I spend the rest of the walk lost in my thoughts, so I don’t see the guy on the bicycle until he’s nearly on top of me. He’s coming fast down the hill that leads up to my house and he’s looking at his screen as he rides. I’m right in his path as he comes around the corner, so I have to jump to the side.
He skids—his wheels slide sideways and the rear one goes over the curb backward—but he gets control before he spins into traffic. His screen doesn’t stop. It escapes his hand and falls into the gutter. He comes to a stop facing me, blond hair falling out from under his helmet, dismounts and picks up his screen.
“Damn, you okay?” I ask.
He looks at me, a little surprised, then smiles, checks himself out, turns to look down at his bike before scooting the whole thing back onto the sidewalk. “Yeah, man.” He looks down at his screen, then holds it up to show me. “These Live-Tech screens’ll survive anything.” Then he smiles. “Really sorry I almost hit you, dude. I had a delivery at the top of the hill and got carried away coming down. It’s my bad.”
I shrug. “T’salright.”
He taps his helmet and rights his bike. “You take good care of yourself, man. All sorts of things can happen.”
And then he leaves, biking down the street back the way I came from. I watch him go, feeling weird about the whole thing. When he turns the corner down Echo Park Avenue, I start up the hill, still anxious.
The lights are on at my house and the gate is open. My dad’s truck is sitting on the driveway next to my mom’s rosebushes. I take a deep breath and let it out before I walk to the front door. I search my pockets for my keys, but when I get to the door, I see that I don’t need them. The door is open. The TV’s blaring in the living room.
“Mom?” I call as I push the door. “I’m home.”
There’s no answer.
“Dad?”
Nothing.
I look in the living room. There’s no one watching TV. Something smells bad, like an unflushed toilet. I wrinkle my nose and sniff again. There’s something else, too. Something sour.
I go to call them again, but there’s a package on the table next to the door with my name on it.
My letter said that there’d be a package, that I should open it.
I pick it up. It’s about the size of a book and it doesn’t weigh much. It’s the Live-Tech. My mom ordered it before I fucked everything up and it’s here now.
I open the package as quietly as I can. I’ve watched the videos about them already, so I know how it works. All I need to do is put the pod in my ear and it does everything else—even contacts my carrier to make the switch.
In the package the screen is on top, folded tight and small so it’s the size of a Post-it. The pod is nestled in packaging under it. It’s a bright green–colored lump right now, the top side identified by the Live-Tech logo, and a pentagon with a triangle inside it along with a bunch of starlike dots are etched in black. When I activate it, the logo will disappear and it’ll change color to match my skin, making the pod nearly invisible. I lay the screen on the table and pick up the pod. It’s attached to a piece of thick paper that says: “KEEP THIS DEACTIVATION CODE WITH YOUR RECORDS,” followed by a long series of random words.
I put the paper back in the box and put the pod in my ear, tapping it three times in the middle. It vibrates, then the lump begins to shift and change shape. When it’s done, I have to reach up to touch it to make sure it’s still in my ear.
It vibrates again. This time it sends a tingling sensation down my neck and arm that makes me shiver slightly. It passes.
Call Mom, I think.
The screen lights and unfolds even though I didn’t do or say anything. Mom appears along with a picture.
It rings.
My mom’s phone rings at the other end of the hall. I walk to the kitchen to find her.
The bad smell gets worse as I enter the kitchen.
At first, I think they’re playing a game when I see them both on the floor. My mom is curled up like a baby and my dad is spread out on his stomach like you do when you get a big bed all to yourself. But they’re not playing—my dad’s shirt is stained red with blood so thick that it’s hard to tell where his clothes stop and the pool on the floor starts. My mom’s shirt has ridden up on her back to where I can see her bra strap.
My mom’s phone is ringing on the counter.
They’re not moving. They’re not breathing.
I think they’re dead.
Adrenaline sends shooting pains down both arms. My fingers burn and tingle.
“MOM!” I’m just bending down to touch her when something moves off to my right. I redirect myself away from whoever’s there, turning to size them up as I do.
What I see doesn’t make any sense.
It’s tall. Dark. Not black or brown, but dark—like a hole. Almost impossible to see. Its head is pointed, shaped like a pin, but I can’t tell what part of its head has the face on it—there are bumps and spaces and light spots, but they don’t make any sense.
It moves again, but not the way anything should ever move. It’s dead silent, a shadow without a body to block the light. The legs are long and there are more than two, but I can’t tell how many because it looks like it’s wearing a cape that covers it nearly to its feet.
Incursion. This is an Incursion. They are real. That’s a bug. An alien. The thoughts all happen as I’m backing away, half squatting.
I’ve been in enough fights to know what to do. I rise slowly, keeping my knees bent so I can jump if I need to. It’s circling back toward the hallway to the front door and I turn, too, keeping my eyes on it.
