Keep Quiet - 11. Keep Quiet

It is nighttime now and the world panics. The floating cylinder opened for the first time and a smaller object shot out from it, evading the fighter planes that tried to intercept it, heading for a destination unknown.

But that is not all. Observatories around the world report seeing large unidentified objects, spherical in shape, approaching the Earth from the blackness of space. They are moving very fast and it is all but certain that they will collide with our planet in the next few hours. Some think they may be ships.

They are not ships, but bombs. They are a message in the sky, clear for those who know how to interpret it. The fiery trails which these unidentified objects leave in their wake look almost beautiful, like the tails of comets glowing in the night. And yet I know differently. They spell out not beauty doom for humanity, they foretell our extinction.

I suppose it is time to leave my house for the last time. My bad knee will have to hold out for a few hours. I can no longer stay inside, not now. Even though those objects will still take hours or maybe days to reach us, something else is here already. Just outside my building, in fact.

I can see a strange and horribly familiar alien glow, green and gold, shining through my windows.

I think I can guess where the smaller object which came out of the floating cylinder was headed for. It came for me.

I can hear people outside on the street. They are screaming. The alien glow is getting brighter. I have glanced out the window just now, and so I know. It is hovering in the sky just outside, motionless and silent, so very bright.

Its brightness is not uniform. It pulsates at regular intervals, repeating its message again and again and again. It is Morse code, of course. Why? Why does this alien vessel know Morse code? And why does it repeat the same seven letters over and over and over again?

D-A-N-N-Y-T-K

Always the same message. It is the same message I saw days and days ago, projected horribly on the surface of the moon. Only now it is here, inescapable. D-A-N-N-Y-T-K.

‘Danny, They know. Danny, They know.’

I need to go out. I need to go out and see…

***

I ran after Charles. He headed straight down to the basement and so I did the same, heedless of how much noise I made, the only thought in my mind being the fact that I wanted to know the true depth of the horror which had arrived to this accursed location on the night of the bolide explosion and which had ultimately led to this crisis. I diverted from my path only at the beginning, rushing into Charles’s room and reaching under the mattress to snatch away the revolver that he still kept underneath, inside a small leather case. I needed a weapon in case the creature attacked again. I needed to feel safe. I tucked the gun into my coat and rushed down the hall as fast as I possibly could.

I reached the basement in time to see Charles all the way down the hall, rattling the gate to the well.

“Charles!” I shouted. “Wait!”

But he either did not hear me or ignored me. He took out a keychain and unlocked the gate. I sprinted after him once more, afraid he would lock the gate behind him, but he must have been in too much of a hurry and he simply pushed the gate wide open so it slammed against the wall on the far side. Without hesitation, I saw him rush to the well.

Then he jumped in.

I followed as fast as I could. I kept expecting to see the thing which had attacked me jump out from a corner, but I made it all the way to the well without seeing anything out of the ordinary. Once there, I stopped in front of the large circular structure. I could not see Charles. The water was dark, as the only illumination came from the hallway behind me. Where had he gone? How deep was the well?

I climbed onto its rim so I was standing above the water, looking down. It was then that I saw faint yellowish glow, not too far down, and then the glow simply… Moved away. Disappeared.

Was there a passageway down there? Some sort of underwater tunnel which led somewhere else?

Under normal circumstances I would have stopped to think about what I was about to do. I would have found a rope, maybe, or asked for help.

These were not normal circumstances, though. I took one deep breath and jumped into the water.

I was expecting cold and the fact that the water was almost hot was a bigger shock than I was prepared to face. I gasped involuntarily, letting out most of my air, and so I was forced to kick up desperately until my head breached the surface of the water. I gulped in air several times, looking down, feeling a horrible mixture of fear, confusion, and desperation. But I could not allow myself to hesitate. I breathed in deeply once more and then dived.

I had never been a good swimmer, but I did not have to go too far down. I plunged into the darkness, kicking with heavy feet as I belatedly realized that I should have taken off my shoes before I jumped in. It was too late now. I used arms and legs to go further down and kept my eyes open.

