by Joshua James
Ada sighed. “Okay, I’ll be right in.” She stayed outside long enough to see the first dirt being tossed on the dead girl’s body; then with a groan, she stood up and headed inside.
Seeing Bishop, awkwardly standing there in the middle of these dead strangers’ home, Ada was reminded of Francesca. She too was a teenager, or had been. At least the little girl they’d found here had gotten a burial. Francesca’s body was still floating in a few inches of raw sewage water under the streets, rotting and bloated.
Bishop took off the scarf that covered his face. Another survivor gave him a glass of water, which he immediately downed.
“So what do you have for me, Bishop?” asked Ada.
“A couple of things. First, I come bearing gifts.” With a smile, Bishop took off his backpack and reached inside. Out of it he produced a strange-looking little device. He offered it to Ada. “For your knee.”
“Thank you. What is it?” Ada examined the little contraption Bishop had just given her.
“A brace, so you can move quicker. You seem like you’ve been a bit down, not able to go out there yourself.”
“How do I…?”
“Here, let me.” Bishop took the knee brace back from Ada, and flipped it around. “Gimme your leg.”
Ada liked Bishop. The kid lived to look tough, even when he was scared out of his mind. The fact that he was closer to losing his last baby tooth than to Ada’s age didn’t seem to affect his crush on her, either.
Ada put her leg up, and Bishop slipped the brace over her boot, like fitting Cinderella’s slipper. She grabbed the top and pulled the rest of it up to her knee. Unlike the fictional princess’ missing shoe, the ankle and knee brace quickly tightened hard on her injured limb. It hurt. A lot. She stifled a cry, and settled for a grunt.
Once the pain subsided, Ada’s new brace actually did its job. The first step she took on it was steady and didn’t hurt. She was back to being mobile again. And it was just in time, because Bishop had more news.
“I found it, Ada,” he said, keeping his voice low. He was clearly excited.
Ada furrowed her brow. “It?”
“You were right,” he said. “It’s there. The assimilation center.”
Ada felt like she’d been punched in the gut. “Where?”
“Exactly where you said it would be. In the wreckage of the Atlas.”
“Bishop!” Ada snapped as she leaned forward. “What have I told you about going there?”
“I was trying to give a couple bastards the slip,” he said defensively, “and I ended up there. What’s wrong with that?”
Ada didn’t believe that for a second, and she didn’t attempt to hide it. “Dammit, Bishop, don’t take stupid risks.”
“Do you want to know what I saw or not?” he asked in a huff.
“I want you to be smart.”
Bishop replied as if she’d asked for details. “They got, shit, must’ve been at least a couple hundred people all lined up outside there.”
“A line?” Ada said, feeling sick to her stomach. She had no doubt, given her knowledge of the Shapeless and what she’d seen at the sanctuary station, that they were going to do the same here: replace the population with alien versions of themselves.
“I couldn’t get around to the other side to see if anyone came out,” Bishop said. Ada had been careful to explain little of what she thought happened to those who were replicated. “But whatever’s going on there…I get some bad vibes, man. Real bad vibes. Know what I mean?”
Bishop looked tired and small. Like a kid, for once. He’d been out for hours, at least nine or ten.
“I do,” Ada said. She patted him on the shoulder. At her touch, the life sparked back into his eyes. Hormones were an amazing thing. “Come with me. We’re gonna get you some food, and you can show me on the map where this place is.”
Ada was picky about who she took out with her on excursions from whatever spot they called HQ at any given moment. If her experiences on the Atlas, Sanctuary Station-33, and Vassar-1 had taught her anything, it was that some people were cut out for the fighting and running. Others weren’t, and those that weren’t often ended up very dead.
So Ada took with her the two hooded, poncho-wearing men. Their names were Fei and Walter. Both had been soldiers before Vassar-1 fell. Neither had much of a personality, which was fine by Ada. They could fight. That was what mattered.
