CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

They rushed down to the command center, the knocking louder now that they were closer to the entrance. Even so, with the airlock in the way, Kevin was impressed that the sound was carrying. What were they hitting the door with?

Luna didn’t look impressed; she looked worried.

“What’s wrong?” Kevin asked.

“What if it’s the aliens, or controlled people?” she demanded. “What if they’re going around, rounding up survivors?”

“Why would they be doing that?” Kevin asked, but fear crept into him at the thought of it. What if they were? What if they got in?

“It’s what

I’d

do if I were an alien,” Luna said. “Take over everything, make sure there’s no one left to fight back. Kill anyone who gets in the way.”

Not for the first time in his life, Kevin vowed never to get on Luna’s bad side. Even so, he could hear the fear underneath her words. He could even share it. What if they’d run all the way to somewhere that felt safe, only for it to be falling apart already?

“Can we see who’s out there?” Kevin asked.

Luna pointed to the blank screens. “They’ve been dead since last night.”

“But that’s just the signal from around the world,” Kevin insisted. “There must be… I don’t know, security cameras or something.”

There had to be. A military research facility wouldn’t stay blind to everything happening around it. He started to press buttons on the computer systems, trying to find a way of getting them to do what they wanted. Most of the screens there were blank, the signals from around the world cut off, or blocked, or just… gone. Luna started pressing buttons beside him, although Kevin suspected that she didn’t know what to do any more than he did.

“Whoever it is, I don’t know if we should let them in,” Luna said. “It could be anyone out there.”

“It could be,” Kevin said, “but what if it’s someone who needs our help?”

“Maybe,” Luna said, not sounding convinced. “Whoever it is, they’re hitting the door pretty hard.”

That was true. The metallic echoes of each blow reverberated through the bunker. They came in groups of three, and slowly Kevin started to realize that there was a pattern to the spaces between them.

“Three short, three long, three short,” he said.

“You mean SOS?” Luna asked.

Kevin glanced over to her.

“I thought everyone knew that,” she said. “That’s about all I remember.”

“So someone out there is in trouble?” Kevin asked, and the thought of that brought a different kind of worry. Should they be helping, rather than hesitating? He spotted a picture of a camera down in the corner of one of the screens. He pressed it, and now the screens lit up with images from security cameras around the deserted base.

“That one,” Luna said, pointing to one of the images as if Kevin didn’t know how to pick one out from the rest. “Here, let me.”

She pressed a button, and the image came to fill the screen.

Kevin didn’t know what he’d been expecting. A horde of people controlled by the aliens, maybe. Some soldier who knew about the base and had fought his way across the country to get there. Not a girl their age, holding what looked like the remains of a signpost and banging it against the door in a steady rhythm.

She was athletic and dark-haired, her hair cut short and a stud through her nose as if daring the world to say anything about it. Kevin could see that her features were pretty, very pretty, he thought, but with a tough edge to them that suggested she wouldn’t appreciate being called that. She was wearing a dark hooded top with a leather jacket over it that seemed a couple of sizes too big, ripped jeans, and hiking boots. She had a small rucksack, like she was just on the mountain for the hiking, but the rest of her looked more like a runaway, her clothes streaked with enough dirt that she could have been out there for weeks before the aliens came.

“I don’t like this,” Luna said. “Why is there just one girl out there, trying to get in?”

“I don’t know,” Kevin said, “but we should probably let her.”

That made sense, didn’t it? If she was asking for help, then they should at least

try

to, shouldn’t they? The girl was looking up at the screen now, and although there didn’t seem to be any sound, she didn’t look happy at being left out there.

Luna pressed something and now they could hear her, microphones picking up her words.

“…to let me in! There are still those

things

out here! I’m sure of it!”

Kevin found himself looking past her on the screen, and sure enough, he thought he could make out the signs of people there, moving with the odd purposelessness that suggested the aliens had them.

“We should let her in,” Kevin said. “We can’t just leave someone out there.”

“She’s not wearing a mask,” Luna pointed out.

“So?”

Luna shook her head. “So if she’s not wearing a mask, how is the alien vapor not converting her? How do we know that she

isn’t

one of them?”

As if in answer to that, the girl on the screen moved closer to the camera, staring straight up into it.

“I know there’s someone in there,” she said. “I saw the camera move. Look, I’m not one of them, I’m normal. Look at me!”

Kevin looked into her eyes. They were wide and brown, but most importantly, the pupils were normal. Not shifted to pure white the way the scientists’ had been when the vapor from the rock had claimed them, or the way his mother’s had been when he’d gone home…

“We have to let her in,” Kevin said. “If we leave her out there, the controlled people will get her.”

Sure enough, Kevin could see figures in military uniform moving forward, moving in unison, obviously under the aliens’ control.

He ran for the airlock and used the key Dr. Levin had given him to open it. Beyond, the girl was there waiting, while the former soldiers were closing in now, breaking into a run.

