by Hugh Howey
Sharon says, “Help me get him inside.”
“He’s dead,” I say, stating the obvious.
“We can save him,” she replies, handing me the key to her apartment. “Put him in the bathtub.”
Before my stunned brain has time to realize what’s happening, I’m staggering up the stairs cradling Mark’s lifeless body.
Sharon is gone.
I back through the main door. My heel catches on the carpet in the lobby and I almost fall. Fumbling with her keys, I struggle to raise Mark high enough so my hand can reach the lock. I could have put him down, but for some reason that feels wrong, and so I persevere and finally the door unlocks.
The heavy door swings open as I bump Mark’s body against the solid wooden panel. Turning sideways, I shimmy through the doorway.
The apartment is empty. Mark and Sharon have lived here for years, but there’s no carpet, no furniture. There’s a fridge in the kitchen, but no table, no chairs. No couch in the living room. No beds in the bedrooms.
The layout of the apartment is the same as mine, so I know where the bathroom is. It feels wrong, but I lay Mark in the bathtub just as Sharon instructed. I’m a little clumsy, and his head hits the tap. Thinking about it, I realize I’ve put him in the wrong way, with his head by the faucet. Blood runs down the drain.
“Shit.”
I go to move him, but he’s heavy, and it’s awkward leaning down to grab his legs and twist him around. After a few tugs, I give up. What difference does it make? He’s dead.
I look at myself in the mirror. Blood has stained my jacket.
Sharon squeezes into the bathroom behind me. She’s dragging two metal trash cans full of packed snow and ice. She dumps them on Mark, burying him in slush.
“Ice,” she says, as his head disappears beneath the dirty snow. “I need more ice.”
“There’s an ice dispenser on the second floor,” I say.
“Brilliant,” she replies, kissing me on the cheek. “Stay here with him.”
“Ah.”
She kissed me. Why did she kiss me?
Sharon’s gone before I can say anything else. I can hear her rummaging around in the kitchen, frantically opening and then slamming drawers and cupboards. She runs out the door and pounds up the stairs.
Sirens sound in the distance. I pull back the curtain and peer out through the tiny bathroom window.
A cop car pulls up in front of the building. There aren’t any parking spots, so he noses his cruiser into a slight gap, leaving its fat ass blocking the road. Blue and red lights light up the twilight, flickering over the snow and ice.
I look back at Mark. Two legs protrude from beneath the slush.
“This is so wrong,” I mumble to myself, but I haven’t done anything wrong, have I? I don’t think so. Outside, the cop is standing beside the blood-splattered snow on the sidewalk, talking to one of the neighbors from across the road. A small crowd forms as another cop car arrives from the opposite direction.
Sharon jogs back into the cramped bathroom still catching her breath. She’s carrying three plastic bags full of ice cubes, and she’s got a roll of Saran Wrap under her arm, along with a roll of tinfoil. She raises her elbow and both rolls drop to the bathroom floor.
“Help me get him up.”
Sharon plunges her hands into the snow and slush covering Mark’s body. I’m more cautious. She drags him up by the lapels on his jacket and leans him against the side of the tub. Mark’s head lolls to one side. Ice sticks to his hair. His lips are blue. His eyes stare blindly ahead.
“You’ve only got three minutes,” I say, not sure what she thinks she can accomplish. I’ve heard of people doing some pretty weird shit when someone dies, but this wins first prize at the county fair.
“You might have three minutes,” she replies. “He has thirty.”
I start to say something but Sharon cuts me off. “Hold this.”
She positions the ice bags around his head and grabs my hands, pushing them in place against the cold plastic. I do as I’m told.
Sharon pulls at the roll of Saran Wrap and starts winding the thin plastic sheet around Mark’s head. She dodges my hands as she wraps the bags of ice against his face and the sides of his skull. I get the gist of what she’s doing and alternate my hands, making sure the ice is hard up against his skin. She packs the ice carefully, patting it down and moving it around so none of his features can be seen.
