CHAPTER FOURTEEN
April
26, 2003? Maybe 27th?
Maggie
said that she had a hiding place just inside the town limits. A place
where she could wait for them to come again, and hide until she could
do good. Maggie was planning a counter attack for ten years.
It took
some doing to find it, but we had all night. And the night was
lasting a long time.
Believe
it or not: That was the low point. My family had come back to
themselves properly while we searched, and suddenly realized that
something was happening. We had to tell them the story five times.
Zack's dad wanted to build a fire at least, to warm up a bit. We
stopped him, not willing to start a fire. My dad didn't believe it at
first, but we were close enough to Town that he could see the
buildings burning. Eventually, he believed we were not insane. Mom
thought it was a bad joke and demanded over and over that we stop it.
Not one
of them was willing to take our word for it. Not one of them was...
It's
wrong to focus on this after everything that's happened tonight, but
they all seemed mad at us for some reason. It's not like I was
expecting a parade, but some comment from our families that we'd been
brave about it... An admission from my dad that threatening to have
me committed was a bad call. A perfectly understandable one, I'll
grant you, but still.
The only
coherent thing Mom said, once she stopped telling me to quit with the
cruel joke, was to ask where Ben was.
The
search took almost five hours, but we found Maggie's shack
eventually, but the Saucers had apparently found it first. It was a
smoking ruin.
Pierce
suggested we go back to his fishing shack. It wasn't far, and the
Saucers had found it too; but we picked through the rubble enough to
find two backpacks. Mine and Jess'. It was enough to get some clean
clothes, a little food and my Journal back. And then we drove a good
distance away from even the ruin of the shack, and waited.
We had
nowhere else to go for a while. We just sat around the Van and
listened to the sound of explosions in the distance. Once it became
clear the sun wasn't coming up, mom believed. It was scary. She sort
of... caved in on herself... I don't know what she was looking at,
but it wasn't us.
Zack's
dad said little, but the way he looked at me... I wasn't sure if he
wanted to salute me, or blame me for what happened to Zack. He
believed us faster than any of the others. I think he knew that I
would never make a joke of something happening to his son.
Marie's
parents were so much like her, or I suppose I should say that she was
like them. They were unflappable, at least to us, but Marie later
confided to me that they weren't handling it as well as we thought.
They stayed close together, and didn't like it when Marie came over
to talk to me or Pierce.
And
Pierce was acting the same way he did in his cell. A tiger pacing the
cage. He didn't want to stay with us, and we could all see it. I
think only Marie and I knew why.
His
father was still out there somewhere.
~oo00oo~
The adults all stayed in the
back of the van, still a little woozy, and some of them still
expecting it to be a dream.
Pierce was outside the van
with his father's shotgun, keeping watch, pacing around. Jake and
Marie stayed in the cab of the Van, dozing in and out as the
adrenaline faded.
Jake's father came up to the
sliding panel in the van to take a look out the front windshield.
"What time is it?"
"Don't bother with your
watch." Jake said without looking. "According to my clock,
the sun should have come up sixteen hours ago."
Boom.
In the distance, there was the sound of an explosion.
His mother shifted behind
them. "Jake? What about Ben?" She croaked. "What
happened to Ben?"
Jake felt kicked in the
stomach, yet again. Marie's hand rested gently on his shoulder,
offering what comfort she could as they looked out the windshield to
the world outside.
"I failed him."
Jake said softly.
Marie's touch on his
shoulder tightened, and she pulled the door beside her open.
"Outside." She said shortly, pulling him along behind her.
They stepped out of the van
and Marie took the gun off Pierce. "Beat it." She told him
simply.
Pierce read the situation
instantly. "Yes ma'am." He quickly made his way to the
Driver's side door and climbed in, leaving them alone.
Boom.
Another explosion, echoing from far away.
