I don’t like being out of the cave like this.
“Good morning, Pirate,” she says.
“Good morning.” I rub my eyes, then stop. There’s a fresh bandage with fresh, hair-pulling tape.
“You can probably take that off,” she says.
I peel away the bandage, grateful to have both eyes open. “Why don’t I have my clothes on?”
“You soaked them twice, killing that fever. I could have boiled water on your forehead.”
“Why are we out here?”
“It’s too hot in the hideout. I had to risk it.”
“Shouldn’t we get back in the cave?”
“In a bit. The inside needs to air out a little more.” She reads my look. “The Evil One has had some busy nights. He needs his beauty sleep.”
The Evil One. I like that. “How long was I sick?”
“Three days. I thought I’d lost you—until I found this.” She holds up the azith pill bottle. “Where did you get it?”
“The sleeping pills? I found those when I was scrounging for food.”
Something moves off to my left. I find it. A seagull sits on the concrete barrier, then flies away.
“They’re not sleeping pills,” she says. “It’s azithromycin, a prescription antibiotic.”
“I almost took them one night when I couldn’t sleep.”
“You’re very lucky you had them. They saved your life.”
Staying out like this is getting on my nerves. Even the seagulls are freaking me out. Sunlight is shrinking the shadows. I sit up. “Can I have my clothes?”
Aunt Janet reaches down, picks up my things, and tosses them to me, saying, “They’re probably dry by now.”
She turns her back while I dress. They’re still a little damp, but close enough. And the smell—I’m used to that.
With my clothes on I feel better. Like I can run if I need to.
I say, “Are you a nurse?”
Aunt Janet laughs. “I’m a school librarian. But I’m a mother, and all mothers are part-time nurses.” She studies my face and says, “Megs, what do you remember?”
“I remember you said something about Richie and that I needed to be quiet. I remember being sure he was in the cave, that he had a knife. I remember being hot and cold at the same time. That’s about it. Oh, and the car was shaking. I thought it was from the thunder.”
She smiles. “We had a storm all right. Hurricane Richie.”
I think about that for a moment, then say, “I did have a dream, though.”
I tell her about the baby over the steaming pot and the countdown. About Richie turning into Mr. Hendricks. She takes it all in without saying anything. Her eyes—a soft brown with flecks of green—are hard to read. When I’m done, she’s quiet, then opens her mouth to say something, stops, and looks away. Like she’s trying to figure out what to put out there, the truth or something else.
She says, “You found a great hiding spot, Megs. The Evil One and his pal hit every car, including this one, on the first three levels.”
“How do you know?”
“I had to look for water.”
I remember her giving me something to drink.
“Where did you find the water?”
“The fluid reservoirs for the windshield washers. Sometimes people just put in water.”
“You said he was yelling?”
“Screaming is more like it,” she says. “I believe he’s possessed by demons.”
“What was he saying?”
There’s that look again. Like she’s measuring one choice against another. I used to get the same thing from Mom after her fights with Zack. I’d ask about the red spots and the bruises. She’d give me that same look and try to hide things by changing the subject and lighting cigarettes, one after the other. After Zack moved in she lit a lot of cigarettes.
I’m pretty sure I know what Aunt Janet isn’t saying.
“Richie said something about Cassie, right?”
“Yes, and some other things, too. Bad things. But now isn’t the time to talk about it.”
“Why? Why can’t you tell me now?”
“Because you were—you are—a very sick girl. The infection almost killed you and—”
“But I’m better now.” I sit up straight and tall. “Tell me what he said.”
“You won’t go crazy on me?”
“I promise.”
Aunt Janet leans forward and says, “Richie must have figured out that I’m in the garage with you. He said Mr. Hendricks has a message for us. If we turn in the gun, he’ll give the baby the medicine. Otherwise”—she turns away at this, her voice cracking—“he said the aliens will get some baby food.”
“Did he say anything about Cassie?”
“Yes.”
I wait. Silence booms in the front seat.
“What did he say?”
Aunt Janet turns to me and says, “That she tasted like chicken.”
All those thoughts I had about Richie come boiling to the top. I reach for the door handle, ready to jump out. Aunt Janet is saying something about plans for tomorrow. I’m not listening. My brain is locked on the wormhole, the gun, and pointing the barrel at Richie’s smiling, evil face. But none of that happens. As soon as I open the door, my head spins like a Tilt-A-Whirl. I see all these crazy colors and almost fall to the pavement. I slide back into the car and close my eyes. Everything is still spinning.
Aunt Janet says, “Do you really have the gun?”
“I think so. It’s in a briefcase that’s locked, so I don’t know for sure. I hid it.”
“Where?”
“I wedged it under the seat in my mom’s car on the first level.”
“What are you planning to do with it?” she asks.
“I’m going to shoot Richie in the head.”
“You can’t do that. It’s not—”
“Yes I can, so shut up!”
“Don’t talk to me like that, please.”
“He’s a monster. He doesn’t deserve to live.”
“Have you ever shot someone, Megs?”
The only gun I’ve ever had in my hand squirted water. But I’m not about to tell her.
