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The Foster Residence
Prescott Valley, Arizona
Several days later . . .
NATHAN FOSTER HAD RETURNED HOME to Arizona after the war. He wanted a quiet place of his own that was big enough for him and Ben, and with a little bit of land. Land had been available for cheap in Prescott Valley, so he’d settled there, fixing up an old, prewar farmhouse. It had its own well, came with a barn, and sat on twenty acres. It was close enough to town that he was still able to get good internet access, but far enough outside of town that he could shoot without the neighbors complaining.
In the morning sun, he stood on the back ten with Ben, watching closely as the boy fired his new revolver. The target, a life-size silhouette of one of the gaunt aliens, was only fifteen feet away, but that was enough for a start. Ben had shot rifles and shotguns before but had never been interested in handguns. He’d go plinking with a .22 pistol now and then, and Nathan had taught him the basics of using a handgun, but the Canadian revolver was the first handgun of his own.
“The trigger is heavy,” the boy complained, “and long.”
“It’s a revolver trigger,” Nathan explained. “It’s like that because it has to cock the hammer and rotate the cylinder, all in one motion. Jesse polished it a little. It’s smooth.”
BANG. “I keep missing.”
“You’re just pulling to the right, is all,” Nathan said. He bent down and adjusted Ben’s grip. “Hold it firmly. Shift your grip up a little. There you go. Now concentrate on pulling the trigger straight back toward you. Don’t worry about being fast. Be smooth instead.”
Clad in earmuffs and shooting glasses, the boy had a look of concentration on his face as he fired again. BANG. BANG. BANG. Click!
“You’re out,” Nathan said. “Nice shooting, though.” All three rounds had hit the silhouette center-of-mass. “That’s three good shots. Now reload, like I showed you.”
“Oh, right.” Grasping the barrel with his left hand, Ben depressed the release lever with his thumb and broke the action open. Just as he’d been shown, he angled the cylinder back toward himself. All six cases ejected cleanly. Then, holding the weapon by the barrel and cylinder, he reached down with his right hand and retrieved a speedloader from his belt. He fumbled a little bit, trying to align the six cartridges with the chambers, but he got them in. He twisted the knob, dropping the cartridges into the chambers, and let the speedloader fall to the ground. Regaining his firing grip, he closed the weapon’s action and pushed it back out in both hands, reacquiring his sight picture.
“Excellent!” Nathan said, pleased with how well he was doing. “Fire another string, clear your weapon, then re-holster.”
The boy did as he was told, placing six more .38 wadcutters into the target’s chest area. He unloaded and stuck the revolver into a surplus holster that Jesse had been able to scrounge up for it. It wasn’t a speed rig, but it was secure, and Nathan was more worried about the boy losing the gun than he was about his draw speed.
“You really think I’m going to need all this stuff, Uncle Nate?” Ben asked. He was a skinny kid, and not particularly tall. He was energetic and surprisingly strong for his size, but he’d never been very athletic. He was more interested in video games and reading than sports. In a sane world, a young man like Ben would be in school or something, not bounty hunting.
Unfortunately, they didn’t live in a sane world. “I hope not, but shit happens sometimes, like the other day. I don’t plan on putting you in danger, but if the situation gets sideways you need to be able to protect yourself.”
“What was it like?”
“What?”
“Killing those two guys. What was it like?”
Nathan paused. He didn’t really know how to answer that. “That’s a hell of a thing to ask a man,” he said.
“No, for real, what’s it like?”
“Fine, you really wanna know? I didn’t feel anything except recoil. When it’s going down like that you don’t have time for feelings. You act on adrenaline, training, and experience. If you hesitate, you die. You can’t afford to second-guess yourself when people are trying to kill you. There’s time to moralize later.”
“Can I tell you something?”
“What? Of course you can, boy. We’re family.”
“Promise you won’t get mad?”
“I’m not gonna get mad, Ben. What’s on your mind?”
Ben’s eyes were downcast. “I know what happened to Mom. I remember.”
