Alien Invasion 04 Annihilation (41 page)

CHAPTER 83

Terrence watched it happen.
 

The first shuttle spun toward the pyramid’s entrance — seemingly meaning to steamroll Andreus, Coffey, and a new arrival that looked like Cameron Bannister, but taking no notice when they dodged its approach, leaving it to roll under the Apex like a coin slipping into a slot.
 

The second shuttle rose into the air and began to flit about, somehow spastic.
 

Then the humans ran. Toward the street’s entrance a block down from where Terrence had bunkered with Malcolm Jons, apparently oblivious to the fact that they were running toward murder.
 

“They don’t know,” said Jons, watching over his shoulder. They were in an alcove, surrounded by construction detritus. They’d lost their vision when the strange fog had rolled in, and they’d taken each other’s hands without shame. They’d stumbled in the only direction they knew to go:
away
. They’d found this place when the day had finally returned. Citizens kept peeking out, seeing them but saying nothing. Humanity was one now, all wary of the Reptars and Titans swarming at the rear.
 

He could see an old man at his window, watching Terrence as if hoping to score a vicarious victory. Heaven’s Veil had, despite the appearances of freedom and self-determination, lived under a boot for two years. Terrence noted the same silent terror in the eyes of all he’d seen today. They were all staying where they were meant to, obediently holing up in their homes and shops. Not making waves. They’d stay under the whip until they died without lifting a finger.
 

“They’ll come this way. It’s more sensible.”
 

Jons shook his big, bald head. “They’re headed into Astral central. We gotta get them.”
 

Terrence did the only thing he could think of — picked up a rock and hurled it hard at the group of retreating people. It struck a woman with green hair as she mounted one of the motorcycles and fired its engine. The thing coughed to life with a roar. From their hiding place, Terrence and Jons both watched the group of waiting Astrals turn their heads.
 

The woman, in her panic, wrenched the bike’s throttle before she was seated. It spun out, making a half circle, and pinned her leg to the stone. A man from Andreus’s group stopped to free her, but the others all ran. More bikes fired. The army dispersed, “all for one” abandoned in panic’s crimson haze.

“Hell, Terrence. Look.”
 

He turned. The Apex was still pulsing, now with smoke pluming from the entrance, and a sound like thunder.
 

Nothing mattered. Terrence cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, not caring who heard. The jig was up either way. At least they could die together.
 

“Over here!”
 

The melee was too thick. The Astrals barely noticed his shout over the roaring bikes and the rushing of people hither and yon. They began to turn. To move toward the choked alleyway Andreus and Cameron and the others had been heading for. Then something else started to happen. Something that made Terrence’s testicles clench and try to crawl up inside his body.
 

Titans fell on all fours. Their skin charred from powder white to black scales. And one by one, they turned into Reptars.
 

“Jesus.” Terrence didn’t shout again, now feeling his skin chill like ice. He waved his arms, trying to capitalize on his newly earned attention.

They rushed forward, staying low. There was little point. The new Reptars were coming, both from ahead and behind. They saw them. They saw the others running, and were angry.
 

“Run,” Jons said.
 

“Just a second.” Terrence could feel breath in his throat like acid. His head was spinning. He thought he might fall over, pass out.
 

“Come on.” Jons grabbed him with his big meaty paw, dragging, urging.
 

“They’re almost here.”
 

“RUN!”
 

Reptars swarmed. Shuttles buzzed like angry bees above them. Cameron, Andreus, Coffey, and maybe half of the soldiers arrived, breathless, into their futile cluster. Titans marched from above and behind, pinning them in. Motorcycles purred then stalled.
 

They turned to go, found themselves facing teeth and strong arms.
 

Then the Apex detonated behind them as the shuttle in its gut blew like a bomb.

CHAPTER 84

Piper spun toward the sound of an explosion in the city’s interior. She didn’t see it happen. She was near the RV, shielded from the Heaven’s Veil skyline by a cluster of trees. By the time she sprang around them and looked toward the sound, she couldn’t place what had changed. Then she gasped. The Apex, which had become the city’s iconic middle, was gone.
 

“They did it.”
 

Charlie came up beside Piper, his face more annoyed than victorious. “They were supposed to overload it.”

“I guess it overloaded too far.”
 

Piper didn’t flinch. She looked toward Clara, no longer reluctant to ask the small girl questions she couldn’t possibly answer. Lila had gripped her hand hard enough to bleach the skin, but the girl showed no signs of complaint.
 

“Are they okay, Clara?”
 

Clara nodded.

“They did it. They did what you said.”
 

“They just weakened it.”
 

“Then what blew it up?”
 

Christopher was holding Lila around the shoulders, trying to seem calm and definitely failing. His eyes were giant marbles. As were everyone’s in the group, except for Clara’s. “Was it Thor’s Hammer? Is it over?”
 

Clara shook her head. “No. Mr. Cameron knows where that is now, though. And he has the key.”
 

“Where is it? Where is Thor’s Hammer?”
 

“It’s at Mr. Benjamin’s favorite. The place they love, from when Mr. Cameron was little.”
 

“Where, Clara?”
 

But Clara yawned, unimpressed by it all. “I’m sleepy.”

“Where?”
Lila demanded, a bit too rough.
 

“I don’t know the place name. He does.”
 

“Cameron
does.”
 

“At least
Cameron.” Before Piper could ask what that meant, the girl went on. “It’s a mountain. In a faraway place, across the ocean.”
 

And Charlie, hearing this, said, “Super. I guess we’ll grab a rowboat.”
 

