Aliens and Ice Cream

by Michael James

  Heather supported Liz upstairs to the bathroom. Liz didn’t protest or say anything. Her eyes were distant, almost catatonic. A single, thin line of saliva hung from the corner of her mouth.

  “Okay sweetie, time to get you clean.” Heather forced her voice to be upbeat. "You need to get out of these clothes.”

  Liz stood motionless while Heather undressed her, showing no reaction when her shirt came off. Heather noted it was one of her favorites, the cute powder blue top with the double straps. Ruined. It was difficult to fumble at the snaps on Liz’s jeans with one hand, but she unzipped them.

  “You need to help me okay? I’ll turn on the shower.”

  Liz nodded, nothing more than a slight inclination of her head, and took off her pants. There was so much blood, it almost looked like a deep tan against her pale skin. Heather realized Liz was in deep shock but didn’t know what to do. She hoped the shower would help. There wouldn’t be any hot water left, but it didn’t matter. She turned on the faucet and guided Liz into the tub. The freezing water caused Heather to pull her hand back, but Liz didn’t flinch.

  “Clean yourself off, okay? Use soap and shampoo.” She pressed a bottle into Liz’s hand, who stared at it, blinking. Heather debated saying more, but instead closed the curtain to give her some privacy.

  While Liz showered, Heather decided to get herself cleaned up. But first, she needed to do something about her arm. She took off her own shirt, also ruined and sloppy with blood, and inspected her shoulder in the mirror. Her bra strap slid down her arm, there being no bone to hold it up. There didn’t seem to be any swelling, but her shoulder hung lower than it should be.

  Heather flipped her brain to autopilot and stopped thinking. She padded down the hallway to Liz’s room, the sound of the rushing water from the shower fading behind her. The familiar sights caused her to pause. So much time spent in this room with Liz, huddled on the bed, huddled over their phones, dreaming together. None of that mattered now.

  On the desk beside the bed, she found what she was looking for. The spongy stress ball their teachers handed out last year during an exquisitely horrifying lesson in sex-ed, put on as an appeasement to the catholic coalition of parents. Written on the side, in aggressively cheerful font, was the slogan Good Kids Wait, and Liz had joked she wished she was holding the ball the first time she and Pete had been together. She put the ball in her mouth, keeping her thoughts blank. If she thought about what she was planning, she wouldn’t do it.

  A few months back, during an intense volleyball game, one of her teammates dislocated her shoulder and the school nurse popped it back in. Heather watched, fascinated and disgusted at the remedy, and she remembered how to do it. A simple and quick movement. Nothing to worry about.

  Don’t think.

  With her good hand, she grabbed her useless arm by the bicep. Don’t think. She bit harder on the sex ball. Don’t think. Should she count down? That would mean thinking, and-

  She pulled her arm up and in, as hard as she could, and she screamed into the spongy toy.

  This is not the type of screaming I wanted on my first time with the sex ball, she thought.

  Her shoulder gave a loud pop and then her vision swam. She collapsed to the floor, not crying, but tears streamed down her cheeks. Moving her bad arm was the hardest thing she’d ever forced herself to do, but she did it. Gently, but it moved. The pain was intense enough that she’d need a sling, but her arm rested back in its socket.

  Laughing and crying in equal doses, she crawled to her feet. Liz’s closet was open, and she helped herself to some clothes. They weren’t her size, but they were close enough. Liz was shorter and wider, but they had swapped enough times that Heather knew what would fit and what wouldn’t. She also got a new outfit for Liz. Bundling the clothes under her good arm, she padded back to the bathroom where the water was still running.

  “Liz? Are you okay?” She poked her head through the curtain in to the shower. Liz had sat down in the tub with her legs hugged to her chest, letting the water fall on her. She shivered under the ice-cold flow, her lips blue against her pale skin. Heather turned off the water and got Liz to her feet. She let Heather dry her, although her mouth hung open and her eyes maintained that dull, vacant expression. Heather kept up a running dialog of nonsense.

