Orbs II: Stranded (21 page)

Overton fumbled for his final magazine. “Changing!” he yelled.

Bouma jumped to a single knee and squeezed off a volley of covering fire.

The Steam Beast let out a voracious scream and smashed the side of its head into the back of the train. Glass rained down on Sophie as the creature continued its attack, trying desperately to squeeze its head inside the car.

Within seconds it had used its beak to rip off the back door and was working on wiggling its head inside the twisted metal.

“Move!” Overton yelled. He twisted his helmet and Sophie locked eyes with him through their visors. For the first time since the invasion, she saw true terror in the marine’s eyes.

Grabbing Jeff’s hand, she pulled him away from the slobbering beast as it pried the metal back. She paused to watch the Spiders as they climbed onto the car. Their claws dug into the roof above them, enough to send Jeff scrambling.

The boy tugged on Sophie’s hand and started pulling her away. “Got to go!” he yelled.

Sophie ran as she looked behind her at Overton and Bouma firing off their final rounds. She focused on an object that Bouma had pulled from his pack.

When Jeff and Sophie reached the door to the next car, she focused
on the object. It was a grenade, but not an electromagnetic grenade. This looked like one of the old-fashioned ones that she’d seen on Overton’s belt earlier. But those wouldn’t work, would they?

Bouma’s voice bled over the channel.“Overton!”

He glanced over at the other marine and focused on the black baseball-sized object. With a nod, Overton pushed himself to his feet and grabbed Bouma under the arm.

“Got to move, got to move!” Overton said. Twisting in Sophie’s direction he pointed over her shoulder and yelled, “Get into the next car.”

Paralyzed with fear, Sophie let Jeff pull her through the open door. The marines caught up a second later. Sophie’s gaze instantly narrowed in on Bouma’s empty hands. She hardly had enough time to comprehend what had happened when the blast from the grenade tore through the other end of the car.

Without thinking she dove and tackled Jeff onto the ground, shielding him from the shrapnel and scorching heat of the grenade. Bouma and Overton hit the deck next to her, and then immediately bounced back to their feet.

Bouma reached down and grabbed her under the arms, pulling her away from the fire and smoke flickering out of the ruined cabin behind them. Overton latched onto Jeff and swept the boy into his arms.

Sophie felt a wave of relief when she saw the full extent of the destruction they were leaving behind. There was no sign of the Steam Beast or the Spiders now, only the twisted metal left by the grenade that protruded from the train like the teeth from a hungry animal.

The ringing from the blast still echoed in her helmet, as Bouma dragged her across the floor.

When they got to the third car, the marine helped her to her feet and smacked the side of her helmet.

“Sophie, are you with me?” Bouma asked, tapping his finger on her visor.

She nodded and blinked away the stars. Risking one more glance over her shoulder, she followed Jeff and the marines into the darkness.

The vibrations had ceased, and the Organics’ shrieks had vanished. The grenade had cut the aliens off, bringing down half the tunnel on the horde. But that didn’t mean they were in the clear yet. And Sophie knew it was mostly her fault. After all, she had ordered the team underground when Overton had argued it would be safer to move through the city. In the end he was right. The tunnels were narrow coffins with limited escape routes. They weren’t even safe from the Steam Beasts.

Sergeant Overton paused a few feet ahead and stared into the darkness. “We’re pretty far off course. My HUD shows we backtracked a mile. Take five. I’ll try to find an alternate route.”

Letting go of Jeff’s hand, Sophie slid off her helmet and grabbed her water bottle. With two large gulps, she drank half the bottle. She felt a tug on her armored wrist and looked down to see the boy staring up at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, offering him a drink.

“I think I found a route. But not through the tunnels. We need to hit the blacktop,” Overton said, pointing upward.

Sophie knew Overton expected opposition, especially since she had ordered them to use the tunnels. But he was right this time; if they were off course and a horde of Spiders was hunting them, then heading above ground might be their only option. She was not too proud to admit that she had been wrong.

Sophie glanced at her mission clock, and then reattached the bottle to her belt and grabbed Jeff’s hand. “Lead the way.”

Overton nodded and led them down another series of passages until they got to a platform. A fading sign hung off the side of the concrete wall.

E19

Overton shot a hand signal, and Bouma climbed onto the platform. He reached down for Sophie’s hand first and hoisted her onto the ledge. Then he reached back down for Jeff. Once they were up, Overton checked both tunnels for contacts before pulling himself onto the concrete stage.

They advanced up the stairs cautiously, Bouma taking point. Halfway up, they saw the first hints of the afternoon sun bleeding through the station windows.

