Colonization (Alien Invasion Book 3) (40 page)

“I tried to protect her while you were gone. After you abandoned her. I did my best, but it wasn’t good enough. Just like I wasn’t good enough for you even before you knew about the baby. Just like you wanted to leave me behind, before Lila forced you to take me. But I always did what was right. Even after people broke in, and everyone made friends with the intruders. The same people who betrayed you, before you turned on the rest of us. The same people who, I’m pretty sure, included the man who slept with your wife.”

Heather looked at Meyer’s face. Meyer Dempsey was never at a loss for words. Meyer Dempsey was never bested in conversation.
Never
. But he was speechless now.

“I always wanted to help. Always tried to protect this family. I kept the guard even while you ignored it. I played second fiddle to Christopher even though I was supposed to outrank him. And when the chips were down, it was me — not Christopher — who kept stepping up. When Piper went missing. When they were plotting against you. When they did exactly what you said they’d do with the network center, and I dutifully reported it just as you’d asked.”

Raj’s eyes bored into Meyer’s. The gun was rock steady, aimed at his chest. Heather remembered a few Raj gunshots gone awry, hilarious in the past like a best-of bloopers reel. But there wasn’t a chance of him missing this time.

Her eyes searched the street. There were a few bricks in a pile near an adjacent building, but they were just bricks. If she went for them, he’d turn and shoot her.

“I’m going to watch you burn, viceroy,” Raj snarled.

Meyer, seeming to sense futility, tensed for a pointless fight. Heather saw it happen, but Raj somehow missed it, his glare intent upon Meyer’s face. It was a stupid, stupid thing to consider, the gun leveled as it was.

Heather was about to shout for Meyer to knock it off — blowing his cover to Raj but saving his life — when Meyer struck. He did it when Raj’s eyes flicked toward a sound down the street, gaining a partial second’s advantage. But it wasn’t enough, and Raj wasn’t close enough to grab or strike.

Meyer lunged forward.

Raj took his shot.

In the moment of shock that followed, Heather leaped for her brick — with all the fury of impending, righteous loss — and smashed it into the back of Raj’s head.

Raj collapsed, unconscious.

Heather rolled Meyer over, down on her knees in the street, finding her hands wet with spreading blood, in time to see him form two final words before dying.

Meyer didn’t make sounds, but she could read his lips just fine.

The last words she’d have expected from the great Meyer Dempsey’s final breath.

“Love you.”

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The Reptars came for them.

Cameron was breathless beside Piper, staring toward the advancing horde of black, panther-like shapes, his breath leaving shallow and fast. His hand, on her arm, had gone slack.

The nearest of them leaped. It moved shockingly fast, scuttling across the space like a spider. Its mouth opened, revealing concentric semicircles of needle teeth. The inside glow that bled between the creature’s scales shone brighter within its throat. Piper stood frozen, seeing how its mouth seemed to disengage past 180 degrees, the top of its head becoming invisible as it presented only tongue and teeth.

The thing gave its rattling purr as it came forward, its Titan reticence entirely gone. It struck at one of the rebel survivors, Taylor, and tore her arm off at the shoulder. She screamed, her motions jostling Andreus from the only partially ajar doorway.

They came.
En masse,
they came.

No hesitation. The Reptar that had started with Taylor finished her off, its bite ripping her head entirely off. Her friend, Olivia, battered stupidly at its body, but her ministrations were cut short when a second Reptar ripped her in half at the waist.

Cameron yanked Piper away, dragging her through throngs of humans and black alien limbs whirring like the churning blades of a food processor. Blood sprayed Piper’s face, her bare arms, her chest. She saw Ivan ripped apart in front of her then nearly lost her footing as his blood drenched the concrete underfoot.

They were headed the wrong way, sprinting to duck behind a truck left in the entry cavern following its final delivery. Cameron pulled her down, wrapping his arm around her from the back, clamping his blood-streaked hand over her mouth without delicacy. The air left her lungs.