  “I got you some new clothes and underwear. You can put that on yourself. I borrowed your shirt, see? I’ve always loved this one, even though it’s a bit tight for me. You know who would love to see me in this? Matt Cutler. Liz, you wouldn’t believe it, we almost kissed. He’s a great guy, once you get past the shyness and get him talking. I wouldn't have known that about him. He figured out a bunch of stuff about the aliens, like how they work and why they’re here.”

  Prattling kept the dispiriting silence away and made it easier to go through the steps of bathing and clothing her broken friend like a toddler.

  “I’m going to put you to bed now, even though it’s early. We’re together so you don’t have to worry about being alone. I’ll stay with you through the whole thing, okay? I won't go anywhere. It will be like a sleepover.”

  She maneuvered Liz into bed and positioned herself so she was sitting up with Liz’s head in her lap. The unsettling, vacant stare remained her friend's eyes and Heather fretted about what else she could do. She had no experience with traumatic shock brought on by alien attack. With no better ideas, she stroked her friend’s hair and hummed tunelessly under her breath. It would be a long night.

  Paul

  Paul debated having a swig of olive oil. The food supply problem wasn’t that bad yet, but didn’t it make sense to conserve every little bit? Everything in the fridge was in danger of spoiling. All that was left was a few eggs, some cheese, and about a dozen half-filled containers of condiments. The downstairs freezer was filled with pounds of meat they had no way to consume, unless they lit a fire in the house.

  Thankfully, enough natural light came in through the kitchen windows that Paul could continue his pointless inventory. Either they had enough food, or they didn’t. If they didn’t, there was nothing he could do about it. Hopefully, Martin had better supplies in his house, but it’s not like he could run down the local grocery store and pick up a few things.

  I bet Amazon still delivers, though.

  He’d been day-to-day focused, like an alcoholic white-knuckling through the first week of sobriety. Don’t worry about that minute, worry about this minute. Don’t worry about tomorrow, get through today. Eventually, he’d need to figure out longer term considerations. How were they ever going to get out of here? And even if they did, what then? Where would they even go?

  Big thoughts, and every time he’d turn them over, he’d panic at the bottomless well that lived underneath. Even now, he retreated. Back to indexing food. Get through today. Make sure Sharon takes one more breath. Get Krista through the wall. Breathe. Breathe.

  The quiet of the neighborhood was abruptly broken by a deep thrumming sound, impossibly low, like playing the first string on a bass guitar. But louder than it had any right to be and the smallest of whimpers trickled from his mouth.

  The aliens were doing something. A new alarm? An escalation of their auditory torture?

  He wanted to run to the basement to hide, so he forced his legs to be brave for him and make himself run to the living room window. He looked out but wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Beside the tree house, it looked like Heather was running across the street, but that couldn’t possibly be right. And to the other side, a junction box from down the road had grown a pair of legs and was sprinting to the tree house.

  “NO!” he pounded on the living room window, hopeless of making any real difference. Heather would die and then he’d need to look Martin in the eye and explain why his daughter died. What was she even thinking?

  But she didn’t die. The aliens didn’t do anything. Above Alexandra’s house, one of the aliens reminded Paul of a fishing lure, the way it bobbed up and down. It dipped downwards and didn’t ma
ke any move toward Heather, almost like it was offline or powered down.

  She disappeared behind a row of half-dead azalea bushes that rimmed the perimeter of the Stocking household and then he couldn’t see anything else, but he assumed she made it. He couldn’t understand how she was alive.

  The alien straightened back up, regaining purpose. The junction box stopped moving and skidded to a halt beneath the tree house. He could see Matt and Abby yelling something in the doorway and then someone scrambled out of the junction box and up the stairs, tumbling into his kids. Was that... was that Pete?

  He didn’t know what he just saw. Worse, he had no way to figure it out.

