Untaken (12 page)

My watch said five o’clock, but we’d been in the cellar so long I didn’t know if that was a.m. or p.m. anymore.

My cell phone hadn’t shown any bars since the night all the invasion shit went down, so that was no use either.

Even by Dad’s standards, the basement was already a pit. For all his planning, he hadn’t managed to figure on little things like a bathroom, or any place to put our dirty food cans. The heat didn’t help. I lay on my bed with sweat beading up off my body, watching the spooky shapes that your mind starts projecting onto the blackness when you lay in the dark for hours at a time. Nothing else to look at but Dad lying on his own bunk across from me.

With the stink and the darkness, it was kind of like being laid out in a tomb. At least the undead get to rise from the grave at sunset though. All Dad and I had to look forward to was chowing down on a tin of Heinz beans and listening to each other’s farts in the dark until it was time to eat again.
I’d asked Dad a couple of times if maybe we could go up to the yard to empty the bucket that was making do as our bathroom, but he’d shaken his head each time.

I didn’t want to get him mad, so I remained on my bunk, drifting in and out of sleep.

There hadn’t been much sound from outside after the first night. A bit of shouting, a few screams. Sometimes, a car went by fast, and once, a loud sound that was almost like singing—some mighty engine from a galaxy far, far away, which made my bones rattle in sympathetic dread.

When I thought about it—and there wasn’t much else to do in this dark, stinking basement—this was an exciting time to be alive. Maybe it was the end of the world, and maybe there were greater and more exciting dangers to be faced than aiming for an over-full pee bucket by torchlight, but at least I was alive while the world’s first genuine sci-fi shit went down. I wondered a lot about what was going on out there.

I swung my legs off the bed and reached for the little radio.

“Don’t try it,” Dad said. “Nothing but propaganda. Useless.”

I sighed and lay back down. I’d tried to listen to the radio earlier while he slept, but it was hard to get a signal down in the basement, and to actually hear what the guys were saying, I’d have needed to turn it loud, which would have woken Dad.

“I’m gonna go crazy down here,” I said.

“Nah, you won’t. It’ll be over soon, I reckon. Then you’ll be glad we stuck to the plan.”

It might’ve been easier to bear if Dad had told me what the plan was, but he didn’t seem inclined to share. The thought of fresh air and sunlight made a weird thrill go through me. I felt almost thirsty for it, the way you shudder at the thought of a cool drink on a parched day.

“Get some sleep, best thing you can do,” Dad said.

Sure enough, he was snoring a few seconds later. I waited a little longer.

“Mmmshbgd. Hmm? Yeah, reckon so.”

I stifled a giggle. Dad always talked gobbledygook when he was in a good, deep sleep. Now I’d be safe to move.

It’d be bad news to go outside maybe, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to open the bulkhead that led out into the backyard a crack, and see if it was night or day. Just reconnaissance. Like a soldier would do. Some fresh air couldn’t hurt, and it wasn’t like the Almighty Alien Queen was likely to be chilling out in our backyard in Nowheresville, MA.

I could empty the slop bucket at the same time. Save Dad the embarrassment of acknowledging the snag in his plan. Save us both from strangling on the stink of piss and shit. Sometimes, when Dad screwed up, he’d overlook things that would normally get him raging if the screw up went away. Sometimes, like with the deer head, he’d get mad anyway, but as the long, hot, stinky days went by, I began to feel that Dad getting mad was something I could live with.

I pulled my shirt over my nose to pick up the bucket. It was pretty much full. The turds bumped up against the sides like little toy ships when I lifted it, and some of the pee water slopped out over the sides. Jeez, it was bad!

My stomach clenched and it was uncertain for a second whether I was going to add to the mess by barfing, but Dad turned over and grunted in his sleep, and the chance that he might wake up shot a flash of fear through me that short circuited every other bodily impulse. I walked real slowly over to the bulkhead and set the bucket down. I reached for the latch, then stopped. Itchy runners of sweat trickled down my ribs.

