Homicidal Aliens and Other Disappointments (5 page)

As he’s talking, I step farther into the room. My words have probably given him my position or at least narrowed down where he thinks I am. That’s reason enough to move, and I do — to the far wall. He finishes his little speech and then does something that pulls the air just to the right of me. It’s almost like it’s sucked away, like water pulled down a drain. It tries to pull me in, but I’m far enough away that I can move beyond it.

You’re going to kill us for money,
I think with as much contempt as I can. At the same time I duck and roll (thank you, nine years of martial arts) because he turns to where I am.

He thinks,
It sounds so petty when you say it that way. Money, I find, is a necessary evil. In the old days, a hunter was so valued he needed no money. Monarchs gave him palaces and females and warriors to fight for him and anything he desired. But these modern times require money. I feel cheapened by it, but what can you do? Times change. Hunt and kill stay the same, though. Thank the One for that. I am what I do. It’s a beautiful thing.

He strikes again. A different strike? This time it feels like a rip in the air, like something I could fall through. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like where I ended up.

I’m coming for you,
he thinks.
Don’t disappoint me with weak tricks. Fight me, here and now. What’s the use of running, anyway? Your time, your species’ time, has passed. I have to say you haven’t done a very good job keeping this planet up, either. It needs — what is the term? — a makeover. This world won’t miss humans. So, time to go. There is no way out, dreamwalker. I’m sorry for your loss.

I know he’s trying to get me to say something. The fear is still pouring out of me, and I’m pretty sure he’ll feel it or smell it or something. I do want to say something, a lot of somethings. I shouldn’t. But —

Intercourse you,
I think.

As I tuck and roll, I try to wake myself up. I say the word
wake
again and again, as if repeating it might spark a “There’s no place like home” magic. At least I have the tiny victory of confusing the alien.
Intercourse me?
he thinks.
What does this mean?

Wake. Wake. Wake.
And then, finally, thankfully, I do. I’m back in my sleeping bag. I fight to catch my breath. I’m still sweating fear. It does not smell good. I’m pretty sure Eau de Fear will not be the scent of the future, or maybe it will if the aliens get their way. Deathday. It was so real. Deathgiver. He was so real.

Lying there in my warm bag, the cold all around me, I try to convince myself that it was just a dream. I don’t have much luck. In the old world, there would have been no question. A dream was just a dream. But this isn’t the old world.

I unzip my bag and dress quickly. The cold from the night feels sharp against my body and raises goose bumps on my arms. I think about waking Lauren, but it’s early, the sun not even up above the mountain peaks to the west. I decide to go for a walk and then wake her. Only a few people in camp are awake and stomping around, shaking the cold from their sleepy bodies. I walk away from them and the camp.

The woods are dense with tall trees and undergrowth, but after a few minutes, I find a narrow trail. The sun rises over the mountain, and sunlight slides between leafy tree limbs. I walk for maybe another ten minutes before I come up against a massive cliff. It’s so high that even leaning back as far as I can, I can’t see the top. I could go around it, though it would take a long time. Or I could just head back to camp. I study the cliff for a minute and decide I can climb it. This is a stupid decision — it isn’t like I don’t have enough excitement in my life — but that doesn’t dissuade me. Somehow stupid is appealing at the moment.

And so I climb up the too-steep and too-crumbly cliff, losing my footing a couple of times and nearly falling to what would most likely be my death. On the bright side, that would make my deathgiver this cliff and not some smug alien hunter. Not all that bright when I actually think it through to the end result.

About three-fourths of the way up, I stop to catch my shallow breath. My right foot slips off the rock, and suddenly I’m falling. I frantically grab for anything and just by chance get hold of one of the roots coming out of the rock. I’m lucky. My right foot finds a solid rock, and I’m able to steady myself. I consider turning back, but it would probably be just as hard to go down now as go up. And though it sounds kind of silly, if I’m going to die anyway, I’d rather be going up than down.

By the time I make it to the top, the sun, as yellow as Bart Simpson’s face, is fully up and in the blue sky the aliens love so much. I’m panting with doglike urgency and have the powerful thirst those energy drinks are always claiming they can satisfy. Claimed. I have to keep reminding myself. Everything is past tense.

My legs dangle over the side. I’ve got little cuts all over me from the uneven rock edges. I feel stupid. But then a cool breeze passes over my sweaty skin and I look out over a broad, beautiful valley and I can see all the way to Taos, and in that moment it is all worth it. All I’ve done to get here, to see this, to be a part of it. Survived. Been a slave. Escaped. Run. Fought. Killed. Nearly died. This is my world. It belongs to me, and I belong to it.

The feeling blows over me like the wind. I can’t hold on to it. But when it’s gone, I have its memory and it gives me strength.

My dad sits next to me. (Okay, I’m not totally psycho. This isn’t
Hamlet.
I know my dad isn’t here, not even as a ghost. But I kind of pretend my dead father can visit me sometimes. At least I think I’m pretending. It’s sort of a daydream that sometimes seems a little more real than it should.)

“Look where you’ve got yourself now, Grasshopper,” he says. “You’re free.”

My dad is — was — a big man. He had blond hair that, in certain lights, seemed almost white. People said he was handsome, but I always thought it was more like his face had a lot of personality. People remember it.

“I’m not a slave anymore,” I say.

“And you’ve got a girlfriend.”

“I guess.” Technically Lauren is my girlfriend, and I did feel close to her, so close, on the journey from Austin to Taos. Not so much since we made it to the rebel camp, though. I don’t know why. It’s disappointing.

“And you killed one of the lords.”

“Yeah, and it’s made people think I’m something I’m not.”

“You know you’re going to have to help them see.”

