Homicidal Aliens and Other Disappointments

by Brian Yansky

  Lauren asks me what I needed to talk to Doc about, and, because of the presence of Zack and Zelda, I say that I just wanted to learn a little more about the camp. Lame, I know.

  “So what did you find out?” Lauren says.

  “That that Running Bird/Sam White guy is one weird dude.”

  “He was a priest of the House of Jupiter,” Catlin says. “My mother met him once. I remember her talking about him, how powerful he was. But he broke his vows after his wife died — killed by a drunk driver or something. He was pretty young, I think.”

  “He’s a priest of Weirdness now,” I say.

  Then, before someone asks me to explain, I ask Zelda and Zack about how they got here. They say they walked all the way from Denver.

  “We were lucky to get away,” Zelda says. “A lot of people didn’t. Our parents and our aunt and uncle and cousins didn’t. We had some close calls getting here. Then I heard the whisper of minds in these mountains. We found the camp.”

  “You have that talent?” Catlin says.

  “What talent?” Lauren asks.

  “Some people can hear farther than most,” Catlin says. “Not many. It’s a very powerful talent.”

  “I’m lucky,” Zelda says, her face flushing a little. I can feel it flush, feel the heat in her body rise, even though I can’t see her clearly.

  “Did everyone in your clan have this talent?” Lauren asks. I can hear her wanting to catalog and organize information. I can hear her curiosity and the reach of her mind. She always impresses me.

  Zelda says her clan members could predict the weather, tell if someone was lying, sometimes make people see things that weren’t there for a second or two, and sometimes see what someone might do or had done. Also, many were good fighters. A lot of them worked in law enforcement or in the military.

  “So houses tend to have certain talents?” I say.

  Catlin answers that they do. Her house, the House of Venus, is known to be good at affecting people’s emotions. They can calm people or anger them. Many of them were good healers — nurses and doctors and psychiatrists.

  I turn to the shadowy figure of Zack, thinking maybe I’ll ask him what his abilities are since he seems too shy to join the conversation on his own. But even in the dark, I can tell that Zack is looking right at me — and that he probably has been for quite some time.

  “Is something wrong?” I ask him.

  “It’s just . . . you don’t sound like I thought he’d sound. The Chosen One, I mean.”

  His voice breaks in that unlucky way a voice does sometimes when a totally normal boy is asking something important. The whole miserable “suddenly a girl has inhabited your vocal cords” experience. Luckily, I’m past that phase. Well, like, 98 percent past it, anyway.

  The girls giggle.

  Showing male solidarity, I turn away from the girls. “That’s because I’m not him,” I say.

  “You don’t really look like the Chosen One,” Zelda says.

  “He doesn’t?” Catlin sounds surprised. An irritating flush burns my cheeks. Maybe the lack of a fire isn’t such a bad thing after all.

  “I mean like I imagined him. You know. Big. Ripped like a superhero or like Thor or something.”

  “The Chosen One isn’t that way,” Catlin says. “It’s his mind that’s strong, and his spirit. He’s caring, and he fights for everyone. The spirit of the Warrior chooses him because he has qualities that make him a good leader.”

  They all look at me. I’m totally behind the no-fire rule now.

  “Oh, come on,” Lauren says, using her A-student voice. “We all know there’s no such thing as the Warrior Spirit or the Chosen One. It’s a story — a myth invented to give people hope during really hard times.”

  She looks around like she expects a chorus of agreement, but she doesn’t get one. Even I feel oddly reluctant to side with her, despite agreeing with everything she just said. What’s holding me back? Crazy as it sounds, there have been times when I don’t feel like myself. Like at the meeting, when I saw Doc and Dylan in some other place.

  “They say you fight like the aliens,” Zack says.

  “He totally did,” Catlin says. “He killed Lord Vertenomous.”

  “A lot of people were attacking him. It wasn’t just me,” I say.

  “But you killed him,” she says. “Maybe the spirit was in you then. Maybe it comes and goes.”

  “There was no spirit,” I say. “It was just me.”

