Cut Off (43 page)

Before Ness could motion a response, Sebastian plopped on the table, tentacles retracting protectively. Ness moved to him, touched the spot beneath one of the limbs where his skin was softest, and felt a faint pulse.

"Is he okay?" Kerry said. Ness shrugged. Kerry walked in a circle, rubbing his hands down his face. "That was disgusting!"

Ness wanted to be insulted, but found he couldn't disagree. "My other friend's still in the prison. Mind giving me a hand?"

"Tell me it's not another alien."

"You're in luck. Regular ol' human."

They wheeled the gurney to the room of orange boxes. Georgia stood vigil at the front, door cracked to the gardens. Ness and Kerry lifted Sprite onto the gurney. He was still asleep, but his face looked pained. Ness rolled him to the room with Sebastian, checked Sebastian's drip-tube, then dribbled water into Sprite's mouth. As he cast about the room for anything more he could do, something rasped from out in the hall.

Ness snatched a pistol from Sebastian's bandolier and handed it to Kerry. "Two buttons on the grip. Press 'em both to fire. Do
not
aim at anything you don't want slagged."

The man looked equal parts thrilled and scared. "Got it."

Ness moved to the door. The noise peaked and chuffed past. He swung out into the hall, where Tristan was wrestling with one of the orange box lids. Seeing him, she set it down and swept her forearm across her brow.

Ness raised his eyebrows. "Redecorating?"

"Barricading. These things absorb lasers as well as anything I've seen." She nudged the corner of the lid with her toe. "How's it going?"

Ness shook his head. "I got no god damn idea. He got out the bullet. He's either asleep or in a coma."

"Before, it seemed like you were able to monitor the enemies' location."

"With the pad, yeah. The one that got stolen for use as a flashlight."

"Can you find another?"

"It's worth the effort." He flipped a salute at Kerry. "Thanks for your assistance, but I expect she can use you more at this point."

Ness found a new pad within minutes, but after ten minutes of fiddling with it, he still hadn't fought through its initial screens, let alone navigated to its live map feature. He checked on Sebastian, hoping the alien might be awake and able to lend a claw, but he remained curled on the table, motionless. Ness wandered out to the hall, where Tristan and Kerry were using the gurney to wheel two of the heavy lids to the fortifications. The foremost of these was a chest-high wall of lids a short ways from the intersection, propped up by chairs and tables. They'd erected a second bank of battlements behind this, including an elevated platform that would be able to fire down on the first wall if it were overrun.

"Looks like a big-ass pillow fort," Ness said.

"That was the inspiration," Tristan said with a trace of sheepishness. "Still have to block the other end of the tunnel. Couldn't you have found an alien hospital that had a dead end?"

"You should throw some chairs and scalpels and junk around the intersections. Make 'em work for their advance."

"Like World War I with lasers. Wish we had some dirigibles to scout with." She looked away from the work. "Still don't have my map, huh? What exactly is our plan from here?"

"Wait for Sebastian to wake up." He folded his arms. "And hope we don't have to put our pillow fort to use."

As he continued to try to finagle his way through the pad's abstruse software, Kerry dragged chairs and instruments to the intersection. Tristan and the other man, whose name Ness had learned was John, set up a barricade down the other side of the hall. Thirty minutes later, as they were lugging one of the last lids out to the second blockade, Kerry hollered.

"Contact!"

Ness sprinted toward him. Tristan and John dropped their gurney to follow on his heels. Kerry was behind the first wall of lids, pistol gripped in his hands. Ness scrambled up the elevated barricade and hopped down beside him.

"What'd you see?"

Kerry pointed down the tunnel, indicating the left turn of the intersection. "Face poked around the corner. Took one look at me and pulled back."

Tristan braced herself against the overturned lid. "Just one?"

"If there'd been more, I would have screamed a lot louder."

She nodded, eyeballing the crossing. "They know we're here. It's only a matter of time now. John, go watch the other end of the tunnel. Ness, run and tell Georgia to be on high alert and to fall back if she sees any movement. Once you're done, set up on the platform. Kerry, you're here with me."

