Untaken (11 page)

Mr. Novak patted my shoulder awkwardly. “I know you want to wait here for your folks, but you’re more likely to find them at the center.”

“I know,” I replied. “I wanted to stick here awhile longer though. They haven’t had time to get here yet, and—”

“That’s true, honey, but I don’t think you should be here in this big old house alone. Something…might happen again, and your folks would want you to be somewhere safe, wouldn’t they?”

Mr. Novak was right. I felt kind of bad leaving our house, but it would be nice to have grown-ups with me. Not to mention a ride to Needham, which wasn’t exactly a short stroll.

“Okay,” I said. “I gotta leave them a note though, so they’ll know where I am when they get here. And I have to pack my stuff.”

“Just the essentials,” said Mr. Novak. “Mrs. Novak made some sandwiches for the drive. The turkey ones you like, on marble rye. And remember about the note.”

As if I’d forget that! The other thing about some old people with no kids? They think a fourteen-year-old has the same memory span as a baby. Still, turkey and Swiss on marble rye was a pretty sweet deal. It was kind of funny in a way, the way Mr. Novak and me never once mentioned the Space Men. I guessed maybe Mr. Novak was in shock too. If we didn’t think too hard about it, we could tell ourselves that everything was still under control.

I wrapped a sweatshirt around my tablet to cushion it, and shoved the whole thing into my backpack, then went downstairs to the kitchen and found a pad of paper by the phone to write my note on. Just to check, I picked up the receiver, but of course, the line was dead.

Tap, tap
.

I spun around looking for the source of the noise. It was coming from behind me, from the window over the sink. At first I thought it was a leaky faucet, but as I moved closer I saw a flicker of movement behind the glass.

Tap, tap
. It was like someone was knocking on the glass asking to be let in.

I bent down and squinted through the honeysuckle vines that covered the window. A slender black shape snaked through the leaves, weaving carefully between the vines to tap the glass again. What I the hell
was
it? The thing had a long black body stretching away out of sight, and a small blunt head that skittered and prodded against the glass of the window. The sight of that black eyeless head gave me the same shivery ice-water feeling looking at the ships had. What it looked like more than anything was one of the horrible deep-water eels from Mikey’s ocean books. Something sly and mean and always hungry.

Another black head joined the first, tapping lightly to begin with, then pressing harder until with a sudden “pop,” a crack ran across the pane.

I yelped, and backed up quickly, only stopping when the small of my back smacked sharply into the kitchen table.

The window shattered and shards of broken glass clattered into the sink. The pain in my back registered from very far away. My head was light, and vision was fading to a weird foggy whiteness. I lifted up a trembling hand and pinched my own cheek, hard. I couldn’t faint, not now.

More eel things appeared at the window, nosing at the sharp edges of the broken glass, then advancing into the room to slither and probe along the kitchen counter. There were ten, then twenty, and then still more of them oiling in through the window. They snaked down to inspect the floor where I’d been standing seconds before, writhing more quickly now as though they’d scented prey.

Me
.

I wanted to run; or rather I wanted to somehow get away without moving at all, because if I moved, the things at the window might see me, although I couldn’t see any eyes on those freakish heads. I edged one sneaker a half step backwards, and the creatures froze all at once. They’d
heard
me. I had to run, run fast, because as soon as I moved they were going to come for me. I gulped air, but I still felt like I was suffocating. I darted round the table, and slammed right into a chair, tumbling to the ground. The eel things boiled through the window, and then—The familiar sound of a car door shutting. All at once, the black eel things withdrew and the window was empty. I scrambled on all fours toward the hall door with the idea of hiding in the closet again, but a terrible thought stopped me in my tracks. Mr. Novak. It had to be him out by his car, and he didn’t know about the eels.

I walked back toward the window on legs that didn’t seem to want to bend properly. Mr. Novak stood beside his big blue Chrysler, loading bags into the trunk. He noticed me staring through the window with my mouth hanging open. A frown passed over his face as he saw the freshly broken glass, and his mouth was just opening to call across to me when his eyes hitched upward and his face froze. I rushed toward the front door yelling his name, but by the time I got outside, the only question seemed to be which of us was going to die first.

The creature floated in the air about fifteen feet from the ground, like a jellyfish floats in the sea, dozens of tentacles—not eels, as I’d originally thought—moving lazily beneath a roundish, black body, like a grotesque balloon made of what could have been dark oily metal, or slimy black flesh.

“What the hell?” barked Mr. Novak.

The sound of his voice decided things. The creature moved horribly fast, dropping from the air to envelop Mr. Novak in a mass of whipping tentacles. As the tentacles wrapped tighter and tighter around him, his screams became quieter, then… stopped.

Mine didn’t.

