Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences (20 page)

I get to my feet. The impossible
is
possible. Lord Vertenomous is fighting the rebels. A ring of energy expands out from him and breaks against them, and a lot of them fall. I throw something like a roundhouse kick. He turns to block it and slips slightly. I see it then, an open place, a chance. I throw everything I’ve got at Lord Vertenomous. I hit him with my mind, my heart, everything that makes me human.

The wind comes back and I’m blown onto my butt and I think I’ve missed. Then I feel the wind reverse back into him. It makes a sucking sound, and branches break from trees and everything is pulled toward Lord Vertenomous. But all this lasts only a second.

He’s dead.

I look around the square. I stand up slowly, and I see the people. They don’t look like a commercial for Target, that’s for sure. They look dirty, and their clothes are worn, and they’re beaten up. There are many lying on the ground; some are dead, and some of them are alive but hurt. Catlin goes to help whomever she can. I hear people say, “Healer.” Lauren comes to my side.

“You killed him,” a woman says. “The alien, the strong one. You fought the same way they fight.”

“I don’t know,” I say. I’m confused by what she says. I’m in shock and I hurt all over.

Others are whispering the same thing.
He fought like they fight. He killed the alien that called himself a lord
.

The crowd parts as two men walk up to us. One has long white hair and the other is blond. They look like father and son. The younger one is my age or a little older.

“You led them here,” the one about my age says accusingly.

“We didn’t know they were following us,” Lauren says.

The people around are quiet now, waiting for the man with white hair to speak. He’s their leader, obviously. There’s something about him that feels young and strong even though he looks old. “You kill like they kill. How did you learn to kill that way?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“He is a warrior,” one of the women says.

Someone else whispers the word.

The blond guy swings around and glares at the woman who spoke. “That doesn’t make him a warrior. One kill doesn’t make him a warrior.”

“You had this power before the aliens invaded?” The white-haired man asks me. “The power of a warrior?”

“No.”

“No,” he says, as if he is agreeing with me.

“He doesn’t know anything,” the guy my age says. “He was lucky. The alien was being attacked on all sides and he was lucky.”

“No,” White Hair says. “No one has that much luck.”

“We need to go,” the young guy says. “More will be coming.”

“Do you wish to come with us?” White Hair says to me and Lauren.

“They were tracking them,” the young guy says. “That’s one of their lords dead there. The aliens will come looking for these three, and we’ll be in even more danger.”

“She is not a new blood,” White Hair says pointing at Catlin, who is bent over an injured person. “She is a healer. And he kills like they kill. They will add to our strength. In any event, we cannot leave them.”

I look at Lauren. She nods.

“We’ll come,” I say.

“I am Lorenzo Sergio de Cabeza the third, but you may call me Doc.”

“You’re a doctor?” Lauren says.

“Not the medical kind. Two PhDs. I was an indecisive youth.”

The younger guy stomps off, but everyone else seems happy to have us. Many of them welcome us. Doc tells us to jump into one of the truck beds. We do. Our truck joins a convoy of trucks and jeeps heading up into the mountains.

One of the three boys sitting in our truck says, “Welcome to New America.”

“New America?” I say “Where’s New America?”

“We’re New America,” he says. “That’s what Doc calls us.”

New America. All the death. All we’ve lost. It seems like too much. How can there be a New America? Then Lauren takes my hand. Her hand is small and smooth.

“New America,” she says like she’s deciding something.

I look at Lauren and at the trees and at the blue sky, and I take my world back. It’s our world. Ours.

I want to thank my wife, Frances Hill, for her patience and encouragement. Thanks to my agent, Sara Crowe, for her persistent faith and encouragement and, of course, finding a home for my work. Thanks to all the staff at Candlewick, particularly my editor, Jennifer Yoon, for insightful edits, thoughtful suggestions, and plain hard work on this manuscript. Thanks also to my writing group: Varian Johnson, April Lurie, Julie Lake, Frances Hill, and Helen Hemphill. Also thanks to my one-day writing group: Don Tate, Debbie Gonzales, Shana Burg, and Donna Bowman Bratton. Last, thanks to my parents, Bill and Agnes Yansky, for their ridiculous assertion that my sister and I could be whatever we wanted to be. Sometimes ridiculous assertions can make all the difference.

BRIAN YANSKY
is the author of
My Road Trip to the Pretty Girl Capital of the World
and
Wonders of the World
. About
Alien Invasion,
he says, “I started off wanting to write the feel-good alien invasion novel of the year (which sounds presumptuous until you realize there probably wouldn’t have been any competition), but the situation — the destruction of most of the earth’s population and the enslavement of the survivors — redirected my aim. Now it seems I’ve written a funny-serious novel about alien invasion and the survival of the human race — an almost-feel-good alien invasion novel. Hope you like it.” Brian Yansky holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College and is an assistant professor at Austin Community College. He lives in Austin, Texas.