“Good,” Meeks said. “I’ve offered them our full assistance.”
“I understand,” Lysart said quietly, as he and the chief eyed each other. “We’ve already started an analysis. We didn’t know what else to do.”
“Good. I’ll be in touch again soon. Let’s help them get to the bottom of this, Lysart.” Meeks seemed to pause before adding with an air of excitement, “This could put Bateson Dermacell on the map!” Meeks hung up, and Lysart couldn’t help but stare at the cell for a moment, thinking how strange a closing statement that was to make, given the circumstances.
“Dr. Pellan?” The chief pulled him from his thoughts with a deep drawl.
Lysart looked up at the big man as he stepped toward him.
“We need your help,” the chief said.
Lysart nodded. “Yes. I believe you do.”
*
Abbie Randell waited and waited, the minutes turning into hours, but her family did not return. Not her mother, not her father, not her younger sister. She’d tried their cell phones, and when she had finally gotten through, she’d heard her mother’s ringing downstairs. Her heart nearly leapt out of her throat as she chased the sound to the ground floor, thinking her mother must be home. She found the cell sitting on the kitchen bench, buzzing and ringing with a solemn tune that bounced around the empty kitchen.
Her mother’s car was parked in the driveway, her cell phone was here in the kitchen. Why would she leave without them?
She’d tried the cells of her father and sister again, but they too rang out. She left message after message, but they never called back. Most of her friends were away at university, but she’d tried to reach those still in town. Some didn’t answer. Some were reported as missing.
Then she made the mistake of turning on the TV. The news hit her like a hard slap to the face. At first she thought it had to be a joke, but as the minutes ticked by, she realized it wasn’t. She collapsed onto the couch in her living room and stared at the staticky footage before her. Just like the TV at Mona’s Cafe, something was interfering with the reception, the screen jumping and that strange mechanical sound emanating from the speakers.
She watched the footage replaying before her, showing a massive black spaceship poised over her town. She saw the unmistakable image of the clock tower on the Victoryville Civic Hall. There was no doubt as to where this had taken place. She had lived in Victoryville all her life. She’d been to that Civic Hall many times, and that refurbished clock tower was the icon depicted on every one of the town’s promotional flyers..
After seeing the footage, she had immediately peered out her front door, searching the sky, wondering if the spaceship was still there somewhere. She recalled little Lena pointing at something in the sky . . . had she seen something? Had Abbie herself seen something? That strange haze, the mirage in the sky before she’d blinked her vision clear. Had she missed something she should’ve warned people about?
Dusk was falling swiftly, casting the streets in a yellow-brown hue, but the sky overhead still looked clear. It just didn’t seem real. It didn’t seem possible that thing had been sitting over their town just hours before.
She moved back inside to the TV and saw footage of a military blockade twenty miles outside the town. The voiceover said that they had set up a perimeter, quarantining the town from the outside world. Abbie collapsed once more onto her couch, staring helplessly. The military looked armed to the teeth, like they were on guard in a Middle Eastern conflict zone. How could this be happening just outside of Victoryville?
She turned the TV off. She couldn’t bear to watch any more. She picked up the baseball cap that sat on the couch beside her. It was her father’s lucky cap. He wore it to every Little League game he coached. She turned it about in her hands, staring at it, wondering how his interview had gone that morning. Wondering if he’d got the job. Wondering why he hadn’t come home yet. Maybe he was out celebrating with her mother. Maybe they didn’t know what was going on.
But she knew that couldn’t be true. Not after what had happened. So why hadn’t they come home to see if she was okay? To see if her sister Sarah was okay?
She got up and walked to the TV cabinet, picking up the framed photo perched atop that had been taken last Easter on their annual family holiday to the coast. Her father was wearing the very same baseball cap, her mother and sister wore the fashion outlet sunglasses they’d bought that trip, and Abbie was there with her hair wet and salty from the ocean. “The fish” her mother nicknamed her, for Abbie’s love of the water and of swimming.
She remembered taking the picture, stretching her arm out as far as it would go to fit them all in. They were squished tightly together and managed to all get in frame, albeit in fits of laughter. She could almost feel the sun on her skin and the sand beneath her toes as she looked at it. She pressed the frame against her chest then moved back to the couch and continued to wait.
The town eventually grew dark and she began to pace the house, listening to the sounds of her neighbors and strangers walking along the roadside desperately calling out the names of their loved ones. Their missing loved ones. Abbie thought briefly about joining them, but didn’t want to leave in case her family came home. So she sat there, listening, waiting. Holding that picture to her chest and rocking herself.
And still they didn’t come home.
As each minute passed, Abbie’s heart filled more and more with dread.
The flash of police car lights caught her attention and she moved to look out the window. She heard Deputy Cann’s strained voice calling out to those on the street, telling them to head indoors. She wanted to run to him and report her family as missing, but she saw many others doing the same thing too. Hopelessly, she turned away and moved back to the couch.
Josh eventually knocked on her front door. When she opened it, the first thing she saw were his sad brown eyes, before her focus was drawn to the three red welts running down his chin.
