The Fallout, page 5
Nina clambered into the ventilation duct and Alexa followed along behind her. “Sorry buddy, this is gonna be a tight squeeze,” Nina heard Jack say to Steve. A moment later she heard Jack throw himself into the ventilation shaft and Steve let out a small yelp. Jack must be dragging Steve along—hopefully by his good arm.
Nina’s hand burned as the gash on her palm reopened. She kept crawling through the duct, leaving a slick trail of blood behind.
“Hurry!” Steve called from the rear. “I see something back there! Something really, really bad!”
Up ahead, Nina’s flashlight beam caught another grated panel. She redoubled her efforts, pushing the pain out of her mind. She dragged herself onward until she reached the panel.
“Why are we stopping? Hey! Why are we stopping?” Steve shouted, panic taking over the edge of his voice.
“Hang on!” Nina shouted. She struggled to rearrange her body in the cramped crawlspace so that her feet were facing the grate. Then she began to kick. An alien voice echoed through the ventilation shaft behind them. We don’t have much time. They’re hunting us. Nina put all her strength into her next kick, and the grate gave way.
Nina dragged herself clear. Once again, she found herself in one of the mall’s cavernous corridors. One part of the mall looked about the same as any others and it was difficult to say exactly where they were within the building, but anywhere was better than being stuck in Systems and Maintenance with the Visitors. She turned and reached down to help the others get free of the crawl space.
“Not good, not good, not good,” Jack kept repeating as he struggled to free himself. With the help of Nina and Alexa, he was able to get out. Then he hauled Steve out into the open with one hand. They broke into a sprint, tearing down the corridor and dodging benches, massage tables, and hat kiosks as they went.
“Hey, Jack,” Steve panted, “if we don’t make it out of this . . . thanks. You’re not that bad of a guy when it comes down to it.”
“Not now, weirdo!” Jack snapped. “We can talk about this later, like actually any time other than right now.”
Nina spotted a clothing shop up ahead filled with fake palm trees and other jungle decorations. “In here!” she whisper-shouted, breaking toward the entrance.
They staggered into the plastic jungle and quickly shut off their flashlights, panting in the darkness.
“What now?” Alexa asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” Nina admitted. She peered out from behind the leaves of a fake plastic tree so that she could get a view of the mall’s main space. Off in the distance she could see beams of blue light cutting through the air, accompanied by voices screaming in an unfamiliar alien language.
Chapter 13
“Nina,” Steve whispered suddenly, “if this goes the way I think it’s gonna go, there’s something I want to ask you.”
“Steve, can you shut up!” Jack hissed. “You’re going to get us killed.”
It really was not the time, but Nina realized that, if things kept going the way they had been, it was never going to be. The Visitors hadn’t had much trouble tracking them so far. Nina didn’t have high hopes that the group could avoid capture much longer.
She turned to Steve. “What is it?”
The beams of light down the hallway continued to approach, although they were going excruciatingly slowly. Some kind of strange hissing squawks sounded through the halls as well. Steve glanced at the hall and then shakily turned back to Nina. “I just wanted to make sure we were okay,” he said quietly. “Every time I try to make things better, I just screw them up, so if this is really the end, I wanted to . . .”
“Seriously?” Jack hissed again. “Not now, guys.”
“Quiet,” Alexa whispered. “This is obviously important, and we’re much more likely to survive if everyone is emotionally stable.”
An alien roar echoed through the shopping mall from somewhere nearby, and it was answered by another, farther off. There was another hissing squawk.
Nina gave a nervous laugh, running her good hand through her hair that was damp with sweat. “I mean, we’re not okay. We’re stuck in an abandoned shopping mall being chased by aliens. I can’t think of a way for things to be less okay.”
Steve gave her a worried look, and she smiled softly at him to calm him. “But you and me, we’re fine. The dating thing didn’t work out, but I’m always going to care about you.”
He grunted. “Yeah, but that still kind of sucks. I’m sorry I messed everything up. And now it sucks even more because everything is so weird all the time.”
“I know. But if, somehow, we both live for more than a few more minutes, it’s going to suck a little less every day until it doesn’t suck anymore. And it’ll just be us, Nina and Steve, friends again, like old times.”
