Arrival

“Decontamination Procedure Starting,” an electronic voice said, the way it had when Kevin and Luna had first arrived. There was the rush of the air being cleaned by the bunker’s filters around them.

“Hi, I’m Kevin,” he said. He suspected that there should be something more dramatic to say at a moment like this, but he couldn’t think of it.

The girl was silent for a moment or two, then seemed to realize that Kevin might be expecting an answer. “I’m Chloe.”

“It’s good to meet you, Chloe,” Kevin said.

She looked at him quietly, as though assessing him, and seemed almost ready to run. “Yeah, I guess.”

The other door to the airlock clicked open. Luna was waiting for them, smiling her most welcoming smile, even though she’d been the one arguing against letting Chloe in.

“Hello,” Luna said. She held out a hand. “I’m Luna.”

Chloe stared at it, then shrugged without taking it.

“This is Chloe,” Kevin said for her.

Chloe nodded in not very enthusiastic agreement, looking around warily.

“Where is everyone?” she demanded at last.

“There’s no everyone,” Luna replied. “There’s just us. Me and Kevin.”

She stepped over next to Kevin as if to emphasize that they were a team. She even put a hand on his shoulder.

“Just you two?” Chloe said. She sat down on one of the command center’s chairs, shaking her head. “All this way, and it’s just you two?”

“Where have you come from?” Kevin asked.

“That doesn’t matter,” Chloe said, not looking at them.

“I think it kind of matters a bit,” Luna shot back. “I mean, you’ve shown up out of nowhere, and you’re asking us to trust you.”

Chloe looked over sharply, shrugged again, and then walked out of the room. Kevin went after her, mostly because he suspected that if Luna went after her there might be some kind of argument, and also because there was something intriguing about Chloe. There were so many things they didn’t know about her.

“You don’t need to follow me,” Chloe said, looking back as Kevin followed her along one of the corridors.

“I thought I could show you round,” Kevin said. “You know… if you want.”

Chloe shrugged once more. There seemed to be nuances to her shrugs, and it seemed that this one meant okay. Kevin wasn’t quite sure what to make of her.

“We’ve been looking around since we got here,” Kevin said. “There’s a kitchen and a storeroom down here, and some bathrooms here. This is the dormitory where we’re sleeping. Pick out a bed if you want. I’m down that way, and so is Luna.”

Chloe picked a bed. It was the other side of the room from the ones Luna and Kevin had chosen.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” she said, “but I don’t know you, and…” She shook her head, not finishing that. There was a haunted look to her as she did it.

“Are you okay?” Kevin asked.

“I’m fine,” Chloe shot back, but then softened her voice a little. “I’m fine. I’ve just been used to looking after myself for a while. I guess I’m not very good at opening up to people.”

“Okay,” Kevin said. He stepped back toward the door. “I can go if you don’t want to—”

“I ran away from home,” Chloe said. It was enough to stop Kevin where he was.

“What?”

“I mean, before the aliens came,” Chloe continued. “My mom shouted at me all the time, and my dad was… well, some stuff happened, and they all said I was crazy… anyway, I have a cousin up north. I thought if I could get to him, I’d be okay, and then the aliens came.”

To Kevin, it sounded like she was skimming over a lot of stuff, but he let it go. A lot of the pauses had the feeling of gaps that hid the kind of stuff that hurt too much, as if pretending would make it all go away. He knew about that. Like if he pretended everything was fine, his illness wasn’t really there.

“How did you survive out there?” Kevin asked.

“I did what I had to,” Chloe said, sounding defensive, and also kind of haunted again. “Wait, you mean when everyone else changed? I was… I guess it was just luck. I was inside away from everyone when it started happening, and people said there was a gas or something, but by the time I got out, it was just those things trying to grab people and breathe on them.”

“By the time you got out?” Kevin said.

“This butcher locked me in his meat locker. Said I was trying to steal from him.”

Was that somewhere that might keep the alien vapor out? Did it mean that Luna and he didn’t need their masks anymore?

“It will be okay,” Kevin said.

Chloe gave him another of those shrugs. “You’re the kid on TV, aren’t you? When you said your name was Kevin, I didn’t get it, but I think I recognize you. Is that why you’re here? They stashed you in a safe place because you’re the boy who knows about aliens?”

Kevin shook his head, moving back over to her. “They didn’t put me here. Dr. Levin gave me a key to fit the bunkers they have, and told me about the one under the NASA research center, but that went wrong. Luna and I had to find this place by ourselves.”

Chloe nodded. “Luna… is she your girlfriend?”

People were always assuming that. Kevin couldn’t understand why. It seemed obvious to him that Luna would never be his girlfriend.

“She’s my friend,” Kevin said. “We’re not… I mean…”

It was weird how talking about aliens was easier than talking about exactly what he and Luna were.

“Strange,” Chloe said. “I mean, you seem nice. I definitely wouldn’t leave you as just a friend. I wonder—”

Kevin didn’t get to find out what she wondered, though, because a pointed cough came from the doorway. Almost as pointed as the look Luna gave them when Kevin turned around.

“I wanted to see what was taking you both so long,” she said, and she didn’t sound happy. She looked… almost jealous, and that didn’t make sense, because nothing was happening here, and in any case, Kevin and Luna weren’t like that. Were they?

“Hi, Luna,” Kevin said. “Chloe was just telling me about herself.”

“I bet she was,” Luna said. “Maybe she can tell me some of it too. And maybe, while we’re doing that, we can work out what we’re all going to do next.”

***

They went through to the kitchen area, because none of them had eaten breakfast yet. Kevin went to get supplies from the storeroom, not entirely sure if he should leave Luna and Chloe alone right then.