The Grays

by Whitley Strieber

  As Mike watched her, he reflected on just how careful he had to be right now. The grays must not find out that he knew about this little monstrosity of theirs. “I want you to transmit an image of the satellite photo again, Lauren,” he said smoothly.

  She closed her eyes.

  “Lauren, pick it up and look at it. Do it right.”

  “I’ve already done it ten times! Come on.”

  “You barely glanced at it.”

  “Shut up and let me work!”

  Her dad had been a guy you could settle down with after work and knock back a few drinks. In fact, Mike had wanted to bring him into the Trust. It was too dangerous, though. For some years, it had been obvious that the grays couldn’t read minds well—not normal minds. But Eamon’s mind was a different story, like hers. They had to be kept strictly unaware of any secret the grays shouldn’t know.

  Although the daybed appeared empty, Lauren knew that Adam was lying on it. She had learned to see him in her imagination, even though his tiny movements, synchronized to her flickering eyes, prevented her from observing him in detail.

  Mike wanted her to be careful, so she’d be careful. She formed a thought series this time. First, a picture of a map of the state of Kentucky. Then a vision of the satellite image of the event in the field behind the Oak Road houses.

  Nothing came back.

  She formed another thought: React, Adam. She called up a sense of urgency, stared, tensed her muscles.

  There exploded into her mind an image that at first seemed to make no sense. She was looking up at a towering, immense wall of ice, ghostly white and iridescent, blue against a deep blue sky. And then she heard a sound, a gigantic snapping noise that combined with a strange sort of sigh, as if a thousand people had simultaneously gasped.

  She was on the upper deck of a cruise ship. They were glacier-watching. The deck was jammed with people . . . and the ice was curving slowly over them, bringing with it a shadow that turned the bright afternoon an eerie, glowing blue.

  The ship’s huge horn began to sound, thundering again and again. The whole body of the vessel shuddered as it strove to get underway, the propellers churning, smoke gushing from the stacks.

  With a boom to wake the dead, a gigantic boulder of ice—an ice mountain—slammed down on the foredeck. The whole ship lurched violently upward and forward. Water, clear and frigid, surged over the bounding deck, and the passengers were hurled screaming into the waves.

  Lauren looked up again and saw, dropping toward them, an even greater mountain of ice, an eternity of ice.

  She was back in the cage. She asked Adam a question with her mind, felt the question in her heart: what does it mean?

  Then she saw—

  A supermarket, bright lights . . . voices bellowed, a little girl toddled past with a tin of sardines, a man swooped down, grabbed it, knocking the child aside. Screams came, merging with the bouncy shopping music. People clawed for bread, raced down long, empty aisles, hollow people, their eyes wild, ripping open boxes of uncooked pasta, gobbling it, throwing back raw oatmeal, eating from the mashed garbage on the floor.

  Gunshots. Soldiers in dirty uniforms, tired young faces, terrified eyes, shot into the crowd—and people just sat there, staring like a dumb animal stares who has no idea what’s about to happen. As they got shot, they crashed back with astonishing force into a shattered freezer, and then the soldiers passed down another aisle.

  “What’s going on in there?”

  “I don’t know! He’s showing me some sort of tragedy.”

  “Wha-a-at?”

  “Ships sinking, people starving in a supermarket—”

  “Christ, will you get me what I need!”

  “Damn you, Mike, what I am gonna get you is what I always get you. I am gonna get you what he has to give!”

  Because Adam was showing Lauren images of the coming extinction, he might be aware of the conversation Mike had been listening to, which made continuing this way too dangerous. “Okay, that’s it. Come out. We’re done.”

  “I love my baby,” she whispered, getting up from the Barcalounger. She reached out, touched the cool, soft skin of a hand that only became visible when she held it, the narrow fingers and lethal black claws fading when she withdrew.

  Adam shot back an image of a mother nursing an infant, his standard good-bye. As she got up, he made one of his audible sounds, a cry like a shocked and despairing woman. Did he feel anything? She didn’t know. But she did know that he was trying for sympathetic attention.

