“Can you hear me, boy?”
“No.”
That won a second laugh, louder this time. “Do you know what’s happening to you?”
Bloch said, “No.”
Yet that wasn’t true.
More soldiers were gathering outside the hospital, setting up weapons, debating lines of fire.
The physicist pointed at Bloch, looking sick and pleased in the same moment. “I was right,” he boasted. “There is a contamination problem.”
“Where did this happened?” the colonel asked.
“While people were carting the spaceman around, I’d guess,” said the physicist.
Bloch slowly lifted his arms. The tube from the IV bottle had merged with him. His elbow still felt like an elbow except it wasn’t sore, and the raking marks in his bicep had become permanent features.
“Don’t move,” the angry soldier repeated.
Mom climbed to her feet, reaching for him.
“Don’t get near him,” the nurse advised.
“I’m hot, be careful,” Bloch said. But she insisted on touching the rebuilt arm, scorching each of her fingertips.
Mr. Rightly came forward, glasses dangling and forgotten on the tip of his moist little nose. “Is it really you?”
“Maybe,” the boy said. “Or maybe not.”
“How do you feel, Bloch?”
Bloch studied his hands with his fine new eyes. “Good,” he said.
“Are you scared?”
“No.”
The colonel whispered new orders to the lieutenant.
The lieutenant and a private pulled on leather gloves and came forward, grabbing the teacher under his arms.
“What is this?” Mr. Rightly asked.
“We’re placing you under observation, as a precaution,” the colonel explained.
“That’s absurd,” said Mr. Rightly, squirming hard.
On his own, the private decided that the situation demanded a small surgical punch—one blow to the kidneys, just to put the new patient to the floor.
The lieutenant cursed.
Bloch sat up, and the shriveled bed shattered beneath him.
“Don’t move,” the angry soldier repeated, drawing sloppy circles with the gun barrel.
“Leave him alone,” Bloch said.
“I’m all right,” Mr. Rightly said, lifting a shaking hand. “They just want to be cautious. Don’t worry about it, son.”
Bloch sat on the floor, watching every face.
Then the physicist turned to the colonel, whispering, “You know, the mother just touched him too.”
The colonel nodded, and two more soldiers edged forward.
“No,” Bloch said.
One man hesitated, and irritated by the perceived cowardice, his partner came faster, lifting a pistol, aiming at the woman who had a burnt hand and a monstrous child.
Thought and motion arrived in the same instant.
The pistol was crushed and the empty-handed soldier was on his back, sprawled out and unsure what could have put him there so fast, so neatly. Then Bloch leaped about the room, gracefully destroying weapons and setting bodies on their rumps before ending up in the middle of the chaos, seven feet tall and invulnerable. With the crackly new voice, he said, “I’ve touched all of you. And I don’t think it means anything. And now leave my mother the hell alone.”
“The monster’s loose,” the angry soldier screamed. “It’s attacking us.”
Three of the outside soldiers did nothing. But the fourth man had shot his first leopard in the morning, and he was still riding the adrenaline high. The hot target was visible with night goggles—a radiant giant looming over cowering bodies. The private sprayed the target with automatic weapons fire. Eleven bullets were absorbed by Bloch’s chest, their mass and energy and sweet bits of metal feeding the body that ran through the shredded wall and ran into the open parking lot, carefully drawing fire away from those harmless sacks of living water.
A few people joined up with the refugee stream, abandoning the city for the Interstate and solid, trusted ground to the west. But most of the city remained close to home. People didn’t know enough to be properly terrified. Some heard the same stories that the Army heard about the Night Side. But every truth had three rumors ready to beat it into submission. Besides, two hundred thousand bodies were difficult to move. Some cars still worked, but for how long? Sparks and odd magnetisms ran shared the air with a hundred comforting stories, and what scared people most was the idea that the family SUV would die on some dark stretch of road, in the cold and with hungry people streaming past.
No, it was better to stay inside your own house. People knew their homes. They had basements and favorite chairs and trusted blankets. Instinct and hope made it possible to sit in the dark, the ground rolling steadily but never hard enough to shake down the pictures on the wall. It was easy to shut tired eyes, entertaining the luscious idea that every light would soon pop on again, televisions and Google returning in force. Whatever the crisis was, it would be explained soon. Maybe the war would be won. Or an alien face would fill the plasma television—a brain- rich beast dressed in silver, its rumbling voice explaining why the world had been assimilated and what was demanded of the new slaves.
That was a very potent rumor. The world had been invaded, humanity enslaved. And slavery had its appeal. Citizens of all persuasions would chew on the notion until they tasted hope: property had value. Property needed to be cared for. Men and women sat in lounge chairs in their basements, making ready for what seemed like the worst fate short of death. But it wasn’t death, and the aliens would want their bodies and minds for some important task, and every reading of history showed that conquerors always failed. Wasn’t that common knowledge? Overlords grew sloppy and weak, and after a thousand years of making ready, the human slaves would rise up and defeat their hated enemies, acquiring starships and miracle weapons in the bargain.
That’s what the woman was thinking. She was sitting beside the basement stove, burning the last of her Bradford pear. She was out of beer and cigarettes and sorry for that, but the tea was warm and not too bitter. She was reaching for the mug when someone forced the upstairs door open and came inside. She stopped in mid-reach, listening to a very big man moving across her living room, the floor boards complaining about the burden, and for the next mad moment she wondered if the visitor wasn’t human. The zoo had ponies. The creature sounded as big as a horse. After everything else, was that so crazy? Then a portion of the oak turned to fire and soot, and something infinitely stranger than a Clydesdale dropped into the basement, landing gently beside her.
“Quiet,” said the man-shaped demon, one finger set against the demon mouth.
She had never been so silent.
“They’re chasing me,” he said with a little laugh.
He was wearing nothing but a clumsy loincloth made from pink attic insulation. A buttery yellow light emerged from his face, and he was hotter than the stove. Studying his features, the woman saw that goofy neighbor boy who walked past her house every day. That was the boy who was standing outside just before the aliens crashed. Not even two days ago, incredible as that seemed.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m no monster.”
Unlikely though it was, she believed him.
A working spotlight swept through the upstairs of her house. She saw it through the hole and the basement windows. Then it was gone and there was just the two of them, and she was ready to be scared but she wasn’t. This unexpected adventure was nothing but thrilling.
The boy-who-wasn’t-a-monster knelt low, whispering, “I’m having this funny thought. Do you want to hear it?”
