I Hope You Get This Message

by Farah Naz Rishi

  And then everyone could hear it: the insistent, piercing wail of a fire alarm.

  “It’s Alma!” someone cried. “They’re here!”

  Just like that, all hell broke loose. People snapped out of their stupor, their screams and stomps all blending into a cacophonous flurry of sound. A rush of people thronged past the bar, one of them catching Cate in the face with an elbow. She stumbled off her stool and was immediately swept up into the flow of people. There was something else, too, another sound rising above it all, something that sounded terrifyingly like gunshots. The crowd swallowed Cate whole. Her limbs were pinned to her sides. She could hardly breathe.

  “Don’t you fucking touch me!” a man to her left snarled, crimson-faced. He flailed out with his fist and struck the nose of another man, releasing a tide of blood. Then Cate heard the gunshots clearer now. Debris fell from the ceiling like snowflakes. She thought she smelled smoke too. Screams crescendoed once again, the shoving growing more desperate. Just how many shooters were there?

  Cate’s mind clouded with white panic. It’s okay, she told herself. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s going to be okay.

  But there was no room to turn around—no room to turn at all. I can’t go back, she realized suddenly, remembering a snippet of knowledge she’d once heard during a fire drill. I have to follow the crowd like it’s a wave. So I don’t fall. If I fall, I’ll get trampled to death.

  Don’t fall. Don’t fall. Don’t fall.

  The crowd swept her along, unrelenting. All the way to the front of the casino, screams and shouts echoing in her ears the whole time. Until she and the crowd reached a bottleneck just inside the main exit. Her cheek was pressed into someone’s shoulder blade, and by now Cate had been squished and pushed so many times she could hardly breathe. But she could see it: people were beginning to break from the crowd. Getting outside. The crowd here was so tight that it was almost motionless, and for a moment Cate felt almost surreally calm, as if she were just standing in the middle of a group of people, on a subway train, or something.

  And then Cate saw it—an opening. She shoved forward with all her might, squeezed through a tiny gap between two large, sweaty men, and ran through the doors and out into the rain.

  When Cate found a pocket of space between a row of pine trees that dotted the outskirts of the building, she stopped and took gigantic breaths, in and out, tears streaming from her eyes. Her lungs prickled beneath her chest, and her shoes were digging into the backs of her heels, but she barely felt the pain. She’d only run a couple hundred feet from the casino, half stumbling down the wet hillside until she reached the trees, until she reached the cover of their shadowy branches.

  From a distance, Cate could still see the police and SWAT team members evacuating people, ushering them away from the casino entrance and toward the pine trees where she was hidden. She could smell smoke, too, and hear the wail of approaching fire trucks.

  On the other side of the trees was the parking lot. She stumbled but somehow managed to stay on her feet as she willed herself forward, toward the first line of cars in the lot. She scanned them, unable to find that familiar shade of blue, and bolted deeper into the maze of cars. The lot seemed so much bigger than before, and she couldn’t remember where they’d parked.

  The crowd from the casino was close behind. Soon this parking lot would be utter chaos. There were too many rows and too many cars, many of them parked in weird, crooked angles in an attempt to make their own spots where there were none left. She doubted those cars belonged to people heading to the church.

  But Ivy’s blue Mazda was gone.

  “Come on, come on . . .” She grabbed the door handle of another sedan and pulled. Locked. Of course. A fresh crowd of people thronged past her. One girl’s face was streaked with soot and rust, or maybe blood. In the distance, smoke was unwinding from the casino roof.

  She coughed. She was still having trouble breathing. Her head was full of thick clouds of smoke, with the clamor of the alarms, with the shrill, piercing wail of the approaching emergency vehicles. She just wanted to sit down somewhere. Somewhere dry and safe and enclosed—somewhere quiet.

  Automatically, almost without thinking, Cate tried the hatchback on her right. Also locked. Cate went around to the next car, tried the door. Nope. She tried another, and then a pickup truck, and then another car, moving closer and closer toward the church until . . .

