Fireworks

by James A. Moore

  Already, Onyx V was making calculations, pinpointing the exact spot where the ship must have gone down. Anderson watched the targeting lines move from various spots, narrowing down on a square before finally magnifying the grid for better detail. The crosshairs converged and pointed to a spot on the map, a tiny town that was hardly worth noticing. Mark Anderson shivered inside, even as he gave commands and moved towards the airfield to oversee the deployment of jets. His would not leave for almost six hours: a preposterous amount of wasted time, in his eyes. Still, there were details to handle, last minute arrangements to take care of. Colonel Mark Anderson prayed with all of his heart that the town of Collier, Georgia had somehow missed the spectacle, but knew where it counts that they must have seen at least something of the crash or landing, whichever was the case.

  He had his orders, and he would follow them, even if everyone in Collier ended up in prisons or coffins before he was done with the task ahead. But he would not like it, no sir, not one damned bit. He had no idea, none whatsoever, of just what the good people of Collier had just seen. He tried to prepare for any eventuality, but what he saw when he arrived was worse than he could have ever dreamed.

  8

  Collier, Georgia

  July Fourth

  The night was only beginning; the fireworks were flashing above the lake and everyone was enjoying them as best they could. Mosquitoes swarmed through the humid night air, finding new targets and generally annoying everyone that they fed on. Beer and cola were being consumed from picnic baskets laden down with food that no one would eat: every year people brought too much food and most of what they brought became fodder for the ants and other scavenging insects. In the long set of docks, where thirty or so boats ranging from rowboats to monsters just shy of yachts rested, more people sat in their leisure craft and enjoyed the gentle lulling motions of the waves.

  Out on Oldman's Lake, Bobby Carlson was having the time of his life, lighting fuses and listening to the cheers from the shore. He could just see Frank Osborn staring up at the sky, a cigarette burning in the corner of his mouth. Frank always pissed and moaned about the Fourth of July, but Bobby knew well enough that the man was having fun. Frank had grown up on Bobby's street, and had always been one to pretend that he was less impressed or pleased than everyone else.

  The time for the grand finale was finally approaching and that was a good thing, because Bobby didn't quite feel his best. He suspected he'd maybe pushed himself a little too hard, maybe even started the old ticker arguing about going to sleep without his consent again. Just as soon as the last fuse was lit he'd have to take a nitroglycerin tablet and hope for the best.

  A barrage of pyrotechnic blasts rocketed through the night sky and, for a few seconds, the night was as bright as the noonday sun, but far more colorful. Popping, hissing, shrieking explosions rocked the heavens and, in the lake below, Bobby Carlson reached for his botde of heart pills. Under the tongue with practiced ease and he could already feel the pressure in his chest easing slightly. He often wondered if the pill really worked that quickly or if he just imagined the change taking place. Damn, but it was a fine feeling either way, give or take the taste in his mouth and the burning under his tongue.

  Bobby let his eyes wander towards the distant, fading constellations of his own creation, and reached for the final fuse. The night had been perfect as far as the fireworks were concerned. Artie had managed to stay sober all the way through the evening, and Bobby was almost ready to believe the boy had finally wised up enough to stay away from the hootch. Time would tell. He signaled Artie and his nephew nodded back, reaching for the final fuse on his end.

  The waves were gentle on the lake, and that was good too. Bobby lit his fuse, and Artie lit the last in his selection as well. Both of them waited, breathing a sigh of relief that all had gone smoothly, and watched the skies above as the fuses counted down their last seconds.

  Artie noticed it first, the faint burning luminescence coming towards them at unnatural speed. It looked almost like lightning running across the sky instead of falling towards the ground, but the color was all wrong, and it wasn't quite fast enough to be electricity in motion. Then it shifted directions even as Artie was calling to his uncle. It started coming straight towards the lake.

