by Wyatt Savage
“About the aliens?”
He nodded. “About them, about those silver spheres or maybe those containers that have been popping up all over the place.”
“No, sir. Honest to God he hasn’t.”
“You’re sure?”
I nodded. “I don’t even think he believes they’re real. At least I think he believes in his heart of hearts that the aliens are bluffing, that they’re not coming back.”
“You’ll tell us if you hear something, won’t you, Logan?” Ronimal asked. “Cause he may know things that could help all of us.”
“Yes, sir.”
Justin snorted at this and said something under his breath. I heard a female calling my name outside and I stood and took a step and Justin blocked my way out. He removed something from his pocket. A small box with warning markings on the side and an image of a skull-and-crossbones.
“What is that?” I asked.
“A kind of poison,” he whispered.
I smiled because I thought I hadn’t heard him right. I looked back at Ronimal and his head was hanging, as if he was embarrassed by what Justin was saying.
“Excuse me, Mister Best, but did you say poison?”
Justin nodded. “It’s the easiest way. When the time comes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They won’t be allowed to play,” Justin said. “You heard what the alien said before. Anyone under eighteen and over fifty-four can’t play. Your folks won’t qualify.”
“What about children?” I asked.
Justin didn’t have any other kids that I was aware of, but Ronimal sure as shit did. My words must’ve struck a nerve because he glared at me.
“You let me worry about the children,” he said, breathing through his nose.
I held the men’s looks. “Are you saying…what are you saying? That I should poison my folks?”
Justin’s eyes widened and I noticed for the first time that he didn’t blink. “I’m simply saying that you need to think about what’s going to happen when the game starts.”
“I can’t do harm to them, sir.”
“Some might consider it mercy.”
“Mercy ain’t mine to give,” I replied.
I brushed past Justin, exited the RV, and waved to Noora who was looking for me. Glancing back, I saw Ronimal and Justin whispering in hushed tones before they slammed the RV door shut.
8
Sleep did not come easy for me that night. I had so many damn nightmares that I just decided to camp in a chair near a window clutching the only weapon I kept in my room, a Swiss Army knife Dad had given me on my twelfth birthday.
Lish’s primer-splotched Jeep pulled up a little after eleven the next morning. I crashed in the back as we drove down into D.C., which had taken on the appearance of a city under siege. Helicopters buzzed overhead and I noticed more than one newly constructed sandbagged emplacement concealing a tank or some armored vehicle.
We drove past a checkpoint and entered a parking garage a block away from
Washington’s Union Station. We exited the car and walked alongside each other through the garage. Lish was wearing jeans and a worn pea coat with a pin fastened to the front of a fist in the shape of an American flag. Dwayne was dressed in an old camouflage army jacket, limping as he always did, sucking on his vape pen, bopping his head to a rhythm only he could hear.
“We need us some walking tunes,” he said.
“What kind?”
“I’m getting, like, a seventies vibe all of a sudden.”
“Which means?”
“Maybe some Doobie Brothers, no, Steely Dan!” Dwayne said, fixing his glasses. “Yeah, you can never go wrong with ‘The Dan.’” Off our looks he shrunk. “Yeah I know, I know. Steely Dan, right? See that’s the problem, I’m too damn white for most black folks, and too damn black for most white folks.”
I first met Dwayne a few months after I got out of the hospital and one of the things that I liked about him most was that he didn’t have much of a filter. He spoke his mind and didn’t put on airs or try to accommodate you, which was an increasingly rare thing, at least in my experience.
“You know what you are to us, Dwayne?” Lish asked.
“What’s that, Logan?”
“Just. Right.”
Dwayne batted his eyelashes in an exaggerated fashion. “I’ll try remembering that the next time I’m caught between the Klan and the Crips.”
“Just don’t go playing any Steely-fucking-Dan and it’ll be all good,” Lish said as we put our arms around Dwayne and exited the garage.
You can do worse than D.C. on an unseasonably warm winter weekend. The air is usually clear, the monuments are in full view, and most of the tongue-clucking politicians and their minions are out of town. The city hummed with tourists and locals and a good number of folks who were dressed up in alien costumes like people from one of those cosplay conventions. Some of them were mingling around on the sidewalks, or posing for pictures with food-hawkers. A few said everyone had come to check out the container.
“Am I the only one that finds that wildly inappropriate?” Lish asked, angling her chin toward the costumed revelers.
Dwayne smiled. “I don’t have a problem with it.”
“How come?” she asked.
“Because when bad things happen, it pays to keep living your life. Ain’t that right, Logan?”
I nodded. “Why just last night my neighbors told me that I should poison my parents, but I just shrugged that craziness right off.”
Dwayne’s eyes went wide and Lish put a hand to her mouth. “Whoa. Are you shitting me?”
“I shit you not,” I replied.
“Why would someone say that?” she asked.
“Because they said it was gonna get bad when the game started.”
