But Now Is
FOUND
THE OUTERS TRILOGY
PART TWO
©2008 The Angst Guy (theangstguy@yahoo.com)
Daria and associated characters
are ©2008 MTV Networks
Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me,
whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com
Synopsis: In this sequel to “Who Once Was Lost,” twelve-year-old Daria
Morgendorffer, the only human known to have been kidnapped by aliens, tries to
return to a normal life in her new home in
Author’s Notes and Acknowledgements appear at the end of this story.
This story
makes use of a free type font for the titles, for aesthetic value. The font is
Denmark Regular, which has a very nice Star Trek-like sci-fi flavor. The author
feels it improves the overall look of the tale. The font is available for
downloading (again, free) at AbstractFonts.com.
*
Old habits
are sure hard to break, Daria Morgendorffer ruefully thought. School was
over for the day—but here she sat, trapped in a seminar classroom on the second
floor of
Her cheek
twitched beneath her long brown hair. If the boogieman doesn’t get me first,
that is.
It was a
Tuesday in early November. A cold wind blew against the windows under an
overcast sky. Daria was finding her eight-grade class work to be challenging,
which she felt was good. She had also found some of her teachers to be
challenging, which was not so good. A thick cloud of notoriety followed her
wherever she went—notoriety she could not possibly help—and people reacted to
it in different ways. Most were okay with it, in the sense of being only mildly
annoying, but she knew that a few felt an irresistible desire to bring her down
to earth by poking holes in what they perceived to be her sense of superiority
and privilege.
The World Lit
teacher was a prime example. She had made fun of Daria the previous week during
class for her six-page report on Russian novels, not believing for a moment
that Daria had actually read any. Thus followed the
Shakespearean insults. And thus Daria, after a parent-principal
conference, was being kept after school to attend a sensitivity-awareness
seminar twice a week for the next four weeks. This came despite her parents’
proof that Daria had read at least a half dozen
Russian novels and even seemed to like them.
I don’t
have a sense of privilege, Daria fumed, sitting with her arms crossed over
her chest as she and the other students in the class waited for the teacher to
arrive. I don’t want special treatment. I just want everyone to leave me the
hell alone. I won’t argue the superiority part, though. I’m a hell of a lot
smarter than that bonehead World Lit teacher. Maybe that’s why the aliens
kidnapped me and froze me for three years underground, before I could escape.
They knew I was a superior human and they wanted me for . . . for something,
maybe their extraterrestrial bug collection. Maybe I was like a rare butterfly
with pretty wings. And one day, the aliens will come back and find me and stick
a pin through me to make sure I don’t get away again. Or they’ll have me for a
snack. There’s not a thing I can do about it, either way.
Anyone who
could have eavesdropped on her thoughts would have thought Daria insane, but
the three-year kidnapping part had really happened. At a summer camp in June
1994, she had fallen into a sinkhole. She climbed out after a minor earthquake
destroyed the cave, unaware that it was now September 1997 and she was listed
as a missing child. Her parents, thinking she was dead, had disposed of all her
things, moved away, and gotten new jobs and a new house. Only her sister Quinn
had really believed she was still alive, and only Quinn was able to see Daria
through the turmoil that followed when she was reunited with her family.
Over a month
after her recovery, Daria was still a top story in the news. She had fallen
into the sinkhole at age twelve and a half. When she came out, she was still
twelve and a half, having not aged in the slightest. Medical tests had
confirmed it. It was now widely believed she had been caught in some sort of
high-tech trap set by unknown beings—probably not human ones—who had kept her
in suspended animation for over three years until pure luck freed her.
Fourteen-year-old Quinn, once Daria’s younger sister, was now her older one;
once Daria’s nemesis, Quinn was now her primary support—a cosmic jest without
parallel.
Daria’s
notoriety lay in the fact that she was probably the only person ever to have
had an encounter with a superior nonhuman intelligence. She was also the only
person to have been restored, unharmed, from suspended animation. People read
into that anything they wished. The media followed her without end. Paparazzi
with telephoto-lens cameras, following her every move, were a common part of
the landscape. So were tabloid covers in supermarkets showing doctored photos
of her talking to Gray Aliens, Satan, Elvis, or Bigfoot. Adults trying to ask
her about UFOs, time machines, the future, and the afterlife were the everyday
norm. Most people did not believe her when she said she remembered nothing of
those lost three years, which was a shame because it was true.
Sighing, Daria
played with a pencil at her desk and reflected on the irony of it all. Before
she fell into the sinkhole, in the days when she was just an unknown kid, she
was an outcast. Other school kids thought of her as weird, and she ignored them
and had no friends. Now, unquestionably one of the most famous people alive,
she was still an outcast, still thought of as weird, and still had no friends.
Other students were fearful of her or thought she had made up the whole thing.
Bitter at the constant rejection she received, and frustrated at the inability
of anyone to communicate with her on her level, Daria refused to make the
effort to be nice. She spoke her mind and let the chips fall where they may.
Which was what finally brought her to the sensitivity awareness
class.
The classroom
door opened, and a tall African-American woman entered. She had a short Afro,
gold hoop earrings, elegantly tailored clothing, and an annoyed expression. She
dropped a notebook on the desk at the front of the classroom and put her fists
on her hips. All talking in the room ceased.
“My name is
Michele Landon,” said the woman, with all the charm of a drill sergeant. “I’m
your Sensitivity Awareness Scholastic Session teacher for the next eight
Tuesdays and Thursdays, not counting holidays. We will cover the basics of sensitivity
awareness and why you’re being kept after school to learn about it, if for some
reason you can’t already guess. Sensitivity Awareness Scholastic Sessions are
for your own good. Though I’m not a regular teacher, I was asked to be your
instructor by the principal of this school and the Lawndale Businesswoman’s
A boy with a
half grin sat up in his seat. “Well,” he said, “it’s funny that the initials
for this class . . . never mind.”
“The initials what?”
His grin
faded. “They . . . nothing.”
“Do you think
this class is funny?” said Ms. Landon, her temper skyrocketing.
“I said, no. I
mean, no, ma’am.”
“You think
there’s something funny about me?” she pressed on.
“No, I was
just—”
“Do I
look funny to you? Is that it?”
“No, honest! I—”
“Then shut up
when I’m talking to you, or I’ll call your parents! Do you understand me?”
The boy nodded
rapidly.
“I don’t
tolerate disrespect in my classroom!” Ms. Landon swung her gaze to take in the
whole room. “You’re here because you showed a lack of respect or a lack of
sensitivity or basic courtesy or common sense, or you did something else
stupid, I don’t care what, and we’re going to fix it no matter what it takes—do
you understand me?”
A reluctant
chorus of “Yes, ma’am!” and “Yes, Ms. Landon!” followed.
Daria raised
her hand. She suspected it was a mistake to speak up, and apparently so did the
girl sitting behind her who gasped and whispered, “Don’t!”
However, it
was too late. “You!” Ms. Landon called, pointing at
Daria. “What’s your problem?”
Daria lowered
her hand. “What if someone shows a lack of respect to us?” she said. She meant
to talk about her World Lit teacher’s cutting remarks about her honesty.
“Are you
saying I’m not respecting you?” Ms. Landon shouted. “Do you have a problem with
how I’m talking to you?”
Oh, crap!
“No, Ms. Landon,” Daria said, wishing she could dig a hole and hide in it. “I
meant—”
“I am not going
to put up with this kind of thing!” Ms. Landon snapped. “I don’t have to be
here! I used to be a senior vice president at U. S. World, I’m only doing this
for your benefit until I can get a nanny for my son and get back into the
workforce, and I will not tolerate disrespect!”
Another
Shakespearean insult, a nasty one, hovered on the tip of her tongue—but Daria
chose the hard-learned path of wisdom. “I’m sorry,” she said aloud, and meant
it. She made a promise to herself to zip her lips from now on when Ms. Landon
was around.
Ms. Landon
glared hard at Daria—then, mollified by the apology, turned her attention
elsewhere. “Can anyone tell me what the most important part of sensitivity
awareness is? Anyone? Speak up, damn it!”
Something
brushed against Daria’s left shoulder. She reached up to feel around—and
encountered a scrap of paper being passed by the girl behind her. Carefully
taking the paper without Ms. Landon seeing it, she opened the scrap and read:
SHE’S VERY SENSITIVE ABOUT SENSITIVITY.
Daria checked
on Ms. Landon, then quietly wrote a reply. HOW AM I
GOING TO LEARN TO BE SENSITIVE IF I CAN’T ASK THE TEACHER ANYTHING BECAUSE
SHE’S TOO SENSITIVE?
While Ms.
Landon berated several students on the other side of the room, the paper came
back. PLAY DUMB. TRUST ME, IT’S YOUR ONLY HOPE.
Daria groaned
and tore out a new scrap of paper, the old one being used up. PLAY DUMB IN
SCHOOL, WHERE I’M SUPPOSED TO BE SMART?
The note came
back when Ms. Landon’s back was turned, as she wrote on the chalkboard. IF YOU
PLAY DUMB, YOU ARE BEING SMART, it read.
Daria risked a
glance behind her. A tall, thin girl sat there, another eighth grader Daria
recalled from her other classes. She had silky black bangs and blue eyes and
today was dressed primarily in black, though with a bright red sweater tied
around her waist by the sleeves. Their eyes met. The girl smiled at Daria.
For the first
time in years, Daria smiled back at another student. The tall girl then looked
at the teacher and quickly motioned for Daria to turn around again, which she
did in the nick of time. Ms. Landon was finished with writing down the six most
important elements of sensitivity awareness.
“Get out your
notebooks and write this down!” she shouted at the class. “I didn’t put it up
here for decoration!”
Between taking
notes, Daria managed to get another note to the girl behind her. TALK AFTER CLASS?
SURE. CAN YOU
COME OVER TO MY HOUSE?
PARENTS WON’T
LET ME OUT. THEY’RE PICKING ME UP AT THREE. CAN YOU COME OVER INSTEAD?
I’LL CALL
HOME, SHOULD BE OKAY. ARE YOU DARIA?
YES, I’M THAT
DARIA. IS THAT A PROBLEM?
BEATS ME. I’M NOT SENSITIVE ENOUGH TO KNOW.
Daria smiled.
This was promising. She wrote back, WHAT’S YOUR NAME?
The note came
back right before class ended.
ELSIE SLOANE.
“So,” said
Elsie as they waited at the middle school’s front doors for Daria’s parents to
pick them up, “what are you in the slammer for?”
“Sarcasm,”
said Daria. “Disrespect. Mouthing
off. Being a public nuisance.”
“Not bad for a
newbie,” said Elsie. Her tone became more defiant. “I’m practically a lifer.
This is my third time through SASS.”
“Third? You’re kidding.”
“Nope. I told someone in the hall last Monday the assistant
principal got his yard-work clothes mixed up with his school clothes, and the
A. P. was right behind me. After all that, he still doesn’t dress any better.”
Elsie’s
interest in clothing set off alarms in Daria’s head. “I’m not into fashion,”
she said glumly. “If you dump me, I won’t hold it against you.”
“Oh, I’m not
into the let’s-all-dress-like-hookers thing,” said Elsie. “I want to be a
costume designer in theater—do up the actors for plays, musicals, whatever. I wanna shake things up a little. My dream is to see Hamlet
done with
Daria looked
at Elsie with renewed respect. “Yeah,” she said. “I could see that.” She
hesitated, then said, “I’d like to be a writer.”
“Hey, perfect!
You do the plays, I’ll do the costumes, and we’ll both rock Broadway!”
“Yeah,” said
Daria softly, already starting to picture it. For the first time in ages, she
wasn’t thinking about how miserable life was.
The driver of
a dark blue Lexus sitting outside the doors honked the horn and waved at the
girls in frustration through the windows.
“Oops,” said
Else. “That your dad?”
“Yeah.” Daria pushed open a door and held it for Elsie.
“Don’t expect too much.”
“You haven’t
met my family yet.”
“Hey, kiddo!”
said Jake Morgendorffer as the girls got into the back seat. “Mom called from
the office and said you were having a friend over. Is this Elmer?”
Daria clenched
her teeth as if in pain.
“Elsie,” said
Elsie in a flat voice. “No one’s done the cow joke for three weeks now. It was
almost a record.”
“El—oh! Damn it! Sorry about that, really! I—ah—I kind of
got confused, you know, with—”
“Dad,” said
Daria sharply, “just drive.”
“Okay,” Jake
groaned. “Sorry.” He turned the radio to an oldies rock station and put the car
in gear.
“Sorry,” Daria
whispered to her friend, mortified. “I’d like to say I was adopted, but I
haven’t found where they hid the paperwork.”
Elsie
shrugged. “He’s not you,” she said. “Tell me about your writing.”
“Mmm . . .
it’s probably awful. I gave up on poetry after one of my teachers said he liked
it. I’m trying to do short stories. I haven’t tried plays yet. I’d better get
on it.”
“How do you
think Cats would go over if, instead of little cats, they were
saber-toothed tigers?”
Daria
considered this. “Would there be blood?”
“As much as the budget allows. Maybe
more.”
“I’ll buy a
season ticket.”
“People aren’t
using their imaginations enough. When I think of all the opportunities that
were wasted in The Sound of Music, I could—”
“Oh,” said
Jake from the front seat, “um, El—”
“Elsie!” said
both girls at once.
“Elsie! Yeah!
Your last name is Sloane, right?”
“Uh-oh,” Elsie
said under her breath.
“Is that
Sloane as in Grace, Sloane and Page? The investment firm in Halcyon Hills, with
the whole top floor of that big gold cube building?”
“It’s kind of
amber-ish, actually.”
“Wow!” Jake
grinned. “Say, think your dad could slip me a little of that inside
information? Give me a few hot stock tips?”
Daria buried
her face in her hands. “I know I’m adopted,” she muttered. “I just know it.”
“Mister
Morgendorffer, he could,” Elsie said calmly, “but it’s kind of like illegal,
you know? And he kind of like told me I have to tell him about anyone who asks
about that so he can kind of like turn them over to the government for an
investigation, like, you know?”
“Uh—oh! Hey, that was a joke! Heh,
heh! Yeah, Ol’ Jakey was just pulling your leg! I don’t need any inside
info! Don’t you worry about! I’ve got my own stock-market secrets! Just kiddin’ around, yeah, that’s me. Always
making jokes. I’m like that all the time—isn’t that right, Daria?”
“Look out for
the truck, Dad.”
“What? Where?” The car slowed. “Did you see a truck?”
“I wish I
drank,” said Daria, her face red. “Life would be more tolerable if I did.”
A few minutes
later, the girls closed the door to Daria’s bedroom and dropped their backpacks
on the floor. “Homework now or later?” said Daria.
“Break time
first,” said Elsie. “Don’t worry about your dad. Everyone asks that, and I
always tell them they’re being investigated, but I never tell anyone.”
“Damn it,”
said Daria. “My hopes are dashed.”
“Mind if I ask
a weird question?”
“My mom’s sort
of strange, too. She’s a lawyer. Dad’s a business consultant.”
“No, that
wasn’t it.”
“Then it’s
probably about Elvis or Bigfoot. They’re married and have a kid now.”
Elsie burst
into laughter and had to sit down on Daria’s bed until it passed. “That wasn’t
it, either. It . . . oh, forget it.”
“Go ahead and
ask. I can’t be any more humiliated than I already am with my parents around.”
Elsie’s
expression grew serious. “Do you mind that about my dad?”
Daria drew a
blank. She hadn’t expected this question. “Do I mind what about your dad?”
“Well, that
we’re rich. He makes a lot of money. A lot.”
For a moment, Daria thought Elsie looked fearful. “We’re probably the richest
family in
Daria nodded.
That made sense. “Do you mind me being Daria?” she said.
Elsie looked
down at her hands, her fingers interlocked and elbows resting on her knees. “I
guess I sort of thought it would be cool to be you, but I got to thinking about
it, and I thought maybe it . . .”
“—wasn’t
cool,” Daria finished. “You’re right. It isn’t.” She sat down on the bed near
Elsie. “It sucks. I can’t go anywhere without some jerk trying to get me to
contact his dead uncle or tell him when Earth’s being invaded. I hate it.” She
reflected a moment. “Some of the endorsement offers look interesting, though.”
“Endorsements? Oh, right.”
“Yeah. They’d help pay for college, for my sister and for
me. On one hand, I’d hate to make money off of something I can’t help,
something that’s probably going to kill me in time, but on the other—”
“Excuse me,”
said Elsie, her eyes widening. “What was that you said? About killing you?”
Daria became
quiet. “Well,” she said at last, “I don’t know.” She was quiet again for a
while. “I don’t know what they’re going to do when they come looking for me.”
Elsie blinked.
“They,” she said.
Daria nodded.
“You don’t
really know that they’re going to do that, right?”
“I don’t
know.” Daria’s voice grew softer as she spoke. “I say they were aliens, but
they could be anything. I never really saw anything or anyone, just the cave. I
only got out of there by accident. I don’t think I was supposed to get out.
They might be peeved about that.” She licked her lips. “I think about it a lot,
mostly at night.”
It took time
for Elsie to frame a response. “That’s kind of defeatist, isn’t it?”
“I think the
word is realistic. You could put the whole U. S. Army outside our house, but it
probably wouldn’t help.” Her shoulders drooped. “If they want me, they’ll get
me.”
“What’s your
sister like?” Elsie suddenly asked, leaning back on the bed on her elbows.
“Oh.” Daria
shook herself out of her funk. “Uh . . . she’s all right. We get along pretty
well. She sticks up for me against Mom and Dad when things are tense. You might
actually like her. She’s into the teen fashion thing pretty deep.”
“Eh, people
like that don’t get into the costume aspect too much. If they can’t wear it and
get a boy toy, it’s no use to them.”
“What did you
do for Halloween?”
“Nothing. Oh, I did put a mustache on my brother when he was
asleep. Looked sort of like Hitler if you squinted a lot.”
“Older brother or younger?”
“Tom’s older.
He’s a sophomore at
“What’s he
like? Tom, I mean?”
Elsie swung
her legs back and forth as she lay flat on her back on the bed. “Full of
himself, acts like he’s Mister Casual Suave. He wears these old clothes and
pretends he’s a regular guy who’s half-broke, and when people find out he’s
not, he acts like it’s nothing, like ‘I’m not really rich, I’m just like you
are.’ He’s such an ass.”
“How about your Mom and Dad?”
Elsie sighed.
She stopped swinging her legs and sat up, looking at the floor. “The truth is,”
she said softly, “they’re okay. Dad’s all right, mostly, when he’s not working
or golfing.” Elsie tensed. “I don’t get along with my mom too well. We don’t
agree on anything, and we fight a lot.” She got up from the bed and tugged up on
her black pants. “I don’t want to be like her, sitting around living off some
rich guy I married. She says all I need from college is my M.R.S. degree, then I can do what I want. That so pisses me off. Your mom’s
a lawyer, that’s gotta be all right somehow.”
“Maybe. She works like it’s her religion. You’d think the
phone was glued to her head. I know more about her case load than about her.”
“What kind of
law?”
“Corporate.
She works for a little firm that’s—wait, that’s wrong.
That was in
They began
talking about school and quietly settled into finishing their math homework.
Afterward, they watched TV.
“This looks
like a rerun,” said Daria.
“That’s
disgusting!” said Elsie, making a face. “I’d never go out with anyone from the
British Royal Family, much less all of them at once! Unless they wore that
Elizabethan get-up from the 1500s. That was pretty cool. What show is this?”
“‘Sick, Sad World.’”
“I think it’s
horrible. This must be the worst TV show ever. How often does it come on?”
“Weekdays about this time for new shows, but they alternate with
reruns. The specials are on Sunday nights.”
“I’ll have to
put it in my PDA calendar. Oh, hey—tomorrow they’re talking to Bigfoot’s hair
dresser!”
Elsie’s mother
called to say she would pick her daughter up at seven, before the Morgendorffers had dinner. Quinn came back from an
afternoon date and was preparing for an evening date when she wandered by
Daria’s room and peeked in. Daria made the introductions.
“If Daria
likes you, you’re okay with me,” Quinn told Elsie. “How old is your brother
again?”
“Sixteen,”
said Elsie. “He’s kind of—”
“What kind of
car does he drive?”
“He has to
borrow my Dad’s old BMW, but—”
“I’m free
Saturday—no, all day Sunday, yeah. Have him give me a call. Thanks!” She
hurried off to her room to put on makeup.
Daria and
Elsie looked at each other. They both shook their heads.
“Let’s just
pretend that didn’t happen,” said Daria.
“Tom won’t be
around much this weekend anyway,” said Elsie. “He’s going out with this girl in
Fielding’s science club. She has a meteor-watching project, and he’s helping
her with it.”
“Somewhere
dark,” said Daria. “Somewhere secluded.”
“At the overlook above the abandoned rock quarry.”
“Ah.”
“Yup.”
“That would be
the Leonids,” said Daria. “It’s a meteor shower that
comes every year about this time. It should be an interesting night, if the
sky’s clear and they bother to look.”
“You should
come over this weekend. I’m working on this costume and need a little help.”
“You’ve
mistaken me for someone who can sew.”
“If you can
stand in place with your arms out, I’ll get Mom to spring for pizza.”
“I don’t know
if my parental units will agree. They’re a little . . . paranoid.”
“Mom’s very
persuasive. I’ll give her that. Don’t worry about it.”
“Done, then.”
“Cool.” Elsie
smirked. “Maybe we can go outside and see a few shooting stars ourselves.”
Helen Morgendorffer and Katherine (“Oh, call me Kay!”)
Sloane, Elsie’s mother, met for lunch during the week and negotiated all the
details of future sleepovers. Over dinner that evening, Helen shook her head.
“I had no idea that they were—you know, so—so—”
“Rich?” said
Daria. “Influential? Jocular? Enormous?
Purple?”
“Stop it.
Anyway, I gave her our unlisted numbers, the cell-phone numbers, and the code
to get past the answering service if they use our old number.” She fixed Daria
with a meaningful look. “And we both agreed that this would be the last
after-school sensitivity session either you or Elsie would ever need to take—or
else. If you get my drift.”
“Don’t beat
me,” Daria said. She pointed across the table at her sister. “Beat her. She
made me misbehave.”
Quinn did not
respond, as she was eating her salad. When Helen looked in another direction,
however, Quinn good-naturedly scratched her nose with her middle finger while
giving Daria a faint smile.
The week
passed slowly enough, but Friday morning eventually came and with it the
promise of a night away from home. Putting on her black jeans and boots,
forest-green tee, and the gold windbreaker of which she was increasingly fond,
Daria went downstairs for breakfast in a good mood. She thought it odd that no
one else in the family could tell.
“I thought
you’d be more cheerful,” said her mother as she served microwave-heated,
syrup-flavored waffles. “It’s your first sleepover, Daria. I don’t think you
ever had one in
“I am
cheerful,” Daria replied in a slightly annoyed deadpan. “And I did go to
sleepovers in
“Oh, I
remember,” said Quinn, spearing a strawberry on her fruit plate with a fork. “I
was there, too. There were six of us, and you read to us from that book. What
was the name . . . Valley of the Dolls.”
“Was that a
horror movie?” asked Jake, reading the business section of the morning paper.
Startled,
Helen spilled a spoonful of shredded wheat back into her bowl. “You what?”
she cried. “Daria, where did you get that dreadful novel?”
“Library,”
said Daria, buttering her toast. “I had an adult card.”
