by N. W. Harris
“Probably vaporized them,” the soldier said.
“Let’s hope,” Pelros replied. “Keep a sharp watch just the same.
“What will this green alien try to do now?” General Talus said, approaching Pelros. His face was red from the light beam’s heat.
“The green walls that were pushing those humans up the steps have stopped moving,” Pelros observed.
“Maybe we’ve stumped it,” the general replied. “Although I’m guessing not for long.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Don’t stop,” Shane shouted. “Push them out of the way.”
The Russians and his teammates echoed the order. Squatting on the steps and firing his rifle at the teenagers coming down upon them, Shane picked off the enemy with precision. Bullets whizzed past his head, and even over the hammering of gunfire, he swore he heard the wet thwack of the hot slugs tearing through flesh behind him.
On the steps, they could only stand seven people wide. When the fighting started, Kelly was on his left with Tracy and Steve beside her. Jones was on his right with Anfisa and Petrov beyond him. Before their charge, he’d almost replaced Jones with Maurice, worried the alien would grow tired quickly on the long climb. Now, he was glad he hadn’t. From the corner of his eye, he saw Jones’ barrel shift left and right with precision. Every time a shot left the gun, it landed with lethal result.
“It’s impossible,” a kid on his heels screamed, desperate terror in his voice. “We’re not going to make it.” His last word transformed into a grunt and then a pained cry. Without looking back, Shane decided the boy had stood up to turn and retreat, catching a bullet for his panic.
“We are stronger,” Shane yelled. “Stay with me.”
He darted up the steps, hoping those behind him would follow. Jones lagged a little, but he stayed at Shane’s side along with the rest of the front row. Blood pounded his eardrums, his heart intoxicated with adrenaline. He remembered Captain Jones’ lesson. Control what he could—his breathing, where his eyes focused, and how he moved his gun and pulled the trigger—nothing else mattered.
With no cover and less than ten people on the front line, the battle was all about who was the quicker and better shot. The uphill advantage was not enough to save those humans who fought for the Anunnaki. The kids fell before they could take aim, tumbling down the steps.
Shane made it to the first bodies and crouched behind them for cover. He glanced back. The green wall followed them up the stairs. No longer the tight column they started on the steps with, his army had spread out.
“Hurry, damn it,” he shouted, terrified by what he saw.
Whether slowed by fear or exhaustion, the kids who lagged could not outrun the wall. Its green glow flashed brighter when it burned through Shamus’ people, and he could see the gold chains around the thug’s neck swing back and forth as he rushed up the stairs behind Shane’s group.
“Nothing we can do,” Anfisa yelled with that cold and callous tone she was famous for.
He knew she spoke the truth, but it didn’t make it any easier to see the kids dying. Picking off the brainwashed teens who blocked him from the Anunnaki, he climbed around the bodies and made his way higher.
Green walls of fire flashed up the sloped ramps on the sides of the steps, heading for the top of the pyramid.
“We’re trapped,” Kelly said.
“And so are they,” Shane replied, jabbing his gun upward.
He’d hoped the kids above them would see a few of their friends die, and then give up the fight and climb back down into the apartments on either side. No chance of that now. The green walls blocked them in. If they didn’t turn and retreat up into the ship’s city, Shane and his friends would have to kill them to get through.
Anunnaki lies inspired these kids to fight. If they knew the truth, that these aliens killed their parents, they would’ve turned on them as soon as their slave genes were deactivated. They’d be fighting alongside Shane and his friends, not against them. It made him sick to have to shoot them.
Sunlight flashed from atop the ship, and he saw the giant mirrors turning.
“They’ll shine light on us so we are easier to shoot,” Jones said.
“We’ll be blinded,” Steve added.
“We’re halfway there,” Shane yelled with as much encouragement as he could muster.
His leg muscles burned, and the green wall rising up the steps behind them drew closer.
“Come on,” he shouted, trying to inspire himself as much as the others.
The mirrors shifted more, and the one at the top of the steps glowed brighter until he had to squint his eyes. As Steve predicted, he could barely see his targets. A loud hissing filled the air like a thousand eggs hitting a hot frying pan at once. The light grew orange where it shined around hundreds of teenagers trapped on the steps above him. A few feet over Shane’s head, the intense, blinding beam shot down the steps.
He squatted lower, the air temperature increasing until he felt like he was in an oven. A ray of the bright light passed between the kids above him, striking his left forearm. Pain erupted where the light hit him, and he let out a yelp and rolled left. No longer blocked by the teens who fought for the Anunnaki, the full focus of the beam of light blasted one of the teenagers below him. The girl screamed in agony, dropping to her knees and bringing her arms up to block her face. The light made her skin blister, cooking her flesh.
“There’s an opening,” Tracy shouted.
Squinting his eyes, Shane saw where she pointed. The green wall on the side had a small break in it, an expanding exit off the steps and out of the line of fire.
“Go through it,” he shouted at the top of his seared lungs.
He crawled across to the opening, which stopped once it was only a couple of yards wide.
“Go, go!” he yelled, pushing kids over the side of the steps and into the dark courtyard of the apartment below.
