Enhanced Read online

  “Okay. Let’s start at the beginning … the super-beginning.” He coughs. “The ancient Sumerians…”

  And my brain clouds over with memories of my world history fail earlier today. It seems like decades ago. How can so much even happen in one day after a month of nothing, of waiting?

  “The ancient Sumerians … Are you listening?” he asks impatiently, and when I say I am, he continues, “They wrote on tablets three thousand years before the Bible. On those tablets the Sumerians detail exploits on other worlds, flying machines, huge battles on the Earth over the Earth.”

  “So what you’re saying is that aliens have always been here?”

  “Exactly. I’m saying there have always been aliens and for a while their presence was more obvious, much more obvious than now. The Nehilim, the Greek gods, the Starwalkers—so many names in so many cultures.”

  As we stride past the grocery store and the mini-mall attached to it, I try to imagine the Greek and Norse gods being actual living beings and not made-up fables. I wonder if Zeus was as randy as he was in the myths. I wonder if Odin really only had one eye. But if they were real … “And then what? Why did they stop coming?”

  “To understand that, we have to understand what humans are.”

  His pause is so long that I have to ask, “Which is?”

  He swallows hard. I watch his Adam’s apple move in his neck. “Prototypes. We were seeded here. These protohumans were initially four feet tall and super-hairy. They were planted and then the aliens left. A lot of abductees have been told this same story.”

  “But why just plant us and leave?”

  “Who knows? An experiment, maybe? Just to see how we evolve?” He puts on his sunglasses even though we are not facing the sun as we walk. “The Book of Enoch says, ‘Go tell the Watchers of heaven, who have deserted the lofty sky, and their holy everlasting station, who have been polluted with women. And have done as the sons of men do, by taking to themselves wives, and who have been greatly corrupted on the earth…’”

  “So these four-feet tall, hairy Earth women are so sexy that the aliens had to go?” I raise an eyebrow.

  “Sort of.”

  “What is this Book of Enoch?”

  “It’s ancient, a Jewish religious piece. There are sections that date from 300 B.C. But it’s not part of the biblical canon. Most people don’t consider it inspired by God or anything like that. Well, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church does, as does the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, but that’s it.”

  I stop really paying attention.

  “It’s believed Enoch wrote it before the big flood—the Noah’s ark flood.”

  I have no idea who Enoch is, but I’m not liking this whole concept. “Everyone is always blaming women and sex. I hate that.”

  “It’s hate-worthy,” China agrees. “Basically, the book says that evil is here because fallen angels are here. The fallen angels are here to procreate with human women.”

  “So all evil is human females’ fault?” I scoff. “Nice. I bet men wrote that.”

  “The book reads, ‘And they became pregnant, and they bore great giants, whose height was three hundred ells. Who consumed all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind,’ but not all of mankind, obviously, because some still existed. And the fallen angels began ‘to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another’s flesh, and drink the blood,’” he says as I shudder.

  I don’t want any of that to be true. “But what about the aliens you talk to? Aliens like Pierce? What do they say? Are they the implanting aliens who have come back?”

  “No. None are. Pierce’s people blended into the Earth after their own planet was attacked by another race. They became the Fae—the pixies and elves and fairies of folklore. The Wendigos and that troll-like alien that attacked you in the bathroom this morning are pretty much enslaved by the Samyaza here. Those are the ones you have to worry about.”

  “The ones that want to get rid of all the humans.” I stop walking for a second. The sounds of the diner and the sirens are far behind us. The destruction was small but immense. If they can do that, what else can they do?

  China stops with me. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do they want to get rid of us?” I wipe at my lips with the back of my hand. They are so dry that they feel crusty.

  “We are just too many. A swarm of bugs to them, semi-clever bugs. We’d never give up our Earth to them. So they need to get rid of us so they can have the planet.” He says it all so matter-of-factly.

  Bugs.

  Inconsequential.

  Experimented on.

  Abducted.

  Bugs.

  What would that make me? A super-bug?

  I blink away the memory of the explosion, the waitress, unmoving on the ground. “Why don’t they just vaporize us or something? Like an ant bomb. Just be done with us?”

  “They’d miss some of us. Some would hide in bunkers or rural Maine or Louisiana or Tibet or wherever. They need a precise technology to eradicate all of us without having to hunt every single one of us down and without harming the Earth’s actual atmosphere, which is a bit of a paradise to them.”

  “And this precise technology?”

  “Involves isolating DNA, obviously. It has to be DNA that only occurs in humans and not other alien species or animals—that’s harder than you imagine—and, using that, creating a biological agent to spread the poison by having it only attracted to that DNA … and then creating the machine itself to spread it. Or at least, that’s what we think. We could be wrong.” He steps over a pile of dirty old snow that has accumulated in the breakdown lane and hasn’t yet been melted by sun, like most of the other snow. “I’m sorry. This is a lot of information to dump on you.”

  “I’d rather just know, just get it out in the open.” I pause to kick the snowbank with my yellow Keds, suddenly glad that I didn’t dress up for school today. “Why do they have to assemble the machine anyway? Like, why aren’t the parts all put together already?”

