Homicidal Aliens and Other Disappointments

by Brian Yansky

  My dad sits next to me. (Okay, I’m not totally psycho. This isn’t Hamlet. I know my dad isn’t here, not even as a ghost. But I kind of pretend my dead father can visit me sometimes. At least I think I’m pretending. It’s sort of a daydream that sometimes seems a little more real than it should.)

  “Look where you’ve got yourself now, Grasshopper,” he says. “You’re free.”

  My dad is — was — a big man. He had blond hair that, in certain lights, seemed almost white. People said he was handsome, but I always thought it was more like his face had a lot of personality. People remember it.

  “I’m not a slave anymore,” I say.

  “And you’ve got a girlfriend.”

  “I guess.” Technically Lauren is my girlfriend, and I did feel close to her, so close, on the journey from Austin to Taos. Not so much since we made it to the rebel camp, though. I don’t know why. It’s disappointing.

  “And you killed one of the lords.”

  “Yeah, and it’s made people think I’m something I’m not.”

  “You know you’re going to have to help them see.”

  “See what?”

  “It’s like before you and your friends made up your minds to escape. You wanted to believe you could just survive as slaves, didn’t you? You thought you’d be lucky to do that. But then you realized you could do more. You escaped.”

  “We did. And a lot of people died.”

  “You might have never tried,” he says. “You might have died a slave.”

  “That was totally different. We escaped. We didn’t fight them. Fighting them is different. We can’t win.”

  This is the truth that was too big to say to Doc and Running Bird and that Robert guy and even to myself. They’re way more powerful than we will ever be, and there are too many of them. It’s just not possible to win. We can fight, but we can’t win.

  “You couldn’t escape, either,” my dad says. “Or so you thought. Until you did, right?”

  “It’s not the same.”

  I’m looking out over the broad expanse, but when I turn to my dad to ask him what I should do, he’s not there. I’m talking to myself. I’m sitting by myself.

  “I hate it when you do that!” I shout.

  No answer. Just the echo of my words off the rocks. Maybe that is the answer.

  After a while, I make my way around the cliff and find a safer way down. When I near camp, I hear voices and see people getting breakfast and sitting at tables and eating. Someone sees me and shouts, “There he is!” Heads turn my way. The people closest to me think, Worried. Or maybe they feel worried. This whole telepathy thing is confusing. It’s like everyone is always boiling over with thoughts and feelings, some of which are clear and distinct but most of which are vague and confusing, like background chatter at a party.

  “We thought you were lost,” someone says.

  I hear others agree, and the weight of their concern embarrasses me. I look away, which is when I notice Dylan across the clearing. He’s not one of the ones sending me waves of worry. Instead, he’s busy talking to a pretty brown-haired girl who’s looking at him all moon-eyed. I have this rush of images: dozens of other girls looking at him just that way and then crying over him later. Player.

  The images go away when Dylan finally sees me. He stops talking, and his body stiffens with anger, his face swells with it. Stay the hell out of my head, you freak, he mindpseaks.

  Guard your thoughts better, I mindspeak back.

  He pushes toward me through the crowd, bumping people but either not noticing or not caring. I watch as he shields his thoughts, hiding his rage from everyone, looking outwardly concerned. Hiding from everyone except me, because I can still read him, even when he’s shielded. No one else can do that.

  Maybe he’s right. Maybe I am a freak. I mean even more of a freak than the freaks we’ve all become.

  “Where have you been?” Dylan says when he reaches me, his voice sounding as concerned as he looks. Even I almost believe him.

  Everyone near us has stopped talking and is watching us. “Out for a walk,” I say. “Seeing the sights.”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  I think the list is practically endless, but I say, “Something is wrong with me because I took a walk? What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal is you were gone when your girlfriend woke up, and she got people worried. This isn’t a Boy Scout camp.”

  “It would be a strange one,” I say.

  Someone laughs, which I appreciate.

  Dylan’s eyes narrow. “Even the little kids know not to wander off and get lost.”

