The Dark Above

by Jeremy Finley

  “I don’t know if you heard Nanna, but she’s figured out how to find the girl. I got lucky in California that the man causing the fires ended up near to me so I could directly track him down. This canyon is too vast and too broken for me to just drive. I need help. I need those drones to search for the swarm. Ask Nanna.”

  “William, please be careful—”

  “I will. Kate, there’s one last thing. I know that Dr.… that Steven died. But he was carrying something that you all need to see. It explains what I told you to ask about. It explains Blue.”

  “Mom has it, William. He gave a flash drive to her. She hasn’t been able to look at it yet.”

  “Nanna saw Steven? Before he died?”

  “He lasted long enough to give it to her—”

  Kate’s voice was abruptly cut off. He could hear her arguing, and the general’s voice came on the line. “Just know that the final move will be ours, William. You do anything we don’t like, it’s all over.”

  “The guns come off the girl, General. Now. That’s a deal breaker. We are on the same side here. I promise you, if I do anything that concerns you, take any maneuver you wish. But I won’t drive a foot further until I know those guns are down.”

  “There’s a whole lot more at stake for you than just that little girl if you try to pull something over on us.”

  “Understood. But the guns. Now.”

  He heard the general cover up the receiver and bark commands.

  “It’s done. But know that these drones are armed.”

  “I realize that. And General, I’d pull everyone back as far as you can. I’m not in control of Lily’s sister. It could spread rapidly.”

  “Is that’s what’s coming? Dammit, son, if you’re holding out—”

  “I’m not. I just don’t want my family or any other innocent people that close to a wave like that again. And frankly … it concerns me that it is what’s coming next. The positioning of those carrying the weapons … it isn’t effective.”

  “Effective? What the hell does that mean—?”

  “It only affects the borders of the populations. It doesn’t impact the majority of people.”

  The general was quiet for a moment. “I shouldn’t disclose this … but what does it matter at this point? Our fear is that they are trapping every population. Storms on one border; fires, sickness, violence on the others. They’ll be no way to escape; every damn country will be paralyzed, unable to flee. We’ll be ripe for the picking, if that’s their intention. Alright, the drones are up. I’m putting one of my geographic experts on the line to guide you where you can drive. A final warning, William: You do anything questionable, and we’re coming right for you.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you.”

  A pause, then another man’s voice. “Sir, this is Corporal Sava. We’ve studied the terrain. First thing you’ll have to do is backtrack off the plateau.”

  William followed the orders, driving the ATV for an hour across the bone-dry and at times brutally uneven terrain. The corporal explained that a drone above him would guide him to Interstate 94, which would lead him into the canyon. William clearly understood what that drone carried that could be dropped at any moment.

  “We’ve got nothing,” General Wolve practically shouted when he snatched the phone from the corporal. “Everything is dead out there. The girl is useless so far, she only says it looks like a mountain. You said you’ve seen it, can’t you give us anything?”

  “I wish I could. What I’ve seen is replicated a million times out there.”

  “Dammit. Are you even in the canyon yet?”

  “I can see the interstate now. Driving as fast as I can, but it’s rough out here.”

  The corporal got back on the line and directed him down the blessedly smooth pavement, utterly deserted by order of the military. It reminded him of driving on the abandoned Louisiana highway, with no one but a dying old man and a terrified little girl as company.

  “William,” Wolve’s voice shot through the speakerphone. “We think we’ve found it.”

  “What do you see?”

  “It’s isolated. Apart from the others. And we’re seeing it now. There’s something above it, moving. Your grandmother says it’s how the beetles looked above the trees. Stand by, we’re figuring out how to get you to it. It’s in the middle of nowhere.”

  William pressed the pedal further, thankful that the gas gauge read nearly full.

  “Mr. Chance, you should be passing over the Little Missouri River now,” Corporal Sava said. “You’ll have to start slowing down. You’re going to have to take what looks to be East River Road. There’s no exit, you’ll have to off-road onto it.”

  He could feel the proximity of Lily’s sister growing stronger as he exited once again onto the jarringly bumpy earth. As he jumbled onto the road, he accelerated.

  “You’ll stay on this for a while. But get ready to off-road again,” Sava said.

  Clearly designed to be a sightseeing destination, the road provided stunning views of the sprawling Badlands and the towering mesas beyond. A half hour on the road, the feeling of déjà vu began to creep in.

  “Alright, at that next curve, you’re going to have to just head northeast. I can tell the terrain isn’t smooth.”

  He steered onto grasslands, thankful for the military vehicle’s stabilization as he rumbled through the wildflowers and wheatgrass, nearly colliding more than once with a petrified tree. As he approached a particularly isolated butte, the smell of rotten meat hit, and nearly caused him to gag. A herd of dead buffalo, at least twenty strong, lay surrounded by a swirl of flies. He lifted his shirt over his mouth, trying not to breathe.

  He vaguely remembered from his junior high geography class that buttes were typically smaller than mesas and plateaus. But the solitary imperial formation, building from the earth with sheer walls and topped with a staggering array of jutting rock, was massive.