“Quick, inside!” Kevin said. He pulled the girl inside the airlock, because there was no time to waste. He went to pull the door closed, knowing that they would be safe the moment it was there between them and the controlled who advanced on the base.

It didn’t budge.

“Help me,” Kevin shouted to her, hauling on the door and feeling the solidity of the steel beneath his hands. The girl grabbed hold of it with him, pulling at the door, throwing her weight back to try to move it.

A little way away, the former soldiers were advancing at a run, and it was all Kevin could do to keep his attention on the door, not on them. It was the only way he could keep his terror at bay and focus on throwing his own weight back, pulling at the door.

Finally, it gave way, grinding into motion as they dragged it closed. Kevin heard the echo of it as it slammed, locking with a click that rang around the airlock.

“

Decontamination Procedure Starting,

” an electronic voice said, the way it had when Kevin and Luna had first arrived. There was the rush of the air being cleaned by the bunker’s filters around them.

“Hi, I’m Kevin,” he said. He suspected that there should be something more dramatic to say at a moment like this, but he couldn’t think of it.

The girl was silent for a moment or two, then seemed to realize that Kevin might be expecting an answer. “I’m Chloe.”

“It’s good to meet you, Chloe,” Kevin said.

She looked at him quietly, as though assessing him, and seemed almost ready to run. “Yeah, I guess.”

The other door to the airlock clicked open. Luna was waiting for them, smiling her most welcoming smile, even though she’d been the one arguing against letting Chloe in.

“Hello,” Luna said. She held out a hand. “I’m Luna.”

Chloe stared at it, then shrugged without taking it.

“This is Chloe,” Kevin said for her.

Chloe nodded in not very enthusiastic agreement, looking around warily.

“Where is everyone?” she demanded at last.

“There’s no everyone,” Luna replied. “There’s just us. Me and Kevin.”

She stepped over next to Kevin as if to emphasize that they were a team. She even put a hand on his shoulder.

“Just you two?” Chloe said. She sat down on one of the command center’s chairs, shaking her head. “All this way, and it’s just you two?”

“Where have you come from?” Kevin asked.

“That doesn’t matter,” Chloe said, not looking at them.

“I think it kind of matters a bit,” Luna shot back. “I mean, you’ve shown up out of nowhere, and you’re asking us to trust you.”

Chloe looked over sharply, shrugged again, and then walked out of the room. Kevin went after her, mostly because he suspected that if Luna went after her there might be some kind of argument, and also because there was something intriguing about Chloe. There were so many things they didn’t know about her.

“You don’t need to follow me,” Chloe said, looking back as Kevin followed her along one of the corridors.

“I thought I could show you round,” Kevin said. “You know… if you want.”

Chloe shrugged once more. There seemed to be nuances to her shrugs, and it seemed that this one meant okay. Kevin wasn’t quite sure what to make of her.

“We’ve been looking around since we got here,” Kevin said. “There’s a kitchen and a storeroom down here, and some bathrooms here. This is the dormitory where we’re sleeping. Pick out a bed if you want. I’m down that way, and so is Luna.”

Chloe picked a bed. It was the other side of the room from the ones Luna and Kevin had chosen.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” she said, “but I don’t know you, and…” She shook her head, not finishing that. There was a haunted look to her as she did it.

“Are you okay?” Kevin asked.

“I’m fine,” Chloe shot back, but then softened her voice a little. “I’m fine. I’ve just been used to looking after myself for a while. I guess I’m not very good at opening up to people.”

“Okay,” Kevin said. He stepped back toward the door. “I can go if you don’t want to—”

“I ran away from home,” Chloe said. It was enough to stop Kevin where he was.

“What?”

“I mean, before the aliens came,” Chloe continued. “My mom shouted at me all the time, and my dad was… well, some stuff happened, and they all said I was crazy… anyway, I have a cousin up north. I thought if I could get to him, I’d be okay, and then the aliens came.”

To Kevin, it sounded like she was skimming over a lot of stuff, but he let it go. A lot of the pauses had the feeling of gaps that hid the kind of stuff that hurt too much, as if pretending would make it all go away. He knew about that. Like if he pretended everything was fine, his illness wasn’t really there.

“How did you survive out there?” Kevin asked.

“I did what I had to,” Chloe said, sounding defensive, and also kind of haunted again. “Wait, you mean when everyone else changed? I was… I guess it was just luck. I was inside away from everyone when it started happening, and people said there was a gas or something, but by the time I got out, it was just those things trying to grab people and breathe on them.”

“By the time you got out?” Kevin said.

“This butcher locked me in his meat locker. Said I was trying to steal from him.”

Was that somewhere that might keep the alien vapor out? Did it mean that Luna and he didn’t need their masks anymore?

“It will be okay,” Kevin said.

