by John Corwin
"Don't get ahead of yourself, Mum," Randall said with a broad grin. "The kids need to have fun first. You've got college ahead of you too, son."
"Stop the car, Dad. Turn it around," Nick said.
"Have you decided where to attend?" Randall asked, seemingly oblivious to what Nick had just said.
"Stop the car!" Nick shouted. It was about to happen. He could feel it.
"Excellent choice, son. We're so proud of you."
A searing bright blue light flashed in the windshield. Rebecca screamed. Randall shouted. Nick flung his hands up. Metal screeched.
Steam rose from the hood of the car. A large tree stood where the dash had been, its bark scarred and bleeding sap. Randall and Rebecca sat slumped over their seatbelts, bloody, and lifeless. Nick screamed.
Something tiny, the size of a marble hovered over the broken windshield. Nick stared at it. A blue light flashed.
* * * * *
Sheep grazed in the distance. A cold wind swept from the fields and up the hill into Nick's face. A boy and a dog stared at him, their heads cocked to the side.
"Who are you?" the boy asked. "What're you doing up here?"
Nick jumped to his feet. "Mom? Dad?"
The boy looked around, then down at a farmstead a few hundred yards down the hill. "You need a phone?"
Nick didn't know where he was or what he needed. Had everything been a dream? "A phone would be nice. Where am I?"
"A bit from Epwell. You get lost on a hike or something?"
Nick walked down the hill and used the phone. Nobody answered either of his parents' cell phones. His guts ached with dread and sick worry. It hadn't been a dream. He knew that now. His parents were dead. He was alone in the world.
Uncle Albert picked him up a few hours later and drove him out to Keneton.
"Where the hell have you been, lad? Your parents are two weeks in the grave and you're nowhere to be found."
"I don't know." Nick wiped a lone tear from his eye and fought the others back with anger. "How long have I been missing?"
"Three bloody weeks. We delayed the funeral, hoping you'd turn up. Police considered foul play, but nobody knew why you'd be kidnapped. Jenny's been sick with worry about you."
"Jenny." His heart swelled with joy at the mere thought of her. She was waiting for him. He needed her now more than anything.
They entered Keneton. Nick saw people walking the streets, many heading to the pub. He felt an overwhelming urge to stop and talk to them. That was odd since Nick didn't make friends easily or often. He stuck to his own. His circle of friends was small but tight.
"I need to stop at the grocer," Albert said. "Need anything?"
"I'll just wait in the car."
Albert went inside. Nick watched people coming in and out of the small shop. The urge to talk to them tugged at him again. He resisted the urge until he could take it no longer and got out. A woman approached the store. He walked to her, extended his hand like a politician.
"Hello, there. I'm Nick."
She raised an eyebrow, extended her hand, and shook his. "You're new here?"
"I am." He thought he should continue the conversation but no longer felt the desire to talk to her at all. A man emerged from the store. Nick greeted him the same way. The woman looked slightly confused then went into the store as he ignored her.
Albert emerged a few moments later. "You running for office, lad?"
"No, I just wanted to talk to people."
The urges grew worse. When he went back to London with Jenny, it took all his willpower not to talk to every single person he came across which was quite a lot in the city. Nick wondered if this was a coping mechanism. Maybe his mind needed this. But where had he been for three weeks? Had he blanked everything from his mind?
* * * * *
Nick staggered a few feet from the pub before dropping to his knees and vomiting. He heaved until he was dry then rolled onto his back and stared at the night sky. Jenny was going to kill him. He'd promised to be home before six for dinner and a nice evening together. Instead, the bloody urge had hit him, dragged him into another random pub and here he was. It was hopeless. No matter how hard he tried or how much he drank, he couldn't fight it. Couldn't overcome this bloody mental obsession of his.
He pushed himself up and checked the time. Eight already. After a sweaty nauseating jog through the streets he saw their place, the place they'd shared for a little under a year since Nick's parents had died. He pushed inside, ran up the stairs to the bedroom. Saw her packing.
