If God Doesn't Show

by R. Thomas Riley

  A tiger, but not like anything she’d ever seen at the zoo. This only projected a tiger’s shape. There were other features that didn’t belong on the animal. A scorpion’s tail lashed about, while its mane flowed with tentacles. She gasped as she recalled where she’d seen something similar. Her brother’s card collection. Corry always had weird tastes in books, movies and music, but the cards succeeded in completely freaking her out. The cards featured creatures of a fantasy world, but with major artistic privileges. Animals morphed with other animals to create these horrendous and freakish monsters. What she saw now was just like what she’d seen on the playing cards, except in shadowy outlines.

  Todd slid his finger up behind the trigger guard, and Samantha screamed. The vision had been brief. The hammer on the 9MM slowly cocked to the rear.

  “Don’t do this, Todd. Please don’t do this.”

  He relinquished his grip and tore open the cabin door, leaping out then lurching about the tarmac. His movements were erratic, and Sam had the feeling if he’d been on fire, he would move and writhe in the same frenetic manner. The roar of the blades filled the cabin and made it difficult for her to hear the radio, so she leaned over and swung the door shut. She started to latch the door, hesitated, then decided it was better to have Todd outside, rather than inside with her.

  Todd stopped stumbling about and stared right at her. His smile was bloody as he ran towards the helicopter. She sucked in a breath as she realized what he planned to do. It all happened so fast, there wasn’t any time for her to react. Todd leapt up on the side of the railing surrounding the helipad and perched there like some insane primate. In the flash of an eye, the shadow shoved him off the railing and directly into the whirring blades. The chopper shuddered as he disappeared in a cloud of blood and gore. The blades caught him just beneath the chin and flung his body backwards, as if an invisible chain yanked it.

  Across the way, a door swung open, and Jossart and Wells moved out onto the tarmac. They only just made it out as Todd leaped to his death. The back spray of his suicide spattered across the two men, bits of bluish white matter spackling Well’s suit. Sam watched Well’s face exhibit downright disgust as tried to brush the stuff off, but he succeeded in merely smearing the carnage across his chest. To their right, Sam saw something meaty smack into the wall, creating a weird kaleidoscope of bone, blood, and internal organs.

  Her attention was drawn to the rainbow that hovered in the air near the helicopter. She shuddered as she realized it was blood particles producing the colorful effect.

  The two men exchanged some communication, the younger tapping the older man on the shoulder and pantomiming he was going to approach the waiting helicopter. Wells nodded his understanding and disappeared back into the stairwell.

  Sam watched the man approaching and tensed in preparation to lift off. He seemed normal looking enough, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. She realized Todd’s body probably hadn’t damaged the blades, but she wasn’t anxious to fly the helicopter and find out if her hunch was correct. She wracked her brain. Sure, there had been instances of blades killing someone, but had the blades been damaged to the point of making the craft unable to fly? She wasn’t sure.

  The man indicated he was friendly, and Sam decided to take the chance. As the man pulled open the canopy door, though, she leveled her pistol on him.

  “What’s your name?” she called over the roar of the helicopter.

  “Jossart, Park Police. I’m cool, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Where’s everyone else?”

  Jossart turned and waved to Wells. “We wanted to make sure you were kosher before everyone came out. Where’s your copilot?”

  “You’re wearing him.”

  “Oh.” Jossart grimaced.

  Archer helped Carling up the stairs. She was still a bit woozy and the going was slow.

  In front of them, President Wendell glanced back. “Patricia, just a few more feet. We’ll be in the air soon, back to the airport and Air Force One.”

  She glanced up and smiled. Archer didn’t like how shaky the smile seemed on her face. Her eyes were glazed, in addition to the nice goose egg on her forehead. Probably from the shock, but it could be more serious. She could have a concussion. Archer would rest easier when they got back to Air Force One and medical could check her out.

  0928 – Stairwell

  “I heeeeaaaar yooooouuuu!”

  Archer glanced over the railing. A few flights down, Augustson lumbered up the stairs. Only his hand was visible in the dimly lit stairwell. The red emergency lights cast an eerie glow. Jossart appeared at the top of the stairs. Wells took hold of Wendell’s arm and led him out of the stairwell, while a misshapen shadow crawled on the stairs. Archer caught it moving and his heart fluttered. He grit his teeth.

  “Jossart! Take care of Carling. I’ve got to take care of something else,” he ordered, his voice cold. How the hell is he still alive? Must be another one of those shadowy things. They don’t give up, do they?

  He turned and started back down the stairs as he pulled his pistol. “Augustson, you come any farther and I will be forced to fire on you.”

  His warning was greeted with jeering laughter. What sinister force was at work here? Archer thought fiercely about what was going on, but try as he might, he wasn’t coming up with an explanation to fit the current circumstances. If this was terror related, why were some people affected and not others. Why wasn’t he affected?

  He shuddered as he recalled what Wayteck had said. At first, when the Secretary of Defense referred to the DPRK, it hadn’t registered, but now it did—Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea. Archer had taken a few political science classes at night, but he didn’t need those to know what horror North Korea had just unleashed. By now, China may have leapt at the opportunity to launch, and who knew what other countries would gleefully join the party. Had whatever affected this side of the world caused the Koreans to launch?

