The Dark Above

by Jeremy Finley

  Jane sat forward. “I want to believe you. I really do. But it’s just hard after what you did. You should have warned me.”

  He approached them, kneeling down. “I need you, Jane. I need you to wake me up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have to find the man causing the fires. Like I did to find you … I have to go in. To the dreams. If I’m successful, I want to then try and find my grandmother too. But if it gets me first, you have to wake me up. If it truly takes hold of me, it will not let me go. This wasn’t in their plans. I was only supposed to connect with you through the dreams, that was it. They never intended us to actually find each other.”

  “How do you know that?” Jane asked.

  “The anger. I feel it every time I defy them, whether it be reaching out to you on my own or stopping the disasters. They obviously intended me only to control you under their direction. I don’t think they ever anticipated how much control I actually have.”

  Jane shook her head. “How am I supposed to know if it takes you?”

  “He screams,” Lily said softly.

  “Can you do it? You’ll have to force me awake. It might take … the connection between us to do it. We know … when we’re together, it can’t reach me.”

  “Earl isn’t going to like that,” Ryan said.

  “Earl?” Jane raised an eyebrow.

  “One of the bastards up there,” Ryan pointed up. “He spent a lot of time in my head, and vice versa. So I know they see us as lower than rats in a maze, and they’re just watching to see how successful we are on our world in destroying each other. Whatever works, they’ll just duplicate it elsewhere. We’re just a testing site. If they didn’t count on William having this much control, once they have him, they won’t let him go.”

  William stood and walked over to one of the seats. He sighed, hearing Jane rise and come and sit beside him.

  “It comes at me all the time now,” he said. “It will be quick.”

  She nodded.

  He slowed his breath. Before he shut his eyes, he thought of the flames, and the eyes.

  Before he could even begin to venture into the dark, it had him.

  * * *

  Jane watched him flinch, and she instinctively reached out to squeeze his hand. William then seemed to calm, the tension in his face softening.

  My God, she thought. How is this happening to us?

  Even though she was still angry with William and harbored a real worry that even he wasn’t truly in control of himself, she did believe him. That he wanted to stop this.

  She looked back to Lily and Ryan, who were both now looking out the windows. Just two kids. Handling this as an adult was one thing. But children? She could only imagine what it would be like to be a hormonal teenager and wake up one day to realize you could make people kill each other with a flick of your wrist. Or what about Lily? Close your eyes and give people diseases. How can a child even comprehend that? And somewhere, out there in the smoke, was someone who was burning the very world around him.

  And let us not forget yourself, dear doctor. Who ruined the city you love with wind and rain? How many people died in those hurricanes you summoned? How many homes and businesses were destroyed when you had the dreams of storms?

  She knew it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t William’s fault. They were only instruments in the hands of what—aliens? She couldn’t even say the word. It was all too ludicrous. You are a woman of science, of facts and proven theories.

  Yet you summoned hurricane winds to batter a warehouse. You brought down the rain to drown a building. You parted the waters from the storm so you could walk through. And before all that, you had psychic communications with a man in another room, blocking repeated attempts by an outside force to control him. You could see his astral projections, for God’s sake, while you were locked in some room miles beneath the earth. What bit of science explains any of that?

  “It doesn’t,” she whispered.

  It all paled in comparison to knowing each time she’s had the horrific dreams of the storms, that she was, in fact, bringing them. That they weren’t dreams; it was William connecting with her unknowingly from afar, triggering whatever weapon was inside her. She distinctly recalled his confused and frightened look in the dreams.

  She looked back at him. It sure would be easier to hate the unwilling commander of all their destructive abilities if he weren’t a genuinely honest guy who happens to look like Prince Harry.

  When he jerked, wrenching his face towards her, she actually gasped in surprise. William thrashed to the other side, his eyes squinted and his hands clutching the armrests. He began to shake.

  “William!” She took his face in her hands, only to have him pull away. His teeth were chattering.

  “Jane, what’s happening?” Ryan cried out.

  “What’s going on back there?” Quincy yelled from the cockpit.

  Jane took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, trying to recall the sensation of when William had come to her repeatedly in their government cells.

  She felt it immediately, a pathway. She saw him.

  William was in flames.

  He struggled to move, as if he wanted to go further into the fire. But his arms, his wrists, his legs, all were enveloped in long, slick stretches of tar. The substance then split, climbing up his back and wrapping around his throat.

  A moving mass sprang from the corner of her eye, shooting out and immediately enveloping her in writhing wall of shining black scales.

  As it closed in around her, she wanted to scream. Pure rage emitted from the twisting and thrashing, a wrath so pervasive that she choked, unable to breathe.

  Just a glimpse of William then, a fragment of his face, trying to get through. She could see his fingers, then a hand. She grasped it with both her hands. At the moment they touched, it was if a million flashbulbs went off before her eyes.

  They gasped for air. Jane tried to get her bearings as William nearly fell out of his chair.

