There would be no consolation for them. Not that the end would be quick, not that hope still remained for rescue, not that their children would survive them, maybe not even that later generations would remember them.
They survive as idiom, that’s all. Their dying screams have been all but forgotten except for this one oblique reference to them, a glib phrase for ‘I don’t want to hear it’. ‘Speakers down, buddy, huh? Speakers down.’
Which only leaves one question; on every shuttle from every site that made the same idiot mistake of leaving the external microphones attached, it only took the shifting of a single dial to turn that sound off, just one simple movement to be free of the memory of that sound, to remove the frozen look of guilt that followed every survivor for life, to not have to think about the hope we had just torn from the last Earthers there would ever be. So then why did I, why did every damn pilot I’ve ever spoken to, on every ship, from every site, all over that dying planet, leave that dial be, stay their hand and leave those speakers up?
Jars for Their Eyes
William R.D. Wood
“Daddy, my tummy hurts.”
Lucas slid quickly from the dining room chair and knelt at little Zoe’s side. He slipped an arm around her shoulder. Hopefully Emma hadn’t overheard from the kitchen.
“Tummies do that sometimes,” he said to the girl, pulling her close. The room was dark. The frequent power grid brownouts had finally stopped teasing them a few days ago leaving the house electricity-free and oddly quiet for a family of five.
No. Not five. Just three.
The house popped and creaked, settling in. The nights grew colder day by day. Summer had been hard on them. Maybe autumn would be gentler.
“Daddy?”
Keep the tremble out of your voice, Lucas “It’ll be fine.”
A hollow crack came from the kitchen followed by glass scraping across the countertop, the clank of a pan. Emma was getting some of their canned vegetables ready for tomorrow. She hadn’t heard Zoe, otherwise she’d have come in by now. The only time she paid any mind to their daughter anymore was when the poor little thing was in pain.
He stroked the side of her head. A stomach ache was a symptom, sure, but could just as easily come from eating too many stewed potatoes. Think positive. You’re the parent here. That’s your only job now.
He swept a wayward strand behind Zoe’s ear. She was adorable, inheriting Emma’s jet black hair and his naturally tanned skin. She had Emma’s cheekbones and chin but she’d gotten his nose. He’d always thought his nose was his worst feature but on his little angel, it was perfect. Her most striking features, though, were her sapphire green eyes. Where they’d come from in the family tree was anyone’s guess.
Lucas took Zoe’s chin in his hand, but didn’t lift it, scared her eyes might have taken on a darker shade.
He choked up but quickly covered with a small cough. He had to be strong for Zoe. Emma was busy in the kitchen, not listening, so hopefully she wouldn’t be freaking out tonight. And the dark things that had claimed the rest of the world were not coming for him or what remained of his family. For whatever reason, the three of them had been spared so far. Everything was fine. Everything was going to stay that way.
“Does your head hurt too, honey?” He wanted to smack himself. Concern had shoved the question out before fear could stop it.
“Uh-uh. Just my tummy.”
That was something at least. Kids had growing pains all the time, apocalypse or not. Pulling her head against his chest, he kissed the top of her head. A few months ago, it would have been Emma who calmed their little girl with a kiss. He’d have looked on pretending not to be jealous.
You never knew how good you had it when you were in the moment. And now, even if they disappeared, there were so few people left, what kind of life could they hope to build? Emma had been an accountant for God’s sake. And who would want a graphic designer when everyone was already blaming that damned artist in Zurich for the end of days? Everyone who was still around, anyway.
Maybe Emma would become the sweet, loving mother and wife she had been before? So much had been lost. He thought of the twins’ room, now empty.
No. He had to focus on Zoe. “Okay, that’s good, then,” he said keeping his voice low, hoping she’d continue to do the same.
“It’s all cold and rumbly,” whispered Zoe. She pushed her plate away. “I don’t wanna eat any more.”
“That’s fine, that’s fine. Here, Daddy will eat the rest all up.” He scooped the few remaining potatoes into his mouth and swallowed without really chewing making the growling and grumbling noises that always made her smile. He wiped a drop of sauce from the corner of his mouth with his thumb and licked it off. “But don’t tell Mommy, okay?”
Zoe was almost four now and loved secrets, her favorite being the hidden fortress under the pile of leaves in the yard. The stronghold was nothing more than the cardboard box from the refrigerator he and Emma had bought for one another for their anniversary last year.
The trees had shed their leaves all at once two weeks back instead of their usual seasonal decline. Zoe had helped him rake the leaves up the sides of the box. The top was only sparsely covered, the stained cardboard peeking through. As far as Zoe was concerned, it was invisible to all but her own gaze. And those select few with whom she’d entrusted with its secret location.
While he and Zoe had worked in the yard, Emma had sat on the edge of the porch smoking, watching the two of them as they giggled and shoved armfuls of leaves along the ground. At one point Lucas thought Emma was about to join them, but the hint of a smile had only crept out a millimeter from the corners of her mouth before returning.
“Sleepy, Daddy.” Zoe nestled into him.
