The Fugitive (8 page)

SARAH TRIES TO TELL ME THAT I’M FREAKING
out about this too much, but I can tell she’s worried too. She knows the lengths the Mogs will go to in order to get what they want—after all, she was their prisoner. As we drive, she goes into more detail about the rebel Mog John’s recruited on to his team. Apparently, he’s a hard-core computer wiz, and there are tons of evil ETs who’ve been trained on computers just like he has.

It doesn’t bode well for us. I kind of wish I’d known this sooner. I have no way of knowing who’d win in a hacker battle between GUARD and a spaceship full of highly trained Mogs.

I have Sarah text GUARD, telling him what happened, more about Adam, and asking for his advice. She reads and responds for me as I drive us back towards the ranch.

GUARD: If the Mogs had no idea where you were, they’d never be able to track you down based on your IP address or any of your communications from the ranch.

GUARD: But if they know you’re somewhere near a little town in Alabama, that could be trouble.

Me: SHIT. What should we do?

GUARD: That’s your call. It should take them a while to pinpoint an area to search. Could take hours. Could take weeks. I don’t know how skilled their hackers are.

GUARD: More than likely they’d just raze the whole area looking for you.

Me: All my notes and stuff are at the ranch. We need that info, but maybe it’d be better if we just abandoned the base? Can you get all my stuff off the computer?

A minute passes.

GUARD: No. It’s either dead or turned off. I can track
its location, but I can’t get onto it remotely without juice.

Not charging my electronics is going to kill me.

Sarah looks at me.

“All the work we’ve been doing is on your computer, right?” she asks.

“Yeah, but—” I start.

“We can swing by and grab everything. Then, I don’t know, find one of those crappy motels you’ve gotten so good at scouting out.”

“This is dangerous,” I say.

She laughs a little.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

She texts GUARD back, telling him what we’re doing.

GUARD: You’re a true patriot for Earth. Keep me posted. Constant communication.

Night has completely fallen by the time we get back to the ranch. Everything looks just as we left it. Calm and boring.

“Bernie,” Sarah says, letting the dog out of the backseat, “go take a look around, okay? But be careful.”

I guess he understands her, because he darts off as we hurry inside. I head straight to the back room to
pack up my notes and computers while Sarah grabs some of our clothes, food and other random stuff that might come in handy on the road. It’s almost like we’re getting ready to go on vacation instead of running away to hide from aliens and government henchmen.

I’ve just pulled my big messenger bag over my shoulder when all the lights go dark.

I hear glass breaking in the kitchen.

“Sarah!” I shout.

She yells back at me from the kitchen that she’s fine. I trip over a chair trying to get to her—the windowless room is completely pitch-black now that the power’s off. I curse as I hit the ground hard, my left arm throbbing. There’s a sound like the air conditioner starting up and then suddenly the power’s back on. I vaguely remember seeing a generator out at the back of the house—thanks again, GUARD. As I get to my feet, I kick the chair out of the way. Just as I’m about to leave the room, the security monitors boot up.

There are at least twenty Mogs closing in on the ranch house.

There’s a split second when I freeze, can’t even will my legs to move. And then adrenaline crashes over me and I react. I grab two guns off the weapons shelves and bolt to the kitchen, where Sarah’s crouched over a few glasses she knocked to the ground when the lights went out.

“What was—” she starts.

“Mogs!” I whisper.

Before she can respond, an explosion blows the front door in.

Both of us duck behind the kitchen island. I’m about to tell Sarah to stay down when she grabs one of the handguns I brought from the back room and fires two shots through the kitchen window, nailing a Mog right in the forehead. It turns to ash and disappears.

Whoa.

“Did you bring ammo?” she asks as she fires through the front doorway while I cock the shotgun I grabbed.

Crap.
Ammo.

“No,” I admit.

“Can you use that?” She nods to my weapon.

“Yeah.”

“Then cover me,” she says.

