Alien Home

by Mark Zubro

  The blue glow surrounding them extended into the frozen street. Cars slowed, and their occupants stared. A male stood at the curb on the near side of the street. “That’s the other one,” Joe said. He took Mike’s communicator. Using all three, his own, Mike’s, and the one from Frab, he increased the glow. The other alien wobbled and sank to his knees in the snow.

  Mike and Joe carried Frab to the other one. Mike called 9-1-1. He said, “I’ve got two unconscious people on the sidewalk.” He gave the address. He also called the FBI agents, Henry and Hynes. “Why’d you call them?”

  Joe smiled at him. “Those FBI agents pestered me. Let these guys here deal with some more inconvenient humans for a while.”

  “How long will they be unconscious?”

  “For at least a couple of hours. We can turn off our communicators for a while. When we do, and the aura from your implant still surrounds us, we’ll know we’ve got more trouble.”

  They tapped at the face of their communicators and the glows faded.

  Joe said, “Your implant isn’t causing a defensive reaction. We should be safe.”

  Joe used Frab’s and this new alien’s communicators plus his own and Mike’s to do a sweep of the area. When he finished he said, “As far as I can tell there aren’t any more of them, but I’m not sure. I should be able to pick up their ship. It’s got to be here. My technology has been trumped.”

  “I know how you feel,” Mike said.

  “Vov made the original of your implant, and I think it might be more powerful than I ever imagined. I wish I knew for sure.”

  They waited until they saw the ambulance turn the corner onto Irving Park. Joe used his own communicator for a few moments. There was a wild blue flash inside the former bakery.

  “That’s it?” Mike asked.

  “Good enough.”

  “Should we burn it down?”

  “No need.”

  Mike looked back at Frab and the other alien now being ministered to by paramedics. Joe gave a brief chuckle. “Earth doctors will work on them. I’d love to be there when they wake up.”

  “What will actually happen at the hospital?” Mike asked.

  “With luck the FBI agents will have gotten to them by then as well. As for the doctors.” Joe shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me. Your Earth instruments won’t register. They’ll be breathing so they won’t be declared dead. After that? Maybe they’ll try to stick them with needles. Although why you would inject unconscious people with various substances is beyond me.”

  “They could stick them with intravenous stuff,” Mike said.

  “We could speculate uselessly out here in the cold, or we could get the hell out of here.”

  Being wary of a possible trap and even more aliens, they hurried through the streets, back onto a bus, and then to their car in the garage at home. Mike pressed the control for the garage door start. They climbed in the car, and Mike started the engine. As soon as he could clear the rising door, he hit the gas pedal. The tires squealed as he backed out. Because he was going too fast, they slewed into the snow. The alley had yet to be plowed. They were the very last priority after a Chicago blizzard. In a few seconds Joe adapted the energy field to melt the snow around them. Mike threw the car into drive and eased through the rapid melt. No aliens appeared. As the number of blocks from the apartment increased, Joe lessened the energy field to emit as little blue glow as possible but enough to help them through the streets.

  “Where are we going?” Mike asked.

  “To my ship. It’s all I can think of.”

  “Are we going to run away?”

  “I’m open to alternatives.”

  “What about Jack?”

  “They won’t go after him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “He has no technology. They had no reports of him. Only the bounty hunter reported back, and he could only have mentioned you.”

  “Won’t they read our minds? Have they read yours already?”

  “I will sacrifice anything to keep Jack from coming to harm. I know you would too.”

  “Yes.”

  “I would do the same for you.”

  “Is it going to come to that, us dying for each other?”

  “People on my planet are civilized. We aren’t barbarians, but there are standards, and they aren’t always Earth standards. They would never harm the boy. They just might take him with us.”

  “They’re going to get us, aren’t they?”

  “I will try to foil them. If we can get away for a while, maybe we can come up with a plan.”

  While they talked, Mike drove onto Lake Shore Drive, now almost clear of snow. The mayors of Chicago had all learned the lesson of Mike Bilandic and Jane Byrne: clear the streets of snow as fast as possible and don’t lie about your progress.

  They headed toward the spot where they’d left the transportation device to the ship.

  Mike said, “I can’t just leave Jack.”

  “I understand. What do you want to do?”

  “I feel like we should have been able to do something ahead of time to prevent this.”

  “We did everything we could think of.”

  Mike nodded. “I’m most worried about Jack.”

  “Would you have not wanted Jack to move in?”

  “No.”

  “Or not loved him?”

  “No. Leaving Earth is bad enough, but abandoning Jack is unconscionable. His dad might be dead, but he’s talked about feeling abandoned by his dad and mom. Maybe they didn’t physically leave him, but they did emotionally. I don’t want to be that kind of parent.”

