Strike (2 page)

I was almost too stunned to turn around. Almost. I looked over my shoulder to the stretch of sea grass that bordered the beach to see my best friend trudging over the sand berm, headed my way.

Quinn Carr was alive.

He carried a beach chair and had a bright orange towel draped around his neck. His mop of curly blond hair and thick glasses were unmistakable. My best friend, the guy who was disintegrated when he was hit by a killer beam of light fired from three Air Force fighters, was somehow headed my way.

“Jeez,” he said. “Could you have picked a spot a little further away? My feet are on fire.”

Quinn dropped his towel and stood on it directly over me, blocking the sun so that I didn’t have to squint. I saw him in silhouette, a dark, impossible ghost.

All I could do was stare in wonder and ask the only question that made sense. “Are we in heaven?”

“Yeah right,” he said with a scoff. “I know you think Pemberwick is, like, nirvana but . . . heaven? That’s over the top, even for you.”

My mind was reeling, desperate to understand what was happening.

“You okay, Tuck?” Quinn asked with concern.

“Okay? I’m about as far from okay as you can get. What the hell is going on?”

“You tell me,” he said. “Your leg looks gnarly.”

“My leg?”

I looked down to see that my right leg was covered in blood. The instant I saw it, I registered the pain. It was vaguely numb at first, but the sensation quickly grew into a vicious, angry ache.

“My folks can fix you up,” Quinn said. “But I don’t know how you’re going to ride your bike to the hospital.”

“I rode my bike here?” I asked, bouncing between confusion and panic.

“I was hoping we could take a midnight ride later,” he said. “I miss those rides, Tuck. Hell, I miss
you
. I wish things could go back to the way they were.”

I tried to stand up but the pain in my leg forced me to stay down.

“What is happening, Quinn?” I cried. “Why am I here?”

Quinn laughed in that casual way he had of letting you know he knew so much more than anybody else in the world and said, “Because this is where you want to be. Hopefully you’ll get back here someday. For real.”

“But I’m here now!”

Quinn took a step back and the sun blasted my eyes.

“I’m proud of you, buddy. You’re officially my hero.”

“Quinn?” I shouted.

The only reply I got was a sudden rush of sound. At first I feared that a rogue wave had hit the beach and I was about to be washed away. But the sound was too steady for that. I looked for Quinn, but he was gone. The whole beach was gone.

I was still lying in the sand, but it was Mojave sand. It was night. The blinding light revealed its true nature: It wasn’t the sun at all, but a searchlight on a helicopter that was shining down on me. The rogue-wave sound was the steady whine of its engine.

I had only visited Pemberwick Island in the dazed stupor of a teasing dream. My pounding head was proof of that. The only thing real about any of it was my bloody leg. I was hurt. Badly. The pain was excruciating. I didn’t dare touch it for fear I would feel a bone sticking out.

I waved to the chopper, hoping it was coming to get me. It answered by killing the searchlight and flying off. It was hard to see any detail, as I’d just had a bright light shining directly into my eyes, but I could still make out the rising-sun SYLO logo on its belly.

Whoever was in that chopper, they didn’t care about me.

As the sound of the helicopter’s engine faded I looked around to try to figure out my next move. I was definitely in the middle of nowhere. I did a slow three-sixty until I spotted something that rocked me fully back to reality: the wreck of our helicopter.

A dozen thoughts flashed through my brain. None of them were good. My mother, Tori, and Kent were on board. So were Granger and Cutter. It looked as though I had been thrown clear of the wreck. That might have happened because I was near the door that was blown open. Whatever had happened, I was lucky to be alive, even though my leg was useless.

I tried to get up but there was no way my leg could handle any weight. Still, I had to get to the wreck. People could be trapped inside. The only way I could move was to crawl on one knee, dragging my dead leg behind me. The pain was unbearable. It felt as though my limb was being wrenched off, and on fire, but I didn’t stop.

The chopper was dead. The engine was silent. It wasn’t burning so I didn’t think there was any chance of an explosion. How long had it been since the crash? I could have been lying there for hours. Why didn’t the SYLO helicopter land? I didn’t hear any sounds of battle. The action seemed over.

As I crawled nearer to the wreck, I realized that my leg wasn’t my only problem. My head was spinning. I must have had a concussion, not that I knew what that was like. I’d had my bell rung a few times playing football, when I’d see colors and hear a sharp ringing for a few minutes. This felt like that, except it wouldn’t go away. The world was spinning and so was my stomach. I heaved, losing whatever I had eaten earlier that day in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas. That seemed like centuries before.