"I'm sorry, Jen. Just a little late, love."
She looked at him, eyes red with past tears.
"Where're you going?" he asked.
"Nowhere. You're the one that's going."
"Then why're you packing?" He overcame the drunken stupor long enough to realize those were his bags she was packing. "You can't do this to me."
"I own the place, Nick. I pay for it. You haven't paid a bloody thing for months. You haven't held a job long enough."
"It's just a rough time for me. You've got to understand."
"I understood. Your parents died almost a year ago. The Nick I knew before then was totally different. You never drank, smoked, or felt the need to hang out at every random pub we came to. Now it's like some disease. You're not the man I loved. I think he died with your parents."
"We can beat this, Jen, I know it."
"We tried to beat it. Now you'll have to beat it on your own."
"God, no, Jen. Please don't do this. I love you. I have a problem but I'm trying so hard to overcome it. I'll do anything. My therapist thinks I'm making progress."
"You're sick. Don't you see that? You need more than a therapist. You need medical help, Nick. I can't deal with this one more day. Not one more bloody stinking day. I'm sick of it. Sick to my bones and tired of crying myself to sleep every night you're gone drinking." Jenny slammed his suitcase shut. "I fit your clothes inside. Anything else you need, I'll have it shipped. I want you out first thing tomorrow." She rolled the suitcase to the top of the stairs. He followed her.
"Please no."
She threw up her hands. "I'm done." She turned, slammed the bedroom door shut behind her and locked it.
* * * * *
"Come to the states," Tim said. "You're a pilot. This will be a good experience for you."
Nick hung up the phone. Jenny was gone for good. He had nothing left in London. His social affliction hadn't improved and drinking himself into a stupor every night was no solution. What better place to escape from it all than Antarctica?
Weeks later he was there. After meeting everyone on the base, he no longer felt the overwhelming desire to talk to everyone. He almost felt normal again. But he missed Jenny. He missed his parents. Drinking was the only thing that helped.
Then the emergency evacuation took place. He was all alone. Except for his video camera, a few movies, and, of course, his imaginary friend, Lucy. Soon all that would be left was his insanity.
* * * * *
"Meow."
Nibbles curled up next to me and purred into my ear. I hurt all over. Every part of me felt like it had been broken and reassembled. Something else felt wrong. I looked at my hand. It wasn't my hand. It was too large, too masculine. I sat up and felt the weight of gravity pushing down on me. Looked at the rest of my body. I was inside Nick.
Chapter 12
I relaxed and Nick's body released me. He groaned and put a hand to his head. Looked around the room. "Are you here, Lucy?"
My heart lightened. Did he actually believe I was real now? I realized something else. This place was different. I flitted outside the building and took in the surroundings. Snowcapped mountains cut off the horizon on my left. I zoomed higher and saw ocean to my right. The building below me stood next to a small airstrip. A single-engine plane sat to the side of the runway. He'd escaped Antarctica. He was somewhere in Argentina, I guessed. I laughed, allowing this bit of joy to drag my heart out of the depression zone.
I was dangerously close to going emo and I didn't like that thought one bit. Back inside the building, Nick was microwaving breakfast, humming to himself. Bits of a dream drifted back to me in graphic detail. How his parents had died. How he'd lost Jenny. What had become of him. My joy quickly faded when I remembered how his parents had died. That floating orb was not manmade. Other pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. Nick's overwhelming urge to talk to people had felt unnatural. Like someone had forced him into that behavior.
A terrible suspicion blossomed inside me and I knew Nick could no longer remain a secret. It was already strange enough that I'd merged with him after passing out. A flutter of panic made me feel even sicker. The aliens. Had I stopped them? Obviously I was still "alive" but I didn't know if I'd been out of it for hours, days, or longer. I called Kyle. He answered within a split second so I knew he was worried. He showed up seconds later, Chris in tow. Nibbles flitted around their legs, purring happily.
Chris hugged me tight and kissed my forehead, my cheeks, my mouth. "I was so worried," he said. "Don't ever do something that stupid again."