There could be
anything
out there.

I thought of the fresh air outside. Just one lungful after the sweltering sewer of the basement would be worth pretty much anything. I wouldn’t go far. Just ditch the bucket and duck back inside.

The first set of bulkhead doors whined on their hinges as I gently lowered them inwards. The second set of doors were the steel ones that Dad had added to make the basement into a fortress. They were warm to the touch, and a single line of brilliant white sunlight shone between them. It was day, then.

When I put my nose to the crack, the sweetness of the air made my mouth water. How had I never noticed how good the outdoors smelled before? The green smell of grass and flowers and rich earth and even the tangy smell of hot sun on the wooden shingles of the house flooded my nostrils. I inhaled several great, big breaths, smiling like a goof.

The reinforced doors were harder to open. There was a tricky lock on the handles and the doors were heavy. When I finally wrestled them open, the sunlight streamed in, making my eyes water. I was real worried all that light would wake Dad, so I grabbed the bucket in one hand, then scooted up the steps, quick as I could. I set down the bucket on the grass and turned to ease the doors down gently behind me.

Snick!

The lock click into place with a neat mechanical sound. I tugged at the doors. They didn’t even rattle. I was locked out in the yard and, to make it worse, I couldn’t see a goddamn thing. Turns out when you live in a basement for a week, sunlight takes a bit of getting used to.

I willed myself to be a soldier, but the fear sweat still trickled down my ribs. I staggered backward until my shoulder bumped up against the wall of the house. I strained my ears, listening for stealthy footprints. The skin on my throat crawled as I imagined big green hands closing round my neck to throttle the life out of me. I scrubbed at my eyes with my fists, which made weird red flowers bloom behind my eyelids, but didn’t seem to help much otherwise.

Count to a hundred. Just sit still and chill the hell out
.

One…

Two…

Three…

When I’d counted to ninety-three, I started to be able to see again.

I was kind of disappointed, God’s honest truth.

Things I didn’t see:

Spaceships shooting across the sky.

Weird alien fungus covering everything like silly string.

Funky glowing craters.

Nothing was at all different in our scrubby backyard in any way.

What a bust! It was quieter than usual without the traffic noise, I guessed, but that was about it. Big whoop. The bucket sat where I left it, over by the bulkhead doors. A good number of flies buzzed over the top of it already. Not for nothing, but getting up close and personal with that bucket all over again didn’t have much appeal for me. There were clean buckets in the house. And since I’d have to wake Dad up either way, pounding on the basement door inside the kitchen seemed like a better option than pounding on the one out in the yard. I’d gotten my fresh air and my look at the sky—where ships still hung like they’d never moved at all—but now the stillness of the day seemed less peaceful than it had earlier. In fact, I had a good case of creeping gooseflesh.

Dad had done a pretty good job of boarding up the doors and windows, but when I crept around behind the house, the sheet of plywood over my bedroom window hung down on one nail, and the window itself was busted. Had to be the explosions we’d heard a few days back. A lot of the other houses in the neighborhood had busted out windows, too, now that I took a look around. Lucky break for me. Now Dad might actually have another cause to thank me for: finding a chink in our fortress.

I threw my sweatshirt over the jagged glass left in the frame, and boosted myself in through the window. My room looked pretty much the same, other than all the broken glass lying on the bed, but I felt like I’d been away for a hundred years, rather than just hiding in the basement for two weeks.

The house was real dark and hot, and the doorways leading off the hall had all canted to the left. Whatever those big explosions were, they’d been close enough to damage the house some. I had to get back to that basement again. At least if the house was fixing to fall down, we’d be safe there, just like in a tornado.

I was pretty sure the buckets were in the hall closet. I dug through the tangled mess of work boots and closet junk, finding the Converse sneaker I’d been missing since Spring, but no buckets. Behind me, the door of Dad’s room swung open with a sly creak.

I froze up right away. He couldn’t be up here, could he? More likely, it was a looter. Someone who’d guessed we had a good place to hide and a nice stock of supplies and wanted in on the action.

