CHAPTER 6: BLINDSIDED

It was sometime past two, and he still hadn’t slept because the hairy hillbilly ape had only stashed one blanket and Douglass refused to share body heat with strangers who had kidnapped him.

Or maybe it was just the aliens. The constant pounding was impossible to blot out, shaking the mountains all around them every few seconds.

Douglass huddled by the tiny, pissant fire, now and then casting an irritated look down to where the alien spaceship that was even then pounding something into the planet’s core in the darkened valley below. Every three seconds, an eerie purple pulse was lighting up the mountains for a split second in all directions before it descended deep into the earth at frightening speeds.

It was his turn on ‘watch’—what a ridiculous idea, since what was he going to watch, exactly, in the goddamn dark—and he was supposed to get the blanket for two hours at four. Two more hours. Fuck.

In the tent—which was only a two-person tent—the two who had kidnapped him were sleeping like babies. Goddamn babies. Fuck he hated Alaska.

And aliens. He hated those, too.

Fuck he was tired.

Douglass rubbed his hands over the fire again, eying the pile of kindling that the ogre had forbade him from throwing on the flames.

“Gotta preserve our resources,” the hillbilly dipshit had said. Well, fuck that, he was cold. Douglass grabbed the whole stack and threw it on the fire, then gave a satisfied grin as the flames started to take hold on the dead branches the hillbilly and the heiress had collected from the willow groves down the mountainside.

“That’s more like it,” he muttered, as the fire started to roar.

From inside the tent came a roar, “You better not’ve just thrown all the wood on the fire, city boy!”

“Yeah, well. You guys have the fucking blanket and I have the guns.” Douglass didn’t know exactly how to use them, of course, but he figured it couldn’t be that hard. Point it at something he didn’t like and pull the trigger. All the city kids were doing it. Part of the reason he moved to fucking Alaska so he didn’t have to deal with gunshot wounds from stupid gang wars.

He wondered again how his parents were faring in Illinois. Couldn’t be great, without power. Then again, maybe it was a localized thing, and maybe Alaska was the only place experiencing this shit.

Because Alaska sucked.

Because it was cold and filled with gun-toting hillbilly assholes.

Wow, he hadn’t been in this bad of a mood since his cat had jumped onto his sink when he was gone, turned on the water, and somehow flooded his entire kitchen and living area while Douglass was staying late at the ER, then decided he’d scared the piss and shit out of himself and decided to relieve himself on Douglass’s bedding out of protest. All he’d wanted to do when he got home way too late that night cleaning up gore and patching up missing fingers was go to sleep, but first he’d had to call the apartment manager, mop up the linoleum, open all the doors and windows to try and dry the place out, go to rent a wet-vac to soak up the water from the carpets, and oh, by the way, just when he thought it was over, he’d had to change out his bedding because his freaked out cat had left him a present.

Damn cat. He missed that cat. It had died the year before, liver failure. He’d been in the market for another one when he got the opportunity to head to Oh-So-Glorious Alaska.

“You hear that?” the tent said. “That dumbshit put all the wood on the fire.”

“It’s wood,” Douglass snapped. “You can get more!” He made a disgusted snort and turned to look back down at the valley.

Thus, he was looking directly at the alien ship jackhammering its load into Mother Earth when the explosion of ultraviolet light lit up the night—and made something break in his eyes.

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Douglass screamed, holding his hands to his face as everything became a searing white haze of burning, fiery nothingness. He dropped and rolled, trying to get away from the light. He felt himself hit the fire, and only numbly managed to roll away from it.

“What? What happened?!” He heard the sound of a tent unzipping.

Douglass’s doctor’s instincts snapped into gear before anything else. “Stay in the tent!” Douglass cried. “The light from the ship! Fucking stay in the tent, don’t look at the light!”

There was a moment of hesitation, then, “What light?” More zipper.

The light was stabbing at him in pulses, now. “Stay in the tent!”

A very long, very pregnant pause. Then, right beside him, “You okay, doc?” He felt a concerned hand the size of a dinnerplate on his shoulder.

The light was still blazing like a sun all around him, stabbing from all directions at once. “Keep your eyes shut,” Douglass said. “It’s gonna burn out your retinas if you look at it too long.”

