Nemesis: Box Set: Books 1 - 3 (3 page)

T
he heat woke Michael
.

Before he even opened his eyes, he felt the sweat on his brow. His whole sleeping bag felt like he had rolled too close to the fire, perhaps even dangerously close. He turned over and looked, but the fire was dead, not even any ash smoldering between the rocks. So then why was he so hot? It was fall and quickly turning to winter, yet he could feel sweat sticking his shirt to his skin.

He unzipped the bag and climbed out, standing up and looking across the field. None of the other fires still burned, but the moonlight illuminated a few other people sleeping, some with bags, some just wrapped in old blankets. Nothing he saw could explain the heat though, and it wasn’t just in his sleeping bag. The air out here was hot, uncomfortably so.

Michael turned around, looking at the whole field, trying to find something that could account for the temperature. Nothing. The place was dark and the air more or less still.

He turned his head upward, without any real reason.

His mouth opened an inch or two without him knowing. He’d never seen anything like it before, nothing so beautiful. A shooting star moving across the sky, fire covering it and streaming out behind before dying in the atmosphere, unable to find anything that would continue its life. He stared, a part of him thinking that he should wake the others, but unable to actually pull himself away. The fire burned blue, hotter than anything he had seen in the bonfire earlier that night, probably hotter than anything he had ever witnessed before. It moved with an almost paradoxical intensity and stillness—traveling at untold speeds, yet silent as it passed through the night air.

“Hey,” he said, not taking his eyes from the sky.

No one around him moved.

“Hey!” he said, louder but trying not to let his voice spread too far.

“What?” Thera asked, jumping in her sleeping bag.

The other two started as well, each of them saying something similar, though Michael didn’t hear them. He was looking at the falling object, and beginning to think it wasn’t a star. Beginning to think that it was getting awfully close to where they all lay. He’d never seen a falling star before, but he imagined they looked extremely different than what was above him.

The fire spread across the object almost evenly, but at some points,there was a break in its radiance and Michael could see what lay beneath. He didn’t know what rocks flying through space should look like, but a perfect white? No. That’s all he could see from such a distance, but it was unmistakable. It wasn’t the dark, space formed look that he imagined of an asteroid, but the pure white of porcelain.

“What is it?” Thera asked, climbing out of her bag.

Michael heard the rustle as Bryan and Julie climbed from their sleeping bags, all of them looking up into the sky just as he did.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think…” But he didn’t know how to finish the sentence. He didn’t know what he didn’t think, because he didn’t know what flew above them. Only that it was huge. Only that it was ablaze. Only that it was white underneath all that blue fire. Only that it was moving closer and closer to where they stood, and at a frightening speed.

“Is it going to hit us?” Bryan asked, standing now.

No one answered.

“What should we do?” Julie asked, fear already rippling through her voice. Michael was scared too, because what could they do? You didn’t outrun something of that size, something moving that fast, burning that hot. You couldn’t outrun an atomic bomb, and while this wasn’t that exactly, it felt close enough.

“I don’t know,” he said again, unable to think of any other words.

“We need to leave,” Thera said.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Julie said.

No one moved though, because despite their fear, the novelty—the beauty—held them captive.

And it was too late, anyway. Michael saw that with a detached sort of calm, an observation. Far too late. The thing was going to hit, and while it appeared that it wouldn’t fall on them, he didn’t know if the blast could make its way to them, could send the same heat filling this air to consume him. Consume all of them.

“It’s going to crash,” Julie said.

Michael watched as the thing passed below the tree line, out of his vision, and then he waited. He wasn’t sure what he waited on: A noise? A blast wave? Death? He waited though, for five minutes at least, all of them staring out at the forest in front of them. Nothing came. No sound. No death. Just the still quiet of night.

R
igley’s phone
showed her something she didn’t like.

She disliked it so intensely that she stopped paying attention to where she was, where she was heading, to everything else around her really—for once forgetting completely about her surroundings. If Rigley did anything well, she was painfully aware of what happened around her, both her immediate surroundings and the greater workings of her organization. During this brief moment though, Rigley didn’t see or care about any of that, because her phone contained all the information she needed.

Impact in Georgia. Without a doubt, impact, and from what she could tell, it wasn’t inanimate matter. It appeared that whatever broached the Earth’s atmosphere had been large, and something that large should have evaporated much of the eastern coast. Indeed, the entire world should be reeling from earthquakes and tsunamis, spreading out from the crash site. None of that was occurring, though. The world continued spinning just like yesterday, as if nothing had happened.

Her phone said differently. Her phone said something very important had happened.

This could quickly spiral out of control if it wasn’t handled appropriately; Rigley understood that with a cool clarity. She should have received this information before now, before five in the morning, but there was a delay between the data collected and the data she received. Even now, she was hours behind and that was a problem, because no one knew what the impact actually was or what it contained. No one had a clue. She’d seen things like this before, if not this exact magnitude. They’d been lucky back then; luck carried them through the last couple times, if she was being honest. Luck ran out though, always.

Rigley knew who she needed.

