Intruders: The Invasion: A Post-Apocalyptic, Alien Invasion Thriller (Book 1) (3 page)

I looked at my cell, frustrated, then froze.

The date on the screen said Dec 12th. I’d slept through the
night and day, and it was now night time again. 7:10, to be exact.

Suddenly the pressure in my bladder was terrible. I couldn’t
believe I’d held it that long.

Jessie was still happy as could be; eating bananas and
watching a cartoon alien shoot and disintegrate a cartoon dog on the TV screen.

As I emptied my bladder, I tried to make sense of what the
hell was going on. Why had I slept so long? Was the world in any better shape
since I’d drifted off?

I washed my hands and headed back into the kitchen to check
news reports on the laptop.

Before I sat down at the laptop, I looked out the living
room window. There were shapes wandering the streets now; shambling. This wasn’t
a normal walk. It was dark, so I couldn’t make out who the people were, or if
they were really alive or dead. But by the way they were moving, a kind of
mindless shuffling, I knew that these were some of the dead that had come back.

A cold chill danced over my spine. How could this be
happening?

I tried the police station again on my cell. We had no home
phone, as we all had cell phones and had no need for it. Nobody was answering
at the police station. No answer from Kelly or Derek.

I tried 911. The lines were completely jammed.

Not a big surprise.

I checked the laptop. The kid hadn’t returned to his live
streaming video. A view of an empty kitchen filled the screen.

There were a lot of other pleas for help on PheedMe.

News reports were not encouraging. The dead were growing
quickly in numbers. A scratch or a bite would kill you within an hour. Soon
after, you turn into one of them.

The military were out in tanks and humvees, but more and
more of them were being taken down. The sheer numbers of the dead were making
the task of killing them unmanageable. The rapidness with which a person turned
was making it near impossible to keep their numbers down.

But more interesting were the reports and videos of the
children and babies who had returned. It seemed that all of the kids who had
vanished had reappeared over night.

All of them now had white blonde hair and strange, green
eyes.

“Doe-doe!”

I jumped up and ran into the living room, where Jessie was
standing on the couch looking out the window into the street. She pointed one
small finger at the glass, touching it lightly. “Oook! Oook! A boy aside!”

As I approached the window, my breath caught in my throat. A
boy of about nine years old with a shock of white hair stood under a street
light, staring up at the window. He stared right at me as the dead wandered all
around him.

And the strangest thing was that the dead didn’t seem to
bother with him at all.

* * *

My initial reaction was that the kid gave me the creeps. My
second was that I needed to get him out of the street, before the dead realized
that he was standing there and that he wasn’t one of them.

He was still watching me. I waved him up. “Come on, kid.
Slowly.”

He just stood there, expressionless, watching me.

I was going to have to go out there and get him. “Damn it.”

“Bad word, Doe-doe.” Jessie wagged a finger at me.

“Sorry, Jess. Listen. Can you stay in here and be a good
girl while Doe-Doe goes out and gets that little boy?”

Jessie nodded. “I a big girl.”

“Yes, you are.” Watching the kid for a long minute, I hoped
I wasn’t being an idiot going out there. If something happened to me trying to
get that kid to safety, Jessie would be on her own.

But I couldn’t leave him out there like that. The dead could
turn their attention to him at any moment. I frowned. Why didn’t he come up?
Why did he just stand there like that?

He must be in shock. Must’ve lost his parents. Siblings, too
maybe.

“Poor kid.” I bit my lip, heart pounding, trying to ready
myself for going out there.

“Yeah. Poe kid.” Jessie’s voice was full of sympathy. “Where
his mommy? With my mommy?”

“I don’t know, sweetie. I’ll just be a minute. Stay here,
okay?”

She nodded her head, and then turned back to the window.

I made my legs move and headed toward the door, listening
for any movement outside. I heard nothing. Slowly, I turned the knob and pulled
the door open about an inch.

The smell hit me at the same time as the cold did. A
strange, sulfuric smell, with the reek of rot beneath it.

