Last Chance--A Novel Read online

  I yelled her name. Behind me metallic thunderclaps grew closer and closer. It took a moment for me to register what they were. The Hatchlings were bounding across the slabs, hammering down onto the floating metal rectangles.

  “Alex!” I shouted.

  The thunderclaps quickened. Orange-tinted blurs darted into my peripheral vision. Patrick wheeled around in a full turn, getting off a shotgun blast without breaking stride.

  And then it was the two of us running shoulder to shoulder, weaving through the wobbling slabs, hurdling fallen bodies. The semi truck waited ahead, tantalizingly close.

  “Where is she?” Patrick yelled.

  I didn’t know.

  I wouldn’t have thought I could have felt more terrified, but losing Alex in this sea of horrors proved that I still had a ways to free-fall before I hit bottom.

  As I reached the edge of the foundation, a Hatchling reared up right in front of me. There’d be no time to veer. He leapt for me. I slid onto my back beneath a slab. The concrete was slick—I didn’t want to know with what.

  I flew beneath the floating sheet metal, feeling a weird pull at my joints and bones. Above me the Hatchling clanged onto the slab, making it bounce low enough to touch my nose.

  As he tumbled overhead, I shot out the other side, popped up onto my feet, and kept running. Thank God for Little League slide practice.

  I felt heat at my back—the breath of the Hatchlings? Was that even possible?

  Patrick and I broke free of the last line of slabs and withered Husks. The passenger door of the semi was open. Patrick dove in first. I crowded his back, grabbing the door to yank it shut behind me. Patrick’s momentum carried him across to the driver’s seat. Before he could get there, the driver’s door flew open and a form shot in from the other side, beating him to the space behind the wheel.

  The smile Alex managed was nervous, wobbling on her face. Even so, it brought a wave of relief and affection that I felt in my spine. “I’ll drive,” she said.

  Hatchlings pelted the door behind me with enough force to dent the panel. They hammered the cab from all sides. I banged down the door lock.

  Alex redlined the engine, throwing us into a screeching turn. The tires smoked and shot gravel. A fat female Hatchling flew at us, plopping onto the windshield and cracking it. Two males followed in her wake, smearing the glass, blotting out our field of vision. The crack spiderwebbed.

  We weren’t moving.

  “Go, Alex!” Patrick shouted.

  Alex’s hands whitened around the wheel. Concern twisted her forehead. “I can’t.”

  The banging intensified, Hatchlings smashing into the truck from all sides. Something struck the roof hard, denting it in low enough to tap Patrick’s black cowboy hat askew. My heart knocked my ribs. I peered out the window and saw the front tire spinning uselessly in a puddle of orange slime. The tread caught another Hatchling by the foot and sucked him under. They were turning to mush beneath us, giving the tires no traction. It was worse than snow.

  We were stuck.

  The smell crowded the cab like something physical, pressing through our nostrils, down our throats.

  A male Hatchling slapped against my window, inches from my face, scaring the crap out of me. His mouth spread on the pane, thick tongue dragging across the glass. His incisors gleamed. Others piled into him, layers deep. His claw clicked against the door handle.

  Alex hit the steering wheel with the heels of her hands, screaming, though I could barely hear her over the sound of bodies striking the truck. Her hair flicked across her face, caught in the corner of her mouth.

  Now we could see nothing but orange on all sides, as if we’d been dropped into a bowl of Jell-O. The wipers squeaked back and forth ineffectually, still trying to perform their duty, laughable and heroic. Another female smashed onto the windshield. The glass groaned all around us.

  At any second it would give way.

  ENTRY 7

  “Scoot over!” Patrick yelled.

  Grabbing his shotgun, he tumbled over Alex and into the driver’s seat.

  He unlocked the door.

  “Patrick!” Alex shouted. She grabbed his arm, but he twisted free.

  I looked past him through the driver’s window. Amid the churning sea of orange, I made out a flash of polished black—one of the Drones pressing himself into the mix.

  Patrick reared back, his shoulders knocking Alex into me and me into the passenger window. He raised one of his cowboy boots and pistoned it into the driver’s door.

