Beasts of Byron (Silvers Invasion Book 2)

by Alex Mersey

  “Our hands are tied, but we’re not hurt. Ritter, don’t shoot! I’d prefer to send them back alive.”

  “Okay, let’s see how good you are at following instructions,” he told the men. “Drop the weapons and step away from the jeep, nice and slow.”

  No one moved for a frozen second, then the driver snapped, “Do it!” and slid the strap from his shoulder, letting his rifle fall to the ground.

  The man up front dropped his rifle on the seat and climbed over the door.

  Beth breathed her first easy breath in hours and choked on it when the sound of a gunshot cracked the air. Her gaze snapped to Ritter, but if he’d been shot, that didn’t stop him from returning fire. He opened up the semi-automatic on the driver, each round hammering behind her eyes, spotting her vision. Between one blink and the next, both of Clint’s men had dropped from sight and Ritter was crab-walking down the rubble, rifle trained on…she pushed up awkwardly, one foot on the floor, knee folded on the seat, to peer over the side with Jackson to see.

  The second man was there, he must have sunk to his knees, hands linked behind his head, when Ritter opened fire.

  “I didn’t know Dale had a pistol,” he said defensively as Ritter marched up with a fiercely pissed-off grimace.

  Ritter prodded the tip of the rifle barrel in his chest. “You fucking knew he had another gun.”

  “I didn’t think he’d use it, I swear.”

  “That’s enough,” Beth said to Ritter, her tone firmed with fabricated confidence. Fake it until you believe it. “You are not going to kill him.”

  Ritter prodded the man again for the sheer hell of it, then hauled him to his feet and patted him down. He gave her a heavy-browed look. “You’re sure about this?”

  “Yes, I’m bloody sure.”

  With a dissatisfied grunt, Ritter swatted the man with the barrel of his rifle. “What’s your name?”

  “Briar,” the man said quickly. “George Briar.”

  “Okay, George Briar, let’s see you run.” Ritter stood back, rifle pointed, a sneer hardening his mouth. “Straight down that road. You have a five minute head start.”

  The man looked around wildly, sweat beading his brow. He met Beth’s eye and held it, hoping for what? Sympathy?

  Tick tock, she mouthed and he took off at a sprint, zig-zagging down the road as if already dancing around a spray of bullets.

  “Piece of shit,” Ritter muttered as he pulled a Swiss Army knife from his belt and came around to free Beth and Jackson’s hands.

  Jackson perched on the jeep door, rubbing his wrists, head hung. “Well, that was a stupid plan.”

  “Any plan that saves our jeep works for me,” Ritter said.

  Beth squeezed between the front seats, knew what she’d see when she looked over the windshield to where the driver had gone down, but still her heartbeat caught in her throat like a lump of clay as her gaze skimmed the bloodied tangle of blond hair and splayed limbs. This man had orders to deliver her safe and sound and now he lay dead in a pool of his own blood.

  He had a name.

  Dale.

  A life for a jeep.

  She’d hardened herself to these kinds of harsh realities, but this felt all wrong. Her breath caught on a whisper of regret and suddenly her legs didn’t want to hold her up.

  She sat down heavily. “It was a stupid plan.”

  - 9 -

  Sean

  Sean drove with a heavy foot on the gas, shaving at least fifteen minutes off the ride back to Little Falls. His passenger sat silent, chin tipped down, eyes glued to the dash. Williams hadn’t moved since they’d strapped his seatbelt on, but it wasn’t paralysis, not exactly. When they’d been trying to figure out a way to move the 180 pound man around the ship in the courtyard, Cassie had tugged his arm and Williams had stepped forward.

  That’s how they’d gotten him into the truck, one mindless step for every encouraging tug.

  Williams was seemingly unresponsive to everyone and everything around him, but his brain still sent the signal and his muscles moved. There was nothing wrong with his involuntary responses, he blinked, he breathed, his heart beat.

  It was the voluntary responses that where shut down, as if Williams…as if he… Shit!

