Striker (The Alien Wars Book 2) (2 page)

Logan
tried putting
a hand on Jet’s shoulder, but he threw it off. “I don’t need your sympathy,”
the teen said.

“You’re upset.
You’re young—” Xavier said.

“I’m not a kid.
I’m seventeen,” Jet interrupted.

Logan, who had
been studying the dead bodies, looked at Jet. “He means your father saved your
life. That’s what you should be grateful about.”

“What the hell
are you talking about?” Jet roared and cried at the same time, in only the way
a teenager could.

“Look!”
Logan
pointed to
how close Muscle’s shredded torso was lying to Sanchez’s. “If we had time to
run away, why didn’t he?”

“I don’t know,”
Jet admitted. “But what difference does it make now?”

“He saved you. He
saved all of us.”
Logan
looked at Jet. “I saw more than my share of grenades and suicide
bombs while I was in
Iraq
, and I realized one thing: a M67 grenade, which is the one that
Sanchez had, is fatal to anyone within fifteen feet. There is no way that we
were more than ten feet away when it went off.”

“What are you
saying?” Jet
said,
his brow furrowing. “That it wasn’t
a M67?”

Logan
solemnly
gazed at Jet. “Muscles jumped on the grenade, putting it between him and
Sanchez. He took the blast for us.”

Jet was stunned.
He looked at Muscles and then at Sanchez. “He … sacrificed himself?”

Logan
carefully
squeezed his shoulder. “For better or worse, he was the type of guy who didn’t
hesitate when something had to be done.
No matter the cost.”

Jet dropped
beside his father’s body. Everyone looked away while he wept. “Why did you do
it, Dad? Why did you have to be the one to die?” He rested his head upon his father’s
chest and cried.

Logan and Xavier
gave him some space and leaned over the edge of the roof. All was dark below.
All was silent.

“What do you
think is happening down there?” Xavier asked.

“Confusion.
Chaos,
more likely.
Hell, I don’t know,”
Logan
admitted.
“What worries me is how we’re going to get down from here.”

Xavier sighed.
“The stairs are the only way.”

“Yeah, but what
happens when we reach the lobby? We’re almost out of ammunition, and a few of
us are wounded. I just don’t see us getting past a group of determined men.”

“So what if we
don’t?” Xavier asked.

“What do you
mean?”
Logan
replied, frowning. “As soon as we go down the stairs—”

“We don’t, at
least not yet.” Xavier hesitated. “I’ll have to have a talk with Lucy. She
might know how committed Sanchez’s men are.”

Using the light
of the moon, the two walked back to the bodies of Sanchez and Muscles. Jet was
no longer there. Assuming that he had gone back to the others, they walked
toward the chairs and tables. There, in the glow of a flashlight, everyone was
talking about the last twenty-four hours.

“We heard about
Muscles. Did he really sacrifice himself?” Lucy asked.

Logan
sighed as he
rushed up to her and put an arm around her. He kissed her on the cheek.
“Yes, and all because Sanchez had the grenade.”

“He waited till
the last possible moment, until we were right there,” Xavier said. “He was
downright evil to the very end.”

“So, what’s the
plan now?” Jet asked.

“Well, thanks
partly to your father, Carlos Sanchez is dead. The question that remains is how
fanatical are his followers?”
Logan
glanced at Lucy. “Do you think his guards are the sort of people who’ll
just cut their losses and run? Or will they fight to the death?”

Lucy looked down
at the ground as she thought. “Sanchez was a dictator. You were either with him
or against him. And if you were against him, you fled the city.” Tears welled
in her eyes. “I remember this one woman. She was caught stealing some food. She
said she had a young son who was starving. She pleaded with Sanchez to spare
the child but …” Lucy sobbed. “He got the boy and shot him right in front of
her.”

As Lucy wept,
Logan
held her
tight. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

Lucy shook her
head. “I know you didn’t. It was just so awful.”

“Okay, don’t
think about it any longer.”
Logan
turned to the others. “If we head downstairs now, we’ll get
slaughtered. It seems clear to me that we need to spend the night here and wait
it out. I have a feeling that once they realize that Sanchez is dead, his
followers will leave The View.”

“But what if they
don’t?” Jet said. “If we wait it out here, come morning, we might find
ourselves up against a tougher group of men.”

“Let’s put it to
a vote. What do
ya
say?”
Logan
raised his
hand. “Raise your hand if you want to stay here for the night.”

Everyone except
Jet raised their hands.

“Okay, we’ll
stay.”
Logan
glanced at his watch. “We should have time to grab some food from
the party room. We don’t want to be starving when we wake up in the morning.”

“Where are we
going to sleep?” Jet asked.

“I say one of the
suites farthest away from the staircase,”
Logan
said.

“Why there?”
Xavier questioned.

“If someone comes
searching for Sanchez, they’ll search the party room, the penthouse suite, and
maybe one of the rooms next to it,”
Logan
replied. “But
hopefully, not every single room, least not the room farthest away from the
penthouse suite.”

“Sounds good,”
Xavier said. “I didn’t feel like walking down all those stairs again,
especially with this flashlight.” He glanced at the light, which was slowly
fading. “Let’s hurry before it decides to die completely.”

Everyone stood
up, and after one last glance at the
smoldering
helicopter, they walked toward the rooftop door.

Xavier’s eyelids
were almost closed as
Logan
walked over. “I’ll take over now.”

