Alien Nation #8 - Cross of Blood

by K. W. Jeter

  The Newcomers were only a pretext. The reason that the HDL existed was power. And nothing else.

  To the HDL, the existence of Aalice and the stolen baby, and the implications they had for the relationship between humans and Newcomers, was their worst nightmare come true. If the Newcomers were to be seen as essentially human—not alien parasites, but a branch that had once come from the same root—and if matings between Newcomers and humans would result in nothing more than the Newcomers being reabsorbed into one genetic stream again . . . then there would be no way for the HDL to stir up hatred between the two groups. No longer two, but one people; brethren reunited. And with no hatred, there would be no reason at all for the HDL to exist. And no reason for people to listen to an aging beauty queen like Darlene Bryant, no way for her to grasp power in her hand . . .

  Noah had learned his history well enough; Bryant had even encouraged him to read up on the HDL’s illustrious—her word—predecessors. The grasping of power required an enemy, something to be labelled as evil, to whip up loathing against. The Nazis had known how to do it; there had even been those in the top ranks of the Third Reich who’d admitted they had no feelings one way or another about the Jews, but had found them useful as a way of bringing their own followers to heel. A cold, calculating evil, one that knew the road to the city of power was paved with murder.

  Cold evil, cold logic. In the middle of the high desert of eastern Oregon, Noah felt his skin chilled by a wind that stirred no dust at his feet. The time had come and embraced him, the time when the evil he had served claimed him for its own. The harsh landscape faded from his vision; he saw Darlene Bryant turning toward him and smiling, her eyes two mirrors of polished darkness, smiling and saying, I know who you are. You’re one of us. Bryant had looked into his heart and had judged him to be the same order of creature that she was, wanting the same things, capable of doing whatever was necessary to get them.

  Eliminate the two children, the fax’s concluding orders had read. Instructions on disposal of the bodies to follow.

  Noah folded the paper and tucked it back into his shirt pocket. No thoughts moved inside his head, as though the words themselves had been rendered numb. He started walking toward another of the camp’s low buildings.

  The little girl was still asleep on the blanket in the corner. The light sifting through the boarded-up windows had changed its angle, touching a corner of Aalice’s face. He stood gazing down at her, one minute and then another passing. Instructions to follow . . . Words that weren’t his own turned inside him. Disposal of the bodies . . .

  He knelt down and prodded the girl’s shoulder. “Hey . . .” His voice was kept low. “Come on, Aalice, wake up.”

  “Hm?” She lifted her head and sleepily regarded him. “I was dreaming . . . I dreamt you took me out there.” Aalice pointed to the cabin’s open doorway and the desert beyond the fence.

  “Yeah, well, that’s where we’re going.” Noah stood up, reaching down to help her to her feet. “We’re going for a drive.”

  “Really?” Her face lit up.

  “Sure thing.” He found it easier to speak now that his decision had been made. “But we gotta keep it quiet, okay? It’s kind of a . . . surprise thing. So I don’t want the others to know just yet.”

  “Oh.” Aalice peered more closely at him. “I get it. I’ll be quiet as a mouse.”

  She knows the score, thought Noah. This kid had been up here a lot longer than he had, and she wasn’t stupid. She could have figured out a long time ago that her survival might depend upon reading out the situation around her.

  “Are we going right now?” asked Aalice.

  He nodded, his brain still working through the details. There was more to worry about than just him and the little girl. He glanced around the empty room, then back down to the blanket at his feet. “You know, we’re going to be gone for a while. Maybe you should bring your doll along . . . you wouldn’t want it to get lonely back here.” Aalice picked up the doll and stood beside him, waiting. “Here—” He reached down and gathered up the blanket. “Let’s wrap her up so she doesn’t get cold.” Aalice let him bundle the doll in the folded blanket, then held it against herself when he gave it back. “Okay, now we gotta go over to the other building and pick something else up. Now you just do whatever I tell you, all right?”

  Aalice said nothing, but gave a nod, her eyes wide and serious.

