Paired Pursuit (17 page)

Finn was thinking about Mari, how she'd brightened up both of their lives. Gareth couldn't disagree, although he was more focused on surviving the night so that she could continue to brighten up their lives. And, he hoped, to raise a little hell at the Complex.

“More than a little hell
.
”
Finn's mindvoice grew a little stronger as he came nearer.
“I heard rumors that some Twins were going to be bred.”

“Bred?”
Gareth steeled himself against the gut-kick that accompanied that word. To be put to a woman, to not see his own child…no, fuck that noise.

“To humans, yeah. They haven't been able to create Twins with XX chromosomes, only us XYs, so they want to experiment further.”

“I'm done being experimented on,”
Gareth replied.

“As are we all, so I'd like to talk to others when we get back. Some of us toe the line less than others. Maybe bringing Mari back will be the encouragement some of us need to start running our own lives without asking for permission to take a piss.”

A surge of mingled satisfaction and surprise swept Gareth. His Twin used to be someone who sought permission for most things, preferring to follow official guidelines rather than strike out on his own. Now Gareth sensed him chafing against all the restrictions as much as he did. Score one again for Mari.

“I'm completely fed up with the way we've been treated,”
Finn sent.
“I won't deny that Mari's presence in our lives has me worried about our future, but I would eventually have snapped. Others are pissed off as well…the triplets, for example.”

“Yeah, well, splitting them up for that job was an idiotic thing to do.”
Gareth shook his head and blasted another alien.

“I know. It's going to come to a head sooner rather than later.”

“I've been telling you this for years,”
Gareth replied.

“I wasn't ready to listen. I am now.”

“Let's kill some aliens first.”

Finn sent the equivalent of a snort. It was good to banter with his Twin—they'd been pretty damn snappish with each other for the past six months—but Gareth's attention was soon fully occupied by fighting. The waves were never-ending. Even a well-equipped City would struggle to repel this attack.

Scar City was utterly crumbling.

Gareth yelled a warning as he saw a wedge of aliens enmeshing. Another good ramming or three would bring an entire section of the wall down at this point—and the bastards were deliberately targeting the weakest spots.

One of the soldiers, her shirt sleeves rolled up, leaned forward to hurl a bomb just as the ram rushed forward. The resulting crash against the wall caused her to overbalance and fall. Gareth swore viciously, but she was lost in a sea of paleness, swallowed up so completely that only a few shreds of her boots were left. He shot anyway, leaving an alien's flank blackened.

“Bombs in three!” Ramsey roared, his voice cracking through the loudspeaker.

“Sir?”

Gareth whirled. He'd never been called
sir
in his life, but a soldier stood awaiting his attention, clearly having addressed him.

“Sir, this wall is going to come down. It's dangerously unstable.” The soldier was on the young side, his facial hair still a little peach fuzzy, but there was no mistaking his earnest intelligence.

“What do you suggest, soldier? You know who I am—I have no authority here.”

“No, sir, not officially, but you can convince people to get down before everything falls. Look—the next time the aliens hit, that part of the wall is going to shear away. See the exposed rebar there? We need to get down and hold the place from the ground.”

He'd been shooting at aliens for so long that their ghostly white bodies seemed to swim in front of his eyes. Gareth shook it off, sending a mental shove to Finn as he studied the failing section of wall.

“He's right. That's going to come down. I'll tell Ramsey while you start getting people to the base. We'll need a blockade down there—anything, really. Old cars, fire engines, that kind of stuff.”
Finn sounded stressed.

“Let's go. My brother's informed the sergeant.”

“How—oh.” The soldier cleared his throat. “I forgot you were telepathic.”

“We're pyrokinetic too. That means I can set you on fire when you don't move fast enough.” Gareth was immature enough to chortle as the soldier turned tail and ran, calling for the section of wall to be evacuated. It was a shame they couldn't really set stuff on fire.

Although, come to think of it, burning oil drums would be a decent deterrent if part of the wall wound up coming down. Gareth shot a series of laser beams into the crowd of aliens, noting that the solar battery was nearly spent, then abandoned his post to head for the stairs.

Fortunately, the young soldier had warned everyone. Unfortunately, he'd started a minor panic. Soldiers and civilians alike were beginning to stampede. Their fear was almost palpable, and Gareth knew it was only a matter of time before some trigger-happy idiot fucked up and shot a beam into a human.

“
Single file!
” he bellowed, and the combination of his imposing presence and commanding voice caused the line of people to quit shoving so much. His brows drew down at the thought of Mari being in there somewhere, and only the knowledge that she was safe at Patrice's held him in check as he strode toward the stairs.

