“C’mon,” Cole whispered, patting her back. “We gotta go.”
“Pooch!” she shouted, her heart pounding. He’d been driving. They were on their way to Ottawa. Rice was there, Cole had said. Rice! They’d been in an accident. “Where’s Pooch?”
Cole crawled over her in the darkness, feeling his way past the jumble behind her. She reached out to her right. The handle of a motorcycle. That’s what had stuck in her back. “We gotta go, Linda,” Cole repeated. He pushed at the back. A door fell open, but it was wrong. She could see in the faint light from outside. The door fell down. The van was on its side.
Cole lifted the top door with one hand and pulled on the layers of canvas with the other, flipping them away and freeing both of her feet. Cold air and rain blew in through the doors. “Can you move?” he asked again. He glanced over his shoulder, back down the road.
“Okay,” she said. She pushed herself forward on her bottom, her skirt catching momentarily. Cole grabbed her feet and helped her as she neared the door.
“Watch your head,” he cautioned. His voice was still too far away.
She lowered her legs over the edge, bare skin sliding over cold, wet metal, her feet slipping down the door that now formed a ramp. Cole grabbed her elbows and pulled her forward until she was standing on the grass. Rain fell on her face and Cole reached around to pull up the hood of her raincoat. “We need to help Pooch!” she said.
The lights from the Beecher Falls station cast a faint glow across the sky, like the radiance of a distant city. She could see Cole sag at her words. He didn’t make it? The tears came again.
“He’s dead, Linda.”
She started forward on the slippery grass. “I need to see him.”
Cole grabbed her arm. The wind was picking up. It sounded like a tent flap, flailing in a storm. Cole looked up at the sky, then turned to the President. “No, Linda. We have to go.”
“I need to see him!” she snarled. Jerking free of his grip, she kept moving, running her hand along the edge of the van to guide her. She made it to the front, then realized that Pooch’s window was now buried in the mud. She started for the front windshield but Cole grabbed her arm again.
“We have to go!” he shouted over the growing wind. He pointed to the sky and she looked up, rain pattering her face. Directly overhead was a light, a round, ghostly blue-white disc that glowed steadily in the rainstorm. It grew to the size of the moon as she watched. It was coming down right on them. Coming. For her. Coming like they had always come. In the confusion of night. In the cold and tender hours of her life. Coming….
Cole tugged on her arm, pulled her toward the ditch. She lost her footing and fell to one knee, feeling the cold grass and mud soak through her gauzy skirt. Cole lifted her back to her feet and walked her across the ditch until they were on the gravel shoulder. She looked up, eyes shielded with a hand, expecting the aliens to set upon her like starving dogs.
The cloud ceiling, high and featureless, began to glow and flicker, as if lit from above by dozens of powerful searchlights. A helicopter dropped suddenly out of the dark mist, cast in silhouette by the flashing clouds. It rushed toward Cole and Linda like an eagle diving for its prey, its forward spotlight scanning the ground. The glowing blue disc, almost on top of them now, jerked quickly aside, then circled the helicopter as if readying to strike. The entire cloud ceiling flashed daylight-bright and the tiny disc pulsed brightly, waggled back and forth in the air, then streaked away into the night, as though it were terrified. The helicopter settled down onto the pavement as the sky went dark again.
“Run!” shouted Cole over the clamor of the rotors, grabbing Linda’s hand and dragging her away. He peered into the darkness, searching frantically for the yellow Toyota pickup that Pooch had said would be meeting them.
Linda yanked herself free of Cole’s grasp and cried out, pointing. There in the road, lit by the chopper’s running lights, lay a body, its face horribly mangled, its arms splayed at revolting angles. The wash from the rotor blades picked at the fabric of the man’s gray suit.
“Rice!” Cole shouted over the noise.
