“They’re taking our stuff! They’re taking our things out of the car. I told them to stop, but they won’t,” Gracie yelled.
“Wait, who’s taking our stuff?”
“Those asshole guys, who’d you think? Your new buddies. First they lock Jake away, now they’re stealing our stuff.”
I tried to make sense of what she was saying. That she’d been right about the beer didn’t make me any happier.
“There’s gotta be a good reason for all of this,” I managed, finally. “They’re army guys. They’re on our side. If we just talk to them, tell them they made a mistake about Jake, it’ll all be okay.”
“We don’t have a side!” Gracie was shouting again. “We’re just a bunch of kids! You, too. You’re not an army guy; you’re just a dumb kid, too.”
“Jeez, Gracie.”
“No more bullshit, Brandon. This crazy idea you have about army guys saving us. It’s never going to happen. They didn’t save us at the center, did they? They didn’t save your Dad!”
I gave her a shove and she fell back against the wall.
“Oh, hey now, kids, no fighting.” It was Doc. He grinned as though everything was real funny, and I felt a fresh lurch of unease.
No. Gracie was wrong. The army guys were the only guys left in charge. They were here to help. If my head would just stop throbbing, I’d be able to figure out what was happening.
“Don’t you dare talk to us,” said Gracie, squaring up to Doc. “Let Jake out and give us back our things.”
“Calm down, Miss,” said Doc. “We haven’t taken your things. They’re right here, in the garage. When you leave, Terry and I will pack them all in your car for you. We’ll even send you off with a little extra.”
“We’re leaving now. And Jake’s coming with us.” said Gracie. She stormed away, leaving me to squint up at Doc.
“What’s going on?” I asked him. “Why’d you guys shut Jake away?”
“I’m afraid the little girl doesn’t understand,” said Doc, taking a seat next to me at the kitchen table. “I know she’s just concerned about her brother; what was his name again?”
“Jake,” I told him. “He’s not really her brother. We just found him.”
“Really?” said Doc. “But I expect she feels like he’s a brother now. I don’t expect she would lie to us otherwise.”
“Gracie’s okay.” I shrugged. “She doesn’t trust people, is all.”
“Quiet little kid, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. He doesn’t say much. He’s getting better though. Probably saw some pretty sick shit before we found him. In shock, right?”
“It sounds likely,” agreed Doc.
“And these doodles. Are they Gracie’s?” Doc held up a sheath of crumpled papers. I had to squint at them hard before I could see what they are.
“Nah, those are Jake’s. He likes to make those crazy patterns. Keeps him quiet.”
“I see,” said Doc.
Outside, Gracie was shouting about something again. There was a thumping noise, and a yell from Terry.
“Is it true you’re going to let us go? I don’t understand why you guys shut Jake away.”
“You’re all eager to go on to Gracie’s mom’s place in Bangor?” Doc asked, ignoring my question.
I paused. I had no reason to lie to Doc, but I found myself agreeing. “Yeah. I’m guessing she won’t find her family there either, but you have to keep hoping right?”
“Right,” said Doc. “And you’ve been driving up from the South?”
“Walked a lot of it,” I said. “But yeah, we’ve driven the last part.”
“And have you seen anything unusual in the woods while you were driving?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “What kind of thing?”
“Debris. Broken trees. Maybe people, or a person on the road.”
“Nothing like that,” I said. “Is it important?”
“Perhaps,” said Doc “But right now there is the question of young Jake.”
“If you’re trying to help us, then let him out. Just for five minutes even, so we can make sure he’s okay.”
Gracie was yelling at Terry out in the yard. There was no sound at all from the room where Jake was shut up, except from the occasional whimper from the dog. It had bitten Terry pretty good, tore his pants, and ripped a good chunk of the meat from his calf. I figured the dumb mutt was a sight safer shut up with Jake than it would be if Terry got his hands on it.
“It’s a credit to you that you want to help your friend,” Doc said. “But the best way to help him, to help all of us, is to trust me. You know you can trust me, Brandon.”
“Do I? I’m trying, but truth be told, I don’t know you guys from Adam. You won’t tell me nothing. You smash up Gracie’s computer, you lock Jake away. And you still haven’t told me why, just asked a bunch of weird questions.”
Doc sighed. “We’re working for the US military, Brandon. I didn’t want to break Gracie’s computer, and I don’t want to hold anything back from you, but the information we’re dealing with is extremely sensitive. We have enemies, enemies who would dearly like to know where we are and what we are doing. I should have explained myself properly, and for that, I’m sorry, but I was only acting in the best interests of our mission.”
“So you say. It was guys like you locked us up back in Massachusetts. Guys like you…my Dad.”
“I have read some of the reports out of Massachusetts,” said Doc with a frown. “And from similar facilities around the country. A regrettable farce which we’re still trying to clean up. Nothing to do with military intelligence. Nothing to do with intelligence of any kind.”
“You army guys are on a different side from those Center guys.” I had to say it again, to remind myself that it was the truth.
