Homicidal Aliens and Other Disappointments Read online

  So here’s what happened, fellow earthlings, though I’m sure you already know: aliens landed, took over the world in ten seconds, killed millions of people, enslaved the survivors, and pretty much started colonizing like Earth belonged to them.

  And the truth? I won’t lie. It did. Pretty much.

  THE END

  Well, not the THE END. There’s a Part Two.

  These aliens, who call themselves Sanginians, like to say they are the greatest beings in the known universe. And yeah, they have awesome powers. They can conquer a world faster than we can brush our teeth or send a text. But here’s one thing they didn’t count on when they conquered Earth: We humans are stubborn about total annihilation of our species. And, as a general rule, we’re reluctant to die. We aren’t going to just hand our world over to them and say, “Take it. Hope you like it. Have a nice day.” I don’t want them to like it. I don’t want them to have a nice day. I don’t want them to ever have a nice day on this world. Have a terrible day, Sanginians.

  My new friends and I were enslaved like most of the survivors, but we didn’t stay slaves. We found a way out. We escaped. We stole a Sanginian ship in Austin and traveled across West Texas to the steep mountains of northern New Mexico, where we’d heard there was a rebel camp. We met the rebels at the same time that an alien lord, the alien lord, their leader here on Earth, caught up with us in Taos. Sucked. Big-time.

  The alien lord’s name was Lord Vertenomous, and he’d come to collect his property (me, my friends) — what they like to call product. He was crazy powerful in the way the aliens are powerful: mind power, telepathic power. He was going to kill us, but the rebels attacked. Somehow, in the confusion of their attack, I killed Lord Vertenomous. He was saying, “I am sorry for your loss” left and right — which is what they say when they kill us because they are polite killers (you have to give them that)— when I turned him off. Fifteen rebels lay scattered on the ground, dead, and minds all around me were weeping with loss, but I killed the son of a female dog (my way of swearing due to a promise I made my now-dead mother) before he killed us all.

  That was something. Not enough, but something.

  How could I kill Lord Vertenomous when the aliens are so powerful? Extreme luck. And I’m changed. I’m not the same boy I was when the aliens invaded. It turns out I had their kind of telepathic/telekinetic power buried in my brain all along. Big surprise. Humongous. The same awakening happened to a lot of us survivors, maybe all, though my abilities are, well, extreme. And it isn’t because I’ve got a big brain. Lauren, my sort-of girlfriend, is the smartest person I know, and she’s one of the weakest as far as telepathic power. Go figure. I don’t know why I’m strong, but I’ll use this new strength and anything else I can to fight the aliens.

  The rebels don’t believe my “luck” explanation. Well, not most of them, anyway. I can feel some think it must be luck.

  “You’re damn right it’s luck,” says one guy about my age, blond hair, his mind as prickly as a porcupine.

  But most of the rebels don’t feel that way. I can hear them think things like Warrior and New blood and At last!

  The rebels aren’t like me or Lauren. They’re like Catlin, my other friend who I escaped with. They’re what the rebels call “talented”— people who had telepathic powers before the aliens invaded, like long before, like back in Roman times. The rebels say the talented are all over the world and are divided into twelve different houses named for Roman gods: Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, Venus, Mars, Diana, Minerva, Pluto, Vulcan, Juno, Mercury, and Saturn. According to Catlin, each house has different local clans, and there were many of these before the invasion, but now no one knows how many clans are left.

  The rebels think my killing Lord Vert is the fulfillment of a myth that goes all the way back to the origins of the houses in Roman days. The myth of the Warrior Spirit.

  According to this myth, the Warrior Spirit will come to one of its choosing in a time of great need, and it will fill him or her with a power great enough to save the talented. It’s a prophecy as old as the talented themselves, like before Christ even. A lot of the rebels have been waiting and praying to their gods (yep, they have more than one) for the Chosen One to hurry up and get here. And many of them think he finally has.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell them. “Wrong dude.” I’m not the Chosen One or the Chosen Anything. I feel lost most of the time. Afraid. Sad. Mad. Helpless. I wish I could be more than I am, but I’m just me.

