The Last Starry Night

Grandma Griffin’s apartment backed right up to the woods, and after dinner there wasn’t much she liked better than to stand on the porch with an ice cold sweet tea and listen to the crickets. They were very loud and fast tonight, on account of the heat. Grandma imagined that they were trying to speak to her, and if she could just sort of tune her ear right, she’d hear a voice that she hadn’t heard for three years.

Floyd came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Ursula,” he said. “You all right?”

Good old Floyd. Of course she wasn’t all right, and he knew it, but there was no point in talking about it tonight. “Oh, I’m fine,” she said, and lay her hand on his.

“There are plenty of stars out,” he said. “Look up, Ursula.”

“Floyd,” she said, “are you going to lecture me about stars again? You know I don’t care a fig what their names are or what constellation they’re in. You’re just trying to distract me.”

“Don’t you want to be distracted?” he asked.

She looked at his small bright black eyes. He was so very different from her husband – Will had been a huge, slow man, strong as the earth he farmed; but Floyd... “Floyd,” she said, “you’re a smart man.”

“Of course, the summer stars are pretty faint. But luckily you’ve got a north-facing porch here. That there’s Polaris. And the Big Dipper hanging off to the side.”

She lay her head on his shoulder. “How about that one?” she said, pointing.

“That’s a bright one, isn’t it? It’s – well, it must be a planet, because it – but it’s not in the...” He fell silent.

“Floyd, are you going to tell me you don’t know the name of that star?”

“Ursula, gosh darn it, I don’t have any idea.”

“I do believe that’s the first time I’ve heard you say you don’t know something.”

“Well there’s lots of things I don’t know. But I swear that star has never been there before. It’s sitting right there in the middle of the Big Dipper’s bowl. It can’t be a planet, because it’s not in the Zodiac. Maybe it’s a supernova, or --”

And the stars flashed fire red, and went out.

Grandma screamed. Floyd gasped. The crickets kept chirping.

And then the Earth filled the sky. They could not see it as well as Azzie had, since the lights of Grandma’s living room spilled out onto the porch, but they saw forest-green and sandy-brown Australia hanging above them, and right over the trees, ice-white Antarctica.

“I’ll be,” breathed Floyd.

“It’s beautiful,” said Grandma. “What does it mean?”

“Well,” said Floyd slowly, “I reckon this’ll be the second time you hear me say I don’t know something. -- What’s that light in the trees?”

It was red: firelight. Then they heard screams, skidding car wheels, and sirens.

“That’s Ngoc’s apartment building,” said Grandma. “It’s burning!”

***

They weren’t as young as they used to be, but they made good time down the path through the woods. It was easy to pick their way along; the Earth in the sky cast a dim turquoise light over everything. Soon Grandma, who had been quite a runner twenty years ago, pulled ahead of Floyd, so it was she that ran headlong into Ngoc and Johnny.

“Oh, thank heavens you’re safe,” said Grandma. “Where’s Azzie?”

But Ngoc was far too upset to try to force her thoughts into English. She pointed vaguely back towards the burning building.

Grandma didn’t hesitate. She would have run right up into the fire. But Ngoc grabbed her arm and shrieked in Vietnamese.

“Let go,” cried Grandma.

Ngoc found an English word. “Alien,” she screamed.

“What?!”

Ngoc pointed up above the burning apartment. Grandma looked. A glittering sphere, like a mirror-ball Christmas ornament spattered with glowing paint, was rising over the trees. Grandma stood and stared, struck dumb. Ngoc collapsed on the ground, sobbing, “They have her, they have her!”

“What is that?” said Floyd.

But Grandma couldn’t say anything. She watched the shining sphere silently rise up into the Earth-filled sky, shrinking out of sight.

***

“I saw them,” said Ngoc. She was cradling Johnny on the wicker couch in Grandma’s apartment. “They were very large, very tall, like big lizards. They had three eyes. I came out of the apartment with Johnny when I heard the fire alarm. I saw them shoot fire on the apartments to burn them. And I said, ‘Azzie, Azzie,’ and I saw her, they had her, she had her eyes closed and maybe she was a – a – asleep. And --”

Grandma sat down next to her and put her arm around her. But Ngoc only sobbed and held Johnny more tightly. Johnny was very tired; he only sucked his thumb and looked around the room, eyes half-open.

