by B. T. Wright
Above him he watched an endless sea of glittering stars, sandwiched in between what looked to be the tops of trees. He opened and closed his eyes several times in an effort to clear the cobwebs.
“Jake? Jake, can you hear me?”
He recognized Tyler’s voice immediately and started to sit up. He felt a hand on his chest.
“Easy,” Bryan said. Jake could just see the top of his bald head come into view above him. “You have a nasty gash on your forehead. Don’t try to do too much.”
But all Jake could think about was Jess and where she could be. He sat up and put his back against something hard. When he looked forward, he saw the bed of the pickup truck in front of him, and dust flying in the red of the taillights just beyond the tailgate. Ginger was lying at his feet, and as soon as she saw Jake open his eyes, she sprang forward and began to lick at his face.
“She’s the one who found you in the woods,” Tyler said.
Jake was happy to see the dog, but his mind wouldn’t let him embrace her. He gently pushed her to the side. “Where’s Jess?”
Tyler hung his head. A surge of anger rushed through Jake like he’d never felt before. He reached forward, took Tyler’s shirt in his hands, and shook him. “You left her? You left Jess with those . . . things?”
Tyler didn’t make eye contact.
“Answer me! She was supposed to be your friend!”
“She’s gone, okay, Jake?” Tyler’s eyes were wet with tears. “She’s gone! They took her! By the time we followed the dog to you, she was nowhere around!”
Jake shoved Tyler away, and he landed hard on the bed of the truck. Then he turned to Bryan. “Why didn’t you help me stop them? How could you just let them take her!”
Bryan shook his head. “If there was anything I could have done, I would have done it. You saw the way they swarmed her.”
“Stop the truck!” Jake turned and pounded on the window of the back of the cab. “Stop the fucking truck!”
TW applied the brakes, and the truck slid on the dirt-covered road. Ginger whimpered when she was tossed sideways, and Jake was over the side before it came to a full stop. As soon as his feet hit the ground, his head swam and he nearly fell over. Bryan reached over the side of the truck and caught him under the left arm to help hold him up. Jake ripped his arm away and pulled the passenger door open.
“Turn the truck around right now. We’re going back for Jess.”
Mark was in the passenger seat, and Jake watched as TW leaned around him from behind the wheel.
“Everything all right back there?” TW said.
“Is everything all right?” Jake’s voice went up an octave. His blood was boiling. “All of you leave Jess to die and you ask me if everything is all right?”
“Bryan didn’t tell you?” Mark said.
Before Jake could inquire, Bryan hopped over the side of the truck and sidled up to Jake. “I haven’t had a chance. He just woke up, he was incensed, and understandably so.”
“What’s going on? How long was I out?”
“‘Bout a half hour,” Bryan said. “Let’s get back in the truck and I’ll explain.”
“Okay, but only if we are turning around to get Jess.”
“Jake, we’re not turning around, but I do need your help to come up with a plan. Get in the truck so we can keep moving while we talk about it.”
“I’m not going anywhere but back to Jess. TW, turn the truck around right now or I’ll yank you out of the truck and drive myself.”
“Damn it, Bryan, just tell him so we can get moving,” TW said.
Bryan let out a sigh. The crickets serenaded from the trees and a warm breeze pushed through the quiet night.
“Well someone better say something. And it better be good.”
Jake was breathing heavy. The chance to save Jess had been taken away from him by getting knocked unconscious, then dragged away from her, and wasn’t sitting well.
“Look . . .” Bryan walked over beside Mark and nodded toward the back seat. “Amy is the reason we aren’t still back there looking for Jess.”
“What? I—I don’t understand. You mean to keep her safe?”
“No. I mean because the aliens spoke to her.”
29
If Jake had been angry before, hearing that everyone had let Amy communicate with the aliens and they left Jess behind, now he was seeing red.
“You let her show all the aliens where we are? And you left Jess to die?” Jake walked away from the truck, kicked a cloud of dust into the air, then returned.
