At the End - a post-apocalyptic novel (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) (34 page)

“We could use a key,” Jelly blurted.

“A key?” I asked.

“The things around the alions’ necks, those
are keys,” he stated. He walked over to an alion carcass and
snatched a green disk hanging around its neck. “These disks open
the doors.”

“Well that might make it a little easier,”
Burnhammer said. “But don’t count on it.”

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Penelope asked,
staring at Burnhammer.

“Corporal Burnhammer of the 56th Infantry
Division, United States Army.” She smiled. “The woman who’s going
to rescue your scrawny ass.”

Penelope smiled back at her. “And I’m glad
for it.”

“Good, now let’s get a move on.” PocketPad
in hand, she navigated the maze of corridors. Three rooms away,
Jelly opened a locked door, only to find a group of alions, but our
firepower made quick work of the surprised beasts.

That occurrence happened four more times,
but every time we killed the unsuspecting alions before they could
sound any alarm.

A few times the alions rushed us from
behind, scouting. One of the alions wore a funny helmet, which
Penelope seized, fitting it on her head.

“Oh, by the way, they can make themselves
invisible,” she said in a nonchalant tone. “But I think they also
have a way of detecting invisible objects with these nifty helmets.
I just have to figure out how to use them.” She pressed a button.
“There are several different types of vision. Even a heat sen—” She
screamed before she could finish her sentence, firing an entire
magazine into the air behind us.

“Was it an alion?” Jelly asked, picking up
two alion guns. He handed one to Penelope.

“Two,” she replied. She returned the empty
handgun to Burnhammer. “How close are we to the ship?”

“The hallway should only be two or three
rooms away,” Burnhammer said, regarding the PocketPad screen.

Inhaling a deep breath, we continued on,
sprinting the rest of the way.

We huddled under the hole in the ceiling.
“How are we going to get back up?” I asked.

“I wish you would have asked that before we
left the ship,” Tortilla spat.

“It’s okay,” Burnhammer assured us. Using
the PocketPad, she sent a signal to the ship, and out of a
compartment below the hatch ejected a tether used for the
spacesuits. The tether fell down the sealing tube, hitting the
grating of the alion ship. “Climb,” she ordered.

We didn’t hesitate. Penelope ascended first,
then Jelly, and next went Tortilla. Burnhammer eyed me, and I knew
not to argue, so I climbed up the tether as fast as I could.
Burnhammer threw a grenade to each end of the corridor, then began
scrambling up until she was aboard the ship.

I closed the hatch.

When we sat down in the cockpit, the radio
started spitting out words muffled by static.

Burnhammer clutched the radio. “Repeat
transmission. I say again, please repeat transmission.”

The static disappeared for a second and I
recognized Geisler’s voice. I listened carefully as the static
dropped in and out. “They—all—dead—sur—attack—they’re all
dead!”

Darrel

“
W
ho is dead?
Geisler, what are you talking about?” Burnhammer spoke into the
radio.

I sat in a chair to the right of the front
chairs. Penelope had plunked down next to me. Everyone in the room
listened with attentive ears.

“Henderson, Fox—vera, Lakes, Tasper, they’re
all dead.” The soldier Burnhammer called Geisler was cutting out
less frequently now. “You have to turn on the Planetary Defense
Network . . .”

Burnhammer flopped back in her chair.
“They’re all dead . . .” she said quietly, directed at no one in
particular. She looked over at Maggy. “What do ya say, are you up
for it?” She glanced around at all of us.

“Hell yes we are,” Maggy spoke up.

“Wait, what are we up for?” Penelope
asked.

Maggy explained the plan, how they had
intended to destroy all the alion vessels by powering up the
inoperative PDN, and also how the alions were permitted to abduct a
percentage of humans before they went and took almost everyone. The
brief story made my stomach queasy.

Eventually Penelope and I agreed to the
mission. We didn’t really have a choice, though.

“Geisler, inform command at Mount Baldy that
we’ll finish the job,” Burnhammer told the soldier on the other
side of the radio. “Geisler, there is something you should know . .
. there are hundreds of people trapped on the ship in some sort of
suspended animation, we can’t just kill them . . .”

