Boston morning news
There were three people named Violet living in Sorrow Falls, plus one Viola. One of the Violets was an infant, and a second was an eighty-two-year old retiree who, upon being interviewed, didn’t appear to be fully aware that that Violet was her legal name, as she only responded to ‘Bessie’.
The third ended up being a dead end. This Violet was twenty-seven, which seemed just about right for a certified Friend-of-Annie, but when Melissa went to her house she learned that the army’s information wasn’t entirely current. Violet Moran no longer lived in Sorrow Falls, and hadn’t for fifteen months. If she was truly the same Violet that had been name-checked by Beth Weld, maybe she and Annie were good enough friends to make it feasible for Annie to have gone to wherever it was Ms. Moran currently resided. However, that relocation was to Nebraska.
The one Viola in town was also a dead-end. She didn’t even live there. She was renting a PO Box in Sorrow Falls, but actually resided in Oakdale. Melissa sent a couple of soldiers over to question her anyway.
Captain Braver’s inability to positively identify Violet would have been just an annoying inconvenience if it weren’t for the fact that the door-to-door searches weren’t going well at all.
Sorrow Falls wasn’t a big place, but it wasn’t that small, either. Conducting full address-by-address searches was incredibly time-consuming, and it would only get worse once they got to the apartment houses below Main.
Nobody was happy about this.
Braver was only in charge due to a sort of complicated deputizing, because she was the nearest officer attached to Team Babysitter when Annie Collins blew open the doors to hell. Melissa’s command was deeply temporary, however, as General Perlmutter was reportedly en route.
At minimum, Melissa hoped to have Collins located and surrounded before he got to town. Whatever orders came down after that were really going to need the direct involvement of someone with his stars.
She hadn’t started with the apartment houses, because she didn’t think Annie was there. After the list of friends who would likely take her in was exhausted came the farms. This was in tandem with aerial surveillance, because while they were looking for one nineteen-year old college kid, they also had to locate that camper. Only one of the two fit inside a closet.
“There’s too many variables,” she said aloud. The sergeant in the driver’s seat turned.
“What’s that, ma’am?”
“There are too many variables. Is it just Collins, or is it Collins and the camper, or is it just the camper? Did they drop her off somewhere or are they still together?”
“We’re checking the roads still,” the kid said. “Ain’t we?”
“We are. And we’re pretty sure it came here, and it’s still here. Don’t mind me, sergeant, it’s just been a long night.”
They were parked at the edge of one of the farms. The main house was largely obscured from the road, which made approaching it something of a tactical problem. She had cadets—half of her force were cadets, because when you have to muster an invading army in under ten hours in New England, this is what you get—approaching the farmhouse to notify whoever the heck lived here that they would be searching everything and they didn’t need his or her permission to do it first.
She was pretty sure some of the cadets hadn’t even drilled with live ammo yet.
Someone’s going to end up dead from all of this, she thought. She wondered if that would land on her, or on the Pentagon, who ordered this mess in the first place.
Melissa had come to the conclusion that she hated Annie Collins. It should have been a difficult decision to reach—or to admit to, at least—but that turned out not to be so. She hated her. And she sort of hated Ed Somerville too, for being so stupid about this.
She opened the channel on her radio.
“This is Braver, how are we doing in there?”
“Approaching the door now, ma’am.”
A burst of static followed the corporal’s reply and then a loud whine that hit Melissa right between the eyes. She dropped the radio like it had overheated and let out an audible yelp she’d have been embarrassed about had the driver not also cried out, and clapped his hands over his ears.
It only lasted a couple of seconds.
She grabbed the radio off the floor.
“Corporal, what was that?”
“Don’t know, ma’am, I was going to… Holy…!”
Whatever happened next, it wasn’t something the soldier on the other end of the line had the time to describe. The gunfire said plenty, though.
“She’s here,” Melissa said.
She jumped out of the Jeep, and ran toward the gunshots, unholstering her sidearm as she went.
She caught up with the corporal—his name was Wicks, and he was one of the two experienced men on this particular house search—who had ducked behind a hedge in view of the porch.
“What is it, Wicks? Is it her?”
The younger man looked terrified.
“Don’t know, we never got inside.”
“Who fired?”
“They fired first I think. We—someone might be down, I don’t… I don’t know.”
“Corporal, look at me. Tell me what happened.”
“We might have fired first. We might have. They’re monsters.”
“…excuse me?”
From the back of the farmhouse she heard a grown man shriek, and then more gunfire, all of which sounded like it was coming from her men. No return fire.
The house looked big enough to hide a small army of its own. Kozlowsky and Lane were reportedly very well armed, and according to their psych profile, going down in a gunfight with the federal government was right in their wheelhouse. They could be inside. No camper, but maybe they ditched it on a side road somewhere nearby, where the trees could hide it.
It didn’t feel right, though.
“Corporal, tell everyone to stand down.”
