1942664419 (S) (27 page)

Something scratched against the door. The voices hushed, and the footsteps seemed to continue down the hall.

No way! Could we possibly get that lucky?

Dad shifted his weapon toward the ceiling. He kept his eyes focused on the door for what seemed like an eternity before he glanced at Nematali. “Open it.”

34

Dad guided us out into the hallway. Lumps of black tar-like goo dripped down the wall to our left. Were the outer walls intact? How long did we have to get out of there?

“It’s too quiet,” Dad whispered to David. “And that was far too easy.”

“A trap?” David asked.

“Probably. Keep the civilians tight. This is probably going to get ugly.”

“Maybe they abandoned ship,” I said. “This place is falling apart.”

Dad checked around a corner.

David pressed against the wall beside him. “That’s the only reason we’re probably not up against a garrison. There are only a few people left.”

“Where are the stairs?” Dad asked.

“Over here.” David maneuvered us toward the goo. “I hope they’re still functional.”

“The section four-nine column would bring us closer to the hangars,” Nematali said.

David nodded. “That’s why I’m worried they’ll be waiting for us there. We’re out of time, and they know it as much as we do.”

We pulled into a tight ball, and my insides seemed to shatter as we throttled upward in the alien elevator and jolted to a stop. My head whirled as I stumbled from the lift pad. I clawed for purchase against one of the three walls enclosing us and prayed I didn’t puke. I took a few steps away to make room as Dad staggered toward the only hall leading from the elevator. If anyone came down that corridor shooting, we were screwed.

Dad clutched the wall as his face turned a nasty shade of green. “What in God’s name was that?”

“Relax and breathe through it. You will adjust.” Nematali gazed at the ceiling. The deep gray had faded to light ash. “We don’t have much longer. We’re going to start venting air soon.”

“Let’s move.” Dad sprinted down the corridor.

My chest burned as we stopped at a juncture where the hall split. Dad poked his head out.

Thomp.

David yanked him back. A hole formed in the wall where Dad’s face had been.

Crap! They were shooting at us!

“Can we go that way?” Dad tilted his chin toward the other corridor.

“No,” Nematali said. “They’ve blocked the only way to the hangars.”

Thomp.

The wall to our left fizzled like a million sparklers and disintegrated, leaving a deep indent behind.

Dad closed his eyes. I could read
Hail Mary
whispering across his silent lips. I hadn’t seen Dad pray since Mom’s funeral. I didn’t know if I should be happy, or terrified.

His eyes shot open. Vacant. Focused. Was the man I knew even in there anymore?

Dad’s face twisted into a sneer before he leaped into the corridor and pointed his weapon down the hall.
Thomp.
A ring of swirling energy shot from the silver chamber in his hands and bounced off the ceiling.

He backed up three steps as his gun recoiled, slamming him into the wall with a grunt. Dad steadied and reset himself before pointing his firearm back down the corridor.

Water dripped steadily somewhere down the dark passage in front of us. Each drop echoed, the lone sound on a sinking ship.

Dad slung his weapon back around his shoulder. “Clear.”

We followed him down the hallway. I gaped, stepping over mounds of liquid metal that may have had people under them. The walls had rounded out, fizzling orange and red along the edges. If someone could contain the power of an atomic bomb in a small area, this is what I’d expect it to look like.

Dad slipped the weapon from his arm. “I don’t think I used this thing right.” He perused the buttons on the side of the cylinder and broke one off.

“What are you doing?” David asked.

“Making sure I don’t hit that button again.”

David scanned the giant, gaping hole we stood in. “Yeah, I think that might be a good idea.” He moved a few steps away from the desolation and sunk his hand into a wall. “There should be a hanger over here.”

The molten metal moaned before parting.

Dad held up his hand and glanced inside. “No one there, but I doubt the creeps outside were the only ones guarding this place.”

“Let me check it out,” David said.

“Sorry, kid. That’s my job.” Dad gripped his gun-thingy with both hands.

David stopped him from advancing. “No, sir. You don’t know what you’re looking for. I do.”

Dad nodded. “Be quick. I keep waiting for the world to come down on us.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be back before you know it.” David inched around the edge of the wall and disappeared inside.

