Revelations (Extinction Point, Book 3)

by Jones, Paul Antony

  Emily jerked awake, her eyes snapping open at the gentle shake of her elbow by Reilly, and his crackling voice in her ear that told her: “Wake up, Emily, we’re almost home.”

  “Okay,” she managed to say, as the memory of the dream itself slipped from her mind.

  The Black Hawk circled over Point Loma, and through the dirt-stained cabin window Emily could see people far below caught in the dying light of the day.

  They were all the family she had now, she thought as she watched each of them stop what they were doing and stare up at the helicopter buzzing toward them, craning their necks as they searched the sky at the sound of their approaching craft.

  “Where the hell is that landing strip?” MacAlister asked over the intercom. The light was fleeing the world so fast it was becoming hard to make out the actual buildings of their camp from their shadows. “I don’t want to have to set us down on Coronado, if I can help it.”

  As if they had heard his complaint, Emily saw three bright-red lights burst into life one after the other on the ground. Flares. Whoever lit them had tossed them down to form a triangle that was obviously meant to define their landing point.

  “Starboard, Mac,” Emily said into her microphone.

  “Where?…Okay, got it.” He swung the helicopter around and dipped it down toward the improvised landing pad. They descended and Emily thought she heard all four of them let out a sigh of relief when the tires finally touched down.

  “Terra firma,” Mac said as he cut the engines, then added with a grin, “The firmer it is the less bloody terror. Welcome home.”

  Emily could see the beams of flashlights around the edge of the landing pad; they were moving toward them now, bouncing back and forth as their owners ran to greet the returning group, the Black Hawk’s rotor blades already slowing to a stop.

  The door of the helo was opened from outside and Rhiannon’s face appeared, ghostly in the orange glow of her flashlight. Thor sidled over and licked the girl’s face, his tail beating against Emily’s leg.

  “Hi,” Rhiannon said nonchalantly, as if they had just returned from a shopping trip rather than an exploratory mission to seek out new life and boldly go where no one had gone before, to quote Captain James T. Kirk. But Emily saw the girl’s eyes flit from person to person as she made sure everyone was accounted for. The kid had a caring heart. It was going to be difficult for her to keep it in the world Emily knew lay ahead of them.

  Now, as Emily unbuckled her safety harness and jumped down to the waiting crew, for the first time in what seemed like years to her, she felt a real sense of hope. A sense of belonging. She threw her arms around Rhiannon and hugged her, welcoming the one she got in return.

  “You okay?” she asked the girl.

  “I’m good. Did you find the spaceship?” The question was asked so innocently, as if hunting for crashed aliens was something normal, another reminder of how topsy-turvy the world had become. Spaceships and aliens and the end of the world. Oh my!

  “Yes, we found it,” Emily smiled.

  “Cool!” Rhiannon said. “Come on, Thor.” The dog gave a deep bark and chased after Rhiannon as she headed back to the camp and the welcome warmth of its security lights.

  “Everything okay, Em?” MacAlister said as he climbed down from the cockpit and joined Emily on the ground next to the rapidly cooling Black Hawk.

  “I’m going to need everyone assembled in the canteen,” she said, ignoring the barrage of questions fired at them by the small group of sailors who greeted the four returning comrades. “Can we do that in about an hour?”

  MacAlister nodded. “I’ll make sure everyone’s there.”

  “Thanks, Mac.” She reached out and found his hand and squeezed it. “And thanks for waiting.”

  He gently returned the squeeze. “Anytime.” Their hands lingered for another second then reluctantly drifted apart.

  It took a little longer than the hour Emily had requested to get all the survivors into the same room together. But as the last stragglers walked in, Emily took a swig from her bottle of water and looked out at the rows of expectant faces staring right back at her.

  When the last butt was in a seat, she stood and raised her hands to quell the hum of chatter.

  Where to begin? Where to begin?

  “I know most of you are probably only now coming to terms with the events following the rain. And I also know that most of you probably think I’m a little…nuts.” There were a couple of knowing smiles from the crowd and a scattering of polite smiles. “But I would also hope that you would at least accept that what I’ve told you up until now has been proven correct, in as much as it’s possible to prove. So, if you can give me the benefit of the doubt that I’m not completely crazy, it will make what I have to say next a little easier.”

  She took another long pull from the water bottle. It was room temperature by now but it still felt good against the scratch of the sandpaper that had suddenly coated her throat. How best to say what she needed to say next? Straight to the point would be best, she supposed.

  Okay, here we go.

  “During our expedition to discover what the object was that took out the ISS and crashed in Nevada, we discovered a spaceship. It had landed just outside Las Vegas, and during a…altercation…I was captured by the aliens that caused the red rain. I was taken somewhere, I don’t really know where it was, and they explained to me why everything that has happened since the day the rain occurred.”

  God, that sounded ridiculous, but it was the truth.