“Ma’am?”
“I don’t want anyone shooting me.”
Braver stood up and stepped around the hedge that, in truth, wasn’t going to be stopping any bullets anyway. She had no megaphone, so she just cupped her hands around her mouth instead.
“You in the farmhouse!”
Her words echoed. No response.
“We only want Annie Collins! We’re not here for anybody else!”
“She’s not here!” someone shouted from inside. Man’s voice, didn’t sound particularly monstrous. “You’re trying to kill us!”
“Sir, it’s been a very long day already. I’m afraid it’s possible some of us are a little more tired and a little less experienced than others. But you’re talking to me now. I’m Captain Braver, and this is my operation. You have my personal guarantee that we are not here to hurt you. We just need to check the house for a dangerous fugitive. Can you come out so we can talk about this like normal folks?”
There was a long silence. Well, nearly silence. She could hear an argument taking place, between whoever she was talking to and whoever else was in the house. Then, the inner door opened and a man pushed his way through the screen door.
Except, he wasn’t a man.
When Melissa was a child, she used to get nightmares all the time, which were pretty advanced as nightmares go, especially since she was only five or six. They starred a fully formed nightmare-being that was incredibly tall, skinny, and half made of shadows. He would come out at night and hiss loudly like a snake, and then his jaw would unhinge because he was there to eat her up. She would scream, and her parents would come in, and the light made the shadow snake monster go away.
Many years (and some therapy) later, she figured out that the thing that haunted her as a child was mostly the product of a hissing radiator, mixed with interesting shadows from the hallway light, and an active imagination.
Knowing that meant never having to see it again… until now, when it walked out of the farmhouse door.
“SHE’S NOT HEEEEEERE!” it s
hrieked. Its jaw opened up so wide she could feel its hot breath from a hundred feet away.
“Jesus Christ!” she shouted, falling over backwards. She was shooting before she even hit the ground. All the shots went wide, and the thing slinked back inside.
The other soldiers opened fire as well, giving Melissa a chance to crawl back around the hedge.
“What the hell, what the hell, what the hell,” she was muttering. “What was that?”
“Monsters,” the corporal said again.
“It’s the whole town. It’s the whole town. What did Collins do to these people?”
Her radio crackled to life.
“Braver, come in.”
“This is Braver. The town is… there are monsters here, command.”
“Melissa, this is Cal, we have reports of gunfire all over, what’s going on there?”
“General, I can’t explain, but we’re under attack. Something’s wrong with these people.”
“Zombies again?”
That this was a serious question certainly put the entire situation in a different light. Sorrow Falls used to have zombies, so why not hissing shadow snake monsters?
“No sir, something else.”
“Well, fall back.”
“It’s the entire town, sir.”
“Fall back, Braver, that’s an order. We got a hit on one of the searches you commissioned.”
She had to stop and think for a second about that statement, because she didn’t remember any such search. She could barely remember anything that happened before that farmhouse door opened.
“Violet?”
“No, one of the aerial surveys. We have high confidence that we have her location. I’m sending the GPS coordinates to your handheld. I’ll be there within the hour.”
The Internet was blowing up.
“I’m seeing live reports,” Lindsey said. “The army is shooting at people.”
Dobbs opened up his phone. She assumed he was checking the nearest social media platform for confirmation. It didn’t matter which one; the whole country knew what happened at Wainwright, and what was happening now. Unlike the last time Sorrow Falls was making news, there wasn’t an alien ship preventing any contact with the outside world, so there was plenty of real-time reporting going on.
“No zombie mentions so far. Wonder what set them off?”
Lindsey was still trying to get past the idea that she was in the middle of all of this, with these people in particular. It felt a lot like being thrust into the plot of her favorite movie.
Dobbs, as one of the more well-known people in the group, was particularly strange to be around, because he was essentially exactly like he seemed in his TV appearances.
He was the only one, though. Oona only gave two or three in-the-moment interviews, and then disappeared. Laura, even fewer. Sam was pretty popular, media-wise, but he had a default Generic Soldier approach to cameras, so he was nothing like how he appeared.
Dobbs put his phone away and took another look at the computer screen. Lindsey had been trying to collect more data on the affect the signal was having on people, by looking at the most extreme cases.
“You write that website, right?” Dobbs asked. “Collins-something?”
“CollinsWorthy, yes.”
“Huh. Always thought a guy wrote that.”
“I hear that a lot. I think it’s my writing style, maybe. Not sure.”
“You had nice things to say about me a couple of times. I appreciate that.”
She was going to point out that she only said nice things about everyone, because she was self-evidently an Annie Collins (and company) groupie, but decided this wasn’t the time.
“Is it weird, being famous?” she asked.
“For me? A little. I’m glad I’m not Annie-famous. That’d be too much.”
“Yeah, for me too.”
“One minute they love you, the next minute they hate you…”
He trailed off.
