September 2009

“You have to stay strong, little guy,” she said. “We’ve already been through the worst of it. It’s still hard, but we’re out of the city. I know you haven’t had your vaccinations like you should. It’s still a little cold, but it’s springtime now. We’ve been through worse. Whatever this is, you can fight it. You’re like your daddy.” Jessie looked for a route ahead. Before her lay a steep incline, rocky with thick vegetation. She pursed her lips and turned eastward.

“Max — your daddy — wasn’t a fighter in a violent way. He was just a quiet guy who joined the Army for the G.I. Bill. But Aaron, he loved you so much. He never got to hold you, but he wanted to so badly. I was just two months pregnant when he deployed to Iraq, but he knew about you, and he was so happy you were going to be with us.”

Jessie thrust aside ferns with her stick. The suitcase snagged on a shrub and she yanked it through. She remembered her late night discussions with Max as they spooned together in bed, his words hot and moist against her neck. How they debated bringing a baby into the world, already worrying about threats from bullies and terrorists and their eventual transition to a civilian life. How she fretted about losing all the weight she’d already gained during the first trimester. Oh, how little they knew.

“He would put his hands on my belly to see if he could feel you yet. He couldn’t, of course. You were still too little. But he tried. One time right before he left, his eyes lit up like he really felt something, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him I just smothered a burp. That little movement meant too much to him.”

She glanced down at Aaron’s face, barely visible in the folds. His cheeks were flushed, but he seemed to be sleeping. Every now and then his breath would catch as his lungs inflated. Still, Jessie walked. There was nothing else to do. The slope to her right grew more gradual, and a narrow trail emerged. She began the upward climb, fighting through brambles with every step.

“Max would be so proud that you made it this far, Aaron. So proud. You made it through the attacks, the invasion. By stupid luck we were in the sewers when most of the city was leveled by American bombers. The Singers, the militia. The rogue men. Leticia.” Jessie’s voice warbled.

“I can’t lose you, Aaron. I can’t. You have to keep fighting. I can’t do this without you.”

She made it to the high ridge and leaned her shoulder against a pine tree, every muscle throbbing. She set down the suitcase and reached for her water bottle, and that’s when she heard it. The singing. The high, quivering notes like a chorus of adolescent boys, but with a vibrato more intense than any mere human could muster. Jessie fell to her knees, her hands instinctively covering Aaron.

“No, not here,” she whispered. “No.”

~*~

With a pair of children’s binoculars, Jessie scanned the terrain. It didn’t take long to find them. There was a river below, and through the treetops and vegetation, she could see them walking along the shore. She sucked in a breath. These Singers wore no helmets. Their pasty green faces were exposed to Earth’s air and seemed to breathe without difficulty, though their severe v-shaped lips seemed higher, tighter than on other aliens she had seen; in a human, it would be an expression of constipation, but on the Singers, it was difficult to read. Their silver suits were the same as the common soldiers she had encountered in the city, but overall something was different about these aliens. Something was different about their song.

“They sound happy,” she whispered to Aaron.

These Singers didn’t march in cadence while wailing their plaintive song. They waded in the river, calling to brethren, breaking into spontaneous rhythmic chants like the call and reply of a Greek play. One waded deeper in the water, and another high verse emerged. Jessie fidgeted and leaned this way and that, trying to see through the branches to discern the cause of their jubilation. As the alien emerged from the river, Jessie finally saw what it was holding.

“A fish?”

A fat salmon writhed in the alien’s grasp. The other Singers held their arms aloft and spun in circles, bounding high with legs split horizontal to the earth. To one side, a cluster of aliens hunkered together then stood. Light glinted against nearby tree trunks. A fire. They built a fire.