  It flew open into the mass of bodies. Leaning against us, Patrick raised the shotgun, aimed it down the length of his body between his boots, and fired.

  The blast tore a hole through the orange wall. The pellets wouldn’t hurt the Hatchlings—we’d learned that already. So what the hell was he doing?

  Patrick shucked the shotgun, the shell flying over his shoulder and pinging off my cheek. He fired again through the temporary hole.

  And hit the Drone.

  The Drone exploded, blast mist firing out of the armor gashes, blowing back our hair. But it also blew back the Hatchlings, clearing a small circle by the driver’s door.

  A makeshift grenade.

  Patrick rolled forward, lunging out of the truck and onto his feet in the short-lived clearing. He swept his boot across the ground, kicking the deflated armor before the front tire.

  Then he jumped back an instant before the Hatchlings regrouped. They hammered the door into the frame behind him hard enough to knock him across the bench seat. Alex ducked, so I caught my brother’s full force, both of us piled against the passenger window. My face was mashed to the glass. On the other side, I could see nothing but bulging black eyes and fangs snapping for purchase.

  Alex jackknifed sideways beneath Patrick’s legs and stomped on the gas pedal.

  The tires spun in place and kept spinning.

  And then the front tire grabbed the armor, yanking the truck into a partial turn. Hatchlings flew away from one side and slid from the cracked windshield as cleanly as if we’d wipered them off. Only one female held her place, clinging to the lip of the hood.

  The tire pulled itself farther onto the armor, and then we shot free.

  Patrick and I seesawed toward the driver’s side, but Alex shouldered up into place, ramming us off with her elbow so she could hold the wheel.

  On the hood the female Hatchling drew back a plump fist, aiming for the center of the spiderweb.

  The shotgun rolled across Patrick’s knees.

  Without looking over, Alex grabbed it, digging her finger through the trigger guard, and swung it in front of her.

  She fired through the windshield, turning the Hatchling’s face into an orange smear. The Hatchling rose up, and then the wind caught her and lifted her off the truck like she’d been tied to a passing plane.

  Through the shattered windshield, air blasted our faces. Our eyes watered. Alex didn’t let up, though, not for a second. We careened across the parking lot and bounced violently onto the slope of the hillside.

  A shuddering exhalation left Alex, making a sound like a moan.

  In the rearview mirror, we could see them bounding after us in that terrible apelike gait. They were falling farther and farther behind.

  I had forgotten to breathe. I told my lungs that now would be an okay time to start again.

  We veered upslope, jolting in our seats, dodging felled trees and stumps left behind when the Drones had cleared a swath of the mountain in their pursuit of me. A half-depleted gravel pile flew by on the right, and then a familiar knoll lurched into sight ahead.

  The rise from which I’d shot the Queen.

  I squinted into the wind. My eyes locked on a massive tree stump a few strides from the knoll. I couldn’t see inside, but I could tell that it was hollow.

  “Stop!” I yelled. “Stop here!”

  Alex hit the brakes. I tumbled out of the cab, falling onto a soft patch of moss. The Hatchlings surged up the hillside at u
s, a tide of orange. I tried to rise, my sneaker skidding out on the moss. It felt like I was moving in slow motion.

  “Whatever you’re doing,” Patrick said, “do it faster.”

  I ran to the giant hollow stump and peered inside.

  Sure enough, there lay the Rebel’s empty suit like a cast-off shell, left behind when he’d died. And his helmet. I’d dropped it there after twisting it off to peer down the neckhole. I’d found only wisps of smoke.

  I snatched up the helmet and turned.

  Alex and Patrick were staring at me, their eyes flaring.

  “Chance,” Patrick said. His voice was dead calm, like the time he told me to hold still before he shot a rattlesnake coiled two feet behind my heel.

  I knew he was trying not to panic me, but it had the opposite effect.

  I didn’t know what was wrong, but his and Alex’s eyes were locked on a spot a few inches to my side.

  And then the smell hit.

  Rancid. Like rotten eggs.

