H.A.L.F.: The Makers (46 page)

“Get up,” the first guard said. He kicked Erika’s leg with the toe of his boot.

Erika turned over and sat on her hind end but didn’t make any move to do as he commanded. “Make me.” She’d likely pay for her sarcastic tongue. She usually did, in some form. But it felt good to defy the guy anyway.

The man pulled his rifle back. “They said alive. Didn’t say nothin’ about not beatin’ the snot out of you little shits.” The butt of the rifle came at Erika’s face.

She grabbed the end of the rifle before it made contact with her jaw. She tried to yank the rifle from the man’s hands, but he was strong and had a solid grip on it.

Erika didn’t let go. She dug her feet into the sandy ground to get leverage and yanked as hard as she could with her whole body. Being in the downward position, she had gravity and leverage on her side. The guard toppled and nearly fell on her, but still he held the rifle tightly.

Erika kept her hands on the gun but threw her elbow up and caught the man’s chin. The pain was enough to make him lessen his grip, and Erika got the rifle away from him.

Before she got a chance to point the rifle at the man she’d taken it from, the second guard put the point of a gun barrel against the back of her head. “Don’t even think about it. Drop it or, so help me, I’ll put a bullet in your skull, to hell with orders. They can get blood out of a dead body as easily as a live one.”

As Erika had told Tex, fear of dying has a way of trumping orders. She believed the guy would do as he threatened. She dropped the gun to the ground. As soon as the rifle hit the dirt, the first guard’s meaty fist found her face. He punched her squarely in the cheek, sending rockets of pain threading through her head. Blood trickled down her cheek, wet and cold. Burning tears stung at the corners of her eyes. She was near to passing out as a wave of nausea washed over her.

“Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it?” the guard said. He grabbed his rifle from the ground where Erika had dropped it. “Now get up and move or a bloody face will be –”

The man didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. He fell to the ground, his face beet red, his eyes bulging as he struggled to breathe.

“What the – ?” The second guard coughed and pulled at his neck.

Tex’s voice was a low monotone. “Take their weapons.”

Both men writhed on the ground now. Erika was able to easily get their weapons away from them and grab the guns they’d confiscated from her and Tex. She handed two to Tex, strapped one across her shoulder and held the other with both hands.

“Run,” Tex said.

“Not without you.”

He shot her a look that could wither a delicate flower. “If you want to live, do as I say.”

Erika didn’t know if Tex was issuing a threat or a directive. She was glad of the help his renewed abilities gave them, but fear wound around her. He had been so unstable since Dr. Randall unhooked him from the Conexus interface.
What if he turns his weapon on me?

Erika pushed her fear aside and decided to trust in Tex. She ran as fast as she could toward the perimeter of the school grounds. They’d been close when they’d run into the guards. The barricade was ahead of her.
Nearly there.
Someone was running behind her. She hoped it was Tex but feared it was a guard. She wanted to look but was afraid of what she’d see. Curiosity got the better of her and she tossed a look over her shoulder.

Tex’s legs were a blur beneath him. His upper body was entirely still as though he was not moving at all. He quickly closed the gap between them.

She’d once pled with him to spare the lives of Sturgis’ guards and Joe, the man who had attacked her. But she now hoped that Tex had put the two guards they’d struggled with out of commission. The man she’d elbowed had taken a dislike to her. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if he caught up to them.

They were less than five feet from the barricade, but the dogs had their scent. The barking grew louder as Tex overtook her. A small breeze wafted over her as he passed.

Erika’s toe caught a large rock and she was tumbling toward the ground. She stumbled and nearly fell, but she refused to give up and righted herself within a few steps.

Tex jumped the barricade gracefully. He looked like a gazelle, his movements quick and effortless. Erika’s legs were shaky beneath her. She wasn’t even going to attempt to jump. She knew she’d end up splatting against the concrete barrier.

The dogs’ paws crunched on the rocky ground. They growled and snarled behind her. She looked back and there were at least three large, dark-haired dogs barreling toward her.

Tex was over the wall and Erika could see only the top of his head.
There must be a drop-off on the other side.

“Make haste,” he said.

