Garrick: Scifi Alien Invasion Romance (Earth Resistance Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Also by Theresa Beachman

  Garrick

  Earth Resistance Book 1

  Theresa Beachman

  Copyright © 2017 by Theresa Houseman

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover art by Nutmeg Design

  Edited by Glory Box Editing

  Created with Vellum

  For G, E & J.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Also by Theresa Beachman

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  Alone and outside for the first time in six months, Dr Anna Ward licked a bead of sweat from her upper lip. The saltiness was a distraction from her racing heartbeat and the crunching pain in her knuckles as she gripped her pulse rifle.

  She was hunting Chittrix.

  Humming under her breath, she adjusted the shoulder strap of her body armour for the umpteenth time, reassuring herself it was still there. Her legs were wobbly with adrenalin, drunk with freedom and space. Since the first days of the invasion all her forays had been with other team members. Nearly all of the team were now dead.

  Fear pounded loudly in her chest, reminding her she was still alive. She scanned the street in front of her: buffed stone entrances and three-storey Victorian houses with smashed bay windows and doors hanging drunkenly from hinges. A light breeze kissed her skin, delicious after months of stale lab air. Near her, a tangle of alien vegetation shifted, settling lower to the ground, making itself more comfortable.

  Half an hour ago, she’d left the lab without telling Julia or Blake. She’d taken only the essentials: newly grown body armour and Julia’s laser pulse rifle. She didn’t know how long she had before they noticed and came looking for her. She’d told Julia she was going down to the armoury lab to check on some samples, which had been half true—she’d gone to the lab, packed up what she needed and left.

  Anna continued down the empty road, sweeping the pulse rifle from side to side as she made her way deeper into the maze of abandoned houses.

  Six months ago, Chittrix had landed in every country on the planet. Meteors had peppered the earth with their pale grey forms, gouging deep channels and craters across the surface of the world. At first, the meteor shower had been treated as a scientific anomaly. Scientists had gone crazy to chip and hack at the pale unassuming rock. But within twenty-four hours, the meteors had cracked open, spewing eggs and spindly legged hatchlings.

  Within a week most of the civilised planet had gone to hell, subsumed under the sheer volume of the new insect species. Now the Chittrix dominated the planet, and humans had been pushed to the edges of existence.

  London was virtually empty, devastated under the onslaught of the Chittrix invasion and finally wiped out when the government, in a last desperate effort to stall the slaughter and regain control, had released Agent S above the city. The Chittrix—so called because of the brittle chittering sound they made—had proven resilient to the nerve toxin, and Agent S had instead poisoned any human or animal unlucky enough to be in the open air on the day of release.

  As Chief Engineer in Weapons Development, Anna and a small team of scientists at Magdon Down’s Military Science Park ten miles north of the city had been safe in their labs, with air filtration and enough food to last for months. They’d continued to work day and night on developing new technology to pull the world back from the brink of annihilation by the Chittrix. And now, six months down the line? Now it’s ready but too late. Everyone’s already dead.

  She pushed aside an overhanging string of ivy and poked the snub-nose of her weapon into a front garden. A car sat open in the driveway, seats slashed and sprouting burst foam and black mould. No bodies. As far as her team had worked out, the Chittrix took many of the human corpses.

  The houses here were more desirable than many in the capital, surrounded by extensive front gardens and high walls that separated them from the main road and forced Anna to walk past driveway entrances with no way to see what lay on the other side of the wall until she was actually there. Plants had overgrown on many, a mixture of native weeds and new alien ones that crawled and strangled their way across the littered tarmac. Julia had identified many of them as carnivorous.

  Anna ran a sweaty hand down the smooth plates of her body armour, reassuring herself. The sleeved jerkin completely protected her upper body, while flexible plates protected her thighs. The synthetic biological armour was her baby that she’d spent the last six months nurturing. Boosted by the Chittrix’s own genetic material, it was grown to be impact tolerant and immune to their venom and the razor edges of their teeth and claws.

  The pulse rifle she carried was seriously juiced to deliver bone shattering bolts of energy, and Anna was determined to put
it to good use. She’d been promising herself this day since the Chittrix had destroyed the world’s armies, and her heart skipped a little now that she had the resources and capability to do something useful. It was a small comfort, but she took what she could get.

