Chapter Seventeen

 

 

Matt and I remained still. We knew what weapons Marv had at his disposal. We knew that he had smoke bombs. What I didn't know was whether Marv was working alone, trying to keep the Grounders off his back, or if he had formed an alliance with them. I was willing to bet on the latter. The Mars Identity people didn't want us to try taking back Earth. In a way, they and the Grounders were on the same side.

Matt spoke first. "Marv!" he shouted at the walker. It towered high above us. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you have stayed on precious Mars?"

Matt had a point.

Below the walker, the pulse cannon's red glow died and began to intensify again. The two dozen remaining Grounders waited behind it, silent. Marv was the one in charge here. Even the Great Council guy in the black robe waited. Marv would give the orders.

"This needs to stop," Marv said, voice booming over the speaker. "I left Celeste with Fiona. She's going to make sure that Fiona launches more of us Identity folks. The Great Council needs to stay protected from her idiocy."

It was an alliance, then. I was beginning to see how this whole thing worked. The Identity people were good sports when it came to losing. Lap dogs, maybe. The Grounders must offer them perks to keep the rest of us on Mars.

Marv and his girlfriend had won the fight at Base A and forced Fiona to launch Marv after us.

She had even told us to watch out for the second cylinder. Then Marv tracked us using the capsules in our guns.

I still had mine pointed at the Grounders. If I fired, I would kill some of them. Matt could do the same, and we'd save ourselves from the pulse cannon.

But then Marv could crush us with those metal feet or annihilate us with whatever he had used to blast apart the side of the dome.

I eyed Matt. He shook his head.

"Surrender," Marv said, "and we will let you live."

I took a breath and stood up tall. In the face of death, my Earther status was shining through. My duty was to fight these Grounders as my grandfather had. I hadn't forgotten who I was after all. The hooded man from eight years ago couldn't take that away from me. "Why are you helping the Grounders?" I shouted. "You know what they do to people."

The Grounders remained silent and emotionless. I felt as if I were starting at a bunch of wax dummies. Marv shifted behind the glass window of the walker. I caught another flash of his green flesh. "You've heard the Grounders' side of this story," Marv said. "Fair is fair."

I eyed Matt again. "The Grounders' side?" I hadn't heard anything. Besides, the Grounders might torture my parents or convert them. They were killing the Earth. Nothing made that forgivable. There was nothing the Grounders could tell me that would change my mind.

"Marv!" Matt shouted. "The Grounders destroy people! They don't have any mercy!"

The pulse cannon intensified. My knees trembled.

More Identity people would stop us and aid the Grounders. Earth would die. Matt and I were the only two people in this invasion fighting for our cause. My parents were doomed.

"What is your decision?" Marv asked. "I hate to destroy fellow colonists. You will cause me problems if I have to kill you, Matt."

I couldn't give up.

The pulse cannon was still charging. A hum filled the air. The Grounders waited. All Marv had to do was give the word, and Matt and I would disintegrate. Our particles would rain onto the grass to join the others. I could run back towards my house, but I would never outpace the walker. Marv would crush me under the machine's wide, elephant-like feet.

An Earther didn't give up.

Gun in hand, I rushed the Grounders.

"Tess!" Matt shouted.

I aimed.

Fired.

I swept the rippling beam across the front of the pulse cannon, now glowing with a bright red inside. Popping sounds followed. Grounders grasped at their necks. Smoke rose from collars. The Great Council member dropped his hood to reveal a middle-aged guy, one who might have once had a family, and the disgusting blob attached to his neck. It smoked and turned black. Grounders fell in silent agony. The survivors scattered away from the pulse cannon.

The beam died.

I had five minutes before I could use this again.

"What are you doing?" Marv shouted over the speaker.

I ran past the cannon as the walker took a gigantic, terrifying step away from me. The ground trembled as its enormous foot sank into the ground. I would die now. Marv would crush me.

"Girl," a Grounder woman said, running at me. "You are not fair."

The walker took another step, its segmented leg missing me by a meter. I pulled my fist back and punched her in the shoulder. She stopped, rubbing it with a neutral expression.

"Give me my parents!" I shouted. I swung again, striking her in the jaw. "Give me my parents back! You're not going to make them like you!" I didn't care anymore that they'd lied to me. They were my parents. My family. I had to protect them.

I lunged at the woman. We went down. I punched and screamed obscenities as the walker took another step. Marv was turning around so he could see me. So he could attack. I swung again, hitting the Grounder woman in the eye as her collar flipped down, revealing the horror. She raised her arms to protect herself, but I turned my rage on the blob on her neck. I wrapped my hands around her neck, digging my fingers into the flesh of the Grounder.

It felt like a mushy tomato. Its skin popped as I dug my fingernails in. The woman's body went into spasm, and she shook as if electrocuted. She was going into a seizure. Her eyes rolled into her head, leaving only milky white. The Grounder pulsed around my fingers. I pulled. Red tentacles parted with skin. They thrashed. The woman fell to the ground, limp. Dead.

