Camp Alien

by Gini Koch

  As before, the android kept coming, though it was having issues. Ensured it had more by shooting five shots into its head. It went down. Lizzie pulled out the bar, I dragged the body to what I was hoping would become a pile.

  Was really glad that we were using the stab then shoot technique, because the next person through the door was Mahin. “Do you need help?” she asked, looking wild.

  “Not yet but potentially.” Shared Mission: Duck Blind details. “So, what have you been doing?”

  “Running mostly.” She cocked her head and ran behind me. “There were three after me and I think they’re here.”

  Put my gun into my left hand and hefted a bar with my right while Mahin grabbed a bar, too. The first of the Naked Army came running in and impaled himself on Lizzie’s bar.

  Couldn’t shoot him because the next one was right behind him and I had to use my javelin skills again. I was a little high, but the good news was that even though I missed the android coming through the door, I speared the one behind him right through the face.

  Lizzie meanwhile had pulled out her bar from the first one and was slamming it against his head. Mahin was in a really good horse stance, bar up like a spear, so when the unharmed android came at her, she was able to stab him through the gut.

  I got my Glock back into my shooting hand and proceeded to empty the last five bullets in the clip into the android Mahin was dealing with. As it went down, I dropped out the empty clip. “Refill!”

  Lizzie, still hitting the android with the bar one-handed, reached into her pocket and tossed me a new clip. Slammed it in, then shot the android that was pulling the bar out of its body. It went down, Mahin grabbed her bar back, then she and Lizzie dragged their androids to the pile, while I went to drag the one in from the hall.

  Which was a mistake, in that I didn’t have a bar on me and six more androids were converging on us from both sides.

  On the plus side, I had a mostly full clip. The ones on my right were closest. Emptied said clip into them, one, two, three. Literally. They seemed to have no self-preservation and less intelligence about doing things like ducking or dodging. Had no complaints—I liked being alive.

  Luckily for me, Lizzie came out and rammed a bar into the nearest android on my left while Mahin dragged the one in the hall back into the room. Dropped the clip as Lizzie and I ran back into the room. She slapped a new clip into my hand and grabbed a bar while I put the clip in and turned to shoot the next android.

  He obliged by walking into the room, taking five bullets to the head, and going down.

  “You know, I don’t remember androids being this easy to kill,” I mentioned as the third one came in and I shot him, too. “Think it’s because they’re not really ‘done’ yet?”

  “Possibly,” Mahin said as she dragged the two in the room to our pile. “But they may not be ‘dead’, so to speak, just immobilized.”

  Went outside with more caution this time. No one else was in sight, so I dragged our last android in, pulled out the bar in his head, and tossed him onto the pile.

  “We totes have over half the naked creepers down,” Lizzie said. “Should we stay here? Doesn’t seem like anyone else is coming.”

  “Give it a couple of minutes and enjoy the brief respite. Trust me, it won’t last long.”

  True enough, it didn’t. Only this time what came through the door wasn’t one of the Naked Army. It was the Navy and Air Force Kendricks.

  Fortunately for us, we were all getting good at the Stab and Shoot Method. Unfortunately for us, these androids were a lot harder to take down.

  Lizzie skewered Army Kendrick while Mahin did the same to Navy. Put five bullets in Army Kendrick, Lizzie tossed me a new clip, then I put five bullets into Navy Kendrick. They were still up. Not doing great, but still up and swinging. Army Kendrick pulled the bar out of his middle and started swinging it around.

  Lizzie dodged and fell against Navy Kendrick, which was good because she hit his side where the metal bar was not and made him lose his balance so the kick he was aiming toward Mahin missed.

  Navy Kendrick went down, Lizzie managed to keep her balance, though she was staggering. I had to back up to avoid being hit by Army Kendrick, so I used the time to shoot him some more. He went down, but he wasn’t out.

  Mahin grabbed another bar and started slamming it on Army Kendrick’s head. Meanwhile, Lizzie had pulled the bar through Navy Kendrick’s back and was hitting him with it as well.

  Put my last bullets from this clip into Navy Kendrick, then dug around in my purse for another clip. Found one, and only one. Couldn’t remember how many clips Lizzie still had on her, but had to figure it wasn’t all that many.

  We dragged the finally down androids to the pile. Looked out the window. There were several of what looked like either large metal shipping crates or portable classrooms or stranded rail cars some ways away from the back. There were ten of these—two sets of two to the right and left, a set of three in the middle, another set of two to the far left near a larger building that was even farther away, and one that was sitting at an angle and alone, kind of in the middle to the right.

  It was between this angled smaller metal building and the larger normal, for this place, building that I was pretty sure the helicarrier was sitting.

  However, there was something more important much closer to the building we were in. White and Abigail were standing back-to-back, and they were surrounded by the remaining dozen androids. And it didn’t look like Abigail was using her shield, which probably wasn’t wise at this juncture.

  “We need to get out of here. Grab our ammunition, such as it is, and let’s get going.”

  Put my Glock back into my purse and hit pause on my iPod as Mahin picked up the remaining metal bars. Lizzie and I took the footboard and headboard—which were far heavier than they looked—just in case.