“But you . . .
you were eleven!”
“You and Dad
got me the card, remember? So I could check out books on s-e-x instead of
calling you at work to ask about it?”
“I remember
now!” said Jake, looking up from the newspaper. “That was the movie about the
dinosaur and the cowboys, right? Only it was called Valley of . . . what
was the dinosaur’s name? It began with a G. Damn it!”
“I remember
those s-e-x books,” said Quinn, spearing another strawberry. “Boy, some of
those had the funniest pictures I’d ever—”
“Daria!” said
Helen. “You weren’t supposed to show them to anyone else!”
“I couldn’t
keep Quinn out of my room.”
“You still
can’t,” said Quinn through a mouthful of strawberry.
Daria fixed
her sister with a narrow-eyed gaze.
“Teas-ing!” said Quinn in a singsong voice.
“Anyway,” said
Daria with a half-hearted glare across the table, “I am happy about the
overnight.”
“Ah, Daria,”
said her father, looking uncomfortable, “remember, when you see the Sloanes—I
was only kidding about the, um, you know, the—”
“The what?”
asked Helen.
“Nothing!”
said Jake. “Just a joke, but be sure to tell them that.”
“I’d bet
they’d be willing to forget the whole thing for a small fee,” said Daria,
cutting up her fried egg.
She went to
school with a fifty-dollar bill in her pocket. “Any chance we’ll visit a
bookstore while I’m over?” she asked Elsie in their first-period history class.
“I hope so,”
said Elsie. “I need some picture books on Japanese theater. I was wondering
about an Oriental version of Julius Caesar, only with a ten-minute
samurai-and-ninja battle when the conspirators are trying to stab him.”
The second
SASS meeting of the week had been the day before, so they were picked up
immediately after school by Elsie’s brother, Tom. It was Daria’s first time
seeing him.
Tom looked
good, and the longer Daria looked at him, the better he looked. Cool gray eyes,
casually combed brown hair, a rakish grin—Daria bumped into the door of the BMW
and dropped her overnight bag as she tried to get in the back seat.
“You must be
Daria,” said Tom in a warm voice. He reached back from the driver’s seat to
shake her hand after she was seated. “I’m sure Elsie’s told you all about me.
She lies a lot, though.”
“Good to meet
you,” Daria said faintly. His hand was huge, and his grip warm and firm. She
felt her face burn. Tom looked like the kind of self-confident, easy-going guy
who would later become a secret agent. He could probably shoot a dozen bad guys
and never get a wrinkle on his shirt or speck of blood on his tux. He had that
kind of cool—in Daria’s suddenly fevered mind.
Elsie poked
Daria in the ribs with her elbow. “He’s evil!” she said in a loud stage
whisper. “Eee-vil!”
“Aw, what’s
wrong with a little evil?” said Tom with a bright smile. “It makes life fun.
That’s what the Borgias said, and look what party
animals they turned out to be.” He gave Daria a wink and turned around to start
the car.
“Um, yeah,”
said Daria, completely tongue-tied.
“Remember your
promise,” Elsie said to Daria. “You’re going to try on the space vixen costume
I designed for Annie when we get in.”
“This I’ve got
to see,” said Tom, pulling onto the main highway.
Daria thought
she would catch fire from embarrassment. The blush spread across her face and
downward over her shoulders, upper arms, and chest.
“Is it too hot
in here for you?” Elsie asked, looking at Daria with concern. “Hey, turn on the
A/C, driver!”
“As you
command, El Sickie,” said Tom, complying.
The Sloanes’
house was in the easternmost part of the most exclusive subdivision in
“If Tom goes
out with that girl tonight, you know it won’t be for skywatching,”
Elsie said, leaning back on her swing and looking at the gray overcast. “It’s
just a game to him. Dating, I mean. He’s not serious about anyone.”
“Hmmm,” said
Daria, concentrating on the ground. She felt an irrational surge of jealousy
among a host of other emotions, but it was good to know he was just playing the
field. Forcing thoughts of Tom out of her head, she tried to sort out what else
was bugging her. The visible extent of the Sloanes’ wealth took some getting
used to, and Daria felt very out of place within it. I’m no more out of
place here than anywhere else in this stupid world, she reminded herself. I’m
the odd one, not the Sloanes. Not Elsie—and not Tom. She shook her head,
trying to jar Tom out of her mind again. I’m too young for him, anyway. If
he could wait for me, though, then—
“The thing
that drives me crazy,” said Elsie, “is the game-playing that goes on. Some of
it’s cutesy stuff, like Mom and Dad bickering over Dad’s old shoes and why
doesn’t he ever get a new pair, and some of it’s serious, like having to go to
formal parties and meet people I don’t give a crap about and pretend I’m
interested in what they did over the last year, when I know they don’t give a
crap about me. Tom’s a lot better at sucking up than I am. One of my uncles
calls me ‘Miss Mouth.’ I don’t do half the backbiting he does, though.” She
shrugged. “At least they know I’m honest.”
Daria dug the
toe of her boot into the dead leaves below the swing. “I didn’t get along with
my parents when I got back,” she said. “My dad thought I might be brainwashed
or psycho, and my mom thought I just ran away. Then,
then the doctors were testing me and finding out a lot of weird stuff, my mom
and I had a big problem. She kind of lost it.” She bit her lip. “Quinn talked
to her and got her straightened out, I think, but things are still kind of
rough. I don’t think they know how to deal with me some days. I’m glad your mom
got them to let me come over. I feel like I’m in this cage sometimes, and—”
She broke off
and looked around. “What’s that?” she said.
Elsie sat up
and listened. “What?”
“That tone,”
said Daria. She got up from the swing seat, a puzzled look on her face. “I
can’t tell where it’s coming from.”
“Is this a
joke?” Elsie got up, too. “I can’t hear anything but that weed trimmer at the
Robinsons’ place. Is that it?”
Daria shook
her head, her confusion deepening. After a moment, she put her hands over her
ears, listened, then jammed her index fingers in her
ears to seal them completely shut. She turned in place to face Elsie.
“I can still
hear it,” she said. She waited a few more seconds. “I think it’s inside my
head.”
“Oh, it’s that
tinny thing,” said Elsie. “You know, the ringing in
your ears. It’ll go away. I get it sometimes.”
Daria nodded
doubtfully. She dropped her hands, and Elsie showed her the rest of the
extensive backyard. They went inside afterward when Elsie’s mother called from
the spacious back deck.
“Hello,
Daria!” said Mrs. Sloane. She was tall and had short dark hair, piercing eyes,
and the most pleasant voice. Her manners were impeccable. “It’s wonderful to
see you again! Would you girls care for a snack?”
“If we have
to,” grumbled Elsie.
“Thank you,”
said Daria, still fiddling with her right ear.
“Is something
wrong?” Mrs. Sloane asked, giving Daria a longer look. “Earache?”
“No. I’ve got
some kind of ringing in my ears. Like a tuning fork, high pitched.”
“Does it
hurt?”
“No. Just weird.”
“Let me know
if it gets to be a problem, and we’ll call your parents. Come on inside, it’s
getting too cool out. I’ve got brownies and milk waiting.”
As they passed
through the kitchen, Mrs. Sloane walked over to the radio, which was putting
out loud static. “What’s wrong with this thing?” she said. “It was fine just a
minute ago.” She twisted the dial, which had no effect, rapped the radio once
on the top with her knuckles, then shut it off. “I
hate it when I can’t get my talk radio in the afternoons. Go have a seat in the
dining room, girls, and let me get the brownies.”
“She does make
good brownies,” Elsie reluctantly confided.
Daria felt
grossly underdressed as she and Elsie took their seats at the long table in the
elegant French dining room. Mrs. Sloane seemed very nice despite Elsie’s
comments, but Daria understood the political problems arising from supporting
either mother or daughter when the wrong one might hear. She discarded the
issue and tried pressing on her ears again. The tone continued just as before.
It wasn’t particularly loud or annoying, but it didn’t stop. It seemed to come
from everywhere at once.
Mrs. Sloane
brought out a small tray with chocolate-chip brownies on it and two glasses of
milk. While looking around the dining room, Daria spotted a small television
set on a tabletop. “Want to see ‘Sick, Sad World’?” she asked after Mrs. Sloane
left. “It’s about time for it to come on.”
“Sure.”
Stuffing a brownie in her mouth, Elsie went over and turned on the set. The
picture came up, but the reception was poor. Moving the antenna around did not
seem to help.
“Let me try,”
said Daria. She got up and walked over to tweak a few knobs. As she approached
the set, the picture got worse until it was a mass of static. Daria frowned and
stopped a few feet short of the set.
“What’s wrong
with this thing?” said Elsie, repeating her mother’s words from earlier. She
smacked the set with her open hand. “C’mon, work! I command you!”
“Move back a
moment,” said Daria. Elsie looked around, then did so.
Daria slowly approached the set. The static grew even worse. She raised a hand
and put it on the TV screen—and the picture went completely out. A loud hum
came out of the speakers.
“Whoa,” said
Elsie, backing up. “What was that?”
Daria dropped
her hand and backed up, too. The farther she got from the set, the better the
picture became. When she stood against the far wall, the TV had almost normal
reception. She began walking toward the set again. The static quickly returned.
“Girls?”
called Mrs. Sloane from the kitchen. “Are you playing with the TV in there?”
Daria
listened. She could hear the radio playing in the kitchen. A talk show was on.
“Does your radio work now?” she called.
“Yes, it seems
to be fine. I never know what’s wrong with these things. They just do whatever
they please, don’t they?”
Daria and
Elsie looked at each other, then Daria left the dining
room for the kitchen again. As she did, she could hear the talk show on the
radio begin to disappear into the hiss of static. “Oh, fudge,” said Mrs.
Sloane, looking up from a salad she was making. “I’m going to have to get a new
radio.”
“Wait a
minute,” said Daria. She walked into the kitchen, straight for the radio. The
static hissing from the radio became worse until it was a loud roar when she
stood next to it and moved her hand across the front of the set.
Daria slowly
turned to Elsie, who regarded her with an open mouth. The high tone still rang
inside her head. “It’s me,” Daria said, her voice almost a whisper.
“Back up a
moment,” said Mrs. Sloane, watching carefully.
Daria walked
back to the doorway into the dining room. The radio static faded. The talk show
came on.
“Wow,” said
Elsie. “Can you always do that?”
“No,” said
Daria. “I never have before.” She put her fingers in her ears again, then looked at Elsie. “I think something inside my head is
doing it,” she said. “I think it’s that tone I hear.”
“Mom!” came Tom’s shout from the stairway to the second floor. “Can
you come up here for a minute?”
“Just a minute, Tom!” Mrs. Sloane called back.
“Now, Mom! Just come up here!”
“Tom, we’re
busy! Can’t it wait?”
“There’s
something on TV! Come on!”
With a last
concerned look at Daria, Mrs. Sloane left the kitchen for the stairs. Elsie turned
off the radio. “Come on,” she said, and Daria followed her back into the dining
room. “Stand over there,” Elsie said, pointing to the corner of the room
farthest from the small TV. Daria did, and Elsie turned on the TV. She went
through the cable channels until she came to a news station. As thin lines of
interference ran across the screen, a reporter stood beside a road in a
forested area, speaking into a microphone. LIVE FROM CAMP SUNRISE,
Daria’s heart
sank. “Oh, no,” she whispered.
“Shhh!” Elsie turned the volume
up.
“—no comment
from the FBI officer in charge at the scene,” said the reporter. “We understand
that six workers on the site were injured in the explosion. Most of them are
said to have suffered severe cold injuries, including frostbite, possibly from
a refrigerant being used in the investigation of the collapsed cave. Frankly,
though, I have no idea what the refrigerant would have been used for. It’s not
a standard item in any sort of recovery efforts I know of.”
A woman’s
voice-over spoke next. “Frank, thank you, and we’ll get back to you when you
have further word on what happened.” The picture changed to a woman anchor at a
news desk. “Once again, an explosion is reported to have occurred within the
last twenty minutes at the cave in
Elsie turned
the volume down again.
“They blew up
the cave,” Daria said, her voice dead. “That has to be it.”
“Why would
they do that?” said Elsie. “They were trying to dig it out, weren’t they? To
see what was in it?”
Daria shook
her head. “Not them,” she said, pointing at the screen. “The
others. To keep everyone from finding what was in there. They’re back.”
A reply died
on Elsie’s lips. She stared at Daria with large round eyes, seeing her anew.
Putting her
fingers in her ears, Daria listened to the tone. She walked toward the TV. The
screen began to fill with lines of static until it showed nothing but
electronic snow.
“I’m sending a
signal,” she whispered. “Something’s inside me, sending a signal like with
radio waves. They did it to me.”
“Why?” Elsie
whispered back.
Daria looked
at her friend. “So they could find me.”
One of Daria’s
secret hopes was that she would live to see her next birthday, only six days
away on Thursday, November 20th. She and her parents had agreed that she would,
for family purposes, turn thirteen that day, though official records would
continue to list her as sixteen. The full consequences of suspended animation
were not yet worked into the legal system. No matter—Daria would have a
birthday once more, and that was the bottom line.
As she stood
in the Sloanes’ dining room, the hiss of static in her ears from the television
set, Daria felt a shadow pass over that secret hope and conceal it from
view—perhaps forever.
“Daria?”
She blinked
and looked at Elsie, returning to the present.
“Daria,” Elsie
repeated, “do you want to call home?”
“I think I’d
better,” Daria said. Her breathing was rapid and shallow. “I’m sorry.”
Elsie ignored
that. “Does it hurt?”
“What?”
“What—” Elsie
gestured at Daria’s head “—what’s happening with you.”
“Oh. No.” Her
voice sounded faint in her ears. “I still have that ringing in my head, that’s
all. Where’s the phone?”
“In the kitchen. Come on.”
Elsie showed
Daria the kitchen phone, a neo-antique model in the same French style as parts
of the house appeared to be. Daria lifted the handset—and her finger paused
above the rotary dial. What the hell? After a moment, she remembered how
to use it. It felt strange, forcing the dial around in a little circle. A faint
buzz of static came from the earpiece (I’m even screwing up the phone
system? she thought in amazement), and it took forever for someone to pick
up.
The line
clicked. A burst of static came and faded. Daria heard the sound of giggling
and shushing on the other end. “Morgendorffers,” came Quinn’s voice.
“Quinn?”
“Daria? We seem to have a bad line. I can hardly hear you.
You’re still at the Sloanes?”
“Yeah.” Daria swallowed. “Listen—”
“Are Mom and
Dad there?”
“No, they’re
not here.” Daria frowned. “Aren’t they there with you?”
“No, they went
out to photocopy a huge stack of legal briefs Mom needs for work on Monday, and
then they were going to dinner at that French place, Chez Pierre. It’s right
next to where you’re at.” Quinn’s voice became very distant. “Jeffy, be careful
with that. That’s—oh, no! That was my dad’s! Jeffy!”
That Quinn had
a boy over with no one else present, in total violation of every parental rule
that existed, was irrelevant at the moment. “Quinn, please! Listen to me!”
“Wait—just put
it down, Jeffy! Forget it! It’s already broken!” Quinn’s voice returned. “What
is it?”
“Something bad
is happening.” Static in the line rose and fell. “I think I need to get home, but—I
don’t know what I can do about it.”
Quinn’s tone
abruptly changed to older-sister apprehension. “What’s wrong? Did you get your
first period?”
Daria felt her
face turn red. “No! It’s not that!”
“Well, are you
hurt? Is someone with you over there?”
“I’m not hurt,
but the news said something happened at that cave I was trapped in, back at
“Hold on!”
Quinn shouted. Her voice became distant again. “Jeffy!
We have to go get my sister!” A male voice said something Daria couldn’t make
out. “I don’t care what your dad said about you being out with the car, we have
to go! Are you taking me, or do I have to call Jeremy? I don’t care what his
name is! Are you taking me? Then get out your keys and let’s go!” Quinn’s voice
became loud again. “I’ll be right there, okay?”
“Shouldn’t we
call Mom or Dad on their phones? They could get me right away.”
“Mom’s cell
phone died and it’s being recharged, and I called Daddy earlier about something
but he doesn’t have his phone turned on and I had to leave a message and I am
so going to scream at him for it! It’s faster if we get you. We’re on our way!”
“Okay,” said
Daria. She hoped this Jeffy was a good driver. The issue of what he was doing
at the house with Quinn could wait. The other end clicked off, and she hung up.
Seeing Mrs. Sloane walk back into the kitchen, Daria gave her a depressed look.
“I’m sorry everything got so screwed up,” she said. “I swear this isn’t a
joke.”
“Dear, I know.
Tom said there was something on the news about . . . well,
anyway, we can’t do a thing about it. Did you want to call your parents?”
“My sister’s
coming to get me.” Daria rubbed her ears. The tone carried on in her head. “I
shouldn’t have come here,” she said dejectedly. “Everything has been nothing
but trouble since I got back.”
“No way!” said
Elsie. “You can come over again some other time. Don’t worry about it.”
Mrs. Sloane
crouched down in front of Daria so she was eye level with her. She put a gentle
hand on Daria’s arm. “Daria,” she said, “your mother told me what happened to
you, and I still wanted you to come over. It’s not your fault, what happened,
and this isn’t, either. I admit I don’t know what’s going on right now, but
we’ll find a way to set things right. Okay?”
Though she did
not believe for a second that anything would be set aright, Daria nodded and
said, “Okay.”
“Good.” Mrs.
Sloane stood upright. “Elsie, take Daria and her things upstairs until her
sister gets here. I’ll call Angier, my husband. He’s at work. He’s supposed to
get off at five, but maybe he can cut loose a little early if we need him. It’s
only four fifteen.”
Daria
automatically looked out the dining-room windows. Sunset was about five thirty,
she remembered, but it was dark already, thanks to the low overcast sky. The
view out the window was of the front lawn, taking in the driveway down to the
gates leading onto the property. Daria squinted. A white van was parked outside
the closed gates. Two men knelt on the van’s roof, holding telephoto cameras
aimed in her direction.
“If I felt
like laughing, I’d say that was almost funny,” she said, pointing. “I forgot
they might follow us here.”
“What?” Mrs.
Sloane looked out the window as well. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Say,
‘cheese,’” said Daria flatly. “It makes for a better picture on the tabloids at
the checkout counter.”
“Do they
always hound you like this?” asked Elsie, at Daria’s side.
“Like the sun
and the moon and the wind and the stars. Endless and
eternal.” She thought. “Hmmm. I should use that
in a story sometime.” If I live past tonight.
“I’m going to
call the guards at the gatehouse,” said Mrs. Sloane. “That van shouldn’t have
even been allowed into Crewe Neck. It’s ridiculous, grown men behaving like
that.” She walked quickly away to the kitchen.
“We should let
them know they’re appreciated,” said Elsie—and she promptly flipped her right
hand up, only the middle finger extended, and pressed
her hand to the window.
Daria noticed.
“Your picture won’t appear in the newspapers, but you can count on seeing
copies of it on eBay by noon tomorrow.”
Elsie dropped
her hand as quickly as she’d raised it. “Let’s go upstairs,” she said, leaving
the window. “Bastards.”
Once back in
her bedroom, Elsie closed the door and they walked idly around the room. As she
looked at the shelves full of costuming books Elsie had collected, Daria
suddenly began to talk about her life—what things were like before
A knock at the
door stopped the monologue. “Elsie?” called Mrs. Sloane. “Your father’s going
to be late tonight. He’s meeting with clients. Daria?”
“Yes?”
“When will
your sister be here?”
“I’m expecting
her at any time. We don’t live that far from here.”
“If you don’t
mind, then, I’m going out to the Crewe Neck gatehouse and file a complaint to
keep those vultures out of here. I have to do it before the supervisor goes off
his shift at six. Tom’s in charge until I get back. Make sure he comes
downstairs to answer the door personally.”
“Can you pick
up a pizza on the way home?” Elsie called back.
“Don’t be
silly. We’re having fish tonight, like we always do on Fridays.”
Elsie made an
angst-ridden noise and flopped on her back on the bed, the very picture of
preteen disgust with authority. “Whatever!” she shouted. In a more normal tone,
she added to Daria, “Just as well you’re going. She’s not the perfect fish chef
she thinks she is.”
“At least it
isn’t microwaved lasagna, like we’ll be having,” said
Daria. As Mrs. Sloane’s footsteps went down the staircase, Daria glanced at the
wall clock. It was just after five. “Quinn should be here already,” she said.
“I bet she stopped at a clothing sale somewhere.” Despite her comment, she felt
a touch of worry. Quinn was pretty reliable of late when it came to sticking up
for her sister. She hoped there hadn’t been an accident. Teenage boys weren’t
good risks behind the wheel, especially if they were in a hurry.
“As long as
we’re still here, let me get out the space vixen costume and see what you think
of it,” said Elsie, getting off the bed. “You don’t have to put it on. I don’t
want Tom to get all drooly over your legs.”
“Thanks for
looking out for me,” said Daria, fighting down another blush.
“You wouldn’t
have anything to worry about anyway,” said Elsie, looking through the clothing
in her large-sized walk-in closet. “Tom only goes for girls his own age. He
hasn’t finished going through the Rachels,
Figures,
thought Daria, feeling downcast. It would look too weird, a high-school guy
going out with a wacko eighth grader. Not something the parents would want to
see in the society pages of the newspaper. God, listen to me. My hormones must
have finally kicked in. She heard a garage door open downstairs at the rear
of the house as Mrs. Sloane prepared to leave. “Where’s Tom?” she asked.
“In his room
with the earphones on, probably,” said Elsie, coming out of the closet with a
plastic-covered outfit that looked like a cross between a NASA spacesuit and a
one-piece Mylar bathing suit with long gloves. “It’s supposed to have boots,
but I haven’t found any I like yet. The evil lady in charge of the orphanage in
Annie wears it. She’s actually from
Though this
sounded uncomfortably like one of Daria’s imagined scenarios for her own
future, she had to smile. “It has a certain appeal, when you put it like that,”
she said. “Cool outfit.”
“Thanks. I
should get a few mannequins, but Mom doesn’t want my room looking like a
sweatshop for underage dressmakers.”
“You know,”
said Daria, eyeing the clock again, “we’d better go downstairs in case Quinn
gets here. We won’t hear her knocking otherwise.”
“Yeah.” Elsie sighed and put the costume on the bed, then
led the way to the door. “What are you going to do when you get home?”
“Um . . .”
Daria realized she hadn’t thought about that. If the beings that captured her
were actually coming back for her, what should she do? She listened to the
omnipresent high-pitched tone in her ears. Any beings that could put a
transmitter inside a person’s head that couldn’t be detected by x-rays or MRIs
were powerful indeed. If they came for her tonight, what would they do to her
family? If they would kidnap a child and hide her away for three years, tagging
her with an internal transmitter the way humans tagged elk or banded migratory
birds, they weren’t limited by thoughts of human morality. They would do what
they pleased. Blowing up the fallen cave in
Following the
dark logic to its conclusion, if Daria went home tonight, it might result in
the deaths of everyone in her family. Staying here would similarly doom the
Sloanes. There was no way for her to know, for instance, that she herself was
not rigged to explode like the cave must have been. She had assumed she was
valuable to her captors, though they might in the end kill her, sacrificing her
like a research animal to study her one last time before discarding her
remains.
“Hey,” said
Elsie. She snapped her fingers in front of Daria’s face. “You okay?”
“What? Oh,
yeah. Let’s go.”
