“They are close to finishing the construction of a gateway between this world and theirs. We have to stop them. We are amassing an army, and we plan to fight.”
“Are you joining them?” the village chief asked Yas in English, clearly for Monet’s benefit.
“We are.” The chief turned to face Lina and Monet.
“Then we will join you too,” he said. “You have all of our warriors, and I will send word to the villages in the valley that they should join us.”
Lina allowed herself a faint smile of triumph and aimed it at Monet. Glancing at the woman beside her, she saw that the smile was already mirrored and brighter than any she had seen before.
“So you’ll fight with us?” she asked.
“We will fight,” the chief said. “We will join you.”
Chapter 20
Alec
The Jeep drove slowly over a broken tree branch, and Tom stopped to assess the situation. The road was covered with felled trees, and from the looks of things, it hadn’t happened naturally.
“Who would do this? The Overseers?” Alec asked, his boots hitting the asphalt beside the vehicle. The sun was hidden behind a thin gray layer of cloud cover and a mist clung low to the ground, giving their drive a creepy, ethereal feeling. Alec had never seen anything quite like this in Detroit, and even though Tom assured him it was quite normal for northern California, it still sent a shiver through Alec’s veins.
“Not the Overseers. It’ll be the group we’re heading to see. See how they cut the trunks, ragged and at different heights?” Tom pointed to the base of one of the sideways trees, and Alec saw what he was referring to. “They tried to make it appear like a natural disaster; a windstorm.”
“But they really were trying to make the road in harder to access?” Alec asked.
“Very good. There will be other paths to their camp, but this is the most accessible by vehicle. I suspect they’ll have blocked all of the entry points in some fashion or another.” Tom was in a good mood today, better than the last couple weeks at least.
They’d stayed in Reno for longer than the older man had wanted, mostly because Alec didn’t want to move their patient until she had recovered a little. She still hadn’t come out of her coma, but at least she had better color, and her breathing was less labored.
“Do we go around?” Alec asked.
Tom walked to the edge of the street, stepping into the ditch. He used his arm span to check the distance between the last log and the treeline, and he muttered quietly to himself before returning. “No. I think we can make it with the Jeep.”
The air smelled different here, and Alec inhaled deeply. It held moisture in it, a freshness he’d never experienced before.
“The ocean is only a few miles away,” Tom said. “That’s what you’re picking up.”
The ocean. May as well have told Alec he was going to the moon. The idea that the ocean existed, even though he’d seen a colorful picture of it in one of his old magazines, was tough to fathom.
“Will we reach it?” Alec asked, staring in the direction Tom had indicated.
“Sure. I think we will. Maybe not today, not with this mist.” Tom climbed into the vehicle, and Alec followed suit. He was really hoping to see the water, to walk on a beach, to touch the lapping water with his fingertips.
Over the last few days, he’d realized there were so many things he wanted out of life; things that were never even dreams until he’d escaped the clutches of the Occupation. The trip with Monet had sparked something in him, a desire for living that hadn’t existed inside him before.
“I can tell what you’re thinking,” Tom said, urging the Jeep into the deep ditch. It leaned so hard to the side for a moment, Alec thought they were going to pitch over. It righted itself with a few bumps, and they began moving past the blockade of trees, the Jeep lifting occasionally as Tom was forced to drive over a trunk or two.
Finally, Alec responded to the comment after a few tense moments. “How could you know what I’m thinking?”
“You’ve realized there’s an entire world out there, and you’ve never seen any of it.” Tom grinned at him, and Alec looked away.
“Have you always been a mind reader?” Alec asked.
“Yes, I have. You have a big heart, don’t you?” Tom asked.
Alec wasn’t sure how to respond, so he kept quiet.
“I saw it in Detroit. I was so proud of the way you handled yourself. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you there,” Tom admitted.
Alec considered this and turned to his uncle. “You have nothing to apologize for, Tom. You gave me the ID blocker. It changed my life. Do you have any idea how many times I escaped at night to visit that warehouse? I’d sit there for hours flipping through those magazines, seeing pictures of happy families, people walking their dogs, and having fun with friends. You gave me an imagination, a hope that there might be more out there. If you hadn’t done that, I would never have made it through the next couple years.”
“We need more than hope now, son. But we have to show these people there might be more than hiding in a hole. Can you help me do that?” Tom asked, his face pleading and soft.
Alec clenched his jaw and nodded. “I’ll do anything to help fight the Overseers.” Alec pictured the alien who’d approached him after Beth had been shot. He could almost smell the leathery skin, see the dark almond-shaped eyes.
“Good, because I have a feeling it's going to be a hard sell. They’ve avoided conversation with me for years,” Tom told him.
“They have? Why? Aren’t we on the same team?”
“I think the days of teams are a thing of the past. It’s everyone for themselves, at least that’s what Zhao thinks. As long as his people are safe, he’ll stay concealed,” Tom said.
Zhao. Alec had never heard of the man before, but from the way Tom spoke of him, it sounded like he was the leader. “Did you know him before this all happened?”
Tom nodded slowly. “I did.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
“Not really.” Tom averted his eyes.
