Zach Croft: 2055
The crystals sliced through Zach’s veins like shards of broken glass.
He could feel them in his arms.
His neck.
The blood vessels in his eyes.
With every passing second, there seemed to be more of them, splintering and multiplying as they mutilated him from the inside out.
He thought of Ryker’s mother and the bed in Prescott where they left her to die. He thought of the crimson coughs that echoed through the halls of the Gateway after they evacuated the colony. He thought of his father sprawled on the floor in a pool of crystallized blood.
Zach pulled his face away from the microscope’s eyepiece with a start, pressing his knuckles against his eyelids as if to purge the horrifying images from his mind. Then, he glanced at the tray of wet, reddish dirt resting on the petri dish in the lab station. To the naked eye, nothing appeared out of the ordinary. It could have been a clump of mud picked up on the side of the road to Foxhold or found between cracks in the stone surface of Eden’s town square.
Under the microscope, however, a thousand blueish-purple crystals slowly materialized in the iron-rich soil. Between them, bacteria carved microscopic troughs in the dirt, devouring the sediment and pumping out crystalline violet structures in its place.
As the crystals grew, some merged into progressively larger clusters. Soon, a red, viscous liquid would form within them—irogen, the precious resource that brought Zach and his crew of survivors from Earth to their new home on Alpha Cen.
Mabel looked up from her microscope and regarded Zach with concern. “Why don’t you take off? You have to work in the morning.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“That bad, huh?”
“It wouldn’t be if people could get along like grown-ups. But that would be asking too much.” Zach sighed. “You remember Lily from OSE?”
“Chemistry department? Short red hair?”
“That’s her. Well, she filed a complaint against Heston, the blacksmith, saying that he intentionally rammed her with a wheelbarrow. But Heston swears that Lily stepped in front of it on purpose because—”
“Please, stop.”
“You sure? It gets better.”
“I will literally die of boredom.”
“Welcome to my life.”
Zach knew he should be grateful—boredom was a luxury, especially after everything he had gone through last year. But that didn’t change the fact that his life mainly consisted of mediating petty squabbles between the Edish and Earthmen. Hanging out with Mabel and watching irogen grow was the closest thing he had to a good time lately.
“Have you heard from Cora?” Zach asked, changing the subject.
Mabel nodded. Her wild blonde curls bobbed. “Yeah, she’s good.”
“Soldiers treating her okay?”
“Well, they finally started calling her names behind her back instead of to her face, so…”
“Hey, progress is progress.”
Erik Trivett entered the lab, the actuators inside his robotic leg faintly whirring as he walked. “Howdy, partners. How’s the shit farming going?”
“Don’t be mean,” Mabel replied.
“What’s the matter, Doctor?” Erik tried to lean over Mabel’s shoulder to peer into her microscope.”You keep the bacteria well-fed, and we collect its shit. That’s the deal, right?”
“It’s called biomining, jerk.” She threw a good-natured elbow backward into Erik’s gut.
“Oof.” Erik doubled over and clutched his stomach. “Zach, I’d like to file a complaint.”
“For what?”
He picked up a sealed biocontainment canister marked DANGER: BIOHAZARD. “Toxic work environment.”
“Hey!” Mabel warned, suddenly serious. “Put it down.”
Erik carefully placed the canister on the table and backed away, his hands raised in an exaggerated show of caution.
Zach leaned back in his chair and stretched. “All right. Looks like about three days before this batch is ready.”
“Foxhold can hold out for resupply until then?” Erik asked.
“Shouldn’t be a problem. Assuming the shipment gets there in one piece.”
Zach carried his tray of crystals to the sub-zero containment unit in the corner of the lab, punched in the access code, and stepped back as a freezing mist erupted into the air. Once the fog cleared, he placed the tray into the unit next to a row of glass jars. Each jar was packed with capsules neatly arranged in stacks of ring-shaped trays. Each capsule contained enough pure liquid irogen to power Eden for weeks.
“It would be nice if the Roaches could just leave us alone for once,” Mabel groused.
Zach closed the storage container. It sealed with a loud hiss. “And miss the chance to screw us over? Never.”
