Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences (11 page)

“It’s not real,” I say.

“It’s real,” Catlin says.

“What we see isn’t. It’s like what he did to trap you in your room, only more powerful. What do you see it as?”

“It’s like a mountain,” she says. “It’s like a smooth cliff. Black and shiny.”

I hear the wall of water crash over the house and I know it’s only a matter of minutes before it will bury me. Bury us.

Michael takes a run at the wall. I know he thinks he can break through it like he broke through the tackles of three-hundred-pound linemen. He bounces off it.

Lindsey says we need to climb it. We’ll never break through something so thick. She thinks of the wall as stone. She starts to climb it, but she’s not really climbing. She only thinks she is.

“Follow me,” she says. “Come on, we can go over it.”

Lauren sees her climbing, sees her climbing right up a rock wall, and starts doing the same. They’re both caught in the same illusion. They’re not climbing anything. I can tell that Michael sees this, but he wants to believe that they’re escaping. He’s trying to convince himself that he should climb, too. I grab Lindsey and pull her back, and the illusion breaks. Lauren falls.

“It keeps changing,” Catlin says. “It becomes what we think it is.”

Lauren looks angry. She stands. “It fools us into thinking we’ve found a way out. That’s how it keeps us in.”

“Find the weakness,” I say. “The curtain had a weak spot. Maybe this thing does, too.”

I hear people in the house screaming. A thousand screams. They’re drowning. They’re being buried in water. I guess that’s probably an illusion, too, but it’s an illusion that’s killing people. I hear death.

Michael hits the wall. He’s hitting it with his fist, but his mind is hitting it at the same time. His hand starts to bleed. He grimaces, but he keeps hitting. Something does break. A piece, I think.

The wall becomes glass then. That’s what I see. It looks like I could shatter it with a palm-heel strike. I show Michael the strike so that he doesn’t break his hand hitting the wall with his fist, and I tell him to strike where I do. We stand side by side and strike it. The glass makes a sound but doesn’t shatter. I take a few steps back and do a sliding side kick. Then a back kick. I’m trying to make each of these physical movements a mental one, too. I’m trying to force my mind to strike against the wall.

I stop.

“Don’t stop,” Michael says. “We’re getting it.”

“It’s letting us think we’re getting it.”

Catlin takes my hand. I turn and see she’s grabbed Lauren’s hand, too.

“Hold hands,” she shouts.

I’ve been distracted by the wall, but now I hear the water only a few feet behind us. It’s a roar. I feel it pulling me under.

Everybody is holding hands.

“You’ve got to think of us all together.”

I feel Michael and Lindsey pulling away when she says this.

“Do it!” I yell. “Just do it. Now.”

“Run at the wall,” Catlin says.

I see it then. See what we’ve got to do.
See us punching through it. All of us,
I think to the others.

For a moment our minds join. We run at the wall.

Then I hear the aliens.
We’re very sorry for y
our loss
.

The wave passes. A part of it comes through the hole and knocks us all on our butts; we’re lucky, though: the wall holds most of it in. When it’s past, I hear silence behind it. No screaming now, just dead silence.

“We’ve got to get going,” I say.

We help each other up. We all know that we were meant to be part of that silence and it won’t take them long to realize we aren’t. The most powerful beings in the universe will not be happy.

“Get going where?” Lindsey says.

“Find a car, something that we can use to get away and out into the country.”

We run. The bushes and tree leaves are wet, and before long we’re soaked. We hit a patch of thorn bushes so then we’re soaked
and
cut up. We keep looking back, expecting the Handlers to swoop down on us at any minute. A few times I think I even hear the rush of water, but it’s just my imagination. We’re all breathing hard but we keep running like our lives depend on it because they do.

“Break,” Lindsey calls.

I don’t stop.

“Come on,” Lauren says.

I stop.

“Where are you taking us?” Lindsey says through heavy, short breaths.

“The city.”

“This is the best way?” Lauren says. She’s trying to slow her breathing. She has her hands pressed together in front of her. I hear her trying to think yoga thoughts, trying to slow her racing heart.

“More like the best way to hell,” Lindsey says.

“You want to lead?”

“I doubt I could do any worse.”

She doesn’t say anything more, though.

“We need to keep moving,” I say.

We run some more. Then we come to a bridge and downtown is in front of us. We take a second rest. We’re all sucking air now.

“Is there water?” I ask.

Lauren shakes her head. “We couldn’t get to the food or clothes. It was just too crazy in there.”

“Think they know we’re gone yet?” Michael says.

“He’ll know,” Catlin says.

We don’t need to ask who he is.

“Wonder if there are any cars left,” Michael says.

This worries me a little. They were destroying every machine they could find when we worked downtown, including a lot of cars. But they used trucks and buses, so they didn’t destroy those. I don’t see us escaping in a Greyhound, though.

“We’ve got to get out somehow,” I say. “It will just get harder the longer we’re here.”

“Maybe not,” Lauren says. We all look at her. “Addyen showed me her house. In my mind, I mean. It’s in a neighborhood called Hyde Park.”

“I know that neighborhood,” I say. “It’s north of the university. My uncle lived there.”

“Her house is on Avenue B.”

“So what?” Lindsey says.

