Untaken Read online

  Me.

  I wanted to run; or rather I wanted to somehow get away without moving at all, because if I moved, the things at the window might see me, although I couldn’t see any eyes on those freakish heads. I edged one sneaker a half step backwards, and the creatures froze all at once. They’d heard me. I had to run, run fast, because as soon as I moved they were going to come for me. I gulped air, but I still felt like I was suffocating. I darted round the table, and slammed right into a chair, tumbling to the ground. The eel things boiled through the window, and then—The familiar sound of a car door shutting. All at once, the black eel things withdrew and the window was empty. I scrambled on all fours toward the hall door with the idea of hiding in the closet again, but a terrible thought stopped me in my tracks. Mr. Novak. It had to be him out by his car, and he didn’t know about the eels.

  I walked back toward the window on legs that didn’t seem to want to bend properly. Mr. Novak stood beside his big blue Chrysler, loading bags into the trunk. He noticed me staring through the window with my mouth hanging open. A frown passed over his face as he saw the freshly broken glass, and his mouth was just opening to call across to me when his eyes hitched upward and his face froze. I rushed toward the front door yelling his name, but by the time I got outside, the only question seemed to be which of us was going to die first.

  The creature floated in the air about fifteen feet from the ground, like a jellyfish floats in the sea, dozens of tentacles—not eels, as I’d originally thought—moving lazily beneath a roundish, black body, like a grotesque balloon made of what could have been dark oily metal, or slimy black flesh.

  “What the hell?” barked Mr. Novak.

  The sound of his voice decided things. The creature moved horribly fast, dropping from the air to envelop Mr. Novak in a mass of whipping tentacles. As the tentacles wrapped tighter and tighter around him, his screams became quieter, then… stopped.

  Mine didn’t.

  Mrs. Novak came pelting out of the house, her eyes wide. If Mr. Novak’s slamming his car door had saved me from the first creature, then Mrs. Novak rushing out like she did saved me from the second.

  Her mouth flopped open. “Gracie, what’s happening?”

  Before I could reply, a maelstrom of black tentacles whipped around the side of the house. She started to run, but the thing was fast. Limber black arms streamed around her body, pinning her arms to her side, and muffling her screams in seconds. It grabbed her right out of her summer sandals—the last thing I saw of her were the white soles of her feet kicking, before the creature pulled her around the side of the house and out of my sight.

  I didn’t run. It was all I could do to force my trembling legs to walk. My mind felt blank, like our TV, still tuned to a station that had stopped broadcasting anything sane when the world ended. I walked inside, closed the door behind me, thought about it numbly, then slid the chain across. I crawled into the closet, right to the very back, and waited to see whether I would live through the night.

  Brandon

  lay on my rickety camp bed down in the basement. It wasn’t real comfy, but it was kind of like camping out, a pretty sweet deal. I turned over carefully to find a more comfortable position. If you moved too fast on those beds, they’d tip you off their backs like cranky mules throwing an inexperienced rider. I settled back and flipped the page of my book. The next thing I knew, I was being thrown clean across the room in a shower of grit, by an explosion which shook the earth. I landed hard on the concrete floor, skinning my elbows.

  “Dad! What happened?”

  Dad was on his feet already. He stuck out a hand and hauled me upright. People sometimes mistook us for brothers—we had the same black hair, only his was shot through with gray at the sides. Now, though, it was like we’d both turned to old men in an instant, our hair powdered white with plaster dust. Dad stared out through his dusty bangs, eyes bright with excitement.

  “This is it, son. Things are about to get real interesting….”

  He was cut off by a sound like a hundred jet engines screaming all at once, followed by a thud so loud and near it rocked the earth, nearly knocking me off my feet a second time. The basement shook again, and more dust showered down upon us. The lights gave one last feeble flicker and went out for good.

  I scrabbled about looking for the flashlight, and breathed in a big gulp of plaster dust. I tried for another gasp of air and succeeded in breathing in a second burning lungful. My head smacked hard on the rough concrete of the basement wall. The blackness felt like something solid, pushing into my nose and open mouth and ears until I thought I’d smother in it. We were being buried alive down here—I floundered in the bottom of my own grave… then a light came on and I could see again.

