by Rebecca Ore
“He knows other humans would be scared of him. So he stays with us.”
“Well, with you dropped out of school and him, I’ve got help enough,” Warren said. “They want me to make about ten thousand pills a week, plus tab another ten thousand Quaaludes. But I also heard some Atlanta investors threw one drug-tabbing operation to the Feds.”
The alien shivered a bit in the cold, early November. I wondered about leaving Warren with this mess, traveling cross-country in dead winter. We’d have to cut out holes for the webs in the alien’s clothes. He needed warm clothes. And food—what if someone caught us?
I got Warren’s other bag from the back of the camper.
“The Atlanta people know I’ve got a brother, but they sure didn’t mention the spare help.” He laughed as though having an alien helping was one thing he had over on those Atlanta investors. I got scared for Warren, too.
Alpha, after a quick look at me, gestured to Warren, wanted him to see all the work we’d done on the chicken house. The moonlight glinted off the new tin roof, off the methane tanks, and the compressor squatting low and dirty between the tanks and the chicken house wall.
“Hell of a lot of work,” Warren said tiredly. I thought he was more referring to what he had ahead of him than the shed we’d roofed. “Damn eggs, damn pills; both a bitch to market.”
The next morning, two guys drove up in a big Ryder truck with mud-smeared plates and unloaded another pill-milking machine. Huge, anonymous guys, one black, one white, feed brand caps low on the foreheads and enough dirt on their faces to mask them. Their voices seemed to shift accent with each separate short sentence that they spoke.
“See,” Warren said to me, “they’re helping out.” His hand shaking, he signed a receipt for the machine.
“Don’t sign anything, Warren.” I saw the curtains at the alien’s window flutter a bit, as though he’d been watching. Warren handed them the receipt and looked at me as though he was stoned, doomed, or both.
The guys from Atlanta took the receipt and drove away. Next day, we unbuilt the machine and re-built it in the bunker.
Alpha stopped the machines just as Warren started them, the powder mill and both pilling machines. The alien, one hand cupped over the powder mill switch, lips pulled back so the little teeth glittered, pointed from me to the respirator, and back.
Warren sighed, went upstairs, and came back with a gas mask for me, which was hot and clammy, but it worked.
I’d never before seen Warren take bossing from man or beast, but now he had a whole mess of bosses.
At Thanksgiving, Warren went over to Galax to spend the holidays with a woman he knew. As soon as he was gone, the alien started drawing again, me with a human woman, among aliens. I wasn’t sure if they shook hands in space the way he was drawing them, or if he was using the Earth gestures to make me think I’d be at home in space.
I stopped his hand and drew Warren getting shot by a black guy and a white guy.
We sat there a long time, at the kitchen table, with cats mewing at our feet. He hummed low in his throat, first drew a black man and a white man shooting us all, then three skeletons, two not quite the same as the third, as though he guessed what our human bones were like under the different flesh.
Yes, we could all get killed. I heard the road alarm finally go off, the clock buzz of it, and burned the drawings in the sink. Horrible drawings.
The alien went “blam” with his lips, so real I jumped as though a shotgun had gone off, expecting to hear pellets rattling against the walls until I realized he’d spoken it.
Then he stepped up behind me and rubbed the backs of his hands against my shoulder. I knocked his hands away and said, “Don’t tempt me.” He pushed his knuckles, hand curled slightly, against my chin, then walked away fast, as though very frustrated.
The alarm stopped just as I got out the shotgun—Warren must have missed disconnecting the override, but he’d gotten back to it.
The alien and I fixed the turkey, then Warren came out of his room, red-faced. His Galax woman wanted him to quit the drug business, now. “She doesn’t approve,” he said. “And she sure the hell doesn’t understand what they’d do to me.”
All of us were bone-jerking tense. The alien began pacing, rocking his torso over his short bowed legs, spreading his arm webs, then pulling his arms around his body, the membranes stretched tight around himself. He spread his arms again, as if he turned hot and cold, or didn’t know which he was, cold or hot.
