by Clare Murray
Or, heaven forbid, new arrivals?
The Twins seemed nonplussed as well when she glanced up to gauge their reactions. Still, they seemed ready to react at a moment’s notice, forearms bared and ready to engage the UV-sabers at their wrists. Abby had glimpsed Twins from far off, had seen them in action when Scar City had been attacked. The men were fearsome fighters, able to pull off physical feats humans could only dream about.
She was safer with them on the wall than she was in the depths of Uther’s compound.
“T-twenty at the front, at least.” The guard continued to relay updates through the phone. “More at the back, can’t tell how many. They’re strange ones, sir. Bigger and slower.”
The wind gusted, and the aliens in the lead lifted their heads higher, scenting prey. The leader opened its mouth, letting it gape wide. Abby waited, expecting to hear the hideous yips and wailing howls that had given the aliens their nickname of Barks.
Instead, a strangely mellifluous, two-toned roar filled the night. Abby stepped forward, awed despite herself. Its voice put her in mind of a French horn accompanied by a lighter brass instrument, like the high note on a trumpet.
A clunk behind her told her the guard had dropped the phone. “What the Sam Hill are those things?” he demanded.
Another time, Abby might have laughed at the phrasing. Now, she merely waited for one of the Twins to answer. It took them a moment, because something was wrong. Dead wrong. Everyone knew it.
The Twins were obviously communicating mentally, trying to hash it out. Abby waited, hoping that two plus two didn’t equal four in this particular scenario.
Her hopes were dashed when Russ spoke.
“Yeah, those are the females. Couldn’t be anything else.” Russ shook his head, his expression bleak. “Looks like Felton’s device really did wake them up from hibernation.”
Chapter Six
Cam watched the aliens undulate toward the wall with every sense on full alert. The Multiple Project had exhaustively trained its participants—willing or not—so he’d learned patience. Enough patience to wait for the whites of their eyes before shooting, so to speak.
When NASA had first registered the approach of alien ships, back at the turn of the century, they hadn’t known what to expect. So Twins went through different training programs, inculcated in specializations that ranged from leading on-ground combat to bio warfare and guerilla tactics.
Cam specialized in flight. Russ, in assassination.
Scientists—pushed hard by various governments, of course—had been required to make the Multiple Project “relevant to today’s needs as well as tomorrow’s,” which meant training Twins to engage in human-against-human combat. Hence, Russ’s choice.
When the Invasion occurred, they’d transitioned away from virtual reality combat against varying aliens—his favorite had been the computer-generated green men with single eyes—into the real thing. It had happened abruptly and viciously, and it had been the making of many of them.
“They’re looking at us!” The young guard took a step back, as if that might save him. Every set of alien eye stalks was focused on the wall.
Even so, Cam got the sense they were weak and wouldn’t try to tackle prey that might resist. He took the time to study the females, meshing his observations with his brother’s. They were stockier than their male counterparts, although they had the same translucent skin and facial structure with sharklike teeth and six insect-like black eyes. Their muzzles were different, wider and larger, giving them the ability to vocalize in brassier, less dog-like tones. Pouches of skin or fat hung at their bellies, a key difference between them and the males.
“The better to breed as much spawn as possible,” Russ sent darkly.
Hell, Cam didn’t want to think about that. He preferred to concentrate on the fact that humans were resilient.
One of the aliens near the back brayed its strange tonal call. Multiple sets of eye stalks swiveled her way. After a moment, Cam saw what had gotten their attention—one of them was industriously picking apart the shuttered windows of a barn, tossing aside splinters of wood with its tentacled appendages. A faint, terrified moo drifted on the breeze.
“Someone got cocky, leaving stock like that outside the walls,” he sent.
“It’s been pretty quiet in this area, to be fair.” Russ kept his arm around Abby. “Besides, it takes the pressure off us. For now.”
He was right. Within the space of a few minutes, the females had torn an opening in the barn. Bovine bellows split the air, but the slaughter was mercifully over almost as soon as it had begun. Cam took a moment to be grateful that these aliens didn’t seem to play cat-and-mouse games.
Then again, they were generally too hungry to do that kind of thing. Although the aliens had glutted themselves in the first flush of the Invasion, humans weren’t easy prey. Cam wondered if the Barks were used to prey that fought back.
Somehow, he didn’t think so. He’d long felt there was another aspect to the Invasion, something even the scientists weren’t picking up on.
“Are they retreating?” Abby asked, interrupting those thoughts.
“Looks like.” Cam watched them undulate slowly into the distance. When he could no longer see flickers of movement on the horizon, he allowed himself to relax a touch. Next to him, the young guard still gibbered on the phone, and it sounded like his superior wasn’t far from hysteria himself.
Backup was on the way—a day late and a dollar short.
“You should get some sleep,” he told Abby, not liking the shadows underneath her eyes. She’d been through a lot in the last forty-eight. One day, he planned to winnow out the events leading up to her flipping the table and running from Headquarters. It had been a ballsy move, wrecking the Federal control room. They’d have had her executed, most likely.
“I can stand guard on the wall,” Russ offered.
“No, I’ll do it.”
