The Ancients (The Survivors Book Four)

by Nathan Hystad

  I found the pull chain on my bedside lamp, turning it on. It was a fake Tiffany lamp. Janine had found it at a garage sale for what she’d dubbed “the bargain price of the year.” Memories flooded my brain as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

  Light poured in lines between my white blinds, casting striped shadows on my wall. Where had I been? I shook my head, trying to free the cobwebs, but it wasn’t coming back.

  “No one has an explanation for the ships, but we expect the president to make a statement soon. Please do not panic,” Rollie Armstrong said with a slight tremor in his voice.

  Ships? Images flashed in my mind of large black vessels hanging over New York City; of smaller, sleek silver ships over my hometown. The Kraski! I remembered them now. An overflow of missing details forced themselves into my confused mind, causing my vision to swim. I leaned back, pushing a pillow over my face to ease the pain.

  Eventually, they subsided, and I knew this wasn’t real. I’d already lived this day. I was sent here to do something, I just didn’t know what. My breath slowed as the anxiety and stress eased from my tight muscles, my headache now just a dull throb.

  I rolled off the bed, carefully stepping over the slippers I knew would be there. With eyes mostly closed, I crossed to my en suite bathroom and washed my face. The reflection caught me off-guard as water dripped down my chin. I looked so young. It was me from this day in the past. The real me was a few years older; more gray speckled my hair, deeper lines carved in my face. Mary called them laugh lines, but it felt like a long time since I’d laughed enough to make some.

  Mary. Flashes of her beautiful face flipped through my mind like a stack of Polaroids being dropped from the sky. I saw her the first time she’d knocked on the Jeep window, just after the silver ship had nearly scared us to death. I saw her piloting one of those ships as we rescued humanity from its doom near the sun. A picture of her wearing a gorgeous dress for Magnus and Natalia’s wedding appeared, making way for an image of her as we sat hiding from the rain on Kareem’s world. Her hair was wet, goosebumps rising on her pale skin as a breeze carried through our pitiful shelter. Then our wedding night, resplendent in white. All of these shots came and went.

  She was here somewhere. I knew it. That was my mission.

  With new energy, I threw on some pants, amused at how accurate the scene was. The jeans fit me just like they had, and the knees had exactly the right amount of fade. Throwing a short-sleeved button-up plaid shirt over my tank top, I headed for the front door. I didn’t even close it as I walked barefoot down my driveway. Just as I thought, Susan was there with Carey beside her.

  My heart melted at seeing the young pup. He wiggled and came to say hi. I knelt down, petting him far more closely than the old me ever had. Susan studied me with a grin and asked, “What do you think they are, Dean?” I’d known she was going to say those exact words. It felt like a pre-emptive déjà vu.

  I didn’t say anything at first. I just stood and hugged her. I told her everything was going to be okay. For her, it wasn’t, but if I could make her last day on Earth a little better, I wanted to. Carey barked at me as we embraced, and when I let go, Susan looked up at me with weepy eyes. She mouthed the words “Thank you” and turned back to stare at the ship in the sky.

  I left her standing there. The weight of what was coming for Earth pushed me down, and my knees felt weak. I didn’t want to live this again. I’d barely made it through the first time, and now I had to see it repeated. “Damn you!” I shouted as I entered my house. Theos. That was who’d done this to me. The recent quests came back to me now. How dare the self-righteous bastards do this to us?

  If I ever did find them… I slumped down on my couch and ran my fingers through my hair. I didn’t have an answer for it. I just wanted to get through this and get back to Mary and Slate, in my real life. The anger evaporated. It wasn’t going to help me.

  “No time to waste,” I said, grabbing my keys. This time, I threw some shoes on and left my house, firing up my old truck. It felt good to be driving it again. Some things you did miss when they were gone. Earth was gone now too, so I vowed to let myself enjoy these aspects of the mission I was on. I counted myself grateful to be able to visit Earth again, Earth before everyone was ripped from it, changing our paths forever.