“How come you don’t hate her?” he asked.
“I can’t imagine I would,” she said.
“Yeah, yeah, neither can I. But her story. About the party. What was the girl’s name? Ginny?”
“Ginger.”
“Yeah, her. Close friend, tried to stab her. While she was being held down by a guy she also thought was a close friend.”
“I get it; it doesn’t make sense. Something got into their heads. I was thinking it was the same thing that made everyone hate her.”
“But it’s the wrong question. Why don’t you hate her?”
“I… I mean, of course I don’t hate her.”
“Or, why don’t I?” Dobbs asked. “Why doesn’t Oona, or Sam or Laura? Or her bodyguard, the one who I think probably violated a direct order or something when she jumped in front of the bullet. What made her side with Annie then, when everyone else on her security team was ready to put her down?”
“You’re right, that’s a better question.”
Lindsey tapped in a few commands on the computer. She was checking one of her own social media feeds.
“Okay, it isn’t just us, though. See here, here’s someone swearing Annie couldn’t have done anything wrong. Look at the replies.”
Dobbs read over a few.
“Nasty stuff.”
“Right, for every person saying the army has to leave Annie alone, there are ten telling whoever said that to shut up and… well, and a lot worse, but that’s the Internet. Now here’s another one. And this is a third one.”
“I’m not sure I get your point.”
“All three posters are Sorrow Falls residents. I’ve been following them since they came out.”
“Of… the closet?”
“As former zombies.”
“Oh, but that’s most of the town.”
“Okay.” Her hands were shaking, which was something they did when she was excited about something. She felt a little embarrassed about this, and hoped he didn’t notice. “Okay, and now they’re all insisting Annie is innocent and the army is wrong. And apparently the army’s shooting at them because of it.”
“They don’t hate Annie either.”
“Yeah.”
“But I was never a zombie,” Dobbs said. “Neither were any of the rest of us. Were you?”
“No.”
“We need something you, the bodyguard, the former zombies, and our gang all have in common. We figure that out, maybe we’ll understand what’s making everyone else crazy.”
“Aliens,” Lindsey said. “The zombies had an alien in their heads, and you guys had this Violet girl in yours, so maybe this signal can only work if… I don’t know, maybe there’s a switch and you can only throw it once.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t know. That’s where it falls apart.”
“Where the hell have you been?” Annie asked Violet. It was, amazingly, the first question that came to mind, and not what do you mean, you can see and hear Rick too?
“I was in the garden,” Violet said.
Annie looked closely at her friend, who was shedding dirt all over the guest room, and then started laughing.
“You were in the garden! Ed, she was in the garden. That’s too much. I can’t believe this is my life.”
Ed didn’t look at all amused, and Cora just looked terrified.
“She crawled out of the ground,” the Secret Service agent muttered. “I watched it happen.”
“Maybe we should get you cleaned up,” Annie said.
Violet tried to get off the bed, and discovered her body completely disagreed with this plan. She would have fallen on the floor if Cora hadn’t anticipated it and caught her.
“I had to help her inside,” Cora explained. “She’s really weak. Here, sit.”
She helped Vi to a chair.
“Food,” Violet said. “This body needs food. I used up what little energy I had digging out and getting to you.”
Cora looked in Vi’s eyes, like a doctor giving an exam.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’ve been dead for a couple of weeks,” she said.
“Thanks, I have been.”
Oona’s approach to the defense of the farmhouse was an advanced case of better-safe-than-sorry, and for a change, nobody felt like disputing what would in most other circumstances be an extreme response to the situation.
One might argue, for instance, that an act of surrender would be preferable to all parties, and that if the army elected to surround the team at their current location, at worst a temporary standoff might ensue, whereby terms were negotiated.
This seemed especially likely once the spaceship landed, because it was the most dangerous piece on the board, and that was true whether the board in question was Sorrow Falls or the entire planet. On top of that, if a battle were to take place, the ship’s defenses would be far superior than anything Oona and Laura had lying around in their camper.
Nonetheless, it was deemed prudent to establish some old-school defenses. Also, it gave them something to do.
The first thing they did was take the Jeep down the road, because nobody—Annie included—seemed to know what happened after it passed Violet’s farmhouse. The answer to that went a long way toward a solution both for the possibility of them escaping a frontal assault and for answering whether they needed to anticipate a rear attack.
The road didn’t go anywhere; just up a hill for two miles, where it looped back on itself. Sam—who drove the Jeep—was pretty sure he saw evidence of where something large had driven off the road at the top of the cul-de-sac, but they didn’t have time to explore. Once the area defenses had been arranged to Oona’s satisfaction, he planned to bring up the possibility that they could track Violet’s camper, if they had a couple of days to work with.
After concluding that a rear assault was unlikely and a rear retreat impossible, he returned to camp, and then he and Laura took to the woods in front of the house.
The Frequency of Aliens Page 31
