Alien Invasion (Book 1): Invasion (27 page)

“You’re thinking of goldfish,” she said.
 

“So you’re saying they’ll stop when they’re full.”
 

Lila shrugged. There was only so much she could do. If nobody had come back, they’d have starved in their stalls. If nobody came back even now, they’d run out of food and starve in the arena. Maybe they’d eat themselves to death. Maybe she was choosing their doom, same as she was choosing her own.

Raj closed the gate to the storage area, and proceeded to toss several hay bales inside, followed by three cracked-open bags of feed. Then he vaulted the gate, walked to the arena’s far end, and opened the outside door. They were in the mountains, a wild area, with barely any traffic. Horses were animals. They’d adapt.
 

“Split the difference,” he said.
 

Time passed differently once they were riding. Lila hadn’t fully realized her exhaustion until she was back to traveling without using her legs.
 

Something in her mind had shut off a lot of what was happening in her body — perhaps trying to keep her feet moving despite pain and fear and fatigue, obeying a primitive sense of self-preservation. But now that her only job was to balance atop the horse (she didn’t even have to think or steer; her father was in the lead, and the others simply followed), Lila found her mind had gone back to wandering. She wondered if she was in shock.

What was shock like? Yet another condition she couldn’t look up. When she felt dizzy thinking of their destination, was that morning sickness, shock, or cowardice? Did Trevor and Raj feel the same? Did Piper?
 

A few days was all it had taken to affect a change in Piper. She was still Lila’s quirky, vaguely New-Age stepmother. She was still cool; she still shared a surprising amount of Lila’s tastes in music — and of course in clothing, seeing as she was the brain behind Quirky Q. Lila’s friends had been over the moon when Lila’s father had married Piper Fucking Dempsey — but to Lila, it had all been so obvious. Yes, Piper was amazing. But her father had married her when she’d been Piper Fucking Quincy, a nobody known by no one. Piper Quincy had put the Q in Quirky Q, but the world only knew her after she’d married the mogul who funded her business to make it what it was now. To put the Fucking in Piper Fucking Dempsey, as it were.
 

But now, in addition to being all those cool things — more an older sister than a mother figure — Piper had grown an edge. She rode beside Lila’s father rather than behind him as she would have in the past. She’d taken the driver’s seat several times when they’d still had a car — not just when Meyer needed rest, but sometimes because she liked her hands on the wheel.

“Hey,” said Raj.
 

He’d ridden up alongside her, same as Piper had ridden up to her father. She looked over, trying to see him anew. He’d proven himself during this trip, even though he technically shouldn’t even be on it. He’d been forced into the family as if by a crowbar, and seemed to fit. He’d been noble and stupid enough to run after the woman in trouble when the freeway riot began, then smart enough to cut his losses and drag Lila back out. He’d handled the car salesman with the gun. He’d stood up to her father, even though he’d lost. She could hardly count that against him. Everyone lost to Meyer Dempsey.
 

“Hey.”
 

“How are you? I mean … ” He looked ahead, past Trevor, to the adults at the front of their five-horse caravan on the road’s side. He patted his own stomach and lowered his voice. “You know. With the … ?”

She forced a smile. “I feel okay. For now.”
 

“Not sick?”
 

Lila looked up at the bright-blue sky, hemmed in by hills and trees. Being up in these mountains was almost like being in a valley, but the feeling was secure rather than claustrophobic. It was almost possible to believe they might escape the spheres. The sun was high though the air held a chill.
 

“Only in the mornings. I don’t feel like throwing up once it gets past noon, like clockwork.” She pointed at the high sun, establishing the time without digging for her phone.

“You didn’t seem like you wanted to throw up this morning.”
 

“I barfed in one of the stalls.”
 

“Oh.”
 

“But I don’t know if that’s morning sickness. I might just be convinced it
should
be morning sickness.”

“How would that work?”
 

Lila let it go. Her own mind could manufacture all sorts of illnesses if it thought it was supposed to, but Raj was cut and dry. He’d make a good doctor. Maybe even a good dad.
 

“Never mind.”
 

“Piper said she heard on the news that the ships are slowing down.”

Lila looked over. Why did he have to say that? She’d managed to feel human and normal for a few minutes. They had a sunny day with long shadows and crisp mountain air. It was almost possible to imagine all the skiers arriving a few months from now, parking their expensive vehicles and walking toward lodges with their overpriced skis. That was a world where people had nothing better to do than reach the top of a big hill and slide back down on boards. A world that she suspected might never return.

Lila recovered anyway. Denial wouldn’t help. If things were coming, she might as well force herself to get used to it.
 

“I thought they were already slowing down.”
 

“Well, sure. But now they’re, you know, braking.”
 

“Like breaking into pieces?”
 

“No.
Braking
. Like, ‘whoa.’” He pulled the reins back to demonstrate, and the horse dutifully stopped. Lila laughed as he nudged his mount’s sides to catch up.
 

“What does that mean?”
 

“That they don’t want to ram us.”
 

She’d forgotten the idea that the ships might simply ram Earth to begin with. Raj’s bringing up the threat then dismissing it immediately didn’t feel like good news. It felt like a wash.
 

Lila looked up, wondering how long it would be before people could see the ships with the naked eye. Maybe some people already could. The thought gave her a chill, but she stuffed it down.

“Oh. Well, that’s good.”
 

“Sure.” Silence, then, “What do you think they want?”
 

Lila shrugged, trying to hide her dread.

“What do you think they’re
like?”
he said.
 

