“Dean, do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said, not sure what I was agreeing to.
“Trust no one but a man who looks like this.” She stepped back and his face hovered before mine.
“Okay,” I said.
She then repeated a numerical code over and over, until I was repeating it back to her.
After, they talked for a while longer, and by the time he left, I was falling asleep on the couch, with no memory of anyone ever being there.
__________
I pushed my way to the crack in the wall, Mary trying to grab me on the way over. “What the hell are you doing, Dean?” she yelled, grabbing my arm. “You don’t actually believe those guys, do you?”
It had all come back to me. That strange visit from years ago. Janine’s tears at the prediction I would be here at this moment. I’d failed her. I’d failed everyone.
“They were right! Vanessa is one of the bad ones! This device is here to keep the aliens away. Those guys were trying to help us keep our damn planet,” I said, fighting to make her let go of me. “Trust me, Mary. It’s true. Do you see our people beaming back down?”
The new ship hovered a hundred yards away, and something was beaming down from the green light. Magnus and Natalia were right behind the ship, and I could see them moving out of the way, trying to get between us and the new arrivals.
“Dean, what gives?” he asked.
“Just keep whatever comes out of there from coming over here!” I yelled. Mary let me go and I clambered through the crack in the wall. There was a tunnel back there leading to some dusty stairs.
“Ray! Turn it on!” I yelled while running down. There was no reply.
A small amount of light lit the way from down a tight passageway, and it led me to a small room. Ray was sitting on the ground with his back to an advanced-looking machine; soft orange light glowed off its controls.
“Ray,” I said, stepping lightly into the space, “turn it on now.” Tears were falling down his face, and it twisted into something I’d never seen on the usually affable man.
“Can’t do that, Dean,” he said raising a gun to me. “They said my family would be spared, and I could live alongside them as an ambassador. All I had to do was make sure to shut it off.”
My heart was racing, but I tried to keep the worry from my voice. “You don’t really believe that, do you? You would sacrifice all of those lives just for yours and your family’s? That’s not the Ray I know. Put down the gun. There’s another way. I know how to save them and get rid of these bastards. Trust me.” It was a bit of a lie, but I was grasping at straws.
His hand shook; his finger was on the trigger. “It’s not possible. They’re too powerful. They won’t stop until they have this planet.”
Gunshots rang from above, and Ray’s eyes left me for a moment to look upwards at the noise. I kicked out, knocking the gun from his hands. I pulled my own gun from my pants just too late. Ray’s large frame was on me quickly, tackling me to the ground. My gun went off as his full weight pressed on top of me. I panicked, trying to feel if I had been shot. My stomach felt wet, but there was no pain.
“I’m sorry, Dean. Remember that. You’re a good man… you were a good friend,” Ray said, coughing blood out beside me. “Take care of them if you can. Don’t tell them about…” I rolled him off me, sure he wasn’t going to be breathing for long. I ran to the machine and looked for the on button. Instead, I found a lit key pad with numbers on it. With bloody fingers, I pressed a sequence I knew – though I wasn’t sure why – and it came to life. Light enveloped the room and I had to close my eyes tight, covering them with my arm to keep it from blinding me. Soon the light dissipated, leaving me standing there in a dim room, machine whirring away, and Ray’s body in the doorway. The gunfire had ceased.
I stopped to see if Ray was alive, but he just lay there, unmoving, eyes still open. I shut them with my hand and a tear rolled down my dirty face. I really couldn’t trust anyone. If they had gotten to Ray before all of this, how could I trust any of the others? Maybe Mary was in on it. Maybe Natalia would shoot me on the spot and come back to turn this thing off. I grabbed Ray’s gun and put it in my pants, leaving me holding the gun Ray was killed with. I choked back a gag as I thought about the fact that I’d just murdered a man. A man I’d known. A man I had really liked. This was war, I told myself, and if I hadn’t done it, we had no hope of survival.
It didn’t help. I vomited in the doorway, staggering out of the small room and down the tight hall. I raised my gun and crept out of the crack leading to the ancient plaza.