  Of all the worlds I’d been to, none of them compared to being home, and that was where I’d found myself. I just needed to get to Mary and figure out what that meant.

  I passed the same church I had all those years ago and slowed as my client Steve waved at me. Today, I kept driving, not making way for small talk. It came to me that I never did find out if Steve survived the Event. There was so much I didn’t know. If I made it home to New Spero, I was going to look into it.

  I needed to reconnect with my old life to complete my new one. I’d been treating them as separate entities, but they both made me who I was. It didn’t have to be broken down into pre-Event and post-Event. It could just be my life.

  I took another direction, bypassing the backed-up traffic I knew was on the main drag, leaving James and his fender-bender behind. I silently wished my old friend the best and made for the storage unit. It wasn’t long before I had the pendant around my neck. If this really was a replay of that day, I wasn’t going to be beamed away with everyone.

  What was I going to do? I nearly crashed into a car parked in the middle of the street as an idea came to me. I swerved to the side of the road and parked, seeing a sobbing teenage girl in the stopped car.

  I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed information. “Mary Lafontaine in Washington, please.”

  “There is no Mary Lafontaine listed, sir.”

  “How about Bob or Robert Lafontaine?”

  “Please hold, connecting.”

  The phone rang, a land line still active. Mary hadn’t changed the name on the bill, and I hoped she was still home.

  “Hello,” a very familiar voice answered.

  “Mary, it’s me,” I said, relief flooding through me.

  “Dean?” she asked, and tears came to me in the blink of an eye. I hadn’t been sure my real Mary would be there. I’d worried she was stuck in her own version of that day.

  “Of course it’s Dean.”

  She laughed; not a calm, funny sound, but the kind when you’re so happy, the laughter merges with crying to make the perfect heart-warming sound no one wants to share. “I was so worried and confused. How did they do this?”

  “I don’t know. But we need to get together. How quick can we meet up?”

  “The roads are looking bad, but nowhere near as backed up as they are this afternoon. I’ll start driving now. Let’s meet outside Philly.” She named a small town I hadn’t heard of. It was close enough to a main highway but had access via a less busy road, should the traffic get too congested.

  “This is weird, isn’t it?” I asked. I could hear her starting a car and noticed the sound change as she switched to hands-free.

  “It is. I miss you, and it’s only been an hour since I saw you. Being here, in this place, is so odd. As much as we all talk about our old lives, I’m much happier with my new one with you.”

  I threw my truck in drive and turned it around, leaving my phone on speaker. My truck didn’t have Bluetooth, so I cranked the volume up and set the phone upside down in my cup holder. “Mary, just who are we dealing with here? What kind of race could send us back to Earth? Everything we’ve seen tells me they’re literally conducting this from beyond the proverbial grave. How could they send us to this specific time?”

  She was silent for a few moments, and just when I was going to make sure the call hadn’t dropped, she spoke. “I’ve got it!” I could sense her enthusiasm from a few hundred miles away. “They didn’t know where they were sending us. Their program locked into our minds, and sent us to the most traumatic, life-changing day of our lives.”

  “To what end?” I asked.

  “That I don’t know. Maybe they just want
to see how we deal with it. I expect a message or hint at some point. They’ve given us one every other time.” I could hear someone honking loudly from the other end of the call.

  “Everything okay there?” I asked, raising my voice so she could hear over the racket.

  “I forgot what jerks people could be. Some guy just rammed into a parked car, and now there’s a full-out melee going on. Was it really like this?” she asked.

  It had been much worse in a lot of cases. The horror stories of what happened that day, on Earth and then on the vessels, would linger with me for life. I remembered hearing some of the things that people had done to one another, and it took me a week to get out of the hotel room once we were back. I had seriously regretted saving everyone. Part of me thought the universe might have been better off without us. Mary had talked me down at that point in time, reminding me of all the good stories, of the countless heroic and selfless acts hundreds and thousands of people had done.

