Red the First (9 page)

“
Don’t act like a caveman,
Red,” she snorted. “Trust me when I say that I have better things
to do than poke around in that thing on top of your neck all day.
It takes a lot of concentration to do it and I have enough on my
own mind without having to worry about what’s on yours.”

“
Duly noted.”

“
My ability isn’t completely
reliable, but imagine how handy it would be if we were traveling
abroad.”

“
Yes, I’m sure it will be
useful when we board that next flight to Paris,” Red remarked
sarcastically. “Or the next time we visit the Great
Wall.”

“
Humph.” Elizabeth took her
empty plate to the counter and slammed it into the sink. “Who are
you to mock me? At least I don’t believe in grocery store aliens!
What do you think it was shopping for—panty liners?”

Red sent imaginary darts at his wife’s
head. He had told her the entire tale on the condition she would
not belittle him or tell another soul. He shoved everything off of
the table with a sweep of his arm, sending plates, glasses, serving
dishes and silverware alike crashing to the floor. As he stormed
out of the house, he heard Elizabeth shout at him.

“
Real mature of you, Red.
Like I said before, you’re a big, grumpy ass!”

Chapter 12

Elizabeth regretted bringing up the
alien in such a condescending way, but Red had made light of her
ability to read thoughts. She frowned at the mess on the floor,
knowing the dishes would stay there forever unless she cleaned up
the remains herself. The food was a different story. She cleared up
the glass shards and dish fragments, and opened the back door and
yelled for Zena. The dog was a living garbage disposal. A mound of
black and brown fur bounded out of the woods, through the garden
and back door, sliding to a stop in front of Elizabeth. The dog
knew that when Elizabeth called, it could only mean one
thing—cleanup duty.

All Elizabeth had to do was stand over
the mess and point. “Treat!”

The dog wasn’t picky. As long as the
vegetables were coated in oil, or in dressing, it was the next best
thing to steak. Zena gulped dinner down in less than a minute.
Elizabeth let her lick the floor clean, patted her on the head, and
then opened the back door. Zena chose to curl up on the living room
rug instead, ignoring Elizabeth’s order to go outside.

“
Even the dog doesn’t listen
to me,” Elizabeth complained.

After cleaning the greasy spots with
soap and water, she plopped down on a rocker, nursing her wounded
pride.

Zena was asleep on her back, snoring
away, privates totally exposed as her hind legs splayed out in
utter relaxation. At least someone was content. Elizabeth retrieved
her lopsided experiment in basket weaving from the coffee table and
started working the reeds in and out, in and out, hoping the
repetitive motion would calm her down.

Red could be such an insensitive jerk.
She let out a long sigh. After an hour of working on the basket,
and numerous splinters in her fingers, the handle popped off and
scratched her chin. She was swearing when a knock rattled the front
door.

It was Nate, all bug-eyed and out of
breath. “We have a new arrival.”

They’d had newcomers before and it was
always exciting, but Nate seemed unusually agitated over the
development. Why?

Reading people’s minds was becoming
more second nature than she had let on. The young man’s thoughts
centered on the two-way radio from the celebration in the library.
A picture of a middle-aged black man with a neatly trimmed beard
and broad shoulders hung in his head. She realized Nate thought the
two were connected.

“
It’s not Hank, is
it?”

“
How the hell did you know
that?” Nate gave her a sidelong look.

“
Just a guess. Well, what
does he want?”

“
He says he’s from the
government.”

“
It still
exists?”

Nate shrugged.

“
The town council is
gathering in the Assembly Hall to meet him.”

Elizabeth went out to find Red. She
figured he was out in the woods behind the house, searching out
possible logs to chop up for firewood, his favorite place and way
to unwind. She found him deep in the forest, sitting by the creek,
chewing on a piece of grass. When she told him of the arrival, he
wordlessly got up and started toward the town center. She had to
jog to keep up with him. Obviously, he was still mad at her for the
‘alien’ comments.

They were the last to arrive at the
former burger joint, which now served as the town hall. The council
was already assembled: Dr. Patel, Professor Mary Linkletter, Farmer
Morningside, Jerome Fireside and Father Bob, the man whose
impartiality kept everything peaceful. Veronica Albright, who not
only looked sharp, but had a sharp mind as well, was the last
council member. The other women in town disliked her, probably
because she was both beautiful and opinionated, but Elizabeth found
the former computer guru’s forthrightness refreshing.

Elizabeth’s role was council secretary.
Basically, she took roll call, brought in a pitcher of drinking
water and glasses, provided the snacks, and jotted down the
minutes. Of all the people on the council, Elizabeth felt that she
was the least qualified, that she’d only been selected for the
council because her husband was the mayor. For that reason, she
tried to melt into the scenery and not make any waves.

An African American man, bald but with
a graying beard was at one of the swivel stools bolted to the floor
in front of what had been the dining counter. He swiveled around
when Red and Elizabeth entered, and stood to offer both of them a
firm handshake.

“
I’m General Hank Moore,” he
said with a gentlemanly southern drawl. “United States Department
of Extraterrestrial Affairs. Glad to meet you.”

Red’s demeanor stiffened at
extraterrestrial
. Hearing the general talk about it out in
the open was what Red had wanted, but after keeping his own
sighting a secret for so long, he was having misgivings about
talking about it. He’d originally seen the general, as a potential
ally, someone to verify that the alien he saw at the supermarket
was real. Now that Red was listening to another man making similar
claims, his cynical hat had come on.

“
Department of
Extraterrestrial Affairs?” Red asked with an incredulous
squint.