  Click.

  Thank God. Someone had forgotten to lock their Acura.

  She scrambled inside, scattering a pile of papers and a portable radio across the back seat. She quietly closed the door behind her and locked it.

  Cate flattened herself against the back seat of the car as frantic footsteps thundered past her. She felt light-headed and closed her eyes. She could feel the pinch of her blackbird key chain in her pocket pressing into her stomach, but her body trembled uncontrollably and she didn’t dare move it. She felt a sob well up in her throat. The world was ending, and she was miles away from her mom, crying in a strange car that smelled faintly of mangos and hoping her best friend didn’t hate her. And for what? To find a dad who’d never even bothered to fight to get Mom back?

  Stupid. So stupid. But the stupidest thing of all was how sure she was, even now, that she would have regretted not trying.

  Footsteps. She heard more footsteps, a lone pair, slapping the pavement, getting closer. Was it more people from the casino, people like her, who were just trying to find someplace to hide? Or was it the shooter?

  Please let me be safe.

  She closed her eyes and prayed.

  11

  Adeem

  Smoke.

  Adeem saw it the second he was outside; the back of the lot, where the cars were more packed together, was also full of people, many of them breathless and red-faced, as though they’d been running. And more were coming, bursting through the row of pine trees that divided the church grounds from the casino. Some were screaming, others crying. Dread seized his legs and clutched painfully at his chest. He’d caught glimpses of these kinds of scenes on the TV, had heard about them on his radio—disasters like school shootings—but that was the news, something that happened to other people, not something you just walked into.

  Beyond the pine trees, elevated by a giant hill, the casino seemed to glow against the purple evening haze, lit up by long rows of neon pink lights that ran down its windows like columns. A crowd had gathered around the giant fountain at the casino entrance, now closed off by uniformed officers who had emerged from lit cop cars. A Humvee rolled in beside a parked fire truck, and cops in SWAT gear hopped off, carrying guns that were half their size, to take position in front of the casino doors. Cops with German shepherds patrolled the perimeter. People in yellow jackets were escorting or carrying the wounded to the grass; there were so many wounded.

  Adeem hoped Reza and the others stayed in the basement. Stay safe, Rez.

  He’d text him later, when he could. When he could think.

  Adeem moved as fast as he could without breaking into a run toward his car. The gravel pathway to the parking lot crunched beneath his feet. He narrowly dodged another driver frantically trying to leave. Finally, he reached his own car and leaned against it to keep himself steady.

  “Breathe,” he repeated to himself. “Breathe.” Miss Takemoto was right about the dangers of becoming a Mountain Dew–chugging zombie; Adeem was more out of shape than he’d thought. He imagined his heart gasping for air, its four chambers contracting and pumping in a desperate, clumsy dance to keep him functioning, if only barely.

  He unlocked the car, pulled open the driver’s seat door, and froze.

  “I can explain.”

  A girl was huddled in the back seat of his Acura TSX with both hands up, as if she was worried he was going to try and shoot her. In the evening dark, he hadn’t seen her from outside.

  She had dark, liquid eyes set against her pale, freckled skin. Her forehead was a mess of sweaty bangs. And she was shaking.


  “Jesus!” Adeem drew back, startled. “How’d you get inside?” he demanded.

  “The door was unlocked.” The girl gripped the seat in front of her.

  Unlocked? Oh no. Panicking, he suddenly reached for a lever on the driver’s seat—which made the girl flinch—and folded the seat down with a loud thud. But there it was, safe and sound: his Tecson radio and his external AM antenna, tucked in the back-seat pocket. The only remaining thread he had to his sister.

  Adeem shoved the radio into the glove compartment and breathed a long sigh of relief. The girl, he realized, had inched as far away from him as she could, so he pushed the driver’s seat up into place, gently, to put some space between them. The girl was obviously on edge, and he wasn’t helping.

