Girl Vs (Sinister Skies Book 1) Read online

  Girl Vs

  By X. Culletto

  Copyright Xela Culletto

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN-10: 1973108321

  ISBN-13: 978-1973108320

  No parts of this book may be used or produced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without prior written consent of the author except where permitted by law.

  The characters and events depicted in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  This book is dedicated to Arian,

  whose strength of character rivals Rhyan’s

  and Michael, who continually impresses me with his durability.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  My knife sliced cleanly through the alien’s abdomen, spilling liquidy blue guts into the mud and across my shirt. I jumped back to avoid the postmortem spasms these creatures always seemed to have.

  Not fast enough, though. The creature’s front appendage convulsed forward, and the razor-sharp claws tore through my bicep like icing on a cake.

  “Arrgh!” I grunted.

  The alien landed with a slosh in the mud and even though the creature was dead, I took an irritable swipe at its back. Gloppy blue alien blood splattered up, mixing with the red blood that was now flowing freely down my arm and dripping from my fingertips.

  Meg’s not going to be happy I ruined another shirt.

  Grunting, I pulled the alien’s massive shoulder back and wrenched out the dart I’d shot into it. Being careful not to touch the poisonous tip, I replaced it, as well as my combat knife, into the thick leather pouch I had strapped across my torso. I’d have to clean them later; it would be pointless to try to wipe them on my blood-and-mud-splattered garb.

  Wrinkling my nose in distaste at my own loathsome appearance (not to mention body odor), I began the short trek back through the woods to the cave.

  Vanessa took one look at me and scowled.

  “Can’t you at least try not to lose a pint of blood every time you go out? I’m running out of thread to stitch you up with.”

  “Who’d you learn bedside manner from—Annie Wilkes?” I spat back.

  I was used to her disapproval, but it wasn’t as though this was as bad as the stab wound I’d taken to the leg last fall. I still had a hint of a limp from that episode. And the scar… Well, it was a good thing I wouldn’t be wearing swimsuits anymore.

  Vanessa was about to respond—fiercely, judging by the look on her face—when Meg intervened.

  “Rhyan, come over here and let me clean you up.” At least she was sympathetic.

  Giving her a wide berth, I passed by Vanessa to the back of the cave, where Meg was using a scrub board to wash the never-ending laundry. I looked guiltily at the neatly folded towels that she had probably spent her morning on. She plucked the top one, dipped it into a bin of water and began wiping blood from my hands.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I don’t know why John can’t go out,” she murmured as she worked. “He’s much more suited to the disposing of those creatures than a teenage girl.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. And really, it was. I liked heading out each day, weapons in hand. It gave me something to focus on. Somewhere to channel my vengeance.

  It had to at least be better than sitting around the cave, which was all Vanessa seemed to do these days. She claimed to be “scouting for Vela”, but really she was just moping over Shawn. Again.

  “Vela” was the name given to the aliens by the media, after the constellation they appeared to have come straight through.

  “Ow!” I yelped when Meg’s towel got too close to the cuts.

  John, a burly man whose face was mostly hidden in beard, turned from the ham radio he was messing with.

  “You okay, kid?” he asked gruffly.

  Looking sideways at him, I nodded. Truth was, John scared the daylights out of me. His job was to “take care of” anybody who might come around with an eye for our stuff. He hadn’t had to do much of that lately. There seemed to be fewer people every week. We hadn’t run into anyone outside our group in a month.

  “You should take a pistol with you,” he said, for at least the third time. “Won’t have to get so close.”

  I gave a small nod in response, but there was no way I would trade my darts for bullets. True, the darts couldn’t go as far, but they did make the aliens groggy, no matter where they hit. A misplaced bullet would only enrage the beasts. And so far, my only advantage had been fighting a dazed Vela as opposed to one that was riled up.

  Vanessa pulled her first aid kit from a tattered bag.

  “All right, come here then,” she barked.

  Meg had finished cleaning most of the blood, leaving two distinct slashes that could only have come from one source. I had other sets—one on my back and one on my side—scars I would bear for life. I was beginning to feel like a human patchwork quilt.

  Reluctantly I sat next to Vanessa who was threading a needle. Not for the first time I wished there was still some lidocaine left in her medical bag. This wasn’t going to be fun.

  “Just get it over with,” I sighed.

  “You know,” she said, pressing the alcohol swab onto the cuts a little too firmly, “you really should consider how lucky you are that I’m here. Without me you’d be as good as dead.”

  “Yeah, we should probably make you our chief or something.”

  She stabbed the needle in and I winced.

  “Don’t you know it’s not wise to insult someone who’s holding a needle?”

