Gage stayed with her.
Total, it took less than twenty-four hours. The crud thickened, lost its plasticity and hardened. Adah stopped crying and watched in a daze.
In the future, Gage insisted, when the crud had been fully examined, scientists would reverse the process and bring them back. It wasn’t a forever thing. Adah nodded, and Gage led her to his parents’ porch, where two sets of clothes lay folded.
He told Adah what needed to be done. She nodded dumbly and complied without embarrassment or shame. He shaved her head. She shaved his. They undressed, bathed and dumped their clothes in the barrel. Gage squeezed kerosene into the barrel, then a little more to be sure, and extra, to be extra sure. He ignited it. Flames leaped to the ceiling; smoke poured out, then retreated into the barrel. Gage and Adah dressed and fled from the smoke inside.
Gage’s parents lay on the couch hugging each other, their naked bodies coated with crud, which joined them together.
Suddenly, the full flush of Gage’s thirteen years coursed through his body with enough ferocity to convince him if he said “No” hard enough, the world would back down and cooperate. His parents had done everything right, and still, the crud had them. Something had to be done, and it couldn’t be what had already been tried.
He leaped on his parents and tore at the crud. It came away in chunks like drying taffy.
Adah said he should leave them be. They’d be back. Meanwhile, they were in a better place.
As far as Gage saw it, Adah’s parents had succumbed to the crud because Adah didn’t understand what was going on. She didn’t know when to say “No” and was too young to say it in the right way. Her parents had probably filled her head with religious gobbledygook, which confused her and made her think it was a good thing the crud was taking them—the great mystery of God.
Gage uncovered his parents’ mouths and scooped out the gelled crud inside, then ripped it away from their closed eyes. Hair came away with it. So did small patches of skin, which bled, then crudded over. He ripped his parents from each other’s arms and laid them side by side and pumped on their chests like a television EMT. Gouts of crud erupted from their mouths and nostrils with each thrust. Frenzied, he pulled away strips of crud. Like long, thick hangnails, skin peeled away, down their arms and legs and across their chests.
When he was done, they looked like they had been attacked by an animal.
Crud slowly, slowly covered the wounds.
Adah said he shouldn’t have done that.
Breathless, Gage agreed.
He felt like he had done something irreversible. He said he would listen to Adah from now on. He would be dependable. She could trust him. He would never do anything like that again. He didn’t mean to scare her. His parents would be fine, he said and knew he was already lying to her, though he couldn’t tell if it was for her own good, or his.
Gage divided his time between expanding the obstacle course so it surrounded Lost Pine and testing combinations on the gun safe.
Adah intermittently visited him in the cellar to tell him of her work and make sure he was eating.
“I’ve made a greenhouse with the clear poly tarps from the shed,” she said. “It should help when it gets cold.”
“I let a chick hatch,” she said.
“I caught two raccoons. They’re gutted and drying in the sun.”
Gage put on a good face for Adah and thanked her, but there was more to protect than ever. Monk had to return. He had all but threatened he would join a gang. Now that he knew he couldn’t have Lost Pine to himself, nothing stopped him from overtaking it with force, even if that meant he would have to share it. Some of Lost Pine was better than none. Monk would see that. A gang would, too.
Gage wondered if Martin and Sue hadn’t improved upon Lost Pine as he and Adah were because they feared it would attract gangs. Martin and Sue had the equipment. It had waited in Lost Pine’s storage, like bait in a trap. Had the task of constant upkeep been too daunting? Had they feared the work would weaken their bodies and the crud would overwhelm them?
The obstacle course closed around the house like a malicious fence. It comforted Gage and made him feel penned in. Too much work had been dumped into it to abandon it at the first sign of trouble. He got good at sending stones where he wanted, and thrilled at starting devastating traps in motion. Besieged scenarios played over and over in his mind. He showed Adah where she should run, if she had to. Day by day, the route changed. She stared at the sharpened wooden spikes and shifting topology of holes and berms, unspeaking, her hands clenched. Gage told her not to worry. He had everything covered.
