“How?” She began. She’d intended to ask an intelligent question, but just that one word came out. Her mind was awash with doubt.
Leopold stood beside her.
“I take it you guys haven’t seen the freak show before?”
Bower turned to him wondering what stunned look sat on her face. Although it seemed like a cliche, she was aware her jaw had dropped and her mouth was open.
“Yeah,” Leopold continued. “It kinda has that effect on everyone the first time.”
“What do you know about it?” Jameson asked, stepping backwards next to them. His eyes never left the craft as it rose slowly above the uneasy quiet of the city. Bower could see his professionalism kicking in.
Leopold spoke with the precision of a reporter providing a sound bite.
“The mothership is the size of Connecticut. NASA has said there’s no cause for panic, but you try telling that to a bunch of rednecks crowing about anal probes, or a bunch of Arabs that won’t let women drive, or a Buddhist monk or the Pope, a Pacific island chief or a corrupt politician from Russia. Don’t panic, my ass. Hysteria has seized the world. You think Malawi is all fucked up. You should see Yonkers.”
In any other context, Jameson probably would have laughed, but it was apparent Leopold wasn’t joking.
“They’re saying it’s the end of the world, but that’s not the worst bit.”
Bower didn’t say anything, she couldn’t think of anything worse.
“The worst part of all this is those nutters that are trying to bring about the end of the world. For them, this is somehow a biblical prophesy coming true, something about a dragon with seven heads.”
Jameson turned to Leopold. There was no grandstanding on Leopold’s part, these were raw facts.
“NASA released images of the craft a few days ago, just before the UFO moved in from somewhere near the Moon. The press ran with the scientific opinion that their presence was benign, but it didn’t seem to matter, all it took was a few fringe groups to run with worst-case scenarios about the aliens being monsters from hell and fear ran rampant through society. The general population freaked out at the thought of a strange alien spaceship flying overhead with impunity. It’s Sputnik all over again.
“And it’s not just that the alien spacecraft looks scary, it’s that the appearance of this grotesque craft has shattered the illusion of control we have in life. We like to think we’re masters of our own destiny, but that thing has proven otherwise, showing just how impotent and insignificant we really are in this vast universe.”
Leopold stuttered, which seemed out of character for him, making Bower wonder how deeply all this affected him personally.
“At first ... At first, it was just the wackos, you know, the cults. The isolationists, shacked up in some barn in the middle of farmland, waiting for the Messiah or some shit. Men, women, children ... Jonestown all over again. But then they started finding normal folk, people that just snapped. Murder-suicides. Poor bastards never reached out to someone. They should have. They should have said something. They should have talked to someone about what they were feeling. They shouldn’t have felt helpless. They shouldn’t have felt alone. There were people all around them who cared, they just couldn’t see it.”
Tears were rolling down his cheeks. Bower went to say something, but Leopold cut her off.
“Life should never end that way. Life is too precious. No matter how dark the night, the world keeps turning, there’s always a dawn. Even if someone’s on the other side of the world, they’re never more than a phone call away, you know.”
Jameson’s head hung low. Bower felt a lump in her throat.
“I ... I should have been there. Not half a world away, drinking myself silly in some shitty bar in a country on the verge of war. But, no, I had to be someone. I had to prove something. I was driven, driven by what? Driven to what? To be the big man, the foreign correspondent for a throw-away thirty second slot in the late edition of the News?”
He paused for a second, and Bower wondered who he’d lost. She couldn’t be sure, but she suspected it had been his parents.
“Funny thing, this alien spaceship. Makes you see life in a different light. It’s as though someone’s lifted the rose-colored glasses and I’m finally seeing reality for what it is.”
He wiped his eyes.
“It’s not their fault,” Leopold continued. “The aliens, that is. Hell, they haven’t done anything other than to show up at the party. It’s us. Self-obsessed. For tens of thousands of years we thought the cosmos revolved around us, the sun and all the stars rising and setting on our egos. Oh, Copernicus might have shifted the bounds, putting the sun at the center of the solar system, but we still think everything revolves around us.”
