Mutant

I always thought I’d march away from Muddy Springs wearing a pair of Aunt Dee’s crazy shoes—probably the loud orange pumps with the daisy on the toe. The ones she gave me on my sixteenth birthday. I had stacks of shoes from Aunt Dee in my closet and under my bed.

I had a very clear image of how it would be when I walked, no strutted, away. Mom would put on a brave face and tell me to visit often. Dad would be silent, proud, maybe a little choked up. The image gets kind of fuzzy here. I’m walking down Main Street in my loud orange shoes. Crowds of friends and neighbors are waving, throwing confetti. Lately, they’re all wearing black, which is wrong.

I had plans for each pair of those shoes. Each one was a reward for reaching another milestone. The tasseled suede platforms were for prom. The red and blue polka dot high heeled boots were to be worn to celebrate Christmas. I would wear the six inch lilac sandals to a wedding; any wedding.

Not one of the shoes she’d sent me was appropriate for the town’s dinky grocery store, or the hospital in Bishop.

Dad slowed our elderly Volvo and turned in to Ray’s Gas and Grocery, bumping over the rough blacktop.

“Careful, Jason,” Mom muttered.

I said nothing. The three of us had been fighting the same enemy for so long, we didn’t remember how to let go. I hurt. My body ached. Dad could drive us across a bed of duck feathers and I would still hurt. Still struggle to breathe.

I leaned my forehead against the cool glass and peered through my reflection at the wide flat streets, the dusty pine trees and beat up pickup trucks--all the things that used to irritate me. Muddy Springs was just another small, annoying Nevada town.

I would give anything to be part of it again.

A handful of the palest teenagers I’d ever seen outside of a hospital stood next to the newspaper stand by the entrance to Rays. They were strangers here. That alone would have caught my attention. I knew Muddy Springs and the people who lived here like I knew my own family. I knew everything about Jean Anne’s husband’s uncle’s gout. I knew that Tom Bryce, computer genius, was failing English. I knew that news of my homecoming would spread fast and that women were already starting to cook the parade of casseroles and cookies that would begin to fill our freezer. I knew way too much about the people and the town. And they knew way too much about me. Any strangers here stuck out like a swimsuit model on the moon.

But these kids weren’t just strangers. They were bald.

I’d seen a lot of bald kids in the last weeks. Months. Years. But not here. Not like this. Muddy Springs was small town Nevada. There were two acceptable reasons to be bald: either you were an old guy who’d lost his hair, or you had cancer.

I pressed close to the window like any small town gossip, looking with fascination for details. The kids’ eyes, shaded by identical sunglasses, scrutinized the street. There were six of them. In spite of their pallor they didn’t look sick. They wore plain white tee-shirts and brand new jeans, which rode low on lean hips. They moved like athletes; graceful and strong and healthy.

What struck me even more than their pale skin and bald heads were their hands. Most people standing in a strange place will fidget. Not these kids. These kids held their hands very still. Not one of them fiddled or tapped or twisted.

Who were they?

“What is this? The Muddy Springs Cancer convention?” asked Dad. He was trying to be funny—trying to laugh in the face of the enemy because Aunt Dee had lectured us all on the importance of laughter in healing. But there was an uneasy overtone to his voice. He got out of the car and peered back at us through the window. “Be right back,” he said with such authority that there was no doubt he’d be right back.

Dad was the leader of our battalion. He set the course and me and Mom followed. I watched him anxiously, like a toothless guard dog, as he passed the kids. He and Mom were the best parents a girl could hope for. They were smart and thoughtful and strict enough so I knew where I stood, but they weren’t unfair. The thing I admired most was their strength. They were strong. Really, really strong. Lately, though, that strength had begun to look brittle, like a cold day would snap them into frozen shards of ice.

Dad spoke to the strange kids. They just stared at him, and something in their too-blank expressions made my skin prickle. He stopped, puzzled, then with a shrug went into the store.

One of the kids, a boy about sixteen, my age, spoke to the girl next to him. She curled her lip and with a lightning fast move that blurred her arm, swiped her nails at him. The boy reeled back, his hand over his shoulder. Blood oozed between his fingers.

Casually, the girl and the others walked away.

For the briefest moment, when the boy turned, his tee-shirt rode up the small of his back, exposing a swath of skin just above the waistband of his jeans. Something green flashed in a vee rising along his spine. Scales, was my first thought. Then his shirt settled back over his jeans. I shook my head. Tattoo. It must have been a tattoo.

