Alien Invasion (Book 1): Invasion (5 page)

Piper reached out and tapped the radio to turn it off, her finger shaking.

CHAPTER FIVE

Day One, Morning
 

The Dempsey Penthouse, New York

Meyer tapped his earbud while running around the penthouse with a sense of foreboding. Somehow without knowing at all, he’d been sure this was coming.
 

All the visions in his ceremonies. Tripped-out haze, lying beside Heather while she talked about the “groovy fucking colors,” sharing none of his richer experience in the far-seeing rituals. Ayahuasca was medicine, but Heather just saw it as a helluva time — not unlike the many other substances she’d put into her body and brain. She’d never been truly addicted to anything through all her dalliances, so it seemed ironic to Meyer — who’d really only cared for that most expensive drug of all — that he might have been the addicted one.
 

Not to the chemicals, but to the puzzle his mind had been slowly solving since his first glimpse of Mother Ayahuasca.
 

“Incoming call from: Piper.”
 

The mechanical voice pronounced Piper’s name as “Pipper.” It was simple to correct mispronunciations, but he’d never cared to. And right now, on the eve of an apocalypse, it annoyed Meyer more than anything that his phone still couldn’t properly pronounce his wife’s name.
 

He tapped the bud again.
 

There was a shuffling noise. Meyer heard his son say, “Here.”

Piper: “Oh, excellent, thank you, Trevor.
Meyer?”

Meyer was shoving item after item into a duffel. He’d just packed two similar bags, and most of what they’d need was already in the van downstairs. From the outside, Meyer’s packing would have looked less frantic than he felt, owing to the fact that he’d practically memorized his packing lists and kept whatever he could spare already packed, stowed, and ready to go. Only last-minute items took time, and he was already done. Meyer checked mental boxes in his mind as if on an internal heads-up display.
 

“Are you on your way?” he demanded.
 

“Oh, thank God. We’ve been trying to reach you for hours. Well, not hours. A long time, though. Trevor has.”
 

“So Trevor’s there? You got the kids?”
 

A loud clattering preceded a horn’s ugly bray.
 

Far away, Meyer heard Piper yell, “Brother trucker!” Then: “Sorry, kids.” A nervous laugh followed, not from Piper. Seconds later her voice filled the receiver, out of breath. “I just hope I can make it there.”

“Where are you?”
 

“Near the park. I just picked up Lila.”
 

Meyer stopped, wrist-deep in a duffel.
 

“You aren’t out at the school?”
 

“I had to pick up Lila.”
 

Another rustling, and something that sounded like Piper might have hit something, run someone over, or driven up onto the sidewalk. All were fine with Meyer as long as the passengers in Piper’s stupid Beetle survived. But she was a shaky driver under the best of circumstances. She’d grown up in the country and had only moved to the city after her campaign on Meyer’s crowdfunding platform had birthed her Quirky Q clothing line — and, eventually, their relationship. She was too tentative for New York streets, and today was no normal rush hour.

“Jesus, Piper. Put someone else on the phone. Just drive.”
 

“Lila, take the phone.” Then, somewhat near the receiver: “I love you.”
 

“I love you too, baby. Just be—”
 

Trevor’s voice: “Hey, Dad.”
 

“Lila, your voice has gotten so deep.”
 

“Lila doesn’t want to take the phone,” Trevor said. “She doesn’t want you to yell at her for ditching school.”
 

“Lila was ditching school?” He shook the thought away. That was well down the list of things that simply did not fucking matter right now. He had to see them safe, then get to Morristown and the Gulfstream. Things were uncertain until then. Once in the air, they’d be okay. He could worry about FAA rules and where they’d land later. They could fly low and land at the compound if need be. But none of that could happen until the city was behind them.
 

“She was with Raj.”
 

“That doesn’t matter right now,” Meyer said. “Tell me exactly where you are.”
 

“They ditched the whole day so they could go to the park and make out.”
 

Lila’s voice from nearby, probably the back seat: “Give me that phone, you little shit!”
 

“Lila says hi.”
 

“Where are you?” Meyer repeated.
 

“On 77
th
. We just picked up Lila and Raj.”
 

“Raj? You have Raj?”
 

“Yeah. They keep making out in the back seat. It’s gross.”
 

“Trevor, you little—!”
 

“Get
off
, Lila! I’m talking to dad right now.”
 

Piper: “Will you two just … ”
 

There was the squeal of tires, a vintage Piper shriek, and, mercifully, no crash. Meyer realized he’d paused his packing. No matter now that the plan might be changing.
 

“Tell Piper to turn autodrive back on before she gets you all killed.” Meyer had been doing some mental theater since he saw the incoming call, and could imagine every noise paired with ridiculous acrobatics from his adorable but not always street smart wife.
 

“Tried a bit ago,” said Trevor. “The streets aren’t terrible as far as traffic is concerned, but there are a billion people running around, like, kind of everywhere. Pretty sure we saw some guy get wasted earlier. Not by us. The car doesn’t know what to do with them all. It just kind of politely waits for them to pass.”
 

“You’re on the west side?”
 

“Yeah. On 77
th
. But Dad, it’s going to be pretty hard to get all the way around the park and home. It’ll take some time.”
 

“Don’t try. We’re headed to Jersey anyway. Cross to Weehawken. I’ll meet you at that gas station where we bought the Twinkies that made you sick. Do you remember it?”
 

