Nowhere on Earth

by Nick Lake

  Including, of course, that she was trying to get Aidan to the HAARP facility, and then to his real family. And how on earth was she going to explain that?

  CHAPTER 38

  EMILY’S DAD HAD many useful things in his backpack—that was his style—but the most important, as far as Emily was concerned, was a bottle of amoxicillin.

  While her mom sat next to Aidan on the bed, talking softly to him, her dad took a look at Bob’s arm.

  “This is a bullet wound,” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Bob.

  Emily’s dad leaned back. “How did you get a bullet wound?”

  Emily cut a glance at Bob.

  “A hunter, we think.”

  “A hunter took a shot at you?”

  “We weren’t wearing hi-vis jackets,” said Bob.

  Emily’s dad looked out of the window, though there wasn’t much to see. “You saw him?”

  “No,” said Emily. “He must have been far away.”

  “It’s not hunting season,” said her dad.

  “Doesn’t always stop people,” said Bob.

  “True,” said Emily’s dad. There was still an edge to his voice. Like, there would be more questions later, like the trueness of true applied only to the very limited idea of people hunting outside of season, not to the totality of what Bob was saying. He took the bottle of antibiotics from his backpack and handed it to Bob. “Anyway. We need to get you to a hospital, maybe some IV antibiotics, but start by taking this in the meantime,” he said. “I’m not a doctor, but you’re gonna want a capful three times a day, at least.”

  Emily’s mind was running calculations almost in the background of her thoughts. If her parents went to the hospital with Bob, could she and Aidan get away somehow? Continue on?

  “Thanks,” said Bob. He was sitting in a chair, his leg propped up on the other chair. Emily’s dad had confirmed what she already knew—that the ankle was only sprained—though, of course, it didn’t help in terms of getting out of the mountains.

  “How did you get here?” said Emily to her dad.

  “We drove to a spur road about twenty miles east of here,” he said. “Hiked the rest of the way.”

  A pause. There was a conversation looming, and Emily wasn’t happy about it. And there was still the question of how to continue their journey. The men in black weren’t going to just give up, after all.

  “What about you?” asked her dad.

  Yep, now it was here. Not looming anymore but present. The storm broken, the cloud emptying out water on the earth, in torrents, in floods.

  “I mean, we know how you got here. But why? We got lucky, you know. Marvin from the airfield saw you hanging around Bob’s plane, and when we started asking questions in town to try to find you, when the police put out a missing persons alert, Marvin put two and two together.” Another pause. “Your mom has been out of her mind with worry.”

  The longest pause yet.

  “Me too, actually,” he added. “And when the plane went down…when it went off radar…we thought you were…” He couldn’t complete the sentence.

  Emily grimaced to herself. Great. Marvin was the type who’d usually put two and two together—and get a night in a holding cell for drunk and disorderly—so it was just her luck he’d been on the ball enough to clock her near the plane.

  Her dad took a breath. “So, Emily. Why?”

  “I…,” she began. “I don’t know.”

  “Is it because of school? The…fire?”

  Interesting. So whatever Aidan had done to their memories had stopped working.

  “You can say arson, Dad,” she said. “You can say suspension.”

  “Fine. Is it because you got suspended from school for arson? Because Pastor Norcross thinks that you—”

  “It’s not any of that,” said Emily. “I just…” What could she possibly say? The truth was, she had plenty of reasons to run away. The insularity of her town. Her inability to fit in at school, at Bible class on Sunday; her total incapacity to care about the things her parents cared about: bake sales, Friday football, church, hiking, hunting.

  Because she’d never wanted to be in Alaska in the first place.

  Because she had no friends there. Because Jeremy was over two thousand miles away.

  Because there was one coffee shop and three fishing-supply stores.

  But she wouldn’t have boarded a plane in secret because of any of those things. The real truth was something she couldn’t say, something impossible.

  Only, she realized, perhaps the best way to lie was to form it around a grain of truth.

  “There were some men,” she said. “They kept…following me and Aidan.”

  Her dad tilted his head. “What?”

  “I swear, it’s true.” She was trying to sound like a teenager. She was a teenager, obviously. But she was really trying to sound like one. Like an adult’s idea of one. Someone with incoherent thoughts, impulsive behavior. “Everywhere we went, they were there. They followed me back from school. Men in suits. I felt like…like they were maybe there to take me away.”

  Her mom had come over, was standing next to her dad. Aidan was asking her a question with his eyes, behind them. Where was she going with this? She had no idea.

  “Take you away?”

  “I mean…,” Emily said. “I tried to burn down the school, right?” This was true. Well, not true. But true as far as her parents were concerned. The layers were getting complicated. “And Aidan’s so small, I thought they, I thought you—” Nice touch, Emily, but don’t go too far. “I mean, I thought they were official, you know, that they might worry about my influence on him. I don’t know. I got paranoid. Thought maybe…they were from social services, come to take me away. I’ve watched too many TV shows, maybe.”

  “I’ve always told you to watch less TV,” said her mom.

  “Social services doesn’t take kids away for lighting a fire in a locker room,” said her dad, sticking to the logic of the story.

