Alien Invasion 04 Annihilation (18 page)

Heather could hear herself, knew how ridiculous she must sound.
Alive again
. And
Like I said, he’s dead
. Yeah. Those weren’t things a crazy person said. It was positively shocking that Lila didn’t believe her every word.

It was impossible to talk with Meyer between them, with him dressing his wound in the middle of the formal dining room instead of somewhere logical, like a bathroom. How had this little display even happened? They didn’t store gauze in the dining room. He must have run somewhere for it then brought it here. Or he’d started to clean this strange new wound (and forget
that
mystery for a second) before getting suddenly hungry.
 

Heather grabbed Lila’s arm and dragged her aside, to the room’s end, as if Meyer might not notice them standing there talking about him.
 

“I wasn’t lying to you, Lila.”
 

“Mom … ”
 

“I told you he died. He did. I saw it happen. He wasn’t breathing. His eyes were open. It was over.” She blinked back tears, realizing how strange it would be to cry over the death of a man who was, in most people’s opinions, standing five feet from her now.
 

“I know you thought that, but — ”

“And then I told you he was back. I told you to go in and find him. I was telling you the truth then, too.”
 

“Mom, I know how you are, and I just — ”

“This isn’t funny to me, Lila. I haven’t been screwing with you. You need to believe me. That’s not … ” Heather stopped, hearing herself. She was about to say,
That’s not your father
. And when it had been just Heather and Meyer in the room, that had been easy to believe. But now she wasn’t just seeing Meyer through her own eyes. She was seeing him through Lila’s, too.
 

What, did she think he’d been body snatched?

Was it really that hard to believe what he’d said earlier, now that she really thought about it? After knocking Raj out cold, she’d seen a shuttle coming. She sat on the stones, sobbing over what she’d thought (perhaps erroneously) were Meyer’s final breaths. The shuttle’s approach was the reason she’d run, fleeing in futile circles before realizing Dorothy was right, and that in an alien-colonized city, there really was no place like home. She’d assumed the shuttle would arrive, see what had happened, and cart him away. Maybe finish Raj off for her. Or perhaps give pursuit, knowing Heather was a saboteur, and a potential murderer.

But maybe that’s not what the shuttle had done.
 

Maybe it had fixed him, even though he’d been technically dead.
 

After all, when people drowned, CPR could revive them minutes later. When they flatlined in ambulances and emergency rooms, countless TV shows had proved that a crash cart could bring those people back.
 

Yes, he’d been dead. Shot through the heart or lungs or God knew what else. Diced inside. But maybe the aliens been able to fix the damage and re-fire his system.
 

“That’s not what?” Meyer said, looking right at her.
 

Heather said nothing. Lila’s hard eyes softened. Heather exhaled, her shoulders dropping, defensive tension draining from her frame.

Heather thought Lila might cry, for reasons unknown — for the stress if nothing else.
 

Or maybe she’d walk out, still annoyed by her jackass mother’s antics.
 

But instead, Lila hugged Heather, too.
 

Behind her, Meyer smiled.
 

He continued to wrap his damaged hand.
 

Because even though Astral technology had healed a bullet through the chest, it somehow wasn’t available to fix a tenderized fist.

CHAPTER 35

When Charlie came around the RV, Nathan had parked himself in a folding lawn chair at the vehicle’s front, kicked back with a beer that had to be at least three years old. The moon had emerged and Nathan had no idea what time it was, but in this shitty folding chair he’d enjoyed the feeling of sitting under the sun on a summer day. Possibly while swatting flies and bitching about welfare.
 

“Send your drone,” Charlie said. There was no hello. There was only a command.
 

Nathan looked to Coffey for support, but she must have gone inside. The lawn chair next to him was empty, its garishly colored straps of woven plastic fiber exposed to the cool nighttime air instead of safely concealed by her ass.
 

“It’s malfunctioning,” Nathan answered.
 

“Let me look at it.”
 

“It’s so malfunctioned, you can’t even look at it.”
 

Charlie stood still, staring at Nathan through his thick glasses, his bushy brown-and-gray beard doing nothing to make him look softer or less angular. Charlie didn’t have particularly large eyes, but they always seemed to be sticking out, accusing the person they were watching of idiocy.
 

“The lights have been on for a while now,” Charlie announced. “Still just the generators. The drone might be able to spot them and go unseen if you got it close before. We need to know if they went toward the Apex. If they’re on target.”
 

“I don’t think they are,” Nathan stared.

Charlie stared.
 

“Are you going to ask
why
I think they’re not on target?”
 

“Why?”
 

“Because the Astrals probably chose to arrest them instead. It was inevitable.”
 

“We decided that the chances of arrest were low. That’s why we did this.”
 

Nathan swigged his beer. “Ah. Yes. But that was back when we thought the Astrals would need our friends to show them to Thor’s Hammer because they themselves didn’t know where it was.”
 

Charlie’s stare faltered. So he was human after all. “What are you talking about?”
 

“I dropped a message to Meyer Dempsey. Told him that two people were entering the city and that they were carrying the key to something the Astrals were very interested in, inside Cameron’s satchel.” Another sip. The beer tasted like gasoline.
 

Nathan tipped his beer at Charlie. “Oh. And that what the Astrals were searching for was almost for-sure under the Apex after all, just in a different chamber, and that if they scanned down there for stone matching the unique kind used in the key, they’d probably have no trouble fi — ”
 

Nathan stopped talking when Charlie, showing agility never before seen in a scientist, leaped forward and rolled them both over the chair, onto the ground.
 

