At the End - a post-apocalyptic novel (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) (30 page)

The open expanse of the hangar was replaced
by a short ceiling of a corridor. She lifted my back and scooted me
to the wall, handing me the alion gun. “If you see something, shoot
it,” she advised.

“What’s happening?”

“We crashed,” she panted. “Now we’re
running.” She held up the bazooka, glancing between doors.

“Everything hurts,” I informed her. My head
was swimming. “We made it?”

“Yeah, we made it. Just rest a moment.” She
counted to ten aloud. “Can you walk?”

“How did we survive?” I asked.

“I’m not sure, but I would guess it had
something to due with the red field that surrounded us. I think it
was a safety mechanism for when they crash. Can you walk?”

I shook my head in disbelief. “We should be
dead, a nosedive from 100 meters or more . . . we should be
dead.”

“Try walking.” She clutched my arm and
helped me to my feet. “Easy now,” she said in a gentle tone.

I wobbled. “My legs feel dead.” I attempted
a step forward. My foot landed with a CLOMP. “Yeah, I think I can
walk.”

“We’ll take it slow, we just have to get out
of here.” She took my arm and placed it around her shoulder. “Lean
on me if you need to.”

In a fog, I must have leaned on her pretty
hard, as she groaned under my weight. I wasn’t brave enough to walk
on my own. I limped through a doorway, into another empty corridor,
then into a pod-filled corridor. We climbed up into the duct system
and rested.

“I must have frozen twenty of them. They
were coming at us from everywhere. I wonder if this bazooka-thing
has a limit . . .”

Her voice trailed off as my hearing went in
and out. Everything was dulled, except for the aches terrorizing my
body. “What do we do now?” I asked her, my voice cracking and
strained.

“We find a way to blow the ship up . . . we
can’t escape, so we blow it up.” She gave a sliver of a grin, but
it wasn’t as pleasant as it had been when we found the hangar. Now
it was dark and full of despair.

I nodded at her. “Okay . . . we blow it up,”
I agreed.

“When you’re ready, let’s find us some
explosives,” she said, her smile expanding.

We rested, listening to dozens of alions
pass underneath us, roaring and calling; it sounded like we had
created quite a mess in the hangar. Once I recuperated enough
strength, we began another tiresome trek, crawling like infants
about to collapse for a nap.

Eventually we found a room brimming with
electrical equipment, advanced beyond anything I had ever seen,
including the flight deck with its giant wall map.

Penelope lowered herself down to a flat
space atop a console. She helped me ease myself down next to her.
We slipped off the side where no electronics decorated the panel.
“What is this place?” she asked.

I shrugged. “A control room . . . or maybe
some kind of communications room? I don’t know; your guess is as
good as mine.” I touched an unlit button, feeling its
smoothness.

“Look, on the wall, the chips.” She pointed
to a rack of objects hanging on a wall, as she walked to the far
side of the room. “The chips that were in us.” With delicate
fingers, she slid the chip off the rack and tossed it to me. She
grabbed a second one to inspect for herself.

“You still thinking they’re locator
beacons?” I asked.

“Aren’t you?” She flipped the chip over and
showed me a little red button. “I think this is how they activate
it.”

“I’m just glad to be rid of it.” I tossed
mine to the floor; it skidded into a dull silver console. I studied
the unit for a moment. “Hey.” I poked her shoulder to get her
attention. “Does that look like a radio transceiver?”

“You mean because it has a dial?”

I walked up to it. “Yeah, I don’t know. It
just looks like one to me. Maybe we could send a message to
Earth.”

She stepped beside me. “Send a message . . .
so far, we haven’t had very much success working their electronics.
Even their guns are difficult to fire.”

“It’s worth a try, don’t you think?”

She shrugged and waved her hands. “I’d
rather look for explosives.”

“Just give me a few minutes to fiddle with
it,” I said. I started adjusting a big orange knob.

“Are you any good with our own electronics?”
she asked.

“No, not really,” I answered. “But just give
me a minute to try. If I fail, I fail . . . and if I don’t, you’ll
kiss me later.”

“Did that crash knock some confidence into
you?” She smiled, almost happy.

