by Kody Boye
“Jason Parks was there. He helped teach me how to shoot.”
“Jason Parks,” my sister said, frowning. “He’s the kid who lives with Henshaw on the opposite side of the complex. Right?”
“Right,” I said. “At least, I think so.”
“The one who lost both his parents?”
I nodded.
“That’s gotta be hard,” she continued. “I could only imagine what I’d do if it were just the two of us.”
“We’d be fine. I mean… it’d be hard, sure, but… we’d manage. Somehow.”
“He’s been managing since he was just barely eleven. Can you imagine everything he’s gone through?”
No. I couldn’t. Which was exactly why I felt so alienated around him. He didn’t act like a regular teenager his age—a boy who worked in the fields, rearing steers and other animals for meat and milk, burning off testosterone with the help of hard labor. If anything, Jason resembled a lost puppy whom I felt vied for attention but was afraid of being rejected. The idea, as simple as it was, hurt. Thinking about it made me realize just how lucky my sister and I were that we still had our mother.
“Well,” Xiomara said, rolling her shoulders before starting for the armory. “Duty calls. G’night, sis.”
“Night.” I watched her walk down the road until she was but a distant speck upon the horizon.
I waited for inspiration to strike me—to spur me into the apartment so I could rendezvous with my mother about the day’s activities and all they’d entailed. The sun was setting, the light fading from the sky, the clouds rolling in to take precedence over the land which they had been waiting to conquer. Distantly, I heard thunder, and imagined it would rain on a night where I could snuggle beneath my blanket while Xiomara was bound to the walls.
With a shake of my head, I turned and entered the apartment.
My mother—who’d been sitting at the table reading an old paperback—lifted her eyes as I opened, then closed the door behind me. “Ana Mia,” she said with a smile. “Welcome back.”
“Sorry I disappeared,” I said. “The Guard pulled me out of bed. Weapons training.”
“I understand.” She dog-tailed the page she was on and closed the book, rising and approaching. She wrapped me in a hug and reached up to run her hand along my temple. “About your hair.”
I waited.
“Were you wanting it cut now, or…”
“Now would probably be better,” I said. “Bite the bullet, take the plunge.”
“It isn’t going to look horrible, Mia.”
“I know. Still… I’ll miss it.”
“As will I, baby girl.”
My mother took my hand and led me into the small bathroom the three of us shared, then began to pilfer the medicine cabinet. She recovered the simple hair-cutting scissors buried within its depths. As I pulled my hair back into a ponytail, I stared at my reflection in the mirror and tried to envision how I would look once the hair was cut. It’d be okay, I imagined. I had nice enough features to where a short haircut might not look completely horrible. But I hadn’t cut my hair for nearly six years, except for trimming the split ends here and there. It’d be a huge adjustment.
“Ready?” my mother asked.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I replied.
She snipped once, then twice.
The hair spilled from my shoulders.
When I reached back to pull the band from what remained of the ponytail, I had what resembled a boyish cut—not short, but long enough to hang just below my eyebrows if I didn’t part my hair from my face.
“Well?” my mother asked. “Shall we keep it like this, or do you want it shorter?”
“This is fine,” I said. I actually kind of liked it. It complemented my sun-kissed skin, finely bronzed in the heat of the Texas sun, and made my big eyes appear even more doe-like. I found myself smiling as I looked at myself in the mirror.
“Well, I’m glad you like it. I’ve biscuits and pork for dinner if you’re ready to eat.”
“More than ready,” I replied.
We were just about to leave the bathroom when a thought struck me.
“Mama?” I asked, looking at her reflection in the mirror.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Thank you. For everything you’ve ever done for me and Xiomara. I got to thinking about it today and, well… I realized how lucky the two of us are to have you.”
“You never have to thank me, Ana Mia. Te amo,” she said.
“Te amo,” I replied, then followed her out to eat dinner.
I lay awake listening to the sound of the brooding thunderstorm as it rolled in from the depths of west Texas. Pleasant in that it had cooled the temperature, its ferocious gales were picking up. I imagined Xiomara trying to maintain her bearings on the walls and realized, with absolute guilt, I was actually thankful I’d been called in for weapons training.
I could only imagine how cold it was going to get outside. It’d probably drop at least ten, if not fifteen degrees. For someone like Xiomara—who’d become accustomed to fifty-five, maybe sixty-degree nights—it’d be a big change, and undoubtedly an uncomfortable one.
Snuggled beneath my blankets, content with my place in the world and all that I’d accomplished, I rolled onto my stomach. I tried to imagine how my sister and Asha Dawson were doing on a night where the world seemed to be conspiring against them.
Outside, rain fell, thunder struck, what sounded like hail began to plink at the windows.
At the very least, they were covered by the platform, and hopefully wouldn’t have to deal with the more extreme facets of the central Texas weather. Maybe they wouldn’t even have to look at the Coyotes.
“They never did like rain,” I mumbled.
My mother, having fallen asleep, inhaled a sharp breath.
At first I thought she’d heard me. Then I realized she merely shifted onto her side.
I sighed, rolled onto my back, and looked out the nearby window.
