Alien Invasion (Book 1): Invasion (11 page)

Piper had mostly turned around so she could cross her legs. He’d successfully ignored her while watching his sleeping father in his almost fully reclined seat, but now she saw him facing forward and looked up.
 

“Hey.” She smiled.
 

Trevor forced himself to meet her eyes, then detour his focus to somewhere near her left shoulder. His crush had always been inappropriate, but the past thirty-six hours had made it clear just how unseemly continuing that infatuation would be. Piper was twice his age; she was married to his father; she was, for shit’s sake, his
stepmother
. But that didn’t stop her from being the most beautiful woman Trevor had ever known in person, and it didn’t help that she doted on him, paid him all the attention he’d ever want.
 

Trevor was with her for the duration. He was with his father, with Lila, with Raj. Assuming Mom wasn’t waylaid, she’d be halfway to the ranch, and blessedly, Trevor was with her for the duration, too. They were all in this together. Their own little ecosystem. He had to make peace with the idea that he’d be locked in with Piper (or as good as locked in) and that his chances to find another girl and forget her were practically nil. Hopefully, the ranch had porn on the juke. He could form an unhealthy attachment to some slutty actress who took it in all holes. Wouldn’t that be a pleasant change?
 

“Hey,” he replied.
 

“How are you holding up?”
 

Trevor looked back. The van’s relative quiet made it feel like they were alone together, but they weren’t. Lila and Raj were up. In their own world, but awake.
 

“Okay, I guess.”
 

“We’ll make it, you know.”
 

“You mean, like, stay alive?”
 

She laughed — a delightful sound that was as much throat as it was air.
 

“I meant we’ll make it to the ranch.”
 

He glanced at Lila. Then, not wanting to speak but wanting to move things forward and needing to talk to
someone
, Trevor said, “Do you believe him?”
 

“Your dad?”
 

“Yeah.”
 

“About the ranch?”
 

“Yeah. That we have to get there and stuff.”
 

Piper shrugged. Her answer was only half serious. The other half was the pacifying answer you give a kid who won’t know a brush-off for what it was. “Where else are we going to go?”
 

“Somewhere that’s not days away.” They’d all heard the update on the news. The original estimates held. NASA and the Astral people were in agreement. They had four days before first contact, and that left little wiggle room. It had taken them almost thirty-six hours so far, and they’d only reached Ohio. They were supposed to have taken a plane. They were supposed to be there already. When that was the plan, this made sense to Trevor. The idea of driving changed his opinion in the extreme, trust in his father notwithstanding.
 

“Where?”

“Anywhere. Get a hotel.”
 

“Your dad doesn’t want to get a hotel room.”
 

“Well, maybe we could talk him into it. Somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. Or Canada. Aliens never go to Canada.”
 

“You have a lot of experience with aliens?”
 

“In movies, I mean.”
 

“Maybe in Canadian movies they go there. Are you sure? Do you want to check?”
 

She was humoring him. He was slowly moving from infatuated to infuriated.
 

“I’m serious.”
 

“I know you are, kiddo. But he’s doing the best he can. He’s a smart guy, and I trust him. Do you trust him?”
 

Trevor looked back. Now Lila and Raj were listening. Lila nodded first, probably without even realizing it.
 

“Yeah.”
 

“Then we have to go with that. None of us knows what’s going to happen. Your dad was prepared so far, and he’d tell you that in some way, he did know what was going to happen — at least enough to start building a bunker, buy and stock this van, and all that. We owe him a lot right now, whether we understand it or think he got lucky or not. And yeah, we can’t know for sure, but it’s better than what I knew — or what I’d know to do now on my own.”
 

Trevor nodded.
 

“We’ve said what we think,” Piper continued. “And we should continue to. We will continue to. Of course. He’ll
want
us to. But in the end, he’s driven to take us to Colorado come hell or high water, and, well … ” She trailed off.
 

Trevor sighed, then nodded again.

The van was quiet for a long few seconds, save the hypnotic hum of their wheels on the road.
 

Then Meyer’s phone, silent since Jersey, started to ring.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Day Two, Late Afternoon

Rural Ohio
 

Meyer blinked awake to the sound of his ringing phone. For the first moment, he didn’t answer. He just stared at his family and Raj. They were all looking his way, vaguely guilty, as if they’d been doing something they didn’t want him to know about.

The spell broke, and he snatched his phone, registering that it was Heather when he saw the screen, though his mind didn’t really make the connection until her voice was in his ear: decidedly higher-pitched than Piper’s sexy rumble, a bit squeaky, rushed with adrenaline as if she were high.
 

“Heather?”
 

“Meyer? Thank God. Where are you? Are the kids okay? Hell, is fucking
Piper
okay?” She didn’t stop to let Meyer answer. “I’ve got a little bit of a problem here. Actually, I’ve got a lot of problems. I forgot to bring my Vellum, for one. When I get to Colorado, will Piper share hers? I mean, if she doesn’t mind me seeing her porn or whatever other embarrassing books she has on it. She wouldn’t mind, right? Better than sharing her husband.” A small, uneasy laugh.
 

Meyer lowered his voice, peering at Piper, hoping she hadn’t heard that. Heather was always making inappropriate jokes (she’d built a career on them, after all), but that one was way too close to the bone.
 

