The Lying Planet

by Carol Riggs

  “I’ll see who I can round up,” she says, and we disconnect.

  With any luck, she’ll send some fighters to collect my weapons and take out the guards.

  I stash the guns under the lieutenant’s hedge a block before Leonard and I reach Farrow’s. At the commander’s unit, a UHV rests on the front pavement, docked crooked as though it arrived in haste. Two stocky guards stand at his front door. One of them raises a hand as we approach, while the other points a flamer at us.

  “Halt right there. Hand over all your weapons.”

  “We don’t have any,” I say with a grimace. Nuke it all. I hate that we’re helpless, but we don’t have a choice. When will Shelly or the other fighters get here? What are the chances I can get close enough to smother Farrow’s throat vents with my bare hands? Could I stall him or threaten his life somehow to make the guards free our siblings?

  The first guard pats us down in a weapons check, while the second guard turns, raps on the door, and opens it. “They’ve arrived, Master Farrow.”

  Commander Farrow steps into view as Leonard and I are prodded inside. His expression is brutal, the shadow from his hatchet nose harsh against his face. “So, the rebellious instigator arrives,” he says to me.

  “What do you want?” I force myself to meet his cutting gaze. “I can’t undo the uprising.”

  “No, you cannot.” He studies me with a malevolent glare and motions us into his office. The desk and furniture have either been replaced or cleaned since my manure rampage. We halt next to where Mom and Dad stand by a wall lud-heater. Three small figures are sleeping on a long couch across the room. Tammi’s curls fan out across the beige upholstery. Next to her, Rachel sleeps in drugged innocence. Leonard’s two-year-old brother lies in an even smaller bundle at the opposite end.

  My attention shifts to Dad. His expression is unyielding. Mom’s face is red and livid, as if she has yelled long and hard.

  Commander Farrow picks up a laser pistol from a round table and hefts it, as if feeling its weight. “Exactly how many humans know about our identity, Mr. Lawton?”

  I balk. I don’t want anyone else to get punished. My gaze darts back to Rachel and Tammi. A mounting pressure throbs in my head.

  “Anyone who’s awake knows the truth, sir.” I hate myself for adding the “sir.”

  “No one sleeping knows?”

  “We only told the kids who would be good fighters.” I say the lie without a wobble, and hide my shaking hands behind my back. If our invasion fails, I’m hoping there are kids left who knew but decided to sleep it out.

  “That’s unfortunate. We probably won’t be able to salvage many rebels for harvesting, even if we incarcerate them until they’re ripe.” He glowers afresh at me. “You’ve caused us a grave hardship for the next few years, but at least we’ll have our younger crops of children.”

  I wince. I’d like to tell him that most of his horde aren’t responding because they’re already dead, not sleeping, but I’m not 100 percent sure it’s true. I only hope it is. I’m trusting the unified smothering went well, and that somewhere out there, Peyton, Harrel, and my other friends are still fighting the guards and any adults awakened by Farrow’s emergency mind message.

  Commander Farrow aims his laser pistol at Leonard and me. “Let’s continue. While my guards squash this foolish uprising, I’ll see to your punishment. Don’t try to stop this demonstration, or I’ll shoot you.” He focuses his gaze on Dad. “Brother Lawton, you may perform the first act of retribution.”

  Leonard sucks in a sharp yelp. Staring at Dad, I struggle against a horror that wells up from my toes and closes my throat off. What is he going to do?

  “Before I kill you both,” the commander continues, “you will see how it feels to have part of your family destroyed, as your friends have destroyed some of my horde by shooting them or suffocating them in their sleep. Your father will begin with his youngest child.”

  I gulp. Part of my family destroyed? “Dad, no! You can’t—”

  Dad looks me squarely in the face and draws his laser pistol. He steps over to the couch. With a steady hand, he raises the weapon and points it at the soft rise and fall of Tammi’s chest.

  As the crisp hum of a laser blasts out, my heart rips into a million pieces.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  A yell of unimaginable torture rips from my lungs, and my legs buckle. White spots fog my vision. Beside me, Leonard retches. Dad’s hand, the one that holds his laser pistol, wavers over Tammi’s body. It trembles and releases. The gun thumps against her small arm and bounces onto the floor. Dad staggers against the couch, his eyes glazed.

