The Resisters (10 page)

The single tiny crack resisted his efforts.

A tingling spread over Ethan’s throat. He got dizzy.

This was it.

They were going to win.

Ethan mustered all his strength, tensed his entire body—and hit the window with everything he had.

A second crack splintered out from the first.

He’d done it.

But it was too late. The cracked window held.

His eyelids drooped … and closed.

Ethan jerked upright. No! He couldn’t fall asleep!

He raised a trembling hand but felt his strength draining away.

He hit the glass.

Every window on his side of the bus shattered. Glass pebbles showered over Ethan. The bus shuddered and skidded to the side of the road. Hot wind, dust, and smoke blasted inside.

The chemical smell was gone, though.

Just in time. His head cleared.

Ethan stared at his hand … and then at the massive damage done to the bus.

There was no way
he
could’ve done this, was there?

A second impact sent the bus tumbling sideways.

It flipped—the other windows crumbled—metal wrenched and sparked.

Ethan, strapped upside down and helpless in his seat, tasted blood.

BLOOD RAN OUT OF ETHAN’S NOSE AND
dripped to the floor—or rather the ceiling that was now where the floor should be in the overturned bus.

He coughed. The smoke got thicker.

What had just happened? Nothing made sense.

Maybe it was because he was hanging upside down, semidrugged and shaken.

From the back of the bus there was a sputtering and a sudden strong acrid odor. The battery packs were back there. From his chemistry class Ethan knew that if they cracked, they could leak an explosive gas.

He’d figure out what had happened to the bus later. He had to get out first!

The harness that had saved him from serious injury when the bus flipped was snug … and still locked.

He’d have to cut himself out. With what? The shattered glass was the “safe” kind, plastic-coated, that made tiny pebbles when it broke. He couldn’t use it.

Under the seat ahead, though, a metal brace had twisted free and dangled there.

Ethan stretched—barely touched it with his fingertips, pulled it closer, grasped it, and pulled it free!

The end of the brace had a wicked, razor-sharp edge. Ethan sawed through the straps of his harness—and dropped headfirst onto the ceiling of the bus.

He scrambled out of a broken window and staggered from the bus.

The back of the bus had been crumpled like an empty aluminum can. Jets of gas spewed out.

Ethan ran up a nearby hill, climbing to the paved road the bus had been on.

The bus exploded! A wave of force and heat knocked him over. Flames shot through the passenger section and lifted the bus into the air—then it landed with a terrific crash.

A few seconds slower and Ethan would’ve been roasted alive.

He trembled but forced himself to stop, got to his feet, and got his bearings.

He was outside in the real world. It looked like a cross between the Sahara Desert and the cratered surface of the moon. There was no vegetation. The ground was a series of
strip mines and toxic waste channels. The air was choked with dust … and drones.

A dozen of the same part-insect, part-rocket things that had attacked him yesterday circled the blackened, smoking remains of the school bus.

Three drones peeled off and landed, surrounding Ethan.

They were bigger than he remembered. Their slim torpedo bodies were about his size. Their wings were super-thin translucent silver metal. Each had a single eye, a segmented bulb in which Ethan saw hundreds of hexagonal reflections of himself.

Their stingers pointed at him. They retracted with a click, like they were about to shoot.

The skin at the base of Ethan’s spine crawled.

He tensed, trying to figure out how to dodge
three
of those darts at once.

A shadow streaked overhead—there was a hypersonic buzz—three red lights strobed so bright, they left Ethan blinking—and there were three flashes of heat that instantly sunburned his right arm.

The three drones around him sizzled, and lines of molten metal scarred their lengths. Their tiny insect legs gave out, and they dropped to the ground, inert.

Ethan’s vision cleared and he saw a giant dragonfly zip between the drones over the bus, shooting them with lasers and ripping the closest to shrapnel with its front pincers.

“Madison!” He shouted and whooped for joy.

Ethan had never been so glad to see a bug before.

Thrumming filled the air behind him. Ethan turned, and a fifteen-foot-tall rhinoceros beetle dropped from the air three paces from him with enough force to make the earth tremble.

It was a terrifying sight … so much destructive armored force, so close.

The beetle’s stubby black wings folded under its shell like Japanese origami.

“I
really
hope that’s you, Felix,” Ethan said.

The beetle took a menacing step closer.

Ethan felt absolute, life-threatening danger emanating from the thing, and he backed away.

Was Felix angry at him? Going to pulverize him because Ethan had ditched them yesterday? He had every right to be mad. Ethan’s running away could have gotten them captured or killed … but if they were so angry, why come back and save him?

Was this even Felix? It could be some
other
combat beetle, controlled by the Ch’zar.

The beetle’s horns flickered with blue beams that intersected and combined.

Ethan held up his hands in the universal gesture of peace and surrender. There was nowhere to hide. That particle beam would blast him into atoms!

Ethan heard and then felt a buzzing—a split second before he got sideswiped by an unstoppable force.

The dragonfly swooped in, yanked him off his feet, and soared into the air so quickly, the acceleration almost pulled the skin off his face.

He tried to scream but was going too fast to take a breath.

The dragonfly rolled and dove to the ground. It hovered to a stop so quickly that Ethan’s stomach rattled in his rib cage.

The dragonfly unceremoniously dropped him on the dirt and took off into the air.