  China keeps walking forward. His leather jacket stretches across his shoulder blades. Smoke has smudged a spot ashen. A tiny rip mars the fabric at the bottom of his jacket. My clothes haven’t fared better from that explosion. I trot after him because he hasn’t broken his pace at all. The man is a robot, I swear. “China?”

  “It’s a good question. I think the machine takes time to assemble and they worried about people like us being able to eradicate centuries’ worth of work if we located the machine prior to its implementation. So it has been assembled in secret in steps in a location we are still trying to determine. But now … well, the latest intelligence is saying that it’s all a ruse. That the machine is already assembled. That it isn’t a machine at all. It’s just waiting to be activated.”

  “You don’t know where?”

  “No.” He sighs. “This is all conjecture. We don’t know anything for certain. I mean, we call it a machine, but all we really know about it is that it involves crystals and chips.”

  Crystals. Like the one in my pocket.

  “And how close are they to being done building it?”

  “Our sources say really close. But again, none of the information is solid.”

  “But your sources don’t say where. Or what it looks like?”

  “No.”

  “Lovely.”

  A short burst of laughter erupts out of his mouth, and it seems involuntary. “Exactly. Lovely.” He stops. Touches his coat pocket. “Damn it, I lost my phone.”

  * * *

  As we walk, I search for The Book of Enoch on my phone’s Web surfer application. Some of the fallen angels taught humans, I guess. Because the text I find reads:

  And Azâzêl taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, a
nd bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all coloring tinctures. And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways. Semjâzâ taught enchantments, and root-cuttings, Armârôs the resolving of enchantments, Barâqîjâl, taught astrology, Kôkabêl the constellations, Ezêqêêl the knowledge of the clouds, Araqiêl the signs of the earth, Shamsiêl the signs of the sun, and Sariêl the course of the moon.’

  We’re almost at the two-mile mark when I ask China, “Do you think The Book of Enoch is real?”

  He shrugs. “What’s real, honestly?”

  “Don’t get all philosophical-stoner on me,” I tell him, slightly miffed that he won’t give me a straight answer.

  A huge white dog runs by. Its leash drags behind after it. It’s the same dog I saw at school earlier. There have been a lot of dogs barking in the distance today. It couldn’t have all been this one, could it? Lunging, I grab the end of the red leash. Sailboats decorate it. The dog stops abruptly, turns, and stares up at me with big, sweet brown eyes.

  “I don’t see its owner,” I say.

  China spins around, searching. “Me either.”

  He squats down and reaches between all the messy fur to read a tag. “It has a number.”

  “Call it,” I insist, scruffing up the dog’s fur behind her ears. I think it’s a her.

  China asks for my phone. I explain that his phone actually wasn’t in his coat pocket but is hanging out of his pants pocket. The dog licks his face and he laughs. China actually laughs. I almost fall over from shock and try to imagine him in a different life, a normal life. What would he even be? In the Marines? A cop? A football quarterback? A top chef? I can’t even imagine. But he would definitely be someone with a dog.

  “It’s a recording,” he whispers as his free hand pets the dog’s furry head. His face hardens.

  “They’re dead.”

  “What?”

  “The dog owner is dead.” He hangs up and calls again so that I can hear the message, which is a woman’s voice, breaking, saying that her grandma and grandpa have died and to please send donations to the American Society for the Protection of Animals. The message box is full so we can’t leave a message.

  I stare into the dog’s eyes. How long has the poor thing been wandering around? “Then who do we bring her to?”

  “The pound.”

  “No way,” I say. “We are not abandoning her to the pound. What if it’s a kill shelter? No way.”

  I hug the dog to my chest. She lets me. She rests the bottom of her big muzzle on my shoulder. Her breath is, to put it gently, a bit like eggy tuna, but I don’t care.

  China’s face softens.

  “We can’t take her to a pound,” I say.

  “She’s a dog, Mana. She’s a responsibility. As much as I love dogs—”

  “I need her,” I interrupt. “I don’t have anyone I can trust.”

  There. I said it.

  “Trust is … It’s a liability in this job, but it makes you whole, Mana.” He pets the dog’s back in long sweeping gestures. Tiny bits of fur flutter up in the air. She’s shedding.

  “You don’t trust anyone,” I sputter. The dog licks my cheek.

  His hand stops stroking the dog’s back. “I trusted your mother.”

  I don’t know what to say to that, honestly, so I just keep stroking the dog’s back.

  “You trust Seppie,” he says after a moment.

  “Usually.” I cringe. “But I don’t want to make her life any harder with all this stuff, you know? Lyle—Lyle’s already involved.”

  “She’s involved just by knowing,” China says. He picks a tiny piece of dried-up leaf out of the dog’s fur.

  “I don’t want her to be the kind of involved where she misses school and loses her chance to get into a good college and have the kind of happy life she wants.”

  “There’s a chance that there will soon be no college,” he says. “No kids taking their SATs or AP tests.”

  “I am not sure that’s so bad,” I half kid. “I mean, annihilation of humankind is bad, but no more standardized tests judging your aptitude and determining your future as part of a commercialized venture to make those testing companies money? That sounds pretty good to me.”

