by Sean Platt
“Yeah.”
“I think about her, too,” he said. “Paola was a good kid.”
Mary kept staring out the window.
Times like this, Boricio wished she’d show some emotion and cry for her daughter. Hell, a part of Boricio wanted her to weep on his shoulder — he was surprisingly old-fashioned that way. But tears couldn’t own her, and she refused to dwell on what couldn’t be.
A knock on the front door cut into their quiet, rapid and careless, ignoring the coded knock rebels were instructed to use.
In most circumstances, Boricio would see that as a sign that shit was wrong, that maybe someone was being coerced to knock and draw them out. But a few of their recent recruits weren’t exactly the sharpest crayons in the box. But hell, beggars were bitches when even choosers were chumps.
Mary grabbed her shotgun from the kitchen table.
Boricio grabbed his knife from the counter. Even dull-for-apples would gut a fucker fine.
“Who is it?” Boricio asked.
“It’s me, Barrow.”
Boricio rolled his eyes. Jake Barrow was the freshest of his recruits, a freckle-faced sixteen-year-old farm boy who was as big as a linebacker but dumb as one who’d taken a few too many hits. He’d lost his family to the plague last year and had been wandering upstate searching for God Knew What when Boricio and Ed found him and invited Hayseed Harry back to The City.
Boricio glanced at Mary to make sure she was ready, in case he didn’t use the code because he happened to be at gunpoint or some shit, then opened the door.
Barrow stood there, sweating — obvious even in the candlelit living room — out of breath, eager to spit something out.
“You forget the fucking knock?” Mary said before the boy could open his mouth. She slammed the door shut behind him then sat her shotgun down on the couch.
“S-sorry, I forgot. I was in a hurry to get up here and tell you.”
“Tell us what?” Boricio asked, waiting for Barrow to hit the fucking point.
“They’re dead.”
“Who’s dead?”
“Matt and Jace.”
“What the hell you talking about?” Boricio asked.
“The scouts we sent to infiltrate the slaughterhouse last week, Matt and Jace. They’re dead. When I went to see if they’d left a message at the drop point like they were supposed to after gaining the aliens’ trust, I saw their bodies hanging on pikes outside the slaughterhouse.”
“Are you sure?” Mary asked.
“Yes, I’m sure! It’s them, and they were torn to shreds!”
“Shit.” Boricio shook his head. “We’ve gotta flush.”
Mary was a step ahead already, loading duffel bags as Boricio hit the radios and called Ed Keenan over the encrypted transmission.
“Ed, we’ve got a Protocol 15. Repeat, Protocol 15. We’ll meet at Station 20.”
“Copy,” Keenan said over the radio.
“What’s going on?” Barrow asked.
“We need to pronto the fuck outta here before the place starts crawling with Guardsmen, aliens, or maybe an orgy of both.”
Bags packed, Boricio proceeded to set off the timer for the bomb that would leave the apartment looking like a busted box of Cocoa Pebbles — along with anything they left behind.
Two minutes.
They headed to the stairs when five men in Black Island Guardsmen uniforms and black visored helmets appeared just below them, automatic rifles in hand, taking aim. Desmond had infected all the Guardsmen shortly after the invasion, and their numbers were strong.
“Stop!” one of the men said, voice sounding mechanical through his helmet’s speakers, aiming his rife.
Mary fired her shotgun and sent him backward down the stairs, taking the other four men tumbling with him.
They had two paths of escape — up the stairs and to the rooftop, where they’d constructed a makeshift slide to the next apartment building or down the stairs.
Way Boricio saw it, if the cock swallowers were coming from downstairs, that meant another group was flooding down from above. They weren’t stupid enough to send all their men in the same way. He had to take care of the three remaining cumswappers before more fuckers wanted to party.
He leaped down, knife in hand, quick to slice through the suit’s black leather collar, straight into the man’s throat.
