All of the Above

by Timothy Scott Bennett

  Evlyn knew that a fall through a floor would not spell the end of the distorted woman. She was right. Bob flew up out of the hole and hovered in the air above the dining room table. “Alice!” she screamed in a rage.

  Alice was nowhere to be seen.

  “She left,” said Grace, stepping forward, her head held high.

  Bob looked down on the girl. “You’re the little shit that got in the way before,” she said with disgust.

  “She didn’t like what she saw,” said Grace, ignoring Bob’s words.

  “Who?” said Bob.

  “Alice,” said Grace, stepping closer. “She sees what you’ve become. She sees how sick you are.” Dennis stepped quietly to Grace’s side.

  Bob held out her hand. “You’re next sweetie,” she said with a grotesque, melted smile.

  While Grace spoke with her, Payok, Sina and the old woman surrounded Bob from behind. Before she could materialize another cube they were on her, pulling her to the tabletop and engulfing her in arms and legs and bodies. Bob exploded again but this time her opponents were not thrown off. Their interwoven arms and legs and fingers and hearts and intentions held them tightly together. Grace’s words had shifted things. This woman was sick. She needed help. And they knew that, to help her, they first had to contain her.

  Bob struggled, biting and kicking like a lunatic, trying to rise into the air above and then falling back down under the weight of her adversaries. She let loose a bloodcurdling scream that split the walls around her. The kitchen fell away into splinters and dust. The neighborhood beyond the walls bowed and buckled and broke into pieces. Bob screamed again and again and again, heaving with unspent rage. Sina and Payok held fast. As she hummed an old French children’s song, Evlyn engulfed them all with her light.

  After a while Bob’s screaming turned to sobs.

  16.28

  “My God,” whispered Cole. The stairs had been ripped away from the wall, leaving huge gaps where the cold night air seeped in. He stepped forward, holding onto Ruth’s hand as she followed. The noise had abated. All they could hear now was a woman’s quiet weeping. They had to go see what was happening.

  “Cole?” said Ruth, her voice urging caution.

  “The house is falling apart, sweetie,” he said, turning to whisper in her ear. “It’s not safe. We have to get out of here.”

  Cole tested the top step with his right foot. It shifted a bit, but felt strong enough to hold his weight. He took another step and turned to Ruth. “It’s okay,” he said. Together they crept down the stairs.

  Ruth gasped. The house was half gone. What remained was a shambles. At the bottom of the stairs stood a strange man in a long, red robe. He looked like something out of the French Renaissance. He nodded as she and Cole neared him and passed by. In the dining room a pair of what looked like Eskimos, and an old, old woman made, it seemed, from light, held a young woman in their arms. The young woman’s face was buried in the old woman’s neck. She was the one who’d been crying. Next to them stood a cute little girl in overalls, and her skinny little dog. And everywhere there were animals. A little fox stood on the sofa, watching them. An eagle perched on top of the stereo. And a huge walrus filled the floor in front of the Eskimos, scratching its belly with both flippers.

  “What—?” said Ruth, awe and confusion in her voice. It was all she could think to say.

  The little girl brightened. “Hi Mom. Hi Dad,” she said. The little dog thumped his tail against the floor.

  An aftershock rumbled and the rest of the house fell away, and the neighborhood with it, leaving them all suspended in the heart of a bright, blue nebula, a buckled wood floor beneath them and the old brown sofa sitting crookedly at the edge. Ruth and Cole looked at each other. They both knew exactly where they were.

  One of the Eskimos screamed in pain and disappeared.

  16.29

  The ground shook again and Linda shouted, coughing as the icy wind filled her throat. A beam of yellow sliced an Inuit man in half right in front of her, then swept across the circle, slicing across Payok’s arm as it moved. She and Cole would be next.

