Patrick shoved us up the stairs in front of him. In the top hall, an attic hatch marred the perfect ceiling. Patrick yanked on the dangling cord, the ladder unfolding with a thump. He lunged up, shouting at us to follow.
The Benadryl had kicked in big time, leaving me groggy. I paused on the rungs halfway up and shook my head.
The rumbling sound grew louder yet.
I forced myself to climb.
The attic wasn’t really an attic. It was a dormer room with thick, shaggy carpet. The walls were lined with file cabinets and storage boxes. Coming off the ladder, I kicked a box, and it spilled its contents—yellowed photo albums and an old varsity-football jacket.
Pieces of someone’s life.
Alex and Patrick were crowded over by an oval window, one of those specialty ones with a starburst grid. It looked like the wheel of a big boat. Patrick’s whole body was tensed, his shoulders flexed up like the hackles of a dog.
“Whaa?” I slurred.
“Shh.” Alex waved me over.
My first step was wobbly. I evened out my balance the best I could, stumbled to the window, and took a knee behind them, trying to peer over their shoulders. The window, three stories up, poked above the nearby treetops, giving a view of the northeast side of Ponderosa Pass. Stifling a yawn, I shifted to peer between Alex’s head and Patrick’s hat. Way across the flats, I could make out a collection of buildings in the distance. Stark Peak—the closest thing to a big city we’d had growing up, an hour and a half by car before the alien invasion. The giant spire atop City Hall lorded over the cityscape. I remembered going there for a field trip in third grade, our class tittering in the grand marble lobby lined with saltwater aquariums. Growing up here, we were about as far as you could get from an ocean, so you can imagine us kids gawking at the coral and the clown fish, moray eels and puffers. It was like encountering creatures from another planet, but—as I’ve learned since—a lot more pleasant.
I’d always thought I’d get to see the ocean someday. Breathe in the salty breeze. Swim in the waves. Bury myself up to the neck in sand.
So much stuff I wouldn’t get to do.
I could hear the rush of the tide, a low rumble washing around me, and—
Alex jabbed me with an elbow, and I fought my eyes open.
She used to play ice hockey, so getting elbowed by her is a different kind of elbowed.
Somehow I was sitting on the plush carpet. I rubbed my arm. “Ow.”
“We can’t have you falling asleep right now, Chance,” she hissed.
“I waasun susleep.”
She snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Look at what we’re dealing with.”
“I already looked.”
“No. You didn’t. You gave a glance and then fell back on your—”
“Chance,” Patrick said in his no-fooling-around voice. “Get up here.”
I got.
They scooted aside to make room for me, and I finally had my first good look at the mountain.
At first I didn’t believe what I was seeing. I squeezed my eyes shut, hard, and then forced them open again.
A column of Harvesters poured over the brink of the pass from the Hatch site. The procession was made up mostly of Hatchlings, but there were plenty of Drones and a few Hosts. The Hatchlings’ camo flesh morphed to match the terrain, creating a weird optical illusion. The ribbon of movement spilled down the folds of the mountain, headed, it seemed, directly for us. It disappeared from sight just beyond the bulge of trees fronting the house.
In spite of the Benadryl, I felt suddenly quite awake.
I stared at the swell of forest before us, waiting for the vanguard to emerge. But Alex smacked me again with an elbow and pointed to the north.
It seemed the Harvesters had changed course in that dip of land before the A-frame. We couldn’t see this, only where the war parade emerged a half mile to our left on the side of the mountain. Down in the foothills, it was joined by two other streams of Harvesters, one presumably coming from the tractor plant at Culverside and another from the hay-pressing factory in Pinedale.
Their ranks swelled, but they held the marching formation. They cut north, moving toward Stark Peak. Incredulous, I let my eyes rise to the cluster of buildings at the horizon. Every few miles another tributary poured in from another town, the living yield of another Hatch site. Drones. Hatchlings, mostly male, some female. The occasional Queen bobbing into view higher than the rest, like a lord riding one of those fancy chairs slaves used to carry them around in.
In the flats by Lakewood and Springfield, cattle trucks joined the parade. Were Hatchlings driving them? Hosts? The Harvesters were moving everyone and everything to Stark Peak, a long column stretched out across the highway like a war supply line.
Closer to us, right at the base of the foothills, a commotion broke out. A cluster of Hatchlings bulged from the heavy traffic of the march and spread through a trailer park. From here they looked like angry insects, monsters in a video game. They swarmed the dirty little compound, kicking through doors and windows and emerging from the double-wides dragging kids in their wake.
The kids bucked and kicked, their mouths spread wide in terror. Over the thousands of marching feet, we couldn’t hear their cries. Their heels gouged trails through the dirt.
The Hatchlings hauled the kids toward the cattle trucks. Through the slats I could see movement. My stomach burned, all acid and stress.
A gate swung open, and we saw inside.
Bodies mashed together into a block of life. Squirming, sobbing, screaming. One girl’s thin arm rose above the fray.
Alex had pressed her knuckles to her mouth. She wasn’t making a sound, but I could feel the energy pouring off her like heat.
The Hatchlings herded the new kids up the ramp, packing them in with the others. Except the last kid. They tossed him back to two female Hatchlings instead.
I had to look away.
When I looked again, the kid was gone, the truck gate was closed, and the procession continued.
“We gotta clear out of here and get back to the school,” Patrick said. He wasn’t whispering, but his voice was low, as if the Harvesters could hear us huddled here in the dormer. “Or that’s gonna be us.”
It would have been impossible for them to spot us, but Alex and I had drawn away from the window.
Another wave of grogginess swept through me, and I yawned, my eyes watering. I wanted to curl up and sleep for a hundred years. I wanted to scream and run. I wanted to give up. I wanted to fight.
A violet light spilled through the feathered clouds, illuminating Stark Peak from the west—the pale buildings shimmering with the sunset’s last gasp. I lifted my hand, blocking out the Harvesters and their war march, leaving only the cityscape and the wide-open sky. Alex glanced over at me and then did the same, peering over the tops of her fingers.
She said, “This would’ve been beautiful once.”
Patrick was up and ready, crouching, a dark silhouette in the darkness of the room. “Let’s go. We got work to do.”
He wasn’t big on sunset gazing.
Alex stood. I told my limbs to move, but they didn’t listen. I stared at them blearily. Yawned again.
Patrick slapped me across the face hard enough to force my head to the side. “C’mon, Chance,” he said. “We need you to snap to.”
I found my feet.