by Sean Platt
“Is that Mom?” said Trevor. “Is anything wrong?”
Meyer waved him away, then turned forward, now trying to speak quietly, to listen without being overheard. What he wouldn’t give for an office door to close.
On the other end of the phone, Heather sounded like she was crying. Not helpless crying — terror crying. Closer to hyperventilation than a quiet sob.
“Where are you? Specifically? Tell me what happened.”
Heather spoke again, her voice still hitching but more contained. For once, she sounded both composed and serious. A good sign. No panic and no jokes — so far, so good.
“Just outside Vegas. I don’t know the road. It’s all desert.”
“Vegas.” Meyer took the phone from his ear and squinted at Piper, asking a silent question. They’d heard something about Vegas. Something that, as he thought about it now, tickled the back of his brain with bad news. What was wrong in Vegas? Something …
“It’s burning to the ground. There are squads of people walking around — not running, but walking, like they’re on patrol — and just general fuckery from one end to the other.”
Piper was pointing at her tablet’s screen, showing Meyer the news update he’d seen earlier, about Vegas.
“You should have gone around it.”
“I went around it. And …” There was a crashing sound. Heather shrieked, then fumbled the phone. Meyer waited, hearing ambient noise, wondering what might have happened. The line was still open, but what had happened to Heather? A minute later, she was back.
“What do I do, Meyer?”
“You haven’t told me what’s wrong.”
“Because you interrupted to yell at me for getting too close and not following instructions.”
“Okay, fine.”
“But these … these three Big Daddy Roth cartoons came out of nowhere, all supercharged hotrods with engines poking out of the top and shit, bunch of toothless motherfuckers hanging out all over the place, hooting at me like they wanted to drag race, beat me to death, and peel off my skin, whatever.”
“What, they came after you? From Vegas?”
“Two behind me at first, coming up on the side, waving and hooting and yelling. Then one more pulled up in front and …”
“Why didn’t you stay out in the desert? You got too close to the city.”
“Let’s talk some about what I should have done! Let’s rehash all the shit I did wrong during our marriage! You’re always right! You always know best!”
“Calm down.”
Another bang. Another small gasp from Heather.
“They’re herding me back.”
“What does that mean?”
“They’re herding me like a fucking cow, Meyer! That’s what it means!”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Toward the Strip?”
“Can you outrun them?”
“I’m in a Prius. They’re burning premium and testosterone.”
Meyer wondered why in the hell anyone driving around Vegas in hotrods would want Heather’s crappy little hybrid, but he refrained from asking. They want the driver, not the car.
“Are you at least behind the wheel?”
“No. I left it on autodrive. The car keeps beeping courteously at them, asking if they wouldn’t mind staying in their lane. And asking me if I’d like to stop at the Arby’s up ahead. And that’s really the worst part of all of this, Meyer. Why does it think I would ever, in a million years, no matter how many alien ships show up …”
Meyer felt a strong need to cut Heather off before she finished the sentence.
“You’ll have to …”
“ … ever want to eat at Arby’s?”
“ … to lose them,” Meyer finished.
“Have you ever eaten at Arby’s? Like, ever in your life?”
“Stop joking for a goddamned second, will you?”
Meyer’s pulse had quickened. He was sweating around his collar. He wanted to wipe his forehead, but that would mean declaring defeat to the universe. Heather was a dozen states away, and this was the only call they’d managed in a day. If she was going to be overtaken, he’d only be able to hear it happen. It was rare that Meyer met a situation he cared about but couldn’t control. This was one.
“How am I supposed to lose them?” Not really a question, more a yammering of desperation.
“Where is she, Dad?”
Meyer shook his head at Lila as he’d shaken off Trevor.
“Is she okay?”
“Heather? You’re not holding the phone, are you?”
“Dad! Is Mom okay?”
“Yes. I’m also writing an essay and flipping through my dad’s old filing cabinet.”
“Heather …”
“Dad!”
Meyer spun. “I hear you, Lila! Will you just hold on a goddamned second?”
Lila shrunk back, wounded. Trevor’s eyes were wide, shocked, scared. Meyer felt his gut plummet. He was losing control. He was supposed to be the rock, but the boulder was crushing them all.
“Of course I’m not holding the phone. I have the earbud.”
“You’re in the Prius?” He winced, determinedly avoiding Lila’s penetrating gaze from behind, waiting for Heather to make another stupid joke. She’d already told him that she was in the PriusX. She was being surrounded by highwaymen in a high-speed chase, and still she’d take any comedic opening he gave her.
Instead she said, “Yes.”
“There’s a gun in the glove compartment.”
“There’s … no, there’s not.”
“Just get it, Heather. Put the car on auto, and get it.”
Sounds. A clicking noise.
“Why is there a gun in my glove compartment?”
“Because I put it there.”
“You know I don’t like guns.” It was one of Heather’s things. Meyer didn’t particularly like guns either, and they’d had talks, after some recent school shooting or other, about gun control and waiting periods and the other things that made the NRA so furious. But liberal convictions didn’t come in handy when the world was burning.
“You’re going to like it plenty right now. Do you see it?”