Dad breathed heavily. Sweat dripped down his temples. “This isn’t right. We’re not getting enough resistance.” He glanced into the room. “I’d swear we were … ” His eyes bolted open. “Colin!”

The boom of Dad’s voice echoed off the sagging walls as he raced into the hangar.

Thomp.

The entire room wavered like the air over a campfire. Bits of the ceiling dripped onto the floor.

“Dad!” I sprang forward, hesitating as my lungs seized, overtaken by heat and thick fluid in the air.

My father rose from the floor on one knee, weapon readied. David lay on his back beside him, eyes closed and mouth open.

No!

Thomp.

Dad fell back as his cylinder fired. Clear air, a nearly invisible moving smear, shot across the room and exploded against a far wall. An Erescopian ducked and raised a silver disk. A pinpoint of light shot out of the swirling circle, driving across the hangar toward my father.

Dad cried out and fell to the deck beside David.

“No!” I ran toward them, holding my chest.

“Don’t,” Nematali called. “You’ll be killed!”

Never stopped me before.

Dad pushed up and fired his weapon again. Red stains trailed from his shoulder to his waist.

Thomp.

I dropped to my knees and slammed my hands against my ears. The echo of the weapon’s discharge seared through me as the walls beside where the Erescopian had been melted to nothing. Quiet enveloped the room, until David moaned.

I slid beside my father. Blood dripped from a six-inch slice across his shoulder. “You’re hurt.”

“I’ll live.” He eased his hand beneath David’s armpit and hefted him up. “Masters, you all right?”

David blinked as if waking from a long sleep. He scanned the room. “Holy cow.”

My father brought him to his feet. “You’re a lucky bastard, you know that?”

David nodded. “Lucky you were here, that is. You saved my life.”

Dad’s eyes narrowed. His nose twitched, and he cocked his head to the side. His features changed. Softened. He looked like Dad again. Not Dad from a few weeks ago, but the clean, unstressed lines of the man I camped with at Lum’s Pond as a kid, the slight dimple of the man who taught me how to ride a bike, the eyes of the man who taught me how to make tacos.

Dad. He was still in there.

I startled. Private Masters had died under my father’s command. Dad had been hardened ever since. But today, he saved Colin. It didn’t matter that this time it wasn’t the real Colin Masters.

“I can’t believe you jumped right in the line of fire,” David said.

“You’d do no different.” Dad glanced about the room. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but there aren’t any ships in this hangar.”

David pulled back his hair. “That’s a ship over there.” He walked toward a shimmering orb the width of a minivan.

Thomp.

The air between David and the ship wavered. Part of the floor disappeared, as if it had been carved out with a giant trowel.

“They are shooting at us!” I cried.

“Thanks for the memo,” Dad muttered.

The floor buckled, and Dad pulled us all behind the mound of molten metal left behind.

Thomp.

The top of the mound disappeared as the weapon’s charge rocketed over our heads. David shoved me to the deck. The ground gave way below me, like being squashed into a tepid mud puddle. My knee sank through the flooring. The frigid liquid metal bit through my jeans. “I’m sinking!”

Thomp.

Dad pulled me out while David pointed his disk toward where the ship hung a few feet above the floor. An Erescopian darted toward the orb and disappeared inside. A flash of light illuminated the craft, cutting a hole in the side that quickly closed over before the orb rose from the deck and rocketed from the hangar.

David plopped to the floor beside me. “So much for that ship.”

“There has to be another way out,” Dad said. “How did you get here?”

“The aft hanger. It’s on this level.”

Dad nodded. “Then that’s where we have to go.”

35

I tumbled out of a wall and landed flat on my rear end.

Dad and David called “clear” as I pulled up to my feet.

Nematali frowned, her gaze riveted to Dad’s injury. “This part of the ship isn’t degrading as quickly.” Nematali placed her hand on Dad’s shoulder. “We should look at your wound.”

Dad waved her off. “This is no time for triage. Believe me, I’ve had worse. We have to get out of this Hellhole.”

I pulled on the edge of Dad’s shirt. Blood oozed over the crusted material. “You really need a doctor.”

