The Grays (14 page)

“I have something,” she said. “A face.”

“What sort of a face?”

“A kid. I asked him about Oak Road and I got the face of a kid.”

“Bring it out.”

Mike was all over her the moment the door closed. “Got what? What did you get?”

“They’re interested in a child.”

“Say more.”

“He’s a boy of fourteen or fifteen, curly hair, and another thing, I glimpsed a dog. He has a dog.”

Mike became furtive. “Okay,” he said, “that makes no sense.”

“Yes it does. They’re interested in this kid.”

“Probably some kind of breeding issue. We’ll never figure it out. You’re dismissed. Operation complete.”

He was lying and he was scared—and she was suspicious. “What’s the deal with this child?”

“Look, I have to go to Washington and I’m already late. You’re done, Lauren. Thank you.”

She watched him leave. The one pleasant thing about her relationship with him was knowing that he wanted her, and denying him. She did it
because—well, she didn’t like him. Just did not like the man. She was not nice to him, couldn’t be. Why, she thought, had something to do with Adam. Adam seemed suspicious of him, somehow. Wary.

“What’s going on, Andy?” she asked as she came into the control room still drying her hair.

“The boss is sure as hell in a lather.”

She went topside, and when the elevator doors opened found Mike just leaving. He was in full uniform, which was pretty unusual around here. He had his briefcase in his hand.

“You’re moving fast,” she said.

“Yep.”

“Are you going to do something to that child, Mike?”

“Look, this is not your issue. Your issue is to communicate with Adam, and to take that job one hell of a lot more seriously than you do.”

“How dare you.”

“How dare me? You’re the one with pictures on the walls down in that hellhole. That thing is a predator. It’s a monster. It’s not a damn pet, for God’s sake, woman.”

She made a decision. He was going to Washington. Fine, she was coming back here and going at it again with Adam. She would get to the bottom of this without Mike around. Because, if this child was in some kind of danger due to her report, then she had a very clear moral duty: no matter the legal blockade her clearance created, she had to protect the kid. She would not be a party to murder, and she would not follow orders that she considered to be illegal.

She watched Mike hurry out to the parking lot, and take off in his latest car, a brand-new VW Phaeton. She knew the value of that car, she’d looked it up. He’d just driven off in half a year’s pay. Where his real money came from she didn’t know, but it sure as hell was not the United States Air Force.

THE SUN PEEKING OVER THE
Warners’ roof woke Katelyn. As usual, she rolled over, at first feeling entirely normal. She considered turning on the news.

And then it hit her: she was upstairs in bed, not in Conner’s room where she had gone to sleep.

Dan chose that moment to slide an arm over her. Katelyn leaped away from him as if his body was on fire.

“Hey!”

“Conner!” She ran downstairs, ran across the kitchen, took his stairs three at a time, and burst in.

When she saw that the door to the outside was open, she stifled a cry. But the lump in the bed seemed entirely normal. She knelt beside him and peeked into the covers. Conner was deeply asleep.

She kissed his freckled cheek, inhaling the milky-sour smell of his skin.

Dan came in, went over and closed the door that led out under the deck and into the backyard. “Look,” he said.

There was a puddle of water on the floor in front of it, standing on the linoleum.

“And outside.”

In the sparse grass that clung to life under the deck, were numerous small holes. They looked for all the world as if somebody had walked there on stilts.

She went to Dan, looked down at the water, out at the peculiar holes. This was not right. None of this should be here. She rushed back to Conner, drew down his covers. Again she kissed him. She pulled him into her arms.

Conner moaned, then suddenly stiffened. “Mom?” he said.

Kneeling beside the bed, she held his face in her hands and looked into his eyes.

He asked, “What’s the matter?”

She hugged him to her, feeling the heft of him against her. Her boy was on the verge of becoming a young man, and he was so beautiful, and you had to be so very careful not to let him know how beautiful you thought he was.

“Could you guys let me get dressed, here?”

The little boy who had cheerfully laid naked in her lap just a few short years ago now did not want to get out from under the covers in her presence, not even wearing pajamas.

She kissed his cheek. “Six months to your first shave,” she said. “Mom predicts.”

“The sooner the better.” He looked at her. She looked back at him. He moved his eyes toward the door.

“Breakfast in ten minutes.”

She and Dan went upstairs.

“What was that about?” Dan asked as she closed the door.

She whispered, “It’s about his growing maturity. Problems controlling what’s up down below.”

“You think? Puberty?”

“Bright kids reach it early, so it says in the book.” As they mounted the stairs, she saw the
CONNER ZONE
sign in his recycling bag and took it out. “The Conner Zone was so cute,” she said.

“Cute is the problem,” Dan said. “Part of it. The other part is being too smart in a world that glorifies the lowest common denominator. Conner’s intelligence is not fashionable, and it’s too big for him to conceal.”

“Oh, I never want him to do that. How’s your ear, by the way?”

“Not actually okay. I could stand to get an X-ray.”

“You’re kidding. On your ear?”

“Well, there’s something there.”

“Something
there?
” She reached up and touched the outer edge of the ear. “It’s a little sort of a knot.”

“I know what it is.”

“Relax, Dan, I’m not the enemy.”

For the past half hour, the smell of coffee had been getting stronger, and she went into the kitchen and poured them both mugs. Dan took his over
to the table. She went into the pantry and got Conner’s latest cereal, some kind of amaranth flakes thing. Conner had his own dietary ideas, most of them pretty smart—and pretty awful. He was a modified vegetarian except when Dan grilled steaks. Then he was a sullen but voracious carnivore.

There was no cancer of the ear, was there?

Conner appeared, poured himself coffee. She waited to see if he put the required amount of half and half in it. Did—but just a drop.

“Eggs?” she asked as she turned on the skillet.

