by David Coy
“Where did it come from?” she asked with a weak voice.
Greenbaum shook his head with his mouth open, not looking at her.
“Well, it’s not from Mars!” Greenbaum said stupidly.
Shut up.
She glanced over at Greenbaum expecting her gaze to bounce off him, but it stuck fast, held there by the fear she saw behind the mask of his face.
“We have to talk,” he said.
* * *
“Bailey and Gilbert are both gone,” Mary said. “It’s been over twenty hours. There’s a new guy in Gilbert’s hole—a little Indian of the South American variety.” Her voice was flat. There was no panic in it, just resignation. Being gone so long could only mean one of two things: either they were dead—or they were alive and worse than dead.
She stood with her arms folded, chin up, keeping her grief down with the force of her will alone. When Phil put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her in, she broke down like a child and wept.
They’d all become attached to brave, innocent Bailey. The injustice and horror of it was almost too much for Phil as well.
“Goddamn it . . . ” Ned said softly and turned away. “This place is eating us alive.” He walked away shaking his head.
“There’s nothing we can do for her,” Phil said to Mary. “Nothing.”
He held her until her sobs shrank to sniffs, and the sniffs died to a cough or two. She wiped her eyes and face on the sleeve of her floppy shirt, then walked away toward her chamber. On the way, she dug a cigarette out of her pocket and lit it.
They’d worked out most of the details for the time being except the major one: someone stayed behind. That individual would sacrifice himself or herself for the others. They thought about trying to somehow trick the control panel or maybe operate it from remote, but those were just empty suggestions. There were no real options. Someone would have to stay.
Phil reached into his pocket and pulled out the little folded envelope. He opened it and took out the five straws he’d fashioned out of the copper wire from the lamp cord in the dump. Since Bailey and Gilbert were gone, he tossed two of the long ones away.
Nobody said anything when they decided to do it, but they’d all hoped it would be Gilbert who drew the short straw, and Phil had briefly considered rigging the draw to ensure it.
Now, it was just the three of them.
Phil decided it would be best to do the draw just a few hours before they attempted their escape. There would be less time for the loser to think.
He placed the remaining straws back in the envelope and put it in his pocket. He checked his watch. It was almost time to call Linda and Greenbaum.
When he got to Mary’s chamber, Mary already had the phone ready to go. Phil was amazed by her resilience and kissed her gently on the forehead for it. There was still some strength and determination left that hadn’t been carved away.
Linda answered the phone on the first ring.
Phil told them about the plan to escape, but left off the part about one of them staying behind. When he was finished, he thought he heard Linda say, “Oh, God” under her breath but wasn’t sure.
* * *
Greenbaum ambled through the kitchen and out into the living room as if he didn’t quite know where to sit. Linda watched him, and waited patiently.
“What’s going on,” he asked.
He finally picked a spot on the sofa and squatted down into it. Linda followed him and sat down across from him, hands folded. When she looked at Greenbaum’s face, it was ashen as if he’d just climbed ten flights of stairs. He brushed his hair out of his face and tried to smile. The effort was too much for him.
Her own heart was still pounding. “What the hell is wrong?” she asked. “You look like you’re having a heart attack.” She felt a little like that herself. She leaned in toward him.
“Are you?”
It was possible. He wasn’t in the best physical shape. A part of her hoped it was only that.
“No. I’m fine. I mean, I’m not dying just yet.”
“Then what? What’s wrong?”
Greenbaum just looked at her with that pained expression on his face. The look alone was starting to annoy her.
“Well, what? Speak,” she said.
Greenbaum took a deep breath, then did just that, using only a fraction of the air in his lungs.
“Do you know what that thing is against the sun?” He let the remaining waste air sigh out.
“Of course I do.”
“Are you sure?”
“What are you saying?” she snapped.
This was ridiculous. They were acting like children. Nothing productive could come of this.
“Look, you said you wanted to talk, so talk,” she said, clearly annoyed with him.
“We’ll never be able to convince anyone with any influence,” he said, “that the attack is real in time to prevent the deployment of the alien weapon.”
“You’re like a leaf in the goddamned wind, did you know
that?”
“You don’t understand enough yet.”
“I understand just plenty.”
“Look at what’s happening with your eyes wide open. The facts are just too fantastic. The attack is damned apocalyptic. We’ll sound like Chicken Little—or assholes because that’s what humans as a species, and as individuals, are conditioned to hear. Even the reality of the ship, the hardest evidence of all, won’t set off alarms fast enough to save us. Do you get what I’m saying?”
“You won’t even try, will you?”
“Linda, there’s no way we can make them believe us! Don’t you get it. Have you been asleep for the last week?”
She crossed her arms and fell back into the sofa.
“I refuse to believe what you are saying.”
“There is no policy, no charter, no rules of engagement to protect us from this thing.”
“You’re weak.”