He paused for a second, as though he was waiting for her to correct him, but Bower didn’t know quite what to say.
“Look at how stupid we are. They come in peace. We go to pieces. They must think the whole bloody planet is an insane asylum.”
“But,” Bower pleaded, “there must be someone down here who has kept their head about them.”
“Oh, there’s a bunch of scientists banding together to represent humanity, only they don’t. They’re the minority, the level heads. Even they are victims of this madness.”
“I don’t understand,” Jameson said.
“Fear spreads like wildfire. We’re like a herd of buffalo spooked by lightning. The thunder breaks and we charge headlong off the cliff, blindly following whoever’s in front of us. Stampedes trample the weak, they bring out the worst in humanity. There’s only so much rational thought when the supermarket shelves are bare. There’s only so much restraint when the gas pump runs empty. There’s only so long we can hold out against our base survival instincts, then we’re just animals fighting to survive. It’s trample or be trampled.”
Leopold put his hands on his head, pulling at his hair in frustration as he turned to one side, making as though he was going to scream.
Jameson took charge. He seemed to understand what was needed. He barked orders at his soldiers, his gruff voice snapping Leopold back to reality.
“Elvis, take Smithy, Brannigan and Phelps, and see what sense you can get out of any refugees coming up from Lilongwe. We need to know if the UN still holds the airport.
“Bosco, I need that goddamn radio fixed. We need to get in touch with the Navy, get them to send in a couple of helos for evac.”
Elvis strutted over, his chest bare, sweat dripping from his muscular frame.
“They ain’t gonna send shit with RPGs lighting up the sky,” he added with his Memphis swagger. He picked up his backpack and his M4 rifle, handling them as though they were weightless.
Jameson considered his words, replying, “Then we get clear of Ksaungu. If we can, we make for Lilongwe and grab the last stagecoach out of Dodge. If we can’t make Lilongwe, we find ourselves some clear ground and call in the cavalry.”
“And if the radio doesn’t work?” Bosco asked.
“Same as usual. We hump over the mountains,” Jameson said.
“Fucking-A,” Elvis replied. He seemed to relish the prospect of marching for hundreds of miles through the jungle. He was already heading out through the restaurant, three other soldiers following hard behind him.
Bower appreciated Jameson’s resolve. He was breaking them out of a slump, not letting his men lose focus.
“You can join us,” Jameson said, reaching out a hand to Leopold. For a second, the older man hesitated, then he reached out and shook the soldier’s hand.
“I appreciate the gesture, but I’m here for the duration.”
Jameson nodded respectfully.
Leopold looked back at the alien craft. Whatever its path, it wasn’t passing directly overhead, its orbit took it from the south-east to the north-west but its passage was further to the west, somewhere out over Zambia.
“I’ll be all right,” Leopold added, looking at Bower, speaking as though she needed to hear
reassuring words. Kowalski walked up grinning as though he were on holiday. Between him and Leopold, Bower knew exactly what was happening.
Leopold seemed to be able to switch off his concerns. It was a facade, she’d seen him coming apart at the seams just moments before, but now he was calm and collected. Like all of them, he’d been in Africa too long. He’d learnt to disconnect himself from reality and deal with the harsh cruelty of war, but that meant suspending the normal feelings of empathy one human being felt for another. It wasn’t calloused, she had to do the same thing whenever she operated, to do any less was to jeopardize someone’s life during surgery. But Leopold had extended this front to dealing with the alien. He buried the raw feelings about his family that just moments before had threatened to boil over.
As savage as a war zone was, it was a known quantity. The prospect of a world torn apart on contact with a vastly superior alien species represented too many unknowns. Unknowns unsettled even the bravest souls. As much as Bower wanted to think of herself as coldly logical, she knew there was a bias at play, skewing her perception as much as his. And Kowalski was too calm, making out as though there was nothing exceptional in the sky at all. Jameson might not show it, but he too must have felt the fractured tension.
