by Sean Platt
Christopher looked over. “Bullshit! I kill him, you guys haul him! That was the deal!”
“If you’d used a normal slug maybe! Half his fucking head is gone, Christopher! You think I want that shit all over me?”
“Look,” Christopher continued in an eminently reasonable tone of voice, “I’ll clean up the blood. But I’m not dragging the body.”
“You’re doing it all!”
“How is that fair, Cameron?”
“How is you using fucking hollow points fair, Christopher?”
“That’s just what I had!”
“Nobody just has those!”
“Well, I did,” Christopher said, crossing his arms.
Across the room, Lila slipped in a puddle of blood and almost struck the ground. The big-armed man caught her. Raj came at him, apparently meaning to protect his woman, but the big man cuffed him away. He set Lila down and turned toward Raj instantly, apologizing, mumbling that the strike had been force of habit.
“Okay, everyone. Calm down!” Cameron said, raising his arms.
Lila was ranting and screaming, not hearing at all. Heather was mumbling.
Cameron put his fingers in his mouth and loudly whistled. Lila shrieked one last time and fell silent. All eyes turned to the group’s new leader.
“It’s over,” Cameron said. “Over. Okay?”
He looked around the room to make sure everyone planned to remain quiet then continued.
“I’m sorry to have put you through that little bit of drama and violence, but it’s over now, okay? It was an unfortunate consequence of how we found things when we arrived.”
Piper found her speech. It was, apparently, right where she’d left it: under her terror.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Cameron put his right hand on his chest, fingers splayed.
“My name is Cameron Bannister.” He pointed around the room at each of the new arrivals in turn. “And as Morgan kindly informed you before losing his mind, that’s Vincent, Terrence, Christopher, and Dan.”
Piper blinked. Her eyes wanted to water, but at least she’d stopped screaming.
“It’s okay,” said Cameron, giving her a too-big smile. “We’re the good guys.”
CHAPTER TEN
The Dempseys were upset. Cameron could understand.
Until a few months ago, he’d never seen a dead body — not even at a funeral, because he’d assiduously avoided them. He always gave spiritual excuses (“we should celebrate her life, not remember her earthly remains”) that hid his own fear of death. Until two months ago, he’d never seen a body in plain sight, discarded like litter. Even during the first weeks of occupation, Cameron had stayed in America’s guts, keeping to the little villages where drinking and music made people forget the skies, despite the ships. It had been easier to find those places than he’d thought. At first, there had been nothing but fear. And after a few weeks of nothing, burgs with only clouds above almost seemed to forget.
No ships. No abductions. Might as well get back to our business.
In retrospect, Cameron supposed he’d been rationalizing. The bands of people he’d found those first weeks — those who sometimes knew his music and always enjoyed it once he started to play — were more huddles than towns. And really, those who “got back to business” did so by living in their houses and settling into daily routines. Living and shopping, even if so many of the stores became free-for-alls. But at the time, it had seemed to Cameron that he’d found a way to stay normal. To rise above it all. To see the ships in the sky and pretend they didn’t mean what they did.
And as he’d continued his backwater tour during those first weeks — never playing the venues Dan had booked him into but finding a park or a garage where people wanted to hear him play acoustic — Cameron told himself he was living life on his terms, refusing to be defined by events that didn’t touch him. Then he’d realized that just because there were no ships above Shepherd’s Bend, Iowa, that didn’t mean the people there weren’t vulnerable to global events. It definitely didn’t mean that Cameron Bannister was immune.
He was human, same as anyone. And he had his own cross to bear — most of it back in Utah, from where he’d been diverted to come here — same as the Dempseys.
Cameron looked around the room as the family settled. The teen girl — that would be Lila; she looked just like the photos in his mobile folio, taken at her father’s side — was covered in spatter. Piper (she looked much better than the photos Cameron had found) looked almost as bad. That was unfortunate. Even after traveling with Vincent, Dan, and Terrence, he himself was still new to gore. If he’d been painted with another man’s brains, he’d find it hard to trust, too. But he supposed he should take it easy on Christopher. The original plan had called for Cameron to kill Morgan, and he still wasn’t entirely sure he could have done it. Just too damn human, apparently.
“Will … ” Piper swallowed, then tried again. “Will you let us go?”
Cameron held up a hand. “You misunderstand. You’re not captives. Not anymore.”
“So we can go.” She looked at the others: Lila, Meyer’s son, Trevor, and … he didn’t know who the Indian kid was, but he’d find out soon enough. And, yes, the slippery son of a bitch really had brought his ex-wife to share the bunker with his current one. There was no question that was Heather Hawthorne in the corner. And to think: he’d laughed when Benjamin had said Cameron and his crew might run into her. Apparently, Meyer had giant balls outside the boardroom, too.
“Of course. But there’s no need to. This is your house, not ours.”
Piper blinked. He may as well have been speaking Chinese.
Cameron sighed. “Christopher, give her a wet towel or something. Lila too.”
