by Clare Murray
Mari looked at the oversized watch on her wrist, fingered the locket around her neck that had once belonged to her mother. “I can understand that line of thinking.”
“My daughter went east with my granddaughter, Abigail. That was a year ago when the attacks here started to really get bad. Haven’t seen either of them since. Come on through here.”
Mari’s room was up a short flight of stairs. It boasted a double bed with a desk and chair near the window. There was even a small attached bathroom with a shower.
“Will this do you?” the old woman asked. “I’m Patrice, by the way.”
“Mari.” She dug in her purse for money, handed it over. The woman’s hands shook a little as she carefully tucked the coins away, and Mari frowned as she realized how thin the woman was.
“Do you like turnips?” she asked.
* * * * *
Hours later, Mari rubbed her eyes, sitting up in bed. She hadn’t meant to nap quite so long, but after last night’s excitement, she had been exhausted. She and Patrice had eaten bread and boiled turnips for lunch, frugally storing the uneaten portion for later. The old woman had been a good listener, although Mari was careful not to confide everything to her.
Still, she’d come away with the distinct impression that Patrice was trustworthy. So, after taking a shower, she went downstairs in search of her, eventually finding the woman sitting on the porch in her rocking chair. A pistol was within reach, as was an old, battered paperback, but Patrice watched the streets.
“Used to be busier out there,” she said by way of greeting. “Lots of people have left over the past decade. Crime’s gotten worse. So’s the drugs. But there’s still folks to watch, and it passes the time.”
“Will you be all right if I take a walk?”
Patrice frowned, her blue eyes sharpening. “A walk? At this time of evening? Girl, it’ll be full dark in a few minutes, and the Barks will be attacking that wall.”
A little chill took her. “Is it in danger of falling?”
“Not tonight. Soon, though. They’re relentless.”
Her father had formed a theory about that, she vaguely recalled. He’d discussed it with her mother, but Mari had been too young to understand what she was hearing. Then they had fled Scar City, and she’d all but forgotten about the theory for more than a decade. Flagstaff had been so safe by comparison.
The aliens wanted something in this City, and they wouldn’t stop until they got it.
Her mother had argued that the Barks wanted meat, but her father pointed out that hunting wild animals was more efficient than trying to dig under a wall every night. Then Mari’s mother had cried, asking why the aliens kept attacking, begging her father to make them stop. He hadn’t replied, merely stormed off into the night to make his usual observations.
Within a week, however, they’d left. And, Mari admitted, found more peace in Flagstaff City than anywhere else they’d ever been. It was a shame her mother had died before truly realizing that.
“There. Look!” Patrice tugged her arm. “Those are Twins.”
Mari’s eyes widened and she bent down, peeking from behind the rocking chair as Finn and Gareth passed. They looked…intent. Worried. They paused halfway down the street, conferring.
Probably just talking about her father’s rumored device. It was best that they’d parted ways. Mari needed whatever her father had left behind.
On impulse, she decided to follow them. Maybe they would lead her in the right direction. She felt a stab of guilt for leaving them without a good-bye, but she’d wanted to spare herself the pain of being dumped.
Not that she had any lingering guilt over losing her virginity to them…
But sleeping with them again was painfully tempting.
“You look like you ain’t never seen Twins in your life.”
“I hadn’t until recently.” Mari kept her eyes on the men. “Well, I’ll go for my walk now.”
“Be careful.” Patrice reached for her paperback. “Ain’t exactly the friendliest of Cities after dark.”
The Glock was heavy against her waist, and Mari flashed the old woman a quick smile. “Thanks for the warning.”
She devoutly hoped that following the Twins wasn’t a stupid move. The men were moving again, striding along as they animatedly discussed something. When they stopped in front of a large building to argue, Mari ducked behind a Dumpster and pretended to adjust her shoe. Then she had to hurry when both men strode off again. God, they could walk fast.
The men disappeared into the building, which seemed to be some sort of gaming hall, judging from the sounds within. Mari paused on the threshold, but a group of loud men on the street behind drove her inside. Despite the revolver at her side, she felt uneasy, both at the leers the men gave her and the seedy appearance of the interior.
Oh hell. This was the Wanderer Inn. She stared at the sign above the counter, reading it twice before it sank in. The place had changed from a friendly saloon to a raucous gaming hall.
“You want a drink?” A passing waitress gave her a frankly dubious look.
“I can order at the bar.” Mari had no intention of doing so. Not here.
She vaguely remembered the layout of the Wanderer. A former casino back in Reno’s heyday, the slot machines had all disappeared from its floors. Pool tables and couches took up most of the large room. The bartender was serving up home-brewed beer in large glasses, flipping out the occasional shot of what was probably moonshine in small glasses.
Mari sidled along the wall, eyes widening as she caught sight of what was going on in the shadows. A man stood with his hands on a kneeling man’s shoulders, eyes closed in pleasure as he thrust his naked cock forward. His partner’s lips slid sensuously down his shaft, head bobbing rhythmically.
