“Your house is on fire,” she said.
“I’ll be right there,” Robby said. He handed the radio back to Ted, folded up the ladder, and leaned it against the trailer before setting the brush on top of it. “Can you tell Luke and the others I had to take off?” he asked Ted.
“We’ll be right behind you,” Ted said.
ROBBY SQUATTED DOWN on his haunches in front of Lisa and Romie’s big picture window. Down the street and to the right, through the scattered branches of two big fir trees, he could just see the flames. Above the trees the sky was marred by a thick black column of smoke.
“That’s why he was late,” Ted said as he paced around the coffee table. “I bet if we went over there we’d find hoof prints leading up to the house.”
“Why the hell would he ride a horse over here to set a fire?" Pete asked.
Brad sat in a small flower print chair near the door. Romie and Lisa sat side-by-side on their couch. The door opened and Sheila let herself in.
“I heard you guys on the radio,” Sheila said as she came through the kitchen into the living room. “What’s going on?”
“Luke burned down Robby’s house,” Ted said.
“Oh my god, why? Is everyone okay? Is Judy okay?" Sheila asked.
“Yeah, she’s over at the airport with those guys,” Pete said. “Unless they’ve left already. You know, she was late to the party too. Robby, was Judy still at home when you left the house this morning?”
“Yeah,” Robby said. He spun around and sat on the carpet, hugging his knees to his chest.
“So what’s the damage?" Sheila asked. “Where are we at?”
“No harm, really,” Robby said. “Just personal stuff. I mean it’s all stuff I collected in the past few months anyway.”
“It’s an attack, is what it is,” Ted said. “Plus all your notes and maps. What about your recreation of the alien message on the wall in the basement? That’s all gone.”
“I’ve got electronic copies of all that stuff,” Robby said. “And I remember it all anyway.”
“It’s good you’ve got copies, but you’ve got to remember—if something happens to you, it doesn’t matter how good your memory is. The rest of us will be in the dark,” Ted said.
“Maybe we shouldn’t stay here,” Romie said. “Plenty of people know we live here. We should go hide out until they’re all gone.”
“You think they’ll come after us?" Lisa asked.
“Why not?" Ted asked. “All we know is this: at least one of them is trying to hurt us. For all we know, several of them wish us harm. Did you see all the guns that Frank and Luke were packing?”
“Frank had a bunch,” Brad said. “I only saw one on Luke.”
“They had guns?" Sheila asked. “What for? What do they think guns are going to help with?”
The group fell silent, but the tension in the room built anyway. Sheila started to chew at her fingernails and Ted sat down on the edge of a table and rocked back and forth.
Robby stood up and addressed the group—“Romie’s right. We shouldn’t stay here. I don’t think Luke’s crew is coming after us, but if the fire spreads, it might attract other attention.”
“You mean from the thing up north?" Romie asked. “I thought you said it was still gestating.”
“Yes,” Robby said, “I think it is, but I’m talking about the forces that were deployed to prepare the area. There might be versions we haven’t seen yet—things like white blood cells. Things that will show up to counteract any destructive forces; fire, for instance. I’ve got another place set up. It’s downtown. It will be closer to the bridge anyway. We can start executing the plan from there.”
“Is it safe?" Lisa asked.
“Safe as anywhere, I guess,” Robby said.
They didn’t wait long to find out if Robby’s theory about the white blood cells would be correct. The men and women piled into three cars and left after Romie and Lisa gathered a few things they thought they’d need from their borrowed house.
THEY FOLLOWED ROBBY to the third floor of a downtown parking garage. From there, a covered walkway led to a well-appointed apartment building. Robby had equipped several adjacent dwellings with portable heaters and water. He ran a generator in the atrium to provide basic electricity.
Robby and Brad pinned maps to the living room wall while Ted, Sheila, and Pete ventured out to collect their possessions from their temporary homes. By the time the three of them returned to the apartment, Robby and Brad finished reconstructing the plans and Lisa and Romie joined them in the center apartment.
Although they’d discussed the plan, this marked the first time they’d all seen Robby’s map laid out. Robby and Brad constructed a mural on the wall of high-detail topographic maps showing the terrain from Portland to Waterville. The highlighted route stretched about seventy-five miles—north from the coast to deep inland.
Ted scratched the back of his head as he studied the map. He traced his fingers up the gently waving dotted line. “You’ve told us it will be using our own infrastructure as the scaffolding for its growth, right?”
“Correct,” Robby said.
“But why wouldn’t it just use the rivers?" Ted asked. “Our roads follow the rivers for the most part. I don’t see why the thing wouldn’t grow into them.”
“I don’t know exactly,” Robby said. “But if this thing has tried to colonize Earth several times before and and it was unsuccessful, we should look for the man-made differences. Since the origin of the planet, it’s had natural features like these rivers. I assume if it could use the rivers, it would have done so back in the time of dinosaurs or even earlier. Since it didn’t gestate then, I’m guessing it needs things like roads to thrive. Maybe it waited until our civilization tamed the landscape enough to make it suitable.”
“There’s a lot of guesses in there,” Pete said.
“You bought in last night—has your opinion changed?” Brad asked.
“Not substantially,” Pete said. “Just stating the obvious.”
“Well, we can try the highway up to here,” Robby said, pointing at the center map. “This is where the train tracks diverge from the highway. It’s several miles south of Brad’s house. If everything looks okay north of there, I’m fine continuing on the highway. If not, we can backtrack to the rails.”
“Fair enough,” Pete said. “I can even go ahead on a fast snowmobile to scout. Make sure everything is kosher.”
“I object,” Ted said. “For one thing, we’ll need everyone driving a rig if we want to do this in one trip. And second, I don’t think we should split up for any reason.”
“I’m with Ted,” Sheila said. “Everyone together.”
“Okay, okay,” Pete said. “Just thinking out loud, that’s all.”
“What about the people?" Sheila asked. “We have to get a thousand of them you said?”
“I have no way to come up with an exact number,” Robby said, “but I think a thousand will do.”
“Any particular people?" Sheila asked.
“No,” Robby said. “The first thousand corpses we can find will do.”
“I’ve been thinking—we need to respect them,” Ted said. “We need to remember that they were our neighbors.”
Romie waved a hand at Ted—“They’re just meat now. What difference does it make?”
“We’re human,” Ted said. “We have certain rules we live by so we can respect life. You wouldn’t want us to drop into chaos, would you?”
“This is an emergency situation,” Romie said. “And we’ve all lost people.”
“We’ll certainly respect the dead,” Pete said. “Let’s just not go crazy here. At the heart of the matter, we’re going to have to collect, and then haul those bodies across a big chunk of real estate. There’s only so much respect you can pay when you’re loading a body on the back of a big sled.”