Untaken Read online

  The best thing to do, it seemed, was to wait at our house for my family so we could all go to this evacuation center together. Last year, Mom had taken Liam and Mikey and me camping, and I’d read this great book on what to do if you get lost in the woods. What I remembered from that book most of all, is that if you got separated from your buddies, you were supposed to stay put so they could come find you. Now, Newton isn’t exactly the deep woods, but I figured the advice was still good.

  If my family hadn’t turned up by the time the food in the fridge ran out, I’d go to the center by myself, and leave a note so they’d know where I was. Logically thinking—like a good Outposter—the center would be the most likely place for them to go anyway, if for some reason they couldn’t make it home.

  I would have loved to have stayed online longer just to see if any other Outposters logged on, but my battery had already gone down to forty-five percent, and I wanted to be able to get online later if I had to, so I shut down the tablet and went indoors.

  My room looked so normal; it spooked me worse than the blown-apart houses somehow. Once I was in bed, there was only the dark of the night and the silence to show anything terrible had happened, and that I was all alone, waiting to see if real life alien invaders were going to blow me to bits as I slept. The thought got me giggling again, but I didn’t like the way my laughter echoed in the black silence of my room. I sounded like a crazy person.

  Part of my mind wanted to stay alert and listen for Mom and Dad or another attack, but the other part felt like it was covered in some terrible blank fog that just wanted me to sleep and sleep until things were normal. I was in shock, I guess. That was something else the woodland book had said could happen. Every now and then, the shocked part would drag the alert part down into some confusing half-waking dream, and I’d only realize I’d slept at all when I’d jerk awake with a yell.

  Once, I saw the beam of a flashlight through one of the windows, and lay still in bed, straining for the sound of dad’s keys in the door, but after a while, the flashlight moved on.

  Sunlight flooded in through the open curtains. I woke up gasping and dazed, painted from head to toe with sweat from a nightmare I only half remembered. I stumbled out of bed and staggered to the window. I wanted so much for everything to be normal out there—Mr. Novak next door running his mower, my mom’s car parked in the drive, Mikey & Liam riding their bikes on the lawn—that for a second, I almost saw it that way through sheer willpower.

  Then my dream faded and I was left staring out at the ruined street. I could hardly bring myself to look skyward. When I did, the ships were still there, silent and stationary. The sight of them made me feel cold all over, like I’d plunged into an icy lake, out of my depth and sinking helplessly. I couldn’t help but feel the ships were watching. Waiting.

  I tried the TV, but the power was still out. I dragged the little battery operated radio out of dad’s workshop and dialed through the bands, hoping to find some news.

  What I got instead was a lot of crackle and a creepy robotic voice shrilling “Stay in your homes. Await further instruction. Seek shelter if needed.” Then there was a list of all the local places you could go for help, including 6_star’s place in Needham.

  I didn’t listen for long. In a way, I was happy there’d been no news. It was like, if I heard that anything really bad was happening officially then it would be true.

  The only sound in the house was the tick of the clock on the wall. The clock ran on batteries as brisk and businesslike as it had yesterday, but the hour hand seemed to crawl. I knew that if I wanted to speed that clock up, I should keep busy until Mom and Dad got home, but my mind didn’t seem to want to fixate on any one thing.

  I grabbed a broom and swept up some of the plaster dust and broken glass from the living room windows, then got distracted by the distant rattle of a helicopter. My ears pricked at the wail of sirens, but they didn’t come any closer, and after a while, they faded away to nothing.

  When I went to the bathroom, the toilet wouldn’t flush properly and flooded the bathroom with gross pee water when I tried to flush it a second time. I needed to get a mop, to fix it before Mom got home. The toilet gurgled like it was dying and glugged out more water. I skipped back into the hall in my sodden sneakers and slammed the door shut on the whole mess. The plumbing must have been screwed up by all the explosions or something; I wouldn’t be able to fix it with just a bit of mopping. I couldn’t fix anything! I breathed in a great whoop of air, and before I knew it, I was sobbing—ugly, little kid sobbing—with streamers of snot hanging down my face and everything. It was pathetic. I was being pathetic. How was crying going to fix any of this? My mom and dad would know what to do.

