Charlee shook her head. “No, not brave, just scared. It was either jump or . . .” Charlee’s voice trailed off.
Slim laid a hand gently on Charlee’s shoulder. “Some of the bravest guys I knew in the war were scared to death,” he said. “I always worried about the ones that said they weren’t scared. Something wrong upstairs.” Slim pointed at his head. “Lot of those guys didn’t make it home.”
“By the way,” Ralph said to Jason, “I’d stay away from Bangor if I was you. A lot of terrible stuff went down there and I hear it still ain’t safe.”
“Are you able to communicate with the outside world?” Jason asked.
“Got an old ham radio in the other room,” Ralph replied. “Been a hobby of mine since I was a kid. Word is, the plague started up all over again, only this time it’s different.”
“Different how?” Jason remembered what Spencer had said and how the technicians on the plane had acted.
“Seems they’re more resilient now. Last longer. Maybe do more damage.”
“Wonderful,” Charlee said, her body giving a slight fear-filled shudder.
“I’m not sure those idiots who stole the virus knew what they were in for,” Ralph said. “Now there’s talk of aliens and Armageddon and all the usual crap.” Ralph gave a dismissive flap of the hand. “There’s even talk of a savior, but that ain’t surprising either.”
Jason’s interest piqued. “What’s this about aliens?” he asked Ralph.
“Ah, you know, just crazy talk. When folks are scared they make up all sorts of things. Started out with just one report, but now a bunch of operators have gotten ahold of it and are spreading it like wildfire. They’re saying the aliens arrived here at midnight July third, about the same time the virus struck. This morning I heard a report that the aliens are securing nuclear sites, and not just here in the U.S of A, but all over the world.”
Charlee turned to Jason. “You think it’s true?” she asked. “If it is you think the aliens’ll use our own nukes against us?”
Jason shrugged. “I don’t know, Charlee. After what’s happened anything’s possible. But if they are here I’d say there’s a better chance they’re securing those sites to keep us from using them against each other.”
“That don’t say much for the human race,” commented Slim.
Jason and Danielle exchanged an uneasy glance.
“We need to get out of here as soon as possible,” Jason said. “I’m pretty sure we need to go further north, up into the wilderness. We might have to borrow your car, Ralph.”
“We can use the one I . . . borrowed,” Cobain said. “I don’t think the original owner will mind.”
“Wilderness?” Ralph said. “You mean like up in the Allagash?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Jason replied. “I think that’s where the little girl is, and she needs all three of these objects.”
“Do you think she just needs the objects or does she need us too?” Danielle asked. “I’ve been having these dreams where you and I are with her in this strange but beautiful place.”
“If she’s in the Allagash wilderness you’ll have a bitch of a time getting there by car,” Ralph said. “And it’ll take too much time anyway.”
“What do you suggest then?”
“I suggest we get dinner on the table and eat, then I’ll tell you all a crazy little story.” Ralph went around to all the windows and made sure the shades and curtains were drawn. Then he lit a few candles and place them along the table. “Not smart to advertise our presence,” he said.
They ate in the dining room where there was a family size table. The chicken with all the trimmings was wonderful. There wasn’t much serious conversation during the meal, just some snippets of small talk. Everyone was too busy stuffing their faces. Besides it gave everyone a break from the craziness. Sitting around the table having a family style meal made them feel almost normal, like nothing could hurt them here.
When the meal was almost done Ralph got up from the table and said, “I’ll be right back.” He left the dining room and entered a room that appeared to be a combination living room and library. He returned with a small book. It was about the size of a mass market paperback only thinner and much older, bound in what appeared to be leather. He handed it to Jason. “See that the child gets this,” he said.
Jason stared at the cover. It was blank, nothing but aged brown leather. Danielle leaned over for a closer look. “What is it?” she said.
“Just give it to the kid,” Ralph said. “She’ll know what to do with it.”
“Why don’t you come with us,” Danielle said. “You could give it to her yourself.”
