CHAPTER THREE
2345 Words
CHAPTER THREE
Numbers flashed through Kevin’s mind, bursting through it in rapid sequence, seeming almost to burn themselves onto his brain. They seemed too fast to hold onto, but Kevin knew he had to try. He grabbed for them…
Kevin woke, blinking up at the top bunk of the bed he’d chosen from the floor. His head ached like he’d been hit on it, but it wasn’t that. It was just the pain that came as his body tried to process an alien signal it couldn’t handle, trying vainly to grasp onto it. He put a hand to his nose and it came away stained by a thin stream of blood.
“Here,” Luna said, handing him a cloth.
“Thanks,” Kevin replied.
Chloe was watching him from the other side of the bunkbed, as though it was a barrier between her and Luna.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “What happened?”
“I told you what happened,” Luna said. Kevin could hear the annoyance there.
Chloe shook her head. “I want to hear it from him.”
Kevin swallowed. “I think… I think there’s a transmission.”
“I told you,” Luna said, with a certain satisfaction, then looked back to Kevin. “Wait, you think there’s one?”
Kevin could understand that uncertainty. Before, the transmissions had all been so clear.
“There weren’t any words,” Kevin said. “It was all numbers.”
“Like the first time,” Luna said.
Kevin nodded, struggling to sit up. When he blinked, he could see the numbers clearly, burning behind his eyelids, there whether he wanted to see them or not.
“So this is how it happens?” Chloe asked, sounding almost excited about it. “You get actual transmissions into your brain?”
“I get hints of things,” Kevin said, “but the actual transmissions come through NASA’s radio telescopes. I’m just able to translate them.”
“That’s… amazing,” Chloe said.
It was easy to forget that there were people out there who hadn’t seen him doing this plenty of times before.
“It’s not something fun,” Luna said. “You can see what it does to Kevin. And all the trouble that’s come from it too… not just the aliens coming here. We’ve had people threaten us, try to kill us, people not believe Kevin. Do you know what it’s like, not being believed when you’re telling the truth? Being told that you’re crazy?”
Chloe had been looking increasingly angry as Luna spoke, but once she said that, Chloe went quiet.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “Yeah, I do.”
She went and sat down on the corner of one of the other beds, and Kevin saw her fingers drumming together as though there was a lot she wanted to say, but didn’t. Kevin might have asked her what was wrong, but Luna was speaking to him again.
“So this means that there’s another message waiting?” she asked. “Another transmission from the aliens?”
Kevin nodded. “Not the ones who invaded, though. This felt more like the way it did with the other ones. The ones who tried to warn us.”
“I guessed that,” Luna said. “I mean, what are the invaders going to say now? Surrender and be destroyed, puny humans? Resistance is futile? What kind of aliens gloat when they’ve already beaten you?”
“Everyone else does,” Chloe muttered, then stood up and walked out.
Luna made a face at her retreating back. “What’s her problem?”
Kevin shook his head. “I don’t know. I get the feeling that something pretty bad happened before she came here.”
“You mean worse than the world being invaded by aliens?” Luna asked. “Or worse than being grabbed by a guy with a gun at a press conference?”
“I don’t know,” Kevin repeated. He got the feeling that he should probably go after Chloe, but he didn’t feel strong enough to do it yet, and in any case, he also had the feeling that Luna wouldn’t be happy with him if he did.
“I figured she would have told you,” Luna said. “I mean, you looked to be having a nice talk when I showed up before.”
It sounded almost jealous, but why would Luna be jealous? She had to know that she and Kevin would always be best friends, and nothing would come between that, right? And as for anything else… well, that would imply that Luna was interested in being more than just his friend, and Kevin couldn’t really believe that would ever happen.
“She didn’t really say much,” Kevin said. “Just that she ran away.”
“Looks like she’s good at that,” Luna said, with another pointed look toward the door.
“Luna,” Kevin said. “Can you at least try to be nice to her? I mean, I don’t know why you’re even mad at her. I’d have thought you’d get along.”
“Because we’re both girls?” Luna said.
“No!” Kevin said hurriedly. “I mean, because you’re both…” He tried to think of the right words. Would tough be right? Chloe certainly looked it, while Luna didn’t, but Kevin knew from experience that she was.
“We’re nothing alike,” Luna said. “She called me a cheerleader.”
She made it sound like an insult.
