One of the MPs at the front of the bus turned and banged on the cage. “Shut the fuck up back there!”
Coyle cackled mirthfully at his own joke.
McKenna picked up a protein bar, which they’d given him as a meal. He turned to Nebraska Williams.
“Dinner and a show. Great.” He nodded at Baxley, who had turned away from Coyle, slumped back down in his seat. “He just sits there?”
“Oh,” Nebraska replied, “he’ll kill him one of these days.”
“What’s stopping him?”
“He likes the jokes.” Nebraska nodded toward the bald lunatic. “Coyle’s here ’cos of a friendly fire incident. He got turned around, fired on one of his own vehicles. There were fatalities.” He shrugged. “Now he tells jokes. Go figure.”
McKenna nodded in the direction of the magician, who was still shuffling his cards, one-handed. “What about him? Lynch?”
“Ordnance man. They gave him a medal for blowing up half a mountain in Mosul.”
“Why’s he here?” McKenna asked.
“Blew up the other half, too.”
Lynch overheard. His cards stopped shuffling and he glanced up at McKenna. “Entropy, boyo. That’s my game. The universe favors chaos. How long’s it take to put together a skyscraper? Five years. To knock it down? Five seconds. Things like to fall apart.”
“And you hasten the process,” McKenna said.
“I make it happen.” Lynch held up a card, flicked it, and it vanished. “Poof, just like that. I work for Entropy. I’m aligned with the universe.”
“Yeah, well, ask the universe to get us some coffee.” McKenna settled back against the bus bench, his gaze landing on the guy in the back with the neck tattoo and the long hair.
“Him?” he asked.
“Nettles,” Nebraska reminded him. “Three tours piloting Hueys. Now he gets jumpy when he’s not in the air.” He glanced toward the back of the bus. “Hey, Nettles. Is it the end times yet?”
Nettles glared at him, shifting slightly. The crucifix dangling from his neck glinted in the strobing of the streetlights they rumbled past.
McKenna kept his expression neutral. These men were broken. Crazy or not, they were certainly dangerous. They had a sense of brotherhood, and the sarcasm flowed freely, but violence simmered among them as well. All of them were used to combat, having someone to fight. McKenna had a bad feeling that if they went too long without an enemy, they might cast aside brotherhood and decide fighting each other was better than no fight at all.
Nebraska turned to him. “Everyone’s got a story. What’s yours?”
McKenna almost smiled, but thought better of it. What was he supposed to say? “You wouldn’t believe me,” he muttered.
“This is the batshit bus. Try me.”
McKenna shrugged, scrutinized Nebraska’s face as though trying to gauge what his reaction would be from his neutral, patient expression. Finally, he said, “I had a run-in with a space alien. They want to put a lid on it, so… here I am.”
They’d assume he was crazy, of course. Why else would he be among them? But Nebraska just shook his head and glanced out the window, making a disgruntled tsking noise.
“Goddamn space aliens,” he said.
McKenna stared at him. It hadn’t occurred to him that the loonies might be crazy enough to believe him.
* * *
Casey stood over the Predator, studying its skin. Its pores. The slope of its massive forehead. With gloved fingers, she touched the thick protuberances that gave it the illusion of hair, wondering what the hell they were for. Could they be mere decoration? The scientist in her didn’t think so. The alien still lived, but seemed to be dormant, and she wondered if they kept it deeply sedated or if it had entered a hibernative state. The scientists at Project: Stargazer were far from above drugging a creature they certainly considered hostile—they’d named it “the Predator” not “the good neighbor”—and she couldn’t say that she blamed them. But her thoughts were awhirl with questions that would only be answered by interacting with the Predator.
As she moved around the table, she smirked at her own arrogance. Interacting with it? She had seen its weaponry and armor, she’d seen its mandibles and the sharp teeth behind them. The creature’s race apparently used the Earth—if Traeger and Church were to be believed—as their own big game preserve, and Casey had an idea what the game was. Did she really want to be face-to-face with one of these things while it was awake and aware of her presence?
