At the End - a post-apocalyptic novel (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) (24 page)

The sickening sight made my stomach gurgle
in abhorrence.

I turned and ran back to the hall.

Now I knew that if I tripped the alarm,
hundreds of bone-sucking alions would be there within moments, long
before I could make an escape.

I made my way back to the room where they
held Penelope. She still lay unconscious on one of the three center
tables. An alion examined the body with the slow pumping heart,
experimenting. The shorthaired man made no gut-wrenching screams as
I had expected; he just rested with a tranquil, drugged face,
slightly curved up in a smile.

I scrutinized the yellow line’s pattern, but
after a while I figured out it scanned around the room at random. I
looked about the room, searching for its origination point, yet it
didn’t appear to have one, as it glided along the room without a
trace of the source from where it was emitted.

Another alion walked into the room and
pressed a combination of keys on a translucent screen. One of the
slabs along the wall to my right moved forth. The slab, controlled
by a computerized arm, reached the alion within a second, rotating
the table so that it was horizontal like the other three.

The alion took a cutting tool and began to
open the chest cavity of the woman.

She screamed in agony.

I crushed my ears with my hands. It was no
use; the horrific sound penetrated my attempt to muffle the
screaming, shooting right down into my stomach. I backed out of the
room again.

For all my effort to sit and watch the room,
I couldn’t stand by the door for longer than a minute, but when my
stomach settled, I went back to study the layout once again. I went
back and forth a hundred times or more, adding on to the picture I
was building in my head.

I searched all the rooms circling the
torture room. Three were hallways, one a square room with padding,
and the fifth was pitch-black and smelled of decay, so I did not
linger. For hours, I walked back and forth through the connecting
halls, scouting out the entire area, looking for an opportunity. As
my body slowed in exhaustion, I realized I had to make my own
opportunity, but I couldn’t fathom how.

Using a pod, I climbed up into the duct
system to clear my head. I visualized the torture room. Nothing
came. Hungry, I took out a chocolate bar I had found in the
stockroom of food.

I didn’t know how long I had sat there, but
soon a horrible itch came over me, pushing me back to the torture
room. Stashing what little water I had in the duct, I went back and
stared at Penelope. They hadn’t touched her yet. But how long would
it be before they did? A minute? An hour? A day? How long could I
stand outside and do nothing?

Anger flooded my veins. Helplessness
followed.

Hungry again, I went searching for food. I
found a smaller storage unit brimming with food, not far from the
massive dining hall. I also found the kitchen, watching alions
prepare plates crowded with meat and thick flat breads.

I stuffed my face with cheese crackers,
unable to control my appetite. I felt sicker and sicker by the
minute, but I couldn’t stop eating.

Then suddenly I looked up and an alion stood
in the doorway, gaping down at a floating box of crackers that I
had forgotten to cloak. Dropping the box, I grabbed the gun that
lay between my legs. The black globes pierced the beast’s skull. I
hurtled over the carcass and out into a short hall. Another alion
caught sight of its dead companion and chased after me. I whipped
around frantically, shooting but never hitting. The bazooka tube
was strapped across its back. Unfastening the buckles with its
humanlike fingers, the alion lifted the weapon above its head and
aimed in the direction of my fleeing body.

I zigzagged as I crossed into another,
lengthier hallway. When I came to the door at the end, it was
locked, and I had no time to use the yellow disk.

I whirled around to face the alion.

It shot the blue orb at my invisible face as
I launched a stream of black globes. The blue cloud immobilized me.
I felt the blue lightning strikes pierce my vulnerable pink skin in
a thousand different places. With every pulse came a stabbing
pain.

Suspended, I gazed out of the
semi-transparent cloud, watching as the claws that promised my
death approached.

I waited with open eyes.

Maggy

N
o one spoke as we
drove south. The thrumming of gas engines surrounded us. Most of
the vehicles were electric, powered by high-absorbent solar panels,
but they were also old and the batteries did not last when darkness
came. I was told that we had entered California a short while ago,
but it didn’t look any different than southern Oregon. What road
our wheels rode on, no one knew, and I received the same answer
from all of the soldiers: “We’ll be there soon.”