“We should just let them steal it,” Erik said. “Heck, we should give it to them. Leave a big case of irogen outside Blackwing with a note: Please store in direct sunlight.” Erik made a detonation sound and mimed an explosion with his hands. “Boom. No more Roaches.” He turned to Zach. “Think they’d fall for that?”
Zach gave a tight-lipped smile but said nothing.
Mable chuckled grimly. “We can only hope.”
The stars overhead were remarkably bright.
As Zach crossed the street, he picked out the various constellations he’d named during his time on Alpha Cen. Some of them were the same as the ones he knew on Earth—albeit viewed from a different angle—but it was still fun to relabel them.
He made out Harper’s Whip, the Sword, and Big Bear. Then, he spied his favorite: Ryker’s Ring. The silver points of light formed an almost perfect circle overhead. In the center, the moon Erstermond glowed a fluorescent blue, its intricate craters shadowed in some places. If he squinted enough, it looked like they formed a letter G.
Back on Earth, it was easy to forget that the world existed before humans. On Alpha Cen, however, everything seemed untouched, and the crimson-hued darkness of the sky only reinforced that sensation.
Zach set course for his quarters by way of the town square. Eden was beautiful when no one was around. Walking down the street felt like strolling through a museum, moving from one century to the next, marveling at technology as it progressed through the ages. Within a few hundred feet, he passed a stone building resembling a cinder block, a blacksmith’s forge, an almost entirely glass classroom, and a newly constructed wooden tower.
The ground around the tower was still scorched black from a past blaze. The remnants of graffiti marked the outer wall of the building closest to it, the pale letters still visible as clean marks against the shadowed hue of the soot-stained wall: WE ARE NOT YOUR SERVANTS.
Zach moved past the tower and into the town square. A handful of Edishmen sat on the steps of the general store, chatting. They fell silent and nodded respectfully to Zach as he passed. They returned to whispering once he was out of earshot, glancing briefly in his direction as they spoke. He had the distinct impression that they were talking about him—or at least about something that they didn’t want him to hear.
Zach considered doubling back to speak to them, but his impulse was interrupted when the light on the post over his head flickered, sputtered, and went dark.
A collective groan sounded behind him.
“What the hell, man? Again?” one of the men complained, loud enough for Zach to hear.
Zach got the hint. “I’m on it,” he called to the men. Then, he headed for the energy station. He was tired and wanted to go home, but he was too close to the station to justify calling out one of the other Earthmen to resolve the problem. If he could fix it himself, he would.
Arriving at the edge of town, he waded through the tall grass toward the station until the squat masonry structure emerged from the darkness. A narrow metal lattice extended from the building’s crown to the overhead power lines. The battery-powered indicator light at the top of the lattice flashed red.
Zach reached the energy station and unlocked the door to the capsule release system. Inside, a stack of irogen capsules was loaded into a cartridge like bullets in the clip of an automatic weapon. In fact, OSE engineers had built the system using components from a decommissioned machine gun, among other spare parts.
The release mechanism connected to a pipe that fed the capsules into the processing unit, which converted them into energy to power the town. It was—in theory, at least—a more reliable source of energy than the aging solar panels and weakening batteries that powered Eden before the Earthmen’s arrival. The only problem was that the release system sometimes malfunctioned, resulting in a capsule getting stuck. Such an issue would have been unthinkable on Earth—engineers would have manufactured the system with millimeter precision. But on Alpha Cen, things were a little more… improvised.
In the dim glow of the emergency backup bulb, Zach examined the release system. Sure enough, one of the irogen capsules was lodged at an angle in the pipe. The vacuum that was supposed to pull the capsule through the tube and into the generator whirred uselessly. Zach probed one finger into the pipe and nudged the capsule until it dislodged. It promptly zipped out of sight. The generator’s internals hummed momentarily, then rumbled, then whined as the turbine inside spun up again.
Zach looked up at the indicator light overhead and watched it turn green. Lights across Eden began to illuminate. The street lamps closest to him came on first. After that, the spotlights along the outer walls lit up. Then, the Alpha Centauri Initiative logo projected on the side of the Governor’s Manor flickered back on, championing their lost mission with the letters ACI slanting rightward in a futuristic font.
All of that from a single capsule of irogen.
The fuel still amazed him.