  Suddenly, the rock beneath the wok exploded upward in a torrent of stone and dust. Linda watched in confusion and disbelief as huge, monstrous jaws pushed up from the Earth and swallowed the flying ship, the men, and their rifles, in a single, crushing mouthful. The beast fell back into the Earth like a breaching whale falls back into the sea, leaving a pile of boulders where none had been before. The ground stopped shaking. The wind fell to silence. The snow diminished to a few stray flakes and the clouds broke apart, revealing the first light of dawn.

  Aamai and the others stopped dancing. The woman who’d been beating the drum stood and stared at the pile of boulders. “Wentshukumishiteu!” she said. She fell on her knees with arms overhead and bowed in awed thanksgiving.

  Linda, overwhelmed by the impossibility of what had just happened, remembered to breathe, and grounded herself in the physical: she brushed the snow from Cole’s face and bent to listen to his heart. It was still beating.

  16.30

  “What the fuck!” shouted Rice as his soldiers disappeared. He stormed up onto the ledge and kicked at a boulder. “You assholes get back here!” he screamed.

  The boulder was unimpressed.

  16.31

  Cole turned at the touch of a hand on his shoulder.

  “We have to go, little brother,” said Obie.

  Cole turned back to Ruth, sitting on the sofa with Grace snuggled in her arms. He needed to say something but he didn’t know what.

  Ruth smiled. “I know, Cole,” she said softly. “You have work to do. So go do it.”

  Cole looked down at his feet, and then back at Ruth. Tears clogged his throat. He nodded once, smiled with thanks and love, then turned to Obie. “What about Grace?” he asked.

  “They’ve got some catching up to do, bro. Leave ‘em be. They’ll figure things out.”

  Cole leaned over and put a hand on Grace’s head. “I’ll see you back home, girl,” he said. The words cut at his heart. He did not know if he could make them come true.

  Grace opened her eyes and smiled. “Take care of Cornfed, Daddy,” she said. She closed her eyes and buried her face against her mother’s neck.

  Cole reached out and took Ruth’s hand and squeezed. “I’ll see you,” he said.

  “Yeah,” answered Ruth. She buried her face in Grace’s hair and closed her eyes.

  Cole turned. There stood Obie, with the Eskimo woman standing behind him, her face pained with worry. The crying young woman had slipped quietly out the front door when her captors released her. The old woman of light had followed close behind. The animals had apparently all wandered away. “So how do we do this?” asked Cole.

  “Click your heels and repeat these words: there’s no place like home.” Obie grinned.

  “Forgot my ruby slippers, Obie,” said Cole. “You got another way?”

  Obie shrugged, turning to include Sina, now traveling without her angakkuq and her warrior. “Getting home’s the easy part,” he said to them all. “You’re already there. Your bodies eagerly await you, ready to reconnect. Just open your eyes.”

  “My eyes are already open, Obie,” said Cole.

  Obie shook his head. “Your other eyes, little bro,” he said.

  Cole opened his other eyes.

  16.32

  Linda gasped. “Cole!” she cried, bursting into tears. She threw herself down onto him, burying her face in his neck and squeezing him tight.

  Cole reached out and patted her back with fumbling, mittened hands. “Hello, Linda,” he said softly.

  All of Linda’s doubt and worry melted away at the sound of his voice. It just didn’t fucking matter anymore. Whether the aliens had manipulated her or not, her heart still longed for this man. For now, she could let it be. She raised her head and kissed him gently on the lips, afraid to scare him away again. Cole’s eyes welled with joyful tears.

  The sound of boo
ts crunching on snow interrupted their reunion. They both looked up. There stood Obie, his face grim.

  “We could use your help,” he said, gesturing around him.

  Cole and Linda looked out across the circle.

  The ground was littered with bodies.

  Chapter Seventeen

  17.1

  Alice nodded at the two privates at the door, who stood with rifles drawn and comms in hand. Alice understood. The entire operation was on alert this morning, since Mr. Rice’s return. Sick to death from trekking and furious at his defeat, he’d lashed out at anybody and everybody he could. These soldiers understood that the children behind this door were key to the future of this organization. The General’s surprise visit an hour ago had made that very clear. The soldiers were not about to let Mr. Rice down. They had seen him angry before.

