Forever Twilight, Patrick Sean Lee [christmas read aloud txt] 📗

it possible for you to summon them? You met one of them up there in that spacecraft. It’s just possible they stuck it outside, with whatever is inside it, to give us a fighting chance to stop the killers among them.”

“What makes you think that the evil ones wouldn’t have known about it, and then arrived to blast it to kingdom come?” I said.

“Yes, why wouldn’t they have done that…unless they don’t even know it exists?” he answered.

Figuring out how to contact them—I could race back to the avocado farm and the spire-like home of Mari, Jerrick, and the others, and plead with them to…

Charles, with Denise at his shoulder, expressed their doubts. That Mari had warned us not to return.

The alarm sounded. All talking ceased as if we’d been racing along in Muntser’s Ferrari and suddenly hit a solid stone wall we hadn’t seen in all the fun. Eight pairs of eyes shot wide open and locked on the bell hanging on the wall where Peter and Munster had stuck it weeks ago.

Invasion. As if we didn’t have enough problems already.

Munster was the first to gain his senses and react. He’d grabbed his shotgun and was into the living room before I or anyone else could blink.

Oh, Just Bernie

 

“Hit the lights,” Charles exclaimed as he bounced to his feet. He raced out to join Munster. I was already on my feet by then, squeezing Peter’s arm in a panic. Cynthia ran to the light switches and flipped them.

Darkness. Silly. The blare of the bell would lead whoever was coming in, from whichever direction they had entered the farm perimeter, like a lighthouse beacon.

“Peter, disconnect that thing!”

Peter leapt to his sister’s side, reached up, and yanked one of the wires free. The near-dead silence that followed was nearly as deafening as the noise of the bell. Short little snippets of comments. Cynthia; “Who…? The aliens?” Peter, still staring up at the bright red bell; “No. Can’t be.” Sammie to Jude, the little girl’s fingers like claws on the older girl’s arm; “What? Who is it?”

Even though my ears were ringing, I picked up on the jumble of Charles’ and Munsters’ voices out front; the door hinges squeaking open. Steps. Hurried steps onto the porch. I blew out of the kitchen, expecting to see a gang of men darting up beside the drive under the cover of the trees. Cynthia, Peter, Sammie, Denise and Jude were right behind me. The bell had awakened Lashawna. I caught her unsure movement up on the landing, like a shadow cast through rapidly moving clouds. “What is it?” she whispered hoarsely. I muttered, “Don’t know,” and continued on, joining Charles and Munster, with his shotgun raised, out on the porch.

Whoever had broken the perimeter circuit could be coming at us—or fleeing back the way he or they came—from any direction. I didn’t expect to see anyone on the drive. Maybe movement under the trees; the blaring bell worked like a two-edged sword. I stopped in a state of shock at Charles’ side when I squinted in the bright moonlight, down along the brilliantly lit road.

Three figures, now nearly even with the stricken Flamemobile. One hunched forward, but not in a wary way. His hands—it was a man I could plainly see—his hands grasping his stomach. He was injured. That’s when I knew exactly who the three invaders were. The others were girls. Kayla and Celia.

Celia remained beside Bernie, trying hard to keep him upright and moving forward. Kayla left them and ran toward us, her hands waving frantically over her head. Her voice was high-pitched and pleading. “Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot! We need help!”

Munster let the barrel of the shotgun drop a few inches. Jude no doubt recognized Kayla’s voice. She swept by us, almost stumbled as she bounced down the wooden steps and onto the drive.

“Kayla! Kayla! Oh God…”

Charles was the first of us to leave the porch as Jude rushed to Kayla’s side and caught her in a jarring bear hug. He walked quickly toward the weary-looking trio and Jude.

“Alarm works pretty damned good I guess,” Munster quipped, lowering the gun completely. “Who the hell are they?”

“That’s Bernie,” I spit.

“Ber…oh, yeah. Here,” he said shoving the gun at me. I took it, and thought seriously about finishing the job I’d messed up on a month ago. How on earth did they find us? Whatever. Don’t shoot him. Wait.

I stayed beside Munster, mixed feelings of hatred and pity banging at each other in my brain. The remainder of our happy, worried, confused, healthy family left us and ran to help.

Jude left Kayla to the others. She ran to her sister, who greeted her with a hug and a flurry of kisses. Bernie collapsed onto the gravel beneath him the moment his playmate let go of him. Jude didn’t bat an eye.

A few minutes later we’d managed to lug the bastard inside. They managed. Charles and Denise helped him onto the sofa. Celia and Kayla kept blubbering thank yous and “…his wound just won’t heal!” Tough luck, girl. “We’ve tried everything…”

Denise and Cynthia mother-henned the creep, carefully lifting his filthy, blood stained shirt to inspect the wound.

“Good God, this should have been stitched closed,” Denise remarked. She turned her head to Celia, who stood over Bernie lovingly. “Didn’t you even disinfect the wound?”

