by Brian Yansky
“We just have to do it,” I say. It’s like that with kicks and punches and forms. You can only be shown so much. You’ve got to figure it out for yourself. The only problem is, we don’t have time.
I grab Lauren’s hand with my left and Catlin’s with my right. I feel our minds join and slip away and join and slip away. It’s like grabbing hands in a dream and not being able to hold on.
The water washes over the back of the bus but nothing happens, and I realize it won’t destroy whatever is in its path. It’s more specific than that. It will only destroy us.
“Focus,” I shout, as much to myself as to the others. I grab their hands more tightly.
The wall of water inches forward. The confusion is pulling me under. I squeeze the girls’ hands and force my mind more deeply into theirs. Lauren groans. Catlin and I are together. Lauren fights to keep her place and she slips again. Then she does it. We’re together. Joined.
It starts to happen. We build it together. A wall. Thin at first. Then thicker. Anchise’s wall of water rushes forward, and a second later it breaks against our wall, shattering it. I’m knocked to the floor, and I’m pulled away from Lauren and Catlin. They fall, too, Lauren hitting her head on one of the metal poles.
I’m underwater, sinking to the bottom. I can’t breathe. It’s dark. I’m alone. And I give in to it. I surrender. I let myself sink.
“Going to die are we, Grasshopper?” my dad says.
“I should have died a long time ago,” I say. “I should have died when everyone else did.”
“Maybe. Maybe we all should have died. No more humans.”
“I didn’t deserve to survive.”
“It’s not about deserve, is it? Go ahead and quit. Take the easy way out.”
“Shut up. Just shut up.” I’ve never said that to my father.
It’s quiet then. I’m sinking in the silence. All alone.
“Dad?”
“I’m here. I’m always here.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” he says.
“What do I do? How can I go on?”
“Sometimes you have to just put one foot in front of the other.”
“That’s not going to work underwater.”
“It’s a metaphor.”
“Not a very good one.”
“I’m a soldier, not a poet. But you’re the last of your kind. We live on in you. In all of you.”
I admit then what I’ve known for a long time. My father is dead. My mother is dead. I’m alive, and if they’re alive at all, it’s in me.
I fight then. I get mad. I fight my way back to the surface. I force my way through the dark. In a few seconds, I open my eyes, the smell of rotten eggs in the air. I force myself to my feet, the bus bumping and swaying and roaring down the street. Catlin and Lauren are still on the floor of the bus.
The Handler is going to his ship, Addyen thinks. You slowed his attack enough no one died. But the girls are asleep. I need to wake them before they slip into the deep sleep. Can you drive this thing?
I slip in behind her as she climbs out. But where do I go? I just floor the stupid thing.
Addyen sends me something in my mind. A map.
Follow.
At first I don’t think I can. I don’t see where to turn, but then I do. I see how her line makes twists and turns through the neighborhood.
Addyen is calling for Lauren, and I realize that she’s in Lauren’s mind, calling her back from some dark, quiet place. Not sleep but not death, someplace in between. I see Lauren step into the light of her mind, and then it’s too bright and I have to look away. Then Addyen goes to Catlin’s mind, and the same thing happens and Catlin wakes up, too.
I see Anchise’s ship in the rearview mirror. It’s closing on us fast now. He’ll be over us in a few seconds, and I don’t think he’ll leave any survivors this time. Addyen nudges me out of the driver’s seat and tells me to let her drive again. She tells us to jump as she goes around the next corner. Maybe it will give us a few seconds.
“We’ll all jump,” Lauren says.
He won’t hurt me, Addyen explains. I’m a citizen. What you felt before wouldn’t have hurt me.
“Please, Addyen.”
“Jump,” I say, taking hold of Lauren’s arm.
We jump and run to the bushes alongside a blue house. The ship passes by a second later, and a second after that the bus explodes.
“Oh, no,” Lauren says.
Anchise must realize we aren’t on the bus; his ship spins back toward us.
