“We’re gonna have to limp back home, folks. Ole Bessy’s radiator hose has split and she’sa over heatin’.”
“Do you think one of the other cars on the road might have a hose that could fit?” Jack asked, uncertain if it was even possible. “There are some cars up there.”
Jack pointed down the road, perhaps half a mile, to a small cluster of ruined vehicles. It was obvious none of them were older late model pickups, but he assumed that one engine had to be pretty much like another.
“We might could rig somethin’,” Tom admitted with a nod and a grin.
Watching the other two boys nod as well Jack hopped out of the truck, followed by Steve, the other boy who had rode in the back.
“Cole, you stay here with the girls and the rest of us will go and look for a hose,” Tom spoke again.
Yup, Jack decided, Tom was definitely a football player. He had the jock swagger that the other boys envied, and they followed his orders without question. Or perhaps now that these boys belonged to the resistance, they had some sort of ranking system in place. Peering at their arm bands, Jack looked for any insignias that might be a sign of rank, but found nothing.
Within seconds he and two of the three other boys were walking up the road towards the cluster of vehicles ahead. Though his headache refused to relent, his head was swimming with questions. Turning to look first at Steve to his right, Jack found the boy trudging along with his head down, a blank expression on his face. He really wasn’t much to look at. He was unremarkable in almost every way. All of his features and even his size couldn’t be described as anything other than average. He had light brown, almost sandy hair and hazel eyes that hinted at little else than defeat. Had Jack gone to school with the boy, he probably wouldn’t have even noticed him.
Deciding that any question he asked would probably be answered by the larger boy anyway, Jack turned his attention to his opposite side and found Tom already looking back at him in return.
“So what’s your story?” Tom asked unexpectedly.
“What do you mean?” questioned Jack.
“Well, we done told ya’ll bout us, and the resistance, but we don’t really know nothin’ bout you,” Tom answered.
Yup. Corn fed Jock. Holy redneck. At least it explained the old pickup and his ability to get it running.
“We’re from Chicago. When all this happened…” Jack waved his arms through the air to gesture at everything in general, “We were already locked in a survival shelter. We just came out, maybe a week ago.”
“Ain’t that bout perfect?” Tom asked, though Jack wasn’t certain if there was a proper response. “You mean that you four missed everything that happened? Like everything?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Jack answered.
“You’re lucky then,” said Steve, causing Jack’s head to swivel around.
“What’s that mean?” Tom asked, cutting Jack’s own reply short.
“They didn’t see’em all. They didn’t watch it all burn. They haven’t been runnin’ and hidin’ for months just hoping to find food.”
Jack watched expecting more, but both of his new companions walked on in silence for the remainder of their trip, jaws locked, with vacant expressions on their faces. Reaching the cluster of cars they went to work opening the hoods and inspecting the hoses within under Tom’s supervision. Out of the six cars, four hoses were melted and the fifth, Tom explained, was air-cooled. Within seconds of prying open the final hood, Tom began shaking his head.
“Shoulda know’d it. All these import do-jabs got tiny motors. The hoses are too danged small,” Tom complained, kicking at the air as he turned away from the car.
“Can we use these smaller hoses to repair the bigger one?” Jack asked.
“No. If they was bigger hoses, we might could do it. Not with these’ins though. If we had something to wrap around the split in the hose to seal it up, it might hold for a while.”
“Can’t we cut a piece of one of these hoses and wrap it around Bessy’s?” Jack asked.
“Naw, they’re all too stiff. We need something more flexy like.”
“Like an inner tube?” Jack asked.
“That’d do it, man. But car tires ain’t got none.”
Turning, Jack strode just a few paces to the trunk of a car they had already inspected. Pushing the trunk lid up, he revealed the bicycle tire within, which he had noticed when passing it moments earlier. Both Tom and Steve grinned at him.
