by Brian Yansky
“This does not seem like normal human behavior,” Bart says in that professorial voice he uses sometimes.
“It is,” I say.
“No, it’s not,” both the girls say at the same time, which just sets them off on another laughing jag.
I offer Lauren the window seat because she’s been sitting in the middle and looking kind of miserable there. She says I’d be really uncomfortable in the middle. There’s not enough room. Catlin suggests Lauren sit on my lap, then smiles innocently. Lauren and I discuss the possibility for a while, each coming up with reasons for and against it, and I catch Catlin rolling her eyes. I finally ask Lauren if she would please just sit there.
“That’s my gun,” I say when she shifts away from my lap like she’s sat on a tack. I just want to be clear, but I guess I’ve said it kind of abruptly.
Both Lauren and I turn red.
“Embarrassment,” Bartemous says with way too much enthusiasm. “Blood rushing to the face. I’ve read about it.”
We find the interstate. I consider messing with Bart some more by talking about how light the traffic is, but I don’t because I’m suddenly aware of how empty everything feels. A city without people is unnatural. The loneliness of it is all around me, like air, and, like air, I have to breathe it in. I have no choice.
We’re into the mountains by midafternoon, and by evening we’ve reached Taos.
Just after we cross the gorge, I hear others like us, or at least one other human mind. I’m sure of it. Then, as we get into town, it’s gone. Something else is present, something large and powerful and definitely not human.
“We made it,” Lauren says, sounding surprised and happy. She doesn’t hear what’s going on, so she doesn’t know that we’ve made it right into a trap.
“This is very bad,” Bartemous says.
We turn off the main street and into a plaza, the plaza of my dream. Bartemous is concentrating on putting up a shield. Something smashes it to pieces like it’s nothing; Bart groans and slumps over the wheel. A second later the truck crashes against a wall I can’t see. I’m thrown forward into the windshield. Something sharp cuts into my forehead and blood trickles down my cheek. The doors of the truck fly off their hinges and I’m yanked out; we all are. No one physically touches us, but it feels like giant hands are reaching out and batting us around.
Then there’s wind behind us, and it blows me — all of us — across the plaza. My knees and my elbows scrape against the pavement as I tumble over it. Skin rips from my hands as I try to break my fall and grab for anything I can. I get hold of a small tree in a planter, but it snaps as I’m shoved on by the wind.
Bart wakes up enough to mumble, “I am a citizen of the Republic.”
He tries to say it louder, but the wind eats up his words. Then the wind dies as quickly as it came, and I’m still. Something holds me to the ground. It’s holding the others, too, including Bart. Then I see Lord Vert. It’s the first time I’ve seen his physical self. He’s larger than even the Handler next to him. His skin has a deeper green.
These killed a Handler. He turns to the Handler beside him. Hard to believe. Slaves. Look at them.
The Handler seems almost embarrassed by something, but he looks at us.
I am a citizen, Bart thinks with as much authority as someone whose face is pushed into the pavement can have. More than I would have thought. I am a man of reputation, a scholar. You must release me immediately.
A scholar? Lord Vertenomous replies. Surely a scholar knows the penalty for assisting runaways. I am Lord Vertenomous, scholar. You dare to tell me what I must do?
I was not —
I feel Lord Vertenomous’s mind move, and Bart goes silent. We’re all lifted to our feet and then off the ground. It’s then that I realize Bart is dead.
Sorry for your loss, Lord Vertenomous thinks. He turns to us then, but he avoids looking at Catlin. She looks right at him. Now, where are the others?
I feel Lord Vertenomous pushing into me, and I throw up a door and slam it shut. He’s surprised. He bangs on it. I manage to keep it shut, though I feel it give, feel that in a second it will break apart. Before it does, the Handler distracts him.
This one — the Handler points to Lauren — came here to find them. They came because they believed the rebels are here, but they know nothing.
Lord Vertenomous looks angry then. Disgusting creatures. Look at them.
Then I feel his anger turn to me, feel it like something smothering me, like hands around my throat. I gasp for breath. I hear Catlin rush at him with her mind, but he pushes her away like she’s made of paper. Lauren is being held by the Handler.
My breath is gone. I’m losing consciousness. When I’m just to the edge, I’m pulled back. I drop to the ground. I hear the others hit the ground, too. I look up and see Lord Vertenomous looking around the square. I feel his surprise.
People come out of the small shops all around us, probably fifty or sixty of them. I can hear their minds. Some of them join in the imperfect and messy way that Lauren and Catlin and I join. I feel the power of those joined increase. There are ten in one group. The others have fewer. Even that group of ten is still not as strong as the Handler and certainly not as strong as Lord Vertenomous, but there are so many attackers that some of them get past the Handler’s defenses and he falls, overpowered. They’ve killed him. They’ve killed him with their minds.