  Rice had tried to flick over to the Confusion, Alice eventually learned, just after some huge creature had swallowed his shooters. But the signal was lost by then. He’d immediately popped back to the physical to learn that Bob had not yet returned. “Get the fuck back here!” Alice had heard him screaming to her mother’s body in the room next door. She’d risen at the sound of a crashing lamp and stepped out into the hallway to find Mr. Rice on his hands and knees, vomiting on the tile.

  “What the fuck happened?” he’d demanded, seeing Alice out of the corner of his eye.

  “We were defeated,” replied Alice, evenly.

  “Defeated?” laughed Rice through his vomit. “We don’t get defeated, baby-cakes. We don’t—” Rice had moaned in pain, wretched and heaved, and then recovered enough to speak. “How could we be defeated?”

  Alice had watched curiously. Mr. Rice had been too long between treks. The effects on his body were worse than ever. She’d stepped back quickly as Rice hit the floor, fainting face-first into his undigested cheeseburger.

  Alice looked up to the soldiers at the door. “I need to speak with the human children,” she said. She did not expect to be challenged. As part of the Trekking Team, and as a fully functional Earthside human-alien hybrid, she far outranked these soldiers, even in her tiny body. The privates stepped aside. One of them punched the lockpad and the door slid open.

  It was darker in the little room. Alice adjusted her eyes, then turned to the soldiers. “You may close the door,” she said. They looked at her blankly, then the closer of the two shrugged and touched the pad. The door slid shut.

  The female, Emily, was lying on her cot, her face red and raw from a night of tears. The male was sitting at the table. His face was tight with what Alice knew to be anger. They were watching her closely.

  “Your father has been restored,” said Alice, having calculated that this would be the best way to begin.

  “What?” said Emily, sitting up.

  “Your father’s soul has been reconnected to his body,” Alice explained. “He now lives as you do.”

  “Why should we believe you?” asked the male, Iain.

  “It is what is so,” explained Alice.

  Emily stood and stepped quickly toward the tiny hybrid. “Are you here to help us?” she asked, her voice shaking. She reached out and touched Alice’s upper arm, hesitantly, as though petting a wild animal. “Can you get us out of here? Can you take us—?” Emily stopped, choking on a sob.

  Alice nodded. “The alive ones have withdrawn from Mr. Rice and the Plan. I will now follow their lead. We must leave this place before Mr. Rice acts to prohibit us.” Alice headed to the door, then turned. “I will return as soon as I can.”

  “You’re leaving?” asked Emily.

  “I must make sure my mother cannot follow us,” said Alice.

  Iain was now standing as well. “How do we get out of here, Alice?”

  Alice looked up at him, noting the expression on his face. Her mother would have called that look “hope” and laughed at it with scorn. But Alice noticed the curious, warming sensation in her chest and found that she enjoyed it. She sensed she was sharing in the sensations of these two human children. It was almost as if she were one of them. “The soldiers will stop me if I try to escort you through the facility,” she said. “We will attempt another way. Though I do not know if it will work.”

  “What way?” asked Emily.

  Alice stepped over to the wall and pushed her hand and forearm into it as if it were nothing but illusion. She pulled her hand back out of solid rock and turned to face the human children. “This way,” she said.

  Iain’s eyes went wide. Emily took a step back in surprise, then smiled and nodded. Alice imagined sitting one day with these two and speaking to them of their lives, and of her own. There would be so much to learn. The thought of that brought forth again the warming sensation in her chest.

  “My father’s people could escort you this way with ease,” said Alice. “For myself, I am unsure of my abilities. I am a new type of being and my limitations and talents are not yet fully understood. But we have help on the other side.”

  “Help?” asked Emily.

  “Yes,” nodded Alice. “Another like myself, though very unlike. I met him only recently. His name is Jack.”

  17.2

  The plane smacked into the ground and Ruth screamed and the sky flashed like lightning and Cole awoke from his dream to hear a soft knock at the door. “Yeah?” he said, groggily.