If I breathed through my mouth, whatever was in the air
would be on my tongue. I kept my mouth closed and dealt with the stench.

I peeked through the small opening I’d made. No one was out
there.

Carefully, I closed the door behind me and walked quietly
across the wooden porch and down the steps.

Nothing paid attention to me, yet. Just the little boy.

Again, I tried to wave him up. He remained still, gazing at
me with those weird, expressionless eyes. With his coloring, I knew he had been
one of the vanished. He had probably just come back from where he’d been, like
Jessie had.

A dead woman shuffled past him, and now she was close enough
for me to see that she’d been the woman who lived next door. She’d had a son.

Realization slammed into me. This had been the dark-haired
kid who lived next door with her. She was a single mother. It had been just the
two of them. But they’d been gone, visiting her parents in another state ---
Connecticut --- maybe Vermont. I couldn’t remember.

They were back, now.

She continued past him, moving slowly under the street
light, and I could see that her eyes were milky white, her skin shot through
with dark veins. She made strange gurgling noises deep in her throat.

Fear clawed at my belly and my heart slammed in my chest as
I watched her move past him, not even looking at him.

He had to be in shock.

Was that why all these kids had white hair now? Shock? What
had they seen while they were gone? Had it been that terrible?

I waited until she had walked several feet away, looked all
around to make sure there weren’t any dead near us, and moved as quickly and
quietly as I could toward him.

“Hey, Danny. Are you okay?” I took his hand. It felt cold in
mine.

He looked up at me, nodding slowly. His voice came out as a
whisper. “Yes.”

“Come on, buddy. Let’s get you in the house. It’s not safe
out here.” I gently tugged on his hand, starting to walk back toward the house,
looking all around us. On the news I’d seen how fast these things could move
when they had motivation to. Motivation being food --- the closest thing to eat
being the living.

It seemed that the dead didn’t like eating things that
weren’t moving and screaming while they tore into them, preferring instead the
taste of hot blood, and the feeling of it spraying their faces.

My breaths came out in little pants, and my body broke out
in a cold sweat. Just a few more feet and we’d be at the stairs to the porch.

A knock sounded above and I looked up, startled. Jessie was
knocking on the window, giggling and yelling. She was thrilled that Danny was
coming with me.

I turned and looked toward the street. Several of the dead
were now walking toward the house, inhuman moans and grunts coming from their
dead throats.

Hot fear shot through my chest. My mouth went dry. “Come on,
Danny. Better move a little faster.”

Then his hand was gone from mine and he was like a blur,
moving toward the door.

I’d never seen a person move so fast.

He looked at me, and a slow smirk lifted the corners of his
lips.

* * *

This definitely wasn’t like the polite kid who lived next
door and sometimes came over to the porch when Jessie and I came out here to
play. These kids were different. I hadn’t had a chance to look up what people
were posting about their kids. But I sure as hell would now, the minute I got
Danny settled in.

The kid gave me the creeps, but I couldn’t just leave him
outside. He was still a kid. Wasn’t he?

I opened the door for him, and the second he walked in the
apartment, Jessie was laughing and clapping. Her personality hadn’t changed.
She was still the bright and cheerful little girl she’d been before she’d
vanished. Thank God.

“Danny! Yo hair aw white!” Jessie apparently didn’t know
that her hair had changed color, too.

But now looking at it, I realized that the eyebrows and
eyelashes of both kids were also white. It wasn’t so much that their hair had
changed color as that the color had leached out of it.

Spooky.

“Have a seat, Danny. Would you like something to drink? A
juice box? Milk? Water?”

Danny sat on the couch next to Jessica, who ran her fingers
through his white hair.

“Nana, Danny?” Jessie asked him.

He looked up at her and said nothing, but Jessie stopped
moving, staring back into his eyes. In a moment, she nodded, then climbed off
the couch and toddled off into the kitchen.

