CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
Kevin slammed the bunker’s wall of monitors, partly in frustration, and partly because he’d seen it work on TV. It didn’t work here, though, and that only fueled the frustration he felt.
“They
can’t
just go blank,” he insisted. Weren’t these systems supposed to be designed to survive just about anything? “Not now, not like this.”
Not when they’d just seen the world all but ending, people gathering while alien ships swept in over them. Beside him, Luna was staring up at them as if expecting them to come back on at any moment, or maybe just because she was imagining her parents out there somewhere, clambering into an alien ship.
Kevin put an arm around her, not sure if he was comforting her or trying to comfort himself.
“Do you think people are all right?” Luna asked. “Do you think my parents are?”
Kevin swallowed, thinking of the people lining up to go into the ships. His mother would have been somewhere among them too.
“I hope so,” he said.
“It feels wrong,” Luna said. “We’re safe here in a bunker, while everyone else is stuck out there… how many people do you think were converted?”
Kevin thought about the vast seas of people there had been on the screens before they went blank, and the dwindling numbers of people there to report on it all.
“I don’t know, a lot,” he guessed.
“Maybe everybody,” Luna said. “Maybe we’re the last ones.”
“We should look around,” he said. “Maybe we can find a way to turn it all back on. Then we can see.”
He said it as much to try to distract Luna as because he thought they had a hope of doing it. What did they know about fixing computer systems? If one of the scientists from the NASA institute had been there… maybe Dr. Levin… but they were gone, just like everyone else. They’d been transformed by the vapor, turning into things that had chased after them and hunted them.
“Come on,” he said to Luna, gently pulling her away from the screen. “We need to look around.”
Luna nodded, though she didn’t seem to be taking much of it in right then. “I guess so.”
They set off through the bunker underneath Mount Diablo, and Kevin looked around, surprised by the sheer space of it. If they’d been looking around a place like this at a different time, it might have seemed like an adventure. As it was, every echoing step reminded Kevin just how alone they were. This was a whole military base, and they were the only ones in it.
“This is cool,” Luna said, her smile too bright to be real. “Like sneaking through warehouses.”
Kevin could tell that her heart wasn’t in it, though. She might have been trying her best to be the old Luna, but what came out was too flat for that.
“It’s okay,” Kevin said, “you don’t have to pretend with me. I’m…”
What could he say? That he was sad too? It didn’t seem like enough to encompass the end of the world, or the loss of everyone they’d known, or any of it, really.
“I know,” Luna said. “I’m just trying to be… hopeful, I guess. Come on, let’s see what’s here.”
Kevin had the feeling of her wanting the distraction, so they headed deeper into the bunker. It was a huge space, which looked as though it could have housed hundreds of people if it needed to. There were pipes and cables leading away into its depths, and signs stenciled on the walls in yellow paint.
“Look,” Luna said, pointing, “there’s a kitchen that way.”
Kevin could feel his stomach rumbling at the thought, and although it didn’t cut through the rest of it, the two of them turned off in the direction the sign indicated. They walked down one corridor, then another, coming out into a kitchen that was built on an industrial scale. There were freezers set toward the back, behind doors that could have protected a vault, and other doors that seemed to lead off into storerooms.
“We should see if there’s any food in them,” Luna suggested, opening one.
The space behind was even larger than Kevin might have expected, stacked with box after box. He opened one and found silvery, sealed packets that looked as though they would keep forever.
“There’s enough food to feed us for a lifetime here,” Kevin said, and then realized exactly
what
he’d just said. “Not that… I mean, we might not have to stay here forever.”
“What if we do, though?” Luna asked.
Kevin wasn’t sure he had a good answer for that. He couldn’t imagine living forever in here. He could barely imagine a lifetime, let alone one night, spent in a bunker. “Then I guess we’re better in here than out there. At least here we’re safe.”
“I guess so,” Luna said, with a look around at the walls that seemed to assess how thick they were. “Safe, yes.”
“We should see what else is here,” Kevin said. “If we’re going to be staying here, we’ll need other things. Water, places to sleep, fresh air. A way to talk to the outside.”
He counted them off on his fingers as he thought of them.
“We should see if there are other ways in or out, too,” Luna said. “We want to make sure that no one else can get in.”
Kevin nodded, because that seemed like an important one. They started to search the bunker, using the kitchen as a kind of base, going back and forth between it and the main control room, which seemed curiously silent without anything on its screens.
There was another room nearby that was filled with communications equipment. Kevin saw radios and computers. There was even something that looked like an old-fashioned telegraph machine in the corner, as if the people there didn’t trust that the more modern equipment would be there for them when it was needed.
“They have so much stuff,” Luna said, pressing a button and getting a burst of white noise in response.
