Arrival

“Chloe said that the vapor was gone,” Kevin pointed out.

“And how does she know?” Luna countered. “Okay, maybe, but I’d rather have one with me just in case. You can have the job of telling her that we’re going.”

“Maybe she’ll want to come with us,” Kevin said.

Luna made a face. “I guess it’s better than leaving her here and wondering if she’ll let us back in again. I’ll get started getting supplies together. You go and talk to her.”

***

Kevin made his way through the underground complex, looking for Chloe. It took a while to find her in the tangled corridors and storerooms, but eventually he heard her ahead. She seemed to be talking to herself.

“I can’t do it… I can’t do it…”

Kevin cautiously looked through a doorway to find Chloe sitting on the floor of a storeroom. There were things scattered around in a spread that didn’t look accidental. It looked as though she’d swept her arm along one of the shelves, knocking everything to the floor. She had her head in her hands and seemed to be crying.

“Chloe?”

She looked up as Kevin approached, wiping away her tears as if afraid they might be used against her.

“I’m fine,” she said, before Kevin could even ask if she was okay. “I’m fine.”

“I used to say I was fine when people asked me about my illness,” Kevin said, moving to sit down beside her. “It mostly meant I wasn’t.”

“I just get… upset… sometimes,” Chloe said, and Kevin guessed she’d picked that word carefully out of all the ones that had come to her. “I do stuff without really thinking. It’s part of why people said I was crazy.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Kevin said.

Chloe sighed. “You don’t know me yet. Did you just come here to see how badly I was messing up?”

“No, of course not,” Kevin said. “We… I… think that we need to go back to the NASA research institute. With what I saw, there might be a message, and it might be important.”

“You want to go into the middle of the city, to a place that might be full of them?” Chloe replied. “That’s…that doesn’t make any sense. We could go anywhere. There are the Survivors in LA, or my cousin up north…”

“We need to do this,” Kevin said. “Luna’s collecting supplies, and we’ll work out a plan for getting there safely. You could stay here if you want, though. You don’t have to come with us if you don’t think it would be safe enough.”

“You don’t want me to come with you?” Chloe said, and now she sounded as upset as she’d looked before.

“That’s not what I said,” Kevin said.

“It’s what you meant, though, isn’t it?” Chloe shot back.

“No,” Kevin replied. “I just thought you might not want to come. You said yourself it might be dangerous.”

Chloe shrugged. “Whatever.”

“Chloe,” Kevin said. “I don’t want to—”

“Whatever,” Chloe repeated, in a dull tone. “Do what you want. I don’t care. Go off and make your stupid preparations.”

“Chloe—”

“Go!” she snapped.

Kevin went, hoping that if he left Chloe alone for a while, they might be able to talk about it again later or something. That was what people did, wasn’t it? They talked about things and made up?

For now, he knew he should probably help Luna find supplies for their journey. They would need all kinds of things, from gas for the car that they’d left waiting outside to clothes, to maps. He passed a door with the word “Armory” printed above it and tried the handle, but it was locked. Maybe that was just as well. He doubted that he and Luna could fight their way through a horde of controlled people no matter how many weapons they had. Besides, just the thought of it made him picture his mother running toward him, or the scientists from the Institute, or Luna’s parents. He didn’t think he would be able to hurt any of them.

He was still thinking about it when he heard alarms going off in the direction of the control room.

Kevin ran there, hoping it would all just be some false alarm or minor fault, but in his heart, he knew it wouldn’t be. He knew exactly who would be responsible for that alarm, and he didn’t want to think about what she might be doing.

He saw Chloe as he ran into the control room. She was pressing buttons on the computers through a haze of tears, stabbing at them with her fingers as if pressing them harder would make them work better.

“Chloe, what are you doing?” Kevin demanded.

“I don’t have to do what you say. I don’t have to do what anyone says,” she said, in a determined tone. “You can’t keep me here. I need to get out!”

“No one’s trying to—”

“I thought you liked me. I thought you might be my friend, but you’re like all the others. I’m going. You can’t stop me!”

She pressed something else, and the tone of the alarms changed. Computer-generated words blared over the speakers.

