Laurie raised her rifle but her dad shuffled into her line of fire, his rifle at his shoulder.
"Watch it, you two!" Sonja cried.
While Laurie lowered her weapon, Dan placed his sights on the center of the running boy's back. His forefinger curled around the trigger. A splinter of doubt slowed his squeeze. What if Donny had misunderstood? What if the boy was suffering from a temporary bout of insanity from lying comatose for so long?
Gary Hanson ducked out of sight behind the barn. Dan lowered his rifle. Sonja was helping Donny to his feet. He seemed okay, if tottering a bit on his feet, his normally rosy cheeks the color of white marble.
"I need to check on her," Sonja said to her husband. Dan gave her a grim nod.
Diana, Myth, and Penny jogged down the stairs from the guest bedroom.
"What's going on?" Diana asked.
"Gary woke up," said Dan. "From the sounds of it, he was hungry."
"He was" – Donny hunched over, holding his chest, willing himself not to retch – "he was eating her."
Horror invaded Diana. No. Not again. She'd meant to tell the Jensens about how she'd found Penny, but the time never seemed right, and she never imagined that the boy would just wake up and attack someone. She should've warned them, damn it!
When Sonja returned, her flesh tones nearly matched her son's.
"It's real, isn't it?" Donny asked in a little boy's voice that Laurie hadn't heard for ages. "I didn't imagine it."
"It's real." Sonja eased around him, hands squeezing her arms, her haunted gaze seeking out her husband's. "He apparently was consuming her. But I'm sure she'd bled out and was unconscious or dead through most of it."
Dan was giving his face a fierce massage. "I need to go after him before he gets too far."
"You're going to kill him?" Sonja asked.
"We can't have a maniac running around here, can we?"
"I'll come with you," said Diana.
Dan shook his head. "Hang tight here. In case he comes back."
"Be careful, Dan." Sonja touched his arm. "That boy is unnaturally strong, as if he's hyped up on something."
"I noticed." He glanced at the door lying on the floor. "Don't worry. I'll be careful."
Dan squeezed his wife's arm and patted Laurie's shoulder and departed with a nod to his pale-faced son. Outside, the brisk spring morning was starting to warm up. The mist rose from the freshly planted fields, evaporating in the sun's rays that would grow stronger with each day. Soon, corn would be rising, too – mountains of field corn that would've fed legions of livestock and hundreds of cars. A small portion of land was devoted to sweet corn.
Dan shook off his farming thoughts with a jolt of self-contempt. He wanted things to be normal so desperately, so ridiculously, that here he was ignoring a half-eaten body in his basement and not even able to focus on a crazed teenaged killer.
He circled the buildings, giving them a wide berth, allowing the youth no opportunity to jump out from around a corner or otherwise sneak up on him. Dan had hunted men. He'd killed men who were trained soldiers. He might be "hyped up" on something, but he was still just a damn kid.
Gary Hanson had no clue about what was happening, Dan was sure about that. Something had gone horrifically wrong in his brain and he'd killed his sister. It was horrible, but then what part of this wasn't? Still, a human being becoming a monster while they were surrounded by alien monsters? Something particularly unnerving about that.
Diana caught up with him, breathing hard, her MP 10 in hand.
"Hey," she said.
"I would prefer it if you stayed in the house, Diana."
"I need to tell you something. To warn you."
"About what? You don't think I'm aware that this kid is dangerous?"
"But you may not be aware of how dangerous – " She pointed suddenly. "There he is!"
A tiny figure was bobbing along two fields away. Dan snapped on his scope and propped his rife on a fence post. The boy had to be 1500 yards out, if not more. Dan was an accurate shooter, but no marksman. He'd never shot at anything live more than six hundred yards away, and that was with Laurie or one of his friends spotting for him. Keep running, kid.
He lowered his rifle and turned to Diana. She averted her eyes in a way that suggested she believed she was guilty of something.