“Take my hands,” I tell Lauren and Catlin. “Try to be invisible. You’re the best at it, Catlin. Help us.”
So we try. We all try. And the ship flies right past us and I think maybe, just maybe, we’re good enough together to hide. A few seconds later, it’s back, though. It hovers uncertainly and then lands on the front lawn of the house.
Anchise gets out of the ship, and I feel him searching with his mind. He’s aware of us, but I don’t think he can see exactly where we are. He turns to the porch and then to the bushes where we’re huddled. He does something and we’re not hidden anymore.
I am sorry to have to kill you.
I’m really tired of this absurd apology.
“Maybe I’m not sorry to have to kill you,” I say, which sounds kind of crazy, especially since I’m cowering behind a bush.
But it works. Anchise pauses for just a second, wondering if he might have missed something. I go for it then, an elbow shot to his head. That’s how I think of it, like a martial arts move, but I’m moving with my mind. He easily blocks it.
Then Lauren does something crazy. She runs at him. She physically runs at him. Catlin throws something between them with her mind, something thorny, which Anchise knocks away. Then he knocks Lauren away and turns to me. By then I’ve got the gun out of my jeans, the gun I found in Addyen’s house. Before Anchise can make his insincere apology, I shoot the son of a female dog in the head. I keep shooting, all head shots.
He falls.
I can hear his confusion. I can hear his disbelief. It’s like being killed by a pointed stick. It’s an outrage. How is it possible? I keep firing until there are no more bullets and the gun just makes an empty click when I pull the trigger. Catlin has to take the gun from me because I can’t stop firing it.
“I am not sorry,” I say to a very dead Anchise. “I am not sorry at all.”
I kneel down by Lauren. At first I don’t think she’s breathing, but then I put my finger to her neck and find a pulse. It’s soft and erratic, but it’s there.
“We need a doctor,” I say, but that’s a stupid thing to say. No more 911. No more doctors. Anyway, she isn’t physically hurt that I can see.
“Lauren,” I say.
Then I do the only thing I can do; I go into her mind. It’s like walking into fire. I try to back out, but I’m caught. It’s like the fire comes up all around me. I try to calm down. I can’t get out of the fire because it’s all around me. So I think of what can fight fire. I make water. I make rain. The fire doesn’t go out, but it weakens. It weakens enough that I can back out of her mind.
“Let me,” Catlin says then.
“It’s too hot,” I say.
“I might be able to get past it.”
Catlin lays her hands on Lauren’s head. She does something that puts out the flames. I try to follow, but the fire comes back up and I’m pushed back.
“You can’t help,” Catlin says. “Just wait. Call her name. That might help if I can bring her back part of the way.”
So I call Lauren’s name. I pace and call her name. I don’t know how much time passes. Not a lot. Catlin steps away. She staggers, and I catch her, hold her up, while she gets her footing.
Lauren coughs and groans, but she wakes. Her eyes open. She looks at me.
“I heard you,” she says to me.
“Unbelievable,” I say, because what I think I’ve seen, what it feels like I’ve seen, is a miracle
.
Catlin says. “Do you see me?”
She looks at her, nods. “My head feels like it’s about to split open.”
“She needs to stand,” Catlin says to me.
I help lift Lauren up. She puts her arm over my shoulder. She staggers like she’s drunk, like she can’t get her legs to work right. Slowly she walks a little better.
“We need to take his ship,” I say. “They’ll be coming for us. They’ll know.”
Lauren still can’t walk well so I help her to the ship.
I know, from the Reader, what to push to get the control to come out. The control is sort of like a DVD player; it slides out and that’s where the driver’s hand goes. That’s how they connect. My hand is too big. “Stupid little aliens,” I say.
Catlin frowns at me.
“I said aliens. Little aliens, not little people. Anyway,” I go on, “you’re going to have to drive.”
