Forging Zero (2 page)

…and
there was nothing he could do to stop it.

More
than once during his vigil, Joe found his hands sweaty, his skin broken out in
goosebumps.  As each new snippet of information came in from the White House, the
feeling of dread intensified, congealing in his guts like a cold, hard rot. 
Unlike Sam, Joe knew what it meant for their family.  For Dad.  A few hours
after the aliens first landed, Joe had heard Dad and Manny discussing the
military’s order to stand down.  He had heard their furtive whispers about a
group of Marines ‘taking things into their own hands.’ 

Joe
wasn’t an idiot.  He knew what that meant.  He also knew his dad didn’t stand a
chance.  Not against
that
. 

Tens of
thousands of massive, skyscraper-sized ships, their sleek black bodies gleaming
like obsidian, had landed on whatever building, parking lot, shopping mall, or
school that got in their way.  The news helicopters that hadn’t been shot down had
caught live pictures of the masses of aliens that came marching out of each
ship, looking like glossy black ants marching in perfect synchronicity.

There
were too many of them.  Some experts said they’d unloaded a tenth of the
population of Earth from those ships, and each one a hardened warrior sporting
advanced weaponry and glistening black suits that seemed to be utterly
impenetrable to anything humans had to throw at them.

Dad
didn’t stand a chance.  Nobody did.

Thus, Joe
ignored Sam’s know-it-all bullshit and clung to every scrap of information,
listening to the same tiny tidbits replayed over and over until he could repeat
them by heart, praying to God that it was a bad dream and his Dad wouldn’t have
to go to war.

God
wasn’t listening.

The
invasion wasn’t a game, wasn’t a huge hoax, wasn’t a dream.  It was real, and
the longer the aliens stayed camped out in the headquarters of every major
government on the planet, secretly talking to world leaders behind closed
doors, the more agitated the populace got.  A thousand different debaters on
television had a thousand different opinions.  They claimed the aliens were
invaders, there to take humans as slaves.  Or liberators, there to raise human
consciousness, end war, and give humanity great new technology.  Or diplomats,
there to invite them into a vast alien democracy.

In the
end, they were all right.

They
called themselves Ooreiki.  When they weren’t encased in inky black suits and
bulbous ebony helmets, they were squat brown creatures with huge, glistening
eyes, tentacles protruding from their heads and bodies, and four parallel slits
along each side of leathery necks that fluttered like gills, though they
breathed air as well as any human.  They also lived a really long time.  Some
said four, even five hundred years.

The
Ooreiki claimed they were not alone.  They said they came from an immense alien
society, one that spanned the entire universe, swallowing whole galaxies and
all the species within.  Earth was only one of hundreds of thousands of planets
to fall under its dominion, the latest in its ever-expanding search for the
ends of space.

And, in
their very first press-release, translated by a terrified-looking woman in a
rumpled business suit, they told humanity what would be expected of it, now
that it had been tested and accepted as a sentient race and given a seat in
Congress.  The woman’s mascara-smeared eyes darted continually to something
behind the camera as she listed out new law after new code after new
regulation.  It was the end, however, that made every hair on Joe’s body stand
on end.

These
are your rights and responsibilities during your probationary period, as your
formal rights have not yet cleared Congressional committees.  In summary, you
will do as you are told.  Do
not
attack,
confront, or in any way impede the movement or actions of Congressional
forces.  Relinquish all of your projectile weapons to our collection stations,
which will be set up in every major city by the end of the day.  For a full
list of prohibited weapons, see the local collection center.  Anyone found with
a weapon on this list will be killed as a saboteur.  We say again, anyone who
stands in our way will be annihilated.

The
matter-of-fact way the aliens spoke of Earth’s submission was accentuated by
the way the government did nothing to stop them.  There were no brilliant
aerial battles, no brave last stands.  Jets remained grounded, guns remained
quiet, missiles remained siloed.  As Joe agonized over every news clip, Earth
simply gave up without a fight.

