SARAH TRIES TO TELL ME THAT I’M FREAKING out about this too much, but I can tell she’s worried too. She knows the lengths the Mogs will go to in order to get what they want—after all, she was their prisoner. As we drive, she goes into more detail about the rebel Mog John’s recruited on to his team. Apparently, he’s a hard-core computer wiz, and there are tons of evil ETs who’ve been trained on computers just like he has.
It doesn’t bode well for us. I kind of wish I’d known this sooner. I have no way of knowing who’d win in a hacker battle between GUARD and a spaceship full of highly trained Mogs.
I have Sarah text GUARD, telling him what happened, more about Adam, and asking for his advice. She reads and responds for me as I drive us back towards the ranch.
GUARD: If the Mogs had no idea where you were, they’d never be able to track you down based on your IP address or any of your communications from the ranch.
GUARD: But if they know you’re somewhere near a little town in Alabama, that could be trouble.
Me: SHIT. What should we do?
GUARD: That’s your call. It should take them a while to pinpoint an area to search. Could take hours. Could take weeks. I don’t know how skilled their hackers are.
GUARD: More than likely they’d just raze the whole area looking for you.
Me: All my notes and stuff are at the ranch. We need that info, but maybe it’d be better if we just abandoned the base? Can you get all my stuff off the computer?
A minute passes.
GUARD: No. It’s either dead or turned off. I can track its location, but I can’t get onto it remotely without juice.
Not charging my electronics is going to kill me.
Sarah looks at me.
“All the work we’ve been doing is on your computer, right?” she asks.
“Yeah, but—” I start.
“We can swing by and grab everything. Then, I don’t know, find one of those crappy motels you’ve gotten so good at scouting out.”
“This is dangerous,” I say.
She laughs a little.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
She texts GUARD back, telling him what we’re doing.
GUARD: You’re a true patriot for Earth. Keep me posted. Constant communication.
Night has completely fallen by the time we get back to the ranch. Everything looks just as we left it. Calm and boring.
“Bernie,” Sarah says, letting the dog out of the backseat, “go take a look around, okay? But be careful.”
I guess he understands her, because he darts off as we hurry inside. I head straight to the back room to pack up my notes and computers while Sarah grabs some of our clothes, food and other random stuff that might come in handy on the road. It’s almost like we’re getting ready to go on vacation instead of running away to hide from aliens and government henchmen.
I’ve just pulled my big messenger bag over my shoulder when all the lights go dark.
I hear glass breaking in the kitchen.
“Sarah!” I shout.
She yells back at me from the kitchen that she’s fine. I trip over a chair trying to get to her—the windowless room is completely pitch-black now that the power’s off. I curse as I hit the ground hard, my left arm throbbing. There’s a sound like the air conditioner starting up and then suddenly the power’s back on. I vaguely remember seeing a generator out at the back of the house—thanks again, GUARD. As I get to my feet, I kick the chair out of the way. Just as I’m about to leave the room, the security monitors boot up.
There are at least twenty Mogs closing in on the ranch house.
There’s a split second when I freeze, can’t even will my legs to move. And then adrenaline crashes over me and I react. I grab two guns off the weapons shelves and bolt to the kitchen, where Sarah’s crouched over a few glasses she knocked to the ground when the lights went out.
“What was—” she starts.
“Mogs!” I whisper.
Before she can respond, an explosion blows the front door in.
Both of us duck behind the kitchen island. I’m about to tell Sarah to stay down when she grabs one of the handguns I brought from the back room and fires two shots through the kitchen window, nailing a Mog right in the forehead. It turns to ash and disappears.
Whoa.
“Did you bring ammo?” she asks as she fires through the front doorway while I cock the shotgun I grabbed.
Crap. Ammo.
“No,” I admit.
“Can you use that?” She nods to my weapon.
“Yeah.”
“Then cover me,” she says.
As gunfire and Mog blasts tear up the living room and kitchen, I pop up from my cover and start pumping rounds through the doorway and windows, firing at every possible place the Mogs could be. I wonder how screwed we are—how many Mogs were just off camera on the monitors? Sarah makes for the back room, grabbing a big butcher’s knife out of a block along the way and keeping it positioned at chest level, ready to strike.
I can’t help but marvel at what a badass my ex-girlfriend has turned into.
She reappears with a grocery bag overflowing with ammo. We duck behind the kitchen island again to regroup and reload. I keep my shotgun pointed at the kitchen window.
“We could bunker down in the back,” I say. “The door’s thick.”
“No way.” She shakes her head. “We’d be trapped.”
“Then we have to make it to the truck.” I pat my pocket to make sure my keys are there. “If they haven’t blown it up or something.”
