Sanctuary (2 page)

And out of the smoke locusts came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth.  They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads.

—REVELATION 9:3

Jennie Ransom wanted to thro
w
a tantrum like a three-year-old.

Her mom finished drying her hands on the checkered dishtowel and looked up at her. “I can’t believe they are even going to hold classes with all that’s going on. Regardless, you’re not going.”

“Why not? My roommate is going back. It’s ridiculous that you’re going to keep me home.”

“Do you think I care what your roommate and her parents are doing?” Mom’s stern look tried to shame her.

Jennie refused to let it. “Obviously not.”

“Look, Jennie,” Mom said, as she placed a hand on her daughter's shoulder. Jennie ripped away and crossed her arms, glaring at her. Mom didn’t frown or glare back, but her eyes looked both tired and hurt. “I don’t like this anymore than you do, but with the chaos the world is in right now, your sophomore year of college will have to be put on hold.”

Jennie sighed, clenching and unclenching her jaw. The breeze from the inch gap in the kitchen window blew wisps of brown hair into her face. She leaned her back against the kitchen sink. Why did her parents have to be so overprotective? The alien ships had simply hovered for the past six weeks. Sure, the poisoned water had killed many people—but that was on the other side of the world. No one she knew had been harmed. And maybe it had been a mistake—maybe they were simply trying to make it drinkable for themselves, not trying to kill people. If the aliens wanted to destroy them, wouldn't it have happened by now? She was so tired of sitting around, doing nothing.

Mom searched Jennie’s face. “One of those alien ships hovers right over Norfolk. That’s less than twenty miles away.”

“But if I was at Virginia Tech, I’d be almost three hundred miles away.”

“There’s one over D.C., too,” her mother continued as though she hadn’t heard. “And if war breaks out, like the newscasters are saying, I’d rather have you here than three hundred miles away. Who knows what they are capable of? Just look at the sun.”

Her mom walked to the window over the kitchen sink and pointed. Jennie reluctantly turned her head. The oversized orange ball that replaced the sun was a sad facsimile of what it used to be. Black spots marred the surface from where the aliens had attacked it.
Bigger, yet not as warm.
The thought barely made any sense to her.

“But the aliens have just been sitting there for weeks, Mom. They haven’t moved, yet.”

“…yet.” Her mother repeated, a finger raised.

“Do you expect me to stay indoors all the time, or am I allowed to go outside?”

“That’s just mean, Jennie. You can go to the community college while you’re home, so you don’t fall behind in your studies. I just don’t want you to be far away should something happen.”

Even though it was her goal to lay a guilt trip on her mom, Jennie still felt a twinge of remorse when she looked into those sad brown eyes. She took a deep breath and uncrossed her arms.

“Fine. I’ll get online and register for classes today.”

Her heart broke a little at the thought. The freedom she’d discovered her freshman year away from home slipped through her fingers. Up until now, she could hardly wait to go back, just to get out from her mother and father’s rules and constant, “Where are you going?” Now she resigned herself to the loss of freedom. She swallowed a lump in her throat.

“Good. I’m glad you understand,” Mom said, laying a hand successfully on Jennie’s shoulder and kissing her cheek.

“Yeah, yeah.” Jennie shrugged her off and took her cell phone from her pocket. Her thumbs moved across the keys and texted Jessica, her roommate.

Not going back! Rents have me on lockdown. :(

“Could you move out of the way, honey?” Mom pushed on Jennie’s hip to get under the kitchen sink. Jennie flung her hands in the air and threw herself into a chair at the kitchen table. Now her mom wanted control of where she stood in the kitchen.

That sucks!
Jessica texted back,
Zeta Psi is gonna miss u.

Ugh. Her crush on Freddie would just have to wait, too. The frat boy hardly noticed her as a freshman last year anyway, except to offer her beer. Jennie always politely took the can, holding it so that no one else would offer her one, and eventually left it unopened on a coffee table. She hated the taste, and the guilt of her parents transcended the three hundred miles, too.

I know,
Jennie texted,
And Chinese on Wed w/o me, 2 :(

The ache in her chest sank deeper into her stomach.

Her mother pulled out gardening gloves and a bag of
Mulch & Grow
from the cabinet.

“Why are you bothering with that? It’s not like those tomatoes are going to grow anyway. It’s too cold.”

“With some tender loving care, they just might.” Mom gave her a crooked grin, rising from her knees with the bag and gloves. She wore a floral sweater and her gardening jeans, a ridiculous outfit for July in Virginia, normally the hottest month of the year.

Now the temperature registered thirty degrees lower than it used to. Outside, it was a balmy sixty-two degrees. Jennie’s favorite weather, in fact, except that it was so unnatural that she just couldn’t enjoy it. “So you’re going to pretend that everything’s fine?”

“Yep.”

“But not fine enough for me to go back to school?”

“Nope.”

“Does Dad agree on this, too?”

“Yep.”

“Whatever!” Jennie gave an exasperated squeal and threw her hands in the air again. She rubbed her temple. A headache was coming.

Her father slept upstairs, even though the late morning sun rose over the trees. Her father naturally rose early, but that was before the aliens came. Now, he stayed up late every night watching 24-hour news stations, waiting for something to happen. The house was quiet. Her father and little brother slept, and the television rested in silence. Her mother slipped out the door to the garden, and Jennie stood to look outside the window through the top half of the kitchen door. Whistling, her mother hopped down the steps toward her tomato plants in the weak, half-yellow sunlight.

