Becoming Alien by Rebecca Ore Read Free Book Online Page A

figure out how to understand him.
    My hand, as though it’d grown an alien-sympathizing brain, turned the ignition key before I really wanted to. Then, remembering the teachers back at high school, I dropped one foot down on the accelerator, the other on the clutch, and shifted— Bye, Virginia, we’re history.

 
 
2
Steel Things, Steel Places
    We’d escape to the alien buildings in Alpha’s drawings, abandoning pilling machines jammed on nasty drugs and photos of men with crushed legs in envelopes postmarked Atlanta.
    The alien reached over the seat for the shotgun and shells. Softly making fired gun sounds, he stuck his long index finger through the trigger guard.
    Damn! I stopped and pulled the gun out of his hands. The alien watched very intently as I broke open the breech, saw it was empty, and closed it. He reached to take it back, but I shoved the gun as far as I could through the trunk hole.
    As I re-set Warren’s road alarm, the alien drummed his fists on the dashboard, then got a shotgun shell, holding the shell delicately in his long fingers, the sparse fur on his knuckles picking up highlights from the inside lights.
    The sooner we got off county roads and onto the I-81 going west, the safer I’d feel. Warren—I knew it was irrational—could have spies watching on Rte. 8.
    The alien began to sing to himself.
    About a half mile farther, I saw a black mass pull out of an abandoned house’s driveway onto the road.
    My headlights hit it.
    Warren’s truck!
    I wondered if I could jam it on and get around him, but fence posts, high banks crowded me.
    “No. No. No.”
    My God, Warren’s in the truck, I thought for a second before I realized it was the alien, imitating Warren. The alien shook his head vigorously. He’d learned no from Warren.
    I said, “Sorry,” and stopped the Fairlane.
    “No.” The trembling alien spoke exactly like he’d said the other no’s, precisely the same tone. He began climbing over the seat, to hide in the trunk as I’d drawn that he should do when we were around strangers.
    Now the beating. I turned and drove back home; parked close to the house, and started crying on the steering wheel.
    Warren’s pickup almost rammed the Fairlane. He came out of the cab white-faced, jabbering. “If you’d waited another hour, I would have gone on, but you were so obvious, so damn fucking anxious.”
    Slowly I got out of the Fairlane. “Where’s the alien?” Warren asked. “Where’s the monster? You shit, Tom, my only brother, sneaking out with an alien monster, blood drinker.” Warren yanked the keys out of the ignition and bent them against a stone. When he reached into the car again, Warren’s voice faded: “Sweet Jesus.”
    I moved toward the car. Warren said almost calmly, “Stop, Tom, it’s got a shotgun trained on me.”
    “Not loaded,” I said. Then I remembered the shell the alien fingered, how he’d watched me open the breech. “Wait! Could be…”
    As Warren backed away, the alien crawled out over the seat, with the gun crooked in his elbow, muttering soft blams. The creature was crying. He said again, in Warren’s voice, “No,” and raised the gun up, finger not quite on the trigger, head and shoulder hairs standing up.
    Seemingly forever, both stood in the truck headlights. Then Warren, reaching for his boot pistol, rolled into the darkness. The dark flashed, the little crack of the .22, not the big .357 magnum.
    The alien screamed and dropped the shotgun. He braced himself against the car and began talking hoarsely in his own language.
    “Warren, are you all right?” I asked.
    “Yeah, I got him.”
    “No,” the alien said. “No.” He reached down and spread a hand over the wound, then began trying to walk to Warren.
    I caught him, and he pushed my hands against the wound, like wet hot meat, and collapsed.
    “Bring him in the house,” Warren said. He held the door as I staggered in, the alien weighing almost as much as me.
    “Put him on the