Her hands were trembling as she gripped the steering wheel of the Durango, pulled slowly away, and swung the vehicle around toward the gravel road leading away from the house.
Simon had said he was taking another shorter route to get to the Jeffersons’. Emily scanned the trees ahead of her for any hint of a turnoff as she slowly advanced along the same road they had left along earlier; the darkness was repulsed by the SUV’s high beams. She had been too focused on keeping the big vehicle on the road when they had first traveled this road, speeding away from the creature. Now she saw the turnoff, a gravel path leading into the woods to her left. She turned on to it and accelerated gently up to twenty, still nervous and unsure of her driving ability but more concerned with the way the hand tremors had turned into a case of the full-on shakes.
The children sat quietly in the backseat; Rhiannon stared directly ahead and Ben cuddled up to Thor. The dog’s head rested in the boy’s lap.
Shock. Disbelief. Horror. Each time Emily glanced in the mirror above her head, she would see a new emotion on one of the children’s faces. If things had been normal and something of this emotional magnitude had occurred, there would be people to turn to, experts to help. Someone would know how to deal with the turmoil these kids were about to experience. Emily had no idea how to handle their feelings. God! She was only now beginning to get a grip on her own. What was she expected to do? She couldn’t stop, couldn’t hole up with them and try and explain what had happened. A storm was coming. A storm unlike any other ever experienced on this world. What was she supposed to do?
The trees disappeared, and Emily found herself bumping over a graveled road that followed the contour of the ridgeline; in the distance she could see the glow of the lights she had left on in the house to help guide them back.
She focused on those lights as they grew closer and brighter; this must have been how sailors felt. Lost on the sea, with only the stars to guide them until they found the light of some distant port to lead them back to safety.
She had to prioritize. There had been more orbs hanging from that tree, unopened; each one would contain one more of the creature she had just killed. They could be out there now, waiting, watching. Commander Mulligan had said they had twenty-four hours maximum before the storm caught up with them if they stayed here. The choice was obvious, she supposed, she had to get the kids out now and run. Right now. Run to anywhere that was not here.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Emily drove all night and into the next day, stopping only when the children complained they needed a bathroom break, then ushering them back into the vehicle and speeding away again. That evening, exhausted and barely able to focus on the road ahead, Emily had finally pulled the SUV over to the side of the road.
They spent the night in the vehicle, camped in the breakdown lane of Route 90. Emily had tried to sleep, but the occasional whimper from one of the children and a pounding headache had all but ensured she got little rest.
Emily woke in the morning to the storm Commander Mulligan had warned them about—it had arrived with a vengeance. The sky ahead was masked by normal clouds. But the sky behind them was choked with red and pregnant with foreboding. The storm had already consumed most of the eastern horizon. Thick tendrils stretched across the sky ahead of a main bank of billowing red that filled an entire third of the visible eastern hemisphere from horizon to horizon. An occasional flash of lightning lit up the interior, illuminating the clouds with thick bands of white light.
With the children still sleeping, Emily pulled the Durango away from the shoulder and headed northwest. They had been silent for most of the headlong flight out of Stuyvesant, the mock disdain and sniping between the siblings forgotten as Rhiannon had silently consoled her brother, cradling him in her arms.
Clots of alien trees lay in almost every direction Emily looked as she cruised up the freeway. These weren’t the half-finished variety, either; they were fully constructed and already giving off a red fog of dust that hung above the skyline like smog, scintillating in the early morning light. It was almost as if the construction had sped up in anticipation of the approaching storm. Here and there, along the tree-lined grass embankments on either side of the road, Emily would spot stretches of red where the indigenous foliage had been converted to something not of this world.
They had plenty of supplies—despite her fear, Emily had circled back to Simon’s house before they’d left. She’d thrown boxes and boxes of food into the back of the Durango, along with the children’s bags. But there were other worries. The SUV was down to under half a tank of gas. Emily had no idea how much they had started out with, and she wasn’t sure how far what was left would get them. She was keeping her speed down to fifty, but even so, the needle on the fuel gauge quickly slipped sufficiently close to the quarter-tank mark that she decided now would be as good a time as any to start looking for gas. If she could fill the tank up, that should give them enough to get them close to Flint, Michigan, their next major goal.
A few minutes later, she spotted a Hilton Garden Inn ahead. Perfect. She hung a right at the next junction and pulled around back of the roadside inn. There were a couple of cars parked in the back lot, but otherwise the building looked empty. She was sure the kids would appreciate using the facilities despite the fact there was no water; kids appreciated their privacy. She followed the driveway around to the front of the building and pulled up outside the entranceway. There were a couple more vehicles parked in random spaces out front, and she could see the occasional evidence that the inn had not been empty when the red rain struck; she counted seven windows that had near-perfect circles cut through their glass.
She surveyed the terrain through the window of the SUV—it looked clear—then turned off the engine.
Emily undid her seat belt and turned to face the children, feeling the bones in her stiff back pop as she twisted. Rhiannon was already awake, but Ben was still asleep.
“Are we staying here tonight?” the girl asked, looking out at the hotel.