“No, that ain’t gonna happen, ma’am. Only you five were meant to go.”
“How do you know that?”
“I told you, the little girl . . . well, you know.” Ralph smiled sadly.
Jason began leafing through the pages of the book. It was a volume of poetry by Robert Browning. His eyes fell upon a random passage and he read it aloud:
“To wit, she was meant for heaven, not Earth;
Had turned an angel before this time:
Yet she was mortal, in such dearth
Of frailty, all you could count a crime
Was—she knew her gold hair’s worth”
Following the passage there was absolute silence around the table. The air was thick with emotion.
Bullets tore through the windows with a horrific fierceness scattering shards of glass and plaster and bits of wood about the dining room in showers of shrapnel. Jason felt a sting on his face and his hand came away with blood on it. He grabbed Danielle and Charlee and pushed them to the floor beneath the table. The book was forgotten for a moment, until it fluttered down amidst the clutter. Jason grabbed it and shoved it in his pocket.
“You’re bleeding,” Danielle said.
“I’m okay.”
More rounds tore through windows and walls shredding curtains and shades and knocking pictures off the walls. Jason looked at the assault rifle on the floor beside him and shook his head, knowing he did not have enough ammo to fight off a squad of well-armed soldiers.
“You have any weapons?” He asked Ralph
“This way,” Ralph said crawling toward the living room. “We have to move fast, but stay low.”
Jason sent everyone crawling behind Ralph before turning in the opposite direction.
“What are you doing?” Danielle hissed.
“Stay with Ralph. I’ll catch up.”
Outside headlights illuminated the house, washing the room in soft yellow light through the louvered blinds. Jason slid to the window, parted the blinds slightly and saw two vehicles. Both were heavy duty late model trucks. From them poured several armed men. One man hoisted a long tube to his shoulder. Jason rested his rifle on the windowsill, aimed and pulled the trigger. The man with the tube went down as another man scrambled for it. Jason slid back across the dining room floor through shards of debris. Ralph had gathered everyone around an open door at the far end of the living room.
“Everybody down into the cellar,” Ralph said. “Hurry!”
A hail of rounds blasted in through the living room windows and Ralph was struck in the chest. He went down as blood poured from the wound. Danielle tore his shirt away and inspected the wound. She gave Jason a grim look.
“Don’t worry about me,” Ralph said. “You folks have to go now!”
“You need medical attention and I’m a doctor!”
“Go!”
“Do as he says,” Jason said. “I’ll bring him down.”
With distressed looks everyone except Jason clambered down the stairs as another barrage of rounds tore into the house. Jason crawled to where Ralph lay bleeding. “Come on,” He said, “I’ll carry you.”
“No,” Ralph said. “You gotta move before it’s too late. I told you I wasn’t meant to go.”
“That’s ridiculous—”
“Just do your part,” Ralph said. “I’ve done m
ine.”
“What’s down there besides a cellar?” Jason asked.
“Plenty. Some you won’t believe. First there’s a door at the back of the root cellar.” Ralph’s breathing had gone ragged. “It’s hard to see, but feel around. There’s a solid locking system on the inside, almost invisible. Make sure you bolt it after everyone is through. It’ll take a while for those assholes to break it down. There’s an underground tunnel that leads to the barn. There’s no light so feel your way along. Halfway through the tunnel there’s another door on the left with a cache of weapons and ammo. There’s a flashlight on a shelf to the right of the door. Take what you need, then continue on to the barn. You’ll know what to do when you get there.”
“How will I know?”
Ralph’s eyes filled with rapture. “Something . . . wonderful . . . sorry, didn’t have time to tell you.” His breathing halted for a second. “No time now. Make sure the child gets the book.” Ralph’s eyes glazed and his chest stopped moving.
“Damn!” Jason said. He quickly dragged Ralph out of the way, crawled through the cellar door and closed it behind him, bolted it from the inside and ran down the stairs as a massive explosion rocked the house above him. Dust and debris began to sift down through cracks in the floorboards, and now licks of fire were dripping to the cellar floor like burning grease and the place was filling with smoke.
