The End Is Now

THE SIXTH DAY OF DEER CAMP Scott Sigler

George didn’t want to be the one to say it, but it had to be said: “We can’t stay here.”

They all looked at him. Gloved hands flexed on hunting rifles. Jaco gave a tiny, weak shake of the head. Bernie closed his eyes and sighed. Toivo glared. Only Arnold nodded: older, wiser, but even he clearly wasn’t crazy about the idea of leaving.

The impossible had happened: an actual alien invasion. George and his three boyhood friends—and the man who had been a father figure to them all—were sitting in the same cabin they’d come to every November for almost three decades. A remote spot in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the middle of nowhere, really, and something had crashed here, something that wasn’t a plane or a jet or anything else they knew.

That something was out in the woods, the deep woods, behind the cabin, among the pines and spruces and birch and several feet of snow. They had seen it, a vague shape through the trees, red and green and blue lights filtering through the darkness and the wind-driven white. It was out there, this ship, and, according to the internet stories they’d read on Bernie’s phone, ships similar to it were attacking major cities all over the world.

That was all the info they had to go on. Cell phones weren’t working anymore—voice or internet—and even back in the day when landlines were all there were, the cabin hadn’t had one.

Why that ship had crashed here, George didn’t know. Neither did his friends. What they did know was that three days of steady snow had choked the narrow, back-country roads, making them impassible by car. They could walk out on foot, sure, if they could survive the cold long enough to reach shelter elsewhere. The very reason they came to this cabin year after year was because there was nothing near it—in this weather, with the snowpack, it was at least an hour’s walk to another cabin.

There was one snowmobile, an old thing that had sat idle this year and last. George remembered someone firing it up three years back. Would it even start? If it did, it could get one man out, maybe two, but not five.

Just say it . . . just tell them you should take the snowmobile because you have to get out of here, get to your sons, your wife.

That little voice nagged at him, told him to use the parent trump card that all parents of young children used. But this wasn’t getting out of work a little early to pick the boys up from soccer practice, this wasn’t asking someone else at the office—someone who didn’t have kids—to stay late because you had to get the babysitter home . . . these were his closest friends, men that he loved, and leaving them would be the most selfish thing.

If they’re really your friends, they’d understand. You’ve got kids, just ask them if you can—

“Can’t stay here, you say,” Toivo said. “We sure as hell can’t leave, Georgie.”

Toivo had sobered up. Mostly. His eyes still looked tired, hungover-tired, and a bit of gleaming snot stuck to his mustache. Dressed in a full snowsuit over two sweaters, he looked like a brown Pillsbury Doughboy. So did George, for that matter. So did everyone else.

Toivo gestured to the cabin’s ratty wall. “What da fuck do you think we’re gonna do outside, Georgie? Hide in da woods? It’s fuckin’ forty below out there.”

George nodded. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Cold was one thing. He was a grown man—he could handle cold—but forty below wasn’t cold, it was something else altogether. And then there was the snow. Still falling steadily from the night sky, increasing the thick whiteness that covered bare branches and pine boughs alike, adding to the three feet already on the ground. That snow hid all the sticks and logs and foot-snapping holes around the shack.

But . . . there were no trees or sticks on the road. Nothing there but snow. The road would take them away. They needed to be on that road, and the sooner the better.

Get them all moving, it doesn’t matter, get them out of here and find a way to get home . . .

“That ship is close,” George said. “We’re the only building in the area.” He pointed to the cabin’s small, black, wood-burning stove, which gave off heat that seemed far more delicious now that he knew he’d soon leave it behind. “The stove is putting out smoke. If they have IR, they’ll see the shack lit up all red, or whatever, and know that people are here.”

Arnold’s wrinkled face furrowed. “IR? What da hell is that?”

“Infrared, Pops,” Bernie said. “Like in Predator.”

Arnold’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Ah, yeah. Like Predator.”

Those two, Arnold and Bernie, had such a strong father-son resemblance they looked like a before-and-after picture: this is you before you start to smoke, kids, and this is you after. Bernie, over forty, same age as George and Jaco and Toivo, with a full “hunting cabin beard” that had taken him only a week to grow. Arnold, white stubble in and on the folds of his face, tired eyes peering out from behind thick glasses.

