Nowhere on Earth

by Nick Lake

  Wolves definitely did hunt other creatures: as they rounded a hillock and came closer to the beach, Emily saw a pile of red rags on the snowy grass that, as they approached, she realized was a young Dall ram, steam still rising from it—a fresh kill, left behind by the wolves.

  No: not a kill.

  They drew closer, and Emily became aware that what she had thought was warm meat, making vapor, was actually the ram still breathing. Its legs were splayed, its horns dug into the earth. The spine was visible through its back, some of the ribs too, and the skin and hide of one leg was pulled back, like a rolled-down sock, exposing the muscle and nerves beneath.

  She felt her gag reflex kick in, and fought it—she needed to do something for the ram, something to help it, but what could she—

  She turned, saw that Aidan was moving toward the ram.

  “Aidan…,” she said, meaning to counsel him against caring. Like her dad had done when she first shot a deer. The way of the natural world, that sort of thing.

  But he ignored her.

  The little boy got right up close to the sheep, then dropped to one knee. He looked into the animal’s visible eye, which was rolling in pain. The ram was foaming at the mouth.

  “Horrible thing,” said Bob, making an attempt to carry on.

  But Aidan was paying no attention to him or to Emily. He crouched and put a hand on the ram’s neck; held it there while looking into its eye.

  Gradually the animal slowed, calmed, until it was just gazing up at him, and then it let out one long last breath, like a sigh.

  The large brown eye closed, and the ram lay still.

  For a moment, everything was silent. Even the lake stopped its groaning.

  Aidan stood.

  “What did you do?” said Emily.

  “They have memories,” said Aidan. “Just pictures, but still. I took it to its mother. To the meadow where it was born.”

  Emily didn’t know what to say to that.

  She stepped forward and took Aidan’s hand. She held it tight. He smiled at her.

  “Thank you,” she said. Embarrassingly, tears pricked at her eyes.

  He nodded.

  They began to walk away. “We should be taking some of the meat,” said Bob.

  “I know,” said Emily. Part of her wanted to. Her stomach, especially. It was tingling, empty—a space inside her she had never been this aware of before, a vacuum.

  “But I don’t want to,” said Bob.

  “Me neither,” she said. “It wouldn’t feel right.”

  When they reached the edge of the pebble beach, Bob drew closer to Aidan. “What you were telling us about…about memories. Can you do that with people? Take them to…” He paused. “…places?”

  “Yes,” said Aidan.

  Bob bit his lip.

  “Is there somewhere you would like to revisit?” asked Aidan.

  “Don’t say words like revisit. You still look like a kid. It’s freaky.”

  “OK.”

  “Good.”

  “But is there?” said Aidan.

  Bob pulled at his ear. “I don’t know,” he said. “Forget I asked.”

  Just then a pair of ptarmigans clattered and flapped up from the brush ahead of them. Emily’s hands raised the rifle without her mind having any say at all, and her finger pulled the trigger: bullets sent tracer trails into the air, pulling up and to the right, just missing Aidan, who was ahead again.

  Aidan and Bob turned to her.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “If those had been men,” said Aidan, “I think you would have missed.”

  The flurry of the ptarmigans’ wings had turned to smooth downward strokes, as they came back to earth a safe distance away, pushing the air, softening their landing.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Emily. “I realize that.”

  She rolled her eyes, but Bob was looking serious. His eyes took in the mountains around them.

  “If there are any men within miles,” he said, “they’ll have heard those shots.”

  Damn it. She turned and looked up at the mountains. A shadow, on the tree line, that could have been…No. Just a cloud, passing over.

  Still. She had an uncomfortable feeling. A feeling like they were being watched.

  What if there was a man still out there?

  What if there were two?

  Emily pressed on but slung the gun behind her back. Her legs felt weak. She glanced at Bob, and he was white as paper.

  Not good.

  Not good at all.

  CHAPTER 25

  THEY CAME OUT of the bracken and onto a beach of pebbles and larger stones, a mercy for Emily because the snow was starting to get into her boots. This was easier for walking: but the curve of the lake also meant it would take longer to reach the cabin, which was on its shore.

  They were lucky, of course: in winter they would’ve needed not just boots but several layers of socks, newspaper packed into them too, anything to prevent frostbite and gangrene. As it was, Emily was concerned about the loss of sensation in her toes: they had been sore and throbbing, and now she didn’t feel them at all.

  The stones did not prove such a mercy for Bob. Their strange little band had rounded the top of the lake, and the cabin was maybe three miles away, when one of the larger stones rolled under his foot and he went down, heavily, on his side. Emily rushed to him.

  “Damn it,” he said. “That’s my ankle.”

  She crouched by him. He was fortunate that he too had been wearing boots when the plane went down, that his ankles were at least partly protected by the stiff leather: hopefully, it would just be a sprain. She helped him up, his arm over her shoulder. She handed the rifle to Aidan. “Here. Carry this.”

  Aidan took it and pulled a face. “I wish I could help to carry Bob,” he said. “But I’m not…physically strong. In any incarnation.”

  “Don’t say words like that,” said Bob. “I told you.”