Erika hitched a leg up over the barricade, the other dangling behind her. Pain erupted in her heel as sharp teeth clutched her ankle. The dog’s powerful jaws had her in its grip and yanked, nearly pulling her back over the barricade. She was straddling the concrete half-wall and gripped it with both hands. She tried to pull her leg away, but the dog pulled too, ripping a chunk of her flesh off.

Two other dogs joined the one that had its teeth in her. They jumped at the concrete barricade and barked and yowled. Guards ran toward them and one spoke into his comm link. “Got ’em pinned on the barricade.”

She pulled one of the rifles off her back and mashed the butt of it down onto the dog’s snout. It yipped in pain and released its jaws. “Sorry, buddy, didn’t want to hurt you. But my leg’s not a chew toy.” She pulled her leg free and threw herself over the wall without a thought as to how far down she was going to fall.

She braced to impact the hard ground. Instead she fell into Tex’s thin, wiry arms.

He held her with surprising ease. For an instant their faces were inches apart, their eyes locked as Tex cradled her against his chest. And for a fleeting moment, Tex’s eyes seemed less dark, his lips less thin, and his cheeks less gaunt. He looked like he was ready to kiss her and she was near to letting him.

But the dogs snarled and threw themselves against the concrete barricade. Men yelled and somewhere a siren whooped.

Tex put her down gently. His voice was softer than it had been before. “Lead the way.”

She took his hand, though not because she was unsure if he’d follow but because she needed to feel connected to the world so she could push through the pain and keep moving. Erika ran down the hill and tried not to topple. She fled the school, a place that had once been her home away from home and most recently the site of her mom’s deathbed. She was glad to say good-bye to it.

The lone siren became a chorus that rang out in the cool, desert night. Erika darted down an alleyway of crumbly pavement in need of repair and through backyards of dried grass. The low-slung slump block houses were silent sentinels of the town in its death throes.

The sirens wailed, getting closer and closer and seemingly from all directions. They rounded a corner, and Erika’s heart, already beating madly, leapt into her throat. Ian’s house. It was dark and still, but it was familiar. The sight of it flooded her mind with memories of eating dinner with Ian’s family at a crowded table in their tiny, cluttered dining room. Hot tears played at the corners of her eyes again, her throat tight.

Erika pulled Tex into the partially enclosed carport and let go of his hand. Her fingers shook as she pulled a rusty can off the top shelf of Mr. Frew’s rickety homemade workbench. She dumped the contents of the can out onto the wood counter. A spider tumbled out and beat a hasty retreat across the wood. Amongst the handful of dirty coins was a plastic Corona beer keychain with a single key.

She dangled the key in the air for Tex to see. He said nothing, his face again stoic. It made her miss Ian terribly. If Ian were there, he’d have eased their tension with amusing comments or at least traded insults with her.

The truck was at the back of the house, and as she ran toward it, she passed her Yamaha that still stood where she’d parked it before that fateful night in the desert. She wanted to hop on it and ride east, Tex’s arms wrapped around her waist, the cool night air snarling her hair, the rattle of the engine beneath her. She never felt more alive than when she rode, as if the roar of the engine powered her, her hands on the throttle giving her a sense of control over her destiny.

But they were headed to four-wheel-drive country. The bike would be no use getting them there.

“Wait here. I’ll get the truck.”

Mr. Frew’s fifteen-year-old truck was jacked so high, Erika had to jump to get into it. She cranked the key and the engine whined and spit. She’d ridden with Ian in the truck before. She knew it was a finicky fella. She waited a few seconds they didn’t have, turned the key again and tapped the gas pedal a few times. The engine turned over and choked out a plume of smoky exhaust.

She spun out and turned the truck around on the lawn. Mr. Frew’s grass had once been as green as a fairway, an anomalous sight in their desert town. “
Just add water,”
he’d said in answer to how he got such a lush backyard in a place where lawn grass didn’t want to grow.
Sorry, Mr. Frew.
She hoped he survived his illness so he’d have a chance to come home and get blazing mad at her for what she’d done to his lawn.

