Chapter 13

Caught

Night of the Apocalypse

Retirement Home

Mabel wasn't surprised to find herself in a blue room, or something like it. “I'd love it if you fixed my arthritis,” Mabel said, “but I don't think I'd be good at killing aliens. I don't like killing spiders even, and spiders creep me out. I've spent my life running a housekeeping business. As a kid, I helped Mom with her housekeeping business, then I got married and you can guess what happened with that.”

“You reproduced?” Beginner's Guide said.

“Yep. And you have no idea how much cooking and cleaning a bunch of kids need. I raised a family and ran a housekeeping business on the side to make ends meet. Did it for over thirty years, until my arthritis made me stop... Horrible thing to do, nuking those alien missionaries in the middle of a crowded city. I liked the alien missionaries. They looked like four-foot-tall Pak-Men with skinny arms and legs coming out of them. I even have a copy of their pamphlet. I know a guy who swears the pamphlet is code for 'drink more beer' but I can't make any sense of it. Certain people must have seen the aliens talking to African leaders, thought they were forming an alliance with Africa.”

“Yes. So, Mabel Otero, you would cook and clean for alien monster killers? Out of the goodness of your heart? How would you protect yourself?” Beginner's Guide asked.

“Not out of the goodness of my heart, but I charge good rates, and if I saw something, I'd go to a monster killer and say 'do your job'. Let me put it like this, Beginner's Guide. How would you feel if a monster hunter was killed, or failed to kill a monster, because they had to deal with a filthy or vermin-infested home?”

There was a long pause... “I suppose,” Beginner's Guide said.

***

Six Months Post Apocalypse

Skull Hideout

Going up the long flights of stairs in the Skull hideout turned out to be much harder than going down them. Ian trudged up the stairs feeling hot and exhausted. Smoke filled the stairwell from the recently used guns and explosives, making it hard for him to breathe. Ian was followed by some thirty survivors. Like Ian and Stacy, they'd been taken against their will and were eager to get out. Most of them were children.

The words showed up on Ian's display

You have killed 36 humans for mating rights to your sister, and other currently available females. You have gained your first title, Skull Crusher, you have won 3,000 credits and 5 stat points. I would like to give you more, but humans are not that tough. Maybe if somebody would breed tougher humans? Hint Hint.

Ian sighed.

***

The first thing Ian did, when Stacy freed him, was use the dead psychics' Galactic Market Polaroid Camera to take a picture of himself standing next to their dead bodies. He put that picture on the wall beside the pictures they'd taken of themselves posing with their victims. It seemed only fair. Ian recognized a few of the victims, like Mathew Gruber, but most he didn't.

Rest in peace, fellow psychics. Sorry I couldn't do more for you.

Leaving the room, the two of them found Stacy's weapons and armor in a storage room nearby. From there, it was a simple matter to find and free the missing children.

***

“Any aliens?” a girl behind Ian asked.

“No,” Ian answered. He heard a clack clack clack of one of BG's overgrown cockroaches coming down the stairs. “Shit. Except for that one.” Ian grabbed for his pistol and backed down the stairs.

“You are such a baby,” five-year-old Gabrielle Gruber said, producing a small frying pan from nowhere. She ran forward and Wham! Wham! Wham! she smashed it to death.

“Thank you,” Ian said.

Gabrielle sniffed. Her frying pan vanished. A piece of hard candy appeared in her hand, she put it in her mouth. Good monster killing incentive, Ian supposed.

“What's that?” someone asked.

Ian heard a quiet whirring noise. “It's okay,” he said. “We must be close to the surface. That's a short-range drone.” Ian waved. “Hi Dad.”

When they emerged from the underground shelter, Ian and the rescued children found themselves surrounded by a crowd. Kids were scooped up by parents and caretakers. Ian and Stacy were met by their dad. Ian's 'sort of friends', Sam and Dex, were nearby, along with many people he'd never seen before.

“Thank God you're safe,” Dad said. He hugged both his children. “What happened?”

“They all started shooting. It was insane,” Ian lied. “When we got free, we didn't see any aliens, just a lot of dead people.”

“We took out their patrols,” Dad said. “They'd gotten predictable enough for us to set land mines for their trucks. Blew the bastards to hell. I was so worried about you two. Thank god you're okay.”

Mrs. Wilcox stood in front of the crowd. She looked calm and collected, as usual. Her attractive suit of polished silver armor reflected the late afternoon sun.

“It's about time you did something about the Skulls!” an older man shouted. “What took you so long!”.

“Let me first say, whoever has Road Warrior's motorcycle, please return it,” Mrs. Wilcox said. “His motorcycle is useless to anyone else, and he needs it for his mail route. Though I'm happy to say I've never watched the Road Warrior TV series, I have been informed there are people who think tradition dictates Road Warrior must fight a duel to the death with a four-armed mutant named Zero to get his motorcycle back. He's ten years old, so how about we let him off this time.”