There!

A yellow glow a couple of feet further down. I followed it, holding my breath, and bumped my head against the edge of a tunnel which branched off from the main well shaft. I kicked more fiercely and squirmed my body into the tunnel, following the light, a part of my brain screaming that I did not know where I was going and when my breath ran out, if I did not find a way out, I would drown. The tunnel was too narrow to turn around and swing back. And so I did the only thing I could, following the light, swimming desperately, trying to reach the end before my lungs gave out.

The yellow light disappeared within a couple of seconds and it was then that black panic seized me. My lungs were burning. I needed to get some air. I lost one of my shoes and my shirt kept restricting the movement of my arms. The tunnel was so narrow that I could touch both sides of it if I stretched out my arms and I kept bumping my head against the top of it. The water was now uncomfortably hot.

I was going to drown. Where had the light gone?

A primal burst of desperation propelled my limbs forward and I used the last bit of my strength to swim. So panicked was I that I did not realize I had reached the end of the tunnel until my face collided against its slippery stone wall. I was forced to stop and I had nowhere to go. The pain in my lungs had become agony. I was beginning to see strange lights at the periphery of my vision. I could not go back, I could not go forward. Air, I needed air. I could not go to the sides. I was going to die. I could only go –

Up.

I glanced up and saw the golden light. I rearranged my body and kicked against the bottom of the tunnel. I surged upwards through the water and less than a second later broke through into blessed, blessed air. I choked, gasping. I coughed up water. It took me more than a minute for my head to stop spinning and for my heartbeat to attain a semblance of normalcy. I reached out with grasping hands until I found the lip of the circular shaft I was in. I dragged myself out with shaking arms and rolled onto strangely soft ground until I was lying on my back, chest heaving, struggling to fight off the panic which refused to recede entirely. I had almost drowned. I had almost drowned.

It was only after my breathing slowed down that the rational part of my brain appeared to engage itself once again. Only then did I register the fact that I was looking up at the curved ceiling of what must have been a natural cave. I could see fragments of irregular rock poking through a nearly uniform cover of… Mold. Just mold, everywhere.

It was all glowing with that same color. It was all around me. The glow was bright enough that it looked as though the space was flooded with the brilliance of electric lighting.

I realized I knew where I was: underneath the accursed crater.

I had been here once before, years ago, only then most of this place had been underwater. It was not so anymore. The air around me was hot, almost stifling, and very dry. The stench I had by now grown horribly accustomed to was pervasive, disgusting, inescapable. Rotting vegetable matter. The mold overhead swayed, rippling like algae under a gentle underwater current. I could feel a muted hum vibrating through the ground. It felt like a very large generator working, or an enormous insect buzzing away, unseen.

Panic rose up in me again but I could not simply lie on the ground forever. With effort and a painful grunt, I pushed myself up to a seated position. Then I stood up, holding my head between my hands since a headache had begun to throb between my temples.

Now on my feet, I looked around.

I stared in naked horror.

The cave had been transformed. The walls, the ceiling, the irregular rocks and the floor itself – all of it was coated by luminescing mold, but now that I was standing I saw that the mold had a structure to it. The thin strands of gently-swaying vegetable matter threaded themselves together in knots and patterns, clusters, and links between those clusters, reminding me of an impossibly macroscopic representation of living tissue. Thick columns of mold created pillars between ceiling and floor. Thinner ones spread out through the space like links in a gigantic spiderweb, and within them I could see what I could not help but think of as nuclei, circular or ellipsoidal structures floating within the tendrils and the columns, glowing.

Pulsating.