"You know something I don't," he said.
"It's about Penny." Diana glanced back at the house, grateful the girl had decided to stay put. "She has some unusual physical and psychological qualities, and I'm guessing that boy does, too."
"What unusual psychological and physical qualities?"
"Superior strength and speed, for one. And I don't mean a little bit superior. I'd say she can run about as fast as a horse and jump about as well as Lebron James on a trampoline. I watched Penny smash the top of an oak dresser with one blow. I don't know of any man, no matter how advanced in martial arts, who could come close, parlor tricks with brittle bricks aside."
Dan glanced from her to where they'd last seen Gary Hanson and then back to her. "The Adderall did more than just protect her or Gary's lives. It altered them."
"Physically and mentally."
"Penny doesn't strike me as insane," said Dan. "A bit off, maybe, but I don't see her eating one of her siblings."
His thin smile faded as Diana studied two pigeons displaying on the roof of the nearby outbuilding. The seconds of silence slowly mounted.
"Or did she?" Dan asked. "Eat one of her siblings."
Diana let out a held breath and met his gaze. "I found her in her bedroom chowing down on her younger brother."
Dan released his own breath with a punctured inner tube hissing sound. "You're telling me this now?"
"I didn't think the boy would awaken or that he would behave that way if he did."
"But you knew there was a possibility."
"Yes."
"Why didn't you tell us?"
"Penny seems to have recovered from that initial state of mind. She might still be a bit off, but she seems mostly sane to me now. I didn't want you to view her as a monster."
"A young woman just lost her life because we weren't aware of the danger."
"I'm painfully aware of that. I made a terrible error in judgment."
Dan held her gaze for a long few seconds before turning away to brace himself on a fence post, his shoulders slumping. He couldn't work up a lot of anger toward the woman. None of them was prepared to deal with the ever-evolving bizarre permutations of this situation. But what if that had been Laurie down there with him when he woke up instead of Cindy? He gritted his teeth. Forgiveness would not come so easily, then.
"We can leave," said Diana. "If that's what you want."
Dan straightened up with a sigh. "I have a feeling we're all going to make our fair share of mistakes. Hopefully, we'll survive them. But Diana, the one thing we can't afford, in my opinion, is secrets. Hiding things from each other could get us killed. We can't hold things back, especially knowledge that could be crucial. That's the only way we can work successfully as a team."
"You're either an ex-corporate officer or ex-military." Diana cracked a small smile.
Dan released a soft snort. "Definitely not ex-corporate. I was a Ranger for a few years."
"I'm impressed."
"It's not as hard as raising a family or running a business, in my experience."
"Good thing I avoided those things."
Dan leaned against the post, facing her. "You hold that gun pretty comfortably for an accountant. Is that yours, or did you borrow it from Orchard Hardware?"
"This one's mine."
"Smith and Wesson M&P 10. Nice gun. I thought about getting one for myself."
"I'm sure there's one or two left at the hardware store. Quite a selection for a small town."
"Do you hunt?"
"Nope."
"Self-defense, then?"
"Yes. You hunt, then?"
"I've been known to." Dan's half-smile gained a shar
p edge. "Your eyes are kind of hard for an accountant's, too. They look like they've seen one or two things."
Diana resisted looking away. "Most people have. You're angling to hear my life story?"
"If we're going to work as a team it would be helpful to know something about any relevant background and experience, wouldn't you say?"
Diana let out a short laugh. "Were you an interrogator in the Army?"
"Nope. But I learned to read people pretty well."
Diana assessed the possibilities. What the hell. Sharing part of herself beckoned like a liberation.
"I was in the Agency," she said.
"The CIA?"
"Right."
"International Travel Service was a cover?"
"Yes."
"What did you do? Were you an operator?"
"I was a Psychological Operations officer. I helped organize and manage some operations. Not sure that makes me an operator in your lexicon."
"In the Middle East?"