“Emergency Evacuation Procedure begun. Opening doors. Please exit the base in an orderly fashion.”

“What?” Kevin said. “Chloe, what have you done?”

“What’s she doing now?” Luna asked, as she ran into the room. She had a backpack over one shoulder that she’d obviously been using to collect supplies, still half open because of the hurry to get there. She didn’t look happy.

Not as unhappy as Chloe did, though. “You were going to leave me behind here like some kind of… of prisoner,” she said, and her tone was frantic, angry, and scared all at once. “You’re not going to keep me here. I’m going to my cousin. I’m going to find out what happened to him. Then I’m going to the Survivors.”

Behind her, the great door to the airlock was swinging open. To Kevin’s shock, so was the outer door, both of them opening at once in a clear path to the outside. Kevin could see the mountain road outside, and the trees. Worse, he could see figures moving out there, turning toward the sound almost in unison.

Pretty much as soon as the way was clear, Chloe darted through the doorway, out onto the mountain. Kevin was too shocked by it all to try to stop her, and Luna was pulling on her gas mask in a hurry, obviously still unsure about whether to trust the air outside or not.

“The door, Kevin!” Luna yelled as she hurried to put it in place. “We need to close the door.”

Kevin nodded. “I’ve got it.”

He hoped he had it, at least. He could see the people outside advancing toward the door, more of them than he could have believed given that the aliens were supposed to have taken the people. There were soldiers and hikers, whole families moving in a kind of stilted, silent coordination.

Kevin pressed buttons on the computer, hoping to undo whatever had been done. Nothing seemed to have any effect. It didn’t help that he didn’t have a clue how the computer system here worked. It wasn’t as if everything was labeled for anyone who wanted to try using it. Besides, he suspected that an emergency door opening like this wasn’t supposed to be easy to undo, in case people got trapped inside. He mashed at the computer’s keys, hoping to find some combination that might do something.

None of it worked. The doors stayed open, a clear path standing to the outside, and now, along that path, the people controlled by the aliens were stalking forward.

They were coming.

And if they reached the bunker, Kevin was terrified of what would happen next.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Run!” Kevin yelled as the people the aliens had converted closed in on the bunker. Luna already seemed to be taking his advice, running back into the confusing depths of the place, so fast that Kevin had to push to keep up.

They’d always been good at running away. Whenever they got into trouble for being somewhere they shouldn’t be, they always managed to keep ahead of whoever was following them. Well, most of the time. Well, at least better than half. This time, though, Kevin suspected they would get something a lot worse than a stern warning if the creatures behind them caught up.

He could hear the thud of their feet on the bunker’s floor as they followed, the sound of their pursuit silent except for the clatter of boots against concrete. They didn’t call out in their pursuit, didn’t screech or scream or demand that Kevin and Luna stop. Somehow, that made it all scarier.

“This way!” Luna called out, still leading him deeper into the base. They passed the armory, and now Kevin did wish he had some kind of weapon, simply because it seemed like the only way they were going to be able to get out of there in one piece. Since he didn’t have one, he settled for knocking over whatever he passed as he ran, pushing a cart into the path of the advancing people, closing doors behind him. Crashes told him when they slammed into the obstacles Kevin was putting in their way, but so far none of it seemed to be slowing them down even a little.

“Quiet now,” Luna whispered, pulling Kevin into another corridor and slowing down to a tiptoe. A crowd of hikers and soldiers hurried past just a second later, moving with all the speed and strength that seemed to come from being controlled by the aliens.

“Why are they so fast?” Kevin whispered back, trying to catch his breath. It didn’t seem fair, them being that fast. The least you should be able to expect from an alien invasion was to be able to run away from it properly.

“The aliens are probably just making them use all of their muscles,” Luna said, “not caring if they hurt them. You know, like when grandmas lift cars off people.”

“Grandmas can lift cars off people?” Kevin said.

Luna shrugged. With her gas mask on, it was impossible to know if she was making fun of him or not. “I saw it on TV. Have you got your breath back yet?”

Kevin nodded even though it wasn’t exactly true. “Where are we going? If they’re smart, they’ll have left people by the entrance.”

“So we go to the other entrance,” Luna said.

