Stunning.
I turn toward it, shaking with relief. It shimmers fast, the mask emerging to gaze at me. The expressionless mask, same as the rest, feels different, the scent of roses surrounding me.
A long, white tendril rises up, emerging from the tip of the creature’s finger. I take one step back, but then hold my ground. It hasn’t hurt me yet. I glance down at the image it has created with me. It is an artist, like me. It understands life, and beauty, and it protects those things.
The tendril...the tip of the worm encased inside a four-legged biological suit, slips up toward my head. It hovers before my eyes, waiting. Patient. Its intentions are also clear. Okay, I think. August would probably stop me, but his experience is different from mine. I know I’m only here because these Blur arranged it, with my parents, and then protected me. I owe them my trust.
So I give it, and lean forward.
The tap on my forehead is so gentle, I barely feel it, but the words that careen into my mind are heard loud and clear.
IT IS TIME.
Time for what? I think, and the answer comes from within.
A scream erupts from my mouth as my whole body seizes, at the mercy of a contraction.
50
AUGUST
Trust is a tricky thing. It’s earned over time. Through action, reaction and follow-through. In the two weeks since the revelation of my bull’s eye rash, trust has been restored. I’m not doubted, avoided or excluded. To these people, I’m still August.
The August.
But I am watched.
I don’t blame them. The rash has become a symbol for danger. The enemy. Anyone else bearing the black rings on their chest would be shot at a distance. The rings acting as judge and jury. One of these few, one of these innocents turned survivors, turned warriors, would be executioner.
Despite my apparent guilt, execution has been stayed. I live among them. I direct their path. And if the Blur somehow exerted control over me, the results could be disastrous. That’s why I made arrangements with Jeb. If it becomes clear that I am no longer me, that my spirit has been lost, he will free me from this world and the potential burden that would come from harming my friends. He also promised, along with Mark and Tanya, to continue on to Poe should that horrible scenario present itself.
So far, it hasn’t. And I’m grateful. Despite my willingness to die for these people. For Poe. I’d rather it wasn’t them who had to take my life. The idea of taking one of theirs frightens me so much that I sleep separately from the others. I strap a string of jingle bells, taken from a home’s front door, to my ankle at night. They will see and hear me coming.
It’s a morbid way to live, but it eases the burden burning black on my shoulder and over my chest.
“Hold up,” Mark says from ahead. I brake hard and pull up beside him. My body is grateful for the stop. We’ve been pushing beyond my breaking point, and then some—at my insistence. Poe’s continued silence, never answering my calls, never reaching out to me, implies sinister outcomes I refuse to consider. So we’ve pushed, and made great time. We considered taking cars and just hauling ass for the remainder of the trip, which we could complete in a single day, but the further north we go, the more lights in the sky we see, day and night. We haven’t witnessed anything as dramatic as the battle that Poe described, but there have been several occasions where it seemed like one UFO was chasing the other. Taking cars, while so very tempting, would expose us, and what kind of leader would I be if I risked revealing all these people to the Blur at the very end of our journey? As much as I’m worried about Poe, getting there later is better than never arriving...even if she is in trouble. Dying on the road won’t help her.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, face turned to the pavement, breath short. Rivulets of sweat roll over my forehead and drip from my nose. I’ve never been in New England during the summer before now, and strangely, it feels a lot like Florida. The air feels like steam. It saturates my clothes and merges with the sweat oozing from my pores to form rivers down my sides and my legs. I’m a sponge.
“Look,” he says, while the group slows to a stop. No one is particularly worried. No alarm has been sounded.
I follow Mark’s pointed finger up over the highway. The three lanes of Interstate 95 are all but free of vehicles. When the human race was turned to dust, New England was being buried by snow. The only vehicles we see on the highway now are massive, orange snow plows still laden with heaps of brown sand and salt, and the occasional car or truck, many of them on the side of the road.
Ahead, I see a blue rectangle. It’s a sign, but the sweat covering my sunglasses conceals the words. I remove the glasses and squint against the bright sun, while wiping the lenses against my equally sweat-soaked shirt. The rectangular blue sign, framed in white, reads, ‘Welcome to New Hampshire.’ And then below that, the words, ‘Live Free or Die.’
Jeb rolls up beside me. “I might not be a Yankee, but that is a badass state slogan.”
“That’s what we’re all about now, isn’t it?” Mark says. He turns to me. “Maybe that’s why we’re here? In New England. The birthplace of freedom in America.”
“Isn’t that Boston?” Tanya asks. “Boston Tea Party and all that.”
“What’s the Massachusetts state motto?” Jeb asks.
We all shrug. Everyone in our group is from west of the Mississippi, or the Deep South.
“Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem,” a man from the group, says.
“What does that mean?” I ask without turning around.
“By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty.”
The last two words spoken by the man cause the hairs on my damp arms to break free and stand on end. He pronounced, ‘under’ as ‘undah,’ and ‘liberty’ as ‘libahty.’ It’s a distinct Bostonian accent, mixed with a little something else. The speaker is not one of our group. And I’m not the only one to make this realization.