  I blink through watery eyes.

  Wait a minute. Tammi is fine. She’s still breathing. Unhurt.

  It’s Dad who’s shot, a laser slice seared across his back and abdomen—

  Mom screeches and whips to face the doorway where the shot came from. Commander Farrow also pivots with his laser pistol, but another shot hits his leg before he can fire. The commander jerks, drops to his knees, and shoots at the unseen intruder. A chunk of the door frame sizzles.

  I dash over and try to wrestle the pistol from Farrow’s hand. He bellows, gouging my arm with a spiny appendage that emerges from his ribs. I kick his wounded thigh. He howls and drops his weapon. I grab it and back off, pointing it at him.

  Leonard runs over and snatches the pistol that Dad dropped, and we face the doorway. Peyton moves into view, her sweatshirt hood over her head. She grips a laser pistol in her hands.

  By the lud-heater, Mom snarls and rushes at Peyton. “You filthy little—”

  Leonard swivels toward Mom, his teeth clenched, and shoots. “You sick, disgusting aliens!” he yells as she totters and clutches her shoulder. He shoots again. “You ruined my life. You ruined my friends’ lives. You killed and ate my big sister! You’re not worthy to spit on.”

  Mom jerks as he fires two more times. I gag, nauseated each time the laser fire sears her. She collapses with a rustling thump onto the floor, turning into her alien form.

  “No, no,” Dad moans from where he sags against the couch.

  Near me, Commander Farrow draws a labored breath and flutters one human hand across the wound on his thigh. I see the faint outline of a vermal snout on his face, the shimmering of beady lobster eyes.

  Harrel enters the room, a flamer in one hand and a bottle of shampoo in the other. Without a word, he hands me the bottle.

  I meet the commander’s gaze and flick open the lid. His shrewd eyes rake over me. “Call off the rest of your guards,” I say. “Tell them the war is over, that they need to drop their weapons and gather at the transport stops where we can round them up.”

  “I don’t take orders from humans,” he says, his voice slushy through bared fangs.

  Not unexpected. And the guards will probably never surrender. I pour a thick green glob over his throat. Within seconds, his eyes roll back and he tumbles the rest of the way to the floor.

  I thump the bottle onto the table. Lightheaded, I place my hands on my knees, closing my eyes and sucking in air to gather energy for what I have to do next.

  Someone scuffs up beside me.

  “Jay,” comes Peyton’s voice. “Your dad—”

  I raise my head and straighten up. “I know.”

  “Do you want me to…?”

  “No.” I retrieve the bottle and step to the couch. My alien father didn’t hesitate a moment for what he planned to do to Tammi, and once I’ve gotten what I need from him, I won’t hesitate, either. I look down into his flickering human face while I vaguely register that the deep scratches Farrow made on my arm are throbbing.

  “Can you send a message to tell the guards and the rest of your horde that your master is dead?” I ask.

  “I can and will.” Dad’s voice wavers. A heavy pause follows, then a faint, “The message is sent.”

  “Thanks. Does your kind live anywhere else on Liberty?”

  “No. We were what was left after our
ships were shot down. That’s when we created the safe zones.” He looks up into my face, his faltering camouflage making his eyes smaller and overlaid with darkness. “I have to know, Jay. Did you kill Redmond?”

  I swallow. “I had to. He attacked Peyton.”

  “Ah.” He groans as a spasm hits him. “You’re a fine protector.”

  “You took good care of me, too.”

  “I tried my best. Good-bye, son. Do what you have to do. I’m ready to enter the dimension of death.”

  “Good-bye…Dad.”

  I aim the bottle and squeeze. The shampoo lands on his neck, scented like citrus and harmless-looking, but it does its work in seconds. He slumps and doesn’t move again. I snap the lid closed and look at the sleeping faces of Rachel, Tammi, and Leonard’s brother. The bottle slips from my hand onto the couch. I sense Dad growing fanged, snouted, and crustacean below me, but I turn away and don’t glance down. Peyton pushes back her sweatshirt hood, her eyes glistening.