“My parents came home, but . . . we can’t find my kid brother,” he said quietly.
She stared at him as tears suddenly rimmed her own eyes.
“They haven’t shown?” he asked her. “Your family?”
She shook her head as a tear fell down her cheek. She wiped it away. Josh stared back at her for a moment as though unsure what to do. They’d only just met a day ago, standing in line at Mona’s Cafe. Or maybe it was two days ago. She wasn’t sure any more.
The thought caused more tears to course down her cheeks.
Josh reached forward somewhat awkwardly, and pulled her into a hug. She found herself clinging to him.
“What happened to us?” she whispered into his shoulder.
“I don’t know,” he whispered back.
*
Richard had been relieved when he’d finally gotten access to the outside world. His first call had been to Harry Dean, his editor at CNN.
“Harry Dean’s office,” the familiar voice of Kelly, his assistant, answered.
“Kelly, hi. It’s Richard Keene.”
“Richard!” she said anxiously. “Oh my God, are you alright? We’ve been so worried! Are you still in Victoryville?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Is Harry about?”
“I’ll put you straight through.”
“Richard!” Harry answered abruptly, his voice suggesting too many years of smoking cigarettes. “Where the hell are you?”
“Victoryville.”
“Jesus Christ! Are you alright, kid?” Harry often called him “kid”, but it didn’t bother Richard. Harry had been his boss and mentor for a long time now.
“I’m fine. I’m okay,” he said.
“Lisa and Benny, too?”
Richard paused a moment, clutching the phone tighter. “I can’t find them, Harry.”
“What do you mean? You think maybe they got out before it happened?”
“No.” Richard tried hard to fight the awful feeling in his gut. “Harry .
. . a lot of people seem to be missing.”
“Missing?”
“Some of us woke up and . . . the rest were just gone.”
“What do you mean you woke up?”
“We blacked out. Everyone left here in town, blacked out. And when we woke, everyone else was gone.”
A moment of silence passed before Harry whispered, “Holy shit.”
“I don’t know what’s going on. I saw on the news, the military has the town surrounded.”
“Yeah. Look, don’t worry. We’ll get you out of there as soon as we can. Just sit tight and stay calm.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Listen, kid, I know you’ve just been through the wringer, but are you up to filing a report? Over the phone if need be. The world is going to want to hear what’s going on in there.”
Richard nodded to himself. He’d been expecting this. It’s what he did for a living, after all. “Of course.” He moved over to his laptop to check the internet connection. It was up and running again. “I have Benny’s camera,” he said, moving his eyes over to where it now lay on his bed. He paused a moment, swallowing the lump threatening to block his throat. “I’ll send something through.”
“Okay. Good. Just stay safe. We’ll get you out of there.”
“Yeah.”
“You want me to call your folks? Let them know you’re okay.”
“No, I’ll call them now. But, Benny and Lisa . . .”
He heard Harry sigh heavily down the phone. “I’ll call their families. You just get me that report. Their families will want to know what’s happening.”
“I’ll send something through soon.”
“Thanks, kid. You hang in there, alright. And stay sharp! This is the biggest goddamn story there’s ever been.”
*
Stanley Barrick reentered the busy ops room with his aide, Colin, following close behind. With them, was Dr. Rita Hogarth, Epidemic Intelligence Service officer from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, brought in to help with the “stripe” situation. They joined the others at the briefing table and the necessary introductions were made.
“What’s the latest?”
“It’s strange,” Wattowski said, shaking her head. “Even though our systems went down, even though we couldn’t track or trace anything, now our systems are up and all the data is here.” She motioned to the monitor in front of her.
“What do you mean?” Barrick asked, studying the display of graphs. “You’ve located the ship?”
“No. We’ve still got nothing on the ship. But it . . .” She held both hands up as though trying to explain the size of a fish that got away, “it blocked us from accessing anything while it was here, yet somehow our systems still recorded everything. It’s like it froze our access, locked us out of our own systems, but it didn’t hinder the actual systems from working. As soon as it was gone, it gave us that access back. It’s all here. We have atmospheric readings, radar and heat signatures. We have an absolute wealth of data flowing through.”
“On their ship?”
“Not the ship per se, but the effect of it on our environment. Which, in turn, we can use to gather some information on their ship. We have temperature spikes recorded, we have increased wind readings, we have metallic elements detected in air samples, all recorded from the nearest weather station, just outside of Victoryville.”
“So what does that mean?”
“It means . . . well, I don’t know what it means exactly. It will take us hours, days, to analyze this information, but it’s fascinating. Whatever they are, they’re not scared of us figuring out who they are. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have allowed us to access this information.”
“Maybe it was a flaw in their system?” Colonel Levin suggested. “They could block us temporarily, but not stop the systems recording or prevent our eventual access once they’d gone.”
“No.” The nearby technician in the Metallica T-shirt spoke up. “There’s no flaw in their system.” He tapped his screen. “I think they purposely let us gather data on them. They just didn’t want us to have it while they were here,” he shrugged, “in case we turned out to be as advanced as them and somehow used it against them. But I’ll tell you something . . . during those twenty-four hours, we had a massive spike in data download, concentrated right there in the Victoryville area.”