Chloe gave him another of those shrugs. “You’re the kid on TV, aren’t you? When you said your name was Kevin, I didn’t get it, but I think I recognize you. Is that why you’re here? They stashed you in a safe place because you’re the boy who knows about aliens?”

Kevin shook his head, moving back over to her. “They didn’t put me here. Dr. Levin gave me a key to fit the bunkers they have, and told me about the one under the NASA research center, but that went wrong. Luna and I had to find this place by ourselves.”

Chloe nodded. “Luna… is she your girlfriend?”

People were always assuming that. Kevin couldn’t understand why. It seemed obvious to him that Luna would never be his girlfriend.

“She’s my friend,” Kevin said. “We’re not… I mean…”

It was weird how talking about aliens was easier than talking about exactly what he and Luna were.

“Strange,” Chloe said. “I mean, you seem nice. I

definitely

wouldn’t leave you as just a friend. I wonder—”

Kevin didn’t get to find out what she wondered, though, because a pointed cough came from the doorway. Almost as pointed as the look Luna gave them when Kevin turned around.

“I wanted to see what was taking you both so long,” she said, and she didn’t sound happy. She looked… almost jealous, and that didn’t make sense, because nothing was happening here, and in any case, Kevin and Luna weren’t like that. Were they?

“Hi, Luna,” Kevin said. “Chloe was just telling me about herself.”

“I bet she was,” Luna said. “Maybe she can tell me some of it too. And maybe, while we’re doing that, we can work out what we’re all going to do next.”

---

They went through to the kitchen area, because none of them had eaten breakfast yet. Kevin went to get supplies from the storeroom, not entirely sure if he should leave Luna and Chloe alone right then.

Kevin picked out a packet that claimed to be blueberry pancakes, and took it out to them. They were quiet, which was kind of worrying in itself—Luna was almost never quiet.

“I found blueberry pancakes,” he said.

“That’s great,” Luna said. “I love blueberry pancakes.”

“I like them too,” Chloe said, although Kevin got the feeling she’d only said it because Luna had.

“Well, I don’t know how good they’ll be,” Kevin said.

The answer to that was simple: they tasted like something that had been in a packet in a storeroom for longer than they should have been. Even so, he was hungry enough by then to eat all of his.

“How did you hear about this place?” Kevin asked Chloe while they were eating.

“My dad… his job meant that he… heard things,” she said, but didn’t expand on it more than that. Kevin suspected that if Luna had asked rather than him, she wouldn’t have said even that much.

“So you trekked here, and battered on the door until someone let you in?” Luna said. She didn’t sound to Kevin as though she believed it much.

“I had to go somewhere,” Chloe said.

“I wonder if there are other places like this where people have managed to hide out,” Kevin said before that could turn into an argument. He wanted them to get along, if they were stuck there.

“If there are, we can’t contact them,” Luna said. “There’s still no signal coming in through the screens, and all those communications devices are useless if we don’t know who we’re connecting to.”

“Maybe you’re just not turning them on right,” Chloe said.

Luna gave her a pointed look.

“We can stay here as long as we need to, anyway,” Luna said. “We’re safe here. We talked about this yesterday, Kevin.”

They had, and it had been a comforting thought at the time, but was that it? Were the three of them just going to stay there for the rest of their lives?

“I might know about a place,” Chloe said, between mouthfuls of pancake.

“You just happen to know about somewhere?” Luna said. “The same way that you heard about here?”

To Kevin, she sounded suspicious. He wanted to give Chloe the benefit of the doubt, but Luna sounded much less like she trusted her.

Chloe put down her fork. “I heard about it on the way here from some people I met. I figured that this was closer, and safer. But if there’s no one here…”

“We’re here,” Luna said. “We’re safe here.”

“Are we?” Chloe demanded, looking around at Kevin as if for confirmation. “There’s supposed to be a group toward LA who are helping refugees gather together and stay safe. They call themselves the Survivors.”

“So you want us to go all the way to LA and look for these people?” Luna asked.

“What’s

your

plan? Just sit here and wait for things to get better?”

Kevin looked from one to the other, trying to work out the best way to keep all of this calm.

“We have enough food to last forever, and maybe we’ll get the radio working soon. We can’t just go out there when there could be anything.”

Chloe shook her head. “Things don’t get better. Trust me.”

“Trust you?” Luna said. “We don’t even know you. We’re staying here.”

Kevin knew that tone. It meant that Luna wasn’t backing down.

“Listen to the perfect little cheerleader, thinking she’s in charge,” Chloe shot back.

“You know nothing about me,” Luna insisted, in a dangerous tone of voice.

Kevin could barely work out why they were arguing. He’d been trying not to get involved, but now it seemed as though he might have to.

He stood to say something, but stopped, because pain shot through his head, along with something else, a feeling he hadn’t had in days now.

“Kevin?” Luna said. “Are you all right?”

Kevin shook his head. “I think… I think there’s another signal coming through.”