The Last 8

by Laura Pohl

  I turn off the television so I won’t have another panic attack. The room is silent again, plunging me into the emptiness that is this house.

  Stay safe. What a fucking joke.

  I go the desk and rummage through it. In the top drawer lies Abuelo’s handgun.

  My eyes linger on it.

  There is a way out, and it’s staring right at me. The aliens might not have gotten me, but there’s nothing left for me here.

  I shove the thought aside, refusing to think about it. On top of the desk is a picture of the three of us from our trip to Disneyland. Abuela had complained the whole way there, saying that I was spoiled. I was eight years old, wearing a hat with Mickey Mouse ears and a Mulan balloon tied to my wrist so it wouldn’t fly away. Beneath the photo, a four-leaf clover is taped to the frame.

  Abuelo’s lucky charm. I could find four-leaf clovers anywhere. The night that my mother abandoned me on my grandparents’ porch, she left a letter and a clover. It’s how I’d gotten my name.

  There’s still a chance that Abuelo’s out there. There’s still something I can do. I can fight.

  I grab the photo, the gun, and Abuela’s wooden rosary, and I leave.

  * * *

  The Beechcraft is waiting for me outside.

  I put the key in the ignition and the motor roars to life. I can feel the power that flight gives me coursing through my veins. Somehow, even after all of this, I still know that I’m meant to be in the sky.

  I hang Abuela’s rosary from a knob on the instrument panel for good luck.

  Turning the plane around, I head for the fields. I check the gauges on the panel again and again, putting on earmuffs to dull the noise. Pressures, temperature, and fuel all look good.

  I accelerate, but the plane is slow at first, like it’s reluctant to get off the ground. Just like me. It shakes, but I grab the yoke. It’s in my control—just about the only thing that is right now. And slowly, it rises from the ground and up into the air.

  I feel a rush as it flies up and up and up, as I leave everything behind. Everything looks so small from up here that it can’t matter—when I’m in the sky, nothing else matters.

  When I look at the empty seat next to me, my heart breaks. That’s Abuelo’s seat, but he isn’t up here with me. I have no roots anymore.

  I fly low for a while, waiting. The Beechcraft is a steady, trustworthy machine, and all the instruments are active as I look around and evaluate the situation. I flip through the radio frequencies, searching for a channel that might hear me. I need to identify my call sign and try to make contact with the base.

  “This is Beechcraft November-one-zero-one, flying under the license of Carlos Martinez, United States Air Force pilot number Foxtrot-one-five-four-six.”

  Silence answers me. I steady the course south toward the base and try again.

  “This is Beechcraft November-one-zero-one, trying for Malmstrom.”

  No answer.

  I bite my lower lip, trying not to jump to conclusions.

  “This is Beechcraft November-one-zero-one for Malmstrom. Please respond.”

  Still no answer. My hands are sweaty as I change the channel again and again, trying every frequency.

  “This is Beechcraft November-one-zero-one. Is anyone out there?”

  Suddenly I hear the sound of a strange engine that I don’t recognize. When I look over my shoulder, I see a flash of dark silver iron.

  There are two of them behind me—two shining, metallic spaceship hulls. My heart beats fast in my chest as I search the sky for more.

  These are different from the others that I’ve seen up close. They look more like F-15 Eagle fighter jets than landing shells, like they’ve been designed specifically to hunt in the sky.

  I hit the radio again, broadcasting wildly. I still have twenty or thirty minutes to go until I reach the base.

  “This is Beechcraft November-one-zero-one, requesting aid,” I say. Please, someone be out there. Anyone. “I’ve got two of them on my tail, similar to fighter jets.”

  I gulp down hard.

  That’s when I see something glowing in the spaceships behind me.

  The first shot doesn’t hit me, but the second one does. I flip the plane around, unable to wrap my head around the fact that I’m being chased by alien spaceships. It all sounds mad, like the world has gone to hell in just a couple of minutes. Aliens have invaded my home planet and are exterminating my species like we’re nothing. Like we’re livestock.