Floyd, sitting on the floor with his shotgun nearby, had the television on, flipping from channel to channel, trying to find news. The anchors had their hands full trying to keep up with the police dispatch reports, which were coming fast and furious. Fires everywhere, phone lines down, reports of aliens and battles with the National Guard, and on top of it all, the Earth in the sky.

Grandma came over to him. “Floyd, are we safe here?”

He shook his head. “As safe here as anywhere, I reckon,” he said. “It all depends on whether the aliens decide to take up residence here. I don’t know whether they’re invading, or colonizing, or what, but the whole city’s going to be higgledy-piggledy for a while.”

“How about my sister’s place?”

“I don’t know. Seems like we might be better off here near the city, where the army and such can put up more of a fight.”

“All right, Floyd.”

“How’s Ngoc?”

“She ain’t doing so well. She’s told me a little bit, but she’s all closed up. She don’t like me much.”

“Oh, come on, Ursula. You’re her kids closest kin.”

“All I do is remind her of what she’s lost.”

“But at a time like this --”

“She ain’t going to reach out to me unless she has to. And right now she reckons she don’t have to. Is there any of that tea left?”

Grandma sat with Floyd for a while, taking comfort from being near him. At last she roused herself and went over to Ngoc again. She had stopped crying, and was simply staring blankly at the floor. Johnny was asleep in her arms, his pudgy face pressed up against her arm.

Grandma sat down next to her. “I’m sorry I came over today and brought those presents,” she said. “I was out of line. I’m just an old woman, and a busybody. But you and I, we got to stick together to make it through this thing. Maybe the sun will come up tomorrow and everything will be fine, but till then we got to work together and support each other. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

Ngoc just kept staring at the floor.

“Ngoc, you can’t just pretend we’re not here. We’re the only family you got. You got to look up and take an interest.”

Ngoc did not turn.

“All right,” said Grandma at last. She sighed and went back to Floyd.

“That woman is as stubborn as a blind mule,” she said.

“Near as stubborn as you,” said Floyd. Grandma had to laugh.

***

The night wore on. Grandma fell asleep with her head on Floyd’s shoulder; Ngoc was asleep on the couch with Johnny. Floyd kept switching from channel to channel. The aliens were everywhere. They’d landed on every continent, in every country. They had approached national governments, state governments, town councils, tribal leaders, whatever the local authorities were, and demanded land to live on. They were planning to stay. They were colonizing.

Of course people were resisting. Fights were usually bloody and ended badly. Human guns killed aliens all right, but the enemy had worse things: pistols that shot out bolts of blackness that could slice anything in two; bombs that could quickly and quietly annihilate whole towns. The American military had mobilized, but it was designed to fight a war on the surface of the earth; it could not contain an enemy that was dropping from the sky.

The United Nations were trying to set up some kind of negotiations with the aliens, but it would take a while. In the meantime the invasion continued.

Floyd didn’t hear anything about anyone being captured by the aliens. Just Azzie. Why Azzie?

Not long before dawn he heard noises from the woods: snapping, hissing. Gently he extracted himself from under Grandma and went over to the porch. The firelight from the other apartment complex had gone out, but there were lights in the woods – some flashlights, some brief explosions.

Floyd stepped back over to his shotgun, leaned over to lift it. In the time it took him to grasp it and stand up, the door smashed open and, in a whirlwind of motion, two huge reptilian beasts were inside. Floyd raised the gun, but a huge claw knocked it from his hands. He was dimly aware of Grandma screaming as he desperately kicked at the creature, but a second claw raked his face and he remembered nothing more.

***

Grandma woke up hard, her head thumping with pain. She tried to get up off the floor, and found her hands and feet tied. The apartment was dark except for the kitchen lights. She couldn’t see into the kitchen, but she could hear the clink and clang of pots, and water boiling.

What in heavens name were the aliens doing in her kitchen?

Floyd lay on the floor a few feet away, his face covered with blood. It looked as though he was breathing, though. Ngoc and Johnny she couldn’t see.

