by Jay Falconer
A few steps later, Lucas heard a loud squeal coming from behind him. It trumped the sounds of buildings crashing to the ground. It was the same debilitating shrill that he heard the night before. He was starting to get dizzy, but couldn’t cover his ears while pushing the wheelchair. He hoped his equilibrium would hold out long enough to get Drew away from there.
With the sound of death breathing down his neck, he looked back to check the progress of the energy field. All he could see was a rolling wall of shimmering energy closing the gap behind him. He could not see the intruder’s top or sides; it was too close.
A pair of bicyclists whizzed past him on the left, and then cut across in front, as they pedaled furiously along the sidewalk. Fifty feet ahead of them was a pair of young women who were stumbling forward arm-in-arm, helping each other remain upright. When the bicyclists nearly ran the women over, Lucas wondered if the earsplitting squeal was affecting their vision.
Seconds later, both the bicyclists and the girls made it safely around the corner, just in front of the science lab. Lucas intended to use the same escape route, if he had enough time. His thigh muscles were burning and he could hardly maintain his balance.
They were still alive when they made it to end of the mall twenty seconds later. Drew’s wheelchair almost tipped over as they made the ninety-degree corner and headed north between the science lab and the Student Union.
“Hang on, little brother. We’re almost there!” he yelled, hoping Drew could hear him above the noise.
Drew’s head was hanging down and bobbing as they moved—the dome’s high-decibel shrieking must have knocked him unconscious again. He pushed Drew’s chair as hard as he could, hoping not to run out of breath.
Just then, the squeal stopped. Lucas slowed down and looked over his right shoulder. He saw the enormous crown of the dome just beyond the top floor of the Student Union. It had stopped moving and was now a blistering orange color.
There was a pair of news helicopters off in the distance, circling above the giant intruder. Lucas wondered why the helicopter pilots weren’t affected by the squeal that seemed to disable nearly everyone else in the vicinity, at least on the ground. Perhaps it had limited range. It was also possible that the dome’s shrill was one-directional and only people directly in front of it could hear it.
Three seconds later, Lucas heard a swooshing sound as the dome vanished; the sound was followed by a rush of wind that tried to pull him back toward the mall.
Drew woke up and rubbed his forehead. “Whoa, my head’s killing me. Where are we?”
“We’re just north of the lab. We’re safe.”
Drew looked back in the direction of the Student Union. “What happened to that thing?”
“I don’t know. It just stopped moving and then vanished.”
“We should go back and see if anyone needs help.”
Lucas agreed. They reversed course and went back to the south side of the Student Union. Lucas stared, horrified, when they turned the corner and looked east. There was a long, shallow, devastated channel about three hundred feet wide in front of them. It was perfectly straight and appeared to stretch all the way to the east end of the mall near Campbell Avenue.
All the buildings along the north side of the grassy mall were intact, but most of the campus buildings along the mall’s south side had been obliterated, including the four-story library and the old basketball gym. He wondered how many students had been inside when the buildings were destroyed.
As Lucas had predicted, the energy field had just missed consuming the Student Union. There was an eight-foot-wide strip of undisturbed grass between the previous night’s theatre event and the latest incident. Everything else caught in the dome’s path had vanished. Again, there was no visible rubble.
“There’s more of that black stuff,” Drew said, pointing to a film of black powder covering the bottom of the entire channel.
Lucas saw something else: a tall, pyramid-shaped mass near the dome’s endpoint. “Let’s go check that out,” he said, pointing at the discovery.
They moved closer to it, along with a handful of other witnesses.
“Oh, my God. Is that what I think it is?” Drew asked.
“Yeah, it is. That’s a pile of bodies, at least bits and pieces of them.”
The dome had expelled an eight-foot-high mound of semi-liquid human remains. The heap oozed down its sides as gravity pulled at its gooey consistency made up of organs, muscle, tissue, fingers, skulls, bones, brain matter, and intestines, intermingled like a bloody tossed salad. The coroner’s office was going to be busy for months sorting out the remains.
