Nina crept toward the exit. Once she got closer to the doors, she carefully avoided the broken glass that littered the floor. She positioned herself in the lower corner of the door farthest from the broken one. She cautiously scanned the parking lot. Other than the lack of people and the pair of jeeps the guardsmen had left behind, everything outside appeared astonishingly normal. The sun was even out. She reminded herself not to slip into a false sense of security and focused intently on the line of buses in the center of the lot.
It would have helped if she had any idea what she was actually looking for. So far they’d only ever seen the Visitors’ ships—she had no idea what the aliens themselves looked like.
She thought about different types of aliens she’d seen in all the movies Steve used to make her watch. Based on that, she was either looking for something pretty large, maybe a little bigger than Jack, or else something normal-sized but with a giant head.
Still, it was possible they could change their shape. She wondered briefly if Jack was really who he said he was. Could he actually be an alien disguised to look like Jack Kurten? But she quickly dismissed the idea. Jack had trouble doing basic human things like getting through a door, but that was also standard Jack. Plus, if Jack were a shapeshifter, he wouldn’t have called Steve “Weird Steve” or known that Nina had been dating him.
A sudden movement near the buses interrupted her thoughts. She inched closer to the door and peered through it, practically pressing her nose up against the glass. There it was again. A flicker of light was coming from behind the front tires of one of the buses.
Slowly, a helmeted human head poked out. It was one of the guardsmen from earlier—he must have somehow made it back to the mall. He reached an arm out and began manipulating what she could now see was a small mirror. He flashed reflected sunlight toward her in regular intervals. The broken glass behind her crunched underfoot, and then a hand grabbed her shoulder and startled her.
“Don’t do that!” she hissed at Steve, who had crept up behind her as she had been observing the parking lot.
“I think he’s trying to signal us,” he said. “It might be Morse code.”
Nina shifted her weight so she could glare at Steve. “Great, so do you know Morse code?”
He shook his head.
“Well then that’s not very much help, is it,” she sighed. “I’m going to see if I can get him to come over here.”
She slowly lifted herself up and waved to the guardsman, who continued flashing the mirror at them. She mouthed that she couldn’t understand and then began waving him toward them. He dropped the mirror and shook his head, then returned the same gesture she’d been giving him, urging them to come join him outside. She looked at Steve, who was shaking his head.
“You heard what Jack said—we’re not going out there,” he told her.
The guardsman was standing up now, no longer trying to conceal himself with the bus, and frantically waving at them. There was a flash of movement in the sky above him, and Nina could see one of the smaller Visitor ships approaching. Nina pounded on the glass, trying to draw the soldier’s attention to the ship. The guard spotted it and took off, sprinting back toward the woods.
“We have to get out of here—now!” Steve shouted. “Before they see us!”
Nina was rooted in place. If the soldier came back here alone, she wondered, what does that mean for the others?
“Nina! Come on! Get up!” Steve urged, grabbing her by the shoulder. “It’s getting closer!”
The ship seemed to crawl through the sky as it passed the mall and continued in the direction the soldier went. Nina snapped back into action and pushed herself up off the floor, catching a shard of glass with her palm in her rush to get away from the windows and opening up a deep gash. As they hurried back into the darkness, she couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to the soldier.