The Object: Book One (Object Series) (8 page)

"Nervous day in
Louisville
, ladies and gentlemen."

He pulled his cigarette case out of his pocket, popped it open with one hand, and pulled out the longest partial.  Closing the case, he lost his grip and dropped it.  It rattled down the roof and into the gutter.

"
Sherman
!" Drake called up.  "How are you getting down?"

He lit the cigarette and took a long drag.

"Only way we can," he said, not loud enough for Drake to hear.

A loud crash came from inside and hot air shot out the window. 
Sherman
pulled Lillia up into his lap and scooted down to the ledge.  He stood, leaning back to make up for the extra weight.

Then he jumped.

~ ~ ~ ~

Whitney sat with her hands in her lap, staring at her plate.

"Hayden!" Barry yelled with a mouthful of food.

"Just let him sleep, Barry."

"He came home drunk last night, didn't he?"

She nodded.

Barry scooped a forkful of eggs and stuffed them in his mouth.  Then he chewed on a piece of bacon.

"I'm gonna rob the city."

She looked up at him.  "What?"

"You heard me."

"I don't know what you mean."

"The city is under quarantine and everyone of means has fled.  They left behind their homes, their cars, and most importantly their businesses.  Banks, jewelry stores, pawn shops.  Can you imagine all the cash, all the gold, all the diamonds people left behind?  It's a free-for-all.  All I need to do is collect, then find a way out of the city."

"What if the world is ending?"

"If you're counting on that, you might as well kill yourself now."

She sniffled.  "I'm scared, Barry.  I want to leave."

"Didn't you hear me?  I said the city is quarantined.  There's nowhere to go."

"But you said . . . there's got to be a way out.  We're going to die, Barry!"

Barry sighed.  He wiped his mouth with a napkin, got up, and came around the table.  He stood behind his wife and rubbed her shoulders.

"You should eat."

"I'm not hungry."

Down the hall, Hayden emerged from his room and went straight to the bathroom, slamming the door.

"Ouch, that's too hard," Whitney said.

He smiled, pet her on the head.  "You know, I'm going to be very busy from here on out," he spoke softly.  "I may not have time to come home most nights."

She was crying.  "You can't do that to me, Barry.  I'm terrified.  I don't know what to do.  I don't want to be alone.  Please."

In the bathroom, the shower came on.

"Thanks for breakfast," Barry said.

Then he wrapped his hands around Whitney's neck and squeezed, watching her naked legs kick out from her bathrobe, listening to the splashing sounds of Hayden in the shower.

Waking Up Falling

Lillia sensed she was falling before she opened her eyes, and when she did she caught a glimpse of Drake's pale, terrified face before shutting them again.  She felt
Sherman
's bony arms wrapped around her, smelled his rancid clothes, and behind the rush of wind in her ears she could hear the roar of the fire behind her.

Kate screamed and Drake called her name.  Then, suddenly, she was no longer falling.

I'm dead
, she thought. 
I'm dead now.

"Holy Jesus,"
Sherman
said, his mouth right next to her ear.  "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!"

~ ~ ~ ~

Hayden stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around his waist.  His head was pounding  He wiped the steam off the mirror and inspected the bruise on his cheekbone.  Those two frat boys had put up quite a fight, but Hayden handled them well.  A kick in the ribs for one and two punches for the other.  Everyone at the party had looked stunned.  A scrawny five-foot-eight kid against two football players, and he put them on the ground so fast half the crowd missed it.

In twelve years of studying
Tae Kwon Do,
Hayden had never used his skills outside the dojo.  Sometimes he broke into the high school gymnasium after hours to use the exercise equipment and practice, but that was it. None of his friends knew he could fight.  Not even his dad.

His dad knew he took
Tae Kwon Do,
but to Barry it was just another boring subject of polite dinner table chatter, like strangers stuck sitting together in a crowded restaurant.  He had no idea what Hayden was capable of.  Hayden hadn't even known until last night.

It happened in the front yard of C.J. Norton's house.  Right by
3rd Street
on a busy evening.  Cops could have rolled past any second, but a group of people had gathered outside to stare up at the object and talk about it.

An argument unrelated to the object began to swell between a girl and one of the guys Hayden ended up taking down.  At first everyone ignored it, but as the arguing turned to yelling and the yelling to screaming, more and more people turned away from the enormous alien rock in the sky to better understand the context of the fight.

Hayden was the last to tear his eyes away from the object.  A loud pop was what drew him to the crowd, then the wave of gasps and some girl saying, "Oh my God, I can't believe he hit her."