“This ain’t a movie,” Toivo said. “This ain’t about IR. Georgie, I love ya, but stop lying—you think you can get back to Milwaukee.”

A stab of guilt, like George had been caught in a crime. He couldn’t lie to these men, at least not convincingly. They knew him too well.

“I do,” George said. “We have to get out of here, you guys. At least out of the cabin. If they’re killing people all over, they’ll come here, and if they find us, they’ll probably kill us, too.”

Bernie walked to the stove. “We should put da fire out, anyway. If there’s no fire they can’t see us, maybe. We’ll lose heat, but at least we’re protected from da wind.”

Jaco shook his head. “Putting it out makes way more smoke. Just let it burn out on its own.”

He was right about the smoke, but the tone in Jaco’s voice made it clear he was more worried about the cold.

Everyone looked worried, scared, but Jaco more than the rest. His oversized glasses framed wide eyes made wider by the thick lenses. He was the smallest of the five, always had been, so small that his rifle made him look like a preteen boy dressing up as a hunter for Halloween. He had children, too, a pair of daughters. At five and seven, they were the same ages as George’s boys. George had often teased Jaco that his boys would someday date those girls.

Toivo tried to sling his rifle over his shoulder, but his snowsuit’s bulk blocked him.

“We’ve got guns,” he said. He tried to sling the weapon a second time, succeeded. “We can defend ourselves, eh? We stay here, we won’t die from da cold. Maybe you forgot what it’s like living in a big city, Georgie, but in da woods, you don’t fuck with forty below.”

Jaco righted a folding chair that had been knocked over when the alien ship had screamed overhead—so close and loud the cabin rattled as if struck by artillery. He sat.

“Defend ourselves,” he said. “Toivo, those things are blowing up cities. From what those websites said, they’re taking on the military, and winning. You think hunting rifles are going to do anything?”

Toivo shrugged. “I’m not a physedicist,” he said. “But bullets will probably kill those things just like they kill us.”

“Physicist,” Jaco said, shaking his head. “You dumb-ass, phys-ed is gym.”

George didn’t want to listen to them jabber. His sons were probably terrified, wondering where their father was. His wife was . . . well, she was probably loading the shotgun and getting the boys into the basement. No trembling flower, his wife.

“Bernie, put out the fire,” George said. “Sorry, Toivo, but we have to get out of here. I’m telling you, they’ll come for this cabin. They crashed, they’ll want to secure the area.”

Toivo snorted. “Secure the area. What da hell are you, Georgie, some Delta Force guy or something? Chuck Norris?”

George didn’t have any military experience. None of them did. Just four men in middle-age—and one well past it—who knew nothing more about soldiering than what they’d seen in the movies.

Toivo pointed to the cabin’s warped wooden floor. “We’re staying here. They come? We’ve got guns.”

“If we stay, we put out the fire,” Bernie said. “I agree with George. Infrared.”

Jaco shook his head. “Don’t put it out, you idiots. Whatever is in that ship probably has its hands full. We leave it burning, but we get on the road. I’m with George—I’ve got to get to my daughters.”

Two men—George and Jaco—with little kids. Two men—Bernie and Toivo—with none. And Arnold, whose grown son was standing right next to him. Three sets of needs, three sets of perspectives.

Arnold coughed up some phlegm, then swallowed it in that abstract way old men do. “George is right,” he said. “You boys get out of the cabin.”

George felt a sense of relief that Arnold, the man who’d practically raised him, the best man George knew, was with him on that decision.

“Okay,” George said. “So we hit the road, we stay together and hope for the best.”

Arnold shook his head. “I said you boys get out of the cabin. I’ll keep an eye on the ship, make sure nothing comes after you.”

Bernie rolled his eyes, as if his father’s sudden act of bravery was not only expected, but annoying as well.

“Dad, we don’t have time for that shit,” he said. “We’re all going.”

“I’m seventy-two goddamn years old,” Arnold said. “I’ve been faking it just fine, but there’s only so much left in my tank. My bum hip is killing me. No way I’ll make it in this cold, son. So you do what your father tells you, and—”

“Shut up,” Jaco hissed. “You guys hear that?”

