Alien Invasion (Book 1): Invasion (20 page)

But the engines had come alive one at a time. First just a few, breaking the night’s stillness. In the dark, surrounded by trees, it had been easy to believe they were in a forest. But it had only taken fifteen minutes before it was apparent that they were in a spreading panic instead.
 

Now, with his hand on Lila’s shoulder, Meyer looked at Lila, Raj, and Trevor, all of them stirring. Meyer had already sneaked to the tree line and back. He knew the answer to their collective question, had overheard enough to put it together.
 

Raj said, “Are those car engines?”
 

Trevor looked at him with the distain of a teenager woken before he was ready. “So you’ve heard engines before. Hooray.”
 

Immediately defensive: “Listen to how many there are, you little shit!”

“Don’t call me a shit, you shit.”
 

“Shut up, Trevor,” Lila snapped.
 

Piper sat up beside Meyer. She looked toward the headlights illuminating the forest’s edge instead of at him, but he looked over at her profile without thinking, taking in her sleep-tousled hair, the strangely confident look in her big, blue eyes. Yesterday’s encounter had changed her in some small way. It was as plain as the nose on her less-panicked-than-expected face.

“What’s going on?” Piper finally looked over, and for a moment Meyer felt guilty. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t his fault alien ships were on their way. But then again, maybe that wasn’t what he felt guilty about.
 

“Something happened overnight. I went out there when it started a while ago. I heard one guy arguing with another, saying that he had a good telescope inside and could ‘see better than you can.’ I think they must be close enough to see.”
 

Confidence bled from Piper’s face. It was easy to forget the approaching ships with all the mayhem on the ground. Riots were rational. Aliens were not.
 

“You mean … ?”
 

Meyer nodded. “I’m sure they don’t look like much with what most people have, but there are plenty of nerds out there with big telescopes who aren’t official NASA.”
 

“But we already knew they were coming,” Trevor said.
 

“You know the expression: ‘Seeing is believing.’”
 

“But … why would they all be leaving? Where are they going?”
 

“Harder to say. I wish we had a TV or a radio. Just from overhearing, though, I think someone might have made some predictions.” Meyer looked around the small group. “About landing spots, maybe.”
 

“How could anyone know where they’re going to land?” said Trevor.
 

“They don’t have to know. Someone just has to guess, or make a suggestion. Then this happens.” He raised his arm toward the growing cacophony. “Once a few people decide they’d better get the hell out of Dodge, everyone else decides the same.”
 

Meyer crept forward. The others stayed behind them, dragging their packs.
 

“What now, Dad?” said Trevor.
 

“I wanted to get a car.”
 

“And now?” said Piper.
 

“I
still
want to get a car.”
 

They came to the edge of the wood. It was a poor thicket, really just a handful of unused lots where the trees had yet to get chopped. But it was enough for concealment — especially given that no one seemed to have interest in anything but the road.
 

It was bumper to bumper, mirroring the riot they’d fled the previous afternoon. The only differences were the number of lanes (the road had two, and both directions were occupied by cars wanting to leave) and the civility. There wasn’t any, really. But Meyer thought that might be okay. If these people wore their fear on their chests and openly panicked, maybe they wouldn’t explode into chaos like the expressway had. Alternatively, there might be nothing to stop them from exploding into immediate chaos.
 

“How are we going to buy a car now, Meyer?” The wooded area was on a slight rise, and Piper was watching the people across the packed street above the hoods of the jostling, honking line of vehicles.
 

“I said ‘get.’ Not ‘buy.’”
 

“So, what, you’re going to steal one?”
 

“I’ll write them a credit chit if it’ll make you feel better. Slip it under the door, and they can cash it later, after they’re done murdering each other for food.”
 

He’d been joking, but the comment shut Piper down. Another presence appeared at his side. Meyer looked over and saw Raj beside him.
 

“You know how to hotwire a car?” he said.
 

“Not since cars had ignition wires.”
 

Meyer tried to keep the condescension from his stare. The boy was only trying to help.
 

“No, I don’t know how to ‘hotwire’ a car. But unless you expect to find an ’04 Camry in there, that doesn’t matter.”
 

Raj had no rebuttal. Meyer sighed.
 

“Look. We have two choices. I’d love to find an unused vehicle in there somewhere — something that was a second car, and the people who own it took another and left it behind. But that means finding the key fob transponder if we expect to start it, and I don’t think it’s going to be that simple, even if we break into the house and root around.”
 

“We can’t break into someone’s house!” Lila said.
 

Raj put his hand on her arm. “What’s the other choice?”
 

Meyer firmed his jaw. “We take one that someone’s already using.”
 

Piper was staring at him. Meyer looked over.
 

“No,” she said.
 

“We have to get to Vail. We
have
to.”
 

“They have places they need to go.” She nodded at the line of cars. “They all do.”
 

“They’re running in circles. They don’t know where they’re even going. They just think one of those ships is going to park over Chicago, and they’re looking the things in the eye for the first time. They’re not thinking smart, Piper.”
 

“But you are.”
 

“We’ll put a vehicle to good use. These people are just panicking.”
 

Piper nodded. “Oh, that’s right. Whereas
you’re
thinking smart.”

