Light Through the Window

by Cassandra Morphy

  "Ouch," Alex said. "That looks like it hurts."

  "What does?" Ellie asked.

  "Oh, god," Eric said. He jerked away from her, tripping over his own feet as he scrambled to get away from her.

  "What?" Ellie asked.

  "Here, let me," Alex said. She tore a piece of her shirt away, using it as a bandage as she pressed down on Ellie's forehead. "Hold that in place, okay?"

  "What?" Ellie asked, again, but she held the cloth in place as ordered.

  "Seriously, you two, get a room," Becky said. Ellie blushed at the comment, which seemed to satisfy Becky. She smiled broadly as she made her way away from the window and the raging aliens outside.

  "Alright, Ellie," Rebecca Anne said. Her voice was loud, louder than it needed to be without distance and the window between them. "Come on out so I can rearrange the rest of that face of yours."

  "Wait, what's this about my face?" Ellie asked. "Is my face alright?"

  "It's just a gash," Alex said. "There was a lot of glass. Some of it probably cut you."

  "You're not as pretty as you think you are anymore," Rebecca Anne said.

  "You bitch," Alex yelled. She turned on Rebecca Anne, angrily. It was only Ellie's quick reflexes that saved her, holding her back before she could climb out of the window.

  "Don't do it," Ellie said. "She'd tear you apart and not think twice about it."

  "Aw, is you widdle girlfriend looking for a fight?" Rebecca Anne said, in a teasing voice.

  She took three steps to her left, going over to a street lamp that was standing up along the path. The light wasn't on, of course, between the power outage and the fact that it was still the middle of the day. Rebecca Anne placed both of her hands on the pole, wrapping them around in a single circle, and bent down next to it. She barely showed any strain as she pulled the pole out of the ground. No sparks fired off as the wires disconnected from the mount. She held it up with a single hand, though it was clearly awkward for her to keep it aloft.

  "I'm ready," she said. She pumped the pole a few times, testing the balance of it, though Ellie wasn't sure she would be able to bring it to bear in a fight.

  "Right," Red said. He was staring at her, wide eyed, from his hiding place behind the couch. "Aliens."

  Ellie's eyes went to the crowd behind Rebecca Anne. They were mostly focused on whatever was happening on the far side of the quad, straining to see over the heads of their fellow aliens in front of them. She expected at least some of the crowd to turn and join in with Rebecca Anne. But those few individuals that looked back there, that looked towards the group and the alien holding the lamp pole over her head, just rolled their eyes before turning back to the main attraction. Of course, Ellie didn't for once think that her group would be enough to subdue that one alien anyway. More would have just made it impossible.

  "Red, take George and Eric and head out the back," Ellie whispered. She tried not to move her lips too much as she stared down the alien in front of her. Any sign of opposition would only antagonize her further.

  "What about you guys?" he said. He didn't bother trying to whisper, though, and Rebecca Anne's eyes darted towards him as soon as he did.

  "Just go," Ellie said. "We'll keep her busy while you guys run away."

  "I take offense at the term guys," George said.

  "Just get out of here," Ellie said. "I'll hold her off."

  "What do you want us to do?" Becky asked.

  "Stand there and look intimidating. When those three are gone, head off after them. I'll be right behind."

  "Aren't you going to come out here?" Rebecca Anne asked. "I'd love to introduce you to a little heavy metal."

  "Why?" Ellie asked.

  "Do you really have to ask that after all that you've done? Breaking into my room, stealing my mother's file. Do you really wonder why I want to bash your head in?"

  "No, that's obvious. I meant, why would I come out there?"

  "What?"

  "Why would I go out there to face you? It's nice in here. A little drafty now that the window isn't there anymore. But it's much nicer than out there with all those... aliens tearing up the place." As she said that, an explosion sounded off from the far side of the quad and the crowd behind Rebecca Anne cheered. The crowd started moving forward, away from Rebecca Anne and the dorm, pushing against those in front of them. "Well, certainly not with you still around."

