“Leave that to me,” she said, hefting her pack onto her shoulders. She tugged his sleeve and he followed her as she ran along the tree line. The sun had set by the time Monet waved them away from the trees and he duplicated her hunched jog.
Alec heard the whine of a Seeker but kept moving, aware the Seeker couldn’t read their IDs with the bracelet blockers over their wrists. The drones could easily target them as fugitives if they came into view. What had Monet called them? Freeborns?
Monet stopped behind one of a series of smaller buildings outside the giant warehouse. “These are trailers. They use them for meetings when they do construction work and store outdoor equipment in them. Since I don’t see any construction going on, I think they’re likely empty. Let’s find out.” Monet stood with her back against the side of the trailer, and Alec followed her around to a door.
“Locked.” Monet pulled a tool from her pack, and she jammed it into the metal frame around the plastic door and pushed. It snapped open and she glanced around before shoving Alec inside.
Monet activated a dim flashlight, setting it on the floor to give them barely enough light to obtain a visual on the room.
“Look for a tablet or a computer,” she said, and Alec got to work sifting through the trailer’s five desks. There were papers strewn about and coffee cups above dark rings on folders. There really was a whole world out there Alec didn’t know about. He pictured his nemesis Simon standing in a room like this one, drinking coffee and laughing about the half chit he gave one of the workers just because he could.
Something reflected a shred of light under a piece of paper, and he slid the sheet to the side. “Is this what you’re after?” he asked, and Monet rushed to him.
“And bingo was his name-o.” The tablet was dark, and she flipped it around in her hand until she found the power key, and with a press, the screen lit up. Alec had seen the site supervisors with similar tools, but he didn’t know what purpose they served.
“What’s it going to do?”
“I’m hoping this has the routes…” She was moving through the screens so fast, it made Alec dizzy. Clearly, she had experience with the tablets. “There we go. This hasn’t been updated for a while, but it looks like… wait, this might be even better.”
“What?” He peered over her shoulder, the letters and numbers on the screen making little sense to him.
“There’s a truck heading for Omaha, but it continues on to Denver. If we can hop on board there, we can get to McCook in no time.” Monet was grinning from ear to ear, and Alec wasn’t sure which was worse: hiding out in a semi-trailer waiting to be caught or running outside for countless miles to McCook.
“How far is Denver from McCook?” he asked.
“We won’t be going to Denver,” she said with a glimmer of trouble in her eyes. He was starting to read her expressions, and this one spoke volumes of trouble.
“For once, can you stop being so vague and just fill me in?” he said too loudly.
“Growing a backbone. I like that.” She gave him a light punch in the arm. “Fine. I have something I can plant on the wheel well. When we’re near McCook, I blow a tire. They stop the truck, we jump out. No harm, no foul.”
He rolled his eyes at her. “Why does it always sound so easy coming from your mouth?”
“Because I have something you don’t.”
“What’s that?”
“Confidence. If this schedule is still the same, the truck bound for Denver leaves in eight hours. We have to make sure we’re on it. That means we wait until the guards are almost done with their shift. At four AM, the night guards switch off with the morning crew. The night crew people are groggy, sometimes a little drunk, and often bored. It’s the best time to make the trip to the loading bay. We head for bay twelve.”
“How do you know so much?” Alec asked.
“How do you think? I used to be a guard. In another lifetime.” Monet’s eyes unfocussed.
“Looks like we have some time. Maybe you can tell me about it?” Alec prodded.
She crossed the cramped space to the exit and slid the twisted lock closed before settling down to the ground, her back on the door. She held her gun in her hand but settled it to her lap.
“They recruited me when I was about your age,” she started.
“The Reclaimers?” he asked.
She nodded. “I’d managed to befriend a supervisor at the kids’ camp. They falsified my documents to keep me from getting into the breeding facilities. I couldn’t do it. It all seemed so wrong to me. I remembered what the world was like before. I got stuck working the fields in Kentucky and it wasn’t so bad. Hard work, but I got sick. Pneumonia, and I almost died.