“She’ll help us,” Lauren replies. “She thinks it’s wrong that we’re slaves. She’ll help us escape.”

I think about this and about Addyen giving us dessert that night, and I think we don’t have anywhere else to go. “Let’s do it.”

“We all need to agree,” Michael says. “It’s all of our lives at risk here.”

So we vote, and we all agree that it’s the best choice of bad choices.

Lauren turns to Catlin. “But before we go to Addyen’s house, I want some answers, like how you know so much about the aliens.”

Catlin doesn’t say anything. “I don’t know if I trust her,” Lauren says.

“But you trust me, right?” I say.

Lauren looks at me like she’s not sure, but she says, “Okay, Jesse. For now.” We hurry on. We make it to downtown, which has been seriously transformed. Even with the dim lamps that light the path, we can see that. They’ve torn down some buildings, but the big change is that all the streets are gone and have been replaced by either grass or wide pebble walkways. Somehow they’ve already got leafy trees and thick bushes everywhere. As I’m taking all this in, I hear a ship overhead, one of those little ships that buzz around about forty feet off the ground.

Not one ship but two come into sight behind us. I hear alien minds scanning the area. I think they’re using some kind of echo device in the ships to help them. They’ve followed our trail.

“Get down,” Lauren says.

“There’s no place to hide, genius,” Lindsey says. “They’ll hear us even if we’re in the bushes.”

“She’s right,” Michael says. “They’ll know we’re here.”

Lauren is used to giving orders, but I can see she’s uncertain now. “Hiding in the bushes is better than not hiding at all.”

“Oh, please,” Lindsey says. “We might as well give them the finger. In fact, that’s a good idea.” Lindsey illustrates.

“I saw him do something once,” Catlin says. “I think it was a way to hide.”

“Hide how?” I say.

The others are arguing about getting down or not getting down or who is giving orders. I’m the only one listening to Catlin.

“He made himself fade.”

“Listen,” I say to the others. I have to say it again and louder,
“Listen.”

They turn toward me with the kind of look I used to give my mom when she shook me awake in the morning.

“Listen to her,” I say.

“Get close,” Catlin says. I move toward her, and Lauren comes in between Catlin and me and then Michael and Lindsey come closer, too.

“Try thinking of yourself as light,” Catlin says, “as light as a feather, as light as air. Think of yourself as so light that you’re not really here.”

“What is she talking about?” Lindsey says.

“Do it,” I say.

And, surprisingly, they all do. They all try, anyway. I feel pretty stupid. I feel like a kid playing at being invisible. One of the ships is almost above us.

My arm disappears and Catlin’s head disappears. Then I look down and see one of my legs disappear, too, and Catlin disappears almost entirely. I can still see her, but she’s vague.

The others are trying, but they’re still visible.

“Think of yourself as thin,” I say, because that’s what I did. “Then think of yourself as so thin you aren’t here.”

“I am thin,” Lindsey snaps.

“Just do it,” Lauren says.

Lauren fades a little and so does Michael, but Lindsey doesn’t.

“Not so thin now,” Lauren says to Lindsey.

“You’re not much better.”

They get a little better then, competing, but not like Catlin and me. The ship is close. Lindsey is the most visible, so I put my arms around her. I see Catlin doing the same with Lauren, and Lauren fades more and Catlin shows slightly more. But together that way, they’re less visible. The ship passes over us and beyond. After a few minutes, I let Lindsey go.

“We’re definitely freaks,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say, “but you have to admit that was kind of cool.”

There are things about these new powers that I like. If it weren’t for the complete destruction of our planet and the enslavement of our species, I might even think these powers could be a good thing.

“You think you can find the neighborhood from here?” Lauren asks me.

“I think so.”

We walk through downtown.

“Look at this,” Lindsey says. “Look what they’ve done. They can’t have done this to New York City. No way. I bet New York fought them off. New Yorkers would know how to deal with aliens.”

“No one fought them off,” Lauren says.

No one else says anything. What can we say? What do we really know? But the thing is, I do know. New York is no different from anyplace else; New York belongs to them now.

PERSONAL LOG:

It is impossible that slaves, that product, could create a hole in the boundary, so when a Handler reported this, I could only think that we who were joined did it. Some surge of power we couldn’t control must have made a hole. It is an unlikely explanation, but far more unlikely is the possibility that slaves could break through my boundary.

I ordered inventory done immediately. It is possible that some of the slaves escaped. Doubtful but not outside of the realm of possibility. Reports of successful product destruction have come in from the other heads of houses across the colony. These reports were interrupted by Anchise, who did a sweep of the house and grounds. He claimed some of our product is missing.

Check again,
I ordered.

I’ve checked twice, lord.

He showed me who’s missing, and one of them is my second, Catlin. For a moment I suspect she learned something from me that helped her escape, but what could she have learned? It’s absurd. It’s as absurd as product breaking through my boundary. I can only think that they were running and they came to the wall just as we who were joined made a hole. They were lucky enough to be nearby, and they jumped through the hole as we swept over the grounds. It is an unfortunate coincidence.

Find them,
I ordered.
And take another Handler with you.

Another?

Take another.

Anchise could not conceal his anger, but I will not underestimate this product again.