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  Charlie fucking Jackson—the little wasp, again.

  Gregor sat down and let out a long breath. “How bad? Will it be another three-week job?”

  “It’s croatoan tech, who knows? We need to send over an engineer for a proper evaluation.”

  “What about the crew?”

  “Two dead—by croatoans hands—and three missing. We’re trying to find them. I’ve lost contact with our patrol. They were tracking a weak signal.”

  “Have your squad sweep the area. They’re new, confused. They can’t be far away.”

  “Okay. I’ll let them know. Out.”

  He grabbed a pair of binoculars from his desk, stormed outside, and headed to an ivy-covered brick garage attached to the exterior left wall. The rusty door’s mechanism screamed as he wrenched it up. It shuddered open. Flecks of loose, dark red paint dropped around his boots.

  Daylight filled the space inside. On the right stood a table supporting a bottle of water and a bowl of slop.

  In the middle of the room, Marek squinted. He’d fallen over sideways along with the chair he was secured to with rope. He tried to speak but only managed to cough.

  Gregor gripped Marek’s shirt and the chair, hauling them both upright. “There you go. What have you been doing in here, old friend?”

  Marek gulped hard. “Why are you doing this?”

  The decision to put Marek in an improvised prison cell wasn’t taken lightly. Gregor feared the croatoans might demand his friend be turned into dinner. He’d been captured by wild humans—no real surprises by whom, Gregor thought. Marek had shown weakness. Gregor was sure the aliens were watching how he handled the situation. He’d tell Marek when the time was right. For now, it had to remain as realistic as possible, not even a wink.

  It was for their own protection, especially with Augustus sniffing around. That bastard seemed to know everything.

  “You look terrible. Can I get you some food? Water?” Gregor asked.

  “Why, Gregor?”

  Gregor picked up a bottle of water and a tray of the croatoans’ slop, still sealed up tight. “I need to know I can trust you again. You were missing for two days.”

  “I’ve told you—”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences. We’ve suffered another outage today. Now, open wide.”

  Marek spluttered as he tried to drink. Gregor emptied the bottle over Marek’s mouth and face. “Are you hungry?” He peeled off the lid and dug a plastic spoon into the cream-colored contents. He pushed the spoon against Marek’s mouth.

  Marek twisted away, spitting away the food around his lips. “I’m not eating that shit. Gregor, please.”

  He threw the tray to one side. “I want to hear again about your supposed captors. Did they say anything about attacking harvesters?”

  “We’ve been through this. They only asked me questions. One was blond-haired, late forties or so, the other much younger, perhaps mid-twenties, red head. Both had beards and looked like they’ve been living in the forests.”

  “They didn’t mention the harvesters? Not once?”

  “They wanted to know about the warehouses and the shuttles. What was coming down, what was going up, that kind of thing.”

  Gregor walked to the entrance and reached for the door. “I’ll give you another day to think about it.”

  Marek tried to shout. The screeching hinges drowned out his words. Gregor slammed the door shut and wiped his hands on his jeans. A rumble of thunder rolled in the distance. He looked up at the gathering clouds, wondering if the weather was starting to match his situation.

  ***

  Rain fell steadily over the camp. Gregor squelched through mud toward the chocolate factory.

  Two croatoan hover-bikes shot over the trees from the distance, coming toward the main square. Layla was on the back of one, ducked behind the croatoan rider, shielding herself. The droning grew louder as they hovered for a moment before descending, joining the other parked bikes in a smart line.

  The square was busy with aliens. They seemed to be fascinated with the rain. Whenever it started to fall, they’d leave the barracks and stand in it, looking up, taking off their gloves and waggling their spindly olive fingers.

  It was times like this that Gregor thought they were almost child-like. A quick look at the pulse cannon on a shuttle or the meat-processing warehouses would quickly push the idea from his mind.

  Layla dismounted and headed toward the chocolate factory, looking uncomfortable in her soaked black trousers and jacket.

  Gregor met her by the entrance.

  He glanced at the riders who joined the others, marveling at the grim weather.

  “They never get bored of it,” he said.

  “I do. Let’s get inside,” Layla said with a scowl.

  The chocolate factory was deserted apart from Gregor’s man at the monitors, lit up by their glare. Charts, pens, and the croatoans’ shoebox-shaped computer devices lay around the large table. The little surveyor bastards were probably out enjoying the rain too.

  “What’s that?” Layla said. She pointed to a number of objects in the corner. The odd plastic thing he saw earlier. It’d been hooked into the power source and glowed light green, highlighting an electronic system inside.

  Three transparent boxes were stacked next to it.

  “I saw them carrying it here. Probably came down with Augustus. His shuttle’s still here.”

  “What does he want?”

  He let out a grunt. “You’re the anthropologist. You tell me.”

  She crouched in front of the glowing object and ran her hand along its exterior. “I’ve got no idea what this is, but I’ll find out. They brought some large crates down the other day and stored them in the barracks. Something’s going on. Seems like they’re preparing for something. The sneaky fuckers are always up to something.”

