Nemesis: Book Six (12 page)

The south had different laws, for better or worse—and hopefully the result would be better in Will's situation.

He left the alien on the chair, bound as well as Will possibly could with the materials he had.

"Watch him," he said to Wren, making sure they held eye contact for a second before leaving.

Wren didn't ask where he was going, and maybe that was a good thing. It might mean a bit of trust, and Will thought they would need a lot between the two of them before this ended. It could also mean Wren was just exhausted and didn't have the energy to ask anything—which, much like if Will didn't find a weapon upstairs, wouldn't be such a good thing.

Will climbed the stairs, leaving the bottom floor of the house for the first time since he came in. He found all he needed to bind the alien inside the garage. Guns though, if there were any, wouldn't be in the garage. They would be in the bedroom, the master.

He heard footsteps behind him, and whirled around, the gun in his hand moving from hip to shoulder level as quick as his feet faced him downstairs.

Rigley looked back up at him. He held the gun on her for a second longer than he should, the same question popping up in his mind.
Should I just kill her
?

Maybe earlier, but now wasn't the time. Not with the stress running through this house like a rampaging river.

He brought the gun back to his hip and continued moving up. Rigley said nothing, but followed, her own footfalls louder than his, and Will didn't like that. It meant Rigley was inside her head, not in reality.

That's the norm now, though, isn't it?

Will pushed her from his mind; she could follow, and if something fucked up, then he would do what he should have done out on those white fields.

He stepped onto the second floor and looked both left and right, trying to figure out which way lay the master bedroom. He didn't see anything substantial, so he took a right, opening the doors in the hallway as he went.

Nothing on the right side, so he turned around, went down the left, passing Rigley at the top of the stairs as he did—a part of him wanted to push her, ending both her suffering and the risk she posed with each breath. He walked on though, without touching her.

He found the door on the far left side, opening it into the largest bedroom of the house. The bed was perfectly made, as if the people of the house had started their day as usual. Like maybe someone might walk out of the master bathroom. But no, whoever made this bed was run over by the white cake, eaten alive for the warmth that these creatures craved.

Will swept through the room, pulling drawers and opening doors. He found the closet, going right to the top level, letting his hands search where his eyes couldn't see. And Sweet-Fucking-Jesus, praise be to All that is Holy, he felt the plastic case of a gun-box. He pulled it down, quickly, hoping to the same God he just cursed that it would be unlocked and loaded.

Locked and unloaded guns were as useful as holes in condoms.

He tossed it on the bed, realizing that God must have been pissed for his blasphemy, because the goddamned thing was locked. Which was okay, not too bad. He could get in. If no ammunition lay inside the box, that would create some problems.

Will grabbed his own weapon, turning it in his hand so that the butt faced the box. He hammered it down on the small key lock, smashing the plastic to bits with a few harsh swipes. He got at the metal lock next, bending it until it finally broke. He lifted the smashed lid, revealing the weapon beneath.

He checked the chamber. Loaded. Looked at the magazine. Loaded.

Will let out a sigh. Two pieces. Not three. Will doubted his luck would hold out to find another one, but two could work. Two and a few other tricks Will had in mind.

"Why don't you kill that thing?" Rigley said.

Her voice cracked through his relief like a whip across a bull's back.

He turned his head around. "Because we need it."

"We don't need it. We have Morena; she's all we need."

"Does any part of you realize how insane you are?" Will said. Disgust rose in him like raw sewage flowing out of some deep well. No pity. Just disgust bordering on hatred. Because they had one job in this whole thing, one promise that they made when they signed up—to protect the world from the exact creature she now professed to need.

"Does any part of you realize how insane you are?" she said back to him. "Do you even realize what it is you're doing?"

"I'm trying to save the fucking planet, Rigley. Or have you missed that during your whole meltdown?"

Her eyes were wet with tears.

"You're going to kill an entire planet."

That was it. That was the break. That short sentence described everything going on in her head, all the emotions that drove her and Morena to drape the east coast with molten lava.

"We've done it before, Rigley. That's all we've done for years. Kill so that we could live. How many other planets did we wipe out by killing their last offspring that landed here. Why is this different?"

"It is. It's
fucking
different, Will. You can't kill her." The rampaging river of tension still rolled through the house, but an undercurrent of rage flowed through Rigley's voice. Maybe even murder.

"What do you want me to do?" he said.

"Either help me, or help her by killing Kenneth Marks downstairs, or just leave."

Will smiled, a helpless look. "Rigley, that's not Kenneth Marks. That's an alien, the same as she is. That thing down there is going to help Morena kill every man, woman, and child on this planet. On
your
planet. Kenneth Marks is coming, but not wearing someone else's body. You can help me, Rigley, or you can .…"

He let the statement trail off, because he didn't want to finish it. He didn't want to commit. Insane or not, Rigley had been with him a long time.