  But that was Emily’s secret weapon: she was a teenager, she was antilogic.

  “I guess,” she said. “I just kind of freaked out. And Aidan too—he didn’t like those men. You know they came to our house once?”

  Her dad didn’t stop frowning, but he let out a long sigh. “They did?”

  Her mom shook her head. “Census takers, honey. I was there.” She put a hand on Emily’s. Her expression was solicitous: worried but relieved too. Like: she’d been hurt by Emily getting on the plane, worried about her getting lost. And she was sad that Emily was so emotional, so confused. But there was a part of her that was pleased it wasn’t about rejection; that it was about irrational fear. “You know you can still see the school counselor?” she said. “They told us that. Even though you’re suspended. If you want to talk about…”

  A pause.

  “…about…the fire.”

  Emily winced.

  “Everyone wants to help you,” said her dad. “Us included, even when you…stray from the path.” Even when you sin were the words in his head, Emily knew, though he was self-aware enough not to say them, and Emily was grateful for that at least. “There’s no one who wants to hurt you, no men in suits coming to—”

  A bullet thwapped through the plastic window, shattering a little framed picture of Jesus on his cross, hanging on the opposite wall.

  The second bullet hit her father in the side, spinning him around.

  CHAPTER 39

  DAD!

  Emily didn’t pause to think. As her dad fell and her mom screamed and pulled Aidan to the floor, she threw herself toward the door, picked up the assault rifle they’d taken from the dead man. She went to the window—she was expecting any moment a bullet would tear through her, but it didn’t happen—and crouched below the sill. Aidan and Bob and her mom were lying on
the floor near the stove.

  Her dad was levering himself up into a crawling position, and when she saw that, she let out a long breath.

  She could feel and hear rounds hitting the outside of the cabin. Her dad was suddenly beside her—jump-cut quick. Leaning against the wall, avoiding the window. She glanced at his side.

  “Flesh wound,” he said. “Skimmed me is all.”

  She nodded.

  Another bullet hit the side of the cabin.

  “Whoever built this built it good,” said her dad. His grammar tended to slip in moments of stress. “You gonna give me that rifle?”

  She didn’t. She popped her head up and scanned the lakeside, the trees. A flash from the undergrowth fifty yards away, and she ducked as a shot chipped the window frame. Another flash. Thud.

  But only from that one location, as far as she could see—only one shooter. She swung up the stock of the gun, got the barrel over the sill, and fired right through the plastic toward where she had seen the fire coming from. The noise was enormous, head-filling.

  Dum-dum-dum!

  Dum-dum-dum!

  Two bursts of semiauto fire—not too much. They only had a finite amount of ammunition. There was a break for ten seconds, maybe, and then another round of bullets slammed into the cabin.

  “Who the hell is it?” said her dad in a strained whisper.

  “Wish I knew,” Emily whispered back.

  “The hunter who shot Bob Simpson with a long-range full-metal-jacket round, maybe,” said her dad. He raised an eyebrow.

  “Maybe.”

  “Or someone hunting Bob. Or you.” He was looking at her.

  She tried not to meet his eyes. He was too good at reading her.

  “He shot at us when we were walking in the valley up there.” She gestured toward the mountain. “I don’t know if we strayed into a secret military area or something.” The small kernel of truth in the flesh of the lie.

  “So they’re shooting civilians now? No.”

  She was still averting her eyes. Her dad would see her lies in an instant, if he looked into them. She gave a noncommittal shrug.

  “Some psycho, maybe,” he said, his tone less suspicious, and she realized: Why would he think she knew anything about what was happening? There had been no gunfire for a minute now. Had she hit the guy? Or was he just sneaking up on them?

  “I guess,” agreed Emily, muscles physically relaxing. Feeling bad—she wasn’t big on Bible study, but she didn’t like lying, either. Relieved at the same time, though.

  “Active shooter, they call them on the news,” said her dad needlessly, and Emily realized something else: This was how he dealt with stress. By trying to understand, to analyze.

  Thud. Thud. Swish.

  More bullets, the last going through the plastic window. Emily raised the gun above the sill, let off another burst of fire in the direction she thought they’d come from.

  “We can’t stay here,” she said.

  “Why not? Better than going out there.”

  “No. What if it’s not just one guy? What if they bring grenades? Smoke? What if they burn down the cabin?”

  He nodded, getting it right away. “OK. So what’s the plan, then?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “You’re the soldier, right?”

  He nodded again. “Wait here. Keep laying down covering fire. Small bursts, to preserve ammo.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “Yeah, fine,” he said. “I deserved that.” He crawled across the room and paused by Bob, exchanged a few words with him. Then he went to the cupboards on the other side of the room, started looking through them. He pulled out a jerry can—unscrewed the cap and sniffed. He brought it over to where she still crouched, occasionally putting the barrel of the rifle over the sill and firing in the general direction of the flashes she had seen earlier.

  “OK,” he said. “Here it is. The plan. You’re going to give me the gun. Then you get Bob to that shed out back.”

  “Cold storage.”

