Will McIntosh - Watching Over Us

“I saw one up there. Can you get this in the window?”

Jared grabbed the grenade, ran halfway across the street, then stopped, fumbled with the grenade. “How do I work it?”

Laurel ran out to him, trying to recall the brief tutorial she’d received on activating grenades. She took the grenade from Jared, squeezed the safety lever, thumbed the clip, then twisted the pull pin. Keeping the safety lever tight, she handed it back to Jared.

“Throw.” A good twenty seconds had passed since she’d spotted the Luyten; Laurel knew it must have repositioned long ago.

Jared wound, whipped the grenade at the window. It struck the brick sill, ricocheted up and to the right, dropped to the sidewalk. Laurel dove just before it exploded.

“ Laurel .”

Laurel looked toward the tracks. Sergio was racing toward them, dragging his rifle by its strap, his too-big helmet bobbing over one eye.

The arm holding the rifle blackened and curled. Sergio howled, dropped to one knee, clutching the charred stump.

“ Sergio .” Laurel raced toward him. He was screaming, writhing on the asphalt. There were burned bodies everywhere.

Laurel grabbed Sergio under the armpits, the left—the burned one—was red-hot, but she ignored the pain. Laurel meant to drag him, but Jared was there, grabbing Sergio’s legs. They trotted back to the doorway of the paint shop, gently set Sergio down on the sidewalk.

His eyes stared sightlessly up at the store’s awning.

“No, no, no,” Laurel moaned, pressing her face close to Sergio’s. She knew she had to get up, had to keep fighting, but this little boy with a Hulk sticker on his helmet and comic books in his pack was dead, and Laurel wasn’t sure she had any fight left in her.

A sharp intake of breath from Jared got Laurel’s attention. She lifted her head. A Luyten was rounding the corner across the street. It was red orange, the size of a minivan, moving on four of its six appendages. It held a mushroom-shaped heater in one of its free appendages.

Laurel’s rifle was on the sidewalk a few paces away; Jared’s was strapped across his back. Of course, the Luyten already knew that, or it wouldn’t have moved into the open. It pointed the heater in their direction.

As Laurel tensed, its insides burst out the front of it, an explosion of coal-black entrails and organs. Black blood sprayed halfway across the empty street.

Stunned, Laurel struggled to her feet, tried to decide whether to make a run for it just as a defender jogged into view.

It paused at the same corner the Luyten had recently occupied and looked around, its massive rifle pointed at the sky, deep-set eyes hidden in the shadow of its helmet.

Laurel raised a hand, but it didn’t acknowledge her, or even seem to notice her.

Four Luyten came galloping down the middle of the street. Laurel dropped to her stomach as half a dozen defenders appeared in pursuit, firing what might have been grenades from launchers that appeared to be built right into their forearms.

As the Luyten approached, the defender hiding across from Laurel leveled his rifle and fired. Behind her, the façade of the paint store burst inward; in the street the Luyten’s thick, jewel-colored skin blossomed with wounds, and they fell.

The defenders set upon them, firing point-blank into their eyes, which were set at spoked intervals around the center of their bodies.

Laurel pressed a hand on Jared’s back. “Are you okay?”

Jared lifted his head. “Yeah.”

They trotted back to the tracks. Two of their platoon mates were still alive: Diamond, who was pressed along the steel rail of the track, and a boy named Artey, who’d been hiding in the tobacco field on the far side. If they’d survived, the Luyten would have come back and finished them both off, but it was hard to shake off the primordial instinct to hide when monsters were all around you.

The defenders were gone.

Numb, her ears ringing, Laurel led the three survivors along the track until they reached the forest. She didn’t outrank them, but she was an adult, and they were kids, and no one questioned her taking charge of what was left of their platoon.

Before the sun had even set, Artey was asleep, curled against a big elm tree. Laurel and the others sat on a fallen tree and ate MREs.

She’d been right: the Luyten couldn’t read the defenders’ minds. How confused and disorganized the Luyten had looked without that advantage. For the first time in four years, Laurel felt a green tendril of hope sprouting in her heart. Maybe the human race would survive after all.

It was hard to feel elated. Most of her companions were dead. All those kids left for the vultures, if the vultures would even have them, burned like that.

“Where are the defenders?” Jared asked. His face was red from close contact with heater guns, as if he had a bad sunburn. “They could get us to Cleveland, or Cincinnati. The starfish wouldn’t dare attack if we were with the defenders.”

“They lose their advantage when we’re around,” Laurel said. It was ironic: The defenders had been created to save humanity, yet humanity was their Kryptonite. If anyone in Laurel’s platoon had seen the defenders before the Luyten attacked, the Luyten would have been tipped off, and could have run, or set a trap…

A cold shock ran through Laurel. She set down the slice of pie she’d been working on.

With all of the miles and miles of enemy territory, the defenders just happened to be close enough to arrive not five minutes into the firefight?

The defenders had been waiting for the Luyten to show up. Using them as bait.

But if the defenders had been watching Laurel’s platoon, why had they waited those precious minutes before joining the fight? She pictured Sergio stumbling toward her, cradling what was left of his arm.

Deeper in the woods, a light flashed briefly. It wasn’t the soft glow the Luytens’ equipment sometimes emitted, but the hard, white light of a human-manufactured flashlight.

Laurel stood, brushed herself off. “Stay here. If I’m not back by dawn, keep following the tracks.”

“Where are you going?” Jared’s tone pleaded for her to stay.

She put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m going to find the defenders. I’ll be back.”

She headed toward the spot where the light had flashed.

Not five minutes later, a defender on watch stopped her.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked, towering over her, assault rifle clutched in front of his chest.

“Looking for you.” Craning her neck, she kept her eyes steady on his. “I want to speak to your CO.”

With a grunt, the defender led her into their camp. They were sitting in silence, not looking at each other, their backs propped against trees.

Their commander rose when he saw Laurel. “What are you doing here? You’re betraying our location to the enemy.” They were terrifying to look at. Their faces looked as if they were chiseled from stone, their shoulders remarkably broad.

“You’re using us as bait,” Laurel said.

The commander blew air from his nose, folded his arms. “If we hadn’t been following you, you’d be dead.”

Laurel saw Sergio’s half-charred body lying in the eaves of the paint store. “Most of my platoon is dead. I’m not questioning your strategy, I just want to know why you waited so long to help us.”

The defender folded his arms. “We needed to know how many Luyten were present, and where they were positioned, to formulate a battle plan.” He was clearly smart, even though he didn’t look it.

“People were dying,” Laurel said. “You don’t hang back and gather intelligence when an entire platoon is being slaughtered.”

The defender snorted again. “Our mission is to defeat the Luyten. Strategically, it wasn’t worth risking defenders to save a few individuals.” He shrugged. “I judged it an acceptable level of collateral damage.”