“No more secrets, Tom. I think you owe me that.”
They’d managed to pass the blockade, and Tom steered back onto the road. It was overgrown with vegetation along the edges, but the center remained flat and firm.
“Zhao would have been my brother-in-law,” he said.
“Would have been…” An understanding crept into Alec’s thoughts. “What was her name?”
Tom let out a long sigh and glanced at the woman in the backseat, who’d begun mumbling incoherently but softly. “Her name was Jennifer, and she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on.”
Alec waited, not wanting to interject, and Tom continued. “We met a few years before the invasion, not long after your father won his first election. Zhao was a Senator from Texas, Jen his younger sister.
“She had me the instant I saw her at a fundraiser. I was rising up the ranks myself, and had been promoted to Major in the Marine Corps, though she never seemed impressed with any of that. She wanted to be a painter, and the rest of the world’s news played second fiddle to her art.”
Alec wasn’t familiar with the term, but he didn’t ask. “What was she like?”
Tom smiled. “She always had a smirk, like she had a joke but wasn’t willing to share it with anyone. She had dark brown hair, naturally curly, the kind that made other women jealous, but she also drew their attention and friendship like a moth to a flame. She was one of a kind, Alec,” Tom said so quietly, Alec almost couldn’t hear him.
“Where…where am I?” a weak voice asked.
Alec jumped in his seat and craned his neck towards the seat where the ill woman was trying to sit up. Tom pulled over and undid his seatbelt.
“Stay calm. We’re here to help you,” Tom told her.
The woman’s eyes were wide, the whites rheumy and red-lined. She propped herself to a sitting position and lifted her arm without the hand, as if forgetting
she’d lost it. “What happened?”
“You tell us. We found you on the side of the highway passed out,” Alec told her.
“I… wait, are you with them?” She started to scramble for the door handle, but Tom had the child locks activated.
“No, we’re not with the Occupation.” Alec held his arm up, showing her the metallic bracelet over his ID chip. He hadn’t had the surgery to remove it yet, but Tom claimed he would likely be able to do it while they waited at the facility they were headed for. “This stops them from finding me.”
“What about you?” she asked Tom, who didn’t wear a bracelet.
“We have ways to remove them without… going to such dramatic efforts.” He nodded toward her missing appendage.
“Where are we?” she asked, choking back a sob.
“First, you tell us who you are, and I’ll decide if we keep you with us any longer,” Tom said flatly.
Alec thought it was a little harsh, but the woman didn’t flinch. “My name’s Rebecca. Came from Vegas. It was all going to hell, so I finally bailed.”
“Where were you going?” Alec asked.
“North. That’s all I knew. Someone mentioned a possible haven in Chicago, but that’s… that’s so far away,” she said.
Alec passed her a bottle of water, and she drank it greedily, water spilling everywhere.
“What did you mean about Vegas?” Tom asked slowly.
“We worked in manufacturing. The usual: drones, hovercars… I’m good with my hands, so they let me join the crew. Better than the breeding grounds.” She met Alec’s stare, and he saw a profound sadness in them. “They were ramping up production so much, making us work fourteen-hour shifts, not caring if it killed us. If anyone underperformed, the worker would disappear and be replaced by someone else.”
Alec guessed that the ones who’d vanished were likely buried in a big pit somewhere in the desert.
“I’m going to need to discuss this in detail later, Rebecca. I’m Tom, and this young man is Alec,” he said, firing up the engine.
“Nice to meet you,” Alec said, sticking his hand out. She took it in an awkward and clammy shake.
“You can thank him for saving your life too. I was going to leave you on the side of the road,” Tom said, pulling the Jeep away.
“Thank you,” Rebecca said, and Alec only nodded. She was younger than he’d initially thought, maybe around his own age. “Did I dream it, or were we in a room somewhere?”
“The hotel in Reno. We stayed for a day while you rested,” Alec told her.
“I’ve never been in a hotel before.” She laughed, and it turned into a cough.
“Take it easy,” Tom told her. “We’ll be at our destination very soon. We’ll change your bandages and feed you when we arrive.”
She nodded and closed her eyes while still sitting up. Soon she was dozing again, and Alec watched the surrounding landscape in silence. For a second, he thought he could see the ocean ahead, but the misty fog grew thicker as they grew closer to sea level. Eventually, Tom slowed and pointed to the overhanging trees.
“This is a cypress tree tunnel,” Tom told him.
It was ominous, like they were entering a portal to a fairy tale world, and when they passed through the drooping tree cover, Alec spotted the gate. It was threatening and wooden, hidden by greenery and leafy branches.
“This is it,” Tom said with a finality that gave Alec goosebumps.
Tom rolled the window open, and an armed woman appeared from the tree cover, wearing full camouflage with branches and leaves attached to her. Even her face was painted in tones of green, and she stopped ten yards away.
“I’m here to see Zhao,” Tom said.
“Who should I tell him is here?” she asked, picking up a radio on her hip.
“Colonel Tom Mason.”