“What?” He’d always said he didn’t remember. The shrinks figured it was a result of the trauma. She’d been caught behind enemy lines when the UEA invaded California during their final offensive of the war. Ben had been found in a refugee camp after the war, but his mother had never been located.
“I’m sorry I lied,” Ben said, struggling, and failing, to choke back tears. “It was easier to just lie and say I didn’t remember, but it’s not true. I remember. I just . . . after the shooting, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I remember. I saw Mom die.”
Jesus. “Come have a sit-down,” Nathan said, gesturing to a pair of faded lawn chairs under a raggedy old umbrella. Sitting down, he reached into the cooler and got a Dr. Pepper for the boy. “Talk to me. Tell me what happened.” He never let it show, but it had been hard for Nathan, too, not knowing what had happened to his sister, Samantha.
He remembered, vividly, the day California was invaded. A combined Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force offensive had finally pushed the UEA out of Texas and back into Mexico. The damned Greys counterattacked by opening up a second front in the Continental United States. They were somehow able to jam NORAD’s radars effectively enough to conceal hundreds of hypersonic transport aircraft. The planes dropped troops and weapons into Southern California before turning kamikaze and striking various targets throughout the region.
Having secured a beachhead, the UEA was able to bring up more assets from Mexico and South America by sea, reinforcing their toehold in California and allowing them to break out of the Greater Los Angeles Perimeter. They were able to take the entire LA-to-San Francisco corridor before being stopped, and they held that territory for two years. The number of American citizens caught behind enemy lines (and being used as human shields) prevented the US from responding with nuclear weapons.
“I don’t remember everything,” Ben said, sipping his soda. “One day we left the old house. Mom put me in my car seat. I didn’t know what was happening.”
“If I had to guess, that was probably when the invasion happened. You would have been about four. I was fighting in Northern Mexico when that happened.”
“We ended up in a big camp, like, a really big camp. They built these little houses for us to live in. There were a lot of families, a lot of kids, each given their own little house. Ours had the number 264 painted on it. We had food every day, we had beds, after a while it just seemed normal.”
“That was the intention,” Nathan said. “Eventually they would have put all the kids like you into their creches to be indoctrinated to love the Greys.”
“I remember some of that,” Ben said. “They started a school. Every day, we’d go to the schoolhouse, and this man and this woman would tell us about the Visitors. The Visitors love you, they would say, and they told us they were going to take care of us and our families from now on. We’d also do stuff like reading and counting and art like it was a regular kindergarten.”
Nathan’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything.
Ben continued, “We’d watch these videos all the time, cartoons about how great the Visitors were. A lot of them were hosted by this blonde girl, I remember that part. She was older, like a teenager, and she was really pretty. She had like this catchphrase she’d say, ‘Together, we’re building a better world.’ I remember because the teachers would have us recite that at the end of the video. You’d say your name and then say, ‘Together, we’re building a better world.’”
“I see. How long did this go on?”
“I don’t know. It seemed like forever, but I was just a little kid. A year, maybe? One day they all just left us. The teachers, the people who ran the camp, they all just, like, were gone one day. Everybody was confused. Then soldiers found us.”
“That was close to the end of the war,” Nathan said. “When I got you from the Refugee Resettlement Administration, they said you’d been located in a refugee internment camp outside Bakersfield. The camps were all abandoned by UEA forces before the Army got to them. Was . . . was your mom still with you, then?”
Ben was quiet for a moment. “No. One night, she got me out of bed and said we were leaving. I guess a bunch of people had been working on a plan to get us out.”
Nathan struggled to keep his composure and let Ben keep talking.
“There were a bunch of kids,” the boy continued, “but the grown-ups didn’t tell us anything except that we were going for a ride in a truck. They said it would be fun. We were loaded into the back of a truck, like a big moving truck. Mom was with me, and so were a few of the other parents. Not all the kids’ parents were there, though. Some were crying.”
“What happened?”
“I’m not sure. We were in the back of the truck. It was dark. They told us to be quiet. Something must have gone wrong. There was shouting, then they opened the doors and shined these bright lights in on all of us.”