  “We couldn’t have stopped my planet sending anyone. We did everything we could. We tried as hard as we could for four years to think of possible options.”

  “I know.”

  “We could have left four years ago and made a life together traveling among the stars. The two of us forever on a lonely space ship sending back false messages to my planet. Eventually the fuel would have run out if I couldn’t find a new ready source, or we’d have grown old and died in a far off part of the galaxy, drifting between the stars. That’s not what I wanted.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “I wanted to be with you here on Earth, to make a real life together, and I never would have gotten to try your grandmother’s lasagna.”

  Mike smiled for the first time in quite a while then shook his head. “Maybe we were deluding ourselves to think it would ever happen.”

  “Maybe.”

  As Mike moved off the Drive at Hollywood and onto Sheridan Road, he asked, “They can’t get to me. Can I hurt them? If I tried could I kill one?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “I never wanted to hurt anybody. Look what I’ve already done tonight. At a mortal threat to you, I think I would do the same as I did for Jack. I won’t let them hurt him or you.”

  “I don’t know if you could stop them. I hope it doesn’t come to a fight.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m very afraid we’d lose.”

  “If my being taken will allow Jack to stay here, I’ll gladly go. Everything he has is here.”

  “Except you’d be gone.”

  “And you.” Mike sighed. “I wish I knew what was best, and I wish I knew if we were going to live to see if I made the right choice.” He thumped his fist against the steering wheel. “What happens to us if we get taken to your planet?”

  “Probably my implants would be severely altered if not eliminated. If I wasn’t responding the way they wished, they’d start removing parts of my brain.”

  “Why didn’t they just do that to the criminal scientist you were chasing?”

  “Maybe he had knowledge they wanted. Maybe they were going to, and he escaped before they could.”

  “And what will they do to me?”

  “They’ll try to get rid of that implant. After that, I don’t know. I can’t imagine they’d set us up in a cozy cottage near the sea to grow old in bliss. T
here are ‘non-indigenous being’ protection laws and very strict laws about same-sex couples being together. They might even send us to separate prison planets, or maybe they wouldn’t do much. The goal would probably be to make sure you couldn’t contaminate Earth with knowledge I’d given you.”

  “I’d be a prisoner.”

  “In the best case scenario.”

  “Or dead.”

  “Worst case.”

  “Who exactly were these two?”

  Joe said, “My guess what’s happening is it’s as if Interpol, the FBI, the CIA, MI 6, the KGB, and the Chinese secret service were after us at the same time. Probably the alliances between those who are after us are shifting back and forth, sometimes fighting each other, sometimes cooperating.”

  Mike said, “Like galactic Keystone Cops.”

  He drove in silence until they reached Northwestern University in Evanston. They parked on the snow-free bottom floor of the two-tiered parking garage near the southeast corner of the campus. Theirs was the only car in the lot. Outside in the thundering wind and waves of snow scudding along the ground, they found a few vague remnants of the footprints they’d made the day before and followed them back to the lake shore. They hadn’t used the communicator to melt a clear path because they didn’t want anyone getting suspicious. As they approached the rocks where they had hidden it, Mike couldn’t see the translucent disk. That wasn’t unusual. The thing was invisible. On the side of the rock away from the shore Joe leaned down to grab the disk. His hands came up empty. He said, “It’s gone.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  They looked at each other. They looked at the sky. They glanced at the lake. Other than the howling wind, the universe chose to be silent.

  Mike whispered. “Fuck-a-doodle-do.”

  In the moonlight they checked for other footprints. There were none. Joe tried using his communicator to check for traces of other aliens’ presence. He got nothing.

  “Did Frab get it?”

  “No idea.”

  “Can you summon your ship here?”

  “Using my communicator to summon my ship would most likely give us away. If Frab and his friend found the disc, they almost certainly have located the ship. They may not be able to capture it although I’m not sure about that. I was told I was the only one who could ever get into it. Again, at least they’re not supposed to be able to. As we both know, the information I got from my superiors before I left was less than adequate. I presume Frab and his buddy can certainly prevent us from getting to it, and before my ship could get here, theirs might arrive.”

  Walking back to the car in the snow they’d trodden through twice already was easier than the first two times.

  “Maybe they already have your ship,” Mike said as they sat in the car waiting for its warmth to overcome the bitter cold.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why wasn’t someone here to trap us?”

  A hand thudded on the trunk of the car. Joe screamed and slumped over. Mike’s energy field flashed blue around him.

  Mike yanked the car into gear and floored it. Tires squealed as he burst from his parking place and roared toward the exit. As they raced out, he glanced in the mirrors and then whisked his head around as far as he could in every direction. He saw a man, presumably an alien, struggling to rise from the cold concrete ground.