The guestbook ledger ran out of pages. Gage scavenged the house for paper. He wrote combinations on scraps and organized them within the ledger. Broken pencil nubs wore down to nothing. He found a pin and sterilized it over a flame, then wrote with dabs of blood on its point. He pricked his finger over and over, gouging deep for blood.
Piano notes arrested Gage from his concentration in the cellar. He rushed to the piano room, machete firmly in hand. Adah stood frozen by the bare keys.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said, her eyes fixed on his machete.
“No, no,” Gage said. “Go ahead.”
He returned to the cellar.
The piano remained silent.
The musty brick walls of the cellar lurched inward, Portland’s crud-kids crowded just behind them and the rest of the crud-blighted world pressed against their backs, waiting for Gage to relax.
Adah’s soft voice startled him.
“It’s late,” she said. “Come up and watch the stars with me.”
Lying beside Adah on the roof, bare feet dangling over the eaves, Gage pointed out constellations where they emerged from behind passing clouds. He tracked the faint points of light from dead satellites.
“Tell me one of those stories,” Adah said, “about how it used to be.”
Gage liked telling used-to-be stories. They were something he could give Adah the world otherwise withheld. For her, it seemed like the world had always been like it was. He could change that, but he didn’t know what to say.
Finally, he said, “Everyone used to tell me I could be anything I wanted.”
Adah’s laughter rang loudly in the silence of the forest. “What’s that even supposed to mean?”
Her laughter spread. They laughed together. Gage laughed to tears and hugged her when he could no longer tell why he cried.
“There’s one,” Adah said. She unlaced herself from Gage and pointed into the sky. “A shooting star. Make a wish.”
“Where?”
“It was right there.”
He followed her moving finger, but couldn’t find what she pointed at.
“There’s another one,” he said. He took her hand, and used her finger to point it out. “It’s a meteor shower.”
Shooting stars streaked the night sky, many more than on previous occasions.
“We’re going to have too many wishes,” Adah said.
“Let’s hope not.”
Gage and Adah laughed to tears, wiped their cheeks dry, then watched the show.
Monk returned.
At first, he was a pair of headlights approaching on the road while Adah and Gage watched the second night of the meteor shower from the roof. With their eyes trained to spot faint lights in the dark sky, the headlights blazed like fireballs. Then the headlights stopped outside the driveway and honked. Gage looked at Adah and grabbed his machete. Adah grabbed his hand.
“If he got a car,” Adah said, “he could have almost anything else. Guns. A dozen others.”
“I know how to make it through the obstacle course,” Gage said. “I can lead them through the worst parts.”
“Gage,” she said.
“They’re coming one way or another,” he said. “During the day, they’ll have a
chance to notice the traps and avoid them.
“I want you to open the stove and crank every burner to high. Cover a rock with cloth. If they make it to the house, light the cloth and throw it through a kitchen window. Stay in the coop until then.”
Adah squeezed his hand. He climbed down through the attic and slinked out the back door.
As quiet as a breeze, Gage maneuvered through his obstacle course toward the honking. Monk flashed the headlights from off to brights, off, brights . . . During the dark intervals, Gage closed in and slowed. His stomach tightened. Goose pimples sleeved his arms. His ears prickled with heat in the dusky chill.
Standing outside a rusted red pickup truck, Monk leaned through the driver’s side window onto the horn.
The truck bed lay empty. Others either hunkered down out of sight or had already dispersed into cover across the road. The strobing of the headlights ruined his night vision. Blaring, the horn covered all other noises.
There was no use waiting to let them spot his cover or get better positions than they already had. He dug a fist-sized stone from the soft forest floor, tested its heft from palm to palm and imagined it striking Monk before he sprung and hurled it as hard as he could. He ducked out of sight and covered his head. The stone sounded a meaty crack. The horn cut out and gave way for the skidding crunch of Monk collapsing into the gravel.