“
That’s what I said.”
General Moore motioned for everyone to be seated around the long
counter.

Red gave Elizabeth a quizzical look; he
wanted to know if she had sized up the newcomer yet, but she hadn’t
quite gotten a grip on the general’s thoughts.

“
Get him to talk more,” she
whispered to Red, hoping that would help open the general’s mind to
her.

“
How was the trip here?” Red
asked.

“
Tough.”

Elizabeth had paper spread out on the
table in front of her, pen ready, prepared to take notes. She
jotted down a few things, but her main purpose was to zone in on
the newcomer’s thoughts. A person’s words were the windows into his
or her mind. Even if she didn’t understand their meaning, they
flowed from the mind like water from a wellspring. She had learned
how to swim against the current to reach the source, but entering
the general’s mind was like diving into a mighty river. The torrent
threatened to sweep her away, but she fought with all her strength
and skill. In her limited experience, she had never met a mind
quite like this before.

Her hand stopped writing as she gazed
into space—the general’s innermost space. She saw images of steam
coming out of the radiator of a jeep and the general’s weathered
brown hands trying to fix the problem. Next came images of endless
highways and camping out under the cover of trees with starlight
flickering overhead. She also saw numerous occasions when the
general pulled an unusual-looking phone from the secret pocket
inside his flannel shirt. Holy crap…the thing was powered by a
nuclear battery. The general worried that carrying it so close to
his chest would give him cancer, but he held onto the phone like a
lifeline nevertheless.

“
I’m in,” she let Red know
with a whisper.

As General Moore talked to Hewego’s
senior council members, pictures ran through his head. These
pictures generated the words he used, but he carefully filtered
everything he said. Not that he intended to conceal anything, nor
did he intend to mislead them; the man was simply so disciplined
that every word, every action, had to pass an inspection
first.

She saw him camped out on the side of a
road, a pup tent in the background, warming beans over a small
fire. He placed a call on his nuclear phone. She couldn’t make out
what the party on the other end of the line was saying, but she saw
his thoughts grow darker and graver. He appeared to age ten years
all at once. He collapsed into a mound, scraping the dirt with his
nails, and sobbed. From the short trip inside his mind, she
understood that he wasn’t an emotional kind of guy. What could have
possibly gotten to him like that? Elizabeth didn’t want to
know.

She knew she ought to look away, break
the link, but like some sicko driving past a fresh car wreck, she
couldn’t help but stare.

“
Elizabeth.” Veronica came
to her chair, setting her hands on both Elizabeth’s shoulders. “You
look pale. Are you feeling okay?”

She shook her head, fighting back
tears—the general’s tears. “Just a bad piece of meat, I
think.”

Veronica returned to her own seat,
while Elizabeth maintained her link with the general.

On the journey to Hewego, he had met up
with two guys carrying machine guns. They both addressed him as
General Moore. She couldn’t be sure whether these were genuine
memories or delusions, but she was inclined to think the former.
His mind wasn’t a jumbled tangled mess like a deranged person’s
would be—she’d touched a few minds of the mentally ill in the past
few years, and this man was not one of those. In fact, the
general’s mind was extraordinarily organized—like hanging files
where everything was neatly labeled, and all the corners of the
paperwork matched up without any curled edges. General Moore
genuinely believed himself to be the highest ranking member of the
United States government to have survived the plague. She perceived
him as Atlas, the weight of the world bowing his back, and he
needed others to help shoulder the burden. Her chest felt like it
was being crushed in a vice, but she had to learn more.

She paused to make a few notes on the
paper, so it at least looked like she was keeping proper minutes,
but writing wasn’t easy when the world felt like it was spinning
out of control. Thirst seized her parched throat. Her fingers
grasped for a nearby glass of water and she gulped most of it down
like she’d just run a marathon. She ignored the inquisitive glares
of her fellow council members as she re-entered General Moore’s
mind.

She saw him in a huge planetarium
filled with military people and politicians. He wore a starched
white shirt, black tie and a blue jacket with four gleaming stars
on each shoulder. Everyone in the room was watching a presentation
that spanned an imitation universe filled with stars and
planets.

Wow! She choked on her water when she
saw the president of the United States was there in the
planetarium; she recognized the faces of several world leaders.
They were being addressed by a person unlike anyone she’d ever seen
before. His skin was lemon yellow and so translucent that his
internal organs were visible. Something like a heart pumped inside
his chest. His blue eyes glowed like fiery stars.

General Moore had filed the creature in
his mind as a friendly. The friendly warned those in the assembly
about the Celeruns, a race of creatures which had set a trajectory
through outer space, and how over the course of ten thousand years,
every planet they had visited was now completely and entirely
dominated by Celeruns. The friendly’s planet, flagged within its
own solar system, and Earth within its system, were highlighted on
the ceiling of the planetarium. “It’s too late for my world,” the
friendly said. “They’re already there; my species has been
relegated to one small corner of our planet, and in a few
generations we will be gone. Your planet is next.”

“
What can we do to stop
them?” The President asked.

“
The only thing you can do
is ensure the survival of your species. Recognize that mankind’s
reign is over, but that it’s not too late to start an evacuation.
Other worlds are standing by to help. They have offered to
transport five hundred thousand humans off Earth to worlds willing
to offer them permanent settlement, ensuring the survival of your
species.”

After a moment of silence, and a brief
consultation among the top leaders, the President spoke.

“
We will consider the
offer,” the President said, “but leaving millions to die is
unacceptable.”

“
Not to mention the panic an
evacuation would cause.” Elizabeth recognized the man speaking as
the leader of Russia. “We’ll have to find another way.”