I WAKE UP TO SOMEONE POUNDING ON MY HOTEL room door and am on my feet and throwing clothes on in record time, ready to fly out the bathroom window and disappear into the woods. I forget that I have a damned gunshot wound on my arm until I pull my bag over my shoulder and end up wincing in pain, grinding my teeth together to keep from shouting. I’m just about to make a dash towards the window in the bathroom when I notice that I’m still logged onto the blog’s chat client—I remembered to keep the computer plugged in this time—and that GUARD has sent me like a dozen messages telling me to expect someone, and to answer when they come knocking and to not use my real name or info when they ask for it.
Reluctantly, I look through the door’s peephole. There’s a man with a clipboard. He’s wearing the kind of shirt that has his name sewed onto a patch on his chest. I slowly open the door, keeping it chained.
“Hey,” I say through the few inches of space.
“You expecting a big delivery?” he asks. He smells like a cigar and is sweaty, even though it can’t be very hot outside.
“Uh . . . yeah?” This must be another one of GUARD’s care packages.
He holds the clipboard out in front of himself, obviously waiting for me to open up the door so that he can hand it to me. Instead, I squeeze my right hand out and grab it, sliding it in through the crack. The man sighs loudly and mutters something about what a pain in the ass this job has been today.
“I need you to sign the top one and fill out the one underneath,” he says.
“Okay. Give me a second.”
The top form on the clipboard is from some towing-and-cargo service that wants a signature as proof of delivery. The other page has something to do with a title, and wants my name and home address.
GUARD’s message suddenly makes sense.
Still trying to wrap my brain around what’s happening, I rely on the name GUARD used in his first package delivery and that I’ve been using at motels. I sign “Jolly Roger” on the forms. As for my address, I think of the dogs waiting for me at home: 182 Abby St. in Dozer, OH, with a random assortment of numbers as a zip code.
When I hand back the forms, I actually open the door. The man takes a look at the pages.
“Interesting name,” he says.
“It’s, uh, a family thing.” I shrug.
I’m expecting him to hand me a box, but instead he holds out a pair of keys.
“It’s gassed up,” he says as I take the keys and stare at them dumbly. “Per the instructions we received.”
“Instructions?” I ask, but the man’s already halfway to a big tow truck parked right in front of my room.
“Make sure you get her insured,” he calls back to me. “They’re not supposed to let you drive off without proof of insurance, but . . . hell, whatever you said on the phone to the boss at the dealership must have been pretty convincing to drag me out of bed so early.”
He starts to walk away as I stand dumbfounded in the doorway to my hotel room. I click the Unlock button on the keys in my hand, and a shiny, blue, extended-cab truck honks in the parking lot.
I run back inside to the computer.
Me: You’re kidding me with this right?
GUARD: It should get you to where you need to go.
Me: This is crazy.
GUARD: As crazy as invaders from Mogadore?
GUARD: I figured I might owe you after everything you’ve been through.
Me: What about my other truck?
GUARD: A separate towing company is picking it up in an hour and taking it to a secure location. Get anything you need out of it now.
Something clicks in my brain, even over the rush of the fact that I have a new truck.
Me: Wait. How did u kno where I am?
GUARD: I’ve been monitoring the netbook I sent you. I can track it, even when it’s powered down. Once I knew the place you were staying, I just had to nudge the front desk for your room number.
A weird feeling overtakes me—something I haven’t felt since Sarah started dating John. A particular sort of anger that can only come from realizing that I’ve been betrayed by someone I thought was looking out for me.
GUARD has been keeping tabs on me this whole time. Why? I start to worry that this whole “drive towards Alabama” thing is just a prank.
Me: What the hell man?
GUARD: Apologies. I had to make sure we were working towards the same goal. There’s a lot of double-crossing going on in the world right now.
GUARD: If it makes any difference, I trust you.
Before I can respond, he messages me an address in Alabama.
Me: Is this where you’re at?
GUARD: It’s what I’ve gotten set up for you. Home sweet home. I’ll be stopping by to see you soon.
GUARD: Now if I were you, I’d get the hell out of Louisiana.
I sign off. I’m about to pack up my netbook when I realize that I didn’t write to Sarah yesterday, so I sit back on the bed and open up my email.
Sarah—
I don’t even know what to say about the last twenty-four hours. You know what’s funny? When we were both still in Paradise, I actually thought that maybe we’d go to prom together. Not dating or anything, just together. I was worried about prom. Getting a tux and corsage and crap.
Yesterday I got shot at by a bunch of FBI agents. Sarah, I hope you’re okay. . . .
I’m not saying my old truck was a piece of crap or anything, but this new one is kind of the shit. I’m still pissed that GUARD’s been secretly tracking me this whole time, but my new wheels help make up for that.
I plug the address GUARD sent me into the truck’s GPS system and head towards Alabama. My destination is about eight hours away. I can make it to my new home base by the late afternoon. That leaves me with plenty of time to figure out what the hell has happened in the last few days. Time to digest—just me, an energy drink and eight hours of open road and news radio.