Will. She didn’t know what he was doing, probably working for some other agency, but when she called, the other agencies understood the pecking order. Will would go where she sent him, and he was necessary right now. Rigley had to understand the situation without creating unrest, and Will was her best chance. Will would keep it silent, and that was of all importance. That and speed.

Rigley flipped through the screens on her phone quickly, and dialed his number.

“Yes?” he said.

“I need you in a place called Grayson, Georgia, as soon as possible. I’m going to send over all the details. How quickly can you be there?”

“Forty-eight hours,” Will said.

She hung up the phone, flicked to another screen, and sent all the data that she’d received.

Rigley leaned her head back against the headrest and looked out the window. There wasn’t anything else she could do for five hours, besides firebomb the whole city. It hadn’t come to that yet, though.

It won’t come to that,
she thought.

Let Will do his work first.

B
ryan looked
at the light shining through his blinds and onto the floor. The sun was still up, so he hadn’t slept for too long. None of them fell asleep again last night; they’d sat the entire time talking about what they saw. Talking, arguing, and finally coming to a consensus that they weren’t going out into the woods to see it. Bryan was ready to run out there ten minutes after none of them had been burnt black, but he was the only one. Even Michael was hesitant about it, and when Julie got to harping, that was the end of it. Of course, Bryan still tried to convince them, but there really wasn’t any reason for him to continue trying at that point. Julie had made her mind up; it was dangerous; they could get hurt; professionals needed to go out there, not high-school kids.

Bryan let it go, went home in the morning and slept off his hangover.

It was mostly gone now and the sun shining across his room said there was still daylight left. Daylight was good, especially since Bryan planned on going out there to see what came down. He didn’t understand the physics of the thing, didn’t know if radiation was already killing every chipmunk and bird out there in those woods, but he was going to see what crashed.

Because he saw the white underneath the fire. He saw how the fire seemed to live on top of the object, but not actually burn it. Not hurting it in any way. And then when it landed? No loud noise. No blast of air rushing out from the forest. Just silence as if nothing happened, silence and the heat permeating the air. Bryan was going back out there and Julie didn’t need to hear anything about it. He didn’t want to go alone, though. That might be too dangerous. But Julie wouldn’t go and Thera was way too smart to find herself in those woods with something that came from space. Which left Michael—who hadn’t been completely against the idea last night; he’d been swayed by Julie’s ferocity, her fear.

Bryan picked up his cellphone, found Michael’s number and dialed. He listened as it rang, thinking through what he wanted to say, what he could say to convince Michael, because Bryan didn’t want to go alone, but still would go regardless of what happened on this call.

“Hey,” Michael answered.

“Yo,” Bryan said. “What are you doing?”

“About to head into work. Have a short shift tonight, four hours.”

“Hmmmm,” Bryan said aloud. In four hours, the sun would be down, which wasn’t ideal. He didn’t especially want to go out there at night, but he didn’t want to wait until tomorrow either. “You want to go back out to the field when you get off?”

“The two of us?”

“Yeah, just us. I want to see what landed out there.”

Michael didn’t say anything for a few seconds and Bryan let silence fall over the line.

“Why do you want to go out there so bad?” Michael asked finally.

Had Bryan avoided that question? Maybe, because he hadn’t asked himself, even though it seemed like such an obvious question. Something important to understand because of how
much
he wanted this. And now with the question before him, he didn’t have an answer. He couldn’t describe why he wanted to be out there so much. Was it just curiosity? Was it that nothing in his whole life had ever carried the magnitude of what he saw last night? A falling star, but something that looked nothing like a star? That was part of it, sure, but it felt deeper too. It felt more complex and yet simpler. It felt like he was being called out there. Like something was whispering his name, the whisper not in his ear but in his brain…
Bryan, Bryan, Bryan…come see me. Come see what’s out here. Come see what dropped from the sky and managed not to kill all of you.

“I don’t know,” he said, pushing away those whispers. He wouldn’t tell Michael that, not just because he might think Bryan crazy, but because he wouldn’t go if he knew. “I just think it would be cool to see what happened last night.”

Michael waited a few more seconds before speaking. “I get off around nine. You want to go out there at ten?”

“Yeah, that’ll work,” Bryan said.

“
Y
ou’re insane
,” Thera said. “Legitimately, this is the dumbest idea either of you have ever cooked up.”

Michael held the cordless phone to his ear, lying in his bed at the back of the trailer. He’d hung up the phone with Bryan a few minutes ago, having agreed to go back to the field. He needed to put his uniform on and get to work, but he didn’t like what he just told Bryan. He didn’t want to go out there, not fully.

“I know,” he said. “It doesn’t feel smart, at all.”

“It’s not smart. It’s idiotic. I can’t believe you told him you would go. I can’t believe he wants to go.”

“Maybe the police or someone else is already out there? Maybe we won’t even be allowed near it?” Michael asked.

“Maybe. But maybe not. What the hell is wrong with Bryan? Why does he want to see it so bad? I mean, last night was
intense
. Like, he wasn’t taking no for an answer until Julie started crying.”