The headlights remained on, crosscutting the forest with stark shadows.
Gage darted away from the road to deeper cover, his body tense, his breath held for fear it’d give him away. His heart pounded in his ears, louder than everything else. He imagined Adah in the chicken coop, a match in hand. He imagined gunshots. He darted for deeper cover behind a log housing a sleepy beehive, then thought he might have been too invisible, and they’d never chase what they hadn’t seen.
City crud-kids had never been so quiet.
Gage kicked the log and dashed between tree trunks. Two covered spike pits separated him from the next berm. Leaping over them would put him in plain sight twice. He couldn’t go back. Bees buzzed madly just out of range. One deep breath, two, three, and he ran, leaped, leaped and dove behind the berm. No shout pinned him like a searchlight. No gunshot tore him from his course. No hiss of arrow or crash of rock explored his position.
They had seen him. He was sure of it. Even if they mistook him for a deer, they should’ve fired freely for the sake of fresh meat. A cold certainty chilled Gage’s blood that after the loss of Monk, which they had likely planned for, they were feigning patience in order to lull him into a false sense of security. Or, they numbered too many to be drawn into his game.
Monk groaned. Gage had difficulty discerning how many people scrabbled in the gravel and noisily pawed the side of the truck.
Gage ducked and looked. An oozing gash rent Monk’s jaw like a wet pair of red lips. He opened the door to protect himself and spat out a tooth.
Suddenly, Gage felt he shouldn’t have thrown a stone. It all but declared the gun safe had remained impregnable.
Monk shouted.
“Gage! Adah!” His voice quavered. “I’m sorry!”
Gage dug into the soft, damp soil, searching for stones. Roots cat’s-cradled his fingers.
“They’ve come for the bodies!” Monk shouted. “They landed in Portland and they’re collecting the cocoons! It’s happening everywhere!”
Gage imagined Lost Pine filling with gas, exhausting all they relied upon, their future. He imagined the fiery explosion. Everything gone, but at least it’d snuff out a gang as it burst.
“It’s not a meteor shower! It’s them! They seeded the crud, now they’ve come to harvest!”
Something scraped against the metal of the truck bed and Monk grunted as he eased it onto the gravel. Gage peeked. Monk stood beside an adult-sized cocoon.
“I’ve come to bury my parents!” Monk said. “It’s the only place I thought they’d be safe! I’m coming in! You can either help me or let your traps kill me!”
Monk dragged the cocoon toward the blackberries blocking the driveway. Delicately, as though the cocoon was no more than a candy shell, as Gage remembered handling his own parents after their crud healed over, Monk hefted the cocoon onto the heap of thorny vines. He bobsledded it ahead of him toward the camouflaged spike pit which dropped off on the other side.
The cocoon teetered over the pit. Monk slipped and cursed and made to shove it forward.
There was no one else. Monk was alone.
“Stay put!” Gage called out. “Wait! Don’t move!”
Monk froze. His gaze darted through the shadows. “Help me!”
Gage imagined Adah testing the grain of the matchbox’s strike pad with her thumb, then he bolted toward the coop through the obstacle course, shouting for her to cut the propane flow.
Monk limped. His cheek’s wound soaked the bandage wrapped around his jaw and stained it dark red. A fresh welt blackened the eye that hadn’t been blackened before and swelled it shut. He wouldn’t say how he got the truck, only that it was worth it. Its gas gauge needle touched F. Tension straps held full gas cans secure in its bed.
Standing in the deepening hole he dug for his parents, Monk rattled off everything he had seen as though there was too much to say and too little time to say it.