  I walk over on shaky legs and enclose her in a sweaty hug. Her hair smells like smoke and sulfur. A purple bruise is forming on her cheekbone. Her body feels reassuringly solid against me. “Thanks for coming to help out,” I say. “Ditto to you, Harrel.”

  “We have to keep going,” Harrel says beside us, fatigue saturating his words. “There are some aliens left. It’s good we have two of these fire weapons now, yours from under the hedge and one from the guards we killed outside.”

  “Yeah, we’ll need as many of those flamers as we can find.” I let Peyton slip from my arms. “Although I’m not sure they owned a lot. I think mostly the scavenger team used them.”

  Leonard stands with one hand on the mantle, head down and shaking hard. Tears stream down his face. I step over and throw my uninjured arm around his convulsing shoulders.

  “You did it, dude,” I say. “You helped save my sisters and your brother.”

  “Yeah.” After a few moments, he straightens and wipes his nose on the shoulder of my sweatshirt. He trembles. “Sorry about your mom.”

  “She wasn’t really my mom.” I clap him on the back and force myself to keep planning. Move forward. Don’t let yourself feel. This war isn’t finished yet. “Let’s take our siblings to a different unit, away from Farrow and these other alien bodies. Will you stay somewhere with the kids, Leonard?”

  “Sure,” he says with a sniffle.

  Harrel collects the weapons. Peyton grabs tape and a bandage for my arm, which is bleeding through the ripped holes of my sweatshirt. We use the UHV docked outside Farrow’s dwelling to transfer the kids one street over to Sean’s unit, and shut the door to the bedroom, where his smothered alien-parents lie. Sean’s siblings are fast asleep in another bedroom. I have no idea where Sean is.

  Somewhere safe, I hope.

  After Peyton hurriedly wraps my arm, we leave Sean’s unit. I frown as I notice she’s limping. It’s still dark out, the plushgrass wet from the ground-swells that began at 1:00. Harrel drives a little wobbly as he learns to steer the UHV, the front lights cutting a glaring path through the streets.

  “Rot it all,” he mumbles. “I wish I knew where Misty was.”

  I don’t have time to answer. Peyton jabs a finger at a pair of incoming guards on the permawalk. She buzzes her window down and shoots her flamer into the street, downing one of them. I take out the other one. We continue to patrol, flaming and shooting.

  After what seems like an endless time of fiery combat, the streets are clear except for drifting and running humans. Alien blood is smeared across many stretches of pavement. A vehicle hovers up next to us, a glossy maroon UHV that Blake is driving. His father’s vehicle.

  “A bunch of us managed to kill the guards at the gate,” he says, his gaze hard, a long gash angled across his forehead. “With one casualty of ours, Xavier… After that, Shelly, Konrad, and two other guys took a UHV along the outside perimeter. I’m heading to Aubrie’s to make sure she’s okay. She was freaking out about being left with her parents’ bodies after Konrad smothered them.”

  “All right,” Peyton says. As Blake drives off, she exchanges a sober look with me. “That’s rough about Xavier. He and Blake were good friends, and he was a cool guy.” She draws in a huge breath and pats her sweatshirt pocket, where a bottle of shampoo is stashed. “Well, next we should do a final sweep of the streets and smother the tranquilized aliens to finish them off.”

  “That’s smart.” I honestly don’t know how she’s still sane and thinking straight. But it’s a good idea. We don’t want any of the beasts to wake up and escape the zone.

  Harrel docks the UHV. “If we can drive the garbage hovertruck, we can haul the alien bodies to the incinerator complex. I think my mom said it’s a few miles west of here.”

  Nodding, I glance around us. Carcasses of aliens litter the lawns and permawalks. Fences are charred, and sweetbushes have been flamed to smoking stubble. A few blackened human bodies also lie motionless. My gaze skids away.

  My friends and classmates have died tonight in this war. As much as I knew that would be hard to avoid, the stark reality of it burns a hole in my heart.

  “Let’s get started,” Peyton says, sounding as exhausted as I feel. “The younger kids will be waking up at seven o’clock.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The number of alien bodies we gather from the streets is staggering. Other older kids also help carry them out of the units. Now three hours into our cleanup, we count the crusty, gruesome shells as we load them onto the garbage hovertruck’s platform, keeping an exact tally to verify we’ve gotten them all. Harrel triggers the platform to dump the beasts inside.