  But here’s the thing about desperate people: they want to believe in something; they need to believe in something. So the rebels see me kill the leader of the aliens, and they think they’ve found their Warrior Spirit. And nothing I can say will convince them otherwise.

  After I kill Lord Vertenomous, we load up the trucks, laying the bodies of the dead all together in one truck bed, then drive up a windy mountain road that ends, miles later, at a ski lodge parking lot. The rebels drive their trucks and cars and motorcycles right up to the edge of the thick pine forest, where we all hop out. A few rebels cover the vehicles with tree branches. Some others stay with the bodies. The rest of us follow a wide path into the pines and up the mountain from the lodge. In the lead is Doc, the old, white-haired guy who convinced the other rebels to let me, Lauren, and Catlin join their group. Following close on his heels is the blond guy about my age who didn’t want to let us join the rebels. The sky is blue, the air fresh and clean. There’s a sweet smell, sweet taste. I close my eyes and try to pretend I’m just a lucky camper taking a walk in the woods.

  I start to hear some of my fellow rebels’ random thoughts, which pretty much ruin the camper fantasy. The mundane and the terrible whisper all around me.

  I wish I had an apple.

  I miss my phone.

  More dead. More always dead.

  Why can’t we drive closer to camp?

  Need a bath.

  That guy in front of me definitely needs a bath.

  Dead. We’ll all be dead soon.

  I’m so afraid.

  Then I hear a scream. I crouch and cover my ears. But it’s not a real scream; it’s a scream inside someone’s mind, and it’s being projected directly into my mind. I see what they see. I see the face of one of the dead, and I experience losing someone I love, through this other mind, again. I’m alone like they’re alone — the way losing someone separates you so completely from everyone else — and I think of my parents and friends and all those I’ve lost, and I curse under my breath (sorry, Mom) that someone makes me feel that loss again.

  I hear more voices, feel more pain as the news spreads. I try to shove that pain back on those who force it at me.

  Then the voices do fade. I still hear them, but it’s not like before. They’re the low mumble of a distant crowd. I see the path and woods again, feel the sprinkle of sunlight through the leaves.

  Off to the right of us, wide paths are cut through the trees, creating slopes for skiers who no longer exist. Then the trees thicken, and I can’t see them anymore. We walk for twenty minutes, the path getting steeper so that everyone is panting pretty hard by the time it levels into a slight slope. The woods thicken even more around us, and the patches of sunlight disappear entirely until we come around a bend and stop at a small clearing. Cliffs rise on two sides, and a gurgling stream slips effortlessly between them and rushes down the mountain. Off to the left is a meadow with blue flowers, which makes me think of the aliens and their plantings in Austin: trees with big blue leaves the size of dinner plates. These blue flowers aren’t alien, though. They’re ours, small with petals like daisies, fragile looking. If we were on vacation, this would be an awesome spot. But we a
ren’t on vacation. We will never be on vacation.

  Sometimes a thought like this sets off an avalanche of never-bes. Never be with my family again. Never be in my home. Never be in college. Never be, never be. The never-bes can fill you with all that isn’t and can’t be if you’re not careful. And maybe even if you are.

  We enter the camp on the side where the supply cave is. The rebels have raided a lot of stores in Santa Fe and Taos, and they’ve got camping equipment and all kinds of things in the supply cave. Lauren, Catlin, and I are all given tents and sleeping bags and some other basics and told to set up camp in Section 4. Lots of tents dot the wooded hillside. We walk past Sections 1, 2, and 3, numbers marked on tree trunks, out to the less crowded Section 4.

  As we pass through camp, I’m shocked and pleased to see children and old people among the rebels. Back in Austin there were almost no grandparents or even parents and no little sisters or brothers. We thought they had all been murdered by the aliens.