"In the Middle Eastern theater, yes. And elsewhere."
"You're being a bit cryptic."
"I think what you need to know is if I've had some weapons and combat training and some experience applying that training in the field. The answer: I'm no Rambette, but yes, I've had some combat training and experience. I'm not keen on discussing the details of my missions. Are you about your missions?"
"Not really."
"I didn't think so. So are we good?"
Dan squinted at her for a few long seconds. "I think so. I hope so."
Diana turned away from his prying hazel eyes to the field where they'd last seen Gary Hanson fleeing.
"Do you want to go after the boy?" she asked.
Dan traced her gaze past the corn and soybean fields that would never be harvested. He bore the boy no ill-will. Something had gone wrong in his brain – something he had no power over. Maybe Gary would recover from his insanity at some point and realize what he'd done. Either way, being alone and unarmed and deranged, his days – if not his minutes – were numbered.
"I don't see much point in tracking him down," said Dan. "I doubt he'll last long out there alone."
"He could come to his senses. Penny did. More or less."
"Do you have a background in psychology – given what you did?"
"I have a degree. And psychological analysis was part of my job."
"So, speaking as a psychologist, is Penny dangerous to my family, Diana? In your best, most honest professional judgment."
"Assessing the psychology of someone with superpowers who's mutated into something who might not even be entirely human..." Diana shook her head. "That might be a little beyond my range of expertise. But my best guess is that she doesn't represent any danger to us under normal circumstances."
"Normal circumstances?"
"Well, I'd recommend keeping her well-fed."
"I don't find that very humorous."
"It wasn't intended to be." Diana returned his cool gaze. "I believe she's bonded with me. I think she wants to be part of a family more than she wants to cannibalize anyone. She might not feel true affection or kindness toward me or anyone else. She could be borderline sociopathic. But she did risk her life to save mine. That counts for something."
"She obviously feels an attachment to you," Dan said. "That doesn't mean it extends to anyone else."
"She gives every indication of wanting to belong to a social unit. And I think she could be a useful addition, especially in a fight. If you want an 'operator,' she definitely fits the bill."
"Assuming she doesn't turn her 'superpowers' on us at some point."
"As I said, I'm willing to take her away. You make the call and we will."
"What if I wanted you to stay but not her?"
"Abandon her? You might as well ask me to put a bullet in her head."
He raised a brow. "Would you? I mean, if it came to that?"
"Would I kill her if she attacked you or your family? Yes. But not otherwise. And I won't abandon her, not without cause."
Dan nodded. Neither spoke for a while. Two pigeons on the utility building stopped battling and flew off. Diana searched the skies, but saw no sign of either Zurzay or any other flying creature.
"All right." Dan straightened up off the fence post. "Let's keep our motley crew together, for now. We should get back before they send the cavalry after us."
They started toward the house.
"I've been meaning to ask you about Myth," said Diana. "How her cloning worked. How she went about taking genetic material from that girl."
"The girl was Marjorie Wilson." Dan said her name with a heavy breath. "My daughter actually caught Myth, in her original form, feeding on her. Laurie probably would've killed her if she hadn't run off. So that, I would guess, was when she took Marjorie's DNA." He made a sound as if something was caught in his throat. "And her brain, which provided Myth with some of her memories."
"You're saying she ate her brain?"
"Yes. But Marjorie was already dead."
"Still. It seems like a lot of eating people is going around. What did the alien look like in her original form?"
"Laurie said she resembled a shriveled old lady."
"Balding? Stringy grey hair?"
"Sounds about right." Dan glanced at her. "You saw her?"
"I saw several of them emerge from the landing craft. One of them could've been her."
"Huh. I wonder if any of the others survived...and what form they might take."
"I think that's something you might want to ask her."
