by TJ Klune
Nate tried to speak. He couldn’t form words.
Alex eyed him warily. “Eat your food. You’re gonna need it.”
Art grinned at him through a mouthful of bacon.
Somehow, Nate ate his food.
Of course, he didn’t taste a single bite.
chapter eleven
They stayed on back roads when they could as they continued north. Alex said he didn’t want to take a chance on main highways, though it might have been quicker. Before they’d left the diner, he’d switched out the license plate on the C/K with another truck in the parking lot. Art kept watch, whistling a jaunty tune. Nate sat in the truck, trying to keep his breakfast from making a reappearance.
He needed to ask more questions. Where they were going. What the plan was. Why they needed to go east. What planet Artemis Darth Vader had come from, and how she’d been captured thirty years before yet still managed to look as she did now. The easy questions.
He wondered if the cabin still stood or if it’d been razed to the ground by the water guy who wasn’t a water guy.
He didn’t know what it meant that he could think such a sentence.
Alex had switched on the radio an hour after they’d left the diner. He’d turned the dial until he found a station playing news. They talked about baseball. About the weather. About Markham-Tripp, the comet that was getting closer and closer, and man, those folks in the mountains were going to have such a sight, away from the light pollution of the big cities. Another three weeks and it’ll be the brightest it’ll ever be, how about that? And now, a song that’s already five years old, can you believe that, it’s Garth Brooks with that thunder rolls and lightning strikes.
There was nothing about soldiers outside of Roseland. About the downing of Black Hawk helicopters. About two men and a little girl on the run. Not a single word.
It was like none of it had happened at all.
Like they didn’t even exist.
Nate looked out the window, watching the trees go by.
Art sometimes sang along with the radio while she read a book Alex had gotten from her bag. Silver Canyon this time. A gunslinger named Matt Brennan falls in love with a rancher’s daughter. It wasn’t Nate’s favorite. Art wore her sunglasses, pushing them back up on her face every few pages. One of the lenses looked scratched. It’d probably happened during their escape.
It was early evening by the time they crossed into the Willamette National Forest. There were more clouds in the sky. If they kept going, they’d hit rain sooner rather than later.
Nate was brought out of his stupor when he felt the truck starting to slow. He blinked, looking over at Alex. He was scowling, which wasn’t anything unusual. But it was deeper than Nate had seen before.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, the first time he’d spoken since they’d left the diner.
Alex shook his head.
Art hummed as she folded the corner of the page and closed the book. “He’s mentally preparing himself.”
Nate didn’t like the sound of that. “For?”
She looked up at him. He could barely make out her eyes behind the dark lenses. “The conversation we’re about to have. He’s worried you’re not going to believe us. Or that you’re going to do something to hurt me. Or leave us.”
“Art,” Alex warned through gritted teeth.
“What? You are.”
“Maybe we should just keep driving,” Nate said, fidgeting in his seat. “We don’t need to talk about anything. We can just pretend that nothing happened.”
Alex grunted. Nate didn’t think that was any answer at all.
There was a pull-off up ahead on the right. Three wooden picnic tables sat in the grass next to a black metal trash can. Pine trees swayed in the breeze. The grass was a brighter green than Nate had ever seen before. There was no one else there.
Alex stopped the truck next to the tables. An empty paper cup sat on one of them. Red and white, the word COKE on the side. “Get out.”
Nate shook his head furiously. “No. I’m fine right here, thank you.”
“Nate. Get out of the truck. Now.”
“Or what? You gonna shoot me and—oh dear god, please don’t shoot me.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to shoot you.”
“He won’t shoot you,” Art said, patting Nate on the knee. “We like you too much to make you bleed. And besides, that would just slow us down if you were shot.”
“And I could have shot you many times already,” Alex said. “I don’t need to start now.”
“That isn’t as reassuring as you think it is,” Nate muttered. “Okay. If I get out of the truck, do you promise not to leave me here?”
“Only if you want to be left here,” Alex said. He didn’t sound happy.
“Okay. Um. That’s… fine. I’ll just get out now.” He opened the door. The air felt heavy. He sucked in a deep breath.
“Wow,” Art said. “Could you possibly move any slower?”
Jesus Christ.
He stepped out of the truck. The ground was solid beneath his feet. He could see squirrels running up tree trunks. Birds were singing. He could almost convince himself that everything was normal. That everything was fine.
Art took his hand.
He looked down at her.
“It’ll be okay,” she told him. “You’ll see. You just need to listen, and I promise it’ll be okay. I won’t hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. And I know you don’t want to hurt me. You’re different. You’re like Alex. He’s special.”
Nate didn’t know what to do with that.
He allowed Art to pull him over to one of the picnic tables. She made him sit down before she went to the other side of the table. She crawled up on top of it and sat in front of Nate, legs crossed, elbows on her knees, chin in her hands. “Hi,” she said as she stared at him.
“Hi,” Nate managed to say in return. He tried to look away, but it was damn near impossible.
“So. Pretty crazy, right? The past couple of weeks.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
Art smiled at him. “I know. I’m just trying to make light conversation to make you feel better.”
“It’s not working.”