Ness took off running. She gave orders like she'd been doing so her whole life. Anyway, if she'd decided to take command, that meant she'd be committed to the end. He ran to let Georgia know the score, then slipped into the surgery room. The blue tube was still nearly half full, but knowing it could be some time before he could monitor it again, Ness pulled it out and replaced it. After a glance at Sprite, he jogged out to the elevated platform.

Tristan and Kerry remained at the first barricade. Minutes drifted past. As his inside star had insisted they would, they'd made it to the surgery. Sebastian had tended to himself. They'd even found Sprite.

But the reality was they were in enemy territory, their presence was known, and he didn't have the first idea how long it would take for Sebastian to awaken—if he ever would. Yet without him, the only way to know they'd eradicated the aliens' work was to destroy every computer, plant, and alien in the installation.

He thought Tristan would stay to the end. She was resolved, understood this was bigger than her own life. The three others, he wouldn't be surprised if they began to go AWOL within a few more hours. They'd just spent untold weeks imprisoned in a slimy orange closet. Devoured Tristan's food straightaway. There were bushels of fruit and vegetables in the garden, but they might be tainted by the virus. They'd leave as soon as they got too hungry. Another day, tops.

From the left side of the intersection, an alien darted across the tunnel. Kerry shouted and fired a laser behind it. Ness' heart bumped like an old woman falling down the stairs. While Kerry held steady on the right side of the crossing, Tristan shifted her aim to the left. A minute later, another being emerged from the left, zig-zagging through the intersection. Instead of the potato-shaped gray body above long dark limbs, this thing was orange, with short legs dancing crazily beneath its heavy bulk. Ness opened fire, joined by Tristan. Gouts of steam rose from the thing's body as the lasers dug through its thick sides. It burst forward toward the right-hand tunnel, the lower portion of its thorax flapping like weighted drapes. Tristan lowered her beam to slice at its legs. As it ducked out of sight, the severed end of tentacle hooked back and forth on the floor like a worm expelled from its host.

"What the fuck was that?" Kerry said. "A soldier? It didn't even look like the same species!"

"They only got the one model," Ness said. "Looked like improvised armor to me. They're testing us."

Tristan nodded. "It slows the lasers, but it doesn't stop them. Aim for the necks and legs."

She'd no sooner said this than the alien reappeared, hooking around the corner and racing straight toward them, firing blue lights through the dust hanging in the air. Three lasers slashed from the barricades, converging on its spindly neck. Its head toppled away, landing with a thunk; the charging body got two more steps before its legs gave out. It skidded to a stop halfway to the first barrier.

"Christ," Kerry said.

Tristan turned to shout down the tunnel. "Anything over there, John?"

"All clear!"

Ness turned back to the tunnel. A dark, blunt object protruded six inches from the right side of the intersection. As soon as he recognized it—a sense-pod—it snapped back into cover.

For half an hour, the tunnels were silent. Ness' legs quivered with the chemicals of battle, his stomach squeezing into an unbreakable knot. Something shimmered at the crossing, accompanied by a hard scrape. The left side of the tunnel wobbled up and down. Orange rectangles extended from the intersection. Ness fired on the barriers, as did Kerry. Their beams met the lids and bounced into the floor, scorching it. They fired again, their shots angling away harmlessly. The lids advanced.

"We're screwed!" Kerry shouted. "We got to get out of here!"

Behind the first wall, Tristan dropped her pistol and laid her rifle over the edge of the lid. A laser flashed, spearing past her head. She pulled the trigger, the crack of the shot booming in the enclosed space. The advancing lids shattered. Glass cascaded to the floor in a silver shimmer, revealing four unarmored aliens. They popped upright, lasers in their claws, and the three humans tore into them, slashing their bodies apart.

"Couldn't even tell what I was looking at," Ness said into the ensuing silence.

"Mirror," Tristan said. "Thank my mom for that one. Her sci-fi collection could have filled a library."

They hardly had the chance to catch their breath before the lights snapped off. Ness shouted in surprise. Something rustled down the way. Shards of glass tinkled. Tristan fired three quick pulses at head height, the flashes burning on Ness' retinas. He activated his alien pad. Pale light spread over the platform. He hopped down to the top of the barrier, crouched, and slung the pad Frisbee-style. It bounced from the floor, coming to a stop face up a few feet in front of the intersection.

