The Distance

by Jeremy Robinson

  I run to a window on the side of the room, above the couch, and peer through the thin line. The forest on this side is filling in nicely, the rush of early summer growth, no wavering shapes in sight. What is hitting the wires?

  Kneeling on the couch, I plunge my hand between the cushions and take hold of the rifle buried there. I spend a lot of time on the couch, and I pictured a Blur coming through the living room door, thinking me defenseless only to find a rifle quick at hand. It’s not exactly what happens, but I still feel glad for the preparation. My father’s rifle slides out from between the cushions, loaded and ready to go, covered in dust bunnies. With light fingers, I brush off the rifle, along with the surge of sadness that comes unbidden, with his possessions.

  The second tripwire jingles, the bells a different size than the first. Without meaning to, I set up a musical early warning system, the sounds as lovely as a porch wind chime.

  Any animal with a brain or instincts would have run from the first chimes. The identity of my visitor is down to two possibilities. Human or Blur.

  They’re coming, I think, but I’m afraid to commit to the idea. It could be people. August has twenty-eight people with him. That could happen to me.

  The sky starts to darken and color. Dusk is upon us.

  Night is coming. August’s forbidden darkness. Maybe he was right.

  I’m tempted to open the front door to the porch, demand whoever it is to show themselves. I imagine laughing at a shy deer, tangled in the wire, and freeing it, while Luke barks from the house. He would want to play with it.

  Maybe that’s all it is.

  My eyes are slits, squinting through the planks over the window. I lean down. The window is open a crack. I turn and press my ear as close as I can, squishing my head against the plywood. After the second jingle, it’s been silent.

  Remembering the back door, I scoot back through the kitchen, lock the deadbolt and bump a long section of two-by four onto the hooks I attached to the frame. It will take a battering ram to get through it. Or whatever an advanced civilization might use.

  Back door secure, I mentally run through the upstairs, everything tight and locked down. Basement, secure. The bulkhead lock is thick steel, and the door at the bottom is boarded up.

  How will I know if it’s the Bad Blur? August, where are you? How will I know?

  His voice arrives in my head, my own personal Yoda, or the onset of schizophrenia. “You’ll know, Poe. You’ll know.”

  I’m panicking. Impending doom overwhelms me. I can’t do this. I can’t stand, on my own, against this. Not now.

  I don’t care who is out there.

  Let it come.

  I don’t care.

  And then, I do. Because I can see it.

  The backdrop of trees behind the cleared space of the front yard, where Leila threw the ball to Luke, a million years ago, warbles, as though seen through running water.

  The shimmering quickens, and I know what comes next. The heavily lined face, like wood, materializes in a flash, like a light switch, somehow the black oiliness meeting my eyes, even through the boarded window. The eyes promise suffering, and indifference to it.

  I half expect to see anger and aggression seeping out of this thing, my enemy, but it looks as frozen-faced and uncaring as the first Blur I saw. It’s a mask, I remind myself. A biological suit. The Blur don’t have faces. Not really.

  It’s difficult to aim out the window, the opening so low and narrow. I hadn’t thought of this. My preparations are those of a bored and broken woman. August was right. I’m out of time, and I didn’t focus. Randomly, without aiming through the scope, I fire the rifle in the general direction of the Blur. A part of me just wanting to miss. Let them come.

  The explosive shot reverberates through the living room, assaulting my ears. Squirt flinches with a kick. But I don’t slow. I pull the rifle back, and look through the window. The shimmering shape quavers. The tall grass beneath it flattens out. Did I hit it? Is it dead? No, I think, vaguely remembering something August said about fire.

  I’m sorry, Squirt, I gave in too soon. You should have picked someone else. Someone mightier.

  Be mighty now.

  I chamber the next round, shove the rifle out the window and pull the trigger. I repeat the process again and again without checking for results, firing an aimless swath through the slender woods in the front yard.

  You can all die, motherfuckers.