Lila squatted in front of Clara, her manner urgent as if she’d just remembered something. “Clara, honey? You said earlier that they were trying to turn on a ‘spotlight.’ The Astrals, I mean. Is that over? Did they stop it?”
 

Charlie looked down at Lila then to Piper, who was watching him back. He asked, “What spotlight?”
 

“To help them find the chest without our help,” Clara answered. “So they don’t have to keep following us.”
 

Or let us live so they can see where we go,
Piper thought.
 

“But Cameron and the others stopped it. They stopped the Astrals from turning on their spotlight and finding the … the chest.” Lila’s eyes went to Christopher. Piper saw an unspoken message flit between them:
Or from doing whatever other insidious things might have been afoot for as long as the Apex stood.

Lila looked toward the city, toward the absent Apex and its missing glow, toward the landing area it was no longer projecting, the signal it was no longer sending through its antenna. No matter what happened next — if Cameron and the rest made it out of Heaven’s Veil or not, at least that much had been done. And with prodding, even though she claimed not to know the name of the place she saw inside Cameron’s mind, Clara could find the mountain that had once been Cameron and Benjamin’s favorite, across the uncrossable sea. So all was as well as it could be, considering.
 

“They stopped it for a while,” Clara said.
 

“Because of the other Apexes,” Charlie said. “I told you this was a fool’s errand. They can just do to the others what they were doing with this one. We sure can’t destroy them all.”
 

But Clara was pointing at the city. At the hovering motherships, which even in the daylight Piper could see were now starting to glow.
 

“The don’t
need
to turn on the spotlight,” Clara said, “if they can make the chest call out for them to hear it.”
 

Lila was still stooping, her skin now paper white. “Clara, honey? What does that mean?”
 

Clara was still pointing at the glowing motherships.
 

“We should pack,” she said.

CHAPTER 85

Cameron tried to stand, but something heavy was on him. His peripheral vision displayed nothing but bodies. Something had blown up. He could barely hear. Sounds were muted, ringing like a distant alarm. Astral bodies surrounded him to complement the humans: all of them equal in the reaper’s eyes.
 

“Get off of me,” he said to the person who’d been blown into him. He remembered a feeling like a concussion. Someone had seemed to tackle him. Then, a split second later, something had blown.
 

He blinked. His head hurt. The inability to hear was disorienting. He could see people rising, or running. Malcolm Jons and Terrence were ahead, but it hurt Cameron to lift his neck and look. He should be dead. Most of the bodies around him, save the few getting up and crawling away, had been sliced and diced by blue glass … or whatever it was the Apex had belched out when it went down swinging.
 

The Apex is gone.

The fact was only vaguely interesting. Cameron knew he’d been trying to undermine it somehow, but the notion that the Apex would have come equipped with a handy self-destruct mechanism had seemed pretty damn convenient. He’d distinctly thought that when he’d been running from Heather and Raj, failing them like he’d failed his father, Trevor, and everyone else. Today had been every man for himself, and Cameron had been no exception. You fled or died. The only catch was the guilt that followed survival.
 

Cameron turned his head, vacantly aware that someone was yelling at him. Maybe Jeanine Coffey. He remembered seeing her get up a few seconds ago and head toward Terrence, or maybe not. He looked up. It was Coffey, all right, but something was wrong with her. She seemed to be shouting, but barely any sound was leaving her lips. It was funny. He thought about laughing.
 

Coffey turned and vanished — somewhere out of his line of sight. Cameron couldn’t see her, but he seemed to feel her. And it hurt too much to turn his head. Though slowly, his hearing was leaking back. Not much. Mostly, he still heard the whine of that distant alarm — real or in his ears, he hadn’t a clue. A teapot’s whistle, now mingling with the slightest of shouts.
 

(Hurry!)

He sensed the word more than heard it. From Police Chief Jons, who looked like he might have taken a hunk of shrapnel to his arm. Red gunk was dripping down his meaty limb, drizzling from his fingers.
 

Above him, still very faint, Jeanine Coffey said,
“Get up. We have to go.”
 

And indeed they did. More shuttles were coming. Cameron could see them. More Titans and Reptars spilled from between the buildings, from somewhere behind the smoking pile of debris and rock that was once the pyramid.
 

The last of the weight left Cameron’s back. He wasn’t dead. He might not even be cut. His head was clearing, the situation’s weight and reality settling on him like a lead cloak.
 

Coffey helped Cameron to his knees then pulled him to his feet. His satchel had been slung around his back. Coffey pulled it forward, feeling around inside. The key must still have been whole because she visibly relaxed then took the satchel for herself. Still too quiet amid all the ringing, she said,
“He squeezed it between you. It’s safe.”
 

“Who?” Cameron’s voice sounded odd to his ears.
 

As Coffey dragged him forward, Cameron looked back and saw Nathan’s motionless body.
 

CHAPTER 86

There had been a ticking sound before the Apex had blown. Nathan must have heard it and intuited its meaning because he’d dived for Cameron’s back, toward the key, and what might be the planet’s most important object. Jeanine had heard it too. But instead of leaping to protect her general, she’d ducked. She’d covered. She’d shoved her fingers in her ears. And when the dust had cleared, she’d remained mostly whole, with merely a glancing cut across one shoulder.
 

It’s for the best. Everything happens for a reason.
 

She’d once believed such things. Grandma had said them when things went awry and when Jeanine had been a teenage girl with problems that had seemed so dire at the time, she’d tried hard to accept Grandma’s words. It had worked, to an extent. But it wasn’t working now. And yet it had to because Nathan was dead regardless. They were fucked up the butt, and the stone key for Thor’s Hammer — wherever
that
might be — was only safe for as long as they refused to mourn and kept running.