  His gaze meets mine. The dog licks my chin.

  “I still don’t understand why you think you aren’t smart,” he says.

  “I don’t test well.” I give a shrug like it doesn’t matter, but it does. It’s hard having teachers think you’re dumb. It’s hard not doing as well at school as your two best friends—one best friend now, I guess, since Lyle freaked out in the bathroom.

  “You talk about not trusting people? I talk about not trusting tests.” He gives a little snicker. “Although to be fair, tests are made by people…”

  “So if you don’t trust tests, you don’t trust people, since they are the ones who made the tests? Is that what you’re saying?”

  He grabs the dog’s leash. “Exactly. Now, what should we name this beast?”

  “Do we get to keep her?”

  Nodding, he passes the leash to me as I stand up. I launch myself into a hug, wrapping my arms around him. It’s a bit like hugging a tree. The dog wags her tail and yips.

  “You should name her,” China says.

  “She probably already had a name.”

  “We’ll never know it.”

  I think about it as we start walking again and I finally say, “Enoch.”

  “That’s a guy’s name.”

  I try to express my displeasure at his limited scope with a grunt.

  He raises his hands up in the air like he’s surrendering. “I get it. I get it.” After a moment he adds, “But do you know who Enoch was? Or is it just because we were talking about the book?”

  “The book,” I admit. “Plus, she seems like an Enoch.”

  Enoch stops to pee on a utility pole. I glance away because it seems rude to watch. China taunts me about my “tender sensibilities,” but I don’t rise to his bait. I’m too tired out to debate or taunt back. Teasing takes energy.

  Once we start walking again, China says, “Enoch was one of the ten pre-deluge patriarchs. The deluge being the flood—the biblical Noah’s ark flood. You do know what that was about, right?”

  “Of course,” I say, but he still explains that Noah’s flood was actually an attempt to destroy mankind. Noah survived because he was warned. The flood story isn’t just Christian, but also can be found in Greek mythology, in India’s Puranas, in the Mayan history of the K’iche’ people, as well as in that of the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwas of Wisconsin. He rattles all this off with more confidence than my world history teacher.

  “The deluge,” he announces, “was allegedly the aliens first attempt to get rid of us humans.”

  I stop walking.

  “In the Babylonian account of the flood, the Hindu narrative, and the book of Genesis, a man is told that the flood is coming and warned to build a vessel to keep him and his family safe. “He lets out a sigh. “It’s commonly believed that Pierce’s race saved them, warned them. Some say it was God. That works, too. I don’t know.”

  “So, why don’t they just do that again? Why build a machine?”

  “It obviously didn’t work well last time.” He waves an arm to show the proliferation of human civilization all around us. “Plus, it’s a geological nightmare. That wasn’t my point, though. I wanted to tell you what Enoch means.”

  “Okay.”

  “It means ‘he who does not see death,’ and it says in Genesis that ‘he was not; for God took him.’”

  “You mean, Enoch just sort of left the Earth.”

  “Basically. He was taken to heaven and became the head archangel, guardian of all of heaven’s treasures. And he is the angel that communicates God’s words to everyone else.”

  “Wow. That’s kind of a promotion.”
r />   He laughs. “You can say that again.”

  “Wow. That’s kind of a promotion.”

  “I didn’t mean it literally!” He whines to Enoch the Dog that I am silly and much too literal, but I know he secretly thinks I’m funny. I spend the rest of our walk thinking about floods, and gas, the waitress, the poor dead alien in the bathroom, Lyle, my mom, Wharff and how his horrible experience makes me feel not so alone—all these random things that I shouldn’t have to think about. Not once do I think about my history test.

  CHAPTER 8

  We remember that we’ve actually left China’s car at the hospital, so we end up walking two and a half miles to the hospital instead of three toward home, which shouldn’t seem as much of an awesome event as it feels. It’s been that kind of day, the kind of day where you see death and aliens and green amnesia gas and flying saucers controlled by your own government. It is the kind of day when your own best friend breaks up with you because he can’t take how weird your life has gotten even though his own life is totally weird. But at least it is also the kind of day where you get a dog.

  As we reach China’s Jeep, he asks, “Lyle hasn’t tried to call you? Or text?”

  “Nope.”

  “That doesn’t sound like him.”

  “Dumping me because of all this doesn’t sound like him either.”

  “You drive.” China clicks his seatbelt into lock position and I back out of the parking space. “You’re sure it’s him?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” I lie, but now that he’s asked I realize that I’m not actually sure at all.

  And then Enoch starts growling from the backseat. The car smells intensely of dog.

  My ears perk up. “What is it, baby?”

  China scowls.

  And there is Seppie fast-walking at us. Seppie! Joy leaps into my face and I can’t stop smiling. Lyle’s right next to her. I thought she was going to camp and Lyle was … My brain tries to understand what’s happening, but I can’t. They have crowbars in their hands like they are construction workers.

  “What are they doing?” I ask, trying to figure it all out. Seppie is not a crowbar type of person.