  My hand moves into the pocket of my jeans and feels for the paper calendar there. It was given to me by one of those few older people imprisoned by Lord Vert. Her name was Betty. She kept track of the days since the invasion because she was determined not to let the aliens take time from us even as they took everything else. She gave me the calendar right before she killed herself. I’m the keeper of days now, and I keep them for Betty and myself and because it’s one small thing the aliens haven’t been able to take. Every small thing we keep matters.

  I hear people thinking my name everywhere we walk, which is kind of creepy. And, yeah, maybe a tiny bit cool, too — for about a second. Jesse, his name is Jesse. He killed an alien lord. They say the spirit fills him.

  “They say.” My mother, the English teacher, hated when someone said “They say.” She wasn’t one to let linguistic imprecision pass. “They who?” she would ask, raising her eyebrows. If the president of the United States had said, “They say,” she would have stopped him cold with her raised eyebrows and said, “And just who is ‘they,’ Mr. President?” He would have answered, too. Nobody ignored my mom. Nobody.

  “They” are wrong, I mindspeak. No spirit fills me. I never even had school spirit.

  For a second, unexpectedly, I miss my high school. Not just my friends, who I’ve missed a thousand times since the invasion, but the actual building where I was forced to sit through boring lectures and take tests and eat food that was not always clearly identifiable.

  We set up camp on a flat section just below a rocky ledge, a spot that Lauren picks for its privacy and levelness. I can see Catlin approves, but I’d rather be farther off, up the hill. Using her class president voice, Lauren directs us to set up our tents in a little triangle around a space where we dig a pit for a fire. We are about to head out to gather firewood when one of our neighbors — a tall, thin woman with a British accent — tells us we can’t light fires because of the alien patrol ships.

  “Great,” I say. “That’s just double frickin’ great.”

  Everyone, including me, is a little surprised by the anger in my voice.

  “I just wanted to roast marshmallows,” I say, which, I know, sounds completely ridiculous.

  Some part of me, the ridiculous part I guess, thought reaching the rebel camp meant reaching freedom. But the aliens are still here. They’re still everywhere. I’m not free.

  I feel Catlin understand, hear her understand, and for a second I think she’s going to touch me on the shoulder, but she doesn’t. Lauren just looks irritated. I don’t blame her. I’m being ungrateful. Weak. Still, I’m irritated by her irritation. She reminds me of my mother when she was giving me a failing grade over some behavior. I quickly bury this thought. I’m not the smartest guy when it comes to girls, but I’m smart enough to know that getting caught comparing your girlfriend to your mother is a poor relationship move.

  A bell calls us to dinner. We follow a path over to the eating area. Three women and a man ladle stew into plastic bowls, which they serve with two pieces of bread. The rebels eat at picnic tables that circle a small clearing. The tables are painted an earthy brown and are mostly back in the trees, though I worry that some of them, if the aliens fly low enough, could be seen from the air. There are probably two hundred people eating, maybe more. Some white, some Hispanic, some Native American, a few African-American, a few Asian. Rainbow crowd.

  And there are little kids being little kids. Complaining. Arguing. Playing. There’s a crying baby. A baby! I shouldn’t be all that happy to hear the less-than-sweet sound of a crying infant, but I am. I am.

  A little blond girl from the next table shyly looks my way and mindspeaks, Are you here to save us?

  I should tell the truth. After all we’ve all been through, we deserve the truth. But she’s so little, and the truth is so cruel: I can’t save anyone. I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t say it.

  Instead I mindspeak, Eat your vegetables.

  She gives me a deserved look of contempt.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “For what?” Lauren says.

  Catlin knows, but Lauren can’t hear what’s in other minds very well and misses most of what’s gone on between the little girl and me. It’s like she’s deaf almost. I should tell her, but I’m hungry and tired and I just don’t feel like it. I tell her the last part about telling the little girl to eat her vegetables.

  “You’ll make a good father,” she says.

  Which just about causes me to spit my stew out. Even before the end of the world, I wasn’t ready to start thinking of myself as a father, and now . . . now I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine anyone having children in this world.