Boricio could see the helmet visor cloud with the alien attempting to escape through the man’s mouth, no doubt desperate for a new host.
“Don’t break their helmets!” Boricio shouted in case Barrow forgot yet another element of basic training.
One of the two remaining Guardsmen reached up, glove gripping Boricio’s arm.
A painful shock coursed from the man’s glove through Boricio’s arm.
Boricio screamed, trying to wrench himself free, but all he could do was shake in the electric current.
The man reached down to his left and grabbed his blade, eager to punch holes in Boricio.
Gunshot from above.
Mary.
Electro Glove fell back, his chest full of buckshot — down but not yet out. Boricio struggled against the pain to grab his knife and make a filet.
Below Boricio and the fallen Guardsman, the last of them started to stand, raising his rifle.
Boricio’s hand found the handle, but there was no way he’d be quick enough to reach the man. And he doubted he could throw the blade hard enough to pierce the man’s uniform.
But he didn’t need to. A yell from above as Barrow barreled downstairs. He jumped over Boricio and the fallen Guardsmen then landed on top of the last man, taking him down, both of them tumbling down the stairs until they hit a hard stop at the landing.
Boricio finished off his guy then raced downstairs to make sure Barrow’s guy stayed the fuck down.
A shot exploded above them.
Boricio quickly turned, afraid he’d see the worst — Mary shot dead in front of his eyes.
He couldn’t see her injury but could tell from the way Mary stood frozen and wide-eyed for a moment, she’d been shot from behind.
Four new Guardsmen crowded the hall behind Mary, guns aimed at her.
She fell limply down the stairs. Boricio caught a glimpse of her bloodied back as he raced forward to catch her. She’d hit the wall and a step on the way before he could bring her fall to a halt.
Her eyes were closed.
Boricio’s gut scraped the floor.
He couldn’t lose her, too.
The Guardsman above barked, “Arms up!”
Boricio looked up, growling, wanting to tear them to shreds with his bare hands.
But he couldn’t move. He was the only thing keeping Mary from falling farther. His blade was on the ground, his gun in one of the bags Mary had dropped at the top of the stairway.
The Guardsman repeated his order, “Arms — ”
And then the explosion.
Two
Brent Foster
Sometimes, waking up was the hardest thing in the world.
In Brent’s dreams, life was still the same as it had been before he’d been stolen from the world. His wife, Gina, was still alive. Ben hadn’t lost his mother, and they lived in Manhattan, where he still had a job at the paper. Life was stressful, but good. He was doing what he’d always wanted to do, and though Brent rarely had time for his family, he still had them.
Then he opened his eyes, and reality smothered the sensation. Slowly at first. For a brief moment, he felt like the life he’d lived the past six years was the dream. Brent merely had to roll over, and he’d find his sleeping wife beside him. They’d spend the morning in bed, read the New York Times, then go for a walk in the park with Ben. But then it fell apart, like all good dreams did these days.
The world outside was a festering shell inside an empty echo. This wasn’t their world any longer, even if Keenan and crew were in The City, fighting the war. The way Brent saw it, it was a pointless battle. The aliens had won. They could only
hope for a way to somehow exist without being noticed by either the roving bandits that claimed lands outside The City or the aliens who sometimes flew ships overhead searching for people to face God Knew What.
Despite Crowded House’s plea, the dream was over. Nothing was the same — or could be again.
Brent sat up, his room at The Farm bathed in the moon’s pale blue. Beside him, his nine-year-old son, Ben, snored softly.
At least one good thing is left.
Living at The Farm still felt like a gift, even though they’d been at the compound for nearly two years. It had limited solar power, running water, a well, and of course crops and animals, which sustained the thirty-five people who lived there. But they could be discovered any day, and few too people at The Farm seemed to recognize the threat.
While Marina and Teagan had come a long way with their shooting and combat training, neither of them, nor anyone else at The Farm, came close to the skills boasted by Ed Keenan or Lisa from Black Mountain. He’d feel a lot safer if Ed were here, but he’d chosen to stay in The City with Team Boricio.
