by Sean Platt
“I like you, Ed,” Sullivan said.
“I’d hate to see how you treat people you don’t like.”
Sarcasm seemed lost on Sullivan.
“There are few humans we see as worthy of joining us. Accessing Sullivan’s memories, and archives of our experience going against you, we see you as a formidable enemy, and a possible ally in this new world.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ed said, his mind already guessing. “Wait? You’re infected?”
Sullivan smiled. “Infected is such a pejorative term. We prefer evolved.”
“How long have you been evolved? Did you come to this world like this?”
“No, Sullivan is one of our more recent acquisitions. A good one. A heightened human, like yourself. We appreciate humans who can benefit our species, rather than bleed it.”
“What do you mean?” Ed asked, using curiosity to buy minutes.
“We made a mistake on the other world, attempting to assimilate your species all at once. Yes, we won, but it was messy, and missed our purpose. It was chaos, destroying us as much as you. This time, we are looking to keep you alive, as hosts.”
“Hosts?” Ed repeated, unable to hide his disgust. “You want to nest inside us like parasites?”
“I believe your word symbiosis is closer. Mutual existence, both of us better for the union.”
“I’d like to ask Sullivan what he thinks about this arrangement,” Ed said. “If he’s even in there anymore.”
“I’m still here,” Sullivan said, though Ed couldn’t be certain he was hearing Sullivan at all. For all Ed knew, the only thing left of Sullivan was his flesh.
Ed asked, “You like having this thing in you, Sully?”
“You humans are such hypocrites,” Sullivan said. “Your body teems with bacteria and tiny bugs which allow you to live as you do, and digest foods that you eat. Without other life forms, you’d cease to exist. If we didn’t come along now, you’d surely annihilate yourselves in a matter of time. You put on such a benevolent face for such a hostile species.”
“I’ve seen what your kind did on the other world,” Ed said. “How do you expect me to see you as anything other than a threat?”
“I told you, you’re among the chosen who will evolve. You, and your family.”
“And what about everyone else?”
“Let me ask you this, Ed. If you were growing a garden and weeds started to sprout, would you nurture those weeds the same as you would the plants you wanted to thrive? Or would you eliminate them?”
“Eliminate them,” Ed said. “But in my version of this hypothetical, you’re the weeds.”
“Oh, come now,” Sullivan surprised Ed with his casual tone, “you’ve seen the worst of your species. How you treat one another, with no regard for life — how can you see humans as anything but parasites? Your societies are based on destruction — of one another, and your resources. I know you see this as true, which is why I’m inviting you to be a part of something better. Something better than either of our species could ever be on our own. We’re gathering numbers and strength, preparing for our day. I promise you, Ed, it will be glorious: no death, starvation or destruction; only life forever.”
Ed pretended to contemplate the monster’s offer, buying time, mulling options. Sullivan seemed to be on his own, so Ed could defeat him if he could gain the upper hand. As his mouth moved, his eyes scanned the room for something he could use. “Why should I trust you? This isn’t exactly something people will sign up for — ‘Oh yes, please, infect me, take over my body.’ ”
“You only fear this because you’ve not yet seen the good we are capable of when you’re one of us. We exist as one, each caring for and knowing what the other thinks, wants, needs — because we all think, want and need the same thing. There’s no distinction between one and all. There’s no need for the barriers of language. We communicate here,” Sullivan pointed to his head. “How long have humans been here, and this is the best you can do?”
“Can’t argue that,” Ed said. “Humans suck, yes Sir.”
“It’s your choice, Ed. Join us and we can usher in a new world together … or die with your family.”
Forty-Eight
Rose McCallister
Rose stared at the man holding them hostage, confused, afraid, and feeling as if the world had been pulled out from under her the moment she entered the hotel room. “Who are you?”
Rose looked to Boricio, frantic with questions, hoping she would see something in his eyes that might explain the impossible. But his face was uncharacteristically absent. He was smiling, but it wasn’t any sort of smile Rose had ever seen. His eyes looked odd, too, like he wasn’t there — or perhaps was maybe drugged, something more than his pot.
She turned to their attacker. He looked like a retired cop more than a psychopath. “What do you want with us?”
The man’s lip peeled back in a horrible smile. Off-white gleamed under the ugliest grin Rose had ever seen.
“My name is Mike Blackmore,” he said. “As for what I want … I suggest you ask your boyfriend.”
Boricio said nothing. The man she loved was buried behind a smile so sour and stripped from its usual confidence, she could barely stand to see it. He looked equally stoic and crazed. Seeing the stranger above him holding the gun made Rose think of a cat and a snake, but she had no idea which was which.
Rose kept begging Boricio for an answer, her eyes to his, but his silence only got louder. Finally, Mike stepped into its middle.
“Cat got your tongue, Boricio?” He waved his gun from one captive to the other. “You were writing books with your filthy mouth a few minutes ago. Clearing years of work from my desk, writing lines for psychos in every novel or novella I’ll ever write, and now you’re playing mime because we have company?”
Boricio stared at Mike, muscles bulging as he flexed against his restraints. “Leave her out of this!”
