by David Beers
Morena fell back on the bed, spreading her arms out to the side. “Fuck,” she said, adapting the vulgarity of this language, feeling that the word just fit the situation.
If she went forward, there was no turning back. There would be no other chances. If she released the spawn here, flying again would be impossible, and revealing herself—at least for a time—would be impossible. She would be vulnerable to whatever attack these creatures mounted. Yet if she stayed, waiting, trying to gain more information, she would eventually be found out.
“What happens when they really start suspecting?” she asked, interrupting her own thought process.
“I don’t honestly know. They might commit me.”
“What does commit mean?”
“You go to an insane asylum. They put you behind bars with crazy people,” Bryan said.
Morena laughed out loud, the only time her voice ever sounded human. They would lock her up? Bars? It was lunacy, a thought which had never occurred to her, that this is how she—the Var—could end up. Locked in a cage on some foreign planet, with a species not even out of the second stage of development. Absurd, and yet, a possibility. Sooner or later, they would be too suspicious, they would think something was wrong with Bryan, and then they would act.
She had to act first. She would find no more information on the heat of this planet outside of what she learned yesterday.
Morena had made the choice to come here, even if she didn’t know it when she made it. She acted as Var, she made the choice that no one else would make. She made the choice that sent her to this place, and now she would need to deal with the consequences.
Morena looked to her right hand, opening it so that her palm faced the ceiling.
Tiny, white spores began to grow out of her skin, wiggling out like worms, except looking closer to tiny pieces of clouds once they exited. They coalesced in her palm, forming something akin to a dandelion. She felt herself growing weaker with each spore that rose out of her hand, felt herself dying some. It was normal, necessary—the pain of birth was to remind Bynums of life’s sanctity. That is why they never went to war.
The tiny cloud droplets finished escaping from her palm. She lifted her hand into the air, tossing the spawn up, and watched as it floated toward the window behind the bed. It floated through the glass in the same way the individual particles had left her hand.
* * *
The spawn knew focus, knew it better than perhaps any other entity to ever live. It had only one purpose, and unlike, say, a sperm, it was conscious of that purpose. Aware and thinking, but unconcerned with anything besides its one goal.
Finding warmth.
Yet not just any warmth, a heat that would turn the spawn into what its final form should be. Very few things in this universe contained the heat it needed, indeed, the vast majority of the universe was far, far too cold for it to survive. It was on a timeline, and if it didn’t make the deadline, it would perish. That was another reason for the focus, its understanding of impending death. That knowledge would make anything work hard.
The spawn floated through the window and with a laziness that belied its underlying drive, slowly moved through the air, floating like a leaf blown by a soft wind. The air didn’t control it however, and while from a distance, it looked like a single entity—inside was a small mass of singular entities all struggling in one direction. Each one of the tiny eggs—for that’s what they were, but containing a group consciousness—pushed forward, all honing in on the place they had identified as the most likely to give them success. They needed, it needed, to get out of this populated area. What it needed to do was something that could’t be interrupted—if something interrupted the process, even minutely, death came next.
But it was more than death of itself. Even more than its offspring’s death.
Those eggs, that entity, carried a species inside it. Not a singular offspring, but millions. It carried a planet inside.
It took a few hours to make its way from the suburban mass it was born into, finally sensing fewer and fewer creatures around it. Not quite there yet, though. The whole area, really, wasn’t ideal—but if it went too far away from its mother, it would lose its ability to reproduce. Remaining close to its creator was imperative, so this place would have to suffice.
It floated out to a forest, not the same one its mother landed in, but another, more densely filled with vegetation. A place that would be unlikely to see intelligent creatures, due to aconsiderable overgrowth of the plants that sprung up so profusely. The spawn floated down through the tree tops, careful to miss the tiny pine leaves that would have easily damaged the eggs pushing the mass forward. Being careful, that was the need here. Making sure that nothing inside this wooded area could, or would, harm them.
Closer.
The eggs didn’t have language, but they had…thoughts, or feelings. The classification didn’t matter, but what spawned from those feelings did. Giddiness. The eggs knew they were nearing ground, knew that the hours of floating were coming to an end. Pure happiness.
The dandelion mass landed on the ground, softly, the eggs on the bottom not moving into the dirt and the eggs above not pushing them down. Despite their giddiness, they had to wait. It had to be certain; there was no room for error. Its mother would not produce another spawn, and if it died here, then its mother died here too. Its mother’s offspring, the planet the spawn hoped to create, would all end.
There were creatures in these woods, a lot of them. Small things, not even an inch long, and larger things that moved quickly. Flying things. This forest was fully stocked with any number of beings that might accidentally damage the spores.
The spawn waited as the tiny eggs circled around inside, a tiny, white ball of moving parts. A small, yet expanding circle of transparent gas began moving from the spawn, spreading outward slowly, shaped like a dome. The gas floated through the small shrubs, moving both out and up, not harming any inanimate objects, nothing that consumed CO2. The gas first touched the smaller animals, the insects, and they turned on their backs immediately, their legs spasming in tiny little movements. It kept moving, not caring about the creatures lying dead in its wake, and the eggs kept their circular paths inside the spawn.
