The Deadliest Earthling Read online

  Worried-looking men and women in combat uniforms buzzed around them. As disordered as he remembered them ten years ago. The same old weapons and war memorabilia hung along the walls leading up to the stairwell.

  “Colonel Laura, we need you out there,” a young man said, running down the stairs.

  Laura turned to Orun. “You know where to find the Eagle. And if you don’t, just follow the bodies. I’ll catch up.” With that, she hurried off down the hall.

  Johnny felt ill upon reaching the second floor. Whether the sickness came from the poison or the bloodied bodies, he’d never know. Soldiers lay along shattered linoleum, guns still in their cold grips, eyes glazed over. Bullet holes and craters chewed up the walls. Old medallions and paintings had toppled to the floor or outright broken. Johnny brushed dirt off his forehead, his nail scratching deep into his skin. Intermingled with the bodies of fallen resistance fighters were the much larger grey Anunnaki forms.

  A nine-foot-tall Anunnaki body rested motionless beside him, a number of bullets embedded in its dark grey body armor. A bullet hole left a dark red circle on its hairless, elongated grey head. Even dead, its face—a blend of human and serpentine characteristics—exuded an irritating smugness as if the Anunnaki soldiers had scored the last laugh.

  A few medical personnel glanced at them.

  “Any of you free? The Keeper has been poisoned,” from Orun.

  A woman in a blue nurse uniform raced over, her face red as a pomegranate. “I’m Nurse Tows.”

  She seemed about to shake their hands, then motioned for them to follow her. Despite her shorter stature, she was leaving them in the dust. In seconds, they reached a thick oak door with an eagle insignia, which she pounded on until a muscular man answered. His uniform read Edwards.

  “Orun, the Keeper, and Nurse Tows,” Edwards said, letting them in.

  The Eagle’s office and living quarters served as a battle command center with all the telltale signs of an imminent threat. Two soldiers drew concentric circles on a map on the wall. Juan Menendez, the Eagle’s personal bodyguard and Ibdan’s brother, stared out the window through binoculars, his ponytail dangling over a thin black suit and tropical orange shirt.

  The table in the middle of the room contained the real business. The Eagle loomed over a series of documents, Styrofoam coffee cups, a cane, and a radio. For one sinister instant, Johnny thought he’d hear his parents’ voice.

  The Eagle briefly turned from the table and gave them a quick look of acknowledgment.

  Amelia Dagos’s Navy Seal black bomber jacket and faded grey-white city camo pants resembled all the old posters and paintings his parents showed him growing up. Without even trying, the Eagle evoked a sense of hope and awe.

  Under the blemishes and wrinkles of her seventy-two years on Earth, a look of hidden fierceness lingered. No one gave the Anunnaki nightmares like her.

  If anyone knew how to keep them safe from Anunnaki, she did, Johnny assured himself.

  “You’re early,” she said sarcastically to Orun.

  “Over here,” Nurse Tows said, nudging Johnny’s arm. At her gesture, he sat atop an examination table in the corner of the room. “Take deep breaths and try to remain calm.” As he inhaled, she wrapped a black blood pressure cuff around his right bicep. “I’m going to remove some blood and run a quick test.”

  The next thing Johnny knew a needle pinched into his shoulder. Meanwhile, the Eagle brought Orun up to speed. The Anunnaki had dropped in, literally, and broken through via the roof. The Eagle suspected they were targeting her. Fortunately, fifty years of chasing down a single person was bound to turn even the most patient aliens reckless. That’s how the soldiers managed to fend them off.

  Orun skimmed over a few documents on the table.

  “Incoming report!” someone shouted.

  All heads turned to a man monitoring a telegraph machine. The man blinked and cleared his throat. “Sky Axis!”

  “That’s the code for a firestorm,” someone uttered.

  Chapter 12

  “Calm down or the poison will spread through you completely,” Nurse Tows said as the heart rate monitor jumped.

  Johnny had to be hallucinating. Launching a firestorm on New Bagram was unprecedented and ridiculous. When the Shroud War ended forty years ago, the Naga promised peace to all who submitted to their rules. True, any human resisters were prone to being hunted down, resulting in a shadow war ever since. And in that time, they had launched numerous attacks against freedom fighter strongholds. But Johnny had never heard of them openly annihilating entire cities.