  Descending darkness stops my barrage. I glance through the window. If there are any others, I can’t see them. I won’t see them. Fatigue settles into my core, weighing down my limbs. The pendulum that is my hormone-laden mind shifts. I don’t want to figure anything out anymore. Don’t want to fight. The loss of connection with August, and the coming night, plucked out my last thread of give-a-shit.

  But I shot it, didn’t I? It could be dead.

  The third jingle, the bells’ peal closest to the house, the highest note, agitates the sudden quiet from my ceased rifle. So alone, yet obviously not, I place my hands on my belly, feeling around with deep breaths for Squirt. Squirt, who in the absence of August, can give me strength for whatever is out there.

  I feel nothing. My heart barrels over, thumping. Did the rifle firing affect her? The sound of it? The jolts? I rub my hands all over my belly, which is only smooth, round and motionless. Have I harmed her?

  My worries are interrupted by the motion detector light illuminating the side of the house.

  Not the front.

  I don’t want to look. I feel around for Squirt, and again, nothing.

  I scurry into the kitchen, hands and knees, and peer through the small window.

  The yard, cast in the triggered flood light, shimmers. For as far as I can see, past the edge of the light’s influence, into the dark yard. The woods. Everything.

  The air itself appears to be alive.

  A horde of Blur, come to collect their prize.

  47

  POE

  The yard, illuminated by the motion sensor light, looks like it’s underwater. So many Blur, no separation between them. The visual distortion extends past the edge of the light into the now darkness of early evening, their bodies overlapping, crushed together in countless numbers. There could be twenty of them. There could be fifty.

  What are they waiting for? What do they want?

  My hands find my belly again, feel for Squirt, who is still, motionless.

  I have lost August.

  I have lost my reasoning.

  I have lost my baby.

  Let them come.

  I’m done.

  I lay down on the couch in the dark, quiet house, a shell. Luke, who had been hiding under an upstairs bed during the shooting, pads down the stairs and into the living room. He licks my hand, dangling off the couch. I stare at him, glassy eyed. I don’t pet him. I notice each of his eyebrow hairs, lit up from the outside light, his soft, golden forehead, where I always kiss him.

  Everything is quiet.

  And then, assault.

  The house rattles.

  Doors first.

  I should have listened to August. Should have focused past the fissures. Should have stayed sane.

  They’re trying to get in.

  Luke barks at the front door and runs into the kitchen, barking at the window and the back door. Apparently we’re surrounded. I seem to be floating somewhere outside of my body. In the room? Outside of the house? I don’t know and I don’t care. I watch Luke run around, barking, frantic, the sounds of actual, living aliens pulling siding and window frames off the exterior of my house.

  They fly through the galaxy from who knows where and they can’t make it into my house? Little old pregnant me? Can’t they just blast their way in? Turn the walls to powder? The hell is taking them so long? A trickle of information finds its way from the depths: they have limits. August says. They’re not soldiers. They’re scientists. Just because they’re an advanced civilization, doesn’t mean they carry around alien
bazookas.

  They were fighting. In the sky. They must have some kind of weaponry...

  You can’t pluck a lone woman from a house with weapons designed for shooting down other UFOs.

  They want us alive.

  I sit up and lean against the back of the couch like a drugged person. Indifference lolls my head to the side, as I watch the second wall of my interior brick building crumble into the widening cracks. Then the picture goes blank, like the end of an old-fashioned movie reel, white space at the end of the show, the flap of the projection film, around and around.

  I lose consciousness, slipping to the side, feeling gravity’s tug.

  Then nothing.

  I awake when I hit the floor, one arm draped over my big belly. From my sideways visual, Luke faces the big living room window, his front paws up on the couch, barking and snarling. Slow motion barking, his sound deep and long. A long, thin, sharp object extends into the house, sneaking through the small opening where I had been firing the rifle into the yard, aimed toward Luke’s chest.

  Is that Luke?