She looked at him, her eyes still wet with tears, barely keeping them from spilling on to her cheeks. She said nothing, and finally left the room, leaving Will to his two weapons.

R
igley breathed
in air that burned her whole body. The heat started in her mouth, flowing down through her trachea, and filling her lungs.

It hurt.

And she couldn't do anything about it.

She couldn't turn back and find some other way that didn't light her up from the inside every time she sucked in breath. She couldn't cool the air down in this room, and certainly couldn't do a damn thing about the air outside this place.

Forward was the only answer. Try to find an escape.

Sweat dripped from her forehead into her right eye. She reached up and wiped away the stinging salt. She was trying to focus on a singular part of the wall, a part she
thought
looked different than the rest of the black room. She could see nothing else except for the thing she now stared at—and was it even real or a mirage? She couldn't tell, the room was just too dark. Her mind might be playing with her, and if so .…

You're going to die in here.

No doubt came with the thought and no hope tried to rise against it. Death was certain if she wasn't looking at an escape of some kind.

Rigley started walking again, hugging the wall, her feet moving carefully because she didn't know if she could rise again if she fell.

Yes, she wasn't mistaken. Something
was
different about that piece of the wall. She saw a light on it, something shining from the outside. Her hand went to her brow, wiping away more sweat without her knowing it. She focused only on (
a window? Is it a window?
) the different wall in front of her. Her feet kept moving though her eyes didn't, not even for a second; because if she looked away, it might disappear. She might not be able to find it again.

Rigley stretched her hand out and touched .…

Glass.

A window.

Tears rushed to her eyes, tears of relief—a relief she had never known before. She wouldn't die in here. She would live if she could just break the window. She was only three stories high, a fall from this distance wouldn't kill her, not if she jumped correctly.

She took another step forward, still basically gripping the walls with her fingers.

Rigley looked out the window and saw a moon. Not
the
moon, because
the
moon was a white thing that gave off a pale light. A pure light. What Rigley looked at resembled the moon in that it held the same shape, but the color? The light?

The tears in Rigley's eyes spilled over, mixing with the beads of sweat on her face. They had been tears of relief, and could tears morph into something else? So quickly?

Tears of terror?

Rigley looked at a red moon. Not the bright red of the signs that hung around this place, but a deep red.

You know what color that is. You know exactly what color.

She saw—in a flash across her mind—blood dropping into a toilet. She saw herself looking down, understanding that deep red, that blood, meant her baby no longer existed. That her baby just leaked from her body in a splash, hitting the water the same as urine.

You know that color.

The moon was full of blood, swelling like a tick on a dog's leg.

And Christ Jesus, it was dripping. The blood squeezed from the moon, looking like disgusting sweat leaving fleshy skin. She watched as it fell, massive drops of red rain impossibly flying through space and the Earth's atmosphere, where they splashed against the ground like asteroids.

Rigley turned and looked back at the room. She saw nothing but her old friend, darkness.

She couldn't go back that way. She had to get out this window, out into a world ruled by a blood filled moon.

W
ill handed
the weapon to Wren.

The man took it, Will knowing immediately that he had never handled a gun before. A complete virgin. Looked like God gave him everything He would upstairs.

"She's coming," Will said.

Wren nodded, holding the gun with both hands as he looked at it.

"I shot one of these when I was a kid, with my dad."

Perhaps not a complete virgin, but close enough.

"You're going to have to shoot it again, Wren. I don't want to pretend that you won't. She's going to be here soon; I haven't looked at any reports on her in a while, but I imagine she flies like the wind. We have to be ready."

"You can't be ready for her," the kid said from his place on the floor. He sat with his back against the wall, and while Will hadn't forgot about him, he paid him little mind. Will looked to him, and saw the boy's eyes were on the two of them. "Was he right? Did she get ahold of you too?"

So the kid had been listening when the alien spoke. Will looked over to it, sitting in its chair, unmoving. It stared straight out, not glancing one way or another, showing no signs if it listened to their conversation.

"It's true," Will said, not turning from the alien. "She was inside me."

"Then you know. You've seen her. He was right. There isn't a thing we can do here."

Will looked at the kid. He turned his whole body around so that he faced him fully, but even that wasn't enough. Will walked over and stood above him with his gun in hand.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Will said.

Bryan didn't look away but didn't say anything.

"That's not a rhetorical fucking question. I want to know what in the hell is wrong with you? I know what's wrong with Rigley, and I got a pretty good idea the man behind me has sipped on the bottle a few too many times, but what the hell is your deal?"

Bryan dropped his eyes to the floor.

"Don't look away, you little prick. Don't try to hide. What is it you want to do? You want to just give up?"

"If you're trying to give me some kind of pick me up speech, go fuck yourself," Bryan said.

"A pick me up speech? What the hell do you think is going on here? I don't care one way or another what happens to you kid. I got two guns, and if you noticed, I didn't give the second one to you. Honestly, I'd use you for bait if Wren didn't want you to live because his kid’s inside you. So don't mistake what I'm saying here. I really just want to know why you're such a pussy, saying basically what the alien said, except it's
your
world that we're going to lose, not his."