Maybe I
should run away once everyone at home is asleep, she thought as she
followed Elsie down the stairs, her overnight bag in hand. I know how to
turn off the house alarm—no, wait, that won’t work. The damn paparazzi will see
me right off! Damn it to hell! I wish I’d never come out of that cave!
At the bottom
of the stairs, Daria looked back up, thinking of Tom. She shook her head and
went to the front door. “May as well see if Quinn’s here,” she said.
“She might
have pulled around back to the garage,” said Elsie. “Wait, she couldn’t if the
driveway gate is shut. It closes and locks automatically when someone leaves.”
“The car might
on the street outside, down the hill.” Daria reached for the doorknob. “She
sounded like she was in a hurry to get—”
The lights
went out.
The world went
black. Daria gasped and jerked her hand back from the doorknob. “No way I did that!” she cried. “No way!”
She turned around in the Sloanes’ main foyer, her eyes adjusting to the dim light.
Faint gray illumination came through windows around the house. A rising wind
rumbled against the walls.
“God, that
scared the crap out of me,” said Elsie. She yelled up the stairs. “Tom! Hey, Tom!
Come downstairs!”
A door opened
on the second floor. “I know, I know!” her brother called. “I’ll start the
generator in a minute!”
“Start it
now!” she shouted back.
“I’m changing
clothes for my date! You start it,
“Ooo, he’ll be in trouble!” Elsie growled. “He knows he can’t
leave until Mom or Dad gets back!” She marched off toward the kitchen. Daria
glanced at the front door, then gave up and followed her friend. They passed
through the kitchen to a door that Daria guessed led into the garage. It did;
Elsie went through it and descended a few steps to the concrete floor, walking
past a spotless new black Corvette Stingray by the kitchen door. The vast
garage had space for two other cars, both of which were gone.
Daria stopped
in the doorway. A cold wind blew against her face. Mrs. Sloane had left the
wider of the two garage doors open when she drove off to see the guards. The
door looked out into the backyard, on the side that turned into a dense woodlot
about a hundred feet from the house. The swing set and children’s fort were to
the right, she remembered. Dry leaves blew into the garage, whirling in the
wind.
Elsie stopped
on the far side of the garage, standing before a large gasoline engine with
several large electrical cords leading into it. She checked the gas gauge, then called back to Daria. “Tom’s gonna
have to fill the tank up when he comes down. When this starts, it’ll be really
loud. You can shut the garage door.”
Nodding, Daria
reached up for the garage door switch. As she did, she again looked out the
garage door into the wooded side of the backyard.
A human figure
was coming toward the house.
“Elsie?” Daria
called, her voice rising.
“Get ready!”
Elsie shouted, a hand hovering over a large red button
as she tried to shield her ears with her other arm.
“Someone’s in
your yard!” Daria shouted back, pointing. Elsie looked out the garage door.
The figure
moved out of the evening shadows between the trees with a strange, stiff-legged
gait, dragging one foot. It appeared to be a man with a camera hanging from a
shoulder strap. The camera bounced against his abdomen as he moved. His clothes
were stiff, as if made of cardboard. A white substance was spattered over his
tattered leather jacket and long beige cargo pants. He was making directly for
the open garage, his left hand extended before him as if begging, the other arm
held in an odd pose close to his side. An injured
photographer? she wondered—but something
about him shouted wrong.
“Shut the
door!” screamed Elsie. Slapping the red start button, she ran for the
kitchen. The generator came to life with a painful, ear-splitting roar. Daria
punched the button to shut the garage door—but nothing happened. She jammed the
button down in a panic as Elsie fled past her into the house. The foot-dragging
man reached the paved driveway. He was all wrong, a rigid-limbed mummy from a
bad horror film. He groaned through a mouth that did not close, and then
gestured at Daria with his left hand. The camera strap suddenly broke in
several places. The camera hit the pavement, shattering the telephoto lens.
Fragments of the strap bounced on the blacktop and broke again.
The garage and
house lights came on. With a bang, the garage door began to descend at a
seeming snail’s crawl, yet it covered the image of the approaching man and
thumped to the ground before he came through. Daria spotted a smaller button
below the garage door control that read LOCK, and she hit that one as well
before she went inside, slammed the door, locked the knob, and threw the
deadbolt.
Out of Daria’s
sight, Elsie continued to shriek as she ran through the house: “Lock the
doors and windows! Lock everything!” Daria swiftly checked the kitchen’s
many windows and the door to the back deck, found them secure, and then hurried
on to the dining room.
“Hey!” came Tom’s angry shout from upstairs. “What the hell are you
doing down there? Cut it out, or I’ll tell Mom!”
Daria took a
different path than Elsie had taken, running into the living room on the side
of the house opposite the garage and kitchen. The living room had a large door
with a full-length window that led out onto an open porch. She locked the
doorknob and the deadbolt, but it was clear all someone on the outside had to
do was smash out the window and reach inside to undo the locks. Damn stupid
architects! Seeing no immediate cure for it, she ran after Elsie to tell
her.
Elsie was in
the kitchen again, dialing the telephone. “Come on! Work!” she yelled at it.
Daria started to approach—then remembered her overpowering effect on electronic
circuitry. The high tone still rang in her head, though she was no longer
paying attention to it. She backed away from the phone—and bumped into someone
behind her. Strong hands seized her shoulders as she let out a frightened yelp.
“What are you
two doing?” Tom shouted, steadying Daria after she’d backed into him. “Stop
playing around! Is the generator on?”
“The phone’s
dead!” Elsie shouted, pounding on the hang-up switch in an attempt to stir it
to life again.
“Someone’s in
the backyard!” Daria said, trying to be calm and rational but still shouting.
“Where?” Tom walked to the kitchen windows—and stopped
short. Elsie looked up from the phone and screamed. Daria reached for the
kitchen light switches and shut them all off, flipping other switches until she
found the toggle to turn on the outside lights around the wooden deck.
The staggering
man was coming around the side of the house from the garage. He moved more
slowly through the grass than on the pavement, but he kept his head turned in
the direction of the kitchen windows. Only his left eye moved in his face, the
other frozen in place looking ahead, so he seemed cross-eyed. The rest of his
features were set rigidly in place, with his mouth open as if shouting. He
still held his left arm forward, his fingers outstretched as if pleading. It
was clear that he was making for the steps leading up to the deck—and then to
the kitchen door.
“What the
hell?” said Tom. He turned and snatched a large
cutting knife from a wooden block containing a number of chef’s tools, but he
backed up anyway. “Elsie, you and your friend go upstairs!”
“Daria!” said
Daria. “I’m Daria!” She saw something moving through the grass and dead leaves
behind the man. It was small and light in color, but hard to see even with the
deck lights on. An animal?
The staggering
man reached the steps. Gripping the railing with his left hand, he tried to
lift a leg to get up the first step.
In the next
instant, a blast of white fog enveloped him from behind as a loud,
high-pressure hiss roared out. Daria, Elsie, and Tom gasped. When the white fog
hit the windows, all the panes turned white with frost and broke with a
simultaneous crack! Bits of glass rang down on the countertops and
floor, but almost all of the panes remained intact, keeping most of the fog
back. The door frosted over for a moment, as well as parts of the walls. A
breath of arctic cold swept through the kitchen as wisps of fog blew in around
the door and through cracks in the windows. Everyone stepped well back, but the
chill stung faces and hands.
The swirls of
translucent frost covering the broken windows vanished in seconds. The fog
outside cleared in the relentless wind. Two deck lights had gone out, those
nearest the staggering man. The man now stood motionless at the foot of the
steps, covered in white frost.
Tom stepped
toward the door, knife raised. Braving the deathly chill, Daria carefully crept
over to an intact but cracked window to look outside.
The frost
faded from the man as she watched. Stiff as a mannequin, he tilted forward and
fell against the steps. When he hit, his body shattered like porcelain. Shards
of his arms and fingers and clothing and head scattered in every direction; his
torso broke into three large chunks that leaked red. His face snapped off as a
single piece. Missing only the nose, it came to rest in front of Daria’s
window. The eyes looked dully up at the dark clouds, the mouth still round as
if crying out. A dark red stain spread out from below the pale mask, seeping
into the wood of the deck.
Paralyzed with
terror, Daria could not even scream. Someone grabbed her and dragged her
roughly away from the window. “Upstairs!” Tom shouted in her ear. “Run!”
She was
vaguely aware that she was running, Elsie at her side. A single ceiling light
illuminated the foyer area. As they approached the stairway leading up, loud
hammering began on the front door, and the knob rattled back and forth. “Open
this door!” a man screamed outside. “Open this goddamn door! Open it! Hurry!”
Daria and
Elsie came to a stop halfway across the foyer, Tom behind them. All stared at
the door in dread, expecting it to be thrown open at any moment despite its
three locks.
“Open it!”
the man screamed in sudden hysteria. “Oh, God!
God, no, please, no no—”
White fog
blasted into the foyer around the edges of the door. Frost instantly formed
over the door as the wood itself split in several vertical lines, admitting
more fog. Windows covered in ice cracked in their frames on both sides of the
doorway.
Daria, Elsie,
and Tom fled as the fog shot in. Daria, in the rear, felt a terrific wave of
cold pass through her clothing and sink its teeth into her spine and into the
backs of her head, arms, and legs. The pain was sharp and intense. She stumbled
and fell in the hallway leading away from the foyer, but she got up and
scrambled after the Sloanes a moment later. Numbness spread across her back and
legs, a burning ache raging at the edges.
She got into
the living room and found Tom clutching Elsie against him, both huddled by a
fireplace against a wall. Elsie was crying softly. The hall light gave the room
its only illumination. On the room’s opposite side was the door with the
full-length window, leading out to the long side porch. Everything outside was
now completely dark. Daria stood near the two Sloanes, all three panting from
exhaustion and fear. They watched the door and waited, having nowhere else to
run.
Something
clattered onto the wood floor of the side porch, moving unseen below a line of
windows. Elsie flinched in Tom’s arms, whimpering. He had dropped the carving
knife at some point earlier. Daria stopped breathing in fright.
More
clattering and skittering things got onto the porch and made their way across
the wood for the door. Nothing appeared on the other side of the window in the
door but the darkness. They seemed to be waiting, too.
It’s the
boogieman, Daria knew, him and his helpers. I
knew he’d come for me, and he did.
She stood
stock-still and held her breath—but as she waited, a new thought came that
caused her breathing to start again.
He came for
me, but I’m not going with him.
Daria quickly
looked around the living room for something to use as a shield, a weapon,
anything. What could she possibly do? Fireplace tools, lamps, books on a side
table—
The fireplace!
They’re using cold as a weapon! My cave was cold! They blew up the cave this
afternoon with cold! They use and need the cold! It was a vast jump in
logic, but it was all she had. She quickly knelt by the fireplace and flung
aside the wire screen in front of it. It was gas fed; the logs were ceramic.
Daria found the knob for the gas and turned it fully up. A hiss filled the air
with the stink of natural gas.
Frantic, she
stood up and looked for matches. She was on the verge of asking Tom and Elsie
when she saw a box of long matches on the mantel, between an old clock and a
crystal vase. Grabbing the box, she tore off the cardboard lid and drew one
match that accidentally pulled out several more with it. The spares fell to the
floor. She snapped the head of her match across the rough striker on the bottom
of the box, saw the flare of fire, and stuck the match into the fireplace.
FOOM! A
huge yellow-white flash leaped at her with a rush of hot air, singeing her face
and hair. She fell backward on the floor, so startled she couldn’t remember for
a moment what had happened. The roaring heat stung her exposed skin and filled
the room with light.
As Daria got
up again, she saw a legal notepad on a table and grabbed it. She stuck one end
in the flames until the paper caught, then held it out in front of her at the
porch door. Balanced between courage and terror, she
baby-stepped across the carpet, holding the notepad so the flames along the
edge spread and grew brighter. Go away! she
thought at the things outside on the porch. I’ll burn you! Go away or you’ll
get it!
The flickering
yellow light from the notepad illuminated the porch outside through the window
in the door. Dozens of scrambling noises crossed the porch in a moment—and were
gone. The wind pressed hard against the house. A piece of glass from a
shattered windowpane in the kitchen fell to the floor.
Breathing
heavily, Daria held her pose until she was sure the creatures had fled. She
stepped back and shivered, then walked back to the fireplace, looking behind
her every second. As she moved to set the burning notepad down in the
fireplace, she heard light, fast clattering noises on the porch again.
In panic and
fury, she threw the burning notepad overhand at the door. It struck the window
glass and fell onto the thick carpet. The things on the porch ran off in less
than a second. Without thinking, Daria dashed over to retrieve the notebook and
keep it from setting the carpet on fire. She found herself one foot from the glassed
door—and realized how close to death she was. Snatching the notepad, she ran
back to the fireplace, shivering uncontrollably for several moments. Nothing
had been visible outside except the night, but it was no comfort.
Daria dropped
the notepad on the marble tiles in front of the fireplace and stamped the
flames out. She wiped her face with trembling hands, then
turned to look at Tom and Elsie. They stared at her with wide eyes, still
holding each other.
“S-s-sort of
like the Neanderthals driving the cave bears away, don’t you think?” Daria
said, feeling giddy and very close to fainting. The situation was too unreal to
come up with anything sensible to say. She took a deep breath and knelt down
with her back to the roaring fire, trying to organize her thoughts.
“What do we
do?” said Tom in a cracked voice.
“We have to
stay near the fire, near anything hot,” she said. “I think they need the cold.
The thermostat—if we can turn up the thermostat in the house, too, that might
keep them away. Turn it up as high as it will go. It might work. They don’t
like fire. At least I think they don’t. It’s all we’ve got.”
“What are
they?” asked Elsie.
Daria felt
pins-and-needles prickling across her back and legs. She knew she had taken a
cold injury in the foyer, but there was nothing she could do about it. She
still felt close to fainting. “I don’t know. I think they’re the things that
caught me, three years ago. I think they came back for me. I don’t know why.”
“I’ll get the
thermostat,” said Tom. He let go of Elsie, prying her hands from him, then slowly walked back to the hallway toward the foyer.
“Be careful!”
Elsie cried. She started to follow him.
Daria got up,
swaying from momentary dizziness, and caught her by the arm. “Wait. Let’s turn
on the lights in here first. We have to see, and it will give us a little more
heat.”
Still in
shock, Elsie looked blankly at Daria before nodding. They turned on as many
lights as they could without getting close to the windows or the porch door.
After she wiped her eyes and sniffed a few times, Elsie looked in better
control of herself. “Now what?” she asked Daria.
“I guess now
we wait for Quinn to—” Daria gasped, horrified that she had forgotten. “Quinn’s
coming!”
“And Mom and
Dad!” said Elsie.
“We have
to—crap! We can’t open a window to yell at them! We can’t go outside!”
“We can go
upstairs and open a window up there,” said Tom, “unless whatever’s out there
can fly. Can they?”
“How should I
know?” Daria said. “I don’t know what they look like!”
“They kept you
frozen in that cave, didn’t they?” Tom snapped. “Don’t you remember anything
about them?”
“No!”
“Tom!” yelled
Elsie. “Stop it! She doesn’t know!”
Tom raised his
hands and dropped them in a gesture of frustration. “We have to go upstairs and
risk it, then. I can’t believe you can’t remember anything!”
“I was frozen,
damn it!” Daria shouted, upset that she was being questioned like this. “How
could I remember anything at all?”
Tom didn’t
reply. He stalked off down the hall, with Elsie and Daria following. Daria, the
last one out of the room, heard something odd behind her. She slowed, turning
her head.
Something—lots
of things—ran across the porch again. They were moving in a single direction,
around the house toward the front door.
They were
following her.
How the
hell can they see me through the walls? Radar? X-rays?
She became
aware of the high-pitched tone inside her head.
Oh, no! I’m
still calling them!
Tom was
already in the foyer, walking cautiously toward the stairs with Elsie behind
him. Daria came in next—and heard something rustling outside the split front
door, on the concrete step. She knew it couldn’t be the man who had been there,
trying to get in. It had to be—
“Run
upstairs!” she yelled. “Run!”
The Sloanes
ran, taking the steps two and three at a time. Many things tapped and clawed at
the front door when Daria ran past it. On impulse, she reached out and snapped
on the switches for the front lights, then pounded up the stairs after Elsie
and Tom. Hitting the lights triggered a new burst of skittering noises on the
concrete outside. Don’t let them break the door down! she
prayed. Let it hold together just a little longer!
She made
herself stop at the top of the stairs instead of running down a hallway. “Do
you have a space heater?” she shouted, though Elsie and Tom were only a few
feet away, also looking down the stairs.
“Yeah,” said
Elsie. She flipped on the hall lights, hurried off to the bathroom, and
disappeared into it. Tom and Daria were alone then, panting and looking down at
the front door.
“I’m sorry I
got on you,” Tom said abruptly. He gripped the railing with white-knuckled
hands. “I just—too much is happening. I’m sorry.”
“I can’t
remember anything about them!” Daria said heatedly. “I just can’t!”
“Okay! I
believe you!” said Tom. “You’re doing okay so far, I think. Maybe you know more
about them than you think. Recovered memories or something.
We just have to keep thinking of things to hold them off.”
It pissed her
off to hear that Tom didn’t believe she’d come up with the use of fire and heat
on her own. I’m a lot smarter than you think I am, dope! she raged. Stop being such a jerk!
“You were
going to find a window,” Daria said, electing to change the subject.
“Yeah.” Tom stood back, then went down the hall to a door
and opened it. “Yell if anything happens,” he said.
“Ha,” said
Daria under her breath. If anything went wrong, she planned to scream until she
went deaf. It was sounding more and more like the intelligent thing to do.
Elsie came out
of the bathroom with a space heater on an electric cord. “Put it here, at the
top of the stairs,” Daria said. Elsie did, and they plugged it in at a nearby
wall outlet. Daria turned the heater up all the way, aiming it down the steps.
“Careful,”
said Elsie. “It might catch the carpet on fire.”
“Damn.” Daria
compromised by aiming the heater slightly upward, leaving it in the center of
the top step. “That might do it. Do we have anything else hot up here?”
“Candles?”
said Elsie. “Tom’s got some, don’t ask me why. My hair dryer! Will that do?”
“We really
need something bigger and hotter.” Daria sighed and tried to think.
“It’s getting
warm up here already from the furnace,” said Elsie.
“Good, I hope.
Anything to make it—”
“Should I open
the window?” Tom shouted from the room.
“Wait here,”
said Daria. She hurried down the hall to the door and went inside what looked
like a guest bedroom. The lights were off. Tom was at the windows on the front
side of the house.
“I don’t know
if it’s safe,” he said. “Can they fly?”
“I told you—I
don’t know! Go back out with Elsie, and close the door behind you.”
“Why?”
“In case they
get in, of course!”
“What about
you, then?”
“Just go,
okay? I’ll be fine! Go stay with Elsie and watch the stairs!”
“I really
should—”
“Go protect
your sister!”
With clear
reluctance, Tom left. He did not close the door behind him all the way, though.
Daria turned
her attention to the windows. One story below, the front porch light
illuminated a broad semicircle over the yard. A tree’s limbs blocked some of her
view, but she could see down the hill on which the mansion rested to the wall
around the property and the street beyond. No sign of alien monsters could be
seen, which was a relief—but where were they?
It was hard to
tell, but it looked as if the main gate was still shut, and the white paparazzi
van she’d seen earlier was parked in front of it. Why the hell would they do
that? she wondered. They must have moved up
after Mrs. Sloane—oh! Of course! They jumped over the gate from the top of the
van! It was safer than scaling over the wall, with those spikes on top of it.
Those two guys outside the house must have been—damn those idiots! They ran
right into the aliens! Damn them for being such freaking morons!
Though she had
a terrific dislike of tabloid photographers, Daria still felt sick to think of
their fate. What kind of stuff are the aliens using for a weapon, anyway? Liquid oxygen? No, we didn’t smell the air get fresher. Liquid nitrogen? It’s inert, won’t explode, and usually
what’s used in science experiments showing how roses can be frozen and broken.
She thought of the broken-off face of the photographer and shuddered. She
didn’t remember how cold liquid nitrogen was, but she knew it was pretty damn
cold.
She was about
to move away from the window and talk to Tom and Elsie again when she saw a
dark shape move across the white top of the van, then carefully drop over the
gate to the driveway. The figure then began walking quickly up the paved path
toward the front door, tossing a long mane of hair as it went.
It was Quinn.
Heading straight for her death.
Daria unlocked
the window and shoved it open. She didn’t care if the creatures below saw her
do it. “Quinn!” she shouted. “Run! Get out of here!”
The figure below
stopped. “Daria?” Quinn shouted back. “Where are you?”
“The aliens
are here!” Daria’s voice arose to a scream. “Get away! They’re outside the
house!”
Quinn looked
around her, stepping back. “Where?”
“Damn it, run!
Get out of here! Don’t come any closer!”
“Daria?” came another shout, from the driveway gate. It was Mrs.
Sloane. “What’s going on?”
“Run,
Quinn!” Daria shrieked.
Quinn suddenly
did run.
Toward the front door of the house.
“No!”
Daria saw that her sister would be upon the creatures in seconds, if she wasn’t
already. But if the creatures really did follow Daria wherever she went—
Daria ran from
the bedroom and bumped into Tom, who was walking back. “What’s going—” he
began, but she ran past him, past the space heater, and down the stairs as fast
as she could go.
“Daria! No!” Elsie and Tom shouted, but she kept going. When
she hit the floor by the front door, she took off down the hall for the living
room again. Follow me! Follow me to the other side of the house! Get away
from my sister!
As she ran
into the overheated living room, the fireplace roaring yellow and bright, she
heard a skittering and scratching on the outside porch, the noise of things
running along below the windows. Terror welled up inside her, but she didn’t
stop until she reached the side of the room at the rear of the house. The
lights in the living room cast so much glare on the
windows it was impossible to see anything outside, and no exterior lights were
turned on in this area. Still, unable to stand the possibility she might see
something dreadful through the windows, she crouched several feet from the
wall, shivering from head to toe. At any moment she expected to feel a blast of
frigid wind at her back, but better that than for Quinn to—
Quinn screamed
outside near the front door, a long, piercing shriek from the bottom of her
soul. Daria clapped her hands over her ears. Overcome with terror, she burst
into tears. Her plan had failed. Her sister had been found and would die.
Footsteps
pounded down the stairs. Someone ran through the foyer into the other side of
the house, but not into the garage. The footsteps were too heavy to have been
Elsie, so it had to be Tom. An inside door opened, other noises followed, then she heard Tom shout, “Over here! Run!” Confused
noises followed, then came the bang of a shutting
window. Quinn’s wails echoed through the house, mixed with the thump of
footsteps on carpet. “Get to the stairs!” Tom yelled. “Go!” The heavier
footsteps then came into the living room. “Daria!” shouted Tom. “She’s inside!
Get back upstairs!”
A rustling
noise came through the wall behind Daria, against the outside of the house.
Whatever was out there was either getting antsy about the noise or sensed that
Daria was about to depart. Something tapped lightly against the glass of the
door to the porch. It then tapped twice more, harder.
“Come on!”
he shouted.
Daria leaped
up and ran, hearing the skittering of feet across the porch behind her. Tom led
the way down the hall to the stairs, making sure she went before he did. At the
top of the stairs beyond the space heater, Daria saw Quinn sitting with her
back to the wall, sobbing in hysteria. Dropping to her knees, Daria hugged her
sister as they cried together.
