From a Distant Star (29 page)

Hearing my thoughts, he nodded in affirmation, then leaned down and kissed my brow.

“Oh.” I looked up at him, not knowing what to say. When the doctor told Lucas the cancer treatment would make him sterile, he’d been bitter about it, but I’d told him I didn’t care. That all I cared about was that he would live. And this was basically true, but now, knowing I could have his child was like getting a gift wrapped in a miracle.

Scout said, “When I’m gone, will you remember me?”

Tears filled my eyes. “Every day of my life.” I wiped my eyes with my fingertips. “Thank you.”

There was a commotion out on the field. Distracted, we peered through the bushes and saw one of the soldiers walking Christy Carversen out of the woods, his gun aimed at her back. She had her hands up. A resolute look crossed Scout’s face and he released me from his grasp.

“Good-bye, Emma,” he said. “I need to go.” And then, before I could stop him, he ran out onto the field, straight toward the soldiers, his hands raised in the air.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

“Scout, no! Wait!” I dropped my backpack and flashlight and followed him out onto the field, my arms raised in the air, my breathing ragged. The soldiers, grouped in clusters across the clearing, caught sight of us a moment later, and their guns snapped to attention right at us. Scout, oblivious to how this worked, kept on going. A cannon-sized light swung in our direction, blinding me for a moment.

A man’s voice boomed out over the field: “Drop the weapon immediately!”

I stopped, confused. Neither of us had a weapon. Why did they think we did? “We’re unarmed,” I yelled. “Scout, stop!” I could barely see him through the glare as he trotted forward, not listening.

“Drop your weapon
now
and get on the ground or we’ll shoot.” The voice came over some kind of speaker as loud as an announcer at a sports event. I threw myself down, not wanting to die that night, or any night really, but definitely not that one. Above my head, gunfire cracked, making me shudder, and then, just like that, it was over. I raised my head to look and saw soldiers trotting across the field toward me, their boots eye level with my face. I flinched, waiting for the inevitable, but they went right past me. I craned my neck to look behind me and saw a man down on
the ground, a rocket launcher lying a few feet away from his outstretched arm. Some other men jogged by with a stretcher, and a lone man came after, toting a medical box. I watched as they lifted the man I assumed to be Christy Carversen’s brother, Woodcarver. The patient shouted out a string of curse words as they attended to his injuries. So he wasn’t dead, just wounded.

Suddenly, Agent Mariah Wilson was standing above me, her hand extended. I took it and she pulled me to my feet. “We meet again, Ms. Garson,” she said. “You’re not so good at following directions, I see.”

My fear melted into despair. In a minute, we were going to be hauled off, interrogated, and maybe killed, or charged with some fake crime. All of this, the planning, the car ride, the close calls, opening the locked basement door, reaching Regina—all that, and Scout still wouldn’t make it home? No, this just wasn’t right. It couldn’t all be for nothing.

Downfield, I saw Scout talking to Agent Goodman and pointing to the sky.

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” I said, thinking that Scout was probably saying plenty already. “Why can’t you just leave us alone? We’re not hurting anyone. Why can’t you just go and forget you ever saw us?”

She shook her head. “That’s not going to happen. Come with me.” I hesitated and she said, “I asked you nicely. If I have to ask again it’s not going to be so nice.” I looked around at all the soldiers with guns and knew I didn’t have a choice.

Agent Wilson gripped my elbow so tightly I swear her fingers dug all the way in until they found bone. She pulled me along, past one helicopter and a group of soldiers who barely looked my way. When we reached Agent Goodman and Scout, she said, “Cuff ’em. I don’t want to lose these two again.”

Agent Todd Goodman said, “Do you think that’s necessary? They’re just kids.” She raised both eyebrows, and he said, “Okay.
Got it.” He pulled two sets of handcuffs seemingly out of nowhere and then had Scout turn around while he clicked a set onto his wrists.

When it was my turn, I blinked tears away, determined to be strong. “Are we being charged with something?” I asked, remembering what Roy Atkins, the senior citizen–square-dancing moonshiner, had said. “Because I don’t think you can hold us if you aren’t charging us.”