  There was a smattering of embarrassed laughter from the crowd, but mostly Emily saw blank stares or faces twisted with incredulity looking back at her. She couldn’t blame them, of course; how would she react if she were in their place? How many kooks and crazies had she walked away from when she was working at the New York Tribune who insisted they had been abducted or seen a UFO? No, she couldn’t blame them, but still, she had to convince them.

  Truth be told, it did not matter what they thought about this part of her story, because what she had to say next was going to be even more unbelievable to them.

  “I know, I know. It probably sounds crazy to you—”

  “Probably?” one of the sailors said from the back of the room. His remark was followed by a scattering of snickers.

  “Hey!” MacAlister said, rising up from his seat at the front and turning to face his crew. “Give it a rest.”

  Emily began to explain how she had woken in the ship, how she had met the aliens calling themselves the Caretakers, and the explanation they had given her for why they had chosen Earth. When she was done a heavy silence settled over the crowd of sailors.

  “We’ve still got a couple of nukes in the bay,” a sailor Emily thought was named Cooper said finally. “I say we drop one on the bastards and see how they like that.”

  Captain Constantine spoke, “Wonderful idea, Mr. Cooper, and then what? There are God knows how many more of these ships around the world, so how would you suggest we handle it when one of them decides to take a shot back at us? That’s assuming our nuke even has the possibility of hitting them. For all we know, they could lob the thing right back to us. Or detonate it before it even left the launch tube. No. There won’t be any nukes.”

  “Do you have the photographs?” Emily asked.

  Mac nodded. He had found a printer in one of the unused offices and run off enough copies of the photographs Emily had captured for everyone.

  “Pass these along,” he said, handing a stack to the first sailor in each row.

  There was a chorus of curses and expletives as the photos were passed from hand to hand.

  “That is what we are dealing with,” said Emily when the last of the men had the image in his hand. “And Commander Mulligan mentioned there were more, seven in total we think, that landed around the world besides this one. Still think it’s a good idea
to nuke it?”

  The mood of the crowd had become less cynical since they had been handed the photographs, Emily thought, and a little more receptive, so she pushed on.

  “But that’s not all they told me,” she continued. “They also gave me a warning that I should pass on to all of you.”

  The chatter that had broken out among the crew faded to silence again.

  “They told me that they would allow us an area of land extending twenty miles out from Point Loma. That we would be left to our own devices as long as we stayed there, but if we or any of the other survivors they say are out there try to expand beyond that area, well, then we would be ‘dealt with,’ to use their words.”

  “‘Dealt with’? What the fuck does ‘dealt with’ mean? Fuck!” This from the same sailor who, minutes earlier, had suggested they nuke Las Vegas.

  “Use your imagination, Cooper,” MacAlister hissed this time. “What do you think an alien race that’s capable of eliminating an entire planet of eight-billion people and then setting up home there as easily as we go on a camping trip is capable of doing? Hmmm? Jesus Christ, if there was a navy left to complain to I swear I’d be asking them to check you for fucking brain damage.”

  This brought a smattering of laughter from some of the other sailors. Cooper flushed scarlet with embarrassment. “I was only asking,” he mumbled.

  “Yeah? Well let me spell it out for you, for all of you. I’ve seen this ship up close. I’ve stood not fifty feet away from these aliens, so hear this from me: If we stray outside the cordon these Caretakers have set aside for us, they will fry our arses. There. Is that clear enough for you?”

  Cooper nodded.

  “Good. Emily, please continue.”

  “While they never directly said anything about frying anyone’s asses…or arses, they did make it clear that there would be severe repercussions if we strayed outside the boundaries they set for us. What’s more important is that they were very specific in their insistence that we are not the only survivors left alive. There are others and we have to find them. There are how many of us left? Thirty-five. That’s nowhere near enough to maintain a viable community, not if we want the human race to become something more than just a footnote on this planet’s history. We have to track down these other survivors. It’s our only chance at a future.”

  When Emily finished speaking she looked across at Captain Constantine. “That’s it,” she said.

  “Alright, well, thank you Emily. Does anyone have any questions?”

  A sailor at the front raised his hand.

  “Go ahead, Stevens,” said the captain.

  “But what happens in the future, what happens if these other survivors join us and we survive and we grow?”

  All eyes turned back to Emily again.

  “While he didn’t use these exact words, the alien I spoke with effectively said we are on probation; behave ourselves and they will leave us alone. Start any trouble, and they’ll deal with us accordingly.”

  “What happens if we run out of room?” another voice asked.

  “Again, it’s going to depend on our behavior. But at some point in the future, the Caretakers will judge us; if we meet their standards, I think we might be given room to expand.”

  “And if we fail?”

  “It’s up to us to make sure we don’t fail. It’s the responsibility of every one of us left to ensure that we, and every generation that comes after us, understands what is needed to survive on this new planet. We won’t be allowed to meaninglessly squander resources or life anymore because we’re no longer at the top of the food chain; something with a lot more intelligence, a lot more power than we could ever imagine, runs the show now. But all they are asking is that we learn a little humility, a little respect for what we have.”

