Human.4 by Mike A. Lancaster

Author:Mike A. Lancaster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science fiction
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781606842416
Publisher: EgmontUSA
Published: 2011-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

“We have to find Rodney,” Mrs. O’Donnell said, and it took me a few seconds to work out who she was talking about. Even though we had been talking about the four of us, it seemed crazy that I could have forgotten about the fate of the fourth person.

Mr. Peterson.

Last seen in a fetal ball on the stage at the talent show.

Where we had left him.

“What happened to him?” I asked. “I mean, after everyone started moving again?”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. O’Donnell said. “I was so relieved, I … I kind of forgot about him. I wandered down the High Street, sort of in a daze, but no one was talking. They were just filing past, completely silent. When I spoke to someone they responded, but it was like they would rather not be talking. As if there was something … new … going on in their heads. They no longer seemed to need to chatter away about nothing. It was eerie. Like … like a funeral, or something.”

I drained the orange squash and rolled the glass around on my trouser leg.

“I … I need to ask something,” I said. “And … well, there’s no sort of easy way to … Are we talking aliens here, do you think?”

Both Lilly and Mrs. O’Donnell looked at me seriously.

It was Lilly who spoke first.

“There’s no such thing as aliens,” she said definitively.

“Wow, I had no idea that scientists had actually figured that out,” I said. “Last I heard they were still keeping an open mind.”

“You know what I mean. No little green men and silver spaceships.”

“That’s not the only kind of alien life possible,” I said. “Has anyone seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers?”

Mrs. O’Donnell sighed.

“You do realize that was a film?” she said caustically. “Not a documentary. And Invasion of the Body Snatchers wasn’t really about aliens. It was about communism, and the remake was about the changing roles of men and women in modern society.”

“I thought they were from outer space,” I said grumpily. “In fact, I remember them saying that the pod things that took over people and changed them were aliens.”

Mrs. O’Donnell’s face told me that she thought I had missed the point that she was making.

“The differences in text and subtext aside,” she said, “you’re thinking that alien pod creatures arrived in Millgrove during a village talent show, and took over everybody except the handful of people hypnotized by a boy magician?”

“Yeah, well, you put it that way and it sounds kinda stupid,” I said. “But pod people was only meant as an example, drawn from a science-fiction movie. We are agreed that something weird happened, aren’t we? I mean, this isn’t everyday Millgrove, is it? People that we know are acting strangely. We recognize their faces, but no longer them.”

“We have no way of knowing what happened when we were in trances on that stage,” Mrs. O’Donnell said, “but surely it’s more likely that it’s us who are at fault, that we’re seeing things differently—”

“Have you managed to get any TV or radio signals?” I interrupted.

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