Zach yawned, his exhaustion suddenly rushing back to overcome his wonder. He locked up the energy station and set off for his quarters, looking forward to a few hours of blissful rest before another day of doing nothing interesting in Eden.
Zach’s eyelids fluttered as a rumbling noise interrupted his sleep. It vibrated the walls of his room, sounding like a concrete crusher pulverizing rocks right outside his window.
Construction? Zach wondered, his mind still fuzzy with sleep. So early?
Another sound blared, deep and throaty, with a shrill, serrated overtone that threatened to shred Zach’s eardrums. Zach sat bolt upright in bed, his heart suddenly pounding. That wasn’t construction.
It was a roar.
A cacophony of other noises erupted outside. Screams. Crashes. Stonebacks howling in terror. Then, the room shook with a series of thuds that sounded to Zach like footsteps.
Giant footsteps.
With his eyes adjusting to the darkness, Zach could make out the shadows of people passing by his door as they sprinted down the alley. That was enough to confirm that he wasn’t dreaming. Whatever was happening outside was real.
Zach yanked his blanket aside and leaped to his feet. The roar came again, followed by a frantic pounding on his door.
“Get out! It’s coming!” a voice shouted.
“What’s coming?” Zach called. But there was no reply—whoever the voice belonged to had fled. Zach teetered on one leg as he rushed to dress himself. His hair fell into his eyes in the process. He really needed to get it cut.
Once fully clothed, he wrenched open the door and plunged into the cold. A man racing past his door nearly slammed into him.
Zach’s eyes followed the man as he joined the panicked crowds of Edishmen and Earthmen pushing and shoving their way down the street toward the north clearing and the gate beyond. Then, Zach turned and looked in the direction from which the man came, where a flickering orange glow illuminated the night sky. Buildings formed misshapen silhouettes against a wall of flames. Thick plumes of black smoke merged into a hazy veil spreading over the town.
What was going on down there? Were they under attack? Was it the Roaches? The flames were coming from the direction of the irogen lab—maybe something had gone wrong there. Zach realized he needed to find Mabel and Erik to ensure they were okay.
Edish soldiers pushed upstream against the surging masses, heading toward the fires. Zach shoved sideways through the crowd until he was able to join the soldiers. A few more people did the same, and by the time they reached the end of the street, they were a strange hodgepodge of military and civilians, Edishmen and Earthmen.
“What’s happening?” Zach asked the person next to him.
The man yelled, “I don’t know!”
“There was an explosion at the wall!” a woman nearby shouted.
They turned the corner into the mecha district, where massive warehouses loomed on either side of the road. Metal signs marked the buildings, each engraved with a distinct symbol: a gear, a computer monitor, a spade, and a rifle.
The armory.
As they approached this final building, Zach’s group encountered another scrum that had streamed down an adjacent street. The masses crowded against the entrance as one of the soldiers punched a code into a keypad and tried to spin the vault-style lock. It wouldn’t budge.
Another roar pierced the air, followed by a thud that shook the ground with such force that Zach had to grab onto the person next to him to keep his balance.
“Enter the code!” someone shouted.
“I’m trying!” the soldier yelled as he frantically jammed his trembling finger against the keypad. “It’s not working!”
Zach turned away from the armory, intending to head for the lab instead. He found himself directly in the path of an intense woman clad in steel-reinforced leather armor—Halsy Crow, Commander of the Edish army.
“Where are you going?” she growled.
“The lab—”
“No, we need all hands on deck. Stay here.” She pushed past Zach and shouldered her way through the crowd. “Move, move, move!”
When she reached the soldier at the entrance, she shoved him aside, slammed the correct code into the keypad, then spun the lock. The door swung inward, revealing racks containing a vast assortment of weapons, everything from modern firearms to medieval-looking weapons seemingly crafted by hand: spears, battle axes, even a variety of crude crossbows.
The mob surged into the building and began seizing whatever weapons they could get their hands on. “Rifles and armor to the soldiers!” Halsy ordered. She snatched an automatic weapon away from a man in an ACI t-shirt and pajama pants and handed him a spear instead. “That means you, Jim.”
As the soldiers and civilians armed themselves, Halsy grabbed a compound bow from a rack nearby, then effortlessly swung a quiver of arrows over her shoulder and tightened the strap against her chest. Next, she opened a drawer filled with vintage-looking handguns, grabbed a revolver and a small burlap bag filled with ammunition, and tossed them to Zach. He caught them awkwardly.
