“Why’d you have to ask?” Callie wanted to know.
Her face was white, but, this time, there were no tears in her eyes. And why she was questioning me, and not Su-Lynn, I don’t know. We were in the gym—again.
“Don’t you want to know what’s happening?”
“No… Well, yes, but not really,” Callie said, and I nearly fell off the running machine.
I didn’t know what to say to that, but my machine beeped to let me know I’d reached the end of the session, and I got off. Time to hit the showers.
I glanced at the clock on the wall—funny how some things don’t change between civilizations. Seems everyone who’s gone somewhere wants a way of telling how long it took. Too early for dinner, so I guessed we’d be hitting the books, again. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Actually, I couldn’t have been more right…or more wrong.
Instead of heading to one of the classrooms, our ever-constant supervisor and her armed guards took us to a lecture theatre. Don’t get me wrong; we’d been in their lecture theatres before—best place for them to educate us on the facts of the universe, and all that kind of stuff. This time, it was a little different.
Firstly, because this was the first time we’d been able to see any of the other kids from our school since we got put on a bus. Up until then we’d been pretty isolated from everyone else. I later found out that they’d had the same thing happen to them. That meeting in the lecture theatre was the first time we’d seen any of the friends or family who’d been at school that day.
We mighta got real excited over just that, except that there was this feeling that something was about to go terribly wrong. There were armed aliens everywhere, and not all of them looked the way we were used to. Sure, there were plenty of yvernatch around; Earth was going to be “theirs” after all, but there were others, as well.
I mighta got busy staring at them, except I was too busy checkin’ out the room. It had a stage at the front, and a big screen, and there was a bunch of techs playing around with the lectern, or podium, or whatever it was at one side. But what really caught my eye was the plastic on the podium floor.
It looked like they’d spread a whole roll of it out in front of the screen, and I couldn’t help thinking that it was a bad sign. Of course, I didn’t have a lot of time for thinking, because the aliens lost no time in separating five of us out of the line.
It looked pretty random to me. We were being directed to seats, and then suddenly someone would be taken out of line and made to stand against the wall. Callie was walking just in front of me, so when one of the aliens laid a hand on her arm, I didn’t really have a choice.
She saw them reach for her, and shrank away. She was walking with one of her besties, and they were holding hands. They’d been doing that ever since they’d arrived. Anyway, the alien just sort of lunged forward and grabbed Callie’s bicep. It started to pull her out of line, and Callie started to scream.
Her girlfriend started to scream, and the kids nearest her grabbed hold of her, and tried to pull her out of the alien’s hands. I saw, from the expression on the yvernatch’s face—don’t give me that look; they do have expressions. Anyway, I saw from its expression that there was going to be one almighty fuss, and I could see from Callie’s reaction there was going to be a fight, so I stepped in.
I laid a hand on the alien’s arm and told him to leave her alone, and that’s when he grabbed me. I mean What. The… Next thing I knew, I heard this “Hey!” from behind me, as Mitch weighed in, and then another “Hey” as he got pulled out of line with me, and we found ourselves standing up against the wall, next to each other, with Su-Lynn and Davo and Alicia Reed, and a couple of the other kids I hadn’t got to know, yet.
And that’s when I realized that Callie’s not the only one to have kicked up a stink, that, all over the hall there were kids who were fighting not to be pulled out of line, kids fighting to keep their friends, kids just…and, all of a sudden, things were scary as any nightmare I’ve ever had. I reached out and grabbed Mitch’s hand.
He was already there, his hand meeting mine half way between us. One of the aliens noticed, but didn’t try to stop us. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have said it looked a little bit sad, but the look was gone before I could be sure.
Yeah, sure, I’m sure I saw it, now. Now, I’m sure of a lot of things, but, back then, not so much.
Anyway, when they got everyone sitting down—except for those of us they’d got standing up against a wall, the screen went live and I realized they’d organized a conference call. At first my heart gave this little hopeful skip. I’m thinking like, maybe they were going to call our parents, let us speak to them, that kind of thing, but then our prime minister came into focus, and the first group of five kids were led up onto the stage.
I have to say, our prime minister wasn’t alone. He was standing with pretty much every political big wig I’ve ever seen making noise on the television, and a bunch of men and women in all kinds of uniforms. I think he might have been trying to make some kind of statement, but he didn’t get the chance.
No sooner than his eyes had focused on the kids on stage than the aliens just shot them.
They. Just. Shot. Them.
I saw it. I couldn’t…wouldn’t…believe it, but it was as if a big cold hand just reached into my chest and turned off my heart. The way my face went tingly when the alien-she told us they might still shoot us? Yeah, I felt that spread across my body. It even wiped out the feel of Mitch’s hand squeezing mine so tight, he might actually have broken something. The politicians didn’t even have time to react.
“That was to show you we mean business.”
Give him credit, the prime minister was speechless. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, and the aliens started talking.
“This auditorium is filled with your children,” it said. “Your world will agree to become our subjects, or your children will die. And then we will start on the rest of you.”
The prime minister’s mouth opened and closed a couple more times, and one of the other ministers laid a hand on his arm.
“Do it,” she said.
“But we have to vote…” his voice petered away, as the soldiers nearest a group of kids halfway up the auditorium, turned and shot them.
The hall erupted into screams. Some kids even stood up.
“Sit down and you will not be harmed,” the alien leader ordered, and some did.
I didn’t believe him.
“Sit down, or you will be shot!” he said and more kids landed their bums on seats; some were pulled down by those nearest them.
The ones still standing were shot. I heard weeping, and felt hot, silent tears on my cheeks. The rest of me started to shake. Mitch’s hand was crushing mine, and I knew he was as scared and horrified and angry as I was—but neither of us moved. We didn’t dare; the aliens closest had taken aim, and we didn’t want them to pull their triggers. The prime minister and his ministers had gone pale, their faces frozen in horror.
“Surrender your part of the world to us,” the alien repeated, “and the rest of your children will be safe.”
“But—” the prime minister said, and that’s as far as he got, before the soldiers nearest us, fired.