"If you want to get some sleep, I'll keep an eye out," Eve said. "I know there's no possible way I could sleep right now even if I wanted to."
"That's okay," Greg said. "I can't sleep either." But even as he said it, he stifled a yawn and felt his eyes grow heavy.
"I didn't mean to be a bitch," she said. "I get like that sometimes when I'm nervous. It wasn't you."
"I think we've all said things tonight that we wouldn't under normal circumstances." Greg remembered Brandon's harsh words and pushed them aside.
"What are we going to do when we make it out of here?" she asked. "How are we going to live? Where are we going to live? It's not like I enjoyed living with Pat, but at least it was a roof over my head."
"I don't know," Greg said. "I don't really have anywhere to go. I know my parents are dead. Brandon's too. We're on our own. All we have right now is each other."
Brandon muttered something and began snoring lightly. Apparently, he wasn't too worried about what would happen tomorrow. It wasn't fair to say that Brandon didn't care, surely he was as scared as they were, but for the time being, he was done thinking about it. Greg envied him.
"It might seem silly," Eve said, "but I'm glad I met you two. Where there's friendship, there's hope... or something like that."
Greg chuckled and closed his eyes. "You can put that on a greeting card."
"A greeting card... right."
Eve waited until Greg fell asleep and his breathing became regular. His broken nose whistled. He kept twitching and muttering and Eve wondered exactly what he was dreaming about. Dreaming was a concept she didn't understand. She'd never really dreamed before. She'd seen things, even remembered things, but they were nothing more than hollow images of different lives, or better lives. She had no real way of comparing the two.
Once she was sure Greg was asleep, she stood and joined Brandon on the rock. He was the one she wanted to talk to, the one she had been drawn to since they'd met. Where there's friendship, there's hope, she thought. Isn't that from a movie?
She shrugged and shook Brandon awake.
He opened his eyes and nearly called out before Eve put her hand over his mouth.
"It's okay," she said. "It's only me."
"What's wrong? Where's Greg?"
"He's right over there," she pointed. "He's fine. We're all fine for the moment."
"What's going on?" Brandon asked, wiping his eyes. He hissed at the pain in his leg and tried to remain as still as possible. "Why did you wake me up?"
"I just wanted to talk to you. It's lonely up here."
Brandon grunted and sat up, looking down into the dark valley where Ditchburn was gasping its final breath. He'd been here at The Overhang with Greg dozens of times. It was peaceful. The town looked like a ship out at sea, lights blazing, people going happily about their day. Now, the ship was gone, sunk, leaving nothing behind but floating debris.
"So talk," Brandon said.
Eve collected her thoughts and tapped her fingernails on the rock. She seemed fidgety and uncomfortable.
"What was your life like? Ya know, before this?"
"Normal," Brandon said. "Mom, Dad, sister... a dumb old dog who was half blind. I thought life was pretty boring, but I'd kill to have it back." He stared at his feet and let the silence punctuate his misery.
"Tell me about your blind dog."
"What? Rambler? Why?"
"Rambler," Eve said. "Yes. What is Rambler like?"
"He's just a dog," Brandon laughed. "He'd piss on the rug, eat crumbs beneath the dinner table, bark at the mailman. Just a dog doing dog stuff."
Eve squinted and nodded once, taking it all in. "I never had a blind Rambler dog."
Brandon laughed. Eve was a strange girl, but he suddenly enjoyed her company.
"You woke me up just to ask about my dog?"
"Is there something wrong with that?"
"No, I guess not. It's just weird, that's all."
"It's nice here," Eve said, shifting directions.
"We came up here a lot," he said. "Sometimes Jonas came with us. None of our families ever had money, so instead of going to theme parks or vacations to Florida, we'd grab sodas and junk food and spend the day here. We'd talk about girls or video games or what we wanted to do with our lives after high school. I guess none of that really matters now. Even if things somehow went back to normal, it would never be the same."
"It could be better," Eve said. "Like a new beginning."