  Sean rolled down the window, the air suddenly too hot and thick in the cab. If he remembered correctly from school biology, all voluntary responses began with a conscious decision. You decided to reach for something, your brain sent the signal and your arm moved. You decided to walk somewhere, your brain sent the signal and your legs moved. You decided…you decided.

  And what if you couldn’t make that decision any longer?

  What happened then?

  The red laser still killed, only much more slowly. Fried the starter motor, the part of the brain that made those lightning quick decisions to eat when you were hungry, drink when you were thirsty.

  But why kill slowly when they could zap us into puddles of ash?

  Why?

  Sean banged the heel of his palm against the wheel. Know thy enemy. That was the first rule of war, whether fought across a boardroom table or on a battlefield. They’d made one small step today, they’d found the kill shot, but it didn’t feel like nearly enough.

  From habit, he eased up on the gas as the road passed by Sunrise Farm. Two lone figures patrolled the perimeter. The man on the gate came through, Jacob, flagging the truck over to the verge. Sean waved, but kept going. He didn’t have time for a roadside chat, or to explain Williams, or the dead alien they had loaded on the back of the truck.

  At the crossroads north of town, though, his spidery senses tingled and he wondered if he should have stopped. The main road through town was deserted. Had a meeting been called? Maybe Colonel Ainsley had finally arrived. Announced the news that the Silvers were on the ground? Sean scrapped that last one off the list. If the townsfolk knew, they’d be out in force, panicking and gossiping in the streets.

  He slowed to a crawl, glancing left to right at the shops he passed. The doors were closed, no shoppers, but that wasn’t unusual. The town’s stores were locked down, supplies rationed and doled out on a stringent basis.

  The narrow side streets were ghostly quiet.

  Sean intended offloading the Silver first, but as he drove past Doc Nate’s house, he slammed the brakes and reversed back to the white picket fence. Something wasn’t right here.

  “I won’t be long,” he said to Williams as he climbed out.

  No indication that Williams heard or cared.

  Sean hopped the low gate and strode up the path, shouted as he stepped into the hallway, “Doc Nate? Hello?”

  He listened a moment, walked deeper into the house. “Chris? Allira?” Stopped at the foot of the stairs and called up for them, for anyone, checked the yard.

  No one was home, or at the house next door or the one after that.

  A fluffy lapdog stood on its hind legs inside a bay window of the house across the street, pawing the glass, mouth yapping although the noise didn’t reach outside. Sean ran over, hammered on the door with his fist, tried the door when there was no answer. It swung open and the yapping dog bounced out, almost bowled him over.

  “Hey there, where’s your owner, huh?” He went down to pat the dog, but the fur ball slipped between his legs and spun circles. Not here, that much he’d bet on.

  Sean backed out of the house, made sure the dog was on the right side of the door before he pulled it closed. The yapping instantly receded, and it was just him and the sound of his boots slapping the pavement as he walked the streets, knocked on doors, peeped through windows, searched the houses he could gain entry to, called out until his voice scratched.

  He ended up at the truck again without having come across a single other person.

  An unresponsive passenger, a dead alien and a silent town. Why the fuck did bad things always come in threes?

  Sean jogged up the road, past the gas station, cut left through the field of dandelions and long grass a
nd then the army tents.

  “Hello?” he shouted, charging from one tent to the next, medic to Captain Davis to armory to mess to the tent he’d been assigned with Lynn. “Lynn! Johnnie! Hello?”

  He couldn’t see.

  Couldn’t see any sign of a struggle.

  Couldn’t see tiny piles of salt reduced from human life.

  Couldn’t see what the hell had happened here.

  The tactical vehicle and the pair of LAVs were parked neatly beneath the trees. The tents were all in order. The town wasn’t in ruins.

  Nothing was obviously out of place…except the people.

  Sean stopped dead, stopped looking, starting thinking.

  We have an escape plan.

  He took off toward the river, followed it to the cave and up the forested mountain, a rocky path that touched sides with the fledgling cascade waterfall. It was a tricky climb, the natural steps eroded into the stone at awkwardly sloped angles and slippery with green algae.