“Jake, they already knew where she was. They—”
“Bullshit!” Jake interrupted. He stalked over to Bryan, grabbed him by the shirt, and slammed his back against the truck. Bryan pushed him away, but Jake came right back at him.
TW came around the front of the truck and stepped in between them. “Cool off, Jake! Let him talk. We have got to get moving!”
“Cool off? Am I the only one using my head?” Jake looked back and forth between Bryan and TW. “If they knew where Amy was, they wouldn’t have worried around with Jess. There were enough of them back there to overrun us with ease. The only reason they didn’t is because they need to know where Amy is! Apparently they were smart enough to know if they killed us all, we wouldn’t be able to tell them. They obviously took Jess to torture it out of her or something.”
“That’s what we are trying to tell you, Jake. And you aren’t entirely wrong,” Bryan said. “I wasn’t there, I was busy running after you. But TW was.” Bryan shifted focus to TW. “Go on, you tell him. Then we have to go.”
Jake had nothing left to say, so he let TW speak.
“When Bryan went running after you and the dog, Amy sat up in the back seat and told me they were trying to get inside her head again.”
“And you didn’t stop her?”
TW paused for a moment. “Well, like you, I wanted to save Jess. Hell, save all of us. But I wasn’t gonna let her until she told me it felt different than the last time.”
“Different?” Jake’s head was still swimming. “How?”
“She said the other times they were trying to get in her head to see where she was, it felt like the aliens were forcing it. Threatening, I think that was the word she used.”
“And this time?”
“She just said it felt friendlier.”
“And you believe that the aliens that had descended upon earth by overtaking our human bodies and savagely ripping our friends and families apart, that what, they all of a sudden wanted to play nice?”
“Watch yourself, Jake. You weren’t there. She said she thought she could keep them from knowing her location. Said she was going to make believe she was back in her bedroom in Kentucky. Amy was going to do it whether I let her or not. She thought it could help Jess, and by God I think she was right.”
Bryan cleared his throat. “TW, get to it. We need to leave here now.”
“Right, anyway . . . Amy let them in—scary as hell to watch by the way—and she did her whole eyes-roll-back-in-her-head thing. Just about a minute later she came to. She said at first they were just trying to locate her. Just like you were worried about, Jake. But she said she just pictured her bedroom while they probed her. Amy said she could feel them getting frustrated because they knew she wasn’t all the way back in Lexington. So they told her they would exchange Jess for Amy if that’s what it took. Told her it was the only way Jess was going to live. Well, Amy’s pretty fond of your lady, I guess, so she told them she would do it.”
“What?” Jake was at a loss. “You mean she agreed?”
“Yeah, that’s why we are in such a hurry. We have to be in Woodstock, Virginia before dawn.”
“How the hell do you know that, TW?”
“Well, before Amy fell asleep in the back seat, she told us it was like they dropped a pin on the location. Like how you would on an iPhone. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I have a map from our planning back in Cincinnati. I opened it and ask
ed if she could show me, and she didn’t hesitate. Pointed right at Woodstock. Said they would have ‘the woman’ there by dawn. If Amy wasn’t handed over by then, they would kill her.”
Jake didn’t have time to ask any more questions about what they said or why they let Amy talk to the aliens again. His mind was only on the fact that if there was a chance—though he felt there was no way they would actually keep Jess alive—they had to act on it. His mind was already spinning on a plan. He pulled out his phone; the time read 1:23am.
“Where are we right now?”
“Almost to Highway 81.” TW took the map from his back pocket, unfolded it, and pointed. “We have to get to here.” He moved his finger north on the map a couple inches. “That’s Woodstock.”
“How far do you think that is?” Jake said.
“No clogged roads? Hour and a half. But the road may be impassable by car just like I-64 was. That’s why we’re in a hurry, son. We’re just trying to get to your girl.”
Jake shook his head as he took a deep breath.
