Touched by an Alien

AK-47 if they had to.
    The song was barely to the first chorus and we had the guns. Melanie pointed hers right at the head creep. “Give me another reason.” He put his hands up.
    The pilots and I stood up. “On your side.”
    Melanie nodded. “Nice to see you.” She shot Christopher a worried look. “They have other hostages.”
    “We know,” he answered. He sounded out of breath, and I knew without asking that he was finally out of hyperjuice.
    The pilots started untying the bound men. Some of the women helped them and revived the ones who were out. I walked to the head creep; Duchess trotted over next to me. “When is Yates due to arrive?”
    He sneered. It was clear he’d practiced a lot in the mirror. “Who?”
    “Your fearless leader. You know, the one who always lets his minions do his dirty work? When’s he due for the command performance?” I prayed he wasn’t here yet. If he wasn’t, Martini and the others were likely to still be alive.
    “When he comes, he will crush you like the pitiful bugs that you are.”
    “Blah, blah, blah, heard it all before, not afraid of the creepy old man or his fugly alter ego.”
    “You should be,” another one of the terrorists hissed. “He will remake the world in his own image.”
    “And you’re okay with that? I realize that, as a group goes, you’ve all got real potential, if we clean you up and groom you, on a scale of one to ten, to end up somewhere around negative five, but that’s still more attractive than anything Yates is offering.”
    “Laugh now while you have the weapons,” the first one snarled as most of the Dazzlers giggled. “When our leader comes, you will pay.”
    “You laughed while you had the weapons. It seems only fair we do the same.” I looked around. “Girls, we need to store the trash somewhere it can’t get out or make noise. Any ideas? Me, I’m thinking there’s this warehouse made of corrugated steel in the middle of the freaking desert.”
    Emily gave me a smile that should have caused several of the terrorists to wet themselves. “I love that plan.”
    “Do the gates work?”
    “Yes, they only jammed them,” Melanie said.
    I took a deep breath. No better time for it than the present. “Where’s Beverly?”
    Emily’s eyes narrowed. “You mean Beverly the traitor, that Beverly?”
    “Yeah, her.”
    “She has our daughters, James, Tim, a couple of human pilots, and Jeff,” Melanie answered. “If Jeff doesn’t get medical attention soon he’s going to die.”
    I’d known that already, but it still sucked hearing it. “That’s the plan. Him and Christopher dead, the rest of you turned into parasitic spawners.” The women nodded—beautiful but not dumb at all. “We need to get these slime-balls trussed up. Anyone have any duct tape?”
    “Lots,” one of the gals I didn’t know said. “A lot of it on this level, too. It’s amazing what you can do with that stuff.”
    “Good. Can you all handle them? We need to get them trussed up and out of sight before Yates shows up.”
    Ah, hyperspeed. All but the Che wanna-be were trussed up within seconds. He smirked. “You cannot touch me.”
    I looked down at Duchess. “Puppy girl? I don’t like this mean man.” Then I punched him in the face. And Duchess went for what I’d trained her to do when I was really serious about self-defense—his groin.
    The screams were lovely.
    “Marry me,” Jerry said as he trotted over, my now-silent iPod in his hand.
    “Taken, by the alien you were apparently separated from at birth.” If he was still alive, of course. I dropped iPod and speakers back into my purse. I kept the Glock out.
    Jerry sighed. “All the good ones are always taken.”
    I put my arm around his shoulders. “My love, take a look, a close look, at the mass of women before you, and then take heart. Most of the ones under thirty aren’t married, and—here’s your special bonus—they only want to marry human males.”
    He smiled. “I knew helping you land was the right thing to do.”

CHAPTER 52
    THE TERRORISTS WERE TRANSPORTED to the warehouse. The A-C males went there to guard them—it would be too hot for the humans we didn’t actually want to roast, especially since the A-Cs planned to turn the thermostat up to broiling.
    That left us a goodly complement of military personnel, but not as many as I’d hoped. Turned out most had gone to Home Base when White had realized they needed to move the base of Operation Fugly