Warren, his eyes on the turkey that he was slicing to bits, jerked his chin at Alpha, who stepped away from the table, hands hooked behind his neck, the long arms fitted up against his sides. “Gonna be weird,” Warren said, “when the Atlanta people get tired of me, and the law finds your alien here.” He started to laugh, then turned an angry red.
“If you hadn’t expanded your damned operation on Alpha’s labor…”
“Shut up, Tom,” Warren said. “It was way the hell over before that. And the guy in California dumped that damn locator in the ocean. He’s none too happy. He shot a man with thyroid eyes snooping around where he kept the egg. And he didn’t get it killed. Other people took it away. Aliens after us.” Warren grabbed a turkey leg, bit into it, and choked, coughing the meat out into his hand. I guessed he hadn’t stayed long enough to eat in Galax.
After dinner, the alien watched Warren drive off, then turned to me and went “blam” again, just like a shotgun. Then he curled up on the sofa and beat at the armrests with his fists, hissing and singsonging, eyes quivering
“Warren,” I said at breakfast soon after that, as nonchalantly as I could, “why don’t we get the Fairlane tuned up, the battery’s getting old. Get it in shape in case I have to come after you in Atlanta, or something.”
He looked up at me, his eyes red-veined, fork with egg on it in front of his unshaved chin. Quaaludes and speed—crank it up, crank it down. Quaalude-slow this morning, he stared at me blankly a long while. Finally he said, “Sure.”
At the sink, the alien turned back to look at us. He came back to the table, glass of blood and oil in one hand, plate of our eggs in the other, and oo’ed slightly.
“You’re using, Warren,” I said. He’d always dabbled, but he wasn’t stable enough to do a whole lot of speed. And here I was going to abandon him to the drug investors. I felt guilty, but God, I had to get out. Save Alpha. But seeing Warren using hurt—he was my brother.
“Have a lot of work to finish,” Warren said. “Alien here doesn’t seem to mind the push, and I don’t force the load on you.”
All I ran was one pilling machine, and I felt doubly guilty, to be making drugs, to leave so much work to them. Triply guilty, to be plotting to leave.
“Sorry,” I said.
“I’ll get you a new battery, tune that old Ford up. Must be boring all the time with some weird creature who can’t even say boo.”
Alpha had made himself a flat straw out of a Coke bottle he melted and fussed with over the gas stove, and now he had it stuck deep in his throat, pumping up the blood and oil mix, breathing in and out all the while.
Hadn’t noticed he could breathe when he drank, before. Alien, very alien. Could he and I escape and leave Warren, who’d lose everything, maybe even sanity or life, to anonymous guys with dirt-masked faces?
Or should I turn the alien over to the government? Sure, turn Alph over to the Air Force—him prisoner for life and the Atlanta investors still after Warren and me. The alien had already drawn up the best plan: kidnap some girl and leave the planet with the friendly aliens, if he hadn’t been lying with that old yellow #2 pencil.
Flat lot of good #2 pencils had done me all my time on Earth. Me high-percentiling the achievement tests only made teachers think I was thief-stock cool.
“Thanks,” I said to Warren, who didn’t seem to have noticed that my pause had been rather long.
While Warren went out for groceries and a new car battery, Alpha and I worked in our respirators, both weird-
looking beyond the ordinary with the breather snouts and shadowed faces under the harsh light of the bunker, working between earth walls shored up with chicken wire and two-by-fours.
On a machine like in a factory—nothing romantic about drug-making. Damned machines whumped down the pill powder while I cleared the stupid little pistons and adjusted the powder flow. Stomp that pedal, old obsolete cranky machine.
The alarm went off, then stopped. Warren.
The alien watched from the porch as Warren drove up and parked. Smoke came off the engine block, so Warren said, “Think I’ll drive it about, see if it needs more work, or if the oil’s just got to burn off.”
Alpha, up on the porch, fidgeted, almost dancing. Suddenly, I thought of how stupid, really, the escape plan was—where exactly were we going? I hopped up on the porch and caught him by a web, rudely, then shifted my hand to his elbow and led him inside.