Moving as though of one mind, like a shoal of fish, our group dismounts from bikes, crouches behind the frames and takes aim at the newcomer. He’s a young man, tan skin. If I had to guess, he’s Puerto Rican. He wears a navy blue Red Sox cap—nearly identical to Claire’s cap, which currently rests on my head, failing to absorb my sweat. His clean shaven face reveals a number of scars, but he looks friendly enough. He stands just twenty feet away, in the highway’s median.
The man’s hands launch to the sky in time with his eyelids and eyebrows. “Whoa!” He’s armed, but the handgun remains tucked into his waist band. “Don’t shoot!”
“Your chest,” Jeb says.
The man looks down at his orange T-shirt, then back up to Jeb, uncomprehending.
“Lift your shirt,” I tell him. “We need to see your chest.”
“The hell for?” the man says, growing agitated, looking at us like we’re a bunch of perverts.
“We’ve been attacked,” I tell him, “by people with dark rings around their chest. It’s like a rash, but black.”
Recognition fills the man’s eyes. He nods. “Seen a few of them, too.” He lifts his shirt just long enough for us to see that he’s built like Hercules and rash-free. “They’re pretty much all assholes.” He lifts his chin toward our group. “You all run into trouble or something? You’re the first bunch I’ve seen roll in like you’re expecting a war.” He squints. Looks us over. “Or have already seen one.”
I barely hear all this. As he speaks, I stand and lower my rifle. The shoal behavior continues, my group lowering weapons, growing more curious than afraid. But I’m only interested in a single detail the man let slip. I let my bike lie on the pavement, and head toward the lone man, stopping a few feet away.
Done speaking, he watches my approach.
“Nice hat,” he says.
“It was my daughter’s.”
“Was,” he says.
The detail breaks my heart, but I nod.
“Sorry.”
“We’re all sorry for something.” I star
e into his eyes. “Your name?”
“Luis,” he says. “You?”
“I’ll get to that in a minute.” He looks annoyed by this, but I don’t give him time to complain. “You said we were the first group you’d seen arrive expecting a war. How many other groups have there been?”
He looks my people over one more time and then answers, “Three. One came up the East Coast. Another from Canada. The last group arrived on a boat. Sailed into Rye Harbor like a ghost ship. Looked like no one was aboard until they reached land and slipped out into the woods. That was a week ago. I wasn’t there, but that’s how the story goes. And there is another group, one day behind you, coming across 495. From the West. Maybe Northwest. We haven’t said, ‘Hi,’ yet. Being careful, you know?”
I can’t help but smile. “What’s your total number?”
“So,” he says, avoiding the question. “You’re the bossman.”
“How do you know that?” I ask.
“Apart from the fact that you’re the one talking to me now, I’ve been tracking you guys for a few days.” He lets that sink in. Reaches behind his back and unclips a radio from his belt. “We have recon covering all major routes into the area. I’ve been following you since you passed through Danvers.”
“Stopped us because we were getting close?”
He shakes his head. “Because you arrived.”
I hold my breath.
“But you guys are different,” he says.
“Dangerous?” I ask.
He nods. “Hell, yes.”
“I hope so,” I tell him. “For all our sakes.”
He turns his head skyward. “Because of them?”
“Have you seen them?” I ask.
“Only in the sky. At first, just at night. Like they were looking for us. But they’ve come out in the day. I think they’re fighting each other.” He points northwest. “Over there.”
I let my mind’s eye slip into an overhead view of New Hampshire. I’ve studied the map and route to Poe’s house so often that I could draw the map from memory.
Poe is northwest.
I know it’s useless, but I turn away from Luis, take the SAT phone from my pocket and speed-dial Poe. When the speaker reaches my ear, it’s not endless ringing I hear. It’s screaming.
My heart pounds. Vision narrows. I’m about to scream her name when I realize the sound is digital. It’s a hiss, like an old school 14k dial-up Internet connection. I pull the phone away from my ear, hang up and dial again. The sound returns.
Something is happening.
“When was the last time you saw evidence of a battle?” I ask.
“Today,” he says, motioning to the distant sky with his head. “It’s happening now, man. Look.”
I turn northwest again, watching. The humid sky is hazy and full of towering, fluffy white cumulus clouds. I watch the giants shift through the atmosphere. And then, I see it. A flicker of light on the horizon, brightening the cloud’s shadowed bottom for an instant. “There,” I say, pointing. “Is that where Barrington is?”
Luis looks, “Yeah, I think so. Somewhere up there. Why?”
“We need to go there. Now.”
“Uhh.” He just looks at me. “No one goes up there. Before or now. It’s too dangerous. They’ll find us.”
There isn’t time to explain, so I unleash a strange power that I know, in my core, will shift the course of this conversation. “I’m August.”
The man blinks. “What?”
“My name is August.”
Eyes widen... “I thought.... But August is now. That’s when people started showing up.”
I take my wallet from my pocket, remove my ID and hold it in front of his face. “I. Am. August.” I speak the words in a way that argues my point, that says I’m confident in my role. That I’m in charge. “Your parents left you a note. Well, here I am. You found me.”
“Holy shit.”
“And I need your help. Now.”
“W—what do you need?”
