. Annie felt her heart sink. She hadn’t seen him in weeks, but she was sure that he had the same attitude towards her that he always had. “She is a ranger first and foremost. She is one of us. How many of our lives has she saved? She’s an ace for God’s sake.”
There was a long silence amongst the rangers. Annie felt her muscles relax. She had never been more thankful for Mitch. Maybe she wasn’t going to get attacked by a mob. “Why did you come, Annie?” Scott asked.
Annie took a deep breath, nodding towards Mitch who smiled at her. “We need to work together,” she said. “The people of the Shield are not ready to protect themselves. These people have never faced a soul sucker in their entire lives. Their only hope for survival is with our protection.”
“Our protection?” Mia laughed. Her arm was still bleeding. “We can barely keep ourselves alive. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are a lot of us missing from a couple weeks ago. How many have we lost?”
“Four,” Dougie answered. “We’ve lost four in the last ten days.”
“Allison,” Mia nodded, her eyes welling up. “My best friend in the entire world. I watched her soul get ripped from her throat as her body bled to death. That was when a group of seven of us got overwhelmed by two of them.” She wiped the tears from her eyes, leaving streaks of blood across her cheeks.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Annie said. “I felt the same way when I lost Anthony.”
“That’s not the point,” Mia said. “That was two soul suckers. Two of them versus seven, and we couldn’t save ourselves. You expect that the rangers will be able to protect a couple thousand humans from an entire earth of suckers?”
“Are you saying you don’t even want to try?”
Annie looked up into the open sky. The snow was beginning to pick up. For the first time since the Shield had gone up, the little town in the middle of it was going to be coated with fresh, white snow. “Do you feel that?” Annie asked. The rangers stopped arguing amongst themselves and looked over to her. Annie’s hands were exposed. She was frozen, she had been for hours. But every snowflake that landed on her numb fingers filled her with hope. “We’re free.” She smiled.
“We’re going to die,” Turner said matter-of-factly.
“We may.” She nodded, closing her eyes for a moment to feel the snow fall and melt instantly on her face. “But if we do, we die free people. We are no longer trapped in a cage, waiting to be picked off one by one. We’re out, in the open, on the Earth that our ancestors experienced.”
“I would rather be safe,” Mia growled.
Mitch grinned. “Hold on a sec,” he said. Everyone watched him run over to where the Shield edge had been. Snow had accumulated on the outside of the barrier, and now that it had broken down, the snow clung to the previous shape in a pile about a foot high. Mitch grabbed a handful of it and clumped it together. “Heads up!”
He chucked the snow straight at Scott. It exploded off his shoulder, sending chunks of snow in every direction, spraying everyone in his direct vicinity. Scott couldn’t help it, he burst out laughing. “Did you just hit your commanding officer?” he called. There were a couple of odd chuckles from the crowd.
“I believe they used to call it a snow ball fight,” Mitch taunted, already shaping another one.
Scott sprinted over and tackled him into the pile of snow, both of them laughing hysterically. Some of the other rangers jogged over to join in the fun. Annie had never seen most of these people laugh before. “Let’s build a snow man!” one of them yelled. Annie remembered learning about these activities in history class. Skiing, snowboarding, building forts, and skating on ice. People used to enjoy the cold. Now, it was just another danger to the humans. Another way to die, another way to run out of food.
For a few moments, everyone forgot what danger they were in. They played in the snow, the first time the rangers had truly felt like they had a break. Until the screaming started. From deep within the town there was a young, piercing scream. The rangers stopped playing. Everybody went stiff.
“Help, oh god, please help!” A voice echoed from somewhere within their small town.
Everyone went silent. The fun was over as quickly as it had begun. Scott got off Mitch, pulling his friend up and dusting the snow off both of their jackets. “Annie’s right,” Scott said, walking up next to her and putting his arm over her shoulder. “We are the last line of defense for the humans of Earth. And we will not let our species fall without a fight. I know that our careers are over. I know that we don’t need to do this. But I want to fight until I can’t fight anymore. Who’s with me?”
A few stepped forward. Dougie, Ethan, Mitch, the twins. Annie sighed. Seven of them would not be enough to protect the entire city, but it was worth a try. “No one else?” Mitch spat at their feet. “You mean to tell me that you’d rather die, crouched under some broken building, than on your feet and fighting? You all disgust me.” Mitch was growing on Annie with every passing second.
Mia stepped forward. “Maybe this is just a sign that the Test didn’t work. Maybe there’s a reason so many of us are dead.”
“Yeah, or maybe you’re all just cowards,” Mitch growled.