I wiped my mouth with my dirty sleeve and kept going. I had to know who was inside that wreck, even if there was nothing I could do to help them. When I finally reached the downed chopper, the first person I saw was the pilot through the shattered windshield. Cutter. He was dead. The marine commando who helped lead the rebels in Las Vegas but was secretly part of SYLO was gone. He came across as an arrogant jock, but the guy had compassion. He actually told us that he was honored to know us. In the end, I was honored to have known him.

I dragged my way to the side of the chopper and the huge gash that had once been a door. The spinning got worse. So did the nausea. I wasn’t going to last much longer, let alone help anybody who was inside. But I had to know. These were the only people I had left in the world. My mother. My friends. Granger, too. It’s weird to say that I hoped Granger survived after all he had done, but nothing was turning out the way I expected it to.

I pulled myself toward the opening and hesitated. What would I find inside? It could be gruesome. I wasn’t sure what was hurting more: my leg, my head, or my heart.

The chopper was a twisted wreck. It didn’t seem likely that anybody could have survived such a violent crash. It took every bit of physical and mental strength I had left to poke my head inside the downed craft.

What I saw inside was . . . nothing. No bodies. No survivors. No sign that anybody had lived or died. Even the copilot’s seat was empty. Granger was gone, along with my mother and my friends. The shock of seeing the empty craft and realizing that I was totally on my own was the last straw.

I gave in to the spinning.

The world turned upside down and I dropped into oblivion.

I
should have been hurting a lot more than I was.

That was the first conscious thought I had. My right leg had been pretty much hanging by a thread; my head had been battered so hard that my skull must have cracked like Humpty-Dumpty; and after being tossed from a crashing helicopter I probably had any number of other injuries that I hadn’t noticed only because the other two were so vicious.

I had the brief fear that I might be dead, but I didn’t think a trip to the afterlife involved having an IV stuck into your arm. The only real physical discomfort I felt was a stiff left wrist from the needle that pumped liquid into me from a plastic bag hanging overhead. I was definitely alive, so why wasn’t I in pain? I didn’t even feel numbed by drugs. I forced myself to focus on my surroundings. Part of me wanted to be back on that beach on Pemberwick Island, but since that was only a dream, it was just as well that I wasn’t. Instead I was lying on my back in what looked like a hospital ward. There were two long lines of beds that faced each other. Most were occupied by a patient. Rather than some antiseptic institution, though, the building looked more like a long wooden hut. This place was brand new, with the smell of freshly cut wood overriding any typical hospital smells.

I lifted my head slightly and saw that all of the patients, including me, were wearing the same thing: bright orange one-piece coveralls. My bloody jeans and dark hoodie were gone, replaced by an outfit that made me look like I was ready to work on a road crew . . . that handled plutonium. On my feet was a pair of clean gleaming-white sneakers.

I reached down to my injured leg to discover it was no longer injured. How long had I been unconscious? Was I in a coma long enough for my leg to have healed completely?

The answer came quickly and it wasn’t a good one. I suddenly registered that the medical staff all wore black-and-gray military fatigues.

The uniform of the Air Force. The Retros.

I instantly realized why I wasn’t in any pain. They had given me the same miracle medicine that had healed Tori’s gunshot wound and brought Mr. Feit back from the brink of death. It was probably being pumped into me through the IV. I may have been healed but it came at a steep price.

I was in the hands of the Retros.

The realization gave me a shot of adrenaline that brought me into full focus. I wanted to jump up and run, but I had no idea where I was and wouldn’t know which way to go. I had to force myself to calm down and understand the situation before doing something stupid. I didn’t want to let anybody know that I was awake so I did my best to scope out the situation without sitting bolt upright.

It was daytime. Bright sunlight shone in through windows set near the ceiling. As I focused I realized that they weren’t windows at all, but openings for ventilation . . . and they weren’t doing a very good job, because it was hot. The only relief came from ceiling fans that were spaced every ten feet or so, gently moving around the warm, dry air. This was no high-tech medical center. It was more like how I imagined a hastily erected battlefield hospital must feel.

Every last one of the patients seemed to be in the same situation as me. They were on their backs, hooked up to an IV. There were both men and women, and all appeared to be adults. I watched through squinted eyes as a Retro approached the guy in the bed next to me. He held a small device that could have been an iPod and scanned something at the foot of the bed. He checked the screen, dropped it into his pocket, and lifted the guy’s leg to examine his foot. He rotated it a few times as if to see that it was working properly. His casual manner made it seem more like he was checking out a piece of machinery than a human being. Satisfied, he dropped the foot, went right to the guy’s IV, and pulled it out.

