He smoothed over my hair. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
I nodded and pulled myself up to a sitting position. My body shook all over, but I held it together. “I’m fine. Besides, it took us so long to get here, I’m thinking we should stay awhile, appreciate the view.”
“Ha ha.” Gale helped me to my feet. “I know you too well, Julie. Well enough to know you’re hiding behind that sarcasm.”
I untangled my rifle and hefted my backpack on my back. It felt like two tons. Unless the queen Sparkie liked Kashi, all those granola bars were unnecessary. “Then, you also know how stubborn I can be.”
He nodded. “Stubborn enough to win Go Fish every time.”
We walked to a single panel on the floor with one indent for a rock. I made sure my rifle was ready to fire and glanced at Gale.
He nodded. “Let’s pay the queen a visit.”
I stuck the rock in, and the wall melted away.
The control chamber stretched the length of the ship. On one side, the dark city of Boston loomed like some tortured beast. On the other, the giant ball of lightning pulsated and sparked. In the center, upon a high, white seat sat the largest Sparkie I’d ever seen. It towered over eight feet tall, with a bald, oversized head with green veins running under the glimmery skin. Hundreds of fibrous strands sprouted from the head to the top of the ship and the control panel over the window. To call it a queen would have been denying the androgynous shape of its elongated body. But, all I could think of was a beehive, with an overly large queen at the core controlling the drones.
As we walked toward it with our guns raised, it turned to us and narrowed two large oval eyes. Long, needle-shaped teeth protruded from its mouth like it had been growing them for quite some time.
I cocked my gun. “Don’t move.”
“I don’t think she understands you,” Gale whispered beside me.
I shot lasers at her with my eyes. “Oh, I think she does.”
I shot my gun into the chamber with the lightning, and then pointed it again at the queen. “Tell me where my people are.”
The queen hissed, a long, drawn-out nasty one. Her black and bottomless eyes bore right into me, as if she could see my soul and pick it apart.
Anger ignited like a raging volcano. She’d taken Mom’s life in the blink of an eye along with billions of others for something as simple as salt. I wanted to shoot her right there, but that wouldn’t do me any good. “Where is my mom?”
Pain erupted behind my eyes, and I cringed back.
Gale held his hand to his forehead. “What’s going on?”
Static sounded inside my head, then, from the chaos, came one horrible, heartbreaking word. Irretrievable.
Telepathy. She used our minds to translate her language.
I stared at her with defiance, making sure I still held my gun. “Why?”
The static surged again, and I covered one ear with my free hand. Leave or die.
“No.” I stepped toward her, refusing to believe her. “Bring them back.”
Gale pulled me back. “Julie, I don’t think she can.”
I shrugged him off me. The harsh reality dug into my soul. “Then she’ll pay for what she did.”
She lunged, and the fibrous strands ripped from her head. I fired one shot after another, but she just kept coming. Gale fired beside me. As she approached, he pushed me aside. The queen rammed into him, and they fell to the floor in a heap of limbs.
“No!” Gale could not die because of me. It should have been me wrestling with her on the floor. I tried to get a good shot, but they kept moving.
This Sparkie’s tail moved sinuously like a ginormous killer dandelion. The tentacles swerved through the air like snakes, spearing at Gale’s face. Each time it dove for the kill, my chest seized. Gale moved out of the way twice before it hit him in the side. He cried out in pain as the Sparkie dug her teeth into his shoulder, crushing my heart into mush.
“No!” I screamed and aimed for its head, praying I didn’t hit Gale, and fired. My gun exploded into light. The first shot hit the queen’s shoulder. She turned and hissed, Gale’s blood dripping from her mouth.
I shot again and again, hitting her in the chest and then the head.
The Sparkie fell on top of Gale. Neither one of them moved.
No, no, no…panic seized me like a cold hand around my throat. I rushed over, my pulse beating a thousand times a minute. The Sparkie covered Gale completely, and I couldn’t uncover his face. She suffocated him. I had to pull her off.