  Artie opened his mouth to call his Uncle Bobby's name at the same time that the fireworks escaped from their perches and screamed an arc into the heavens. Everywhere around the two men, missiles flared into colorful trails of light, smoke and thunder as they did what they were created to do. If Bobby Carlson heard his nephew's words, he never gave a sign. He too looked towards the sky, and he too saw the object coming down. Eyes watched from all around them, staring towards the stars and waiting with growing anticipation to be dazzled. Bobby looked away from the darkness above for only a few seconds, long enough to finally see that his nephew was trying to be heard over the sound of the grand finale. Bobby saw the fear written on his face and nodded back; he had seen the falling thing too.

  As the final volley of explosions ignited the air above the lake, people on the shore stood cheering, amazed by the spectacle. A few, and only a few, noticed that something was amiss, realized that at least one of the streaks of light in the air was moving not upwards, but towards the lake with deliberate fury. Worse still, it was growing bigger.

  Then the sound hit: a screaming banshee wail that seemed to switch frequencies as quickly as it reached one. The electrically enhanced sounds of the Collier High School Marching Band on the P.A. system were replaced by white noise caused by whatever energies danced around the falling object. High, keening screams and low mournful howls filled the air. Everyone stopped cheering as the vibrations falling towards the ground started teeth rattling in their sockets. Artie dove from his raft as the light grew closer, making for the shore on limbs powered by adrenaline. On the beach, the people were either running away from the water or covering their ears and falling to the ground. Collier's canine population tried to match the pitch of the howls from above, with minimal success.

  Old Bobby Carlson knew long before the light hit the lake that he was a dead man. He felt the vibrations in his bones, saw the light plummeting towards him with all the intimacy of a new lover. "I'll be home to you soon, Marion. You wait there for me." The light filled the sky and before the impact occurred, Bobby Carlson felt his heart stop beating, felt his brain start to boil in his skull, along with his eyes… eyes that had seen and loved Collier for most of his life.

  The sounds reached their highest level, and even those who tried to run were forced to fall and cover their ears. The noise became everything for them, a primal scream threatening to break their bodies and their minds. Amilee Foster, only eight months old, and momentarily out of reach of her parents, cried futilely, calling for help against the sound. The doctors would later say it was a miracle her eardrums hadn't ruptured.

  Marty Wander and Mike Summers were actually looking up towards the sky to see what was making the sound. What they saw, even though it only lasted a second, was enough to make them believe in God as all of the teachings in Sunday school could never hope to. Green lightning lashed from some dark object, danced in a corona around the edges and roared across the dark thing's surface in random, furious arcs. The sight alone was impressive, but the scope of the thing was too much to fully comprehend. It seemed to fill the entire sky already, but even as they watched it expanded, growing larger as it fell towards the waters of Lake Oldman.

  Retinal burns made new homes in their eyes, and both screamed out in pain as the object hit the surface of the lake. Beside them, Billy and Andy Newsome screamed as well. Tom Thornton simply curled into a ball and prayed to God Almighty with the passion of a condemned man.

  The reaction was instantaneous and the impact rocked all of Collier. On the beach and in the grass-covered picnic grounds, people were lifted into the air and dropped back to the lawn. The earth moved in a wave of protest, pushing the Independence Day celebrants as easily as a hurricane
moves leaves. Arthur McMurphy managed to break his right arm and dislocate his left knee when he fell. The burger and Coca-Cola he carried were hopelessly crushed into his Braves' T-shirt.

  Several cars were thrown into the air as well. The entire Habersham family, down for the weekend and visiting Mrs. Habersham's mother, were crushed along with their Mercedes Benz station wagon when Doug Martin's Ford Ranger landed atop it. The windows in Milo Fitzwater's Ace Hardware exploded from their frames and shivered across the ground. Several other storefronts followed the new trend.