“I remember it,” said Piper’s voice in the distance. How loud was her phone, and how little attention was she paying to the road?

“You’re sure, Dad?”
 

“You’d be backtracking. Who knows how much worse traffic might get. The panic’s only starting.”
 

“You’re always in front,” Trevor said. “Even when it comes to panic.”

“That’s right.” Meyer smiled in spite of himself. “Take care of them for me, okay, Trevor?”
 

“Sure, Dad. See you in Jersey.”
 

Meyer hung up, then closed his eyes to inhale the stillness.
 

He didn’t like the idea of meeting away from the penthouse, but that was just him being nervous and selfish. They were halfway to where they needed to go, practically speaking. Whenever Meyer thought about these scenarios (“obsessed over,” in Heather’s words — sometimes onstage, in her act) getting out of the city was always the choke point. He’d looked into parking a helicopter on the roof for a while, but couldn’t secure permissions. Ultimately, New York itself was the problem, which was why they were moving to the ranch. Unfortunately, the apocalypse had come early.
 

Meyer returned to his mental checklist, still packing. Trevor had been joking; he knew this was far,
far
more directed than panic. He’d bored his kids to tears discussing concepts that the ceremonies had slowly helped him absorb — a distinct feeling that the universe was far more connected than most people believed, and that a great change was coming that they’d all best prepare for.
 

It was somewhat of a woo-woo idea for a mogul, but Meyer considered himself a Renaissance man. He conducted his business with iron logic, but cared for his body, with daily yoga and massage. He’d redefined entertainment following the studio failures in the first part of the twenty-first century, and yet his kids always came first — to the point that Heather had granted him custody in deference to his “more stable life.”
 

Like most powerful people, Meyer had his quirks. But now the world was learning what he’d known all along: that his preoccupation with, and advance preparation for, the end days had been time and mental energy well spent.
 

Walking shoes. Electronics and charged extra batteries.
 

The latter wouldn’t last forever, but they could be charged in his phenomenally expensive Benz JetVan. As long as they had the van and fuel, and the communication networks stayed up, they’d be able to use them.
 

The earbud buzzed again.
 

“Incoming call from: Heather.”
 

Tap.
“What?”
 

“Hello to you too, sweetums.”

“Are you packed up? Are you out of the city yet?”
 

“I’m working on it.”
 

“Quickly, Heather. Have you checked the highways?”
 

“How?”
 

“Online.”
 

“Oh. No. I didn’t think of it. Should I?”
 

Meyer sighed. “Yes. Of course you should. You want to end up in a parking lot?”
 

“Maybe I should fly.”
 

“Don’t try.”
 

“I checked the flight schedules. United has a direct flight, LAX to Vail. You can meet me there, or I can rent a car.”
 

“Do you think this is a vacation?”
 

Heather’s reply sounded annoyed, but at least she was being serious, for once.
 

“Oh, but it makes sense to drive.
You’re
flying.”
 

“I have a private jet, Heather. And I’m not going to LAX.”
 

“You’re going to JFK.”
 

“No, I’m going to Morristown. JFK will be a mess. Like LAX. But if you think it’s smart to try and buy a ticket and fight security and crowds on the verge of rioting, go right ahead.”
 

That was a dangerous thing to say. Heather might just take him up on it to prove a point. She constantly flew for comedy gigs and sometimes movie work and was away from their old home more than at it. She’d first caught Meyer’s attention because she was as arrogant as he was, and Heather Hawthorne wasn’t the kind of woman many men would dare to push around. But she’d been with him as his preoccupation had grown, and she knew as well as Meyer just how fully stocked and bulletproof the Vail compound was. He’d even proposed the idea of Heather moving in when they did, in a guest house on the same sprawling property, for “safety” in Meyer’s supposedly paranoid opinion.
 

“Maybe I should stay where I am.”
 

“Jesus, Heather, no, get on the road, and start driving. Gas up the second you can and then as often as you see a gas station that isn’t being mobbed. You’ve got the hybrid; you should be good unless you’re fantastically unlucky.”
 

“That’s a long drive, Meyer.”
 

“Better than staying in LA.”
 

“I don’t know. Right now I have friends nearby. And the basement looks like CostCo.”
 

Meyer had added to the stockpile with every visit. He’d lived in New York since the divorce, but whenever he went to LA it was as if he was still lord of his old manor. He kept buying bottled water, canned food, sometimes weapons. Even Heather didn’t know where he’d stowed it all.
 

“Heather, do I really need to explain this to you?”
 

“Go ahead. I just love listening to your explanations. Please, make it a long one.”
 

Meyer bit his retort. “New York and LA. Those are the two cities everyone considers attacking. It’s where everything bad happens. It’s where everyone, every time there’s a blip, goes apeshit with panic. People are already losing it in Manhattan. I’m moving as fast as I can.”
 

Heather’s voice changed, suddenly worried. “The kids. They’re with you? Did you get them from school?”
 

“Piper did. But then she came all the damned way back to Central Park for Lila.”
 

“Why was Lila in Central Park?”
 

“She ditched. But look, I literally just spoke to them. They’re fine. I sent them over the bridge and am going to meet them in Weehawken.”
 

“They’re not with you?” Now Heather sounded near panic. He’d
never
heard her like this. It was disorienting, almost terrifying.