At the End - a post-apocalyptic novel (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) (15 page)

“This is insane,” Penelope said in
frustration. She took out the knife, turned, and prepared herself
for the coming attack.

“I’m not smart enough for this crap,” I
confessed.

She giggled. “Who is?” Her eyes locked with
mine, and a flood of warmth pulsed in my body; blood rushed to my
crotch. I tried to put the feeling down. At that moment, I wish I
had a textbook with me.

I blushed and turned back to the strip of
colors. My thoughts were consumed with panic and lust, colliding in
a painful ache that sought to end my life. Then I wheeled around
and spotted the alion corpse. A silver disk hung around its neck. A
red orb glowed at its center. I examined the strip again, and below
it, I found a small port that looked about the same size and shape
of the disk.

I ran and detached it from its neck, then
shoved it into the port. The entire disk lit up red. The door still
didn’t open.

I heard the roar booming down the hall
towards us, a call of death, full of fury and hostility, all aimed
at us. They were so fast, so incredibly fast. The alion approached
on acrobatic paws, spread wide for perfect weight distribution.

Twitching, I punched the red button. The
door slid to the side, withdrawing into a darkness meant only for
lifeless objects. I grabbed the disk and yanked on Penelope’s
shoulder, bolting over the threshold. When I spun around, I saw the
alion flying through the air, unmindful that I had a key to the
door. I slammed the disk into the port with my right and pounded
the red button again.

As quick as the OMP2 could fire a bullet,
the door sealed shut. A PANG reverberated down the hall that we now
stood in.

Penelope smiled at me as she panted. “I
think it cracked its skull.”

“I hope so,” I said. I removed the disk from
the port and slid it down into my pocket. “We’ll probably need
this.”

She bent over, arms on her knees, breathing
in quick bursts. “We need to go.”

“We need to recover our breaths.” I placed
my hand on her back, and I thought about rubbing it, but then that
sounded complicated in my head, so I just gently patted her. “Keep
breathing.”

We composed ourselves, slowly taking back
control of our lungs.

I studied the room. It was identical to the
one with our pods, except at the other end were two doors instead
of one. One of the doors went off in a different direction. “You
want to take this, see where it goes?” I asked.

She nodded. “Sure, dude. Sounds like a good
plan.” She stumbled forth, legs shaking. “I wish I had that
shotgun.”

I smiled. “You seem to be pretty good with
the knife.”

She laughed. “No, that was pure luck. It
tripped on a wire, plunged right into the blade. I would have died
. . . I should have died . . .” Her voice became dejected, full of
burden and despair.

I gave her back another comforting pat, then
stepped forward. The door connected to another similar room, which
connected to another similar room, and it was the same after every
new door, endless. We passed face after face, frozen, with calm
eyes following our movements.

Finally, after several twists and turns, we
crossed over a threshold into a room without pods. The shape of the
hall resembled all the previous ones, but instead of pods along the
sides, giant clear panes surrounded us.

Penelope gasped, stunned. “No,” she
whispered.

I cleared my throat. “Are we—are we really
in space?” Before our eyes, bright and dim stars twinkled all
around. I gazed downward. “Look.” I pointed.

“No—no—no—no—no!” she cried. She collapsed
to her knees. An eruption of tears followed.

I knelt down and rubbed her back. I thought
the situation was appropriate. She needed the stronger form of
comfort. I didn’t say a word, for nothing that came to mind sounded
right; no words existed that would make it better.

I stared down at the bright blue oceans of
Earth. The shapes of the continents really did look like giant
puzzle pieces from above. Brilliant white clouds blocked out
sections of the globe. The planet looked so serene, so bright with
the billions of lights in all the cities, expansive clusters of
illumination.

Her tears stopped after a few moments lost
in a world of devastation. We sat there in silence, observing the
world and all its wonders.

“You see that?” Penelope said, pointing to
an object traveling swiftly through space, a black dot on the
backdrop of blue.

“Yeah, I do. It’s coming this way.”

