Zuri stopped her jeep a few meters from the neural network and fingered an explosive ball in her hand. Deemed a walking nervous system, the chain of three-meter-tall stalks crossed the landscape on wiry dendrites, sucking up sodium and potassium and destroying all life in its path. Mineral deposits in Canada, Belarus, Peru, Ethiopia, and China were battlegrounds, including Zuri’s hometown of Grand Saline, Texas. Plasma bolts fired by the dendrites repelled artillery and air attack. The only retaliation was by foot.
This is for you, Lance, Tara, Marilee, Pedro, Angel. Zuri ran through the names of the track team she’d captained, charred in a raid on her high school during a meet. She’d escaped immolation by huddling in a basement stairwell, where commandos scooped her up and brought her to the resistance.
Cradling the explosive ball, Zuri started her run but collapsed after a few strides. She remembered the screams of her teammates. She thought of her parents and her little brother, a middle-schooler, taken out when the aliens hit her city with a super bolt while she was away at training. The attack also destroyed the daycare center her parents ran. She hated the daycare center, hated working with children, and was looking forward to an athletic scholarship, all of which had created a rift with her mother. The aliens, in their perverted way, had resolved that.
Consumed by guilt, Zuri looked at the chain of neurons stretching to the horizon. She was exhausted from setting endless explosions and nauseated by the resulting slime.
Suddenly, a blackbird swooshed overhead and landed atop one of the neurons. Zuri slipped the explosive into a velvet pouch on her tactical belt and launched a drone. Watching the drone’s video on a wrist monitor, she observed the bird, a hatchling, and an unhatched egg nesting. Mom’s found a safe spot, she thought, watching the bird feed a worm to the hatchling. She jerked when the video abruptly went out. She looked up at the neuron and saw the dendrite striking at the bird and the drone spiraling away.
Zuri launched into a zigzag attack. The dendrite shot a plasma bolt, recharged, and shot again, missing twice. Zuri set the explosive at the base of the neuron and climbed the stalk. At the top she found the cremated remains of the mother and hatchling, but the unhatched egg was intact. She grabbed the egg, slid down the stalk, and retreated.
As she zigzagged across the field, a dendrite lashed out and wrapped itself around her thigh. She landed flat on her face, unsheathed a knife, and stabbed at tough membrane. The dendrite cut through the pantleg of her insulated commando suit, reaching skin. She tensed up, anticipating the electric charge that would roast her leg. Just then, an explosion sent pieces of rubbery neuron bouncing around her like tread from a blowout, one small chunk pinging off her jaw. Spitting blood, she unpeeled the dendrite from her leg and grinned at the smoldering neuron, now a nub.
Zuri drove back to headquarters and pushed her way through a door marked ARK. Inside a warehouse converted to rehabilitate animals collected in the field, she went up to a lab-coated technician. “Dory!”
“Thank God you’re back!” Dory said. “Major Krag’s presenting new coordinates in the tactical room—” Dory paused and squinted at Zuri’s swelling jaw and lacerated thigh. “Get to the infirmary, Zuri!”
Zuri reached into her velvet pouch and withdrew the egg. “Blackbird. Saved it when the mom was cooked.” Zuri left out that she blamed herself for the bird’s demise.
Dory sucked air and took the egg. She moved slowly to a cage and slid the egg under a slender, grey bird missing half a wing.
“Mourning doves always lay two eggs,” Dory said. “This mother lost one. Now she has two.”
As Zuri stared at the dove, an image of herself as a little girl flashed in her mind of slipping into her parents’ bed at night and curling up in the warm canyon between their bodies. Then she shook her head and ran to the tactical room.
“We suspect the neurons communicate by passing signals through the air, synapse to synapse,” Krag was saying, pointing to a display screen. The major, a middle-aged man always wearing a freshly pressed uniform, had become a strong parental figure for Zuri, and the entire sector looked to him for inspiration. It was Krag who’d discovered that there was a one-meter gap at the base of each stalk where the resistance could plant explosives. With her speed, Zuri had become the sector’s prime commando.
Krag went on, “We’ve detected highly concentrated signals emanating from a section of ground in our sector. I need a volunteer—”
“Coordinates, please!” Zuri said, jumping up.
Krag smirked. “Of course, Zuri.”
Minutes later, Zuri parked her jeep a few klicks from the neural network. She knew the network would be growing a new neuron to replace the one she’d destroyed. Thoughts of her classmates, parents, and the blackbird egg spurred her on, and the pain in her jaw and leg helped her focus.
Carrying an energy detector, she came upon a section of ground that made the reading jump. With a hand shovel, she dug into sod and quickly uncovered tiny dendrites sticking up. She dug deeper and gasped at a clutch of neurons, only centimeters in size each, hugging themselves in a tiny ball. She pulled an explosive from her pouch, held it over the nest, and hesitated. The neurons were squirming, impossibly small. She heard a howl and looked up at a saucer, some thirty meters across, darkening the sky, gliding toward her. She dropped the explosive into the nest.
