Alien Game (The Thousand Worlds) Read online

  “Scout drone,” said Dad. “I think I got it before it could contact the hive mind. Now go! We wait too long, there will be hundreds of those things swarming over the yard.”

  I had a million questions, but the habit of obedience was stronger than my curiosity and my fear, and I ran after Dad as he and Maggie jogged to the garage. It was a two-car garage, but half the space was taken up by Dad’s workbenches and equipment lockers. Dad drove a big black SUV that looked the kind of vehicle that would be driven by spooks for Homeland Security or the FBI or something, and he yanked out his key and unlocked the back.

  “Roland, Maggie,” he snapped, pointing at some of the footlockers. “Get boxes one, two, four, and seven. I’m going to start the car.” He jogged around and start the engine, and Maggie and I started hauling the labeled footlockers to the SUV, straining under the weight. It took both of us to move just one of them. Dad saw us straining, grimaced to himself, and rushed to help us. Together Maggie and I could move one of the lockers, but he picked up two at once and dumped them in the back of the SUV.

  I caught my breath. Looking back, the lockers hadn’t been all that heavy, not compared to some of the loads I’ve carried since, but I was only sixteen and I had that pack on my back.

  “Move,” barked Dad. “Roland, take shotgun. Maggie, in the back. If I tell either of you to duck, do it.”

  I nodded and climbed into the passenger seat, while Maggie scrambled into the back. Dad climbed into the SUV, slamming the door behind him. He had already started the engine, which is kind of a dangerous thing to do in a closed garage, but he hit the garage door opener. The big door rattled open, and before it was even all the way up, he hit the gas and slammed into the alley, tires squealing as he swung the SUV around.

  For a moment, the strange tear in the air was right behind us, and I stared into the hellish, twisted world on the other side. I saw the warped jungle, and I saw shapes moving beyond: huge, hulking beasts the size of houses, covered in spines and tentacles and claws and thousands of eyes.

  The sight of them filled me with the same fear and crawling revulsion as the smaller creature that Dad had killed. For a wild instant, I wondered if the end of the world had come, if the Gates of Hell had opened and all the devils were coming out, and then Dad slammed on the gas. The SUV rocketed down the alley at reckless speed, blurring past the neighbors’ garages.

  In the streetlight ahead I saw something skittering at the end of the alley.

  A lot of somethings.

  Nearly a half-dozen of those smaller creatures, the things that Dad had called drones, moved back and forth between the alley and the street. As the SUV roared towards them, all the creatures turned and started scuttling towards us.

  “Dad,” I said.

  “Hang on!” he said, and he pushed the gas harder.

  The SUV roared and shot forward, and we ran over the drones. They were small enough and the SUV was big enough that we crushed them under our tires instead of having them slam into the radiator grill or into the hood. I heard a crushing, crunching sound, and black slime spattered across my window. The SUV jerked and bucked, and for an awful instant I was sure that we had hit one of the creatures at exactly the right angle to send us rolling.

  Then we screeched into the street and Dad spun the wheel in a right turn. I looked back and saw that we had crushed four of the creatures into pools of glistening black pulp, while the remaining two pursued us in vain.

  And as I looked, I saw something bigger emerge from the gate in the alley.

  Something maybe about the size of a human, but definitely not human. I had a brief glimpse of a thing that looked vaguely like a giant armored insect, and then the SUV tore down the street. For a moment, everything looked normal, and I almost found it hard to believe I had just seen a hole in the air disgorging giant insect-monsters. Rows of parked cars stood along the curbs, and here and there I spotted people smoking on their front steps or talking into their cell phones.

  Then I saw a flicker of gray light behind one of the house, and as we drove past, I glimpsed another one of those gates, the black shapes of drones jumping through it. As I looked, I heard the distant wail of a police siren.

  Then another, and another, and the distant rapid pop of gunshots.

  “Dad,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything, his mouth a hard line, his knuckles shining white against his skin as he gripped the wheel.

