Invasion

44

Reno woke up and rubbed his eyes. Even doing so didn’t clear up his cloudy mind as he looked around. He could feel the motion of moving down a highway, but he didn’t know where he was or how he’d gotten there. His vision still hadn’t cleared up when the pain rushed to his head. Taking a quick breath, he groaned as he raised his hand to his cheek.

“He’s waking up,” a female voice said.

Following the sound of the voice, Reno opened his eyes to see Maya’s daughter, Laura, leaning over him. Maya was driving, and she pushed her daughter back with an arm bar.

“Give him some space.”

Reno looked to Maya, his memory slowly filtering back. As he stared, three blurry versions of her face appeared and wavered as if he was looking at her through old windows. She reached over and ran her hand through his hair.

“Just relax.”

Leaning back in the seat again, Reno closed his eyes before blinking several times. His vision slowly refocused, but the pain in his face only increased. He opened his eyes and saw Laura next to him with Aiden sitting between her and her mother.

Reno felt a touch on his arm and looked over to see Maya with a bottle in her hand.

“Take two of these.” She shook the small bottle of Advil and looked at Laura. “Get him some water.”

Laura pulled a half-full water bottle from a bag sitting on the floor. Maya shook the bottle of Advil and dropped two of the orange pills into his hand.

“I can take them without it.”

“Ugh, I forgot you can do that,” Maya said. “You still need to drink some water anyway to rehydrate, so take it.”

He accepted the water from Laura, twisting off the cap and pressing the bottle to his lips. He drank in huge gulps, his eyes closed.

A jolt of electric pain rocketed through his jaw as he did, and he put the water bottle down and grabbed the sun visor.

Maya said, “Wait, you might not want to look at your—”

But he ignored her and pulled it down, revealing the mirror underneath. His nose had swollen to twice its size and his lip had been split in three places. He winced, already noticing a blackened bruise blooming on the left side of his face.

Nobody in the truck said a word. Reno shook his head, slammed the visor back up, and looked at Maya.

“Where’s Gerald and John?”

But he knew. He’d glanced in the side view mirror several times and there hadn’t been another vehicle behind them, nor was their one up ahead. And the other men sure as hell weren’t riding inside the fertilizer tank mounted where the truck’s bed had once been.

Maya kept her hands at ten and two, and wouldn’t even look at him. Aiden sniffled and Laura shook her head, her teeth biting into her bottom lip.

“You left them behind.”

That couldn’t have been her only option. Could it?

“Why?”

Maya’s body stiffened. “What? I told John we’d go back for them if we could.”

“We could have found a way to get to Cincy without leaving anyone behind.”

“And what would that have been? You couldn’t help us problem-solve, could you, Reno? Do you know what he did to you?”

“The last thing I remember is fighting.”

“He beat you within an inch of your life. I seriously thought you were dead. Remember the time we answered that call to Printer’s Alley for the dude who’d been jumped? It was like that.”

Reno did remember that. A forty-year-old guy had been beaten by a group of men who’d used Maglites as fists. Maya wouldn’t have brought that up unless she really wanted to make a point, but it didn’t convince him she’d done the right thing. Gerald had beaten him. But they’d been fighting, and every fight had a winner and a loser. He’d just happened to lose. Leaving John and Gerald behind was giving them a death sentence, and Reno wouldn’t have wished that on anyone, even the man who’d beaten his ass.

“We should turn around and get them now.”

Maya sighed, and Reno felt Laura shift on the seat beside him.

His old partner started to say something twice, but each time she struggled to get the words out.

“The aliens will kill them both,” he said simply. “Gerald is the father of your children.”

“I know goddamn well who he is!”

Reno winced as the sound of her yelling threatened to rip his head apart, the pain now throbbing at the base of his skull.

“You think it was easy for me to leave him behind? John understood. I had no choice. We didn’t have the time to wait around and try to fix the other truck or find one that worked. We only have until dusk to make it to that stadium before they’re likely going to lock it up. And he’d lost it, Reno. You saw him at the rest stop. The guy we left behind isn’t the man I married.”

Reno nodded, then looked at Aiden and Laura, but both kids continued staring silently out the windshield.

“I’m sorry you had to make that decision.”

Maya turned her head and glanced past her kids to make eye contact with Reno. “So am I.”

He sat there, the pain in his chest now rivaling the pain in his head. Stress. It always made him tight. Reno saw the horizon darkening and realized they only had a few hours of sunlight left.

They’d all done things under the dome that they would never have done in their old lives. But this, this was different. If it had been the mother of Reno’s children, he would have done everything possible to get them to Cincy. Everything. She’d left Gerald and John behind. Maybe Maya wasn’t the person he’d thought she was. Maybe this was the real Maya, and if that was the case, he’d have some soul-searching to do once they reached Cincinnati safety.

They passed the sign for Florence, Kentucky, signaling they had about eleven miles until they reached Cincinnati. That city might as well have been on a different planet compared to their old lives.

Maybe the alien threat was the one driving the truck.