Kyle stood by, his face as angry as I'd ever seen it. "I don't know whether to kill you or get down on my knees and thank you. I knew immediately that you somehow made that spider thing do what it did. Of course none of us found out about it until a day after it happened. We were too busy possessing gorillas."
"What happened?" I asked, freeing myself from Chris for a moment.
"You don't know?" Kyle shook his head. "According to witnesses, they saw a crazy girl trying to do something to the centipedes. Then the girl vanished inside the spider-cat thing. A few minutes later, all the centipedes attached to it exploded, the spider-cat turned and tore into the vehicle that collects the glowing cubes and killed some of the Octos. Then the girl's ghost drifted out of the spider-cat and vanished just before the blue orb on its back exploded and splattered it all over the place."
"Now we know how to stop them," I said. "We can beat them."
"Maybe," Chris said. "But so far nobody else has been able to merge with another one."
"And the aliens have shut everything down," Kyle said. "We think they're trying to figure out what went wrong. Another attack on the spiders wouldn't work right now since they're locked up in cryo. We surveyed all the other cleanup zones and they're locked down as well."
I sighed. "At least it bought us some time." I paused and looked at them, my heart growing heavy. I had to tell them about Nick. So I did. My voice quavered as I told them everything about him, leaving out some of the very personal bits, of course. I could tell from their expressions they were righteously pissed.
Kyle slapped his forehead. "Son of a bitch. We can't tell anyone." He paced in a circle, muttering under his breath, then stopped and glared at me. "I won't pretend I'm not upset, Luce, but I understand."
Chris eyed me suspiciously. His fists clenched. "You feel something for him, don't you?"
I couldn't meet his gaze. "I couldn't help it. I wanted to help him."
"It's more than that, Lucy. Now a few things make sense. All those days you were away supposedly travelling, you were with him. Merging with him, getting to know him. Falling in love with him too, right?"
I wanted to deny it, but I couldn't. I still cared for Nick, but now I knew there might be another reason for his survival. A very dark reason. "I never wanted to hurt you, Chris."
His eyes bored into me, his arms crossed over his chest. "God damn, Lucy. You merged with him. That's more intimate than sex, don't you think?" His voice rose and his fists tightened. "I can't even look at you." He glared at me, jaw clenched, eyes full of anguish.
"How can you say that? It has nothing to do with sex."
"Yeah. Right. Screw this." He flitted away.
"Are you saying you had sex with a gorilla then?" I yelled at empty air. Tears pooled in my eyes.
Kyle put a gentle hand on my shoulder.
"Give him time, Luce. He'll come around."
"I can't take anymore," I said. "Everyone hates me, then they love me, then they hate me again. Every good thing I do goes to crap."
"Oh geez, don't be so melodramatic. It's not that horrible."
"Saving the world from aliens is not easy on the emotions," I said. "You don't understand."
"I might as well fill you in on the latest developments so you'll stop feeling so sorry for yourself," Kyle said, moving a few feet away. "You've been gone about a week. We've trained thirty more people, all about our age, to help out. Everyone was eager to duplicate your feat, but we decided to wait and plan it out better. One guy didn't listen to us. He merged with another spider-cat while they were herding it back into the ship and never came out."
"Well look at what happened to me. I vanished too."
"Yeah but you drifted free of the creature just before vanishing. He never came back out of it and the spider-cat didn't blow up."
"You sure his corpse wasn't vaporized in the meantime?"
"Positive. His corpse is still rotting where it died."
"His ghost is dead?"
"We have no clue and no way to find out except to wait."
"This is bad," I said.
"That's not the worst. We lost five more during their gorilla training."
"Lost them? How?"
"Apparently some people can't handle it and their ghosts never came back out of the gorillas. We don't know what happened to them or why, but it's worried us. Harb went into the gorillas they'd possessed and didn't find anything. In fact, the gorillas are acting normally."
"As if they were never possessed?"
"Exactly."
How had I been so lucky, I wondered. I'd merged with a human, a gorilla, and a freaking alien and survived. Had it just been dumb luck or something more? I saw Nibbles lunge at a red feather from the corner of my eye.