  “Dean?” Mary asked, and I realized I hadn’t replied. My heart was racing again; the repressed trauma from that time was trying to surface. I took a long swallow of water and decided to cork the pain for a little while longer.

  “Humans are stronger than ever, and this may be a reminder, but it isn’t who we are anymore. Maybe this is our lesson.”

  “I hope so. Keep me posted on your progress. I’m going to double back and hit the other way out of town. Things are hectic here. You’re farther from Philly, but I bet you beat me there.”

  She was probably right. I would avoid any major cities on my route, but on a good day, she would still beat me by an hour. Today wasn’t a good day. “I’ll call you in an hour, unless something goes awry.”

  “I can’t wait to see you, babe,” Mary said.

  “Right back at you.” The call ended, and I looked up to the west, catching the sun glimmer off the silver ship above my hometown. Shivers ran down my spine, and I turned to focus on the road. I had an arduous drive ahead of me.

  Twenty-Four

  The diner’s lights were still on, telling me this was the one place in town that was open for business. Mary was beside me, worry lines creasing her forehead as we pulled into the parking lot. I’d beaten her by an hour, as she’d guessed, but the fact was, we were both there, together in the past.

  “It’s hard to believe we’re not really here. That our bodies are inside a rock amidst a water-covered world.” Mary smiled at me from the passenger seat of my truck. She’d suggested we ditch her SUV, saying it was originally Bob’s, and that she’d rather leave it behind. I agreed.

  “Wherever we really are, my body’s telling me to eat something.” I was surprised at the urgency of my hunger.

  There was only one other car parked in front of the diner, where a sign flashed “All Day Breakfast” from behind a smudged window pane. Chimes rang as I pushed the door open, holding it for Mary to enter first. My gut instinct was to have a gun when entering an unknown room. I shoved this feeling down as a smiling elderly couple greeted us.

  “Are you guys open?” Mary asked them.

  “Seven days a week,” the man said, revealing a gap where he was missing a tooth.

  “Even today?” I prompted.

  “Even today,” the man’s short wife said. She watched us from behind large rhinestone-lined glasses as we walked inside and took a seat at a booth along the window. Music from the Fifties played through crackling speakers, and the smell of the place reminded me of every diner I’d ever been inside. It was comforting.

  “What’s on the menu?” I asked, feeling my stomach grumble again. I fidgeted with the condiments, then the salt and pepper shakers, before tapping one of those little jam packets.

  The lady was already moving for our table, carrying a pot of black coffee. Mary and I flipped our cups and let her fill them. I read her nametag, which said “Esther” in capital letters. “Since it’s just Cleve and me today, we could do up some eggs and hash. Side of bacon?”

  Mary answered for us. “That sounds perfect.” Cleve had already begun to turn toward the kitchen as she spoke.

  “How are they going to communicate with us? I keep expecting a text from the Theos, giving us directions.” I sat my dark-screened phone on the old faux wood table top. I took a sip of my coffee and couldn’t believe how good it was. New Spero had a lot of amenities, but good, old-school roasted beans were getting harder and harder to find. A lot of smaller backyard growers and then roasters were starting to pop up. There was always a market for coffee, no matter what the circumstances.

  Mary finally took a drink from hers and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath of the steaming cup before gulping down more. “That’s amazing. But to answer your question, I was thinking the same thing. Cell phone. But who knows with them? They have a mist-man telling us what to do next most of the time. I think their way of communicating may be different than ours.”

  I laughed at her term for what I’d dubbed the “shadow man” in my head. I liked “mist-man” too. “Hopefully we don’t have to wait long. I don’t really want to stay here any longer than I have to.”

  Mary looked contemplative. “What is it, Mary?” I asked.

  She started, then paused, instead taking another drink from her cup, this time a sip. “Doesn’t Ray live in Pittsburgh?”

  Her question nearly took the air from my lungs. Up until now, I hadn’t been thinking of the others. Magnus and Natalia were here too. They had a head start on the details, so they were probably already starting their journey to South America.