The queen’s skin felt slick and smooth like stone under my hands as I yanked her giant body off of Gale. She must have weighed two hundred pounds. Had she crushed him?
Panic rushed in, seizing my chest until I could barely breathe.
Gale’s blood pooled around him, thick and dark red. His shoulder was a mess of torn shirt and skin. I pressed on the wound, trying to staunch the flow as his blood seeped between my fingers.
“Please, no. Please, Gale, don’t die.”
His eyes fluttered open. His face was paled, and sweat beaded on his brow. “Did we get her?”
“We did.” Tears ran down my cheeks. “You’re going to be fine.” I ripped the fabric of my shirt and tied it around his chest. “I’m going to find a way to get us out of here.”
We didn’t have much time. No doubt, we’d caused a lot of ruckus. Sparkies would be coming up from the other levels. This was my fault. I’d climbed that ladder blinded by revenge.
There was no way I’d get him out alive.
Unless….
Desperation ravaged through me like a fever. I glanced at the chair where the fibrous strands hung severed from the controller. Could I take the helm?
As much as I didn’t like the thought of those wires in my head, it was the only way. I would be able to control the ship. Maybe, then, I could get Gale out.
I dragged him to the chair.
“Julie, what are you doing?”
“Making sure you’re safe.”
“No, wait.” He reached for me, but I tore away from his weak fingers. I climbed up to the chair with the rock in my hand.
As if they sensed my presence, the strands wove down toward me. I jumped as the first one pierced the skin of my neck. More followed, piercing the back of my head, the skin above my ear, my shoulder, and even my arms. I screamed from the pain until my mind buzzed with activity, like a thousand televisions all running at the same time.
I saw everything.
Sparkies climbing the ladders on all sides.
The gear churning the ocean waters.
Thousands of ships flying in the sky.
I heard billions of their voices, like a chorus of chatter, each one bent on gathering, preserving, collecting the salt. All the voices chanted the same thing, except the ones in this ship. They rioted in a frenzied panic without a queen to organize their thoughts.
I raised my hand, and the wall to the room reformed. Using my mind, I strengthened the metal around the room, locking all the Sparkies out.
I dug deeper, sifting through their databanks, their memories.
Worlds flashed in my mind. Jungle planets, barren rock, icy tundra, and a sprawling metropolis. I watched as the inhabitants blinked out of existence, and the Sparkies claimed their resources unharmed.
Using some sort of trans-dimensional technology, they moved from planet to planet by bending time and space. The electromagnetic surge broke apart the very atoms that made up the inhabitants, dissolving them into loose molecules. The queen Sparkie was right. I couldn’t bring everyone back.
Vast hopelessness spread through me. At the end of the world, there was nothing I could do.
Gale groaned beside me. “What do you see?”
Only his presence kept me sane. “Awful things. Entire civilizations wiped out.”
He coughed. His voice weakened by the minute. “Can you stop them?”
Could I?
I could blow this ship up, but it would be one o
f many. It would not stop their onslaught, or save future worlds from their cold-hearted invasion. The Sparkies had mastered a power that had eluded every other civilization, leaving everyone in the universe susceptible to their destruction. They could control space and time.
Wait.
If they could control time, I could go back to the day the asteroids came down from the sky and warn everyone on Earth.
No. That wouldn’t work, either. It didn’t leave enough time to prepare.
What about five years before or even ten?
Would anyone believe me? I was a cashier at Save ’n Shop, not some rocket scientist at NASA. No one would listen. Besides, that wouldn’t stop the Sparkies from eliminating other species. I would just be saving Earth. No, they had to be stopped on a grand scale.
I had their limitless power at my fingertips, I just had to think outside the box.
The metal pounded on all sides around us. The Sparkies hissed as static built up in the air. I didn’t have much time.
“Julie?”
“I’m thinking.”
The idea hit me like a Sparkie tail, zapping my senses until my head threatened to explode as I wrapped my mind around it.
