by Platt, Sean
Heather looked around at each of them, then at the door with its new nails. “Well, what do you want to do until then?”
Meyer’s eyes became steely. He was looking outside too, possibly wondering when people would be able to look up and see the ships without an app or a telescope. Wondering what might happen then, and if eight hours of waiting would give anyone time to run and hide.
“Figure out what to do when that timer hits zero,” he said. “Before they realize I tricked them, and decide to come in here and start killing until I do it right.”
DAY SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Day Six, Early Morning
Axis Mundi
The night was long and dark.
It had been nearly eight by the time Meyer finished his debate with Garth, doing his best to twist the man into a conversational pretzel. He’d acted irate — easy, because he was. He’d acted betrayed, which he also was — and which, surprisingly, he’d decided might be an effective lever against a man with blue-collar values and what he thought might be a Christian upbringing. And about that, he was right: Garth didn’t shout when Meyer said he’d taken what rightfully belonged to the Dempsey family. Instead, he’d gone on the defensive — the move of a man trying to establish himself as right, rather than arguing why it was okay for him to do wrong.
But that was just filibustering, and Meyer had known it from the start. He was buying time, unsure what to do with it post-purchase. In truth, he had no idea how to handle the situation. There was really only one way to solve it — to let Garth and his crew into the bunker. The stubborn part of Meyer — the one that always had to win, and never surrender, because giving up was for cowards — wanted to resist just for the sake of resistance. But there was another, more practical reason to keep trying.
Garth knew that there was plenty about the bunker that he himself didn’t know, because Meyer — like any smart man who wishes to keep a secret — had the lair constructed in pieces by discreet firms. Each was sworn to secrecy. One handled wiring for the lower level only; another handled network and computers; another handled rooms that Garth’s crew only saw through caution tape. Only Meyer knew all of its tricks … and Garth, unless he was an idiot, knew that Meyer was the kind of man who liked tricks plenty. He’d have back doors. He’d have failsafes. It was all true. If Garth and the boys went into the lair, Meyer would know how to get them back out.
And of course, Garth knew that. Which meant that Garth, as much as it would pain his relatively moderate personality to act, couldn’t afford to let Meyer or his family live. It didn’t even matter that Garth wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger himself. Wade would do it with relish.
Meyer sat in the dark while Trevor snoozed with his head on his mother’s chest, Heather’s abrasive mouth finally silent.
Eight hours.
He’d set the timer at around 8 p.m. That meant that at some time around 4 a.m., it would reach zero. It wouldn’t ring or buzz, but it seemed too much to hope the invaders would just sleep until morning and give him extra hours to think. No, they’d be watching it. They’d know they could sleep in the bunker. And truth be told, Meyer thought that none of the three men truly believed the time delay thing. They just knew that they could wait eight hours with impunity. Last Meyer had heard, the current projections said the ships wouldn’t arrive until around noon, maybe later.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, watching the moon as it appeared between distant peaks. The moon was just a big rock in space. The Earth was just a big rock in space. Of course they weren’t alone. They’d never been alone. They’d just been more anonymous life on the one planet in the solar system lucky enough to have a magnetic field to deflect the solar wind. It was luck, nothing more. Humanity wasn’t special, and they were about to learn it.
Meyer thought of the bunker, trying to fight the growing certainty that they’d never get inside, and that something terrible would happen if they did.
He closed his eyes, keeping his spine tall, rigid enough that his tired mind wouldn’t be tempted to sleep. If he started to nod off, he’d slouch, and that would wake him.
But he didn’t think he’d sleep. Meyer’s mind — his higher mind, not the lump of gray clay inside his skull — knew what he was doing, and what he was trying to access.
He breathed slowly. Tried to muffle the outside world. Tried to imagine the home’s quiet as being the silence of somewhere else, far away. Outer space, perhaps. Or maybe not. He’d visited a place very like outer space again and again, when his individual mind found the universal mind, when he seemed to see the world from above (not literally, but conceptually), when he felt like he could see through all the things that others took for granted: the permanence of objects, the rigid and always forward-marching nature of time, the artificial divisions between this and that.