The group had dispersed. The door to the tunnels was still ajar, but Piper had no idea if anyone had managed to get through. The first Reptar — the one that had ripped Taylor and Olivia apart as if holding a grudge — had panicked the group. Maybe its desertion was good. Right now, Reptars seemed occupied with slashing their party to pieces and were ignoring the unused doorway — a positive development if anyone hoped to use it without being followed like snakes chasing mice through their furrows.

“They’re shapeshifters,” Cameron said, breathing heavy, his eyes bulging with fright. “Titans. Reptars. It’s just an illusion. All this time, they’ve been able to change from one to the other.”

Maybe
, Piper thought. But the ability to shift forms was something no human had ever seen and lived to report. It was a secret the Astrals had kept carefully guarded — pretending to be harmless Titans at all costs instead of revealing their nature. Surprising the Astrals into changing now meant that before today, nobody had seen them angry.

No one would be leaving alive.

“We have to reach the tunnels,” Cameron said, his panic apparently forgetting that he’d dragged them
away
to hide behind the truck.

With a tremendous crash, their hiding place was torn into the air. Piper saw three Reptars behind the truck, all with their front limbs up as it flipped through the air in a tight spiral and struck the concrete ceiling, making rain from shattered pebbles. It crashed back down as Cameron leaped atop Piper and drove her to the ground.

One of the three beasts turned then shot after a male lab tech — Piper couldn’t tell who. He fell apart like sliced meat. With horror, Piper saw Danika with her hands shielding her face behind the fallen tech. Her eyes met Piper’s before the thing impaled her with one of its claw limbs.

The two remaining Reptars over Piper and Cameron reared like horses then came down just feet away. Both opened their mouths to purr then flicked their heads upward as something heavy struck the one in front. Piper’s eyes followed the object’s trajectory (it turned out to be a small tractor tire, pulled from somewhere on a gantry) above and saw Benjamin with his arms out, post throw. Charlie was beside him in his usual buttoned shirt and bland tie, a solid right-hand man to the end.

The struck Reptar turned then jumped upward in two giant bounds. It made quick work of the climb, on the gantry in seconds. Benjamin and Charlie were already sliding down a ladder like firemen. The thing followed, but at the bottom its eyes lighted on Tina, the tech Piper had seen earlier. It went through her like mown grass as Charlie and Benjamin dove behind a pile of boxes.

The final Reptar struck, charging them with a wide open mouth, unhinged like the one from before. The alien looked like the head of a hairbrush: a large, flat oval studded with spines sharp as knives. It shoved toward them, but Cameron had scrambled for a push broom in the corner. The thing had a heavy metal handle, and Cameron jammed it into the Reptar’s mouth. The creature bit on the pole, momentarily stymied, but the skin on Cameron’s right hand was flayed as it brushed one of the razor-sharp teeth, skin hanging in a flap, a torrent of blood spilling down his arm.

Piper spun toward a loud banging and saw Cameron wrestling with the Reptar. It was a shotgun report, from one of the few large weapons they’d brought. Nathan Andreus turned after his shot and shoved the shotgun’s barrel practically down a new Reptar’s throat. There was a new report, and a blue-black spray covered the wall behind it as he pulled the trigger.

Piper waited for Andreus, having cleared himself a circle, to aid Cameron’s rescue. Instead, he slipped through the tunnel doorway, followed by Coffey.

She pulled the door closed behind them, leaving everyone else to die.

Cameron was weakening. The Reptar’s strong jaws were bending the bar, and it was backing up to strike anew, from a different angle. But with Coffey and Andreus gone, nobody had more than a small-caliber sidearm except for Trevor, who in a fit of panic Piper realized, she hadn’t seen since this all started.

There was a jolt. She looked over to see Cameron rolling the Reptar aside, somehow besting it in a wrestling match. All of sudden, Cameron was winning, having beaten the monster because it was inexplicably dead, or dying. Something massive and sharp had been driven through its eye. She looked up to see Benjamin standing over the Reptar, his chest out like a proper savior.

