Someone off camera shakily said that yes, the cameras were rolling.
“We’ve been monitoring your communications,” the translator said. “And we’ve come to correct an error in the facts.”
He shoved Mai forward, and Mai let out a cry of pain.
“You’ve been told that this man is to be your Guide. That he has great wisdom to impart, in exchange for letting him live here on your world.”
Kurt glanced at me. My tears had stopped.
“This man is no Guide,” the monster said. “He is a leader, I’ll grant you. But he is a leader of slaves. He is a leader of a people we grind under our feet. Who are less than the food we eat. He is a leader of drones. That is what your Guides are. Drones. Living shells who exist only to benefit us. He has lied to you. And he will pay for his lies.”
And with that, the monster grabbed Mai’s injured shoulder, lifted him from the floor, and rammed another clawed hand into Mai’s chest.
“And so we will do to all of our property,” he said. “To this man’s children, and their loved ones.”
He dropped Mai to the floor, who fell motionless out of the camera shot. All that remained now was the broken podium, the two monsters, and the president.
The beast pointed his gun at the camera, and everything went to static.
I looked at Kurt. “We’ve got to find Coya and Suski.” He nodded, and we pushed our way back through the crowd of horrified people.
FOURTEEN
I yanked off my shoes and then ran down the hallway toward the Ghouls dorm. Other people were running, too; it felt like the whole school was in a state of panic. We’d seen the real aliens. They were the ones we had feared would come out of the crashed spaceship, and they were every bit as bad as we had suspected.
“Mutiny,” I said to Kurt as we ran toward the girls’ dorm. “That’s what all the murder scenes were. It was mutiny.”
As I threw the door open and turned down the dorm hallway, all the pieces seemed to come together in my mind.
“The rooms were too big—that was one thing we noticed—the ceilings were too tall, and we thought that was weird.”
“And the room,” Kurt said. “The murder room. You said that those beds were bigger than the rest.”
“Yes! There were these awful aliens on board, and they were keeping the Guides as slaves, and the slaves mutinied.”
My phone buzzed, and I pulled it from my pocket.
“Dad,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“We’re mobilizing for World War Three down here,” he said.
“Dad, be careful.”
“Don’t tell me to be careful,” he said, his voice more stern than usual. “You be careful. I know you. The alien specifically mentioned Mai’s children.”
“I know, Dad,” I said. “I’ll be careful.”
“I want you to get out of here. Out of state. I want you to go to Grandma’s. Not Grandma Goodwin, but Grandma Tanner.”
“New Mexico is, like, a thousand miles from here,” I said.
“More than a thousand miles,” he said. “And that’s where I want you. Off the grid. Out of touch. It’ll be the safest place.”
“Dad, I can’t leave my friends.”
“Then take them with you,” he said. “But get out. That’ll be the last place anyone will be fighting.”
“What about you?” I was holding back tears.
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’m with the army. Someone has to save the world, right?”
I smiled through my tears. “Dad, it was mutiny, wasn’t it?”
“That’s my guess, too,” he said. “Now hang up, and drive. I don’t imagine cops will be handing out a lot of speeding tickets, and Bluebell is fast.”
“I love you, Dad.”
“Love you, too.”
Nobody cared as Kurt ran down the hall of the girls’ dorm and we threw open the door. Rachel reached the door about the same time I did, coming from the other direction. She was a sobbing mess, while Brynne looked like she was ready to find a machine gun and take the aliens on single-handedly.
“Where’s Coya?” I asked, out of breath.
“The FBI came for her,” Brynne said.
“Where are they taking her?” Kurt asked.
“They said they were taking her—Suski, too—to the bunker.”
“I know where that is,” Rachel said. “I think they’re talking about the old tornado shelter. I used to go there to get some peace and quiet. Until I saw a rat.”
“Let’s get down there,” I said.
“Why?” Kurt asked. “Won’t the FBI be able to protect them?”
I paused for a minute. It was true. Plus there were camouflaged surface-to-air missiles out on the property. Did they really need us?
“Rachel,” I said. “Lead us to the top of those stairs. I want to go down there if we have to.”
She nodded. We grabbed a few things that we thought we might need—sweaters, keys, Rachel’s pepper spray, Brynne’s brass knuckles, which, I think, were illegal to even own. She just smiled and said that she’d only had to use them once, on a blind date who was all hands.
We ran to the old part of the school, following Rachel to the basement. Just as we rounded the corner, we came face-to-face with two FBI agents, guns drawn.
“Where are you going?” one demanded.
“Trying to get to a safe place,” I said.
“We’re advising all students to—”
He stopped as we heard the explosive whoosh of rockets being fired.
“They’re here,” I said. “How many agents do you have?”
“Four,” he said. “We’re going to keep you safe. Just head down that hallway and cover in place. Sit with your back against the wall, put your head between your knees. Wait for instructions.”
“It’s okay,” I said, talking as quickly as I could think, which is never good. “We’re leaving.”
“That’s your choice,” he said.
“We’re taking Coya and Suski with us,” I said.
