He knew that TARA STYLE — always fully capitalised — was the name of a series of stores aimed at a young, price-conscious crowd. Its upmarket and hair-raisingly expensive counterpart, TARA COUTURE, did have a presence in Colorado but lay to the south in Colorado Springs, with other locations in more traditional fashion capitals such as Paris and London.
Given Tara’s level of fame and the depth of her recent association with Colorado, it made sense for there to be a TARA STYLE outlet within the building where Colorado met the world in the same way it made sense for a Scottish airport to contain stores selling expensive tweed and whisky or for a Cuban one to contain stores full of rum and cigars.
The same logic held for the alien-themed gift shop that was also rapidly emptying before Dan’s eyes. Its window displayed all kinds of memorabilia and trinkets, from posters of the drive-in to full-size replicas of the ‘Welcome to Birchwood: Proud Home of Dan McCarthy’ sign that would greet any tourists who made their way towards the small and once-unknown town whenever it wasn’t closed off to incoming traffic.
The walk passed without incident and Dan was sitting in Clark’s car within a few minutes. Dan and Emma, quickly settling in the back seat, stuck to their plan of not telling Clark anything until they got home. This was less about keeping his mind focused on the road than it was about Dan’s desire to tell Henry and Tara at the same time; after almost two years of secrets and lies, all he wanted was for his close friends and family — his trusted circle, his team — to be on the same page whenever possible.
“How are you guys doing?” Clark asked, deliberately low-key in his greeting.
“Glad to be home,” Emma replied. “Where’s Tara? I thought she might have fancied coming along for the ride to get her out of the house.”
Clark turned the ignition to start the engine. “She’s still sleeping off last night,” he said, not laughing.
“Last night? I thought everything was closed and you were both staying in?”
“Yeah… that doesn’t exactly stop her from going to town these days,” Clark shrugged. “It was the same at the grill the other night. She’s in that kind of ‘drinking to feel better’ zone right now, you know? Not drinking to have more fun. I’ve been staying at your place for the last few nights because she didn’t want to be alone, and she usually lives alone so it’s not like she’s not used to it. You know her better than me, but… I dunno, this seems like it’s maybe more than just feeling down about a guy.”
Emma sighed, almost sorry she’d asked but naturally concerned. “They did just break up two weeks ago,” she said, “and she did find out he was cheating when Blitz News ran the story. But she seemed to be getting over it before we left. She forced us not to cancel our trip and said she’d be fine staying in Birchwood as long as you’d be around, and it sounds like you have been.”
“I have,” Clark nodded. “And I don’t want you to think it’s worse than it is or anything. I mean, she’s okay… but I’m glad you guys are home earlier than planned. You know, ignoring everything else that’s happening right now and why you’re home early. I think she needs you.”
Emma lifted her phone from her pocket. “I’ll tell her we’re on the way home,” she said, getting right to the texting.
Dan, silent in the seat behind Clark, looked out of the window and saw a huge TARA COUTURE billboard featuring Hollywood A-lister Kaitlyn Judd in a subtly pinstriped power suit.
Tara was certainly doing okay, but Dan knew that didn’t mean anything if she wasn’t feeling okay.
Clark seemed to respect Dan’s tired silence for the rest of the drive, which passed fairly quickly thanks to Sunday’s typical lack of late-morning traffic.
After lounging in thought most of the way, Dan sat up straight when there were only a few minutes to go.
He looked out with a head full of competing memories as he saw the barely visible turn towards Richard Walker’s old place at Stevenson Farm, the site of so many incredible extraterrestrial moments that it would have been a tourist destination rivalling the drive-in if anyone other than the three people in the car and Tara knew about them. Phil Norris now owned the place having bought it at auction after Walker’s death, and they still saw no reason to complicate Phil’s life and ruin his love affair with Stevenson Farm by telling him which political titan used to live in the cottage or which interplanetary travellers had made more than a single landing in its adjacent cornfield.
Next came the road sign, which was always when the real feeling of being home kicked in. A heavy police presence surrounded the drive-in, and a manned roadblock remained in place on the way to the McCarthys’ residential area of town. The attending officers saw Clark’s car approaching and raised the barrier in good time, with no need for him to draw to a full stop. He raised a hand in appreciation and continued on.
A minute or so later, the car did draw to a stop as he pulled into the driveway.
“Uh, the door’s not opening,” Dan said in surprise as he tried to get out. He glanced forward to Clark and saw his expression and body language turn in a decidedly negative direction.
“So…” Clark said, huffing out the word. “Were you ever planning to tell me about this goddamn message you got on Friday night, or are we back to keeping secrets?”
“When the hell did I ever keep a secret from you?” Dan snapped, the words pouring out of his mouth at twice the normal rate. “And what are you even talking about, the Kloster letter way back at the start? Okay… one thing, for a few days, when you were on another continent and I didn’t want to mention it over the phone. That’s your beef?”
“I need to know these things, Dan,” Clark said, his tone one of concern rather than anger.
“Open the door right now or I’m smashing my way out,” Dan threatened, emptily and emotionally, from a position of frustration and exhaustion.
