Theaella

77

I’d never seen such a welcoming sight.

A different weather system, like Alex had said, devoid of spores.

“We did it.” Alex smiled. “We did it. We’ll find a car on the way down. And even if we don’t, we’ll make it on foot in what—four, five hours?”

“Less,” Vincent said.

“We can send them to save the kids at Lawrenceville. And to our school. They can finally start putting the world back together.”

We came together in a victory huddle of sorts, arms around shoulders, a tiny hard-won celebration.

A boom rent the air, loud enough to vibrate my ribs. Pinecones dropped from the branches all around us, plopping on the ground. Matthew yelped and shot in reverse into the forest.

The granite ledge spiderwebbed. We leapt back as it went to pieces and crumbled away.

Another boom sounded. Then another. So loud I hunched and covered my ears.

“Oh, no,” Alex said. “Oh, God, no.”

I looked at her, but her gaze was elsewhere, fixed on the sky. Vincent’s was, too.

Rising slowly, I drew shoulder to shoulder with them.

Hundreds of asteroids streaked through the night air, rocketing for Earth. Alight with flames, they slanted toward Stark Peak, Lakewood, Springfield—more cities than I could name, more than I could even see. Too many to count, they filled the sky.

The asteroid over Creek’s Cause wasn’t the problem.

It was the prelude.

It wasn’t the grueling hike down that wrecked us, nor the half-day wait at the base of the pass for nightfall. It wasn’t the two hours we spent huddled behind the barricade for the horde to disperse so we could boost the Silverado, nor the long, silent drive across the valley. It wasn’t even the jarring off-road route we were forced to take as we neared Creek’s Cause, having to dodge the town that once belonged to us.

It was the weight of despair.

We hadn’t failed just in our mission; we were coming back to a far more chilling reality. It wasn’t just Creek’s Cause that was compromised—or the valley itself.

It was the whole state. Or even the continent.

And Vincent turned eighteen in four days.

After leaving the truck in the woods outside town, we circled the school and came in from the barren plain to the west, sneaking to the left-field fence of the baseball diamond. Vincent had switched the locks on the bullpen gate himself, and so after a few twists of the combination dial we drifted onto the outfield grass and crept toward the school just as dawn started to lift the cover of night.

Finally we came up on the back door near Dr. Chatterjee’s biology room. Before Vincent could give a tap with his knuckles, it swung open.

Ben Braaten’s wide, broken face peered out at us, chewing a Slim Jim, a lookout canteen looped around his neck.

He took our measure, then stepped back to let us in. “All hail the rescuing army,” he said.

*

We entered the dark gym, worn out and exhausted. Some kids were sleeping, but there was a surprising amount of activity. JoJo and Rocky tossed the Frisbee, the fluorescent green disk zipping back and forth. JoJo had set Bunny on the bottom bleacher so that those half-marble stuffed-animal eyes could watch them play. JoJo spotted us first, gave a shout of delight, and ran over, wrapping her arms around me. Her sweeping brown hair had been cut short, sticking out at jagged angles. I guess the two-minute showers had made it too hard to manage. It looked terrible and adorable at the same time.

We walked over to the storage room to turn in our supplies and weapons. Eve had fallen asleep at her desk, her cheek resting on her arms. I shook her gently.

She lifted her sleepy head. At the sight of me, a smile seemed to catch her by surprise. “Chance. I wasn’t sure you were coming back.”

“Uh, we’re here, too,” Alex said with a knowing grin.

“Right.” Eve looked embarrassed as she took our stuff. “Glad you’re okay.”

Most of the others had noticed us by now, the kids on the cots rousing as news of our return rippled through the gym. Over on the bleachers, Dr. Chatterjee was frowning down at the carbon monoxide detector. He looked up and threw a salute in our direction.

“What happened?” he asked, the others quieting down at his voice.

“You guys really don’t know?” Vincent said. “You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?” Ben asked.

“The booms in the sky?” Alex said.

A hundred blank faces looked back at us.

Then Marina Mendez bolted upright. “The explosions we heard,” she said, prodding her twin sister.

“Yeah,” Maria added. “We thought the Hosts were blowing up gas lines in town or something.”

Dr. Chatterjee found his feet and stood shakily, his face blanched with concern. “What were they?”

“Asteroids,” Alex said. “There were more of them.”

“How many more?” Chet asked.

Alex walked to the bleachers, slid out the TV, set it on one of the benches, and turned it on. The kids swept around onto the gym floor as if drawn magnetically.

A panicked newscaster clutched her papers in her sweaty fists.

“—meteorites scattering the eastern seaboard—”

Alex turned the old-fashioned dial, clicking through the channels, every fresh bit of news as unsettling as the last.

“—confirmed reports of strange stalks sprouting up—”

“—pods splitting open—”

“—afflictions from Los Angeles to Seattle—”

The images were even worse.

Times Square, empty except for trash blowing around and a few Mappers walking their spirals.

A woman with a swollen belly pulling herself atop the hovering disk of Seattle’s Space Needle, lying like Snoopy on his doghouse, and bursting, scattering spores far and wide.

Two men harnessing themselves with climbing gear to the main towers of the Golden Gate bridge, leaning back into the great wide-open, and exploding.

And the small towns, too. Gym-ready housewives on church steeples. Accountants in suits scaling transmission towers. Streets filling with Hosts. Screaming children, fleeing and bloody, like something from the Vietnam documentaries Mrs. Olsen used to show in history class. Everything narrated by the panicked voices of reporters until the cameras, too, shuddered and fell, lenses cracking, screens turned to snowy white. As the broadcasts went down, Alex bit her lower lip and kept clicking through the remaining channels, chasing the thread of civilization. We watched in shock, glued to the images.