  Crossing the compound, Noah saw a bunch of the HDL team members clustered near a wooden pole to which they had nailed a broken-through ten-gallon can; they were shooting desultory hoops, knocking back the beers in their hands with more enthusiasm. Some of the men had stripped off their shirts, their shoulders and backs damp with sweat. All of them turned their sullen gazes toward Noah and Aalice, then away with muttered comments and ugly, snickering laughs.

  In the compound’s main building, Nurse Eward was standing at one of the windows, smoking a cigarette. A litter of ground-out butts lay around her feet, smears of black ash marking the floor’s wooden planks. She glanced over her shoulder as Noah and Aalice came inside. “What do you want?”

  Noah pushed the little girl ahead of himself. “The kid said she was hungry.”

  “So get her something to eat, already.” Shaking her head in disgust, Eward turned back to the dust-clouded window. “Christ, do I have to do everything around here?”

  He stopped with Aalice beside the chrome cart from the hospital. “Hey, is everything all right with this one?”

  The nurse’s slit-eyed gaze turned his way again. “Why the hell shouldn’t it be?”

  “I don’t know. It just looks . . . kinda sick.” In fact, the infant bedded down inside the cart looked perfectly healthy to him. It opened its eyes and gurgled, as though recognizing the face above it; the tiny hands clutched and waved in the air. “Maybe you better come over here and check it out.”

  Eward angrily threw down her cigarette and stomped over toward them. With one hand, Noah protectively nudged Aalice behind himself. He stepped back so the nurse could lean over the cart.

  “What’re you talking about?” With unfeeling, clinical precision, Eward ran a hand over the infant’s brow, using the ball of her thumb to pull one of its eyelids open wider. “This thing’s healthy as a horse.”

  “That’s a relief—” Noah said nothing more, but reached out and grabbed the woman by the hair at the back of her head. She gasped in surprise as he jerked her away from the cart. His other fist arced upward, catching her on the point of her jaw. The blow rolled her eyes back in their sockets; she collapsed limp and unconscious when he let go of her.

  “Wow . . .” Aalice breathed out the syllable. “That was cool.”

  “I told you to be quiet.” He leaned down and grabbed Eward under the arms. Her head lolled as he dragged her into the building’s kitchen area and out of sight. A glimpse out the window as he came back showed him that the rest of the HDL members were still out by their makeshift basketball court. Noah took the doll from Aalice’s grasp and slipped it from the folded blanket. A few seconds juggling act, and the doll was tucked inside the hospital cart. The wriggling infant lay in the crook of his arm, swaddled and concealed. He knelt down in front of Aalice. “Okay, now you have to carry the baby.” The bundle, bigger than the doll had been, filled Aalice’s arms; she had to lean back to balance her two-handed grip on it. “You got it?”

  Aalice nodded gravely.

  He led her out the building’s front door, hoping that the infant would stay quiet until they were well away from the other HDL members. One end of the blanket dragged on the ground as Noah put his hand on Aalice’s shoulder, carefully pushing her toward the other side of the compound. He had debated with himself about whether to stuff a bag full of the infant’s supplies, then carry it out himself, but had decided against it. There were some plastic jugs of water in the Jeep he was planning on taking; that, plus the couple cans of formula he managed to cram into his jacket pockets, would have to do. If they got away clean
from the compound, it wouldn’t be long before he would have the baby someplace where it would be taken care of. And if they didn’t get away, a whole case of formula wouldn’t make any difference about what happened next, to the baby, Aalice, and him.

  Several yards away, a few of the HDL members glanced over at the small parade, then turned back to their hoops. Noah watched them from the corner of his eye—none of them appeared to suspect anything wrong.

  As soon as they were around the corner of the next building, Noah took the blanket-wrapped infant from Aalice’s arms. They were out of the angle of the others sight; with one arm tucking the squirming baby against his chest, he took Aalice’s hand and pulled her at a quick trot toward the cluster of vehicles, parked at the compound’s far corner.