“Yeah, we’re charging you with disturbing the peace,” Mariah Wilson said, chuckling.

“Can’t we just wait here for a while? My friend is meeting someone here. They’ll expect him to be here tonight.” I made a good case, I thought, but she didn’t even turn her head in my direction.

She ignored me, tapping on the side of the chopper and addressing Agent Goodman. “Get ’em inside.”

It wasn’t easy to climb in with our hands cuffed behind our backs, but Agent Goodman helped guide us to our seats, then buckled our seat belts for us.

“I’m sorry it ended up this way,” I said to Scout, who sat next to the window. He was watching as they loaded Christy Carversen and her brother, strapped to a gurney, into another helicopter.

He gestured out the window with a tip of his head and spoke softly. “Christy and her brother hate people from other planets, because their grandfather was taken once by a spaceship and probed. He said they hurt him badly. It is a family story that has caused much hatred.”

“Do you believe that story?” I asked. Out on the field, soldiers were getting their final orders and lining up to get back on the choppers.

“I have heard of it happening.” He shrugged. “But no one from my planet would do such a thing. It is not our way.”

The two federal agents sat down in seats facing us, the pilot behind them. A crew of soldiers entered the chopper from the
opposite side and filed in, barely glancing our way as they moved past to take their seats. If they were curious, they didn’t show it. None of them would have helped us, even if they knew the whole story. They knew their duty. The world was divided into us and them, and we weren’t them.

After the doors slammed shut, Agent Goodman turned around and gave the pilot the okay to take off. The engine started up with a mighty vibration, accompanied by the roar of the whirring blades. I yelled, “Where are you taking us?”

Agent Wilson just shook her head and looked annoyed. We lifted sharply into the air, the suddenness giving my stomach a rollercoaster-ride lurch. It didn’t help that the cuffs dug into my wrists. I leaned against Scout and tried to give him a reassuring smile, even though I wasn’t really feeling it. He met my eyes and nodded before turning his attention back to the window.

We hovered above the tree line, and I saw the lights of the other helicopters as they rose and flanked us. Our seats rumbled as we were jostled from side to side; the noise was incredible. If my hands had been free, I would have covered my ears. Through the window, I saw the field, dotted with the solar lights, so very small from up here. I felt someone’s eyes on me and I looked up to see Mariah Wilson, her arms folded and a grin on her face. I didn’t need to have Scout’s ability to pick up on her smug satisfaction. The chopper went up again and then, abruptly, it stopped and I saw Mariah Wilson’s expression change to surprise, her facial muscles moving in slow motion. And then everything began to happen in slow motion.

The sound of the blades became muffled and the view out our window softened. We could still see the dark night sky, but it seemed to be off in the distance, like looking through a sheet of waved glass far beyond. The best I could make out was that the helicopters had been lifted up inside of something enormous that
now encased us, causing our actions to slow down like moving through water.

“What’s . . . going . . . on?” Agent Goodman yelled, the words stretching like someone had reduced the film speed.

Peering down, I saw that, below us, what looked like giant glass doors, larger than the landing field, were pulling shut, and now the ground below appeared as gauzy as a dream. All around us, the stars shone as if we were seeing them through a prism. My sense of reality had become distorted; I was mesmerized by the way time and space were reshaping around us, but having trouble making sense of it.

If I had to guess, I’d say we were inside a giant, transparent spaceship. The helicopters were stuck in place, and the space outside the window was hazy. I was able to make out movement within the opalescent murkiness. People? I wasn’t quite sure. The shapes were generally right: a head, body, and limbs, but it was so indistinct I couldn’t tell.

It took an enormous effort to turn my head to look at Scout. His smile confirmed my guess. His ship had come and, instead of landing on the ground or beaming him up like in the movies, it had swallowed all of us whole. Just as Mrs. Kokesh had predicted, we were in the belly of the whale. Scout leaned forward, his movements deft and quick compared to the rest of us, and he rested a hand on each of the agent’s knees.

“Once you land, you will need to let Emma go. Do you understand?” he said, speaking firmly. “You have to release her
right away.
Nothing will be more important than letting her go.” Both of them nodded compliantly. He added, “Do not bother her, or anyone she knows, ever again.”

