"He actually ate it," Mahirimah said, "and he still married me." Everyone laughed.
"Moral of the story is," Maurice said looking at the girls, "when men are in love, they will do all sorts of crazy things for a woman."
"I don't know. I think you're probably the exception to the rule. I've never met anyone like that," Ann said.
"You will," Mahirimah said.
"Now don't go giving the woman false hope, Mahi. She's right you know. I am special."
Mahirimah rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Ok, Mister Special. I'm betting you forgot to take your medicine before dinner."
Maurice's smile faded and his eyes narrowed. "Damn. Excuse me for a minute."
"Aha! I thought so," she called after him.
They continued to eat while Maurice was away, each lost in their thoughts. Daisy clearly loved that she got to eat with her hands.
Mahirimah broke the silence and said, "Ann, why don't you and the girls stay here tonight? It's getting late and thinking about you all being home alone again with no electricity..."
"Oh, we'll be fine."
"Mom, can we? Please?" Daisy said.
Ann sighed. "Honey, we don't have any clothes or anything else with us."
"You can borrow whatever you need."
"I don't know."
"What don't you know?" Maurice said as he returned to his seat at the table.
"I've invited them to stay tonight."
"That's a great idea. I can start a fire and crack open a bottle of wine."
"Well, when you put it that way," Ann said.
When they had finished eating, Mahirimah led the girls to the bathroom to wash their hands while Ann cleared the table. Maurice started the generator and let it run for a while so the refrigerator could keep everything cold, and then as promised, he started a fire in their large beautiful fireplace.
By the time Ann and Mahirimah got the girls tucked into bed and back downstairs, the fire was roaring and three glasses of wine were waiting for them. They each took a seat on the sofa and stared into the flames.
"That was a wonderful meal, Mahi. Thank you so much, both of you, for having us over and for letting us stay tonight."
Mahirimah grabbed Ann's hand, gave it a squeeze, and smiled. "I've been wanting to make mansaf for you to try. Plus, we love having you and the girls over. With the power out like this, it seemed like the perfect time for a sleep over."
"It's during times like this we need to remind ourselves that we need one another," Maurice said taking a sip from his glass.
Ann swirled the deep red liquid in the bottom of her glass letting the firelight shine through it. Then she drank a mouthful. "I wonder if Iggy is back yet and what he might have found out."
"I sure hope he's back, because if he isn't..." Maurice didn't finish the sentence but his pause said enough. More than any of them wanted to think about. They sat in a cold silence that pushed against the warmth and glow that the fire and wine were creating.
As he sipped his wine and stared into the fire, Maurice leapt back in time to a different place where he sat around a fire burning in a fifty-five-gallon drum. The men he sat with passed around a bottle of some harsh and questionable liquor. They spoke about the things they had seen and the things they'd done in recent days. Much of it horrifying but some of it had been touching.
It took a while to notice that Sgt. Ray Harding's squad had gone on patrol, taking that journalist with them, and never returned. It wasn't unusual for patrols to be late, but they had also lost radio contact.
Maurice and another three men volunteered to look for them. Feeling slightly buzzed, he strapped on his gear including night vision goggles and they left the relative safety of their base.
They drove in silence and in darkness using their night vision to keep them on course. Maurice spotted the patrol vehicle's IR beacon two hundred meters in the distance, and they parked their Humvee out of sight quickly camouflaging it.
They crept up on the vehicle slowly taking nearly an hour to cover the distance. When they finally got to it, their worst fears were realized.
The engine compartment of the Humvee was a twisted shamble of metal. The doors drooped on their hinges and Ray Harding's body lay on the ground stripped of his gear. The driver, a corporal Maurice could no longer identify due to the condition of his body, sat slumped in the driver seat. The third Marine they would not recover until the following morning.
Lying on the floor behind the front seats was the journalist embedded with their unit. She was covered with blood but somehow miraculously alive. They called for a Med-evac and QRF to respond to their location. Maurice dragged her from the Humvee and examined her.
Her left forearm and left cheek were bleeding profusely. Her arm had a tourniquet applied, but she hadn't done it quite right and blood still seeped. She had all the signs of going into shock. Maurice did his best to keep her alive until the medics arrived. He succeeded.
He visited her at the field hospital the next morning and then the following day. Because of her wounds, she wasn't able to speak, but they expected her to make a full recovery.
Months later, he ran into her in Germany. She recognized him first and an instant later the scar on her cheek gave her away. They had a drink together, and to Maurice's surprise, he fell in love with her during that conversation.
He turned to look at Mahirimah and when she met his gaze, he reached up and ran a finger along that scared cheek. She took his hand in hers and said, "Maurice, you can't keep letting the past color the way you see things. This isn't a war zone."
He sighed and looked down. Then he nodded and said, "You're right, but it's easier said than done."
The world had changed somehow while they slept, but they did not understand how or what to expect from it except for vague notions garnered from hearsay. Nothing generated fear more than the unknown and unknowable. And so fear pressed in on them and it affected each in their own way.
