Dream Wars_Rising, page 5
Santiago Lopez was the leader of the three-hundred-strong militia in downtown Los Angeles, Asesinos de Extraterrestres, which loosely translated to “Alien Killers.” I couldn’t have asked to be dropped next to a better team. The ghouls always tried to pull everyone into ground zero, near their city where the bloodbath was unavoidable, but you had some leeway if you could regulate your mental state. Be calm and not fear. Santiago had that mental control. He’d spent one year in solitary confinement for a crime he said he never committed, and in that place he’d learned to manage his thoughts to keep from going insane.
“Damn, Kit, is that the Striker brothers? You protecting some high-profile shit nowadays,” he said as the group approached.
Damn. I didn’t expect Santiago to have read Tech Monthly or whatever magazine Damien was on the cover of lately.
I ran my hand through my hair. “Yeah, I wanted to keep that on the DL.”
He waved his hand in front of my face. “Don’t even worry about it. I’ve already forgotten who they are, and my crew is too dumb to know of them.”
I laughed. Santiago was a solid guy.
“You know, full disclosure, one of my clients is a ghoul attraction.” I didn’t want to get into a beef with these guys by not telling them, then have some shit go down and get blamed for it.
He shrugged. “So is Emilia, remember? It’s all good. Better that there’s more of us. Although I’m not sure the old guy can pull his weight.” He looked Mr. Hansen up and down.
I chuckled. “That old guy is former MI6.”
He looked impressed. “No shit. Well I’m glad we get to hang tonight. Go see Emilia, she’s got some news to tell you.” He motioned behind him.
I nodded before turning away from him.
“Ronnie girl!” he catcalled, then went into some long Spanish conversation with her. He was always flirting with her, much to Brisk’s annoyance.
“Who are these people?” Damien whispered, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. He’d come out of nowhere, which didn’t sit well with me. Focus on your surroundings.
“Friends. If shit goes down, they’ve got our back.” And I’d have theirs.
He just nodded, looking at Josephine and his little brother, then scouring the open space for ghouls. I wasn’t stupid, I knew Damien Striker could hold his own, but if a guy who was so capable was hiring my team, then shit was probably about to get really bad.
I walked past the perimeter of the alien pod trees and into the inner ring. This orchard was a great hiding spot, although the glow of the pods lit everything in the middle up; if someone looked too closely, they would see us all sitting inside of it. Good thing ghouls didn’t have night vision goggles or anything like that, just their super alert and heightened senses.
Our scientists thought these specific tree pods made the green regenerative serum and fed it to the planet through the roots system. They were everywhere though, and when we’d blown a bunch of them up, they grew back in twenty-four hours, from a hacked-off stump to a ten-foot-tall oval pod that lit up from the inside within a day. They’d be beautiful if they weren’t so creepy. Not to mention the serrated needles that stuck out all over the outside edges. They looked like hairs, but if you touched one you were quickly pierced. Those pricks burned like fire on your skin for days.
“Emilia!” I called to the sassy teenager.
She spun, gun in one hand, spear in the other, her jaw dropping. “Kit! Dude. Oh my God, is Ronnie here?” she asked, with a mild Hispanic accent.
I grinned. “Of course. How’ve you been? Playing nice with the boys at school?”
Emilia was a ball buster—no one got the drop on her. I hadn’t seen them in about six months; life got busy and we stopped hanging out.
She grinned. “I dropped out of school.”
My heart fell. She had always been smart, but a lot of people gave up the pursuit of academics for other, more practical things.
“I thought you wanted to be an astronaut.” She could’ve done it too.
She was still grinning. “Nope. I got into the academy! Your letter of recommendation went a long way, they said.”
Oh shit. I’d forgotten I wrote that. It was months ago, and Santiago had asked for the favor.
I smiled but it didn’t reach my eyes. I didn’t think she would get in, being that she had gang affiliations and no money. She was also old to be starting the program, up against girls who’d been there since they were twelve.