  I killed him. Me. Where there could — or maybe even should — be pride, there’s shame. Alien lord. Mass murderer. Destroyer of the human race. Enslaver. Rapist. Lord Vertenomous was all those things, but it still feels wrong to kill. I had to do it. I know that. Maybe it’s like what a soldier feels in war. Doing things you have to do can still make you feel empty inside. I shove the feeling away, and it goes, but not willingly and not as far as I’d like.

  “I wish I could be like you,” Zack says to me. I can’t really see him, but I can feel him, feel the yearning in him. “I wish I could kill one of them. I wish I could kill them all.”

  I want to tell him he doesn’t, not really, but I don’t say anything. We all stare at our fire that isn’t there. There’s the sound of someone unzipping a tent down from us. Other than that, it’s a big silence.

  Zack breaks it. “I don’t have my talent yet, but I will. My father and uncle were both good fighters. That’s what my talent will be. I’ll be a fighter, and I will kill them.”

  “We saw a lot of people die,” Zelda says, apologizing. She doesn’t need to. I understand. We all understand.

  “I don’t care what happens to me,” Zack says. “I just want to kill some of them.”

  “You have to care,” Catlin says. “If we stop caring, we’re lost.”

  “I care.” His hands are balled fists; his body is stiff. “I care about killing them.”

  The aliens have taken everything from us. What did they leave behind? An empty space. What can fill an empty space? Hate. I didn’t know that before, but I do now. If you’re not careful, you can end up being all hate.

  I grew up the son of a soldier, one who’d been to war, one who’d worked his way up to colonel. I heard stories about people who filled the emptiness with hate. They’d had their country taken away from them, had their families killed, had their homes destroyed. He said some of those people were capable of anything. They’d strap a bomb to themselves and explode it in a public place because hate was all they had.

  “You can’t stop caring, Zack, because we’re all that’s left,” Zelda says. “There has to be more to us than just revenge. We have to be more. We’re the ones who will make the new world when we defeat the aliens.”

  I feel like laughing at this — in an “Are you crazy?” kind of way. Defeat the aliens?

  “As long as we fight,” Zack says, the tightness in his voice easing a little.

  “We’ll fight,” I say, placing a hand on Zack’s shoulder and pretending confidence. But the truth? I struggle every moment just to have faith we’ll survive another day.

  After a while, exhausted, we all crawl into our tents. I don’t even sneak over to Lauren’s tent. I want to. I just can’t keep my eyes open long enough to get up out of my sleeping bag once I’ve crawled into it. My eyes are so heavy. Everything is so heavy.

  I dream of aliens. I see a fleet of ships. I’m seeing them from a long distance but not through a telescope. Sweet Son of God, I’m floating in space. The strange thing is, it’s kind of cool. I can breathe fine. I’m big, too — as big as the moon.

  Even with my enormous eyes, I can’t see the end of the fleet. How can there be that many ships in the universe? But there are. Then, suddenly, in the way of dreams, I’m sucked out of space and into a room. I know immediately where I am. I’m in Lord Vertenomous’s house. I begin to sweat. This is where I was a slave, lost friends, was almost murdered. There is no fight-or-flight discussion going on in my mind. My thoughts are all in agreement: run.


  But I can’t run. I can’t even move. I can feel the fear coming out of me like sweat. I feel his presence. How is that possible? I killed him. How could he possibly be here? But then I realize that what I’m feeling is an alien’s strength, his power, which is like Lord Vertenomous’s but different somehow. Then I feel other aliens, many of them, in the house. It’s like falling into a pit of snakes.

  I keep thinking this isn’t possible. Dream. I can’t be back here. Dream. But I can be back here because my dreams aren’t like other people’s anymore. I can dreamwalk. I can go places in my dreams. Never this far before, but here I am. I really, really wish I wasn’t.

