The Others

by Jeremy Robinson

  “They’re gone,” I tell her.

  She points the shotgun toward the dead creature. “Not all of them.”

  “Dead,” I tell her, not sharing my assessment that it was never alive. “Sheeb, pumping buckshot into this thing isn’t going to do any good.”

  “Might make me feel better.” She lowers the shotgun and then motions to the basement door. “Can they come up?”

  “Better if we take care of this first,” I tell her, and then add, “Once we do, you should send the girls home…those that have homes…but the kids need to stay in the bunker.” I turn to Lindo. “They couldn’t find them. You know why?”

  A slow headshake reveals where his longwinded thought process is leading. “Best guess is that the metal shielded them from whatever frequency is used when they…you know.” He taps his head.

  “Talk in your head,” Sheba says. “That was a new kind of horrible, by the way. I should hate you for bringing this shit down on me and mine…” She heads for the basement door, patting me on the shoulder as she passes. “…but I’m really just glad you’re all right.” She stops. The pat becomes a squeeze. “No one is better at finding people than you. You’ll find him.” She pats again and heads down the basement stairs.

  “Nice lady,” Lindo says. “You come here much?”

  When I look at him, he’s smiling. “Once. On the clock.”

  His smile fades when I pluck a butcher’s knife from a drawer and test the blade on my thumb.

  “Holy shit.” Godin stumbles up beside me, gripping the countertop. He’s justifiably overwhelmed and a bit weak in the knees. “You got one of them?”

  “Lord Jesus, protect us,” Young says upon seeing the body. He steps further into the kitchen, trailed by Wini, who has somehow managed to clean the blood from her face and stop the bleeding. Her wounds looked worse than they are, but seeing her injured erases any hesitation I felt about what’s going to happen here.

  “I’m fine,” she says, noting my attention. “Takes more than an alien invasion to put me down.”

  I’m not really satisfied by her reassurance, but I don’t think time is on our side. If not for whatever Jacob did to my psyche, boosting my confidence and steeling my nerves, I’m pretty sure my response would be closer to Young’s. But she’s alive, and for now that’s going to have to be enough. “Anyone uncomfortable with peeling this S.O.B. apart and finding out what makes it tick should leave now.”

  “You’re dissecting it?” Young asks, looking like he might take me up on the offer to leave.

  “Disassembling it,” I say. “Dissection is what you do to previously living creatures. I don’t think this thing was ever alive.” I motion to the amethyst geode hole in its head.

  Young looks ready puke, but Godin sees it. “No brain.”

  I place the blade against the seam around its neck, preparing to cut away the skin-tight garment. I push the blade forward, expecting a tug as the blade catches on the fabric. But the metal just glides over the seam. I touch my fingers to the neck I’d grasped just minutes ago. This time around, I’m more gentle, sliding my fingertips from the neck to the garment. There’s a subtle shift in texture, but it’s seamless. “It’s not wearing clothing.”

  The revelation supports my working theory, so I have no qualms about what I do next. Lifting the knife, I stab it into the thing’s gut, just below the ribs. My audience reacts with revolt, flinching, squirming, and groaning. I’m beyond caring about whether or not this is sanitary, sacrilegious, or some kind of inter-species war crime.

  I want answers, and I want them now.

  I cut around the whole abdomen, carving a circle. As the sharp knife slips through the body, I feel no resistance aside from the subtle separation of skin.

  When I draw the blade back, Godin says, “I’ll do it.” He finishes pulling on a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves. “I understand the way you’re thinking, but you and I both know there’s a right and wrong way to do this. Unless you were lying about who you used to be.”

  My impatience nearly pushes me to ignore the sheriff, but then I look at my purple stained hands and remember the number of autopsies I’ve attended. They were nothing like the butcher job I’m doing here. They were methodical. Scientific. And clean.

  While the others wait in silence, I head for the sink and scrub my hands. It takes three washes to clear the purple from my hands. The stain that remains will likely stay with me until my skin cells shed away. Still drying my hands, I return to the island and give Godin a nod.