Mary was over by the ship talking with Magnus and Natalia. Were they conspiring against me? I put my gun up and called out to them. “Put your weapons down!” I walked forward, doing my best SWAT team impression from the movies I’d seen. I was sure I looked a fool, but they all turned wide-eyed and slowly lowered their weapons.
“Dean, what are you doing? What’s happening? This ship came down, and three of them beamed down, shooting at us. Magnus here shot one of them as we ducked behind that crumbled wall,” Mary said, voice shaky.
I could see all of the damage. Holes were missing all around us, and the ground was cut open where the ship had ripped the land open like a can opener over the twins. I moved to under the ship and there lay three large creatures. They were almost humanoid, with small black eyes, no hair to be seen, and pale white skin, like a worm whose whole life had been spent under a rock. Green ooze pooled from their mouths. Janine had been mixed up with these things? It was hard to imagine.
“Vanessa lied to us, Mary. They all lied to us. Bob, Kate...Janine. They were working for these bastards. The device was planted here by those guys.” I nodded to the twins’ smaller ship, still hovering there. “They were the race taken over. Most of them are dead, but they kept a few enslaved to use as diplomats. Or maybe just fodder for war. I’m not sure. Some of them broke free and came here centuries ago. This whole place was built to hide this thing. Those pale aliens can’t be near it. They wanted Earth but couldn’t come while this was turned on. So they sent expendables to convince us this was the right move. What more dramatic event than all of humanity being whisked away could make a bunch of skilled humans come to their race’s aid? We had to believe it was true.”
They just stood there listening to my story. I wasn’t actually sure if I was being a hundred percent accurate, but I knew I was damn close. “Did Vanessa die when she came close to here?” I asked, sure of the answer.
“Yeah, she wanted to come up, but she was so weak. She collapsed and vomited some green liquid, and was gone. I see those things did the same.” Mary pointed at the dead aliens.
“I think these guys have zero tolerance of the device. The hybrids could live for years if they were far away from it, but the closer Vanessa got, the worse off she was,” I said.
“Dean, where’s Ray?” Mary asked quietly.
The pressure build-up in me came to a boil and I crouched down, worried I might vomit again. “He was with them. They told him his family would be safe. He just had to make sure it was shut down. He was with them the whole time.”
Mary crouched down beside me and put her hand on mine. “I’m sorry, Dean. But I’m glad you’re here. How did you know? How did you know all of this?”
“I didn’t. After I ran from the ship on the hill in Colombia, I saw a guy that looked just like the one Vanessa had shot when he was trying to warn me in Florida. Then I saw them again when we entered Peru.”
Magnus cut me short. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us? We could have helped!”
“I didn’t know what to believe or who to trust. I’m sorry, guys. It was just too much. Janine was their mole. She chose me instead of the guy they intended for her, and I just had a memory of her meeting with one of the twin guys in our house. They gave me the code to turn the device back on, should it fail. I had no recollection until I came here.” It all sounded so crazy.
“What do we do now? The
y’re going to retaliate.” Magnus ran his hands over his close-cropped hair. Natalia was almost pacing around us. I handed her the gun by my feet. She took it and smiled at me.
“We give ‘em what they deserve,” I said with a smile.
We heard some noise from the hole in the ground by the twins’ ship. A hand grabbed the rock and we ran over to it. One of them had survived, though he looked worse for wear. His hairpiece had fallen off, and he was bleeding all over. Magnus grabbed his arm and hauled him up.
The alien’s back against the dirt, his eyes closed, he spoke in his monotone way. “We hit them up there, and end this today.”
TWENTY-ONE
“The man was communicating with them somehow. Find it,” he gasped.
The computer! When I’d met him, he kept going on about his computer and how he needed batteries and other things from the electronics store in New York. That had to be it. He’d sold out humanity for his life and his family’s, and I almost couldn’t blame him for it. I wondered if I would have done the same for Janine’s life, under different circumstances. It was easy to judge someone else, but harder to look in the mirror.