The emergency exit. Kevin had been so busy thinking about the bunker being overrun that he’d pretty much forgotten it. If they could get to it, then maybe they had a chance. They could get to the car and drive to NASA.

“Ready?” Luna asked. “Okay, go.”

They scurried along the corridors, and somehow, not seeing the controlled people was worse than seeing them. They were so quiet that they could have been around any corner, waiting to grab them, and if they did, then what happened next wouldn’t be worth—

“Run!” Luna called out as an arm grabbed for her from around the next corner. It succeeded in getting hold of the cloth of her shirt, and Kevin slammed forward, throwing his whole weight against the arm like he was trying to tackle it.

The grip broke free and he and Luna were running again, taking twists and turns at random to try to lose their pursuers. They couldn’t run faster than them in a straight line, so they had to look for spaces where the controlled people couldn’t follow, and try to use the maze-like layout of the bunker against them.

“It’s in here,” Luna said, pointing to a doorway.

Kevin had to take her word for it. Right then, he felt so lost that he couldn’t even tell someone the way back to the control room. He plunged into the section of corridor after Luna, then shut the door behind them, grabbing a fire extinguisher and trying to use it to jam the door shut. It looked as flimsy as cardboard compared to the controlled people’s strength.

Now they just had to get the escape hatch open.

Kevin put his hands on the wheel, trying to turn it. Nothing happened; it was so stiff it felt as though it might have been made from rock. He tried again, his knuckles going white with the effort.

“Maybe a little help?” he suggested.

“But you seemed to be having fun,” Luna shot back from behind her mask, before gripping onto the locking wheel with him and hauling at it. Still it was stuck.

“We need to try harder,” Luna said.

“I’m trying as hard as I can,” Kevin assured her.

“Well, unless you want to go ask one of the controlled people for help, we need to do more. On three. One…”

A clang came at the door Kevin had barred.

“Three!” he said, pulling at the wheel with every scrap of strength he could pull together. Luna seemed to have the same idea, all but hanging her weight off the thing.

Finally, as a second clang came from the door they’d barred, the thing shifted. They spun it open while Kevin’s muscles complained, and then Luna dove inside headfirst, not waiting to see if Kevin wanted to go first. He hurried after her, shutting the hatch behind him in the hope that the corridor would just look empty to anything following.

The space beyond was narrow, little more than a kind of crawl tunnel. If the two of them had been adults, they would probably have barely fit. As it was, there was enough space to scramble along on their hands and knees, hurrying to another hatch at the far end. Thankfully, this one wasn’t stuck, and opened smoothly to reveal the mountainside beyond.

“We need to be careful,” Luna said softly as the two of them dropped down onto the mountainside. “They might still be out here.”

They were, because Kevin could see figures further off, moving up the slope as if to get to the front entrance. There were some trees nearby, so he and Luna slipped into them, staying low and trying to keep out of sight.

They crept their way up the mountain, trying to work out where exactly they’d hidden Dr. Levin’s car. If they could get to the car, then they could get out of there, leaving the alien-controlled people, and go to the base.

Kevin spotted it a little way away, right where they’d left it, tucked out of sight. He crept toward it… and that was when he saw Chloe coming around a bend in the mountain road, from the parking lot at the summit. A pair of tourists, moving with the strangely coordinated silence of the alien controlled, were running after her, and they were gaining.

“We have to help her,” Kevin said.

“After everything she’s just done?” Luna shot back. “It would serve her right if we left her to become an alien too. She’d probably be less trouble.”

“Luna,” Kevin said.

“I’m just saying that she totally doesn’t deserve our help,” Luna said.

The controlled people were almost at Chloe now.

“That’s probably true,” Kevin said. He started forward. “I’m still going to help her, though.”

He set off in Chloe’s direction and wasn’t that surprised to find Luna running alongside him.

“I’m doing this for you, not her,” Luna said.

“Of course,” Kevin agreed, running faster.

“And you can stop smiling about it,” Luna continued. “I’m just doing this because you’ll only get aliened if I don’t help.”

“Aliened?”

“I’ll think of a better word later,” Luna said.

