The Deadliest Earthling Read online

  He laughed inwardly but abandoned the thought at a tinge of sadness. What were the chances any of his friends were still alive? He pictured them the way he’d last seen them together. Cleaning the crud off Sarah’s dad’s military vehicle.

  He thought about his and Hamiad’s first prank, vandalizing a bathroom. For two twelve-year-olds, they’d made quite a mess, even sticking a cherry bomb in one toilet. Now that he knew what the janitors had to deal with, he doubted he’d ever vandalize anything again.

  Morris nudged his elbow. Johnny swerved to the side as an onslaught of water shot out from an opening on the side. Too late. He shivered at the cold sewage piling down on him.

  Then he noticed sunlight spilling in from a gutter hole ahead. Together, they rushed to freedom.

  In fact, Johnny scampered out through the gutter so quickly, he didn’t bother checking his surroundings. If he did, he would’ve noticed the Anunnaki patrolling the street.

  Chapter 35

  There were three of them strolling down the street toward Johnny, each with their black visors activated. Stay down, Johnny urged his cousin. At the same time, he heard Morris clambering onto the road.

  But the Anunnaki didn’t seem to notice either of them. He clutched Morris’s shoulder, keen on keeping it that way. When the Anunnaki were well past seeing them, he relaxed and let himself sag over, his gut still churning. The muck covered them, he realized, all but concealing their body heat.

  Buzzing alerted him to the flies gathering all over him. He swatted at them, sludge flying off as he did. The doorways, niches, and walls around them offered plenty of hiding spots, especially if they got creative. No reason to hinder themselves with the crap. They ran over to a vendor stand.

  Containers of apples, pomegranates, and dates were thrown along the floor. They would’ve made a good meal, but Johnny couldn’t eat anything for a few hours. They threw their arms and bodies around, flinging the sludge off, and scraped out the bits entrenched in their hair.

  “Let’s never do that again,” Morris said.

  “I don’t know, I heard it’s good for your skin,” Johnny said, plumping his still-brown face with a grin.

  After dousing themselves with all the water in their canteens, the smell was tolerable. Still disgusting, but tolerable.

  A chilling screech echoed through the street. Johnny’s head whipped up to see two Anunnaki stumble backward, bullet wounds decorating their arms and chests with red.

  One flicker dropped to its side, the other on its back. Suddenly five Anunnaki stormed into the fray, crying out in alarm, and dove into shooting positions along the road.

  The unseen insurgents went silent, leaving the Naga to carry the two injured to the side of the road.

  The militia deserved props for troubling the Anunnaki like this, but Johnny doubted they had the strength to force them out of the city. What he needed was to find and convince their leader to help him reach the bunker.

  A loud crack pulled his attention back to the battlefield. He’d heard plenty of gunshots. The crack sounded stronger, like a rocket-propelled grenade.

  Johnny crouched and gestured for Morris to do the same.

  A squad of Anunnaki scooted along the road, waving their palms around. A dog ran out from a cardboard box. Two flickers blasted it dead.

  “You think we should go somewhere a little safer?” Morris asked.

  Johnny nodded. He wasn’t going back in the sewers, but if there was a militia here, they must’ve traveled through a hidden network to avoid getting outright killed. Maybe through buildings, or even underground.

  They descended a set of stairs to a bazaar plaza. Like the stand above, shelves and counters lay scattered, fresh clothes, rugs, bowls of fruit, spices, and fresh meat strung in disarray. The Anunnaki must’ve burst in and let off a few pulse surges to scare everyone away.

  As if to confirm this, he caught a domineering figure at the edge of his vision. A single Anunnaki stood guard in the center of the plaza. They were as good as dead if the soldier scanned the bazaar with its visor.

  Johnny noticed a trail of clothes and fruits leading down an alley as if someone lost them trying to escape. They could use those clothes. More than that, they could use whatever outlet the runner had been going for.

  Johnny treated his every footstep as if he were walking over paper-thin ice. His cautious creeping spread to Morris, and together, they inched their way to a large brown house. They found the door unlocked, snuck in, and slumped down in the dank interior.