“What’s
happening?” Quinn gasped through her tears. “What happened to that man at the
front door? What is going on?”
“It’s all
right,” said Daria, holding Quinn’s head against her. “It’s all right.”
Elsie hurried
out of the spare bedroom. “I told Mom to call the police and not let anyone
else get near the house,” she said. “I told her something was outside and we
couldn’t leave, and she shouldn’t let Dad in, either.”
Breathing
heavily, Tom nodded, trying not to stare at Daria and Quinn. “Good. I’m still
afraid those things are going to try to break in, though. I don’t know what’s
kept them out this long. They could probably smash through the windows if they
tried.”
“Maybe the
heat’s keeping them out, like Daria said,” said Elsie. “It’s getting really hot
in here.”
“I think I’m
keeping them out, too,” said Daria, still holding Quinn.
Tom and Elsie
looked at her. “What?” said Elsie. “You?”
“I don’t think
they don’t want to hurt me. They might want to take me alive. If they didn’t
care, they would have smashed their way in by now and gotten us all. Maybe they
don’t like the heat and light, too. I know they don’t like fire. That’s all I
can guess.”
Tom ran a hand
through his brown hair. “I don’t know, either, but I think they’re trying to
plan things out, too, like we are. If they do get in, I don’t know what we can
do to keep them back. We’re going to have to get out of here. We should get
down to the garage and get in Dad’s Stingray and run for it.”
Elsie’s eyes
widened. “He told you to never drive that car or else—”
“We have to
get out of here!” Tom snapped. “I don’t care what he said! I’ll get the keys in
the kitchen and we’ll open the garage door real fast and beat it! They can have
the damn house!”
“It won’t
work,” said Daria, still with Quinn.
“Why?” Tom
demanded.
“Because they’re following me. Elsie knows what I
mean. I’m giving off a signal of some kind, like a radio signal. I don’t know
how or why. They must have put something in me, and they’re homing in on it.
It’s me they’re after, not you. If we try to escape together, they’ll get us
because they’ll know where I am.”
“We’re not
leaving you here!” Elsie shouted.
“The only
reason they’re here is because I’m here! You don’t stand a chance if—”
“Wait! Wait a
minute!” said Tom, staring at Daria. “When you saw Quinn coming, you ran
downstairs to the back side of the house because you knew—”
“Yes, that
they’d follow me and not her! I wasn’t trying to run away, I was trying to save
her! Don’t you understand? If I go outside with you, they’ll kill you! They’re
after me! You’ll have to get out on your own, without me!”
Except for
Quinn trying to stifle her tears, the wind pressing against the walls, and the
hum of the generator in the garage below, all was quiet.
“Elsie,” said
Tom in a low voice, “let’s go look out the windows again and see if anyone else
is in the yard.”
“Okay,” she
said after a moment.
“Daria,” Tom
went on, “you and Quinn watch the stairs. See if you can think of anything that
would help. We’ll be right back.” He then put an arm around his sister and
herded her down the hall to the spare bedroom. The door closed behind them.
Daria brushed
Quinn’s long red hair from her face.
“I’m not
leaving you,” said Quinn, wiping her eyes. “No way.
You can forget it.”
“I’ll find a
way out,” said Daria. She thought it came out well for a lie. “I’m not going to
just stay here. You and the others—”
“Bull!” Quinn
caught hold of Daria and pulled her close, wrapping her arms around her smaller
sister. “I am not leaving you!” she said in a hoarse whisper in Daria’s ear. “I
waited three damn years to get you back! I’m not doing it again!”
I shouldn’t
have brought it up, Daria thought to herself,
though she was grateful to hear Quinn’s words. I have to talk about
something else. “We’re in a lot of trouble,” she said. “I think Tom’s
right. Whatever’s out there is going to find a way in, sooner or later. It
wouldn’t take much. I thought we could keep them back, but it doesn’t make any
sense now that I think about it. This house isn’t built like a fort. We can’t
risk running back to the main gate, so we’ll have to take the car and pray we
get through.”
“Did
those—those things, did they do something to that—that man at the door?”
“Uh, yeah.” Daria tried not to think of the man’s screams,
how he might have looked when they froze him. “They killed another guy out
back, too. I think those guys were photographers. Those things, whatever they
are, got here a while ago, and we’ve been trying to keep them out ever since.”
Quinn got to
her feet and gave Daria one more hug. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said.
“I’m glad
you’re okay, too,” said Daria. “Is Jeffy waiting at the gate with Mrs. Sloane?”
“No, and I’m
going to kill him when he gets out of jail!” Quinn said in an exasperated tone.
“He drove over here like a maniac and got himself arrested right at the
entrance for speeding and driving without a license. The cops let me go, so I
ran all the way here from the guardhouse. When I got here, Elsie’s mother was
trying to get in, but that damn van was parked in front of the gate and the
bumper was pushing on the gate so it’s jammed and it can’t open at all. We were
waiting for a wrecker when I thought I hear some stuff going on up here, and
Mrs. Sloane helped me climb on top of the van and over the gate, and I guess
you know the rest. I am so going to kill Jeffy!”
“Jeez. Let’s
get Tom and Elsie and think about getting out of here.”
“Are the
aliens really out there? I didn’t see anything when I was coming up,
except—except for that guy at—”
“They’re
there, but they’re following me, not you, so you didn’t see them, thank God.
It’s a long story. Can you get the other two?”
“Sure.” Quinn
glanced downstairs and then walked to the door where Tom and Elsie had gone,
rapping on it with her knuckles. “Come on out.”
After a pause,
the door opened. “Quinn,” said Tom, “go look out the window. See if you can see
anything in the yard.”
“Uh, okay.
Daria, I’ll be right back.”
“Hurry,” said
Daria. The door shut. Daria looked down the hall with a frown. All three of
them were in the bedroom now. What was going on?
Her train of
thought was disrupted after a moment when Elsie came out. She walked over and
stood by Daria’s side at the top of the stairs. “Anything
going on down there?” Elsie said.
“No. I think
your brother’s right, we have to go.”
Elsie nodded. “Me, too. He’s right about the car. Dad will kill us if we
scratch it, though.” Suddenly she began to laugh. “But those things will kill
us if we don’t, right? I’m sorry, but I can’t believe this. This is so messed
up.”
“This will
only work if I’m somewhere where you’re not. I’ll figure something out.”
Nothing came to mind. Daria frowned down the hallway again. “What’s Tom doing
in there?”
“Oh. Uh, we
were trying to, uh, signal to Mom. Yeah. He didn’t want to yell at her and, you
know, draw attention.”
“Like we haven’t drawn enough.” Daria shrugged. “I agree.
This is really messed up.”
The bedroom
door opened, and Tom and Quinn came out. They did not look at Daria. When the
four gathered at the top of the stairs, Daria drew a deep breath. “Thank you,
Tom,” she began. “Thanks for getting Quinn in here. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Yeah,” said
Quinn. “Thanks.” And she leaned over, her face up, and kissed him on the cheek.
Tom looked startled and blushed.
The stab of
jealousy Daria felt in that moment took her completely by surprise. She tried
to push it away. It was not the time for stuff like that, and she felt she
shouldn’t think about it anyway at any time. “Tom’s right,” she said, changing
the subject, “about what he said earlier about leaving. We have to get out of here
as fast as we can. Let’s unplug the space heater and take it with us, in case
it keeps those things away. It’ll stay hot for a little while.”
“I’ll carry
it,” said Tom.
“Let me go
into the living room while you guys go to the garage,” said Daria. “Wait!
Listen to me!” she added, as Quinn and Elsie began to object. I have to make
this plausible. “I’ll go with you, sure, but let me stay in the living room
just a minute or two, so you have a chance to do whatever you need to do. Then
I’ll run back to the garage and we can leave. I think if I run really fast,
it’ll take those things by surprise and we can get the garage door open and get
out before they get to us, okay?” I’d never run fast enough to get into the
car before the aliens got to the garage door, but they don’t need to know that.
I’m not going with them, period. There are worse things than letting the
boogieman get you.
Tom, Elsie,
and Quinn looked at each other. “Sure,” said Tom slowly, “we can do that. We’d
better go now before anything else goes wrong.”
At that
moment, the lights went out again. Quinn gave a little shriek. Stunned, the
four heard the dying rumble of the generator in the garage as it chugged to a
stop.
“Oh, crap!”
yelled Elsie in the darkness. “It only had a little gasoline in it! It ran
out!”
“Why didn’t
you fill it?” Tom shouted at her.
“You
were supposed to fill it!” Elsie yelled back. “Dad told you to do it last
week!”
“Shut up!”
yelled Daria. She felt around on the floor, then
jerked the space heater’s plug from the wall. “Be careful and don’t fall down
the stairs! Let’s go!”
Tom grabbed
the space heater and led the way down the stairs, holding it out in front of
him by the base. Flickering yellow light from the fireplace in the living room
illuminated the darkness downstairs. They walked as a close bunch, peering
everywhere with nervous eyes.
“Where are the
flashlights?” Quinn whispered.
“In the
kitchen,” Elsie whispered back. “I’ll get a couple.”
The kitchen
was pitch black except for the red glow from the space heater’s cooling coils.
Elsie found two flashlights and passed one to Quinn, taking one for herself. Tom found the keys to the Stingray, then went to the door to the garage. After listening, he
opened it and held the space heater out in front of him. The garage was dark;
the door to the outside was still closed.
Tom put the
space heater down. “Elsie, give me your flashlight,” he said. When she did, he
swung the light around the garage. “All clear. Come
on.”
Quinn and
Elsie began to follow—but they stopped when they saw that Daria stood off on
the far side of the kitchen.
“I’ll be with
you in a moment,” Daria said, gesturing for them to move on. “I have to
distract the others outside. Go on. I’ll be okay. They’re not going to hurt
me.” When Quinn handed a flashlight out to her, she waved it away. “I don’t
need it. I can see.”
Quinn lowered
her flashlight. “Daria,” she said softly, “please—”
“Elsie,
Quinn!” Tom shouted, his voice echoing in the dark garage. “Let her go! Come
on! I need your help!”
The two girls
stared at Daria for an ageless moment—then slowly, reluctantly, turned and
left, leaving the garage door half open behind them. Both relieved and
saddened, Daria walked over, shut the garage door, then left the kitchen and
slowly went down the silent hall toward the living room. The enormity of what
she was doing was finally getting to her. I’ll be left behind, but that’s
okay, she thought. Tom bought it, thank God. They’ll have a chance to
live because of that. I have to think of that and nothing else.
She stopped at
the entrance to the living room. Nothing was visible through the outside
windows. Daria had never felt so alone in her whole life. Swallowing, she
slowly walking in, quickly getting as close as she dared to the crackling,
snapping flames in the fireplace. She again heard skittering noises move across
the wooden floor of the porch, but nothing came into view in the porch door
window.
Very soon,
she thought, watching the windows, very soon, I’ll know what the aliens
really look like. I only hope that no one hears me scream.
All alone now,
Daria waited in the living room by the fireplace. She shivered despite the
great heat and rubbed her arms through her jacket sleeves, listening to distant
noises from the garage as the other three prepared their escape.
I hope they
get Quinn away from here, far away. I want Elsie and Tom to make it, too, all
three of them: my sister, my only school friend, and . . . I should leave that
next part alone. I saw the kiss. I know what it probably meant. He was so
courageous to rescue her, and she was so grateful. They deserve each other. I
can’t go with them, but even if I could, even if I wasn’t too young, Tom and I
could never be a couple.
Wait—what
is this? I can’t believe I’m even thinking about this junk when we’re right on
the edge of such terrible things, all of us about to die. This is the stupidest
thing in the world. I have nothing that would interest anyone anyway, much less
Tom, even if he can be a twit sometimes. I made the right choice. It hurts, but
I did the right thing. It hurts because I know I won’t see them again. This is
the real end. I’ll miss my parents, even as messed up as they are, but I’ll
really miss Quinn. After all she went through, waiting
all those years for me to come back, all she did for me, and now she won’t—
Daria sniffed
and wiped her eyes under her glasses, struggling not to cry.
I need to
stop feeling sorry for myself, right this instant. This is a bunch of bull.
This could work out. I really don’t know that it won’t. I’m scared, but I can’t
let that get to me. I have to go on with this. I was so ready earlier to not
let the aliens get me, and now I’m just a wreck. Get yourself together,
Morgendorffer. It’ll be okay. I can stay here by the fire until morning, or
until the police or army get here to get rid of these things—but even if the
boogieman does get me, even if it doesn’t work out, the monsters won’t get my
sister or my best friends. At least I did that. I finally did something good with
my life, something good—
Footsteps were
coming down the hallway to the living room. Daria felt her heart jump to her
throat. “Wh-who is it?” she called, crossing her arms and backing up to
the fire as close as she dared.
“Me,” said
Tom, coming into view. He stopped, glanced at the dark windows, then walked slowly over to her. He stopped an arm’s reach
away, looking at her face. “You okay?”
She nodded
rapidly, nervous with him so close, and wiped her eyes again. There was so much
she wanted to say—but it was time to ditch the small talk. Best
to get it over with quickly. She tried to sound strong and confident as
she made her case. “Tom, I want you to go. Take the others and get in the car
and go without me. Please. I’ll be okay. Nothing will get in here with me
standing right by the fireplace. I’m safe here. Just get Quinn and Elsie and
get out of here, now. Please, just go.”
“We’ve fixed
up the car,” said Tom, as if he hadn’t heard her. “We put some old blankets and
coats in it that we’ll use for protection in case they use that . . . liquid
nitrogen or whatever it is. It’s not much, but it should help. We also poured a
big pool of lighter fluid by the big garage door next to the Stingray’s door.
We’ll set it on fire and open both doors just as we leave. Maybe the flames
will drive them back or confuse them, if they’re waiting for us. It’s worth a
try. Like you said, they don’t like fire.”
“Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “I’ll stay here, then, and
keep those things away from you.” She gasped, thinking of a new problem.
“Wait—how are you getting the garage door open? The generator’s dead.”
“Oh, Elsie’s
going to start it back up again in a moment. I filled the tank up. No more
gasoline, though. We’ll get the power back on, then
we’ll open the garage door and burn rubber all the way down the driveway.”
“And the gate! Quinn said it was jammed shut by that van.
How are you—”
“Yeah, I don’t
know about that. We’ll figure it out when we get there.” He paused, looking at
Daria with steady eyes. “You really are planning to stay behind while we
run for it.”
She nodded her
head yes, but not as hard as before. “I have to. Don’t give me a lot of crap
about it, either. You have to get them out of here now. Send the police back
for me, but you go. You have to. You know it.”
He looked at
her in silence in a way that she thought was very strange. “You are,” he
finally said, “the bravest and smartest person I have ever known. I wanted to
tell you that.”
Daria was as
surprised as she could get. “Me?” she said. What to say? “No. No, I’m not that
brave. I’m . . . I’m . . . not that brave.” She reached out and pushed him
gently in the chest. “Please go,” she said. “Get the other two out of here. It
would kill me if anything happened to Quinn. It’s the only way you’ll get out.
I’ll be okay here, really. Just get the police back here, or the military or
something. I’ll be okay. The fire will keep me safe. You have to go.”
She pushed
again, but her hand stayed against his chest. Tom reached up and took it. His
hand was large and warm. She felt very small next to him. He took a breath to
say something.
A car engine
started and revved up. It sounded astoundingly loud in the house. “Tom!” came Elsie’s shout down the hall. “Tom! We’re ready!”
“Start the
generator!” he shouted back. He looked down into Daria’s eyes and squeezed her
hand. “You really are the bravest person ever.”
Her heart
thumped almost as loudly as the Stingray’s motor. “Thanks,” she whispered. The
feel of his hand holding hers was wonderful, but it hurt. She would never see
him again—not in this world, anyway. The pain was more than she could take.
“Tom,” she said, suddenly pressured to say a thing she’d never thought she’d
ever say, “I want you to know that I—”
The
generator’s thunder suddenly filled the air. “Go!” screamed Elsie from
the garage.
Tom looked
down the hall, then at Daria. In less than a second, he let go of her hand and
lunged forward. One hand went across her back, the other just under her hips.
He spun as he lifted her off the ground and ran with her down the hall for the
garage. Too shocked to struggle, she yelled “Tom!” but could do nothing else.
She had a last
second view of the living room as she was carried down the hall. With a
terrific hiss, white fog blasted across the living-room windows facing the
porch. Thick frost formed over the entire wall. Every window, lamp, glass
picture, and piece of china burst. Shards of glass from the windows clattered
to the carpeted floor across the room. Something came through the broken window
in the door, knocking out more glass, then another
ear-splitting blast filled the entire living room with white fog. The crackling
roar from the fireplace went out in an instant.
By then, Tom’s
feet pounded through the kitchen. All the house lights came on again. He jumped
the steps down to the garage floor, setting Daria on her feet by the rear end
of the rumbling Stingray. The air reeked of exhaust fumes and spilled lighter
fluid, and she was deafened by the howl of the generator and the revving of the
Stingray’s engine in the enclosed garage. Tom dashed back, shut the door to the
kitchen, and grabbed a bottle of lighter fluid by the steps. He sprayed it over
the door, then took out a cigarette lighter and touched it off. The lower half
of the kitchen door and the top steps burst into flame. He then ran past Daria
and knelt by a vast glistening pool on the far side of the garage. She heard
the cigarette lighter click—and yellow flames arose in the middle of the garage
with a heat flash that scorched her face.
She started to
say something, but Tom grabbed her, spun her around, and forced her head down.
The passenger door on the Stingray was open and the seat had been moved
forward. Tom shoved her through the narrow opening into the cramped back seat
of the car. She crashed into a blanket-covered lump that pulled her close and
shouted with Elsie’s voice, “Go, go, go, go, go!” Tom forced the
passenger seat back, jumped in, slammed the door, and then picked up a
garage-door opener from the dash and pushed several buttons hard.
Wearing a
heavy coat with leather work gloves, Quinn sat in the driver’s seat, leaning
forward with both hands on the steering wheel. Through the smoke filling the
garage, Daria saw the garage door before them rise just as high as the
Stingray’s roof. Quinn took her foot off the brake and trod the accelerator.
The Stingray shot forward through the smoke and out of the garage and into the
wind and the night. Quinn snapped the wheel to the left to get down the
driveway. The Corvette fishtailed, the end swinging wide and throwing Elsie
into Daria in the back.
The boogiemen
were waiting for them. Quinn screamed and nailed the brakes, throwing everyone
forward. Tom swore and braced himself, his seat belt not fastened. From her
place in back, Daria looked through the windshield and had the impression that
three or four giant daddy longlegs on fragile, silvery white legs were walking
across the driveway in the car’s headlights. Wisps of fog drifted from their
high white bodies, from which whiplike tentacles writhed, coiled, and uncoiled.
Dreamlike, the spiders pivoted and strode toward the Stingray. Quinn hit the
gas and whipped the steering wheel around. The Stingray did a one-eighty, back
tires screaming. Daria smelled rubber burning. They took off around the back of
the house—
—directly into the rest of the spiders. Daria saw about a
half-dozen giant daddy longlegs ahead of them before Quinn whipped the wheel
around once more, heading back the way they’d originally planned. The three
daddy longlegs had scattered from the road itself but stretched long tentacles
toward the Stingray as it came on.
The longlegs on the left blasted white fog at the ground ahead of
the car. Quinn swerved to the right but ran through part of the fog
anyway. The windshield snapped, several long cracks running across it from left
to right; the left window by the driver also broke but held together. Deathly
cold filled the car and stung Daria’s face. One of the front tires began to
thump loudly.
The Stingray
came out of the fog in a skid, with the right side of the car facing down the
driveway. Quinn reversed the steering wheel to control the skid, gunning the
engine again. Tom shouted something in a panic and pointed to the right side of
the driveway. Daria caught a glimpse of more spiders coming out of a dark place
within a small grove of trees. These spiders were short and moved with rapid
footsteps (the ones on the porch, thought Daria), but they grew very
fast as their legs telescoped out and became limber and agile, turning them
into longlegs like the others. One of the longlegs started across the road
ahead of the Stingray, a third of the way down the hill.
Quinn pressed
the gas pedal down to the floor and hunched up, lowering her head to the level
of the steering wheel. “Hang on!” she shouted, and she aimed for the
daddy longlegs in the middle of the road. It immediately tried to get out of
the way, legs swinging, but one leg was still in the road when the Stingray
snapped it off. The broken silvery leg smacked the center of windshield and
cracked it into a spider web. Daria turned and saw the crippled longlegs
stagger across the yard and come to a stop, missing one of its eight or ten
legs but still on its feet.
With a
staggering bang, the car’s front left tire exploded. The Stingray dragged to
the left and almost flipped over as it ran off the driveway into the yard,
coming in a broad circle up the hill toward the house. Daria saw that the
Sloanes’ house was dark again; heavy fog drifted from the area around the
garage and from the side porch. They got the generator, she thought, and
then she saw several spiders striding across the yard toward them. The closest
one launched a brief jet of fog in the car’s direction but stopped and
backpedaled as the Stingray roared past and tore sod out of the yard.
Moving slower
now, the Stingray was guided back onto the driveway before Quinn again sped up.
The front left tire rim screamed as it dragged on the driveway. At the bottom
of the hill were two police cars with flashing red and blue lights, one of them
just pulling up. Other cars were present with headlights on. The main gate was
halfway open.
Daria turned
to look out the back window and tried to scream though nothing came out. One of
the silver-white daddy longlegs towered over the car, keeping pace behind it on
its spindly legs. Tentacles uncoiled down from its smoking body toward her
face. She thought it meant to kill her.
In the next
instant, Quinn hit the brakes and Daria was thrown toward the front of the car.
The back window was punched down and broke, a huge hole
showing where Daria had peered upward a moment earlier. Tom’s seat hit her in
the back and knocked the wind out of her. She was then thrown to the side as
the Stingray skidded and spun. Something banged into the car’s left side and
then the rooftop. Daria could not think through the spinning around and chaos
and squealing tires and screaming. She felt a terrific jolt as something
exploded in front of the car. It was terrifically cold as she was flung about
like a rubber ball in the back seat.
The car came
to a rest with creaks and pops, the engine off. Daria was aware she was lying
on top of Elsie. Shouts, screams, and running footsteps came
from outside. Daria pushed herself up, too
dazed to think. Her glasses were missing, and it was impossible to see anything
but blurs except close up.
A gunshot went
off near the car, then two more, then a flurry of semiautomatic gunfire.
Bullets cracked as they passed over and around the car. Daria sank down, hoping
to keep Elsie flat if she came to. Another explosion echoed out a short
distance away; metallic pieces clattered to the ground and bounced on pavement
with ringing sounds. People ran past the car, shouting, “There! There it went!”
“Daria?” It was Quinn from the front seat. “Daria?”
“Quinn?”
“Y’okay?”
“I think so.
Are you?”
No answer
came. Daria pushed herself up again, not too high. Quinn was looking back from
her seat, fuzzy in Daria’s vision. Several dark streams ran down from Quinn’s
hair across her forehead, into her eyes, and down to her mouth and chin. Tom
lay against the passenger door, not moving.
“Love you,”
said Quinn. She tried to smile, then closed her eyes and sank into her seat as
if in relief. Her breath came out in a sigh.
“Quinn?” Daria
reached for her sister and touched her face. The warm dark streams on her face
stained Daria’s fingertips. Her sister did not move.
