Chapter 11 #3
Like he usually did with Judd, Gabriel ignored him and continued, “The unique armored plating on the Monkey Cats makes a clean shot almost impossible,” Gabriel began, eyebrows furrowing. “And all their vital organs and bits are small, closely clustered in the middle of their chest.”
“So not only do you need a clean shot, but you need one that will penetrate deep enough to do any damage,” Phin recapped, leaning back. The chair squeaked in protest under his mass.
Blake sat back as the conversation continued without him.
The more they went over things, the more hopeless it seemed.
Whether it was the Off Formers or the Monkey Cats, they seemed specifically created to be hard to kill.
Which was obvious. But if they were difficult to kill for each other, then they were impossible for a human.
A soft, easily squashed, and or punctured human.
He was beginning to feel the passion from Gabriel’s speech ebb.
It’s one thing to feel invincible standing in a mob, fueled by crappy coffee and severely misplaced optimism.
Another completely, to try and formulate a plan that didn’t end up with them looking like a bug on a windshield.
Beside him, Sara began to squirm. She fiddled with the ends of her hair, completely tuning out the conversation around her. Blake didn’t blame her. She should probably be out coloring or something. No one had thought to find something for her to do when they all set about preparing for war.
What does a six-year-old do during war? Hide? No. That wouldn’t work. Blake’s mother always said a bored child is a child who gets rug burn on their nose from pretending to be a pig on the carpet. Which, to be fair, he only did once. But the lesson stuck.
“Hey,” he whispered. She blinked up at him with wary eyes. “I uh—I don’t know what you like to do, but I have a couple of books you might like. One has a kid with a magic pen and a snarky horse that I liked when I was younger. So if you want…” he trailed off, feeling dumb.
It was the thinnest of olive branches he could possibly extend, but Sara’s lips curled into a soft smile anyway.
“I like to read.”
She was all knobbly knees and pointy elbows. Too thin even under her baggy clothes, with her hair in her face. But she was sitting up. She was talking. She was smiling.
Swallowing thickly, Blake realized that Sara wasn’t just a six-year-old kid. She was the strongest goddamn person in the room.
Take care of her.
Four words that hit harder than anything Blake had ever felt. When her mom said it, he’d been too preoccupied with watching her die. Trying to do something besides fail another person he’d wanted to help.
Blake still didn’t know her mother’s name. He didn’t know her favorite color or whether she preferred cats or dogs. But as he looked into her daughter’s face, he knew without a shadow of a doubt he understood her.
Because none of those things mattered to her mom. What mattered to her was this skinny, blonde-haired kid. This was her whole world. And Blake hadn’t failed her. Not while this kid was still alive.
With a shaking hand, he reached out to pat the girl’s shoulder. His throat was dry, and it took a moment for him to find the words.
“I’ll get you some books,” he said.
What he meant was: I will do everything in my power to make this world a safe place for you.
Blake just hoped that wherever her mother was, she believed him.
As he removed his hand, he remembered something.
He’d been on his front, grit in his mouth, blood dripping down his cheek, and his ears ringing.
A blip. A black spot in his vision. Dirt, he thought.
But as he focused back on the memory, it took shape.
Coalesced into something more than just a smudge.
Blake stood up so quickly his head spun.
Body protesting, he stepped forward. Someone called his name, but he was too busy following the thread his mind was weaving.
No one can do what you can, Gabriel had said.
Blake hadn’t believed him. But now he was trying.
Staring down at the dingy floor, not seeing the scuffs in the tile, but the hazy smoky sky over the buildings.
A burnt-out liquor store. An overturned car.
Fire licked the sky, the heat smoldering against his back.
“The Queen.”
Gabriel was in front of him, his face drawn. “Blake?”
Glancing over at the board, Blake tried to explain what he’d seen, but only just comprehended. “The Monkey Cats. You said they only live three days and that they must have some way to—to replenish their ranks, right?”
The entire room was staring at him like he’d grown a second head. He huffed, desperately trying to grab hold of his train of thought before it was lost in the abyss of his mind—somewhere between every word to the Scooby Doo theme song and his high school locker combination.
