"We have restrooms..." Laurie cut herself off with a grimace. It was time to find another nurse's uniform.
When they returned to the ER, her dad glanced at "Myth" and cocked an eyebrow at his daughter as though reading Laurie's trials in her face.
"Nice outfit," he said. "Too bad she doesn't have the knowledge that uniform implies. We could use more people with medical training besides your mom."
"I'm not sure what she knows," said Laurie. "I have this feeling it's more than we think."
Her father gave her a skeptical look. "Hopefully, she won't slow us down too much. We need to get moving or your mom and Donny will start worrying and come looking for us. But first I want to backtrack and remove the Hanson children from the sidewalk, along with their brother outside their house. I'm not sure if Cindy and her other brother have seen their bodies, but even if they have I'd like to spare them that again."
But when they returned to the grocery store, "Myth" stumbling along behind, they found the Hanson brother and sister's bodies – along with those of the fairies – were missing. In their place, stretched out on the warm sidewalk, was what appeared to be a fat brown snake or worm about the size of a python, several distinct lumps bulging along its length.
"Szgiiuh." Myth was pointing at it. "Eat...dead."
"Sz-what?" Dan stared at her. "You're saying you know what these things are?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"Live with."
"Live...with." Dan spoke the words slowly, each word adding a crease to the lines between his brow. "You mean, you lived with these snakes?"
"Live with all." Myth made an expansive gesture. "All things in..."
Laurie, who'd been hanging on her words, willing them to make sense, ventured a guess: "Ship?"
"Yes. In ship."
Laurie and her dad exchanged a look. She noticed that his right hand had moved to rest on the butt of his pistol.
"Are you saying," Dan began, speaking with exaggerated emphasis, "that you were in the ship that brought these...animals?"
"Yes."
"You're an alien?" Laurie blurted. "You're not really human?"
"Not human. Body human."
"How?"
"Take human body inside."
As Laurie stared into the woman/alien's big, slowly blinking grey-green eyes, she suddenly knew the person she reminded her of – a person whose body was lying in a hospital bed on the second floor. The one with the missing brain. The one that goblin-creature had been feeding on –
"Oh, no..."
Her dad shot her a sharp glance. "What, Lor?"
Goosebumps were popping up on Laurie's forearms like a sudden case of the measles. Her right hand rested on the pistol in her gun belt, fingers slowly curling around its grip.
"I think I might know who...or what...this thing is."
"Thing?"
"Do you remember the creature I told you about that was feeding on a woman on the second floor?"
"The one with the missing brain? But then – "
Dan drew his handgun, flicking off the safety, centering it on Myth's chest. Laurie seconded him with her own pistol. The woman's eyes widened. She raised both her hands.
"No," she croaked.
"What are you?" Laurie demanded.
"Friend."
"A friend who eats human brains," said Dan, his Smith and Wesson remaining centered on her chest. "Not my idea of friendly."
"Eat. Not...kill."
None of them moved. The woman – or whatever it was – kept her hands in the air, and Laurie and her father kept their pistols leveled on her.
"I think I recognize her," Dan said to Laurie. "Marjorie Wilson, daughter of Mark and Maryanne Wilson. I know Mark from the feed store. I think your mom said Marjorie just got married and was being treated for some kind of cancer."
Laurie nodded. Her mom knew a lot of people from private practice and her rounds at the hospital.
"She seems to be saying she didn't kill her," Laurie said. "That Marjorie was already dead."
"Makes sense." Dan spoke with a grudging tone. "The airborne toxin got her just like almost everyone else."
Laurie faced the woman/alien. "Then you're a clone of her?"
"Not know 'clone' word. But take her shape."
"Sounds like clone to me," said Dan. "If we're understanding you right, why did you choose Marjorie's body?"
The woman raised her shoulders. "Face nice...?"
Dan and his daughter looked at each other.
"Not sure I'm believing what I'm hearing," he muttered.