I wanted to correct her and tell her that
there were probably millions aboard the ship, but I kept my mouth
shut instead.

“Can you rescue them?” Geisler asked.

“We tried, but we couldn’t figure out how.
Maybe if we could get some help, someone who knows electronics and
mechanics better.”

“This is our only chance, you have to power
up the PDN. Do I have to order you to do it?”

“No, sir. We’ll be back to celebrate before
you can say hold on to your panties. Over and out.” Burnhammer
replaced the radio on the console. Geisler gave no reply, or if he
did, the radio was turned down enough so that I couldn’t hear
it.

“So we’re going to leave those people there
to die?” Penelope asked.

“We would have to know how to work the alion
systems,” Maggy said. “Otherwise the people die if we try to
release them any other way. Trust me, we tried; it was
terrible.”

“Which brings us to the question: how did
you escape the capsules?” Félix asked.

“Uhrm. The capsules, you mean the pods?” I
asked.

“Sure, whatever, the pods. How did you get
out of them? Or were you never in them?”

“Oh, we were in them all right,” I told him.
“But there was a
malfunction
”—I air quoted—“with Penelope’s
pod, and she escaped, killed an alion, then by some great luck,
released me. We think they were testing us, letting Penelope loose
on purpose, to see what she would do, like an experiment. But we
don’t really know.”

Burnhammer disengaged from the alion mother
ship, zooming through space. It was unbelievable, the stars, the
orbiting satellites, the dead Solar Stations, the mother ship,
everything within view astounded me.

Luckily no alion space fighters hunted us,
as there had been an epic space battle earlier, one Félix described
with fondness and enthusiasm, telling us how he had operated the
ship’s laser system.

I supplied them with the story of how we
escaped, living in the duct systems, finding the alion technology,
the flight deck, killing the alion admiral, the freezer, the wall
of security footage that displayed our every move, squeezing in
every agonizing detail that I could remember. Penelope helped out
when I misremembered something, but kept quiet for the most part,
growing more irritated the more times Maggy called me Jelly. Her
jaw was clenched, and I could see how much she disliked the
nickname.

“We’re nearing the ISS,” Burnhammer apprised
us of our closing proximity. “There are still drones circling the
station, and I don’t see any alion ships docked, so the alions that
killed the rest of the platoon must have already been on there.
Hopefully that’s a good thing for us.”

“A good thing?” Maggy questioned. She
prepared her gear. She wore a full-length suit of body armor, which
she related as Dragon Scale, a bullet-stopping suit of magic.

“If they were already there, then maybe that
means only a few are monitoring the station,” Burnhammer said.
“Posted there to make sure a group like us doesn’t come along with
a bright idea like ours. They probably never actually thought we’d
be coming since they took away almost everything we had to fight
them with.”

“They’re probably cloaked,” Penelope chimed
in.

“Makes sense,” Burnhammer replied. “It would
explain how such a well-trained team was taken down without a large
number of alions on board. Unless of course I’m wrong and a whole
company of the beasts await our arrival.”

“And if there is a whole company of alions,
what do we do then?” Félix raised the question.

“We’ll give ’em everything we’ve got,”
Burnhammer answered.

“Or die trying,” Penelope said, as if a
motto.

“That’s certain,” I said. “Does anyone know
what to do once we land?”

Burnhammer slowed the ship, pulling up
alongside the giant station. She approached a landing platform that
resembled a helicopter pad. “Someone is supposed to guide us
through the process. Geisler will patch us through to somebody with
some expertise, or at least a manual.”

“All right, I guess that’s something,” I
replied.

The ship felt like it was barely moving when
she touched down. Automatic clamps locked us in place. “Geisler,
this is Burnhammer, we’ve docked on the ISS.”

“Glad to hear it. I’m ready to patch you
through to command. Communications say they have a small team
working through the manuals, and one person who has actually been
aboard the ISS. So this is good luck from the rest of the Stalkers,
we hope to see you soon. HOOAH.”

“HOOAH,” Burnhammer shouted into the
radio.

“Corporal Burnhammer, this is command at
Mount Baldy, please respond,” a familiar female voice said over the
radio.