Mom’s door flew open. She leaped onto the blacktop and hurried to the boy’s side. Mom, when it came to injured kids was as unstoppable as a storm. She also tended to faint at the sight of blood.

I shoved my door open and set my hospital slippers onto the rough pavement. I stood up, holding the door until the dizziness passed, then I tottered over to Mom who was using her gentle but firm kindergarten teacher voice to convince him to let her help. His sunglasses had slipped off and he stared over her head. He was tall and pale but he had high cheekbones and an angled face that wasn’t beautiful, but was close enough. His body was coiled tight.

I pushed past Mom. “Give me your arm,” I snapped.

He turned his gaze straight at me, and for a moment I was falling. His eyes were black. So black it was impossible to tell the iris from the pupil. So black that the whites of his eyes seemed almost too white. Vertigo sucked me into those dark, black eyes. Just before he covered them with his sunglasses I thought I saw tiny specks of blue floating in the black. I shook my head to clear it, put out my hand and snapped my fingers.

“Your arm. Now.”

Did a hint of a smile touch his mouth? No, probably not. His face under the glasses was as expressionless as ever. He let his hand fall from the wound and turned it toward me. Five stripes of blood colored his sleeve, as if he’d been clawed by an animal. Mom gasped. I whipped the bright pink and red scarf from my head, exposing my bare scalp to the sun. My hands trembled, and my breath was short and ineffective. I wrapped the scarf around the wound. “Loosen it when the bleeding stops.” I tottered, gulping for air.

Mom’s hands found my shoulders and she pressed my head down so that my pathetic, cancer-tainted blood could feed my brain. The blackness cleared, and when I finally straightened, the boy was gone. “Well, that was odd,” she said. “Did you see his eyes?”

We made our way back to the car. Dad was just exiting the store with a gallon of milk and a paper bag full of junk food—his latest plan to try to put some weight on my shaky frame. We’d gone the organic route for a long time, but it didn’t cure me, so now we were eating Snickers, Milkyway and Hersheys.

When we got home Mom pulled out her best Wedgwood china and the good silverware. Dad got out some old chipped mugs. I peeled the wrappers off of three candy bars, sliced them into bite-sized pieces and arranged them like fine French cuisine onto little serving platters. In the last couple of years we’d become a team that way, each of us silently performing tasks that would mean nothing by themselves, but meant everything together. It meant routine. Home.

We didn’t talk about death. We didn’t need to. It hovered over us, pressing its sharp finger into our spines and whispering in our ears. “You’re dying, Miranda Baxter. Dying.”

I had one thing to whisper back. “Not yet.”

Mom disappeared for a moment and then returned with a fresh coat of makeup. As if makeup could hide the worry and despair that had folded into all the small lines on her face. “Jokes!” she said, her voice a little shrill. “Does anyone have any jokes to tell?”

I reached over and took her hand. Her beautiful manicured nails were chipped, her skin dry from the desert air, hadn’t seen a good moisturizer in a while. Somehow in the last months our roles had changed. I had failed them. I was still failing them. How could I keep them safe? How could I give them even a tenth of what they’d given me? I was the center of their world. How were they going to keep going when I’d gone? “Mom, it’s going to take more than jokes to save me.”

“Miracles happen every day, Miranda,” she declared.

Dad thunked his coffee cup decisively on the table. “We’ll get another opinion. There’s a place in Arizona…”

I thought about the shoe boxes stacked at the bottom of my closet, waiting. There was no way the world could go on without me. I lifted my head to take in the room—all wood and crystal and flowers. Mom loved beautiful things. She loved the way sun shown through cut glass and the way the elongated tulips on her new rug welcomed people in. Next to a beautifully hung watercolor of the Sierra Mountains were five little stick drawings I’d done my first year in school. They were hideous drawings. I would never be an artist, but Mom had made me feel like one. Each of those stupid little drawings was framed and hung as carefully as the watercolor beside it.

The sky outside had turned the deepening shade of afternoon blue. I shook my head and scowled against the prickling behind my eyes. If one of the three of us broke down now, we’d all break. It had been a long time since I cried. I owed my parents that much. I almost missed the flash of light hitting the shape flitting across the lawn. I didn’t even blink. Probably Jenny, the neighbor’s golden retriever, chasing a squirrel. Probably nothing at all.