The cockpit door swung open. They could see the pilot inside, his grim face dimly lit by the blush of an instrument panel. Cole stepped backwards, reaching out to pull Linda away. Linda shook off Cole’s hand and turned back to the chopper. The man inside smiled and Linda knew in her heart that he was their friend. She grabbed Cole’s hand and tugged at him through the noise and the rain and the twisting air, then jerked open the cabin door and climbed inside, her head bowed low, as if in surrender or obeisance or both. Cole hesitated, glancing over his shoulder at the distant headlights approaching from the north, then back at Linda in the cabin. With an exaggerated shrug he threw off his doubts and fears and followed his President into the copter, pulling the door closed behind them. The roar was deafening. The whole cabin shook. Before they could even sit down the helicopter had leapt into the night sky, forcing them to grab hold of each other to avoid falling.
The pilot reached over and flicked on a cabin light long enough for them to take their jump seats and find their seatbelts. Cole and Linda strapped themselves in and the light flicked back off.
“Welcome to Canada, Mrs. President,” said the pilot over the rattle and hum.
“Are you Elly?” asked Cole, shouting to be heard.
“I am,” said Elly, concentrating on the controls. The copter lurched to the left, swinging around in a tight sweep that jostled them all.
“We thought you’d be in a truck.”
“The Toyota would not start.” He reached down to his left and the helicopter shot up toward the clouds. “The electrical system was totally fried. So I came in my other car.”
“Pooch is dead,” said Linda, her throat thick with loss. She noticed her hand in Cole’s and squeezed it tightly.
Elly stared ahead, focusing on his mission. When he spoke there was anger in his voice. “He said he probably would be.”
Pooch was Elly’s cousin, Linda remembered. And he’d died to get her across the border. No wonder Elly was angry. As she had so many times before, the President cursed the damned aliens, and the People who served them. Pooch had broken Spud’s arm. Linda vowed, in that moment, to exceed him. She reached forward, placing her hand on Elly’s shoulder. The pilot flinched but did not turn around. “I’m sorry,” Linda offered. It was all she had to give. For now.
Elly pointed out the cockpit window to the sky before them. “Your welcoming party is here,” he said.
Linda stretched her neck to better see. Moving across the sky in a seemingly random pattern was a multitude of lights - globes and discs and triangles and straight lines - some as small as basketballs, others as massive as aircraft carriers. As the helicopter approached, the UFOs fell into a circular formation thousands of feet in diameter, looking like the mouth of a wormhole to a distant galaxy, or a wreath of lights hanging in the air. Linda took a deep breath, to help calm her fear and excitement. She couldn’t tell whether these were the jaws of a monster ready to snap shut, or an honor guard to see them on their way.
“Pooch said to expect them, but I didn’t believe him,” said Elly over the rotors. His hand steady on the controls, his eyes focused on the task at hand, Elly pushed them forward toward the lights.
9.6
She focused on her father and flickered out to go find him. The sky flew to pieces around her, flinging her through the hearts of galaxies and the flutterings of butterflies. There was her mother, boarding her plane. There was Emily, bored in class. There were the dead living, the living dying, the lights of birds and the mutterings of boulders. A screaming woman grabbed at Grace’s cord. A distant sun burned her face. Her universe whirled like a midway ride, lifting her to the clouds and tossing her back to Earth. And there was her father’s car, speeding below her through the night.
A cry rose up from the car. A scream. A howl. That woman from the house. Keeley. It was she in the car. Grace feared that Keeley’s
grief could cause her to have an accident, so she settled in beside her and cast a warm glow of love and peace over her. Keeley sighed and kept the car on the road.
Her father was not here. Linda was not here. For some reason Grace had missed them. She rose and enfolded and scanned the Cosmos for her father’s pattern of love and flickered again. In an instant, there he was.
The Little Prince zipped away as she approached. He stopped in the distance and turned to watch, a fawn seeking the safety of woods. Grace smiled. He was so shy! Grace beamed him a packet of gratitude, thankful that he’d watched over her father and Linda while she was away. She turned to look for Dennis. Her little dog was flying excitedly toward her from below, almost tripping over his own legs. Dennis jumped into her arms and slathered her face with love, then wriggled down and took his place at her feet, proud to be helping. She reached down and scratched under his chin. The little dog closed his eyes and thumped a hind leg.