“Not the crash, the fall.” I brushed my hand
against hers.

She grabbed my fingers, locking them
together. “Whatever did it, I like it.” She kissed me softly.

Our lips parted after the most magical
moment I had ever experienced.

Before I could speak, she kissed me again,
harder and longer. Blood rushed throughout my aching limbs. “Now
get to work,” she said, smiling as our eyes met.

I wanted to kiss again, but I also wanted to
hurry up so we could get out of the room. There were too many
alions stalking the halls to stay put for very long. I began
pressing random buttons and tuned the orange knob.

Static blasted from a speaker in the
console.

Penelope twisted all the knobs within range,
and after several failed tries, found the volume. “I can barely
hear as it is right now,” she said, rubbing her ears.

I kept turning the knob until a voice came
on. It was a person’s voice. “I can’t understand it.”

“It’s Portuguese, I think,” she said. “Keep
tuning it.”

I turned the knob a little bit more, then a
little bit more, slowly twisting it until finally a woman speaking
English came over the broadcast.

A microphone-looking device jetted out of
the console, and I quickly grabbed it, holding down the yellow
button on it. “Can anyone hear me?” I released the button. Nothing.
“This is Darrel Reid, can anyone hear me?”

“I read you loud and clear, Darrel Reid.
This is Private Albores of the U.S. 56th Infantry Division. Please
describe your location and situation.”

“What should I say?” I asked Penelope.

“What do you mean? Tell her we’re on a
ship!”

“In outer space?”

“Yes in outer space!”

I clicked the button. “Private Albores, I,
along with Penelope Whitestone, are onboard an alion vessel in
outer space above North America. We are in extreme danger.” I
released the button.

“Say over,” she yelled at me.

“Over,” I added quickly.

“And don’t call them alions, she won’t know
what you’re talking about.”

“Repeat your transmission, Darrel. I
couldn’t understand your message. And you don’t have to say over,
that’s what the beep indicates.”

I repeated what I had said, using alien
instead of alion.

“We have a team heading out the gates as we
speak. They have a plan to fly classified spaceships to try to
power up the Planetary Defense Network, so we can destroy all
extraterrestrial threats. I will relay your transmission to them.
They’ll be you’re best bet at a rescue.”

I looked at Penelope, wide-eyed. “Did you
hear that,” I said, excited beyond control. “Rescue. RESCUE!”

“Rescue!” she repeated the glorious
word.

I gripped the microphone and clicked the
button. “Thank you! Thank you, Private Albores. I have a
transmitter that I think will help you find us. Do you know how to
calibrate locator beacons?”

“Describe the locator to me, and we’ll see
what we can do.”

“It’s alien technology, but I’ll describe it
as best I can.” Penelope handed me the silver device. I began to
detail the locator, and she walked me through programming the
beacon to send a certain frequency they could pick up.

“We have your signal.”

I jumped in the air, then kissed Penelope,
completely ecstatic. “Great! We’ll try to find a safe place to hide
while we wait.”

Static overtook the transmission for the
first time since beginning the conversation. “Repeat transmission.
You cut out—what?” The voice filled with alarm. Gunfire boomed in
the background. Then the channel went dead.

“You think they were under attack?” I
asked.

“Sure sounds like it,” she said. “They have
our signal, we should get back to the duct.”

I nodded. “That’s certain.” A spark of light
caught my attention to my left. The wall, covered in individual
displays—the very picture of a security room from any casino heist
film—came to life, streaming video footage as if monitoring the
ship. The screens shifted coverage.

Penelope pointed to a screen showing the
duct system and a dead alion. “That’s where we were.” She saw
another place where we had left a sign of our escape, then another
and another. “They’ve been watching us this whole time.”

I tapped the screen with our pods on view.
“If they know where we are, why have they let us roam the
ship?”

“They hunted us on the ground, on our own
territory . . . maybe they wanted to see how we would react in
their domain. You know, testing us . . .”

“You think we’ve been set up from the
beginning?” I asked, disconcerted.