Meyer wasn’t a party guy, not one to rely on substances. He’d smoked pot; he’d drunk; he’d smoked. A few years ago — right around the time he’d grown serious about his nutrition, his body, and whatever energy lay beyond it — he’d quit all three. Now the only thing he ever took into his system was what Juha prepared for him, and for Heather if she joined the ceremony with him. It wasn’t a drug: it was medicine. To Meyer, ayahuasca felt more like a lens. Or a doorway.
He sat for ten minutes, trying to access that feeling of ascension and seeing beyond. But it was no use. It had been too long. The effects always stayed with him after the ceremony ended, leading to a long-tail high that lasted for weeks, sometimes months. The medicine was Windex on a windshield. Eventually, life’s muck would cloud that view, and it would need another cleaning — but for a while, Meyer could finally see everything clearly, like stars outside of the city.
But not now. The lens was too dirty. He knew the ships were coming, same as everyone else. He knew there was more to the story, but could no longer remember what it was. He knew there were connections. There was universal knowledge, accessible only to his higher mind — the higher mind, he often thought, that belonged to everyone and everything. But right now he was only a man, in a body, trapped in a pantry.
He looked at the wall clock beyond the door. It was after midnight. Less than four hours to go.
They couldn’t ram the door. Even without the new nails, it would take several hits — plenty of time for the men to hear and come running. They couldn’t open the door in stealth; the hinges and screwdrivers were on the outside, and the mesh was too small to reach through. There was no one to help them. Piper and Lila would try to find a cavalry, no matter what he’d told them, but there was no one to help. The closest neighbors were miles away; the streets were empty; anyone who could help, given their own surely pressing concerns, never would. Lila and Piper were on their own, and that meant that Meyer, Heather, Trevor, and Raj were, too.
He had no idea how to escape.
No idea how to get into the bunker.
No idea how to do anything but wait for time to expire.
And then, all of a sudden, he did.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Day Six, Early Morning
Axis Mundi
Garth didn’t like this at all.
He’d checked on the panel outside the bunker’s entrance three times since midnight, but none of those times had done anything to improve his mood. In theory, he should feel relieved. The clock was ticking, and in just a little while, this would all be over.
He looked at his cell phone, eyes ticking toward where the service bars should be in the vain hope that Verizon might have suddenly and inexplicably stitched its shit together. It hadn’t. And really, now that he thought about it, cell service had been hit or miss up at this job even before the aliens encouraged the world to start crapping its pants. That’s why the house had been hardwired for phone service. It struck Garth as strange that anyone would bother with real phones anymore, seeing as his grandmothers were the only people he knew who still had one. But maybe this was why: because sometimes in the mountains it was the
only way.
He noted the time: 3:07 a.m.
Just over an hour left. Garth wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He was almost positive that Meyer had been lying out his ass (who put a time delay on a panic room?), but hadn’t been positive enough to start shooting kids. They could wait. At the end of eight hours, if it turned out Meyer was as full of shit as Garth thought he was, then they could start pulling triggers.
The thought turned Garth’s stomach. He didn’t have kids of his own, but he did have nieces and nephews. The kid with the bushy eyebrows wasn’t as young as they were, but he was still just a teenager. Garth remembered being a teenager. He’d been stupider than a retarded idiot, and more ignorant than he’d have ever believed, driven by his dick and gluttony. He hadn’t had as much sex as his friends, owing to his awkward manner and equally awkward appearance, but that hadn’t stopped him from spending all of his time in pursuit. He’d broken laws, and a few heads. Even now, looking back as a man who was considering shooting kids to get his way, Garth wanted to groan at his teenage self’s poor judgement.
