Untaken (14 page)

I wasn’t sure what good a fence, even one topped with barbed wire, would be against the Space Men, but it still felt good to have a barrier between us and the outside world.

Stephanie’s eyes opened slowly, then closed again.

The bus doors hissed open and we started to shuffle down the aisle.

“Come on, baby girl. You can sleep when we get inside. Have us something to eat, too.”

“Ma’am, you need to hurry it up,” said the mean cop. “It ain’t safe outside.”

“Stephie, come on now, you’re embarrassing me!” hissed Mona.

I stopped by the door, not wanting to seem rude by ditching them, but pretty eager to get inside. My family could be in there, just through that ugly brick wall.

Stephie squinted at her mom through narrow red eyes, then settled her head back down against the window.

“For Pete’s sake!” said Mona. She grabbed her daughter by her wrist and hauled. Her face was bright red. She gave Stephie’s limp arm a shake. “Come on, young lady, now!”

Eventually, Mona got her standing.

Stephie followed us off the bus with her eyes half-closed and her legs marching stiffly, like she was still half asleep.

The lobby was wonderfully cool—there must have been a generator or something, to keep the air conditioning blowing. A dim corridor stretched off ahead of us, disappearing into a warren of offices. A shorter corridor led away to the left, and through the double doors at the end, came the babble of human voices. A cop and two guys in suits stood outside the double doors, collecting forms as people went inside. Most of the people from our bus were already filing through. I tried to look past them to see inside the warehouse. All I could catch was a jumble of faces as the mass of people inside pushed forward, probably anxious to see if the folks they lost were among the new arrivals.

“No ID, huh?” the cop said to me.

I shook my head.

“That’s your mom there?” he asked, nodding at Mona, who was still trying to coax Stephie forward.

“No, Sir,” I replied. “I don’t know where my mom is. Her name is Helen, and my dad is Ross. Our last name is—”

“There’s a list up on the board in there,” he said. “If they’re at any of the shelters, their names’ll be posted. Good luck.”

My pulse sped. I itched to bust through that door, sure that my family would be inside waiting for me. Maybe sitting on a camp bed, playing Hearts, like we used to do down on the Cape when the weather was too lousy to go to the beach. But I couldn’t just run off and leave Mona, not when she’d been so nice to me.

The cop peered at Mona’s driver’s license, looking like he needed a coffee, or about three days’ worth of sleep, while the guys in suits muttered over Mona and Stephanie’s forms. Just the three of us bus people remained in the corridor now.

The cop said something to Mona in a low voice.

“What do you mean she can’t go in there?” Mona yelled, making me jump.

The guys in suits frowned at the cop, who fumbled for his radio.

“Six-sixty-seven. We got a six-sixty-seven, guys.”

“What’s going on?” Mona tried again.

“Ma’am, we will explain everything to you soon. Your daughter will be quite safe, quite comfortable, but we can’t have her inside with the other people,” said one of the suit guys. The tramp of boots echoed in the lobby as more cops appeared.

“Why in the hell not?” Mona’s face was red, but Stephie just stood there staring at her shoes like they were the most interesting thing she’d ever seen.

“Please, Ma’am. It’s best I explain in private.” He seemed to notice I was still there, then and turned to me.

“If you’re not with these people, then please make your way inside the shelter, Miss.”

“We’re leaving.” Mona grabbed Stephie by the arm.

“I can’t allow you to leave with her,” said the first suit guy. “It’s for your own safety. And hers,” he added.

Mona strode off toward the lobby, but the cops closed in around her. Two of them grabbed Stephie and started to drag her down the dark passageway, toward the empty offices.

She seemed to wake up a bit then. “Mom? Where are we?”

“You let her go! You just let us alone. We’re leaving. You can’t keep us here!”

The first cop pulled his gun out. Each of the suit guys took one of Mona’s arms and began half dragging her, half leading her down the corridor after Stephie.

I thought about following them, but the lady cop from the bus stepped in front of me, placing her hand on my shoulder to stop me.

“Miss, you go on in there right now.”

“Where are they taking them?”

“Quarantine.”

“For what?”

“Miss, you all in there want to get the flu? That girl is sick. Now hustle. You see ‘em again when they better.”

What she said made sense, but I’d never seen a cop pull a gun on anyone before outside of a movie, let alone point it at a nice suburban mom like Mona. The world really was different now, but what could I do about that? It was finding my family that mattered. I pushed open the big double doors and found myself in a warehouse filled with camp beds.

