There were two queen-size beds in the room, both empty, thank goodness, but Emily found the desiccated husk of a pupa behind the love seat at the opposite end of the room. When she tried to pick it up to move it, it crumbled to dust between her fingers, leaving nothing but a black shadow of powder on the carpet.
They were all still wearing the same dirt- and alien-gunk-stained clothes from the previous night. Both the kids looked like bedraggled street urchins, their faces spotted with mud, their clothes dirty and stiff with sweat. Emily tried the faucets in the bathroom, but nothing came out, just a deep rattle of empty pipes. They would have to make do with the baby wipes tonight.
Emily caught a glimpse of the old Rhiannon’s petulance when she handed her the packet of lemon-scented wipes and suggested she might like to grab her bag of clothes and head into the bathroom to clean herself up. In the meantime she would help her brother, Emily told her. She smiled as Rhiannon snatched the wipes from her hand, grabbed her bag, and stomped into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.
Ben was lying on the second bed, his back to her. She made her way to the opposite side and knelt down beside the boy. His face was bathed in the gray sunlight flowing through the room’s only window.
“How are you feeling, Ben?” she asked softly.
“My tummy hurts,” the boy said weakly.
Emily smiled reassuringly. “Would you like a little water?” The boy nodded. “Let’s sit you up then, and I’ll bring you some, okay?” She slipped her hands under Ben’s armpits and raised him upright. The kid weighed about as much as a sparrow; she was going to have to make sure he ate regularly if he was going to stay healthy. She pulled a disposable cup from its wrapper on the side table and poured it half-full of water from her bottle. Ben took it and gulped it down in three swift swigs. He held the empty cup out for more, and Emily happily obliged, pouring in the remainder of the water. It disappeared almost as quickly as the first time, and Emily thought she saw a little color returning to the kid’s face.
“Hey, Ben,” she said as he handed the cup back to her. “How about we get you into a change of clothes?” Ben raised his arms above his head and waited for Emily to pull his shirt over his head. He unbuckled his belt, kicked off his shoes, and wriggled out of his jeans. Emily pulled off his socks, holding her nose in mock-disgust as she deposited them into the trash can at the side of the bed, which elicited a brief giggling fit from Ben.
“Okay, big guy. Let’s get you cleaned up.” She pulled a fresh towelette from a second packet of baby wipes and began to methodically clean the dirt from his face and his neck, then down his arms to his fingertips. She gave his chest and legs a quick once-over. “Up you get,” she said when she was done with his feet. “Let’s get your back next.”
Ben stood and turned.
The bruise on his back from where the creature’s whiplike tentacle had hit the boy was ugly; a mix of angry purple-and-black blotches overlapping each other around a raised bump of skin. Emily carefully probed the area with the baby wipe, cleaning the wound as gently as possible. The wound looked a little inflamed to her. She’d need to disinfect it.
She finished cleaning the boy up, then led him over to where she had set her backpack down. She opened a side flap and pulled out the first aid kit, then opened it and unwrapped an antiseptic wipe.
“That itches,” he said as she used the wipe to go back over the welt and bruised area beneath his shoulder.
“All done,” replied Emily, balling the antiseptic wipe and tossing it in the trash. She pulled out fresh clothes for him from his backpack and helped him into them. By the time she was finished, the kid looked a lot more like the little ball of energy she had come to adore over the past couple of days.
She stared into his eyes for a moment, pushing an errant lock of hair from his face. There was so much sadness behind those young eyes. She was about to ask him how he was feeling when Rhiannon flounced out of the bathroom dressed in bright-pink sweats.
“Your turn,” she said to Emily, tossing the half-empty pack of baby wipes to her.
Emily pulled another antiseptic wipe from the first aid kit and headed into the bathroom. The gash on her forehead was ugly looking and inflamed. She cleaned the area with the antibacterial wipe. By the time Emily was done wiping the grime from the rest of her body and slipping into her fresh, if rather wrinkled, clothes, the kids were sitting together at the small table. They had helped themselves to a can of fruit each and were happily spooning the contents into their mouths. A third can sat on the tabletop, a plastic spoon resting next to it.
Emily pulled the lid off the can and joined them for dinner.
That evening, Emily placed a sat-phone call to Jacob from the corridor of the hotel. In the confusion and headlong flight of the past few days, she had completely forgotten her nightly commitment to update him. And in her earlier rush to pack, she realized as she pulled the equipment from the backpack, she had somehow managed to turn the phone off, so there was no way for him to contact her.
Emily knew he would be horribly worried.
“All that matters is that you are all okay,” he said after she had explained. “Tell me more about the creature and what happened.”
Emily ran through how she had managed to rescue the kids but how Simon had been overcome by the creature. Jacob, as always, found the subject matter fascinating.
“I’m sorry,” he said after he realized he was more concerned with the process of Simon’s transmutation by the creature than the loss of the man. “Sometimes the scientist gets the better of me.”
His embarrassment quickly dissipated when she told him she was now driving. “That’s fantastic.” Jacob’s voice took on a new dimension of cheerfulness at the news. “You’ll be here in no time at all now.”
But Jacob’s tone fell back to one of concern when he heard the conclusion of her battle with the creature and that Ben had been struck by the alien as it died. “Is he all right?”
“Yes, a little bruised and in shock. But the kid has his sister looking after him. He’ll pull through.”
After the call ended, Emily found both the children already asleep. She replaced the phone in the backpack and climbed into the second bed, lulled quickly to sleep by the children’s steady breathing.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Daylight gently woke Emily, dancing across the lids of her eyes.
She stretched, dressed, and let Thor out into the corridor, waiting at the door as he wandered first up, then back down the corridor. When, for reasons known only to the dog, he settled on a particular door to pee against, he looked back at her and she nodded once, giving him her permission to do his thing indoors. When he was done, she ushered him back in and allowed the door to click closed behind her.
Rhiannon must have already been awake when she’d let Thor outside, because when Emily turned around, the girl was pulling on the top to her sweats—even more shockingly pink in the daylight, Emily noted—but Ben was still asleep, bundled up beneath the blankets next to where Rhiannon had been sleeping.
“Ben,” Emily called as she searched the supply bag for something other than granola bars for breakfast. She was sure she had seen a couple of Fiber One bars in here somewhere. “Rhiannon, wake your brother,” Emily asked when the boy didn’t answer or stir.
“Emily!” The concern in Rhia’s voice made all thoughts of breakfast disappear, and Emily found herself instantly at the girl’s side.