34
Evan hit the ground, hard. Solid ground: Already an improvement over where they’d just been.
“Holy shit, we found it,” Leo said, under his breath.
“We found them,” Teena said, awed. Evan had had a feeling that the nest had been guarding something important, and he’d been right. Before them was a sea of people that filled the room as massive as an airplane hangar. It looked like half the town was there.
“Wow, how are we going to get all these people out of here?” Evan couldn’t believe they’d made it. There’d been moments when he’d thought they’d only find the captives if they were captives themselves. Now the three of them stood there, looking from the crowd, to one another, and back to the crowd. From Teena’s and Leo’s matching expressions of surprised delight, he could tell they felt like he did: Now that they’d found everyone, how did they make sure not to screw it up?
“I wasn’t expecting it to be so … lively,” Leo said, scanning the crowd, probably looking for Sarabeth.
The people were distracted and frantic. They hadn’t even noticed Evan and the others arrive.
“Yeah, I thought they’d seem more mind-controlled or something,” Evan said, peering over the half wall they’d come out behind.
“It’s better they’re not,” Teena said, starting to move out into the crowd. “We should move in. Look for your families, or anyone you know. See if there’s a safer way out than the way we came.”
Evan and Leo breathed matching sighs of relief, both glad to have someone taking charge. Teena led the way, and they stepped into the crowd. No one turned to look at them, which was awfully odd, given their spandex uniforms coated in green guts.
Evan didn’t see anyone he knew until his eyes landed on the far side of the room, where several hundred people turned inward, all focused on Godly Jim, probably preaching to his new targets in the middle of their circle. At least Evan’s mom was among them. He wanted to go to her, but he didn’t want Jim to slow the rescue down. There was a lot of saving to do, and Jim couldn’t help.
“What is everyone doing?” Teena wove past some women in their nightgowns.
“Arguing and panicking,” Leo said. “Listen.” As they cut through the clusters of people, they heard snippets of conversation in the crowd.
From a woman in a short leopard-print robe: “I can’t die. I can’t! I haven’t slept with anyone since my husband left me.”
From a young mom, clutching her baby to her chest: “I wish we had moved to Lawn Grove when we’d had the chance.”
From one pajama-clad dad to another who looked ready to throw down: “We need to figure out how that thing works, so we can use it against them.”
“Look for this thing they want to use.” Leo sidestepped a crying toddler.
“I think they mean that,” Evan said, pointing across the room. “By the other door out.”
A line of shriveled corpses hung like rag dolls above a door similar to the one Evan and Leo hadn’t been able to open. Beneath the corpses, a half-dozen aliens pulled yet another body from what looked like a tanning bed, or a human-sized panini press. The aliens started to string up the body alongside the others.
“Oh my god,” Teena said, staring from the bodies to the machine. Her skin had gone green. “Did that machine do that? How?”
At that moment, an old man broke away from his group of senior citizens, a crazed look in his eyes. He held a ballpoint pen aloft in one hand and a pocketknife in the other. “I fought in World War Two. I’ll kill you all!” he yelled, running wildly at the aliens.
The old man was two feet from the door when one of the aliens reached out a claw and punctured his side, like he was meat for a shish kebab. The alien tossed him onto the panini press and closed the top. The alien pushed a button, and as the room of people fell silent, the machine hummed to life. The man’s withered scream echoed through the chamber. Within about thirty seconds, two spouts at the foot of the press shot out blood and water into massive tubes that disappeared into the ceiling of the room.
Teena gagged, covering her mouth with her hand. The crowd reacted the same way, women crying, men wringing their hands, everyone staring at the aliens in fear and then turning away, as if staring too long would make them the aliens’ next target. No one spoke or moved. The device obviously didn’t just drain humans. It prevented uprisings.
“No wonder no one wants to leave,” Leo said. “They can’t leave.”
“They can’t stay, either,” Evan said. There weren’t really that many aliens guarding the room, probably because their intimidation technique worked so well. “We can take them out the door we came in. Now that we killed the nest, there’s no threat left back that way.”
Leo was still eyeballing the crowd. “Do you think everyone is in this room?” Evan knew he was talking about Sarabeth.
“She’s gotta be down there somewhere,” Evan told him.
“I haven’t seen my dad, either, but he blends in. Sarabeth’s a tall redhead. I feel like I would have seen her.” His voice was sad and dejected. “Where else would they have taken her?”
Teena’s face registered his question, and a grin spread across her face. “It’s not about where they brought her. It’s where she went once she got here.”
A look of realization dawned on Leo’s face. “The center of the ship!” He shook his head, amazed. “It’s a little nutty, but how sweet would it be if she’s right?”
“But how would she have gotten out without getting killed?” Evan said, looking around. His focus kept landing on Godly Jim’s crowd, and anger welled up inside of him. His stepfather could have been trying to get people off the ship, instead of using them as an audience.
“I’m not sure,” Leo said jumpily. “I need to find out.”
“You’re right,” Evan said, trusting that Sarabeth would have figured something out. He took off his backpack and pulled out his squirt gun and two pints of whiskey. He tucked the Super Soaker into his body armor and the pint bottles into the tight waistband of his bike shorts. He looked from Leo to Teena. “You guys find Sarabeth. I can handle this.”
The chatter in the room was growing again, back into the nervous and panicked crescendo it had reached before the old man tried to attack the aliens.
Leo squinted at him. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Sarabeth needs you more.” He was already moving toward his stepfather. “I need to handle this alone anyway.”
“But how are you going to get people out with the aliens in here? They’ll kill you,” Leo said.
“Not if I kill them first.” Evan patted his Super Soaker. There were only six aliens. He’d killed that many by himself when Teena and Leo had been frozen. “They won’t even see me coming.”