“Where’s the computer?” I asked Mary.
“I think it’s in the car still,” she quickly answered.
“Nat, can you run back and get it?” Magnus asked, but she was already making her way back down the ancient city of ruins.
“What’s your name?” Mary asked the alien.
“Teelon. We’re called the Deltra. We won’t have a lot of time. They’ll be wondering why they haven’t heard back from their ship or the human soon. They’ll want news of the device,” he said.
“Can you get up?”
“Yes. I think so.” Magnus helped him to a sitting position.
“What’s the plan, Teelon?” I asked, wondering if he was thinking what I was. I glanced at Mary, and hoped she was as good a pilot as I thought she was.
“First things first. We need to get that device out of its hiding place.”
“I’m on it. Dean, you with me?” Magnus grabbed my shoulder. I dreaded going back down that tunnel to see Ray’s dead body.
“Yes. It’s going to be a tight fit down there; I hope we can get it out.” My stomach was already queasy.
“I have a plan for that.” He walked over to the dead aliens and grabbed one of their blasters. He tested it, firing a red beam into a wall. It tore a hole the size of a basketball in the rock. “I think this will do the excavating trick.” He slung it over his shoulder. Natalia was running back with a computer in her hands.
Teelon was already working at it as we headed to the crack in the plaza wall. We were soon back down the stairs and hall. Magnus went first and slid Ray’s body to the edge of the space.
“I didn’t know him, but I’m sorry it came to this, Dean,” Magnus said calmly. I could tell he meant the words. For a big guy, he wore his heart on his sleeve. I patted him on the arm and thanked him. The device appeared to be built into the stone, almost like a screen on a wall.
“I don’t know how big it is, or how deep it goes. Whatever you do, don’t turn the thing off,” I said as he grabbed an edge and slowly tried to pry it free. It moved, and dust sifted to the ground as the large Swede rocked it back and forth, eventually loosening it. It was only two feet from side to side, about one and a half feet tall, and when he got it out, we saw that it was about three feet deep. He grunted, sweat pouring down his face, and soon he had it resting on the ground beside Ray.
We each took an end and carried it up and out to the crack in the wall. Carey barked as we struggled to fit it through.
“Stand back,” Magnus said, unslinging the laser from his shoulder. I ducked back and crouched over the device to keep it safe. He fired two rounds at the entrance, and rock crumbled around us. He groaned as he lifted the huge stone blocks out of the way, and then we were back to carrying it through and into the night air. It was still whirring away, a constant alien repellent.
Teelon’s eyes went wide at the sight of it, and he muttered something that sounded like a mantra over and over. This was from his ancestors, and I was sure he’d been waiting for this moment a long time. He was helping save a race, and at the same time, hopefully helping his own.
“I used Ray’s computer to tell them there’s been a setback. We have to get into their ship and reiterate the message,” the alien said as he struggled to get to his feet.
“Just how do we do that?” Mary asked.
“Easy, follow me.” We went with him to where the ship was hovering above us. It was about fifty feet in the air, and had to be two hundred feet long, another fifty wide. Twice the size, at least, of Teelon’s ship. He muttered as he grabbed something from each of the three aliens’ collars.
“The three of you will go in this one. One can come with me in my ship.” Carey barked at this.
“Don’t worry, boy. I wouldn’t go anywhere without you.” I petted him for a moment.
“Teelon, can you show Mary how to fly this thing?” I asked. Mary’s eyes went wide at first, and then a smile slowly spread on her beautiful face. At that moment, I wanted to go over to her and kiss her.
“I think so,” he said. “Come.” He pinned one of the things from their collars on Mary’s shirt, then one on Natalia’s and his own. “We’ll be right back. Please bring the Kalentrek over here. We will come back for it.”
“Kalen...what? Is that what you call it?” I asked.