“Go,” the soldier said. That was it. “Go.”

The patient stood up obediently, and after spending a few seconds to test his foot, he walked off down the line of beds headed for . . . somewhere. Spread across his back were four large black numbers: 4242.

The soldier made an entry into his device and moved on.

I cautiously looked around to the rest of the ward to see similar scenes playing out. Retro doctors, or whatever they were, checked on patients while entering information into their electronic devices. A few of the patients were unplugged and given the same “Go” command as the guy next to me. The rest were left to continue whatever healing process was going on.

A few minutes later another patient in an orange jumpsuit was wheeled in on a gurney and transferred to the bed next to me. It was a woman and she was a mess. She was unconscious, and that was a good thing, because her right leg was twisted into such a grotesque angle that it made me want to gag. A small blossom of blood grew in the orange material below her right knee. It seemed as though her leg was in just as bad a shape as mine had been. The medical guy hooked her up to the IV, entered some notes, and moved on.

The scene was disturbing for all sorts of reasons. These patients were being treated no better than animals. Or robots. Very few words were exchanged. Nobody asked any questions or spoke about how they were feeling. The doctors didn’t even pretend to care. Who knows? They might not even have been medically trained. That miracle medicine healed the body at an impossible speed; it wasn’t like the doctors had to do anything more than stick the IV in.

Also disturbing were the numbers printed on the patients’ backs. Nobody was called by name. It was all so . . . inhuman. It followed what Jon Purcell, the Retro infiltrator we met in Portland, told us. He called us primates and said we were all dead already. The Retros thought the only value we had was to rebuild the world for them. I saw that plan in action at Fenway Park. Tori and I watched with horror as survivors of the attack were treated like slaves, fed the Ruby (which gave them impossible strength and speed), and forced to work on the project that Granger called the gate to hell.

Is that what these orange-wearing people were being used for?

Is that what I was being healed for?

Most upsetting of all, I had no idea what had happened to my mother. Tori, Kent, and Granger were missing too. Part of me hoped that they had died in the crash so they wouldn’t be forced into becoming robot slaves like the people surrounding me.

And me.

The reality of the situation hit me with a wave of despair. Whatever hope we had of putting an end to the Retros’ plans of resetting society ended when our chopper crashed into the desert floor. I may have survived, but the Retros did too. Destroying their fleet of planes hadn’t put them out of business. Our moment of victory was short-lived. We had failed.

“You are Zero Three One One,” a woman said.

Without thinking I turned quickly to see that she was standing at the foot of my bed. I wished I hadn’t looked to her so quickly. It proved that I was awake.

“I’m not a number,” I said defiantly.

I saw a few of the other patients shoot a quick look toward me as if I had broken the cardinal rule by opening my mouth.

“Do not speak,” the woman said harshly.

“Why not?” I asked.

She raised her electronic device, aimed it at me, and a second later I felt a painful jolt of energy shoot through my body. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was brutal enough to convince me to keep my mouth shut. That was some device: iPod and torture-shooter all in one handy package.

“You’re new,” she said with no emotion, as if she’d given this same speech a hundred times. “You’re allowed one mistake. You won’t be allowed another.”

I didn’t dare say, “Oh yeah? And then what?” That might have been suicide. The Retros had no hesitation about wiping out three-quarters of the world’s population. They wouldn’t think twice about destroying a wiseass kid with too many questions . . . especially one who had a hand in blowing up the entire Retro fleet of attack planes at Area 51.

I truly hoped they didn’t know I had anything to do with that.

The woman grabbed my leg and worked my knee around like she was kneading bread dough. She didn’t ask how I felt or if she was hurting me. (For the record, I felt fine, and she wasn’t.) She learned all she needed to know from her incredibly thorough five-second exam. I think all she was doing was checking to see if my lower leg was still attached. Once that was established, I was good to go.

She yanked out my IV (without swabbing my arm with alcohol to stop any bleeding, I might add) and simply said, “Go.”

I almost said, “Where?” but didn’t want to get zapped again.

I wanted to question her. I wanted to ask where we were. I wanted to know how long I had been out. Hell, I wanted to punch her in the head.

But I also wanted to find out about my mom and the others. For that I needed to be alive.

