Red the First (8 page)

“
Before I had my ability, I
never realized how much men think about sex. It’s not just you—all
of them. Even the old farts. As a gender, you’re really quite
brutish.”

“
So, do you want
to?”

“
Okay,” she said. “But on
one condition.”

“
Name it?”

“
We dance three more
songs.”

“
I can do that.”

During the second song, Michael and his
friends came up from the back room carrying a metal box,
interrupting all the adults.

“
Hey,” he said. “Look what
we found!”

It was a two-way radio equipped with
antennas, levers and curly cords. Jerome urged them to set it on
the center table.

Everybody gathered around as Blanche
fiddled with the controls. “My grandpa was an avid ham radio
operator for decades—he kept a filing cabinet full of fuses and
wires and switches and stuff, with one drawer just for contacts
he’d made around the world all written in that old-fashioned
Spencerian handwriting. My dad too; he had one just like this,” she
explained. “I used to play with it when he wasn’t
looking.”

Static, hisses, and pops came out of
the speaker, but no speech, no voices. People quickly lost
interest. The music resumed. Red opened a bottle of wine and was
serving it around when Blanche cried out, “I got
someone!”

“
Shh! Shh!” Nate said,
motioning everyone to be quiet.

Blanche had tuned in, apparently in the
middle of a broadcast. A man with an eloquent southern flair spoke
with calm confidence. “The plague was supposed to wipe out all of
humanity,” the man said. “But they miscalculated the resiliency of
the human race. When their scouts first set foot on our world, they
realized we wouldn’t go down as easily as they had hoped. But make
no mistake about it, the Celeruns have targeted Earth, and they
won’t rest until it’s theirs.”

Some of the partygoers
giggled.

“
This guy is a loon,” Jerome
said.

‘
Who are the Celeruns?”
someone asked. “Wasn’t the plague a natural phenomenon?”

“
I picture him wearing a
tinfoil hat,” Nate added, causing sputters of laughter.

“
Quiet!” Red said moving his
ear as close to the speaker as possible. The reception was bad and
the static was getting worse. “Let’s hear him out.”

“
On other planets, the
Celeruns have rarely resorted to violence, but make no mistake
about it, they are hostile invaders. They come in phases, first the
scouts, then the military fleet, and finally the mother ship. The
scouts are already here. Intelligence puts the mother ship in our
solar system by the end of the year…” The broadcast broke up.
Blanche worked the dials and raised it again. “They destroy native
inhabitants by crowding them out within two or three generations.
The United States, Russia, China and the UK have been preparing for
their arrival since World War II, but our governments never
expected a biological attack.

“
The Celeruns want nothing
less than total human extinction, but we will not go down without a
fight. There is still a way to keep them from stealing our planet.”
The static took over, blocking out the broadcast.

“
Don’t lose him,” Red said
urgently. “See if you can raise him. I want to talk to
him.”

Blanche clutched the microphone in her
hand so hard her knuckles whitened. “Ten-four, uh, guy on the other
end of the line.”

More static.

Red grabbed the mic. “Hello, hello—can
you hear me?”

“
Affirmative,” came the
voice on the other end. “Is this a real person?”

“
Last time I
checked.”

“
Good Lord Almighty, you are
a real person. Thought I might have raised a Celerun again. They
have no sense of humor.”

“
The name’s Red. Who are
you?”

“
Call me Hank. Are you
alone, Red?”

“
No, Hank.”

“
How many are with you?
Wait, no, don’t tell me, because if there’s very many of you,
they’ll make you a priority target.”

“
A target for the
Celeruns?”

“
Yes. Are you familiar with
them?”

“
Maybe. You’re breaking up
real bad, so tell me what to do before we lose our
connection.”

“
We have to keep this very
short.”

“
In that case, Hank, I
better give our location before we lose you.”

“
Stop! Don’t say it!” The
signal dropped, but Blanche thrust the antennae in Jerome’s hand
and motioned for him to heft it higher. Jerome climbed on top of a
table, shoving honey cakes and wine out of the way. The signal
returned. “I have a sophisticated scrambler, which will shield the
both of us, but the Celeruns might have figured out how to
circumvent it by now.” Hank’s voice sounded even and steady, like a
man in control. “They understand human language quite well, but
wordplay, metaphors, and picturesque speech confounds
them.”

“
I don’t
understand.”

“
If you say someone looks
like a bow-wow, they’ll take it to mean she looks like a dog’s
bark. If you say your heart is on fire, they’ll think that the
circulatory organ in your chest is aflame. These are common
references though, so they can quickly look up their correct
meanings. The key to confusing their interpreters is originality.
The more unusual the turn of phrase, the more it slows down their
intelligence gathering.”

“
I still don’t understand
what you want from us.”

“
Tell me where your heart
is.”

“
Huh?”

“
Don’t give me any landmarks
or names of places,” Hank said. “Use unique imagery; paint a
picture, a reference to something you wouldn’t find in a
dictionary, a thesaurus, or Wikipedia.”

“
Wikipedia—but the internet
is gone.”

“
They saved everything on
it,” Hank said.

“
I’m still not
following.”

“
Home is where your heart
is,” Professor Linkletter said. “I think Hank wants to know our
location, but he wants you to do it without giving names of places
or landmarks the Celeruns might recognize.”

Red looked to the others at the party.
“How should I tell him how to find us without using coordinates or
names?”

He was met with shrugs and
indecisiveness.

“
We’re losing him,” Blanche
informed. “Better come up with something fast.”

“
Don’t worry,” Michael
stepped up. “I got this.”