  "But... But I went through all the trouble of getting a weapon," Rebecca Anne said.

  "Yea, and there's that, too," Ellie said. "It's not like you can use that in here."

  Rebecca Anne glared at Ellie. She pulled back on the pole, stretching it out as far as she could behind her. Once she started moving it, she ended up putting her other hand in place on the pole as well, choking up on it like it was a baseball bat. Ellie wasn't that good of a judge of distance, but she had a feeling that the pole would be able to reach them from where Rebecca Anne had pulled it out of the ground. Still, the alien took three steps closer as she wound up her swing.

  Ellie turned her back towards the alien, diving forward and pushing her friends to the floor underneath her. She felt the wind blow past the back of her head, though she didn't see how close the swing had come to hitting them. Glass broke and metal whined behind them, but Ellie didn't turn around. Instead, she just pulled her friends back to their feet, pushing them further into the room. Only when they were at the door did she turn around to see the damage that the alien had wrought.

  The pole hadn't quite made it into the room, though there was enough of it inside that it would have hit Ellie had she not ducked. The cross bar was sticking up, pressed against the top of the window pane and whining as it fought between the cement of the building and Rebecca Anne's alien might. The light itself was dangling down from it on the ends of the wires, which still ran through the length of the pole. The glass cover and the light bulb were both gone, leaving only a few glass shards attached to the socket. Rebecca Anne still struggled with the weapon, trying to push it further through the window, despite the three girls having gone across to the other side of the room.

  "Come on," Ellie said. "Let's get out of here before she realizes she doesn't need the pole to kill us."

  They rushed out of the room and down the hall towards the lobby. Behind them, metal clashed and then finally went silent. Ellie was left with an unsettling feeling and a desire to look back there. But Becky and Alex were still moving forward and she followed in their wake. They made it to the middle of the lobby, heading across to the stairwell, when the sound of more glass shattering reached them. Ellie skidded to a halt, though the other two continued onwards. She looked towards the sound, towards the front door to the building. Rebecca Anne was already running through the inner glass door, the outer one still raining down shards on top of her.

  Ellie didn't have much time to think before Rebecca Anne was barreling into her. The two girls fell to the floor, Rebecca Anne's momentum sliding them across the slick surface until they slammed into the far wall. The wall was tile and it broke under the impact. Tiles fell on them both as they grappled for an advantage over the other. Ellie's training quickly failed her under the flying fists of the other woman. Instead, she just raised her arms, putting them protectively around her head.

  Rebecca Anne was screaming in her face, the noise and continued impacts to Ellie's ears causing a ringing to start up in them. The ringing continued even after the punches and shouting stopped, so it took Ellie a few moments to realize when they did. She peeked out between her arms, curious what was happening but still expecting the return of the onslaught. It was only then that she noticed Rebecca Anne was no longer on top of her. Instead, she was slumped against the wall several feet away. Above her was Alex's triumphant form, looking like an avenging angel with the sunlight glowing from behind her.

  "Get the hell away from her, you bitch," she said.

  She was brandishing a metal pipe, not one nearly as long as the pole that Rebecca Anne had been using, but it see
med to have gotten the job done. The alien was slumped against the wall, bleeding from a contusion on the back of her head, though she wasn't as injured and defenseless as Ellie would have liked. Rebecca Anne was holding the back of her head, stemming the flow of blood. She checked it a couple of times before getting back to her feet.

  "You... human," she spat, incapable of coming up with a better insult with the head injury. "You'll pay for that."

  Rebecca Anne stood before Alex, unarmed and injured. And, yet, she still seemed to be in the better position. Where Alex seemed to radiate light, darkness bathed Rebecca Anne, her eyes drinking up what little light the corner once had. Ellie, still prone on the floor between them, feared that she would be trampled on by both of them once the fighting started in earnest.

  "Come on," Becky said. She was standing next to Alex, between her and the wall and more directly over Ellie. Becky reached down, grabbing Ellie around the wrists and pulling her to her feet. "We need to get out of here."

