by Jason Brant
“Aaron.”
His head reeled at his father’s voice again.
His old man had returned, standing in the other door.
“Let go of me!”
Rather than releasing Stephanie, Aaron pulled her closer to him, throwing his arm around her shoulder. He hugged her close to him, backing up until his butt hit the island in the middle of the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” Stephanie’s voice rose in anger, her eyes growing large as she glared back at him. She tried to push him away, but he cinched down on her.
“Something is seriously wrong here. Look at them. All of them. They have the same expressions.”
“Turn out the light,” all three said at once.
The odd chorus got Stephanie’s attention and she stopped fighting against Aaron’s grip.
“They’re acting like pod people,” Aaron said. He heard his words quiver when he spoke and hated showing weakness in front of her.
“What are pod people?” She never took her eyes from her parents.
“From Invasion of the Body Snatchers. They look like your friends and family, but they’re aliens.”
“Don’t be ridicul—”
“Aaron.”
“Stephanie.”
“Turn out the light.”
Stephanie shivered in his arms.
Aaron wanted to see how his father was able to stand without assistance so he angled the flashlight in his direction.
His father’s face changed, becoming a mask of rage and... something else. A hiss came from him as he leapt backwards, into the dark room behind him.
“What the—” Stephanie hadn’t seen the change in his father, only heard the sound, and was turning her head to the other door.
Aaron almost vomited. The way his father’s skin squirmed threatened to break his mind. That wasn’t his dad. Couldn’t have been. He would have fallen over if not for the island he rested against.
Without thinking, he turned the flashlight on Stephanie’s parents. They stepped into the hallway behind them before the beam fell across their bodies. Another hiss escaped them as they disappeared into the darkness.
“What is going on?” Stephanie screamed. Her hands covered either side of her face, shaking her head back and forth.
Aaron wished he had the answer to that question. He wanted to console her, but his own mind reeled at the otherworldly things happening before them.
“Call the cops.” The words escaped him before he even knew what he was saying.
“What?” Stephanie shrugged his arm from her shoulders and turned back to him. “You want to call the cops on our own parents?”
“You didn’t see my dad’s face.” Aaron shuddered as the image filled his head again. “That wasn’t him.”
“But—”
Aaron didn’t want to argue with her, feeling that he needed to do something. He spotted a phone hanging on the wall by a Viking refrigerator. In two steps he was in front of it, pulling it from its cradle, his hands shaking as he tried to dial 911. He didn’t even get a dial tone.
Dropping the phone, he reached into his pocket for his cell. It didn’t work either.
“Nothing’s working!”
“Come into the dark.” The voices came from somewhere deeper in the house.
“Stop it!” Stephanie cried out, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“We need to get help.” Aaron reached out and took her hand, squeezing it.
Stephanie sobbed, but let him lead her to the entrance of the hall. He peeked around the corner, afraid that their parents, or what looked like them, would be hiding there.
The hallway was empty—dark—like everything else.
They moved quickly to the front door. Aaron shined the light around, the anticipation of something jumping out at them forcing him into a slow jog. Stephanie matched his pace and they were out of the house within seconds.
The headlights from his Sable still lit up the front porch. They crossed it and hopped down the steps, turning around to face the house again.
Three silhouettes filled the front window, motionless.
The car in the street still burned. No firefighters or EMTs had arrived. They couldn’t even hear sirens. Aaron tried to look around the neighborhood, hoping to see someone, something, moving around. He couldn’t even tell where the other houses were. Only thick dark surrounded them.
Stephanie must have felt it too. She fell to her knees, sobs racking her body. Her eyes searched the void around them.
Aaron didn’t like standing in the front lawn with their pod people parents watching them from a window. They couldn’t see anything beyond the beams from his car’s headlights, but he felt that something was close. Were their parents the only things watching them?
“Let’s get back to my car.” He reached down and touched her shoulder.
“What are we going to do?” Stephanie looked up at him, her mascara running down her cheeks.
“Find help.”
She wiped at her face, and then nodded. Standing up, she reached out for his hand. Had this been under any other circumstances, Aaron knew he would have giggled like a little girl at the idea of holding Stephanie White’s hand. Holy shit.
They trotted to the car. The feeling of being watched grew stronger as they approached the Sable and Aaron kept darting the light around in random directions. They were never able to spot anything, but the feeling never went away.
After helping Stephanie into the passenger’s seat, Aaron climbed in the driver’s side, flipping on every light he could find. He didn’t like driving with the interior dome lights on, but he knew that staying out of the dark was the best thing for them right then. If their Body Snatcher parents wanted them without lights, then he would search for every source of it he could find.
The idea of being afraid of the dark would have felt moronic to him just twenty minutes ago.
They sat in the car and stared at her house, neither knowing what to say. Aaron flipped on his high beams and watched the silhouettes in the window scatter. He was thankful that they weren’t close enough to hear if they’d made those horrible hissing sounds again.
