The Slow Path Home
Chapter Three
Emily sat in the family room with Jonathan, eating her dinner while they both watched a movie.
"Is he going to be okay now, Mom?" Jonathan asked.
"Maybe. I don't really know. Now that he's not bleeding like a stuck pig, he's got a better chance."
Emily was eating quickly. She didn't want to leave the guy up there by himself for too long, but she also wanted some time to absorb this insane Christmas evening and try to make some sense of it all. The more she thought about it, the less likely that seemed.
Jonathan broke into her thoughts. "Do you think he really is an alien with two hearts?"
Emily shrugged tiredly. "I'm beginning to think he is. I felt a heartbeat on the right side of his chest. That's certainly not normal."
"Wow!" Jonathan exclaimed. "What planet do you think he's from? Mars, maybe?"
"How the heck should I know?" she snapped.
There was silence for a few minutes. Emily finally spoke. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have growled at you like that. It's just that this whole thing is pretty crazy, you know?"
"Yeah, I understand."
The storm was still raging outside and the lights kept flickering, but they were staying on, so far.
"Whether he's an alien or not, I don't think we could get him to the hospital in this weather. Even with the truck, I don't think I could make it, and the ambulance sure couldn't."
Pippin wandered into the family room, stood in front of the television and whined. "Oh, Lord. You need to go out, don't you?" Emily sighed.
"I'll take him out," Jonathan volunteered.
"I don't know about that, sweetie. It's such a mess out there."
"I don't mind. Really."
"OK. But don't go far with him. I don't care where he does his business in this storm. The driveway is fine."
"Okay."
Emily took her dirty dishes into the kitchen and put them in the sink. As she rinsed her plate, she glanced over at the time. Ten o'clock. It felt later than that. She'd better get back upstairs and check on their houseguest.
Nothing had changed in the time Emily had left him. He lay still as death underneath the sheet. Only the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed let her know he was still alive.
"Hey, buddy," Emily said as she came to stand by the bed. "I was kind of hoping you'd be feeling better and awake." There was no reaction to her voice. "I guess rest is the best thing for you right now, anyway." She cleared her throat self-consciously. "It's getting late, so what I'm going to do is sleep in here with you tonight, over on the couch. Hope you don't mind, but I think it would be a good thing if I stayed close by in case you need anything."
She pushed back some of his bangs that had fallen over his eyes a bit and was struck by how cool his skin felt. He'd been out of the cold attic now for quite some time so he should have been warmed up by now. Maybe....maybe this was his normal body temperature? If he had two hearts, she mused, why not a lower body temp? Curiosity got the better of her and she went down the hall to the other bathroom. She came back with the electronic ear thermometer she used on the kids.
"I'm just going to put this in your ear a little bit. It's a thermometer. I want to take your temperature." Emily gave his ear a bit of a tug and set it in the canal gently. As soon as she pushed the button, the thermometer began to beep furiously. ERROR LOW TEMP flashed on the display. "No shit," she mumbled in annoyance at the machine. She ran her fingers back through her bangs as she thought. "Got it," she took off down the hall and down the stairs. There were some banging and clattering noises from below and in just a couple of minutes she reappeared in the bedroom.
"Now, I know this might look a little odd," she said, and held out what she brought back up with her, a metal stick about eight inches long with a gauge at one end and a rather wicked looking point at the other. "It's a meat thermometer I use for cooking, but it registers all the way down to freezing. Anyway, I'm just going to stick it under your arm. Well, not actually STICK you with it, like with the point. Just put it under your arm for a bit and see what it reads. Okay?"
Emily pulled the sheet back a bit and gently moved his arm over enough to put the thermometer under his arm. After a couple of minutes, she took it out. She looked at it and then put it back in again. When she looked at it again, the reading hadn't changed.
"Well, my buddy," she said slowly. "Either you're clinically dead and don't realize it, or this is your normal temperature." The thermometer read sixty degrees Fahrenheit. Emily shook her head. Just one more bizarre thing to add to the whole bizarre day.