Had there been any room, they would have parted like water for him. As it was, most people shrank away, hurrying down the steps as he barked orders to gather material for a blockade and oil for fires. Some faces wore clearly disbelieving expressions—and one soldier had defiantly remained behind atop the wall, continuing to shoot aliens—but now that Gareth was descending the stairs, he could see the large cracks running through the section the aliens had repeatedly rammed. No amount of mortar could fix that kind of damage.

“Yeah, this City's falling tonight,”
he sent.

“Ramsey is evacuating the other side. The rest of the wall seems structurally sound, so it's just this part we're going to have to hold. You okay?”

“A little homicidal, for a variety of reasons. I'll take it out on the aliens as soon as possible.”

At the bottom, people scattered. Gareth gave most of them credit—they dove right into shoring up the wall…although a handful took the opportunity to disappear into the center of the City. No doubt they intended to hole up and try to survive the night.

“Ram!” The shout was distant, panicked. Gareth's head snapped up.

“Finn?”

An adrenaline-tinged hash of thoughts was all that greeted his query. Gareth leaped backward as scores of aliens slammed into the wall. Someone screamed as the much-patched structure of concrete, wood and metal began to crumble. There was a loud rumbling, a cracking that drowned out the zapping of lasers. The wall was holding—barely though, and not for long. The next ram would be its death knell.

“The wall is going down!”

“So hold the line!” Gareth pitched his voice to override the rising tide of terror. A few at the edge of the crowd slunk away, but others gave him their full attention. “Get some old vehicles over here, ready to plug the gap. Start up a big fire and get your lasers ready. How many hours until dawn?”

“Four, sir.”

“We've survived until now. We can make it until dawn.”

“Nice pep talk.”

“Are you off that wall yet?”
Gareth wasn't in any mood to joke around.

“About to be. Had to help carry Ramsey off. I think he broke his leg, so he should be out of commission for a few months. If it were one of us, we'd be in bed for what, a day or two? I don't know what I'd do if I had to stay in a bed for weeks on end.”

“I do, but it involves Mari being there.”
Gareth instinctively went to a defensive crouch as the alien ram battered the wall again. This time there was a strange, low groaning, as if the bricks themselves had been mortally injured. Then the groaning turned into a full-fledged rumbling.

“Finn!”

The segment of wall collapsed in a pile of rubble, throwing up a huge cloud of dust through which aliens began to clamber, howling and yipping. Gareth raised his laser and got off a quick series of shots.

A shrill siren cut through the air, sounding the direst of warnings to the City's population. A nearby chorus of howls sang along, providing sinister backup. Gareth shook himself, fired a beam through a pale body, partially severing it. He had to keep his head. But…

“Finn, damn it, tell me you're all right.”

One of the soldiers gunned a truck toward the newly created gap, parking so that it formed a partial blockade. That seemed to be the catalyst for more people to act, rushing forward to bolster the breach. A line of oil-filled barrels began to take shape, and a woman who looked like she'd been a junkie for decades was the one to light the first flame. She handed her lighter to a soldier, barely flinching as bullets and lasers zinged overhead.

A score of aliens lay dead atop the rubble now, but more slavered behind, cautious enough to avoid being shot. The breach was as shored up as it was going to be, yet Gareth knew how tenuous their position was, how close the City stood to absolute annihilation.

“Finn? Answer me. I can feel you're alive but you're worrying the hell out of me here.”

“Hurt. Sorry. Karma for joking around earlier—my arm's broken.”

“Get to the infirmary. Or to Patrice's.”

“On my way to grab a sling. It looks bad down there. Least I can do is come back and fire a few rounds with my good hand.”

Gareth ducked as someone chucked a grenade over the barricade. It exploded, sending the wave of aliens scurrying backward. A soldier huffed. “Not so tough when they're all packed together with nowhere to dodge.”

“Yeah!” someone roared, and resistance redoubled.

Three hours later, however, morale was in tatters. Ammo was in short supply, so the soldiers had to space out the grenades. At several points, Gareth had been forced to leap onto the top of the barricade and fight hand-to-hand with his UV-saber. Even with the aliens funneled through the narrow gap, he couldn't keep up with the sheer number of them.

An hour left until dawn, and his muscles ached like hell. Sweat dripped into his eyes as he took a chug of water, seizing an opportunity to rest for a minute while a few soldiers chucked hastily constructed Molotov cocktails at the aliens. The smell of gunpowder and gasoline rested heavily in the air.

“Take it easy out there, okay? You're exhausted.”

“So are you.”
Gareth eyed the aliens at the wall and decided they were too intimidated to press the attack. He remained where he was, wedged against the bumper of a burned-out van.
“You still on the other part of the wall?”