Kids picked up bugs all the time. Sniffles and stomach aches. Not a big deal. Besides, he’d scavenged plenty of medicine. “It’s getting late. Let’s get you ready for bed, big girl. I’ll get a flashlight and read Wonderstruck to you again. How does that sound?”
Leaves rustled along the ground outside in the breeze, their sound like crackling flames. Through the window, Lucas glimpsed a child-sized figure ambling down the road. Probably Ms. Levesque’s son from over on Charter. Almost had to be considering how damned few families stayed behind after the evacuation. The higher population densities in the refugee areas had only resulted in a proportionate increase in those claimed. That had been when they were still taking adults.
The boy in the street stopped. Lucas couldn’t see his eyes in the gloom but you didn’t really need to see them to know.
“The whole thing?” asked Zoe pushing away, suddenly more alert.
“What?”
“Wonderstruck. The whole thing?”
“The whole darned thing.”
Zoe squirmed and he could tell she was grinning up at him, despite the shadows.
* * *
Lucas left Zoe’s bedroom door open and moved quietly through the house, passed the locked door of the twins’ room and down the stairs. Darkness had fallen completely outside. Moonlight seeped through thin, drab curtains. Cans and boxes lined the hallway to the kitchen. Zoe was fast asleep but he didn’t want to disturb Emma. Maybe she’d gone to couch already. She never joined him in bed anymore. Hell, she wouldn’t even sleep with Zoe in her room back when the girl still bothered to beg. Kids learned. Emma’s refusals had never been angry, or impatient, or even irritated. Just quiet, empty nos.
It was like she’d said her goodbyes, made her peace, and Zoe was already wandering the streets with the Levesque boy.
Zoe had lasted only a quarter of the way through Wonderstruck. Lucas was thankful for that. Tomorrow, when the sun came up, dingy as it had become, he’d take a good look at her eyes.
Just a quick round through the house and he’d go back and bed down in the floor beside Zoe. The kitchen was dark, the tile cold through hi
s threadbare socks and he slid his feet along surface to avoid the possibility of broken glass. Emma sometimes dropped jars. She seldom cleaned them up anymore.
Emma had proven invaluable in the early weeks, she’d been all over the internet learning all she could about frontier living and survival. The countertop brimmed with canned vegetables, the stockpile of supplies from neighboring houses and the mended clothes were a testament to her grit and tenacity. She’d changed as the months passed following the twins, though. As if her body was a fragile vessel, dropped and now riddled with tiny imperfections, fissures that had allowed her to leak away.
A tiny red light flared in the darkness.
Lucas jumped. “You scared me, babe.”
A year ago, his Emma would have laughed at catching him unawares. Lucas heard her sharp intake of breath followed an instant later by the smell of her cigarette. She’d quit smoking when she’d gotten pregnant with Zoe but had started back the day they’d locked up the twins’ room. “She asleep?”
“Out like a light. We played pretty hard outside this afternoon.” Lucas moved to the sink and looked out the window. The world was shadows, dark and darker. Without the streetlights, the moon was barely enough to see by. Funny how a few tiny light bulbs had been so comforting before.
“In the fort,” said Emma.
“She loves that thing,” said Lucas, unable to keep the smile from his voice. “I’m so glad we kept that box. You should go out and play with her in it tomorrow. The days are getting colder and it’ll give me a chance to drive into town. Ms. Levesque said there was another FEMA drop and we could use some more water.”
Emma didn’t answer.
“Zoe would love it. She misses you, babe. She doesn’t understand all this. Just that her mommy isn’t playing with her anymore.”
“It doesn’t matter, Lucas.”
“Of course, it matters. She’s our daughter.”
“So, what then? It’s our job? Is that it?”
He’d said that a few too many times and now she wasted no opportunity to use it against him. He refused the bait.
The tip of Emma’s cigarette grew brighter. Long seconds later, it did so again.
The silence made the darkness heavy and the wall between them as impenetrable as the locked doorway down the hall. In the basin, a single jar lay on its side. Moonlight glinted in the crack. The tang of preserved tomatoes mixed with cigarette smoke.
“I heard her,” said Emma.
Lucas sighed. “She felt fine as soon as I got her to bed. A little distraction was all she needed.”
She slid something heavy across the kitchen table toward him.
“Kids get little aches and pains all the time,” said Lucas.
“Look around, Lucas.” Her voice was quiet, emotionless. “It’s all theirs now. The whole fucking planet. And, one way or the other, we’re all just waiting to be taken too.”
He couldn’t look at her, keeping his gaze fixed on the jar. Moonlight squirmed in the crack. Emma was always worse at night. “You shouldn’t say stuff like that. They could leave any moment.”
The tip of her cigarette glowed. “And we go back to our happy little lives?”
The base of his skull tingled as the moonlight in the jar vanished. The boy stood outside the window.
The object on the table scraped against the surface. The metallic snap of the slide being pulled back filled the room. In the dark, he couldn’t tell if Emma were offering him the pistol or pointing it at him.
“We don’t need that,” he said. “I’ll lead him away.”
He crossed to the door, stopping to fumble in their clutter drawer. The muscles between his shoulder blades cramped where her gaze, or that of the gun, stared at him. He pointed an LED flashlight at the floor and clicked it on and off to make sure the batteries were good.
