Alien Invasion (Book 1): Invasion (23 page)

But she wouldn’t have a doctor. Not for the delivery if they had to stay underground, and not for the checkups. How would she know how the baby was developing? Who would she ask her medical questions? If Mom arrived, she could ask her, but Piper had never been pregnant. How would she know if she was gaining enough weight, too much weight, or if something was wrong? What if the baby’s umbilical cord was wrapped around its neck during the delivery? What if it was breech?
 

Oh, shit — what if she needed a C-section?

Lila told herself to relax. As her father had pointed out many times already, nothing had even happened yet. Wasn’t it possible that the aliens would be friendly? Wasn’t it possible that there
were
no aliens, and that the spheres were just probes or something? Wasn’t it possible that they were, indeed, alien ships … but that they were bound for somewhere beyond Earth, maybe on their way to the sun?
 

And besides — women had been having babies forever. Since way before modern medicine. It’s the reason humanity still existed. Even Eve had managed it, and she’d had the world’s first vagina. And it’s not like Adam had been prepared to be an obstetrician, amateur gynecologist though he’d undoubtedly been.
 

And hey, throughout history, only, like, half of women died in childbirth.

She was pulled from her reverie as the car slowed, shocked to realize hours had passed into dark. They’d found a gas station at the crossroads of nothing and nowhere, and its lights were on — obvious now that the light had mostly drained from the day. It was fully automated, like a real civilized station in the city. There didn’t need to be an attendant — and there was, therefore, nobody around.
 

At least that’s what they thought before they knew they were wrong.
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Day Four, Early Evening
 

Rural Iowa
 

Piper didn’t want to breathe a word, but she knew something was wrong, or about to be.
 

They’d been too lucky. Things had gone entirely too well. They’d found themselves stuck in a highway riot, in the middle of an apparent alien invasion, and they were still alive and together. They were still on their way. They still had a fair amount of supplies, including not-terrible food and clean water. They’d managed to steal a good car without so much as getting shot, and were only a dozen or so miles away from living out the coming apocalypse in opulence.
 

It bothered Piper that they were cut off from the world. The Internet had still been up and running as of twenty-four hours ago, but they hadn’t been able to access it since. The JetVan had a private network fed from the satellite, but without the van they were subject to the whims and traffic limits of ground-based towers like everyone else. That meant no service, no access, and no news beyond what local radio (not even the satellite network, which didn’t have an active subscription in the Land Cruiser) provided.

The same was true of voice coverage on the phones. She and Meyer both kept turning their seats around, to check on the kids’ mood and to pass the time with conversation. Several times, she’d seen Trevor and Lila listening to their phones like kids hoping to hear the ocean in a conch shell. They’d dropped the phones guiltily into their laps as soon as Piper looked back — and Piper, sensing she should allow them their dignity, hope, or both, allowed them to think she’d seen nothing.
 

But she knew what they were doing: trying to contact their mother. Trying to call Raj’s parents. Trying to call friends they’d had back when the world was still a more innocent place.
 

Not that the adults were immune to hope. She’d tried her parents several times, and she kept seeing Meyer listen to his phone from the corner of her eye. Sometimes she let him have his privacy and sometimes she raised an eyebrow as he hung up, silently asking if he’d had any luck. But of course he hadn’t, same as her. No one could answer without a connection.
 

Trevor and Lila’s mother might be dead. They might never know for sure, but privately Piper thought it was a safe bet, given the last they’d heard of her.
 

Raj’s parents might be dead too. That one seemed less likely as an isolated event, but it raised a troubling uncertainty for Piper: the fate of New York as a whole. Piper was just twenty-nine, and felt herself still just a child these past few days. She’d grown up in a connected world, where you could learn just about anything about anywhere at any time. Having no news of New York — or anywhere — for long stretches of time unsettled her to the core.
 

They’d been sticking to back roads, with Meyer always watching the map for a way out in case they ran into another traffic jam. There was always a way around, but that precaution meant sticking to farm roads big enough to be on the map but not large enough to risk congestion. It meant a lot of driving through nothingness, and sometimes all that prickled the radio dial were low-wattage religious broadcasts: preachers who thought the aliens were Jesus coming home, or that they carried the wrath of God in their round ships’ bellies.
 

When they could get news, it felt to Piper like surfacing for air in a vast expanse of water. Each time she heard a broadcast, it felt like Genesis, with the world created anew rather than simply reported upon.

Chicago was back! It hadn’t been destroyed!
 

New York was back! Nobody had burned it to the ground!

But between strong signals, both cities might have perished. Anything could have happened. Nobody could contact anyone, and no responsible souls had taken to available airways to trumpet the good news of America’s survival.
 

Piper found herself pondering the sky’s edge as dusk slowly turned it from dim to dark. How far away was the horizon in flat land? She had no idea — and, being a child of the Internet, felt helpless with no way to Google the answer. Maybe fifty miles? Maybe less?

It meant she knew that for fifty miles (maybe less) in every direction, the world still existed.
 

Beyond that was anyone’s guess.
 

