by Kody Boye
With that in mind, I simply nodded.
“We will be arriving in Austin, Texas soon,” the alien reminded me. “Prepare for your descent. This may be the last time you are ever onboard a Harvester ship.”
I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or sad. I’d seen so many wonders, witnessed so many things. To think that I would soon be returning to Earth was almost unfathomable.
Rather than consider my future, I turned to my present by looking out the window.
Austin loomed in the distance.
Soon, I would be on the ground and back at Burgundy Hospital.
I couldn’t wait.
I expected my descent from the Harvester ship to draw more attention. Instead, the streets were empty, the roofs were vacant, and the entrance to the hospital was all but barren.
By the time I finally landed, I felt like I was the only person in the world.
“Hello?” I asked, unsure if anyone—or anything—could hear me even though the world was completely silent. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
A frown crossed my features as I began to make my way toward the hospital. It seemed… strange, that nobody would’ve come out to greet me. Normally I was met with an entourage, or at least one or two armed men and women who would ensure my safety. But today, there was nothing.
Fearing that something might have gone wrong in my absence, I took off in a run. Mostly scared for Asha but also afraid of what state the hospital might be in, I pumped my legs as hard as I could, dodging around derelict cars and jumping over cracks in the road that otherwise would’ve tripped me.
The closer I got, the more I realized there was nothing to be seen.
No.
It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.
Burgundy Hospital couldn’t have been abandoned—or, worse, sieged by alien or man—in my absence. I hadn’t been gone that long, just barely a week. But a lot could change in a short amount of time, and in bounding forward, my heart felt like it would explode out of my chest.
I burst through the front entrance and into the lobby, inhaled a big breath, and then cried, “Hello?”
No one answered.
I fell—defeated, to my knees—and was just about to scream when I heard footsteps echoing along the long back halls.
“Hello?” I asked again. “Is somebody there?”
“Ana Mia?” a familiar voice asked. “Is that you?”
I didn’t wait.
I bounded forward—up and stairs and around the nearby corner.
I crushed Asha in a hug immediately upon seeing her and buried my face in her shoulder just in time to begin sobbing.
“Ana Mia,” she said, clutching me in a grip reminiscent of someone on the verge of death. “I thought… I thought—”
“That something had happened?” I sobbed, pushing myself away to look her in the eyes. “I did too.”
She stared at me, her blue eyes taking in my every feature, and it was then that I realized that she was dressed in full militia uniform—complete with a rifle, sidearm and body armor.
“Asha,” I said after a moment. “You’re… you’re—”
“It’s happening, Ana Mia,” she said, cutting me off before I could finish.
“What is?” I asked.
“The president’s speech.”
Her speech? I frowned. What speech? She hadn’t told me that there would be a speech, much less so soon.
That could only mean—
“The delegations,” I said, turning and started down the hall, toward where I could faintly hear the sound of a strong woman’s voice warbling through the static of our radio communications. “They must’ve already decided what’s to happen.”
Rather than wait for Asha to clarify, I took off, bolting down the hall and through the open doorway.
The room was crowded, flooded from side to side and corner to corner with bodies of both men and women and children. I briefly saw Commander Dubois’ face in the crowd, but didn’t pay attention very long, as shortly thereafter the president resumed speaking.
“People of the United States,” she said. “Men, women and children alike: it has been a long and tumultuous six years—filled with hate, conflict, and senseless violence that we could not, nor ever would have, anticipated. On September 17th, 2024, our world changed for what we initially believed would be the worst. But today, I am here to announce that it will change for the better.
“On October 21rst, 2030—six years, one month and four days after They came to our world—I met and spoke with the leader of the people who came from the stars. These people—these grand, intelligent people, known and declared to us only as the Grays—came from a dying planet in the Zeta Reticuli system some thirty-nine light years away with a purpose: to seek out, and eventually assimilate into, the population of a habitable planet. To do this, They had to understand us. And to understand us, They had to abduct us.
“I will not lie when I tell you that these atrocities committed upon humanity have been some of the greatest we have seen in modern history. But I assure you: those responsible for the abductions and experimentations on our people will be tried, convicted, and then jailed under the Geneva Convention. The leader of the Grays has agreed to these circumstances and promises that she will cooperate fully with us when we begin to circumnavigate the legal affairs that will begin to take place within the coming months and years.
“With that being said: the Gray people will begin to descend into the lower atmosphere within the coming days, and will begin to distribute Their refugees across the cities of the United States in the days thereafter. Members of the armed forces in each state of the United States are asked to meet with Their local military dispatchment in preparation to assist with the humanitarian efforts that will be provided to our alien companions.
“To my fellow Americans, I implore you: find peace in my decision. The majority of the Gray people coming to the planet Earth are refugees. They are women and children. They are Their disabled. Their weak. Their elderly. They seek only for a home to call Their own.
“Thank you for your time and consideration. More information will follow in the coming hours.”