Alpha embraced me, so excited, and brought out the atlas again.
How, I wondered, was I ever to understand them in space? I drew me speaking, using a little balloon for the words like a cartoon. Then the alien, with a balloon full of song notes. Then his question sign.
He drew me and a balloon with an exact copy of the word “Executive” in it, copied from the top of the legal pad. Then he drew a box, “Executive,” going in, and scribbles, in his own writing, coming out. Translation machines?
I heard the Ford coming back and cleared up all the peculiar drawings before Warren could see them. All the rest of the afternoon, the alien chirped and koo’ed, acting pert when Warren tried to make him load the pill mill faster.
“Damn, Warren,” I said, “I’d rather take getting shot than doing this forever.”
“Hush, Tom. Your little buddy’s quick on tones. Don’t you encourage his fussing. Thought I’d broke him good.”
“Damn machine’s gonna jam.”
Yelling, muffled voices in a haze of speed dust, Quaalude powder. Worse than factory work, buried underground working. Warren reached into a bag and took another pill, swallowed it down with a beer, and began staring down the basement tunnel as if he’d heard something. God, his hair’s turning gray—I hadn’t noticed that before.
Then he looked at the alien, and they both jerked their heads down, not nodding, not at all friendly.
The alien wanted to leave now and kept shoving little drawings of the Fairlane at me when Warren wasn’t looking. He must have stayed up late, drawing little cars on paper scraps, filling his pants and shirt pockets with them.
He wore shirts in the cold, slit from elbow down to the waist for the webs, which he kept close to his body except when he reached out to hand me one of those little drawings. Then the web would dangle out, raw and cold looking.
Carefully, when Warren was out, I checked for inside alarms and searched for Warren’s money. He’d hid it inside his stereo. I only found it because the screwheads looked a bit too used and the stereo hadn’t worked in years. Who’d have thought someone would mess up a thousand-dollar stereo and tape deck for a stash, but the stash was around $20,000. I took $5,000, trying to persuade myself it was my money, too. And it was, really.
While I found the money, the alien, eyes glittering, watched Dr. Who and sang to himself, spreading his arms periodically, blood pulsing into the web veins. Warren came back about fifteen minutes after I’d taken his money and said he was going to deliver pills to his Atlanta connection tonight.
As we got set up to pack the pills, Warren gave us both plastic surgical gloves, which didn’t fit Alpha well. He managed to cover his fingers, though, and we all scooped pills into double plastic bags, then dropped each bag into a barrel half full of chicken shit. Warren showed the alien how to top off the barrel, and then we soldered the barrels shut.
Two barrels of pills. Warren got the camper-back off the pickup and laid down planks so we could roll the barrels into the truck bed. Didn’t look like much, just a couple of chicken-shit drums for some organic farmers.
We watched Warren drive off, me thinking about the guys who killed over the drug business, Alpha dancing around, glad to see him go. The alien and I re-set the road alarms after Warren passed the electric eye, then started packing.
Alpha got the shotgun and shells from Warren’s room. We had a TV show on, playing loud to keep me a bit distracted from what I was doing. The alien came up to the screen, watched the humans a bit, then raised the gun, grinning his alien grin. Blam!
After I realized he hadn’t actually blown the set away, I took the gun and shells away from him. He danced around me, flipping his elbows out, whacking me with them.
Warren had fixed the Fairlane so you could flip the back seat down and get to the trunk. Once we’d gotten the back seat out, the alien could ride up front most of the time, but could hide in the trunk if he had to, or when we stopped for gas and groceries. I thought we’d be better off to drive at night, sleep off the road during the day.
So, I sat in the car, an alien beside me, night coming on, the ignition key pushed in the slot, cartons of eggs and suitcases in back. Both the alien and I trembled. He opened the atlas and pointed to Berkeley. Maybe, I thought, some scientist could figure out how to understand him.
My hand, as though it’d grown an alien-sympathizing brain, turned the ignition key before I really wanted to. Then, remembering the teachers back at high school, I dropped one foot down on the accelerator, the other on the clutch, and shifted—Bye, Virginia, we’re history.
