Aliens and Ice Cream Read online

  Aliens and Ice Cream

  Aliens and Ice Cream

  Copyright © 2019 by Michael James

  Cover Design by Lance Buckley

  https://www.lancebuckley.com

  Chapter Images by Milo McDowell via Unsplash

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the author except for the use of quotations in a book review.

  ISBN: 978-1-9990544-2-7 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-9990544-0-3 (ebook)

  https://Authormichaeljames.com

  ALSO BY MICHAEL JAMES

  They Collapse Together

  For Brady, again

  Contents

  Day 1: The Barbecue

  Day 1: The Attack

  Day 2: The Waiting

  Day 3: The Drone

  Day 4: The Hole

  Day 5: The Plan

  Day 6: The Group

  Day 7: The Last Day

  Epilogue

  Before: The Barbecue

  Matt

  Matt’s plan would have worked if he hadn’t thrown up on himself.

  Every day, Kate Bennett jogged past his house while he watched from his bedroom window. Even though they were halfway through summer vacation, she kept a fixed routine. By nine a.m., he’d hear the steady clop-clop-clop of her shoes as she did her rounds up and down the street. Sometimes, Heather from next door would join and Kate seemed glad for the company. That’s what got him thinking.

  Matt liked Kate. A lot. She was smart and pretty and liked math, so they had that in common, but every time he tried to talk to her, something got in the way. Another guy would come over. She’d be late for her part-time job. Dinner. He wasn't blowing it, but it was close. In two months, they’d all be off to college. He needed to be alone with her where it didn’t seem forced and creepy and he was running out of time.

  Okay, so inserting himself into her jogging routine was a little creepy, but he was out of ideas, which was why he hatched this plan. In his head, he reviewed the steps.

  1. Join Kate in casual jog.

  2. Impress her with jogging knowhow (e.g. did she know Shakespeare mentioned jogging in Taming of the Shrew?).

  3. Compliment her running shoes.

  4. Add jogging humor – what do you get if you’re telling puns while jogging? A running joke.

  5. Post jog, suggest casual get together: a movie.

  Matt had considered this from every angle. Once he deconstructed a problem, it became a manageable series of steps. He suspected the same comforting logic did not apply to relationships, but he couldn't stop his brain from doing it. High school hadn’t provided him with a ton of dating opportunities, and he was glad to see it in his rear-view mirror. Kate was kind of like a final exam. Ask out a human girl. Maybe she’d say yes, maybe no, but at least he would have done something other than watch from the sidelines.

  That morning, he ate a big breakfast, assuming he’d need the energy. He’d never jogged before and wasn’t sure how the rules worked. Filled with sausage and burps, he went outside to wait on the front lawn. He considered wearing a headband, but aside from his bangs, he kept his hair short and anyway, his mom said his brown hair complimented his eyes. Whatever that meant.

  Matt hopped up and down in place. The day seemed off, a strange combination of hot and cold that caused him to shiver, even though the breeze coming from over the forest that surrounded his house was warm. The sun hid behind a cloud-covered sky, creating slashes of purple and orange that stretched across the horizon. The air had a weight to it, a heaviness he struggled to put a name to, and carried an odor like burning electrical wires. Maybe from the construction up the street? A strange morning, regardless.

  His dad was already outside, screwing around with the lawn mower, poking at the interior with a screwdriver.

  “Any luck?” Matt asked

  “Nah.” His Dad wiped his hands on his pants. “It might be toast. Krista was right.” Krista was Matt’s mom and she tolerated his dad’s tinkering with weary patience. There wasn’t a single item in his house that contained a motor that his dad hadn’t tried to ‘improve’ or fix. An engineer by trade, he made it his mission to understand the inner workings of just about everything electronic.

  “Those lawnmowers,” Matt said absently, staring down the street to where Kate should appear.

  "What’s going on, buddy?" He gestured at Matt’s running outfit, bought fresh that week. "Never seen you wear that stuff before."

