Zed (The Zed Trilogy Book 1)

by C. S. Nelson

  Life was far easier, far less stressful, when Annie stopped giving a shit. She was going to die. A soul sucker was going to catch her and was going to end her life. There was no way that people would survive for the ship arrival two weeks from now. Every sucker in miles would have heard the Shield break, would have known that there was a feast available. But she was going to protect as many people as possible. She, at the very least, was going to die a hero.

  Annie slowly walked down the street, holding her gun nonchalantly over her shoulder. People were screaming around her. People were sobbing. Annie tuned the terror out, singing the lullaby to herself that always reminded her of Anthony. “You are my sunshine…” Execute a soul sucker. “My only sunshine…” Pull a piece of Shield of a crushed woman as her lover stood next to it sobbing. “You make me happy, when skies are grey…” Pulling a young child up onto his feet. “You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you…” Stabbing a sucker in the throat as it knelt over someone draining them of their life. “Please don’t take my sunshine away.” Annie leaned down and dragged her finger through its blue blood, wiping it along her other cheek.

  Annie didn’t stop. She walked in circles around the Shield well into the morning. She had no clue if Mitch and the twins were still alive, still fighting. The sun had risen hours ago. Most people had since gone into hiding, in houses that hadn’t been crushed or in underground bunkers that had been surrounded by cement, knowing how easy it was for the soul suckers to dig.

  But she wasn’t tired, she wasn’t hungry, and she wasn’t cold. She was satisfied with the way things were going. There were bodies littered around the streets. There were hunks of Shield that had impaled unfortunate people who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. There were rivers of blood on top of the frozen snow, random patterns of both red and blue. And for the most part, anyone that was out on the street now was a soul sucker in disguise, looking for wounded people.

  By the time it was noon, Annie had slaughtered at least twenty of them. Her heart no longer pounded out of her chest when she came across one of the creatures. She no longer felt any fear. She had covered her face with so much sucker blood that she was entirely blue. It cracked every time she moved her face, it smelled sweet, more inviting than human blood. She was satisfied.

  Annie came across two people that had been in her graduating class. They were sitting down, resting against a building that had been mostly destroyed by the collapse of the Shield. The guy’s leg was very obviously broken, and the girl was sitting next to him stroking his hair. They both looked absolutely frozen, the tips of their nose had gone white and there was frost in their hair. Annie was ashamed of herself that she couldn’t remember either of their names. How the last couple months had changed her.

  “What’s going on here?” Annie asked, holding her gun up. She couldn’t see blood from either of them, despite the state they appeared to be in.

  They both looked at her, shocked. Obviously the state of her face made it impossible for them to recognize her. “He got hit by a piece of the Shield,” the girl said, with tears in her eyes. “He can hardly move. By the time he was conscious everyone had already left. We don’t know what to do.”

  “Shh, baby…” The boy kissed her on the forehead weakly.

  The girl’s face revealed that she knew that her boyfriend wasn’t going to make it. Annie picked up a piece of Shield off the ground and tossed it into the girl’s lap. “I’ll help you get to a safe place, just as soon as you cut yourself.”

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” the girl asked, standing up. The piece of Shield fell to the frozen grass. The boy tugged on her arm a little bit but she pulled away.

  “I just need to make sure you aren’t aliens,” Annie explained calmly. “All I need is a little cut.”

  “Just do it,” the boy said, picking up the Shield off the ground and drawing it across the skin of his upper arm. It was red.

  “I’m not doing that. Look at her, she’s obviously insane,” the girl crossed her arms and stared daggers at Annie.

  The boy tried to pass the shard up to her but she slapped his hand away. “Honey…”

  She shook her head in disgust. “I’m not cutting myself. I hate blood and we don’t need your help, you freak.”

  Annie sighed, holding her gun towards the girl’s face. “Are you going to cut yourself or am I going to have to kill you?” All it would take was one more second of hesitation, and Annie would pull the trigger. She wasn’t going to fall for any of these monsters’ tricks. There was no amount of pleading that would convince her into allowing someone to get by without showing her their blood.