  "Not before I knock this alien into next week," Alex said, brandishing the pipe.

  Rebecca Anne screamed again, charging at the three women. Alex winded up a swing of the pipe, but the alien was faster, slamming into her stomach before she could bring the pipe down at her. The pipe skittered across the floor as Alex fell backwards. This time Rebecca Anne kept her feet, instead of tackling her to the ground like she had with Ellie. She stood over Alex as she started to attack her. Ellie got to her first, though. Her arm went out, catching the flailing fist before it could strike. Rebecca Anne looked to her, in shock, in betrayal, as if she had expected Ellie to be on her side.

  "Get away from my friends," Ellie said. She pushed Rebecca Anne backwards with all her strength, practically tossing the larger woman across the room and back towards the front doors.

  "Let's go," Becky shouted again. She led the way back towards the stairwell, back towards where the two of them had been when the fighting had started.

  They only got three steps closer to the door before Ellie turned back to Rebecca Anne. She reacted more out of a subconscious cue than anything she saw or heard. The alien was back on them, the lost pipe in her hands. Ellie pushed Alex out of the way, just managing to dodge the pipe herself. The pipe landed on the hard tile floor, cracking and breaking several of them on impact. Ellie stared at the floor for a moment, her stomach in knots over the thought of what that strike would have done to either of them.

  Rebecca Anne swung the pipe back up, clipping Ellie's forehead and knocking her back into the wall. Her back hit something solid, cold, metal, something that would probably leave a mark there, but she wasn't sure what at the moment. The alien turned against her once more, squaring off as the pipe swung forward. Ellie ducked aside and the pipe broke through the wall behind her. As she scrambled away, Ellie noticed that Rebecca Anne wasn't chasing after her. Instead, she was preoccupied with the pipe, now lodged in the wall. The alien struggled to extract it, to use the weapon against her. But, as Ellie made her way around her, she noticed that it was tangled in the wiring for the elevator.

  "Let's go," Becky shouted, one last time, turning back around towards the stairwell. She held the door open as the three of them ran through it, then the emergency exit just next to it.

  The sunlight hit Ellie hard, making her feel like the repeated blows to the head caused some kind of migraine. Still, the heat of the late September sun felt good on her face, as long as she kept her eyes closed. She let her friends lead her forward into the afternoon, but they didn't go far.

  "Where is everyone?" Alex asked someone.

  "They took them," George said. His voice had so much panic, so much loss, so much pain in it that Ellie opened her eyes to look at him.

  "Who?" Becky asked.

  "The aliens, they took Red and Eric. They said something about converting them, about wondering how the conversions would compare between the two brothers."

  "Conversion?" Becky asked. "I don't like the sound of that."

  "No," Ellie agreed. "That sounds bad. Very bad. Like 'let's make them aliens like us' bad."

  "I think that's exactly what they're planning," Alex said. "Which way did they go, George? Which way did they go?"

  Chapter Forty-One

  That's No Mob, That's an Invasion

  It took Ellie a few moments to realize that George hadn't gone unscathed in his run in with the aliens. Once her eyes had adjusted to the light, and her head stopped pounding, she was able to see the bruises that were already starting to form on his cheek and around his right eye. The palms of his hands were skinned where he must have fallen to the concrete and he was walking with a limp as he led the group down the road.

  They had left campus soon after meeting back up with George, supposedly chasing after the aliens that had grabbed Eric and Red. However, something was telling Ellie that they weren't likely to find them, to catch up to them. At least, that is, not before they had a chance to infect the boys with whatever it was that made them aliens in the first place. She had no idea how it was transmitted from human to human, how long it took to take effect. The girl from the night of the break in had turned within a week, but she hadn't seen her before the rally. For all they knew, the encounters she had had with Rebecca Anne was enough to get her infected. During her most paranoid moments, she looked over at George, wondering if his eyes would go black while he led them on a wild goose chase down the road.

