Rogue Star_Frozen Earth_Post-Apocalyptic Technothriller

by Jasper T. Scott

  “Harry?” a woman called out in a trembling voice.

  “Quiet!” he snapped.

  “You’re Celine’s Dad, right?” I whispered, turning to him at the top of the stairs.

  It was his turn to nod. “Yeah.” He jerked his head sideways. “What’s going on out there?”

  Ground-shaking footsteps interrupted us, and I glanced at the door Harry had just locked behind us. It was a simple wooden door. “That’s not going to hold,” I said.

  Chapter 32

  I found Alex and Celine hugging each other on a couch in the basement of the Hartfords’ house. A flashlight sat between them, aimed at the ceiling to provide diffuse light. My gaze lingered as I saw my son’s girlfriend clearly for the first time. She was a stunning girl with dark hair and perfect golden skin. I wondered if that was all Alex saw in her, or if he had a better reason for risking his life (and mine) by running out after her in the middle of a war zone. My eyes found Alex, and I glared, but he probably couldn’t see that in the darkened basement.

  “Where’s mom?” he asked.

  “Back at the shelter with Rachel—where you should be right now,” I snapped.

  Harry Hartford moved between us to get my attention. “Your son mentioned that. He said you’ve got a place that’s safe. Is that true?”

  I hesitated, wondering how safe it would be after everything I’d seen tonight. A four-legged tank like the one standing on the street outside could blow open the front door of our shelter just as easily as it had blown through Harry’s. The only hope we had was that the Screechers wouldn’t find Richard’s complex. It seemed like a scant hope to hold onto, but Duncan had said there weren’t that many of them compared to us, so maybe they wouldn’t be able to conduct a thorough search.

  “Well?” Harry prompted. “Is it safe there or not?”

  “Safer than here, especially since one of the big Screechers blew your front door apart.”

  Harry cursed and his wife made a strangled noise. “So that’s how you got in here,” he concluded.

  I nodded. “We should lie low for now. We can’t go outside with that thing waiting for us, but it’s too big to come inside, so we should be safe down here.”

  “What about the flyings discs?” Harry asked.

  He made a good point.

  Harry turned to his wife. I noticed that the beam of her flashlight was shivering. “We can run out the back and head for the lake,” he said. “They hunt us by our heat signatures, but we might stand a chance of concealing those signatures in the water.”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  “They’ll still see our heads,” Alex pointed out.

  “So duck if you hear one coming,” Harry replied. “Besides, bullets don’t travel far underwater. We’ll stand a much better chance.”

  “What if they see us running to the lake?” Celine asked.

  I shook my head. “I didn’t see any more discs out there, and the one that found us didn’t shoot. I think it was out of ammo. They might be re-arming, or maybe they moved on after they killed the soldiers.”

  “Us? Soldiers?” Harry asked, shaking his head.

  I told him about Duncan and the Humvee full of dead soldiers we’d found.

  “If they killed soldiers, what chance do we stand?” Harry’s wife shrieked.

  “Quiet!” he hissed, and held up a hand to emphasize the need for silence. His gaze strayed to the ceiling.

  The basement was shaking with muffled thunder. Dust trickled down from the ceiling with each impact, shimmering in the light of Mrs. Hartford’s flashlight. Gradually, the sound grew softer. The Screecher outside was moving on.

  Harry let out a controlled sigh. “All right. We wait until those footsteps are gone, and then we run like our tails are on fire. Got it?” He turned in a slow circle to make sure we were all on the same page. No one voiced disagreement this time.

  When Harry’s eyes grazed mine, I nodded. “You have another gun?”

  “Yeah. Over here.” He led me to a wall with rifles mounted on it. Taking an AR15 off the rack, he loaded it with bullets from a chest of drawers below the rack, and then handed the gun to me. “You know how to use it?” he asked before letting go.

  “I brought an M16 on my way over.”

  “So where is it now?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t think it would be polite to come knocking on your door with an assault rifle.”

