Forging Zero

by Sara King

  All over the world, riots broke out at the news, and suddenly the reporters had something else to talk about. The Crips and the Bloods and the Hells Angels were taking a stand right alongside disbanded soldiers, National Guard, and Marines. People everywhere were dying in swaths, the aliens obliterating whole city blocks if too many people tried to fight. Joe stayed glued to the TV, only eating when his stomach distracted him from the aliens marching across the screen. They were so precise, so perfect…like the old World War II videos of Nazi soldiers. It triggered something primal that made him want to crawl under his bed and hide.

  But not his dad. When they finally announced that the alien collection crews would be sweeping through their neighborhood, Joe’s father pulled out his old military work cammies and started getting dressed. They were the desert ones, the ones Joe had associated with war back when Joe had to stand in a crowd with his mom and watch his dad get on a ship to go overseas.

  What Joe remembered most about that first night was his father’s sleeves. He took hours to get them right, ironing them so flat they wrapped around his biceps like Celtic armbands. His dad prided himself on having the most tightly rolled sleeves in his unit, tighter than the captains and majors and generals themselves. Joe could always tell his father from a distance just by looking at his sleeves.

  “A Marine takes pride in his job, Joe. Even if it’s rolling sleeves.” It was what his father had said a thousand times before when he labored over his uniform. Now he said nothing. Joe and Sam watched him, neither able to dredge up the courage to ask him why he was getting dressed in the middle of the night. The silence was ominous.

  When their mother saw what her husband was doing, she ushered Joe and Sam to their rooms and made them lock the doors. Through the cracks, Joe heard her argue with his father, plead with him, and cry, but finally she retreated and sequestered herself in the other end of the house. Joe crept back out to watch his father iron his cammies, his anxiety growing like a hard lump in his throat. Sam followed him, his skinny ten-year-old body hunched close behind Joe as they came to a stop beside their father’s ironing board.

  For long moments, the three of them just stood there watching the iron in silence. Then, softly, without looking up, their dad said, “Sometimes you’ve gotta stand up for yourself, even when you know you ain’t got a chance.” Outside, they heard shouts and helicopters and car alarms.

  “What are you doing, Dad?” Sam whispered.

  “Yeah, Dad,” Joe said softly. “They disbanded the Marines. You heard the TV.”

  The iron stopped, settling over the sleeve. Their father stared down at it, his muscular arm no longer moving. When he looked at them, Joe was stunned to see tears. Their father settled his gaze on Sam. “You get yourself in MIT, Sam. You’re gonna be a big guy like your brother and me, but brute strength ain’t gonna win this. It’s gonna be someone with a brain like yours, and you ain’t no warrior. You’re a scholar, kid. Stay here and figure out a way to beat these bastards.” The iron started to move again.

  Sam’s chest caught in a sob. “I’ll go. Stay here, Dad. I’ll go with them.”

  “No.” Their father’s tone brooked no argument.

  Sam, the idiot, argued anyway. “But—”

  “Go back to your room.” Their father’s voice was filled with warning.

  “But Dad—”

  “Go, Sam.”

  Giving Joe an agonized look, Sam went.

  Joe’s father finished ironing in silence and then tugged his cammi jacket over his wide shoulders. The sleeves rested just above his biceps, crisp and perfect despite the chaos outside. Seeing it on his father for the first time in four years, Joe felt a cold chill. When their eyes met, there was a sadness in his father’s face, a recognition that Joe could not understand. He watched his dad pick up the three guns he’d left by the front door, his throat burning with the need to say something.

  “Take care of your brother, Joe.” Then his father opened the door and disappeared into the chaos of black smoke, gunfire, and screaming.

  That was two months ago.

  Joe was still fourteen, but he felt older now. Compared to the other kids in the hazy red light of the obsidian dome, he was ancient.

  I’m not supposed to be here. Sam is.

