Alien Invasion 04 Annihilation
Read Alien Invasion 04 Annihilation Online
Authors: Johnny B. Truant Sean Platt
Annihilation
by Sean Platt &
Johnny B. Truant
Copyright © 2015 by Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
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CHAPTER 1
Piper Dempsey watched Cameron step out from behind the rock outcropping, unsure of why exactly his body language made her certain he wanted to die.
“Stay low, Cameron,” Andreus whispered.
Instead of ducking like the others, Cameron moved forward. Into the gap between rocks, in full view of the massive silver sphere. He may as well have been hands to hips like a gunslinger.
“Cameron,” Charlie said.
“It knows we’re here either way,” Cameron replied without turning. “What’s the point in hiding, Charlie?”
As if the words were his cue, Cameron climbed to the rock’s top. Piper, not trusting herself to speak, could only watch him do it. She watched him clamber. She watched his feet miss and drag dry lines along the rock’s side. She listened, wincing, as a scree of loose stone fell to the ground with a clatter.
She thought Cameron might stand. Instead, he sat on the rock as if watching a sunset, in full view of the mothership.
Piper finally found her voice. She reached up and took his wrist, tugging. But really, what did she think she would do? Drag him off, give him a concussion against the hot, baked ground?
“It’s going to see us.”
“It can already see us.”
Jeanine piped up. “We haven’t seen any shuttles since leaving the Mormon archive.”
Instead of striking Cameron as a sensible rebuttal, it must have hit him as fighting words. He’d been eerily silent through the trip. She wasn’t sure if the hard look in his eyes, on his usually boyish, recently older face, was an improvement or something worse.
“You’re right,” he snapped. “We
haven’t
seen any shuttles. No motherships. No Reptars slinking around the rocks after us … or maybe they’d put their safeties back on, and we’d get to watch a bunch of smiling Titans following like drones? They could get on tiny motorcycles then follow the RV. That’d be funny, wouldn’t it? They’d look like those famous fat twins on their bikes. Alien comedy at its best.”
Now Andreus looked angry. He’d been wearing a damp rag on his head since they’d left the RV in one of the few places with overhead cover a few miles back. Piper kept wanting to make babushka jokes, but she couldn’t quite manage. The man might be firmly on their side now, but he was still terrifying.
It would probably get worse. Piper was sure the warlord’s daughter was as dead as Cameron’s father and her own stepson, but right now his anger seemed blunted by hope. He’d be terrible once that was gone.
“Get the fuck off that rock,” Andreus said. “You’ll blow our cover.”
Cameron looked at Andreus with a fight in his eyes. The look, from the once-thoughtful and always-smiling man she’d loved, was awful.
Cameron’s jaw worked. He glanced toward the mothership parked over the Moab ranch. The ground was scorched and seemed to have taken at least one blast from an energy weapon, but much of what was once there seemed to be standing. Why, Piper had no idea.
Cameron backed up, stood, and raised his arms overhead, facing the ship.
“Hey, you!” he shouted in the thin desert air. “Hey! We’re over here, you motherfuckers!”
Piper was sure Andreus would tackle him, but Coffey acted first. She was simple but effective. She grabbed both ankles and pulled. Cameron fell on his ass, his body bending him in the middle to keep his head from striking the rock. Coffey couldn’t have known for certain it would work. She might’ve figured he’d end up quiet or dead, and either would be an improvement.
With Cameron unbalanced, Coffey dragged him down. A second later, he was in a jumble against the rock’s foot, his face full of frustration and stewing emotion. To Piper, it all seemed to be on one end of the spectrum: anger, desperation, maybe self-destruction. He’d done selfless, but he was through. And he’d done surviving, but it seemed like Cameron was finished with that, too.
Andreus and Coffey stood over him. Charlie came to Piper’s side and, shocking her, took hold of her arm in a way that was almost comforting, almost human.