  Harry snorted. “Too bad.”

  “We can’t swim with guns, anyway.”

  “Sure you can.” Harry withdrew a rolled up strap and clipped it onto the back and front of the rifle he’d given me. Then he withdrew a second strap for himself and clipped it to his shotgun. Slinging the gun over his shoulder, he began slotting extra shells into slots in the strap. “No sense leaving our guns behind,” he said. When he was done loading ammo into his gun strap, he handed me a bandoleer of ammo. I strapped it on, watching as Harry cocked his head to the ceiling and held a hand to his ear.

  I listened with him. The thundering footsteps were so soft now that they were almost indiscernible.

  “It’s gone,” Alex said.

  “Almost,” I replied.

  “It’s the best chance we’re going to get,” Harry added.

  “Maybe we should just stay here,” his wife added. “If they moved on that means it’s safe, right?”

  I wondered if she was right, but Harry shook his head. “They’ll be back.” Harry turned to me. “Did they go into any of the houses?”

  I thought about that. “Not that I saw. They shot up some lady’s car when she tried to escape, but that was it.”

  Harry nodded as if I’d just confirmed his suspicions. “They’re prioritizing. They’ll take out the military and people on the streets first. After that they’ll come back for a more thorough sweep. We don’t want to be here when that happens.”

  That made some sense, but it didn’t make me feel any better about hiding in Richard’s shelter. What if they found us there, too?

  Chapter 33

  Harry Hartford insisted he go up first to make sure that the way was clear. I waited with the others in the basement, in the dark with the flashlights off, sitting on the edge of the couch beside my son. Mrs. Hartford’s silhouette paced back and forth through the silver glow of moonlight spilling in from the windows at the top of the basement walls. She was a nervous wreck.

  “Mom... save your energy,” Celine said. “You’re going to need it to run.”

  She stopped and stared wide-eyed at her daughter. Something shifted behind her eyes, and she snapped out of it. “You’re right.” She came and sat on the other arm of the couch.

  I glanced at her. “What’s your name?”

  “Deborah.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Logan.”

  The door at the top of the stairs burst open, and we heard hurried footsteps thumping down the stairs. Deborah clicked her flashlight on and shone it in that direction.

  Harry’s head popped between the ceiling and the posts of the railing. “Let’s go!” he said in an urgent whisper.

  We didn’t wait to be asked twice. Alex and Celine were the first ones up. I followed, walking fast, with Deborah beside me. As we ran up the stairs, I kept a firm grip on my rifle to keep the barrel from swinging into line with anyone.

  Before we could leave the stairwell, Harry barred the way and nodded down to his wife. “Turn off the flashlight, Debs.”

  I heard a click, and the shadows came rushing in. “Follow me,” Harry whispered, and then dashed out.

  We raced through the kitchen and through the twisted, molten remains of the French doors. Following Harry we cut across his backyard and into an unkempt field between Lakeview Ranch and Calaveras Lake. As we went, I strained to listen for buzzing sounds, but the only thing I could hear was nature’s orchestra of crickets and frogs. I was surprised the cold hadn’t shut them up, but maybe these were their dying gasps.

  Long grass swished by our l
egs as we ran. Up ahead I caught a glimpse of moonlight shining on the water. We were almost there.

  The grass parted, and we hit the gravel access road that ran around the lake. Still I didn’t hear any buzzing sounds.

  Harry stopped running and we all slowed to catch our breath.

  “I think we made it,” I breathed.

  “Don’t rejoice yet,” Harry said. “We still have a long, cold swim ahead of us.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. Right now the activity and my winter clothes were keeping me warm, but the lake would be freezing. Not to mention, I wouldn’t be able to swim with my boots, jeans, jacket, and gun all weighing me down.

  “Maybe we should walk,” I suggested. The possibility of masking our heat signatures in the lake seemed to pale in comparison with the risk that we could all freeze to death in the process.

