by David Beers
* * *
It was unbelievable.
That’s all Wren really knew. That he couldn’t believe what Bryan was telling him. An alien crash-landed, somehow took over him and Thera, and then fought off a group of soldiers before finally causing some kind of volcanic eruption. Wren had never heard anything nearly as ridiculous. This wasn’t flying saucers or probes. This was an alien invasion that started with the boy in front of him.
And yet, even though he didn’t believe it, he knew it to be true. Because he had seen the man show up at his house, seen him ready to murder Wren right on the stoop except for his neighbor across the tiny lawn. Because the next day someone showed up to kill him.
The rumbling that never ended was because of a goddamn alien out in the woods near the high school.
He unscrewed the cap on his flask without knowing it. He didn’t bring it to his lips though, instead only smiled and shook his head as he looked away from Bryan.
“You don’t believe him?” Glenn asked, hearing the slight chuckle.
Wren didn’t look up. “No, I believe him. Every word. It’s just fucking ridiculous when you think about it. The end of the world happening two miles from us.” He raised his eyes to Bryan. “I’m sorry, keep going.”
“I ran. I just ran because I didn’t know what else to do and Thera, she’s still out there. She’s still in that hole.” The boy started crying then, putting his face in his hands. Wren felt for him, he truly did, though empathy was too much. This whole damn experience showed him that, and Linda hadn’t spoken up yet about it, thank God. He felt for the kid, but he didn’t empathize. He didn’t know how.
Michael. He didn’t know what the hell was happening to his own son, and worry didn’t describe the thoughts ripping through his head about him, but no empathy there either. Wren had none. He had lost the ability to relate.
He looked down at the flask, seeing the cap open. He screwed it back on. The flask gave him ten years that he couldn’t remember. Ten years that drowned out the pain of Linda’s voice, ten years that he begged for. But it fucking took, too. It took and took and took and hadn’t even told him it would. Or maybe it did and he’d been too drunk to notice.
Rita went to Bryan, putting her arms around him again, though he didn’t take his hands away from his eyes. Glenn stayed where he was, on the edge of his seat, and Julie remained standing behind Bryan, her hands on his shoulders, her face still a swollen balloon of black and blue.
The only person not there that should have been (besides Thera, Linda sniped) was Michael. His son sat slightly behind Wren in a chair, having been separated the entire time. Having self-segregated himself from the group as he talked about colors that no one else could see.
Wren wished Linda would speak up now. Wished she would tell him what to do, give him some kind of advice. But there was nothing besides the Thera comment. Only his voice echoed through the halls of his mind.
Bryan was right.
They needed to leave.
Wren just didn’t know how and everyone around him was so concerned with Bryan’s welfare, they weren’t thinking about next steps. Despite his distance, Michael was the only one in any similar mindset as Wren, the only one that might be able to think about finding safety. Bryan wanted to leave, but shock weighed on him heavier than a conscience guilty of murder.
And with that thought he felt the grip of the frying pan in his hand, felt the weight of it.
No, don’t think about that. Not now.
Wren turned his head over his shoulder, looking to Michael.
Perhaps it was the slow infusion of liquor, or perhaps it was what the liquor had stolen over the past decade, but Wren managed to remain calm for much of this. That ended as he looked at his son.
He saw it for a single second and no one else did because their eyes were elsewhere. He saw it and a fear that could destroy universes flooded him.
Michael’s eyes were white.
Totally, as if two perfect white globes had been placed in his head, so white that they almost glowed. He looked sightless and mindless as he stared out into the world, unable to see anything without a pupil. It only lasted a second, though, because they shut like doors thrown closed by gods.
Michael fell from the chair in a heap, lying there for a few seconds, and then he started shaking. His whole body jumping with currents that no one around him could see.
* * *
Wren’s hands shook.
Not like Michael’s body and not like they would from withdrawal. They shook from the nervous energy his brain couldn’t stop shooting out to his body. The flask sat on the kitchen counter and they all stood amongst the broken plates and trashed cabinets. Four of them, because Michael couldn’t stand. Michael couldn’t open his eyes. Michael could do goddamn nothing but lay on the couch Wren put him on.
Rita paced, kicking shards of broken dishes and glass out of the way as she did, creating a path across the kitchen. Bryan stood in between his father and Julie, Julie’s hand gripping his.
“We need to leave,” Rita said, nodding. Now that her son was up and moving, the thought finally fucking occurred to her, apparently. “We have to get out of here if what Bryan says is true.”
Wren looked to Bryan, but the kid only stared at the floor, so he turned back to Rita.
“Now you want to leave?” Wren said. “When Bryan was lying out in the lawn or sitting in there on the couch, telling us how badly we needed to, you weren’t trying to get out. Now my kid is lying in there on a couch and not moving, but you’re ready to go?”
