The Summer It Came for Us

by Rix, Dan

  I tensed up, squeezing it tighter and tighter, past where it should’ve fired, way past where it should’ve fired . . . oh God, it wasn’t working—

  BANG.

  The gun punched back into my hands, sending a jolt through my shoulders, followed by a shockwave of adrenaline.

  I gasped and doubled over, my heart galloping like a racehorse.

  I didn’t see where the bullet hit, but it wasn’t the target.

  “You’re a natural.” Malcolm watched me proudly. “You want to empty the clip?”

  I shook my head vigorously.

  “Malcolm, Remi!” Zoe ran over. “You guys need to see this.”

  “Zoe, stay where you are.” Malcolm rushed forward and pointed my arms—and the gun—away from Zoe’s direction while he disarmed me.

  She shouted something else, but with the earplugs, I didn’t catch it.

  “What?” I called, cupping my ears.

  She shouted again, and I made out the gist of it.

  Something in the river.

  “Wait, what?” I pried out my earplugs, and finally, I heard her clearly.

  “Guys, get over here! There’s a body in the river.”

  I scrambled after Zoe and Jace, cutting through the trees toward the riverbank, and burst out on the banks of a shady inlet overgrown with reeds.

  Our long shadows scattered the water bugs.

  “Right there.” Zoe pointed toward a mangled shrub whose thorny branches dipped into the water.

  I raised my hand to my mouth, speechless.

  From behind those branches jutted a human arm, rising and falling on the current. The rest of the body was totally submerged, and from where I stood, I could just make out its blue-gray shape beneath the surface.

  The body had snagged on the shrub while floating down the river.

  Malcolm came up next to me. “It must have washed here from upstream.”

  Jace leaned out to get a better look. “What’s upstream? You think someone tried to dispose a body?”

  “Well, that’s where all those scientists are,” Zoe said. “And that’s where . . .”

  She trailed off, and the four of us exchanged an uneasy look.

  Where we crashed.

  The crash site was two miles upstream.

  “We need to call the police,” I said, my throat oddly tight.

  “Just wait a minute,” said Jace. “It might not be him, it might be one of the scientists.”

  “It’s still a dead body, Jace.” Rolling my eyes, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed 9-1-1, my hands much steadier now that I’d done it before.

  But this time Malcolm held up his hand to stop me.

  “If they come, there might be a cover-up. We’ll look. Just to make sure it’s not him. Then we’ll call.”

  We all nodded, but no one moved.

  Could it be? Had Vincent died shortly after the crash, fallen into the river, and turned up here?

  It was too real a possibility, too frightening.

  “So . . . someone go over there and look at his face,” Jace said.

  “Hah, yeah right!” Zoe scoffed. “I’m not going over there. And it could be a girl.”

  “Nah, that’s a dude’s arm,” said Jace. “Anybody tell if he’s black from here?”

  I squinted toward the arm, but the sun was close to setting. In the deepening shadows under the shrub, I couldn’t tell if the skin tone was black, white, purple, or some sickly yellow.

  “I’ll check,” said Malcolm.

  “Want—want me to come?” I offered.

  “No, you stay.” He crept out along the bank, hopped over a muddy patch,

  He lifted his shirt over his mouth and nose. “Stinks over here.”

  I chewed my fingernails, biting off whole bits.

  Please don’t be Vincent . . . please don’t be Vincent . . .

  Malcolm grabbed hold of the shrub and wrenched aside its limbs to uncover the face. When he did, he jerked back, and his shirt slipped off his mouth.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

  My heart gave a nervous start.

  “Is it . . . is it Vincent?” Zoe asked.

  “One of the scientists?” Jace said.

  Malcolm merely stared, and I saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down.

  “Malcolm, who is it?” I asked, hating the suspense.

  When he turned back to us, he looked like he’d just seen a ghost.

  “It’s Jace,” he said.

  Chapter 16

  Two miles upriver, Clara Hopkins was giving her final instructions to the tree climber.