  After dinner, Doc invites us to a meeting. I’m so tired, I feel like I could sleep sitting up at the table, so I sure don’t want to go to a meeting. But most people are getting up and dutifully heading in the direction Doc pointed us toward.

  Lauren and Catlin stand up, and I’m about to give in when I start to choke. It doesn’t feel like that. It feels like hands are around my throat, squeezing. Fingers digging in. I fight for breath but stagger helplessly. Then I’m falling. I see Lord Vertenomous. It’s like I’ve traveled back to the plaza in Taos. The brick walkway beneath me; low, crowded stucco buildings all around; the pale-blue sky gone milky. Just like then.

  None of this makes any sense, but it seems so real. I hear what I heard back then. The sounds of people dying: calling to each other, screaming, crying, falling.

  Then somehow I’m standing up, and I’m in that moment when I found a way to kill Lord Vertenomous and he fell, dead. But now I’m fighting another alien, too — not Lord Vertenomous, not nearly as strong as he was, but an alien all the same and in the same square — and I’m losing. More people are dying.

  What is happening to me?

  Then, just as quickly, I’m right back on the bench, and Lauren and Catlin are looking at me with concern. I realize then that I’ve been on the bench this whole time while also in that other place. I’m shaky. I grip the table, as if holding tight can keep me from slipping away.

  “Are you all right?” Lauren says.

  “Not really,” I say, but then try to smile. “Fine. I’m fine. Must be the rich food.”

  What just happened? Flashback? Some kind of message? Could I have somehow fallen asleep and dreamed? Nothing makes sense so I choose what my mom would have called a typical male reaction: I try to pretend it didn’t really happen.

  Catlin, Lauren, and I walk down one of the narrow paths near the supply caves. I realize that I actually like the way the woods feel. I’m a city boy, but these woods, foreign to me before the aliens came, feel less foreign now. And the cities feel more foreign. Like graveyards, empty and haunted.

  I notice something as we walk. A faint hum in the trees and bushes. I feel my muscles tense.

  “Do you hear that?” I whisper.

  Lauren listens and looks at me with something close to that little girl’s look when I told her to eat her vegetables. “Bugs?
”

  “Oh, right,” I say. But then I realize that bugs mean more than just bugs. Bugs mean everything didn’t die when the aliens conquered us. Score one for the home planet. We have bugs.

  “I saw a squirrel earlier,” Catlin says. “I asked someone if I’d really seen what I thought I’d seen, and they said there were some animals out here. I guess the aliens focused their killing ray on the cities. The damage doesn’t seem as complete here.”

  “Killing ray?” I say, raising my eyebrow in a Spockian way. Or trying anyway. No one could raise a single eyebrow like Spock.

  “What would you call it?”

  Both Catlin and I like retro science-fiction movies. We’ve talked about them before. We like the good ones or the ones that are so bad they’re good. I quote from one that falls in the latter category: “Death ray.”

  She thinks about it and smiles. “Teenagers from Outer Space.”

  “Exactly,” I say. “A classically bad, really bad, movie.”

  I see a scene from the movie in her mind. It’s when a dog gets zapped into a skeleton by a ray gun. This telepathic power we have is totally weird, but on the plus side, we get to share a truly awful scene from Teenagers from Outer Space.

  “You shouldn’t joke about it,” Lauren says, glaring at Catlin, though she manages to save enough of the feeling to give me a quick look of disapproval.

  She walks faster so she gets ahead of us. I’m surprised by her reaction. She must know we aren’t joking because we think it’s funny ha-ha. We’re joking because it’s too terrible not to joke. But then I feel bad, like I’ve laughed at a funeral or something.

  “I’m sorry,” Catlin says to Lauren.

  I apologize, too, but the whole thing makes me realize that Lauren and I don’t really know each other all that well. I mean, we have a connection and all. From back at Lord Vertenomous’s. And we kissed once in that abandoned grocery store in West Texas when we were traveling here. But things seem different now. Maybe I just need to try harder to understand the way she sees things.