“Yeah, I'm in the infirmary. Arm's splinted and already healing, though it hurts like hell. Repairmen are working overtime but the Barks aren't focused on ramming anymore. They're all trying to get through the gap.”

“How many?”

“Lots.”
Finn's tone was bleak.
“And I had another call from Command—Dr. Felton delayed those train evac orders until the last minute. Scar City's population isn't totally screwed…but it's going to be close getting everyone out.”

“What the fuck?”
He was going to kill Felton.
“That asshole wanted us to finish the mission that badly? So much he'd risk an entire City to get that goddamn device?”

“Yep. And I'm dealing with his superior now, so hopefully he'll have been properly disciplined. But Command says our plane isn't going to be here until nearly nightfall.”

“When we get back to the Complex, I want to call a meeting with the other Twins.”

“Roger that.”
Finn's easy acceptance of his fury was unusual. Generally, he tried to smooth things over, make him cooperate with the powers-that-be. Clearly, he was done kow-towing, and Gareth was fiercely glad of it.

With renewed vigor, he leaped into the fight. The current—or perhaps former, judging by her lucidity—junkie he'd seen earlier was still helping out. She even started up a countdown to dawn, hollering out the time in five minute intervals. As if galvanized by the light at the end of the tunnel, people rushed around faster than they had before. Out of the corner of his eye, Gareth noticed a few new people, perhaps sent here from other sections of the wall, or deserters who had come crawling back after a change of heart.

“Twenty minutes!” announced the junkie.

Gareth fired his laser into the gap. He blinked, catching sight of the leader who had attacked the train. The aliens were nearly indistinguishable—at least to a human—except for size. What set this one apart was Mari's bullet wound through its jowls. It reared back, hissing as it displayed its serrated teeth. Its malevolent gaze was fixed directly upon him.

Chapter Eight

“I should never have kept all those scavenged things,” Patrice said for the tenth time. She fiddled with the half-knitted sweater she was holding, clicked her needles together.

“You weren't to know,” Mari said.

“That's true, but I can still kick myself. I should have dumped everything outside the walls, let them have a free-for-all.”

Neither woman had slept. How could they, after that siren went off? It sounded again, preempting further conversation. The wail rose long and thin before dwindling away. Yet the fact that it was continuing to sound gave them both hope.

“I'd like to shove it up an alien's…oh, damn it.” Patrice scowled as a knitting needle clattered to the floor. “Why am I doing this in the first place? Abigail isn't going to come back, and I won't have the room to schlep this out of here.”

“Well, it's better to fiddle with a sweater than your shotgun,” Mari pointed out.

Patrice snorted. “I've always tried to be pragmatic. That's why I stayed here in the first place. I knew the area, I knew my neighbors, and I liked my house. I should have left five years ago, but I couldn't bear it if my granddaughter came back and found me gone.”

“Do you want to leave a note? In case…” Mari trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence. Scar City's fall was inevitable at this point, but speaking it out loud—especially while it was still dark—felt too risky. Silly for her to think that way, especially when the Twins were out there, fighting—
oh please let them be alive and well
—but she couldn't help herself.

“That's a good idea.” Patrice set the sweater aside and rose, peering warily through the slats of the boarded-up window. “Twenty minutes until dawn. Sky's lightening, but it won't be enough UV to drive the Barks underground yet.”

Mari shivered as the siren went off again. “I want to go to the wall.”

“Oh no. Those boys would have my head if I let you out of the house, Gareth especially.”

They both jumped as someone knocked on the door. Mari rushed to peer out the keyhole, heart thumping in dread. The Twins wouldn't have abandoned the wall before dawn unless there was something very wrong.

“Which Twin is it?” Patrice's voice shook.

Mari blinked. “It's…neither. There's a woman out there. Unarmed.”

Patrice didn't bother speaking. She rushed forward and yanked the door open. “Abigail? Oh.”

“I'm Gina, sorry. But I'm a friend of Abigail's.”

“You'll forgive me if I don't believe you.” Patrice's brows drew down. “You didn't offer up the name Abigail without me first saying it. So why are you here?”

“She's twenty-five, about five foot six, curly brown hair, likes Rottweilers, and her last name is Brooks. You want to know her shoe size too? And her favorite food?”

Patrice drew a shaky breath. “Used to be pizza. Cheese pizza, light on the sauce, heavy on the mozzarella.”

“She still likes pizza when she can get it.” Gina flicked a gaze upward as the klaxon went off again. “I can't stay long. I aim to get the first train out of here. Was on my way to the coast when this all went down…only planned to stay here overnight. Instead I ended up carrying supplies to the people fighting on the wall.”

