Chapter 2 Zoey

I woke up to chaos, screaming, and Diego shoving my pack into my hand. “Go with Riley. Get out of here. I’ll hold them back.”

I blinked, still mostly out of it. There was screaming from the other room, and somewhere in the bar we used as a safe house, gunshots went off.

My first thought was, Fuck! That’ll draw the bugs!

I looked toward the door, and Connor’s lifeless eyes stared back at me from the floor just outside in the hallway.

What the—

Diego shoved at me, breaking my line of sight with the macabre image. “Go!”

“What’s going on?” Riley asked from beside me.

I hadn’t even realized she was there.

“Corey came back with friends. They attacked us in our sleep. Connor’s dead. So’s Jenny. Dean and I are going to hold them off. Go.”

I was fully awake now, adrenaline pumping through my veins. “What about Tomas?” I asked as I pulled on my boots and my coat.

Diego shook his head as another shot rang out.

“Go before the bugs come. Take the scooters. Get to Sanctuary. They know you. They will take you in. Go! ” He shoved us out the back door.

It was a moonless night, and the only light was from our scooters. The sounds of the wheels on the pavement and the blood pumping in my ears were oddly loud, and I worried they’d drown out the sounds of scuttler feet, but as we rounded the corner, we heard them.

Shit!

The bugs were least active at night, but it was also our most vulnerable time. I could only see what was illuminated directly in front of me, and paranoia meant I heard bugs coming from all sides. But our scooters were fast, and unless I had the unfortunate luck of running directly into a pack, we’d make it to the garage.

It was just down the street, and while it wasn’t an official safe house, we knew it was secure. We looped around the back, flung open the door, ran inside, and slid down with our backs against the door. There was a moment of silence before scratching came from the other side of the door.

“Riley?” My voice sounded much too loud.

“Yeah?” she replied between pants.

“What are we going to do?”

Another loud gunshot rang out, and the scratching stopped as the bugs were drawn away from our location.

“God! Why didn’t we fight back? We should go back and…” I closed my eyes and saw Connor’s lifeless eyes. “Connor’s dead. I saw him.”

“Me too. But we can’t go back there now. The bugs. I heard Corey. They wanted to keep the two of us and offer us as gifts to the New Earth Militia. They’re going to find that shuttle the motherfucker keeps talking about and fly there. Diego and Dean, they…” She trailed off.

She didn’t need to finish. I know what she meant. They did this for us. If we went back there now, it would be like they gave up everything for nothing.

“We get back at them,” I said. “We get back at those sons of bitches.”

“Yeah. But how?”

“They’re going to steal the SUV and other gear. But that’s going to be useless to them if we sabotage all the safe houses and charging stations.” Suddenly, my brain was working at double speed, and the plan became clear. “We’ll change the passcode to all the lockers so they won’t be able to take any more of our weapons and ammo.”

“Yes. Let’s do that.”

We made a plan, with her traveling more or less straight toward Sanctuary and taking out all the charging points along the way except for one, which I would use on my way back. I would make the bigger loop, shutting down all the other charging stations before heading to Sanctuary and dealing with the final safe house.

“We’ll meet at Sanctuary,” I said.

“Don’t do anything stupid.” She clasped onto my forearms. “You’re all I have left now.”

***

I squinted against the blazing sun as I peered out through the crack in the curtains, spying the bright red roof of the neighboring barn in the distance. Right beside that, but out of sight, was my next target: the farmhouse. The last time I’d been here with Riley, we’d stashed some food and clean water under some loose floorboards.

With the sun at its zenith above me, flyers circled, their keen, buggy eyes ever vigilant for anything edible. In this apocalyptic Earth, that was me. Or anything that moved, for that matter.

High noon was a horrible time to be out and about. Anyone who’d survived this long in the bugpocalypse knew that. But I had no choice; I had to keep moving. Corey and his friends were on my tail, and I didn’t live through six fucking years of space bug-filled terror to be done in now by human hands.

Nope. No fucking way.

One of the flying insectoids shrieked, calling out the location of possible prey, and all the others reoriented to seek out their next food source, including the one closest to my location.

With the aerial menace’s attention diverted, I opened the door and made a run for it, dashing across the dried-up lawn toward the ditch that ran alongside the road. My pack, which had the electric scooter strapped to it, was heavy, but I couldn’t leave either of them behind. Not if I wanted to outrun the assholes who were after me.

I might not be able to use my electric scooter through the fields, but it gave me an upper hand through the streets and intersections blocked by abandoned vehicles.

I was huffing and puffing, my lungs feeling like they were about to explode as I slid into the ditch. With so little cover from buildings or trees, this was my best bet if I wanted to make it to my destination alive. There were shrubs and other vegetation growing in intervals along the ditch, and normally, they took advantage of the water collected there to weather out the periods of drought.