Staying just near the gap, he helped as many kids through as he could. His scalp and back felt like it was on fire. He stayed and endured the pain, wanting to save them all. When he could stand the heat no longer, Shane dove through the opening.
He landed on something soft and rolled. Stunned and terrified, he gazed up at the opening in the green wall just as it slammed shut. He could still see through it, watching in horror as the kids behind him dove into the green fire. They tried to escape the burning light cast down by the mirrors only to be incinerated by Greenie. Ash rained on him—the remains of the kids who tried to follow Shane to safety.
The terrifying scene might’ve only lasted another thirty seconds, but it seemed an eternity as Shane lay on his back looking up at the dying kids. They stopped leaping into the green wall, and then the Anunnaki redirected the mirrors. The beam of white-hot light gone, he lay blind in the darkness.
Stunned, he could see and hear nothing for a moment. Then he felt pain. His back, neck, and head hurt like the flesh had been burnt. Next, he heard the moans of dying kids all around him.
The soft surface he’d landed on moved beneath him, and he realized he’d fallen on the kids who had dove off the stairs. They lay in a pile in the dark courtyard of the apartment on the side of the Anunnaki ship.
Groaning at the pain, Shane rolled over and gently climbed away from the steps, trying to get off anyone he was squishing. He found the cold marbled floor of the patio and crawled onto it.
“Shane.” Tracy’s voice cut through the darkness. “Jules.”
“I’m here,” Jules replied, no sound of suffering in her voice.
“Me too,” he said, trying not to let his pain bleed into his tone.
“Can’t see shit,” Steve said, sounding very close.
“Give it a moment.” This was Jones. “Our eyes will adjust.”
Shane’s eyes began to make better use of the cool light of the moon. He stared straight up, searching the dark sky. Because of the moon and the glow radiating from the column of sunlight that struck the city atop the alie
n ship, he could only see a few stars. Regardless, it seemed so peaceful up there. He focused on that peace, trying to ignore the pain coming from his back. The cool floor helped to relieve his discomfort, but he couldn’t lie there for long.
“Shit’s always gotta get crazy.” He groaned, pushing himself up to a sitting position. “Anybody else burnt?”
Kelly sat near him, a blank expression on her face. His heart felt like it dropped in his chest, but then she turned toward him, her eyes reassuring him that her memory hadn’t left her again.
“My arms are blistered,” Steve replied. “Feels like my face and chest are too. That light went right through my clothes.”
“How bad?” Shane asked, expecting his injuries, which he couldn’t see, would be similar.
“Not too bad, I think,” Steve said. “I’ll live, but it hurts like hell.”
“Looks like he was on the beach for a week with no sunscreen,” Laura observed, studying his face.
“I wish,” Steve replied. “The beach part at least.”
“Anybody still have their first aid kits?” Tracy asked, her voice strained as she stood.
She began inspecting their injuries and grouped the kids by the severity of their wounds. She checked Shane last. He had large, watery blisters forming on his neck and the backs of his arms. Tracy sighed when she saw them, and then eased his shirt up. He groaned, but leaned forward so she could. His gaze fell on one of the kids who’d taken a direct hit from the light and escaped the steps right before the injuries killed him. The kid lay motionless near the edge, the puddle of fluids leaking from his cooked body glistening in the moonlight.
“How is it, Doc?” Shane asked. The combination of his pain and the gruesome sight made him want to throw up. “Tell me straight.”
“Looks like shit,” she said quietly. “How do you feel?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he growled, gritting his teeth when he pulled his shirt back down.
He took account of his remaining soldiers. “We’re missing a lot of kids,” he said quietly.
“We barely made it out in time,” Anfisa replied. “The rest were too far down.”
The green wall burned on the side of the steps above them. He stepped around the kids sitting and laying on the patio, assessing their condition. Too many were dead or dying, and closer to the wall alongside the steps, he found more kids with gunshot wounds.
“See to the injured,” he ordered over his shoulder.
“Yeah, that would be all of us,” Petrov replied.
Climbing onto a bench, Shane peered through the green fire onto the staircase. Charred bodies littered the steps all the way down to where the green wall looped around a quarter of the way up from the bottom. It still climbed the steps, incinerating the remains of the kids who he’d hoped to keep alive. He could see some of them moving, attempting to climb away from Greenie.
Above, there were just as many bodies. They’d been closest to the source of the light beam, and none of them had survived. The Anunnaki rewarded the loyalty of the humans with a quicker death than those who defied them.
Kelly climbed next to him. She looked out on the steps, horror and sadness in her wet eyes.
“If Greenie hadn’t opened that wall,” Shane said, “we’d be dead.”
“It needs some of us alive to go up and kill the Anunnaki,” Kelly said dismally.
“But something’s not right,” Shane said, looking down below, where the green wall had incinerated most of Shamus’ gang. “The piles of ashes seem too small.”
“I think it’s because they’re burned so completely,” Kelly replied.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Looks so artificial somehow.”
“Greenie’s not going to give us a chance to rest,” Kelly said, pointing.