"Speaking of rotting corpses, are we going to vanish when our bodies completely decompose?"
"I don't think so. Otherwise there wouldn't be any old ghosts around."
"Something the aliens do to our bodies kills us off then?"
"They convert our former molecules into pure energy. Somehow we're anchored to our bodies and once that anchor is gone, we're gone."
That was depressing. I looked at Kyle. "What now?"
"I want to show you something," he said.
We flitted to the alien cube that had landed near our neighborhood. Fifty of the slimy octo-aliens had gathered around a large tub of green ooze. Above the tub was a grated platform with the bodies of those aliens that, according to Kyle, had been killed by the spider-cat. The aliens trumpeted in their strange language, touching the bodies of the dead ones and each other. The trumpeting noises grew in volume. At first it sounded random. Then a haunting harmonic melody emerged. For a few minutes, I was entranced as the music gathered force and crescendoed into a cry of what had to be grief. Nibbles appeared and started chasing their tentacles.
"Are they singing?" I asked.
He nodded. "They've been doing this for two days now. I think they're mourning."
"Did alien ghosts appear when they died?"
He shrugged. "I think we'd know pretty fast if an Octo joined us in Heavenly."
"That's what we're calling them now?"
"Yeah."
"Well this rocks. We hurt the bastards."
Kyle nodded, but he didn't look happy.
"What?"
"Nothing. I just hate all the killing."
"Are you serious? They started it, don't forget that."
Bella appeared at Kyle's side. Her eyes narrowed to slits when she saw me. Nibbles didn't greet her. He flitted to my shoulder and perched there.
"Well if it isn't little Miss Hero. Guess your temper tantrum paid off," Bella said.
"What's your problem with me?"
"C'mon, guys, don't do this," Kyle said.
Bella flitted to my left side away from Kyle. "Your secrets cost us thousands of lives. That's my problem with you. Too
bad that alien didn't eat your soul for lunch."
"I saved lives in case you hadn't noticed."
"Not the right ones!" Bella screamed. Nibbles hissed and vanished.
I backed away, shocked.
Kyle forced himself between us. "Bella, damn it, it's too late."
"Yeah, it's too late all right." She shook her head. "I should've known you'd defend her." She blipped away but not before I saw the tears in her eyes. I looked at Kyle, a question in my eyes.
"The rest of her family is gone, Luce. The bugs got them just before you told us about merging."
I choked back a sob. My chest knotted and I couldn't breathe. It was all an illusion, of course, but it felt real. "My fault," I said. "My fault."
"Don't run off and do something stupid again," Kyle said. "Please."
"I need to get away. You guys don't need me any more. You know how to merge. You know how to stop the aliens."
"But you're the only one who's merged with an alien creature. We need your knowledge, Luce."
"Then take it," I said, holding my hand out for him to merge. "Take everything. I don't care any more."
Kyle shook his head. "Give them time. Chris and Bella will come around."
"As if they're the only ones who hate me. I'll bet they've told everyone else it's my fault."
He sighed and I knew it was true. He took my hand and merged. I felt everything flow from me. How much of it he actually absorbed, I'm not sure.
"Nick," he said, eyes wide. "You controlled him. And his dreams." He withdrew from the merge.
"You figure it out," I said. "I'm done." And I left.
Chris hated me. Bella hated me. Ms. Tate hated me. The world against Lucy. I can be so melodramatic at times, but knowing that I'm being foolish doesn't make it any easier to change. I stood atop a mountain somewhere in China. Nibbles appeared on my shoulder and nuzzled my cheek. His deep purr vibrated in my ear. At least he didn't hate me. And somehow, he always found me when he wanted to.
"Thanks, buddy," I said and stroked his fur. I felt pretty stupid running away again. It was interesting seeing the world, but it was probably in bad taste to do it while aliens were snacking on my neighborhood. What else could I do? Pretty much everyone associated with Harb's project hated me or didn't trust me now.