Julia scrambled for the pistol, but it had clattered to the ground underneath the communications console.
She pawed on the floor for it, grasping at anything.
She heard Mick and Kendall grunting. Kendall’s grunts soon resembled screeches and chirps rather than human language.
She turned her hand over and finally felt the pistol in her grip. She yanked it out, turned herself over and tried to aim through the doorway at the writhing mass of reptile and human.
But she couldn’t get a bead on Kendall. And she wouldn’t be able to shoot without fear of hitting Mick.
Kendall rolled off of Mick and was on his feet incredibly fast. His tail whipped around and Julia could see that despite the close confines of the corridor, Kendall might be able to bring it to bear on Mick if the timing and distancing was correct.
She squeezed off a shot over Mick’s shoulder at Kendall.
Mick looked back at her. “Be careful with that thing!”
He turned back and ducked just as Kendall’s tail went sweeping past his head. Julia fired another shot at Kendall and he screeched at her now.
Mick charged in low like he was tackling a rival football player. He impacted with Kendall around the waist and brought them both on to the floor. Julia figured it was a smarter move than allowing Kendall to remain upright where he could use his tail.
Mick used his elbows on Kendall’s chest. Julia heard Kendall screech again and again each time Mick impacted with them. Kendall tried to bring his hands to bear on Mick, but the thin limbs could do little damage.
Julia got up and moved closer.
Kendall was still trying to use his tail and got it close enough once to actually jab Mick in the upper back. Mick reared back and howled as the spikes dug into his back.
Julia aimed the pistol. “Mick! Roll off!”
He didn’t need to be told twice. He jerked himself off of Kendall’s body and Julia saw Kendall’s chest exposed. She fired the pistol.
All the remaining bullets plunged into Kendall’s chest, tearing holes in the scaly skin. Blood jetted out of them followed by bits of yellowish pus and gray skin. He screeched now louder than ever.
His head reared back, his mouth fully exposed.
Julia kept firing until no more bullets came out of the gun.
Brass shell casing littered the ground.
Kendall stopped moving.
Mick moved closer. “He’s dead.”
Julia let the pistol drop to the floor.
And turned into Mick’s shoulder.
Finally, it was over.
35
The sun-baked cherry trees that hung low over the eaves of the farmhouse made it look like all of Mother Nature was devoted to protecting the occupants of the home. The wooden clapboards were in the midst of being repainted and the gables themselves seemed to disappear in the thick branches hanging close to the windows.
A swing bench creaked in time as a warm breeze tickled the porch below. Julia sat with her feet barely scraping the porch floor and drank an ice-cold glass of lemonade while she listened to the buzz of cicadas in the nearby field.
They hadn’t planted anything yet, but Mick said they would come next season. Julia leaned back and watched his tan muscles bulge and undulate as he slapped some paint on the side of the house. If she craned her neck back far enough, she could see where the brown of his flesh met the faded blue denim of his overalls.
She sighed.
Half a year. Half a year since all that cold and death down at the bottom of the world.
Damn, it felt good to be home.
They’d been rescued within forty-eight hours. The C-130 touched down and came complete with a squad of heavily armed soldiers, the likes of which Julia had never seen before.
But Mick had.
They’d welcomed each other like old buddies. And then most of the soldiers went skipping off across the ice toward where the space ship had burned up. Mick had mentioned the need to clean up things so other people wouldn’t find out.
Julia wasn’t sure she believed it was right to keep things like that from the public’s attention. After all, how many other people had been hurt or abducted or even killed by the aliens? Didn’t they deserve something for all their pain?
The truth was, Julia was far more interested in getting home than she was in following up with the aliens. All she wanted was to be far away from Antarctica.
Mick was as good as his word.
Within two weeks, he was out of the Air Force. He was a civilian again. His dress blues, adorned with more medals than Julia believed a man could wear, hung in their huge walk-in closet in the master bedroom.
They’d bought this home with Mick’s savings and decided they’d settle here, where the warm sun would forever ensure that snow and ice wouldn’t come calling. Mick had already relaxed so much that he seemed almost a different man.
A better man.
And Julia, well she’d changed as well.
After all, eating for two had a way of doing that to a woman.
She caressed her belly with two hands, feeling the firm protective womb that encircled her baby the same way the tree branches did over their home. Another couple of months and they’d have their first child.
Mick hadn’t wanted to know and neither did Julia. Surprise, they both figured, would be a nice thing indeed. It would be their way of finally exorcising some of the demons.
Julia no longer dreamed about Antarctica. She no longer desired to go there. All she wanted now was a little peace and happiness.
And it seemed she’d found them both.
Mick came down the ladder and leaned over the porch railing to kiss her. “Is that fresh lemonade?”
She smiled. “Have some.”
He took a sip and sighed. “Good.”
She smiled. “Are you going to work all afternoon?”
“Don’t want our baby coming home to a shoddy place, do you? But I suppose I can take a break if you need me to.”
“I need you to.”
He sat down next to her on the swing chair and for a long minute, neither said anything to the other. This happened sometimes. They’d seen so much together, that there didn’t always seem enough silence in the world to help drown out all the agony of their past.
“Nice to be here,” said Julia.
Mick nodded. “I miss them, too.”
She looked at him. “How did you know I was thinking about them?”
He looked at her. “After all of it, how could you not? I know I think about them all the time, too.”
She smiled. “Well, we’ve got some other things to think about now. I suppose we won’t ever forget them, but maybe we should move on.”
“Time will help,” said Mick. “If nothing else.”
Julia took one of Mick’s gnarled hands and placed it on her stomach. “He’s kicking.”
Mick grinned. “It’s a ‘he’ now?”
“I think so.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Just a feeling.”
Mick rubbed her belly. “Any other feelings you want to share?”
Julia saw the horrible images that had been filling her head at night — the disfigured beak for a mouth, the red slit eyes, the scaly skin, the twisted claws, the long thin spiked tail — she thought about how she’d started waking up in a cold sweat night after night while Mick slept peacefully beside her. She thought about how lately her stomach had hurt more often than not. She thought about how much she’d taken to praying lately that her child wouldn’t be some freak of nature. That the aliens hadn’t successfully impregnated her after all.
She thought about it all, but only smiled at Mick.
“No,” she said.
And then, only to herself, she began to pray.