They didn’t at first, but the noise grew; over the whine of the wind through the trees outside, they heard faint snaps and cracks.

Something was coming through the woods.

Something big.

“We move, now,” Arnold said. “You boys come with me.”

They rushed from the house, bumping into each other, stumbling off the rickety, two-step porch. Toivo fell sideways as he ran; the snow bank rising up from the thin path caught him at a forty-five-degree angle, so he didn’t fall far.

George had assumed Arnold would run for the road, but he didn’t—he turned right and stumbled through the snow toward the cabin’s corner.

“Arnold! Where are you going!”

George stopped, but the others didn’t. They followed Arnold, three men carrying hunting rifles, stutter-stumbling through snow that came up to their crotches, moving too fast to walk in each other’s footsteps.

Jesus H., was the old man attacking? They vanished around the corner, not running away from the oncoming sound, but toward it.

George found himself alone.

The cold pressed in on him, on his face, tried to drive through his snowsuit as if it were armor that would slowly, inexorably dent and crumble under the pressure. Out of the cabin for all of ten seconds, he already felt it.

The porch light cast a dim glow onto the path, the blanket of white on the driveway, and the walls of the same stuff that made the truck nothing more than a vehicle-shaped snow bank.

He looked at the snowmobile, or rather the curved hump of white burying it. The keys were inside the cabin. He could grab them—the others had left him alone—he had to get back to his family. He could dig down to the snowmobile . . . no, that would take twenty minutes all by itself, then the thing probably wouldn’t start. He had to run, get as far down the road as he could.

Little Jaco . . . Bernie . . . Toivo . . . Mister Ekola.

The people who had made him who he was: go after them, or head down the road alone and start a three-hundred-sixty-mile trek to Milwaukee.

From the other side of the cabin, he heard the crack of a tree giving way, a brittle sound quickly swallowed by the snowy night.

George couldn’t do it; he couldn’t leave his friends.

I’ll get home as soon as I can, I will . . .

He held his rifle tight in both gloved hands and ran to the corner of the cabin, stumbling through the snow just as the others had done.

Most people don’t know real cold. Sure, they’ve been cold before; they’ve sat through a football game in below-freezing temps; they’ve experienced winter here or there, perhaps even been dumb enough to take a vacation to Chicago in December. All of those things are cold, but real cold? Don’t-fuck-with-forty-below cold?

That can kick your ass. That can kill you.

George tried to stop shivering, but he couldn’t. Wind slid through the trees, drove the cold into him as if he wasn’t even wearing a snowsuit with the hood up over a hat, three sweaters, jeans over long johns, three pairs of socks, gloves and even a scarf wrapped tight around his nose and mouth. His hands felt like there was a steel vice on each knuckle of each finger, and the fingertips themselves stung like he’d sliced off the ends and dipped the raw stubs in battery acid.

And he’d only been outside for five minutes.

Forty below? Maybe worse than that, maybe far worse with the wind-chill factored in.

He followed the footsteps of his friends, mostly by feel because it was so dark. No porch light here, no stars; he wouldn’t have been able to see anything at all if not for the barest glimmer from the covered moon turning the snow gray. He had a flashlight in a snowsuit pocket, but knew better than to use it.

Most people don’t know real cold, and most people also don’t know real snow. The kind of snow that piles up week after week, a crispy layer near the bottom with the hidden logs and sticks, a layer so firm that when you break through it and stagger on, sometimes your foot slides right out of your boot. Above that, the dense snowpack, then finally, on top, several inches of the fluffy stuff. Every step sank so deep he couldn’t quite raise his boot all the way out to take the next one. He was wading more than walking.

So dark. The woods were nothing but shadows holding aliens; they had to be out here somewhere, probably had already come out of the ship and were closing in. He should have stayed on the road, gotten out of there while he could, he—

“Georgie! Get over here!”

Bernie—the voice was so close. Shadows moved . . . just to the left, heads peeking up from behind a fallen tree, the trunk smooth and softened by snow.

George stumbled toward it, each step breaking through the crust and driving in with that Styrofoam-sounding crunch. He fell more than walked the last three feet. His friends caught him, pulled him down. His chest heaved, drawing icy knives deep into his lungs.