Lila didn’t like the images
that
brought up, either. She wondered at herself, watching her own reactions as if from the outside. Had she been thinking they might be giant marbles that would show up, hang out, then leave without doing anything? Because based on her reactions to Raj’s perfectly sensible inquiries, it sure seemed she had.
 

“I have no idea.” She decided to rip off the Band-Aid. “I just hope they’re not those gray things with the giant, black, almond-shaped eyes.”
 

Raj studied Lila.
 

“You have
big
,
brown
, almond-shaped eyes. Maybe they’ll like you.”
 

Lila wondered if she should be insulted, but he clearly meant it as a cutesy compliment. And besides, it was true. She did have big, brown, almond-shaped eyes.

“Maybe.”
 

“I get a little ashy sometimes,” he said. “Do you think our baby might be able to pass for one of them, if they take over the planet and enslave us all?”
 

Now he’d taken it too far.
 

“Raj, that’s not … ”
 

But her horse — with autodrive as good as either of their two cars on this long trip — had stopped to keep from rear-ending Trevor’s. Her brother’s horse, in turn, had stopped behind the leads.
 

They’d been on a long, packed-dirt road that Lila now realized was her own new driveway. She’d never been to the under-construction compound, but if they were really the only house on what she’d taken for this long road, it was isolated indeed.
 

The house peeking between the trees looked finished to Lila, though there was a stack of lumber and shingles to one side and a port-a-potty standing on the unfinished dirt lawn. It must just be final details that needed doing up top, but her father had been clear: the bunker, which mattered most, was finished, full, and downright bombproof.
 

“Wow, Dad,” said Trevor. “It’s awesome.”
 

Meyer said nothing.
 

“Dad?”
 

Piper reached out slowly as if she wanted to touch him. But her hand seemed to decide it had been foolish and settled back on her leg, twitching as if unsure where to go.
 

Lila looked from one to the other. In front of her, Trevor turned back, puzzled.
 

“What’s wrong, Dad? Why did we stop?”
 

“That strikes me as off.” He pointed toward an out-jut that was, seen from the side, probably a garage. Beside it was a blue PriusX, its bumper half-off and resting on the concrete.
 

“Is that … ?” Lila began. But it almost had to be. “That’s Mom’s car!”
 

Trevor’s head whipped around, and both Lila and her brother began to stir, their horses sensing their desire to move forward.
 

Meyer held out a pacifying hand, palm back, to stop them. “Hang on.”
 

Lila waited for him to elaborate, then saw silhouettes moving in the window, just behind two pickups at the end of fresh ruts — two vehicles that, now that she thought about it, really had no business being here.
 

The silhouettes were holding long things that could only be shotguns.
 

“We’re not quite home yet,” he said.
 

CHAPTER THIRTY

Day Five, Early Evening
 

Axis Mundi
 

Heather wondered if it meant anything that all three of the men who’d taken over Meyer’s house had facial hair.

She wasn’t tied to a chair like a movie damsel, and she wasn’t gagged, but the three men had mustaches appropriate to binding and gagging damsels just the same. They kept threatening to rectify the gag situation if she didn’t shut the hell up.
 

As far as Heather could tell, they didn’t recognize her. That was probably good because they wouldn’t see her as having any special value (as if the world, right now, cared about C-list celebrity), and it was similarly good because it meant she’d just be a loudmouth fortysomething Jew rather than a famous girl worth raping, if for no other reason than bragging rights.
 

Or a rousing game of I Never.
 

I never fucked a famous comedienne.
And then these three assholes would have to drink.
 

But she hadn’t been raped outside of Vegas, she hadn’t been raped after those onlookers had responded to the gunshots she’d managed to squeeze from the pistol despite her revulsion, and she hadn’t been raped the nights she’d had to stop her car after the GPS had failed and her Prius — not the most advanced vehicle — lost its ability to navigate without her.
 

Heather wondered if she should be offended that so few people had tried to rape her. She was still smoking hot. All the tabloids said so.
 

It was the kind of wry, inappropriate, that’s-just-wrong joke she’d make in one of her shows. Nobody would even flinch, probably. After all the shit that had made her famous onstage? She was immune. The infamous Hitler jokes assured that. Now, nothing from her mouth could shock an audience. And besides, the minute people started laughing at her wrong jokes — which they always did, and rather breathlessly — they were culpable. If someone had a problem with her jokes about wet panties and Hitler (note to self: need jokes about
Hitler’s
wet panties), that accusing finger would have to turn on everyone who’d ever thought they were funny, too.
 

Heather stood, sat, stood again. They’d locked her in the second pantry, apparently agreeing that binding her to a chair was a bit too tried and true. The pantry wasn’t stocked yet, but for some reason only Meyer understood it had a mesh door that the assholes in her house had locked via two screwdrivers hammered into the jamb. They had a lot of screwdrivers. For a while, the leader (the one with the best, most Snidely Whiplash mustache; the others were closer to simply unshaven) had forgotten about his tool belt, as if this were just another day on the Vail house job. He’d taken it off after Heather mocked him about it through the grate, and for a while he’d stared at her with hatred. She was sure a revenge-raping was on the table. But then he’d pussied out, like all tough guys did. Heather should know, as a woman in an industry dominated by men. They’d all tried to push her around for a while when she’d been new, but then she’d crossed every line that anyone could possibly imagine, including that of her father’s secret alcoholism and discovering her mother’s vibrator and how it had been clumped with disgusting goo. Then the boys had left her alone. It was like fistfighting with a crazy person. You never knew what stupid shit they might do, seeing as they were out of their minds, so those with no stones just stayed in the corner.