  The difference is that livestock are useful. To these aliens, we are nothing but bugs.

  They shoot again and all I can think is, Go to hell, leave me alone, leave me the fuck alone. A string of Spanish curse words crosses my mind, words that I would catch Abuela saying under her breath when she thought I couldn’t hear her.

  But the aliens don’t go away. They pursue me.

  “Mayday, Mayday,” I shout into the radio. “Beechcraft November-one-zero-one has been hit. Requesting emergency landing at Malmstrom Air Force Base.”

  My plane has no defenses. There are no weapons I can use to fight them off. I hear more laser blasts coming toward me, and I spin around madly, avoiding them. If I make it to the base, someone there might hear me. They can take the spaceships down.

  I concentrate on this, on getting there, and let the rest of the noise fall away. I can’t bear to check the plane’s engine, the glaring lights that glow on the instrument panel.

  “Mayday, Mayday,” I call again, my voice choking, my lungs fighting for air. “Requesting emergency landing at Malmstrom.”

  My words transmit into emptiness, unheard. The next shot hits the left wing, sending the plane flying out of control. I grab the yoke, but the plane is unbalanced with half of a wing gone. I steady myself, but Abuelo never taught me how to do this. He never prepared me for being attacked.

  The shots keep coming, and this time I think that I’m going to die. They’re shooting at me fiercely, one blast after another. The fuel tank starts leaking, and I know it’s over when the plane catches fire. The motor is failing, and I can’t do anything to repair it.

  This is nothing like Noah. This will not be a quick, merciful death. They won’t stop until they’ve taken this plane down.

  There’s no way I can escape this—I’m not going to be able to salvage the last thing that remained of my grandfather. All I can do is go down with it.

  The humming behind me stops, and I watch the ships retreat with some relief. It’s short-lived, though. I can see the base now, but the plane is out of control and the engine is coming undone in midair.

  And where there should be an air base, all I can see is a wrecked and devastated wasteland.

  Chapter 6

  The plane falls full force against the air as it plummets down toward the destruction. I can’t control it. My time in the sky is done, and I know—I know—I won’t be able to get up there again.

  The sky slips from my grasp just as I’m trying to reach it.

  I crash hard. My head hits the back of my chair and everything darkens, my vision filling with spots. As the plane comes to a stop, I can’t feel my legs. My brain throbs from the impact. I just lie there, waiting for death, waiting for anything that will get me out of here. Praying that the aliens have an ounce of pity and just take me, once and for all.

  I lie among the rubble, blinking the pain away. Something makes me move. Slowly, I crawl out of my seat. My ribs hurt, my side is smashed, and I can’t breathe right. But I’m not giving up now. I collapse to the ground just outside the plane and take in the damage.

  The Beechcraft is a complete wreck—the right wing is pierced into the hull, the tail is torn from the main skeleton, and what’s left of the motor is engulfed in a cloud of black smoke.

  I turn and survey the rest of the ruins around me. I can distinguish a few things through m
y delirious haze: the landing strip, the hangar where the planes used to be, and what appears to be the roof of the main building.

  But that’s it. There’s wreckage and rubble and chaos everywhere, chunks of broken cement and pieces of exposed wire. This place looks like it’s been through hell and back.

  When I try to stand, my knees wobble. My ribs are surely broken.

  The whole base is devastated—what had once been a huge military complex had been destroyed with ease, like it had simply been blown into the air. We never stood a chance. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, left.

  I walk among the debris, limping toward where Malmstrom’s main building used to stand. I don’t see any bodies, but there’s a piece of fabric that might have been part of an American flag. I pick it up, but it falls apart at my touch. The building has collapsed entirely, and the concrete is coming undone in the sun.

  Stupid, stupid me. Daring to hope that there’d be anything left. That I could make my way here and find Abuelo, that we could still have a chance to take to the skies together.

  I don’t belong to the sky anymore.