Unobscured by clouds, the moon shone bright and full, marking upon the world a testament to the fact that life, as fractured and disjointed as it was, continued on.
With one final sigh, I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep, already contemplating what tomorrow’s meeting with Jason might bring.
“Mom?” I asked as she prepared for work the following morning. “Do you know where a guy named Jason Parks lives?”
“Parks… Parks, Parks,” she mumbled under her breath, tying her apron off around her waist and lifting her head to the window. “I… believe he lives in the apartment building across the road from the main entrance. You know the one I’m talking about?”
“I think so,” I replied. “Do you happen to know the apartment number by chance?”
“2102.”
“2102?”
“2102,” she said.
“And you’re sure?” I frowned.
“Well, not exactly sure, but I remember that I used to send him home with extra sandwiches and snacks when the two of you were kids. That poor boy.” My mother sighed, shaking her head. “Losing both parents so young.”
“Yeah,” I said, running a comb through my hair.
“Why do you ask?” She frowned. “You don’t plan on going over to his apartment, do you?”
“Just to see if he wants to walk around and talk,” I replied, then paused when her gaze shifted from confusion to outright concern. “Don’t worry, Mama. I’m not going to go into some boy’s house.”
“You know I can’t always tell you what you can and can’t do,” my mother said, walking over and taking hold of both shoulders. “But as a mother, I do have to warn you about the dangers of unsafe sex.”
“Sex?” I laughed, shrugging out of her grasp. “Mama! I’m only just starting to get to know him. I’m not going to go over there and have sex with him.”
“Even so, you have to be aware of how dangerous it is for a young woman like yourself in this day and age. We don’t have state-of-the-
art technology and high-end facilities like we used to. If you get pregnant—”
“Mama!”
“Ana Mia Sofia Berrios, don’t you start interrupting—”
“I swear,” I said, taking hold of her hand, “on my heart, and on your grave, I won’t do anything with him. Besides…” I grimaced as the barrage of images they’d shown us for young-adult education entered my mind. “I can’t even handle thinking about being pregnant, let alone actually being pregnant.”
“Good,” my mother said. “You may be a young woman now, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to keep watching out for you.”
“I know, Mama. I appreciate it.” I wrapped her in a hug, tightened my grip around her body, then turned and started for the doorway. “Would it be okay if Jason and I stopped by the kitchens for lunch this afternoon?”
“You ought to go to bed before noon,” she said. “But yes. If you’re still up and about around the time we start serving lunch, you can stop by and have whatever we’re cooking. I don’t think it’s going to be anything too extravagant, though. Probably just oatmeal with honey.”
“That sounds delicious,” I replied. “Goodbye, Mama.”
“Bye doll.”
With that, I walked out the door and made my way toward Jason’s apartment.
When I reached his apartment on the other side of the complex, I stopped to consider the implications of meeting him at his home before knocking on the door—wondering if he was the kind of guy who would try and invite me in or if he would play the perfect gentlemen and simply walk out to begin our leisurely stroll about the complex. Nervous over the message I could be sending, and a bit on edge from the talk with my mother, I shoved my hands into my pockets and bit my lip—trying desperately to fight the images bombarding my head. Though I hadn’t considered this to be a date, I could see how it might be seen as such. A guy, and a girl, walking around, getting to know each other. Then at the end there’d probably be a—
No.
I shook my head.
This was not a date. This was nothing of the sort. It was merely a casual outing with a member of the Guard—nothing more, nothing less.
In my insistence to dispel the notion from my mind, I reached out to knock on the door, only to come in contact with open space. The door had opened to reveal Jason, dressed casually in a black T-shirt that stretched across his broad chest and a pair of simple blue jeans. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said, then swallowed—hoping, to God or whomever might be listening, that my cheeks had not reddened from the thoughts coursing through my head.
“Sorry it took me so long. I was just getting ready.”
“That’s fine.” I moved aside as he stepped out, turning to lock the door. “I wasn’t sure if you’d heard me the first time. Hence the second knock.”
“You didn’t knock a second time,” he said with a smile.
That time I blushed, but pushed it aside just as quickly before starting forward to lead him in our endless pursuit across the complex. “So,” I said as he jogged the few feet to catch up. “How’s your day been going?”
“It’s been going fine.” He slid his hands into his pockets as he fell into pace beside me. “Just woke up not too long ago. I figured you’d come around sometime this morning, so I figured I’d better get out of bed.”
“I’m not bothering you by coming around so early, am I?”
“No,” he said. “Like I said: I figured you’d be up and about. I wanted to spend some time with you. Get to know you a little more.”
“Well,” I replied. “You’re welcome to ask anything you’d like.”
“Why’d you join the Guard?”
I grimaced.
Of course he’d open with the hardest question of all.
“Sorry,” he said after a moment, as if he hadn’t anticipated that it might be a touchy subject. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine.”
“No,” I replied. “It’s not that. It’s just… well…”
I closed my eyes, sighed, then opened them to find that we’d wandered toward the center of the complex—near where the small park that used to stand had been repurposed into a field to keep the farm animals within. Inside, several cows, sheep, and even chickens ran amok, herded by collies from one side to another as men and women tended to their respective tasks.