The entire chamber beat at the rhythm of an unseen heart. The vibration spread through the mold, like a wave, every couple of seconds. I had once seen the beating heart tissue of a frog and this reminded me of it very strongly. It felt as though I had been shrunk down and transported into the heart of a living creature. The beating was not something I could hear, but I could feel it through the soles of my feet, deeper and more rhythmical than the muted vibrations I had felt as I was lying down. Each throb commanded my attention like the echo of the suggestion of an idea. At first I could barely perceive this strange mental undercurrent, but the longer I listened, the louder the suggestion got. It was not only my body that could feel the beating of the alien heart, either. My mind could sense it in a way I had no words for, like a new sense I had no idea my brain was capable of perceiving until now.

The sensation was very simple because the only thing it demanded was focus. It demanded that I look at the very center of the chamber, where a gigantic spire of living, glowing tissue rose up from the ground like a corrupted stalagmite, but bigger by far than any natural formation I had ever seen. The edges of the spire were irregular, waving, shifting. It looked like the decaying stalk of a plant that has only just sprouted, but this plant was orders of magnitude removed from any biological structure I had ever seen on my own planet. Through the throbbing echoes in my mind, I felt as though I had a distant impression of vast networks of underground roots that had tunneled through the earth over years in search of water and nutrients and energy. They had found it and the living web beneath my feet reached further than I could comprehend. It had threaded itself through the entire valley and was, even now, tunneling through the mountains, reaching, questing, hungry.

Its hunger terrified me. The terror I felt upon perceiving it shattered the focus which the rhythmical beating of the tissue around me had induced in my mind, and my eyes fell for the first time on the center of the spire, at ground level. I saw an extremely complicated structure around which the spire had grown, and I knew, upon laying eyes on it, that it was the core, the nexus, of everything in this chamber and beyond.

I took a hesitant step towards it. The structure resembled an upright cocoon, such as a caterpillar might make, and it was linked to the spire and to the entire chamber by thread upon thread of exquisitely delicate strands of glowing mold. It was the center of the spiderweb, the eye of the living storm all around me. It was the locus of energy and effort and hunger and… And consciousness.

Another step forward. I was not sure it had been entirely taken of my own volition. I could see that the cocoon throbbed, directing the beating of the heart.

Another step forward. Then another. I was closer now when I saw that the cocoon was about as tall as myself. There was someone lying prostrate on the glowing, gently-swaying ground before it. I tried to focus on the figure but my gaze was wrenched forward. All I could see was the cocoon. I needed to go to it. I needed –

The figure on the ground moaned. Charles.

Charles.

Like one who steps awake from a dream or a trance, I suddenly came to my senses.

“Charles!” I shouted, heedless of the rather violent beating of the cocoon which followed the sound of my voice.

I rushed towards him and knelt beside him. I feared he had been hurt or worse, but he opened his eyes as soon as I was with him.

Danny, he mouthed.

I helped him stand up. He was trembling, unsteady on his feet. His clothing, like mine, was thoroughly soaked. His eyes were wide, bloodshot. He tried to speak but grimaced and grabbed his temples as though suffering under a great migraine.

What is going on? I signed. Charles, talk to me.

We are too late, he replied, his hands barely able to sign properly. She’s inside it now. I was hoping to learn… before it awakened… It’s too late now, Danny. It’s too late!

What are you talking –

But I never finished my question. The entire cave shivered and the ground beneath my feet trembled ominously. The beating of the heart slowed down yet became inexpressibly stronger. It was as though it were being concentrated. Focused.

Once again my attention was wrenched towards the cocoon. Were my eyes deceiving me, or was it splitting from the top, opening like a flower?

The heartbeat stopped. The silence that followed rattled my mind with horror because I knew that something had changed forever. A process which had taken years upon years had reached its apex and I knew I must avert my eyes but I could not… I was forced to look as the cocoon opened and then withered, falling away from that which it had contained, the shape only slightly shorter than I, a shape with a head and arms and legs. The mold fell away from the shape and yet it remained connected to the entire chamber by the long hair sprouting from its head, hair which was not hair but rather living tendrils that swayed gently under a nonexistent wind.

