The End of the World As We Know It Read online

  Before any of them realized what was happening, green tentacles shot out from the door and yanked them inside, dragging them along a cold, damp floor. Leo pressed against the constricting tentacles, but the more he resisted, the tighter they got. Just ahead of him, through the dark, he saw Evan kicking and Teena, caught by the leg, being dragged on her stomach.

  Pfft! Pfft! Two bursts of sound punctured the air.

  “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” The inhuman squeal pierced Leo’s eardrums.

  He heard another Pfft! Pfft! behind him. Suddenly, the tentacles loosened, drooping down around his mid-section. Teena stood over him with a nail gun and gave him a hand getting up. Then she vanished into the dark. Then he heard the nail gun again, and another squeal of agony.

  Teena emerged from the darkness with Evan in tow. Leo coughed into his sleeve, trying to regain his breath. “What was that?”

  At their feet was the creature Teena had killed. It had no face, just a beach-ball-sized green center, now punctured with nails, from which the ropy tentacles emerged. The dead tentacles lay like tangled ropes of seaweed at their feet.

  Ahead of them was a dimly lit staircase leading down into the bowels of the ship.

  “What do you think’s down there?” Evan asked.

  Leo had been hoping to stumble on the holding bay, but why would the aliens guard their prison with what was basically a plant? A violent plant, but still. “I hope something,” Leo said, brushing the end of a tentacle off his shoulder. It fell to the floor with a splat. “I’m starting to feel like this ship is empty.”

  “Me too,” Teena agreed.

  Leo walked first down the slippery ramp, stopping to listen for signs of danger. They could barely see ahead of them. On the last step, his body went rigid, like a panicked exclamation point.

  They were in a dim, but not entirely dark room that was teeming with aliens. But unlike the ones they’d encountered before, these were slightly smaller, with deeper purple skin and long green tendrils sprouting from their heads like hair. Dead, dented sockets took the place of the other aliens’ fly-like eyes. The effect was as chilling as the chamber’s cool, damp air.

  If they backed up the stairs before these things saw them or, really, sensed them, maybe they’d survive.

  Leo took a step backward, knowing his friends would get the hint. But his foot lost traction on the stairs, and he slid off, landing with a loud splat on the gooey floor. The room of aliens collectively lifted their heads, their green snakelike hair swirling in mid-air.

  As if on cue, the aliens opened their wide, gaping mouths. All at once, they let loose a barrage of greenies. The little flying aliens emerged from the aliens’ mouths in dense clusters, hovering in the air for a split second before releasing a massive, eardrum-breaking squeal. And then they flew right at them.

  “They can’t puke greenies unless you shoot them!” Leo yelled over the din.

  “These are the female aliens!” Teena screamed. “This is a nest!”

  “Let’s not make it our tomb!” Evan shouted, as he raised his bat yet again.

  Teena dialed up the pressure on her nail gun and let loose a storm of nails into chamber. As they met their targets, the nails pierced the baby greenies, which fell to the floor of the nest, writhing uselessly.

  Leo pulled out his nail gun and started to shoot as four greenies, stuck together in a slimy ball as they flew, came at him. The first nail fell limply to the floor, as did the second and third. He dialed up the pressure. Still nothing. The nail gun was busted. A greenie dug its teeth into his armor, so he fumbled in his backpack, emerging with the paring knife he’d taken from Abe’s trailer. He swiped the air uselessly as the greenies began to surround him. He felt like he was standing in someone’s stomach and couldn’t get traction on the soft, slippery floor.

  Evan was ahead, in the thick of greenies. He swatted away, and Leo could see the little hatchlings explode in mid-air. But even Evan was having trouble. His mid-section was covered in at least a half dozen of the creatures. Leo heard Teena fire her nail gun several times, and he hoped she’d come to Evan’s aid.

  Leo could barely see as the greenies clung to his armor and buzzed around his head. With a good swipe of his knife, he cut a few down, and through the gap, he saw that another greenie swarm separated him from Evan and Teena.

  “Use your nail gun!” Teena yelled to him.

  “I can’t! It’s broken!” Leo yelled back.

