Alien Taste
Page 28
“I’m hungry too.”
Max laughed and returned the Sauer to its holster under his pillow. “I’ll see what we can get delivered.”
A short conversation with the front desk produced the number of a Chinese restaurant that delivered. Max called in an order, and then fiddled with baby bottles and formula.
It hurts. The baby whimpered into Ukiah’s mind. It hurts.
“I know, pumpkin,” Ukiah murmured, nosing into his memory’s soft black hair. “If you just burp, it will stop hurting.”
Max took the baby, expertly tucking him onto his shoulder, and produced a wet burp with a couple of well-placed pats. “We need a name for him.”
“How about Max?” Ukiah carefully accepted the baby back from Max, mindful to support the wobbly neck and head.
“Thanks, but no,” Max said with great sincerity. “My older brother is a junior, and it drove me nuts with big Bob and little Bob, Bob and Bobbie, Senior and Junior. If our partnership is to be a long one, let’s not complicate it with that.” Max considered a moment, and then suggested, “John Oregon would be nice and simple. Face it, kid, not much about his life is going to be simple.”
Gas gone, hunger became the baby’s complaint.
“Is that bottle ready?”
“It should be.” Max lifted the bottle out of the water, tested on his wrist. Satisfied with the temperature, he handed it to Ukiah. “John? Jim? Tom?”
Ukiah looked down at the baby as it ate greedily. “What do you think, little one?”
Eyes as black as his own regarded him. Kittanning.
“Kittanning?”
It was where I was born.
“He says he wants to be called Kittanning.”
Max scowled at Ukiah. “Why does your life have to be so weird?”
“Sorry.”
“Kittanning. Kittanning Oregon. Kit. Kit Oregon. Okay. It works.”
The phone rang. Max eyed it a moment before picking it up. “Yes?”
A woman’s voice asked, “You ordered Chinese food to be delivered?”
“Yes.”
“It’s here. I’m sending the delivery man up.”
“Thank you.”
They waited, tense, to the silence, the soft chime as the elevator opened down the hall, and then footsteps approaching the door. A soft knock. “Chinese?”
Max looked at Ukiah.
“It’s a human,” Ukiah whispered. “He has food. There’s no one else out there.”
So Max opened the door, took the offered bag, and paid in cash. They listened to the retreating footsteps, the chime of the elevator, and then the silence.
“How long are we going to hide out?” Ukiah asked.
“A day or two. Maybe a week.” Max unloaded the bag. “We need to get hold of Leo and make sure no one can take the baby. Kittanning. There’s the whole mess of you coming back from the dead.” He paused to turn on the television. The Martian landscape appeared on the screen. As they watched, the alien ship, repulsive to the human eye, flickered into existence.
Max turned the channel. The alien ship loomed in the Mars Rover’s cameras, huge and menacing, its true dimensions lost as it towered over the Earth vehicle. Next channel. The blinding explosion, seconds of brilliance before the Mars Rover vaporized in the destruction of the alien ship, followed by the gray static. Next channel. A frame by frame analysis of the sequence. Channel after channel. All normal programming preempted. Photos enlarged until they were blurred. Computer modeling done in an attempt to grasp the true dimensions of the now vanished ship. Shots of Mars through the Hubble telescope, showing a massive dust storm, blurring all features. Experts from every field across the world were being interviewed, offering no real explanations.
“Okay, we might be hiding out longer than a week,” Max finally said.
“I’m sorry, Max.”
“Hell, kid, considering all the ways this could have turned out, I think we got a pretty good deal.”
They slept. They ate. They watched the endless coverage on the spaceship, because there was nothing else to watch. Finally, Max went out and bought a DVD player and a couple dozen comedies. Life, he said, had been too exciting lately for thrillers. They packed up Kittanning and their guns and cautiously ventured out each day to let the cleaning staff in.
They made their phone calls while out driving. Indigo paid them compliments on neatly vanishing and arranged to meet them at the Grove City Outlet Mall, just off of I-79, halfway to the safe house on Saturday afternoon. Chino reported that the work was proceeding on the office and that no one seemed interested in him, the offices, or their location. Leo, their lawyer, was much less optimistic; while fathers were optional, the legal system mandated that newborns came with birth mothers. He promised to work on a solution.
By Saturday, Max still looked like a raccoon, but not a single bruise remained on Ukiah.
The safe house was a lovely craftsman cabin with faded blue siding, set on the shore of a lake. Maple and oak trees stood close to shelter it from the sun and wind, but beyond it was the wide openness of water and sky. When they arrived, Ukiah’s moms and Cally came out in their summer dresses to fuss over him. When they were done, Max and Indigo distracted Cally off to the beach, and Ukiah lifted the sleeping Kittanning out of the car.
“Who’s this?” Mom Jo whispered.
“This is my son. His name is Kittanning.”
The song of wolves woke him. The wind was up, tossing the treetops, rushing thin veils of clouds across the star studded sky. Ukiah found Mom Jo on the back porch in her flannel bathrobe, staring out over the lake.
“There aren’t any wolves in Pennsylvania,” she breathed.
“Yes, there are,” he said, feeling the faint prickle of Pack presence. “They just walk on two legs instead of four.” He started down the steps, out into the wild night.
She reached out and caught him by the shoulders. “I know they’re calling you. Just remember to come back.”
In the dark, with his other family nearby, he finally found the courage to ask the question he wanted to ask all day. “Does it bother you, Mom, that I’m not human?”
She laughed into his hair. “Oh, Mowgli, my little wolf boy, I knew you weren’t human when I saw you sitting in the snow, eating that rabbit. Go on, run with your gray brothers. Just remember to come back to me.”