  The sheriff slips delicate fingers beneath inhuman skin, pinches, and then slowly lifts. The cleaved epidermis slurps away like a blanched tomato skin. There’s no layer of fat or muscle clinging to it. Godin holds the wiggling sheet up and then lays it in the sink.

  The exposed innards are what I expected—crystalized purple goo. “Can we all agree that if there aren’t organs hiding in there, that this thing isn’t a living being?”

  No one answers, but I see some subtle nods. “Go ahead,” I say to Godin.

  The sheriff slides his fingers into the purple, probing. He lifts them out and slips them back in, repeating the process several times. When he encounters no resistance on his fifth pass, he dips his hands further in and scoops out a mound of purple sludge that he deposits on the counter beside the body. Inside is just more purple.

  No organs.

  “Non-living entities,” Lindo whispers, sounding more fascinated than horrified.

  “You can call it what it is,” I say. “We all know what robots are.”

  And I know what that means, that the Grays themselves—the beings we believed to be our enemies—are really just autonomous pawns. Part of the extraterrestrial narrative meant to turn our eyes and thoughts toward the stars. Because while they’re generally humanoid, they’re just different enough that no one would even consider their origins to be local. In that way, they’ve been perfectly designed.

  I lift the creature’s arm in my hands. “The bones are closer to ceramic.” I prove the point by slamming the forearm against the counter’s edge, using moderate force. It breaks and folds at a ninety-degree angle.

  Young flinches at the break, and looks ready to run, but hangs in there. “You’re sure?”

  “Pretty sure,” I say, and then I reach a hand out to Godin. “May I?”

  Godin peels the too-tight glove from his right hand and holds it out to me. I slip the glove over my hand and move to the thing’s head.

  “Oh God,” Young says, stumbling back to lean against the kitchen counter, a hand to his mouth.

  I glance at Wini. She’s the only one here whose opinion really matters to me. If this is crossing a line, she’ll let me know.

  “Do what needs doing,” she says. “And we’ll get drunk later to forget it.”

  We share a smile and then I slip my hand through the hole. Purple gunk wells up on the sides of my hand as I push down deep. The top of the head is empty. Just full of more goo. For a moment, I wonder if the sludge itself contains some kind of nano-tech, but when I shift my hand down, just behind the black eyes, I feel something solid.

  It’s a sphere, but it’s not perfect. There are thin strands of something protruding from its surface, like firm tendrils.

  And they’re feeling me back.

  32

  I wrap my fingers around the sphere, but I’m not sure it’s necessary. The thing is holding on to me just as tightly.

  I feel like I’m doing a decent job hiding my concern, but Wini sees through the façade. “What’s wrong?”

  “Just…” I glance around the kitchen. “Get a pot with a lid.”

  While Wini hustles away to fulfil my request, I turn to Lindo. “You know what this is?”

  He shakes his head, looking both frightened by the possibilities, and excited by them. Too excited.

  So I direct my next request to Godin. “Find a thin blade. Like a fillet knife. Or scissors.”

  “What are you going to do?” Lindo asks, th
e horror in his voice fueled more by what I might do to our discovery than what it might do to me, or everyone else.

  The little tendrils poke against the rubber gloves, twitching around. Impatient. Hungry. “Hurry!”

  Wini returns with a chrome pot and lid.

  “There,” I say to her, dipping my head toward the countertop beside the body’s head. “Be ready with the cover.

  She places the pot down and holds the cover up, a Spartan warrior peeking over the top of her shield, waiting for action.

  Godin returns wielding a pair of heavy-duty kitchen scissors that look tough enough to cut wire.

  “Be ready to cut,” I tell him.

  “Cut what?”

  “Wish I knew. On three.”

  Curiosity pulls Young from the kitchen’s far side. He approaches with the same caution one might a case of old dynamite.

  “One,” I say, “Two…” I take a breath. Let it out. “Three.”