  “Be on your guard up there,” she said. “Once you’ve got a visual, plant the package and come straight back down. We’re not sure if this thing is dangerous.”

  He nodded and secured his lanyard around the pine’s gigantic trunk, and Clara retreated to follow his ascent on her tablet computer, which streamed from the video camera and microphone fixed to his helmet.

  The climber was to locate the source of the EM field up in the canopy—the Glipper, as they’d heard the DIA guys calling it—and position a package of cameras and instruments so they could study it from the ground.

  Flickers of late-afternoon sun glimmered through the trees, making her uneasy.

  They didn’t have much light left.

  The climber flicked his lanyard up a few feet at a time, then using it as leverage dug his spurs into the bark and stepped up to meet it, his clips and buckles clinking on his belt. He climbed up through the lower branches, and soon vanished from sight.

  “Seeing a bunch more scratches up here,” his voice crackled over the radio.

  She saw it over the tablet feed, too. More claw marks scraped into the trunk.

  Sources of electromagnetic fields didn’t just climb up into trees.

  More likely, a black bear had stumbled on the source, whatever it was, and eaten it, in which case they’d have to tranquilize the animal and the cut it open. They could have a long night ahead of them.

  “Just be careful,” she radioed back.

  “Getting close now,” he said, consulting his own Gauss meter. “Should be just up through these branches. Man, I can feel it.”

  Pine needles scraped across the camera, and then his head broke through into a shadowy alcove.

  Squinting in disbelief at her tablet, she made out walls built up of matted pine needles, twigs, feathers, and clumps of mud . . . like a bird’s nest.

  “What the hell?” he muttered, turning his head too fast for her to make out anything else on the feed.

  “What do you see? You’re turning too fast.”

  “I’m in some kind of structure, looks like it’s been made by an animal, but there’s nothing here—”

  On her tablet computer, a shadow shifted against the background.

  “Look out, behind you!” she cried.

  The view spun. No, she couldn’t be seeing this right.

  “What in God’s name . . . ?” he muttered, as a hulking shadow separated itself from the background.

  “Abort!” she yelled. “Get out of the tree!”

  But then, from way up in the tree’s canopy, came his bloodcurdling scream.

  A moment later, something crashed down through the branches and landed with a sickening splat, making her flinch.

  She took one look and clamped her hand over her mouth, knowing she was about to lose her dinner.

  It was the top half of the climber’s body, severed cleanly through the middle, now spilling coils of gray intestine into the dirt.

  It was Jace.

  We all took our turns leaning around the shrub to see his bloated face half-submerged in the river, the mud-stained band T-shirt he’d worn that night rippling in the current, his cross necklace dangling from his neck, twinkling in the shallows.

  It was Jace.

  Blood had dried around a long gash on his forehead, the skin around it a sickly brownish yellow bruise, leaving no doubt how this corpse had died.

 
I stared for as long as I could, my brain struggling to process, before the putrid fumes drove me back.

  Jace—the living Jace—knelt in the mud by his dead body, hands clutched to the sides of his face, muttering, “What the fuck . . . what the fuck . . . what the fuck . . .” until Malcolm hauled him to his feet and dragged him back.

  Jaw hanging open, I looked between Jace and the corpse.

  But he was here. He was with us.

  He’d always been with us.

  He didn’t die in the car crash.

  Zoe broke away from the group to throw up. She came back looking sicker than ever.

  I barely noticed.

  A nauseating knot had formed in my own stomach.

  Why was there a body here as if he had died?

  “Should we call the police?” Zoe offered weakly, wiping her mouth.

  “But I’m right here,” Jace said. “I’m here, I’m me.” He pointed a shaky finger toward the body. “That is not me.”

  “Then what is it?” said Malcolm, squeezing his jaw.

  “It’s a fake,” Jace said suddenly. “It’s those scientists. It’s probably made of wax. They planted it here to—to make it look like I died.”

  But we all knew it wasn’t made of wax.

