The Vulgus Chronicles: The Truth About Alien Tyranny by Murphy John

Author:Murphy, John [Murphy, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-04-29T07:00:00+00:00

5

The base unit showed one green light, and one blinking amber light.

“I think it’s just the screen that must be dead,” Manny said.

“Juice! We need juice!” Dweasel said.

“Maybe we can get some electricity somewhere,” Hannah said.

“I don’t know how to do that,” Manny said.

“Well, all those plug-ins in the kitchen are dead,” Cookie said. “All the power’s been out since the storm troopers came to town.”

“Do you have any batteries? What about this lantern?” Hannah asked.

“That’s the wrong kind of juice,” Dweasel said. “That has big batteries. They won’t fit in this screen. Wrong kind of juice.”

“Maybe we can try the other screens and boxes,” Hannah said. “They’ve gotta have the same batteries.”

Without a word, Dweasel got up and walked briskly toward the basement. He came back in a moment and grabbed the lantern. “I gotta take this,” he said, then disappeared down the stairs.

“I can help,” Hannah said.

“Oh, just let him do his thing. I’m sure he’ll fetch them all and raise a fit if you try to help him.”

Manny took a moment to look at Hannah in the light from the fireplace. She noticed, and then looked away. She did look tall with strong shoulders. He wondered if that bothered her growing up. No one liked to stand out during adolescence. Her manner suggested she was shy and awkward, but her enthusiasm for being with them came across. She apparently enjoyed their company as much as he enjoyed hers.

“Is anyone else living with you across the street?”

“Um—no. Not anymore. I mean, I didn’t live there before a month or so ago. But no one was with me.”

“Hiding, like us?” Manny asked.

She nodded vigorously but said nothing, looking away.

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen, I think. Maybe a little older. I lose track.”

“I’m nineteen,” Manny said. “Where’s your family? What happened to them?”

She shrugged several times. “Pennsylvania, I guess?”

“How’d you wind up here?” Manny asked, trying to be inquisitive rather than interrogating.

She shrugged more, but didn’t answer. “How’d you wind up here,” she asked in return.

“Well, I can’t really say,” Manny said, turning his eyes away this time. It occurred to him that she had something to hide, something possibly as traumatic as he had experienced. Everyone seemed to have varying degrees of bad memories of late.

He looked back at her challenging eyes, “I was in…” he paused a moment. “I was in a prison camp.” He fudged. The horror of where he really was would be too much for anyone to accept. Cookie didn’t even know. Certainly Dweasel didn’t know anything about his background. To him, Manny was just a gimp that he had to help or tend to periodically. Manny often wondered if Dweasel resented him, or if it was just his nature to look perturbed all the time.

“It was a labor camp, really. The government stuck me in there, but I escaped.”

“I thought you said you were in the military,” Hannah said.

“That came later, but it wasn’t the Global Alliance or anything. Kind of the US military—of sorts.” He felt it important to reassure her of such.

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