by Platt, Sean
“Are you near the museum? The Museum of Natural History?”
“I … sure, I suppose.”
Somewhere behind Lila, she heard a scream, then running feet. Raj looked at the same time, his eyes wide. Then the feet were past, and they were back to being mostly alone.
“The West 77th Street entrance. Meet me there.”
“When?” But that was far too compliant. “Why?”
Lila listened for several minutes while Piper lost her mind on the phone. When she finally hung up with a promise to be in front of the museum as soon as she could (“though it may take a while for me to get there because the streets are losing their shit”), Lila looked at Raj. She was ready to say that her stepmother had finally lost her airy-fairy, hippie mind, but Raj’s expression stopped her. He’d been poking around on that stupid wrist mobile thing of his, using the projection feature to watch video on the bench with the accompanying earpiece pushed into his head. And his eyes were as wide as she’d imagined Piper’s through their conversation.
“Aliens,” said Raj.
“You can’t possibly believe that. You’re more rational than stupid crap like UFOs and aliens.”
There was another shout. A group of people ran into and then quickly out of sight. Raj clutched Lila protectively, but they were gone before the potential threat could more than register.
“Everyone else seems to believe it,” said Raj, nodding toward his wrist. “What did Piper say?”
“She said … ” Lila trailed off. It was all too ridiculous.
“Shit, Lila. This isn’t good. We can go to my place.”
“It’s way the hell uptown.”
“We’ll take a cab.”
A crashing, crunching sound tore through the air from somewhere far away.
“Piper is going to pick me up at the museum.”
“Let’s go,” he said, standing. “Think she can drop me off? Think she’ll be too pissed that we ditched together?”
“Something tells me she has bigger things to worry about,” Lila said. “Just don’t tell her you got me pregnant, and I think we’ll be fine.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Day One, Late Morning
Constellation Academy, New York
Trevor stood dutifully in the car line at school for five minutes, then decided that another frozen moment would make him fucking retarded.
The school had held itself together for a respectably long time, but everyone’s seams were now showing. Mr. Banks, the principal, seemed to be totally MIA. Mr. Hoover seemed to be acting as a reluctant shepherd. He’d made that “proceed to the front lobby in a calm and orderly manner” announcement over the tablet network, interrupting Trevor’s already distracted class by popping onto everyone’s screens in a small window in the middle of a lecture about the Protestant Reformation.
When Trevor’s group (more or less intact and keeping its wits) arrived in the lobby, Hoover had been there too, shouting loudly enough that everyone decided to gift him with responsible authority. Hoover had brokered the bus lines, seeming to mostly get the right kids to the appropriate places, assisted by the corps of surly bus drivers themselves. To the side of the bus loop, a few of the security officers who’d stuck around managed the car line, continually warning the kids back from the curb as if afraid their manic parents (several were already waiting by the time the car line formed) might run them down in their haste.
Nothing in line was orderly. A car at the rear would make a pickup then try to rush forward, cutting everyone off. There was much honking and already two fights.
The car line dutifully formed around the horseshoe and out into the street, but Trevor could see the writing on the wall: anyone who joined at its rear now would spend angry minutes fighting the loop before rejoining what was an increasingly snarled line of traffic beyond.
Trevor hoofed it out toward the end of the line, where new cars were joining. He moved back with the line. The school wasn’t as jammed as those downtown, but getting out of here wouldn’t be easy — especially once they turned back toward home.
A few minutes later, Piper’s distinctive blue Bug pulled up, and Trevor felt his gut sink. Yes, he’d be leaving school and going home. But he’d be riding in the car, alone, with Piper. In the Bug’s infuriatingly close quarters.
He flagged her down, raising his hands in a universal “stop, don’t pull up any farther” gesture. Then he ran to the vehicle, feeling that odd tumult he’d been recently feeling whenever around his stepmom.
He reached for the door, but Piper was already leaning over to push it open for him. He looked in, and she was still across the seat where he needed to be, her huge, beautiful blue eyes looking up at him with watery concern as if he were only a child. She was wearing a tight top — maybe coming from yoga; Trevor hated when she did yoga at home — and her ample boobs were on shapely display, courteously separated and shaped by the bisection of her seat belt.
“Trevor, thank God.”
Trevor said nothing. He looked away from Piper and slid into the Bug’s bucket seat, setting the bag on his lap. Everyone said the world was ending and aliens were on their way (he’d even seen photos on the app; he had it same as anyone), and still he was getting an inappropriate boner. Perfect.
“Are you okay?” she said, her naturally husky voice (Trevor found it “throaty” and “sexy”) sounding somehow uneasy, barely hanging on. “You seem okay. Is the school okay? Are they taking care of the kids who are left? Look at me. Right here.”
Trevor reluctantly looked over. Jesus, she was beautiful. Those big, blue eyes, that innocent, usually carefree bearing, that dark and wavy hair with its retro-geek bangs. That seat belt plumping her chest.