The call and response of monstrous roars continued to grow nearer, as did the blue lights.
“You know, this has been lovely,” Alexa whispered. “It probably hasn’t meant much to you, but it’s nice for me to be a part of something, even for such a brief time. I really wish we all would have gotten to know one another sooner.”
Nina grinned at her, while Jack let out a frustrated moan and stood up. “All right, you know what? If we’re not going to commit to this hiding thing, then I say we rush them. I didn’t stick around and fight last time I had the chance, and I’m not going to make that mistake again.” He released a long, shaky breath. “I shouldn’t have left everyone. I should have at least tried to make sure more people could have gotten away. And it seems like a surprise attack is our only shot of getting out of here alive, especially with you three chattering away like the world isn’t ending.”
Nina stood up too. Jack had a harsh sort of bluntness to him, but he was right. They’d gotten this far together, and if it was all going to end right now, they may as well go down swinging. Together. She grabbed Steve by the hand and pulled him to his feet. “You ready, Steve?”
“Yeah,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze and then letting it drop. “Let’s do it.”
Alexa leapt to her feet as well. “What a surprise! I love it—we’re like the three musketeers! You know, despite the title, there are actually four of them.”
“All right, fine, great, let’s do this!” Jack shouted, clearly losing his patience with all of them. He turned toward the shop doors and raised a fist. “This one is for Earth, you alien freaks!”
They burst out the entrance to the store and charged toward the blue lights, which swung toward them immediately, bright enough to strike them all completely blind.
Chapter 14
Nina threw her arm up before her eyes and tried to blink her vision back into focus, groaning in pain. She could hear the others doing the same.
“Are we dead?” she heard Steve ask.
“Did the aliens get us?” Jack asked.
“Sir! We’ve located the survivors—all three of them, plus one more female,” a woman’s voice barked from behind the blinding wall of lights. “Prepare for extraction.”
There was a beep followed by a static-riddled squawk, and a distorted voice replied, “Affirmative. Eastern Egress is all clear for Pilgrims. Plymouth Rock, out.”
Somebody grabbed Nina roughly by the shoulder and began guiding her down the hallway. “All right kids, we’ve gotta get out of here, now! They’re on our tail. Let’s go! Keep your heads down!” the woman shouted. She looked over her shoulder as she walked them forward. “Baker, Incanto, cover the rear!”
Nina stumbled forward with the guidance of the unknown arm as her vision gradually came into focus. Gunfire erupted from somewhere behind them, followed by a chorus of alien roars. A soldier’s radio went off, and Nina quickly recognized the hissing squawk they’d been hearing: it was actually the static call of the soldiers’ radios. She glanced over and saw some heavily armored soldiers ushering the others along beside her, then spotted rays of sunlight streaming in through a door up ahead.
They burst out into the parking lot on the other side of the mall, where there was a large armored vehicle waiting for them a few yards from the door. The soldiers quickly threw them in the back end of it before slamming the door shut and pounding on the rear window. The vehicle immediately sped off.
There was a medic in back, and she began checking their vitals. “Everyone okay?” she asked without looking up from her tools.
Nina found her voice first. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I think we’re okay. What’s going on? I mean, what even happened?”
“We don’t know yet. They hit us hard and fast, but we got a lot of people out in time. Your families are looking for you—they noticed you were missing once we got back to the base,” the medic explained. “Lucky for us we keep some hardware in a hardened bunker in case we get into a nuke fight—radios, lights, vehicles, everything. As soon as we can get more organized, we’re gonna make the Visitors sorry they ever showed up.”
Everyone was quiet for a few minutes as she checked each of their wounds. As she fitted Steve with an actual sling, the medic looked up at them and asked, “How’d you kids manage to make it on your own, anyway? It’s a nightmare out here.”
“Together,” Nina said, smiling at the others. “We made it together.”
About the Author
Glasko Klein is a financial researcher who holds an MFA in fiction from Long Island University Brooklyn. He resides in New York City with his fiancée and his bilingual cat, Umlaut.
Glasko Klein, The Fallout
