Nina and Steve paused and exchanged glances in the darkness. Steve put a finger to his lips and Nina nodded her agreement. It could be a trick.
“Come on, wait up! You can’t leave me out here to die!” the Visitor called out. “Steve, is that you back there? I thought I heard you yelling.”
The voice sounded familiar, but Nina couldn’t quite place it. In the back of her memory she could hear the same voice calling out, steadier and deeper from the window of a moving car last summer.
“Come on you nerd, I know you’re not gonna let them take me!” That was it. Nina placed him as soon as she heard ‘nerd.’
“. . . Jack Kurten?” Nina called cautiously.
“Yeah, now get me out of this doorway before the aliens come back!”
“Great,” Steve mumbled, then ran toward the door. Nina walked along after him. By the time she caught up, Steve had managed to disentangle Jack’s backpack from the doorframe and help him to his feet.
He was a sight to see. Jack Kurten was six-foot-five and looked at least half as wide, especially wrapped in his bulky letterman jacket. He lifted a large hand and brushed broken glass out of his hair.
“Hi, Jack,” Nina said impatiently. If she could’ve chosen someone else to get stuck with during the possible end of the world, Jack wouldn’t have been her top pick. Still, it was a relief to know that she and Steve weren’t completely alone.
Jack shouldered his backpack, which he’d had to remove to get through the door. “Well, well, well,” he said. “So aliens invade and Nina and Steve set up a freaking love nest at the Oak Grove Mall. You guys are really too cute to live, you know that?”
Steve glanced at Nina with a pained look on his face. Nina gave him a slight shake of her head. Considering everything else that was happening, she didn’t feel the need to explain to Jack that they were no longer a couple. “Nina’s blood sugar got low,” Steve said. “We had to get her something.”
“Well, you guys got lucky. The National Guard had us hoofing it to some shelter, then we saw another one of those ships, but smaller—and this time it landed. Those soldiers told us to get down and started setting up like they were gonna have a shoot-out with the aliens.” He coughed. “I was right there with them, but I didn’t want to get stuck in a laser fight with nothing but my fists, you know?”
“So what happened?” Steve asked.
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “It was really confusing, all right? I don’t know what happened after that.”
Nina stared at him. “What do you mean you don’t know?” Her mind was racing. The Visitors might have taken the rest of the group hostage, or worse.
Jack brushed the last bits of shattered glass out of his hair. “Oh, like you guys would have stuck around for that,” he snapped.
“Wait a minute,” Steve said. “You just left?”
Jack glared at him. “I know you’re probably into aliens, being Weird Steve and all, but I don’t need to mess around with space monsters. I don’t think you do either, even if you’re pretty good at talking a big game in front of your little girlfriend.”
“Hey!” Steve said, starting to tense up again.
Nina held up her hands. “Guys, c’mon. Let’s not get into this right now. Jack, what happened to everyone else? Do you know where you guys were going when the Visitors attacked?”
“No, I was just following the crowd. I don’t even know if those soldier guys actually had much of a plan—it seemed like they were arguing with each other,” Jack said. He glanced quickly out the door, then returned his attention to the others. “You guys weren’t there. You don’t get it. I figured I could come back here and get my car started while they were distracted with everybody else. Maybe I could . . . I don’t know.”
Steve scoffed. “You’re a real hero, Jack.”
Nina half expected Jack to haul Steve off and knock his teeth out, and for a second it looked like he was going to. But then he just sighed and snapped, “Yeah Steve, just like you. I’m sure if you’d been there you would’ve been able to scare them off. Get real. You wouldn’t have lasted two seconds out there.”
There was an uncomfortable moment of silence. Nina realized they had no way of knowing what had happened to their families. Steve took another step away from them and gave the doorframe a solid kick. He must have been having the same thought.
Jack shook his head back and forth and then pulled one of his hands backward through his hair. By the time he returned his arm to his side, he seemed to have shaken it off.
“Whatever. It’s just whatever,” Jack said. “So what’s the plan here? Or have you been too busy making out in here to come up with anything good?”
Nina felt heat start to build up in her cheekbones and knew she must be turning bright red. It took everything she had to ignore the comment. Luckily, Steve barely seemed to register what Jack had said. “No, we haven’t come up with a plan yet. We’ve been stuck in here, so we didn’t know how bad it had gotten out there.”
Jack began pacing back and forth. Steve watched with his arms crossed and an eyebrow arched. Nina wondered how long he would give Jack before making a snarky comment.
Then, out of nowhere, Steve bolted away from the doors. Before Jack and Nina could ask what he was doing, he began loudly shushing them and gesturing for them to back away from the entrance.
They retreated several yards into the darkness before Nina grabbed hold of Steve to stop him. “Steve, what is it?”
“Something’s out there,” he said, voice shaking. “I saw it slip between the buses.”
Jack crouched beside them. “What was it?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but I don’t want to find out,” Steve hissed.
“Well neither do I,” Jack said. “I was just out there—it’s not great.”
Nina sat back, briefly considering their options. Since this invasion had started they’d been both literally and figuratively in the dark, and they didn’t have much to show for it other than perhaps lasting slightly longer before getting abducted. If they didn’t figure out what was going on in the parking lot, they’d probably just end up sitting there, half-in, half-out of the mall. Eventually they would either be captured where they sat, or her blood sugar would get low again and they’d have to move without having any idea what their options were.
“I’m going to check it out,” she said.
“No!” both boys said in unison. But she had already started crawling back toward the doorway. She’d had enough of discussion for the moment. It was time to get something done.