  Orun turned to the Eagle. “Make the call.”

  Johnny’s mind raced as he held in a breath. Orun taught him the Anunnaki followed the rules of the peace treaty signed after the Shroud War because they feared a global, unified human uprising. Even though their weapons packed a big punch, they also consumed a lot of energy. The Anunnaki couldn’t afford another full-scale war without risking a shutdown of their major cities. And if they ever did try to openly wipe out humanity, a few countries still supposedly possessed nuclear weapons. It was a matter of avoiding mutually assured destruction. He didn’t see why the Anunnaki would risk breaking those rules now.

  Johnny watched Dagos, eagerly awaiting what must be a grand hidden plan. He’d heard jet aircraft still flew in distant pockets of the world. Maybe that could help them. Instead, she said, “We’re going down.”

  “Down?” Edwards asked. Johnny was clearly not the only one surprised by this.

  “Unless you’d rather stay here?”

  As if on cue, Juan said, “Residents are entering the underground passage.”

  “Down the tunnel, then,” the Eagle said, grabbing the cane off the table. “Our senators didn’t spend billions on these for nothing.”

  “We’re going to abandon New Bagram?” Johnny asked. She was New Bagram’s founder. She couldn’t leave it.

  Dagos frowned. “What’s so hard to understand about the concept of survival?”

  Johnny’s image of her mostly came from his childhood. The night of his parents’ end, he’d slept in this room. She’d tucked him in. Brought him a cup of hot chocolate in the morning. Her shrewdness right now threw him off.

  Edwards exchanged a worried glance with Nurse Tows. Not noticing this sentiment, Dagos started for the door.

  “Wait,” Nurse Tows said. “I need at least another minute to read Johnny’s test.”

  “We don’t have a minute. Bring the antidotes,” the Eagle snapped.

  Nurse Tows looked at the shelves hesitantly. Sitting on them were well over a hundred different vials, pill boxes, and medical bottles. Carrying all of them would be impossible. One way or another, Johnny was going to die.

  “Orun, stay with them,” the Eagle said. “You know where to find us.”

  He nodded curtly. At that, Johnny watched her lead the others into the hall.

  “We’ll know how to cure you soon,” Nurse Tows said, checking the window.

  Johnny wanted to look, but knew he shouldn’t. So he looked at the rows and rows of bottles, vials, and boxes. “That many poisons exist,” he thought aloud.

  But his mind lingered elsewhere. He’d never see New Bagram again.

  Soon the firestorm would wipe his hometown off the map. His innards stiffened. Where would they go? And what about the other recruits? He pictured Hamiad, Skunk, and Krem out at the obstacle course, and it burned a hole in him. When he thought of Sarah, it hurt as suddenly as a blow from behind.

  “Thanks for staying,” he told Orun.

  “A firestorm isn’t something you want to experience alone.”

  He had never experienced a firestorm, of course. But he was familiar with the stories.

  First an Anunnaki glider launched a projectile that spread nitrogen clouds. The force of the searing wind would not only damage people, buildings, livestock, and plants but set the stage for another blast, which actually ignited the clouds. Equivalent to setting off a bomb with the
targets already saturated in gasoline.

  He shuddered, and a bitter taste spread down the back of his throat.

  Out of nowhere, another syringe poked his shoulder.

  “All done. You’ve got the antidote,” Nurse Tows said. “That’s the good news. The bad news is that.”

  She motioned to the window, where rooftops and tarps and doors were pin-wheeling through the air. Johnny’s jaw fell slack.

  “Come on!” Orun said, ushering them to the doorway. As they stumbled into the hall, the window exploded with a howl. “If we get to the basement in thirty seconds, we might survive.”

  Johnny clenched his teeth. And if we don’t?

  A series of screams joined the vicious howling of the wind. Johnny couldn’t believe it. He was confronted by the awful image of a wave of heat ripping through the streets of New Bagram, instantly reducing people and buildings to ash.

  They rushed down the stairwell, sweat hopping off Johnny’s face.

