Invasion

37

“We only stopped here to regroup.” Maya thought the African-American woman was probably sixty years old and she spoke with a deep, fluid Louisiana drawl. Maya’s eyes hadn’t adjusted enough to notice much else about her. “We don’t want any trouble.”

Six or seven people walked through the shadows from the travel center. They surrounded the woman and stared at Maya. The woman still hadn’t responded, and Maya hadn’t been paying attention to her truck when she heard the door open. Then she heard the click of a gun and saw Gerald aiming at the woman. Three of the people with her raised their own firearms, their weapons ranging from pistols to semi-automatic rifles.

“Back the fuck down, lady. I’m military.”

Maya lifted her hands in the air before stomping over to Gerald.

“Stop it. Put down the damn gun. You’re gonna get yourself killed.”

He looked back at her, a darkness in his eyes. He tilted his head.

“Yeah? And would that be such a bad thing for you? No more custody complications.”

Maya shook her head. Without replying, she grabbed Gerald’s wrist and lowered his arm. A single tear came from one eye and he let loose with a sarcastic chuckle, but he didn’t fight her on it.

“Think of the behavior you’re modeling right now.”

At first, Gerald snarled and spun away from Maya, but a moment later he lowered his head, and when she put a soft hand on his shoulder, he turned around and stepped into her arms.

She couldn’t remember the last time they had hugged, let alone shown any kind of affection towards one another. Maya gripped the back of his shirt, feeling the pain caught between them and letting him have a few seconds. After Gerald slowly pulled away, Maya turned her focus back to the woman and the rest stop group as Reno stepped forward with John at his side.

“I’m sorry about this,” Reno said. “We’ve had a rough night and barely escaped an alien attack at Fort Campbell. We’re going to be on our way now.”

As Maya motioned to her friends and family to get back into the trucks, she heard other footsteps. When she turned around, the woman had cut the distance between them in half.

“Not so fast.”

Now that she was closer, Maya believed the woman to be in her late sixties, maybe pushing seventy. The senior wore a dark gray T-shirt under an open flannel shirt. Maya shook her head at her, not sure what was coming.

“Please, let us be on our way.”

The woman looked at Reno and John, who hadn’t said much since Gerald had come out of the truck with the gun. Then she turned and looked at Aiden and Laura before shaking her own head at Maya.

“Not until you let me feed those kids.”

Relaxing, Maya smiled.

The woman returned her expression with a warm, wide grin. She waved Maya and their group toward the rest stop building.

“Come on inside.”

The woman then turned her back, even though Gerald had been pointing a gun at them a few minutes earlier. Now, he looked at Maya and shrugged.

Maya glanced over to Reno and John, who were staring at her, waiting to follow her lead. Laura had moved, but Aiden gave Maya his best “C’mon, Mom” look, which she knew meant he was hungry.

Without saying another word, Maya followed the woman and the rest of the group through the grass and toward the travel center.

Five candles illuminated the foyer along with a couple of battery-powered lights. Maya noticed two generators sitting in the corner, as well as three portable spotlights. The woman went behind a desk and grabbed a cardboard box. She then came over to Maya.

“May I offer something to your children?”

Maya looked inside the box and saw it was filled with junk food—mostly chips and candy bars.

Maya nodded. “Thank you.”

The woman went to the kids and let them each pick from the box.

Maya looked around, checking for threats but seeing none. This travel area and rest stop looked exactly like the hundreds of others she’d been in over the years. While traveling, she’d never given these places a second thought, usually scurrying to and from their restrooms before getting back onto the highway. But now, she saw the well-worn facility in a new way. As these people had already realized, the place could be transformed into a bunker.

“We raided the vending machines as soon as we got here.” The woman had spoken the obvious, but Maya didn’t want to be rude, so she didn’t interrupt. “Luckily, no one else had yet. It’s not the most nutritious stuff, but it’s better than nothing.”

After the kids had each grabbed a couple of things, the woman returned to Maya. She put the box in front of her, but Maya waved it away. She had lost her appetite when the realization of what had happened to all those people at the base—and Cameron—had hit her. She couldn’t think of eating now, especially not a sugar-filled treat.

“Suit yourself.” The woman handed the box to one of the men behind her who walked it over to Gerald, Reno, and John. The woman then stuck out her hand to Maya.

“Donna.”

Maya looked at the woman’s hand before reaching out to shake it. “I’m Maya.”

“Nice to meet you, Maya.”

Donna then looked past Maya, who turned to see what had caught the woman’s attention. Gerald had gone to a corner by himself and was sitting on the floor with his elbows on his knees and his chin on his arms—looking straight ahead at the wall across the room while the rest of the people introduced themselves to one another.

“I don’t mind if you all stay here until the sun comes up,” Donna said. “But you’re going to have to keep him under control.”

“I understand. He lost someone very dear to him tonight when Fort Campbell went down.”

“I’d like to hear about what happened there.”

Reno walked up with his hands on his hips. He looked at Gerald, then to Maya. “That was some outburst back there.”

“Yeah, well, he’s hurting.”

“Still, isn’t that why you divorced him?”

Maya turned on Reno, her cheeks flushed and a knot forming in her stomach. As if he could read her face, Reno stepped back and put his hands on top of his head, drawing in a deep breath.

“That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry.”

“Why don’t you fill Donna here in on what happened at Fort Campbell and mind your own damn business?”

Without giving Reno the chance to respond, Maya walked over to Gerald, leaving Reno and Donna standing in an awkward silence. She sat on the floor next to her ex-husband.

“I’m sorry about losing my cool out there.”

Gerald had spoken without taking his eyes off the wall.

“It’s all right. I know you’re upset. Cameron and I had become close, so I can sort of understand what you’re going through.”

“Yeah, well, I had no right to blame that on you. It wasn’t your fault.”

“You don’t have to—”

“It was his.”

Gerald twisted around and pointed at Reno, whose back was turned as he spoke with Donna.

“If he had only been more patient and allowed us to have a discussion as a group instead of insisting on leaving tonight, then we might all—”

“Then we might all be dead,” Maya said, cutting him off. “We’d have been stuck inside one of those buildings that blew up.”

“I had a plan. It would have kept our family alive.”

“We can’t change what happened. Protecting them now is all that matters to me. And I know we can only do that if we stick together. You’re hurting, I get it, but you’ve got to do your best to move on so we can stay focused and do what’s right for our kids.”

Maya stood up and brushed off her pants, blowing a wisp of hair from her face before looking down at Gerald.

“I’ll leave you to mourn, but we don’t have much time.”

Gerald scoffed, then looked at the wall again, shaking his head. Then he looked back up at Maya.

“We can’t trust Reno. You know it, and I know it.”

Maya walked away, feeling that knot in her stomach turning into doubt.