Revelations (18 page)

“Shit!” she murmured under her breath and hauled MacAlister toward the exit, his injured foot dragging behind him.

Emily started screaming for help as soon as they hit the exit doors. She could see Parsons and the other sailor look up from their work on the Black Hawk’s engine, their heads swiveling back and forth like disturbed prairie dogs as they tried to locate the source of her cry. She yelled again and this time she saw Parsons point in their direction, then he was down off the copter and running toward them.

“Bloody hell, girl, what happened? Where’s Rusty?” he asked, panting for breath.

“Dead,” she said, as Parsons and the other sailor slipped MacAlister’s arm from around her and over their own shoulders. They carried the dazed soldier double-time to the cover of the helicopter. Emily kept checking behind them, watching for the beetles to suddenly appear in the doorway, but there was no sign of them. Territorial, she thought, like spiders, who preferred to hunt in very localized areas.

“What happened?” Parsons demanded.

“Later,” she said, as a wave of exhaustion overtook her. “We need to get him back to the base.”

By the time they reached the boat, MacAlister was fully conscious again but still unable to walk without the help of the others.

“Are you okay?” he asked Emily through dry lips.

“It’s just a scratch,” she said, probing the chunk of flesh that had been bitten from her palm.

The damage from the beetle’s bite was not as serious as it could have been, probably because they hunted as a pack. Just as a single bee sting would not have killed the average human, a single bite from one of the creatures was not going to prove fatal. They relied on their sheer overwhelming numbers to take down their prey.
Unless the bite also conveyed some kind of toxin or poison
, her mind added. Unless it was a slow-acting one, then that seemed unlikely. Still, the thought lingered.

MacAlister let out a hiss of pain as his companions hefted him into the boat.

“I’ll get his boot off,” Emily said as the other sailor moved to the boat’s controls and started the engine. She unlaced the boot and began to gently ease it off his foot. MacAlister’s clenched teeth were enough to tell her it was painful.

“Sorry,” she said, wincing as she pulled the boot away with a final tug. She stripped off the thick sock. Beneath it she could see his ankle was swollen and there was some bruising around the joint. Gently, she ran a finger over the swelling, expecting MacAlister to cry out in pain, but he didn’t even wince. “No pain?” she asked.

“Just a little,” he replied. “Not too bad.”

“What the hell happened back there?” said Parsons.

Emily began to explain, but MacAlister interrupted when she stumbled over her words describing the fate of Rusty. “She saved my life is what she did. If it hadn’t been for Emily, those little bastards would have been chowing down on the both of us, as well as Rusty.”

“The little ginger bastard didn’t deserve that,” Parsons said somberly. “I hope he gives the fuckers food poisoning.”

“I don’t think the ankle is sprained, but without an X-ray, I can’t be sure. There’s some mild swelling, but your boot probably saved you from a severe sprain or a broken ankle,” said Amar. They were in a room on the ground floor of Building One that had been designated as a makeshift medical center. Amar had been using it to treat the inevitable cuts and scrapes that the crew had incurred since landing. The majority of the
HMS Vengeance’s
sick bay had been destroyed in the sub fire, so Amar had resorted to some painful probing of MacAlister’s ankle. “I’ve given you a tetanus shot for the bite and stitched the ear and other bites. You will live…probably, but you’ll need to keep off your feet for a few days at least. We’ll keep an eye on the swelling and assess accordingly.”

Emily had also received a tetanus shot for the injury to her hand. She scratched absentmindedly at the puncture wound on her butt from the injection. It itched worse than the bite.

“Will I still retain my dashing good looks and cutting wit?” MacAlister asked good-humoredly.

“Unfortunately, you will remain just as bloody ugly as you’ve always been, there’s no cure for that. As to the cutting wit, that’s been dead for far too long,” Amar fired back, then added, “Rest, understood?”

MacAlister nodded. He lay on a cot, his injured foot elevated on a pile of manuals they had liberated from an unused room, an icepack wrapped around his ankle to help relieve the swelling.

“How long before he’s able to walk?” Captain Constantine asked.

“He needs to keep off it for a couple of days, just to be sure. Like I said, he was lucky.”

“Captain, it’s nothing. I’m okay, really.”