“
We
have so much stuff now,” Kevin pointed out. “Maybe if there are other people out there, we’ll be able to communicate with them.”
Luna looked around. “Do you think there are other people left? What if it’s just us?”
Kevin didn’t know what to say to that. If he was going to be trapped as one of the last people in the world, there was no one he’d rather be stuck with than his best friend. Even so, he had to believe that there were others out there somewhere. He had to.
“There must be other people somewhere,” he said. “There are other bunkers and things, and some people will have worked out what was happening. There were people broadcasting pictures, so they must have known what was going on.”
“But the screens went blank,” Luna pointed out. “We don’t know that they’re still out there.”
Kevin swallowed at that thought. He’d assumed that the signal had just cut off, but what if it wasn’t the signal? What if the people sending it were also gone?
He shook his head. “We can’t think like that,” he said. “We have to hope that there are more people out there.”
“People who can kill the aliens,” Luna said, with a harsh glint in her eye. Kevin got the feeling that if she’d had the means to fight them, Luna would have been out there right now trying to take them on.
Kevin could understand that. It was a part of who Luna was; a part of what he liked about her so much. He even felt a part of the same anger, feeling it bubbling up inside him at the thought of being tricked by the aliens, and at everything that had been taken from him.
He needed the distraction of looking around the bunker as much as Luna did, because the alternative was thinking about his mom, and his friends, and everyone else who might have been standing under the alien ships when they came.
They continued looking around the bunker, and it didn’t take long to find what looked like a back way out. The words “Unsealed Environment. For Emergency Escape Only!” were stenciled above a hatch that looked like the torpedo tube from a submarine, complete with big circular handle to seal it. It seemed barely big enough for most people to crawl through. Of course, for Kevin and Luna it would mean plenty of space.
“Unsealed environment?” Luna said. “What do you think that means?”
“I guess it means that there’s no airlock on this exit?” Kevin said, not sure. The words stenciled around it made it sound like something hugely dangerous to open. Maybe it was.
“No airlock?”
“People wouldn’t want one if they had to get out fast.”
He saw Luna’s hand go to the gas mask that she’d had to wear for the whole drive over, and that now hung from the belt of her jeans. Kevin could guess what she was thinking.
“There’s no way the alien vapor can get in here,” he said, trying to reassure her. He didn’t want Luna to be scared. “Not if we don’t open that door.”
“I know it’s stupid,” Luna said. “I know that the vapor probably isn’t even out there anymore; that it’s just the people they’ve taken over…”
“But it still doesn’t feel safe?” Kevin guessed. Nothing felt safe right then, even in a bunker.
Luna nodded. “I need to get away from that door.”
Kevin went with her, back into the bunker, away from the emergency exit. It actually made him feel a bit safer, knowing that the two of them could escape if they needed to, but he hoped they
wouldn’t
need to. They needed somewhere safe, right then. Somewhere they could hide from the aliens until it was safe to come out again.
Or until his illness killed him. That was a particularly horrible thought. There weren’t any tremors from the leukodystrophy right then, but Kevin had no doubt they would be back, and worse. Only the fact that they had bigger things to worry about forced him to push thoughts of it away, and what did it say that it took an alien invasion to make his illness look insignificant?
“I think there are rooms down here,” Luna said, leading the way down one of the corridors. There were. There were whole dormitories there, with rank after rank of bunkbeds that were mostly no more than metal frames, but with a few that had possessions by them, along with mattresses and bedding.
“You’d have thought that some of them would stay inside,” Kevin said. “It makes no sense that there’s
nobody
here.”
Luna shook her head. “They would have gone outside to help. And then… well, by the time they worked out it was a bad idea, the aliens would have controlled them.”
That made a kind of sense, but it was still a horrible thought.
“I miss my parents,” Luna said from nowhere, although maybe she’d been thinking it all this time. The pain that had come from Kevin’s mom being taken hadn’t gone away; it had just been pushed into the background by the need to keep doing things, by the need to get to safety, and to make sure that they would both
stay
safe.
“I miss my mom, too,” Kevin said, sitting down on the edge of a bed frame. He found that it was impossible to picture her then as she’d been before the aliens came. Instead, the image that sprang to mind was of her as she’d been on the doorstep of their house, controlled by the aliens and trying to grab him.
Luna sat on a bed frame of her own. Neither of them had picked one of the ones with bedding. That didn’t feel right somehow. Those felt as though they belonged to someone, and their owners might be back at any moment.
“It’s not just my parents,” Luna said. “It’s all the other kids at school, all the people I’ve ever met. They’ll all have been taken. All of them.”