  When Mike looked forward, he saw someone standing in the middle of the exit lane. What looked like a communicator gleamed in his upraised right hand. Holding onto the wheel with one hand, Mike plucked his communicator out of his pocket. He held it up and concentrated. A yellow flash flamed from the alien’s fist in front of him. Mike’s communicator responded with a streak of blue lightning. Mike blinked his eyes to clear the stars from his vision. When he could see clearly again, he was only yards from the exit. No one stood in his way. He didn’t look back. The old Chevy lumbered out of the parking lot and into the night.

  Mike reached out for Joe. He was unconscious but breathing regularly.

  After several blocks, Mike hit a red light. He glanced on all sides, checked all the mirrors. They were the only car in sight.

  The energy field faded after his first left and winked out a few blocks later. Safe for the moment, Mike thought, as long as Vov’s powerful implant kept him so. He had little confidence in his own ability and a whole lot of doubt and confusion about the powers arrayed against him. Nothing he could do about that now.

  Mike touched Joe again, left his hand on his husband’s left leg. His fear and worry grew as his heart rate returned to normal. Another escape. As he sat at the light, he felt his breathing even. As he watched the red in front of him, he actually smiled. There were no other cars on the road, no cop cars he could see. There was no reason to sit here. He didn’t think there was much reason to go forward either. The refrain from the old Bob Dylan song came to him, “Ain’t no reason to go up, ain’t no reason to go down, ain’t no reason to go anywhere.”

  Worrying wasn’t getting him anywhere. Paralysis from fear was useless. Mike was a practical man, but was there a reasonable, practical solution to his present crisis? He doubted it.

  Mike chose to go north on Sheridan Road for several blocks. He took a left on Center Street, another left at Ridge back into downtown Evanston.

  Mike didn’t know how far the other aliens were behind, but he thought the energy field might revive Joe. He pulled to the side of the road next to the Orrington Hotel and reestablished it. He found it much easier than he had even a few days ago. He didn’t understand it, but his mind seemed to be attuned differently. He managed to cause the energy field to glow even brighter. Joe remained asleep. Mike had no idea what to do, but he decided to keep moving. He kept the field active as he resumed his journey. Since either his implant or his communicator or both had so far been unbeatable by these new aliens, he hoped they would be undetectable as well. He remembered that Joe and his implants had been detected by the probe, but his hadn’t. Keeping Joe unharmed triumphed over doubt. He left the energy field on.

  Mike took Ridge Avenue down to Howard Street. He assumed he needed to get back to Joe’s ship. He had no idea how to accomplish that on his own. Even if he could find a boat to go out onto the lake, he had no idea how to navigate to the ship. At the moment he was heading for Meganvilia’s. He needed to let him know there was danger, that he might have to leave at a moment’s notice. He had to make some provision for Jack. Mike also wanted to call his mom and dad. The thought of not seeing his parents ever again stung. He wiped tears from his eyes. Did love for Joe make all this worth it? He hoped so. It was too late now if it didn’t.

  It was two in the morning. Parking on Hood Street just west of Clark was difficult to find. Normally it wasn’t a problem, but with all the snow, he realized Chicagoans had done what tradition and the exigencies of the storm demanded. Clear a parking space on the street and stake a claim to it. At this hour there were no spots. He wound up using his energy field to clear an opening and park illegally in front of a driveway. He figured he’d be long gone by morning when anyone needed to use it or any cop would notice. He also thought about the irony of looking for a legal parking space when the likelihood was high that he would be spirited away to another planet sometime before the end of the day. Realizing he had nearly a block to carry Joe, Mike thought of leaving the car on, the heater going, with Joe inside, and going for help, but Mike was determined not to make the mistake so often seen in the movies, of the two characters splitting up. Plus, he wanted to have Joe near to keep him encompassed by the energy field.

  Removing Joe’s inert body from the car was awkward. Mike found that, unlike in the hotel parking lot earlier, the blue glow kept the worst of the bitter cold at bay. He could manipulate it better now. The power was nowhere near as effective as it was when Joe kept it going, but it helped. With the communicator clutched in one hand, and Joe over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, the walk down the street in the midst of the blue glow was as otherworldly as imaginab
le. All his workouts, as he’d reminded himself when he carried Joe down the stairs of the hotel the other night, paid off more than he ever imagined they would.

  The tramp up Meganvilia’s cleared steps was less of a nuisance than he thought it might be. As he rang the bell and waited, he kept the energy field active. The blue glow would be obvious to any observer, but the late night streets were deserted. As for Meganvilia, it was time for truth, and he couldn’t risk Joe’s health on the need for concealment.