Page 80 of The Commander

The harness, like a seatbelt, crisscrossed her chest and lap, tightening automatically. Frantic searching under the seat and beneath her legs yielded nothing. All the alien tech was subtle. Streamlined. Even the buttons on the device were shallow, barely raised plates. The truck had a steering wheel, but everything else was smooth panels. Nothing lit up helpfully under her probing hands.

Muted yells erupted outside. Cara jerked around to see people fall back, knocked off their feet. Mackie, curled like a shrimp, appeared on the platform.

Brenda was down, underneath someone else. The mayor’s face turned bright red as he tried to stand. He waved his arms, making come-to-me-motions and looking toward the building behind him as if he expected someone to come from that direction with help. Men ran off the loading dock and passed the truck, expressions urgent and intent.

What had happened? Hand on the dash, she leaned forward to see, felt a release, and looked down to see the belts pull away from her body.

“Yes!” she shouted in triumph and felt around for the door latch, hoping he hadn’t locked it. Did these things even have locks? She must have found the right thing because the door swung open for her. Killing device in hand, she got out.

“Brenda! Are you okay? What are you doing with him?” Cara called out. Had Andy forced her up there? She didn’t look forced, butafter everything, Cara refused to believe that the scrawny good-for-nothing ass could coax Brenda back to his side.

Behind Brenda and the group, red hats appeared. They looked disheveled and confused. They looked drunk.

“Cara! Cara, help me. The bluey is going to kill us,” Brenda pointed at Bastain.

“Shut up,” Andy yelled at Brenda, pushing her aside with his foot as he helped the mayor up.

“No one’s going to die, girl,” the mayor called out, a goon on his other side helping him stand.

“Men have gone to get what you want, Commander,” Andy called out above the din the others were creating.

“Just do what he says, Brenda. You just gotta do what he says.” Cara was still confused. The answer was right there, but she didn’t want to believe it. While she’d risked her life to feed Brenda, Brenda had gone back to the person who had thrown her to the dogs like a bone.

“Yes. Do what he says. Unlike you,” Bastain said toward Cara with a dark menace that raised the hair on the back of her neck. She felt his anger.

Why was his menace as sexy as hell? He’d picked up a man and thrown him up into a group of people. She hadn’t seen it, but the result knocked them all down. He didn’t look winded. He hadn’t looked bothered by any of it until she exited his truck.

“Brenda, what are you doing here? Where are the others?”

She didn’t see any of the others. Were they still out in the camp by the river, starving, or had the mayor let them back in?

“She came back to me as soon as you disappeared. They said you got picked up. Gotta admit, I never imagined you would be an alien whore,” Andy answered for Brenda as he reached behind himself to take something another man handed him.

It looked like one of the guns the muzzle faces carried.

She only got a glimpse of the dark colored thing before the commander was up on the platform picking Andy up. Shit, he moved fast.

Bastain raised Andy in the air, bent him in half. The wrong way. The man’s bones broke, cracking to pieces as he screamed with a horrific furor that Cara would never forget.

Worse than a weapons blast, the sound of Andy’s death scraped across Cara’s eardrums in a loud, painful burst that hurt the soul. The commander had broken Andy’s spine like a piece of wood—and who knew what else—in a single, brutal move.

The man who’d gotten the weapon for Andy tried to dash away, but the commander was so fast—everywhere at once. He threw Andy down, caught the man around the middle, snapped him backward like a cracker, and threw him down like trash on top of Andy.

“You humans are very tiresome. Where are those power cells?” He straightened up, casual and bothered, bored by his own violence.

Cara looked from him to the dying, broken bodies of the men on the ground. He killed them so easily.

“Here! Here!” One of the pig’s men called from across the street. There were several of them, each carrying a square battery and running in their direction.

“No! Andy. Not my Andy. Someone help him.” Brenda scrambled off the loading dock and went to her knees next to the man who tried to prostitute her.

“Brenda.” Cara didn’t know what to say.

“You killed him.” Cara said between huffs of breath. She looked like she was hyperventilating—entering full panic mode, her face growing redder by the second. “You have to calm down. The baby. Your baby.” Cara tried to grab at something sane. This was all so crazy, and there was still a baby to save.

Andy didn’t deserve anything from anyone. He was scum. Brenda must have gone back to him because of the baby.

Jumping down from the platform, a grim expression passed over the commander’s face as he looked from Brenda to Cara.

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