“Please?” I said. “General? Xavier?”
When he didn’t answer, I tried again.
“Dad?”
But he still didn’t respond.
He was dead to the world.
I FLEW HIM straight to the hospital in south Beaverton where my mother worked, but when I swooped down looking for a spot to land, I saw that all the roads surrounding it were jammed with abandoned vehicles and frightened people. If I landed my Interceptor nearby it would draw all kinds of attention, and it was doubtful I’d be able to take off again.
I was circling back over the city, looking for a quiet place to set down, when I spotted my high school down below. There were only a few cars still parked in the student lot, and mine was one of them. I could also make out the burn marks on the school’s front lawn left by the EDA shuttle when Ray had arrived to pick me up this morning—a whole lifetime ago.
I considered landing my ship in the lot right next to my car, but then I thought better of leaving it parked out in the open. A few seconds later, I spotted the perfect parking spot.
I swung around and flew back over the school, but this time I strafed the roof of the gym with laser fire. Then I made another pass and strafed it again, until the whole roof collapsed. Once the dust settled, I lowered my Interceptor down into the gym, concealing it perfectly from view, except from directly above.
The school superintendent was going to be pissed about the damage, but he could bill me.
I was sure someone must have spotted my ship during its brief descent, or heard the noise I’d made. But when I climbed out of my cockpit and ran back outside the gym to take a quick look around, I didn’t see anyone rushing toward the building to investigate. I figured that the people who weren’t too busy fleeing the city or looting were probably inside their homes, glued to their TV and computer screens, waiting for news.
I sent my mother a text message, asking her to meet us at home with a first aid kit, as soon as possible. Then I pulled my car around, up to the gymnasium’s exit. I ran back inside, opened up my father’s escape pod, and—staggering under his weight—carried him out to my car.
The jolt of pain he must’ve felt when I finally managed to flip him into the passenger seat brought him to a state of semiconsciousness.
“RedJive, standing by!” he said drunkenly, slurring his words. He blinked a few times and looked around the car, his eyes widening in recognition.
“Hey, I know this car. This is my old Omni! This shit heap still runs?”
I couldn’t speak for a moment. I was too overjoyed to see his eyes open.
“Yeah, it still runs,” I finally managed to say. “But just barely.” As I gently removed his jacket, I noticed there was blood on some of its patches. I balled the jacket up and shoved it under his head for a pillow. “Try to stay still, okay? Just rest. We’ll be home soon.”
“Wow, really?” he said, smiling faintly. “I’ve never been home.”
LUCKILY MY HOUSE was only a couple of miles from school, and most of the streets were still passable. I only had to make one detour, to get around a five-car accident blocking an intersection. During the trip, my father drooled and mumbled in the passenger seat, obviously riding high on whatever pain meds the escape pod’s emergency systems had injected into his bloodstream.
As I turned down our street and saw our empty driveway, I clenched my teeth in disappointment. My mom wasn’t here.
I was still helping my father out of the car when I heard an engine behind me and turned to see my mom’s car pulling in. I made a second’s worth of eye contact with her through the windshield, saw her eyes widen as she recognized me—and then she was leaping out of her car and running to mine, covering her mouth with her long fingers.
My father opened his eyes in the passenger seat beside me as she peered in.
He didn’t speak. He just stared at her, as if paralyzed. I put a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey, Mom,” I said, getting out of the car. “I’m home. We’re home.”
She took me in her arms and crushed her face against my shoulder as tightly as she could. When she finally let go, she turned back to look at my father, still inside the car. “Xavier?” she said. “Is that really you?”
Somehow he managed to pull himself up out of the car, onto his feet.
Then he took a step toward her, and she threw her arms around him. He buried his face in her hair, inhaling deeply.
As I watched them embrace, there on the front lawn, my heart was rocked by waves of unbridled joy. It occurred to me that up until this moment I’d only ever experienced the bridled kind. Having the reins slipped off my heart after a lifetime of wearing them was a bit overwhelming—in the best possible way.