  But the worst of the damage happened at the water. The surface of Oldman's Lake swallowed the fiery object and immediately gagged. The water went to the boiling point and beyond, converted into steam in seconds. Artie Carlson lived through the collision only though the dumbest of luck. The first scalding wave threw him from the water and onto the shore with second- and third-degree burns across most of his legs and back. Had he worn shorts as he originally intended, his legs would have cooked like stewing beef. As it was they were protected by denim and only burned severely. Bobby Carlson was crushed under the thing that struck the water, forced deep into the silt and baked by the heat of the craft. The fish in the lake disappeared in the roiling foam, reappearing seconds later as steamed meat and flash-fried scales. The long docks exploded into flames. The old, weathered wood of the boat landings took only a few seconds to reach the burning point. The boats themselves were thrown high on the first of the massive waves, and those who were unfortunate enough to be standing on the vessels were hurled into the scalding waters or launched ashore, The heat from the falling star set many of the boats ablaze. Only two people lived through the experience; Mark Walton and Mary Chambers. Both were burned over most of their bodies. Neither would ever be the same. The Lobster Hut, the only seafood restaurant in the entire town, had the misfortune of being too close to the water. The propane tanks stored outside of the actual building went up with a roar that most people could not hear over the sound of the ringing in their skulls, and took most of the restaurant along for the ride. Thirty-five people inside the building, or standing too near, were erased from the history books in a massive, blinding flash that still failed to compete with the actual landing site.

  Fully four feet of the sand at the shoreline fused together and took with it fifteen people, four picnic baskets, seven coolers and three dogs. Pieces of all would be found melted into the glass over the next few days. Most of the people were spared the worst of the impact, only being bruised and battered. The sound that had driven people to their knees and then to the ground; saved them from the worst of the heat blast. Amilee Foster, uncovered save by a blanket, suffered blistering burns on one half of her face, and her mother, finally able to think again after the sensory overload, suffered second and third degree burns on her arms, chest and the top of her head. Altogether, one hundred and fifty-seven people died in the accident, and one hundred and seventy-two were injured.

  The flames which managed to maintain their hold on the boats along the docks soon added a new measure of noise to the cacophony of screaming people and boiling water. Propane tanks within the vessels-initially shielded from the worst of the initial wave of incinerating energies-soon felt a heat they could not withstand and exploded in brilliant fireballs of shrapnel that rained down over the woods and the picnic area.

  Those few boats left unscathed by the initial wave of heat soon began to burn despite their luck. Along the shore a fire built that defied the boiling waters of Lake Oldman.

  Frank Osborn placed a call to the Parrish County Hospital and demanded they send as many ambulances as they could. His hair was singed and a few minor burns kissed his face and hands, but otherwise Frank was fine, if severely rattled. Uncertain as to just what had occurred, Frank explained that the fireworks had gone bad and "lots of people are screaming like it's the end of the world." It may as well have been the end of the world that day; Collier would never be the same.

  The aliens had landed, and landed poorly at best.

  BOOK ONE

  FRANK'S STORY

  CHAPTER 1

  1

  Frank Osborn spent three years of his youth wallowing in the worst sorts of filth the Vietnam War could produce. He'd seen friends and enemies alike torn into shredded meat and viscera by bullets, bombs and napalm. He'd watched the shattered remains of young soldiers try to pull themselves across the ground, too hurt to understand that they should just lie still and die. He had killed other people simply to stay alive. Sometimes, when the world was too quiet, he still struggled with the images of children doing a wild dance caused by the bullets he fired into their bodies. He had, God help him, murdered those children because they were too friendly and they might have been booby-trapped. Not all of them were, but he could live with that. He'd long since adjusted to the violence he had committed in Asia so long ago. Or at least he liked to tell himself that he had.

  For the first time in his life, he understood what some soldiers meant when they spoke of flashbacks. Right now Collier sure as hell seemed like it had been transported through time and space to end up right in the middle of that nasty war.