The captain gave MacAlister a long appraising stare. “I know you, Jimmy. So I’m giving you a direct order: Stay off your feet for the next few days. You’ll be no good to us if you make that injury worse, do you hear me?”

Emily could see the reluctance in MacAlister’s face as he nodded his acquiescence.

“Rhiannon and I will keep you company,” said Emily. “You won’t be bored.”

“I found some new books,” said Rhiannon from the opposite side of the cot.

MacAlister threw up both hands in mock surrender. “Alright, I give in. I’ll stay put.”

“Great,” said Rhiannon, “what would you like me to read to you first?”

Jimmy MacAlister had always known he had wanted to go to sea.

When he was growing up in Rosyth, he told Emily, he would spend every free hour wandering around the navy yards and docklands, watching the ships come and go, listening to the different accents and languages of the sailors as they disembarked, wondering where they were coming from and where they were bound.

At nineteen, he’d joined the Royal Marines, the elite amphibious infantry branch of Britain’s Royal Navy. He was a natural soldier, not because he was good at killing, but because he was good at not getting himself or the men who inevitably fell under his command killed. Moving up to the Special Boat Service, the Royal Navy’s Special Forces, was the next logical step in his career. He’d failed on his first attempt, but a few years later, he tried again and was accepted. He’d been with them ever since.

“My dad left when I was just a wee lad, I don’t even remember him,” he told Emily on the second day. “And my ma died when I was twenty-two. No brothers or sisters, so there was never anything to tie me to my hometown. The place was a shithole, anyway. So, the navy became my family.”

Emily was surprised at how at ease she felt around MacAlister. So much so that she found herself sharing her own past with him. Perhaps it was because he was such a willing listener (or a captive audience, she wasn’t quite sure which). He was never judgmental of any of the decisions she had been forced to make. Which was why, on the third day of his recuperation, she told him about what she had done to Rhiannon’s little brother, Benjamin. How he had slowly transformed. How she had taken the pillow and suffocated the boy.

Emily found herself crying at the memory. Her shoulders heaving as she sobbed quietly into her hands.

MacAlister reached out and eased her hands away from her face. “There’s no shame in doing what you have to do to survive,” he told her. “You chose the only option that made sense under the circumstances. You made the right choice to ensure you and Rhiannon survived.”

“But he was just a boy,” she whimpered.

“We’ve all done things we regret, Emily. We try to make the best decision we can when we’re faced with a shitty choice. I would have done the same thing in your situation. This world is going to be nothing but hard choices from now on. Most people would not be able to make them, they would not be able to do what you did.
They
would die. You, you’re a
survivor
, Emily. Survivors are always the ones that make the hardest choices.”

Emily wiped away the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, leaned in, and kissed MacAlister on the cheek. She began to pull back but stopped and moved in closer, kissing him lightly on the lips.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Am I intruding?” came a voice from over Emily’s shoulder. It was Amar, the medic.

“No,” she said and forced a smile to her lips as she pulled away. “Come on in.”

“Does it hurt at all?” Amar asked as MacAlister took a few tentative steps with his injured ankle, Emily on one side of him, Amar on the other, lending support.

“I’m not going to be playing soccer anytime soon, but, no, there’s not too much pain.”

Amar bent to check the elasticated support sock he had slipped over MacAlister’s ankle. “Lift your leg up,” Amar ordered. “Good, now move your foot from left to right.” MacAlister did as he was ordered. “Okay, now up and down…good, good. Let’s see if we can get the foot into your boots.”

MacAlister sat down and Emily helped to ease his boots on. “Feels good, doc,” he said as he cautiously stood up, shifting his weight slowly from his good foot to the injured one.

Amar looked pleased with the results. “Good,” he said. “Now for God’s sake, try to be more careful from now on, will you?”

The Black Hawk looked like a huge black bug sitting on the pad, Emily thought as they walked over to it, the early morning sun already beating against her exposed skin. Today was going to be a scorcher.

While the rest of them gathered in a small cluster near the front of the helo, MacAlister walked around the outside, occasionally bending to check some protrusion or pull on some part of the fuselage. When he was satisfied, he made his way to the pilot’s side of the cockpit and pulled the door open, then climbed in.

