Aliens and Ice Cream

by Michael James

  “We’re good for water.”

  Krista looked up from the cupboards where she counted cans of soup. Four. Martin leaned against the doorway, sweat staining his chest and underarms. “I had a couple plastic storage bins the basement, and I filled them up. Two hundred gallons. Enough to last us a while.”

  “That’s good. We have enough food for at least two weeks if we’re careful. Although by the end, we’ll be eating flour and water and plain pasta. You have a huge bag of rice which will go a long way.”

  “Great.” Martin got a glass and ran it under the kitchen sink. He tilted his head and she could see the corded muscles of his arm bunch when he brought the glass up. A big man, and although he had thirty extra pounds, a lot of it was muscle. Untethered nausea rose in her throat the longer she stared at him, not because of how he looked, but because of what she’d done. Thank god he hadn’t brought it up again. She couldn’t deal with his advances right now. The only thing keeping her attention was getting food to the kids. A thought occurred to her.

  “You ever play any baseball?”

  He blinked, as if startled by the question. “Sure. Not league or anything but yeah, what guy hasn’t played baseball?”

  Both the men in my family, she thought, but kept it to herself. “Your living room window looks right out to the tree fort. Could you throw something far enough to reach the kids?”

  “I don’t know.” He sat down beside her, the chair creaking under the weight. He didn’t sit across from her, he sat beside her. She noticed that.

  “It’s possible though, right?”

  “Sure, if we had something to throw. But it’s at least two hundred feet. Since you brought up baseball, it’s about the distance from the outfield to the home plate. Even if we were positive opening a door wouldn’t cause those things to shoot at us, I’d have to thread something through the tree house window. It would be like trying to hit a stop sign from half a football field away.” He shook his head. “It’s an idea, but let’s see if we can think of any others first, before we throw things.”

  “We could at least try.”

  “You’re worried. So am I. My daughter is trapped too. But we don’t know what could happen. What if I threw something and knocked out a board? Maybe those things outside would shoot them.”

  She didn’t say anything, but at her sides her hands clenched with enough force that her nails bent backwards, close to breaking against her palm. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Hey,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”

  She stood up, shaking her head. “We need to do something. They’ve been stuck for almost twenty-four hours with nothing except a bottle of pop and some crackers. Either you come up with better ideas, or I’m throwing food at them.”

  “Okay,” he said, and stood. He stepped closer, and she had to crane her neck upwards. “You’re not thinking clearly. I understand, it’s a scary situation. But panic and hysteria won’t solve anything.”

  “Look directly at me,” she said, “and tell me I’m in a panic. I won't wait for someone else to come up with an idea.”

  “Krista, I get it. I do. But throwing cans of soup at the tree house won't help them. I agree it’s an idea, but it’s a last-resort idea. There must be other ways to get to them. I don’t know, maybe we can…” he finished helplessly, not able to complete the sentence.

  “We could what? What other ideas do you have?”

  “Nothing.” He stared at the floor. “But for now, we need to trust the process. Give the police or army a chance to do something.”

  “There’s not going to be any army or police. You heard the message from the president same as I did. They’re as fucked as we are. Either we solve this ourselves, or our children will die.”

  “Yeah.” He rubbed his chin but didn’t say anything else.

  Fuck this. She grabbed a can of soup off the counter. Without waiting for a reaction, she went to the front door and turned the knob, opening it up a crack. Enough to see outside.

  The angle to the tree house was horrible. Martin was right about the distance, she’d have to toss the can across the lawn, and across the street, to a side of the tree house that only had a single window slit. A huge tree on the front lawn partially obscured her view. Martin was right. She’d have no chance. This idea was unworkable. She bit her lip. There was nothing she could do.

  I need to get out of here, she thought.

  Outside, the drones circled.

  Heather

  The boredom was worse than the hunger, or at least a close tie. There was nothing to do in the tree house other than stare out the window at a cloudless, deep blue sky. She stopped trying to count all the black specks she saw. It was like trying to count spilled pepper.