Emily had intended to try to get a couple more hours of driving in before calling it quits, but the storm was now just a distant collar of red around the eastern horizon, and this seemed like the perfect place to spend the night. Besides, Ben did not look right to her. His face looked puffy around the eyes, and he looked paler than when they had first set off that morning.
“Sure,” she replied. “Looks nice, doesn’t it? How’s your brother doing back there?”
Rhiannon gave her brother’s shoulder a gentle shake. His eyes fluttered open—they were a little bloodshot, Emily noted—and swept around the interior of the SUV as if unsure of where he was before finally settling on Emily. She gave him a broad smile. “How you doing there, kiddo?”
“I wanna go home,” he croaked, his lips dry and cracked.
“I know you do. I know. But we’re going to spend the night at this motel, and then, in the morning, we’ll talk some more, okay?”
Ben nodded from behind a pout.
* * *
They found a room on the second floor. With the power out, the electronic locks had all automatically failed to the locked position, but they lucked out. The room they would spend the night in had been occupied. Whoever had been staying there had died and transformed into one of the spider-aliens, but instead of chewing through the window, it had exited through the front door. The hole it left was large enough for Emily to reach through and use the internal handle to open the locked door.
There were two queen-size beds in the room, both empty, thank goodness, but Emily found the desiccated husk of a pupa behind the love seat at the opposite end of the room. When she tried to pick it up to move it, it crumbled to dust between her fingers, leaving nothing but a black shadow of powder on the carpet.
They were all still wearing the same dirt- and alien-gunk-stained clothes from the previous night. Both the kids looked like bedraggled street urchins, their faces spotted with mud, their clothes dirty and stiff with sweat. Emily tried
the faucets in the bathroom, but nothing came out, just a deep rattle of empty pipes. They would have to make do with the baby wipes tonight.
Emily caught a glimpse of the old Rhiannon’s petulance when she handed her the packet of lemon-scented wipes and suggested she might like to grab her bag of clothes and head into the bathroom to clean herself up. In the meantime she would help her brother, Emily told her. She smiled as Rhiannon snatched the wipes from her hand, grabbed her bag, and stomped into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.
Ben was lying on the second bed, his back to her. She made her way to the opposite side and knelt down beside the boy. His face was bathed in the gray sunlight flowing through the room’s only window.
“How are you feeling, Ben?” she asked softly.
“My tummy hurts,” the boy said weakly.
Emily smiled reassuringly. “Would you like a little water?” The boy nodded. “Let’s sit you up then, and I’ll bring you some, okay?” She slipped her hands under Ben’s armpits and raised him upright. The kid weighed about as much as a sparrow; she was going to have to make sure he ate regularly if he was going to stay healthy. She pulled a disposable cup from its wrapper on the side table and poured it half-full of water from her bottle. Ben took it and gulped it down in three swift swigs. He held the empty cup out for more, and Emily happily obliged, pouring in the remainder of the water. It disappeared almost as quickly as the first time, and Emily thought she saw a little color returning to the kid’s face.
“Hey, Ben,” she said as he handed the cup back to her. “How about we get you into a change of clothes?” Ben raised his arms above his head and waited for Emily to pull his shirt over his head. He unbuckled his belt, kicked off his shoes, and wriggled out of his jeans. Emily pulled off his socks, holding her nose in mock-disgust as she deposited them into the trash can at the side of the bed, which elicited a brief giggling fit from Ben.
“Okay, big guy. Let’s get you cleaned up.” She pulled a fresh towelette from a second packet of baby wipes and began to methodically clean the dirt from his face and his neck, then down his arms to his fingertips. She gave his chest and legs a quick once-over. “Up you get,” she said when she was done with his feet. “Let’s get your back next.”
Ben stood and turned.
The bruise on his back from where the creature’s whiplike tentacle had hit the boy was ugly; a mix of angry purple-and-black blotches overlapping each other around a raised bump of skin. Emily carefully probed the area with the baby wipe, cleaning the wound as gently as possible. The wound looked a little inflamed to her. She’d need to disinfect it.
She finished cleaning the boy up, then led him over to where she had set her backpack down. She opened a side flap and pulled out the first aid kit, then opened it and unwrapped an antiseptic wipe.
“That itches,” he said as she used the wipe to go back over the welt and bruised area beneath his shoulder.
“All done,” replied Emily, balling the antiseptic wipe and tossing it in the trash. She pulled out fresh clothes for him from his backpack and helped him into them. By the time she was finished, the kid looked a lot more like the little ball of energy she had come to adore over the past couple of days.
She stared into his eyes for a moment, pushing an errant lock of hair from his face. There was so much sadness behind those young eyes. She was about to ask him how he was feeling when Rhiannon flounced out of the bathroom dressed in bright-pink sweats.
“Your turn,” she said to Emily, tossing the half-empty pack of baby wipes to her.
Emily pulled another antiseptic wipe from the first aid kit and headed into the bathroom. The gash on her forehead was ugly looking and inflamed. She cleaned the area with the antibacterial wipe. By the time Emily was done wiping the grime from the rest of her body and slipping into her fresh, if rather wrinkled, clothes, the kids were sitting together at the small table. They had helped themselves to a can of fruit each and were happily spooning the contents into their mouths. A third can sat on the tabletop, a plastic spoon resting next to it.