  The girl wiped tears from her eyes. “I’ve been with him the whole time. I’m not an alien.”

  Annie shook her head.

  The boy, out of desperation, slashed the girl’s hand. It immediately started pouring blood. Red, human blood. “What the hell?” the girl screamed at him.

  “I wouldn’t be yelling at him if I were you,” Annie said, lifting up the boy off of the ground and threw his arm over her shoulder. She had carried Zed around for hours, completely unconscious, she could handle this guy. “He just saved your life.”

  Annie thought for a brief second that she needed to be more careful. She almost killed an innocent girl. But the world was in crisis mode. Annie dragged the boy to the hospital, a building where the upper floors had been destroyed, but the lower levels were fine. Annie knew that people must have been hiding there. She dropped the couple off and received a massive hug from the guy and not so much as a look from the girl. Whatever. That wasn’t why she had done it.

  Annie took the time that she was inside to grab a snack and go to the bathroom. The halls were crowded with people, hiding, staring nervously out the window, waiting for a sucker attack. She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror for a long moment. Everywhere but her eyes and mouth was covered in dried blue blood. She looked like a savage. She scared herself. For a moment she debated washing it off.

  Then she growled at her own reflection. Scary. Intimidating. Any soul sucker that saw her would run in fear. And if they didn’t, they would be the fresh line of blood smeared across her body. It was too bad that there would be no more history recorded on Earth. Annie was going to get her own chapter. Her story was going to be passed down through generations. She would go down in history. All of the rangers who stepped up to fight would. But her, they would have made statues of her. Named buildings after her. Everyone would have forgotten the name ‘Henderson’ and replaced it with the name ‘Annie’.

  Annie sighed. Enough with the stupid fantasies. She pulled the bathroom door open, stuffed a couple of extra granola bars in her pocket, and left the hospital again. The streets were completely bare. There was a very thin film of red and blue dyed snow on everything. It made the town look very surreal. It had always been bare. It had always been dry. Now it looked like something out of an abstract painting.

  Annie kicked up some of the snow and began walking down the road. She doubted there would be anyone left on the streets, unless they were injured. Anyone that had stayed out would probably have frozen to death by now. Then Annie turned a corner and saw him. Zed.

  He looked at her from across the street, first with confusion, then relief, then absolute disgust. “Annie?” he asked.

  She should have washed off the blood.

  He walked over to her, slowly. His ribs were completely healed. He wasn’t even wearing the brace anymore. He looked incredibly uncomfortable. “What is going on…what’s with the, uh…” He pointed to his face. Annie had never seen him look so uncomfortable. He couldn’t hide the grimace.

  “I, um…” Annie scratched the back of her head. “I guess I went overboard a little bit. With the-”

  “The blood of my people all over your face?” Zed interrupted.

  Annie picked up snow and began scrubbing her face furiously. “I just, thought it was intimidating. You know, considering your people are currently mass mu
rdering us.”

  Zed nodded, his lips pursed. “Seems like you’ve been doing a little bit of mass murdering of your own. If I recall it was less than twenty-four hours ago when you were disgusted by the thought of killing my brother. Looks like you’re okay with all that now, huh?”

  Had it only been the day before that Zed’s brother had attacked them both? Had it only been 24 hours before that Annie had felt so guilt-ridden that she had sworn she would never take another life? Perhaps the last day had shown Annie who she truly was, or perhaps it had changed her into who she had become.

  “I want to apologize,” Annie said. “But it’s my life or theirs.”

  “The only difference is when we kill you, we don’t take part of you as some kind of trophy.”

  Annie laughed at the hypocrisy of his statement. “Other than our souls,” Annie reminded him. “Other than our entire outward appearance that you can use to ensure that you can trap more of us like moths to a flame.”

  “I don’t want to argue with you over whether or not this is right or wrong, because you know that it’s wrong.”