“The world will never stop surprising me,” Mike said, turning to Rose. “I wouldn’t have thought a monster could feel what this one seems to feel for you.”
“What are you talking about?” Rose dared a step forward, hoping the stranger wouldn’t pull his trigger in a packed motel. She needed Boricio, and had to get nearer even if only a step at a time.
Mike reached down to the bed, picked up a manila folder and thrust it at Rose. “See for yourself.”
Rose grabbed the folder, heart racing as dread spilled through her gut. Whatever had brought the man here would be revealed in its contents. She imagined that he was some conspiracy theory nut who was about to hand over a whole bunch of documents which would prove that the world was out to get him. Boricio happened to be in the wrong place and time, crossing paths with a lunatic.
What could have unraveled him like this?
Rose opened the folder to faded photos of a young girl — the kind parents had, baby photos and school portraits. Pigtails, freckles, uncertain smile, crooked. The pictures then went evil: a desecrated body, almost cartoon in its defacement, with crude drawings that looked … at first the word in her head was familiar, until familiar grew meaning and Rose found a sudden and soul-raking horror. A scream caught in her throat, then slowly clawed its way out as her eyes found the Applebee’s logo with a line through it, then blew from her lips as she hit the final picture: a head like a jack-o’-lantern sitting atop the dresser.
Rose was mush, her legs weightless. She wasn’t sure how she managed to stay on her feet. Her head was dizzy, stomach churning, heart beating out of her chest. “What is this, and why are you showing me?”
Her eyes were on Mike.
Mike moved his to Boricio.
Oh, no.
“That was my daughter, Amber. Last time she was seen alive, she was in the company of your animal, here. Why don’t you ask him what he has to say about her? Already said plenty before you got here.”
Mike pitched his voice into a reasonable approximation of Boricio. “What do they call you at
the rest stops, Ass Vandal? Hershey Murial? Mr. Butterworth on account of your colita being so rich and creamy?”
He lost his Boricio, went back to a barely controlled Mike.
“Before that, your boyfriend said it was nice to make my acquaintance since he never likes to tear life from a man’s throat, or intestines from their belly, without knowing a name. He said there was no need to be proper, nicknames were fine. Your monster also said he ‘came for justice’ in my murdered daughter’s mouth.”
Rose heard every word like the song it would have sounded like, sung by Boricio. She could hear a sick glee in the words.
Boricio finally spoke: “This is between me, you, and the four balls between us. She ain’t done nothing but be here. You do what you have to, and I’ll make it easy. But you’ve gotta let her go.”
“Like you didn’t for Amber.”
“Apples to oranges. I was doing what I did, but you’re only doing what you think you have to. You’re better than I am.”
He admits it. He did do it!
Oh, God!
The stranger shook his head, then waved his gun at Rose. “Being with someone like you makes her a monster, too. I’ll be doing the world a favor, putting both of you down like the mongrels you are.”
“That’s the thing, Señor Sorrow, you’ve already broken the dishes. This shit is for real and forever. She don’t know the Boricio you know, and never did. She knows the Boricio she knows, the one who deserves her, instead of the one who deserves you. Both Boricios were always there, you showed her the one she didn’t know about. Now she’ll wake up screaming through the rest of her life. A bullet’s mercy would be best, but I’ll beg you not to anyway, because I’m a monster to the end, selfish enough to not want a world without my Rose, even if she’s miserable inside it.”
Mike leaned into Boricio. “Tell her what you are, maybe I won’t kill her.”
Boricio turned to Rose, and gripped her eyes like fingers on a cliff.
“I’m every bit of the Boricio you know, and what I’m about to say won’t alter an apostrophe on our covenant, Rose, but there’s a side of me you’ve not met. I’m a hunter. Simply put, I end lives to keep mine strong, and sometimes to make it stronger. At least I used to, before all that happened did. After Boy Wonder, I’ve only purged the deserving. Like that pile of shit preying on Paola.”
Rose gasped.
“The bodies from last night, that wasn’t purging, Rose, that was saving my life and Mary’s. Someone was obviously after us. This here,” he nodded up at Mike, looming above him, “has nothing to do with that.”
“You murder people … just … because?”
“There ain’t no just because … ”
“Answer the question!”
“I purge because I have to.”
“What do you mean, Boricio? No one has to kill anyone else!”
“It’s them or me,” he said, simple, like he’d decided on chicken. “Purging pushes my darkness to the bottom. If it rises too high, it’ll spill out and kill me. Too long without, I’ll put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger, like flushing a shitter.”
Rose didn’t know what to say. Or think. Or feel. Or do. Part of her wanted to say that maybe he should’ve put the gun in his mouth. He was a monster, and didn’t deserve to live. She wanted to say that and a hundred other things, but her tongue was too thick in her mouth, unable to find will or words.
More than anything, Rose wanted to run.
If there wasn’t a man holding her in place with a gun, that’s exactly what she’d do. Rose was mortified. If this was her scene she would have to rewrite: It wasn’t believable for her heroine to be with a man like Boricio and not know.
How could I have been so stupid?
Part of her wondered how she could ever believe in anything again. Another part, the part who loved Boricio in ways she couldn’t explain, wondered if there were pieces of herself that knew all along, and stayed in denial.