"But if she came from this ship, Dad, maybe she knows why this happened and who did it?"
"Okay. I'm game. We'll talk to her about that on the way back to the Hansons."
"Food first?" Myth gestured to her stomach.
They entered the grocery store. Dan dug a still-cold steak from the freezer, and Laurie added a box of protein bars. They resumed walking down Main Street past the hospital while Myth chomped on the raw meat. Laurie averted her eyes from the blood accumulating around Myth's happy smile.
"Myth," Dan said, "So you know what all these creatures are?"
"Yes."
"What are they?"
Myth gave him a puzzled frown. "Not see what are?"
"We see they're animals," said Dan. "But we don't know why they're here and who put them here."
"Keepers put them here."
"What are the 'Keepers?'"
"Animals belong them."
"The Keepers," said Laurie slowly, "are the owners of these creatures."
"Yes."
"They're aliens."
"Yes."
"What do they look like?" Dan broke in.
"Like..." Myth looked around pointing to a fence post on their right. "Like that."
Laurie turned her rifle toward it, half-believing a monster might lurk there, but all she could see was a hornet, its sleek body undulating on the warm wood.
"Wasps?" Dan's face filled with pained incredulity once again.
"Yes. But bigger. Your size."
"Why do they keep all these creatures, Myth?" Laurie asked. "Are they studying them? Or is it some kind of zoo?"
"Study, yes. What is zoo?"
"It's a place where animals are kept so people can watch them."
"Then zoo, yes. Many enjoy seeing animals."
"And why the hell did this zoo end up down here?" Dan's voice cracked with anger.
"Ship problem," said Myth. "Animals must land safe place."
"What kind of problem?" Laurie asked.
"Not know."
"Did you know what they were planning to do to us?" Dan asked.
"No. Not know why they hurt you."
"Well, I'd guess they wanted to make goddamn sure their precious animals had a safe place to land." Dan stared grimly down the road, his jaw set. "Even if that took killing thousands if not billions of the human race. What kind of monsters are they?"
"Smart monsters," said Myth. "Much power."
Back at the Hansons', they paused to remove the remains of the brother to another backyard behind some brush before knocking on the door. Cindy's face glowed with a relief that turned to question as she stared at Myth.
"Marjorie?"
"You know her?" asked Dan.
"She and my mom are – were – friends. My mom wanted her to try alternative cures. Right, Marjorie?"
Myth regarded her with puzzled eyes.
"It's not Marjorie," said Dan. "But we can talk about that later. Why don't you take us to your brother?"
Cindy led them to a back bedroom where her sole surviving brother lay apparently comatose on his bed.
They wheeled the gurney in beside the bed. Cindy gently removed the blanket covering the boy, who Laurie guessed was seventeen or eighteen. The bed stunk of urine and feces, though he was lying on a sheet of an unsoiled plastic garbage bag – his sister's attempt to contain his bodily effusions, Laurie thought. No clothes. Laurie worked hard to kee
p her eyes on his chest and face. She couldn't help noticing that he was an unusually good-looking guy and well-built. Very muscular. Laurie also noticed that his skin had a red, scaly appearance. Not scaly like dried skin. More like actual scales – overlapping square patches of skin slightly darker than his overall red flush.
Dan touched his forehead. "He does seem to have a fever and some kind of...rash?"
"Yes," said his sister. "I took it a few times at first. It was around 104. I think it might still be that. But he seems stable," she added with a weak shrug.
"Let's slide him on the cart. My wife will have a good look at him when we get him to our place."
"Where is your place?"
"A few miles out of town. Bit of a walk, but we'll be fine."
Chapter 5
THEY DIDN'T HAVE THE best setup for guests, Laurie thought, but they were making do. Thanks to a manual pump near the well – always a great backup when the power went out – they had plenty of fresh, high-quality water, not only for drinking but for powering their toilets and washing dishes. Also, plenty of canned and dried goods in the cellar. Cindy and her brother, Gary, camped out in the basement, while Myth occupied their guest bedroom, having quickly learned to use the toilet and the basic ins and outs of personal hygiene, thanks mostly to counseling from Laurie's mother.
