Signs of Life
“Sinclair, Solomon, and Webb, back together again!” The small shuttle was barely wide enough for a foot of clearance on either side of the pilot chair, but somehow, Mickey managed to wiggle his way between the chair arm and the panel. Clapping his hand on Alexa’s shoulder, the mechanic beamed and added, “Just like old times!”
Behind the pilot seat of the small shuttle stood Barrett, tall and imposing as ever with his arms crossed over his barrel chest. “It’s only a scouting mission, Mickey,” he noted, watching with only mild interest as Alexa piloted the small shuttle in elegant weaves across the planet’s landscape. “I doubt we’ll even see anything interesting.”
The Archangel was parked a few dozen kilometers behind them and getting farther with each passing minute. After some doing, Alexa had managed to convince ever-vigilant Captain Aldaine to let her take the shuttle and Barrett out to scout for a place to hide their current cargo stash. (Naturally, Mickey had insisted that he tag along as well.) This planet had pinged back to their sensors that no life was present; all they needed was to find the most out-of-the-way spot to hide the goods.
Alexa nodded slightly to agree with Barrett — though the motion cut off midway when the shuttle arced over a hill. The pilot swiftly slowed the shuttle to a crawl, and beside her, she felt more than saw when Mickey leaned his tall frame forward. “Well hey now,” Mickey chuckled and pointed forward. “Buildin’s,” he reported, as if Barrett and Alexa hadn’t already seen them.
They had. Before them and at the bottom of a steep hill was a veritable city, tall buildings made of dull gray and glints of broken glass, planes upon planes of metal, broken up by browns and greens where the planet’s plants had overtaken the structures. It was a wasteland.
“I thought this planet was lifeless,” Alexa directed toward Barrett, though her attention was aimed forward as she directed the shuttle in a smooth acceleration toward the city.
Leaning over Alexa’s left shoulder while Mickey stayed at her right, Barrett tapped at one of the few small screens set into the control panel of the tiny shuttle. Really, just two of them would have been too many for this small vessel; three of them made it a sardine can. Still, he focused on the question, scanning the screen again to verify his information before he answered, “It’s still coming up with no life signs. Captain checked it twice before we even set out.” He glanced up again, peering out through the glass at the desolate buildings they were approaching.
“Someone was here,” Mickey noted with an empathic wave toward the eerie structures. Now that they were closer, it was easy to see that the buildings looked like they had been abandoned for years.
Barrett shrugged one shoulder. “Owen sent out an atmo probe before we landed. Atmosphere is breathable by humans and everything, which means the planet’s either naturally earth-like or terraformed.”
Knowing his tone, Alexa easily read into the statement and verbalized the implication in her low, cool cadence: “There should be people here.”
In moments, she had maneuvered the shuttle in a tight turn to land it on a paved section of the ground, and the whirr of engines ceased as she shut the vehicle off. For a few moments, the trio sat in a silence that was suddenly eerie as they peered around at the wasteland of dark metal towering around them.
Something was wrong.
Alexa finally broke the stillness, turning to the screen Barrett had been tapping so she could see the scans for herself. Soon Barrett joined her in assessing the data. “Should we radio back to the ship?” he asked lowly.
A moment of thought. Finally, she said, “No need to worry them.” Despite not knowing whether there was anything about which they should worry. All she knew was that, if they radioed back, Eagan would be here in minutes, danger or no. She loved the man, but she wouldn’t deny that the prospect of a mission with only Barrett (and Mickey) had struck her in an oddly nostalgic way. Besides, with the feeling in her gut, she rather wanted the wolfman to stay guarding the Archangel and its inhabitants.
While the others were bent over the panel, talking quietly among themselves, it left Mickey to lean casually against the pilot seat and stare out the window at the bleak tableau. Not a bit of movement in sight.
Which made it all the more startling when Mickey saw movement in the window of one of the buildings.
“Whoa!” he yelped, stumbling back a step or two, smacking his head on the lowered ceiling of the small craft.
The sound and movement were enough to startle Alexa and Barrett out of their little conference, their heads whipping up so they could both do a defensive perimeter sweep. “What?” asked Barrett finally, throwing a frown at Mickey.
But the mechanic’s eyes were locked on a building to their left, what looked like an abandoned office building. “I saw someone in that window,” he explained, pointing to one of the busted windows of the second floor. “That one there.”