Christopher, duly chastised, entered the kitchen. The faucet ran. Good news; if the water was running as hard as it sounded, that meant the pump was probably running. Maybe there really hadn’t been too much damage. He hadn’t been entirely comfortable with the “gasoline and cherry bomb” plan, but Terrence had assured him that any bunker worth its salt would have a door between a gas generator and its supply and the rest of the living space … and that because it was so critical, it would have a good fire suppression system that would run even with the power on reserve. Cameron hadn’t been in a position to argue. He’d been pretending to be a crazy, violent kid for Morgan’s benefit — Morgan, who’d already staked his claim on the place and made himself feared prior to Cameron’s arrival.
Christopher returned with two towels. He handed one to Piper and the other to Lila, who snatched hers like a nervous animal. Piper accepted hers with a smile and a grateful nod. If not for all the Morgan-gore on her face, neck, and clothes, she would have looked adorably shy.
“How do you know our names?” Piper asked.
“Have a seat. Please.” Cameron gestured toward the couch and looked around at his crew. “And you guys — put the guns down and take five. You look like a goon squad.”
Vincent shrugged then sat. Under his impressive body and demeanor, the small wooden chair looked miniature. Christopher didn’t seem willing to go far enough to grab a chair and half sat on a cabinet against the wall. Dan remained standing because Dan — though Cameron loved him like a father — was a son of a bitch. Terrence had already crossed his arms and leaned back, doing his best James Dean.
Piper waited for Cameron to sit in the living room’s least comfortable chair before nodding an okay to the others. The kids flanked her, staring hard at Cameron. Heather sat on the couch’s arm. The Indian kid seemed put-out as he came to the couch and found himself excluded. Pouting, he sat on the love seat alone.
“I know your names because we came here to find you. Morgan … ” Cameron stopped, looking down at the floor’s bleeding meat, wondering if they could all ignore it for now or if someone should drag it away — or at least put down a few paper towels. “Morgan was here to take the bunker, and he’d already established himself when we showed u
p, so it was either fight him outright or pretend to ally with him and double-cross him later. We took the coward’s way out, but the one least likely to get anyone killed — other than Morgan anyway. But he wasn’t here because of Meyer or because of you. He wanted what was in the bunker, and you were in the way.”
“How did you even know it was here?” Piper asked.
“Me? I assumed there had to be something below ground. Well … ” Cameron shifted. That wasn’t actually true. “I was told,” he corrected, “because someone else assumed. We found the house empty, and it didn’t make sense that Meyer would have come alone then lived in an open house without even boarding windows. But you didn’t fool Morgan for a second. He knew right away that there was more to this house than others were seeing. This house had no basement, no crawlspace … but it did have all sorts of strange, survivalist preparations in place. Windmills on the hill. A solar farm. He had everyone out there scared of him.”
“Not everyone,” Christopher said.
Cameron scratched his cheek, nodding in agreement.
“Christopher was with Morgan when we arrived, but he came to Vincent. Said he didn’t trust Morgan. They joined up on the road, but then Morgan started to get crazier. Threatening.”
“You were looking for us,” Piper said.
Cameron nodded.
“And that’s supposed to make us trust you. To not think you might be worth being afraid of.”
“We don’t want to hurt you.”
“But you know all about us. You know who this house belonged to. You knew enough about Meyer that you ‘assumed’ there’d be a bunker here. You didn’t come to take what we had, but still the best way to get in was to team up with … with him.” Piper looked at Morgan’s body, clearly disgusted.
“I understand that this has been rough.” Whether Cameron meant today’s events or the totality of their stay in the bunker, he wasn’t sure.
“All I know,” Piper said, “is that you broke through my front door. That you blew up our generator and started a fire. And that I’m supposed to trust you just because you shot a man in the middle of my living room.”
Cameron looked helplessly up at Dan.
“Tell her about The Nine,” Dan suggested.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Trevor watched the man who’d killed the group’s leader: Christopher. Even wedged between his mother and Piper (and holy shit was that uncomfortable; her boob was pressed into his arm to the nipple, and even after a siege he’d managed to pop a boner), Trevor was weighing his chances. If needed, could he squeeze himself out of his tit-pressed position, leap for someone’s gun, and gain an advantage?
Probably not. But he didn’t trust these men any more than Piper seemed to. It was awesome how obviously she wasn’t buying into a word of their bullshit. Maybe they really were the good guys, and maybe they weren’t. But after seeing one man’s brains darken the far wall, it was the kind of claim anyone would be stupid to take on faith.
“Morgan was right. Your husband was taken into one of the ships,” Cameron said.
“But how could you possibly know that?” Piper asked.
He sighed as if deciding to omit a complicated piece of the story. “I know people who have studied this stuff all their lives. There’s a lab I’ll tell you about later, still very operational. And they have … well … resources.” Cameron looked again at the broad man with the curly hair and bad skin: Dan. “Anyway, you know about the big wave of abductions that came right after the ships arrived, right?”
“That was our favorite TV show,” interrupted Trevor’s mother, her wiseass quips still intact after the quarrel. “Except for the part where they fucked up Moscow. That was clearly the network suits interfering with the artistry to please viewers.”
Cameron turned from Piper. “Heather, right?”
“Dickhead, right?” Heather answered.
