The True Meaning of Smekday (2 page)

“Oh boy, Pig,” I said softly, and Pig crawled out from under the brake like it wasn’t anything to her one way or the other.

A minute later I pulled to the side of the road and stopped, and looked around at the car. The Boov gun had disintegrated my mirror, and there was a hole in the left rear window where the beam had entered the car. I craned my neck and saw there was an even bigger hole in the rear windshield where it’d left. Each hole was as perfect as could be, like a biscuit cutter through dough.

“I hate them,” I said. “I
hate
them. We were really lucky, Pig.”

But Pig didn’t hear. She was stretched out on the passenger seat, asleep.

Why did the Boov shoot? I didn’t know—all I was doing was driving to Florida, like they wanted. But at mile forty-eight I found out why nobody else was on the road. There wasn’t one.

We were curving around a bend when the car bucked over a pothole. My seat belt went taut as I jerked forward and back, pain twisting up my neck. Pig rolled off her seat, woke up briefly on the floor of the car, and fell back asleep where she was.

I swerved around chunks of asphalt and rounded something that was less like a pothole and more like an empty swimming pool. Then another curve, and the road was gone. My little car dropped off a shelf of pavement into a crater of earth and tar, and I jiggled the steering wheel as I mashed my corn-can foot against the brake. We skidded and plowed through twisted metal curlicues that were once a barricade, then slid down the embankment, rolled over twice, and came to an abrupt stop in a MoPo parking lot.

The air around the car was orange with dust. I clutched the steering wheel like a life preserver. Pig was sprawled on her back in the crook where the windshield meets the dash. Our eyes met, and she gave me a short hiss.

So that was it. Nobody was taking their cars because the Boov had destroyed the highways. Of course they had.

I wearily unbuckled myself and fell out of the car. Pig followed and stretched and darted off after a bug.

I nearly puked. Can I say that in a school paper? That I puked? Because when I said “nearly,” what I really meant was “repeatedly.”

While I was bent over I noticed we’d blown a tire. I wasn’t sure if there was a spare, but it didn’t matter much one way or the other since I didn’t know how to change it. All Mom had ever taught me about vehicle maintenance was the number of a tow truck to call if you stopped moving forward.

Well, it was a long shot, but I figured I might as well try to call
somebody.
I wasn’t likely to get any answer, but we were too far from home to walk back now. I popped open the glove box and retrieved the emergency cell phone that only had one hour of talking time on it and was NOT A TOY. I flipped it open and pushed the power button, and it suddenly crackled to life. Strange voices gibbered back and forth on the other end.

“But I didn’t even dial yet,” I mumbled, and the voices stopped. “Hello?” I said.

The voices came again in bleats and pops, like a lamb stepping on bubble wrap. They grew louder, more agitated.

I quickly hit the power button again and flapped the phone shut. It was like something gross and alien in my hand now, so I pushed it back into the glove box and put a car manual on top of it.

Car manual, I thought. It might tell me how to change the tire. No. Later. It can wait.

I sat down. The sky was clear again, and blue. In the distance was a small town I didn’t know. The tallest building was an old stone church, and this had a clean bite taken out of its bell tower. Nearby I could see broken telephone poles hanging like limp marionettes. I’d been sitting long enough.

“Maybe there’s still some food in the MoPo store,” I said brightly, looking for Pig.

For you time-capsule types, MoPo was something called a convenience store, as in, “The soda is conveniently located right next to the doughnuts and lottery tickets.” People who want to understand better how the human race was conquered so easily need to study those stores. Almost everything inside was filled with sugar, cheese, or weight-loss tips.

It was dark inside, but I’d expected that. Pig followed me to the door, which opened with a jingle, and into the empty store. The shelves were nearly bare, probably looted, except for some moldy bread and yogurt health snacks called NutriZone Extreme FitnessPlus Blaster Bars with Calcium. There was also a bag and a few tins of cat food, which was nice. I sat on the cold linoleum floor and ate one of the pink health bars, and Pig had a tin of Sea Captain’s Entree.