The thought made Piper feel cold and lonely, so she unlocked the seat and slid it closer to Meyer’s, then lay down with her head in his lap. He looked down, brushed dark bangs from her eyes, and smiled. Piper suspected he knew what she was thinking — at least her thoughts’ vague color. He always did. Meyer seemed to know everything in advance, same as he’d known to build a bunker and make plans bent on getting them to it. Same as he claimed, through visions brought by the drug Piper feared and didn’t understand (and partaken with Heather, her mind added bitterly), that Meyer knew they’d better be in their shelter when the clock ran out.
 

She’d asked him, in a whisper, what he suspected.
 

What will happen, Meyer? What will happen when those ships arrive?

But he wouldn’t even answer. He’d shaken his head as if he didn’t know, and maybe at the top level of his mind, he didn’t. But
something
in Meyer knew.
Something
had them running scared, thankful that they were a night’s drive from Vail, afraid that something might yet stand in their way.
 

Now she lay with her head in his lap, his reassuring fingers stroking her hair as if she were a pet. Just another child for him to shepherd, another mouth to feed.
 

She must have fallen asleep, because by the time Piper looked up again, she saw a dark pall behind Meyer’s head, the cut of his strong jawline above.
 

She straightened.
 

“Where are we?” she asked.
 

“Outside Des Moines.”
 

She looked around. By their new definitions, being “outside” a city meant a horizon at least. She was reminded of her earlier solipsistic thoughts and considered asking Meyer how he could be sure Des Moines was even still there. But it was a silly thought by a silly, frightened little girl. She let it go.
 

“What time is it?”
 

He apparently didn’t know, because he looked at the dash before answering.
 

“Almost eight.”
 

“From Chicago. Is that good time?”
 

Meyer shrugged. He was fourteen years older than her, but no less used to GPS and the Internet. They could unfold the map and see if it looked like good time, but it hardly mattered. They were where they were, and they had to go where they needed to go.
 

She looked through the windshield, feeling the car slow around her. A gas station was ahead, in the middle of a dark crossroads spotted only by a few yellowish streetlights. There were houses in the distance, but they were mute, with only scant illumination in the windows. She looked back at the kids to gauge the vehicle’s mood (or to assure herself that there were still people in the world, seeing as she couldn’t count on more than fifty miles of America), and found Lila looking uneasy. She was about to ask what was troubling her, but Meyer nodded at the station and spoke first.
 

“I want to stop here. It looks automated, so the pumps might still be unlocked.”
 

“Do we need gas?”
 

“We always kind of need gas. Maybe they’ll have cans.”
 

Maybe. But they’d passed a few stations along the way so far, always on these quiet back roads where it seemed that only horses and buggies truly belonged (not really, of course, but Piper had grown used to the hurly burly of a city), and this was the first in a while that still looked up and running. Just one more thing for Piper to worry about. Had the other stations been down because the attendants had shuttered them up before running home to hide? Or had the grid finally failed? But even the dead stations had been devoid of gas cans, just as they’d been stripped of food and water. There wasn’t much out here in the boonies, and the locals seemed to have divvied it up well before the city mice showed up.
 

“Sure,” Piper said. But she wasn’t sure at all. That creeping feeling of luck running thin was like a splinter in her spine. She wouldn’t say anything to Meyer because he’d only laugh (or not, but she tended to flinch from his mockery the same as she flinched from his judgments about her religion — or would, if she told him she still had any), but Piper felt it just the same. They’d taken this trip on Meyer’s hunches and foreknowledge, but still she felt her own wasn’t worth saying. She was being chicken. Immature. A fool, with her head in the clouds.
 

But Meyer was studying her. The roads had been plenty clear for autodrive using the banked (but apparently undisplayable) maps, and he only took over manually when he wanted to stop. So far, he’d just told it to slow. He’d take the wheel soon, but for now he still had his eyes free. And you couldn’t hide much from Meyer Dempsey’s careful eyes when he decided to look.
 

“What is it?”
 

“Nothing.”
 

“Piper.” More earnest, more firm. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”
 

She laughed, and the sound was too loud. She should have left the radio on. They should be able to get Des Moines by now, and probably had been able to for a while. If it was still there, of course.
 

“I’m just a little freaked out. I know it’s ridiculous.”
 

He gave her a small, bittersweet smile. “It’s not ridiculous to be freaked out right now. Not even a little.”
 

“I’m sorry.”
 

“Don’t be sorry.”
 

That was sensible advice, but Piper kept thinking of all she didn’t know.
 

Were the ships closer to Earth?
 

Had they sped up or slowed down?
 

Had they annihilated Shanghai?
 

Was the president promising a quick response or urging a nationwide evacuation?
 

Strictly speaking, they should have kept the radio on at all times, scanning for new information. But they could only take so much, even when the signal was strong, and the outside world brought comfort with its voice — even when its news was grim. Music was better than terror’s unending drumbeat of terror. And when there was no music, silence was a strain of solace.
 

She reached for the radio, suddenly eager to split the moment. But Meyer held up a hand to stop her.
 

“I want to be able to listen,” he said.
 

“Why?”
 

“It just … ”
 
He looked like he’d said too much. His eyes flicked to the kids as he turned the Cruiser to manual and settled his foot on the pedal. “It pays to know what’s going on around you.”
 

Piper looked at the approaching gas station. She was suddenly very, very sure that stopping was an awful idea. They were in the middle of nowhere. The station was deserted, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. If something went wrong, there would be no witnesses.