by Sean Platt
Luca and Anna were lying together on their L-shaped couch watching The Incredibles. Neither had picked the movie, since no one seemed to agree on whose turn it was to choose. Luca was certain it was his turn, and he wanted to watch Return of the Jedi again. Anna said it was her turn — she wanted to watch Tangled for the bajillionth time. Mom had a headache and didn’t feel like hearing another argument, so she compromised with The Incredibles, which both Luca and Anna loudly complained about, even though they both loved the movie, and it was even one of Luca’s three favorite Pixars.
As the movie was ending, and the clock on the cable box was nearing 9 p.m., Luca knew their mom would be in the living room any minute to pick up a few stray kernels of popcorn from the carpet and announce bedtime. Luca glanced over at Anna, lightly snoring above the pool of fresh drool on her pillow. He closed his eyes and pretended to be sleeping, too, hoping their mom might leave them there for the night.
Ever since arriving in the other Luca’s world, and claiming his spot in Luca’s family, he had grown to hate bedtime. Sometimes, when he and Anna fell asleep together on the couch, their mom would leave them through the night. It was these nights, lying beside his sister, when Luca felt the most safe, comfortable, and, oddly enough, most loved.
When he had to sleep in his bedroom, all alone, he felt like the impostor he was.
“Time for bed,” Mom said, spoiling Luca’s hope.
Luca rose from the couch, dejected, hoping to win some sympathy and be allowed to maybe sleep in the living room. Anna was already standing, and hugging their mom goodnight, resigned to her fate — and resigning Luca to his.
Luca hugged his mom goodnight, but pushed his face into her harder than usual.
“What’s wrong, honey?” she asked.
“Just sad,” he said.
“Sad? You can watch Return of the Jedi another night, maybe even tomorrow.” She patted him on the shoulders.
Luca was going to tell her that it wasn’t The Incredibles that had made him sad, but decided not to. Because what could he say? That he was sad because he’d taken her real son’s place? That he left his family behind as monsters tore through his home world?
Luca couldn’t even start to explain what he only sort of understood. So, he said the only thing he could.
“Thank you, Mom.”
His mom hugged him harder before Luca trudged off to the bathroom. He brushed his teeth and peed, then headed to his father’s office.
His dad was tapping away at a thin aluminum keyboard, his eyes centered on the screen. It took him a moment to notice Luca. Once he did, Luca’s dad looked up, without smiling. He seemed more distracted than happy to see him. Luca figured he must be working on something extra special important.
“Goodnight, Buddy,” his dad said, hugging him goodnight.
“Goodnight, Dad,” Luca said, head down as he shuffled to his bedroom where his mom came inside to tuck him in a few minutes later.
As his mom closed the door, the shadows returned.
Outside his window, through the parted curtains, Luca could see the moon peering through the thousand-fingered trees, its soft glow twisting those fingers into scary shadows on Luca’s far wall.
He turned from the window and then turned back, choosing to lie facing the window and its glow instead of the wall and its shadows. Luca closed his eyes and thought about his family — his real family, back on the world he’d abandoned.
Luca had tried to return several times since October so that he could see how they were doing, but was only successful a few times. He hadn’t been able to control where he went, however. And each time he’d gone to the other world, he’d wound up with the other Luca. Only that Luca had changed. He was older. And the other Luca couldn’t see him. Nobody could see him — as if he were some kind of ghost.
Luca’s only success was last month when he saw the other version of his new dad, Will. He was surprised the other Will had been able to see him, and didn’t know how long he would be able to do so, so he delivered his message so urgently that he wasn’t even sure Will understood what he was saying.
Even if Will had understood, he was bleeding so much he looked like he was just minutes from dying. If Will was dead, then he couldn’t have given the message to anyone. And if that were the case, then perhaps all hope was lost — for Luca and his world. Perhaps all hope was lost, anyway, though. Because Luca wasn’t even sure that the message would help. He was only giving that message because of the dream he’d had — the dream where people were looking for the vial Luca had hidden.
Luca had tried to go back a few times after he saw Will, but nothing was working. Luca wasn’t sure why getting to the other world now was so much harder. He’d been able to do it so easily before Oct. 15.
But then something had happened.
Perhaps it had to do with the thing that pulled the others to his world. It wasn’t the Darkness that he’d seen taking over his world. It was something else — a brightness that Luca felt more than saw.
He closed his eyes and tried to go back, just as he had tried to do nearly every night since October.
And then he was gone.
Luca was suddenly floating in darkness, salt water splashing his face and into his eyes and mouth as he struggled to keep his nose and mouth above the surface. Luca’s arms thrashed in the water as he struggled to see anything. But he couldn’t drink his surroundings without also drinking salt.
Luca swallowed a mouthful of sea and went underwater.
He panicked, then somehow managed to come back up, spitting out water as he paddled to stay above the churning waves.
Where am I?
Something splashed loud behind him, hitting the water so hard it caused a giant wave to plunge him back beneath the surface. He could hear the muffled splashes of more things falling around him. Confused, he opened his eyes underwater, despite the burning, to see what was making so much noise.