  He’d seen it so many times over the past year, but only for that fleeting moment, as the dream took him from the hospital into the stone itself.

  It defied logic to think that anything could be alive inside.

  His throat clogged, and he wished there was water nearby. Thudding across the earth, he at last came to park before it.

  “Ok, proceed with caution.” The general was back on the phone. “Take the satellite phone with you. There should be a rifle in the back. Grab it. We’re watching. Keep talking to us.”

  William unplugged the phone and stepped out, opening the back of the Humvee to find carefully mounted rifles. Beside them rested two service pistols. Preferring the idea of concealing a weapon more than approaching obviously armed, he slid one into the back of his jeans.

  The heat blasted him as he squinted, looking up at the blinding blue sky above. In the near distance, he could hear the whirling of the drone.

  If he didn’t know what to look for, it could have been easily missed. It was, after all, further up into the sky than insects should be. Yet the swarm was unmistakable. Whatever diseases killed below somehow did not wipe out the creatures above.

  He watched the swarm change and twist. For a moment, he saw it take shape, right before it broke apart again.

  “My grandmother was right,” William said into the phone. “Tell her she was right. I see it. I see the strand.”

  “OK. Careful now. Keep talking.”

  “I’m walking up.”

  The dream had shown him the crevices left behind by erosion, the redness of the scoria. Around it, nothing grew. Nothing thrived.

  How could a child be inside?

  “Any sign of the girl? You might have to walk around.”

  “Nothing yet.”

  The fissures scattered across the rock appeared to deepen as the outcroppings began casting lengthy shadows as the sun dropped.

  “Something’s happening,” William said.

  “What is it? Talk to us.”

  He took a suddenly step back as he realized he was not seei
ng a darkening contour, but a widening division splitting the rock before him. It made no sound, no cracking of the earth. Fluidly it parted, not offering a formal passageway, but wide enough to step into.

  “It’s opening.”

  “The rock? Opening? OK, back away. We’re flying the drone closer—”

  The phone suddenly went dead. The buzzing of the drone ceased as well, and seconds later William flinched and whirled around as it came crashing to the earth.

  “General?” William said.

  The phone’s screen was black. He pressed the power button, but it failed to respond.

  He looked from the dead device to the rock.

  His heart thudded in his chest, thinking of the online material he’d furiously read while flying to the disaster site in an effort to educate himself about the terrain on which he would ultimately travel.

  The nation’s twenty-sixth president, for whom the park was named, had loved the Badlands, describing the rocks as characters that were fantastically broken. Roosevelt’s quote was repeated on most websites.

  “… so bizarre in color as to seem hardly properly to belong to this earth.”

  He reached out for Lily’s sister. He could feel her, less than a yard or two away.

  All he had to do was touch her. Touch her and it would be over.

  He stepped into the opening, the darkness beyond beginning to lighten. He hesitantly moved inwards, reaching out to touch the sides of the rock to steady himself. He swallowed a bit of revulsion when the walls felt clammy, not unlike a sweaty palm.

  The opening continued to brighten, revealing walls the color of liquid metal, littered with scores of lights embedded deep in broken lines. It was when he turned back, hoping that the glimpse of daylight from the familiar world would give him strength, that he realized his mistake.

  Only blackness, now shining with thousands of tiny lights, was behind him. He imagined Lily running through the lights, somehow free, desperate to escape, emerging to the clean night air outside.

  She hadn’t understood how she’d escaped, and it was suddenly clear why. She hadn’t found a way out. Without her understanding, without her realization, she’d been sent.

  To see if she could find him. To bring him in.

  * * *

  “What the hell is happening?”

  Kate looked up from the blank screen that had been, just moments ago, displaying the image from the drone above her nephew. General Wolve was practically screaming now.

  “Get that drone back up! Or send another that way!”

  “Sir,” a soldier said, turning around another laptop screen on the table. “They’re all down. All the drones we sent in. They just crashed.”

  “Jesus! Did you try that phone again?”

  “It’s dead sir. It’s like something wiped it all out.”

  “Dammit!” The general strode away. Kate quickly followed behind.

  “General—”

  “We’ve been had, Senator, just in case you’re slow on the draw,” the general said. “And your nephew has left me no choice.”

  “My nephew isn’t doing this—”

  “How the hell do you know?” He momentarily whirled around. “How do we know he isn’t being controlled? That all this is what they intended?”

  “Let’s cut to the chase. You know how the president feels. You drop bombs on that mesa, you are wiping out the country’s only chance at stopping—”

  “General Wolve!”

  Two men emerged from the tent, running towards them, representing the general’s split command, the soldier dressed in camouflage, the agent in a black suit. The SSA agent held out a laptop.

  “Sir, you need to see this.”

  The agent pointed to the screen, which displayed white pinpoints over a satellite view of the United States. “This is from our weather radar that picked up the light transmissions a year ago. Since the four appeared, there’s been nothing since. In the last five minutes, there have been ninety-two. Just as storms literally formed all over the world. At the same time.”

  “Ninety-two?” The general took the laptop to examine it closer. “My God, the entire middle of the US is covered. Do we have a visual yet?”