  “We need to get going,” said Obie through the door. His voice was thick with regret.

  Cole sighed. “Just a sec,” he said. He rubbed at his eyes. The light through the bedroom shades was gray and lifeless. The sky must have clouded over, he thought. It had been sunny before. But it was still the same day. They’d only slept a few hours. He breathed deeply, letting the cool air rouse his lungs and stir his blood. It was time to get moving again. There would be no real rest until this was finished. Sina had already arranged their flight.

  Linda stirred beside him, rolling over to trap him with her right arm. Her fingers rested on his bare stomach. “You can’t go,” she whispered.

  Cole smiled. Going was the last thing he wanted to do. Yet Obie’s request could not be ignored. He hugged her to him, rubbing her shoulder and head with his hand. He still hadn’t gotten used to his own body, let alone hers. The aliens had changed it. It felt stronger, smoother, calmer, younger. As if the aliens, having taken him into the shop for a blown head gasket, had thrown in a full tune-up and detailing for free. There was an energy coursing through him now that he’d never known before. And he could feel it in Linda as well. They were both … awake.

  “We gotta get up, sweetie,” he said gently. Linda groaned and Cole hugged her tighter. He understood. The day had almost destroyed them all. The injured were given first aid and transported quickly by snowcat back to Akkituyok. The bodies of Utterpok, Immaqa and the others, sliced to pieces by the killers Rice had summoned, were an assault on everyone; their blood, spilled out on the snow and ice, created stains that would never wash clean. Some of the survivors stayed behind to prepare the dead for burial, wrapping the bodies in caribou hides. They took them by dogsled and snowmobile out onto the snow-covered tundra, where they would be left face up, protected by traditional cairns of stones. The morning’s work was accompanied by loud weeping and the shedding of many tears. The Inuit did not speak much, though more than one commented on the aptness of their hamlet’s name: “costs much.”

  The funerary ritual would take place late in the night. Cole and Linda asked to attend but were refused; they would not be allowed to stay that long. “We will risk our tribe no further,” said Sina, her grief and anger palpable. Feeling both guilt and regret, neither Cole nor Linda were inclined to argue. Cole’s resurrection, and what assistance the Inuit had given Linda, had come at the price of great and personal loss to Sina’s group.

  As if to add to the confusion, the Strangers returned at dawn, filling the sky with ships of all shapes and sizes. They passed overhead in slow, somber sweeps like mourners in a funeral parlor, keeping their distance and yet claimi
ng their right to be there. Most of the Inuit noted the aliens’ appearance and then ignored them. Sina scowled at the sky for a full minute before turning her back. It seemed she had anger enough for the Tuurngait as well.

  Being so far out of their element, there was little Cole and Linda could do to really help the Inuit grieve. So they carried and gathered and packed and hauled when an extra hand was needed, eyes low, heads bowed in deep thanks and deeper sorrow. Both sighed with relief when Aamai told them it was time for them to leave.

  He took them back on his sled, saying little to Cole and Linda the entire hour. He sang softly to his dogs instead, a quiet dirge that rose above the shushing of the sled runners and evaporated in the silence of the clear, blue sky. At one point he stopped the sled and went to sit amongst his team, sobbing loudly. The dogs whined cheerlessly, in communion with their musher. After a while Aamai returned to the sled and took his position. The dogs understood, and pulled them quietly across the snow without a word.

  “You take my bedroom in the back,” Aamai told them, when they stepped into the trailer. It was ten o’clock in the morning. Cole was about to protest but Linda stopped him with a touch to his arm. She took his hand and they walked down the hall, closing the door behind them. With a finger to her lips to silence him, she pulled back the covers, sat on the bed, and began to remove her clothes, motioning for Cole to do the same. They undressed quickly, eyes furtive and shy, and crawled into each other’s arms. There Linda wept deeply, releasing her grief and joy. Soon they were both asleep.

  Cole snapped out of his reverie when his brother knocked again. “Cole?” Obie said, his voice sharp with impatience.