Homicidal Aliens and Other Disappointments (26 page)

“Retreat!” I shout.
Fall back!

We retreat, but it’s not an orderly retreat. People scatter. The hunters call for reinforcements, but they don’t try to follow us. They hold their position, trying to kill whoever is within their range.

We run through the woods. The darkness gives us cover but also makes running difficult, even dangerous. A lot of people fall. One woman has to be carried after spraining or breaking her ankle.

Eventually we gather at another clearing, this one smaller than the last. We call to each other in the dark. Catlin works on the wounded. Running Bird orders me to post sentries, and then he sends a scout back where we’ve come from to be sure the aliens aren’t following.

“How do they keep finding us?” I say, staying on my feet because I’m too worked up to lie down. I pace. My dad used to pace, and it irritated me and my mom, but here I am pacing just like he did.

No one answers. Catlin is busy working on the wounded. The other rebels are busy trying to catch their breath and grieving for the dead and fighting the feeling of — there’s no other word for it — doom. No one has an answer.

Another moment. I go to another moment instead of hearing an answer. I’m dying. The Hunter is standing over me. Running Bird is dead. Michael is dead. Sam is dead. Zelda is dead. Zack is dead. And Catlin, Catlin is dead, too.

You have been worthy prey,
he mindspeaks.
I’m sorry for your loss.

I’m sorry for your loss.

I’m sorry for your loss.

I’m sorry for your loss.

I see variations of my death, but they all end the same way. Everyone I care about is dead, and I’m the last to die — though I do die — I always die, and the Hunter is always saying,
I’m sorry for your loss.
Over and over and over.

I was beginning to believe in the future I’d imagined before, the future with Catlin and me alive together and with Cat. But that is just one version of the future. One of thousands of versions.
I’m sorry for your loss.
Maybe all but one ends with those words. How can I possibly find it?

“He’s stabilized,” Catlin says.

I nod distractedly. “How do they keep finding us?” I say again.

“I don’t know,” Catlin says. “Michael doesn’t have anything in him, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve checked him closely.”

“Could you have missed something?”

“No,” she says, and then she stops. “Unless . . .”

“Unless what?”

“I didn’t check you or Zack or myself. I didn’t think —”

“Check me,” I say.

She finds it almost right away. He didn’t even bury it deeply. I just couldn’t feel it. I feel her pull it out of me, though, and I also feel a deep shame. Too weak to feel it. Too weak.

“Stupid,” she says. “I should have checked us all.”

“It’s my fault,” I say. “They’ve been tracking us through me.”

“You couldn’t know.”

Because we’re weak and they are strong. Just like they’ve always told us.

She checks herself and Zack. They’re both clean.

“Son of a female dog.” The Hunter had a contingency plan for his contingency plan. He used me. The son of a female dog used me.

“Put it back,” I tell Catlin.

“What?”

“Put it back in me.”

“But —” And then she realizes. “You’re sure?”

“I’m tired of running,” I say.

And she puts it back.

In the morning we go back to where we were attacked. If there are others from our group still out there somewhere, they might gravitate to this position.

There are no aliens at the clearing. I knew there wouldn’t be. For whatever reason, the Hunter couldn’t make the last ambush. He was probably pretty upset about that. He won’t decline the next ambush invitation. He’ll be right there at the front, leading. He’ll let us gather back together, and then he’ll make a special visit.

But it won’t be on his terms this time. I join with Catlin, and together we put out a call into the woods, telling any survivors from New America to meet up back at the clearing. We don’t even try to hide it. I’m sure the aliens can hear us. In fact, I’m counting on it.

Running Bird comes over from where he’s been tending to the wounded and asks me if I’m crazy. “Every alien in a ten-mile radius just heard that call,” he says.

They know where we are anyway,
I mindspeak just to him.
They’ve known all along.

He grabs my arm and leads me off a ways into the woods.

“Tell me,” he says.

So I do.

“I should have felt it,” I say. I do feel it now. I control it. What it transmits and what it doesn’t. But I’m too late.

“We have no time for guilt,” he says. “You need to lead us to the future where we survive. That’s what you need to do.”

I tell him I had Catlin put the tracker back in my brain. I tell him I can control it. Running Bird looks like he wants to argue, but then I feel him change his mind. He decides to trust me. We go back to the clearing and find Sam and have a meeting.

Sam listens and even seems to agree about the element of surprise and how much of an advantage it is.

“We need to be ready,” I say. “We need to use guns. They’re good distractions. The aliens come in like a wedge every time, don’t they? They’re predictable. How can we use that against them?”

Sam devises a plan.

Is it a good plan? I’m no military person. I don’t know. I do know that this is a place, a moment, that’s very important on the line. There are a whole lot of possible bad moments beyond our fight with the Hunter. Thousands. More, probably. But I know there’s at least one good one. And I have to believe there’s a way to get there. I have to.

We tell everyone that we will be attacked again. The news goes over better than I thought it would. Most New Americans don’t panic. Everyone is scared, but there’s a kind of relief in finally making a stand against the aliens.

We practice scenarios of the attack and defensive moves and counterattacks. We drill. And then we drill some more. Zack is happy, and even Zelda seems to accept that this is the time to fight.