She also brought Bishop along. He knew the city better than any of them. He hadn’t had a HUD to navigate it when he was younger. On Earth, that would be unheard of—even the poorest people in the world had a HUD provided at birth—but as she was learning, Vassar-1 was a different world, a world of sharp contrasts. Bishop might know most of the streets around them like the back of his hand, but the more luxurious or high-income areas, like the Hill and the Government District, might as well be on another planet for him.
Lastly, Ada took with her an ex-cop named Darlene Monatua. Darlene looked more like a librarian than a cop, but she had a good head and a calm temperament.
Ada’s group, dressed in ponchos to blend in with the rubble and ruin, moved silently through alleyways and side streets, crossing through buildings whenever they could. They were heading towards the wreckage of the Atlas.
Periodically, Ada would check her weapons. She had her rifle to fight the human cultists who were still going through the city, hunting for survivors, chief among them the zealots/heralds, who seemed especially interested in their dogged pursuit of her. Secondly she’d check the weapon slung over the opposite shoulder, an industrial strength flamethrower she’d salvaged from a docked ship. Both were heavy and slowed her down, but she didn’t dare go out unprotected.
“Okay, stop here,” said Bishop. The group knelt in an alleyway across the street from a public park. They saw the top sections of the downed Atlas just above the burnt-out park treetops. “This is the best vantage point. At the end of that park is a cliff. Below that, a clear view of the wreckage.”
“You’re sure?” asked Ada.
“Positive. We might want to shed some unnecessary weight, though.”
Ada saw what he meant. “Lots of open ground.”
“And ships have been regularly flying over. Patrolling, I guess.”
For not the first time, she shook her head at Bishop. “And you said you don’t normally come here, huh?”
Bishop blushed. “I mean, not really,” he mumbled. “It’s just...I just have to see what they’re doing.”
Ada had no reply for that. Instead, she turned to the others. Walter and Fei looked at Ada, as well as Darlene. They looked at her as if to say: “Is he serious about shedding stuff?” It didn’t take a detective to tell that by suggesting that they shed weight, Bishop meant to leave their weapons behind.
But Ada had other ideas. “Leave the packs, water, everything but our weapons.”
“Maybe just keep one each,” Bishop suggested.
“We keep the weapons,” Ada said firmly. “All of them.”
Bishop shrugged.
“Whenever you’re ready, Bishop, lead the way,” Ada said.
Bishop first took a moment to scan the streets around the park. There was no one or nothing moving in any direction. He hurried across to the park, with Ada right behind him. The others followed.
Ada was on high alert: eyes wide, ears receptive, nose smelling every little aroma. Nothing seemed off, or at least no more off than everything else.
The park itself, like all of Vassar-1, was a graveyard. That seemed to be the trend anywhere the Shapeless went. They arrived, killed everything in sight, then tried to replace the dead with their own. Once everything had been properly annihilated, they moved on. Ada saw no logic in it, no reasoning, just alien savagery. If it was a religion, she could find no rhyme or reason to its ways.
Ada ignored a dead family in the middle of a playground at the park. From the looks of it, a bomb had exploded while they were playing. It must have been very early in the attack. The dozen or
so other bodies made her think that it was probably a suicide bomber who’d seen a target of opportunity.
At least they died quick. At least they’ll stay dead and not become some kind of obscene alien tribute to the people they actually were. Like the captain …
“Here we are, just beyond these bushes. Be careful, though, there’s a bit of a drop,” said Bishop, kneeling down out of sight.
“Right here?” Ada asked. It seemed too soon to stop, but Bishop seemed apprehensive about getting any closer.
“Yup, just stick your head through. You’ll be able to see the whole thing.”
Ada pushed branches and leaves out of her face as she crawled through the bushes. It was tough going. The tall bushes, meant to be a natural boundary for the park, were more than a dozen feet thick. No doubt somebody had been paid good money to maintain them. With her poncho and weapons adding bulk to her frame, she could barely get her head through to the other side. In other circumstances, it might have been comical.