  Johnny’s eyes registered no Naga lurking among the bookshelf, coffee table, Persian rug, or couch. Relieved, he exhaled deeply and released the Conifer’s cloaking.

  There weren’t any traces of the militia. That surprised him. They had to be inside one of the buildings.

  He crossed the room and peered out the window. Down the road, Anunnaki were rounding up stray civilians. All this because of his stupid plan to try to bait the Ascendi into the city.

  As he and Morris reached the second floor, an old landscape painting fell off the wall, drawing his eyes to a balcony with a wooden plank linking to another structure. Two Anunnaki support units, called sirrushes, stalked below. From above, they resembled giant black metallic dogs with long, narrow necks and snakelike heads. Except that they were completely artificial lifeforms, programmed to aid the Anunnaki and carry supplies inside their bodies.

  With a pop, one deflated a soccer ball in the middle of the road under its “paw.”

  Johnny watched the sirrushes pass around a bend in the street, then he placed a hand on the board. It felt steady enough.

  He turned to Morris. “Shall we?”

  The board landed them inside a bedroom with a pile of dirty clothes sitting next to a bucket of soapy water. In the hall, someone had strewn shirts and pants. Johnny guessed the Naga had ordered the owners to leave without question. The other rooms were about as messy.

  He found no connectors to the nearby buildings and went downstairs, bringing him to another abandoned space. Only a shred of sunlight crept through the windows.

  “Oh man,” Morris groaned, peeking through one.

  “What?” Johnny asked, going over.

  Outside, Anunnaki were stalking the dirt road, their elongated heads rising above some of the mud-brick shacks. Upon first glance, he counted six Anunnaki plus two sirrushes.

  He spotted the black of their eye visors and yanked Morris away. Even a sliver of their energy signatures could give away their position.

  A sudden bang from upstairs snapped their heads over their shoulders. It sounded like someone had split a piece of wood. They exchanged panicked looks.

  Johnny scoured the room for a weapon. A wooden table offered a butter knife. He settled for that.

  “Stay here,” he said. He activated the Conifer’s cloaking and began creeping up the stairs.

  Clutching the knife in his left hand, he remembered the wound where he once stabbed himself. Thinking about that and Orun, he wondered how long before the Anunnaki would crack his Kheper code. What if they already had? Then the Khepers blocking his Conifer’s beacon could be traced, used for the completely opposite purpose.

  His heartbeat quickened at that possibility. As he reached the last step, he froze and let himself picture an Anunnaki lurking just around the corner. He’d lunge in and spring for its head. And what if it knocks the knife out of your hands? a tiny voice asked. With a trace of regret, he had to admit he still didn’t know how to beat an Anunnaki without a weapon.

  The upstairs hall looked the same as when they’d entered. So did the bedroom. Only the window had changed. The wooden board was gone.

  Johnny edged along the wall, hearing his boots squish as he maneuvered around a small stool. At the window, he relaxed with an exasperated breath. No Anunnaki were waiting to burst in. Instead, the board lay on the dirt below, one end splintered. The sight of an Anunnaki’s back a few feet away hinted that the flicker decided a wooden board connecting two buildings coul
d do no good.

  He sank from the window, not daring to close it. They were safe, but they were also trapped.

  Chapter 36

  The Anunnaki outside were saying something in Nebirian when Johnny pulled a grey thobe out of the soapy bucket and squeezed out the excess water on the living room rug.

  “It’s all yours,” he said to Morris.

  Morris stripped off his soiled thobe and chucked it to the other side of the room. His pants followed, leaving him with only his black boxers.

  “Is it weird that I feel like criticizing your flabbiness?” Johnny grinned. Also naked except for his grey boxers, the bulge on his biceps and the cross dividing his abs put his cousin’s belly to shame.

  Confusion conquered Morris’s face. “This is garbage. You drink all that beer and you still look sharper than me.”

  “Comes with the territory.” Johnny shrugged.

  “Speaking of territory, you mind taking these?” Morris kicked Johnny’s sewage-soaked pants over to him.