  “Gonna go for a run,” Matt shrugged.

  “A run, huh? All by yourself?”

  “Sure, or you know. With whatever. Whoever.”

  “I got it.” His dad smirked and continued fiddling with the engine.

  Matt blushed. His dad always knew what he was up to. Before he could retort, he heard a door shut next door. His neighbor, Heather, limbered up on her front porch, also getting ready for a jog. Her dark, blonde hair hung over her shoulder in a ponytail. She noticed Matt and waved before coming over, stopping on the street in front of his lawn.

  “Hi, Mr. Cutler. Hey, Matty. Are you going out for a run?”

  Shit. Not Kate. Wrong friggin girl.

  “Hi.” Matt waved politely. “Yeah, I thought I’d run it up so I’m stretching. Keeping limber.”

  Heather tucked a loose hair behind her ear. “Want to run with me?”

  “I don’t want to pull a hamstring.” The answer made no sense and he knew it. But the plan wasn't to run with Heather, what would he get out of that? Health benefits?

  “If you change your mind, I’m meeting Kate at the top of the street.”

  “But my hamstrings feel loose,” he interrupted. “Fluid, you know? I’m ready. We should get going. Oh, Kate is meeting us? Kate who? I love jogging, always have.”

  “Easy does it, pal,” his dad muttered, keeping his head low to the lawnmower. “Steady.”

  “Ha!” Matt’s nervous laughter came out stilted, and his face warmed with sloppy embarrassment. Heather arched an eyebrow and stood with her arms crossed. He jogged past her before more stupid words came out of his dumb mouth, and Heather caught up.

  “I don’t remember seeing you out before, do you run?”

  “Big time,” he already struggled for breath. “I’m all over the place with my running.”

  “Sure.” She smiled and looked away, like she had learned a secret. Could women read minds?

  He focused on keeping pace with her, as she was unsurprisingly fast. Matt couldn’t remember how many school teams she’d joined in the short time she’d been in the neighborhood. As they neared the end of the road, Matt saw Kate waiting in front of her house. She wore tight stretch pants that stopped mid-way down her perfect calves. Like Heather, she had tied her hair back into a ponytail, but where Heather’s was the color of light sand, Kate ’s was midnight black.

  “I picked up a hitchhiker,” Heather said by way of greeting, pointing at him.

  “Hi, Matty.” Kate smiled at him. “It’s nice to see you. I didn't know you ran.”

  "Big time," he huffed between breaths. "Trying to get the old blood flowing."

  “Where’s your blood flowing to?” Kate asked, laughing.

  “Oh, I’m sure I can guess where it's going.” Heather gave Kate a sly smile. This conversation was three sentences deep and already Matt was drowning in the subtext. Time to bring out the big guns, point two of his plans. Random jogging facts.

  “Hey, did you know jogging dates to early Roman ti
mes? The soldiers would use it to warm up for war.”

  “Is running with us like being in a war?” Heather blinked at him with innocent eyes.

  “You’d think he’d enjoy spending time with two pretty girls,” Kate added.

  “Maybe we’re not pretty enough for him. Matt, is Kate pretty, or is Kate like a Roman solider?” Heather’s mouth twitched while she spoke, and Matt wondered if flames engulfed his head. He gaped at them like a moron. He simply could not talk to girls. He was great at science, terrible at conversation. But he realized Heather had given him an opening for point three on his list. Jogging compliments.

  “She looks great. I love her running shoes.”

  Heather snorted and shook her head before exchanging another of those loaded glances with Kate.

  “Your shoes are nice too, Matt,” Kate said. “They look brand new, like you’ve never used them?”

  “Of course he’s used them, Kate, do you think he’s only jogging as an excuse to talk to us? That would be crazy.”

