A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) (11 page)

Oates isn’t paying attention to me. He’s staring intently past me into the blanket of white fog, in this way that feels vaguely ominous.

Crack-BOOM!

“Uh, Oates?” I say. “What is that—”

He puts up a hand to quiet me, and that’s when I pick it up. It’s not the thunder-crack that’s got him spooked. There’s another sound underneath it. A very quiet whirring that grows gradually louder. I do my own ominous staring-off-into-the-creepy-white-fog thing, but all my pitiful human eyes can make out is a giant heap of nada.

Until . . .

Several dark splotches begin to appear out of the fog. Five splotches, to be precise. As they get within a few hundred meters of us, I’m able to distinguish what they are: five large snowmobiles, cruising over the snow toward the camp.

“More supplies?” I ask Oates. “Why is headquarters sending more stuff so soon after we got here? And why didn’t
we
get to cruise in on snowmobiles?”

“Because,” Oates says solemnly. And when I look up at him, his stony face makes all of his previous stony faces look downright expressive. “We don’t use snowmobiles.”

“Uh . . .”

“Get behind me, child.”

A fierce chill hits me in the stomach. The Jin’Kai. They’ve found us.

The snow instantly seems to grow a hundred times thicker than before. I feel like I’m stuck in one of those nightmares where you try to run but your legs won’t work as I try to push through the snow to hide behind Oates. Not that it will do much good. There’s at least four or five guys on each of the snowmobiles, and as tough as Oates is, I don’t think he’s going to stand much of a chance against twenty some Jin’Kai, who presumably are armed. Our only hope is if we can get back to the cabin and warn the others.

Oates must have the same idea, because he’s slicing through the waist-deep snow to make a path for us away from the intruders. But instead of ducking inside the cabin, he suddenly shifts direction and heads to the dog kennel. A split second later he emerges brandishing a long pole, one of the
snares he uses to corral the dogs when they’re overly rambunctious. Oates darts back in front of me just as the first two snowmobiles blast into camp.

The riders are wearing black thermals with full ski masks covering their faces. Which is a little moustache-twirly-cliché, even for the Jin’Kai. Oates extends the snare out horizontally in front of him, and with a lightning-quick jump forward he manages to cross-check both of the drivers, knocking them off their vehicles before they can brake to a stop. They fall backward into the snow, forcing the other riders to bail out before the mobiles crash into the side of the cabin. The Jin’Kai roll away and crouch into attack positions, but they’re a bit clumsier than I would have expected. At least, compared to Oates, that is. Dude is a straight-up ninja.

The Jin’Kai charge at him en masse, brandishing what look like batons. So apparently this ice-bound outfit thought they could capture me without the use of ray guns. Interesting. There’s ten attackers encircling Oates, while the last three snowmobiles whir in behind them, but Oates doesn’t seem fazed in the slightest. He bobs and weaves, avoiding each intended blow, using the momentum of his attackers against them as he whacks one in the back and trips another one up before lunging past.

And then it happens. One of the Jin’Kai douchetards spots me and makes a move toward me. But before the dude can get two paces closer to me, Oates has caught him around the neck with the snare. He yanks him down hard into the snow.

“Elvie, go!” he shouts.

For serious, that is some badass shit.

I’m busy thanking my lucky stars I somehow always seem to be sided with the buffest aliens, when Oates suddenly stumbles forward, tripping over the dude he’s just downed, and I realize he’s been smacked by a second Jin’Kai in the back. Despite his limp, Oates manages to spin on his attacker, landing a crunching
smack
with the butt of the pole against the dude’s jaw.

I turn toward the door of the cabin, which is feeling a lot farther away than the six or so meters that it actually is. And I’m halfway there when one of the snowmobiles cuts in front of me, spraying me in the face with icy snow as it slices to a stop. My path is blocked. I raise my hands in the air—’cause, I don’t know, that’s what you do—and my eyes dart frantically, searching for Oates. But it’s all a mess of confusion and snow and fog and
seriously loud barking
, and I can’t find him anywhere.

“It’s a girl!” one of the Jin’Kai shouts, leaping off his ride.

“Grab her!” a second shouts. The first guy moves toward me. Given the snowdrifts and all, the number of available evasive maneuvers in my repertoire is slim, so the dude’s on me pretty quick. My only remaining move is one I haven’t stooped to since fourth grade.