Before he realized it, Hayden was pushing his way through the ring of people.  Someone spilled a solo cup full of cold beer all down his back.  He didn't know if it was an accident or not, and before he could address the subject he spilled out into the open center of the crowd and found a girl cowering, covering her face and crying, in the arms of another girl.  A few paces removed stood a thick-necked frat boy being grappled by a friend of equal size and stature.

They both saw him coming and came forward, their struggle set aside immediately at the chance to fight someone small and wimpy.

The rest took place in an instant, and before anyone could say anything Hayden took off down the street to his car.

Hayden brushed his teeth and got dressed, then pulled his wallet, keys, and loose change from the pocket of his dirty pants--he’d slept in them last night.

When he stepped out of the bathroom, he found his mother lying dead on the floor.

~ ~ ~ ~

In the middle of the night, Roger and Danny loaded up on handguns and took one .12 gauge shotgun apiece from a gun store, filling shopping bags with ammunition.  Roger felt stupid, but he'd played too many video games not to get a certain thrill from having a pistol sticking out from the waistband of his pants.

The roads were empty, which made turning around easy after realizing they'd passed Stacie's apartment.  They found her building on a little road behind a large multiplex that housed, among other things, a movie theater and a grocery store.

When they stepped up to Stacie's front door, Danny began to kick at it.

"Whoa, whoa!" Roger said.

Danny stopped.  "What's the problem?"

"People might still live here, man."

"So what?"

"I've got the keys."

"Well why didn't you say so?"

Danny stepped back and lit a cigarette.  Roger tried several keys until the deadbolt turned.  He unlocked the knob itself and they entered.

The apartment looked like it was occupied by an old woman.  Antique furniture, flowery print on the sofa and seat cushions, a grandfather clock standing in one corner, dozens and dozens of family photos hanging on the walls, intermixed with way too many clocks for a girl in her early twenties.

"Nice place," Danny said.

He crossed immediately to the kitchen area and threw the door open.  His head disappeared inside for a moment and then he came out with a pickle jar in his hand, a block of cheddar cheese in his mouth, and half-full bottle of wine tucked under his arm.

"Mmm'gonna take a shower," he mumbled through the cheese.

Roger flopped down on the couch, grabbed the remote off the coffee table, and turned on the TV.

". . . said that government officials in conjunction with the U.S. Marine Corps and NASA are attempting to make basic contact with the object.  A spokesperson for the White House stated that no immediate plans are in place to launch a preemptive attack, but the president did say in his address to the nation late last evening that he would 'do whatever it takes to protect American citizens.'"

That was the last Roger heard of the news coverage.  He was fast asleep on the couch.

When he awoke again, Danny had raided the refrigerator.  He sat at the kitchen table with food spread out all around him.

"I think I might just live here," he said with a mouthful of food.

Roger sat up, coughed.  "Have you seen the cat?"

"Nope."

"Did you look for him?"

"I don't think I'm into the cat thing."

Roger got up from the couch and came to the table.  He made a peanut butter sandwich with whole wheat bread and took a banana from a bowl on the countertop.  He sat at a stool and ate, then downed a glass of water.

Danny finished off the bottle of wine, then wandered to the couch and was soon snoring.

On top of the microwave was a small framed photo of Stacie with Sprinkles in her lap.  He was solid white, slender.  His big green eyes stared at the camera with seeming intent.

Roger started to get up and look for the cat, but seeing Stacie's face again brought back an image of her hanging upside, piercing screams set against the sound of the expressway, the rush of wind coming off that enormous spaceship--if it was a spaceship.

This was the first time he'd stopped to think about the object and the trouble not only he and the city of
Louisville
faced but the entire world.

And what were those lights he'd seen in the sky last night?

He thought about the military barricade on the interstate.  If he were going to escape the city, it would have to be through the woods. 
Mount Washington
was quite a hike, but he could make it.

This Danny kid, though, apparently lived an hour south of
Louisville
.  Maybe they should stay here for now, wait it out in a dead waitress's apartment.  Either that or find some other abandoned place, likely one not so nice.  Besides, the very feel of Stacie's apartment spoke of a very lonely young woman.  Surely the odds of someone showing up to look for her were minimal.  And even if they did, Roger might be the only person left in the city who could tell them what happened to her.

He certainly didn't want to tote a cat all around the city while he looked for a place to stay.

That thought brought his mind back to Sprinkles, who, if even alive, hadn't so much as meowed since Roger and Danny arrived.  Danny kicking the door probably hadn't helped matters, nor did his current snoring.

Roger got up from the stool and crossed the kitchen to the short hallway, which had three doors, two standing wide open, the third cracked open about three inches.