The next instant something hurtled through the window in a burst of breaking glass.

Bang. Just like that, the world fell apart.

A form crouched in the sunlight. The girl from Ray’s, her pale bald head reflecting the light. She wore the same loose fitting jeans and plain white running shoes with angled pink stripes down the sides. Her body was still tight, athletic and ready. She unfurled from the crouch and looked at us with eyes that were a flat, glittering black. Then she grinned. As she grinned, her teeth lengthened. Her fingers sprouted claws, sharp as razors.

Me and my parents, the average American family of three, sat at our kitchen table, our mouths hanging open. I looked across at Dad and without exchanging words I could see the same denial written on his face that I knew was on my own.

Mom stood up and faced the girl. “Is this a joke? Did Dee set this up? Because it lacks humor.” She glared at Dad, but Dad just shook his head. Mom turned back to the girl and said in a loud, shrill voice. “Okay, young lady. You just turn yourself around and waltz on out of here. And tell Dee she can pay for that window. Do you hear me?”

The girl’s grin widened and she stepped toward us.

Mom seemed to shrink.

The solid oak front door splintered open and the boy from Ray’s crashed into our home. His tee-shirt was still blood smeared. My scarf was gone. He padded forward on bare feet, laying each foot soundlessly against the large pink tulips on Mom’s new rug. He was graceful and predatory and very nearly beautiful. He didn’t sprout claws or teeth, but he had the same glittering black eyes as the girl.

For an instant I looked into his eyes again. Dad jumped to his feet and stumbled in front of me and Mom, a table knife held like a lethal weapon in his hand. Mom grabbed me and held on tight. Outside, we heard screams and a few gunshots. Mom tightened her hold on me and made a sound like a kitten in pain, but that was all. My heart began to beat faster and adrenaline shot through my body, pouring energy and strength into my wasted frame.

The boy paused. Again, our eyes met. It was an instant of quiet, as if we were locked in a soundproof room. Just the two of us. Just an instant. A flash of pain crossed his face. Indecision replaced the look of determination.

I pried mom’s hands from my arm and pushed her gently back. The blood on the boy’s arm and the grin on the girl’s face spoke of death. Mom wasn’t the one slated to die. I moved up beside Dad. Neither was he. “Run!” I whispered.

“Get behind me, Miranda,” he said.

That’s how it was. How it had always been. Me and Mom and Dad. We protected each other. We were a team. I turned to the boy and said in a low, fierce voice. “Get out of our house.”

He took a half step back, just as more bald kids with claws and sharp teeth and scales barged through the door and charged at us. You wouldn’t think we’d know how to fight. Mom was a kindergarten teacher. Dad was a dentist. I was a cancer patient. But we’d been fighting for years. It didn’t matter that what we’d been fighting was a microscopic disease that had invaded my body cell by cell. It didn’t matter that we had never seen our enemy before. Fighting is what we knew. I think it was even kind of a relief to have an enemy we could see because we fought viciously, with a joy that would have scared the crap out of us at any other time. Even with the whatever-they-were leaping around like over caffeinated grasshoppers and throwing furniture at walls, we fought to save each other.

Mom snagged the Waterford crystal vase she was so proud of and smashed it against the table, creating a jagged knife. Even in the middle of the chaos I was so proud of her. I loved them both so much. Dad broke a china plate and swiped at the horde of teenagers. They jumped back and circled warily, throwing questioning glances at the boy, who stood near the doorway as if paralyzed. I grabbed Dad’s coffee mug and held it like a club. I clutched the table with the other hand and locked my knees to keep from falling.

“Miranda, get back!” my mother screamed.

“Call 911!” Dad hollered.

The not-quite-humans advanced again, cutting us off from the phone and from any possible way out. We used plates and table knives and teeth and nails. We kicked and screamed. Not-quite-human blood flew. We were winning, backing them down—then, through the open doorway stepped something else…something that could have walked out of a bad science fiction flick.

It had the upright look of a human skeleton covered in supple, shiny metal skin that flashed copper in the sun. Its torso and face were slightly translucent. Something pulsed at the center of its body and long curling strands of something that looked like angel hair pasta twisted around in its abdomen. It stood in the doorway for a moment, its head swiveling to take in the room. Its eyes glowed yellow and then amber as it studied us. All activity in the room stopped. The invading teenagers stood, their hands and bodies still, resting. Their faces were slack, almost disinterested.