  It would all be okay as soon as they got home.

  All through the day, I listened for the familiar sound of a car engine, or the voices of my mom and my brothers, but they didn’t come. There had to be a lot of people downtown, and surely the Police or someone was organizing rides for people. Someone would be in charge. In fact, the most likely thing, now that I thought about it properly, was that all of them had been taken to one of 6_star’s emergency centers, just waiting for the all-clear to come home again.

  So really, there was no need to panic just because they hadn’t shown up the very first day.

  Brandon

  he Biedermanns had split town some time during the night, and that had to account for some of Dad’s good mood today. Our remaining neighbors had dragged their radios and portable TVs outside, so they could keep an eye on the invaders, but no one was getting anything but static and a pre-recorded emergency broadcast I was already sick of hearing.

  The ships were back in the sky again, but Dad ignored them and I tried my best to do the same.

  We worked all day, side by side, me fetching and carrying, and Dad whacking in nails. We did a real good job of turning our little ranch house into a genuine bunker. Dad was clever with his hands. He used plywood to cover the doors and windows, with neat little slots cut in that we could look out through. He hauled his old welding kit out of the basement, and sent me running round the back yard, wrenching all that old scrap iron free of the weeds. It was almost like he’d had a plan for that junk all along.

  The basement was the real triumph though. It was past midnight when we started working on it. My eyes kept slipping closed, and my shoulders felt like someone had run piano wire through them and was yanking on the ends, but Dad was still going strong. He swapped the flimsy wooden doors that led from the kitchen to the basement stairs with the heavy metal one from the gun shed and did likewise with the bulkhead door that led out into the yard.

  “That ought to do it,” he said finally, sometime around three a.m.

  “Looks good,” I said.

  “It don’t look pretty,” he said with a smile, “but yeah, it looks good.” He clapped me on the shoulder.

  “How ‘bout a beer before we settle in?”

  We drank our beers sitting in the yard, the moonlight glinting off our new reinforcements. I kept my gaze on the ships, but I didn’t feel so scared of them now. I guess what I felt was something like gratitude.

  That night, I slept sounder than I had in months. It was the hard work that did it. That, and knowing Dad was sleeping too, instead of out wilding somewhere.

  It was dark in the house when I woke up, even though my bedside clock said 8:00 a.m., but it felt safe, too—cozy, I guess I’d call it—with so much plywood over the windows, not even the sun could get in.

  We worked all day again on the house, tearing down the weak parts and building them up strong. Lou drove by once in his big police cruiser, but I reckoned the local law enforcement boys had bigger things to worry about than Dad’s building projects.

  I was still beat from the day before. My muscles were stiff, and the blisters on my hands made it hard for me to hold the hammer. I was trying my best to help Dad, but with him standing over me, I was liable to drop things, to hammer nails in crooked and strip s
crews at the best of times.

  “Make yourself useful and go hunt up some supplies. Food. That kind of shit,” he told me as I served the two of us lunch—my specialty: fried eggs in ketchup.

  “I could go down to the corner store,” I said, “but Shaw’s is closed. I heard Mr. Kauffmann telling Mr. Leddy. Everyone went crazy down there and smashed the place up.”

  Dad rolled his eyes. “I don’t mean the stores. Use your head, Brandon. Look in the houses. Start next door with them lousy Biedermanns. Lots of people split town in a hurry. It’ll be easy pickings if we move now before them other fools think of it.”

  “Isn’t that kind of…stealing?” I pictured Lou in his big police cruiser. Lifting a bottle of sauce from the corner store was one thing, but breaking and entering was serious.

  “In a survival situation, you do what you can to feed you and yours,” Dad stated. “You think when those bastards attack, things like taking a few tins of franks’n’beans will mean shit?”