Some of the FBI is working with the Mogs. I don’t know how many agents, or what percentage. Actually, if the FBI is working with them, then there are probably other agencies on their side as well. And some of the government is in on it too. Sanderson is proof enough of that. There are some people rebelling, but again, it could be just Walker and her team or half the FBI. There are so many variables that it’s impossible for me to even begin to imagine things like odds or stats. All I know for sure is that the majority of the world knows nothing about what’s really going on. If they did . . .
That’s where my focus should be. Trying to convince people that there’s an actual threat here. That there are aliens who will think nothing of destroying our planet if it means getting what they want—whatever that is. Who might even be gearing up for a full-scale invasion or something. I need to find more proof of what’s happening. I need to turn They Walk Among Us into a movement. Maybe even an army.
And it all goes back to Sarah again. Not just because I promised—and want—to protect her, but because we need her to get to the other Garde. She’s our connection. But I still have no idea how to find her. I need to step my search for her up to the next level. I think about posting a message to her on TWAU but realize that the dumbest thing I could do is get her face or name out there where some assclown might see her and try to tell me where she is, only to alert other authorities. I should discuss options with GUARD. Maybe he can pull some hacker moves and break into her email account or something. Maybe he can even track her face using security cameras.
We have to find her. Not for her sake or mine, but for the world’s. So we can create a united front with the Loric.
And it would be great to have someone helping me out. In person. Someone I knew and trusted and cared for. Someone to keep me from being lost and alone in all this.
At a little drugstore just across the Alabama border, I stop to buy butterfly bandages. I try to remember a time when I didn’t have problems like taking care of gunshot wounds or running from government agencies. It wasn’t that long ago. Just a few months. A weird thing happens as I think about Friday nights under stadium lights and hanging out with my buddies after games. Usually when I do this, I wish I could go back and enjoy not knowing what’s going on in the world. But now I’m glad I have a much bigger purpose. I can do great things.
Not that I wasn’t great before. I’m just in a position now where I can do some truly capital-A Awesome shit.
The address GUARD gave me takes me through Huntsville, which looks like a pretty good-sized town, and then out into nothingness and a series of back roads and dirt trails that lead me closer and closer to the edge of a national park. I start to worry that the GPS has completely failed at its job of getting me to the base until a structure finally comes into view. It’s almost completely hidden by hills and trees, set back from a dirt path. The GPS tells me that I’ve arrived at my destination just as I stop in front of a giant wrought-iron gate topped with the words “Yellowhammer Ranch.”
It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in a long time.
There’s no lock on the gate, which is good for me right now but also means that the place probably has shit security. As I drive over a cattle guard and onto the property, my stomach starts to clench up a little bit. This whole thing feels really weird—as if I’m trespassing on someone else’s property.
The house is one story and looks like a big log cabin.
Great. I’m attending Fugitive Camp.
I stay alert. I’m not going to do what I did at the warehouse and just barge in—though, at this point, the FBI or Mogs would have to go pretty far out of their way in order to track me to this remote location. I knock on the front door since I have no idea if I’m actually in the right place or not. When no one answers, I circle the house just to make sure there’s not some rancher out herding sheep or whatever it is people do in places like this. But there’s only overgrown fields marked off by barbed-wire fences and a barn out back that’s missing almost all of one side and is obviously empty. A big patch of grass in front of it has been flattened and burned in places, like something really big was sitting on top of it that was only recently moved. I shrug and look around, guessing that there was a tractor or something there that got hauled off.
Back on the front porch, I try the doorknob. The house is unlocked.
“Hello?” I call, but there’s no sound or movement, so I head in and find a light switch. The place looks like I’d expect a country home to look. There’s a lot of oversized furniture, mostly made out of wood. A cow skull hangs over the fireplace. A leather couch sits in front of a projector-style big-screen TV that’s probably as old as I am and I’m guessing weighs a ton. I open up the refrigerator in the kitchen out of curiosity and see that it’s stocked with essentials: milk, water, and even a few steaks. The pantry’s got a bunch of food in it too. Everything looks fresh.
Thanks, GUARD, for making sure I don’t starve.
I check out a few of the bedrooms, but there’s nothing really interesting until I stop in front of a quilt hanging at the end of a hallway near the back of the house. There’s a note on it that says “Look behind me.”
Huh?
I pull back the quilt and find a solid sheet of metal that’s got a little rectangle of reddish-colored glass on the right side where a doorknob or handle might normally be. It looks just like the little fingerprint scanner on my netbook.
“No way,” I murmur as I raise my thumb to the little port.
There’s a beeping noise, and the glass lights up green. The door starts clicking loudly, and I take a few steps back, concerned about what I’m going to find on the other side.
After a few seconds, the thick metal door swings open a bit, and I push it in farther as I enter the room. I immediately see about a dozen computer monitors covering one of the walls. Each of them is streaming footage from the areas in and around the house. There must be cameras located all over the grounds.
So much for laughing at the lack of security.
There’s a sleek-looking computer set up at a desk opposite the other monitors. A couple of burner phones sit beside it. I turn one on and find that GUARD’s number is already programmed into it, then pocket the burner.
“What the hell is . . . ,” I say as I take everything in. But then I turn around and never finish the question.
The wall behind me is lined with shelves. There are several handguns, rifles, and knives sitting on them, along with a few things that I assume are weapons but don’t immediately recognize. In the center is a folder with something written on it in black marker. I pick it up.
I hope you’re ready for war.
-G