It was a human shape which was revealed before me. A shape with softly glowing eyes, the very same eyes I had seen down in the basement and which now are gazing at me with a horrible sort of intelligence which I knew, I just knew, was not human. Even though the face of the creature standing there was known to me, I realized that this was not the maid, Ms. Avery, such as I had known her. She had been changed, just like the animals in those abominable cages had been changed. She was something new, something come from beyond the stars, something whose attention could not be denied and under which I felt pathetically small, insignificant, powerless. She demanded my attention and I could do nothing but give it.

Her upper body looked mostly human still, even to the extent of wearing the tattered remains of what must have been a robe of some kind. The skin of her arms, her hands, and her neck was still pale, but underneath it I could see something moving, something swaying. Her face was emaciated. She looked like a victim of famine, or like someone who has been sick for many years, slowly wasting away. Her horrible, glowing eyes and the filigree network of living hair that was not hair were the only things about her that looked powerful and truly alive. They were mesmerizing in a horrible way, tugging at my mind with that insistent hunger, that call that demanded that I look, that I see, that I pay attention.

It was almost enough for me to overlook her lower body, but not entirely. Her legs… Her legs were no longer human legs. They looked like a clumsy attempt at making lower limbs which could belong to a human being and yet they resembled the disgusting jointed appendages of an arthropod. They were made entirely of glowing mold and they appeared to mesh with the ground seamlessly, almost as if they had grown from it to join her upper body. As I watched in stupefied silence, the creature jerked its right leg forward. It was torn off from the ground itself, or so it seemed, as the foot that was not a foot was lifted and placed forward in a clumsy facsimile of a step.

I backed away from it out of instinct. The creature’s eyes widened and it opened its mouth.

I do not know whether it tried to speak, but the sound that escaped that throat has threaded itself through my nightmares ever since. It was a gurgling hiss that had never been heard on Earth before, a horrible moan, the groan of a dying creature which was made all the more disturbing because it looked, almost, as if the thing were trying to form words with lips that would not work correctly.

I gasped in horror.

The creature paused.

Back away from it, Danny, Charles gestured urgently. He was struggling to do the same thing he suggested.

I can’t! I replied. My body felt as if made from lead. I could not escape the insistent drilling gaze of those glowing eyes. I don’t know what’s happening!

The creature, the alien, opened its mouth once more, a mouth which had once belonged to a human being, and another horrible gurgle issued forth from its corrupted throat.

I felt a hand on the back of my shirt and then a sharp tug which sent me stumbling backwards. I fell to the ground, as did Charles, who had tried to pull me away. I grunted in pain and then looked up at the alien standing before us.

What do you want? Charles gestured in evident panic. Why are you here? What do you want?

The horrible sound the thing was making stopped. It finally looked away from me and focused on Charles. On… On his hands.

It looked at its own hands, then. And I felt something in my mind. Something that was not coming from me. It was like a flash of understanding, like a shuddering epiphany.

But then the ceiling above us started vibrating. And the creature went berserk.

“Look out!” I shouted, and threw myself over Charles in a ridiculous attempt to protect him from what I was certain would be an attack.

The attack never came, but the creature did tear itself out of the ground, moving in a horribly uncertain yet incredibly powerful way, jerking its body in uneven synchronicity and looking like a sped-up film of an animal learning to walk. It turned its back on us and launched itself at the spire, clawing its way upwards like a nightmarish spider.

In my mind, I felt the focus of its overpowering attention shift away from the two of us and I gasped, aware for the first time of the crushing pressure under which my awareness had been while the alien had looked at us. I felt clarity and relief and an altogether different kind of fear all come crowding in when I saw Charles jump onto his feet and take off running after the alien.

“Stop!” Charles screamed. “Come back!”

The alien reached the end of the spire and jumped straight up with superhuman agility. The mold which covered the ceiling parted as the alien reached it and revealed the upper landing of a staircase I had not seen before. Right above it there was a circular hatch such as one might find in a submarine. The alien reached for it… and pulled.

There was a sound of metal groaning as the hatch was bent out of shape. The metal held, but the alien pulled on it a second time and I saw it visibly deform.