  “Adam, I know you have a message for me connected with all these disasters, and I know I’m not getting it. However, we’re asking you about a specific incident, and—”

  She got no response from him. She knew why: he’d heard the words, but unless you formed your thoughts in your mind, he didn’t understand you.

  “Lauren, break it off!”

  “Mike—sir—”

  “Lauren, there’s no time!”

  No time? What the hell was he talking about? She had all the time in the world. And God knew, Adam had time. “I’m going to get this thing rolling.”

  “There is no time!”

  But Adam had different ideas. Adam’s mind was all around her, she could feel it. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let herself go blank.

  He came into her, as always, like a dog sniffing for a buried bone. Letting him get inside her felt kind of good, but also oddly sad . . . a sadness that he brought with him. He would go into her memories and kind of troll there, bringing up all sorts of things from her past, things she’d just as soon have forgotten, stuff done when drunk, that sort of stuff. He liked the intense things. Sort of ate them, she thought.

  She let him go deep into a familiar little corner, the cardboard box experience when she was about ten, one of the first things she’d ever done that was related to sex. She smelled the slightly damp cardboard box again, saw Willy Severs’s plump, white body, felt his hand go under her blouse—and then shut that door with a great crash.

  She shot her question at Adam: the satellite image again, the town of Wilton, the houses on Oak Road.

  For the split of an instant, she thought she glimpsed a boy’s face, but it was not Willy Severs. Curly hair, slightly chunky, looked about fourteen or fifteen.

  “I have something,” she said. “A face.”

  “What sort of a face?”

  “A kid. I asked him about Oak Road and I got the face of a kid.”

  “Bring it out.”

  Mike was all over her the moment the door closed. “Got what? What did you get?”

  “They’re interested in a child.”

  “Say more.”

  “He’s a boy of fourteen or fifteen, curly hair, and another thing, I glimpsed a dog. He has a dog.”

  Mike became furtive. “Okay,” he said, “that makes no sense.”

  “Yes it does. They’re interested in this kid.”

  “Probably some kind of breeding issue. We’ll never figure it out. You’re dismissed. Operation complete.”

  He was lying and he was scared—and she was suspicious. “What’s the deal with this child?”

  “Look, I have to go to Washington and I’m already late. You’re done, Lauren. Thank you.”

  She watched him leave. The one pleasant thing about her relationship with him was knowing that he wanted her, and denying him. She did it because—well, she didn’t like him. Just did not like the man. She was not nice to him, couldn’t be. Why, she thought, had something to do with Adam. Adam seemed suspicious of him, somehow. Wary.

  “What’s going on, Andy?” she asked as she came into the control room still drying her hair.

  “The boss is sure as hell in a lather.”

  She went topside, and when the elevator doors opened found Mike just leaving. He was in full uniform, which was pretty unusual around here. He had his briefcase in his hand.

  “You’re moving fast,” she said.

  “Yep.”

 
; “Are you going to do something to that child, Mike?”

  “Look, this is not your issue. Your issue is to communicate with Adam, and to take that job one hell of a lot more seriously than you do.”

  “How dare you.”

  “How dare me? You’re the one with pictures on the walls down in that hellhole. That thing is a predator. It’s a monster. It’s not a damn pet, for God’s sake, woman.”

  She made a decision. He was going to Washington. Fine, she was coming back here and going at it again with Adam. She would get to the bottom of this without Mike around. Because, if this child was in some kind of danger due to her report, then she had a very clear moral duty: no matter the legal blockade her clearance created, she had to protect the kid. She would not be a party to murder, and she would not follow orders that she considered to be illegal.

  She watched Mike hurry out to the parking lot, and take off in his latest car, a brand-new VW Phaeton. She knew the value of that car, she’d looked it up. He’d just driven off in half a year’s pay. Where his real money came from she didn’t know, but it sure as hell was not the United States Air Force.

  TEN

  THE SUN PEEKING OVER THE Warners’ roof woke Katelyn. As usual, she rolled over, at first feeling entirely normal. She considered turning on the news.