  “Dad,” I said again. “What’s happening?”

  “Don’t you have to go to work?” said Maggie in a small voice. “I mean, you’re a law enforcement officer,” Dad had trained us never to use the word cop, “and if something bad is happening, don’t you have to go to work?”

  “No,” said Dad. “Not this time. Family’s more important, and the entire Chicago PD is going to be dead in the next day, along with most of Chicago.”

  “Those things in the alley,” I said. “You know what they are.”

  “Yeah.” He fell silent and I thought he wouldn’t say anything more, but then he kept talking. “You know I was in the army before I joined the department.”

  I nodded.

  “I learned some classified stuff in the army,” said Dad. “I knew these things would come someday. That’s why I’ve been getting ready. I didn’t prep up and train you two just because I was afraid of riots or civil war or the government collapsing, though it never hurts to be prepared. No, I did all this because I knew they were coming someday. I had hoped…” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head. “I hoped it would come after your lifetimes. Guess I hoped wrong.”

  We were doing at least thirty over the speed limit, and had turned onto a street lined with strip malls and small shops. Dad passed a bus on the right, and I caught a glimpse of the driver glaring at us. So far everything seemed calm, but if all of those gates started disgorging creatures like the drones, or even bigger monsters, then a panic would spread quickly. And when the police fought back, they would call in the National Guard and the army or maybe even the Air Force or something.

  Chicago was going to become a war zone.

  No wonder Dad wanted to get out now.

  “What are they?” I said.

  I didn’t think he was going to answer, but after a moment he did.

  “Don’t rightly know,” he said. “I don’t think anyone does. Army intel always just called them the Dark. Stupid name, scares everyone, but it stuck. They’re probably aliens. They might be devils from Hell. They might even be from the past or the future or something. I don’t know. But whenever they come out of those gates that opens up, and they can open anywhere, they kill everyone they can catch.”

  “This has happened before?” said Maggie.

  “Yeah, couple of times,” said Dad, pushing the gas a little further. He ran a red light, and I flinched as we came within a few feet of hitting an oncoming truck. Dad swerved around it, the tires screeching, almost went onto the curb, and resumed driving. “Usually it happens out in Idaho or Nevada or someplace isolated like that, and the government covers it up. They take out any Darksiders that come through and shoot anyone who talks too much. But if the Dark is opening this many gates in a major urban area, they’re coming for us in a big way. It’s going to be a war like no one’s ever seen before.”

  “Then where are we going?” said Maggie.

  “Washington State,” said Dad. “I know some people in the army. They’ve been getting ready for this, even if no one else has, the idiots.” He shook his head. “We get out of Chicago fast enough, we ought to avoid the worst of it. Getting over the Mississippi will be tricky once the panic starts. The US Highway 52 bridge is our best bet. Mostly rural, and…”

  He swore and slammed onto the brakes as a huge shape out of nightmare lumbered onto the street ahead.

  Just looking at the thing made my stomach twist. Something about it reminded me of an elephant, though it was much larger than any elephant. It stomped along on eight legs that looked like folding knives of bla
ck glass, their tips digging chunks from the asphalt. An armored shell that looked like an armadillo squatted atop those legs, a vast maze of tentacles lashing at the air from its front and back. Dozens of small black shapes circled around the huge creature, and some of them broke away, heading towards us.

  Dad swore again, spun the wheel, and hit the gas, while the black shapes pursued us. As they drew closer, I saw that they looked kind of like deformed, glistening mantises, albeit mantises the size of baseball bats. The SUV roared as it hurtled forward, and we outpaced almost all of the flying things.

  One slammed into the back window and landed there. There was a horrible squealing noise, its bladed forelimbs sliding against the window, and I realized that it was cutting through the glass.

  “Maggie!” shouted Dad. “Shoot it!”