Once she was through, though, the vantage point was perfect. She could see almost the whole wreckage of the UEF Atlas. Surrounded by demolished buildings, destroyed in its crash, it was a sight to behold. Even if it wasn’t the real ship, it was as large as the original. Maybe bigger. It had been bigger in the air; she was sure of it.
Small fires still burned in the devastation that bordered the clearing in the woods, made of glass, steel, and concrete. It had once been some kind of industrial park, and Ada suspected that the steep hill on the other side of the bushes was manmade. The ground fell away sharply. Getting their group down would be tricky from here. They’d need another path around.
Most sickeningly, she saw exactly what Bishop had described. There was a long, winding line of people outside a gaping hole in the side of the downed dreadnought. Scared people, families, all being shepherded by armed cultist. How long had this been going on? Where the hell were the city sentinels? The military? Anyone?
Ada pulled her head back before she could be spotted, but stayed deep in the bushes.
“Bishop, can you reach through here and give me some binoculars? I need to see exactly what’s going on from here—” Ada’s sentence stopped in its tracks as she happened to glance down from her vantage point. She was still hidden in the bushes, but she had a good view down over the lip of the steep hillside and into the devastation below.
About a hundred feet down, on a roof of a building under the cliff side, Ada saw a dead body. That wasn’t strange on its own. But that dead body, even slightly decayed, looked a whole of a hell of a lot like Bishop.
Shit.
Ada fought her growing panic as she began to wiggle her way back out of the bushes. She couldn’t turn around; she could only back up. She tried to stay calm, but she was so exposed here, on all fours with her ass in the air like a precocious child. The stiff bushes suddenly changed from a solid defensive position to an active deterrent to her turning to face her new enemy.
She loudly broke a branch, then two more, in her haste. She needed to save the others, or at least not die stuck in here like a pig in a blanket.
“Whoa, calm down,” Bishop said. “What’s wrong, Ada? Just gimme a second—”
Ada heard a woman’s scream, two gunshots, then silence. She felt a warm wet splash on the back of her legs.
“Sorry, just couldn’t remember where I put them. But they were right there around my neck. Funny, right? Sitting there the whole time in plain sight.”
Ada yanked the rifle off her shoulder. It was absolutely the wrong weapon for the circumstances. The rifle got tangled in branches as she pulled at the long muzzle. She desperately wished she had her pistol. Ada almost had the rifle turned around and pointed behind her when it was ripped out of her hands with ferocious force. The strap that was still around her shoulder drew taut, spinning her around, smashing her face through the thick underbrush, drawing blood as she crashed into branches. The strap finally ripped free, jolting her shoulder so hard she was sure it was dislocated. She snapped back into the bushes, weaponless now.
She spun around, diving back into the bushes, back the way she’d gone, ignoring the pain in her shoulder as branches clawed against her like fingernails. She scrambled wildly, kicking and crawling, until she’d very nearly reached the far side where she’d been when she’d first seen the real Bishop.
“Hillside” was a generous interpretation. It was a cliff. There had once been a fence here, which the bushes had surely been grown to hide. Ada knew there wasn’t much of a chance that she’d survive the fall forward, but any chance was better than no chance at all.
“Let me help you get a better look,” said a cold, low voice behind her. Ada felt a hand clamp down around her uninjured ankle like a vise. With inhuman strength, it dragged her across the ground and ripped her clear of the bushes. Before she knew what was happening, she was tossed in the air and slammed to the grass. She saw stars as she choked on her breath, her chest heaving wildly. Her ribs were on fire.
Ada found herself staring into the lifeless face of Walter. He’d been cut in two. His other half was about four feet away. Darlene was lying prone, face-down, a few feet away.
She turned over and started to get up when she felt a spike go through her left hand. Before she could even register the pain, she was kicked her hard in the ribs. She choked on dirt when she collapsed, screaming in raw pain as she was pinned to the wet ground. Blood was everywhere.
The fake Bishop stood over Ada, parts of his body morphing and wiggling. He kept the teenager’s face, but his parts weren’t of a human shape. Then the top half of his head fell backwards, opening his mouth like a Pez dispenser full of razor-sharp needle teeth.