Jason set a hand on my shoulder.
I immediately grimaced and shied away. “It’s been six years since everything started.” I stepped forward and leaned onto the fence that separated us from the nearby farm animals. “I just… thought that maybe something would change.”
“That They would leave?” Jason asked.
“Or that we would be rescued,” I replied.
“By who?”
“I don’t know. Russia. China. Australia. There has to be somewhere They haven’t… well… colonized.”
It was such an ugly word, colonization—reminiscent of times long gone: when we, as native humans, had conquered the world and the lesser peoples within it. Why, alien life coming to Earth was no different than the Europeans coming to settle the Americas. History liked to claim we made peace—that we broke bread, exchanged corn, ate turkey and all that other nonsense—but in reality, it was we who had poisoned them with smallpox and other infectious diseases, leading to the utter genocide of millions upon millions of people.
Maybe this was just history’s way of repeating itself in the modern age.
Maybe we weren’t supposed to be rescued.
Maybe, like all those poor Natives, this was our extinction event.
Maybe—
Sighing, I reached up to run a hand through my hair and found myself unable to return my eyes to Jason’s. It made sense, in a way, that we would exchange tales of woe during our first major outing. While I didn’t blame him for asking, I wasn’t sure if it would be fair to ask about his story in return.
Rather than question him myself, he answered for me.
“My parents were Harvested on the first night of the invasion,” Jason said, coming up alongside me and leaning against the wooden fencing like I had moments before. “We’d been outside watching the stars when we saw Them appear. At first, we thought it was a meteor shower. Then, when They came closer, we realized They were something else.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“My mother and father were beamed up almost instantly. There was literally nothing they could do. One minute they were standing there, then the next they were floating in midair. They screamed for me to run—to get into the house and dial 9-1-1. Then they just… disappeared.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, reaching out to set a hand on his shoulder.
His muscles tightened beneath my touch. Though I wanted to feel offended, I realized his reaction was not unlike my own. I drew my hand away and settled it at my side.
“I think about what you’ve gone through and realize how lucky I am to still have my mom and sister.” I turned toward him as one of the dogs barked and led a number of sheep away from the cows an individual was attempting to milk. “I think about everything that’s happened to you and realize how utterly alone I could be in the world.”
“I’m not alone,” Jason replied. “Not when I have friends like you.”
“You consider us friends?” I asked after a moment.
He nodded and reached out to bump my shoulder with his fist. “We’re Guardsmen. We have to stick together. Don’t we? Code of honor and everything?”
“Yeah,” I said with a smile. “Code of honor.”
I reached out and bumped his fist just as the farmer milking the cows fell off his stool and spilled the bucket of milk.
“Ouch,” I said.
“Someone’s getting in trouble,” Jason replied with a slight smirk.
“Aren’t you glad we aren’t working in the fields?” I asked.
“Yeah. More than glad.”
I frowned.
Something about the way he spoke made
me think he wasn’t being completely honest.
In looking at him, and at the way his eyes narrowed to examine what was happening before us, I wondered if he would’ve preferred to do something else—and if, like me, circumstance had led him to a calling he felt he couldn’t ignore.
“Jason,” I said after a moment’s hesitation.
“Yeah?” he replied, his gaze still lost in the fields.
“Do you want to go get a bite to eat?”
He merely turned his eyes to look at me, said, “Sure,” then began to lead us on.
Lunch was served every day at noon in the wooded area where tall trees grew and picnic tables were in abundance. As Jason and I fell into line with the conglomeration of people appearing from various parts of the apartment complex, I tried to spot my mother. A crowd of cooks stood arranged along the simple retractable tables, beneath tents that served to keep bugs away. I frowned when I couldn’t find her.
“Something wrong?” Jason asked.
“No,” I said, then paused to consider his words before saying, “I was looking for my mom.”
“Was she expecting you?”
“Kind of,” I said. “But I guess it doesn’t matter. She’s probably busy right now anyway.”
He shrugged and didn’t offer any further commentary as he progressed down the line, toward where the cooks stood like sentinels slopping food and slinging bread onto trays. Judging by the scent of honey in the air and the big vats of sticky-looking substances, the day’s meal was just as my mom had said it would be: oatmeal and honey, complete with a side of steaming fresh bread made from the wheat in the fields. My stomach rumbled in anticipation and my mouth watered at the thought of eating such delicious food. I somehow managed to restrain myself from pushing forward and took a tray as we made our way along the serving tables.
“I remember when we were kids,” Jason said as he took one of the trays in hand, “and we used to get so excited about going to lunch.”
“It was the only time we got to feel normal,” I offered. “The only time we got to be… well… kids.”
I remembered those days clearly—when, after settling into Fort Hope, and once the existential fear of alien abduction had left my mind, Xiomara and I would follow our mother to the kitchens. We’d help with whatever activities we could before we ran free during the hour-long period designated for lunch each day. It never got old—us, together, running through the park, weaving among the wooden benches and tables while playing tag or hide-and-go-seek. I was never any good at the latter, but boy could I sure run. I was always the first to take off and the last to be tagged, all because I was so fast.