  With the blanket for cushioning, he made a nest for the baby in the space behind the driver’s seat of the Jeep. A bungee cord looped between one floor bolt and another was just slack enough to keep the baby secure. The small face wrinkled; it was annoyed by all the fussing around, but not enough to start crying yet.

  Noah dug the formula cans out of his jacket and tucked them underneath the driver’s seat. As he turned the key in the ignition, he put his other hand on top of Aalice’s head and pushed her down below the level of the passenger side door. “You gotta keep down,” he told her as the engine caught and roared to life. “It’s a game.”

  “No, it’s not.” She looked offended as she crouched beside him. “I know what’s going on. We’re escaping.”

  “Sure as shit.” He slammed the Jeep into gear and punched the accelerator.

  Noah could see in the mirror as the HDL members turned and watched the dust cloud zoom past them. He knew that even these bastards weren’t so slow as to not be able to figure out that something was up.

  At the fence, he slammed on the brakes, jumped out and pulled back the gate. He could hear voices shouting in the distance. He glanced over his shoulder and saw running figures, a couple others coming out of the main building with the nurse supported between them.

  He scrambled back into the Jeep. “Hold on!” Beside him, Aalice yanked her seat belt tight around her waist. The Jeep’s wheels spun gravel, then they were outside the compound, laying a rubber track on the road before straightening out.

  In the mirror, he saw the larger, heavier vehicles starting to roll. He knew that they would be able to catch up if he stayed on the narrow strip of asphalt; it took only a second for him to make his next decision. With a jerk of the steering wheel, he slung the Jeep off the road, heading across the high desert.

  C H A P T E R 1 6

  WHAT HE WANTED—needed, really—was sleep. He could feel it right down in his bones, the overwhelming desire to just steer the motorcycle over to the side of the road, switch off the racketing engine, and then lay his weary body on the ground. If he did that, he knew he would be unconscious in a matter of seconds, the bright sun pressing down on him like the covers of the softest bed imaginable.

  You go for nearly twenty hours straight, thought Buck, and that’s what you get. It was a miracle that he hadn’t become even loopier than he already was. His spine felt as if it had become fused into a permanent curve from the hundreds of miles of being hunched over the bike’s tank. From the center of Los Angeles, straight up I-5 like a ground-hugging rocket aimed due north, and then once he’d crossed the state border into Oregon, the long diagonal northwest—he’d stopped only to fill the motorcycle with gas, shoving down into his own gut bags of organ-meat snacks from the stations’ vending machines. The California Highway Patrol had picked him up on their radar somewhere around Fresno, but he’d managed to elude them, turning the bike onto a service road paralleling the interstate and switching off his headlight, gunning through the dark until he lost his pursuers somewhere behind.

  That was as close as he’d come to getting caught, which would have put a serious crimp in his elapsed time. Buck didn’t know if the road cops in Oregon were better or worse, but there definitely seemed to be fewer of them once he got into the bleak wilds east of the main highway. Once he’d started heading in the direction of Idaho, it had been more or less a straight shot all the way to Vindoma.

  The fatigue faded from his system when he saw the sign posting the outskirts of the little town. He had finally reached his destination. He rolled on the bike’s accelerator, hurtling down the narrow two-lane road.

  There was so little to the place that Buck almost shot out the other side before he realized it. He had to jam on the brakes and fishtail the bike to a halt, his own dust settling around him. A half dozen or so terts, the drivers of the battered pickup trucks parked over at the combined gas station and general store, glanced his way. They appeared only mildly curious. It took Buck a moment to remember that he still had his helmet on—the locals had no way of knowing that he was a Newcomer. A yellow hound lying in the dust by the gas pumps barely managed to lift its head and sniff the air; then it rolled over in slow motion, resuming its noontime slumber.

  A few minutes later and he had located the phone booth, snug against the utilities pole a few yards away from the store. The number was the same as the one that the Caller ID device in his father’s home office had read out; his little sister Emily’s electronic detective work hadn’t sent him all this way for nothing. Leaving his motorcycle parked beside the phone booth, Buck headed toward the store, his legs stiff from the long ride.

