Almost a month later, he was still bothered by the fact that they'd once had a little boy, and now they wouldn't talk about him. People who were over things talked about their loved ones even after they were gone, didn't they? This was on his mind as David finally parked in their driveway.
"We have a surprise for you, Will," Maddie announced as they took off their seatbelts.
"What?" he asked cautiously.
"Come see," she invited, walking towards the front door. He and David had no choice but to follow after her.
He expected her to lead him to the tree since he could see boxes and bags under it, reflecting the Christmas lights he'd been sure for a while that no one would ever use again, but instead she headed for the stairs.
Her journey through the house ended outside the door he'd once cracked open in his hunt for signs of the other boy. "Go ahead and take a look," David told him, also clearly aware of what was in there.
Will turned the knob and David reached past him for the light switch. There was now a bed where the space had just been empty before, a full size one with a blue plaid comforter and matching cases on the two pillows. A dresser made of the same sort of dark wood as the bed's headboard stood between the windows, and David walked in and placed Will's bag on its surface.
Maddie smiled. "We wanted to do something nicer than an air mattress or a cot. How'd we do?"
"Good," Will said, forcing himself to speak up. It was hard to because something was clotting up his throat.
Her smile faded, and he realized that he hadn't sounded as cheerful as he'd hoped. "Thanks."
He thought about trying to say it was really nice, but that'd just come out hollow, so he didn't bother to. Not when it wasn't going to make them feel better.
"We should work on heating up dinner," David said, and they both nodded.
Will trailed behind them, thinking about the room. It was just a bed and a dresser, not a whole, decorated room like he'd had at home. Maybe they were hoping to make more use of the room as a guest room. It didn't necessarily mean that they'd ask him to stay. Or would they even ask him his opinion if they decided to keep him? Maybe it didn't work that way.
Dinner was pretty subdued, and he knew it was his fault but he couldn't do anything about it. They seemed tolerant, though, and he sensed that they just figured the holidays without his parents were hard.
After dinner they went to the living room, and David fished a long box out from under the Christmas tree. Then he added a smaller package to the top before handing both to Will.
When Will looked up at him questioningly, David explained, "In my family we had a tradition of always opening a present on Christmas Eve. Maddie's indulged me over the years, and I'm hoping you will, too."
"This is two things, though," Will blurted out, semi-horrified by his own lack of manners.
Maddie tapped the box. "This one doesn't count."
"Okay…"
"Go ahead and open them," David said, a hint of cheerfulness back in his eyes.
Not wanting to kill their cheer dead again, Will forced himself to smile and opened the box first. The pajamas were just his size. "Thanks." Glancing at them, he asked, "How did you know what size to buy?"
He'd been hoping that David would say that he remembered his own sizes from when he'd been Will's height, but Maddie said, "Oh, we asked Mrs. Ogden to check for us. We didn't want to leave it to chance that they'd need to be returned."
David's mouth quirked. "Maddie'd rather face down a tornado than go shopping Christmas Eve."
"Huh." Will looked at the pajamas, not the couple. They'd been talking to Mrs. Ogden about him, and he didn't really feel comfortable with that. What else had she told them? What if she'd told them about...
"Now the other one," Maddie demanded playfully. Will blinked, shocked to have been pulled out of his thoughts so suddenly. His fingers fumbled a little as he plucked at the paper, trying to find a place to tear it.
When the paper finally came away, he found himself looking at the cover of a book. It was by Stephen King, but the dragon on the cover made it seem like fantasy, not horror. He hadn't realized that the author wrote anything in other genres.
"Have you read it?" David asked, sounding oddly eager.
"No, I haven't," Will replied, shaking his head.
"Well, I hope you'll like it."
"Thanks." Will traced the dragon with the tip of a finger. "This looks good." Maybe he should have read the book jacket before saying that, but it really did look good.
"You can start it before you go to sleep," David suggested. "But I was thinking we might watch a Christmas movie before we hit the hay, though. Sound okay?"
Will knew that he should simply say "yes" but he couldn't. "What movie?" he asked cautiously.
"I was thinking of The Santa Clause," David said, and he sounded like he was afraid that the suggestion was going to upset Will.