Yeah. Hell, yeah, she did.
Where did they come from? What were their starships like? How had they first discovered Earth? The Predators were a spacefaring race, interstellar travelers, which meant that despite their obviously violent, apparently savage culture, they were also a people with advanced science and technology far greater than humanity had managed to create. It felt like a dream to her, so surreal that in the too-warm environment of her hazmat suit and the sterile whiteness of the lab, she grew a bit faint and had to shake it off.
It’s real, she reminded herself. Wake up, Dr. Brackett. This is not a drill.
Casey smiled as she crouched for a closer look at the Predator’s hands and the powerful fingers tipped with sharp claws. Awake, it could rip her heart out of her chest, she had no doubt of that. But what might it tell her, if she could convince it not to kill her?
She turned to Traeger. “That file they showed me. Do you have it?”
From behind him, Agent Church produced the file and handed it over. Casey took it and began to flip through reports and photographs. She came across a telephoto shot of the Predator—or a Predator, anyway— in a familiar cityscape.
“This one,” she said. “Los Angeles, 2005.”
She frowned and went back to the previous photo, which showed a tall man with white-blond hair and a strangely familiar, toothy grin. Quickly, she glanced up at Dr. Keyes, who gave her a sheepish look.
“Your father,” she said. “Sorry. Shoulda seen it. The, uh…”
Resemblance, she wanted to say. But this was more than a resemblance. The man in the photo had to be Keyes’ father. His son was a dead ringer.
“Anyway, in this photo,” she said, flipping back to the shot in LA. The helmet it wore seemed different from the war mask in the display case she’d seen earlier. “It’s wearing some kind of… atmosphere mask. A bio-helmet.” Casey pointed at the tech mounted on the alien’s wrists, wondering if they were also weaponry. “And what are these, wrist gauntlets?”
She glanced back at the dormant Predator and then at a nearby steel table, where its equipment had been laid out like a buffet of extraterrestrial bizarreness. There were other weapons and bits of armor, but not…
“Where are they? The mask and the other gauntlet?”
Traeger shot Keyes an uneasy glance. “We looked, believe me.”
Casey flipped back to another, more recent photograph—one that had been on top of the file. The man in the photo had a grown-out buzzcut, but everything about him said military.
“Is this the man who made first contact?”
Traeger shot Church a warning look, but Church either didn’t notice or ignored it.
“That’s right,” he said.
“I’d like to talk to him.”
Traeger shifted, stood a bit straighter. Those handsome features hardened. “He’s… being evaluated.”
Casey scowled. “I see. Well, if you’re going to lobotomize him, can I ask him some questions first?”
* * *
A squawk from one of the radios up front drew McKenna’s attention. He saw one of the MPs reach to his belt and grab his radio, answering the call.
“Go ahead,” the MP said, and as he listened to whatever orders were being given to him, his gaze drifted to McKenna. His eyes narrowed slightly. “Read you five-by-five. Out.”
Gears ground as the bus began to slow. McKenna stared at the MP, saw the way the man’s gaze shifted away from him. Whatever command he’d just received, it didn�
�t bode well. But then McKenna had never thought this was all going to end in a cheerful sing-along with his new friends. Maybe all six of them, there in the back of the bus, had been marked for “accidental” death, a way to clean up half a dozen messes the military didn’t want to deal with.
Regrets started to rise in the back of his mind, things he wished he’d done if his end had been accelerated. He pushed those thoughts out of his head. Regrets were for quitters, and McKenna was still breathing. For the moment, anyway.
One thing lingered, though. His son’s birthday had come and gone a few months back and McKenna had never gotten him a gift. He’d kept meaning to. The trouble was, he never knew what to get Rory, didn’t know what his son liked. McKenna recognized that last part was the problem, but didn’t know what to do about it.
Next year, he thought, glancing again at the MP and wondering about the orders the man had just received. Yeah, next year.
