by Anna Hackett
“My squad will take the Darkswifts up,” Mac said. “We plan to do some coordinated strikes on alien patrols. We’ve planned a scattered pattern, to throw the aliens off the scent of the convoy and our intended path.”
Adam nodded. “Good.”
“Speaking of scent,” Roth added. “Should we be worried about rexes?”
Liberty shivered. The aliens had huge Tyrannosaurus rex-like beasts, and used them like sniffer dogs. They’d had packs of them, saddled with riders, in the mountains.
“For some reason, we haven’t seen any on scans.” Adam drank more of his coffee. “For now, we’ll be grateful for small mercies and keep an eye out.”
Roth nodded. “Tane and his berserkers will be doing some guerilla warfare.”
Tane didn’t straighten or even look up. “We’ve got a few things up our sleeves.”
Liberty raised a brow. Most of the berserkers didn’t even wear upper armor, let alone sleeves. Their muscled, tattooed biceps were often on display.
A resigned look crossed Adam’s face. “I’m guessing I don’t want to know the details of those things?”
Tane raised his head, his eyes dark in his lean face. “Probably not.”
Adam sighed. “Okay, what else?”
“I’m loaning MacKinnon to Squad Seven,” Marcus said. “He’s our best explosives man. He can help them set some charges that’ll make the raptors think twice about chasing us.”
Reed MacKinnon tossed out a salute. Liberty had heard rumors that the former Navy SEAL was a maestro with explosives.
A redhead with creamy skin stepped forward. “We have all our drones up. We’re focusing on the area surrounding and ahead of the convoy. If there are any aliens to spot, or their balls of spiders in range, we’ll find them.”
“Good. Thank you, Lia.” Adam took another long drink of his coffee. “Elle? Liberty? You wanted to talk about the convoy.”
Elle nodded. “I invited Liberty because she has her finger on the pulse of the convoy.”
Adam’s intense blue gaze moved her way.
“I watch and I listen.” Liberty smiled at the soldiers around her. “I enjoy talking with people, unlike some people around here who can only manage scowls and grunts.”
There was some good-natured rumbling.
Then Liberty couldn’t keep the smile on her face any longer. “People are weary, scared, and tired.” The conversation around her stopped. “Truthfully, they’re at a breaking point.”
***
Adam shoved a hand through his hair, remembering that it was no longer a shaggy mess. Thoughts of his haircut—and the rest of that night—tried to penetrate his planning and route details, but he ruthlessly shoved them away.
Focus on the convoy. He’d known the survivors were at the edge of their limits, hell, they all were, but he’d hoped their resiliency would carry them through this last leg of the journey.
They were so close now.
As the soldiers around him erupted with comments and questions, he took another sip of his coffee. He almost groaned aloud. It was exactly how he liked it. Strong, with a lot of frothy milk. He didn’t know how she’d known what he liked, but part of him wondered if Liberty was psychic.
No. Not psychic. Just very, very good at reading people, and he was curious where she’d picked up the skill.
“How do we keep up morale?” he asked.
“Remind them why we’re doing this,” Liberty answered. She took a sip of her own coffee.
Adam found his gaze glued to her red lips as they wrapped around the rim of her cup. She was wearing some sort of gloss, and her lips were shiny. Just like they looked when he’d finished kissing them.
“They need a reminder of what’s important,” Liberty added, her gaze clinging to his.
Adam shifted, feeling a vague sense of unease. “What do you suggest?”
“Something to let off steam.” Her direct gaze never wavered from his.
He saw a reflection of their night together in the deep blue. She was thinking of how it felt when his fingers were inside her, his mouth on hers. It went straight to his cock.
“A gathering,” Liberty said, splintering Adam’s heated thoughts. “A party. Something that celebrates survival, life…love.”
Adam had to remind himself that however hot his encounter with Liberty, it was over. Done. An error in judgment on his behalf.