  I finally am able to force myself to move. Do I do what I should and take off out the door like I’m being chased by bears or bulls? I do not. I move to the door. I can feel him just beyond it, hear his power like thunder crackling in the sky. Something is pulling me toward him. I go from being unable to move to being unable not to move. I remember being caught in one of those fast-moving Colorado streams once, the impossibly strong current banging me into rocks. I had no control then, just like I have no control now.

  I open the door and look in and see an alien standing in front of one of their communication devices. He is small, with the greenish tint to his skin that all of them have and big round eyes. I also see his power, which radiates around him, a dark green with tiny explosions of blue. It’s so intense, it blinds me for a second, and then it fades into him.

  I don’t know how an alien communication device works, but I know that it amplifies and directs their thoughts so they can communicate over vast distances, out in space even. I hear this alien reporting on finding and killing forty more humans. I think of Running Bird saying the House of Vulcan is destroyed and wonder if these are the forty.

  The alien stops talking and turns. He’s tense and aware, and he looks right at me. But the alien’s eyes keep moving. They look all around the room. It’s like a scan, his power reaching out, feeling for my presence. It breaks over me like a wave breaking onshore. It practically knocks me off my feet.

  Who’s there?

  I feel zero desire to tell him. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’d like to say, “Your worst nightmare” or something along those lines. I consider it, even, but then I decide I’d prefer to survive in silence than to have my one satisfying moment.

  Here but not here, he thinks. He’s puzzled. I can feel that. Dreamwalker? On this planet? Extraordinary. I’ve never actually met one, but that’s what you are, aren’t you?

  He seems pleased. I know he can’t see me, because he’s not looking at me, but he’s still scanning for me with his mind as he talks; he’s listening, and I think he’ll hear even the faintest sound. If a breath escapes my mouth, he’ll find me. The air itself will creak.

  You are one of them, aren’t you, Prey? The product that is not product. And here you are, a dreamwalker. This is a surprise, and I do love surprises. Welcome, dreamwalker, I am your deathgiver. We all have to have a deathgiver sooner or later. Sooner in your case. Think of it this way: Most of us never have the opportunity to meet our deathgiver. You do. Happy deathday to you.

  Great, I finally meet an alien with a sense of humor, and the big joke is that he’s going to kill me. Good one. I should stay quiet, but I can’t. We celebrate birthdays, not deathdays, you freak of freaks. (While all the aliens are freaks to us, I have the feeling that this one is even freakier than most.) And I’m not product. You know I’m not. A lot of us aren’t.

  Product was what they called us humans they didn’t kill. In the beginning we were valuable because the Sanginians could link to us and manipulate us. We were special. Then we were too special. We were evolving, learning how to send messages and not just receive them. We became evidence then, evidence that they shouldn’t have settled our planet because we weren’t mindless, soulless animals. We became dangerous to the company. The alien company bringing the settlers has kept the existence of those of us who can “hear” a secret. They have no intention of losing their profit because a few humans aren’t product.

  Indeed not. Product certainly can’t dreamwalk. This means I will have to kill you even more quickly. Can’t have you causing trouble for my employers, now, can I? And I have yet to meet anyone who causes trouble from the grave.

  He pauses, and I can see that this is the part he likes the best: toying with his prey before he kills it. Cat and mouse. I often tell my prey to come back from death and say hello. Some swear they will haunt me until I die. But do they? Never so much as a word. It’s a disappointment, frankly. I fear there is no life after this one. He sighs. Oh, well. Live while you can, right?

  As he’s talking, I step farther into the room. My words have probably given him my position or at least narrowed down where he thinks I am. That’s reason enough to move, and I do — to the far wall. He finishes his little speech and then does something that pulls the air just to the right of me. It’s almost like it’s sucked away, like water pulled down a drain. It tries to pull me in, but I’m far enough away that I can move beyond it.

  You’re going to kill us for money, I think with as much contempt as I can. At the same time I duck and roll (thank you, nine years of martial arts) because he turns to where I am.

  He thinks, It sounds so petty when you say it that way. Money, I find, is a necessary evil. In the old days, a hunter was so valued he needed no money. Monarchs gave him palaces and females and warriors to fight for him and anything he desired. But these modern times require money. I feel cheapened by it, but what can you do? Times change. Hunt and kill stay the same, though. Thank the One for that. I am what I do. It’s a beautiful thing.