9
Rory heard his mom’s Subaru Outback pull into the driveway. Through the open window of his bedroom, he listened as the engine shut off, and then the cicadas filled the night with their usual hum. He liked the cicadas. Their music reminded him of static on the radio, a comfortable fuzz that kept things from getting too quiet.
Downstairs, the front door opened. Mom would no doubt have shopping bags. He ought to go and help her, but he’d been thinking and felt no sense of urgency. She didn’t really need him down there.
“Rory!” she called from below. “I’m home! I got you something.”
Blinking, he shook himself from his reverie and left his room.
“Rory?” she called into the quiet house, as he padded down the steps.
His mother smiled when he entered the kitchen. She gave him a kiss on the cheek as she started to unpack her shopping bags. Rory loved his mother. She could grow distracted, nearly as much as Rory himself, but his dad had always said that was an “artist thing.” His mother painted beautifully, her work hung in galleries, but she hadn’t become famous yet. People weren’t exactly clamoring for Emily McKenna paintings, but Rory knew she had sold plenty of them, and that made her a professional artist. It seemed very clear to him that this was an important thing, and he often wondered why his mother didn’t give herself more credit for her accomplishments.
He smiled at her, but his mom had already become distracted by the stack of language books he had left on the counter. French, German, Swedish, even Russian.
“You did one of these after school?” she asked.
“I did all of them after school.”
Her smile was so familiar that even Rory, who struggled with non-verbal communication, could read the meaning behind it: Why am I even surprised? He watched as she reached inside a big plastic bag from Target.
“So, look, I got you two options,” she began, as she drew out a pair of boxed Halloween costumes. “Pirate? Or Frankenstein?”
His mother held up both costumes, proffering them as if each was a remarkable treasure. Rory studied her face, mostly ignoring the costumes. It occurred to him that he ought to explain to her that Frankenstein had been the doctor rather than the monster, but he had been learning strategies of social interaction and knew that sometimes people did not like to be corrected. It was difficult for him to resist the urge, but that was why he fought hard to stay silent on the matter. The hard things were the ones most worth doing.
“Frankenstein,” she prompted, mistaking his silence for incomprehension. “You know, green skin? Met the Wolfman?”
Rory took a breath. The doctor, not the monster. The words were on the tip of his tongue, but he kept his expression blank. Michael Rosenn, his therapist, would be proud when Rory told him later on. For now, though, his mother gave an exasperated sigh and held up the other box, acting as if it had been the prize she intended to give him all along.
“Let’s go with pirate!”
Rory took the boxed pirate costume and reached inside, pulling out the mask. “This is dumb,” he said, no punches pulled. “Dad’s always telling me to grow up. Be a big boy.”
Still, no matter what his father said, he knew the idea of trick-or-treating ought to appeal to him. His classmates seemed thrilled at the prospect. Reluctantly, he donned the mask. He breathed evenly, but it sounded very loud with the plastic covering his face, and he didn’t like peering through the eyeholes. He turned his head to experiment, wondering how much it would restrict his vision, and he noticed the water spot on the wall—the one he had tried not to notice ever since he had heard his parents fighting in the kitchen, heard his mother remind his dad that he’d once driven his fist through that wall and the spot was not water at all, but the place where it had been plastered over and the paint didn’t match.
His dad had a temper.
Rory took off the mask and set it on the counter. “It’s too small. The guys’ll… you know, still be able to tell.”
Emily frowned. “Tell what?”
“That’s it’s me,” he replied. He caught sight of the sad look on her face, the sudden wetness in her eyes, as he turned to leave the room, but he didn’t understand the source of her sadness. He was only being practical, after all.
“I love you, peanut,” she said, her voice breaking a little.
“Jag alskar dig,” he said automatically as he left the kitchen. Swedish for I love you.
Rory didn’t announce that he was going into the basement. He never did, but somehow his mom always knew when to look for him there. Now he descended into his lair and glanced around at the many recycled computers, screens glowing with online games awaiting his attention. A sign hung on the wall—CONTROL AREA.