Rita didn’t stop pacing and didn’t look at Wren, though he stared at her. Anger was in him now, and it was a different feeling than what he thought anger to be. Normally anger came laced with vodka, but this was sober anger. Usually he wanted people to shut up when he was angry, but now he wanted an answer.
“Hey, Bryan—I don’t mean anything by it. It was fine that we waited.” Wren turned to Glenn. “Are you wanting to leave now, too?”
“We need to at some point. We can’t stay here. I mean the goddamn floor is still shaking, Wren.”
Rita kicked another piece of glass out of her way, spreading her path further along the tiled kitchen floor. It scraped across, crashing into other objects before coming to rest against the wall.
“We can carry him,” she said.
“Yeah? What if he has another seizure? What if he breaks something while we’re moving him?”
“What if we stay here and that thing in the woods comes for Bryan?” She stopped walking, finally meeting Wren’s eyes. “I’m not letting that happen.”
“She’s right,” Glenn said. “Michael could get hurt if we move him, for sure, but he could die if we stay. We could all die.”
“Where was this sense of urgency when Bryan was immobile? Why right now?”
“Because we’re thinking more clearly,” Glenn said.
“Fuck this,” Rita said, stepping off her path and into the mess of the kitchen floor. She headed to the phone and Wren felt his heart leaping from his chest and into his esophagus.
“NO!” he screamed as her hand went to the phone on the wall, picking it up even as the words left his mouth, paying him no mind at all. She put the phone to her ear and reached up to dial.
Wren didn’t move though he wanted to. He wanted to throw her through the goddamn wall, but instead he just watched as she dialed out.
“There’s no tone,” she said.
Wren stared, mouth open, his adrenaline rushing through his veins even as he heard there wasn’t any reason for it.
“No dial tone?” Glenn said.
“No.” She still held the phone to her face.
“There was earlier,” Wren said. “The power is still on. Someone cut the phone lines.”
No one said anything for a few seconds, the only sound coming from the air conditioning blowing through the vents.
“They wanted us to call out before. They wanted information. Now they don’t. They don’t want
us talking to anyone,” Glenn said. Wren looked at him, the same realization coming to his own mind. No more information was needed. All the information anyone ever wanted came from beneath their feet as the whole goddamn world shook like some kind of winter wonderland Christmas bowl. Whoever was in charge didn’t need to hear from any of the wonderland’s inhabitants now.
“It doesn’t matter,” Bryan said.
All eyes in the room went to him, though he didn’t look up.
“What, babe?” Rita said.
“It doesn’t matter. Phone line or no phone line. Leaving or staying. We can’t run from her. We could go to Mexico, but eventually she’ll find us. It doesn’t matter where we go or what we do, she’s coming, and she won’t stop.”
* * *
Michael looked like he was asleep.
Wren stood at the end of the couch, looking down at him. He had left the kitchen, saying he needed some time to think. He couldn’t remember the last time he told anyone that—time to think. Standing over Michael, what was he to think about? Glenn was right. They had to go. It didn’t matter what Bryan said; the boy was scared. They couldn’t stay here and wait on that thing to show up, even if it would be dangerous to move Michael.
He walked around to the front of the couch.
Michael lay on his side, Wren having turned him that way to keep him from possibly choking on his vomit. The old Jimmy Hendrix method.
There wasn’t any humor in the thought.
There wasn’t any humor in Wren at all.
He was scared to open his son’s eyelids. He hadn’t done so since Michael fell off the chair, hadn’t told anyone what he saw either. Those blank eyes, white as a dry erase board. He hoped it had been his imagination, and now he didn’t want to know the truth. He didn’t want to open Michael’s eyelids and not see the brown eyes his son was born with. Not see Linda’s eyes that Michael inherited.
Wren lifted his son’s head up and sat down, letting Michael lay across his lap. The boy didn’t move at all.
He spent the past ten years trying to forget his life. He spent the past two days trying to find it. And now, holding Michael, he realized he was about to lose it. The past day he’d spent with Michael, had he touched him at all besides the first hug when finding him? Had he spoken to him at all? Had he done anything that a father should do, especially one who so desperately wanted his son to just be alive?
Not a fucking thing.
Even sober he was a shitty father.
And where are you, dear Linda, to tell me no? That I’ve done the best I could under the circumstances?
She was silent, of course. Just like Michael. Because this is what happened when you trade your life for the ability to forget. You end up on a couch with a son who might be dead and a wife who already was. You end up in silence, because you have no one.
“Please,” he said, looking down at Michael, his eyes beginning to water. Yesterday he moved with purpose. Yesterday he was intent on staying sober and finding his son. Yesterday there was hope. Now he held his son, and hope fluttered away like some beautiful butterfly that Wren shouldn’t have possessed anyway. “Please come back,” he said as the tears broke over his eyelids.
He held his son and he cried.
For his son.
For himself.
89
Present Day
Morena looked at the little girl.