He forced himself to focus on the matter at hand. “We don’t have time for a party. We’re on the run. Two more days of travel and we’ll be there.”
Liberty shook her hair back, the glorious gold strands glinting in the sun. “Some don’t have that long. They won’t make it.”
Adam felt conflicted. He glanced at the hard faces of his soldiers. None of them had ever given up. They picked up their weapons and fought, risked their lives, every single day.
The people of the convoy would have to do their bit too, and keep moving.
“No. I’m sorry. We can’t.”
Liberty looked like she wanted to argue, but she gave him a slow nod.
Adam’s hand clenched on his cooling coffee. He felt like he’d disappointed her. “Okay, everyone, let’s get to work and get on the road.”
The squads scattered, heading off to help the convoy pack up, or to get started on the distractions they had planned for the aliens.
He turned to find Marcus beside him, his face its usual tough mask.
“Consider what she said,” the man said.
“Two days, Marcus. We’ll be there.”
“If we don’t remember what’s important…life isn’t worth living.”
Memories hit Adam. Liberty’s husky cries, her clever mouth, her curvy body.
Marcus shifted. “It’s far easier to fight knowing I have someone worth fighting for. Someone worth living for.” The soldier nodded and walked away.
Some of them weren’t that lucky. Pushing it all aside, Adam strode through their makeshift camp, urging people to pack up and get ready to leave. He caught glimpses of Liberty moving here and there, but forced himself not to go near her.
He needed some space from her…otherwise he was liable to grab her and drag her back to his truck.
“All right, everyone, let’s move out. We are so close to reaching the Enclave.”
“Today?” a young woman eagerly asked.
“Tomorrow,” he answered.
Her shoulders slumped a little. “It feels like it’s always tomorrow.” The woman turned toward her vehicle.
With a sigh, he turned to head toward his truck, nearly running into someone. “Sorry.”
“That’s perfectly okay, General.” Over-large green eyes stared up at him.
Selena was his wild card. An alien they’d rescued from the Gizzida, her species was also an enemy of the aliens. She didn’t look much different than humans, with her slim body and humanoid form—but her impossibly pale skin, large green eyes and green blood gave her away.
“We’ll be leaving soon,” he said.
She nodded. “I’ll be ready.”
He cleared his throat. “How are you?”
A sad smile crossed her face. “Grateful you’ve taken me in.” With a nod, she hurried off.
Adam climbed into his truck and saw that the soldier assigned to drive him today looked like he was barely out of his teens. “Private.”
The young man nodded. “Sir. A pleasure to drive you today.”
Adam nodded. “What’s your name?”
“Private Matthew Daniel Terrance Mitchell, sir.”
Adam’s lips twitched. “I think I’ll just call you Private.”
The man looked at him. “That’s fine, sir. Although no one worries so much about rank anymore, do they?”
Well, everyone called him general. Only one person called him Adam, deep in the dark of night, hotly whispered in his ear.
He shifted to dispel the erection rising in his trousers. “Let’s move out, Private.”
Private Mitchell nodded again
and ground the gears, setting the vehicle moving.
“You have family in the convoy?” Adam asked.
A desolate look crossed the young man’s face. “No, sir…they lived on the west coast. In Perth. I’ve never been able to confirm if they survived or not.”
Adam closed his eyes for a moment. Perth had been bombed heavily, and the distance between the east and west coast was vast. Not easy for survivors to head this way.
“I’m sorry.”
Private Mitchell shrugged, then a small smile emerged. “I do have a girlfriend, though. I met her at Blue Mountain Base.”
Adam raised a brow, watching color fill the man’s cheeks.
“She’s pretty and smart, and for some reason she really likes me.”
“That’s great news, Private.” The excitement and love exuding from the young man made Adam feel unbearably old. “Well, looks like you have an excellent reason to get us safely to the Enclave.”
The young man straightened. “Yes, sir, I do.”
Chapter Five
The first hour of the slow drive was uneventful.