They were almost at Chloe now. One of the controlled people reached out for her but Kevin and Luna were faster, grabbing her and pulling her off the path and down into the trees. The slope made it treacherous, but maybe that was a good thing as one of the controlled people came tumbling past them.

“You came back for me,” Chloe said. “You—”

“Stop talking and keep running,” Luna snapped. “The car’s just ahead.”

And the remaining hiker was just behind, moving with all the tenacity of a wolf chasing a deer. Kevin didn’t want to think about how that kind of thing usually ended, he just kept running, switching directions through the trees.

The alien-controlled hiker grabbed for him and Kevin managed to dodge. To his surprise, Chloe was there, pushing the man from the side, sending him tumbling further down the slope, scrambling to stop his fall. She grinned at it, although Kevin winced, because even if there was an alien controlling that body, it still belonged to someone, and if they ever got it back, they would probably want it without broken bones.

“Get in!” Luna yelled from ahead. She was at the car now, hopping in at the driver’s side.

Kevin and Chloe ran for the car and got in as Luna started to turn the key. Kevin heard her cursing under her breath as she did, and it only took a moment to realize why: The car wasn’t starting. It made a kind of whirring, coughing sound, but other than that, nothing happened, no matter how many times Luna tried to get it to go.

Fear rose up in Kevin then, although there had been more than enough of it sloshing around in him anyway thanks to having to run away from alien-controlled people. He looked around at the trees, trying to spot movement, looking for any sign of the controlled people. Not just the ones who had stumbled down the slope, because there would be more. There always seemed to be more.

“It’s not working,” Luna said.

“It’s not going to work,” Chloe said. “You’ve flooded it.”

“As if you know anything about it,” Luna shot back.

It had the feeling of an argument that would take too long and be too loud; that would still have them sitting there when more of the controlled people came. Already, Kevin thought he could see rustling in the trees.

“We have to go,” Kevin said. He thought he could see shapes out beyond the nearest trunks. “We have to go now.”

He got out of the car again and the others followed with obvious reluctance. At least they followed, slipping away into the trees just in time as Kevin looked back to see hikers and soldiers, park rangers and families, descending on the car in a silent, coordinated mass. Some of them looked around, seeming almost to sniff the air. Kevin hurried away as quickly as he dared.

“They won’t be distracted by the car for long,” Kevin guessed. “We need to think of something else.”

“There are plenty of cars up in the parking lot,” Chloe said.

Luna snorted. “That we don’t have keys for.”

“I don’t need a key. That’s what I was up there doing, until they charged after me.” She still sounded as though she wanted to pick a fight, but right then, if they could all get out of there, Kevin could live with that.

“We’ll need to keep quiet,” Kevin said, and the others looked at him as if he’d just said the most obvious thing in the world. They all crept forward, making their way up the mountain to the summit and the parking lot that stood there for visitors. For the moment, at least, it seemed to be empty.

“You might as well take off that stupid mask,” Chloe said to Luna. “I told you, whatever they put in the air is gone. Or are you scared?”

The last one was enough to get to Luna. Pointedly, she reached up and took off her mask, hanging it from her belt.

“I’m not scared,” she said. “I’m just not stupid.”

“We need to find a car,” Kevin said, interrupting before they could argue again.

There were plenty to choose from, left wherever they’d been parked by the people visiting the mountain. There were SUVs and minivans, modern cars and old ones in all kinds of colors and—

“That one,” Chloe said, pointing to a pickup truck that looked beaten up to the point where Kevin was amazed there was anything left of it. The paintwork was peeling, rust showing through in spots. “I’ll be able to start that one.”

They went over to it, and it turned out that one of the windows was open a crack. Chloe pulled it down further, then reached in and opened the door.

“Doesn’t it worry you that she knows how to do all this?” Luna asked Kevin.

Chloe looked back over her shoulder. “Not all of us get perfect little lives, cheerleader.”

Kevin was almost grateful for the sight of a group of the controlled people advancing slowly, obviously searching.

“Quick,” he said, “in the truck!”

They got in, keeping their heads down. Chloe was in the driver’s seat working on something with the ignition. It seemed to be taking a long time.

“I thought you said you could do this,” Luna whispered.