“I’m going to be eating really pure for a while,” Conner said. “No dairy, no alcohol.”

“You don’t drink alcohol,” Dan said. “Better not.”

“I mean, no wine with dinner.”

“Wine belongs to the soul, son. No man can be fully himself without wine.”

“The other kids can’t drink it.”

“Which is why they’ll all be bingeing like the college students in a few years. Did you know that binge drinking among the young is unheard of in Europe, but common here and in the UK? What does that tell you—children have to learn wine early, get used to it. Which is why you’ll continue with a glass of wine at dinner, thank you.”

“I love the irony. Most kids would do anything to drink even so much as a sip. But I don’t want to, so it’s forced on me.”

“Well, you get a glass. One glass. Which is mandatory.”

“Do you want to have the fight now or schedule it for later? Because I will not be drinking wine.”

Dan sighed. “I’ve got to go to the health center to get my ear amputated. Let’s do it when I get back.” He picked up Conner’s cereal box. “I saw this lying open in the pantry last night. Are roach eggs okay for vegans?”

Conner took the box, poured himself some cereal. “Amaranth is one of a handful of dicots which photosynthesize directly to a four-carbon compound.”

“Ah. So the reason you’re now eating nothing but horrible-looking little crumbs is explained. You want that four-carbon compound.”

“Actually, I want the protein and the lysine without meat, plus I get a designer-quality lipid fraction. I have the cholesterol readings of a twelve-year-old, you know.”

“You’re eleven.”

“It’s a joke, Dad.”

“Ah. Of course.”

Katelyn put down her and Dan’s eggs and sat at the head of the table. “May I know the why of the vegan thing?”

“The aliens.”

A silence fell, extended. “Are you about to piss me off?” Dan asked.

“I am eating pure because this neighborhood is in a close-encounter situation and it’s the eating of animals that triggers the kind of fear response I experienced last night. I don’t want to fear the aliens. I want to face them.”

“Oh, boy,” Katelyn said. “Dan—”

“No. No, I understand that I’m being baited. It’s not a big deal, Katelyn.” He watched Conner digging into the amaranth, and as he watched, he got angrier and angrier. He
was
being baited, damn right. Conner was masterful at it. And here he’d been the confidante, the father confessor, just yesterday. Now he was the enemy and his ear hurt like hell, to tell the truth, and he really did not need this just now.

“We had a visit from the grays, and they had an abductee aboard the craft,
and
the Keltons probably have video. A first in history. The world is changing, lady and gentleman, and I am preparing myself.”

“What grays?” Dan asked carefully.

“Try Googling ‘gray aliens’ sometime. You’ll find more than four thousand references. Plus, this business of a UFO descending with a screaming woman inside happened in Kentucky before. Moorehead, 2003, same situation, with one difference—no video. Lots of nine-one-one calls, but no video and therefore no story.”

The sanctimonious singsong, the eyebrows raised to make the face appear absurdly credulous—it was all calculated to infuriate. Conner knew perfectly well how ridiculous Dan considered the whole UFO/alien folklore to be, and how damaging to the culture.

“Goddamnit, it was nothing but some kind of dope-inspired prank!”

“Dad, please. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Dan’s hand had slammed down on the table before he could stop it.

Conner seized the opportunity. “Right, go physical yet again, Dad. It’ll make a juicy story for my psychiatrist-to-be. Another one.”

Dan had spanked Conner exactly one time, when, at the age of three, he had rewired the toaster and caused a dangerous fire in the wall of the kitchen. It had been a single, sharp blow to the left buttock . . . which had been thrown back at him perhaps ten thousand times since.

“Conner, listen to me. I’m up for tenure, which the entire college knows.
It’s terribly important to us. If I don’t get it, I have to resign, which means that we have to move to some other college where Mom and I can both get work, and she has to give up her own tenure here—it’ll be a mess, son. And something like this—a UFO in the backyard—can ruin my chances. Marcie Cotton already wants to write me off. So please, for me, do not say anything about us seeing it for at least another few weeks.”

Conner gazed off into the middle distance. “Prediction: the Keltons’ tape, if it is halfway decent, will make this place famous. Prediction: Dr. Jeffers will make a total idiot of himself about it and he’ll end up with walking papers. Prediction: you will not be damaged by this, but Dr. Cotton will still screw you to the wall.”

Every time Conner used the word “prediction,” a chill went right through Dan. Their son was never wrong. Actually, he found that he was so on edge and Conner sounded so right that he almost burst into tears—and was instantly appalled at himself. How could he possibly react like that? That wasn’t him.

But then he thought—the pressure of the tenure conference coming up, the bizarre events in the night, the sleeplessness, Katelyn’s waking up in near hysterics, this damned lump in his ear—of course he was on edge. Stressed. Big time.

“Look,” he said, “thanks for a perfectly delicious breakfast. Tomorrow’s my turn and it’s waffles unless there are objections.” He looked down at the still-gobbling Conner. “I’ll make yours without egg.”

“Fine.”

“They’ll be fascinating. I’m going to the health center, I’ll call you with a verdict.”

“Prediction,” Conner said. “They will find a small object enclosed in a membrane made of cutaneous tissue. And, if you search your body, you will find an indentation where that tissue was taken from. It’s called a witch’s mark.” He smiled up at Dan. “The grays have been with us for some time.”

“Conner, this happened last night in a kitchen full of people. I hardly think the grays could have operated on me without anybody noticing.”

“There was a moment—probably just a few seconds—when you were all turned off. The grays did what they did and turned you back on as they left. It’s called missing time. It’s the way they handle us. We’re their property, you know. You know what the great anomalist Charles Fort called the world? A barnyard. The grays are the farmers, and right now they’re doing a little farm work right here on Oak Road.”