“I don’t think we’re going to make it to Florida,” I said.

“Mao?”

“Florida. That’s where we’re going. Big state, full of oranges.”

Pig went back to her food, and I took another bite of what I was beginning to think was just a big eraser.

“Maybe we can stay here. We’re pretty far outside the city. The Boov might not even notice.”

“Mao.”

“Sure we could. We could live in someone’s house. Or a hotel. And the town’s probably full of canned food.”

“Mao mao?”

“Fine. You’re so smart, give me one reason why it wouldn’t work.”

“Mao.”

“Oh, you say that about everything.”

Pig purred and settled down for a nap. I leaned back against an ATM and shut my eyes against the setting sun. I don’t remember falling asleep, but it was dark outside when I woke with a loaf of bread under my head and heard the jingle of the front door.

I gasped for breath and scampered under a shelf. Too late I remembered Pig, who was nowhere to be seen. Something moved through the vacant store, its footsteps like a drumroll.

Go away, go away,
I chanted in my head at what I was sure was a Boov. It skibbered past my row of shelves, and I got a look at its cluster of tiny elephant legs, clad in a light blue rubber suit. Boov. Probably sent to find me.

Then the drumroll stopped. A wet, nasally voice said, “Oh. Hello, kitten.”

Pig.

“How did you come to be inside of the MoPo?”

I heard Pig purr loudly, the skunk. She was probably rubbing up against each one of its eight legs.

“Did someone…let you to inside, hm?”

My heart pounded. As if Pig might say,
Yeah, Gratuity did. Aisle five.

“Perhaps you are being hungry,” the Boov told Pig. “Would you enjoy to join me in a jar of cough syrup?”

The drumroll resumed. They were moving again. I poked my neck out of the shelf in time to see them walk through a door marked
EMPLOYEES ONLY
.

I slid out and ran, unthinking, for the door. I pushed through with a shove and a tinkling sound and thought, Oh, yeah. The bell. A quick look behind me and I was off. I sped to the car, retrieved my bag, and made for a row of hedges that lined the parking lot. I was safely behind them and watching through a gap in the leaves just in time to see the Boov peek out of the MoPo. He, it, squeezed through the door and looked from side to side, scanning the lot for whatever had been dumb enough to forget the door jingled. Then he gave a start when he saw my car, and smiled back at Pig. I could see her through the door, her front paws up on the glass.

“Hello, hm?” the Boov shouted. He looked up toward the ruined highway and whistled through his nose.

I tried to make myself as small as possible, tried to stop my heart from pounding, or the blood from thrumming in my ears. The Boov pattered across the asphalt toward something new, something I hadn’t noticed before.

In the corner of the lot was this crazy-looking thing, like a huge spool of thread with antlers. It was all plasticky and blue, and it was hanging in the air, about six inches above the ground.

“I would not to hurt you!” the Boov shouted again. “If you would enjoy to be my guest, there is enough cough syrup and teething biscuits for everyone!”

It, he, whatever, hopped his squat body atop the big spool, clamping down around the edges with his little elephant legs. His tiny frog arms reached up and gripped the antlers, and with a few flicks and twists, the blue plastic thing rose a foot in the air and sailed up the hill of shale and weeds to the highway.

“’Allo!” he shouted as he drifted away. “There is no to fear! The Boov are no longer eating you people!”

The Boov’s weird little scooter disappeared over the ridge, and I darted out toward the store—for what? To get Pig? She probably preferred to stay with the Boov. But she was all I had, and the car wouldn’t drive on a flat tire, and my only thought was to vanish into this little town and hope the Boov didn’t try too hard to find me.

“Time to go, Pig,” I said as I burst into the MoPo, my guts jangling like a nervous doorbell. She tried to slip out the door, after the alien, I guess, but I scooped her up.

“Stupid cat.”