Mom and Dad and I backed together so that we stood, pressed between the table and the creature. Dad’s shoulder and arm were hard and warm, Mom’s vibrated a little against mine. I stared at the approaching creature. It looked almost liquid, the way it moved in a graceful fluid walk. Something, a light pressure almost like fingers stroking my skin, began to press against my face and head, probing into my mind, gently prying open a seal I’d never known was there.

A heavy buzzing filled me as the invisible hand explored and then dominated what had always been mine. “No,” I whispered. My body began to sway back and forth, back and forth. The room receded around me so that I was looking at it backward, through the wrong end of a telescope. The world, my home and I were all tiny and so far away. So insignificant. Was this what it meant to die? This slipping away? This loss of self?

You’re dying, Miranda Baxter.

“Not yet,” I muttered. I heard my voice from a long way off—almost nonexistent, but I did hear it. I whispered the words again, louder. “Not yet!” Again. “NOT YET.”

I began to push back against the weight and the buzzing. I wrenched my mind away from the violating presence. I shook my head hard. It hurt. It hurt so bad I wanted to cry. But I knew about pain. I knew how to let it slide through me. I shook my head again and suddenly the pressure, the invisible hand and the pain were gone.

I staggered against the table, breathing hard. Beside me, Dad’s shoulder had gone slack. Mom had stopped trembling. They stood, eyes open and staring at the creature. My heart slammed harder and suddenly the adrenaline of the last few moments drained away. I couldn’t get enough air. I felt dizzy and weak. I grasped Dad’s arm. “Dad? Mom?”

For the first time in my life, they didn’t turn to me when I called them.

Dad tore his arm from my grip and he and Mom stepped away from me. “NO!” I cried. I grabbed for Dad’s arm again, but the girl, our first invader, leaped in front of me and grinned her sharp-toothed grin.

Without thinking, I slammed my fist into her face. My knuckles tore open and blood dripped down my hand. The girl wheeled back. I struck her again, then leaped past her, after my parents. I sucked in breath after breath, trying to shake the dizzy blackness that edged into my vision. There was no way in hell these…things were taking my family.

Hands; dozens of hands clutched me and pulled me back. I could only struggle against them as the skeletal creature turned and walked across the fragments of our meal and our lives. Mom and Dad followed it out of the house. They didn’t turn or flinch when I screamed for them. They just walked out of the ruined door and were gone.

A writhing mass of hard, strong bodies covered me and pulled me down. One of them sank his teeth into my upper arm and ripped upward. I shrieked and jerked away. My hand fell against another mug. I gripped it and slammed it into his head. He tumbled sideways. They pulled back enough for me to see fangs and grins of anticipation and pleasure. I scrambled to my knees and glared at them.

I forgot about the leukemia. I forgot about death. I forgot that I couldn’t breathe and that I was dizzy. My lips pulled back in a snarl that was completely foreign to an average American teenager and yet somehow belonged to me. I struck at them with the coffee cup, wanting to see blood.

They closed in.

I stared back into their blank eyes. I’d had life all worked out. I was supposed to have a little more time. I stared into their blank eyes and I thought about Mom and Dad. About how much I loved them. And I thought about the pink feather boa heels and about Aunt Dee. I was thinking she was right. I shouldn’t have waited. I should have worn them.

Then the boy whose eyes I met earlier was there. He waved an arm at the others and they moved back, circling. I flung the mug at his head. He caught it with one hand, then knelt and studied my face. “Why did you come to my aid today?”

“Because I’m an idiot,” I snarled back.

He considered my words for a moment, then shook his head. “I am not satisfied with this answer.” He leaned closer and I could see streaks of dirt on his pasty skin. “I must know why.”

I scrambled back, groping for a piece of broken plate.

The others circled closer, their feet crushing bits of porcelain into the rug, as if the porcelain had never sat whole on a kitchen table, topped with little bite sized slices of Snickers and Hershey’s. As if all it had ever been was broken. I watched all the little bits and pieces of my life pounded into a smashed, crumbled medley that was a distorted mix of what it should have been. I could think of only one thing. “I want my parents back. Do you hear me?” I screamed.

The girl with the pink stripes on her shoes ran at me, her nails extended. I held a shard of porcelain in one fist and braced for impact. I was going to die, oh yeah. I could see that in her eyes, but I was going to put some mean scars on that pretty face first.