  Time was running out. There was only so much testing to be done in the lab, but Julia and Blake had vetoed the idea of a live test as too dangerous after the deaths of their colleagues through hunting and scavenging in the previous months.

  Blake, their translator, had deciphered enough of the alien communications to be concerned that Chittrix activity was increasing across the city, but Anna was done hiding in the lab. They were running out of time, and they needed to put the armour through its paces.

  Supplies were low, and they had already scavenged from every house within several days travel. It was time to move on. Hunt further afield, find a longer-term base. Somewhere with a safe, green space for growing fresh food. Anna still hoped to find other survivors who wanted to fight, who’d put her research to use, but so far the only humans they’d run up against had been violent, lawless scavengers.

  So here you are, Anna. Still not sure if this is clever or stupid.

  Her feet sounded loud on the deserted street, grit shifting noisily under the soles of her boots. She walked past a cafe, its front door smashed in, glass cabinets tipped over and empty. A startled scrawny orange cat shot out the broken building with a wail, straight through Anna’s legs, nearly tripping her up.

  Damn.

  By the time she regained her balance, it was gone. She stood for a second, waiting to hear if the cat’s yowl had attracted any attention.

  Nothing moved. The sky was empty and blue above her head.

  Fostered from an early age, Anna had spent most of her life alone. She was proud to be the dictionary definition of self-reliant. That was the way she liked it. Even before the Chittrix invasion life had shown her that there was no such thing as a happy ending. She was hit by a stab of melancholy but let it slide from her gut, reminding herself that was what had powered her meteoric rise through a male-dominated profession and kept her alive when so many had died.

  Ahead, the street swung around a tight corner, leaving her blind. Several cars had crashed in a huddle of bent, rusty metal right on the apex of the corner, leaving only a small gap between the nearest car and the wall for her to squeeze through. It was slim, eight inches at most. Blood had dried in a delicate filigree on the hood nearest her.

  Anna swallowed and flexed her fingers in the rubber casings of the rifle grip. Her mouth was parched dry, but she’d been in too much of a rush to bring water. She dropped the nose of her weapon, scanning the buildings around her and the sky above for any signs of Chittrix. The sky remained a silent sapphire blue, the buildings around her dark, holding their secrets close.

  She squeezed through the narrow opening. Anna was petite, but even she had to breathe in, her belly grazing against the crumbling brickwork. Red dust smeared across her stomach and the armour plates. Once free on the other side, she swung her rifle around in a full three hundred and sixty, constantly alert for Chittrix. Blood thundered in her ears.

  Where are you?

  The road ahead was empty, the street as hushed as the one she’d left. Relief swamped her in an all-encompassing wave, only to vanish a second later as a huge Chittrix crawled over the roof of a house several buildings down. It skated across the slates, clawed feet screeching on the dark tiles before squatting on powerful corded haunches on the lowest extent of the roof.

  Her brain did a double-take. This outing was looking less and less like a good idea.

  The obsidian head of the Chittrix twisted and clicked, its oily carapace reflected in the early morning light as it sized her up. The space behind her was too narrow for a fast retreat and red brick walls hemmed her in on either side. There was only forward and the Chittrix.

  It flexed and stood on its hind legs, its long seven-foot tail balanced behind it in a sweeping curve of ebony scales. Unleashing coiled thighs, it leaped from the roof in a single athletic bound. One pair of arms were tucked into its lower underbelly. A second pair were held in front of its chest, long scalpel-edged claws flexing and clicking. Silvered web-like wings sprouted from its shoulders and waist, enabling flight speeds faster than a human man. It was midnight death on legs.

  A frantic sea of Scutters swiftly followed, smaller scorpion-like aliens that were never far from the larger Chittrix. Each was half as big as a dog, two heavy fighting claws at the front with a grip powerful enough to snap a man’s leg and a barbed sting loaded with venom on their segmented tails. The Scutters sensed her presence, cascading over the feet of the larger alien in excitement.

  The Chittrix cocked its head in a slow arc, sunlight reflected from its multifaceted compound eyes as it evaluated Anna. A low chittering warning emanated from deep in its throat as sleek scales slid away from its primitive mouth. Its jaw gaped, revealing an orgy of lethal shards masquerading as teeth. A needle-thin tongue snapped between them and tasted her scent, rasping against its glossy exoskeleton.

