Another End of the World
by Michael Penkas
G |
ail hung up the telephone and began to cry. She hated crying and she hated Roger for making her cry.
Her son Steven ran into the room, out of breath and covered in dirt. She smiled through her tears and was about to tell him to go wash up when he said, “Mom, there’s an alien in the backyard.”
Gail took a deep breath. “Son of a bitch.”
She slammed her fist onto the table, just missing the telephone. “Son of a bitch!”
Steven took a step away, his eyes tearing up. He turned to run, but she said, Wait, and he stopped.
Gail got up and went to her son. He was crying by the time she took him in her arms. “It’s okay, honey,” she said, swaying him gently as they both stood in the doorway. “I’m not mad at you. I just ... got some bad news. I’m not mad at you.”
Steven was crying into her stomach. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She pushed him back to arms’ length, still holding him by the shoulders. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s just that Dad’s not coming home tonight. He has to work late and he’s staying at a motelinstead.”
“Can we go see him?”
She shook her head. “No. He needs to sleep. It’s just that I miss him and I was a little sad that he wouldn’t be coming home tonight.” She looked her son over. “What were you doing?” His face and hands were dirty. The knees of his jeans were caked with mud and grass.
His eyes lit up. “There’s an alien in the yard, by the pond.” He turned to look towards the back door. “He was just walking around.”
Gail stood up and, still holding her son’s hand, said, “Well, let’s go have a look.”
Two hours later Steven was safely over at a friend’s house and Gail was putting on her protective goggles in the back yard. Her mother was kneeling beside her, also wearing goggles. Spread around the women were two spades, a shovel and a garden hose. Both of them were staring at the pond.
It was about five feet across and two feet deep. Roger and Gail had put it together four years before when they’d first moved into the house. It was a black plastic lininglined with large stones. On the picnic table near the back door was a ten gallon aquarium holding the dozen goldfish that normally lived in it.
Her mother said, “Well, let’s get on with it.”
The two women began removing the stones that encircled the pond, setting them to one side and checking the spaces beneath them. After the fifth stone, Gail’s mother saidAhh. She picked something up and held it on her finger. Gail shuffled over to see what she’d found.
The alien stood an inch tall, dressed in a beige body armor that made it look like an ant standing upright. If it spoke, its voice was far too faint for either woman to hear. It pointed towards Gail’s mother and, before either woman could react, a faint red beam struck her goggles.
With one quick motion her mother brought a thumb down on the alien, crushing it. She let the corpse fall to the ground then went back to work.
Once all of the stones were removed, the two women considered the lining.
“Should I get a bucket?” Gail asked.
“No. We’ll just pull the matting out and let the water soak into the ground. That’ll loosen up the soil.”
Gail nodded. It would also flood any facilities that had been built beneath the pond. As they began pulling at the edges of the plastic, she saw that it was an ideal location for a secret base. The pond placed the aliens close to human habitation without much danger of discovery. It was the one part of the yard that never got mowed and where there was an ample supply of water.
It took several minutes to pull up the lining. They stood on opposite ends of the pond, each picking up an edge, then lifted the entire thing. It was quite heavy at first, but as they continued the water poured out the front. By the time it was empty, both women were sweating.
Gail handed her mother a bottled water and sat down to watch the water seep into the soil. “How’s Dad?”
“Oh, same as ever. I’m just glad I answered the phone when you called. Otherwise he would have insisted on coming over.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Gail’s father had begun collecting alien technology seven years ago. Since his retirement, his idle hobby had become something of an obsession. “Maybe we should set aside something for him when we—,”
“Absolutely not! He’s already filled the basement with this crap. Besides, if he knew there were aliens here, he’d be over to dig up the entire yard.”
“I guess.”
“He’s already had one heart attack.”
“Yeah.” Gail didn’t like thinking about her father’s heart attack. It was what had prompted his early retirement. Gail didn’t think she was ready to deal with the loss of a parent. They were both still so young. Neither of them had even turned sixty.
Water from the pond had sunk halfway down. She tried not to think about what was happening beneath the surface. If there were living facilities down there, they probably weren’t airtight. They’d be filling with water right now; flooding out and drowning the inhabitants. Men and women, far from home, probably with families waiting for them in some other star system.
But this was war.
The aliens had made their declaration nearly ten years ago. Even when it had become evident that they were hopelessly outmatched, they continued to fight. Pride prevented them from admitting defeat and now Gail and her mother were going to kill untold numbers of them.
“What about Roger?”
“Hmm?” Her mother was staring at her. “Roger? How is he? Still putting in his eighty hour weeks?”
Gail nodded. “Yeah. He’s really busy these days.”
“He should slow down. I know money’s important but he’ll never get this time back with his son.”
“I know.”
“Your father didn’t work nearly his hours. I worry about him.”
“Don’t.” She turned away from her mother and stared back at the hole, now three quarters empty of pondwater. “He’s fine.” For a moment, she was glad the aliens were dying. Then she felt guilty.
Her mother put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Roger takes care of himself a lot better than your father did. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
As the last remnants of water seeped away, Gail whispered, “He’s seeing someone.”
The hand fell from her shoulder. “What?”
“Roger. He’s seeing another woman. He spends two or three nights a week in motels with her. He says he’s working late. And he is. But he’s also seeing another woman.”
“You don’t know --”
“Would you know? If it was Dad, would you know?”
Gail stood up and grabbed a shovel.
“Gail?”
“Let’s just do this. Okay?” Staring down into the hole, she saw gray patches of metal popping up from the soil.
She drove the shovel down, bringing up earth and metal. She turned it over so that it fell back into the hole, then dug in again. And again. And again.
There was no sound coming from the hole. All around her was broken metal and dirt. She continued picking up the pieces with the shovel, then tossing them back to the ground. There was an occasional scraping sound as the iron blade dug through the flimsy extraterrestrial metal no stronger than foil.
Her arms and face stung as pink beams of light issued from the wreckage, dotting her with little temporary freckles. The only danger from the aliens’ death rays was that one might strike an eye ... hence the protective goggles. Otherwise, they hurt less than mosquito bites. She raised up the shovel, ready to bring it down on the entire strike team, when her mother said, “Gail!”
She turned and saw that her mother was holding the garden hose. “Get out of there.”
Gail stepped out of the hole while her mother turned on the hose and re-flooded it. As the water drained into the soil again, she saw dozens of small brown spots float to the surface. She could have mistaken them for clumps of dirt, except that some were struggling to get to dry land.
“Steven wanted to know if he could keep one,” she said.
“He’s just like your father. Those two.” Her mother smiled weakly. “Don’t --”
“What do I tell him?”
“Tell him they went away. Tell him they went back to their planet. We’ll put the plastic back down, re-fill the pond, put the fish back and he won’t even know the difference.”
“What am I going to do?”
Her mother put down the garden hose and sat beside her, knowing they were no longer talking about aliens. “You’ll take it day by day. If Roger’s ... well, whatever happens, you know your father and I will be there.”
“I know.” She wiped her eyes, then laughed as her hand knocked against the goggles. “What a day.”
“Yeah.”
Another pink ray stung her arm and Gail looked down to see one small alien standing a foot away from them, firing from one woman to the other. Gail’s mother reached out to swipe at it but Gail put a hand on her shoulder.
“No. Just let him go. It doesn’t matter.”
The alien continued shooting at them for another minute. Then, perhaps realizing the futility of what it was doing, stopped firing and walked away.
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