  The first floor was a mess of raw walls stripped of paint, steaming rifles, swords, and medals, and people strewn across the floor with pink skin, an acrid chemical stench filling his nose. Instantly, the baked air smothered him. An hour in the desert would’ve felt cooler.

  “That door!” Orun barked, pointing to one so badly scorched that it was still smoking.

  A high-pitched whine gave Johnny pause. Because it was a sound his parents and Orun had trained him to fear. He whipped around in time to see a rogue Anunnaki limping forward, its hand falling in a post-throw motion. On instinct, Johnny extracted his tactical blade and launched it at the Anunnaki’s forehead. Like that, it sagged to the floor.

  “Good work,” Orun said, quietly kneeling over Nurse Tows. She was bleeding from the chest. The Anunnaki’s pulse surge just now. Gently, Orun ran his fingers over her eyelids.

  A metal object glinted in Johnny’s periphery. Whatever the Anunnaki had thrown. He looked at the basement door right as a sudden blinding flash met his eyes followed by a muffled roar. Johnny covered his head and hit the deck. Chunks of wood seared against his skin, and he rolled back and to his knees. He was not dead. But he would be soon. Because the Anunnaki’s explosive had transformed the doorway into an unyielding pile of flaming debris.

  Beyond the stretch of hall, a cloud of flames expanded through the streets, consuming everything.

  “What now?” he cried.

  The building rumbled, and pieces of chipped floor began rattling. The ground loosened under him, his body teetering in every direction.

  Acid speared through his innards. The Anunnaki had done what his parents did not. Cast the finishing blow to their enemy.

  Chapter 13

  Johnny opened his eyes. At once they stung, and his head spun. He imagined himself glowing. Was he dead? He tried to speak, but his dry throat offered only a whisper.

  A dark chamber materialized around him. Far above him hung a dim light. Orun appeared and pressed a bottle to his mouth. “Drink.”

  He practically chugged it, and only then did he feel capable of forming a full sentence with meaning behind it.

  “How did we survive?”

  He wondered how Orun still wore his brown thobe. But considering his thobe could withstand bullets and knives, maybe fire wasn’t such a stretch. The thobe itself was infused with Khepers. So advanced the firestorm hadn’t even made Orun sweat. Not that Naga did sweat.

  Orun gestured with his hand. A silver strand of Khepers stretched out from his sleeve and webbed over Johnny’s chest, forming a cold metal film. With a flick of his wrist, the Khepers retreated back into his sleeve. “Can you walk?”

  “I think so,” Johnny said.

  Orun wrapped his arm around his shoulders and helped him stand. His entire body felt rickety, but nothing seemed particularly damaged. A vast tunnel extended ahead of them.

  Johnny turned back and registered the wall that must’ve enclosed a staircase. Somehow, Orun got them inside the doorway, and delivered them to this escape tunnel. Finally, Johnny had a chance to regain his strength.

  It was so quiet, he would’ve settled for one of Orun’s lectures to keep his thoughts from churning. He tried to push the reality out of his mind, but he couldn’t. Etched in his head was an image of his friends lying on the red dirt like shriveled leaves. His insides crumbled. He’d only been a young child when his parents died, and time had mostly numbed those wounds. But this was insane.

  Five minutes passed before he and Orun came upon the Eagle’s group. They stood in a semi-circle, awaiting their approach.

  “Are you okay?” Edwards asked, aiming his flashlight at them.

  “We are,” Orun reported.

  Edwards’s head sank. “We better keep moving.”

  They fell in step with the Eagle, Juan, and two more soldiers. A palpable gloom set in among them as the minutes dragged by.

  Johnny didn’t see any way the resistance could recover from this loss. How would new resistance fighters ever get trained? There were other camps, other havens, but nothing on the scale of New Bagram.

  The silver lining, according to the Eagle, was that medical officers and a few other soldiers had gone up ahead and made contact with a group of survivors ranging into the thousands.

  “You think any of this has to do with the rumors?” Juan asked the Eagle.

  Johnny’s ears piqued up at that. Over the last week, a set of rumors had infiltrated many conversations among combat instructors and the other recruits. Rumors that thanks to a rare orbital anomaly, Mars would pass close enough to Earth that it would show up in the night sky for two weeks. And that this “flyby” would usher in the end of mankind.