  “Sorry,” said Aidan.

  In movies, aliens were always terrifying; powerful. And Aidan was powerful: the things he could make you see, the things he could make you remember. But he was vulnerable to the cold—Emily knew that well—and he was no stronger, bodily, than the little boy he appeared to be.

  An arctic tern flew low over the lake, its breast picking up a blue tinge from the ice, as if the lake was its own light source.

  Bob limped and hopped, and Emily supported his weight, and it felt like it took hours to cover a few hundred yards. In fact, it probably did take hours, because the sun was going down over the mountains, the high snow clouds turning red and orange under a sky the blue of ice, a fire without heat, up there in the heavens.

  Emily thought a fire with heat would be nice. The cold was deep in her fingers now, her toes—a bone ache—and she was hungry. So hungry.

  To keep herself going, she tried to make conversation with Bob, though he was monosyllabic at the best of times.

  “If we get out of here…,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Will you get another plane?” she said. “I mean, was it insured?”

  “Yep,” he said.

  They kept going awhile in complete silence.

  It was when they were resting by the lake shore, Emily breathing deeply from the exertion of taking his weight as he limped, that he asked her a question. She’d been scanning the mountains behind them, looking for movement, for the silhouette of a man, or men. They were way outside hunting season, so anyone they did see would be after them. No question.

  Bob’s question was a lot less evident:

  “After you’ve sent his message and beamed him up or whatever, what will you do?” Bob said.

  “Me?”

  “Yes. You.”

  She glanced ahead at Aidan, who w
as skimming stones on the glassy surface of the lake. No one had taught him that, of course. Presumably he had picked it up from someone’s memories. Maybe Bob’s, or her father’s, certainly not hers because she was no good at it—though her mom was an expert, could make a flat stone bounce a dozen times before it sank, so it could have been from her.

  “Go home, I guess,” she said.

  “You don’t sound very happy about it.”

  She shrugged.

  She didn’t say:

  Home is a trap. Home is all those days stretching ahead of me, days of being confined to a school I don’t like, in a town so small it’s barely on the map, where without Aidan to hypnotize them or whatever everyone is going to call me an arsonist.

  She got her arm under Bob again, took his weight again, keeping him moving. Staying too still would mean hypothermia. Would mean death.

  Had to keep him going.

  What would an adult ask? Emily wondered.

  After a time she said, “Do you have a…a wife? Kids?”

  “Wife,” he said. “No kids. But I don’t think my wife will be wanting to see me, even if I get out of this alive.”

  “You sound very sure about that.”

  He looked away. “Yeah.”

  “We’re probably on the news,” Emily said. “She might be worried about you. She must be worried about you.”

  “She might. But I let her down bad.”

  “Was it…um…infidelity?” She said it, and immediately she felt stupid. But the pastor was always talking about infidelity in church. That is, he was always talking, in church, about infidelity. Infidelity actually in church would have made Pastor Norcross’s bushy eyebrows rise right off his face.

  Bob gave a hollow laugh. “No,” he said. “Something happened, and I…I didn’t handle it well. Drank a lot. Flew a lot. Wasn’t around a lot.” There were tears in his eyes. She could see them glittering in the low light. “Funny how it goes: when you need people the most, you sometimes push them away.”

  She thought of her parents. Shoved the thought into the recesses of her mind.

  “Huh,” she said noncommittally.

  “Anyway,” said Bob. “We can’t make the cabin today.” He said it flat, like it didn’t matter, even though it was bad. Very bad.

  She looked ahead. He was right. The cabin was still two miles away, at least, and the sun was nothing but an orange glow over the mountains.

  She looked at her watch. A G-Shock. Her parents had given it to her for her last birthday. She’d have preferred the iPhone she’d asked for, but at least the Casio was indestructible and always told the right time, thanks to its radio and GPS connections.

  4:16 p.m.

  Seeing the watch, something stirred in her mind—some worry: a lake-bottom creature, moving in the silt. Then it was gone.

  She nodded to Bob. “We’ll have to make a fire here,” she said. Said it casually, mimicking his apparent lack of concern, though she was scanning the hillsides at the same time. Watching out for anyone who might be following them, who would see the flames.

  “There’s nowhere to hide anyway,” said Bob, reading her mind. “Not without leaves on the trees. If they’re coming, we’re screwed, whether we light a fire or not.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  Actually, they were more screwed without the fire—they would freeze and die. Especially Aidan. Or Aidan first, more accurately. He would die, and then she and Bob would die, holding on to one another for meager warmth. It wasn’t a comforting image.

  She looked around for shelter. If there had been a low branch, parallel to the ground, and if they had a tarpaulin, they could have made a simple tent shelter, but there wasn’t and they didn’t.

  They had:

  Well, the same as before. A lighter, basically.

  No: they had a gun now too. But it wasn’t much use for shelter.

  Or for eating.

  There was no choice. Emily would have to build a fire on the beach, surrounded by stones, entirely visible to the upland around them, and they would have to sleep as close to it as possible, for that all-important warmth.

  And hope the men somehow wouldn’t see them.

