The Border

by Robert McCammon

  “Yeah. Let’s try it.”

  Hannah turned them onto the road and they started up again, leaving whorls of dust behind the tires. The bus jubbled over loose stones, which put them all on edge. A little more than two hundred yards up the road, they came to a chainlink fence about eight feet high. It was topped by a coil of barbed wire, and the fence went in both directions through the woods as far as they could see.

  On the gate, which bore a sturdy-looking padlock, was a sign that read PRIVATE PROPERTY, NO TRESPASSING.

  They sat with the engine idling. “What do you think, bossman?” Hannah asked.

  “I think it’s strange. This is a national forest. How can it be private property?”

  “Don’t know, but that’s what the sign says.”

  “Yeah.” Dave turned to look at Ethan. “What do you think?”

  The expression was determined and the silver eyes were intense. “I think we need to go through that gate.”

  Dave nodded. “There’s no such thing as private property anymore, is there? Odd, though, to be in a national forest. Hannah, can you push us through?”

  “I could, but I don’t want to. Get anything tangled up underneath or blow the tires…wouldn’t be good.”

  “I’ll do it.” Ethan stood up. Hannah opened the door for him and he stepped off the bus. As the others watched, it took maybe ten seconds for the peacekeeper to take aim at the gate with the palm of his right hand and the entire gate to separate from its padlock and chain and go flying through the air; in midair it curved and sailed into the woods on the right. The coil of barbed wire hung down over the entrance but would only scratch a little paint off the bus. Ethan came back aboard and returned to his seat as if the merest amount of energy had been required, though he was opening and closing a hand whose bones and tendons throbbed with a dull ache.

  “Easy enough,” Hannah said. “I wish I could’ve done that to my ex-husband. All right, we’re movin’.”

  She drove them through. They had taken two curves, still ascending, when another fence blocked the road. It was not made of chainlink; it was at least six feet high and made of what appeared to be a gridwork of thin white wires. Again Hannah stopped the bus before a padlocked gate, because she knew what it was even as Dave said it out loud.

  “That’s an electric fence. Damn…somebody doesn’t want people going up this road, that’s for sure.”

  “Which means,” Olivia said, “there’s something up there that’s supposed to stay hidden.”

  “Right. Well…Ethan, can you knock that gate down?”

  “I can,” Ethan said, “but I think you should know that the electricity has been activated.”

  “No way!” said Jefferson. “All the power’s knocked out, and why would anybody use up gas for a generator to run that thing?”

  “Power is running through the fence and the gate. I can feel the movement of energy. Touching that would be enough to kill any human.”

  No one spoke for a moment. Dave scratched his beard and saw that, like the chainlink fence, this one also extended into the forest on both sides as far as could be seen. He thought it was likely the fence went around the entire mountain. Somebody had gone to great lengths and great expense to protect their property, but why?

  “We have to keep going,” Ethan said. “I’ll open the gate.” He got off the bus again and made another ten seconds’ work of the gate, breaking it open and folding it back against the fence so no wires were torn. It was a minimal use of his power. He was keenly aware of the sensation of being watched by something other than the Cypher and Gorgon trackers, and scanning the trees he quickly made out two small optical devices in the branches up over his head, painted in gray camouflage. They were both aimed directly at the gate. He assumed someone had just witnessed an action that would immediately cause alarms to go off.

  “There are cameras in the trees,” he reported when he got back aboard. “Two that I saw, probably more. I would think someone knows we’re here, and they’re not going to like it.”

  With a hard edge in his voice, Dave said, “No reason to stop now. Let’s go on.”

  Ethan returned to his seat. Hannah started them forward again and didn’t breathe easily until they were way past the fence. The road steepened in its ascent and once more the bus chugged, the tires struggling for traction in the dust and stones. After a hard pull of perhaps a quarter of a mile they came to a place where the dead trees fell away and above them towered the mountain’s white peak. The road leveled off. Directly ahead it ended at a guardrail overlooking the valley below, with a solid wall of white stone to their right.