Piper thought a fight might erupt, but Cameron only shook his head, looking at the dust, clearly sad. They’d all shed their tears in the three days it had taken to find a way back here — on foot, then right out in the goddamned open in the solar RV that the Astrals had conveniently left behind. Cameron — and unbelievably, even Charlie — had come from moments of privacy with red eyes. Piper had cried the most, and openly. But it wasn’t loss she saw on Cameron’s face now. It was something worse.
“They let us go,” he said. “They almost killed us back at Little Cottonwood, but then they had their time to cool off, and now they’re just watching again. They won’t hurt us. No matter what we do, we’re free to be slaves.”
“We don’t know that,” Andreus said.
Cameron’s eyes went to the warlord then to Charlie before they settled on Piper. When he spoke, Piper assumed his words were meant for Andreus. But he stared right at her, eye to eye.
“We know,” he said, “and now we’re in hell.”
CHAPTER 2
Nathan Andreus wanted to punch Cameron in the face. Not just to shut him up, either, though there was that. Mostly, he needed someone to hurt, and this group of five was all he had. Because about that, Cameron was right: There had been no Astrals since they’d left Cottonwood. Their absence had seemed lucky. But now, looking at Cameron, Andreus had to admit he’d always seen it as convenient as well.
“We stop whining,” Andreus said, “and we start finding solutions.”
“Just walk up there,” Cameron said, standing, seeming to make an effort to pull his little tantrum together. He tossed his chin toward the half-destroyed cliffside lab, the ranch house remains sticking their burned members into the sky like black bones. “That’s your solution. Just walk right on up.”
“There’s no cover,” said Charlie.
Andreus winced. He was trying to diffuse Cameron rather than fuel him. But Charlie had teed him up.
“We don’t need cover, Charlie. They want us to go in there.”
“We’ve already done this,” Andreus said. “The part where we pretend they can see us and act accordingly.”
“We weren’t pretending then, and we’re not pretending now.”
“You saw how they came after us. They wanted your satchel.” He nodded to the bag hanging against Cameron’s side, indicating the plate with its keylike ridges inside. The device, if the late Benjamin Bannister had been correct, was a key to the Thor’s Hammer weapon.
“Then what?”
Cameron shook his head then turned toward Piper, finding the group’s easiest audience. Andreus had been trying to keep his eyes forward since they’d left Cottonwood, choosing to believe they’d find something in Moab worth saving. That Grace was still alive out there somewhere, against all odds, and that he was still a father despite his recent role as widower. But Nathan had to admit that Piper, at times, had been one of the group’s most determined. They were a pair, same as he and Jeanine. Charlie was the odd man out, and sometimes it felt like they were two teams fighting for the man like a swing vote.
“Then what were they supposed to do?” Cameron repeated, facing Piper, eyeing the others. “If they’d taken the plate from my satchel, what would they have done next?”
“Used it,” Coffey said.
“Where?” Cameron met Nathan’s eyes, challenging him in a way nobody challenged Nathan Fucking Andreus. “Where would they go to use it? Dad says the Templars took Thor’s Hammer and hid it. They took this key,” he slapped the satchel, “and hid
it
, too, like removing the core from a nuke. So let’s say they caught us back there. What would they have done with the key? Thor’s Hammer is still lost.” His jaw shifted to the side, biting crosswise, eyes half-lidded. “I just keep coming back to the fact that once upon a time, someone pulled a fast one on the Astrals. And that all we’re doing, by keeping up this chase, is helping them find it.”
“We’re finding it to deactivate it,” Charlie said, his tone still neutral, drier than toast.
Cameron leaned against the rock, his eyes wanting to close. When he spoke again, he sounded as spent as they all felt.
“We should just give up.”
Nathan’s eyes flicked to Piper, expecting her to protest, to feed into his self-pity. But she stayed put, newly hardened by Trevor’s death, along with all the others.
“It’s lost,” Cameron continued. “They don’t know where to find it. If my father was still alive, it might make sense to go after it. Maybe we could have pulled another switcharoo and reached the thing with enough time to destroy it, but all we’ll do now is lead them right to it. We’ll see where they’ve been hiding, then we can stop pretending we’re alone, or ever have been.”