It was a little past eleven o'clock when Emily and Jonathan finally headed to bed. She gave Jonathan a hug at the doorway of his room. "I'm so proud of you today. You were such a help to me, even with all that blood. You did everything I asked you to do. Merry Christmas, my good boy."
"You're my good Mom," he said as he returned the hug. "Merry Christmas."
Emily went into her own room and retrieved her pillows and a blanket. She hadn't slept in the master bedroom for the last two years, not since Tom had died. She had taken over the guest bedroom and turned it into her own. It was small; there was barely enough room in it for a double bed and a small dresser, but it was enough for her. She still kept a lot of her clothes and things in the master bedroom and she used the master bath, but she couldn't stand sleeping alone in the bed that she'd shared with Tom for so many years.
Once back in the master bedroom, she threw her pillows and blanket on the couch and went to check on the man. It looked as if he had shifted a little: his head was tilted at a different angle than it was earlier. She supposed that was a good thing. He still looked awful, though. Emily felt a wave of sympathy toward him. He didn't look like a bad guy. He could be, for all she knew, but somehow she got the feeling that he wasn't. "Bedtime, buddy," she told him. "You get a good night's rest and I bet you'll be feeling great in the morning. If you need me, I'll just be over there on the couch. Okay?" She smoothed his hair back again. "Good night."
Emily turned off the overhead light but turned on the floor lamp by the couch. Positioning the pillows behind her back, she opened up one of the books she brought up with her. She wasn't expecting to get much sleep tonight, not with the storm still raging around the house and an alien from outer space unconscious on the other side of the room.
The house rattled and shook all night long, but by some miracle, the electricity never went out. Emily read and dozed on and off. About every hour or so, she got up to check on the man. He seemed to be doing okay. Not really any different than he was earlier. Around four o'clock in the morning, Emily dozed off once again and stayed asleep until Jonathan came in and woke her up.
"Mom?"
Emily sat up like a bolt. "What? What?"
"Nothing. I just thought you might want to know, it's seven-thirty."
"Wow. That late? I must have really passed out." Emily rubbed her eyes and stood up. "How's our guest doing, I wonder?" She went over to the bed to check on him.
He had definitely moved since the last time she looked at him. One hand was thrown up on the pillow by his head, and his face was turned toward it. Emily was amazed at how much better his face appeared. The bruising and swelling around his eye were significantly reduced. The other bruises and abrasions around his face were nearly healed up. If this was how fast he healed from relatively mild injuries, his chest and leg should improve rapidly as well.
"You're looking good here, buddy," she told him. "Think you can wake up for us?" She shook gently by the shoulder. "Hello, let's wake up now. Time for some breakfast." He was as unresponsive as before.
Emily sighed. "Well, at least he's looking better. Let's you and me head on downstairs. I'm in desperate need of hot tea and food."
After eating, showering and getting dressed, Emily came back to the bedroom with Jonathan. Emily was carrying some more pillows and Jonathan had a large glass of ice water. "Let's prop him up some and see if we can get him to drink a little," Emily had suggested to her son while she ate. "Maybe getting some fluids into him will perk him up." They managed to get him sitting up enough that she didn't fear that he might choke on the water, but they still could not rouse him to any level of wakefulness. Emily finally gave up in exasperation.
"Maybe his body is working so hard on getting better that he can't wake up?" Jonathan offered.
"That's better than any reason I've thought of so far," his mom told him. "But if that's the case, I wish he'd be quick about it."