Her hand fits fine. I tell her that it’s interactive. Her mind controls it, but it also has to power it in certain ways. It’s like a computer, but not.
“That’s not really helpful.”
“Sorry,” I say.
I try to help her see what I’ve read. It’s like seeing in a different way. Sort of like one of those paintings that looks like one thing, but if you stare at it long enough, it can look like something completely different. We have to see it differently to understand how to power the ship with our minds and to use the power it has. She fails to get it off the ground several times before it rises.
“Okay,” she says. “Okay.”
I tell her to go a little higher. The ships fly best thirty to forty feet off the ground.
“Turn west,” I say.
She’s confused by west. I say left, but that doesn’t seem to help any. I point.
“I’m not good with directions,” Catlin says.
That’s an understatement, I think.
“I heard that,” she says.
Catlin flies the ship pretty well. It wobbles every now and then, and once we unexplainably drop twenty feet, but mostly she’s in control. We pass over the lake and see a whole line of transport ships off in the distance. As we get to the edge of town, we see a parking lot with thousands of little ships like ours parked in it.
We leave the city and we leave behind more dead. People just keep dying. When Anchise attacked the bus and almost killed me, for a brief second I felt something like relief. Finally, my turn. Finally, I wouldn’t have to watch any more people I care about die. But I survived again. It’s just so hard sometimes.
“It is hard,” Catlin says, breaking into my thoughts.
“He was my best friend,” I say.
“I’m sorry,” Lauren says.
We lapse into silence. There’s nothing more to say. We’re all sorry.
We fly over a highway, into the sun, and do our best to keep going west. It gets much more difficult to be sure about our direction when the sun goes down. It gets more difficult to see the road, too, though the ship has headlights. Catlin is exhausted and falls asleep for a few seconds before I shake her awake. We’re forced to land in a field. It’s a bumpy landing, but no one gets hurt.
I feel a little safer here in the country. It’s more familiar than the city, not so transformed by the aliens. There are stars in the sky, a familiar sky, and looking up, I can forget for a second what’s happened to our world.
I’m sure they know about Anchise by now. Can they track us? I worry that we’re too out in the open here. We passed a farmhouse a few miles back. I ask Catlin to fly us there. This turns out to be a bad idea. She gets the ship up just fine, but then we veer off course and into a line of trees. We crash right through the top of one. The ship’s front caves in a little from the collision and something breaks. Catlin can’t stop it then. We hit another tree and the front section of the ship is pushed to our knees. The shelf where Catlin has her hand retracts, and we have no control at all.
“Turn it off,” Lauren shouts.
We hit a third tree, and this time the top of the ship is torn off by branches. I shout, “Jump,” which turns out to be completely unnecessary since both girls have already jumped.
The ship rises then, as if it was only waiting for the opportunity to get rid of its incompetent and dangerous pilot and crew. It floats up over the trees and heads back in the direction we came from. Its engine is making a sound like someone banging on a pot, but the sound gets farther and farther off. Then it’s gone and all we hear is the silence.
We all agree that we should probably get some sleep, so we find a place under some trees.
The temperature has dropped since the sun went down, but we make beds out of leaves, and it’s not so bad. It’s not so good, either. We’re cold and hungry, but exhaustion overcomes both, and after a while we all fall asleep. My sleep is deep and dreamless. I’m grateful for that.
It’s funny how beautiful the sunrise is the next morning. The warmth on my face, the way the light falls across the field, all of it is so beautiful. In spite of everything, I’m grateful to be alive to see this, to feel something ninety-three million miles away warm my face.
Catlin and Lauren are still asleep. Catlin looks so young when she sleeps, like a kid. But we aren’t young anymore. That’s gone.
PERSONAL LOG:
I sent Handlers after the three who killed Anchise and took his ship. It is beyond belief that primitives could kill him, but they did.
