Hissers II: Death March (3 page)

“But you were there.
No telling what you…”

“What I might have in my blood? In my brain? Like what, space slugs? Please.”

“Until we get the okay to let you go all of you are to remain with us. Sorry, it’s orders. I know it must suck, but trust me, you’re not prisoners. We’re trying to help.”

“I doubt it.”

She walked off toward the food tent, hungry for a Kit Kat or Snickers, still wondering about Connor, praying he was safe, angry at herself for not joining him. But when he’d leapt out of the truck, she’d known she needed to be with her parents. And she’d needed to run interference for him anyway. Two Marines had tried to stop him, but she’d thrown herself in front of them as he ran away. By the time they’d gotten her subdued, the spider monsters were appearing in the distance, and so they’d written him off and shouted for the trucks to get going. Her parents had asked her what was wrong with her head. She’d ignored them. All that mattered was that Connor got to San Diego.

But she still hated that she hadn’t joined him.

She found the food tent and riffled through a box of candies, settled on a Payday. It was hot and soft and she tried to find the fat content on the ingredients label but gave up. That’s when the alarm rang out all through the camp.

“Shit,” she muttered
, feeling her gut go tight, knowing what this must mean. “They’re here.”

And now she heard the familiar susurration of doom blowing on the breeze.

Ssssss Sssss Ssssss

Hissers. Closing in.

Tuesday, 9:19 AM

They were fifteen miles away from where he’d been picked up, but Connor was still on edge.
The interior of Olive’s trailer was cool and dark, owing to it being parked under a copse of trees. A wall of pallets had been set up as a perimeter but they were more for camouflage than actual protection. The furniture inside was small, designed for tight living quarters. A card table, a leather recliner, a TV on a small stand. Connor moved toward a metal pole running floor-to-ceiling in the middle of what passed for the living room. He ran his hand up and down it. “What’s this for? Support?”

Olive emerged from the bedroom, threw a shirt and jeans at him. “Here, put these on. They’ll probably fit okay. Belonged to an ex
of mine a long time ago. I kept them to do house work in.” She pushed past him and made her way through the kitchen and out the rear door. When she was gone he took off his damp clothes and put the new ones on, transferred his only belonging—the flash drive—to the pockets. She was right, they fit pretty well. Except that the jeans were too long so he rolled them up. He looked down at the shirt and read what was written there: Iron Maiden. He’d heard of them, but had never listened to their music. It was before his time. The picture of the monster on the front reminded him of the hissers, which seemed fitting for the situation.

Olive
came back in with two hot dogs and cheese from the small grill she’d fired up twenty minute ago. The food smelled amazing and he began to salivate like a dog.

“Here.” She handed him one of the dogs wrapped in a cheese slice. “Ain’t got any buns but it’s better than nuts and berries.”

“Thank you,” he said, taking the food and wolfing it down. It was good to have processed food again. The smell and taste reminded him of Seth, of their summer treks to the 7-Eleven for hotdogs and Redbulls. Once again he thought of his best friend, how he’d never see him again. Never play video games or ride bikes together. Never begin high school and play on the soccer team. He felt the tears in his eyes and turned away from Olive, pretended to wipe his mouth with the shirt but instead dried his eyes.

When he was done he turned back to the pole. “Is this a support beam?” he asked again.

Olive let out a short laugh. “Yeah, support for my wallet.”

“I don’t get it.”

She sized him up. “Fourteen, huh? Yeah okay. It’s for pole dancing, kid. Bartending was getting slow, and truth be told I could make more money doing this.”

“You mean you’re a stripper?”

“I guess you could say that. I prefer the term entrepreneur.”

“So, like, you have guys in here to watch you get naked?” It would explain why the trailer was so secluded, he realized.

“Hell no. And I ought to slap you for insulting my intelligence. What do I look like, a victim-in-waiting? No, I use that computer there. At least I did when there was an Internet. Charged guys twenty bucks for five minutes of a live show. See the little camera on top? They sent the money to my Paypal account and logged in to see a show.”

The feel of the pole suddenly took on a new sensation for Connor. He could envision Olive sliding up and down it completely nude, rubbing herse
lf in weird ways like he had seen girls do in videos on the Internet. He looked back at her, involuntarily looked her up and down. She was very attractive, skinny, with long brunette hair now tied in a ponytail, large eyes, small nose, and a figure that was worthy of getting paid for.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she said, “I ain’t giving you no show
.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to look—”

“For one, you’re too young and for two, you don’t have any money. That’s a joke, that second one. Relax, you look like you’re turning to stone. I’m just teasing you, Connor. But don’t think for one second I’m some kind of whore. It was just a supplemental income kind of a gig, you know. I’m not proud of it. But hell, I don’t regret it. I bought that truck out there with the money.  You okay? You look scared?”

Connor had never had any sort of interaction with a woman who wasn’t afraid to show her body to people. It was too…adult. And though he very badly wanted to see her naked—to see any girl naked for that matter—he knew this was beyond his comprehension.

He stepped back from the pole and looked at her TV. There was a Nintendo Wii sitting next to it. “Do you have Mario World?” he asked.

“No, I only have what came with it
—some sports thingie—and exercise games. Don’t matter though, the power’s dead here, remember?”

“Oh yeah.”
He sat back in the recliner and forced his eyes to avoid her. He still couldn’t help but think of her naked and hanging upside down on the pole now. To get his mind off it he started thinking of his favorite kills in Halo. Sticky grenade kills and warthog kills and melee kills.

“Where are you headed?” she asked, finishing up her hot dog.

“San Diego. I need to bring something to someone.”