He strode toward the whiteboard, pointing at the Monkey Cat section. “The ships haven’t landed, but the Monkey Cats only live for three days. So how do they keep their numbers up?”
Irving’s watched him with something besides indifference glittering in his eyes.
Blake tapped the board. “Clones.”
Everyone seemed to take a collective breath before they deflated, skepticism clouding their features.
Alvarez snorted. “Clones? Seriously?”
“Yes,” Blake said between clenched teeth. “They have a single, longer living Monkey Cat that clones herself.”
Gabriel pushed a chair aside so he could come closer. “Herself?”
“Yes.” Blake felt manic, his heart jackrabbiting in his chest, breath shallow. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it before. It was so obvious.
“Don’t you guys get it? They’re similar to bees! They have a hive mind and a smarter, hardier version of the others…like an original version while the rest are just copies.” He took a shaking breath. “A Queen.”
No one said anything. They didn’t have to. He realized what he must look like with his sweat-dampened hair and wide eyes, but he had to make them see.
“I saw her. Right after we left the vet clinic—the car blew up. I was on the ground and—”
“With a head injury,” Alvarez interrupted.
“I saw her,” Blake repeated venomously. “On top of a building on the west side of the street. They’ve kept her hidden, protected. And she has to be on Earth so she can…can lay or spit out troops or whatever.”
Tommy was chewing his lip. “Why would they risk having something so invaluable in a war zone?”
Blake felt himself deflate. He didn’t know that. He just knew she existed.
“Because transportation would be too risky,” Gabriel answered.
“What’s the worst thing you can do around an enemy?
Be predictable. Their ships haven’t moved since they entered our atmosphere.
Either because they can’t, or don’t want to.
But, if they had some kind of transport between the ship and the ground every three days, the Off Formers would just destroy it.
They can’t risk their Queen getting destroyed, so they leave her on the ground. ”
“Or their transporting abilities were destroyed,” Phin supplied. “Maybe when they stopped the Zappy Balls.”
Hope flickered in Blake’s chest.
“Okay, so wait, the Monkey Cats have a Queen, and the ones running around killing us are what? Her harem of sperm donors?” Alvarez’s lip curled.
Victoria scoffed. “Why would you even go there?”
“He said they were bees!”
“I said they were similar to bees!” Blake threw up his hands. “I just—look, all I know is what I saw. She’s on that roof.”
“How do you know she’ll still be there?” Judd asked, tapping the marker on his lip. There was a black mark on his chin from where he’d mistaken which end was open.
Blake felt his grin widen as he looked over at Irving. “Because she’s entrenched behind walls. Safe in her burrow like a ground spider.”
Irving’s eyebrows twitched. He was looking through Blake, his mind parsing through everything he’d just been told and the implications.
Judd smirked. “Bees, spiders, and aliens, oh my…”
No one laughed.
“We don’t have to kill hundreds of Monkey Cats,” Blake said, turning back to Gabriel. “Just one.”
Recognition flickered across his handsome features. “And the rest will die out in three days.”
Irving wheeled back into his office. Blake heard paper rustling, and then he returned with a map of DC.
It had a dozen or so holes from thumbtacks.
He brought the map to the whiteboard, and Judd splayed it over his crimped writing.
Alvarez came forward to help them pinpoint exactly where they were when Blake saw the Queen.
His legs felt shaky after his big moment, and he stumbled back into an empty chair. He brushed his hair from his face and tried to calm down.
That was the first time he’d used what he’d considered an off-putting quirk like a superpower.
An ability he’d trained for. One that was good for something besides movie trivia and reading faster than anyone else he knew.
For possibly the first time in his life, Blake was good at something besides being a paramedic.
He could save lives with something beyond his hands.
He looked down at his shaking hands and didn’t see blood or the grooves of an axe handle.
“All right, great.” Phin stood up. In the small space, he seemed to tower over everyone.
“Killing one Monkey Cat sounds doable until we factor in that she’s got to be protected.
They’re not going to leave their army making printer without something heavy guarding her.
And she’s still a Monkey Cat. Killing them isn’t a walk in the park. ”
The soldiers immediately latched onto the problem of killing something. In a way, that was simpler. Things like what and why didn’t matter, as long as they could focus on how. On what gun or piece of weaponry would be enough?
