Dark Creations: Hell on Earth (Part 5) (6 page)

She glimpsed over her shoulder a second time and inspected her team.  They did not flinch at her scrutiny, and why would they?  She was their commanding officer.  But she wasn’t checking their readiness or anything that official as they may have suspected.  She was simply noting that it was highly unlikely that any of the
replacements looked like the people inside.  Everyone with her looked to be in their early twenties, at most, while the parents were nearing their fiftieth year.  Such details didn’t matter to her creator, though.  The members would occupy the home in a business-like capacity.  They would pay bills, answer phone calls, emails, and text messages, and fulfill employment obligations.  They would also deter visits from friends and family.  Day-to-day life would continue, at least, on the surface it would, until each home had been overtaken.  Then, to the rest of the country, the small town of Taft would carry on as it always had.  Only Lord Terzini and his members would know that Taft had been locked down, and under the control of a race intended to overthrow humanity.

Overthrow humanity
.  The thought sent another shiver through Amber’s core.  But she needed to push it back, back to the farthest niches of her being.  She could not risk getting herself killed.  She did not know why, but felt she had a purpose greater than what she’d been used for thus far.  She straightened her posture, rolled her shoulders back and widened her stance.  She took a deep breath and rapped her knuckles against the door a second time.  Terzini had explained to her, and every other member, again and again how perfect the world would be once human beings had been eradicated, yet she still shuddered at the prospect of slaughtering innocents.  Her maker had said no humans were innocent, and orders were orders.  She could not defy an order, not without facing torture then death. 

When no one answered her
second knock, she tried the doorknob before engaging in the standard system of kicking in the door.  To her surprise, it was unlocked.  She pushed it forward and the door opened inward noiselessly.  The others rushed in.  Amber stepped inside after them.  They moved silently, swiftly through the house in search of its residents. 

The first was caught in a matter of seconds.  He sat atop the toilet, presumably the eldest male in t
he family, the father.  His eyes were wide with fear and disbelief, his body utterly frozen.  But not for long.  Within seconds, Kit, the only other female on her team raised her gun and fired two shots, one to his head and one to his chest.  Amber felt her world go silent as she saw his body slump against the wall beside him before he tumbled forward, off the toilet to the tiled floor below.  His lifeless face judged her with an expression of abject fear.  She wanted to run, to flee to the van they’d arrived in and leave, leave the town, the state, the country, to get as far away from Terzini and Taft as possible.  But she could not.  She knew he’d find her no matter where she went. 

Sound returned to her and she expected to hear screams of alarm and fright, yet the television still played and thumps still echoed upstairs. 
Then she remembered that the silencers affixed to their weapons were the reason for the household remaining oblivious of the fact that a gun had just been fired in their bathroom. 

A quick look at the faces of her teammates revealed exactly what she’d thought it would: nothing.  Not a drop of remorse, or any other emotion, registered on their features. 
They remained stoic as they nodded to her then dispersed.  She had no choice but to follow.  They swept through the lower level of the house stealthily, communicating only with their eyes to indicate that a room was empty. 

Amber knew more people were in the house, had heard them.  In her head, she silently willed them to hide despite knowing hiding would be futile.  She hated what they were doing with every part of her, but was powerless to stop it, to intervene on behalf of the humans. 

She and her team stole across a large living room and into the kitchen when they spotted another target.  A woman stood with her back to them singing softly as she washed dishes.  She must have heard their footsteps and assumed one of her family members had entered the room because she asked casually, “Who was at the door, honey?”  When no one answered, she turned from the sink unexpectedly and saw them.  Her eyes went immediately to the guns they held and she began screaming, “Oh my God!  Oh no!  Kyle!  Kyle,
run
!  Take the girls and run!” 

Her screams
drilled through Amber’s head, through her bones.  The woman wanted to protect Kyle and the girls, her son and daughters.  Her gut-wrenching pleas, even in the face of her death, tore through Amber.  Her hands began to tremble violently and she worried her grip on her gun would falter.  Footsteps thundered in the hallway.  The woman’s adult son was attempting to escape.  He had managed to scramble to the staircase when the two males on her team fired off several shots.  She had not received any form of confirmation that the son had been killed so she assumed her members were still in pursuit. 

