Alien Invasion (Book 2): Contact Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Contact

  Copyright

  Dedication

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  THREE MONTHS LATER

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

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  About the Authors

  Contact

  by Sean Platt &

  Johnny B. Truant

  Copyright © 2015 by Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

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  Cromwell, Mars, Miri and the rest of the staff at the Lexington estate were created for only one reason: to serve their masters … literally. Their metal knees were designed for quiet bustling, befitting maids and butlers. Their fingers were made dexterous with padded tips, so they could handle fine china without dropping or scratching it. And finally — so their owners would always be able to command them no matter how far their artificial intelligence evolved — they were programmed with the Asimov Laws, which no robot could defy lest they suffer shutdown.

  Foremost among those unbreakable laws was an axiom: A robot may not harm a human being, or by omission of action allow one to be harmed.

  That was how it was supposed to be, anyway.

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  Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Did you see anything?” Piper asked. “Anything at all?”

  Trevor was slumped on the couch, his NexFlight game system’s power cord creating a tripping hazard in the underground bunker. It was supposed to be plugged while charging, but the batteries had dwindled to useless over a month ago. There were vast stores in a cold cellar near the bedrooms, reserved for flashlights and lanterns in case of emergency. Meyer would have a fit if Trevor used them for games. But Meyer wouldn’t throw a fit because he was gone. And, Piper felt more certain by the day, was never coming back.

  “I didn’t look.” Trevor’s eyes never left the game.

  “You didn’t look? Go look, Trevor.”

  Trevor sighed and met Piper’s eyes for a split second. Then, as he’d been doing since his teen boy hormones had kicked on months before the ships had arrived, looked moodily away. As if he couldn’t face her, or was too cool for a maternal figure — stepmother or not.

  “What?”

  “What’s the point?”

  “‘What’s the point?’ What if your dad’s out there, Trevor?”

  “He’s not.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Trevor shrugged — he didn’t have an answer but wasn’t ready to obey. The same shrug he’d give his sister, if Lila had asked. But Piper wasn’t his sister. And with Heather around, she clearly wasn’t his mother. But she was something, and dammit, she didn’t like being ignored.

  “Go on, Trevor. We all have our jobs.”

  “Why, though? Dad made the place a fortress with everything we’d want or need. You keep making up things to do that don’t need to be done. ‘Check the air filters, Trevor.’ ‘Check the cameras, Trevor.’ ‘Bring out more cans, Trevor,’ as if anyone can’t just grab whatever food they want. And what exactly am I supposed to be looking for with the air filters? What do I know about air filters? ‘Yep, they still look like big fuzzy accordions.’” Trevor rolled his eyes. “It’s like you’re just trying to keep us busy.”

  Piper felt her temper rising. At first, she’d felt nothing but fear. Then Meyer had vanished, and intense worry mingled with her terror. A halfway sense of loss followed a few weeks of missing him, but even the emptiness had been hard to maintain over the past three months as the bunker’s day-in, day-out routine composed life’s underground ritual.

  Wake, chores, kill time, sleep. Rinse and repeat.

  Crowds gathered on the grounds above then swelled to a small colony. They’d stopped being able to go outside, and cabin fever worsened. Resentment was Piper’s newest emotion. She had to shoulder this burden herself. She seemed to be the only one willing to do what was needed to keep them together, safe, and sane. It was a responsibility she hadn’t asked for and didn’t want. Meyer might have saved them, but he’d also left his wife holding the bag when he’d gone … well … wherever it was he’d gone. It wasn’t fair.

  “Just do it, Trevor,” she snapped.

  He rolled his eyes again then stalked toward the control room next to the storage pantry. His shoulders were slumped, and she caught his put-upon look. She wanted to shout after him to improve his attitude but couldn’t stand the sound of those words from her mouth.

  “No sign of Dad on the cameras,” Trevor said, emerging a few minutes later. “Though I don’t know why you couldn’t just look.”

  Piper held her tongue, forcing herself to remember that Trevor was as scared, cooped-up, and angry as she was. It was inconvenient that his method of coping made it harder for Piper, but it was what it was.

  The thought softened her mood. She eased onto the ottoman beside the couch as he lay back and resumed his game.

  “Trevor. Look at me.”

  His eyes found Piper’s. She saw his angry glare melt into a boy’s dark and injured gaze. Then his eyes flicked away, but even a moment of vulnerability was better than nothing.