  CHAPTER 26

  EMILY TURNED TO Aidan. Tried to keep her voice calm. “Can you get kindling? Tinder? Look for dry moss and leaves and stuff?”

  “Ten-four,” he said. That was definitely a phrase he’d got from her dad.

  He gathered fire-starting material while she looked for wood: there were good dry branches at the forest’s edge, washed up long ago by some swell on the lake.

  Quickly she built a fire, Aidan ferrying her the tinder, which she lit with the lighter before wigwamming small twigs on top of it, and then larger ones, and larger still, until there was a roaring, flaming firepit, surrounded by big beach stones. The sky was getting dark now.

  Water was easy at least, this time. The lake was full of it: the unfrozen edges anyway. They each kneeled and drank as much as they could; but not so much that it would hurt their stomachs, which felt painfully hollow—Emily’s was a void inside her, a missing space where the concept of food should be. Aidan drank too: as he said, all living things needed water. She had to help Bob to the water’s edge and lower him to it—her back was screaming at her by the time they returned to the fire.

  “If I need the toilet, I’m wiping my ass on my own,” he said with a scowl.

  “Ugh,” she said. “No argument from me.”

  They smiled at each other. Something was still troubling her, though, something scaled, and ancient, sand shifting as it moved, invisible beneath it, in the depths of her mind.

  They didn’t speak much, any of them. They just huddled by the crackling fire. It sent sparks high into the dark night air, to mingle with the stars, hot red dying ones among the white glowing ones that never went out but only moved slowly across the sky as she lay there looking up.

  She held Aidan close, pressed against her.

  “Are you warm enough?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “But also yes. Thank you.”

  She knew what he meant.

  As the night wore on, she moved away from him only to stoke the fire, to add more fuel to it. Then each time she wrapped him again in her limbs, imagined heat radiating out from her, a red wave she couldn’t see, keeping him alive. She had to keep him alive. She had to get him home.

  At some point, despite herself, she fell asleep.

  At some point after that, she woke gasping, the fire spilling buttery light over the pebbles of the beach.

  And as she woke, she knew what had bothered her earlier when she’d looked at her watch.

  GPS, she thought.

  CHAPTER 27

  SHE KNEW SHE should wake Bob right away, tell him what she’d realized, deal with it. That was the safest thing to do if they didn’t want to get shot, or worse. But Bob’s snoring was labored, and his skin was shiny with sweat despite the cold: a little more sleep might mean the difference between life and death.

  The difference between life and death. People talked about that as if they knew what it was. What the difference was. Emily didn’t. What was the difference between the atoms of a Dall ram when it was alive and when its heart stopped beating?

  Maybe Aidan knew.

  Emily held Aidan close to her, willing her life force to seep into him, the heat of her body, of her blood.

  That first night after she’d found him, Aidan had almost died. There were lots of things he knew, and, it turned out, there were lots he didn’t. They’d returned to the woods behind the house to conceal his ship better—sneaking out of the back door when her parents were watching TV. Luckily, the moon was nearly full, so it was easy to see the way. But it was fifteen degrees below. So cold your eyelashes froze if you didn’t blink often enough.

 
She put on her thickest coat, her gloves, her hat. They snuck through the undergrowth as quietly as they could. When they reached the ship, there was the challenge that she couldn’t fix its edges, couldn’t comprehend its dimensions. Also: it was big, or so it seemed. When she tried to push against it, she felt as though she were pressing on a building.

  At first, they hauled broken branches and laid them on the impossible, unimaginable structure. But the branches had slid off, and it was too big. Then Aidan exclaimed, “There.”

  Behind the ship was a steep drop, a kind of fissure in the earth, very deep, lined with foliage and full of old leaves.

  “If we can push it in there, no one will see it,” he said.

  “If,” she said. “But the ship seems kind of heavy.”

  He smiled. He was pale in the moonlight. “Give me a place to stand and a pole long enough, and I will move the earth,” he said.

  “What?”

  “It’s Archimedes. Talking about the concept of leverage.” He walked round to the other side of the ship. It was weird to hear words like this coming from what looked like a little boy. “We need a big rock,” he continued. “And a long, strong branch.”

  She found the rock easily enough, and was able to drag it—with some small help from him—to the ship. Then they selected a long, relatively fresh branch—one that wasn’t dry and brown and wouldn’t snap easily.

  He stepped back, directed her as she put the branch over the rock and under the ship, then used her weight to push down on the other end, until—inch by inch—the ship started to move.

  Leverage: she got it now. It was something she kind of understood, the principle of leverage, from her old dance classes and from her awful couple of weeks of cheerleading: that something small—a slender body—could be made to contain springs, to exert great strength, to loft into the air, to flip, to stand upside down.

  They kept having to slide the rock forward and do it again, and again, until she was sweating and had to take her coat off and hang it on a tree.

  But eventually the ship tipped, and there was a loud groaning sound, and then it slid into the drop, with a boom and a crunch and a whoosh of leaves puffing up into the air, then slowly settling down on…nothing. A gleam, maybe, as of metal, but just a hole in the ground full of leaves and broken twigs.