Yet Maurice felt like a knife, long unused, freshly drawn from its sheath. The pressure ground at him and sharpened his edges. Though he would never admit it to anyone, least of all himself, it made him feel alive. He came to his ministry seeking redemption from such things. But here he was being drawn toward it once again.
CHAPTER TEN
David and Ivy, Endless Fields - Early evening Wed Sep 4
They flew in silence for the better part of an hour traversing a barren desert terrain. She took turns gazing out at the landscape and then down at David who seemed to sleep peacefully. His skin had taken on the pink glow of a sunburn though she knew it hadn't been the sun that caused it. She didn't like the turn his breathing was taking. She hesitated to call it labored but had a bad feeling it was heading in that direction.
The sun lay behind them, low in the sky. Orange light raked the ground casting long shadows, turning the rust-colored landscape a dark umber. Then without warning the terrain changed from barren desert to an immense and lush farm field.
Row upon row of small green plants were being set into the ground by the strangest looking tractors she had ever seen. By strange, she meant sophisticated. These things weren't your run-of-the-mill John Deere tractors. There were other smaller objects moving around as well. From her altitude, she couldn't tell what they were, but from their movements, they also seemed mechanical.
Two other things set this farm field apart from the usual kind. First was the fact it lay in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing else around it. No house. No barn. No buildings of any kind. There wasn't even a road. Who would farm a field miles from anything and why?
The second peculiar thing she noticed was that, though the field itself was lush, the surrounding area transitioned back to desert within feet of the edge. She'd seen nothing like it before. It had to take an immense amount of water to keep that field so green. Where the hell was all that water coming from?
"Uh, Rodriguez?" she said into the headset and then paused, "Is there any way we can swing by that e
quipment down there again at a lower altitude?"
"Ma'am, we don't have a lot of fuel to play with."
"I understand, but this is important. It relates to the...um...aliens, I think." The word felt strange in her mouth. Saying it made what happened seem more real. Aliens. She had witnessed them first hand. Up close and personal. And she had killed them. In self-defense, yet she had killed them. Did that violate her Hippocratic oath? How odd to think they had traveled millions of miles just to get shot with a 44 magnum.
There was a long silence. Ivy could imagine the pilot and co-pilot conferring with one another. The helicopter banked and descended.
"All right, ma'am. I'll do one sweep around and then we need to get back on course."
"Thank you."
The helicopter came around low and slow. She peered out of the window trying to make sense of what she was seeing. The plants were not a typical agricultural crop. It was hard to tell for sure, but judging by the shape of the plants, and she had seen a lot of them in recent days, the feeling in her gut said they were cannabis.
"Okay, Rodriguez," she said, "tell me what you think that stuff down there looks like."
"No idea, ma'am. Never seen anything like that but I'm from New York. I wouldn't know a farm tractor if it ran me over."
"What about the plants?"
"Well, I'm no botanist but being from New York, like I said, that looks an awful lot like bud."
"I'd have to agree," Kowalski said, peering out the doorway.
As they approached one of the larger machines, the one that looked like a shallow inverted U, two things became clear. First, it looked to be planting seedlings in the ground. Second, there was no one controlling it. It was automated. There were, perhaps, half a dozen smaller robots moving up and down the rows, but she couldn't really tell what they were doing.
The helicopter turned again and then they continued on their original course. Ivy turned and looked at David. She wished she could talk this out with him. She needed a different perspective. Someone to bounce ideas off.
What was the chance that what she had just seen was an illegal pot operation? There were no roads in or out of the area so how would people get there? Small bush plane perhaps. That was a possibility. The equipment seemed too high tech for just anyone to have. Especially if they were robots.
Perhaps they were being remotely controlled. Considering all the plants they found in the alien ship and what she was certain was cannabis oil, her gut told her this operation was alien run. Assuming she was correct, the bigger question was why.
The alien they found on the ship was having cannabis oil slowly administered. It was being dripped on its forehead. What if they had a similar enough physiology to humans to allow them to get high from it? It is entirely possible they had interrupted it in the middle of getting stoned. That would explain its lack of coordination and apparent surprise.
Were they growing it because of addiction? That seemed possible. For instance, supposed they had explored Earth, discovered the plant and found it could get them stoned. They took some home. It became a big hit. There was a huge demand for it. Some business minded of them cultivated large amounts to fill that demand.
Thinking back to the alien on the ship, she recalled it having a wound on its chest. A puncture wound. Perhaps a gunshot wound. Cannabis had medical uses. It could treat pain, anxiety, cachexia, glaucoma and a host of other things they were just discovering. Perhaps it had similar medical properties to alien physiology?
She needed to get into a lab where she could examine samples of the oil and alien tissue. That would at least lend clues. Except she had nothing other than their blood which she got on her clothes and David got on his. That was a start.
"Rodriguez, is there any way you could note the coordinates for that field in case we needed to find it again?"
"Oh, I am way ahead of you, ma'am."
"Y'all need to stop calling me, ma'am. You're making me feel old."