They huddled together out of a need for warmth, or maybe from pure fear.

Another crack, that thing coming through the woods.

George wiped his glove across his eyes, clearing away flakes that clung to his lashes. He rose up on his knees, peeked over the log. The cabin . . . it was so close. How could it be that close? It seemed like he’d been walking forever, each step a battle, but he hadn’t made it more than thirty or forty feet. He was close enough to see smoke slipping out of the thin stove-pipe, instantly ripped into the night by the unforgiving wind.

The cracking again, a branch giving way, maybe an entire tree. And a new sound, a grinding, like machinery that had seen better days. In the woods, a shape, a big shape, backlit by the ship’s red and green and blue lights.

George slipped back down. He looked to Arnold. Shivering Arnold, old Arnold. “Why?” George hissed. “Why didn’t we run?”

“IR,” Arnold said. “Like The Terminator.”

“Predator,” Bernie said. “Like Predator, Dad.”

Arnold’s body trembled horribly, like an invisible hand had him between giant fingers and was rattling him like some child’s toy.

“Heat . . . our heat,” he said. “If we hide behind a big log . . . they won't see us.”

George stared, dumbfounded. They had followed this man here, because of that reasoning? They could have been a hundred yards down the road by now. Instead, they were closer to the oncoming threat.

Arnold—the man he’d once known only as Mister Ekola—had been their rock once, but now he was just a scared old man who had made a shitty decision based on a movie he couldn’t fully remember.

“Hey,” Jaco said. “Couldn’t Terminator see in infrared, too?”

Toivo and Bernie thought, then nodded. George wanted to punch them all right in the nose.

Over the wind’s scream, the cracking and grinding drew closer. George had a flash memory of a summer campfire some thirty years earlier, the night stars above, skin on his face and his toes and knees nearly burning because the closer you sat to the fire the less the mosquitoes and black flies bothered you. Mister Ekola, a flashlight under his chin casting strange shadows on his cheeks and eyes, telling a story of a killer with a limp. You knew this killer because of the sound, the thump-drag sound, a good foot stepping forward, then the slide of the bad foot following behind.

Thump, drag . . . thump, drag . . .

George had told that same story to his sons. It had scared the hell out of them just like it had scared the hell out of him. And now, a version of that sound had him damn near pissing his pants, a version with the added tones of snapping branches and broken gears.

Thump, drag, crack-crack, snap . . . thump, drag, whir-snap, crack, whine . . .

George’s friends huddled down lower to the ground, pressing into the log like they were newborn pups nursing from their mother.

Someone had to look; someone had to know what was coming.

George forced himself to rise up, just enough to see over the snow-covered log.

Thump, drag, crack-whine, grind-snap . . .

The thing broke through the tree line just thirty feet from the cabin. A robot, a big-ass robot maybe fifteen feet tall. Two legs . . . the left stepping forward, the right dragging along behind, functioning barely enough to position itself so the machine could take another step with its left. Broken branches jutted out of tears in the metal shell, or plastic, or whatever it was made of. Bipedal—no arms George could see—but cracks everywhere, breaks and tears and dents, smoke-streaks . . . the thing was trashed. Part of the shell was ripped free near the top. Hard to see in the darkness and snow, but George could make out a yellow shape . . . a form that moved . . .

Sweet Jesus.

An alien.

Thump, drag . . . thump, drag . . .

The robot paused just past the tree line, big feet hidden in the snow. Something fluttered open near what George could only think of as the machine’s hips. Then, a flash, and a rocket shot out, closing the distance in less than a second.

He was already dropping behind the log when the cabin erupted in a fireless explosion that launched a hailstorm of broken-board shrapnel into the woods, knocking free chunks of clinging snow that had withstood the blowing wind.

George’s ass hit the ground. He stared into the dark woods, mind blank.

A hand on his shoulder: Jaco, leaning in.

“Georgie, was that the fucking cabin that just blew up?”

I have to get on that road, get to Milwaukee, whatever it takes to reach my children, find a way—

“Georgie!”

“Yes, goddamit! It was the cabin!”

The sound again, thump, drag . . . thump, drag . . .