He half smiled, but his face was dead serious. “No, they’re under lockdown.”
“No,” I argued. “They said they’re coming after the children of Mai. That’s Coya and Suski. They’ve already fired rockets. Those aliens—those things—are here.”
There was the chatter of machine-gun fire outside.
“They’ll be safer here where we can keep an eye on them,” he said. “This isn’t your decision to make.”
“No,” I said. “It’s your decision. But think about it: just a handful of those things got through the Governor’s Residence security. Do you have anywhere near their manpower? We’re going to be the next target, because we’re not protected. Half the U.S. army is down at the spaceship, at the camps where the Guides are. But aliens—these bad, psycho aliens—are coming here.”
He looked back at the other agent in the foyer.
“Where will you take them?”
“If I tell you, they could torture it out of you,” I said.
He thought for a minute and then shook his head. “No. No way. I’m not turning over our responsibility to a couple of teenagers.” There was a boom, loud and close. It shook dust from the plaster ceilings and the fire alarm went off. Every twenty feet a light high on the wall flashed bright and fast, and a siren blared.
“I can see the parking lot door and it’s fine. I watched Hannah and Emily both get in their cars and get away from here,” I yelled to the agent, and he had responded, which meant the new aliens had come in through a different door. If they’d come in through his, he’d be dead.
“The explosion could have been one of our RPGs,” he said, although he plainly didn’t believe it.
A moment later the fire sprinklers turned on, heavy and soaking.
“Give them to me before the aliens get down here,” I pleaded. I needed to see Coya again. We’d grown closer than I had realized. Even stoic, grumbling Suski had grown on me.
The sound of gunfire was
getting closer. “That’s the National Guard,” the agent murmured to himself. “Where are . . . East One, this is West One. Come in.”
I couldn’t hear a response—his radio was one of those little spiral cords that went up to his ear—but he made the call again. “East One, this is West One. Come in. East Two, this is West One. Come in.”
There were two explosions in quick succession—giant, wall-shaking explosions, and I could only guess that those missile trucks had just been destroyed.
“Dammit,” he said, turning back to me. “Your car fast? You a good driver?”
“Yes to both,” I said. I almost hugged him. “We’ll take care of them.”
“Hurry,” he said, and I followed him into the old part of the building, down a set of stairs, and then through a locked steel door.
The basement looked like an old musty library, with rows and rows of shelves. Coya and Suski were sitting on a pair of folding chairs. Coya jumped up and gave me a hug when she saw me.
“I am so sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry about your father.”
“I’m sorry about our lies,” Coya said.
“I don’t care about that. We’re going to get you out of here. To somewhere safe.”
Suski looked up at the FBI agents, and the agent-in-charge nodded. “We can’t protect this place. Not against that kind of firepower.”
“Where are we going?” Suski said, standing up.
“You’re coming with me,” I said. “And we’re leaving now. No time to pack anything.”
The agent-in-charge turned to me and handed me his FBI badge. “If you get questioned by anyone along the way—if you run into roadblocks or get pulled over—show them this and have them call me.”
“Thank you,” I said, tucking the ID into my coat pocket. “We won’t let you down.”
“If there’s a country left at the end of this, and if I still have my job, I want to hear from you.”
“We’ll be in touch. I’ll keep them safe.”
He turned to one of the agents. “Give me your Taser.” The other agent very reluctantly pulled it from his holster.
“As long as I’m getting fired,” the agent-in-charge said, “you might as well take this.” He placed the gunlike device in my hand, and I took a deep breath.
He quickly showed me how to operate it—twenty seconds’ worth of instruction, but enough to give me the gist. I could figure out the rest.
The six of us ran back out the door and up the stairs. Suski was still wearing his uniform, but Coya was dressed casually—a T-shirt and jeans that I recognized from Brynne’s closet. Neither of them had coats. We’d have to stop somewhere and buy them. If any stores were still going to be operating now that the world was at war with aliens.
I wondered if the president was still alive.
I put Suski in the front seat—he was too broad-shouldered to fit in the back with the others. Coya was the smallest of us, and I asked Rachel if she could take the first shift holding her. Rachel nodded enthusiastically. “I can’t believe we’re running.”
There were flames just off the road, and, like I’d guessed, the two trucks were burning. There was an armored vehicle by the front door, its back hatch open and empty. I couldn’t see any alien ship, but there was a fire raging in the small commercial district just west of our campus. Had we knocked a ship out of the sky? It made me want to chant USA! USA! but the aliens were still in the school—the gunfire and the explosions proved that. The aliens were going to kill those FBI agents. Would they kill the students? Torture them for information? “Anyone want to bail, say so now,” I said. “This is going to be dangerous. We have two people that some awful-looking aliens view as targets.”
“That’s why I’m coming,” Rachel said, steel-faced. “We have to do something.”
Brynne laughed, unease in her voice. “I’m just hoping that, at some point, I get to sit on Suski’s lap.” When I looked at her in the rearview mirror, I saw she was reaching across Kurt to hold Coya’s hand.
“You’re sure?” I asked them again.