“Yeah, I’m not very good at it. There are… nuances I haven’t yet mastered. You’re very complex.”
Nate chuckled weakly. “I’m really not.”
“Oh, I wasn’t talking about you specifically. I meant humans in general.”
Nate felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. “That’s… I…”
She lifted her sunglasses and set them on top of her head. “But you are too, Nate. More than you give yourself credit for.” Her eyes were like the grass, so brightly green.
“Can you read my mind?” Nate blurted.
“No,” Alex said gruffly, coming to stand at the edge of the table while still scanning the tree line. “She can’t.”
“But I am telekinetic,” Art said cheerfully.
Nate wheezed.
Alex sighed. “She’s…”
“Seventh Sea,” Art said. “Do you remember saying that at the cabin?”
Nate could do nothing but nod.
“Do you know what that means?”
“No.”
“It’s code,” Alex said. “Sea. S-E-A. Also means the letter C. As in contact. There was a man in the seventies. His name was Hynek. He published a book where he described a scale of contact between us and… others. Initially, he posited three kinds of contact.” His shoulders were stiff. He looked as if he’d rather be doing anything else other than talking. It was a familiar sight, but it didn’t make Nate feel any better. “The first is a visual sighting of an unidentified object less than five hundred feet away, enough to make out detail.”
“This is fun,” Art said. “I’m having fun.”
Alex ignored her. “The second is where physical effects are felt. Animals reacting. Ca
rs malfunctioning. Radios going on the fritz. Evidence left behind. Scorch marks. Traces of chemicals.” He glanced at Nate. “Sometimes in the second level, it affects people. Paralysis. Discomfort.”
Art wiggled her fingers at Nate. “Are you feeling any discomfort right now?”
“Yes,” Nate said.
Art frowned at her fingers. “Huh. I didn’t know I could do that. Should we see if I could paralyze you?”
Alex wasn’t having any of it. “Contact of the third kind is when there are… beings present. Those that seem to be piloting the objects seen in the first kind. It’s also called first contact.”
Art sighed. “Contact of the first kind is objects seen, but contact of the third kind is seeing something alive, and that’s also first contact. So unnecessary.”
“Jesus,” Nate said, voice breaking. “You’re serious.”
“Yes,” Alex said bluntly. “I am. Extensions came after Hynek. Clarifications. Pushing it further. The fourth kind is abduction. The fifth kind is communication. The sixth kind is death of a human or animal in relation to contact.”
Nate closed his eyes. “And the seventh?” Because what could be worse than abduction and death?
“The seventh is me,” Art said quietly. “Though it doesn’t quite fit.”
“Contact of the seventh kind is a hybrid,” Alex said. “Either produced sexually or by artificial methods. It’s… she’s not a hybrid. It’s not like that with her. It’s more… symbiotic.”
“Nate,” Art said.
He opened his eyes. In front of him sat a little girl. A man stood near her. They spoke of things that should be impossible. Things that shouldn’t exist. Nate… he’d never really given much thought to such things. Oh, he knew of Roswell and the stories behind it. He knew of lights in the sky. He’d even seen a couple of episodes of that new show X-Files. For fuck’s sake, he’d spent years in DC, and he knew about secrets. But this wasn’t something he thought about. How could it be? Because it was bullshit. If pressed, Nate would have said that humans were alone. That if such things existed, if there were life beyond Earth, they would be single-celled organisms on planets far, far away, in acidic oceans or buried in igneous rock. Nothing intelligent. And if, on the extreme off chance, there was intelligent life somewhere out there, he didn’t think they’d come here. What would be the point?
He didn’t believe in shadow sects of the government. In men in black. In Area 51. The world was dark enough already without those things. And there was no proof. There had never been any solid proof. Just stories. That’s all they were. Stories. Yes, some mysteries needed to be solved, questions that needed to be asked, but they were earthbound with logical explanations.
Until now.
If they were to be believed.
Art cocked her head. “You’re thinking too hard.”
“You can’t read my mind.”
“No. But it’s not that hard to tell. Your forehead is wrinkled. You do that when you’re thinking.”
“It’s not—you really expect me to accept this. To take this at your word. To just… believe you. In you. In this.”
“Do you know Cisco Grove?” Art asked, and Alex bowed his head.
“No,” Nate said.
“It’s in Northern California.”
“I don’t—”
“It’s a campground. There was a man.”
“Oren Schraeder,” Alex said.
“Yes,” Art said. “Oren Schraeder. What a lovely name. It just… rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? Oren Schraeder. Anyway. He was a hunter. On a camping trip. He came upon something he didn’t expect to see.” She pointed at her chest. “Me.”
“You,” Nate said stupidly. “Like… this. Like how you are. Now.”
She laughed. “No. Of course not. That would just be ridiculous. How could I look like I do now if I’d never been here before? Honestly, Nate. That’s just crazy.”
Nate didn’t know how to answer that, so he said nothing.
“He was scared, of course. It was dark, and he’d wandered away from his campsite. He’d thought he’d do a little night hunting. He had a bow and arrow and a light attached to his head, and then he found me. I wasn’t going to hurt him. I wasn’t even going to try and communicate with him. But I was curious. I’d never seen one up close before.” She was barely blinking. “A human.”