Then the speech began anew—looped in an endless recording of the president’s declaration of alien cohabitation.
I stared at the radio—at the arbiter of what was undoubtedly Their salvation and what could be considered our own personal destruction—and realized now that this was it. After all these years, after all these battles, after all these nightmares, worries, tragedies and senseless deaths, it was finally, truly over.
“It’s over,” I whispered, the disbelief still hanging in my voice like a gnarled thorn from the blackest of roses. “It’s finally over.”
“It’ll never be over,” Dubois said, her voice harsh and her face red. “Not when there are people who have been wronged by everything They’ve done.”
She turned her head.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
I saw, in her eyes, the beast of madness, the rage of an entire nation.
I saw my own feelings.
I turned my head away in an effort to push her gaze away, but still I felt it on me, boring into my body like the hottest laser in the entire galaxy.
Asha took my arm, as if sensing my discomfort, and began to lead me toward the edge of the room. “Let’s go,” she said.
So we did—down one hall and then another, then finally another. When finally we came to our room, she closed the door behind us, turned, and brought me into her arms.
It was then that I cried.
Six years, one month and four days after They’d arrived, it was finally over.
Maybe now we could move on with our lives.
We watched, from our place at our bedroom window, as the Coyotes made Their way down the street and toward the heart of the city.
“Where do you think They’re going?” Asha asked.
“Back,” I said. “To Them.”
I pointed.
; Harvester ships could be seen dotting the horizon, Their beams of light first lifting and then depositing into Their ships the phantoms that had haunted our world for so long. In a way, it was comforting, knowing that They were going willingly and without resistance, but in another it unsettled me, as it only marked the beginning of what was to come.
Assimilation. Habitation. Integration. This was the order of what was to come—the Holy Trinity of Life after Them.
I shivered, then, out of reflex rather than actual chill, and drew away from the window to sit on the bed. I tried desperately to rein my thoughts in—to keep them from wandering during a time in which my mind could conjure the most devilish of things—but was unable to keep them restrained. They eventually wandered to what Dubois had said, and the look that had been on her face.
She’d been so angry—had shown such rage—all because of what the president had said. What was the story there, I wondered, and why had it affected her so?
Rather than consider what I could not comprehend outright, I turned my attention to Asha, who watched me with calm yet curious eyes. “I’m worried about you,” she said after a moment. “I’ve been worried since you got back from that ship.”
“I know.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“There isn’t much to say, Asha. I went up. Did what They asked. Got the job done. I mean… the president and the queen have declared peace with one another. What happens next is beyond my control.”
“You’ve been through a lot, Mia.”
“So have you.”
“But not nearly as much as you have.” Asha stepped forward. She paused a moment before sitting down on the bed beside me and taking my hand in hers. “I mean… it isn’t like the weight of the world was just hanging on my shoulders.”
“It isn’t a contest, Asha.”
“I know, but, still…” The girl sighed. She reached up to run a hand over the slight smattering of hair developing along her skull and turned her attention back to the window—where, distantly, the Harvesters’ beams could be seen lighting up the sky like lightning during a storm. “You were forced to do things you wouldn’t have done in a thousand years—made to stand against everything you stood for and bear it as if it would have no effect on you. That’s gotta be hard.”
“It was. And is,” I said. “But it’s over now.”
“So we hope,” Asha said.
The way she said it gave me pause.
When I looked into her eyes—when I saw, in their depths, not herself, but Commander Dubois and her horrid rage—I trembled.
Deep down inside me, a voice whispered that something bad was about to happen.
I couldn’t even begin to imagine what that possibly was.
Chapter 11
The skies above Austin, Texas were clear and blue on this October day, during which Mary-Anne and I wandered the local community garden picking at the last of the food before the winter frost. Armed with a rifle in the event that we ran into Feral Coyotes, Reapers or bloodthirsty scavengers, I kept guard as Mary-Anne stooped to pick at ruby-red strawberries.
“It’s not much,” the girl said as she began to deposit them into bags, “but it’ll make stuff for the little kids come time Halloween rolls around.”
“How many people are there living at Burgundy Hospital anyway?” I asked, adjusting my hold on my gun.
“At least fifty, if not sixty. Most of them sleep in the gymnasium. The rest live in the offices or private rooms.”
“The higher ups,” I said.
Mary-Anne nodded. “Right,” she said, standing when she’d felt she’d picked a sufficient number of strawberries. She moved on to the snarls of grapes growing along the dilapidated and worn-down wooden fence and began to pick through them, only occasionally lifting her head to examine me. “I heard about what you did,” she said. “About how you went up into that ship.”
“You did?” I asked.
“Yeah. How… how was it? Up there, I mean? Scary? Beautiful?”
“More like terrifying,” I replied, surprised at her second choice of words. “But… yes. In a way, it was beautiful, to see what all could be accomplished.”
“Are you happy it’s over?”
“I don’t think it’ll ever be over,” I replied. “At least not for some people.”