"I don't want a new beginning, I want my life back."
"Sometimes change is good. That's what my stepfather thought, anyway."
"I don't think this is the sort of change he was talking about," Brandon said. He sat up straighter and ran his tongue over his dry lips. "What's with the question and answer period? Why do you want to know about my life?"
"It's fascinating," Eve replied. "Everyone has different lives, thoughts, ideas. You're not all the same at all."
"Of course we're not all the same. Have you been living in a cave all these years?"
"No, I don't think so." She tilted her head like a dog hearing a strange noise. She put her hand on Brandon's arm and lightly caressed his skin. Brandon quickly pulled away.
"Your hand is like ice," he said. He watched as Eve slid closer. Any other time, Brandon would have accepted her strange flirtation. He would have enjoyed it. This was different.
"Did you know that Eve was the first woman?" she asked. "In the Bible... Eve is the mother of all women. The beginning of everything."
"Wonderful," Brandon said. "You know, I think I learned that in Sunday school. Do you have a point?"
"I picked that name for myself," she said. "She was the first and I am the first. It only felt right to carry on the tradition."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Adam. Would you like to be Adam? There's so much we can learn from each other... so much to learn together."
Brandon tried slipping away before Eve grabbed his arm again. Her hand felt like frozen hamburger; in seconds, his skin burned from the intense cold.
"I don't know what the hell you're talking about, but please get your hand off me."
"Do you want to kiss me, Adam?"
"Kiss... what? No! You're creeping me the hell out. My name is Brandon, not Adam."
"Adam and Eve. The genesis of all humankind. The start of a new world."
Brandon shook her off and tried to stand, but his ankle betrayed him.
"Who are you?" He looked down at his arm and saw a dark handprint forming on his flesh where Eve had touched him. "Get away from me."
"Why are you making this difficult?" Eve said. "How many chances will you get to be immortal? Don't be scared, Adam."
"Brandon!" he shouted. "My name is Brandon."
"Not anymore."
Eve lunged and landed on his chest. The cold radiated from her body in waves, sinking into his skin through two layers of clothing. He couldn't catch his breath. The sudden, frigid cold had shocked his body into a state of near paralysis.
"Get off..." Brandon wheezed, but his voice was gone.
"You will love the new world," Eve said, grinding on his midsection like a hungry lover. "You will love it with me."
She grabbed his face in her hands as his cheeks instantly blistered from her icy touch.
Eve bent down and kissed him on the lips, her saliva mingling with his own.
Suddenly, the cold didn't seem so bad.
The heat that replaced it was much worse.
Chapter 12
"GREG!"
The loud scream tore Greg from sleep and drilled into his ears. He had no idea where he was or why his best friend was shouting at the top of his lungs.
"What's that?" Greg said groggily. "What's going on?"
"GREG! She's one of them. Eve is one of them!"
Brandon sounded congested, his voice wet and muffled.
"Them? Who... oh... OH!" He shot to his feet as he watched Brandon and Eve struggling in t
he dark. "What the fuck are you doing? Get off him."
Eve jumped up and took a comical fighting stance, but there was nothing funny about the look in her eyes. A thin line of blood ran from her lips, sizzling and bubbling on her chin.
"Greg, RUN!" Brandon bellowed. It was hard to understand his garbled cry, as if he had a mouthful of marbles.
"What did you do to him?" Greg said.
"I helped him become," Eve said. "Just as I'll help you."
Brandon stood and stumbled as red foam shot from his mouth in a geyser. He held his throat with both hands and spit out chunks of his tongue as he swayed on his feet, his broken ankle forgotten.
Greg was frozen in place. Eve stood between them, hunched over like a linebacker, prepared for any sudden movement.
"You can't help him," she said. "What's done is done, but it's not over. You can become, too."
Brandon's neck boiled like a cauldron of steaming blood and meat. His fingers had been burned to the bone, but still, he remained on his feet, watching Eve with burning rage. He stumbled forward and almost fell as his flesh dripped on the rocks like rain.