He didn’t want to shoot Meyer’s son, and didn’t particularly want to hurt Meyer. Or his wife, or that Indian kid. This was supposed to be straightforward. It was supposed to be bloodless. He’d been drinking with Remy on the day the news had broken. Remy was already dour, and started saying that if the world ended at the hands of the aliens, at least his pathetic life wouldn’t be much of a loss. Garth had tried to talk him out of it, to tell him he’d done okay.
But what did it matter? Remy had wanted to know. They were dead anyway. There was no place to go, no place to hide.
Maybe Garth shouldn’t have started talking about the Dempsey job. Maybe Remy shouldn’t have agreed as readily. And definitely, anticipating trouble on the drive, they shouldn’t have turned to his cousin, Wade, as necessary recklessness. But what was done was done, and by the time they’d found Dempsey’s cunt of an ex-wife in the living room, it had been too late to go back. By then, Remy had decided that staying alive was a good idea after all. Garth never needed convincing. Wade was too hopped-up, young, and dumb to consider hesitation.
Kill her, Wade had suggested.
But Garth didn’t like that idea, so they’d tossed her into the pantry. Now the fucking pantry was full, and he might have to shoot a kid to close the door on this mess. It was out of hand. But they’d come this far, so it wasn’t like they could walk away now. Wade, for one, wouldn’t have it. Garth, too, kind of wanted to keep on living. And at this point, it wasn’t like Meyer and his family would just let them hang out in peace, as they very well may have if this had been handled differently.
Garth stood. Wade and Remy were in bedrooms, maybe asleep. Garth couldn’t do the same. Even if he didn’t have to kill the kid himself, he’d have to order it. Even turning his head would be tacit agreement. Wade was an animal; it was the owner’s fault if a beast got off its leash.
But as much as Garth didn’t want to do what had to be done, he wanted to get into that bunker. He knew what was in it. He’d watched, between nailing boards, while Dempsey had stocked the thing on his last visit. He’d brought case after case of food through the doors off the kitchen, then dumbwaitered them down himself. There was some sort of mechanical unloading thingy at the bottom, it seemed, because Meyer was able to keep sending more and more stuff down without any help.
Food.
Water.
Mysterious cases with no labels.
Garth knew what was in at least some of those cases. He’d even considered calling Meyer on it, joking that he was breaking all sorts of laws. A man couldn’t own those things. Only armies could. Normal people wouldn’t even recognize some of the stuff Meyer was sending down the chute, but Garth, thanks to his time with the Army, knew plenty.
Electronics, for entertainment.
Survival supplies.
Body armor, gas masks — paranoid shit that Garth wouldn’t have a clue how to find.
It was all down there, just waiting in the enormous bunker under the well-paced floor. His crew had only built parts of it (and had been specifically barred from other parts by polite men who seemed an awful lot like private security), but he knew it was big, comfortable, and well stocked. He’d even had the place furnished like the ultimate man cave before they’d capped the last corner, lowering couches and beds from above on cranes.
It was all right below his feet, and he wanted it. He’d thought they could waltz in and steal it, but he’d had no idea they’d be cockblocked by such nasty security. But they had, and so maybe Dempsey’s arrival, as unpleasant as it might get, was a blessing. He still believed in blessings, when they served him. So yeah, maybe this was meant to be. Maybe Garth Wrigley was destined to survive the apocalypse. Maybe God had arranged this. Didn’t God occasionally kill his own people? Garth’s Sunday School was rusty, but he was pretty sure he had. Maybe this was like that.
Or maybe Meyer would make it easy. Maybe he’d just tell them the code. Maybe he’d open it up without any fuss.
But then he’d be a threat. No, he’d probably need to go. They all would.
It would be okay. Wade could do it. Or maybe they could just reinforce the pantry and leave them in there forever. But of course, that would mean they’d die of thirst and starvation, and that sounded worse than a bullet. Maybe he’d be doing them a kindness.
He looked again at his phone: 3:18.