“Follow me,” Jason said.
“What about Ralph,” Slim asked.
“He didn’t make it.”
“Bastards!” Danielle said bitterly.
Jason opened the door to the root cellar and ushered everyone inside. He made his way quickly to the back. Light back there was almost nonexistent. He was feeling around the back wall when his hand contacted the nearly invisible latch Ralph had mentioned. With a quick flip of his wrist the door opened. He ushered everybody into the tunnel, closed and locked the door behind them. Together they felt their way along the earthen wall until Jason came in contact with another door, He opened it and felt his way around until his hand landed on a shelf. Almost immediately he felt the flashlight. When he turned it on he was stunned by what he saw. Weapons of every variety. It appeared Ralph had been stockpiling them. A true survivalist. Jason grabbed weapons and handed them out; small arms with extra loaded clips for the ladies, automatics for him and Slim with half a dozen loaded clips each, extra boxes of ammo which he stashed in a metal ammo box along with grenades. “You know how to use a weapon?” he asked Johnny Cobain.
Cobain pulled a revolver from beneath his jacket. “38 Special,” he said. “Picked it up on my way up here. Came in handy a few times. Almost out of ammo though.”
“I think you’d be better off with an automatic,” Jason said handing him a .9 mm and a handful of extra clips. “Faster and easier to load, and more fire power. Put those clips in your pocket.”
Cobain accepted the weapon and clips without argument. They wasted no time in the tunnel. Jason hadn’t forgotten what Ralph had told him: “Continue on to the barn. You’ll know what to do when you get there.”
“Where are we going?” Charlee asked.
“The barn.”
“Why?”
“It’s where Ralph said we should go.”
“What if those assholes are waiting for us?”
“Chance we’ll have to take.”
Jason turned to Cobain. “Johnny, did you put your car in the barn or did Ralph?”
“He did. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering.”
“Now that you mention it, he was very protective of that place. Wouldn’t let me near it.”
They came to a dead end with a ladder. Jason shined the flashlight up toward the ceiling and saw the trap door. “I’m going up. I’ll push the door open a little and have a look around, see what I can see.”
As the trapdoor creaked open, bits of soil and shafts of hay came sifting down around its perimeter leading Jason to believe that Ralph had done a careful job of concealing it.
To Jason’s surprise he did not have to use his flashlight to see out through the inch wide crack. In fact a strange luminescent blue light came flooding in all around the door. For a long moment he stood there on that ladder staring as his eyes adjusted to the strange light. What he saw nearly blew his mind.
CHAPTER 22
Somewhere beneath the ice Caves. Northern Maine Wilderness. July 6th.
There was no railing. Just stairs, a hair raising descent that twisted round and round into what seemed infinity. It was hard for Eli, considering his size and deformities. It would take only one minor error, one tiny stumble and death waited somewhere below. But Eli knew that wouldn’t happen. He was on a mission and he did not have the luxury of failure.
At a certain point Doug, who was in the lead, halted. “This is approximately halfway,” he said. “We should take a breather.”
“How do you know that?” Eli asked.
“I carved it on the wall.” Doug pointed. There were two large “A’s” neatly carved into the granite surface of the wall.
“Let me guess,” Eli said. “Annie and Ariel.”
Doug nodded. “The two most important people in my life.”
“So let me get this straight. If you know this is halfway then you must know how many steps there are.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I never counted them. I timed myself. The first time it took me sixty eight minutes to descend walking at a normal gate. It’s a lot slower going up. The second time it took me seventy one minutes to descend. A three minute difference. So the third time I stopped at thirty five minutes and carved the A’s. It’s slower going with you two so I’ve been watching for the carvings.” He looked at his watch. It’s taken us forty two minutes to get to this point. It’ll take us at least another forty minutes to reach the bottom.”
