Matt Archer: Legend Read Free Page A

blood-red moon…there’s a set of lunar eclipses coming soon,
right?”
     “Yeah, the first one is at the end of this year, I think.”
I turned to the soldiers. All I got in response was a set of very grim looks.
    Parker pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll call Colonel Black
and let him know.”
    The others gathered into a little clump, staring at me with
worried eyes. I didn’t blame them. It had been three years since the start of
the last set of full lunar eclipses, when we’d been invaded for the first time.
Another set meant only one thing…
    Monsters 2.0.
     
     

Chapter Two
     
     
    Captain Parker’s voice rose and fell behind the wall of his
hotel room, which was next door to ours. Will was taking his own sweet time in
the shower. I didn’t begrudge him that; he’d sprinted around that parking lot
like a boss and looked kind of tired. Having me fall on him after pulling me
out of the rock monster’s way probably hadn’t helped much, either.
    And waiting gave me time to eavesdrop.
    As soon as we hit the hotel’s lobby, Parker headed for his
room to call Colonel Black to brief him on our encounter. Johnson and Murphy
stayed behind to observe the retrieval and clean up. When we’d left, guys in
Hazmat suits were carefully putting chunks of slime-coated rock into huge metal
containers. Most crumbled when they picked them up, and some of the pebbles put
off a weird, sickly yellow glow. I really hoped it wasn’t radioactive.
    “…first eclipse should be in December,” Parker was saying.
“Yes, sir. The enemy threatened Jorge directly….Yes, sir, I understand that
Peru’s not under the dark zone for that eclipse, but the warning made it sound
like….well, I think Major Ramirez may be needed down there to help Jorge. He’s
ready, and he knows the area better than the rest of us.”
    I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Ramirez, back out
in the field? It’d been six months since we’d rescued him from the demons that
held him captive in Afghanistan, but he’d been on leave ever since.
    “Dude,” Will yelled from behind the bathroom door, “I have
an enormous bruise on my back from when we fell. We’ll need to cook up an
accident story for the ‘rents.”
    “Yeah, I guess we can’t use a football game since you
haven’t played all week. Bruise’ll be too fresh.” Trying to figure out how to
maintain his cover made me think of Mamie. Beneath my older sister’s pig-tails
and innocent smile lurked a seriously creative liar, and she had a knack for coming
up with cover stories. I really missed her since she left for college. “If you
just wear a shirt whenever they’re home, you should be in the clear, right?”
    “Probably.” He opened the door, wearing shorts and a
Greenhill High t-shirt. “Hear anything?”
    “Sounds like the colonel’s gonna activate Ramirez.”
    Will let out a low whistle. “Think he’s ready?”
    I shrugged. PTSD was a strange thing. If anybody had a
reason to kill a few monsters, it was Ramirez. “His hand’s fully rehabbed and
Uncle Mike says they’ve been working out together at the Pentagon gym. He’s
probably ready.”
    Parker knocked on the door between our rooms, cutting the
conversation short. I opened up to let him in, not surprised to see that he
hadn’t changed out of his dust and slime smeared civvies. His rust-colored hair
stuck up in about nine places, and his jeans had a big rip in the knee, with a
crusty scab to match. It’s not like I could talk; I hadn’t cleaned up either.
    “Is the colonel really sending Ramirez to Peru?” I asked.
    “I should’ve known you’d be listening in,” Parker answered,
sounding tired. I noted how pale he was, enough that his freckles stood out on
his face. The last few years had been a grind for all of us.
    “Ramirez is going active effective immediately,” Parker said.
“They’re putting together his team now, and they’ll deploy to Peru next week.
Murphy will likely be reassigned back to the