  I shook my head.

  “But having that food could mean the difference between life and death for us.”

  I could see the truth in that, but a prickle of gooseflesh crept down my spine as I hopped the fence between our yard and the Biedermann’s, then snuck between their neatly clipped bushes to the backyard.

  A dumb-looking garden gnome grinned at me from the patio. I hefted it by its pointy hat and let the sliding door have it.

  With the sound of Dad’s power saw chomping through timber, I didn’t think anyone had heard the glass break, but all the same, I made myself wait five long, jittery minutes before stooping through the shattered panel.

  Even though the Biedermanns had left in a rush, their house seemed so clean and ordered compared to ours. For the first time, I wondered if maybe Grammy hadn’t been right about Dad’s housekeeping. I mean, our house was great, but there always seemed to be kind of an uncomfortable feeling in there. Like, no matter how many windows you opened, you could never quite get enough light in. I don’t know if that feeling came from the fridge that was always empty but for beers and dried-up spills, or the floors that would never quite come clean, or something that came from Dad himself, who often seemed surrounded by some sort of hot, dark energy that made my skin prickle.

  The Biedermann’s was more like Grammy’s place. Everything clean. Pictures on the walls with honest-to-god frames around them, instead of tacked up magazine pages showing cars or chicks with their titties out—which was the kind of art Dad favored.

  There were photos, too. Tom and Louise and their two dopey kids posing together against cheesy photographers’ backdrops, or just out and about together, on vacation, or in the park. There weren’t any photos like that in our house. Just the old ones of Mom that I wasn’t supposed to see, and one of me taken at school a few years back, before Dad said they were a waste of money when he could see my face any old day just by looking at me.

  Besides, what would our photographs have shown anyhow? Dad driving off in his truck to go hunting with his buddies? Me trying to take the spliff from between his fingers when he nodded off smoking?

  I felt guilty for thinking that way. I didn’t want to be like one of those dumb Biedermanns. Dad was smarter than any of them—you could tell that just by looking at all the stuff they’d left behind when they ran away. Sure, some of the closets were empty, and a lot of the good food was gone, but there was plenty left behind. Rich pickings.

  They’d split with no real plan.

  “They’re scared,” said Dad, when I came back with my haul. “But they’re only scared enough to run; like that’ll make a lick of difference.”

  I brewed up some of the Biedermann’s fancy organic coffee and we took the steaming mugs outdoors to drink in front of the radio.

  “Give it a rest,” Dad finally said as I dialed through the bands, trying to find some news. “It’d just be more of the same anyway. Them Generals got themselves believing all that ‘we come in peace’ bullshit the government scientists been trying to sell. You mark my words, them politicians are gonna tie the hands of our troops, until there isn’t a damn thing we can do.”

  I knew Dad was right. Back when the Space Men had first arrived, scientist after scientist had appeared on screen, yakking on and on about “the need for contact” and “exercising caution” until my head spun.

  “What’s gonna happen eventually is that the Army’ll tell them political types and pencil necks where to shove it,” Dad said. “And then we’ll kick some alien ass, all right?”

  “Guess so,” I said.

  “Darn tootin’.”

  We kind of grinned at each other a moment.

  That night, I lay awake in spite of my aches and pains. Who knew what funky weapons were on those ships? I’d been so caught up in fortifying the house and enjoying Dad’s good mood, that I hadn’t stopped to think about what might be happening now, just a few miles down the road. The Space Men could be here any day. If there really was a battle, would I be able to step up and fight like a soldier? I had enough trouble killing rabbits—would I really be able to shoot straight when the time came?

  Yes, I decided. So long as Dad was beside me, I’d make him proud.

  I’d step up.

  Everything would be okay.

  Gracie

  he sun was starting to go down again when there was a knock on the door. All the fear and hope I’d held in all day seemed to get stuck in my throat, making it hard to breathe. I ran to the door, and my hands were so slick with sweat I had to fold a big wad of my T-shirt around the door handle before I could open it.