Boricio.
She loved him. Not just the man she thought she knew, but the man she did. The man who knew it was him or the world, and was strong enough to keep himself breathing inside it.
But loving Boricio was horrible: Thinking on it for longer than a blush was too awful to stand.
Anger bubbled inside her. She ignored Mike’s gun, stayed in its aim as she marched to Boricio and slapped him hard across the face. She drew back her hand, swollen and throbbing and stared at the red welt. Boricio stared at her, eyes welling up with tears, silent.
Boricio had held his tongue for longer than Rose had ever seen.
She wanted him to talk, to say something — anything — that might help her understand why.
She knew he could somehow make sense of this if he would try.
They held their stares, neither blinking forever. Rose knew — because she knew Boricio — that it would break something inside him to open his mouth.
His breath reminded her of an animal pawing dirt, getting ready to run. Her pulse quickened, knowing Boricio was seconds from speaking. He opened his mouth. She tipped her body toward him.
Mike’s attention prickled behind her.
Boricio spoke, but before Rose heard a word, the door behind her ripped from its hinges. She spun around, and found herself staring into the eyes of the man who had interrupted something else before, at Marina’s, a second before Paola stepped into The Capacitor.
Steven was his name.
His eyes found Rose, held her stare, and told her without words that she was his reason for coming.
Forty-Nine
Edward Keenan
Sullivan watched them on the couch, waiting for Ed to accept his proposal: Join the aliens or die.
“I’m not letting those things inside me,” Jade said, vehemently shaking her head, glaring at Sullivan, not seeming to care if he saw her disgust.
Crying, Teagan said, “If they’re going to kill us anyway, why not join them? I mean, it seems like he’s still human.”
“Looks are deceiving,” Jade said. “You saw what they did on the other world! You saw them kill your Ed! How can you trust them?”
“He said it was different this time.” Teagan desperately wanted to believe whatever bullshit Sullivan was selling. Ed felt sorry for her, but at the same time, he couldn’t blame her. She was looking out for her daughter. Given the choice to live, even if it meant a parasite inside you, or die, most people would choose life. That was everyone’s ultimate goal, after all, to live, no matter what.
Ed stayed out of the argument, letting the girls talk it out as he studied Sullivan’s responses. At times, his face seemed to flirt with emotion, though Ed could never be certain what emotion it was. At other times, the man’s (alien’s?) face was blank. Ed wondered how much of Sullivan had stayed inside the body. If “Sullivan” had any control over the alien’s actions, or if he was forced to sit, mute witness to whatever the alien wished to do with his body.
Teagan must’ve been wondering the same thing. “Sullivan, if you’re still in there, tell me something about yourself. Give me a reason why I should believe what the alien’s saying.”
Sullivan’s face shifted ever so slightly. He cleared his throat. “When I was 13, my father found out he had cancer. My mother was scared to death, didn’t know what to do. He told her everything would be OK, that not only had he taken care of all the financial stuff and paperwork, the doctor also said there was a chance he could go into remission. It wasn’t much hope, but enough for my mom to hold onto. My mother was a devout optimist, and needed that ray of hope. A few weeks later, I was sitting outside on the porch swing, daydreaming, when the front door slammed and my dad came out and sat beside me. He told me he was going to die. I said I thought the doctors told him he had a chance. He said he’d lied to my mom. While he knew there wasn’t any hope, he didn’t want her to know that because of how much it would harm her. He needed her to believe, not for his sake, but hers.”
Sullivan started to choke at the memory, tho
ugh Ed wasn’t sure if it was genuine emotion, or some guise of humanity broadcast.
Sullivan continued, “So I asked my dad why he was telling me. Why not lie to me, too? He asked what I preferred, a lie or the truth. I told him I’d always rather have the truth. He said he knew that about me, because I was just like him. We were realists, prepared for when the world pulled the carpet from under us, especially when compared to idealists, like Mom, whose worlds crumbled when reality crashed. He said it was up to me to make sure Mom didn’t lose faith. There was nothing more important than keeping her hope as high as I could. I asked why, especially when there was none? He looked me in the eyes and told me that he didn’t choose not to believe. That’s just how he was wired. But for those who could believe in things like hope, God, and whatever was better than that, he felt it necessary to maintain the illusion, because sometimes belief paid off and offered a salve that indifference never could.”
Teagan swallowed, her eyes welling with tears. “What does that mean?”
Sullivan answered, this time his voice bleached of emotion. “I believe that was Sullivan’s way of saying what you needed to hear, but that he himself doesn’t appreciate his role as host.”
Ed had to make his move.
Sullivan sat, Glock in hand, somewhat on them, but not directly. If Ed could get Sullivan — the real Sullivan — thinking again, he might be able to strike while the alien was preoccupied.
Ed said, “I would like proof that Sullivan’s still in there somewhere.”
Sullivan looked up, “What proof?”
“When we first met, you were questioning me in an interrogation room, do you remember?”
Sullivan’s face softened. His eyes looked up and to the left as he searched for recall.
“Yes,” Sullivan said. “I remember.”
“I told you about something back then, something important about my job, do you remember what it was?”