A few feet away, a couple was getting busy against the wall, oblivious to their audience. Several people watched the action from couches, nursing their drinks as they leaned against high, circular tables. Somewhere in the shadows, a woman hit orgasm and let out a loud shriek of pleasure.
Mari jumped as someone placed a heavy hand on her shoulder. She smelled stale body odor, accompanied by the stink of beer breath.
“You alone, li’l lady?”
“I’m otherwise engaged,” she replied coolly.
“Doesn’t look like it.” The man kept his hand on her shoulder, looking her up and down. “You’re like steak in front of a dog, walkin’ in here. How do you expect me to resist?”
“I once owned a Labrador who loved prime rib. But he wouldn’t take anything off my plate without my say-so.” She turned to glare in his face. “And if you behave worse than a dog, you might as well give yourself up to the Barks outside.”
Mari rested her fingers on the butt of the Glock, wrenching out of his grasp. Behind the man, she caught the waitress’s smirk of approval, but she didn’t wait around, striding quickly for the door. It had been a mistake to come in here at all.
She crossed the threshold, the sounds of a scuffle following her. Without pausing, she continued on through the streets, trying to visualize where she was. She only vaguely recognized this area, having rarely been allowed outside their tiny family dwelling after dark. But she could see the wall in the near distance, so she turned to head there, retracing her father’s steps.
Footsteps pounded behind her. Her eyes widened—had the man come after her? She pulled the gun, whirling, and came face-to-face with—
“Finn?”
“Thank God we’ve found you.” He ignored the gun and crushed her to his chest, one hand cradling the back of her head in such a comforting gesture that she briefly let herself relax against him, letting him tuck the gun back into its hidden holster.
Then she wriggled. “You were looking for me? Why? I intended to leave without you seeing me in there.”
“You nearly succeeded. Gareth’
s back there…remonstrating with that man. And yes we were looking for you,” he practically shouted. “We were worried sick! When we didn’t find you at the Wanderer, we searched the entire City, even searched outside the walls.”
She swallowed, disconcerted. “Oh. You looked for me. I thought…”
“That gaming hall was the last place we thought we’d find you,” Gareth said, having unexpectedly prowled up behind her. “Good thing we went full circle.”
“Hey, I followed you in there.” She tried to fold her arms, but the men boxed her in, gently but firmly.
“Why did you run?” Finn’s sincerity disarmed her.
“I—because…it clearly wasn’t going to last between us.” In their intoxicating presence, all clarity of mind seemed to disappear. She felt addicted to their smell, their voices.
“What do you mean?” Gareth asked.
“You’re both on male birth control, for heaven’s sake,” Mari said. “For all I know, you make it a habit to seduce women aboard trains.”
Finn went slack-jawed, and Gareth made a slight sound. “The facility we come from doesn’t permit us to leave without first taking a birth control injection,” Finn said. “Does that put your mind at ease?”
Mari tried to step away, shaking her head, not in denial but in bewilderment. “But…then you were flirting with that train driver. I thought it best to leave without further complicating things.”
“You mean you thought we would dump you? That’s the silliest thing I ever heard.” Finn reached to smooth her hair, as if he couldn’t help but touch her. “We definitely weren’t flirting with that driver, by the way.”
“Well, she was coming on to you pretty strong,” Mari muttered.
“The feeling was decidedly not mutual,” Finn said.
“Oh.” Mari shuffled atop the cracked asphalt of the street, embarrassment flushing her cheeks. “Look, I’ve…never done this relationship thing before. When I was young, dating was all about going to the movies and riding around on bicycles—or in cars, if you were old enough. Then the world basically ended, and…”
They were still listening, so she soldiered on after a brief pause. “I mean, I’ve kissed boys, but things have always stopped there. I never knew what to do next, because I wasn’t ready for marriage, and where I lived, women were required to have dowries. I couldn’t afford that. So I resigned myself to living life on my own. That’s all.”
They were standing on either side of her, soaking in every word she uttered. Although the occasional laugh or shout drifted out from the nearby gaming hall, the streets were deserted.
“What I think,” Gareth said quietly, “is that you don’t consider yourself worthy of love.”
“I’ve never met anyone I was—” She cut herself off before saying attracted to, because she had met somebody. Two somebodies. She was very damn attracted to the Twins. “I wouldn’t know what to do in a long-term relationship,” she concluded lamely.
Gareth closed in behind her, and Finn took her back into his arms. She felt as if she were trapped between two hungry tigers, but she clung to Finn, tentatively at first, then more firmly as he bent his head to kiss her.
“We’ve never been in a long-term relationship either,” Gareth said. He pressed against her back, cupping her breasts as if he owned them. “Maybe we could learn from each other, play it by ear.”
“You should know we never intended to let you go,” Finn said, breaking the kiss. His green eyes were deadly serious. “Had you decided to end things, we would have respected that, but we would have insisted upon escorting you somewhere safe. Where have you been, Marisol?”
She blinked. When had she told him her full name? But his tone brooked no argument, and his words—and the kiss—had left her dazed, so she simply answered, “I took lodging with an elderly woman a few streets that way. She needed the money and offered a better rate than the Wanderer Inn.”
