23
It was almost sad that the aliens were all reduced to dust. Well, dust and some glitter streaking the cracks in the concrete. After a hard-fought battle, you wanted some kind of aftermath scene. Just to prove you hadn’t dreamt the whole thing.
“Nice work, man,” Leo said to Evan. He scanned the empty horizon and felt almost as satisfied as if he’d just cleaned his plate at a fancy steakhouse. Actually, food would be good right now, he thought.
Next to him, Evan’s sweater was crusty with his own dried blood. His face was dirty, and he looked spent, like someone who’d been running for days. But as Evan rubbed his arm, his face was one of a man satisfied with a job well done.
They were leaning against the van, next to the open back window. Thanks to the aliens, the Gussy Me Up van was dented in places and tilting, due to the greenie that had taken out the front tire earlier. But the van was still driveable, and attached to it, Abe’s trailer was still in good shape. Part of Leo wanted to look inside, but another part of him wanted to keep it sacred. The old man’s death had hit him harder than he’d ever say.
Behind them, in the van, Sarabeth was trying to bandage Teena’s cut using some torn-up Gussy Me Up polo shirts. If he ignored her wound, with her windblown hair and her melted-off makeup, Teena looked just a weensy bit like someone who’d just gotten lucky.
In contrast, Sarabeth still looked calm and composed, even though she’d fought as hard as anyone. Leo smiled to himself as Sarabeth bit her lip in concentration. He knew she’d left the battle behind her already, and her mind was working in overdrive thinking about what came next. They’d made it past the perimeter, but that just meant they were one step closer to the ship.
“I’ll be fine,” Teena was saying insistently. She looked out the broken passenger window at the guys. “Maybe we should hit the ship now, while we have momentum. The mall will just slow us down.”
“We won that battle because we prepared for it,” Leo said. “We’re out of supplies. We’re tired. Let’s stick to the plan and get to the mall.”
The sky was growing dark, and the air was colder. Across Fordham Avenue was an old strip mall that hadn’t been updated since the seventies. Instead of the faux Tuscan oranges and yellows that many of Tinley Hills’s new shopping plazas had, this one was just gray and flat, and in the parking lot was a Stop ’n’ Smoke, a tiny shed that sold cigarettes at a drive-through window.
“You know what would be good about now?” Leo said to Evan. “A cigarette.”
“I don’t smoke,” Evan said.
“And I’ve been thinking about quitting,” Leo replied. “But something about fighting off aliens makes the health risks seem like less of a big deal.”
Evan seemed to consider this. He looked at Teena in the backseat until she finally looked back up at him. She smiled.
“What?” Teena asked. “I’m okay, really.”
“Okay,” Evan said, blushing beneath his dirty face. “Let’s go.”
Sarabeth looked up momentarily from her work and caught Leo’s eye with a half-smile he couldn’t quite decipher. He knew he liked it, though. He smiled back at her. “Be right back.”
He and Evan jogged across the empty street and pushed on the door of the Stop ’n’ Smoke. It was locked. He still had a pistol tucked into his jeans, so he fired a shot at the lock, like they did in movies.
He was hoping the door would blow open. Instead, the bullet lodged itself next to the knob, the sound of the shot echoing through the empty town. He tapped the door with his foot. It creaked open.
“At least guns work for something around here,” he told Evan as he walked in and scanned the various cartons of cigarettes. Evan minded the door, keeping watch on the van across the street, probably worried about leaving the girls.
Leo quickly scanned the tiny space, wrinkling his nose at menthols and Marlboros. “So, I’ve always been more of a Camel guy, but maybe this occasion calls for something fancy. A Nat Sherman, perhaps.” He crouched down to see under the register, where the premium tobacco was kept. He grabbed a box of Nats, a box of Camels, and a second Bic—a green one, for backup.
“How many more of those aliens do you think there are?” Evan asked.
“Man, I don’t know. We at least need more supplies. We can’t take chances.”
“Um, chance taken,” Evan said, pointing down Fordham. “They must have heard the shot.”
Dozens of aliens were coming toward them. They were about a quarter mile away, marching in unison, and not slowly.
Without talking, Leo and Evan dashed across the street. Leo jumped into the van, and before Evan even had his door half closed, Leo pressed the gas and zoomed down the nearest side street, hoping the aliens wouldn’t see them.
The girls looked at the road behind them. “It was the gunshot, wasn’t it?” Sarabeth said.
“I fucked up. I’m sorry,” Leo replied, careening down Sayre Avenue, a quiet residential street that abutted the mall. He kept an eye peeled for other aliens or—he hoped—other non-captives, but the street was as empty as the rest of the town.
“You didn’t know, man,” Evan said next to him. “I thought we might be in the clear, too.”
Leo parked at a far corner of the mall parking lot, just near the Shoppoplex construction site where the ship had landed. There was still a cluster of trees that hadn’t been taken down, and a set of Dumpsters. Even when things were normal, this particular part of the parking lot had been dark and scary, and female mall employees were urged not to park there.
The four of them were all breathless and cagey. Their victory high was gone.
“I don’t think they saw us,” Teena said, looking tense. “We’re safe for now, but we need to move quickly.”
“She’s right,” Sarabeth said, an edge creeping into her voice.
Leo had imagined this moment differently. He hadn’t even had his victory smoke yet.
No, he thought. The aliens aren’t going to take this from us. “Slow down, people,” he said. “Let’s let the mall tell us what to do next.”