“Don’t argue with me, Piper.”
 

Something snapped. Her husky, often-sexy, often-demure voice rose, becoming too loud for early morning. Despite the engine noise and shouts of fleeing people below, Meyer thought they might be seen, making themselves into unwitting targets.
 

“Don’t give me your superior bullshit, Meyer! You are not dragging someone out of a car by gunpoint! Just because you think you know something they don’t, that doesn’t make you … ”
 

“I
do
know something they don’t. I have all along.” He kept his voice calm, fighting anger fused with frustration. Maybe just a bit of fear. If they couldn’t get a car, they were stuck. And they couldn’t be stuck, no matter what. They had to reach Vail.
They had to get to his Axis Mundi
. Anything else was unthinkable.
 

“You wouldn’t have wanted anyone to take our van.”
 

He flashed back to the teens in New Jersey. The panic had barely begun, and they’d already been ready to rumble. “Didn’t stop them from trying.”
 

“Doesn’t mean we should do the same.”
 

“How else are we going to get out of here, Piper?
We
actually have somewhere to go! What’s really going to happen, here? We’ll strand someone where they should have fucking stayed all along?”
 

“That’s their decision to make,” she said.
 

Meyer looked at the line of vehicles and the gibbering people yelling from their home doorways and car windows. For a few very clear seconds, he saw them all as sheep, running in pointless circles fueled by fear. Clogging the way for the shepherds, with places they needed to be.
 

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll find another way.”

But he had no idea how.
 

And with a thousand miles left to their haven across packed roads, time was quickly thinning.
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Day Four, Morning

Chicago

One significant advantage of this panicky lot versus the rioting expressway, Piper thought as they moved down the berm toward a snaking line of cars and pedestrians: no one seemed to notice them at all.
 

Everyone here was probably less than a quarter mile from home (the early birds had fled at the front — the Meyer Dempseys of outer Chicago, perhaps), and were therefore properly stocked. They were in their own vehicles, probably fully gassed up, with the kids’ electronic games jammed into the back seat to keep them entertained through an apocalyptic family trip. There might come a day (and perhaps it would be soon) when neighbor would turn on neighbor and each would take what the other had. But for now, it seemed that most homes had remained their owners’ castles. And most people’s parked-in vehicles remained their oases on wheels.
 

The Dempsey family had no such oasis. But that was the Dempsey family’s problem.
 

Meyer clearly didn’t agree with that sentiment; he fumed in silence beside her, holding his pack’s straps as if to keep it firmly in line. This was their first end-of-the-world scenario, but Meyer’s life had been survival of the fittest. He’d done poorly in school because he never cared about tests, then claimed control of his destiny by starting his own business at age fourteen, selling hilarious fake how-to pamphlets to students right under the administration’s nose. He’d partnered with promising idea men and women who’d failed at crowdfunding their dreams, reasoning that if the public didn’t want to pay full price, a private investor was justified in spending pennies. Those who didn’t like his deals, he beat to market and drove out of business. All fair game, in Meyer’s opinion.
 

Everyone had their shots in life. Not taking them was their own goddamned fault.
 

But Piper had been raised differently. She hadn’t met Meyer until after he’d taken his crowdfunding idea machine further by starting his own platform. His attraction to her gave Piper special treatment. She’d started Quirky Q with Meyer as a fair partner — the way he treated all partners who were reasonable enough to understand that his way was always best. But she’d hidden some of herself as they’d dated then married, because those buried truths were things Meyer, in all his wisdom, would find stupid.

Things like religion. Like belief in a god. Which god, she wasn’t willing to say. Her parents had believed in the Christian God, but Piper herself had always been more spiritual. She kept it all to herself, though, because of Meyer’s overbearing views. He was good to her, but saw belief in “something beyond” as something stupid. Ironic, considering all the time he spent tripping on his drug with Heather, looking into some great understanding that ordinary folks couldn’t see.
 

Heather
. Piper suppressed the thought. No point in ruminating now, considering the situation and Heather’s likely death. It was a shame. She’d liked Heather despite her jealousy. Despite her certainty that Meyer had never stopped loving her, even after he’d started loving Piper.
 

Heather and Meyer, it seemed, had shared everything. Probably still had, right until the end. Piper had only shared a part of herself, and she’d only allowed Meyer to share parts of himself. Which meant it might have been her fault. All of it. All of what continued to happen with Heather, because Piper was too reserved to keep up.
 

The rules had changed — but not those that mattered.
 

You didn’t take what wasn’t yours. You didn’t rob someone of what they needed to secure your own survival. No matter whether you were Meyer Fucking Dempsey or some poor slob living on the south side of Chicago.
 

They walked the line of cars for a while, Meyer apparently reasoning that there was little point in securing a vehicle behind a snarl of traffic. They weren’t the only walkers; there were many with packs like theirs and many significantly larger, as if those brave souls planned to head into the hinterlands and live like primitives until this all blew over.

Piper nodded to those she made eye contact with. Meyer stared defiantly ahead. A surprising number nodded back, proving her right: there was at least a little civility left in the world.
 

Hi, nice to see you.
 

Wonderful day for an apocalypse, isn’t it?
 

Oh yes. Lovely day for the end of humanity.