The craft zoomed up, heading to an open bay
across from us, hundreds of meters away. The strange crimson gas
jetted out of the front of the craft as it decelerated,
disappearing into the hard vacuum of outer space. The craft
vanished behind a colossal gray wall.

“So they do have smaller ships docked,” I
remarked.

“We just have to get over there,” she said,
sighing. “It looks like a long, long way, impossible for us not to
be spotted.”

My nerves were trembling. “Yeah.”

Collected, she eyed me with her bold brown
eyes. “Then let us be well armed.” The words brightened our mood.
“We should search for a weapons depot along the way.”

“I was just thinking that.” I smiled at her.
“Let’s get moving.”

We tiptoed along the clear walk, mesmerized
by the view. I used the disk to get us through another secured
door. An alion stood at the far end of the room, clicking buttons
on a huge display with its humanlike fingers.

“Here,” Penelope whispered, yanking my shirt
to the left. “Hurry, use the key.”

I fumbled with the disk. My hands slippery,
the object fell with a CLANG on the grating.

Penelope scooped it up and locked it into
the port, pressed the red button, and snatched the disk, pushing me
over the threshold. She shut the door. “Run,” she commanded.

I ran for the door at the end of the hall.
Five halls later, we stopped to catch our breath. We both needed
inhalers, being on the verge of breaking down, mentally at least.
Asthma was a hard thing to control with just mental exertion.

We eventually came to a square room, unlike
all the rest, with a tall ceiling, and stacks of large white cases.
Sidling through the towers, checking around corners for anything
dangerous, I caught sight of an alion facing the opposite
direction, at work pressing foreign icons on a small touch
screen.

“Back,” I whispered.

She caught my sleeve and tugged. She pointed
to the cases near the alion. She gesticulated knocking over the
towers onto the beast. With a wink, she turned, off to do the deed.
She was fearless, utterly fearless, a big change from the night I
had met her, when her cousin was torn from the duplex.

Picking up speed, she shouldered the white
pile. Instantly the cases fell on top of the alion, crushing it
under the weight of the mysterious containers. A feeble cry escaped
the alion before it died. The sound almost made me feel sorry for
the beast. One of the cases broke open by Penelope’s feet. Thick,
black polystyrene foam lined the inside, and set within ten perfect
cutouts looked like weapons.

“Are those guns?” I asked. I squatted next
to her.

She grasped one, jerking it from the foam,
holding it up in front of us. They weren’t fitted to our hands, and
it didn’t resemble our pistols exactly, more like two pistols glued
together along the barrel, with horizontal triggers instead of
vertical, like shooting gangsta style. The objects glowed blue in
the bright lighting of the room.

I seized one for myself, gripping it with
both hands crossed over each other, and one thumb on each trigger.
“I think you hold it like this. They have two thumbs,
remember.”

“That makes sense.” She tried it my way.

Each barrel ended in a canister that
reminded me of a soda can. “Should we test them?” I asked,
excited.

She shook her head. “What if they make a lot
of noise, or blow a hole through the ship. We don’t know what’s on
the other side of the walls.”

“Good point. Well, how will we know if they
work, or if they are even loaded?”

“Look for anything that looks like it would
open a cartridge. If we find where the ammo is, then we’ll know if
they’re loaded or not.” She fiddled with hers for a while.

I played around with mine as well, but I
couldn’t find any buttons or switches, or anything that resembled
such.

I looked up as I heard a click. From the
middle of the object, a silver box popped out onto the grating. She
snatched it up and inspected it.

I stared at her, amazed. “How did you do
that?”

“Hold on, I’ll show you in a second.” At the
ends of the box, she took out a small black globe. “It looks like a
shotgun shot but
huge
.” After her examination, she taught me
how to eject the cartridge. “If it’s not a weapon, then I’ll be
pretty surprised. But then again, they’re aliens.” She loaded up
her cartridge.

I opened my mouth to correct her.

“Alions,” she said abruptly. “I meant
alions. Let’s go through more of these cases, maybe there’s other
gear in here.” With nimble fingers, she began to comb through the
cases, piling the useless containers in the corner by the dead
alion.