I searched their databank for their home planet and saw a world covered by strange, box-like buildings. Modules covered every inch, rising from the ground to twenty stories in the air like some metallic beehive. The entire place swarmed with Sparkies. Some of them lay listless on the rooftops, their bodies emaciated, while others climbed over each other in the levels below to lick what looked like salty residue on a rock.
The salt.
That’s what sustained them. They’d exhausted their only resource. That’s why they came to Earth.
I asked the ship to take me back in their history, and I watched as the buildings recede into gorgeous rock formations made of sand and salt, reflecting the purple, blue, and white lights of their sky, where a perpetual Aurora Borealis reigned.
I turned to Gale. “I know what to do.” It was a horrible, unforgivable God-like act, and I’d taken basic philosophy and morality, so I knew the repercussions of my plan. But, when it all came down to it, my family and friends came above an alien civilization. I was willing to live with the consequences. Let me be damned.
My mind demanded the ship travel to the world and that time, before they discovered technology.
Nothing happened. Maybe I couldn’t drive the ship after all. I glanced at the walls where the Sparkies pounded to get in. Would it end here, like this?
I tried again, envisioning the beauty of their world before they mined it to pieces, and the peace that had reigned for centuries before their population spread out of control.
Suddenly, my stomach somersaulted and blindingly bright white light pierced the front window. Every molecule in my body stretched, ripped apart then fused back together. I closed my eyes, seeing splotches of red and green beneath my eyelids. When I opened them again, the world I’d seen in the databank stood before us.
“Where did you take us?” Gale whispered beside me.
“Their home world. Before they discovered this technology.”
“Why?”
Would Gale forgive me? I had to tell him the truth. “I’m going to use their technology on them, wiping out the entire timeline of their existence after this point in history.” I wished I could move my arms to comfort him, but the wires held me in place. “If this is successful, everything we did after the asteroid shower will be rewritten.”
“Then, we would have never met.”
“I know. It’s the only way to save the people on Earth, and to save you.” The reality hit me so hard, I could barely breathe. My dream had been correct. I would have to choose between Gale and my family and friends. I only wished I’d be able to remember him and what we had together.
“Remember me, Julie. You are my world.”
Gale’s words stung like sweet melancholy, shattering me and making me soar at the same time. Here, at the end of the world, I’d found the one thing I didn’t think I’d ever have. Gale made me feel special, wanted, precious. I cherished our time together more than anything in the world. We’d only had two weeks, but we’d made it count. If only my former self at Save ’n Shop could see it. She’d felt so trapped, scared, incapacitated by drudgery. I’d tell her anything was possible. I’d teach her dreaming big was the only way to get anything she wanted. I’d make her hope.
The metal started to give way, and static filled the room as the Sparkies tried to squeeze through. We were out of time.
I closed my eyes and set off the weapon with one thought in my mind. Gale. Remember me.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SAME OLD
June 22, 2013, 6:30 a.m.
I hit my alarm and covered my head with my pillow. Ringing groceries at Save ’n Shop was just about the last thing I wanted to do for eight hours. A killer headache throbbed in my left temple, and my mouth was dry as sandpaper.
What had I done last night?
If I remembered correctly, I’d watched a Survivor marathon with Mom. I hadn’t drunk anything besides V8, and if that gave me a hangover, then I didn’t know how I would get through the bonfire tonight. Better find a way to drain my beer without Hailey looking.
Mom.
The thought of her sent a pang of wistful melancholy through my chest. I jumped out of bed and ran into the living room. She snored in her wheelchair while a blonde woman on TV tried to sell a diamond bracelet.
I threw my arms around her and squeezed as hard as I could.
“What’s the matter, hon? Did you have a bad dream?” Mom rubbed her eyes, still groggy from sleep.
“No. I was getting up for work, and I had the urge to come in here and see you.”