I held a red worm with thrashing tentacles. The injured creature pulsed, appendages whipping and searching for something to grasp. One of them wrapped around my thumb, squeezing as if it were pleading for its life.

I stood, disgust washing over me.

Marv turned. The green headlight fell on me.

And then the tentacle whipped again, landing on my arm.

It inched towards my neck.

Towards my brain.

It needed a new host to survive.

I shook my arm, trying to cast it off, but it was no use. The creature wriggled, sticking to my skin, holes filling with purplish-red ooze. Something stabbed into my flesh. I screamed with the pain. Around me, more Grounders fell as Matt fired his heat gun. Marv let out another horn blast, ready to attack.

The Grounder pulsed.

It was feeding on my blood and healing.

Then it would crawl up my arm and take my brain.

"Get off!" I shouted, prying at the creature with my free hand. It refused to budge. My rage turned to cold terror.

Matt appeared at my side. "Tess!" he shouted, letting the heat gun fall to his side. He grabbed onto the Grounder, pulling, but the creature continued to feed, pulsing. Marv watched. I wanted to faint with the pain. A wave of dizziness washed over me, making the world dark.

"I didn't want to have to kill you," Marv shouted over the speaker. He had the voice of a fanatic, of someone who didn't think. "You could have had a good future on Mars. You could have accepted--"

"The cannon!" Matt shouted, releasing my arm.

The pain in my arm intensified. I imagined a needle of fire under my skin. A horrible pressure built. How much of my blood would the Grounder suck out of me?

The tripod blasted its otherworldly horn again. It faced us. In the eerie light, I could see Marv. His hand hovered over the middle of the dashboard.

Over the smoke bomb button.

I shoved the pain out of my mind and searched the back of the cannon. It was our only chance.

There were buttons. Lots and lots of buttons. I prayed that the now-dead Grounders had already prepped this thing. I had no idea what to do.

A lone red button said FIRE in black letters.

Marv stood before the cannon, right over our ruined walker as if daring us to try to take shelter. Something clicked, and a small black shape dropped from the tripod, ready to explode and suffocate us.

I would have to kill a human. Someone who belonged on Earth, but had forgotten his place in the universe.

I slammed my hand down on the button.

A red blast filled the air, and the cannon roared as black smoke exploded and spread underneath Marv. I stepped back. A shock wave shook the world, shaking the Grounder off my skin. It hung off my arm, finished feeding, and dropped to the ground. Matt grabbed my injured arm and pulled me away from the cannon.

It was the strangest sight.

Marv's tripod stumbled as the pulse cannon blasted away its legs. It fell, causing Marv to fall right into the spreading black smoke. Green light reflected off the black particles, making them look like a swarm of vaporous death. The cloud spread.

Matt and I ran.

The fact that the pulse cannon had blasted apart some of the black particles might be the only reason the two of us still breathed and lived. Dark tendrils raced along the ground, trying to grasp for us, but I held my breath. I jumped over bodies. We bolted out of Woking Park and onto the street, breathing in the gross smog that still hung in the sticky air. We left Marv and the one surviving Grounder in the dark vapor, which was no doubt leaking into Marv's tripod.

When we returned, he would be dead.

"Don't stop." Matt stumbled.

"Matt!" I stopped. I would not leave him behind, even as the black smoke advanced on us. I pulled my shirt over my nose, wishing that I had my gas mask. Matt seethed again, grabbing his broken arm.

I pulled him up as a tendril of smoke reached his leg. It spread like a disease, consuming everything it touched. I was glad that the neighborhood surrounding Woking Park was dead and evacuated by the Enforcers, that every house was dark.

"Go!" I shouted, coughing on the usual smog that hung over everything. "We need high ground!"

Flames flickered behind us. Matt bolted away from the spreading black smoke, which spilled out of the park and thinned as it reached the homes around us. It wrapped around the old man's vintage car, almost lovingly.

We didn't stop until we had climbed the hill to Cherry Street and passed the real entrance to the park, my home. A single light remained on by the guard booth, showing that it was empty. Dead.

Matt panted with exhaustion. So did I. We leaned on each other, away from the toxic cloud's reach, and breathed the air that would only make us wheeze. Matt and I had brought something far worse to Earth than pollution.

Behind us, a cloud of darkness hung, coating yards and rising around streetlights. The pulse cannon hadn't destroyed all of it, but it had given us the chance to flee.

Another horn wail came from the second fallen tripod. Hopefully, it was a final one.

"Tess," Matt said. "Thanks. For not leaving me."

"What kind of person do you think I am?" I asked, thoughts turning to Winnie again.

All we could do was watch as the black cloud smothered all life underneath it, promising more horror to come.