Where was it going? Where did that hatch lead to? And why did I get this horrible mental echo of ravenous desperation coming from the creature?

I got up as fast as I could and ran after Charles. He moved faster than I would have expected him to be able to run and headed for the far end of the chamber. I followed desperately and it was only when I had nearly reached the opposite wall of the cave that I saw Charles was headed for the staircase. It appeared to have been bolted to the wall, and I now saw that, although it had been partially hidden by the mold, it led straight up to the hatch in the ceiling that the alien was trying to tear off its foundations.

I was just a few steps behind Charles as we both ascended the metallic stairs, chasing after the creature. The mold was thick underfoot and twice I slipped, which was terrifying given the fact that I was now almost at ceiling level and a drop down to the ground would have been crippling if not deadly. Charles himself very nearly fell once, but he was racing towards the creature and I was right on his heels despite the fact that I did not know what we were doing or what was happening or why the creature so desperately wanted to go above ground.

An earsplittingly sharp scrape of metal on metal forced me to stop and cover my ears. Then there was a loud clang, and when I looked again, I saw that the alien had managed to tear the hatch off its hinges. It did not even turn back to look at us. It just jumped straight up into the circular hole that it had created and disappeared from sight.

Charles and I followed it. We could do nothing else. I saw Charles climb a flimsy ladder which led up into the unknown and I threw myself at it just is just his feet disappeared above me, out of sight. I did not hesitate. I simply pulled myself up, slipping only once this time, until I cleared the hatch and came out into… Into open space.

I scrambled onto my feet, looking around with darting eyes. It was dark out but there was no shortage of illumination, as both Charles and I were standing underneath several floodlights which surrounded us from far away. Just a few feet to my right an array of antennas rose up from the ground. The floor around me was solid concrete, polished. It sloped outward gently, rising ever so slightly until it was lost in the darkness of the night. I realized I was standing at the very center of the parabolic dish which Charles had built over what had previously been the indentation, the scar left on the ground by the meteorite which had crashed on our planet so many years ago. Straight overhead, as I saw when I craned my neck up, a complicated array of transmitting equipment hung above us all at the focus of the paraboloid, a jumble of cables and blinking lights and antennas. The low hum of whichever generator constantly fed power to the Array could not only be heard, but also felt through the soles of my feet. I was standing at the very center of what had been the focus of Charles’s obsession ever since I had left for the war. He had been constantly beaming messages up to the stars, and trying to puzzle out the meaning in the jumbled chaos that he received as an answer.

He had been so busy trying to discover the smallest inkling of intelligent life out in the void… and the bitter irony was that alien life had been gestating below our feet the entire time. Now, the gigantic array of impressive technology appeared almost pitiful when compared to the horror I had just witnessed.

The nightmare wasn’t over yet, though. I could see that the creature, the hybrid, was climbing the arm of the crane which suspended the array of antennas over our heads. Fearless, the creature used its human forelimbs and its disgusting lower body with breathtaking dexterity. What was it doing? Why was it so eagerly climbing? I watched, transfixed, as it reached the top of the crane arm and then began to worm its way horizontally until it managed to reach the cluster of equipment which was beeping and blinking, busily transmitting and receiving information, oblivious to the chaos which had unfolded all around it.

The alien reached its destination and went berserk.

It grabbed metal and twisted it out of shape. It lunged forward and bit cables in half. It thrashed overhead in a frenzy of destruction, lashing out at everything within reach as if it were the most important thing in the universe to destroy every possible last a bit of the transceiver array. The crane which supported everything wobbled under the onslaught and it was only when I heard a dismayed cry that my attention was wrenched away from what the creature overhead was doing. I glanced at the crane arm further away.

Charles was climbing it, just like the creature had done.

“Charles! No!”

I rushed forward but when I reached the crane I realized I could not help Charles at all. He was already a dozen feet above me, climbing the structure as best as he was able to, but he had never been an athletic individual and I could see that the tiniest distraction would send him tumbling down to the ground, to certain death. I could not follow him or I would risk causing him to fall. I was reduced to watch, horrified, as Charles made his way to the very top of the wobbling crane.