“Mom … ” Trevor said.
“We know there were abductions,” Cameron turned to Piper, ignoring Trevor and his mother. “At first, they were just rumors, then they — the people I mentioned — started to receive footage from all over the world from a network of sources. But they never knew for sure about Meyer.”
“We figure he’ll be back any minute,” Heather said. “He ran out for some smokes.”
Cameron gave Trevor’s mother more of a smiling acknowledgement than she probably deserved then spoke to Piper.
“According to our stats, there have been just shy of twenty thousand worldwide abductions. Some of that is government information accessed through leaked channels, some is NASA, again through leaked channels. Plenty is via an informal network of nerds that have managed to keep a primitive version of their own private Internet up and running. But there’s good reason to believe the figures are accurate, down to the person, excepting very recent activity and unreported or unobserved phenomena. But that last bit is hard to say because communications have been spotty at best, and even harder to keep an eye on since we joined Morgan and had to start playing our parts. It’s been weeks since I’ve managed to raise anything reliable about the overall state of the nation.”
“‘Raise’?” Piper said.
Cameron nodded. “There are still a few open communication frequencies. I can’t take credit for that; Terrence found them.” He tipped his head toward the cool black man still leaning against the wall.
“The open frequencies are mostly noise,” Cameron went on, “but we’ve also heard what sounds like military chatter.”
“Military!” Trevor didn’t like drawing attention to himself, but the word left him almost involuntarily. He’d forgotten about the military. In movies (even a few of his father’s films, come to think of it), the army always managed to shoot down the big, bad alien ships. The fact that they were still around and scheming felt strangely encouraging.
Cameron nodded. “It’s highly encoded. I can’t even guess at the encryption or what they’re saying. Might not even be military. Point is, the specificity of the open frequencies tells us it’s probably intentional. The fact that most frequencies are blocked and only a few are open, I mean.”
“‘Blocked’?” said Piper.
“By the ships,” said Terrence. Trevor looked him over. The man was dressed in fitting jeans, boots, and a black leather vest.
“But why would a few channels be open?”
“If I had to guess,” said Terrence in his deep, syrupy voice, “it’s to create a bottleneck. A way to force communication into a few channels so they can easily monitor it.”
“The government?”
“The other guys,” Terrence corrected, pointing up.
Cameron looked at the TV. “When did your news stop broadcasting here?”
“About six weeks ago,” Piper said.
Cameron nodded. “Black Tuesday. It happened everywhere on the same day. But at that time, people who’d been taken were being returned, right?”
Trevor remembered that quite plainly. That had given them hope. There had always been the possibility that Dad had walked away, that he’d fallen into a hole and died, or that he’d been killed by bandits. But there was an equal possibility that he’d been taken, and when the first abductees had begun appearing back at home — altered somehow, strange, maybe a little frightening — that had made them all think Dad might return.
“Yes,” Piper said.
“What you may not know is that abductee returns have slowed over time. At first, it was thousands of people coming back per week, worldwide. Then hundreds then dozens. Finally, just single digits. As far as we can tell, it slowed further after Black Tuesday. Kind of like listening for your microwave popcorn to finish popping.”
Trevor said, “What’s a microwave?”
Heather rolled her eyes. “Kids these days.”
“My dad had one.” Cameron smiled at Trevor, and Trevor had to remind himself that these men had yet to prove they could be trusted. “They used to be a popular way to cook food. We used to make popcorn in ou
rs, before we watched movies. You’d put this flat bag in and set the timer for a minute. At first, the popcorn kernels would pop really fast, but eventually they’d slow down, and you’d hear a cluster of new pops, then just one or two every other second. The returning abductees were like that. Right up until three weeks ago.”
“What happened three weeks ago?” said Piper.
“Three weeks ago, I was on my way to Moab, Utah. Me and Dan. To the facility I told you about. A lab. I had one of the communication channels open to Moab — well, not ‘to Moab’; you can’t connect point to point anymore, so far as we can tell — but we’d agreed to use the same public frequency, knowing everyone could hear us and being careful what we said. I got this message, telling me to meet up with Vincent and Terrence and come here, to a private residence in Vail instead.”
“But the abductions … ”
“That’s when they stopped. That’s why I came here.”
Piper shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Mrs. Dempsey—”
“Piper.”
“Piper,” Cameron said, “it’s been three weeks since the last abductee was returned. But as it turns out, it’s not just most of them who’ve come home. As of the day I’m talking about — and this still true today, unless something has changed in the last handful of hours — all of them had been returned. All but nine.”
Trevor looked from Cameron to Piper. He said, “Nine?”
Cameron nodded. “Nine of out twenty thousand abductees remain missing, and have been for more than a month. Meyer — your husband, your father — is one of them. And my friends in Moab feel that those people still gone are somehow significant, not just oversights or loose ends. They matter, Piper. Trevor. And so in our circles, we call them simply ‘The Nine.’”
Again, Trevor looked at Piper before focusing on Cameron, who now had every nugget of the room’s attention. “What’s so ‘significant’ about these nine people?” he asked.
“That,” said Cameron, “is what we’re here to find out.”