  “I wasn’t lost,” I say. “I just wanted some time to myself.”

  “Of course, if you really had the Warrior Spirit in you, you wouldn’t get lost.” He forces a smile.

  “I wasn’t lost.” You moron. Too late I realize I didn’t shield the thought, so it floats out into the world for all to hear.

  I know the truth about you, Dylan mindspeaks.

  He’s thinking this just to me, blocking out everyone else. I think I see how he does it, and I file that information away. In spite of my dislike and distrust of him, I can’t help listening closely, like maybe he does know some truth about me.

  You aren’t special. You don’t know anything. You don’t belong here with us, he mindspeaks.

  You aren’t so special, either, I retort, which I admit does have a fifth-grade ring to it.

  Funny. I think of that word — retort. It’s my mom’s word. She was always on me about improving my vocabulary. Once I accidentally called her dude, and you would have thought I’d just confessed to murder. She talked for a long time about how she’d failed as a mother, how all her hard work had been for naught (yes, she used this word and lots of others like it and, yes, she could be pretty embarrassing in public — make that very embarrassing). But here I am using her word, which reminds me of her and makes me remember that a part of her is still in me. Another thing to hold on to. Another way the aliens haven’t won.

  Dylan struts off. I think he does something that makes him seem bigger than he is, but I don’t know what. Another talent? Lauren and Catlin come up behind me as I’m trying to figure this out. I see them in my mind almost the way you’d see a shadow move out of the corner of your eye.

  “You thought I was missing?” I say to Lauren, irritated she put me in a position where Dylan could chastise me in public.

  “I wasn’t actually worried,” she says, and I can sense that she’s irritated that I’m irritated. “Dylan asked me where you were, and I said you weren’t in your tent when I woke up. He’s the one who made a big deal about it.”

  “Dylan just wanted to embarrass you,” Catlin says, which is exactly what I’m thinking.

  “You should tell people before you go somewhere, though,” Lauren says, unknowingly echoing Dylan. “It’s not safe here. Or anywhere.”

  “Everyone’s nervous after yesterday,” Catlin says. “They all think something is going to happen.”

  “Something is going to happen,” I say.

  “Of course something is going to happen,” Lauren says.

  “I mean something more specific,” I say.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yeah, what?” Catlin says.

  “I had a dream last night.” I tell them about it. About the Hunter and deathdays and the Hunter’s employers needing us dead before word of our telepathic abilities gets out and the endless fleet of alien ships that I saw out in space.

  “Are you going to tell Doc?” Catlin asks.

  I shake my head. “It was just a dream. I already told him about the smuggler, so he knows everything we know.”

  “But you didn’t tell him about the dream,” Catlin says.

  “It was just a dream,” Lauren says.

  “Yeah,” I say, “it was just a dream.”

  I’m glad to agree with Lauren.

  “Um . . .” Catlin says.

  “No um,” I say.


  “Sorry, but there is an um,” Catlin says. “You’re a dreamwalker. ‘Just a dream’ doesn’t work for you.”

  Lauren frowns, which makes me frown, too.

  “It could be just a dream,” I insist.

  “You met me in a dream. I’m pretty real, right?” Catlin says.

  Small and pretty and very real. Sometimes I feel like she’s the most real thing in my life. I immediately regret this thought.

  “That was different,” I say.

  “Real is real. Dreams are dreams,” Lauren says, like she is stating the obvious, which once would have been true but isn’t anymore. “He can tell the difference.”

  “It’s hard for dreamwalkers sometimes,” Catlin says.

  Great. On top of everything else, now it’s hard for me to know what’s real and what’s a dream. The list of what’s hard for me just keeps growing.

  “Look,” Lauren says, “not all dreams can be true even for someone with Jesse’s —” She frowns. What to call it?

  “Talent,” Catlin says.

  Lauren’s frown deepens, because can this really be a talent? I wonder myself. “Whatever it is,” she says, “it’s not like every dream Jesse has is going to be real, right?”