Nathan had thought Charlie might try to hit him, but he hadn’t expected his fervor. The quickest and easiest way to let Charlie in on the situation was this ripping off of the Band-Aid, so Nathan had come ready to parry. But Charlie was stronger and more lithe than he appeared to be, and Coffey wasn’t around. Nathan was pinned in seconds.
 

“You turned them in?”
 

Nathan raised his leg, fast and hard. The knee struck Charlie in the balls, and he rolled away, moaning. Then, as Nathan righted the chair and brushed himself off to stand, Charlie hobbled over and tried to hit him. This time, Nathan was ready. But still, Charlie’s effort — stepping up with his boys crushed — was admirable.
 

The fight was over in less than thirty seconds. The scuffle pulled Coffey from the RV, but there was no longer a need. Nathan and Charlie were both leaning against opposite awning supports, panting. Two men past their youth, scrapping like teenagers.
 

“What’s going on here?” Coffey demanded, eyeing them both.

“I don’t think he likes my plan,” Nathan said.
 

Charlie lunged again. This time, Coffey was in the middle. She did little other than extend an arm but must have hit Charlie because he staggered and again found his place in the corner.
 

“You sold them out to save yourself,” Charlie said.
 

“Sit down, Charlie.”

“You’re a selfless, brutal — ”

“Sit
down,
Charlie,” Coffey repeated, pushing her chair toward him. “Let him explain.”
 

Charlie seemed both shocked and darkly satisfied by Coffey’s lack of surprise over the duplicity. His eyes were wary as he slowly sat, his body tense.

“We’ve been through this song and dance before,” Andreus said. “Man walks to gate. Man is allowed to enter. Then man does what the Astrals expect, hoping he’ll somehow be allowed to leave when he’s done, and of course that’s not how it happens. Last time, the Republic managed to get in there and take them out, but even that shouldn’t have worked. If they hadn’t specifically wanted us to get away so we’d get to take Piper to Moab, my people would have been fried as they’d rolled across the land between here and there. Think about it. Why has your lab been permitted to survive, even today? Because they needed Benjamin. After his death, they needed Cameron to go through his father’s research, and of course they need that power outlet on the property. Our truce is the only reason my camps haven’t been destroyed.”
 

He paused. Chances were extraordinarily slim that the Republic, which didn’t have the strategic significance to the Astrals of a Moab laboratory, was still in existence.
 

“Or
had
a truce, anyway,” Nathan finished. There should probably be emotion there, but he didn’t want to go looking. He’d managed to find Grace. That was enough. “We only truly fooled the Astrals once. Don’t tell me you can’t see the difference.”
 

Charlie was still watching Nathan with his big bug eyes.
 

“Cameron’s plan wouldn’t have worked. Somehow, he was supposed to do the exact same switcharoo we did in Cottonwood? It was absurd. Maybe the standoff would have held until they’d entered the Apex, which the Astrals would likely have allowed them do. But they’d have been watched. By Reptars, if it’s true those little BB things don’t work with the network out. He’d basically have had a guard on his tail the entire time. They’d have taken him the minute he reached the Hammer. Maybe Benjamin figured out what the Templars pulled off better than the Astrals, but I’ll bet they know how to use their own doomsday weapon just fine. There’d be no more need for Cameron or Piper. They’d have taken the key and turned it on. Then we’d all be fucked.”
 

“So you turned them in to save your skin,” Charlie said.
 

There was a low whistling noise in the sky above. Charlie looked up nervously, searching for a shuttle or perhaps the dark specter the others said they kept seeing like kids afraid of the boogeyman. But Nathan knew what it was, and it was right on time.
 

The black drone glided by, rolling to a stop on the flat land just beyond them.
 

“Malfunctioning,” Charlie said.
 

Nathan and Charlie stared at each other while Coffey trotted over. She returned with nothing more elegant or spectacular than a slip of paper that must have been banded to the drone’s belly.
 

She handed the paper to Nathan. He read it and smiled.
 

“What?” Charlie asked.
 

“Looks like Dempsey got my message turning them in to save my skin,” he said, “and has requested my presence in Heaven’s Veil.”
 

“Why?”
 

“To make peace,” Nathan said. “To discuss resuming my duties, controlling the outlands for our alien overlords.”

CHAPTER 36

Cameron kept looking up, reminding himself that nobody was all knowing or all powerful, and that the Astrals weren’t an exception.

There were no shuttles directly overhead, following them. There were no Reptars on the streets … on their paths. Without the reminder, Cameron couldn’t help wondering what game was being played against them — why the Astrals were letting them go free. But there was another possibility, if Cameron could let himself believe it: that the Astrals weren’t letting them go at all, and that for a change, they had actually managed evasion.
 

He thought of the Titans — the way they’d turned on each other like common thugs.

He thought of what Piper kept asking herself, and Cameron: what the black shadow had done back there, when it had diffused and surrounded them all. Was it responsible for what had happened? It sure seemed that way. But why? What was it? And what, precisely, had it done?

And again: Was the shadow — or the Astrals as a whole — playing them like the BB had been playing them before they’d discovered its presence? Was this another game? Another ruse designed to ease the fugitives into a false sense of security, as they’d been lulled before? Were the Astrals still watching … and were Cameron, Piper, Christopher, and Captain Jons now doing exactly what the Astrals wanted them to do, for reasons unknown?
 

Piper watched Cameron’s face as they half ran, half stalked the Heaven’s Veil streets. She seemed to be wondering the same things. Piper had run this same basic route before ending up at the church. Now they were headed almost all the way back, hoping for different results: a genuine escape rather than one they were coached to make. But Jons had sworn that Grandma Mary was still safe, that she hadn’t been discovered.