Earth: Population 2 (Paradise Lost Book 1) (16 page)

He opened the computer as Jay Dovetail shouted commands to his crew. “You’ve been watching my movie. I thought you said you hadn’t seen it.”

“I said I’d seen it a few times.” Guilt dripped off me. This was my friend I was lying to. Okay, he’d become more than a friend, at least in my eyes. I couldn’t keep up the charade any longer. “To tell you the truth, I’ve seen it so many times I can recite the lines along with you. I love that movie. It brings me peace when I’ve had a hard day at the grocery store, and when I feel like I’ll never amount to anything in my life. If Jay Dovetail can rise up from the dungeon to a captain, then there’s hope for me.”

“It’s just a movie.” Gale shut it off. I didn’t need to look to know pictures of him were plastered all over my screen in a grand collage. His face fell, and he glanced at me again as if I’d betrayed him. “This computer is yours?”

I slapped my hand on my face. “I wanted to tell you. But, you went on and on about how you hate crazy fans, and you were the last person in the world. I needed your help.”

“I can’t believe it.” He put the computer down. Hurt shone in his eyes. “I thought I’d finally met someone who liked me for me, someone normal.”

“Gale, I’m sorry.”

He turned away and started walking to the door. “Come on.”

I grabbed my backpack and laptop and struggled to keep up. “Where are we going?”

He turned back and faced me. The chill in his gaze froze me to the core. “You wanted to rescue the world, right? So, what are we waiting for?”

I stared at him in defiance. “We were going to celebrate.” We were going to spend time just the two of us before who knew what happened to tear us apart. Looks like I’d done enough of that already.

Gale threw his hands up in the air. “Celebrate what? The end of the world? Why don’t we just get it over with? It’s time.”

“Gale, wait.” I followed him through the house, grabbing what I could. Good thing my backpack was always packed with the rock, among other necessary things, like granola bars.

He barreled through the front door and I followed him across the front lawn to where the ship sat. “You’re not thinking right. Our guns aren’t even loaded.”

“Load them on the way.”

I’d wanted to leave every minute of every day since we’d found the ship, and now my knees weakened, and I could barely walk. I wasn’t ready. I collapsed to the ground, dropping everything in the grass. “No.”

“Julie, you’ve been bugging me these past two days to go, and now you say no?”

Tears rolled down my cheeks as I broke apart. “Not like this. Not with you mad at me.”

Gale’s face softened a bit, but he still held something back. “I’m not mad at you, I’m just…disappointed.”

I centered myself, trying to make sense of my rambling thoughts. I only had one chance to explain that what we had was so beyond a Hollywood crush. “Maybe I did like you like a crazy fan at first. But then we spent all this time together, and I got to know you—the real you. How you like science and SpaghettiOs, and how you take a long time to wake up before anything makes sense.” I smiled to myself. “How you suck at cards.”

He even smiled with that one.

Encouraged, I went on. “I realized you’re just a normal guy who leaves his socks on the floor. A guy who has his own problems stuck in a situation that you didn’t choose. So what if it’s acting in a movie or being stuck at a cash register? I know what it’s like to feel trapped. I get you, Gale. I understand so much about you, and I see so much of that in myself. What I’m trying to say is, this whole thing between you and me is not some superficial fan obsession. It’s way beyond that now, at least for me.”

Gale breathed deeply, and I let my words sink in, hoping I got through to him. It was the first time in my life I spoke with such raw vulnerability. I spoke from the depths of my soul.

Behind us, something snapped and sizzled. I spun around, and my pulse jolted into overdrive. “What’s going on?”

“It’s the electric fence.” Gale pulled me back. “It’s failing.”

“No.” I wasn’t ready. All that time back in the mansion I thought I was, but, faced with the inevitable, all I could do was stand frozen in place. “That’s impossible.” It’s not like we used a ton of power, and generators last years, right?

“It has plenty of fuel.” He yanked me back toward the house. “The Sparkies must have found a way to turn it off. Come on, Julie. We have to get out of here. Pack everything you can.”