Marie led him by the hand a
little ways from the Police Van and sat down. Jake did the same. "I
can't handle this if you lose it." She said softly. "I'm
the reason that Zack came back to town with us, and it all happened,
and we're here now... and if you fall apart, so will I."
Jake scrubbed his face with
his hands and nodded. "My brother went with them willingly, my
best friend... and Jess."
Marie said nothing. "It's
been a long night, in more ways than one."
Boom.
The explosions were far enough away that they could almost think it
was thunder.
Jake looked over at her and
smiled. "You had a lot of opportunities to say I-told-you-so
about Jess, and you didn't take them. Thank you for that."
Marie chuckled. "I
remember once I lost my favorite doll, out on a school trip. I went
running into my kitchen, tears rolling down my face and begged mom to
tell me where she was... Mom said she was so sorry I lost Dolly, but
if I hadn't taken her everywhere with me, I probably wouldn't have
lost her."
Jake snorted. "Gotta
love parents. No matter how bad your day, they can still add a little
guilt on top of everything."
Marie slid over and laid her
head on his shoulder. "You saved my life and my family tonight,
Jake. I can't bring myself to say 'I-told-you-so' about any of it."
She yawned. "Besides, I just meant she was shallow, I didn't
think she would work with aliens from Planet X to abduct our whole
town."
Jake looked at Marie. Marie
looked at Jake... And they both burst into hysterical mirthless
laughter. It was harsh and painful and tears were steaming down their
faces by the end of it, but eventually they settled.
Boom.
Another blast, and both of them looked back toward their town. Too
far to tell which building had been hit, too far below the horizon to
see the blast. "What's happening back there?" Marie
murmured to herself.
"I don't want to know."
Jake sighed.
"I really miss Zack."
She confessed after a while. "And I know you do too."
Jake nodded, eyes red.
"Yeah. I feel like I should have been able to..."
"This isn't a movie,
Jake." Marie said gently. "The plucky teenagers save the
world from an alien invasion? That's more far-fetched than aliens to
begin with. We never really stood a chance. But we saved our
families, and we lived, and that's not such a bad thing."
"Guess not." Jake
admitted.
And then the world went
pitch black. The sky went from and eerie green to a deep darkness. No
moon, no stars, no lights of any kind. They both froze, unable to see
anything, not even each other.
"Jake?" Marie
whispered, and Jake put a hand out, feeling for her. She did too, and
they quickly gripped one another by the arms. A moment later the
Police Van's headlights lit up, almost blinding them, but guiding
them back.
~oo00oo~
When the
Aurora vanished, the explosions stopped, and Mr Washington suggested
we go back to town. He said that it was probably over.
He was
right. The whole town was gone. All of it. Every house. Every
building. The streetlights were all off, the roads drew a grid around
row after row of burning wreckage. Every house had been destroyed.
Aside
from billowing smoke, nothing was moving. Not a single sign of anyone
remained. Curtis Creek was gone. Nothing but rubble.
I
remember being very still. Nobody said anything, but I could hear
sobbing from the back seat.
And
then, the final indignity: Jess' house was the only one still
standing. We went there, almost hoping to find her cowering under her
bed. No such luck. The place was empty.
~oo00oo~
"How
did you know this place would still be here?" Marie asked
Pierce.
"Just
a guess. I figured being a collaborator had its perks." Pierce
said plainly. "Jess volunteered before we started hearing
explosions."
"Wonder
where she is." Jake commented.
"You
can ask that about a lot of people. Jess, her family, Mayor Grady..."
Pierce bit his lip. His tone was leading. "And my dad."
"You're
going after him, aren't you?" David Colbert spoke from the
couch. Deanna didn't wake up, still shuddering weakly as her husband
stroked her hair.
"I
am." Pierce nodded. He sent a glance at Jake and Marie. "Sooner
or later, there'll be a reckoning. Dad helped both sides, and both
because he wanted to protect me. As a lawman, I don't know where that
puts him, or me... but I have to find him." He glanced at the
five adults, and glanced at Jake and Marie. "Your families are
here. Mine ain't."