She struggled a little, and found that she was bony enough to work her hands out of the ropes. She sat up and untied her feet. Now what?

Floyd’s gun lay near him. The aliens had simply left it where it fell. She crept over to it and lifted it. Pretty heavy, but not too heavy. Loaded and ready. Safety off. She hadn’t used one of these in years, but...

She eased herself to where she had a straight shot into the kitchen.

There were two huge reptilian aliens. They had three eyes each, so they could see behind them, but their heads were tilted forward, so that two eyes were focused on the stove and one was focused on the ceiling. They had her biggest stainless steel pot on the stove, steam coming out of it.

They were using her kitchen without permission. Whatever other crimes they had committed, that one alone was worth the death penalty.

She raised the rifle. The first one would be easy. The second shot would be a lot harder.

She pulled the trigger, and the gun bucked hard. The left-hand alien was shot in the back of the head. It slammed forward onto the stove top, and slid off to the ground. The other alien spun around, hissing, lifting a gun of its own. Grandma fired again, and hit this one between its two front eyes. It fell back, dropped its gun, and crumpled.

Grandma sighed and put down the rifle. A thin bolt of dawn was coming in through the curtains, filling the room with a soft golden shimmer, drowning out the electric kitchen lights. Grandma went over to the window and looked out. Black smoke was rising from across the forest, and sirens wailed far off. But the sun had risen on schedule.

“All right,” she said. “Enough lounging about.”

***

“Floyd, put that thing down. You have no idea what it’ll do.”

Sheepishly, Floyd put down the alien pistol. “We got to bring it along, Ursula,” he said. “The folks in Washington will want a look at it.”

“That don’t mean you got to shoot your fingers off in the meantime,” snapped Grandma. “Give it here.” She buried it deep in a suitcase.

In fifteen minutes, Grandma had packed three suitcases and piled up enough food to feed them all for a week. Now she busied herself with toiletries in the bathroom, while Ngoc and Floyd loaded the car.

Johnny woke up. He had had bad dreams about big lizards, and he was glad to be awake. He hugged his new burgundy bear to him tightly, and soon felt all better. He got up and wandered into the kitchen to find out about breakfast. Momma and Grandma weren’t there, but he heard something from the stove. There was a pot there, making bubbling and hissing noises. Johnny dragged a chair across the kitchen floor to the stove and, gripping burgundy bear firmly, climbed up. From there he could peek into the noisy pot.

Twelve eyes looked up at him.

There were four little things that looked like fish with legs. Each of them had three eyes. They had stubby snouts, and they hissed and burbled. Their eyes were large and soft. Johnny thought they were smiling at him.

“Baby fish need a Daddy,” said Johnny. “Johnny is a good Daddy.”

He carefully lifted the pot from the stove and put it on an oven mitt. Then he went into the living room.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” said Grandma. She was putting some toiletries into a bag.

“Good morning, Grandma,” said Johnny.

“We’re going to see the President in Washington,” said Grandma. “We’ll get some breakfast on the way.”

“Okay,” said Johnny. “Johnny have baby fish. Johnny put baby fish in bag to show President.”

“Sure, sweetheart,” said Grandma absently.

Johnny took a denim bag and brought it back into the kitchen. The four baby fish were still hissing in their pot. He carefully took them out one by one and put them in his bag. They were warm and a little wiggly, and they felt like snake skin. They looked up at him with their huge eyes gratefully.

“Baby fish need food,” he said. “Johnny is a good Daddy.”

He got down off the stool and took a box of cereal from the cupboard. He poured cereal into the bag. The four little fish began eating ravenously. They seemed a little bigger than before. Very quickly the cereal was all gone. Immediately, they all fell asleep.

“We’re almost ready to go, Johnny,” said Grandma from the other room. “Come and get a new diaper.”

“Nite nite baby fish,” said Johnny. He tied up the cloth bag with the fish inside it and carried it in to his Grandma.

“Bring baby fish for President,” said Johnny, handing the bag to Grandma.

“Sure, sweetheart,” said Grandma. “We’ll show them to the President as soon as we get there.” She put the bag beside the other things to bring with Johnny in the back seat.