"What would you prefer?"
"I would prefer princess. I know that seems a bit much, but once you get to know me you'd agree."
"How about doc?"
"Well, okay. I can settle for that."
"All right, Doc. We have about another hour of flight time before we get to Denver. So just sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight."
Sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight? That seemed like a tall order considering everything going on. Had she thought about it more carefully, she would have asked Kowalski to grab her a bottle of fine Kentucky bourbon instead of a beer. She was so keyed up, she didn't think she'd be able to relax and enjoy anything for a long time.
"Kowalski?" she said into her headset.
"Yeah, Doc?"
"Do you have any idea what's going on here?"
Kowalski caught her eye for a moment and then looked out of the helicopter. "They gave us a general brief when they scrambled everybody Tuesday morning," he paused and bit his lip while he continued to look out at the dimming landscape.
"And?"
"You know how there are always asteroids and stuff flying by the earth just missing us?"
"Uh, huh."
"Guys like Dr. Hadley here keep track of that sort of thing. Anyway, he figured out, at the last minute, that one of those things changed trajectory for some reason and put it on a collision course with us."
"Sweet baby Jesus."
"Seems like he got in touch with General Jacobs and we launched a nuke to try to break it up high in the atmosphere. And we did mostly, except this thing was enormous. A small piece came down in the Midwest and really messed things up. Another bigger piece hit the Atlantic and caused a tsunami."
Ivy felt an icy nausea in the pit of her stomach. "Pardon my French, but it sounds like we're fucked."
"That's not even the half of it. Nobody had time to think through using a high atmospheric nuke like that and that it might cause an EMP."
"An EMP?"
"Electro-magnetic pulse. It fries most electronic equipment unless shielded against it. So now two-thirds of the country no longer has any functional electronics which includes modern vehicles because everything has electronic ignition and a computer. The West Coast is mostly okay and so is the northeast. Everything else is, like you said, fucked."
"Well, that explains why my motorcycle was dead in the water. What about the aliens?"
"No idea. We've had some sightings and some contact. That's it. I don't know if there is any connection."
"Well, now I'm kinda sorry I asked you to fill me in."
Kowalski looked at her and shrugged. "Don't shoot the messenger."
"Have you ever been on one of those alien ships?"
He shook his head. "Nope."
"It's pretty wild. Never seen anything like it."
"I'm sure it must have been. What was it like?"
"Like something out of a sci-fi movie. They had a center control console that looked like one solid piece of black glass with nothing on it. It was one giant touch screen. There was a lot more, but the technology wasn't the weird part."
"What was the weird part then?"
"Well, they had potted marijuana plants everywhere in the main compartment."
"Potted marijuana? So that's why you wanted us to swing by that field back there?"
"Yeah. I'm sure they must be the ones farming it. I don't really understand why."
"Well, was there anything else weird in there that might give you a clue?"
"They were administering what appeared to be an oil extract of the plant to a wounded one of their own."
"Okay, well there's your answer. That seems straight forward. We use it medically too, right?"
"Yeah...we do, but..."
"But what?"
"I don't know. Something doesn't seem right. Like there's more to it."
"Was there anything else on the ship that seemed weird?"
She thought about it for a moment. "Not that I can think of. I mean we found video tapes and DVDs of some sci-fi
and horror movies, but I can't see what they have to do with anything."
He squinted at her. "Sci-fi and horror movies? That's definitely weird."
Ivy sighed and looked out at a landscape descending into darkness. Her mind tried to make sense of everything she'd seen and heard. Time to play connect the dots with whatever dots she had so far. What did she know?
An asteroid should have passed harmlessly by the earth but suddenly changed direction and headed straight for us. Newton's first law of motion states that an object would remain in uniform motion unless acted on by an external unbalanced force. So something collided with the asteroid knocking it off course. She could think of no other plausible explanation. The question remained whether the collision was a random six sigma event, or something done on purpose.
Next, were aliens extremely interested in marijuana. Based on what she had seen so far, it seemed like that interest focused on medical use of the plant. However, if the alien's physiology allowed medicinal use that also allowed for the possibility of recreational use. So she couldn't rule that out.
If she assumed it had a medical use, then what were they treating? And why would they need so much? If they needed that much, why not figure out a way to replicate it in a lab? She had so many questions and no real answers.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Turnello at the cabin, Things get weird - Early Morning Thurs Sep 5
The sound of a distant gunshot woke him. Turnello blinked open his eyes and realized he lay on a cold hearth. His body was stiff and the arm he rested his head on was numb. He rolled onto his back and his body shivered. It was so cold.
He'd just been in an elevator, hadn't he? Aliens. Aliens were chasing him. There were lots of plants in pots. Lots of pot plants in pots? He never liked pot. It did nothing for him. Why would he dream of it? Or aliens?
He looked around. The room appeared different to him in the daylight. It was cold, dusty, and dead silent. Outside, the rain had lessened, and water dripped from the trees onto the ground. On the deck came a shuffling of feet he presumed to be the old man.
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