  “It’s full,” he says. “Time to make the run again. Let me know if you see Misty.” When I murmur a response, he climbs into the truck, activates it into a whirring hover, and drives away.

  Still no sign of Misty. I really hope nothing bad has happened to her. But the odds aren’t in her favor.

  Next to me, Peyton wipes her forehead with a shaky arm. “We’re up to seven hundred and sixty-three aliens out of the eight hundred and fourteen that survived the War. That’s counting Mr. Redmond and the unburned ones we’re lining up in yards for proof the aliens really existed.”

  I nod. We won’t let really young kids see the beasts, but everyone above the age of six will be able to view the bodies. I’m not crazy about Rachel and Tammi seeing a sight like that, but it’s about truth and what’s best in the long run, not what I want. As Peyton pointed out, kids that age have already seen Blake and Shelly branded and banished. They’ve seen Mick’s burned body at the primary compound.

  Sean trudges up, thankfully alive. He’s dragging an alien body. “At least these creatures don’t look human. I couldn’t take it if they had the faces of my parents and trainers and neighbors.”

  That’s for sure. I mirror his grim expression, then glance at the sky, which is lightening in a predawn glow. “Is that all on this street?”

  “Just a couple more. We’ve also been putting our friends who didn’t make it in Blake’s and Harrel’s units. On tarps, under sheets. In case, ya know…their brothers and sisters want to say good-bye.”

  A response won’t come out of my mouth. Peyton reaches for my hand and holds it. Her grip is snug. Secure. We walk to the next street over, with Sean and about two dozen others behind us. Peyton is still limping, not putting full weight on her right foot.

  As we begin collecting and sorting bodies on my street, my wristcomm lights up.

  “Jay, it’s Daniel.” His voice sounds thin and weary. “What’s the status in Sanctuary?”

  “Commander Farrow and the lieutenants are dead. It looks like the entire horde is. We’re counting bodies and hauling them to the incinerator complex.”

  “Same for Refuge and Fort Hope. Looks like we’ve won the war. But there are a lot of human deaths, and the conception lab in Fort Hope was destroyed. Farrow’s wife did it.”

  I gulp and blink a few times. Hundreds of tiny, helpless embryo
s, lost.

  “How?” I ask with an effort.

  “She set the place on fire with a flamer, screaming about revenge and how humans were ‘hideous murderers.’ Vic blasted her arm with a laser, and she ran into the building. She burned up with the fire she started.”

  “Just as well for her, I guess.”

  Ugly. It’s all so ugly. Too much hatred, too much murderous violence. Somewhere out there beyond the twelve galaxies, I’m sure peaceful aliens exist, ones who would welcome cooperation between our species and work together to build colonies on different planets.

  But Farrow and his horde weren’t those kinds of aliens.

  Daniel sighs so loudly I hear him on the wristcomm. “I’ll stay in the zones for a while, in between driving to New Paradise to check on the garden, dogs, and other animals. I can help deal with the human casualties and settle the kids into a new pattern.” He pauses. “Jeff didn’t make it. A perimeter guard got him…bad chest wound. Died almost right away.”

  “Oh, man. I’m sorry.” My words are pathetic. I don’t know how many years Jeff lived at Daniel’s dwelling, but even with Daniel’s gruff exterior it wasn’t hard to see they were friends. They worked together, grew and ate food together. If it weren’t for this battle, Jeff would be alive.

  We disconnect on that miserable note.

  I return to hauling alien bodies from the units. At some point soon, we need to go home to be there when our younger siblings wake up. I glance at Sean, who’s helping a guy carry a deceased girl into my unit. Some children won’t have anyone to check on them. Other children will awaken in unfamiliar places, like my sisters at Sean’s unit.

  Rachel. Tammi. I almost lost them tonight.

  The thought dissolves my knee joints in an instant.

  I drop to the damp plushgrass. A gurgling sob wracks my body. I press my hands over my face and curl over the grass, the fresh smell of it a welcome break from the odors of alien blood, flamer sulfur, and the charred human flesh that reeks a million times worse than a branding. There’s no stopping the tears streaking down my face. I want to be strong, but it seems my adrenaline and endurance have run out.