Mrs. Novak came pelting out of the house, her eyes wide. If Mr. Novak’s slamming his car door had saved me from the first creature, then Mrs. Novak rushing out like she did saved me from the second.

Her mouth flopped open. “Gracie, what’s happening?”

Before I could reply, a maelstrom of black tentacles whipped around the side of the house. She started to run, but the thing was fast. Limber black arms streamed around her body, pinning her arms to her side, and muffling her screams in seconds. It grabbed her right out of her summer sandals—the last thing I saw of her were the white soles of her feet kicking, before the creature pulled her around the side of the house and out of my sight.

I didn’t run. It was all I could do to force my trembling legs to walk. My mind felt blank, like our TV, still tuned to a station that had stopped broadcasting anything sane when the world ended. I walked inside, closed the door behind me, thought about it numbly, then slid the chain across. I crawled into the closet, right to the very back, and waited to see whether I would live through the night.

Brandon

lay on my rickety camp bed down in the basement. It wasn’t real comfy, but it was kind of like camping out, a pretty sweet deal. I turned over carefully to find a more comfortable position. If you moved too fast on those beds, they’d tip you off their backs like cranky mules throwing an inexperienced rider. I settled back and flipped the page of my book. The next thing I knew, I was being thrown clean across the room in a shower of grit, by an explosion which shook the earth. I landed hard on the concrete floor, skinning my elbows.

“Dad! What happened?”

Dad was on his feet already. He stuck out a hand and hauled me upright. People sometimes mistook us for brothers—we had the same black hair, only his was shot through with gray at the sides. Now, though, it was like we’d both turned to old men in an instant, our hair powdered white with plaster dust. Dad stared out through his dusty bangs, eyes bright with excitement.

“This is it, son. Things are about to get real interesting….”

He was cut off by a sound like a hundred jet engines screaming all at once, followed by a
thud
so loud and near it rocked the earth, nearly knocking me off my feet a second time. The basement shook again, and more dust showered down upon us. The lights gave one last feeble flicker and went out for good.

I scrabbled about looking for the flashlight, and breathed in a big gulp of plaster dust. I tried for another gasp of air and succeeded in breathing in a second burning lungful. My head smacked hard on the rough concrete of the basement wall. The blackness felt like something solid, pushing into my nose and open mouth and ears until I thought I’d smother in it. We were being buried alive down here—I floundered in the bottom of my own grave… then a light came on and I could see again.

Dad, of course. He’d gone right to the emergency kit and turned on one of the big flashlights. I tried to wipe some of the dust and snot off my face before he saw me sniveling. He patted the camp bed where he sat and I staggered over to join him.

“They’re coming,” I said, when I trusted my voice to come out right.

“Yup. They’re coming. Only, I reckon we’ll be fine for now if we just lay low.

“Sure.” I nodded.

My doubt must have shown because Dad said, “Couple of big hits, then it all stopped. They ain’t coming in here for us just yet. Tryin’ to flush us out, I reckon. Just like you do when you’re hunting ducks. Get ‘em out of cover and on the wing.”

“What for?” I asked. It seemed to me that if they wanted to kill us, then blowing up houses was better than picking us off “on the wing.”

“Beats me, son. But there’s no good in worrying over it now. We just sit tight and wait until them army guys get here. Reckon those intergalactic sons of bitches’ll have a fight on their hands then, all right.”

The thought of ass-kicking perked Dad right up. He set to whistling; the cheery sound set my teeth on edge. He started heating up some beans and franks on the Primus. My stomach was clenched up like a fist, and the thought of supper didn’t do much for me.

“Eat up, then hit the hay. We’ll sleep in shifts tonight: you first, then me.”

The beans had plaster dust floating on top of them. Probably give me cancer or some shit. I spurted out a bark of laughter. Why the hell was I worried about cancer at a time like this?

Dad smiled at me, finishing his own bowl in a few big bites.

I waited for the next explosion, or worse: the sly turning of the handle on the bulkhead door. We’d shored them up pretty good, but who knew what was out there? I tried to picture our neighborhood crawling with little green men. Even though I was scared shitless, it still didn’t seem real to me that there could be actual aliens outside.

Dad picked up the Remington. It seemed to glow in the beam of the flashlight like black oil, beautiful and strong.

“Think you know how to use this?” asked Dad.

I nodded, not able to speak for the second time that night. My love and pride became a physical lump in my throat.

“You take the first watch, then. Don’t let no one in, no matter who it is. Them doors stay shut, okay? Don’t care if it’s anyone we know, don’t care if they’re hurt. We open the doors, we may as well walk on out there and offer ourselves to them ships. Got it?”

“I got it.” I didn’t think that anything on earth—or off—could persuade me to open the doors.