Back at Rebecca's hiding place, Timmy hurriedly changed out of that ridiculous outfit, returning to his more respectable casual clothes.

Ss'sik'chtokiwij don't have to worry about the nuisance of clothing. I suppose if we had soft bodies and sensitive skin, there might be a need, but the rituals of covering up and turning one's back when the other changes made me impatient, for it is something I never have to do.

Still, Timmy changed with sufficient haste, and soon the children and I made a strategic retreat.

I wanted to stop by the little `play room' to grab some more meat from the corpse, but both children refused to follow me in, and I didn't dare leave them alone another second.

I followed them into the public restroom (they both used the male's section, being too afraid to be alone).

The big bearded man from Ssorzechola's cult took one step into the facility, glanced at me, then backed out in a hurry.

The children had eaten. They muttered something about brushing their teeth, but neither cared enough to bother. We returned to the safety of their cramped little lair.

The two of them looked glum, understandably so. They sighed, stared at each other, stared at me.

I tried to think of something to say to cheer them up, but couldn't. I wanted to say something about Jesus, but couldn't phrase it properly in the current context without it sounding trite or phony.

Then I noticed some little metal bits and a light bulb lying in the corner of the fort.

Whilst in my prison, I had read about the principles of electricity. Though my studies hadn't shown me how to disable an electric leash, the information gave me an idea.

The average battery consists mainly of acids and a few pieces of metal. Now, I didn't know for a fact the metal would work, but thought even a failed attempt would cheer the children up, at least a little.

I stuck the metal bits in my mouth with care, touching the end of the light bulb to this contrivance.

Success. The light bulb lit up like the pale bald man from the Addams Family program.

This elicited a few chuckles and smiles from the children. Although the novelty wore off quickly, I think it did all of us a world of good, at least taking our minds off our troubles for a moment.

I prayed over each of them, bid them good night, then laid down to sleep at the entrance of this little den.

I dreamed of the curly haired woman again.

"Leave those children alone," she growled, firing her gun.

I limped away, running into another corridor, far from Rebecca and Timmy.

A group of shadowy figures in fatigues pointed weapons at me.

All at once, they opened fire.

"Eat this, fucker!"

I awoke to find the children staring at me.

They had been awake for some time, it seemed, silently watching me while I slept.

For an entire minute, we just stared at each other, trying to figure each other out, I suppose.

"What are we going to do about breakfast?" Rebecca said it so quick and tight lipped that I thought the sound had come from someone else.

"Yes. I suppose that's a good idea."

I led them through maintenance ducts, as was now their custom, back to the food storage room they had made a pig of themselves in the previous evening.

The mess had been cleaned up. Some humans remained alive enough to tidy the room occasionally, it seemed.

Cereal makes a distinct sound when poured into a ceramic bowl. A soft jingling noise, almost like coins dropping in a jar.

It has many similarities between to dog food, as evidenced by the Ralston-Purina company. Timmy seemed disturbed by the sounds, but put up a front like it didn't matter.

He made it a point to not debase himself by eating off the floor like a dog, setting the bowl up on a storage crate, fetching a spoon from a drawer and milk from a nearby freezer, pulling up a chair to complete the arrangement. I helped him with the milk, because the container had been designed to serve a large family (industrial two gallon) and he spilled it.

Before she saw the milk, Rebecca had been content with reaching into drums of Corn Pops and Capitán Crunch and stuffing handfuls into her mouth, but now she requested a bowl as well.

As I was in the middle of saying grace for them, a stranger in a Pittsburgh Steelers hoodie barged into the room.

Dark, muddy umber skin, piercing in one ear.

The scrubby mustached fellow appeared to be a bit groggy. After stretching and rubbing his baggy eyes, he approached me. "Hey, man. Could you hand me the thing of corn flakes and the sugar? The cafeteria's out."

As I searched the shelves in bewilderment, he jumped back with a start. "Whoa! Shit! What the fuck!"

His eyes practically bugged out of his head, and that's saying something, because they already had a bulging appearance. "Oh my God, what in the hell is going on here!"