This isn’t happening.
This was our oasis, our escape. How could they break it down and take the last thing we had away from us?

Gale pulled me back to the house. He shoved the guns into our backpacks along with some extra food. “Julie, you have to help me.”

Gale finding out about my crush, his disappointment in me, the Sparkies invasion of our space…. It all had overloaded my emotions. My body started shutting down. I couldn’t process what was going on.

Gale threw my backpack to me. “You have the rock in there, right?”

I caught the pack in slow motion and fumbled to get my arms through the straps. When they wouldn’t cooperate, I collapsed on the couch and buried my face in my hands. It was over.

“Julie.” Gale must have dropped everything he was doing, because he plopped down beside me. “I’m sorry about before.” He pulled my hands away from my face. “Listen to me.”

I turned to him in despair. Everything seemed too late.

“We can do this. We’re still a team. You said before that how you felt about me was way beyond a crush.”

I nodded.

“It’s beyond that for me, too.”

Before I could react, he pulled me up and pressed his lips against mine. His hand closed on my back, and he pulled me against him like he’d never let go. I kissed him back, threading my hands through his hair, desperate to keep what we had in such a fractured world. At the end of it all, I found the one thing I was looking for all my life. I felt special.

He pulled back and held me close, pressing his forehead against mine. “I don’t want to lose you, Julie.”

“I don’t want to lose you, either.” My lower lip trembled.

“Then, we have to go now.” He stood and offered his hand. “Come on.”

We snuck out the side door and crawled along the hedges surrounding the house. Static filled the air as the Sparkies surrounded the building. I didn’t want to think of them going through our stuff, invading all the special places we’d shared. They’d violated the one last thing I’d found sacred.

“They must have found a way to cut the electricity,” Gale whispered. He pointed to the corner of the house. “We’ll get a clear path to the ship from over there.”

I followed him to the edge of the foundation. We peered around the side of the house to the main grounds. Sparkies climbed the statues, splashed in the fountain, and swept through the bushes. Three of them stood by the salt containers, testing the white grains with their elongated fingers.

“They don’t seem interested in their own ship,” Gale whispered. “I think we can make a run for it.”

My stomach hollowed as I thought of us running through the open grass with the Sparkies closing in. It was like some awful episode of National Geographic when you see the lions rounding up the antelope. I was never good at track.

Gale must have sensed my doubt. He took my hand and squeezed. “We’ll be together. I’m not leaving you behind.”

I nodded, biting my lip. The places where they’d stung me before burned in my memory.

We cocked our guns, counted to three, then sprang from the bushes, launching toward the ship.

Sparkies hissed around us, raising their tails to emit a staticky alarm. Gale ran like a track star, his long legs taking one step for my two. I huffed beside him, already losing momentum. We zigzagged through the garden, trampling the daisies.

I stumbled, and my heart leapt to my throat as the ground came up and grass forced its way into my eyes and mouth.

Game over. I should have known I’d never make it. The sting of defeat kicked me in the gut.

Gale pulled me up and yanked me forward. The Sparkies surrounded us, lashing their tails through the air. We ducked, backing up as they corralled us in.

We started shooting, carving a path through the line. The gunshots numbed my hearing as the kickback stung my arm. We dashed forward and reached the ship.

“I’m out of bullets.” Gale dropped his gun and dug for the smaller one inside his pack.

“Go in and close the hatch. I’ll cover for you.” I backed up into the hatchway, shooting the closest Sparkies. There were too many of them to keep them all back. We had seconds, if that.

The hatch started closing, and I backed up, shooting the elongated hands that reached inside. Finally, the hatch sealed, and the engines hummed with life.

I collapsed into my seat in the cockpit, my entire body shaking. “Where are we going to go?”

Gale focused on the controls as we rose into the sky. Sparkies fell off our wings, tumbling to the masses filling the courtyard below. “I figure, we don’t have much time before they call in reinforcements and track the ship.” His face was solemn. “Only one place left to go.”