Someone shouted, “Boo! Fight! Fight!”

Mrs. Wilcox looked around and took a deep breath. “On a related note, we do not tolerate people messing with our children, or bothering our patrols. A group of criminals known as The Skulls was doing just that. So, as leader of the Fortress, I took care of the situation.”

“Took care of it, how?” someone asked.

“I took care of it,” Mrs. Wilcox said again. “I hope anyone else who wants to mess with my people in the future will consider what happened here today before they do.”

“So what did happen here today?” someone asked.

“Could be a new alien,” Dad said. “Or a toxin that built up underground and drove them all insane. Whatever it was, it couldn't have happened to nicer people. I'm sending a team down to see if we can salvage anything useful. Anything they should be looking for?”

“Plenty of weapons,” Ian answered.

“I heard you're fast enough to hit bullets with that cane of yours,” someone said to Robert, who was hanging out nearby.

“Well, if you start shooting, it's not going to be your bullets I swing at. If you get my drift,” Robert answered.

“Is the Demon Tongue dead?” Melanie Gruber asked. She stood in front of Ian, holding her five-year-old daughter Gabrielle tightly.

“Demon Tongue?” Ian asked.

“Yes. The forked tongue of the devil. The two Skull boys. People like you,” she answered, glaring at Ian.

Ian sighed. Mrs. Melanie Gruber was a 'thou shalt not suffer any witch to live' Christian. She didn't know about her late son, Mathew's psychic gift and Ian sure as hell wasn't going to tell her.

“They're dead,” Ian said. “They committed suicide.”

“Good. Satan will punish those monsters,” Mrs. Gruber said.

“Mrs. Gruber, we found your son,” a couple of grim-faced men told her. They led her and her daughter away.

“Ian, I would speak to you in private. Now.” Mrs. Wilcox dragged him to her personal car, a large black SUV with tinted windows. The back of the car was screened off from the driver and soundproofed, so Mrs. Wilcox and Ian could talk in private.

As soon as they were alone, she took Ian's hands in her own. “Are you okay, Ian? And what did I just take credit for? I got a strange message from BG this morning saying I crushed the Skull rebellion. Then I learned you and Stacy had been kidnapped and the Red Baron saw smoke rising from this area, so I brought every available person to investigate and it looks like half the enclaves in the city did the same.”

Ian took his hands back and told her about the shooting, and how thirty-six Skulls were dead. He left out his part in the process, though he was sure Mrs. Wilcox suspected.

“Good,” Mrs. Wilcox said. “I'm guessing any survivors are in hiding. They weren't exactly popular. Oh, we found their inside guy. It was Willie, the young man who kept running off whenever you were around. Turned out Willie's older brother owed someone money. We had a talk. They won't be causing any more trouble.”

Ian shuddered as images of “the talk” went through his mind. He felt a horrible cry of grief from Mrs. Gruber as she found her dead son where Skulls had tossed him out with the garbage. She was a crazy bitch who hated Ian, but he knew she loved her children dearly. That the people who did it were dead must be of little consolation for her.

He took a deep breath and pulled his mind back to himself. He had enough problems without involving himself in everyone else's.

“I'm okay with you using me as bait for a trap,” Ian said, “but please tell me you didn't know they were planning to kidnap Stacy.”

“We were all in danger from the Skulls, myself included,” Mrs. Wilcox replied. “I suspect they spotted Stacy when she went out to the runway to meet the Red Baron, something I warned her against.”

“That's fair,” Ian replied. He took a deep breath and started coughing. “It's okay, I'm fine,” he said when he'd recovered. “Uh Mrs. Wilcox, BG is getting strange... stranger than usual.” He told Mrs. Wilcox about how he got summoned to the blue room, and how BG was trying to get him to mate with his sister. “I know you talk to BG. Is she losing it?”

Mrs. Wilcox giggled. “You know I'm not the jealous type, and the two of you would make such a cute couple. What does Stacy think?”

“Stacy doesn't know, and you'd better not tell her,” Ian answered. “Things are weird between us as it is. She seems to think I had something to do with those two psychic predators committing suicide.”

“Did you?” Mrs. Wilcox asked.

“So what's the deal with BG?” Ian responded.

“I see Stacy talking to the Red Baron,” Mrs. Wilcox said. “Looks like you have some competition.”

“Dammit Mrs. Wilcox, I'm serious,” Ian said. “Is BG going insane? And if she is, is that a good or bad thing?”

“BG has always been insane,” Mrs. Wilcox said. “She was programmed by aliens who all wanted different things. Some of these aliens want to study humans, others want to change, or exterminate us. One wrong move on BG's part, and she's programmed to turn herself off, the AI equivalent of committing suicide. I despise BG, but in many ways she's like us, trapped on this world trying to survive.” Mrs. Wilcox sighed and shook her head. “I don't know why she's fixated on you and your sister, Ian. Your galactic following might have put BG up to this, to see if you'll do it. Or possibly BG really thinks the two of you are the best possible genetic match.”