  She flashed him a smile, her hazel eyes picking up the green glow from the device. She’d pulled her blonde hair back into a ponytail. Her face was smudged with grease and orange root. For a scientist, she didn’t have any problems with getting stuck into the physical side of things.

  Gregor had warmed to Layla over the last couple of months. When he had first arrived in North America, she was introduced as part of this operation.

  They’d picked her up in England. She was a social scientist, whatever that entailed. Gregor never really knew. Her job at the facility was to look for efficiencies in the way they ran operations—improve the human resources and the harvesting root yield. He was sure she hated him, it was her aloof style, but he felt protective of her.

  She’d introduced a number of improvements on the farm that increased their food and reproduction output. In Europe, he ran the paddocks like his parents ran their pig farm. She suggested changes in human livestock management like providing shelter to limit exposure. Another key improvement was feeding livestock produce from the food processing warehouses instead of swill. He was impressed with the pragmatic circular nature of the coldly delivered suggestion. Its effectiveness after deployment was tangible.

  He wondered, though, how far her coldness truly extended.

  Though from one perspective, what they were doing here, treating humans like cattle was barbaric, but it was the world now, and now people like Layla knew it. She had the smarts to exploit a situation, something Gregor had decided to keep a close eye on. He had no doubt she’d step on him if it furthered her agenda, whatever that might be.

  “Did you figure out the details of what happened at the harvester?” Gregor said.

  “They shot the guard on the platform and suffocated the driver. You need to get a grip on this. We might all go down.”

  “They seem okay at the moment,” Gregor said, nodding his head toward the main square where the aliens were doing their weird rain dance nonsense. “It’s Augustus I’m concerned about. He came down straight away, asking questions.”

  Layla smiled. “Let me work on him. I’ve got a few questions of my own—”

>   Alex burst through the metal swing door entrance. “We’ve got signals again.”

  She held a croatoan tablet out, a detachable one from a hover-bike they used to track humans with. Gregor remembered the rage he felt when his bead was inserted. The advantages became clearer when he was assigned human resource manager and tracked missing stock.

  “Where? How many?” Gregor said.

  “We’ve got a cluster of signals, maybe three. Not far away from the harvester. They could be underground. Keeps fading in and out.”

  Gregor grabbed the tablet and orientated the red dots to a map on the wall. “I’ve picked up something there before. Couldn’t find anything.”

  “Fifteen minute rule?” Alex said.

  Gregor nodded. The croatoans didn’t place huge value on individual wild humans. When they took him or his team out hunting for new livestock, they’d only be allowed to pursue a target for fifteen minutes.

  The logic behind their rule was the aliens didn’t want to waste their time in a game of cat and mouse with one of the more slippery and resourceful humans. He thought they viewed it as the same as catching a rabbit in a garden. It was slightly annoying but wouldn’t hurt them; they could crush it if they really wanted. Alternatively, the signal could be from a corpse buried in a shallow grave.

  “Three croatoans are scrambling. I need to take the tablet back,” Alex said.

  “The crew might be with the little wasp,” Layla said.

  “That’s what I’m hoping. Can you go with them?” Gregor said. “Try to convince them that this is the shit who’s been attacking the harvesters?”

  Layla puffed her cheeks. “They won’t go on a wild goose chase. I don’t see what use I’ll be.”

  “At what point will they start caring about the bastard who’s screwing our production statistics?” Gregor said. “I don’t want him slipping through our fingers.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” Alex said.

  The door flung open, and a group of surveyors entered, visors covered in droplets. They surrounded the large wooden table and started working on their computers, studying charts and busily clicking to each other.

  Gregor leaned toward Layla. “You’re the one they trust and I trust. Please, go with them. We need some human intelligence on the ground.”

  “Okay. I’ll get them to bring him in alive if I can.”

  “Thanks. Alive or dead, I’m easy with either option.”

  They left the chocolate factory. Layla and Alex headed for the central area, where three croatoans sat on hover-bikes, watching their approach.

  Gregor walked between two warehouses and scanned the paddocks. His men were distributing food. One drove a large tractor around the grassed areas while two stood on the trailer it towed, throwing out silver trays to outstretched hands.

  Some humans sat and ate at the spot they received their food. Others protectively took their trays to an individual spot, cautiously looking around while scooping the contents into their mouths with their hands.

  One shot from a croatoan weapon was all it took to turn them into brainless cattle during capture. Yet, after a few months in captivity, some started to display more advanced kinds of behavior, a broken attempt at language, an attempt to climb the paddock fence, or an assault on a guard.

  This made the meat-processing selection easier. The guards would splash paint across any human showing danger signs. They would be the first in the back of the truck for the weekly meat-processing run. The rest would be picked at random.

  Three hover-bikes roared overhead, accelerating away.

  Gregor instinctively ducked even though they were fifty feet overhead, their pink circles opaquely shimmering. Layla waved downwards from the rear bike.

  Within a few minutes they were little black specks in the distance, their vapor trails quickly vanishing in the breeze.

  Gregor turned to look at the camp. Augustus walked toward him, flanked by two croatoan guards from the shuttle, his usual escort. He raised his robe clear of the muddy ground, exposing his skinny white ankles as he crossed the more muddy thoroughfares.