Alexa shook her head as if to dismiss the idea, but the way her eyebrows were furrowed gave her suspicions away. “No signs of life,” she reminded tonelessly.
“I know what I saw,” Mickey declared right back. He had worked up the nerve to step up by the seat once more. “We gotta check it out!”
Both of his companions locked their eyes on him sharply, wearing matching looks of disbelief. “That sounds like an excellent way to get us killed,” said Alexa.
Mickey snorted. “Not more’n some a’ my other ideas,” he reminded her, though she seemed very unimpressed with that response. So he tried another tactic: “Barrett’s curious, too!”
Only mildly irritated, Alexa turned to her other side to look back, if only to prove to Mickey that Barrett was not curious — only to stop and become immediately exasperated when she saw the thoughtful way Barrett was staring at the building. “No,” was all she said.
Barrett jumped slightly like he hadn’t noticed that she was suddenly looking at him and was embarrassed to be caught in his musings. Shrugging, he admitted, “Come on, Alexa, you can’t say you’re not a little curious that—”
“I am not a little curious.”
“—that there are absolutely no signs of life, and yet he saw something. Could be a species that doesn’t give off life signs, or one that’s found a way to mask them. Either way, it’s interesting.”
A long-suffering sigh came from Alexa, and she turned forward, resting an elbow on the control panel so she could bring her fingers up to rub at specific spots above her eyebrows. She may as well have named the spots ‘Mickey’ and ‘Barrett’ — although the ‘Barrett’ headache spot was usually reserved for Eagan. “We are not,” she spoke, voice low and level, “going to go investigate.”
Ten minutes later, they were investigating.
Each held a weapon. Barrett wielded his trusty combat shotgun, while Mickey brandished a small, automatic pistol-looking number, though thanks to some engineer meddling by Maggie and Owen, the projectiles were not bullets but small bursts of energy. Alexa had a medium-sized gun that fired in quick, three-round bursts, and she was also armed with a bright flashlight. Because of this, she was the first to duck in through the doorway being held open by Barrett.
Inside the building was even gloomier than outside. Because they now stood in a hallway, there was no natural light filtering in besides from the glass doors inside which they now stood. Still, the light filtered in enough that they could see the hallway, the rusted metal of the walls, the dark doors scattered along each side of the wall, a few of the doors sitting half-open or flung wide.
Slowly, the trio advanced, with Alexa leading the charge and the boys trailing, flanking her on either side. Alexa and Barrett kept their guns and the flashlight raised; Mickey kept his gun hanging in a belt loop at his side like he had all but forgotten its presence. From what they could see as they advanced past some of the open doors, most of the rooms were offices, with desks and chairs and long-broken technology scattered about.
“Well,” came Barrett’s voice, “anything that might have been lootable looks to already have been looted.” He spoke quietly, like the very air around them seemed to demand keeping one’s voice low. A pause, then he added, “I wonder what the hell happened here.”
“Beats me,” Mickey answered, and even his usually-bright voice was kept at a lower, restrained level. “Hey, whatever I saw was on the second floor. We oughta look for an elevator or some stairs or—”
The clatter that came from their left broke off his sentence, and the accompanying movement happened before they could even swing around to confront the source of the noise. Something flashed out from one of the open doorways, a mass of flailing limbs, gray hands grabbing the closest thing: Mickey. In a surprisingly swift motion, the thing had pulled the yelping mechanic out of the hallway and into one of the rooms, throwing him on the ground.
All Mickey had time to process was a groaning, hulking mass of shadow above him before there were hands clawing at him, at his chest and neck. He could feel fingernails scratching at him, and above him, there came continued hisses from behind jagged, rotting teeth. It was all Mickey could do to grab the shoulders of his attacker and hold it at bay as the thing hissed and chomped at the air.
This happened in the span of about three seconds. After that, all Mickey could hear was the deafening blasts of gunshots echoing in the small space.
Whatever was bearing down on Mickey was suddenly bearing down with much more gravity, having gone limp after being extinguished by the cavalry.
“Mickey,” he heard Alexa saying, voice tight with barely-restrained panic, and suddenly the weight was lifted off Mickey as Barrett picked up the dead thing and tossed it across the room. Alexa was already beside her best friend, kneeling on a floor covered in dust and grime, her flashlight discarded so her hand hand could grip his shoulder hard. “Mickey,” she said again as Barrett joined her on the ground, her voice a bit more controlled, almost a warning, like there would be hell to pay if he didn’t respond.