Donny was experimenting with electricity. He'd built a hand-crank generator using parts from their microwave oven. No one was quite able to follow what he was doing, but the gist was that the generator did work – with a catch: when he cranked up the voltage, it would only go so far. Not far enough, Donny said, to generate current more powerful than something that might create a flickering light in a light bulb. Which he proceeded to demonstrate. After more experimentation, he came to what for him was a startling conclusion.
"There seems to be a built-in electrical limiter," he said. "Which is completely crazy. You can't alter the basic constants of physics. Unless..." He frowned. "Unless a constraint has been introduced into our environment itself. An artificial constraint. But that's still pretty crazy."
"Translation?" asked their mom.
"I don't know." Donny shoved his fingers through his blond curls. "It would be like invisible electricity-eating gremlins..." His frown grew extra lines in his smooth round face. "Nanites. Totally a science fiction concept. That was actually used in some cable series..." He thought for a while. "Not coming to me at the moment."
"You sure it isn't your generator?" Dan asked
"Not completely. But by my calculations, it's only generating half the power it should. I'll keep experimenting, but that's my best theory now."
Laurie's mom, meanwhile, tried to get to the bottom of what had made them sick and killed so many people. Lacking high-tech lab equipment and blood analyzers, Sonja Jensen had checked her and other family members' blood the old-fashioned way: a non-electronic microscope, cell staining of blood samples on glass slides, and culturing bacteria on their hands and other objects in Petri dishes. Her only definite finding was a mildly elevated white blood cell count in everyone – except the still-comatose Gary Hanson, whose WBC count was not only off the charts but so was the size of his leukocytes themselves.
"I'd have to do some more digging," Sonja said in a private family meeting, "but I'm fairly sure the elevated WBC count, especially in the Hanson boy's case, fits a response to a biological agent much better than a nerve agent. Or some form of unidentified toxin. We seem to be doing fine, but I'm not sure what's going on with Gary Hanson. He has a lot of neoplasia happening with his leukocytes and red blood cells. His skin looks something like Ichthyosis – a genetic disease involving scaling or thickening of the skin – but the other symptoms don't match. I don't have a clue how to treat him."
"Maybe you should give him more Adderall," Donny chuckled, drawing a dry look from his mom that turned quickly into a thoughtful frown.
"Some form of stimulant might not be the worst idea," she said. "Adderall or epinephrine. If we don't get him up and moving soon we'll need to feed and hydrate him intravenously. I'm surprised he isn't showing more signs of muscle wasting to this point. I have this feeling that he's in a healing phase and if we jar him awake that could be interrupted. But that's mostly just a feeling."
As they made travel plans for a quick jaunt to Minden, Dan started training Myth, Donny, and Cindy with firearms. While Myth learned swiftly, and Cindy made slow progress, Donny was like a cat being taught to farm, Laurie thought. Donny hated guns and hunting and any kind of violence with a passion. Though he didn't especially like animals, often joking that he liked his wildlife "behind bars," he had taken to arguing that some of them – the most intelligent animals – might have rights. He'd even tried being vegetarian for a couple of months before acknowledging that despite his higher principles he couldn't do without meat.
His dad had exercised great patience with his ideas, Laurie thought, never trying to force his love of hunting or any other views on him. But that holiday was now over: Donny needed to learn how to shoot guns. End of story. And while Donny bowed to that logic, he groaned and complained and dispensed critical commentary every inch of the way.
Myth, on the other hand, seemed fascinated by the mechanical aspects of their weapons and learned their operation with startling speed. She had a calm, deliberate method of aiming and firing that produced surprisingly accurate results. Dan called her a "natural marksman."