Adam kept his gaze glued ahead, alert for any movement. He knew the drone operators and comms officers would warn him well before he spotted anything, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
Still, he was the one who spotted the object first.
He squinted and leaned forward a little. It was a dark shadow against the morning sun. “Slow down, Private.”
The vehicle slowed. “What the hell is that?” Mitchell murmured.
Adam touched the comms controls on the dash. “Elle, are you there?”
“Yes, General.”
“Any alien signatures?”
“No, sir, nothing.”
“Thank you. Hell Squad?”
“Yeah.” Marcus’ gravelly voice. “We see it.”
Adam knew the squad was in the armored Z6-Hunter vehicle just ahead of him. “Approach with caution.”
As they moved slowly forward, the tall, dark silhouette gained detail.
Adam sucked in a breath. He touched the comm again. “Hunters, move forward. All other convoy vehicles stop and hold.”
“Oh, my God,” Private Mitchell breathed.
A huge structure, constructed of a bonelike substance that was definitely part of the aliens’ organic technology, rose approximately twenty feet into the air. Dangling from it, about six feet off the ground, was a large cage.
Filled with humans.
“Stop here, Private.”
The young man halted their vehicle, and Adam checked his laser pistol before opening the door.
The people were crying, arms reaching through the bars of the cage. As Adam approached, he saw they were all starving—skeletally thin, their clothes nothing more than tattered rags.
He stood there, watching them, his stomach a hard, sick knot. He sensed a presence and Marcus, and his second-in-command, Cruz, flanked him.
“It’s a trap,” Marcus said.
Adam had already deduced that. But he couldn’t damn well leave them there. Not like this, not like animals.
“Let’s take a closer look,” Adam ordered. “See what they can tell us.”
Marcus nodded and waved his squad forward to assess the cage.
With his gut burning, Adam moved closer. “I’m General Adam Holmes.” He held his hands up, unthreatening. “We’re going to try and get you out of there.”
The people sobbed and moaned, thin arms reaching out. They appeared delirious, none of them aware of what he was saying.
Then Adam noticed a man at the back had red raptor eyes. A woman at the front had patches of raptor-like scales on her neck and face. Adam’s chin fell to his chest. They’d been experimented on.
Marcus, Cruz, and Gabe walked around the perimeter, murmuring to each other. Claudia and Shaw stood nearby, weapons up.
“Can you tell me your names?” Adam looked up, trying to catch the eye of any of the prisoners. “Where are you from?”
No response.
Marcus and the others stopped. Marcus shook his head. “It’s rigged to blow. Looks like some sort of pressure sensor. You take their weight out of the cage, it’ll trigger the explosive.”
“Raptor explosive,” Gabe added. “Don’t know enough about it to determine the blast radius.”
Adam shoved his hands on his hips. Which meant they had no idea how far back to move the convoy. Options. He needed options.
“We could try to cut it open, and substitute their weight with something,” Adam suggested.
“It’ll take time,” Cruz said.
“Time we don’t have.” Marcus touched his ear, head tilted as he listened. “Fuck. Elle said we have raptors incoming. A few kilometers out, but heading this way.”
Adam swallowed a curse. “It gets worse. They’ve been experimented on.”
There were soft curses. They all knew it was irreversible.
“Please…my baby.”
The soft, stuttering voice from above made him look up. One woman, with skin stretched over her protruding cheekbones and hair that may have once been blonde but was now just a matted mess around her face was crouched, her hand—now more like a raptor claw—reaching down.
Beside her was a young boy.
He was maybe five, but he was so underweight, it was hard to tell. His dark eyes were huge in his pale face. He showed no signs of the alien experimentation.
“My baby.” The woman pushed the child forward.
A bitter taste filled Adam’s mouth. In those dark eyes he saw so much pain. And a rabid hope. “We need to get the boy out.”
“Marcus, give me a foot up,” Gabe said in a low voice. “Also need something about the same weight as the boy.”