  Maggie stared at the creature, her eyes huge in her face. Dad had trained us well, but we had never seen anything like that monster before. Shooting a human was one thing. It wasn’t all that different than shooting targets at the range, as I would find out later. But Maggie had never seen the mantis-thing before, and the shock and horror of it made her freeze up.

  “Down!” I said, twisting around in my seat. “Down, down!”

  Maggie dropped to the seat, and I gripped my pistol with both hands and started shooting.

  My first shot missed and punched a hole in the back window. My second shot caught the creature in its center of mass. I had no idea where the vital points were on the mantis-thing, but aiming for the center of mass was always a good idea. I squeezed the trigger again, and this time the creature jerked off the window and hit the road behind us, spewing black fluid as it rolled away. The sight made me briefly think of a full soda bottle thrown out of the back of a moving card.

  “You okay?” I said.

  Maggie nodded and straightened up, shivering.

  “You’re going to have to toughen up,” said Dad, his eyes back on the road. “Those things are going to be everywhere. It’s going to be a hard trip to Washington State. Understand?”

  Maggie didn’t say anything.

  “Margaret,” said Dad. “Do you understand?”

  At last she nodded. “I do. I understand. I’m sorry. I just got frightened. I…”

  “Don’t apologize,” said Dad. “Do better next time. If we’re going to get to Washington alive, we need to watch out for each other.”

  We lapsed into silence as Dad drove as fast as he could, and around us, I heard more and more sirens and more of the strange whining noise from the gates.

  We got of Chicago alive. It took the better part of a day, but we got out alive.

  I’ve since spoken with other survivors of Invasion Day in Chicago, and Dad’s paranoia paid off. We got out before the first major wave of Darksiders came through the gates, and before the panic and riots started. There were riots, of course. A large portion of the city’s population decided to take advantage of the chaos to descend on Michigan Avenue for some retail therapy via looting, only to be slaughtered when winged Darksiders fell on them. Central authority collapsed, and Chicago degenerated into chaos, with every man for himself.

  Millions of people died. Or were taken.

  More on that later.

  We headed west on US Highway 52. There wasn’t a lot of traffic. From time to time we saw that people had started building barricades across the freeway, and Dad turned off and headed through the county roads. He seemed to have a surprising knowledge of the back ways of Illinois, and he put it to good use, avoiding the major towns along the highway. It almost seemed like a pleasant drive in the country.

  Almost. Except for a few oddities.

  Like the lack of traffic.

  Or the fact that most of the radio stations had gone off air, and those that were on seemed to be either people begging for the military to help them or people ranting that the end of the world had come and Jesus had returned to judge mankind. Or the occasional barricades we saw piled up on roads or by houses, or the plumes of smoke we sometimes saw in the distance. Dad checked his cell phone from time to time, but there was no signal. He said that it meant the Dark had opened gates in the other major cities, that this was not just a raid but an invasion.

  We were attacked twice.

  The first time was when we stopped alongside a county road so Dad could get some rest before driving into the night. As soon as we stopped, three Darksiders of the kind that we had shot in the backyard attacked, heading straight for us. Fortunately, we were on our guard, and we had a clear field of fire. All three of us started shooting, and we took down the horrible creatures before they reached us, the last one came to a twitching stop about a yard from my feet.

  “Don’t touch it, Roland,” said Dad. I jerked back from the creature. “The venom in its pincers can stay active for hours after it’s dead.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  We had to drive to a new place to camp, and spent a restless night watching for more Darksiders.

  The second time we got into a gunfight, Dad shot two people.

  We were on a county road in a wooded part of western Illinois. The road went around a curve, and Dad slowed down. As he did, we saw a van pulled across the road. There were two men in jeans and brown coats standing there, both of them holding shotguns.

  “I was afraid of this,” said Dad, bringing the SUV to a stop. “Wait here.”

  He slid out of the car and walked forward, hands spread to show that he wasn’t carrying any weapons. The two men in tan jackets approached him, shotguns held low. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Dad was smiling more than he usually did, and soon he had the men nodding along with them.