I slowly stood up. The last time I had moved I was broken in a dozen places and so dizzy I couldn’t see straight. I expected my head to go light and pain to shoot up my leg. Instead, I felt surprisingly strong. There was no pain. No dizziness. No nausea . . . and no fatigue whatsoever. I felt great. At least physically.

“Follow me, Zero Three One One,” came a man’s command.

Standing between the rows of beds was another Retro soldier. This guy wasn’t part of the medical staff. The black baton weapon he held proved that. I’d seen that weapon in action and knew that the charge it shot out could knock somebody into next week . . . or kill them, depending on its setting. I’d used one myself to threaten Mr. Feit—Colonel Feit of the United States Freakin’ Killer Air Force. The fear of getting zapped convinced him to turn a giant attack craft back from its mission of wiping out the rest of the population of Los Angeles.

The Retro soldier motioned for me to walk ahead of him between the two rows of beds. I obeyed and walked slowly past him toward a door that was thirty yards away. The whole way, I stole quick glances at the poor victims who were being healed, hoping to catch a glimpse of my mom or the others. Many were awake, staring blankly at the ceiling. None made eye contact with me. It was like being trapped in zombie-land.

I pushed through the door at the far end of the building and entered another structure that looked nearly as long as the hospital ward, but it was twice as wide. Rather than hospital beds, there were dozens of white domes that looked like igloos lined up neatly in two rows.

The Retro soldier pushed past me and hurried up to one of them. He used his weapon to rap on what looked like a door. A second later a panel slid open with a quick, sharp
hiss.

“Inside,” the guy commanded. “Sit down. Wait.”

“Why?” I asked.

At the sound of my voice, the guy stiffened as if I had just slapped him in the face. He started to bring the weapon around to shoot me for daring to open my mouth, but he took a deep breath and got hold of his emotions.

“If you keep asking questions,” he said, “you won’t be alive long enough to get any answers. Inside. Sit down. Wait.”

Message received. I ducked down and entered the dark dome.

Inside was a black wire chair with a wide back that faced a flat, blank white wall. That was it. The entire inside of the dome was white, except for the chair. I sat down, as instructed, like a good little primate prisoner.

With a hissing sound, the door closed, plunging the dome into total darkness. I felt panic rising. What were they going to do with me? If they knew I planted the bomb that destroyed every last Retro plane at Area 51 and killed one of their leaders, I could be in for a rough time. Was this my prison? Was I sentenced to live the rest of my life in dark solitude? Or would it be my execution chamber?

I sat there in pitch darkness for what felt like an hour, though it might have been only a few seconds. I was a breath away from screaming out, “Why am I in here?” when words appeared in front of me. They were white letters that looked to be floating in space.

YOU ARE ZERO THREE O
NE ONE. ACKNOWLEDGE.
I heard it spoken as I saw the words written in front of me. It was said aloud by a woman who spoke with no emotion and not much inflection. It felt like a computer-generated voice, but it sounded way more natural than that.

The words disappeared, only to be replaced by the single word: acknowledge.

“ACKNOWLEDGE,”
the voice repeated.

“That’s what they tell me,” I replied.

I figured that was a good answer. I wasn’t accepting the fact that they considered me a number rather than a human being, but I didn’t want to pick a fight with a machine that was probably way smarter than me.

Each time the computer spoke, the words appeared in front of me. I guess it was in case I was deaf or something.

“
YOU ARE FORTUNATE, ZER
O THREE ONE ONE,
” the voice said. “
YOU
HAVE BEEN SELECTED
TO HELP REDIRECT THE
COURSE OF THE WORLD
.
”

“You mean I’m lucky because I wasn’t killed when you guys wiped out most of the population,” I said.

I couldn’t help myself.

The machine didn’t acknowledge that.

“
THE WORK WILL BE D
IFFICULT,
” the computer voice and the floating words continued. “
BUT YOU WI
LL BE REWARDED WITH
THE KNOWLEDGE THAT Y
OU ARE PERFORMING AN
IMPORTANT SERVICE T
O MANKIND.”

“And if I get hurt you’ll just plug me into the magic medicine machine and fix me right up so I can get right back to work, right?”

“YOU WILL
BE FED WELL AND GIV
EN MEDICAL TREATMENT
WHEN NECESSARY,”
was the reply.
“AS
LONG AS YOU COOPERA
TE AND WORK HARD, YOU
WILL BE TREATED FAI
RLY.”

The conversation had turned ominous.

“And what if I don’t cooperate and work hard?” I asked.

“
Y
OU WILL BE ELI
MINATED,
” was the horrifyingly matter-of-fact answer.