  Hannah stopped about ten feet from the guardrail. “This is as far as we go, folks.”

  They sat in silence, as the hot engine ticked.

  “What now?” Jefferson asked. “There’s nothing here!”

  “You’re wrong,” Dave said, standing up. “That guardrail…what’s it up here for? To keep a car from going over, so somebody’s been driving that road. Damned if I know, but I can’t see anyplace wide enough to turn around and it would be mighty tough to back down. Which says to me that—”

  “Stay where you are,” came a man’s magnified voice from a loudspeaker. “If you step off that, bus you will be executed. Repeat: stay where you are.”

  The voice was flat, calm, and deadly in its resolve. It was the voice of a trained professional who Dave figured would have no qualms putting everyone on the bus to death. Whoever it was, he had a big surprise coming.

  And then Dave finished what he was saying, as a section of the rock wall at least ten feet wide began to tilt inward and open up on smooth and nearly soundless machinery. “Which says to me that there’s a way in, and it’s big enough for a car.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN.

  “ARE THEY GOING TO KILL US?” NIKKI ASKED, HER VOICE TREMBLING.

  Five men with weapons had emerged from the opening doorway in the white stone. Three wore regular t-shirts and jeans and carried automatic rifles, one wore gray trousers and a pale blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves and the fifth was dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and a gray-striped tie. Both these men were carrying automatic pistols. The one in the suit was a black man with close-cropped hair and the one wearing the gray trousers was Asian. All were maybe in their late twenties or early thirties, were clean-shaven, healthy in appearance, and moved quickly. They looked to Dave like very capable killers. They came toward the bus with what appeared to be deadly intent.

  “Open up,” said the man in the suit, who seemed to be the leader. He was used to issuing commands; his voice, though not necessarily loud, carried the demand for instant obedience. He took aim at Hannah through the door’s glass. “I will repeat that once, ma’am: open up.”

  The others had taken up stations at various points around the bus. All the weapons were trained on the passengers.

  “Open it,” Dave said.

  Hannah did. The black man came aboard, followed by one of the others with an automatic rifle. “Stand up, ma’am. Leave the key in the ignition and your weapon in the seat and move back.” She obeyed, realizing this was not a man to be messed with. “The rest of you stay very still.” He was holding his pistol in a two-handed grip. His deep-set, olive-colored eyes darted here and there, taking everything in; they stopped on Ethan and remained there for a few seconds before he went on. “You’re going to move slowly now and put your weapons in the aisle. If I don’t like a quick movement, I will kill you. Everyone tell me they understand that.”

  Everyone told him, except Ethan who remained silent and watchful. The black man’s wary gaze kept coming back to Ethan, but both the pistol and the rifle were aimed along the aisle so as to swing fast upon anyone they chose to target.

  The guns were laid in the aisle. “Thank you,” the man said. “Now folks…you are all going to put your hands behind your head and you are going to walk off this bus single file. Again, I don’t like quick movements and neither do the agents outside. So be very, very ca
reful as you leave and we’ll have no problem. When you get off the bus, you’ll be told what to do.”

  Jefferson had heard something that snagged in his head. “Agents? What kind of agents?”

  “Secret Service, sir. Now…I want no talking, either. Everyone just be quiet, move carefully and slowly and follow instructions.”

  When they got outside, the man in the suit urged everyone along toward the entrance into the White Mansion, which was not only big enough to admit a car, but probably big enough to let a tank rumble through. He stopped Ethan by putting an arm in his way. Ethan kept his hands behind his head as instructed.

  “Will, take them all inside,” the man told the Asian. “You just stand where you are,” he said to Ethan.

  “Listen,” said Olivia, “we have a lot to tell you.”

  “I’m sure you do, and we have a lot of questions to ask you as well. Please go along with the others now. Don, stick here with me for a minute.” One of the men armed with an automatic rifle took a position just beside Ethan.