  Joe closed his eyes and let his head touch the wall behind him. The black substance depressed slightly at his touch, cradling his skull with its eerie, alien perfection. Like everything else on the ship, the wall seemed alive. It seemed to move with a soul of its own, like a billion little ants covered the surface. Sometimes his hair stuck, just enough that it was uncomfortable, but not enough to pull it out. The cloth under his butt and against his shoulder-blades likewise fused to the stuff.

  Behind closed eyes, an image blazed in Joe’s mind. His dad, stepping into the whirling smoke outside, sleeves rolled for war.

  Joe immediately fought the surge of anger twisting in his gut. The government had ordered the Marines not to get involved. They’d told everyone to stay in their homes, to do whatever the aliens told them. Yet Joe’s father had rallied his old friends anyway. Why? Why couldn’t they just hide Sam? Why did Dad have to fight?

  The children trapped in the room with Joe had long since stopped crying. Some were sleeping, snot and tears leaking down their faces. Many were huddled in whimpering groups, wide-eyed, clutching their knees or whatever relics of home they had managed to salvage before the sweeps. One little girl had a sooty cloth doll, one half of its head singed from the fires.

  The stench of smoke still stung the insides of Joe’s nostrils. In the weeks that followed the start of the Draft, burning houses had cast the subdivision in a putrid black haze. Along the sidewalks, cars had smoldered, adding spent gasoline and plastic fumes to the choking smog. Constant gunfire had rattled the glass in the windows. Armed looters had followed behind the Congies, taking stuff from the homes and bodies of people who had resisted the aliens’ collection efforts.

  But now all Joe cared about was food. He hadn’t eaten in so long that his stomach was a constant pain to him, keeping him awake. They had water, piped in from the walls in constant-supply tubes that looked a lot like the bottles on a gerbil tank, but that was it. Worse, the water tasted funny, almost like algae. Joe guessed it had been days since their capture, but like the other kids that the aliens had kidnapped and herded in here like cattle, Joe had spent most of his time sleeping. It had been so quiet since their abductors had shoved them in here that several times, Joe had wondered if they had been forgotten in their prison to starve.

  I’m not supposed to be here. It should have been Sam.

  Joe took a deep breath and released it angrily, then pushed himself to his feet. The living black walls gripped his damp palms like frozen metal. Joe yanked his hands away and rubbed his palms together to rid himself of the sensation.

  Everywhere, little kids were watching him. Joe tried to ignore them, but he was head and shoulders taller than anyone else in the room and his size drew their anxious gazes.

  They wanted his help. He could see the fear and desperation in their eyes. They wanted him to do something, like their parents would have done something for them, and for days Joe had resented them for it. He hated their stares. Their need. Who did they think he was? What made them think he could help them? He wasn’t their dad. He was just a kid, just like them, and they were captured by aliens. A big kid, but still just a kid.

  I’m not supposed to be here.

  The thought wrenched at Joe’s spirit, just as it had a thousand times already. He hated his brother. It was Sam who was supposed to be on this ship, listening to children whimper and smelling kiddie pee as they wet themselves. It was Sam who’d been strung out in a line of kids bound for the ship. And it was Sam who’d run away while Joe got caught.

  His mother’s words from the day of his capture still haunted him.

  Go to Hell, Joe.

  The agony of that moment was still raw in his chest, so raw it hurt to breathe. His mo
m had begged him. Begged him not to go after Sam. “You’re all I have left,” she kept saying, through tears. “Please, Joe. Please don’t do this. You can’t help Sam…”

  And Joe had turned his back to her and walked out the door.

  Go to Hell, Joe, had been his mother’s last teary words she shouted after him as she stood there, shaking, on the front porch, watching him go. I hope you go to Hell.

  She’d gotten her wish.

  Miserable, he got up and stumbled over to one of the tiny holes spaced along the circular edge of the room. He pissed in it, then zipped up and looked out over the ocean of children. He saw one kid in fake cammies, the kind you could buy at the PX to dress your kid up like a soldier. It even had cute little rolled sleeves, though they were flat and lifeless from mechanical pressing. Nothing like his father’s.

  Stupid kid.

  Joe tore his attention away from the boy, his eyes stinging. He let his gaze wander around the edges of the obsidian dome, looking once again for an exit, a seam, a lock, any indication that they weren’t trapped here forever.