Grace noted how differently she felt here, how clear was her mind, how distant was that little girl whose body she inhabited. She focused her awareness on her surroundings and peered into the densest layers. She frowned. This was not the house where she’d left them. This was a lone highway. A decrepit white truck lay on its side. An Elder disentangled himself from a battered body in the middle of the road and flickered out without a word.
Linda and her father crawled out of the truck. Grace sent them a parcel of love and dove into the vehicle to see what had happened. The big man from the house would not be crawling anywhere.
She rose up to a spot overhead, scanning for dangers. The sky was filled with beings, with voices and intentions and wants and needs and plans she could barely begin to comprehend. A flutter of metal and wind came in from the north, pushing the multitude aside. She could feel the good heart of the man inside and drifted away to observe.
Her father and Linda climbed into the metal thing. She knew what it was … a helicopter! Grace smiled and started to follow.
A furious knot of dark, blinding power flew out of nowhere and knocked her from the sky.
Chapter Ten
10.1
Mary keyed her way in and shut the door quietly behind her. She glanced at the clock over the sofa and sighed with exhaustion. God, it was after midnight. Making her way across the room by the diffuse haze of city lights filtering in through her window, she pulled aside the sheer curtains and slid open the door to the promenade. She stepped out into the night. After two hours down in the Rock with Bob, she found the view comforting. Buildings full of people, working through the night, sparse traffic winding its way between those buildings, the lights on the Monument: these things all connected her to the normal world. Alone and afraid on the third floor of the White House, Mary needed that connection.
She let the curtains fall and made her way to the bathroom, pulling her sweater over her head and slipping out of her shoes as she walked. Feeling her way through the darkness, she sat on the edge of the tub and turned on the water, letting it get hot before she stopped the drain. The situation below, and Rice’s failure, had left her feeling soiled and worn. Cold. Old. Beat up. Used. She lit the votive candle that sat on the tub’s edge, then unbuttoned her silk blouse and let it slide to the floor. She sat and let the bathtub fill, thinking of nothing at all. Standing, she slipped off her skirt, panties and bra, making a heap on the floor. She lowered herself into the tub and turned off the flow. The comfort of warm water brought tears to her eyes and she let them gather and slide down her cheeks. Here in her own room, here in the dark, she got to cry.
Had it all made sense at one time? She couldn’t quite remember. The clock on the living room wall had said it was 12:07 a.m. Seven minutes into day four. Fifty-three hours and change since the President had run. Hardly enough time for Mary’s whole world to have unraveled. And yet it had. The reports from around the world had come in no more than an hour ago. A few of the Life had gone completely dormant. The rest of them had fled, leaving their facilities behind as if they’d just popped out for a smoke and then never come back. Not even Spud would answer the call. The General was holed up in his office, drunk and angry. The President was lost in the night. Rice had failed to bring her in. And that failure had brought to Mary’s conscious mind something she hadn’t allowed herself to know before: she was in love with Linda Travis. Fuck. That’s just wonderful. Rice’s last words clung to her like a song, playing over and over in her mind: what are we doing here?
Mary grabbed the soap from its dish and pulled it across her stomach, sighing at the touch, the simple joy of lather and fingers and skin. They didn’t touch. The aliens. She sniffed bitterly. After all this time they still hadn’t found a better term for them. Decades of contact and they were still alien. They might call themselves the Life, but they didn’t feel like Life to her. They felt like concrete and stainless steel and wet leather gloves.
Now that they were gone it was easier to see: humans had never been able to get inside of them, to know them, to feel who they were and what they wanted and where they were headed and why. Behind the words, the treaties, the actions, the information, the promises, and the Plan, the inner world of the Life remained as essentially unknown as the Earthly bugs they resembled. Rice had figured it out sooner than she: she, too, had had enough. But she had no idea what that meant. Despite the fact that she hated his guts, she wished Rice were here right now, to talk to. He would have understood.