Chapter 7
THE NEXT DAY, AFTER burying Cindy's remains, Diana, Dan, Penny, and Myth started their trip to Minden – the three adults by bike, Penny on foot. In private, Dan had not wanted the girl to accompany them, but the option of leaving her alone with his family had even less appeal. He had a similar quandary about Myth. Yes, she seemed perfectly friendly and reasonable, but neither he nor his wife and Diana – in private discussion – were quite sure she might not want to add to her genetic makeup if given a chance. Also, while Myth had shown considerable promise with firearms on unmoving targets, Dan wanted to see how she'd do in a "live fire" situation.
Laurie argued that she should come instead of Myth, but had grudgingly accepted her role as a family co-protector.
Leaving Sonja, Laurie, and Donny alone to fend for themselves made Dan uneasy, but it was a matter of tradeoffs: the extreme dangers of traveling versus those at their home. All Dan could think to do was play the odds. His wife and daughter were both pretty good with guns, and Laurie had proven herself surprisingly "combat capable" during her unauthorized foray into town. As much as he'd hated her running off like that, her excursion had answered some important questions that could only be answered under combat circumstances. And even Donny, who'd hated guns with a passion seemingly from birth, had overcome his lifelong prejudice, learning gun basics and performing some target practice.
The previous afternoon, they'd corralled the best bikes they could find in and around Glenwald, and had hauled more rifles and handguns along with several spare clips, knives, backpacks, water purification systems and tablets from Orchard Hardware, as well as food from the grocery store. The plan was to complete the twenty-three or four-mile ride to Minden in around two hours, check in on his parents and perform a quick search for survivors. They all assumed that they'd find Dan's parents dead, along with most if not all of the townspeople, and if that was the case, they might return later that afternoon or, at the latest, first thing the next morning. Though they had no expectation of finding anyone alive, they all agreed that it was the logical first step toward exploring the outside world that had to be taken.
You couldn't fully appreciate the silent absence of human life, Diana thought, until you pedaled down an empty rural road – empty except for an occasional deserted car or truck – and instead of looking out for approaching cars you kept looking for exotic alien creatures.
Maybe two of the most exo
tic creatures, she thought, were traveling along with them. An alien assuming the form of a young, pretty woman who'd been diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer, according to Sonja. An alien who had some of her memories and human understanding, but didn't seem to have any emotional connection with her life. She seemed to have her own personality as distinct from what Marjorie Wilson's had been, but it wasn't obvious to Diana what it was. If she'd been human, Diana would've described her as an introvert, calm and quiet, though that might be an illusion based on her limited vocabulary. Myth was learning words and phrases so quickly that Diana figured her true personality would soon reveal itself. No hint of what she'd call "anti-social" or psychotic/homicidal tendencies, but then how did one evaluate personality traits of an alien being?
"Do you think others of your kind might've survived?" Diana had asked Myth the day before. "And would you recognize them in their new forms if they did?"
"Some may live," Myth had replied. "Hard to recognize, but may."
Diana thought that in some ways it was easier communicating with Zurzay. There was also the possibility, probably a function of the paranoia instilled by her former life, that Myth wasn't being entirely forthcoming. She claimed to know only what 'The Keepers' had told her about her race: they did not breed among themselves but instead lived and evolved by absorbing the genetic material of other creatures. That seemed to imply that they required a constant source of "other creatures" in order to follow their evolutionary imperative. Diana asked her about that, but she had no answer. Or maybe she didn't want to answer?
They'd gone about halfway to Minden without encountering any threatening creatures – the only alien creatures they'd seen were a few of the "scavenger worms" – when a group of maybe twenty "fairies" appeared on the highway ahead, coming straight for them in their unique bobbing style of movement: scampering a few meters, launching themselves into buzzing flight, then hitting the ground and repeating. Diana guessed they were moving at thirty or forty miles per hour.
"I'll take the center position," said Dan, crouching in the center of the road. "Diana, take the left, Myth, the right. Penny – please just stay back out of our line of fire for now."
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