  This was making Annie furious. She had been hoping, praying, that Zed would be alive. That she would find him again before she was taken away on a ship or killed. He wasn’t even happy to see her. “I think that it’s messed up that you’re judging me for this.” She pointed to her dried blue face. “When I’m only killing your people for survival, and your people are killing us for sport. For some kind of high you feel. Which appears to be far more selfish to me.”

  “Well if you hadn’t destroyed the entire planet first.” Zed crossed his arms, backing up from her subtly. “You know? Causing manmade natural disasters. Maybe then we wouldn’t feel like we had to intervene in order to save a planet that we lived in harmony with for so many millions of years.”

  “So when you released all of your friends from their cages so that they could murder my people who were defenselessly trapped in their prisons, was that intervening to save the planet?”

  Zed’s face dropped. “That was a mistake,” he breathed.

  “Did you assume that the creatures that have been destroying every human that they came across would be merciful to those sitting five feet away from them with nowhere to run and no way to defend themselves?”

  “They were starving, they were close to death.”

  “You murdered those people,” Annie said.

  They both stared at each other for a long time. The snow fell between them. The air was cold. They watched each other breathe out, their breath hanging in midair. If not for the tension between them, their situation would have been relaxing. Annie could feel her heart break as she realized what was happening between them.

  “I don’t think that we can work together anymore,” Annie mumbled.

  Zed’s arms dropped to his side. His eyes darted back and forth. He was having an internal conflict that Annie could feel. He was trying to determine whether he should beg Annie to stay, apologize for his wrong doings, or if he should tell her to disappear and never see her again. They didn’t have a choice. In order to survive, they were going to need to kill each other’s people. “I guess you’re right,” his voice cracked.

  Annie nodded, looking down at the ground. She gently kicked some of the snow in front of her boot, not wanting to say anything else. She didn’t want this to be the end for them. She wouldn’t have been able to get this far without Zed. He had sacrificed everything for her. But now that there was no Shield, as broken as it may have been before, they had different goals. The high that she had been feeling only moments before had dissipated. She was beginning to feel the cold once again. “So, then…” she started.

  “Then this is goodbye,” Zed finished her statement, more firmly this time. He believed that he had made the right decision.

  Annie let out a long, defeated sigh. Zed, I don’t want to say goodbye. Zed, I couldn’t do any of this without you. Zed, the thought of never seeing you again make me feel sick to my stomach. “Okay,” she said, her voice trembling.

  Zed nodded and began to turn and walk away, his eyes never looking up from the ground to meet her gaze.

  “Zed, wait!” It spilled out of her before she had any control over it.

  He turned halfway but still wouldn’t look at her. “What?”

  Annie didn’t want to cry. She had promised herself that she wouldn’t cry. But Zed was the only being that Annie still cared deeply about. She ran the distance between them and wrapped her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. It seemed like a long couple seconds, but eventually, Zed wrapped his big arms around her waist, pulling her as close to him as possible. Annie could feel his heart pounding against her chest.

  She ran her fingers through his hair, breathing him in quietly. She had never been so close to him. She had never been able to breathe in his scent. A deep musky scent that smelled like the forest and calmed her down just by being near it. His hands ran across the small of her back. Neither of them moved. Neither of them wanted to move. Pulling away meant saying goodbye.

  “Annie,” he whispered. His mouth was so close to her ear that she could feel his hot breath.

  “Yes?” she whispered back. She felt warm, her skin prickly.

  He pulled his face away slightly, resting his forehead against her own. She closed her eyes. It didn’t matter that he was a soul sucker. It didn’t matter that appearance was that of a boy that he had killed years ago. She felt so safe with him holding onto her.

  “Annie,” he said again. She raised her chin a little. “I need to go find my people.”

  She put her hand on his cheek. No. Don’t leave.

  “I promise you, I won’t kill any of your people. I care about you so much, Annie. I wish you nothing but the best. I’ll think about you everyday,” he said. This was it. Her head was spinning.

