Cascade Collection

by Phil Maxey

  Even at this speed, it was obvious the creature would make it before them. Zach started to decrease speed, knowing that hitting the breaks wouldn’t stop them from hitting it anyway, but he had to try.

  “Wait, it’s stopping,” said Michael.

  They all watched the creature, a few yards from the white-gray highway, stop and examine the ice below its cumbersome mass. Zach increased the speed again and all three vehicles sped past. They all let out a sigh of relief.

  An hour later the sun was low, and the light even less. The convoy entered a dusty town of cattle markets and wide tree lined roads.

  “We’ll find somewhere in this town, for the night. Over,” said Zach on his radio.

  After driving around, a large mock Victorian building caught Abbey’s eye, and they drove up to its covered front doors, passing over a muddy snow covered lawn. A rusting plaque on a brick column near its entrance announced that it was a former school.

  The habitants of the Humvee got out and walked up to a large piece of metal sheeting that was partially covering up the old paint worn doors. “Reckon this placed was unused even before the Cascade,” said Zach sliding his hands over the ice-cold metallic surface.

  Michael looked up at the boarded up windows. “If there’s any E.L.F’s in here they would probably be scared off by the ghosts.”

  Bass and four soldiers jumped off the bus and joined them near the entrance.

  “Might be a good idea to skirt the perimeter of the building, see what’s around,” said Zach to Bass, who ordered two soldiers to do just that.

  Jacks jumped down from the second bus and approached Zach. “I’ll join them.”

  Bass and Zach approached the rust chipped metal sheet, and grabbed the edges carefully. They then pulled and it came away with a screeching sound, and then a pop as the old screws that were keeping it in place failed.

  Behind were two impressive weathered worn doors from another century, with solid looking dark iron handles. Zach took hold of one and pushed forward. The door opened with a creaking sound and dust fell from its top.

  Outside the sun was now on the verge of being obsolete, and the hall they all cautiously walked into, was full of shadows and a slight smell of damp. Multiple flashlights started up, and beams explored the scarred walls and tiled floor around them. They were standing in a large hallway, with a wide staircase directly in front of them that wound its way up to a second floor. To their left and right open doors revealed large rooms that were used as classrooms.

  “I’ll check upstairs,” said Fiona.

  Cal walked with her. “I’ll help.”

  Zach, Abbey and Michael walked into the right classroom. A few chairs sat up against pale yellow walls, and some rotten wooden desks sat in the middle of the room. Two white wooden shelving units stood against the far wall with a few faded books with dark patches on them.

  Zach looked at the boarded up windows. “Well it’s not much, but it looks secure. Let’s get everyone inside.”

  Soon everyone was divided up into the two front rooms, and blankets and soft clothing was put down to create makeshift beds. The upstairs had more empty rooms but Zach wanted everyone on the ground floor, close by. They lit candles but kept them against the far walls away from the windows in case any light escaped, highlighting their location. The desks were covered by a large sheet, which became a rudimentary location to cook, with a small gas stove. After an hour, hot food was being served. This warmed the members of the group, but not enough for anyone to remove any of the multiple layers of clothing they had on, and a number of the children were buried under piles of blankets and woolen winter hats.

  Michael watched Hanna huddled with Megan from across the room, both were sipping on a cup of hot soup. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small plastic cat, with a metal chain dangling from it. He rolled it over in his fingers, remembering his own cat from when he was a child. Buzz was his name, from a cartoon character he loved. Standing he walked the short distance, and stood in front of Hanna.

  Michael held out the orange feline figurine. “I know it’s a few days late but I thought Megan might like this as a Christmas present.”

  Megan’s eyes immediately lit up, and her hand reached for it.

  “I think it’s a car air freshener or something.”

  Hanna took it and held it to her nose. “Riecht nach Apfel.” She smiled and gave it to Megan who also sniffed it.

  “What do you say to the nice man?”

  Megan looked confused.

  “In English.”

  Megan looked up at Michael. “Thank you.”

  Michael smiled. “You’re welcome.” He then went to turn and walk away.

  “You can sit here if you want. We are closer to the candles so I think warmer.”

  Michael smiled again but this time not only on the outside.

  Zach and Abbey sat in one of the corners, of the high ceilinged rooms. A thick blanket covering their legs, on top of which laid a number of maps that Zach had accumulated.

  “I wonder how the others are doing?” said Abbey between bites of a candy bar.

  “The other convoy?”

  “Yes.”

  Zach sighed. “They have Raj, so that’s something on their side. But if they have kept taking loses like they had been, then there won’t be many making it back to Bravo. The council is going to see it as Trow’s failure.”

  She held his hand.

  “They are probably a day ahead, but if we leave at first light tomorrow, we can make it to Jims place around sundown, and then if we do the same again the following day we should make it to Roswell before them,” he gave a hopeful smile. “That’s the plan anyway.”

  “We’ll make it.”

  In the other room, Cal sat with Fiona. This was the colder of the two rooms as it had less people, despite Rob’s best efforts to light as many candles as he could find.

  “Try not to burn this place down, Rob,” Fiona half joked. Bass chuckled, then coughed under a blanket in the corner.

