Emma leads them to the front gate, and presses a buzzer. After a moment, a gruff, masculine voice responds.
"Who is it?" The voice says through the speaker. The guy sounds scared.
Emma presses and holds a second button and says, "Professor Hidgens—"
"Don't lie to me whoever you are," the voice snaps. "I'm Professor Hidgens!"
Emma rolls her eyes. "I hate that stupid joke," she mumbles, then presses the button again to speak. "No, Professor, it's me— Emma Perkins. The whole town's gone crazy, and I didn't know where else to go."
"Emma! You've come to the right place!Hold on, I'll let you in!"
A second later, the gate clicks and swings open, and Emma leads them up to the front door. She opens it herself with a key she'd apparently been given. The professor— a man in his late fifties or early sixties, if Ted had to guess, with silver hair and a black turtleneck under a brown suit jacket— greeted them in that first room, the dining room.
"Professor, thank God," Emma sighs, reaching for him. They hug, a little awkwardly, before Emma pulls away and introduces the rest of them. "These are my friends, Paul— and them..." she says the last bit lamely, having clearly already forgotten their names.
Hannah peeks out from Ted's shoulder, and quickly reburies her face. Bill and Paul are half-carrying, half-dragging Sam into the house, and dump him in a dining chair.
"We came from downtown," Emma continues. "Now listen, this is going to sound crazy, but everyone's—"
"Singing?" Hidgens interrupts, grabbing Emma by her upper arms. "And dancing? Like a musical?" He lets go of her. "They want you to join them and once they get you, you're a part of it?"
Emma blinks, and slowly says, "Yeah, how did you know?"
"I theorized this exact scenario thirty years ago," Hidgens declares.
"Really?" Paul asks doubtfully.
"Really!" Hidgens says.
"Like exactly this?"
"Exactly!"
"That the world would become a musical?" Paul asks, still unsure.
"You'd better believe it," Hidgens replies.
"Wait," Charlotte interrupts, "so that's what's wrong with Sam?"
Hidgens whirls to see her unconscious husband, pulling out a small handgun. "Good God! Don't tell me you brought one of them here!" He snaps.
Ted twists to shield Hannah from the gun, putting himself between it and her.
"I told you we should've left him in the alley," he snaps at Charlotte.
"You're a monster, Ted!" Charlotte replies.
"No, he's a monster! You're putting my daughter in danger just being near him," Ted growls, holding Hannah even tighter.
Hidgens sees the little girl, and puts the gun away. "Alright, everyone just calm down," he barks. "Providence has brought him to me... quickly! Cuff him to the chair! Make sure he's secure. There's no telling what would happen if he were awake and loose!"
Ted sets Hannah down next to Emma, and helps Bill grab both sets of cuffs from Sam's toolbelt and cuff him to the chair. Ted puts the key in his pocket. Hannah clings shyly to Emma's leg, and the barista crouches down to soothe her.
"I've been preparing for this day for decades," Hidgens announces. "Now all of the answers are right in front of me! If only I have the wits to decipher them."
Carefully, he pokes around at the blue goop oozing from the wound in Sam's head, and pulls a chunk out, a disgusted look on his face. "Emma," he calls, and she goes to him after a gentle smile to Hannah. "Tell me... what on Earth does this look like to you?"
Emma peers at it in confusion. "I don't know," she says slowly, waving her hand a little. "Some kind of blue... shit?"
"Exactly, Emma!" Hidgens declares. "What the fuck is this shit?!"
Ted goes back to Hannah and picks her up again, covering her ears with his shoulder and one hand.
"I'll tell you what on Earth it looks like," Hidgens continues, throwing Ted and Hannah a slightly apologetic glance. "Nothing! You all remember that meteor that crashed into the Starlight Theare last night? I daresay it carried a deadly cargo, a contagious pathogen of cosmic origin."
"Wait a second, doc," Bill jumps in. "Don't tell me you're talking about... aliens?"
"Why is that so hard to believe?" Hidgens retorts. "Think of all that we take for granted now, that was once foretold in the pages of Bradbury, and Asimov! Why, look no further than my robot assistant, Alexa!" He holds up the wireless Amazon device, as it chimes in response to hearing its name.
"Once contained to the realm of science fiction, she is now science fact!" Hidgens looks around and sees everyone's disbeliving faces, and huffs slightly. "Alexa! Dim the lights." The lights go down, and Hidgens sets the Alexa back down and walks to the light switch.
"Extraordinary," he breathes. "Twenty years ago I would have had to walk all the way to the dimmer." He brings the lights back up by hand, then retakes his spot standing next to Sam.
"Now, as unbelievable as she— or this outbreak— may seem, it is no longer a question of can this be happening, but rather how do we stop it? I've got to get this blue shit beneath a microscope to find out what makes these bastards tick!" Hidgens glances at Ted and Hannah again before preparing to leave.
