Alien Taste (33 page)

The Rover control center was, it turned out, in the observatory level of the old terminal. Escalators led down to the great concourse and beyond were a row of doors to the outside. They stumbled down the uneven stairs, the fight following close on their heels. As they sprinted toward the doors, Rennie flung away his shotgun.

“What are you doing?” Ukiah cried.

“I'm trying not to get killed by the cavalry,” Rennie snapped. He yanked open the center plywood-covered door and pushed Ukiah out into the open.

Thirty-odd police cars were jammed into the five-lane half-circle departing zone, their lights almost blinding after the darkness of the terminal. A hundred police, it seemed, crouched behind the squad cars, shotguns and service revolvers aimed at Ukiah.

Ukiah jerked up his hands, cringing.
Oh, this is going to hurt.

“Hold your fire!” Indigo's voice boomed across a megaphone. “He's one of ours!”

Max, carrying the baby, was pushed through the door next. He too paused, stunned by the array of weaponry aimed at him.

“Hold your fire!” Indigo chanted.

Rennie stepped out behind them, caught hold of their arms and hustled them to the curb. Even as they reached the cars, the fight burst out of the doors. Tight knots of three and four combatants roiled through each of the five doors, spilling out quickly until the entire war spread across the sidewalk.

“This is the FBI!” Indigo boomed across the megaphone as Ukiah and the others dropped down beside her, panting from running. “You're under arrest! Put down the weapons and don't move!”

“Who are the good guys?” the officer beside Indigo asked her.

Indigo turned her gray eyes to Ukiah.

“Shoot them all,” Rennie whispered to him.

Ukiah quailed at the thought, then nodded as a policeman beyond Indigo suddenly cried out in pain, shot by the Ontongard. “Shoot them all, sort them out later.”

“Return fire,” Indigo commanded.

The thunder of gunfire was long and deafening. Ukiah crouched behind a cruiser's tire as the thunder went on and on. Mars glistened in the evening sky
and, for a moment, seemed brighter and larger than ever before.

 

They bagged the dead as quickly as possible, wearing leather gloves to snatch up mice and ferrets gathering around the bodies. Ukiah and Rennie picked out the Pack dead and gathered up the Pack's collection of mice. Indigo had the dead Pack members moved to a temporary holding area; officially their bodies were to be moved to the coroner's office after the Ontongard were dealt with, but when that time arrived later the next day, they were gone.

Once the Pack was cleared away, Indigo started on the Ontongard. “These people are carriers of a highly deadly virus transmitted through the blood,” she told the coroner who just arrived, having only been called after the Pack dead had been culled. “Have them fingerprinted, a dental print made, and then cremate all the bodies.”

She made a point to single out Hex's body. “Make sure this one is first to be cremated.”

Ukiah watched them carry Hex away. “That's cold. You know they're still alive.”

Indigo looked away. “What they did to you was cold. What they tried to do to me was cold. What they did to Wil Trace and Agent Warner was cold.” She shook her head. “This is the only justice that makes sense. I'm not going to risk the lives of these officers over and over again. What would a jail term be to the Ontongard? Would they even serve it? What about the other prisoners? How would you protect them from the Ontongard? If we gave them a trial and found them guilty and sentenced them to death, how would we carry it out? Our Constitution, made for men, bans burning people alive, and
nothing else would kill them. They're not human, Ukiah, and we can't treat them as such.”

“I'm not human either, Indigo.”

She looked at him with tears in her eyes. “Yes, you are, because you allow yourself to be one. You've taken a name and place in our society. You've got a birth certificate, Social Security number, you've registered for the draft, you pay your taxes, and you obey the law. You've said, ‘These are my mothers. These are my friends. This is my lover.' You take photographs, have favorite clothes and favorite foods. Everything you've ever done has made you part of mankind. Even the Pack, with all their lawlessness, have kept their names and wear their gang colors as a signal of ‘this is who we are within your society. We are the lawless ones that run on the fringes, expect trouble from us.' They have friends. They take lovers. As long as there has been the FBI, there has been a Pack file. They're human because they make themselves human.