He sucked in another breath and let the words out one at a time putting stress on just the right ones and talked with his hands.
“I . . . ” she started but couldn’t finish. She looked at her hands, her human hands, and folded one over the other as if to protect it.
“What do you feel when you look up at the stars at night?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t remember,” she said flatly. She wished her leg would stop bouncing.
“Do you know what I feel?”
“What?”
“Wonder,” he said. “Wonder and horror.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“The universe has horror in it beyond our imagination.”
“No shit there, Sherlock,” she said. It was silly.
She sat there hating him for the truth. The truth didn’t help them. The truth was cold and stupid—and she hated him.
“There’s a glimmer of hope in all this. We have to maximize what resources we have—put our effort where it can do the most good.”
“What?”
“Phil.”
“What about him?”
“He’s a soldier, isn’t he?”
“Was. So?”
* * *
Greenbaum leaned over towards the phone and Linda leaned away to give him space. She felt as if she was being torn in half.
“Even if you escape, you’ll die,” Greenbaum said into the speaker. “You’ll die, me, Linda, the whole planet will die. Forget about escape. It wouldn’t mean anything anyway.”
Linda’s anger flared. He didn’t have to put it like that.
“Even if you capture a shuttle,” he continued, “you could fly the damned thing down and land it on the Pentagon and not get any action on it for weeks. It would be taken as an elaborate and highly detailed hoax, then it would be taken under advisement. The very fact of its existence would suggest, first, not the reality of an attack, but the lengths some people will go to create a hoax. It would be so fantastic it would have to be a hoax, don’t you see that?”
“What
exactly do you want me to do about it Greenbaum?” Phil snapped back.
“Find a way to sabotage the ship.”
“Is that all?”
“We have pictures, Phil,” Linda offered hopefully. “Maybe those could help.”
“Maybe I could ask them to just pack up and go home!” Phil yelled back. “That makes as much sense!”
“You’ve got to find a way!” Greenbaum barked.
“There is no way!”
“Well you’ve got to find it!”
“Stop! Stop it!” Linda yelled at them.
She gave Greenbaum a look that could have cut. He was blowing it. In a matter of seconds, it had all flown out of control. This was not what they’d agreed to. Greenbaum’s panic had flummoxed the whole thing.
It all sounded so logical just an hour before. Horrible, but logical.
Linda wanted to vomit. She was way over her head.
She’d thought out what to say and how to say it, rehearsing it in her mind. She’d forgotten almost all of it. It was all a cloud now.
“Greenbaum’s right,” she said. “You have to try to kill the . . . the ship.”
She wanted to run, to hide in the nearest hole in the ground and never come back out.
“Even if you . . . you die trying, Phil, you have to try.” That was the hardest part. She wanted to tell him that the fate of the world as they knew it lay in his hands, but she couldn’t muster the nerve to say the words.
“You have to stop it, Phil,” she simply said.
The silence on the other end of the phone was thick enough to cut.
“Look,” Greenbaum said, leaning in at the speaker phone. “If you can move around freely, and if you think you can fly one of those damned things home, then you know enough to find a way to kill or disable the ship before they release their weapon. From what you’ve said, that could be at any time now, right?”
That wasn’t as agreed, either, and Linda held in check the raging impulse to backhand Greenbaum with her fist. She closed her eyes.
Release their weapon, Phil thought. That was it. The wasps were simply a biological weapon. That put it all in perspective. That was the right view. The aliens were there to kill and conquer—no less than Cortez, Pol Pot or Ghingis Khan—it was that simple. The mode was different, but the motivation was precisely the same.
“You have to find a way, Phil,” Linda said, trying to sound kind.
To Phil, her voice sounded hollow as if it were coming up out of a deep, cold well.
“Phil?” Linda’s voice said.
On some cosmic plane, maybe it all made sense after all. At the core of all life was the struggle of species against species for the available resources. It was simple. The struggle spanned the interplanetary regions of space. Why shouldn t it?
“Phil?”
Only the strong survive.
“Phil, are you there?”
Survival of the fittest.
“Phil!” she pleaded.
Nobody’s keeping score.
“I’m here,” he finally said.
“Thank God.”
“For what, Linda?” he said calmly.
Phil broke the connection just before the timer chimed. He’d hung up on them and it chilled Linda to the bone.
When she looked over at Greenbaum, he reminded her of Billy Hoffer, the bratty kid she grew up with who always had to have his way—no matter what. She wanted to kill him.
“You stupid son of a bitch,” she said. The remark was aimed at herself, too. She had it coming.
“Do you think he’ll do it?” he asked, trying to ignore the insult.
She looked at him and shook her head.
“It’s not like we asked him to change a tire, now is it?”
“No. It isn’t.”
“If it’s possible,” she said. “He’ll try—and when he calls tomorrow—if he calls—we’d better he ready to help him any way we can.”
“I’ll get the photos to the lab,” he said.
“You do that.”