  We reached the pebbly beach, and still there were no buzzing sounds to indicate that we’d been spotted or followed. “All right,” Harry said. “But we should walk close to the water, just in case we need to run in and hide.”

  “Fair enough.” I turned to see Alex and Celine holding hands as they hurried down the beach ahead of us.

  “You’d better lead the way,” Harry said. “I don’t know how to get to your place.”

  “Sure.” I nodded and took off at a run, forcing the others to run to keep up. Pebbles crunched and skittered under our feet, making me wince. The frogs and crickets did a pretty good job of covering for us, but they couldn’t completely mask all of the noise we were making. I thought about what Duncan had said, that the Screechers could hear us, too, and wondered how far the noise would carry.

  I stopped and turned to address the others.

  “What’s wrong?” Harry asked as he ran up beside me.

  “We’re making too much noise. We should stick to the grass if we’re not going to swim.”

  Harry nodded and glanced back the way we’d come. I noticed his body stiffen, and then he raised his shotgun to his shoulder.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I thought I saw something...” he said slowly.

  I brought my own gun up and sighted down the barrel. A flicker of moonlight winked at me through the grass.

  “There...” Harry said. “Did you see it?”

  I had. “Alex, take the others to the shelter.”

  “But—”

  The grass parted and a small version of the four-legged tank I’d seen earlier came creeping through. Six articulated arms unfolded and bright green lasers sliced through the dark, seeking targets.

  “Alex, run!” I yelled.

  I heard a girlish scream, followed by a burst of skittering pebbles as everyone except for myself and Harry fled.

  Harry fired his shotgun with a deafening bang that terminated in a metallic crunch. All six arms and lasers converged on his chest. The beams hovered there for a second, and I was too horrified to react. The metal monster shrieked at us. Harry screamed in reply. Chuk-chuk. He reloaded his shotgun, and I experienced a flash of deja vu. The same thing had happened before Duncan exploded in a sticky wave of gore on Harry’s front porch.

  “Wait!” I reached out and pushed Harry’s shotgun down. At the same time I lowered my rifle and held up my hands.

  Three of the six lasers diverted from Harry’s chest to mine. Another shriek sounded from the metal beast, but still it didn’t fire on us.

  “It’s trying to talk to us,” I said. “Put your gun on the ground.” I shrugged out of my rifle strap and laid the AR15 at my feet. Harry did the same with his shotgun.

  The lasers disappeared, and another shriek reached our ears, but this one sounded less urgent. The alien robot came slinking out of the field toward us, pebbles crunching under splayed metal feet.

  I held my breath as it approached. The articulated arms were still tracking us, even without the lasers, making me wonder if the lasers had been for our benefit—a visual warning.

  The Screecher came to within just a few feet of us, revealing a sleek, aerodynamic design that gleamed in the moonlight. The machine might have passed for a robotic dog if it weren’t for the six long, spider-like arms that sprouted from its back, and the fact that it’s head was nothing but a gleaming black ball mounted above its shoulders on a long, skinny neck. I stared into that gleaming black sphere and felt it looking back at me. It was like a giant eye. I wondered if that was its function and if the machine would be able to see us without it. Directly below the sphere, where a real dog’s head and neck would have been, was what looked like the barrel of a powerful cannon.

  “We are unarmed,” I said. “We mean you no harm.”

  All six lasers snapped back on. Three for each of us. The emerald beams connected us to the alien machine in some perverse way.

  “I don’t think it understands the concept of surrender,” Harry said.

  What would it understand? There had to be a way to communicate that we were not a threat. Taking a chance, I got down on my knees. Pebbles ground against my knee caps with sharp stabs of pain.

  “Please,” I said, with my hands still raised in surrender. “I have children. They need me.”

  The Screecher shrieked at us again. I wished I could understand whatever it was trying to say. “We’re not a threat.” Harry got down on his knees beside me.

  The lasers vanished once more, and metallic clicking noises followed as the Screecher’s six arms folded away against its sides.

  I nodded encouragingly and smiled. The Screecher turned and slunk away. Beside me, Harry shifted his stance. The shotgun swept up, moonlight flashing off the barrel.