“Yes. Roughly translated to shield in your language.” He tapped each of their collars and a green light shone down, starting to lift them up to the ship. My pendant began to burn hot, and I could see everyone else’s light up too. They still lifted, and Mary even gave a whoop as she entered the ship like a ghost. They were gone, leaving Magnus, Carey, and me alone on Machu Picchu in the dark.
__________
We sat on the ground as light from the sun peeked over the distant horizon. It was amazing up here, and I felt like I was on the top of the world. It had been hours since the ship had left with our friends in it. We had nothing to do but wait. We’d gone back to Ray and Mary’s car and found some food for us and Carey to share, along with some water. Magnus puffed on a cigar he found in Ray’s bag –the ones I’d asked him to get in Florida before Vanessa had shot one of our allies.
Had Ray and Vanessa known about each other? Had they been working together from the start? I thought about the ships knowing where we were, seeing them while in the boat during a storm. They hadn’t meant to stop us, just to drive us here to disarm the device that meant their death. The shield, as Teelon had called it. As fitting a name as any, I supposed.
“I do hope they come back. This isn’t over yet. Do you think we can really do this?” I asked him, accepting a cigar when he offered one. I puffed it while he held the lighter to the end, and I coughed when I inhaled the first blast of smoke. It had been a while since I’d had one of these, but soon I was puffing at it like an old pro.
“They’ll be back. Those ladies will know how to fly that thing in no time. Natalia can fly just about anything,” he said.
My gut told me to trust Teelon, but what if he’d just taken them to separate us. I stubbed out the cigar, my gut feeling all of a sudden queasy. I changed the subject.
“So are you two...you know…” I left it unsaid.
“I love her, yes. She’s a tough nut to crack. I think she loves me too, though she would never say it.” He laughed as if he’d made the biggest joke of his life. “Not that she says much.”
“Have you ever heard her talk?”
“Never. I think before everything, she did, but something snapped in her when she was taken. I don’t know what those guys did to her, but I have an idea.” He looked down at his hands as if to see if they still had blood on them. I was pretty sure I knew what had happened to those men after Magnus had found those girls being transported.
“You’re a good man, Magnus.” I clapped him on the back and we sat there as the sun rose over th
e hills in the distance. For the first time, I got a good look at Machu, and it was breathtaking. I could see why so many people were drawn here. I wondered what they would think if we got everyone back to Earth and told them humanity’s savior had been hiding here all along. As long as we could make this work.
My heart jumped as I saw a ship coming in at full speed towards us. I desperately hoped it was our friends and not the aliens coming to pulverize us. It slowed abruptly and came to a stop, hovering above us. Green lights lowered and Mary, Natalia, and our new friend Teelon sank to the ground. Mary rushed over to me and kissed me firmly on the mouth.
“Someone was smoking,” she said, grabbing my unlit cigar and putting it between her teeth. “That was the most awesome thing of my life. A girl could get used to a ride like that.”
She was talking excitedly and even Natalia was grinning ear to ear.
“Let’s do this! Time to kick some alien ass!” Mary yelled, the word ass echoing down the mountain valley.
It was exciting to see her all ramped up like this, and I could still feel her lips against mine. I hoped no one noticed my red cheeks. This was no time for my emotions to get all stirred up. We had the human race to save.
“Natalia will come with me in my ship. You two go with Mary.” He clipped two small metal broaches on our collars. It was only then that I realized I hadn’t had a real shower in a few days, and my shirt, along with the rest of me, was utterly dirty.
“Nat, are you okay with that? I can go with him if you like.” Magnus walked over to her and took her hand in his. She looked tiny next to him.
She nodded and kissed him softly. I glanced over at Mary, and this time, I swear she blushed a bit.
Teelon moved to his ship. “She may have to do the flying. My time might expire before this day is through. I think I have internal bleeding, and I fear the worst. She seemed to have great understanding of flying, and I know she’ll be capable. I also showed her the weapons system, should the need arise. We’ll be able to communicate between ships; I’ve programmed that one to my frequency, which is hidden from the Kraski. You know the plan. Now let’s see this through.”
The Survivors: Books 1-3 Page 15