The boy reached out and grabbed her wrist. He spoke, still quietly, but his voice full of command. “You will not have this human.”

She yanked out of his grip and leaped at me. The boy bounded into the air, hurdled into her and slammed them both into the floor. He leaped to his feet, grabbed her arm and twisted it high behind her back. At the same time he pressed one bare foot onto her neck. “You will not have this human,” he repeated to the rest of them.

I scooted back through the glass and the fragments, my eyes on her face. His foot pressed harder against her neck. With a simple shifting of his weight he could kill her. My heart pounded too hard, I could feel it battering the inside of my chest. For weeks I’d known I was going to die. I’d felt such a bag of emotions: sadness, anger, curiosity, fear…even relief, but the only emotion I could detect on the girl’s face was resignation, as if she accepted her death with no question and no opinion. That’s when I realized just how far off of normal she was. You don’t go peacefully into death. You fight. You fight until it takes you and then you fight some more. What kind of creature accepts death with such staunch submission?

The boy’s foot pressed harder. I heard a cracking sound. Her eyes closed and that was it. Death was that simple. And that final.

The boy moved away from the dead girl and leaned over me. I screamed and swung the broken plate at his face. He ducked, jerked the plate from my hand and with unbelievable strength hauled me to my feet, threw me over his shoulder and we were running. Running. Running.

The next moments blurred together. Did I continue to fight him? Yes I did, but his grip was iron strong and no matter how I kicked and scratched and hit, I remained across his shoulder flopping along like a big fish carcass. The boy raced down the wide residential street, weaving through humans and others, some fighting, some staring, blank faced. Did the other not-quite-humans chase us? Yes I think they did, but they seemed confused and stopped amid the turmoil.

The boy carried me through the clusters of struggling people and up the wooded hill at the edge of town until we reached the ancient moss covered log. Carefully, he deposited me behind it. For a moment I stared, stunned at the blue sky, which was now filling with smoke. The boy moved between me and the sky; his black eyes flashed with deep lightning points of blue. “I must know why you helped me,” he said, his voice uninflected and flat.

Below us the sound of screaming and fighting died down. I scrambled upright and clung to the log, forcing gulps of air into my lungs. Fuzzy, black mist fingered its way into the edges of my vision. I had to lower my head between my knees. My mind began to replay one of those jump rope chants we used to sing; I went downtown to see Charlie Brown. He gave me a nickel to buy me a pickle. The pickle was sour…. As soon as my head cleared I looked up again.

Smoke billowed from the ruined houses and stores, creating a drifting ring of cover that hid and then revealed hundreds of people in the soccer field at the edge of town. Some I recognized by the way they stood or by the clothes they wore: Mr. and Mrs. Blake. George Morton and Mary-Lou…. And Mom and Dad.

I gripped the edges of the log, feeling its age and the way the moss softened and ate at the fibers until it wasn’t really wood anymore and wasn’t anything else either. Mom, Dad and pretty much all of the adults and most of the kids from Muddy Springs milled around quietly in the park, surrounded by dozens of the expressionless not-humans and three of the metal skeleton things. I tightened my fingers and pieces of mossy wood fell apart and crumbled to the ground. I was breathing too fast, and I was dizzy and scared. Deliberately I slowed my breathing. I had to be calm. I had to be rational.

Blood matted the sleeve covering my arm, oozed from the bite wound down my wrist and between my fingers, staining the sharp wedge of granite I somehow held in one fist. He gave me a nickel to buy a pickle… I didn’t know why the chant was running through my mind, but the rock…a grenade would have been nice, but since grenades are a little hard to come by in your average American town, I must have picked up the first weapon I could get my hands on.

My new friend touched my shoulder, his strange black eyes studying the field below. I could have buried the sharp side of my stone in his head, but I was pretty sure that this one—this boy with the grim, unreadable face had saved my life. So I chose not to brain him. For the moment.

“Girl,” he said. “Why did you come to my aid today?”

I shook my head. My family…my whole life was standing calmly down on the Muddy Springs Municipal Ball field, waiting for…for what? “What do they want from my parents?”

“They take humans for battle.”

“Battle? My dad’s a dentist.”

“Humans are great fighters. And yet you came to my aid. Why? I must understand.” This time there was a note of desperation in his voice.

“I don’t have time for this,” I shouted.