  “What happened?” Quincy said, standing with Ryan and Lily in the aisle.

  “It was waiting,” he said with a delirious look in his eyes. “You came for me.”

  “Are you alright? What was that?” Jane demanded.

  “Oh God,” he said, covering his eyes. “It had me from the second I entered. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t get away. It took me … all over the world. I saw their eyes, and the disasters started. Over and over and over … I couldn’t stop it.”

  “I saw you … in flames. That … thing … had you.”

  “I couldn’t get away … but I could divert. Just for a moment. I found him, the man in the flames. But he’s afraid.”

  “Of course he is. He’s surrounded by fire,” Jane said.

  “No,” William said. “He’s afraid of me.”

  TWENTY

  The smoke was relentless. Outside the window of the Gulfstream, it looked to Kate like the entire world was burning. The footage from television didn’t do the fires justice; everything below the plane was gray and ash.

  Across from her sat an armed soldier, who, uncomfortably, kept a fairly constant gaze upon her. If she were to swivel around, she would see the same arrangement was made for her mother, Stella, even Roxy.

  “What do you think I’m going to do? Flip someone over my shoulder? Maybe a karate chop?” Roxy had complained when they’d boarded the plane six hours prior, and she was forced to sit in her own section under the watch of the soldier.

  Stella had lectured everyone intensely about the freedoms of the press and pointed out that journalists in the United States cannot be taken prisoners of the government. She’d been shown her seat at the back of the plane.

  Kate had raised her own hell on the flight, demanding to speak with her staff, even invoking the name of the president. Mark Wolve had just given her an aggravated look, ordering the soldiers to keep them silent as he drew a curtain separating him and his staff from the rest of them.

  Only her
mother had said nothing, sitting, folding her hands in her lap, and looking out the window. Four soldiers were stationed around her.

  Kate wanted to stand and tear the curtain open, demanding to know where they were going. But she knew if she dared make a move, that soldier would be on her in a heartbeat. Even when she did turn around to check on her family, he cleared his throat as a warning.

  She thought about praying, something she hadn’t done in perhaps a decade or more. She’d prayed at her dad’s funeral, hadn’t she?

  Dad. Would you be ashamed of me? Would you understand I did what I thought I had to do to protect the nation? Or would you frown that I had put country before family—

  The curtain abruptly parted, and Mark stepped through, carrying a laptop. All the soldiers snapped to attention. “Corporal Rice, your seat.”

  “Yes sir, General Wolve, sir.” As the corporal went to stand in the back of the plane, Mark sat down, opening up the laptop.

  “General, what is Blue?”

  The man continued to look at his laptop. “That doesn’t matter right now—”

  “My nephew said to ask about Blue. And I have. And no one seems to want to answer that question.”

  “You have to understand something, Senator. I am no longer here to answer all your questions anymore.”

  “Must have been a heavy hit to the ego to cover up those four stars under that black suit.”

  He slowly looked up. “When the lightning first arrived last year, and the SSA updated the director of the FBI, he thought it best to contact my boss at the Pentagon. I was quietly transferred over to make sure that what happened fifteen years ago didn’t happen again.”

  “Yes, things are much better this time.”

  He turned the laptop, displaying a flashing red stripe stretched across CNN’s homepage, the banner reading, “WORLD UNDER SIEGE.”

  “Let’s just start with the United Kingdom. Hurricanes off the coast of Scotland. A terror attack in Southampton. Wildfires in East Ireland. Hospitals in Kingston upon Hull flooded with calls from people suddenly in the final stages of cancer, heart disease, you name it. And do you know when all this started?”

  “There have been reports of these disasters sporadically in different countries for the last six months—”

  “They started ten minutes ago.” He scrolled down on the site. “Let’s check in on the Middle East. The coast of Yemen: Hurricanes. In Pakistan, Islamabad started burning like someone poured gasoline on the streets. Northern Kazakhstan: All of the residents of the Hotel Hizhina died when a car drove up and tossed in a truckload of bombs into the lobby. Lebanon: Overwhelmed with people barely able to breathe because of chest infections. In the last ten minutes.”

  Mark pointed to a map of the world. “It’s the same now on every coast of Africa. Australia’s been battling these disasters for days now, but it’s now happening on the corners of every continent and heavily populated country. China, Russia, they have multiple accounts of the same disasters. On the four corners of the largest populations.”

  “People are dying in all these countries, and you’re worried that we won’t be able to keep up with competing regimes? You have alien technology using our planet as a weapons testing site—”

  “We have to make sure that there’s an America left if Syria finds one of the four.”

  “My God, General, shouldn’t basic survival of our people be at the top of your list of concerns—”

  “I’ll tell you what I’m concerned about. What I’ve been concerned about since the moment I was assigned to take over this shadow agency: that the SSA is operating in every nation in every world practically unchecked. So everyone has the same intelligence, and once the four are identified, their militaries will be thinking the same. That’s what worries me.”