She put her head in her hands, and Kevin reached out to take her hand, not saying anything. It was just as enormous for him in that moment, with the thought that everyone out there in the world might have been taken by the aliens. Ordinary people, celebrities, friends…
“There are no people left,” Luna said.
“I thought you didn’t like people anyway,” Kevin countered. “I thought you’d decided that most people are stupid?”
Luna smiled slightly at that, but it looked as though it took an effort. “I’ll take stupid over controlled by aliens any day.” She paused for a moment. “Do you think… do you think that people will ever be all right again?”
Kevin couldn’t look at her. “I don’t know.” He couldn’t see how they would. “We’re safe though. That’s all that matters.”
It wasn’t, though. Not by a long way.
They looked around the bunker until they found more bedding, not wanting to take anything from the bunks that were already set up. Those remained as pristine as if their owners might come back at any moment, although Kevin had to hope they wouldn’t, because he guessed that the aliens controlled them now.
They went back to the kitchen long enough to get something to eat. The packet said chicken, but Kevin could barely taste it. Maybe that was a good thing, judging by the look on Luna’s face.
“I’m never going to complain about having to eat vegetables again,” she said, although Kevin suspected that she probably would. She wouldn’t be Luna if she didn’t.
When they were done, they took turns cleaning up in one of the bunker’s bathrooms. They could probably have just picked a bathroom each, or two, or more, but Kevin, at least, didn’t want to be that far apart from Luna just yet. Even when the time came to pick bunks, they chose ones almost next to one another, when they had the whole space of the dormitory to choose from. It was like a little island picked out in the middle of it, and if he tried really hard, Kevin could almost pretend that it was some kind of sleepover. Well, no, he couldn’t, not really, but it was good to at least try.
They turned off the lights, using military-issue flashlights to guide them back to bed. Luna hopped up onto the top bunk of her chosen bed, while Kevin took the bottom level of his.
“Afraid of heights?” Luna asked.
“I just don’t want to have a vision halfway up and fall onto the floor,” Kevin said. Not that he’d had any visions since the one warning him about the invasion. Not that it would do any good now if he did. He found himself wondering what the point of his visions was when none of it had helped.
“Right,” Luna said. “I guess… yeah, I guess you should be careful.”
“Maybe in the morning things will look better,” Kevin suggested. He didn’t really believe it.
“We’d have to see it before it could look better,” Luna pointed out.
“Well, maybe we’ll be able to find a way to see things again,” Kevin said. If they did, though, what might they see? Would they see hordes of aliens out there in the world now? A barren landscape with nothing in it?
“Maybe we’ll work out what we’re going to do next,” Luna suggested. “Maybe we’ll dream of a way to make all of this better.”
“Maybe,” Kevin said, although he suspected that any dreams he had would be dominated by the sight of all those silent people.
“Sleep well,” Kevin said.
“Sleep well.”
In fact, it seemed to take forever for Kevin to fall asleep. He lay there in the dark, listening to Luna as her breathing deepened and she started to snore in a way she would probably never admit to when awake. This would have felt very different without her here. Even if there had been someone else there, Kevin would have felt alone, but as it was…
…As it was, he was still almost alone, but at least Luna was there to share in the loneliness of it. Kevin couldn’t get away from the thoughts of what had happened to his mother, to everyone, but at least he knew that Luna was safe.
Those thoughts followed him down into sleep and into his dreams.
In his dreams, Kevin was surrounded by everyone he’d known. His mother was there, his friends from school, his teachers, the people from NASA. Ted was there, with military gear slung all over him, and Professor Brewster, his face in a scowl that suggested he disapproved of everything Kevin had done.
Their features twisted as Kevin watched, becoming every alien from a sci-fi movie ever. Some of them became gray-skinned and big-eyed, while others looked more like insects with plates of armor across them. Professor Brewster had tentacles coming from his hands, while Dr. Levin’s eyes were on stalks. They lumbered toward Kevin and he started to run.
He ran through the corridors of the NASA institute, barely able to keep ahead of them as they poured out of doorway after doorway, and even though he’d lived there, Kevin couldn’t find the way out to safety. He couldn’t find the way to make this better.
He dove into a lab, shutting the door behind him and barricading it with chairs and tables and anything else he could find. Even so, the transformed people on the outside of the room hammered on the door, their fists pounding against it while, for no reason Kevin understood, an alarm started to sound…
Kevin woke with a gasp. It was still dark, but one look at the time on his phone told him that was just because they were underground. In the background, an alarm was sounding, the dull buzz of it constant, while underneath it, there was a dull, metallic thudding.
He knew Luna was awake, because she turned on the lights.
“What is it?” Kevin asked.
Luna looked at him. “I think… I think someone wants to come in.”