The storm had calmed down quite a bit overnight. While the wind was still strong, it had died down considerably and no longer seemed to threaten to overturn trees on the house. Snow was still falling heavily. With nowhere to go and nothing better to do, Emily and Jonathan sat with the man. Emily read books on the couch while Jonathan stretched out on the floor and mostly watched movies on his iPod Touch, when his mom didn't nag him into reading one of his new books for awhile. Even though he knew it was forbidden, Pippin came wandering up to sit with them as well. Emily didn't have the heart to scold him and chase him back downstairs; Pippin was a very much a "people" dog and he hated being separated from his people for too long. The dog lay quietly on the floor of the bedroom, but now and then he would get up and walk to the bed to look questioningly at the man.
"Are you curious, Pippin? Do you want to know who that is? Well, join the club," Emily told him.
Lunch came and went. Jonathan took Pippin downstairs and bundled himself up to take Pippin for a walk. Emily decided that it was probably a good time to change the dressings on the man's chest and do something to the wounds on his leg as well.
The cuts on his chest were healing as dramatically as the ones on is face. By tomorrow, Emily thought that he could do without the bandages altogether. She put fresh ointment and gauze over them and taped them back down. She could still feel some of his ribs move as she pressed the medical tape down again. She gently put a hand on either side of his chest, and this time, felt the twin thumping of heartbeats. It was bizarre but fascinating.
Emily pulled the blanket and sheet back down to the foot of the bed and carefully unwound the Ace from around his leg. There was no sign of fresh bleeding, thank God, but she was a little disheartened to notice that there was no sign of the rapid healing that was occurring with the rest of his wounds. That long gash down the length of his leg needed stitching, at the very least. Probably some kind of other surgery as well. And that one up by the knee.......she shuddered to think about what that probably needed.
Cleaning up the long gash was straightforward enough, and it didn't take long for Emily to carefully wash it and apply the ointment and bandages. Then using warm water and a wash cloth, she began to carefully peel back the layers of gauze on the wound below the knee.
To her relief, the bleeding didn't start up again but what she saw now that the old blood and gauze were out of the way made her heart sink. This was so much worse than the gash. A literal hunk had been taken out of his leg, including a piece of the bone. The raw, open red of muscle and skin along with the glistening white of the bone made her stomach clench and churn.
"Oh, my," was all she could say. "Oh, my."
This man needed a doctor. He needed to be in a hospital. This was way beyond anything that she could help with ointment and bandages. But there was no way she could take him to a hospital. Not him with two hearts and the body temperature of a lizard.
Emily hitched herself up to sit at the end of the bed and stared at the man's leg. She had no idea what to do. Cover it with ointment and a bandage? Try to sew it up herself? What was the right course of action? The sound of the door slamming below as Jonathan returned with Pippin broke her out of her thoughts and she made her decision as she slid down from the bed.
"Here's the deal, buddy," Emily told him. "There's a great big chunk missing out of your leg. You need more than what I can do for you. You need to go to a hospital and be taken care of by somebody who knows what they're doing. But even if this storm had stopped and I was able to get you out of here, there's nobody around here anyway who would have the faintest clue of what to do with you. Plus, on top of that, they might send you off to someplace where they'd....I don't know....dissect you or something. I don't think either of us would like that to happen." She stepped closer and picked up his hand. "So you're stuck with me. And Jonathan. We'll do the best we can. I'm going to keep on doing what I've been doing because at least so far it hasn't seemed to hurt you and might actually be helping you. Hope that meets with your approval." He gave no sign that he heard anything she said to him.
Emily sighed and gave his hand a squeeze and let it drop back down on the bed. "Time to get busy, buddy. Like I said before, this is probably gonna hurt."
The evening came and the storm finally finished blowing itself out. Emily had never seen so much snow in all her life. She and Jonathan had gone out together right before dark with a yard stick and tried to get a measure of how much snow had fallen but it was nearly impossible. In some places, the wind had scoured nearly all the snow away, while on one side of the house, it had drifted higher than Emily's head. They gave up and went back into the house, and Emily went upstairs to check on their guest. She had left him pretty much alone since working on his leg earlier in the afternoon. He seemed to be doing fine, so she had busied herself doing odds and ends around the house. Shortly after the two of them finished dinner, Emily sent Jonathan upstairs to check on the man while she settled herself in front of the computer to work on some bill paying. She had barely started when Jonathan came back down to her.
