Invasion (The Alien Wars #1) (35 page)

In the glow of the subsiding flames, the surviving members of the group walked over to where the tables and chairs were and sat down. All of them were shocked. They were still trying to digest what had happened when a shot rang out.

Logan
leaped to his feet and reached for his pistol. “You don’t think he—”

“I hope not,” Xavier interrupted, also leaping to his feet.

The two of them raced past the
smoldering
wreck of the helicopter and saw Jet standing by the remnants of Sanchez, a shaking pistol in his hand.

Jet tossed it to the ground in anger and turned around to face the others. “What?”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Xavier said.

“Sorry for my loss? What good is that?” Jet screeched. “Is that going to bring him back?”

“No, but at least you can be grateful to him,”
Logan
said.

“Grateful for what?”
Jet spluttered.
“Grateful for divorcing my mother when I was just a kid?
Grateful for having to sleep on the streets for more than a year?”

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 Muscles 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 matter 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 darkness 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.”

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

“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 that’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 keep 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 someone came up them, 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.