Cut Off (15 page)

Ahead, the brush stirred. Tristan pressed herself behind a tree trunk. Something white emerged from cover, head bobbing: a chicken. It pecked at the dirt. Tristan continued forward. The chicken straightened and dashed off into the ferns.

She approached the shack from uphill, stopping a hundred yards away from it, suddenly wishing they'd moved at twilight instead. At least the site was intact, with no obvious damage to the fence or the shack itself. Gun in hand, she resumed threading through the trees.

A muzzle flashed from the side of the shack, accompanied by the crack of a rifle. A bullet hummed past her and shredded into the foliage. Tristan grabbed Alden's sleeve and pulled him prone. The rifle went off again. She flicked the safety off her pistol and fired steadily toward the point where the flashes had come from, letting no more than a second pass between shots. As she did so, Alden laid his rifle over a rock and sighted in.

A shot spanged into the rock in front of her, spraying her face with grit. Tristan ducked. Alden fired back. Another shot rang out from the shack.

Tristan holstered the hot pistol and got out her rifle. She slid the bolt forward, locked it down, and put her eye to the scope. The man was set up behind the corner of the shack. The corner itself was a 4x4 that might well stop a rifle bullet—she really had no idea—but the walls were plywood. Her round would punch right through them. She took aim at the corner of the building, then moved slightly to the left, trying to gauge the narrow window where she would be past the 4x4 while still being able to hit the gunman's body. She squeezed the trigger.

A moment later, he fired back. Tristan swore and aimed again. The shot hit the corner with a heavy thunk. The man yelled out, but it was a noise of surprise and anger, not pain. She readied herself for a third shot.

Alden grabbed her shoulder. "Listen!"

She pressed herself behind the rock. Another bullet thrummed over their heads. In the brief silence that followed, the buzz of the jet carried across the night, mounting in volume.

"Get ready to run." She got out her pistol, ejected the spent magazine, and replaced it. A rifle shot smashed into the rock and she flinched. She rolled on her stomach, propped her wrists on the rock, and began to fire. "Go!"

Alden hunched low, veering to the right to put the shack between him and the gunman. Tristan peppered the corner of the building, splinters flying. She counted rounds. As she spent the tenth one, she popped up and ran, firing wild behind her.

She reached a dead sprint, slowly gaining ground on Alden as he weaved through the trees. The rifleman had time to assess the situation and get off a single shot. It whacked into a trunk two feet to Tristan's left. Then heat flashed over Tristan's back and she left her feet and found herself in a heap in the dirt. Her ears rang and her head hurt. So did her shoulder and cheek from the impact with the ground. Behind her, flames crackled from the crater where the shack had once stood, flinging shadows across the forest. She crawled uphill toward Alden, who was already sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

"You okay?" she said. Her voice sounded funny in her ears.

"Unless I'm hurt so bad I can't feel it." He staggered to his feet and looked up at the stars beyond the canopy, his mouth hanging open. "Is it gone?"

"Wouldn't count on it. It came in so fast it could be back on us in seconds."

She realized she'd dropped her pistol and jogged back for it, head tilted to listen for the jet. Metal gleamed in the ferns. She picked up the pistol and holstered it, noting dirt in the barrel. No time to clean it now. She rejoined Alden and they jogged uphill away from the strike. She was sore, but none of her hurts were of the spiking type that indicated serious damage.

"Everything's gone," Alden said after a couple of minutes of running.

"I know."

"Have you thought about our next step?"

"Should probably try to find another boat. Might be something on the north shore."

"What if they hit us when we're out to sea? Like they did to the others?"

"They can't possibly patrol the entire ocean," she said, though as she did so, she wasn't certain it was true. Even a single jet could control the waters by constantly circling the island. A fully-rigged sloop would take at least half an hour to reach Molokai. More, if the winds weren't perfect. They could try a night crossing, but the aliens seemed to have some kind of sensors that weren't hampered by darkness. They had located three people exchanging gunfire in the middle of the woods, anyway.

Yet one thing was certain: the aliens couldn't possibly hunt the area forever. Sooner or later, they would decide their mission was complete.