  Then the men glanced into the trees, and Dad drew his Glock and shot them both.

  It happened so fast that I barely saw it. The two men in tan jackets never saw it coming. One moment they were living, breathing men. The next they were dead on the asphalt, their blood and brains pooling beneath them. Dad grimaced for a moment, shook his head, and looked back at the SUV.

  “Maggie, Roland, get out here,” said Dad. “We’ll need to take their weapons and any useful supplies they have.”

  I climbed out of the SUV, too shocked to argue, and Maggie followed suit. Dad opened the back of the dead men’s van, flinched, and then closed the door.

  “No,” he said. “On second thought, we’ll just go.”

  I could smell the blood in the air, mixed with the familiar odor of gun smoke.

  “You killed them,” I whispered.

  “Yeah,” said Dad, as if I was stating the obvious.

  “But you just murdered them!” I said. “They didn’t do anything to us, and you just shot them in the head so we can take their stuff.”

  Dad stared at me for a moment. He looked like he had been carved out of stone.

  “Come with me,” said Dad. “Both of you. You need to see something.”

  I hesitated, but as horrified and as angry as I was, obedience was a lifelong habit. Dad walked into the trees, and Maggie and I followed him. I noticed that a lot of the undergrowth had been trampled, and tire tracks marked the dirt. Dad stepped around a big oak tree, and I stopped in sudden shock, my gorge rising.

  Two cars sat in a small clearing, and dumped on the ground were a dozen dead people, men, women, and children. All of them had been shot. Maggie let out a little shriek, one hand flying to her mouth.

  “I saw the tracks from the road,” said Dad. “Figured we’d run into something like that sooner or later. Those two rats on the road had set up a little ambush. They’ve been stopping people fleeing the city, killing them, and taking their stuff. In a few days, when the smell gets too bad, they’ll go somewhere else and do it again.” He gripped our shoulders, the hand against my shoulder still holding his Glock. “Listen to me. We’re going to see a lot of things like this in the next few years. If we’re going to survive, we’re going to have to be hard, and we’re going to have to trust each other. Understand?”

  I nodded, to
o sickened to speak.

  Dad hesitated, and then nodded back. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  Without another word, we walked back to the SUV, steered around the van, and kept going.

  Chapter 3: The Drive

  We got across the Mississippi without incident. After the ambush on the country road, I feared that bandits would have set up on the bridge, but I guess the two men Dad killed had been ahead of the curve. On the bridge was a long line of heavily loaded cars and trucks fleeing to the west, away from Chicago, and while the mood was tense and it took a long time to cross the bridge, there wasn’t any violence. The fact that everyone I saw was openly carrying weapons helped keep a civil air.

  Dad talked to a grim-faced old man in a pickup truck, a bandoleer of shotgun shells across his chest. He had come from Dubuque, and the town had been destroyed by the Dark after a dozen gates opened up in the heart of the city. Dad questioned him for a few moments, and then suggested that he head towards eastern Washington State, where Dad was confident that the military would be in control of the situation.

  Which made me wonder where we were going and why.

  “Where are we going?” I asked once we had gotten over the Mississippi. Dad had abandoned US Highway 52, taking instead a maze of county roads through the cornfields of Iowa.

  “Eastern Washington State,” said Dad, his eyes on the road. Far to the west I saw a plume of smoke, but other than that there were no threats in sight.

  “Yeah, but why?” I said. “I mean…those Darksider things are everywhere. Why would going to Washington be any safer than going anywhere else? We’re not going to Seattle, are we?”

  “No,” said Dad with a contemptuous snort. “Seattle? The Mecca of hippies?” He sobered a little. “I suppose they’re all dead, though. The Dark would have opened gates there as well.”

  “But why would we be any safer out there than we would be here?” I said, gesturing at the rows of corn passing us by. “Do you have like…I don’t know, a bunker out there or something?”

  “No,” said Dad.