by Terry James
Robbins stopped in front of the centermost pair of doors and stood staring straight ahead for several seconds, his arms straight down at his sides. Megan looked at his strange expression, then, seeing he was not going to do so, tried the doors herself.
“See? They’re locked, just like they said,” she said, frustration beginning to overwhelm her anxiety. “See--these, too,” she added, trying to open several of the other doors.
Robbins continued to stare straight ahead, oblivious to the woman’s presence.
“We better get down right now,” Megan pleaded, putting her right hand on his forearm.
The skin felt unlike flesh; rather, it was solid to the touch beneath the flannel suit coat’s sleeve--like wood, or stone.
“Blake! What is wrong with you?!”
Megan pulled her hand away and stared at Blake’s eyes. They appeared cold, black, and non-human–like the eyes of a shark.
“The doors won’t open. They’re locked,” Megan said with irritation.
Robbins walked forward and reached to the handle on one of the massive doors. When the door swung outward toward the roof, she blinked, was frozen in place for a moment, then hurried through the opening to just behind Robbins before the door swung back to the closed position.
Blake Robbins strode without hesitation toward the south side of Tower Two, the secretary breaking into a jog every few steps to keep up. She looked back to the north, seeing the inferno blazing skyward, Tower One’s roof obscured by thick, black smoke.
“My God! Those poor people,” she said, the tears coming again with realization of the magnitude of the catastrophe. “What are we doing? Where are we going? Do you expect a helicopter or something?”
Robbins continued walking, stopping finally when he reached the roof’s barrier that was its southern outer perimeter. He lowered his arms to his sides again, his black, pupil-filled eyes staring toward the Atlantic’s horizon.
Megan saw it then. It seemed to swoop from high above, its engines screaming while it banked, almost as if it would roll. It straightened slightly at the last second, closing in on the skyscraper at 590 MPH.
Her already-shocked brain couldn’t react in time to prepare for the impact. The huge, fuel-laden 757 cut a swath through the tower, and the building lurched northward, making the secretary sense that it would topple toward its blazing sister tower. Tower Two sprang back toward the south, throwing her to the roof, then straightened to its proper upright position.
She struggled to her feet, her knees braised, and her leg bruised from her fall. Her eyes went to Blake Robbins, who had not been moved from his stiff-legged stance. He continued to stare toward the Atlantic.
A monstrous fireball boiled upward, turning the southern sky into a massive sphere of reds, oranges, and yellows while causing a hot wind to sweep across the roof. Megan fell to her knees, the heated air singing her hair, burning her face, and causing her to gasp for breath. She looked upward at her boss, who raised his arms, lifting his hands skyward.
He spoke in a growl that crawled from somewhere within, in a language the secretary couldn’t understand. Suddenly, Blake Robbins wasn’t there anymore.
5:30 the evening of September 11, 2001
Her eyes failed to penetrate the coagulant air outside the 37th floor window.
All the Lower East Side of the city seemed locked in fog. But it wasn’t fog. The stench of smoke and dust that billowed from the World Trade towers collapse had hung and swirled thickly while she had traversed on foot the 22 blocks from mid-town Manhattan to her apartment building three hours earlier. She didn’t see improvement while she held the cell phone to her right ear and spoke.
“Clark, have you told Mom and Dad? Were you able to get them?”
Morgan Lansing pulled her gaze from trying to see the street below, which teemed with fire trucks and emergency vehicles moving toward the carnage that once was the 110-floor twin World Trade tower buildings.
She sat on the edge of the bed, beginning to pat and rub a huge rottweiler’s dark head. The dog nuzzled her roughly, trying to get her full attention away from her conversation.
“No, Peanut! No, no!” she scolded the year-old canine, but continued to scratch and rub his head and ears.
“No problem,” she said into the phone’s mouthpiece. “It’s just Jeddy, wanting me to pay attention…”
A young woman walked through the doorway, and Morgan cut her eyes at her, while her apartment mate sat on the end of the bed and began rubbing the dog, who moved to her side, welcoming the unfettered attention.
“It’s terrible outside. But our building is safe. There’s no problem,” she reassured her older brother, Clark Lansing, who issued words of caution.
“Yes, my dear big brother, we’ll be very careful.” She hesitated when her only sibling interrupted. Then she spoke again.
“I know they’re worried. Tell them I’ve been trying to call. I’ll keep trying until I get through, okay?”
Morgan listened a moment longer, then said: “Yes…yes, I’ll be careful. Love you. Bye.” She stood after pushing the “off” button on the cell phone.
“Mom’s been trying to get me. Clark said if I would stay off the phone long enough, maybe they could get through.” She rolled her eyes.
“You know the cell towers must be melting down. They’ll get through,” Casandra Lincoln said, pulling gently at one of the rottweiler’s ears.
“Guess so,” Morgan said, again looking out the window before turning to face the girl. A feeling of gloom suddenly saturated her senses.
“I’ve been on this great job exactly one day, and now this. Cassie, what do you think this means…I mean, to our jobs?”
“Our jobs might be the least of our worries, according to all of the news guys,” Casandra said. “They’re saying we can expect there to be more attacks.”