"Okay," Will replied, relaxing. He'd seen the movie a couple of times before, but it wasn't a family favorite. If David had suggested watching The Christmas Carol, any version of it, he probably would have freaked out a little. It was his mom's favorite Christmas tale, and there were years when they'd rented a bunch of versions of it to have a marathon on Christmas Eve.
"Great." David looked calmer too, a lot like a person who thinks they narrowly averted a disaster does. It made sense because in a way he had.
Before they began the movie, David started a fire, and Maddie offered Will a throw blanket. It was a bit chilly, less so than at the home but it still was December and they were lucky to have any heat and power in so few months since the invasion, so Will accepted it gratefully.
It was soft and warm. Somehow, despite these characteristics, it still reminded him of the scratchy horse blankets he and the other kids had been given the day they'd been piled into the back of a truck to be taken to the refuge camp had been set up for the orphans of war and those who had lost their homes in the various battles with the invaders, a place to go before they figured out how to house them better. At the time he'd been grateful for that blanket too, because the wind was sharp and the short sides of the truck offered little protection from it. It was much nicer to be curled up in an easy chair a few yards from a fire, that was for sure.
On the couch David and Maddie sat close together, and Maddie draped a second blanket over their laps. They looked very content together, and while this should make Will happy for them, it didn't. How could they be happy when their little boy was gone? How could they not miss him as desperately as he missed his parents? It had probably been a very long time, he reminded himself. They were all told that grief lessens in time, but he was still finding that hard to believe.
After the movie's opening credits, Will found himself getting absorbed in the fantasy. It had been about three years since he'd last believed in Santa himself, but he liked the idea that it might still be possible for the jolly old fellow to be real. Still, though, as fun as the movie was, it still didn't address one question that always bothered him about movies that involved Santa being proven to be real: if the adults didn't believe that Santa was real, where the heck did they think the presents they didn't buy came from? Black out shopping? A reverse Robinhood? Some random stranger stalking them and breaking into their house? It seemed to Will that having it be Santa would be the most innocuous option, and the one that people would want to believe. Yet it never got explained in any movie he could think of.
"That never gets old," David said, sounding pleased as the movie ended. Looking at will, he said, "so, did you like it?"
"Sure. It's pretty funny."
David gave him a sidelong look. "I suppose that we don't need to leave out cookies for Santa, right?"
"Not unless you want to eat them yourselves," Will said with a grin. "I haven't believed in a while."
Strange look crossed David's face. "Well," he said at last. "I guess you are too big for that."
This left Will feeling like he did something wrong. He wished that he could say something that would make it better, but he didn't know what.
Maggie looked at the clock. "Will, you don't have to go to sleep yet, but I think it's about time to head up to bed. David and I have both had a long day."
"Okay." Will gathered up the book and the pajamas. "Good night," he said shyly.
"Good night, Will," David said, waving at him.
Will put the new book down on the bed, and decided to change into his new pajamas. There was nothing wrong with keeping his regular clothes on, not when Maddie told him that he didn't have to go to sleep yet, but he felt like he would be more comfortable in the pajamas.
Before he did that, though, he went into the bathroom that he had been shown the last time, and brushed his teeth and his unruly auburn hair. The Addison's bedroom must have its own en suite bathroom, because none of their stuff was in this bathroom. He shut the light off, thinking about how it would be nice to have a bathroom of his own, like he used to, and not one shared amongst many boys.
Back in the guest bedroom Will was still pulling on the new pajamas when he became aware of a noise intruding in the darkness. Going to the room's window, he cracked it open a couple of inches so he could hear what was going on a little better. He'd thought that he'd heard voices, and he wasn't wrong, but it wasn't a conversation going on outside. It was singing. A group of about eight people stood outside the house directly across the street, and they were holding song books, although most of the singers weren't looking at them. The homeowners stood in the doorway, but they were too far away for Will to determine their facial expressions. He figured that they were pleased, though, because they hadn't slammed the door on the carolers.
There was a soft rap on the door, and he wasn't surprised to note that the doorknob was being turned. Maddie looked in on him. "I thought you were still awake because of the light under the door."
"Uh huh." He tugged at the shirt, glad that the singing hadn't happened two minutes earlier. He knew that not wearing a shirt was acceptable for boys in a way that it wasn't for girls, but still, he was too shy to be half dressed around people who were practically strangers.