  Being a parent was a lot like being a cop. Walking into crime scenes created by his children, making note of the broken lamp, the ball bouncing in the corner, and the guilty faces. “What’s going on here?” was usually a good way to start the interrogation, and if it was a tough case, he could call in Krista to play bad cop.

  But he had no parental tools to apply in this scenario. His kids were off doing things and he couldn’t stop them. Or help them. Or show them. Or whichever thing they needed him to do, he couldn’t do it. His role had been downgraded to observer. Obviously, something profound had happened outside, something his kids had engineered, but it was without his support or guidance. Matt and Abby weren’t allowed to have moments without him. What had they done?

  “Paul! Paul!” John’s voice yelled up from the basement.

  What now?

  He was torn between ineffectually looking out the window and going to see what John wanted. On the one hand, staring pointlessly made him feel like he was doing something, despite how obviously stupid that feeling was. On the other, John seemed to be frantic.

  Through the window, he could see Matt and Abby speaking with the person from the junction box and they all seemed to be okay. He couldn’t see Heather, but at least he had the assurance that his children were alive. He curled in on himself, made sticky with shame at that thought, but he couldn’t shake the relief.

  John continued yelling from the basement, and Paul turned to see what was getting him all riled up. Maybe he found a leak in the bathroom and wanted to discuss plumbing maintenance or something.

  Downstairs, John scraped at the dirt in the wall, picking at it with a small spade. Close to the edge of the giant hole in the concrete, about a foot from the edge, Paul saw something that made his heart lurch.

  A hand poked through the dirt.

  “They’re here, Paul.” John turned to him with wide and frantic eyes. “They’re through.”

  Krista

  Krista punched through the final layer of dirt. The exit was a foot across, and she could reach through and grab Paul’s hand, hear his laugh, practically taste his voice. So close now, and she was down to hacking at the dirt with her bare hands, rubbing away the packed earth that stood between her and her husband.

  From behind, Martin called out useless advice like, “Dig faster,” and “Use a shovel,” but she ignored him. The need to get through was palpable, and she was done with subtlety. She clawed at the dirt, ripping away the remaining edges, and the hole expanded. Someone’s hands grabbed her forearms and pulled, and she was through. Completed.

  “Krista.” Paul pulled her up and she was in his arms, wrapped in the safety of him, burying her head into his neck and surprising herself by crying. She could hardly see him by the dim candlelight, but it was enough.

  “I missed you so much.” She sounded like she was five, barely recognizing her own voice. It was true though.

  “I missed you too. Hey, did you ever get me that coke I asked for?”

  At first, she wasn’t sure what he meant, but then remembered: the last thing he said to her before the aliens came was to get a drink. He was smiling, trying to cheer her up with a dumb joke, taking away the tension. Typical Paul. Her Paul.

  “You’re such a dweeb.” She wiped her eyes and punched him softly in the arm. His face was drawn with huge circles pooled under his eyes, but it was wonderful to see him.

  “You’re a sight, Krista.” John approached and wrapped her in a hug.

  “You too, John.” She couldn’t stop smiling now that they were all together.

  “I’m going to need some help here.” Martin’s voice came from the hole. He had managed to get his head and arm out but was stuck. John laughed, and Martin looked like he was going to say something, but he snorted out a chuckle and everyone was all laughs and smiles. It was too good to be together, nothing could ruin it.

  They pulled Martin through, followed by handshakes and claps on shoulders and rounds of “Good man,” – It was wonderful, and she spun in a circle, going from hug to hug, taking it all in.

  “I can’t believe that worked.” John crouched down and peered into the hole that connected the houses. “We’re going to need to buttress that if we’re going to move back and forth.”

  “There’s some material in my basement we can use,” Martin said. “We can make it bigger so it’s easier to get through.”

  “Why?” When Krista spoke, three sets of head swiveled to look at her. “I mean, we’re all here now. Why would we go back?” Paul answered first.