  “Sir, would you tell me your name?” Ethan asked, as his friends were escorted through the opening.

  “Bennett Jackson. Yours?”

  “Ethan Gaines. Mr. Jackson, I need to tell you that there is a Gorgon warship about forty miles northeast of this position and moving closer. I don’t know if they’re preparing an attack or not, but it would be wise to be ready if possible.”

  “A human-looking boy with silver eyes who talks like a fifty-year-old man. That’s a first. Are you a Cypher?”

  “No sir.”

  “The cameras saw you destroy two gates without a weapon. How’d you do that?”

  “I am a weapon,” Ethan said. “May I put my hands down? This is an uncomfortable posture.”

  “Frisk him,” Jackson told the other man. It was done quickly and efficiently. Eye contact was kept during the procedure. “Okay Ethan, you can put your hands down.” Jackson looked toward the milky sky to the northeast and then back to the boy. “You’re not a Gorgon or a Cypher—you say—but you’re not human, either. You say you’re a weapon, and I believe what I’ve seen. So what side are you a weapon for?”

  “Your side.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jackson gave him a thin, cold smile absolutely devoid of humor. “I have seen a lot of things I would never have believed possible two years ago. My wife and my six-year-old daughter are likely dead, back in Washington.” Flames flickered in the olive-green eyes; they were highly dangerous, but they didn’t last long. Ethan knew this man kept his emotions in a tightly sealed box, for fear that letting anything out might tear him to pieces. The loss of his wife had solidified Jackson’s marriage to his job, which Ethan saw in an instant had been a constant demand to him and a point of pride. There were the memories in there of a rough background in a rough neighborhood, scenes of hard military training and a medal of some kind being presented to him. “At least,” Jackson continued, “I hope they died before things got really bad. You’re some kind of creature made by either the Gorgons or the Cyphers, is what I think. You have to be. Are you bringing the Gorgons here? Is that what this is about?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “How did you find this place?”

  Ethan traveled across the tortured landscape of Bennett Jackson’s mind. He saw within seconds what this mountain held.

  “This is the secure location for the President,” Ethan said. “And he’s here.”

  “You’ve come to kill him? Or guide the ship in to kill everyone?”

  “No. As my friend Olivia said, we have a lot to tell you.”

  Jackson removed a small black communications device from within his coat. It had a keypad on it and a yellow, green and red button. He pressed the red one. “Waiting for instructions,” he said into the speaker. Then, to Ethan, “If I took you inside without permission they’d put me in a rubber room before I was shot.”

  “If someone here doesn’t listen to me,” said Ethan calmly, “there will be no more they for you to be involved with, if you’re speaking of your human race. The Cyphers and Gorgons won’t stop fighting until this planet is destroyed. Even then they might not stop. Mr. Jackson, I’m here to help you and I’ve come a very long way. Please take me to your President.”

  Jackson scanned the northeastern sky once more. A muscle clenched in his jaw. “How do you know the warship’s out there?”

  “I can feel its harmonic signature getting stronger.”

  “Its what?”

  “The composition of its matter sends out a frequency. A vibrational signal I can pick up. All matter does this. The Gorgon ships are easily recognizable from this signal.”

  Jackson just stood there like a statue, staring at him.

  Ethan finally tapped his skull and said, “I have a radar in here.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Jackson said, and narrowed his eyes. “What’re we going to do with you?”

  “The wise thing, I hope,” Ethan answered.

  Bennett Jackson wore an expression of dismay. He looked to the other man, Don, for some kind of help and got only a shrug. He then seemed to be searching all points of the compass for something to steady his own course. He rubbed at a spot on his forehead as if trying to make the gears in his brain mesh a little better.

  A voice came from the communications device: “Bring him in. Room 5A.”