Emily could see him systematically checking gauges, flipping switches, and pushing on levers on the Black Hawk’s console. Several minutes passed before he turned his attention back to the group waiting patiently outside. The gesture he made through the cockpit window was clear: Move back.

As one the group automatically backed away until they judged they were at a safe distance, well away from the rotors. MacAlister flipped a few more switches and Emily was pretty sure she saw him suck in a deep breath.

A high-pitched whine grew steadily in volume and pitch as the twin engines kicked into life. A few seconds later both the main and tail rotors began to spin, slowly at first, then faster and faster as MacAlister fed power to them, until they quickly became just a ghostly blur. A wave of hot air and dust rushed over the crowd of onlookers, kicked up by the downdraft, and Emily covered her eyes to avoid getting peppered with dirt. When she looked again, the helicopter was twenty feet off the ground and climbing. It banked to the left as its nose dipped slightly and the helo looped out over the water. It roared out across the bay, gaining height as it went, then banked left again and flew directly over Point Loma, before circling around and heading back toward Emily and the others. MacAlister circled the helo overhead one final time, then set the Black Hawk down almost exactly where it had taken off.

From the pilot’s seat MacAlister turned to face Emily and the others, gave them a thumbs-up accompanied by his trademark grin.

The rotors of the Black Hawk gradually became motionless and the world grew silent again, but not before a huge cheer from the gathered onlookers ripped over the island like a thunderclap on a clear day.

MacAlister’s flyby had apparently got the Point Loma survivors’ attention. He had to run a gauntlet of backslaps from the rest of the crew who had assembled on the beach to welcome him back.

“Alright, alright,” he called out, raising one hand in mock acceptance of the praise being heaped on him. “Don’t you lot have somewhere else you should be?”

Emily found his embarrassment terribly amusing. She stifled a laugh as she followed him up the beach path, the cavalcade of congratulations being heaped on the SBS soldier showing no sign of subsiding.

“Jesus,” Mac said eventually, “all I did was fly a bloody helicopter. It’s not like I walked my way back here over the bloody water.”

As the hoopla began to die down, Emily added a couple more
whoops
of her own for good measure, only to trigger another round of backslaps and cheers.

“Oh, thank you
very
much,” Mac said, but turning to give her a fuck-you-very-much look that brought tears of laughter to her eyes.

“You…Are…Welcome…” she stuttered between guffaws.

Before the boat ride back to Point Loma, MacAlister had spoken with Parsons and his team. “Good work. She runs like a dream,” he told them. “Fuel her up, give her another once-over and get her ready to fly again. I want to be out of here again this time tomorrow morning. That doable?”

Parsons had nodded and motioned his helpers to get to work. “You heard Sergeant MacAlister. Do you need me to hold your hands? Get to work.”

As MacAlister and Emily walked back to the camp she pulled him aside.

“Mac, listen, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. I want to come with you when you go to Las Vegas.”

“No way,” he said without hesitation. “This is just an observation mission. We’re getting in and getting back out again. And, no offense, Emily, but I can’t risk having you along.”

She tried not to take offense, to keep her tone level, but it was hard not to feel a little hurt. “Listen, I’m the only one that has any real experience with the aliens. You think those bugs were bad? Wait until you meet up with one of the things that got to Rhiannon’s dad and brother. Besides, you said yourself, it’s just an observation mission. I’ve got camera experience, I can help.”

“I’m sorry Emily, really I am, but I can’t.” MacAlister began to walk off.

Emily reached out and grabbed his hand, pulling him to face her. “Mac. Don’t you get it? I have to go, I have to see these things for myself. I’m the only living survivor of the red rain; I have to know why.”

MacAlister stared back, not breaking eye contact. “It’s not up to me, Emily. The skipper is the one with the final say.” He paused. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said finally, his voice softening. He squeezed her hand and walked away.

Emily watched the rest of the crew file past her back to the base. MacAlister’s impromptu flyby had obviously lifted their spirits, judging by the smiles on their faces and the lighthearted banter she caught snippets of. But she was not sure any of them really appreciated the depth of their predicament. She was convinced that what she had seen on her sojourn across the country was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, a prelude of the world that now lay out there.

And there was no way in hell she was going to miss out on discovering it.