  Hope is the thing that kills me in the end. Because it doesn’t take my body, but it takes my soul.

  I feel the cold metal of Abuelo’s gun. Tears swell in my eyes, and my throat is raw and burning. My knees bend, and all I want to do is scream, scream until there’s nothing left in my lungs, until all the dust has cleared away and I can’t breathe anymore. Until I can fight the urge to die and find the will to live, because right now I can’t do either.

  I scream at the top of my lungs.

  My shoulders are shaking, my hands trembling in fists. I pick up rocks and throw them away, trying to make the aliens move, trying to shatter them against the metal hulls of the broken airplanes, making a racket.

  “Just kill me!”

  I want them to, because I can’t do it myself. My grandparents and Noah are dead. All I want to do is follow them.

  “Cowards!” I shout to the empty space around me. “Show your fucking faces! Isn’t it humanity that you want? Come get me!”

  I kick another stone and topple over the rubble, cutting my lip. I taste iron and blood, and when I turn, I hear it. The sound that haunts me.

  The alien approaches the corner of my vision, its metal legs clinking. Its eyes are vacant, its face stretched. It looks around, and I see others join it.

  I sob again, and one of them moves forward. My brain screams inside my head, urging me to do something that I can’t decipher. Run toward them? Run away from them? Stay and survive? Run and be killed?

  I close my eyes, waiting. Waiting for the end to come. You took everyone from me, I think. Take me, too.

  But they don’t make a move. If they can hear me, they mistake me for something else, an animal or something not worth their time. The aliens turn away, just like before, like I’m invisible.

  On impulse, I raise Abuelo’s gun and shoot one of them, straight in the back.

  It turns, jumping. Impenetrable skin. But as it scans the area, it doesn’t seem to find anything.

  The gun in my hand is useless, except for one thing. I put it to my temple, feeling the cold muzzle form a perfect circle against my skin. Put this bullet inside my head. That’s all I have to do.

  The aliens vanish from sight.

  Breathe in. Breathe out.

  I have to beat the weaker Clover, the one who wants to crumble. I just have to be stubborn enough to do it. Stubborn enough to know that I can conquer the Clover who just wants to blow her brains out and die, die, die.

  I lower the gun.

  It’s just like flying a plane. It’s just getting from one place to another, until the day that you run out of gas. It’s not a victory, but it’s not a defeat, either.

  I start walking, one foot in front of the other. Breathing slowly. Destined for nowhere.

  Days pass.

  The days turn into weeks, and the weeks turn into months. And even though I cross the country, there’s no one else to see. No one else is alive.

  Earth is empty.

  And so am I.

  Part II

  Apocalypse, Please

  Chapter 7

  The car swerves off the road when I blink and crashes full force into the alien spaceship.

  The alarm goes off, blasting in my ears. I struggle against the airbag, which has deployed, and try to no avail to stuff it back inside the steering wheel. Sputnik barks.

  “Fuck,” I say, pushing the door open and stomping my feet onto the asphalt. The spaceship is silent, like everything else on this planet.

  I go around the car and the smoke that rises from the motor, billowing into the sky. The front of the car is smashed against the stronger metal of the spaceship in an awkward position, as if embracing it—the spaceship suffered no damage at all, defying all laws of physics. I resist the urge to kick it, mostly because I know that I’ll break my toes if I do.

  There’s no way I’ll be able to move the car. I sigh wearily.

  Sputnik hops out of the car, wagging her gigantic tail and looking at the spaceship. She sniffs it, quickly losing interest in its chromed metal, and sits on the asphalt by my side.

  “Damn this car. Damn this whole planet.”

  I open the back door and get my bag of supplies, which consists of some stolen clothes and food that I’ve packed along the way. There’s water, too, and I find it hilarious that in the midst of an apocalypse, food and water are the only things in abundance.

  I unzip the bag, take out a pack of chips, and open it. I pop one into my mouth, sighing. Sputnik wags her tail, eyeing the chips.

