Paired Pursuit

by Clare Murray

  “Twenty minutes!” announced the junkie.

  Gareth fired his laser into the gap. He blinked, catching sight of the leader who had attacked the train. The aliens were nearly indistinguishable—at least to a human—except for size. What set this one apart was Mari’s bullet wound through its jowls. It reared back, hissing as it displayed its serrated teeth. Its malevolent gaze was fixed directly upon him.

  Chapter Eight

  “I should never have kept all those scavenged things,” Patrice said for the tenth time. She fiddled with the half-knitted sweater she was holding, clicked her needles together.

  “You weren’t to know,” Mari said.

  “That’s true, but I can still kick myself. I should have dumped everything outside the walls, let them have a free-for-all.”

  Neither woman had slept. How could they, after that siren went off? It sounded again, preempting further conversation. The wail rose long and thin before dwindling away. Yet the fact that it was continuing to sound gave them both hope.

  “I’d like to shove it up an alien’s…oh, damn it.” Patrice scowled as a knitting needle clattered to the floor. “Why am I doing this in the first place? Abigail isn’t going to come back, and I won’t have the room to schlep this out of here.”

  “Well, it’s better to fiddle with a sweater than your shotgun,” Mari pointed out.

  Patrice snorted. “I’ve always tried to be pragmatic. That’s why I stayed here in the first place. I knew the area, I knew my neighbors, and I liked my house. I should have left five years ago, but I couldn’t bear it if my granddaughter came back and found me gone.”

  “Do you want to leave a note? In case…” Mari trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence. Scar City’s fall was inevitable at this point, but speaking it out loud—especially while it was still dark—felt too risky. Silly for her to think that way, especially when the Twins were out there, fighting—oh please let them be alive and well—but she couldn’t help herself.

  “That’s a good idea.” Patrice set the sweater aside and rose, peering warily through the slats of the boarded-up window. “Twenty minutes until dawn. Sky’s lightening, but it won’t be enough UV to drive the Barks underground yet.”

  Mari shivered as the siren went off again. “I want to go to the wall.”

  “Oh no. Those boys would have my head if I let you out of the house, Gareth especially.”

  They both jumped as someone knocked on the door. Mari rushed to peer out the keyhole, heart thumping in dread. The Twins wouldn’t have abandoned the wall before dawn unless there was something very wrong.

  “Which Twin is it?” Patrice’s voice shook.

  Mari blinked. “It’s…neither. There’s a woman out there. Unarmed.”

  Patrice didn’t bother speaking. She rushed forward and yanked the door open. “Abigail? Oh.”

  “I’m Gina, sorry. But I’m a friend of Abigail’s.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.” Patrice’s brows drew down. “You didn’t offer up the name Abigail without me first saying it. So why are you here?”

  “She’s twenty-five, about five foot six, curly brown hair, likes Rottweilers, and her last name is Brooks. You want to know her shoe size too? And her favorite food?”

  Patrice drew a shaky breath. “Used to be pizza. Cheese pizza, light on the sauce, heavy on the mozzarella.”

  “She still likes pizza when she can get it.” Gina flicked a gaze upward as the klaxon went off again. “I can’t stay long. I aim to get the first train out of here. Was on my way to the coast when this all went down…only planned to stay here overnight. Instead I ended up carrying supplies to the people fighting on the wall.”

  “Did you see any Twins?” Mari demanded.

  “Oh yeah. Handsome as anything. One’s hurt—I got a good look at him in the infirmary—but the other one pretty much singlehandedly held the breach in the wall. Everyone thought we were goners, but the dude got up and started hand-to-hand with that crazy UV sword of his. He was still doing that when I left, fighting a massive leader alien. Probably killed it by now.”

  Relief nearly choked her. She slumped a little against the wall, laying her palms flat against the strong, solid wood. Next to her, Patrice sighed. “Thank you. You’ve brought a powerful lot of good news. Do you want anything to eat?”