It was very
quiet. Then the police got to them.
The idea of
having one of her birthday parties in a three-bedroom suite on the top floor of
a high-quality hotel had never occurred to Daria, though it had also never
occurred to her that her parents’ home would be unavailable because her family
was afraid enemy aliens from space might attack it, that the party would be
attended by many more people than in her immediate family, including
plainclothes FBI agents, or that she would actually get a flavor of cake she
liked.
“. . . Happy
birthday, dear Daria! Happy Birthday to you!” The
crowd around the table finished its off-key singing and applauded. Daria
allowed herself a trace of a smile as she looked at her cake: chocolate with
chocolate frosting and chocolate chips throughout, and thirteen candles on top.
It was more than adequate, even if she was technically sixteen. She still
looked and felt thirteen, give or take a few months.
“Better late
than never,” she said when the applause died. “This must be the first time in
history that thirteen was a lucky number.”
“Amen to
that,” muttered her father. His sentiments were echoed by other parents in the
room.
“And since
you’ve all been nice enough to throw this party for me,” Daria continued, “I
will do the socially expected thing—but only this once.” Leaning forward, she
inhaled to blow out the candles.
Across the
table from her, Quinn also inhaled and leaned forward as if she meant to blow
the candles out first. Daria saw this, panicked, and blew them out in a hard,
fast breath. Everyone laughed.
“No cake for
thee, thou frothy, common-kissing hedge-pig,” Daria muttered, giving Quinn a
mock glare.
“Daria,”
growled her mother with a forced smile.
Her sister sat
back in her chair and smirked. “Takes one to know one,” Quinn said. “I wouldn’t
want a piece of your higgidy-piggidy cake, anyway,
now that you’ve spit all over it.” Quinn’s bandaged head and buzz-cut hair were
covered with a colorful bandana, tied in back. She had come through the
collision between the Stingray and the longlegs in better shape than she’d
first appeared. The other three members of the Fashion Club stood behind Quinn
and smirked with her. Sandi Griffin gave Quinn’s shoulder a gentle,
congratulatory squeeze.
“Cake is sooo fattening anyway,” said Tiffany Blum-Deckler
knowingly. “If you breathe the fumes, you get calories.”
“The spit absorbs
the calories, though,” Daria said. “I can put more on if you like.”
A chorus of
groans and “Eww!” noises went through the room.
“Children,
don’t argue,” said Helen under her breath as she prepared to cut into the cake.
“We’re not
arguing,” said Daria, matter-of-factly. “We’re engaged in normal sibling
discourse.”
“Makes me
wonder what you think of as ‘normal,’” said Quinn, still smirking.
“We wouldn’t
know anything about normal in our family,” said Elsie, standing behind
Daria. She turned to her brother, Tom, and added, “Would we, Studley Do-Right?” Tom sighed and rolled his eyes. A
bandage covered his right cheek, and his right arm was in a splint.
“Stud-ley?” chorused the Fashion Club with cheerful smiles. “Eww!”
“Have your
fun,” said Tom with wounded dignity. “I’ll consider the source.”
“I still wish
they wouldn’t argue,” mumbled Helen, “especially in
front of the . . .” Helen glanced at the television cameraman standing in the
back of the group, quietly recording the event for posterity.
“They’re fine,
Helen,” said a husky feminine voice by Helen’s ear. “Let ‘em
bicker. My kids fight all the time, and it hasn’t hurt
them—far as I know.” The brunette in the business suit at Helen’s side glanced
at the cameraman, too. “Remind me to cut out those last comments in editing,”
she said.
Daria shook
her head as she waited for her mother to finish putting chocolate-chip
cookie-dough ice cream on her slice of cake. The brunette was Linda Griffin,
who in addition to being Sandi’s mother was vice president of marketing for
KSBC, a Lawndale TV station, and current chairwoman of the board of the
Lawndale Businesswomen’s
As her mother
and father handed cake and ice cream to others in the group, Daria eyed the
wall clock. It was twenty till five, and sundown was less than an hour away.
She had a certain bet riding with Quinn and fully expected to win it.
“I thought
there was supposed to be pizza,” said Daria as an aside to Elsie.
“It’s coming,”
said Helen, having overheard the comment. “Pizza King said it was running
late.”
“Delivery boy
probably got lost,” said Daria’s Aunt Rita. “Probably a
college kid who couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a flashlight.”
Quinn heard
this and coughed so hard she sprayed her diet soda into her lap. Her horrified
friends quickly began cleaning her up.
“Shame Amy
couldn’t be here,” said Rita. “That must be one hell of an editorial meeting
she had tonight to miss this.”
“Now, I’m sure
there was some excuse,” said Helen. She glanced at the wall clock. “I doubt
we’ll see her this late.”
Daria heard
and nodded to herself as she ate. She would win the bet, but she was sorry
about it, too.
A knock
sounded at the door. The plainclothes federal agent sitting by the door got up
and looked through the peephole, then opened the door and then waved the person
inside. It was a skinny twenty-something guy with red-brown bangs, a bad case
of acne, and a turkey neck. His resemblance to a turkey was further aided by
his large, pointed nose, which reminded Daria of a beak. “Pizza King,” he said
in a subdued voice, looking around the room. “Sorry I’m late.” He carried an
armload of large pizza boxes. Guests in the room quickly guided the young man
over to Daria’s table, where he put the boxes down. The boxes disappeared
thereafter as everyone grabbed for ones with favored toppings.
“Here’s the
bill,” said the pizza guy, pulling a wadded yellow paper from his shirt pocket.
He had a geeky voice, too. Daria noticed his nametag read “ARTIE.” He looked
familiar, but she couldn’t place him.
Jake
Morgendorffer handed Artie a few twenties. “Keep the change, son,” he said
expansively. “It’s my daughter’s birthday!”
“Thanks,” said
Artie. He folded the bills and put them in his shirt pocket without looking at
them. He was looking at Daria instead. “Um . . . you’re the girl who was on TV,
right?” he asked.
“Depends on
which show you were watching,” Daria replied. His stare was making her
uncomfortable.
“The, um,
thing about the aliens,” Artie said. “On the news.”
“That’s me,”
Daria said with a sigh. “However, my sister over there, this gentleman here—” Daria
indicated Tom “—and the girl behind me, they’re the real heroes. I was only
along for the ride.”
“She’s too
modest,” said Tom. “However, I’m sure if you give her a dollar, she’ll
autograph your stomach.”
The Fashion
Club broke into giggles at this. Daria gave Tom what she hoped was an
especially fierce glare, but he seemed unaffected and winked at her.
“I thought it
was you,” said Artie, nodding. He never took his gaze off Daria. “That was, uh,
pretty interesting.”
“Weren’t you
on TV yourself?” asked Elsie, looking Artie over carefully. “I seem to remember
you or someone like you on ‘Sick, Sad World’ a few weeks ago, one of the
reruns.”
“Oh,” said
Artie. He shrugged. “Uh, yeah, that was me,” he mumbled. “It wasn’t anything.”
“You said
you’d been kidnapped by aliens,” said Daria, remembering now. “You were at a
UFO convention in Middleton that I missed.”
“Yeah,” said
Artie. “It wasn’t anything. It was just the Grays, the usual thing. You know
how they get. I gotta go. Got more deliveries. Uh,
have a good night.”
“Thanks,
Artie!” said Jake. He reached in his shirt pocket. “If you ever get your own
business and need some consulting, here’s my card!”
“That young
man was kidnapped by aliens, too?” a wide-eyed Helen asked Daria as Artie left.
“That’s what
he told Sick Sad,” said Daria. “It wasn’t anything like . . . whatever. Who knows.”
“He looked
embarrassed,” said Quinn. “Maybe he made up all that stuff about being
kidnapped, and now he’s faced with the real thing, and he’s sort of, like,
uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh!” Sandi repeated. “Nerd alert!” More giggles
followed.
At five sharp,
Linda Griffin checked her watch. “I’d better wrap this up and get going,” she
said. She pulled out her notebook and flipped it open. She read down several
lines, talking a step toward Daria. “Let’s see. You don’t hear that musical
note or tone in your head anymore, right?”
“Mmm?” Daria swallowed her mouthful of cake. “Sorry. No, I
don’t. It stopped while the police were taking me to the hospital. After it
quit, the cops could use their radio, so I know I was broadcasting something.
They never did figure out what or how. The skull x-rays came out normal.” She
shot a glance at Quinn to see if a comeback was in the works, but her sister
was talking to her friends.
“Ah-ha,” said
Linda. “And, let’s see. Quinn, you don’t have to go back to Cedars of Lawndale
for a checkup until next Monday, right?”
“What? Oh,
right,” said Quinn. “I think I’m fine, though.”
“I’ll go with
you to your appointment!” said Sandi. “I’ll be your moral support!”
Daria
discretely coughed upon hearing the word “moral.” No one noticed.
“You’ll be in
school that day, dear,” said Linda, “but I might be able to twist Ms. Li’s arm
a bit to get you out, if we work mention of the school into that day’s story.
She always likes that, promoting ‘Laaawndale’ High.
It’s her weak spot.” She read more notes, talking to herself. “I have
everything about the lie-detector tests, and about
Tom, Elsie, and Quinn planning the escape and rescuing Daria from herself. . .
. hmmm.”
Daria looked
up with a real glare. Thanks a lot! she
thought. Didn’t you understand anything about what I said about that signal
I was giving off? I couldn’t be near the others because it attracted the
aliens! You—oh, forget it.
“You know,
Mrs. Griffin,” said Tom, glancing uneasily at Daria, “in all fairness, Daria
was—”
“Yeah,” said
Elsie and Quinn at the same time. “She—”
“The FBI and
ATF won’t talk to me, so I can’t get anything there,” Linda went on, oblivious.
“I’ve got the police report on the Sloanes’ house, the broken power and phone
lines—”
“Frozen and
broken,” Tom put in. “And about Daria, that tone—”
“Right, frozen . . . such a shame about those two photographers.
One of them was in
A pall fell
over the group at the table. Any mention of the two dead men was sure to kill
conversation.
“Yeah,” said
the TV cameraman, looking at the clock. “Shouldn’t we be going? Sundown’s
coming.”
“Just a
minute,” said Linda, still reading notes. “Yes, that’s about it for now.” She
shut her notebook and gave Quinn a broad smile. “And
congratulations, dear, for your masterful handling of that car. Two
kills on alien monsters with one sports car!”
“One and a
half,” corrected Quinn. “I only broke a leg off one, and the other one fell
over the car and blew up when I stopped because the gate wasn’t open wide
enough.”
“You still got
two of them, and the
Quinn looked
uneasy and glanced at Daria. “That’s not true,” she said. “Daria—”
“And I
understand the police aren’t going to prosecute for your lack of a license.”
“Bless their
hearts!” said Quinn with sincerity. “They are just the sweetest guys! But as I
was saying—”
“Where did you
learn to drive like that?” Linda went on.
“Oh, I learned
to drive on dates,” said Quinn easily. “You know, like when you go out for
dinner but your date has too much to drink, even though he’s like underage and
not supposed to drink, or he’s playing one of those stupid videogames and you
want to go home but he doesn’t, and he like hands you the car keys and is all
like, if you want to go, just go, and so you do, you know, and he’s like all
mad about it later because he had to walk home, but you’re like, hey, you said
I could go, right? I mean, you know? And some guys are like, hey, let me show
you how to drive, only they’re like putting their arms around you so it gets
kind of cramped and hard to steer or—”
“Quinn, dear,”
Helen interrupted, “could you go see if my purse is in my bedroom?”
“Yeah, it is,”
said Quinn. “Anyway, it gets—”
“Go check
again,” said Helen firmly. “Now.”
Quinn groaned
and got up. “Fine,” she said, and she left. Her friends started to go with her.
“Sandi?” said
Linda, putting her notebook away and glancing at her watch,
and then out the windows at the sun near the horizon. “We’d best be going. Have
to meet with the station manager and newsroom staff.”
“Mom, do we
have to go now?” Sandi asked, looking irked. “Quinn’s going to—”
“Now, Sandi! Kids, honestly. And
thank you again for inviting us, Helen. You are such a dear.”
After the
Griffins left, the party broke up quickly. Parents around the room gazed at the
setting sun and herded their children to the door. “Hope to see you back in
Sensitivity Awareness next Monday,” said Michele Landon primly. “Jodie, Rachel,
come along.”
“It was good
to meet you,” Jodie Landon said to Daria as they shook hands goodbye. “Good
luck on having a less exciting life.” Jodie was a tall teenager with dark skin
and cornrows in her hair, a sophomore honors student at Lawndale High. Daria
took an immediate liking to her because Jodie was not only direct and honest,
she also didn’t expect anything from her, unlike many
well-wishers Daria had met lately.
“Thanks, and good to meet you, too. You have my e-mail.”
Daria looked at the sullen Rachel, Jodie’s sixth-grade sister, who had stayed
in the background and said nothing all evening. “See you in middle school next
Monday.”
Rachel glanced
at her, then nodded, looking down. Daria knew she
wasn’t a particularly good student, and she wondered if this caused problems at
home with their high-pressure parents. As the Landons were leaving, Rachel
stopped to adjust a shoe, then pulled a slip of paper from dress pocket and ran
back to give it to Daria. She hurried off immediately afterward. Daria read the
slip: CALL IF YOU WANT. A phone number followed. Daria shrugged and tucked it
in a pocket. Several people had given her notes like this. She kept them all.
One never knew what the future would bring.
In no time,
the party was down to the Morgendorffers, Rita
Barksdale, the two Sloane children, and the FBI agent by the door—and
eight-year-old Tricia Gupty and her parents. “Thanks
for inviting me!” Tricia said with a broad grin, her blonde bangs wagging. “It
was great! Too bad my little brother had to do his Bible homework, ‘cause he would have loved it.”
“I’m glad you
had fun,” said Daria impassively, “and don’t spend your ten thousand dollars
reward money all in one place.”
“Oh, I’ve
already given it away to feed homeless people!” said Tricia gaily. “I got six
national and local awards because of it, I got in the newspapers and on TV, and
the home-school association is giving me an honorary dinner, too! Next time you
get lost, let me find you again so I can get more money to give to charity!”
Daria rolled
her eyes. The relentlessly cheerful Tricia was credited with finding Daria at a children’s camp several months earlier, when Daria escaped
from her confinement in suspended animation. Cruel fate had arranged for Tricia
to hail from the same town Daria’s family now called home, Lawndale—and, worse,
the Guptys lived only a few blocks away. “Fine,”
Daria said. “Whatever.”
After the Guptys left, Daria turned to Quinn and held out her hand.
“It’s five twenty p.m.,” she said. “Do you know where your fifty dollars is?”
Quinn made a
face and reached into a pants pocket. “I was sure someone would stay past
sundown,” she said. “Bunch of chickens. Although Sandi wanted to stay. She only left because her
mother—”
“She didn’t
put up a fight,” said Daria. “We’re everyone’s best friend in the daytime, but
they’re going to run off after dark.”
“Daria, don’t
be so cynical,” said her mother, piling up the used paper plates. She stopped
and looked around. “I thought the hotel had people here to help with cleaning
up.”
“They left
when everyone else left,” said Daria.
“Oh, this is
getting ridiculous.” Helen put down the paper plates and marched over to a
phone. “I’m calling the concierge right this minute.”
“Don’t worry.
I’ll clean up,” said Jake, picking up the plates and tossing them into a
wastebasket. “Hey, where’d that big trashcan go, the one on wheels?”
“The hotel
people took it with them when they left,” said Daria.
“Damn it! Helen,
this stinks!”
“I’m on it,”
said his wife. She tapped her foot, the phone pressed to her ear. “Come on,
pick up. Oh, hello? Concierge? Just what kind of
fly-by-night operation are you running here?”
“We can hang
around,” said Elsie, taking a seat by Daria. “Don’t we count in this bet?”
“No,” said
Quinn, still digging through her pockets. “Your family’s staying in the hotel
with us, so you can’t run away like everyone else can.” She tossed a bill to
Daria and looked around the room. “I hope Aunt Rita’s in the bathroom. It would
bum me out if she left, too.”
“They’re
afraid of meeting special visitors after dark?” asked Tom.
Daria and
Quinn both nodded with sad faces.
“I guess I am,
too,” said Elsie, “but if it’s going to happen, it’ll happen. I should have
brought my Barbarella knock-off outfit along. Maybe the aliens would get into
space vixens.”
“After seeing
them,” said Tom, “I rather doubt it.” He looked at Quinn. “By the way, you know
we’re being given a new car, right?”
Quinn looked
surprised. “Really? I thought the insurance covered
it.”
“Well, not the
car, no. And Dad said the insurance company might fight us on whether having
aliens destroy your house came anywhere under our homeowner’s policy.”
“That sucks,”
said Quinn. “I wonder if that will do anything to the insurance rates in
“Bet you
another fifty it does,” Daria said glumly. “Anywhere, where’s the new car
from?”
“The Corvette company. It seems that using one of their vehicles to escape
the house skyrocketed their sales. They said they
couldn’t buy advertising like that anywhere.”
“At least
someone’s getting something good out of this mess,” said Daria. “I had some
endorsement offers, but the ones Quinn’s getting lately blow mine out of the
water.” She glanced at her sister. “You deserve it, though, I have to admit.”
Quinn had the
decency to blush. “You do, too,” she said. “People can be such jerks. This guy
called last night and said—”
A knock
sounded at the door. The FBI agent checked through the spy hole. He turned to
Jake and Helen, who were still arguing over the telephone with the hotel
management. “This lady familiar to you?” he called.
Jake came over
and peeked out. “Oh!” he said. “Yeah, let her in!”
The agent did
so, and a woman with long wavy brown hair and round eyeglasses came in,
carrying two shopping bags. “Did you start the party without me? Damn that
traffic!”
“Aunt Amy!”
cried Daria and Quinn, getting up at once to run over and hug her.
“Sorry I
didn’t think I was coming,” said Amy, putting down the bags to put an arm
around each of her nieces, “but I managed to reschedule the meeting at the last
minute, and I jumped in my car and broke the speed limit all the way over
here.” She turned to the FBI agent. “If you’re a cop, you didn’t hear that.”
The agent only laughed.
Rita returned
from the bathroom, and a joyful evening began. Quinn tried to get her
fifty-dollar bet back from Daria, but Daria said Amy was family and didn’t
count, and Quinn didn’t press it. More cake and pizza was eaten, birthday
presents were opened, and Daria found herself in possession of many new books
and articles of clothing. She was monetarily well off to boot. She had the
fifty dollars her father had given her a week ago to bribe the Sloanes, too,
but she decided not to mention it to anyone.
Helen and her
two sisters decided to go down to the hotel bar and talk, and Quinn elected to
go with them. Daria begged off, feeling very tired. Elsie and Tom had left for
their parents’ suite down the hall earlier that evening. Only her father and
the FBI agent remained behind.
“Damn, I guess
I do have to clean up,” said Jake, surveying the mountains of debris from the
long party. “Stupid union regulations.”
“What
regulations?” Daria asked, chewing on a cold crust of pizza.
“Something
about not doing involuntary hazardous duty without ten times normal pay, or something like that. Your mom’s got them in her
sights, though. We’re taking them to court about this.”
“Dad, we’re
taking over three dozen people and groups to court right now for all sorts of
things. Mom’s not even going to work anymore, she has so many people to call to
schedule court dates.”
“Yeah, but you
gotta make the bastards pay sometime.” Jake rubbed his chin, then
looked down at his daughter. “Happy birthday, kiddo,” he said.
Daria looked
up at him and nodded. “Thanks, Dad-o.”
Jake sighed.
“You know, Daria,” he began, but his voice ran out for a moment. He looked
around at the FBI agent, who sat by the door reading a magazine, then he took a
seat next to his daughter. Daria looked back with mild interest, expecting him
to hand her more money as a secret dad-to-daughter present.
“You know,” he
began again, “I’ve not been that good a father to you,
since you got back. Hell, I don’t think I was all that good back when you were
with us, before you went off to—well, to camp that summer. I . . . I’ve thought
a lot about it, over the years, and since you got back.” He was silent for a
few moments.
Daria said
nothing. She stopped eating pizza crusts. Her father had never talked to her
like this.
“I blame my
own dad for some of it, but, hell, it’s really up to me, isn’t it? I should
have listened to you more and done more things—”
“Dad,” Daria
interrupted, glancing at the FBI agent, “you don’t have to go into this—”
“Well, yes I
do, and I have to say it now,” her father said. “I have to say it before I
never get the chance to say it and spend my life regretting it. I have to say
what I wish my own dad had said to me. You’re a great kid, Daria. You’re a hell
of a lot smarter than I’ll ever be. You’ve been through . . . I guess I’ll
never know what you’ve been through, what a complete nightmare it’s been,
coming back and finding everything changed and, well, finding that your mother
and I—well, that we’d thought you weren’t coming back—”
“Dad,” said
Daria, her voice cracking. To her shock, she was close to crying. “Dad, stop.
It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t
okay. You’re my daughter. I’ll never have another one like you. I shouldn’t
have given up on you the way I think my own dad gave up on me. It was wrong,
and I’m sorry as hell for it, but I can’t do anything to make up for it except
be there for you, from this day on, no matter what you need or want from me. I
don’t mean money, though if you need that you can have it, too, but I mean,
just if you need me to talk or just be there, or whatever you want. Do you
understand?”
It was
impossible to speak, as her throat had closed up, so Daria got up and went to
her father. He hugged her and began to cry himself. “I’m so sorry,” he said.
“I’m so sorry for not being there for you.”
They hugged
for a while more, then Jake kissed her on the cheek.
“I’ll never get another kiddo like you,” he said. “You’re the greatest.”
Daria sniffed
and wiped her red face. “Thanks,” she said. “It really—”
Another knock
came from the door. They turned and saw the FBI agent get up, magazine in hand,
and peek outside. “Not again,” the agent sighed. He grinned at Jake and Daria, then opened the door. “I don’t think anyone ordered it, but
we’d—”
A loud hiss
sounded at the same moment that a cloud of white fog and snowy spray blasted
over the agent, knocking him backward. When he hit the floor, his arms, head,
and most of his clothing shattered, and his torso broke in half.
Daria had not
finished screaming when her father snatched her up and ran to one of the
suite’s bedrooms and shoved her inside. “Lock the door and call nine one one!” he yelled—then he slammed the door.
But he stayed
outside.
Panicking,
Daria looked about for the phone. Her father shouted in the other room;
furniture was knocked over. Spotting the phone on the far side of the room on a
table, she ran to it and picked up the handset.
A hissing
blast sounded through the door and walls. She spun about, the handset to her
ear but the emergency number undialed.
White fog
drifted under the door into the bedroom. The temperature fell sharply. She
shivered and watched the fog dissipate and waited for her father to come back
into the bedroom.
Furniture
moved in the other room. Someone then walked across the floor to the bedroom
door. After a pause, the doorknob turned, and the door opened.
She had
forgotten to lock it.
Still wearing
his Pizza King outfit, a young man with a facial resemblance to a turkey
stepped in and grinned at her. He held a gray gunlike device in his gloved
hands, aiming it at the floor.
“Freeze,”
Artie said softly, and his grin broadened into a laugh.
Artie stepped
into the hotel bedroom and kicked the door shut behind him. He never took his
gaze from Daria. His breath misted the air. Fog drifted from the narrow,
frost-covered mouth of the gray weapon he held with both gloved hands. The
long, bulky weapon was slung over Artie’s shoulders on a jury-rigged rope sling.
