Adaptation: book I (3 page)

Wolf didn’t come home. She sat out food in his special bowl. She had even slaughtered a chicken and stewed it up especially for him.
But even when the sun set, Wolf had not returned. This was the first time that he’d spent a night without her in the four years that she’d had him. What did he know about the wilderness? He was just a baby …

Each evening she stood on the porch and stared out into the distance waiting for Wolf to come back. Six months went by, and one evening she heard familiar scratching on the door. Carmella sat up straight in bed and turned up the lantern. She listened and heard scratching and a soft whining. Carmella jumped out of bed and dashed to the door. She flung it open without thought, and there was her baby!

“Wolf!” She grabbed him and hugged him around his furry throat as his tail thumped back and forth.

He licked her face, even though he knew he wasn’t supposed to do that and for once she didn’t chastise him. She began asking him where he had been. He was thin and she stood and led him into the house but he wouldn’t come.

“What’s wrong, boy?”

Wolf looked behind him, whined, and walked in a circle. He let out a sharp bark, and another wolf came out of the darkness. Carmella peered out into the night. The second wolf stared at her with strange eyes, watching her as if she was some curious abomination. After a few long moments, the second wolf came forward and crept up the stairs, warily keeping Carmella in its sights.

“Wolf? Is that your … wife? Did you go get married, boy?” She chuckled to herself. “Now you’re bringing her home to meet your mama?”

Carmella went to the kitchen, trusting that Wolf would keep his woman in her place. She pulled out all the chicken butts she had been saving and placed them in a skillet on the cook stove to warm up. She filled his water bowl and set it out on the front porch. They both drank from it, and when she brought out the chicken butts, she placed them in one bowl and set it in front of her boy. Wolf sucked them down in appreciation while the female bared her teeth at Carmella’s proximity before she joined him.

“Bitch,” Carmella muttered. It was exactly what a bitch would do—come to your house, eat your food, and then roll her eyes at you.

After the chicken butt appetizer, she filled his bowl with a mixture of hard and canned dog food. They scarfed that down as well. Poor baby, he was so hungry. She made to move outside, but the bitch growled at her, stopping her in her tracks. Wolf snapped at his wife, who quickly retreated as Carmella came out on the porch and sat in her chair. Wolf sniffed the porch for a few minutes before curling at her feet. She reached down and stroked his fur while his wife stood in the yard watching and looking agitated.

Carmella thought about shooing her away but didn’t. She was Wolf’s wife, after all, and since wolves mated for life, she and Wolf’s wife would have to get used to each other.

They stayed that way throughout the night. She thought Wolf was asleep, but he was content to lie at her feet. As the sun rose, Wolf sat up, sniffed the porch, he looked at his Mama, and darted down the stairs and into the woods, his wife trailing closely behind.

It was so difficult after that. It was as if Wolf had visited to tell her goodbye. Carmella cried for two days after that.

Wolf returned several months later.

This time he had his wife and three little furry pups. Carmella picked up each puppy in her arms and carried them into the house. This time Wolf followed and so did his wife. She still gave Carmella the stink eye, but it didn’t matter. Carmella was holding Wolf’s pups, and there was nothing that could have made her happier.

Carmella prepared a feast for the family and played with the babies for the rest of the day instead of tending to her chores. Wolf sat in contentment nearby, looking out at the horizon in a way she had never seen before, his ears perking if he heard an errant sound. She realized that he was watching, protecting them all in a way he had never done before. What had he experienced in the year that he’d gone out and made a family? She thought she understood why he sniffed the porch so carefully. Wolf was making sure that nothing had been at the house in his absence.

Wolf was torn between his mama and his family. He kept coming back to keep watch over Carmella. Over time, the children grew bigger, and it sometimes looked as if a pack of wolves had come for her, but she recognized each of them. Each wolf took to her except the wife. That bitch never liked her and had once snapped at her when she reached out to pat her in a show of friendship. But Wolf didn’t play that shit, and he nipped her back, causing her to whine and go outside. Wolf kept his children under control when they were in the house. Sometimes Carmella would cackle at their antics, even when they knocked over and broke things and went hiding in shame. She loved them intensely.

Wolf had more pups, and the older ones stopped coming around. But every few months Wolf would return home. He never stayed longer than a day, but she knew each time he left that he’d soon return.

Carmella had milke
d
the cow and was returning to her house with the frothy pail humming some made-up tune when she saw it.

Partially concealed by a large oak tree several yards away, the Blob stood very still looking every bit like an octopus. Carmella had never been this close to one before. When they had first come, Jody had wanted to go to one of the fairs to see them. He’d taken Micah …

Carmella shuddered. What was it doing here? After all this time, what was it doing here? They couldn’t still be collecting humans after
ten years!

Carmella was seventeen the year the mother ship had appeared in the sky. Days before there were frantic news reports of a strange mass approaching earth. NASA did extensive studies using satellites and the Hubble, but there was no official word of the findings. The leaders of the world held extensive meetings. The mother ship appeared in the sky over the Atlantic Ocean amid mass suicide and killings as people thought it was the sign of the end of the world or the fulfillment of some prophecy.

The greatest scientific minds of the world tried to find ways to communicate with the mother ship, but if it ever happened, no one was the wiser. There were conspiracy theories running wild, made worse by the fact that the mother ship hovered unmoving in the sky for  months.