  “It’s just like your car,” I whispered.

  He gave me a sharp look. “What do you mean? How is it just like my car, Remi?”

  “It crashed, and it was all dented up, and . . . and now it’s in your garage.” I finished my statement with a heavy gulp.

  You died . . . and now you’re standing here.

  “There seems to be a copy of you,” Malcolm said.

  What he didn’t say, but what we all were thinking, was if there was a copy, then which one was fake?

  If Jace had died in the crash, then who was this guy we’d been hanging out with for the last four days?

  Or . . . what was he?

  Jace licked his lips, looking nervous.

  Zoe gave him a wary look and edged away from him.

  Malcolm’s hand inched toward his concealed holster.

  “No,” I said firmly. “We’re not going to act like that, we’re not going to start suspecting each other. It’s much more likely that Jace—that our Jace—is the real one. He’s right. It’s got to be a fake.”

  “Police can do an autopsy,” Malcolm said.

  “Guys, can we please not call them,” Jace said.

  “Jace, there’s a dead body,” I said.

  “I’m standing right here.”

  “It’s a dead body.”

  “Of who? It’s not me, so who is it?” He dragged his hand through his hair. “Look, all I’m saying is they might get weird about it. I could be a suspect.”

  “Of what crime? Murdering yourself?” Malcolm said with a raised eyebrow.

  “Vincent’s still missing, guys,” I said loudly. “This could be the missing link, this could be a clue to what happened. We have an extra Jace, and no Vincent, right? That could be significant.”

  In the end, on my insistence, we did call the police.

  Looking more bewildered than ever, officer Schapiro and the county’s medical examiner fished out the body, sealed it in a body bag, and left after taking our statements, saying, “We’ll let you know.”

  In other words, not promising.

  It was well after dark by the time we finished all the questioning, at last climbed into Malcolm’s convertible, and headed back down Ridgeview Drive, taking a wide arc around the perimeter of the river valley, paralleling the accelerator ring of the collider for most of the way—hints of it just visible in the starlight.

  No one spoke.

  Because how sure could we really be?

  With all this talk of alien abductions, it seemed naïve to not at least consider the possibility.

  During the eight hours we didn’t remember, had something else—something inhuman—taken on Jace’s form?

  “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” Malcolm muttered.

  “What?” said Jace.

  “Nothing.”

  “Malcolm, do you ever put the top up?” I grumbled, catching my flapping hair and clutching it to my neck. Though still warm, the air battering my cheeks and yanking at my clothing made for a miserable drive.

  “Don’t know how,” he said, downshifting around a curve.

  Suddenly, his headlights sputtered and dimmed for a few seconds before coming back on.

  At the same time, the air temperature plummeted, drawing out goosebumps on my flesh. Most likely, we’d just driven into the shadowy side of a mountain that had stayed cold through the day.

  Still, I had to squeeze my arms close to fight a shiver.

  But the cold wasn’t the only thing nipping at my skin.

  Like a glove slowly enveloping me, a field of static electricity moved over my arms and up the back of my neck. The air itself had a zing to it, stinging my nostrils and the back of my tongue—a taste like burnt electronics.

  I’d learned in science class that was the smell of ozone.

  “You guys feel that?” I whispered.

  “Yep,” said Jace. “It felt like this back at the crash site. There must be patches like this all around the valley.”

  Zoe pulled out her cell phone. “Guys, do you remember what time that bright flash was on Thursday?”

  “10:47 p.m.,” said Malcolm. “Why?”

  “You actually remember that?” I said.

  “I was holding my phone in my hands, I was staring right at the time.”

  I leaned forward, curious. “By the way, did you lose reception that night?”

  “Phone went dead, just like everything else.”

  “Uh . . . guys?” Zoe whispered, staring at her phone.

  I glanced at her. “Why? Why were you asking about the time?”

  “Because it’s 10:47 p.m. right now.”

  We were all silent as that sank in.

  Then I felt it.