Odd projections and stubs sticking out from the weapon’s surface in random
places gave the weapon an incomplete look, as if it had once been a part of a
larger mechanism.
“Hang up,”
said Artie. The gun’s smoking barrel turned in her direction.
Her mouth dry,
Daria replaced the handset with trembling fingers.
Artie lowered
the gun and walked over. “Turn around,” he ordered. “We don’t have any time.
They’ll be up in a couple minutes when they figure out something’s wrong, and
they’ll be pissed.” Impatient at Daria’s hesitation, he spun her around with
one hand, then shoved her up against a wall. After
unslinging the weapon and tossing it on the bed along with his gloves, he took
a roll of gray duct tape from his Pizza King jacket
pocket. He then grabbed her hands and wound the tape around her wrists until
they were tightly bound behind her back. “I love this stuff,” he said as he
worked. “They say duct tape holds the universe together. It’s like the Force
from Star Wars, but I don’t remember how the rest of the joke goes.”
Once he was
done, he ripped off the end of the tape, then pocketed
the roll. “We’re taking the express route out of here. Do only what I tell you
to do, okay?” He turned her around so she faced him. “You understand me?”
Daria looked
up at Artie and thought of her father. She knew he had to be dead, though she
couldn’t yet admit it aloud. As clueless as her dad often was, he had genuinely
tried to make amends with her, and then he had sacrificed his life so that she
might escape. That connection with him had meant everything. He had cared about
her, and she had the strength to go on without him because of that.
Artie,
however, had no hold over her, no matter what he threatened to do. He had just
murdered her father. There was nothing he could do to her that would be worse
than that.
Daria fought
down a deep ache of grief. Her fears faded as she got control of herself. She
would take life moment by moment, and do her best to stay on top of the
situation. Later, when it was safe, she would let herself mourn her dad.
But as for Artie . . .
“I asked you a
question, kid!” Artie shouted. “Are you going to do what I tell you to do?”
Daria’s eyes
narrowed, but she nodded. “Yeah,” she whispered.
“Okay, good.
Stand there and don’t move. And don’t try to run, either.” Artie put on his
gloves and slung his weapon over his shoulders again, then reached into his
other jacket pocket and pulled out a small gray box with a sliding switch on
it. “I may as well tell you I’m not working for fairy-tale critters like the
Grays. I made up that stuff for the tabloids and TV news. It was fun, but it
was a bunch of horse manure, if you didn’t already know.” He looked around the
room, then held the box out in the direction of one wall and pushed the switch.
“Let’s see if this works.”
For a second
or two nothing happened. As Daria watched, however, a black dot appeared in the
middle of the air over the floor. The dot grew rapidly in size until it was a
vertical disk several feet across.
“Most
excellent,” said Artie with a smile, pocketing the box. “I’m finally getting
the hang of it.”
To Daria’s
astonishment, the disk was a floating window that looked into an unlit room.
She saw a smooth rock floor on the other side, but no walls and no light,
except what passed through the hole from the hotel room to illuminate the new
area. The disk grew until its bottom touched—and easily passed through—the
floor of the hotel.
What the
hell is that? she thought. A
wormhole or dimensional gateway, like in science fiction? Where
the hell does that lead?
Artie grabbed
Daria by the shoulders. She suddenly realized he was going to shove her through
the hole, and she struggled to escape. “Stop it!” he shouted in her
ear—then he pushed her ahead of him, running at the hole’s
center. They went through it and abruptly dropped a short distance to the floor
on the other side. Daria stumbled and fell, unable to catch herself because her
hands were tied. A little luck was with her. Though she banged her left knee
hard, lost her glasses, and had the wind knocked out of her, she didn’t strike
her head on the rock-hard floor.
The air was
stale and smelled like broken stone. As Daria moaned from the excruciating pain
in her knee and lungs, she heard footsteps approach. “Damn it, be careful!”
Artie shouted at her. “I didn’t want you to get all busted up!” He reached down
and pulled her roughly to her feet by one arm. She couldn’t put weight on her
bruised leg without feeling like her knee would buckle, so she tried balancing
on her right foot. Her chest ached as she breathed.
The room
suddenly got darker. Daria raised her head, her eyes streaming with tears. The
hole in space, fuzzy-edged in her vision, was rapidly getting smaller. She
heard men shouting on the other side, outside the bedroom door in the hotel.
The hole suddenly shrank to tiny size and vanished. All was dark. She sat down
hard on the floor before she lost her balance and fell, still wheezing and
groaning from pain.
That was
a gateway! Where are we now? How did he do that? What other devices does he
have? Is he really human?
“Should’ve
turned the light before I left,” Artie grumbled nearby. “It’s what I get for
being in a hurry. Wait here.” He walked a few steps, then
Daria heard a cigarette lighter click. A moment later, Artie held the lighter
aloft in an ungloved hand. “There it is,” he said, and he walked away. Moments
later, a brighter light came on.
They stood in
a large square room whose walls had horizontal bands in shades of gray and tan.
Daria’s myopia made it hard to tell more. Artie had activated a lantern that
Daria guessed was battery powered as no cord led away from it. It sat on the
floor against a wall. The room seemed empty otherwise.
“Didn’t you
have glasses?” Artie asked, walking over as he put his glove back on. He got
Daria to her feet again, then said, “Oh, here they
are.” He bent down and picked them up. Daria thought about kicking him, but he
still had that big gray gun, and she had nowhere to escape. Artie examined her
glasses. “They’re not broken,” he said, and he put them back on her face with
clumsy gloved hands.
Events were
getting weird and moving fast, but Daria made herself pay attention. Getting
her glasses back confirmed that the room was large, about thirty feet across,
and carved out of solid rock with a flat, twenty-something-foot ceiling. The
walls were roughly hewn, obviously not natural. An open tunnel was visible in
the direction they were heading, square in shape and about a man’s height high
and wide. The gray floor was mostly smooth but had small rocks chips and dust
scattered over it. It looked like limestone.
“Let’s go,”
said Artie, waving her on toward the tunnel. She tried hopping to stay off her
left leg but almost fell. Artie frowned at her. “Jeez, I hope you didn’t bust
anything. Is it your leg?” She nodded, and he looked scornful. “Well, that was
stupid. You should have been more careful. I can’t carry you. Look, you’re just
going to have to get going as best you can. Here, fine, I’ll hold your arm.
Don’t try anything. We’re heading for that way out.”
With Artie
acting as her support, Daria limped toward the tunnel. It appeared to run for
about twenty feet, ending in a smooth wall. Artie got her into the tunnel, then
stopped and let her lean against the wall while he went back and got the
electric lantern. As he returned, he motioned for her to continue ahead of him.
“Keep moving,” he said. “It’s not far.”
Daria
maneuvered down the tunnel with short hops, bumping painfully into the rock at
her side. As she went, she heard a low rumbling all around her—and she froze.
“Earthquake!” she shouted in panic, remembering the one she’d survived in
“Keep moving,
I said!” Artie snapped in annoyance. “It’s just a damn train!”
“What?”
Daria’s breathing slowed. The rumbling continued through the rock, but the
ground did not shift and the walls and ceiling did not collapse. “A train?” she
repeated.
“Yeah. Man, that really had you
going! You should have seen your face! Keep moving!”
Though stung,
Daria kept herself from a smart retort. He had the gun and her hands were tied,
after all. Were they in a mine dug below an active railroad line? She began
limping on her own, using the tunnel wall for support, until she reached the
wall at the end.
“Pretty cool,
huh?” said Artie. “I had this place fixed up about four years ago. It would
blow everyone’s mind if they knew it was here. I love it. Just push on the
door.”
Daria looked
the featureless wall up and down, then raised her injured leg and gently pushed
on it. The wall swung open, clearly a door. Beyond it was a vast, dark space,
much larger than the previous room. Cold air enveloped her, making her shiver.
The floor was made of relatively smooth gray limestone that showed signs of
having been carved.
As Daria
hopped out, the light from Artie’s lantern fell past her upon several objects
only twenty feet away, standing in the darkness with fog drifting from their
high bodies: six silvery-white daddy longlegs.
“No!”
Daria gasped. The echo reverberated through an enormous space. She backed up
into Artie, felt her knee give way, and fell down with a painful thump on her
posterior. For a few moments, she saw stars.
“Hey, watch
it!” Artie shouted. “Jeez, you almost knocked me down!” He stamped off with the
lantern to a spot to the left of the row of longlegs, where a table and chair
stood, surrounded by various boxes, crates, bags, and shelving units jammed
with assorted items. Here, Artie put down the lantern and deposited the gloves,
gray gun, and items from his jacket pockets. He flipped a few switches on a
control box near the table—and most of the gigantic room lit up.
Daria blinked
against the glare from numerous bright floodlights. The longlegs were
motionless, even their tentacles dangling limp as noodles. The smoking central
body of each longlegs was perhaps eight feet off the ground, supported by
numerous stiltlike legs. They showed no interest in
her or anything else.
As her eyes
adjusted to the light, Daria saw that they were in a huge chamber inside a deep
mine or quarry. Vast rock pillars, each as wide as a tractor-trailer, rose to
support the three-story-high ceiling. The wide aisles formed by the pillars
stretched away in every direction except toward the wall behind her. Lights had
been mounted halfway up many of the nearby pillars, the cables from them
running down to a large gray object the size of a refrigerator, about sixty
feet away. The wall behind her had several other doors like the one through
which she had entered the chamber.
“How do you
like it?” Artie called to her. “Cool, isn’t it? My secret
hideout. Kind of like being a kid again, huh?
Hey, you may as well make yourself comfortable. Don’t try running off anywhere,
though, because there’s nowhere to go. We’re sealed off in here. The quarry’s
closed. Plus, if you did disappear—” He pointed to the row of longlegs “—I’d
get one of those things to go find you, and you’d regret it.”
Daria shivered
again, only partly out of fear. The temperature in this vast chamber was close
to freezing. She wondered if the cold came from the smoking longlegs. With a
grimace, she tried to get to her feet, but her left knee was still bad. If she
could get her hands free, she reasoned, she might be able to use something as a
crutch—if she didn’t try to kill Artie first.
“You weren’t
the only one who got picked up in one of those little people traps, you know,”
Artie remarked from his open workspace. He was rummaging through the contents
of a cardboard box. “I got a little story to tell, if you’ve got the time. Just kidding. You’ve got the time, I know. Listen up, and
maybe you’ll learn something, for whatever good it does you.”
“The Outers
never catch many people,” Artie said, still looking in the cardboard box. He
talked quickly, as if he’d been waiting for this moment for ages. “The traps
aren’t set to pick up more than one person each every few years, maybe every
century, no matter how many people walk over them. They open and close up
pretty fast, and once they close, it’s like solid rock over them, like there
wasn’t any hole there at all. Your trap in
He pulled a
small gray cube from the box and examined it, then pried a cover off and began
inspecting the insides. “You know, the easiest way to think about this whole
thing is to think about those trenches in the
Daria nodded.
Her knee was beginning to throb. She tried to focus on his monologue to take
her mind off the pain.
“Good.” Artie
sniffed, looking down at the table. “So,” he continued, “one day the fishes see
this big thing coming down from the black heavens. It’s really a submarine, but
to the fishes it’s like some weird giant fish. They can’t tell if it’s alive or
not. And then comes this diving robot, even weirder
than the submarine, and soon all sorts of strange things are down there in the
trench, poking around, taking samples, that sort of thing. The fishes might
think those things are alive, or maybe they’re different species of weird fish,
but all those things really are, are tools. The fishes can’t see the people
inside the submarine or the people way up on the ocean’s surface, controlling
the diving robots from ships. The fishes are totally ignorant. They can’t even
guess at what those people look like, much less guess at what the people want.”
He looked
intently at Daria. “Do the people in the sub or on the ships want to live down
there in the trench? Hell, no! They’re just curious, poking around and looking
at stuff, taking movies to show around back at the lab. They don’t want to take
over the trench. It’s too alien and hostile to them. People couldn’t live in
ocean trenches if they tried, and they wouldn’t do it even if they could. The
fishes can have the damn abyss. They just have to get used to being filmed,
poked, and sampled now and then, and maybe accidentally squashed or cut up in a
propeller once in a while. Otherwise, life goes on as always.”
Artie raised a
finger. “Now, suppose some of those fishes down there in the trench, they
happen to be smart. They have the potential to make things, get themselves out
of the trench if they tried long enough. They can maybe build their own
submarines, sort of, or even make vehicles to explore the surface world. That
changes things. The people building the subs, that
might surprise them. Maybe they’d think that was pretty cool, and they’d want
to communicate with the fishes. Who wouldn’t?”
He paused,
frowning. “Only they don’t. They never do. The people keep out of the way of
these smart fishes but keep spying on them, sampling a tiny few of them in
traps, keeping their distance, never showing themselves or their tools if they
can help it. Maybe they catch a few smart fishes and experiment on them to see
what potential they have.” He wiggled his eyebrows at Daria, then
he became serious again. “Why hide, though?”
Daria almost
attempted an answer, but Artie cut her off. “‘Cause
maybe those people are afraid of the fishes from the trench. Maybe—just
maybe—those people have some vulnerability, and they’re scared it will be found
out. They’re scared that those smart fishes might figure out their weak points,
and then there’d be hell to pay if the smart fishes got mad about how they were
being treated. Maybe those people spying on the smart fishes are afraid of
being discovered, afraid there might be a war. Why be afraid? Maybe there
aren’t many people doing the spying, like a little colony of them, not billions
but a few hundred on a little island. And maybe the smart fishes are kind of
scary, warlike, prone to shoot first and ask questions
later. That would be something, wouldn’t it? A really cool
scenario.” He nodded. “I thought so, too.”
He really
likes the sound of his own voice, Daria thought. She felt she was following
his line of reasoning fairly well, but she avoided commenting on it. He might
get angry, and she couldn’t afford that.
“The Outers,
they like it way out there in the cold and the dark, hanging around the outer
planets like Jupiter and all that. I don’t think they’re from around here,
actually, but from some other star system. Beats me how they got here. They’re
not natives, though. I’ve looked at a lot of the Outers’ stuff, and that’s
pretty much what I’ve figured out. I think I know where they’re hanging around
these days, too, their own little island. They don’t like our space probes and
stuff coming around them. Makes them nervous about being discovered, I think. I
bet that probe that went up last month really—” He cut himself off and rubbed
the back of his neck. “Anyway, they don’t really want our planet, or any of the
hot little rock balls next to the sun where it’s too hot to live. I caught a
whiff of air inside a couple of things I think had been to their living areas,
whatever those are like, and that almost burned my nose out. It was like inhaling
maximum-strength window cleaner. They must need ammonia in liquid form like we
need water. Protein and ammonia chemistry, maybe. Beats hell out of me. Just a guess,
anyway.”
Artie sighed
and looked at Daria. “I’ve been thinking for years about what I’d say if anyone
found out about this place. Guess you’re the winner.” He chuckled. “You freak
out way too much, though. Can’t even tell if you’ve got any
brains. Maybe I’m wasting my time. I dunno.”
He picked up his gray gun. “Don’t go anywhere or try anything stupid. I have to
get some more helium. We’ll talk more when I get back.” With that, he walked
off down one of the aisles in the cavern.
Helium? Does his gun use liquid helium? Daria
forced away thoughts of her father and tried to be rational. She had thought
the super-cold stuff that the gun and the longlegs sprayed around was liquid
nitrogen, which she’d seen at a science fair back in
Her attention
swung to the motionless longlegs. If those things sprayed liquid helium but
could stand around in Earth temperatures, doing nothing, they could not
possibly be alive in any sense unless they had the most bizarre chemistry. They
had to be robots, using Artie’s analogy of deep-sea fish—the humans—and people
with submarines—the aliens. Had robots, then, attacked the Sloanes’ home? If
so, who had been guiding or programming them? The Outers?
Artie? She suspected the latter, given their halting,
overcautious attempts to get her. Artie could have retrieved the longlegs
afterwards with the gateway device, however that worked. That would explain why
no one found any moving longlegs.
A glance at
the longlegs nearby confirmed Daria’s suspicions. One of the longlegs was
missing half a leg, snapped off about five feet up. That’s the one Quinn
rammed. Attacking the house must have been Artie’s doing, since there don’t
seem to be any aliens around here at all—unless he’s one of them, though I’m
not sure he is. He must have been pretty mad when he lost those two longlegs.
The thought gave her a small measure of satisfaction.
Getting
nervous, she looked in the direction Artie had gone. If he was using liquid
helium, how was he able to keep himself from freezing to death when he used it?
He had those big gloves and possibly protective gear under his clothes. Maybe
the gun was made of material that didn’t transmit heat or cold, so it was safe
to hold. But still, the super-cold spray would . . .
“Oh,” she said
in realization. She remembered the analysis done of her blood back in the
hospital in
She also
remembered the chemistry teacher’s warnings that liquid nitrogen and liquid
helium could cause suffocation when they turned to gas in large amounts,
pushing the oxygen out of an enclosed area. However, she, Quinn, and the
Sloanes never stayed long enough in one place at the Sloanes’ mansion to get
bad effects like that. Could that antifreeze supply enough oxygen to a person’s
cells to stave off suffocation?
Frustrated,
Daria looked down at herself—and a new question arose. Why wasn’t she
cold anymore? She could tell it was cold in the cavern, but it didn’t bother
her as it once did. And hadn’t she taken a bad cold injury at the Sloanes’
house during the attack last Friday, when the aliens sprayed the photographer
at the front door? She had forgotten about it until now because her back hadn’t
hurt once since then. Neither she nor anyone else had mentioned seeing any
terrible scars or dead skin on her, anywhere.
That
chemical’s back in my bloodstream! she realized. I
must be generating it inside me! How the hell can I do that? Did the
alien trap mess with my insides more than I’d thought? Or did Artie do that?
She had no
answers. As she waited for Artie to return, she began to think of her father.
It was the wrong thing to do, because it hurt so much it made her want to cry, and crying was the last thing she wanted Artie
to see her do. She squashed her eyes shut, concentrating. I will get out of
this. I will be brave and get out of this. I will stay on top of things and
wait—something will show up. I’ll wait for it. I’ll never give up.
Once she was
in better control, she began to work on her taped wrists. Nothing was in view
that could be used to cut the bonds. She tried twisting her wrists around to
loosen the tape, but that didn’t work, either. He must have had practice at
this, she thought.
Artie
reappeared after a few long minutes. “Still there, huh?” he called. He put the
gray gun on the table and walked over toward her. “Hey, you want to see another
one of those smart fishes that got caught? One that didn’t get away, I mean,
like you.” He grinned. “Or like me.”
Daria had half
expected this, but she had to ask anyway. “You were caught, too?”
“Yeah, but
that’s a weird story. Can you stand up?”
Daria managed
to get up on one knee after a struggle. Her swollen knee was killing her. “No,”
she said.
Groaning,
Artie walked over and pulled her to her feet. “Don’t try anything,” he warned.
He began to guide her toward one of the doors along the wall behind her. She
limped along with her teeth clenched against the pain.
“So, are the
Outers here?” she said as they went. It was the question uppermost in her mind,
but she wanted to think about something besides her knee, too.
“Nah. They come and go. They haven’t been back in a few
years, not that I know. Maybe they had budget cuts and couldn’t afford the
trip, who knows. They left their stuff behind, though. Probably didn’t think
anyone would find it. Ha.” He brought Daria to a stop beside one of the doors.
“I’m kind of proud of this,” he said with a goofy grin. “You gotta see it. You
know that alien trap that caught you, how it had the preservation and cryogenic
mechanisms in the floor to keep you on ice all those years? I built my own
little preservation chamber here a few years ago, just to see if I could do it,
and I caught something and put it in there to see if it worked, and it did!”
Daria’s gaze went
to the door. “You caught someone?”
His expression
darkened. “Yeah, but there was a purpose to it. I
wasn’t just screwing around. It was a real experiment, okay?” He let go of
Daria and let her stand on one leg, then reached for the door, which had no handle.
“It’ll be cold at first, but you’ll get used to it. I bet you’re already used
to it, just like me.”
Artie rapped
hard on the door with his fist. A seal around the door popped, and a puff of
ice crystals blew out as the door came ajar. He got his fingernails into the
crack and then pulled the door open wide. A thick wave of fog rolled out. For a
moment Daria was chilled to the bone, then the chill passed and she felt almost
normal—except for the knowledge that she obviously wasn’t normal anymore. She
wasn’t sure if she even counted as human, despite what the medical tests had
showed.
After peering
inside, Artie stepped back and gestured for Daria to take a look. She feared he
meant to push her into the room, but she was curious as well and took the risk.
Hopping closer, she stopped along the wall by the doorway and peeked around the
corner. Beyond the door was a very small room, a little over fifteen feet
across and filled with rapidly dissipating fog. The visible spots on the floor
were perfectly smooth, though the walls were rough rock. After a moment, Daria
recognized the floor as being the same kind of material on which she had
awakened when the earthquake had freed her from suspended animation several
months ago in
A moment
later, Daria’s startled attention shifted to a body on the floor, half shrouded
in mist. It was a lightly tanned teenage girl around Daria’s age. She appeared
to be asleep on her back, her arms and legs straight at her sides. Her chest
did not move, and cold fog hovered undisturbed over her red lips. The girl wore
a rumpled black T-shirt, gray jogging shorts, and
battered red sneakers with tube socks. A red headband was stretched over her
forehead and short black bangs. Dark bruises showed on her right cheek and both
arms.
Daria turned
her head to read the red lettering on the shirt: MYSTIK SPIRAL. Was that a rock
band? She had no idea.
“She was a
fighter, I’ll tell you,” said Artie, remembering. “Damn near killed me before I
chloroformed her. She’s been on ice for three years now, my best experiment. Kind of a souvenir.” He gave Daria a toothy grin. “And I
think I know some tourists who’ll want her for their collection.”
Daria looked
down at the girl’s body in the mist, trying to grasp what Artie was saying.
“You’re . . . you’re giving her away to the aliens? The
Outers?”
“Well, yeah,
sort of.” Artie quickly pushed the door shut to once more seal the girl in,
then pressed hard on it with his hands. “Can’t leave it open too long, or
she’ll start to thaw out. Want to keep her on ice a little while longer.”
“Why? What did
she do to you?”
Artie looked
annoyed. “It’s not what she did, dope! It’s not anything personal. It’s just—it’s
a lot bigger than that, okay? You don’t get it!”
“Then explain
it to me!” Daria said, her temper flaring. Her aching knee was driving her
crazy. “I’m not stupid! I understood what you were saying about the Outers not
wanting to take over Earth and all that. Just tell me why you’re going to give
her to them. Don’t they have enough of us already?”
“It’s not
that! Damn, you’re so—” For a moment, Daria worried that Artie’s temper would
get the best of him, his acne-marked face was so red.
“Why am I even talking to you? You’re just a kid!”
I’d better
tone it down. If he gets really mad, he’ll be a lot worse than Mrs. Landon
could ever be. “What I meant was,” Daria continued in a softer tone, “why
help them at all? They captured you, too, right? Doesn’t that make them your
enemy?”
“I’m not
helping them!” Artie shouted. “And no, they’re not my enemy! I’m using
her as a . . . uh, uh—” His anger faded into confusion “—what the hell do they
call that, when you give something away so the person who gets it will do stuff
for you—it’s like bait, but it begins with an L, uh—”
Daria leaned
back against the rock wall, taking the pressure off her injured knee. “You mean
leverage?”