“What happened to our parents?” Stephanie asked.
Aaron paused, not knowing how to answer that. In the movies, the host had always been destroyed before a duplicate could be made. He hoped with all of his being that wouldn’t be the case here. His gut told him that it very well might be. The thought made him want to bawl.
“I don’t know.”
He put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway, moving slowly because his backup lights weren’t cutting through the curtain of black behind them. He didn’t have more than five feet of visibility through the back windshield.
They drove the street then, coming even with the flaming car. Aaron couldn’t see anyone in the front seat at all. The fire had died down a bit and little more than a steel husk of the vehicle remained.
“Did everyone but us disappear?” Stephanie asked. She pulled at the ends of her hair, twisting and tying. Hysteria had overtaken her.
“Stephanie, I don’t know any more than you do.”
Her faced dropped at that and her sobs picked up again. He thought about lying and telling her that they were OK, that everything would be all right, but he didn’t see the point. They were in deep shit and he had no idea how they could get out of it. They’d stepped out of reality and were now smack dab in the middle of a science fiction novel.
His entire goal at that point was to stay in the light.
Aaron turned right at an intersection, heading toward the center of town. He glanced at the readouts on his dash and felt his heart sink. His gas light was on. In the mayhem he’d completely forgot that he needed to refill after the delivery. His funds had been getting low lately and he never had enough money to put more than half of a tank in. The tip from this last delivery would have given him enough for a few gallons of fuel.
“We’ve got a problem.”
“No
w what? I’m not sure I can take anything else.”
“We’re going to run out of gas soon.”
“So? There are gas stations all over—” She cut herself off, raising a hand to her open mouth. “They won’t work without power will they?”
“I don’t know – I doubt it.”
“So what are we going to do?”
Panic nibbled at the edges of Aaron’s thoughts, threatening to overtake him.
“Police stations probably have generators right? The kind that kick in when the power goes out?”
Stephanie looked at him like he was a genius. “I bet they do!”
“Let’s give that a shot. Do you know where the nearest station is?”
“I think there’s one about a mile away. I think.”
She didn’t sound too sure to Aaron and he didn’t know if he wanted to bet his life on a guess. He thought they might be able to steal someone’s car, one with more gas in it. The idea of finding one with the keys in it felt slim though. Aberdeen didn’t have a reputation of the safest city around. People took extra caution in not making their vehicles available to would-be thieves.
Stephanie told him to take a right at the next intersection.
The new street didn’t have a single car on it. There were only two homes visible when his headlights swung around the corner and both had garages with closed doors. His idea to steal a car went in the trash.
“Are you sure it’s up here? We don’t have enough gas to drive around town.”
“It is.” Stephanie sat up in her seat, holding her hand over her eyes to shield them from the dome light. Their plan of going to the police station perked her up and seemed to give her something to work toward. “I think.”
They rolled down the road at a hair above ten miles an hour. Aaron’s headlights had never been the best, but they barely made a dent in the endless shadow before them. It was like driving through fog, but rather than their high beams creating a hard-to-see-through glare, they simply disappeared.
Once or twice Stephanie cried out, pointing at her window, sure that she had seen something moving nearby. Aaron tried his best not to look, afraid his nerve would finally snap.
He saw movement too, but he didn’t dare avert his eyes from the road.
After five minutes of puttering along, Aaron opened his mouth to tell her that they needed to try something else when he thought he saw something ahead.
“Is that... is that light up there?”
At first, he thought his eyes might have been playing tricks on him – that he only saw a reflection off a window. As they moved a bit closer, he could make out a light on the front of a building. It didn’t illuminate the entire wall of the structure, but it was enough.
“That’s it! That’s the police station. I told you!” Stephanie clapped her hands, her sorrow and fear temporarily forgotten.
Aaron felt a pang of hope. The department’s shield sat under the light, details emerging as they got closer. In there would be a bevy of guns, flashlights, and, obviously, power. And best of all, they could find someone who might have answers. Officers could go to their homes and help their families.
They crossed into the parking lot and stopped ten yards away from the front door.
“Doesn’t look very busy,” Aaron said. He didn’t like the quiet that enveloped the station.
“What should we do?”
After a moment’s thought, Aaron honked the horn, hoping someone would come outside. He waited ten seconds and honked again.
No one appeared.
“I guess we should go inside and see if we can find anyone.”
“What if there’s no one here? Then what?”
Aaron appreciated how scared she was. He felt the same way. Unfortunately for him, she now looked to him for answers and he felt obliged to give her some.
“We’ll find someone. There’s just no way that we’re the only people around. Someone else had to have had a fire going or a candle lit – something.” He was starting to have doubts about that but he didn’t want to share them.
“You think the dark took everyone?”
He did, but he didn’t want to say it.
They climbed out of the car, Stephanie with the flashlight in her hand. Aaron kept the high beams on, shining them through the glass door. He could see an empty desk a dozen feet in front of the entrance.