  The silky black surface of the room was flawless. Two feet out of reach, a scarlet globe protruded from the ceiling and cast the space in an eerie red haze, but there were no doors, no windows, nothing but hundreds of little kids watching him.

  Joe’s angry, frustrated scowl fell once again upon the little groups of children huddled against the walls. The boy who was brave enough to meet his gaze flinched and looked at the floor between his legs. Moments later, his thin shoulders began quaking in tiny sobs.

  In that moment, Joe felt like he’d been slapped. Watching the kids whimper and cringe away from his angry look, he realized that they all just wanted someone to tell them they’d be okay. Just like Joe had wanted, back when his world was falling apart. When Dad disappeared, and nobody would go looking for him. When he found Dad’s friend Manny, slumped against a bent parking meter in a pool of blood, Dad’s knife in his hands. When they came for Sam.

  Though Joe’s nerves were screaming at him to curl up against the wall somewhere and pretend they didn’t exist, he went over to the boy and squatted in front of him. The kid glanced up, the hope in his eyes so strong it was painful.

  Swallowing hard, Joe said, “How you doing?”

  The kid blurted, “Do you know when they’re gonna let us go home?”

  Hearing the innocent desperation in the kid’s voice, Joe felt a tiny part of him die. Nobody had told him. Nobody had even bothered to even tell him.

  I can’t help these kids, Joe thought, in despair. What the hell did he say to them? Who the hell was he, Joe Dobbs, to tell them they were never going to see their families again?

  But he had to tell him something. Looking into his eyes, Joe knew he couldn’t just walk away and go back to sulking. But he couldn’t tell him the truth, either.

  “I don’t know when they’re gonna let us out,” Joe said, “but I do know they’re not gonna leave us in here forever.” Not by a long shot.

  The kid began to shake. “I don’t want them to come back. They scare me.”

  They’re gonna do a lot worse than scare us. Joe reached out and put a hand on the boy’s thin shoulder, enveloping it with his palm. “Look, kid, they’re just big squid. You find scarier stuff in your kitchen sink.”

  “They don’t look like squid,” the kid whimpered.

  He’s right. They’re goddamn aliens, you insensitive son of a bitch. “Prunes, then. Big, butt-ugly prunes.”

  The kid laughed, a relieved half-sob. Joe patted his shoulder and stood up.

  “Aren’t you too big to be here?” an older girl behind Joe said, accusation strong in her voice.

  Joe flinched. “Yeah, I’m fourteen,” he offered reluctantly. Two years older than the aliens’ max collection age. What was worse, Joe was a freak. At fourteen, he was built like a professional NFL linebacker and already over six feet. To these kids, he probably looked eighty.

  “So why’d they take you?” another nearby girl demanded.

  “I was stupid,” Joe said, grimacing.

  “Stupid how?”

  “I did something they didn’t like,” Joe said, tensing his fists with the memory, wishing he had somewhere he could hide from all of their piercing stares. Every eye in the room was on him. He probably looked like a lot of their dads.

  “Like what?” a kid insisted.

  Joe grimaced. “Look, uh…guys. I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You should tell them you’re fourteen,” a girl said sagely.

  “Yeah,” a little boy piped up. “You can’t be here if you’re older than twelve.” He was probably seven or eight, and he looked perfectly sure that if Joe were to walk up to the aliens right now and tell them he was fourteen, not twelve, he would receive a Get Out Of Jail Free card and everything would be all right.

  Obviously, none of them had seen what Joe had done to get into this place. Or the look in the aliens’ eyes when they’d first shoved him into this huge room, alone, more than a day before the other kids.

  None of them understand. Joe felt an overwhelming urge to get away from them, to get back to his empty spot against the wall and be alone, but he forced himself to smile, instead. “Maybe I’ll do that.” Yeah, right about the time they pulled out a gun and blew his head off for being too damn old.

  Feeling the pressure of their stares, Joe slunk back over to his ‘corner’ and turned to partially face the wall. It was the only way he could pretend they weren’t watching him.

