Assuming he’s all right.
Mick peered around the corner, minimizing his own exposure, and then he turned to Sam, looking utterly shaken. He gestured for her to join him, and she did. When she saw what he was looking at, her jaw dropped in astonishment.
One of the Jeeps was lying on its side. The other had been ripped into a grotesque shape, little more than shredded pieces of metal that wouldn’t have been recognizable as a vehicle if there weren’t tires lying on the road. There were no signs of human bodies in either of the vehicles.
She saw a large branch of some sort lying on the road, and it was only when she spotted blood seeping from it that she realized it was a human arm. There was a leg nearby, and a piece of a torso—not even the whole thing—that had the name tag “Blake” still attached to it.
For a moment she forgot where she was, forgot everything except the horror of what she was seeing. Reflexively she opened her mouth to scream, but Mick heard the sharp intake of air and fortunately turned fast enough that he could once again clap a hand over her mouth. He pulled her to the ground behind a tree in order to get out of the sight line of whatever it was that had done this, especially if it was still around. Sam screamed nevertheless, but it was severely muffled by his hand. “Shut up!” he hissed into her ear.
She breathed heavily. Again. Her eyes were still wide with terror, but she managed enough of a nod that he slowly removed his hand from her mouth.
“What… what the hell did this?” she said. Speaking too loudly wasn’t a problem; she could barely get any words out at all.
“I have no idea.”
Then something stepped into view, something that—although Sam could not have known it—was of the same race as the creature that Hopper had seen standing atop a vessel three hundred miles away.
The alien being was studying the dead police officers—or the remains of them—with what seemed to be a clinical detachment, as if trying to figure out how they had fit together in the first place before they’d been butchered.
Then, slowly, its attention turned toward Sam and Mick’s hiding place.
At which point, Sam completely lost it.
Her body began to convulse and Mick had no choice but to cover her mouth again. In fact, he had to do more, because her impulse was to scramble to her feet and run like hell. Such a move would have been suicide. She didn’t dare draw that degree of attention to herself.
But it was as if Sam had completely lost control. She was trembling violently, her eyes were bugging out of her skull, and tears were pouring down her face. It wasn’t just her own safety that was tilting her into the throes of hysteria. It was the realization that the absurd claims the cop had been making were true, and that Hopper was facing a completely unknown enemy that, for all she knew, had already killed him and everyone on his vessel.
She tried to tear away from Mick but he only held her closer. He said, “Shhhh,” into her ear, and that noise was enough to cause the alien’s head to whip around and look in their direction again.
Mick quickly wrapped an arm under her chin with the crook of his elbow over the midline of her neck. Then he pinched the arm together and Sam suddenly felt dizzy, as if something had shut off the flow of blood to her brain. And she blacked out.
She came to some time later, jolted awake by the deafening sound of something else flying low overhead. Sam looked up and saw a vessel that was unlike any air vehicle she’d ever seen. It was huge, and appeared to be composed of two sections. The upper one was long, wide, and flat, like the top of an aircraft carrier. There didn’t appear to be anything atop it, although she couldn’t be sure from this angle. But the front was open, as was the back, allowing for the possibility of smaller vessels flying into and out of it. The lower section, the underside, was two-thirds the length of the upper, deeper than it and with what appeared to be a series of oversized clamps running along either side.
She was still in the exact same place that she’d been in when she’d passed out.
The alien was gone. So was Mick.
She felt a resurgence of the panic that had seized her earlier. Convinced she was alone, Sam had never been more terrified in her life. Then she heard soft movement from up ahead, and for a moment she came close to freaking out again before she heard the telltale sounds of Mick’s hydraulics. Sure enough, there he came around the bend. He looked stunned, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d seen.
So distracted was he that he nearly stumbled over Sam, who was just now sitting up. He crouched in front of her, his eyes flickering with concern. “Are you all ri— ow!” The last was a result of the fact that she’d just punched him in the solar plexus. Not hard, but enough to get a startled exclamation out of him.
“You put a sleeper hold on me?” she demanded. “You dick!” With no sign of the alien and Mick now speaking in a normal tone, she wasn’t attempting to keep her voice down. “You could’ve killed me if you hadn’t done the hold correctly!”
“Yeah, I know.” He didn’t seem particularly concerned over her ire, although he was rubbing where she’d struck him. “Because I’ve used it to kill people. So I know how to do it right and I know how to do it dead. Which is what we would’ve been, thanks to the Predator over there, if I hadn’t done something to shut you up. You okay now?”
She nodded, although doing so made her neck sore. “What happened after you—?”
“Dropped you like a bad habit? Well, he was looking right where we were hiding, and he took a couple of steps toward us, and then suddenly that ship showed up and he lost interest. I guess he had bigger fish to fry.”
“Or bigger planets.” The entire thing seemed demented; she felt like she was running to catch up with events as they were unfolding, except she was on a treadmill, getting nowhere fast while the world sped along without her. “Where did you go?”
“I followed him. He seemed pretty distracted by the new arrival. I saw others like him, setting up some kind of… I don’t know what it was.”
“But… what are they?”
“You mean our new pals? I have no idea.”
“What are they doing?”
“If I had to guess… considering that they seemed to be setting up shop with some kind of satellite dishes ahead a ways… they’re building something.”
“Where is everyone?”
“Everyone? You mean our armed forces? Our Navy, who’s out fighting them in the ocean? Our marines, who just got the crap blown out of their nearby bases? Gee… I don’t know.”
“Where’s my father? Where’s Hopper?” Tears, uncontrolled, started running down her cheeks.
Mick was clearly running out of patience. “Stop,” he said firmly, and there seemed a chance that he might wind up knocking her unconscious again if she didn’t get ahold of herself. She gulped deeply and snuffled a few times, doing the best she could.
“Mick?”
“What?”
“Am I dreaming?”
His face softened, but only a little. “I don’t think so. I know I’m not, because I know that when I’m dreaming about gorgeous women, there’s no scary aliens around.” Despite the seriousness of the situation, that last comment actually made her smile slightly. “Can you pull it together, Sam? Can you?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “I’m okay.”
She got to her feet, dusting herself off. Almost as an afterthought, she said, “Thanks for saving my ass, by the way. I shouldn’t have lost it like that.”
“I’ve seen professional soldiers lose it over far less. And you’re welcome.” He glanced in the direction of the Jeep. “We’re gonna get some guns.”