  “But they can’t be controlled. They can’t be used as weapons—”

  “Unless we find William. And all the different branches of the SSA around the world have the intelligence that he is considered the conduit. So don’t think we’re the only ones after him all this time. Imagine if another superpower gets to him first. We did have him, until your family got involved. We suspect your nephew is operating not by his own will. We tried to bring him in, remove whatever it is within them all to stop this. Now, he’s left us no choice.”

  “I know him. He’s smart, and he’s trying to stop this. He’s worried about what they can do.”

  “He’s a college dropout who mows lawns and can control people with unstoppable weapons. I’ll keep the security of this nation in our hands, if you don’t mind.”

  He looked out the window. “We are at the end of this, Senator. You will have to choose whether to uphold your sworn duty to serve the people of this country or put your family first. I think I know how you will choose.”

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Really?” He raised his eyebrows. “No husband. No children. No family of your own. Your entire life is devoted to amassing power. If the world survives this, you could be president one day. And that, of course, will all depend on whether or not you can make some hard decisions.”

  “What I can do? I have no way of finding him. Surely you aren’t thinking of using me as some kind of bait? Because I can tell you, he’s not especially fond of me at the moment.”

  “Of course not. But your mother, your sister, your family friend back there. That’s a different story. He’s quite fond of them. Which is why you will convince them to help us bring him in. Just so it’s clear, the commander in chief agrees this must be done. If you’d like, I can get him on the phone.”

  Kate crossed her ankles. “Funny, General. I’ve used the same threat myself in the past when I’ve needed someone to follow my direction.”

  “Then you understand that our president is not a man to piss off. He’s been made aware that while the San Joaquin Valley has been evacuated, there are still people inside. It’s been difficult to track with the fires, but thermal imaging shows a small pocket of people moving. We’ve been keeping watch on them. We’ll be landing at Beale Air Force Base and then taking helicopters to their current location. We have men stationed nearby.”

  “How can anyone exist in that?” she asked.

  “The fires ignite in random locations, but it’s clear whoever is starting them has no grasp on what he can do. There are still pockets that haven’t been touched. And in one of those areas, we’ve identified a farmer who we think has been secretly working illegals until the fires reach his land. We think that farmer is our fourth. And we just need your nephew to get to him to know for sure. It’s the only reason we haven’t moved in on your nephew’s plane, which landed about an hour ago. We’re tracking him at this moment.”

  “You can’t just let my twenty-two-year-old nephew wander into a wildfire, for Christ sake. He’ll never survive—”

  “Senator, we are keeping watch on him from various fire trucks that he no doubt believes are fighting the fires. Frankly, I’m growing weary of chasing your relatives. If you need another reason,” he said, scrolling to the second major headline on CNN’s page. “SENATOR’S WIFE OFFERS PROOF OF ALIEN COVER-UP.”

  The general glowered. “I just haven’t determined yet which member of your family is more of a threat. You must convince your mother to speak with us. Tell us where Don Rush is; he could be a real threat if your nephew activates him. As could your mother, obviously. And she hinted that she knows what is within them that gives them this weapon. We must know that.”

  “I told you, she won’t discuss it with me. She says she will only tell William.”

  “Which is another reason why we must contain him. But realize this, Senator: He has the ability to activate them. We know that the ones abducted in the past year survive even after they unleash their weapons. But all those returned from the abductions all those years before … do not. I know you’ve read the files. If he triggers your mother, all those around her could die. And she, for certain, will.”

 
* * *

  “Are you sure?” Quincy asked, looking over the steering wheel. “You’re sure he’s out there?”

  The landscape beyond the windshield was completely covered in a dark haze. From their perch on the rim of the valley, it was impossible to see where the fires started and ended. Twice now, a fire truck had gone screaming past them.

  They’d gone unnoticed once again because of Quincy. An older-model pickup truck was waiting for them at the private runway. He’d had it delivered using one of his private accounts, just as he had done to rent the plane, knowing his corporation was desperate to find him and would be monitoring all his accounts they were familiar with.

  They’d rushed from the plane into the truck, afraid of seeing the rest of Quincy’s security, which he hadn’t paid off or, even worse, government agents. But they’d gotten away without incident, hoping the truck allowed them to attempt to blend in with the farmers who could only drive by the fires and watch their livelihood burn.

  “I can sense him,” William said. “But I don’t know where. Out there, somewhere. But we can’t just drive into that smoke—”

  The pressure was suddenly so strong in his head that he doubled over. He covered his head, struggling to keep the dream from seizing control to draw him in.

  “Fight it,” Jane said, her hand on his back.

  After a few moments, he sat back, his face hurting from the strain. He felt Lily’s hand on his arm. He reached up and patted her hand.

  “I’m OK.”

  “Jesus, that’s what it feels like?” Quincy asked.

  “It does now. It’s constantly trying to draw me in.”

  “I don’t care what happens,” Jane said. “It’s the only way to block it—”

  “I’m not putting you all at risk any more than I already have,” William said.