As the Jin’Kai grabs both my upraised arms, I knee him squarely where the sun don’t shine.

His balls, I mean. The sun does not shine there.

“Oof!” my attacker shouts, dropping me with a
plop
on my butt in the snow. “You little—”

Before he can finish, a flash of tan fur comes to my rescue, tackling the Jin’Kai into the snow. As I scramble to my feet,
Pontius is snarling and shredding the dude’s black thermal with his massive jaws.

I knew that doggy liked me. The other dogs have all run away, or are taking in the scene semicuriously while licking themselves in unmentionable places. Not my buddy Pontius, though.

“Pontius!” I shout, suddenly eyeing another intruder, smaller than the rest, who has snuck around from behind the snowmobile with his baton raised.
“Pontius!”
But the dog is too busy chewing on the guy underneath him to listen.

Before the would-be PETA offender can strike the brave pup, I jump on the guy’s back. And to my surprise, the Jin’Kai topples over, burying us both in a drift. I wrestle the baton out of his hand without much effort and toss it away. He struggles underneath me, but I have him pinned.

“No offense,” I say, panting. I wedge my knee farther into the guy’s stomach and glare at his ski-masked face. “But you’ve got to be the lamest, weakest Jin’Kai I’ve ever met.”

“Jin
what
?” comes the high-pitched response. I do a double take. The person whose kidney I’m currently grinding to paste is . . . a woman.

A baton blow to my noggin creates a rather unpleasant sensation, and I topple forward. I think I hear my female adversary call out “No!” as she pulls herself out from under me, but I can’t say. The sky above me is spinning round and round and round. A few hands grab me underneath my arms, and I am brusquely lifted to my feet.

“Are you all right? Can you walk?” the woman barks at me. I try to focus on her masked face, but everything is still spinning.
Close by I can make out Oates, his arms tied behind his back, kneeling in the snow. Pontius is being held at bay with the very snare that Oates had been using only a moment earlier. “Can you walk?” the question comes again. In response I straighten up to my full five feet, three inches, and eye my attackers very seriously.

And vomit.

The woman turns around to Oates.

“We’re here for Bernard Oglesby,” she spits through her mask. “Your hostage. Is he inside the facility?”

Hostage? Bernard? I want to explain to this woman that Bernard’s no hostage—unless he’s the kind of hostage who
walks across the fricking tundra to give his captors a break on fuel cell money
. But I’m too busy working on this potential concussion I’ve got going to tell her that, and Oates—surprise surprise—says nothing at all.

The woman marches toward the cabin. “Bring him,” she instructs her friends. She flicks a thumb at me. “Carry her.”

I am lifted off my feet and carried by one of the intruders as we make our way inside the cabin. It’s clear once we’re all inside that these guys, whoever they are, aren’t Jin’Kai. They’re not nearly buff enough. Furthermore, they pretty much have no idea what they’re doing—they’re no finely tuned commando force like the one Cole and Captain Bob were a part of, that’s for sure. They rummage through the cabin, knocking over shelves, before coming to the sliding door in the floor that leads to the underground facility.

“Bring me the C-4,” the woman calls out to someone behind her. One of the goons hands her the small putty explosive, and she sticks it against the door.

“That won’t be necessary,” Oates says. She stops and raises an eyebrow. Well, I assume she raises an eyebrow. There’s no way to tell with the ski mask and all. But it’s certainly an eyebrow-raising moment. “There’s no need for further violence,” Oates goes on. “I will tell you the code provided you give me your word not to harm anyone else.”

“We’re not here to harm anyone,” the woman replies. “So long as everyone plays nice.”

Oates stares at her for a moment, before finally speaking. “Three, two, six, three, eight, two, seven.”

The woman plugs the number into the control panel. There is a sharp beep, a slight delay, and then the door slides open. The woman gestures to some of her cohorts, who rush ahead down the stairs. I give Oates a look as we are shoved together down the stairs at the back of the group, but he gives no sign that he notices.

The door doesn’t usually beep.

We come down into the main hallway, and strangely, the door to the canteen at the far end is closed. The hall is completely empty.

“Where is everyone?” the woman asks in a whisper. Her comrades have taken up defensive positions on either side of the hallway, looking around for any sign of movement.