He was fearless in those final moments. Once at the very top he scrambled on hands and feet all along the horizontal arm of the crane until he reached the focal point of his giant parabolic dish. The alien either did not see him approach or did not react to his presence at the beginning. It was much too busy destroying everything in sight. It was monstrously strong and by the time Charles stood up just a couple of feet away from it, looking as though he was desperately trying to keep his balance, the alien had thoroughly obliterated every last fragment of technology which the array had housed at its central and most critical point.

“STOP!” Charles screamed, loud enough that I heard him, even though he was so high up.

The alien whipped its head back. I saw the manic glow in its eyes. It appeared to hesitate, but then ignored Charles and crouched down, attempting to dislodge a cluster of very thick cables which looked as though they fed power to the structure.

“Stop!” Charles repeated, and attacked the creature.

Yes, it was he who attacked first. The alien appeared surprised. It did not react in time and Charles delivered a vicious kick to its midsection which sent it sprawling back. Only its superhuman agility prevented the creature from falling over the side. It grabbed on to whatever metal support it could find and then hoisted itself up once again.

It lifted its arms and snarled. I saw it gather momentum as it prepared to lunge for Charles and kill him.

I… I acted, and to this day I wonder whether this last, reflexive action on my part has not doomed us all.

I learned how to fire a gun in the military. I became a good shot, in fact. And so, I whipped out the revolver out of its sealed leather bag, took aim, and emptied out all six rounds before the creature had a chance to reach my friend.

The noise was deafening. They were both so far away that I feared I may have hit Charles by mistake… But my aim was true. The alien staggered visibly, arms still raised up, and then collapsed.

It fell over the edge, its limp body slamming against the ground below with a sickening crunch. Ears still ringing from the shots, I rushed forward, gun in hand, to verify it was really dead.

I reached it in just a couple of seconds. The alien was dying, it was clear to see. There were two gunshot wounds in his chest and its deformed legs were crumpled underneath it, broken. It was bleeding from the head.

And yet the eyes still glowed, they glowed even brighter if at all possible, and as they fixed on me standing over it with the weapon which had killed it still in my hand, I had a sudden, horrible realization. It came in a wave, a sort of mental echo that I could not place, like a message desperately delivered in an incomprehensible language. It haunts me. It haunts me in dreams and in vigil and it tortures me with the crushing regret which I forever carry now. At that moment, I finally understood.

The eyes, the glowing eyes, they were not evil. The burning intensity in them had been…

Worry.

The alien lifted its arms one last time, lying on the ground. And with trembling hands, silently, imitating the language it had seen Charles and me use, it spoke.

Keep quiet, it said. Its eyes were glowing desperately. It gestured feebly at the Array all around us, at the antennas which had been so busily transmitting information out into the stars, advertising the fact that the Earth had intelligent life, that we wanted to make contact.

With what appeared like a last desperate effort, the alien gestured again.

Keep quiet… Keep quiet… Or They will hear.

Like a light going out, its eyes dimmed suddenly. Death snatched it away from me before I could ask what it had meant and its arms fell to the ground, lifeless.

Above me, every light suddenly went out except for one. It came down from the sky, a blinding floodlight which all but blinded me.

It was a ship, cylindrical. I saw it then for the first time. It came down until it was hovering just a few feet above Charles. The light surrounded my friend. He screamed. I screamed as well. Then there was a sizzling, as of electricity. Every hair on my body stood up on end and I saw the dead body of the alien beside me being lifted up into the sky by means I could not fathom. It rose and rose until it reached the blinding light overhead and then disappeared.

Along with Charles.

I barely glimpsed him as he was being taken by the alien ship. I shouted his name but the ship paid me no mind. Its light turned off suddenly and then it was gone.

Gone, forever. Or so I thought.