  Anna pulled the rifle up in front of her in a defensive gesture, glancing down the sights at the terrible beauty in front of her.

  “Come on.” Her lips moved, but her voice was barely audible over the increasingly loud clicks and shrieks. The Scutters were a seething mass of shiny agitation, now only a few feet away and undulating like hot, shiny treacle. They moved so quickly it was impossible for her to distinguish individual ones. Anna held the rifle steady, aiming at the Chittrix and ignoring the Scutters. If she took out the Chittrix, the smaller Scutters would falter. The Chittrix rocked backwards, preparing to leap.

  “Anna!”

  The Chittrix’s head snapped round as it dismissed Anna for Julia, who skidded to a halt across the street, her face a picture of blind panic. She wore body armour, but the only weapon she carried was a knife that she shifted from one hand to the other. Under a dishevelled mane of hair, her eyes darted from Anna to the Chittrix and back to Anna.

  “What the hell?” Anna spat out. “Are you crazy?”

  The Chittrix raised its head in a piercing battle cry, fuelling a frenzied vibrating response in the Scutters.

  Julia’s knife hit the road with a loud clatter. Anna took advantage of the distraction, rocked onto the balls of her feet and lunged forward. The Chittrix pitched in the opposite direction, aiming for Julia.

  Anna fired the pulse rifle, but inaccurately, only gouging a chunk from the beast’s shoulder. It stumbled, screaming, and then the Scutters began to move in unison, piling themselves higher and higher into a defensive screen between the Chittrix and Anna.

  Anna dodged the climbing Scutters. The Chittrix bellowed at Julia, still hurtling towards her.

  Anna rammed into the side of the Chittrix, her speed giving her enough momentum to knock it slightly off-balance. It’s tailed whipped viciously and caught her on the side of the head, but her armoured helmet took the brunt of the blow. Shock waves rocked through her skull, and her teeth collided painfully in her jaw as blood filled her mouth with a sharp metallic tang. She ricocheted off the brutal body and stumbled backwards. The Chittrix turned from Julia, hissing wildly now.

  Fuck.

  Elongated forearms grasped for Anna in a jerking attack. She ducked, stepped backwards, brought the pulse weapon up to her shoulder, rested it under the groove of her collarbone and pressed her finger to the trigger.

  A white pulse of energy surged from the weapon and hit the Chittrix square in the thorax. It twisted on its feet and howled, the sound ripping into Anna’s ears. She risked a look over her shoulder.

  Julia was scrabbling backwards, never taking her eyes from the alien swarm. The Scutters had changed direction, surging towards Julia’s legs. Anna lowered her rifle and swept the ground with the energy blast. Scutters flipped and popped, filling the air with gurgling liquid as they ruptured and burned.

  “Run!” Anna shouted.

  A rattle sounded
behind her, then the tail of the Chittrix slammed into her, flinging her forward with the force of a truck. Air exploded from her lungs as she landed on rough, unyielding concrete. Her armour absorbed most of the blow, but her cheek scraped excruciatingly against sharp stones. She rolled on to her back, the rifle in her hands held defensively in front of her body as the Chittrix loomed over her, murderous jaws open wide.

  Its ribbon tongue lashed, flinging acrid yellow venom. Anna closed her eyes reflexively, hearing the patter of venom on her chest plate. It hissed and bubbled but didn’t penetrate. Spurred on, she lifted the pulse weapon and fired, aiming for the tender meat in the gaps where Chittrix thigh met abdomen. The pulse hit home, and the Chittrix howled, one leg buckling under its heavy body. It spat more venom from its throat, and Anna rolled, tugging her helmet visor low over her face. She pushed herself to her knees, then lurched to her feet, hot breath raging through her lungs.

  I’m still in one piece!

  Elated, she took a step closer to the Chittrix and raised her weapon once more. Its head drooped, its tail thrashing wildly. Ochre liquid seeped from the joint she had hit.

  Hurt, but not down yet.

  As Anna lifted her rifle to fire at its head, deceivingly lowered in defeat, its tail curved in a cutting arc behind her heels. It smashed her flat. Her skull cracked on concrete, and her vision greyed over, the world hovering on the edge of consciousness.