“They attacked everything and anything that moved. I stopped the car, locked the doors, though I had no idea how much that helped, then hid, covering myself with a blanket.”
I’d already read articles saying that these creatures hunted by smell, but there were literally dozens of screaming and bleeding people all around me. But no claws came tearing into the windows of my minivan. And no saw-edged mandibles lunged for me. And when it was all quiet again, minutes or hours, I didn’t know, I poked my head out to survey the carnage. Jackets and bags lay abandoned on the street. There were splotches of blood on the ground, but no bodies. I knew where they were—all taken back to the nest to feed the swarm.
Flyers still circled above, and I waited for them to leave, my eyes glued to my phone screen as the reports came in.
“By the time I thought it was safe enough to continue driving home, men in uniform had already arrived. They escorted me home, then told me to keep listening for news of a potential evacuation or a safe location to meet.”
The news never came. Nothing did. We were already on our own.
“I saw my first Xarc’n warrior a few days later.”
It had to be one of the hunters here. I never did figure out which one it was for sure, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was Jorg’k. He’d been the one clearing the scourge in the area where our group had settled after realizing the world would never be the same, and we were better working together than trying to survive alone.
“What was your first reaction to us?”
I thought about it. “That you guys were scary. Strong, and on our side. But scary.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m glad we all teamed up.”
He looked pensive for a moment, then said, “Yes, we are a good team.”
Chapter 16: Ror’k
“Someone on the inside, you say.” Roger’s frown deepened as he leaned back against his chair. “Then that makes sense why the boys didn’t just come to one of us for help. I’m glad I didn’t let them do anything permanent. They are children after all.”
We were still in my shuttle. The centicreep was still wrapped around the ship. I could just take off and fling it off the hull, but the flyers were out now, and I didn’t want to attract their attention with Dottie in my shuttle. Since the creature was no longer actively trying to break in, I let it be. I was waiting for the creature to make the mistake of crawling over the working end of one of my ship’s blasters.
The two males I’d helped earlier by netting those scuttlers turned out to be the missing older brothers of the youngsters I’d been giving impromptu training lessons to. Dottie explained that they had been coerced into doing the NEM’s bidding to protect their brothers, and everything had fallen into place. I’d known in my heart that those were good youngsters.
“The bad news is that the boys are no longer in the settlement. We sent them outside. I had to do it. I advocated rehabilitation, but they wouldn’t give us any information, and people are angry.”
“That’s understandable,” Dottie said. “I was angry about what they did to my library, but I get it now. I am sure once the truth comes out, the others will forgive them.”
“I hope they do too,” Roger said. “They’ve been good trade partners to us in the past. And I’m glad to know that Shawn and Kai are still alive. They were the ones I dealt with before. And between you and me, the boys didn’t try very hard to grab the good stuff.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
A smirk tugged at Roger’s lips. “The books might technically be what the NEM wanted, but they were the most useless and outdated ones in our collection. The medical supplies and food too. Even the seeds. They tried to take the old and expiring stuff. They hid the good shit in one of our storage rooms, so that even if they did succeed, we’d find the missing supplies eventually. It led us to believe that they didn’t want to do this in the first place.”
“Malicious compliance. I have heard about this human term before,” I said. “They’re following mission protocol, but in the most useless way possible.”
“Good for them.” Dottie grinned.
“We’ll send a team out to look for them when the flyers leave. They should be smart enough to sit pretty.” Roger sighed. “We still don’t know how they managed to call the scourge in like that. The hunters didn’t detect any lure signal. It was timed too well to be a coincidence.”
“It isn’t,” I said. “The New Earth Militia is doing it. They called in the scourge when they left here too. They left Dottie and the two males to deal with them.” I retrieved the objectfrom my pouch, which was still sitting on the floor outside of the decontamination unit. “Does this look familiar?”
“That looks like an old air tag,” Roger said.
I frowned at the unfamiliar word.
“It’s a tracking device meant to help locate people’s belongings,” Dottie explained.
“And you said the bugs were attracted to it?”
“Only the ones already here. No new scourge came in. My devices do not detect a luring signal coming from it.”