“Well, you were on the—”
“That’s not the point,” Luna said, but then stopped. “Okay, though. I’ll be nice. I guess if we’re all stuck in a bunker together, we’ll have to get along. But I’m doing this for you, not for her.”
“Thanks,” Kevin said.
“Of course, if there’s some new signal, then we’re not going to be able to stay in the bunker, are we?” Luna said, sounding as though it was all pretty obvious. Maybe it was to her. Luna had always been good at coming up with plans for things. Quite often, they’d been plans for getting into more trouble.
Kevin hadn’t thought it through yet, but Luna was probably right. If there was a new signal, then they had to find out what it meant, and there was only one place they could do that.
“I think we have to go back to the research institute,” Kevin said.
“Even though we barely got out of there the first time?” Luna said. “And we don’t know what’s on the message, and we don’t know if it will do any good when the aliens have already taken our world. It could just be ‘sorry, we tried to warn you.’”
“What if it’s not, though?” Kevin countered. “I mean, do you really believe they’d send a message all the way across space for that?”
“No, I guess not,” Luna said, looking more serious now.
“What if they found a way to beat the aliens, or force them out of controlling people’s bodies?” Kevin said. “What if they give us some way to make this better? We have to go back. Well… I do. I mean, you might be safer if—”
“Finish that thought and I’ll punch you,” Luna said. “Of course I’m going to come.”
“But I thought that—”
“You thought you’d leave me behind while you had an adventure by yourself?” Luna demanded.
Kevin shook his head. “I thought that we’d finally gotten somewhere safe. I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to give that up. I have to be there to translate the message, but no one else—ow!”
He rubbed his arm where Luna’s fist had connected with it.
“I told you I would,” she said with a broad smile that suggested she wasn’t remotely sorry. “I’m coming with you, because someone has to keep you from getting grabbed by controlled people. Besides, if there’s anything there that will let us turn around and kick their asses for what they did, I want to know about it.”
That was part of what was so incredible about Luna. She didn’t give up, even when everything said that it was the sensible thing to do. She’d fight anything, up to and including an alien invasion.
“Did I ever tell you how amazing you are?” Kevin asked.
“You don’t need to tell me,” Luna said with another grin. “I just know. Frankly, you’re lucky you get to be my friend.”
“True,” Kevin said. He turned serious for a moment. “We need a plan if we’re going to go back.”
“We’ll need supplies,” Luna said, starting to check items off on her fingers. “We’ll need food, maybe tools to get inside, masks…”
“Chloe said that the vapor was gone,” Kevin pointed out.
“And how does she know?” Luna countered. “Okay, maybe, but I’d rather have one with me just in case. You can have the job of telling her that we’re going.”
“Maybe she’ll want to come with us,” Kevin said.
Luna made a face. “I guess it’s better than leaving her here and wondering if she’ll let us back in again. I’ll get started getting supplies together. You go and talk to her.”
***
Kevin made his way through the underground complex, looking for Chloe. It took a while to find her in the tangled corridors and storerooms, but eventually he heard her ahead. She seemed to be talking to herself.
“I can’t do it… I can’t do it…”
Kevin cautiously looked through a doorway to find Chloe sitting on the floor of a storeroom. There were things scattered around in a spread that didn’t look accidental. It looked as though she’d swept her arm along one of the shelves, knocking everything to the floor. She had her head in her hands and seemed to be crying.
“Chloe?”
She looked up as Kevin approached, wiping away her tears as if afraid they might be used against her.
“I’m fine,” she said, before Kevin could even ask if she was okay. “I’m fine.”
“I used to say I was fine when people asked me about my illness,” Kevin said, moving to sit down beside her. “It mostly meant I wasn’t.”
“I just get… upset… sometimes,” Chloe said, and Kevin guessed she’d picked that word carefully out of all the ones that had come to her. “I do stuff without really thinking. It’s part of why people said I was crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Kevin said.
Chloe sighed. “You don’t know me yet. Did you just come here to see how badly I was messing up?”
“No, of course not,” Kevin said. “We… I… think that we need to go back to the NASA research institute. With what I saw, there might be a message, and it might be important.”
“You want to go into the middle of the city, to a place that might be full of them?” Chloe replied. “That’s…that doesn’t make any sense. We could go anywhere. There are the Survivors in LA, or my cousin up north…”
“We need to do this,” Kevin said. “Luna’s collecting supplies, and we’ll work out a plan for getting there safely. You could stay here if you want, though. You don’t have to come with us if you don’t think it would be safe enough.”
