As we turned the corner, we saw the store, and I sighed. Cars had parked, and there were customers. They seemed oblivious to the fresh teenage corpse on the sidewalk. The sentence ‘ALL FAGS MUST DIE’ was spray painted in red on the ground near the body.
Two police cars flew by as we pulled into the parking lot.
“You want anything?”
“Hurry up.”
Waiting, I saw a mother pushing her young boy in his wheelchair on the street, both of them smiling and singing, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.” They were converts. Most of the cars and pedestrians on the road were headed toward Queenstown, and most were converts. The nonconverts were usually police officers, firefighters, or weary homeowners guarding their property with rifles and shotguns.
Lieutenant Barber took more than ten minutes in the store, and I started honking the horn. He came out with a coffee, a bag of chips, and some newspapers. At this point, I suspected he was purposefully delaying. Without saying anything, he got in and drove.
When we made a full stop at a stop sign, a blond boy burst out the front door of the corner house. His father chased him on the front lawn and tackled him. We were close enough to see the three black butterflies on the son’s head. I could hear the mother wailing inside.
“I’m one of you. Help me,” the boy shouted to us.
“Mind your business,” the father said to us.
Focused on us, the father didn’t see the other young convert walking by on the street. He rushed up and sucker kicked the father in the face. His son got up and started running with his new friend to Queenstown. I opened the door, intending to check on the father, but Lieutenant Barber hit the gas, and we sped through the intersection.
A few blocks down, we saw a middle-aged female with three butterflies on her shaved head walking backward along the road. She spotted us and held up a cardboard sign that read, ‘QUEENSTOWN.’ She waved it overhead and gave an open mouth smile as we approached.
We should have been more suspicious.
Unlike most, she had baggage: a large green duffel bag. Yet, converts were told to enter the ships naked. Luggage was pointless.
“Know thy enemy,” Lieutenant Barber said.
“You’re picking her up?”
“Sure, why not?”
“I don’t know. There’s something strange about her.”
“All these converts are fucked in the head,” he said sharply, gently honking and stopping on the shoulder. She threw away her sign and ran up. She wore a green flannel top with denim pants. An American flag was tattooed on her neck, and her three butterflies were drawn with freshly applied crimson nail polish.
“Howdy,” she said and smiled as she opened the rear passenger door behind me. “Y’all going to Queenstown, right? Aw, lookit your heads; ’course you are.”
There was a metallic clang when her bag hit the floor behind us.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Sharon. You?”
“I’m Frank, and this is Markus,” Lieutenant Barber said in a friendly tone and began driving, a bit faster than before. We turned another corner and saw a naked male convert walking in the street. Sharon laughed.
“That guy has the right idea,” the lieutenant said. “Y’know, Sharon, you can’t take that bag with you. You can’t take anything with you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What’s in the bag anyway?” I asked.
“Just personal stuff.”
“You women and your bags,” Lieutenant Barber said. “Where’re you from?”
“South Texas,” she said. “Can’t ya tell?”
Texas was an easy guess, but something in her voice wasn’t right. She was too excited, too loud. Her accent sounded too thick.
“You military?” I asked.
With a defensive tone she replied, “I can’t be in a military where they allow dykes and queers, know what I mean? And I don’t wanna live in a country which lets fags ruin marriage, know what I mean? America’s gone to hell, and these aliens are here to save us.”
“Yeah, all those fucking fags, ruining America and marriage and God knows what else. Probably why the aliens attacked DC,” Lieutenant Barber said as he winked at me.
Neither of us saw Sharon reaching into her bag.
With no accent whatsoever, she said, “You people make me sick.” Then she put a handgun up to Lieutenant Barber’s temple. Calmly, Lieutenant Barber pulled the car to the shoulder.
“Don’t turn off the engine,” she said with no accent. “Now get out—both of you.”
Lieutenant Barber looked at me, shrugged his shoulders, and opened his door to exit.
I glared at her. “Aliens invade Earth, and so this is a good day to carjack?”
“You won’t need your car in outer space, dipshit. Now go. Move.”
Lieutenant Barber had already walked around the car, opened my door, and was forcefully pulling me out. By the time I closed the door, she had hopped into the front seat and started to drive off. I watched my car disappear around the corner.
Lieutenant Barber was already walking back the way we came.
“So that’s it?” I asked.
“What, you wanna walk to Queenstown on your bum ankle? That’s about two miles, and we gotta walk back.”
“Give me your phone.”
“Be my guest.”
I dialed 911 and was put on hold. I was hoping to at least report my car stolen, but after waiting for five minutes with no response, I just hung up.
As we walked back, I wondered if Sharon was more than she seemed.
Sharon seemed like a car thief impersonating a convert, but I wondered if there was a further level of duplicity—I wondered if she was also impersonating a car thief. At the risk of sounding too imaginative . . . I still wonder whether Sharon was some military buddy of Lieutenant Barber’s who happened to live in the area.
Let me explain.
Lieutenant Barber’s job was to protect me, not my car, and with no car, he knew I’d be forced to walk back to Ralph’s—I couldn’t walk to Queenstown and back on my ankle. So, as a guardian, his job would be easier if I had to stay at Ralph’s for the next three days. Then, his duty to protect Ralph and me would be done.
