by B. T. Wright
For now.
Jake only had a matter of seconds and he knew it. The only instruction he’d given Amy was to make her communication with them as short as she could.
His time to make this happen was right now.
34
As the hundreds of aliens surrounding all sides of the diner looked up to the heavens to receive Amy’s communication, Jake sprinted through the last two rows of them like a running back blasting into the end zone. He raised his Beretta and shot out the large panel window on the right side of the building and jumped through the falling glass as Jess’s scream met his ears. She stood, startled, then glanced to her left, behind a wall that blocked Jake’s view of what she was looking at. When something walked around the corner, Jake skidded to a stop on the slick tile floor.
The same alien that had dragged Jess into the woods outside the abandoned house earlier reached out and grabbed her by the throat as it looked right into Jake’s eyes. There were a lot of things that Jake didn’t understand in that moment, not the least of which was how that one particular alien was able to keep from being frozen by Amy’s communication. But it wasn’t time to ponder the new world’s problems, and the alien holding Jess by the neck had made a terrible mistake by not already killing her.
Now it was going to die.
The alien opened its mouth, but before it could make a single sound, Jake squeezed the trigger twice and half of its head disappeared in a bloody mist. Jake sprang forward, and just as he reached Jess he heard consecutive bangs of bullets outside the diner. When he hooked Jess’s arm, he looked toward the front entrance and could see that the aliens were no longer looking skyward––they were looking at him. The bullets were from Bryan’s AR-15, and he was taking out a line of aliens just outside the entrance in an attempt to clear a path.
Jake raised his gun once again as he pulled Jess along behind him. He shot seven times through the glass door at anything he could hit. He slid to a stop, ejected the empty magazine, and replaced it with a fresh one, then immediately fired in front of him as several more aliens moved toward the entrance.
“Keep your hands on my shoulders and hold on tight. Don’t let go!” Jake shouted.
When he felt Jess’s hands on him, he rushed through the door where the glass used to be as he fired at any head he could find. Bryan was still trying to make a hole for them, but he couldn’t fire directly in Jake’s path for fear of shooting Jake. That was going to be up to Jake, and he continued firing straight ahead as the wave of aliens collapsed around him. He was almost at the last of them when he felt Jess’s hands rip from his shoulders.
“Jake!”
Jake kicked the alien woman that was clawing at him on his left, turned, saw a large man pulling Jess backward, and let out a breath as he raised his gun and pulled the trigger. The alien man’s forehead exploded, and two more aliens grabbed at Jess from the left. Jake shot twice more and hit the first one, but the slide locked back on his Beretta. His gun was empty.
Jess rushed forward, narrowly escaping two aliens that had moved in from the left and the right. Jake shucked one alien man’s grip on his arm, push-kicked another on his right, and the two aliens that were about to grab Jess once again both dropped to the ground as Bryan rained a string of bullets their way. Jess reached out for Jake, and he punched the alien man on her right so hard that he thought his hand had broken. Jess made it to him, but when they turned to run, several more aliens had moved in onto the main road to block their path to the gas station.
What made things worse was that Jake had no ammo. And judging by the silence from the gas station, Bryan was also empty.
“Run, Jake!” he heard Bryan shout. “Run!”
Then he heard shots being fired from a pistol. Bryan must have switched to his side arm. But that wasn’t going to be enough. The screeches and moans of angry aliens on all sides filled the otherwise quiet night. There was nowhere to run, and nothing to kill these things with. Jake saw an alien woman grab Jess just as he felt two hands around his left arm. The group of aliens in the street started to move forward. They were trapped. Jake had come close, but in the end, he’d failed to save Jess.
“Jake! No!” Bryan cried out.
The aliens in front of him were ready to attack.
Then in an instant, all five of them were gone. The front end of a pickup truck slammed through all of them, knocking them right, left, up, and down. The crunch of bones and cracking of infected skulls woke Jake from his near-death trance, and he threw his left elbow back and up into the jaw of the alien that had a hold on his arm. Bryan had jumped up into the back of the pickup truck and fired twice, dropping the alien that’d had a hold on Jess. Jake grabbed Jess’s arm and slung her forward toward the truck. He push-kicked an alien man away on his left, put his head down, and bull-rushed an alien woman attacking on his right, then took three long strides and a jump. He tumbled over the side of the truck and landed hard on the fiberglass bed below.
The truck’s engine screamed and the tires smoked beneath them. As the truck moved forward, an alien man jumped into the truck bed on top of Jake. Without stopping its momentum, the alien gnashed his teeth together and came forward. Jake was just able to get a defensive forearm under its chin, stopping it from biting his face. Before Jake could mount any offense, the alien man was lifted off of him. Jake looked back and watched as Bryan almost effortlessly tossed it over the side of the truck. When he sat up, the diner, and the horde of aliens in front of it were getting farther and farther away.