Cam made himself say it, although he would much rather have gone with Abby. Now that immediate danger had receded, he wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed with her and hold her for the rest of the night. But he’d bordered on possessive earlier. It wasn’t easy being a Twin. Caveman instincts demanded sole possession of a woman—yet the link with his brother overrode everything else.
When he’d gone down on Abby earlier, her taste had made him half-drunk with lust, to the point where it took only a few strokes of his hand to come all over her belly. He’d wanted to finish inside her, but that would have to wait. Even the rawest of animal attraction wasn’t enough to hold a relationship together if they didn’t work at building one first, and that shed was no place for firsts.
Logic told him Russ would take care of Abby as well as Cam himself could. Emotion told him to back off, let his brother develop a bond with her. A relationship.
If relationships could last in this world gone crazier.
Cam watched Russ and Abby go down the steps. She was too tired to say anything beyond wishing him a good night, and the stiffness of her body suggested shock and fear had settled into her bones. She needed sleep.
Leaning on the wall, he stared into the night as the concrete of the wall dug roughly into the fabric of his shirt. People came and went around him, but they let him be. That wasn’t surprising—his physique suggested he could beat the shit out of anyone, and most people were aware of the fact that he had a mentally connected double. Even so, Cam stayed watchful. People had the propensity to be utter idiots even in the face of danger. Uther’s insane power struggle proved that.
The Shadow Feds proved it too. Seemed like humans couldn’t unite under one leader—not when there was more than one power-hungry individual jockeying for position. Cam grimaced. Maybe there was something to the notion of Twins striking out on their own, forming a separate community…
But wouldn’t that be a grab for power in itself?
Stupid complications. Cam shut down those thoughts and concentrated on keeping watch through the night. After a time, he welcomed the cool air on his cheeks and found a measure of peace in the low sound of men and women conversing nearby.
At dawn, Katya ordered Uther’s corpse burned. A pair of men threw his stripped body onto the flames with no fanfare, and a small group kept vigil. Snake Eyes was treated with more respect, with Katya herself tossing lavender into the flames that licked his body. She spoke a few words, a simple eulogy that meant nothing to the dead man and everything to the people listening to the woman who looked to be the next leader of this particular group of humans.
Cam listened with one ear. Being up all night was no problem for someone like him. The prospect of breeding aliens, however, worried the shit out of him. Thankfully, the females hadn’t returned, having sated themselves on cattle.
Tonight might be a wholly different story.
Already, soldiers were securing the walls, installing more reliable UV beacons to scorch the aliens when they drew close. In a clear attempt to consolidate her power, Katya threw orders left and right. Uther’s former henchmen had melted into the night.
“So, you going to stay here?” Katya asked as Cam descended the wall. He’d waited until the pinkness of the sunrise was tinged with gold.
“No.”
She gave him a mercenary look. “Free lodging, food, and I’ll pay you twice as much as you get in Chicago.”
He faked a considering look. “Women thrown in?”
Her blue eyes shuttered. “No. We don’t play that way. Not any longer.”
A real smile touched his lips. “Good. For that, I’m happy to give advice on defenses. Won’t stay, though—I have my orders, and I follow them.”
For now, at least.
Although he needed an hour or two of shut-eye, Cam took twenty minutes to walk the perimeter with Katya, who took copious notes, writing down every single suggestion he made. Unlike with Uther, the denizens of the compound didn’t shy away from Katya, women and children openly greeting her. By the time he was done giving her pointers, Cam had a pretty good feeling about her leadership.
“It wasn’t supposed to be me,” she said as they parted. Her blue eyes were sad. “Snake Eyes was going to take over. He was a good man.”
“How did he get shot?” Cam had thrown himself half on top of Abby, missing the details.
“Uther fired at you, drunk bastard that he was. Snake got off a shot at his back, but it wasn’t enough to kill him. Uther turned and got him in the head.”
“Then you got him in the head,” Cam guessed.
“Yes, and good riddance to bad rubbish, as my baba would have said. I’ll leave you now—stuff to do, sleep to get.” Katya nodded a good-bye and strode off, leaving him alone outside the guest shed.
He entered quietly, finding Russ stretched out next to Abby. His brother got up silently as a cat. “She’s been zonked for the past four hours, but that won’t be enough sleep for her. I’ve had my three hours, so I’m good.”
“Wake me after two if I oversleep.”
“Sure. I’m going to go grab some supplies, stock the van, make sure we’re good to go. We’ll leave in two and a half hours, get out of the city while the getting’s good.”
“Roger that.” Cam shucked off his boots and lay down fully clothed next to Abby. Her steady breathing lulled him to sleep almost immediately.
When he woke, it was abruptly, the lethargy in his body telling him his two-hour quota wasn’t quite finished. The distress in Russ’s mind was clear as an alarm clock, however.
Cam sprang to his feet, ready to fight.
“No, Cam. I’m fine. The van was broken into, though. One of the Shadow Fed commtabs was switched on.”
“Son of a—witch.” He hadn’t meant to speak out loud, and only barely managed to amend his statement as he realized Abby was awake and listening.
She quirked her lips in a smile. “I don’t mind if you let loose around me, you know.”
