Alien Proliferation

horrible monster hanging up there waiting to pounce.”
    “I’m not looking under the bed,” Reader said with a laugh.
    We were both humans. We both lifted our feet up. “Let’s scoot into the middle of the bed.”
    He scooted without argument and helped me move. The Poofs got on either side of us. “Jeff’s going to love this when he gets home. Hope he doesn’t kill me.”
    I shook my head. “He’ll understand.” I hoped. Because I wasn’t letting Reader leave me now that he was here.
    He knew it, too. He shifted so I could lean my back against his side. “Better?” He kissed the back of my head. Poofikins cuddled next to us so we could both lean into it. Harlie remained on guard. Neither Poof had growled at all, which was unusual in a danger situation.
    “Yeah. Still freaked out, just not as freaked since you’re here.”
    “That’s my job, at least until Jeff gets back.” He made a few more phone calls while I went in and out of dreamland. I heard him confirm that everyone was all right in Dulce, run checks of all our other U.S. Bases, then call the Euro team. “Well,” he said as he hung up, “I don’t think the teams not meeting up with Jeff is related to this. They’re there and they’re fine, and they did get the orders from Gladys. But since Amy wasn’t where she was supposed to be, neither were Jeff and Christopher, so the Euro teams had to find them. They’re heading back soon.”
    “Good. You won’t leave until they’re back, right?”
    “Right.” He moved his arm and wrapped it around my shoulders, so I could lean my chin on his arm. We’d gotten used to this position since my stomach had gotten huge. It let him hold me in a nonsexual way, support my back, and comfort me all at the same time. Jeff occasionally had to be reminded that Reader was gay, but otherwise he was okay with it.
    Leaned my chin, felt sleepy, closed eyes. “Everything’s okay then?”
    “Yeah. Well, as far as we can tell. If we don’t count mysterious knocking that freaked out the entire population.”
    I opened my eyes. “James? Doesn’t that seem . . . odd?”
    “We passed odd a while ago.”
    “No, I mean that everyone was freaked out? Me, I can understand. You and Paul because I was on the phone with you, sure. But Richard? Everyone else? You said no one answered their doors, right?”
    “Right.” I could tell by the way he said it he was on the same wavelength I was now. “Everyone Paul talked to said the knocking frightened them, or similar, and they wouldn’t answer the door.”
    “That’s beyond unusual. I mean, there are plenty of people who would open the door. All of Airborne, for starters. My flyboys wouldn’t be thrown by someone knocking in the middle of the night.”
    “But they were. Paul checked with high-level personnel first. All of them felt the same as us: It’s creepy, it’s scary, it’s wrong, don’t open the door.”
    “But you did.”
    “Babe, you were either in agony or being attacked. Yeah, I opened the door.”
    Something was tickling in my mind. “Security was down here. At least the first contingent. I heard something, scuffling, and the knocking stopped for a little bit, then started up, stronger.”
    “Security, all of them, are back at the main command center, Level Three.”
    “So whatever knocked them out put them back there. Why?”
    “No idea.”
    “More to the point, why weren’t you knocked out and put back, either into your room or into the Security command center?”
    “Maybe it was a group hallucination?”
    “I point you back to the sleeping Security team.” A thought occurred. Decided to test it. “Which, I have to say, puts us all in terrible danger. And means that Jeff could have trouble getting back.”
    The com went live. “Commander Martini, are you all right?”
    “Yeah, Gladys, I’m okay.”
    “Is Captain Reader with you?”
    “Yes.” It always cracked me up to hear someone use Reader’s official A-C title. He never used it unless he had to, and no one on Alpha ever referred to him that way, but because we were a military unit, in that sense, we all needed military-type titles. And he was our best pilot, even better than my flyboys, which, considering they were Top Gun trained, was saying a lot.
    “Security is back up and live, running complete facility scans.”
    “Thanks, Gladys. Glad you and the rest of the team are okay.” One more test. “James, maybe you should leave.” The baby kicked, hard. I