Suckers

by Z. Rider

  “Who’s there?”

  “The parasites. They’re in Manchester.”

  The line went quiet.

  † † †

  The door between the bedroom and living room was open. It felt like it needed to be, an open-air link to Ray out on the couch. In the darkness.

  A drop of water fell from the faucet in the kitchen every five minutes.

  Occasionally a car crept past the building.

  At four a.m. a shot rang out, hollow and echoing. Off toward Goffstown, it sounded like. Dan hoped they were shooting the fucking bats. People had been doing that in other places—people and authorities, though the authorities were telling people to stop shooting off guns in populated areas, even if it was the fucking bats they were trying to shoot.

  It hadn’t been helping anyway—or if it had, it hadn’t been helping enough.

  Talk was they were trying to find a biochemical agent that wiped out the parasites without killing everything around them. Trouble was, the parasites didn’t need oxygen. They didn’t need water. And once they “hatched”—if you wanted to call climbing out of someone’s throat hatching—they didn’t need blood. They just had to live long enough to lay more eggs.

  They could be killed, though—cutting them up did a good job. Buddy’d told him and Ray about a story he’d seen online, how a few groups were trying to work out a way to lure and trap the fuckers. If they couldn’t find a better way to bait them, they planned on putting out a call. The terminally ill and the elderly, they’d said, might consider volunteering, maybe death row inmates. Compensation could be made to the families. They were collecting donations.

  The couch creaked.

  Ray left the living room. When he returned from the bathroom, the roll-spark of his lighter came, the soft scrape of the beer bottle he was using for an ashtray as he dragged it near the couch again.

  Dawn took forever to get there.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Dan pulled in behind Buddy’s truck with the late-morning sun glinting off the hood of his car. He wished he felt more certain about this. While he knew going to Deerfield was a better idea than staying in the city, he was less confident everyone would agree.

  He had his shit packed in his trunk, because he was going to Deerfield whether the Ford clan went or not. Or at least that was the impression he planned to give. Another thing he wasn’t certain about was whether he’d go through with it if Ray didn’t come. He liked the idea of being out where it was less populated—and a group could take care of itself better than individuals off on their own. But he couldn’t imagine sitting in the middle of nowhere with his mom, wondering what Ray was doing back in town.

  Ray, though, wouldn’t go if Buddy didn’t go, because there was no way Ray was leaving them to deal with this themselves, not with his niece in the equation. Maybe Dan could move his mom out here. If Ray moved across the driveway to Buddy’s house, Dan and his mom could move into Ray’s place. They’d be half a yard away from each other—close enough to have each other’s backs.

  But Jesus, they’d all seen the news footage. Deerfield would be better.

  The walk up the driveway was like going to a funeral, the day unseasonably warm, like early fall instead of a week past Thanksgiving, the neighborhood eerie quiet. He fisted his hands in his jacket pockets. As he put his foot on the first step of the porch, the storm door opened, Ray standing there.

  He let the door fall shut behind him.

  “Well?” Dan said.

  “They’re still discussing it.”

  “My mom’s cool with it. She’s out shopping for a big dinner to celebrate. No pressure or anything.”

  Ray smiled. “No pressure.”

  “Does everything seem weird now that they’re here?”

  “I stopped by Pigeon’s for some smokes on the way home,” Ray said. “Place was crazy. You know, a little market. I can’t imagine the grocery stores. I hope Faye gets out alive.”

  “Yeah.”

  The door swung open, Buddy stepping out, squinting and lifting a hand over his eyes to shield the sun. “Saw one of those things at your place last night, huh?”

  “Yep. So let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  “It’s fucking tempting.”

  “It’s fucking a good idea,” Dan said.

  “I’ve got work. If power lines go down in the middle of all this, and there’s no one to fix them…”

  “It’s thirty minutes away.”

  Buddy rubbed his tongue along the inside of his cheek, watching the road.

  Ray tapped a cigarette out of his pack.

  Buddy said, “I can’t impose on Faye.”

  “Now that she knows you might come, she’ll be disappointed if you didn’t show up.”