“We’re scientists,” she says as she works. “We’re not from around here.”
“Brooklyn?” I ask, detecting a familiar twang in her accent.
“Wrong planet,” she replies, standing up and admiring her handiwork. I stand up as well, although I’m not sure what I’m admiring.
Planet? Did she just say planet? Maybe I didn’t hear her correctly. I try to think of the names of countries that sound like planet. Nope, can’t think of any. Plano? Maybe she’s from Texas.
“The police are here,” I say, trying to be helpful.
“Oh, good,” she replies, reaching around behind me and pulling back the curtain. She fires three rounds out the window. The sound of gunfire in a tiny tiled bathroom is like thunder breaking directly overhead, rattling my bones.
She’s gone.
I look around and Sharon has disappeared.
I peer through the window, and the crowd has panicked. They’re screaming and running for cover as the cops double back behind their vehicles. The cops have got their guns drawn, pointing at the building—pointing at me!
“Shit!” I whip my hand away from the curtain. The lacy fabric can’t fall back in place fast enough.
“Fuck. Fuck,” I repeat with my heart pounding in my chest.
“We need to get out of here,” Sharon says, standing in the doorway of the bathroom, only she’s talking to a banana.
I blink and look again, wondering if my eyes are deceiving me. Nope, I got it right the first time. Sharon is holding the banana like a phone and speaking into it. I can’t help myself. I reach out and touch the banana as she speaks, wondering if it’s like a joke phone or something.
“I don’t want a shuttle,” she protests to the banana. “I need a direct evac to the Moon.”
My fingers touch the banana. The skin feels like a regular old banana peel. It’s motley, with flecks of black and a bruise at one end. I wouldn’t eat it. My mother would make banana bread with it, or muffins or something. She certainly wouldn’t talk to it.
“I don’t have time for this,” Sharon cries. “He’s dead, don’t you get that? If I don’t get him out of here, he’s gone. A shuttle isn’t good enough.”
Sharon drops the banana to her side. I would have called her crazy, but my father told me never call someone holding a handgun crazy. It’s good advice, I think.
“We’ve got to get to the lab,” she says. “If I can get a cerebral imprint, I can reconstruct his conscious awareness before it fades, but we don’t have long.”
The banana drops to the floor. I’d be happier if she’d dropped the gun.
“What’s going on?” I ask, trying to walk a tightrope with someone undergoing a severe mental breakdown.
“Oh, the banana?” she says.
It’s not just the banana I’m interested in, but that’s a good start.
Sharon says, “They’re a great source of potassium isotopes—half-life of over a billion years!”
I raise my eyebrows. That’s not quite the explanation I was after.
“Potatoes will work too. Brazil nuts are the best.” She appeals with her hands. “It’s tech you wouldn’t understand. I can use the nuclear resonance of the isotope as a natural amplifier. It allows me to communicate with others.”
“Oh, I think I understand,” I reply, backing into the corner of the bathroom by the sink. Carrying Mark inside, okay, I was trying to help a grieving neighbor. Shooting at cops, talking to bananas… yeah, this isn’t my circus, these aren’t my monkeys.
“Do you trust me?” she asks, and I mu
st admit, looking into those pretty blue eyes and hearing her soft feminine voice is somewhat hypnotic, but I’m officially freaked out.
“No,” I reply, deliberately looking down at the gun in her hand to make my point.
“See,” she says. “Honesty. I like that in a man. I get hit on by creeps all the time. They’re never honest, you know? I appreciate your honesty.”
Sharon grabs the tinfoil from the floor and tears off a couple of strips roughly two feet long. She hands one to me.
“Ah,” I mumble, looking at the thin, shiny foil drooping under its own weight.
“Quick,” she says, wrapping the tinfoil around her head. She crumples the foil so her head looks like a Hersey’s kiss.
“Hurry,” she adds, waving the gun around.
“Uh, okay,” I say, somewhat reluctantly mashing the tinfoil over my head. I’ve gone for a World War II combat helmet look, but I look utterly pathetic in the mirror.