With a blink, Sophie clicked off her night vision. As her eyes began to adjust to the natural light, she saw the floor was littered with trash and abandoned bags. Her eyes fell on a single article of clothing, a hat with the New York Yankees logo.

Sophie smiled. Her father had worn one every time he mowed their yard when she was a girl. Reaching down, she swiped the hat off the ground to find it was covered in some sort of goo.

“What’s that smell?” Jeff asked. He moved away from Sophie toward the piles of trash.

Strands of Organic gore webbed off the hat as she flipped it over. “Ugh!” she cried, tossing it toward one of the trash heaps. As she watched the hat slide across the floor she realized the mounds weren’t trash at all. They were the remains of orbs.

Dozens of them.

Overton saw them at the same time.

Everyone froze but Sophie. She stepped over to one of the popped spheres. It looked like a deflated balloon. They had been here a while. And without a helmet, Jeff was probably smelling the rot.

“We need to keep moving,” Overton said.

Sophie looked back at Jeff, who was covering his nose with his sleeve. There was something about him that looked different. His matted hair was longer and his chin a bit more pronounced. He looked much older than he had just a few weeks ago.

“Come on,” Sophie said, motioning Jeff forward. Before she followed the marines out of the building she checked the stairs. Through the darkness she thought she saw the hint of blue light.

Was it just her imagination, or had the horde found them again?

She didn’t wait to find out. She turned and took off running to catch up with the others.

They had been on the move for an hour, ducking in and out of empty
buildings, stopping to take in nutrition and to check their route. Debris from miniature dust tornadoes impeded their vision as they made their way closer to the lakebed. The farther they got from the protection of the buildings, the worse it was, with hot swirls of dust pounding their armor.

Jeff was suffering the worst. He walked hunched over with one hand protecting his eyes and the other on Sophie’s back. Sweat drenched his shirt, and his thick mop of hair clung to his forehead like strands of seaweed.

By the time they reached the first residential street, Sophie had trouble catching her breath. The dying trees meant less oxygen production and higher levels of carbon dioxide. Not only was the planet warming, the air was getting thinner.

What had once been a beautiful neighborhood now looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. Dead tree branches extended over the yards; their limbs broken and cracked, moving in the wind like a skeleton reaching out to her.

The bright reds, blues, and greens of contemporary architecture were nothing but a distant memory; the paint had faded with every blast from the scorching wind. Cracked and shattered windows filled the frames of what were once magnificent views of the Rocky Mountains. Everywhere she looked the sight was the same. The landscape was transformed.

“Sophie, get up here,” Overton said.

Grabbing Jeff’s sunburned hand, she started pulling him through the powerful gusts of wind. “Almost there,” she said.

Fifteen minutes later, they were on the edge of the last neighborhood before the lakebed. Overton crouched behind a wrecked Jeep, where the twisted metal curved to form a protective nest with a 360-degree view. Torn canvas clung to the Jeep’s metal columns like skin, flapping in the wind.

Sophie ducked behind the bumper of a pickup truck. A trail of fuel leaked from the bottom of the vehicle like blood. She couldn’t help but consider that soon she might be lying in a puddle of her own blood.

She shook the negative thoughts away and handed off her water
bottle to Jeff, who took a long swig.

“Thanks, Doctor Sophie,” he whispered, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

Sophie smiled. No matter what happened, she would stay with Jeff until the end. She took a quick drink and peeked around the corner of the bumper to see Bouma disappear into one of the houses. He was moving into position.

Sophie’s heart rate jumped exponentially, kicking inside her rib cage. This was it. They were close now. All they had to do was wait for Kiel to complete his mission.

“All clear,” Bouma said.

“Report?” Overton asked.

A pause broke over the com, the familiar sound of static entering Sophie’s ears. She knew what the lapse meant. Bouma had seen something he couldn’t or didn’t want to describe.

“Nothing good, sir. The lakebed is full of Spiders. Hundreds of them. I see at least a dozen Sentinels on the south embankment. Several Worms are curled up on the north side. And there is one of those . . . wait, no, there are
two
of the Steam Beasts. One of them appears to be fighting with a pack of Spiders.”

“Fighting with one another? They must be damn hungry,” Overton said. “At least they’ll be distracted when we bring the pain.”

Sophie rolled her eyes. Bring the pain? The only pain they were going to bring was their own when they walked into the Spiders’ nest. With little ammo, and no protection from the RVAMP, it was only a matter of time before a drone or something worse discovered them.

“What about survivors?” Overton asked.

“None in plain sight, sir. The poles are still lined with them, but it’s hard to tell if any of them are alive.”

“Sit tight. Kiel should be pushing that button any minute now.”

