Arrival: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller

36

Maya slid down next to Reno’s side at the bottom of the culvert.

“Those things,” she said. “They just get right back up.”

“What did you see?” a man asked.

Reno stood, shifting all his weight onto his good ankle. He put his hand on Maya’s shoulder.

“What was it, Maya?” Reno asked.

Maya took a deep breath, her eyes vibrating inside of her skull. Twice, she began to tell Reno what she had seen, but both times she failed to find the words to describe the… alien.

“You all need to find shelter,” she said, deciding this wasn’t the time or place to discuss what they were. Where they were going seemed to be a higher priority. “It’s not safe here.”

“What did you see?” Reno asked, squeezing her shoulder.

Maya pushed his hand away. “That thing didn’t die! Those guys fired dozens of rounds into it, and they thought it was dead. But I watched it stand up and walk away like nothing had happened.”

The child who’d been next to Reno cried and his mother covered his ears. Several families had made it to the culvert along with five or six other random folks looking for cover.

“Get out of here with that talk,” the woman said. “You’re scaring my kids!”

“You’d better get them out of here. As far away as you can. All of you need to leave. Right now!”

The others talked and began to argue, conversations soon turning into a waterfall of angry accusations. Reno took Maya’s hand and gently pulled her away from the others.

“You’ve got to get a hold of yourself,” Reno said gently.

“Those aren’t paratroopers or the 181^st Airborne. Those are aliens, and our weapons aren’t hurting them.”

“Okay, okay. But these people are already panicking. I’m not sure having them running off in all directions is the best thing to do, especially for the kids.”

Maya glanced down at the children clutching their mother, faces buried in her legs as she pulled them closer. The woman stared at Maya with narrowed eyes.

She’d only been trying to help, to save them from whatever those things were that had flown out of the ship. The one had looked at her. Right at her.

“If these people don’t want to leave, you can’t make them,” Reno said, confirming what she knew was the truth. “This is about us now. About Laura and Aiden. You did what you could for these people, and now they’re responsible for themselves.”

You’re right.

Maya brushed her hair from her face and nodded. She held Reno’s hand as they walked to the other side of the culvert and up the concrete incline to ground level. She turned and looked one last time at the others, who were choosing to stay. As much as Maya wanted to try one last time to convince them otherwise, she didn’t. Instead, she turned and helped Reno out of the culvert and onto the sidewalk.

They crossed the sidewalk and continued down the road on their quest to find a way out of the dome. Turning down a side street, she saw the deep, black wall of the dome. Now that the creatures controlling it had blackened the surface and prevented light from coming through, it was no longer a mystery where the dome stood. Fires raged throughout the city, casting an orange haze overhead and providing limited visibility. Maya felt as though she was trapped inside of a furnace.

Maya alternated between a walk and a light jog, trying to keep her eyes on the dome as they passed houses. It cut straight through buildings, cars, and presumably anything else that had been on the edge when it had come down. The dome remained like a black, velvet curtain.

There must be a way out of here.

She’d been walking for ten minutes when Maya realized Reno wasn’t beside her. She looked back to see him thirty feet behind, stumbling along on his injured ankle and wincing with each step. She jogged back to him and hung his arm around her neck.

“Sorry. I got ahead of myself.”

“Look, I need to sit down. I can’t put any weight on my damned ankle.”

Maya thought again about the alien and the way it had turned to face her. When the hatch on the ship had opened, hundreds—possibly thousands—of those things had flown out. Where had they gone, and what were they doing? The questions made her shiver.

Ahead on the right stood a house with a front door that had been ripped from its hinges. She scanned the yard, seeing car parts, old tires, and dilapidated furniture scattered across the front lawn. Someone had put a 90s Buick sedan up on blocks, and a rusted short bus sat at the end of the driveway; the name of a church had been painted on the side, but was now worn and faded, leaving only the word “Baptist” fully legible.

Maya pointed to the bus and led Reno to it. She pushed on the doors, and they opened.

“Wait here.”

Maya stepped into the bus slowly. She looked down the aisle, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dark. Children’s toys and balding car tires filled the back third of the bus, but otherwise, the remaining seats sat empty, and nobody had been hiding on the floor.

She reached down to take Reno’s hand and he shook his head, opting to use the rails to pull himself up and into the bus. He sat down in the third row. Maya shut and locked the door behind them. She then took a seat on a bench across the aisle from Reno, allowing him to stretch out and elevate his leg on the bench he’d reclined on.

“Do you need anything?”

Reno shook his head. “Not unless you’ve been hiding an ice pack in your pants. I just need to elevate it for a while.”

Maya leaned over and gently rotated his injured ankle to get a better look. It had swollen to the size of a baseball, and she knew it would blow up to twice that size the second he took his shoe off.

“You keep this elevated. I’ll check the house and see if there’s any ice in the freezer.”

“Maya,” he said, ignoring her need to treat him as a patient. “I need you to tell me what you saw back there. Why did you freak out?”

And, after a moment, she explained—the rounds the men had fired and the way the alien had risen, looked directly into her eyes, and disappeared back into the darkness. Then, she kept going, to say that if what she’d seen had in fact been one of those things flying out of the spaceship, there had to be thousands of those creatures walking the streets.

“It looked right at me, Reno. That thing saw me.”

Reno shook his head, his eyes darting around the bus as his brain undoubtedly processed what Maya had told him she’d observed.

“Do you think it healed itself?”

“Only two possibilities: it healed itself or the bullets never touched it. Those guys pumped shotgun shells and semi-auto rounds at it. They couldn’t have missed at that range. It’s not possible.”

Reno leaned back against the window and closed his eyes. “Jesus.”

“We have to stick with our game plan. We’ll stay near the edge of the dome and try to find a way out. If we can—”

“No,” Reno said, cutting her off.

Maya grimaced. “What?”

“I can’t walk on this ankle.”

Maya looked down again. “The swelling will go down if you keep it elevated. We can hang here until it does. I’ll try to find some ice and in an hour or so, we’ll—”

“No,” Reno said again, this time in a whisper.

Tears flowed from Maya’s eyes. She was a paramedic. She knew the truth—he couldn’t go on. They would both die moving at the pace they’d need to even if Reno was able to keep his ankle elevated and iced for another twelve hours.

“I can’t do this without you,” she said.

“You can. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. And your kids need you for that very reason. I’ll only slow you down and put both of our lives in jeopardy.”

She sniffled and then put her head on Reno’s chest, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“This isn’t the last time you’ll see me,” he said. “I promise.”

Maya lifted her head and looked into his light brown eyes. She ran her palm across his cheek, up into his hair, and pulled his lips toward hers.

She kissed him, and this time Maya leaned into Reno instead of pulling away. He kissed her back before holding her face in his hands and gazing into her eyes.

“Get to your children.”

Maya nodded, stood up, and swept her hair behind her ears. She walked to the doors and opened them before stopping. She glanced at Reno one last time and wiped her eyes.

“I’ll be back.”