  Lynn, Johnnie, Beth, Allira, they all knew the plan. Any hint of trouble, any sighting from the skies or ash blowing in the wind, get to the forest above the cave. Hide. Wait. Regroup. He called their names as he tramped along the ridge and wound an aimless route between the trees. Hunted for his friends, shouted until his voice grew hoarse, walked the forest until he was forced to admit the truth.

  He wasn’t going to find them.

  Not here, anyway.

  But he would, he promised himself as he made his way down the mountain.

  No bodies. No struggle. No piles of cremated bone and flesh.

  People did not just disappear.

  There’d be an explanation, there always was.

  Sean spent a couple of minutes at the river’s edge, splashing water on his face, dismissing theories as fast they formed.

  Colonel Ainsley hadn’t arrived and ordered an evacuation. There’d be signs of a mass exodus, the chaos left behind when people left in a hurry. Besides, the army wouldn’t leave their vehicles behind, or the armory tent stocked full of weapons and ammo.

  The Silvers hadn’t attacked. There’d be crumbled buildings, wreckage and casualties—or dunes of the aftermath if it had been a battlecruiser flyover instead of a drone strike.

  He took some slow, deep breaths to quieten the spinning theories and focus on the here and now.

  Keep Williams alive. Try to find a way to reach the man through that fugue coma.

  Get to the farms, Sunrise Farm first. They’d know something.

  He crossed the clearing by the cave entrance to the trail that led through the woods. The route was longer in distance, but quicker at a run without the obstacle course of hidden ditches, soggy reeds and overgrown thickets. Before he’d taken two steps, he saw a length of rope tangled around the bark near the base of a tall, spindly tree. Sean went down on a knee to examine the shredded twine where it had been roughly severed near a double knot.

  Blood smudged the threads, not yet dried and caked. The ground was scuffed. He couldn’t tell from either whether a human or animal had been tied here. A dog, perhaps, who’d pawed himself bloody, then finally gnawed through the rope.

  Sean pushed to his feet and into a run, setting a steady pace for the quarter mile trail. As he broke through the tree line onto the road just south of town, he heard the distant rumble of an engine and it struck him like a damn gear change in the brain.

  The jeep.

  He hadn’t seen the jeep parked in the camp.

  Beth and Private Ritter were still out there. They hadn’t been here when…when whatever the hell this was had happened.

  Adrenaline pulsed his stride into a flat-out sprint on the road and he saw the jeep pulling up beside the truck just as he flashed past the gas station.

  Beth hopped out and marched up to meet him with an intense scowl. “What’s going on here? Where is everyone?”

  “I don’t…” Sean slowed to a walk, sucking on air to fill his lungs. He’d always been a jogger, not a sprinter. “Beth, I’m not sure.” He held his hands up to placate her, knowing it wouldn’t help. “They’re not here. Everyone’s gone.”

  “Gone where?” Her frown blanked, her tone challenging, accusing him. “Sean, where is she? Where is Alli?”

  His throat thickened with what he had to say. “She’s not here.”

  “No,” Beth said, not believing, not wanting to believe.

  He shifted his gaze to include the young, dark-haired man who joined them. Sean had seen him around, he was from Little Falls, had people here. “I returned about an hour ago and found the town like this. Empty. I’ve searched the houses. I’ve looked everywhere. There’s no sign of an attack or struggle or evacuation or anything. They’re just gone.”

  All color drained from the man’s face. “I have to find Jake,” he mumbled and turned, paused, then went racing down the road.

  “I’ve seen this before,” Beth said, her words a breathless whisper.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing, I’ll explain later, I’ll…” She trailed off, that thought lost, the next gushing out, “They’ve escaped up the mountain. Alli knows to go straight—”

  “I’ve already looked there.”

  “Then you missed them. It’s a big mountain.”

  “Beth, I didn’t miss them,” he said, but she wasn’t listening, she’d already pushed past him in that direction.

  Sean let her go. She needed to search for herself, scour every inch of the mountain and forest if that’s what it took to understand.