“Uh, almost,
but—”
“A loss leader?” Daria said, not believing this was what he
meant.
“Yeah!” Artie’s face cleared, and he snapped his fingers.
“That’s it! A loss leader, so they’ll want to do stuff for me! That’s it
exactly!”
“I see,” said
Daria, who did indeed see. He was a sociopath and insane. Despite a
terrible urge to try to rip the tape off her wrists so she could punch the
living snot out of Artie, she kept up her patter. “A loss
leader. You want the aliens to think you’re helping them because you’re
giving them something for free, but instead they’ll end up helping you.”
“Yeah! You got it!” Artie almost jumped with excitement.
“The smart fishes are going to bait the people on the island! That’s it!”
“Ah,” said
Daria. A sarcastic retort would have to wait. Artie was dangerous beyond
belief. “In a way, then, that girl . . . who is she, by the way?”
“Oh, I don’t
know, some smart ass who used to jog around town.
Middle schooler, I think. She was such a skinny
little wus, but man—” He gingerly touched his nose
“—she was one mean kid. I wasn’t going to kill her or nothing, I just wanted—”
“The experiment.” Daria knew in that moment she was going to
try to stop Artie, even if she had to kill him. How she did it was unimportant;
she had to try. She looked past him at the small headquarters he had made for
himself with the table, chair, shelving units, and cabinets. She couldn’t use
the liquid helium gun, she couldn’t use a club, kicking him was useless, and
she couldn’t—
Her eyes
widened. Yes! “Can I sit down over there?” she said, nodding toward the
table. “My leg hurts a lot.”
“What?” He
looked back and considered her request. “Yeah, for a little
while. It won’t hurt.” He took her by the arm and reluctantly helped her
over to a spot near the table, then got a crate for her to sit on. He sat in
the folding chair by the table.
“Thanks,” she
mumbled. She wanted to ask him to take the tape off her hands, but he wouldn’t,
and it would make him suspicious. Talking would relax him. “Go ahead with what
you were saying. About the experiment, I mean.”
“Oh. Not much
else to tell. I used the transporter to get near where she sometimes went
jogging, and when she went by, I grabbed her, finally knocked her out. The
chamber I built myself, using stuff from the trap that caught me. Works pretty well. One of the robots fixed her up, and in
she went. Her brother was in a band around here, I think. Man, she was one mean
kid. The world’s definitely better off without her.”
Daria nodded,
saying nothing. How can I be so calm around this psycho? I must be way too
cynical for my own good. “If you were looking at her as some kind of bait,
then what was your hook?”
The surprised
look on Artie’s face was replaced by laughter. He looked even more like a
turkey when he laughed than he did normally. “That was good!” he said, slapping
his thighs. “You’re getting it! Today’s your birthday, right? You’re twelve?”
“Thirteen.” And
thanks to you, you nut bar, it’s the worst birthday in history.
“You’re pretty
smart for thirteen. Yeah, there’s a hook. I thought a lot about it. You
remember what I said about those smart fishes being kind of vengeful about how
they were being treated, right?”
“I can well
imagine,” Daria said dryly.
“Well, my hook
is that I’ve got their stuff and I can use it, and they’ll have to give me more
stuff if they want anything else from this planet. They shouldn’t have left it
lying around. I’ve been messing with the Outers’ stuff for a few years. I was
already into aliens and reading science fiction and stuff before they got me,
you know? So I was ready. I was the smartest kid in Burkittsville, probably the
whole state, too. An earthquake got you out of that trap, right? That was pure
luck. Me—” Artie looked inordinately proud “—the Outers let me out on purpose.”
“On purpose?” She blinked. “Why?”
“I think ‘cause they knew I was so smart, you know? They wanted to see
if I was as smart as they were, the Outers. You know how scientists are always
trying to find out if dolphins or chimps are as smart as we are?”
“Yeah, I get
it,” said Daria. “You’re saying the Outers tried that with you.”
“Yeah, exactly. Turns out, if I recall correctly, there’s no
way to tell with dolphins. They’re just too different from us to know if
they’re smarter or we are. Maybe that’s the thing between humans and Outers.
What they call intelligent and what we call it, maybe that’s two different
things. I still got all their stuff, though, so I guess I was smarter than they
thought.”
I should do
be a news reporter, do interviews. “How long did the Outers have you . . .
preserved, before they let you out? And what did they do?”
“Oh, that’s a
story. You know how old I am? You won’t believe it. I’m forty-seven. Is that
wild? Forty-seven, I swear it. I mean, I’m twenty-eight as far as what I
remember and how I’ve aged, but I was born in nineteen fifty-two, August first.
I lived with my aunt and uncle, not too far from here on a farm over in
Burkittsville. That’s in central
“When I woke
up again, it was nineteen eighty-six. I didn’t know at first what year it was,
though. One of those spider-robots—” He pointed to the line of longlegs “—was
waiting for me. Man, I was shaking, but I was ready for it. I thought, aliens! Yeah! So this spider-robot starts trying to
communicate with me. It was slow going, but it gave me food—don’t know where it
got it, but anyway, we went through this long, long time in the cave, working
with some weird machines the Outers left behind, and after a while—”
“Left behind?”
said Daria. “You said something about this before, that—”
“Look, just
let me tell this, okay? I don’t know all the answers, but I know more than you
do. Just let me finish, all right? Okay, then. Yeah, the Outers were here once,
but they left. I think they come and go, and when they’re gone they make their
robots do their work, except when I’m using them. I guess the Outers aren’t too
picky about me using their things, which is cool. Anyway, yeah, I think they
finally stopped coming by ‘cause they didn’t like
Earth all that much, and maybe there were too many people around. Maybe they
were the flying saucers people kept seeing all those years, and now you don’t
see them so much anymore. Anyway, I never saw a one of them.”
Daria had
trouble believing the aliens would blithely let Artie play with their godlike
technology. It wasn’t likely they’d forgotten about what they’d left behind,
either. Did they want Artie to use their stuff? Maybe he was doing their
work for them without knowing it. If so, he certainly wasn’t doing it very
well. Perhaps the extraterrestrial schooling he’d gotten had also unhinged him.
A definitive answer would have to wait. “I’m sorry to interrupt again,” she
said, “but you said you thought you knew where the Outers were hiding out.”
“Oh, yeah.” Artie nodded, but his manner became deceptively
casual. “Yeah, I think so. If they lived on big planets like Jupiter, they’d
have a hard time getting from place to place, you know? ‘Cause of the intense
gravity and all. They’d never get away from their homeworlds. And they’d
probably be floaters in that big atmosphere with no real ground below them,
sort of like balloon-fish or jellyfish. But if they actually get around in
space and make stuff, they’d have to live on a solid surface that’s not too
gravity-heavy. Anyway—” He shrugged “—it wasn’t that hard to figure out.”
He’s not
going to tell me where they are. He said something earlier about a space probe
launch last month that might upset the Outers. I wonder if . . . Daria
filed it away for later. “Go ahead. Sorry. You were talking about being let out
of the trap so they could see how intelligent you were.” She resisted adding a
sarcastic comment or two, but only for the sake of self-preservation.
“Yeah. We had a sort of school going. I would say things or
draw pictures or point at stuff, and the spider-robot would draw pictures back,
and it was sort of like talking, a little. Plus, I had to work with a lot of
these weird machines. I left those back in the cave in Burkittsville. I hated
them, they gave me headaches. Anyway, I told the spider-robot who I was and
what I knew, and about Earth and
“You told the
aliens about Earth?” Daria couldn’t help it. “Didn’t you think that they might
use that—”
Anger filled
Artie’s face. “Oh, knock it off! They already knew about us, okay? What’s your
problem?”
Daria shoved
the issue aside. It was too late to do anything about it now. “Okay, forget it.
Sorry. Go on.”
Artie managed
a look of wounded dignity. “You’re sounding real high and mighty, like you’d
know what to do if you were me! As if you’d really know!”
“Okay! Forget
it! I shouldn’t have said anything!” Not to a megalomaniac nut bar, anyway.
“All right
then. Anyway—and this was my real point, okay?—anyway, they were teaching me,
and one day the robot stopped working. Didn’t do a thing.
I couldn’t figure out why. Budget cuts, like I said, but who knows. They
stopped trying to communicate with me, so I was on my own after that. That was,
um, nineteen eighty-nine. Anyway, I learned how to work a few of the Outers’
little gadgets. Later, I started experimenting and figured out how to run some
of their bigger stuff. I had the robots going again seven years ago, and the
transporter kind of working about then, off and on. It wasn’t all that hard.
See, everything the Outers have runs on telepathy, sort of. You have to hold
one of their things, their machines, or else stand real close to it, and you
think about what you want it to do, and then it does it—well, some of the time.
It didn’t work for me at first, I think, because none of this stuff could read
my mind, but that changed after the spider-robot was working with me for a
while.”
Daria
cautiously raised a hand. When Artie gave her the go-ahead, she said, “Why
would they want to do that? Show you how to use their stuff, I mean.”
“Oh.” Artie
frowned. “I don’t know, really. I mean, the robot never tried to show me how to
work stuff like the transporter. I’d pick up the transporter box and nothing at
all would happen, at first. But I kept working with that weird equipment the
spider-robot was using to communicate with me, and after I was on my own, I
realized I could figure their stuff out.” He stopped, thinking back. “Maybe the
robot was experimenting on me, doing something to my brain like making me
smarter, or maybe the machines I was using changed so they could read my
thoughts. I don’t know. Whatever it was, I started to make stuff work. I had
the transporter box one day—”
“Is that the
thing that makes the holes in the air, from one place to another?”
“Uh, yeah. I named it after that thing on ‘Star Trek’ on TV,
you know? It’s not the same thing as on the show, but it does let you get from
place to place. Anyway, I had the transporter box, and I was messing with it
outside in the spring of nineteen ninety, and suddenly I got it to work. It’s
still kinda hard to do. I can visualize pretty easily
where I want the transporter to lead me to, but I keep feeling like the point
where that hole appears is moving all the time, and I can’t figure out what’s
making it move or why it’s moving. I can’t explain it any better than that.
Anyway, when you pick up the transporter box, you see in your mind where the
point’s going to appear, and when you get the point where you want it, you push
the switch and it appears.” He shrugged. “If it hasn’t moved off, I mean. Just
lately I’ve started getting it to work like I want it to work. It’s hard, but
I’m finally getting it, like I did in the hotel. That was almost perfect.
“Anyway, when
I could use the transporter so I could move stuff around, I’d already figured
out how to make the spider-robots go places and do things, and how to keep them
pumped with liquid helium so their insides and computer brains kept working
right, and I made myself that helium sprayer, so I thought, what am I going to
do next? I had to get out and get a job by then so I could eat. Man, the world
had sure changed a lot since nineteen sixty-nine, but
I figured it out. I’m smart, like I said. My aunt and uncle had moved, but that
was okay. After a while I was working in restaurants in the area part-time. It
was a bear getting a job, ‘cause I forgot my Social
Security number, and I didn’t want people looking me up and saying, where have
you been since sixty-nine, man? I mean, it was a pain in the butt, but some
places didn’t care and they paid me on the sly like I’d come up from
When they
closed the rock quarry on the south side? Daria’s eyes widened. There was
an abandoned rock quarry with a railroad line running through it on the
southwest side of
“You bet! I
used the transporter to move my stuff out of the trap chamber to here, and
after that I kind of started turning this place into my own Fortress of
Solitude, like Superman had in the comics, you know? I got a lot of stuff in
here, and I got the robots to help put everything up. It’s been kind of fun,
going around using the transporter to rip places off. I don’t do it around here
so much, but I rip off a lot of stores around Oakwood. I hate that town. I got
fired from three different places there, for no reason at all. I was asking the
people I was working with about aliens, if they’d ever seen any of them, ‘cause
I had the idea that if I pretended I’d been captured by fake aliens—those
imaginary Grays that everyone talks about—I might run into people who had met
the Outers, and they could give me more information about them, you see?”
“I see,” said
Daria. “People aren’t very smart, are they?”
“No, they sure
aren’t. I got on TV a lot, though. That was cool. I acted silly sometimes, but
they ate it up.”
“I saw you on
‘Sick, Sad World.’ That was pretty . . . interesting.”
“I guess. I
saw you on television, too, when they found you at that kids’ camp. I’ve been
following your story almost every day.”
Things fell
into place in Daria’s head. “You’ve been trying really hard to find me, haven’t
you?”
“Uh—well,
yeah. Sure. I couldn’t get near you ‘cause of all the police and reporters and
security people and stuff, and those damn photographers were always around, but
yeah.”
“Did you make
that radio signal go off inside my head last Friday? That tone I kept hearing?”
Artie
hesitated, then shrugged and nodded. “Yeah. The Outers
have some way of making their specimens—the people who get caught in those
traps—send out what I call a ‘find-me frequency’ in the event they escape or
can’t be found. I don’t know how they do it, but they implant this little tiny
transmitter in the back of the skull. It works for a little while, then it sort of wears out and dissolves in your blood. I
figured out how to turn your transmitter on with the equipment here, then I
knew where you were, and . . . well, you know the rest. I got a little rushed,
though, looking for you. It was supposed to rain that night, and I didn’t want
the robots to ice over. That would be a pain.” His expression darkened. “Losing
those two, though, that was way worse.”
“Did the
photographers get in the way that night, too?” she casually asked.
“Hell, yeah! They started taking pictures of the robots! I
was just trying to get to see you, you know. And the government’s digging
around in that trap in
And murder
anyone who gets in your way, like my father and my friends and everyone else.
“Can I ask you something else?”
“Yeah, sure. What?”
“Why did you
want to find me? What in the world do you . . . did you want me for?” As she
was speaking, Daria suddenly thought of the girl in the preservation
chamber—and she realized exactly what Artie had wanted her for.
“Why’d I want
you?” Artie looked away, avoiding her gaze. “Well, hell, I was just curious,
you know? I wanted to talk, that’s all. I mean, you’d been in the news a lot,
and I wanted to see what you were like, get to talk a little, like we’re doing
now. That’s a stupid question.”
“Ah,” said Daria—but what she
thought was, You lying bastard! You wanted
to catch me and make me a part of your “loss leader” gift to the aliens. You
thought because I’d escaped from their trap, the Outers might know about it and
want me even more, and you’d ingratiate yourself with them if you could give
them two human beings up front, free of charge. Then you’d figure out a way to
ask the Outers for favors, maybe in exchange for more bodies. You were going to
ship me off with the other girl as soon as you caught me. You were going to do
it last Friday night, but everything screwed up. You got frustrated then and
tried to kill me, making that longlegs punch out the rear window of the car
when we were escaping. And you’re going to ship me and that other girl off
tonight, once you get tired of showing off. You murdered my father and those
photographers and the FBI agent who was helping us and God knows how many other
people, and it doesn’t even bother you to think about it. You joined the
aliens’ side, betraying humanity, but you’re even more of a monster than the
Outers are.
But if you
thought that girl you kidnapped was one mean kid, boy, you haven’t really met
me, have you?
“That little
gray box you had at the hotel, the box with the switch—that’s the transporter?”
Daria said suddenly, shifting her seat on the crate. She forgot about her
aching knee.
“Huh? Oh,
yeah. That’s over here.” He got up from his chair and walked over to the table.
Daria carefully stood up from the crate, balancing on her good leg, then
gritted her teeth and began taking short hops over to the table where Artie
stood. Everything hinged now on Artie getting the chance to show again how
great he was. He moved to one side as she approached, but he continued looking
through the items on the table.
“Yeah,” he
said, “I’ve got all kinds of weird stuff here. Don’t touch any of it. Huh,
guess you can’t with your hands stuck together like that. Anyway, this here—”
He picked up a familiar gray box with its sliding switch “—this is the
transporter. I can’t believe this little box does so much. See, I’m holding it,
and in my head I can see a sort of big three-d map showing where I am and where
the dot is, and I can move the dot around by concentrating on it, but—jeez, you
know, it’s still moving on its own, so moving it by myself is so hard to do,
even after all this time—”
Daria hopped
to a spot beside a seven-foot-high open metal cabinet next to the table. The
cabinet’s shelves were completely filled with machine parts, cardboard boxes of
tools, and alien gadgetry. On the top shelf was something that looked like a
lawnmower engine. Noting that the cabinet was only one foot wide, she
positioned herself with her back to the shelves, feigning interest in the
transporter Artie showed her. It was no doubt important, but not half as
important as what she was about to do.
“—Okay, here,
let me see if I can do this,” said Artie. “I have to be careful, ‘cause I don’t think there’s any kind of safety mechanism on
this. I mean, I could open up the transporter to the bottom of the ocean, and
the water would blast right through here, ‘cause the pressure there’s so huge,
much bigger than the air pressure here. It would shoot in here like a giant
fire hose!” He glanced at her with a mischievous grin, then
held up the box, looking away from her. “This must have one hell of a power
source. I bet I could go to Pluto with this. I can’t believe one little box
does all this, you know? It’s almost like a weapon in itself. You’d never think
a thing like this could be dangerous, but in the wrong hands, it—”
Behind her
back, Daria’s fingers gripped one of the metal cabinet shelves. It was now or
never. Help me do this right, she prayed—and then she leaned forward
hard, gripping the shelf.
The heavily
overloaded cabinet lurched and tilted. She felt it pass over its balancing
point—and fall, her fingers still pulling it down on her—
—and on Artie,
who was right in its way.
Because she
stood close to one end of the cabinet, Daria thought she could dodge out of the
way at the last second after she had pulled it down on Artie. Her plan,
however, went awry when she held on too long to the cabinet in an effort to
give it additional momentum. When she felt the cabinet hit her back, she
realized her mistake. She tried to throw herself out of the way, but she fell
on the rock floor on her side, her legs still under the cabinet, and had her
wind knocked out once again.
Chance saved
her. The upper part of the cabinet smacked the unsuspecting Artie across the
shoulder blades, smashing him flat across the table before him. The
engine-block device formerly on the cabinet’s top struck the back of his head
and banged his forehead hard on a metal box on the tabletop. The table’s legs
collapsed two seconds later, but by that time Daria had wiggled out of harm’s
way. Machinery falling from the shelves bruised her hips and legs, and the fall
reinjured her knee, but she crawled away grateful she could still move.
Grimacing, she
managed to get up on her good knee and survey the damage. Almost buried under
the cabinet and its former contents, Artie had only his head, shoulders, and
right arm free. His eyes were closed and he did not move. Daria crawled to the
cabinet and found a sharp metal brace on the back, then
backed up to it and rubbed the tape on her wrists over the edge, her heart was
in her throat all the while. Artie did not regain consciousness, fortunately.
The tape gave
way, and she ripped it free of her hands as she struggled to her feet. Dazed
and swaying, she rubbed her wrists and wondered if Artie was dead, unconscious,
or faking. The latter seemed unlikely, as he was clearly bleeding now from head
injuries; red streams ran down over his face and eyes. The transporter device
had been knocked from his hand; she spotted it a few feet away and limped over
to pick it up, stuffing it in a jacket pocket after a moment’s inspection. The
liquid-helium gun was caught beneath the cabinet with Artie, but it was out of
his reach and she did not want to touch it and risk activating it.
After removing
every tool or device within range of Artie’s free hand, Daria stepped back and
surveyed the scene. She swallowed, feeling nauseated. She had never
deliberately hurt another person in her life, except for a few angry if
harmless wrestling matches with Quinn. Artie had more than earned his
punishment, but she still felt guilt for what she’d done—just not a terribly
deep sense of guilt.
“I’d do it
again,” she said aloud to Artie. “If you get up, I’ll stomp you flat.” The show
of bravado made her feel better, and after a cautious
glance at the inactive longlegs, Daria limped off toward the door in the rock
wall behind her, behind which was the girl that Artie had kidnapped and
preserved years earlier.
By the time
Daria got to the door, she was so weary from pain she could do nothing more
than fall against it for support. She was deathly afraid she’d permanently
damaged her knee joint. When she could manage it, she pounded on the door with
both fists to loosen it, as she had seen Artie do. Ice crystals blew out around
her, but the door didn’t open as she was still leaning against it. She realized
this and stood back on her good leg, then tried again. It took several more
poundings—always checking to see if Artie was up again and the longlegs were
shut down—before the door loosened enough for her to open it.
Cold fog fell
out and swamped her. Shivering madly, she tried to kneel on the smooth floor,
but her knee gave way and she fell over the girl hidden in the mist instead.
“Sorry!” she gasped, then got up on her hands and
knees. The cold floor felt very soothing to her bad knee, and relief flooded
through her as she searched for the girl’s limbs. A hand, a leg, the other
leg—Daria quickly caught hold of the girl’s feet and began to drag her out of
the preservation room. An ageless minute later, the girl was free, though still
unconscious.
The
black-haired girl in the jogging outfit was very tall, very thin, and
strikingly pretty, with high cheekbones, sharp features, and thick black hair
that was much longer than it had first appeared, as it was held up in back with
a clip. Only her front bangs had been visible. Her eye makeup and lipstick were
intact, and she had gold stud earrings in her pierced ears. The bruises on her
face and arms turned out to be smudges of grease, though pale scars and scrapes
covered her arms. Daria thought it was little wonder that Artie had decided to
kidnap this particular girl for his experiment, which she fervently hoped went
no further than merely freezing the girl.
Daria bent
over the girl, rubbing one of her hands. “Hey!” she called, unsure whether to
shout or talk normally. “Wake up! You have to get up! Are you okay?”
Just when
Daria feared the girl might be in a real coma, the girl’s eyes fluttered and
blinked. She inhaled and coughed, then looked up at Daria with huge brown eyes.
A quizzical expression came over her face.
“Hey,” she
said.
“You have to
get up,” said Daria quickly. “I don’t think we have much time. Do you
understand me? Get up!”
The girl
nodded—and then her eyes opened wide with fear. She tried to sit up, but she
fell back instead, her hands clutching her head in pain. “Is that guy here?”
she cried. “That Artie guy? He tried to—”
“Artie’s
knocked out!” Daria said, glancing back to make sure. “I don’t know how long
he’ll be down. We have to get out of here!”
“He’s knocked
out?” the girl repeated. She rolled over and got up on her hands and knees,
trying to get her bearings. “Ow, my
head! What happened? Did he put me in that refrigerator again?”
“He did, but I
got you back out. We’re safe for the moment, but we have to get out of here.
Are you okay?”
“I dunno. Everything’s spinning around and around. Man, I wish
it would stop. Can you help me up?”
The girl was
taller than Daria by over half a foot, but thin to the point of being anorexic.
At first, she clung to Daria for support, which was difficult for Daria because
of her bad knee. “Oh, man,” the girl moaned. “Oh, man. That son of a bitch, I
can’t believe he did that to me. We used to get pizza from him. Where did you
say he is?”
“Over there,
under that pile of junk.” Daria pointed. “He’s pinned under those shelves.”
The girl
squinted in the indicated direction. “I’m not like a bad person, you know? But
I just want to beat the sweet bejeezus out of him. He
jumped me when I was like jogging in the park, and he stuck this smelly rag
right over my face, and I woke up in this really cold room and I got out, and
we were in this same cave, I think, but he jumped me again and we got into this
big fight and he gave me some kind of drug and stuck me back in there. He said
the refrigerator wasn’t working right and he had to fix it, and then he just
dumped me back in there. He was telling me all sorts of lies and just making me
so mad. I just want to knock his freaking head off, and then I want my dad to
come get me.”