  “They’ve got to have a trash can around here somewhere,” Johnny said, collecting his dirty clothes. They had decided to use their predicament to clean themselves up. The clothes they wore through the sewers were lost causes, but the ones the locals left needed only a single wash.

  In the kitchen, Johnny stripped off his boxers and plugged all his dirty laundry into a wastebasket near one window. Through the yellow curtains the outlines of Anunnaki spawned momentary alarm in him. Just seeing them still unnerved him. If he’d had a gun or a real knife, it would be another matter altogether. With nothing between them but walls, the Naga could potentially find him and Morris any minute. And there wouldn’t be much they could do except pretend they were locals who had refused to leave.

  He returned to the living room to check if his boxers were dry enough to wear yet.

  “Hey, how about some warning?” Morris said, turning away.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make you jealous again,” Johnny said lightly.

  “I’m sure you’re used to being around naked guys, huh?”

  Johnny removed the candles and eating utensils from the table and placed them on the ground beside their rope, bundled-up tents, lighters, a Bible, and Orun’s earring. Then he grabbed the gold-purple-and-black-checkered tablecloth and wrapped it around his waist.

  “Is that better?”

  As he dipped a blue shirt into the bucket, Morris’s face brightened. “You know, I actually don’t feel hopeless about being stuck here.”

  Johnny sat on the sofa and thrummed his fingers on the cushions.

  He wasn’t exactly panicking himself, but the situation was far from optimal. If he let himself really play out the odds of surviving this, a blind-animal fear crept over him. Pure and primal. Like he was a sheep surrounded by wolves. Because Anunnaki didn’t normally evacuate civilians from cities. That wasn’t standard operating procedure for them. He’d only ever heard of them doing it if there were threats of bombs from resistance fighters. But that usually meant evacuating a few buildings. Not an entire city.

  Johnny finally responded.

  “You don’t?”

  “When I heard the Naga had captured Orun, I panicked. And then I thought, if the things in the Bible really were true, like blood and bones true, then…” Morris licked his lips in deep thought. “Then all the good stuff has to be true too. The part about Heaven and rewarding the faithful and the meek inheriting the Earth. I figured what was the point of being afraid anyway? Being afraid never got me anywhere with bullies. It was when I stopped worrying that things changed.”

  Johnny’s gaze drifted up to the ceiling. To the cracks and its unevenness. He didn’t know if the Bible was real the way his cousin was thinking. Even if the Ark of the Covenant existed, it couldn’t be exactly as the Bible said. There was probably some disconnect in the interpretation. But Morris’s words calmed him, and he didn’t want to argue.

  He peered at his cousin and studied him in appreciation. His face was worn and his brown hair damp, but his dark eyes were full of compassion. Johnny couldn’t remember the last time he stared at someone, to appreciate them being there. Probably with the Eagle a long time ago.

  Morris finished his clothes, laid them out, and sat against the wall.

  “Want to see if they’ve got alcohol in this place?”

  He was clearly bored, Johnny thought. Ironically, he couldn’t say he wanted to drink. Somehow, it seemed an ominous choice to make right now. He needed his senses.

  “Are you sick of the Bible?” Johnny’s tiredness seeped into his words. It came off sarcastically even though he meant it as an honest question.

  “You know I’ve read it, I don’t know, two dozen times. I have to.”

  “Why?”

  “I have a really bad memory.”

  Johnny smiled. He definitely knew what rereading the same material over and over felt like.

  They took turns sleeping and keeping watch. Morris offered Johnny the first rest, making the point that as the Keeper, he was the one more qualified to fight Anunnaki. He needed to rest more.

  So Johnny slept on the couch, not as comfortable as his hanging cargo net in New Bagram, but softer than the sofa in the bunker. He shut his eyes and let the heaviness form in his head. Little details flitting away. His thoughts and worries mixed, faded, colliding into one another. They sank into the canyons of his psyche, fuel for dreams.

  The next thing he knew, he stood in a giant crater, a gold tower jabbing out of the earth. Dozens and dozens of slaves shoveled through black dirt. Among them Sarah, Hamiad, Krem, and Skunk.