“Load up,” she ordered.
“But—”
Before he could protest further, a bleeding soldier appeared in the doorway. “Commander Crow,” he gasped. “We need reinforcements! It’s—”
Suddenly, a colossal, scaled hand appeared from behind, grabbing the soldier around the torso and yanking him away. The man’s scream was cut short by a crunch. A moment later, his body slammed to the ground with a blood-splattering squelch, his broken limbs rag-dolling for a moment in a cloud of dust before falling still.
His head was missing.
Many in the crowd screamed and recoiled at the sight, but Halsy maintained her composure. She notched an arrow on her bow and edged along the wall to the doorway, keeping her eyes and weapon trained upward. She paused at the entrance momentarily, then stepped out into the open. Zach unconsciously held his breath, sure she was about to meet her demise.
“Clear!” Halsy yelled. “Let’s go, let’s go!”
The soldiers followed Halsy as she sprinted out of the armory and across the road. They fanned out, putting as much distance between each other as they could in the confines of the narrow streets. It was smart, Zach realized—the further apart they were from each other, the fewer whatever was out there could kill at once. They did it automatically, almost naturally, without needing specific orders or battle plans.
Unfortunately, being smart wasn’t enough. Not for all of them, anyway.
Within seconds, the monstrous claw seized another victim. It crushed the man and hurled his body against the side of one of the warehouses, nearly caving in the corrugated metal wall with the impact. A dark smear of red dripped down the building to where the corpse lay crumpled and broken.
Zach stared numbly at the body. It was the soldier from the entrance to the armory, the one who struggled to input the code. His feet were still bare. Less than five minutes ago, he had been asleep in his bunk. Now, he was dead at the hands of… what?
What the hell was that thing?
Another roar broke Zach from his stupor just in time for him to glimpse the blur of a scaled fist crashing down on the armory’s roof. Falling debris knocked Zach to the dirt, pinning him under a pile of sheet metal and rubble and crushing the air out of his lungs. He tried to draw a breath, but it seemed like his brain had forgotten how to inhale. His chest felt empty, compressed by the weight of the wreckage.
A volley of gunfire exploded from somewhere above Zach as soldiers unloaded their weapons at the rampaging beast. Muzzle flashes lit up the smoke and dust like strobe lights. The blasts’ reverberations assaulted Zach’s eardrums, filling his head with a deafening, high-pitched whine.
Zach felt someone tugging him by the shoulders, and suddenly, he was back on his feet. “Get up!” a voice shouted. It sounded muffled and far away.
Zach stumbled over the debris and away from the collapsing building, bumping into other silhouettes in the murk as he went. He turned to look for the person who had pulled him up, but the man was gone, lost in the chaos.
Instead, Zach’s eyes climbed skyward. A towering creature loomed over him, standing on two legs as thick as redwoods. It was easily thirty feet tall. Blood and gore dripped from the four-fingered claws at the ends of its muscular arms. A thick layer of scales covered its entire body, save for two sunken eye sockets ringed with glistening yellow flesh. The beast lifted its misshapen head to the sky and roared, revealing a half-dozen rows of jagged teeth inside its hideous mouth.
Zach watched in horror as the creature picked up another soldier and ripped him in half. Thick drops of blood pelted Zach’s face and arms and soaked the ground around him. He raised his gun and fired, adding to the futile barrage of munitions ricocheting harmlessly off the creature’s armored hide.
The monster clawed wildly at the air, its thickly muscled arms generating a gale-force wind with each swoop. A grenade flashed at its feet. Another exploded near its shoulder. A third landed in its gaping maw. The charge bounced against the creature’s back teeth and landed under its slithering tongue. When the grenade exploded, its blast knocked the beast off balance, splattering yellow ooze down onto its attackers.
Yes! Zach thought. They blew its damn head off!
There was no way it could survive a head wound like that. But when the smoke cleared, Zach’s hope faded with it. A piece of the creature’s jaw was gone, and streams of blood poured down its neck, but it was still alive.
And it was pissed.