TW continued, “So, if we make it to Woodstock before dawn, what are we going to do? We can’t hand Amy over, but I know you want Jess back.”
“Let me worry about that. Let’s get out of here.”
Jake climbed back inside the bed of the truck. The gears in his mind were turning on how to make something happen. And though it was far too premature, a trickle of hope leaked into his system. TW hit the gas, and the truck started down the road. Ginger nuzzled up next to Jake, and as he rubbed her head, he began to plot a way to save both Jess and Amy. No matter how impossible that prospect seemed.
30
Emily had been staring at the same spot on the ceiling for more than an hour. She looked over at the clock—1:30 in the morning. She should have been exhausted, but her mind was relentless. Thoughts of Jake and if he were alive swirled, and Karen’s words about a house being surrounded rattling in her brain. She was also constantly filing through her mind for any clue as to what might make the Beritrix stick in Karen’s system. All these things were working to keep her wide awake.
After Karen briefly came back to being herself, her eyes had returned to complete black and she went back to her blank, sedated stare. John Two had yet to become lucid. Emily’s theory was that it was because he was a man, and maybe more Beritrix was needed to bring him around. Either way, for the moment, pushing aside the alien inside of them had been only temporary, or it hadn’t happened at all. After considering it for hours, she could only come to the conclusion that the Propofol given to sedate them wasn’t strong enough. Maybe something more potent that completely shut off their systems would be more effective in letting the human in them fight through.
It made sense to Emily that if they shut off the brain while the Beritrix flooded the system, it could help keep the alien from fighting for the host’s consciousness. That was what they would need to try next, and the idea was so profound that Emily was up and out of her bed. The days of waiting until morning to try something new were gone. Every second meant far more than it used to. And every minute was a lifetime in the fight for saving the world.
Emily finished tying her shoes and throwing a t-shirt over her head and picked up the receiver on the phone by her bed. A directory of numbers on a laminated sheet of paper had been placed in her room at some point during the day. She flipped on the lamp and ran her finger down the list until she found Elaine. She hesitated for a moment before pressing the last number that would dial the doctor’s room. Elaine had been through a major trauma earlier and she probably really needed her rest. A second later, Emily pressed the button. If Elaine wasn’t up to it at this hour, Emily would certainly understand, but she had to at least give her the respect of asking before she went looking for answers.
“You can’t sleep either?” Elaine answered Emily’s call.
Emily breathed a sigh of relief. She was happier than she thought she’d be to bounce her ideas off of someone. “Not even for a second.”
“You must have something, otherwise you wouldn’t have called at this hour.”
“I do—well, I have an idea that is—Are you sure you’re up for it?”
“Well, I do have to be up early for yoga . . . Of course I’m up for it. There’s nothing else to do under this mountain. Might as well try to save the world. What are you thinking?”
Emily told Elaine about her idea for upping the dose of Beritrix and coupling it with a much stronger anesthesia. Twenty-five minutes later, Emily, Elaine, Shelley, and two men from security were sitting in the meeting room.
“You want to do what now?” Derek, a skinny man with a buzzed haircut said to her. He was holding the cup of coffee as if it were a lifeline.
“Before all of this happened, before the . . . invasion”––it still felt strange to talk about an invasion with a straight face––“did you have someone that kept the wildlife at bay?”
“Yeah, Roger here.” Derek looked over at the burly man beside him.
The man had a full but well maintained dark-brown beard. His shoulders were stout, but his hat was so low Emily could barely see his eyes.
“Why do you ask? No offense, but it seems like the days of worrying about mountain lions are long gone.”
Emily didn’t acknowledge Derek’s statement. Instead, she looked at Roger. “Did you kill the animals that got too close to the facility, or tranquilize them?”
“Ma’am?” Roger’s deep voice grumbled.
“Just—I need a tranquilizer. Do we have any here in the facility?” Emily was tired, so she was shorter with the men than she normally would’ve been.
“Sure, we have some carfentanil. Strong stuff though, I don’t recommend it.”