Brent respected Boricio’s skills, but the man was a lunatic who would only lead anyone behind him into the jaws of death. He was glad that Ben and Becca didn’t have to be around the psychopath. It wasn’t that Brent thought Boricio would ever hurt the kids. He’d been quite nice to them during their times together. But Brent had seen the things Boricio had done in his life prior to the world falling apart. And while he might have changed, and was now on their side, there was a part of Brent that believed nobody ever changed all that much. Which meant that Boricio might slip some day and murder everyone around him. And the farther away Brent, Teagan, and the kids were, the better.
A wolf howled in the distance and sent a chill rippling through Brent.
Calm down. You’re worrying too damned much.
Brent had always been a worrier, and the alien invasion had only poured gasoline on the fire of his fretting. If anything, he’d grown more paralyzed. More worried about what might happen to the kids.
He hated his fear and would give anything to be more like Ed — or hell, even Boricio. If he could somehow find a bit of their bravery, without Boricio’s recklessness, he’d bring more value to The Farm, and his son.
He looked at his watch, saw that it was 4:19 a.m. Given that he hadn’t fallen asleep until midnight, he should have been exhausted. Instead, Brent was wired — his mind racing with awful possibilities.
He got out of bed, careful not to wake Ben, deciding he’d go to the kitchen for something to eat.
He softly descended the stairs, trying not to wake any of the other inhabitants in the two-story home. In addition to the main house, there was a barn and a small cottage on the back of the heavily wooded property. There was also a small farm in the rear where they grew corn, wheat, potatoes, and carrots alongside a small orchard of apple trees.
Brent stepped into the kitchen area; he wasn’t alone.
Teagan was leaning against the wood-burning stove, cradling a cup of coffee. She was wearing a long pink shirt. Brent wondered if she were wearing shorts or panties beneath it. Her nipples were hard, poking visibly through the fabric.
He tried not to leer. He had ten years, or more, on her. But it felt like forever since he’d been with another woman, and she was beautiful and sexy in a shy sort of way. And while he felt too old for Teagan, she had been with Ed’s doppelgänger on the other world, and he was more than twenty years her senior. Maybe Teagan had a thing for older guys? Maybe Brent had a shot.
She was nice and had been a good friend these past four years. And their kids got along great, too. But she’d never given Brent any sign of interest beyond friendship, and he wasn’t about to make the first move. Particularly when they lived in such close quarters.
“Want some?” Teagan nodded toward the kettle.
“Is that still any good?”
“Not really. But better than I expected, given the cans expired three years ago.”
“No, thanks. I’ll pass.”
Brent went to the pantry and found a plastic bowl of homemade blueberry muffins made by one of the other women last week.
He peeled back the lid and held the open bowl toward Teagan. “Want one?”
Her smile was sweet with guilt. “No, thanks. I already had one.”
Brent smiled back, took a muffin, then replaced the bowl. He took a bite, pacing near the kitchen sink, not wanting to hover near Teagan.
“So,” she said, “why are you up?”
“I dunno. Just woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. You?”
“Becca woke up crying. It took forever to get her back to sleep. And now I’m wide awake.”
“Nightmares again?”
“Yeah, poor girl. Does Ben get them?”
“Not too much anymore.”
“What about you? Do you have nightmares?”
Brent thought about telling Teagan how the nightmares weren’t the worst part — it was the happy dreams where his wife was alive. But he didn’t feel like talking about Gina with anyone, least of all to a woman he was attracted to. It felt somehow wrong, even though Gina never had a problem moving on when she thought Brent was gone.
“Sometimes. You?”
Teagan met his gaze. Her green eyes looked almost blue in the dark, beneath her long red hair. “Sometimes, I dream about my parents. When we first came back to Earth, I thought about going back to see if they were okay. Originally, I thought they’d vanished right in front of me, but after I realized it was me who’d disappeared in front of them, I thought maybe I should go let them know I was alive. But then I thought better.”
