“Up that way,” he said. He pointed up a short dirt road. Cars lined the left side of it. “That lil’ green house there.”
Shawn thanked him.
“Jah bless,” the man said.
Shawn walked up the path and knocked a few times on the door until a slender Rasta man opened it and greeted him.
“Bennett sent me,” Shawn said.
The Rasta looked him over quick and then whisked him inside. “Speak fast. What you want?”
“A high-caliber sniper rifle.”
“You ever use one?”
“No.”
The man laughed. “People call me Boonie. I like it enough. Call me Boonie.”
Shawn gave his name.
“Yes, nephew. My condolences for the young one.”
“You got a rifle?”
“Not here. Have to send for it.” He told Shawn to have a seat on the couch, then made his way to the kitchen. Same room. The couch smelled like sweat and damp cloth, but the house was clean. “Hard to get guns these days,” he started again. “Babylon don’t pay no mind when you shooting up your own, but when you point your gun at them, that’s when they stop smiling with you.” The Rasta stopped and turned to him. “If this is a vengeance killing, be sure to get away fast. Them aliens are highly protective of their own.”
“So am I,” Shawn said.
“The last guy to shoot at one of them aliens got both his hands ripped right off his arms.”
“That’s why I want a rifle.”
“They’re unkillable. Whole body’s like a bulletproof vest.”
“Not their eyes.”
Boonie came to the couch with a plate of bread and fried tofu with green peppers and onions. He handed it to Shawn and stared at him.
The tofu was cooked in soy sauce and vegetable oil—a little greasy, but good. Shawn ate the tofu and the bread separately.
“I’ll need a little time,” Boonie said. “Come back in a week.”
“Okay.”
“You sure about this?”
“I will come by late afternoon,” Shawn said.
Boonie nodded, but his eyes stayed fixed on Shawn. “See you in a week. Bring two thousand dollars with you.”
• • •
When Shawn came back the following week, Boonie rushed him in and sat him on the same ratty couch. He turned on the lights inside since his apartment caught very little natural light. Then he set a large duffel bag down in front of Shawn.
“Open it,” Boonie said.
Inside, Shawn found a gleaming black rifle.
“The money?” Boonie asked.
Shawn tossed him the paper bag full of cash he had gotten from his uncle.
“Okay, so check this,” Boonie said. And for the next few minutes, he walked Shawn through disassembling and reassembling the rifle’s component parts, loading it, and mounting it on its two legs. “You’ll need a good spot, high up, but here’s the best feature. This computer …” he pulled a small black tablet the size of a cell phone from the duffel bag and attached it to the left side of the receiver, “… can tell the gun what part of the body you want to hit.”
As Shawn watched, Boonie programmed the rifle. He set it for the eyes. “It pretty easy to use, so you shouldn’t have trouble reprogramming it yourself if a better idea hits you in the next couple days. That’s it.”
“That’s it?” Shawn started disassembling the weapon, wrapping the parts in some old towels that Boonie provided, and placing them back in the bag.
“Is your car nearby?”
Shawn nodded.
“Get going.”
Shawn slung the duffel over his shoulder. It was lighter than he expected.
“Good luck, hot-stepper,” Boonie said as he left.
Shawn wouldn’t go after Mera. She was too sharp and too cautious. He would wait for that one. Another time, another opportunity. But he would get the one who killed Anthony. That was easy enough since she still walked the path from her house, up on the hill behind the hospital, down to Back Street. She had a thing for roti, and a small restaurant on Back Street served the best. She walked there every weekday, undeterred by sun or distance. She took her time, too. About an hour of walking.
He tailed her, studied the path, and found the right spot. There was an abandoned jewelry store on Main Street, still unrepaired since Hurricane Irma, that she passed every day. It would have to be on Tuesday because the street’s jewelry and accessory shops were crowded with tourists on all the other days. He spent two weeks tailing and planning. Before he knew it, all that was left was the doing. He had to climb and find an entrance to the second floor. He jimmied the old lock, slipped inside, and shut the door tight behind him. He pried the wood loose from the corner of a boarded-up window overlooking the street, making a big enough gap for him to see when the time came.
On the day, Shawn climbed to his spot early and waited. He checked the tablet over and over to make sure it was programmed right. The abandoned building was hot, his sweat making his clothes stick to him.
He didn’t have to wait long. There she was, walking past one of the tall utility poles that lined the sidewalk. She moved in that same slow way, taking her time. The rifle was already trained in her direction.
Main Street was crowded with people entering and leaving the jewelry and souvenir shops. A man dressed in a carnival outfit of red feathers greeted tourists outside Diamonds International. An older white couple stood outside Cardow Jewelers, studying an open map. The female Ynaa strode past them all. A red Jeep honked as two boys in Charlotte Amalie High School uniforms ran across the street. They spun out of the way when they saw the Ynaa.
On the tablet, he could see video of the street. The shot vector danced from one person to the next. He directed the vector to the Ynaa and confirmed her as the target. The gun locked in on her eyes. All he had to do was press the button on the touch screen. Not even a trigger to squeeze. So easy.
Shawn’s hand hovered above the glowing green circle at the corner of the touch screen.