“Shit!” Jaco said, said it with such ferocity that it contracted his body, made his head snap forward. “Screw that! Everyone, shoot that thing on one, okay?”

Thump, drag . . . coming closer.

“Three,” Jaco said.

Counting? Why was he counting? It was a damn robot-thing that blew up buildings, it—

Thump, drag . . .

“Two!”

Holy shit! Jaco was going to fire at that thing out there?

Thump, drag . . .

“Jaco, no, you—”

“One!”

Movement all around, George’s friends rising up, the crack of rifles firing followed by the sound of bolts sliding back, then forward again.

George ripped off his gloves, held the rifle tight as he rose to his knees and turned, all one uncoordinated, lurching movement. He swung the barrel of his Remington 700 over the top of the log, knocking aside clumps of snow. The hand cupping the forestock pressed down on the log, snow instantly melting from the heat of his skin.

The big machine turned sharply, swiveling at the hips like the turret of a tank, the motion herky-jerky and halting.

George fired instantly, without aiming, had no idea if he’d hit.

Gunshots from his left and from his right. He popped the rifle’s lever up and pulled it back, heard the faint ring of the ejected shell, shoved the bolt forward but it stuck; his hand slipped off, his momentum lurched him forward into the log.

The guns kept firing.

I’ve never even shot a deer what the hell am I doing I should have gone to the range more should have—

He slammed the bolt home; the sound of it locking into place seemed to slow time from a mad explosion of a volcano to the slow creep of its lava flow. He looked through his scope at the fifteen-foot-tall machine only twenty feet away, sighted through one of the tears in the shell at the yellowish form.

He pulled the trigger. The Remington jumped. He saw the yellow thing inside twitch, then fall still.

It didn’t move.

Neither did the machine.

“Stop firing,” he shouted.

The rifle reports ended like someone had unplugged a TV in the middle of an action movie. No gunshot echoes, not with the snow-covered trees eating up all sound save for the wind.

George stared. They all stared. No one knew what else to do.

Slowly, like a top-heavy bookshelf with one too many knickknacks, the thing tipped forward: Fifteen feet of alien machine arced down and slammed into the ground with a billowing whuff of snow.

The top of it was only five feet away.

They stared at it. It didn’t move. Somewhere under there, hidden by all that bulk, was the alien who had been driving it.

“Holy shit,” Jaco said. “I think we killed it.”

George hoped so. He looked to his right, to the cabin; or what was left of it. Shattered, destroyed, blown apart with such force that there were only a few stumps of broken wood and a snow-free patch marking the place he and his friends had come every year for almost three decades.

“Told ya bullets would kill it,” Toivo said. “Who’s the physedicist now?”

The wind kept howling. The wind didn’t care.

“Guys,” Bernie said, “we gotta get moving. I’m freezing, eh?”

Those words might as well have been boiling oil thrown on George’s hands. The cold smashed them, ground his fingers. He set the gun against the log, almost fumbled it in the process, then grabbed his gloves out of the snow and pulled them on, only to find snow had somehow gotten inside of them.

His gloves were wet. Wet inside.

“It’s getting colder,” Arnold said. “How da fuck can it get colder?”

The old man started to cough. He bent at the knees, then fell to them, his body shaking.

Bernie knelt next to him, holding him close. He looked up at George. “We gotta get dad inside.”

Jaco pointed to where the cabin had been. “Inside where, Bernie? There is no more inside.”

Bernie shouted back at him. “Then build a fucking lean-to or something! Start a fire!”

Jaco slung his rifle. “Build a lean-to? I don’t have that merit badge, eh?”

The two began arguing, Jaco about how they might as well start walking and Bernie how they couldn’t, how they had to find a way to help Arnold. Jaco didn’t say the words—he couldn’t, none of them could—but he was making a case for heartbreak: If they started moving, they had a chance, even if that meant Arnold did not.

George took off his wet gloves, stuffed them into his snowsuit. His hands, brittle as glass, searched for pockets. He wasn’t going to last long out here.

None of them would.

Toivo pointed to the woods, to the red, green, and blue beams filtering through the trees, beams that colorized the driving snow.

“There is so an inside,” he said. “The only one we got.”

Bernie and Jaco stopped arguing.