When we walk on toward Santa Fe, Running Bird and I are at the front of the New Americans, Sam and Michael and Catlin at the rear. The path is narrow and the woods thick around us for much of the way. Rocky sides of mountains hem us in. If we’re caught here on this path, we’ll be trapped. Hoping to get to a wider path or a more open area, I try to hurry the others.

We do, eventually, and we’re able to slow down, which is good because everyone is tired. We rest and walk and rest and walk the day away. No one attacks. It’s near dusk, near time to set up a camp, when we come to a clearing in the woods. Sam suggests that we go to the other side of the clearing and camp there.

We get sloppy as we cross the clearing and lose our lines. Everyone is ready to rest. I order them to re-form the lines, but they’re tired and the response is listless and uneven. When I turn back to try to get them to move, the attack starts.

There are two groups of them this time. A smaller group attacks from behind while the main group attacks from ahead, both in their standard wedge formation. I take a small amount of satisfaction from the fact that they think we’re dangerous enough to change tactics and make their attack less predictable.

The Hunter is where I knew he’d be, though. He’s attacking with the main group, at the point of the wedge. As we practiced, we form two squads. Those in back face the hunters from that direction, and the rest of us face the Hunter and the main force.

Sam’s shooters are quickly up into the woods, both north and south, and they fire as the rest of us attack with kicks, punches, and blocks — most of them physical but some of them mental.

We’re still outpowered, but our preparedness seems to catch the aliens by surprise. The shooters do exactly what they’re supposed to do. They draw the aliens’ attention, weakening their focus.

Sensing the weakness, we attack harder. I send my wave of whatever at them, which disrupts their defense long enough for a few bullets to get through. One of the aliens is hit and spins back into others. But more of our people die.

I’m sorry for your loss.

The Hunter gets close to me then. He lets the others worry about the bullets. He thinks that I am the key. I think that he is. He does something that knocks me to the ground and that I have no defense for. That’s when I see it again. The future. One of a thousand moments when we are all dead. A million. Me first. He says,
Sorry for your loss.

I see it. I’m in it.

I try to push him away, break his hold, but it’s like I’m being strangled. I can’t break the grip of his hands. This is the moment of my death. Deathgiver. He was right.

Sorry for your loss.

Catlin joins with me. I try to break from her because if she joins, then she’ll fall, too. She will die, too. Even together, we aren’t strong enough to break his hold. All she’s done is made it easier for him to kill us both.

Then I feel something else. Something on the Hunter. I’m able to move my head enough to see. It’s Running Bird. He’s jumped on the Hunter’s back.
“No!”
I cry, because I know what happens next; I’ve seen it. Wile E. Coyote blows up the Road Runner. That TNT in the road finally gets him.

I see Running Bird explode, see the Hunter make him split apart.

Catlin’s screams are echoing in my head, and it’s all happening just as I’ve seen it. The Hunter is reaching out to split Catlin apart, like he’s done a thousand times, and as she falls, I do to him what I did to that rock Running Bird threw at me what seems like a century ago: I split him. He’s split into pieces. They fly off in all directions.

That stupid nursery rhyme comes to my mind: “All the kings horses and all the king’s men . . .”

But I’m wrong.

He’s so powerful that he pulls the pieces back together; they rejoin. He’s so powerful that the life flows back into him. He even begins to smile. But then he looks down. Catlin stands before him, and she’s holding one small piece of him in her hand. She crushes it.

His smile fades. It’s been a long time since he’s been surprised. That’s what he thinks. Then he crumbles, and the pieces of him shatter on the ground.

And he dies, his body next to Running Bird’s.

When the other hunters feel their leader die, they can’t believe it at first. Then I feel it in them. Fear. Confusion and fear. This time, they’re the ones who run. This time we hold our ground. There’s cheering, but I don’t cheer. I kneel by Running Bird. Catlin kneels and tries something, but she knows it’s useless. We saw him break inside.

She pulls on my arm. “There’ll be more of them coming.”

“Probably,” I say, still kneeling by his body.

“We’ve got to go.”

Zack and Zelda tell Catlin a girl’s hurt over by the trees. Catlin goes into my mind and takes the tracking device out of me and then runs. Zack stays behind me and looks down at Running Bird.

“He’s old,” Zack says. “You wouldn’t think he’d be so strong.”

“No.”

“He was, though.”

“Yeah, he was.”

“I killed one of them,” Zack says. “With a gun.”

“You did good,” I say.

“It doesn’t feel good,” Zack says. “I thought it would.”

“No,” I say.

“I really thought it would.”

“I know,” I say, still looking at Running Bird. And then I say, “We don’t have any choice, Zack. They haven’t left us any choice.”

It’s a soldier’s thing to say, I guess. I never wanted to be a soldier. Doesn’t matter.

“I know,” he says, and looks embarrassed. He starts walking off.

“Zack,” I say, and he stops and looks back at me. “It’s good that it doesn’t feel good.”

He stares at me for a second, then says, “Yeah,” and walks on.

Sam comes over and says we need to go. We need to move on and find a place to sleep. So we move on — just like we’ve had to do and have to do, leaving the dead behind.