“Watch out!” Halsy warned as the monster stampeded across the street toward another warehouse. Two soldiers in its path dove out of the way. A third wasn’t fast enough—he was crushed into red paste by the creature’s massive foot.
The beast crashed through the warehouse and kept going out the other side, moving on to the storm monitoring station behind it. The station’s giant antenna crumpled into a spiral of twisted steel that reminded Zach of the fossilized spine of a metal brontosaurus. Sparks erupted from a generator at its base, sparking a fire in the dry grass surrounding it. Flames raced across the ground and consumed the wooden support beams in the rubble.
Halsy signaled to the surviving soldiers. “The square!” she ordered. “Move!”
Following Halsy’s command, the soldiers navigated through the debris in pursuit of the creature. Behind them, the fire swelled in intensity, belching thick black smoke into the sky. Some townspeople tried to fight the flames with whatever meager water supply they could conjure from nearby hoses, but the fires continued to grow.
The intensity of the heat forced Zach backward down the street, allowing him to get his bearings again for the first time since he had been wrenched from sleep a few minutes earlier. Where was he headed before he got swept up with Halsy and the soldiers? That’s right.
Mabel. Erik. The lab.
The irogen lab was two streets over, in the opposite direction of the monster’s path. But that was little consolation—the creature could turn around and be at the lab in twenty seconds or less.
Zach frowned at the useless pistol, then tossed it into the wreckage. He might as well have been shooting at the creature with a Nerf gun for all the damage it did. No, he needed something more powerful if he wanted to protect himself. He needed—
“Grenades,” he said out loud, surprising himself with the sound of his voice. At least his hearing hadn’t been permanently damaged.
He scanned the aftermath of the beast’s attack until his eyes landed on the body of the soldier the creature threw against the wall. Three grenades still dangled from the man’s vest, their outer shells slick with blood. Swallowing his revulsion, Zach unhooked one of the explosives, wiped it clean with his shirt, and then slipped it into the pocket of his cargo pants. He did the same for the other two grenades. Then, he stood and sprinted in the direction of the lab.
When Zach reached the building, he found Mabel and Erik struggling to wheel a hand cart loaded with cases of irogen capsules down the front steps. In his haste, Erik accidentally steered the cart off the bottom step at an angle, causing it to tip precariously to the side.
Mabel braced her hand on the top crate to prevent it from sliding off the stack. “Careful!”
“I’m trying,” Erik replied through gritted teeth as he struggled to straighten the heavy load.
Mabel saw Zach first. Her eyes went wide at the sight of his dust-smeared, blood-streaked form emerging from the smoke. “Oh my god! Zach!”
Zach limped to a stop and doubled over, trying to catch his breath. “You’re okay,” he gasped, relieved.
“Yeah, we’re okay,” Mabel confirmed. “Are you?” She rushed over to him and attempted to inspect his injuries.
Zach waved her away. “It’s not my blood.” Pointing at the irogen cart, he asked, “Where are you taking it?”
“The basement. It’ll be more secure down there.” Erik pivoted the cart and hurriedly wheeled it toward an open hatch on the side of the building, where a wide staircase descended into the darkness of the lab’s cellar.
“And the Red Plague?”
“Already down there,” Mabel replied.
Zach nodded, relieved that his friends had the wherewithal to secure the deadly pathogen and move the irogen out of harm’s way. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if so many canisters of the powerful fuel were to be caught in a fire—the resulting explosion would vaporize Eden and leave a crater the size of Texas in its wake. Zach had avoided being atomized by irogen once before, narrowly escaping from Prescott while overheated irogen crystals exploded in the mines underneath him. He didn’t want to relive that experience any time soon.
Erik paused at the top of the basement stairs. “A little help here?”
Zach and Mabel hurried to assist Erik. Several heavy thuds shook the ground underfoot as they guided the cart down the stairs. Another terrifying roar pierced the air, followed by the rumble of collapsing masonry. Exploding ordnance and shotgun blasts punctuated the continuous rattle of automatic weapons fire. The battle was getting closer.
“What the hell is that thing?” Mabel cried over the din.
“I don’t know.”
“Whatever it is,” Erik said, his eyes rolling skyward, “it’s here.”
