Melee

by Wyatt Savage

  “Since when are 27 days a whole year?” I asked.

  “They’re saying the FBI and the CIA and the military are mobilizing to investigate all of it,” Mom said, ignoring my remark, her hand shaking. “Same thing that happened here happened all over the world apparently.”

  “Maybe it was just a YouTube stunt,” I said. “One of those videos, what are they called? Deep fakes?”

  “Try telling that to Brenda and Tom,” Mom said, reminding me of little Mary Wray, who was no longer with us. I wanted to ask how they were doing and if the cops were investigating what happened to her, but then I read Mom’s look and thought better of it.

  “Some people don’t think any of it happened,” Dad said, gazing at the plate of eggs he was marinating in ketchup.

  I sat down across from him. He passed me the ketchup and I deferred since I’m more of a hot sauce guy and not a huge fan of eggs anyway. “Who doesn’t believe it happened?”

  Dad’s eyes remained fixed on his eggs. It was like he was terrified they might get up and run away at any moment. “People on the computer, son—”

  “The Facebook,” Mom mumbled.

  “Social media,” I corrected.

  “The social media folks,” Dad continued, glancing up, egg and ketchup dribbling down his chin. “They’re saying everything that happened yesterday was made up or worse...”

  “A conspiracy,” Mom said, anger flaring in her eyes.

  “A false-flag operation,” Dad added.

  I rubbed the scar on my head. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s when someone, usually a government, does a bad thing and blames it on someone else.”

  A thought popped into my head. “Like that fire in the German Reichstag?”

  A crooked smile gripped Dad’s mouth. “You actually remembered that?”

  I was a bit of a history buff in the days before my accident and sometimes the old facts and figures came back to me. When they did my folks made a big deal out of it, as if it was a sign that the kid they used to know, the one that was buried under a mental avalanche, had finally found a way to tunnel up to the surface.

  Dad reached over and squeezed my wrist. “Hurry up and eat so we can make it on time, okay?”

  “What?”

  Mom groaned. “Don’t you remember, Logan? We’re going over to see the belting.”

  “What’s a belting?”

  “Nick’s testing for his white belt,” she said.

  I’d completely forgotten, but then I fished the day’s bunched-up post-its out of a pocket, two of them, one of which reminded me that, (1) it was Saturday; (2) I didn’t have to work; and (3) we were indeed going to see my brother Sean and his family.

  “Don’t worry, kiddo,” Dad said, forcing a smile, ever the optimist. “This whole crazy thing is going to blow over. Just you wait and see.”

  “What about Mary?” Mom asked.

  Dad looked back down at his eggs and I checked the other post-it, which reminded me to grab a frozen waffle and my meds, ten milligrams of Memantine (for foggy brains), four milligrams of Ondansetron (to offset the stomach-churning effects of Memantine), and five hundred milligrams of Vitamin D.

  On the way to the karate place we passed a cordon of army trucks that were speeding in the other direction. I was in the back of the car, peering outside at the trucks like a golden retriever. At twenty-three olive-colored machines I stopped counting.

  “Guess they know something maybe we don’t,” I said, catching Dad’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

  Dad flipped on the radio and floated the dial, but all anybody was talking about was the aliens so he turned it off. I’d hoped that they’d want to discuss the arrival, but Dad wasn’t like that. He was well-versed in ignoring things and it had taken him six months after my accident for him to realize his dreams of me pitching professionally would never come to fruition. Still, I tried to prod them.

  “Did you see anything strange after what happened yesterday?” I asked.

  Mom looked back. “What do you mean?”

  “Did you see that alien?”

  “The female thingie with the long red hair?”

  It hit me that perhaps different people had seen different things. I had no idea why the aliens may have come to us in different guises, but it was deeply unsettling. I imagined that if the aliens had taken the time to visit our little planet, there was probably a reason for everything they did.

  “No,” I said, ignoring Mom’s response. “I meant…was your vision messed up?”

  “In what way?”

  “Did you see little boxes and stuff in the air?”

  Mom snorted. “No, sweetie.”

  I took this in and pressed myself against the window. It was a long drive so I closed my eyes and with some effort willed the HUD, my SecondSight head-up display, to come to me.

  It didn’t at first and I realized that was probably because I was soundlessly mouthing words, trying to call it forth like some kind of sorcerer.

  I crawled up into myself, if that makes any sense at all, working to communicate with my mind.

  My eyes opened and closed and the HUD, my SecondSight, came to me. I stared at the boxes and icons filled with the words “vitals,” “kills,” “class,” “health,” “chattel,” “species,” and mentally moved the boxes up and down and sideways, stacking them, reordering them like I was playing some half-assed version of Tetris.

  I wasn’t very good at it and every move caused jags of pain to flog my temples. My teeth began to hurt and a single droplet of blood oozed out of my nose. I could tell that it wasn’t going to be easy to use SecondSight. The cursor appeared, blinking, beckoning. “Do you have questions?”

  “You’re goddamn right I do,” I thought.

  “What is your question?” the alien ghost voice asked.

  “What the hell is SecondSight?”