At that point in time, Bower could have said, ‘I saw a unicorn dancing in a rainbow this morning,’ and no one would have batted an eyelid. It was shock, not the shock of physical trauma, the shock of sensory overload. Bower had seen this once before, during her first parachute jump.
Standing there in the sweltering heat of the courtyard, her mind flashed back to that tandem jump from ten thousand feet. The air had been surprisingly cold when the door to the small Cessna opened. With stainless steel carabiners locking her jumpsuit to the instructor behind her, the two of them had shuffled awkwardly toward the open door. He told her it would be just like their rehearsal sitting on the tarmac. All she had to do was swing her feet around, out of the open door, and rest them on the wheel, but her mind shut down. She could hear people talking to her, reassuring her she’d be fine, but her body felt numb.
Bower remembered nodding. Those few seconds felt like a dream. The instructor positioned himself behind her, his legs straddling her back. She could remember the countdown from three, which seemed a ridiculously small number to start from. Why not five? Or ten? But she’d known it was a token gesture, something to provide a semblance of sanity when jumping out of a perfectly functional aircraft, and then it came, the sensory overload. The instructor pushed forward, tumbling headlong out of the plane with her hanging from his straps.
Apparently, they had 30 seconds of free-fall before the chute opened, but Bower’s mind had overloaded. There was too much coming at her. All she remembered was sitting on the edge of the plane and then the chute opening above her. At the time, she had marveled at how far away the plane was when the parachute opened, her mind jarred by its apparently instantaneous motion. It was only when she reviewed the video from her helmet cam that she realized she’d blacked out. She’d never lost consciousness, her mind had simply refused to process the events that appeared to lead only to her demise. It wasn’t until the chute opened that her subconscious returned control to her.
And here she was, looking in the eyes of a perfectly rational reporter in a war zone, a veteran of too many conflicts, struggling with the implications of a vast alien spacecraft looming overhead. Leopold smiled, as did Kowalski. Bower smiled too. They were three lunatics trying to find whoever was in charge of the asylum.
Chapter 06: Road to Lilongwe
The next morning, Bower was woken by a sharp rap on the door and a soldier’s voice yelling, “Get your shit packed. We roll in fifteen.” At least, she thought that’s what was said.
For a moment, she had to check whether she was dreaming. It was still dark out, but the sky was lightening. Kowalski was already downstairs, she figured, as his bag was gone and he was nowhere to be seen. Fifteen minutes, Bower felt like screaming at the top of her lungs. What sort of world is it where people expect you to get ready for the day in a mere fifteen minutes?
“Barbarians,” she muttered to herself as she wandered into the bathroom and splashed water on her face. If she was going to be ready to go in fifteen minutes she’d have to hustle. By her somewhat admittedly anecdotal reckoning of time she was downstairs within fifteen minutes with her bag over her shoulder, but she was the only one standing there by the Hummer and the truck.
Bower felt cheated.
She could see one of the soldiers on sentry duty on the second floor, watching the vehicles and the back entrance to the hotel, but this was hardly the quick, early start she’d expected.
Jameson came jogging casually down the stairs.
“Good morning,” he said cheerfully.
“Morning,” she replied. Bower couldn’t bring herself to add the noun good, not yet at least. Ah, she was being too grumpy and she knew it.
“There’s coffee in the kitchen.”
“I’m good.”
There, she said it, good was out there for all to hear. Well, Jameson at least.
“We should be ready to go within -”
“Fifteen,” she added, cutting him off.
He smiled. She could see he was a little confused by her abrupt comment. Bower softened her attitude, saying, “Yeah, I thought we’d be ready in around fifteen minutes.”
If she could figure out who had thumped on her door, she was going to throttle them.
Jameson seemed a little perplexed by her attitude, but he clearly wasn’t in on the joke. He just nodded as he put his pack in the Hummer.