He peeked in the spare bedroom, flipped on the light switch.

The room was completely empty.  Just freshly vacuumed blue carpet.  He checked the closet, found it as empty as the room.  Stacie must have lost a roommate before she died.

"Sprinkles?" he said, turning back toward the door.  He came out into the hall, stepped into the bathroom, turned on the light.  The shower curtain hung neatly folded up and laid over the rod.  Nothing in the tub, nothing behind the trashcan.

The door barely cracked open was the last option, and before Roger even pushed on the door he caught a glimpse of Sprinkles' big green eyes underneath a some kind of furniture--maybe a chifforobe.  Only a narrow line of light spilled across it, and beneath that, in the darkness, a set of glowing green eyes shrank to horizontal slits.  A rising growl built with the creak of the door as Roger inched it open and reached into the dark to find the light switch.  Before flipping it on, he glanced back over at the chifforobe.  The glowing eyes were gone.

Light flooded the room and Sprinkles slammed into Roger's arm, raking his claws across the skin and sinking a sharp incisor into a knuckle before flopping back to the floor, landing on his feet, and sprinting out of the room hissing and growling.

Roger backed away from the door and sat on the edge of Stacie's neatly made pink bed, heart pounding.  He inspected the hole in his knuckle and wrapped the bottom of his t-shirt over it, then the scratches on his arm, blood trickling from each one.

Then Danny screamed and the cat shrieked.  Something toppled over and shattered.  Roger jumped up and came out the door as Danny stood near the couch prying Sprinkles from his face.  He watched Danny rip the cat free and fling it over the bar and into the kitchen, where it landed on the counter, sliding back against the wall, then leapt up on the refrigerator and across to the top of the cabinets.  There it ducked and growled low, staring down at Danny, glancing at Roger.

That's when Roger noticed a strange thing about Sprinkles.  It wasn't the right angle of light spilling into the bedroom that had made his eyes glow bright green.  Here in the fluorescent white of the kitchen, they still glowed--even brighter now.

The gun went off before Roger realized Danny had drawn it.  Beneath Sprinkles, a section of the cabinet door exploded in chunks and splinters.  The cat leapt to the refrigerator, then to the floor.  It passed Roger as he fell against the wall covering the sides of his head with his arms.  "Damn it, Danny!"

He looked up at Danny, whose face looked like Roger's arm.

"You see that thing's eyes?" Danny asked.

"Yeah.  Crazy."

"It's a damn devil cat.  Evil.  Or maybe--shit, dude!  Maybe it's an alien."

"An alien that looks like a cat?"

"Yeah.  I mean, you know.  Like an alien that takes whatever shape it wants.  To blend in with the world."

Roger climbed to his feet.  "Why would an alien want to look like a cat?"

"So people won't know it's an alien."

"Its eyes glow," Roger said.  He looked directly at Danny.  "Why don't you put that gun away?"

"Nuh-uh," Danny said, reestablishing his footing amidst the fragments of a broken lamp.  His eyes continuously darted to the hallway floor, where he held aim with the gun.  "I'm for real about this, buddy.  That's a freakin' alien cat.  You wait till I blow its head off, see what comes out."

"Let me just--"

"What?  Talk to it?"

"Just wait," Roger said.  He entered the hallway.

"Dude, seriously," Danny whispered.  Roger didn't stop.  He stepped up to the open door of Stacie's bedroom.  No sign of Sprinkles.  He could be under the bed, in the closet, atop or underneath any one of Stacie's strange antique furniture.  "If that thing starts eating you, I'm outta here," Danny called in a hushed voice.

Then Roger stepped into the bedroom and pushed the door to behind him, leaving it slightly cracked.  The corner of the bed was less than six feet away.  He'd be making his face vulnerable if he got on his knees to peek under there.

"Sprinkles?" he said.

He felt ridiculous trying not to make a sound as he knelt, placed his hands on the floor, and dropped.  Under the bed he found several plastic storage containers, a magazine with a man in a Speedo on the cover, a hair brush, and mason jar filled with quarters.

"Here Sprinkles," he said.  "Sprinkles?  I'm not going to hurt you.  Dumb cat.  Here kitty kitty."

From high up in the closet, Sprinkles growled at him.  He got to his feet quickly and moved around the side of the bed opposite the closet, where he could scan the shelf hanging above the clothes rod.  A clutter of boxes and small luggage.

He saw the green eyes peeking down from atop a stack of shoeboxes, just the faintest outline of a head and horizontal ears.

"You may not like me, cat, but I'm all you've got now.  Better get used to it."