Emily stood, ignoring the pins and needles she felt tingling through her legs from being seated for so long, and walked through the doorway, the floor warm against her bare feet. Beyond it lay another, larger room. This one was circular, with an oval ceiling that spiraled up to a point far above her head. The room was empty except for one wall where multicolored liquids gurgled and oozed through a row of thick, clear pipes on the opposite side of the room. They merged into a single larger pipe where the liquids mixed together and flowed onward to whatever destination and design the aliens had for it. She did not want to think what that goo might once have been.
Another opening appeared in the opposite wall. This time, beyond the second doorway, Emily could see the gentle swell of a hill, covered in the red lichen, but otherwise clear of the tangle of jungle that seemed to have sprung up everywhere across the planet.
A ramp led from the edge of the wall to the ground.
Emily glanced at Jacob. He held her stare wordlessly until she turned away and walked nervously through the opening and out onto the sun-drenched hillside.
As she stepped from the ramp Emily heard a soft pop behind her. She had expected to find herself next to whatever alien craft she had been held in, but when she turned to look back, she was alone on the hill. There was no sign of the ramp or the room that she had just left. Shading her eyes against the glare of the sun, Emily scanned the sky for any indication of a departing craft, but the air was empty of all but a few small clouds.
She allowed her gaze to follow the downward curve of the hill as it dropped away before eventually meeting and being swallowed up by the ubiquitous red jungle below. Beyond the jungle, in the distance, Emily could see the outline of what had once been Las Vegas. She had assumed that she had been within the aliens’ craft, but the truth was, she now understood, that “room” could have been anywhere on the planet or off it. The aliens—what had they called themselves, the Caretakers?—seemed more than capable of manipulating space, bending it to their needs. Still, it was a surprise to realize that they had stranded her on the opposite side of the city from where they had landed.
On the ground near to where she stood, Emily noticed her backpack, clothes, shotgun, and other belongings, neatly deposited in a small pile.
She dressed quickly, then undid the flap of the backpack and pulled it open, searching inside for the two-way radio MacAlister had insisted she take. It was still there, thank God. She pulled it out and switched it on. A burst of static exploded from the radio. She turned the volume down and held the radio in front of her mouth.
“Hello? Can anybody hear me?”
The quiet soughing of an afternoon breeze moving through the distant jungle was her only answer.
Emily pressed the talk button again, repeating her question, “MacAlister, do you read me?”
Another burst of interference was followed by a momentary silence, then a familiar voice crackled from the radio’s speaker.
“Emily? Emily, can you hear me?” He sounded amazed to be speaking to her, and a little relieved too.
“MacAlister! Yes, it’s me.” She found herself almost yelling into the microphone.
“Are you okay? Are you injured?” The concern in MacAlister’s voice was touching. But it was a good question: Was she okay? She wasn’t sure. Looking down at herself, there didn’t seem to be any signs of injury, but her brain still felt fuzzy, almost as though she was drunk, but without the feeling of needing to throw up. She felt… different somehow.
“I’m okay,” she said hesitantly.
“Where are you?” MacAlister asked, his voice all business now.
She looked around the top of the hill. The sun was well past its zenith, and heading toward the western horizon to her right and she could see the remnants of Vegas poking up from the jungle in the distance, but almost directly ahead of her.
“I’m on a clear hilltop, about six, maybe seven miles north of where we landed,” she told MacAlister. She turned through 360 degrees. “It’s pretty much the only place here not covered by the jungle.”
“Just sit tight, Emily. We’re coming to get you, okay?”
“Okay,” she replied, feeling a steady pull of exhaustion begin to tug at her muscles.
She sat and waited.
Minutes later, as the afternoon sun beat down on the hilltop, the steady beat of the helicopter’s rotors chopping through the air echoed across the Las Vegas valley, arriving long before Emily spotted the dark dot of the Black Hawk as it sped toward her. She pulled off her jacket and stood, waving it above her head with as much energy as she could still muster until she saw the chopper adjust its vector and curve gracefully in her direction.
The helo circled around the hilltop as MacAlister searched for a safe place to put it down. Emily shaded her eyes from flying debris as the Black Hawk descended, and then she was moving to the helicopter before the wheels had touched down.
The passenger door slid open and a shape leaped from within and bounded toward her.
“Thor!” Emily yelled, her voice whipped away by the noise of the Black Hawk’s engines.
The malamute raced toward her, then hesitated and slowed, his head dipping down almost to the ground, but his eyes never leaving her as he sniffed at the air around Emily and let out a low half-whine, half-growl.
“What’s wrong with you, mutt?” she said. The malamute had never hesitated with her before. “It’s just me.” There must be some residual smell or essence of the creatures she had encountered on the ship that was making him nervous. “Come on. Come here,” she cooed, offering her hand out to her dog. He sniffed it once then licked it and that was enough. The malamute almost bowled her over, weaving around and between her legs, pushing up against her. She grabbed the dog by his collar and guided him back toward the waiting helicopter.
Reilly leaned out and yelled something that she couldn’t hear over the roar of the engines, then Burris’s head appeared over his shoulder as the two sailors beckoned her to get in.
Thor leaped inside the helo and Emily climbed in behind him. Reilly slid the door closed again. She could see MacAlister twisting in his seat toward her. He was mouthing something to her but she couldn’t hear him, the engines still too loud even with the cabin door closed. He tapped the headphones on his head and pointed above her head. She reached for the set of headphones, slipping them over her ears.
MacAlister’s voice filled her head, “—you okay? Emily, can you hear me? Are you okay?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m okay.”
“What the hell happened? We thought we had lost you. I thought I had lost you.”
“It’s a long story, Mac,” she sighed, her nervous-energy supply finally hitting empty. “Just get us out of here.”
MacAlister reluctantly turned his attention back to the console and Emily felt the Black Hawk lift off and begin to gain altitude.
“Home,” she said. “Take us home.”
CHAPTER 29
The Black Hawk approached Point Loma just after sunset, the remnants of the day still smoldering on the horizon, spilling orange fire along its edge.
“So are you going to tell me what happened?” MacAlister said over the helo’s intercom.
Emily shook her head, “No, not here. It’s something everyone has to hear, and I don’t think I want to tell it more than once,” she told him. “Why don’t you tell me what happened after I was shot?”
MacAlister reluctantly allowed the subject to switch to him and Reilly.
“When you shot that one alien—God, that sounds weird said out loud, doesn’t it? Alien!—I thought maybe we’d be able to take on the others too, but then…” Emily heard a stutter in the Scotsman’s tone, a quiver to the usually strong voice that betrayed the emotion the man was feeling. “Then you went down. I started to move toward where you’d fallen while Reilly laid down some covering fire—”