  “No, I have to go. I promised Abigail I’d deliver you this letter, though, so here it is.” Gina handed over a small yellow envelope. She was about to draw back when Patrice took her hand and gripped it tightly.

  “Thank you for coming. If you ever need anything…”

  “Hey, Abigail saved my life. I owed her one. She’s a good person.”

  “Thank you,” Patrice repeated, and they both watched Gina go, rushing off in the direction of the train station. Moments later, the sun cleared the horizon, bathing her fleeing form in brightness. Then she was gone, the only evidence of her presence an upscattering of dust and old scraps of newspaper.

  “I’m going to the wall to find Gareth and Finn,” Mari said. That way she’d kill two birds with one stone: giving Patrice privacy to read the letter, and seeing the Twins with her own eyes. The fact that Gareth had been fighting the leader made her nervous—was he the alien she’d shot from the train? The way he’d stared at her still made her shiver.

  “Take the dog,” Patrice said. “Here’s the leash, and don’t you dare be out for long, or I’ll have to come after you myself.”

  Mari hurried toward the wall, Tank bounding beside her. The Rottweiler had access to a decently large backyard, where Patrice threw battered tennis balls for him to fetch, but his excitement at going on a walk was clear. She broke into a jog, then a run, and was breathless by the time she arrived at the wall.

  “Oh my God.”

  Tank looked up at her under-the-breath exclamation, but she only had eyes for the half-destroyed wall. A barricade of sorts blocked part of it, with wood and barbed wire scattered atop a huge mound of rubble, and vehicles parked at the edges. Several barrels of oil still burned, coughing thin black smoke into the air.

  Corpses of aliens were everywhere. At first she stared at them, afraid to move lest they suddenly rise up and attack. Then, as she saw the sunlight slowly blackening their pale skin, she moved forward.

  Where were the Twins? There were plenty of humans around, running to and fro. She saw Ramsey being stretchered down a flight of stairs, still rattling out orders to an aide. Mari caught the words evacuation, four trains and no time before Ramsey was taken out of earshot.

  One soldier trailed behind, frowning at a clipboard. She moved to intercept him. “Sorry to bother you, but have you seen the Twins? I’m looking for them.”

  He looked up, the frown remaining upon his face. “Yes, but one of them was hurt. I’d check the infirmary if I were you. Good luck.”

  She gasped a response over her shoulder, already running up the steps that Ramsey had just been stretchered down. Mari could smell and hear the infirmary before she saw it—a stench of blood and bodily fluids mingled with the cries of the wounded. When she rounded the corner, Tank heeling at her side, she saw Finn seated near a bed, helping a soldier splint his ankle. Although Finn’s arm was in a sling, he seemed calm and collected, and from that Mari deduced that Gareth must be okay and that Finn himself wasn’t too badly injured. She sagged a little, that terrible, worried energy that had carried her to the wall dissipating somewhat as lack of sleep set in.

  Before Finn could spot her, she withdrew, leading Tank back around the corner and down the stairs. At the bottom, a soldier struggled to load a set of lasers onto the back of a jeep, and Mari automatically reached to help him.

  “Thanks.” He gave her an exhausted smile as they heaved the equipment into the folded-down backseat. “Do you need a ride to the station?”

  “No, she doesn’t.” The voice was familiar,
sparking both chagrin and delight. She turned to face Gareth, mercifully uninjured save for a few scratches. Without even looking at the other man, he approached her, a hard set to his jaw. “Let’s go, Mari.”

  Tank trotted alongside them as they walked away from the wall. Gareth’s strides were purposeful, and he didn’t touch her at all. After thirty seconds of silence, Mari stopped in her tracks.

  “I refuse to be frog-marched back to Patrice’s.”

  Gareth stopped a few strides farther down the road. He turned, eyes blazing. “You shouldn’t have left the house in the first place!”