Jake turned around and got up to his knees. Before he could thank Bryan for saving his ass, Jess threw her arms around him and squeezed him like he’d never felt before. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. Emotion swelled inside of him as he felt her sobbing against him. He hadn’t been sure that he would ever have her in his arms again, and now that he did, he didn’t ever want to let go. The love he felt for her began to overwhelm him. The thought of her not being in his life––no matter how long or short the rest of it might be––nearly broke him.
Jess pulled back and just looked at Jake. He placed his hand on her jaw and wiped the tears streaming from her eyes with his thumb.
“I thought I was never going to see you again,” Jess shouted over the truck’s loud engine and the howling wind. “I didn’t think you would come back for me.”
Those words broke Jake’s heart. He knew exactly why she felt that way. And it was all his fault. He didn’t have any words for her, he just pulled her back in and held her. He’d said enough that day. Any words now would be meaningless. Whatever Jess felt like doing about their relationship thereafter was up to her, but right now, he was going to make sure she felt his love. Other than his brother and nephews, her love was the only thing he had left.
35
Emily looked around the room. The right wall was all glass, and she saw no movement in the hallway. She saw no movement because it was somewhere around five in the morning. The hall would be bustling soon enough, but for now it was quiet. So was the lab. The two aliens breathing, the occasional beep of their monitors, and the slight snore of Elaine with her head resting on her arm at the desk next to Emily were the only sounds.
Emily’s eyes were heavy, but her mind racing through the thoughts of what might be when the two infected humans lying on gurneys in front of her woke up. It was too important. It had been a few hours now since Elaine and Emily had given Karen and John Two double doses of Beritrix, with a carfentanil chaser. Emily had studied carfentanil and its effects on the elephants that were tranquilized by it, and the humans who had actually been using it as a recreational drug. The study she had read consisted of a story showing the doses used by humans and how it affected them. That’s how she had decided on just how much to administer with the Beritrix to completely shut down the system without shutting it down for good by killing them.
So far, Karen’s, and John Two’s vitals were holding up, but they were completely out of it. Which was exactly the goal. Put t
he mind to sleep, the human, and the alien, while the Beritrix supercharged their immune systems. Hopefully, and Emily did literally cross her fingers, it would be enough to kick the alien out of their systems entirely. If that was even a possibility, of course. She had a million questions about what would happen to the alien if it did get bounced out of its host. Did it turn to particles in the air until it found a new host? Did the supercharging of the human immune system somehow kill it like the immune system would kill a virus, or a cold?
Emily stood from her chair and walked over to Karen like she had done at least a hundred other times over the last couple of hours. She looked peaceful. Her eyes were closed, which helped. No matter how sedated the infected were, with their ugly black eyes open, they never looked at peace. Only like death itself. Which was exactly what these black-eyed monsters had been to an estimated ninety-eight percent of the population.
Over the course of the week, Emily had often wondered why they came to earth. Even more so, why they came the way they did. What was their goal? Was it like in the movies, and their planet was dying so they were looking for a new one? Then, like hundreds of times before, she thought about Amy. Emily had obviously never met her, but Jake had said she seemed to be a normal teenager. But what was she really? If she could talk to the aliens, and they thought of her as their only weakness, wasn’t she really one of them? And if so, how long had the alien been inside her? Emily knew this was a rather large leap in logic, but logic seemed out the window at that point.
A knock at the door derailed Emily’s train of thought. She looked up and was surprised to see the president standing there. He gave a warm smile and waved for her to come outside. She took one last look at Karen, then moved toward the door and opened it.
“Mr. President, do you need something?”
Though it was early, he looked refreshed. More so than Emily had seen in days. His gray hair was neatly combed to the side, and the lines on his face didn’t seem as deep.
“I just wanted to check in and see how things are going before everything gets busy today. Any news?”
Emily explained to him what had happened overnight. How Karen had come back but then gone back under the alien trance.
“This is amazing news, Emily. Why didn’t someone wake me?”
“It was early and we didn’t want to create any false alarms.”
“So you’ve done it? You’ve found a way to remove the aliens?”
Emily looked back over her shoulder at the aliens on the table. The ones that looked so human at the moment.
“I—It’s—I can’t say that yet. But it’s definitely promising.”
“Listen, I want to be the first to know when something happens. Contact me directly. There is nothing more important here in this facility than the work you and Dr. Kendall are doing.”
Emily nodded. “I will. And thank you for believing in me this week. It has made the ups and downs more tolerable.”
The president smiled. “Have you heard from your soldier friend?”
Emily felt her bright face falter. That was the other thing that had so easily kept her awake without any sleep. Jake. It had been far too long since he’d checked in. He was supposed to use the small generator he had with him on the boat to power the radio and check in before he had to leave it. But she had heard nothing.
“No. I haven’t gotten any word from the radio room that he has checked in.”
Emily could tell that the president was trying not to show his worry, but she could see it in his eyes. Emily knew the president thought their work in the lab was important, but she was also aware that getting Amy to Mount Weather safely was an equal priority. It was killing her that they hadn’t been able to get a helicopter out to try and find Jake. She knew how much they would need help out there. But she couldn’t help but think there was no way Jake would be able to survive with all of the aliens between him and Mount Weather.