  Dad, of course. He’d gone right to the emergency kit and turned on one of the big flashlights. I tried to wipe some of the dust and snot off my face before he saw me sniveling. He patted the camp bed where he sat and I staggered over to join him.

  “They’re coming,” I said, when I trusted my voice to come out right.

  “Yup. They’re coming. Only, I reckon we’ll be fine for now if we just lay low.

  “Sure.” I nodded.

  My doubt must have shown because Dad said, “Couple of big hits, then it all stopped. They ain’t coming in here for us just yet. Tryin’ to flush us out, I reckon. Just like you do when you’re hunting ducks. Get ‘em out of cover and on the wing.”

  “What for?” I asked. It seemed to me that if they wanted to kill us, then blowing up houses was better than picking us off “on the wing.”

  “Beats me, son. But there’s no good in worrying over it now. We just sit tight and wait until them army guys get here. Reckon those intergalactic sons of bitches’ll have a fight on their hands then, all right.”

  The thought of ass-kicking perked Dad right up. He set to whistling; the cheery sound set my teeth on edge. He started heating up some beans and franks on the Primus. My stomach was clenched up like a fist, and the thought of supper didn’t do much for me.

  “Eat up, then hit the hay. We’ll sleep in shifts tonight: you first, then me.”

  The beans had plaster dust floating on top of them. Probably give me cancer or some shit. I spurted out a bark of laughter. Why the hell was I worried about cancer at a time like this?

  Dad smiled at me, finishing his own bowl in a few big bites.

  I waited for the next explosion, or worse: the sly turning of the handle on the bulkhead door. We’d shored them up pretty good, but who knew what was out there? I tried to picture our neighborhood crawling with little green men. Even though I was scared shitless, it still didn’t seem real to me that there could be actual aliens outside.

  Dad picked up the Remington. It seemed to glow in the beam of the flashlight like black oil, beautiful and strong.

  “Think you know how to use this?” asked Dad.

  I nodded, not able to speak for the second time that night. My love and pride became a physical lump in my throat.

  “You take the first watch, then. Don’t let no one in, no matter who it is. Them doors stay shut, okay? Don’t care if it’s anyone we know, don’t care if they’re hurt. We open the doors, we may as well walk on out there and offer ourselves to them ships. Got it?”

  “I got it.” I didn’t think that anything on earth—or off—could persuade me to open the doors.

  My watch said five o’clock, but we’d been in the cellar so long I didn’t know if that was a.m. or p.m. anymore.

  My cell phone hadn’t shown any bars since the night all the invasion shit went down, so that was no use either.

  Even by Dad’s standards, the basement was already a pit. For all his planning, he hadn’t managed to figure on little things like a bathroom, or any place to put our dirty food cans. The heat didn’t help. I lay on my bed with sweat beading up off my body, watching the spooky shapes that your mind starts projecting onto the blackness when you lay in the dark for hours at a time. Nothing else to look at but D
ad lying on his own bunk across from me.

  With the stink and the darkness, it was kind of like being laid out in a tomb. At least the undead get to rise from the grave at sunset though. All Dad and I had to look forward to was chowing down on a tin of Heinz beans and listening to each other’s farts in the dark until it was time to eat again.

  I’d asked Dad a couple of times if maybe we could go up to the yard to empty the bucket that was making do as our bathroom, but he’d shaken his head each time.

  I didn’t want to get him mad, so I remained on my bunk, drifting in and out of sleep.

  There hadn’t been much sound from outside after the first night. A bit of shouting, a few screams. Sometimes, a car went by fast, and once, a loud sound that was almost like singing—some mighty engine from a galaxy far, far away, which made my bones rattle in sympathetic dread.

  When I thought about it—and there wasn’t much else to do in this dark, stinking basement—this was an exciting time to be alive. Maybe it was the end of the world, and maybe there were greater and more exciting dangers to be faced than aiming for an over-full pee bucket by torchlight, but at least I was alive while the world’s first genuine sci-fi shit went down. I wondered a lot about what was going on out there.

