Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences (19 page)

“We won’t ever be safe, will we?” Catlin says.

I could lie, but I don’t. “No.”

“I don’t want to die. I did for a while when he had me locked in that tower. I planned on finding a way to kill myself.”

“What stopped you?”

She looks up at me with her very green eyes. “You did. You came into my room, and I wasn’t alone.”

“We aren’t going to die,” I say.

We stay a little longer, and then we make our way back down the rocks. By the time we reach the house, the sun is pushing up into the sky and I’m already starting to sweat.

PERSONAL LOG:

One of the patrol has called with news. He’s spotted the runaways. He’s read one of the females and knows they are traveling to a town once called Taos. He gave me the coordinates and asked if he should send patrols. I told him no. I will take care of this.

I’ve told Adamanous, my strongest Handler, to ready two ships. He asked if I wanted patrol to meet us there. I let him see my scorn. Am I not Lord Vertenomous, son of a senator, descendant of those who have been part of the ruling class for generations? Do I not have strength enough to kill runaway slaves? If we are lucky enough to run into the troublesome rebels, do I not have strength enough to kill them with a wave of my hand?

We do not need patrol,
I told him coldly.
We will put an end to this today.

I’m in the room where I kept the girl. I would tear her apart if she were here now, but I feel an unpardonable nostalgia for those nights we lay in bed before the other colonists arrived. Of course it is not the slave girl that I miss. It is those nights when success and an increase to my reputation seemed certain. It is not my fault. But I admit something here that I will only allow myself to admit now and only once. I knew that girl had more power than someone with no link to the One. I knew she was not product. I should have killed her immediately.

It is a secret I will bury deep.

We drive west, and before long we’re out of the red canyons and the land flattens around us. We come to Lubbock, where we find a grocery store.

We have to force the sliding doors open because the electricity is off here. The smell is pretty awful: spoiled milk and rotten fruit, vegetables, and meat. The store is dim without lights, but I can see well enough to tell that the shelves have plenty of food on them. We find the water bottles right away and each grab one and slug it down, even Bart.

Bart says he’s thrilled to be in a food storage unit, but that he imagined it would be larger.

“I would like to find the cereal that the great champions of your games ate,” he says.

Blank stares. We’re all a little dazed with heat and travel, but I doubt any of us would have known what he was talking about even if we were alert.

“Wheaties, breakfast of champions,” he says.

Right.

Lauren suggests we get carts and load up; we have the truck, after all, and who knows when we’ll get another chance to shop. She and I take a cart to one side of the store and Catlin and Bart head toward the other. As they walk off, I hear Catlin breaking the news to Bart that anyone could eat the “breakfast of champions.”

It’s kind of strange to be pushing a cart through the dim, abandoned grocery store. Lauren says she’s always liked shopping. She finds it relaxing.

“Of course I could do without the smell.”

“You did this for fun, didn’t you?” I say.

“Maybe,” she says.

We’re at the granola section and she really goes crazy. She loads up. Surprise, surprise. Once the cart is weighted down with bags of granola and granola bars and granola thingies, we push on to the chips section. She has the nerve to complain when I put some chips in the cart because she says they’re empty calories.

“Listen, granola girl, maybe I want some empty calories. Maybe I need something to offset all that roughage or whatever I’m going to get from granola.”

“You might as well eat grass,” she says.

“I don’t like grass. I do like potato chips.”

“Grass has about as much to do with a potato as those chips you’ve got.”

Another aisle over we’re in the chocolate section, and not surprisingly, given that she’s a girl, she puts some chocolate in the cart. I point out that she’s adding to our empty calorie collection, but she claims studies have shown that chocolate fights cancer. She actually cites one of the studies.

We brush against each other a lot as we load up the cart. It’s like a little shock each time we do, a pleasant shock. Finally I kiss her. I just do it. She kisses me back. She feels soft and I’m lost in that softness. My arms are around her, my hands on her back. I feel her body press against mine. So there we are making out in the stale air and rotting food smell of the grocery store at the end of the world.

“Romantic,” she says finally.

“Well, I wanted to wait for just the right moment.”

Catlin and Bart push their cart around the corner and into our aisle. Bart says, “We’d better get going.”

Catlin looks from Lauren to me and smiles. “Shopping can be fun, can’t it?”

“We must go,” Bart says.

“Hope there’s not a line,” I say.

“Gallows humor,” Lauren says, but smiles.

We go through checkout and I say, “Guy says everything is free today. It’s a free day.”

“To whom is he speaking?” Bart asks Catlin.

“No one,” she says. “He’s just in a good mood all of a sudden. I wonder why.”

“Were there free days? Days when all food was free?”

“Never,” she says.

He looks annoyed and seems about to ask another question but decides against it. We load the groceries into bags and cart them out to the truck. One of the bags splits open as I lift it in.

“
Intercourse!
” I shout. “
Supreme Being condemn it to the fires of hell
.”