  “Prophecies are never true,” Edwards scowled.

  “But reports by our spies usually are,” the Eagle noted.

  “What worries me more is how we interpret the rumors,” Orun said.

  “A nacebo effect?” the Eagle asked.

  Orun nodded and started to speak, when a high-pitched whine froze them in their tracks. The unmistakable sound of an Anunnaki pulse surge. Everyone dropped to their knees and drew their weapons. They killed their flashlights, leaving them at the edge of the tunnel bulb’s dim glow. Only Johnny and Orun were unarmed. Biting his teeth, Johnny reached his hand out, and whispered, “Anyone got a gun? And a knife?”

  Edwards passed him a tactical blade and a handgun.

  A second pulse surge rang in their ears. Like the first, they detected no obvious target.

  A few seconds passed followed by a third.

  “I don’t like this,” Edwards snapped.

  “I see Anunnaki soldiers. They’ve got people lined up,” Orun said, a slick black surface covering his eyes.

  Johnny cursed under his breath. They could be executing just about anyone from New Bagram. His classmates. His fellow recruits. His friends.

  “The other evacuation group,” the Eagle suggested grimly. “How many Anunnaki?”

  “Five. Might be more in the intersecting tunnel.”

  With an audible click, Edwards tore back the slide on his rifle. “I say we lock and load.”

  “No complaints here,” the Eagle said. “Just be careful. We’ve lost too many today. We can’t afford to lose more. Edwards, take the lead. Johnny, keep everyone cloaked with your Conifer. Think you can do that?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. This was a routine firing maneuver he’d practiced many times. He looked to Edwards and the other two soldiers. “Ready?”

  They nodded.

  “I’ll be joining you, too,” Juan said.

  Right. Orun could serve as the Eagle’s bodyguard for the moment. Because despite his tremendous power and capabilities, he could not act in any sort of violent manner. Something about his role on Earth being non-intervention only. Johnny didn’t quite understand, but they were the rules of the universe, as Orun liked to say.

  Johnny activated the Conifer’s cloaking. To each other, they appeared as blue transparent ghost-like figures. They marched in, crouchin
g low. With only the glow from the ceiling light bulbs, they needed to get in close to eliminate the Anunnaki.

  Johnny kept his focus swapped from them to Edwards, awaiting his nonverbal orders.

  A hiss alerted Johnny to white smoke arising by their feet. Motion-sensing smoke grenades. No sooner did he feel a hot waft of it rolling down his throat. At once, he began coughing violently, the others hacking up their lungs in turn. Squinting teary eyes, he registered the Anunnaki swiveling around, a mere ten feet between them. They would notice their outline in the smoke unless he cloaked even that. But a sharp pain spread in his chest, and he knew he couldn’t.

  “On your knees. Release your weapons,” one of the Anunnaki snapped in a deep guttural tone.

  Shielding his mouth and nose, Johnny obeyed. In the corner of his vision, the others did the same.

  “There you are,” said a familiar voice.

  A second later, Officer Harrison materialized by the Anunnaki, a shotgun hanging from his hand. As the smoke spread and thinned among the high ceiling, he swaggered over to them.

  “Edwards, long time no see. Heard you did pretty good as my replacement.”

  “You’re with them?” Edwards snapped. “They’ll kill you. Don’t you get that?”

  Harrison squatted down so they were face-to-face, his shotgun his cane. “Don’t tell me you believe the Anunnaki are evil, savage beasts? That’s just the narrative we teach our cadets. They’re smarter than us. Wiser.” With a grunt, he rose to a full stand. “Now, on to business. I’ll require two things from you. The Conifer and the Eagle.”

  He strolled over to Johnny and plucked the Conifer necklace off him. “Make that one thing.”

  Johnny racked his mind for a solution.

  Grabbing their guns and trying to beat the Anunnaki in a firefight was a crap shoot. They’d just as easily die themselves. And the chamber offered little to work with. Shooting out the lights would blind them, but not the Anunnaki.

  “You really think we’ll trade our lives for the Eagle’s?” her bodyguard snapped.

  “No, Juan. But I think she’ll trade her life for the survivors’.”