  “There’s going to be stuff in Martin’s house we can use, Kris. We don’t have any ideas for how to get out, so anything’s got to help. In fact, one of us should go over now and do a quick inventory on the food. See where we’re at. We’ve been shipping a lot out to the kids and we’re nearly out.”

  She opened her mouth to say that was a terrible idea, that they needed to stay together, and the best thing they could do was to plan their next move, but before the words came out, she looked at him. He stared at her like he always did, waiting for her approval. And horribly, her first instinct was to slap him down. She wanted him to be more assertive but the second he tried, she’d put him in his place. That was the pattern. He’d try something, and she’d say no, so he’d try less. And because he’d try less, she’d get frustrated and pick up more of the work herself. Which led to her saying no when he tried to do something. Which led him to try less. And on and on and on it went.

  Who started this cycle first? Him or her? Did it even matter? Because that’s all marriage was. Patterns and layers. A painting made with a partner, both people taking turns with the brush strokes. Sometimes there would be mistakes, and the smart couples would recognize it, shrug, paint over it and keep working. She and Paul had been trying to fix the same corner of the painting for years, but she’d hogged the brush.

  It stopped now.

  “That’s a great idea, Paul.” She squeezed his arm and was both overjoyed and depressed to see relief light in his eyes. Relief that she wasn’t shooting him down.

  “I think I can squeeze through the hole if you two have spent enough time in there,” John said. “I’ll take a quick run through and see what’s what.” Krista noticed he looked to Paul for approval.

  “Great. See if you can find anything for Sharon, too.”

  John nodded and crawled into the hole, disappearing completely in moments.

  “Where is she, Cutler?” Nothing of the earlier joviality remained in Martin’s voice.

  “Upstairs, Martin. In the guest room. We’ve done everything we can, but she’s… not doing that well. I’m sorry.”

  “Get out of my way.” Martin pushed him aside and took the stairs two at a time. Paul looked after him and sighed.

  “We should go up there too.”

  “I’m going to screw you stupid tonight.” Krista surprised herself by saying that, and even in the dim light of the basement she saw his eyebrows raise.

  “What?”

  “Whatever is happening with Sharon, I’m sure you did your best. We’ll go up and see if we can help, and once that’s done, we’ll figure out how to get to our children. And then I’m going to throw you down onto the bed and ravage you.”

  “I’m… totally okay with that plan.” She heard the grin in his voice.

  “Paul,
we haven’t always been perfect, but I want you to know I love you, okay? No matter what.” She took his face in her hands and pulled him close. “Do you believe me?”

  “I do.”

  “Say it then. Tell me.”

  He spoke slowly, unsure what she was after. “I believe you. I believe you love me.”

  “Good.” She dropped her hands to her sides. “Don’t ever forget it, okay?”

  “I won’t. Now come up with me to check on Sharon.”

  They held hands as they walked up the stairs, and she decided she might not ever let go.

  “How is she?”

  “Really bad. I don’t know what to do. I think the bleeding stopped, but she’s barely been conscious over the past day or two. I thought that she’d be okay once we got the bleeding under control.”

  “Have you checked the bandage?”

  Paul shook his head. “She told me not to.”

  “Okay, maybe we start there.”

  They climbed the stairs to the second floor and Krista’s stomach did backflips, worried what she might see. At the top, the door to the spare room stood open. Krista audibly swallowed.

  They crept around the corner and even before they entered the room, Krista could smell the wrongness. A syrupy odor, thick and sweet, hung in the air. Even with the windows open, the wrongness permeated everything.

  Martin crouched beside the bed, clutching Sharon’s hand with his own. Krista was surprised to see signs that he’d been crying, evidenced by his rheumy eyes and sniffles. Why would she be surprised? That was his wife. He might be an asshole, but he wasn’t totally without feeling.

  “You’ve ruined her, Cutler.” He threw the accusation at Paul the instant they stepped foot into the room.

  “I’m so sorry. I did everything I could. Everything she told me to do.” Paul tied invisible knots with his hands, looking down at his feet. It wasn’t fair. This wasn’t his fault.