“That’s great. I’m really happy for you.” I hugged her tightly. If she wanted to live this life, I couldn’t stop her.
She nodded, her long brown ponytail bobbing. “I start after the summer. I’m gonna be a badass and work my way up to commander, just like you.” She grinned.
I don’t know why that statement made me sad. It shouldn’t have. I should’ve been proud, flattered. It was a great thing to get into the academy and get the military training. After two years of civic duty, you were free to join the armed forces or go into private protection like me. It paid well, it was practical, but it just wasn’t what I wanted for the future of the youth of humanity.
“Why drop out of school? Why not do both?” I went to school and the academy, as did Ronnie. The last thing we needed were trained soldiers with no education.
She shook her head. “Need to help my bro with the family business.”
I nodded. Santiago ran the militia like a business. Everyone paid monthly dues, and he did training exercises and camp-outs and other things. They were always busy.
“If Lieutenant Blackthorn is still there, do everything possible not to be in his class.”
“Why?”
“Just trust me. First day of class as a young kid, and he maced us all in the face and left the room. He’s not all there in the head.”
I’d hoped the academy had gotten rid of him, but part of me thought they kept him around because he made good soldiers. Nothing about the Dream Wars was predictable, and neither was he.
Her eyes bugged out, and I patted her shoulder.
“You’ll be fine. I still tell people the story of the badass fourteen-year-old hellion I met in the Dream Wars who killed a ghoulie with an ice pick.” She was like Maxine’s mini me, as she should be since the grunts were attracted to her.
She grinned. “Thanks, Kit.”
I squeezed her shoulder before walking off to greet and introduce myself to the others. I didn’t hang out in the Dream Wars with just anyone, so I wanted to shake each person’s hand and assess if they were okay, not stim junkies or hotheads I needed to look out for.
After making my rounds to the other eight people on Santiago’s team, I concluded this was a good group. I expected nothing less, but it was still my habit to check.
Nox came up beside me, flicking a lighter in his left hand. We were alone, standing off to the perimeter’s outer edge, facing the glowing of a far-off city miles in the distance. The cities were full of ghouls and frightened humans, but we’d have advance notice if any ghouls started making their way here, and could outrun them at this distance. They weren’t fast, didn’t run or walk, just… hovered at a brisk jogging pace. The grunts did anyway—the scary-ass sentries were another story.
“You think he really can make an arm cuff that would repel them?” Nox asked, in a low voice.
I looked over at him, his long dark hair was prettier than mine. Silky and thick.
“I think that if anyone can, it’s them,” I replied honestly. They were Striker Industries, after all. They’d made half the shit I was wearing.
He nodded, looking out at the glowing alien city. “I wouldn’t even know what to do with myself if I wasn’t fighting them.”
I chuckled. “You and me both.” It’s all we’d known. For the last ten years, twenty-four hours a day, it’s all we thought about. It was all our society focused on. New cars were only put out every four years instead of every year, the manpower and factories instead making weapons, Kevlar clothing and other practical things to survive the Dream Wars. We needed to tend to crops and coffee plantations that kept us awake, make food in labs and work at water treatment facilities. Fashion, consumerism, entertainment were all luxuries that barely existed. We watched old movies, wore old clothes, drove older cars. The only thing that mattered was surviving the night.
Nox was one of my best friends. Next to Ronnie, I was closest with him. He got me and was deeply spiritual, so I could talk to him about stuff that others scoffed at.
I heard the approaching footsteps, knowing it was Damien without looking. Part of my gift, I sensed energies. Everyone had a mental vibration they gave off, and Damien’s was deep and fast, unique only to him.
I spun around, gathering all of the professionalism I could muster. He was probably going to bitch about meeting up with these “riffraff thugs,” and suggest we move on.
“You wanna play cards? It settles Jeremy’s anxiety.” He held up a deck of playing cards, and I immediately chastised myself for judging him.