“Everyone.”
He still looks unsure, unwilling to give up his people. “For...what?”
“For Poe,” I say, and I notice the name means nothing to him. “And her baby.”
He perks up. “A baby?”
I point to the sky. “They...want to take her child.” While they haven’t come right out and said it, what else could it be? The first child born in this new world is important to them for some reason. There is nothing else odd or remarkable about Poe, at least not anything creatures from another world might care about. But a child, to scientists, could very well be the results of some cosmic experiment they’ve been waiting for.
“Why can’t she just run? Meet us here?”
“Because the baby is being born...” I look up at the flickering sky, and make a guess that might turn out to be a lie. But I don’t think so. “Right now.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“I have spent the last six months crossing this country to reach Poe on this day, and there isn’t a God damned thing in this world that is going to keep me—” I point to my people, who are watching and nodding along. “—or them from reaching my girls in time.” Girls? I think, and then I realize that somewhere along the way I began to think of Squirt as a girl, and both of them as my family. “This is why you’re here, Luis. This is why your parents saved you and left you a note to find me. Find August. Two words. You can’t find a month. You can only wait for it. But here I am, the only findable August on this planet. And you can either help me, or you can get the hell out of our way.”
Luis looks at me for just a moment, then raises the radio to his mouth, presses the transmit button and speaks a brief command.
Both sides of the highway come to life as people emerge from the woods and climb up the sloped sides. Most, like us, stand astride bicycles. Fewer are armed in any obvious way, but they outnumber us five to one.
Despite this positive development, I can’t find a smile. I turn to Luis and say, “I want everyone who can fight, and ride, in four lines. I’m setting the pace, and—”
“Barrington is at least thirty miles from here,” Luis says. “We won’t make it there until tomorrow.”
While the string of curses running through my mind nearly comes out of my mouth, Luis smiles. “But I know where we can get some cars.”
51
POE
The drive home, dogs in the truck, contractions squeezing me, is a haze, like when I draw now. But I’m home, in the kitchen, gripping the island for stability. What happened to the Blur? I have no memory of its departure.
The contractions are four minutes apart now. August coached me on a lot of this, as he and his wife had chosen natural childbirth, and she had Claire, his daughter, in a birthing tub at the hospital, a midwife attending. He told me that it’s usually not what we see on TV, with the feet up in the stirrups, and to train my body to react to the pain and intensity with relaxation, rather than tightening, as that would open up everything for me and make an easier path for Squirt.
I’m terrified. As a marathoner, I understand training my body, so this I can do. I just should have been practicing more before now.
Go upstairs, Poe, I hear my mother tell me. You can’t do this in the kitchen.
A glass of water is all I think to bring. The dogs run ahead of me upstairs, then double back as I place one foot in front of the other, clinging to the banister. They herd me up the stairs, the three of us mammals, in this thing together. Nothing is prepared. Did I actually think this wasn’t going to happen?
I make it to my parents’ room, my first time in six months. It smells like them still, and comforts me. I lie on the bed, drenched, already exhausted. With difficulty, I pull off my wet, sweaty clothing and place my hands on my lower abdomen. Squirt is doing her thing in there, her body so low. I’m terrified that she’ll be breeched, and I’ll have to figure out how to retrieve her, legs first, all those limbs entangled up in there.
At that though
t, my breathing shallows, and I climb out of bed to look out the window. He’s not here. He’s not coming. He could be dead. I can’t believe I broke the stupid phone.
Lying back down on my side, I sip at the water, wishing I had a straw and someone other than dogs to attend to me. In between the contractions, I feel tired but almost normal, like I could just get up and do chores.
A deep intensity forces a gasp out of me.
It’s happening.
It’s happening, and I am all alone.
There is nothing to do but act, nothing to feel but purpose. Rolling out of bed to another profound sensation, only a few minutes away from the last, I shuffle to the bathroom and turn on the light. Too bright. I shut it off again and light a candle. Run the hot water while breathing through another contraction.
While the tub fills, Squirt nestles into a different position, her space quite cramped now, and warm liquid runs trickling down my legs. Have I peed myself? Is this what women in labor do? It wouldn’t surprise me. But, no, more comes trickling out. I knock a towel onto the floor from the bathroom closet to sop it up. The liquid continues to trickle out, and I understand it. My water has broken. Maybe Squirt’s head is preventing it from gushing?
Several points of acute pressure all over my body force me down into the tub, into the water. I can no longer stand.
Another profound sensation, both sharp and throbbing, roars over me. And then in one minute, another. The hot water holds me, a counterpoint to pain.
And then...a concussive force rolls over the whole house, shaking walls. The violence is matched by the sound, a twanging explosion.
Oh God, not now.
But now makes more sense than ever.
They’re here for this. For her.
As a contraction fades, I stand from the water, dripping and shivering, but not wanting to get caught in this small bathroom, soaking wet and slippery. With just forty-five seconds before the next contraction drops me, I hobble down the hall, led by the dogs, naked and dripping, holding my belly. Ten seconds remain, as I roll up onto my parents’ bed and sink into the down comforter. I’m wrapped in their warmth, and then unyielding pressure.
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