Everyone
made their goodbyes and the Sheriff's son left them.
Jake and
Marie walked him out, and kept an eye on the vehicle until it was out
of sight. The Saucers had done their work well. They had not seen a
single vehicle of any kind. Every car, Jeep, Truck, 4X4,
Motorcycle... everything had been destroyed. Jake and Marie were left
standing on the front step of the only house they could see that
hadn't been burned to the ground.
"For what it's
worth..." He said finally. "You were right about Jess."
"You said that
already." Marie commented quietly.
"I don't mean tonight,
I mean what you were talking about days ago. If I had my head on
straight, I would have seen it too. When you asked me what she
brought out in me? The answer was... nothing. I told myself she was
something more than she was, but she didn't change and neither did I.
And I think that if Pierce hadn't been an idiot, I'd still just be
helping her with her homework. I was... convenient to her."
Marie nodded. "My mom
told me once that everyone goes through a relationship like that at
some point in their lives."
"Forgive me?"
"For what?"
"For not listening to
you when I had the chance. Or anyone else, for that matter. You, Dad,
even Pierce warned me." Jake said. "But you and Zack? Your
opinion means everything to me. I have no idea what I was thinking."
"She's blonde and
popular and pretty, Jake. What you were thinking is not that hard to
define." Marie drawled.
"No, I suppose not."
Jake snorted at his own foolishness. "Marie? You remember what
it was like in there?"
"It's possible I may
never be able to forget."
"They had most everyone
I know in that place." He started counting on his fingers.
"Jess, Sheriff Tanner, Mayor Grady... They're collaborators.
That's three. Our families, minus Ben, plus the two of us? That's
nine total. Pierce makes ten. Twelve if the Spacemen decide to honor
their end of the deal and give Jess her parents back."
"I've been thinking the
same thing. Those ten-maybe-twelve people are probably all that's
left of this entire town." Marie nodded. "What are you
going to do when you see them again?"
"What are you going to
do?" He asked her. "What will they
do now?"
"Honest to God, I don't
know." Marie admitted.
They sat together on the
porch swing, arms around each other, breathing slowly as the seconds
ticked by in the endless night. They had been through a war together,
against things they had no conception of, and though they had lost
all their friends to the menace, they had seen each other through.
Endless night. Jake
thought suddenly. Then
why is the horizon... A
spike of fear went through him. The light was growing brighter in the
distance. Not a green glow, a brighter one, paler and clearer.
The Ship coming back? A
searchlight? He
thought, feeling his heart race.
"What is it?"
Marie asked softly, feeling him tense. He pulled away from her and
went over to the edge of the porch, peering into the distance.
"Look." Jake said
finally, beyond exhausted. "Sun's coming up."
~oo00oo~
Deciding to go out to the
edge of town was the easy part. Getting our families to be okay with
it was much harder. They flatly forbade us to go back, but
truthfully, I didn't much care what they said. That sounds worse than
it is. We'd decided to investigate, we'd decided to fight back, we'd
gone into the Town Hall and an Alien Spaceship and back out again,
all without their permission. Or their help. In fact, most of what we
did was over their objections. I didn't realize it until just now,
but we took on an Alien Invasion all by ourselves.
We didn't have a working
car left, but we weren't in any hurry. About halfway there, we found
a couple of bicycles, and the twisted remains of their owners by the
road. The bikes still worked, and Marie and I took them.
It wasn't until we were
halfway there that I suddenly realized. To get out of town, we'd have
to go to the Bridge... past the cornfield.
~oo00oo~
The two of them pedaled, not
saying much to each other.
The Bridge was the closest
point on the Dead Zone that they could reach, and the fastest way to
find out whether or not it was really over.
They were halfway there when
they saw someone walking down the road. Two people. Without having to
talk about it, they both skidded their bikes off the street, and hid
in the long grass. Outside of town, it often grew out of control for
weeks, even months at a time, making a decent hiding place.