He seemed so sure of himself that Red
let him take the microphone. Michael didn’t waste a
moment.

“
Hey, mister, think about
these things: what a kid says before he eats Brussels sprouts.” He
didn’t pause for a breath. “What you do on the playground when a
girl tries to kiss you.” He looked to Red for assurance that he was
doing well. Red shrugged and returned a scowl, but Elizabeth gave
Michael a nod of encouragement.

“
One more clue,” Michael
said. “A little hello in the middle of two cops eating
breakfast.”

“
Gimme that,” Red snatched
away the microphone. “Hank, sorry about that. I’ll think of another
way...”

“
Oh, shoot,” Blanche
informed. “I lost the transmission.”

“
What were you thinking,
Michael? How in the world is he going to figure out Akron, Ohio
from all of that?”

Michael turned to a boy about his own
age.

“
What do you say before you
eat Brussels sprouts?”

The boy said. “Yuck.”

“
Anyone else?”

“
Yum?” A ten-year-old girl
volunteered.

Michael looked at her as if a turd had
fallen out of her mouth.

“
Ack,” Nate said. “I say
ack.”

“
Me too,” Michael
nodded.

“
And what do you do when a
girl wants to kiss you?”

Nate puckered his lips, making a
come-here motion with his fingers.”Plant it right here,
baby.”

“
No,” Michael rolled his
eyes. “I mean if you’re a
kid
.”

“
Back before I knew better,
I ran away,” Nate said.

“
Now put it
together.”

“
Ack.” A smile spread across
Nate’s face. “Run.”

“
Ahh,” came from Blanche.
“Akron.”

“
Good thinking, son.” Father
Bob said. “So explain the deal with the cops eating
breakfast.”

“
Cops eat donuts for
breakfast. And donuts are shaped like O’s.”

“
A little hello,” Professor
Linkletter said, waving the tips of her fingers on her right hand.
“As in…hi. What a clever young man you are.”

“
I don’t get it.” Red
admitted.

“
It’s wordplay for the state
of Ohio, Red,” Blanche explained. “Donut. Hi. Donut. Get
it?”

“
Michael,” Elizabeth hugged
him close. “I’m so proud of you.”

The crowd squeezed in around him to pat
his head and shake his hand. He looked mighty pleased with himself,
but his eyes went to Red’s as if his adopted father’s approval
mattered the most.

“
Nobody’s going to figure
out Akron from that,” Red said, too preoccupied thinking about the
incident at Schlotz’s to notice the boy’s crestfallen expression.
Good grief, had he been attacked by an alien scout? As shocking as
the realization of the existence of aliens had been, it had never
crossed his mind that it might be the precursor to an entire
invasion.

“
Don’t tell me any of you
are taking this talk about space aliens seriously,” Veronica said,
hands on hips. “Especially you, Red. As the mayor of Hewego, you
have a responsibility to keep this kind of nonsense in check. We
wouldn’t want panic tearing down what we’ve worked so hard to
build.”

“
Lighten up,” Elizabeth
said. “Even if Hank’s a nutter, he’s a human being, and that makes
him family. If the plague has taught me anything, it’s that there’s
nothing more valuable than each other. Let him come.”

“
Just so long as we agree
there are no space aliens,” Veronica said. “Our cozy little
community is off to a good start. I’d hate to see paranoia spread.
That kind of thing could ruin us.”

Her words sobered up the party. She had
a point. And if he hadn’t seen what he had seen outside Schlotz’s,
Red might have made a similar speech. Now didn’t seem like the
right time to mention his encounter. His eyes darted to the
ceiling, wondering about who was up there. Were they listening and
perhaps watching? The thought left him cold.

Chapter 11

On a hot day in August, Red and
Elizabeth sat in their kitchen eating tomato salad; the cucumbers
and celery had just come in and the combination was refreshing.
They were just chatting about random things from their pasts, with
no particular aim or goal. She talked about the time she hiked the
Grand Canyon with her parents, got bit by a snake, and had to be
airlifted to the nearest hospital. He brought up his four years in
the service and some of his more daring exploits. He mentioned that
he had learned some Arabic during his time in the Middle
East.

“
I didn’t know you knew any
other languages. Say something,” she encouraged.

“
You don’t know Arabic. I
could make up words and you wouldn’t know the
difference.”

“
Humor me.”

Red obliged and rattled off the first
thing that came to mind.

“
You ordered a
cheeseburger,” she said.

“
No—the exact phrase I
thought was:
My camel for a cheeseburger with extra onions
.
You got the general idea, but your interpretation is way off in the
details.”

“
Don’t be a
stick-in-the-mud,” she said, her enthusiasm never waning. “I’m
branching out.”

“
You mean my thoughts are no
longer enough for you?” Red complained as he sipped water. He
hadn’t been exactly happy the day Elizabeth admitted she had been
reading his thoughts since the day they left Mrs. Jenkins’s
house.

“
Don’t you see how this is a
breakthrough? I’m not just hearing your thoughts, I’m seeing what
you see, feeling what you feel. This means my ability to read a
person isn’t limited by language. When you spoke in Arabic, I
didn’t understand the words, but I saw the cheeseburger you
pictured in your mind. And it was loaded with everything. I felt
your mouth salivate at the thought of it, I could smell the onions,
and I also felt a pang of sadness over the fact you can’t have them
anymore, at least not until Veronica’s ready to start butchering
some of the herd. Personally, I hate hamburgers, and I don’t miss
them a bit.”

Red scratched his temple. His wife was
more aware of what was going on in his head than he was. How very
disturbing. “Woman!” he said a little more forcefully than he had
intended. “Stay out of my mind.”