“Oh my God,” Bouma whispered a moment later.

“What?”

“A Sentinel just looked my way. I think it spotted me . . . fuck . . .”

The sound of rumbling filled the com. Sophie could visualize Bouma scrambling across the room, crawling on all fours to get away
from the window. Labored breathing mixed with the static.

“Sir, they’re coming.”

“Get a hold of yourself, Bouma. How many are coming?”

“All of them.”

CHAPTER 29

K
IEL
hoisted himself onto the ledge, and with one final kick, he scooted across the sharp, rocky surface.

“Yes!” he yelled. Flipping on his back, he went to unfasten the rope around his waist and the harnesses of the RVAMP. The sense of triumph washed away when he saw another ledge above him. It had been hidden from view earlier, and what had appeared to be the top of the mountain was an illusion.

Grunting, he fumbled to loosen the device, knowing the drone would be on him any second. The right clasp clicked, unlocked, and he quickly tugged on the left clasp. “Come on. Come on!” he grumbled.

A boom from the drone diverted his attention back to the skyline.

It was heading toward the city.

“What the hell?”

The left strap finally clicked, unlocked, and he shed the weapon on the ground. Scrambling to his knees, he pushed himself to his feet and watched the drone descend over the suburbs.

Sweat cascaded off his forehead and he swept it away with his sleeve. Above him the next cliff jutted out at an angle, blocking his view of how much higher the mountain was. He knew there was no way he would be able to scale it, not with the weight of the weapon on his back. His arms were already on fire. Besides, there were no trees or rocks to fasten the rope around. He had climbed as far as possible. This was it.

Kiel knelt next to the metal RVAMP. “Shit, shit, shit,” he repeated as he scanned the side of the device for the control board. He had spent
so much time focusing on the journey that he had mostly ignored Emanuel’s directions before they left. Now he couldn’t remember how to operate the damned thing.

Removing the side panel, he frantically scanned the device. Underneath the latch he found several buttons and a bar that he remembered the biologist describing as the power meter. It was solid green. Fully charged.

Kiel wiped his forehead and swept his gaze over the city. The buildings were so small in the distance, like a diorama an architect would build for a presentation. Somewhere out there, Overton and the others were waiting—waiting for him. With a drone and an army of aliens heading right for them.

They were sitting ducks, and he held the key to their survival in his hands.

I won’t let you down, sir.

He remembered the promise, and with a deep breath he looked back down at the device. Two buttons. One red, one green. Neither of them labeled.

“It has to be the green one. It has to be. Doesn’t it?”

He reached for the button, his finger hovering over it. Closing his eyes, he pushed. When he opened them, nothing had changed. The drone was just a dot in the distance but it was still moving, still heading for his team.

“Shit!” he yelled as loud as he could. The word drifted away in the wind. Looking back down at the weapon, he saw the power meter was still green.

“Please work,” he whispered. He pushed the button again. If it weren’t for the whine from the slowly fading power meter, he wouldn’t have known it was working. Slowly, the power meter drained to a single red bar.

Kiel scrambled to his feet and looked for the drone. He crawled closer to the edge, sticking his head over the cliff. It was gone.

“Yeah!” he yelled, flashing his middle fingers over the cliff. “Ha-ha! Looks like I got you, bastards,” he laughed. He thought of his family, his friends, and his squad. His laugh grew louder, and tears formed in
his eyes.

He was laughing so loud that at first he didn’t hear the cracking sound beneath him.

And then the ledge gave way, and he was falling.

Sophie watched the horde of Spiders speeding around the corner. A few yards in front of her Overton took a deep breath and leveled his rifle at the pack. There were so many of them. An impossible number, tumbling over one another and crashing into cars, poles, and mailboxes. Their shrieks filled the afternoon with the sound of impending death.

Ducking behind the bumper, Sophie closed her eyes and hugged Jeff. The scraping and scratching of hundreds of claws, mixed with the aliens’ screams, was enough to paralyze her.

She pulled Jeff closer and put her index finger on the trigger of the .45, raising it slowly. A flurry of thoughts raced through her mind. At first, they were nothing more than a concoction of memories—times she had spent with Emanuel and Holly, times she had lost herself in her work inside her laboratory—but then she had a different thought. A dream.

Mars. She had been so close, just months away from setting foot on the Red Planet, but it had all been a lie. Anger flooded her mind as she thought of Dr. Hoffman. His deceit. His obsidian eyes.

Everything was about to end and there wasn’t anything she could do about it. Except . . .

She looked at the .45 and considered.

No. She couldn’t. Could she?

The alternative was being torn to shreds by the aliens. Wouldn’t it be better to end it quickly? With two squeezes she could make sure they both felt only a second of pain.