  “We’ll get you food,” I tell her, but she keeps ogling them.

  I take out a map and lay it on the trunk of the car, examining a broken road sign to figure out where I am—about ninety miles north of Eldorado, Texas. I should find shelter for the evening, then look for another car tomorrow morning so I can continue this endless road trip. I could get to the border by tomorrow afternoon, if I find a car.

  The hot sun toasts me alive, but my one comfort is that if I’m burning out here, so are the aliens. Ever since the invasion, temperatures have gotten weirder. By my count, it’s the beginning of October, and it should definitely be cooler by now, yet I’m roasting.

  Sputnik and I walk, her tongue hanging out of her mouth. I give her water from time to time to keep her hydrated. Her fur is fluffy in the heat, but she’s having a hard time keeping up.

  It takes us three hours to reach the next town, which looks like a deserted village now—there’s not a single soul in sight. It’s like being in a Wild West ghost town. The sun is starting to set, and I want to find a place to sleep soon.

  After trying a couple of houses, I find one that’s unlocked. It’s empty and clean, like the family suddenly decided to go on a trip and left their house open. I throw my bag on the sofa, watching it bounce off of the firm stuffing. Sputnik trots in without a care in the world, sniffing her way around, even stopping to squat and pee in the middle of the floor.

  “Gross,” I tell her, but she ignores me.

  The Bernese mountain dog continues her trek through the rest of the house, nose to the ground, and I follow her.

  I go through the cupboards in the kitchen, looking for food. The fridge isn’t worth checking—there’s no electricity, so it’s not working and the food in there is probably all rotten. After all, it’s been six months since the aliens came out of their shells and razed the planet.

  I find some sealed jars and packages in the cabinets. I pick one up and start chewing on some peanuts that aren’t half bad. I have a slight allergic reaction to peanuts, so almost instantly, my skin develops an angry red rash, like I have a bad case of chicken pox. It’s not life-threatening for me, but it used to make me feel self-conscious. Now I don’t care if my whole face turns into a polka
-dot festival, as long as I have food to keep me alive. I find some dog food and give it to Sputnik, although she’s never as excited about dog food as she is on the days when we hunt free-range chickens.

  I eat more peanuts as I walk through the rest of the house. I go into the bathroom and, miraculously, the water is working. It’s cold, but it’s better than nothing. I quickly climb out of my filthy clothes.

  After showering, I search the bedrooms for clean clothes to wear. Whoever lived here had two young kids, and their clothing is too small. I don’t linger in the bedroom with pictures of ponies on the wall. Moving on to the couple’s room, I pick up a pair of pants from the woman and a few large T-shirts from the man, along with a nice camo jacket that looks like it was made to fit me. I feel fresher than I have in weeks. My dark hair falls almost to my waist, but I can’t bear to cut it.

  Before dark, I go downstairs and lock up all the doors and windows, closing the shutters. Sputnik follows me dutifully, her paws heavy on the ground as she, too, seems to check every window. There’s no basement in this house, which makes me wish I had been choosier about my accommodations. Paying attention to every single creak the stairs make, I climb upstairs and slide under the bed, taking a pillow with me. I can’t sleep in the bed—it feels unprotected. Unsafe.

  The space under the bed is confined. Sputnik crawls under, too, her black eyes blinking as she stares at me. Her fur smells like she needs a bath, but it’s comforting—the dog is warm and heavy next to me, and she makes me feel safe. I let myself breathe calmly, filling my lungs with air for a long time, then letting go. They don’t work half as well as they used to before I crashed the plane. I breathe in, count to eight, breathe out.

  The room gets darker and darker as night falls. Some nights are easier, and I can almost fall into a fitful sleep, but other nights I stay awake all night, wondering if one of them is going to barge in and finally take me. I can hear them sometimes, and I wish they’d simply give up and go home.

  But they never do. The spaceships remain here, and sometimes, I see shadows crossing the skies.