Free Todd by Adam J Nicolai Page A

sunlight and
the rattle of the generator; felt a vague sense of relief that the water was
still running. "Good morning," he said when Todd came back into the
living room.
    "Morning." Todd ambled
into the kitchen and poured a bowl of cereal. He opened the fridge looking for
the milk, then made a face. "I forgot about this stuff," he said as
he grabbed a pitcher of reconstituted milk. Alan had mixed it up yesterday,
since all the normal milk had gone bad.
    " Bon appétit. "
    "What does that mean?"
    "It just means... enjoy your
food."
    "Oh." Todd took a bite,
grimacing at the thin milk. "I probably won't."
    Alan joined him with a bowl of his
own. Todd was unusually quiet for breakfast. Normally Brenda had to tell him to
stop talking and finish eating so he could catch his school bus on time. Alan
supposed that since neither Brenda nor Allie were here, there really wasn't
much to say. Todd didn't talk to him like he talked to them.
    The boy stopped eating and looked
at him. "What if we never find Mommy and Allie?"
    Alan had just taken in a mouthful
of cereal, of course. He held up a finger as he crunched through it. It bought
him a minute to think, but it also exposed him to the dangerous gleam of his
son's eyes. They were earnest. Desperate. Whatever Todd needed, Alan didn't
have it.
    "What do you mean?" he
finally said.
    "Well... I've been looking
everywhere we go, and they're just gone ." He furrowed his brow,
concentrating. "It's like their bodies are gone. And I think... I
mean, I wonder if..." He chewed his lip. "You can't live without your
body."
    "Yeah." It was a heavy
word. "I've been thinking about that, too." Alan's instinct was to
withdraw from the question. It was too big; it would be too easy to screw it
up. But he also wanted to talk about it, to air some of the ideas that had been
running through his head.
    You don't owe him anything, Alan's
dad said, and that's what decided him. He went on. "But what happened was
so weird. Really powerful. Maybe whatever did it, if it was that powerful,
maybe it didn't have to kill them. Maybe it, like... teleported them, or
something."
    "Teleported them where?"
    To the mother ship, he
mused, or to the middle of space. He thought of the blue star, but
didn't mention it. "I don't know." The boy was already scared; he had
horrible ideas enough without listening to his father's.
    "Maybe it teleported them to
a big building somewhere," Todd said, "like a jail, and they're all
there, and we can find them."
    "Maybe," Alan said. If that
were true, if there were survivors, they should be looking for them. Right? If
every human being on Earth—
    Not the whole Earth, it
couldn't have hit the whole planet
    —were holed up in one giant
building somewhere, it had to be possible to find it. Maybe even save them.
    But if it weren't true, the search
would be fruitless. Travel was dangerous; they'd seen enough wildfires and
twisted metal to know that. The idea of roaming aimlessly, searching for
something that wasn't even there, left a hollow in his chest.
    And even if that is what
happened, and we did find them, then what? We're still talking about a force
stronger than the combined total of every defense the entire human species had.
It would see us and just throw us in with the others. Again, he couldn't
say it. Why had he started talking about this in the first place?
    "But I still don't think
that's it," Todd said.
    "Why not?"
    "Because if I was a monster,
I wouldn't want to capture all the people. I'd want to get rid of them, so they
couldn't hurt me or fight me."
    "You think a monster did
it?"
    "Yeah." That musing look
had gone out of his eye; now he looked scared. "I do."
    It was the part where Alan was
supposed to reassure him that there were no monsters, that there was a rational
explanation for everything, that he didn't have to worry.
    Either way, he realized, teleported
or killed, we're still alone. It slammed into him like a wrecking ball.
Brenda wasn't on a business trip. Allie