Outside the group of carolers seemed to be crossing the street so they could next sing to the people next door. It made Will wonder if they were next after that, or if only certain houses would get a serenade.
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy
Maddie nodded towards his window. "Amazing, isn't it? I never thought I'd hear Christmas carolers again."
"Me neither," Will said, but unlike her, he would have been happy never to hear them once more.
Silent night, Holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin, mother and child...
When he looked at her, he realized that his unhappiness about the Christmas carols must've shown on his face. She looked concerned, and like she was afraid that she had upset him somehow. "Well, sleep tight." Maddie went to the window, and shut it firmly.
"You too," Will said faintly as she left the room.
Alone in the guestroom once more, Will buried his face in his pillow and began to cry quietly.
In March he and his parents had been forced out of their house by hunger. It had taken them three months to go through nearly all of their canned goods, and they weren't sure where they could turn to in order to get more food. The local stores had been picked over, that much they had heard through the grapevine, not that either of his parents had engaged in looting themselves.
Rumor also had it that there were places in the country that were not as thoroughly infested with the invaders as the town where they lived. So it had become his parents' plan to take Will, a couple of suitcases, and the two bags of food they still had left and flee for one of those places.
At first it almost seemed to work. They had gotten into the car, driven away, and were three miles down the road before disaster struck. They came to the first checkpoint. It turned out that it would be the only checkpoint. At least for them.
In the driver's seat Will's father looked panicked as soon as the invaders stepped into the road. Whispering to Will's mother, he said "do I stop?"
"Yes, stop," she said frantically.
The car began to slow, but as soon as they could clearly see the invaders' weapons, Will's father inexplicably put his foot on the gas. The car shot forward, and almost made it past the invaders. Almost.
For as long as he lived, Will would never forget the screams. His mother yelped, first in surprise, and then in pain. There were flashes of hot light, and his father made a grunting noise just before he slumped forward over the steering wheel. Still screaming, now in terror, his mother grabbed the wheel, and jammed her foot over her husband's on the brake. Will himself had been too terrified to make a sound.
The car coasted to a stop, and Will expected the invaders to come and pulled them out. But they didn't. Instead, the creatures watched impassively from the side of the road. Somehow, his mother managed to put the car in park.
Leaning over the back seat, Will started to say, "is dad o-" but his question dried up in his throat. Where the back of his father's skull had been at one point was now a red, pulpy mess. "No, no, no," he chanted, putting his hands over his eyes.
To his shock, his mother slapped him. He took his hands away from his eyes, blinked at her. She gave him a grim look. "Will, we have to get him into the backseat now."
He moaned in horror, but gingerly grabbed his father's arms and helped haul him into the backseat. A panicky part of him began to gibber about being forced to sit with a dead man, even as the rest of his brain insisted that the wound was pretty bad, but it didn't necessarily mean that his father was dead.
His mother slid herself into the driver seat, and then looked back at him. "Climb over the seat," she demanded.
Will did so without question. Anything to be away from the death in the backseat.
For a long minute she stared out the windshield, looking at the three invaders who stood there, watching them too. Then, she slowly put the car in reverse, and turned around.
"Where are we going?" Will demanded to know.
"Home," she said shortly.
He wanted to ask what they would do at home, considering they were nearly starving there. Considering that his father was probably dead. But he didn't. Instead he just watched out the rear window, hoping that their vehicle wouldn't be shot at again.
They made it all the way home, and somehow that felt like a miracle. Or maybe, half of one. His father didn't miraculously tell them that his head sure hurt but he would be okay. Instead, he lay slumped where they had put him. Will couldn't help but look at him in the rearview mirror. With everything that had already gone wrong over the past three months, he had never prepared himself mentally for something like this happening too.
His mother parked, and they both sat there for a moment, neither of them seemed to quite know what to do. They would have had to been quite cold, and as inhuman as the invaders, to instantly have a clue.
It was only when they looked out the window that they realized they weren't alone. More invaders, not the ones that had killed his father, at least Will was pretty sure, were standing in their yard. He wondered faintly if they had somehow communicated with the others, and had been sent ahead. The police could find their address from their license plate number, no doubt they could as well.
"Do we get out?" Will whispered, feeling panicked.