But soon wasn’t soon. Alions ambushed us
over and over, and the column of heavy vehicles stopped a hundred
times to fight off the small groups of attackers. Once, an alion
tore a soldier from the edge of the jeep, just stole him away in
the daylight. It was even more horrific than when they took
Mike.

Tortilla and I, along with the twins,
huddled at the front of the jeep’s bed, shivering under a single
blanket. Tortilla continuously comforted both girls, even though
Amanda insisted she didn’t need it. Jane dug her head into his
chest and squeezed his body, terrified. She clung to him for a
better part of the journey.

As dawn broke on the next morning,
Burnhammer appeared at the tailgate for the first time since our
departure. “How are you four doing?” she asked. Her camouflage
uniform already looked normal to my eyes. She hopped up into the
bed and took a seat across from us on the long benches.

“We’re hungry,” I answered. “They haven’t
really been giving us rations.”

She cursed. “Hold on, I’ll go get you some.”
She returned with four quick meals, wrapped and preserved; two were
turkey subs and the others were ham.

“Thanks,” I said, unwrapping the
package.

“I’ll tell the ones looking after you to
keep you better fed, but I have to go,” she spoke softly. “Duties
to be done.”

“Can’t you look after us?” Jane asked.

“Wish I could, but I have orders to watch
our six. We can’t let them sneak up behind us anymore.” She smiled
and hefted her rifle over her shoulder. “Your guns still
working?”

Tortilla and I nodded.

“Good. Ask one of the soldiers to show you
how to clean them. Keeping a clean gun will keep you alive.” She
nodded and left.

The sandwich tasted much better than the
jerky at this point, a relief from the same foods we had been
eating for what seemed like a year. I tried to count the days, but
when I did, Jacob and his house and his death wish always popped
into mind, so I quit counting after the second day. I know it
couldn’t have been more than nine or ten days max. A sick taste
filled my mouth when my thoughts drifted to Jacob. Watching his
death now ate away at my nerves. I replayed the scene over and
over. I wasn’t even sure I had any nerves left.

Even though we were surrounded by hundreds
of soldiers, who were trained and packing heavy-duty weapons, I
felt more vulnerable now than when I woke up alone in my house.
After losing Jacob, the soldiers did not promise safety as I once
thought they had. None of us were safe . . . none of us.

As the sun awoke, dark, unfriendly clouds
blocked out its warmth, pouring rain to muddy up the ground off the
road. It rained into the afternoon, until we had either passed the
clouds, or they had been swept away. By three, the clear blue sky
smiled again.

I walked to the edge of the jeep, bouncing
around as the driver failed to miss potholes. I stared up at the
sun. The warmth bathed me and I absorbed as much as I could. I
closed my eyes from the harsh light.

Then a mass blocked out the rays for a
second.

I opened my eyes and spotted the alion
craft. Balls of yellow exploded at the rear of the column, sending
giant plumes of red and yellow flames skyward. Thick black smoke
engulfed what I could see of the convoy’s tail. The boom generated
from the tanks deafened. Huge mounted machineguns added to the
chorus of blasts.

The jeep sped up.

Out of the smoke, an alion craft flew low,
zooming over the tops of vehicles. The triangular ship fired a wave
of yellow dots. The jeep at our backs exploded; its flames reached
for my face, like a hand grabbing blindly for food to consume. I
fell back.

One of the soldiers inside our jeep radioed
his superior. No response came. The large black man called over and
over, but it was futile, no one was going to respond.

“Give it up, Charles,” the Asian woman said,
who sat next to him. “Just protect the civvies, that’s our
duty.”

A broad, pale man with a bushy mustache and
thick eyebrows took guard at the tailgate. He helped me to my feet,
then turned his attention to the sky, searching for alion crafts.
One approached, flying even faster than its last pass over. The man
aimed an anti-air rocket at the front tip of the craft. Waiting
until it zipped over a tank four vehicles behind, he pulled the
trigger, and with gray smoke filling our mouths, the rocket raced
towards its target.