“Someone had to stick their neck out to get me medication and assistance. They ended up moving me to a manufacturing plant like yours, only we were doing repair work on their hovercars and ships. I never had the pleasure of entering one, but I worked plenty on the cars.”
“What are they like?” Alec asked. He leaned toward her, enthralled by her story. His was so boring, so lame in comparison.
“The hovercars? Loud, inefficient, but they fly the bastards around, so convenient, I suppose. Where was I?” she asked, looking at the far wall in the dark.
“Manufacturing plant.”
“Right. That’s where I met Crash and Jackfish. Crash was part of the Reclaimers. Showed up one day with the kid and targeted me. I still don’t know why.”
Alec did. “Probably because you’re energetic, strong, opinionated, and make good company,” he said, glad of the darkness. He didn’t know what had come over him.
“I bet you say that to all the ladies.” She laughed. “They told me about the Reclaimers after a couple months, and I bought in big time. In my experience, humans were shit at times, but I’d had enough of them looking out for me in my short life, that I knew it was worth risking my own existence to make a difference. And here we are.” Her head leaned on the door behind her.
“That’s great. We need people like you to help. I can’t believe there’s even anyone out there fighting the Occupation.” Alec meant it. He’d lived his entire life up to this point being forced to accept status quo, and a fire burned deep in his belly at the thought of changing that. This was his moment, his recruitment, and he was all in. “I’m sorry about Jackfish,” he said, remembering the dead man was her friend. “And Crash.”
“I have every expectation that Crash will be alive and that we’ll see him again.” Her voice was quiet, and Alec wasn’t sure if it held the same conviction as before.
“I bet he is too. I only just met the guy, but he seemed like the strongest man I’d ever seen. If he’s anything like you, he’ll be fine,” Alec said.
They stayed there, talking for a while before taking the opportunity to sleep. Monet told him she had an alarm in her pack, and she set it for three AM.
Alec was shaken awake right on cue, and he stretched, trying not to consider the immense danger they were about to walk into.
“Okay. The loading dock is right over there.” Monet pointed toward the door and northwest of the trailers. “We’re making for trailer twelve. They load the goods and shut the doors, without much preamble. We need to be on that trailer, hidden, and I have a quick stop to make before then.”
“We’d better do this.” Alec clutched his gun in his hand, but he hadn’t practiced firing it. The door swung open, and Monet took the lead. Alec felt the cool middle of the night air against his sweating brow and started toward the edge of the massive warehouse.
The ground began to shake, and Alec worried they had been seen. The same sound from earlier carried to his ears, and an immense light filled the entire area from his right.
“Keep moving. That’s their ship activating,” Monet said, and he looked away from the bright source, trying to blink away the spots from his eyes.
The alien vessel was firing up right as they were trying to run toward the loading dock. Alec knew it had to be a coincidenc
e, but it was an unlikely one.
“This is good,” Monet whispered. “Everyone will be distracted.”
Monet led him to the first semi’s parking spot. It held the number one on the truck and he saw the same number on the closed bay door.
Monet climbed under the trailer, rolling in the gravel to the other side, and he did his best effort to imitate her. Number two. They had some ways to go. He was under the second trailer when he heard the footsteps crunching on the rocks nearby.
The ground shook again, a constant hum and vibrations that jarred Alec’s teeth and turned his brain to mush.
His heart blasted against his chest when he heard a voice from the next trailer. “I’m not working any later tonight. They can’t just show up unannounced and then take off at four in the morning.” The woman’s voice was loud.
“Keep it down. You don’t want one of them to hear you, do you?” a male asked in return.
“And then what? Do you actually think they even speak our language?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Just keep it quiet until they leave. God, they give me the creeps.”