Charlie was running up behind Benjamin, shouting, panicking, not giving Benjamin credit for his kill and his son’s rescue. But Benjamin saw none of it; he smiled down at Cameron and said, “Bet you didn’t think your old man could — ”

Too late, Piper, still on the ground, realized why Charlie had been running. The truck had fallen back into place, once more shielding them from the rest of the room. A second unseen beast had sneaked up behind Benjamin.

Benjamin’s face changed from triumphant to confused.

The Reptar ripped through him and started to chew.

Cameron and Piper were mostly to their feet when it happened. Cameron, his face shocked, tried to jump on the beast, but Charlie struck him like a linebacker, his moderate frame easily trumping Cameron’s slight one. The pair struck the ground, all three of them now mostly around to the other side of the flipped truck. They couldn’t see the Reptar or Benjamin’s body, which was a blessing. But they could see the rest of the space, and that was a curse.

Piper had lost track of any gunshots, but she could see two or three dead Reptars. By contrast, she saw scads of dead humans — or, at least,
pieces
. There were arms and legs and torsos and heads, indistinct chunks that could’ve been anything. Some of the Reptars were finishing off the few remaining humans remains; the rest were leaping across the room like apes in cages. Charlie had knocked them behind a kind of standing desk — possibly a check-in station for incoming vehicles — but between them and the door Coffey and Andreus had sneaked through were twenty feet or so of gore-streaked open floor.

Cameron was still trying to rise and take his revenge. Charlie slapped him.

“Don’t be an idiot!” he snapped with more emotion than Piper had ever heard from him. “Don’t thank him by jumping into the same thing’s mouth!”

Cameron’s eyes cleared. Charlie pointed at the garage-bay-like doors to the outside, clotted with patrolling Titans-turned-Reptars. Beyond them were the heavy metal bodies of waiting shuttles, ready to clean up anything hoping to flee.

When he was sure Cameron and Piper saw what had happened outside, Charlie pointed at the concealed door in the room’s wall.

“We all know the way, through tunnels they probably don’t know anything about. Your father’s final helping hand. Don’t insult him by not taking advantage.”

Piper wanted to say,
Like Coffey and Andreus took advantage by leaving us all behind?
But she stopped herself and nodded. Cameron, making his face grim but settled, nodded too.

“They’re heading to the doors. They know we’re mostly finished.” Charlie pointed again. It was true; the Reptars were falling into a slow patrol, apparently looking for loose ends. No one was left. Piper wanted to believe Trevor had made it out somehow, but she didn’t see how.

“Stay low. Now,” Charlie commanded.

Cameron went first. When the way seemed clear, he waved to the others to follow. He made the door in seconds, flinching whenever one of the Reptars purred while crossing nearby, barely seen. He looked around again before opening it then waved Charlie in, followed by Piper.

She moved to comply, but something had her leg. Piper turned to see it in the clawed appendage of a Reptar that had been hiding, waiting, maybe knowing the door was there all along.

It moved to strike, its mouth open and gut churning. Cameron had been frozen; he moved his arm for some futile reason but wasn’t close enough. Piper tried to curl up and protect her middle.

Cameron stretched. The door yawned open as his hand dragged it. Inside, Piper could see Charlie, the moment frozen, his mouth open in a shout, his bug eyes wide.

A shot ripped through the now mostly quiet space as the thing’s head exploded.

“Trevor,” she breathed, noticing him more than her own salvation. “Thank God you’re — ”

Every Reptar turned at the shot. A grim expression crossed Trevor’s face, and he raised a foot to kick her hard in the chest, into Cameron’s arms as they tumbled backward against Charlie, through the open doorway.

She had time to see Trevor’s eyes meeting hers as at least five of the beasts descended on him at once, all teeth and claws and fury.

Cameron closed the door, latching it somehow from the inside.

Charlie, too close to Piper’s ear in the small, rock-lined space, shouted for her to run.

So she did, leaving acres of death behind her.

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