  We were heading for the door when I heard a weird sound, sort of like white noise. Turned around. To see that, unfortunately, Mahin had been right—the androids had been down, but they weren’t out.

  The pile was moving.

  CHAPTER 55

  THE THREE OF US FROZE. Some things make you stop in your tracks. Some, like seeing Jeff on our wedding day, were great reasons. Some, like what we were watching right now, were not.

  The pile was moving, as if the androids on the bottom were trying to move the ones on top of them. My iPod started up and I knew I hadn’t jostled it. Instead of the song I’d had on repeat, we now had “Electric Worry” by Clutch playing. Loved this song, but memory shared that it had been used for a video game—one about killing zombies.

  “I think they’ve rebooted or whatever,” Lizzie said, her voice only shaking a little bit.

  Mahin opened her mouth, but whatever she was going to say was interrupted by the pile sort of exploding out, as the first android we’d taken down crawled out and over the pile of his duplicated brethren.

  “Kill it!” Mahin screamed. “Kill it with fire!” Then she started really yelling, but in Farsi. I had no idea what she was saying, but I was pretty sure that the words “kill” and “fire” were in there.

  Adrenaline is a funny thing. When it came to fight or flight, I was usually on the side of kick ’em in the tenders first, run away later. Right now, though, I really wanted to run. Only Mahin was freaking out in the doorway and, due to all the metal she was holding, was actually blocking any escape Lizzie and I could hope to make.

  Looked at said teenager. For the first time she looked terrified. “They really are zombie androids,” she said, her voice heading to the level where only dogs would be able to hear her. Normally I thought of that as my personal register, but couldn’t really fault Lizzie for going there.

  Lizzie was a kid, and she was, for all intents and purposes right now, my kid. Sure, I hadn’t given birth to her, sure she had an adopted father, but she was my ward, an
d besides Batman hadn’t birthed any of the Robins, either, but they were his wards, and that meant Batman was going to do all that he could to save whichever Robin, even though he’d put said Robin in danger in the first place. Apparently I had a lot in common with Batman right now.

  However, I also had zombie androids, and they were terrifying my friend and my kid.

  Rage hit, in all its She-Hulk and Wolverine’s Berserker Rage glory. Pulled the footboard and headboard out of Lizzie’s hands, let the headboard fall, then took one end of the footboard and started slamming it against the android as if the footboard was a baseball bat and the android was good ol’ Beverly, who’d tried to do horrific things to Jeff during Operation Fugly.

  They might have been tough, they might have been rough, they might have been made of metal and wires and nothing else nice, but these androids didn’t stand a chance against me right now.

  I was slamming what appeared to be an indestructible piece of metal and wood against these things, to the song that was now on repeat, and I just made sure that they were splattering as much as androids could splatter.

  Slam, spin, slam, kick, slam, jump up and down on the body, slam some more. Lost count of which one I was destroying and just kept on. Realized that Mahin and Lizzie were helping again, beating the androids with the metal bars. They were also kicking, stomping, and jumping on the bodies.

  I was going faster than either one of them, though, and not just because Lizzie was a human and Mahin was a hybrid without the double-hearts. I was revved to the top of my adrenal rush and everything else around me was in slow motion, just like it had been during Operation Confusion, when my husband and friends had been chained up and tortured.

  Was glad Jeff wasn’t around because my rage and our terror would have really affected him badly. Just channeled worry about what he’d be doing if he was here into smashing more androids.

  Sooner than I’d have thought, we had no more moving parts in here. It looked like a horrific murder scene, which was to say that it still fit the entire motif of this House of Horrors and didn’t even look out of place.

  We stopped and backed away.

  “Wow,” Lizzie said finally. “I guess they do die.”

  “When you turn them into separate parts and make the parts mush, yeah, they do.”

  Mahin was muttering about how this place should be burned to the ground. Had never realized she had arson in her veins, but clearly she was Old School and believed in setting the monsters on fire. Couldn’t argue with the logic, just didn’t want to turn a gigantic building to ash because I knew that wouldn’t play out well for us.

  “Let’s get out of here and help the others.”

  “Should we turn off the music?” Lizzie asked.

  “Um, yeah, I guess.” I mean, clearly Algar was going to turn it on anyway. Felt something brush my cheek, and looked around. No one was there, but I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye again. But when I looked, nothing. Okay, so maybe the music wasn’t Algar, but was a helpful spirit. I’d ask Algar later. And take whatever help we could get, ghostly or otherwise.

  We gathered up our makeshift yet extremely effective weapons—the footboard was banged up and dented, as were some of the metal bars, but they were in useable shape, and the headboard hadn’t been touched yet.

  Put the iPod on pause but put my earbuds back in and started my own music up. Band of Horse’s “Is There A Ghost” came on. Nice to see Algar was keeping his sense of humor.

  We headed downstairs carefully and cautiously, but as quickly as we could. Naturally, I got lost, so Lizzie ended up taking point, though I kept close to her. However, having destroyed the zombie androids seemed to have emboldened her, and she wasn’t nearly as freaked out as she had been.