Except this winter, both rain and snow had been scarcer than ever, and all the vegetation was yellow and dried. I traveled along the ditch, crouching as I went until I neared the farmhouse. It looked the same as it had the last time I was here, and the collection of tin cans Riley and I had set up to serve as an early warning system was still hanging under the porch roof. Spying no bugs, I sprang up out of the ditch and ran toward the robin’s egg-blue front door of the farmhouse.

They appeared from around the barn when I was halfway there. I felt the electric stab of fear right through to my fingers and toes at the sight of the half dozen or so scuttlers that had been traveling toward the flyer’s screech in search of prey.

I dropped to the ground and froze, hoping they hadn’t spotted me. Unlike flyers, scuttlers hunted predominantly with scent, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t see, especially when they were so close I could see the toxins gleaming on the edges of their blade-like claws.

I’d sprayed myself down with a concoction of nose-burning floral perfumes earlier, so I was pretty sure I didn’t smell edible to these bugs. If I just stayed very still—

But one of the creatures stopped and waved its mandibles in my direction. I’d seen this behavior before. It was tasting the air. Shit. Did that mean the perfume wasn’t working? Then the rest of its group stopped as well, almost as if it had said something to them. They all turned in my direction.

Fuck!

Should I make a run for it? The door was right there!

The scuttler that had stopped first started toward me.

I scrambled to my feet and bolted for the door as the rest of the horrid creatures hurried my way. The sounds of their feet against the dried-up lawn echoed in my ears. It was the reason we called them scuttlers. They made a scuttling sound as they moved, a sound that haunted my nightmares on the daily.

I dove inside and then slammed the door shut. Or at least, I tried to. The creature tried to shove its way into the house, even as the cans Riley and I had strung up came crashing down. We’d filled the cans with rocks and anything heavy we could find and duct-taped them shut. Their main job was to make a loud sound, alerting us if we were inside the home, but if the intruder was human, they would also hurt quite a bit. But against the space bug’s chitin-rich carapace, they did jack shit.

I put my back to the door and leaned my weight on it, trying to dig my heels in and shove it closed with brute force. Instead, my combat boots skidded on the wooden floor.

Suddenly, there was a shout from outside, and the creatures—there were more than one now—that had piled up in front of the door turned to face it. The door slammed shut, and I bolted it.

But that shout didn’t bode well for me. It meant Corey had caught up.

I didn’t bother to push any furniture up against the door. Knowing Corey and his goons, they’d probably sneak in through the side door.

I did, however, sneak a peek through the slats of the boarded-up window. I needed to know where they were so I could make an escape while they were distracted by the bugs. But it wasn’t Corey or his stolen electric vehicle that greeted me.

A purple Xarc’n hunter wielding two swords fought the scuttlers outside. Despite his massively muscled frame and shoulders that would put Thor to shame, he danced nimbly between the creatures, his twin blades gleaming as they beheaded my multilegged attackers.

While the weapons were shaped very much like old Earth longswords, they were made of some unknown alien alloy. They made easy work of the bugs’ thick carapaces, the glowing plasma edge practically melting through them like butter.

Was it the same alien warrior from before? It had to be. I recognized the lighter patches of purple on him. His yellow eyes gleamed in the sunlight as he kicked one of the twitching scuttlers away and swung his sword again at the one that replaced it. He bared his sharp teeth in a wide grin, almost like he was having fun.

Well, the Xarc’ns did claim they were engineered especially to kill the deadly space bugs, so maybe he was having fun.

With his foes dispatched, he turned to the house, his keen eyes scanning the windows, and spotted me right through the cracks between the boards. Oops. Instead of using the opportunity to run, I’d stayed to watch the battle.

I ran to the living room and picked up the shotgun from the gun rack on the wall. I knew it wasn’t loaded, but I was willing to bluff. There hadn’t been a firearm in my pack, just a knife.

I pointed at the crack in the board, pressing it right up against the glass, and hoped he recognized what it was.

“Leave now, or I’ll shoot!” I yelled.

I knew he could understand me. They all understood English.

I peered through a smaller crack to see what he would do. Instead of leaving, he backed up, facing the door, and then lowered his head so that all I could see were his huge horns.

Holy shit! He was going to ram his way in!

It took a single try, and the door gave up the ghost, flying off its hinges.

The alien looked in shock at the door, which was now a crumpled mess in the foyer. He ran a ham-sized hand over his dark hair, looking sheepish, said something in a humorous tone, then chuckled. His voice was low and growly despite the amused tone.

A robotic voice coming from a device on the alien’s belt translated. “Oops. I didn’t mean to do that.”