Gunshots rang from above, and Ray’s eyes left me for a moment to look upwards at the noise. I kicked out, knocking the gun from his hands. I pulled my own gun from my pants just too late. Ray’s large frame was on me quickly, tackling me to the ground. My gun went off as his full weight pressed on top of me. I panicked, trying to feel if I had been shot. My stomach felt wet, but there was no pain.
“I’m sorry, Dean. Remember that. You’re a good man… you were a good friend,” Ray said, coughing blood out beside me. “Take care of them if you can. Don’t tell them about…” I rolled him off me, sure he wasn’t going to be breathing for long. I ran to the machine and looked for the on button. Instead, I found a lit key pad with numbers on it. With bloody fingers, I pressed a sequence I knew – though I wasn’t sure why – and it came to life. Light enveloped the room and I had to close my eyes tight, covering them with my arm to keep it from blinding me. Soon the light dissipated, leaving me standing there in a dim room, machine whirring away, and Ray’s body in the doorway. The gunfire had ceased.
I stopped to see if Ray was alive, but he just lay there, unmoving, eyes still open. I shut them with my hand and a tear rolled down my dirty face. I really couldn’t trust anyone. If they had gotten to Ray before all of this, how could I trust any of the others? Maybe Mary was in on it. Maybe Natalia would shoot me on the spot and come back to turn this thing off. I grabbed Ray’s gun and put it in my pants, leaving me holding the gun Ray was killed with. I choked back a gag as I thought about the fact that I’d just murdered a man. A man I’d known. A man I had really liked. This was war, I told myself, and if I hadn’t done it, we had no hope of survival.
It didn’t help. I vomited in the doorway, staggering out of the small room and down the tight hall. I raised my gun and crept out of the crack leading to the ancient plaza.
Mary was over by the ship talking with Magnus and Natalia. Were they conspiring against me? I put my gun up and called out to them. “Put your weapons down!” I walked forward, doing my best SWAT team impression from the movies I’d seen. I was sure I looked a fool, but they all turned wide-eyed and slowly lowered their weapons.
“Dean, what are you doing? What’s happening? This ship came down, and three of them beamed down, shooting at us. Magnus here shot one of them as we ducked behind that crumbled wall,” Mary said, voice shaky.
I could see all of the damage. Holes were missing all around us, and the ground was cut open where the ship had ripped the land open like a can opener over the twins. I moved to under the ship and there lay three large creatures. They were almost humanoid, with small black eyes, no hair to be seen, and pale white skin, like a worm whose whole life had been spent under a rock. Green ooze pooled from their mouths. Janine had been mixed up with these things? It was hard to imagine.
“Vanessa lied to us, Mary. They all lied to us. Bob, Kate… Janine. They were working for these bastards. The device was planted here by those guys.” I nodded to the twins’ smaller ship, still hovering there. “They were the race taken over. Most of them are dead, but they kept a few enslaved to use as diplomats. Or maybe just fodder for war. I’m not sure. Some of them broke free and came here centuries ago. This whole place was built to hide this thing. Those pale aliens can’t be near it. They wanted Earth but couldn’t come while this was turned on. So they sent expendables to convince us this was the right move. What more dramatic event than all of humanity being whisked away could make a bunch of skilled humans come to their race’s aid? We had to believe it was true.”
They just stood there listening to my story. I wasn’t actually sure if I was being a hundred percent accurate, but I knew I was damn close. “Did Vanessa die when she came close to here?” I asked, sure of the answer.
“Yeah, she wanted to come up, but she was so weak. She collapsed and vomited some green liquid, and was gone. I see those things did the same.” Mary pointed at the dead aliens.
“I think these guys have zero tolerance of the device. The hybrids could live for years if they were far away from it, but the closer Vanessa got, the worse off she was,” I said.
“Dean, where’s Ray?” Mary asked quietly.
The pressure build-up in me came to a boil and I crouched down, worried I might vomit again. “He was with them. They told him his family would be safe. He just had to make sure it was shut down. He was with them the whole time.”
Mary crouched down beside me and put her hand on mine. “I’m sorry, Dean. But I’m glad you’re here. How did you know? How did you know all of this?”
“I didn’t. After I ran from the ship on the hill in Colombia, I saw a guy that looked just like the one Vanessa had shot when he was trying to warn me in Florida. Then I saw them again when we entered Peru.”
Magnus cut me short. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us? We could have helped!”
“I didn’t know what to believe or who to trust. I’m sorry, guys. It was just too much. Janine was their mole. She chose me instead of the guy they intended for her, and I just had a memory of her meeting with one of the twin guys in our house. They gave me the code to turn the device back on, should it fall. I had no recollection until I came here.” It all sounded so crazy.
“What do we do now? They’re going to retaliate.” Magnus ran his hands over his close-cropped hair. Natalia was almost pacing around us. I handed her the gun by my feet. She took it and smiled at me.
“We give ‘em what they deserve,” I said with a smile.
We heard some noise from the hole in the ground by the twins’ ship. A hand grabbed the rock and we ran over to it. One of them had survived, though he looked worse for wear. His hairpiece had fallen off, and he was bleeding all over. Magnus grabbed his arm and hauled him up.
The alien’s back against the dirt, his eyes closed, he spoke in his monotone way. “We hit them up there, and end this today.”
TWENTY-ONE
“The man was communicating with them somehow. Find it,” he gasped.
The computer! When I’d met him, he kept going on about his computer and how he needed batteries and other things from the electronics store in New York. That had to be it. He’d sold out humanity for his life and his family’s, and I almost couldn’t blame him for it. I wondered if I would have done the same for Janine’s life, under different circumstances. It was easy to judge someone else, but harder to look in the mirror.
“Where’s the computer?” I asked Mary.
“I think it’s in the car still,” she quickly answered.
“Nat, can you run back and get it?” Magnus asked, but she was already making her way back down the ancient city of ruins.
“What’s your name?” Mary asked the alien.
“Teelon. We’re called the Deltra. We won’t have a lot of time. They’ll be wondering why they haven’t heard back from their ship or the human soon. They’ll want news of the device,” he said.
“Can you get up?”
“Yes. I think so.” Magnus helped him to a sitting position.
“What’s the plan, Teelon?” I asked, wondering if he was thinking what I was. I glanced at Mary, and hoped she was as good a pilot as I thought she was.
“First things first. We need to get that device out of its hiding place.”
“I’m on it. Dean, you with me?” Magnus grabbed my shoulder. I dreaded going back down that tunnel to see Ray’s dead body.
“Yes. It’s going to be a tight fit down there; I hope we can get it out.” My stomach was already queasy.
“I have a plan for that.” He walked over to the dead aliens and grabbed one of their blasters. He tested it, firing a red beam into a wall. It tore a hole the size of a basketball in the rock. “I think this will do the excavating trick.” He slung it over his shoulder. Natalia was running back with a computer in her hands.