I turned to Penelope. “I recognize that
voice.”

She scrunched her brow. “How?”

“I’m not sure,” I replied.

“This is Burnhammer. Who am I talking
to?”

“Private Albores. I had the pleasure of
talking to your platoon leader, Henderson. Are you ready for
docking instructions?”

“I am, Albores. Proceed.”

“I guess normally someone inside the station
would engage the docking tunnel, so you’ll have to board the ISS
and do it manually. There will be a button on the inside of the
docking portal. You can use your PocketPad to send a code to open
the doors. Transmitting code now . . .”

“Oh great, another trip outside. Just what I
wanted to do.”

“ . . . Life support and artificial gravity
are still online, along with secondary lights and some other minor
systems.”

“All right, thanks, private. I’ll radio you
when we’re secured. Over and out.”

“Over and out.”

“I can do it,” Maggy shouted with
excitement. She sprung from her chair. “Let me do it.”

“Sorry, Maggy, but I can’t let you,”
Burnhammer said. “Now help me put on the suit.” Heading towards the
aft compartment, we watched Burnhammer gear up in the spacesuit. We
had to wait behind a door in another compartment as she disappeared
out the hatch.

“I could have done it,” Maggy muttered.

“We all know that,” Félix said. “But it’s
her charge to protect us, so let her do her job.”

Maggy eyed him disapprovingly.

“So tell me what happened after we were
taken?” I asked. Maggy had already related that Penelope’s sisters
were safe at some secret military base, but she hadn’t mention
Jacob at all. “How is Jacob?”

The two began to tear up at Jacob’s name.
“He uh . . . he didn’t make it,” Félix said with a lump in his
throat. “He died in Portland.”

I cleared my throat. “Died . . . how?” I sat
down, waiting for an answer.

“He had gotten pretty sick, and he was
exhausted, which slowed him down,” Maggy said. “He was put in, well
it’s hard to describe, but it was like a big blue cloud—”

“Yeah, we know those,” I interrupted.

“Okay, well, after they trapped him . . .
yeah.” She sniffled. “I . . . I watched it happen. I thought he was
right behind me, but when I turned . . . he was so far back. I
should have kept a closer eye on him.”

Félix grabbed her and put her head to his
shoulder.

I reflected on my friendship with Jacob. I
hadn’t known him all too well, but still, his death pained me a
great deal.

I jerked as the ship moved.

“I think something hit us,” Penelope said.
She ran to the window between compartments, searching the aft for
Burnhammer. “She’s not back.”

My memories of Jacob were put to the back of
my mind as I looked through the window. “Uhrm. How long should we
wait?”

“No more than an hour,” Maggy said. “There’s
another suit.” She pointed to the white spacesuit hanging in a
cubby. “I’ll go investigating by then.”

“You won’t have to,” Penelope said. “There
she is now.”

I glanced through the window and saw
Burnhammer stepping out of the hatch. She gave us the thumbs
up.

Maggy tapped a button that pressurized the
room. Opening the door a moment later, we scooted inside, peering
down the hatch. A long pipe had extended up to connect the ISS to
the ship.

I stared down at a walkway into the ISS,
something I had never thought I would do. The ladder spaced the
entire distance, so we didn’t have to worry about a tether, which I
had trouble climbing up from the alion mother ship. I was certainly
grateful for the sturdy bars.

Once we helped Burnhammer remove the
spacesuit, she walked up to Penelope. “Do you mind if I wear your
helmet. I’m trained and I should be the one to go first.”

Penelope nodded, stripping off the helmet
and handing it over to the soldier.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get all the furry
bastards,” Burnhammer declared. “I promise.” She stared at Maggy
for a moment. “Since I’ll be busy watching our front, you’ll have
to navigate us.” Unclipping her radio, she handed it to Maggy,
along with her PocketPad. “Can you handle it?”

“Yes, sir,” Maggy quickly replied.

“Ready?” Burnhammer glanced around at
us.

I nodded, raising my alion gun. Everyone
else signaled that they were prepared as well.

With the go-ahead, Burnhammer descended the
ladder. Her feet planted on the ISS and she scanned the area.
Looking up, she yelled, “Clear.”