When I reached the van, it didn’t look like Hopkins and Preen had even moved. Their vitals were still green, but they weren’t moving very quickly.
The van had rammed into the side of a building and suffered minor cosmetic damage to the fender. I checked that there was still a fob in the dashboard, then pushed the vehicle back onto the street before punching the spiderwebbed driver-side window and front windshield out. Even though I was wearing armor, I wiped glass out of the seat, then let myself in. Surprisingly, the vehicle had fuel in it, but the batteries were drained. I found the universal adapter port and slid an Avenger battery into place.
I tried the engine.
It turned over.
Finally, something was going right.
I pulled onto the road and got it pointed north, toward the Vaulter. It hit me then how easy it would be to just drive on, get to the Vaulter, and go.
Save yourself.
Chills ran down my spine. The mission was a disaster. Too many good people had died for no good reason. Earth still belonged to the Leviathans. The human race was doomed. All we could hope for was a slow retreat that bought small groups of people a chance to find someplace else to hide for a year or two. Even living aboard starships seemed improbable. We had been targeted for annihilation, and nothing was going to stop it.
But I wasn’t going to make that annihilation easier.
I turned the van around and headed west.
The thing drove like an armored personnel carrier—sluggish, with no acceleration whatsoever. It still moved faster than I could manage in the Juggernaut, and more importantly, it would get Hopkins off her feet.
Preen seemed to figure out I was coming for him; his signal moved toward the street I was on.
Somewhere to the west, a grenade exploded.
Gerhardt. Still fighting.
I stopped when I spotted Preen. He was carrying Hopkins, who had passed out.
We got her into the back.
He slid into the passenger seat and glanced west. “Heard that grenade.”
“Me too.” I traced a gloved finger along the curve of the steering wheel.
“He didn’t draw that thing off, we—”
“I know.”
Nearly a hundred of us had dropped. For nothing. Escaping Earth with three would be a poke in the Leviathans’ eyes. Four?
I put the van into drive and headed west. A flash of a smile spread over Preen’s lips, then disappeared. Would he smile when the Leviathan crushed us with one of its tentacle-legs?
Another explosion boomed west of us, and I caught the obsidian bulk of the Leviathan to the right as it changed direction, cutting onto our road several kilometers ahead.
I braked as the thing curled back on itself and its face tentacles undulated in our direction.
Preen doubled over and gagged; I felt a pressure in my head.
It had seen us and changed its mind.
I put the van into reverse, punched the accelerator…
And the engine died. Drained. Wiped out.
The Leviathan.
It charged toward us.
Not four escaping Earth. Zero. I’d bungled the one positive from the mission.
Preen sat up, tears trailing down his face. “I can’t feel my soul.”
I didn’t believe in a soul, but I knew what he meant. The thing was in our heads, twisting our perceptions, stealing our lives.
My BAS flickered. The dashboard lights flashed—on, off, on, off.
The monstrous alien stumbled. Its knobby tentacle-legs gave, and it crashed into a building front.
Not appeared to crash into the building by warping our perceptions.
Crashed.
Stonework collapsed and rained on its sleek, black skin.
It made another of those pitiful screeching noises.
The armor-piercing tank round? One of the incendiaries?
The dashboard lights flickered again but this time stayed on. My BAS display took on a sine wave distortion, then straightened back out.
I gasped. “The Avenger! Shit!” I cackled. “SS6 got something right!”
I leaned out the window and fired my CAWS-5. “Gerhardt! Let’s go!”
The Leviathan thrashed inside the ruined building.
There was no time to wait. I started the engine up again and drove around the giant beast. Preen moaned as the twitching tentacle-legs whipped past. Concrete dust mixed with the foul, alien stench and the strange wind chime warbling coming from the thing. It was all I could do not to open fire on it in that moment, but waking it from whatever state it was in would guarantee we weren’t going anywhere. The van wasn’t outrunning anything.
A motor growled ahead of us, and the Mongoose shot into view, braking a car length ahead of us.
Gerhardt glared at me. “I told you not to come looking for me.”
“You told me to trust my instincts, too. So I did.”
His lips twisted as he scowled at the convulsing alien. “I guess we have some good news for SS6.”
“We do. Now let’s get out of here.”
I turned the van around and pushed it as hard as I could. Gerhardt hung tight behind. He didn’t need to. The Leviathan didn’t pursue.
We drove past the shuddering flock of Croakers that had apparently fallen from the sky. Black ink that might have been blood leaked from open wounds. And at the Vaulter, we found a small pack of Hyenas waiting for us, black eyes rolled up, revealing a rim of green.
The weapon didn’t kill, but it incapacitated. For however long the batteries lasted, the gigantic aliens and their nightmarish servants were rendered ineffective. That was something—a start, a chance.
We crawled into the extraction ship and buckled in. And as the rockets roared to life, I realized with more than a little surprise that all the death and terror hadn’t been for nothing. We’d found something in the blasted ruins of the planet that had birthed our species, something I hadn’t even considered possible.
Hope.
Author P.R Adams
I was born and raised in Tampa, Florida. I joined the Air Force, and my career took me from coast to coast before depositing me in the St. Louis, Missouri area for several years. After a tour in Korea and a short return to the St. Louis area, I retired and moved to the greater Denver, Colorado metropolitan area.
I write speculative fiction, mostly science fiction and fantasy. My favorite writers over the years have been Robert E. Howard, Philip K. Dick, Roger Zelazny, Richard Matheson, and Michael Crichton.
My website is located at: http://www.p-r-adams.com/
The Expanding Universe, an Exploration of the Science Fiction Genre Anthology title is Copyright © 2018 Craig Martelle published through LMBPN Publishing.
The authors of the individual short stories retain the copyright of the works featured in this anthology.
Information War - Copyright © 2018 Craig Martelle
Checkmate - Copyright © 2018 by Jonathon P. Brazee
A Little Surprise - Copyright © 2018 by P.R. Adams
Lights Out - Copyright © 2018 by Kayelle Allen
Chancerian - Copyright © 2018 by Drew Avera
Skin Suits - Copyright © 2018 by Justin Bell
Endpoint - Copyright © 2018 by Michael Campling
Daughters of Ayor - Copyright © 2018 by David R. Bernstein
Breaker - Copyright © 2018 David VanDyke and Reaper Press, LLC.
One Last Battle - Copyright © 2018 by Timothy Ellis
Tuesday - Copyright © 2018 by Lyn Forester
The Burden of Honor - Copyright © 2018 by Kevin McLaughlin
Messenger - Copyright © 2018 by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne & R.R. Virdi
Unexpected Bounty - Copyright © 2018 by Terry Mixon
The Spike - Copyright © 2018 by Nathan Mutch
Duty - Copyright © 2018 by Bill Patterson
Mothers - Copyright © 2018 by CM Simpson
Alaska’s Vengeance - Copyright © 2018 by J.L. Stowers
Sycorax -
Copyright © 2018 by Jenetta Penner
Warp Three - Copyright © 2018 by David VanBergen
All rights reserved.
ISBN
ISBN 13:
ASIN: B07HDRRYSH
Cover Illustration © Christian Kallias
Book Formatting by James Baldwin
http://www.jamesosiris.com
The Expanding Universe 4: Space Adventure, Alien Contact, & Military Science Fiction (Science Fiction Anthology) Page 50