With no
one to challenge them, all that was left was to listen to their demands. 
Endless demands, ranging from the mundane; a few odd souvenirs for individual
aliens to bring home to their families as gifts, to the outrageous; a global
meeting to pick a single representative to speak for Earth.  And still their
demands came.  Rules for living, rules for government, rules for population…

Joe’s
mom kept getting distracted watching the news and burned so many nightly meals
she ended up screaming, throwing pots of spaghetti and burnt Brussels sprouts
across the kitchen.  She didn’t cook after that. 

His
father’s troubled heart was not as obvious, but Joe could see it.  His dad had
a lot of the old Celtic blood in him, blood that left him smiling and
constantly at play, even when things went wrong.  He wasn’t playing now.  The
way he held his broad shoulders, the constant tension in his muscular body, the
way he looked at Joe and Sam when he thought they were distracted—together,
these things were even more disturbing than their mother’s spaghetti-fest.

For
once, Joe was glad he was still a kid.  He was glad this was somebody else’s
problem.

And
yet, he couldn’t stop watching the newsfeeds, his lungs aching from holding his
breath for too long.  He knew something bad was happening inside the White House,
that the worst of the aliens’ demands was yet to come.  Something about the way
the aliens stood guard on the lawn, their onyx suits matching their sleek
obsidian guns like they were stone statues in a museum of freaks, left Joe sick
with apprehension.  

Then
they murdered a Secret Service Agent on live TV. 

The
young man had been trying to get the President to safety through a secret
tunnel out of the White House when the aliens caught him.  As Joe watched, they
dragged him out onto the lawn and shot him in the face with some flesh-dissolving
bluish goo that made his bloody neck look like it was oozing purple snot, then
went right back into the White House without saying a word, pushing the
president ahead of them like a criminal.  The picture of the grinning young man
that the news crews flashed all over TV only a few minutes later showed him
holding a baby, wearing a Marine uniform in front of an American flag.  Seeing
it reminded Joe of similar pictures of his dad and he quietly locked himself in
the bathroom until his queasiness went away.  He knew the worst was still to
come.

When
CNN broadcasted the aliens’ final list of demands, it read like something the
conquistadors might have dictated to the South Americans.  They wanted
allegiance.  They wanted hostages.  They wanted supplies. 

And
they wanted children. 

Ninety-eight
percent of the healthy ones.  Boys and girls.  Everyone five to twelve.  To
start a human section of their vast alien army.

And,
just that suddenly, Sam wasn’t such a smartass anymore.  He actually got kind
of quiet—a first for Sam—and spent a lot of time in his room.  Their mom spent
a lot of time with him, crying.

All
over the world, riots broke out at the news, and suddenly the reporters had
something else to talk about.  The Crips and the Bloods and the Hells Angels
were taking a stand right alongside disbanded soldiers, National Guard, and Marines. 
People everywhere were dying in swaths, the aliens obliterating whole city
blocks if too many people tried to fight.  Joe stayed glued to the TV, only
eating when his stomach distracted him from the aliens marching across the
screen.  They were so precise, so perfect…like the old World War II videos of
Nazi soldiers.  It triggered something primal that made him want to crawl under
his bed and hide.

But not
his dad.  When they finally announced that the alien collection crews would be
sweeping through their neighborhood, Joe’s father pulled out his old military
work cammies and started getting dressed.  They were the desert ones, the ones
Joe had associated with war back when Joe had to stand in a crowd with his mom
and watch his dad get on a ship to go overseas. 

What
Joe remembered most about that first night was his father’s sleeves.  He took
hours to get them right, ironing them so flat they wrapped around his biceps
like Celtic armbands.  His dad prided himself on having the most tightly rolled
sleeves in his unit, tighter than the captains and majors and generals
themselves.  Joe could always tell his father from a distance just by looking
at his sleeves.