Then, silence. Heavy. It echoed in my mind and I could not move. Dumbstruck, I stood there. The horrible stillness of the night surrounded me.

I was left alone on that accursed parabolic Array. Hours passed. I could not understand what had happened.

When Henry came and found me, the first light of dawn was burning in the East. I did not know why he was there, and I did not care. He no longer looked sick. But he looked very, very sad.

“They are gone, aren’t they?” he asked me, standing beside me on the cold concrete.

“Yes.”

“I felt them go,” Henry said, reaching up to touch his temples. “In my mind. I felt its mind let go when you killed it.”

I would have asked how he knew that I had killed the alien but I could not muster the strength to do so.

“We misunderstood them, Daniel,” Henry said to me. His voice sounded hollow. As though it shared the horror and regret which was beginning to consume me. “You, me, even Charles, we all misunderstood. We thought the alien had come to kill us. We thought it was infecting creatures to take them over… And, in a way, it was. But not for evil. It desperately tried to talk to us without killing us but our biology was too different. It spent years perfecting a link from mind to mind… It was trying to warn us. I saw it in my mind while I was delirious. Visions. They have been watching us for thousands of years, did you know that? Caring for us. Protecting us from… From Them. Whatever They are. Those others, they kill intelligent life. All they can find. And they have found us.”

“Was it because of Charles?” I asked at last. I remembered how frantically the alien had tried to destroy the antennas all around us. To silence us so They wouldn’t hear. “Was it because of this Array of his?”

“Partly, yes. But we have had radio for years now. We broadcast our existence into the void without meaning to. The alien tried to prevent it. To keep us hidden. It failed.”

“What happens now?”

Henry shrugged. He looked like one who has accepted death. “Now we wait for Them to come. The others, the evil ones. We are defenseless. I have seen the weapons they use. Entire asteroids, sent like bombs towards helpless planets. We cannot fight against that, we do not have the technology yet. We are doomed. Humanity itself is doomed.”

I heard his words, but strangely, what mattered to me most right then was the fate of a single individual.

“And where is Charles? Where are they taking him?”

Henry looked at me and started to cry. “I don’t know.”

***

And so now I hobble out of my home, into the cold night, under the blinding glow of the alien vessel which hovers over the neighborhood. People are screaming, running away. I hear a siren but it is moving away from this place. Everyone is terrified, and why would they not be?

Only I know differently. Only I approach, slowly because of my knee, until I am standing underneath the thing that, I know, has come for me. The night all around us is chilly and yet I do not feel cold. The golden-green glow in the sky, that familiar radiance which I first saw underneath a crater decades and decades ago, fills me now, not with horror, but with warmth, and with memories.

A figure comes down from the light above, hovering, coming down gently as though floating. It is as though gravity does not exist for this figure. I would wonder how this is possible, how such a flagrant violation of the laws of physics can be, but I am past disbelief. My mind is completely open, ready to accept whatever happens next. And so I look up, focusing on the floating figure, squinting under the intense glare, trying to make out details in the physical form of the alien that has come down to talk to me.

The figure appears bipedal. When it descends more I realize it also has two arms. A head. When it is just a few feet above the ground I realize the figure is a man, a young human man. I cannot see his face clearly. He lands on his feet just a few paces in front of me, barely making a noise. The light overhead dims to the point where it is no longer blinding… And then I see him.

I gasp. Tears choke me. My hands spell out his name.

Charles.

He smiles. He lifts his hands and answers my gestures with his own.

Hi, Danny. It has been a long time.

He opens his arms wide, still smiling.

I cry out in joy, surprise, confusion, and all but throw myself into his arms. His embrace is strong and firm. He smells just like I remember. It’s him. It is impossible, but it’s him.

“Charles,” I whisper into his hair, crying. “Charles, it’s you.”

“Yes, Danny,” he whispers back, although he would not have been able to hear my whispers, not before. “It’s me.”

Our embrace ends and I step back, but I do not let go of his hands. I drink in the sight of him and marvel.