She jumped into the jeep and, after a short distance, realized she couldn’t outrun the saucer. She got out and faced the craft, taking aim with a sidearm. Suddenly, an explosion shook the ground, and she saw a string of neurons along the network topple like dominoes. The saucer wavered in air and crashed in a fireball, blowing her over.
Back at headquarters, Zuri debriefed Krag.
“Well done, Zuri,” Krag said. “So, destroying a nest shocks the system. I’m assembling a detail for another mission.”
Zuri led Krag to the hole she’d opened up. While detail members fanned out, Zuri felt a twinge inside her head. Something tugged at her, and she called for Krag to follow. The sensation was overwhelming her.
After running a few meters, she stopped and pointed to a section of ground. “Here, Major!”
Shovels dug up turf and uncovered a nest of tiny neurons.
“Lord,” Krag muttered. He ordered the nest destroyed, and a string of neurons toppled along the network.
“Here!” Zuri yelled, running to another spot, and the team destroyed another nest.
“And here!” Zuri yelled, pointing to another spot. She was exhilarated, recalling how she felt when her relay team would tear up the running track, with her running anchor.
“How are you finding these nests?” Krag asked.
Zuri’s head began to throb, and she stopped cold. She squeezed her hands against her temples and turned to Krag, the throbbing exploding into great pain. She fell, screaming and writhing on the ground.
Zuri had completed a lap when a neuron came lumbering onto her high school running track, shooting plasma bolts at her feet. She veered off the track, cleats clapping on asphalt, and sprinted down a street. She saw a toddler crying on a street curb and a neuron bearing down on it, dendrites latching onto the toddler’s head. Zuri sped toward the toddler and snatched it out from under the neuron. As she ran off, a gang of neurons created a barrier ahead of her, and another closed in behind, trapping her in a ring. Zuri tossed the child like a volleyball to a bystander and lunged at one of the neurons, grabbing its dendrite and pulling the neuron over like a cut tree. Before she could leap over the stalk and escape, dendrites wrapped themselves around her arms and legs. Heat from the dendrites burned into her skin, and she saw her four limbs simultaneously sever from her body. Now just a torso, she squirmed on the ground as a neuron bent over her, dripping green slime on her face.
Zuri awoke in the infirmary with a start, Krag and Dory smiling down at her.
“Easy,” Krag said. “Feeling better?”
Zuri nodded and rubbed her head. “Weird dream. Pain’s gone.”
Dory handed Zuri a sheet of glossy paper. “Take a look at this micrograph, Zuri. Surgeons removed a microscopic neuron clinging to your brain stem.”
Zuri sat up, still shivering from her dream, and looked at a magnified speck on the photo, circled in marking pen. She squinted and could make out miniature dendrites and a stalk. “A neuron? That small?”
“A hundredth of a millimeter,” Dory said, “but identical to a full-grown adult. It was transmitting a faint signal that the surgeons detected. Must have traveled through your bloodstream.”
“The cut on my leg,” Zuri said. “When I knelt beside that clutch . . .”
Dory nodded. “An individual crawled inside you. You were its mother for a while.”
Krag said, “Looks like the alien plants nest wherever they want to extend the network. Probably don’t brood over their young so as not to give away their positions. You found their Achilles’ heel, Zuri. We now have a plan to follow these nests to the nerve center and bring down the whole damn network.”
The major saluted, smiled warmly, and left.
“Hard to believe a fragile creature grows to be so evil,” Zuri said, peering at the picture.
“It wanted to nest, like all young,” Dory said.
Dory exited and returned a moment later with the bird cage containing the mourning dove. She set the cage on a table by the bed. “The infirmary staff isn’t excited about a bird cage in a treatment room, but I thought you might like some company. Both eggs have hatched. If you watch, you’ll see activity under the mother. Now rest.”
“The alien doesn’t brood over its young?” Zuri said.
Dory shrugged and left.
Zuri couldn’t fathom such a life form, and the notion of running from nest to nest, destroying defenseless young, made her sick. She spotted two beaks poking out from under the mourning dove. Exhausted, she envisioned crawling into bed with her parents, but couldn’t sleep.
After weeks of field study, Krag’s team located a point of extreme energy coming from what was once a housing tract, now a debris-strewn area leveled by the aliens. Armed with newly developed energy disruptors that could momentarily stun the neurons by short-circuiting their synapses, Zuri and an attack squad dug a narrow pit and descended into an underground chamber. If this were the control center, it would hopefully be distracted by a flurry of attacks under Krag’s command down the network.