They stood for a moment gazing out over the massive chamber before them. To Eli it looked like a hundred football stadiums could fit inside this space with room to spare. Like an underground version of the Grand Canyon. He looked heavenward and saw that light from above was getting brighter. “Do you guys actually have any idea what this is?”
Jennings smiled but it was more a grimace. “Not a clue—”
“I think it’s a ship,” Doug said which drew a sharp stare from Jennings.
“You know I’m not totally bought into that,” Jennings said.
“Of course you’re not. You never totally buy into anything.”
“You know me so well, young Mr. McArthur.”
“We’ve talked about this, Rick. Maybe it’s not a ship in the conventional sense . . . in the way we were taught about such things, but I believe it is most definitely a ship, or some sort of transporter. When you see the rest of it, Eli, I think you’ll agree.”
“A transporter?” Eli said. “You mean?”
“I mean there’s something very alien about this place,” Doug said. “Whatever it is I don’t think it originated here.”
“Like it was brought here or something?”
“Yeah, or maybe it isn’t here.”
“Maybe it isn’t here?” Eli said. “I don’t know what that means.”
“I’m not going to explain,” Doug said to Eli. “You seem to have a good imagination.”
There was a long moment of silence. Finally Eli said, “Yeah, I feel it. It’s why the blue light is here.”
Doug nodded.
Jennings said, “Eli, obviously you remember the light on Apocalypse Island, the one that went straight down into that shaft in the ground?”
“How could I forget? It was some sort of miracle that helped shape mine and Danny’s lives. Our government destroyed it.”
“No,” Jennings said. “They didn’t destroy it. They tried, but failed. In any event, there’s another one just like it only a hundred times bigger right beneath us.”
“That explains a lot,” Eli said.
“Doug and I believe it’s connected in some way to th
is . . . formation.”
“And that’s what I’m hearing,” Eli said. “Or maybe feeling would be a better description.” He placed his fist over his heart. “I feel it here, exactly like Apocalypse Island.”
“Right you are,” Jennings replied.
Eli stopped and stood staring, thinking, allowing the ultra-low frequency hum to permeate his entire being and the blue light to wash over and through him in radiant waves. “It recognizes me,” he said.
“What?”
“The Blue Light. It remembers me. It knows me.”
“Are you sure, Eli?”
“It’s why I’m here. It’s why Danny is here. It needs us.”
“For what?” Doug asked.
“I don’t know yet. Being down here is part of it, but there’s more I don’t yet understand. Actually there’s a lot I don’t understand. Intuition is a very cool thing, but it doesn’t necessarily answer all the hard questions. Questions like, if this thing is a transporter, then why is it so big? I mean, what the hell is it going to transport? Half the planet?” And as Eli asked the question the answer came to him. He thought about everything that had happened and remembered what was going on up on the surface, and for a moment he lost the ability to breathe.
Ariel’s voice suddenly spoke inside his head and he listened. The future cannot be avoided, Ariel said. It is coming and we cannot stop it. You need to hurry before it is too late.
“Come on, guys, we have to move,” Eli said. “Ariel’s kicking my ass.”
Doug, Jennings and Eli moved away from the halfway point and continued their hair-raising trek down that improbable spiral staircase toward the floor of the canyon below.
CHAPTER 23
Somewhere beneath the ice Caves. Northern Maine Wilderness. July 6th.
It was the biggest and baddest experience of Eli’s life. Completely beyond anything he had ever imagined. And that was saying something for a man who was a survivor of the CIA’s secret MK-ULTRA radiation experiments. They had just reached the ground floor after nearly an hour more on those infernal stone steps and he could do nothing but stare out across the wild, blue expanses in total awe. He craned his neck, gazing skyward, but could see nothing up there except what appeared to be blue roiling clouds, as if it wasn’t a cavern at all, but a massive canyon cut between two vertical cliffs. He knew it had to be a trick of the mind, but then … his reverie was interrupted by a muffled buzzing sound.
Song of Ariel: A Blue Light Thriller (Book 2) (Blue Light Series) Page 26