  The place was obviously the town’s de facto social center, The humans who had been outside had retreated into the store’s cooler shade. A couple of them had popped open beers, leaning themselves against the counter with its antique cash register and rack of tobacco snuff cans, or sitting on top of stacked fifty-pound bags of animal feed.

  A human woman, blond hair tied back with a rubber band, rested her sun-burnt arms on the counter. “If you need gas,” she said, pointing back out the door, “go ahead and pump it yourself. Just let me know what it comes to.”

  “Actually—” Buck pulled off the helmet. “I need some directions.” He dangled the helmet at his side. “I’m trying to find some people up here.”

  “Look at that.” One of the terts nudged a companion next to him. “It’s one of those . . . whatchacallem . . . Newcomer guys.” The man’s face filled with an almost childlike delight. “You know, like they have over in the big cities.” Another poke to the ribs sloshed the beer in his friend’s hand. “Ain’t it?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Charlie.” The woman behind the counter winced in embarrassment. “Simmer down.” She slowly shook her head as she looked back toward Buck. “Don’t pay him any attention. His idea of the big city is La Grande.”

  “Yeah, well, at least I watch something on the tube besides the flippin’ Oprah show.” Charlie pointed to Buck. “He is one of them Newcomers. Remember, it was on all the news years ago, when they came down from outer space?”

  “I came up here from Los Angeles, actually—”

  “Same difference.” One of the other humans snorted a laugh into his beer can.

  He didn’t have time for the locals’ attempts at light conversation. “Look, I’m in kind of a hurry—”

  “Like I said, fella, don’t let these clowns ring your chimes.” The human woman tossed a wadded-up bar towel at the men.

  “The whole point, of what I was trying to say,” continued the one named Charlie, “is that we’ve just never had one of these folks come around here before. That’s all.”

  “But that ain’t true.” The man beside him lowered his beer. “You seen that little girl those fruitloops out in that camp have got. Remember? You thought a coyote had got one of those spaniel pups you been trying to breed, and we went looking for it out by that big old fence they got. And we saw her, we saw that little girl.” He pointed to Buck. “I mean, she was kinda like him . . .”

  “Wait a minute.” Buck had no idea what girl the terts were talking about, but it might still be a lead. “Who do you mean? What camp?”

  “Oh, there�
�s a bunch of out-of-state jerks been hanging out in that old gun club up the road.” The local spat on the floor in disgust. “Real unfriendly types . . .”

  “Yeah, about all they ever do is come in here and stock up on cases of beer.” The woman shook her head. “I don’t need their business, if they can’t even be bothered to say good morning to folks.”

  “But do you know who they are?”

  “Funny thing is,” said Charlie, “when they first came around here, I thought they were all like veterinarians or something. ’Cause if you ever heard them talking, all they’d ever go on about was how they were going to get rid of all the parasites. And I thought, shoot, if that’s what they want to do, they oughta start by going over and deworming all those mutts Ernest has got in his backyard—”

  “Hey!” One of the other men looked offended. “Those dogs are pure-breds!”

  “Yeah, right . . .” Charlie and the rest got a laugh out of that.

  “Please—” Buck had caught the word parasites and knew what it meant. “There’s a camp or someplace where these people are at? How do I get there?”

  A few moments later, with the locals’ directions locked inside his head, he had fired up the motorcycle and was headed out of the town, not even taking the time to put the helmet back on.

  So where’s Matt and the rest of those guys? wondered Buck as he leaned forward, wind tearing at his eyes. He had been half-expecting to see Sikes and some other LAPD, along with special units from the Bureau of Newcomer Affairs, swarming all over this territory. By now, everything should have been over except for the mopping-up. The authorities had faster ways of getting on the scene than bone-tailing it on a motorcycle from the middle of one state to another. What happened to the message he’d left for Sikes at the police station? Either the detective hadn’t gotten it, or he’d decided it was a joke and had wadded it up and thrown it into the trash can at the side of the desk.