Alien Invasion 04 Annihilation (42 page)

Jeanine told herself that she’d looked out for number one because someone needed to lead this group the hell out of … well … out of Hell. Nathan was gone, and the police chief, large though he was, was already flagging. Cameron was dazed, but he’d been weak since he’d watched his father die. It was Jeanine or nobody. And maybe that, in the end, made her saving herself commendable.

But only if she didn’t dawdle. Only if she did what needed doing, without hesitation.
 

The demolished Apex was like a hive of furious hornets. The shuttle had blown its roof off, but it was either an upward-only blast, or the stone floors in the temple below were sturdier than she’d have thought. Looking back as she pulled Cameron toward Jons and Terrence, Jeanine felt as if they must have been spawned down there — as if the Apex, not the motherships, was where Astrals were born.
 

They boiled out in waves. There were no Titans. Only Reptars.
 

They came fast. She couldn’t just take the key and run; Cameron’s brain, if anything, held Thor’s Hammer’s location. He had to survive — another reason, perhaps, that Nathan had given him a second back when the Apex had blown. Now it was Jeanine’s job to get him out.
 

But they were too quick. They came. She moved, but not enough.
 

Before Jeanine could think to curl up with Cameron and wait to die — there wasn’t enough time to give him the satchel back and die
for
him — there was a hot thump and a sizzle. She felt a hot draft and looked up to see the shuttle from earlier incinerating Reptars in a sweeping wave, firing a solid beam into the pyramid’s remains. A scent like cooking pork assaulted her nostrils.
 

The shuttle seemed to spin; it was hard to tell given its uniform shape. It lanced out with another beam. The building past Terrence, Jons, and the few remaining soldiers blew backward, crumbling to rubble. There were more Titans beyond, each one already most of its way to Reptar. Another beam, and they were gone.
 

“What’s it doing?” Jons asked, aghast, his voice audible but muffled in her ringing ears.
 

It was a stupid question. Help was help. The first shuttle had brought down the Apex, and this one had fried their pursuers. It didn’t matter what or why. It only mattered that the way, for a while at least, was clear.
 

Jeanine ran as fast as Cameron could go. She left the others. They didn’t matter, and Cameron was slowly returning, his eyes clearing, injuries — if he had any — far from mortal.
 

A block later, she saw Terrence and Jons. Several of Nathan’s summoned soldiers were on her other side, running for their own lives as much as anyone else’s.
 

The shuttle followed. Others came up behind it and fired, Astral to Astral. The lead shuttle seemed to anticipate the blow; it veered to one side and plowed through a building that was either an apartment or a business. It returned fire, but the shuttle merely bounced when struck, undamaged. Then the shuttle in the rear — now joined by three others — fired on the first. The friendly shuttle bounced like a ping-pong ball between blasts then zoomed straight up and was gone. The others pursued, energy beams lancing the newly vacant sky.
 

They were on their own.

Jeanine dove down, catching her breath and allowing Cameron to catch his. Jons fell into line beside them, alone. Terrence and the others were gone. She looked back. There were no obvious bodies, but it seemed more likely that they’d caught spare fire than deciding to go somewhere better.
 

“We have to look for them,” Cameron said, his voice still balled in cotton. “They may be trapped.”
 

“They’re dead!”

“You don’t know that!”
 

Jeanine started forward. Cameron pulled her in the opposite direction, straining.
 

It was maddening. The gate was ahead, practically within sight. The lead shuttle had blown them a path; the gate was as gone as the Apex. They could make it.
 

Except for the shuttles.
 

Which, she suddenly realized as Cameron pulled against her, had vanished from the sky. It should have been a relief. Instead, it felt ominous.
 

Jeanine looked up. The shuttles were gone. Every single one. And there were no more Astrals active on the ground. She, Jons, and Cameron had a straight shot. She could even see some of the shuttles retreating, climbing into the motherships’ bellies above.
 

“We have to go back for them!”
Cameron shouted, leaning against her with all of his weight.

But Jeanine was still looking up. At the four motherships. And the way they were glowing.

Her eyes flashed toward Cameron. All at once, she surrendered to his pull. She dove with him, keeping hold but letting his momentum hurl him to the ground in a crash.
 

When he recovered, Jeanine pulled him upright and hit him hard in the throat. Then she handed Cameron to Captain Jons, who tossed him over a shoulder. Then they ran from the city before it killed them.

CHAPTER 87

Lila wasn’t sure whether she should look down at her daughter, who seemed unimpressed by all that was happening, or the two people she could now see running from the city across the parched open sprawl that the Astrals had cleared when Vail’s land had been razed for Heaven’s streets to be built.
 

The people were an odd pair. There was a thin, athletic-looking woman with brown hair and a bald, enormous black man who looked to be made only of muscle. The latter, who had to be Police Chief Jons, was carrying a third person: a stirring form that was probably Cameron Bannister. Or so thought Piper, who kept trying to run forward only to be rebuffed by Charlie and Christopher.
 

Clara was watching it all. Observing the pair approach with no obvious concern for their safety, or surprise to see them. She was watching the four motherships, which were doing something that spanned all four: a kind of glowing, shared cloud of energy gathered and sparked between them. Lila had no idea what might be happening, but she had an excellent guess that it wasn’t good. And yet Clara didn’t flinch.
 

“Clara, honey, let’s go inside.”

“Going inside won’t help, Mommy.”
 