“Is tinfoil really necessary?” I ask as I mash the foil in place.
“Aluminum foil,” Sharon says, correcting me. “Oh, aluminum foil is an invention ahead of its time. Horribly underappreciated. People just shove it in ovens, not realizing its potential. Did you know the docking collar on the Apollo missions was protected by aluminum foil? This is the stuff of rocket launches and moon landings. It’ll shield us from surveillance.”
I’m not convinced.
“Can I go now?”
“Yes, yes,” she replies. “We need to go. Grab Mark.”
Ordinarily, I would have said, “Fuck no,” but she gestures with the gun and it seems only polite to comply and stay alive for a few more minutes.
I hoist Mark and his ice-head up and over my shoulder.
Without looking, Sharon squeezes off a few more deafening rounds out the window.
“Come on,” she says. I see her lips move, but I don’t hear the words. My ears are still ringing.
I follow her out into the foyer of the building. Nervous eyes peer from the corner of the stairs on the second floor. A camera phone snaps a shot of me with the iceman slumped over my shoulder and Sharon with her gun. That’ll make it onto the evening news. Sorry Mom.
We head out the back of the building into the alley.
Sharon’s able to move much faster than me. She keeps beckoning me on with her gun. I’m trying to recall how many shots she’s fired. I’m racking my brain trying to recognize the make of handgun, wondering how many rounds the magazine holds. She’s fired four or five shots. She’s probably got the same number left.
“Quick, the shuttle’s coming.”
I jog down the dark alley behind her. My lungs are burning. My heart is pounding in my chest. Alien or crazy woman? I’m thinking crazy, but I’m half wondering if I’m going to see some kind of UFO alien space shuttle thingy arriving in response to her banana call. Nah. She’s a nut-bag.
Headlights blind me as I round the corner of the alley.
An old-fashioned bus pulls up, the kind with the 1950s flares and grooves and an absurd amount of polished chrome. Instead of a digital display, there’s an old hand-cranked sign above the driver: Downtown Shuttle. I can’t help but let out a soft laugh.
Pneumatics sound as the door opens and Sharon scrambles up into the bus. I climb in behind her, seriously thinking about dumping the body and running, wondering how good a shot she is, but not wanting to end up like Mark.
“Thanks, Joe,” Sharon says, standing behind the driver. “I thought we were stuck there for a moment.”
“No problem,” Joe replies. “I was in the neighborhood anyway.”
Joe’s an African-American in his late sixties. Tight grey curly hair and a receding hairline are the only clues to his age. He’s wearing a uniform, but he doesn’t look like a regular bus driver.
I plop Mark and his impromptu ice helmet onto an empty seat. His body slumps sideways and I have to stop him from falling onto the floor. I look up at the passengers apologetically. No one seems to notice. I’ve just climbed into a bus with a dead body draped over one shoulder and no one cares?
“How’s Mark?” the driver asks as the bus pulls away from the curb.
“He’s fine.”
“He’s dead,” I say. I can’t help myself.
“He’ll be fine,” Sharon insists, gesturing to the seat opposite Mark.
I slide in against the window and Sharon sits down next to me. Turning sideways, I look at the other people on the bus. There are a couple of teenagers making out in the back, a middle-aged man wearing a business suit, a nurse still in uniform, and an old lady sitting two seats behind Mark’s body. His feet stick out into the aisle.
“What is wrong with you people?” I ask, desperately hoping someone’s dialing 911 with their phone hidden out of sight. “Dead body? Gun? Tinfoil hats? Anyone?”
“Shhh,” Sharon says, trying to soothe me. Softly, she corrects me with, “Aluminum foil.”
I want to scream, but I compose myself.
“You need professional help, Sharon. Turn yourself in to the police and I’m sure we can work this out. No one has to get hurt.”
Sharon sighs.
“Do you know what I hate about all this?” she asks.