When one was hiding out and biding time in the Dream Wars, with no immediate threat, it was common to play games such as cards. I was working though, and I never let my guard down. I’d stare at this open land for the next four hours, bored out of my mind but alert, ready.
“Oh. No, thanks. I need to keep watch,” I told him.
“Okay.” He shrugged and turned around to meet up with Jeremy and Josephine, who were sitting on a cloth blanket they had spread out.
Nox was grinning at me when I faced him once more.
“What?” I asked him, adjusting the grip on my weapon.
Nox shook his head. “Go play cards. That was his peace offering for being a dick earlier. Honestly, do you not understand guys after all these years?”
I barked out a laugh. “All what years? I’m twenty and I’ve been with like two guys. Brisk being one of them.” Steven Martel being the other, plus a handful of guys I’d kissed and then promptly dumped for being douchebags. Steven had cheated on me, and Brisk and I only dated a month. I didn’t have that much experience with guys to go on. There was no time for love when you were stuck in a war.
But was what Nox said true? Damien was trying to make peace?
“Go. We have to live with this guy “indefinitely.” It would be nice not to have awkward tension. “I’ll take watch.” His air quotes made me smile.
I guess I could play one game. Show him I’m not always a coldhearted bitch. Just most of the time.
“Call me if you see anything. Even a moth,” I joked.
He saluted me. “Yes, sir.”
As I made my way over to Damien, his brother, and Josephine, I scanned the area. Ronnie was talking animatedly to Santiago, and most of his crew inside of the pod orchard. Maxine was just outside of it, gun drawn as she scanned the place. She was like a rabid pit bull on a chain—if she saw a ghoul, that chain would snap and the grunt wouldn’t stand a chance. Controlling her was hard, but she was worth the struggle. Brisk stood inside the pod orchard about twenty feet from Maxine, glancing between Ronnie and the open area. Mr. Hansen was surprisingly outside as well, examining the space, including the skies. He had two samurai swords drawn in a fisted grip. Part of me wanted to get some action tonight just so I could see him use them. I’d bet he was badass. The weight of my own samurai swords rested comfortably on my back, in their harness, waiting to be used. Guns were great for distance fighting, but when the ghouls got close, nothing shredded them better than swords.
“Hey, I guess I will take you up on your offer,” I said to Damien, as I approached their little circle.
He looked up at me with a smirk and dealt my cards.
Josephine made room so I could sit between her and Damien. Jeremy’s eyes flicked up to mine and back down quickly. Josephine was still handcuffed to him, but held her cards fanned out with her free hand.
“No card reading, Jer. I can tell when you do that.” She pointed at him, and a lopsided guilty grin lit up his face. Damien smiled too.
As I settled into the game, I sent up a silent prayer for all of us to get home safely tonight. I’d lost all faith in God when the ghouls landed, but I couldn’t deny there was something out there. Maybe it was a “she” or an “it” but there was something. I just hoped that something or someone was looking out for me tonight, because the look in Dawn’s eyes earlier had shaken me to my core.
Chapter Four
Over the next four hours, my team and I traded off watching the perimeter and playing cards with the Striker family. Josephine stayed by Jeremy’s side, handcuffed the entire time. Any time they stopped playing, Jeremy started rocking and breathing heavily, looking around at the landscape and eyeing a place to run. Bombs and guns went off all night here, so much that I barely heard them anymore—it had become like normal background noise to me—but to Jeremy and Maxine, I knew each pop of a bullet wore on their nerves. Now I was watching the horizon with Damien, both of us on guard at the southeastern side of the orchard.
“Ten years of this,” Damien said, looking out at the city as the bombs went off. We’d been standing near each other in silence for much of the past hour. The Dream Wars tended to make you ruminate on things, usually negative, like the ghouls were trying to control our minds and make us more depressed. I personally didn’t have so much of that problem since I seemed to have an affinity for mental control. Yet, Maxine and Brisk struggled with it the most.