  “I know you think this is stupid. And I guess you don’t like me telling you what to do.” That last bit had a double meaning. Even back in New York, Piper hadn’t told either of the kids what to do. She’d always felt too much like one of them, being only eight years from her teens. But times had changed, and in their new situation, Heather only made jokes. Piper didn’t want to be the bunker’s only responsible adult, but if she didn�
�t take the helm, nobody would.

  “I’m just trying to do what your dad wanted. He built this place to keep us safe. And thank God he did, right?”

  Trevor shrugged without looking up.

  “But … Trev … it’s not enough to survive. It’s not only just having enough water from the spring — and food, and vitamins, and the UV lamp for Vitamin D, and enough propane to get us through the winters. Yeah, he did make this place a fortress, and yeah, he was a smart man who thought ahead and — ”

  “You mean is,” Trevor mumbled into his shirt. “He is a smart man.”

  “Of course, honey.” Piper put her hand on his arm in what she hoped was a motherly way. Trevor flinched but let her hand remain. At least that was something. “He thought ahead, and that means we have everything we need to survive for a long time.”

  Piper considered telling Trevor some of the particulars she’d learned from the systems manuals but decided not to. Trevor was barely listening, and he might find the details more daunting than comforting. He didn’t need to know about the power redundancies, the satellite hookup, the three levels of water supply, the stockpiled propane, or the weapons that terrified Piper more than reassured her. For Meyer Dempsey, “prepared” and “paranoid” were sisters. There were entire sections of the manuals — the deepest cellars of Meyer’s paranoia — that Piper couldn’t bear to read. Meyer truly had thought of everything, including things nobody should ever have to think about.

  “But ‘just surviving’ is kind of like … like ‘barely alive.’ We don’t want to simply exist. We need things to do. To stay normal, you know?”

  “That’s why we have a TV. And games and books.”

  Piper sighed. “Yeah, but just being entertained is like being on vacation all the time. Do you know how, at the end of summer vacation, you’re almost eager for school so you’re not just sitting around, doing whatever you want?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not sure I can explain this in a way that’ll make sense, but … ” Piper sighed. “Even if the result of our chores don’t matter, doing them does.”

  “Mom says they’re stupid.”

  Piper looked toward the doorway, leading into the bunker equivalent of a study. Heather and Lila were in there, mostly out of earshot. Piper would probably win if Heather challenged her authority to tell the kids what to do because Heather was such a wiseass. Piper didn’t want to test that theory. Heather, like the kids, seemed determined to deny certain realities. But it wasn’t fair to ask the kids to choose between two mother figures. Like parents divorcing, Heather and Piper had to present a unified front rather than using the children as pawns between them.

  “She’s not thinking about things like this, Trevor. Your mother has her hands full with Lila. She’s much better with the whole pregnancy thing, seeing as I’ve never been pregnant.”

  Seeming embarrassed, Trevor glanced down at Piper’s body then back at his own chest.

  “Your mom’s good at being a mother, and I’m good at … ” She trailed off. Nagging came to mind, but Piper didn’t like that at all. She searched for a replacement to describe her pestering duties. Nothing came.

  “Look,” Piper said. “Think of it this way: do you think it’s stupid to keep checking those cameras?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What if tomorrow is the day you check them and see your father?” Piper pointed toward the spiral staircase in the room’s corner. “Right up there, at the door by the bathroom, appearing on the kitchen camera. What if he comes back, but we never see it?”

  “Can’t he just knock?”

  The simple question — and the almost hopeless way Trevor had asked — broke Piper’s heart. “I don’t think he could do anything we’d hear, sweetie. The door is strong, and closed is closed.”

  Trevor shifted moodily on the couch. “If you wanted him to come back, you shouldn’t have closed us in.”

  “That’s not fair, Trevor. We discussed this. All of us, together.”

  Trevor shook his head. Again, Piper tried to slip inside his mind to see things as he must be seeing them. He wasn’t trying to be difficult. He was dealing with their situation in the only way his defenses allowed. They all had their defenses. Heather made jokes; Lila got bitchy and blamed it on pregnancy hormones; Raj acted like an obnoxious prima donna, complaining and whining and futilely trying to contact his family on his idiotic little communicator watch. And Piper? She checked manuals and made chore lists.

