by Wyatt Savage
“What happened to the people on the bridge?” another man asked.
“Dead,” the woman said, breathing through her nose. “They’re all dead.”
The ground underfoot suddenly shifted.
I stumbled, throwing out my hands. Those around me panicked and began running in every direction. Several of them collided and down they went. I reached for an older woman clutching a pair of binoculars and the ground opened up under her.
The asphalt just split apart as if something huge had climbed up out of it. My fingers touched those of the older woman, but she vanished screaming down into the hole.
I made a move to search for her and the ground began crumbling.
Breaking away.
Falling apart underfoot and all around me.
My SecondSight popped up, the boxes illuminating a section of roadway. I followed the boxes, hopping left and then right, picking up speed. I could sense the ground trembling, able to dart away at the last moment to avoid slipping down into a hole.
“GO! RUN!” I screamed to anyone in earshot, but they either didn’t hear me, or didn’t want to believe what was happening.
A family of four off to my left vanished as the ground swallowed them up.
Two teenagers holding a dog disappeared off to my right.
The ground continued to break apart and I put my head down and ran for everything I had, shouting for Sue, who never bothered to answer my screams.
I streaked between the parked cars, watching people still behind the wheel try to clamber out of their vehicles only to be taken down by the earthquake or whatever it was that was trenching the ground. Moving purely on reflex, I was shocked when boxes appeared in my line of sight marked “Reactions” including, among others, “Attack,” “Evade,” “Anticipate,” “Dash,” and “Brace.”
Without thinking, I blinked at “Anticipate” and found myself able to spot certain things before they happened. For instance, I sensed that the ground would be opening to the right and so I jogged left. The only person who seemed to see things the way that I did was the gym-toned woman I’d witnessed earlier.
She too appeared to have all the right moves, deftly sidestepping sinkholes seconds before they opened up, hurdling others or dancing along a thin sliver of road before it broke apart. I called out to her, but she was too focused and didn’t respond.
By the time I reached Dad’s car I was out of breath and miraculously the earthquake had stopped.
Looking back, I saw that everything in front of the ten or so cars beyond Dad’s was gone. The ground, a good five hundred feet of Route 50 on both sides, was one long ravine. Dad moved over and hugged me and we looked at the enormous wound in the earth. There were no more screams, by the way. Almost everyone in front of us had vanished into the ground. In the distance the sounds of ambulances could be heard along with the whop-whop-whop of helicopters.
Turning back, I caught stares from the occupants of the other cars behind me. Everyone was out and standing in the road. Several people were taking pictures with their goddamn cellphones.
I noticed a face in the crowd.
The gym-toned woman I’d seen before, the only other one with the ability to discern things before they happened. She’d made it back alive.
“You!” I shouted.
She caught my look and I moved to her.
“You saw it, didn’t you?” I asked as she tried to leave and I grabbed her arm.
“Eighteen days,” she whispered.
“What?”
“It begins in eighteen days.”
“The game?”
She nodded. “People have been stockpiling weapons and gear. They’ve formed teams, linking up with the military and police. They’ve been training.”
“You can see them, can’t you? The boxes?”
“Forget the fucking boxes and get ready,” she said, some steel in her voice. “Because hell is coming.” And with that, she shrugged off my hand, spun on her heels and trudged back through the mass of people who were making way for an ambulance and a team of first-responders.
Two FBI agents and three officials from Homeland Security were waiting for Dad and me when we got back. A couple of off-the-rack white guys and an Asian dude with broad shoulders and closely mown hair.
They had lots of questions and little patience. They grilled me about what had happened in D.C. and how it was that I’d come to find myself in the two areas where catastrophic happenings had occurred.
“Shitty luck,” I said with a shrug.
The Asian FBI Special Agent in Charge, a guy named Pei with a small smiley-face button on his suit jacket, was not amused. He had a low, melodious voice that put me at ease, and was holding a small recording device. “Can you describe the incident at the bridge for us.”
I did. And when that was over, Agent Pei asked, “What do you know about the walls, Mister James?”
“The walls in this house?”
“The walls outside,” he replied.
“Which walls?”
“Haven’t you seen the news?”
“We’ve been in the car, sir,” Dad said, interrupting.
Agent Pei motioned to a colleague who held an iPad-like device up. He tapped the screen and a file opened to reveal footage of a wall.
A massive, black wall.
The POV zoomed in close to the wall and I could see that whatever it was made out of was rippling—undulating might be a better word.
As if it was alive.
Dad gasped and turned away.
“Where are those?” I asked.
Agent Pei adjusted his smiley-face pin. “There’s one on the outskirts of D.C., encircling most of the city. Appeared out of nowhere three hours ago. There’s another one on the other side of the Severn River Bridge, and one more in front of the Chesapeake Bridge, right before where the Bay Bridge used to be. Those just popped up in the last forty-five minutes or so.”
“How is this happening?” Dad asked, motioning Mom back so that she didn’t see the footage.