“Well, shit,” Jaco said.

Bernie pulled his trembling father tighter, nodded.

“Toivo’s right,” he said. “It’s that or Dad dies.”

“That or . . . or . . . ,” George said, his jaw betraying him, suddenly clacking his teeth together so rapidly the words wouldn’t come. He clenched, fought down the shivering long enough to say five more words.

“That, or we all die.”

As far as choices went, this one sucked as much as any choice possibly could.

“Can’t believe we got this close,” Toivo said. “I expected to be dead already, eh? Ain’t they got no more machines?”

He stood on George’s right, rifle held in gloved hands. George wanted those gloves, needed them, or needed something to dry his out. His fingers were going numb. The stinging had stopped, which meant frostbite was setting in.

He had little strength left. All of the men were exhausted, drained from the fight and the long walk through the woods to the crashed ship. If another machine came, George knew they were done for; at this point he wasn’t even sure if he had the will to fight again.

The ship wasn’t as big as they had thought, but it was big enough. It had come down hard, gouging a long, fifty-foot-wide trench through the pines, like God had reached down an invisible stick and dragged a straight line through the woods, snapping trees into kindling, kicking out a wake of ice and frozen dirt.

And the ship itself . . .

George hadn’t known what to expect, what an alien ship was supposed to look like. It was a disc . . . nothing more than a classic flying saucer, really. Or at least it probably had been before the crash. The front end was smashed and torn, far worse, even, than the machine that had blown up the cabin. This thing had hit hard, the front edge digging into the ground almost like a shovel, so deep that the back end had probably tilted up behind it as it slid along the ground, grinding out that wide trench. It might have even flipped over during the crash, maybe even more than once—George actually had no idea if he was looking at the front or the back, or if the disc even had a front.

There . . . a hole . . . ragged in some places, smooth and somewhat melted in others. Someone or something—maybe that alien and its machine they’d left behind—had cut its way out.

George pointed at the hole.

“That’s got to be the door,” he said. His frozen lips, almost as numb as his fingers, were barely able to form the words. “Jaco, that look like a door to you?”

Jaco was on George’s left, rifle barrel pointed forward and down. Of all the friends, little Jaco—for reasons George couldn’t explain—now looked the most like a soldier: hard eyes peeking out from above a blue, snow-slick scarf wrapped around his mouth and nose, weapon at the ready.

“I dunno, Georgie. I ain’t got that merit badge, either. If that is the door, I’m guessing it’s an afterthought.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Bernie from behind them. “Whatever it is, we’ve got to go in.”

George turned, looked back. Bernie was behind them, one arm under his father’s shoulder. Arnold’s head hung down; George didn’t know if the old man was conscious anymore.

“We have to,” Bernie said.

His eyes pleaded for understanding. He knew what he was asking of his friends.

George didn’t want to go in. He loved Mister Ekola, truly and deeply, but he had children of his own . . . was Mister Ekola’s life more important than George getting back to his boys?

George glanced at Jaco. Jaco had been the first to think of leaving, to say-without-saying that Arnold was old, that he’d already had his time on this world. In that glance, George suddenly and shamefully hoped Jaco would say let’s get out of here, and George could pretend to be upset but actually back Jaco’s play, and they would leave and not go into that ruined ship and it wouldn’t be George’s fault . . . not really.

Jaco glanced at the opening.

“Fuck it,” he said. “My dick’s freezing off. Fuck it.”

He didn’t wait for anyone to answer him. He pointed his hunting rifle ahead and walked to the opening of the ruined ship.

George had a moment to hate Jaco, hate him very much, then he followed, Toivo just a step behind.

There were bodies everywhere.

The first few were so mangled George had no idea what the aliens looked like pre-crash. The yellow color he’d seen in the walking machine, it turned out, was probably clothing, because the twisted limbs and scraps of pulverized flesh showed various hues of blue. He saw what had to be hands (though they looked like they had two thumbs and one finger) and what had to be arms (connected to the hands, obviously, but long and thin, the arms of a death camp victim in those Holocaust documentaries); he also saw enough biological wreckage to identify legs (stick-thin but not so different from his own), hips, a midsection (with what might be vital organs in a bulge on the back rather than in front, for those that still had vital organs, at least), and an endless amount of sticky, clear fluid.