“Dude, doc,” Rusty said, “there’s nothing here.”

Then Douglass realized his eyes were closed, and the throbbing in his eyes was timed to the beat of his heart. He stopped thrashing and holding his face. “Fuck me,” he whispered.

“Would rather not,” the big man chuckled. “But if you insist…”

Douglass shoved him away disgustedly and pushed to his feet, completely ignoring the hillbilly, now. He turned, eyes open wide, and spun.

The brightness was the same in a 360-degree radius. No shadows, no shapes, no colors. No change whatsoever.

“Fuck,” he whispered. “Guys… I think it blinded me.”

“What did?” Envy asked, the sound of her boots crunching as she came close.

“I was looking at the ship and boom there was this big flash and suddenly I couldn’t see.”

“I didn’t hear a boom.”

“No, it was just a light.”

“I didn’t see a light.”

“Listen,” Douglass said, “I can’t fucking see. There was some sort of explosion.”

“I didn’t hear an explosion.” Like she didn’t freakin’ believe him. Like he was just a whiny pain in her ass that wasted their kerosene and burned all their firewood.

“So you’re blind, doctor?” Rusty asked, a strange tension in his voice. “Can’t see at all? To fix wounds and stuff?”

And, with the inflection of those words, Douglass realized his usefulness to the survivalist nutjob had just visibly diminished, relegating him once again to ‘dumb city boy.’

“I can see a little,” Douglass lied. “I think it’ll come back.”

He could feel the big man relax. “Yeah, okay.” He heard the man turn, then heard him curse. “Can’t believe you put all the wood on the fire.” Massive footsteps crunched back to the tent.

But Douglass was now standing there with a pounding heart, realizing just how narrowly he had avoided being ditched as useless baggage slowing them down.

“You really can’t see anything, can you?” Envy said, quieter, from right in front of him.

Douglass swallowed hard.

“I just waved my hand right in front of your eyes. You didn’t even flinch. You’ve got this crazy dead stare—it’s actually kinda creepy.”

Considering how much his eyes hurt, he supposed the watery, bloodshot look he was giving the world at the moment was creepy. Still, it didn’t make him feel any better.

“Please don’t tell Rusty,” he managed. “I think he’d kill me.”

There was a really long pause, then, “I won’t tell Rusty.” Then there was another moment of hesitation. “But I’m gonna just lay this out there: If you’re really blind, and this really is the apocalypse, you better start finding other ways to pull your weight.” The way she said it told him that, so far, she was definitely not impressed.

“Sorry about the firewood,” he muttered.

He couldn’t see her expression, which terrified him.

“And the kerosene,” he blurted. “Sorry.”

“Go get in the tent,” she said. “Rusty was letting me use the blanket. Maybe your eyes will be better when you wake up.”

And, for once in his life, Douglass had no qualms with crawling into a tent with a massive, hairy hillbilly to share warmth.

“What the fuck is he doing in here, Miss Travis?” Rusty asked, as she helped Douglass crawl inside.

“He isn’t good on watch,” Envy said, and her voice didn’t sound happy. Like maybe she thought he was faking it to get the blanket. Fuck, this wasn’t going well. “Might as well take his place, let him get some rest, see if his eyes improve.”

“I guess…” Douglass could feel Rusty’s glare of disapproval. Not good. Not good.

“Just wrap him up,” Envy said. “I’ll keep watch.”

“Don’t watch the ship,” Douglass said.

“Dude, the ship’s gone,” Envy snapped. Indeed, the pounding had stopped. “Just sleep it off while I go find more wood in the dark, okay, asshole?”

And, just like that, Douglass let a big, hairy man tuck him into bed.

“Better be better in the morning,” Rusty growled in Douglass’s ear. Literally. In his ear. Like a lover. Because they were practically spooning.

“If you’re not, then maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day…” A big finger touched Douglass’s throat, making him jerk, then drew a line from ear to ear. “Somethin’ ta think about.”

“I’ll be fine,” Douglass said, swallowing.

“Better be.” Then the big man yawned and, much more cheerfully—and louder—said, “Good night, doc!”

“Good night,” Douglass whispered, cold all over despite the blanket.