  His insides melted as he ran over to them. He shouted out, and they looked up at him. It was really them. Alive. Slaves, but alive. Only, then he spotted the Anunnaki overseers littering the black crater, preventing any chances of escape. His pulse raced in desperation, and the world around him broke apart.

  “Calm down,” Morris hissed.

  The living room materialized around him. Johnny felt the couch beneath him and something smothering his mouth. Instantly he bit. Morris pulled away his hand and cringed.

  “I’m okay. It was only a dream,” Johnny said as much to convince himself as his cousin.

  “You sure? I’ve never seen someone get that wild over a dream, and I’ve worked with some crazy people.”

  “I guess it’s your turn to sleep,” he said weakly, rising to his feet.

  The whole dream or whatever it was made no sense. What were his friends doing dressed up as slaves in a giant pit anyway? Was that supposed to be the afterlife? Morris would be the perfect person to ask, but he refused to accept it as anything more than his subconscious trying to sort itself out. Dreams didn’t mean anything.

  Unless they weren’t dreams.

  He remembered the slaves and the black dirt crater and the golden tower from the Ascendi Major. When he tried to mind-control him inside the Anunnaki base, he’d inserted this hallucination into his head. That’s why he was dreaming about it. He was only remembering his own capture.

  “Whatever happened with your friends?” Morris asked. “You sounded guilty. You were apologizing.”

  The whole question caught him off guard. His mouth stiffened. The words snagged in his throat. At the same time, he heard a faint scratch.

  “Did you hear something?” Johnny asked, biting his lip.

  Morris rolled his eyes, no doubt thinking he was trying to dodge the question. Maybe the noise meant nothing.

  Johnny listened hard. By now the gunfire and pulse surges of the early morning had subsided. It was too faint to be any of that.

  A scratching sound from upstairs amplified his senses and made his shoulders rise with agitation.

  He wasn’t the only one. Morris backed off, eyes glued to the stairs.

  The rucksack, Johnny mouthed, motioning to it. With a long-drawn stride, his cousin began sticking everything back into a single pack.

  He grabbed the knife, whipped his feet to the ground, and let the momentum
bring him off the sofa. The butter knife tensed in his grip. Making his way to the second floor, he pinpointed the scratching to the bedroom. Probably a cat or a bird. He could hear it emanating through the walls.

  At the top of the stairs, he cloaked himself and leaned out. Nothing in the hall. He pictured a cat hologram and sent it to stand in front of the bedroom. Given the lack of a response, he figured the sound couldn’t be anything important. Then it sounded off again, and this time, he recognized it from one too many dreams. Radio static.

  Inside the bedroom, he stopped to hear it out. His impatience made the seconds crawl by. Finally he heard the burst again and scrambled over to the bed. It was coming from beneath the mattress. Heaving it up, he discovered a small grey walkie-talkie near the wall.

  He chided himself. The first thing they should’ve done was ransack the whole house. They would’ve found it earlier.

  He raised the volume only to catch a whining. But a whining with a deep coughing noise cutting in. A distorted voice. The antennae bent halfway through.

  “What is it?” Morris asked quietly from the doorway.

  Johnny showed it to him.

  “You think someone’s trying to communicate with us?”

  “Maybe,” Johnny said. “But I can’t catch a good signal in here.”

  “You can’t go out there,” Morris said. “The Naga will see you.”

  “Not if I go on the roof.”

  Given the Anunnaki’s use of aerial drones, this was only half-true. Warm air washed in from the window, and he figured that the rooftop would reflect enough heat to effectively camouflage his thermal signal if he used the Conifer. Still, the Anunnaki might detect the radio waves. They might even be broadcasting whatever the message was.

  “Are you just going to climb out the window?” Morris asked in disbelief.

  “Pretty much,” Johnny said.

  Cloaked, he poked his body out the window and began latching on to the niches until he managed to reach the roof. His eyes fluttered at the brightness bouncing off it.

  After a few blinks, Kandrazi’s main district sharpened around him. Trees and rooftops in every direction, some crumbling, and more black smoke than he’d seen earlier. With a good look at the roads, he saw that Anunnaki soldiers stood on every street corner. One group of Anunnaki was going from door to door a few hundred feet away.