by Alex Mersey
“Anything I learn,” Sean promised as he turned to go.
He took the road back to town, passed straight through. If Colonel Ainsley had anything to do with the town’s apparent evacuation, the answers lay south of Little Falls.
Ritter insisted not.
Sean was less sure. The pigeon had left last night to run the news by motorcycle. Base command was two hundred and sixty kilometers south west. That was maybe five hours to get there, if he took his sweet time. And this wasn’t news anyone would sit on.
So where was Colonel Ainsley? Or rather, what was the nature of the convoy he’d dispatched? An intelligence gathering committee or a clean-up crew? Sean wasn’t much of one for conspiracy theories, but the country was at stake here, maybe the whole damn world. A downed battlecruiser. Silvers on the ground. Known location of a Silvers compound. That was the kind of information the army would want to keep to itself and control.
Sean almost wished it were true, that the army had Lynn, Johnnie, Allira, everyone. The government wouldn’t sanction killing American citizens, innocent woman and children. Not if they had a choice, and they did. They’d detain the town until the intel was no longer classified or relevant.
The Clyde farm holdings stood half a kilometer back from the main road, just visible above their fields of corn. They wouldn’t necessarily have seen the convoy pass, but they sure as hell would have heard it.
Sean eased his foot off the gas as he turned off the road, to spare the truck’s suspension on the rain-rutted dirt track and to get a good look around. He’d negotiated the move of a refugee family and three loners here a couple of days ago. The Clyde household was full with his wife, two small children and elderly parents-in-law.
And yet no guard was stationed up the water tower.
No one rushed out to greet him when he pulled alongside the farmhouse.
The rocker on the front porch was noticeably bare of old man Clyde passing the time and sucking on his cherry tobacco pipe.
Sean climbed down from the truck, slammed his frustration out on the door. He recognized the soundless, lifeless signs. Whatever had happened in Little Falls, had come through here. He still checked, walked through the hollow passages and empty rooms of the house, searched the barn and the outbuildings. Dishes stacked neatly on a drying rack in the kitchen. A half-cooked chicken in the wood-fired AGA stove, although the oven dial had been turned to off. A pair of corn scythes rested against the outside barn wall.
These people had left in an organized hurry, not in chaos.
There’d been no attack here, no scuffle or show of resistance.
If he didn’t know better, he’d say they’d gone willingly. All of them. The farm and the town. But Lynn wouldn’t do that to him. Allira wouldn’t do that to Beth. At the very least, they would have left a note.
He returned to Doc Nate’s with nothing substantial, only suspicions.
The more thought he gave it, the more he was convinced. SPU 14 had enough weapons to bring down a sky of black arrows, maybe even cripple a battlecruiser. There was only one reason they would have laid down arms and surrendered without a fight. Orders from their chain of command. Colonel Ainsley.
They’d stashed the dead Silver in the clinic and that’s where he found Beth and her friend…Jackson, that’s what Ritter had called him. Their voices drew him off to the side as soon as he stepped inside the hallway.
“A dead Silver,” Jackson was saying, hovering over the alien creature deposited on a hospital bed. He poked the creamy white exoskeleton. “The only thing right in this godforsaken day.”
Beth stood across from him, arms folded. “A live one would have been better,” she said in a strained voice. “Given us some answers.”
“You’re assuming they speak English.” Jackson said. “Or that it’s possible to take one alive.”
“Nearly impossible to take one dead, too,” Sean spoke up.
Jackson’s gaze jerked to him. “Ritter was telling us, some type of body plating that activates?”
“Like a damned missile defense system. Kill shot to the eye, remember that.” He looked at Beth, shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry. Sunrise Farm heard rounds of machine gun fire, not enough to indicate a proper fight. The Clyde farmstead is deserted, same as here. Everyone just gone. I couldn’t find out anything.”