Dwayne quirked an eyebrow. “Which game?”
“Fucking Monopoly, Dwayne. The Melee.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“How’d you take it?” Lish asked.
“About how you’d expect.”
“What the hell is going wrong with people?” Lish asked.
“They’re scared.”
“They’ve stopped believing in the story,” Dwayne said, making air quotes around the words “the story.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means since the time our ancestors emerged from their caves the one thing that’s kept people together is the shared belief in some greater story. Sometimes it’s religion, other times it’s the belief in a person, or a cause, or a country, but you gotta have faith in the story, in the notion that tomorrow is gonna be better than today, or why else would you get up in the morning?”
“Frozen waffles,” I replied.
Lish nodded. “Totally. I loves me some frozen waffles.”
“You guys are missing the point,” Dwayne said.
“No, we’re pretty much just ignoring you,” Lish answered, sticking out her tongue at him as he laughed and flipped her a middle finger.
We moved down past the Capitol Reflecting Pool, which was full of more gawkers and costumed revelers, the entire area decorated with ornaments.
Moving between the partiers, we listened to the hum of generators as holiday tunes blasted from an old boombox, including the song “Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!” which echoed over everything.
“The world is divided between Martin and Buble,” Lish said.
I walked alongside her and she read my expression and pointed at the boombox.
“I was talking about the song by the way. About how there are basically two, super old versions that most people know. One’s by Dean Martin and the other is by Michael Buble. You can tell a lot about a person based on which version they like.”
“Which one’s this?” I asked.
“The Dean Martin version.”
“I like this one.”
“Me too,” she said, grinning. “Dino had a swagger when he sang, y’know?”
I n
odded, humming along to the song as it ended. My gaze returned to her. “So now you know my deepest, darkest secret. I like Dean Martin.”
“That’s about all I know,” Lish replied.
I patted my pockets. “Well, somewhere I’ve got a resume and a list of references if you’re interested.”
She smiled and pecked me on the cheek. It was electric.
I looked over and, throwing caution to the wind, made a move to kiss her back and she pulled away.
“You were doing so well, Logan,” she sighed. “You were witty, a good listener, and exhibited none of the attributes of the men I normally steer clear of.”
My cheeks reddened. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be, but it’s too early to swap spit. I just broke up with my boyfriend a few weeks ago after he told me he needed more space.”
“To do what?”
“That’s what I asked.”
“What’d he say?”
“Bang other chicks.”
“Points for honesty.”
She nibbled on her lips. “One of the few times I would’ve preferred a lie.”
We stopped and took in everything.
“Seeing that I’ve gone and jumped the gun, what do we do?” I asked.
“We do what we came here to do,” she said, placing her hands on her hips. “We have some fucking fun.”
I reached for her hand and the crowd swelled and suddenly we were separated. I stumbled back, surprised by the surge of people. There were hundreds in our vicinity, maybe thousands. Everyone was hooting and hollering or banging drums and blowing party whistles.
I searched for Lish and Dwayne, but lost them in the ocean of gawkers. Given my issues, I did exactly what I’d been taught to do.
I stopped and stood.
This was a coping mechanism to calm my nerves and allow me to retrace my steps if I had to return to the car. Not only had the accident robbed me of my ability to process things in crowded spaces, but it had caused me to become anxious.
I stood there, hands clasped, hoping like hell that Dwayne and Lish would find me and then something happened. I refuse to call it a miracle, but something wonderful did come to me that day.
Looking up, there was a sparkle of light and my anxiety suddenly melted away. I wasn’t scared, or worried, and as my SecondSight flickered into view, I wasn’t confused. At all. In fact, I’d never felt so alive in my life.
Colors were more vibrant as I set off searching for my companions. I bobbed and weaved and slipped through the ocean of humanity, moving at what seemed like twice the speed of everyone else. The boxes and icons on my internal HUD were continuously hopping from person to person, object to object, populating with various pieces of information including temperature, distances, wind speed, and what I took to be my vitals.
I stopped near the edge of the Reflecting Pool, waiting to see if Dwayne and Lish spotted me. There were a ton of people now, thousands of them, everyone moving like a wave down toward the container.
“Can you hear me, Sue?” I asked.
“Yes,” the alien ghost voice responded.
“I feel different.”
“You are experiencing advanced mirroring.”
“Why?”
“I am not at liberty to answer that question.”
“We’re only eight days into this thing. Is something going to happen?”
Silence.
“Answer the goddamn question,” I snapped.
“I am not at liberty to answer your last question, Logan.”
Fear prickled the back of my neck. With my newfound abilities I sensed something. A change, a disturbance in the air. An energy. Something was happening. Something big.
I began moving along the edge of the pool, running, cutting through the crowds, fighting my way to reach a stone pillar, a vantage point.
I vaulted six feet up onto the pillar and looked out into the sea of humanity.
The people were smiling, laughing, shouting, and pointing at the container.