"Uh, excuse me Professor," Paul speaks up. "This is a lot to take in. Do you have anything to take the edge off? Uh, a drink? Or something?"
"Young man," Hidgens says lowly. "For the last twenty-seven years, I have been stockpiling the bare essentials needed for human survival, in the event of a world-ending cataclysm!" He pauses, then throws an arm around Paul. "You bet your ass we got booze, come with me!"
Ted goes to follow, Hannah in his arms, but he sees Charlotte hesitating. Setting his daughter down, he encourages her to go with Emma and the others.
"C'mon, Charlotte," Ted says. "We'll make you a drink and we can relax... talk... you can get to know Hannah?" He lingers by the stairs to the basement, where the rest of them had disappeared down.
"Ted, the whole world could be comin' to an end!" She cries. "What's the point?"
"The point is that I left my wife for you, Charlotte," Ted snaps, "and you still won't even consider leaving Sam!"
"His brains fell out today," she whimpers. "If I can't be a wife to him now, what kind of woman am I?"
"I dunno, Charlotte, I'm not your therapist!" Ted says, annoyed. "So why don't you just go back to fucking him, huh? I know that's why you actually went to counciling."
"Not just that," she replies with a sigh, stroking hair out of Sam's face. "I want to make things work with him... I love him. I know I shouldn't, but I do."
Ted sighs, too. "He treats you like dirt, Char. The guy's scumbag. But you do you, I'm done. We're over, Charlotte." He digs the keys out of his pocket and tosses them to her. She catches them, surprised. "I'm gonna go check on my daughter and hit on that hot professor."
Ted goes downstairs, and catches up to the others. Hannah's curled up on a couch, sniffling. Bill's searching the liquor cabinet, and Paul and Emma are standing off to the side in silence. The professor is nowhere to be seen.
Ted goes and sits next to Hannah, and she uncurls long enough to scoot so her head can rest in her dad's lap. He strokes her hair, and she slowly calms down as her breathing evens out. She falls asleep.
Ted looks around. There's a ping-pong table in the middle of the room, though it looks like it hasn't been touched in years. The liquor cabinet is over against one wall, and a large dry-erase board from floor to ceiling on another. The third wall has three different doors. There are a couple of mis-matched armchairs around the room, as well as the couch he and Hannah are on.
"He said this was a full bar," Bill grumbles. "But how am I supposed to make a Shirley Temple without any cherries?"
"Jesus, Bill," Ted chuckles. "It's the end of the world, and you're gonna get your drink on with a Shirley fuckin' Temple?"
"Well I figured one of us should stay sober," Bill snaps. "We might need a designated driver."
Ted considers it. He could keep being an asshole about it, but he chooses not to. Not in front of Hannah, even if she's asleep. "I'm not drinking," he says instead. "You can have whatever you really want."
Bill blinks at him, and even Paul and Emma glance over. "Seriously?" Bill asks.
Ted points to Hannah with his free hand and nods. "Seriously."
Bill looks doubtful for a moment, clearly waiting for Ted to say 'psyche!' But when he doesn't, Bill grabs the bottle of Maker's Mark and pours himself a glass. Ted quietly hums a lullaby, still stroking Hannah's hair. Paul and Emma sit down in front of a couple of the armchairs and talk quietly to each other.
Ted only catches snippets of their conversation— something about Emma being in Guatemala for a long time, her sister's funeral bringing her back, and musicals in high school. Ted doesn't really care about any of that. He keeps his eyes set down on Hannah, watching her twitch and mumble incoherently in her sleep.
Ted glances up when he hears footsteps, expecting to see Charlotte finally coming to join them. He's horrified to see the blue shit dripping from the side of her mouth, her guts stained blue as they hang from her belly. Sam stands behind her with a feral grin on his face.
"Charlotte?!" Ted exclaims, scooping Hannah up protectively.
"It is time," Charlotte declares, and sings the rest of what's to come, "to DIE!" She holds the note out a ridiculously long time, then she and Sam start coming closer.
Hannah wakes up, sees Charlotte, and screams before hiding her face in Ted's shirt once again.
"What's wrong with her shirt?" Emma exclaims, as Charlotte and Sam rush to the middle of the room. The only thing protecting them is the ping-pong table, except for Bill, who is over by the liquor cabinet still. Sam and Charlotte inch toward him as they sing.
"No!" Paul cries. "He has a daughter!"
Ted passes Hannah to Paul and tries to help Bill. Bill gets away, but Sam grabs Ted and throws him to the floor. He and Charlotte stand over him, each with their legs spread on either side of his body, as they sing.
Paul holds Hannah protectively as she cries, reaching for her dad.