But as the two people passed
by, Jake couldn't help himself. It was Mr and Mrs Connolly. Jess'
Parents. Jake jumped up and shouted over to them. "HEY!"
The Connolly's both spun,
startled. "Jake?"
Jake went running up to
them. "What happened?" He demanded of them. "Where's
Jess?!"
"That was going to be
our question to you." Mr Connolly growled. "We were driving
away from town, our wheels hit the Bridge and... Then suddenly we
were on foot. What the hell happened to the Bridge? Did the structure
collapse on our truck?"
Marie interrupted them
carefully. "Is that all you remember?"
Mrs Connolly had realized by
this point that something unexpected had happened. "Kids, tell
us what happened. Obviously we missed something. Is Jess all right?"
Jake and Marie traded an
eloquent look. There's
an interesting question.
Jake told Marie without saying anything.
Not the time. Marie
shook her head a little. Aloud, she returned her attention to Jess'
parents. "Go home. You know the address, and yours is the only
house left in town still standing. You'll find our families there,
they'll give you the broad points. We're looking for Jess now, as a
matter of fact."
"What do you mean 'the
only house still standing'?" Mr Connolly demanded. "What
the hell is going on?"
"Mr Connolly?"
Jake interrupted. "At the Bridge... is the mist gone?"
"Yes, as a matter of
fact. How long were we... unconscious?" The last word came out
as a question. "I don't really know..."
"I know exactly how you
feel." Jake nodded, picking up his bike. He sent Marie a look.
"We gotta get to the Bridge before they do. She and Pierce are
the only two people in town with working vehicles."
Marie got the point
instantly and grabbed her own bike.
"By the way..."
Jake said to Jess' father. "I think I should take this
opportunity to end the suspense: I'm not
interested in dating your daughter."
~oo00oo~
They weren't the only
people we saw as we rode on toward the Bridge. In fact there were
dozens of people slowly walking their way back into town. It was
Marie that realized who they were. It was the Search Teams. The ones
that had gone out looking for Jess' family. They had been returned to
us too.
That wasn't our problem.
Our problem was that we were heading for the Bridge.
~oo00oo~
They both came to a stop as
the valley full of corn came into view.
"Is it me, or does it
look a whole lot meaner?" Marie asked quietly.
The corn was waving in the
breeze, and Jake shivered, though it wasn't that cold. The wall of
mist was gone. The closer they got to the Bridge, the clearer it
became that the long siege was over, or at least, less visible. Jake
slowed a little as they got closer, remembering the 'night' before.
The Police Van that Pierce
had taken was parked a good distance away from the valley, and they
both braked to a stop beside it. There was nobody inside. Jake fished
around in the glove box came came up with a pair of binoculars.
He looked through them,
scanning the cornfield and the Bridge out of town. There was still a
visible bit of wreckage hanging down from the Bridge, and the ashes
of their bonfire from an eternity ago was still there.
"This is where it all
started." Jake commented. "For us, at least. It feels like
such a long time ago." He waved at the valley. "And all the
animals coming out of the cornfield doesn't help."
"Well, we know it
wasn't just people getting snatched by the Dead Zone." Marie
commented. "I expected more people coming out though..."
"I think..." Jake
bit his lip. "The Connolly's woke up where they vanished. My
guess is that you come back in where you went out. If we went down to
the Creek, I bet we'd find Janice Mitchell wandering around in a
daze."
At that moment, there was a
distant gunshot, coming from the Bridge.
Jake and Marie traded a
quick look, and immediately started pedaling toward it. "I can
remember a time we would be running away
from gunshots." Marie hissed over at him.
"So can I. It was
yesterday." Jake hissed back.
Nevertheless, they put all
their speed into getting to the Bridge. Jake saw the twisted remains
of his own bike, still leaning against the structure. He could see
the place where he'd hidden, getting the infamous pictures, and the
part of the Bridge that had collapsed, sending him into the valley
below. There was still enough of it intact to drive across.
