The Distance

by Jeremy Robinson

  The bullet cuts through empty space and then punches through the branches above. There’s nothing there. No ugly face. No concealed form. But I can hear it moving, sliding through the brush.

  I crawl to Mark. We’re both freaking out, there’s no denying that. As much as I’m sure we would both like to handle the situation with the calm confidence of James Bond, we’re more like twin rabbits trapped by a wolf. Well, if rabbits carried rifles.

  “Tell me if you see it,” I say.

  “See it?” The quiver in Mark’s voice makes him hard to understand. “I can’t see anything, man.”

  “Just tell me if you know where it—”

  “There!” he says, pointing behind me. I turn and pull the trigger. Nothing happens.

  I forgot to chamber the next round.

  A warbling shriek—the creature’s battle cry—rips through the night, drawing shouts from me and Mark. I pull down on the lever, pointing the rifle toward the sound. The spent round pops out of the chamber, allowing the next to take its place. As the lever snaps back up, completing the half-second action, a face slides out of the gloom, focused on me. That horrible face. Its bark-like crags. Its oily, blank eyes. It scowls at me. It loathes me, I think.

  No...its annoyed by me, but...indifferent. I am nothing in its eyes, and it is nothing in mine until it focuses its attention in my direction, which it does now with painful results.

  I feel the pain before I see the attack. Agony explodes in my shoulder, and my eyes turn toward the source. The Blur’s long finger has punched through the meat of my shoulder, slipping inside my body and striking bone, etching grooves.

  A scream builds and then erupts from my lips.

  The Blur’s face remains unmoving.

  “Oh my god!” Mark shouts, kicking away from the monster. “Oh my god!”

  The Blur whips its head toward him. The face disappears.

  What the f—

  The face slams back into focus as the creature turns back to me. There’s a swelling pressure inside my shoulder, and then the Blur yanks its finger out. The sudden jolt sends a spasm through my body, clutching one set of muscles after another, spreading from my torso out through my arms and down to my hands, which clench shut and pull the rifle’s trigger.

  The weapon fires into the Blur at point blank range. An earsplitting shriek so horrid that it brings tears to my eyes is followed by the sound of snapping limbs. For a moment, I think the thing has torn into Mark, but the crunching sound isn’t bones. It’s branches, and it’s fading.

  I hit it.

  I shot it!

  Accidentally, but still. It’s something.

  I roll toward Mark and grab his arm. “Are you okay?”

  He’s got a squirrely look in his eyes, like he’s not okay, but when he turns to me, focus comes back like the shifting colors of a slowly changing mood ring. A smile emerges. “Dude, you were badass. Were you in the military or something?”

  His question staggers me. I’m not sure which part of my clumsy, fear-filled, nearly botched assault fell into the badass category, but I decide not to argue. The kid has clearly not seen a single 80s action movie.

  The UFO’s bright light flickers in time with a loud hum, pulsing three times. In a blink, the light slips into the sky, taking its place among the stars, once again unseen in plain sight.

  Feeling victorious, but beaten, I grunt as I stand and offer my hand to Mark. He takes it, and I pull him to his feet. But he doesn’t let go of my hand. Instead he shakes it, thanking me and then saying, “You never told me your name.”

  “August,” I say, and the word hits him like a sucker punch to the gut.

  My hand flings free from his as he staggers back, stopping when he hits a tree. He looks winded. Wounded. There are genuine tears in his eyes. “What? August? For real?”

  “Yeah,” I say, unsure on how to elaborate on my name. His reaction reminds me of Steve Manke, who had a similar reaction to my name before dying.

  But Mark isn’t about to die. Far from it. Instead, he shoves off the tree and wraps his arm around me, weeping into my shoulder. Confused, I return the hug the way unclose relatives might, with a gentle pat and a sidelong glance that says, ‘Are you really hugging me?’