"Mom, I think maybe you should come up and take a look at him," he told her in a worried voice.
"Why? What's wrong?" Emily was slightly annoyed. She hated doing bills but she also hated being interrupted once she finally made herself sit down and get busy on doing them.
"I don't know. He looks different. Like something's not right."
Emily sighed. Christmas bills would have to wait until later.
Jonathan was right. He did look different. The man's cheeks were flushed bright red and his brow was furrowed. Emily rested her hand on his forehead. With that bizarre body temperature, she couldn't tell if he was running a fever or not. She fetched the meat thermometer from where she had left it on the dresser the night before.
"What's that?" Jonathan asked.
"Meat thermometer. I used it last night to see what his temp was because he kept feeling so cold to me." Emily put the thermometer under his arm again. "The regular thermometer I use with you guys doesn't register temperatures that low."
"Low? What was his temperature?"
"Sixty degrees."
Jonathan looked at her in astonishment. "Sixty? That can't be right! In Health class we learned that the average body temperature is ninety-eight point six degrees!"
"Average for us, yeah. Apparently not average for him."
"That's just plain weird." Jonathan shook his head. "How can you live being that cold?"
"He could say the same thing about us," Emily pointed out. "'How can they live being that warm?'" She pulled the thermometer out and looked at it carefully. "Sixty-two degrees."
"So he's running a fever then?"
"Yeah," Emily sat the thermometer back on the dresser. "Damn."
Jonathan looked up at her. "That's not so bad, is it? Sixty-two degrees would like a hundred degree fever for us. Just give him some aspirin or something like we take."
"I wish it was that simple," Emily said to him. "But how do we know what's safe to give him? Stuff that's safe for us might be bad for him. It could kill him. I'm taking a chance just putting that ointment on him."
"I didn't think of that," Jonathan said. He sat down on the couch and rested his chin on his hands. "I wish he would wake up and tell us what we should do."
"You and me both." Emily went to join him on the couch. "But sometimes doing nothing can be the best thing with a fever. It means your body is fighting off some kind of infection and you don't want to interfere with that." She scratched her head thoughtfully. "Maybe I'll try putting some hot compresses on it. See if that helps him any."
The three of them, Emily, Jonathan and Pippin, spent the rest of the evening sitting upstairs with the man. They tried several times to get him to drink some water and managed to get a few swallows down his throat. Eventually, Emily chased Jonathan to bed and shooed Pippin down the stairs for the night.
Emily rechecked his temperature and was relieved to see that it had stayed steady at sixty-two degrees. He still looked flushed and in discomfort. A peek under the bandages on his leg showed nothing new or worrisome. She leaned on the foot of the bed and stared at him for awhile. He didn't seem to be getting any worse, but he wasn't getting any better either, and that worried her.
"What am I going to do with you, buddy?" she asked the silent figure on the bed. Emily had never been good at just sitting and waiting in situations like this. She wanted to do something, anything that might make him feel better. Finally, she stood up and started down the hallway to the attic. Maybe he had something in that box of his that could help, if she could get in there.
Neither Emily nor Jonathan had been back up here since they had brought the man downstairs on Christmas; Emily half-expected to see another big blue box or two sitting in the attic, but there was still only the one. Nothing had changed; it still sat there in the middle of the floor, glowing and softly humming. Emily switched on the main light and walked around to the side where the man had been lying. She puzzled over the sign on the door.
FREE
FOR USE OF
PUBLIC
ADVICE & ASSISTANCE
OBTAINABLE IMMEDIATELY
OFFICERS & CARS
RESPOND TO ALL CALLS
PULL TO OPEN
"Advice and assistance," Emily said to herself. "That's just what I'm looking for, thank you." She reached out to try the door but stopped. What if there was someone else in there? Should she just barge on in or...? Tentatively, she knocked on the door and waited. When there was no response, she knocked again harder. "Hello?" she called out as she knocked once again. "Hello?"
