Regardless of which message we heard, we were supposed to reply with a brief message of our own.
This is M1ARC. You’re five nine.
Five nine meant that we’d heard them loud and clear, so that they would know to stop transmitting. If we didn’t hear the message clearly, then we were to send back one one instead.
Overall, it wasn’t a method of communication that inspired a lot of confidence, but right now it was the only one we had, and not just because Richard had built his shelter off the grid. According to Alex’s girlfriend, the cell networks were down, electricity was spotty, and Internet and cable likewise. Even when the electricity did come back, the cable and Internet were usually still out. Getting both services to work at the same time required a miracle that Celine’s parents were no longer willing to pay for, but that was the last that I’d heard on the subject.
Alex hadn’t been able to visit Celine for more than a week now. Her parents had her on lock-down after an RV gang cruised through her neighborhood breaking into homes. Besides stealing all of the supplies that they could, they’d killed at least six people who were home during the raid, and raped several women. Celine’s house had escaped by virtue of the burglar bars and security doors her father had installed. That, and he’d fired back with his shotgun from one of the second-floor windows.
Hearing that account made me glad that Richard had built his compound far enough from the road that no one could see it.
Another burst of noise came over the radio, and Kate leaned suddenly toward it. “Can you turn up the volume?”
I arched an eyebrow at her over the rim of my coffee mug. “You want that racket to be louder?”
“No, but... listen...”
I did. The muffled voices were as indecipherable as ever. If we tried scanning for the frequencies they were using we would probably be able to hear them clearer, but we couldn’t risk missing a message from Haven.
Shaking my head, I said, “I can’t make anything out.” All of the hissing and popping was drowning out the voices.
“Don’t you hear it?” More popping. “It sounds like gunfire.”
I blinked. “What? Who would fire a gun while using a radio?” Kate just looked at me, and I figured it out for myself. “Right. Dumb question.” The military and police used shortwave radios all the time. Either of them would have a good reason to fire their weapons while transmitting. I listened harder to the noise. Kate was right. Those popping sounds did sound like weapons fire, but they were coming in rapid bursts. That didn’t sound like police weapons to me. “I wonder what’s going on?”
Muffled voices were shouting at each other between the gunfire; then I heard something else—a screech of what might have been electronic interference, but for the agonized screams that followed.
“What was that?” Kate asked, her eyes big and staring. Another screech came, followed by another burst of noise from the radio, this one rumbling and roaring. The window in the utility room rattled in its frame. My gaze skipped up to that dark pane of glass, my heart suddenly pounding in my chest.
“Was that an explosion?” Kate asked, her eyes widening still further, until they looked like they might fall out of her head.
“I need to go check on something.” I patted Kate’s thigh urgently to get her off my lap. She got up and turned to watch as I ran out of the room.
“Where are you going?” she called after me.
“Upstairs, to the tower!” I called back.
“Why?” came her distant reply.
Alex opened the door to his room and I almost ran into it. “What’s going on?” he asked as I ran past.
Rachel opened her door next, rubbing sleepy eyes with her fists. “Daddy? Why are you running?”
I didn’t have enough breath to spare for a reply. Taking the stairs two at a time, I used my hands to pull myself up faster. My palms were slick with sweat and sliding on the cold metal railing.
One thought echoed over and over through my head: the speakers in our radio weren’t powerful enough to rattle windows. As if to confirm that, another BOOM sounded, and the staircase shivered. I reached the hatch at the top of the stairs and slid the locking bolts aside. Pushing the hatch open, cold air came howling in—with a flurry of... snowflakes. I stared at them melting in my palms, horror bursting inside of me.
This was April! San Antonio was supposed to stay relatively warm, not plunge into an ice age with the rest of the planet. The rogue star wasn’t even here yet, and that meant temperatures were still going to drop.
A flash of light brought my gaze up to the sky, and I gasped. Meteors were falling, drawing fiery orange streaks through the night. Boom. The tower shook. A much smaller streak appeared, racing up, followed by another flash of light.