“You don’t want me to come with you?” Chloe said, and now she sounded as upset as she’d looked before.
“That’s not what I said,” Kevin said.
“It’s what you meant, though, isn’t it?” Chloe shot back.
“No,” Kevin replied. “I just thought you might not want to come. You said yourself it might be dangerous.”
Chloe shrugged. “Whatever.”
“Chloe,” Kevin said. “I don’t want to—”
“Whatever,” Chloe repeated, in a dull tone. “Do what you want. I don’t care. Go off and make your stupid preparations.”
“Chloe—”
“Go!” she snapped.
Kevin went, hoping that if he left Chloe alone for a while, they might be able to talk about it again later or something. That was what people did, wasn’t it? They talked about things and made up?
For now, he knew he should probably help Luna find supplies for their journey. They would need all kinds of things, from gas for the car that they’d left waiting outside to clothes, to maps. He passed a door with the word “Armory” printed above it and tried the handle, but it was locked. Maybe that was just as well. He doubted that he and Luna could fight their way through a horde of controlled people no matter how many weapons they had. Besides, just the thought of it made him picture his mother running toward him, or the scientists from the Institute, or Luna’s parents. He didn’t think he would be able to hurt any of them.
He was still thinking about it when he heard alarms going off in the direction of the control room.
Kevin ran there, hoping it would all just be some false alarm or minor fault, but in his heart, he knew it wouldn’t be. He knew exactly who would be responsible for that alarm, and he didn’t want to think about what she might be doing.
He saw Chloe as he ran into the control room. She was pressing buttons on the computers through a haze of tears, stabbing at them with her fingers as if pressing them harder would make them work better.
“Chloe, what are you doing?” Kevin demanded.
“I don’t have to do what you say. I don’t have to do what anyone says,” she said, in a determined tone. “You can’t keep me here. I need to get out!”
“No one’s trying to—”
“I thought you liked me. I thought you might be my friend, but you’re like all the others. I’m going. You can’t stop me!”
She pressed something else, and the tone of the alarms changed. Computer-generated words blared over the speakers.
“Emergency Evacuation Procedure begun. Opening doors. Please exit the base in an orderly fashion.”
“What?” Kevin said. “Chloe, what have you done?”
“What’s she doing now?” Luna asked, as she ran into the room. She had a backpack over one shoulder that she’d obviously been using to collect supplies, still half open because of the hurry to get there. She didn’t look happy.
Not as unhappy as Chloe did, though. “You were going to leave me behind here like some kind of… of prisoner,” she said, and her tone was frantic, angry, and scared all at once. “You’re not going to keep me here. I’m going to my cousin. I’m going to find out what happened to him. Then I’m going to the Survivors.”
Behind her, the great door to the airlock was swinging open. To Kevin’s shock, so was the outer door, both of them opening at once in a clear path to the outside. Kevin could see the mountain road outside, and the trees. Worse, he could see figures moving out there, turning toward the sound almost in unison.
Pretty much as soon as the way was clear, Chloe darted through the doorway, out onto the mountain. Kevin was too shocked by it all to try to stop her, and Luna was pulling on her gas mask in a hurry, obviously still unsure about whether to trust the air outside or not.
“The door, Kevin!” Luna yelled as she hurried to put it in place. “We need to close the door.”
Kevin nodded. “I’ve got it.”
He hoped he had it, at least. He could see the people outside advancing toward the door, more of them than he could have believed given that the aliens were supposed to have taken the people. There were soldiers and hikers, whole families moving in a kind of stilted, silent coordination.
Kevin pressed buttons on the computer, hoping to undo whatever had been done. Nothing seemed to have any effect. It didn’t help that he didn’t have a clue how the computer system here worked. It wasn’t as if everything was labeled for anyone who wanted to try using it. Besides, he suspected that an emergency door opening like this wasn’t supposed to be easy to undo, in case people got trapped inside. He mashed at the computer’s keys, hoping to find some combination that might do something.
None of it worked. The doors stayed open, a clear path standing to the outside, and now, along that path, the people controlled by the aliens were stalking forward.
They were coming.
And if they reached the bunker, Kevin was terrified of what would happen next.
- Writer