"The children were hungry." I offered him the drum of corn flakes. "They have lost their parents and have suffered a very personal sort of abuse. I hope you can understand why they do not eat with the others."

The man blinked like the proverbial frog in a hailstorm.

Then the brain inside his bald head woke up, at least a little. "As l-long as you g-guys clean up after yourself, I didn't see a thing."

He took the corn flakes, backing out of the room in such an anxious state that he neglected to pick up the aforementioned sugar.

Once Rebecca and Timmy finished eating, we cleaned up, as instructed, departing from there.

When we stopped by the library of the children's school to pick up a copy of Peter Pan (Rebecca's idea), I heard the first sounds of an all-out brutal war that would leave heavy casualties for both humans and Ss'sik'chtokiwij alike.

In the hallways, women and children fled from the battle with no shoes and bloody feet. Ss'sik'chtokiwij shrieked and guns barked over men's screams as lives got taken on both sides. Geological survey charges detonated.

A de facto refugee center had been hastily assembled in the school room next door. People noisily hammered, wielding together fortifications further down the corridor.

The power went out suddenly, and I had to lead the children with my tail through the dark passageways.

The people passing by said that `Martians' had chewed through the wiring. A misnomer, of course, but so is the name `Indian' for the North American native. It was unfortunately catchier than `LV426ian' or `Archeronian', even if this dead rock were truly our home.

Since my Uncle Fester routine did not permit me to read aloud, I couldn't entertain the children with the story of Peter's shadow being removed by a dog. Rebecca did attempt to use my cleverly devised illumination to read it to Timmy, but I accidentally drooled a hole through the pages so that you couldn't read anything after the illustration of Pan playing the flute. At least no one got hurt.

After sitting silently in the darkness for awhile, Timmy said, "Ernie, there's a dead dog outside the base. It's all covered in maggots and bugs and vomit. I one it."

I didn't understand. "Then it's yours."

"No, no. Say `I two it.'"

So I did.

"I three it."

The game amused him, so I went ahead and counted upwards with him, not realizing he'd set me up to say that I devoured the disgusting dog carcass.

They had a good laugh at my expense, but that's okay. They needed the levity.

Rebecca followed this game with another called `grocery store', in which one tried to remember a long list of imaginary groceries.

"I'm going to the store, and I'm going to get soap, candy, chips and toilet paper..." one would say, and the other would reply, "I'm going to the store, and I'm going to get soap..." and so on, on down the list, with one new item added.

As the list became unwieldy, and the children forgot bits of their lists, something shuffled through the air ducts.

I shushed the children silent.

Whilst playing this silly grocery game (which, incidentally, I was quite good at), I'd been tinkering with weaponry in the dark. With a little trial and error, I could determine the object relationships by touch, and occasionally placing a light bulb in my mouth.

I had been successful in loading all the weapons, and unloading them.

Shotguns, being the largest, clumsiest implements, I chose to employ first, in order to dispose of them.

Telling the children to remain where they were, I crept into the maintenance tunnel, cocking the shotgun as I trailed the sound. "Halt! Who goes there!"

"A repairman," a familiar voice called from the dark.

Not Hissandra or Pain.

"Have you a name?"

"I have."

The broad red shape in my infrared immediately put my defenses on high alert.

Still, not sure who this was yet. For all I knew, it could be the repairman.

[0000]

Feeling a bit jaunty with a firearm in my claws, I tested him with something I had read in Peter Pan. "Vegetable?"

"No."

"Animal?"

"No."

"Mineral?"

"No."

"Man?"

"No!" the voice shouted.

"Boy?"

"Yes! Wonderful boy!"

Now I could tell with absolute certainty that I spoke to none other than the children's assailant.

I aimed at the red object and fired.

"Grow up, sodomite! And leave the children alone!"

The red object scuttled backwards into the dark.

I returned to the fort, feeling nervous and shaken. The foul foe had somehow trailed us, almost to our very door.

He'd used the very same maintenance hatch Rebecca had used, and judging by the scraping sounds, he carried a flashlight, switching it off as he neared our hiding spot, for stealth.