The Ynaa was tall and brown, with very short hair. Almost bald. She wore hoop earrings as part of her facade. She looked human enough, even attractive, but her wooden steps gave her away. He recognized the expression on her face—the same one Mera had worn on that day at the cemetery. Tranquility. Not a care in the world. The Ynaa was certain that nothing could touch her. How wonderful it must be to float through the world with all that certainty, knowing that you could do anything and it wouldn’t come back to you. How wonderful it must be to feel safe.
Shawn pressed the button.
There was a sharp zipping sound as the high-velocity bullet left the chamber and cut through the air. Then a wet, sucking sound, loud enough to hear over the crowd, as it entered her eyeball. The Ynaa wailed. The unnatural sound reached him and throbbed in his ears. Then she collapsed on the street and curled into a ball, shaking, before going completely still. A moment passed before the passersby, registering what had happened, erupted all at once in a frenzy of screaming.
• • •
Shawn went to his brother’s grave. He rested his hand on the grass and told his brother that he had gotten the Ynaa and that it was all over. He had done what no one else was willing to do. Shawn’s eyes burned, and he allowed himself to cry. He stayed there for an hour and told his brother the whole thing. How he had done it. How it felt. He allowed himself a joyous laugh of triumph.
Then he drove home feeling as though he had earned his place on the earth, feeling that he had gotten his soul back, his pride. He felt no remorse and marveled at the lack of it. He knew then that he could do this again. He could do it a thousand times more.
When he got home, he met his mother sitting on the couch with the TV on. The news cycle had already picked up the killing. The governor talked somberly to the camera, the words “Ynaa As
sassinated” in bold letters at the bottom of the screen.
Shawn sat in Anthony’s chair. He stared quietly at the screen and allowed a flicker of a smile to show on his face. He didn’t look at his mother—didn’t notice her eyes on him, or the sudden recognition coming to her face.
“What did you do?” she asked him. She tried to ask again, but the last of it caught in her throat.
“I did something,” he said, and he told her not to worry. The aliens were afraid now. They could be touched. They could be killed. No longer could they hide behind the idea of their own safety. Things would be different now, he promised. Things would be better.
The Lesson
At the base of Ship Tower, a slender blue-white column like a stalk of sugarcane ascended to the ship proper. Mera stepped onto the platform that fanned out from the thin stalk at its base, the reefs immediately coming alive and speaking to her in Ynaa. She commanded them to take her to the top level. The reefs curved around her like a curtain of water.
Once she stepped inside the column, the reefs shot her up to the top level of the ship. As she stepped out, they made space for her again, gently brushing against the outline of her body. Mera thanked them and walked along the silky white corridors to Ohoim’s domicile. She passed no other Ynaa in the hall.
At Ohoim’s door, she whispered to his reefs, “Tell him we need to talk.”
A few minutes passed before the door unfolded for her. Inside, Ohoim sat at a table, eating a plate of rice and peas with johnnycake and fried kingfish.
Ohoim looked up as Mera entered. “Do you want any?” he asked in his slow, deliberate way. Even among Ynaa, Ohoim sounded too slow, too deliberate. He had slowed down over his long life, which was several thousand years to Mera’s few hundred. One of the oldest Ynaa still alive.
She shook her head at his offer with the same deliberateness. Apparently, they were going to talk around the issue. Mera had to push down her frustration. She had become unpracticed with the Ynaa.
“The food here …” A long pause. “… is delicious, isn’t it?”
Mera nodded.
“The raw materials themselves aren’t so good. But put together like this”—he looked down at his plate—“it creates something better than its parts.” Ohoim was not in his human skin. As he spoke, the tentacles on his head squirmed and he revealed the tiniest slivers of knife-edged teeth. A traditional long black cloak covered the rest of his body.
“We can leave,” Mera said.
Ohoim stood. The movement was so fluid, she lost track of him for the briefest moment as he blurred and then resolidified. Ohoim’s gills expanded with a slow breath. The dark orbs of his eyes shimmered. “You’re finished with your work, then?”
“Yes,” Mera said, taking from her purse a blue pearl the size of a golf ball. It was the culmination of hundreds of years of research, and the answer to all the Ynaa’s hopes and dreams. Mera hoped it would be enough. “Everything is there. We can set off for Sa right away.”
The streaks of orange on Ohoim’s cheeks brightened as he took the pearl. “Such good timing.”
Mera ignored the way Ohoim’s tentacles flexed, the accusation in them. She had finished her work a week ago, but she wanted to be thorough, to make sure. She didn’t want the Ynaa to leave only to come back and reignite fear in the humans. Waiting had seemed smart, prudent. Now it seemed a terrible mistake on her part.
“We know who did it,” Ohoim said.
“Will action be taken against him?”
“Yes.” Ohoim’s orange streaks flared like fire.
“And no one else?”
Ohoim moved again, first slowly, then fast, to the far side of the room, where a human bed stood against the wall. Next to it stood the tall cylindrical chamber, filled with oxygen-rich saline liquid, where Ynaa traditionally slept. Image windows of different sizes occupied all the space around and above the two beds.
