Oblivion (2 page)

Danny climbed, still slightly crouched so that his hands could brush the shingles. That way, he didn’t have to look at the devastation until he was ready.

“God,” Nikara said again. The word was coming out of him like an involuntary prayer.

Danny sat down next to him, his feet resting on the other side of the roof, the peak against his butt. His hands gripped the rough surface. He waited until he was braced before he looked up.

The blackness spread before him like a shadow across the land. It made everything look flat, even where Danny knew there were rolling hills, slight inclines, and tiny valleys. Then the blackness ended, and the blue water of the Pacific sparkled in the sun. The ocean looked exactly the same. Only it was as if someone had moved a new landscape in front of it, a landscape without houses or stores or tourist attractions; without restaurants or the Wharf or ships; without birds or dogs or people.

His breath caught in his throat. He might have said something—he didn’t know for certain. He had gone into those businesses, walked down streets now buried in blackness. He had played at the water’s edge.

He had had friends in the neighborhoods covered in soot.

The wind was cooler up here and smelled of the sea. The blackness had no smell at all, at least not one he could detect. A gust hit him, and then another even colder gust, drying his sweat and covering his skin in goose bumps.

“Can you see where Cort’s house used to be?” Nikara asked in a voice Danny had never heard before.

Danny made himself look toward the south. Cort had grown up with them, but he lived about five blocks away. He had stayed home sick that day, April 13. And when it became clear what parts of the area were completely destroyed, Danny had asked his mother if she thought Cort got away.

“No, honey,” she had said. She had tried to pull him into a hug, but he wasn’t a baby anymore. He didn’t need comfort. When Nikara had come over to the house the next day and asked the same question, Danny had said, “What do you think?” and neither of them mentioned Cort again.

Until now.

Danny’s grip on the roof grew tighter. The wind was stinging his eyes, filling them with tears. Cort had rounded out their threesome. He had been cautious when Nikara was reckless, the voice of reason when Danny had one of his crazy ideas, and completely willing to tag along, even on the silliest adventure. In fact, Cort would have been sitting beside them if he hadn’t—melted—or whatever those things did to someone.

If he hadn’t died.

Danny shivered. He would never see Cort again. Or Cort’s father, the only father who was still at home among the three of them.

Or Cort’s dog, Buddy.

Or Cort’s house.

“Do you see it?” Nikara asked.

“No,” Danny said. “I can’t tell where it was at all.”

He was amazed at how calm he sounded. It was as if he were talking about a landmark or a shop or something he had never seen before. Not a place where he had eaten dinner, where he and Nikara and Cort had logged on to his parents’ system and sent phony e-mails to all the good-looking girls in class.

“You can see some of the foundations, if you look hard enough.” Nikara’s voice was flat. That was why it sounded so weird.

Danny squinted. He could see the shapes of the houses beneath the black dust, something that wouldn’t have been as visible from the ground. Large squares here, large rectangles there, a tangle of rubble between.

He rubbed his eye. Damn the wind.

“I still can’t pick out which house was his ”

“Why does it matter so much?” Danny asked.

“I don’t know,” Nikara said. “It just does ”

They looked at each other. Nikara’s eyes were red, too. Cort was the only friend they’d lost. Their school was east of the destruction and everyone they knew had been in class that day. Except Cort.

A lot of kids lost homes, though. And pets. And parents.

“Do you think it hurt?” The question came out as a whisper. He was surprised it even left his lips.

Nikara swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed. He hunched his shoulders, then turned the movement into a shrug. “They showed some film on CNN. That lady, in Europe—

“Africa,” Danny said.

“—she got caught in the black cloud and it dissolved her skin. There was blood everywhere and she was screaming .. ” Nikara’s voice trailed off. He glanced at the blackness before them as if he were seeing it for the first time. “Yeah. I think it hurt.”

Danny closed his eyes. He didn’t want to think about Cort like that lady, Cort on his couch, sick with the flu when suddenly the roof disappeared, and this black cloud came at him—

Danny’s eyes flew open. There was no black cloud. Only black dust. “They don’t want people walking in that stuff,” he said. “You think that’s because it might dissolve their feet?”

“I don’t know,” Nikara said. He brought his knees up and rested his chin on them, as if he were contemplating a problem.

The plan had been to look at the destruction and then maybe walk through it. Unspoken in all of it was that maybe they’d find something of Cort’s. Maybe even Cort’s house. Maybe proof that Cort had lived through it all.

But that wasn’t possible. Danny knew it now. Even though he had seen the destruction from a distance and on television, it wasn’t the same as sitting here, on the edge of it—an edge that was as arbitrary as the teams Mr. Goble chose in gym class. If Cort’s house had been five blocks east, Cort would be sitting up here with them now. Cort would know if the black dust was safe. He’d know how much trouble they’d be in if the patrols caught them. He’d know everything.

“How much time do we have?” Danny asked.

Nikara checked his wrist’puter. “Ten minutes ”

“We have to get down before that,” Danny said. “They could see us for miles up here.”

“If they’re looking up,” Nikara said.

“Where else would they look?” Danny asked. “The attack came from above.”

“I don’t think they’re expecting another attack,” Nikara said. “At least not right away. They’d be acting a whole lot different if they were ”

Still, thinking about patrols put Danny back on alert. If the patrols could see him from far away, he should be able to see them, too. He made himself look away from the black dust covering everything and instead focused on the roads.

The army used the roads closest to the destruction. They had also built a few roads through it—long winding paths where the black dust had somehow been cleared out. Danny remembered his mother telling him about that, and how she didn’t approve of the army sending the dust back in the air where it might do damage again.