“Now we’ll just haveta git some these hose clamps off these cars to hold it in place. You got a screwdriver?” Tom asked, pointing towards Jack’s bag, still upon his back.
“Yeah, I think there’s one in here,” he said pulling the bag from his back.
As they worked to remove what Tom called hose clamps from the vehicles, and scrape off any melted or charred rubber from them, Tom rattled on about muscle cars and motors. None of which meant anything to Jack, but even so, he listened intently not wanting to offend the other boy, hoping the conversation would eventually turn back to the events that had occurred over the last several months.
* * * * *
Sam sat silently with Will across from Tammy in the back of the truck watching Jack walk away with the other boys. Cole stood like a fence post in the middle of the street, the only sign that he was alive was his head turning this way and that. Sam wanted to talk to him. Wanted to ask every question raging within her, but something held her back. She didn’t know this boy. She didn’t know where to begin. She didn’t want to upset him by asking something that might be painful. All in all it was that awkward moment at a funeral when you wanted to speak up but were afraid that someone might take offence. She weighed out how best to ask her questions, as Jack and the other boys grew further away, reaching the cars ahead, finally deciding that a subtle nudge might get the boy talking enough to get some information without being intrusive.
“Hey, Cole,” Sam said, watching as the boy turned to face her in the truck.
He was different from the other two boys. She could tell. He was dressed differently, wearing khakis instead of jeans, and a polo shirt instead of a tee. His dark hair was parted into two separate but equal sides showing both intent and care, and in his eyes was a sparkle. She could see the gears turning in there as he looked at her, trying to puzzle her out just as she tried to size him up in return. He was smart.
“You and the other boys meet in the resistance?” Sam asked, assured of Cole’s attention.
“Yeah,” he responded simply.
Sam supposed he wasn’t used to chit chat, at least not these days. Perhaps he was a loner, but that just didn’t seem to fit. She was going to try yet another direct question, but then thinking better of it, she changed her tactic.
“How come you do what Tom says when it’s obvious that you are smarter than he is?”
Watching, Sam grinned flirtatiously as Cole’s expression changed first to an awkward embarrassed grin, and then to something much more serious.
“They don’t really want me along,” he said with a shrug. “It’s why they took Jack with them and left me here.”
“How come?” Sam asked, feeling Will sit up to pay closer attention himself.
“Cause of my dad.”
“Let’s pretend I’ve been under a rock for a while,” Sam said jokingly. “Is your dad a criminal or something?”
“No actually he is… was... a scientist at Harvard.”
“Oh, wow. I’m sorry you lost him. We lost our parents too,” Sam admitted.
There it was, that creepy embarrassing funeral feeling she had hoped to avoid, but nope. Smacked herself right in the face with it. At least the conversation could only go up from here. Right?
“I didn’t lose him, just Harvard is gone so it’s weird to say that he works there when there is no there. Ya know?” Cole admitted.
“Yeah, I get it,” Sam answered, conversational catastrophe averted. “But that still doesn’t explain why you think the other boys don’t like you.�
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“Oh, it’s more than think. They all say my dad is crazy, but I’ve seen him run the tests a million times. They can’t all be wrong.”
Sam looked back down the road, the boys were already returning. They were jogging and their heads were held high. A good sign. She turned her attention back to her conversation.
“Wait. What? What tests?”
“Oh, well, my dad is a geneticist, and he has been studying the DNA of them,” Cole answered, gesturing to the sky.
“What did the tests say?” Sam asked, happy to be learning something about what was going on.
“Well. Um…” Cole looked around nervously, obviously looking for the right words. He paced a little, turning towards her several times as she waited, letting him work out the answer. His hesitation spoke volumes.
“C’mon, Cole. I won’t judge you,” she encouraged him as the other boys trotted up. “What did your dad’s tests show?”
“That he’s friggin’ crazy, that’s what,” Tom answered, panting slightly.
Sam could actually see Cole shut down. The light in his eyes went out as Tom, Jack, and Steve gathered under the hood of the pickup. Still, she wanted the answer.