  The sweet, docile and passive pet is gone. It looks like Luke, but he’s transformed into an enraged beast, finally finding the canine savagery he lacked when we first met. The sight of him shakes my apathy. He is going to protect me, or die trying.

  A voice, actual, real and known, although not one I’ve ever heard before, speaks in thin, sprawling ink across the white space—the space where I used to produce art, the space where I used to care.

  You were made for a purpose.

  You were saved for a purpose.

  Get up.

  Get.

  Up.

  Fight!

  I stand, dizzied. Get my feet beneath me.

  The finger is inches from Luke’s fluffy chest. He hasn’t seen it. These are August’s Blur. They kill with those fingers.

  They’re going to kill my dog!

  Crystal clarity snaps into my mind, the pendulum of sanity no longer swinging.

  “Not fucking happening,” I say, and then I yell, “Luke!” He bounds off the couch to me, tail wagging, savagery gone. His eyes flit toward the window, but he stays with me, the alpha in charge once more.

  From the kitchen I grab the largest knife, and chop at the needle-like finger now tugging at the wood covering the window.

  The cleaved digit falls off and lands behind the couch, the arm withdrawing from the window. Wasting no time, I grab the rifle and aim out the window. I pull the trigger, reload and repeat using the rounds filling my pockets, balancing on my bare feet, a tiny woodland sprite gone bonkers.

  Out of ammunition, I pull out the box waiting for me on a nearby shelf and reload. Shattering glass erupts into the kitchen, skittering through the gaps between the boards. They must be standing on the bulkhead, to reach the window. A rancid chemical smell, burnt plastic, roils into the house like thick clouds, causing me to gag. Luke runs to the kitchen, barking and snarling, ready to defend. But what else can I do, aside from spray bullets? I’m not even sure it’s working.

  “Come on, Poe,” I say aloud, my words a croak. “You were raised better than this.” I will not let them down.

  What did August say?

  A single word enters my thoughts.

  Fire.

  You can kill them with fire.

  Molotov cocktail, I think, remembering his mention of glass bottles. I recall footage of the revolts in the Ukraine. The rebels used Molotov cocktails against the riot police, driving them back, their shields and numbers suddenly useless.

  I run to the basement, even as I hear another window shatter, somewhere else on the first floor. In one corner, my parents’ recycling still sits, never actually recycled after their deaths. They did so much of their own homemade cooking, canning and brewing, the recycling sat here forever, never quite full enough to bother with. I rifle through the glass and plastic and find a whiskey bottle. Then two more.

  Quicker, Poe. They’re coming.

  I spin in a circle, looking for some kind of flammable fuel, and I spot a red gas can sitting by the bulkhead door. With the three bottles half full, I take rags from the workbench and stuff them into the bottles. I don’t know if I’m doing this right—every move I perform is based on actors in movies I’ve watched with my guy friends, usually while doing drinking games or drawing.

  Wood snaps upstairs, sharp and surprising. Three bottles in hand, I huff up the stairs, careful not to trip again, and I place them on the table. In the living room, I pick up my rifle, which I realize I should have never left. I aim it right into the undulating mass of warbling Blur, pressed against the cracking wood of the kitchen window above the sink. Then fire. The sound barely registers on my ears now, either toughened, or deafened. The bullet punches through wood and glass, and then body suit. The Blur falls away, which I see as a sudden clearing of the air.

  I fire again and again, grunting, exhausted. Is this hurting Squirt? Am I hurting them? Their chemical pungency scorches the insides of my nose and mouth, making my eyes water. I reload, and fire into the crowd outside the kitchen windows, like some kind of crazed police officer at a protest, afraid and confused by the throng’s intent. Then I run to the living room window and repeat.

  A long, dull cramp climbs up the side of my abdomen and then tightens across the width of it. And then another, the tightness distracting me.

  Oh my god, no.

  Not labor.

  Not now. It’s too early.