  “I thought they were crazy, man,” he says. “I...it just didn’t make any sense.” He leans back. Looks me in the eyes. “But they weren’t crazy, were they? They knew.”

  “Knew...what?”

  “How to survive it.” He lets go of me, hands on his head, and he starts pacing. “And man, holy shit, they knew about you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, dude.” He stops pacing. “It was their final words. Well, not really their final words. They told me they loved me. But they left this.” He digs inside his pocket and pulls out a long, yellow legal sized sheet of lined paper. He unfolds it with shaking hands and turns it around. There are two words written in bold marker, and they stagger me.

  I take the page from him and read the two words again, hoping that they’ll change, because it means that all of this is happening for a reason beyond our control. But the words haven’t changed. I read them aloud.

  “Find August.”

  “I found you man, I can’t believe it, but I found you!”

  “Yeah, you did,” I say, despite the fact that I found him. “The question is, why?”

  31

  AUGUST

  “What’s his name? How did he survive? Where’s he from? Did he get hurt?”

  Poe’s questions rattle against my eardrum faster than I could possibly reply. After telling her that I’d found the mystery survivor and confronted another Blur, she launched into the questions, most of which I can’t remember. I cut in with, “I’m fine, thanks for asking.” And that’s not even the truth. The hole in my shoulder, which stopped bleeding strangely fast on its own, hurts like...well, it hurts like a hole in my shoulder.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I’m just excited.”

  “Me, too,” I say, glancing at Mark, who is fast asleep, wrapped in a sleeping bag, head on his backpack. He’s lit by the dull green glow of the sat phone’s display. After recovering our gear, we returned to the cover of the woods, hiking a few miles east before settling down for the night.

  “What’s that sound?” she asks.

  “Mark,” I say. “That’s his name, and he snores. Loudly.” Mark’s night-song isn’t a solo, though. Scores of chirping insects and peeper frogs join in, making the night louder than the day. “He’s fine. A bit freaked out, but fine.”

  “How did he survive?” she asks.

  That’s the second time she’s asked that question, and she’s trying to sound casual about it. During all the time we’ve talked, that’s one story she hasn’t told me. She knows all about how I survived, hidden below ground in a dark matter laboratory. But when I’ve asked her, she’s deflected or claimed ignorance. Not wanting to make her uncomfortable, I haven’t pushed. Partly because I don’t care how she survived. I’m just happy she did.

  However, her interest in Mark’s survival story piques my interest anew.

  When I don’t answer right away, she says, “Did he tell you?”

  During our hike through the dark, after explaining everything I knew about the Blur and Poe, Mark and I traded survival stories. How could we not? His ends with a note that reads, ‘Find August.’ Rather than tell her straight out, I fish for information, using Mark’s story as bait. “Poe...did your parents know what was going to happen?”

  I hear a quick intake of air on the other end, but she says nothing.

  “Did they put you in something? Some kind of device?”

  “Is that what happened to Mark?” she asks.

  “His parents were a little off. UFO abductees. Drew schematics for strange devices on the walls. Stuff like that. They called him over in a panic and drugged him. He woke up in what he called an upright, padded coffin with a vent. It opened with a timed padlock. Sound familiar?”

  She doesn’t
reply, but I can hear her crying.

  “Poe.” My voice is gentle, like I used to talk to Claire when she got hurt. “Is this what happened to you? To your parents?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they ever talk about being abducted by aliens?” The question sounds so ridiculous it makes me cringe, but here we are, fighting strange translucent beings at the end of the world—well, the human race at least. I think the rest of the world is going to be just fine. I wonder if apes will evolve to take our place. Or maybe dolphins.

  “Yeah,” she says, but she doesn’t elaborate. “But I’m kind of relieved to know I’m not the only one. But what does that mean?”

  “It means there’s a plan.”

  “Whose?”

  “I don’t know. Poe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Does my name mean anything to you? I mean, before we found each other?”

  “Nothing more than the second most miserable month in the Northeast, after February. Why?”