* * *
“So this is your chamber? They gave it to you?” Bailey asked, sauntering around with her hands on her hips. Her smile was as sweet as honey. The chamber was larger and cleaner than the holes in the tube. There was actually a ledge going around it that you could sit on. Bailey tried it out.
“Yes. It can be yours, too.”
“Roommates?” she asked sweetly.
Gilbert drew his mouth into an invisible smile and harumphed just below an audible level.
Against one wall, there were plastic crates filled with foodstuff, and Bailey poked around in them. She pulled out a package of Ding Dongs with a big grin.
“Can I have these?”
The sphinx nodded.
“Yeah?”
She opened the package and took a big bite. Her face lit up, and she made a big, toothy, chocolaty smile at the sphinx.
“Yum,” she said. “So are you friends with them now—the aliens I mean?”
“Something like that.”
“Can I be their friend, too?”
“Perhaps.”
Bailey exhaled her best smile. “Really?”
“I said perhaps.”
“Can you put in a word for me?”
The sphinx found that funny and almost smiled.
“Come here,” he said.
Bailey lit up shyly and came over and kneeled down in front of him. She took another bite of Ding Dong.
“Um . . . these are good. Want some?”
The sphinx shook its head just enough. Bailey kneeled there and chewed, waiting for him to say something, smiling cutely at him from time to time.
“You are the first of the thousand,” Gilbert said, not looking at her. “Do you know what that means?”
“Nope.”
“It means God has given you over to me for safekeeping.”
“Oh, boy,” she said past the food.
“Yes. You are the first and shall be the mother to many. Glory to God.”
«T)-V?
“I’m sorry?”
“That’s right,” he said, reaching out to touch her hair. “The mother to many.”
Bailey felt his hand caress her hair.
“Who’ll be the daddy to these manys?” she asked chewing.
The sphinx just stared, then let the slightest tremble of a smile cross his face, like he was telling a secret.
“I hope it’s not those gosh-danged aliens,” she said with a sideways grin.
It didn’t matter that she didn’t hear me, he thought. There was time for that later.
“Do you know how—evil—the world is?” the sphinx said.
“Pretty bad, huh?”
“There are liars in the world who would say anything.”
“I know what you mean. I’ve known a couple of those. They’ll say anything to get in your pants. All they wanna do is fuck you in the ass.”
She stuffed the last of the cake in her mouth.
The sphinx gathered up a fistful of Bailey’s hair and twisted it.
“Ow!”
“I don’t like dirty words.”
“I’m sorry,” she said wincing. “I didn’t know bad words would hurt the ears of the God our lord.”
He relaxed his grip. Bailey looked hurt for a second more, then brightened.
“Tell me more about the thousand . . . whatevers.”
The sphinx thought about how to tell her he would soon be the lord and master of what was left of humanity. He wanted to tell her straight out but didn’t want her to panic. He was sure he’d heard of women fainting or running screaming from men of enormous power. He was certain this one had never met an agent of God.
He wondered briefly how she would take the news that billions of humans would soon die horribly, but that didn’t matter.
“God has sent these demons to do His will,” he began. “They shall unleash a horror on the Earth to cleanse it. Great numbers of people will die.”
“Like how many?�
�
“Most of them.”
“Wow. That’s a lot of people. Why do they want to kill so many people?”
“It is the will of God that they do it.”
“When will it happen?”
“A week. Perhaps just somewhat longer.”
“And you and me won’t die? We’ll be like . . . saved?”
“Yes. You will be part of the thousand. You will be saved to serve God and his agent.”
“How come me?”
“I can’t tell you just now.”
“Who is this God’s agent?”
The sphinx stared at her and let the answer well up from deep in his soul. When the words were of sufficient volume, he let them out in a long, warm gush.
“I am the agent of God and the master of the one thousand.”
Bailey smiled her brightest smile at him.
“Hey, are you gonna be the daddy of all the babies then?” she asked sweetly.
The sphinx nodded and swallowed. “Not all. But the children of the new Earth must be clean and wholesome,” it said. “They must not be liars, or keepers of secrets.”
Bailey smiled up at him adoringly like he was the very image of God Himself.
Gilbert Keefer looked down at the moist, oval face of Bailey Hall, so close to his loins that he could feel the heat of her lovely head against them. He could see her chest and her cleavage beneath her shirt and the fine, straight scars of his queen’s ordeal. The power of his Lord God stirred in him like a beast in rut.
Bailey just smiled up at him with an open and innocent smile. I’d abort it with a coat hanger before I gave birth to your nasty mother-fucking baby, she thought.
“Can I have another pack of Ding Dongs?” she asked nicely.
12
W e’ve had a change in plan,” Phil said. He read the confusion in their faces and wanted to apologize. What else could you do?
“What kind of change?” Ned wanted to know.
Mary squinted one eye at him. “Spit it out, Phil,” she said.