“Jesus, Meyer.” But then, with perfect timing, one of the other cars must have struck her, and there was another gasp. Then she said, “Okay, I’ve got it. Where are the bullets?”
“In the gun.”
“You left a loaded weapon? Right there in my glove compartment?”
The lecturing, naughty-naughty tone of her voice unhinged something. Meyer snapped, “It doesn’t do a hell of a lot of good without bullets!”
Piper leaned forward, her head cocking like a dog’s. Piper was even more liberal than Heather, tending toward “peace-loving hippie.” But there were guns in the van, too, and she’d need to make her peace with them soon enough. It was them or the people trying to attack them. The sooner everyone woke up and smelled the goddamned coffee, the better. The days of peace and love were over for a while — at least until the ships arrived, declared any intentions they may have, and humanity had a chance to get used to it. Or die in fire.
“How do I use it? Just pull the trigger?”
“There are bullets in the clip but nothing in the chamber …”
“What does that mean?”
“If you’d shut up for a second and let me explain, I’d tell you!”
“Okay, okay.” There was an odd reversal in the air. Heather was the one with men on her tail, and Heather was the one who’d called in a panic. Meyer was safe, and yet he was the one coming slowly undone. The lack of control was getting under his skin.
He breathed. Tried to reset.
“Hold it by the grip with your left hand, finger away from the trigger. Then grab the slide — the part on the top — with your other hand and pull it back until it clicks, then let it slide forward. Just like in the movies.”
There was a loud racking sound on her end of the line.
“Okay.”
“There’s a little switch on the side. Above the grip.”
“Looks like a little toilet flush lever.”
“Yes. Keep your finger off the trigger and flip it.”
“Now I see a red dot.”
“That means the safety is off.”
“And now I blow into the end where the bullet comes from, right, like this?”
“Stop it, Heather.”
“I’m kidding. Lighten up.”
The idea that she was telling him to lighten up, now, was too absurd for a reply.
“Now what?” she said.
“Point it at whatever you want to go away. Then pull the trigger.”
“I can’t just … what’s that beeping?”
Meyer heard it too. He looked around, then found the source. It was coming from his phone, blinking with a message that said, LOW BATTERY.
He grabbed for his phone, then scrambled for the cord. But the phone had been giving him problems for months now, and he didn’t want to send it in to have the battery switched because he needed it. On cold days, it barely worked. More than once on his morning runs as the air had grown chill, he’d slipped the thing inside his shirt to warm the battery enough to keep it alive.
“Meyer?” came Heather’s voice, tinny with distance. He could hear her from far away as the speaker left his ear, as he tried to mesh plug with port. “Meyer, they’re shoving me off the road. They’re making me pull over!”
“Hang on!”
“Meyer, are you there? There’s one in front, and I can’t get around him, and he’s slowing down and—”
“Don’t let them pull you over! Don’t let—”
The phone’s screen went black as Meyer was still fumbling with the cord and port.
The call was broken, and Heather was gone.
CHAPTER 13
Day Two, Evening
Bowling Green, Ohio
It was late.
The roads were quiet, almost deserted. It reminded Piper of her youth, of open skies away from the bright lights of the big city. They’d skirted Toledo to the south and remained on two-lane country roads. The only real signs of activity they’d seen, save the scant illumination inside the living rooms of single houses, was a parking lot’s worth of lights on an artery called I-75. There were a few twinkles coming from the south that seemed to be a berg Piper had never heard of called Bowling Green. But otherwise they could have been anywhere.
Piper was still in the left front seat, and Meyer was still in the right. If there was a need to take over manual driving, Meyer would have done it, but so far there hadn’t been, and they’d stayed put. Little beyond polite, almost hushed requests had been traded between the van’s occupants since Meyer’s phone had dropped Heather’s call. The ensuing silence seemed to be an unspoken moratorium, or a period of respect, like a moment of silence to honor the dead.
Piper tried to make Meyer feel better. She told him that Heather had a gun. She had it cocked, armed, and ready. Meyer had done that much. Thank God that call had gone through. It was almost too good to be true, as if someone above had made it happen. They hadn’t kept the line open, but Meyer had told Heather what she needed to know. There wasn’t more he could have done, anyway. If the call hadn’t dropped when the phone died, it would have merely offered an auditory window into whatever happened next. It wouldn’t change a thing. Meyer couldn’t help any more than he already had.
And there was an unspoken corollary that Piper didn’t want to say aloud, though she hoped Meyer was aware enough to understand: Yes, they might have heard Heather’s victory over her pursuers. They might have heard her vanquish the bad guys and get away. But there was also a fair chance that they’d have heard her beaten, robbed, raped. Hearing that would do nobody any good, particularly her children. If bad things were destined to happen to Heather (and Piper did believe in destiny, whether she admitted it to Meyer or not), then it was best for those things to happen where no one could hear them. It sounded terrible, but it was true: if today was Heather’s day to die, it was best that she die alone.
