School by Nathaniel Hardman (top reads .TXT) 📕

was gone for the day. They had taken Two Head away yesterday, but the spider was now in the backyard, constantly monitored by a small company of scientists.

He wasn’t sure why they hadn’t taken the spider as well, but he was kind of glad they hadn’t. The spider gave him access to the scientists, and the security badge they had given him to get to his house also gave him some limited access to the army. And somehow, he was going to use that to get his kids back.

He gave Lori’s shoulder a final squeeze and went back to work.

He googled sound-editing software.

NINETEEN

“Okay, time to give up.” Suzy announced. “We’re never sneaking up on that.”

They were hiding in a stand of bushes, looking down the long central street of the city at the castle wall they could see in the distance. They could just see the top of the school peeking out over the battlements. Snake-faced aliens bustled about in the space between, some on spiderback, some on foot, some with two-headed dogs in tow. A family of aliens rode past on a millipede.

“Stop!” Jeff whispered, pulling her down as she started to stand up. “We can swim up to it.” He pointed at the river/canal that ran along the main street.

Suzy made an angry tsk. The river was how they had gotten this far into town, but they had been forced to climb out and hide when a pair of aliens had come down to the river for water. Since then, they had seen a fairly steady stream of traffic to the shore.

“Even if we can get to the wall, how are we going to get inside to see what’s going on in there?”

“We can climb up.”

Suzy growled. They had been sneaking, swimming, and crawling all day. She was hungry, thirsty, and exhausted, and it was making her irritable.

“Okay,” Jeff said. “I have a better idea. I’ve been thinking about this since yesterday: let’s go back to the school.”

“That’s what I’m saying!”

“No, not that school,” Jeff made a shooing motion down the river. “The alien school. No, listen. Where do you go to learn how to use a magic wand? Hogwarts, right? So if we want to learn to use this,” he held up the wand he had recovered yesterday, “that’s where we need to go! Alien Hogwarts!”

“Just listen to yourself.” Suzy shook her head and stood up. “I’m going to back to our school. From everything we’ve seen…” She trailed off. There was a sound. A thrumming. “Jeff!” She pointed.

A helicopter was approaching from beyond the school, flying low over the town. “They came for us!” She started to wave her arms, shrugging Jeff off as he tried to pull her back down to the bushes. “Let go! We want them to see us!”

The helicopter slowed down over the school, circling slowly. The aliens in the street had noticed as well, many stopping to point and shout to each other.

“Come on!” She pulled Jeff up. “Let’s go!”

Jeff was pulling back, and she half turned toward him, so she only saw what happened in her periphery.

It was still scary.

There was a flicker of movement between the school and the helicopter, and the helicopter burst into flames. Big flames, bursting from the sides, the tail, everywhere. The helicopter veered wildly, hurtling away from them. In seconds, it was gone, leaving behind a trail of fading black smoke.

Suzy sank back into the bushes with Jeff. They were both silent for a long moment. Then Suzy whispered shakily, “Okay. Let’s try Hogwarts.”

On the far side of the field, a dozen or so kids were emerging from the school. They looked so alien with their smooth, snakey faces and wrap-around shirts like kimonos, but there was also something universal and familiar in the way they came out of the building, laughing, relaxing from a day spent inside the school. One snatched away a paper from his friend, then ran laughing as the first tried to get it back.

“Dang,” Jeff whispered. “I think they’re already done for the day.”

“I don’t know-” Suzy considered. “They’re not leaving very fast.”

This was true. The kids were moving gradually onto the field, a few of them performing some lazy stretches. “What are they waiting for?” She muttered. “I’m so hungry. When they all leave, you should break into the school and see if they have any food in there.”

A boy came running out of the school holding a ball.

He shouted something to the others, threw the ball down in front of him, and began driving it across the field. The other kids exploded into activity, some of them running toward the boy with the ball, most of them running away.

The game they launched into looked a lot like soccer – they were all kicking a ball around – but Suzy couldn’t figure out how the goals/arches worked. There were six of them, she counted, high enough to run through, spread in a loose circle about the field, like some sort of croquet pitch for giants. Most of the kids had spread out to stand by the various arches, but a few stayed with the ball, fighting for possession.

As Suzy watched, two boys – or girls? She was starting to realize that without hair or distinguishing curves, they could be either – ran toward one arch, then executed a perfect give-and-go around a defender and drove the ball through the arch.

Suzy smiled to see something so familiar, a move she had drilled herself many times in soccer practice. Then one of the pair tackled the other, and Suzy’s warm bubble of nostalgia popped. Weren’t they on the same team?

“Suz.” Jeff whispered. “Maybe we should just go out there. Make friends, you know?”

Suzy stared back, mouth working soundlessly as she tried to find words to address