  “Piece of crap,” Teena swore. “I’ll use the Uzi.”

  “You can’t see in here, Teena,” Evan said behind her. “You might fire right at Leo.”

  “Yeah, no firing at Leo!” Leo yelled back. A greenie seized his upper inner thigh. Leo froze. It was going to bite his balls. He fucking needed his balls.

  His trusty purple lighter. He had tucked it into the waistband of the spandex. Now he pulled the sweaty Bic out and flicked it into life. He held it to the ball-biting greenie, feeling the heat on his thigh. The little beast caught fire and let go. Sweet. He proceeded to ignite the rest of his greenie attachments. They squealed and dropped to the floor, forming tiny fire pits where they fell.

  He had an idea. Pulling out his hair spray can, Leo yelled to his friends, “Take cover!”

  Teena and Evan hit the floor just as Leo sprayed a stream of hair spray and set fire to it, making a torch. The giant ball of greenies ignited like something straight out of hell. Their mothers must have sensed the greenies’ pain because they writhed and screamed as if they were the ones on fire.

  The greenies were burning, and through the flames, Leo’s eyes landed on another white puckered door, just beyond the mothers’ nest. If they could make it past the female aliens, they could get through that door.

  Leo gestured to his friends to follow him, and they started to run through the smoky haze of flaming greenies.

  “Why aren’t the big ones doing anything?” Teena asked, looking at the dormant female aliens. They were still, save for the snakelike movements of their green hair.

  “Because they’re going to give birth again!” Leo shouted. “There’s a door back there.”

  “You think it’s a holding chamber?” Evan asked.

  “Whatever it is, it’s gotta be better than this,” Leo said as the mama aliens started to move and sway. He pulled his Phat Phil’s Pizza polo from his backpack.

  Leo used his knife to cut the shirt in two pieces, then pulled Abe’s bottles of tequila and Jack Daniel’s from his backpack. He uncapped them and shoved each shirt piece down a bottle neck to make a wick. He soaked the cloth with Abe’s cheap gin.

  He took a swig of the gin for himself and handed the Molotov cocktails to Evan.

  “I’ll light, you throw,” Leo said. He looked at Teena. “Get ready to run.”

  Leo ignited the first bottle, watching the flame take hold and crackle its way up to the bottle top. Evan hurled it toward the aliens, where they were clumped together most tightly. Even Leo could see it was hardly a perfect throw—the bundle was an odd shape and flew shakily toward its target. It landed at the edge of the ring of aliens. The bottle didn’t even break.

  “Shit,” Evan said. Leo grimaced. The little fiery bundle hardly looked like it would do anything.

  “Look … ” Teena pointed to the nest. The aliens were starting to open their mouths, ready to let loose with more greenies.

  “That one was just practice,” Leo said encouragingly, giving the second bomb to Evan. He lit the wick. The bottle arced overhead, starting to fall right in the center of the aliens.

  All at once, two things happened.

  The mama aliens pulled back their mouths, regurgitating another swarm of greenies into the air.

  And the second bomb dropped, the bottle bursting with a violent pop at the center of the nest. Shards of glass and balls of fire flew through the air, landing scattershot throughout the nest. A few of the aliens’ hair caught fire, and the tendrils whipped through the air, igniting greenies and other mama aliens. Meanwhile,
the exploding fireballs were landing all around them, and the first bomb—the one at the edge of the nest—burst, sending glass into the air.

  Leo, Teena, and Evan ran toward the door, trying to shield themselves from the whips of flames all around. They fought to get past the mamas, which were now trying to escape in an unorganized cluster. In front of them, the newly born greenies flew haphazardly, colliding with one another. Some were on fire, and the greenies that weren’t in flames set in on other greenies, gnawing and biting one another like little cannibals.

  Leo cut a path toward the second door, his arms sticky with dead greenies. Evan was behind him but waiting for Teena, who’d stumbled over a dead mama aliens’ ropy green hair. “You go,” Evan said to Leo as he went back for Teena.

  Leo shook his head. “Get her,” he said to Evan. “I’ll hold the door.”