Are there other people here?
Luca saw several dozen faint-orange somethings glowing above him.
Pretty.
What are they?
He surfaced for air, wiping water from his eyes as he looked up, peering into the black to see what the orange lights were made of. As he squeezed his eyes in concentration, Luca felt fear, like fingers wrapping tightly around his heart.
Above him, dozens of burning chunks of something were raining from the sky, splashing the water all around him. He couldn’t tell what they were, but there were dozens or more orange spots coming at him, some of them huge.
Luca screamed as he desperately paddled, trying to swim free from the falling fire, with no idea where to go.
He swam in blind fear as flaming debris continued to rain around him, smashing tall waves against his body, sometimes hard enough to bury him beneath another choking wave.
Where is this stuff coming from? And what is it?
From what Luca could tell, the something was made from all sorts of stuff: wood, chunks of trees, pieces of cars, clothing, books, and food.
Something splashed beside him, confusing him at first, until he realized it was a person’s head, ripped from their body and burned on over half of their face.
Luca screamed, went under, then surfaced again, spitting and gagging on the harsh salt water as he gasped for air.
Keep swimming!
Luca kept going, faster than he’d ever swum in his life, trying to find a way to go back to the other world, where he’d been safe in the other Luca’s bed.
But he couldn’t get back if he wasn’t able to concentrate.
Luca swam for what felt like forever, his entire body in pain and his arms and legs about to turn rubber, unable to float any longer, until he found himself at a safe distance from the falling stuff.
That’s when he saw the source of the falling stuff in the distance: two of the largest tornadoes Luca had ever seen. While Luca had only seen tornadoes on TV, he was sure they didn’t usually have balls of lightning and fire in the midd
le, though.
Luca couldn’t tell how far away the tornadoes were from one another, but they seemed close, like they were about to collide. He’d never seen two at once, even on TV. It was like the tornados were fighting to see which one could gather then spit the most terrible stuff into the sky as they moved closer to one another.
Luca finally realized that it wasn’t just stuff they were spitting into the sky. The tornados were spitting what was left of Black Island.
His eyes widened as he screamed.
Luca woke in his bed, soaking wet, and screeching.
No one could hear his scream, however, because someone’s hand was covering his mouth.
Forty-Four
Brent Foster
Other Earth
Somewhere in Georgia …
March 31, 2012
FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT …
The black van barreled down the two-lane highway beneath the bright morning sun toward Dunn, Georgia as if on a mission from God.
Boricio was behind the wheel, with Callie in the front seat. Jung, the tall muscular Swiss super-soldier sat behind them, while Ed and Brent took the rear. Ed was resting his eyes, though Brent could never be certain if he were really napping — in which case, the dude was able to sleep anywhere — or if he were just lying low to appear like less of a threat in case he needed to bolt into action.
Brent’s mind wandered to their next destination — after they went to the other Boricio’s compound — Black Island.
He wondered how Jane and her daughter, Emily, were doing.
It had been a couple of weeks since he’d seen them, but it felt like months. He was surprised how much he missed them both. He thought of their last dinner, and how Emily had hugged him, filled with sudden sadness when he told her that he had to go on a special trip.
Emily made him promise to return home, safe. Of course he said he would, even though he wasn’t sure at the time. Now it looked like he might make good on his promise. Just one more stop, then back to Black Island they’d go, carrying their lingering questions behind them:
Would they be returning with both Boricios? And what had the bald Boricio done that had banished him to Black Mountain? Yes, they might make it back to Black Island in one piece, but Brent wondered what sort of reception would be waiting.
Before the trip, Boricio said Black Island might hold the key to them going home. But he said nothing about how that would happen, and Brent was afraid to ask for specifics, in the same way he’d been afraid to ask Ed for particulars when Ed said they might be able to get home somehow.
Brent was still clinging to the hope that they might get home, and that he would see his wife and son again. He’d not allowed himself more than a few stray thoughts surrounding Ben and Gina during the previous week, particularly when it seemed like they might not make it back to Black Island, let alone home. Now, as they drew closer to Black Island, he found himself daring to hope again.
He thought of Ben and smiled. He couldn’t wait to see his son again, to hold him in his arms and hug his tiny buddy. He thought of his son’s toy, the Stanley Train that was taken from him by Black Island Guardsmen. He wondered if that toy belonged to the Ben of this world, who was mutated and held in chambers deep in Black Island’s bowels, or if he’d somehow brought it from his own world when he was yanked away.
Let me make it back, God, and I swear, I’ll quit my job and never neglect my family again. Please. Just let us make it back.
Brent felt hypocritical praying to a God who hadn’t earned his faith. If He was real, Brent wondered, did He piss on the prayers of the skeptics, and was he cursing himself by now turning to prayer? As if God somehow would say, “No, you didn’t believe in me before now. Fuck off.”
Brent wondered what would happen if they actually found a way back to Earth.?