Drew vomited twice next to his chair. After wiping off his chin, he asked, “What the heck’s going on here?”
“Beats me, brother,” Lucas said, scooping up a handful of the black residue power. “But I think it’s all related to our E-121 experiment.”
Lucas could not see any clothing in the bloody pile, and could not visually identify any of the remains as belonging to Abby or Jasmine. Given Drew’s fragile emotional state, it was probably a good thing Abby’s pink windbreaker wasn’t visible in the dome’s waste pile.
“Do you think it’ll happen again?” Drew asked.
“Beats the shit out of me. But we shouldn’t wait around here to find out. Let’s go.”
Chapter 11
Retrospect
Lucas pointed to the rear of a white broadcast van parked a few hundred feet past the science lab, on a side street to the left. The vehicle was parked behind two other news vans from competing stations, both facing the opposite way.
“Let’s go see if Channel 9 caught anything on camera,” he said to Drew.
When they arrived, they found the van’s cargo door open, partially covering up the faded black stenciling on the side. Inside were two clean-cut young technicians wearing jeans and T-shirts, and one older man with a bad comb-over and a belly hanging down to the front pockets of his slacks. All three men were sitting close together in front of the mobile studio, watching the center monitor.
Lucas poked his head inside the van. “Is that footage of the energy field that just tore up the mall?”
The older man turned around. “Yeah, it is. Who the hell are you?”
“Dr. Lucas Ramsay. I’m with the Astrophysics Department,” Lucas said, stepping inside the van.
The man looked him over from head to toe, then shook Lucas’ hand with a firm grip. “I’m Don Cain, Field Producer. Channel 9 News.”
Lucas nodded and gave him a half-smile. “Can I take a closer look at the video? I may be able to explain what happened.”
“Sure, Doc, why not? Provided we get the exclusive.”
“It’s a deal.”
Cain used his left hand to nudge one of the techs out of his chair, before motioning to Lucas to sit down, which he did.
“Can you restart it at the beginning? I need to see the entire footage,” Lucas asked.
Cain restarted the playback, showing an overhead feed shot from one of the helicopters circling the mall. The first few minutes showed the energy dome working its way west from Campbell Avenue, gobbling up street signs, parked cars, campus buildings, fencing, and most of the university’s newly renovated aquatic center. It was hard for him to watch as a handful of students scrambled to get away from it—some made it, others didn’t.
The helicopter caught up to the dome and then flew directly overtop it. When its camera tilted down, Lucas could see deep inside the phenomenon through a fifty-foot opening in the intruder’s crown. The aperture was much like the eye of a hurricane. Debris was being carved out along the dome’s inside edge and, while suspended in midair, it was twisted and compacted into a long, winding rope of matter, before being flushed through a swirling black vortex in the center.
Partially consumed buildings collapsed along the south side of the mall, but only after the energy field moved past them. While the dome was in contact with them, the damaged structures seemed to defy gravity
and remain erect, leading Lucas to believe that the energy field’s perimeter was acting like a stabilizing force, keeping the buildings upright until after it passed.
He continued to watch the energy field rumble across the mall, consuming every inch of grass, trees, cement, and pavement, all of it stripped from the earth and wedged through the sphere’s powerful vortex.
He saw himself as a miniature on the ground, running up the right side of the monitor as he and Drew moved west along the front of the Student Union. On the left side of the screen, two injured females—one of them pregnant—were struggling in the grass, trying to get up before the energy field reached them. Lucas had to look away when they didn’t make it. He was obviously wrong earlier when he’d told Drew that the police would help those injured in the mass exodus.
The dome continued up the video screen, slaughtering people unable to escape its maw. Lucas held his breath as their bodies were ripped apart like string cheese, then mangled and distorted as they were sucked through the dome’s violent eddy.