Jennie shrugged and headed to the cupboard as a triad beep went off in her hand. She read Jessica’s text.

Gonna miss u 2 much! :(

Shaking her head, Jennie turned her sadness to irritation with her headache and stuck the phone in her pocket without texting back. She couldn’t stand it anymore. She reached up into the cupboard for a glass and headed to the kitchen sink. Bottled water couldn’t be trusted unless it was over two months old. She ran the tapped groundwater through the filter for a moment and watched her mother out the window above the sink.

Her mom bent over the plants, spreading her
Mulch & Grow.
Even though it was nearly eleven, the lighting made it appear dusk. The golden hue gave her mother a halo over her nut brown hair. Jennie really did love her mother, but she loved her better when there were more miles between them.

Jennie filled the glass and set it on the counter. She needed an ibuprofen.

As she reached up to the top shelf in the pantry, a vibration started in her chest. Holding the white bottle in her hand, she turned around confused.

Like a jet when it flew too low, the rumble increased in intensity as it approached. Jennie watched the glass tremble on the counter top for a moment before fear clenched her stomach. “MOM!?”

She rushed to the sink and looked out the window, but her mother wasn’t in the garden any more. Jennie barreled through the kitchen, the vibrations in her chest like bass on a stereo. “MOM?”

When Jennie reached the back door, she saw them. Four large dog-like creatures with pinched faces like bulldogs and lion-like manes. They snarled, and one of them leapt at the window on the top half of the door when it saw her. Jennie jumped back and fell hard on the cold tile floor. The bottle of painkiller bounced across the kitchen tiles. The creature slammed against the window a second time, cracking it. She blinked hard. Her heart sunk, and the hairs on her arms stood on end. A horrendous gargling howl rent the air, causing a shiver down her spine. She held her breath and waited for the creature to slam into the door again.

“What on earth?” she whispered to herself.

When the third attempt never came, she scrambled toward the door. Blinking hard, she used the door knob to help herself stand. Out the cracked window, her mother was still out of sight, but the last of the dogs headed across the field behind her backyard.

“MOM?” Jennie called out.

The rumbling faded, and the vibrations in her chest receded with the dogs. She pulled open the door and rushed onto their back deck. “Mom, where are you?”

When she reached the banister, she looked over the side. Her mom lay sprawled with one hand on the lattice. Blood gushed from Mom’s leg and her opposite arm. Jennie’s ears rang and flooded with every beat of her heart.

Jennie didn’t know how she got to the second floor of her house, but she found herself shaking her sleeping father. How had he slept through the rumbling? “Outside, it’s Mom…”

Her father leapt from the bed. Mickey, her little brother, lay asleep and undisturbed. Dad ran down the stairs and outside in his flannel pajama bottoms and white t-shirt. He scooped Mom up to his chest and carried her inside. Blood stained his shirt in crimson.

“Jennie, call 911!”  Her father had said it at least three times before it finally registered in her brain.

She pulled the cell phone from her pocket, but it refused to connect. With a groan, she grabbed the cordless from the wall receiver, glad her heart stopped pounding in her head so she could hear.

“All operators are busy at this time,” a mechanical voice deadpanned, “Please stay on the line, and the next available operator will take your call.”

“They have me on hold, Dad. Should I hang up and try again?” She held the phone in both hands away from her face.

“No, just stay on the line.” Her father lifted the shredded jeans from Mom’s leg. “It looks like a shark bite. What on earth happened?”

Jennie took in the damage through tear-filled eyes. A huge chunk was taken from her mother’s calf, exposing the fibrous tendons that covered the bone in her leg. A bloodstain grew on the beige couch. Was she going to die? Panic rose up.

“What happened, Jennie?”

“I...I...They looked like lions, or dogs, or something. The rumbling shook the whole house…I tried to go outside to get Mom, but—” A sob blocked her throat.

Her father grabbed a throw pillow and held it against the leg. Mom’s exposed forearm laid across her chest in much the same condition as her calf.

“Grab me the duct tape.”

Jennie suddenly remembered the phone, put it back to her ear, and headed to the hall closet. She reached for the shelf above the jackets and grabbed the junk basket next to the toolbox.

“Please stay on the line. An operator will be with you shortly.”

She shoved the phone in the crook of her neck and fished through the box.  Half the contents dropped around her feet.
Who cares?
When her fingers wrapped around the silver duct tape, a short-lived relief sent prickles down her arms. But the urgency gripped her chest in less than a heartbeat, and she threw the junk basket on the ground with the rest of the items.

“Hurry, Jennie!” her father called from the living room. “And turn on the TV. Maybe they’ll have something about what’s going on.”

She handed her father the tape and turned toward the TV. The mechanical voice on the phone came through again, followed by more easy listening.

When she clicked on the TV, the shouting and wailing began before the picture warmed up on the screen. A sideways picture of New York City broke through, with the shaky voice of the newscaster voicing over.

“What we are watching now – I can’t believe it – is live footage of Times Square,” the newscaster’s voice paused for a deep breath. “We’ve lost our man on the scene and his camera man to what appears to be some kind of new alien creature. Just a short half-hour ago, the doors to the ship that hovered above Central Park opened and these dog-like creatures flooded out.”

Jennie couldn’t pull her eyes from the screen. She straightened and dropped the phone on the hardwood. The battery popped out and skidded across the floor.