“Who did?”
“Policemen. UEA security, I guess, I don’t know. We just thought they were police. The separated the kids from the adults. I was crying as they pulled me away from Mom. Then . . . then they shot them.”
There was a knot in Nathan’s stomach. “The adults?”
“Yeah. Mom and a couple others. They just shot them, right in front of us. The last thing Mom said was she screamed at me to close my eyes. I didn’t listen.” There were tears streaming down Ben’s cheeks now. “I watched them shoot her. I watched her die. Just boom, one shot, right in the head,” he said, touching his forehead with his index finger, “and down she went. It didn’t seem real. I didn’t realize what had happened. For a long time after that I kept asking where she was, when she was coming back. I didn’t understand.” He paused again, choking back tears. “I didn’t understand that she was dead and she wasn’t coming back.”
Despite his best efforts, there were tears in Nathan’s eyes, too. After all these years, to finally know . . . it was almost too much. He leaned forward and hugged Ben tightly. “She loved you. She loved you so much she died trying to bring you home.” Ben was sobbing into Nathan’s shoulder now. “I know this wasn’t easy for you,” Nathan said. “Thank you for telling me what happened to my sister. It’s good to finally know.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I think I made myself forget it, but I don’t want to forget anymore. I want to remember Mom.”
“I’m proud of you, Ben,” Nathan managed, “and I know your mom would be, too.” He pulled back from embracing his nephew, wiped his eyes, and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Now, how’s about we shoot a little more? You up for it?”
Ben nodded. “Let’s do it.”
NATHAN WATCHED with some satisfaction as a pair of Homeland Security agents, in their gray fatigues and black vests, loaded Carter Reid into the back of a prisoner transport van and secured him. The prisoner looked to be in shock, as if the gravity of his situation was finally sinking in. The bounty, minus taxes, had been deposited into Nathan’s account, and the traitor would face justice at last.
It was tempting to gloat sometimes, to fire off a mean comment as the prisoners were being hauled away, but he always refrained. There was the possibility, however remote, that they were actually innocent. More than that, what was the point? Carter Reid would, in all likelihood, be found guilty; the aliens’ human administrators kept detailed records, and the government had built a solid case against him before the bounty was ever issued. For his crimes, he would almost certainly be hanged, and he knew that. Taunting him would be childish; his comeuppance would arrive soon enough.
With his prisoner handed off to the authorities, Nathan went back into the office. Stella, at her desk, looked up when he came inside. “Stop brooding.”
“I’m not brooding,” he said, sitting as his desk. His desk was pushed up against hers, so that they faced each other when they were both seated.
“You’re brooding,” she insisted. “You’re still pissed off about Erik Landers, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Nathan admitted. “Damned fool should have just come quietly. Hell, the case against him was weak. He might have gotten off. We’d have still gotten paid, and he’d be a free man.”
“We are still getting paid,” Stella reminded him. “It’ll take longer to process, but we’ll still get paid. This is the only deadly force incident you’ve had this year so far, so we’re not in much danger of getting audited.”
“Say, when are they coming to pick up the body, anyway?” The gunrunner’s corpse was still chilling in the basement.
“DHS says they can’t get a meat wagon out here until Monday, but they swore up and down they’d get him then. I reminded them we’re charging them for every day we have to store the body.” She took a sip of her coffee. “That’s not all that’s bothering you about this.”
“It’s not. I came real close to getting my ticket punched and I had to kill two men. The whole thing was sloppy. Ben could have been hurt. I did some stupid shit when I was his age, but I never had to worry about being gunned down.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Stella said, gently. “We can’t know what we can’t know. When you told me what happened, I thought I must have missed something, so I went back over every bit of information we had on the case. There was nothing in the dossier we were given to indicate that he was working with accomplices. It makes a certain amount of sense, when you think about it, but there are guys like him who work solo, too. I’m just glad that you boys weren’t hurt.”
“Kind of you to say.”
“The last thing I want to have to do is dust off my résumé and find a new job,” she said, pausing to sip her coffee again, “so you watch yourself out there. Have you talked to Ben about what happened?”