“What’s your
name? Mine’s Daria Morgendorffer.”
“Monique,”
said the girl. “Monique van der Wals.
What day is it?”
Monique? The
name was familiar. Daria remembered rumors in middle school about a local girl
with that name who had vanished some years ago. Most people thought she’d run
away. “It’s Friday, November 20th.” She stopped herself before she named the
year. “It’s my birthday,” she added lamely. “When did Artie kidnap you?”
“It’s
November? Oh, man! I can’t believe it! November, really?
He grabbed me in September, on September the, um . . . I forgot the day. It was
two weeks right after school started.” Monique straightened, still holding her
hands to the sides of her head. “Sunday. It was on a
Sunday morning, early. I was . . . I was out jogging to clear my head. I drank
too much beer the night before. I know I’m not supposed to, I’m underage, I
know. Wooo.”
She took a deep breath and held it, then let it out. “Thanks, thanks so much,”
she told Daria. “Oh, man, that’s the last time I ever get wasted like that. No
more bingeing. Hey, where are we? I mean, like, where is this cave?”
“We’re in the
old rock quarry in
“What year?
What . . . nineteen ninety-one. Oh, you know what? He told me when I woke up
that one time that it was nineteen ninety-four. He said I’d been asleep for
three years before the refrigerator stopped working. He was telling me all
sorts of lies like that. He told me that—”
“Monique?
Listen to me.” Daria waited until the taller girl looked at her. “Monique,
Artie wasn’t lying. I know it’s hard to believe, but you have to trust me.
You’d been asleep a long time. You were in sort of like a coma, in that . . .
in that refrigerator.”
Monique stared
at her, her large eyes growing larger. “What?”
“Monique . . .
a lot of time has gone by,” Daria said. “It’s not nineteen ninety-one anymore.
That was six years ago. It’s nineteen ninety-seven now, in November. He kept
you frozen in here all that time. I got caught and frozen, too, by . . . by
people helping Artie, but I was caught in nineteen ninety-four. I didn’t get
out until a couple months ago. I’m serious!”
“Nineteen ninety-seven?” Monique’s face sagged in disbelief,
and she stepped back. “No way! No freaking way! That’s
. . . that’s six years! No way!”
“Listen, we
have to get out of here before he comes to! It’s really important! He’s done a
lot of bad things, and we have to let people know about it. Do you know how to
get out of this place?”
“No! I don’t
even know how I got in here! What are you talking about, nineteen ninety-seven?
It’s still nineteen ninety-one, isn’t it? You said November? Ahhh!”
Monique’s face
filled with fright. Daria turned to see what she had seen: the row of longlegs.
“What the hell
are those?” she yelled.
“Look, just
forget about them for now! They aren’t doing anything yet! Look, I hurt my
knee. Can you help me get over to where Artie is? We have to look around for a
map or something to get us out of here!”
After a long
stare at the longlegs, Monique nodded. “Okay,” she whispered. She and Daria
then put arms around each other, and together they walked and limped toward the
makeshift headquarters Artie had set up. “What are those things?” Monique
asked, looking back once.
“They’re
robots,” said Daria, and she grunted in pain. “We’re okay as long as they’re
not doing anything. Keep going.”
“Are you
kidding me about the year? I can’t believe I’ve been gone that long. That can’t
be right. What about my dad? My dad’ll be crazy if
I’ve been gone even a couple days without calling. Do you know my dad, Mike van
der Wals?”
“No, my family
just moved here a few months ago. It’s a long story. Just get me to that
table.”
As they
approached, Monique slowed, seeing Artie. She stopped by a shelving unit to let
Daria get her own footing, then carefully walked over and inspected Artie.
“Is he still
alive?” she asked. “I can’t tell if he’s breathing.” Her face hardened. “I so
want to kick him right now, I really do. He really hurt me when we were
fighting. I wanted to kill him.”
“No! Keep out
of his reach,” said Daria. “Make sure he’s not getting up!” She began to look
around for a map of the cave system or notes to the same effect. Nothing like
that could be found. It finally occurred to her that if Artie had lived here since
1990, he wouldn’t need a map. He’d already know his way around. Searching was
useless.
“Hey! There’s
a phone!” said Monique. She picked up a handset and held it to her ear. “Oh,
man! It’s dead! It’s still got batteries, though.”
“Does it turn
on?” Daria called, hobbling over. “There should be a ‘call’ button if it’s a
cell or portable phone.” She spotted a portable phone base and noticed a number
of electronic boxes attached to it. The labels on the boxes told her the phone
line was rigged to be untraceable. A piece of paper stuck to one box with tape
had the numbers for local time and weather reports, three phone-sex services,
and something called the UFO Updates Hotline.
Monique
pressed the buttons on the phone handset to no avail. Daria began to trace the
wires back from the electronic boxes. “It’s unplugged,” she said. She spotted a
phone jack on the end of a long wire, crouched down with some difficulty, and
plugged the system in. “Does it work now?”
“Yeah! Thanks!” Monique quickly began dialing a number.
“I’ve got to call my dad!”
Daria waited
as Monique held the phone to her ear, her face alive with excitement. Even at a
distance, though, Daria heard a series of tones, then
a recorded voice came over the handset: “The number you have reached is not
in service at this time. Please hang up and check the number again before
dialing.”
“What?”
Monique stared at the handset as if it had bitten her. “That’s my home phone
number! I know it is!” She dialed it a second time, but got the same recording.
“Damn it, what’s wrong?”
Your dad
moved, thought Daria, but she knew better than to say that. “Dial nine one one! Get the
police!”
Monique
dialed, but a loud busy signal came over the phone. “It’s not supposed to be
busy, is it?” she said. “I thought someone was supposed to answer this number
all the time.”
Daria took the
phone from Monique, hung up, then punched in 911
again. The phone still registered a busy signal. “Something big must be
happening,” she said. “A lot of people must be calling about . . . oh, I know
what it is. It must be about the hotel. Artie kidnapped me tonight at a hotel,
after he . . . after he . . .” She stopped speaking.
Her gaze went to Artie, still nearly buried and motionless.
She had almost
forgotten that he had killed her father this evening.
Monique looked
at Daria, then at Artie. Whatever she thought Artie had done to Daria, she
didn’t say. “He’ll get his,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. He’ll get his.
I’ll make sure of it. Can I try the phone again?”
Daria handed
the handset to Monique without comment. Her gaze fell on Monique’s T-shirt.
“What’s Mystik Spiral?” she asked dully.
Monique looked
down at her chest, then dialed 911. A busy signal came
on. “It’s the band I’m in,” she said, hanging up and dialing again. “We just
started it. It’s actually Trent and Jesse’s band. They’re in ninth grade at
Lawndale High,
“Huh? No. I
can’t play anything.” Daria put her hands in her jacket pockets. She felt the
transporter device, a wad of money she’d gotten for her birthday barely an hour
before, and—a slip of paper. She pulled the paper out.
CALL IF YOU
WANT, it read, with a
“Give me the
phone!” said Daria quickly. Monique did, and Daria dialed the master phone
number for her home. She got only a recorded message, without even the chance
to leave her own message afterward. Her mother, sister, and aunts would not
likely be home yet from the hotel. She thanked God they’d missed the chaos of
Artie’s attack. Hanging up in frustration, Daria then dialed the number on the
paper.
The phone rang
once before someone picked it up. “‘Lo,” said Rachel
Landon in a tired voice. “Rachel.”
“Rachel? This
is Daria,” said Daria. “Rachel—listen carefully. This
is very important. Do you have a pencil and paper there?”
“Daria? Hi. Sure, just a moment.”
After a pause, the phone picked up again. “Are you still at your birthday
party?”
“No. Rachel,
something terrible has happened. I’m not joking. I really need your help.
Please, go tell your parents that I’ve been kidnapped.”
A gasp. “What?”
“Rachel,
please help me! Another girl and I were kidnapped, and we just got to a
telephone. We’re in a lot of trouble, and we need help right away. We’ve tried
to dial nine one one, but we can’t get through, and
we can’t get anyone at our home numbers to pick up.”
“Kidnapped?
Oh, God, no! Are you okay?”
“We’re kind of
banged up, but we’re okay at the moment. I think we’re being held in the old
quarry on the south side, by the railroad line. We’re in a kind of cave in the
quarry, and we don’t know how to get out. Please write this down and tell your
parents. Don’t hang up the phone, either! Keep us on the line!”
“Did . . . did
the aliens do this?”
Daria glanced
at Monique, who couldn’t hear what Rachel was saying. “It was a guy working for
them. His name is Artie, A-R-T-I-E. I don’t know his last name. He was
pretending to be a pizza delivery guy. He killed some people at the hotel
tonight, including my—” It came back and hit her. Daria’s face scrunched up,
and she burst into tears. “He killed my dad!” she howled, and she stood
with the phone to her ear and bawled until she couldn’t see.
Monique
carefully took the phone from her. “Hello? Who is this? Rachel, listen, my name
is Monique van der Wals.
No, she’s still here, but she’s really upset. Listen, Artie kidnapped me, too,
and I need to talk to my dad! Write my name down and get someone to call my dad
right away, please!” Daria heard Monique spell out her name and give her phone
number. “Sure, go get your parents now! Please hurry!”
Daria forgot
about her knee. It didn’t matter any more. She wrapped her arms around her
middle and cried until she was hoarse. She felt someone tall put two arms
around her, and she leaned forward and buried her face in the taller person’s
Mystik Spiral T-shirt. Monique said nothing as she held the smaller girl to
her.
When Daria
could speak again, she heard someone shouting over the handset, which Monique
had put on a nearby shelf. “Get the phone,” she mumbled, pointing to it.
Monique picked
it up. “Hello? Mister Landon? This is Monique van der
Wals. I’m here with Daria . . . wait.”
She looked at Daria.
“Morgendorffer,”
muttered Daria, who had done this many times in the past.
“Daria
Morgendorffer. We need your help, okay?” She paused, listening. “No, I swear to
God, this isn’t a joke! No, Mister Landon, really, my name is Monique—”
Stunned, she pulled the phone from her ear. “He hung up on me!” she said in
astonishment. “He hung up on me, just like that!”
Daria took off
her glasses and wiped her eyes on her jacket sleeves. Her nose was running, but
she didn’t have anything to wipe it on. She looked around for a rag after she
put her glasses back on.
“He really
killed your dad?” Monique asked, lowering the phone.
Daria nodded.
She gave up and wiped her nose on her hand, wiping it on the back of her pants.
It hardly mattered, she told herself.
“I’m going to
kick that son of a bitch right in the head,” said Monique, her teeth gritted.
She punched in 911 on the phone again. “I’ll kick him good right after I—oh!”
“Nine one one emergency,” said a woman’s voice over the phone. “Do
you need police, fire, or rescue?”
“Yes!” shouted
Monique. “Oh, man, thank God we got you! We need . . . police and rescue, I
think! My name is Monique van der Wals,
and I’m with Daria Morgen . . . uh—”
“Morgendorffer.”
“—Daria Morgendorffer, and we’ve been kidnapped by—”
“Hang up the
phone,” said a faint, steady voice.
Daria and
Monique looked up at the same time.
His face
streaked with blood, Artie was watching them with one eye open. He was still
nearly buried under the cabinet. Daria noticed one of his shoulders was moving, the one for the arm buried under the cabinet.
About a
hundred feet beyond him, one of the longlegs robots shifted, then stepped away
from the line of its other siblings and began walking slowly toward them.
Freezing fog drifted from its spider body as it came.
“Ma’am?” said
the woman on the phone. “Are you still on the line?”
Despite its
smaller size, the approaching longlegs robot looked to Daria like one of the
Tripods from a science-fiction trilogy she’d once read, or a Martian war machine
from The War of the Worlds. Strangely, in the backwash of her grief, she
felt no fear of it. It’s just a tool, like Artie said, she thought. It’s
a tool and nothing more.
Her gaze
shifted to Artie, who stared back. She knew he was controlling the robot with a
device he’d found with his hidden hand. He obviously meant to kill them.
A curious
sense of detachment came over her. She mourned her father, but she had
something important to do that had to be done now.
“Are you still
there?” called the emergency operator from the phone in Monique’s hand.
The shelving
unit by which Monique had left Daria was jammed with tools and electronic
parts. Daria reached up and seized the handle of a claw hammer, pulling it
free.
“Should we
run?” Monique yelled, pointing at the robot with the phone in her hand. “Is
this bad?”
Balancing on
her good foot, Daria swung the hammer back and clumsily threw it at Artie. The
hammer went wide and struck another shelving unit, but Artie saw it and
flinched.
The longlegs
robot stopped, rocking on its multiple legs. Then it came on like a freight
train.
With a cry,
Monique dropped the portable phone and bolted.
Daria snatched
another hammer and flung it overhand at Artie, not waiting to see the results.
The robot was seconds away from her. She grabbed a pipe wrench and threw it,
then a long screwdriver, a circuitry board, and a baseball-size piece of steel
machinery that slipped out of her hand and fell a yard away. She was reaching
for a battery-operated power drill when Monique grabbed her from behind and
shouted “Run!” Daria pivoted on her bad knee, shrieked in pain, and went
down like a sandbag, taking Monique with her. They yelled and struggled to get
up and looked to see where the robot was.
The longlegs
had stopped about forty feet away, tentacles swinging back and forth under its
smoking central body.
Artie wasn’t
the same as before. His bloodied face was illuminated in the floodlights above,
his head thrown back and mouth open and eye half-closed.
The second
hammer lay on the ground a few feet from his head.
Monique got up
and tried to pull Daria away, but she resisted. She instead crawled over to the
portable phone, hissing through her teeth when her bad knee touched the ground.
The phone handset’s plastic casing had split when it was dropped. The line was
dead.
“Daria!” Monique shouted. “Let’s get out of here! C’mon,
let’s go!”
Daria looked
at the longlegs, then at Artie. She put down the broken phone. I’m not done
yet, she thought, and she slowly crawled toward Artie, dragging her bad
leg. It took forever to get to him.
Monique’s
voice echoed through the cavern behind her. “Hey, Daria, what are you doing?
Hey! Come back, okay?”
With a large,
bloody-edged bruise forming in the middle of his forehead, Artie was badly injured
but still breathing. Daria retrieved the second hammer and held it at the
ready. I should kill him while I’ve got the chance! He can’t stop me! I can
finish this now! However, even when she believed she had to kill him if she
ever wanted to feel safe again, she found herself unable to do it. I don’t
have to look. It would be like pounding a nail in, she told herself. It
would be the easiest thing in the world. Just close your eyes and hit the
bastard a good one. You have to do it. He deserves to die for what he’s done.
Hit him as hard as you can, just one time! Do it! Coward! Chicken! Do it for
your dad! Do it!
The hammer
lowered in her grip. Coward. The hammerhead
tapped the rock floor of the cavern and rested against it.
“Damn it,” she
whispered in defeat.
She then
noticed Artie still wore his Pizza King jacket. Hammer at the ready in case he
regained consciousness, she used her free hand to pull the jacket out from
under the cabinet, until she could get into the pockets and get at the roll of
gray duct tape. She fished his buried arm out next. Several minutes later,
Artie’s hands and wrists were thoroughly taped down to the top of the cabinet
on his back, his arms spread-eagled. She could not find the device he’d used to
control the longlegs robots, hidden as it was under the heavy cabinet, but she
hoped it wouldn’t matter with him out of action.
Her work
finished, Daria tried to get to her feet. It wasn’t possible. Her knee was too
swollen and painful to be moved. Monique came over and helped her up.
“Can you get
that folding chair from over there?” Daria asked. “I want to sit next to him
and keep an eye on him.”
“Are you sure
it’s safe here with that thing?” Monique nodded at the spider-robot. “Don’t you
want to go?”
“It isn’t safe
anywhere around here, but I can’t go anywhere with my leg like this. I just
can’t. Look, if you want to find a way out, that would
be great, but find a flashlight and leave me here.”
“Are you sure?
What if that big bug over there starts to do something?”
“It won’t as
long as Artie’s knocked out. He was controlling it.”
“What?”
Daria sighed.
“Monique, trust me, a lot of stuff has happened since you got kidnapped in
nineteen ninety-one. I can’t explain it all, but trust me, everything’s a mess
now.”
Monique looked
at the longlegs. “Am I dreaming, or did we like get invaded or something? Is
that it?”
Daria thought
about her answer. “Yeah, invaded,” she said in a low voice. “Something like that. Not everyone knows about it, but yeah, we did.”
She pointed to the robot. “That’s one of the aliens’ robots. Artie joined the
aliens’ side and was helping them. He can’t make the robots do anything as long
as he’s tied up like this. I think we’ll be okay for a little while, but we
will have to find a way out as soon as we can. I just can’t do a thing right
now. I have to rest. It’s been too much.”
“Oh, man.”
After a moment, Monique gave Daria a warm hug. “You know,” she said, “I don’t
understand any of this, but if you know what’s going on, I’ll just follow along
after you, okay?”
“Okay. The
chair, please, before I scream.”
Once she was
seated, Daria slumped down with her head back and eyes closed, waiting for the
pain in her knee to recede. She held the hammer across her lap. Artie was
within a hammer’s reach of her.
“Your knee’s
all green and black,” Monique said in a low voice, making a face as she
inspected Daria’s leg. She rolled Daria’s pants leg down and stood, hands on
her hips. “What do we do now?”
“Get the phone
again,” Daria whispered. Her head was filled with a red haze. “Maybe we can fix
it.” She opened her eyes. “Is there any aspirin around here?”
A check of the
area turned up a first-aid box. Daria took three aspirin with a drink from a
plastic gallon jug of water that Monique located in a cabinet full of junk-food
supplies.
“Just like a
guy to have nothing but pretzels and chips,” grumbled Monique. She surveyed the
cavern. “Wonder where he put the bathroom? I don’t need it, but it does make
you wonder, huh?”
“In any
direction, a long way off, I’ll bet.” Daria stuck her hands in her pockets. She
felt the transporter device and pulled it out. A small gray
box with a sliding switch. Another tool. She
wondered if the aliens had made it for themselves or for Artie. It looked
awfully simple.
This must
have one hell of a power source, Artie had said. I bet I could go to
Pluto with this.
“Or to my
backyard,” said Daria. She held the box up, looking for any sort of printing or
markings on it.
“Say what?”
The box was
unmarked. “Nothing. Sorry.”
“Hey, listen,
will you be okay here? I want to look around for a bit, maybe see if there’s a
way out. I won’t go too far, okay?”
“Sure. I’ll be
fine.” Daria inhaled through her teeth, glancing at Artie. Her grip tightened
on the hammer in her lap. “If he moves, I’ll nail him.”
“Cool.” Armed
with a large flashlight and the damaged portable phone, Monique left, though
with several long looks back at the nearest spider-robot. Also peeking in the
robot’s direction at times, Daria returned to looking over the transporter box.
It didn’t make sense for such a tiny, simple-looking device to be able to do so
much, yet she’d seen it work with her own eyes. It’s a remote control at
best, nothing more, she thought. Well, maybe. I shouldn’t second-guess
alien technology, but it’s my guess this thing is like a TV remote, sending the
user’s commands to the gateway-making unit, wherever that is. The energy needed
to connect two places in space, even if they were a block away, would be huge.
Artie was right, this must have one hell of a power source. I can’t even
imagine how someone would calculate the energy it would take. Hmm. No controls but the button. Artie said the Outers’
tools worked by telepathy, so maybe—
She held the
device up so that the longlegs was visible above it and Artie’s face below it. Okay,
little box, she thought, do something telepathic. Nothing happened. Maybe
I have to think about where I want the gate to open. Artie talked like it
created only one gate, but there’d have to be two, wouldn’t there? One end
opens in one place, and the other opens somewhere else. So, if I wanted one end
of the gate to open, um, ten feet away from where I’m sitting— She
concentrated.
Nothing.
Figures. Well, Artie did say he had to go through
a lot of training in order to—
She blinked
and jerked her head. Moving spots and lines were appearing before her eyes, in
front of the control device. After a moment, they vanished.
Was that—?
She concentrated again, thinking about opening one end of the gate near her.
The moving
spots and lines returned after a second. They seemed to float in front of her
face, but when she took a hand from the controller and waved it through them,
they vanished. Her fingers touched nothing. Feeling unnerved by the sudden
display, Daria set the small gray box on the rock between her feet and stared
down at it.
Was that a
hologram? No, there’d have to be a projector and something solid for the image
to reflect from. Was that all in my mind, then? How could it do that? Artie
said it took a long time for him to . . . oh, right, he also said he thought
the Outers might have been fixing the devices to read his mind—and maybe other
human minds, too. Why would the Outers want to do that? Well, if they wanted
humans to act as their agents, that might make sense. Super-powered middlemen of evil, yeah. Artie was peachy. But
how could the Outers trust people to do their bidding? Artie was a total
fruitcake, maybe from the start and maybe from hanging around the Outers’
mind-reading machines too long. He really screwed up the attack on Elsie and
Tom’s house last Friday night, got two machines blown up and all their parts
confiscated by the government. That wasn’t good for their side.
She winced and
tried not to think about her aching knee. Artie said this device could be a
nasty weapon. I can see that. Open one end in outer space, and wherever you
open the other gate, everything there gets sucked out into the void. The ultimate vacuum cleaner. It might even work on Quinn’s
room.
But why
give something like this to Artie?
She looked up
at the former Pizza King delivery boy. He was still
unconscious.
If it were
me, why would I, an alien being, give super-technology to a nut bar? If I had
any brains at all, I wouldn’t do it. He could attack me with it, for one
thing—unless I was sure he couldn’t turn it on me. Or unless I was
overconfident and ignored the negative consequences, like humans thinking
deep-sea fish were no threat to them, using Artie’s analogy. Or I wasn’t there
managing things and had left either a stupid flunky or an automated system to
respond to emergencies. Or I was insane. Hmmm. I’d
have to be insane to work with Artie—unless his nuttiness worked to my
advantage somehow. Beats me.
Moving
along, Artie said he didn’t think there was a safety mechanism on the gateway
opener. That doesn’t make sense. Maybe the Outers led him to believe that, but
they were just testing him to see if he’d try to do something stupid with it,
like attack them. His attack on Elsie’s house wasn’t very bright, but it wasn’t
disastrous. Well, wait—it was, wasn’t it? Alien technology was finally
revealed. Police shot at a longlegs robot and blew it up, and Quinn ran into
one and broke its leg off, right before she stopped the car too fast and one
fell over us and exploded. So that was a bad thing for the aliens, right?
She frowned.
Play contrarian, though. What if the aliens had intended that they be
discovered in some way, and the spider-robots were, for them, cheap throwaways?
Why would they want to let us know they were out there? Is there any situation
in human history analogous to this?
Daria shifted
in her seat, grimacing as bolts of pain went out from her swollen knee. Why
would you want a potential enemy to know that you existed? Your enemy would get
ready to attack you, and then—
Her face cleared in surprise, and her mouth made a round O. Of course! It might be a situation like the one I saw discussed on that show about the Cold War on the World History Channel. Americans and Russians used to probe each other’s air and sea defenses to get the other side to respond. A lone plane or sub would move in too close to the enemy’s borders, then would flee if detected. Each side could then find out how well its enemy’s early-warning systems and military defenses worked. It’s like stirring up a hornet’s nest from a distance to see how many hornets might attack you, and how they’d do it. Maybe the Outers decided it was time to see what we were capable of do