“Did you see any Twins?” Mari demanded.

“Oh yeah. Handsome as anything. One's hurt—I got a good look at him in the infirmary—but the other one pretty much singlehandedly held the breach in the wall. Everyone thought we were goners, but the dude got up and started hand-to-hand with that crazy UV sword of his. He was still doing that when I left, fighting a massive leader alien. Probably killed it by now.”

Relief nearly choked her. She slumped a little against the wall, laying her palms flat against the strong, solid wood. Next to her, Patrice sighed. “Thank you. You've brought a powerful lot of good news. Do you want anything to eat?”

“No, I have to go. I promised Abigail I'd deliver you this letter, though, so here it is.” Gina handed over a small yellow envelope. She was about to draw back when Patrice took her hand and gripped it tightly.

“Thank you for coming. If you ever need anything…”

“Hey, Abigail saved my life. I owed her one. She's a good person.”

“Thank you,” Patrice repeated, and they both watched Gina go, rushing off in the direction of the train station. Moments later, the sun cleared the horizon, bathing her fleeing form in brightness. Then she was gone, the only evidence of her presence an upscattering of dust and old scraps of newspaper.

“I'm going to the wall to find Gareth and Finn,” Mari said. That way she'd kill two birds with one stone: giving Patrice privacy to read the letter, and seeing the Twins with her own eyes. The fact that Gareth had been fighting the leader made her nervous—was he the alien she'd shot from the train? The way he'd stared at her still made her shiver.

“Take the dog,” Patrice said. “Here's the leash, and don't you dare be out for long, or I'll have to come after you myself.”

Mari hurried toward the wall, Tank bounding beside her. The Rottweiler had access to a decently large backyard, where Patrice threw battered tennis balls for him to fetch, but his excitement at going on a walk was clear. She broke into a jog, then a run, and was breathless by the time she arrived at the wall.

“Oh my God.”

Tank looked up at her under-the-breath exclamation, but she only had eyes for the half-destroyed wall. A barricade of sorts blocked part of it, with wood and barbed wire scattered atop a huge mound of rubble, and vehicles parked at the edges. Several barrels of oil still burned, coughing thin black smoke into the air.

Corpses of aliens were everywhere. At first she stared at them, afraid to move lest they suddenly rise up and attack. Then, as she saw the sunlight slowly blackening their pale skin, she moved forward.

Where were the Twins? There were plenty of humans around, running to and fro. She saw Ramsey being stretchered down a flight of stairs, still rattling out orders to an aide. Mari caught the words
evacuation
,
four trains
and
no time
before Ramsey was taken out of earshot.

One soldier trailed behind, frowning at a clipboard. She moved to intercept him. “Sorry to bother you, but have you seen the Twins? I'm looking for them.”

He looked up, the frown remaining upon his face. “Yes, but one of them was hurt. I'd check the infirmary if I were you. Good luck.”

She gasped a response over her shoulder, already running up the steps that Ramsey had just been stretchered down. Mari could smell and hear the infirmary before she saw it—a stench of blood and bodily fluids mingled with the cries of the wounded. When she rounded the corner, Tank heeling at her side, she saw Finn seated near a bed, helping a soldier splint his ankle. Although Finn's arm was in a sling, he seemed calm and collected, and from that Mari deduced that Gareth must be okay and that Finn himself wasn't too badly injured. She sagged a little, that terrible, worried energy that had carried her to the wall dissipating somewhat as lack of sleep set in.

Before Finn could spot her, she withdrew, leading Tank back around the corner and down the stairs. At the bottom, a soldier struggled to load a set of lasers onto the back of a jeep, and Mari automatically reached to help him.

“Thanks.” He gave her an exhausted smile as they heaved the equipment into the folded-down backseat. “Do you need a ride to the station?”

“No, she doesn't.” The voice was familiar, sparking both chagrin and delight. She turned to face Gareth, mercifully uninjured save for a few scratches. Without even looking at the other man, he approached her, a hard set to his jaw. “Let's go, Mari.”

Tank trotted alongside them as they walked away from the wall. Gareth's strides were purposeful, and he didn't touch her at all. After thirty seconds of silence, Mari stopped in her tracks.

“I refuse to be frog-marched back to Patrice's.”

Gareth stopped a few strides farther down the road. He turned, eyes blazing. “You shouldn't have left the house in the first place!”

“Oh, of course not,” she shot back. “What I should have done was sit there like a good girl until you came and patted me on the back. I shouldn't have worried my pretty little head, right?”

“She's got you there, brother.”

Gareth wheeled, turning his glare on Finn. “I don't want her running around where she could be hurt.”