Dr. Chatterjee paced, rubbing his head. “After the meteorites hit the soil, the stalks took a week to grow in McCafferty’s field before they burst and infected him.”

At the mention of her father, JoJo stiffened. Rocky took her by the shoulder and said, “C’mon. You don’t need to see all this. Let’s play catch.”

Chatterjee removed his glasses and polished them on his sleeve, though at this point his shirt looked dirtier than the lenses. “It’s happening so much faster now. The process is accelerated. Why?”

My throat felt scratchy, the words coming out hoarse. “They found what they’re looking for,” I said. “Here at Creek’s Cause. We were a test case, maybe. For all we know, there were a thousand test cases on a thousand planets. But this one worked. And now they don’t want to waste any more time.”

“Doing what?” Chatterjee said.

“Taking over.”

“You’re talking about aliens?” Ben said. “You think they sent asteroids from outer space?”

“As opposed to asteroids from Wichita?” Alex said.

“I’m afraid Chance could be right,” Dr. Chatterjee said. “With the deliberate mapping, the directed actions of the Chasers, that squirming eye peering out of Ezekiel…” At this he shuddered. “It seems that they’re seeding Earth.” He placed his smudged eyeglasses back on his face. “Preparing it.”

He returned his solemn gaze to the television. As the rest of us stayed there, mired to the gym floor, the younger kids tossed the Frisbee around, wiping tears from their cheeks in between catches.

A bad throw bumped off Ben’s back, and he turned sharply. “Stop that,” he said. “We’re trying to watch the invasion.”

“Come on, Ben,” Vincent said. “Let them play if it distracts them.”

Ben didn’t reply. He kept his gaze on the television. After a cautious pause, the young kids resumed their throwing.

The rest of us couldn’t not watch the images on-screen. Throughout the day and evening, destruction swept across the globe.

Chasers ravaging the beaches of Melbourne, rolling young kids in their own beach towels and spiriting them away.

People shuddering on the floor of the Tokyo stock exchange, ash drifting from the spaces where their eyes used to be.

Factory workers buckling themselves to construction cranes thrusting out from half-built skyrises in Shanghai.

Mappers pacing through Red Square.

Sheikhs and their wives lying on the roofs of luxury high-rises in Kuala Lumpur as if suntanning, their ripe bellies exploding beneath the Southeast Asian sun.

A shoeless investment banker scaling the Tower of London.

Chasers storming the Louvre, hijacking a field trip of uniformed schoolchildren.

A man with a huge gut roping himself to one arm of the giant Christ statue in Rio de Janeiro.

The world was a very big place. We were finally getting to see all of it.

Just after nightfall we were down to the last channel.

Live footage showed Chasers wading into a grand fountain in Caracas, yanking children out from where they hid beneath the arcing water. The camera toppled over, giving a tilted view of the atrocities.

Then it went to static.

Alex clicked the dial frantically around and around, but there was nothing left to see. We had lost the outside world. Everything we knew had shrunk to within the four walls of the gym.

Alex sank to the floor and pressed her fists to her chin. The static kept on, a white-noise roar. Ben clomped up the bleachers and settled on the top bench, staring through the open windows at the darkness beyond.

Vincent moved to Alex, rested a hand on her head. “Alexandra,” he said.

She didn’t respond. He reached over and turned off the TV. The sudden silence felt even scarier than what we’d just seen.

The only remaining sound was the whoosh of the Frisbee as the young kids tossed it around. JoJo’s throw went wide, drifting up to Ben. He caught it and said, “Enough.” Then he flung the Frisbee through the open window.

JoJo cried out and scampered up the bleachers. She rested her hands on the sill and watched, then crumpled to the top bench. “It went over the fence,” she said. A few wisps of hair that the scissors had missed fell down past her eyes. “You threw it over the fence.”

“This ain’t no time for kid games,” Ben said. “We got bigger concerns right now.”

Dr. Chatterjee rose, facing up at Ben. “What does that accomplish? It’s cruel, yes, with the added advantage of being foolish. The younger kids are quiet when they play.”

“The time for playing is over,” Ben said. “We should be training these kids to kill Hosts.”

“That is not what we’re going to do.”

“And why not? You can’t defend us. Not as a cripple. Who’s to say I don’t just take over and run things the way they need to be run? That’s the problem with your vote earlier. You say you’re the leader. But you got no way to enforce it.”

“I’ll enforce it,” Vincent said.

Ben looked over at him and gave a thoughtful nod. “For four more days, maybe.”

“Ben,” Chatterjee said. “Come down here right now.”

Ben looked at him. Then folded his arms. “Or what?” he asked.

Chatterjee had no reply.

“That’s the problem,” Ben said. “You can’t enforce anything. You have no authority. There’s a new order we have to recognize, Dr. Chatterjee. The old rules don’t apply. If I decide not to play along, who’s gonna do anything about it?”

A tense silence settled over the gym.

Alex stood first.

Then I did, too. Eve was next.

Others starting rising, one after another, until about two-thirds of the kids were on their feet. The rest sat glaring up at us, making clear they were Ben’s allies.

“Okay.” Ben gave a nod and started down from the bleachers. He stared at those of us standing against him. “But you should realize, guys. It’s only a matter of time.” His footsteps padded across the court, and then he took up his usual post by the double doors.

JoJo was still crying, so I climbed up to her. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll get it back for you.”

“When?”

I peered past her through the window. Her Frisbee stood out, a fluorescent green dot in the middle of the street across from the school’s front lawn. In the driveway just beyond, a Chaser crouched on her haunches atop a Volvo, facing away.

“Later,” I answered.

From below, Alex said, “What are the readings?”

It took a moment for Dr. Chatterjee to catch her meaning, and then he raised the carbon monoxide detector to the dim light. He shook his head. “It’s gotten worse. There are more of the unknown particulates in the air than before.”