“What’s the matter with you?”
 

“Nothing. Nothing at all. Everything is just great. I’m not even counting days until the world ends.”
 

“Are you high?”
 

“They’re going to get my car, Meyer.”
 

Meyer looked again at Piper. It wasn’t clear either way whether she was hearing any of this.
 

“Who is?”
 

“Angry gamblers. Elvis’s ghost. Those white tigers the gay guys used to perform with. Siegfried and Ron. Was it Ron?”
 

“Roy.”
 

“See, you understand. This is all very logical to you. So tell me, when you were seeing the bright and swirling colors and the spirit in the sky or whatever told you to dig a hole and get ready for aliens to show up, was there any information on me being
fucking gang-murdered in Las Fucking Vegas?”
Her voice rose into a shriek, seconds from losing control. That’s what it took to finally shove Heather out of her on-stage persona: terror.

Piper had heard that one. Her eyes went wide. She started to say something, but Meyer shook his head. He looked out the window ahead, watching anonymous miles of Ohio roads spool out before them. He’d have to check the GPS to be sure, but they were probably somewhere between Cleveland and Toledo. He suddenly resented being woken. The idea was to drive through Ohio at night, ideally while sleeping. He didn’t want to see it.
 

“Calm down. What are you talking about?’

“You know my car?”
 

“Yeah.”
 

“And you know how I own it? Because it’s
my
car?”
 

“Yeah.”

“You know how if someone got it from me without my permission, maybe by stabbing me to death, that would be them
getting it
?”
 

“How about you just fucking answer the question for once?”
 

Meyer closed his eyes and exhaled, forcing himself to calm down. He’d kept it together so far. They all had. But they were teetering on a precipice, and at some point someone in the van would stare reality in its unblinking eye. It was easy to pretend there weren’t ships approaching from outer space — and to pretend they wanted to reach the Vail compound for an early ski season — but there were harsh truths that all of them had so far managed to nudge aside. He wasn’t as immune to that knowledge as he’d managed to seem, and was in danger of showing it now. Heather was in trouble. Beneath Meyer’s calm veneer, his fear for her was a blood red warning.
 

“Is that Mom?” said Trevor. “Is anything wrong?”
 

Meyer waved him away, then turned forward, now trying to speak quietly, to listen without being overheard. What he wouldn’t give for an office door to close.
 

On the other end of the phone, Heather sounded like she was crying. Not helpless crying — terror crying. Closer to hyperventilation than a quiet sob.
 

“Where are you? Specifically? Tell me what happened.”
 

Heather spoke again, her voice still hitching but more contained. For once, she sounded both composed and serious. A good sign. No panic and no jokes — so far, so good.
 

“Just outside Vegas. I don’t know the road. It’s all desert.”
 

“Vegas.” Meyer took the phone from his ear and squinted at Piper, asking a silent question. They’d heard something about Vegas. Something that, as he thought about it now, tickled the back of his brain with bad news. What was wrong in Vegas?
Something
…
 

“It’s burning to the ground. There are squads of people walking around — not running, but walking, like they’re on patrol — and just general fuckery from one end to the other.”
 

Piper was pointing at her tablet’s screen, showing Meyer the news update he’d seen earlier, about Vegas.
 

“You should have gone around it.”
 

“I
went
around it. And … ” There was a crashing sound. Heather shrieked, then fumbled the phone. Meyer waited, hearing ambient noise, wondering what might have happened. The line was still open, but what had happened to Heather? A minute later, she was back.
 

“What do I do, Meyer?”
 

“You haven’t told me what’s wrong.”

“Because you interrupted to yell at me for getting too close and not following instructions.”
 

“Okay, fine.”
 

“But these … these three Big Daddy Roth cartoons came out of nowhere, all supercharged hotrods with engines poking out of the top and shit, bunch of toothless motherfuckers hanging out all over the place, hooting at me like they wanted to drag race, beat me to death, and peel off my skin, whatever.”
 

“What, they came after you? From Vegas?”
 

“Two behind me at first, coming up on the side, waving and hooting and yelling. Then one more pulled up in front and … ”
 

“Why didn’t you stay out in the desert? You got too close to the city.”
 

“Let’s talk some about what I should have done! Let’s rehash all the shit I did wrong during our marriage! You’re always right! You always know best!”
 

“Calm down.”
 

Another bang. Another small gasp from Heather.
 

“They’re herding me back.”
 

“What does that mean?”
 

“They’re herding me like a fucking cow, Meyer! That’s what it means!”
 

“Where?”
 

“I don’t know. Toward the Strip?”
 

“Can you outrun them?”
 

“I’m in a Prius. They’re burning premium and testosterone.”
 

Meyer wondered why in the hell anyone driving around Vegas in hotrods would want Heather’s crappy little hybrid, but he refrained from asking.
They want the driver, not the car.

“Are you at least behind the wheel?”
 

“No. I left it on autodrive. The car keeps beeping courteously at them, asking if they wouldn’t mind staying in their lane. And asking me if I’d like to stop at the Arby’s up ahead. And that’s really the worst part of all of this, Meyer. Why does it think I would ever, in a million years, no matter how many alien ships show up … ”
 

Meyer felt a strong need to cut Heather off before she finished the sentence.