“My foster-mother was a stickler about not swearing in front of ladies.”
“So what’s wrong?” That smile died, and her hazel eyes went serious.
He debated not telling her, pacing the room twice. She didn’t need extra worry on top of everything else—but this wasn’t something to cover up to spare her feelings. Maybe if they were in the safety of the Complex…but they weren’t. Yet.
“The Shadow Feds can track us through the commtabs, but only if they’re turned on.”
Abby nodded impatiently, gesturing for him to go on.
“Somebody broke into the van last night and rifled through our stuff. They didn’t take anything important, but they left one of the commtabs switched on. Even with patchy satellite service, they’ve had enough time to put a trace on that particular device.”
Her face turned a few shades paler. “Th-then we need to go. Now.”
“Easy. Hey.” He intercepted her on the way to the door, holding her firmly. “We’ll be off in a few minutes.”
She trembled in his arms, a bundle of raw, partially sleep-deprived nerves. “I can’t go back there.”
“We won’t let you.” His lips hovered above her head, the words dropping into her curly hair, which held the clean scent of homemade shampoo. He wished he could bury his nose against her, hold her tight. He never wanted to let her go. But she was right—they had to get out of here.
“What’s the status on the compromised commtab?” Cam sent.
“It’s still on. I want them to think they can easily track her. I propose we dump it somewhere in the City and drive off. Might throw them off her track.”
Cam recognized the doubt in Russ’s mind and suppressed a grimace as he bent to retrieve his backpack. It was common knowledge that the Shadow Feds became fixated on people and issues they considered threats to them. Before the Invasion, their kind stuck to ad hominem attacks, nasty campaign messages and the occasional implied threat.
The thin veneer of civilization constraining their baser tendencies had long worn off. Now these people had Abby in their sights.
She emerged from the bathroom, face wet. For a moment, he thought she’d been crying, and an animalistic rage stirred deep inside. But her eyes were clear, if scared, so she must have simply splashed her face with water.
Cam hooked his arm around her waist, pulling her close. “Ready to face the world, sweet thing?”
She hefted her bag. “I’d rather go back to bed for a month, but yes. Is it safe to… Uther’s really dead, right? We can leave?”
“Yep. Looks like Katya’s stepped into the role of leader.”
“Oh, that’s good.” He felt the moment her shoulders relaxed. “So they won’t stop us from leaving. No more power plays.”
“That’s the assumption we’re working from.”
Despite his cavalier words, Cam kept a sharp eye out as they left the guest shed. The public areas were mostly empty. He assumed people were sleeping off the craziness of the night. A handful of people still worked on the wall, beefing it up with barbed wire and other defenses. No doubt word of the spaceship’s arrival had reached the Complex by now, phoned in by soldiers loyal to the current president.
The real question was whether this particular ship was the only one containing females. Cam doubted that was the case. That meant there were other Cities scrambling to shore up defenses as quickly as possible. Maybe even quieter Cities who’d been blindsided by the arrival, having been complacent with their relative lack of alien attack. Hopefully there hadn’t been too many casualties. The human race couldn’t afford that.
“I sourced us some breakfast,” Russ sent. “We’ll eat on the go.”
“We’re not going to make Chicago tonight, are we?”
“No. We’ll need to stay overnight at a safe house.”
Cam plucked the coordinates and details from his brother’s head. Technically, Uther’s compound had been labelled as a safe house, so he wasn’t all that happy about risking the hospitality of another stranger. Before the arrival of the females, they might have risked a night in the open, protected by the armored van. With more aliens on the scene, they needed the safety of walls—and other people.
“Just need to hope there’s a temporary stop to all this internal power shit,” was Russ’s grumpy interjection.
“When there’s an external threat, humans do a pretty good job at banding together. And all we need is temporary. We’ll get to the Complex the day after tomorrow by latest. We’re close enough that another set of Twins can pick us up if need be.”
“True.” Russ sounded mollified. “That one set of Triplets tends to patrol between Peoria and Fort Wayne. They might even be at the safe house tonight. That’s one hell of a boring assignment, though. I’d go insane if I spent all my time looping between Cities troubleshooting minor problems.”
“Valentino, Lorenzo, and Rocco? Yeah, after those three got up to crazy trouble a few years ago, I don’t think the scientists trust them doing anything other than patrols close by.”
They walked quietly through the last of the warehouses, dodging a pair of people carrying an oversized piece of plywood. As they stepped into the weak sunlight, Katya came toward them.
“Still time to reconsider,” she said.
“Can’t do it.” Cam lifted a shoulder in a regretful shrug.
“Put in a good word for me with the government, would you? Uther was stupid, squandered most of their payouts on scavenged beer. But they trusted him, while they don’t know me from Adam. I’ll spend any money on food, gear, and medicine.”
Looking at the serious glint to her blue eyes, Cam knew she meant every word of that. He nodded. “Sure. I’ll note down in our report that you’re good people.”
“Thanks.” Katya flashed him a slightly rueful grin. “They still have you doing paperwork even post-Invasion?”
“That shit never ends,” Russ said. “Most of it is electronic now, obviously, but old habits die hard.”