She looks at me hard. “I asked you if you’ve ever shot someone?”
“No,” I say. “Not yet.”
“I didn’t think so,” she says. “Me either, and I don’t think I could.”
“Well, I know I can,” I say.
“And how does a twelve-year-old girl know this?”
I think about it, then say, “Because I’m a pirate, and that’s what pirates do.”
DAY 25: PROSSER, WASHINGTON
The Brood
And yet again, the screeching.
Only this time it’s different. I had an episode just before it happened. Up to this point I thought the flash of light was the main event. Now I’m not so sure. There’s more to the moment of blackness that comes right before it. Like I should pay more attention, maybe stretch it out. I’m not sure how or why, but that’s what I’m chewing on when my head fills with the freaking alien noise.
Once the nausea passes and my brain clears, I head downstairs. Dad is standing in front of the dining room window. The shade is up. He’s in sweatpants and a pajama top, looking out at the PODs. I’m amazed at how thin he is. But his beard is trimmed and his hair is combed. Part hippie, part engineer. I wonder if Mom would recognize him. The broken nose doesn’t help.
He says, “They’ve stopped spinning.”
I stand beside him at the window. Large bloodred circles are forming on the bottom of the PODs. The circles spread outward and up, almost to a point where the bottom halves become entirely red. I have to remind myself to breathe.
A massive hole opens in the bottom of the PODs.
Then, like swarms of bees from mother hives, small black dots pour out of the holes. They form pulsing black clouds, shimmering like hot oil as they literally fill the sky. Patches of blue sky become smaller and smaller, then disappear as
the swarms merge. Their shadows cover the ground. An early-evening darkness falls upon us, even though it’s still morning. We watch in stunned silence. The PODs continue to bleed out, and it feels like it will never end. Whatever they plan on doing, I hope it’s quick and I hope it doesn’t hurt.
There’s a humming sound, slowly getting louder. The windowpane shakes. Even glasses in the cabinet over the sink are vibrating.
Dad says, “Do you think Mom is watching this?”
“You think she’s alive?” I ask.
“Yes, I do. I dream about her almost every night.”
“I thought you didn’t dream.”
“I do now.”
The mini-PODs have formed into funnels that spiral to the ground.
I want to ask if that’s a good thing, Mom being alive to see this. I want to say, Why didn’t you let me walk out the door? Why did you let me send Dutch? Why do I have to die with my eye swollen shut? But instead I say, “I dream about her, too.”
Dad turns away from the window. I think his shoulders are shaking, but I’m not sure. I’ve never seen him cry, although I’ve heard a strange moaning sound coming from his room. He rubs his beard, draws a breath, and says, “Let’s have that last chocolate bar for breakfast. For some reason I feel like celebrating.”
We sit down for what could be our last meal. He carefully breaks the bar in two, putting each portion on a separate plate. Why we can’t just eat it out of our hand is a mystery to me. My slab is the biggest, of course. We accompany the feast with a half glass of warm, murky water from the bottom of the hot-water tank. I taste each individual flake of rust.
But the chocolate, I must admit, is the best ever.
I’ve always wondered what is inside the PODs, and now I know. Mini-PODs. The black dots are really smaller versions of the mother ships, with one notable difference. There is a single black stalk sticking up from the very top like a middle finger. Otherwise the surface is smooth and glistens as though it’s covered with a thin layer of oil. I know this because I see them outside the dining room window. In fact, if there wasn’t the minor issue of being deleted, I could open the window and touch one of the brood with my hand. At first they made a low-level buzz. Now they do their thing in silence.
That thing is to hover a couple of feet above the ground and move in what at first seemed to be random circles and lines. After a while it became clear that there was nothing random about them. The mini-PODs organized into huge brood-squares easily the size of three or four football fields. They move in slow, meticulous, grid-like patterns. Even though they cover the earth like robotic beetles and often pass within inches of each other, they never touch. And while this is going on, squirrels scamper across the grass, robins fly around building nests, and massive flocks of geese, free from hunters, fill the sky. It’s just your average spring day on the planet.
There is another observation worth bringing up: The mini-PODs avoid the houses. After that heart-pounding instant when they left the sky and descended to earth, it’s been pretty boring. We waited for them to spray poison gas or morph into killer robots, but nothing dramatic happened. After an hour, things settled into this meticulous, ground-hugging infestation.
Meanwhile, the mother PODs are rotating.
Dad is sitting at the kitchen table, drawing graphs in his notebook.
I guess breakfast is canceled.
DAY 25: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Cracking the Oyster
It’s a sunny morning, but that doesn’t matter. Like we’re going to the beach or something—ha! Instead of a bathing suit, I’m wearing camo pants, and instead of suntan lotion and candy, my pockets bulge with other treasures, like pepper spray, a knife, a cigarette lighter, tape, and a screwdriver.
No, today will definitely not be a day at the beach.
We sneak down to the Nova, ducking behind cars and watching for you-know-who. Twice I have to wait for Aunt Janet while she bends over like someone punched her in the stomach. She said it’s nothing to worry about, just a little gas cramp from the jerky we had for breakfast. I don’t know about that. I heard her groaning in the dark last night. If it really is gas, then we need to find her something else to eat.