I heard footsteps on the stairs behind me, heard an echo of my gasp, and turned to see Kate covering her mouth with both hands.
“Shit!” Alex said from where he stood on the stairs just behind her.
“What’s happening?” Kate asked in a crumbling voice.
Another boom. I looked away, back up to the sky. Again I saw a tiny streak of light, followed by a bright flash. The meaning of all that crystallized in my brain, and I realized what I was seeing. Those smaller streaks were missiles, and the meteors weren’t meteors at all. They were spacecraft.
“They’re here,” I said.
Chapter 28
We stayed up there, watching like idiots as the sky fell. Falling snow soaked into our clothes.
First the temperatures dropped below freezing, and now this: our interstellar visitors were a month early, and on today of all days. We were supposed to be leaving the shelter today. Instead, I was contemplating an indefinite stay. We couldn’t go out now, not with aliens invading Earth and our country waging war on them. Maybe that was why Haven hadn’t contacted us. They didn’t want to draw attention to themselves by broadcasting radio signals.
Another missile streaked through the night, and another explosion shuddered through the tower, this one closer and more powerful than before. Flaming debris rained down, and I wondered how many alien lives had been lost. Kate reached for my hand, and Rachel hugged my legs harder.
“Why are they firing?” Alex asked.
I was wondering the same thing myself. Having been completely cut off for the past week, there was no way to know how the initial exchange with our alien visitors had gone. Did the president try to shake hands, and they somehow misconstrued that as an act of war? Did they fire the first shot or did we? It seemed beyond foolish to attack an alien race with superior technology unless there was no other option.
Another spaceship streaked down, this one larger or closer than the rest. I peered up at it through squinting eyes, waiting for the inevitable flash of a missile exploding against its hull.
But this time that didn’t happen. The envelope of orange fire that wreathed the falling spacecraft dimmed to a faintly glowing silhouette, and I noticed that the vehicle was streamlined from nose to tail. This was not some gravity-defying spaceship with mysterious technologies that could somehow bend or break the laws of physics.
This spaceship was gliding down. The white cone of a sonic shock wave appeared, wreathing the vehicle, first at the nose, and then the tail, followed by a thunderous boom.
“Dad, what’s that?” Alex asked.
I turned to see him pointing behind us. Another spaceship was coming down, but this one was even closer and far larger than the speck I’d been tracking across the sky. It was coming down for a landing tail-first somewhere behind Celine’s neighborhood. It couldn’t have been more than half a mile away.
“I think we’d better go downstairs,” I said. Just then, a pair of jet fighters streaked overhead, so close that the roar of their thrusters was deafening and wind of their passing staggered us. Missiles shot out, racing on thick white plumes of propellant, but before they could reach their target, they exploded like fireworks right over Celine’s neighborhood. Seconds later, both fighter
s broke apart. The flaming pieces tumbled from the sky and crashed with dazzling flashes of light somewhere over the horizon. The thunder of those blasts belatedly reached my ringing ears, and I snapped out of it.
“Downstairs!” I yelled. Not trusting anyone to be able to hear me, I physically ushered my family down the stairs. Rachel was sobbing and holding her ears. Alex looked like he’d seen a ghost, and Kate was screaming things that I couldn’t hear. I hoped my hearing loss was temporary.
I made sure my family was on their way, then shut and locked the hatch behind us. More explosions thundered through the tower, shaking it hard. By the time we were downstairs again, I was relieved to find that my hearing was returning.
Kate grabbed fistfuls of my jacket and shook me. “We can’t stay here!” she said, her eyes flashing with panic.
“You want to go out there?” I demanded, pointing back to the stairs. “There’s a war going on above our heads!”
Kate released my jacket and subsided, slowly shaking her head and backing away. She fetched up against the wall and slid down it to the floor.
“My ears hurt!” Rachel screamed.
I went down on my haunches beside her. “Let me see,” I said, and pulled her hands away.
