Dark Energy (17 page)

I refused to believe it. Maybe their reality was like that, but my reality was that the good guys won and the bad guys lost. Maybe the bad guys did some really horrible stuff first, but the good guys fixed it. Was I naive? Probably. Almost certainly. But I didn't care. The good guys were going to win this time.

Eff you, Masters.

New Mexico was the Land of Enchantment. What I loved about it was that the nickname didn't refer to enchanting beauty or enchanting charms. It referred to real enchantment, like magic. There were twenty-three Native American tribes in New Mexico, and I'd been to many of their dances and feast days—especially when I was little and my mom was still alive. And there was something otherworldly about the state, something that made you wonder if it wasn't like any other place on Earth—if it was connected to something deeper. The people here lived simpler lives—my dad's parents often called the reservation a Third World country because so many people didn't have electricity or running water. To me it was peaceful, quiet, and—dare I say—spiritual. My grandmother's reservation was like a little string attached to my heart that never untied, that never let me forget that part of my heritage lived off the land.

I have always felt totally at home in the barrenness of New Mexico, despite the fact that I lived my whole life in lush, green Florida. There's something about sitting outside in the shade of a juniper, watching a stinkbug waddle across dry desert sand, while the buffeting wind is blowing through the sage behind you and the salt grass in front of you, and the horizon stretches out into the distance to some far-off monuments of sandstone. It makes you feel human.

There was more to New Mexico than that, of course. There was the food, which, next to seafood, was my favorite food on Earth. Green chile and mutton stew—I know that sounds gross, but that's because you've never been sick in a hogan, a traditional Navajo house, and had your grandma cook you a pot of stew while you lay on a stack of blankets.

And, yes, it's
chile
with an
e
. I don't know why that bothers so many people, but it's how it's spelled. Look it up.

We made a final pit stop at a grocery store in Cuba, New Mexico, just before entering the reservation. It was dinnertime, and we were all hungry—even Suski. After picking up a week's worth of groceries—mostly as a payment to my grandma for the surprise visit—we bought some fried chicken and potatoes at the deli. We sat at the picnic table outside the store and ate, mostly in silence. We were all exhausted and sore from almost a full twenty-four-hour drive.

“What if they're tracing our credit cards?” Rachel asked, chewing slowly.

“I thought about that, too,” Kurt said. “But then why wouldn't they have found us by now? Just follow the gas receipts and look for a BMW. It's not like that car blends in.”

“Maybe they're waiting till dark,” Brynne said. “I mean, they attacked the Governor's Residence during the night. Sioux Falls, too. Maybe they like to be in the dark.”

“This is the last place we'll use the credit cards,” I said. “And we've probably got another seventy miles to Grandma's house. We'll do our best to hide the car when we get there.” I thought of the shade houses that Grandma used to build during the summer, with canopies made of juniper boughs. We could do something like that to hide Bluebell. She'd probably get scratched, but that was better than the alternative.

Which meant, of course, that I was terrified. If I was willing to scratch my baby with pine needles, I had to be going out of my freaking mind.

I looked across the table at Kurt, who looked back at me and smiled through a full mouth. There was the tiniest wink—an indication that he knew I was having a rough time and he wanted to comfort me. He couldn't hold my hand right now, but he could wink.

I winked back.

Rachel held a newspaper and read while the rest of us ate.

“There was another attack,” she said, finishing chewing a potato and swallowing it.

She suddenly had all our attention, as though a car hit its
brakes and squealed to a stop.

“The Utah Data Center,” she said. “They have video—I bet it's all over TV.”

“What's the Utah Data Center?” Kurt asked, a half second before the rest of us asked it.

“National Security Agency,” Rachel answered. “Remember when there was that big scandal about how the NSA was listening in on everyone's phone calls?”

Coya looked at me. “NSA is not NASA?”

“No. NASA deals with outer space. NSA deals with communication.”

