Nathan Hystad: The Event

After what felt like long minutes, the firing stopped. All I could hear was heavy breathing and the clatter of something falling to the ground. I struggled to turn my neck, but a searing pain shot through my body.

“Mary, it’s over. That should be all of them. It’s okay,” I heard Mae tell her.

A hand pressed on my shoulder, and Mary rolled me over carefully. She looked at me with her big brown eyes and tears were falling down on me. “Dean, are you okay?”

“I think so,” I lied. Truth was, I could hardly move, and something was definitely wrong.

“You fool. I was going to be the one to save the day, sacrifice myself for you guys and all the people here. Then you had to go ruin it and keep me alive. I can’t believe you did that running tackle.” Her voice was soft as she spoke.

“Some of them are alive!” Mae rushed down to the next room, where a head poked out of. The face was dirty and gaunt. I remembered that much. “We’re here to help you. Don’t worry, everything’s going to be okay. We’re going to bring you home.”

Hesitantly at first, groups of people began to emerge from the container’s storage rooms. Soon the halls were filled with people, and Mae was barking orders. Mary was still holding my hand and before my vision went black, I saw her beautiful face smiling at me. “We did it, Dean. We did it.”

Iawoke in a dark room. My back spasmed, and I realized I must have slept on it wrong. What was I supposed to be doing today? I tried to recall and couldn’t. I had a tax file for the O’Sullivans to do, and was I meeting James later for beers and the Yankees game on his new sixty-incher?

I heard a dog bark in the distance and wished that Susan wouldn’t let Carey do that so early in the morning. It had to be dark out still; otherwise, light would be seeping through my never-quite-closed curtains. I reached out for my alarm clock and my arm kept moving through the air. Where the hell was my nightstand?

When I tried to turn, my back screamed at me and failed to comply. I started to panic. My eyes were adjusting, and now I could make out the outlines of the room, and this wasn’t my bed. My mind felt groggy, muddy with images. Ships coming out of the sky, big black cubes lowering in the dawn skyline, and green light, grasping at my friend as he was pulled through the ceiling.

“Hello! Is anyone there?” I yelled at the top of my lungs. I tried to move again, and this time pushed with my left hand. I propelled myself to my side, my back in agony the whole time. I fell forward and was too late catching myself. Before I knew it, I hit the ground, my hand coming up just in time to protect my face. I didn’t know what was wrong with my motor skills. I heard a hiss and what sounded like a sliding door. Light poured in and the clink of metal headed toward me.

I tried to look up and got a face full of dog tongue as a reward. “Carey?” He yelped a bit and licked me some more.

“Dean, what happened?” a voice asked. Hands grasped me under the arms and helped me back onto the bed.

“Janine?” I asked, looking at my wife. My memory flickered and I saw the hospital, and that final moment in our bed, then the coffin at the service.

“No, Dean. It’s Mae.”

“What happened to me?” I asked, still unsure where exactly I was.

Her face was grave. “You were hit. In the spine.”

“Dean?” a new voice asked from the doorway.

Seeing her standing there, with light pouring in behind her, I felt my heart flutter.

“Mary,” I said, remembering all of a sudden. I recalled seeing her ready to sacrifice herself to save us and the people in that room, and then she’d seen a hybrid who’d looked like her husband Bob. That pause was enough to almost get her killed, and apparently almost enough to get me killed too.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Well, I’m confused and my back hurts like hell, but I’m alive. What’s happened?”

“We killed them all and brought you into the bridge. You were out, and it wasn’t good. It seems you took a shot right in the spine. We got you onto a cot and scoured for a doctor. This ship picked up its load from Egypt, so we had a hell of a time finding someone who understood us. Once we had a translator, we found a doctor.” She paused and held my hand. “He said if you didn’t die, you would be paralyzed.”

I wiggled my toes and fingers just to be sure, and they all moved. “But I’m not,” I said, maybe a little too defiantly.

“No, you’re not. We did the only thing we thought might help.” Her eyes told me she was scared to tell me something.

“What is it?”

“We injected you with hybrid blood. Mae had heard of some of the hybrids on Earth healing their partners of illness or ailments without them knowing, using their own blood. We didn’t know if it would actually work… but it seems to have.”

Hybrid blood. I really didn’t know what to say. How could having an alien transfusion be any worse than being paralyzed? It seemed a fair trade-off to me.

I looked at Mae. “Was it yours?” I asked quietly.

She nodded. “It was mine.” I could see she looked drained, even a little pale in the dark room.

“Thank you. How long have I been out?”

“Four days,” Mary said.

“Four days! What’s going on? Are we on the way home?” I couldn’t believe I’d slept through so much.

“Calm down, Dean. We have the world’s best and brightest at our disposal. We’ve appointed leaders to each container, and the dead have been isolated to a few floors on each ship. Mini-hospitals have been made, and we’ve distributed the small rations we found. More are going to die on the way home. We simply don’t have enough food and water, and we’ve had more than a few incidents. Bad people are still bad people even in crisis, it appears.” I left it at that, because I understood what she was implying.

“How many? How many are dead?” I needed to know.

“Dean, don’t worry about that now. You just worry about resting and getting better. In a couple hours, you can come and see our progress. We’re only a couple days away from home,” Mary said.

Her avoidance of the question was enough to know that we’d lost a lot of them. Earth would never be the same.

She kissed me on the lips, and I was self-conscious of how dry mine were. And how my breath must smell like a rotten tomato, but she lingered on them for a moment and smiled at me after, a cool hand on my face.

“I’ll come back in a bit with some food. Have a rest. Carey will stay with you.” She walked away, and Mae followed her.

Carey jumped up onto the small cot with me and curled up between my legs. I lay there in the dark, my mind reeling at everything that had happened. Closing my eyes, I could swear I could feel the other blood coursing through my veins. But even now, my back felt better than it had when I woke up. Slowly, I drifted into sleep.

Four Years Ago

Iwas on the couch watching the Pirates destroy the Yankees on a cool fall Sunday afternoon. “Sunday in New York” was blasting from the Yankee stadium speakers and the announcers were talking over the song, complaining about the weak bullpen this year. I agreed with them, but I always laughed at the overweight, middle-aged guys telling the world how a team should play better.

The doorbell rang, and Janine hurried from the kitchen to answer it. I took a sip from my now warm Brooklyn Lager, and the room started to spin. I glanced to the door and saw Bob step in, looking frantic. Bob , the name almost came out of my throat, but it refused to emerge. Was there something in my beer? Maybe food poisoning?