“You’d be doing his mother a favor,” she said.
“He’ll follow me. It’ll be okay.” Lucas opened the door. A gust of chilled autumn air entered. Leaves skittered in, crossing the floor like tiny clawed feet. “Get some sleep. It’ll make a world of difference.”
“Why, that’s genius, Lucas. Thanks.”
Lucas slipped outside. The steps were clear and the yard flat. Most of the leaves were mounded at the refrigerator box but each footfall crinkled and crackled. Lucas tightened the flashlight beam and played it across the boy’s back where he still stood peering in the window.
Ms. Levesque had lost her husband early on. Did she even know her son wasn’t in bed right now? That he’d been claimed?
The thin sweat pants and t-shirt the kid wore were woefully inadequate against the cold, but he didn’t so much as shiver. They just didn’t seem to care what happened to the bodies they took. Given long enough, their victims simply starved or died of dehydration.
Lucas ran the beam back and forth across the boy’s back to get his attention. The logo of two children chasing a checkered ball on his shirt confirmed his identity. What was the kid’s name?
The boy turned. The flashlight’s wide-beam mode was enough to illuminate a good portion of the wall behind the boy. Even so, his head remained in shadow. As Lucas panned toward his face, the light tightened and bent, sucked into the darkness where the boy’s eyes had been.
Lucas wavered, knees weak, his head throbbing. Madness tickled the corners of his mind the way it had before he and Emma had locked the hallway door. Resisting the urge to walk toward the boy was easier than he expected. Still he had to jerk his head to one side to avert his gaze, wincing at the shifting pressure behind his own eyes. This close you couldn’t just casually glance away from their faces. An act of will was needed and that had never been his strength.
Maybe Emma was right. Maybe he should go back for the gun. He couldn’t save the boy. No one had ever been able to do that. Taken was taken. And as far as anyone knew the things looking out through their eyes were unaffected by what happened to the bodies they took. They could not be banished, but the windows to this world could be closed.
Windows and doors. Lucas thought of the locked bedroom door in the house. And Zoe’s own door, open and left wide so even the slightest whimper could be heard.
Swinging the light from the boy’s face, heat flared in the back of Lucas’ skull. The beam twitched, seeking to hold the boy’s eyes until Lucas had swung it well away. The back of Lucas’ head itched and burned. When guesses and gasps had still cluttered the air waves, scientists had blamed the visual cortex. Something in humanity’s most rudimentary programming resisted processing what lay behind those cold empty voids.
Lucas just needed this boy as far away from Zoe as possible.
“Come on.” Bile mixed with the taste of potato in his mouth. He spat into the dead grass and began a slow trek across the yard. A hint of cigarette smoke reached him but he didn’t bother looking for Emma. “This way. Follow the light.”
When Lucas reached the curb and stepped on the pavement, he paused until he made out the boy’s slow, steady progress through the leaves.
He could lead the boy back to his home, his mother.
No. The thing staring out of him right now had never lived in there. It had never been on the soccer team. Never called the Levesques Mommy and Daddy.
Lucas regretted leaving the gun, but the choice had been made and he didn’t want to extend his evening stroll any longer than absolutely necessary. A few more streets ahead and he’d switch off the light and take a winding jog back, giving the thing a wide berth. Tomorrow he’d visit Ms. Levesque.
Make sure she knew.
The peak of the art center loomed through the trees. Occasionally the taken would climb stairs to larger buildings, no one knew why. Then they would stop and stare at the structure, or outward, or at the sky.
Lucas was plenty far away from Zoe and Emma now. Solar-charged safety lighting glowed dimly through gaps in th
e boards nailed over the plate glass entrance. Something small lay unmoving on the stoop, pink and yellow in a print that might have been happy jungle animals.
A child’s abandoned doll, he allowed himself.
The light coming through the door should be enough to catch the boy’s attention so he would not attempt to follow Lucas back home.
Lucas glanced back just to make sure the boy was with him. Switching off the flashlight, Lucas cut left, running as far as he dared until his eyes adjusted.
The boy continued his casual course toward the art center. The throbbing in Lucas’ skull abating as he got farther away, though the pressure behind his eyes remained constant. Seasonal allergies. Nothing to worry about.
He was halfway home before he considered turning on the flashlight again. He didn’t really need it. The abandoned streets weren’t scary anymore.
The moon and stars were bright enough and the way was clear. It had been a quiet apocalypse. A quick decline in population as people were claimed and the seasons moved from spring to summer to autumn.
Zoe was going to be fine.
And Emma? Well, Emma would work through this.
She had to.
Lucas slowed his pace and looked up at the smudge of the Milky Way, somewhat robbed of its glory by the moon this evening. Once upon a time he’d laid beneath the stars with Emma. She’d cuddled into him and he’d named off the stars and constellations. Now though, the night didn’t seem so much about those ancient pinpricks of light as it was the emptiness between.
Thunder exploded and Lucas was in motion before it echoed from the side of a single house. His mind reeled, a muddle of white noise. Denials and promises.
Alien Invasion Page 87