  I didn’t reply—I was too busy focusing on not screaming.

  Before the invasion, Vanessa had gone to medical school, though she’d never had the chance to finish. We were lucky to have her—I’d seen what happened to the injured who didn’t get treatment—though I’d never tell her that.

  “Hey, hey!” a male voice called into the cave. Tristen’s voice.


  “We’re here,” Meg called back.

  A tan-faced sandy-haired boy appeared in the cave entrance, shadowed by a scrawny girl with big eyes.

  “Tanya,” I said, smiling through the pain. “How are you?”

  She set down the cardboard box she was carrying and took a seat beside me.

  “What happened to you this time?” she asked, genuinely curious.

  “Oh, you know,” I waved my free hand, “just a little mishap.”

  “Your ‘little mishaps’ sure cause a lot of problems for people,” Vanessa muttered, finishing the last stitch.

  Ignoring her, I turned to Tanya.

  “So what’d you find today?”

  “A big can of fruit cocktail! And a box of graham crackers that only expired last month, and,” she added, deflating a little, “more canned beans.”

  “We also grabbed a few t-shirts off the K-Mart shelf,” Tristen added as he passed by. Bulging sacks dripped from his arms and his hands toted a cardboard box filled to the brim. “Looks like you’re going to need them.”

  I glanced down at the gruesome shirt I was wearing and blushed. It hadn’t escaped my notice that Tristen was the only guy my age around.

  Somehow, though, it seemed to have escaped his.

  “We’ll have those beans for dinner tonight,” Meg said, digging through the sacks.

  “What about the fruit cocktail?” Tanya asked.

  “I’m going to save that for a special occasion,” Meg replied. “Maybe your birthday.”

  Instead of looking pleased, Tanya scowled.

  Tristen helped Meg unload the rest of the supplies he and Tanya had found, then came and sat next to us. Vanessa disappeared into a tattered Grisham novel and John was still playing with the radio.

  “Look Tanya,” Tristen said. “I found this for you.”

  He held out a box of colored pencils and a notebook.

  “Thanks,” she replied. Her scowl lessened.

  “Why don’t you go over by the light and draw a picture?”

  Tanya nodded and followed his suggestion. Tristen turned to me.

  “I need to ask a favor,” he said quietly.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “I want you to tell Tanya how much help she could be, spending her time here with Meg. She listens to you the best.”

  “She’s thirteen, Tristen. I think she knows what she wants.”

  “I’ve told her a thousand times that it’s safer in the cave. She won’t listen. She—“ he took a sharp breath, then continued in a whisper.

  “She had a close call today. She didn’t even know. I got lucky—I was able to distract it and get her out of trouble, but it was close. Way too close. I don’t want her out there anymore.”

  “She won’t leave you,” I whispered back. “You’re her brother. Her last family. If I had any family left, I wouldn’t leave them either.”

  Tristen’s handsome face twisted into a scowl.

  “So you won’t help me.”

  I sighed.

  “I’m not saying that. I’ll do it. It’s just that it won’t work.”

  “Just try,” he said tightly.

  A short while later Meg announced that dinner was ready. Outside the cave, the forest trees cut long shadows through the orange sunlight. Tristen and I pushed the heavy boulder over the cave entrance while everyone else clicked on their flashlights.

  An echo resounded throughout the cave as the rock banged into place. For a moment, all was silent as the six of us looked at each other’s shadowed faces through thin flashlight beams.

  “Well, we don’t want it getting cold,” Meg joked. No one laughed.

  We each took a paper plate of cold baked beans and sat on our sleeping bags, eating halfheartedly with jagged spoons. The scent of cave mildew permeated everything—even the beans.

  John finished first and climbed into his sleeping bag without saying a word. The others soon followed, except that Tristen and Tanya exchanged “goodnights”. I turned my light off, but continued to gaze into the black.

  During the daylight hours, I was able to summon some purpose, some sense of direction in this life. But when things got dark, finding that was much harder. That’s when the thoughts of what should be crept into my mind.

  I should be sitting down at the dinner table with Zach right now—maybe having tacos. Dad would just be walking in the door, a little grumpy from a long day at work. He’d be telling me to get my homework done, and I’d be asking him if I could go to the football game on Friday.

  Somewhere in the back of the cave, a dripping sound. Tanya coughed and Vanessa twisted in her sleeping bag.

  Chapter Two

  Sleeping in a sealed cave meant never knowing when morning arrives. I wasn’t sure how much sleep I was clocking these days, but I knew it couldn’t be much.

  “You awake?” Tanya whispered when she heard me sit up.

  “Yeah,” I whispered back.