  It’s the shadows. This isn’t man made. He stopped and considered the thought. He wasn’t a religious man now, but had been raised as one. Thaddeus had a difficult time associating the world with any type of sentient God, much less the one from the Bible. After God let his wife’s brain slowly eat away her sanity, which forced her to leave him, Thaddeus and the Man upstairs hadn’t been much on speaking terms.

  Archer glanced at his watch. Any minute now, nukes could be striking the coasts. He’d heard Wendell give the order for COGCON 1: Continuity of Government Alert Conditions. This program emulated the DEFCONs of the national security community, and was achieved through a series of alerts via BlackBerry and pager to key officials. COGCON 1, the highest level of preparedness, required each department and agency to have at least one person in its chain of command, and sufficient staffing at alternate operating facilities to perform essential functions.

  More clattering came from below as the immediate threat approached. Archer loathed the possibility of having to fire on a fellow agent, but Augustson posed a clear and present danger to the president.

  It felt good stepping back into his old job. A pang of regret stabbed his gut as he realized this was only temporary. It was funny all the random thoughts that went through his head in the space of a few seconds. He’d likely have to fire on a fellow agent, and here he was thinking about his job and the family he lost.

  The stairwell went silent.

  Melendez! Thaddeus had completely forgotten about the man. The lapse in memory troubled him. It came back now, like a feather blown along with the breeze. As they’d been preparing to head for the helicopter pad, the garage filled with the sounds of the approaching mob. They’d all headed for the stairway, when Melendez stopped. “I can’t leave him for them,” he’d called, and headed back towards the parked SUV.

  Thaddeus would’ve stopped the man, but the Secretary leaned on him, and the president was already in the stairwell. He had figured Melendez could take care of himself. Thaddeus carefully
peered over the side.

  “Melendez?”

  A bullet whistled by mere millimeters from his face. Stunned, he jerked his head back and cursed. “Melendez can’t come to the phone at the moment, if you’d kindly leave a message.” Again the chilling laughter drifted up. “My, my, that sure was close, wasn’t it?”

  So the dead can operate weapons? Archer thought. How the hell are we supposed to fight against something like that? Think I’d prefer terrorists right now.

  Jossart called out from above. “Everyone’s secure, Arch.”

  Another shot rang out. The sound was deafening in the confined space. Archer heard the distinctive snick of a gun sliding from leather with a clarity that was uncanny, despite the ringing in his ears from the percussive blast of Augustson’s wild shots. He chanced a glimpse over the railing. Augustson was closer than he realized, but he wasn’t looking in Archer’s direction.

  A hulking shadow drifted a few feet in front of the agent, pulling the man up the stairs. The air in the stairway seemed to contract. The chattering, just below the cusp of hearing, exploded into loud chaos. Augustson cried out as blood leaked from his ears.

  An intense rage engulfed Archer’s senses. He wanted to shoot something, anything. The shadow opened its mouth and screamed, and the sound was unlike anything Archer had ever heard. A cross between a chicken and a tiger was as close as he could come to describing it. What he saw in the thing’s mouth was a whole other world. It was like looking through an open window. The shadow expanded, and then seemed to swallow itself.

  Augustson cried out as the shadow exploded, rather than dissipating like the shadows before. The explosion flung the man back down the stairs. The crack of his neck ruptured the silence.

  “What was that?” Archer reached up and wiped the blood from his nose and ears.

  As quickly as the rage passed over him, it dissipated, as if it were never there.

  * * *

  Something felt different, but Archer couldn’t put a finger on it. First, there was the silence. No place was ever this silent. He glanced up the stairs and saw Jossart approaching him. Blood leaked from both his ears and from his nose as well. He reached up and felt wetness on his own face. His hand came back dark with blood. Slowly, the sound returned. It was like someone was raising the volume on a TV.

  “You, OK?” Jossart placed a hand on Archer’s shoulder.

  “I think so. How about you? What happened?”

  “You know, I used to work on a carrier,” Jossart said. “What we just felt? That’s what a sonic boom feels like.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep, but now? It’s too quiet. You feel it too?”

  Archer nodded, and peered down over the railing into the darkness of the stairwell. It was empty. “I’ve got to go check.”

  “I’ll tag along.” Jossart smiled. “Ain’t like I’m doing anything else.”

  “You got any family?” Thaddeus asked.

  “None I still talk to.” Jossart grunted as he trained his weapon down the stairwell and began his descent. He paused and his shoulders slumped. “Things are different now…”

  “Yeah,” Archer agreed, and then sucked in a breath. The door at the bottom of the stairwell was propped open a few inches. He could only see a sliver of basement, but it was enough. The bodies were stacked against the door like cordwood. It looked like someone tossed a grenade amongst the crowd. No, more like a rocket launcher exploded. Splattered against the walls and ceiling like black paint was what was left of the shadows.

  “Oh, man,” Jossart muttered as he looked over Archer’s shoulder.

  “They can be killed.” Thaddeus started back up the stairwell as fast as he could take the steps. “Let’s get out of here.”