The room was too quiet. It was impossible to believe any of this was real — either the approaching doom from above (that would, by the way, forgive extreme acts like kidnapping and killing in self-defense, which is what getting rid of those in the pantry would be, when you thought about it) or his new position as a home invader. The silence and darkness were their own presence.
He walked through to the kitchen, peeked at the clock on the supposed time lock, then backed away again, wishing time would hurry the fuck up.
He looked through the bay window. The moon was huge, perched between two distant peaks. Was it full? Well, there was only one way to be sure.
He walked to the French doors, then unlocked them by turning the lever that Remy, retard that he could sometimes be, had left open earlier. He stepped out onto the porch, then walked out to its middle.
No, not a full moon, but close.
He looked up. Garth wanted to see the stars, but the moonlight had washed most of ‘em out. All he could see were a few of the brightest blips, including the really bright one that he seemed to remember wasn’t even a star. It was Venus. Sunlight simply bounced off it just as sunlight bounced off the full moon, and …
Garth staggered back and almost fell to the deck. He had to grip a chair to recover, then give himself a moment to find his balance.
The air was peppered with dozens of tiny round blips, each lit on one side like miniature crescent moons. They were disturbingly obvious, once Garth’s eyes began to adjust. If he’d held a marble at arm’s length, it would be about the same size to his eye as the alien spheres in the sky.
Garth looked up for a long time, feeling like he was tumbling upward. That was them. It had to be. The sight of what looked like half-lit ball bearings in the sky was pure, blood-chilling menace. Something that odd should have a soundtrack or at least appear to move, but as long as Garth watched, the spheres appeared silent without motion. It was quietly ominous — the way a person with feet in concrete might feel watching a steamroller creep forward.
Which, really, was a fair analogy for what was happening.
There was a sound from the lawn, opposite where Garth had been looking.
He whipped around, his hand automatically going to the gun on his hip. For a moment, he stared into the dark, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim expanse. But the home’s rear side was thick with trees and hills; much was shadow even in moonlight.
He didn’t like turning his back on the ships in the sky. They were just hanging there, surely still thousands of miles away or more. Slowing down, if the NASA people
were right. But still Garth felt them like a cool hand on his shoulder — a boogeyman waiting to strike the minute he stopped looking them in the eye.
He couldn’t see anything that might have caused the noise he’d heard. Or thought he’d heard. Because he might not have heard anything. It might’ve been his imagination.
“Fuck you, squirrel,” he said aloud.
Joking — even with himself — should have calmed Garth’s nerves. But all it did was remind him that he was all alone, whistling in the dark to keep the spooks at bay.
He turned back to the house, and heard that sound from the front yard again. This time, he took a few steps forward, forcing his feet to move in an attempt to defeat the stupid, childish fear he felt threatening to suffocate him. He squinted.
A pair of pickup trucks, yellow moonlight glinting from the hoods and bumpers.
The place where the driveway broke through the trees, headed to the main road, looking like a shadowed archway in a fairy tale.
Nothing else.
It must be an animal. A deer or something. They were up in the mountains, after all, and just last night he and Remy had sat on this deck, huddled in blankets, happy to get out of earshot of the woman’s loud mouth. With Wade sleeping something off, they’d felt they could go outside without him deciding to shut her up in an obvious way. And they’d found all sorts of natural sounds: owls, wolves, or coyotes in the distance, the wind’s heavy sighing.
Still, Garth continued to stare at the shadowy yard for an extra few seconds. Then he seemed to feel the spheres in the sky watching him and turned to look, sure they’d have grown to the size of basketballs. But they were no larger than they’d been, no more of a menace.
He turned, reasonably sure he was choosing to leave rather than being frightened back into the house. But when he reentered the kitchen, he found himself looking at someone’s back. Someone who shouldn’t be where he was, covered in drywall dust as if he’d found something sharp, then dug his way through a locked pantry wall.