  "Are you sure this is the way they went?" Ellie asked, and not for the first time. "Shouldn't we have seen them by now? The aliens may be fast, but I don't think they'd be carrying the two boys."

  "This was the direction I saw them heading in, yes," George said. "It's not like I was able to see where they went next. They could be in any of these buildings, hiding out from us."

  "It's just that the rest of the mob seemed to head south. We're going north."

  "Maybe the rest of the aliens are just a distraction," George said.

  "Or, maybe this group is the distraction," Alex said.

  "That doesn't mean we don't keep looking for them," Becky said. "The boys would do it for us."

  "Would they?" Alex asked. "Eric seemed uninterested in helping us at all."

  "That doesn't mean we can let them just take 'em. For one thing, we don't want them to have two more in their group. Their numbers are thick enough as it is."

  "Maybe the other group doesn't even know about what this one is doing," Ellie said. "I mean, just how many aliens does it take to convert a couple of humans? It can't take more than one, or their numbers would never have grown to what they have now."

  "They have to be around here somewhere," George said. He spun around in the middle of the street, as if that would help him track down the missing aliens. They had nothing to go on, other than that they were heading in this direction. The area was mostly cement and asphalt, not soft ground to track on. Even if there was, the area would have been too well worn to make much out of any of it.

  "If the boys had been smart, they would have left us a trail to follow," Becky said.

  "Yea, well, when had Eric ever seemed smart," Ellie asked. "I mean, he, and his brother for that matter, had such trouble on those tests."

  "Uh, I did, too," Becky said.

  "Yea, those were impossible," Alex said. "I just barely managed to get by with a passing grade, and you know me and my grades. You're just so used to skating by, you don't realize how much work the rest of us have to put in. Trust me, tracking down this whole conspiracy of yours has not been good for my GPA."

  "I kept thinking I had the answer, and then..." George said. He paused in the middle of his sentence, staring out ahead of them. After a few seconds of that, he just shook his head and continued, as if there were no pause at all. "Then it turned out the question was something completely different."

  "My eyes are blue," Becky said, nodding at him.

  "Huh?" Alex asked.

  "Never mind."

  "What were you looking at?" Ellie asked. She looked off in t
he direction George had been staring, but she didn't see anything of note.

  "What? Nothing. I-I thought I saw something, but it was nothing. Maybe we should check the next street over."

  "Let's keep going this way for another block or so," Alex said. "If there's nothing, we can split up and double back on the other streets, one group to each side."

  "N-no, I-I... A-Alright," George said.

  "I don't think they would have gotten this far with those two struggling the whole time," Becky said. "We should probably head over now."

  "E-exactly," George said.

  "No, I want to keep going," Ellie said.

  She was still looking in the direction that George had been staring as they continued down the road, getting closer to the alley that was over there. It seemed like just any alley in the city, nothing of note to worry about. Only after they had come up next to it did she notice the overturned garbage can near the entrance. It seemed like such a subtle thing, something that could have just as easily happened in the wind. Yet, something in her was screaming at her that it was something else, something more.

  "Why don't you guys keep on going," she said. "I want to check something really quickly. I'll catch up."

  "I don't like the idea of splitting up," Becky said. As Ellie drifted off from the group, heading towards the alley, Becky followed.

  "Look, you guys check that out, then head over a block in that direction," Alex said. "George and I will head over a block this way."

  "Okay," Ellie said, waving them off as she continued towards the alley.

  "Wait, but..." Becky started to say, but the other two had headed off before she could say anything else.

  The trash can at the edge of the alley was empty. It rocked back and forth in the wind that was coming down the road, lending to the idea that it had fallen over on its own. Ellie wasn't sure why she didn't just leave it at that. Why she didn't do as Alex had said and continue down to the end of the block. She placed her hand on the can, stopping its rocking and steadying it on its side. Once she was sure it would stay in place, she raised her hand, expecting the can to pick up once more. She stood there, staring at the metal contraption, trying to make it move with her mind. Instead, it stayed there, as steady as it would have been had it been standing upright.