  When I finally got the damn thing open, it was just Mr. Novak from across the road.

  “Hey there, Gracie, are the rest of your family”—he paused, like he searched for the appropriate words, then settled on—“home?”

  “Just me,” I said, trying to hide the disappointment in my voice. “Dad was at work, and Mom and the boys were at the Common.”

  Mr. Novak was a nice guy, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by seeming upset that he was still alive and kicking instead of my family. Him and his wife, Wilma, didn’t have any kids of their own and sometimes that means grownups are grumpy with kids, but the Novaks were the other kind—the people who gave us popsicles in the summer, and never minded if our games spilled across from our lawn to theirs.

  “Well, honey, I’m sure they’re all fine,” he said. “They’ve been playing something on the radio just now about an emergency center where folks should gather together. Wilma and I are headed over there and we think it would be best if you came along with us.”

  Mr. Novak patted my shoulder awkwardly. “I know you want to wait here for your folks, but you’re more likely to find them at the center.”

  “I know,” I replied. “I wanted to stick here awhile longer though. They haven’t had time to get here yet, and—”

  “That’s true, honey, but I don’t think you should be here in this big old house alone. Something…might happen again, and your folks would want you to be somewhere safe, wouldn’t they?”

  Mr. Novak was right. I felt kind of bad leaving our house, but it would be nice to have grown-ups with me. Not to mention a ride to Needham, which wasn’t exactly a short stroll.

  “Okay,” I said. “I gotta leave them a note though, so they’ll know where I am when they get here. And I have to pack my stuff.”

  “Just the essentials,” said Mr. Novak. “Mrs. Novak made some sandwiches for the drive. The turkey ones you like, on marble rye. And remember about the note.”

  As if I’d forget that! The other thing about some old people with no kids? They think a fourteen-year-old has the same memory span as a baby. Still, turkey and Swiss on marble rye was a pretty sweet deal. It was kind of funny in a way, the way Mr. Novak and me never once mentioned the Space Men. I guessed maybe Mr. Novak was in shock too. If we didn’t think too hard about it, we could tell ourselves that everything was still under control.

  I wrapped a sweatsh
irt around my tablet to cushion it, and shoved the whole thing into my backpack, then went downstairs to the kitchen and found a pad of paper by the phone to write my note on. Just to check, I picked up the receiver, but of course, the line was dead.

  Tap, tap.

  I spun around looking for the source of the noise. It was coming from behind me, from the window over the sink. At first I thought it was a leaky faucet, but as I moved closer I saw a flicker of movement behind the glass.

  Tap, tap. It was like someone was knocking on the glass asking to be let in.

  I bent down and squinted through the honeysuckle vines that covered the window. A slender black shape snaked through the leaves, weaving carefully between the vines to tap the glass again. What I the hell was it? The thing had a long black body stretching away out of sight, and a small blunt head that skittered and prodded against the glass of the window. The sight of that black eyeless head gave me the same shivery ice-water feeling looking at the ships had. What it looked like more than anything was one of the horrible deep-water eels from Mikey’s ocean books. Something sly and mean and always hungry.

  Another black head joined the first, tapping lightly to begin with, then pressing harder until with a sudden “pop,” a crack ran across the pane.

  I yelped, and backed up quickly, only stopping when the small of my back smacked sharply into the kitchen table.

  The window shattered and shards of broken glass clattered into the sink. The pain in my back registered from very far away. My head was light, and vision was fading to a weird foggy whiteness. I lifted up a trembling hand and pinched my own cheek, hard. I couldn’t faint, not now.

  More eel things appeared at the window, nosing at the sharp edges of the broken glass, then advancing into the room to slither and probe along the kitchen counter. There were ten, then twenty, and then still more of them oiling in through the window. They snaked down to inspect the floor where I’d been standing seconds before, writhing more quickly now as though they’d scented prey.