"You can't do this," Greg cried. "We don't belong to you."
"We're all the same," Eve said. "We all want the same thing. The longer you fight it, the harder it's going to get."
"BRANDON! Brandon, please... fight it."
"There's no fighting," Eve said. "Why would you want to? We're creating perfection, making a new life without pain and struggle. You're the monsters, not us. We're here to clean up your mess... give you a second chance."
Greg felt like an idiot for being fooled. How did they not see it? How did they not realize something was wrong with her the second they let her out of the trunk? She wasn't like the others... her vocal cadence was perfect, her stories, her history... P-21 had learned how to be human in a matter of hours. How could there be any way to survive in a world where they look and sound just like us?
He looked over Eve's shoulder as Brandon lowered his hands and let the acidic toxin eat him from the inside out. He pleaded with his eyes. He no longer had the ability to scream, but his fight wasn't over yet.
Brandon reached down with fingers that were little more than blackened scraps and grabbed a large rock. It took him a tremendous amount of effort, but after several tries, he hefted it over his head and blinked a warning to Greg.
"No," Greg said. "Don't."
Eve spun on Brandon as he brought the rock down on her face with a loud crack. Her head split open, exposing the pulsing gray jelly of her almost-human brain. She brayed like an injured hound, reaching out and pushing Brandon away as she swung her head from side to side. A flap of skin hung over her left eye, partially blinding her.
Greg took the distraction to rush her from behind, wrapping his arms around her waist. He had no idea what he intended to do with her. He tried wrestling her to the ground, but she was much stronger than she appeared, and his hands kept slipping on her freezing skin. He imagined this is what it would be like trying to fight a hundred pounds of ballistics gel.
When he saw he was getting nowhere, he pushed her forward and brought his foot down on the back of her calf. Her leg broke in two like a boneless chicken wing and Eve fell to her knees with a grunt.
"You're NOT HUMAN!" Greg screamed. "You'll never be human."
Eve spun her head completely around and grinned.
"Who will be left to tell the difference?" she croaked. "Your time is over."
Brandon ran out of the dark, just a shadowy blur. His exposed ribcage glistened in the moonlight. When he hit Eve, it sounded like two Sumo wrestlers colliding. He pushed her to the edge of The Overhang as slabs of runny flesh fell at his feet. He looked over his shoulder with a face that appeared to have been run over by a train, but his eyes were clear. He used every scrap of energy left in his failing body to save his best friend. Even as he trembled from the intense pain, it didn't blunt his conviction. He dug his feet into the ground and pushed.
Eve and Brandon toppled over the edge of The Overhang and fell silently into the darkness.
***
After ten minutes of crying, Greg's head felt like it was somewhere else. He hadn't left The Overhang, holding on to some ridiculous shred of hope that Brandon would climb over the rise and tell him everything was okay.
Just fucking peachy, he heard Brandon say in his playful, sarcastic tone.
Nothing was peachy. Greg was alone. More alone than he'd ever felt in his life.
The forest was dead quiet. Ditchburn was sleeping. If not for the scattered fires raging all over town, Greg wouldn't have thought anything was amiss. Just a power outage. A weird dream after a spicy dinner and a horror movie.
How long had it been since he had mustered the courage to ask Lizzie Gennetti to a movie? How long since the world had fallen apart and taken his friends and family with it? The sun would be up in a few hours and Greg was terrified of what the world would look like.
He hugged his knees and rocked back and forth, letting his tears run unchecked down his face. Greg had never given up in his life, but this was a fight he couldn't win. He'd watched his grandfather wither away after a brief, but catastrophic war with cancer. He'd coped with the death of one of his childhood best friends when he fell from his bike and never woke up. The funeral felt like it was something happening to someone else; the coffin lowered into the cold earth was just an empty prop. But this? There was no way to think this had happened to someone else, and there was no doting mother to kiss his tears away. Everything he knew was gone, replaced by monsters that looked like cheap imitations.