Scott pulled him back. “We wish you the best of luck,” Scott said. “I hope we see you all on the ship.” He turned to go into the sleeping quarters for weapons. Annie and the rest of them followed him.
“You’re all going to die,” Mia called after them.
“Why don’t you go find a hiding place to hang around for the next few days?” Mitch yelled back.
It took only seconds for Scott to throw a gun to each of the rangers who had volunteered. Annie was tossed a lightening gun, which she had yet to use on real enemies.
“Do we travel in one big pack, or split up?” Dougie asked.
Everyone, including Scott, turned to Annie for an answer. “One group of three, one group of four. We don’t have a chance by ourselves but we need to cover as much ground as possible.”
“What are the groups, ace?” Scott asked.
Annie looked at the six of them. “Mitch, and you two.” She pointed to Thing 1 and Thing 2. “You come with me.” She didn’t know what their names were, she didn’t care to know. Scott would take good care of the rookies; Annie would keep the wild veterans under control.
“We’ll go towards the school, you go towards the library?” Scott asked.
Annie nodded, high-fiving the three of them before they turned and ran out of the sleeping quarters. “Say goodbye, boys,” Annie said, turning towards her three new best friends. “This could be the last time you see your home.”
Then they turned and sprinted out of the building, towards the town center.
The town was in even worse condition than Annie had expected. Massive chunks of Shield had fallen on most buildings, crushing in their roofs and destroying any sense of structure. People were lying on the freezing ground, bleeding. Some were dead. People were crying, calling the names of their loved ones. And worst of all, there were soul suckers, hiding in the crowds.
Annie knew that they were smart. She was aware that they knew what they had to do to survive. They were hiding, in their human form, waiting for those with weapons to walk by. Then they would quietly attack someone. Annie could hear screaming. Endless, mind-numbing screaming that was always just out of her line of sight. There was no way for them to pick out the humans from the disguised aliens.
“I need everybody to show us their blood,” Annie yelled to massive crowds of startled people. Most ignored her. “I need everyone to cut themselves or you will get shot.”
Mitch nudged her. “That’s just going to cause panic.”
Annie pushed him off her. She needed to know who was an enemy, and she needed to know now. She pulled a piece of Shield off the ground that had a sharpened edge. It didn’t make any sense. Now that it was broken, it had the same texture as glass. She began walking through the crowd, with the three of them following her. “Cut yourself,” she demanded to the first woman she came across.
The woman was crying, she had her two young children under each arm. “I can’t find my husband,” she sobbed.
Annie didn’t have time to send a search party for missing humans, only to protect those that were standing in front of her. “Cut yourself.” Annie held the gun up to her head. “Or I kill you.”
The woman screamed, taking the glass from Annie’s free hand and cutting her finger. Red blood dripped from her hand. “Hold up your hands, children.” She nudged them both gently. “It will only hurt for a moment.”
Annie sliced them herself. They both began crying as their fingers bled, but at least they were safe. “Thank you for your cooperation,” Annie said. She gave the rangers a look over her shoulder, and they all picked up a piece of Shield from the ground and began doing the same thing.
They were moving too slowly. There were too many people around them, and they were taking too much time to willingly show their blood. Annie felt helpless. She could still hear screaming, she knew that there were people dying, but there was nothing she could do to help.
“I’ll be back,” she said to Mitch, who nodded in response.
Annie needed Zed. He would know what to do; he would know how to determine the good silver people from the bad. She ran as fast as she could, back towards the hospital. If he was dead, if Kevin had done something horrible to him, Annie wasn’t sure what she was going to do.
She wasn’t cold anymore. Annie’s adrenaline was pumping. The falling snow melted against her skin and clung against her dark hair and eyelashes. She shook her head side to side, knowing that she couldn’t afford to focus on anything but her own safety, and that of any other human she came across.
Annie punched in the passcode and ripped the door open, running down the narrow hallway to the next door, that was hanging open. She ran inside. Annie’s heart broke at what she saw in front of her. All the soul sucker cages on her right were opened. None of the soul suckers were in the room anymore. All the human cages were closed. Everyone that she had spoken to only an hour before was lying in crumpled piles on the prison floor, completely lifeless. Some even had their half-empty water bottles still firmly clutched in their hands.
At the end of the room, amongst the broken glass, Kevin sat, leaning against the wall. His head was in his hands, and he was crying. “What happened?” Annie demanded.
Kevin looked up and his eyes widened. “Annie, you’re alive!” He stood up. His eyes were red and puffy.
“Why is everyone dead, Kevin?” Annie asked.
Kevin took a step towards her from across the room, but Annie immediately held up the gun. “Annie, I…” He reached his hands towards her, and the look on his face made Annie’s heart hurt. His manic episode was over, but he was still unstable.