  My fist moves an inch and then stops. Panic tingles up my arms. Is it holding me in place? I twist my hand and feel no resistance. It’s not the sphere holding me tight, it’s the gelatinous insides creating a suction around my wrist. I could let go and draw my hand out of the glove, but I want to see this thing. Want to know what we’re up against. Because if this is just a piece of tech, something I can wrap my head around, then the overwhelming strangeness of all this will be dulled.

  I pull again, this time harder. My hand draws the sphere up through the cranium as the thing inside continues to poke and prod.

  A twist and turn of my arm lets me make a bit more progress, but the further I pull the tighter things get. I start tugging in pulses, pulling a little bit further each time, but getting sucked back in a bit.

  “Talk about a mind fuck,” Wini murmurs. I glance at her as my arm continues its up and down motion. She cracks a slight smile and it’s enough to cut through my tension. When I chuckle at her comment and the absurdity of what I’m doing, the tension in the room breaks, my laugh becoming contagious. Just as Young bursts out laughing, the flood gates of his pent up emotions shattering, my hand slurps free of the skull.

  Feeling the thing in my hand was bad enough, but seeing it activates some primitive fight-or-flight part of my mind. Instead of holding my hand out for Godin to cut the thing free, I smash the sphere down on the countertop with a shout of fear. I can’t see if it took any damage, but the five inch tendrils gripping me, squirm and flail and poke.

  “Oh shit!” Lindo says, “Don’t let it touch your skin!”

  I spot one of the tendrils stretching toward the glove’s end, just an inch from my forearm. I slam it on the countertop two more times, but I’m pretty sure, I’m hurting myself more than the sphere.

  “Hold it out!” Godin shouts, and I remember the plan. Restraining my panic, I hold my hand out over the pot.

  Using his gloved hand, Godin slips the scissor blade beneath one of the tendrils holding on to my wrist and cuts. It snips apart easily enough, but when the blade slides away, the tendril seems to melt back together.

  “It’s nano-tech,” Lindo says. “If it touches you…”

  He doesn’t need to finish the warning. I remember how easy it was for him to slip his own nano-tech inside my head. If it touches me, it will get inside me, and who the hell knows what would happen then. It could kill me, make me an automaton like the Gray, make me an acolyte like Harry and his family, or maybe just drive me insane. The only thing I know for sure is that it won’t be good.

  Some of the tendrils latched on to my wrist shrink. Its grip is loosened, but the strand reaching out for my bare arm begins to grow.

  “Shit!” I thrust my hand in the pot and slam it back and forth, filling the air with a chaotic gong to couple my string of expletives. I open my hand and let my fingers flop around. The sphere’s grip doesn’t loosen, but the glove’s does. After a few more thrashes, my hand slips back. The tendrils tighten, but it’s too late.

  “Get ready!” I shout to Wini, and then I send a spasm down my arm that shakes the glove free. It falls into the pot with a thud. Wini is fast with the lid, but not quite fast enough. The sphere clangs against the cover, its little black limbs putting up a fight. Young throws his weight on the lid, shoving it down and severing several of the limbs, which fall to the counter.

  “I got it!” Young shouts, wrapping his big hands around both pot and lid.

  The thing inside batters the metal cover. Young won’t be able to hold it for long. I hurry across the kitchen. “Over here!”

  When I yank the microwave open, Young shoves the pot inside.

  “What are you doing?” Lindo says.

  “Killing the fucking thing.” It’s not really alive, but the way it moves and acts sure as hell makes it feel like a living thing. And subjecting it to a blast of microwaves will feel satisfying.

  Lindo doesn’t see it that way. “I could learn so much from it!” When that doesn’t stop me from slamming the microwave door shut, he adds, “It could change the world. For the better.”

  “From what I’ve seen, the nano-tech you already have only serves one purpose.” I punch in ten minutes on the microwave timer. “Yours.”

  “This is a mistake,” Lindo says, but even he knows there’s no stopping me.

  The pot clangs and bounces inside the microwave. Black tendrils ooze out from under the loosened cover, but there’s no room for the sphere to free itself. I push the Start button and step back.

  As soon as the interior light turns on and the glass plate begins to rotate, a storm of bright blue sparks dances across the pot’s surface, and then it hits the tendrils. The streams of nanites spasm and turn to powder.