“What’s your name?” Stanley asked.
“Er, it’s Gavin Taylor, sir.”
“So, what does that mean, Gavin?” Stanley asked.
The technician looked back at him. “They hooked into our systems, all of them. And they downloaded the data.”
“What data?”
The technician looked back at his screen. “According to those figures, I’d say everything we had. Everything imaginable they could get their hands on. If they have hands, that is.”
Wattowski nodded in thought. “They’ve gathered data on us too, then. They’ve given us a fair exchange.”
“A fair exchange?” Levin seemed to disagree. “They have everything on us and we have, what? A temperature spike?”
Stanley stared at them all for a moment.
“Details,” he told them, “I need details. Get analyzing now.” He turned back to Dr. Hogarth. “Set yourself up at whatever desk you can find. Colin here,” he pointed to his aide, “will get you whatever you need.”
“Thank you,” she said, then moved toward a table, trailing her roller suitcase behind her.
*
Abbie locked up her house, but left the lights on in hope. She walked across the road with Josh to his house, at his insistence. She was torn about leaving her home, but she didn’t want to be alone either. The thought of that spaceship still being there somewhere . . . besides, it was only across the street, she told herself. Josh seemed friendly.
When Abbie entered the Chalmer home, she saw his parents look up expectantly, perhaps hoping it was their missing child returning. Josh’s father had the marks on his face, but his mother’s face was clear of them.
“Mom, Dad,” Josh introduced them, motioning to each, “this is Abbie Randell.”
His mother stepped forward, giving a sad, nervous smile. “Hi, Abbie. I’m Karen.”
“Hi.” Abbie managed a smile.
“Your parents? Sister?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at the doorway.
Abbie just shook her head, unable to get her mouth to move.
“Oh,” Karen’s shoulders slumped sadly. “I—I met your mother the other week. She was so lovely.” She quickly caught herself. “Is lovely.”
Josh’s father threw Karen a glance at her slip-up, then gave Abbie a nod. “Nice to meet you, Abbie. I’m Peter. Do you have any other family in town?”
“No,” she said quietly. “My parents moved out from California before I was born. They’re all back there.”
“Friends?”
“Most are away at university. The ones that were still here aren’t answering my calls.”
Peter eyed her sympathetically. Abbie managed a smile, trying to fight the pull to return to the comfort of her home.
“Have you heard anything new?” Karen asked with hopeful eyes. She motioned to the TV. “Reception is cutting in and out. There seems to be some sort of interference.”
Abbie looked at the fuzzing, twitching screen. “I have the same problem at my house.”
“There’s talk that it might still be here somewhere,” Karen said quietly. The silence sat thickly around them for a moment, before Peter touched his wife’s arm and motioned for her to sit.
Josh motioned for Abbie to do the same, and they all sat down on the chairs in the living room.
“They don’t seem to know what it was,” Karen said, eyes shining with tears. “The ship. It froze everything, apparently. The satellites. The military planes crashed trying to get near it. They couldn’t do anything, but watch. Those on the outside. They just sat there and watched.”
“Josh,” Peter scolded gently.
Karen looked at her husband, then at Abbie again, “No one seems to know what to do,” she whispered. “They had to suspend trading on the stock market to avoid a crash. Everyone’s panicking. Some people in nearby towns are packing up and running away from us. Meanwhile, we’re trapped in here. They’re not letting anyone out.”
“How do people just disappear?” Josh asked, shaking his head. “There’s gotta be hundreds, thousands of them.”
“Some are saying this might be the end of the world,” Karen said, staring at the TV blankly, before looking back at Abbie. “But if this is the end, why are some of us still here?”
An awful silence suffocated the room.
*
Victoryville mayor, Michael Russo, sat in the office of his apartment and dialed into the conference call. He’d just spoken with the state’s governor, and was now connecting to a crisis meeting of the Victoryville Council and the Police Department. Given the chaos that had been thrust upon them, everyone had, in the first several hours, been busy assessing their personal collateral damage. Now it was time to widen the scope and deal with the town’s.
Like many, it would seem, Russo had suffered loss. His partner of eight years, Nicola, was among the missing. After the ceremony, he’d left her shopping while he headed back to his office to tidy up some loose ends. When she hadn’t returned home after “the Occurrence”, he’d tried to track her down but couldn’t find her. The jeweler she worked for hadn’t seen her, nor the salon she regularly attended. She simply disappeared during the blackout. Russo wasn’t sure how to deal with that. He wasn’t sure how to deal with any of it.
Aliens . . .
He squeezed his eyes closed as though trying to erase the image of that black ship hovering over the town; the memory of waking up slumped over his desk. Opening his eyes again, he glanced around his apartment’s study. The words fight or flight raced through his mind as he tried to decide what to do. The truth was, he was doing a little of both. He was throwing himself into work in the hope of regaining some control over this craziness, but also to distract himself from thinking of Nicola.
The Time of the Stripes Page 5