I reached over and touched his arm. “I’m with you.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

COMPLAINT

My pulse pumped in overdrive as we flew to the alien ship. Apprehension crawled down my back and settled in the pit of my stomach along with a more disturbing feeling of doubt. Could we really outsmart a race who’d designed interstellar travel and highly effective weapons of mass destruction? Or at least mass disappearance.

We had to try.

Mom and Hailey, here I come.

Gale reached over and squeezed my hand. “Whatever happens, we’re in this together.”

I nodded, dredging up my hatred of the Sparkies. Anger was much easier to feel than fear. They’d taken everything from me—my best friend, my mom, my job, my life. Time to take something back. “Let’s go kick some alien butt.”

The bright red and greens of the Aurora Borealis glistened around the ship. This close, it was like flying into a rainbow. It would have been breathtakingly gorgeous if I hadn’t dreaded this trip would be our last.

I tapped my foot on the rifle on the floor for reassurance. At least, we weren’t going down without a fight.

Another ship flew by us, and I ducked, hoping the pilot hadn’t seen inside. “That was close.”

Gale shook his head and flew in a direct line behind it. “Guess they don’t know how to take turns around here.”

The bay glistened like eternal heaven as white light illuminated the silver metal inside the structure. The lead ship slowed as it entered.

“Good thing they went first.”

“Why?”

“So I can mimic their flight pattern and speed.”

We rose on a path level to the bay and slowed as well. Inside, white strands of fibrous material glowed and sparked around the walls. In the center, a clear ball holding what looked like an electric storm threw random streams of lightning around the bay.

The other ship flew into an alcove in the wall. We followed it to another empty alcove a few ships down. Gale shut off the engine, and we both breathed a sigh of relief even though the adventure had only started.

“We’re inside.” The moment felt surreal. For the past twenty days, I’d dreamed about being here, and here I was. It was almost too easy. Like they’d let us in. I picked up my backpack and my rifle. My smaller gun rested in the hollow of my back.

Gale wiggled his eyebrows. “Let’s take a tour.”

I slipped my rock into my jeans’ pocket just in case I needed to use it quickly. “Do you have your rock?”

Gale tapped his shirt pocket. “Nice and safe.”

We checked to make sure no Sparkies lurked around and exited the craft. At the apex of the ship fibrous strands stretched down into one giant Sparkie who sat on a white throne at the helm, staring through a clear panel at where the dark city of Boston waited to be saved.

I elbowed Gale. “Who do you suppose that is? The queen?”

Gale shrugged. “At least we know who’s in charge.”

“Like we’re going to file a complaint?”

“Let’s hope we don’t have to.” Gale pulled me forward.

A balcony stretched around the lightning ball, and we peered over the edge. Hundreds of levels sprawled beneath us, another twenty or so rose over our heads. My breathing constricted in my throat. “How are we ever going to find them?”

Gale put a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll do this one level at a time.”

We snuck around the lightning ball. The fibrous strands on the walls sparked as though they read our presence as we walked by them. Hopefully, they read the electromagnetic energy from our rocks and thought we were Sparkies. Whatever the case, I made sure not to go near enough for them to touch me. The strands separated at an archway leading into a corridor circling the structure.

Holding our guns, we tiptoed ahead.

The corridor stretched forward in one long sheet of metal. Dim blue lights glowed at even intervals.

Panic rose up inside me. “Where are all the doors?”

“Look here.” Gale pointed his gun at an indent in the panel the size of our rocks. “All we need is a key.”

I took my rock out and held it close to the indent. “Should I try it?”

“There’s only one way to find out if your mom is here.”

“What if Sparkies are in there?” We’d been too lucky so far.

His gaze leveled with me. “Julie, there’re Sparkies everywhere. We’ll deal with them.”

I nodded and pressed the rock in the hole. It warmed at the touch like an electric current rode through it. Dim blue light glowed under my hand. A portion of the wall grew wavy, like it melted, and then the metal disappeared.

Inside sat a wall of containers, each one the same size and shape as the ones in the ship we’d stolen. We entered the room, and the door reappeared and hardened behind us.

Something hissed from the opposite end.