So he responded: a cough first, then a groan. “What the almighty hell was that thing?” he demanded. Whatever it was had done a number on his collarbone; he could feel sticky blood coming from several jagged tears in his skin from the thing’s fingernails.
“That’s a great question,” Barrett said, “that I vote we talk about back in the shuttle.”
It seemed a fine plan to both Alexa and Mickey. All it took was a swift burst of motion from Alexa and Barrett to pull Mickey to his feet. Since the thing that had attacked him was good and dead, Mickey didn’t see the harm in pausing to brush himself off. Laying on the floor had covered Mickey’s shirt in dust and rubble, and he tried to swipe some of it off his sleeves, something with which an exasperated Alexa even briefly helped.
Meanwhile, Barrett had stepped over toward the dead thing. To his surprise, it seemed… “Guys, I think this is human,” he called over his shoulder. The thing on the ground was grey and looked like it was decaying, but it was humanoid. Humanoid and dead.
Until it sat bolt upright, snarling.
“s**t!” Barrett yelped, stumbling backwards away from the suddenly-mobile corpse. He and Alexa had emptied at least ten shots into the thing; it should have been dead. “Out!” he shouted to his companions, though Alexa was already all but throwing Mickey out into the hallway. She followed, and Barrett followed her, and he barely managed to get the door of the little room closed. Barrett kept a firm hold on the large door handle, though the thing on the other side didn’t actually try the handle, just kept throwing itself against the metal of the door.
All three of them were breathing a bit raggedly, Alexa and Mickey watching as Barrett held the door shut. “What the hell is that thing,” Alexa asked-but-didn’t, and the way her too-calm voice dropped to the rusted ground was positively eerie.
Before Barrett could answer, a hand was gripping Alexa’s upper arm in a vice grip, Mickey’s voice behind her saying in a pitch that was too high for him, “Lex…”
She turned willingly in the direction Mickey was trying to swivel her. It was toward the door through which they had entered the building — the glass of which being the only thing between the three crewmembers and more of whatever had just attacked Mickey. For all the world, the things looked like shambling corpses, rotting and decaying, all shapes and sizes, all clawing at the glass doors.
Automatically, Alexa began backing up, staying in front of Mickey instinctively. Her gun was raised, but she knew that shooting through the doors would accomplish only one thing: removing the only barrier between them and the monsters. “Looks like we’re finding another exit,” was all she said.
When she turned, Mickey turned as well, Barrett rushing to their side — only for all three of them to stop dead in their tracks.
More of the things. Maybe ten, maybe a dozen, all shambling from the dark recesses of the dark hallway, heading directly for them.
Alexa and Barrett didn’t think twice before raising their guns and opening fire.
The small hallway was lit by gun barrel flashes and filled to the brim with the sounds of it, and while creature after approaching creature fell under Barrett’s efficiency and Alexa’s precision, it was Mickey who looked around the hallway. All it took was a moment of searching for Mickey to find what he had been looking for since they had come in: a metal door with a placard attached that read ‘Stairs’.
“Stairs!” he repeated, shouting to be heard over the din of gunfire. Because as much as they kept shooting, the creatures kept coming.
While Alexa might have been tempted to reason with Mickey that going to a higher floor was ridiculous, the mechanic was already leaping across the hallway, throwing his shoulder into the stairway door and disappearing through it. Alexa and Barrett had little choice but to follow.
The stairway was dark, lit only by a single window halfway up to the second floor. Once the three of them were inside, Mickey threw the door closed. He enlisted Barrett’s help in dragging a nearby locker over, toppling it in front of the door. It wouldn’t buy them much time, but it would buy them some.
Alexa, meanwhile, launched herself up the stairs, gun upheld. None of the creatures were in the stairway, as far as she could tell. The only thundering footsteps that came were from Barrett and Mickey as they followed her up. She threw herself out of the stairway and into the hallway of the second floor. To her left, a blank wall; a dead end. To her right, however…
As soon as Barrett and Mickey spilled through the door, Alexa grabbed both of them, all but throwing them across the hallway toward an open door. “Into that room,” she ordered.
They would have objected going into a room where they would be trapped — but once they saw the horde of a dozen or more creatures coming down the hallway, blocking off any possible exit, the boys quickly relented and dodged into the room. Alexa followed hastily, shoving the door shut once she was in.
Mickey found a cabinet. He and Alexa made quick work of toppling the large thing and shoving it against the door.