How would they arrive? Would they appear, just like they’d vanished? Would he show up in his bed and scare the hell out of Gina? Or would they be going home through some sort of science-fiction teleportation machine, and wind up on the other Black Island? If so, would that mean they were immediately apprehended by Homeland Security, then held in detention for months on end as suspected terrorists? Or worse, made part of some secret lab experiment, hidden from the rest of the world and kept from their families forever?
Brent swallowed, feeling anxiety thicken his throat.
So close, yet so far. And too many unanswered questions.
Brent hated not knowing, or having control of his own fate.
Brent was pulled from his thoughts as the van suddenly slowed and Boricio said, “What the hell have we got here?”
Boricio stopped the van, but left the engine running.
Brent felt his heartbeat quicken, thinking back to the maze of cars where they’d nearly surrendered their final breaths on their way to Black Mountain. He couldn’t stand the thought of going through that particular hell again. Everyone, including Ed — now wide awake and obvious about it — moved to the front of the van and stared out the front window.
The thick lines of trees that had bordered both sides of the highway for nearly every mile of the trip were now gone. In their place, nothing but a half mile or so of dark earth, freshly plowed, as if something, perhaps a super tornado, had stripped the land of everything in sight.
The road was oddly untouched, but only as a canvas for the horror lining it — hundreds, if not thousands of aliens, standing on either side of the highway, perfectly still, like statues paving the way to Dunn.
“What the fuck?” Jung said, the word ‘fuck,’ sounding unnatural in his accent.
“Oh Jesus!” Callie cried. “What are they doing?”
Boricio joked, “Laying out the welcome mat, maybe?” But the only color on his face was the black on his patch.
“What do we do?” Brent said, his heart beating so loud he felt like it was throwing echoes off the van walls.
“Drive,” Ed said, his first words all morning.
“What?” Callie said, shocked he would suggest such a thing.
“Drive,” he repeated, meeting Boricio’s eye in the mirror.
Jung said, “I’m not sure about that,” shifting nervously in his seat.
“He’s right,” Boricio said. “If they wanted to attack us, they would have already.”
Boricio stepped on the gas before anyone else, or more likely his own instincts, could raise debate.
The van rolled down the road, slowly at first, maybe 20 mph, as Jung, Ed, and Brent all held their rifles, aimed at the windows and ready to fire. Brent hoped like hell they wouldn’t have occasion to pull the triggers since there was no way they’d be able to take on the wide, churning sea of aliens without eventually joining it.
As they passed, Brent looked out the left-side windows, staring at the aliens in all their many varied forms; repulsed, amazed, and half expecting one or all to leap forward and attack in unison. But they remained still, as if they weren’t even aware of the passing van.
Callie sat shotgun in front, aiming a pistol at her window, her hand, and the gun held in it, shaking.
Ed held his rifle trained on his side window, watching the row fly past as Boricio gathered speed. Brent saw what looked like the end of the aliens’ line ahead in the distance.
They were about halfway there when something slammed into the back of the van.
“Fuck!” Callie screamed, then fired her gun, which sounded like a bomb in the enclosed space.
Brent’s ears felt shattered, just like Callie’s passenger window. He wasn’t sure what had slammed into the back of the van, but the aliens’ mouths were all suddenly open at once, screaming a shrill screech and gnashing their teeth at the van from all sides.
Between the screaming and the high-pitched ringing in his ears, the pain in Brent’s head was unbearable. He dropped his rifle to the floor and covered his ears. Jung, Ed, and Callie were all doing the same, their faces twisted in torment as Boricio struggled to steer them through the dark horde.
The van lurched forward as Brent clutched both sides of his head, trying to dull the terrible shrieking of the aliens. Swarms of the creatures began to move forward into the road, to block their path.
“Fuck!” Boricio screamed as the van tore through the first of them to step in front of the van, their bodies thumping hard against the metal, causing the wheels to wobble against the asphalt, and sending the van steering out of control.
Brent released his ears to grip his seat, as the van flew from the road and onto the freshly turned soil, naked and ugly and stripped of everything but the memory of its once green vegetation.
Brent braced his body, ready for the van to get stuck in the soft soil, giving them unfair seconds before the tires were ensnared in the earth and the aliens surrounded them — seconds before it was finally the end of everything.
The van kept sliding, as if the dirt was hard as pavement, but slick like ice. The van was skidding at a ridiculous speed, and would surely tip if Boricio couldn’t steer the wheels into their skid.
Boricio struggled with the steering wheel, screaming a surprising number of obscenities as he fought the van for control as more things started to slap the van’s sides and back. Something shattered the rear window. Brent looked down as whatever had shattered the window fell to the carpet, black and squirming.
In the first second, Brent thought it looked like a long, black snake, but then saw its hook and remembered the hook-like things Ed had said they’d shot in the back of the store.
Thicker swarms assaulted the van as it continued its skid across the unfrozen black ice of the forest floor. Brent gripped his seat as Ed held his own with one hand and his rifle with the other, taking aim out the back through the shattered window.
The van came to a jarring, screeching halt, which sent everyone flailing to the left. The engine died as thunder rumbled loudly outside.
Except it wasn’t thunder.
As Brent glanced out the window he saw it was a stampede of black, racing toward the van.