“
She
doesn't want to be hurt either,” Mari snapped. “And I'm standing right here, thank you very much, so you can address your concerns directly to me.”

Gareth opened his mouth, then immediately shut it again. He ran a frustrated hand through his short black hair, glaring up at the early morning sky. The pink streaks of dawn were slowly leaching from the brightening blue sky. It was going to be a warm day.

“I guess you had the dog with you,” Gareth finally managed.

“And my gun.”

“Hailey, my foster-mother, had a gun too. Didn't help her. She died anyway.”

“I'm not Hailey,” Mari almost regretted her sharp tongue when Gareth's fierce expression slipped.

“No, you're not. And like Finn keeps telling me, I need to…let go. But by all that's holy, seeing you walking around after we nearly lost the City, seeing you standing within striking distance of those alien corpses, talking to someone I don't know… I lost it.”

Mari went to him, wrapping her arms around him as far as they would go. A few seconds later, Finn pressed against her back, embracing her around the waist with his good arm as Gareth held her shoulders. She sighed deeply, appreciating the warmth, comfort and tacit apology.

“I needed to see that you were all right.”

“We understand, sweetheart,” Finn murmured, his voice rumbling pleasantly against her.

“Just…try to be gentle with us until we get somewhere safe,” Gareth added.

“I wasn't aware you preferred gentle,” Mari said, deliberately brushing against his groin.

His fingers tightened, bunching in the light jacket she wore, and he let out a groan. “I prefer it any way you want it.”

Tank broke the mood by winding the leash around their legs, and Mari pulled back with a smile. “I'd better take him back to Patrice.”

“Do you want an escort, or would you like to go alone?” Gareth looked as if the words tasted hideous, but he got them out anyway, and she squeezed his hand in appreciation.

“I'm good with an escort, but only if he's extra handsome.”

“Stop stroking his ego,” Finn said. “His head won't be able to fit inside the plane—or whatever they send to evacuate us. Speaking of which, I'm going back to our place to pack up. It would be fantastic if you two could rustle up some breakfast.”

Gareth tucked her under his arm as they began walking. “I don't…do very well with surprises,” he said. “I like knowing what's going to happen, who's where, all that. So there will be times when I'm gruff, and I'm sorry.”

“A place for everything, and everything in its place,” she quoted. “The problem with that is life keeps getting in the way. Even you would get tired of micromanaging things after a while, and people don't stay tidily in boxes—not without changing for the worse.”

Mari held her breath, hardly daring to watch him out of the corner of her eye. She was beginning to fall in love with these men, but she wouldn't tolerate being ruled with an iron fist. Some women could, welcoming the order in their lives, but it wasn't Mari's style.

“All right,” Gareth said finally. “Rule number one—don't put Mari in a box.”

“Unless there's chocolate inside,” she hastened to clarify.

“If there was, I'd be in there eating it off you.” He adopted a more serious tone. “Was everything all right last night at Patrice's?”

“Well, we didn't sleep, but everything was fairly quiet. Around dawn, a woman delivered a letter from her granddaughter, Abigail. Apparently she was passing through town, but the train couldn't leave until this morning because there were too many Barks circling the walls.”

“There's going to be a real issue getting everyone out of here,” Gareth said. “So, this message—was it good news?”

“I left her to read it by herself.” Worry made her step her pace up. “The woman who delivered it, Gina, said Abigail was fine, so I assume she's alive, but I wanted to give Patrice space to digest everything.”

“Sounds like you did the right thing.” Gareth knocked on Patrice's front door, boots creaking on the front porch. It seemed like an age ago that Mari had walked up to this house and accepted an offer of hospitality. How naïve she'd been—about everything, but most especially her father's supposedly valuable device.

Yet if she'd known there was no fortune, she might have accepted Tim Johnston's offer of marriage. And she would never have met the Twins.

“Come in.” Patrice bent to greet Tank, almost but not quite hiding her red-rimmed eyes. “Glad you're all right, Gareth.”

“Thanks. It was a long night.”

“And Finn?” Patrice shuffled over to her armchair and sank into it with a sigh.

“Idiot broke his arm when the wall fell. He's back at our place, packing stuff up.”

“About that…”

“You're coming with us.” Both Gareth and Mari spoke together, making the old woman snort.

“I don't dispute that. I want to open this place up, though. Open the windows so the Barks can't hide in here during daylight. I hate the thought of those aliens using my wonderful home as a…a
lair
.” She dabbed fiercely at her face, cleared her throat.

“Of course we can do that. You mind if we have breakfast first?”

“Nope. At this point, we might as well raid the pantry and eat as much food as we can stuff ourselves with.”