“Hold on. You have to make sure you’re close enough. These are too dull to cut it, so make sure to aim for the mask.”
As if on cue, the alien sat up and turned to face Trevor.
“Now!” she said, letting go of Trevor’s arm.
He ran at the creature with his machete raised in the air.
Time slowed for Maya as she watched everything unfold, much like what would happen when she and Reno arrived on the scene of a gruesome accident. She believed it was the way her brain processed stimuli without overwhelming her—it made things bearable.
The only lights shining in the warehouse came from the ends of the barrels as the gunfire erupted. The smoke continued to fill the space, and Maya couldn’t see anything.
She stumbled through the darkness and stood next to Trevor. Both looked down at the alien on the floor who had been struck with another barrage of bullets. It wasn’t moving, but even through the commotion, Maya could hear its mechanical breathing. Trevor still had the machete above his head. He hadn’t swung at the creature’s head yet. Tears filled his eyes, and his entire body shook.
“Trevor!”
He looked at her, gasping.
“I’ll do it. Watch me.”
He nodded.
Maya swung her machete and connected with the mask using the side of the blade, in almost the same spot as she had with the alien in the bathroom. The mask fell from the alien’s face and shattered, revealing dark, thin lips. Its black eyes stared at her.
But instead of gasping for air, the alien blinked and sat up. Its hand shot out and long, spindly fingers wrapped around Trevor’s throat.
“No!”
She had destroyed its protective mask, and yet the alien seemed to be unfazed.
Maya swallowed.
Oh no.
44
Unlike the alien that Maya had fought in the bathroom, this alien with its hand grasped around Trevor’s throat didn’t waste time toying with him. The man’s scream turned into a garbled mess as the alien squeezed tighter, crushing his windpipe like an aluminum can. Blood flowed from his mouth and down his chin as it soaked the front of his shirt.
Maya froze and stared, Trevor’s face contorting in each flash of gunfire like still frames in a horror movie. It was too late to save him.
Someone had turned on a flashlight, and the beam danced around the hazy warehouse. She saw the two other aliens coming at her, both now homing in on Maya after recovering from dozens of rounds of gunfire. Only one man had survived, and he now called out to Maya, a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other.
One of the aliens swatted the flashlight from the man’s hand, knocking it under a stack of pallets and plunging them back into almost total darkness.
“Follow me!” the man said to Maya.
Maya felt her blood rising, and she let the man run past as the three aliens came closer. She grasped the handle of the machete and spread her feet shoulder-length apart.
“No,” Maya said to the man. “I’m making a stand.”
A burst of light shone into the warehouse as the man opened the door to the office and then shut it. Instead of heading for the office and leading the aliens to the only humans still alive in the building, she turned and faced them.
Maya’s instincts kicked in, and she took action before thinking about what to do. She leaped up and struck one alien with the machete, and then another, knocking their masks off. The third smacked her with the back of its hand, but she fell to the floor with her fingers still wrapped around the weapon. She spun and swung at its head, shattering its mask, as well. But one alien had outflanked her, and this one punched her in the back of the head. Maya smacked against the wall, the machete clanging away into the darkness. She shook her head and scrambled to her feet, running as fast as she could toward the back of the warehouse, hoping there was nothing blocking the hallway.
Maya turned right, past a stack of pallets, and banged on a single door which she hoped opened into the main office. She tried turning the handle, but it was locked.
“Open up! Someone, please!”
She hit the door with both fists like she was banging on a drum. Closing her eyes, she put her forehead against the cold, steel surface. She continued to pound on the door, screaming for someone, anyone, to answer.
Then Maya heard the snarl, and turned around.
Without any light shining in the back of the warehouse, she could only sense movement. The three aliens had stopped in front of her, blocking any possible escape. Her only chance was through the door, but it had been locked, and it didn’t seem as though anyone was about to let her inside.
“C’mon,” she said, waving them toward her. “I’m not running anymore.”
As Maya felt the three aliens closing in on her, she heard a click come from the door and felt it shift where she had been leaning on it. A split second later, the door opened a few inches and light from inside the office cut through the darkness at a forty-five-degree angle, pointing toward the creatures.
The aliens screeched in reaction, and their hands went to their faces. They whirled to run back into the dark warehouse, their howls echoing off the walls.
Maya turned to see movement inside of the office. The people must have heard her banging and opened the door, but they’d wisely kept back from it. Maya paused before entering, her brain churning on what she’d seen.
She stepped forward into the light. Maya stopped when she came upon both aliens lying face down on the concrete. She walked toward them, stepping gently, as if her approaching footsteps would throw them into a new fury.
Standing over the two motionless creatures, she noticed that the backs of their bald heads had been scorched, their gray skin burned completely off and leaving only a blackened skull. Maya looked back at the beam of light coming from the office. Someone had opened the door further, casting a wider berth with the light.
When the light hit the aliens’ exposed skin, it sizzled and fried them with a sickening stench of smoke that smelled like burning tires. As the light continued to shine on them, small blue flames ignited and engulfed their entire heads until nothing was left but two piles of ash.
Maya grinned, watching the things fall to ash, and then ran back to the office, excited to tell Kenny and Carla what she had discovered.
45
“How did you do that?” Kenny asked.
Maya picked her machete up off the ground and led Carly, Kenny, and the rest of the survivors back to the bathroom. The alien she’d battled had flipped onto its stomach and managed to cover its head with scraps of clothing torn from dead bodies. Its feet twitched, but it was otherwise still.
“Help me drag it out of the stall.”
Kenny looked at Carly before addressing Maya, wincing as he shifted his weight from his bum leg. “Now, sweetheart, I don’t know what you think we’re gonna—”
“Do it, Kenny,” Maya said, interrupting him. “All of us grab something and pull this thing out into the middle of the floor.”
They each grabbed a part of it then, touching the alien as if it had been covered in slime. Kenny and Carly pulled its feet while another man helped Maya yank the creature by the arms. It tensed up and whined, keeping the rags over its unmasked face. Maya couldn’t believe how heavy it was. She felt the blood flowing again from the wound in her shoulder.
“Now hold it still.”
Maya reached down and snatched the rags from the alien’s face.
At first, the creature stared up into the flickering fluorescent lights. But within a second, its face contorted into a snarl and a low, gravelly hum came from its mouth. As Maya tossed the rags aside, the alien hissed. Tendrils of smoke began to twist from its eyes, and the gray skin started to brown, sending the reek of burning brake pads into the air.