  “Right. No way he can run, so we’re gonna hope they assume we’re all gone, don’t bother searching too closely. You, your mom, and Ade”—they even had a pet name for him!—“are gonna go out the door and book it to the canoe. I’ll cover you. Then I’ll follow.”

  “But you can’t cover yourself.”

  “No. I’ll just have to run fast.”

  It was stupid—you couldn’t outrun bullets—but what else were they going to do? She also didn’t want to leave Bob—but again, what else could they do? The man could barely walk. The word again was in her thoughts a lot. Being shot at, again. People coming for them, again.

  People getting hurt, again.

  Them wanting to take Aidan, again.

  But if they did, she would kill them.

  Again.

  She handed over the rifle and the spare magazine—she’d used up all the bullets in the clip. Then she scooted over to Bob before she could rethink any of this. “You’re going in the cold storage. My dad talked to you, right?”

  “Yep,” he said.

  “Got the antibiotics?”

  “Yep,” he said again.

  No need for further discussion. She got him under the arms and half supported, half carried him to the side door. She turned to her dad and gave him a nod, and he went up on one knee, started firing single shots out of the tattered plastic window. Just like that: Special Forces mode. No unnecessary questions.

  But there would be lots of questions later. Emily knew that.

  She kicked the door open, and she and Bob went out into the half light, the whole lake valley echoing with gunshots. She pulled and pushed and heaved him toward the shed door, then leaned him against the wall while she opened it. He almost fell inside.

  “We’ll come back for you,” she said. “Or we’ll send someone.”

  “Sure.”

  “We will!”

  He smiled. “I believe you.”

  “Keep taking the amoxicillin. If they come back here, hide behind the meat.”

  “Sure.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Stop that. I hate…I hate this. Leaving you behind.” Tears, embarrassingly, sprang up in her eyes. Welled up.

  “I promise you, it’s OK,” he said. “I’ll get out of here. I have to. I need to see my wife; tell her what Aidan showed me.”

  “What did he show you?” She should have been fleeing, but she wanted to know.

  He shook his head. “No time. You’ll have to ask him to show you too.”

  “OK.” She still hesitated. “Thank you. For everything.”

  He smiled. “No. Thank you. I’m an explorer. That’s why I became a pilot. Last frontier, all that shit. Thanks to you, I got to go on the greatest adventure of all. I met an alien. And he gave me the best gift in the world. Now go. Keep him safe.”

  She swallowed. “I will.”

  Gunfire continued from behind them. No time. No time.

  He touched her hand as she turned to go, to hide her tears. “I always wanted to explore,” he said. “What do you want to do with your life?”

  She stared at him. “What?”

  Gunshots—dum dum dum dum. Her dad was going to run out of ammo, even with the extra magazine.

  “I…don’t know.”

  “Then decide,” said Bob. “Once this is all over. Survive—and then decide, and then do it.” He pulled her, unexpectedly, into a hug, and she froze and then relaxed, hugging him back. As if he were her dad, or something, though, of course, her dad would never hug her. Then Bob gave her a little push. “Now go.”

  He pushed her out of the door and pulled it shut, and she ran back to the cabin, where her mom and Aidan were waiting. She scooped up Aidan in one movement, threw him over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and ignored
her mom’s astonished expression.

  “Move,” she said, and her mom moved.

  CHAPTER 40

  THEY RAN TOGETHER, through the dark, under the stars, Emily and her mom, Emily slowed by the weight of Aidan, toward the shore and the canoe. Scent of pine in the air, thunder of gunfire.

  A bullet kicked up pebbles at their feet. Then gunfire blazed from the cabin, her dad shooting, high-tempo percussion, shaking the scene, the water of the lake shivering in the dim light. Emily felt another bullet whip past her but then none—it was one guy, she realized, it really was, and her dad was suppressing the fire.

  Then: “Goober,” said Aidan. “I left Goober.”

  Actually, he said it once and then he shouted it, so she could half lip-read, half hear it; the gunfire was deafening.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  She shook her head. “Sorry. Can’t go back. I’ll get you something else.”

  He buried his face in her neck, and she carried on running.

  They reached the canoe, and Emily basically threw Aidan into it as her mom toppled over into the bottom, an ungainly somersault, and Emily untied the rope securing it, then seized the end and pushed it into the water; she didn’t know where this strength was coming from.

  Thud.

  A bullet hit the tip of the canoe, spitting fiberglass over clear water, then more fire from the cabin, sustained now, nearly full-auto, and it allowed Emily to wade out, the canoe gliding, and then dive into it. She picked up a paddle, threw one to her mom, and they started paddling.

  Only then did Emily realize the catch: even if they could get far enough away, out of range of the man in black’s rifle, how was her dad supposed to join them? He was going to get shot if he tried to wade to the canoe in the icy water. At some point, he would have to turn away, lower his gun.

  A moment: a moment of pure love for her dad, jolting her like a static shock from a person’s hand. She met her mom’s eyes and could see she was feeling the same thing, and it was as if bells inside her and her mom were being chimed, simultaneously, making a chord.

  Aidan took her hand, held it tight. Her mom held the other one.