“Well, unless you’re an MD, I’ll figure I’m piss out of luck. So stop worrying about—”

Nematali dug her thumb into his shoulder.

Dad dropped to the floor, biting his lips. “What kind of cockamamie stunt was that?”

“Sit,” she ordered. “I am a surgical nurse, and you are no good to us if you lose too much blood.”

He nodded and winced when she tugged aside his collar.

“Can I help?” I asked.

“Hold his shoulder still, and pull the fabric back while I work on it. I don’t want to remove his shirt. It may reopen the wound.”

Okay, I could do that. I eased the fabric to the side and forced my eyes shut. I’d never seen Dad hurt or even admit to being in pain. He was impenetrable. The rock in our family. But he was only a man. Human. He could hurt. He could bleed. We all could, and we needed each other to get out of this alive.

Dad winced.

Nematali turned to David as she pulled a silver cylinder the size of a pencil from her coat. “Do something to distract him.”

David eased down beside my father.

“Thank you for what you did for me back there. I was stupid. I could have been killed.”

Dad stretched his neck away from Nematali. “Yeah, well, you learn a few things after being in combat. You survived this time. You’ll remember this and live to fight another day.”

I shivered. The real Colin didn’t get another day.

Dad closed his eyes and seemed to grit his teeth. I didn’t look to see what Nematali was doing to him.

“You have any family back home, private?” Dad asked David.

David blinked, glancing at me. “Just a father, sir. What about you?”

“I have a daughter.” His eyes glossed over, as if he could see past the walls.

What did he think he was looking at? Iraq still? Did he see long ranges of sand rather than opalescent barriers?

Dad wiped his brow. “You should see what my
Pequeña
can do with a camera. She can take a picture of a bug and make it a work of art.” His gaze seemed miles away. “She just got accepted to Columbia. I’m so damn proud of her I can’t stand it.”

A lump formed in my throat. He’d always been critical of my photography; always said it was a waste of time. Then he sent my portfolio to Columbia, and now this? Why didn’t he ever tell me?

“We had a fight before I left. A bad one. A fight we never should’ve had.” His eyes scanned the melting walls. “Now, I’m not sure I’m going to get to tell her.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but David held up a hand, stopping me.

“Tell her what?” David asked.

“We lost her mom a while back. I needed someone to blame, and Jess was … well, Jess was too damn convenient.” He rubbed his eyes. “I love that kid more than life itself. She deserves better.”

“How’d your wife die?” David asked.

Oh, God.
Why did he ask that?

Dad shifted his weight. “Car accident. Stinking drunk in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler. Jess was driving. Cops said she was lucky to be alive.” He shook his head. “That stinking rig wrapped them up like a pretzel. There’s nothing anyone could have done.” He winced, glancing at his shoulder.

“Sorry,” Nematali said, continuing her work on his wound.

Dad took a deep breath. “I took Natalie’s death out on Jess. I was an idiot. I pulled away when that kid needed me the most.” His gaze passed over the walls again. “Now I’m hunkered down in enemy territory, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get to make it up to her.”

David palmed Dad’s good shoulder. “She knows you love her.”

Dad’s lips pursed. “I hope so.”

David’s face blurred behind my tears.

I wanted to hug both of them, but I couldn’t take my hands off Dad’s shoulder.

Why did it have to be this way? Why did I have to find this out now?

There was a psycho outside somewhere, and the ship was melting around us. Dad wanted to be a family again, but we might not live long enough to get back home. Why couldn’t we just take a magic elevator up and out of this death trap and fly back to Earth? Why couldn’t David just beam us down to the planet?

“That’s all I can do.” Nematali placed the silver pencil-thingy back into her pocket. “I stopped the bleeding and deadened the pain, but he’ll need human medicine to fully heal.”

Dad blinked hard. “Did you just say human medicine?”

Nematali straightened. “You need a regular doctor. We need to … ”

Footsteps tapped down the hall. Dad launched to attention as a wave of semi-clear energy zigzagged over our heads and exploded into the partition behind us.

Dad fumbled with his weapon, struggling to point it at the Erescopians threatening our position.