Arrival

“This way!” Luna called out, still leading him deeper into the base. They passed the armory, and now Kevin did wish he had some kind of weapon, simply because it seemed like the only way they were going to be able to get out of there in one piece. Since he didn’t have one, he settled for knocking over whatever he passed as he ran, pushing a cart into the path of the advancing people, closing doors behind him. Crashes told him when they slammed into the obstacles Kevin was putting in their way, but so far none of it seemed to be slowing them down even a little.

“Quiet now,” Luna whispered, pulling Kevin into another corridor and slowing down to a tiptoe. A crowd of hikers and soldiers hurried past just a second later, moving with all the speed and strength that seemed to come from being controlled by the aliens.

“Why are they so fast?” Kevin whispered back, trying to catch his breath. It didn’t seem fair, them being that fast. The least you should be able to expect from an alien invasion was to be able to run away from it properly.

“The aliens are probably just making them use all of their muscles,” Luna said, “not caring if they hurt them. You know, like when grandmas lift cars off people.”

“Grandmas can lift cars off people?” Kevin said.

Luna shrugged. With her gas mask on, it was impossible to know if she was making fun of him or not. “I saw it on TV. Have you got your breath back yet?”

Kevin nodded even though it wasn’t exactly true. “Where are we going? If they’re smart, they’ll have left people by the entrance.”

“So we go to the other entrance,” Luna said.

The emergency exit. Kevin had been so busy thinking about the bunker being overrun that he’d pretty much forgotten it. If they could get to it, then maybe they had a chance. They could get to the car and drive to NASA.

“Ready?” Luna asked. “Okay, go.”

They scurried along the corridors, and somehow, not seeing the controlled people was worse than seeing them. They were so quiet that they could have been around any corner, waiting to grab them, and if they did, then what happened next wouldn’t be worth—

“Run!” Luna called out as an arm grabbed for her from around the next corner. It succeeded in getting hold of the cloth of her shirt, and Kevin slammed forward, throwing his whole weight against the arm like he was trying to tackle it.

The grip broke free and he and Luna were running again, taking twists and turns at random to try to lose their pursuers. They couldn’t run faster than them in a straight line, so they had to look for spaces where the controlled people couldn’t follow, and try to use the maze-like layout of the bunker against them.

“It’s in here,” Luna said, pointing to a doorway.

Kevin had to take her word for it. Right then, he felt so lost that he couldn’t even tell someone the way back to the control room. He plunged into the section of corridor after Luna, then shut the door behind them, grabbing a fire extinguisher and trying to use it to jam the door shut. It looked as flimsy as cardboard compared to the controlled people’s strength.

Now they just had to get the escape hatch open.

Kevin put his hands on the wheel, trying to turn it. Nothing happened; it was so stiff it felt as though it might have been made from rock. He tried again, his knuckles going white with the effort.

“Maybe a little help?” he suggested.

“But you seemed to be having fun,” Luna shot back from behind her mask, before gripping onto the locking wheel with him and hauling at it. Still it was stuck.

“We need to try harder,” Luna said.

“I’m trying as hard as I can,” Kevin assured her.

“Well, unless you want to go ask one of the controlled people for help, we need to do more. On three. One…”

A clang came at the door Kevin had barred.

“Three!” he said, pulling at the wheel with every scrap of strength he could pull together. Luna seemed to have the same idea, all but hanging her weight off the thing.

Finally, as a second clang came from the door they’d barred, the thing shifted. They spun it open while Kevin’s muscles complained, and then Luna dove inside headfirst, not waiting to see if Kevin wanted to go first. He hurried after her, shutting the hatch behind him in the hope that the corridor would just look empty to anything following.

The space beyond was narrow, little more than a kind of crawl tunnel. If the two of them had been adults, they would probably have barely fit. As it was, there was enough space to scramble along on their hands and knees, hurrying to another hatch at the far end. Thankfully, this one wasn’t stuck, and opened smoothly to reveal the mountainside beyond.

“We need to be careful,” Luna said softly as the two of them dropped down onto the mountainside. “They might still be out here.”

They were, because Kevin could see figures further off, moving up the slope as if to get to the front entrance. There were some trees nearby, so he and Luna slipped into them, staying low and trying to keep out of sight.

They crept their way up the mountain, trying to work out where exactly they’d hidden Dr. Levin’s car. If they could get to the car, then they could get out of there, leaving the alien-controlled people, and go to the base.

Kevin spotted it a little way away, right where they’d left it, tucked out of sight. He crept toward it… and that was when he saw Chloe coming around a bend in the mountain road, from the parking lot at the summit. A pair of tourists, moving with the strangely coordinated silence of the alien controlled, were running after her, and they were gaining.

“We have to help her,” Kevin said.

“After everything she’s just done?” Luna shot back. “It would serve her right if we left her to become an alien too. She’d probably be less trouble.”

“Luna,” Kevin said.

“I’m just saying that she totally doesn’t deserve our help,” Luna said.

The controlled people were almost at Chloe now.

“That’s probably true,” Kevin said. He started forward. “I’m still going to help her, though.”

He set off in Chloe’s direction and wasn’t that surprised to find Luna running alongside him.

“I’m doing this for you, not her,” Luna said.

“Of course,” Kevin agreed, running faster.

“And you can stop smiling about it,” Luna continued. “I’m just doing this because you’ll only get aliened if I don’t help.”

“Aliened?”

“I’ll think of a better word later,” Luna said.

They were almost at Chloe now. One of the controlled people reached out for her but Kevin and Luna were faster, grabbing her and pulling her off the path and down into the trees. The slope made it treacherous, but maybe that was a good thing as one of the controlled people came tumbling past them.

“You came back for me,” Chloe said. “You—”

“Stop talking and keep running,” Luna snapped. “The car’s just ahead.”

And the remaining hiker was just behind, moving with all the tenacity of a wolf chasing a deer. Kevin didn’t want to think about how that kind of thing usually ended, he just kept running, switching directions through the trees.

The alien-controlled hiker grabbed for him and Kevin managed to dodge. To his surprise, Chloe was there, pushing the man from the side, sending him tumbling further down the slope, scrambling to stop his fall. She grinned at it, although Kevin winced, because even if there was an alien controlling that body, it still belonged to someone, and if they ever got it back, they would probably want it without broken bones.

“Get in!” Luna yelled from ahead. She was at the car now, hopping in at the driver’s side.

Kevin and Chloe ran for the car and got in as Luna started to turn the key. Kevin heard her cursing under her breath as she did, and it only took a moment to realize why: The car wasn’t starting. It made a kind of whirring, coughing sound, but other than that, nothing happened, no matter how many times Luna tried to get it to go.

Fear rose up in Kevin then, although there had been more than enough of it sloshing around in him anyway thanks to having to run away from alien-controlled people. He looked around at the trees, trying to spot movement, looking for any sign of the controlled people. Not just the ones who had stumbled down the slope, because there would be more. There always seemed to be more.