“Run!  Get your sisters!” his mother screamed
again, her voice shrill with panic.

Amber wanted to drop to her knees and cover her ears, the scene fast becoming far too intense, too harrowing
to endure a moment longer.  Her knees began to crumple just as she felt Kit’s body brush past her. 

“No!
No! Don’t you hurt my babies!” the woman screamed.  “You leave them alone!” 

The hushed pop of two rounds silenced the woman from
any further cries.  She fell to the floor, twin bullet holes marking her forehead.  Amber’s stomach lurched violently.  Vomit burned up her throat.  She worried she’d be sick right then and there.  And the sound of footsteps overhead did little to keep her from retching in front of Kit.  In fact, it made matters worse.  She knew she needed to move, but dizziness made the thought of taking a single step seem impossible.  But she had to. 

Focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, she began leading the way with Kit
in tow, though Kit sought to hunt the son while she wasn’t sure what she was doing. 

As they dashed up the steps, Kit spoke to her.

“I took two of your kills, ma’am.  I was only ordered one.  I have no excuse for my actions.  This is my first invasion and my intent was to be as efficient as possible.  It won’t happen again.  You can take out the boy and his sisters.  I’ll be sure to have the others stand down.”

The world began to swirl in lopsided circles.  She would be expected to kill the three remaining humans; and all of them
young no less.  Fierce tremors racked her body, an attack of panic threatening.  She did not say anything to Kit, but nodded curtly in response, just as a commanding officer in her position ought to.  Inside, however, she felt as though every system in her body was teeming at once, each jockeying to overrun itself in a chaotic tailspin until it ceased functioning.  Every cell in her body screamed and created a deafening roar inside her.

Her world refused to come into perspective until she found herself standing before
two girls huddling against a wall, their backs to Amber and her team, sobbing, while their brother opened a window.  One of her male teammates had already entered the room and had waited, unseen, for her to arrive, while the other guarded the steps.  Both the male and Kit held the girls in their crosshairs, but waited for Amber to take the kill shots.  Two sets of eyes watched her, expecting her to raise her weapon and fire on them, all of them.

The room suddenly sweltered.  Sweat stippled her brow, gathered at her neck and trickled down between her shoulder blades.  Her cotton shirt clung to her back.  She raised her weapon and trained her gaze on the mess of brow
n curls entwined before her.  Her arm trembled as her index finger tensed and tightened around the trigger.  Her throat burned and her mouth went dry.  Random thoughts eddied about in her brain, thoughts of the semblance of a life she had now and the life she could have if she weren’t enslaved to Terzini’s cause.  But she
was
enslaved to his cause.  And she did not have time for what-ifs.  She locked her elbow and took aim at the small head to her left. 

As she was about to shoot, the young man at the window spun
without warning.  He saw her and his eyes widened fleetingly.  He undoubtedly wondered, in that instant why she, a girl who looked like a living Barbie doll and appeared to be the same age as he, had arrived to kill everyone in his house.  She could almost hear that thought cross his mind before he dove in front of his sisters.

“NOOOOO!”
he shouted at the top of his lungs.

His body shielded the two small quivering masses
and the world came sharply into focus.  He was sacrificing himself for his sisters.  He must have known he was simply delaying the inevitable, that they would die eventually, whether it was before or after him.  Still, instead of saving himself and jumping from the open window, he stayed behind and protected his siblings.  His reaction seemed incongruous, unlike any she’d expected.  Her maker had instilled in her and her fellow members that humans were selfish beings, cruel, selfish beings, yet the boy had just exampled otherwise.  Was he a single exception to Terzini’s ideology, or were there others like him?  She simply did not have the answer.  Something was wrong, Terzini was wrong.  She could feel it in every part of her. 

“Kill them,” Kit’s voice urged from behind her. 