She gestures with the gun, waving it around as though she’s stirring soup with the barrel, only the barrel is pointing at my crotch. When Sharon asks if I know what she hates, I think she means our general predicament, but the direction that gun is pointing seems awfully personal.
“Not being honest with you people,” she says. “We should trust you humans. Perhaps not everyone, but some of you. We should find people we can trust and we should trust them.”
“Yes,” I say, feeling like I’m finally getting somewhere with her. I’m hoping my non-verbal body language is saying something along the lines of—dialogue is good, crazy lady, now point that fucking gun somewhere else.
“Do you trust me?” she asks.
It’s the second time she’s posed this question. I’m tempted to say yes to curry her favor, but a loose hold on a loaded gun and a dead body in the seat next to us gets the better of me.
“No.”
“See, that’s what the world needs—honesty. You don’t trust me, but I trust you, and do you know why?”
I shrug my shoulders.
“Because you’re honest. You can trust someone that’s honest. You can never trust someone that lies to you because you never know when they’re lying.”
She leans in and kisses me on the cheek, saying, “Thank you for not lying to me.”
I flinch, steeling myself to make a grab at the gun, but she puts her hand around the back of the seat, and I can feel the warm barrel of the gun resting on my shoulder. I can picture things getting ugly if I lunge for the handgun. The idea of a lead slug tearing through my body doesn’t exactly thrill me, so I focus on my breathing, trying to relax.
I decide to play along.
“So what is it with you aliens? When you said we were being picked up by a shuttle, I’ve got to say, I was expecting something with a few more rockets.”
Sharon laughs. She’s got a beautiful smile. Why is it always the pretty ones that turn out to be psychos?
“Well,” she begins, sounding utterly sincere and genuine, “we’ve been here for about three hundred years.”
“Really?” I say as the bus turns down a darkened street. The lights are out. There must have been a blackout.
“Oh, yeah. We’ve got a base hidden on the far side of the Moon.”
“The dark side?” I ask.
“Actually, there’s no dark side. The moon has days just like Earth, only they’re a month long, but the sun rises and sets over all parts of the Moon just like it does here on Earth.”
“Oh,” I reply. I didn’t know that.
The natural, relaxed tone in her voice is such that she could have been giving me gardening tips, or talking about tides before going fishing.
“Our mission is to use non-intrusive means to initiate social c
hange. We can’t introduce any new technology, but we can guide scientific discovery as a means to effecting social stability. Our focus, though, isn’t on any one science so much as promoting the concept. We’re advocates. We’re trying to lead rather than push, to inspire people to give up on superstitions and traditions. We want humanity to see reason for itself.”
“Huh,” I say. As far as delusions go, this one is pretty good. It’s got just enough elements to avoid a sense of cognitive dissonance in her mind.
“It’s a slow process,” she says, talking to me as though I’m a child. “We’re fighting against hundreds of thousands of years of natural instinct compelling your species to war. You war against everything—skin color, gender, culture, country of origin, any kind of change. I swear, if given the chance, you’d war against eye color—fighting over blue or brown eyes.”
“You’re probably right there,” I concede.
She’s relaxing. I’m thinking about grabbing the gun, but I’m only going to get one chance at this. I don’t want to blow the opportunity.
“Our job is to encourage enlightenment—to help you see the folly inherent in your own nature, to see your own biases and prejudices. And that’s not easy for people to accept.”
I nod.
“So what about me?” I ask. I have to come up at some point. How do I fit into her paranoid delusion? I’m hoping she’s going to say the good guys get to return to their people with the gospel of good news, or something.
“Oh, we normally wipe and replace.”
That doesn’t sound good.
“Like Men in Black?” I ask, making a flashy sign with my thumb. “You know, erase memories and implant new ones?”
“Something like that,” she says.
This is good. For the first time, I think I might just make it out of this alive.
“We hide in plain sight,” she says, running the barrel of the gun across the back of my neck. “We discredit anyone that gets too close to the truth.”
“So you plant conspiracy theories in people’s heads?” I ask. “They think they’re on to something. Everyone else thinks they’re crazy.”