He continued to look at me. There was something so puzzled and lost about his expression…as if he’d just lost his whole world, too. I ground my teeth in frustration and my hand tightened on the rock. Maybe I should brain him after all. No, I needed answers. “I helped you because you were alone in my town and you were hurt.”

He frowned.

“My turn,” I snapped. “Who…no, what are you?”

Hesitantly he turned his arm to reveal the underside of his wrist. There, marked in glowing black ink, was the number R-4. Again, he rested those black eyes on me. “I am a fourth-generation human mutation. A mutant.”

I turned back to the field. He gave me a nickel to buy me a pickle. The pickle was sour so he gave me a flower… Woo-eee-ooo. Either I had a bad case of chemo brain, or my town had been attacked by mutants.

I looked down at the rock in my hand then back at the field. At least a hundred mutants.

Three skeleton things.

One rock.

One wimpy cancer patient.

I needed a weapon. A real weapon. A bomb. A machine gun. I scanned the town. Just a normal western Nevada town. There were plenty of guns in those smoking houses—but bombs and machine guns? My eyes rested on Ray’s Gas and Grocery.

Ray’s GAS. Gas was explosive.

How much time did I have?

I spun on the mutant, grabbed his thin, dirty white shirt and yanked him close. “What are the mutants planning to do?”

“Plan? They plan to do as they are commanded.”

Something flashed overhead. Something shaped like a huge pyramid rocketed toward us, the sun flashing off its golden sides. Blood drummed in my ears. I sucked in breath hard, trying to keep from passing out.

“This isn’t happening,” I mumbled. But sticks dug into my skin and the smoke grated in my nostrils and stung my eyes. I could have pinched myself, but the bite wound hurt like hell already. This was real. I checked the ridge behind me, hoping to see tanks and helicopters and army guys with guns and bombs. No army guys. No guns. No bombs.

Just me.

A rock.

No real chance.

Just me. And Ray’s Gas and Groceries.

The pyramid moved between the sun and the earth, throwing a shadow over the citizens of Muddy Springs.

Time.

Staying low, I forced my skinny, bloated self to the edge of the log. Ray’s wasn’t far. I’d get some bottles and fill them with gas. I’d use rags and matches. I’d…

The boy grabbed my arm and yanked me back behind the log. “Girl, you must not fight the Metallics.”

“My name is Miranda Baxter and I will fight them.” My mouth pulled back in a snarl of fury. The fury felt better than the fear. I let it grow until all I could see was rage, red as blood.

“Miranda Baxter,” he said slowly, as if testing the name with his tongue. “It is good to have a name. You will fight. Your people are great fighters. We had the element of surprise, but even then, the humans fought well.”

“Let go of me.” I tried to jerk away, but his fingers locked around my wrist.

He drew his brows together as if puzzled. “You would aid the humans? As you aided me? No…I will not allow it at this time.”

“I can’t just let them die. They aren’t supposed to die,” I said, pushing back a sob.

“If they cooperate, they will not die.”

The space ship settled to the ground with a soft thunk in front of the captives.

His grip slackened slightly and I whipped my arm away, then stumbled toward town and Ray’s and weapons and my family. My legs were weak, my feet clumsy in their loose quilted slippers.

The boy slammed into me, and we crashed to the ground, skidding on rusty brown pine needles and dead limbs until we stopped against the rough bark of a tree. He clamped his hands on my shoulders and turned me around to face him. “You cannot go to them. The Metallics will take you, too.”

My arm hurt and I was scared. Pain made me mad. Fear made me mad. I fought him. I was into sports. Soccer. Swimming. Track. But the leukemia had weakened me. He held me easily.

“I will not let you go. I cannot.”

“Why not?” I cried, kicking him in the leg.

He paled, but using arms that were a lot stronger than they should have been, he dragged me more fully behind the tree. “You came to my aid. I do not know why. And I saved you. I do not know why, but I did. If I allow you to die…”

“What? What will happen if I die?” I gritted between clenched teeth.

“I will not have saved you. I will be like them.” He nodded toward the other mutants.

An oval in one wall of the pyramid wavered like golden liquid, melting into a broad, high doorway that loomed over the townspeople; a giant, toothless mouth. The townspeople moved toward the open door. Not just my parents, but all the people who’d left casseroles and notes and sent flowers to the hospital. All the people who knew who I was—who would remember me when I was gone, marched like a herd of robots through the open mouth of the pyramid. Each person who boarded that craft took a piece of me with him. I felt, as they disappeared through that door, that I was disappearing, too.