“Do you really expect me to trust you?” Annie asked. She squeezed the trigger slightly and Kevin’s hands immediately went up in the air. She could feel her voice wavering, but she would not let herself cry. She had promised Zed. “What happened in here?”
“As soon as you left, Zed overpowered me. He found the key. He released all of the suckers.”
“He wouldn’t have done that,” Annie shook her head. “Not knowing that the first thing they would do is kill innocent people.”
Kevin closed his eyes. “He talked to them, for a long time. He made them promise that they would leave the room without hurting any of us. And they gave him their word. But they’re soul suckers, Annie…they have no honor.”
Annie felt sick to her stomach, her eyes wandering back over to the dead prisoners. “Then why aren’t you dead?”
Kevin let out a huge sigh. He looked as though any second he was going to begin crying again. Annie had never seen him look so defeated, like a child. This wasn’t Kevin. This wasn’t the man that had saved her from her own fear so many months ago. If Annie could just get him off this planet, out of this setting, maybe she could get the old Kevin back. “Zed saved me,” he croaked. “He threw himself between the aliens and me. He said it was only because he knew how much I meant to you.” More sobs.
Annie didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what to say. Her stomach turned as she thought about the idea of Kevin lying next to all the bodies in the room. Would her heart have broken if he had died, if she had found him down here with the rest of them? Was he even the same person? “Where did he go, Kevin?”
“I don’t know, I swear. He followed the rest of them out after…after the attack. I’ve been sitting here. I heard the Shield break. I’m too afraid to go outside.”
Annie breathed. He was a mere shell of the man he used to be. She turned the piece of Shield in her fingers inside of her pocket, then pulled it out and threw it to him. “Cut yourself,” she ordered.
“Wh-what?”
“Cut yourself, Kevin. Show me you’re human.”
He bent over slowly and picked up the sharp piece of Shield off the floor. He held out his hand to her and very slowly drew a line across the palm of his hand. Annie breathed a sigh of relief. Red blood dripped to the floor.
“I’m so sorry, Annie, I…”
“Just hide down here,” Annie said, lowering her weapon. “I’m sure you’ll hear the ship when it arrives. Only come out then.”
“Please don’t leave me,” he cried, falling to the ground and crawling towards her, desperately. “Please. You need to forgive me. I’m so sorry, Annie. I’ve been so lost. I need help. I forget who I am.”
He wrapped his arm around her leg. Annie stood there for a moment. She wanted to forgive him for his behavior so badly. She loved Kevin. He had been the only reason she had made it this far. But she had learned from her mistake with Dustan. There was no one that she could trust, especially when he was this unstable. It didn’t matter that he showed remorse. “I truly hope you make it onto the ship,” she murmured, her heart breaking. “Goodbye, Kevin.”
He released her, sobbing into the floor, and Annie turned and left the prison without another word.
Chapter 25: Arrival
Where would Zed have gone? Was he trying to prevent the other soul suckers from taking any more lives, or had he given up his ways? When he realized that the rest of the human race was completely fucked up, had he decided to join the soul suckers in their hunt for human sacrifices? Annie looked back and forth on either side of the hospital. But all she saw was chaos. How was she supposed to help anybody in this mess?
Then, as if on cue, she saw her first enemy. There was a soul sucker chasing a man down the road in front of her. It was exactly what she needed in that moment to keep her adrenaline pumping. “Hey, smiley!” she yelled out. The thing turned and looked at her, with that sick, disgusting smile spread across its face. “I bet my soul is juicier than his.”
For creatures that were so intelligent, they turned out to be pretty stupid. The thing turned and began stalking towards her, using its lanky arms to crawl along the ground on all fours. If Annie had anything left to lose, maybe she would have been more worried. But she stood there, straight faced, with her gun tucked behind her back, as the revolting creature crawled towards her. “Are you looking for death, child?” it hissed. It was only meters away now.
“I guess I just like watching you die,” she said, whipping out the gun in half a second and pulling the trigger. Lightening shot from the barrel, finding its way to the creatures face and wrapping around it. The soul sucker screamed, falling to the ground and twitching, electricity still racing through its veins.
The man that it had been chasing had already left, but Annie wasn’t even sure that she was doing it for him. Annie was doing this because Annie wanted to destroy them all. She stepped over to the creature, picking up a piece of glassy Shield, and slicing down its spine. Dipping a single finger in, she drew a line of blue blood across her cheek. “Will Annie become the first person in history to ace twice?” she whispered to herself. “Stay tuned, humans of Earth.”