Nothing. Emily shrugged and reached out to pull the door open. It wouldn't budge. She tried opening the door inward. Nothing budged. In aggravation, she pulled back and forth on the door, trying to get it to open. She gave the bottom panel of the door a couple of kicks. "Damn it."
It was long past midnight, and Emily had fallen asleep on the couch while reading. She awoke suddenly because of something warm and wet in her face: a dog tongue. "Pippin!" she sputtered, shoving the dog away. "What are you doing up here?" Emily sat up, ready to scold the dog, but Pippin turned away from her and walked over to the side of the bed and sat there looking at her. She rubbed her eyes, trying to wake up and get her bearings enough to chase Pippin down the stairs again.
"Out!" she said sternly and pointed at the door. The dog refused to move, so Emily got up and went over to grab his collar. All thoughts of taking Pippin out disappeared when she caught sight of the man. One glance was enough to know that he was much sicker. His face was bright red and covered in a sheen of sweat, and he was breathing at a faster rate than he was before. She felt his forehead and could tell immediately that he was much warmer. Something was going down the tubes with him quickly. Emily grabbed the thermometer and took a reading. It was on the plus side of sixty-six. That would be pushing one hundred and five degrees in a human, assuming that the temperatures could be compared in the same way.
"Crap. This is not good," Emily said to herself, frantically trying to think of what to do. She pulled covers off of him and bent over to look at his leg. If this was coming from an infection, the leg was the most likely spot. She carefully pulled the bandages off. There it was: the wound below his knee. It was oozing some rather nasty-looking discharge, and the area around it was red and swollen and hot to the touch.
That settled it. No more just watching and waiting. Emily set about giving the wound a painfully thorough cleaning that included rubbing alcohol. "Sorry, buddy," she murmured to him as his leg jerked and his face knitted up in distress. "But it needs to be done." She carefully replaced the bandages and then went into the bathroom. Emily opened the medicine cabinet and considered the range of options available to her. Not much, really. Aspirin, acetaminophen or ibuprofen. That was it. She reached out and grabbed the aspirin. Tom had always been the one to use the aspirin for his aches and pains. It never did a thing for her, so she never used it. Might as well try this first, she thought to herself until she noticed the expiration date on the label. 12/12/08. Two years out of date. She tossed the bottle into the wastebasket. No use trying that. That left either the ibuprofen or the acetaminophen. Acetaminophen could be bad for the liver. Did he even have a liver, she wondered. Maybe he had two? Whatever. She decided on the acetaminophen.
Emily filled a cup with cold water from the tap and went back in to the man. "Buddy," she told him. "I'm gonna sit you up and give you some medicine to take to knock down that fever. Between that and the alcohol I put on your leg, I'm hoping you'll feel better." She climbed up onto the bed and with difficulty, pulled him up to prop him on a stack of pillows she placed behind him. "First some water, then the pills, and then some more water to wash the pills down. Okay?'
After about a half an hour, Emily finally managed to get the water and two acetaminophen down his throat. She removed a couple of the pillows from behind him so he could lie back down. It was three o'clock in the morning and Emily was exhausted. There was nothing else she could do now so she figured that she might as well grab some sleep. As she headed back over to the couch, she nearly tripped over Pippin. He had stayed up in the room the whole time.
"Good boy," Emily told him and petted him gently. "You wake me up again if you think he needs me, okay?" Pippin happily thumped his tail and went to curl up next to the bed. Emily pulled her blanket up around her and fell into a sound sleep.
The changing light in the room woke Emily up and she immediately went to check on the man. He looked no better than he had earlier in the night, and his temperature was still the same. She lifted the bandages on his leg. It didn't look any better either.
