15

I struggled to yell but no sound would come. I had to get to the tent to wake Jessie and Frasier. I tried to get up but my muscles wouldn’t respond. The footsteps were coming closer but I couldn’t even crawl.

Then at last I felt my breath returning. The footsteps were running. I opened my mouth to scream, feeling a huge wave of sound building in me.

“AAAAAAAHHHHHH—!”

Hands grabbed me from behind, digging into my sides. My scream broke off as I snapped awake. Jessie was shaking me.

“You fell asleep,” Jessie said accusingly. “It’s morning. We’re lucky those icky aliens didn’t slime their way into our brains while we were asleep.”

“Here you go,” said Frasier. “Breakfast.” He handed out shrink-wrapped packets.

“What’s this?” asked Jessie, tearing hers open.

“MREs,” Frasier answered proudly. “Meals Ready to Eat. I got them a while ago at the Army-Navy store. Cool, huh?”

“It’s brown,” I said, picking at some kind of goo. “What is it?”

Frasier shrugged. “The labels fell off so they were cheap. But they’re all certified nutritious.”

“Mine’s brown too,” said Jessie. “Except where it’s gray.” Experimentally, she touched some to her tongue. “Fried cockroach, definitely. And this here seems a lot like ground night crawler.”

“No,” I said. “I think it’s roadkill. Pressed flat by army tanks, a delicacy, like caviar.”

“Sssh,” said Frasier, binoculars to his eyes. “A school bus just pulled up,” he reported, shoveling some brown glop into his mouth. “Teachers lining up just like yesterday, herding all the kids inside.”

“Let me see,” I said, putting aside my plastic tray for the ants. But even ants didn’t seem interested. Frasier handed me the binoculars and dug into his food.

The last of the kids went inside and the teachers followed, marching in formation. There wasn’t anything else to see but I kept looking because I didn’t want to watch Frasier eat that stuff.

But after a few minutes—Frasier was smacking his lips and Jessie was making barfing noises—the doors to the school opened again.

I jerked to attention. “There’s people coming out,” I said. “Wow. They’ve been in there all night!”

“What!” cried Jessie. “Let me see!”

She grabbed the binoculars out of my hands but the image stayed with me. All the adults we had seen in the street last night, now pouring out of the school, carrying their shovels and picks and stooped with exhaustion.

“They’ve been digging,” said Jessie in an awed voice. “They’re covered with dirt.”

Frasier dropped his empty tray and snatched the binoculars. “It looks like they’ve been digging graves,” he said after a minute. “Lots and lots of graves.”