“Yuck,” Ian said.

“The next time I speak to BG, I'll point out twelve is a bit young for a human female to bear healthy children. I'll suggest waiting another six years. At which point BG will, with any luck, have found another mate for Stacy. Hopefully one who isn't an immediate family member.”

“Thank you.” Ian started coughing again. “I think I inhaled too much smoke down there.”

“I'll take you to the infirmary. They'll give you something,” Mrs. Wilcox said. “Have you eaten?”

“No, and I won't be hungry again for a very long time,” Ian said.

***

Ian woke up the next morning to a dream of children playing ball in the fortress playground. After all his nightmares, this was a welcome change. He heard movement and smelled bleach and pine-sol cleaner mixed with the smell of freshly brewed coffee. It was cleaning day. A large older woman came by once a week to clean, take care of laundry, and sometimes even cook them meals and snacks.”

Ian wandered over to the kitchen.

“Good morning, Ian,” Mabel said. She was in the eating area. She wore an oversize apron with the words “Never trust a skinny cook” on it.

Six months ago Ian hated coffee, but now he'd developed an unhealthy dependency on it.

Ian helped himself to a cup. Mabel was somehow juggling dusting and mopping the floor. He noticed his footprints on the wet floor. “Uh sorry,” he said.

“That's okay, Ian,” the big woman said. “Just don't melt my brain. You melt my brain and nobody else is gonna come up here and clean for you guys, I guarantee it.”

“Well, because you put it that way,” Ian said before he realized something was off. She'd joked with him before, but not about that.

He sensed the reason for this. Oh shit! He choked on his coffee. After a coughing fit, he gulped the rest of it down and pulled out his BG solar-powered cell-phone.

The BG screensaver he couldn't get rid of popped up. The screensaver was black with happy faces, and the words “The Early Human Gets the Alien!” Ian swiped the phone to get past it. He had about twenty text messages.

“Are you up, Ian?”

“Is this phone on!”

“Emergency meeting!”

“Get your ass down here now!”

Those were just the ones from Dad.

Shit. “Just a sec coming,” Ian texted back. He pulled up the latest videos. He scrolled past the stupid alien videos, stupid cat videos, and the stupid dog videos. Oh god. Sorry, Fergi. Dog videos always made him think of his late dog Fergi and that damn shape-changer fire hydrant. He kept scrolling until he found a video that said. “I will not reveal the identity of the poster, nor will I take it down. Humans have the right to know how amazing Ian Anderson is!” BG.

Ian started the video. It was Ian, handcuffed to the desk in front of the two psychic predators. The camera must have been in the ceiling. Ian could see the tops of their three heads. Ian's fists were tightly clenched. The two older boys appeared frozen.

“I never thought my idiot psychic act would fool actual psychics,” video Ian was saying. “The truth is without me our fortress would have burnt to the ground within the first month.”

Ian turned off the phone before the video could finish. Shit shit shit! he thought. His power didn't work on electronics, and the two psychic predators he'd killed probably didn't know about the cameras either. The Skulls must have been using the camera to monitor their own people. Dad's retrieval team must have found the camera footage and someone uploaded it to the BG web.

“Is it true?” Mabel asked, chopping vegetables on a cutting board with a large chef knife.

“No comment,” Ian answered. It wouldn't do him any good to deny it at this point. Nobody would believe him. His mind kept going back to his dream about the kids playing ball in their playground. Why would he keep thinking about that?

“If it's true, you did the right thing. The Skulls were animals,” Mabel said.

There was a loud knocking at the door. “Ian, you up?” It was Gabe. The door opened. Gabe and Stacy entered.

“Dad sent us to get you,” Gabe said.

“Is it true?” Stacy asked. Her eyes wide, she held up her cellphone.

“Dad tried to send Robert, but he refused,” Gabe said. “Robert kept saying 'that guy just killed thirty-six people, and you want me to get him out of bed? I'm alive because I don't do stuff like that.'”

“Is it true?” Stacy asked again. “If it's true, how long have you been hiding it?”

“Since the second week,” Ian said. It felt good to tell the truth. “I didn't want people to be afraid of me.”

“How much did you really make when we killed that wuffle at MonsterMart six months ago?” Gabe asked, helping himself to the coffee.

“Over twenty-one thousand,” Ian said. Images from the playground kept going through his mind.

“You suck,” Gabe said. “Dad can't decide whether to be angry, or impressed, so he's going back and forth.”

Ian walked over to a window that looked out over the grounds. What he saw made him feel like vomiting. “Tell Dad the meeting's going to have to wait. You know that Kitykity alien I was having nightmares about? It's in the playground watching the kids.”