“We have no more weapons!” the teenager pleaded with me. “They figured out how to take all metal. We come in nearly naked now. Any clothing with metal, like jeans or underwire bra is gone.” She sobbed.
What the hell? Is that why the breeders had gone silent? They’d finally figured out how to copy us in without weapons?
That meant people with hip replacements and pacemakers… I couldn’t think about that.
The man was looking up at me from the ground, his eyes pleading.
I was probably going to regret this. But I had Clyde and Skyhome and he didn’t.
Pulling the gun over my head, I handed it to him.
“Start rounding up old ammo and weapons and make a cache. Bury them and mark them with a stack of stones. Spread the word to others and try to find the caches when you enter the Dream War.”
He stood, gripping the gun like a life raft. “I will. Thank y—look out!”
Before the warning had fully left his mouth, I felt the razor-sharp tentacle wrap around my ankle and pull. I’d told Clyde to back up and I’d pushed the guy away from me so there was literally nothing to grab on to. Within two seconds I was fully plunged into the green fluid and being dragged to the bottom of the lake.
I’d barely gotten a full breath in before I’d hit the liquid and went under. Now I was holding my breath while searching my pant leg for my knife. No one was going to get me out of this one; it was all me. I kicked and thrashed against the beast dragging me, trying to dislodge him, but really only served to tighten his hold on my ankle.
There!My fingers wrapped around my pocketknife and relief flooded through me. In two seconds I had the blade extended, and that’s when another tentacle wrapped around my upper body. It was getting ready to ingest me whole. I’d seen these things gulp down a grown man. I needed to act fast, because I was also running out of air. With some serious ninja knife skills that would make Master Aki proud, I lashed out at the tentacle holding me. First the one around my upper body, and when that let go, I bent forward and started to hack away at the one around my ankle. Pain sliced into my calf as I realized I’d accidently cut myself in my mad rush to be free of this monster, but when I gouged him good, he let go. Then it was a fight for my life.
I’d never swam with such desperation before, such frenzied movements. All I could think about was reaching the surface and getting a huge gulp of air.
‘Kit!’Dawn’s voice blazed through my mind. Her meds must have worn off; she was probably in tune again with her hive mind and was seeing what Clyde was seeing.
Bursting through the top of the water like a starved maniac, I inhaled mouthfuls of precious oxygen. Paddling like crazy, I reached the edge and was surprised when the old man I’d given the gun to hauled me up by the armpits with shocking strength. I thought he’d have left by now. Dragging me backward a good twenty feet, he finally dropped me onto the ground.
“Jesus, kid, I thought you were a goner.” He faced me, green stuff all over his hands and arms, the gun hanging from his neck. His eyes were wide, mouth slack.
I couldn’t stop breathing heavily like my lungs wanted to be sure we would in fact still be able to get air.
“Me too,” was all I said. “Thanks,” I added, because even though the bastard jacked me of my gun, he’d stayed, and that said something.
“You gonna be alright?” He eyed my bleeding ankle and upper arms. The damn skid had left a good amount of puncture wounds, but nothing was gushing; it all seemed superficial. Ronnie would be able to fix me up, and I think a smidge of the morphine was still in my system, because I wasn’t in a crazy amount of pain.
“I’ll be okay. Thanks.”
They bade me farewell and I got to my feet, walked briskly over to the lake and dunked the tub inside before heaving it up on shaky legs and running backward to avoid any more skid issues.
I’d forgotten about Dawn and that I hadn’t replied to her, but by the calm way Clyde was watching me, I assumed he was in contact with her.
“Let’s go to Skyhome,” I told him, still using my hand to plug the hole in the tub. The liquid was heavy and my arms were bleeding, so getting on Clyde while the sloshing water threatened to spill over was difficult, but I managed.
As soon as we were airborne, I laid the heavy tub across Clyde’s back, taking the weight off my bleeding arms a bit.
‘Is this weight okay?’I asked him, and prayed he said yes.
‘Won’t fly as fast, but is okay.’
I sagged in relief and decided I needed to check my wounds. Bleeding, even slowly, over the course of a one-hour flight wasn’t going to end well.
Keeping my hand on the hole to plug it, I started to probe my wounds with my free hand. The ones on my upper arms were okay; they didn’t go deep enough to worry me about blood loss, but my ankle was slowly dripping, leaving a trickle of blood throughout the Dream War.
With a sigh, I heaved my ankle up to inspect it and almost toppled backward.
‘Careful. Clyde not used to carrying humans.’
‘Sorry.’