“They say in five to ten more years, humanity will go extinct,” Damien continued when I didn’t reply.
Jesus, that was a sobering statistic. I didn’t even watch the news anymore; it just made me want to crawl in a hole and die, so I stuck to upbeat TV show reruns and old comedy movies.
“Well if your brother can figure out the cuff, then maybe that’ll change,” I said brightly.
He cast me a side glance, his piercing blue eyes catching me a little off guard. “It’s about the only thing I live for anymore. The idea that we can stop it.” He turned to look back over the landscape.
His words made me sad, almost as if he’d given up. Four hours in the Dream Wars was a long time, and it was probably messing with his head. One hour more and I’d tell Tatum to wake us. I never spent more than six hours here if I could help it. I preferred four, but he’d been without sleep for too long. Long gone were the days of eight hours of sleep and a nap. That was only something you read about in history books. Even the elderly were given caffeine pills, and sparing use of stims to keep them from napping. But Damien had gone four days with no sleep. Five to six hours wasn’t going to do much to revive him.
“I’m going to pee.” He started to walk off behind a large spiny pod.
It still surprised me some nights when I felt the need to drink water here or pee or eat an energy bar. Scientists couldn’t explain it other than they thought it had to do with quantum entanglement. When the ghouls hijacked our consciousness and created a duplicate of our bodies, whatever happened to the one body happened to the other to a certain degree. And when we woke, there was just one of us, that other copy disappearing with the waking of consciousness. Then a new copy was made the next time we slept, with identical injures or haircuts or whatever we had changed from the night before. Like a dream that was real. When you were injured here, your body on Earth sustained the same injury, like a soul that was tethered to a body. But if you peed here, you didn’t pee the bed back on Earth. It was like a mixture of a vivid dream and reality.
A group of four Galadrias caught my eye, descending right in front of me. There was no pond for them to drink from, nor a cave for sleeping. They were solitary creatures and didn’t usually live in packs, so four adults flying together was unusual. They must be landing to speak with me. What if Dawn sent them to warn me about something?
I started walking out to meet them when I noticed their flight was erratic, jerky. They normally flew like a falling feather, light and graceful. This was not that. Maybe they were injured. It was too dark for me to make out, but they bled the green stuff, and I didn’t see any of it dripping off them.
I was about thirty feet from them when I saw why they were flying so erratically.
No.
Fear flushed through my veins as my heart kick-started in my chest.
I spun, looking at our little camp, and screamed at the group. “Run!”
The sound of bullets behind me had me zigzagging, trying to reach the pod grove before being gunned down. My Kevlar suit was good, but not that good. An air assault with an automatic rifle would put me in a grave for sure.
This wasn’t possible. The sentries were riding the Galadrias. They’d put chains into their mouths and rode them like we rode horses, pulling the reins to control the flight.
This changes everything.
Too far from the grove to make it for cover, I spun with my gun drawn and started popping off shots at the approaching sentries. I didn’t want them to spray bullets onto our group. The ghouls never even had guns when they’d first landed, using something similar to electric cattle prods but more high-tech, but they stole them from us. When we died, they looted our remains, taking anything they could use to hunt more of us. They didn’t have any cool mind control powers, or teleportation, but they were strong as hell, and fast, and there were more of them than there were of us. That was enough to take us out.
For every hundred or so grunts, I’d see a sentry, but to see four sentries riding Galadrias? They were getting smarter, learning what it would take to find us. I was trying not to hit the Galadrias, but I couldn’t get to the sentries without inflicting major damage on the winged beasts. The sentry descending closest to me was wearing the usual getup, indestructible armor complete with helmet and an automatic rifle with laser scope. The only weaknesses were at the neck, where there was a gap in the helmet and chest plate, or at the groin where the thigh plate of the armor met the cup that covered their package. The sentries were the most humanoid of the aliens—except for the fact that they stood over ten feet tall and their mouth consisted of six rows of teeth with an opening large enough to swallow a human whole.