Then he sat back and turned to me, a warm smile stretching across his face. “I have to go now,” he said, leaning over to kiss my cheek. “You have been everything to me, Emma. Do not forget me.”

The door opened and closed, and he was gone before my lips could even part to speak a word. Where he’d been sitting, the seat belt was unfastened, and the handcuffs, now open, rested on the empty seat. He left so quickly it reminded me of a magician’s stage show where they disappear in a puff of smoke. Except there’d been no smoke. One second, Scout was in the seat next to mine, and the next, he was gone in a blur and the slam of the door, taking my boyfriend’s body with him. Through the window, I saw the outline of that same body walking away from the helicopter. Other forms rushed toward him as if in greeting. Happy to have him back.

The last thing I remember was calling out to him, my words coming out thick and slow. “Scout, wait—what about Lucas?” I can’t honestly say if this part actually happened. Later, it all felt like a dream.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

We all came to at about the same time, gaining consciousness as if we’d been in a deep sleep and were slowly waking up. The helicopters were down on the ground now, parked on the landing field. The engines were off, so everything was dead silent and dark. I had no idea how much time had elapsed or how we’d gotten from inside an alien ship back to Earth. I blinked a few times, wanting to rub my eyes, but my hands were still cuffed. The agents, still sitting across from me, were trying to make sense of what had happened. They remembered much less than I did and I wasn’t about to bring them up to speed. Scout’s empty seat and instructions loomed in their minds, but they couldn’t recall the specifics. Just the feelings he’d imparted, and the importance of letting me go and not bothering me or anyone I knew, ever again.

Agent Wilson got up to talk to the pilot and I heard his voice as he spoke to the other pilots via the radio. There was no record of the interruption and no one seemed to know what had occurred from the time of the first takeoff until now. “We’ll proceed as originally planned?” the pilot said and I held my breath.

“Just one minute,” I heard Agent Wilson say. The light came on in the cabin. She came back to her seat and spoke to Agent Goodman. “Take the cuffs off her.”

He got up dutifully and released my seat belt. I leaned forward and twisted so he could reach my hands, and in a few seconds, I was free. I rubbed my wrists and shook my hands to get the cramps out. “What are you going to do?” I asked, but now they were whispering to each other, not paying any attention to me.

Mariah Wilson roughly slid open the door and pointed a finger at the opening. “Out you go,” she said.

I looked at the field delineated by the dim solar lights and weighed my options. If I left now, how would I ever contact Scout and arrange to get Lucas back? Or maybe, and this was a horrible, unthinkable thought, maybe this had been Scout’s plan all along. Perhaps he lied to get me to help him all the while having no intention of returning Lucas to me ever. Maybe there was no way to extract Scout from Lucas’s body and have Lucas remain unharmed. I knew it was possible but I didn’t want to believe it. After all, Scout had said he’d been in Mack’s body, and the dog was fine after he left.

I hesitated and then said, “Is there someone who can help me send a radio signal to a planet? The one Christy Carversen contacted?”

“Get. Out. Now,” she said.

I scrambled out of the helicopter and looked back to see her making a shooing gesture, like I was an annoying fly. I walked away from the helicopter, in the direction of the woods that stood between me and Christy Carversen’s house. From behind, I heard the helicopters start up, engines rumbling, blades whirring. The motion stirred the night air and lifted my hair off my shoulders. I stopped to look back and saw them rise up above the tree line, then take off in formation. Two minutes later, there was no sign they were ever there. It was just me, all alone in northern Wisconsin, feeling more desperate and afraid than I’d ever felt in my life. I looked up at the stars.

“Where are you, Lucas?” I said aloud, but there was only the rustling of the wind and the chirp of insects in response.

I wandered slowly to the edge of the field and found my flashlight and backpack right where I’d dropped them. I slung the backpack over one shoulder and turned on the light. I focused on getting back to Christy Carversen’s house, and tried to block out my fear and grief, but still I had nagging thoughts. How could I return home without Lucas? And more importantly, how could I live without him? I took a deep breath.
Just one step in front of the other
became my mantra. I pushed aside branches and stepped around tree roots, hoping I was heading in the right direction.