She digested that, her grim expression set in stone. Sweat, or water, plastered her hair to her temples. Her cheeks were hollowed out, a lifetime of responsibility and worry added on to her tender years. Sean didn’t ask if she was okay. She wasn’t. He didn’t offer any more platitudes. That wouldn’t bring anyone back.
Jackson lost interest in the Silver, crossed the room to look out the window. Dirt smudged his face. A streak of dried blood slashed his forehead. Sean didn’t ask.
“Beth…” Sean scrubbed his jaw as he waited for her full attention. “You said you’d seen this before?”
“Yeah, this morning.” She blinked, a frown digging between her brows. “A town called Solkirk.”
Jackson turned from the window. “It looked like they’d fled, to escape some threat—”
“—that never came,” Beth finished. “I knew something was off about the place, about what had happened there. Shit!” She balled her hands at her sides. “I should have come straight back. I should have been here.”
“We would have been here if your friend hadn’t ambushed us,” Jackson retorted.
Sean looked from one to the other. “Friend?”
“Clint,” Beth told him. “We ran into him at the Medical Center near the golf club. He seems to have collected himself an army to do his bidding.”
Sean gave a humorless laugh. “That sounds like Clint.”
“He stole our jeep,” Jackson muttered.
“That’s our Clint,” Sean said, unsurprised.
“We got it back,” Beth said, then fast-tracked to the subject that took precedence over all else. “Where do we start looking?”
That was the one easy answer Sean had. Whomever or whatever his gut instinct blamed, he couldn’t rule out the Silvers and he had to bring Cassie in. Even she would have to finally admit, her surveillance operation was done.
“The fort,” Sean said. “We’re taking this fight to them.”
∞∞∞
They’d brought a brick of C4 and Ritter used it all, pressed into the stone cracks around the perimeter of the misted black lattice gate.
Jackson had stayed behind in Little Falls, to keep an eye on Williams and to be there in case anyone came through the town—or returned to town. Private Evans held his elevated position at the guard house, their proverbial eye in the sky. Cassie and Beth were circling the fort, looking for an alternate, more vulnerable, point of entry.
Sean was right where he wanted to be. He was in a mood to blow something up. The battlecruiser was top of his list, and he’d been all for bringing the mounted missiles to blow the middle out of it, but Ritter had talked him down. Reminded him this was a search and retrieval mission. Of course, now that they were here, it was obvious no one else was. Cassie and Evans had seen no one come or go, no Silvers since the one they’d killed.
There might still be answers, though.
Inside there, Sean thought, staring through the fence to the inner courtyard. Why had the Silvers locked this place down? Why park their ship out front? Where the hell were they?
Ritter gave them enough fuse length to shelter around the side of the battlecruiser with a handheld mechanical detonator.
“The blast will be contained to the entryway, right?” Sean asked as he inspected the man’s handiwork.
Ritter deadpanned him with a look. “Do I look like a demolitions expert?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“You don’t suppose they’re nesting in there, huh?” Ritter said as they waited for the girls to return.
“Nesting?”
“You know…like cocoons or pods that’ll hatch little baby Silvers. That one you killed,
that could’ve been big mama.”
As comical as the notion was, straight from a host of SCI-FI classics, Sean didn’t laugh it off. His stomach soured at the thought, a flood of Silver hatchlings overrunning them. “We should have brought more C4.”
Just then, Beth rounded the corner, M4 hanging from her shoulder strap. She saw them and called, “Two iron-studded doors. All the windows have bars—”
“—and too high to look into,” Cassie said as she appeared a step behind Beth. “Also…” She carried her M4 at the ready and waved the short barrel across the lattice that gated the archway. “That’s everywhere, securing every door and window.”
“This place is like Fort Knox,” Beth ground out.
Sean exchanged a look with Ritter. What was more precious than gold? Baby Silvers about to hatch or spawn. “Okay, let’s blow ourselves a hole.”
“We’re sure about this?” Cassie said, walking up to him. “Back up could be on the way.”
“The cavalry’s not coming,” Beth said.