  “Did your parents leave you a message? Two words?”

  She falls quiet again. I take that as a ‘yes.’ “What did it say?”

  “It was inside the pod—that’s what they called it—”

  “The pod,” I say. “Kind of like a human sized refrigerator?”

  “Have you seen one?” she asks.

  “Mark described it. Now, what was the message?”

  “Two words. ‘Stay home.’ Did Mark get a message?”

  “Yeah,” I say, not really wanting to talk about it. The implications are disconcerting.

  “Well?” Poe, I’ve learned, isn’t the most patient person on the planet. Out of the three of us, she’s definitely got the shortest fuse.

  “Mark’s note said, ‘Find August.’”

  “Geez.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “and here’s the kicker. I’m pretty sure that Steve Manke got the same message from whoever saved him. His last words were ‘Find August. I found you.’”

  “What does it mean?” she asks.

  “Are we straight shooting tonight?” That she kept these kinds of details from me is frustrating. I can understand how she’d be worried about my impression of her. But we’ve built a familial trust, and after our first encounters with the otherworldly, she should have told me about her parents. “No more secrets? No more holding back details?”

  “Okay.”

  “It means we’re pawns. Someone—or the Blur—knew what was coming. They positioned us, or at least waited until we were in position, and then pulled the trigger, setting us down a path they are either directing without our knowledge or accurately predicted to some degree.”

  “But they’re not in control of everything,” she says. “Steve died.”

  “Not until he found me, like he was told to do. Our meeting and his death might all be manipulations designed to keep us on task. To move us in certain directions.”

  “Free will is an illusion,” she says. “My father used to say that. About marketing. About laws. Religion. That our fates are predetermined by the world around us, that the external forces in the world are too great to surmount. I never thought he believed it. He was waxing eloquent. Trying to impress my mother. But maybe he was right? Maybe it wasn’t a theory. Maybe he knew.”

  I wish this sounded like conspiracy. That I could dismiss it all with a wave of my hand, the way I might an errant radio signal from space. But the conspiracy theorists, crackpot abductees and UFO nuts were right. They didn’t all see this coming, that’s for sure. There would be more survivors if they had. But we’re not alone in the universe. People have been abducted and the aliens are decidedly not friendly.

  “What do we do?” she asks. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been good at being told what to do. I don’t want my life to be controlled.”

  Neither do I. Free will is a deeply ingrained human desire going back to the time when humans didn’t have written languages. Agreeing to a plan is one thing. But manipulating people...only dictators and guilt tripping mothers can get away with it, and no one likes them for it. But there’s a problem with not toeing the line this time.

  “Not playing along means not coming to you,” I point out.

  Silence follows the revelation. Like me, she’s torn between the despicable—being controlled—and the unthinkable. Remaining alone.

  “I don’t know about you,” I say, “but I think I’d rather be a slave with company than a free man who dies alone. And I’m an introvert.”

  “If you reach me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If Steve’s role was always to die, we don’t know what our roles really are. Maybe you’ll never make it here.”

  “I will,” I say with more confidence than I feel. “They’re not infallible. They’re not perfect. The Blur tonight, it was trying to kill Mark, and I don’t think it had any intention of taking a bullet. Whatever their plan is, we can fight it, and them, and still find each other.”

  “Wow,” she says with a laugh. “You’re starting to sound...”

  “What?” I ask, expecting one of Poe’s humorous comparisons.

  Instead, she gets serious. “Strong. Capable.”

  My instinct is to joke at the compliments, but she’s right. I’m not the man I used to be.

  “You’re going to make it, aren’t you?”

  It’s not really a question, but I say, “Yes.”

  “I think that—oh!” She sounds surprised by something, and I’m about to ask what happened. If she’s okay. But she beats me to it. “Squirt is kicking. I should probably go. I think I need to eat something. Time for breakfast. Just...don’t stop, okay? I need you to get here. In one piece preferably.”