  “A perception modulator.”

  “What’s it for?”

  “The game.”

  “No, I mean, what I am supposed to do with it?”

  “You will know that when the game begins.”

  “Why can’t you answer that question directly?”

  “Because there are certain things that I am not at liberty to discuss, including among others, how the game is to be played in your world.”

  “You’ve done this before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here?”

  “In other worlds.”

  “How long have they played the game?”

  “Since the stars were new to your corner of the galaxy.”

  “What took them so long to get to Earth?”

  “The selection of a new planet is entirely random. The game has been played very close once before.”

  “Where?”

  “Your moon.”

  “That’s impossible. There’s no life on the moon.”

  The voice didn’t reply and it hit me like a shotgun blast to the face. Maybe there’d been life on the moon once upon a time. Maybe the game took care of that. A chill worked itself up over the knobs of my spine.

  “You’re gonna need a name,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because when you know someone or something you create a bond. Besides, it’s just weird to talk to someone without a name.”

  Silence from the voice.

  “Sue,” I said.

  “What?”

  “That’s your name now. Sue.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss that, Sue.”

  No response and I smiled. Maybe in some small way I’d gotten under Sue’s holographic skin. Score one for Logan Samuel James.

  Before I shut the SecondSight down, I did one last thing, focusing on an item I hadn’t noticed before.

  What looked like holographic crosshairs.

  A targeting reticle.

  Breathing through my nose, I turned and maneuvered the reticle across my field of vision. Looking outside, I glanced at someone hitch
hiking down the road.

  Suddenly, my hand jerked involuntarily.

  My fingers moved, my thumb rising above my balled fist, then one finger extending perpendicular to it.

  A crooked finger gun.

  “What the hell is happening?” I asked.

  “You are mirroring.”

  “What?”

  “Experiencing the faintest hint of the game.”

  “There is no game.”

  “Not yet,” the voice replied.

  “Why am I experiencing the game when it isn’t being played?”

  “Because—” and here Sue paused for the first time— “it would appear you’re unique.”

  “In what way?”

  “You suffered trauma.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I’m inside of you.”

  I shivered and the voice said, “You have an intracortical electrode implant.”

  “And?”

  “And it makes you unique.”

  “You still haven’t explained how it makes me unique.”

  “I am not at liberty to discuss that.”

  I raised the finger gun and an unseen force seemed to aim it at the hitchhiker. The targeting reticle followed the movement, hovering over the center mass of the man’s body.

  Perspiring and with a bloody nose, I shook myself like a wet dog and eased myself down onto the rear seat of the car.

  We arrived a little late to the strip-mall dojo and the white-costumed tykes were already in the midst of testing for a variety of belts: from white to some second-level kind of yellow belt and everything in between. I never took to karate. I know it’s supposed to be great for discipline and all, but I never really needed someone shouting at me to become focused. I always figured that was something you had to learn on your own.

  Anyway, Sean was there with his wife, Kate, and their daughter, Kira, and they were watching their boy, Nick, stand ramrod straight and then execute a snap-kick. The fact that I remembered their names without looking at one of my post-its made me feel good. Small victories.

  Sean adjusted his glasses, waved, and kept a finger over his lips so that we’d know not to talk. He was younger than me by two years, but had always carried himself like he was the big brother. He was the smart one with the terrible learning as my dad liked to say, the family man with kids, a massager of money for the well-heeled in Annapolis and Baltimore. In contrast, I’d always been the jock, the one who was forever being shuttled around from lacrosse to baseball and everything in between. I was the once-upon-a-time golden boy who had little to show for it aside from a collection of tarnished trophies.

  Desultory (yes, sometimes big words came back to me) hugs were exchanged in the dojo as we seated ourselves on the rubber mats and watched the boys and girls execute left-hand blocks, roundhouses, and a variety of double and triple punches and chops. For a bunch of five, six, and seven-year-olds, their little fists of fury were pretty damn impressive.

  Afterward came the frozen yogurt, great heaps of it in Styrofoam cups from a place called Sweet Frog. My parents took great delight in buying the first round for everyone. I sat at the kids’ table, listening to Nick talk about a loose tooth and Kira detail her upcoming dance recital. I wanted to scream at them, to ask what the hell they thought about what was going to happen in 26 days.

  “What about you, Logan?” my brother said, plopping down next to me. I looked over and sucked some yogurt from one of those absurdly small plastic yogurt spoons. “How you doing?”

  “Okay, given the circumstances.”

  “Your thing acting up again?” my brother asked. For some reason he was incapable of using any word other than “thing” to describe my brain injury.

  “No, I meant yesterday, Sean,” I replied. “Y’know, the aliens…”

  He pursed his lips and I caught the loaded look he exchanged with his wife. “Not around the kids, okay?” he whispered.

  “Don’t they know?”

  “Know what, Dad?” Nick asked, looking over.

  “Nothing, big guy,” Sean said, patting his son on the head. “Nothing at all.”

  My dad drew an imaginary blade across his throat which meant it was time to change the subject.