“The aliens aren’t alive. They’re mechanical, built like semi-truck-sized spiders with large storage compartments for abdomens. They landed with their compartments full of equipment, which they unloaded on the outskirts of Portland. It looks like they’re constructing return ships with the stuff. The spiders not constructing the ships race through the city and gather cocoons from where they lay. They store them in their abdomens. When the abdomens are full, the spiders detach them, stack them near the ships-to-be and start helping with the construction projects. They’re quick and soundless. Bullets ricochet off them. Their appendages make quick work of nets and bindings. Some crud-kids tried grenades—I don’t know where they got them—but they only irritated the spiders and got the kids brained by darts.”
Monk’s eyes glazed over and he seemed to lose himself in his head, then find his way back.
“The more cocoons the spiders hold, the less eager people are to use grenades or fire on them. Spiders protect the stacked abdomens and construction sites, too. Crud-kids who swarm them get tossed away like bothersome insects. It’s like they’re performing an act of God.”
“Why would they want cocooned people?” Adah asked.
“There was talk,” Monk said, “about the spiders taking the cocoons to revive and heal the people inside later, for slaves or pets or cattle—the cocoons just preserve and protect them for the return trip. They’re careful not to harm the cocoons.”
“Fifteen light-years is a long haul for exotic foods or pets,” Gage said. “If they have robots like you describe, they couldn’t be in such desperate need for slaves they’d cross between stars for replacements.”
Monk’s eyes hardened. “Never underestimate the desire of one people to oppress another for minimal gain, no matter the cost. Besides, there is nothing to say the trip wasn’t cheap for them.”
“There’s nothing to say it wasn’t expensive, either,” Gage said.
Monk set his shovel in the dirt. “Plain and simple, they’re stealing people and they don’t want the lively ones. They kill when crud-kids become too much trouble.”
“Did spiders follow you?” Adah asked.
Monk continued shoveling. “They were occupied when I split. Whatever else you can say about crud-kid gangs, not even they like it when someone goes grave robbing their families. So many cocoons lay around, though, the spiders didn’t seem concerned about the two I took. I have a feeling they could’ve followed me if they wanted, but I don’t plan on staying. I don’t want to lead them to Lost Pine. I’m burying my parents, then returning to help the fight.”
The rim of the h
ole Monk dug stood at his eyelevel. Sweating, panting, he said, “It has to be deeper. I saw spiders pass over cemeteries where cocoons were buried deep. Maybe later they’ll return and dig up the graves, but for the time being they’re only taking the cocoons on the surface.”
Monk speared his shovel into the earth and flung it over the hole’s rim, slower and slower, grunting louder and louder.
Gage jumped in and helped.
Blisters formed on Gage’s hands, popped and bled. His shoulders ached. His arms burned. His shovel barked against roots and stones, and sent shivers into his ribcage that grated his teeth. He wondered why he was helping Monk. When they finished and Monk lowered his parents into the hole and asked to be alone, Gage knew. Monk’s parents had a chance. He hadn’t torn at them. Their cocoons were well formed. He was storing them for when it might be possible to revive them, whenever that might be.
Adah was right. He shouldn’t pry into how people dealt with loss. It was personal.
Adah spoke as if she had chosen her words carefully and wouldn’t have said them if they weren’t final. “I’m going with him to Portland.”
“Why?” Gage asked. He took her hand.
“I thought we were protecting ourselves here to do some good, but staying here now would just be letting bad happen elsewhere.”
“You heard him. The spiders can’t be stopped.”
“Maybe they haven’t gotten to my parents. Maybe I can get to them before the spiders do.”
“It’s Monk, Adah,” Gage said.
“You think bad people can do no good, and good people can do no bad. But it’s not like that, Gage.”
“Will you come back?”
Adah’s wide, dark eyes dimmed, and Gage saw she had been hoping to recruit him. She seemed to remember what he had done to his parents at the same time he did. Gage looked away, unable to hold her gaze with the calculus laid bare: he had nothing to go back for. She did, and he did not share it, would not risk it. He tightened his grip on her hand, then she unlaced her fingers from his.
Writers of the Future Volume 28: The Best New Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Page 32