Clark pressed the button to unlock the passenger doors and folded his arms in annoyance as Dan wasted no time in getting out.
“How do you know?” Emma asked, perfectly calm despite the heated exchange and the surprising question that kicked it off. “I mean, obviously we were going to tell you as soon as we got inside, but how the hell do you already know?”
Clark opened his own door, answering as he stepped out. “Godfrey told everyone at the GCC, which meant Timo’s three delegates heard. Alessandro called him as soon as he could and he called me. Simple as that.”
Dan, having lifted out his suitcase, noticed Clark getting out of the car but hurried into the house without a backwards glance.
“You need to tell me these things!” Clark yelled, striding forward in pursuit.
Emma intercepted him at the door and stood directly in front of him. “Clark, give him a break,” she hissed under her breath, surprising him with the insistence of her tone. “You don’t have a clue where we’ve been or the weight that’s on his shoulders. There are no more secrets — okay? — but the last person we need any more bullshit from is you. Let him breathe.”
“If something happens, I need to know,” Clark reiterated. “He’s my brother!”
“And he needs you; of course he does. But right now? Well, right now I need you to bring Mr Byrd across the street and see if you can get hold of Phil while you’re at it. Dan wants to tell everyone at once.”
“Tara and my dad already know, too,” Clark said.
Emma shook her head. “None of you know everything…”
V minus 80
Manula Residence
Zanzibar, Tanzania
“Daaaaad,” Hassan Manula’s six-year-old son yelled from the hallway.
Hassan had heard the doorbell and thought nothing of it, but the tone of this call sent a shiver down his spine. His son didn’t sound frightened, as such, but he definitely didn’t sound like he was looking at someone he knew.
The day so far had been the strangest and least comfortable of Hassan’s life, beginning with his accidental discovery of an enormous and apparently alien object and co
ntinuing for far too long with a series of tense conversations with all kinds of law enforcement officers and ELF officials. The latter had told him he’d done all that was needed of him and could return home safe in the knowledge that he would be well looked after for having taken the discovery to the police rather than attempt to make himself famous in the media.
Fame was the last thing in the world Hassan Manula desired, and the second-last was any more attention from the agents. His son’s tone planted a seed of fear in his mind that those very agents were here, and upon reaching the hallway his eyes confirmed as much.
“Mr Manula,” said an unfamiliar man in an ELF blazer. He looked and sounded local and was flanked by two colleagues, both of whom were Chinese and both of whom had been present at the Sunrise Palace Resort during Hassan’s initial questioning. They had been cordial enough with Hassan on that occasion, but their presence at his family home was as welcome as an earthquake.
“What do you want from me?” he asked, his voice and legs shaking. “I told you everything. You said this was over. What do you need?”
The local official smiled, not perturbed by words which were clearly coming from a place of concern rather than recalcitrance. “I don’t need anything,” he said gently. “But you will have to come with us for a while, because Ding Ziyang would very much like to see you.”
V minus 79
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
When Dan entered his old family home, next door to the house he’d shared with Emma for the past year, the first person he saw wasn’t Tara and it wasn’t his father Henry. Instead, and very surprisingly, it was Timo Fiore.
The Italian billionaire and GCC associate member, a great friend of the family, beamed a smile that Dan couldn’t quite understand given the political instability swirling around the organisation Timo was so deeply involved in.
“They’re back,” Timo beamed, his familiar soft accent tinging the words. “And this time they visited you at my lake house! Tell me, can I claim contact by association?”
Dan couldn’t help but laugh, despite still not knowing why Timo was so positive about it all. The man’s lifelong interest in all things extraterrestrial comfortably predated the recent explosion of interest, as evidenced by his massive investment in SETI observatories around the world, and it slowly struck Dan that Timo was simply excited by the Messengers’ return in a way that he himself might have been had he not been seized by shadowy agents in the immediate aftermath.
Had there been no Zanzibar triangle to complicate things, Dan figured he might have already been over his unceremonious detention and experiencing an excited state of mind not unlike Timo’s. But there was a Zanzibar triangle and things were — again — stomach-churningly complicated.
“It’s good to see you,” was all Dan said to Timo, but he truly meant it; after the life-threatening injuries the Italian had sustained in a terrorist attack aimed at halting his efforts to save the world from Il Diavolo, it would always be good to see Timo.
“What about me?” a voice asked from the kitchen, catching Dan’s attention. He turned and saw Tara Ford, looking as bright as a daisy as she stood in the doorway, all teeth and eyes like the world was perfect. She opened her arms, exaggeratedly wide, and walked towards him.
“Are you doing okay?” Dan asked, worried about her having heard what Emma and Clark were talking about in the car.
Tara pulled back and raised her eyebrows. “Am I doing okay? I heard about Friday night, mister. Are you doing okay?”
“I’m fine,” he replied unconvincingly. “But do you know where my dad is? I want to get everyone together.
“He’s with Phil,” Tara said, pointing towards the back of the house. “Outside.”
Emma emerged through the front door with her suitcase moments later and put it down as soon as she saw Tara.
