“Doesn’t look like plastic,” John said. “Looks more like clean white bone.” They stared at each other.
“I hope not,” Jerry said, turning away. Walking through the fog and swirling air to the other end of the shelving, they found a foamlike white matrix, resembling a rubbery honeycomb, pocked with open bubbles filled to the rim with purple syrup. Some of the bubbles dripped purple onto the floor, where each drop hissed and smoked on impact.
John held back an urge to gag and mumbled something about having to get out.
“Sure,” Jerry said, bending down to peer at the bubbles. “Look at this, first.”
John reluctantly bent, hands on knees, and looked at the bubble his brother had indicated.
“Look at all those little wires,” Jerry said. “Little beads traveling on wires, above the purple. Red beads. Looks like blood, don’t it?”
John nodded. He dug into his jeans pocket and pulled out a Swiss army knife he had found under the torn-up seats of the British jeep. He used his fingernails to withdraw a small magnifying glass from the knife handle. “Shine the light on it.” With the beam filling the bubble, he peered through the glass at the purple liquid and the tiny wires with red drops.
The closer he looked, the more detailed it became. Nothing he could identify, but the purple fluid’s surface was composed of thousands of pyramids. The white material resembled foam plastic or cork.
He gritted his teeth. “Very pretty,” he said. He took hold of the edge of a bubble and tore it away. The liquid splashed at his feet and the fog thickened. “They’re not here.”
“Why’d you do that?” Jerry asked.
John slugged the soft honeycomb and pulled his hand away glistening with purple. “Because they’re not here.”
“Who?”
“Ruth and Loren. They’re just gone.”
“Hold on—” Jerry admonished, but John swung with both hands now, tearing the lattice of bubbles apart. They could hardly see each other for the sweet, cloying fog. Jerry grabbed his brother’s shoulder and tried to pull him back. “Stop it, stop it, John, goddammit!”
“They took ‘em!” John screamed. His throat spasmed and he clutched it with one hand, still gripping and tearing and punching with the other. “They’re not in here, Jerry!”
They rolled in the goo until Jerry pinned both his brother’s arms. The light fell with its beam tilting upward behind them. John shook his head, sweat flying, and began a long, silent sob, eyes scrunched shut, mouth stretched wide. Jerry hugged his brother tightly and looked over his shoulder at the beam-lit, swirling fog. “Shh,” he said over and over. They were covered with the smelly brown muck. “Shh.”
“I been holdin’ it in,” John said after sucking a deep, tremulous breath. “Jerry, let me go. I been holdin’ it in too long Let’s get out of here. Nobody’s here. There’s nobody down here.”
“Yeah,” Jerry said. “Not here. Maybe somewhere, but not here.”
“I can feel them, Jerry.”
“I know. But not here.”
“Then where the hell – “
“Shhhh.” They lay in the muck, listening to the soft hiss of the fog and the curtains of air. Jerry could feel his eyes opening as wide as a cat’s in the dark. “Shh. There’s something—”
“Oh, Christ,” John said, struggling from his brother’s arms. They stood, dripping muck, facing the direction of the lantern’s beam. The fog roiled and puffed in the light.
“It’s a jogger,” Jerry said as a silhouette took shape.
“It’s too big,” John said.
The object was at least ten feet across, flattened, fringe hanging from its side, appearing brownish in the uncertain light.
“It doesn’t have legs,” Jerry said, awed. “It’s just floating there.”
John stepped forward. “Goddamn Martians,” he said quietly. He raised his fist. “I’ll break—”
And there was a moment of forgetfulness.
Morning light tinted the east aquamarine. The town, covered with brown and white sheets, resembled something that more properly belonged underwater, a low, flat section of ocean bed.
They stood in the drainage ditch beyond the fences, looking toward the town.
“I can’t move much,” Jerry said.
“I can’t either.”
“I think it stung us.”
“I didn’t feel anything.”
John moved his arm experimentally. “I think I saw them.”
“Saw who?”
“I’m pretty confused, Jerry.”
“Me too.”
The sun was well into the sky before they were able to walk. Over the town, transparent hemispheres drifted between the outlines of the buildings, occasionally shooting down thin pencils of light. “Looks like jellyfish,” Jerry commented as they wobbled toward the road and the truck.
“I think I saw Loren and Ruth. I’m not sure,” John said. They approached the truck slowly, stiffly, and sat in the front seat, closing the doors behind. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“I saw them down where we were. But they weren’t there. That doesn’t make sense.”
“No, I mean, where do we go now?”
“Out of town. Somewhere else.”
“They’re everywhere, John. Radios say that.”
“Goddamn Martians.”
Jerry sighed. “Martians would have zapped us, John.”
“Fuck ‘em. Let’s go away.”
“Whatever they are,” Jerry said, “I’m pretty sure they’re from right around here.” He pointed emphatically toward the ground. “Right from inside that fence.”
“Drive,” John said. Jerry started the engine, put the truck in gear and roared them off down the dirt road. They spun out on East Avenue, narrowly missed a deserted car at the next intersection, and squealed onto South Vasco road, heading for the highway. “How much gas we got?”
“I filled ‘er up in town yesterday. Before the sheets got the pumps.”
“You know,” John said, bending to pick up an oil rag from the floor and wiping his hands, “I don’t think we’re smart enough to figure out anything. We just don’t have any idea.”
“No good ideas, maybe.” Jerry squinted. Someone stood by the road a mile ahead, waving vigorously. John followed his brother’s puzzled stare.
“We’re not alone,” he said.
Jerry slowed the truck. “It’s a woman.” They stopped forty or fifty yards from where she stood on the road shoulder. Jerry leaned out the driver’s side window to see her more clearly. “Not a young woman,” he said, disappointed.
She was in her fifties, hair jet black and flowing, and she wore a peach-colored silk gown that flagged behind her as she ran. The brothers looked at each other and shook their heads, unsure what to think or do.
She approached the passenger side, out of breath and laughing. “Thank God,” she said. “Or whomever. I thought I was the only one left in the whole town.”
“Guess not,” Jerry said. John opened the door and she stepped up into the cab. He moved over for her and she sat, releasing a deep breath and laughing again. She turned her head and regarded him sharply. “You fellows aren’t hoodlums, are you?”
“Don’t believe so,” Jerry said, eyes trained on the road. “Where you from?”
“Back in town. My house is gone, and the neighborhood’s all wrapped up like a Christmas package. I thought I was the only one in the world left alive.”
“Haven’t been listening to the radio, then,” John said.
“No. Don’t like electronic things. But I know what’s going on anyway.”
“Yeah?” Jerry asked, moving the truck back onto the road.
“Yes indeed. My son. He’s responsible for this. I had no idea what form it would take, but there’s no doubt in my mind. And I warned him, too.”
The twins glanced at each other again. The woman tossed her hair and deftly slipped a flexible band around it.