“I’m telling you, a blade is our best option,” Judd said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Ease up, David Bowie.” Phin rolled his eyes. “Even if you could get within stabbing radius of the Monkey Cat, those moving plates will snap your blade in two.”
“Not if I had a big enough blade.”
“Oh, you find a Katana in some Virginian farmer’s shed? Maybe pull a saber out of your ass?”
“You know, you talk about my ass an awful lot for someone—”
“Enough,” Gabriel snapped. “Focus. Monkey Cats are flesh and bone. They aren’t impervious. We need something simple.”
Victoria scoffed, leaning back on her elbows. Over by the front desk, she was well outside the pool of testosterone the rest of them were simmering in. Blake thought he might join her.
“Simple,” she repeated, pale brows arched. “They’re an alien species that’s more advanced than us. Stronger than us, and can clone three warriors for every one we kill. Sure, let’s bonk them over the head.”
Irving pursed his lips. “Theoretically, if they had a brain stem, blunt force trauma could be effective.”
Alvarez threw his arms up, yelling at the room in Spanish. Blake didn’t speak Spanish, but he got the gist of what he was saying well enough.
Gabriel tried to get the room to settle. “Back to basics!” he shouted, slamming his fist on the whiteboard. His fingers smudged the writing. “What do we have that they don’t?”
Everyone stilled as they considered what Gabriel had asked.
Ideas burned through Blake’s head. They didn’t seem to like fire?
But short of stumbling upon a hidden cache of Napalm, he didn’t think they could burn the city before being killed.
Besides, Russia had tried bombing the city, and that hadn’t worked.
Judd’s snort broke the silence. “Meth.” He looked around at their unimpressed faces. “What? You asked what we had that an advanced alien species wouldn’t!”
Victoria threw a pen at his head, and Irving’s sigh sounded like it had been carved from his very soul, but Blake was stuck on something.
Flesh and blood.
“If it bleeds, we can kill it…” he trailed off, looking up in time to see Phin grabbing Judd by the neck, dragging him down so he could try and kick him in the nuts. Gabriel looked like he was ready to tear his hair out.
“That could work,” he said, a little louder, drawing attention. Irving made a face, but Gabriel was listening. “Gabriel, you said they were flesh and blood. A methamphetamine overdose would kill anything alive.”
Irving was staring at him, eyes narrowed. It wasn’t his usual look of complete disdain. This one was incredulous, bordering on irritation. But he was listening.
Blake turned to him. “They’re not designed to survive for long, which leads me to believe they probably don’t have a waste management system. But they almost certainly have an organ to pump blood and oxygen throughout their body. A brain. Both of those things would be affected by meth.”
He could see the wheels turning in Irving’s mind. “Without a proper necropsy, we can’t be sure of any of that.”
“It’s common sense,” Blake snapped. “A stimulant overdose would fry the Queen’s whole system.”
Tommy nodded, eyes on the table as he considered it. “I mean…if anything could kill an alien system, it would be meth.”
Gabriel rocked back on his heels. “They don’t have protection from an internal attack.” He glanced back at the board, his brows furrowing. “They’re designed to protect against armament. Not a small needle that could slip between the plates.”
“It wouldn’t even have to penetrate that deep.”
The room was quiet, but this time there was an undercurrent of excitement. Hands clenched on the table as people glanced at one another, looking for a better idea. No one had any.
As far as Hail Mary’s went, it wasn’t the most glamorous. He didn’t know how they were going to inject a lethal dose of methamphetamine into a Queen alien clone machine attached to a spaceship hovering in their atmosphere. Or even what a lethal dose of methamphetamine was to a Monkey Cat.
But Blake’s paramedic teacher once told him that paramedics make precise decisions based on guesswork and unreliable data. And he’d spent too long doubting himself. Blake was a paramedic, and it was time to save some lives.
To the complete shock of everyone present, Irving addressed Judd directly. “I presume you know how to make methamphetamine?”
Judd knocked Phin off of him with a vicious elbow. Standing up to his full height, he grinned down at Irving. “Oh, I see how it is. Everyone always makes fun of the redneck until it’s time to do some redneck shit.”