He helped Mike up the ladder, then drew it in behind them. The Air Force officers swarmed out of the hospital exit and began fighting to get into the TR. Charles mercilessly shot one of them, and they all fell back. Leaving Mike in the access tunnel, he slid into the cockpit and hit the stick, causing the fans to whine for a moment as they revved.
Below him, the officers were drawing their guns. He knew how vulnerable the TR was to gunfire, and twisted the flight controls, slamming the power switches all the way down as he did so. The world outside whirled wildly and critical maneuver alarms sounded.
But the hospital spun away below, and the shots that were being fired did no damage. He headed the nose of the craft toward the dark, and was off into the night.
SLEEPING BETWEEN AMY AND HIS mom, Conner dreamed of when the bluets would rise out of the ground along the roadsides and the warblers would come back to Kentucky, and he saw his own backyard going green again, and his dad filling the pool with the garden hose. He dreamed then of the days of summer peace. He woke up a little and murmured, “We’re going to be free, all of us.”
“We are free,” Amy said. “Sort of. Aren’t we?”
“Sort of,” he said. “But there’s a lot more to come.”
But in his heart, he despaired, calling,
Silence continued to be the only response.
“Look here, Conner Callaghan, if you’re gonna be my boyfriend, you have to pretend not to be totally geeky. Can you do that?”
He smiled a little. “I’ll give it a shot.” His eyes fluttered closed and he tried again to find the mind of the collective.
The snow, dark now, slowly covered the body of the Two, and in the ashes of the grain elevator, the curious metal bones of his brothers, also, were dusted with it, deep in the black ruins.
EPILOGUE
Late At Night, When the Demons Come
THEY’D COME HOME, HE AND Mom. Dad had to stay at the hospital for a few days. Lauren was with them, and Conner knew that she was going to live here, she had to, he needed her here.
Late that night, Conner lay wide awake, letting his silent tears flow. He was down in his basement room. Mom was in her bedroom upstairs, and in his mind’s eye, he could see her sleeping. Lauren was awake.
He went upstairs. She sat in the living room, sipping from a tall glass.
“Conner!”
“Hi.”
“Can’t sleep?”
“I’m wide awake.”
“Me, too.” She held up her drink. “Want a sip?”
He shook his head. “They make me drink wine at dinner. One of Dad’s many theories. Every time you do that, did you know that you kill about six thousand neurons?”
“I’ve heard that.”
“I need all my neurons.”
“Come sit beside me.” She patted the couch and he came close to her. “Are you scared, Conner?”
“Oh, yes.” He looked out the dark glass doors that opened onto the deck. It was bright outside now, a low moon making the snow shine softly.
“I want to just talk, okay? I don’t like to do that mind stuff.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yeah, you did, you said my name.”
“I heard that, too, but it’s not me.”
Could it be? But no. He sighed. “My friends are dead.”
“Your friends? The Kelton boy?”
“Yeah, him too. But I mean—you know—the ones we’re not supposed to talk about. I need them, Lauren. I’m lost without them.”
“I feel that way about my friend. He was a gray, but they’re not really monsters at all, they’re full of need and hope, and—” She stopped, looked down at him. He was so small, just an ordinary little kid, narrow shoulders, soft, unfinished face, all promise and potential.
“You miss him, then?”
“Earlier, I could feel him in you, sort of, and that was nice. It was like being home again, a little bit.”
He thought about that. “Boy, if people heard us talking about this stuff, they would think we were weird.”
She sensed that he didn’t want to address the matter of Adam. And why would he? Adam had died for him, and that would be very hard to face. “I’m in the military,” she said. “My friend, he was in his military, sort of. The grays’ military of the spirit. I mean, they have no actual army, as such. In the military, though, we always know that death is part of it. Oh, you don’t think about it, you think about life. But death is part of it.”
She had to stop. She did not want him to hear the tears in her voice.
He blinked, sat up straighter, stared toward the deck. That wasn’t Lauren, she was leaning over with her eyes closed and full of tears, almost about to spill her drink.
He got up.
“Going back to bed?”
He hardly heard her. He went out on the deck.
“Conner?”
The night was huge and hollow, the sky aflame with stars. It was cutting cold, but it felt good, somehow, as if the winter night belonged to his grief.
She came out behind him, and then Mom did, too. Mom brought his coat. He had big lamb’s wool slippers on already. “What are we doing at three A.M? May I know?”
Then, through the skeletal trees, there came a glow. It flickered and was gone.
“Is that a flashlight?” his mother asked.
But Conner was off, racing down the deck stairs and across the hard frozen yard. “You guys,” he yelled, his voice slapping the deep silence.
He plunged through the woods, pushing twigs aside, getting scratched by branches. Then he stumbled into the stubbly field and saw hanging there just a hundred yards away, the little ship that had started the whole thing.
It wasn’t glowing much now. In fact, there was just this flickering blue light playing across its skin. As he approached it, he saw that it was bigger than it looked.
“Conner! Conner, be careful!”
He went closer to the thing. It was making a sort of rattling sound, like ball bearings clicking together in something that was turning slowly, just ticking over. There was a round opening, not a hatch, just an opening. Inside, he could see the wooden framework that held the thin outer skin. He pushed at it, and it wobbled slightly in the air.
He peered in.
