by SD Tanner
“They shouldn’t be making themselves comfortable. We need to shake ‘em up.”
“Like how? By bombing them?”
“Why not? They’re dead either way.”
Ark’s vivid blue eyes finally flashed with anger. “You’re not bombing innocent people who need our help. Not on my watch.”
“And exactly how is this your watch? From what I understand, you work for CaliTech. If this is anyone’s watch, it belongs to Dunk.”
“Dunk is a weapons specialist and he doesn’t have the interest nor the skills to lead a country in war.”
Pulling his mouth into a tight sneer, he replied, “And neither do you. You were a Sergeant in the army. You have no training or experience, so just what the hell do you think you’re playing at?”
Shaking his head, Ark replied calmly, “This is not a conversation for now. We’ll talk once we can get Bill on the horn as well.” Clearly dismissing him again, he added, “Mike, keep scanning the other countries. Any intel you get is useful, even if it’s only your best guess.”
CHAPTER SIX: Knighted (Jonesy)
The buses had stopped thirty miles away from the town on a flat desert plain in Nevada. There was nothing to see other than scrubby bushes and sand, but it also meant the area was clear of danger. Sean had loaded the buses with water and basic food supplies, and the fifty people who’d escaped the small town were now standing or sitting around them. Mostly they looked tired and dirty, but he guessed without power and water life had gotten pretty basic for them. There were half a dozen children standing amongst the largely adult group, and he thought saving them had made his mission worthwhile.
A tired looking man with a badly trimmed beard stuck out his hand towards him. “Thanks.”
Not confident enough to use the hydraulic joints in his gloves to shake the man’s hand, he waved him away. “You’re welcome.”
“I’m Chad. What’s your name?”
Sean replied for him, “He doesn’t have a name, so we call him Knight.”
“That’s a name, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t answer to it.”
Although once a nickname he was proud to have, he didn’t want to be called Jonesy anymore. It brought back memories of happier times that were now gone. Originally, he’d planned to become a one-man army. He would kill critters until he finally died, hopefully in some dramatic way where he vindicated the loss of his family, but it wasn’t working out like that. Ally needed his guidance and Sean had placed his trust in him. Both of them were following him around like devoted puppies, and his plan to travel the country alone until he died wasn’t happening.
Knowing Ark would want a report from him, he sighed and asked, “What was going on in the town?”
Chad shrugged and scratched his overgrown beard distractedly. “Nothing much. We was holed up in the buildings and then they let us out.”
“How were you holed up?”
“There was some sort of sticky shit that could absorb people. You couldn’t go near the damned stuff and then it just vanished.”
“What do you mean it vanished?”
“It kinda turned watery and dried into a powder.”
“So, you just left the buildings.”
“Yeah.”
“What about the critters?”
“What about ‘em?”
“What did they do?”
“Nothin’. We left the buildings and providing we didn’t cross their fence line they left us alone.”
A woman wearing glasses elbowed Chad sharply in the ribs. “That’s not true. They grabbed Leo and that other guy.”
“Oh, yeah, they snatch a few people every so often, but mostly they ignored us.”
It didn’t make any sense to him. The critters had taken control of the country swiftly and decisively, but now they were simply keeping the survivors penned behind fences. It meant they must want some of the people left alive. So far, they’d used people to create themselves and as a source of food, but he assumed they had some other use for the survivors or they wouldn’t be holding them.
“So, who are all of you people?”
“Just the folk who lived in Searchlight. When the critters arrived, we lost two thirds of the town one way or another. Some of us tried to leave, but most of us hid inside of the buildings. It was crazy. Pretty much most of us have lost some or all of our families.”
“What were you doing before we opened the fence?”
“Nothin’ much. Scraping by. You know, finding food ‘n water ‘n stuff.”
Chad didn’t strike him as too bright, so he turned to the woman next to him. She was wearing thick-rimmed glasses and had a slight droop to her middle-aged face. He figured she’d probably lost a lot of weight quite quickly and her skin had yet to catch up. “Who are you?”
“I’m Christine. I’ve lived in Searchlight all of my life.”
“What did you do?”
“I sold stuff on the web, you know, like handmade and restored stuff.” Waving her hand at the people around her, she added, “We’re just small town folk here. Some of us worked as farmers, mechanics, clerks and drivers and stuff.”
“What’s your take on what was going on in the town?”
Christine slowly shook her head. “I dunno. After the people turned into the critters, they killed a whole lot of us and we all hid from them. The sticky shit had us trapped inside of the buildings and, just as Chad said, one day it all disappeared. It was just in time too otherwise we would have starved to death. After we got outside again, we all regrouped and eventually started piling supplies and stuff to share. The critters wandered around us, but mostly they didn’t do anything. A few people tried to leave the town, but we learned pretty quick that was a sure fire way to become critter food. You only had to see that happen a few times before you knew leaving wasn’t an option.”