  “Oh, of course not,” she shot back. “What I should have done was sit there like a good girl until you came and patted me on the back. I shouldn’t have worried my pretty little head, right?”

  “She’s got you there, brother.”

  Gareth wheeled, turning his glare on Finn. “I don’t want her running around where she could be hurt.”

  “She doesn’t want to be hurt either,” Mari snapped. “And I’m standing right here, thank you very much, so you can address your concerns directly to me.”

  Gareth opened his mouth, then immediately shut it again. He ran a frustrated hand through his short black hair, glaring up at the early morning sky. The pink streaks of dawn were slowly leaching from the brightening blue sky. It was going to be a warm day.

  “I guess you had the dog with you,” Gareth finally managed.

  “And my gun.”

  “Hailey, my foster-mother, had a gun too. Didn’t help her. She died anyway.”

  “I’m not Hailey,” Mari almost regretted her sharp tongue when Gareth’s fierce expression slipped.

  “No, you’re not. And like Finn keeps telling me, I need to…let go. But by all that’s holy, seeing you walking around after we nearly lost the City, seeing you standing within striking distance of those alien corpses, talking to someone I don’t know… I lost it.”

  Mari went to him, wrapping her arms around him as far as they would go. A few seconds later, Finn pressed against her back, embracing her around the waist with his good arm as Gareth held her shoulders. She sighed deeply, appreciating the warmth, comfort and tacit apology.

  “I needed to see that you were all right.”

  “We understand, sweetheart,” Finn murmured, his voice rumbling pleasantly against her.

  “Just…try to be gentle with us until we get somewhere safe,” Gareth added.

  “I wasn’t aware you preferred gentle,” Mari said, deliberately brushing against his groin.

  His fingers tightened, bunching in the light jacket she wore, and he let out a groan. “I prefer it any way you want it.”

  Tank broke the mood by winding the leash around their legs, and Mari pulled back with a smile. “I’d better take him back to Patrice.”

  “Do you want an escort, or would you like to go alone?” Gareth looked as if the words tasted hideous, but he got them out anyway, and she squeezed his hand in appreciation.

  “I’m good with an escort, but only if he’s extra handsome.”

  “Stop stroking his ego,” Finn said. “His head won’t be able to fit inside the plane—or whatever they send to evacuate us. Speaking of which, I’m going back to our place to pack up. It would be fantastic if you two could rustle up some breakfast.”

  Gareth tucked her under his arm as they began walking. “I don’t…do very well with surprises,” he said. “I like knowing what’s going to happen, who’s where, all that. So there will be times when I’m gruff, and I’m sorry.”

  “A place for everything, and everything in its place,” she quoted. “The problem with that is life keeps getting in the way. Even you would get tired of micromanaging things after a while, and people don’t stay tidily in boxes—not without changing for the worse.”

  Mari held her breath, hardly daring to watch him out of the corner of her eye. She was beginning to fall in love with these men, but she wouldn’t tolerate being ruled with an iron fist. Some women could, welcoming the order in their lives, but it wasn’t Mari’s style.

  “All right,” Gareth said finally. “Rule number one—don’t put Mari in a box.”

  “Unless there’s chocolate inside,” she hastened to clarify.

  “If there was, I’d be in there eating it off you.” He adopted a more serious tone. “Was everything all right last night at Patrice’s?”

  “Well, we didn’t sleep, but everything was fairly quiet. Around dawn, a woman delivered a letter from her granddaughter, Abigail. Apparently she was passing through town, but the train couldn’t leave until this morning because there were too many Barks circling the walls.”

  “There’s going to be a real issue getting everyone out of here,” Gareth said. “So, this message—was it good news?”

  “I left her to read it by herself.” Worry made her step her pace up. “The woman who delivered it, Gina, said Abigail was fine, so I assume she’s alive, but I wanted to give Patrice space to digest everything.”