A bird fell from a tree as it breathed in the invisible poison, its wings twitching on the way down. It landed, bouncing slightly before lying still, its eyes glazed over.
A deer staggered a few feet, its eyes rolling back in its head, and foam spreading across its mouth. It collapsed with a final breath and then moved no more.
The gas continued growing, taking in all of the forest, the tiny spawn at its center. Animals died while plants lived, and an hour later, an unseen, odorless poison hovered throughout the entire area.
The spawn’s giddiness returned.
19
Present Day
Will took a napkin from his pocket and wiped his forehead. He pulled it away, knowing the sweat would appear again soon, knowing that he was going to need more napkins. They were getting nowhere—less than nowhere, they were actually losing ground. The past six hours…he didn’t even want to tell Rigley about it. She would lose her shit, worse than she already was. He hadn’t ever thought Rigley would be out of her league with something, but it nagged at him now. Will couldn’t really blame her though, because he thought he might be too. The more he searched, the more he realized that this thing might have simply disappeared. That whatever came into those woods, falling down from the sky like some furious monster, could have just dissolved into air.
He picked up his phone and dialed Andrew’s number.
“Andrew,” he answered.
“Where are you?” Will said.
“Quadrant one, finishing up interviews for Six-B.”
It was pointless, what they were doing, but it was the first step in a long list of protocols to follow when contact hadn’t been made. Bolivia hadn’t needed this long list of protocols because that place contained more than enough contact for every
human in the entire world. Here, though, interviews were important. Or they had been, years ago, when these protocols were developed. Will wished he could meet the person that created them: assess area’s infestation through local interviews.
They still hadn’t invented a technology that could replace this piece, nothing to save them the time of door to door conversations.
There’s technology, William, it’s just not the kind you want to use. It’s a technical device called the hammer.
No. Protocol was better than that. And there was some technology, though he didn’t know how it worked. Andrew and Lane wired him up, all of the wires hidden, but supposedly relaying information back to them.
It’s going to detect differences that we won’t be able to, one of them said.
What differences? Will asked.
Chemical composition. Things like that. If there’s a match, and even if there’s not a match, we’ll know something is different.
That had been the end of Will’s questions.
“My wires showing anything?” He asked.
“Notta.”
“You found anything?”
“Notta. Everyone here is clean so far.”
“Same here,” Will said. “This is pointless. We’re wasting time.”
“What do you want to do?”
Will didn’t say anything, just sat inside his car, listening to the air conditioning trying to keep up with summer’s last struggle. What did he want to do? A stupid question. He wanted to eliminate whatever had landed here unannounced and with no line of communication. The question Andrew meant to ask was, how do you want to do it? And Will had no answer for that. Were they missing something here? Was there something he hadn’t seen, something that might be hiding?
He kept going back to whoever had been at the crash site. Someone had been there, someone that he hadn’t found. They combed the entire place, him by himself, and then the three of them, looking for anything—any scrap that might contain a clue, or DNA, or a goddamn letter that said, “I, XXX, was here.” Anything that might help. They found nothing. So now they were searching door to door, acting like they were geological surveyors. Idiotic, and Will knew it.
“Who the hell would have been in those woods?” He said into the phone, not really talking to Andrew, but more to himself.
“Hunters?” Andrew answered.
“No,” he answered, still thinking. “There weren’t any stands out there. Hunters have stands.”
And then it clicked, like a rusty train finally listening to its commands and shifting tracks, the metal falling into place just like it should.
“Have you asked anyone if they know who goes out to that field?” So stupid. So incredibly stupid that he hadn’t been asking this question.
“No,” Andrew answered. “I’ve mainly been relying on the data coming back.”
Will ended the call and then quickly dialed Lane’s number. Hopefully someone in this group wasn’t as dumb as him, or hopelessly addicted to data.
“Yeah?” Lane answered.
“Have you asked anyone who is hanging out at the field?”
“Yeah, everyone. I’ve heard a couple different things, and was going to check it in with you when I finished. Most people have no idea, a few parents said their kids go out there sometimes, and one person said he thought demonic rituals were done out there because of the fires.”
Kids. That’s who it had done it. Kids. Kids. Kids. Will had seen the remains of the fires himself, but it hadn’t clicked that teenagers were out there drinking. He was too old to think about that kind of stuff; he hadn’t been camping in twenty years, and he hated it when he had, let alone built a fire to sit around and drink.
Will hung up the phone.
They didn’t need to be out here hustling door to door like vacuum salesman. They needed to be inside the school.
20
Present Day
Thera parked her car on the street, just in front of Bryan’s mailbox. She was alone because that’s how she wanted it. She talked to Julie the night before, and Julie said that Bryan was sick, and wasn’t going to school. Sure enough, he hadn’t been there. Julie didn’t buy it, and when she talked to his parents, they both said he was acting strange too. Bryan told Julie not to come over, something about not getting her sick, and Julie told Thera she hadn’t wanted to fight anymore, so she stayed away the past few days.