“Yes,” they both said, and Rachel added, “Just go already.”
“I’m not letting you go without me,” Kurt said.
Bluebell had been detailed and waxed by the transportation company and had a little bit of that new car smell that she had never lost and that awe-inspiring sheen that only a BMW 550i Gran Turismo can radiate. Zero to sixty in 5.2 seconds. 445 horsepower. Eight-speed automatic transmission. Car and Driver magazine called it “the fastest living room you’ll ever drive.” I think that was meant to be an insult, but this was a party car, designed to cram in all your friends and give them each their own TV. I personally have never stood up and reached to heaven through the sunroof, but I can’t say that no one ever has. (It’s easier to do that from the backseat.)
So, four people in the back was tight, but not as bad as you’d think.
“It was a mutiny, right?” I asked. We didn’t take the freeway—that would lead us past the crash site, and I knew that was a bad idea. I pulled up my GPS and found a route to Sioux Falls that took us southwest through Mankato.
“Yes,” Suski said. “It was a mutiny. We are sorry we lied about it. We didn’t see a choice.”
“You were slaves?”
“Our people have been slaves on that ship for as far back as we can remember. A hundred generations, maybe. We do not know.”
A light dawned in my head. “That’s what those metal rings on the walls were for, weren’t they? They were to lock you up.”
“Yes,” he said. “We were always chained.”
Rachel spoke up. “So how did you mutiny?”
“We overwhelmed them. There were too many of us; they couldn’t stop us, not even with their strength and weapons. But many of our people died.”
“Why did you crash?”
“We didn’t know how to pilot the ship,” Coya said. “As you found out, we don’t know how to read the language of our masters. We couldn’t use their equipment. Our best people found this planet and tried to land. But they were guessing.”
“And then,” Kurt said, “you made up the story about being Guides? Why?”
Suski answered, anger in his voice. “We didn’t want to be slaves again. We wanted freedom. Now we will all be slaves—us and you. The Masters will not leave us alone. Now that they found us here, they will come in force.”
The thought made me shudder. I pictured the alien killing Mai on TV. “How many more Masters are there?”
“We do not know,” Suski said. “But they are strong and we are weak. And they are smart and we are not. They created that spaceship, and the one that attacked the school.”
“Our planet can fight back,” Brynne said. “Just like your people did.”
“Many will die,” Coya said.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “The Masters can’t get away with this. We won’t let them.”
“It’s worse than you think,” Suski said. “They won’t just go away. They need us. We were slaves on the ship, but we were more than slaves.”
I heard Coya take a quick gasp. Disgust.
“What?” I asked, looking in the rearview mirror at her.
“I can’t talk about it,” she said, and looked out the window.
“We are how they breed,” Suski said. “You said that you found tools—spikes and hooks. They are for stabbing. For surgery.”
I heard Coya begin to cry, and I felt my stomach start to turn.
“The spike is used to insert a parasite in our abdomens, men and women. It grows in us, in our bellies. When it gets too big, it . . . I don’t want to say.”
“Say!” Brynne and Rachel said together.
“The parasites begin to eat their way out,” he said. “They are monsters, vermin. Even the Masters can’t control them. They are removed from the body with spikes and hooks, chained and grown in cages until they become like our Masters. Those who go through it do not survive.”
“That’s horri
fying,” Rachel said.
“We had to make the decision,” Suski continued, “when we mutinied, that all those who had been implanted had to be killed. They were all willing. We offered them a merciful death, rather than a death of pain and terror.”
Coya continued for him, her voice shaking with tears. “That was what our ship was for. It was a breeding ship. All of us knew that eventually we would be forced to die.”
“Wait,” I said. “A thousand Guides committed suicide in the ship. Is this why?”
Rachel gasped.
Coya spoke, her voice small and tremulous. “Yes.”
“I’m so sorry,” Brynne said.
“No,” Suski said. “They were proud to die. They killed themselves to give the rest of us freedom.”
There was silence in the car for a long time, as we tried to get through the chaos of the streets without making us look like a target. I followed the speed limit, stuck to side streets, made a reasoned course toward the freeway.
“What about Mai?” I asked. “He was very old. I thought no one got old.”
“There were some who were instructed to control the rest of us. To be in charge of us. Coya and I would have served that role. We would not have been killed. But now, the Masters want us more than any others,” Suski said. “You asked why we have no mothers. It is because we choose not to get attached to our children in the same way you do. We don’t speak of mothers. When you ask us about mothers, we do not reply. We do not get attached to one another the same way you do.”
Coya nodded. “Long ago we decided that we would not breed, not our people. We thought that if there were not enough of us—if we never had children—the Masters could not survive. They forced breeding—artificially.”
“And the children are raised by slaves who are not their mothers. A mother would love her baby too much and smother it—that was the way of it,” Suski said. “Everyone on that ship wanted to die early because they expected to die horribly.”
“Suski and I are brother and sister,” Coya said. “We know that Mai is our father. Most of our people do not know who their fathers are. And no one knows who their mother is. If the Masters are ever gone, it would be our duty to go to our people and lead them.”