“We’re glad you’re safe,” Gareth said. “We were beginning to think you’d managed to leave the City somehow.” He brushed a caress across her bare neck.
Finn tensed, his heavily muscled arms tightening as a far-off series of howls pierced the night. “Here they come.”
“I want to go watch them.” Had to, really, because she had to understand why her father had walked those walls night after night. What she truly wanted to do was hide under the covers—preferably with the Twins—until morning.
“We’ll go with you.”
Most of her trepidation seeped away as the men took her arms, walking on either side of her. Although the lighting along the streets was dim, she felt little fear, knowing that just one of the Twins could take out any threat to her. And she had two of them with her.
It still seemed unreal. But she was quickly yanked back to reality by the sounds of the gathering aliens. Scar City’s wall was twenty feet high, with strategically placed towers from which guards could observe the aliens and fight back when necessary. There were walkways between each one. That was where her father had paced, night after night, watching the aliens come in their waves and be rebuffed.
“There’s one reason human-on-human crime’s so bad lately,” Gareth said, nodding at the towers. Each one was fully manned, leaving very few enforcers on the ground to take care of crime there.
They went single-file up the metal steps, but Mari was glad when Finn took her arm again at the top. There was only a narrow catwalk between towers. Parts of the wall had been shored up with rubble and barbed wire. Crude metal spikes jutted from the bottom, although Mari rather doubted any of the Barks were stupid enough to impale themselves so easily.
She took a deep breath of the night air, looking up at the stars. They were clear and bright, constellations distinctly visible in the sky. Stargazing hadn’t been something one could easily do within the bounds of a pre-Invasion city, since there had been so much light pollution in those days.
While up here, she could see why Reno had been renamed Scar City—the mothership that had crash-landed atop the eastern half of the city had left blackened lines radiating outward, scars that had burned for months even with no apparent fuel. Years later, they were still visible, encircling the City. Mari shuddered, and Finn and Gareth moved closer as if instinctively offering comfort.
“Did you grow up around here?” Finn asked.
“In Scar City? No. I was born and raised in Portland. When the Invasion happened, we were staying in our cabin in Tillamook. The aliens mostly concentrated on eating people in cities, so we were safe in the forest for a few months. Dad even found one of their smaller ships nearby, but it was abandoned.”
“What made you leave?” Gareth asked.
Mari shrugged. “Humans often seek strength in numbers. My parents eventually wanted the safety of walls, so we went to Seattle City—or what was left of it. From there, we went back to Portland, then came here.”
Each time, the aliens had come in waves, attacking the walls at night. Until they went to Flagstaff City, Mari had believed they attacked everywhere with such fervor. Perhaps they had been caught up in the blood thirst of the first few years, before humans built walls to keep them out. Or perhaps her mother had been right, and the creatures had been following them.
“My father thinks the Barks underestimated us,” Mari said. “At least at first. That’s how we were able to shoot down so many of their ships. Of course, we underestimated them too.”
“People have a tendency to disregard their enemies if they’re vastly different from them,” Gareth said. “I don’t think anyone expected the Barks to be so vicious, though.”
Mari flinched as another volley of howls sounded. She could see a group of the aliens in the distance, undulating and pale as they ran among the rubble of what had once been suburbs. “Let’s walk,” she suggested.
By the time they’d made it halfway around the wall’s perimeter, an attack began
in earnest, a concerted attempt by the aliens to demolish part of the wall. Mari hung back as guards shot at the Barks, bullets flying mostly harmlessly through the night, but a few connecting. Craning her neck, she could see that the part of the wall the aliens were targeting was beginning to seriously crumble.
“Screw this,” Gareth muttered. “I can’t stand by and watch this. Stay with her.”
Finn drew her into his arms as Gareth strode forward, lights springing from his wrist and hand. They shone into the darkness, driving the aliens back.
“He can’t do much from up here,” Finn said. “The UV lights we use as weapons are more effective up close, but he can still drive them back.”
After scattering the creatures, Gareth nodded to the guards and came back to them. “Ready to get down?”
“Yes.” Mari had seen enough for tonight, enough to know she wasn’t going to find the answers she needed at the top of the wall. It only stressed her out to see the aliens attacking—she hated to see them up close—and the chilly air was making her shiver.
“Come with us, then.” Finn’s voice was pure seduction, and he led her down the nearest set of stairs, Gareth bringing up the rear.
“Where are you staying?” she asked as they made their way through the dimly lit streets.
“A private house,” Gareth answered. “It’s not large, but it’s comfortable enough. It belongs to the government, so Twins are able to stay in it anytime.”
Mari breathed easier with every step she took away from the wall. Fortunately for her nerves, the house was located centrally, down a quiet side street filled with a mixture of bungalows and FEMA-style temporary housing. Finn stopped in front of one of the latter, motioning for Gareth to do a quick check around the back.
“All clear,” Gareth said. Not that the house looked all that vulnerable to burglary with its metal-shuttered windows and sturdy walls.
Finn unlocked a heavy-duty door, preceding her inside and lighting several candles. Although she was eager to go inside, her body clamoring for theirs, Mari hung back. “I can’t stay here tonight.”