After the miniature Lucas and Drew disappeared off the screen, the energy dome stopped moving, turned an orange color, and then dissipated a few seconds later. The camera zoomed in for a dramatic close-up of the bloody human remains left behind.
Lucas had seen enough. “Could you burn a copy of that footage onto a DVD for me? I would like to analyze it.”
“Sorry, but I can’t. Not without my station manager’s okay. I’m sure he’s going to wanna see it first.”
“We don’t have time for that. Look, I’m not going to steal it. If you want, watermark the frames with your station’s logo and copyright. Just don’t obscure the important stuff.”
Cain finally agreed. Three minutes later, Cain handed a DVD to Lucas. “Can you tell me what this thing is?”
“I’m not sure yet, but once I’ve had a chance to analyze your footage, I should be able to. Give me your number and I’ll call you later with the results.”
Cain gave Lucas his business card. Lucas shook his hand, then climbed out of the van.
“What did you guys see?” Drew asked.
“I’ll show you later. Let’s head back to the apartment so I can check this out better.”
Neither of them said anything until after they crossed Speedway Boulevard on the north side of campus.
“Earlier I saw you with the FBI. What did you tell them?” Lucas asked.
“I didn’t tell them anything except that my girlfriend was on the steps when the accident happened.”
Lucas thought Drew’s use of the term “girlfriend” was a little premature. One breakfast without a kiss goodbye did not constitute much of a relationship; certainly not one that would qualify her as his girlfriend. “Did you tell them you witnessed the theatre flash?”
“Yes, I had to. That was the only way they would talk to me. I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t stay away. I had to see if there was any news about Abby.”
“What else did you say?”
“That was it. I didn’t mention E-121 or the lab accident. Do you think we’re responsible for all this? That we killed Abby and all those other people?”
“I don’t know, maybe. None of this makes much sense.”
“Maybe we should leave town.”
“And go where? We don’t know if this fucking thing will appear again, or where. If it starts jumping around, then no place is safe. Besides, if we did cause this, then we have to stay and find a way to stop it. The only place we can do that is here, in our lab.”
“No, you’re right. It’s our duty to stop it.”
Lucas heard their phone ringing inside when they finally made it to their apartment’s front door. He struggled to find his keys, but eventually opened the deadbolt lock and ran inside. But by the time he made it to the phone, the caller had hung up. “Was probably Mom,” he said.
“Knowing her, she saw the news and has been calling every five minutes. She must be worried sick.”
“Why don’t you give her a quick call while I make backups?”
Lucas logged onto his computer and copied the DVD video evidence to his hard drive. Once there, he uploaded the movie files over the Internet to his private cloud storage space, which he rented for his computer’s weekly offsite backups. He kept backup copies of all their research material there as well.
Drew rolled over to the desk after hanging up the phone. “Mom’s good; I told her not to worry. Is the backup almost done?”
“Just about,” Lucas said, opening the desk drawer. He searched through the pile of junk in the drawer.
“Looking for something?”
“Where the hell’s that sixty-four gigabyte thumb drive we just bought? I want to make a copy of everything so we have it all in one place.”
“It’s still in my backpack. I’ll get it.”
Lucas heard footsteps walking across the floor of the apartment above them. His neighbor then flushed the toilet, sending a noisy stream of water down the sewer pipes in the wall.
Drew handed the flash drive to Lucas. “If you need the space, delete my study folders. I don’t need them anymore.”
“Why don’t you see what the news is saying?” Lucas suggested, inserting the drive into his computer’s USB port. “The remote’s on the couch. Hit the MUTE button so I can work in peace.”
A few minutes later, Drew called out to Lucas from the couch. “You’d better come see this.”
“What’s wrong?” Lucas answered with only partial interest. He was still in the middle of his USB drive’s download.
“They’re setting up roadblocks around campus.”