More footsteps and now the voices came from in front of the truck they were hiding under. “Let’s watch them take off. Then I’ll be able to sleep after my shift,” the woman said.
“Give me a minute. Shoelace,” he said, and the woman whistled as she walked away, gravel crunching loudly.
Monet clasped a hand over Alec’s mouth and rolled onto her belly. “What the…” the voice said, and his steps were coming closer. They weren’t hiding very well under the trailer, and Alec knew this was it. He held his gun tightly, but Monet met his gaze and shook her head. He glanced down and saw a knife in her hand.
“Who’s there? Is that you, Kelly?” The man crouched beside Monet.
Chapter 30
Cole
The rest of the night was spent in a rush of pain and exhaustion as they fled. The slope they ran down from the hilltop pointed roughly north, so they simply tried to put as much distance between themselves and the machines as they could.
It was easy to get turned around in the dark, especially in the storm, and a few times they lost one another and were forced to call out.
Neither of them spoke a word other than those few times. The fear of seeing a Tracker and the stress of escaping it spurred them beyond their normal limits. Long before the dawn, they were forced to stop and rest.
Cole recognized the danger in how Lina moved. He forced open the door of the nearest building, grunting loudly with the effort of pushing the sliding metal along seized tracks against years and years of rust. Managing to create a gap barely large enough for them to slip through, he took off his pack and pushed it ahead of him, fumbling in the top pouch for the small flashlight that needed to be wound up to emit a dull glow.
Holding it in his left hand along with the foregrip of the shotgun, he investigated the single-story building, checking the corners and the other few rooms before settling on a small room without windows and returning to lead Lina inside.
“Dry clothes,” he told her as they had both shivered. After the stress and exertion of their escape, their bodies were now leaking out their heat through the wet material at a rate that would cause them serious issues soon. He stripped off his own layers without shame, turning away from her as she was clearly more reserved, even in spite of the tiny amount of light the dying flashlight gave off to illuminate the small space. They pulled dry clothes out of their packs and put them on over wet, cold skin as they both shivered.
“We need a fire,” he said, looking around for anything that would burn to accompany the bundle of dry kindling wrapped up in his kit. She nodded, her teeth chattering uncontrollably, making her unable to get any words out. Cole grabbed her hands and put them on her torso, rubbing them up and down by way of instruction before he left the room. He took the flashlight with him and heard a small yelp of fear as he left her in the dark.
He found three old wooden chairs, all covered in a thick layer of grime and compacted dust like many things, and began breaking them up before putting the broken pieces into a small metal trash can that had some dusty old paper at the bottom. He returned to find Lina still in the same position, rubbing her body with her hands robotically.
He put down the trash can and set light to the small shards of dry wood that had been buried in the very center of his bag. The wood caught quickly, especially as he added a handful of the fluffy stuffing from one of the coats left behind at the last place. The broken wood went on and took a few minutes to catch properly, but soon, the small, orange flames began to radiate heat. Lina knelt beside it, sucking up the warmth as though she knew her life depended on it.
Cole took out some of the dried meat from his pack and a bottle of water, holding it out to her insistently until she relented and took them.
As they both chewed on the smoky meat, a sound in the outer room made them freeze. It was a wet sound—Cole could think of no other way to describe it—and he heard the distinct echo of footsteps. Not the sound of two feet falling one after the other, but of four legs moving together. He reached slowly for his shotgun, somehow thinking that fast movement would bring the thing chasing them down on their hiding place like a fury. He carefully pointed the barrel at the gap in the door where the smoke from their fire drifted away.
The footsteps came towards them, forcing another small yelp from Lina, who reached with shaking hands for her own gun. The sound was closer, but there was something about the noise that made Cole twitch the barrel upwards away from the door and reach out a hand to stop Lina from pulling her trigger.
In the flickering orange light of their small fire, her face, lips still shivering, registered confusion and fear, but he hoped his eyes returned a look of confidence and belief that she should trust him. He picked up a strip of dried meat and tossed it into the gap by the door to hear a sound he had hoped for.