  After the noise and violence of a few moments ago, everything seemed almost quiet. But the activity taking place removed that illusion quickly, and the ringing in Frank's ears was certainly in part responsible for the lack of noise. He wondered idly if he might have been deafened, but with everything else going on around him, that was a minor concern for the moment.

  People walked around with dazed expressions on bloodied, burnt faces, trying to understand what was going on. Those who could walk, at least. Seemed like a lot of people couldn't even manage that. The trees closest to the lake were scorched and charred, their leaves blackened and the Spanish moss hanging from their branches incinerated. There wasn't a single weeping willow he could see that hadn't had most of the thin, vinelike branches burnt completely away, and even the stronger oak and maple trees were burned so badly that he knew they wouldn't survive the damage. Even from a dozen yards away he could see that the heat had ruined the outer layers of the wood. Even if it hadn't, most of the trees were now leaning crazily away from the water, pushed by the impact of the thing that even now sent columns of steam into the air. Most of the plants in the area had been fully incinerated, at least those closest to the lake. The grass of the lawn was seared brown, and even from a distance he could see that something was wrong with the sand near the lake, though he couldn't quite decide what that something was. Looks like a nuclear burn, he thought. Heat that intense should have killed everything moving, but it happened so damned fast that it only caught bits and pieces of most of us. Hell, if it'd gone on any longer, we'd all be dead now. He moved forward, setting aside the unsettling thoughts going through his head and concentrating on helping those not beyond his meager abilities to assist.

  His first stop was at the massive permanent concession stand halfway between the water's edge and the parking lot, which had managed to lose most of the paint on its upper third before the-whatever the hell it was-landed in the water. He pulled Albert Waller from inside. Albert was alive, but his face and neck looked like they'd met up with a bucket of boiling oil and lost the fight. His hair was damn near gone along the front, and what was left in back was smoking. Hell, even his shirt and apron had scorch marks, though they ended right around where the window the man had been looking out to see the fireworks would have blocked them. Frank frowned at that, worrying about whether or not the heat had been maybe something a little more like radiation and not just flame. It wasn't a comforting idea, but it explained the way the burn marks worked on Albert's chest. That the propane tanks for the grill had not ignited was something of a miracle in Frank's eyes. If they had, Albert have been blown into flinders and would have never even known what hit him. Albert was unconscious, and the lump on the side of his head matched up just about right with the dent in the Sprite canister, Frank rolled the man on his back and tore the apron he was wearing clean off his body
. Then he grabbed some of the ice from the concession's bins and used the mustard-stained cotton fabric as a crude ice pack on Albert's face.

  He moved on to Emily O'Rourke, lying only a few feet from the concession stand, a fine lady who'd never failed to make the people around her smile and made about the best baked beans he'd ever found at a church social, and did what he could for her. The poor woman was just about one big blister. Her plastic glasses were partially melted to her skin, and her eyes were sealed shut by the swelling in her flesh. William O'Rourke, her husband for almost forty years, was doing his best to comfort her, Her voice was harsh and ragged, her breathing frantic. Frank hated to imagine the sort of pain she was in. The heat rising from her skin was enough to make him wonder if she was burning on the inside.

  He worked to cover the worst of her burns with the crushed ice he had salvaged from the concession, taking his own shirt this time for fear that any contact with the scorched polyester fused into Emily's neckline would cause her more harm. He clutched the ice-laden shirt in one hand and used his other to guide the package into William's big, blistered palms. "William, you're gonna have to hold this to her face. She'll scream, like as not, but you hold it there anyway. We need to get that swelling down and we need to do it right now. You understand me?"

  "Yes, Frank. I do. You go take care of the others now. I'll take care of Emma." The man sounded winded, almost on the verge of tears, but he managed to do as Frank instructed.

  Frank moved on, almost completely on autopilot. Faces blurred and his ears rang anew from the sound of constant screams. He barely even noticed when the ambulances arrived. There were too many wounded for the small company of paramedics to handle alone, so he just kept on doing his thing.