“But the Ontongard—” She shook her head. “They held me for four hours, Ukiah, and not once did any of them give a glimmer of having a soul. You saw how they were, human-shaped appendages for Hex, a group mind working as one spread-out body. They don't have names anymore. The one or two we've managed to capture understood the concept, but refused to apply it to themselves. They don't collect personal effects. You'll find more stuff in a doghouse than where Ontongard have lived for weeks. They don't have friends and lovers. They eat what is at hand. Sometimes it's pizza, but often it's bulk dry dog food. They're not human, Ukiah, and I'm not going to treat them as such.”

What justice would make sense? Pack memory told him how impossible it was to keep Pack in normal
jails. Intricate escape-proof cells would have to be built, and scattered wide to keep the Ontongard separated and isolated from other prisoners. A thousand in all would need to be built and then maintained for hundreds of years.

“You're right,” he sighed. “We can only ignore them, or deal with them thoroughly. Doing things halfway would only lead to dead law officers and Ontongard still roaming free.”

She took his hand. “Do you hate me for this?”

He laughed and put his arms about her. “How could I hate you when I love you so much? Besides, I don't think the Pack would let me get another girlfriend. They like you. They call you the Lady of Steel.”

She hugged him tightly. “The last three days, there was always a Pack member on the fringe of my vision. It was like you were hovering over me, protecting me.” Reluctantly, she released him. “I have work to do. It will take me the rest of today and all of tomorrow to fill out the paperwork. After that, if you don't mind the wait, I could take vacation time and we could go together up to the safe house and get your moms.”

“I'd love that.”

A smile came to her gray eyes, and she went off to wreak her cold vengeance on the remaining Ontongard. As Ukiah watched her compact figure move among the tall burly policemen, Max drifted over to stand beside him.

“You and Agent Zheng.” Max smiled at him. Besides the baby, he now also held diapers, baby clothes, a can of formula, and a baby bottle. “I see it, but I still have trouble believing it.”

“She's the most amazing and beautiful woman there is.”

“They all are when you're in love with them. Here, take the baby. Arn Johnson had some extra baby things in his squad car and he let me have this stuff. Did you know he and his wife had triplets?” Max shook his head. “And he always seemed like such a sane man.” He held up a small disposable diaper. “I can't believe that as small as this is, it's going to be too big.”

“He'll grow into that size.” Ukiah laid his Memory on the trunk of a squad car and found that he hadn't forgotten how to diaper an infant.

“Not today, I hope.”

Ukiah shrugged, reaching for the T-shirt. “I don't think so. Anything is possible.” The T-shirt read “Daddy's Pride and Joy.” He picked up the clothed baby and held him at arm's length. Serious black eyes studied him in return. Beside him, Max read the instructions on the formula can out loud.

“Max, it just suddenly hit me.”

“What?”

“I've got a baby.”

Max gave a tired, weak laugh. “You certainly do.”

“This is–like–forever.”

Max caught Ukiah's slightly panicked look and patted him soothingly on the shoulder. “Don't worry, we'll work it out.”

Wednesday, June 24, 2004
Moon Township, Pennsylvania

While things were still in full chaos, Max slipped them away from the police and FBI. It would be better to go, he pointed out, before anyone thought to ask exactly where the baby came from. Retrieving both the Hummer and Cherokee, they drove to the offices. By then, Ukiah could do little more than slump over the steering wheel of the Cherokee.

Max opened the Cherokee's door. “You okay?”

“I'm wiped, and I know there's nothing here to eat.”

Max laughed and tousled his hair. “Just hold on, it will only be a little while longer.”

Chino appeared minutes later with a plate of sushi from the corner Japanese restaurant. “Oh man, you look like the walking dead. Max too. Where did you find him? Shit, have you been shot again? What the hell happened? Hey, did you hear about the spaceship?”

“Spaceship?” He barely tasted the twelve pieces of California and tuna maki as he wolfed them down, one bite per piece.

“It's on all the channels. The Rover malfunctioned
and stumbled onto this alien spaceship on Mars! Then the dude blew up! They're playing it again and again. Hey, where did the baby come from? Max told me to go get a carseat, but I thought he was shitting me.”

“It's a long story. Where's Max?”

“Taking a shower. He says you're moving out as soon as he's got some clothes packed. The house is full of workmen and cleaners. He doesn't want you to come in, so stay put. I'm running over to Babyland on Penn Avenue. It shouldn't take me more than a couple minutes to get a carseat.”