2
Steel Things, Steel Places
We’d escape to the alien buildings in Alpha’s drawings, abandoning pilling machines jammed on nasty drugs and photos of men with crushed legs in envelopes postmarked Atlanta.
The alien reached over the seat for the shotgun and shells. Softly making fired gun sounds, he stuck his long index finger through the trigger guard.
Damn! I stopped and pulled the gun out of his hands. The alien watched very intently as I broke open the breech, saw it was empty, and closed it. He reached to take it back, but I shoved the gun as far as I could through the trunk hole.
As I re-set Warren’s road alarm, the alien drummed his fists on the dashboard, then got a shotgun shell, holding the shell delicately in his long fingers, the sparse fur on his knuckles picking up highlights from the inside lights.
The sooner we got off county roads and onto the I-81 going west, the safer I’d feel. Warren—I knew it was irrational—could have spies watching on Rte. 8.
The alien began to sing to himself.
About a half mile farther, I saw a black mass pull out of an abandoned house’s driveway onto the road.
My headlights hit it.
Warren’s truck!
I wondered if I could jam it on and get around him, but fence posts, high banks crowded me.
“No. No. No.”
My God, Warren’s in the truck, I thought for a second before I realized it was the alien, imitating Warren. The alien shook his head vigorously. He’d learned no from Warren.
I said, “Sorry,” and stopped the Fairlane.
“No.” The trembling alien spoke exactly like he’d said the other no’s, precisely the same tone. He began climbing over the seat, to hide in the trunk as I’d drawn that he should do when we were around strangers.
Now the beating. I turned and drove back home; parked close to the house, and started crying on the steering wheel.
Warren’s pickup almost rammed the Fairlane. He came out of the cab white-faced, jabbering. “If you’d waited another hour, I would have gone on, but you were so obvious, so damn fucking anxious.”
Slowly I got out of the Fairlane. “Where’s the alien?” Warren asked. “Where’s the monster? You shit, Tom, my only brother, sneaking out with an alien monster, blood drinker.” Warren yanked the keys out of the ignition and bent them against a stone. When he reached into the car again, Warren’s voice faded: “Sweet Jesus.”
I moved toward the car. Warren said almost calmly, “Stop, Tom, it’s got a sh
otgun trained on me.”
“Not loaded,” I said. Then I remembered the shell the alien fingered, how he’d watched me open the breech. “Wait! Could be…”
As Warren backed away, the alien crawled out over the seat, with the gun crooked in his elbow, muttering soft blams. The creature was crying. He said again, in Warren’s voice, “No,” and raised the gun up, finger not quite on the trigger, head and shoulder hairs standing up.
Seemingly forever, both stood in the truck headlights. Then Warren, reaching for his boot pistol, rolled into the darkness. The dark flashed, the little crack of the .22, not the big .357 magnum.
The alien screamed and dropped the shotgun. He braced himself against the car and began talking hoarsely in his own language.
“Warren, are you all right?” I asked.
“Yeah, I got him.”
“No,” the alien said. “No.” He reached down and spread a hand over the wound, then began trying to walk to Warren.
I caught him, and he pushed my hands against the wound, like wet hot meat, and collapsed.
“Bring him in the house,” Warren said. He held the door as I staggered in, the alien weighing almost as much as me.
“Put him on the kitchen table, strip him.” Warren left me while I did that, the alien softly crying, hands fluttering, touching my eyebrows. Warren came back with a first-aid kit and a syringe.
As Warren heated morphine and water in a little copper pot Mom’d used for melting butter, the alien drew in the air with his hands, then grabbed me and looked around until he saw the pad. I got it for him, and he drew me with the aliens and looked at me.
Exhausted and crying, I nodded. He wrote more on the drawing, then drew me giving the drawing to other aliens who looked like him. Then he quivered, the blood oozing from his chest.
Warren drew up a needleful of morphine and palpated the veins in Alpha’s inner elbow. Alpha tried to touch Warren’s face. “He’s got veins, almost like us,” Warren said, slipping the needle in, drawing blood into the syringe.