  The same feeling I’d had the night we crashed, deep in my gut.

  That sense of wrongness. That sense that everything was subtly off, subtly perverted.

  It’s happening again.

  For an instant, I felt such bottomless dread I couldn’t even speak, couldn’t even move, I had no motivation, no will.

  Then the sky flashed a blinding white.

  Just like before, the screen of Zoe’s phone, the car’s headlights, and the dashboard lights went dark.

  “We’re good, we’re good,” Malcolm said, wrestling the wheel and braking to a stop in the middle of the pitch black highway. “I still have control of the car.”

  Just as quickly as they’d gone out, all the lights came back on. The headlights illuminated bugs flittering over the double yellow line and a dark stretch of asphalt.

  I checked on the others, panic nipping at my nerves—Malcolm in the driver’s seat, Jace in the front seat, and Zoe right next to me, looking pale and slightly ill. “At least we’re all still here. Everyone okay?”

  “It didn’t happen right away last time.” Malcolm carefully pulled back into his lane. “Be ready.”

  I tensed up, waiting for the moment I woke up in my bed.

  But what was I even waiting for?

  What was the trigger?

  What had caused us to lose our memories last time?

  Was it the flash itself? The crash? Or something else altogether?

  “Think we’re good,” Malcolm said, scanning the road ahead. “Keep your eyes out for a shadow.”

  But that’s all there was beyond the headlights. Just shadows.

  Spotting a humanoid shape out there would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

  As the seconds passed and nothing happened, Malcolm gradually inched up his speed, and I began to relax. Maybe we were fine. Maybe it was just a false alarm.

  “Will you guys promise to bury me?” Zoe said in a haunted voice.

  Her cell phone slipped from her grip and tumbled to the floor.

 
I looked over, startled, to see her gazing vacantly forward.

  “You okay? You feeling sick again?”

  “I’m—I’m dead—I’m dead now,” she said.

  “Zoe, you’re not dead,” I said. “You’re talking to us.”

  “No, this isn’t the world of the living. I’m dead. I don’t exist anymore.”

  What was this crazy talk?

  “But you do.”

  “It’s just thoughts right now, just chatter, the rest is . . . the rest of me is dead.”

  Her words gave me chills.

  “Zoe, you’re going to be fine,” I said, patting her knee.

  She merely shook her head, a look of utter dismay on her face.

  Malcolm twisted around. “Zoe, snap the fuck out of it.”

  “Can you pull over?” she said. “I need to go back to my body.”

  “What’s she talking about?” Jace swiveled around in his seat.

  “Pinch her,” Malcolm said.

  “I know where Vincent is,” she said. “I’m going to go to Vincent now.”

  “Zoe, please . . .” I pinched her thigh, digging fingernails into her skin.

  She had no reaction.

  I could have drawn blood, and I doubt she would have flinched.

  “Zoe, wake up,” I cried, shaking her arm, feeling a building sense of desperation. “You have to wake up.”

  “It’s come for me,” she said, her eyes wide but vacant. “It’s here . . . the Glipper’s here . . . it’s come for me because I’m dead.”

  “Zoe, what are you talking about?” I said, now frantic seeing my best friend’s state. “You’re not dead!”

  I wanted to scream at her, but I forced my voice to be gentle. “You’re not dead.”

  “Pull over so I can go back to my body,” Zoe said. “I need to go back.”

  “Maybe we should pull over,” I said.

  “Not here,” Malcolm growled. “Not if that thing’s out there.”

  “PULL OVER!” Zoe shrieked.

  Cursing, Malcolm pulled to the side of the road. His tires crunched on the gravel shoulder and kicked up dust, which drifted into the headlights to form a bright, swirling cloud.

  The cloud parted around a humanoid shadow, eight or nine feet tall, standing not five feet from the bumper.

  I screamed.

  The shadow, cast by nothing that I could see, stepped out of the cone of light and into the forest, leaving every inch of my skin prickling with fear.