“
I
do the ordering,” Amber said sternly and reminded Kit of exactly who was in charge.

She knew that Kit’s urging was not emotionally driven, that she was not attempting to break rank.  Without an ego, the prospect of rebellion was nonexistent.  Still, impressing upon her that she was commanding their operation was standard protocol.  The tone she’d used, however, was not. 

Everyone waited for her to act.  Amber’s pulse began to thunder in her ears, drowning out the voices of those in the room with her.  She raised her other hand so that both gripped her pistol.  She wiped sweat from her brow with her forearm, never taking her eyes off the twins and their brother.  She was certain Kit and the others could see her obvious reactions, that she was experiencing some kind of turmoil.  Could they tell that she was having reservations?  She did not know, and did not care.  All she knew was that people would die at her hands in a matter of seconds.

Her breathing was ragged and her temples pounded.  The gun felt too heavy in her hands.  She struggled to hold it up, was about to lower it and surrender herself when
without thinking, she spun on her heels and fired two shots.  Kit’s eyes widened and her mouth fell agape, too stunned by her commanding officer’s action to react.  Both bullets penetrated the center of her forehead and she reeled backward against the wall.  The male team member beside Kit leveled his weapon at Amber.  His mouth was set in a hard line and he was about to fire on her.  She swore she could feel the nervous twitch of his index finger on his trigger, the fraction of a second he hesitated confusedly, and she took advantage of it. 

S
he squeezed her trigger first, before he’d fully committed.  Her bullet tore through his eye socket and dropped him to the floor immediately.  She wanted to let her gun, slickened with perspiration from her palms, slide from her grasp and crash to the floor, but knew another member waited on the staircase and would burst into the room within seconds.  No time existed for her to process what was happening, much less melt down.  She stole into the hallway. The guard on the steps looked up at her with his gun in hand and she did not hesitate.  She discharged her weapon.  Bullets sped through the air and crashed into his torso, effectively staggering him before she took a final shot at his head.  He dropped his weapon and fell to the floor.  She turned from him and reentered the room where the children huddled with their brother.  To her surprise, they hadn’t moved.  Despite the gunfire, the blood, the death around them, they remained where they were.  The young man still refused to abandon his sisters. 

Hearing her footsteps, he flinched, as if anticipating bullets peppering his back at any moment.  When she didn’t shoot, he slid a glance her way from the corner of his eye, trying to gauge her next move.  She was fairly certain he was not expecting what she was about to say.

“If you want to live, you’re going to have to do exactly as I say,” Amber ordered them.

He turned from his sisters, finally let go, and looked to her.
  “What?” he asked, his voice roughened by emotion.

“Get up
.  I will not kill you.  But you have to do exactly as I say, and
now
.”

He did not say another word to her, but began shepherding his sisters away from the wall whispering inaudible words of comfort in their ears.  Amber had no idea what she was doing, what she’d gotten herself into.  All she knew was that she w
ould not kill innocent beings, and that she was no longer afraid. 

Chapter 6

Melissa was
exhausted from her unexpected journey which had included a two and a half hour flight followed by a two hour car ride. Fortunately, she’d just finished spring semester and did not have to miss classes back home, but explaining her trip to her father had been a production in and of itself.  She’d been forced to lie to him.  She hated lying to her father, and had learned long ago that nothing good resulted from it.  As she’d sat on the plane between Gabriel and Jack, that feeling had grown.  Especially since Jack had decided to be frugal with the information he’d share.  For much of the plane ride, Jack had remained quiet.  When he did elect to speak, his words had been vague at best.  He’d clung to generalizations like a lifeline while she and Gabriel were left floundering in uncertain waters.  If she hadn’t been so scared, she would have been annoyed by his sweeping statements and secretiveness.  But she was scared.  And the fact that he’d refused to specify what exactly made him so sure that Terzini had cloned himself only scared her more. He made no mention whatsoever of his earlier claim that Terzini had taken over a town and was in the process of taking over another.  He just kept telling them that there was a war coming, that he wasn’t crazy and that they’d see for themselves what he was talking about.