When they were almost at the door, the light hanging on the front of the building flickered.
It dimmed, almost going out, before brightening again.
Stephanie and Aaron shared an uneasy glance, unsure if they should continue.
Then the front door burst open.
A short, stocky woman pointed a gun at Aaron’s face.
“Get the fuck back!”
Chapter 7
The colonel’s bleating cell phone startled him.
It vibrated with such force that it had almost danced its way off the end table beside his bed.
He rolled over, grumbling, and snatched it from the smooth wood surface, squinting at the bright screen as he tried to see who had the nerve to call him at such an hour. Sergeant Miles – of course. He wrestled with not answering, but he knew that the man wouldn’t even consider calling him unless it was important.
Sliding his thumb across the touch screen, he answered the call. “This had better be a fucking emergency, Sergeant.”
“It is, sir.” Miles’ voice sounded strained, tired.
“What is it?”
Colonel John McKenzie threw the covers off his naked body and swung his legs over the bed. His wife stirred beside him, but didn’t wake, her blonde hair the only thing visible from under the blankets. The air in the bedroom felt cool, giving him a chill.
“There’s a problem at APG, sir.”
“Operation Doorway?”
“I don’t know for certain, sir... what I’m looking at right now is hard to explain.”
“Try harder.”
A lot of noise came through the phone then, followed by Sergeant Miles screaming at someone.
“Stay back, sir! Don’t go beyond me – it’s dangerous!”
“Sergeant Miles? What the fuck is going on?”
Colonel McKenzie pulled on a pair of jeans, wondering if he should grab his uniform instead.
“Aberdeen is... dark, sir.”
“Well, what the hell does that mean? Start making sense.”
“The power is out all over the post and city. But it’s not just the power. There is a line of... darkness that is blocking out everything surrounding the city. I can see stars over my head right now, but above the post... nothing.”
“You can’t see stars? You called me because you can’t see stars?”
“No, sir. We have no communication with anyone on the post. I can’t get a hold of anyone. There is zero movement inside the wall of... darkness. It’s as if a curtain has been pulled over the entire city. Sir.”
“You can’t reach anyone?”
He didn’t like the sound of that.
“No, sir. Complete communication silence.”
“What time did this happen?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t awake until a few minutes ago. Do you think they did this? Sir?”
The colonel pulled a sweatshirt on and worked his way through his house, picking up socks and shoes as he went.
“I’d be willing to bet some money on it, Miles. Where are you?”
“Route 22, by the furniture store.”
Colonel McKenzie veered onto the highway less than five minutes after being called. Though his mind still had a fog over it, his thoughts began to race at the possibilities of what had happened.
Two years ago, McKenzie was brought aboard a boring, science-based experiment at Aberdeen Proving Ground. At first, he’d only halfheartedly gone to work every day, watching over the civilians and contractors that were punching away at keyboards and slurping coffee by the bucket. Why he, an active duty colonel returning from his third tour in Iraq and Afghani
stan, would be inserted into such a dull, unnecessary assignment bewildered him.
Twenty soldiers were put under his command as well and they’d been ordered to remain armed at all times while on duty. That was another surprise that made little sense to him. Aberdeen Proving Ground didn’t have any soldiers – it was a research facility. Having armed military personnel proved contrary to everything he knew about the post.
Last year a breakthrough occurred that changed his perspective. The contractors were building a massive underground facility, had been since before McKenzie arrived, and they completed it one dreary afternoon, popping champagne and giving celebratory speeches. What they’d built hadn’t been disclosed to McKenzie right away, but he’d later discovered it was a particle collider of some kind.
“The largest in the world, by far,” a scientist had spilled to him in a drunken diatribe.
At the same time, a short distance away, another project neared completion. An advanced power plant and grid was constructed, likely to provide energy to the collider. The government, in what appeared a great act of charity, had decided to provide power to the surrounding city of Aberdeen free of charge.
That set off red flags for the colonel. The military didn’t give things away for no reason. His armed detail, the power grid, and the particle collider under his feet piqued his interest.
He started asking questions, querying scientists and project managers, trying to get a grasp on the project he fell under.
Two weeks later he was out on his ass. His superiors were furious. He was removed from the project, put on mandatory leave, and ordered to ride out the rest of his time in civilian clothes. His soldiers, even those that had done nothing wrong, were given the same treatment. All would be honorably discharged in short order.
McKenzie had gleaned a small amount of information before being cut off. A physicist, tipsy on some kind of alcohol, told him that they were going to attempt things that were previously only theoretical. The scientific jargon he spewed went straight over the colonel’s head, but he’d hung on to keywords.
Hidden dimensions.
Mini black holes.
Einstein’s destroyed theory.
Operation Doorway.
The man rambled for quite awhile, throwing out enough information that McKenzie’s head began to spin. He’d talked about the tie between enormous power requirements and sustaining a mini black hole, something that made no sense to McKenzie at the time.