Bart may be an alien, but the way he’s looking at me is familiar: perplexed and a little troubled. Catlin and Lauren laugh.

“This does not seem like normal human behavior,” Bart says in that professorial voice he uses sometimes.

“It is,” I say.

“No, it’s not,” both the girls say at the same time, which just sets them off on another laughing jag.

I offer Lauren the window seat because she’s been sitting in the middle and looking kind of miserable there. She says I’d be really uncomfortable in the middle. There’s not enough room. Catlin suggests Lauren sit on my lap, then smiles innocently. Lauren and I discuss the possibility for a while, each coming up with reasons for and against it, and I catch Catlin rolling her eyes. I finally ask Lauren if she would please just sit there.

“That’s my gun,” I say when she shifts away from my lap like she’s sat on a tack. I just want to be clear, but I guess I’ve said it kind of abruptly.

Both Lauren and I turn red.

“Embarrassment,” Bartemous says with way too much enthusiasm. “Blood rushing to the face. I’ve read about it.”

We find the interstate. I consider messing with Bart some more by talking about how light the traffic is, but I don’t because I’m suddenly aware of how empty everything feels. A city without people is unnatural. The loneliness of it is all around me, like air, and, like air, I have to breathe it in. I have no choice.

We’re into the mountains by midafternoon, and by evening we’ve reached Taos.

Just after we cross the gorge, I hear others like us, or at least one other human mind. I’m sure of it. Then, as we get into town, it’s gone. Something else is present, something large and powerful and definitely not human.

“We made it,” Lauren says, sounding surprised and happy. She doesn’t hear what’s going on, so she doesn’t know that we’ve made it right into a trap.

“This is very bad,” Bartemous says.

We turn off the main street and into a plaza, the plaza of my dream. Bartemous is concentrating on putting up a shield. Something smashes it to pieces like it’s nothing; Bart groans and slumps over the wheel. A second later the truck crashes against a wall I can’t see. I’m thrown forward into the windshield. Something sharp cuts into my forehead and blood trickles down my cheek. The doors of the truck fly off their hinges and I’m yanked out; we all are. No one physically touches us, but it feels like giant hands are reaching out and batting us around.

Then there’s wind behind us, and it blows me — all of us — across the plaza. My knees and my elbows scrape against the pavement as I tumble over it. Skin rips from my hands as I try to break my fall and grab for anything I can. I get hold of a small tree in a planter, but it snaps as I’m shoved on by the wind.

Bart wakes up enough to mumble, “I am a citizen of the Republic.”

He tries to say it louder, but the wind eats up his words. Then the wind dies as quickly as it came, and I’m still. Something holds me to the ground. It’s holding the others, too, including Bart. Then I see Lord Vert. It’s the first time I’ve seen his physical self. He’s larger than even the Handler next to him. His skin has a deeper green.

These killed a Handler
. He turns to the Handler beside him.
Hard to believe. Slaves. Look at them
.

The Handler seems almost embarrassed by something, but he looks at us.

I am a citizen,
Bart thinks with as much authority as someone whose face is pushed into the pavement can have. More than I would have thought.
I am a man of reputation, a scholar. You must release me immediately
.

A scholar?
Lord Vertenomous replies.
Surely a scholar knows the penalty for assisting runaways. I am Lord Vertenomous, scholar. You dare to tell me what I must do?

I was not
—

I feel Lord Vertenomous’s mind move, and Bart goes silent. We’re all lifted to our feet and then off the ground. It’s then that I realize Bart is dead.

Sorry for your loss,
Lord Vertenomous thinks. He turns to us then, but he avoids looking at Catlin. She looks right at him.
Now, where are the others?

I feel Lord Vertenomous pushing into me, and I throw up a door and slam it shut. He’s surprised. He bangs on it. I manage to keep it shut, though I feel it give, feel that in a second it will break apart. Before it does, the Handler distracts him.

This one
— the Handler points to Lauren —
came here to find them. They came because they believed the rebels are here, but they know nothing
.

Lord Vertenomous looks angry then.
Disgusting creatures. Look at them
.

Then I feel his anger turn to me, feel it like something smothering me, like hands around my throat. I gasp for breath. I hear Catlin rush at him with her mind, but he pushes her away like she’s made of paper. Lauren is being held by the Handler.

My breath is gone. I’m losing consciousness. When I’m just to the edge, I’m pulled back. I drop to the ground. I hear the others hit the ground, too. I look up and see Lord Vertenomous looking around the square. I feel his surprise.

People come out of the small shops all around us, probably fifty or sixty of them. I can hear their minds. Some of them join in the imperfect and messy way that Lauren and Catlin and I join. I feel the power of those joined increase. There are ten in one group. The others have fewer. Even that group of ten is still not as strong as the Handler and certainly not as strong as Lord Vertenomous, but there are so many attackers that some of them get past the Handler’s defenses and he falls, overpowered. They’ve killed him. They’ve killed him
with their minds
.