It wasn’t until this was done that the three of them heard a hiss. Barrett was the one to spin first. His shotgun blast was deafening in the small space. Due to both Barrett’s skill as well as the close quarters, the creature suddenly found itself quite without a head. With a final stagger, the thing pitched forward, crashing hard to the dirty ground.
A tense moment of silence, after which Barrett nudged the body with his foot and seemed to deem it really, really dead. Only then did Mickey jump forward toward Barrett and the body, leaving Alexa to lean back against the barricaded door. “What the hell is it?” asked Mickey, and though the trepidation and even fear were evident in his voice, he also couldn’t hide curiosity.
Barrett frowned down at the corpse for a minute more before looking over at Mickey. “I think it’s a… zombie.”
“Zombie?” echoed a bewildered Mickey.
Across the room, Alexa spoke: “A myth.” Though, she had to admit, the scratching that had started on the door at her back didn’t sound make-believe at all.
The shrug Barrett gave was almost apologetic. “Or they’re close enough to zombies to be essentially identical. This one only stopped when I got its head.” A pause where he let that sink in… and then he added, voice gruff and somehow sheepish, “I used to read a lot of zombie things when I was a kid.”
Now that made Mickey drop his fear in favor of excitement. “No s**t?” he laughed and slapped Barrett’s shoulder. “Me too!”
The smile that Barrett gave was rare in its genuineness, devoid of sarcasm. “Really?” he asked, and that was all it took before the boys were chattering over each other, comparing various zombie media, talking about zombie plans they had both had.
Meanwhile, something behind the door hit it hard enough to knock Alexa forward and then back against the door once again. “Guys,” was all she had to say, barely managing to hold on to her usual calm.
Barrett and Mickey at once broke their conversation and rushed over to Alexa, stationing themselves on either side of her, both boys leaning back against the door, lending their weights to the cause. “Okay,” Barrett said over the pounding from the other side of the door. “We can’t go downstairs. We could probably make it out of this room, with the three of us fighting back. But where do we go from there?”
For a moment, the three of them just stood in silence, huddled together so all their backs fit pressed against the door, which pressed back against them as the onslaught from the opposite side continued. The obvious choice would have been to radio back to the Archangel — but as they stood there, Alexa realized with no small amount of exasperation that she had left the comm back on the shuttle. So it was a minute or two later before she finally squirmed out from between the boys, broke away from the door, and rushed across the room.
While the boys adjusted to more comfortable situation to hold the door shut, Alexa darted to the window against the opposite wall. It was broken, the empty window frame pushed up, and she quickly leaned out of it. Jackpot: a fire escape. It was rusted and twisted, and the bottom of the ladder to the ground had long since snapped off, but the drop wasn’t long enough to be a deterrent. It would work. It had to work.
Alexa turned from the window to face her boys. “Fire escape. I can make it to the ground. Then I can make it to the shuttle.”
Both boys reacted to it. Mickey’s eyes widened, Barrett’s face creased into a frown. “Alexa, no,” said Barrett firmly.
“Lex, that’s crazy!” Mickey agreed emphatically. “And that’s comin’ from me!”
As if she did not hear them, Alexa continued, “The shuttle won’t fit in the alley by this window. You’ll have to make it to the roof. The stairway should be a clear shot up.”
Barrett and Mickey at once launched into overlapping protests.
“Enough,” was all it took from Alexa, the short, sharp word silencing both the boys as if it had been a gunshot. “It was you two idiots that got us in here. It’s my job to be an idiot and save us.”
Though the boys threw a glance at one another and seemed like they wanted to argue, they did not. They knew better than anyone that there was no arguing with Alexa. Besides, they knew she was right. She was the smallest and the fastest and undeniably efficient at killing things; if anyone could make it to the shuttle, it was her.
So, without further protest from her companions, Alexa moved forward to them, specifically to Mickey, taking the gun from his belt loop and handing him her semi-auto. His gun was smaller, but it was quicker and more accurate. All of their guns had self-replicating bullet mechanics — thanks again to Maggie and Owen — but the small pistol weapon refilled quicker due to the energy nature of the bullets. It would work fine. All she said to Mickey was a quick instruction of, “That fires three-bullet rounds,” as she nodded to her gun. He would likely be using it to kill some of these… things. She wanted him to be as prepared as possible.