“How else can you explain our survival? You
don’t think they have sensors that can pick us up? I mean it makes
sense, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe they never developed the technology.”
I regretted saying that; it was too unlikely . . . and the more I
thought about, the more it made sense, with the alion’s delay when
holding Penelope captive. They wanted to see what I could and would
do to rescue her. A shudder stopped the mental images. I didn’t
want to think about being a lab rat.

“Doubtful,” she scoffed.

I ignored her scathing tone. Scanning the
screens, I saw another familiar room, the concealed camera rotated
until the back of Penelope’s head came into the scene. A furry body
stood a few meters behind it. “But that would mean—” I started.

Both of us had been too distracted to notice
the silent footfalls of the alion creeping up behind us.

Reacting, Penelope shouldered the bazooka
and launched a stasis-orb. The alion froze. “Run!” she
commanded.

We bolted out the room and down a long hall.
An alion blocked our path in the next hall we entered. Sprinting up
behind us, a company of alions readied bazookas.

I fired the alion gun, both barrels
spinning, ejecting black globe after black globe. Blood splattered
the walls all around.

Penelope shot more stasis-orbs until a
mechanized noise signaled that it was empty. She cursed and threw
it at the company of alions. A stasis-orb suspended the bazooka in
the air, just short of smashing an alion’s skull.

Several more stasis-orbs flew our way.
Before I could say a word, I was trapped again, trapped in a frozen
world of blue. The lightning struck my body. My pain peaked, to the
point that I thought I would pass out.

But instead, I watched as the alions strode
over to me; one tapped its bazooka and the field disappeared.

Another alion ran up and stuck a needle in
my elbow.

I screamed as my surroundings descended into
a warm darkness that no light could penetrate.

Maggy

“
M
aggy! Maggy!”

Tortilla’s voice belled in my ears. I
couldn’t distinguish the words, I just recognized the voice . . .
that comforting voice. I opened my eyes, and there he was, stooping
over me.

“Tortilla?” I rasped. My sore voice ached,
and my throat was so dry that every syllable took great effort to
get out. “Tortilla?”

“I’m here, Maggy. I’m here.” He grasped my
hand, gently squeezing my fingers. “Do you need water?”

I heard gunfire next. The repetition of
burst rounds rent the air. The roars of alions rushed by my ears as
dread attacked my stomach. “What’s happening?”

“We’re under attack,” Tortilla replied. “Do
you need some water?” he repeated.

“I need a gun,” I answered.

“The third jeep is still running,” another
voice yelled. “We need to get to it if we want to get the hell out
of here.”

“I think she’s hurt, Burnhammer,” Tortilla
shouted back.

“Can you carry her?” Burnhammer’s voice
registered in my head.

“I think so,” Tortilla replied. “I’ll have
to.”

I noticed Burnhammer’s back, then her face
as she glanced down at me. She returned her attention to something
in the distance. The sound of her assault rifle rattled my
eardrums.

Tortilla wrapped an arm under my knees and
one around my back, lifting me with a grunt. He smiled. “Does this
hurt?”

“No,” I whispered.

Blackness swooped in again.

The thunder of machine guns broke my
sleep.

“On your nine! Nine! Nine!” someone
screamed. “To your six!”

A stone in the road sent a jolt of pain down
my back. The uneven terrain rocked the jeep side to side. I could
feel every little bump. I tried to sit up.

Tortilla put a hand to my chest to restrain
me. “Rest now. There’s nothing you can do for us. Let the soldiers
handle it.”

Each word became clearer as I listened. I
opened my mouth to talk, but nothing coherent came out, just a gasp
for air.

A bump sent Tortilla into the ceiling of the
back of the jeep and his glasses fell off. He cursed, but then
smiled at me, feigning cheeriness. He retrieved his crooked
spectacles. “We’re gonna get there, don’t you worry.”

Screams from the soldiers continued to burst
forth uninhibited: they used every swear word in the book, and they
never stopped.

“These jeeps were made for rides like this.”
Burnhammer’s voice rang loud and clear. “And we’ll take down every
SOB out there, you have my word on that.”

I shifted my head to the right and found
Burnhammer firing out an open side window. She was yelling as loud
as the rest of her comrades. With deft fingers, she endlessly fed
her assault rifle mag after mag.