  “She’s shopping for a welcome-to-your-temporary-home dinner,” Ray said.

  “Shit.”

  “No pressure.” Ray pushed his lighter back in his pocket.

  “She’s got that old above-ground pool that needs clearing away,” Dan said. “If we happen to tear that down and haul it to the dump while we’re there, I doubt she’ll think we’re much of an intrusion.”

  “I can tear down a pool,” Buddy said. “How’s she getting along since your dad anyway?”

  “She’s okay.” The cancer’d been six years ago, life as they’d known it dragging them all down a path they hadn’t set a course for: symptoms to diagnosis, chemo to hospice, leaving them a family of two at the end of it. He’d worried about her alone that house in the middle of nowhere—and now here they were, running to it themselves. He hoped.

  “Fucking outer space.” Buddy scuffed his boots on the porch. “We’ve been thinking of aliens as being these things with eyes and hands and intelligence and shit, and they turn out to be flying fucking leeches.”

  “They don’t drink blood once they’re out in the wild,” Ray said. “Just lay, you know, impregnate you.”

  Dan shuddered inwardly. That wasn’t exactly the way he wanted to think of what’d happened to him.

  “They’ve gotta live on something,” Buddy said. “You know what I heard?”

  “Unh-uh,” Ray said.

  “They’re some kind of biological weapon sent by intelligent aliens.”

  “Been hanging out on the crackpot forums?”

  “It’s not even on the crackpot forums. People are actually talking about this, saying it could be their way of colonizing this place. I mean, how else do you explain why they only bother with humans?”

  “Parasitoid wasps,” Ray said. Cigarette paper hissed as he took a drag. “They lay their eggs in caterpillars. Not earthworms or beetles, just caterpillars. So it’s not unheard of.”

  “Yeah, but wasps and caterpillars are both from Earth,” Buddy said. “They evolved together. What the fuck is this?”

  “Are you guys coming or not?” Dan said. “We’re wasting daylight hours.”

  “Sarah’s not sure,” Buddy said. “She’d have to take Janie out of school. It’ll be a longer commute to the surgical center. She’s worried about being farther away from cops and hospitals. She’s in there right now Google-mapping the distance from your mom’s to everything.”

  “Taking Janie out of school’s a no-fucking-brainer,” Ray said. Cigarette paper crackled as he took a drag.

  “We don’t know what to do, to tell you the truth,” Buddy said. “Everything’s such a fucking unknown.”

  “Daylight.” Dan pushed past Buddy to open the door. “Slipping right through our fingers.” After the sharp sunlight, the hallway was dim. He aimed himself toward the kitchen at the far end, giving a glance into the two bedrooms as he passed. Jane sat on the floor in one, snapping Duplos on top of each other. Sarah was at the kitchen table, a coffee cup by her hand, the other massaging her shoulder.

  “Congratulations,” he said, coming into the room.

  “Oh, hey.”

  “Guess it’s too early to ask if it’s a boy or a girl.”

  Her smile was a little str
ained, her hair not brushed yet. Without makeup, her eyes looked small, startled. “Way too early. Want some?” She lifted her mug.

  “Nah.” He drew out a chair and sat. Leaned back. Waited for her to take another look at him. Her eyebrows came up a little.

  He said, “This school in Virginia. A little girl attacked another one. Put her in the hospital.”

  “Dan—”

  “We heard gunshots last night.” He sat forward. “People at McGarvey’s were packing. Lots of people. And that was even before anyone saw one of those things here. Come on. Let’s get out of here. You know you’re not really worried about fucking commute times and how far the grocery store is.”

  “Dan…”

  Feet pattered toward them. Ray’s niece grinned, hugging a yarn-headed rag doll to her chest.

  “Hey there,” Dan said.

  She thrust the doll toward him, clutched in her hands. “Meet Maisie.”

  “Did you say Daisy?”

  “Maisie!”

  “Now, I don’t think she’d appreciate you calling her crazy.”

  The doll shook as a laugh rippled through the girl. “I said MMMMaisie!”