I pushed all the cat food and health bars into my bag and dashed out to the car. One last check to make certain I had everything, then I was gone. At the passenger door I remembered the cell phone, and wondered if I should take it, and it was about that time that I got a wicked idea.

Pig squirmed in my arms.

“Wrooowr’ftt,”
she said.

I laughed. “Don’t worry. We’re not going anywhere. We’ll just march into the store and wait for your friend to come back.”

Pig hissed quietly to herself.

Let me tell you how I thought this next part happened. I figured the Boov hovered around the old highway for a bit,
dum de dum
, thinking,
I sure for to am hoping I find Gratuity or whoever it am being, I eat her or I am to be turning her in or beaming her to Florida or something
, then the Boov maybe checked around the MoPo and probably in my car, and then he thought,
Ho hum, it am probably being just my imagination, there am no girl or whatever, me sure am stupid, sheep noise bubble wrap bubble wrap.

Then the Boov parked his antler spool and went back inside the MoPo, and wondered where Pig was, and when the door stopped jingling, he heard something. So he thought,
What am that?
and went to investigate. And as he neared the frozen food section, he could maybe tell it was the voices of other Boov, even though he was so stupid. And he saw there was a freezer door standing open that hadn’t been open before, so he went right over to it and peeked in and made a sheep noise. Maybe at that moment he noticed all the freezer shelves on the floor next to my cell phone, but it didn’t matter, because that was right when I kicked his alien butt inside and barred the door shut with a broom handle.

The Boov hopped up and down and turned to face me. I was happy to see he looked pretty startled, or frightened, and he pressed his thick face against the glass to get a good look at his captor. I did a little dance.

“What for are you did this?” he said. I think that’s what he said. It was hard to hear through the glass. I wondered, suddenly, if he’d run out of air after a while. The thought made me uneasy, and I had to remind myself of the situation I was in.

“Good,” I whispered. “I hope he does run out of air.” I wished he could have been really cold in there, too, but there wasn’t any electricity.

“What?” said the Boov faintly. “What said you?” His eyes darted from side to side like little fish. His frog fingers pawed at the glass.

“I said, you’re getting what you deserve! You stole my mom, so I get to steal one of you!”

“What?”

“You stole my mom!”

“Mimom?”

“MY…MOM!”

The Boov seemed to think about this for a second, then his eyes lit.

“Ahh.
‘My mom’!
” he said happily. “What is it about her, now?”

I shouted and kicked the glass.

“Aha.” The Boov nodded as if I’d said something important. “Ah. So…can I come into the out now?”

“No!” I yelled. “You cannot come into the out. You can never come into the out ever again!”

At this, the Boov looked genuinely surprised, and panicked.

“Then…then…I will have onto shoot with my gun!”

I jumped back, palms up. In all the excitement, I hadn’t thought of that. My eyes darted to where his hips would be, if he’d had any. I frowned.

“You don’t even have a gun!”

“Yes! YES!” he shouted, nodding furiously, as though I’d somehow proven his point. “NO GUN! So I will have to…have to…”

His whole body trembled.

“…SHOOT FORTH THE LASERS FROM MY EYEBALLS!”

I fell into a row of shelves. That one was new to me.

“Shoot forth the lasers?”

“SHOOT FORTH THE LASERS!”

“You can do that?”

The Boov hesitated. His eyes quivered. After a few seconds he replied, “Yes.”

I squinted. “Well, if you shoot your eye lasers, then I’ll have no choice but to…EXPLODE YOUR HEAD!”

“You humans can not to ex—”

“We can! We can too! We just don’t much. It’s considered rude.”

The Boov thought about this for a moment.

“Then…we are needing a…truce. You are not to exploding heads, and I will to not do my DEVASTATING EYE LASERS.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “Truce.”

“Truce.”

A few moments passed in the utter quiet of the store.

“Soo…can I come into the out n—”

“No!”

The Boov pointed over my head, tapping his fingertip against the glass.