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complained as he pulled himself to his feet. It’d been a while since he’d exerted so much energy, and getting the tar beaten out of him by a bunch of trees was an absolute first.
    “What’s going on, anyway?” he asked. “What does anyone want with our little nothing of a village? And shooting us with
darts
? I mean, what
was
that?”
    “I wish I knew.” Alec pulled at the door harder, yanking on the handle, still to no avail. “But those people sure dropped like flies oncethose suckers stuck in ’em.” He turned away from the door with a frustrated look, then put his hands on his hips like an old lady.
    “Dropped like flies,” Mark repeated quietly. “One of them happened to be Darnell. You think he’s okay?”
    Alec shot him a look that said
You’re smarter than that
. And Mark knew it was true. His heart sank a little. Everything had been such a mad rush since the Berg had arrived that it registered only now: Darnell was probably dead.
    “Why are we up here?” Mark asked.
    Alec pointed a finger at him. “Because it’s what you do when someone comes to
your
house and attacks
your
people. You fight back. I’m not going to let these bloodsuckers get away with that crap.”
    Mark thought about Darnell, about all those people hurt and confused, and he realized that Alec was right. “Okay. I’m in. So what do we do?”
    “First, we’ve got to get this blasted door open. Help me look, see if we can find something to make that happen.”
    Mark wandered around the room, though the light was pitiful. “Why are we just hovering right now anyway?”
    “You sure like to ask questions I got no way of answering. Just peel those eyeballs and get searching.”
    “Okay, okay.”
    At first Mark only saw junk and more junk. Spare parts, tools, boxes full of supplies—everything from soap to toilet paper. Then he saw something strapped against the wall that he knew Alec would like: a sledgehammer.
    “Hey, over here!” Mark shouted. He lifted the thing out of the straps, weighing it in his hands. “It’s nice and heavy—perfect for you to beat the door down with your gargantuan soldier arms.”
    “Not as strong as they used to be.”
    The old bear grinned, the faint light glinting in his eyes, as he took the wooden shaft of the hammer. He marched over to the sealed door and started whacking at it. The thing had no chance, but Mark figured it might take a good minute or two of work to break it down. He just hoped that when it opened there wasn’t an army of green-suited thugs waiting on the other side.
    Clang. Clang. Clang
. Alec kept at it, the dents getting bigger.
    Mark poked around more, hoping to find some kind of weapon for when that door finally came open. At least Alec had a huge sledgehammer to swing. Something in the darkest corner of the room caught Mark’s eye, a section full of hard-cased boxes maybe two feet long and a foot high and deep that looked like they were made to protect something important. Some were open and empty; others were sealed.
    He hurried over and strained his eyes to see, but it was too dark to make anything out. He picked up one of the sealed boxes—it was lighter than he would’ve guessed—and moved back into the light, then set the box down on the metal grate of the floor. Leaning over, he finally got a good look.
    There was a warning symbol plastered across the top, the kind that indicated the contents were some sort of biohazard. A label below the symbol said:
    Virus VC321xb47
Highly Contagious
24 Darts, Extreme Caution
    Mark suddenly wished he hadn’t touched the thing.

CHAPTER 7
    Mark straightened up and moved a few feet away. He couldn’t believe he’d handled the box. He might even have opened it if he hadn’t brought it into the light first. For all he knew, those darts had broken during the flight of the Berg. Maybe the virus had even seeped through the small cracks in the container. Not to mention there were open boxes on the shelves, though they