  I loved my brother but he’d always seemed to find a way to walk between the raindrops. His life had been one gentle coast from high school all the way through grad school. His wife had coasted too and I’m pretty sure his two kids would follow suit when they were of age. When you breathe rarified air, you’re not used to the bottom falling out. I on the other hand, had struggled in nearly everything aside from baseball and a burrito-eating contest I’d won in tenth grade. It’s hard to admit, but I was never overly bright even before the accident. I was, however, used to bad shit happening and that’s one of the reasons I think I was better prepared for what I knew was coming. Still, I didn’t want to be impolite or cause a scene, so I nodded and stared at my soupy yogurt and told them about all the wonderful things I’d experienced as a shelf stocker.

  Later, when we were leaving the store Sean stayed behind, holding the door open, offering me a half-hug.

  “It was all smoke and mirrors, Logan,” he said. “That alien stuff yesterday? You watch. In a week nobody will even remember that it happened.”

  I smiled and nodded even though I knew it wasn’t true.

  5

  My weekend afternoons were often spent at a local rehab center where a speech-language clinician tested my level of cognitive communication impairment and executive functioning. I usually only achieved one or two out of the six short-term objectives and the clinician, Ms. Barasso, continued to hope that my metacognition would improve through what she called “inhibition of behaviors, self-reflection, external strategies, and initiation of tasks,” which sounded like a bunch of gobbledygook you might hear some investment banker spouting. Bottom line is this: when you’ve been jettisoned through a windshield at fifty-eight miles per hour and had half your skull removed to ease the swelling, you’re never gonna be the same again. Humpy Dumpty didn’t have shit on me.

  Once I was finished flunking my cog tests, I got to have a little fun which involved teaching several neighborhood children the fine art of pitching, namely how to toss fastballs and pull back the invisible strings that guide a proper change-up. A change-up is an off-speed pitch in baseball and it’s a deceptively difficult thing to throw.

  The issue lies in deceiving the hitter, in making him think that you’re throwing something with much more velocity. You can’t merely slow down your delivery, however, as that’s a definite tell. What you’ve got to do is work on dragging your foot to slow your momentum even though your arm speed stays the same. In my experience, this often takes years to perfect, but the change-up is preferred over breaking balls, curveballs and the like, that can put an ungodly amount of stress on growing joints and ligaments.

  On the day after the aliens arrived, the weather was unusually warm so I scheduled a session teaching Ronimal’s son, Ronimal Jr., a nine-year-old who looked nearly twice his age. The kid had feet like flippers and long, snakelike arms that would likely allow him to whip the ball at more than eighty miles per hour if and when he reached his teens.

  Ronimal Jr.’s old man stood at a distance from us, near the enormous workshop at the back of their house. He’d constructed a nifty little pitcher’s mound beside a batting cage out front of it and I was behind Ronimal Jr., watching him hurl pitches down at a sandbag emplacement forty-eight feet away.

  Ronimal Jr. tossed a few fastballs, then snapped his wrist and broke off a nasty curveball that plunged into the dirt at home plate. “Whoa, whoa, what was that?” I asked.

  “Curveball,” the kid said, looking back with a loopy grin.

  “I thought we agreed not to throw those.”

  “I taught ‘em,” Ronimal said, strolling over.

  “When?”

  “We been batting it around for a while, but last night I decided to let him break a few off.”


  “Why?”

  Ronimal mouthed the word “why” silently, then said, “Why not?”

  “His elbow,” I said.

  Ronimal put one of his bear-sized arms around me. “You familiar with Teddy Roosevelt, Logan?”

  “The fella in the wheelchair?”

  “Nope, that was FDR, a distant cousin.” Off my nod he continued. “Anyway, Teddy once said, ‘I have a contempt for anyone who counts a broken arm or a collarbone as of serious consequences when balanced against the chance of showing physical prowess’ when playing sports.”

  “Translate.”

  “One or two curveballs ain’t gonna hurt, Logan.”

  “Alright, just this once,” I said, smiling. “But the next time I see it, someone’s running laps.”

  Ronimal grinned and watched his boy break off another curveball. Then he jogged down to retrieve the balls and I grabbed a glove to catch them. It was something we did at the end of every session, to teach Ronimal Jr. how to catch a ball and act like a proper cut-off man catching an incoming throw from an outfielder. I’m not sure how it happened, but my SecondSight flickered to life, the boxes and grids filling my POV. I tried to shut the damn thing off, but there it was.

  Ronimal picked up a ball and fired it at me.

  The ball was visible inside one of the boxes which highlighted the damned thing, making it appear twice as large and easier to track.

  I effortlessly snagged the ball.

  Ronimal threw another one at me, this time with a little more mustard on it.

  I didn’t even look the ball in. I just placed my mitt where I surmised it might be and there it went.

  Ronimal Sr. noticed this and commenced chucking balls at me one after another, as fast as he could throw them. I plucked each one out of the air while yawning, barely breaking a sweat. Never before, not even when I’d been a perennial all-star in high school had I been in the zone as I had at that moment. It was as if I knew where the balls, even the ones that skipped off the ground, were going to be before they were thrown.