I coughed, hunching over. I shifted my
squinting eyes to the alion craft. The rocket found its mark and
detonated upon impact. In seconds the entire craft burned, afire
from front to back to wings. The crimson gas emitted by the alion
vessel combusted, adding to the chaos. The ball of fire whooshed
over us, drifting to the left. In a crash, the wet trees and
foliage burst into fire as the craft blew apart into flaming
shards.

“Got one,” the soldier who had shot it down
said. His Slavic accent sounded odd, as I had only heard it in
movies and video games, but never in person, never in real
life.

The other soldiers whooped and hollered
their delight. When the celebration died down an hour had passed.
The soldiers took every kill as a victory, and they relished in it,
as if the end of the war—or whatever we were in—drew near. The only
end I could see, the only future I imagined awaited us all, was
death: flesh torn apart and sliding down the throat of an alion,
digesting in acid.

“You look grim,” Tortilla told me.

“I feel like my heart is growing cold,
bromigo.” My heart hadn’t leapt at his touch the last few days, and
my skin didn’t care what poked it; it was all the same now: metal,
neo-plastic, food, soil . . . it all felt ten times harder than my
skin.

He hugged me, kissed a cheek, and smiled.
“They’re taking us to a safe place.”

I laughed. “There are no safe places
left.”

My mood irritated him, I could see, but he
hid it, pushing my words aside. “There’s still a fight . . . still
a chance. We’re soldiers now, whether we ever wanted to become what
we played or not, that’s us now. You better put all that pain some
place deep, and save it for later, it’s not doing you any good
right now.”

“Tortilla, we’re not sol—”

He put a finger up to my mouth. “We’re
tough, our skin is thick, and our muscles only know endurance, just
like in Death Squad. If it wasn’t true before, it’s true today.” He
nodded at me.

My heart pounded for a second, alive. I
nodded at him. He needed me to be strong. I hugged him tightly. We
sat motionless for a while, our warm bodies pressed together, a
sweet embrace that both of us desperately needed.

The trees of middle California rolled by as
night came.

At night, the convoy stopped, and the
soldiers assigned to us walked around to see buddies. A low-ranking
soldier ran up to the jeep, visiting Charles, spreading news as he
did every few hours. “San Francisco, Sacramento, Oakland, the whole
Bay Area wiped out. Nothin’ left but debris, same as Portland.
They’re everywhere, taking out the major cities . . .” His voice
trailed off as the two walked away. They left the four of us alone
again.

Tortilla seized my hand. “Thick skin,” he
said.

“Do I have thick skin?” Jane asked. “It
feels the same as before.”

“It’s the thickest, toughest skin around,”
Tortilla lied. “An alion would have to be melted to come after you
again. But if they do, we’re all here, standing guard.”

Burnhammer checked in again a short while
later. “They tell me the ride is almost done. We’re going up into
the hills, to a secret base under Mount Baldy. Never been there,
but apparently it’s one of the ten last resort bases. I guess it’s
like a small city, places for civvies.”

Jane grew excited. “We’ll be safe
there?”

“You betcha, kiddo,” Burnhammer replied,
smiling. “I’ve been told survivors can settle in until we
exterminate the infestation.”

“Can I help . . . with the extermination?”
Amanda asked.

“I think your days having to use your
weapons are over, kiddo. You won’t have to until you’re old enough
and choose to enlist. When we get to Mount Baldy, you can relax
again.”

Amanda frowned at that; I could tell she
detested being treated like a little girl. Her angered cheeks
puffed, and she scooted to the back of the jeep, lying down on the
bench in a sullen pout. Jane followed her.

I slipped down from the jeep to stand next
to Burnhammer. “Corporal Burnhammer, can I ask you something?”

“If it’s not classified, I’ll answer.” She
situated her assault rifle to rest across her stomach, hanging from
a shoulder strap.

“How did your entire brigade survive?”

“The entire brigade didn’t survive, but most
of us were underground when the alions—” She smiled when she said
the silly word—“Started taking the masses. The complex was designed
with aluminum built in the walls, and intelligence thinks that’s
one of the tricks that saved us, but they don’t really know for
sure.”