  “Ah. Good. I wouldn’t want you calling her lazy.”

  Jane giggled again.

  “Hello, Ms. Maisie,” he said to the doll. “It’s nice to meet you.” As he reached for one of the stuffed hands, Jane spun the doll around and clutched it to the crook of her neck. “She’s shy,” she said.

  Smiling, Dan sat back. Sarah was watching Jane. He watched Sarah. Finally he said, “That school in Virginia. They were six.”

  † † †

  It felt like a convoy. In his rearview mirror, he had Ray’s dusty black Fury, and beyond that the white tower of a refrigerator rising above the cab of Buddy’s truck. A couple mattresses leaned against it—Jane’s, and a spare in case the fold-out couch wasn’t comfortable.

  It was temporary, though. This thing would blow over. A lot of sharp minds were working on the problem.

  A parasite that hitched a ride on a space mission wasn’t going to be humanity’s downfall. He hoped.

  Dan put on his blinker and banked off the main road, turning up the steep hill that took him home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The next issue was whether to move Dan’s great aunt in with them. They weren’t equipped to deal with a ninety-year-old, but neither could they justify hunkering down to protect their families if they were leaving their weakest member out. Fate and pneumonia made the decision for them, and the funeral was held on a Thursday. Sarah’s father, her only relative in the area, insisted he was just fine in Seabrook, that this was all a panic that would blow over. The Fords…well, they were all accounted for in the house in Deerfield.

  Weeks passed. Buddy, Sarah, and Faye went to work during the day, calling to check in regularly. Dan and Ray kept an eye on Jane, since no one could make a case for sending her off to pre-school. Evenings were big family meals, not unlike the breakfasts his mom made when the band and the crew pulled up with all their equipment at the end of the tour.

  The neighborhood had nine houses, big yards near the bottom of the hill, wooded properties at the top. The road ended just one house past Faye’s, where the forest took over completely. It felt safe. It felt like a refuge. At moments—when Sarah ribbed Buddy, when Jane giggled, when his mom shooed his feet off the coffee table—it even felt normal.

  Saturday morning, the doorbell rang. Dan eased back the curtain on his bedroom window, the t-shirt he’d been about to put on hanging from his hand. The shape of the house gave him a view of the front steps but not the concrete porch itself. Voices carried from down the hall: Faye, Sarah, and Buddy discussing what they should do. When he came out from his room, pulling his shirt on, Faye was heading down the stairs, Buddy right behind with a wooden rolling pin gripped in his fist.

  “Oh, it’s just Bethany,” Faye said as she threw the lock back. “From up the road.” Buddy had the rolling pin ready all the same. Dan leaned against the wall at the top of the stairs, and Ray joined him to watch Bethany ask if they might be able to spare an egg so she could make a cake for her husband’s birthday.

  “Alex said he’d check the stores on his way home, and if he finds some, I’ll bring you two to replace it, but I’d hate to wait till it was almost dark to find out he couldn’t find them, you know?” With her ponytail and loose flannel shirt, Bethany made him think of Patricia from Dunkin’ Donuts. He wondered what had become of her in all this. Was she still pouring coffee, or was she hunkered down at her parents’ with her kids? He hoped for the latter.

  Faye had Bethany come in while she went to check, though she was sure they didn’t have any eggs. Applesauce, though—applesauce could be substituted for egg, she said. “Comes out just as good. How are you two holding up otherwise?” she asked as she opened the pantry.

  “Three,” Bethany said with a bashful expression that brightened to a smile as she put a hand to her belly.

  “Oh my goodness!” Faye said as she put a snack pack of applesauce in Bethany’s hand. “How wonderful!”

  Bethany’s eyes darkened. “It would be. I’m just so scared now, you know? What happens if it’s still like this when the time comes?”

  “You come see us,” Faye said, clasping her wrist. “Whatever help you need, you come see us.”

  “We should have some practice delivering babies by then,” Dan said—and saying it, it hit him that if this went on another six months, they would actually be delivering one right there. And their only medical expert would be the one yelling and pushing. He needed coffee. And fresh air.