  She learned that partially rotten tree house wood made a fantastic insulator. It was easily ninety-five degrees inside. Her hair stuck to her face, and it was difficult to get up the energy to do anything. Even Abby had abandoned the relative comfort of the beanbag chair, finding that it stuck to her sweaty skin, causing it to tug whenever she moved.

  That was how they spent the entire day, lying on the ground, trying to find a comfortable place to sit, and wiping buckets of sweat from their faces. Twice, the drones would screamed their alarm and both times, they all flinched and cover their ears. Each blast only lasted moments but pierced into her skull like a sewing needle. Any time she’d drift off for a nap, the alarm jerked her awake, pulling her upright.

  If there was a high spot, it was Matty Cutler. She was learning he had a sharp sense of humor and a piercing intellect that lived underneath his shy demeanor. Nothing like she would have imagined. In school he faded into the background, content to stay in Pete’s shadow.

  The memory of Pete drove her down a dark spiral of thoughts and she clamped down. No thinking. That was the rule in the tree fort. Don’t think about Kate, or her neighbors, or any of that. Her focus needed to be on getting through the next second, then the next minute, the hour, the day. Whatever it took.

  Her stomach let out a loud rumble. It was close to dinner and the only food they’d eaten all day was stale crackers. Crazy that kids in other parts of the world go entire weeks with barely a bite, but here she was after one day, complaining. She shouldn’t even be noticing this. She needed a distraction.

  “What’re your three biggest fears?” She threw the question out into the middle of the tree house, to give them something to talk about.

  “Being trapped in a tree house by robot aliens,” Matty said, and she snorted out a laugh.

  “Serious answers only,” she said. “Abby, you go first.”

  “Spiders,” Abby said, pushing back a soaking wet chunk of hair from her face. Her damp t-shirt clung to her tiny body.

  “What else?”

  “I don’t like the dark very much,” Abby said, “and even though you said it doesn’t count, I really don’t like those aliens.”

  “No talking about the aliens.” Matty sat up and leaned back against the wall. “Besides, they’re not even scary. They only float around outside, they can’t even get into a stupid tree house.”

  “What about you, Heather?” Abby asked.

  “That’s easy. Coming in second, failure, and heights.”

  “Heights are scary,” Abby agreed. “Once I visited Mommy at the top of her building where she works, and I looked straight down the side until I got dizzy.”

  “Gross,” Heather said. “I couldn’t do that.”

  “You guys are babies,” Matty said. “Are you ready to hear real fears? Real toe-curling stuff?”

  “Tell me, Matty.” Abby clapped, happy enough with the game. Heather wasn’t the only one grateful for the distraction.

  “Number one,” he held up a finger, “riding on the subway and being struck deaf and blind at the same time.”

  “That’s… specific,” Heather noted. “I think you’ll probably be okay.”

  “Sure, but you never know. It would suck if it happened. Two,” he hel
d up another finger, “diving into a swimming pool and emerging in the middle of an unfamiliar ocean.”

  “Wait,” Heather interrupted. “Is the fact that the ocean is unfamiliar what makes that scary? Like if you came up in the middle of the Pacific but recognized where you were, you’d be cool?”

  Matty laughed, an open and honest sound, and she smiled. He had a wonderful laugh, another thing she’d never have expected from him. No one ever laughed at her jokes except Liz. People found her humor too dry.

  “Good point,” he conceded. “It’s the ocean itself that’s scary. Are you ready for number three?”

  “Ready, but these are weird fears,” Abby said. “I don’t think you get how this game works.”

  “This last one is a doozy, but it’s my biggest fear. You know how we get all those leaves in our backyard in the fall? I never told anyone this, but last year, I raked a huge pile into the corner. After I was done, I was tired and got a drink of water. When I came out, there was something strange about the leaves, the pile had begun to take shape, growing into something while I watched.”

