Untaken (20 page)

Robbie remembered a lot at first, but as He began to know more, Robbie’s memories faded to the back, accessible, but not always easy to understand.

What Robbie remembered: A woman who was
Mommy
. She stayed at the front of Robbie’s mind the longest. Her hair fell down around Robbie’s face when she read to him. Her hair smelled like something good to eat. The book she read from had bright pictures.

Caterpillar.

He remembered the word, but the picture didn’t make any more sense to Robbie than it did to Him. Colors on a page was all.

A man whose name was
Daddy
.

A creature who was a Dog. A yellow one with ears that drooped down.

Robbie remembered that they were outside, and they were going to go in the car. Robbie had a special up-high seat. It was a new big boy seat, so he could see out the window. Robbie didn’t know why Mommy and Dad were sad. Mommy’s tears fell on him as she put him in his new car seat. The tears fell on his skin, and Robbie wiped them off.

Then the monsters came. Now Robbie was crying too. Mommy and Dad were wrapped up in silver arms.

Robbie ran and ran, back inside the house, to hide in his room, under the bed where it was safe, but the thing got him, pulling him close with its long, black monster arms.

Robbie remembered when the house went “boom.”

The black arms pulled Robbie closer even as the house fell, shielding him, pulling him in tighter and tighter, like a hug. There was a funny tight feeling in Robbie’s head, his nose, his ears—something tried to get in. When he opened his mouth to scream, the things got inside that too.

Butterfly.

That word meant nothing either.

It was dark. He opened the eyes and tried to see. The body felt strange; there was a disconnect between His mind and the stubborn loyalty of Robbie’s flesh. He flexed the muscles, made the new limbs move. It wasn’t all his newness that was stopping him from leaving his uncomfortable bed in the rubble. There was something across his chest.

House,
said what was left of Robbie.
Part of the house. It all fell down
.
Robbie was still there.

“Mommy?” Robbie made the voice work. He struggled to stay in control, but Robbie knew the body better than he did, and He was pushed back into the sweet, sleepy darkness.

He was Himself again when the ship came. The engines called to him. Robbie struggled weakly, but the song of the engines, the good light of the ship that shone through the wreckage of
House
made Him strong. The heart beat and the thick warm blood pumped. He wanted to get up to run to the ship, but the beam across His chest pinned Him firmly in place. He struggled and moaned, but the voice coming out of the mouth sounded unbearably strange, and He clamped it shut so he didn’t have to hear it mewling.

The ship was leaving and He was trapped.

The others, the ones that used to be
Mommy
and
Daddy
had gone with the ship. He/Robbie could feel it.

Only the Dog was still there. It lay beside them, licking the face that was sometimes His and sometimes Robbie’s.

It was day, then night, day, then night. When it was night, they could see the stars through the gaps in the beams and broken walls. When He was Himself, He could see more than Robbie could. He could see the stars and the stars beyond them, sweeping silver patterns that made Him hurt with longing. One day, Dog was gone too, and then they were all alone.

He was growing stronger, but Robbie’s body was weaker. Once it rained and He drank the water, then there was nothing else to drink. He got thinner, and when the Ships came again, He hardly struggled.

Sometimes He slept.

When He woke up from one of the sleeps, there were two people staring down at Him, a boy and a girl, pale and skinny and dirty, like He was.

“Jeez,” said the boy. “It’s a little kid.”

Gracie

f you stop again, we’re just gonna leave you,” Brandon snapped. “Then what?”

“I won’t leave him,” I said. “Come on Jakester, hold my hand for a while, there will be other Shinys at the mall.”

I didn’t usually like to hold Jake’s hand, which tended to be sticky, or sweaty, or both, but the road was broken up and it would’ve been easy to take a spill. Jake never cried when he fell down and cut his knees, which was way creepy for a little kid, but it did slow him down, and Brandon was already in a grouchy mood. Not that that was anything new.

Today, we were on a “covert supply mission.” What that meant, if you weren’t a freak like Brandon, was that we were going to sneak into the mall and try to find some food and maybe some warm clothes, because winter was coming soon, and we couldn’t just hope to find what we’d need up in Maine.

Jake stooped to pluck up a couple more bullet casings, which he put into a pocket, already sagging with the weight of his treasures. He picked up shiny things like a little magpie would, collecting and hoarding treasures, his pockets getting heavier throughout the day.

One day, the pockets would rip clean off his overalls, I was sure of it.

When we stopped to rest, Jake liked to make patterns with the Shinys. Neat lines and squares, or strange wavering spirals that sent you cross-eyed if you looked at them when the sun hit just right. Each day’s Shinys disappeared in the night, and the next day, Jake would start his search over again.

I guess Jake buried them. I’d have loved to ask him why he spent all that time picking things up just to toss them away every night, but Jake didn’t talk.

We didn’t even know his real name.

“Mr. and Mrs. R. Jakes” was painted on the mailbox of the house where we found him, and the name “Jake” seemed as good as any, even though we knew that “Jakes” was a last name, and the house could have been anyone’s.

The fall leaves blazed red and yellow and covered the roads and sidewalks—and thankfully any dead guys there might be—in thick drifts, making for a beautiful day in spite of the nervous, squirmy “going to the mall” twisting in my belly.

Brandon was already bitching about the leaves. They hid the big crevices in the asphalt, and he’d fallen on his skinny ass twice. It was his fault for walking so fast all the time. I lagged behind with Jake, kicking the leaves up in extravagant puffs around my scuffed sneakers.

Eventually, Brandon threw down his backpack and stood, waiting, with his arms folded.

“You guys better pick up the pace,” he yelled. “We got a good stretch before we get to the mall, and I sure as hell don’t want to spend the night in there. Gotta get in and out before dark.”

“I know,” I told him. “We’re coming along as fast as we can.
We
don’t want to fall. Can we eat now? We are allowed to eat, right?”

Brandon considered, eyes narrowed behind the dark brown-black curtain of his hair. “Okay. Best to stop now while we still have cover. If anyone comes, I’ll signal like this”—Brandon extended two dirty fingers and pumped his scrawny arm into the air—“and we—”

Oh, for Pete’s sake.
“I know. We run off the road and hide in the weeds. Did you get that signal from Commander Lightning on ‘Action Squad?’ You’re kind of old to watch cartoons.”

“I don’t watch cartoons.”

“Are you sure? Because that’s totally what Commander Lightning does. ‘
To the Sky-copters!
’ just like that.” I dug a can of spaghetti hoops out of my backpack.

Brandon glowered. “It’s a military signal. And you better pay attention if I do it, or we’ll all end up dead.”

“Okay, Brandon, chill. We’ll pay attention, won’t we Jake?”

Jake sat cross-legged in the leaves, pulling Shinys from his pocket and arranging them into a neat series of zigzags. He cut his eyes toward us and gave the curt jerk of his head that could mean “yes” or “no” or “buzz off’—I hadn’t yet figured it out, since it was the same motion for each response he gave.

“Good,” said Brandon. “Eat quickly.”

At first, food hadn’t been hard to find, but as the weeks rolled over into months, what wasn’t in cans was spoiled and useless. Finding cans that weren’t dented or crushed was becoming trickier, too.

My mom once told me never to eat from a dented can, because what was inside might be bad. Brandon hadn’t believed me at first, but a couple of weeks back, he got good and sick from a can of wieners that looked like a giant had stepped on it, and after that, he’d been as careful as I was only to pick up the good cans.