  Emily paused and looked around at the faces looking back at her, the last of humanity gathered here in this one little room. “Because if we choose not to listen, they can take it all away. And the next time, there won’t be anyone left to make a difference.”

  Emily knew she would never grow tired of hearing the waves breaking against the shoreline around Point Loma. The constant susurration of white-capped rolls of ocean slipping up the sand and pebble-strewn beach was the closest she would ever come to the chaotic symphony of the great city she had loved so very much…only to lose forever.

  But that loss no longer hung over her with the same heaviness.

  In the eighteen months since she and Mac had returned from Las Vegas, Emily had resigned herself to being one of the final witnesses of that old world, an anachronistic memory, destined to become part of a myth, woven into the fabric of humanity’s story. It was a surprisingly comforting thought to know that she was one of the last of something that would never, could never, exist again. It made what she still had left from that old life, and the things that she had gained, seem all the more precious to her.

  She walked the beach as she did every morning, lost in her thoughts, the sleeves of her cargo pants rolled up to just below her knees, flip-flops kicked off long ago and carried in her hand as she followed the gentle curve of the beach for a mile or so away from the settlement, her feet tingling as each new wave broke over the wet sand, squelching between her toes.

  It was the same beach that she and the other survivors from the Stockton Islands had first set foot on in this strange new continent, familiar in so many ways, yet changed forever. It was also the same beach where, just ten months earlier, MacAlister and she had spoken their vows together. She smiled at the memory as she passed the spot where Mac had taken her hand in his own and promised to be hers and she had vowed to be his. Captain Constantine had officiated over the ceremony, a simple affair; two survivors, happy to be alive and both amazed that with their species dangling over the precipice of extinction, love, much like life, had managed to find a way to survive.

  In the time between then and now, Emily’s view of this world had…adjusted.

  In almost every novel she had read, every movie she had watched that pitched the end of the world as its theme, it always seemed to pander to humanity’s fear of what would be lost rather than what could be gained through the birth of something new. Birth was a messy business, she knew that from firsthand experience, but the end result was, well, something magnificent.

  Binoculars hung from a strap around her neck; she raised them to her eyes for the fifth time in as many minutes and scanned the open sea for any sign of their new arrivals.

  Captain Constantine had told her over dinner one evening that before the rain had come there could have been upwards of fifty or more submarines plying through the world’s oceans on any given day. That meant there could be thousands more survivors out there, safe beneath the waves, isolated in their hermetically sealed tin cans. That was the day she had started to reach out to potential survivors via the radio.

  In the weeks and months after that first broadcast Emily had managed to make contact with four submarines. Two of those subs—one French, the other Argentinian—had chosen to join them at Point Loma, adding a further three-hundred-and-twenty souls to their growing community of survivors.

  There had also been failures. A German sub and a Russian vessel had chosen to ignore her warnings about settling outside the Green Zone. They had headed back to Europe and their home ports. The German crew had lasted two days at their new location before all radio contact was lost, the Russian crew just under three days before their radio communication abruptly ceased.

  Neither group had been heard from again.

  It was impossible to estimate how many more vessels might be out there, or how many had even survived the tumultuous red storm that had brought such dramatic changes to the planet, but after this length of time, supplies onboard would be all but exhausted, and time would be quickly running out for their crews.

  But the terrible loss of the two crews had at least provid
ed the Point Loma settlers with some valuable information: There seemed to be a window of opportunity, albeit just a matter of days, before the Caretakers would fulfill their threat of retribution to any human who strayed and stayed outside of the zone they had assigned to the remnants of the human race. It also appeared that if a submarine stayed beneath the waves and kept moving, they were not seen as a threat. Maybe the Caretakers could not detect them? Maybe, as long as they kept on moving, the aliens did not care? Emily had given up on trying to fathom their inscrutable motivations.

  Today, however, was an extra-special day. Today, somewhere out there, beneath the rolling blue waves, was a US submarine heading home. And, while Emily welcomed the cosmopolitan mix of accents and attitudes that had sprouted up around the camp, it would be nice to be around others from her own culture.

  She had begun to think that she and Rhiannon were the last survivors of her country. But just a few weeks earlier they had made contact with the USS Michigan, a ballistic missile sub that had ridden out the storm anchored off of the Arctic, much as the crew of the HMS Vengeance had done at the opposite end of the world. They had a full contingent of almost one-hundred-and-thirty-two personnel onboard as well as a number of scientists they had rescued from Arctic research stations similar to the one she and Rhiannon had fought so hard to reach in the Stocktons. The knowledge and skills those scientists and engineers possessed would prove invaluable to the group and their efforts to survive and thrive here at this Southern California refuge.

  They were out there right now, Emily thought, her eyes drifting over the sea, searching for any sign of the new arrivals. She knew she was getting ahead of herself, allowing her excitement to get the better of her; the last time they had made contact with the US sub they were still a good eight hours out, but still, she was looking forward to the promise of new faces, fresh personalities, and new stories to be heard.