A branch of the green wall grew out, darting along the edge of the patio, around the kids who’d escaped, and then turned right and stopped at the ship’s hull. Shane and Kelly climbed down and pulled kids away from the murderous fire.
“We’re trapped,” one of the kids said with a panicked tone.
“No, we aren’t,” Jules replied. “Look.”
Shane turned away from the newly formed green wall, looking at the apartment built into the side of the ship. A dim light came from inside it, seeming to shine from down a long hallway.
“That doesn’t look like firelight,” Steve observed.
“And it isn’t green,” Petrov added.
Shane looked back at the green wall just as it advanced across the patio toward them.
“On your feet,” he ordered. “Into the ship.”
Fear overriding the pain from their injuries, most of the kids jumped up and rushed toward the apartment. He stayed behind until those who could walk were out of the way. The green wall closing on them, he and his friends helped those who couldn’t walk without assistance into the apartment. Shane helped a boy with a bullet in his calf to his feet, and followed the rest in. His hopes that he’d be able to turn back and help the ones they’d left behind died with their agonized screams, the green wall of fire consuming them.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Blocking them in the apartment, Greenie paused its advance. Shane helped the injured boy down the hallway, following the others toward the white light glowing up ahead. They passed out of the apartment and into a corridor. A square panel in the ceiling lit up the kids with bright light.
“Is the power back on?” Shane asked, handing the kid he helped off to one of the other teenagers.
“It doesn’t appear so,” Jones replied tapping on a blank screen on the wall of the corridor.
“It’s just Greenie showing us the way,” Kelly said. “There’s another light down the hall.”
Shane made his way through the survivors to stand next to Kelly. She gazed down the straight corridor into the darkness. With his back to the light, he saw the dim glow holding her attention.
“Looks like we have twenty-eight of the new kids left, Jones and four of his clones, and us and the Russians,” Tracy reported.
“What’s this?” Laura asked.
They turned their attention to the wall she stared at. A small red symbol blinked on a cigar-shaped device mounted in a recessed pocket in the wall.
“Looks like one of Dr. Blain’s healing pens,” Tracy exclaimed.
“And it has power,” Jones added, retrieving the device.
The captain turned to the kid who Shane had helped off the patio. Jones tore open the kid’s pant leg and aimed the device at the hole in the back of his calf. Familiar blue light came from it, and the flesh around the wound began to move. The bullet wiggled back out of the hole and made a ting when it hit the floor. Within a minute, the wound was closed and the boy regained full use of the leg.
Rushing to each of the wounded, Jones healed them. No one talked, and the fear the device might suddenly stop working before it got to everyone made Shane hold his breath. Feeling guilty about those they’d left behind to die, he didn’t let the captain treat him until everyone else was healed. When it was finally his turn, he sighed with relief as the blue light passed over his skin, erasing the burns and eliminating his pain.
“Greenie is coming,” Anfisa announced right after Jones was done with Shane. She stood on the other end of the group, guarding the hall into the apartment they’d come through.
“It’s not going to stop,” Shane said.
“Why does it not burn the ship?” Petrov asked. “It has turned everything it touches to ash.”
“Because it’s corralling us,” Jules answered.
“It’s like the too-perfect piles of ash it left behind outside,” Shane said. “Something’s weird about it.”
“Lots weird about it,” Steve added.
“It wants us to move, now,” Kelly said, staring at the green fire.
Her tone was sad, like her spirit was nearly broken. But he knew the lioness in her would never give up. She’d spend her last breath trying to save her sister. And he’d
spend his last trying to save her. He prayed that it would be enough to keep them alive.
The green wall came too close to allow them more time to contemplate it. Shane and Kelly led the way down the corridor, leaving the island of artificial light.
“Keep together and keep your barrels up,” Shane ordered over his shoulder. “I don’t want anyone getting shot by accident.”
Guns clacked as they were shifted in their hands. The light they’d just been under went out.
Ahead, the dim glow of another white light invited them. Behind, the moving wall of fire cast its eerie green glow, threating to devour them. Neither gave enough light to see the faces of any of the kids. He only knew Kelly was still next to him when their shoulders brushed.
No one spoke, but the darkness was charged with anxious dread. Shane learned enough about the Anunnaki ship he’d help destroy to carry out that mission in Cairo, but ninety percent of the recruit ship was a mystery to him. Having the lights turned out made him feel even more lost. They were at the mercy of Greenie.
Coming closer to the light, he realized it shone from a corridor that turned off the one they walked in. He paused and looked down it, then back over the heads of the kids following him. He could see the green glow, steadily approaching.
“It wants us to go deeper into the ship,” Jones said, pushing around the others to get to the front.
Shane had forgotten that Jones had likely been on these ships before he rebelled.
“Why?” Shane asked.
“Probably guiding us to the internal stairwells,” the captain replied. “I’ve never actually seen one, but I’ve heard the ships have them for emergency use.”
Jones didn’t seem to know as much as Shane hoped. Glancing down the corridor, he saw the green light growing brighter.
“We can’t stay here,” he said, heading into the passageway and under the white light.
Kelly trotted next to him, a determined look on her face. Her brow furrowed with concern, he guessed for her sister. But there was also dread in her expression.