“Yes.” Said Doc. “The military currently operates alone, independent of what remains of the Government. We have access to information and resources that they do not. We’re trying to fix things, Brandon. Jake is a part of that; it’s people like him we need most of all. There are very few of them left, thanks to the idiots at your Center and their ilk.”
“At the Center, they locked people away. Quarantine, they called it. None of those people made it.” Thinking about the Center again made my stomach clench.
Doc patted my shoulder. “We aren’t the Center. Jake would be treated kindly. He is infinitely valuable to us, to the work we’re trying to do. He would be a hero, not a prisoner. As would you.”
“So what do you think Jake can do to help? He can hardly even talk. What’s so special about him?”
“Classified,” said Doc. “You’re just going to have to trust me on this one, Brandon.”
Gracie turned her head away when I joined her on the stoop, but I could still see her red puffy eyes and wet cheeks where she’d been crying.
The sky was an ominous shade of yellowish gray, and a freezing wind nipped at my neck and ears with icy little teeth.
“Maybe we could bust the window out,” Gracie said flatly, as I sat down next to her.
“Jeez, this step is cold. You’re gonna get sick sitting out here.”
“The step isn’t the issue, Brandon.”
“Okay, so you want to bust out a window. And persuade the kid to climb out before Terry and Doc come running. Then I guess we ask them nicely to get the car out for us and we drive off into the sunset. Although we’d need some sun, first.”
“We have to do something! We can’t just let them keep him shut up.”
“Doc said they’d treat him good. They said he’s real important. Jeez, don’t start crying again! They’ll take us with them. Look after us. There’s nothing to be sad about.”
“I’m not sad! I’m pissed. At you. Even you’re not dumb enough to believe those assholes are going to look after us. I can tell you don’t believe them, not really. They just want Jake. And they aren’t interested in helping him either.” She glared at me, the tears cutting through the dirt on her face.
“Well, what do you think they want with him anyway? What’s so special about Jake?” I said, trying to swallow my temper.
“You haven’t guessed?”
“What am I s’posed to have guessed?”
Gracie sighed. It was almost good to see her looking superior and impatient again. She wasn’t the kind of girl who cried.
“Brandon, do you remember what happened at the Mall?”
“You know I don’t.”
“There were Drones there. Not just one, but a whole, like, hive of them or something. You were passed out in the cart and they were coming down from the roof.”
“Hell, I’m glad I don’t remember. Not for nothing, but it almost makes me thankful for the busted head.” I smiled at Gracie, but she didn’t smile back. She looked like she was going to cry again. I patted her back awkwardly, and when she didn’t slap my hand away, I slung an arm round her shoulder.
The first snowflakes were starting to drift down from the sky, big chunky ones that looked set to stick.
“So how come we’re still alive? If all those Drones came. You’re gonna tell me it was Jake?”
“He told them to back off. That was the first time he talked. He talked to them and they did what he said.”
That was crazy. The kid was freaky, but he didn’t have superpowers or anything.
“That’s really what happened? It was pretty intense in there. You sure you weren’t…imagining things?”
Gracie snorted. “No, Brandon, that’s really what happened.”
“So you think Jake can talk to Drones. And Terry and Doc want him. So he can tell them about the Space Men?”
Gracie rolled her eyes. “Terry and Doc want him because he is one of the Space Men. Jeez Brandon, you sure are slow sometimes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It doesn’t matter what you believe. They believe it. Why else would they want to take him?”
“How would they even know?”
“Don’t you remember at the Center?”
“I don’t want to talk about the Center.” I took my arm off Gracie’s shoulder, and clambered up off the step. The cold had stiffened my legs; a new knot of pain was starting to throb nicely right between my eyes.
“Tough, Brandon, because I do. They made us fill out those forms, about whether we’d had any contact with the Space Men. And even when people lied they knew. They knew about your Dad. They saw the way those people acted, and they spun some bullshit about taking care of them. That creepy Doc has been watching Jake ever since we met them. And they have Jake’s drawings. They must have gone through our stuff while we were sleeping. I saw Doc with them after he smashed my tablet. They knew for sure as soon as they saw those pictures.”
My head was really throbbing now. Doc had asked me about the pictures, and I’d just told him. Blabbed everything. Confirmed the crazy idea that they’d gotten about Jake, who was just a little freaky, not a goddamn alien.
“So, Jake’s a Space Man. I guess my Dad was a Space Man, too? I think I would have noticed if I’d been living with some little grey man all my life.”
“Not all your life,” said Gracie. “Something happened to him, right? A Drone, I’m guessing. I saw it happen to my neighbors, The Novaks. The Drones grabbed them and I thought they were dead, but when the ships came they got back up. They walked over to the ships and the ships took them. The Drones didn’t hurt them, they changed them. There was something else at the mall, too. This guy, he had killed his friend, and then he hung himself. He left a note. ‘They look like us but they’re not.’ “
“I don’t want to talk about this no more.”
“They changed people, then they took them away. But some of those changed people missed their ride. We saw what happened to them when the guys in charge caught on to what they were. Why the hell would it be any different with these army guys?”
“The Center guys were Government,” I told her. “Doc said the army guys are against them. And we know that’s true, we saw the army guys take over the center. We saw them shoot Treen.”