  Crap. They were on to him. There was no way for him to do this, they were too smart. He needed to abort the mission. His entire focus shifted from casual dating to social survival. If he could escape this with only medium embarrassment, he’d call it a win.

  “Don’t worry about me and jogging,” he said. “I’m like a perpetual jogging machine, even though perpetual motion is an epistemic impossibility.” He clamped his mouth shut hard enough that his teeth clacked together. Did he use the phrase ‘epistemic impossibility’ in a sentence? This thing was a train wreck.

  Heather raised an eyebrow at him and came to his rescue. “Why don’t we get going? Maybe we’ll keep it slow today.”

  “We do a few rounds up and down the street to warm up,” Kate said. “Then it’s down to the school and back. It’s about five miles.”

  “No problem,” Matt said, his voice sounding too loud. He needed to regroup and end this horrible nightmare. A date was obviously off the table. Heather had ruined his plan by existing and being polite.

  They settled into a light jog, and still Matt struggled to keep pace. They lived on a crescent, a street that curved around on itself with a loop at the bottom. The girls chatted breezily, covering topics like school, songs they liked, and people they didn’t. Matt labored to breathe. At the second loop around the street, Kate stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  “Do you want to take a break?”

  “Why?” he gasped. “I’m getting my wind.”

  Heather and Kate exchanged one of those impenetrable looks unique to eighteen-year-old girls. Kate shrugged, and they kept going.

  “We’ll do two more loops and then get going on the main street,” she said.

  Matt gave a hearty thumbs up and focused on not dying of a heart attack. The sausage he had for breakfast sloshed in his stomach and he tasted bile. Why had he ever thought this was a good idea?

  On the third loop, his best friend Pete was out on his driveway, washing his car with his shirt was off. Pete’s shirt was off a lot. If Matt had that kind of build, he’d skip shirts as well. He doubted one jog would get him abs. Pete did not seem to have the same issues with women that he did.

  “Looking good, buddy.” Pete threw him a sarcastic grin as they jogged by and he heard Kate giggle. That shithead.

  As they rounded his house to finish their third lap, he thought he had done enough running to salvage what little remained of his chances with Kate and get out of this thing alive. He opened his mouth, planning to give them some lie about acute runner's hip, and that’s when he threw up.

  Heather

  After Matty’s accident, Heather lost her motivation for running. The whole thing was too funny. She shouldn’t make fun of him like that in front of Kate, but it was so entertaining. He made such an easy target, with his cute, bumbling sincerity. So unlike most of the guys she’d met in the short months she’d been here. Still chuckling, she went back into her house and into the kitchen to get a glass of water.

  “That was quick.” Her mom's elbows were deep in the sink, her light hair tied back with a bandana.

  “Matty Cutler from next door tried to jog with us, but his stomach disagreed,” she giggled.

  “Oh my, what happened?”

  Heather sat down and recounted the story to her mom, who laughed in all the right places. It had been hard, moving to this new town, away from all her friends, and in the past months she’d found herself closer to her mom. It was nice to have someone to talk to without the pressures of high school popularity. Parents had their advantages.

  Her dad came in from the garage, wiping his hands on a cloth rag strewn over his shoulder. “Anyone ready for a barbecue? Sharon, did you remember to buy steak?”

  “As if I could forget something important like the steak. On barbecue day. Imagine.” Her mom theatrically rolled her eyes and winked at Heather.

  Her dad loved a good barbecue and extended invitations to everyone on the street. This was the third one this summer. Martin Keene believed in neighborhood solidarity and didn’t miss an opportunity to remind everyone how the world was falling to shit, and how events like this were the glue that kept everyone together.

  “You’re back early.” He frowned, and Heather’s shoulders slumped. Here it comes.

  “Matty Cutler from next door got sick.”

  “So that means you get a day off?”

  She bit her lip while her mom rushed to her defense.

  “She already did ten miles this weekend, Martin.”