Instead of answering about the gun, Mickey reached one arm forward and pulled his best friend into a quick but tight hug, even pressing a kiss to the side of her head. “Be careful,” he ordered as he released her, and though Barrett didn’t speak, he nodded to agree.
Alexa nodded back. She headed across the room and peered out the window. The fire escape wouldn’t be a problem, even if she would have to drop eight or nine feet off the broken ladder. Then it was just a matter of getting to the shuttle. How many of the things had been outside the doors downstairs? A dozen? Twenty? Stealth would be her savior. Admittedly, for the shortest of moments, she wondered if she could make it. But that thought left quickly. She could make it. She had to make it. For the boys. For the rest of the crew waiting for them on the Archangel. For Eagan and Elsa. She would make it.
With that thought, she turned to look back at Barrett and Mickey. “Roof,” was all she said by way of goodbye. And then she ducked out of the window and down the fire escape, movements practically feline in their swiftness and stealth.
Barrett and Mickey just had to glance at each other for a moment before they were dodging across the room to lean out through the window. By the time they got there, Alexa was already dropping adeptly to the ground, landing in a crouch. As they watched, she crept up the alley, peeked around the corner for a long few moments, and then disappeared around it.
Mickey’s throat felt dry, and he swallowed, which didn’t help. “What now?” he asked, looking at Barrett.
The big man glanced at the mechanic, then at the machine gun in his hands. In a swift motion, he had traded his own shotgun with the semi-auto. Mickey Webb was many things, but a good shot wasn’t one of them; maybe with a shotgun, he would at least hit something. “Now,” Barrett said, checking the gun, “we fight our way up to the roof.”
As if on cue, the door across the room gave way. Thankfully, the cabinet in front of it made it so the door only opened partially, allowing only one or two of the zombies to spill in. That made it pretty easy pickings for the two armed men.
Fifteen minutes of shooting later, Barrett and Mickey were sprinting up the dusty, dimly-lit staircase. The small space was still mercifully devoid of the shambling monsters, which gave Barrett and Mickey a clean break up toward the roof. Four levels of stairs later, the two of them were stumbling through a doorway onto the roof, gasping to catch their breaths, the brightness of the sky blinding them after the darkness of the building’s interior.
Mickey made quick work of finding a lock on the door and engaging it. The stairway had been clear when he and Barrett had ascended, but they had heard the scraping and groaning of zombies follow them from the second floor as they were nearing the top of the stairs. Some of those things were fast; the monsters would be breaking down the roof door sooner rather than later.
Meanwhile, Barrett had done a sweep of the roof. Only one of the monsters had been wandering around when they arrived, and Barrett dispatched it with a few easy shots to the head. He moved over to the corpse, kicking the dead weight off the side of the roof, watching as it fell the six stories to the ground.
“There are a lot of them down there,” he noted with some discomfort.
That was not what Mickey wanted to hear. He had leveled his shotgun at the door, waiting, and as Barrett joined him, Mickey had to ask what he had been wondering since Alexa had left: “Is she okay?”
Barrett shrugged one shoulder. “She’s Alexa,” was his answer, and surprisingly, that was pretty comforting to Mickey. If anyone could survive a damn zombie apocalypse, it was Alexa Sinclair.
Which was why it was hardly surprising when they heard a whooshing sound, followed shortly by the shuttle arcing over the top of the building, coming to a skilled but crooked landing nearby.
Automatically, Barrett and Mickey sprinted over to the tin can. Barrett threw the door open with vigor, and Mickey all but dove inside, Barrett following hot on his heels. The shuttle was lifting off the roof practically before Barrett began pulling the door shut — and he did have time to see the flimsy roof door break open and admit at least ten zombies, just as the shuttle rose out of reach of the horde. He slammed the shuttle door hastily shut.
Mickey’s first action had been to abandon the shotgun on the floor, and his immediate second action had been to dart across the tiny space, wrapping his arms around Alexa’s shoulders from behind. “You beautiful, magnificent angel!” he was exclaiming, relief pouring off his words. He planted several sloppy kisses on the side of Alexa’s head, which she was able to ignore expertly so she could drive.
Even Barrett had to give in to the relief that was sitting on his chest. He hadn’t doubted Alexa for a second — but that didn’t mean he wasn’t glad to see her, not to mention glad to be safely flying away from a group of brain-eating monsters. He stepped the one or two steps to the piloting console and placed his hand on Alexa’s shoulder, the only bit of it that Mickey wasn’t hanging on. “You okay?” he asked, scanning her.