A scaly foot the size of a small car crashed to the ground overhead, just beside the entrance to the basement stairs. Zach and the others took cover on the stairwell floor, shielding their heads as dirt and grit poured down around them. Several bricks tumbled from the wall, landing dangerously close to Mabel. Erik crawled over and shielded her with his body. “You okay?”
Mabel thumbed the dirt from her eyes. “Barely. But yeah.”
The monster swiped its arm through the roof of the building next to the lab, causing part of it to collapse in a billowing cloud of dust. Strands of brownish spittle dangled from the creature’s mouth as it unhinged its damaged jaw and screeched. The sound echoed in the stairwell, threatening to shred Zach’s eardrums with its shrill reverberations.
“Aim for the eyes!” Zach heard Halsy shout through the chaos. An arrow streaked from the haze and penetrated the yellow-white sclera of the monster’s eyeball with perfect accuracy. The beast roared in agony, grabbing at its face to dislodge the projectile. Another arrow followed the first, lodging in the center of the same eye. “Now!” Halsy yelled.
As the monster roared again, a grenade arced from somewhere on Zach’s left, directed at the beast’s gaping maw. It, too, was perfectly aimed. But before it could find its target, the creature batted it away. Zach momentarily lost sight of the grenade—until it bounced off the stack of irogen crates and landed at his feet.
Acting purely on instinct, Zach bent down, snatched the grenade off the ground, and hurled it out of the stairwell. It exploded in mid-air, a fraction of a second after it left his hand.
Zach and Erik exchanged a haunted look.
“Christ, that was close,” Erik said.
Zach looked up at the creature, down at the stack of irogen crates, and back up at the creature again. An idea formed in his mind. He bent over the stack of irogen crates and punched a code into the keypad on the top crate’s lid. It hissed as the seal released, spewing a cloud of cooling gas into the air.
“What are you doing?” Mabel asked.
Zach reached into the crate, removed a jar of irogen capsules, then thumped his palm on the cart’s handle. “Take the rest inside!”
“Zach, talk to us,” Erik said. “What are you thinking?”
Zach released the latches that sealed the jar of irogen and flipped open the lid. Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the blood-stained grenades he had taken from the fallen soldier. He positioned the cylindrical explosive at the center of the rings of irogen capsules, testing whether the grenade could fit inside the jar. The striker lever lodged against the inside edge of the top ring. The grenade wouldn’t fit as long as the lever was attached—he’d have to pull the pin and release the lever first. But if he did that, it could work.
Could.
But would it? Zach didn’t know. What he did know was that he had to try.
“Listen,” Zach said, “when that thing attacked the armory, one of the soldiers managed to throw a grenade into its mouth, and it did real damage. Blew a chunk of its face off. But the grenade alone wasn’t powerful enough to kill the thing. This, though—” He lifted the jar of irogen capsules.
Mabel’s eyes went wide as she realized what Zach was considering. “Are you nuts?”
“Absolutely not,” Erik added. “If you blow up that much irogen, you’ll take out half the town.”
“And if I don’t…?”
Zach knew his idea was risky—maybe even suicidal—but it was clear that no other weapon at their disposal was going to kill the beast. It was only a matter of time before it destroyed all of Eden. Or killed its residents. Or both.
Most likely both.
The creature’s blistering screech tore through the air, followed by the sound of a man screaming in agony. Another series of jolting thuds rocked the lab building, causing more bricks to fall from the crumbling stairwell wall.
“Okay, fine,” Erik said to Zach, relenting. “What’s your plan?”
“First, I need to get the thing’s attention.”
“And then?” Erik asked.
Zach hesitated. “I’m still working on that part.” He indicated the stack of irogen crates. “In the meantime, get the rest of the irogen out of here.”
Mabel grabbed Zach’s hand. “Be careful.”
“I will.” He hoped he sounded convincing. “Now go.”
“Get the door,” Erik said to Mabel as he tilted the hand cart onto its back wheels. Mabel obliged, pulling up the heavy metal door leading into the basement. Erik looked at Zach. “Good luck.”
Once Mabel and Erik were gone, Zach crept up the stairs just far enough to glimpse the creature still raging outside the lab building. The thing was close, but its back was turned to him, and it was distracted by a group of soldiers strafing it with tracer rounds.
It’s now or never, Zach thought.