Craning my neck, I spotted them.
Dwayne and Lish.
They were down on the other side of Third Street, several hundred yards away. I waved and shouted and by some miracle they spotted me and waved and shouted back.
That’s when it happened.
I smelled the same odor I’d noticed when the aliens first arrived. A note that reminded me vaguely of sulfur.
The boxes on my internal HUD began spinning and focusing on one thing.
The container.
One of the boxes was blinking red.
The one marked “species.”
There was a word inside the box: Obeliscus.
“Get away from the container,” I said, my voice inaudible in the din.
“AWAY!” I shouted to Lish and Dwayne, waving my hands. “GET AWAY FROM THE CONTAINER!”
They made faces because they couldn’t hear me. I mimed for them to move away from the container, but they didn’t.
Dropping down from the pillar, I bulled through the crowd, lowering a shoulder, knocking people aside.
“GET AWAY! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”
Time and sound seemed to slow the closer I got to the container. I was bellowing in what seemed like slow-motion and nobody was listening. And then I darted across Third Street and saw it.
A piece from the container.
Slicing through the air over my head.
I ducked, but the people behind me weren’t so lucky. The metal panel or whatever it was, took their heads off. Just like that.
That got people’s attention.
So did the gigantic monster that was standing on the National Mall.
9
I skidded to a juddering halt, sixty feet away from Dwayne and Lish as the thing that had been hiding inside the container rose to its full and terrible height. How it fit inside that box I’ll never know, but there it was, some kind of biomechanical freakazoid, a construct that appeared to have been built from pieces taken from other, larger beasts.
It had a long, segmented, bulbous body, as if three enormous tarantulas had been bred with an oversized centipede. Its legs, and there appeared to be a dozen or so, were long and thin, sprouting from every direction, including the thing’s short, leathery wings. Its head was tiny relative to the rest of its body, and composed of a single yellow eye with a pair of antennae, above a zipperlike mouth that made a gut-churning mewling as it clicked and ticked forward.
A box on my HUD revealed some details about the monster:
Species: Obeliscus
Level:1
Class:Monster
Health:10/10
Attributes:Blood enhanced with multiple organs that enable fighting with deadly skill and ferocity; has the ability to create and propel weaponized cyclostomata; weakness lies in the cephalothorax.
I had no idea what cyclostomata or cephalothorax meant, but I did know that the crowd had grown quiet. The sight of a monster has that effect on people.
All eyes were on the beast and then it lurched out, its mouth opening to take the head off a nearby cop in a single bite.
Suffice it to say, all hell broke loose.
The other police opened fire and the monster stampeded and I ran toward Dwayne and Lish.
I grabbed their hands and then we wheeled around and ran down Third Street as the ground shook from the monstrous thing that was easily thirty feet long.
“What the hell is that thing?!” Dwayne asked.
“Whatever it is, it looks hungry and pissed off!” Lish replied.
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that the monster had stopped. Its body had ballooned to twice its normal size and then there was a gaseous WHUMP!
“What’s happening?” I wondered aloud.
“Why’s it doing that?”
The thing’s exterior continued to expand like a balloon.
“Down,” I said softly. Then louder: “GET DOWN!”
There was a tremendous burst of air as things shot out of the beast.
It had the size and shape of a knitting needle, but was made from some organic material. It became limp and dropped to the ground, squirming around like a worm, resembling a lamprey or an eel with a tiny barbed mouth that made small, sucking sounds.
Looking around, I realized that many of the worm-needles had struck people in the crowd. There were dozens, hundreds of people splayed on the grass, the asphalt. Many of them were thrashing about and when they stood, their bodies inflated and then burst.
I shit you not, the people struck by the worm-needles exploded.
Little hunks of flesh and bone-shrapnel filled the air as we covered our heads. Other bystanders who hadn’t been struck by the worm-needles were hit by the bone-shrapnel and this in turn somehow infected them, because they too inflated and exploded. This went on and on until there was nobody left standing.
“What the actual fuck,” Lish gasped.
I watched the monster attack the police, swinging its arms, battering the cops whose guns bloodied the monster, but couldn’t bring it down. Several cops barreled into the armored vehicle and began opening fire with a machine gun. Their bullets stitched a wound in the monster’s side, and it turned on the vehicle in anger, spearing several of its legs down through the top of the machine until it stopped moving, began smoking, and caught fire.
“Somebody has to stop the fucking thing,” I muttered.
Dwayne nodded. “Yeah, someone other than us!”
I stood and Dwayne and Lish grabbed my arm. “Let’s go!”
I shook my head. “You guys take cover. I’ll buy you some time.”
“Why does it have to be you?” Lish asked.
“Because I’m the only one dumb enough not to run.”
I charged down Third Street.
“Sue?!” I screamed inwardly. “Can you hear me?!’
“Yes,” the alien ghost voice said.
“There’s a monster here.”
“I can see that.”