"Well," she said to him. "At least you don't seem to be getting any worse." She propped him up on the pillows once again and set about getting him to drink some more water and take a couple more acetaminophen. That accomplished, she leaned back against the headboard and watched him until she dozed off.
Jonathan was still asleep when Emily finally woke up again and went downstairs. Pippin followed her and she gave him his breakfast before fixing her own. She sat down at her lap top with a steaming mug of hot tea and a bowl of cereal and idly checked her email and cruised the headlines of the news sites while she thought.
This situation was rapidly getting out of control, she realized. Band-Aids and rubbing alcohol were not likely to cure whatever infection had taken hold in his leg. Barring a miracle, he was going to die.
"You could take him to the hospital," she argued with herself. "Alien or not, they're better prepared to take care of him than you are. But...." What could they do for him? They didn't know any more about taking care of someone like him than she did. And if they did make him better, what then? What would they do with him? What would they do to him?
To top it all off, she had promised him that she wouldn't take him to the hospital. Well, not actually promised, just told him that she wouldn't. So she wouldn't be breaking a promise if she did take him, right?
Those were her two choices then. Continue to care for him herself and watch him die, or break a near-promise and take him to somewhere where he would probably still die and maybe have worse things done to him.
Emily sighed. She felt tired and near sick. She wished desperately for someone she could talk with about this. "If Tom were here, I wonder what he'd want to do?" she wondered aloud.
The sudden ringing of the phone made her jump. It was Father Michael from their church down the street. "I'm calling everyone and telling them to stay home this morning. Don't even try to get out to Liturgy today. They don't have our street plowed yet and I doubt that any of the secondary roads or side streets are plowed either."
"Well, since we only live two doors down, I doubt that would be a problem for us," Emily commented dryly. "But I'm glad to have official permission from the Orthodox Church to miss Liturgy today."
Father Michael laughed. "How are you managing on your own down there in this, Emily?"
"No problem. It's just a little snow. No big deal," she assured him.
"You will call us if you need anything. Promise?"
"I promise, Father. Don't worry," Emily assured him. She paused for a beat. "Ummmm.....Father? Could....." She stopped.
"What?" Father asked.
"Nothing. Just wanted to wish you and your family a Merry Christmas."
"Thanks, Emily. Merry Christmas to you folks, too."
Emily had almost told him. Almost. "Father, could you come down here and give me some advice on what to do with a space alien who showed up in our attic with his blue box on Christmas?" Father would have tried to help. She had no doubt of that. But there was no way she could drag him into this mess. The theological implications alone were staggering, and she wasn't going to do that to him. No. The fewer people that knew about this situation, the better. This was her problem to deal with; hers and hers alone.
Jonathan came down to join her in the kitchen. "Who was that?" he asked sleepily.
"Father. No Liturgy today."
Jonathan smiled. He didn't mind going to church and he enjoyed serving as an altar boy, but like any teenager he didn't mind an unexpected chance to lounge around on a Sunday morning. "I'm heading back to bed," he told his mother gleefully.
"Oh, no," his mother told him. "I've already got your Poptarts in the toaster and I want you to get dressed and showered ASAP so you can watch our buddy for me awhile."
"How come?"
"'Because I need some fresh air. I'm going to take Pippin out for a good long walk."
While Jonathan ate his breakfast, Emily went upstairs to shower and get dressed herself. Once she was done, waited in the bedroom with the man until Jonathan came in.
"How's he doing?"
Emily hesitated before answering. "Not so good, I'm afraid. His temperature went way up during the night."
"How come?"
"He's got an infection in his leg."
"But the fever's fighting it, right?"
"Yeah, but....." her voice trailed off.
Jonathan sat down next to her. "Mom, I don't want him to die."
"Me neither, sweetheart. But I don't know what else I can do for him."
"Maybe you should take him to the hospital?"
"I've been thinking about it," Emily admitted. "Honestly, though, I don't know that they could do anything for him. And I'm kind of worried about what they might do to him there."