  “All right, Ethan,” Jackson said. “Now when we go inside, you’re not going to turn into a creature I’ll have to kill, will you? I would dislike putting a bullet into the head of anything that looks like a human boy, but I’ll do it in an instant. Also, there will be men inside who’ll shoot you to pieces even if you’re quick enough to kill me. So be careful in your movements and walk ahead of me, and I would ask that you return your hands to the back of your head, fingers locked together, and everyone will feel much better. Agreed?”

  “Yes,” Ethan said. He did as Jackson told him, and walked toward the opening with Jackson two paces behind him and the other man with the automatic rifle just off to his left.

  They entered the White Mansion. The initial chamber looked like a spotless high-tech garage forty feet wide, with a shiny black-painted concrete floor and a ceiling about twenty feet high. Tubes of light ran along the ceiling amid industrial-looking pipes. A metal staircase ascended to a second level. Three black SUVs and a jeep were parked on the garage floor. There were gas pumps, both regular fuel and diesel, a supply of oil drums, tires in racks and batteries on shelves. Ethan saw that his traveling companions had already been spirited away somewhere, and ten or so men—some dressed informally, some in suits, but all clean-shaven and well-fed—had gathered to watch the entrance of the new arrivals, and he figured especially himself. Among them were two uniformed and helmeted soldiers with machine guns. Ethan sensed the low hum of power and felt a great source of energy here, and it both perplexed and interested him.

  “What’s running your power?” he asked.

  Jackson ignored him so completely Ethan couldn’t even read the man’s mind on the subject. Jackson called over one of the jeans-clad Secret Service agents who’d returned to the area and told him to get a detail and clean the bus out of guns and whatever else was on there, but not to bring the bus inside until that order was given. Then Ethan was marched up the metal stairs by Jackson and the man named Don, along a corridor and to another set of stairs that led up to a beige-carpeted area of closed doors. Jackson unlocked a door marked 5A with a key from a keyring, reached in and flipped on a light switch. He stepped back as Ethan entered. It was a single room with a bed, a dresser, a writing table, lamp and chair and beyond that a small white-tiled bathroom. The wallpaper showed artwork of eagles in flight. There were no windows, since they were well inside the mountain. Cool air was circulating from a wall vent. Jackson closed the door and he and the other man took positions on either side of it.

  “You’re going to have a visitor in a few minutes,” Jackson said. “He’ll be very interested to hear your story.”


  “That’s fine.” Ethan looked up at the overhead tube-light and the lamp on the table before he sat down on the bed. “You have a lot of power available here. What’s the source?”

  Jackson again would not answer, but Ethan got the flicker of a mental image from him: a bright glowing piece of white crystal about the size of a man’s hand, suspended in a transparent cylinder and slowly revolving. Cables ran from the base of the cylinder into machinery in a room that felt to Ethan to be on a lower level below the garage.

  Ethan was about to remark on this when the door opened and a man in a gray suit entered, accompanied by another man in a dark blue uniform and cap with many multi-colored bars over his heart. The man in the gray suit wore a white shirt and a blue-patterned tie, he was clean-shaven and slim but healthy in appearance. He looked combative, as if he’d lived every day with his teeth clenched, his lower jaw jutting out just a little too much. He was bald but for a fringe of light brown hair with gray at the temples. He wore horn-rimmed glasses, and his eyes were so pale blue, they were nearly colorless. On his lapel was an American flag pin. The pallid eyes took Ethan in with absolutely no expression on his face, but the military man behind him had a start and actually backed up a pace before Jackson closed the door.

  “Sir, this is Ethan Gaines,” Jackson announced. “He tells me he is neither Cypher nor Gorgon, but he does admit to being an alien weapon in the form of a human boy. He says there’s a Gorgon warship closing in from the northeast. He also says he’s—”

  “I’ll take it from here, thank you,” said the man in the gray suit, with a quick, clipped manner of speech that Ethan thought could easily become abrasive. “Ethan, why don’t our radars pick this ship up?”

  “They have cloaking devices that easily hide them from your systems. May I ask what your name is, and your position?” Vance Derryman, Chief of Staff, came the mental response.