Ark was looking for a workforce to either train as Navigators or make ammunition and weapons. Glancing over the woman’s head, he wondered if they would be the sort of people he could use. Clearly, they’d all lost a lot of weight, but none had been so underfed in first place that they were any the worse for wear for it. Despite their imprisonment, they looked to be in pretty good physical condition. Even he’d lost at least thirty pounds and he was in the best condition he’d been in since he was twenty years old.
Looking at the buses, he figured the survivors could drive to CaliTech and he gave Christine a curt nod. “I need to talk to someone.” Walking away from the group and standing where he couldn’t be overheard, he asked through his headset, “Ark, are you still looking for people?”
“Who have you got?”
“I’ve got the fifty people we just pulled out of the town. They’re already on buses and they’re in reasonable shape. They said the critters didn’t do anything to them other than snatch a few after they imprisoned them. They also said the goo disappeared. Apparently it dried out and turned into dust.”
“Obviously the critters want the people for a reason then.”
“I guess so.”
“We can’t house a workforce behind the walls of CaliTech, so they’ll need to bring their own gear. They can camp around the site.”
“So, you’re okay with me sending them to you?”
“Yeah, I’ll get Jo to assess them and we’ll use whoever we can.”
He didn’t really want to get involved, but finding himself drawn in, he asked, “How are you getting on finding people to train as navs?”
“Not well. We haven’t found any soldiers anywhere.”
“Where are they?”
“I’m guessing a lot of them died, but some have probably managed to hole up somewhere away from the critters.”
Now he could use the Navigator gear, he knew it took a special attitude and mindset to make it work. His own training had been hard, but he’d pushed through the pain. Even now, his body ached from moving in the hydraulics. The visor had been even harder to learn how to use and he still struggled to inte
rpret the screens. Ally had adapted much faster than he had, and he suspected being so much younger than him had helped. Unlike Jas, Ally didn’t have a cop’s instincts, but whatever she lacked in street smarts, her fierce aggression made up for it. To train more people to become Navigators, they needed to find people who could use a gun and knew how to exercise, so that meant they needed to find soldiers.
“Where do you think they’re most likely to be?” He asked.
“Why do you ask? Are you planning to look for them?”
He hadn’t intended to become an extension of CaliTech’s capabilities, but just as he’d tried to walk away from their situation, Ark had provided a structure and a plan he understood. Only a few weeks earlier, he hadn’t been willing to adapt to their new world, but now he found himself agreeing with Ark and wanting to help him. The preppers and Ally were also forming a tight team around him, and they were looking to him for guidance, which he would always give even when he wasn’t trying to.
“I wasn’t planning anything,” he replied dourly. “But I’m out here and you’re in there. If you need soldiers then I’ll go and look for them. I’ll send back anyone I find that looks useful.”
“Good. You know how the nav gear works, so find me some people who look like they’ll be fast learners.”
After he signed off with Ark, he heard Ally through his headset. “Hey, Knight. What’s the plan?”
It seemed he had a new nickname and he reluctantly answered it. “I want you to head back to CaliTech with the survivors. You’ll need to grab some camping gear and supplies on the way there. Ark needs resources and living outside of the walls of CaliTech is safer than being anywhere else.”
“Okie doke.”
CHAPTER SEVEN: Peekaboo (Steve)
A pristine white ceiling appeared to be floating above him and there was a sound behind his left ear. “Badump. Badump. Badump.” The air was underpinned by a chemical odor he vaguely recognized. He made his host lift her head and saw a large metallic creature standing outside of the door to the room. Swirling through her mind, he learned she called herself Cassie and she didn’t recognize the metallic beast.
His host moaned and the metallic creature turned to face her. Walking into the room, its feet banged heavily against the floor, and he thought he could hear a low humming sound.
Leaning over the bed, it flicked up a mask, revealing a human mouth beneath it. “Cassie, are you okay?”
His host couldn’t reply. He wouldn’t let her. “Unnh…”
“Are you thirsty? Do you want a drink?”
While the metallic man picked up a bottle by the side of the bed, he studied him through his host’s eyes. When he tried to move his host’s arms he couldn’t, and whatever was holding them down was also attached to its legs. Testing the strength of the restraints, he thrashed wildly, hearing the bed squeal angrily beneath his host.
“Cassie, calm down. You’re safe here,” the metallic man said soothingly.
Another face appeared in the doorway. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. She just started moaning.”
A woman with dark, cropped hair and an unlined face peered into his host’s eyes. “She seems to be focusing on me. That’s new.”
“What does that mean? Is she regaining consciousness?”
“I don’t know.” Walking back to the door, the woman called, “Nurse! Call Doctor Dayton to Cassie’s room. Stat!”
Returning to the room, the woman shone a bright light into each of his host’s eyes, and he stared back at her unblinkingly. “That’s odd.”
“What is,” a man asked as he walked into the room.
“Her pupils are responsive so she should have blinked when I shone a light into them.”
He scanned his host’s mind again, but she didn’t know who any of these people were. When he tried to find out where he was, she didn’t know that either. He was sure this was the place where the metallic creatures came from and now he knew they were human. It was useful to see the face of the humans resisting their dominance, and he added the knowledge to the collective mind of all of the other primaries.