“It hurt him too much whenever we tried. We did do a little…”

That would be too much. A feeling of contentment and vindication swept over me. I’d made him suffer. I didn’t feel at all guilty about it.

Denise called out for the strongest antiseptic we possessed. A sterilized needle and suture. Clean dressings. Cynthia left the room like the wind to gather up the medical supplies. As Denise attended to Bernie, informing him that, sadly, “…there’ll be some discomfort…”, I pulled Kayla aside.

“How did you find this place?”

Kayla hesitated, like, tell her the truth, or make up some cock and bull story? She exhaled a deep breath.

“It was weird.” Another breath, another hesitation. “This black guy and this goofy chick just showed up at the house. Like just appeared! He looked us all over. Didn’t say a word. The chick with him did, though. Fuck, she was so strange. She had this like menacing look in her eyes. Walked over to poor Bernie, then told us to get him south. To a farm a few miles down the highway. Christ, how many fuckin’ farms are there ‘down south?’, I thought.

‘You’ll know it when you arrive,’ she said. Like she’d read my thoughts! ‘We’ll be there.’ And then her and the black guy vanished. I mean, poof! All the sudden they were gone!”

So Jerrick and Mari were here. Or at least they had been a while ago, out on the highway. Traffic cops. But why they’d gone to Bernie’s disgusting rathole of a house and instructed Kayla and Celia to…how the hell had they made it this far on foot! Bernie looked dead. Unfortunately he wasn’t. Hope springs eternal, though. Maybe before tomorrow dawned he would be. Who could I pray to for that little miracle?

It seems there really is no justice in life.

“They didn’t say anything else to you?”

“No. They just split after she told us to get him south.”

What were Jerrick and Mari up to? It hit me that Jude had said Bernie was once a pilot. Had Jerrick and Mari, or one or the other of them, heard the revelation.

Couldn’t be.

Whatever the case, for whatever reason they’d rescued that snake, we had enough problems without him saddling us down with another. And time was wasting. IF they reasoned that he could mend quickly enough—I couldn’t see that happening—and fly bomb-pitching Munster over the first of the Auroras…hmm.

If Bernie could be saved, it would be weeks, at least, before he was in any condition to fly a plane. No, there had to be another reason.

Across the room on the couch, Bernie howled. I swung my head in his direction. He was thrashing his arms and legs like a pig being slowly gutted. Denise spoke almost metronomic consoling words as she scrubbed the clots of blood from the hole in his side, trying gently, but ferociously to dig the antiseptic cloth deeper down. Cynthia stared at the procedure, making a futile effort to keep him halfway still.

Wait till Denise jabs the needle and thread into you, you gutless rat.

Shame on me.

I couldn’t stand the noise much longer, so I invited Kayla outside into the warm night air. Not much better out here, but at least I didn’t have to watch Bernie squirming and squealing. Peter, Sammie, Lashawna and Jude followed us. We scrunched together on the top step of the porch. I began by welcoming her, then plied her with questions, innocent enough, regarding what all had happened since Jude, Peter, and I had left.

She and Celia had endured a terribly boring existence, listening to Bernie complain and demand whiskey, wine, anything to dull the pain of an infection that grew worse with each passing day. I took it that sex was not on his mind. Food, either, especially in the last week before Jerrick and Mari literally flew in.

“We knew he was getting worse. He had a fever that was killer, and he got all delusional a few days ago. Poor Bernie.”

My ass, poor Bernie. It kind of made me angry that Jerrick and Mari arrived on the scene. They could at least have waited till he kicked the bucket before bailing the two girls out of that place.

Maybe Celia and Kayla were the reason? Jerrick and Mari were just hanging around in the neighborhood, so to speak, after having dropped us off back at the farm? Let’s go bring that Bernie guy back to life!

No, screw him. Let’s help the girls.

Pointless speculation for now.

“How long were you on the highway? You got here pretty fast,” Peter asked.

“Oh God, too long. Three days. That guy weighs a ton, even though he’s skinny as a fuckin’ rail! We took turns dragging him when he couldn’t walk. Freaky.”

Wait a minute. Peter and the rest of us just got home hours ago. Jerrick and Mari had done the deed with Bernie and company…three days ago?

“You’ve been on the road for three days?” I said.

“Yeah. Sun came up and went down three times. A fucking nightmare trip.”

Munster had left Cynthia and wandered out. I could tell by the smile on his face that a certain bond had already grown between trash-mouth Kayla and himself. If we survived the night, my bet was he’d be schooling her in the fine art of shooting his arsenal of guns by daybreak.

More howling inside. Denise or Cynthia, or both of them, were probably taking turns jabbing the needle into poor old Bernie.

“Get me more sutures,” I heard Denise say. Guess Cyn wasn’t in on the real fun. And someone forgot…or purposely dispensed with the idea…to slather some Novocaine, or even Orajel, onto his skin. Life in the new world was not pleasant for the guy. The saddest part was, after she finished sewing him up, he might pull through if she could break his fever.

Shame on her. For playing Florence Nightingale, that is.