She stopped first at her parents’ home. She approached the stone-and-clapboard farmhouse with caution, ducking through the trees to view it from all angles. It appeared undisturbed. In a year of hiding, she’d dared to venture to the house only twice for some needed supplies. She hadn’t gone to her own apartment in town at all.
She would have expected the murderous intruders to occupy Washington, D.C., Boston, New York City, London, Paris, Prague, Rome, not nowheresville, Missouri, USA. But they’d marched through small towns, farms, and ranches, so maybe they preferred the small-town lifestyle.
But if the coast was clear, she’d be able to get out more, gather more supplies and food. She craved anything not freeze-dried. She wouldn’t need to be so quiet. She could run the generator, warm up the cave with an electric heater. She coulddriveto town, which was why she’d stopped at the house—to get her car.
The world had gone deadly quiet. Afraid the enemy might hear the motor, she hadn’t attempted to use a vehicle before. Making noise still worried her, but if she did encounter the enemy, she’d be better able to outrun them in a car than on foot.
Leaving the bag with the oil-soaked blanket in the trees, she pulled her gun and sprinted to the side door, entering into the laundry room. Creeping into the hall, she listened.Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
It was so quiet she probablycouldhear a mouse. The refrigerator wasn’t humming or dropping ice into the receptacle. No heating unit switched on and off. No phones chimed with an incoming text.
Gripping the handgun tighter, she tiptoed toward the great room. From behind the wall, she peered into the space. The living room, kitchen, and dining room were vacant. “Hello? Anybody here? Hello?” she called and prayed she didn’t get a reply.
Not getting one, she stepped into the main room and crossed to the other side of the house to check the bedrooms. The four doors off the hall were shut. A good sign, but not conclusive. The last time she’d been in the house, she’d taken care to shut the doors, hoping if aliens entered, they wouldn’t bother to close them, and she’d be able to tell if the house had been breached.
Room by room, she hid behind the wall, pushed the door open, and peered inside the two bedrooms and a bath. Lastly, she came to the master bedroom at the end of the hall. Vacant. She expelled a shaky sigh of relief and holstered her weapon.
Two suitcases sat next to the king bed. Her parents had been packed and ready to run as soon as they heard the aliens were headed their direction, but they hadn’t acted soon enough. Everything had happened too fast.
The master suite still smelled like her dad’s aftershave. Most men stopped splashing on aftershave a few decades ago, but not her dad. Her mom loved the scent of his cologne because he’d been wearing it when they met, so he continued to wear it well past its fashion-end date. As a teenager, she’d been embarrassed. “Do you have to put that stuff on? People a mile away can smell you.” As an adult, she’d found it endearing.
Now, the scent was heartbreaking. She left the room before she started to cry. She would never again be enveloped in her dad’s warm embrace. Never talk to her mom or her brother. Maybe never talk to anybody except the alien.
I can’t kill him. I can’t release him. I can’t keep him. I don’t want to leave. What the hell am I going to do?
She passed her old bedroom, which had become the guest room when she moved into her own place, and her older brother’s, which her mom had wasted no time in converting to a craft room when he left home. “Geez, Mom, could you at least have waited until I got down the front steps?” he’d joked.
“I need to ensure you don’t boomerang back. I plan to enjoy my empty nest years,” she’d said, but her parents would have welcomed either of them home in a heartbeat if they’d needed help.
She fled the memories, moving into the great room again, noting how dust motes danced in the sunbeam shining through a skylight. A year’s worth of dust coated every flat surface. Trekking across the living room, she’d left footprints in the dust on the dark hardwood floors. Her nose itched, and she felt a sneeze coming on.
“Achoo! Achoo!” She sneezed into the crook of her arm. “Good thing Grav isn’t here to demolish the house.”
She couldn’t believe how he’d freaked. Thank goodness she’d got the fire put out. She could have lost everything. They could have died!
He’d feared she’d had theplaguebefore correcting his wording. He hadn’t had any trouble coming up with the right words until then.
A top commander had died because the Progg lacked immunity to a harmless Earth disease. Could more of them have died? A lot of them? Chances were the leader would have spread the rhinovirus to others before realizing he was ill. Was that why Grav referred to it as the plague? Because it had spread?
Maybe the commander hadn’t contracted a cold but the flu. Symptoms were similar, but influenza killed hundreds of thousands of people every year, and historic flu epidemics had killed millions.
Maybe the admiral got COVID.Her spirits brightened. Did that make her a bad nurse? Oh, well.
After a final glance around the house, she entered the garage. In the corner, she spied two five-gallon red jugs of gasoline. Her dad had been prepared—for all the good it did him.
She pressed the garage door opener, but nothing happened. “Well, duh. No electricity.” There had been when she’d parked her car last year. She disconnected the door from the opener and lifted it manually.
The car fob was still under the floor mat where she’d left it in case she needed to make a quick getaway and didn’t have time to get her keys. She settled in the driver’s seat and pressed the start button.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
“Shit!” Dead battery.
She dashed into the house and rustled up her mom’s spare keys and climbed into her mother’s SUV. “Please start; please start.” She pressed the starter.
The vehicle purred to life.
“Thank goodness.” Even better, the car had a full tank of gas.