"The doctors at the hospital?" Jonathan asked.
"No, not them so much. But once they realize he's not human, they'd probably have to get the government involved and once they get involved.......that's what scares me."
"You mean like in ET?"
"Exactly," Emily told him. "Now, you baby-sit our own ET here while Pippin and I go out for a while. I'm going to take him up on the hill. Okay?"
Jonathan nodded. "We'll be fine, him and me."
"I'll take my phone with me," Emily got up to leave but stopped at the door and turned back. "Jonathan, don't tell anybody about him. Not one word. Not to Father. Not to Eli. Not anybody. Got it?"
"Got it. I promise."
Bundled up in her boots, snow pants and hunting coat, Emily headed out with Pippin. The alley that ran next to the house was unplowed, as were the main streets. Emily slogged through the drifted snow with Pippin on a leash by her side. Once they reached the base of the hill, she unsnapped the leash. "Go on!" she told the dog and Pippin went bounding happily through the white stuff.
Climbing up the hill through the snow was a challenge, but one that Emily welcomed after three days of inactivity and worry. She reached the top panting and out of breath. Pippin was already up there, tearing across the hilltop following the tracks that the rabbits, deer and other assorted wildlife had left behind. Emily walked over to a large granite monument with a statue at the top and flopped down in the snow to sit with her back against the base. From there, she could look out across the town below.
Right now, the town was covered in a sea of white, and there were few signs of life. It looked at if a snowplow had made at least one pass down Liberty Boulevard and the B-Line, but not much more than that. A couple of large, four-wheel drive pickups made their way slowly along the streets. Parking lots were unplowed and stores were still closed. The quiet and lack of activity was eerie. It reminded Emily of the quiet that had descended upon the town the year before when terrorists had supposedly hijacked all the media and information systems in some kind of plot to claim that the planet had been moved out of its orbit. People had sat in their homes, terrified, as the sky went dark and the reports of battles with metal monsters in big cities like London, New York and DC came in. Emily had been frightened all right, but instead of just sitting and waiting for the end of the world in her living room, she had packed up the kids, the dog, a month's supply of food, water and medicine and all the guns and ammo that they had into the truck and headed up north to Tom's cousin's hunting camp in Potter County. They had stayed there for a week, even after the government claimed that all was well again. Emily had wanted to make sure things were well and truly back to normal before going home. Once the fear had passed, it had turned into a nice little vacation with the kids.
The US government had claimed that it was all done by al-Qaida terrorists attempting to overthrow the world and put it all under Islamic rule. Actually, ALL the world's governments said the exact same thing, even in the Islamic ruled countries. That alone made Emily suspicious. She couldn't believe that any group of terrorists was strong enough to put the entire world under some hypnotic spell that made them think that space creatures had stolen the Earth. It seemed ninety-nine percent of the world's population was quite happy to believe the official government explanation, however, and fell back into their normal lives nearly overnight once the threat was over. Well, after all, it was basically the same explanation that the governments had given for that whole "ghost" thing a few years back and people had been happy to believe it then. Might as well believe it again.
In the distance, Emily could hear a low rumbling coming closer. She half hoped that it was the sound of a space ship coming to pick up her houseguest and take him back to wherever he belonged, but the sound was far too familiar. The blare of a locomotive horn just confirmed what she knew, although it was not a sound she was expecting to hear today. The tracks that ran parallel to the B-Line Highway were nowhere to be seen under the blanket of snow. She looked in surprise as what appeared to be a small moving blizzard coming down the tracks.
It was a couple of diesel engines pushing what appeared to be a snowplow car in front of them. The snow flew up and away from the tracks moving in two huge white waves. At that moment, Emily wished for nothing more than to be an engineer on that train and get to watch those graceful white fountains all day long.
"Wow." Emily stood up so she could watch the train for as long as she could. Once it
disappeared from sight, Emily called to Pippin. It was time to go back and deal with her own alien problem at home.