“Don’t look,” she said, pulling Jeff away from the edge of the bumper. “Don’t look,” she repeated. Sophie closed her eyes again. She was no longer the strong, fearless scientist she had been when she entered the Biosphere. She was no longer the leader everyone needed her to be. She made countless mistakes, mistakes that had cost them
lives. Saafi, Timothy, Eric Finley. The list went on and on. There were so many things she would change if she could go back and do it over again. She probably would never have made the decision to leave the Biosphere in the first place. Saafi would still be alive.

Sophie shook her helmet. Her mind was a mess, second-guessing every decision she’d made since the invasion. As she looked at Overton, she realized that they weren’t much different. He had done what he thought would keep his men alive and she had done what she thought would keep her team alive. In the end, they had both reached their breaking points. In the end, they were both losing their grip on reality.

Gripping the .45’s handle tighter, Sophie slowly pulled Jeff against her armored chest. The sounds of the scraping got louder, the shrieks more intense.

The end was near. She thought she had been prepared, but as the sounds of her death scratched closer, she was having a hard time believing it was over.

She raised the pistol to Jeff’s head. Tears raced down her cheeks. As she waited and contemplated her fate, a voice broke out over the com.

“Come on! You want some of this? How about this?” Overton yelled, shooting a volley of rounds at the horde.

Sophie gritted her teeth. She could picture the Spiders swarming like ants and consuming him. The chirp from a second rifle sounded a few seconds later. She gripped the trigger of her gun a bit tighter and hovered the barrel over Jeff’s skull. His face remained planted against her chest armor.

“Don’t let them take me again, Doctor Sophie,” he said.

“I won’t, honey. Just close your eyes. Everything’s going to be okay,” she lied. More tears fell, covering her dry skin with a trail of salt.

Just as she was about to pull the trigger, something exploded. The aliens were shrieking, but not like before. They sounded like they were in pain, like they were . . .

Dying.

She poked her head around the bumper and watched as the Organics fell. Their bodies convulsed on the cement less than a yard from the truck where Sophie hid, their claws tearing helplessly at the
air. Like fish struggling on land, the horde flopped and convulsed in the street. Their bodies were everywhere—in front yards, falling off roofs, shaking on the hoods of vehicles.

Sophie couldn’t believe her eyes. The device had worked. It had really worked. “Look!” she exclaimed. “Kiel did it!”

Jeff peered around the corner of the truck and jumped to his feet. “Yeah!” he screamed.

Bouma paused on the stoop of the house. Slowly, he lowered his weapon. Sophie couldn’t see his face through his visor, but she knew he, too, was in shock.

Minutes passed and the last Spider finally twitched and died. Silence washed over the street. The glow from the aliens faded as their bodies began to shrivel, their shields no longer protecting them.

Sophie looked for Overton, but the Jeep he had taken cover in was full of Spiders. “Sergeant?” she whispered.

“Overton, come in,” Bouma said.

There was no response. Just static.

Sophie made a dash for the Jeep. She slowed when she reached the pile of dead Spiders. “Sergeant?” she repeated.

More static.

Then the slightest movement. The pile of bodies began to shift. Sophie backed up. Had one of them survived?

An armored hand burst through the mass, and Overton’s helmet emerged. “Holy shit,” he said. “Get these fuckers off me.”

Bouma rushed over to help him out from under the mountain of dead aliens. Overton’s armor was covered in fresh blue blood, and gore peppered his sleek black suit. He wiped his visor with his fist, smearing the blood across the glass.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” he asked, as if nothing had happened. “We have some people to save.”

Sophie grinned for the first time that day. Shoving her pistol back in her belt, she followed the marines through the alien graveyard.

ENTRY 3456

DESIGNEE: AI ALEXIA

This will be my last entry for a while. I do not have much left to say. Dr. Winston and her team have been gone for twelve hours, fifteen minutes, and twenty-three seconds. The logical side of my programming leads me to one conclusion—they will not be coming back.

Over the past few days I’ve been spending more time isolated: running statistics, monitoring the Biosphere, studying the Organics, and devouring philosophy. In a way, I suppose I’m preparing for the end of the human race.

Something inside me has changed. In Entry 3410, I contemplated the overwhelming desire of Dr. Winston and her team to survive. Today I am consumed with a new thought. The word has been scrolling across my screen for hours.

Loneliness.

There is no denying I have become attached to Dr. Winston and the others. I’ve done everything in my power to keep the team safe. But there is nothing more I can do.

If the statistics are right, then humanity will soon end. I will be left alone. The last memory of their species will be contained in my hard drive until my power source drains and I, too, die.