“It can’t be that bad, Cole. Tell me, please.”
It took a long moment of silence, but then Cole turned back to her with a look of defeat on his face. Meeting her eyes with his own, he took several strides towards her and leaned in almost as if to whisper so the other boys wouldn’t hear.
“You would hear it from one of them anyway,” he jerked his head towards the front of the truck. “Don’t get me wrong, the equipment my dad managed to salvage is the bare minimum to perform such tests, and he isn’t exactly working in a sterile lab either, but after testing their DNA over and over he gets the same results every single time.”
“And?” Sam asked as Will twisted beside her to hear better, and even Tammy leaned in closer to listen.
“And they share a common ancestor with us. All of them do. Every one.”
Sam couldn’t believe her ears. Could it be true? Had she understood him correctly? A common ancestor? Like the creatures were from here? Genetically engineered or something? She looked up into his eyes again, a million new questions forming on her lips, but Tom’s voice came from the front of the truck once more and Sam knew the conversation was over.
“That’s enough, Cole. Don’tcha be fillin’ them lil girls’ heads with your daddy’s lunatics. There, that should do it. Let’s get ole Bessy back on the road.”
The hood to the truck slammed closed.
* * * * *
Will didn’t know what a geneticist was, or really even what DNA was. But he knew what the words ‘common ancestor’ meant. In his last two weeks of school, Mrs Cameron Paige had taught them about anthropology and fossils. They had learned about everything from dinosaurs to cavemen. He had even gotten to hold a Megalodon tooth, which was super cool. Mrs Paige had said that humans shared common ancestors with monkeys, and that fossils showed how people had evolved over millions of years. It was by far Will’s favorite thing they had ever studied in school. Second to recess, of course. And now, after not having given it a moment’s thought for months, he tried to recall every word she had said about common ancestors.
After several minutes of reflection, Will realized they were moving down the road again, but couldn’t recall anything of further use from his lessons in anthropology. What Cole had said, at least in Will’s mind, was that the aliens shared a great-grandparent with humans somewhere like a gazillion family tree branches in the past. Having seen the monkey men that had chased them, Will imagined it wasn’t out of the realm of reality, but still left a lot of unanswered questions.
As the truck trundled loudly down the road, his thoughts drifted from monkeys flying space ships to the most important question of all. Who would they meet in the hours ahead? Though he tried not to think about his parents directly, not wanting to get his own hopes up, Will wondered if he would know anyone in St Louis. A classmate. A cousin. Maybe even Grandma and Grandpa? After all, they had left several newspapers on the porch and Grandma didn’t like clutter. Maybe they had left before the invasion and were now safe with the resistance. Will hoped he would see a friendly face. A familiar face. Try as hard as he could against it, however, he couldn’t help but imagine seeing Mom and Dad and running into their open arms to be caught up and squeezed silly. But he couldn’t get excited. Not for that.
Knowing he would just have to wait and see, Will rubbed his eyes and leaned his head against Sam’s knee. Shooting a smile across the bed of the truck to Tammy, he watched her smile in return before closing his eyes. He would have to try and let the time pass without making himself cry, thinking about stuff that wasn’t gonna happen. He couldn’t keep acting like a baby.
* * * * *
Tammy sat in the bed of the truck, her bottom going numb from the vibrations that shook the pickup, as it bounced and jostled her as it wound around obstacles in the road. The day’s chain of events had led them a long ways from where they had begun in the morning. Though it appeared that things were looking up, she couldn’t help but be frightened. Large groups meant more attention, and more attention in this world was bad. Groups of one drew groups of the other and Tammy had already lost enough to know how those encounters ended.