“Good, good,” she said. Trevor didn’t know what was so good. The aliens? The panic? “But Hoover — that was Mr. Hoover, right? — he’s taking care of things? Are there any riots? I mean, not riots, but, like, panic, like people fighting and … ”
“A little in the car line,” said Trevor, looking away.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Do you think it’s okay? Do you think they’ll be safe, or—”
“What are you going to do, put the whole school in the back of the Bug?” Trevor snapped, his newly deep voice booming more than intended. He pushed at his glasses, feeling her gaze and knowing they looked stupid and childish. He was fifteen, and every kid he knew had had their vision corrected if it was the slightest bit off. His dad was famous and rich. Why did he have to look this way, with big dumb frames on his face?
He didn’t look up at Piper, but could see her shock in his peripheral vision while staring at his backpack. He played with one of the zippers, turning it over and over, back and forth.
“Okay. Okay, you’re right,” she said. “We’ll just go. I’m sure they’ll be fine. We can only worry about ourselves, right?”
Trevor thought he’d have to snap at Piper before she’d pull into traffic, but she blessedly looked over her left shoulder, tapped the console, and confirmed that she wanted to merge.
Even her technophobia was adorable. The car, without Piper in it, could have picked him up, and it would have done so without rubbing forbidden tits in his face. And still she insisted on confirming every little move it wanted to make, reintroducing the possibility for operator error into what was otherwise a near perfect system.
Then again, judging by what he’d seen in the car line and what he was already seeing on the streets ahead, plenty of people were piloting manually today. Autocars tended to balk at driving on sidewalks, rear-ending stopped vehicles to make a point, and running over streetside trashcans to clear a path. And autocars rarely honked: the staple shout of rage for any driver in a rush.
“Did they tell you about the aliens?”
Trevor looked over, watching her profile. She hadn’t even tried to soften it.
“Ships, Piper. Or maybe just asteroids or something.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Piper. “About asteroids. Or maybe I don’t. I do
n’t know if that’s any better. Unless they miss. They could miss, right? Because they could be shooting right at Earth, but Earth is moving, isn’t it? Do you think that could happen, that they could just fly by?”
“Dunno.”
“I was listening on the radio, kiddo.” Trevor hated when she called him “kiddo.” It implied he was a kid, not her midnight lover as he’d often imagined, doing things he shouldn’t do while thinking of his father’s wife. “They don’t think so.”
“Think what?” said Trevor.
“That they’re asteroids. Or meteors. Or … what else? Like a comet or something. Or Spacelab.” She looked over, and he could see a small, exhausted smile on her wide pink lips.
“What’s Spacelab?”
“Maybe it’s Skylab. Is it Skylab?”
Trevor shrugged. He had no idea what she was talking about. He kind of wished she’d stop talking. Or that he’d invited a friend to be in the car with them, as a buffer.
“Where’s Lila?”
“She’s in the park.”
“Why is she in the damned park?”
“Easy, tiger.”
Tiger, worse than kiddo.
“Well, why is she?” he demanded. “I had to go to school, and she can just ditch?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll make sure she understands she can’t pull stuff like that. And besides, right now all that matters is … ”
“We’re going to the park?”
Piper nodded. A traffic jam loomed ahead, so she jockeyed around, heading down the next block. There was an abandoned cab to one side. Piper swerved into approaching traffic just long enough to get around.
“Yeah. I told her to meet us outside the museum. I think she’s with Raj.”
“Fucking hell.”
“Trevor!”
“Oh, so she can ditch school, a fleet of UFOs is coming, and it’s bad news that I’m swearing. Well fuck that.”
Traffic eased long enough for Piper to glance over. She’d gone full manual before the cab maneuver, and as far as Trevor could see without looking up, she looked flushed with the stress of driving.
“You okay, Trevor?”
“Peachy.”
“You scared?”
Making his voice as insulted as possible: “No.” It was the biggest lie he’d ever told, other than the one he told every day by saying nothing, about Piper.
“Well, I’m scared.” She reached out and tapped the radio. It was voice activated, so she said, “Radio. News.” The car was filled with a comforting third voice, droning on about something neither of them probably really wanted to hear. “It’s okay to be scared, Trevor.”
“I’m fine, okay?”
Again she glanced over, vaguely hurt. That hurt Trevor in return. He didn’t want to offend her, but talking with her was hell. Piper only seemed confused, not understanding why he’d turned on her over the past six months when they used to be such good friends.
“Well, just sit back then. Assuming we can make it to the park, we’ll get Lila and then head home. Everything will be fine after that.”
Trevor found the statement insulting, but said nothing because Piper was probably saying it for herself more than for him. Still, heading to the top floor of a Manhattan building during a coming invasion was less intelligent than ridiculous. There was no way his father, with all his paranoia, had the penthouse in mind as their final plan. He probably had survival gear stowed somewhere, and they’d head into the subway tunnels to live like well-equipped hobos until the overlords had enslaved the world above.
On the radio, the announcer repeated something Trevor had already heard from his friends’ investigations during class, when word about the Astral app happenings had first started to spread: that current projections, crowdsourced by the civilian eggheads watching Astral, seemed to think humanity had only five days left to pretend it was alone in the universe. After that, the ships or whatever they were would arrive. Then shit would really hit the fan.
Piper reached out and tapped the radio to turn it off, her finger shaking.