“I don’t know, Mister James,” Agent Pei replied. “Maybe it’s a kind of psyop. A psychological operation to test our mettle.”
“But how can someone make a goddamn river just…go away?”
“We’re investigating how it happened.”
“Can’t you blow them up or something?” I asked. “The aliens. I mean you can call in the military and take care of it when the time comes, right?”
Agent Pei stared at me for several uncomfortable seconds. “You’re not planning on leaving the area, are you, Mister James?” he finally asked.
“Where would I go?”
It was his turn to shrug. “Lots of people were heading out of town before the walls started appearing.”
“Why?”
Agent Pei flipped the recording device off. “We’ll be back in touch with you, but please don’t leave the state.”
“Why not?” Dad asked.
“Ever heard of the Enemy Detention Act, sir?”
Dad massaged his face. “That was repealed decades ago.”
Agent Pei nodded. “1971 to be exact. Don’t know if you’ve been checking the news, but a new version was signed by the President yesterday.”
Dad looked dumbstruck.
“A list is being compiled of those who might commit acts inimical to the security of the country in a time of emergency,” the agent added.
“Is my son on that list?”
Agent Pei looked down. “We’ll be in touch. Oh, and can I have an autograph please.”
My brows rose. “Sir?”
He held out a pad of paper and a pen. “It’s for my daughter. She saw the video. She’s a big fan of the DC Slayer.”
We didn’t turn the TV on at all that day. There wasn’t a whole lot to watch anyway. Most of the news shows were consumed with constant “Breaking News” about the discovery of strange new structures popping up all over the world, or the looming specter of societal unrest and widespread looting. It was a
lmost as if the media couldn’t wait for the end of the world. We shut off the phones and the iPad and me, Mom, and Dad cocooned ourselves in the house. We kept ourselves busy reminiscing, checking out the piece of trim on the doors leading to the backyard where my folks used to measure my height, the wonky board on the first floor stairs which had caused me to trip and shatter my wrist, the secret “clubhouse” under the stairs where I used to stash my comic books and action figures. Things I hadn’t thought about in years.
Later in the afternoon Dad took a nap and I crawled into bed next to him. Mom joined us. It was the first time I’d slept with my parents since I was seven.
I made plans to meet up with Dwayne and Lish later that night, but spent the rest of the late-afternoon firing up the barbecue. Dad assisted me. We cooked some chicken breasts and roasted off some root vegetables.
“There are more of them now,” Dad said softly.
“How’s that?”
“More walls.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere,” he said, blotting a bead of sweat from his neck. It was December and Dad was sweating. “They’re all over Europe now, Asia…”
“What are they trying to keep out?” I asked.
His right eye twitched uncontrollably. “Maybe they’re trying to keep something in.”
A bird landed on the ground.
Twitching twice before dying.
I opened my mouth to mention this to Dad and then another one landed.
Then five more.
I stared up into the sky and bit back a scream because it was filled with thousands of tiny black and gray bodies.
Birds.
An innumerable number of birds.
Pinwheeling down through the sky like they’d smacked into some huge, invisible wall.
Dad didn’t even bother covering his head.
The vegetables had slipped out of his hands and were on the ground.
And in a second so was Dad.
He’d just collapsed into a kind of seated position.
I made a move to help him and he shrugged off my hands, muttering a string of words that sounded vaguely like “the end is near.”
He sat there silently for several minutes as the birds continued to crash to the ground all around him. I remember reading a poem or a story when I was a kid about a mariner on some sea voyage where a bird died and how it was seen as exceedingly bad luck. Just one bird mind you. I was surrounded by dozens of dead ones.
Dad rose and headed back inside and I gathered up the rest of the food and shut the barbecue grill down.
Something moved peripherally and I saw one of the neighborhood kids standing out on the sidewalk near the edge of our property, watching the birds thud into the concrete. It was Laura Bruciak, the eight-year old daughter of Steven and Elise, the weed lobbyists. I moved and she gaped at me. She looked completely shell-shocked.
“It’s gonna be okay,” I said, approaching her as she knelt to observe a bird that was twitching on the ground.
“W-why is t-this happening?” she stammered.
“Because of the aliens.”
“Don’t tell her that!” a woman shouted.
Elise Bruciak appeared out of nowhere and grabbed up her daughter, who squealed. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked me.
“I’m – I mean – n-nothing,” I stuttered. “I’m not doing anything.”
“Stay away from my daughter,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I replied, approaching her. She held up her hands, almost making the sign of the cross like I was a vampire.
“Mommy, what’s the matter?”
“Stay away from him, sweetie,” Elise said. “Something’s wrong…he’s sick.”
“I’m not – it’s me, Mrs. Bruciak,” I said. “It’s Logan. You know me.” Which was absolutely true as I’d watched her kids twice after they moved in and before my accident.