I’m afraid it all sounds paranoid. But, all he had to do was call her up, meet at a prearranged spot, she steals my car, and that’s it. He was the one driving my car, remember, and he was obviously delaying a lot—I imagined the delays were the result of him waiting, waiting to be certain she was ready in the right spot.
And if she only wanted the car, why not let us drive to Queenstown and steal the car after we got there? If she thought we were converts, it’s the safer, less violent, move.
Of course, I was too embarrassed to mention my conspiracy theory to him, but it was something to think about while walking back, which I did, slowly but inevitably, on limping foot. Considering what happened next, it all feels petty.
The mile walk back was, mercifully, uneventful. By then, it was a little more than two hours after the queen’s press conference. We were two houses away from Ralph’s.
“Is there alcohol in the house?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said with cheer. “I saw it, a whole wine cellar from the previous owner.”
“You want red wine then?”
Lieutenant Barber looked back at me, about to answer, then stopped moving. His face lost expression. I looked over my shoulder and shuddered.
Half a mile away, a Kardashian ship was pointing and traveling in our direction, a hundred feet off the ground. It seemed impossible for something that big to move so quickly without making sound.
“Markus, we have to move,” he said with a hushed tone as he took out his phone and called Ralph. “Ralph, get ready to jump in the panic room . . . There’s a ship coming our way, a Kardashian ship, but wait for Markus. OK? See you in five.”
With my arm over Lieutenant Barber’s shoulder, I limped along the street and
up the driveway, hobbling to the front door. When I gazed back along the driveway, the ship was a few hundred yards behind us, floating as silent as a cloud and descending.
When we made it inside, I looked at Lieutenant Barber.
“Go down that stairwell, take a left, and go all the way. You’ll see the safe room.”
“You’re not coming?”
There was a hissing noise of pressure outside. We peered out the window to see the ship parked along on the street.
“Go. Now. No discussion.”
He ran upstairs as I hopped down the steps. At the basement landing, I looked left and saw Ralph’s dismal purple glow at the end of the long, dark corridor. I ran to him, adrenalin flowing and masking my pain.
Ralph sat on the floor, motionless. He said nothing when I reached him. I picked him up, took him into the panic room, and shut the thick, reinforced door.
Inside were two black-and-white monitors linked to surveillance cameras. One camera covered the long, front lawn. The other covered the long, thin hall outside the panic room.
I saw them on the lawn. First ten, twenty, then at least thirty male Kardashians stormed straight up to the house, vaulting across the lawn like marauding gorillas. I could hear them violently searching the house as I kept my eyes on the monitor covering the corridor outside the panic room.
I froze when I saw a male bound toward our room, stop, and tap his long claws on the metal door. Another rushed up behind him, they communicated, then one went away, leaving the other right outside. For a few seconds the male stared at the camera. With one quick thrash, his claws destroyed it.
My eyes shifted back to the outdoor camera, where I could see the males leaping across the grass and returning to the ship. The noises upstairs had stopped, and I sensed the house was almost empty of intruders. Though I could no longer hear or see him, I was certain the one male had remained outside the door, waiting.
“Ralph?” I whispered.
No response.
I turned back to the monitor. Outside on the lawn, a thick ring of males approached the house at a calm speed. In the middle of them was a single female walking along casually. I didn’t know it at that moment, but it was the queen. I watched her coterie calmly escort her across the full length of the lawn to the house.
“What are they doing?”
Ralph said nothing.
I could hear them jostling and bumping the walls of the corridor outside. We were trapped, but the animal in me still wanted to hide. The only hiding space left was a plain closet set into the wall opposite the entrance of the panic room. I went to it and motioned Ralph to join me.
“Markus, I’m sorry.”
I waved my hand again, beckoning him, but he didn’t move. I backed further into the closet and lightly bumped into several large canisters of helium. As I sat down on the floor of the closet, the power was cut off. I cracked open the closet door, just enough to see Ralph’s dark purple glow.
With barely a sound, something sliced through the thick steel door of the panic room. With geometric precision, a two-foot square was cut out of the door and removed silently by the intruders. Light burst into the room from behind the square hole.
The queen put her hand through the cutout and revealed the source of shining light. Barely fitting in her hand were four glimmering spheres. She gently dumped them into the room. They hit the floor without a single sound or bounce. Immediately, each one rolled to locate one of the four corners of the room and remained there. The four spheres lit up the room from below, and I sensed they were somehow scanning the room.
I glanced at Ralph, still motionless.
I can barely describe what happened next, let alone explain it. An anomalous material was placed in the square hole in the door. I should say it had no color, but I want to say it was somehow the color of nothing. It appeared like a blind spot in my eye, like something my mind, or my eye, could not process.
Next, the material extended and covered the door. As it extended, it became clearer and clearer. When it extended to cover the entire door, the anomalous material was gone, along with the door. The entire metal door was somehow wiped away. There was a slightly noxious odor in the air, no doubt a by-product of this inexplicable chemical process.