“Their blood,” Jaco said. “It’s got no color.”

His face was ashen, his upper lip curled back in revulsion. Jaco had removed his scarf because it was warm in the ship. Borderline hot, even. It was such a welcome relief from the numbing cold that it almost deadened the shock of being there, in a strange ship, surrounded by dead aliens.

If there were any of them left alive, they weren’t showing themselves.

George and the others moved through the ship, finding its familiarity almost disturbing: Even for a different species, a room was a room, a hallway was a hallway. Everything was bent and broken, cracked—twisted from the impact—but maybe it didn’t look all that different from what humans might someday make. The doors were heavy, like something from a battleship.

When Arnold could go no further, they stopped in the largest room they’d found. Ironically, the room was about the same size as the cabin. Bernie had cleared a space of debris, then laid Arnold down. One of Bernie’s sweaters, rolled up, served as a pillow. Arnold already looked better; he was still shivering, but some color had returned to his face. He nodded at whatever Bernie was saying.

“Georgie,” Toivo said. “Come take a look at this.”

Toivo was on the other side of the wreckage-filled room. George walked over broken and fallen bits, careful to watch where he stepped.

Toivo’s eyes flicked in all directions, at the damaged ship, at the body parts scattered across the floor, walls, and ceiling. His hand, however, was pressed against what looked like a door—a door sealed with a heavy wheel, like something from a submarine.

“Find something, Toivo?”

The man nodded. “Sort of.” He made a fist, rapped on the door; knock-knock, the ring of knuckles on metal. Then, he moved his fist two inches to the left and rapped again: kund-kund; this time, two dull thuds.

George leaned closer. The door had been painted over, repeatedly. It was uneven, lumpy in parts.

“It’s Bond-O,” Toivo said. “Well, not Bond-O, but you know what I mean. It’s spackle, a patch job, and from way before da crash.” He pointed up, to the left, down and to the right. “It’s all over, Georgie. Looks like repairs and a lot of ’em. This ship? It’s a beater, eh?”

What did that mean? This ship—this alien ship—something that was the very icon of actual life on other planets . . . it was on par with a used car? Could that be why it crashed? Had something broken at the wrong time?

“A beater, I tell ya,” Toivo said. He rapped on the door again, knock-knock-knock.

The door opened.

No screech of hinges, no sound; it just swung inward.

The heat seemed to vanish; George was cold once again, frozen in place, motionless.

Inside the door, a short creature that had all the bits and pieces he’d seen scattered about the ship, but smaller, all the gore pressed back together into a tiny shape of stick-thin limbs and black eyes (three eyes, not two) in a big head, too big for the body, and—

Toivo fired, the barrel, only inches from the big head: The head blew apart in a clear water-balloon-splatter that splashed goop on George’s face. The creature dropped instantly, a lifeless sack of meat, a puppet cut free from supporting strings.

Toivo slid back the bolt, a metallic sound that seemed just as loud as the gunshot itself. As he pushed it forward, what lay beyond the door came into sudden clarity.

The bolt ratcheted into place, and the barrel came up for another shot.

George’s hand snapped out, grabbed the barrel, raised it up just as Toivo fired: the round went somewhere into the ceiling.

“Georgie, what are you doing?”

“Stop! Just stop!”

George was aware of heat on his hand, where he’d grabbed the barrel, but distantly, because his brain was busy processing what he saw. This room, not as beat up as everything else. Heavy, curving girders running from floor to ceiling, and between them what could only be crash seats of some kind with heavy reinforced doors and thick padding visible behind thick windows. All of this, yes, all of it registering for him, but distant, like the heat on his hand, because in the middle of the room stood a dozen creatures, most smaller than the one Toivo had just killed, some so small they wouldn’t have come up to George’s knee, all clinging together in a trembling pile, black eyes (black alien eyes, not human, not at all, but fear is fear just like a hallway is a hallway) wide open and staring.

“They’re kids,” George said. “Fucking Jesus . . . kids.”

Children. The aliens had put their children in the ship’s safest room, perhaps as soon as trouble started . . .