  Not powder, I realize, just disabled nanites.

  The pot falls still.

  The sparks build in intensity. It’s going to explode. With no way to know if the nanites are permanently destroyed, or if the sphere is completely disabled, the dust becoming airborne would be a very bad idea. Moving against my instinct to run, I dive for the microwave and hit the Stop button.

  The microwave and the blue storm within it go dark.

  I listen for movement within, but hear nothing. Behind me, Godin starts rummaging through drawers and cabinets. It takes him just a moment to discover a junk drawer with duct tape. He peels off a long strip and then seals the microwave’s top seam. He goes to work on the rest, sealing all four seams with an overkill amount of tape, but no one complains. He then locates the microwave’s vent and seals it with even more tape. When he’s done, the oven looks like it’s been wrapped in an alien cocoon.

  I stumble back from the microwave, giving my heart a chance to pump a little slower.

  “I’m going to be honest,” Godin says, “This was the worst god-damn day of my life.”

  “You’re free to go,” I tell him. “But I hope you don’t.” His quick thinking and calm responses kept me from becoming a host to some cryptoterrestrial tech. Well, more of it, anyway.

  “I could call in help,” he suggests.

  “We both know you’re more likely to be put on psychiatric leave than have the cavalry come running to help us fight UFOs and aliens. And in the time it takes to convince them…” I shake my head. “We can’t wait.”

  “Okay then,” he says, “What’s the plan?”

  I turn to Wini. “You pick up the revolver?”

  She reaches behind her back and retrieves the gun. “You know I wouldn’t leave Susie-Q behind.”

  I take the weapon from her. “You named it?”

  “If Jon Hudson can name his truck Betty, then—”

  “Who is Jon Hudson?” I ask.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Fictional character.”

  “Right…” I check the revolver’s chamber, confirming that it’s still loaded. Then I aim the weapon at Lindo’s leg. “Step one. The truth.”

  “The hell, man?” Lindo says.

  “The accent, the fake accent, and the lingo, man, are all fake.”

  “Pssh.” />
  “Daniel?” Wini asks, probably wondering if I’m a little off my rocker. Lindo is a proven liar and an operative whose endgame might not align with ours, but he’s also been an ally who helped keep us from getting killed and mind-controlled. But I can’t abide, or trust, someone whose tangled web of deceptions are impossible to untangle.

  Right now, there’s only one thing regarding Lindo of which I am certain.

  “Lindo is lying to us.” I pull the gun’s hammer back. “And if he doesn’t start telling the whole truth and nothing but, I’m going to put a bullet in his leg. And then the other.”

  33

  “You wouldn’t,” Lindo says, looking a bit defiant, but there’s enough doubt for me to capitalize on.

  “Would rather not,” I say, “but I’m done running away. I know who I am now, and those kids, the kids who were taken already, and are hiding in a bunker below us, they need a protector. If I have to shoot you, I will.”

  His defiance falters. He believes me, and I think that’s because the moment I spoke the words, I realized I meant them. If Jacob was my never-born son, you better believe I’d put a bullet in a man to save him. These kids, many of whom don’t have fathers, or were given up by their fathers, deserve to be loved, to be fought for. And right now, the person who can do that for them is me.

  “Is your name even Steven Cruz?” Young asks.

  When the pastor doesn’t voice any concern over the impending violence, Lindo turns to Godin. But the law doesn’t come to his rescue either.

  “Look, buddy, I don’t know you, but I saw what happened here, and at the ranch. If you know something that can save these kids, I suggest you start talking, or I’m going to leave the room.” He leans in closer. “Then it will be their word against whatever is left of you.”

  “Look,” Wini says, stepping between the rest of us and Lindo. She takes his hand, gives it a gentle pat. “I like you. You’ve done some questionable shit, but nothing I can’t forgive. Yet. If you don’t tell us what you know I’ll shank you myself.”

  She’s dead serious, but Lindo smiles. Instead of concerned, he looks pleased.