I get to my feet. The impossible is possible. Lord Vertenomous is fighting the rebels. A ring of energy expands out from him and breaks against them, and a lot of them fall. I throw something like a roundhouse kick. He turns to block it and slips slightly. I see it then, an open place, a chance. I throw everything I’ve got at Lord Vertenomous. I hit him with my mind, my heart, everything that makes me human.
The wind comes back and I’m blown onto my butt and I think I’ve missed. Then I feel the wind reverse back into him. It makes a sucking sound, and branches break from trees and everything is pulled toward Lord Vertenomous. But all this lasts only a second.
He’s dead.
I look around the square. I stand up slowly, and I see the people. They don’t look like a commercial for Target, that’s for sure. They look dirty, and their clothes are worn, and they’re beaten up. There are many lying on the ground; some are dead, and some of them are alive but hurt. Catlin goes to help whomever she can. I hear people say, “Healer.” Lauren comes to my side.
“You killed him,” a woman says. “The alien, the strong one. You fought the same way they fight.”
“I don’t know,” I say. I’m confused by what she says. I’m in shock and I hurt all over.
Others are whispering the same thing. He fought like they fight. He killed the alien that called himself a lord.
The crowd parts as two men walk up to us. One has long white hair and the other is blond. They look like father and son. The younger one is my age or a little older.
“You led them here,” the one about my age says accusingly.
“We didn’t know they were following us,” Lauren says.
The people around are quiet now, waiting for the man with white hair to speak. He’s their leader, obviously. There’s something about him that feels young and strong even though he looks old. “You kill like they kill. How did you learn to kill that way?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“He is a warrior,” one of the women says.
Someone else whispers the word.
The blond guy swings around and glares at the woman who spoke. “That doesn’t make him a warrior. One kill doesn’t make him a warrior.”
“You had this power before the aliens invaded?” The white-haired man asks me. “The power of a warrior?”
“No.”
“No,” he says, as if he is agreeing with me.
“He doesn’t know anything,” the guy my age says. “He was lucky. The alien was being attacked on all sides and he was lucky.”
“No,” White Hair says. “No one has th
at much luck.”
“We need to go,” the young guy says. “More will be coming.”
“Do you wish to come with us?” White Hair says to me and Lauren.
“They were tracking them,” the young guy says. “That’s one of their lords dead there. The aliens will come looking for these three, and we’ll be in even more danger.”
“She is not a new blood,” White Hair says pointing at Catlin, who is bent over an injured person. “She is a healer. And he kills like they kill. They will add to our strength. In any event, we cannot leave them.”
I look at Lauren. She nods.
“We’ll come,” I say.
“I am Lorenzo Sergio de Cabeza the third, but you may call me Doc.”
“You’re a doctor?” Lauren says.
“Not the medical kind. Two PhDs. I was an indecisive youth.”
The younger guy stomps off, but everyone else seems happy to have us. Many of them welcome us. Doc tells us to jump into one of the truck beds. We do. Our truck joins a convoy of trucks and jeeps heading up into the mountains.
One of the three boys sitting in our truck says, “Welcome to New America.”
“New America?” I say “Where’s New America?”
“We’re New America,” he says. “That’s what Doc calls us.”
New America. All the death. All we’ve lost. It seems like too much. How can there be a New America? Then Lauren takes my hand. Her hand is small and smooth.
“New America,” she says like she’s deciding something.
I look at Lauren and at the trees and at the blue sky, and I take my world back. It’s our world. Ours.
I want to thank my wife, Frances Hill, for her patience and encouragement. Thanks to my agent, Sara Crowe, for her persistent faith and encouragement and, of course, finding a home for my work. Thanks to all the staff at Candlewick, particularly my editor, Jennifer Yoon, for insightful edits, thoughtful suggestions, and plain hard work on this manuscript. Thanks also to my writing group: Varian Johnson, April Lurie, Julie Lake, Frances Hill, and Helen Hemphill. Also thanks to my one-day writing group: Don Tate, Debbie Gonzales, Shana Burg, and Donna Bowman Bratton. Last, thanks to my parents, Bill and Agnes Yansky, for their ridiculous assertion that my sister and I could be whatever we wanted to be. Sometimes ridiculous assertions can make all the difference.
BRIAN YANSKY is the author of My Road Trip to the Pretty Girl Capital of the World and Wonders of the World. About Alien Invasion, he says, “I started off wanting to write the feel-good alien invasion novel of the year (which sounds presumptuous until you realize there probably wouldn’t have been any competition), but the situation — the destruction of most of the earth’s population and the enslavement of the survivors — redirected my aim. Now it seems I’ve written a funny-serious novel about alien invasion and the survival of the human race — an almost-feel-good alien invasion novel. Hope you like it.” Brian Yansky holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College and is an assistant professor at Austin Community College. He lives in Austin, Texas.