“Well, that is actually one of the reasons I came down to see you.” The president smiled.
Emily’s heart raced. “He checked in?”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that.”
Emily’s racing heart sank.
“What I mean is we found a pilot that has a helicopter. A man named Bill Burd radioed in a few hours ago. He’s been holed up in a hangar at the Capital City Airport just outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He said there are no infected—aliens—that he can see at the airport. Says he has a helicopter fueled up and ready to go, he just hasn’t been able to find anyone on the radio until now to have a destination. When they told him about the situation with Jake, he jumped at the chance to help. Said he’d been waiting for an opportunity to fight back. The aliens killed his entire family.”
“So he’s going to try and find Jake?”
“He has been trying. He’s already in the air. But we have no idea where Jake is. All we know is that he should be in Virginia by now, but we don’t know what his route might be. Bill was told to scour a few of the main highways. If he doesn’t find Jake before the sun comes up, it’s going to be much harder to spot him. Right now, headlights would shine like a beacon with no other lights in working order. I was just hoping we missed something, which is why I asked if you’ve talked to him.”
“I haven’t. God I hope this man can find him.”
“We all do.”
The president noticed some commotion through the window to the lab. His eyes widened, and he pointed over Emily’s shoulder. “She supposed to be awake?”
Emily turned around, expecting to see that it was Elaine that he was pointing to, but it wasn’t. It was Karen. And her head was turned toward Emily and the president. And she was smiling.
36
Jake, Jess, Bryan, and TW had been driving the backroads for about an hour. It wouldn’t be long before the sun said hello to the morning, and Jake didn’t know if there was anything he’d ever wanted to see more. Enough had happened since the sun went down to make him pray there was never another sunset again. And Jake wasn’t much of a praying man.
They hadn’t seen any signs of life––human, alien, or otherwise––since they pulled away from the diner. The roads wound up and down the Virginia mountains, and there was rarely a straight stretch to take a break from total concentration. Bryan had relieved TW a while ago, and Jess was fast asleep, her head in Jake’s lap. The entire ride he had done his best not to worry about Amy, Tyler, and Mark. There was nothing he could do about it at the moment, so he just had to let those thoughts die. Though he had pretty much been able to do just that, it didn’t really matter, because those thoughts were quickly replaced with worry about his brother Colt and his two sons.
The last thing he’d heard from Colt, was that everything was okay. He said he and the boys should be at the Mount Weather facility by the time Jake and company got there. But though it hadn’t been all that long since they spoke, Jake knew just how much could happen in a day and a half. The things they’d overcome since leaving the university were enough to fill a lifetime of tragedy. So the concern for his brother held fast to his conscience. All he could do was hope he would see the three of them soon.
Jake gently rubbed Jess’s hair. Even though they’d been through hell and back, he couldn’t help but feel lucky. He imagined if Vegas had odds on whether or not they would be able to get Jess away from the aliens, they would have been astronomically long. But they’d managed it. A true team effort. Jake wouldn’t have made it without Bryan, and Bryan wouldn’t have made it without TW. He was grateful they had come along. They could have easily waited back in Cincinnati and hoped for the best. Without them, Jake new that all of them would be dead. Including Amy—the apparent chosen one.
The radio squawked from where it sat on the console and it made everyone in the car jump. It even woke Jess from her nap.
“Jesus H,” TW said.
Jake realized that the only reason the radio would sound off was if Tyler was close. A bad feeling washed over Jake as he reached
for the radio and pushed the button.
Beep.
“Tyler? It’s Jake. Everything okay?”
Beep.
“Jake!” Tyler’s voice sounded like it did a few days ago in Lexington when he’d gone out to the car and gotten trapped by the infected. Sheer panic. Ginger was barking like mad in the background. “I’ve been radioing for five minutes! It’s Amy, she’s dead! I think she’s dead!”
Beep.
Everyone in the car shifted to look at Jake, and they all had the same look of panic on their faces. Jake pressed the button.
Beep.
“Tyler, I need you to calm down. Is Amy okay or not?”
Beep.
“Didn’t you hear me? She’s not breathing! There’s blood everywhere!”
Beep.
“Tyler!” Jake felt the panic creeping up on him as well. He swallowed hard and tried to focus.
Beep.
“Tell me what’s happening. What do you see?”
Beep.
“Mark knows CPR and he’s trying to revive her, but I don’t think it’s going to matter. They’re coming. Lots of them. There’s nowhere to hide!”
Jake took a breath and let what Tyler was saying sink in. The thought that flashed in his mind was that if Amy was struggling, she must have tried to communicate with the aliens again. And the only reason she would do that would be to save herself, Tyler, and Mark from them. And that made sense if Tyler was saying they’re coming.
Beep.
“Jake! Are you still there? I’m telling you that we ran into a wall of them. We turned around to come back your way, but Amy was panicking and she opened the back door. I had to pull over and I ran us into a ditch!”