Tara didn’t move towards her like she had to Dan, always more reluctant to show her big sister that she needed her, but her eyes gave away how good it was to be reunited.
Emma did the walking and hugged Tara tightly before placing a hand on her cheek and looking into her eyes, the visual resembling a mother checking a fallen child for injuries more than anything else. “Are you okay?” she asked. “And it’s okay to say no.”
“What the hell did Clark tell you guys?” Tara laughed, amused by their unusually concerned attention. She pointed a finger at herself and ran it up and down. “Because I know you’re not about to stand there and tell me I don’t look okay…”
It was Emma’s turn to laugh now. “Can you believe I was almost starting to miss you?” she said, happily convinced by Tara’s faux narcissism that her apparent malaise had been a temporary one after all.
Clark and Mr Byrd entered soon after Emma. “Phil’s already here with Dad, out back,” Clark announced, continuing straight through the house to get them. “Mr Byrd doesn’t know anything at all about Friday, by the way. He wasn’t here when Timo told us.”
Mr Byrd, the loyal neighbour who had been there for Dan during the earliest stages of the IDA leak when no one else could be, glanced around at the faces in the increasingly crowded living room in an effort to gauge whether the news he didn’t know was good or bad.
“Well…” he said in his usual slow, gentle tone, “I do know they found a triangle on a beach.”
As soon as Clark opened the back door, Dan heard rapid and excited footsteps under the laughter that followed Mr Byrd’s comment. Rooster, the affectionate spaniel Dan had rescued from Richard Walker’s place after the Messengers took Walker for the last time, raced through the kitchen and into the living room as quickly as his old legs would carry him. He was more excited to see Dan than anyone, but he stopped very suddenly just a few feet away.
Dan crouched to the ground. “It’s okay, boy… they’re gone. It’s just me.” He held out a hand which Rooster timidly inched towards. He was fully relaxed and nuzzling into Dan by the time Henry and Phil appeared, but his initial reluctance had given Mr Byrd an idea of what he was about to hear; ever since Dan played the old footage from Lolo National Forest at the drive in on Contact Day, Rooster’s ability to sense the recent presence of the Messengers was globally renowned. Indeed, government agents and researchers had performed all kinds of non-invasive tests on Rooster since then, and he had even gone along to some of Dan’s monthly check-ups for some scans of his own.
“Okay,” Clark boomed, clapping his hands together. “Dan, we’re all here. Spit it out.”
V minus 78
Gravesen Hotel
Manhattan, New York
“Billy, Billy!” a slew of reporters called as they surrounded Billy Kendrick on the sidewalk outside the New York Gravesen.
The only media personnel who ever irritated Billy were those who got physical and invaded his personal space, and fortunately they were few and far between. The sheer size of this pack, however, was a great annoyance in and of itself.
“I’m just trying to get to my cab,” the usually affable alien expert said in an impatient tone. “You’ll hear from me on Focus 20/20 tonight… can’t you wait a few hours? That’s if I can get to the damn studio through this rabble.”
Amid the hustle and bustle, which did grow increasingly physical as Billy neared his cab and the swarm of photographers fought for one final shot, he heard a particularly loud question about the unconfirmed rumours that Dan McCarthy might also be appearing on the show.
“Where do you people even get these rumours?” Billy guffawed. “Of course he’s not! Don’t get me wrong, it would be wonderful if Dan felt like he could make these kinds of appearances, because we’d all love to hear from him… but do you cockroaches really wonder why he has to keep his head down? Look at you all, and I’m no one! Try being Dan for five minutes!”
V minus 77
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
Before opening his mouth to begin an uncomfortable and potentially divisive explanation of what he
had experienced on Thursday night, Dan looked around the room and found his eyes settling on the door to the basement. It was inaccessible for Henry’s wheelchair so out of the question as a secure discussion area at the moment, but memories of the previous year rattled through his mind.
“How long would it take to fully shield my old basement again?” he asked Phil, in reference to the signal-blocking technology the privacy-conscious prepper had installed during the basement conversion and then removed after Contact Day when Dan realised that his borderline obsessive paranoia was no longer necessary.
Phil gave it a few seconds of thought then turned his palms up in a slow shrug. “The actual work? Eight, ten hours. Sourcing everything we’d need? At least a few days. But I’ll level with you Dan: that shielding gave you peace of mind more than anything else. The walls down there are thick as hell and they’re under the ground. No one is eavesdropping on you in the basement so long as you have this sealed door and so long as you start keeping all the tech out of there again like you used to. I could hook up the old security centre today if you want it, with feeds from all over town. But in terms of the shielding, the only protection it gave you that you can’t get from basic common-sense security practices was the protection against EMPs. If you’re worried about that, I can get a Faraday cage for your computer and we can hard-wire a secure connection like you used to have.”
Dan rubbed his chin in deep thought. “And next door? We would just need to keep digital devices out and get a better door like I have here, and then Emma’s basement… our basement, I mean… would be totally secure too?” He quickly glanced at Emma. “If you’re okay with that?”
The Final Call Page 9