“See what?”

“It’s like before you and your friends made up your minds to escape. You wanted to believe you could just survive as slaves, didn’t you? You thought you’d be lucky to do that. But then you realized you could do more. You escaped.”

“We did. And a lot of people died.”

“You might have never tried,” he says. “You might have died a slave.”

“That was totally different. We escaped. We didn’t fight them. Fighting them is different. We can’t win.”

This is the truth that was too big to say to Doc and Running Bird and that Robert guy and even to myself. They’re way more powerful than we will ever be, and there are too many of them. It’s just not possible to win. We can fight, but we can’t win.

“You couldn’t escape, either,” my dad says. “Or so you thought. Until you did, right?”

“It’s not the same.”

I’m looking out over the broad expanse, but when I turn to my dad to ask him what I should do, he’s not there. I’m talking to myself. I’m sitting by myself.

“I hate it when you do that!” I shout.

No answer. Just the echo of my words off the rocks. Maybe that is the answer.

After a while, I make my way around the cliff and find a safer way down. When I near camp, I hear voices and see people getting breakfast and sitting at tables and eating. Someone sees me and shouts, “There he is!” Heads turn my way. The people closest to me think,
Worried.
Or maybe they feel worried. This whole telepathy thing is confusing. It’s like everyone is always boiling over with thoughts and feelings, some of which are clear and distinct but most of which are vague and confusing, like background chatter at a party.

“We thought you were lost,” someone says.

I hear others agree, and the weight of their concern embarrasses me. I look away, which is when I notice Dylan across the clearing. He’s not one of the ones sending me waves of worry. Instead, he’s busy talking to a pretty brown-haired girl who’s looking at him all moon-eyed. I have this rush of images: dozens of other girls looking at him just that way and then crying over him later.
Player.

The images go away when Dylan finally sees me. He stops talking, and his body stiffens with anger, his face swells with it.
Stay the hell out of my head, you freak,
he mindpseaks.

Guard your thoughts better,
I mindspeak back.

He pushes toward me through the crowd, bumping people but either not noticing or not caring. I watch as he shields his thoughts, hiding his rage from everyone, looking outwardly concerned. Hiding from everyone except me, because I can still read him, even when he’s shielded. No one else can do that.

Maybe he’s right. Maybe I am a freak. I mean even more of a freak than the freaks we’ve all become.

“Where have you been?” Dylan says when he reaches me, his voice sounding as concerned as he looks. Even I almost believe him.

Everyone near us has stopped talking and is watching us. “Out for a walk,” I say. “Seeing the sights.”

“What is wrong with you?”

I think the list is practically endless, but I say, “Something is wrong with me because I took a walk? What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is you were gone when your girlfriend woke up, and she got people worried. This isn’t a Boy Scout camp.”

“It would be a strange one,” I say.

Someone laughs, which I appreciate.

Dylan’s eyes narrow. “Even the little kids know not to wander off and get lost.”

“I wasn’t lost,” I say. “I just wanted some time to myself.”

“Of course, if you really had the Warrior Spirit in you, you wouldn’t get lost.” He forces a smile.

“I wasn’t lost.”
You moron.
Too late I realize I didn’t shield the thought, so it floats out into the world for all to hear.

I know the truth about you,
Dylan mindspeaks.

He’s thinking this just to me, blocking out everyone else. I think I see how he does it, and I file that information away. In spite of my dislike and distrust of him, I can’t help listening closely, like maybe he does know some truth about me.

You aren’t special. You don’t know anything. You don’t belong here with us,
he mindspeaks.

You aren’t so special, either,
I retort, which I admit does have a fifth-grade ring to it.

Funny. I think of that word —
retort.
It’s my mom’s word. She was always on me about improving my vocabulary. Once I accidentally called her dude, and you would have thought I’d just confessed to murder. She talked for a long time about how she’d failed as a mother, how all her hard work had been for naught (yes, she used this word and lots of others like it and, yes, she could be pretty embarrassing in public — make that very embarrassing). But here I am using her word, which reminds me of her and makes me remember that a part of her is still in me. Another thing to hold on to. Another way the aliens haven’t won.

Dylan struts off. I think he does something that makes him seem bigger than he is, but I don’t know what. Another talent? Lauren and Catlin come up behind me as I’m trying to figure this out. I see them in my mind almost the way you’d see a shadow move out of the corner of your eye.

“You thought I was missing?” I say to Lauren, irritated she put me in a position where Dylan could chastise me in public.

“I wasn’t actually worried,” she says, and I can sense that she’s irritated that I’m irritated. “Dylan asked me where you were, and I said you weren’t in your tent when I woke up. He’s the one who made a big deal about it.”

“Dylan just wanted to embarrass you,” Catlin says, which is exactly what I’m thinking.

“You should tell people before you go somewhere, though,” Lauren says, unknowingly echoing Dylan. “It’s not safe here. Or anywhere.”

“Everyone’s nervous after yesterday,” Catlin says. “They all think something is going to happen.”

“Something
is
going to happen,” I say.

“Of course something is going to happen,” Lauren says.

“I mean something more specific,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“Yeah, what?” Catlin says.

“I had a dream last night.” I tell them about it. About the Hunter and deathdays and the Hunter’s employers needing us dead before word of our telepathic abilities gets out and the endless fleet of alien ships that I saw out in space.

“Are you going to tell Doc?” Catlin asks.

I shake my head. “It was just a dream. I already told him about the smuggler, so he knows everything we know.”

“But you didn’t tell him about the dream,” Catlin says.

“It was just a dream,” Lauren says.

“Yeah,” I say, “it was just a dream.”

I’m glad to agree with Lauren.