It was a shared panic, he could tell that from her expression. "I think we had better," she said at last. "It will probably go easier on us if we don't resist," she added.
Will stared at her. Resist? Like being under arrest? What if those things were here to kill them? To finish the job they started at the checkpoint?
Feeling like the end was nigh, they both got out of the car, and waited to see what would happen. And what happened was not what Will expected. They completely ignored him and his mother, and instead went the car. While they watched the aliens open the back door of the car, and began to prod at the dead man. Will wanted to scream at them to leave him alone, but he realized that was foolish. They couldn't hurt his father anymore, but they could turn on him.
So he said nothing as they dragged the corpse out of the car. And he said nothing when one took out a strange looking device and aimed it at the body. The body instantly dissolved into ash, and Will's mother screamed.
The being with the device turned at the sound of her yell, and looked at her with large expressionless dark eyes. It didn't have facial expressions, at least as well as Will could tell. But something seemed different about the way it looked at her. It wasn't hatred, for some reason he thought that. Bending, it took out what seemed to be a metal container, and before Will could quite figure out how, it got the ashes into the container. Then it held it out to Will's mother.
Will felt faint, when he watched his mother walk over to it, and with shaking hands take the container. They had cremated his father. He couldn't tell if it was because they were attempting to do something less than inhumane for his family, or because it was simply more hygienic to burn the body, and let them dispose of the sterile ashes rather than do something with them themselves.
He was still waiting to see what would happen to them, when they all left. Will was seized by an urge to yell at them, to demand to know what they'd all had meant, but his mother put her hand on his shoulder, and again he said nothing.
It was only after the aliens had left, and he and his mother went inside, that he realized that she had been injured as well.
Infection burned through her in just a few days, and Will had no way of helping her. There was no doctor to turn to, because the only one who lived nearby had also been killed, and he didn't know how to cure an infection himself. So the only thing he could do was watch her burn.
The last day or so, his mother spent in a hallucinogenic haze. She babbled and complained, and nothing she said made much sense to him. Will himself felt numb, and certain that he would lose her too before very long. Some part of him wished that his mother had been killed outright, like his father had, because it would have been kinder to her. As horrible as his father's murder had been, at least he hadn't had time to suffer. And she was suffering.
Will decided that she must have been cold at the end, because she said something about snow to him. And it wasn't snowy, not anymore, it was muddy. It could snow again, but he didn't think it would.
Just before she died, she had the strength to grab his wrist, shocking him. "Silent night," she mumbled.
Leaning towards her, trying not to react to the smell of the festering wound in her shoulder, he asked, "What? What mom?"
Her eyes got wide, and she looked past him before saying "everything's gone silent, hasn't it? Like that song, I swear I hear it now."
"It's okay," he said, clumsily patting her hand. What she had said made no sense. You couldn't hear silence. There wouldn't be a song in silence.
"I think it is," she said, throat sounding sore. "He's coming for us, I'm pretty sure."
"Who?" Will demanded to know, before telling himself that it was stupid to waste her energy on that conversation.
"Oh, I think he's here."
Her fingers slipped away from his wrist then, and Will began to cry. Not so much for her as himself. It didn't hurt her anymore. But he was alone. What would happen to him, his brain demanded to know. He had no answers for it.
Less than two weeks later the invaders were forced out. There were a lot of explosions, and other noises, and he actually heard them scream too. They didn't like it when humans fought back, and soon they were suffering a great many casualties themselves. So they retreated.
Two weeks alone wasn't enough to make Will turn feral, but he did wander the neighborhood, looking for what food he could, occasionally finding some so he wasn't hungry all the time. In another time, and under other circumstances somebody probably would have taken him in, but the casualties had been heavy where he was, and people had their own problems.
Will had been welcoming of the idea of being taken in by the people gathering orphans. He hadn't managed to starve to death, but he did know by then that he was still too young to take care of himself. At least adequately.
In the guest bedroom, Will tried to shove all of these thoughts away. There wasn't any real sense to dwelling on the past, not when there was nothing that could be changed. Maybe that was a lesson that the Addisons' had already learned, and that is why they were more at peace with their loss than he was.
Sighing, Will turned over his pillow, and put his face on the dry side. He fell asleep almost instantly after that.