I struggled against the mutant’s grasp. “What are they doing? Why don’t they run? Why don’t they fight?” I whispered, barely able to push the words past the tightness in my throat.

“Shh!” he said, his eyes desperate. He tightened his grip. “The Metallics will hear you.”

“What Metallic? What is a Metallic?” I asked frantically. My parents stepped up to the ship. “Mom? Dad! Don’t do it! Don’t leave me.” Their shadows against the slanted side of the ship appeared shortened and distorted. Without looking around, first Dad then Mom, calmly followed their neighbors and friends off of the Muddy Springs Municipal All Purpose Sports Field and into the pyramid’s yawning mouth.

“Don’t leave me alone!” I cried. I tried to leap forward, but the boy held me tight.

At once, the Metallics turned there horrible faces toward us.

The heavy buzzing pressed against my mind again. I reeled back. This time I was able to shove the invaders more quickly away. They still pushed at the perimeters of my being, but I was able to think again. “What do they want with my parents? Where are they taking them?”

The boy’s skin had paled even more. His hands covered his ears and he huddled against the trunk of the tree his face pulled into a grimace. He spoke through teeth that were clenched together. “The Masters sense my presence. They wish to understand why my indoctrination has failed.”

The Metallics…or Masters or whatever name they were using, strode toward us, their legs moving in precise sinuous formation.

“They aren’t my masters,” I said with more defiance than I was feeling. I was shaking so hard my teeth chattered together. “We have to stop that ship from leaving.”

His body gave a shudder and the tense muscles of his shoulders slackened. “They call to me. I must go…” He started to stand up and I realized that he was the only connection I had…the only chance I had to rescue my parents. I grabbed his shirt and jerked him back.

“Must go…” he muttered.

I slapped him hard on the face. “You think they want to take you back so they can feed you a cup of hot chocolate at the kitchen table?” I snarled.

He touched his cheek then frowned down at me, his eyes clearer. “What is hot chocolate?”

The sound of aircraft hit the valley and two fighter jets streaked through the sky. The boy looked up anxiously. “Your people come now to fight.”

Thank god.” I stood up and waved with both arms, dizzy with relief. “It’s going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

The two fighters blasted the ship leaving, scarred trails across its golden side. A loud whistle pierced the air and all of the Metallics except one, hurried on board the spacecraft, followed by the remaining mutants. The last Metallic stood where it was, its flat metal eyes looking up the hill toward us. Then it turned. Its fluid limbs moving in graceful rhythm, it walked toward town.

The craft’s door shimmered back into existence and the pyramid lifted from the ground. With a tremendous boom, it zoomed into the sky. Faster than I could blink, it was nothing more than a point of light. In another instant, it was gone.

My parents…my family was gone.

“No! NO!” I screamed. All I could see was a blur of light and dark as my brain refused to believe what had happened. I scrambled over the log and tumbled down the hill, climbed to my feet and ran again. I reached the field, but there was nothing I could do. They were gone.

The ship had left a giant square of flattened, cremated grass imprinted on the ground. I fell to my knees, grabbed a double fistful of char and screamed. “Come back!”

Except for the circling fighters, the sky remained empty.

A shadow flicked above me. The boy hurtled from the sky like a giant ping pong ball, legs thrust forward, arms cart wheeling. He wasn’t flying exactly…more falling. He landed in a heap in front of me, staggered to his hands and knees and climbed to his feet. “You are hurt,” he said, pointing to my bloody sleeve.

I squeezed my hands into fists. “Where are they taking my parents? I want them back. Do you hear me?”

He yanked my sleeve up, then sucked in a breath at what he saw. He reached into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out my scarf. The soft silk had stiffened in places where his blood had dried. He held it out to me as if it were a treasure.

I jerked my arm away and glared at him. “I’m going to get my parents back. I’m going to find them and…and I’m going to make those…those walking toothpicks pay.” It might sound stupid, one smallish, sick girl going up against the empire of walking scrap metal, but I meant it. Muddy Springs was a small, boring, annoying town, but it was my small, boring, annoying town. Mine.

The boy frowned at the scarf, then at me. Finally, he took my hand and tugged at me. “You must come with me. The wound is—”

“You’ve got to help me find them. My parents.”

“Miranda Baxter, it is unlikely, yet conceivable that you might defeat the Metallics. But first, you must survive the humans.”