Her parents lay on the ground, but the little girl stood right in front of Morena. Her eyes were hazel, her hair brown, and she looked absolutely terrified. Morena hadn’t decided if she would kill the parents yet, only that they needed to be dealt with while she observed the girl. She had seen what these creatures looked like from inside them, but never seen one up close, never observed it from outside.
Morena had to make a decision and soon, whether or not these creatures would be allowed to live next to Bynums. To kill an entire species wasn’t something she was ready to do, not quite yet. The little girl’s eyes were wide and tears streamed out of them, though Morena’s aura kept her from fleeing. Morena studied the skin, understanding much of what happened evolutionarily for this girl to end up like this. They would continue to evolve, Morena thought, they might even reach a Stage Three. Currently, they were in a dangerous stage though—one in which their intelligence far outstripped their morality. If a species didn’t die in Stage One, they almost certainly did in Stage Two. In Stage One, the environment killed. In Stage Two, the species killed itself.
Still, there was hope here. Morena couldn’t, with any clear conscience, say that they definitely needed to die. Which was tough, because it took the decision out of her hands. If she looked at this young child—studied it, following the evolution of her physical features with the combined information from Morena’s time inside her hosts—she couldn’t say they were done. That they would kill themselves regardless of what she did; if so, then wiping them out would be an easy choice.
Now, though, the choice rested in their hands. It depended on whether they fought her, on whether they tried to stop her species’ spread.
Morena floated backward, releasing the little girl from her hold. The girl fell back, all of her force trying to run away finally unleashed by Morena. She hovered over the street as the girl, crying, picked herself up and rushed to her father, who lay on the ground behind her. Morena let go of the parents as she turned around, climbing in height as she floated higher and higher over the street.
Perhaps the show she gave them a little bit ago would let humanity know that they should cease whatever ideas they had of stopping her. She didn’t think so, at all, but it was still a nice thought. None had entered her domain yet—she would know the moment they did.
Something was here though. Something she didn’t understand. She hoped when she stopped to look at the little girl that what she felt would disappear, that perhaps using her mind for some other task might either reveal what she was feeling, or let her realize it didn’t exist.
Neither happened.
Instead, Morena felt it again as she rose into the air.
Was it Briten?
No, that wasn’t possible. He hadn’t crossed over from the Ether. And if he did, he would have found her. Did something else cross over? Something when she came back from the Ether, escaping with her?
She didn’t think so because she didn’t feel it then. This came after the birth. She closed her eyes, blocking out the world around her. It was here, in this place, though she couldn’t figure out where. She understood every animal and plant that moved inside this town, all of the information relayed to her as if it was part of her. Except for this, and it felt like neither animal nor plant. It felt…
Like a Bynum.
It felt like another from her planet walked Earth and that just wasn’t possible. Her planet was dead, as were her people. Even the children now coalescing felt different than this new being.
That’s what is feels like…A young Bynum, someone barely out of the womb, barely having formed from its aura. It can’t be.
Still, hope sprang up in her. Longing.
Because whether or not it was impossible, she still felt it the same as she did her children. And if she felt it, then maybe there was something. Maybe something came with them on the ship, and maybe it was awakening now. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Find it, she thought. Find whatever it is and then you’ll know.
90
Present Day
He knocked on Will’s door twice and then put his hand back down to his side. Kenneth Marks wasn’t smiling and wouldn’t use one during this conversation.
He heard Will put his face to the peephole and then listened as the locks on the other side turned in the door.
Will didn’t crack the door, but opened it all the way. He understood how the power structure worked but he didn’t look at Kenneth Marks as any kind of physical threat.
“What’s up?” Will said.
“May I come in?”
Will turned around and walked back i
nto the hotel room. Kenneth Marks followed, walking slower than Will, but watching the man’s movements in front of him.
“A bit late for a social stop,” Will said, lying down in bed, picking up the remote but not bothering to mute the television. The screen cast blue light across the bed, the only light in the room. Kenneth Marks stood just outside of it, still, looking at the television but listening to Will’s breath moving in and out of his nose.
“Very true.”
“So what are you here for?”
“Are you thinking of leaving, Will?” he said.
“It’s crossed my mind.”
“More than once.”
“More than once,” Will said.
“You’re not contaminated.”
Will looked at him, no smile on his face, just the blue from the television and the sternness that grew out of the garden of knowledge, right where the knowledge of death was planted. “That doesn’t mean you’re not going to kill me.”
Kenneth Marks nodded and stepped out from the black shroud of the hallway. He walked in front of the television and to the drapes, pulling them back the same as he had in his room.
“The lights are going out,” he said, seeing Will’s reflection in the window. The city was half black already. When he looked down into the street, he saw the military vehicles and troops, walking people into huge caravans. They cut the lights from each area they evacuated, trying to force anyone from staying inside and hiding. Half the city still shone and the other half looked as dark as the hallway Kenneth Marks just exited.