“Thanks.” Xavier
stood up and yawned. “I’ve been trying to stay awake, but I’m not the young man
I once was. All this climbing, running, it’s getting to me.”

“I thought you
did pretty well today. You kept up with the rest of us,”
Logan
said, sitting
down next to the door.

“Barely.
Anyway, I haven’t heard
anything since I took over, so we should be safe to move in a few hours.”
Xavier gave
Logan
his pistol. “Here, just in case anything happens.”

As Xavier walked
over to the bed and lay down,
Logan
stood up, softly opened the door, and peeked out. He saw no one. He
slipped out into the hallway and closed it behind him.

Light was shining
in at the far windows, which was a good thing, as their flashlight had finally
died in the middle of the night. He reached the staircase and glanced down. It
was still silent. He waited for a few minutes to see if anyone came up the
stairs, but no one did. Not wanting to risk it any further, he strode back to
the room and opened the door.

After sliding it
closed, he sat down beside it and thought about where they could hide out. He
suspected that
San Francisco
would return to its normal state, at least the normal state it was
in before Sanchez took charge, but in the meantime, it’d be best to leave the
city.

There was a slim
chance that some vigilante would come after them for killing Sanchez, and he
didn’t want to be part of any more killing. He glanced at his watch and saw
that it was now January the twenty-fifth. He’d arranged to meet his brother on
the twenty-seventh at
Stinson
Beach
.

They would need
to find a working vehicle and see if the
Golden Gate
Bridge
was
still standing. If it was, they’d head that way, up the coast to
Stinson
Beach
. If it
wasn’t, they’d have to go the longer route around
San Francisco
Bay
.

Hearing movement,
Logan looked up and saw his fiancée approaching. He smiled and put an arm
around her as she sat down beside him. Her long blonde hair was messy and her
dress was smudged with blood, but her smile still looked beautiful. It was what
had attracted him to her in the first place, as well as her kind nature.

Lucy rested her
head on
Logan
’s shoulders. “I was tired, but I couldn’t sleep.”

“I know the
feeling. And this alien invasion isn’t helping matters.”

Surprised, Lucy
poked her head up and looked into his eyes. “I didn’t know you still got those
nightmares.”

Logan
hesitated. “I
was going to tell you on our wedding day, but you know how that turned out.”

Lucy sighed.
“Yes, that was a day I’ll never forget.”

“Do you want to
talk about what happened?”
Logan
asked. Lucy didn’t say anything, so he continued talking. “I’m here
for
you,
you do know that, right?”

Lucy smiled and
kissed him. “Yes. And I’ll tell you.
Just not here.
Not now. I fought so hard to get rid of those memories that I don’t want to
revisit them just now. I want things to get back to normal.”

Logan
squeezed her
tight.
“Normal.
That’s a word I never used to use.”

“You never
realize how good something is until you lose it,” Lucy said.

“That’s for
sure,”
Logan
replied, running a hand through Lucy’s blonde hair. “I knew I loved
you, but I didn’t know how much.”

“How much?”
Lucy asked, grinning.

Logan
grinned back.
“I’ll show you later when we’re all alone. But here’s a taste of what to
expect.” He leaned forward and, holding her head in his hands, kissed her on
the lips.

~*~*~

Kenneth awoke to
raindrops pelting the ground. Sitting up, he glanced at the sky. A storm had
moved in during the night and clouds covered most of the sky. The sun, just
above the horizon, poked out from behind one especially dark cloud.

He had meant to
stay awake as much as possible in case any more wild beasts came back, but the
exhaustion must have overcome him. Luckily, it didn’t look as though any animal
had returned. He glanced at the teens,
who’d
just
woken. “We’ll need to move if we want to stay dry.”

The three of them
quickly put on their shoes and put their stuff back into the backpacks. Then,
with the rugs from the boat slung across their shoulders, the group left the
campsite.

Five minutes
later, with the rain still coming down, Kenneth kicked open the back door of a
run-down house. It was the first one that they had come across. Not wasting
time, they climbed up onto the back porch and hurried to the door.

Dropping their
backpacks in the entryway, he led the search of the house. It wasn’t much to
look at, pretty messy and unkempt, but whether or not it was due to vandals or
if that was how the homeowner had lived, he didn’t know.

With the rain
really pounding down now, the group made their way to the two bedrooms and lay
down, Kenneth taking one bed and the teens taking the other. Their fatigue and
the early hours had them all sound asleep inside ten minutes.

Two hours later,
as the rain ceased and the sun shone through the bedroom windows, Kenneth awoke.
He sauntered to the window and gazed up at the sky. Most of the clouds had
dissipated, but the ones that remained looked pretty dark. Not wanting to
travel in the rain, Kenneth decided that they’d start the trek to
Sparks
.

After walking to
the other bedroom, he awoke the teens. While they prepared to leave, he went to
the kitchen to see if he could find some breakfast. Food had been pretty sparse
lately, and it wasn’t that much different in this house.

There was a
crusty loaf of bread and that was all. He broke the loaf into three pieces and
gave a piece to Molly and Derek.

“Thanks.” Molly
sat down and chomped on the bread.

Derek was halfway
through eating his piece when he paused,
swiveled
his
head, and hurried to the window.

“What’s wrong?”
Kenneth asked, strolling over.

“Look!” Derek
pointed to where three army trucks were rumbling down the nearby road.