And parked at the edge of
the Bridge, almost out of the town, was the truck they had caught a
glimpse of while they were escaping the Town Hall the night before.
It sat empty, with a bullet-hole through the windshield, and one of
the tires shot out.
Jess, Mayor Grady, and the
Sheriff were all handcuffed to the truck's front bumper... And Pierce
was standing guard over them.
Pierce gave them a cocky
grin. "Hey. Look what I found."
The adults had the good
sense to keep quiet, but the second she saw them coming, Jess tried
to jump up without moving. "Jake? I'm sorry-"
Marie cut her off. "Shut
up, Jess."
Jake was pointedly looking
away from the blonde young woman. "So, what did we miss?"
Pierce slung the shotgun
across his shoulder and filled them in. "Well, I figured if all
the buildings were gone, then there would be no reason for these guys
to stick around. When the sun suddenly came back, I saw people
walking out of the distance like something out of a horror movie and
I freaked out a bit... until I realized that I knew who they all
were."
Jess interrupted him. "If
they're the people who went into the Dead Zone, then-"
"Shut up, Jess."
Pierce warned her, and resumed his story. "Anyway, I figured the
Bridge is important to us because it's the fastest way out of town,
and also the place where the Aliens show up, so I came here first. I
parked a ways up the street and kept watch. More people emerged here
too. It was the search teams that didn't come back."
"Yeah." Jake
nodded. "We saw The Connolly's."
Jess spoke up instantly.
"You did?! Where?!"
"SHUT UP, JESS!"
Everyone yelled at her, and she shrank a little under their wrath.
"Anyway, none of them
had a clue what had happened, so I played along, pretended I didn't
have a clue either. Most of them split up, heading in different
directions. A lot of them were coming in from the farms around the
outside of the Dead Zone, so they went back the way they came... And
I stayed here. About half an hour passed, and the Three Stooges here
showed up. They were heading across the Bridge, and I stopped them
before they could get far."
"Trying to get out
before what was left of the town came after you, huh?" Marie
commented to Mayor Grady. "I guess this wasn't in the plan."
Grady said nothing, unable
to meet her gaze.
Sheriff Tanner met her
accusations easily. "I worked for them, and then I didn't any
more. Because of that, my son came out the other side safe and sound.
Whatever that means for me, I'm fine with it."
Silence.
"What do we do with
them?" Pierce asked finally. "I mean, it's not like we can
lock them up at the cells in Town Hall any more. And if we try to
take them to the Courthouse, we'd have to... Well, explain this whole
thing, and I doubt we'd convince anyone of anything."
Jake sighed. "Let them
go."
"What?" Marie,
Pierce, Grady and Jess all blurted in open shock.
Jake waved around. "If
they're not leaving town, where are they going? He asked. "Sheriff,
you want to know what happens next? You keep these two close until we
sort this out."
The Sheriff nodded, eyes on
his son. Pierce was not particularly forgiving.
Marie scowled and unlocked
Jess' cuffs. "Everything works out for you, doesn't it?"
She sneered quietly to Jess. "You got your family back intact,
your house is the only one left standing... You stayed in my house,
ate my food, begged us for help, then you turned traitor, got Zack
killed, shot at us... and you got everything
you wanted."
Jess looked past Marie to
Jake, who still refused to look at her. "Not everything."
She said quietly.
Marie held out a hand and
Jess took it, standing up. A moment later, Marie slugged her hard
across the jaw, and Jess was knocked flat on her rear, seeing stars.
Pierce and Jake let out a chorus of catcalls in response. Marie stood
over Jess, glaring so hard the blonde recoiled further into the dirt.
"That
was for Zack."
Pierce looked to Jake.
"How'd you ever let this one get away?"
"This from the man who
got shot down by Jess?" Jake shot back.