  I want to go home. God, please just let me go home.

  There were no heavenly choirs, no celestial trumpets, no parting of the skies. Just hundreds of desperate little kids, watching him like he had all the answers.

  CHAPTER 2 : Little Harry Simpson

  Without warning, the obsidian wall dripped open beside Joe, and a group of aliens rushed inside in a wave. They weren’t wearing the glistening black suits that they had worn on the White House lawn, the ones that deflected bullets. For the first time, he could see the sticky brown skin up close, the four slender tentacles protruding from each boneless arm, the big snakelike eyes that reminded him of wet gummi bears, the two tentacles wriggling from their heads like worms had burrowed into their brains.

  In the chaos that followed—aliens shouting, kids screaming, children scattering—Joe ducked out the door and ran for it.

  At six-foot-one, with all of his spare time before the Draft spent practicing for football season, Joe was faster—much faster—than his boneless five-foot captors. He peeled out of the room and down the closest red-lit hall. The aliens shouted at him through their translators for him to come back.

  Joe ignored them and kept running.

  Soon, he was alone. He stopped and glanced down two equally long corridors, wondering which way was the way out.

  They hadn’t left Earth yet. The ship hadn’t so much as jiggled since they’d shoved Joe inside the prison with the others only days before.

  He still had a chance.

  Joe chose a corridor and hurtled down it, praying that he could find his way out. He charged down two more hallways—and then abruptly hit a dead end. The corridor terminated in a sleek black wall. It was too abrupt, however, obviously the entrance to another room or hall. Joe desperately searched the wall, looking for some sort of control pad or lock—something that would let him inside. Feeling the beginnings of panic, Joe swept his fingers across the wall, digging at the sticky blackness seeking a button or catch, but he could find no irregularities to indicate an entrance.

  Behind him, Joe heard the muffled pounding of boots as his pursuers caught up with him. Adrenaline scoured his chest and his breath began to come in quick, labored pants as he frantically slapped at the corridor’s unyielding surface, still to no avail. Heart thundering a roaring staccato in his ears, Joe gave up on the door and turned to backtrack.

  Five aliens blocked his path like wormy brown turds. They had smallish black guns out, grunting to themselves
in their harsh alien language, pointing at him and nodding their heads.

  Joe didn’t need their translators to know they were laughing at him.

  The alien in front, his wrinkled brown face streaked with light orange highlights, was the loudest of the bunch. The little device around his neck even managed to interpret the amount of scorn in his voice. “The pathetic creature is too stupid to open a door. We should leave it here to starve. It’s not going anywhere.”

  Joe tensed. “Back off! I’m fourteen. I’m too old to be a soldier.”

  Although the translators around their necks didn’t repeat Joe’s words, the pale, scarred alien in the back gave him an appraising glance. Seemingly having no trouble at all understanding him, it said, “You’re right. Commander Lagrah has something else in mind for you.”

  The alien with the orange facial features made another grunting laugh. “You’re too kind, Kihgl. Just tell the Human we’re gonna kill it.”

  “Be silent, Tril.” The words rang from the translator of the same alien in the back, the one called Kihgl. Kihgl seemed to be a lighter color than the rest, with droopier folds of skin and a startling cross-hatching of black scars across his neck and face disappearing under a crisp black uniform.

  Tril wrinkled his orange-tinted face. “It’s already caused us enough trouble…I don’t see why we can’t extract a little payment before we kill it.”

  “He’s faster than you, Commander Tril. He’s gonna be even harder to control if you panic him.”

  “We can fix that.” Tril raised his gun, aiming at Joe’s leg. The other aliens grunted with laughter as Joe hopped out of the way in a panic.

  “Commander Tril.” The warning in the pale, deeply-scarred alien’s tone was clear.

  Tril immediately tucked the little black gun under his belt and said to Joe, “Lower yourself to the ground and place your arms behind your back.”

  “No.” Joe’s heart was hammering like gunfire against his ribs. He desperately scanned the hall behind them, trying to judge whether or not he could make it past their barricade of bodies before they shot him.