We nod to each other in agreement. The messed-up thing is that we’ve been in this sort of situation together before, back at Paradise High. Only back on campus, we had superpowered aliens on our side. Now it’s just us against a bunch of Mogs.
But then, I tend to forget that I have friends who always seem to come through for me.
There’s a giant roar outside, like a damned dragon has suddenly appeared out of the sky.
“Shit,” I say, imagining some kind of huge Mog creature that’s going to tear the roof off the house at any second. “We’re dead.”
“No,” Sarah says as she reloads. Her face actually lights up. “We’re saved.”
Most of the Mog gunfire that had been focused on the house suddenly disappears. They’re shooting at something else. The roar sounds again, but this time there’s something almost familiar about it—something I recognize. It’s not unlike a beagle’s howl.
Bernie-fucking-Kosar is destroying the Mogs in the front yard.
I grin.
“Can BK hold the bastards off?” I ask.
“For a little while,” Sarah says. “Probably.”
“Now. Go. This is our chance.”
We move in unison, running in a crouched position until we’re taking cover on opposite sides of the front doorway. Peeking out, I can see a bunch of piles of ash around the lawn, as well as at least a dozen shark-faces attacking BK. I actually wasn’t that far off when I thought there was a dragon in the yard. John Smith’s dog is now a huge beast, all muscle and claws and snapping teeth. One of the Mogs blasts him in the leg with a cannon, and in response BK impales him with one of two horns that have grown out of his head.
“Holy hell,” I mutter.
“Go!” Sarah shouts. “BK will catch up.”
And so we run. Luckily, most of the Mogs are focused on BK, and the others we cross paths with are so distracted by the roaring of the beast and shouts of their fellow pale-faced douche bags that we catch them by surprise. A few shots and they’re nothing but dust. We’re in the truck quickly, and before any of them are the wiser, I’ve got the engine on and am gunning it down the little path that leads to the street.
A lone Mog stands between us and the open gate to Yellowhammer Ranch. He holds a blaster out in front of him.
“Get down,” I shout to Sarah as he fires.
I swerve, losing control of the truck for a few seconds but missing the blasts from the Mog’s weapon. I regain control just in time to ram into him. The alien rolls over the hood and roof, landing in the bed of my truck, where he tries to get up on his feet again. Sarah leans out the window and shoots him, and I swear to God we really are the heroes in an action movie.
“Bernie!” she shouts, her head still out the window.
In the rearview mirror, I can see Bernie’s form start to change, and then suddenly he’s soaring through the air as an oversized golden bird. He lets out a shrill call as his giant wings beat against the wind, propelling him forward. He lands in the back of the truck, returning to his familiar dog form just before he hits the bed. Half a second passes before his wet nose is against the back windshield. He barks and pants and looks like a worried, but totally normal, floppy-eared dog as we pass through the gate to Yellowhammer Ranch.
“Holy crap,” Sarah says. She’s breathing deeply. “Okay. We’re okay. Whoa.”
“We don’t know that for sure.” I hand my burner over to Sarah. “Text GUARD. Tell him we just escaped the Mogs.”
It takes her a few seconds to get the text out because her hands are shaking a little. I keep my eyes scouring the road, the fields and the sky, terrified that more Mogs are going to show up at any moment.
“Okay, it’s—” she starts, but she’s cut off by the ringing phone.
GUARD is calling.
“Holy shit” is how I answer the phone.
“How far are you and Sarah from the house?” GUARD asks. His voice is the same slightly distorted, electronic-sounding one from the night when he warned me about the FBI trap.
I glance in the rearview mirror.
“I don’t know. Maybe a mile? I can still see it in—”
I’m cut off by the sound of an explosion. I hit the brakes out of sheer confusion and instinct—and so I can whip my head around and see it for myself. The ranch, barn—the entire area surrounding our safe house—has gone up in a huge ball of fire. I have to shield my eyes.
“That should take care of any Mogs remaining on the property and thoroughly wipe our tracks,” GUARD says.
Sarah turns to me, her mouth hanging open.
“GUARD, dude,” I say. “Did you just blow up the safe house?” My voice starts to get louder. “Were we working on top of a bomb this whole damned time?”
“I can guarantee that the only way that bomb was going to go off was if I wanted it to, and that would only happen in an instance like this. You were both perfectly safe.”
I don’t know what to say. I just sit on the phone in silence, hardly breathing. Trying to wrap my head around this.
“Get the truck moving again,” GUARD says. “The two of you are coming to my home base.”
Suddenly, the GPS on my truck activates, plotting a course to some place outside of Atlanta.
“I’ll see you in a few hours,” GUARD says.
Then he hangs up.