As gunfire and Mog blasts tear up the living room and kitchen, I pop up from my cover and start pumping rounds through the doorway and windows, firing at every possible place the Mogs could be. I wonder how screwed we are—how many Mogs were just off camera on the monitors? Sarah makes for the back room, grabbing a big butcher’s knife out of a block along the way and keeping it positioned at chest level, ready to strike.

I can’t help but marvel at what a badass my ex-girlfriend has turned into.

She reappears with a grocery bag overflowing with ammo. We duck behind the kitchen island again to regroup and reload. I keep my shotgun pointed at the kitchen window.

“We could bunker down in the back,” I say. “The door’s thick.”

“No way.” She shakes her head. “We’d be trapped.”

“Then we have to make it to the truck.” I pat my pocket to make sure my keys are there. “If they haven’t blown it up or something.”

We nod to each other in agreement. The messed-up thing is that we’ve been in this sort of situation together before, back at Paradise High. Only back on campus, we had superpowered aliens on our side. Now it’s just us against a bunch of Mogs.

But then, I tend to forget that I have friends who always seem to come through for me.

There’s a giant roar outside, like a damned dragon has suddenly appeared out of the sky.

“Shit,” I say, imagining some kind of huge Mog creature that’s going to tear the roof off the house at any second. “We’re dead.”

“No,” Sarah says as she reloads. Her face actually lights up. “We’re saved.”

Most of the Mog gunfire that had been focused on the house suddenly disappears. They’re shooting at something else. The roar sounds again, but this time
there’s something almost familiar about it—something I recognize. It’s not unlike a beagle’s howl.

Bernie-fucking-Kosar is destroying the Mogs in the front yard.

I grin.

“Can BK hold the bastards off?” I ask.

“For a little while,” Sarah says. “Probably.”

“Now. Go. This is our chance.”

We move in unison, running in a crouched position until we’re taking cover on opposite sides of the front doorway. Peeking out, I can see a bunch of piles of ash around the lawn, as well as at least a dozen shark-faces attacking BK. I actually wasn’t that far off when I thought there was a dragon in the yard. John Smith’s dog is now a huge beast, all muscle and claws and snapping teeth. One of the Mogs blasts him in the leg with a cannon, and in response BK impales him with one of two horns that have grown out of his head.

“Holy hell,” I mutter.

“Go!” Sarah shouts. “BK will catch up.”

And so we run. Luckily, most of the Mogs are focused on BK, and the others we cross paths with are so distracted by the roaring of the beast and shouts of their fellow pale-faced douche bags that we catch them by surprise. A few shots and they’re nothing but dust. We’re in the truck quickly, and before any of them are the wiser, I’ve got the engine on and am gunning it
down the little path that leads to the street.

A lone Mog stands between us and the open gate to Yellowhammer Ranch. He holds a blaster out in front of him.

“Get down,” I shout to Sarah as he fires.

I swerve, losing control of the truck for a few seconds but missing the blasts from the Mog’s weapon. I regain control just in time to ram into him. The alien rolls over the hood and roof, landing in the bed of my truck, where he tries to get up on his feet again. Sarah leans out the window and shoots him, and I swear to God we really are the heroes in an action movie.

“Bernie!” she shouts, her head still out the window.

In the rearview mirror, I can see Bernie’s form start to change, and then suddenly he’s soaring through the air as an oversized golden bird. He lets out a shrill call as his giant wings beat against the wind, propelling him forward. He lands in the back of the truck, returning to his familiar dog form just before he hits the bed. Half a second passes before his wet nose is against the back windshield. He barks and pants and looks like a worried, but totally normal, floppy-eared dog as we pass through the gate to Yellowhammer Ranch.

“Holy crap,” Sarah says. She’s breathing deeply. “Okay. We’re okay. Whoa.”

“We don’t know that for sure.” I hand my burner over to Sarah. “Text GUARD. Tell him we just escaped
the Mogs.”

It takes her a few seconds to get the text out because her hands are shaking a little. I keep my eyes scouring the road, the fields and the sky, terrified that more Mogs are going to show up at any moment.

“Okay, it’s—” she starts, but she’s cut off by the ringing phone.

GUARD is calling.

“Holy shit” is how I answer the phone.