“My mom’s one of those people,” Mary-Anne replied, securing the satchel that held the grapes in place before turning and looking at the miniature pumpkins that were growing in a patch along the ground. “My dad, he… was killed by Coyotes during the initial stages of the invasion. My mom never got over it. It about drove her crazy for a while there.”
“My mom never got over my father’s abduction either,” I said, drawing close to her as she lifted her head once again to look at me. “For years she’d say goodnight to his picture, convinced that he would come back. She’d tell us girls, Just you wait. Your padre will be back someday.”
“But that someday never came,” Mary-Anne replied.
“No. It didn’t.” I sighed, allowing the breath to spool from between my lips like steam rushing from a tea kettle. When I turned to look at Mary-Anne, her eyes were sad and her face was painted with a frown, her bottom lip quivering as in her eyes the beginnings of tears welled to their surfaces. She turned her head away, then, and wiped at her face; and I, knowing that she would not want to be seen in a moment of weakness, turned my head away as well. I could respect her privacy, and for that reason stepped away, down the row of cornstalks that had long been picked by the birds.
I was just about to turn and ask Mary-Anne if she was all right when I heard a twig snap.
“Mary-Anne?” I asked. “Was that you?”
“No,” she replied. “I thought it was you.”
“It wasn’t me,” I said, thumbing the safety off my rifle and scanning the perimeter for something—anything—that would explain where the noise had come from. “Are you sure you didn’t—”
It came again, this time closer and with more intensity than before.
I jerked my head to the side just in time to see the strawberry bushes shiver.
“Stay behind me,” I said, training my rifle directly ahead of me.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Mary-Anne replied.
It appeared, then—the Coyote. Afflicted with mange and covered in oozing red sores in spots where its fur should have been, it offered a low snarl as it pushed its way through the strawberry bushes to look at the pair of us.
“I thought They were supposed to be harvested?” Mary-Anne asked, her voice trembling and the bags of fruit thudding against her sides.
“They were,” I replied. “This one’s a Feral.”
It snarled.
I trained my weapon on it.
It shifted its eyes from me, to Mary-Anne, then to me again.
Then it charged.
I barely had time to put my hand on the trigger before it launched itself at me, tackling me to the ground and pinning me to the solid earth below. I struggled to overpower its emaciated frame, but to no avail, and punched and kicked and even, at one point, bit at its hand as it attempted to reach for my neck. Its snarling barks caused bits of drool to land on my face, causing me to gag and retch at the same time. This beast was so foul, so ludicrous, so completely unexpected. It should have been harvested—or better: dead. Yet it wasn’t. It was here, fighting me, trying to enslave me, bite me, and kill me.
I heard someone scream and looked up just in time to see Mary-Anne come barreling forward with a bucket. She brought it around in a wide swing and clobbered the creature upside the head, stunning it just long enough for me to knee it in the groin and send it reeling off me.
I grabbed my gun.
I pulled the trigger.
The spray went wide and initially only clipped it, but eventually hit the Coyote full bore and cut it down in a spray of blood and bullets.
When I was finally able to stand—when, after a moment, I was able to catch my breath—
I turned to see that Mary-Anne was covered in blood.
No.
She couldn’t be hurt. She just couldn’t.
“Mary-Anne,” I said, taking a cautious, tentative step forward. “Are you all right?”
“I’m… fine,” she managed, looking down at the bloodied and now trembling beast below me. “It isn’t dead.”
No. It wasn’t. Which was why when I walked over, I only gave it a momentary glance before lifting my gun and filling its head with lead.
After it stopped moving, and when I was able to breathe freely and without fear of it getting back up, I turned to face Mary-Anne and saw that she was trembling.
“Hey,” I said, taking a step back toward her. “It’s all right. It’s dead now. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“There might be more of Them,” she said. “We should go.”
I couldn’t agree more.
We had no sooner walked through the door when I heard Commander Dubois screaming at a soldier to run out and check on what all the commotion was.
“What’s going on?” the commander screamed. “Why did I hear gunfire?”
“I don’t know, ma’am,” the man said, “I—”
The commander pushed the soldier away and came barreling down the hallway, her face a portrait of rage and her mouth torn in a snarl much like that of the Coyote whom I had had just killed. She locked eyes on me for one brief moment, then turned her eyes on Mary-Anne and froze.
Her face immediately went pale.
All emotion left her eyes, lips and cheeks.
In but a moment, however, rage consumed her, and her mouth opened yet again to ask, “What the hell happened?”
“We were attacked,” I said, “by a Feral. I—”
“I said, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?”
“We were attacked by a—”
I realized, then, that it wasn’t me she was talking to. She was talking to Mary-Anne.
“We were picking fruit for the Halloween celebration,” Mary-Anne said, the meek tone of her voice returning as she bowed her head to look at the floor. “Ana Mia was just trying to—”
“You let my daughter go outside the perimeter?” the commander asked.