  “On my way,” I say. “Hanging up now.”

  “Okay.”

  “See ya.”

  “Bye.”

  “That Poe?” Mark asks.

  I’ve become so accustomed to having no one around that the question sounds like a thunderclap, and it nearly sends me sprawling to the ground. Mark laughs at my dramatic reaction. “Whoa, man. Chill.”

  “I’m chilling,” I say. Mark is from Southern California. A real surfer dude type. At least in the way he talks. The stereotype ends there. When not surfing, he was a senior at Cal-Tech. An engineer. Would have had a good life, and given his good looks—tan skin and dark hair from his Hawaiian mother and bright blue eyes from a German father—there probably wouldn’t be a woman out of his league. He also happens to be a relaxed, and kind, guy.

  He stretches and yawns, and I realize I can see him clearly even with the phone off. I look to the East and find a purple sky. The sun is rising. Poe and I talked through what was left of the night.

  “Said you wanted to get an early start, right?” Mark claps his knees and stands from his seated position without using his hands. He drops down into a stretch and flashes me a smile. “I’m good to go when you are.”

  I mentally explore my body. Aching from the long walk, swim and battle. My shoulder throbs with every movement. My feet...are bare. And I feel like I could pass out. “I hate you,” I say with just enough smile to let him know I’m joking. Well, half joking. “First, breakfast. Then we need to find me boots and caffeine. And bikes for both of us.”

  He helps me up and looks worried when I grunt. Without asking permission, he tugs open the hole in my shirt. “Better add antibiotics to your list. This doesn’t look so hot.”

  I pull my collar aside and look at the wound. It’s swollen and deep purple in the center and still not bleeding, which is a bonus, but there is a centimeter-thick ring of black skin a half inch away from the wound’s center, creating a bullseye.

  “Looks like Lyme disease rash,” Mark says.

  “I’m pretty sure Lyme is transmitted by ticks,” I say. “Not aliens.”

  “Yeah, dude,” Mark says, “but I’m pretty sure that should scare you shitless. Cause if it’s not Lyme, what is it?”

  32

  POE

  S
ix weeks have passed since Leila slaughtered the animals and tried to kill me. I have rarely ventured out, except the one time. I thought I might be able to salvage some of the chickens, put them in the freezer, but I didn’t have the stomach for it. I’ve avoided the barn, and the gore frozen inside it, since. It will be thawing soon, I think. Nights still bring the sharp bite of winter, but the days are warming into the mid-forties. A few more weeks and the temperature will rise into the sixties. When that happens... I’m going to have to burn that barn down, I think, but I have no idea how to do that without setting the forest ablaze. If I don’t, the smell will draw carrion animals—racoons, turkey vultures, coyotes—to my door. Not the best environment in which to have a baby. I’m going to have to deal with it soon, before my rounding belly gets too big. And it’s not just the animals. I still have the bags containing my parents’ remains and Leila’s, in a separate bag. I’ve always loved spring, with its delicious promises, but this time, I wish to remain in stasis. Forever winter. Squirt could just live inside me forever and I’d never have to bury my parents.

  I decided to relinquish any blame, to just forgive Leila, my only human, physical companion for months now. I never found out her story, but I’m choosing to believe that before the event, she was happy. A lovely person to be around, with friends and family, a life equal to or greater than my own. A life anyone would envy, full of joy and compassion, lacking in psychosis. It’s how I avoid feeling like I’m the crazy one. Whatever happened to her could have happened to me, but I was inexplicably hidden inside that tomb in the basement, riding out the storm, limbs intact with the rest of me.

  But then there’s August. In my mind, his name is spelled in all capital letters, written like a five year old’s early script—that potent, careful and important. A significant mark, the crayon pressure squeaking along the paper. When a child first writes her name, with all the letters included, it personifies an important step in identity. She exists, and can write to tell about it. August maintains my existence. He preserves my identity. I have used all the crayons in my mental box to write his name across my brain.