  Other than seeing more decay, desolation, and a variety of horrific things in every room we passed, we didn’t come across any more androids. Since I’d seen the remaining dozen surrounding White and Abigail, this wasn’t a surprise, but it confirmed that we didn’t have even more androids out after us. At least not yet.

  We found the back doors and slunk through them. To hear the sound of what I was pretty prepared to say was a rocket launcher.

  CHAPTER 56

  SHOVED MAHIN and pulled Lizzie back against the wall. “Stay down,” I said quietly. It wasn’t hard to stay hidden—there was a ton of trash back here, including what looked like old refrigerators, vending machines, and beds. Truly, Forest Haven was a little slice of heaven.

  Of course, all the crap made it hard to see. Wanted to get out there, but also didn’t want to get hit. Hyperspeed seemed like the obvious choice but, with all the stuff we were holding, it was out of the question. And while some might have just dumped their weapons and done the running thing, I didn’t have faith that said weapons would be here when we got back. I also couldn’t guarantee I could find them again in all the trash.

  Handed Lizzie the footboard, then held the headboard up as a sort of makeshift shield. “You two stay behind me and be ready to run.” With that, we started off toward the sounds of explosions, hiding behind the Mighty Headboard Shield, “Rocket Queen” by Guns N’ Roses in my ears.

  The convenient thing about there being explosions is that it gave us a direction to head for. Shoved aside the thought that only lunatics headed toward the sounds of explosions, since I ran toward stuff like this all the time.

  The building was a long rectangle, and we’d come out in the middle of it. The action was ahead of us, but on the other side of a gigantic pile of trash. So, around the trash we went, crouched down like we were trying to win the Duck Walking Championship.

  Of course, using the headboard as a shield that we were all ducking behind meant that we couldn’t see anything. And because I was the one holding it, I couldn’t peek around either side. Either I had to keep going blind or I had to lower the headboard and expose my head. Neither option seemed all that brilliant.

  “Can you hold this?” I asked Mahin quietly.

  She nodded, put down the bars, and took the headboard from me. We still had the pile of trash on our right, so the only option was for me to peek around the left, which I did, wondering if we were actually being stealthy or if we weren’t being attacked because our enemies were laughing so hard.

  There wasn’t anyone that I could see. Though there were what looked like some destroyed android parts nearby.

  Took the headboard back and, while Mahin picked up the metal bars again, decided that, even though explosions were still happening, we could walk upright and all that jazz right now. Still held the headboard in front of us, but with my head exposed so I could see.

  We could move faster this way, which was good. Once we were near them, it was easy to confirm that the parts were indeed android and they weren’t going to start moving on their own any time soon.

  “Where are Richard and Abigail?” Mahin asked.

  “No idea. They were in this area, but I don’t see them.”

  “Maybe they’re with whoever’s blowing the androids up,” Lizzie suggested.

  “Maybe they’re the ones who are blowing them up,” Mahin added.

  “They weren’t looking like they were winning when I saw them, and they didn’t have weapons with them. And until we see who’s got the rocket launcher or bazooka or whatever, we don’t assume they’re our friend.”

  Looked around. Other than trash and android parts, I didn’t see anything else that shouldn’t be here. The explosions now sounded like they were on the other side of the metal boxes that, now that we were near them, did appear to be metal cargo containers. Had no idea what they were doing here, but decided that if we could avoid ever going into them, it would probably be in our best interests.

  There was enough room between the sets of cargo containers that we could still use the Mighty Headboard Shield, so we did. As we neared the end of the middle set of three and
could therefore see the lone, off-kilter one, I spotted White and Abigail. They were using the cargo container that was at an angle as a far better shield than we were working with.

  There was a figure dressed all in black, wearing a black backpack and a black helmet, and this person was at the near end of the building shooting what was indeed a bazooka of some kind. My time with Centaurion Division had taught me that there were many kinds of personal rocket launchers, but I wasn’t close enough to name the make and model of the one in current use. They kept shooting, reloading, and shooting again, in a very fast and efficient manner.

  “Who is that?” Lizzie whispered.

  “I’m not sure—”

  Would have said more, but my music changed to Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” and I stopped talking and did a closer examination. The person wasn’t large, but they were very comfortable with the weapon. White and Abigail weren’t trying to get away from this person, either—as near as I could tell, they were being protected, not held captive. And that backpack looked vaguely familiar.

  The person stopped firing and turned to those two, indicating they should come with. They did as requested.

  Decided we’d waited long enough. Besides, we had our Mighty Headboard Shield. We were safe. Trotted across the little clearing—looking both ways for incoming androids—and followed the others as they took off for the two other containers diagonally across this clearing from this oddly angled one.

  Checked the clearing—lots and lots of android parts. No functioning androids were standing, running, attacking or even visible. “Did you guys get them all?” I asked as we took cover, just in case, behind these last containers.

  All three of them jumped, but the person in the motorcycle helmet nodded. Good, enemies accounted for, at least for now.

  White and Abigail looked relieved to see us. “I didn’t realize you were behind us, Missus Martini. We were about to start searching for you,” he said.

  Abigail nodded. “We had a little difficulty that delayed us. Like, you know, being surrounded by hostile androids.”