  “Hold on,” Faye said to Bethany. “I think…yes, here it is. Give Alex this, from us.” She passed her one of the Hershey bars she’d tucked away behind the oatmeal.

  That night, they had their first snowfall. The next morning they dug the Christmas decorations out of the attic. It was the first time Faye had put up anything more than a wreath on the door in years. Jane ran through the living room with bits of tinsel stuck to the sleeves of her fuzzy pajamas as they watched the white lights in the branches sparkle. She was in a panic about Santa: how would he deliver presents if no one was supposed to be out at night?

  “He’s changed to daylight hours,” Buddy said.

  “But then kids would see him!”

  “Nope. He’s delivering the presents to your mom’s work.”

  “But then I won’t get to see him!”

  Their equipment was still at Sound Block; all they had was a couple of acoustic guitars, which they pulled out at night when the curtains had been pinned shut and the lights turned low, filling the room with music before Jane was carried off to bed and they could turn on the TV. They’d already come to dread the screen popping to life, the images flashing across it.

  A crisp, clear Saturday came, a promise of snow in the air again, and the three men pulled the pool down and piled it in Buddy’s truck, their jackets hanging over the deck railing, their cheeks ruddy with cold and the flush of physical labor. Sarah brought them coffee, Jane yelled out the back door when it was time for lunch.

  Jamie didn’t check in, and Ray couldn’t reach him. Stick was in Nevada, which surprised no one. Greg had gone to Canada to stay with family. Carey was on his way to Florida. And Josh was just voicemail, unanswered emails. All they could do was hope he was on the road to someplace safe.

  Monday came. The sun sparkled off a dusting of snow. Bare trees gave the woods an empty, open feeling, and the three of them—Dan, Ray, and Jane—needed to get out of the house, breathe fresh air. Ray bundled her up, and they tromped through dead leaves, throwing sticks, spotting squirrels.

  “We have to be back before dark,” Jane said, for the tenth time since they’d left.

  “We certainly will, shortcake.” Ray squeezed her small hand.

  “We have to be back before it even starts to get dark,” she said.

  “We’ll be back way before dark,” Dan said. “Uncle Ray said he’
s cooking dinner tonight, and you know how long that takes him.”

  “Are you making burgers?” She picked her way up the hill in her pink corduroys and bulky blue coat. She was buried in it, a wisp of dark hair poking from under the furred hood.

  “Chili,” Ray said.

  She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like chili.”

  “I’m making a special chili on the side, just for you. I promise you’ll like it.”

  “Can you make a face on it, like you do with burgers?” She liked the pickle-chip eyes and a ketchup smile…then she’d take off the pickles and give them to Ray.

  “I’ll see what I can do.” They crested the hill, coming to a flattened area, the spot where they’d lit campfires as teenagers, coming out there with beer they shouldn’t have had, Ray’s endless cigarettes, and all their plans for their future. They’d wanted to make music on their terms—Fuck it if it doesn’t make us rich, Ray’d said. It hadn’t done them too bad. If they’d cared, they could have bought houses by now, reliable cars. They didn’t even chase after equipment much these days; they liked what they had. They knew how to get the sounds they were after out of it.

  “What’s for dessert?” Jane asked. Faye’d made the mistake of bringing pies home the first week or two—until the grocery store got ugly. No attacks, just a lot of fear and mistrust. Now one of the guys went to the store with her, and it was in and out, fast as possible. Dan couldn’t tell if the half-stocked shelves made that easier or slowed the process down with Faye and Sarah’s frustration.

  Ray said, “A magnificent, tasty apple.”

  Jane sighed. “Can it be a candy apple?” She stooped for a stick, her big blue coat canting out in the back.

  “Do you want to have any teeth left when you grow up?” Ray asked.

  Dan leaned against a tree, looking off into the distance, his hands stuffed in his pockets. Trying to empty his head, clear out the images that had plagued his sleep—gunfire and panic and the night sky full of black creatures.

  When Ray walked up, Dan said, “When this is over, you should find someone who can put up with you and have kids.”