He is just like I remember. Exactly. Young, tall, handsome.

“How?” I whisper.

Charles looks up at the hovering ship. “They did it. The say they needed me to help. To explain. And so they changed me, so I could work with them, all through these years.”

He looks into my eyes. I see it, then, the tiniest hint of that golden-green glow, burning deep in the irises of the man who stands before me. But this time, rather than scaring me, the glow beckons. It speaks of kindness and wisdom and strength.

“They?” Is all I could manage to say. I have so many questions. So many thoughts come to my mind at the same time.

Charles nods solemnly. “Yes. The same beings who sent us a messenger who so desperately tried to warn us. The one you killed.”

I let go of Charles’s hands and back away a couple of steps. I look down at the ground, ashamed. My knee hurts. I want to sit down.

“I am so sorry…” I begin.

“Don’t be,” Charles interrupts. “They understand. Really, they do. And if they are here now, Danny, if they have brought me back, it’s because there is still time. We can still fight.”

I look up at him. “But… The asteroids. The bombs. They are headed for the planet and we can’t stop them.”

“No, but our friends can.”

I blink. “So they are here now to… To help us?”

“Yes. Even now, three of their stealth ships are on intercept course for the asteroid bombs. It is a suicide mission but the pilots are all volunteers. That attack will never reach the Earth.”

“Then we are safe?” I ask, scarcely daring to believe. “Humanity will not go extinct tonight?”

It is Charles’s turn to look down, but when he looks back up at me there is a fierce determination burning in his eyes. “Not completely safe, no. You see, the asteroid bombs are only the first attack. Those Others, the ones who destroy sentient life, they will come for us, Danny. When their bombs are destroyed they will send ships. An invasion force. Our friends will help, but the attack will come from everywhere at once. Every city, every town on the planet will come under attack when They arrive. We do not have much time to prepare. But we do have some.

“And that’s why I’m here,” Charles continues. “We need people to help coordinate the resistance. Smart people, determined, resourceful. I told them about you, and they agreed you’re a good choice. The first choice, in fact. Will you come with me, Danny? Will you help me fight to save our planet?”

I give Charles a rueful grin. I gesture down at myself. “You come forty years too late. I would gladly help, but…”

And, incredibly, Charles laughs. “Oh, Danny. Look at me! If you agree, if you want to fight, they can help you. They can rejuvenate your body, fix your hearing… They can even improve you, just a little, like this.”

Charles’s eyes glow more brightly for an instant and he rushes forward in a blur of motion. In less than a blink of an eye, he is gone.

“Boo,” a voice says from behind me.

I jump, startled. Charles steadies my shoulders and gently turns me around so I’m facing him.

“How did you do that?” I ask, dumbfounded.

“You’ll be able to do that, too, if you want. What do you say, Danny? Will you help us? I… ” and for the first time, he looks almost unsure of himself. Awkward, like the Charles of old. “I’ve missed you so much through these years. I’d love for you and me to –”

I interrupt him with a gentle fingertip on his lips. I hold his gaze, smile, and nod.

“You have been in my thoughts every single day since I lost you,” I tell him. “I have found you again, and I won’t let you go.”

His eyes brim with tears and he smiles broadly. He leans in and kisses me on the lips, deeply, with electric passion. I stiffen for an instant but then I give in, and soon I am crying too, out of pure and unbridled happiness.

When our kiss ends, I cannot stop smiling. I hold both his hands and look into his eyes, at the alien glow in them, yes, but also at the fierce humanity, the kindness, the valor.

“What happens now?” I ask quietly.

“Now?” Charles echoes. “Now I take you up with me. And after a little touch-up… You and me will lead the fight for our home.”

He looks up at the dark sky and frowns in open defiance, as though staring down an unseen enemy. He looks arrestingly handsome, and my heart skips a beat.

“They won’t take us down without a fight,” he says.

I look up with him, and for the first time in years, I am filled with determination and something even stronger than that. Hope.

“No, they won’t,” I agree. “We’ll give them hell.”