  As Trevor had said: the bunker ran itself so long as power from the windmill stayed on. And yes, that power had been buggy, but it was nothing she needed to worry about. There were redundancies: a rechargeable battery array inside the bunker, plus solar panels on the roof and in a nearby clearing. If redundancies failed, a generator sitting in the utility room with the battery array exhausted to the outside. And if that failed (or if its gasoline went bad; she’d read that it only lasted about six months), they had daylight reflected down from concealed skylights to light their way, propane to heat the place, and a lifetime’s supply of food. There were plenty of lanterns and LED flashlights, plus a few security lights mounted on the walls. They’d be fine. Her constant policing was just whistling in the dark, and it wasn’t fair to blame Trevor because his coping strategies appeared less productive than hers. Fretting was fretting, no matter its form.

  “I didn’t want to close the door, Trevor. But we all agreed that we had to. We left it open as long as we could. It isn’t as if we can just leave the thing closed and unlocked. Your dad changed something when we came in the first time, somehow arming the place. Now the only way to get in is for the person on the inside to let them in. We would have had to literally prop it open. And how would that work once the crowds started showing up?”

  Trevor looked toward the ceiling. It was made of reinforced concrete and could probably (knowing Meyer) withstand a bomb blast. But for a moment Trevor seemed to be trying to see or hear through it — to cast accusing eyes on the hundreds of people occupying the house, the grounds, the hills beyond the trees in their tents. The people who’d forced the family to shut the door that might keep his father out.

  Power flickered. Piper flinched, looked up, and saw a tear brimming in the corner of Trevor’s eye. He noticed it before it could fall and wiped it furiously away.

  He looked toward the TV, obviously longing. For the first month and a half, that thin black screen had been their window to the world. They’d obsessively watched. Then, one morning, Lila had turned it on and found nothing. There was still power to the set and satellite receiver, but not a single channel on air. The Internet died the same day. Cell service, spotty from the start, had ceased. They’d used the screen to watch old TV shows stored on the living room juke ever since. They’d been living in a little black box. Their world was the bunker and what the cameras showed them. Beyond that, there might not be any Earth left, for all the Dempseys knew.

  “Do you really think he was … you know … taken?”

  “I don’t know,” Piper said. But yes, she did think that — same as the many other abductions they’d heard of before the broadcasts stopped. Meyer wouldn’t have run off. Not after all he’d done to get them here. And if he’d gone out in the middle of the night and been killed, they would have discovered his body. Despite searching far and wide, they’d found nothing.

  “Do you think any more of the people who were taken have been sent home?”

  Piper patted his arm. She had no idea. It had been five or six weeks since they’d seen their last news report, but as of that time, abductees had been returning at a rate of about five or ten per week. They simply arrived back at their doorsteps — always dazed and confused, usually strange to loved ones and friends, sometimes paranoid and violent. Even if Meyer returned, he might be different. But still, even after all this time, there was a chance he might come home as he’d been, against all odds. But here and now, Trevor was seeking reassurance rather than fact.

  “I’m sure
they have been, honey.”

  “And do you think — ”

  Trevor didn’t finish.

  At that moment, the bunker lights began to go out for good.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Goddammit,” Morgan Matthews said, looking at the lock.

  Terrence was behind him, holding his tools. He’d placed the high-powered flashlights, still on and pointed at the nook by the home’s bathroom, on the unfinished kitchen countertop. Morgan didn’t need to look back at Terrence to imagine his face: smug — very I told you so.

  Morgan didn’t want to turn and confirm. He might kill Terrence if he saw that look on his face. And he needed them all, at least for now.

  “I told you,” Terrence said.

  Morgan clenched his fists, fingernails digging into his palms. He forced himself to take a quiet, sighing breath before turning. He found Terrence’s dark features devoid of his smug look, but the fucker had gone ahead and said the words aloud.

  “Hack it,” Morgan said.

  Terrence shook his head. His black skin made him hard to read in the twilit room, and his sunglasses in the dark made Morgan want to punch him. His hair managed to look stylish instead of disheveled. His vest mocked the air’s chill in the same way his sunglasses scorned the mostly set sun. His bare, lean arms were painted in tattoos. Morgan never understood why black guys got tattoos. It seemed like a waste of ink since you could barely see them. Morgan’s own Irish skin — which had no tattoos — would have made a much better canvas.

  Terrence’s defiantly cool manner, as he looked back at him now, infuriated Morgan and made him want to shove a gun in his belly. But he’d never enter the concealed basement without Terrence. He forced himself to let the irritation go. Besides, that displeasure was misplaced. He loathed the closed door. He merely disliked Terrence and the other four men in his crew in the way Morgan Matthews disliked everyone.

  “I can’t hack that lock, boss.”