The gates opened a moment later, and Tom smiled at Alec. “Welcome to the other half of the resistance.”
Chapter 21
Cole
It was raining when they reached the outskirts of what had once been called Chicago. Cole had the short collar of his leather jacket pulled up, but it didn’t stop the cold water from dripping down his spine.
It had taken him almost an entire day to get used to riding a two-wheeler, and he’d fallen off more than once, but due to their low speeds, the only thing he’d damaged was his pride. His new shotgun hung over his back on a strap and he wondered why he’d never thought to fix a sling for his old weapon. Things like that annoyed him, because he knew he wasn’t stupid, but he realized he did too many dumb things.
Instead of rolling in the skeleton of the city, Soares led them to a side street, where his head whipped left to right searching for somewhere to hide their bikes. Cole, who could have been worried about the muffled noise of the quad bike’s engine, remained concerned about the high frequency whine of the solar-electric engine.
Soares leaned over to his right, forcing his bike to lean at an angle Cole was sure would tip him off and frowned when it didn’t. The older man told him it was something called physics, and Cole didn’t comprehend that, but he had more than enough on his plate to worry about that.
“We wait here,” Soares told him, pressing a button to make the bike settle onto a stand that powered out from the underside of the battery bank.
“How will we find them? Cole asked. “Do you know where they are? Will they talk to us?” Soares held up both hands to ward off any more rapid-fire questions, waiting until Cole had finished bombarding him before he answered them in turn.
“We won’t, not exactly, and I hope so.”
“What do you mean we wo—”
“Dammit, kid! Don’t you ever stop asking questions?” Cole shrank away and allowed a sullen, annoyed expression to descend over his face. His companion huffed and threw both arms up in the air with an exaggerated eye roll before turning to his bike and unstrapping a weathered black canvas bag from it.
“Remember this?” he asked Cole, unzipping it and lifting out a heavy cuboid of metal.
“Is that…?” Cole began, stepping back sharply as Soares activated the drone and it issued a mechanical whine before the legs extended out of the underside. Soares stood back, eyeing the tablet, which he tapped and swiped at, but Cole’s attention was stuck on the hijacked Tracker drone.
The repair where he’d shot it was quite evident. The welding job made it look like surgery had been done so that it had survived the ordeal with horrific scarring as a permanent memento. The metal, usually a shiny gunmetal, had been spray painted with patches of matte black so that it would seem like any other piece of detritus outside.
“This year’s must-have trend,” Soares said as he worked the tablet. “Urban camouflage for the discerning Tracker.” Cole had no idea what he was talking about, so he ignored the words.
“You’re controlling this?” he asked Soares.
“Not exactly. I can override it and give certain commands, but it still operates on the old programming—apart from the whole exterminating human life thing. We’ve just tweaked the operating procedures and protocols, cut off any way it can connect to their network, and made it broadcast on a local wireless area so we can use it as recon.”
“Okay,” Cole said, “I understood everything up to the end…”
“It’s ours now, not theirs, and it can’t link to their network or be infiltrated by them. It sends signals to and from this,” he held up the tablet, “but other than that, it simply does what it used to do, only with parameters we’ve changed.”
“So we’re literally using it to find the Roamers and it won’t kill them?”
“You got it, kid. Wanna do the honors?” He turned and offered the tablet to Cole, displaying a green rectangle on the screen with the word “ACTIVATE” flashing inside it. Cole shrugged, reached over, and tapped the button.
SW-18 woke. It accessed its internal servers through start-up, finding the same designation for itself and noting the maintenance log entries detail
ing an assessment of the damage repair.
It found a long list of error codes during initialization, and each attempt to contact the local and national servers resulted in three failed attempts and an abort with an automated reminder to make another attempt in sixty minutes.
Another error code instructed SW-18 to report to the nearest asset support facility for reload of ordnance and gave it an option to call for extraction if it was unable to locomote. The option to select this was grayed out and unable to be selected.
Geo-location was reporting temporarily unavailable, however it was permitted limited access to local mapping programs and ascertained it was situated in an area marked as Illinois. It recalled database entries for the area and scrolled through the most recent intelligence, which was sparse in detail. All it could understand was that it was in an area where there was believed to be a human stronghold based on interrogation of captured humans caught escaping the facilities. Intelligence directorate had assessed the information to be at twenty-nine percent value, marking it as an “urban myth.”
It checked the time and date, noting that it had been deactivated for eight days, four hours, and nineteen minutes, and searched for any external connection or maintenance record inside that period of what—had it been human—it would have called consciousness.
There was nothing. It had been dark for over a week.
Checking mission parameters and protocol instructions, it found a series of new directives which it assessed in turn.
[LOCATE HUMANS]
[DO NOT HARM ANY HUMAN]
[AVOID DETECTION AT ALL COSTS]
[AVOID ANY OVERSEER ASSETS]
[RETURN TO TRANSPORTING HUMANS WHEN MISSION COMPLETE]
SW-18 went into every directive to explore the sub-menu, which provided context for each instruction until it was satisfied that it fully comprehended the mission objectives.
Salvation (Rise Book 2) Page 13