“The only truth is that they’re going to say whatever it takes to get you to go along with them. They don’t want to help us, they want to use us. They need Jake, but the two of us are only alive as long as we answer their dumb questions and don’t make too much trouble. Because if we get in their way too much, they’ll just shoot us. We’re the extras. Or did you forget all those people we were locked up with?”
“That was the suits. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play dumb, Brandon. Jake trusts you. Those asshole friends of yours are going to kill him. Or worse. And when they do, I hope you remember that it’s all your fault.”
“So what do you want me to do, huh? You think I can help him? There’s nothing I’ve tried to do since this whole thing started that I haven’t screwed up. You guys are better off if I don’t help.”
“Doc’s not your Dad, you know. He’s not going to save you.”
The snow was falling harder, and I had to blink it out of my eyes. I wasn’t crying. Nothing to cry about.
“Brandon, where are you going?”
I didn’t reply. Out in the street, my boots left black footprints in the swiftly growing crust of snow. Gracie’s voice followed me into the snow, but the sound was already distant, muffled by the soft, shaggy flakes.
“Brandon! You can’t just run away! We need you!”
After a while, the snow swallowed her completely and I was left alone with my memories. I tried to push them back, to build a wall between me and those images—a woman with her hair missing and her head wrapped in bandages rocking on a bed. The smell of dirty linoleum and cafeteria food. The weight of my Dad’s body in my arms.
I screamed into the crazed whirl of the storm.
I told those lost people that they were dead, that I was done with them, but still they pressed in on me, snatching at my clothes with hands made of snow and ice.
Jake
he door handle wouldn’t turn. There was a word for that.
Locked.
The door was locked.
Jake wondered why he was Locked in this room. Why didn’t Brandon and Gracie let him out? Maybe something bad had happened to them. There were bad things that could happen to people. There was a word for that too.
Dead.
He’d heard Gracie screaming. He’d heard Brandon shouting. Now things were quiet.
What if Gracie and Brandon were Dead?
He could hear footsteps, but it sounded like the footsteps of the Bad Men.
Dog whined and pushed a slimy nose into his hand. At least Dog was not dead. Dog bit the man, Terry, and Terry kicked Dog, and now Dog walked with one foot held up as if it hurt her to put it down.
Everything was bad here.
Silver shapes whirled and spiraled before Jake’s eyes.
There was a window in the room, and Jake climbed on a chair to look out of it. Dog stood behind him, tail swishing back and forth on the rug, as though Jake were doing it for her amusement.
There were no stars to see, because something was wrong with the sky.
Pieces of it were falling down. Little pieces that shone in the light that spilled from the window.
The stars!
Could the stars be falling out of the sky?
If there were no stars to look at, then Jake really was Locked in here.
And there wasn’t much time left. Jake knew that. Soon it would be too late, and he’d be Locked in here forever.
Tears ran down his face and he wiped them away, angrily.
He curled up under the chair, trying to make himself as small as small could be.
Dog crawled in next to him. Her long pink tongue licked the tears from Jake’s face and, unable to bear being inside his own misery any longer, he sent his mind out to ride on dog’s until the salty taste of the tears filled his mouth.
Gracie
waited outside until it was dark. T
he snow fell harder. At least a foot had settled, with no sign of letting up anytime soon. I tried to remember if Brandon had been wearing his snow boots. If he’d even been wearing his coat.
Not that I should care, anyway! I’d been worried that he’d side with Doc and Terry, but I couldn’t believe he’d left us like that, just stormed off in a sulk, like a little kid Jake’s age.
Maybe I’d pushed him, talking about The Center and bringing up his dad, but it was important. We couldn’t lose Jake just because Brandon was still living in a fantasy land where the good guys came in and saved you.
Every now and then, the hateful face of Doc appeared in the window. I knew I’d have to go inside eventually. I’d been sensible enough to dress for the weather, but even still, the cold found all the little gaps in my clothes and made me shiver. The wind blew great swirls of shaggy snowflakes into my eyes and mouth making me choke and blink back tears. Brandon’s tracks were long covered, and he was so lousy with directions that I wondered if he’d be able to find his way back without them.
If he meant to come back at all.
Doc shoved the back door open, fighting the drift of snow that had blown up against it.
“You really should come inside now. Unless you mean to sit out here all night.”
I didn’t want to do anything he said, but my hands smarted and tingled with the cold, and my fingers had become so numb I had difficulty moving them. If anything happened to me, then Jake would be all alone with these assholes.
“Jeez, this is bullshit,” Terry was saying as I stamped the snow off my boots in the hall. “They’re never gonna get through this by tomorrow.”
“Who?” I asked, suddenly all ears.
“Mind your own business,” snapped Doc. He wasn’t even trying the dumb wheedling tone he used when Brandon was around, and I was glad.
“I guess you mean your army buddies. They’re coming for us, right?”
Terry ignored me and stamped off to the kitchen to crack open a beer, but Doc stared at me coldly.
“I’d much rather talk about your buddies than mine. Where’s Brandon?”
I shrugged. “How should I know? He’s your new best friend.”
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