  “Just outside of Philadelphia International in a wildlife refuge. Federal worker happened to catch it on his phone. He counted more than a thousand.”

  “A thousand what?” the general demanded.

  “People sir. They just appeared in lights from the storm. We’re already getting reports from the other agencies. They’re returning, sir. All over the world.”

  “Kate!”

  She looked over to see Roxy waving. “Kate, come quick! It’s your mom!”

  Her stomach lurching, she hurried around the general to see Roxy now standing before her mother, who had remained near the cage, looking out beyond the edge of the barricade.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Mom,” Stella said, reaching down to take her mother’s hand.

  “What’s wrong?” Kate asked. “Mom’s, what’s—”

  She stopped, holding her breath. Her mother was as unmoving as a statue, her eyes, usually a sparkling blue, had rolled back into her head, revealing nothing but white.

  “My God,” Kate said softly. “General!”

  She broke away, seeing soldiers running out of the tents where the others had been quarantined. She knew without asking that the girl, the doctor, the immigrant, and Ryan all now stood erect, their eyes a horrible white.

  “General!”

  “Get them in the air!” General Wolve shouted. “And keep guns on those people! Get ready!”

  “General, please listen—”

  He shot Kate a furious glance. “Back away, Senator. You won’t want to see this.”

  “General, don’t—”

  He snatched a phone brought to him by a subordinate.

  “When those jets are in position, fire when ready,” he directed.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The fear was old and buried, yet returned with the smell of trapped air, a taste of metal, the curving of the walls with layers of carvings beginning at the ceiling and scrawling across the floor. A hum rose from deep within.

  William watched as the passageway lengthened like a spinal cord, adjusting and uncoiling. Though his earliest memories had been stolen, it still felt disturbingly familiar: the lights throbbing within the walls, the greenish tint of the air as if he were underwater, his lungs absent of air and unable to reach the surface.

  He thought of Nanna, a little girl at five years old. Of Jane. Of Lily and her sister. Of Ryan and Juan and all of them, ripped from their lives and forced down murky throats into whatever waited within the dark.

  He wished for the immigrant’s weapon, to see it all burn.

  Find the girl and get her out.

  When it at last stopped reshaping itself, he crept down the passage, his right hand close to his hip to quickly reach for the pistol. An opaque light shone from beyond, blurred by the ever-present fog. His entire body clenched as he passed through the clearing mists.

  He was wrong to assume that whatever had landed here had somehow taken refuge inside the ancient rock formation in order to hide itself. His inability to determine how high the ceiling rose, to comprehend the vastness of the space, proved that it had adapted over time, shedding its original skin, replacing it with rock and dust and clay, existing here longer than the time it took for the waters to erode the canyon outside.

  The cavernous walls soared like tidal waves, their deep hollows and rising mounds frozen just before impact. The slender knolls appeared to breathe, rising and falling, reaching into the darkness above where they merged together at a zenith, reaching down in a thick, pulsating appendage towards the machine below.

  It too was riddled with the harsh, grotesque inscriptions that lined the walls of the artery that brought him here. Dim, throbbing lights infected every inch of its sprawling girth. It took up nearly the entire center of the chamber, not with def
ined and sharp edges, but organically; a tumor from which the infection grew.

  In its core was the girl.

  He could feel her more than he could see her, as the curved pod she lay within was coated in a thick film.

  Reaching her would mean crossing a floor pockmarked with hollows and peaks, like a churning sea suddenly frozen. Ridges, like raised veins, scrawled across the surface, giving the only semblance of a passage to her.

  As he began to cross, he dared, at last, to open the channel to her mind.

  Ava, I’m here. My name is William. I’m coming.

  Don’t slip. Don’t think about what’s within those deep crevices. Find a way to break her free. Just one touch—

  No.

  He almost stopped, he was so surprised by her response.

  Your sister, Lily, brought me. To find you.

  He could feel her tremble, see the outside of her form flinch within the encasement.

  Run.

  Ava—

  Run!

  The chattering of a thousand swarming rattlesnakes preceded it, slowing and stretching. It rose from behind her: a mud-stained shell of a snapping turtle swollen to the size of a monolith dome. Skin beneath parted to reveal shapes narrowed and long like drowned canoes at the bottom of a polluted river. A maw opened slightly beneath, its saliva thick as dripping tar.

  The air around it moved in sways of thrashing locks, thousands of coils born from beneath the shell and lifting like a leviathan free from the water. While most of the tendrils were free to flail, other, larger cords stretched out to sink into the ground and walls. It was everything beneath them, above them; the very air now in their lungs.

  The choking fear at seeing its ascension was blasted away by the euphoria.

  It was almost agonizing in its return, that barely remembered sensation from the dark, terrifying night in the hospital, his grandmother awkwardly rushing him down a hallway. She’d ripped him from the blissful consciousness. He’d almost protested, until he saw the creature emitting the feeling, and whatever joy he felt dissolved into wretched despair.

  The feeling had happened more than once that night: it came again from the scattering, horrible things in the hospital waiting room, and then finally from the multicolored lights from the ships in the sky that promised exultation if he just stepped out of the truck and walked into the beams of light.