Still, though the thought of running away had crossed her mind on several occasions, she felt an odd attachment to the three siblings she had saved. They were her friends and she didn’t want to leave them behind. Even so, joining a group of hundreds was risky and Jack, Sam, and Will were naïve to the world now. They had been locked up in safety for months and had no idea what they were facing out here. They didn’t know the risks and the rules to staying alive, even if they had made it a week on their own. Tammy knew, though. She knew the dangers and had survived them on her own for months. She had learned a lot about different species of the invaders. If only she could explain it to them.
Pondering her predicament as the afternoon faded into evening, she realized as darkness fell that her chance to flee into the safety of loneliness was gone. Slowing to idle, the truck she rode in honked several times as she leaned back to look ahead past the cab.
There, in the road ahead, was a large cart of some sort piled high with debris and wrapped all around in several layers of barbed wire. To either side of the road, stretching out and away from them was a wall of piled cars, and other various junk all likewise decorated with barbed wire. As the cart rolled aside to clear the road the driver, Tom, sped their truck through the gap in the makeshift defenses, pulling off of the side of the road just a moment later and jerking the vehicle to a stop. As the engine wound down and was turned off, people came from all directions out to greet them.
Ahead, in the center of the camp, were two long buildings made entirely of metal. They were huge hulking things that Tammy recognized as hangars where airplanes would be stored. Shaped like half cylinders, the parallel buildings rose in large arcs from the concrete ground, only to peak and plummet back to the earth once more. Lights shone within the doors of the buildings where they had been left open. Lights. Electricity. But there was no comfort in seeing the hint at modern amenities. No. Instead, Tammy watched the crowd begin to gather around the pickup as her heart started to hammer in her chest. Oh how she didn’t want this.
Chapter Nine
There were people. Lots of people. Even in the dark he could see them coming. Jack almost couldn’t believe it. For more than half a year the only voices and faces he knew were those of Samantha and Will, and over the last days he had added four new faces to that list. Now, however, there were so many more. Jack couldn’t help but think that this was it. This was the end of running. This was civilization, the proof and hope they had been seeking.
It wasn’t until the mob grew nearer that he realized that things weren’t quite what they seemed. Sure, they were people, but they were different. All of them were dirty and gaunt, and though they smiled at the s
ight of newcomers, their eyes showed no real emotion. Most were teenagers though some were children, and a few adults dotted the converging crowd. These were people, but they were broken. The world had changed them, stripped them of hopes and dreams and left them bereft. They were the empty carcasses of people carried forward by the slavery of cause and duty alone. It took only seconds to discern the driving force behind them as a single man stepped out from the crowd with a politician’s smile, raising his hands for silence.
Jack took that moment of silence to quickly look back to his siblings, seated behind him in the bed of the pickup. Looking to both Sam and Will, and then to Tammy as well, he found there the signs of emotional turmoil that threatened him from within, clearly painted on their faces as well. Though Will’s eyes shone with hope, the serious expression on his little face showed his uncertainty and fear of disappointment. Jack watched as Sam instinctively wrapped her arm about their little brother’s shoulders, a look of determination on her face like he had never seen before. She didn’t like something about this place. Tammy, on the other hand, looked outright terrified. Her eyes shot this way and that and it was obvious that she trembled like a beaten animal in a cage. Looking within, Jack found much the same inside himself. Maybe it was anxieties, or nervousness about a crowd after months of isolation, but he didn’t like it.
“Welcome to the resistance,” the man with raised hands greeted as he approached the truck.
Jack watched him lay his hands on the side of the truck’s bed and watched as the older man inspected each of them one at a time, finally meeting Jack’s eyes. He was an average guy, more or less. Perhaps in his early forties, he showed signs of a hard life with toned muscles and tanned skin. About his eyes and mouth were wrinkles that made him appear older than his movements hinted. It was obvious he was slightly better fed than the majority of the crowd. His shortly cropped blond hair pointed to his military roots, but it was his eyes that set him apart. Unlike the rest of those broken teens and children, his eyes were alert, predatory, and cunning. Instinctively Jack didn’t trust him.
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