  He shook his head and cursed as he approached.

  “Have you come to see the paddocks, Mr. Augustus?” Gregor said.

  Augustus straightened his mask. “It’s time you and I had a little chat.”

  Gregor held out his arms. “I trust you’ve found that everything is in order?”

  “We’re shifting the focus of the farm. I’ve got some new targets for you.”

  “New targets?”

  Augustus flashed his yellow teeth through a gap in the mask, hiding some inner delight. Gregor imagined his skinny body fed into the meat-processing machines but instead smiled back and waited for the bad news.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Charlie halted Ben and Ethan, brought them behind a large tree. Its trunk was at least twenty feet in diameter. Up ahead, Denver and Maria, with Pip following close behind, had stopped and gestured to the others.

  They were heading east out of the forest. Charlie knew it as Allegheny National Forest, Pennsylvania. During his exploration of the area in previous years, he and Denver had come across an old hunting lodge.

  Within the derelict shack, he’d found some brochures extolling the beauty of the forest. Back then, he was sure it was a national beauty full of wildlife and a wide variety of flora, but now, with the root in the atmosphere and the croatoan terraforming after the frozen years, a new arrival had appeared: a croatoan tree that looked like a redwood but grew like a weed.

  The brackens and hawthorns had a weird look to them too and excreted a waxy residue. He discovered it was a very useful waterproofing agent. Although the aliens were slowly terraforming the planet, there were some benefits to the things that they were growing.

  The root had plenty of uses, healing being one of them. Charlie doubted he’d be as physically fit and strong as he was without learning how to distill the oil from the root. Still, those gifts paled into a pathetic joke compared to what was lost.

  “How you kids doing?” Charlie asked as he waited for Denver to return to him.

  “Good, I think,” Ethan said, rubbing his collar. “It’s healing fast.”

  “I can barely feel it now,” Ben said.

  “Yup. The root is handy like that.”

  “Is that why the aliens are harvesting it?” Ethan asked, seemingly over his frustration and getting into the spirit of learning how to survive.

  “Among other reasons,” Charlie said. “It’s difficult to really know. I just don’t have the information. But there’s a …” how could he put it without freaking them out again? Human farming was not a subject that he had any easy way into, and he didn’t want to get into it now with the sun setting and the croatoans probably not far behind them.

  The beads felt heavy in his pocket. They seemed to gain mass when they were transmitting, but he knew it was just gravity. It still wasn’t natural, he thought.

  “You were saying?” Ben said.

  “There’s a facility to the east of here. A center of operations if you will. There’s a number of the aliens there along with human … sympathizers who work on their behalf. They’ve been shipping the root harvest up to a mother ship via shuttles for the past few years. But this year is different.”

  “Different how?” Ben asked.

  “I don’t know exactly. The crop is different, more potent. They’ve upped their harvesting, and the air … It’s not right.”

  Charlie ended it there as Denver and the others joined them. Pip nestled into Charlie’s leg and licked at his hand as he stroked the dog’s neck. Despite himself, he thought of his Pippa back before the uprising.

  Ironically, she wasn’t a dog person, preferring the company of cats.

  His thoughts were probably due to Maria. She had a fragile strength to her like Pippa. Although she looked soft on the outside, he could tell she possessed a desire to survive. She wasn’t afraid of her emotions like the others.

  “The
re’s one patrol,” Denver said. “They’re already on the other side of the river. We’re good to go.”

  “Okay,” Charlie said, gathering everyone in. “Listen carefully. What comes next is particularly dangerous. Don’t speak even when prompted. Let me and Denver deal with them.”

  Ethan opened his mouth to ask a question, but Charlie carried on, wanting to get on with things. “I want you all to follow Denver as soon as we’ve broken cover. I’ll take the beads.”

  “What are you going to do?” Ben asked.

  “Let’s say that our galactic friends will have a little surprise waiting for them. I’ll rejoin you once I’m done. Den, you know what to do?”

  Denver nodded. “I’ll keep to the north side, don’t worry.”

  “It’s not you I’m worried about,” Charlie said, looking at the others.

  “What?” Maria said, stepping forward. “Have we not shown you trust? We’ve done everything you’ve asked.”

  “I’m not talking about you lot. Just stick with Denver, and keep those weapons at the ready. Okay, Den, these are all yours. I’ll catch up with you in ten minutes tops.”

  With that, Charlie left the others behind and darted into the darkening forest.

  A few minutes later, he reached what used to be the edge, but the alien-influenced flora didn’t stop on the threshold anymore. It carried right on into the town once known as Ridgway.

  The trees and bushes plagued the town like a slow swarm of locusts. Branches and ferns and ivy covered almost all available surfaces. The old blacktop on Main Street had broken up. Mosses and other lichens had colonized the surface, making it slick underfoot.

  Charlie oriented himself by the layout of the ruins.

  To his right, he could just about see the tops of a series of warehouses.

  The Clarion River flowed parallel to the street. The water was thick and brackish and like the air, under certain light, had taken on an orange cast.