I frowned, following her. She opened the fridge and grabbed
a juice box in one small hand, then closed the fridge and toddled past me, back
into the living room, and handed the juice box to Danny.

Again, he looked into her eyes.

Jessie smiled. “Yo welcome, Danny.”

Danny hadn’t said a word to her.

“How did you know what Danny wanted, Jessie? Did you guess?”
I asked, already dreading her answer, because I knew what it would be.

“I just knowed.” Jessie resumed playing with Danny’s hair as
he watched me silently with those eerie, pale eyes.

* * *

The creepy kid wasn’t talking. Not so that I could hear him,
anyway. I found some cookies in the cupboard and put a bunch on a plate,
putting it on the coffee table for him and Jessie.

Jessie beamed. “Choca ship!”

Danny looked down at the plate, then back at me.

I backed into the kitchen. Whatever his dealio was, he
seemed to really like Jessie, and even be protective of her. But he looked at
me like he didn’t trust me.

Given current events, and God knew what else had happened to
him, I didn’t really blame him.

No. He’s looking at you like he knows
something you don’t.

Just hang in there. Check the news. See
what’s up. You can figure out what to do with him later.

I tried my cell and got a message that the provider was
experiencing technical difficulties. Wonderful. So even if I got a phone number
from Danny for his grandparents in Connecticut or Vermont, or wherever it was
he and his mother had been, I couldn’t call them.

I googled ‘vanished kids return’ and got a ton of hits; blog
entries, videos, and people posing questions on forums.

All saying the same thing.

My kid is back but is different.

I viewed several videos of people recording their returned
kids with their blank expressions and their eerie smiles. Kids seeming to talk
to each other without moving their lips. Siblings having entire conversations
without opening their mouths.

Parents were scared.

I saw more videos of white haired children walking the
streets, some alone, and some in groups, amongst the dead.

The kids acted like the dead weren’t even there, and the
dead did the same with them.

But the most frightening thing I saw were videos, more and
more of them, of children watching, completely emotionless, as the dead tore
the living apart before their eyes.

With my hands pasted over my mouth, I watched in utter
horror as a group of four siblings watched their parents, who were rushing them
to the family car in their driveway, overcome by a large herd of the dead,
tearing chunks from their flesh, taking them down as they shrieked in terror
and agony.

The kids simply stood and watched, completely unaffected.

The person filming was a neighbor across the street, who
kept saying, “Oh, my God. Oh, God. What the hell is wrong with these kids?”

I heard a gasp as one at a time, each of the four children
lifted their shocking white heads, looked straight into the camera, and gave
the same, creepy smirk.

As if they’d heard him.

“Jesus Christ almighty,” the man recording said. “Save us
all.”

* * *

Where the hell were Derek and Kelly?

Deep down, I knew that something had happened to them.
Rayback had said that he’d come back and check on me and see if Jessie had been
brought back, by some miracle, sometime today. Unless I’d slept through his
knocking earlier, he hadn’t come. Neither had Derek and Kelly.

They aren’t coming. You’re on your own.

I sat in a big, fluffy chair in the corner of the living
room while Jessie slept curled up to Danny on the couch. Danny lay behind her,
one arm around her, eyes closed.

Do they still dream?
How else had
these kids changed? Would they ever be normal again? As normal as they could
ever be after what had happened to them? Whatever that had been.

Happy that his spooky eyes weren’t on me, I closed my own
eyes and began to drift. The chaos and constant fear and worry had left me
jittery and so tired. I was trying to find an answer, thinking of what to do.
Ask Danny where his other family lived, like grandparents, aunts, uncles. I
didn’t want to be responsible for him.

Even though he was clearly great with Jessica, the kid scared
me.

I opened my eyes and my heart froze in my chest.

He was looking right at me.

He knows what I’m thinking. Might as well
say it out loud.
“Danny, do you have any family we can take you to?”

Danny shook his head.

“What about the people you just visited with your mom? Your
grandparents? Anyone?” I hated to bring her up, because she was one of the
wandering now, but I had to know.