Meyer wouldn’t speak. He wouldn’t answer her well-meaning consolations. He stared out at the dark road, into the cone of the headlights, his square jaw set, his green eyes hard and forward. A tiny part of Piper was jealous of that stare: of her husband holding vigil for another woman. But that was selfish thinking, and the larger part of Piper knew better. Of course Meyer still loved Heather, in a way. They’d been together for long enough to have two children. They were still great friends. And although it hurt Piper deeply to think about it, she strongly suspected they weren’t as separate, romantically speaking, as they strictly should be. Meyer took a lot of business trips to LA, and he always came back with news of Heather for Trevor and Lila. She’d called his hotel once when he’d been on a trip, guiltily, knowing she should give him his privacy. The clerk had confirmed Meyer Dempsey’s reservation and rung her through to the room, but Meyer never answered despite her night of trying. She was sure he stayed with Heather. Or maybe that had been petty jealousy talking and she should grow up. Be better than this.
She looked over at him now, unsure whether she should take his hand, lean on his arm, or otherwise try and tell him that none of this was his fault. He hadn’t kept the phone plugged in, no. But he’d shepherded them out of New York. He’d urged Heather out of Los Angeles. He’d even inadvertently managed to save Raj — and Piper was indeed beginning to suspect that was a “save” situation. She’d tried to keep the van radio off out of concern for frightening the kids, but she’d been surfing news on her tablet compulsively, and felt sure that Raj was in a better place now than he’d otherwise be. They all were.
Las Vegas was burning, from one end of the Strip to the other.
New York had decayed into riots. According to reports, about half of Manhattan’s power grid had failed. That fueled the riots further.
The major cities had all reported looting, especially once night fell. There were a lot of people in those cities, and many had nothing more than a small home or apartment and barely enough food to get by. If the power failed and stayed off, it was only a matter of time before the water stopped flowing or became unsafe. Everyone wanted food; everyone wanted water; everyone wanted fuel. Those were the commodities people needed when the bedrock underfoot became uncertain, as it was now. Some hoarded what they could. Others fought to take it away, to make sure that if only a few could survive as new supplies stopped circulating, they’d be among them.
Haves versus have-nots, reduced to the level of eating or starving.
And yet here they were, in their luxury van, touring the country in style. Despite seeing little to fear out here in America’s hinterlands, Piper couldn’t help but feel they were wearing an enormous target on their backs. Tomorrow would mark forty-eight hours since Astral had first seen the ships approaching. The resolution of the images the telescope continued to show (the government couldn’t stop them if it wanted; that particular cat was quite far out of the bag) only made the arriving objects seem that much more ominous. They were visible on some of the light telescopes now as recognizable objects, no longer relegated to blurry radio images. But even small and distant, the ships (if that’s what they were) were horrifyingly neutral. They weren’t all edges and turrets and flashing lights. They appeared to be perfectly round, perfectly smooth spheres — gray, if the colors on the distant images could be trusted.
Tomorrow, if estimates held, there would be just three days left. People would wake (if they managed to sleep) with the feeling of wasted hours. They’d panic a bit because of the time that had passed, the miles covered by the approaching armada in their sleep. And soon, they might start to notice the big flashy van. They might start to hoard fuel from more and more gas stations, siphoning from the tanks of even the remote, fully automated stations they were lucky enough to keep finding.
It wasn’t a matter of if, but when. They’d run out of gas sometime, finding themselves unable to fuel withou
t an audience. Maybe once or twice, they could manage to get their gas and go. But as more time passed, those crowds would consider what the clean, fed, well-dressed family in the rich-man’s van had that they didn’t. Then there would be problems.
Meyer seemed to be thinking the same, and in the past half day he’d taken to buying a few extra five-gallon jugs of gasoline whenever they stopped at a station that stocked them. Those extra cans were in a storage compartment in the back, but even that made Piper nervous. What if they were rear-ended? Didn’t all that gas make them like a bomb on wheels? And even if they did have the gas, how would they use it if the streets filled up? You couldn’t fill a tank from inside. You had to get out, so they’d need to find isolated spots to do it. What if they simply drove through an area too congested to pass? Then the fuel wouldn’t matter; crowds could surround them and take the van, fighting among themselves for its spoils. And come to think of it, how did you gas up from a can? Did they have a funnel?
She shook the thoughts away. Those were worries for another time. Or maybe for never. If they stuck to small roads, maybe they could drive all the way to Vail without incident. Maybe they could avoid the crowds entirely. She tried to do the gas calculation in her head, wondering how many extra jugs of fuel they’d need before they stopped needing gas stations at all. But the wheels’ song on the road made her tired, and the night’s pall was heavy. She could figure it out later, or let it go and trust Meyer. He’d been right so far.
“I’d like to drive,” he said. She realized that he’d been watching her for a while.
Piper looked at the console. The car was driving just fine by itself.
“I need something to do.” Then, heartbreakingly, he added, “Please.”
Piper stood without speaking, feeling something come undone, and switched places with him. Meyer was polite, but never begged. Piper wouldn’t have refused him the driver’s seat under any conditions, but even at the most extreme moments — in far bigger negotiations over things that actually mattered — Meyer didn’t plead. If he couldn’t have what he wanted, he let it go.