  I swung my legs off the bed and reached for the little radio.

  “Don’t try it,” Dad said. “Nothing but propaganda. Useless.”

  I sighed and lay back down. I’d tried to listen to the radio earlier while he slept, but it was hard to get a signal down in the basement, and to actually hear what the guys were saying, I’d have needed to turn it loud, which would have woken Dad.

  “I’m gonna go crazy down here,” I said.

  “Nah, you won’t. It’ll be over soon, I reckon. Then you’ll be glad we stuck to the plan.”

  It might’ve been easier to bear if Dad had told me what the plan was, but he didn’t seem inclined to share. The thought of fresh air and sunlight made a weird thrill go through me. I felt almost thirsty for it, the way you shudder at the thought of a cool drink on a parched day.

  “Get some sleep, best thing you can do,” Dad said.

  Sure enough, he was snoring a few seconds later. I waited a little longer.

  “Mmmshbgd. Hmm? Yeah, reckon so.”

  I stifled a giggle. Dad always talked gobbledygook when he was in a good, deep sleep. Now I’d be safe to move.

  It’d be bad news to go outside maybe, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to open the bulkhead that led out into the backyard a crack, and see if it was night or day. Just reconnaissance. Like a soldier would do. Some fresh air couldn’t hurt, and it wasn’t like the Almighty Alien Queen was likely to be chilling out in our backyard in Nowheresville, MA.

  I could empty the slop bucket at the same time. Save Dad the embarrassment of acknowledging the snag in his plan. Save us both from strangling on the stink of piss and shit. Sometimes, when Dad screwed up, he’d overlook things that would normally get him raging if the screw up went away. Sometimes, like with the deer head, he’d get mad anyway, but as the long, hot, stinky days went by, I began to feel that Dad getting mad was something I could live with.

  I pulled my shirt over my nose to pick up the bucket. It was pretty much full. The turds bumped up against the sides like little toy ships when I lifted it, and some of the pee water slopped out over the sides. Jeez, it was bad!

  My stomach clenched and it was uncertain for a second whether I was going to add to the mess by barfing, but Dad turned over and grunted in his sleep, and the chance that he might wake up shot a flash of fear through me that short circuited every other bodily impulse. I walked real slowly over to the bulkhead and set the bucket down. I reached for the latch, then stopped. Itchy runners of sweat trickled down my ribs.

  There could be anything out there.

  I thought of the fresh air outside. Just one lungful after the sweltering sewer of the basement would be worth pretty much anything. I wouldn’t go far. Just ditch the bucket and duck back inside.

  The first set of bulkhead doors whined on their hinges as I gently lowered them inwards. The second set of doors were the steel ones that Dad had added to make the basement into a fortress. They were warm to the touch, and a single line of brilliant white sunlight shone between them. It was day, then.

  When I put my nose to the crack, the sweetness of the air made my mouth water. How had I never noticed how good the outdoors smelled before? The green smell of grass and flowers and rich earth and even the tangy smell of hot sun on the wooden shingles of the house flooded my nostrils. I inhaled several great, big breaths, smiling like a goof.

  The reinforced doors were harder to open. There was a tricky lock on the handles and the doors were heavy. When I finally wrestled them open, the sunlight streamed in, making my eyes water. I was real worried all that light would wake Dad, so I grabbed the bucket in one hand, then scooted up the steps, quick as I could. I set down the bucket on the grass and turned to ease the doors down gently behind me.

  Snick!

  The lock click into place with a neat mechanical sound. I tugged at the doors. They didn’t even rattle. I was locked out in the yard and, to make it worse, I couldn’t see a goddamn thing. Turns out when you live in a basement for a week, sunlight takes a bit of getting used to.

  I willed myself to be a soldier, but the fear sweat still trickled down my ribs. I staggered backward until my shoulder bumped up against the wall of the house. I strained my ears, listening for stealthy footprints. The skin on my throat crawled as I imagined big green hands closing round my neck to throttle the life out of me. I scrubbed at my eyes with my fists, which made weird red flowers bloom behind my eyelids, but didn’t seem to help much otherwise.

  Count to a hundred. Just sit still and chill the hell out.