Laurie had to suppress a jealous twinge when she heard that since her dad had often called her a "natural." Especially, later, when her dad used Myth's progress as the reason for taking her and not Laurie with him to Minden. Laurie was going a bit stir-crazy confined to their farm, but while her dad might sympathize with that, considering the threat from the baboon and fairy-creatures, Laurie was the "logical choice" to remain at home.
Sometimes her dad could be so freaking annoying when he was right.
DIANA AWOKE to the worst hangover symptoms of her life. Not only was her head pounding – her entire body was pounding – along with a prickly, needles-and-pins sensation as if her whole body had fallen asleep and was creepy-crawling back to life.
When she opened her eyes, the day was not the only thing too bright: the smile of the girl looking down on her was so shiny that it hurt her eyes. Diana blinked up at her, not sure who she was for a long moment.
"You're awake!" the girl announced in a cheerleader's cry. "I wasn't sure you would ever wake up."
Diana winced at her loud voice, which seemed directly wired into her eardrums. Her memories semi-coalesced and the girl's name came to her. Penny. And then where she was: on a couch in her living room. And, finally, the state of the world and the fight with the creatures. Or had that all been a dream? Diana massaged her forehead. God, she hoped so.
"Are you hungry? I made a tuna casserole this morning."
Diana raised a feeble hand to ward off the girl's enthusiasm. She worked an elbow under her and pushed, her body creaking upward. A helpful tug from Penny nearly dislocated her left shoulder.
"I'm okay," Diana croaked. "Just give me a minute, please."
The girl backed off while Diana hauled herself into a sitting position. More memories of the battle seeped into her brain, along with some fuzzy analysis of what had happened. Her thoughts concluded on a positive note: Penny could've eaten her while she was unconscious, but instead had made her something to eat. Penny also must've dragged her into the house, somehow staving off the homicidal creatures.
But it hadn't been just her. Diana remembered in a burst of imagery that her powerful newfound friend/ally had dropped down from the sky and gone medieval on the baboon-creatures. A regular whirling dervish with his barbed wings.
Zurzay.
"I could use some water," she addressed her eager assistant.
Penny grabbed a water bottle from a nearby chair and handed it to her. Diana took a few tentative sips before a fierce thirst kicked in and she drained the bottle.
"Thank you," she sai
d. She dropped the bottle beside her. "How long have I been out?"
"About a day and a half."
Diana rubbed her face, letting that sink in. Whatever the killer elves had pumped into her hadn't been lethal, then. But without a little help from her "friends" the baboons and elves would have been fighting over who got to eat her.
"What happened? How did you manage to get me inside with all those things attacking us?"
"They ran off when the flying wolf showed up. But we'd already killed a bunch of them before that." Her small chest swelled with pride. "I'd never shot a pistol before. It was awesome!"
"Glad you enjoyed it." Diana cleared her throat. "You did amazingly well."
"Thank you, Mrs. Mann."
"Thank you for saving my life."
"But you might've saved mine first. Those fairy-things had me kind of surrounded on the roof."
"Well...we got through it all together, somehow." She frowned. "What happened to Zurzay?"
"Who?"
"The flying wolf. That's his name."
Penny went wide-eyed. "He can talk?"
"He doesn't talk, at least that I've seen, but he understands basic things and makes his points known well-enough."
"I had a dog like that once."
"I'd say he's more on our level of intelligence. He might not understand our technology or science, but that doesn't reflect on his intelligence any more than it would for a Stone Age man."
Penny murmured something that sounded halfway between agreement and incomprehension.
"So is he still here?" Diana asked. "I'd imagine he took off."
"He hung around on the roof for a while after he helped me carry you in. Probably making sure those baboons didn't come back."
Diana nodded, waiting for her analytic mind to fully kick in. It was taking its sweet time.
"I think I will try your tuna casserole now," she said. "Then we need to get moving. There are survivors somewhere near here, I'm sure of it."
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