  “Your hunter sounds kind of real to me,” Catlin says. “The way you said he felt powerful. The way he could sense you even though you didn’t want him to. A dreamwalker is very protected in a dream; even when you were weaker, you managed to get away from Lord Vertenomous. This hunter must be incredibly powerful to have sensed you and almost destroyed you.”

  “But if the dream was real,” Lauren says grudgingly, “then what does it tell us?”

  “I don’t know,” Catlin says.

  “It means they won’t stop,” I say.

  “Won’t stop what?”

  Catlin understands. “They won’t stop coming.”

  “They won’t stop until there’s no more space. They will fill our world,” I say.

  “Oh, my God,” Lauren says. “We need to tell people. If this is going to happen, they need to know the facts so they can decide what to do. We can’t fight billions. There aren’t enough of us.”

  “There never will be enough,” I say. “We could stay in those caves for a thousand years. It wouldn’t matter.”

  “We should get Doc to allow us to talk at tonight’s meeting,” Lauren says decisively. She says most things decisively. It’s one of the things I like about her. “The sooner people know what we’re up against, the sooner we can start preparing a strategy.”

  “I think Jesse should tell Doc about his dream before we tell everyone else,” Catlin says. “Doc is in charge.”

  It doesn’t take a mind reader to sense what Lauren thinks, but she begrudgingly agrees. “Doc first, but everyone needs to know.”

  Zack, Zelda by his side, waves from across the camp where they’re eating. I’m thinking I’d like to join them. I’m thinking something smells good.

  “I’ll go talk to Doc after breakfast,” I say, returning Zack’s wave.

  Lauren shoots me a look. “How can you think of food at a time like this, Jesse?”

  It isn’t hard. I think of food pretty regularly — and other things she’d be even more disappointed to know about. I don’t say any of this, though. Instead, I give Zack a helpless shrug and dutifully follow Lauren and Catlin down the main path to a smaller side path that leads to the big brown circus tent that the rebels use as a town hall.

  Inside are desks, tables, and chairs and even some office-looking stuff: computers and phones and radios and a TV. The aliens systematically destroyed our machines when they invaded because, apparently, out there in the big universe there is an empire of machine worlds that they’re at war with. Even though our machines are primitive, the aliens don’t trust them. These are the first machines I’ve seen since I worked on a machine-destruction crew in the early days after the invasion.

  The phones in the tent aren’t cell phones; they’re landlines hooked to cables, which stretch out of the tent and down the mountain toward the strange brown and white restaurant (it looks like it’s made of gingerbread) at the bottom of the ski runs. I wonder if they work — and if they do, who we would even call? Is there anyone left to answer?

  A woman stands in front of Doc and complains about her neighbor. She’s short and wide, with brown hair that looks like it has been chopped off with a knife. Which it probably was.

  “You’ve got to do something. I can’t sleep.”

  “We can move you,” Doc says. “I’m afraid it would have to be to Section 4 due to the growing population.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t. You aren’t moving me out to the boonies. He’s the one who snores. He should move. Could you sleep to this?”

  She demonstrates the snoring with several loud snorts and a long whistle. Catlin, Lauren, and I laugh. Big mistake. The woman swings around. Unfortunately, her anger focuses on me. Both Lauren and Catlin cover their smiles with totally fake coughs.

  “Something funny about my not being able to sleep, young man?”

  “Not at all,” I say, doing my best to smile congenially (another Mom word). “People who snore are a menace to society.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?”

  “No, ma’am,” I say, no longer smiling. Where’s the Warrior Spirit now? I bet a lot of those people who want to believe I’m the Chosen One would give up hope if they saw me with this woman.

  Apparently the ma’am works. (I’m from Texas, and we know the value of a well-placed ma’am.) The woman turns back to Doc.

  “That man has got to be stopped. If you don’t do something about him, then I will,” she says ominously, and stomps out of the tent. There is a bit of a waddle to her stomp because of what my mom would have called her robust figure, but somehow it doesn’t weaken her ability to intimidate. None of us laughs even after she’s out of sight.