The cases were hard to open, for the latches
didn’t want to budge. Each one took a few minutes to finally snap
open. When I unlatched my fourth case, my jaw dropped. “Come look
at this.”

Penelope rushed over. “Is it a harness?”

“Yeah, or an ammunition carrier. See, it has
dozens of ports for spare ammo.” I pointed to the globe-sized holes
along the straps of the cross-section of the accessory. “There are
two in the case, do you want one?”

“Looks too heavy for me,” she replied.

Already holding one, I secured it around my
chest and waist, tightening up the straps, made from a foreign
material that wouldn’t give when squeezed, but was flexible enough
to bend through several buckles. “It’s not heavy at all,” I said. I
danced around comically, flapping my arms up and down.

She smiled. “I wonder what an alion would
think if it saw you. You’re pretty goofy.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I
asked, my heart pounding.

“I haven’t decided quite yet,” she answered.
“Flap around some more, and I’ll let you know the verdict.” Her
giggles were cheering up the moroseness that infiltrated my mind.
It was nice to hear her laugh; it was sweet, high, and musical.

I flapped my arms out again, and on my way
down, I hit a button on the belt portion of the accessory. A sharp
pain zipped from my finger to my shoulder. I stopped. Penelope was
looking at me, horror written across her face. I spun around. I
expected to see an alion, crouching, waiting to pounce on us in its
great stealth. But nothing was there. The pile of cases was the
only thing I could see.

“What is it?”

“Darrel?”

“Yeah?”

“Darrel! Darrel!” She started cursing after
that.

“What’s wrong? Why are you yelling?”

She began searching the room, around towers,
through piles, everywhere. She moved frantically. Cursing to
herself, and every once in a while, she yelled out my name.

I tapped her on her shoulder.

She jumped three meters in the air,
spinning. As she landed, she stuck out her alion weapon, aimed
directly at me. “Whoa! What are you doing?” She scanned the room,
still searching. Her eyes went right through me and on by, as if I
weren’t there. “Penelope, are you all right?”

She made no reply. Her arms shook and shook.
I didn’t know if I had ever seen someone so afraid. She backed up
until she stood against the wall. Tears began to fall to the
grating.

Then I thought about what I had done. I
searched for the button I had accidentally struck, found it, and
smacked it.

Startled, Penelope gasped. “Where the hell
did you go?” she cried in a burst of breath. “I thought they had
taken you away, just plucked you away from me like they did Mike.”
She collapsed. The weapon fell in a CLINK. “I thought—I—were—gone .
. .”

I knelt beside her. “It’s okay . . . it’s
okay. They didn’t take me, I’m right here. I’ve been right here the
whole time. I accidentally hit a button on the belt, and I guess it
made me invisible to you. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Her crying waned into sniffling. She stared
at me, full of joy. She took my hand. “I don’t think I could
survive on this ship alone.”

I gently squeezed her fingers. “You won’t
have to . . . we’ll get out of here, together, and in one piece,” I
promised.

She laughed, irritated. “Why do people say
things like that? In movies and TV shows, people always say things
like that, but it’s not true.”

“In our case it is. The harnesses can make
us invisible. Invisible, Penelope!”

It took a moment for the information to sink
in. “Invisible? As in, nothing can see us?”

“That’s right. You couldn’t see me . . . I
pressed this button.” I repeated the action.

She jerked back.

I pressed the button and reappeared. “See.
Invisible.”

“We’re going to make it . . . we’re going to
make it off of here, aren’t we.”

“Hell yes we are. Now put one on, and let’s
get to that hangar,” I said, energized.

She fitted one of the harnesses around her,
adjusting the straps. Tapping the button, she became invisible to
me. I hit the button, and she appeared in full clarity. I nodded at
her. We found a case with spare black globes and snapped them into
the ports along the chest bands.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Ready.”

“Remember, if we bump into things, things
such as alions, they’ll know we’re there. So don’t do it.”

She smiled. “I think you are a little
clumsier than I am, but I’ll keep it in mind.” Before we crossed
the door’s threshold, she halted. “They won’t be able to hear us,
right?”