Emily pulled the lid off the can and joined them for dinner.
* * *
That evening, Emily placed a sat-phone call to Jacob from the corridor of the hotel. In the confusion and headlong flight of the past few days, she had completely forgotten her nightly commitment to update him. And in her earlier rush to pack, she realized as she pulled the equipment from the backpack, she had somehow managed to turn the phone off, so there was no way for him to contact her.
Emily knew he would be horribly worried.
“All that matters is that you are all okay,” he said after she had explained. “Tell me more about the creature and what happened.”
Emily ran through how she had managed to rescue the kids but how Simon had been overcome by the creature. Jacob, as always, found the subject matter fascinating.
“I’m sorry,” he said after he realized he was more concerned with the process of Simon’s transmutation by the creature than the loss of the man. “Sometimes the scientist gets the better of me.”
His embarrassment quickly dissipated when she told him she was now driving. “That’s fantastic.” Jacob’s voice took on a new dimension of cheerfulness at the news. “You’ll be here in no time at all now.”
But Jacob’s tone fell back to one of concern when he heard the conclusion of her battle with the creature and that Ben had been struck by the alien as it died. “Is he all right?”
“Yes, a little bruised and in shock. But the kid has his sister looking after him. He’ll pull through.”
After the call ended, Emily found both the children already asleep. She replaced the phone in the backpack and climbed into the second bed, lulled quickly to sleep by the children’s steady breathing.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Daylight gently woke Emily, dancing across the lids of her eyes.
She stretched, dressed, and let Thor out into the corridor, waiting at the door as he wandered first up, then back down the corridor. When, for reasons known only to the dog, he settled on a particular door to pee against, he looked back at her and she nodded once, giving him her permission to do his thing indoors. When he was done, she ushered him back in and allowed the door to click closed behind her.
Rhiannon must have already been awake when she’d let Thor outside, because when Emily turned around, the girl was pulling on the top to her sweats—even more shockingly pink in the daylight, Emily noted—but Ben was still asleep, bundled up beneath the blankets next to where Rhiannon had been sleeping.
“Ben,” Emily called as she searched the supply bag for something other than granola bars for breakfast. She was sure she had seen a couple of Fiber One bars in here somewhere. “Rhiannon, wake your brother,” Emily asked when the boy didn’t answer or stir.
“Emily!” The concern in Rhia’s voice made all thoughts of breakfast disappear, and Emily found herself instantly at the girl’s side.
“What is it?”
Rhiannon pulled back the sheet from Ben’s face. The boy did not look well. His face was flushed bright red and his normally bright eyes were dull and even more bloodshot than the day before.
Oh! Dear God, no.
Emily tried to keep her fear at what she saw from reaching her face as she leaned in closer to check if the boy was even breathing. She placed an ear close to his mouth. Yes, thank you, God. She breathed a sigh of relief as she felt the gentle wisp of his breath against her ear.
It’s probably just a reaction to the shock of losing his father, she thought. Too much upheaval for the poor kid. That’s all it is. She didn’t like the way those last couple of sentences sounded in her head; they sounded more like a plea than a statement of fact.
Emily knelt down next to the bed and pulled the covers back from the boy’s body.
“Are you okay, kiddo?” she asked him.
His T-shirt was soaked in sweat, and beads of perspiration dotted his hairline and forehead. She placed a cool hand against his brow
.
Jesus! The kid was burning up.
“My head hurts,” he whimpered.
“Rhiannon, go into the big bag for me, and in the pocket on the left side, you’ll see a first aid kit. Will you go get it for me, please?” she asked, then added, “And bring some water, too. And a fresh T-shirt.”
Ben’s sister remained where she was, staring at her brother.
“Rhiannon!” Emily snapped. “Now, please.” The kid jumped and then ran to the backpack that Emily had left near the entrance to the room. When she was out of sight, Emily gently turned Ben toward her so she could get a better view of his back.
“Oh, shit. Oh no,” she whispered. She threw a hand over her mouth before more emotion could escape from it. Overnight the bruise from the creature’s attack had spread across both of Ben’s shoulders and all the way down to the small of his back. The bump that had seemed inflamed had thickened and enlarged to a black pustule with thick black streamers of infection running from its center, stretching out across his shoulders and under his left armpit. A second ribbon of engorged veins had spread to his spine, then followed it upward toward the base of his neck.
“Here,” said Rhiannon, appearing beside Emily at the door, the plastic first aid kit in one hand and a T-shirt in the other. Emily quickly rolled the boy onto his back before his sister could see the infection tattooed across Ben’s back.
“Thanks.” She opened up the first aid kit and pulled out a bottle of aspirin. The bottle recommended a single tablet for anyone under the age of twelve. But this wasn’t a kid with a headache; this was a child with a major infection. She broke two of the little white tablets into smaller pieces and popped them one at a time into the boy’s mouth, followed by a swig of water from the bottle each time.
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