She had thought they loved her, the aliens. She’d thought she loved them. She laughed bitterly at the notion, the echo of her voice on the cold tile bouncing back to slap her face. Right. Like she knew anything about love. She could barely feel her own heart. She remembered when they’d brought her in, almost two decades ago. They abducted her right in the middle of one of her father’s beatings, freezing the moment in time and space like a dandelion puff in a Lucite paperweight. They floated her through her second-story bedroom window on a beam of blue butterflies, up to their waiting craft and a room full of old pinball machines and boxes of yarn. With fussy precision, they wrapped her with long, silver ribbons and poked her with tiny, black batons, as though they were tailors, fitting her for a new outfit. Whether by luck, providence, or sheer force of will, Mary had managed to break out of their damnable fog. The aliens just stood there, surprised, mouths comically agape, as Mary begged them to take her with them. A full minute passed. Then the tallest of them nodded once, a single, silent gesture that had changed the course of her life. She’d never gone back. Not once. The bugs had saved her. They would be her family now. Even a bug was better than her father.
Mary took a deep breath and slid her head under the water to wash the pain from her short, black hair. She’d thought the People were saving the world. She’d thought this was the only way: trade a small piece of the planet for the knowledge humans needed to get out of the mess they were in. But that piece of the planet kept getting bigger and bigger, and the promises never quite came true. And now the Life were gone. And so was Linda. And the mess was getting out of hand. Fred was dead. And that poor kid at the border crossing. And those troopers! God, Rice, you crazy bastard! The President was still running, zooming off into the night in a helicopter, according to Bob. Leaving Mary behind to clean things up. Leaving her….
Mary came up for air and screamed into the darkness. The Vice-President had cornered her in the hall and yelled at her! The fucking Vice-President! She splashed at the water with both hands, sending ripples of loneliness and rage over the rim of the tub. The whole world had gone out for a smoke, and left her in charge! The press would be bleating come morning. The General would chew her out once again, pickled in his own powerlessness. Mork would sit there in her resting-box, as still as a gargoyle, mocking her with her silence. Bob and Random and Alice would keep trying because that’s what they did, whether it made any sense or not. And she would … what? She didn’t know who she was anymore.
The departure of the aliens was a game changer, and Mary was not sure that she
wanted the game to change. She’d been so happy these past twenty years. To have found other human beings involved with the aliens, other humans who seemed to know what was going on, who seemed to be in control, who actually wanted her … it had been intoxicating. All of a sudden, at fifteen years of age, she’d been brought into the most important project the world had ever known. And in a grand display of Cosmic irony, her childhood of violence and abuse at the hands of her father, when coupled with her lifelong experience as an abductee, had left her with a rare gift: she could interface with the Life in real-time normal reality like nobody’s business. She was hired.
It hadn’t mattered to Mary that somewhere behind the People, in some nebulous, far-off somewhere, there existed a network of hidden powers that controlled the world. She’d known all along that they were there: the elite, the rich, the powers that be. After all, who signed her paychecks? She’d heard that, behind the layers of secrecy there were just more layers, that for every Bilderberg Group and Skull & Bones “secret society” that frightened the bloggers like bedtime boogeymen, there were older, richer, more deeply hidden circles that used these “known” groups as fronts and screens. She’d been told of families and bloodlines that stretched so far back into the ancient mysteries that they made a mockery of “history.” She’d known all along that these were the people who really determined the course of the future for all of humanity, unbeknownst to the vast majority of regular folk, and certainly unbeknownst to the bozos in Washington who imagined that they were in charge. She’d known, but she hadn’t much cared. If her father had taught her nothing else about life on Earth it was this: people needed somebody to rule them. They were not up to the task of ruling themselves.
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