  The mammalian instincts from months ago in the woods kick in hard and sudden, a whiplash, like stepping on the gas. I reload again and again, spending all my ammunition. I’m kicking ass. I’ve done enough damage to stagger some of them backward from the kitchen window, but many more climb up onto the bulkhead, their faces slipping in and out of view, my brain forming new ways to see their invisible outlines.

  Time to push them back a little further, I decide.

  I get a lighter from the junk drawer, lift the bottles from the table and head upstairs.

  Way up in the attic, I didn’t bother covering the two tiny windows. That’s where I go now, with my matches and three small bombs. The windows are ancient, stuck shut, maybe even painted shut. I have to stand on a chest to reach them. Using an old, small club, like something you’d used to churn butter or grind grains, I pound against the window until it shatters. But I swing too hard. My arm slips through the broken glass.

  I scream, my arm bloodied, glass splinters sticking out of it. I leave them in my arm, but clear the rest from the window.

  Now or never, Poe.

  From two stories up, I lean out just a bit, flick the lighter to life and place it against the rag. It smolders briefly, but nothing happens. What did I do—the rag is dry! I tip the bottle upside down, watching the gasoline inside soak quickly through the rag. The smell of gasoline blends in with the acrid odor of the Blur, but makes me smile. I try the lighter again.

  The rag ignites immediately.

  I hurl the bottle down and just far enough away to not set the house on fire.

  I hope.

  A beautiful explosion lights the night.

  I will listen to everything you say from now on, August.

  My left arm is seriously bleeding, but I know it will be worse if I pull the glass out. I hurl the second one down onto the crowd, enjoying the sight of them scattering, now ablaze, high pitched shrieking in the air, like I’ve just lit a bunch of cartoon chipmunks on fire. Another tight spasm ripples across my abdomen, the cramp stable and lasting.

  You have to wait, honey, you have to wait.

  God, not now.

  On the opposite end of the attic, the other window waits, intact, Blur below it at the kitchen. This time, I see my old baseball bat in the corner, and a rush of youthful, pre-pregnancy energy fills me. I am still that person.

  Two swings, hard. Even with the bleeding arm and the enormous middle, the small window shatters. In seconds I’ve thrown the third cocktail down onto the Blur.


  I peer down. Chaos. And lots of fire.

  A third cramp pulls my abdomen so taut I have to sit down and take deep breaths. When it subsides, I realize I may have just set my house on fire.

  Distracted by this, I hustle down the stairs, sweaty, barefoot and bleeding from my arm. When I turn the corner into the living room, I run smack into an invisible wall.

  The door hangs on hinges, deadbolt torn away, wood shattered.

  They got through while I was upstairs. I don’t even have time to wonder where Luke is, before invisible, shimmering limbs surround my legs and lift me into the air, flipping me upside down, my head inches from my parents’ braided rug.

  I still have the baseball bat in my hand and swing it, upside down, at all the warbling nothingness around me. It connects with alternating squishy and cracking sounds. It’s quickly taken away from me.

  Why did I leave the rifle? I suck at this!

  Luke’s name is in my throat, but I want him to be safe, so instead I think, Hide, Luke, hide. Limbs flailing, blood rushing to my face, coughing from the inescapable burning stench of the Blur, I scream at them.

  “Bastards! Let me go!” I can’t breathe. My own heavy belly is suffocating me, upside down like this. I get the sense they’re laughing at me as I feel another texture hold my arms fast, and I’m tipped horizontally, like on a stretcher.

  They’re carrying me out of my house. This is it. The end of my one beautiful life: craziness in the woods, like my parents.

  “Help,” I cough. Just a whisper.

  It’s quiet as my captors carry me out onto the grass, the flames already gone, burned away with the gasoline.

  A sudden but distant noise startles the Blur holding me to a standstill.

  Grinding.

  The noise should terrify me. It took my parents from me. It took everyone—including Leila. But when I hear it this time, I smile. The sound gives me hope.

  The noise increases in volume, just like before, and the Blur spring into action, hurrying. I see a similar craft like the one in the woods, out past my driveway, around the corner, the two intersecting rings.