“Do you like what you see, Aaaaaddddaaaa?” asked Bishop.
“Get away from me, you sick piece of shit,” Ada managed through gritted teeth. She saw her rifle on the ground a dozen feet away. She was trying to calculate how to get to it when she saw Fei’s bloody poncho next to it. She’d somehow held out hope for a moment that he’d gotten away, but he was dead like the rest of them. Like she was about to be.
Bishop made a screeching sound. “We’re just getting start-start-started,” he stuttered, his head reared back, opening his mouth even wider. It was like his entire head was on a joint at the jawline.
He lunged at Ada’s throat.
Gunshots riddled the back of Bishop’s head.
It was enough to distract the monster. It turned to see who attacked it. Ada managed to kick the creature in the chest, sending it stumbling backwards.
She gasped as another wave of pain washed over her, as the stake in her hand was ripped out. She turned to crawl toward her rifle, knowing the monster would be back on her in moments, even if it was momentarily distracted by whoever was shooting at it.
She’d only crawled a few feet away when she heard the Shapeless scream. She turned to see a Molotov cocktail shatter at its feet, instantly setting it ablaze.
The monster screeched and hollered as it burned. Ada figured it probably thought it was immortal. All the aliens seemed to. But now, burning and fast approaching its end, she hoped the creature was scared.
Still screeching, the fake Bishop stumbled into the bushes, setting them on fire as well. It tore through the brush and rushed headlong off the hillside, screeching madly as it went. If there was any justice left in the universe, it would die on the same rooftop where it had dispatched the real version of the innocent teenager.
Two men walked cautiously toward Ada. One had another unlit Molotov in hand.
“We don’t have too many more of those,” Ada heard the other man murmur.
She knew the voice instantly. “Tomas?” she asked.
“Ada? Holy shit, Ada, is that you?” Tomas rushed forward.
“Ada?” Ben asked, following a step behind Tomas, Molotov in hand. His face was as shocked as Ada assumed hers must look.
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She just sat there, grinning stupidly with her mouth o
pen. She’d honestly thought she’d never hear either voice again.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and sat up. She winced in pain.
“You don’t look so good,” Ben said.
“Nice to see you again too,” Ada said.
“I mean it,” Ben said. “Are you okay?”
“She doesn’t look okay,” Tomas said.
“I’m fine,” Ada said, a genuine smile on her face in spite of the pain. She opened her eyes. Ben’s own face betrayed his concern. Tomas was just shaking his head.
“Tough bitch,” Tomas said.
Ada slowly stood up, waving away help from Tomas, holding her injured, bleeding hand close to her torso. “A little woozy, but I’ll live—” She bit off her comment as she grimaced around at the dead bodies of her friends. That was the end of her smiling.
“I’ve been looking all over the place for you,” Ben said. “We have,” he added hastily, nodding at Tomas.
Before Ben could say more, Tomas picked her up in a big bear hug.
“All right, don’t get all soft,” she said to the big man. After Tomas’ surprise show of affection, there was an awkward moment before Ada and Ben negotiated a much more restrained hug. Tomas again patted Ada on the back before he walked over to the remains of her group.
“I thought you were dead,” Ben said. There was a moment of hesitation as they separated, but neither seemed ready for more right now. Ada certainly wasn’t. She was still fighting off the effects of her injuries.
“No, I got lucky. I thought you guys forgot about me.”
“Sorry about your friends,” consoled Tomas.
Ada took a deep breath. What did she feel right now? It was her responsibility to get them back to the rest of the group, and she’d failed in that. But this was the way it had gone since the Lost had crashed on the AIC capital planet. Life was short, cheap, and fleeting. At any moment, the reaper could put his hand on your shoulder. She’d just managed to dodge him one more time. They hadn’t.
She could only imagine how cold she’d seem to Ben and Tomas if she said any of that aloud. “Thank you.” Ada looked blankly at Walter, Fei, and Darlene’s corpses. “What are you guys doing out here?”