“Yeah, this morning. He’s a little shook up, but he’s handling it.”
“He’s a tough kid.”
“That he is. I can’t imagine growing up the way he did.” Nathan was quiet for a moment, then looked around to make sure Ben wasn’t within earshot. “He told me last night that he knows what happened to his mother.”
“Really? Oh my God. What did he say?”
“Well, you know he was in a UEA prison camp for a while? I guess his mom and some others tried to sneak the kids out, but they got caught.”
Stella held a hand up to her mouth. “Oh, Jesus.”
Nathan nodded. “Yeah. They got caught. The bastards shot them, right in front of the kids. Ben was so little, and one of his earliest memories is of his mother being murdered. It ain’t right.”
“It’s not,” Stella agreed, “but it is what it is. How are you doing? That was probably a lot to take in.”
“I’d be lyin’ if I said it wasn’t. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I figured Sam was dead, and accepted that. There was no way she’d have ever given up trying to find Ben if she was still alive. It’s just, hearing how she died, knowing, after all these years . . . it’s enough to make a grown man cry.”
“And that’s okay!” Stella assured him.
Nathan smiled at her. Nobody would accuse him of being the most sensitive man ever, but he wasn’t made of stone. “You know what I really felt, though, learning all this? Pride. Samantha died with her boots on, resisting those traitor sons o’ bitches to the very end. It was a relief to hear, in a way. You know what kind of manipulation and brainwashing the Greys were capable of. I guess, deep down, I was always a little worried that I’d learn that they got to Sam, that they were able to turn her. I feel ashamed of myself for even thinking it, now.”
“Not all of the Greys’ servants went willingly. Like you said, they had methods of manipulation and control that we’re only beginning to understand.”
“I know. Still, I shouldn’t have doubted her.”
“I never knew your sister, but I think she would understand, given everything you went through. I also think she’d be proud of the job you’re doing raising her son.”
“You think? I’m doing the best I can, but sometimes . . .” He trailed off for a moment. “There has to be a better life for him. It ain’t right that a fourteen-year-old boy has to worry about getting shot.”
Stella’s expression softened. “Hon, you’re all the family he has left. I think taking that away from him would be harder on him than the business.”
“Harder on him than seeing his uncle almost get killed?”
“Harder than that. Think about it. He lost his whole world. He watched his mom die. Hell, did he ever even know his father?”
Nathan shook his head. “Ben’s father was a fellow named Greg Nelson. He was Sam’s fiancé before the war. Decent enough fellow, sold insurance. He was going to San Diego to pick up his folks, wanted to get them out of the city after the Greys hit Phoenix.”
“Oh my God.” Stella knew how this story ended without Nathan having to explain it. The aliens destroyed San Diego with an asteroid strike ten days after the destruction of Phoenix.
“Yeah. Sam stayed home with Ben, since he was just a baby. The kid lost his father when he was barely a year old.”
“See? That’s what I was saying. You’re all the family Ben has. This life may not be the best for him, but it’s his life, and I think taking it away from him would devastate him.”
“I don’t think I could do it anyway,” Nathan agreed. He looked up at Stella. “I can’t imagine sending him away. He’s all the family I got left, too. I’m his godfather. I promised Sam that if anything ever happened to her and Greg I’d take care of the boy. I gave her my word. A man’s only as good as his word.”
“So, unless you want to try making a living in town or as a ranch hand, we’re going to have to press forward as best we can. Ben’s becoming a man.” She smiled. “He’s even got a sad little mustache coming in. He’s done with school. Leaving him at home isn’t going to teach him a trade, and if you want to send him to college you’re going to need money. It’s not like the old days where you could get loans from the government for it.”
Nathan didn’t say anything. She was right. They made decent money doing what they did, but a lot of it went to business expenses. Paying for his nephew’s education while also making sure he had retirement funds would be difficult, if not impossible, with a lower-paying job.
