I TRAVEL FOR A FEW DAYS, FORMING A SORT OF routine. In El Paso, I swap my license plates out for a pair of Texas ones when I see a truck similar to mine in a McDonald’s parking lot. I pick up supplies—a toothbrush, a case of energy drinks, some dark clothes in case I end up sneaking around at night again—at a drugstore in some Podunk town near the border. Motels become my new home, because the people there don’t ask questions or seem to care that I sometimes check in at weird hours. Also, cash has been pretty good at buying my anonymity with them. I drive towards Alabama, trying to avoid going into big cities or anywhere that I think FBI agents might be posted. I keep my radio tuned to twenty-four-hour news stations, listening for anything that could possibly be Mog related. When I’m not driving, I try to get info off Purdy’s computer, but none of the systems running on GUARD’s jump drive have been able to get the damned thing functional yet. Every night before I go to sleep, I email Sarah.
She hasn’t responded.
When I’m on the road, I’ve got one eye in my rearview mirror, because no matter how stealthy I think I’m being or how good I know GUARD’s gadgets are, I can’t help but feel like I’m being followed. I spend a lot of time telling myself that I’m being delusional. Sometimes I miss just being a dumb quarterback who had no idea what was going on in the rest of the world, or even my own backyard. At least then I wasn’t holding my breath every time anyone passed me on the highway for fear that they were Mogs or FBI agents trying to run me off the road.
I spend a lot of time wandering around Texas, texting GUARD on occasion to update him on where I am. He arranges for another care package to get sent to me—or to Jolly Roger, more specifically—and I retrieve it from the front desk of a motel outside of Abilene. Enough to keep me fed and sheltered for a little while longer. Other than that, he’s pretty much been on radio silence, responding to texts or emails at odd times, if at all. Whatever he’s got going on, his life must be pretty hectic. I just hope he can get the base set up soon so we can start doing some real work.
And so I can learn who he is.
It sucks being stuck in my truck or a musty motel room all the time, so I hop between coffee shops and diners for a few hours in the afternoons so I can pretend to have some sort of a normal life, and even then I’ll only stop at places that are empty and have secluded tables open in the back. Half a week or so after starting my trek towards Alabama, I camp out at a truck stop an hour outside of Dallas—the kind of place with barstools up against a counter and a dozen different types of pie on display. In a corner booth, I multitask by watching the muted TV mounted over the counter and tuned to a news station, responding to TWAU emails on my netbook and keeping an eye on one of GUARD’s systems running on Purdy’s laptop. I’m not sure what all GUARD had installed on the USB drive he sent me, but the stolen laptop screen keeps blinking with lines of code that mean nothing to me. Hopefully that means the programs are working and I’ll be able to use the computer again soon so I can mine it for info.
The waitress comes by.
“Can I get you anything else?” she asks.
“I’ll take a refill,” I say, nodding towards my cup of coffee but keeping my eyes on the screen.
“You sure about that?” she asks.
I pause and look up at her. She’s old enough to be my mom, and her eyebrows are scrunched together.
“It’s just, that’s your fifth cup and . . .” She trails off, but her eyes land on my fingers. They rest on my keyboard, but they’re twitching from the caffeine. I can feel my blood pulse behind my eyeballs.
“I have a lot of work to do,” I say. “I’ll take another.”
She shrugs and leaves, and I rub my eyes. I probably look like a crazy person, or some kind of junkie who’s wandered in off the streets. I’ve been staying up at night until I literally can’t keep my eyes open any longer, then waking up to dreams of Mogs and FBI agents raiding my motel room after only a few hours of sleep.
I start to go back to the computer when I notice a breaking news report on the TV. Some building in Chicago called the John Hancock Center is on fire. I almost ignore the whole thing to keep working on TWAU blog stuff. And then I see it, in the bottom corner of the frame. Sitting on the roof of the burning building as plain as day to anyone who’s seen one before: a Mogadorian gun. The kind that looks like a cannon and wreaks havoc on an Ohio high school.
This is no accidental fire. The Mogs are responsible for whatever’s happening in Chicago.
That can only mean one of two things: either the Mogs were using the building as a base, or their enemies were. Meaning, the Garde were. Meaning Sarah could have been there.
“Turn that up,” I say to no one in particular. When nobody responds, I talk again, louder. “Can someone turn this up?”
The handful of people sitting at the counter look at me like I’m some kind of idiot.
“This is an emergency!”
“Hey, kid,” a big guy wearing a trucker hat says. He looks like a stand-in for Larry the Cable Guy. He nods to my booth. “Why don’t you just read about it on one of your computers over there and let us enjoy our afternoons.”
Anger surges through me, and for the briefest second, I think about jumping out of my booth and yelling at the guy, but there are more important things going on now.
And besides, he’s got a good point.
My fingers fly over the keys as I scan developing news stories about what’s happening in Chicago. There’s little actual info, though. Eventually, I find a live stream and plug in my headphones in the hope that some of the talking heads will have more details about the situation. The stream shows helicopter footage of smoke billowing out of the building again, and I wish I knew how to record video from my screen. What I do know how to do is take a screen grab, so when the Mog weapon comes into view again, I save a bunch of photos before the video cuts back to some woman in a studio talking about how initial reports suggest the fire is the result of an electrical issue.
Right. That definitely explains why there’s an alien gun on the roof.
I have to tell my readers the truth. The world needs to know. If the Mogs are ballsy enough to attack a building in the middle of Chicago, who knows what they might have in store for us next?
I log on to They Walk Among Us, and I write up what is probably a completely typo-riddled post about what’s going on in Chicago—or at least what I can gather based on what the media is saying and the footage I’ve seen. I include a few screen grabs of the Mog gun, pointing out that it’s obvious this whole thing was more than just an electrical malfunction or something. At the end of the post, I ask anyone who’s reading to be careful and to start looking for suspicious activity in their own towns and cities. Because this could be the beginning of a full-scale invasion for all I know. Then I upload the post with a title that I hope will get people’s attention: “Mog Attack in Chicago: Is This the Zero Hour?”
The second after I hit Publish, someone taps on my shoulder. I’m so in the zone that I didn’t even realize anyone was beside me, and I jump so much that my legs bang against the table. My coffee cup rattles, and some silverware falls to the floor. The waitress takes a few steps away from me before slowly setting my check down.
I realize that a few other people in the diner are looking at me. Maybe because I just jumped. Maybe because I was shouting for people to turn up the TV volume earlier.
Jesus, Mark, chill and get the hell out of here before you cause a scene.
I take a deep breath and start to gather up my things, throwing some cash down on the table. As I leave the diner, I text GUARD, telling him to check out what I’ve just posted—that shit’s going down. It’s only after I’ve sent him the message that my adrenaline starts to die down and is replaced by a different feeling—the fear that Sarah may have been in Chicago. She may have even been in that battle.
Back in my truck, I open up my netbook again and send off a quick email.
Sarah, please, just find some way to let me know you’re safe.