Then he said, “Let’s find my son.”
15
Rory had been wandering the street without ringing any doorbells. He had no candy, which didn’t seem like the best possible result of trick-or-treating. Without his mother or father with him, it seemed unexpectedly frightening to just walk up to a person’s door, ring the bell, and ask for… well, anything. He still loved the anonymity, but somehow his earlier excitement had dissipated. His focus, instead, had been on the helmet and the cool thermal imaging he saw through the eyepieces. That alone had been enough to occupy him as he had walked around the neighborhood.
Now, though, the absence of candy had begun to seem like something he would regret later, so he had begun to study the other kids who were going door-to-door, intending to replicate the process. It was so simple. He’d done it before, just never on his own.
Go on, dummy, he thought.
Rory took a deep breath, watched a Moana and a zombie accept candy from a smiling middle-aged woman in a witch’s hat, and took a step forward. It was time.
“Hey, Ass-burger!”
Wincing, Rory glanced over to see E.J. from school. Even with the helmet covering Rory’s head, the prick had somehow recognized him. Maybe his clothes, or just his build. It was possible, given how much of E.J.’s focus had been on him over the past couple of years.
Rory turned to head in the other direction and nearly ran into Derek, E.J.’s troll-like sidekick.
“What’re you supposed to be?” Derek sneered.
“Leave me alone.”
“Or what?” E.J. asked, boxing him in from behind. “You’ll wash your hands five hundred times?”
He snickered at his own joke as Rory hurried away. The bullies fell in after him, dogging his heels. They weren’t going to let him off that easy—of course they weren’t—so Rory made a beeline for the nearest house. Only when he’d already committed to that direction did he notice that the porch light was off, which meant the owners were either not home or not participating in trick or treat. The house had a patchy lawn and needed a paint job, and one of the shutters hung askew. If someone had told Rory the place was haunted, he wouldn’t have been surprised—and he didn’t even believe in ghosts.
Crap. He ought to veer off, find a different safe haven, one where people were home and kids and parents were gathered on the steps or the front walk. But when he glanced back, he saw E.J. and Derek standing on the sidewalk, smirking in pleasure at his terror. This house might not be the escape route he had hoped for, but he had no choice other than to try it.
He went up the steps and rang the bell. A buzz echoed deep inside the house.
“Trick or treat?” he called hopefully.
To his surprise and consternation, a voice replied immediately, a slightly slurred voice, which came from right behind the door, as if its owner had been crouched or slumped against it. “Fuck off.”
On the sidewalk, just close enough to hear the homeowner’s response, E.J. and Derek laughed, holding onto each other as they bent over with mirth.
Rory turned stiffly away from the door, gaze shifting as he tried to figure out the best path of escape—searching to see if there was a path of escape. Behind him, the door creaked open. Before he could turn, he heard the raspy voice speak up again.
“Here’s a treat, you little shit.”
Then he felt the smack of something hard and wet against the back of his helmet. It rocked him forward slightly and, inside the helmet, Rory blinked in shock and frustration. He wiped the back of his helmet and looked at his hand, fearful that the guy in the house had thrown dog crap at him or something. Instead, his hand came away with a smear of what he thought must be rotten apple, and a glance at the ground proved the theory.
E.J. and Derek were howling with laughter.
Without warning the interior of the helmet lit up. Red lights flashed. Rory’s heart jumped in alarm and he panicked, twisting around for help, for some solution. Symbols scrolled across his internal viewscreen. Targeting information popped up and he stared at the guy on the front steps—the apple-throwing stoner who still stood there, sneering.
“What?” the stoner asked, throwing out his hands in a challenge.
A click came from the side of the helmet. Rory heard a whine. Then hellfire erupted from the helmet and disintegrated the stoner where he stood, blowing out the entire doorway of the house, leaving it a flaming, charred wreckage.
McKenna and Casey had taken Emily’s Subaru and started cruising up and down the streets, moving carefully. With all the kids in the street and on the sidewalks, all the parents holding hands, munchkins with their Jack-o’-lantern buckets, and swaggering teenagers prowling for candy with the laziest costumes imaginable—if any—looking for Rory was like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
“Busy night,” Casey said. “What a great place to trick or treat. Rory’s lucky to have grown up here.”
“Yeah,” McKenna agreed. He didn’t bother to make excuses for how much of Rory’s growing-up he had missed. He had a feeling Casey wouldn’t be surprised, but he didn’t know her well enough to share, even if he’d had the inclination.
“You really think he’s wearing the Predator helmet?”
McKenna turned up Sycamore Street. “Yeah. He found it, that’s for sure. That and the wrist gauntlet. Knowing my kid, and seeing that empty box, I figure there’s almost a hundred percent chance he’s got them both on.”
“At least it’s Halloween,” she said. “So, he won’t stand out.”
“From our point of view, that’s not a good thing.”
McKenna’s gaze continued to shift, tracking each kid, mentally dismissing each costume as he searched for the Predator helmet, and the boy wearing it. He tapped the accelerator again, cruising slowly along Sycamore, watching the shadows and the front steps and the sidewalks.
“I’ve seen every alien encounter movie,” Casey went on. “Sure, I hoped for gently inquisitive or frighteningly ambitious, but I was totally ready for hostile. I mean, let’s face it, if the nature of off-world races is anything like that of humans, they’re bound to be assholes, right? Farming our minerals or harvesting our people—something unpleasant…”
She let the words trail off as she, too, searched the sea of trick-or-treaters.
“Ignore the small groups with parents,” McKenna said. “He wouldn’t fall in with them. He might join a large group of kids, stick to the back where he might not be noticed, but chances are he’ll be on his own. Shouldn’t be hard to spot him.”
“Sounds like a sad kid.”
McKenna frowned. “You’d be surprised. There are things that bum him out or make him frustrated, but he’s got a much better attitude than you’d think, considering how much crap he has to deal with because he sees the world a little differently.”
“You don’t talk much about him.”
“I’ve been doing nothing but talk about him.”
“About keeping him safe, yeah,” Casey said. “But not about what kind of kid he is.”
McKenna went quiet as he braked to let a family cross the street, then turned left on Briarwood Road.
“He’s a good kid, Casey. A really good kid.” McKenna hesitated a moment, then went on. “A hell of a lot better than his old man.”
Whatever she might have said in reply was interrupted by an explosion on the next block. Over the roofs of houses, a pillar of flame flashed toward the night sky and then vanished, but the smoke rising from it remained visible.
Casey and McKenna exchanged a stunned glance, and then he stomped on the gas pedal. He wasn’t a man who prayed—wasn’t a man who believed in things he couldn’t hold in his two hands—but McKenna now found himself praying with all his heart that Rory hadn’t been at the center of that explosion.