CHAPTER FIVE
Day One, Morning
The Dempsey Penthouse, New York
Meyer tapped his earbud while running around the penthouse with a sense of foreboding. Somehow without knowing at all, he’d been sure this was coming.
All the visions in his ceremonies. Tripped-out haze, lying beside Heather while she talked about the “groovy fucking colors,” sharing none of his richer experience in the far-seeing rituals. Ayahuasca was medicine, but Heather just saw it as a helluva time — not unlike the many other substances she’d put into her body and brain. She’d never been truly addicted to anything through all her dalliances, so it seemed ironic to Meyer — who’d really only cared for that most expensive drug of all — that he might have been the addicted one.
Not to the chemicals, but to the puzzle his mind had been slowly solving since his first glimpse of Mother Ayahuasca.
“Incoming call from: Piper.”
The mechanical voice pronounced Piper’s name as “Pipper.” It was simple to correct mispronunciations, but he’d never cared to. And right now, on the eve of an apocalypse, it annoyed Meyer more than anything that his phone still couldn’t properly pronounce his wife’s name.
He tapped the bud again.
There was a shuffling noise. Meyer heard his son say, “Here.”
Piper: “Oh, excellent, thank you, Trevor. Meyer?”
Meyer was shoving item after item into a duffel. He’d just packed two similar bags, and most of what they’d need was already in the van downstairs. From the outside, Meyer’s packing would have looked less frantic than he felt, owing to the fact that he’d practically memorized his packing lists and kept whatever he could spare already packed, stowed, and ready to go. Only last-minute items took time, and he was already done. Meyer checked mental boxes in his mind as if on an internal heads-up display.
“Are you on your way?” he demanded.
“Oh, thank God. We’ve been trying to reach you for hours. Well, not hours. A long time, though. Trevor has.”
“So Trevor’s there? You got the kids?”
A loud clattering preceded a horn’s ugly bray.
Far away, Meyer heard Piper yell, “Brother trucker!” Then: “Sorry, kids.” A nervous laugh followed, not from Piper. Seconds later her voice filled the receiver, out of breath. “I just hope I can make it there.”
“Where are you?”
“Near the park. I just picked up Lila.”
Meyer stopped, wrist-deep in a duffel.
“You aren’t out at the school?”
“I had to pick up Lila.”
Another rustling, and something that sounded like Piper might have hit something, run someone over, or driven up onto the sidewalk. All were fine with Meyer as long as the passengers in Piper’s stupid Beetle survived. But she was a shaky driver under the best of circumstances. She’d grown up in the country and had only moved to the city after her campaign on Meyer’s crowdfunding platform had birthed her Quirky Q clothing line — and, eventually, their relationship. She was too tentative for New York streets, and today was no normal rush hour.
“Jesus, Piper. Put someone else on the phone. Just drive.”
“Lila, take the phone.” Then, somewhat near the receiver: “I love you.”
“I love you too, baby. Just be—”
Trevor’s voice: “Hey, Dad.”
“Lila, your voice has gotten so deep.”
“Lila doesn’t want to take the phone,” Trevor said. “She doesn’t want you to yell at her for ditching school.”
“Lila was ditching school?” He shook the thought away. That was well down the list of things that simply did not fucking matter right now. He had to see them safe, then get to Morristown and the Gulfstream. Things were uncertain until then. Once in the air, they’d be okay. He could worry about FAA rules and where they’d land later. They could fly low and land at the compound if need be. But none of
that could happen until the city was behind them.
“She was with Raj.”
“That doesn’t matter right now,” Meyer said. “Tell me exactly where you are.”
“They ditched the whole day so they could go to the park and make out.”
Lila’s voice from nearby, probably the back seat: “Give me that phone, you little shit!”
“Lila says hi.”
“Where are you?” Meyer repeated.
“On 77th. We just picked up Lila and Raj.”
“Raj? You have Raj?”
“Yeah. They keep making out in the back seat. It’s gross.”
“Trevor, you little—!”
“Get off, Lila! I’m talking to dad right now.”
Piper: “Will you two just … ”
There was the squeal of tires, a vintage Piper shriek, and, mercifully, no crash. Meyer realized he’d paused his packing. No matter now that the plan might be changing.
“Tell Piper to turn autodrive back on before she gets you all killed.” Meyer had been doing some mental theater since he saw the incoming call, and could imagine every noise paired with ridiculous acrobatics from his adorable but not always street smart wife.
“Tried a bit ago,” said Trevor. “The streets aren’t terrible as far as traffic is concerned, but there are a billion people running around, like, kind of everywhere. Pretty sure we saw some guy get wasted earlier. Not by us. The car doesn’t know what to do with them all. It just kind of politely waits for them to pass.”
“You’re on the west side?”
“Yeah. On 77th. But Dad, it’s going to be pretty hard to get all the way around the park and home. It’ll take some time.”
“Don’t try. We’re headed to Jersey anyway. Cross to Weehawken. I’ll meet you at that gas station where we bought the Twinkies that made you sick. Do you remember it?”
“I remember it,” said Piper’s voice in the distance. How loud was her phone, and how little attention was she paying to the road?