Elise covered her daughter’s ears. “We saw those goddamn videos,” Elise hissed. “We all know that something’s wrong with you. Either that or…you’re one of them.”
“What?”
“Look on the internet. Do a little fucking research. They put people here.”
“Who did?”
“The aliens. Everyone knows it. They placed people here ahead of time. They planted them to make things easier for when they came.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but she threw her arms around Laura and helped her back across the street.
That’s when I observed four or five more people. Neighbors. They were either on the front steps of their houses or framed in windows looking out at me. I guess they’d heard the screaming. One of them was Justin Best and he had a poisonous look on his face.
“Don’t let it bother you,” a voice said.
Startled, I looked behind me to see Noora standing twenty feet away on the sidewalk. “They’re acting irrational,” she added. “They’re scared.”
“Join the club.”
She stepped to me and I held my hands up. “Don’t get too close. Apparently I’m evil.”
“I saw the video.”
“So has everyone else.”
“It was pretty kickass.”
“I wish it had never happened,” I said.
“Yeah, it would’ve been better if that thing had killed you and everyone else, right?”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
She flicked her hand dismissively. “Bullshit. You were the right person at the right time.” When I didn’t respond she continued, “You had a head injury didn’t you?”
“How’d you know?”
“That’s the neighborhood scuttlebutt.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Gossip,” she said.
“People are talking about me?
“Of course.”
“What else are the saying?”
“Besides the fact that you’re an alien plant?”
I nodded.
“That you had something implanted in your head which, if true, has given me a pretty interesting theory.”
“I’d love to hear it.”
“Whatever the aliens put in you, in us, likely interacted in a most unusual manner with your already-existing implant, particularly the recalibration of the relevant algorithms.”
“And you’d know this how?”
“I’m pre-med and I’ve dabbled in neurobionics.”
“What’s the takeaway, doc?”
“It’s doc-to-be, and I’d say whatever is inside of you may give you an advantage when the game begins.”
“Lucky me.”
She smiled. “You are lucky, Logan. It might be a stretch but maybe, just possibly, you’ll come to think of yourself as enhanced.”
“Like a superhero?”
She didn’t respond and I did a superhero-ish pose. Noora smiled and walked off.
I strolled across the street as the birds continued to fall like snow. Several whacked into me as I moved past homes that bore the signs of remodeling. Heavy metal doors on some of the houses, sheets of plywood across windows, and at the end of the block was Ronimal’s RV. It too looked different. It had new tires, bigger, wider ones, and metal plate had been welded onto the sides, like armor. Someone had bored holes through the plate to create what looked like firing slots and the two small windows on the back were covered with thick metal mesh. It was obvious that people were getting ready. Getting ready for the game. I checked my watch and saw that it was time to meet up with Dwayne and Lish.
12
“The FBI?” Dwayne asked, pacing around the picnic table, trying not to step on the piles of dead birds as darkness shrouded the land. “The friggin’ FBI came to your house?”
“And they brought along Homeland Security to boot.”
“Someone’s in deep doo-doo,” Lish said with a smirk.
I swapped looks with Lish. “They asked about you.”
Her smile vanished. “Shit. Seriously?”
&nbs
p; I nodded and then grinned. “Just messin’ with you.”
She punched me in the arm and Dwayne rubbed his chin. “If and when they ask about me, Logan, say you don’t know me. I mean, we were never really that close...”
“I wasn’t planning on outing you, Dwayne.”
“Much love,” Dwayne replied, slapping my shoulders, “‘cause shit is getting straight-up whack.”
Lish held his look. “Excuse me?”
He shrugged. “I watched an episode of Empire last night.”
“Which part is whack, Dwayne? The fact that half of all the birds in the world apparently have died or that we’re about to fight in some intergalactic gladiator thing?” Lish asked.
Fishing in his pocket, Dwayne held his giant cellphone up. “What’s whack is that they’re rounding people up now.” He tapped his phone and there was a news story showing buses being offloaded. People exited the buses clutching trash bags and were quickly herded into what looked like a high-school sporting arena.
“Why are they doing that?” I asked.
“Why does anyone do anything? Fear,” Dwayne replied. He stared at the phone. “They think there’s some kinda fifth column, people who are helping the aliens.”
“Like me maybe,” I said with a sinking feeling.
Lish pointed to the cellphone. “The feds could’ve busted you, but they didn’t.”
“They could always come back.”
“They’re too busy cracking down on people trying to get out of the cities.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Or trying to figure out how to get into those dark spires.”
“The what?” I asked.
He swiped a finger across the cellphone and held it up for me to see something on Twitter. Images of black towers, or spires as Dwayne referred to them. I couldn’t tell how tall the damn things were, but they didn’t appear to have any windows or doors and the exteriors were rough and ribbed, almost like lava tubes. The top of the tower was pointed, like a thorn, and there were protuberances on some of them that expanded and contracted, as if the structures were living things.
“Is that shit real?”
“It’s as real as anything else these days,” Dwayne replied.