  Teena had broken free, and Evan pulled her up, nodding to Leo to go. Behind him, Leo heard Teena say sweetly, “You didn’t have to wait for me.”

  It made Leo want to hear Sarabeth’s voice again.

  He just hoped Door Number Two would get them closer to her.

  Leo pushed on the spongy surface, and he, Evan, and Teena plopped out on the other side.

  34

  LOOKS LIKE WE MADE IT

  Evan Brighton, 5:53 A.M. Casimir Pulaski Day, Aliens’ Ship

  Evan hit the ground, hard. Solid ground: Already an improvement over where they’d just been.

  “Holy shit, we found it,” Leo said, under his breath.

  “We found them,” Teena said, awed. Evan had had a feeling that the nest had been guarding something important, and he’d been right. Before them was a sea of people that filled the room as massive as an airplane hangar. It looked like half the town was there.

  “Wow, how are we going to get all these people out of here?” Evan couldn’t believe they’d made it. There’d been moments when he’d thought they’d only find the captives if they were captives themselves. Now the three of them stood there, looking from the crowd, to one another, and back to the crowd. From Teena’s and Leo’s matching expressions of surprised delight, he could tell they felt like he did: Now that they’d found everyone, how did they make sure not to screw it up?

  “I wasn’t expecting it to be so … lively,” Leo said, scanning the crowd, probably looking for Sarabeth.

  The people were distracted and frantic. They hadn’t even noticed Evan and the others arrive.

  “Yeah, I thought they’d seem more mind-controlled or something,” Evan said, peering over the half wall they’d come out behind.

  “It’s better they’re not,” Teena said, starting to move out into the crowd. “We should move in. Look for your families, or anyone you know. See if there’s a safer way out than the way we came.”

  Evan and Leo breathed matching sighs of relief, both glad to have someone taking charge. Teena led the way, and they stepped into the crowd. No one turned to look at them, which was awfully odd, given their spandex uniforms coated in green guts.

  Evan didn’t see anyone he knew until his eyes landed on the far side of the room, where several hundred people turned inward, all focused on Godly Jim, probably preaching to his new targets in the middle of their circle. At least Evan’s mom was among them. He wanted to go to her, but he didn’t want Jim to slow the rescue down. There was a lot of saving to do, and Jim couldn’t help.

  “What is everyone doing?” Teena wove past some women in their nightgowns.

  “Arguing and panicking,” Leo said. “Listen.” As they cut through the clusters of people, they heard snippets of conversation in the crowd.

  From a woman in a short leopard-print robe: “I can’t die. I can’t! I haven’t slept with anyone since my husband left me.”

  From a young mom, clutching her baby to her chest: “I wish we had moved to Lawn Grove when we’d had the chance.”

  From one pajama-clad dad to another who looked ready to throw down: “We need to figure out how that thing works, so we can use it against them.”

  “Look for this thing they want to use.” Leo sidestepped a crying toddler.

  “I think they mean that,” Evan said, pointing across the room. “By the other door out.”

  A line of shriveled corpses hung like rag dolls above a door similar to the one Evan and Leo hadn’t been able to open. Beneath the corpses, a half-dozen aliens pulled yet another body from what looked like a tanning bed, or a human-sized panini press. The aliens started to string up the body alongside the others.

  “Oh my god,” Teena said, staring from the bodies to the machine. Her skin had gone green. “Did that machine do that? How?”

  At that moment, an old man broke away from his group of senior citizens, a crazed look in his eyes. He held a ballpoint pen aloft in one hand and a pocketknife in the other. “I fought in World War Two. I’ll kill you all!” he yelled, running wildly at the aliens.

  The old man was two feet from the door when one of the aliens reached out a claw and punctured his side, like he was meat for a shish kebab. The alien tossed him onto the panini press and closed the top. The alien pushed a button, and as the room of people fell silent, the machine hummed to life. The man’s withered scream echoed through the chamber. Within about thirty seconds, two spouts at the foot of the press shot out blood and water into massive tubes that disappeared into the ceiling of the room.

