On the other side of the room, Daniel’s mother had her arms wrapped around her son. Daniel had been staring at Maya when she turned to look at him. The woman rubbed the boy’s head and mouthed the words ‘thank you’ to Maya.
Kenny lumbered over and squatted down, looking at Maya’s shoulder and then at the swollen red marks on her throat. “What happened?”
“I was heading back this way, and one of those things chased me into the bathroom. It could have killed me, but for some reason, it didn’t. It toyed with me instead.”
“How did you get out of there alive? We thought for sure you were dead.”
“So did I. But I hit it in the face with the toilet tank lid. That—I killed it.”
“Bullshit,” someone else said.
“We’ve been firing round after round into those things out there.” Kenny put a hand on Maya’s arm as if she were a naïve child. “Those damn things have killed half a dozen of our people while taking serious gunfire. And you’re telling us you killed one in a bathroom stall? With part of a toilet?”
Maya shook her head, which brought up a sharp pain in her shoulder. Carly tightened her grip on Maya’s arm, trying to staunch the flow of blood from the wound.
“I knocked its mask off. Once I did that, it started screaming and writhing around on the ground.”
Kenny looked at Carly, and she gave him the look—the unspoken message from wife to husband that says, “Shut up.”
Maya continued. “I’d been able to hear it breathing behind the mask, but it didn’t sound natural—like there was some device regulating the air, or filtering it. I think they need the mask to breathe the air. Our atmosphere must be toxic to them.”
“How are we supposed to get close enough to them to get their masks off?” someone asked. “You happened to be in a tight space while that thing was playing with you.”
“Maybe we can shoot them off,” Carly said.
“I don’t know. I hit it really hard, and from the right angle. But I don’t know if I got lucky or if they really come off that easily. But we know that gunfire slows them down. They seem to recover quickly, but maybe they’re wearing some kind of protective skin—like a bullet-proof suit or something.” Maya felt her brain filling with more and more questions. She shook her head and tried to formulate a theory based on what she’d observed, not on unproven assumptions. “But if we can take them down, maybe we can get close enough to get their masks off.”
Kenny shrugged. “That sounds like as good a plan as any. The only problem is that we’ve lost a lot of our people. And the rest of us are beat to shit.”
Maya looked out the office windows and into the warehouse. If the one in the bathroom was dead, that left three aliens in the warehouse—if others hadn’t arrived in the meantime. Two of Kenny’s men were still out there, though, both with their weapons locked and loaded.
“I’ll lead the charge,” Maya said.
“You’re still bleeding,” Carly said. “And the more blood you lose, the weaker you’re going to get.”
“I’ll be fine. I can run fast.” She turned to the others in the office. “Who’s with me?”
Only one person came forward. He looked to be about twenty-five years old, with shaggy brown hair and long, thin limbs. The tufts of hair on his face would never be confused for a beard, and his acne probably made him look ten years younger than he really was. The others in the room stared at Maya with blank eyes or looked away.
“What’s your name?” Maya asked the kid.
“Trevor.” His voice was shaky, mumbling.
“All right. Were you paying attention to what I was saying earlier? We’ve got to get the masks off those things.”
He nodded.
“We’ll need something to hit them with.” Maya looked around the room. “Something short enough to swing hard and fast, but long enough that we don’t need to get too close to them.”
“I think I got us covered,” Kenny said.
He hobbled to the corner of the room and pulled three machetes from the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet. Maya’s mouth dropped.
“Really? People in this office kept machetes in their cubicles?”
“This was a home improvement store distribution center. We went through and found some goodies when we first got here.”
Trevor took two and handed one machete to Maya, holding the other one in his own left hand.
“The third one is mine.”
Carly looked at her husband as he limped up to Trevor with the third machete in hand.
“But you can barely walk, hon. You can’t fight.”
“I have to,” Kenny said to his wife.
“She’s right,” Maya said. “You need to stay here.”
“And leave you two to fend for yourselves? I don’t think so.”
“We won’t be by ourselves. We’ve got the others out there. And they have guns.”
Kenny huffed. “I won’t hide here while you two go out there and fight.”
Maya went to him and whispered, “You have to stay. These people need you. You can’t risk it when you can barely walk.”
“But I—”
“No,” Maya said before he could finish. “Stay here and be ready. If they come through, do anything you can to get their masks off.”
Kenny looked down and shook his head. When he looked up again, he nodded. “Watch your asses out there.”
Maya smiled at him and then looked at Trevor.
“You ready?”
His lips quivering, the young man nodded.
Maya went to the door. She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath.
I can’t believe I’m going back out there.
She opened her eyes, and then the door.
43
The aliens in the warehouse had recovered and were now standing, shoulder to shoulder—only their silhouettes visible as muzzle flashes painted the darkness in bright bursts. Blue smoke and the stench of gunpowder filled the warehouse. Maya felt a cold shiver run up her neck, and she couldn’t tell if it was because of her blood loss or the fact that the aliens seemed indestructible. She tried not to think about the hundreds, possibly thousands, she had witnessed dropping from the ship’s hatch to land inside the dome.
Maya ran to the closest man holding a gun. He looked at her with big eyes, his face red and with sweat dripping from his brow. Members of Kenny’s group lay on the floor—all of them dead.
“They just keep getting up, no matter how many bullets we fire. Before long, we won’t have any ammunition left!”
“I need you to calm down and stay focused,” Maya said. “I know how to kill them. But I’m going to need your help.” She looked to the others holding guns. “All of you.”
“How?”
With the guns quieted, the aliens started toward them in a slow, methodical march, locked together like robots.
“Get the aliens on the ground, and I’ll show you. Give them everything you’ve got. Me and Trevor here will do the rest.”
The man with the gun didn’t even have a chance to reply. The alien on the far-left broke rank and lunged, roaring with the same high-pitched shriek Maya had endured in the bathroom. She covered her ears again, almost dropping the machete.
Gunfire erupted and mixed with the alien’s shrieks.
Maya turned to Trevor and had to scream into his ear. “Ready?”
He nodded. The machete shook in his hand.
She thought of Reno and wished he were there with her. But he wasn’t, and she’d have to count on Trevor to come through.
The men had coordinated their fire on a single alien, and the barrage of bullets had knocked it down, only ten feet from where they stood. The creature was now on its back, its arms and legs thrashing about. Trevor started for it, but Maya grabbed him by the arm. The men turned their fire on the other aliens, knocking them to the floor with more bullets.