  Jacks sat alone in the same room as Fiona and the rest, but some distance from everyone. He was looking forward to getting to Roswell and then back home to Bravo, this mission had been harder than he had imagined.

  As the temperature dropped outside, heavy snow started to land on the old school, masking its heat signature from glowing eyes in the dark.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Despite a lot of protest from sleepy children, they were back on the road just as the sun peeked over the distant mist covered mountains. Irene walked up the bus aisle confidently knowing where the handholds were, handing out chips, nuts and pieces of bread for a ‘breakfast on the go’ as Zach put it.

  She got level with the seat where Sam and Isaiah where sitting. “Nuts, Chips or piece of bread?”

  “Hmmm” Sam sat looking at the items in a small bag Irene was carrying, she reached in, grabbing a small bag of nuts and tossed them at him, hitting him in the nose, they then fell in his lap. Isaiah laughed.

  “Hey,” exclaimed Sam.

  “Do you not see, I’m walking up the aisle of a moving vehicle, with one hand carrying a bag, and the other holding onto what I can.”

  “Okay…” said Sam looking like a scolded child.

  Isaiah leaned forward. “I’ll take some of the bread.”

  Irene handed Isaiah the bread and continued her walk to the end of the bus, smiling.

  After moving for an hour along nondescript highways, they approached another large lake. This one was not as frozen as the last, but still had a number of large E.L.F’s thrashing around in it.

  Fiona looked closely at the map. “The road goes pretty close to it. If whatever those things are, find us attractive, they could be across that water onto the road quicker than we can pass.”

  Zach looked to his left.

  “What is it?” asked Abbey.

  He clicked on the radio. “Rob, Greggs, you’re sat higher than I am, what’s the terrain look like on the left of us
? Over.”

  A moment of silence was replaced with Rob’s voice. “There are some small desert bushes, and the occasional ice patch, but apart from that looks pretty flat. Over.” Greggs agreed.

  Zach slowed the convoy down. “Okay let’s try getting off the road, we’ll move about two hundred yards away from it, and once we are passed the lake, move back on. Over.”

  Rob and Greggs agreed, and Zach slowly drove the Humvee onto the uneven desert surface. The inhabitants of all vehicles jumped in their seats as the convoy moved away from the lake.

  Michael waved as he was shunted up and down in his seat behind Abbey. “Sayonara, weird lake creatures.”

  Soon they were back on the highway, passing through small towns and eventually onto a three-lane highway heading southeast. The distant mountains grew ever closer as the hours progressed, until the highway was cutting through them.

  A silence had descended inside the Humvee, as Zach, Abbey, Fiona and Michael were each lost in their own thoughts.

  “Are we going to have a conversation about Cal?” said Fiona to no one in particular.

  No one replied, and Michael slid his hand across the back of his neck.

  “I don’t know what it is, but something’s changed in him,” said Fiona.

  Michael frowned and adjusted where his rifle was sitting next to him. “He killed a man, of course he’s changed.”

  “No, that was just a symptom of what was already happening to him. That guy was just a wrong place wrong time kind of thing,” she looked at Zach and Abbey who remained silent in the front. “You two don’t have an opinion?”

  Zach sighed. “None of us really know what being in the hole in New Mexico did to us, how it changed us. And then…everything out here, how that changed.” Zach struggled to find the right words. “We just need to keep an eye on him, but beyond that…”

  “So we just give up on him?” responded Fiona suppressing her anger.

  “He didn’t say that,” said Abbey. “But what do you want us to do?”

  “There’s something going on with him, something more than just him being locked up for all these years... something connected with how the world changed.”

  Abbey knew what was about to be said, but tried to ignore the obvious direction the conversation was going in anyway.

  “I mean, how… why did he have your hacker name, carved into his forehead? That’s got to mean something. And the weird ass space picture he painted in the old warehouse.”

  Michael looked at Fiona. “What now?”

  “Fiona, is talking about this stuff really going to help us or him?”

  Ignoring Michael’s question, she continued answering Zach. “Who knows but we owe him to try, he’s one of us. There’s something, here, something we need to try and understand. It goes beyond our own bullshit.”

  Silence returned to the cab of the Humvee.

  Thoughts of Abbey’s past life danced in her mind. That night when the air was thick and the heavens angry at the earth. As they sped along, weaving left and right past sandy cliffs, she could taste the anger she had as she signed back into her government account with the computer in her apartment, and used passwords that she shouldn’t have had. And the lines of code she needed to write on the fly, to circumvent security that even the best of her colleagues would have had trouble breaking. And the tiny message she encrypted into the malware that she installed in the National Security agency’s network of secret satellites.

  “The earth needs a reset.”

  In her mind, she saw her fingers typing the words, and then after a deep breath and a final gulp of a head-dizzying beverage, hitting the enter key to send her revenge on its way into the myriad of networked systems.

  All the time that she was incarcerated she never gave her actions a second thought, she was glad she did what she did. But after Cal grabbed her in the dark lobby of the ski lodge and told her a name she knew all too well, she started to feel an emotion that was new to her. Guilt.

  As the sun reached a point directly overhead, they passed through a pleasant town, with broadly laid out stores with welcoming signs that promised adventure.