I heard barking, and a second later, Muffit burst out of his doggie door. The old beagle barked and bounded down the front steps and across the front lawn, moving faster than he had in years.
“Muffit!” my father cried, breaking off his embrace with my mother to greet the ancient dog, just a second before Muffit somehow summoned the strength to bound into my kneeling father’s lap.
“Oh, it’s so good to see you, boy!” he said as Muffit showered his face with kisses. “I missed you, boy! Did you miss me?”
Muffit barked happily in reply, then continued to shower my dad with saliva. It had never once occurred to me to wonder whether our dog remembered my father—after all, Muffit had been just a puppy when he disappeared.
My father began to laugh under the beagle’s barrage of kisses—but then he glanced over at my mother and me and his features suddenly contorted into a mask of pain. He turned away and tried to hide his face by burying it in Muffit’s graying coat. My mother put her arms around both of them, and I saw that there were tears running down her cheeks—and I knew they were the same sort now welling up in my own eyes. Tears of joy.
Through my increasingly blurred vision, I watched my father and my mother and my dog, all holding each other, just a few feet away from me—my family, impossibly reunited, after all this time.
Suddenly, I wanted very much for the world not to end. I wanted it to keep going, more than anything.
My father set Muffit down and scratched his silvery muzzle. “You got old, didn’t you, buddy? That’s okay. I did, too.”
My mother examined the cut on my father’s forehead and winced.
“Help me get him inside,” she said. “Christ, what did you give him? Bourbon?”
“The med computer in his escape pod dosed him with some sort of painkiller,” I explained. “Will he be okay?”
My father burst out singing—some old song I didn’t recognize.
“ ‘I haven’t got time for the pain!’ ” he bellowed.
My mother let out a laugh, then nodded at me.
“He’s definitely suffered a concussion, but yes—he’ll live.” She let out another laugh, which turned into a sob halfway through. “That’s funny, considering he’s been dead for seventeen years.” She gave me an unsteady smile. Her lower lip was trembling.
“It’s gonna be okay, Mom,” I said, just to have something to say.
We got my father into the living room and lowered him onto the couch. Then I turned to my mother and hugged her as hard as I ever had in my life.
“I need to run over to Diehl’s house, Ma,” I told her, breaking off the embrace. “There’s something I promised Dad I’d do.”
“He didn’t promise me anything!” my father shouted—but his face was buried in the couch cushions, and Muffit was sitting on his head, so I may have misheard him.
“Zackary Ulysses Lightman, you are not going back out there!” my mother said, pointing her finger at me. “I’ve been worried to death! You can’t do that to me again!”
“It’s okay now,” I told her as I headed for the door. “The first wave of the invasion is over. Nearly all of the alien drones from the vanguard have been destroyed.”
My mother smiled with relief, clearly mistaking my meaning.
“But that was just the first wave, Mom,” I said. “A lot more are on their way.”
“Two more whole waves of them,” my father mumbled, lifting his head long enough to dethrone Muffit, then dropping it facefirst into the cushion again.
Her eyes shifted back and forth between the two of us uncertainly. I went over and hugged her a last time.
“I’ll be back before then,” I told her. “I promise.” I glanced at my father. “Try and sober him up, will you?”
THE DRIVE TO Diehl’s house was easier than I’d feared—I had to use some sidewalks and lawns to avoid pileups and downed power lines, but there was no traffic, so the detours didn’t take long.
When I reached Diehl’s house, I saw over a dozen dormant ATHIDs standing guard around the perimeter of his lawn like robotic sentinels. I saw the omnidirectional camera eyes swivel to follow me as I approached, but they made no move to stop me. I scaled Diehl’s backyard fence, climbed up onto his roof, and then tiptoed over to his second-story bedroom window to peer inside.
To my relief, Diehl was in there, he was alive, and he was doing exactly what I’d expected to find him doing—sitting at his computer, talking to Cruz via a video window on his computer.