"Better idea—we stay in the mountains," she said. "There are streams everywhere. Must be food of some kind. We stick to the forest at all times until we're sure they've packed up and headed home to the crater."

Alden gazed ahead. "Hana."

"Hana?" Tristan quirked her head. "No way. It's
on
Haleakala. We may as well somersault naked into the coffee fields."

"The coast is miles from the crater. It's all jungle. They'd be more likely to be killed by a falling coconut than to find us in that." He gestured behind them. "From the look of things, all they cared about was Lahaina."

"Could be." She slowed; as good as her lungs were, they weren't used to running full-tilt up the side of a mountain fleeing lynch mobs and missile strikes. "Is that what you want to try?"

"Seems safer than pitting a canoe against an alien jet. We know Maui, too. Other than the aliens, and the people in Lahaina who the aliens just massacred, it's not too bad, right?"

Tristan shifted her pack on her shoulders. "To Hana, then. And all we have to do is cross the whole god damn island."

10

"A boat's coming?" Ness said. "What kind?"

Sebastian gestured, "A kind that humans use."

"How far away is it?"

He flicked a tentacle over the small pad that would relay his words to whoever was listening on the other end. "Two miles."

"They
are
aware that China's the size of China and that boat could be headed anywhere?"

"They are aware that we are made of matter that can be destroyed in an instant if someone means us harm."

"Fair enough," Ness signed. "Sounds like we ought to hide in the bushes and see who's expecting a special delivery."

They moved away from the crates and headed uphill into the woods, which were far wilder than the parks of Macau but comprised of the same tropical mishmash. Ness located a dense patch of ivy and got down behind it. In some ways, it was easier for Sebastian to hide in such places. The human eye was well trained to pick out human faces and figures from the surroundings. A body like Sebastian's, though, with stick-like pincer arms and vine-like tentacles? The eye had no idea how to resolve
that
coherently. Toss it in the jungle and it became part of the background.

Sebastian signed something; it was so dark Ness had to ask him to repeat himself. "The boat is at the dock."

Ness raised his binoculars. The slant of the land was too shallow for him to see the dock, but minutes later, a lantern glowed downhill. Two mules appeared pulling a low flatbed cart, accompanied by a man and a woman. They came to the hedge and maneuvered through a gap in its side. At the crates, they detached the mules from the flatbed, set down a few thick, straight dowels, and lowered a ramp from the cart. As the woman hitched the mules to one of the crates, the man jacked up its edge, sliding another two dowels beneath it. The man stepped back. The woman barked something in Chinese. The mules pulled the crate along the dowels, up the ramp, and onto the cart. They repeated this with the second crate, then reattached the animals to the cart and led them out of the hedged-in field.

"Not sure what I was expecting," Ness signed. "But it sure wasn't the arrival of Mom and Pop."

Sebastian jerked his head to face Ness. "You know these people? How can this be?"

"Figure of speech. It means I didn't expect such a small operation."

Sebastian nodded. He didn't move again for several minutes until a message arrived on his pad. "Mom and Pop have left. We must hurry."

They jogged across the field and through the trees bordering the shore. The boat was already a few hundred yards away, cutting southeast toward a larger island. The sub sat right next to the dock with the very top of its tower exposed. Ness and Sebastian swam to it and climbed inside. It hummed to life and lurched forward.

Sprite met them at the exit to the top deck. "What did you see?"

"Two big crates," Ness said. "Got picked up by a couple. Seemed married."

"A married couple? They're the ones doing business with aliens? Who were they, Donald and Ivana?"

"Not unless their names are as fake as yours. Out of the way, we're following them right now."

They headed down to the control room, where Five twiddled buttons, watched the map, and gestured through his com link to other members of the Collective.

Sprite pointed to the map of the bay. "Hong Kong. Bet you fifty dollars."

"I don't have
any
dollars," Ness said.

"Bet you a ride in your space-jet."

"If we had a jet, you think we'd be burbling along in this smelly old sub?"