Morgan considered the words. “Well, according to Mr. Cranston, the agency will be open for business tomorrow,” she said, again sitting on the bed beside the dog, who, standing between them with his chin resting on the bed, enjoyed the petting by both girls.
“Guess advertising must go on,” Morgan’s roommate said, then stood and walked to the bedroom door. She added, before leaving the room, “I don’t know, M, just got a funny feeling things won’t be the same after today.”
2:15 a.m. Wednesday, September 12
Casandra Lincoln was fitful in attempted sleep. Light from some unidentifiable source kept waking her while she tossed first onto her left side, then onto her right. They were only dreams … troubling dreams that kept pulling her to the surface of consciousness every few minutes, she thought, trying to see the amber numbers on the digital alarm clock.
“2:21,” she read, then plopped her head back into the hollowed-out place in the soft pillow. She raised her head and fluffed the old feather pillow that had been her faithful friend since childhood, then tried to settle again.
Noises from outside her window, emanating from the city that never slept, sounded strangely different while she drifted toward unconsciousness. The change brought her head up from the pillow, and she turned to try to hear the altered sound.
Growling. Very deep, and low in volume. Was it Jeddy?
The apartment door was locked, barred, and dead-bolted. The window–at this level, was protected from any intruder, unless he had Spiderman capabilities. The thoughts ran quickly through Casandra’s awakening brain. She sat upright, again craning her head to listen to the growl that came from Morgan’s room. She flipped the cover aside and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.
Finding her soft slippers on the floor, she stepped into them and stood, pausing to hear the growling noise that, this time, was louder than before.
Casandra moved cautiously to Morgan’s bedroom doorway in the semi darkness. The small apartment was lit only by the smoke-muted city lights that streamed in through the narrow spaces that surrounded the blinds and curtains of the window in her friend’s room.
Ch
ill bumps covered her arms and the back of her neck while her eyes tried to penetrate the darkness. She wanted to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. “Morgan.” But the name was only thought, not spoken.
She stepped inside the room and froze with terror when a threatening growl leaped from the rottweiler’s throat and trailed off to become a guttural sound that continued at a low, angry level with each breath the dog drew.
The animal stood on Morgan’s bed, facing Casandra. Its eyes glowed yellow within their sockets, surrounded by black, bristling fur that blended with the heavy shadows. Its snarling mouth curled tightly, the thick canine teeth gnashing slightly within its massive jowls while the growling continued. The dog’s muscles bulged while it bowed and stiffened in preparation for attack.
The faint light revealed Morgan’s form, but Casandra, her mind in panic mode, couldn’t take her eyes from the dog’s eyes and teeth, seeing the girl only through peripheral vision. A sudden movement to the right of the dog broke the transfixation. A black mass seemed to emerge from the lump in the bed that was Morgan Lansing’s body. The horrendous sight formed into the shape of a human-like being. The creature appeared to stand in the bed beside Morgan from the thighs up, but its bottom-most part penetrated the mattress, while its head turned toward Casandra. It moved through the mattress and box springs, emerging fully beside the bed near the wall with the window. The monstrous creature stood almost to the ceiling, its hideous round eyes glowing red while it stared at Morgan’s apartment mate. Then the humanoid mass leaped through the wall and was gone.
Casandra Lincoln’s senses darkened to unconsciousness in the moment of her collapse to the bedroom carpet.
Near Ketchum, Idaho, 5:24 p.m. September 13, 2001
He finally got through the phone maze created by the crisis in New York, after an hour of trying.
His sister was crying, and Clark Lansing strained to hear her words through the static of the cell phone against his left ear. He struggled with equal determination to see the road ahead.
“What happened to her?”
He stared hard through the brief openings created by the slapping windshield wipers, while he questioned Morgan.
“I don’t know, Clark. She was just lying there when I woke up.”
His sister’s words came between sobs.
“What does her doctor say?”
“They can’t figure out what caused her to collapse. Maybe a stroke, or something…”
“A stroke? At 24?”
“They really don’t know, yet,” Morgan said, managing to control her emotions. “One of the best neurologists in New York is running some tests.”
The cell reception broke apart, and then reconnected.
“You there, Morgan?” he said.
“Yes. I’m here.”
“Listen, Sis. We’ll likely lose the cell. If we do, I’ll call you as soon as I can, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Love you, Sis,” he said, listening for her response, but hearing none.
The rain slackened, and the road in the distance became visible again. His thoughts leaped ahead to his meeting with Jabard Sowell, the rancher he had contacted a week before. He questioned his own reasoning ability…driving through the barren reaches of Idaho in a raging storm, looking for Bigfoot. His little cabal–a close-knit group comprised of several classmates at the Princeton School of Journalism--would laugh him off the planet. Even if he got an interesting story from the back woods farmer-rancher, what could he do with it? What respectable publication would take a story on Bigfoot? Maybe the National Enquirer, or one of that sort. But not a respectable rag…
Something other than the quest for a paycheck drove him to investigate. He knew what that something was. The nightmares. They were so real that he could reach out and touch the creatures.
