against each other. Kal towers over her, but I can see his jaw clenched, the veins in his neck standing taut. I desperately try crawling for my disruptor, but the plants are clawing at my hands, snagging around my ankles, just like they did to Kal when the chimp attacked.
The vines slither up around Kal’s boots like snakes, entwined about his shins and holding him in place. His eyes widen in disbelief as the woman leans in. Twisting his rifle with a terrible strength until the long barrel is jammed under his chin. His jaw is clenched, teeth gritted as her fingers close on the trigger.
“Be’shmai,” he gasps. “Run.”
BAMF.
BAMF.
BAMF.
The woman staggers back as the disruptor blasts ring out. The first shot strikes her in the ribs, the second in her shoulder and the final one goes straight through her blooming eye and out the other side.
A greenish-blue mess spatters on the wall behind her. She makes a strange sound, wobbles on her feet. But slowly, Jayla Williams drops to the ground, and the plants around us fall perfectly still.
Kal looks over his shoulder to Finian, who’s standing there with his disruptor pistol in hand. His silver eyebrow is raised as he looks the smaller boy up and down.
“Fine shooting,” he whispers, reaching visibly for his usual calm.
Finian grins, jamming his gun back into its holster.
“Yeah. Not much of a warrior, am I?”
32
Scarlett
“Hold on, Cat, you hear me?” Tyler says. “We’re almost there.”
The girl in his arms, my roomie, his bestie, only moans in reply.
“T-they’re coming. …”
“Scar, how far to the med center?” my brother asks.
“About eight hundred meters,” I reply, voice trembling.
I can see it in the distance now, standing tall in the falling eddies of pollen. It’s three stories high—probably the biggest structure in the settlement aside from the reactor. The green crosses on its flanks are barely visible under the growth of twisted blue-green vines, blood-red flowers, silver leaves. This whole place looks like some ancient ruin on Terra, abandoned centuries ago by people and left for nature to reclaim. Except I get the feeling the people here didn’t abandon anything. And there’s nothing natural about any of this.
Tyler is carrying Cat in his arms—she’s too hurt to walk. Zila is bringing up the rear, ice-cold as always. I’m walking point, and I’m nowhere near as cool, my eyes darting left and right. I’m sweating inside my biosuit, my breath coming quick. The plant life covers everything, rolling and swaying like waves on the ocean’s face—always toward us. The pollen is thick and sticky, and I have to stop every so often to wipe it off the glass dome of my helmet. And I think of Cat, and I think of the rip in her suit and I wonder—
“Movement!” Zila calls, looking at her uniglass. “Three hundred meters!”
I see them coming through the haze, moving in long, loping strides. Their fur is overgrown with weeds and vines and spiny leaves and flowers of blood-red, but I can still see the chimps they used to be underneath. They’re moving quick, crawling across the vertical surfaces of the colony buildings like spiders, or swimming through the undergrowth as if it were water. They’re going to hit us before we reach the med center.
“Open fire!” Tyler roars.
I take a knee, start blasting with my disruptor, feeling the sharp recoil up my arms. Truth is, I’m a bad shot. I spent most of senior year marksmanship classes flirting with my range partner (Troi SanMartin. Ex-boyfriend #48. Pros: loves his mother. Cons: called me his mother’s name), but Tyler scored in the top 10th percentile, and Zila probably sleeps with her disruptor under her pillow.
The shots ring out in the empty streets. It might be my imagination, but as each chimp-thing falls, I swear I hear the plant life around us … whispering. The leaves shiver like the wind was blowing, but there’s not a breath of it. Blue blood spatters, and the animals fall, shrieking as they tumble. But there’s a lot of them.
I can see one bearing down on me, mossy lips peeled back from its teeth, eyes full of flowers. I take steady aim, try to remember my lessons, but my hands are shaking. I fire once, twice. The third shot hits home, striking the chimp-thing in the arm. It spins on the spot but keeps coming. Closing to forty meters. Twenty.
It leaps at me, opening its mouth to scream. And as it does so, its head just keeps …