Zuri’s boots came to rest on a spongy, slippery surface. Wobbling to keep her balance, she shined a flashlight at her feet, gasping at a grey mass of gnarled tissue filled with crevices and rivulets.
She switched on her forehead camera and radioed Krag. “It’s a giant brain, Major. Extends for meters!”
“Zuri, plant that explosive and get out of there before it detects—”
“It has, Sir.”
Neurons were lumbering along the chamber and climbing up the curved lobe of the brain, their dendrites shooting bursts of plasma. The commandos squatted into crevices, the plasma just missing their heads, and returned fire with their disruptors.
Under the commandos’ cover, Zuri slid down the brain and waved her flashlight, looking for a place to plant a powerful explosive. She spotted a slit in the lobe tissue, and when she inserted her hand into it, her arm disappeared up to the elbow in a sheath of warm slime. Perfect! She unclipped the explosive device from her belt and placed it in the slit.
She radioed her team to evacuate, then noticed a neuron lumber into a tunnel a few meters away, pushing another neuron on a gurney. She shined her flashlight down the tunnel and saw rows of neurons lying on tables. There were scores of tables. Other neurons were moving from table to table, tending to prone individuals.
“What are you doing, Zuri?” Krag crackled through the radio. “Get out of there!”
“It’s a hospital, Major.”
Her eyes ballooned when she saw one neuron cradling a tiny one, their dendrites intertwined.
“One of them’s holding a baby,” Zuri said. “I think it’s feeding it current.”
“Zuri!” Krag yelled. “Exit!”
Zuri took a breath and shook off her daze. She pivoted and felt something small squish underfoot. She looked down and saw a flattened neuron, about the size of her thumb, lying still. She peeled the neuron off the ground and stuffed it into her side pouch. She started when the heat of a plasma bolt streaked over her shoulder. She turned and saw a neuron lurching toward her. Other neurons were lurching from behind. She sprayed them all with her disruptor in a sweeping motion, and the slimy stalks froze in place. She slalomed around them and clambered up the brain to the rope, where the last of the commandos were climbing out of the pit.
Zuri scrambled up the rope and saw a helicopter hovering overhead, the rope hanging from the chopper’s frame. As Zuri clung to the end of the rope, the chopper pulled away, but a long dendrite reached out from the pit and its prickly tips into the calf of Zuri’s leg. Zuri felt searing pain and wildly shook her leg, then looked in horror as her leg separated just below the knee and fell away. Blood poured from her severed stump into the air. Hanging on by one hand, she curled the rope around the site of the amputation, letting her weight stanch the flow of blood. The chopper flew off, and the ground erupted, the network of neurons jackknifing like a trainwreck.
Zuri, Dory, and Krag stood before three graves some weeks later. There were headstones for Zuri’s parents, side by side, and a small one for her young brother. Zuri was leaning on a cane.
“How’s the prosthetic working out?” Krag asked.
Zuri was still learning to use her fabricated lower limb. “Wobbly,” she said. “No more sprinting for me.”
“If there’s anything, anything at all, you need, you contact me directly,” Krag said.
“Of course, Sir,” Zuri said.
“What’s the status of the other battle sites?” Dory asked.
“China’s cleared out,” Krag said. “Ethiopia, Belarus, Canada, and Peru are almost clear. It’s quite a sight when a network topples and those huge saucers burst out from underground.”
Krag’s cell buzzed.
“Have to go back to headquarters,” he said.
Krag gave Zuri a hug, somewhat awkwardly, and trudged toward his command vehicle.
“I’ve never seen Krag hug anyone,” Dory said. “He has a human side after all.”
“It had a nursery,” Zuri said blankly.
“What?” Dory said.
Zuri looked to see that Krag had driven off, then let her cane drop and squatted with a wince. From her jacket pocket she pulled out the dead neuron she’d scraped up in the tunnel.
“What the hell are you doing with that?” Dory asked. “A souvenir?”
Zuri pulled up some grass, laid the neuron down, and covered it up.
Dory smiled. “Really?”
Zuri smiled back. “I want to stay awhile. I’ll taxi back to headquarters.”
Dory nodded, zipped up her jacket to her neck, gave a shiver, then walked across the lawn to her jeep.
Zuri laid a hand on her brother’s grave. She smirked, remembering how the sixth-grader would giggle and poke at her while she’d help him with homework. Then she scooted between her parents’ graves, pulled her knees to her chin, and rocked herself. Memories of Christmas, birthday parties, and family vacations cuddled her like a warm blanket. She toyed with the notion of re-starting the daycare center, warming to the idea of working with little ones again. Maybe she could even become a teacher.
Then she saw movement where she’d laid down the neuron and sighed. Dendrites were wiggling up through the grass blades. She pulled out the neuron, plucked off the dendrites, squished slime from its trunk, and re-buried the creature.