  “Sounds like you did the right thing.” Gareth knocked on Patrice’s front door, boots creaking on the front porch. It seemed like an age ago that Mari had walked up to this house and accepted an offer of hospitality. How naïve she’d been—about everything, but most especially her father’s supposedly valuable device.

  Yet if she’d known there was no fortune, she might have accepted Tim Johnston’s offer of marriage. And she would never have met the Twins.

  “Come in.” Patrice bent to greet Tank, almost but not quite hiding her red-rimmed eyes. “Glad you’re all right, Gareth.”

  “Thanks. It was a long night.”

  “And Finn?” Patrice shuffled over to her armchair and sank into it with a sigh.

  “Idiot broke his arm when the wall fell. He’s back at our place, packing stuff up.”

  “About that…”

  “You’re coming with us.” Both Gareth and Mari spoke together, making the old woman snort.

  “I don’t dispute that. I want to open this place up, though. Open the windows so the Barks can’t hide in here during daylight. I hate the thought of those aliens using my wonderful home as a…a lair.” She dabbed fiercely at her face, cleared her throat.

  “Of course we can do that. You mind if we have breakfast first?”

  “Nope. At this point, we might as well raid the pantry and eat as much food as we can stuff ourselves with.”

  An hour later, the four of them had hacked the protective boards off all the windows, flooding the old house with light. That was enough to tucker out the Twins, and Mari and Patrice kept watch while the men slept. After a three hour nap, they were up again, as fresh as if they’d slept for eight. Finn’s broken arm had much improved, although he kept it in its splint, since it was still tender and could easily re-break.

  “I envy them,” Patrice said as the men sawed a hole in the roof to render the attic useless to Barks. “Though they do eat like horses.”

  Mari laughed. “They deserve to.”

  “That’s true enough.” Patrice sighed. “I always used to worry about Abigail not getting enough to eat.”

  “Is she okay?” Mari hadn’t wanted to pry. Since Patrice had brought up the subject herself, though, she figured she might as well ask.

  “Well, the letter was innocuous. Too innocuous, I’d say. There was too much chatter about mundane stuff, not enough about who she was with and why she was writing. Don’t know why she’d send a letter like that.”

  “You mind if we take a look?” Finn rounded the corner. “Sorry, didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but it’s kind of hard for us to not overhear.”

  “Be my guest.” Patrice pulled out a folded-up piece of paper. “What, you think she wrote in code or something?”

  Finn scanned it, frowned. “Yep. Hold on. Right here… It’s not too hard to crack. I think you would have eventually worked it o
ut. The first and last letters of some of the words are different, so…”

  Patrice snatched the paper. “Oh God. ‘Gran, being held at the Shadow Fed HQ. Will try to get out. If can’t, all my love.’ What’s HQ?”

  “Headquarters. The Shadow Feds are holed up in former Washington, DC.” Finn’s voice was neutral, but Mari could tell he was worried. Remembering Hobart, the self-styled reporter, she tended to agree with his view.

  Patrice banged her fists on the armrests of her chair. “What do they want with my granddaughter?”

  “Could be as simple as using her as an indentured servant. Or maybe she has some information they want, and they’re keeping her until she coughs it up.”

  “Why didn’t Gina tell me this?” Patrice demanded. “Damn. I’ll need to go there, try to get her out. When is our transport coming?”

  “We haven’t yet been notified.” Gareth spoke up. Due to his close telepathic link with his Twin, there was no need to explain what had just happened. He clearly knew, from the somber expression on his face. “There are Twins running a mission near DC next week. I can tell them to keep an eye out for Abigail, if you’ll give me a description.”

  “Realistically, that’s the best I can hope for, isn’t it?” Patrice scowled down at her body. “If I were twenty years younger, even ten…oh, Abigail. Give me a little while, I need to lie down on my bed.”

  At a loss for what to do, Mari packed her things, sorting them ruthlessly into piles of decreasing priority until she was down to one suitcase and a backpack. She placed her father’s trunk with its hidden compartment in the living room. Even if she could take it, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.