Somewhere beneath him were the scattered remains of his best friend and the otherworldly creature that had led him to his grave.
Greg stood and peered over the edge, squinting into the dark with eyes that would barely focus. The ground was forty feet below, too far to see in the dark. It didn't matter anyway. He didn't need to see the bloody stain on the rocks to know that Brandon was gone for good.
He opened his mouth and screamed until his lungs burned, listening to his own voice echo over the valley. Whoever had said that primal scream therapy worked was a fucking liar. He still felt bitter and empty.
He stepped closer to the edge.
How do people do this? he thought. How do you end your own life when everything in your being is telling you not to?
Greg didn't realize until that moment that killing himself was even an option, but faced with the reality of his situation, it suddenly seemed like the only plausible way to make this pain go away.
Should I be sad? Angry? Should I pray or ask for forgiveness?
Hope is a very strange animal. It controls people, controls their beliefs and their actions. Very much like faith, hope is sometimes enough to get up in the morning, go to a shitty job, and lie to your children about how amazing the future will be. Greg didn't believe any of that as he stood overlooking the precipice. Hope was dead and lying shriveled in an unmarked grave, just a memory of something that could have been. He never understood how much he relied on the simple fact that tomorrow would always be a given. In the absence of hope, the demons slowly crawled from the shadows, waiting to consume you.
Those demons had come to Ditchburn.
Only two more steps and Greg would feel the wind in his hair one last time. Then nothing. How bad could it be?
His tears had dried and he found something resembling calm.
"I'm sorry, Brandon," he said. "I told you I'd get you out of here and I screwed it all up."
One more step.
The tip of his shoe slid over the edge and hung there over blank space. All he had to do was lean forward and let gravity take over.
The rushing roar of thunder shattered the night. Greg nearly went over the edge before changing his center of gravity and falling back as four, five, six fighter jets flew so close to the mountain, he felt the heat from their engines. He watched them circle over downtown Ditchburn, only visible when they blocked out the stars.
He wasn't alone after all.
Surface-to-ground missiles penetrated the darkness, finding ground targets in a barrage of sound and light.
A fireball raced down Block Street, taking most of the stores and the Silver Screen Cinema with it. Mayfield Park was an inferno, turning the trees into flaming torches. One after another, missiles found their mark, turning sections of Ditchburn into blazing craters. The Overhang shook and rumbled beneath his feet as explosions rang over town like the world's largest bag of microwave popcorn. Streets fell into the sewers; buildings toppled to fill the holes with smoking rubble.
There was no way the rest of the world could ignore this. Every news station from here to California would be reporting on this in minutes. Steven Gates, Wildflower Pharmaceuticals, and the team of ex-con militia would be going right back to the prisons they'd been freed from.
Greg was crying again, this time for a completely different reason. There was an end in sight... there was hope. It may never be the same again, but the hostile takeover was being quelled by good old-fashioned American firepower.
Bring on the fucking resistance!
Ditchburn looked like a Roman candle, but out of the ashes, there was a chance it could live again.
"BRANDON!" Greg bellowed. "It's over!"
Brandon might not be there to see it, but Greg wasn't about to let that stop him. He raised his fists to the sky, shouting and laughing and screaming at the top of his lungs. If anyone was there to see him, they would have thought he'd gone mad.
The Lowe's at the edge of town disappeared in orange fire. Ruptured water mains erupted into the sky, helping quench some of the flames. The Alter Street apartment building tilted and crumbled into its parking lot. Then came the crowds of people... only they weren't people, but the replicas created by P-21... the aliens. The unwanted.
...and they burned.
Greg watched them spin and twirl and roll on the ground as they were burned black in the inferno. He listened to them scream and wondered if they actually felt pain, or if they were only doing what their alien DNA told them to do. The attack had stopped, but the F-15s circled like giant, steel vultures, watching as their prey died in the streets below.
Melt Page 15