Dizzy, Ethan turned on wobbly legs and saw the beetle that had almost blasted him.

He was wrong, though. He hadn’t been the beetle’s target.

It crouched and blasted the ground—boiling dirt and stone into a fiery cauldron.

A pair of hooked insect jaws slashed at the beetle from where they’d been hidden underground.

Another bug.

Ethan recognized it. It was an ant lion—fat body, tiny head, and oversized jaws. He’d seen them before at the bottom of sandy pits, waiting for smaller bugs to wander by and fall in. Then they’d grab, crush, and devour whatever they sank their jaws into.

Only the ant lions Ethan had seen weren’t the size of an eighteen-wheel truck, with armored jaws that looked like they could crush solid steel. They weren’t covered in a
thick silver armor that looked impenetrable. And any ant lion Ethan had seen before
definitely
didn’t have a cannon mounted on its back!

Felix kept blasting the thing with his particle beam.

Madison shot down the remaining drones, and then her dragonfly strafed the ant lion with laser fire.

Their beams heated a section of the ant lion’s silver armor. It sparkled and harmlessly reflected the energy.

The ant lion lunged at the rhinoceros beetle.

Felix jumped back, narrowly escaping the snap of its slashing jaws.

Where had that thing come from? Ethan couldn’t figure out how it could have just been sitting there waiting for them.

More important, though: How were Felix and Madison going to kill it?

Missile launchers popped out from the sides of the rhinoceros beetle, and a pair of rockets whooshed out, struck the ant lion, and exploded in a thunderous cloud.

The ant lion was unfazed. It jumped and knocked Felix to the ground.

The rhinoceros beetle grappled and shoved the ant lion’s cannon to one side just as it fired.

The ground exploded and sent both creatures tumbling into the air.

The beetle landed on its back, legs wriggling in a struggle to right itself.

The ant lion landed on its legs and scrambled toward Felix.

Ethan didn’t think. He just knew he had to somehow stop that thing from ripping Felix apart.

Ethan owed him.

He picked up a fist-sized chunk of rock and hucked it as hard as he could.

It amazingly hit (and then not-so-amazingly bounced off) the ant lion. It didn’t do any damage, but silver sensor hairs on the thing’s armor rippled with irritation. It hesitated.

“Hey, shiny!” Ethan yelled. “You looking for me?”

It stopped. Its antennae twitched.

“Yeah, I’m talking to you! I’ve seen balls of tinfoil that looked scarier!”

The ant lion spun around, and its cannon aimed at Ethan.

“Uh-oh,” Ethan whispered.

The problem with his not-thinking-ahead plan suddenly became very clear to him.

Madison’s dragonfly swooped across the ant lion’s path. It tracked her for a moment, then reoriented on Ethan.

Ethan couldn’t think of anything to do.

He shook.…

No, it wasn’t him. The ground
under
his feet trembled.

Felix’s beetle had gotten up and was behind the ant lion, running, building speed, shaking the earth with its
massive bulk. It leaped into the air and onto the ant lion’s back!

The beetle used one horn to gore the seam where the cannon attached to the ant lion’s armor.

The ant lion turned and tried to flip the huge rhinoceros beetle off, but it couldn’t shake him.

Felix levered the gun up, exposing a crack in the ant lion’s armor—and then fired his missiles into the breach.

Explosions and smoke and lightning filled the air … as well as chunks of silver armor and bug legs and the ant lion’s jagged jaws, which went spinning over Ethan’s head.

When the air cleared, the rhinoceros beetle lay in the center of a charred crater covered with green goo … not moving.

“Felix!” Ethan ran to him.

Madison’s dragonfly landed nearby, its armor popped open, and she slid out.

The pattern on her bodysuit exactly matched the dragonfly’s markings, but then the colors on her suit faded. Madison was drenched in sweat. Her normally spiked hair was plastered to her forehead.

She touched three different places on the beetle armor. The armor slid apart, revealing Felix inside, unconscious … or dead.

The big guy for once looked tiny inside the even larger monster insect fighting suit. Felix’s face was perfectly still and peaceful.

A lump caught in Ethan’s throat. “He’s okay, isn’t he?” Ethan whispered.

Madison ignored him and felt for a pulse on Felix’s neck. She looked grim and rummaged through a small pouch on her belt, pulling out what looked like a Band-Aid. She peeled it and smoothed it onto Felix’s neck.

After a moment Felix inhaled and looked around. “Did we win?” he whispered.

Madison looked like she was going to cry with happiness. “That was so stupid.” She hugged Felix.

She helped him out of the fighting suit.

“Wow,” Ethan said, breathless. “I don’t even know how to—”

Madison whirled, grabbed Ethan by his shirt, and drew back her fist.

He’d never seen any person look like she did—like she wanted to knock his head off!

“I don’t want to hear anything from you, Blackwood …,” she growled, “except where you stashed
our
Infiltrator I.C.E. fighting suit.”

THE BARN SMELLED OF FRESH HAY AND
gasoline. It was an old place on the very edge of Blanca Dairy farmland. There was a rusted plow inside from when horses worked the fields.

Also under the hayloft stood two gigantic insects: a dragonfly and a rhinoceros beetle.

Felix tossed pitchforks of hay down on them to hide the out-of-place creatures. His shaved head glistened with sweat from the work.

Madison stood before Ethan, rubbing goop into his hair and combing it so roughly that she tore some out.