Stella continued, “What I’m getting at is, as screwed up as this whole situation is, you’re doing the best you can, not just for the business but for Ben, too. He’s a good kid. He’s a hell of a lot more mature than I was when I was his age. Yeah, it’s sad that a kid that young has to worry about adult problems, but that’s the way the world is, now, and we can’t change it.”
“No, you’re right,” Nathan said, after a moment. He looked up at his partner. “Thank you.”
“Everyone needs a pep talk sometimes, even a tough guy like you.”
“Where is Ben, anyway?”
“He’s upstairs, going through Erik Landers’s laptop. He was right, the dead guy’s thumbprint did the trick. I was going to look at it later, but he insisted, so I let him have at it. Maybe there’ll be something useful on there. In fact,” she said, standing up, “why don’t we go check on him?”
Nathan stood up as well. “After you.”
Stella shot him a smirk. “You just like watching me walk away.” She walked past him, heels clicking on the concrete floor, a faint hint of perfume wafting in the air as she passed. The pencil skirt she wore did sit nicely on her hips.
Nathan grinned.
Ben had the dead man’s laptop open, and was busily clicking and scrolling when Nathan and Stella entered the small office upstairs. An old, government-surplus desk and office chair had been shoved against the wall, in the same room as the cots, and there was a cable outlet for net access. The boy had his own laptop set up next to Landers’s.
“How goes it?” Nathan asked.
“I’m almost done copying everything. It’s going to take me a while to go through all this.”
“What all is on there?” Stella asked. “Just documents?”
“No,” Ben answered, without looking up. “He kept crazy detailed records, which . . .” He looked up. “That’s weird for a criminal, right?”
“Depends,” Nathan said. “A business is a business, even if it’s illegal. If you don’t keep track of things, you’ll fail.”
“Well, he took a lot of pictures. I mean, tons of pictures.”
Stella raised an eyebrow. “Pictures of what?”
“His guns, for starters. People. Places. I haven’t looked through them all, but some of them look like they were taken with a hidden camera.”
“Blackmail material, maybe,” Stella suggested.
“Or an insurance policy,” Nathan said. “The weapons pictures are probably part of how he managed his inventory. We might be able to track down where he kept his merchandise.”
“You think?” Stella asked.
“Might be worth looking into, at least,” Nathan said.
Ben opened up a picture of a shopping cart. It was sitting in the empty parking lot of a collapsed building someplace. “He has a lot of pictures of shopping carts, like, over a hundred. Who takes pictures of shopping carts?”
Nathan shrugged. “Everyone needs a hobby, I guess. What else? Any sign that he was actually working with alien collaborators?”
“I’ve only looked at a few of the pictures on here, and I haven’t really read any of the documents. It’s going to take me a while.”
“Ben,” Stella began, putting her hand on the boy’s shoulder, “if you find anything, um, disturbing on there, you come get one of us right away, okay?”
Ben paused and looked up at her. “Disturbing? You mean like this entire folder full of porn videos?”
“What? Yes, like that!” Stella looked over at Nathan, who was trying his best not to break out laughing.
“It’s rude to go through another man’s porn stash, boy, even if he’s dead,” Nathan said, chuckling. “You go ahead and move that folder to a separate drive and not onto your computer. Stella can go through it later.”
She shot him an evil look.
“You guys are gross,” Ben said. “I promise I won’t look at his porn, okay? And I’ll let you know if I find anything useful, or disturbing, or whatever. It’s going to take me some time to read all these files.”
“You know what you’re looking for?”
“Of course I do,” Ben insisted. “Addresses or locations. Names. Account numbers and passwords. Stuff like that.”
“Good man,” Nathan said. “Alright, we’ll leave you to it.” He and Stella turned to leave.
“Thank you,” Ben said, not taking his eyes off the screens. There was a little hint of attitude in his voice.
Nathan paused. “And stay out of the porn! I mean it. I come back up here and catch you roughing up the suspect it’s going to be awkward for everybody.”
Ben wheeled around, eyes wide. His entire face turned a deep shade of red. “Gross! Get out!”
Nathan headed back down the stairs, laughing the whole way.