Half of the world thought it should be shot from the sky, but since it was the size of a small
country, that had been overruled, especially since there was no idea of the repercussions of such an act. She and Jody also had different opinions. She was among those who thought the ship should be destroyed, but Jody thought that they should study and befriend the aliens.

By this time Jody and Carmella were friends but too shy to admit that they liked each other a bit more than only friends. They found reasons to be together even if it was only to study … or pretend to study. Jody was a nerdy white kid who played trumpet in the school band, and Carmella was a nerdy black girl who was more mean than nice. It should have been a death sentence for their friendship, but soon their opposing attitudes and styles seemed a magnet that attracted them to each other.

They sat in a café together, a regular hangout away from school and family, watching one of the big-screen televisions that constantly stayed tuned to news coverage of the hovering mother ship. It had been hanging over the Atlantic for six months, and interest mounted with each passing day.

“I’m going to Atlantic City after graduation.”

Carmella’s head turned in his direction.

“Well, there are all these parties going on up and down the coast—”

“Parties?” she interrupted. “You don’t even do parties here. You’re going all the way to Atlantic City to party?”

“No. I mean, not for the partying. I want to go to show support to the aliens. We just want to welcome them.”

Carmella rolled her eyes. “If this was a movie, the aliens would eat you supporters first!”

Jody drummed his fingertips along the table nervously. “I was going to … um.” He cleared his throat and glanced away. “I was going to ask you to come.” His eyes darted to hers quickly, his face bright red. “I know you don’t like the idea of aliens, but, well, I thought it would be fun.” 

Carmella stared at him and felt new emotions well up inside of her. Soon school would be out, and they would go their separate ways. His trip to Atlantic City was testament to that. Beyond that was the knowledge he wanted to be where the aliens were at the same time she was desperately afraid of them. She wasn’t excited about their arrival or the sharing of knowledge. She felt they meant harm to them, and she didn’t want Jody anywhere near them.

“Don’t go, Jody.” She reached out and grasped his hand on the tabletop. “If you stay here …” She swallowed, leaned forward, and placed her lips on his for the first time. When she pulled back, his eyes were glazed.

He gripped her hand gently in his. “Okay.”

Carmella and Jody’s love bloomed in a new age where the speculation of aliens and world domination and doomsday prevailed. And still they found joy in their budding romance amid the chaos and fear that formed a cocoon of security around them.

The doors of the mother ship opened one day when Carmella’s belly was full and stretched with their baby. Strange signposts appeared all over the world in the most desolate tribal villages in the deepest rainforest to Trafalgar Square in London and Takeshita Street in Japan. No one saw them go up, and even cameras didn’t capture the event, which helped to fuel the rumors of world government conspiracies. Later, the world would know of an international government conspiracy, but by then it was too late and the trials and executions for crimes against mankind were too little too late. By the time there were repercussions, Jody and Micah were buried for years, and Carmella no longer cared.

The signposts appeared with security cameras aimed at them and concealed by structures manned by government officials. They couldn’t be removed or destroyed. A year later, the Blobs began to communicate from inside the mother ship.

But even that was a lie.

They had been communicating all along.

The Blobs blew the lid on the subterfuge that had been pulled by world leaders, and this led to mistrust that would finally destroy society.

Carmella felt it was their plan all along.

At first, the communications were almost childlike in their simplicity: “We are friends. We come from far away. We mean you no harm. We want to learn and to teach. We want to meet you.”

Scientists spent a great deal of time interpreting messages and questions, but ultimately there was nothing of importance that the visitors ever communicated.

Or at least nothing that was revealed to the masses.

Several months after the posts appeared and three years after the arrival of the mother ship, the aliens finally revealed themselves. They were introduced with worldwide broadcasts. The first sight of them caused another wave of mass suicides although the Blobs made assurances to the public that they were not here to fulfill a prophecy or to take any humans with them.

Micah was only a baby, and Carmella had put him to sleep before the broadcast. She and Jody had sat on their secondhand couch and watched the broadcast—he in excitement, she with trepidation. The aliens looked like gray Blobs of slimy flesh. Their bodies had no legs, arms, or head. They had protrusions that could elongate and were called sensors, but they looked like tentacles. When not in use, these tentacles retreated into their bodies, the only indication of their existence a slight swollen area. They had eyes, but they were concealed beneath their skin. They had a disgusting ability to elongate like an engorged slug, and if they chose they could form appendages that looked like arms and legs. They moved like inchworms or slugs, but without the use of slime, and they could move fast when they wanted to.

There was no discernable skeleton, and the difference in gender was based on the difference in their tentacles. The males had probes that could burrow into the female. The probes were not purely sex organs but also their way of communicating.

Then the purpose of the signposts became apparent—connecting to it was the way they communicated with their mother ship.

~***~

Carmella knew
that the Blob was aware she’d seen it. They could move fast, but she was closer to the house. She dropped the milk pail and darted across the yard with her heart thumping in her chest, afraid that it would be right at her heals with tentacles reaching for her neck. She bounded up the stairs and with a squeak she slammed the door and secured the locks.

Locks? What good were they when there were windows all throughout the house? She grabbed one of the rifles. She kept one loaded beside each door in case something chased her into her house. She was breathing hard when she eased toward the front window and moved the curtain back to look into her yard. She was sure the thing had followed her up onto her porch, but her porch was empty. She tried to see through the trees edging her yard but couldn’t make out the form of the Blob. She shook her head. Could she have imagined it? No. She might one day lose her mind from solitude, but she wasn’t there yet. She’d seen it standing behind the big tree.