  “That’s not true, Matty. Stop.” Abby crossed her arms and frowned.

  “Oh, it’s true. And you don’t even know the scary part. It turned from a pile of leaves into a body with and head and two arms. A lumpy leaf monster. I swear it looked right at me. We met each other's eyes, that leaf monster and I, and then it pointed at me. One single arm, dripping with decaying leaves and worms. It spoke.”

  “What did it say?” Abby’s eyes were wider than her mouth.

  Matty’s voice dropped an octave, and he spoke slowly. “Leaf me alone.”

  Heather blinked. “Christ.”

  “I don’t get it,” Abby said. “What did he say after that? Does the leaf monster still live in our backyard?”

  “You’re fine, he's teasing.” Heather rolled her eyes at Matt but smiled, so he’d know she was joking. “If a leaf monster lived in your backyard, I’d have seen it from my window.”

  “When are we getting out of here, Matty?” Abby stood up and paced around the cramped interior.

  “Soon, but you have to stay calm. You don’t want your asthma to act up.”

  “Abby has asthma?” Heather asked.

  Matt nodded. “It’s mild, but she needs to keep an eye on it.”

  “But when are we going back?” Abby asked. “I don’t want to sleep out here again and I’m thirsty.”

  “The Internet says to stay indoors. People are posting all over Twitter; it’s all anyone is talking about. Those things are still out there, and the police aren't coming. We have to sit tight.”

  “One more night won’t kill us,” Heather said, but couldn’t keep a tremble from her voice. “We have to be smart about this.”

  “It’s the siren,” Matt said, staring at nothing. “It’s awful. I tense up in anticipation of the next blare, you know?”

  Heather nodded. She did the same thing, like a clock was ticking in her head until the next explosive noise. “What if we wrapped our socks around our heads or something? To block out the sound.”

  “It might work.” He nodded. “It’s better than trying nothing.”

  On cue, the sirens blared outside, and Heather clapped her hands over her ears and yelled. Abby also screamed, but Matt only stared. As soon as the noise started, it was over.

  “It’s horrible,” he whispered.

  Abby wiped tears from her cheeks and sat down hard on the bean bag chair. How long could they stay out here? Another night? They needed water, more than anything else. And sleep. She’d kill for a few unbroken hours. She’d maybe had four in the past two days.

  Fear threatened to overwhelm her, and she swallowed it back. How long could they last without help?

  Paul

  Paul carried a large bowl of water with a fresh towel tucked under his arm, going to check on Sharon. The day had passed in a fuzzy blur of phone calls, loud noises, and endless waiting. He killed time by looking out the windows every minute, trying to keep one eye on the black drones hovering outside their houses, while catching glimpses of the kids in the tree fort.

  He and John inventoried the house, and they were in decent shape, at least for the next week. Enough so they didn’t need to worry, although if this stretched out longer, they’d be in real trouble. The focus now was on getting stuff to the kids. Krista suggested throwing food at the tree house and although everyone agreed that wouldn’t work, no one had a better idea.

  He also had Sharon and her leg to worry about. The Internet still functioned, so he did some research by Googling “horrific leg injuries” and “part of lower leg missing” and “can you die from losing an entire calf”. The results were awful and in a rare case of solidarity on the Internet, everyone agreed the only response was a hospital.

  He tapped on the door to the guest room and pushed it open. Sharon was sitting up against the backboard with her leg propped up by a pile of books. She clicked away on her phone. Her face was pale, and Paul worried he wouldn’t be able to keep her going. Sweat beaded on her face and soaked her hair, from either the injuries or the heat. He’d been trying to keep the AC running, but it was tough to keep the top floor of the house cool in the summer.

  “Knock. I came to check on your leg. I have more pills too.”

  “Thank you, Paul. I was checking on Heather and Martin.” She held up her phone. “Everyone seems okay for the moment, but I wish we could all be together.”