“It’s nearly lunchtime,” Oates says calmly. “They’ll be in the canteen down yonder, prepping the meal.”

Another flick of her head, and the intruders make their way quietly down the hall. My heart is racing in my chest, my head still throbbing. I can’t believe I’ve gotten myself in the middle of an interspecies attack
again
. This sort of destructive
pattern is the kind of thing that girls seek therapy for.

“Once we have control of the facility, find out where Bernard is being kept,” the woman orders one of the dudes walking with her. “Knowing him, he’s probably leading them all in a drum circle—”

Before she can finish, it happens. The doors lining the hallway on either side of us suddenly swoosh open, all at once, and nearly every Almiri prisoner floods out. It happens so fast, and my brain is still so fuzzy, that I’m not even sure what’s gone down. It’s just a flurry of arms and shouting. There are nearly as many Almiri as intruders, and with the jump they have on them, they almost don’t need their super strength. But super strength never hurts, and within a few moments all of the intruders have been disarmed and subdued.

Only then does the canteen door slide open, revealing Rupert on the other side.

“Thanks for the heads up, Titus,” he tells Oates, grinning. “And to think, some of us thought that installing a fail-safe code was extreme.”

“You treacherous Almiri pig,” the woman spits at Oates, struggling against the prisoner who holds her arms pinned behind her. Oates moves past her into the canteen and turns his back to Rupert so that he can cut the binds on his wrists.

“I’m not the one attacking someone’s home,” Oates replies calmly. “Bring them in,” he says to one of the other Almiri. “Let’s see who we’ve got here.”

When we get inside the canteen, I spot Dad and Ducky and Cole standing near one of the far tables. Cole is bouncing Olivia in her papoose. He holds out an arm for me, but I rush
right to the baby, scoop her out, and snuggle her tightly.

“You’re becoming quite the action heroine,” Dad says.

“I think it’s the company I keep.” I stroke Olivia’s feather-soft hair. I’m just so happy she’s okay. She didn’t even wake up in the scuffle.

“I’m glad you’re all right too,” Cole says, startling me into a mega-humongous bear hug. But I don’t mind for one second accepting it. After all, I
did
almost just get ski-mobiled in half.

When I look up, Ducky’s kicking his toes into the floor awkwardly, looking anywhere but at me. I finally catch his eye.

“Sorry,” I mouth silently.

“Sorry,” he mouths back.

We’re gonna be okay, me and Duck. I let myself relax and squeeze my baby closer, taking in the scene around me.

One by one the intruders are unmasked, and I’m surprised to discover that the woman I went knee-to-stomach with outside is not the only female in the bunch. Of the twenty or so ski-masked baddies, about half are ladies. And if that weren’t a tip-off that these enemies weren’t Jin’Kai, their general appearance sure is. I don’t want to sound catty, but runway models these guys are
not
. Between them they’ve got a smattering of receding hairlines, pronounced teeth, and weak chins, just to name a few physical knocks that afflict normal, non-Almiri/Jin’Kai folk.

Still, they’re not all hard on the eyes. I notice Ducky’s gaze lingering on one particular intruder standing not half a meter from Oates. A reed-thin, leggy redhead, probably about twenty-two or twenty-three.

“Cute,” I lean over to tell Ducky. “Kind of a long face,
but you could almost call her striking. You have good taste in villains.”

Within a nanosecond Ducky’s face is as red as the girl’s hair.

“What do you suggest we do with the mules?” I hear Jørgen sneer. And when I look over, I’m shocked to see that for once he’s not glaring daggers at
me
. This time he’s eyeing the ski-masked intruders. Talk about eloquent. Man, the guy really needs to expand his burn vocabulary.

“The lot will remain in the pantry until you hear otherwise from me,” Oates instructs his fellow Almiri. He gives Jørgen a good long look. “You will not harm a one of them.”

“You heard the man,” Jørgen grumbles to the other Almiri, sounding about as thrilled as if Oates had just told him to go pluck his nose hairs out, one by one, with chopsticks. “Into the pantry!”

“Except for that one,” Oates says, pointing to the female ringleader at the far end of the long room, who has yet to be unmasked. She’s still struggling against her captor’s grip, which is very clearly useless—but you’ve got to admire the lady’s moxie. “And the ambassador,” Oates continues. He shoots a glance around the room. “Where is he?”