by Maxey, Phil
They came to what used to be a junction. Leaf and branch covered structures sat at each corner. They turned to the left and pushed through the thick plants until they bumped up a curb, and into an area which the new nature had not totally claimed. An eight-story building loomed above the former parking lot they were in.
Fiona turned the engine off, and the sound of creatures all around them took its place. Shrieks, screams, roars and sounds that could not be quantified, played out in the absolute dark around them.
“Everyone stick close. We try to find a way to the top of this building, then we record what we can for as long as we can, then we get the hell out of here. Everyone agreed?” said Zach.
Everyone did and one by one they got out, each having to push back the sharp foot-wide leaves and vines.
Something slithered a few yards from them, which Zach ignored, instead switching his flashlight on and moving forward. They came across what was left of a metal fence and stepped over it, pushing back the branches and eventually found a wall with an open door.
“Everyone inside, quickly!” Zach half shouted.
The corridor wasn’t much better than outside, with the same mixture of reeds and rope like roots. There was also a pungent odor which smelled like a mixture of sulfur and tar.
They all stood in the narrow space, the only light being from Zach and Fiona’s flashlights.
“None of them know we’re here, right?” said Zach to the Cascaders.
Diaz looked tired. “No, but I don’t think we can keep this up for that much longer.”
Zach nodded. “Lets get this done.”
They all fought their way forward trying to feel for a smooth surface of a wall where they could. Raj waved his phone around, recording as he walked.
Zach came up against another door and waved his light upwards. A sign indicated it was a stairwell.
They all filed inside.
What looked like a single vine four foot thick ascended up the stairs, with numerous branches spinning off from it. They followed it up. It wasn’t long before they arrived at the top landing area. On the wall a stained sign rested, indicating the next door led to the roof.
“We all don’t need to be up there. Diaz, Miles, Wyatt, stay here. You’ll be safer in this spot and you can still sense what’s around us. Fiona, me and Raj will go up on the roof and see what we can see.”
They all nodded. He then clicked on his radio and went to speak but the small LCD screen blinked on and off. “Some kind of interference.” He looked at Diaz. Keep trying to reach Bower, tell him our status. She nodded. He noticed sweat running down her face. “We won’t be long.” She gave a tired smile in return.
With some effort he pushed open the remaining door. The small set of stairs were surprisingly clear of any plant-life. The three of them then walked up.
The sounds of the life around them could be heard even with the door ahead closed. Raj pulled out his audio gun from his pack.
Zach pushed on the door to the roof, but it wouldn’t budge. Fiona walked forward and they both pushed. After a few seconds it gave way and slid backwards. A rush of warm air hit them both.
He slowly lifted his flashlight towards the doorway. What was once the floor of the roof was now a mass of green and brown, with trees that wound their way into the sky.
Zach went to walk forward when a brilliant light illuminated the fledgling forest in front of him, and then blinked off.
Each of them knew they were now close to whatever was on the video from the night before.
Zach tentatively walked forward out onto the roof, being aware of the crunching that his boots were making on the organic material beneath them, and looked skywards. The others followed, then all stood and watched.
Above the roof of a skyscraper a mile off sat a dark shape just visible against the night sky.
“It’s huge!” said Fiona. “Must be at least the size of a passenger plane.”
Raj stood holding his phone towards the shape. “I don’t think I’m picking—”
Suddenly the roof of the skyscraper they were looking at lit up. A creature with multiple octopus type limbs, but with a lizard like head, swiped and snapped at the light that it was now bathed in. And then was gone. The hovering shape then plunged back into darkness.
“They’re taking E.L.F’s!” said Raj.
“Okay, we have seen enough, lets—”
Downstairs Diaz kept trying to get her radio to work, but the screen kept blinking on and off.
“How long they going to be? I can’t keep this up for much longer, and we still need to get out of this place,” said Wyatt covered in sweat. Miles was leaning against the wall.
“Wait here,” said Diaz as she ran through the doorway and up the stairs to the roof.
“Zach! Fiona!…” she shouted. She then noticed a pool of light lying buried under some leaves. Walking to it, she bent down and picked it up. It was Zach’s flashlight.
“Zach! Raj!”
No response came, just the incessant sounds of the creatures. She took one last look around the roof and left.
The End.
BOOK SEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
Abbey watched as a six-legged bird like creature ran across the car sized leaf outside the motel window. She marveled as the E.L.F no bigger than a hamster carried pieces of metal into the center of the plant, intent on building some kind of nest.
The early morning sun streamed through the blinds, making her squint to see the jungle like foliage outside. She glanced back at Burt asleep in his bed. She had learned that he wasn’t exactly an early starter. It was 10 a.m. and she was anxious to get back on the road.