“Thank you,” Leo said, patting Evan’s back. Teena looked at him with concern and squeezed his hand. His heart swelled, unwittingly. He squeezed her hand back and hoped it said what he needed to say.
Evan merged into the thickest part of the crowd as Teena and Leo went back the way they had come. He got a few looks here and there, but people were so consumed by their fear that they didn’t seem to care about the guy with the Super Soaker and the baseball bat. He passed behind his stepfather and listened to Godly Jim’s irritatingly self-satisfied voice.
“God sent these beings to take us away,” he crowed. “We should be proud. We should be honored. We’ve been chosen.”
He had his full preacher drawl going, and Evan prickled at the way his mother stood, nodding dutifully, at Jim’s side. The crowd around him was at least a couple hundred people and growing. Godly Jim was having the time of the end of his life.
Evan would handle him later. He knew he needed to kill the aliens first if he was going to save anyone.
The six aliens lined up by the door weren’t as big as the ones outside the ship. They didn’t even bristle as he approached them, extracting his Super Soaker from his padding. They probably thought he was just another dummy they could put in their human juicer.
He stepped right up to the aliens and, before they could do anything, pulled the trigger on his gun. A jet of perfume streamed at the first alien’s chest, and then the second’s. They both went up in little clouds. The remaining four aliens moved in on him, and he fired again. The gun jammed. He stumbled backward, suddenly wishing he’d kept Teena and Leo for backup.
He fell to the floor, hoping someone in the crowd would help. But people had turned away, like they had with the old man whose carcass had been added to the aliens’ collection. He knew his trusty bat wouldn’t do much good against these indestructible creatures, so Evan pulled the two pints of whiskey from his waistband. He uncapped the bottles as the aliens reached for him, their sharp claws only millimeters from his throat.
“Have a drink,” he sneered, as he splashed the booze at the aliens, hitting three of the four where he needed. They turned to dust right at his feet. But the last one was still on him, its bony, purple foot stepping on Evan’s ankle. It leaned down over Evan, so they were face-to-face.
Each bottle had maybe a shot’s worth of alcohol left. He raised the bottles over his head and then swiftly smashed them, right into the alien’s mucous chest plate. Broken glass protruded from the alien’s skin, and green blood shot onto Evan’s hands. Just when he started to fear there hadn’t been enough alcohol left, the creature’s skin crusted over, its slime drying up instantly. He kicked the dead alien away. It was dust before it hit the floor.
“He just killed the aliens!” someone shouted.
A crowd started to gather around him. “You killed them!” “Are we free?” “How did you do that?” “Thank you!” “What do we do now?”
Evan liked the attention, he had to admit. It felt better than either of his perfect games. Without a beat, he started directing people toward the far door, telling them it was safe and not to be intimidated by the burned-out nest. In groups, people started to leave.
There were thousands of people still left, though, and some hadn’t noticed that their captors had been dispatched. Including Godly Jim’s new flock.
Evan made a beeline for the makeshift church service.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways.” Jim gave his folksy grin, his preacher bellow carrying through the high-ceilinged space. “Look at my wife. Her own son—my stepson, but I think of him like he’s my boy—went missing in all this. And she’s struggling—by golly, is she ever. But she knows she’ll see him again after all this is through. Maybe they’re taking us somewhere more special than Earth. Or maybe they’re sending us to the heaven we know is up there for us. Either way, we welcome the Lord’s plan.”
It was too much for Evan to take. He didn’t know what bothered him more: Jim’s statement that Evan’s mom was cool with his possibly being dead or that Jim had called him “my boy.”
“Actually, I’m right here, Dad,” Evan called, giving the word an ugly edge. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I killed all the outer-space sorts.”
He sidled up next to Jim. With his protruding gut—“God gave me plenty, and I said thank you” was one of his lame jokes—Evan’s stepfather was larger than Evan in girth. But Evan was taller and leaner, something he’d never registered when he’d been doing everything Jim said for the last six years or so.
The weekend had shown Evan some things. Things like he might not get the girl, but he didn’t have to let her treat him like crap, either. Things like he could forgive and forget, for the right person. Things like he needed to stop drinking after three rum-based cocktails. And most important, he was his own man.
“You’re not listening to this crap, are you?” He summoned his voice and pushed his words out over the crowd. “He’s a fraud.”
Jim stepped in front of him. “Everybody, this is my boy, Evan.” Nervous laughter. “He clearly has been watching too many of Hollywood’s movies, and he thinks our heaven-sent friends are our enemies.”
Evan’s mom came up to him and threw her arms around him, despite the dirt and congealed guts that clung to him. “I was so worried about you,” she whispered as Jim stared. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”
Evan hugged her back, beyond grateful she was still alive. But today, he couldn’t let his mom get in the way of him finally telling Jim off, once and for all. “We have to get off this ship,” Evan said, his voice a croak. His mom looked at him in surprise, but he could see some pride in her eyes, too.
He started again, louder, for the whole of Jim’s crowd to hear. “We can’t stay on this ship. My friends and I have been fighting these aliens for days. I’ve seen these things kill everyone and everything in their path,” Evan explained, glad to be covered in greenie guts and dirt and blood. “I took out the guards, but I don’t know how much time we have before more arrive.”
The crowd’s rapt attention for Jim was shifting to him.
“We have to get off this ship, so we can destroy these things once and for all,” he said.
“But we’re chosen, Evan,” Jim said, his milky eyes narrowing.
Evan shook his head and looked at the crowd. “You can either be saved, or you can be rescued,” he said. “The choice is yours.”
“We’re not chosen—we’re captured.” His mother grabbed his hand, tears flowing from her eyes. “We’re all going with you. Everyone is getting off this ship.”
As the crowd fell in line behind him, Evan grinned. Even a guy playing the hero didn’t mind a little motherly love.