He sat and launched back into several games at once, but something in the room kept drawing his attention. In his peripheral vision, he could see his worktable, and when he finally glanced over, he saw the parcel that had been delivered by the postal worker with all of his father’s mail. Rory had compartmentalized its presence, intending to open it just as soon as he’d made his way through the language books upstairs, but he’d forgotten.
Now he sucked in a sharp breath, went to the table, and tore open the package. He reached in, pulling back the dirty newspapers that the contents had been packed with. He reached inside, felt a smooth metallic surface, and pulled out an enormous scarred helmet that reminded him immediately of something out of one of his video games.
For a moment he stood frozen, his mind stunned into immobility, and then abruptly it began to race as he tried to determine precisely what he held. This was not a Halloween mask or a replica. Whoever this helmet might belong to—this thing his father had shipped to himself from Mexico, and which had only been delivered here because he’d forgotten to pay for his post office box—it didn’t belong to Quinn McKenna. The thing didn’t look like US Army gear. It had various markings on its surface, but not in any language Rory had ever seen. It looked like it might have some in-board technology, and he started mentally comparing it to games he’d played and movies he’d seen.
One thing was for sure. Whoever this belonged to, the guy had a massive frickin’ head.
Rory set the helmet aside and reached into the box again. What he pulled out this time made him grin. The wrist gauntlet clearly had the same origin, the same tech. He started fiddling with it, pressing nearly hidden buttons. With a click, a small door opened and a long, trapezoidal object popped out of a compartment in the gauntlet. It reminded him of a fat, old-fashioned remote control, but there was nothing old-fashioned about the sleek surface or the strange texture of the metal. It felt unusual and heavy and strangely warm, almost alien.
He studied the gleaming device—Rory was certain this thing had a purpose. It didn’t appear to be a weapon, but there were switches and buttons. Warily, he punched a button. When nothing happened, he frowned and turned the sleek device over again, cocked his head to study it, then thumbed another button.
A display blinked on. Rory frowned deeper, locked in fascination as he watched glowing red symbols s
croll across the device. His eyes widened as he studied their cryptic patterns, trying to make sense of it all…
* * *
Far from Rory… far from Earth… a stealth ship, smaller and sleeker than the one that had recently crash-landed in the Mexican jungle, glides swiftly toward the Earth. Within it, a Predator quite unlike the one in Project: Stargazer’s custody taps a button and a display appears on its viewscreen. The same glowing symbols scroll, but to these eyes, its patterns are far from cryptic. Instead, they reveal very much indeed. The hunter makes several satisfied clicking noises, and flies onward.
* * *
In his basement, Rory worked studiously, scribbling a transcription of the symbols from the alien device onto the outside of one of his school folders. He knew his heart ought to be racing, but he felt calmer than he’d ever been. Excited, yes… enthusiastic… but intent upon his task. Here was a real puzzle, a real mystery that he could sink his teeth into. He couldn’t ever seem to unravel the mysteries that other people presented, and school had never presented him with a challenge, but here was something different—a true challenge. Languages, after all, had always been his specialty.
With a blip, the readout on the device changed. He scrunched up his face and furiously scribbled this new sequence, translating in his head. His eyes narrowed, and he stared at the device. He had begun to understand it, and now he tapped several buttons, causing the display to revert to the first sequence he’d awoken.
* * *
Aboard the pursuit ship, the strange Predator grimaces and glares with great displeasure at his viewscreen. The readout has changed as if it has a mind of its own. A malfunction? He taps the controls, correcting the sequence…
* * *
Rory could have laughed when the sequence altered again. It seemed to him that the device had reacted to him. For a moment he wondered if it had been programmed this way, or if it contained some kind of alien artificial intelligence that he could not hope to understand.
On second thought, he decided the odds of there being a language or technology he could not understand were very slim. Dismissively, he overrode the device again.
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