He scanned those roads and saw nothing. But on the concrete roads at the edge, he saw vehicles moving like ants going back to their hill. Nikara had said that the patrols were very regular—no one, apparently, wanted to go back into the dust, but the government insisted it be guarded.

Nikara was looking in the same direction Danny was. “You know,” Nikara said as he squinted at the roads, “they’ve been riding through this stuff. It’s got to be safe.”

Danny shuddered. He was getting cold on this roof. “Maybe they wear special suits or something.”

“I’ve seen them,” Nikara said. “The first few days they wore masks, but they haven’t worn anything since.”

Danny looked down. The dust on the other side of the house glistened, just a little. He had never seen blackness glisten before. It seemed almost evil.

“Maybe they’ll get sick later,” Danny said.

“They would have done tests,” Nikara said.

“My mother says you should never put too much trust in the government. Some people even say the government is the cause of all this.”

Nikara sighed. “The aliens did this. I’m going. That’s what we came for.”

“I thought we came to see it up close.”

“You can’t see it up close without getting in it.” Nikara snorted. “Anybody knows that.”

Danny didn’t agree, but he knew better than to argue with Nikara when he was in this kind of mood. Nikara half slid, half walked to the edge of the roof.

“Think it’s too far to jump?” he asked.

“Yes,” Danny said. He hadn’t left the peak, hoping that would discourage Nikara.

“If I hang off the gutter, I won’t drop so far,” Nikara said. “If you break your leg and those things start eating you,” Danny said, “I’m not coming to get you.”

Nikara looked at him over his shoulder. “I didn’t think you would.”

Danny didn’t know how Nikara meant that. Did he mean Danny was a coward? Or that it was a sensible thing not to rescue someone who was dissolving?

Nikara gripped the gutter and swung his legs off the roof. Danny’s stomach tightened. All he could see were Nikara’s brown hands clinging to the rusty metal.

Danny made his way across the roof. He reached the edge just as Nikara let go.

A cloud of dust rose around him, and Danny felt a cry leave his throat. Not Nikara, too. Danny wanted to close his eyes, so that he wouldn’t see a friend die, but he couldn’t look away.

He was breathing shallowly, waiting for the dust to settle, hoping he’d see Nikara in one piece. Danny realized he had lied; if Nikara was injured, Danny would do everything he could, short of jumping in the dust himself, to get Nikara back on the roof.

Finally the dust stopped swirling. Nikara was standing very still. His face, his clothes, his hair were covered in black dust. But his eyes were his own. And they were twinkling.

“It’s like feathers!” Nikara said. “It tickles.”

Danny frowned. He thought the stuff would be stiff and bristly, like rust flakes. He didn’t expect it to be soft.

“Come on down,” Nikara said.

Danny put his hands on the gutter as he had seen Nikara do. The metal was cold against Danny’s skin. He was about to swing over, to join Nikara, but something stopped him.

“Come
on
/” Nikara said.

Danny looked at the dust. Some of it was still swirling near Nikara’s feet. Every time Nikara moved, the dust would move, too. Then Danny let his gaze wander from Nikara to the house foundations. One of those was Cort’s. No one had said what the black stuff was. Some of it had come from those ships, yes, but some of it had to have the remains of buildings in it.

When Danny’s great-uncle Milton died, he’d been cremated, and Danny’s mom, as the only surviving relative, got the ashes. She couldn’t decide whether to keep them or scatter them, so for a few weeks, Danny, Nikara, and Cort would open the urn and look inside.

There were gray flakes—soft gray flakes because Danny had touched them—mixed with bits of bone. And that’s what this black dust and the rubble reminded him of. Ashes, with a bit of bone.

Bile rose in his throat, and he had to swallow hard to keep it down.

“Danny,” Nikara said. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

But Danny couldn’t swing himself off the roof. Not and land in ashes. Cort’s ashes. One of his closest friends, forever reduced to dust and bone.

“You go,” Danny said.

Nikara made a small sound of disgust and slogged through the blackness toward Cort’s house. A cloud rose in his wake. Danny watched as the ashes mixed with ashes, and the dust with dust.

And right at that moment he knew that the aliens had to pay for what they had done to Cort and everyone else.

Danny didn’t know how. But he knew they had to pay. Cort and everyone else mixed with this gray dust that spread out before him couldn’t rest until they did.

April 23, 2018
7:50 p.m. Eastern Time

174 Days Until Second Harvest

The Oval Office smelled musty. That was always the first thing Secretary of State Doug Mickelson noticed about the place. Then he noted the large blue area rug with the emblem of the United States in the center, the antique partner’s desk beneath the large windows where President Franklin did most of his work, and the white couches nearest the door. The room’s oval shape wasn’t that obtrusive—the first time he’d been invited here, Mickelson had thought it would be—but the relatively low ceiling and the comfortable furniture kept it from feeling like a mausoleum, as so much of the White House did.

Still, all the years the building had stood in the District’s damp heat in the days before air-conditioning had taken their toll. There was a general mustiness about the whole building, something an army of cleaning people couldn’t seem to tame. Once, when Mickelson mentioned that the faint pervasive hint of mold played hell on his allergies, his best friend, scientist Leo Cross, had suggested using nanotechnology to clean it out. Mickelson had thought it a good idea at the time. Now, thanks to the alien attack, he understood how nanotechnology worked—had actually seen it in action—and he would rather live with the mold.

He dropped his tall, muscled frame onto the couch, almost tempted to put his feet up. He couldn’t remember being so worn out and so angry at the same time. Since the attack he’d had almost no sleep, and had wanted to punch a dozen people, even though he was known for his calmness under diplomatic fire. He was just boiling mad that the aliens had so easily destroyed so much of his home, his country, his planet.