  "Yeah, I bet Jordan said the same thing before he made the Bulls." His voice took on a mocking falsetto. "I already practiced, why bother shooting more baskets?"

  Heather ground her teeth. “I’m was the captain of two teams at school, dad. I think I’m doing okay, given I’ve only been here the single semester.”

  “Exactly. You’re doing okay. Not great. Weren’t you going for the cross-country team when you leave for college? And you think you’ll make it? Other kids are out there hauling ass, not sitting inside, hen-clucking with their moms.”

  "God, Martin, leave her alone," her mom said.

  “It’s for her own good. Kids today are lazy as shit and need someone to stay on them. You know I’m doing this for you, right sweetie?”

  Heather ground her teeth.

  “Fine.” She slammed her drink on the table. “I guess I’ll just go do twenty miles then.”

  The sarcasm sailed well over her dad’s head and he patted her on the arm. “Atta girl.”

  She squeezed her hands together into fists with enough force to cause her knuckles to crack.

  “I'll check on the Cutlers next door, see if they’re ready for tonight,” her dad continued, oblivious. “That Paul Cutler is a flake, you can’t rely on him to do anything.”

  “Oh stop. He’s fine.” Heather’s mom turned back to the sink.

  “He’s a complete pussy. He doesn’t keep a lawn, Sharon. That’s the only measure of a man that matters. Do you know last week he asked for his burger well done? I mean, come on. What’s next, drinking cranberry juice instead of beer?”

  Heather sighed and let her dad blather on. Whatever bizarre metric he used as a barometer for masculinity, it seemed to change every time he opened his mouth. Sometimes, she didn’t understand how her mom could stomach him. Regardless, sitting here sighing wouldn’t get the run out of the way any faster. Grudgingly, she admitted her dad might have been right. The lazy part of her was using the puke-incident to slack off, and half-assing it didn’t get her any closer to the finish line. She swallowed the rest of her drink and walked to the front door to lace her shoes back up.

  The Matty incident had been funny though. A blind person couldn't miss why he wanted to jog with them. He needed an excuse to be around Kate. He had a thing for her and everyone at school knew it. Kate liked him too and told Heather she wished he'd do something. He’d been dithering for almost the entire year.

  Matty's timidity made zero sense to Heather. You wa
nt something, you go for it. Waiting for other people was for suckers. No one would hand you anything, you had to go for it yourself. If nothing else, her dad had driven that into her.

  Outside, she tried to put her irritation behind her and concentrate on the run. Twenty miles. She normally did ten, but this would show him she wasn’t slacking.

  The weather was cooperating, at least. At this time of the year, it should have been muggy and hot, but the wind coming over the trees that surrounded the houses raised goosebumps on her skin. They sky was an odd shade of purple, the sun peeking from behind the clouds. Instead of her usual route, she made the snap decision to run through the forest surrounding the neighborhood, instead of up to the main street.

  Even among the trees, something felt off. The normal noises she expected were silent as if the animals had retreated into hiding. A typical run would see squirrels cross her path or jays scold her from the safety of branches, high above, but the only noise was her breath and the slap-slap-slap of her shoes against the hard-packed dirt path.

  The forest trail took her on a circuitous path around the neighborhood before she emerged a few miles away from her house. She checked her watch, which told her she’d done eight miles. And she had decided on twenty? Her breath already caught, and a minor stitch had settled into her side. Still, it was better than the alternative of a disappointed sneer from her father and ineffective protests from her mom.

  Squaring her shoulders, she soldiered on.

  By the time she got home, it was past noon and her shirt clung to her body, sticky with sweat. Her vision swam, and it took most of her energy to put one foot in front of the other. Neither of her parents was around to see her victory, making the whole thing seem somewhat pointless. She peeled off her clothes as she took the stairs one spaghetti leg at a time before collapsing onto her bed in an exhausted heap. She should be used to this; her dad was never around and didn’t really give a shit about her. Why else would he move her to a new town in her final year of high school?