When he watched Sowell interviewed on the CBS documentary, hearing the rancher’s descriptions, he knew he must go to Idaho. Now, he would give Sowell a heads-up that he was within a few miles.
Daylight was in its final throes of extinguishing while the Ford Explorer topped the hill and rounded the curve on the narrow road. Clark reached to the console to retrieve the cell phone. He glanced at the piece of paper he held between his thumb and index finger against the padded steering wheel and started to push the buttons of the phone with his right thumb. His eyes darted between the note with Sowell’s phone number, the phone’s number pad, and the now sharply curving road.
Light burst with vision-debilitating brilliance. Instantly blinded, his right foot stomped the brake. He fought to control the steering wheel when the braking caused the front wheels to turn, the anti-lock system reacting to take control from the driver to assert command of the Explorer’s direction of travel. The right front tire hit the gravel just off the asphalt, and the vehicle fishtailed before straightening. Clark gained control and slid the Ford to a stop in a shallow ditch well off the roadway.
The thunderstorm had passed, and the headlight beams cut through the mist caused by the drizzle aftermath. Had it been a lightning strike? There had been no thunderclap such a burst should have caused.
Clark put the Explorer in reverse and tried to back up. The rear wheels spun, but the vehicle remained in place. He put the shift in drive, and the Ford’s rear wheels again spun without moving the vehicle.
He put it in park and opened the door, stepping onto the thick grass that covered the ditch. He examined the rear tires. They were stuck, almost to the top of the rims.
The front tires looked to be on solid ground, but the ditch’s surface, just beneath the grass, was obviously too soft to provide traction.
What had caused the burst of light? It couldn’t have been lightning. The storm had moved on, and he could no longer hear even the faintest hint of thunder.
He scanned the surroundings after retrieving a flashlight, shining the light around the area to look for some rocks, or logs –anything that could provide something to put beneath the tires.
When he stepped carefully through the soft terrain to the right side of the Explorer, he found what he needed. Stones, almost flat, and in a cluster. They should do the job.
He squatted and began gathering the stones between his left forearm and chest. A rustling noise caused him to look to the forested area further off the road.
He picked up the flashlight from the foot-high grass and aimed the beam into the trees. Small saplings fronted the larger, thicker-trunked varieties beyond. Clark moved the light’s beam slowly back and forth, his eyes straining to pierce the blackness.
Satisfied that the sound was only a normal noise of nature, he laid the light aside and again began picking up rocks. Holding as many as possible against his body with his left arm, he fetched the flashlight from the grass, stuffed it in his right pocket, and reached to get a few more stones he could hold in one hand against his stomach.
The Explorer’s lights beamed ahead through the fog-like mist, then he saw it. A dark, human form in the headlights!
“Who is it?!” Clark’s shouted question echoed but elicited no response. He dropped the stones and thrust the flashlight in the direction of the form, which had moved towards the forest, away from the vehicle’s beams.
“Who are you?!” he yelled again, searching with the flashlight to find whatever, whomever was watching him from the darkness of the wooded copse.
A high-pitched shriek from behind caused him to instinctively whirl around. The flashlight beam framed the thing in the distance. The nearly black human-shaped creature appeared huge, even from this distance of 100 feet. The thing stood erect, its massive head and shoulders rising and falling while it again shrieked.
Its face looked to be more than a foot wide and hosted a gaping mouth with fang-like canine teeth gnashing angrily. Fiery, orange-red eyes blinked and glared at him. Paralyzed with the shock of the beast’s threatening, Clark could do nothing but stare back. When he finally began shuffling with trepidation toward the thing to see what it was, it turned and, in
the next instant, could no longer be seen. It was as if it had simply vanished!
Chapter 2
Over the Atlantic, Sunday, September 2004
The government 737 moved at 590 MPH through the late-morning sky at 37,000 feet above the calm, cool Atlantic. Blake Robbins closed the cabin door and lifted the receiver to his ear.
“Yes sir?”
“Blake,” the familiar voice of the assistant to the secretary of defense, several times removed, said. “How’s the flight, so far?”
“Great, sir. Just fine.”
“Good! Good!”
There was silence for a moment, except for a muffled conversation, which Robbins took as George Jenkins talking to an assistant.
“Blake, I’m sorry I wasn’t available to personally brief you before your trip,” the covert operations director said, pausing again to issue orders of approval to an underling. He returned his attention to Robbins.
“But, we are secure with this phone, so thought I would give you a few thoughts.”
“Yes, sir,” Robbins acknowledged.
“The project, as you know, is set for a major test near the end of the month. The president is acutely interested in the results. I spoke with Mr. Rumsfeld, and he informs me that the man is counting on the R technology to perform to good effect against the enemy.”
An uncomfortable silence prodded Robbins to say something.
“Yes, sir. The techno--”
“And, we are all depending on you to convince those involved at Brussels of the importance of this effort,” Jenkins interrupted.
The younger man decided it best to say nothing, listening for Jenkins’ next words.
“The technology has worked at every level tried so far. But, we just don’t know how it is going to do at pinpointing and extracting the targets from these caves. So, I want to say again that the project peripherals have to be made to understand that we expect some unforeseen ramifications of this in-theater experimentation.”
