Hostile Genus: An Epic Military Sci-Fi Series (Invasive Species Book 2) Ben Stevens (best contemporary novels txt) 📖

was unusual was an understatement, and Lucy knew this, so she didn’t waste a second in attempting to assuage any fear or alarm the home’s tenants may be feeling.

“No se alarmes, I am a friend,” Lucy said, both hands in the air. “Your lovely daughters invited me to join them. I am a stranger to the city and did not know about the curfew.”

The young man had been perched on a stool near the woman, whom Lucy assumed was the mother of all three children. He rose to his feet, fists clenched. Neither of them said a word and only continued to stare at Lucy in shock.

“Please, I mean no harm. I have some questions if you would be so kind.” Lucy could practically feel the apprehension in the room, so redoubled her efforts to calm them.

“I know my visage, my apariencia is unsettling, but I assure you, I harbor no bad intentions to you or your family.”

“What do you want?” the boy, presumably Eduardo, asked.

“Maria and Camila here mentioned something when I told them what I do.”

At this, Maria shifted in place and once more cast her eyes down.

“What you do?” Eduardo asked, clearly confused.

“I told them that I stop bad men.” Taking a risk, Lucy decided to command her right thigh to open, revealing her hidden pistol. She saw both pairs of eyes, Eduardo’s and his mother’s, flick to the weapon. Keeping her hands up where they could see them, she nodded to them, tacitly telling them all they needed to know, and then commanded her thigh-compartment to close back up with a thought.

“I see,” Eduardo said, eyes narrowing.

The mother’s face transformed as suddenly as Lucy’s thigh had, morphing into a pained expression: one part hope, one part merciful begging.

“Our prayers are answered! La Virgen de Guadalupe has sent the Sante Muerte to save us!”

Now it was Lucy’s turn to look shocked. Recovering as quickly as possible, she cocked her head slightly and narrowed her eyes.

“What goes on in this city? Save you from whom? The vampires?”

“Si, Los Vampiros,” Eduardo said. “They are devils. They keep us small, you see? My father stood up to them and now he is gone.”

“Gone?” Lucy asked, watching the mother for a reaction as Eduardo spoke.

“Gone. They took him. They take many of us. People disappear. Never come back. Especially people who can do mágico.”

So people down here can shape Strange too, huh? Interesting.

“Why don’t you all leave if you are in danger? Just pack up and go? Why do you stay submissive to the Vampiros if they harm you?”

At this question, the mother made a sound, like a cry, cut off and stifled. She shook her head slowly as Eduardo’s eyes, too old for his teenaged face, bore into Lucy with impassioned anger.

“Señora,” he said, his voice as flat and laced with as much danger as the sides of Lucy’s war-clubs, “they won’t let us leave.”

13

After being ejected from the suite, Ratt found his way out of the palace and onto the streets that they had ridden through on their way in. On foot, he could see more, smell more, and hear more. Up close and personal, the city was more real, more tangible. He noticed strange tattoos on the human citizenry’s necks as well as the intravenous ports installed on their arms, which reminded him of field medicine techniques he had seen employed during the war with Home when he was a child.

He wondered at the tattoos but didn’t ask anyone. He passed some old women with a child sitting on inverted rusty buckets next to what looked like an over-sized frying pan set over a small fire of white ash and red coals. He watched them reach into the pan with simple wooden tongs and flip several small, flat yellow circles—corn tortillas. Even coming from as far to the north as Home, no Latino boy worthy of the name would fail to recognize a corn tortilla when he saw one. This familiar food brought a smile to Ratt’s face, and he waved at the multi-generational group of women. The child stared at him as if he were an alien and the old women scowled.

Friendly neighborhood. Ratt rolled his eyes, hidden behind his tinted lenses, and moved on. He strolled through the night, unmolested for little over an hour, passing homes of such poverty that they would have fit in perfectly in the Shanty or Underground before he stumbled upon the answer to the mystery of the ubiquitous neck tattoos.

Not twenty yards ahead, on the other side of a well-worn, hard-packed mud street, was a line of people stretching off into the distance and around the end of the block. How much longer the line was after that, Ratt could not say. Having illegally read as many books and studied as many pre-Storm films as he could find, Ratt was familiar with pre-Storm history. The scene in front of him evoked memories of images he had seen in an old compilation of ancient magazines.

Ghostly images of a bygone era, all in black and white, of things called “gulag,” “concentration camp,” and “Soviet bread lines.” Every person in this line was human, of that Ratt was sure—no glowing red eyes, no fangs—and every single one of them came equipped with the IV port and neck tattoo. The only people present who didn’t have those accoutrements were the armored soldier-looking types at the front of the line. They were not part of the line but were instead facing the queue, receiving the people in the line, one at a time.

Ratt slid from the street-alley intersection where he had been standing to a position where most of his profile was obscured by a light post with a trash bin at its base. Trying not to draw attention to himself, Ratt reached into his pants pocket, brushing aside the pre-Storm vintage skater chain that dangled there, and withdrew a hand-sized clear plastic bag. He casually dumped the bag on the lid of the