Ukiah shifted over the central console to the passenger side and napped while waiting. He was vaguely aware when Max returned, opening the hatch to load suitcases. It was Chino's return, with bags of fast food, that woke him up.

“I thought you might still be hungry.” Chino grinned as he installed the carseat. “Cute kid. Whose is it?”

“Mine.”

“Ukiah's.”

“You dog!” Chino's smile melted to puzzlement. “So, who's the mother?”

Ukiah glanced helplessly at Max.

“We'll explain later.” Max slammed shut the hatch. “I'll call you tomorrow about the rest of the work that needs to be done here. Watch your step, things still might be a little hairy for a while.”

“Where are you going to be?”

“It'd be better if you don't know.”

 

Max went out by the zoo, then up through Etna. At one point he stopped and switched the license plates. They went through a McDonald's drive-through in Allison Park, cut through the small town of Mars, and
finally they stopped at the Residence Inn in Cranberry Township.

“Here?”

“This is a family place.” Max slid on sunglasses to hide his two black eyes. “We'll blend in here. Kind of.”

Max went in alone and checked them in as three adults (thus creating a paper mother) and a child under the name of John Schmid. They parked in the back and took the elevator, unseen, up to the fourth floor. The suite had two bedrooms, a kitchenette, a living room, and two complete baths. The “do not disturb” sign was a magnet that stuck to the steel door and stated “no service.” Ukiah numbly stripped, showered, pulled on a pair of shorts Max had packed for him, and crawled into the bed of the smaller bedroom. Max stayed awake to set up the crib that housecleaning delivered to the door, fed the baby, changed its diaper, and tucked it into the crib. Then he too collapsed in the larger bedroom.

 

There was a mega-watt streetlamp right outside the window. With the curtains drawn, it was impossible to tell night from day. Ukiah woke from a shared dream of being small and helpless. For a moment he laid curled in the unfamiliar bed, fearful of the Ontongard's return. Then, as he woke up fully and realized what his memory had endured, he went to the crib, full of anger and guilt.

“Hey, little one, it's okay. You're safe.” He lifted the baby out and cradled it to him. Where they touched flesh to flesh, they were so identical that he could barely determine where his body stopped and his memory's started. The baby's fists were covered with saliva and sour milk. The tiny head had minute traces of baby powder. Still, Ukiah could feel the pain
of the baby's gas bloated stomach as if it was his own.

Max came out of his bedroom still looking jumpy. He wore drawstring sweatpants and a white sleeveless undershirt that left little doubt to the hardships he'd suffered the last few days. He held his SIG-Sauer carefully pointed at the ceiling. He relaxed after scanning the room and finding only Ukiah and baby. “I forgot how often those things ate.”

“I'm hungry too.”

Max laughed and returned the Sauer to its holster under his pillow. “I'll see what we can get delivered.”

A short conversation with the front desk produced the number of a Chinese restaurant that delivered. Max called in an order, and then fiddled with baby bottles and formula.

It hurts.
The baby whimpered into Ukiah's mind.
It hurts.

“I know, pumpkin,” Ukiah murmured, nosing into his memory's soft black hair. “If you just burp, it will stop hurting.”

Max took the baby, expertly tucking him onto his shoulder, and produced a wet burp with a couple of well-placed pats. “We need a name for him.”

“How about Max?” Ukiah carefully accepted the baby back from Max, mindful to support the wobbly neck and head.

“Thanks, but no,” Max said with great sincerity. “My older brother is a junior, and it drove me nuts with big Bob and little Bob, Bob and Bobbie, Senior and Junior. If our partnership is to be a long one, let's not complicate it with that.” Max considered a moment, and then suggested, “John Oregon would be nice and simple. Face it, kid, not much about his life is going to be simple.”

Gas gone, hunger became the baby's complaint.

“Is that bottle ready?”

“It should be.” Max lifted the bottle out of the water, tested on his wrist. Satisfied with the temperature, he handed it to Ukiah. “John? Jim? Tom?”

Ukiah looked down at the baby as it ate greedily. “What do you think, little one?”

Eyes as black as his own regarded him.
Kittanning.