Lila thought it would help plenty. Judging by what had just happened with the Apex, it seemed likely that the motherships were about to blow up some human shit of their own: the police station, a few apartments, whatever it took to keep everyone in line. Maybe her father would turn on the Astrals when he discovered everyone gone, but even if he did they’d find someone willing to subdue a voluntarily conquered populace. Hell, Raj would be fantastic for that job.

Explosions were better under cover. And this particular interior had wheels and an engine. Lila wondered if the Astrals would let them go, but they were sort of hidden back here. They could stick to the trees. Maybe run on foot once farther away, like they’d done all those years ago.
 

Still, Lila couldn’t help but feel a tug. The viceroy’s office would survive, and her father was still a chosen one — not just one of nine who’d gone above the ships and returned as media gods, but known by the entire planet. He’d be fine. But she didn’t want to leave him behind.
 

“Come on,” Lila told her. “Let’s play a game.”
 

Clara gave her a look that said,
Are you kidding me?
and Lila let it go.

The new members of their party arrived. Jons offloaded his cargo, which did, in fact, turn out to be an extremely irate Cameron Bannister. But his anger evaporated when he saw Piper, and they embraced — as friends, not lovers. Lila, who had her suspicions especially after having her own dalliances, took comfort in seeing it.
 

Clara was watching her.

“Do you miss him?” she asked. “I miss him, Mommy.”
 

“We’ll see him again,” Lila lied. Although she realized, as she said it, that she had no idea who Clara was talking about.
 

Cameron disengaged from Piper and squatted in front of Clara. It was strange, the way the man and the girl who should by all rights still be in diapers faced one another as equals.
 

“I know where it is,” he said.
 

Clara nodded.
 

“But there’s no way to get there.”
 

All heads turned from Cameron as the ships glowed and the energy beneath them began to accumulate. Clara was right: going inside wouldn’t make any difference at all.
 

“What are they doing?” Cameron asked no one in particular.
 

Clara, still at his side, said, “They’re going to make the chest scream loud enough to find it.”

CHAPTER 88

“Get inside.”
 

Christopher looked up, already used to the idea of taking orders from Cameron again after the years lost between them. The old gang was back, if you ignored the truth that it was just the two of them left. No Vincent, Dan, or Terrence. Just Cameron and Chris, investigating Meyer Dempsey on Benjamin’s orders … except that Benjamin, of course, was also gone.

But it wasn’t Cameron issuing orders, rushing around the RV and pushing each of the small group inside, taking no shit of any kind while motherships powered up behind them. It wasn’t even Charlie (who might have made sense as Benjamin’s successor) or Jeanine Coffey (who was military-seeming enough to pull it off). It was Piper. But she wasn’t the meek flower she’d once been. Her eyes were hard; she seemed, in Christopher’s uninformed opinion, to have a bigger clue about what was happening than anyone other than Clara.

“Where are we going?”
 

Piper didn’t answer. Neither did anyone else. Charlie had Lila by the shoulders, steering her numb carcass from the rear into the RV. She was going willingly enough but looked blank-faced. Something must have snapped. Christopher supposed he should help, seeing as he, if anyone, was Lila’s right hand. Piper was too no-bullshit. When this was over, if they were still alive, maybe she’d become a mother figure again. But right now, Piper was a general.
 

“I’ll — ” Christopher began talking to Charlie.

“Get inside,” Charlie barked.
 

As if Christopher weren’t, right now, wearing a guard uniform. He bellowed the same order to Captain Jons, who was still bleeding copiously down one arm and may have lost more blood than Christopher had thought at a glance. Cameron looked woozy from being knocked flat, punched out, and carried. Coffey had already explained as much, just as she’d bluntly expounded that Heather “hadn’t made it.” Lila wasn’t supposed to hear that, but no one was being especially careful.
 

Christopher found Clara already inside, sitting between the forked legs of Nathan Andreus’s daughter. She was smiling, putting a comforting hand on Christopher’s leg. Grace, above her, seemed either neutral or lost. Christopher didn’t know if anyone had told the girl that her father, too, was dead.
 

He could feel static in the air. Even Christopher’s thick, heavy Italian-Irish mane wanted to stand on end. He could see a hazy halo of flyaways rising from Clara’s loose hair across from him, Grace’s dark ponytail fraying at the end.
 

He didn’t know where Lila had gone. Everything was moving too fast.
 

Then he saw her just down the long padded bench running along the RV’s side. She was upright and alert, her own hair also rising away from her head. But something was off. Something about Lila’s face, her posture, the set of her shoulders was different.
 

Christopher moved down. But before he could put an arm around her, Lila spoke.
 

“She said they want to make it scream.”
 

“We don’t know what that means.”
 

“Clara knows. So does Piper.”
 

Christopher glanced toward the front, toward Piper. Coffey had taken the passenger seat. The girls were at the head of this ship, no doubt. The men had squandered their turn. Meyer had become an alien figurehead and assisted planetary takeover; Benjamin had managed to get himself killed in a mission gone wrong; Andreus had found a similar fate; Cameron had the key to a machine he didn’t know how to find. Except that he might. Maybe that was over, and they’d die without reaching something they knew rather than dying without knowing what they were after.
 

“My mother is dead.”
 

Christopher didn’t know what to say. Her brother was dead, too. And, if the implications were correct, her father might be, too.
 

“My husband is dead.”
 

Christopher’s eyes flicked toward Clara. The girl either didn’t know or (and this sounded terrible; it couldn’t be true) didn’t care. Raj had still been Daddy to her. One of them, anyway.
 

But Clara, out of all of them, looked the least concerned. The least upset. She looked like she was excited to be going on a road trip. And why not? The girl had never left the city.