She had a few more scrapes and bruises than when they had last seen her, and the gun that sat in her lap was smoking a bit from overuse, but Alexa was okay. She nodded to affirm it, though she didn’t take her attention from flying. “Let’s get home,” was all she said.
_____
On the bridge of the Archangel, Grace had not stopped pacing. “They should have been back by now,” she said for what felt like the thirtieth time since Alexa, Mickey, and Barrett had gone. It was a simple scouting mission; what could possibly be taking so long if they were just looking for a place to throw a bunch of crates?
Eagan didn’t turn around from where he sat stationed in the co-pilot chair. “If something was wrong, Alexa would have radioed.”
“And if Alexa is hurt?” demanded Grace but almost immediately regretted it. The possibility didn’t sit right with her, made her chest twist with worry. She had been worried so much lately, even more than usual. Something about her current state. And since the others had departed, a distinct rock of dread had settled deep in the doctor’s gut. Something was wrong.
But Eagan still had an answer for her: “Then Barrett would have radioed.” Barrett better have radioed if something had happened to Alexa.
“And if something happened to Bar—”
“Then Mickey would have radioed.” It was enough to shut Grace up at least for the next few seconds, giving Eagan enough time to follow it up with a final comment of, “They’re fine, Gracie.”
He sounded so calm and confident that Grace had to believe him, though her pacing did continue. But in the pilot seat, Elsa wasn’t quite so convinced. As she sat, keeping Alexa’s spot warm for her, the little girl had thrown continuous glances over at the captain. Her fidgety father hadn’t stood up yet and was doing very well at acting cool, but she saw the concern in the set of his brow as he scanned the screens, and she saw the restlessness in the way his leg hadn’t stopped jiggling since he sat. Perhaps it wasn’t that he thought something had happened, but he was nervous, as was to be expected. He was usually on the front lines, going on any expedition with his crew; staying behind on the ship was surely driving him mad.
Elsa didn’t say any of this. Instead, she turned forward to look again at the screens… and frowned. “Dad?” she asked, eyes locked on a small radar indicator. “Is that them?”
He was standing in an instant, leaning over his daughter, peering at the screen she had pointed out. The blip moving toward the ship had a familiar shape, but its speed was worrying. “That’s them,” he agreed. “Coming in a little hot, though.” Reaching past Elsa, he tapped a button that would send the cargo bay doors downstairs opening. Then he gave Elsa a quick kiss on the head before turning, heading toward the bridge doors, through which Grace was already rushing. “Stay here,” he ordered Elsa over his shoulder before departing the room.
Of course, Elsa waited to give her dad and Aunt Grace only about a five second head start before she was rushing after them.
In the cargo bay, Eagan and Grace were just stepping off the lift by the time the shuttle came hurtling through the wide cargo doors. It was by some miracle (and by a good about of skill from Alexa) that the shuttle twisted and skidded in a tight stop about twenty feet from the doors rather than crashing into the opposite wall. Practically before Eagan and Grace could step toward the small vessel, the door of it opened, the three crewmembers spilling out. On Mickey’s part, this actually meant tripping and sprawling onto the grated cargo bay floor.
At least Alexa and Barrett held weapons — a shotgun and machine gun, respectively — but all three of them were talking over each other. The boys were vehemently shouting about closing the door, and even Alexa raised her voice to say simply, “Door.”
Eagan and Grace could only blink and turn toward the large, warehouse-type doors.
What they saw made Eagan’s eyes widen and Grace actually let out a shriek. Coming up the ramp were at least five shuffling, shambling monstrosities, all drool and blood and rotting flesh, groaning and moaning and hissing.
It was Alexa and Barrett who lifted their guns and opened fire. Blasts from the gunshot mingled with the tight tat-tat-tat, tat-tat-tat triplets from the semi-auto. Before Eagan’s eyes even had time to shift, the five monsters were down.
In all the chaos, it was actually Elsa who made it over to the door button the quickest. She had slipped down the staircase rather than the lift, and her small hand pounded the mechanism to shut the large, sliding doors, effectively closing out any more of whatever those things had been, leaving the cargo bay and the six people inside it in echoing silence.
Matching sighs of relief came from Alexa and Barrett. Barrett placed the fist still clutching the gun up against the shuttle and used it as a brace while he bent at the waist and leaned forward, releasing a long stream of air from his mouth. Even Alexa could not hide the tired slump of her shoulders as she leaned backwards against the smooth metal of the tiny shuttle.