“One-of-One, check out her brain waves. Is that normal?”
“I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“What do you think is happening to her?”
Before the woman called One-of-One could answer, another face appeared at the door. It was that of a young man and he lurched around the doorframe before rushing to the top of the bed.
“Cassie! Are you awake?”
To his surprise, his host’s mind pushed back against his control. “B…B…”
The young man touched his host’s face and pulled it to look at his. “Are you trying to say my name? Say Ben, Cassie. You can do it.”
They were such a simple species, much like the one who ruled him. It seemed impossible his host could fight against his control and yet she did. “K…k…kill m…me.”
Wishing for death was something the humans often shared in common, but he wanted her to stay exactly as she was. If he completed her conversion, he would lose a weapon and that wouldn’t serve his purpose.
“No, Cassie, you don’t have to die. They’ll find a way to heal you. You have to try. Just hang on for a bit longer.”
The young man’s pleading tone set off a chain reaction of grief inside of his host’s mind. Images of the young man as a baby and then as a boy flashed wildly through her memory. They interfered with the memories he needed to access and he pushed them aside, flooding her thinking with his. She wasn’t strong enough to maintain control of her mind and he again dominated his host.
“There! Do you see that?” One-of-One asked, as she pointed at something behind his host’s head.
“What the hell does that mean?” The man asked.
One-of-One’s face filled his vision again and she peered coldly into his eyes. “Who are you?”
Sounding confused, the man asked, “Why are you asking Cassie that?”
Still staring into his host’s eyes, she replied with a sneer, “This isn’t Cassie. Like I told you, Dayton, communication is a two-way street.”
Another face filled his vision, only this time it was the one she’d called Dayton. “Are you telling me we’re talking to the thing in the nest?”
“A human brain doesn’t have those kinds of brainwaves under any conditions…not ever.”
A voice he’d never heard before crackled through speakers he couldn’t see. “You need to shut the hell up now!”
“Ark? What’s the problem?” Dayton asked.
“If One-of-One is right then our enemy has eyes on us. Step away from the bed and get that goddamn nav outta there.”
All the faces disappeared from his line of vision, and the metallic man he now knew to be human left the room with them. Still holding control of his host, he waited to see what they would do next. They couldn’t harm him other than to kill one of their own, so he looked around the room to learn everything he could.
In a little while, he heard the door to the room open again and there was a whirring sound similar to the one the metallic man had made. Lifting his host’s head, he saw the face of another man, only he didn’t look like the others. His features were strangely smooth in some parts, but other areas were tightly puckered. This man was made differently to the other humans, and he scanned his host’s mind trying to understand why.
Before he could find an answer, the man leaned closer to his host’s face. “I see you too, asshole. You won’t win. We’re the sort of species that would rather die than be your slave.”
The word slave didn’t mean anything to him and he scanned his host’s mind for an explanation. Getting an answer, he understood the man was telling him that he wouldn’t be dominated. That was not an option, and using the voice and language of his host, he replied, “Then die.”
CHAPTER EIGHT: Match point (Ark)
Leon was perched uncomfortably on the stool next to his console. “Yeah, okay, but I ne
ed to know which mission you want done first.”
He’d promised the survivors in NORAD that he would have the Navigator squad look for their families in Colorado Springs, Denver and Pueblo, but even when he’d said it, he’d known he was over committing their scant resources. Now they urgently needed the squad to go to Albuquerque to find the programmable chips they needed to make the baby bots.
Shaking his head, he sighed. “I’m sorry to load you guys, but we need to keep NORAD onside or they might abandon their posts.”
Amber and Dom were sitting at their consoles in the command center and she asked, “Do you really think they would leave NORAD?”
Nodding, Leon replied, “Finding your family is a powerful driver, even if they’re likely to be dead.”
Lexie might not have agreed with Leon’s trip to Seattle, but he understood how he must have felt. He wasn’t married, and he had no children that he knew of, but he still wondered what happened to his parents and his brother. Given his physical condition, looking for them wasn’t an option, but he might have made a different decision if he’d had a choice. His brother had always been the polarized opposite of him. He’d been smart and College educated, marrying right on cue at the age of twenty-five. Although there had only been three years between them, he’d taken the other path. When he was nineteen years old and on yet another drunken bender, he’d crashed his car through the front fence of their family home. Finally fed up with his idiotic ways, his father had frog-marched him into the army recruiting office. Initially he’d felt resentful, but until he stepped on the wrong bit of dirt in a war zone, it had been the best decision his father had ever made for him.
As if he could read his mind, Leon asked, “What about your family, Ark? Do you want us to look for them while we’re out there?”
Leon, Lexie and Tank had bluntly told him they would follow his orders, but the same could not be said about Bill and particularly Boris. Using the Navigator squad to find his family would be an emotional decision, and if he sent the squad to look for them, he could lose credibility in the eyes of the CaliTech and NORAD teams. He relied on the commitment of both teams, meaning he couldn’t afford to do anything that could damage the fragile trust growing between all of them. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about his parents and brother, but he had a job to do and in the military, family always came second to the mission.