“What?” Rachel shouted in my face, and I realized that she still couldn’t hear.
I rubbed her ears as if that would make a difference. “They’ll get better soon,” I said.
“I can’t hear you!” she shouted again.
I repeated myself, this time using the same volume as her. She nodded slowly and wiped tears from the corners of her eyes.
“Where did Alex go?” Kate asked.
My brow furrowed, and I glanced about, looking for him. He wasn’t with us in the hallway anymore.
“Alex!” I shouted.
But he gave no reply.
Giving up, I went to look in his room. It was empty. “Alex!” I called again as I returned to the hall. I couldn’t see him in the living room either. Maybe he’d gone to hide in the panic room, or to get a gun from the armory. I scowled at the thought of him grabbing an automatic rifle off the wall. Right now the safest thing for any of us to do was to stay put, not grab a gun and go join the fight.
Running down to the panic room I yanked the heavy metal door open with a screech of hinges. I’d already filled my lungs to blast Alex with a lecture, but the air whistled out in a frustrated sigh. The panic room was empty. I went to check the door to the armory. It was still locked.
Where else would Alex go? To listen to the radio in the utility room? To hide in one of the storage rooms? Or maybe he’d gone back upstairs to watch the battle in the sky.
But then a new thought hit my brain like lightning, and I ran for the stairs. Even from the bottom of the stairs I could see that the front door was cracked open, and moonlight was pooling on the landing. A flash of orange light briefly illuminated the stairwell, followed by the distant boom of an explosion.
Alex had never followed us downstairs. With our ears ringing from the explosions, we hadn’t heard him unlocking and opening the door. After seeing the battle raging outside, he’d run off to go rescue Celine.
I ground my teeth. Even if he made it there and back safely and convinced Celine to come, she would bring her parents with her. That meant we would have three more mouths to feed.
I had to stop him. Dashing back to the panic room, I found the key under the toilet tank and used it to open the armory. I zeroed in on an automatic rifle hanging there—an old M16A2. Taking a magazine off one of the shelves, I slotted it into the weapon. Pulling back on the charging handle, I released it, chambering the first round. Being careful to mind the trigger, I checked to make sure the safety was on.
“What is it?” Kate asked, and I turned to see her standing in the open doorway. She sounded like she was snapping out of it. “Where’s Alex?”
I frowned. “Playing the hero for his girlfriend.” I slung the strap of the rifle over my shoulder and stalked toward my wife with the weapon aimed at the ground. Kate barred my exit, her eyes on the gun. “What are you doing with that?” she demanded.
“What do you think I’m doing with it? It’s a war zone out there! If I go out empty-handed, I might not come back.”
Kate didn’t look happy, but she moved out of the way. I held her gaze a moment longer. “You need to lock the door behind me—and don’t open it for anyone that isn’t me or Alex.”
Kate nodded, and I hurried by her. I ran into Rachel next, biting her nails and peering up at the open door from the bottom of the stairs. I jerked the gun away from her as I approached. Her blue eyes swiveled to me, then dipped to the rifle. They grew big and round as only a child’s could.
“You’re leaving us?” she asked in a quivering voice.
“Just for a minute,” I said. “I’ll be right back. I promise.” Glancing back to look for Kate, I found her standing right behind me. Nodding once, I vaulted up the stairs and shouted back down to her as I left the shelter. “Lock the door!”
Chapter 29
I ran through the empty field between Richard’s property and the adjacent neighborhood of Lakeview Ranch. Tall grass swished past my jeans. Explosions rumbled in the distance, accompanied by steady flashes of light. I wondered if this invasion was limited to San Antonio, or if the entire world was being carpet-bombed with alien landers.
My heart raced thinking about what might be inside those vehicles. I’d watched enough movies to conjure horrifying pictures of deadly predators, along with a plethora of humanoid-looking aliens that could easily be played by humans in monster suits. But what did real aliens look like? I couldn’t even begin to guess. I didn’t particularly want to find out, either.