After the second “cramp” I start to seriously worry about Aunt Janet’s plan, which she explained to me this morning while we waited for the sun to come up. It basically goes like this:
We slip into the hotel through the LTT.
We wait in the kitchen for Mr. Hendricks, or even better, Mr. Hendricks and Richie.
Aunt Janet threatens to shoot them while I tape up their hands and feet.
She guards them while I find Mary and Lewis, her sick baby.
I give Mary six azith pills—that leaves us with ten.
We exit like bandits through the LTT.
We jump into the hideout, close the hatch, and wait out the storm.
Oh, I forgot—we take some water and food from the hotel before we go.
I’m thinking Aunt Janet has seen too many movies. There’s all kinds of craziness in this plan. Like, what if they shoot us with their guns first? Or what if I can’t find Mary? Or they take me hostage and threaten to shoot me? Obviously she’s not good at making these kinds of plans. But I don’t rain on her parade—yet. I figure we get the gun, then I’ll tell her about my plan.
The Nova is exactly the same. There’s still pieces of red plastic under the taillights from when Richie smashed them with the hammer. Aunt Janet keeps an eye on the green door while I dig out the briefcase from under the seat and set it on the pavement.
We start out trying to pry it open with the screwdriver. That is such a waste of time. I get a lug wrench from the SUV. She wedges in the screwdriver while I pry with the lug wrench. It looks like the case is about to pop when Black Beard opens the green door. I ease pressure off the lug wrench and the case snaps shut. Black Beard looks around, drops his pants, squats over the bucket, and whistles. We hide behind the car and wait. I close my eyes. I mean, like, who wants to watch that? After a few minutes we hear the green door open and close. Instantly we’re back to work on the briefcase. Thirty-two minutes, five seconds, and one bloody knuckle later, the case splits open like an oyster.
The pearl is a big black handgun snuggled in a nest of gray foam. Aunt Janet picks up the gun, turns it over in her hands.
She says, “Glock .31 357 SIG.” Her hands move. There’s a metallic snapping sound. In one smooth motion almost too fast to see, the thing that holds the bullets drops out of the handle, she catches it with her left hand, looks at it, frowns, slams it back in. “-Fifteen-round clip, empty.”
My eyes are as wide as Frisbees. “How did you … ?”
She shrugs. “My father was a cop, okay? He collected guns. He used to take me to the shooting range every Sunday after church.”
“So we don’t have any bullets?”
“Not a single one. That means we have to—”
Her face twists. She drops the gun, grabs her head.
The screeching explodes between my ears.
We fall to the floor, twisting and moaning in the dirt and glass. It hurts me bad, but I think it’s killing Aunt Janet. When it’s finally over I know something is wrong. She can barely sit up. Her face is the color of oatmeal, and what little we had for breakfast is all over her shirt. There’s a thin trail of bubbly pink stuff oozing down her chin. Her body is shaking.
She crawls over to the car, leans back against the door.
I say, “I hate it when they do that.”
She opens her mouth to talk but can’t get out the words. Her eyes are all twitchy and her breathing is short and fast, like something is squeezing her lungs.
“Are you okay?” It’s a stupid question, because I can see she isn’t. But I don’t know what else to say.
Her head moves. I can’t tell if it’s a yes or a no.
There’s a flash of yellow light—it lasts for five seconds—and then things get very dark, very fast. Then there’s a soft hum, like I
’m sitting under a tree full of bees.
I say, “I think the aliens are coming.”
She motions for me to come close.
The buzzing isn’t so soft anymore. I place my ear next to her lips.
She whispers, “Help me stand up.”
I wrap her left arm around my shoulder. She struggles to her feet. I hold her steady while we walk to the nearest wall and look up at the sky. My legs almost crumble again. The spaceballs moved way up high—and they’re having babies. Millions of them. Each spaceball has a huge hole in the bottom, and the babies are pouring out like black ink from a bottle. The sky is covered with big ugly stains spreading outward. When the stains come together they form into funnel-like tornados that spiral toward the ground. I count at least five tornados. I can’t see what happens next because buildings are in the way. Truth is, I don’t want to see.
Aunt Janet says, “So it’s finally happening.”
“What is?”
“What they came here to do.”
Whatever that is, it can’t be good. “We need to hide,” I say, trying hard to keep my voice from shaking. I think the utility room is a good spot because it has two metal doors. Or even the Suburban. Anything is better than hanging out here like this. We might as well be standing under a Here’s Dinner sign.
But instead of running, Aunt Janet says, “I wonder if they’re watching?” Her voice is far-off, like she’s someplace else. Her head drops and she takes these short, gaspy breaths. I think she’s crying, that she’s giving up. Then she looks up at the sky and screams: “LEAVE US ALONE!”
What she just did makes about as much sense as an ice cube yelling at the sun. It seems to help, though. There’s some red in her cheeks and her eyes aren’t empty anymore. In fact, they look the opposite of empty when she turns to me and says, “We’re changing the plan.”
That’s a relief, is what I think. “Good,” is what I say.
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