“My goodness! Well, I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know.” I shook my head. “I’m just acting weird.” I checked the time. Six forty-five. I had to get ready, eat breakfast, and walk to work by eight o’clock. “Gotta take a shower.”
“Don’t forget to eat something for breakfast.”
“I will.” For some strange reason, I had an urge to make scrambled eggs with yellow powder. Did we even have that in the kitchen? Even if we did, I didn’t have time to melt butter in the pan, never mind scramble eggs.
After my shower, I ate a bowl of cereal and booked it to work. I was already ten minutes behind by the time I reached the coffee shop where Raggedy Al made his home. The gnarled man sat on the curb, swatting something I couldn’t see.
“Dead or alive. Here or there. Parallel universes all intersected. Too many memory echoes.” He wiped his nose on his tattered sleeve.
Normally, I crossed the street so I didn’t have to deal with him, but, today, I walked over, dug in my pocket, and handed him a five dollar bill. I must have been wearing crazy pants because it took me almost an hour to make that much at work.
“What’s this for, girly?” He stared at me like I was the crazy one. Two of his front teeth were missing, and he didn’t look like he’d bathed in days. A wave of compassion came over me. Why hadn’t I ever tried to help him before?
“I don’t know.” I pointed to his sign. “It does say homeless, please help.”
Raggedy Al pushed the money back in my hand. “You’ve already helped.”
“What?”
“More than you know.”
Why I was standing around talking to Raggedy Al when I was late for work was beyond me. “Ah, thanks.” If he didn’t want it, then I couldn’t help him. Regret trickling over me, I stuffed the money back in my pocket and started jogging to make up some time.
I got to work with half a minute to spare. I checked in, put on my apron, and took my place at register five, feeling like I’d gotten up on the wrong side of the bed. This whole day had me weirded out.
Gertrude was bagging for the other cashier, so it looked like I’d be alone for the day. I recognized my first customer right away. She only shopped once a month, and when she did, it was lik
e she prepared for the end of the world. This lady piled her groceries in one large heap so heavy, the cartwheels squeaked under the pressure.
I turned the belt on and started ringing. I was there all day, anyway. Might as well stay busy.
A gallon of whole milk. Beep.
Three loaves of bread, all white. Beep, beep, beep.
An extra-large bag of Cool Ranch Dorito’s. Yummy. Beep.
A can of SpaghettiOs.
I froze, staring at the label with the O smiling and riding the skateboard. My chest grew tight, and my eyes burned as if someone had sprayed them with cat dander. Why did the can upset me? I’d always enjoyed eating SpaghettiOs.
“Is there something wrong?”
I blinked, glancing at the lady unloading groceries on the belt.
Her white T-shirt said Heavily Armed, Easily Pissed. “You gonna ring that, or are we gonna stand here all day?”
“Sorry.” I rang the can and sent it down the belt to the bagger that wasn’t there. “It wasn’t scanning properly.”
I finished her order, bagged the whole thing, and told her to have a nice day.
Minutes stretched into hours, and, finally, when the clock struck four thirty, I was free. I raced home carrying a bag of groceries and made SpaghettiOs for me and Mom.
Somehow, the taste of the tart tomato sauce comforted me along with Mom’s presence, even though she’d been there, at home, every day of my life since the accident. Why was I getting so sentimental?
It must have been the fact I’d graduated. Big events like that always made a person look back and appreciate what they have.
Hailey picked me up at six. I was so happy to see her she thought I’d already started drinking. We picked a spot in the grass by the bonfire, and she went to get us two beers.
Across the flames, Mike stared at me like a hobbit stared at a pumpkin. I picked at a hole in my skinny jeans and waited for Hailey to return.
She plopped down beside me and handed me a beer. “You’ve been unusually quiet.”
I shrugged. “I’ve had a weird day.”
“Well, now’s the time to celebrate.” She tucked her blonde hair behind her ear and chugged her beer.
Earth: Population 2 (Paradise Lost Book 1) Page 14