My wife annoys me with requests that I would normally be pleased to grant. This wilderness is harder on her than I’d imagined. My daughters miss their friends and school. Thinking of my family makes me angry. My plans have been ruined by product. It is intolerable. If my daughters and wife were not here, I would have followed the product myself and killed them. I would have betrayed the One and killed them slowly and rudely.
I checked on the Handlers. None of them have training as trackers. They move slowly into the wilderness, finding and losing the runaway slaves’ trail.
I’m at my desk, where there is much work to be done, but I don’t do it. My father’s last message burns in my mind. I have tried to destroy it, but he is powerful and communication from him, even from a great distance, is difficult to destroy.
I see it again and it fills me with anger.
Your last report is full of self-pity. You displease me. You should have seen the danger sooner and you should have taken immediate action. What have I taught you if not to always act quickly and decisively when confronted by a threat? Never wait for the other to strike first. Never think of losses. You hesitated out of greed. Do not complain to me of my scouts. Do not try to blame the company. This is your colony. You are the First Citizen. Any excuses only make your failure more evident. Destroy the runaways now. Contact me when you have succeeded.
This is my colony. So be it. I will make this colony work, and I will prove him wrong. I will do whatever I have to do to succeed. I will show him strength.
By afternoon, that warm, pleasant morning sun has become our enemy. It scorches us like it’s scorched this brown, dusty earth. We turn various shades of red, Catlin the worst, a deep lobster color. Besides burning us and making us sweat, which allows dust to stick to every bare part of our skin, it dehydrates us. We’ve had no food or water since yesterday, and though the lack of food is uncomfortable, it’s the thirst that really hurts. My throat is dry as sand, my lips crack painfully, and I’m unable to make even the tiniest drop of spit. I’m feeling pretty sorry for myself.
In spite of all this, Lauren keeps asking Catlin how she cured her. Her mouth is too dry to make words, so she uses her mind.
How did you know, though? How could you? she asks.
As though she’s finally fed up, Catlin thinks, I’m a freak, all right? It’s lucky for you I am.
I’m grateful, Lauren thinks. I just don’t understand how you’d know, how you could learn that fast. It’s got to be like surgery or something.
Lauren stops walking, and we all
stop and stand uncertainly. It is a big, empty land, and it feels like we’ll never get out of it.
But I have to admit that Lauren’s questions aren’t totally unreasonable. How could Catlin learn to do what she did? I mean, we’ve all learned things, but nothing like what she did for Lauren, nothing on that level. I’ve known from the start she was different but — and then I realize what I should have realized earlier.
You were like this, weren’t you? I mean, before the invasion even. You were like we are now.
She looks surprised but tries to hide it with a shrug. Not like this. I’ve increased in strength, too.
Wait, Lauren thinks, you’re saying you had these abilities? Telepathic abilities?
Weak ones.
How weak?
I couldn’t talk to anyone with my mind yet. I could hear sometimes. I could do small things.
Lauren questions Catlin about what she could and couldn’t do. Now some of the things she was able to do before make sense.
My mom was a healer, she thinks. I have her gift. She taught me a few things, but my formal training wouldn’t have started until I graduated from high school.
You brought me into your dream, didn’t you? I think.
She shakes her head. I made the connection. I could sometimes see other people’s dreams. Yours were strong. But I could never do what you do. There are stories about dreamwalkers. Legends. No one I’ve known could dreamwalk.
So you’d seen your mother do what you did for me? Lauren thinks, still trying to work out an explanation for what happened.
Not like that. My power has increased by being around them, too. I’m not even sure my mother could have done what I did. Like I said, we were very lucky.
But your whole family, Lauren thinks. You all had these abilities?
Some of us.
“We’ve got to keep moving,” I say, though it doesn’t seem like we’ve gotten anywhere all morning or that there is anyplace to get to. And I sure don’t want to move again. But I take a step and another and another. The girls follow.
Lauren manages a few more questions, but after a while we’re all too hot, too burned, too sweaty, too thirsty, to do anything but mindlessly put one foot in front of the other.