Coming to a cul-de-sac lined with luxury homes, I skidded to a stop in the grass. I had an assault rifle, and I was approaching a neighborhood that had been raided by armed robbers little more than a week ago.
With a grimace I shrugged out of the rifle’s carrying strap and laid it down carefully in the grass. I’d come back and retrieve the weapon as soon as I found Alex.
Taking off at a run, shadowy lawns scrolled by. One and two floor houses peeked out between hedges and trees. Somewhere in the distance I heard gunfire popping in a stream of steady bursts. Military? I wondered. Or civilians defending their properties? Fighter jets roared, sonic booms cracking in their wake.
I looked at each of the houses, trying to find one with the lights on. I didn’t know which house was Celine’s, but I could ask one of her neighbors to point me in the right direction. The problem was, no one was advertising their existence right now. Not one of the houses had their lights on. A penny dropped in the shallow pool of my distracted mind, and I realized the neighborhood was probably suffering from a blackout.
Then I remembered that Celine’s house had burglar bars. I began checking the windows of every house that I passed, trying to distinguish actual bars from window frames. Fully half of the houses looked like they had bars.
So much for that idea...
Maybe I should have just let Alex go and come back with Celine’s family. Intercepting him early no longer seemed to be an option, anyway. But the rattling roar of a machine gun set me straight. There was a battle raging somewhere within just a few miles of here. I had to get Alex home before the fighting got any closer.
Up ahead I saw the lights inside a car flick on. Car doors slammed and headlights illuminated a garage door. The car began backing out of the driveway, and I sprinted toward it, catching up in seconds. The driver saw me coming and her eyes flared wide. I could see two kids in the back hurriedly putting on their seat belts.
“Hey!” I yelled, and slammed into her door with my momentum. I heard the doors lock. Slapping on the window with both palms, I said, “Wait! I just need to ask you...” I trailed off. Her face was cut and scabbed in places. Ugly bruises colored both cheeks and one eye. Was this one of the rape victims from last week?
Tires squealed and she raced down the street
before I could say or do anything else. But then I noticed something. The street ended in another cul-de-sac up ahead. Brake lights blazed crimson and she began backing into someone’s driveway to turn around.
My pulse pounded in my ears as I waited for her to come back. Headlights turned my way, and I raised both hands, waving as if I was signaling to an aircraft. Just then, a sharp whistling noise split the air. Before I could wonder what it was, the car exploded in a fiery ruin. Flames licked through broken windows, surging high into the night. I gaped at the sight. A flaming car door hit the street with a metallic thud, and I snapped out of it. I had to get those people out! My shoes smacked pavement, drawing sharp pains from my knees and feet as I ran.
By the time I reached the vehicle, I could see that I was far too late. Blackened flesh that might as well have been charcoal peeked through the lapping flames, and no one was moving. Beside me someone’s porch lights snapped on, and a door flew open. I heard cursing, followed by a man’s voice. “Get over here!”
Thank God. I turned and ran toward the voice. A buzzing sound reached my ears just as I leapt up the man’s steps to his front door. I heard loud pops, followed by men screaming, and the sound of car doors slamming. A heavy thud-thud-thud followed, along with the rumble of a truck’s engine.
“Get inside!” The stranger who’d called to me grabbed me by my jacket and pulled me through the open door. I stumbled and fell on my hands and knees. The man shut and locked the door behind me. Dark eyes flashed at me in the fuzzy gloom, followed by a glint of moonlight on the steel barrel of a handgun. “I don’t recognize you. What are you doing here? What’s your name?”
“Logan,” I said, picking myself up. “I’m from 13241, next door.”
“Uh huh,” he said. “No one lives at 13241.”
I grimaced. Maybe we’d done too good a job of keeping a low profile over the past year. I shook my head. “We do. I promise. My son has a girlfriend who lives here. He ran over to look for her, and I came looking for him.”
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