  He took her chin in his hand, and kissed her gently on her blood-covered forehead. Then he released her, and the cold took her over again. She had never felt so abandoned, not by Kevin, not by Dustan, not by the rangers. Zed had promised her he would be with her through everything. And now he was turning and had begun to walk away, his hands in his pockets. She watched him for a long time, until she could barely see him at the end of the road. She wanted to call out to him but she knew that it wouldn’t be fair. That was when Annie heard the noise.

  Zed stopped walking. The sky was overcast, with big thick clouds that went as far as the eye could see. But all of a sudden there was this intense rumbling coming from above. Annie looked to Zed, down the road. Maybe he knew what was going on. But his body was tense; he was staring up at the sky just like she was. Was the world itself ending?

  A massive, black thing suddenly appeared through the clouds. It was loud, so loud that Annie had to cover her ears as it slowly lowered itself down towards where the Shield used to stand. It was the ship. Annie’s mouth dropped open involuntarily. It was the most powerful sight that she had ever seen. It was a second chance coming towards them. It was life.

  The ship hovered over the field of snow that had always been just outside of the Shield next to the ranger base camp. Then it began dropping clumsily. Whatever engines had been keeping the massive thing afloat came to a halt. Earth was silent once again. Annie looked at Zed from down the street. Race you, she thought. He had been thinking the same thing, because they both turned and sprinted towards the ship as fast as they could.

  They came to a screeching halt outside of the ranger’s sleeping quarters, the closest building to the ship without being seen. It was as though the conversation they had just had was already forgotten. “Hide inside?” Annie asked. The ship was now still. Whoever was inside hadn’t shown themselves yet. They must have been getting ready for something big. Dramatic effect.

  Zed nodded and held the door to the sleeping quarters open for her. It was completely empty. The rangers that hadn’t wanted to protect people, only hours before, had left to hide somewhere else. They walked over to Annie’s old bunk and ho
pped up on top, where there was a thin window. Annie’s eyes only glanced for a moment towards Anthony’s bunk, which had the same wrinkles and flipped over corner that it had been there the day after he had been killed. Both of them lay down and waited.

  Annie had never imagined that something that big would ever be able to fly. It was nearly the same size as the Shield itself. It was smooth and glossy, like liquid oil hanging in the air. Every piece of machinery that they had on Earth was so old and so rusted that Annie didn’t even know that engineering like this existed.

  After what felt like forever, a massive cargo plane-like door opened from the side of the ship that was facing the sleeping quarters. Annie grabbed Zed’s hand, who squeezed it gently. Slowly, the cargo door fully extended to reach the ground, and then there were a long few seconds of complete silence.

  There was a loud static sound coming from within the ship. “Attention, people of Earth.” The voice sounded like it belonged to a very young man. It was the first human from Mpho that Annie had ever heard. That anyone here had ever heard. And the voice was completely underwhelming. “My name is Captain Jansen, and I am speaking to you from the planet Mpho. In front of you is the ISS Earthfinder, the ship that we have brought here order to bring you safely home. I request that all humans who wish to be saved to make your way to the ship in an orderly fashion. We will be leaving at dusk, absolutely no exceptions. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  Annie looked down at her watch. It was 2:45 in the afternoon. The sun would set at around 5:30. That didn’t give Annie very much time to come up with a plan. She had promised so many people that she would do everything she could to help them, and she planned on keeping that promise. “Aren’t your kind smart enough to surround the ship? It’s like a free buffet.”

  “I think that your people will have already thought of that.” Zed shrugged. As if on cue, a large group of soldiers jogged down the ramp to exit the ship. They lined up on either side of the entrance. Annie was amazed. They were covered, head to toe, in black matte armor that stood out against the snow. They all wore black reflective masks and held large guns that looked similar to a couple that the rangers had. If only the people of Earth had had this kind of protection, no one would have ever died from a soul sucker attack.