Julie was worried.
Michael was worried.
And from the sounds of it, Bryan’s parents were worried too.
Yet only Thera and Michael knew about the site. Thera felt the pressure growing to tell someone, anyone—to let someone older than her know what they saw out there. She was the responsible one, the one that did what needed to be done, despite popularity or fun. Yet here she was, parked in front of Bryan’s house, not doing what she should. Not calling the police. Not telling his parents.
“If this doesn’t go right, I will,” she said aloud, her hands in her lap, looking past the driveway to the front door. She said it for herself, to solidify the ideas rolling around her mind—crystallize them so that they wouldn’t break when she left this place, so she wouldn’t fall back into the trap of keeping everyone on an even keel. If this went bad, people needed to be upheaved.
She opened the door to her car and stepped out, scared. Genuinely fearful of what was going to happen when she got in there. Had she ever been scared of Bryan before, ever scared of any of her friends? No, not a chance, but she couldn’t deny it right now. Maybe Bryan wasn’t in there. Maybe the strangeness everyone spoke about was actually everyone else. Something else.
“Shut up,” she said, whispering now. This wasn’t a science-fiction novel, some Stephen King nonsense. Her friend wasn’t possessed by an otherworldly alien. He was sick, and if it wasn’t all physical, then some kind of psychiatry could fix whatever else was going on. She wasn’t walking in to some alien’s den. There wouldn’t be a gray man waiting for her inside, with long arms and huge eyes.
Thera walked up the driveway, forcing each step. It didn’t matter what she told herself, the fear still lived inside her.
Bryan’s car was in the driveway; his parents’ weren’t. She had come right after school, hoping that this situation would present itself. Now it had, and yet she just wanted to get back to her car.
She rang the doorbell and waited, the same as she and Michael did the other day. She rang it again, but heard no movement from inside.
“Fine.”
She opened the glass door and twisted the knob to the inside one, fully expecting it to be locked. It wasn’t. She stood there for a second, feeling the knob in her hand. Is this what she really wanted to do? Go into this house, alone? A house in which someone was inside, but wouldn’t answer the door? But all those questions were pointless. This was Bryan. She pushed the door open.
“Hello?” she said as she stepped inside. “Bryan?”
No voice answered her, just the soft sound of the air conditioning blowing through the vents. All the lights were off, furniture casting shadows across the living room floor. To his room then, she thought.
She moved down the hallway, it darker than the rest of the house because there were no windows to allow sunlight in.
“Bryan?” she said again, not slowing her footsteps, but increasingly wondering why no one answered her. Was he asleep? Had none of this woke him?
Thera reached his door, and saw it was ajar. No light inside either, just the same gloom as the rest of the house. She pushed the door open and stepped inside. Her eyes went to the bed where Bryan lay, fully clothed except for shoes. Dressed as if he had been about to go to school, but decided against it at the last moment. His eyes were closed and he lay on his back, his hands crossed on his stomach like a corpse at a funeral.
“Bryan?”
He opened his eyes, but didn’t sit up, just stared straight up at the ceiling. Thera didn’t say anything else; she didn’t know what to say, but she immediately understood wh
at everyone had been talking about. The weirdness. The whole room, the whole house, was strange. And now, him lying there like some kind of dead person.
She breathed out, not realizing that her breath had caught in her lungs.
Bryan sat up, not using his hands at all, but just straight up as if he had the strongest abs in the world. His legs didn’t move an inch, and Thera would have bet a sizable amount of money that Bryan couldn’t have done that if asked before now. She didn’t think anyone could do that. He looked at her, his eyes locking onto hers.
“You okay?” she asked, the words sounding infinitely stupid to her.
“I’m good,” he said, his voice an imitation. A copy of a copy. One of the hundreds of pulp writers doing their best to imitate Hemingway.
Thera knew right then, without any doubt, that she wasn’t speaking to Bryan. That Bryan was gone.
* * *
Bryan hadn’t stopped screaming since he heard Thera’s voice. He was shrieking inside his own head, trying to disrupt whatever the hell Morena was thinking. Trying to communicate with Thera. Trying to convince himself that this wasn’t real, that it couldn’t be happening. Trying anything and everything, but none of it worked. She just kept coming to the room, and Bryan felt Morena waking up. She had been in some kind of deep sleep, though sleep wasn’t the right word, just the only one he could think of that hinted at what she was doing.
Waiting might have worked too—she was waiting on that thing which came out of his hand, those things. It had taken a lot out of her, but Bryan didn’t know how or why. When Thera entered the house though, Morena woke. It didn’t take her long to understand who Thera was and why she was here. She identified Thera as an interloper—everyone in Bryan’s life was being classified as such. Interlopers, those that were trying to get involved in something they had no business with, as if this wasn’t Bryan’s life. The difference between now and every other time an interloper showed up, was that they were alone. It was only Morena and the interloper, and the moment Bryan saw that thought pulsing through Morena’s mind, he started panicking.