  “We’ll figure something out,” he said, sitting on the side of the bed. “I brought stuff to clean up your leg. May I look at it?” Sharon nodded.

  “You need to be careful, Paul. The wrapping needs to stay on the leg. I know it looks awful, but the best thing for it at this point is to keep it wound up and to not disturb it. If you pull the wrapping off, it might re-aggravate the wound and cause it to bleed again. Loss of blood is a bigger concern than infection at this point.”

  Paul was glad she was still lucid enough to give him clear directions. Her expertise was invaluable. Although she must be in horrible pain, she was keeping her spirits up and checking on her family. He wished he had spent more time getting to know her before this.

  “I promise.”

  “Can we talk while you check?” She asked. “It will help me get through this. Martin says I’m such a gab, he can’t get any quiet.”

  “That’s no problem at all, Sharon. Why don’t you tell me about how you and Martin met? We’ve known you all this time, but I never heard how you got together.”

  Sharon smiled, and Paul picked up her leg, trying not to touch the area near the wound, and looked underneath. The sheet they had tied around her leg last night was damp with blood. How much had she already lost? He suspected they weren’t tying it tight enough, but he worried that stopping the bleeding would require a tourniquet so tight she'd lose the leg.

  “It’s not much of a story.” She closed her eyes and leaned back against the headboard. “We met after college through mutual friends. He was big and charming and stupid, and I was young and sort of pretty and also stupid. I hadn’t met many boys interested in me and Martin can turn it on when he wants to.”

  “Oh, I bet you did fine.” Paul looked up from his work. He pictured Sharon as a younger girl and could get the appeal. Blonde hair, that cute upturned nose she passed on to her daughter, and a pretty smile. But life wore her down, leaving lines on her face and gray in her hair. He thought about that old expression, it’s not the years, it’s the mileage. Sharon continued.

  “One night, early when we were dating, another boy asked me out. It’s the only time in my entire life I’ve had two fellows interested in me.”

  Paul readjusted the cloth and set her leg back down. The bedsheet underneath was sticky and crusted together where the blood had dried. The stain was almost the size of a dinner plate.

  “You should have seen Martin’s reaction when he found out. Oh my. He was so angry. You wouldn’t know it to talk to him now, but Martin can have q
uite the temper.”

  “Martin? Really? He’s always seemed calm.” Paul tried to settle the version of Martin he had in his head with the one she was describing. They’d never talked at length, nothing beyond neighbor-speak. Car’s looking good, Paul. Thanks man, love your lawn. Did you see that rain last night? Nasty business. Krista seemed to find him entertaining, but Paul didn’t see the appeal.

  “Well, he’s fine most of the time, but when he doesn’t get what he wants, he can get feisty. What he wanted was me, and he didn’t want other boys coming around. I don’t even know what happened, but Martin had a talk with the other boy, and he wouldn’t even talk to me after that.”

  “Did they get in a fight?”

  “Nothing like that. But Martin has a way about him. Whatever he said, it worked, and it was him and I after that.”

  The story sounded closer to violent than romantic, but Paul smiled and gave Sharon’s arm a squeeze.

  “It looks like the blood is still soaking through the cloth, but not as much as before. Are you sure I shouldn’t change the dressing?”

  She shook her head. “We’re hoping that a clot forms, which will stop the bleeding. If you pull the cloth off, it might pull off the clot, and then it would start again. All we can do is keep it packed up and hope for the best.”

  “It's wound tight.”

  “Thank you, Paul.” She smiled at him, although it was tired and sad. “Last thing. Can you check my toes?”

  “I don’t think any of them went to market, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Funny man. No, you need to tell me if they’re looking discolored or purple. Poke them too.”

  He did as she asked, pulling back the sheets to reveal her feet. The toes looked a little bloated and dark, like a balloon filling with ink.

  “Tough to tell. They’re darker than normal. What am I looking for?”