  And then it hit her: she was upstairs in bed, not in Conner’s room where she had gone to sleep.

  Dan chose that moment to slide an arm over her. Katelyn leaped away from him as if his body was on fire.

  “Hey!”

  “Conner!” She ran downstairs, ran across the kitchen, took his stairs three at a time, and burst in.

  When she saw that the door to the outside was open, she stifled a cry. But the lump in the bed seemed entirely normal. She knelt beside him and peeked into the covers. Conner was deeply asleep.

  She kissed his freckled cheek, inhaling the milky-sour smell of his skin.

  Dan came in, went over and closed the door that led out under the deck and into the backyard. “Look,” he said.

  There was a puddle of water on the floor in front of it, standing on the linoleum.

  “And outside.”

  In the sparse grass that clung to life under the deck, were numerous small holes. They looked for all the world as if somebody had walked there on stilts.

  She went to Dan, looked down at the water, out at the peculiar holes. This was not right. None of this should be here. She rushed back to Conner, drew down his covers. Again she kissed him. She pulled him into her arms.

  Conner moaned, then suddenly stiffened. “Mom?” he said.

  Kneeling beside the bed, she held his face in her hands and looked into his eyes.

  He asked, “What’s the matter?”

  She hugged him to her, feeling the heft of him against her. Her boy was on the verge of becoming a young man, and he was so beautiful, and you had to be so very careful not to let him know how beautiful you thought he was.

  “Could you guys let me get dressed, here?”

  The little boy who had cheerfully laid naked in her lap just a few short years ago now did not want to get out from under the covers in her presence, not even wearing pajamas.

  She kissed his cheek. “Six months to your first shave,” she said. “Mom predicts.”

  “The sooner the better.” He looked at her. She looked back at him. He moved his eyes toward the door.

  “Breakfast in ten minutes.”

  She and Dan went upstairs.

  “What was that about?” Dan asked as she closed the door.

  She whispered, “It’s about his growing maturity. Problems controlling what’s up down below.”

  “You think? Puberty?”

  “Bright kids reach it early, so it says in the book.” As they mounted the stairs, she saw the CONNER ZONE sign in his recycling bag and took it out. “The Conner Zone was so cute,” she said.

  “Cute is the problem,” Dan said. “Part of it. The other part is being too smart in a world that glorifies the lowest common denominator. Conner’s intelligence is not fashionable, and it’s too big for him to conceal.”

  “Oh, I never want him to do that. How’s your ear, by the way?”

  “Not actually okay. I could stand to get an X-ray.”

  “You’re kidding. On your ear?”

  “Well, there’s something there.”

  “Something there?” She reached up and touched the outer edge of the ear. “It’s a little sort of a knot.”

  “I know what it is.”

  “Relax, Dan, I’m not the enemy.”

  For the past half hour, the smell of coffee had been getting stronger, and she went into the kitchen and poured them both mugs. Dan took his over to the table. She went into the pantry and got Conner’s latest cereal, some kind of amaranth flakes thing. Conner had his own dietary ideas, most of them pretty smart—and pretty awful. He was a modified vegetarian except when Dan grilled steaks. Then he was a sullen but voracious carnivore.

  There was no cancer of the ear, was there?

  Conner appeared, poured himself coffee. She waited to see if he put the required amount of half and half in it. Did—but just a drop.

  “Eggs?” she asked as she turned on the skillet.

  “I’m going to be eating really pure for a while,” Conner said. “No dairy, no alcohol.”

  “You don’t drink alcohol,” Dan said. “Better not.”

  “I mean, no wine with dinner.”

  “Wine belongs to the soul, son. No man can be fully himself without wine.”

  “The other kids can’t drink it.”

  “Which is why they’ll all be bingeing like the college students in a few years. Did you know that binge drinking among the young is unheard of in Europe, but common here and in the UK? What does that tell you—children have to learn wine early, get used to it. Which is why you’ll continue with a glass of wine at dinner, thank you.”