“I’d like to see you try,” Chloe shot back.

“Just so long as you can get us to NASA,” Luna said.

Chloe shook her head. “We’re going to LA.”

“San Francisco,” Luna insisted.

“LA,” Chloe shot back.

Kevin knew he needed to intervene, because if he didn’t, they would probably still be arguing when the controlled people caught up to them.

“Please, Chloe, we need to hear this message. And… well, if it doesn’t work out, then maybe we could go to LA. Together.”

Chloe was quiet for a minute. Kevin dared a glance over the dashboard. He hoped she made a decision soon, because the group of controlled people was getting closer.

“I guess you did kind of save my life back there,” Chloe said. “Okay.”

She kept working at what she was doing with the ignition. The engine gave a cough. Kevin looked up to see every alien-controlled person there staring at them now, looking at them with the intensity of a cat that had just spotted a mouse.

“Um… Chloe?”

They started to run forward.

“Can you do this or not?” Luna said.

Chloe didn’t answer, just kept working on whatever she was doing. The engine spluttered again, then roared to life. Chloe looked up in triumph.

“See! I told you that—”

She stopped short as a figure slammed into the truck, making a grab for them.

“Get us out of here,” Kevin said, and Chloe nodded.

The truck lurched forward as she drove, apparently not caring if she hit the controlled people or not. They swerved around a car, and a soldier threw himself into the truck’s path. Chloe didn’t slow it down even for a moment, and the crunch as they hit him was awful. He bounced off the hood and rolled to his feet, but by then they were already away.

Or kind of away, anyway. There was only so fast they could go on the mountain road, especially with the risk of abandoned cars in the way, left wherever people had been when the vapor converted their occupants. Chloe was weaving around them, but it still slowed them down enough that the controlled people running behind were keeping up.

“They’re not giving up,” Luna said with a glance back.

“They don’t get tired, they don’t stop,” Chloe said, and something about the way she said it suggested that she’d learned that the hard way. “Everyone hold on.”

Kevin clung to the dashboard as they sped up, the truck rolling alarmingly as it sped around the obstacles in the way. Kevin was sure they would crash at any moment, but somehow, impossibly, they didn’t. Chloe wrenched the wheel from one side to the other, and the truck lumbered along in response.

They skidded close to the edge of the road, and Kevin didn’t know which would be worse: crashing or being caught. Chloe seemed to have made up her mind, though, because they didn’t slow down. They sped down off the mountain, and now Kevin could see the controlled people falling further and further behind.

“We did it,” he said. “We survived.”

Luna hugged him. Over her shoulder, Kevin could see the look on Chloe’s face while she did it.

“Now all we have to do,” Luna said, “is go into the city, break into a place we barely got out of, and find a message from a second set of aliens without being grabbed by the first ones.”

Put like that, it seemed like an impossible task. Kevin could barely imagine making it to the NASA institute in one piece, but they still had to.

It was the only hope the world had.

CHAPTER FIVE

“I’m tempted to say ‘are we almost there yet,’” Luna said, with a smile across at Kevin.

Kevin should have guessed that one of the biggest dangers of a road trip like this wasn’t just the risk of crashing, or being ambushed by people controlled by aliens, or anything like that. It was the possibility that Luna might get bored enough to start thinking of ways to entertain herself. He had no doubt that would mean an argument with Chloe, and since Chloe was driving, that didn’t feel like a good thing.

Lots of things didn’t, from the alien spaceship hanging moon-sized and ominous in the sky, to the silent near emptiness of the roads. All of it just reminded him how weird this whole situation was, and how much the world had changed almost overnight.

“Can’t you drive any faster?” Luna asked.

“You want faster?” Chloe said, and hit the gas.

Kevin clung on. Once they got off the mountain, the roads opened up a little, but that didn’t mean they could just go as fast as they wanted to. For one thing, Kevin doubted that Chloe had any more of an idea of how to drive than he or Luna did.

For another, there were still too many cars in the road for that.

“Slow down,” Kevin said as they blitzed their way around a Chevy parked in the middle of the freeway, its owner long gone. They barely skidded their way past a motorcycle that had been left on its side, just abandoned. “Chloe, please slow down.”