The legs of the enemies cast spidery shadows against the walls. The two sides stared at each other. Exposed in the hallway, the aliens gestured madly.

"John!" Tristan shouted, firing into the crowd. "
John!
"

More of the creatures swarmed from both sides of the intersection. Lasers flew so thickly Ness dropped behind his barrier, unable to expose his head for a look. He stuck his hand over the edge of the orange lid and slashed his laser back and forth. Heat flashed over his arm and he yanked it back. Kerry sprinted away from the front wall and vaulted over the second barricade. Alone, Tristan ran from side to side along her barrier, harrying the advancing aliens with shots. Some dropped, but they were too many and too fast.

Footsteps rang down the back of the tunnel. A fragment of Ness' mind identified it as John. Not that his presence would matter in the slightest. More likely, he was running for his life.

The steps echoed like mad. Aliens scrambled up the first barricade, their lasers sizzling into the walls of the second. Tristan dived to the side of the tunnel and rolled onto her back, pressing herself against the inner face of the barricade where they'd have the worst angles of fire.

Thunder and lightning exploded behind Ness, startling him so bad he bumped his face into his moist orange shield. The aliens atop the first line of fortifications danced in place, then fell back behind the wall. Flashlights speared through the air. Down the tunnel, a pack of humans trampled toward the barricade, fronted by an old white man and a youngish Hawaiian woman. She carried an assault rifle. He bore an elephant gun with a barrel so big it looked like it should be mounted on a train to shell Paris. Tears of disbelief rolled down Ness' cheeks.

29

It wasn't that she didn't believe what her eyes were seeing: rather, it was what they were showing her that made no sense. The aliens on top of the first wall were retreating. Some were even doing a stuttering jig before falling back, like wide receivers celebrating a touchdown, or Maori warriors who had gotten their battle order all confused.

Then her brain connected what her eyes were seeing to the gunfire her ears had been registering the last two seconds. While her higher consciousness took a mental step back to wonder at this development, her lizard brain seized control of her body, aiming her laser at an alien draped over the barricade and squeezing the buttons. The alien writhed like an anemone in the tide.

Behind the second barricade, human faces swam into view, lit by bobbing flashlights. Rifles blared, hammering the aliens left on the wall, the bullets shredding right through their orange armor. Tristan popped up for a look. The dead were heaped against the outer wall, snarling the way for those trying to retreat, who were further stymied by the row of aliens behind them who hadn't yet grasped the fact they were being massacred. Tristan swept her laser across them, meaning to cut them all down in one swoop, but the beam quit a moment later and wouldn't fire again for another second after that.

The surviving aliens shot back at the reinforcements, but their targets were behind two sets of walls and firing into an open field. Within moments, the remaining aliens broke and sprinted toward the intersection. Each one was struck down before it could scurry to one of the side tunnels. The stink of gunpowder was thick in the air, along with the fetid marine stench of their innards.

Tristan grabbed the top of the wall and vaulted over, landing in a crouch. She walked between the dim shapes of the fallen, firing a blue bolt into each one of their heads. After the ninth, a rifle roared. She whirled. Behind her, an alien slumped back, a laser tumbling from its claw.

"Missed one," the Hawaiian woman said, lowering her assault rifle.

They were so tangled it wasn't easy to separate one from another, but Tristan counted 37 bodies before she was done. A handful of people awaited her on the other side of the wall. She pocketed her pistol, and though she hardly knew him, she threw her arms around Papa Ohe'o's neck.

When she withdrew, he raised his eyebrows. "Remind me to rush to the rescue of a few more young women. What do you say?"

Beside him, Helen jabbed him in the ribs.

"Where's Zach?" Tristan said, eagling into the dimness. Behind the wall, a man raised his hand. She swung herself over the barrier and hugged him, too, smelling fresh sweat. "I thought you'd run off."

The man shrugged. "You came to fight for Hana. So I brought Hana to fight for you."

Ness appeared from the crowd, grinning like a fool. "Damn, man. I figured we were six slices of toast."

Tristan smiled back. "Is everyone okay?"