It had been two days since they left Burt's home in the woods, and almost immediately she was called upon to use her powers to make herself, Burt and the pickup they were driving in, invisible to the world of creatures around them. At first, he couldn’t quite believe they were driving along a highway that was lined with monsters a few story’s high that were paying them no attention, but after a day of traveling it was obvious she was the real deal.
The ground rattled, making Burt utter something in his sleep then turn over.
Abbey didn’t bother looking out the blind at the possible cause. She could sense it was something large and hungry, but it was also just passing by, so instead she fired up the small stove and set about making some coffee. Maybe the smell will wake him.
As she poured the instant powder into the plastic mug, she thought about where Zach could be and sighed. Hopefully he’s given up looking for me, or trying to come here. She didn’t really believe that though. There was a better than evens chance he was out there with the others looking for her. She wasn’t sure how she would forgive herself if something happened to him or the others.
Images of him being attacked by a creature ran through her mind with a force she couldn’t resist. Blood, grief and sadness threatened to overwhelm her, when a voice came from one of the single beds.
“Coffee ready?”
She looked up and smiled. “Sure is, with the one sugar, how you like it.”
Burt looked over her shoulder at the warm glow making its way into the motel room. “Look’s like the weathers turning. Been sunny since we left home…”
She knew what he was going to ask next, as he always did at about this time each morning. “There are no threats outside.”
Burt stood and put his pants on. “Good.”
“Maybe by time this trips over you’ll believe I can control them.”
“Oh I believe it already, but nobodies perfect and I just like to be prepared. Comes from my marine days.”
She nodded, handing him the mug.
He walked over to the kitchen counter and looked at the map that had rested there since the night before. “If the highway is passable then we should make Boston by nightfall. Although we’re going to have to find some more vehicles to siphon fuel from as we mostly have empty canisters in the truck.” He paused, looking like he
wasn’t sure what to say next. “You thought any more about what you want to do when we get there?”
“We should go to the camp first, I don’t know its exact location but it’s meant to be west of the city.”
“I doubt a hundred and sixty square miles of eighty foot walls, will be hard to find.”
She looked back towards the blinds. “It might look very different there, than it did before…”
After a quick breakfast they were ready to head back out. Abbey opened the motel room front door to a beautiful spring day. What was once a parking lot was now covered in vines and plants, which would have looked more at home in a tropical climate. Orange and yellow flowers each one a few feet across fluttered in the gentle breeze, and a number of small E.L.F’s skittered for cover as Abbey and Burt stepped outside and closed the door behind.
Mo shrieked from high above, making them both look to the heavens. Abbey smiled, while Burt walked to the truck and opened the driver’s door, threw his backpack inside and grabbed a rubber tube. He looked out at the few scattered cars that got left behind across the forecourt.
He looked at Abbey. “You sensing any danger?”
She shook her head.
“I’m going to check out these vehicles, see if any got fuel.”
She nodded as Mo swooped down and landed on the top of the pickups crane. She pulled out a cookie from her backpack, and reached out to the monkey bird like creature that seemed to be increasing in size daily. “Only one every few days, as we’re getting low.”
Mo leaned forward and enthusiastically grabbed the cookie. He gave quiet squawks between bites.
Abbey looked out at the central Pennsylvania landscape that was slowly becoming something else, or rather, somewhere else. She wondered if this was a fate which was awaiting the rest of the country, and maybe the world. Would there be a place in it for the original humans? Non-cascaders? When she first discovered the event which changed the world also had changed her she was lost and confused by what it all meant, and definitely didn’t see it as a plus. But a lot had happened since then, and now she felt she had won the lottery. There were humans that belonged to the old world, the world that no longer existed and there was the group she belonged too, those that could control most of the new species with their minds, which meant they had a chance to survive.
She shook her head. I need to stop thinking like that. We’re all the same, all human. I need to know why this all happened. The answers are in Boston, I’m sure of it.
Burt successfully got a flow going in one of the pipes, which was inside a dark green sedan. He waved and she smiled. She then got into the truck. “Not far to go now,” she said to herself under her breath.
CHAPTER TWO
Zach looked at the inside of his cell. A metal box ten feet square, with a source of light he couldn’t quite pin down. On one of the walls was a tube which sludge and water fell from three times a day. The yellow substance with the consistency of treacle he discovered was edible, or at least it hadn’t killed him yet, and in another corner was a hole which he used as a toilet. Again, he presumed that was its purpose, but then who knew. There were no windows, no noises, no sign that the world, hell the universe still existed outside his confined space. Two days he could stomach, but if this was going to be his life again, it was going to be a problem.
Forty-eight hours earlier, after a journey back to the city of Pittsburgh to investigate some strange lights above the skyscrapers, he, Raj and Fiona had somehow managed to get themselves ‘beamed’ up, or out. He wasn’t exactly sure what the hell happened other than, he was on the roof, tangled with vines, there was an intense blinding light and then he was in the box, alone.
If it were aliens that had taken them, they hadn’t made an appearance yet. He wasn’t even sure they knew he was there. Maybe the ship that took them was garbage collecting or something.