Erika pulled the truck around and stopped for Tex to get in. As she looked at the bike, she decided she could leave a lot of things behind, but her Yamaha wasn’t one of them.

“Help me get it into the back,” she said.

Tex seemed to do most of the lifting while Erika guided it. It was another demonstration that Tex’s strength was returning.

Erika pulled onto the main street that led out of town, back toward the jumble of rocks where Jack had turned off so long ago and taken them to the place where they met Tex. But they hadn’t gone a quarter of a mile before flashing lights bounced off her rearview mirror and sirens wailed behind them. There was a barricade of cars ahead of them too.

“Crap, they’ve got us cornered,” Erika said.

“Turn hard to your right.”

“But there’s no road.”

“We need to stay off the road. At least until we lose them.”

“We need to head east,” Erika said.

“Then do as I said. Hard right.”

Erika followed Tex’s direction. They jostled as she drove over a curb and into the desert. She mashed the pedal to the floorboard as they bounced high off their seats, taking out cactus and bushes.
I hate off-roading
. “This will make for one long trip to New Mexico.”

Even with a jacked-up four-wheel drive, the fastest she could go was about twenty. But the truck had an easier time of it than the police cars. The sound of the sirens faded. She could no longer see lights in her rearview mirror. She drove over the rough ground, dodging palo verde trees and avoiding the large columnar saguaro and squatty barrel cactus. Tex navigated, telling her to veer this way or that. She had no idea how he knew what direction she should take, but she followed his directions and focused on not hitting anything big.

After an hour of driving so rough that she was sure her butt was bruised, they hit a paved, two-lane road headed east. They could stay on it for a while, but eventually they’d need to find a road north.

“Where are we going, Erika?”

“Anywhere but here,” she said. She gave the truck more gas and pushed the needle on the speedometer higher, heading toward the pink-tinged eastern sky.

The
Dra’Knar
’s voyage had been uneventful though longer than U’Vol’s crew was used to. K’Sarhi, known as Earth to the Sarhi, its dominant-species inhabitants, was farther from Uktah than any planet they had hunted before. Though the Mocht Bogha created a bridge of warped space between Uktah and K’Sarhi’s solar system, the trip still took several months. The Vree’Kah were anxious to don their krindors and proceed with the hunt.

U’Vol recorded a video message for his family. He had just finished when the proximity alert sounded. He quickly encoded the electronic letter and sent it on its way. It would travel through the Mocht Bogha too, but it would still take months to reach them. If things went badly for him on the surface, he could be dead many months before they knew.

He strode briskly through the dark, cramped corridor and mentally cursed the engineers that had designed the ship as he walked. They had placed the captain’s quarters at the farthest end of the ship away from the control deck. Even with his giant stride, it took nearly twenty minutes to get from one end of the expansive ship to the other.

As he entered the control deck, his first officer, Tu’Vagh, was already in the command room. Tu’Vagh had opened the ebony drosh metal shutters that protected the vast expanse of windows during the intergalactic travel. The view of K’Sarhi was spectacular. The planet was as blue as the scouts had reported and even more beautiful. Masses of wispy white clouds swirled over the oceans. The small planet floated like a precious jewel in the vast dark sea of empty space.
Eponia would appreciate the beauty of this planet where the Sarhi dwell
.

But she would never see the sight. Females were forbidden from wearing krindors or boarding a Vree ship. The M’Uktah believed that Doj imbued all females with the power to create life and that the power flowed to them directly from their contact with the ground of Uktah. If they were to ever leave Uktah, the spell would be broken and the woman would become barren. U’Vol thought that it was probably myth more than truth. He had traveled many light years and seen females of other species able to give birth on other planets. It seemed to him unlikely that Doj would inhibit the wonderful masterpiece of his creation known as woman in such a way. He had witnessed females birthing children in the cruelest of circumstances.
Surely our robust M’Uktah women are not more delicate than craven Kreelan wenches.
But he was not one to create flaghen and question the wisdom of the elders or the Council of U.
I will show Eponia this wonder through my stories upon my return.

Tu’Vagh lay reclined in his command chair. He blinked slowly to temporarily close his optical interface with the ship’s central computer. “Captain on deck,” he shouted.