  I knew I had to turn my head. But I really didn’t want to.

  Something detached from the bark of the tree beside me—it seemed to be made of the tree itself. A shadow flickered toward me.

  A long, three-digit hand.

  Even as it reached for me, I could see the color of the skin changing from a barklike pattern to a familiar orange.

  A single word spun at me through the panic whirl of my thoughts: chameleon.

  The hand clamped over my forearm, singeing my skin. I yelled. I couldn’t help it.

  You would’ve, too.

  ENTRY 8

  As the hand tightened on my forearm, the burn intensified. It felt like acid eating through my skin. I tried to wrench free. The Hatchling peeled away from the tree, his camouflage changing from cracked brown to shades of olive and black that matched the surrounding forest.

  His other claw resolved from the trunk, rising in the air.

  A memory flash hit me from moments before—those pointy nails mangling a boy’s body with the efficiency of a blender.

  I twisted and swung the Rebel’s helmet with all my might. It cracked against the Hatchling’s head, denting it in.

  He reeled back, his grip loosening just barely.

  But it was enough.

  I dropped my weight to the ground and ripped my arm free. It lit up with the pain of a thousand hornet stings, but this was no time for pain. Already the crater at his temple was filling itself back in.

  I ran for the truck.

  The Hatchling scrambled after me.

  The other Hatchlings were surging up the slope toward us, now only twenty yards away. They crashed through the underbrush, leapt over branches. I heaved myself into the cab across Patrick’s lap, and Alex floored the gas pedal. The Hatchling lunged for me. I pulled my legs inside an instant before a tree trunk took the swinging passenger door clean off.

  It smacked brutally into the Hatchling, wiping him from view.

  I stared down at myself in disbelief. My legs remained intact. My feet were still attached to my legs.

  When I lifted my gaze through the open doorframe, I saw the other Hatchlings hurtling after us. Their camouflage cycled rapidly to keep up with the terrain. Colors flickered across them as if their skin were TV screens.

  It looked as though the valley itself had come to life, as though the ground and trees were pursuing us.

  I bit my lip and hunched over my scalded arm, waiting for the sting to let up. We rumbled toward the rim, the truck slowing as the terrain steepened. The Hatchlings were gaining on us. Given the camouflage, it was hard to pin them down. They seemed to sprout from the mud and drip from the branches.

  I looked away. It was almost too much to stand, thinking about what would happen when they caught up.

  Alex’s voice cut through the air. “We’ve got a problem.”

  “As in a bigger problem than problems we already have?” I asked.

  She pointed at the gas needle.

  A quarter tank and dropping rapidly.

  Now an eighth.

  “The fuel line must’ve busted,” Patrick said.

  “How?” Alex asked.

  “I don’t think there’s anything behind us that you didn’t run over,” I said.

  The truck lumbered upslope toward the rim. I glanced back. The living forest was closing in, bits and pieces surging into clarity. Here a claw. There a gaping mouth.

  “Well,” Alex said, “at least it can’t get any worse.”

  A low whooshing sound filled the cab, and then flames licked up from beneath the hood.

  The truck was on fire.

  ENTRY 9

  A yellow blaze in front of us.

  An army of Hatchlings behind.

  The semi—on fire, running out of gas, underbrush wadding against the grille as we labored up a steepening slope.

  Heat blew back across our faces. Branches crackled beneath the charge of hundreds of tridactyl feet.

  Alex was literally standing on the gas pedal, her butt up off the seat, her elbows locked. “Go, go, go, go, go!”

  We slowed, slowed, nearly stopping at the rim. The truck coasted for a weightless moment. Then toppled over the edge.

  The forested downhill slope, spotted here and there with freshly cut tree trunks, seemed to stretch forever. Gravity seized the truck. We started to pick up pace again.

  I shot a look back through the rear window. For the moment the Hatchlings were out of sight behind the brink.

  I grabbed the backpack and Patrick’s sleeve. “We got one shot,” I said, fumbling for the door handle. “Let’s take it.”