Cassie turned to look at her. “Colonel Ainsley—”
“If Captain Davis hadn’t been so hung up on waiting for the Colonel Ainsley,” Beth cut in, “none of this might have happened. Now they’re all gone. What don’t you understand?”
“Beth, your sister isn’t here,” Cassie said, her tone softened in sympathy. “I know you feel the need to do something, anything, but this isn’t just about one small town of people. What we do here impacts the entire war effort.”
Sean stepped between them and an argument that sounded like it had started a while back. “We’re not going to run off with any secret discoveries,” he told Cassie. “You’re welcome to take notes for your report.”
She glared at him. “Really, McAllister, that’s how you’re playing this? I was doing my job.”
Sean bit down on a retort. The army had failed in the only job he deemed important. Not only hadn’t they saved the town, it looked like they hadn’t put up a fight and were maybe even involved. He’d put his trust in them and now Lynn, Johnnie and Allira had vanished without a trace.
“This isn’t a discussion,” he said instead. “The decision’s already made.” He waved Cassie and Beth behind the ship and said to Ritter, “Do it.”
They inserted their earplugs and Ritter pressed the button that would ignite the chemical reaction. Seconds later, the series of loud explosions rumbled Sean’s eardrums. Dust plumed into the sky, stone and mortar debris shot out above them. Cassie flattened herself to the ship, but Beth sank to her knees, arms cowered over her head. Sean covered her with his body and dragged her closer to the protective wall of the ship, stayed like that until the explosions stopped and the dust cleared.
They pulled their earplugs out and stepped from behind the ship to take a look at the damage. A couple of meters either side of the archway sagged into a pile of rubble. The lattice gate, however, stood tall in the gaping hole.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Cassie said, stomping heavily beside Sean as they made their way over.
“The lattice hooked itself into the archway,” Sean thought aloud, looking down at the flagged stone paving of the courtyard. “It must have similar roots going down. Ritter only placed the C4 around the sides and top.”
He examined the edges of the lattice. The thin wires were frayed at the ends where they’d bled into the stone, like shredded cotton. At first he assumed the blast had done it, but it seemed too uniform. Each and every wire ending shot off into the same pattern—a spray of long, fibrous-like threads.
He showed Cassie. “I think this is how the lattice anchors into the stone.”
Beth looked over his shoulder. “That reminds me of images of the nervous system network.”
“You’re right,” Cassie murmured. “It’s almost, like, organic?” She sent Sean a sidelong look. “Do you think it grew into the stone?”
“We know the Silvers themselves can transform body parts,” Sean said. He’d told them about the Silver’s arm reshaping into a stub-barreled weapon. They knew about the armor plating. “Maybe even change composition. I guess this is something similar.”
Ritter had already worked his way around the side of the gate. Carbine slung over his shoulder, he looked back at them. “Are we doing this today or next week?”
“Beth, you’re with me,” Sean said. “Cassie, stick with Ritter. No one go wandering off alone.”
“Yes, boss.” Cassie mock-saluted him and strode over the debris pile to overtake Ritter. “I’ll take point.”
“You’re the sergeant.”
“Your girlfriend’s rather bossy,” Beth observed as they followed around the gate into the wreckage of the courtyard.
“Not my girlfriend, but yeah, you could say she has a bossy streak.” He unclipped the assault rifle from the strap and held it ready, finger near the charge trigger. “Eyes sharp, we have no idea what we could be walking into.”
He paused to watch as Cassie and Ritter reached the first door on their side of the courtyard. Cassie stood with her back against the iron-studded door, slowly turned the handle. She gave Ritter a nod, yanked the door open and he rushed inside, rifle leading the way. Cassie slipped in after him.
Sean waited another heartbeat. No fire. No shouts. “All good, come on.”
He and Beth did it a little differently. He made Beth stand flat against the wall while he opened the door wide. Then they waited to the count of five to see what came out. Nothing. Inside, the long, rectangular room was stark and dimly lit from the small, barred window. No furnishings. Flagged stone floor. The interior walls were also stone, not plastered.