“What the hell were those things?” Grace’s voice, high with alarm, broke the silence.
Oh s**t. That was Mickey’s cue. He had been still laying sprawled on the floor, but at the sounds of the doctor’s distress, he was quickly scrambling to his feet, all while saying his usual, “No, baby, it’s fine, ain’t nothin’ wrong, darlin’, everythin’s fine.” He quickly crossed to her, placing a hand on her back, smoothing out some of the tension that had coiled her muscles. When his usual comforting words didn’t touch her panic, he changed tactics: “Hey, honey, would you mind patchin’ me up?”
That worked. Immediately, Grace switched from a mode of confused panic to a more familiar mode of brutal, clinical efficiency. Turning to Mickey, she spotted what he meant, the congealed blood over long, deep scratches on his collarbone. “Good Lord, look at you!” she said accusingly, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the med bay.
Mickey, for what it was worth, was grinning his usual grin. Angry Grace was much better than panicked Grace. Angry Grace he could handle, if only because he had learned so well that Angry Grace was usually just a clever ruse for Concerned Grace. He allowed her willingly to drag him toward the med bay, saying as they went about how he was absolutely fine and it looked much worse than it was.
Grace hardly seemed to hear him. She could not believe this beautiful idiot was going to be the father of the child growing inside her.
By then, Eagan had already crossed to where Alexa and Barrett had finally caught their breath. He came to a stop in front of Alexa as she handed the shotgun in her hands over to Barrett, its rightful owner. As soon as he approached, Barrett was giving him a wry, crooked smile. “Captain,” the big man greeted with a respectful nod, a nod reserved to greet a rightful leader. Then he glanced at the pilot and added, “Alexa,” as a goodbye before turning and departing, probably to put their guns back in their home in his room.
Eagan watched him go before turning a piercing stare to Alexa. “That didn’t warrant a call back here?” he asked, and the slight accusatory tone was only slightly effective in concealing his concern.
For a fleeting moment, a smile ghosted across Alexa’s face, gone as quickly as it had come. It was a smile only partially born of exhilaration; now that they were all back safely on the ship, she would admit that, despite the danger or maybe because of it, that had been fun. Killing zombies? Maybe not an everyday activity, but she wasn’t complaining. Of course, she couldn’t deny that the smile was also due to the concern in her wolfman’s eyes as he looked at her. Even if killing zombies had been fun, coming home to him was better. “We had it under control,” was how she answered him.
“Uh-huh,” was all Eagan could reply, figuring out at once that there was no use arguing the point, not when she and the boys were back safe. So he instead reached forward to curl his fingers around the back of the pilot’s neck, pulling her in for a kiss, after which he added a kiss to her forehead as well for good measure.
The moment was only broken by a small voice exclaiming, “Mom!” A pitter-patter of tiny feet, and there was Elsa, tugging at Alexa’s sleeve. “Mom, what were those things?”
As weary as Alexa was with the decrease in adrenaline, she certainly wasn’t too tired to crouch down and pick Elsa up. By the time Alexa was standing straight once more, Elsa had settled on one of the pilot’s hips and was all but draped around her, which was comfortable enough to startle Alexa, as such intimacy always did. None-the-less, she answered the question: “I’ll explain as best as I can. While I’m flying us out of this sector.”
True to that word, she began toward the lift, and Eagan fell into step with her unthinkingly. In fact, he looped an arm around her thin shoulders, pausing only to ruffle Elsa’s hair before his hand settled on Alexa’s shoulder. “I assume that means no hiding cargo here,” he noted with dry sarcasm.
Alexa scoffed half of a laugh.
Which made Eagan grin faintly. As they boarded the elevator, he pointed out, “You should visit the med bay.” He had noted that Alexa was unharmed, other than the slight cuts and bruises, like she had been rolling around on gravel.
Not that Alexa seemed concerned about some shallow scrapes. “Getting out of here is the first priority,” she replied as the elevator carried the three of them up toward the bridge, their home base.
“Aunt Grace will find you,” Elsa reminded teasingly, her head laying comfortably on top of Eagan’s hand on Alexa’s shoulder.
Again, there was that faint smile across Alexa’s face, something that had been happening more and more lately. “She always does,” she answered readily, but that was the end of the conversation. As she leaned against Eagan, though, and as she felt the weight of Elsa’s body in her arms, a med bay visit was the last thing on her mind.