“Wouldn’t it make sense to just take the truck?” Bower asked out of curiosity, watching as Jameson rummaged around in the back of the Hummer. “It’s big enough for all of us. Won’t our fuel go further that way?”
“That old piece of shit?” Jameson replied. As the words left his lips he seemed to soften, apparently not wanting to offend her. “Nah. Two is one, one is none.”
“Sorry? I didn’t catch that.”
“Oh, it’s an army phrase,” Jameson said, grabbing another pack from the rear steps of the hotel. “If you’ve only got one set of wheels and something breaks, you’re screwed, if you’ve got two, you can pack everyone into the one remaining vehicle if one of them breaks down. Two is one, one is none. It means, ensure you have redundancy.”
“Oh,” Bower replied, nodding at the realization.
“And besides,” he added. “We’re a small force. Two vehicles make us appear bigger, a force to be reckoned with. A bit of bluster goes a long way.”
The sun was low, barely creeping over the horizon, casting long shadows down the dusty city streets. Above them, the alien craft soared through space. It orbited Earth once every two hours, appearing overhead for about forty five minutes as it slowly soared through the sky. During the night, the craft shimmered like a chameleon, changing colors. Like oil in a puddle, there was a greasy, rainbow of colors, almost metallic in their appearance. The fine tentacles waved as though caught in a breeze. Bower wondered about how big they were, knowing their size was deceptive given the distance involved, but they looked as fine as the hair on her arm.
The previous night, they’d sat up talking until the early hours of the morning, watching for each passing of the alien spacecraft like kids waiting for Santa, at least that’s the way she felt. Across the city, a cry would resound as the inhabitants recognized the unearthly shape drifting smoothly above them. At first, Bower thought it was a cheer, but as the night went on she realized it was a wail, like that of mourners at a funeral.
In the early morning light, the craft took on the purples and pinks of the dawn. For her, the sight was hypnotic.
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” Jameson replied.
“I don’t mean to doubt you, or anything like that, and I do appreciate your ... ” She was struggling for the word, “expertise in things military, if that’s the right way
to phrase it. But, why did we wait here so long? Why stay two nights in Ksaungu instead of pushing on to Lilongwe. I mean, I know it wasn’t because you’re afraid or anything like that. I don’t think that at all. It’s just, I thought there was a plane waiting for us there or something ... ” She was tripping over her words. What started out as a good question had slowly degraded into blather.
Jameson smiled. He really was a gentleman at heart and seemed to understand what she was getting at far better than she did herself.
“Combat isn’t about shooting guns madly at bad guys, it’s about planning and preparation. Rule number one: Never walk blindly into a new arena.”
Bower sat on the dusty steps of a fire exit as he spoke. She finally recognize Smithy on the second floor balcony, peering out across the city with her machine gun at the ready, having kept watch through at least part of the night. Bower wasn’t sure how often the sentries rotated, but she knew Jameson had two of his team awake at all times.
“Combat is fluid, never static, always changing. Lilongwe is an unknown. While there was the chance of rest here in Ksaungu and no good intel on Lilongwe it was prudent to sit tight.”
Bower nodded thoughtfully.
“Besides, we needed to get that radio fixed. Now Bosco’s got the shortwave circuits working on the radio we’ll be able to contact any troops still in Ksaungu. Shortwave won’t give us over-the-horizon coms, but we will have line-of-sight. The standard operating procedure when someone’s MIA is for a high-altitude fly over, listening for MAD chatter.”
“Mad Hatter?” Bower replied, surprised by the term. “What? Like Alice in Wonderland?”
“No,” Jameson added, laughing. “Chatter, MAD chatter. MAD is an acronym meaning Military Air Distress. They’ll be listening for us on the MAD frequency.”
“Oh,” said Bower, feeling a little stupid. “And how far is line-of-sight?”
“About fifty to a hundred clicks, depending on our terrain and their altitude.”
Bower didn’t ask what a click was, but she figured fifty to a hundred of them was neither close nor that far away.
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