The dot representing the boat headed into the channel between the western island and the mainland. At the eastern tip of the island, it passed beneath a line—an elevated highway, most likely—then tacked southeast, drawing nearer and nearer to the west coast of Hong Kong.

"I could have won a jet ride," Sprite said sadly.

"It's going to dock," Ness signed. "Can we surface and watch?"

Sebastian exchanged gestures with Five, then nodded. They returned to the ramps leading to the top hatch. Once the light changed color, they climbed outside. Hong Kong hung dead ahead, hundreds of towers bristling from the shore, a dark mountain rising from the interior. For a moment, Ness was too taken by the spectacle to pay any attention to the sailboat nearing the waterfront.

In his travels, he'd seen plenty of emptied-out big cities. Macau itself had quite the skyline. Yet he wasn't sure he'd seen any like this place. Nothing but buildings, almost all of them giant. Must have been a hell of a sight when it had been lit up. He wished he'd been born just a little sooner, seen more of the world before it had ended. Much as he'd hated most of it—the non-internet part, anyway—parts of it were pretty special, too.

Then again, it was all moot. He'd never had the money to travel outside Idaho. If the aliens hadn't shown up, he would never have seen Hong Kong. Mt. Fuji. The Sydney Opera House. Maybe it was selfish to think of it in those terms, but his perspective was the only one he had.

Ahead, the boat slowed and came to berth at a weathered dock. As the man and woman tied up, a team of men emerged from the building at the base of the dock pushing a platform topped by a small crane. They locked it in position beside the boat and swung the arm over the ship's rails. Two men vaulted onboard and secured the hook to an iron ring on the top of the crate. The other men swung it over to the pier and lowered it onto the boards. As they set about bringing over the second, two of the workers attacked the first crate with pry bars, cracking open one side. It fell to the dock with a whump. They began sorting the canvas sacks inside.

One of the dock workers passed the boatman two lumpy sacks. The man extracted something from one of them, turned it in his hand, and took a bite.

"
Food?
" Ness signed.

Sebastian tilted his head. "Unless he tries to kill himself with not-food."

"This can't be the same stuff they're getting from Macau, is it? What is this, some kind of crazy shell game?"

The alien looked down at his carapace. "Shell game?"

"Swapping one thing for another to disguise your profits."

"Perhaps they don't want known their true desire."

On the dock, the man and his wife wrapped up business and climbed aboard. The longshoremen untied the boat from the cleats and tossed the ropes over its rails. The couple helped push themselves from the dock with the use of long poles, then trimmed their sails to pull them away.

"We know right where the dock is," Ness said. "But once that boat is gone, it's gone."

"Follow it more?"

"I don't know what more that will tell us. It's time to get piratical. I say we board them."

Sebastian considered this. "Will ask the others."

"Don't ask," Ness signed. "Make it known that in order to continue our pursuit of the Swimmers, we have to board that ship."

"Will you hurt them?"

"I don't want to."

"Will you hurt them?"

Ness rolled his eyes. "Not unless they're looking to hurt one of us."

"Then give them no reason to look."

He watched the boat drift away into the current between islands. "Agreed. Now go get the okay."

They headed down the ramp. As Sebastian loped off to speak with the others, Ness checked around for Sprite. He found him in the galley contemplating a container of something green and wobbly.

"Tastes like aquarium filter," Ness said. "But it's nutritious enough."

Sprite set the container on the spongy counter and pushed it aside. "You eat this stuff? How?"

"The arcane process of chewing. You get used to things fast when you don't have any other choice."

"If you say so."

Ness laughed and peeled open one of the cabinets with a slurp. He fished out a Tupperware of banana chips and a second of dried whitefish. "Eat fast. We're about to board them. Gonna need your help."

Sprite's head whipped up. "Why me?"

"I don't know, because you're our resident Chinese speaker?"

"You guys have radios or something, right? Why don't you take one with you and I'll translate from here?"

"Because that's idiotic. What's your problem?"

He glanced at the ceiling, pained. "We're going to stop them, in the middle of the ocean, and jump over the railings with a team of aliens? How are they going to react to that?"