  One…

  Two…

  Three…

  When I’d counted to ninety-three, I started to be able to see again.

  I was kind of disappointed, God’s honest truth.

  Things I didn’t see:

  Spaceships shooting across the sky.

  Weird alien fungus covering everything like silly string.

  Funky glowing craters.

  Nothing was at all different in our scrubby backyard in any way.

  What a bust! It was quieter than usual without the traffic noise, I guessed, but that was about it. Big whoop. The bucket sat where I left it, over by the bulkhead doors. A good number of flies buzzed over the top of it already. Not for nothing, but getting up close and personal with that bucket all over again didn’t have much appeal for me. There were clean buckets in the house. And since I’d have to wake Dad up either way, pounding on the basement door inside the kitchen seemed like a better option than pounding on the one out in the yard. I’d gotten my fresh air and my look at the sky—where ships still hung like they’d never moved at all—but now the stillness of the day seemed less peaceful than it had earlier. In fact, I had a good case of creeping gooseflesh.

  Dad had done a pretty good job of boarding up the doors and windows, but when I crept around behind the house, the sheet of plywood over my bedroom window hung down on one nail, and the window itself was busted. Had to be the explosions we’d heard a few days back. A lot of the other houses in the neighborhood had busted out windows, too, now that I took a look around. Lucky break for me. Now Dad might actually have another cause to thank me for: finding a chink in our fortress.

  I threw my sweatshirt over the jagged glass left in the frame, and boosted myself in through the window. My room looked pretty much the same, other than all the broken glass lying on the bed, but I felt like I’d been away for a hundred years, rather than just hiding in the basement for two weeks.

  The house was real dark and hot, and the doorways leading off the hall had all canted to the left. Whatever those big explosions were, they’d been close enough to damage the house some. I had to get back to that basement again. At least if the house was fixing to fall down, we’d be safe there, just lik
e in a tornado.

  I was pretty sure the buckets were in the hall closet. I dug through the tangled mess of work boots and closet junk, finding the Converse sneaker I’d been missing since Spring, but no buckets. Behind me, the door of Dad’s room swung open with a sly creak.

  I froze up right away. He couldn’t be up here, could he? More likely, it was a looter. Someone who’d guessed we had a good place to hide and a nice stock of supplies and wanted in on the action.

  “We ain’t got nothing here worth takin’,” I shouted, trying to keep my voice from sticking in my throat, which seemed all of a sudden several sizes too small.

  The door creaked again, and there was a stealthy dragging noise, like something shuffling against the wall.

  “My Dad’s got a gun. You better just get out of here!”

  Dad’s room was between me and the basement. If there was one guy in there, I might be able to take him out if I was quick and took him off guard. I grabbed an empty bottle off the counter, wondering if I’d have the balls to smash it over some guy’s head. My one advantage was that I knew where all the creaky places in the floor were. Slowly, I started to sneak down the corridor, bottle held high.

  There was a thump from Dad’s room and I jumped, almost dropping my weapon.

  Sweat trickled down my forehead, getting in my eyes. The bottle was slick and slippery in my hand. What if it broke wrong and cut up my hand? Who in the hell was going to stitch me up?

  Concentrate.

  Another thump, and then the door creaked all the way open.

  A big black bulge like a sick-looking tumor thrust its way into the corridor. Thick black tentacles writhed beneath it, slapping against the wall hard enough to rip gouges in the paper.

  I screamed. The bottle slipped from my fingers—I couldn’t work my hands to stop it, and what difference would it have made anyway?

  I turned to run, but my foot came down on an old boot that had spilled out of the closet and my ankle twisted, spilling me onto the floor. My head thumped against the wall, but I didn’t care about my throbbing head or my swelling ankle, just about getting away from that thing. I scrambled to my feet, and chanced a look back over my shoulder just in time to see the invader seethe through the door frame like black water. A living wall of squirming tentacles filled the corridor from floor to ceiling. It came at me fast, peeling the walls bare of paper, tentacles straining forward toward me. I could smell the scorching metallic stink of it, and then something rammed into me from behind and I was face down on the dirty hall carpet again.