The next room had a large hearth, but was otherwise the same. The dank, unlived-in smell. No indication of what it had once been used for.
“This fort has been standing empty for years,” Sean said.
“More like decades.” Beth turned around in the hollow room, shouted, “Hello!” The room shouted a hollow echo back at her. She shook her head at Sean. “Maybe the Silvers just needed a spot to park their ship.”
“Then why secure the entrances?”
“I don’t know,” she said, walking out into the daylight. “But nothing here is going to help us find Allira and the others.”
She stood there while Sean checked the last two doors. He found a large cast-iron stove in a room packed with loads of shelves, all bare. When he came out, he met Cassie’s eye from across the courtyard. She shook her head at him as she walked on to the next door. Nothing here.
Beth turned a slow circle in the courtyard, the lattice still intact above, the gate propped up from the ground like a modern work of art, the doors around them hanging open. Her circling brought her around to face him.
“Sean, what now?” she said, her voice small, her eyes wide, as if she’d run through her checklist of things to do and reached rock bottom. “How do I find Alli? Where do I even start looking?”
“You don’t.” He wrapped an arm around her, hugged her close for a long moment. “We do it together.”
- 12 -
Beth
The nightmare was never-ending, a tangible fear lodged in the back of Beth’s throat. The fear of never seeing Alli again, of never knowing what had happened to her. The fort had been a total bust. The Silvers clearly had something planned for it in the foreseeable future, but Beth was only interested in the now. Cassie and Evans had sworn they’d had eyes on the fort, on the battlecruiser, the entire time. No one had come in or out. Alli wasn’t there, and that’s where Beth’s curiosity ended.
She’d ridden out two tanks of gas with Sean and Jackson, searching up and down the country roads as far as Briar Creek to the south and Foundryville to the north. The neighboring towns were untouched by this phenomenon. No one had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. It was as if everyone from Little Falls and the Clyde farm had simply vanished into thin air without a trace.
Beth wasn’t giving up, she couldn’t. But the rain clouds and moonless night, and Sean, h
ad finally drummed some reason into her. They needed to eat, to rest, to keep their strength up for the search ahead.
When Sean pulled up alongside the curb outside Doc Nate’s house, the first thing they noticed was the jeep. It was gone.
“I thought we’d agreed,” Beth said irritably as she hopped from the truck’s cab to the high step to the ground. “For God’s sake, it isn’t rocket science. Don’t go off without informing us.”
“Maybe they went after a lead,” Jackson said, climbing down and slammed the rear door behind him.
Sean strode up the path, his steps heavy, his thoughts quiet. He felt the loss every bit as much as her, as Jackson. She saw it in his eyes, in the drag around his mouth. Maybe he even felt it worse. Beth acknowledged her utter selfishness, she worried about Alli first, the others came a distant second. Sean, on the other hand, worried equally for them all. Alli. Lynn. Johnnie. He worried that Williams wouldn’t recover, that the big man would simply slip silently into the night.
Inside, they found Cassie in the lounge. She’d pulled a chair up directly opposite Williams and sat forward, elbows punched to her knees, studying him in the flickering lantern light with a fierce intensity that remained clawed to her expression as she glanced up at their arrival.
“Where’s the jeep?” asked Sean.
“Ritter and Evans took it, headed for base command,” Cassie said. She stood, turned to face him. “We need to get word to Colonel Ainsley.”
“You’re assuming he doesn’t already know,” Sean said. “The pigeon left more than twenty-four hours ago.”
“The pigeon never made it.”
Beth stepped forward, her heart pinching. She was relying on that backup like a second skin. “You know that for fact?”
Cassie nodded. “If he had, a convoy would already be here.” She dipped her head, looking to Sean. “I know all about your theory, Ritter told me.”
Jackson had dropped into an armchair, head hung in his hands, but now he looked up to Sean. “What theory?”
Cassie ignored him, her eyes never leaving Sean. “You’re wrong.”