One at a time, four males lumbered inside, each calmly sitting near a corner of the room, and each staring at Ralph. I wondered why Ralph wasn’t reacting. Why wasn’t he afraid? Why wasn’t he screaming? Ralph had led me to believe the Kardashians would kill him on sight. But they only watched him.
Then the queen came into the doorway. She stepped in slowly, naked and smiling, like a conqueror. She walked to the center of the room and faced Ralph.
“Hello, Father,” she said.
XXXIX
FATHER
“Father,” each of the four males said in their own gruff, respectful tone.
My fear froze. I couldn’t think how it was possible, but everything in that moment—her tone, Ralph’s lack of denial, the calm acknowledgment of the males—all told me it was true: Ralph was their father.
Ralph’s words from the Oval Office sprang to mind: Once I have mated enough, I will spontaneously produce multiple beings, each with a different genetic makeup. I could even produce carbon-based beings.
I wanted to ask how? Why?—but I couldn’t speak. The betrayal paralyzed me, and I feared madness more than death. I could only listen—though I would not comprehend everything I heard.
“Why did you do it?” she asked Ralph with accusation. “Do you fancy yourself a wolf—a wolf giving advice to helpless mortals? Hmm? What did you hope to achieve? Spoil our amusement? Deprive us of our holiday? Your anagram gave us all a good laugh, by the way.”
I didn’t know what she meant by calling Ralph a ‘wolf,’ but it frightened me. Nor did I know what anagram she referred to. The conversation was mysterious, and Ralph’s nonresponsiveness only puzzled me more.
“Why do you even care for these humans?” she roared. “They are so stupid. They think they are living in one of their science fiction films where everyone in the universe speaks English.” She swiveled in my direction. “Do you really think we don’t know you’re in there?”
A single claw blade from a male near the closet poked in the crack of the door and opened it, exposing me. The queen laughed when she saw the butterflies on my forehead.
“Father . . . You’ve chosen some strange bedfellows . . . What have you been telling this human? You were trying to save him from us . . . What makes him so special? What does he know?”
If she had asked me directly, I couldn’t have answered. Shock had turned me speechless. If I could’ve spoken, I would’ve asked about Lieutenant Barber.
“Well,” she continued, “he’ll find out one way or another. While I’m queen, I can protect you both, but when it’s over . . . I don’t know what Dekon will do.”
I didn’t understand, but I sensed she was revealing secrets, not because she wanted me to know, but because she didn’t care if I did. I wrote earlier that the invasion was a holiday for them, but her leadership, as queen, was only a temporary function of this extraordinary holiday.
She focused on me again. “What did Father tell you? Did you two become friends? Lovers? Did he call you his ‘brother’? Did he? I know you are in shock, human, but you can still nod and shake your head, so answer me. Did he label you his ‘brother’? This is important; don’t lie.”
I nodded.
She looked at Ralph. “Is this true, Father?”
“Yes,” Ralph said weakly.
She laughed. “Well then, that makes me your niece, doesn’t it?” She walked over to me with her hand out, smiling. Sensing I had no choice, I carefully stood up, stepped out of the closet, and put my hand out to meet hers. Unexpectedly, she pulled me close and hugged me. Every second in her soft arms eased my nerves. I was so quickly restful in her embrace I slammed straight back on the wall when she suddenly released me.
Newfound family relations notwit
hstanding, I felt like the prey of a predator being played with before dinner. Ralph’s only reaction was to glow blacker.
“So listen, Uncle,” she said to me, “about how we found our long lost father here.”
I gave a nod.
“You probably think we know all about your little planet, like we came all this way to study you because you’re so interesting, but . . . well . . . We’re not really that into you. We only learned what we needed to, or what we wanted to, which wasn’t much. At first, we didn’t care about your so-called ‘lunar advertisement.’ Our first impression was: humans love advertising. You people seem to put advertisements everywhere you can. You even made a TV series about advertising. How revolting . . .”
I nodded politely.
“And when that reporter asked me if we were responsible . . . I had to wonder. So, immediately after the press conference, I ordered the closest ship onto the surface of the moon. What did we find? The lunar advert was composed of solar-powered cells. But your civilization is nowhere near advanced enough for the solar-powered cells we found on that moon,” she said, then turned to Ralph. “Imagine that.”
Ralph did not react. She turned her attention back to me and continued. “Ha, humans barely use the solar technology they do have. But anyway, because of all this, and the laughable anagram, we knew our absentee father was here, somewhere.”
Again, she referenced the anagram, and I still had no clue what she meant. And why did she assume Ralph was responsible, and not some other alien, or some other member of Ralph’s species? I wanted to believe the anagram was something private between her and Ralph, but she spoke as if it was staring me in the face. I didn’t understand, and I doubt she cared if I did. Though she repeatedly addressed me, she was really speaking to Ralph.
“We found no other trace of Father on the moon, so we asked ourselves, what would Father do? He’d try to warn the humans, of course, most likely the Americans—they have the most power. And what advice did Father give you? Did he tell you not to attack? Did he?”
I nodded.
“Of course, he did. And did you listen? No, of course, you didn’t. Your stupid president just had to threaten us in front of your whole stupid world. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”
The Book of Ralph Page 22