  “Harry, no!”

  He fired into the bulbous head of the Screecher with a deafening boom. The head exploded with a sound like shattering glass, and the robot gave a piercing wail. Metal arms deployed once more, sweeping every which way and firing bullets with muffled reports. One of them zipped by, so close to my ear that I could feel the wind of its passing. Another grazed my shoulder with a searing flash of heat. I twisted around and fell over backward with the imparted momentum of the projectile.

  Harry reloaded, firing again and again at the alien machine. Metal crunched loudly with each impact. I sat up, feeling faint as I tried to staunch the hot sticky river of blood pouring from my shoulder.

  I saw the robot collapse, arms and legs thrashing. Pebbles skittered away from it in waves, and bullets zipped blindly through the night. Harry reloaded and fired again, and this time the machine lay still.

  “What were you thinking!” I demanded.

  Harry walked over and kicked the robot to make sure it was actually disabled. The arms and legs didn’t even twitch. Turning back to me, he said, “We need to get out of here before another one comes to investigate.”

  * * *

  Harry took a moment to check my injury. “It doesn’t look too bad. Keep pressure on it.”

  He held out a hand to help me up, but I couldn’t spare one of my own. My injured arm was too weak, and my other hand was busy keeping pressure on the wound.

  Harry realized his mistake and moved to lift me up under my arms instead. He grunted and heaved to get me on my feet. Once standing, I turned and glared at him. “What the hell did you shoot it for?”

  “It turned its back,” Harry replied as he bent to retrieve my AR15 from the ground.

  “Because it was going to leave us alone!”

  Harry snorted and shook his head. Leaving his shotgun to dangle by its strap, he held the rifle in both hands and started jogging down the beach.

  I caught up to him, walking fast on trembling legs. “Are you going to explain yourself?”

  Harry sighed. “That one might have left us alone, but then there’d be a record of it finding us. If the Screechers are coming back for a second sweep, it would be better if they don’t already know where to look.”

  I shook my head and brushed by Harry, taking the lead. “It might not matter. If they come back for a thorough search, they’ll find us anyway.�
��

  Harry appeared walking alongside me, and glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah maybe. How defensible is your shelter?”

  “You’ll see in a minute,” I replied as I angled up from the beach. We had to crawl through a barbed wire fence—no small feat with the gunshot wound in my shoulder.

  Cutting across the back of Richard’s property, the decoy house came into view, and I heard a snort from Harry. “You’re joking, right?”

  In lieu of an explanation I led him around the back to the stand of trees that concealed the real shelter.

  “Oh, I see,” Harry said as we came to the chain fence that ran around the compound. Alex had left the gate open. I nodded to Harry. “Help me lock it, would you?” He nodded and left his guns to dangle from opposite shoulders while he wrapped the chain and clamped the padlock through it. That done, we both hurried over to the door in the base of the tower. I hit the buzzer beside the door and waited. A few moments later I heard locking bolts clunking as they slid aside.

  Kate burst out and wrapped me in a painful hug. “Ouch!” I complained.

  She withdrew sharply and saw me holding my shoulder, my hand glistening blackly in the dim yellow light spilling from the shelter. “You’re hurt!” she said.

  “It’s not too bad,” I said. “The bullet only grazed me.” At least I hoped that was true. It was hard to tell in the dark.

  “You got shot?!”

  “Shhhh,” Harry hissed. “They could hear you.”

  We piled into the shelter, and Kate shut and locked the door behind us. As soon as the door was secured she came to look me over. The blood drained from her face and tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh, Logan... what happened to you?”

  I frowned and looked to Harry. He was also staring at me like he’d seen a ghost. This was the first time that Harry and I had been able to get a good look at each other since we’d met. He was a big man with a barrel chest, dark hair, a broad jaw, and a thick black beard. I could see that he wasn’t injured. As for me... after all the near misses with that tank-sized robot, it was hard to say.