Lucas grabbed his laptop, flew out of his chair, and raced over to the couch where he set his computer down in front of him on the coffee table. The broadcast showed four soldiers patrolling the street in front of the north entrance to the university, while two other soldiers erected sawhorse-style barricades from one side of the street to the other. Three green Humvees were parked perpendicular to the street, just behind the barricade.
“Hey, isn’t that our entrance on Speedway?” Lucas asked.
Drew nodded.
Along the bottom of the screen, the news ticker displayed the words: “BREAKING NEWS: Suspected Terrorist Attack in Tucson . . . National Guard Activated . . . Arizona Governor Declares State of Emergency . . .”
“Shit. Now we’ll never get back into the lab,” Lucas said.
“Better call Dr. Kleezebee.”
Lucas dashed to their wall phone and picked up the receiver. He did not have Kleezebee’s hotel information in Washington, so he dialed the professor’s cell phone, only to have his call redirected to the professor’s voice mailbox. He left a message. “Dr. Kleezebee, this is Lucas. Please call me at the apartment when you get a chance. It’s urgent.”
Next, he tried calling Bruno on both his cell phone and his home phone. There was no answer on either number. “Damn it, where is everybody?”
“You could try Trevor. He’s home,” Drew said, looking up at the ceiling.
“Worth a shot,” Lucas said before grabbing a broom leaning against the wall, next to the fridge. He walked to the center of the room and stood between the couch and coffee table. Above him, the ceiling was dinged with dozens of shallow, nickel-sized indentations. He picked a new spot, then raised the broom handle and rammed it into the ceiling three times, careful not to punch a hole in the drywall. “You know this would be a lot easier it he would just get a damn phone.”
He sat down on the couch and checked his laptop to see if the video download had finished. The progress bar showed 100% complete. He removed the USB thumb drive and put it into his front pocket.
Less than thirty seconds later, there was a knock at the door.
“Trevor?” Drew asked.
“Jesus, he must have sprinted down here.”
When Lucas opened the door, he found Dr. Kleezebee standing there, holding one of the E-121 transport cases. “You’re back already, Professor?”
Kleezebee
unlatched the container’s lid and opened it. “Where the hell is it?”
Lucas needed a few seconds to think, but his mind wasn’t cooperating. “Why don’t you come in?”
Kleezebee scowled and brushed past him. The professor took the middle seat on the sofa while Lucas sat down across from him in a wooden rocking chair his father had made for them in the workshop back home in Phoenix.
Kleezebee put the material case on the coffee table. “With President Lathrop closing campus, I went to your lab to retrieve the E-121 samples. Imagine my surprise when I found this container empty.”
“Sir, there’s something I need to explain. But before I do, let me say that Drew, Trevor and Abby had nothing to do with it. It was my decision, and I take full responsibility for what happened.”
“What the hell did you do?”
“Friday night, after you left for DC, I decided to run the experiment again.”
“You did what?”
“Maybe it’s best if I show you,” Lucas said, queuing up the reactor’s video feed on his laptop. The recording showed the core’s flash of light in slow motion, and the disappearance of the E-121 and its canister.
Kleezebee’s nostrils flared and his face turned a deep shade of red. He just sat there, shaking his head with his jaw clenched, staring at the wall across from him.
Lucas thought his boss was about to blow a gasket, so he quickly explained, hoping to diffuse the situation. “We felt we had to try again while we still had access to the lab what with the committee shutting us down and you going to Washington. So we cranked up the juice and used full power.”
“And we corrected your wave displacement calculations,” Drew said.
Kleezebee lowered his head and began to rub his forehead with his right hand. Almost a full minute later, he said, “You know, there was a damn good reason why I changed your specs. I specifically told you to use only half power. You never should’ve done that without checking with me first.”
“Yes, sir, we know. We’re sorry. But there’s more we need to show you,” Lucas said, starting the video of the theatre’s flash event using frame-by-frame mode. He stopped the playback at the point right before he used the student’s video camera to capture close-up footage of the body parts. He wanted to prepare the professor for what came next.