Cruz nodded and jogged toward the convoy. Marcus crouched and cupped his hands.
Gabe set his boot in Marcus’ palms and reached out. When his gloves touched the bars they sizzled and Adam saw Gabe’s neck muscles go tight.
“Underside of the bars is coated with poison,” Gabe gritted out. “And some sort of electrical charge as well.”
Damn aliens. Adam watched, his heart thumping. The bastards really were throwing everything at them now.
As he watched, Gabe grimaced through the obvious pain and started to bend the bars. It was clearly hard work, the alien substance not moving far.
“Here.” Cruz was back with a sack. It was roughly the same size as the boy.
Gabe grunted. Above him, the delirious people reached down, clawing at him.
Suddenly, Gabe’s body jerked and he let out a pained cry. He fell backward, dead weight. His squad mates swore.
Adam was closest and caught the big man under the arms. Damn, Gabe was heavy. Adam let the momentum carry them both downward, and he stopped Gabe from hitting his head on the ground. As he laid the soldier out, he heard running footsteps behind him.
“Gabe.” Doc Emerson crouched beside them, one of her paramedics with her. Her face was stricken for a second, as she gently touched her lover’s still features. Then it morphed into the calm, focused doctor Adam knew so well. “Raptor poison. It’s chewed through his gloves and paralyzed him. Danny, he’ll need a shot of stimulant.” She stroked Gabe’s face one last time. “I’ll get you fixed up my big, brave guy.”
At the raw love on the woman’s face, Adam’s throat tightened. “Go. Get him back to the med bus. He saved that boy up there.”
Adam stood and as Hell Squad helped get Gabe to the med bus, Adam scooped up the weighted sack. He shoved it up through the small gap in the bars. “Come on.” He gestured to the boy.
The boy looked at his mother, hesitated. She was barely holding on to a semblance of consciousness, but her mother’s love had obviously been strong enough to take a chance on getting her son rescued.
She touched his face, then pushed him into the gap.
As he fell, Adam released the sack and caught the boy. He was all skin and bone, and those haunted dark eyes.
“I’ve got you.�
�� The kid’s clothes were nothing more than a few tatters, leaving him exposed. Adam knelt and put the boy on the ground. It took Adam a second to work the buttons of his own shirt loose and strip it off. He wrapped it around the boy.
The boy snuggled into it, circling into a ball and shivering.
“Here, I’ll take care of him.”
Adam looked up and saw Liberty appear. She was carrying a blanket and wrapped it around the boy.
“Thank you,” Adam said.
“I’ll get him to the med bus.” She looked up at the cage, sympathy and horror washing over her face. “I’ll organize some food and water for them.”
Adam took a deep breath and managed a nod.
But her gaze zeroed in on his face and then her cheeks went white. “You can’t get them out.”
His fingers curled into his palms. “No. The cage is rigged to explode, the outside is covered in raptor poison and some sort of electrical charge. And the aliens are on their way. It’ll take us hours to cut it open and we only have a few minutes before we need to be far away from here.”
“Oh, no,” Liberty whispered.
“And they’ve been experimented on. Looks like they’re all turning raptor.”
He turned and looked back at the convoy. People were huddled in groups by their vehicles, or pressed against the windows. They looked horrified, stricken.
They were all waiting for him to save these people. People each and every one of them knew could have been them.
He looked back up at the cage. Dammit all to hell.
“Adam…” Liberty gripped his arm. Squeezed. Between them the boy started sobbing.
“Get him to the med bus. Take care of him.”
She looked torn for a second, but then she nodded and gathered up the boy in her arms.
Adam stood, and despite the sun on his bare skin, all he felt was a lonely coldness move through him.
Marcus and his team had returned and stood, watching, waiting.
“Elle says the aliens are getting closer,” Marcus said.
Time was up. Adam looked at the convoy, at the hundreds of people he had to protect. “Marcus, do you have any KMA-3 grenades?” he asked.