Elaine said. “Could you bring some down to the lab please?”
“What?” Derek said. “I have to get approval. You can’t just be taking drugs from the supply room.”
“That is precisely what we can do. I am giving you that approval.”
“But I don’t report t—”
“How much do you want?” Roger interrupted.
“Just bring what you’ve got.”
“You’re the one’s experimenting on the aliens, right?” Roger said.
“That’s right,” Emily said.
“Anything we can do to help. I think you should just kill ‘em both, but what do I know.”
“You might know what it takes to cure them soon if you get us what we are asking for.”
“You actually think you can bring people back?”
Emily stood and shook her head. “No, Roger, I don’t think I can bring people back . . . I know I can.”
31
It had taken almost two hours to get near Woodstock. Jake was still having a hard time believing that Jess had been taken. And an even harder time wrapping his mind around the fact that the aliens actually had evolved enough to demand a trade for Amy. Highway 81 was pretty jammed up, but not nearly as bad as I-64 had been. As soon as they made it off the backroads, Jake found an SUV that he, Tyler, Bryan, and Ginger got into. TW was right in front of them in the pickup with Mark and Amy—who was still asleep in the back. Jake tried to keep his focus on what he was going to do when they got to Woodstock, where the aliens were supposedly going to be waiting with Jess, but he was constantly interrupted by worry of how she was doing. It was terrible that she had been taken; even worse for Jake was that their last conversation had been a fight. It just wasn’t sitting well with him, but he had to let it go. He needed a hundred percent of his focus to be on how to get everyone out of their situation alive.
“You know what you want to do yet?” Bryan asked from behind the wheel.
Tyler was asleep with Ginger in the back. The dog had been a much-needed comfort since leaving the house.
Jake rubbed his two-day-old stubble as he stared at the back of TW’s pickup truck their headlights were shining on. “I realize they have evolved, but our only real weapon against them is to outsmart them. There are way too many
of them just to smash in and try an extraction. We need the element of surprise.”
“Got any ideas?”
Jake picked up the map in his lap. “Maybe.” He traced one of the lines of a side road that went around Woodstock with his finger. “Problem is, we have no idea where they’ll be.”
“I’m assuming they’re gonna block off the highway, wouldn’t you?”
“You’d think so. Otherwise we’d never be able to find them.”
Jake hated the entire scenario. Apart from the obvious––his girlfriend being held captive by monsters–– everything else was wrong. He didn’t know the area, he had no idea how many infected there would be, and it was impossible to negotiate with them in any way. They were going in blind, and that was certainly not something a Delta operator was used to. He’d been in a lot of tough spots over the years, but nothing like this. Especially with the stakes being so personal.
Jake’s radio chirped. He reached down and unclipped it from his bag, and as he brought it up, TW’s voice came through the speaker. “Jake, we need to pull over for a minute.”
“Copy.”
The taillights on the pickup lit up in front of them, and TW pulled it over to the shoulder.
“This can’t be good,” Bryan said as he opened the door of the SUV.
Jake got out and walked up to the truck. TW came around, and Mark helped Amy out of the back seat. Her face looked worried. Everyone glowed red in the taillights.
“Everything okay?” Jake said.
TW walked up. “Amy needs to talk to you.”
“Amy, you okay?”
She looked up at Jake, hesitant. “They—they are trying to communicate with me again.”
For a moment Jake let her statement permeate his thoughts. The humid summer air was heavy around them. Jake wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead on the sleeve of his t-shirt. He was trying to weigh the importance of the aliens being able to see their location if Amy let them make contact. If they were already waiting in Woodstock for some sort of exchange for Amy, if they were able to see Amy’s current location, was that actually a good thing? If they were going to attempt to find a back way in, maybe it was good that the aliens saw Amy on the main road. Or, maybe they are already watching and none of it really mattered. Either way, Jake thought it would probably be best to have more information, regardless of the consequences.