He cradled the jar of irogen capsules under his arm like a football, clutched the grenade in his hand, and sprinted out of the stairwell. A thick curtain of smoke swirled around him, burning his lungs and limiting his visibility to only a few feet.
Halsy’s voice called out to him from somewhere in the darkness. “Zach!” He turned toward the sound and saw a blurred silhouette beckoning frantically from behind a pile of rubble. “Get over here!”
Zach sprinted in the direction of the voice and crouched behind the wreckage. Halsy was there, along with two other Edish soldiers. She still clutched her compound bow, but her quiver was empty.
“I’m out,” one of the soldiers said, releasing the empty clip from his smoking weapon. He tossed the useless hardware onto the ground.
The other soldier’s rifle went dry with a loud click. “Same here.” He turned to Halsy. “What now?”
Zach answered before Halsy could. “Run. Get as far away as you can—”
“Hey!” Halsy pushed Zach’s shoulder. “I give the orders around here, not you.”
“You too,” Zach said to Halsy. Now wasn’t the time to let her pull rank. Besides, he was a civilian. She didn’t have any authority over him. “Order your troops to fall back to the square.”
He hoped that would be far enough outside the blast radius to avoid any casualties, but the truth was, he had no idea. The amount of irogen in the jar was probably enough to nuke a few city blocks, but he hoped that if it went off inside the monster’s body, the thing’s armored scales would contain most of the blast while eviscerating the creature from the inside out.
Halsy cocked an eyebrow at Zach, simultaneously enraged and impressed by his gall. “You’re going to get yourself killed, aren’t you?”
“Probably.”
“That was a rhetorical question.” She looked at the two exhausted soldiers with her, then at the broken body of a massacred soldier nearby. After a moment of deliberation, she shouted, “Fall back to the square!”
A group of soldiers nearby echoed her command, which was then echoed by the next group and the next. As the order rippled through the remaining soldiers, they ceased firing and began retreating down alleys and side streets away from the monster.
The two soldiers with Halsy and Zach turned and ran, disappearing into the smoke. Halsy slung her bow over her shoulder and looked Zach in the eye. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know,” Zach replied, meeting her gaze.
Halsy’s mouth hung half-open. “You’re mental, you know that?”
“So I’ve heard.”
Without another word, Halsy followed her soldiers toward the square. Zach was alone.
Well, not totally alone.
Zach peered over the rubble at the massive creature. Its head pivoted from side to side as if searching for more prey—it seemed confused at the sudden lack of edible targets. With the soldiers gone, the street was eerily silent except for the monster’s gurgling, growling breath and the crackling of the fires burning along its path of destruction through the town.
Zach glanced down at the grenade in his hand. It was about the size of a skinny can of the grape soda he and Ryker used to love as kids. A pang of nostalgia and regret tightened his chest, and suddenly, Zach found his vision blurred. He quickly wiped at his eyes, then pulled the pin on the grenade, being careful to keep the striker lever pressed tight in his palm. The grenade wouldn’t be fully armed until he released the lever. Then, he’d have about five seconds before the time-delay fuse activated and the grenade exploded, igniting the irogen.
Plenty of time, he thought grimly.
With the grenade in one hand and the jar of irogen capsules in the other, Zach climbed to the top of the rubble pile just in time to see the beast turning in his direction. A growl brewed in its throat.
“Hey!” Zach shouted. “Over here!”
The creature’s single good eye locked onto Zach. Seething with unbridled animal rage, it lifted its mangled face to the sky, let out a deafening roar, and charged at him.
Three hundred feet.
Two hundred feet.
Swallowing his terror, Zach positioned the grenade at the jar’s opening, its bottom edge aligned with the center of the rings of irogen capsules. His shaking hand caused the striker lever to dislodge a few capsules from the top ring. They tumbled from the jar and into the rubble. Zach left them there. No time to pick them up now.
One hundred feet.
The creature’s mangled jaw hung half-open as it ran, steaming saliva and yellow blood pouring from the wound in long, elastic drips.
Fifty feet.
Thirty.
Every instinct in Zach’s body told him to flee. Instead, he opened his fingers and allowed the grenade’s striker lever to fall away. The grenade dropped cleanly through the center of the rings of irogen and into the jar.
For a brief instant, Zach felt a flash of hope.
Then, the creature was upon him.
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