  He strikes again. A different strike? This time it feels like a rip in the air, like something I could fall through. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like where I ended up.

  I’m coming for you, he thinks. Don’t disappoint me with weak tricks. Fight me, here and now. What’s the use of running, anyway? Your time, your species’ time, has passed. I have to say you haven’t done a very good job keeping this planet up, either. It needs — what is the term? — a makeover. This world won’t miss humans. So, time to go. There is no way out, dreamwalker. I’m sorry for your loss.

  I know he’s trying to get me to say something. The fear is still pouring out of me, and I’m pretty sure he’ll feel it or smell it or something. I do want to say something, a lot of somethings. I shouldn’t. But —

  Intercourse you, I think.

  As I tuck and roll, I try to wake myself up. I say the word wake again and again, as if repeating it might spark a “There’s no place like home” magic. At least I have the tiny victory of confusing the alien. Intercourse me? he thinks. What does this mean?

  Wake. Wake. Wake. And then, finally, thankfully, I do. I’m back in my sleeping bag. I fight to catch my breath. I’m still sweating fear. It does not smell good. I’m pretty sure Eau de Fear will not be the scent of the future, or maybe it will if the aliens get their way. Deathday. It was so real. Deathgiver. He was so real.

  Lying there in my warm bag, the cold all around me, I try to convince myself that it was just a dream. I don’t have much luck. In the old world, there would have been no question. A dream was just a dream. But this isn’t the old world.

  I unzip my bag and dress quickly. The cold from the night feels sharp against my body and raises goose bumps on my arms. I think about waking Lauren, but it’s early, the sun not even up above the mountain peaks to the west. I decide to go for a walk and then wake her. Only a few people in camp are awake and stomping around, shaking the cold from their sleepy bodies. I walk away from them and the camp.

  The woods are dense with tall trees and undergrowth, but after a few minutes, I find a narrow trail. The sun rises over the mountain, and sunlight slides between leafy tree limbs. I walk for maybe another ten minutes before I come up against a massive cliff. It’s so high that even leaning back as far as I can, I can’t see the top. I could go around it, though it would take a lo
ng time. Or I could just head back to camp. I study the cliff for a minute and decide I can climb it. This is a stupid decision — it isn’t like I don’t have enough excitement in my life — but that doesn’t dissuade me. Somehow stupid is appealing at the moment.

  And so I climb up the too-steep and too-crumbly cliff, losing my footing a couple of times and nearly falling to what would most likely be my death. On the bright side, that would make my deathgiver this cliff and not some smug alien hunter. Not all that bright when I actually think it through to the end result.

  About three-fourths of the way up, I stop to catch my shallow breath. My right foot slips off the rock, and suddenly I’m falling. I frantically grab for anything and just by chance get hold of one of the roots coming out of the rock. I’m lucky. My right foot finds a solid rock, and I’m able to steady myself. I consider turning back, but it would probably be just as hard to go down now as go up. And though it sounds kind of silly, if I’m going to die anyway, I’d rather be going up than down.

  By the time I make it to the top, the sun, as yellow as Bart Simpson’s face, is fully up and in the blue sky the aliens love so much. I’m panting with doglike urgency and have the powerful thirst those energy drinks are always claiming they can satisfy. Claimed. I have to keep reminding myself. Everything is past tense.

  My legs dangle over the side. I’ve got little cuts all over me from the uneven rock edges. I feel stupid. But then a cool breeze passes over my sweaty skin and I look out over a broad, beautiful valley and I can see all the way to Taos, and in that moment it is all worth it. All I’ve done to get here, to see this, to be a part of it. Survived. Been a slave. Escaped. Run. Fought. Killed. Nearly died. This is my world. It belongs to me, and I belong to it.

  The feeling blows over me like the wind. I can’t hold on to it. But when it’s gone, I have its memory and it gives me strength.