  Alex looked across at me, her ice-green eyes holding on mine. She nodded.

  I pulled the door handle and fell back, bringing my brother with me. He grabbed his shotgun before we tumbled out of the cab. We hit a patch of soft dirt—our first luck all day. Even so, his weight crushed into me, bruising my shoulder.

  I kicked-pushed him up off me, and we ran a few strides, jumped over an outcropping of shale, and skidded down a long rocky slope into a ravine filled with dead leaves.

  A moment later dust kicked back into our faces and Alex rattled down on her stomach, slotting neatly between me and Patrick. Her face held a worn-out frustration that I didn’t recognize. I knew how she felt; it seemed the onslaught would never end.

  We lay there, panting against the forty-five-degree slope.

  A few precious seconds of rest.

  Soon enough the ground started to vibrate against our cheeks. The pitch rose bit by bit until the earth shook with footfalls. Were the Hatchlings going to sniff out our hiding space? The noise grew even louder. Pebbles shook free, raining down across our heads. We had to turn our faces.

  The sound grew thunderous. It felt like they were on top of us already. It seemed impossible that they wouldn’t spot us. We braced ourselves, chests heaving.

  To our left, way downslope, the semi truck bucked into view, fire erupting from the hood. A stream of Hatchlings followed it. The truck crested a bulge in the mountainside and vanished, hurtling down Ponderosa Pass.

  Following its wake, the stream of Hatchlings passed overhead for one full minute. And then another. They seemed to ripple across the earth, their skin changing against the rocky backdrop.

  Sometime after minute three, the shimmering movement stopped.

  We were still panting.

  “My God, Chance,” Alex said. “We’d better take care of that.”

  I followed her gaze to where my arm rested on the shale between us. The flesh of my forearm was swollen and red, a massive hive.

  A hive in the shape of a three-fingered hand.

  * * *

  We hiked through the dense woods. Patrick took the lead, shotgun slung back over one shoulder. He bent aside a branch for Alex, and she in turn handed it off to me. We were making decent headway down Ponderosa Pass, though we had to take a meandering route to avoid the one that our burning truck and the Hatchlings had blazed through the woods. On our way
we were looking for a cabin, a ranger station, a trailer—anything that might have a first-aid kit.

  “We’re not supposed to be alive right now,” Alex said. “We were supposed to take out the Queen, shut down the Hatch site.” A bitter laugh. “Sacrifice ourselves nobly to win the battle.”

  “And you’re mad that we survived?” Patrick asked.

  “Yeah, I’m mad.”

  “Why?”

  “Because after what we just saw, winning a battle isn’t enough,” Alex said. “We have to win the war.”

  The Rebel helmet swung at my side. How bizarre that neither Patrick nor Alex had asked me about it. I hadn’t had a chance to fill them in on any of it. Not that the fate of the world depended on me and Patrick. Not that we had to stay alive for some mission. Not that I’d met a friggin’ Rebel from outer space who’d told me about the Harvesters.

  I said, “About that—”

  But Alex wasn’t done talking. “That’s the problem with not dying when you set out to. I mean, you make all your plans. And other stuff, complicated stuff…” She placed another bent-back branch in my hand, and our fingers brushed. “… you think you’re not gonna have to deal with. Because you won’t be around to figure it out. But then—surprise.” She shot me a quick look over her shoulder, which I swear was loaded. “You’re alive. And things are more complicated than ever. And you have to figure it out, no matter who gets hurt.”

  My mouth had gone dry.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Patrick said. “How to kill those things. But first we gotta get back to town, warn everyone, and regroup. I want Chatterjee’s take on the Hatchlings, too.”

  I also wanted to hear what our former biology teacher would have to say about all this.

  As Patrick kept on about war strategy, I found myself wondering if I’d mistaken what Alex was saying. Maybe she was just talking about the war. Had I misread her look? Had I misread it because I’d wanted to?

  “… has to be a way to inflict bigger damage,” Patrick was saying.

  I stared down at the Rebel helmet. Then I cleared my throat. “Look, you guys aren’t gonna believe this.…”