“
Yeah? Like what?”

“This.” He took the flash drive from his pocket
.

“What’s that?”

“I’m not sure. I mean it’s a drive, you know, like, for a computer. But I don’t know what’s on it. It was in the plane that crashed, along with a bunch of other information about those creatures. We think it’s some kind of data, maybe a formula, for what made everybody turn into them. Nicole says we can probably use it to find a cure.”

“Oh yeah,” Olive said, as if a child were telling her about a favorite toy or TV show she didn’t really care about. “And who’s ‘we’? Who’s Nicole?”

“Nicole was my friend. She’s dead now. But she died getting this disk to me, and I promised I’d bring it to her dad’s work in San Diego. He works for some kind of science place. Like a…what do you call it…genetics lab or something.”

“No shit? Well that sounds exciting. And you have no idea what’s on it?”

“No. And I’m dumb. I got it wet about a dozen times. It probably doesn’t work.”

Olive pushed passed him into the bedroom, cam
e back out carrying a laptop. “It’s your lucky day, sport. I kept this shutdown in case the electricity ever came back on. It’s got about a quarter charge left on it. Let’s see if we can’t figure out what’s on this disk.”

It took a minute to fire up the computer,
and when it was booted up, she jammed the drive into one of the USB ports and accessed the computer’s drive files.

“Something’s here,” she said, “but it’s not working pro
perly. It keeps flashing off and on, disconnecting itself. Looks like the drive is messed up. Wonder if there’s a way to fix it.”

Connor watched as the document files flashed off and on the screen. He was elated to see that the drive even registered at all, but his heart sank knowing that the files might not ever work again. And even if they got them open somehow, who’s to say they were
n’t corrupted from the water damage.

“Ah, got one,” Olive said.

Connor’s eyes went wide. “What is it?”

“Looks like a bunch of numbers and letters. I’m no genius but it looks like chemistry equations.
Lots of weird math and some letters in a grid. Why didn’t you give this to the military at the encampment you were at? This is probably really fucking important.”

“That’s why we
didn’t
give it to them, because they made it. And then they killed my friends and family because of it.”

“What do you mean?
How do you know the military made these creatures?”

“Because I talked to the General guy who was in charge. He asked me to kill him but I wouldn’t. But he told me they made it. He told me there was no cure.”

“Connor, this here is important stuff. If this can stop what’s happening you’ve got to give it to them. Hell, I’ll take it to them.”

He reached out and grabbed her hand before she could take the drive from the laptop. “No! You don’t get it
. This was part of more of research that was destroyed in the crash. We saw a lot of it, and I don’t think the military actually knows the whole formula. So if we bring it to them we just give them the means to do this again. But Nicole said her dad’s job could look at it and fix it. Maybe.”

For a moment, Olive just stared at him, then slowly removed her hand from the drive. “Okay. Let me humor you for a second
, kid. If it’s true the military doesn’t know this formula, if the only data is on this drive, and a geneticist can possibly use it for a cure, then why not just take it to the closest lab?”

Connor wasn’t quite sure, he just knew
that it felt right to take it to Nicole’s father. Finally he uttered, “Because Nicole died for this. And I don’t even know where a lab is around here. Do you?”

“Actually no. And they probably aren’t open anyway.
There’s blockades everywhere and men with guns shooting up everything that looks like it’s dead.”

“Plus there’s more. I mean….I think Nicole wanted to see her dad. And now that’s she’s dead, and everyone else I know is dead, I want to tell her dad what she did. How she got this disk and how she was a good person.
And plus I know where that lab is because she told me. All I need is one of those big road map books. An atlas. I can find my way there.”

“It’s a full day
’s drive from here, Connor. And with the pandemonium were in it’ll take longer than that. Roadblocks are everywhere. I’m sure the freeways are just bumper to bumper traffic, or worse.”

He snatched the drive from the laptop. “I don’t care, I’m going. And this is mine.”

“It’s the possible future of humanity, kid. Let’s just give it to the military.”

“No! Didn’t you hear what I said? They’re the reason everyone I love is dead. They’re not getting this from me
. Ever.” He made his way to the door and stepped outside, looked up and down the paved road, which was flanked by nothing but woods on one side and a field on the other. Were it not for the telephone poles lining the road he might have figured Olive was living off the grid. A single set of wires connected from the nearest one to her mobile trailer, not that it mattered. She appeared behind him.

“Whatcha doing
now?” she asked.

“I gues
s I’m gonna get going. Which way is west?”

Olive stabbed a finger out past the field. “That way
, more or less. But you won’t make it by yourself. You don’t have any food, any weapons, and means of transportation.”

“I’ll walk. I walked this far.”

“You’ve come a fair way, I’ll give you that. But you’ve got too long a way to go alone. And that leg must still be hurting.”

That was true;
his shin still throbbed at times. But what choice did he have. He couldn’t just ask Olive to drive him all the way to San Diego. Clearly her life was here.

“Okay, screw it, I’ll drive,” she said, as if she’d heard his internal debate.

Connor felt relief flood through him. “Really?”

“Yeah.
You think I’m gonna stay here with what’s coming? I know I’m secluded and off the beaten path but this trailer won’t stand up against the big ones. Eventually they’ll wander over. Plus my mother is west of here. We spoke a few days ago. She was doing fine, but a lot has changed since then and I’m worried about her.”

“You don’t think those things are already west of us, do you?”

“Before the TV stations went out the other day, they were reporting sightings of them monsters all over the place. I’m a bit worried about what may be going on in the areas we ain’t getting reports on. Who knows.”