The room was about half-full of people, and had that gross school cafeteria smell you get from a lot of people living and eating around each other. Some folks jumped up when I came in, then, seeing another stranger instead of the family member they’d hoped for, sat back down on their beds again. One man started to cry, covering his face with his hands to hide it.

I scanned the faces of my fellow survivors again and again, like if I just kept staring at them hard enough, they’d suddenly be the people I wanted to see. But it was no use.

My family wasn’t here.

The lists of names covered a big notice board and spilled over to the walls around it.

I stepped up and began reading.

Brandon

ooner or later, I’d have to get rid of the dead monster that still lay in the corridor where I’d left it after pulling dad free. I wasn’t even sure if I could bring myself to touch it again. Sure, it seemed to be dead, but who knew what creepy Space Man diseases something like that could be carrying?

As for Dad, there didn’t seem to be a mark on him.

I laid him out on the sofa and fixed him a bourbon. He took a big swig, his eyes all bugged out, and his hair and clothes torn and crumpled.

“You okay?” It was a dumb question, but I had to ask.

“What in the hell happened?” Dad rasped.

I shrugged.

“That thing. What in the hell?”

“You killed it, Dad. You shot it, remember?”

“Sure.” He didn’t sound sure.

I wasn’t so sure either. I’d seen movies. Like where the alien queen lays eggs in people, then crazy alien killing machines come bursting out of them.

But this was my Dad. If anything funky started going on, then…well, I didn’t know what, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let him down again. Maybe all my kicking had done the trick after all, and I’d stopped that thing before it could eat my dad, or whatever it planned to do.

Everything could still be okay.

“I think it’s best we get back to the basement.”

Dad nodded, but when he tried to stand up, his legs trembled and he flopped back onto the sofa like all his strings had been cut. I slipped an arm round his ribs and hauled him to his feet, neither of us meeting the other’s eyes as I half carried him down the basement stairs. His legs were a little shaky, but he’d been struggling against those tentacles pretty hard. It didn’t mean he was hurt or anything. As I helped him onto his camp bed, Dad kept hold of the whiskey bottle, taking a pull every now and then. I jogged back up the stairs, breathing hard, to lock the basement door behind us.

“That was a hell of a thing,” Dad muttered, as I double-checked the bulkhead locks out to the yard.

“Dad, I’m real sorry. I know I should have stayed in the basement. I was just trying to change the bucket. Ah, shit, I forgot the damn bucket!”

“Hey now. We won, right? And you’re gonna mind me from now on, ain’t you?”

“Sure, of course I will. I’m just real sorry.” I hunkered down next to his bed. His face was very pale and ugly bruises stood out on his neck and his ropey arms.

“Don’t start with that sniveling. Fix me something to eat, would ya? Kicking alien butt gives a man an appetite.”

I had to smile a little at that. Dad ate his plate of beans and chased it with another shot of bourbon, then he lay back on his bed and started to snore.

I kept a close eye on Dad the next day, but he seemed pretty much normal. We slept and ate, ate and slept, and though I was starting to feel like we’d been living in the black, timeless stink of the basement forever all over again, I did my best not to mind it.

The first we knew of the ship’s retun was a stirring of the air, then the hatch out into the yard began to rattle. I threw up a hand against the bright light that forced its way in through every little chink in our basement fortifications. My bed jittered and shook beneath me with the power of the engines. I rolled off my camp bed and was just wriggling underneath it when Dad strode past me towards the bulkhead that led out into the yard.

“Dad! What are you doing?”

In reply, he shot back the first bolt, then the second.

“Jeez, Dad, don’t go out there!” I hardly heard my own voice over the noise of those engines, and if Dad heard me at all, he didn’t give any indication of it. He flung open the first set of doors and started turning the locks on the second. I grabbed his arm and tried to tug him back. Without even looking at me, he shoved me hard, knocking me flat on my back. He had the second set of doors open now, flooding the basement with brilliant light and a warm, sweet smelling wind that picked my hair up off my sweat-soaked forehead.

Dad stopped for a moment, closing his eyes. He tilted his head back, like he was letting the light and the sound wash over him, breathing in the too-sweet scent. Then he scrambled on up those steps and was gone.

I ran after him, trying not to think too hard about what I might see out there. I tripped up the stairs after him, half-falling into the yard, my feet tangled in the long patchy grass of the overgrown lawn.

“Dad! Where are you?”

I stared around me, the light making my eyes burn and weep. Out in the street was a parade of staggering figures, silhouetted black against the glare of light.