“Oh my god,” Nate said, fingernails digging into the wood of the table. “Oh my god.”
She laughed. “He said the same thing. We… aren’t shaped like you. Like anything, really. We’re… fluid. The closest description you can understand is gaseous. Almost like liquid smoke.”
“She didn’t mean it,” Alex said quietly. “It was recon only. Nothing more. There were others, but she’d found herself alone.”
“They left me,” Art said simply. “It’s my fault, but I can’t blame them. I was lost. I wasn’t supposed to be where I was. I am young, younger than you might think. I shouldn’t have been out there alone. But I—I needed to see for myself. Who you were. What you were made of. What you could be.”
“This isn’t real.” Nate rubbed a hand over his face. “None of this is real.”
“He tried to run,” Art said as if he hadn’t spoken at all. “And even though I knew it was wrong, I chased after him. He was very fast. But I was faster. It was… instinct, I think. Or a word close to it that doesn’t exist in your language. I felt the need to chase.”
“It’s a symbiotic relationship,” Alex said from the other side of the table. “Like a parasite. She…” He glanced at Art.
“It’s okay,” she said, reaching over and touching the back of his hand. “I know how it sounds. Some scary stuff.”
He nodded slowly. “She infected him. Took him over. Have you ever heard of cordyceps?”
“No.” Nate felt like he was floating.
“It’s a fungus in nature. There’s a type called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. It’s an entomopathogen. It infects insects, altering their behavior.”
“Makes bugs go a little nutso,” Art agreed, twirling a finger at the side of her head and crossing her eyes. It was so strangely endearing that Nate felt like screaming.
“It’s similar to what Art is. Was. Except she doesn’t have damaging effects on the host like the fungus does. She’s not here to harm. She’s not here to hurt.”
“I don’t like hurting things,” she said. “It doesn’t make me feel good. I was curious, that’s all. Like you are.”
“Oh,” Nate said, eyes wide. “That’s… that’s great. That’s just… great.”
“Lights had been seen that night,” Alex continued. “Above Cisco Grove. It’s only a couple of hours away from the Mountain.”
Art grimaced. “Talk about picking the worst spot to come to.”
“The Mountain was already in play before her. It’d been set up in the late forties after the end of World War II. The original intent was to study and perfect biological warfare. There’d been a plan in place by the Japanese to use the plague as a biological weapon against civilians in San Diego in September of 1945. But the Japanese surrendered before that, and it was never enacted. The powers that be wanted to be at the forefront of such a movement so they could never be caught unaware. There was hope that by perfecting such weapons, they could also create cures. There was a front put in place, a base in Maryland started in 1943 called the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories.” Alex looked down at his hands. “The Mountain was secret. It was meant to do all the things the base in Maryland could, but without the oversight. They weaponized anthrax. Tularemia. Brucellosis. Q-fever. But that changed on September 5, 1964.”
“Because of Art,” Nate said, head spinning.
“Weird, right?” Art said, picking at the splintering wood of the table. “All it took was me coming here and everything changed. It’s almost flattering. I mean, if you think about it that way.”
“Oren Schraeder was
assigned to the Mountain,” Alex said flatly. “Of all the people for her to infect, she chose the one person she shouldn’t.”
Art rolled her eyes. “How the heck was I supposed to know? It wasn’t like he was in uniform or anything. He was wearing a hat with floppy ears. That didn’t necessarily scream please don’t possess me.”
Nate gaped at her.
She winked at him.
“The Mountain sent a convoy,” Alex said. “They found Oren. He wasn’t acting… normal.”
“I didn’t know how to make his legs work,” Art said with a wince. “Or his arms. Or mouth. Or anything, if I’m being honest. Well. Except his bowels, which was extremely uncomfortable. I didn’t even know how to get out. Not then. When they found us, we were lying on the ground. Oren was drooling and making weird noises, and I couldn’t figure out how to make him stop. They thought he’d been attacked somehow. Or infected back at the base. They quarantined him. And brought us both back to the Mountain.”
“It wasn’t until they used a positron imaging scan that they saw her,” Alex said. “She looked like a ghost trapped within him. Embedded into his brain. Tendrils in the gray matter. They didn’t know what to make of it. Of him. Of what they were seeing. They said it was cancer. Or an infection. But nothing on the Mountain could cause what they were seeing.”
“It took two years for me to be able to figure out how to make him work,” Art said. “And then I started talking and—”
“They believed you?” Nate asked incredulously.
“What? No. Of course not. That would just be ridiculous. They thought something had happened to his brain. It wasn’t until I fried their machines in the next room that they started taking me seriously.” She laughed. “You should have seen the looks on their faces. It was pretty funny, looking back on it. Especially when I started to talk.”
“What did you say?” Nate whispered.
She turned her face toward the sky. “I told them I’d come from a faraway place. That they weren’t alone. That the universe was far bigger than any of them could have possibly imagined.” She sighed. “And that I was ready to go home. If they’d just see fit to let me out, I’d be on my way and that would be that.”