“So what happened?” Brynne asked.

“The Masters shot up the place,” Rachel said, and then looked at Coya and Suski. “Three ships, small ones. They demanded records about you two. The place went into lockdown. One thing can be said in the NSA's favor: they have cameras everywhere. So, when they couldn't get what they wanted, they left, but they gave us a really good look at their ships. It's the same kind that hit the Governor's Residence and included the same aliens—they've identified four.”

“Four ships?” Kurt said.

“They've got to be scouts,” I said. “Or they're just here to get revenge. Those ships are too small to abduct more than a dozen people.”

“A missile put a hole in one,” Brynne said, reading over Rachel's shoulder. “It was bombing the tent city. It was also
identified as one of the ships that hit the NSA.”

“Well,” Kurt said, “this store has security cameras, and it looks like the Masters are trying to read our mail. I vote we get out of here.”

We all took a bathroom break and I warned them that it was the last time they'd have running water for . . . I didn't know. How long were we going to be hiding out here? Until my dad came to get us—that's what he had said.

Back in the car, I turned on the radio, scanning through AM radio stations until I found one that came in clearly. We listened as we drove out west onto the reservation, gleaning what news we could. There hadn't been any attacks on the tent city today, but the air force had the skies over Lakeville filled with aircraft. While we'd been driving away from Minnesota, antiair missiles had been driven to Minnesota, and they were being set up all around the site. No one had seen any sign of the Masters' spaceships since Utah.

None of that filled me with confidence. They had to be somewhere. They couldn't have just fallen off the edge of the world. I mean, yes, that was exactly what a spaceship could do, but why? Why make threats and then disappear?

“They're not as powerful as they want us to believe,” Brynne said, suddenly outraged. She was sitting on Suski's lap in the front seat (and probably loving every minute of it). “Maybe that's the whole reason they're hiding—they're in little ships that can get shot down. Maybe they know they'll
lose if they try to attack the crash site.”

“They are very strong,” Suski said.

Brynne spoke. “You've only seen them being very strong—you haven't seen their spaceships. Rachel, what is the deal with our spaceships? They say that parts of them are as thin as tinfoil?”

“Right,” Rachel said. “The one space shuttle crashed just because a piece of foam hit the shielding. And the other blew up because an O-ring got too cold.”

“So I'm saying: what if their spaceships aren't very strong?” Brynne said.

“But in the news,” I said, “they said one of them got hit by some kind of rocket, and they just took off and flew away.”

“But maybe they're damaged,” Kurt said, getting excited now. “Remember: they started with six ships—that we know about—and it sounds like they're down to only one.”

Coya held her hands up. “You're all forgetting. We know these monsters. They are very strong. If they find us, we will die. There are not enough of us.”

The car was silent for a long moment. I tried to guess how many aliens we were actually talking about—we saw two for sure. But maybe they'd left another in the ship? A pilot? And there had been some fighting taking place off camera. So were there four of them? There really could be as many as they could cram into that ship, but betting on at least four seemed reasonable.

“Guys,” I said, letting out a long breath. “I'm sorry I brought you this way. We should have gone to the crash site. We'd be safer there.”

“No,” Suski said. “You are a good leader.”

“No,” I said. “I asked for you to come with me because I thought it would be better, safer. I thought I could protect you better than the FBI could. It's not working out that way.”

“I think you're a remarkable person, Alice Goodwin,” he said. “I don't think many humans would do what you have done. I don't think many of my people would do what you have done.”

“They would have done something better, that didn't get us caught.”

“No,” he said. “You have done a good thing.”

I took a deep breath and then let out a long sigh. “I don't know what the good thing is anymore. I'm scared.”

“You don't have to be scared.”

I glanced at him and forced a smile. “You'll protect us?”

“Ever since I was a boy I was taught that I was going to be the leader. I didn't know what to do, because there was so much death and I knew I couldn't stop it. What good is a leader when all they can do is help people who will die anyway?”