  And, shit, Private Ritter had made his way around the truck’s cab, was tapping on Williams’ window.

  Sean hurried over. “Did you hear what I said back there?”

  “I heard.” Ritter turned a grim look on him. “Captain Davis has the situation under control? And what’s wrong with your man Williams here? Is he suddenly deaf and blind or something?”

  Or something. “Captain Davis isn’t here. The camp is deserted. When I said everyone’s gone, I meant everyone. Is this part of some protocol that’s been initiated?” Sean shoved a hand through his hair as he met the man’s look. “Is that what’s happening here?”

  “Disappearing a town full of people? What kind of shit-ass protocol would that be?”

  “I had to ask.”

  “Yeah, and I have to find Captain—” He’d started to walk off as he spoke and froze, staring down the bed of the truck. “What the fuck is that?”

  Sean sighed. “Help me get them both inside Doc Nate’s house and I’ll explain.”

  - 10 -

  Chris

  The head of the procession marched into his clipped view through a break in the tightly tangled branches; the Henderson’s daughter, babe in her arms, amongst the front line.

  Chris started counting, one thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three, as the wave of people flowed past his frame of vision. People he’d grown close to, faces he recognized, all from Little Falls.

  The first Silver clocked one thousand and eight. Tall, milky white and sleek, an ethereal creature that moved with the eloquence and grace of a higher being. Chris made a mental note, eight, and one thousand and nine, one thousand and ten…

  Alli clocked one thousand and fifteen, just a glimpse of her profile as she walked three people deep. He hadn’t seen her sister, Beth, or Rachel or Bran, but in this sea of faces, that didn’t mean they weren’t here. Williams was the only one he knew for sure was missing. The man stood half a head taller than anyone else from Little Falls, impossible to overlook.

  The second Silver came at one thousand and forty-three.

  Then Raven, walking the outside line right in front of him, at one thousand and fifty-two.

  The last Silver on this side of the road clocked one thousand and ninety-seven.

  Chris had almost lost his shit when he’d gotten his first glimpse of the aliens. Thank God his limbs had locked down in shock, or he would have gone barreling straight into the melee. He’d just come of
f the trail, having run most of the way after shaking his leash—no thanks to the dumb Jake and dumber Todd. He’d scrubbed his one wrist against the tree bark until it bled, but the threads of cheap rope had finally shredded sufficiently for him to snap the weakened strands. By the time he’d reached the end of the trail, the town was already on the move, the soldiers right there along with them, including Captain Davis. All herded by these six Silvers, three walking the line on either side of the road.

  Eight. Fifteen. Forty-three. Fifty-two. Ninety-seven.

  Silver. Alli. Silver. Raven. Silver.

  This was his third trial run now and the numbers hadn’t changed. They marched with uniform precision, the body of townsfolk and the Silvers as one, like a well-oiled machine.

  Chris sank to his knees behind the bramble bush.

  He’d been following for at least two hours, using the crop fields, trees and bushes along the side of the road for cover. He hadn’t intended doing any more, hadn’t even meant to follow this far. But then he’d realized how carefully they stayed on the road, a silent march leading them deeper and deeper through the twists and turns of lonely country lanes without leaving a breadcrumb to trail. Chris wasn’t brave enough—or foolish enough—to mount a one-man rescue operation, but he could be their breadcrumb and Williams would know exactly what to look for.

  Now, however, he seriously considered making a move.

  The three Silvers on the other side of the road marched directly opposite their counterparts, leaving the same decent gap. They carried no weapons. Kept their heads turned forward, as if they couldn’t comprehend the possibility of a sneak attack from the side or behind.

  Of course, Chris knew it wouldn’t be as easy as all that. More than three hundred humans against six unarmed Silvers? There was a reason no one tried to slip away, and there’d been a couple of blaring opportunities. Bends in the road that cut off the tailing Silvers for precious seconds, thick bush to melt into. There was a threat, a real threat he just hadn’t yet seen, that held the townsfolk captive and obedient like a meek flock of sheep.