  “He does live there,” I said quietly. It started to rain outside, a light patter of drops hitting the window as the breeze carried them toward the building. “Mary, I think I need to go see him.”

  “I’m not sure…” She was cut off by the approach of Cleve and Esther, carrying plates of food. They set them down with a clatter, and I looked down to see food piled high, with about the worst presentation I’d ever seen, even from a small-town diner.

  The two of them lingered longer than I expected, and I looked up to meet Cleve’s gaze. I pushed myself back in the booth seat, startled by what I saw. Black mist coalesced through his eyes, pouring out of his sockets and dissipating into the air. Esther’s were doing the same.

  “What are you?” I asked, raising a hand to Mary, who looked ready to attack them with a butter knife.

  “We are Theos,” the elderly couple said in unison.

  “Why here? Why this time?” I kept the questions coming.

  “You chose this place, not us.” They still spoke at the same time, though not quite perfectly aligned, so there was a slight echo.

  “How did we choose it?”

  “We programmed it to bring you to the most significant day of your lives. We didn’t expect two beings to choose the same time and place. This is…curious.” Mist continued to dance in their eyes.

  “What are we supposed to do? How do we pass this event?” I got goosebumps at my own use of the word event. There would only be one true event in our lives, and that was the traumatic encounter with the Kraski and Deltra. Even the Bhlat battle and the eventual loss of Earth didn’t impact us to the same degree, at least not psychologically. Humans were a hardier breed now, and on the other end of the spectrum, we were also a more nurturing and loving race.

  “You must succumb to your biggest fear. Change your actions.” Esther and Cleve stood side by side, she a full head shorter than her husband. I briefly wondered if they’d survived the original Event, but chances were they hadn’t made it. My heart hurt at the thought.

  “What’s our biggest fear?” Mary asked them, and they shrugged in a very human way.

  “That is for only you to know. Face this fear, and you will pass. Our home will become accessible.” They turned, walking away, leaving us with our unappetizing cold food and a lot to think about.

  “This is it, Dean. Our last stage.” Mary poked at a runny over-easy egg, and after putting some pepper on it, she took a bite. I smiled at
her, at how well she was taking all of this. I decided to eat something too.

  “Face our fears. On this day of all days. It can only mean one thing.” I squirted some ketchup on my hash browns, the squelching sound the only noise in the whole restaurant.

  “What?” Mary asked.

  “We have to let them beam us up.”

  Mary spit out her mouthful of coffee as I said it. “We can’t do that!” she yelled. “Sorry.” She lowered her voice. “I’m not sure I can.” She twisted a lock of hair between her fingers nimbly, avoiding eye contact.

  “None of this is real. What are we afraid of…what were we afraid of?”

  Mary looked at me doubtfully. “I was afraid of all of it, but brave when I needed to be. We were so busy and frantic, we didn’t have much time to worry about what happened if we failed. Failing humanity…I think that’s my biggest fear.”

  She was on the right track. “I believe that’s it. We have to let them beam us up. If we’re beamed, do we win? No. We lose.”

  “What about the others?” she asked, referring to Magnus and Natalia, and even Ray.

  “I wonder what would have happened. We haven’t really talked about it before. Would they have stopped it? Teelon might have convinced them, though Magnus probably would have just shot everyone and turned the thing off. And Ray…” I left the sentence to linger there. I missed him. I’d only known him for a few days, but he was the kind of guy I could have been great friends with. I felt like I’d failed him too.

  “We’ll never know.”

  “Mary, if we’re going to do this, I have to find Ray. I have to make things right and warn him.”

  Mary set down her fork and reached across the table, grabbing my hand in hers. “I agree.”

  “You do?” I thought she’d have some objection to spending our one afternoon there searching for our old friend.

  “Yeah. I know how much it’s bothered you.” She looked ready to say more, to say that I was the one there wrestling him when his gun went off, killing him. But she didn’t.