Goddamn car seats . . . alien spaceship car seats . . . they strapped them in, safe and sound and snug as a bug in a rug, same thing I would have done with my boys . . .

“Georgie, let go of da gun,” Toivo said.

“Same as I would have done,” George said. “Same.”

Toivo yanked his rifle barrel free, almost pulled George off-balance in the process.

Would he shoot another one?

George positioned himself between Toivo and the door, blocking Toivo’s line of sight to the aliens. George tried to close the door, but the dead body blocked it. He reached down, grabbed the bone-thin little arm and dragged the body into the corridor. He stood and again put his hand on the door, to pull it shut, but before he did he glanced into the room—the little creatures were watching him, their black eyes wide with palpable terror.

He knew what they had seen, how they had perceived it: an alien (because to them, that’s exactly what he was) pulling their dead friend away, leaving a streak of wetness behind, then sealing them in.

George again tried to close the door—this time, it was Toivo that stopped it from shutting.

Toivo stared at him.

“Georgie, are you nuts? We gotta kill them.”

“No, we don’t.”

“They’re bombing cities,” Toivo said. “Killing thousands, maybe millions.”

George heard this. He nodded.

“The ones in this room aren’t doing it,” he said. “They didn’t do anything.”

Toivo sneered in disgust, then tried to push the door open—George blocked him with his shoulder.

The two childhood friends locked eyes. Toivo seemed to study George for a moment, as if measuring the man’s will. Then, Toivo shook his head.

“I’ll go back and check on Mister Ekola,” he said.

Toivo walked to Bernie and Arnold. George saw those two looking back, Jaco as well—no one knew what to do, what to think, so they just stared.

George couldn’t meet their gaze.

Kids. Children. This ship, old and repaired and beat up . . . adults dead all over the place, but the kids, safe and sound. Had the one in the walking machine blown up the cabin just to kill, or was it trying to eliminate any threat to these little ones? Was that why the ship had come in the first place? To make a new home?

George didn’t know. He didn’t have any answers. All he could think about was what it would be like if a skinny-limbed alien had kicked in the door to his boys’ bedroom, aimed a weapon at their faces, shot one of them, dropped him like a bag of meat and bones while the other boy watched, helpless to defend himself. How horrible would that be? How life-shattering, how soul-rending?

Toivo was right: Before the phones stopped working George had read the news—the aliens were killing people.

Thousands, maybe millions.

But there were billions of people . . . billions that would fight back, fight back and kill the aliens.

“But not these ones,” George said to no one. “They didn’t do anything. They’re just kids.”

He pulled the door tight. Hands on the wheel, he leaned back, making sure the door had a good seal, then turned it until he heard something click home inside.

“Just kids,” he said. “Just kids.”

He could protect them, but only because there was no one around for miles save for George's childhood friends. And even then, he wasn’t sure—if Toivo, Jaco, and Bernie all insisted on opening that door and shooting whatever they saw inside, how far was George willing to go to prevent that?

Would a stranger have even let him shut that door? What if it had been ten strangers? What if it had been a hundred? If a ship like this crashed or came down near a destroyed city, human survivors would kill any alien they saw—adult or child, it didn’t matter—the first chance they had.

Humanity would win. George felt that in his core, knew it at a base level just as his body knew how to breathe, just as his heart knew how to beat. Humanity would win because those billions of survivors would fight back, and there were millions of guns out there for them to use.

Bullets did the same thing to aliens that they did to people.

Even if all the cities were destroyed, humanity would win. Too many people, too many guns.

And knives. And clubs. And rocks. And fists.

The aliens had attacked, had announced themselves with violence and death. People would be only too happy to return that greeting in kind. George envisioned instant mob scenes, aliens torn to pieces by enraged people. There would be no reasoning with these mobs—how do you appeal to a person’s humanity when the target isn’t human?

Too many people, too many guns.

Humanity would win.

When this was over, would the alien children behind that door be the only ones left?

George tightened the wheel on the door, made doubly sure it was as shut as it could be. He didn’t want it opening on its own. And he prayed the little creatures wouldn't open it, wouldn't come walking out, because judging by the looks on the faces of his friends, the alien children would be as good as dead.

“Just kids,” he mumbled. “Just kids.”

He walked to join his friends.