“How far are you and Sarah from the house?” GUARD asks. His voice is the same slightly distorted, electronic-sounding one from the night when he warned me about the FBI trap.

I glance in the rearview mirror.

“I don’t know. Maybe a mile? I can still see it in—”

I’m cut off by the sound of an explosion. I hit the brakes out of sheer confusion and instinct—and so I can whip my head around and see it for myself. The ranch, barn—the entire area surrounding our safe house—has gone up in a huge ball of fire. I have to shield my eyes.

“That should take care of any Mogs remaining on the property and thoroughly wipe our tracks,” GUARD says.

Sarah turns to me, her mouth hanging open.

“GUARD, dude,” I say. “Did you just blow up the safe house?” My voice starts to get louder. “Were we working on top of a
bomb
this whole damned time?”

“I can guarantee that the only way that bomb was going to go off was if I wanted it to, and that would only happen in an instance like this. You were both perfectly safe.”

I don’t know what to say. I just sit on the phone in silence, hardly breathing. Trying to wrap my head around this.

“Get the truck moving again,” GUARD says. “The two of you are coming to my home base.”

Suddenly, the GPS on my truck activates, plotting a course to some place outside of Atlanta.

“I’ll see you in a few hours,” GUARD says.

Then he hangs up.

WE PASS A FEW OTHER HOUSES AS WE SPEED
away from the ranch. They’re secluded, just like Yellowhammer was, and separated by miles and miles of fields and land. All of them have little trails of smoke rising from their yards and roofs. Not completely destroyed like my base, but definitely messed up.

The Mogs must have narrowed our location down to one area and then systematically searched for us house by house. My brain shuts down as I start to wonder who lived in these homes. Who the Mogs slaughtered in their effort to find us.

It takes everything I have not to puke my guts out.

We ride in silence for a while, listening to BK’s panting in the backseat. I think both of us are in shock. Finally, the quiet is broken when Sarah’s phone rings. It’s John.

“Before you say anything,” she says when she
answers, “I just want you to know that I’m okay.”

She talks to John on the phone, and I strain to try to hear what he’s saying on his end. She tells him a little bit about what happened and where we’re going. I’m glad she doesn’t give him any specifics, because I don’t know how new her burner is or how careful John and the others have been about using them.

Safe houses won’t keep us alive, apparently. Paranoia might. Though I don’t even know if I can call any of us paranoid, since our fears are totally justified.

“Tell John to kick some Mog ass,” I say.

When she’s off the phone I ask her how her alien boyfriend is.

“Fine,” she says.

“Are you worried about him?”

“Every second.”

We cross the state line into Georgia around dawn. Sarah yawns a lot but doesn’t sleep. I offer her an energy drink from my stash in the backseat, but she turns her nose up at it. I down a can in one gulp.

Not long after that my fever comes back, and I start to feel a little woozy. My arm is so sore that I can hardly use it to drive, and Sarah makes me pull off the highway and into a drugstore parking lot. She goes in with some cash and comes out a few minutes later, demanding I move to the passenger seat. I down a few Tylenol
at Sarah’s insistence and despite the energy drink I’ve guzzled, I pass out.

I wake up to Sarah poking the side of my face. We’re almost there. The landscape looks eerily similar to what it did at the ranch house. GUARD definitely has a knack for finding secluded hideouts. We come to a gate among a bunch of trees, and the GPS beeps that we’ve reached our destination. I can just make out a few structures through a dense thicket of incredibly green trees. Old signage says something about the place being a peach-and-pecan orchard.

That must be the place. GUARD’s base.

“I can’t believe I’m finally going to meet the man himself,” I say as we start up an old trail that cuts through rows of thin, dead trees. I’m feeling groggy and drained, but knowing GUARD must be just a couple of yards away fills me with adrenaline.

“You sure this is where your friend is?” Sarah asks. I can hear the skepticism in her voice.

“He’s the one who inputted it into the GPS,” I say.

“It just seems so . . . ordinary.”