  The faraway crack of something that sounded dangerously like gunfire, followed by the shattering of glass, gripped Adeem’s attention toward the hill where the casino stood, only a quarter of a mile away.

  Another bang. Adeem nearly jumped.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Adeem dove into the driver’s seat and slammed the door behind him.

  The girl wrapped the light cardigan she wore closer over her frame. “There’s a gunman—we’re not safe.”

  “No shit,” he retorted. He’d been tense before, but now his entire body was rigid. A bead of sweat rolled down his face. It hit him then, what this girl must have seen. What she must have been through.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “No.” She took a shallow, quivering breath. “I’m okay, I think.”

  She didn’t look okay, but Adeem wasn’t about to point that out.

  Streams of people broke through the row of pine trees beside them, running into the church parking lot. Some were shrieking, sprinting with seemingly no intention of ever stopping. Others were moving toward the church for shelter. At one point, someone bumped into their car with a loud thud. It was a woman just a few years older than Adeem. Leyla’s age.

  Adeem’s body wouldn’t move. He wanted to disappear beneath the woman’s desperate, frantic stare. Before he could even think to let her inside, a high-pitched whistle and a faraway popping resounded through the open sky. The woman’s eyes widened in horror before she ran off.

  The girl with the freckles whimpered behind him. She was watching the sky now through the window, an uneasy expression on her face. Adeem was almost afraid to look, but a flash of red forced him. A flare, maybe? Maybe the police were signaling to each other.

  But suddenly, from up on the hill where the casino was nestled, screams broke through the hazy night air and throbbed between his ears. The crowd that had been waiting outside the entrance scattered. Silvery-gray fumes escaped from a series of shattered windows on the face of the casino and descended upon them, enveloping the entrance, sweeping over the row of police cars. Even from within the car, his nose picked up on a smell that burned his nostrils and stung his eyes.

  An ocean of a crowd sprinted down the hill, toward the church. Toward them.

  “Shit.” That was all Adeem needed to convince him. He shoved his phone back in his pocket and jammed his finger against the Start Engine button. The radio blared to life, blasting some fast-paced electronica. Adeem raised his voice. “I’m gonna Tokyo Drift our way out of this. We’ll figure out the rest later.” Adeem turned to look at her. “You okay with that?”

  More gunshots from the casino. Except they sounded louder this time, too loud for even the music to muffle. The shadowy evening horizon line was now raked by black plumes of smoke. The back of Adeem’s neck tingled with painful awareness—the feeling he used to get, late at night, when he could feel some imaginary monster following him upstairs to his bedroom. Except this time, the danger was real. The monster was real. And somehow he’d fallen right in its path. He opened his mouth to ask her again, but before he could, the girl put on her seat belt.

  “Anywhere’s better than here,” she said.

  He slammed the accelerator. “Roger that.” He was thrown to the back of the seat by sheer force and barely wove through the incoming wave of people, speeding toward the main road and away from the church, the casino, and the haze of hungry flames. Hours of Mario Kart definitely had not prepared him for the real thing. Another bead of sweat rolled down his cheek.

  “I’m Adeem, by the way,” he half screamed.

  The girl leaned forward. “Cate,” she said, wiping her eyes. “My name’s Cate.”

  Five Days Until the End of Deliberations

  [THE FIRST “MESSAGES” SENT OUT IN BINARY BY JESSE’S MACHINE]

  Testing, testing, one, two, three . . .

  Commence message transmission:

  Alma, if you can see this,

  Please, for the sake of my unborn baby, you can’t do this.

  Alma,

  Come at me, bro. If I can handle life, I can handle you.

  Kareem

  Dear Vincent,

  If we don’t make it, know my love remains in space forever.

  Yours,

  Sam

  To the aliens,

  Don’t bother coming here. Humans taste awful.

  Seymour, my one and only,

  They say it’ll all end soon. All I can do now is wish you were here with me. Aliens, Almaens, whoever—give my Seymour a sign that I love him.