"Punch it, squeeze it!" Sam and Charlotte sing, though it sounds more like a sick game of Bop-It. "Crush it, kill it! Ride it, drag it!" Ted tries to crawl away, but they drag him back. "Wind it up, kick its nuts!"
"Daddy!" Hannah cries out.
Ted's vision goes a little blurry as the steel-toed boot makes impact like they'd declared, and he groans. The singing duo finally step away from Ted as they start to approach the others.
Suddenly, a shotgun blast echoes in the room, and Ted sees Sam drop to the ground, oozing blue blood from a gaping wound in his head. A piercing, operatic note comes from Charlotte, almost like a scream, and then another shotgun blast. He sees Charlotte fall, too. There's a hole in her chest where her heart should be.
Ted slowly drags himself to his feet, accepting the professor's outstretched hand.
"Oh, my God!" Emma exclaims. "Professor, you just killed Charlotte!"
"Wrong," Hidgens says, taking an unlit cigarette out of his mouth.
"You shot her," Paul points out.
"I shot a charlatan!" Hidgens declares, mouth hanging open as if to say 'get it?'
Ted snorts quietly as he goes back over to Hannah, taking her from Paul and soothing her. "I'm alright, Pumpkin," he whispers in her ear. "Daddy's okay."
Hidgens seems to appreciate the small acknowledgment of his pun, but rolls his eyes and waves his hand dismissively at the others, who didn't react.
"The Charlotte you knew and loved was gone the minute a note came out of her mouth," Hidgens says. "After examining that blue—" he catches sight of Hannah, who is watching him carefully— "stuff, it didn't take long for me to decipher that Sam was no longer human, but part of the alien brood! Genetically recontructed from the inside out. They're wearing our skin to fool us!"
His eyes widen, and he points the shotgun at his guests. "Which means any one of you could be one of them! So we're gonna have a little test to see who's still human, and who's a musical doppelgänger."
"Professor, we're not aliens," Emma tries to tell him, voice mostly calm but a little pleading.
"I want you all to sing sixteen bars, right now!" Hidgens growls. "Sing the beginning of Moana!"
"No, professor—"
"I said sing, goddammit!" He cocks the gun again, pointing it at them.
Paul leads them, surprisingly enough. They're all disjointed, trying their best, but it's clear that only Hannah knows how the song is supposed to go. Even then, she doesn't do very well. In the end, Bill's singing The Lion King, which makes Hannah giggle.
"That's not it," she says quietly, giving him a shy smile. Bill smiles back at her.
"Alright," Hidgens says, putting the gun down with a mildly disturbed look on his face. "That was terrible. Not a single one of you was on pitch, which means you're still human! These... things... their tactic is to hide among us, and as their numbers grow, they become more bold— and as we've seen, more violent."
A cellphone ringing interrupts Hidgens, and everyone (except for Hannah) checks their pockets. It's Bill's phone.
"Alice? Oh, thank God!" Bill sighs. "I've never been more happy in my life your mother left me and moved you to Clivesdale— what? No, I saw you get on the bus this morning... got off? Got off? To go see Deb? Alice, if Deb jumped off a bridge, would you—? No, you're right. I'm sorry, I know you're scared... wait, what's wrong with Deb? She's doing what?! No, Alice, listen to me. You get away from her right now— no, this has nothing to do with me not liking Deb. Right now you need to run and hide. Where are you? No, you stay there. I'll come to you. No, don't you say— everything's going to be fine. I love you, too." Bill hangs up, and takes a deep breath. He turns to them.
"Give me a snack and some water," he says quickly. "Alice is stuck in the high school, I have to go save her!"
Ted remembers seeing Lex and her boyfriend, and flinches, holding Hannah tighter. "Good luck," he says quietly.
"I'll go with you," Paul says. "I know a shortcut. We should avoid downtown. There's a neighborhood we can cut through, Pinebrook. Rich neighborhood— huge yards."
"Yes, avoid densely populated areas," Hidgens says with a nod.
"And there's a window always open in the teacher's lounge so they can smoke," Emma adds. "Used to be my old escape route. You can slide right in!"
"I didn't go there," Bill says. "I don't know where the teacher's lounge is!"
"I'll go with you guys, too," Emma says. "If we haul ass, we can be there and back in twenty minutes!"
"Godspeed," Hidgens says, passing Bill the shotgun. The three hurry up the stairs, and the remainders can hear the front door slam behind them.
Hidgens turns to Ted. "Would you mind cleaning this up?" He asks hesitantly. "I really should get back to the lab. I have a theory on how to stop this."
"Uh, yeah... do you mind keeping an eye on her?" He boosts Hannah a little bit, where she'd been sliding down.
Hidgens nods. "I could use an extra pair of hands in the lab," he says with a small smirk. Hannah reluctantly lets Ted put her down, and follows Hidgens into his lab while Ted gets to work on cleaning up the two dead bodies.