Nothing new, I supposed. I could not hope to leave the children to their own devices ever again.

"I heard a shot," Rebecca said. "What happened out there?"

"It was the man. He's gone now."

The two visibly shuddered. A silence followed.

"Tell us a story, Ernie," Rebecca said as we settled in the dark.

"What would you like to hear?"

"Do you have a mommy and a daddy?"

I sobbed a little. "Yes. Well, I had a mommy. We don't have fathers, unless you count the bodies we hatch from."

"Why can you speak?" Timmy asked.

"Yes. Tell us about that."

Heartened to note that all the psychological trauma had not robbed them of speech, I told them about my birth, imprisonment, and education.

Rebecca seemed troubled by all this, as if she had heard some of it already, and her brain couldn't put together the pieces right.

"No. That's...not it." She shook her head violently, rubbing her eyes. I could see it in infrared. "You have it all wrong. It was a kid. Her name was Lacy Pederson. She had a disease, so they kept her in a special tent, and me and Kamara came to visit her every week, and we'd play chess together."

This story bothered Timmy just as much as Rebecca, but for different reasons. "How come I never heard about this before?"

"I...I don't know. You should remember. You were there."

"That's funny. I'm not sure how I could forget something like that."

So...now I saw what type of bricks Rebecca used to patch the hole in her mind.

A visual came to me: The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali. Like the watches in that painting, human memory seemed a fluid, elusive thing that didn't stick, but rather oozed between your fingers into the depths of oblivion.

He shook his head. "I don't remember Lacy being sick. She kicked by butt at dodge ball."

"It was a long time ago. She got better."

"Maybe that's why I forgot. What about Kamara? Since when were you two friends?"

Rebecca sighed. "I...I don't know. I can't remember either. I just know we used to be friends and now we aren't...Either that, or it was some other girl from class. I've never had a friend name Sarah. I know a Sandy. Sandy Miller. It might be her. There wasn't a Sarah, I swear."

It felt like she just stabbed me in the heart.

Everything we had been through together, good and bad...gone.

I fought back the sobbing, focusing my mind on the positive: Rebecca was still alive, and if Russ and Anne had been present to see it, they would find their child well taken care of, and even unchanged from the way they remembered her...if their memory remained intact.

Our hiding spot regained its ambient illumination. It seemed someone had repaired the `Martian chewed wires.' Still, we had little reason to go out.

Now that we had lighting, feeble as it may be, I handed Timmy a Swiss army knife, instructing him how to remove the bullet from my person. "I am trusting you with my life."

The fact I survived the operation is a testament to the implicit trust between us.

I applied a piece of metal to the wound, which naturally formed into a sort of patch, but I had no way of telling if it would be enough, or if I had been mortally wounded.

"Do you have a spaceship, Ernie?" Timmy asked.

I shook my head. "I'm afraid we are not an advanced people. But perhaps, one day, I shall be the first to develop an art, or a technology, for which we shall be known."

No one spoke for a few moments.

Rebecca sat up. "We need to get Kaycee."

Timmy sighed. "Newt. Forget about that stupid doll! It's not worth it!"

"It was a Christmas present."

The boy rolled his eyes. "From four years ago!"

"It was a good Christmas. We're not going to get any more of those."

I couldn't exactly disagree. Difficult to say if they would live that long.

Timmy frowned. "Look. It's all the way up at that crazy Chinaman's house."

"Korean," I corrected.

He ignored me. "Even if...that guy isn't out there anymore, the place is full of monsters. What if there's something worse than Scarycola up in that room?"

"Ernie can help us."

I gave Rebecca a slow respectful nod. "I can tell this doll means a great deal to you. I will help in any way I can."

I picked up the dufflebag full of weaponry, letting out a heavy sigh. "I regret that you both must come with me. None of us can afford another incident."

The children did not disagree.

The moment we crawled out of our fort, I stumbled over Brett's mutilated corpse.

Someone had moved the body.

Someone...who knew what I did.

...And where we were.