  0945 – Heliport-Roof

  Neil Marlstone Wendell, Leader of the Free World, grimaced as the percussive sound wave washed over him. He glanced over at Carling, and wanted to straddle her lap and choke the life out of her. He curled his hands around her throat, and then paused in confusion.

  “What are you doing?” Carling tried to free herself from Wendell’s grip. She coughed and rubbed her neck as he sat back in his seat.

  One second he’d been checking her head to make sure she was fine. The next, he’d put his hands around her neck and started choking her. He looked at her. No, he looked through her, as if she wasn’t there.

  “Neil! What’s the matter with you?”

  He pulled his hands back as if her neck were hot to the touch.

  “I-I-I…I don’t know.”

  Melissa sat across from them. She’d brought her hand to her mouth in horror as she’d witnessed the president lunge at the secretary and begin to throttle her. Wendell moved to comfort her, and she cringed from his touch.

  They all glanced towards the door, as what sounded like shots rang out from the stairwell where Jossart disappeared a few moments before. The shots were hard to hear over the roar of the helicopter, but they all were fairly certain they’d been shots.

  In front, Sam turned around and fixed Wendell with a hard stare. “Mr. President, no disrespect, but what just happened?”

  “You all felt that? That blast?”

  The SAT phone rang in Melissa’s hand. She quickly brought it to her ear. “Yes? One moment… It’s for you.”

  Wendell took the phone. “Yes? What was that, Wayteck? It felt sonic or something. What? Oh my god. Are you sure?”

  “He’s close,” Wendell heard Carling whisper. “He’s so close…”

  Wendell held up a hand. “Who else has launched? And they hit the island? Travis, I…a few minutes ago, about that time, something happened. We felt a blast—like a sonic boom. Right, you felt it there as well…was it related to the strike?”

  Melissa screamed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Seven Hours Ago

  Airborne

  Fires dotted the landscape below them as Sam made for the airport. She hadn’t been able to reach anyone at the airport, but President Wendell and Archer still made the decision to head for it. What choice did they really have? If things didn’t look right, they wouldn’t land, but would continue on as far as they could. After that? Nobody wanted to think things through that far just yet.

  The thing making Sam nervous was the lack of people on the ground. She’d been flying for five minutes now, low enough to read street signs on the overpasses, but not a single person was to be found. At least, not a living one. Bodies littered the streets like toys in a rebellious child’s play room. Strewn about this way and that, the placement of the corpses had no rhyme or reason. It was as if they’d dropped where they stood and exploded. The air was thick with black dust.

  At first, Sam worried the stuff might clog the turbines, but it seemed it was too fine to do so. She recalled her father telling her stories about his time in the Philippines, back in the early 90s, when Mt. Pinatubo erupted. The ash had wreaked havoc with the planes in the air, and he’d worked ten hours to redirect all the planes on his scope, at Clark Air Base, to safety elsewhere. The black dust in the air reminded her of that. Her father was the reason she was a pilot, and he’d instilled the love of flight early. She choked back a sob as she wondered where he was at this moment. Had he survived? As with most parents and children, the years had created a distance between them, and she hadn’t noticed until it was too late and the gap was too big. They’d talked when they could, but it wasn’t the same closeness as before.

  “You OK?” Wells asked from beside her.

  She glanced over quickly, as if she’d been caught doing something untoward, and offered a weak smile. “I’m fine.” She sighed with relief. For a second, she was unsure if her voice would serve her.

  “Didn’t think I’d be fighting for my life when I got out of bed this morning,” Wells hesitated and then pressed on, “Or sitting next to such a pretty woman.”

  Sam fixed him with a stare. It was neither warm nor cold—just there. Wells quickly avoided eye contact with her and turned tow
ard the window. She noticed the slight blush to his face. She smirked then thought it was a bit sweet if not vulnerable.

  He flinched as Sam reached over and placed a warm hand on one of his. His hand was dangerously close to his crotch, which meant her hand was as well. Immediately, he began to harden. Sam laughed and removed her hand.

  “No harm, no foul?” she asked. “If we get out of this in one piece, how’s dinner sound?”

  Wells turned to face her, and Sam was glad to see he made an effort to look at her face and not anywhere else. “You serious?”

  “No.” Sam kept her face blank. “I’m just getting your hopes up.” She laughed. “Seriously, you will take me out to dinner after this is all over.”

  “Here we go,” Wells said and pointed out the window.

  Ahead, the airport came into view.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Six Hours Ago

  Airport

  The SAT phone chirped inside the case that also contained the Football. Woodard removed the outer black, leather covering and Thaddeus, who’d never seen the actual case until now in person, thought the silver inner case was the most ominous object he’d ever laid eyes on. Not just because of what was contained within (the power to destroy most of the world) but how it looked. Cold, lifeless steel reflected Woodard’s stony expression. Major Woodard calmly opened it, and offered the phone to President Wendell.

  Archer pulled the cell from his belt and checked its reception. Two bars.

  “You think it’ll ever ring again?”

  Archer jumped at Wendell’s voice. He quickly replaced the phone and sighed. “Someday.”