  Love, Cora

  Len,

  They say this message should reach space, so maybe it’ll reach you. If you’re there, send down a little luck our way. We could use it.

  Love,

  Moira

  Dear Pete,

  I miss you.

  Laura

  Citizens of Alma,

  I’ve already lost everything. I don’t even have enough money to send a longer message. Just please reconsider.

  Thank you,

  Kai

  I swear to all you alien colonizers out there,

  If I die before Derek knows I’ve been crushing on him all year, I’m taking you bitches down with me.

  Up yours,

  Mia

  12

  Jesse

  Less than twenty-four hours after Jesse first posted about the Hewitt Electronic Communication Center on Reddit—HECC, for short—he woke up to a doorbell that wouldn’t stop ringing and a small line of people running from the doorway to the mailbox.

  There were twenty people milling in the front yard, give or take, old and young and everything in between. Most had backpacks and small cameras and wide eyes, like the tourists he used to see back at the Roswell Plaza Hotel. He even recognized some of the locals: Frank Gottlieb, the waiter at Cattle Ranch Steakhouse who swore up and down he’d been abducted by aliens in the ’80s; Kit Newton, a freshman who charged kids at school fifteen bucks a jar filled with dirt from the old UFO crash site; and a few people he’d worked with at the hotel, including the assistant manager, Doug, who was probably happy the hotel closed down because it meant he’d have more time to spend with his exotic snake collection.

  Realization dawned like a punch to his jaw. The machine.

  A van rolled into the driveway, barely avoiding the line of people, and another group of tourists shuffled out. Jesse started counting heads—counting wallets—but kept losing track.

  The photo he’d uploaded had captured the machine’s towering, seven-foot-tall frame; it would be obvious to anyone the thing was massive, and with its glowing interface and backlit keys, it looked straight out of a NASA laboratory. No one would know it was nothing more than a glorified printer—or, at least, a lot of people wouldn’t know. And he didn’t show up at school enough for people to know he was about as good at math and science as knitting blindfolded.

  But he’d spent hours at the Roswell Public Library yesterday after he’d unearthed the machine and found several sun-faded astronomy journals from the ’80s. Some forgotten would-be astronomer from Chile had written a thesis on gaseous planets in the TRAPPIST-2 system, long before Alma had been discovered, and bored Jesse to death with his theory that one of
those gassy planets would complete its orbit around the system’s sun-like star every 489 days. It sounded legit enough to Jesse, and the theory—and poor astronomer—were obscure enough that no one would discover Jesse’s source. So Jesse banked on it, claiming on his Reddit post that Alma, through his machine, had given him all kinds of information about their solar system, including information about their orbits. Information that, as far as anyone could tell, only he and Alma could ever know—unless Jesse had a five-million-dollar telescope. Which he did not.

  He couldn’t believe it had worked.

  The lie, that is.

  Jesse shut the curtains, but already people had seen him. Now they were shouting his name. The local reporters must have been eager for a story, no matter how small—something different from the usual gloom-and-doom that every damn news station was showing nowadays.

  He wished he had another working laptop, but he had to use the only one they had, an ancient, beat-up Gateway, for the inside of the machine. He wondered how many people had seen his Reddit post already. How many people in the world already knew his name?

  Soon everyone will know the name Hewitt, J-Bird.

  When he was alone in Dad’s shed, the feel of wood grain beneath his fingertips had brought him a strange sense of familiarity, like the touch of an old friend; there was comfort in knowing he could easily transform a cheap block of wood, a spring, and some bolts into something sellable to make an easy few bucks, no sweat. With his own two hands, and a little effort, he could manipulate basic materials into something greater.

  And with the machine, he could change things for himself—and for his mom, too.

  He hadn’t told her about his plans yet, and was glad she was as usual working a double at the diner. It wouldn’t take long for rumors of the machine to reach her there, though. He hoped she wouldn’t be too mad.