Desks and chairs began to rattle then, and Maya felt a tingling in her teeth. Like a massive bat, the spaceship descended and hovered on the other side of those windows as if staring right at them.
“Get down!” Maya said as she threw herself to the ground.
Cameron landed beside her and Maya waited, the hum steady but the windows remaining intact. The ship was still there, but it wasn’t doing anything but hovering.
Maybe they’re not sure we’re in here.
The building shook suddenly, and Cameron grabbed Maya’s hand. “What was that?”
She heard the reverberation of the doors slamming against the walls in the stairwell.
“They’re searching the building. C’mon!”
Maya grabbed Cameron’s hand and ran to one of the open offices. Once inside, she shut the door, careful not to slam it. The women ran around the desk and slid the office chair out of the way. The space beneath the desk was large enough for both of them, so Maya went down first, then pulled Cameron down.
Cameron was crying, on the verge of hyperventilating.
“Close your eyes. Take deep breaths.”
Cameron did as Maya instructed, drawing in long, slow breaths. Maya held her hand, using her EMT experience to keep the woman calm while also trying to remain clear-headed. Maybe the aliens didn’t know what floor they were on, or maybe this was just a normal patrol?
Stay calm, Maya. Everything will be fine.
The stairwell’s door swung open outside of the office, crashing into the wall hard enough to make both women jump. Cameron’s eyes shot open and Maya covered her mouth before she could scream. She looked hard into Cameron’s eyes and the woman understood, then nodded. Maya pulled her hand away.
Heavy footsteps shook the floor, and then Maya heard the familiar hiss of the creatures breathing through their masks.
23
Maya didn’t know a lot about the aliens, other than that UV light weakened them, which she’d found to be the only way to overcome their regeneration powers and eventually kill them. She didn’t know what kind of tracking technology they used or if they had auditory detection, but they seemed to be able to find humans in complete darkness.
She pressed her head to the ground and looked through the quarter-inch gap between the front of the desk and the grey, moldy-smelling industrial carpet. Maya could hear the creature’s footsteps, but she couldn’t see anything, and had no way of knowing if more than one alien had come into the building looking for them. She crawled back out while Cameron simply stared at her. Peeking around the edge of the desk, Maya gazed through the open doorway and into the larger office space.
She saw the metallic, gleaming armor first. It caught and reflected the ambient light in the darkened room. Then she saw the creature’s feet encased in what looked like metal boots. And then she saw another pair.
Dammit. There’s at least two.
Maya turned back to make sure Cameron wasn’t freaking out or going into panic mode. To her credit, the woman had calmed herself, breathing more regularly now but keeping her hand over her mouth to be safe.
Maya mouthed the words, “You’re doing great,” and then put her finger to her lips again.
When Maya turned back to see where the aliens had gone, she saw only one pair of metallic boots, but this alien was walking right toward their office.
In the warehouse, they’d been engaged in an all-out war and it had been difficult to hear anything amidst the sound of gunfire. But here, hiding and hoping to remain undiscovered, Maya listened. It didn’t sound as though the alien was breathing, but it was making a low-pitched humming noise which fluctuated in volume—something she had to assume signified the way it was communicating with the others in the building or the ship itself, which was still hovering.
Maya knew they’d be dead if this one alien stumbled upon them. She didn’t have the energy or the resources to fight it off as she had back in the warehouse. She’d watched them kill dozens of people while under the dome in Nashville, using laser beams to instantly pulverize people into nothing but cosmic dust, and the same would happen to her and Cameron if it found them.
Think, Maya.
But she wasn’t sure what she could do. And as the alien stopped in front of the door, only several feet away, Maya shook. She felt her cheeks flushing and her stomach tightened into a sour ball. Cameron’s eyes had bugged out and the woman now used both her hands to keep herself from screaming.
Maya saw the boots cross the threshold and the hairs came up on the back of her neck. She slid back behind the desk. The low hum came from almost directly over her head now, and she was about to lunge out and take her best shot when a bright light hit the wall out in the open room with the cubicles.
The alien screeched and ran out of the small office and toward the source of the light, presumably to extinguish it. Maya slid out from behind the desk and stood up at the same moment that the light went out and a gunshot cracked, creating a still image on her retina—a single man pointing a gun at the alien who had been running straight at him.
Then came another blast and the sound of breaking glass.
Other than Cameron’s crying, the place had gone silent.
“They’re both dead and the ship took off as soon as I killed them,” the male voice said. “You can come out.”
Maya looked at Cameron. “Stay here.”
She slowly walked toward the voice coming from the cubicles, the office around her filled with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. The man had a penlight on and the beam cut through the haze like a spotlight in a nightclub.
Maya walked out of the small office and to within five feet of the man—and passed the dead aliens—before she realized he wasn’t a man after all.
The man was a boy. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old, sporting a shaggy haircut like Aiden’s. He held a shotgun in his hands, but it was pointed at the floor.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, we’re fine.” Maya motioned for Cameron to join them near the cubicles. She did, keeping her hands over her ears. Maya’s rang also, but she’d heard that sound before, unlike Cameron.
“Is it just the two of you?”
“Yeah, and we’re unarmed. We were just trying to hide from those things.”
“I know. I saw you.”
Maya narrowed her eyes. “Are you alone?”
He nodded.
“How can we be sure?”
The boy scoffed. “I guess you can’t be sure. But I’m not going to hurt you.”
If he’d wanted to, Maya knew he could have let the aliens get them or he could have blown her away with the shotgun as soon as she’d come into view.
The teen waved the women toward him. “I gotta assume you weren’t lying when you said you were unarmed.”
Maya shook her head.
“I’m Luke.”
He stuck his hand out and she shook it.
“Maya. And this is Cameron.”
Luke looked past Maya to Cameron. “It’s okay. You’re safe now.” He then turned and started walking across the open room and past the cubicles.
“Where are you going?” Maya said.
Luke smiled. “Come on, and I’ll show you.”
24
The women followed Luke to a door on the far side of the room. Maya turned when she heard coughing behind her, just in time to see Cameron staring at the dead aliens. She doubled over and vomited. Luke went to her before Maya could react, putting an arm around her and pulling her along next to Maya.