  Teena gagged, covering her mouth with her hand. The crowd reacted the same way, women crying, men wringing their hands, everyone staring at the aliens in fear and then turning away, as if staring too long would make them the aliens’ next target. No one spoke or moved. The device obviously didn’t just drain humans. It prevented uprisings.

  “No wonder no one wants to leave,” Leo said. “They can’t leave.”

  “They can’t stay, either,” Evan said. There weren’t really that many aliens guarding the room, probably because their intimidation technique worked so well. “We can take them out the door we came in. Now that we killed the nest, there’s no threat left back that way.”

  Leo was still eyeballing the crowd. “Do you think everyone is in this room?” Evan knew he was talking about Sarabeth.

  “She’s gotta be down there somewhere,” Evan told him.

  “I haven’t seen my dad, either, but he blends in. Sarabeth’s a tall redhead. I feel like I would have seen her.” His voice was sad and dejected. “Where else would they have taken her?”

  Teena’s face registered his question, and a grin spread across her face. “It’s not about where they brought her. It’s where she went once she got here.”

  A look of realization dawned on Leo’s face. “The center of the ship!” He shook his head, amazed. “It’s a little nutty, but how sweet would it be if she’s right?”

  “But how would she have gotten out without getting killed?” Evan said, looking around. His focus kept landing on Godly Jim’s crowd, and anger welled up inside of him. His stepfather could have been trying to get people off the ship, instead of using them as an audience.

  “I’m not sure,” Leo said jumpily. “I need to find out.”

  “You’re right,” Evan said, trusting that Sarabeth would have figured something out. He took off his backpack and pulled out his squirt gun and two pints of whiskey. He tucked the Super Soaker into his body armor and the pint bottles into the tight waistband of his bike shorts. He looked from Leo to Teena. “You guys find Sarabeth. I can handle this.”

  The chatter in the room was growing again, back into the nervous and panicked crescendo it had reached before the old man tried to attack the aliens.

  Leo squinted at him. “Are you sure?”

  He nodded. “Sarabeth needs you more.” He was already moving toward his stepfather. “I need to handle this alone anyway.”

  “But how are you going to get people out with the aliens in here? They’ll kill you,” Leo said.

  “Not if I kill them first.” Evan patted his Super Soaker. There were only six aliens. He’d killed
that many by himself when Teena and Leo had been frozen. “They won’t even see me coming.”

  “Thank you,” Leo said, patting Evan’s back. Teena looked at him with concern and squeezed his hand. His heart swelled, unwittingly. He squeezed her hand back and hoped it said what he needed to say.

  Evan merged into the thickest part of the crowd as Teena and Leo went back the way they had come. He got a few looks here and there, but people were so consumed by their fear that they didn’t seem to care about the guy with the Super Soaker and the baseball bat. He passed behind his stepfather and listened to Godly Jim’s irritatingly self-satisfied voice.

  “God sent these beings to take us away,” he crowed. “We should be proud. We should be honored. We’ve been chosen.”

  He had his full preacher drawl going, and Evan prickled at the way his mother stood, nodding dutifully, at Jim’s side. The crowd around him was at least a couple hundred people and growing. Godly Jim was having the time of the end of his life.

  Evan would handle him later. He knew he needed to kill the aliens first if he was going to save anyone.

  The six aliens lined up by the door weren’t as big as the ones outside the ship. They didn’t even bristle as he approached them, extracting his Super Soaker from his padding. They probably thought he was just another dummy they could put in their human juicer.

  He stepped right up to the aliens and, before they could do anything, pulled the trigger on his gun. A jet of perfume streamed at the first alien’s chest, and then the second’s. They both went up in little clouds. The remaining four aliens moved in on him, and he fired again. The gun jammed. He stumbled backward, suddenly wishing he’d kept Teena and Leo for backup.

  He fell to the floor, hoping someone in the crowd would help. But people had turned away, like they had with the old man whose carcass had been added to the aliens’ collection. He knew his trusty bat wouldn’t do much good against these indestructible creatures, so Evan pulled the two pints of whiskey from his waistband. He uncapped the bottles as the aliens reached for him, their sharp claws only millimeters from his throat.