“Kittanning?”

It was where I was born.

“He says he wants to be called Kittanning.”

Max scowled at Ukiah. “Why does your life have to be so weird?”

“Sorry.”

“Kittanning. Kittanning Oregon. Kit. Kit Oregon. Okay. It works.”

The phone rang. Max eyed it a moment before picking it up. “Yes?”

A woman's voice asked, “You ordered Chinese food to be delivered?”

“Yes.”

“It's here. I'm sending the delivery man up.”

“Thank you.”

They waited, tense, to the silence, the soft chime as the elevator opened down the hall, and then footsteps approaching the door. A soft knock. “Chinese?”

Max looked at Ukiah.

“It's a human,” Ukiah whispered. “He has food. There's no one else out there.”

So Max opened the door, took the offered bag, and paid in cash. They listened to the retreating footsteps, the chime of the elevator, and then the silence.

“How long are we going to hide out?” Ukiah asked.

“A day or two. Maybe a week.” Max unloaded the bag. “We need to get hold of Leo and make sure no
one can take the baby. Kittanning. There's the whole mess of you coming back from the dead.” He paused to turn on the television. The Martian landscape appeared on the screen. As they watched, the alien ship, repulsive to the human eye, flickered into existence.

Max turned the channel. The alien ship loomed in the Mars Rover's cameras, huge and menacing, its true dimensions lost as it towered over the Earth vehicle. Next channel. The blinding explosion, seconds of brilliance before the Mars Rover vaporized in the destruction of the alien ship, followed by the gray static. Next channel. A frame by frame analysis of the sequence. Channel after channel. All normal programming preempted. Photos enlarged until they were blurred. Computer modeling done in an attempt to grasp the true dimensions of the now vanished ship. Shots of Mars through the Hubble telescope, showing a massive dust storm, blurring all features. Experts from every field across the world were being interviewed, offering no real explanations.

“Okay, we might be hiding out longer than a week,” Max finally said.

“I'm sorry, Max.”

“Hell, kid, considering all the ways this could have turned out, I think we got a pretty good deal.”

 

They slept. They ate. They watched the endless coverage on the spaceship, because there was nothing else to watch. Finally, Max went out and bought a DVD player and a couple dozen comedies. Life, he said, had been too exciting lately for thrillers. They packed up Kittanning and their guns and cautiously ventured out each day to let the cleaning staff in.

They made their phone calls while out driving. Indigo paid them compliments on neatly vanishing and
arranged to meet them at the Grove City Outlet Mall, just off of I-79, halfway to the safe house on Saturday afternoon. Chino reported that the work was proceeding on the office and that no one seemed interested in him, the offices, or their location. Leo, their lawyer, was much less optimistic; while fathers were optional, the legal system mandated that newborns came with birth mothers. He promised to work on a solution.

By Saturday, Max still looked like a raccoon, but not a single bruise remained on Ukiah.

 

The safe house was a lovely craftsman cabin with faded blue siding, set on the shore of a lake. Maple and oak trees stood close to shelter it from the sun and wind, but beyond it was the wide openness of water and sky. When they arrived, Ukiah's moms and Cally came out in their summer dresses to fuss over him. When they were done, Max and Indigo distracted Cally off to the beach, and Ukiah lifted the sleeping Kittanning out of the car.

“Who's this?” Mom Jo whispered.

“This is my son. His name is Kittanning.”

 

The song of wolves woke him. The wind was up, tossing the treetops, rushing thin veils of clouds across the star studded sky. Ukiah found Mom Jo on the back porch in her flannel bathrobe, staring out over the lake.

“There aren't any wolves in Pennsylvania,” she breathed.

“Yes, there are,” he said, feeling the faint prickle of Pack presence. “They just walk on two legs instead of four.” He started down the steps, out into the wild night.

She reached out and caught him by the shoulders.
“I know they're calling you. Just remember to come back.”

In the dark, with his other family nearby, he finally found the courage to ask the question he wanted to ask all day. “Does it bother you, Mom, that I'm not human?”

She laughed into his hair. “Oh, Mowgli, my little wolf boy, I knew you weren't human when I saw you sitting in the snow, eating that rabbit. Go on, run with your gray brothers. Just remember to come back to me.”