He sat up. “Three hundred,” he exclaimed. Sweat was pouring down his neck. After the first day was over he slipped back into his exercise routine. Push-up’s, sit-ups, squats and a few other physical maneuvers he had developed over the years had kept him in reasonable condition, despite the circumstances. He also needed the structure, something which needed to be done every day no matter what.
A gurgling noise came from the pipe on the wall. Slowly he got to his feet. It was feeding time again.
*****
Raj sat with his knees against his chest, reciting the periodic table to himself. Over the past two days anytime he felt like anxiety was going to get the better of him, he started counting off the hundred and eighteen symbols along with their isotopes where necessary.
During most of the first day he had scoured every inch of the metallic feeling walls to his small cell trying to understand what material they could be made of, or trying to understand how the light seemed to be all around him but had no definite source. He figured the material which came down the pipe along the walls was a simple concoction of the necessary nutrients to keep him alive, but quickly grew sick of its non-existent taste.
It was now the end of the second day, and as he neared the end of the naturally occurring elements, the wall just ten feet from him completely changed in its appearance. Instead of a semi-reflective surface, it was now a deep black.
He looked at it trying to understand how the material could change like it did, when suddenly light gray symbols appeared. Rows and rows of them. Flashing onto the screen and then as quickly being replaced with others.
Raj slowly got to his feet. “What…” He walked closer until he reached out and touched the giant screen in front of him. All the symbols disappeared to be replaced with one word.
“Hello.”
Raj looked to the left and right, and then back to the innocent looking greeting. “Umm, hello?”
“Do not be alarmed doctor. I needed to scan your brain to discern your thought processes and speech patterns. I can now communicate with you. Please ask your questions as this connection cannot be established for long.”
“Oookay. Who are you?”
“We are the Hulathen. I am Elcher.”
“Why have you kept me prisoner?”
“All of the samples that were procured had to be kept in quarantine until further analysis could be carried out.”
“You think of me as a sample?”
“You are life form designation 1200031 from biosphere 22323 of region 20022 of interstellar space.”
A stream of possible questions ran through his mind, each one being judged then found not adequate to ask of quite possibly humankind's first interaction with a species from another planet.
“Umm where are the people that I was with when you took me?”
“The other samples are being kept in a similar structural space.”
“And when are you going to return us from where you took us?”
There was a pause of a few seconds. “Insufficient data for a reply.”
Raj looked down, then an obvious question jumped into his mind. “Are you responsible for the Cascade?”
“Please provide more data on what you refer to as the ‘Cascade’?”
“The recent sudden change in the ear… biosphere’s 22323 animal and plant life?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” The words came almost as a scream.
“The message from the Arclight required a response. The usual protocol was implemented, but we made a mistake. I want to help.”
Raj looked confused. “Help?”
CHAPTER THREE
Brad looked out of his bedroom window at the newly constructed buildings that had sprung up in the grounds of the outpost. A two-story barracks, which now housed two platoons sat alongside a medical facility. Another building, bigger than both was currently being constructed which was going to be for storage, capable of protecting vehicles of all shapes and sizes as well as food and other supplies. That building was made from steel and cement whereas the two former were made from spruce and pine.
The smell
from the fresh wood drifted on the breeze through the small opening in his window.
A knock came at his bedroom door.
“Come in,” he said turning.
The door opened and a young woman in military uniform stood in the gap. “Captain Bower says the others are rested, he says you and he should talk. He’s in the command room.”
Brad nodded and the woman left.
He already knew that something happened on the roof of a building in Pittsburgh, the result of which was Zach, Fiona and Raj were missing. Diaz told them the story of how they followed them up to the top floor of the building, and the others went onto the roof, and after waiting she went to investigate but they were gone. Not lost, but gone. Bower wanted to send out a search party but Diaz made it clear that would be of no use. After that everyone retired for the night, their minds in a haze of what could have happened. Now that the sun was up, there could be no more excuses as to why they couldn’t be found. But first he needed to know more.
Tucking his shirt into his pants and putting his jacket on, he took a brief look at one of the pictures of his wife and left the room. As usual the rest of the house was a hive of activity. Noise and the smell of food wafted up from downstairs.
A sleepy looking Wyatt emerged from one of the rooms.
“Any E.L.F activity last night?” Brad said to him.
“Uh?” Wyatt rubbed his eyes. “Oh, nah, nothing to be concerned about.”
“What time you come back?”
“I dunno. The sun was coming up. Hope the coffee’s still hot.” He said looking over the bannister to the ground floor.
Brad smiled and put his hand on his shoulder. “Let’s find out.”
They both walked down the wide stairs, passing people moving the other way. Wyatt disappeared into the kitchen, while Brad opened the door to the basement.
The underground level of the house, which was housing supplies had now become the main command room for the outpost.