Marie came over and took the
shotgun off Pierce. "Now get outta here!" She yelled at the
three prisoners. "Start walking. Better yet, RUN!" She
fired a blast in the air over their heads, and the three of them took
off running toward the town.
Leaving Jake, Marie and
Pierce alone at the Bridge.
"The mist is gone."
Pierce offered. "We have the only working cars and trucks for a
hundred miles. I say we go for it."
"Go where?" Marie
asked him practically.
The three of them sat there
for a while. None of them wanted to go back to the ruins of their
home, none of them wanted to leave their families behind.
After a while, they started
hearing engines again. Coming from the other side of the Bridge. They
all spun at the first hint of noise, suddenly feral. Fear had made
them suspicious, paranoid, lethal.
"Who the hell is that?"
Pierce snarled, taking the shotgun off Marie. They could see a cloud
of dust coming up the road.
"I don't know."
Marie told him, sliding up against the bridgework.
"Fight or flight,
Jake?" Pierce asked quickly, as the sound of engines grew
louder.
Jake hesitated. "They're
coming from outside of town... and on the ground. That hasn't
happened all week: I say we stick around."
And so the three of them
stood in the middle of the Bridge, as though standing guard.
Very quickly, the oncoming
vehicle became visible. It wasn't one truck, it was twelve. Five
Humvees, five troop carriers, one supply truck, and bringing up the
rear, an armored truck. All of them wore the colors of the US
Military.
"Well." Jake said
in an oddly thin voice. "We were wondering who to call."
The lead vehicle pulled up
to a halt at the end of the Bridge, and the passenger side door
opened. A man in uniform, clearly the one in charge stepped out of
the Humvee, and took them all in with one long, slow glance. Three
teenagers, a damaged Bridge, Pierce with a shotgun, Jake covered in
cuts and burn marks, and a truck with a bullethole through the
windshield behind them. "Morning. You kids wouldn't happen to be
from Curtis Creek, would you?"
They said nothing,
uncertain.
The soldier leveled a steely
gaze at them all. "Colonel Connor Yates, United States Marine
Corp. I've been assigned to investigate what happened here, to see if
we can figure out what happened to Curtis Creek that put you all out
of contact."
Jake smirked, just a little.
"That... is something of a long story."
"Give me the short
version."
Jake sighed. "Aliens
invaded our town."
"Aliens, huh?"
Colonel Yates took that in for a moment, and burst out laughing.
"That's the stupidest thing I ever heard."
The guy behind him started
laughing too. And there they were, a few kids just barely out of a
war, and the first authority figure they could possibly trust was
laughing in their faces. Jake just stared at him. So did Marie.
Pierce looked ready to shoot the man, but there were a few military
vehicles close by to change his mind. They just stared at him, with
dull, exhausted eyes.
"Jake?" Marie
whispered. "His driver..."
Jake looked past the Colonel
to the Humvee he'd stepped out of. The kid behind the wheel did look
familiar. He was staring at Marie and Jake with a disturbing
intensity, his jaw hanging open.
Colonel Yates looked back at
his Humvee, and saw it too. "Private, front and centre."
The young soldier quickly
opened the door and came out to join them. Jake got a closer look at
him, and was more certain than ever that they had met before... and
then he noticed the soldier's name tag, sewn over his heart. Private
D. Gunn.
"Doug?" Jake
whispered. "Dougie Gunn?"
"Yeah..." The
soldier whispered. "Yeah, Jake; it's me..."
Doug Gunn was now full
grown, wearing a uniform, had apparently gone through basic training
already...
"Missing time."
Marie whispered. "That's why the sun didn't... Oh God, Doug...
how long?"
Doug was still staring,
almost crying. "Found you at the cornfields..." He
whispered. "Like you found me."
Marie nodded. Jake and
Pierce were still gaping. Yates was looking back and forth between
them, weighing up what he was seeing.
"Doug, answer her."
Jake pressed, terrified of the answer. "How long have we all
been in the dark?"