Images of the Ynaa home world cycled through the windows, one after another. Ynaa Sky and Ynaa Water. Snowcapped hills. An endless ocean, a massive moon hanging over dark water, backdropped by a star-filled sky. The pictures were methodical but stylized, indicating an equal partnership between the Ynaa imagination and the reefs’ painstaking attention to detail. Using this method, one could do a thousand paintings in a day—paint every frame of their entire lifetime, if they chose. Ohoim had ripped these images from the memories of a world he left a long time ago.
“I like to look at these when I am homesick,” Ohoim said.
The last word was an older form of the Ynaa word for homesick: dursazen. The Ynaa who had never seen Sa never used that word. They would say they were durzen, which meant they simply missed the familiarity of space once they had been land bound for a while. Dursazen was reserved for the Sa-born, the ones who had left Sa behind for the black.
“Sometimes, I wonder if I will ever go back to that place. Sometimes, I wonder why I didn’t stay behind. We’re so far from that world now. So far.” He took a breath so deep, Mera could feel it vibrating in her own chest. “This cruel universe—it takes everything.” He turned to look at her. His eyes glistened like obsidian. “We will teach the lesson that all creatures must learn: that we will survive this black prison even if we have to stand on the bones of every dead thing in existence.”
Mera took a few steps back, toward the entrance. “Who will you kill?”
“The men on the island,” Ohoim said with the casualness that only Ynaa could use in speaking of mass murder.
Only the men, Mera sent to Derrick over the reef link between them.
Okay, he sent back. His response had a touch of terror in it, suppressed but noticeable.
“When?” Mera asked Ohoim.
He watched her, his tentacles flexing. Then he revealed a mouth full of sharp teeth. They crowded his smile like a nest of needles.
Mera’s breath caught. Get moving, she sent to Derrick. Now.
• • •
Jackson was already heading to Aubrey’s when he got the call from Derrick. An hour ago, the governor had issued a curfew, ordering everyone into their homes. Jackson had no intention of following that order. When Derrick told him to come to the house, he knew he had been right.
Jackson arrived at the house at sunset. He had to block what looked like a government-issued SUV. Derrick immediately got out of the SUV and ran over, motioning for him to roll down his window. Jackson obliged.
“Hey,” he said, his face covered in sweat. “You need to go down to Hull Bay.”
“What about my family?”
“Don’t worry about them. The Ynaa only coming after the men.”
Jackson’s stomach sank.
Derrick handed him a cup through the window. “Drink this.” He slammed the top of Jackson’s car very hard with the flat of his hand and said, “Get going.”
Jackson inspected the cup. It looked like water with some mucous floating in it. “Is this spit?” he asked with narrowed eyes, but Derrick had already walked away from the car.
Derrick jumped into the SUV and started it. The SUV was all black with a government license plate. Through the tinted windshield, Jackson could see Derrick talking to someone over the phone.
His own phone rang. He put down the cup and answered.
“Dad?” Patrice’s voice quivered on the line. A few seconds of silence passed, filled with her panicked breaths and loud, frantic footsteps.
“Don’t worry,” Jackson said. “It’s going to be all right.”
“I coming out!”
“Stay inside.”
The door creaked open, and Patrice flew out of the house, her maternity dress flowing behind her. His ex-wife’s maternity dress that she had worn when she was pregnant with Patrice.
“Stay inside!” Derrick yelled from the SUV.
Ignoring him, Patrice rushed toward the car. In sec
onds, she was at Jackson’s window, reaching in to touch him. Jackson leaned up toward her, pulling her into an embrace. Her tears wet the side of his face.
“I love you, lil’ miss,” he said. “Keep your mother safe.” Try as he might to see his daughter as a grown woman, right then all he could see was his little girl, her eyes rimmed with tears. He wanted to keep her safe, and right now safety meant distance. He had to get as far away from them as possible. “I gotta go, Pat.”
Patrice pulled back to look at him, her hands in the scruff of his unkempt beard. “Don’t get killed,” she ordered.
“I won’t,” he promised.
Derrick honked his horn. Patrice chupsed her teeth but stepped back from the car.
Jackson stole one more look at his daughter. In the child’s place stood the woman once again. She smiled and nodded him on, one hand cradling her belly.
Jackson felt the sting of the possibility that he would never meet his grandchild. He hesitated once more before his right mind asserted itself. Then he reversed and peeled out of the parking lot so fast, he spilled the contents of the cup, resting precariously in a cup holder too large for it, all over his jeans. He swore but didn’t stop, speeding up the hill from the house he and Aubrey had built together.
The streetlights around him went out all at once, and the rock in his throat finally gave way to the cold terror of self-preservation.
• • •
Uncle Bennett came over at his sister’s request. Shawn sat silent as they talked, the two of them not seeming to notice him.
“What foolishness is this?” his mother asked. It wasn’t really a question. “I already lost Tony to these damn aliens. What they gon’ do when they find out about this? Oh, Lord …” His mother sat back in her chair. She had worn herself out yelling.
Uncle Bennett kept his head down. “Don’t worry, sister. It’ll be just fine.”
The Lesson Page 19