An arm comes out from under the cape, pushing it aside just a little bit. There are a lot of arms under there, but they aren’t paired up. They seem like a collection of options, like if people were utility knives.
The one that comes out ends like a knife blade, and unlike the rest of the bug, which seems to just suck light away, the knife blade is covered with something reflective, slick and wet. When it moves, flecks come off, spattering red on the white of the wall.
Blood.
My dad’s body is between us now. There’s a gash in his back, and his shirt is bunched up into it. There’s another in his thigh.
“Get the fuck away from me!” I shout at the bug, but it doesn’t care, it just keeps circling me. “Why don’t you just leave me the fuck alone!”
I’m near the knife drawer now. It’s closed and I don’t know if I can open it, grab a knife, and get ready before it comes at me, but I also don’t think I have any other play here. I shift my movement a bit so I’m backing straight up to the drawer.
The bug follows, keeping the space between us the same.
I bring my hand up slow. The bug stays still.
When my hand’s on the drawer, I slide it open. The bug’s knife hand begins to twitch, and another appendage comes out the other side. This one looks like a crab claw.
I reach into the drawer. My hand is just grasping the handle of a knife when the bug launches itself at me.
I scream, pull the knife from the drawer, and swing it wildly at the bug with my eyes closed.
My knife slashes the air in front of me, but there’s nothing there. I open my eyes.
The bug stopped bare inches from the edge of my reach. It’s not moving any closer and its head is moving slowly up and down. I can’t tell if it has eyes, but it feels like it’s looking at something.
I move my hand. The bug’s head moves, but then it stops tracking the knife. It seems to refocus on me.
On my head.
On my Live-Tech.
The bug makes a sound, like buttons being pushed, then another that sounds like sandpaper against metal. Together, the noises sound like frustration.
I stand up. It doesn’t move. I step forward. It steps back, its arms doing something I don’t understand, then the air to my side begins to wave and turn dark.
The bug leaps into the dark air and disappears.
I stand up, look around again. I’m breathing hard and my fingers feel like they’re on fire.
Something cracks in my mind. The drain I was trying to open before begins to leak as I look at my dad.
I hear my Skywriting Voice. She breaks through, loud:
“YOU BETTER RUN AWAY, BOY! RUN AWAY.”
I look back down at my parents. I hear what she says and part of me wants to run away. I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to be anywhere. I want this to stop, to go away, to go back.
I’m on my knees now, between them. I reach out for my dad, but when my hands get close to him, I stop. I don’t even want to touch him because I’m afraid he’ll be cold and I can’t handle him being cold.
I force myself. My hand brushes his shoulder. His muscles give and he feels normal and I get a hope that he’s not dead, but when I roll him over, it goes away.
His face is gray.
I stand up and step back again. I think about trying to touch my mom, but I can’t. I don’t want to roll her over. I don’t want to see.
“RUN! THEY’RE GONNA SAY YOU DID IT, CRAZY-BOY KILLED HIS FAMILY.”
“It was a bug,” I tell her. My voice is just a whisper. “A bug killed them.”
“THEY WON’T BELIEVE YOU, CRAZY-BOY. TROUBLED-TEEN. NOT GONNA BUY IT SO YOU BETTER RUN!”
“I can’t leave them . . .” Then: “I gotta call the police.”
“JUST RUN!”
Something shifts in me when she says it this time. A sudden clarity that shatters into blind panic because I know she’s right. I stand there for a moment longer, not sure what to do or where to go.
“RUN!”
I stop thinking. I run. I see my dad’s key fob in the bowl by the door and grab it on the way out.
I’ve driven my dad’s truck before. We went out to the desert to shoot guns last summer. It was just me and him and we’d never done anything like that just the two of us. My dad hadn’t done anything fun like that since Pete died, and it felt like my family was being reborn. We spent two days riding around in the Mojave talking and hiking, shooting and driving.
The memory sticks to my mind and even though I’m running to the truck, what I’m seeing is my dad sitting next to me while I drove on some deserted road up beyond Joshua Tree. He’s smiling and trying hard to look relaxed, but I can tell he’s stressed about me driving his beloved truck.
It was the best part of the best day of the best trip I’ve ever taken.
The image crumbles when I unlock the truck. Now all I can see is what I’ve just seen inside. Mom. Dad. The bug. The blood.
My parents are dead.
The truck starts, a high-pitched electric whine the only sign it’s on, and I press the gate button on the visor. It opens very slowly. Part of me wants to back over it so I can get out faster, but that would make a lot of noise. The guitars are back a little, grinding quietly in my head, but my Voice has gone quiet. I know what to do even without her, though.
I have to get to the bus station.