A rumbling growl ceased as a wet snout darted into the light just long enough to grab the meat and withdraw, already chewing and chomping on the scrap hungrily. Cole relaxed, glad that his senses had told him it wasn’t the Tracker that had followed them. He heard the claws click away from their hiding place, uneven as the coyote limped, probably exhausted after the fast journey through the heavy rain.
Lina didn’t seem so reassured and kept her wide eyes on the gap with her gun gripped in her hands tightly. He tried to soothe her, to tell her it wasn’t a danger to them when he wasn’t certain he believed it fully himself. He trusted his instinct, like he’d learned to by growing up in the harsh world where detection because of an ignored feeling meant death, and his instinct told him to trust that the animal hadn’t followed them to do them any harm.
“Rest for a while,” he told her as he shuffled to block the door with his body, knowing that she wouldn’t relax if she thought the coyote could get to her. She nodded, put another piece of wood on the fire, and curled up next to it for warmth before giving in to mental and physical exhaustion.
The rain stopped a couple of hours later, and as tired as Cole’s body had been, his eyes refused to close. The stress and fear he’d felt when the Tracker emerged onto their hilltop had seemed like a premonition of death to him, but now, miles away and taking faith from the knowledge that their injured companion had found them when the Tracker could not, he began to feel like they’d escaped.
But he knew that they couldn’t stay there, not after a Tracker had been destroyed.
Cole thought about how Tom used to tell him stories about the aliens using drones to hunt humans. One of those tales told of how a group of men and women had lured a Tracker towards them and crushed it with a rockfall trap. They were still celebrating when the hovercraft dropped from high in the sky to flood the air with an army of drones that captured all of them.
“How do you know if everyone was captured?” he had asked at the time, his young age not dulling his keen intellect. He remembered Tom smiling and tapping the side of his nose in a
gesture that he used when he didn’t have an answer but wanted to appear like he did.
When the rain stopped and the wind died down, he gently shook Lina awake, making sure that her hand wasn’t on her gun when she’d fallen asleep. Holding a finger to his lips in the last light of their drying fire, he gestured that they needed to get moving again. Reluctantly, he rose, his body stiff and aching from the running and the short sleep on a hard floor.
They put on their damp clothes, strapped on their packs, and set off, taking their bearings from the light gray glow in the sky to their right.
Behind them, lurking somewhere in the shadows of the building, their unexpected companion slunk out to follow them.
Chapter 31
Sw-18
At dawn, the quiet hilltop erupted into a maelstrom of noise and activity as the hovercraft settled into land in the central square. Damp dust whipped all around and a team of four Trackers dropped from the belly of the small ship and spread out in different directions as the ramp extended from the rear and a pair of thin lower legs emerged as the Overseer descended.
SW-18’s master came next, exposing the scaled skin stretched taut over the muscular thighs where the hands hung on long arms. As it hit the wet ground, it lifted one leg as though it had stepped in something unpleasant before raising a tablet device and tapping at it with a long claw. The almond-shaped yellow eyes looked up to take in the battered, mangled form of the last generation Tracker drone.
A noise from further up the ramp, still mostly inside the hovercraft, made the alien on the ground growl and chirp a response.
“Didn’t know we had any of the old ones left in the area,” it said to its companion on the ground. “I thought they’d all been recalled for an upgrade.”
“As did I,” said the other, slipping the tablet into a pouch on its leg and reaching up to pull the half-destroyed remains of the drone down on what appeared to be a rudimentary wire trap. It was cut free and dropped to the ground, gathering more wet dust in the holes torn in its body by what looked like old Earth weapons. The alien grimaced to itself, considering that these old weapons were still capable of tearing one its own kind apart.
Occupation: A Post-Apocalyptic Alien Invasion Thriller (Rise Book 1) Page 16