“A
Marine takes pride in his job, Joe.  Even if it’s rolling sleeves.”
  It was what his father had said a thousand times before when he
labored over his uniform.  Now he said nothing.  Joe and Sam watched him,
neither able to dredge up the courage to ask him why he was getting dressed in
the middle of the night.  The silence was ominous.

When
their mother saw what her husband was doing, she ushered Joe and Sam to their
rooms and made them lock the doors.  Through the cracks, Joe heard her argue
with his father, plead with him, and cry, but finally she retreated and
sequestered herself in the other end of the house.  Joe crept back out to watch
his father iron his cammies, his anxiety growing like a hard lump in his
throat.  Sam followed him, his skinny ten-year-old body hunched close behind
Joe as they came to a stop beside their father’s ironing board.

For
long moments, the three of them just stood there watching the iron in silence. 
Then, softly, without looking up, their dad said, “Sometimes you’ve gotta stand
up for yourself, even when you know you ain’t got a chance.”  Outside, they
heard shouts and helicopters and car alarms.

“What
are you doing, Dad?” Sam whispered.

“Yeah,
Dad,” Joe said softly.  “They disbanded the Marines.  You heard the TV.”

The
iron stopped, settling over the sleeve.  Their father stared down at it, his
muscular arm no longer moving.  When he looked at them, Joe was stunned to see
tears.  Their father settled his gaze on Sam.  “You get yourself in MIT, Sam. 
You’re gonna be a big guy like your brother and me, but brute strength ain’t
gonna win this.  It’s gonna be someone with a brain like yours, and you ain’t
no warrior.  You’re a scholar, kid.  Stay here and figure out a way to beat
these bastards.”  The iron started to move again.

Sam’s
chest caught in a sob.  “I’ll go.  Stay here, Dad.  I’ll go with them.”

“No.” 
Their father’s tone brooked no argument.

Sam,
the idiot, argued anyway.  “But—”

“Go back
to your room.”  Their father’s voice was filled with warning.

“But
Dad—”

“Go,
Sam.”

Giving
Joe an agonized look, Sam went.

Joe’s
father finished ironing in silence and then tugged his cammi jacket over his
wide shoulders.  The sleeves rested just above his biceps, crisp and perfect
despite the chaos outside.  Seeing it on his father for the first time in four
years, Joe felt a cold chill.  When their eyes met, there was a sadness in his
father’s face, a recognition that Joe could not understand.   He watched his
dad pick up the three guns he’d left by the front door, his throat burning with
the need to say something.

“Take
care of your brother, Joe.”  Then his father opened the door and disappeared
into the chaos of black smoke, gunfire, and screaming.

That
was two months ago.

Joe was
still fourteen, but he felt older now.  Compared to the other kids in the hazy
red light of the obsidian dome, he was ancient.

I’m
not supposed to be here.  Sam is.

Joe
closed his eyes and let his head touch the wall behind him.  The black
substance depressed slightly at his touch, cradling his skull with its eerie,
alien perfection.  Like everything else on the ship, the wall seemed alive.  It
seemed to move with a soul of its own, like a billion little ants covered the
surface.  Sometimes his hair stuck, just enough that it was uncomfortable, but
not enough to pull it out.  The cloth under his butt and against his
shoulder-blades likewise fused to the stuff. 

Behind
closed eyes, an image blazed in Joe’s mind.  His dad, stepping into the
whirling smoke outside, sleeves rolled for war.

Joe
immediately fought the surge of anger twisting in his gut.  The government had
ordered the Marines not to get involved.  They’d
told
everyone to stay
in their homes, to do whatever the aliens told them.  Yet Joe’s father had
rallied his old friends anyway.  Why?  Why couldn’t they just hide Sam?  Why
did Dad have to fight? 

The
children trapped in the room with Joe had long since stopped crying.  Some were
sleeping, snot and tears leaking down their faces.  Many were huddled in
whimpering groups, wide-eyed, clutching their knees or whatever relics of home
they had managed to salvage before the sweeps.  One little girl had a sooty
cloth doll, one half of its head singed from the fires.