“We ain’t got nothing here worth takin’,” I shouted, trying to keep my voice from sticking in my throat, which seemed all of a sudden several sizes too small.

The door creaked again, and there was a stealthy dragging noise, like something shuffling against the wall.

“My Dad’s got a gun. You better just get out of here!”

Dad’s room was between me and the basement. If there was one guy in there, I might be able to take him out if I was quick and took him off guard. I grabbed an empty bottle off the counter, wondering if I’d have the balls to smash it over some guy’s head. My one advantage was that I knew where all the creaky places in the floor were. Slowly, I started to sneak down the corridor, bottle held high.

There was a
thump
from Dad’s room and I jumped, almost dropping my weapon.

Sweat trickled down my forehead, getting in my eyes. The bottle was slick and slippery in my hand. What if it broke wrong and cut up my hand? Who in the hell was going to stitch me up?

Concentrate
.

Another
thump
, and then the door creaked all the way open.

A big black bulge like a sick-looking tumor thrust its way into the corridor. Thick black tentacles writhed beneath it, slapping against the wall hard enough to rip gouges in the paper.

I screamed. The bottle slipped from my fingers—I couldn’t work my hands to stop it, and what difference would it have made anyway?

I turned to run, but my foot came down on an old boot that had spilled out of the closet and my ankle twisted, spilling me onto the floor. My head thumped against the wall, but I didn’t care about my throbbing head or my swelling ankle, just about getting away from that
thing
. I scrambled to my feet, and chanced a look back over my shoulder just in time to see the invader seethe through the door frame like black water. A living wall of squirming tentacles filled the corridor from floor to ceiling. It came at me fast, peeling the walls bare of paper, tentacles straining forward toward me. I could smell the scorching metallic stink of it, and then something rammed into me from behind and I was face down on the dirty hall carpet again.

The gun went off so loud in that narrow corridor that my ears sang.

Dad
.

“Get out of here, Brandon! Go on, run!”

But I couldn’t.

He had the gun in between him and the creature. One tentacle had snaked around the barrel, as if exploring the texture of the metal. Dad yanked on the gun, trying to get it high enough to take a second shot that would count for something, but the thing was stronger than him. It plucked the gun out of his hands and let it drop to the floor, then lunged for Dad.

“Don’t—” I began, but the words wouldn’t come out.

Tentacles wound around Dad, pulling him in, almost lovingly. Cradling him. In a few seconds, only Dad’s hand was visible. One lone hand poking out of that mass of black tentacles.

I didn’t know if he was alive or dead, but I had to get him away from that thing.

Touching that oily blackness, hard and slimy like greasy, living metal, made me gag. I swallowed down the bile and dug my fingers in. Trying to move the tentacles was like trying to bend steel. Impossible. I thought maybe I could distract it or something, but now that it had Dad, it paid no more attention to me no matter how much I hollered.

I hobbled to the kitchen on shaking legs, searching for a knife.

I jammed the blade into what I thought might be the alien’s head, but the blade glanced off, cutting a thin line down my own thigh instead.

The chainsaw, maybe? My pants were soaking through with blood and the black spots danced before my eyes again. I wasn’t thinking straight. I’d never used a chainsaw before and what if I cut Dad? Or the monster killed him while I ran out to the shed?

All of a sudden, the tentacles went limp.

“Dad?” I whispered.

Nothing. No movement, no response.

Shutting my eyes, I kicked out as hard as I could, then kicked again, harder this time. The creepy, round body rolled to the side, half off Dad. I grabbed hold of his legs and hauled.

“Dad, come on! Wake up!”

The skin of his face was white and he didn’t move. Tears ran down my cheeks. What the fuck would I do if he was dead?

I swallowed. If he was dead, I’d killed him. It was my fault.

I put my bloody fingers to his neck. His pulse beat faintly against my fingertips. His chest hitched, and he gave a great whooping cough.

“You made it,” I whispered.

“
We
made it.”

The alien lay still on the floor.