I can see a few flashes of silver throughout the branches—cameras. Naturally. I point them out to Sarah and tell her that I’d thought the same thing about the ranch house before I went inside. I’m guessing cameras are up all over the place, just like in Alabama. Possibly even some remote-operated weapons too. I
wouldn’t put it past GUARD.

Eventually, the trees all give way to big, open lawns around a white farmhouse and a gigantic steel building behind it that looks like it used to be some kind of small mill or factory or something.

“He’s here,” I say, more to myself than to Sarah. He has to be here. Everything is going to work out. We’re going to meet up with GUARD and figure out what we can do to bring down these Mogadorian bastards.

I jump out of the truck when we park in front of the house and am a little wobbly on my feet. My fever’s getting worse. BK stares up at me with wet-looking eyes as if he’s actually worried about me or something, but I man up and keep going. There’s a note on the front door of the house that just says “Out Back,” scrawled in messy handwriting. So we wander around the house to the big metal building. We walk through the front door and must trip some kind of invisible alarm, because suddenly the door locks behind us and there are four guns mounted on robotic arms trained on us.

“Shit!” I yell as I try to pull the door open.

“Mark,” Sarah says quietly, but I can tell that she’s freaking out.

I start to move forward but the guns stay on me, keeping their aim with every step I take. So instead, I take a few steps to the right and plant myself in front of Sarah. At our feet, BK starts to growl. The edges of his
body begin to contort, as if he’s just about to transform into a monster.

“I wouldn’t go any farther than that if you don’t want to end up full of holes,” a muffled voice says.

There’s a figure standing in front of us that’s tall—taller than me—and wearing loose-fitting coveralls and a shiny, robotic-looking helmet. Something about it is familiar, but I don’t know why. My head is fuzzy from the fever. A bunch of tools hang from a belt around the person’s waist, but I’m more concerned about what’s in their hands, which, based on what I can remember about the weapons in my dad’s old office, is a semiautomatic combat shotgun.

Dozens of scenarios flash through my mind, none of which end well for us. My loudest thought screams that I’ve been duped again. That I’ve been a huge dumbass and somehow ended up communicating with another fake GUARD. Or maybe GUARD was never on our side to begin with. There’s no mystery grenade to save me this time, though. With all the security stuff everywhere, I’m guessing even if we did make it outside, we’d still be goners.

Behind me, Sarah’s breathing is heavy, and my entire body shudders with regret for bringing her into this.

I’m relieved when the figure lowers the shotgun, but that feeling is quickly replaced by confusion when the weird helmet comes off. The person in front of us is a
black woman with strong, slightly masculine features. Her hair’s shaved on the sides but fades into a short, flat Mohawk on the top of her head. A sheen of sweat shines on her face. She looks like a badass warrior, but she’s also totally hot.

She stares at BK and mutters something in a language I’ve never heard. Her voice is commanding. Suddenly, BK heels.

So much for that line of defense.

“A Chimæra. Wonderful,” she says. She turns her attention to me. “Mark James. You look even worse than the last time I saw you.”

That’s when I realize why the helmet looked familiar. I’ve seen this person before. In New Mexico.

She’s the courier who delivered the first package to me.

“Wait . . . ,” I say. “
You’re
GUARD?”

She nods, raising one eyebrow as if she thinks I should have somehow figured this out already. As if I had any reason to guess that the person I’d been in contact with all this time wasn’t a conspiracy-obsessed hacker shut-in but a woman who looks like she’d be equally comfortable on a magazine cover or a battlefield.

“You can call me Lexa. That was my name on Lorien.”

Lorien?

My head pounds as my brain tries to make sense of the fact that GUARD is not only a chick, but an alien.

What the hell is going on?

“Mark,” Sarah says, breathless. Her eyes are wide and staring at something farther back in the giant metal building, behind the woman.

And then I see what’s got her attention.

“Welcome to the hangar,” Lexa says. “It looks like we need to get you fixed up. I hope you’re good with tools. I’m trying to get this thing to run off the primitive fuel systems available on this planet.”

She turns away from us and walks towards the beat-up silver spaceship parked in the back of the hangar.