  Doc lets out a long sigh. “I hope she doesn’t poison him or smother him in his sleep before I can get this resolved. The problem is, the man is as stubborn as she is. I’m surprised they aren’t married.” He pauses. “Come to think of it, maybe they were once.”

  He puzzles over this for a few seconds and then waves away the thought. “Well, what can I do for you three? Someone snoring in your neighborhood, too?”

  This is where I’m supposed to tell him all about my dream-that-maybe-wasn’t-a-dream. But I chicken out, and instead I point to the phones. “Do those work?”

  Doc nods. “The aliens took out the satellites in the first attack, but we’ve had some success with landlines. We’ve been able to talk with other survivors in Albuquerque and even, once, in San Diego. You want to make a call?”

  Lauren, being Lauren, has no patience for this. She tells Doc all about my dream, but she doesn’t stop there. She gives some reasons he should allow her to speak at the meeting tonight and inform the New Americans. She expands from this into democratic principles and her disapproval of one person, no matter how benevolent he might be, being all-powerful.

  “Did you not just see me dealing with Mrs. Taylor?” Doc says. “Did I look all-powerful to you?”

  “You’re the head of the Wind Clan, though,” Lauren says.

  “Actually, I’m the head of Jupiter House,” he says, “and Wind Clan.”

  “I’m just saying New America should be different. We should be a democracy, with an elected official and an informed populace. A populace that gets to choose whether to stay and fight or to try a different approach.”

  If Doc is upset by what Lauren is saying, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he regards her with the steady gaze of a teacher — which makes sense, given that’s what he was before all this. “Perhaps sometime in the future you’ll be right. Perhaps we will be able to hold elections and make New America a true democracy.”

  “What’s wrong with now?” she says.

  “We’re at war,” he says.

  “So what? The democracy is put on hold until we defeat the aliens? An
d if that doesn’t happen right away and you become too old to rule — or if you die in the battle — then your son inherits? It’s like a monarchy.”

  I see Doc appreciating something he hasn’t before. Lauren’s telepathic abilities aren’t strong, and she has no special talent, but she is talented. She’s scary smart. She’s a natural leader. She is relentless.

  “There will be time to consider these issues in the future. I’m not on my deathbed just yet,” says Doc.

  I can feel the frustration radiating off Lauren like a fever. Doc adds, “As for your request to inform the people of the approaching settlers, I’m afraid I have to ask you to keep quiet about that for now.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “People are close to panic, Lauren. It would be foolish to give them more cause for alarm without knowing if this information is accurate.”

  Lauren doesn’t look convinced. “How can we verify what Jesse saw?” she asks.

  “We’ll leave that up to Running Bird,” Doc says.

  “Why Running Bird?”

  “He is talented in many ways, a priest, even if he has withdrawn his vows. He knows many hidden secrets. And he is the smartest person I know. He will help Jesse discover the truth of his dreams.”

  Lauren looks about as skeptical as I feel. But Catlin seems to accept what he says right away.

  Doc tells me that Running Bird will find me when he’s ready. In the meantime, we agree to keep the doomsday news to ourselves — which I’m more than happy to do.

  I never do get to have breakfast. By the time Lauren, Catlin, and I leave the tent, the breakfast dishes are being put away. I hope Lauren can hear my stomach rumbling as we walk back to our campsite, but she looks too preoccupied to hear much of anything.

  “I’ve always hated secrets,” she tells me. “He’s forcing us to keep secrets.”

  “Just for a little while,” I say.

  “He’s like a king,” she says. “This is America. New America. Whatever. It should be a democracy.”

  She asks Catlin if all the houses and clans are like this. Catlin doesn’t know. She wasn’t that interested in politics. This earns her a lecture in responsibility from Lauren. I find myself getting sleepy, and I say I’m going to rest a little in my tent. I ask Lauren if she maybe wants to catch a nap. I’m thinking a little alone nap time might help us get back to those feelings we seemed to have for each other on the trip here. She says she doesn’t nap, and I can tell she doesn’t approve of the whole concept of sleeping during the day.