  “I’m hungry,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  “Are there any granola bars left?”

  “We can check.”

  I tried to be silent, but the acoustics inside a rock made every sound deafening. The sleeping bag zipper alone woke Tristen and Vanessa.

  The latter moaned. “It’s too early.”

  “Tanya’s hungry.”

  In response, she pulled her pillow over her head.

  Tristen lit his flashlight and got up. Together we sifted through the food stash. Tristen and Tanya brought things back every day to keep us stocked, but three adults and three teenagers go through a lot of food. Especially when burning energy every day just to have water and clean clothes, not to mention hunting ungodly predators.

  There were no granola bars, so we settled for a half-full bag of pretzels.

  It was no sizzling bacon and eggs, but it was enough to rouse the adults from their beds and join in the breakfast.

  After washing the pretzels down with some water, Tristen and I pushed the boulder to reveal the outside world. The sun was up after all. Birds chirped without a care. Easy for them; the aliens had left the animals alone.

  “I’m going out,” I told Tristen. “I’ll talk to Tanya this afternoon.”

  “No, now,” he said.

  “One more day isn’t going to hurt her,” I said. “You’ll be fine.”

  “Rhyan. You said you’d help.”

  “I said I’d try. And it wouldn’t matter anyway. Tanya’s not going to listen to me any better than she does you.”

  Glowering, he turned away to start his preparations for the day. I did the same, gathering my knives, blow darts, trail mix, and water bottle.

  Meg watched us, a guilty look on her face. I knew she hated sitting in the cave all day, letting other people do most of the grunt work. But, thanks to a particularly vicious Vela, she could barely walk anymore, let alone run through the tangled woods.

  John was different. He never seemed to care that Tristen, Tanya, and I took on the most risk every time we left the safety of the cave. But I didn’t mind. To my way of thinking, he carried his weight every time he’d kept desperate, hostile people away from our supplies. I had no qualms about taking down aliens. Taking out people, though….

  I slipped out of the cave without a word to anyone.

  Every morning for the past six months, I’d hiked to the top of the hill in which our cave was cradled. From that vantage point I watched Tristen and Tanya head down the trail toward the suburbs, two dots of color amidst a sea of green and brown.

  My eyes scanned the surrounding forest for unsettled birds. I learned long ago that birds—all birds—will flee any area the aliens infested. I didn’t have to wait long before an entire flock of starlings shot up abruptly from the canopy. They flapped overhead, going south, but I kept my gaze on the spot they’d abandoned.

  Really? There?

  I pursed my lips and, with a rock in the pit of my stomach, began to trek down the hill.

  You can do this, I told m
yself. You have no choice.

  Away from the cities, the aliens never came in large numbers. Which was why I continued to hunt them daily. One, sometimes even two, at a time usually wasn’t a problem. It was helpful that I actively sought them out before they lumbered across our cave. At least that’s what I told myself.

  The cities though, were swollen with millions of hostile, murderous beasts. Creatures that had slaughtered nearly all of humanity in a single month.

  My foot stumbled uncharacteristically over a rock, as though picking up the reluctance in my mind.

  Just go kill the stupid thing, like you’ve done a hundred times.

  My ankle caught on a branch, sending me sprawling. I bit back tears.

  It’s not your fault. My mind summoned up the familiar mantra. Not your fault, not your fault.

  But no matter how many times I repeated it to myself, I still had a hard time believing it.

  Shawn was dead—had died only yards from where I now knelt—and Vanessa blamed me.

  I could see her logic—Shawn and I had set out on a hunt together, and one of us returned. It was only natural she’d be bitter toward me.

  But she hadn’t been there. Hadn’t seen the alien appear as if from nowhere. Hadn’t seen me slay the huge creature with only a pocketknife, because my combat knives had fallen in the mud during the tussle. Hadn’t seen the tear-ridden trek, dragging what was left of Shawn’s body, back up through rain and mud.

  She hated me. And I resented her for her hate.

  It’s not your fault.

  A red-tailed hawk took flight from a branch just above my head. My pity party cut short, I quickly climbed the tree the hawk had vacated.

  I waited. But nothing happened. No ungodly monster came plodding through the trees.

  False alarm.

  Heart pounding, I descended from the roost, and began to hunt. Stepping lightly with a knife in my right hand and a blow dart in my left, I prowled through the trees. Fortunately, there were plenty of larkspur plants around to keep the darts’ tips freshly poisoned.

  I’d come up with the idea a while back, when I saw a Vela rolling on the ground, clearly agitated. It didn’t take long for me to realize it had come across a field of larkspur. Rubbing a little of the flower’s petals onto my darts had proven quite effective in doping the monsters.