“Why’s that?”
“They never would’ve accepted Becca. Hell, my father would think Satan had taken me. He’d probably have had me institutionalized and put Becca up for adoption. Or worse, raised her.”
Brent remembered an earlier conversation when Teagan told him about her abusive father. And how her parents had wanted her to get an abortion. He also had some of her memories, painful memories, from whatever Luca had put in all of them.
“So, what happens in these dreams with your parents?”
“I’m coming home with Becca, but they’re not there. Instead, there are aliens in the house, sitting at the kitchen table, having dinner as if they belonged.”
“So do you think you feel guilty for not going back?”
“Maybe,” she said, taking a sip then refreshing her mug.
“You shouldn’t feel bad.”
“I know.” She shrugged.
Brent felt awkward, like he was trying to console a girl who wasn’t seeking consolation.
I should just shut up now before I say something stupid.
Teagan set her cup on the counter.
“Do you want to kiss me?”
Brent nearly choked on his muffin.
“Wh-what?”
“I’ve seen the way you look at me,” she said, meeting his eyes, no shyness now.
Brent was surprised. Part of him wondered if he was still dreaming. If so, he hoped he wasn’t about to wake up.
“How do I look at you?”
“Sad,” she said. “But sweet.”
His mind was racing with a dozen things to say. But his erection told him to shut the hell up and just act.
He put the rest of his muffin on the table, licked his teeth to make sure they weren’t coated, and swallowed. Then he stepped forward.
Brent paused a foot away from Teagan and realized he was visibly shaking. At least it seemed that way; he couldn’t look at anything but her eyes.
Teagan threw herself at Brent, devouring his mouth with hers, with a hunger that matched (and maybe swallowed) his own.
They stumbled out of the kitchen and into the living room, tangled, kissing, hands running over one another’s bodies.
He guided her toward the couch, and she fell back, legs spread, waiting.
He fell on top of her, hands reaching up her shirt, practical
ly pawing at her soft, supple breasts.
Teagan moaned, hands reaching down into his shorts, grabbing his cock, pulling it out.
He reached down, breathlessly, pulling her underwear aside, feeling her wetness on his fingertips. She guided him inside her. Her warmth made him feel more alive than he’d felt in forever.
Oh, God, don’t cum, don’t cum, don’t cum.
Brent lasted less than twenty seconds.
He thrust, trying to deliver an orgasm before he went soft. She wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him closer, deeper into her.
He kept thrusting then realized it was a lost cause. Desperate to pleasure her, Brent reached down and finished Teagan with his fingers.
Afterwards, they lay on the couch in a sweaty heap, and he felt like he was surfacing from a daze.
Did we just really do this?
Why did she want to fuck me? Does she really like me?
Brent didn’t dare voice his thoughts, the creeping doubts about his sexual prowess. He’d been married so long that he’d forgotten how awkward he’d once been with women. He’d said, and done, enough stupid things in the past to ruin the postcoital mood, displaying insecurities, wondering if they were now a couple — and a million other things that had felt foolish once he was married.
But now those awkward feelings were racing back, and Brent felt like a stupid teenager all over again. He decided to just enjoy the moment for what it was, hoping maybe it would happen again.
Neither of them spoke, lying in silence together until a scream shattered their moment.
Three
Mary Olson
Mary woke shivering, surrounded by black.
She was cold, confused, unable to remember anything but her name.
Where am I?
Fear was copper on her tongue. She reached into the darkness. Her fingers touched cold, wet grass, and the world was slowly lit as if someone were turning a dimmer above.
She looked up to see the full moon peeking out from behind dark clouds gliding through the sky. The world was bathed in a milky-blue luminescence, revealing something that seemed unreal — two rows of thick, ancient trees on either side, carving a neatly sculpted path of tall grass in front and behind her.