  On the bus, Jacob flicked through the pages of his notebook, until he stopped on the quick sketch he did back at the warehouse a few days before. He then went forward a few pages and looked at the notes he took when he overheard Travis and Corey talking about what their astronomical instrument had captured, and that one of their group was responsible for repositioning the telescope. He then skipped back a number of pages. On the small lined paper was a rough sketch Jacob did of Cal’s forehead and the words “Arclight” scratched into it. Each sketch, each scrawled passage of text he had been writing down over the past week was a piece of a large puzzle, he was sure of that. And he was fairly certain of what the answer was, even if it did veer into the realm of science fiction. He then moved to the last page he had written something. The word ‘Aliens’ underlined twice, with a question mark looked back at him. It was an odd conclusion he thought, that he had come too, but one that he was finding it harder to deny with each day. Closing the notebook, he looked out onto the cliffs and desert that had become the daily routine and wondered what he would be writing by the end of this day.

  After three hours of crossing the Arizona and then the New Mexican border, they were getting close to the city of Rockwall and within radio range of Jim Nez’s outpost.

  Zach clicked on the radio. “This is Zach, Captain Felton from Camp Bravo, calling out to Jim Nez. Over.” A few seconds of static passed, and he tried again. Still no response. Everyone in the cab around him seemed asleep. He changed the frequency on the radio and tried again. Crisp white noise came from the radio’s speaker. He thought about waking up Abbey, or telling Bass that he was not hearing anything from the outpost, but it must just be a radio problem he thought.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The sky screamed in orange and mauve as the sun dissolved into the horizon. They had passed San Moore’s hospital they investigated a week before and were now passing the water tower where they first met Jim and his son James. Zach had tried a few more times to reach Jim, but only silence met his requests. As the convoy followed the same path they had been led up last time they were here, Zach took a breath and clicked on his radio. “Bass, I’ve not been able to get Jim on the radio, something feel’s off, have your people stay alert. Over.” Bass acknowledged and agreed.

  Soon they were in the hills outside the city, and at the junction with the large steel tower covered in communication dishes. Turning left, they drove the short distance along the dirt-frosted road, until they came up to the entrance to the manufacturing building that Jim and his friends had made their home.

  “That’s odd,” said Zach, looking at the open gate. “They don’t have a guard on the gate.” He looked over to the large metal shutter, and could see no sign of movement. Something’s wrong.

  Zach led the convoy along the track and stopped a few yards from the large entrance they entered the building through last time. No light came from any of the few boarded up windows that the building had.

  “Maybe they are just busy and don’t know we’re here,” said Abbey not truly believing her own words.

  “Stay in the Humvee until I give the signal to come inside,” said Zach, opening the Humvee’s door and getting out. A cold wind blew, as night started to take hold.

  Bass and a few soldiers ran up to him. “Let’s see if we can get this metal shutter open.”

  They all moved to the large pleated metal shutter, grabbing the bottom and pulled upwards. It slid upwards without much effort and they were all immediately hit by the smell, which escaped out into the darkness.

  Abbey watched them put their arms across their noses, and swallowed hard.

  “Fuck this,” said Fiona getting out. Michael followed. Abbey sat there, knowing she should get out and see what the others were seeing but she felt rooted to the seat.

  The first body that they came across was
a teenage boy. He was lying on his front, with his arms tangled up with the rope from one of their tents. The next was an elderly woman, maybe in her seventies, she was slumped on the floor with her head up against a rotting box of cabbages. Zach and the others around him slid their flashlight beams from one corpse to the next. All were blue in color and had been dead for a few days, some had slash marks across them, but most had small dark red holes in their heads of torsos.

  Abbey walked zombie like up to Zach, and put her hand to her mouth, she then started crying. He held her, but kept his eyes on the dead.

  Bass walked to him. “What we going to do?”

  “We have to stay here for the night, it’s too late to try for anywhere else.”

  Abbey leaned back from her embrace. “But the kids?”

  “We will move all the bodies into the other part of the building, beyond the far door. We’ll tell them the smell is due to rotting food.”

  Abbey pulled away, and looked at the closest body to her. At first she wasn’t sure if she was seeing right as the tears were stinging her eyes, but she leaned forward slightly and even in the gloom it was obvious the person had been shot. “They… they were shot…”

  “Sir?” A young soldier just visible in the gloom, was waving for Zach to walk to where he was.

  Zach and Abbey walked to the far wall, avoiding the black stickiness on the concrete floor. The soldier’s flashlight beam was initially pointing to them as they approached, but then swung around to the wall. On it written in dark red was the word “Geneva”.

  “What does that mean?” said Abbey.

  For a moment Zach was about to answer that he had no idea, and then he remembered the conversation with the priest, Alex, about a motorcycle gang headed up by someone going by the name that was smeared in blood on the wall.

  Zach walked back to Bass who was directing the operation to move all the bodies into the far room. “We need to post lookout’s outside, in case they come back. Let me know when all the bodies are out back.” Bass nodded, and two soldiers who were still on the bus, jumped off, with one running back to the gate and another disappearing around the back of the building.