Bryan looked at him then. "You're going to die. All of us, including Michael. You just don't see it yet."

"That's fine. You're probably right. But I'm going to outlive you. Now if you don't want to help here, that's fine, but I'm going to make sure you can't hurt us either. So I need you to decide right now, whether you're going to carry your weight or if I'm going to take you out of this game. Ask your friend, because to be honest, he seems to have a lot more gumption than you."

No one said anything for a few moments, only the sound of the heater flowing in through the vents filled the room.

Will didn't have time for this, but he was sick of the fucking bitching from this kid. He was sick of the silence, of the depression, of the whole disturbed persona. He wasn't lying to the kid, Will didn't care if he lived or died, but he needed to understand where the kid stood.

Slowly, Bryan raised his eyes from the floor to Will. "I'll help. But I want your word on something. If I die, I want you to do your best to make sure I get out there to my friend, out in those woods. You know who I'm talking about, because you were the one at the door when she answered it. You remember?"

Will nodded. He was talking about the girl that Will kept going back to in his own head. The one that died.

"You promise me you'll bring me there, or you'll try."

"Yeah, I promise. But you're probably right, we'll all probably die in this house," Will said and smiled a little
fuck you
to the kid. He turned so that Wren could see his face, too. "Now listen; we have to do this perfectly if we're going to have any chance of making sure Bryan dies next to his friend."

* * *

K
enneth Marks leaned
his head back against the helicopter's wall. He closed his eyes and breathed in the cool air, focusing on the flow as it came in and then exited. They were getting close now and Kenneth Marks knew that action would take over very shortly. These few moments were the last he would have in which he could think with relative peace. He would still think at the same rate once they landed, of course—making whatever necessary calculations that came up, but he still enjoyed the quiet solitude he felt right now.

Knox told him who was down there, according to Will. This was a homecoming of sorts, and Kenneth Marks couldn't be happier about it. He had Rigley, Will, and Knox and all of them would die before this was over. He would take the most pleasure from Rigley because of what she did to him, but the others? They had their place in this—each one of them having tried to interrupt Kenneth Marks' fun over the course of this venture.

They would all die.

What he needed to make sure happened, the only thing in doubt, was exactly how amenable Morena would be to his ideas.

Who would push this further? Him or her? She would have to walk her species to their death if she wanted to go as far as Kenneth Marks. Because that's what he was doing. He'd go hand in hand, singing kum-ba-yah the whole way, and let the cold dark of the universe freeze his body with a smile on his face.

No calculations for that. He didn’t care how powerful Morena was; when it came to nerves, she wouldn't break his.

"Okay, do you want to go to ground zero or to the house?" the pilot shouted from the cockpit.

Kenneth Marks kept his eyes closed as he replied. "Ground zero."

* * *

T
he heat spread
across the helicopter as if it floated in front of a star. Kenneth Marks felt it from a hundred feet off, and now they flew over it, two hundred feet high, but the heat only intensified now that they floated above--the heat rising to meet them.

Kenneth Marks stood from his seat and went to the helicopter's opening. He looked down and saw the magnificent red beneath. A fire that burned from nearly the universe's creation—relatively at least, certainly closer to that creation than humanity's. He squinted his eyes to keep tears from forming and clouding his view. The hole looked huge from his vantage point.

Everything Morena did stemmed from here, and Kenneth Marks knew she was right, that his disease wouldn't stop at the hole's opening. It would continue down, infecting the strands he saw climbing from the core. They were much different than the ones he kicked up north, watching their dead remains float into the air before falling alongside their soon to be dead brethren. The strands here were huge things, looking more like perfectly white, metal pipes. Hundreds of them lined the opening's perimeter, nestling right next to each other, one by one, intent on spreading out across this new world.

Kenneth Marks saw the burned world around the hole, what had once been green, either black ash or covered with the white alien substance. How many years did woods grow here, now showing—depending on your viewpoint—either the color of death or this new life.

He looked back into the helicopter and saw Knox on the other side, looking out just as he did. Kenneth Marks could have probably stepped back in and given Knox a little tap on his back, sending him falling over the side and into the incinerator beneath. It would be fun, watching him fall, hearing him scream, but everything else would end shortly after—calls would be made, orders given, and Kenneth Marks would sit in a cell while the world froze from the inside out.

No, now wasn't the right time.

"We can't land!" Kenneth Marks shouted into the helicopter. He had them come here because he wanted to give the appearance that he was focused on the core, when clearly it mattered only on the periphery.

"I'm not landing anywhere!" the pilot said, looking out the opposite window from Kenneth Marks.

Knox turned and looked at Kenneth Marks, though his face was hard to read with the distance and wind blowing through the helicopter.

"Take us to the house's coordinates," Kenneth Marks said finally, turning back to watch the fire beneath.