  “I love the irony. Most kids would do anything to drink even so much as a sip. But I don’t want to, so it’s forced on me.”

  “Well, you get a glass. One glass. Which is mandatory.”

  “Do you want to have the fight now or schedule it for later? Because I will not be drinking wine.”

  Dan sighed. “I’ve got to go to the health center to get my ear amputated. Let’s do it when I get back.” He picked up Conner’s cereal box. “I saw this lying open in the pantry last night. Are roach eggs okay for vegans?”

  Conner took the box, poured himself some cereal. “Amaranth is one of a handful of dicots which photosynthesize directly to a four-carbon compound.”

  “Ah. So the reason you’re now eating nothing but horrible-looking little crumbs is explained. You want that four-carbon compound.”

  “Actually, I want the protein and the lysine without meat, plus I get a designer-quality lipid fraction. I have the cholesterol readings of a twelve-year-old, you know.”

  “You’re eleven.”

  “It’s a joke, Dad.”

  “Ah. Of course.”

  Katelyn put down her and Dan’s eggs and sat at the head of the table. “May I know the why of the vegan thing?”

  “The aliens.”

  A silence fell, extended. “Are you about to piss me off?” Dan asked.

  “I am eating pure because this neighborhood is in a close-encounter situation and it’s the eating of animals that triggers the kind of fear response I experienced last night. I don’t want to fear the aliens. I want to face them.”

  “Oh, boy,” Katelyn said. “Dan—”

  “No. No, I understand that I’m being baited. It’s not a big deal, Katelyn.” He watched Conner digging into the amaranth, and as he watched, he got angrier and angrier. He was being baited, damn right. Conner was masterful at it. And here he’d been the confidante, the father confessor, just yesterday. Now he was the enemy and his ear hurt like hell, to tell the truth, and he really did not need this just now.

  “We had a visit from the grays, and they had an
abductee aboard the craft, and the Keltons probably have video. A first in history. The world is changing, lady and gentleman, and I am preparing myself.”

  “What grays?” Dan asked carefully.

  “Try Googling ‘gray aliens’ sometime. You’ll find more than four thousand references. Plus, this business of a UFO descending with a screaming woman inside happened in Kentucky before. Moorehead, 2003, same situation, with one difference—no video. Lots of nine-one-one calls, but no video and therefore no story.”

  The sanctimonious singsong, the eyebrows raised to make the face appear absurdly credulous—it was all calculated to infuriate. Conner knew perfectly well how ridiculous Dan considered the whole UFO/alien folklore to be, and how damaging to the culture.

  “Goddamnit, it was nothing but some kind of dope-inspired prank!”

  “Dad, please. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

  Dan’s hand had slammed down on the table before he could stop it.

  Conner seized the opportunity. “Right, go physical yet again, Dad. It’ll make a juicy story for my psychiatrist-to-be. Another one.”

  Dan had spanked Conner exactly one time, when, at the age of three, he had rewired the toaster and caused a dangerous fire in the wall of the kitchen. It had been a single, sharp blow to the left buttock . . . which had been thrown back at him perhaps ten thousand times since.

  “Conner, listen to me. I’m up for tenure, which the entire college knows. It’s terribly important to us. If I don’t get it, I have to resign, which means that we have to move to some other college where Mom and I can both get work, and she has to give up her own tenure here—it’ll be a mess, son. And something like this—a UFO in the backyard—can ruin my chances. Marcie Cotton already wants to write me off. So please, for me, do not say anything about us seeing it for at least another few weeks.”

  Conner gazed off into the middle distance. “Prediction: the Keltons’ tape, if it is halfway decent, will make this place famous. Prediction: Dr. Jeffers will make a total idiot of himself about it and he’ll end up with walking papers. Prediction: you will not be damaged by this, but Dr. Cotton will still screw you to the wall.”

  Every time Conner used the word “prediction,” a chill went right through Dan. Their son was never wrong. Actually, he found that he was so on edge and Conner sounded so right that he almost burst into tears—and was instantly appalled at himself. How could he possibly react like that? That wasn’t him.