I smiled now, a real, exhausted one. “I feel like that right now.”

“We may die,” Suski said. “I knew long ago that I may
die, and I understand death. But I also learned that I can be a leader who helps people be happy whether they live or die.”

“I wish you'd give me some lessons in that right now.”

“You are teaching me lessons in it every moment,” he said. “You are a good leader. Because you love those you lead.”

I felt a tear roll down my cheek. “And what if we get caught?”

“Then we are caught, and we will die. But we will have been happy first, and it will be a good death.”

A good death. That wasn't what I had planned for. No death—that was what I wanted. I wanted to keep my friends safe. Coya and Suski hadn't mutinied just so they could be torn to shreds by the Masters here on Earth. And Brynne, Rachel, and Kurt—they didn't sign up for any of this. They shouldn't be in the line of fire. They didn't know what they were in for when they came on this trip, when they became friends with the Guides.

The sun was down over the horizon when we rolled into the dusty cutoff of my grandma's town. There wasn't much there—the chapter house, three houses, and a water tower. It wasn't even really a town—it was a collection of dirt roads. If you drove down any of the roads far enough, you'd eventually run into a house.

I turned at the fence post that I recognized as hers. There was a pattern of reflectors on the steel pole so you could identify it in the dark.

We drove over a cattle grate and onto a hardpacked dirt road. A mouse skittered across our path in the headlights and disappeared into the brush at the side. I felt a lump in my throat—was I getting my grandma involved in our deaths, too? If the aliens were waiting for dark before they attacked, then shouldn't we expect them now?

The road wound around half a dozen bends in the mesa, and we passed a few houses before finally reaching a broad clearing. I pulled into the center, my lights resting on Grandma's hogan. It was the traditional home of the Navajos—round, made of logs, with a log-and-mud roof. A stovepipe came out of the center, and I saw smoke puffing out of it. Warm yellow light shone through the cracks around the door.

“Let me go explain, guys,” I said, and pulled off my seatbelt. In Navajo tradition it was good manners to wait in the car until the person came out of her house and invited you up, but it was my grandma, and I figured it would be okay to break with tradition just this once.

I opened the car door just as she did, her short, thin frame silhouetted against the firelight behind her.

“Ya'at'eeh,”
she called out.

“Grandma,” I replied, and hurried across the dirt to where she was standing.

“Is that my Alice?” she asked with a gasp.
“Sh'atsóí.”

“Shimasani,”
I said.

“You're so big,” she said, reaching her arms out to me.
“Come here, you beautiful girl.”

I grabbed her in a bear hug. We were so alike, my grandma and me—same height, same hair color. I was even named after her.

“I'm in trouble,
Shimasani
,” I said, starting to cry. “We came here because we didn't know where else to go.”

“Come in, child,” she said, her voice strong and heavily accented. Her hogan smelled of cedar smoke and tea, and she pulled me inside, setting me on the bed beside her. She hugged me close. “Tell me what's wrong.”

“I told you what's wrong when we talked on the phone. I'm in the middle of it,” I said, and through sobs I explained how I'd ended up as friends with Coya and Suski, how I'd promised to protect them, and how we were on the run. I explained the parts that she probably didn't hear without a television or radio: about the mutiny, about the horrible life they'd had on the ship, always expecting death. And I told her how I'd come here, foolishly, seeking some kind of asylum—a refuge from all the problems of the world.

“We'll take care of you, baby girl,” she said, rocking me in her arms. “We'll take care of you,
nizhóní
.” She held my hand loosely in hers—her skin weathered from a life of living off the land.

I sniffled. “There are six of us,” I said. “Your hogan is so small.”

She laughed. “You are too used to your big house. We
can all fit. Have you eaten?”

I nodded.

“Well, take me out to meet these friends of yours.”

I stood on shaky legs and led her by the hand to Bluebell. My friends were waiting by the car.