Michael had felt it too. The drive to go out there radiated off Bryan, like heat stemming from some invisible fire. He said he wanted to see what it was, but that didn’t feel right. It felt cheap, a lie—only Michael didn’t know what else it could be, what else could make him want it that bad.

“I don’t know, but I can’t let him go out there by himself, can I?”

“Um, you can call the cops, Michael. Let them know what happened and then they’ll be out there when you guys try to find the damn thing.”

“Maybe we won’t find it,” Michael said, not believing the words as they left his lips.

“And maybe you’ll die from radiation poisoning. Who knows?”

T
hings had been
tense between Bryan and Julie over the past twenty-four hours, and she didn’t like it. Hated it, really. Things were going to get tougher next year and she didn’t want to spend their senior year fighting about Michael. They had less than a year to see each other every day at school and hang out every weekend, then both of them would head to different colleges. That would mean they had a few weekends and school breaks to share with each other. Nothing else.

It hurt to think about that. She’d been with Bryan since elementary school, if not in a relationship, then as friends. And now they both were just about to walk away, to leave what they had together in this town, to put additional stress on it. Yet, the stress was necessary for the long term, she understood that. They would need college in order to have anything in this world. They would need college if they didn’t want to end up like…

Michael.

That’s where all these arguments stemmed from and Julie didn’t like it anymore than Bryan. Michael was her friend. Michael had been her friend as long as Bryan. Cutting someone off wasn’t something she enjoyed, despite how she acted when talking to Bryan about it. It was tough and it didn’t feel good, at all. She couldn’t show Bryan that though; she couldn’t show him how much she hated the thought of simply turning Michael away. Because if he saw that in her, he wouldn’t let it happen. He would identify too much with it and then convince her that they couldn’t just leave him behind.

She tried to talk to Thera about the risk, briefly, once, a few months ago. She thought someone would see it the way she did, that maybe Thera would identify somewhat with her.

“What if we never leave?” she said.

“Leave where?”

“Here. Grayson. It’s just a dot on a map, a place that no one outside of our own county has ever heard about.”

“We’re leaving this coming year. What do you mean?” Thera said.

“I don’t know, I guess,” Julie said, sighing, thinking that Thera wouldn’t see it. Thera didn’t hold the fear that Julie did because Thera was going to be something. Thera was getting out of here on her brains alone, and Julie guessed that she knew it.

“You don’t like it here?”

“It’s not that. Grayson is just a town of middle class people with no desires besides being middle class people,” Julie said.

Thera had nodded, but that was it. They stopped talking about it.

But that middle class thing? It scared and depressed Julie. She didn’t want to end up like that, didn’t want to end up like her parents. And if ending up like her parents frightened her, then ending up anything nearing what Michael’s future held terrified her. A trailer? Alcoholism? Working at a fast food restaurant? These things formed her nightmares, and if she didn’t start distancing herself now, then would she ever be able to? The longer they hung around Michael, the longer they hung around this damn town, the more likely they were to end up being it. She couldn’t let that happen, it didn’t matter how much she cared about Michael. It was unthinkable.

Yet Bryan didn’t see it, not like she did.

Julie pushed the thoughts from her mind. They’d been going around in circles all day, leading her nowhere, and the only place she wanted to go was to Bryan. Both of them had planned to see a movie today and she wasn’t going to mention Michael once the entire time. She wasn’t going to talk about last night, wasn’t going to talk about how she had been a bitch, wasn’t even going to bring up the damned shooting star. Tonight, she would be Bryan’s girlfriend and nothing else. That was all she needed, all she wanted.

She put on the last of her makeup, and then picked up her phone. She called Bryan’s cell, and listened as it rang all the way to his voicemail. She hung it up and immediately called his house phone, thinking that he probably left his cell upstairs like always.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mrs. Yetzer. It’s Julie. I called Bryan, but he didn’t answer. Is he there?”

“Hey, Julie. No, he went out with Michael a few minutes ago. Do you want me to have him call you when he gets back?”

Julie didn’t say anything for a second, taking in the words. He went out with Michael? What the hell? She realized her silence was stretching on though, and finally said, “No, thanks though. I’ll just call later.”

T
he moonlight danced
across the field, casting beautiful shadows everywhere. The forest was different, though. Michael imagined that in the next ten years, this entire place would be leveled. The field turned into a parking lot and the forest a collection of stores. Progress and all. Right now though, progress hadn’t reached this piece of Grayson, and the woods were deep and thick. The field was long, maybe the size of two football fields, but the forest was ten times that size. Michael didn’t know; he’d never been deep enough inside to see the entire thing. They used to play here as kids, building forts and having wars, but they never came in at night; now, though, the moon couldn’t compete with the pine tree branches above Michael and Bryan. They each held flashlights, shining out into the dense trees from where they stood at the woods’ edge. The flashlights were the only source of illumination either of them had, and while it was nearly enough, it didn’t make Michael feel safe.

Bryan walked a few feet in front of him, leading. Neither of them spoke much once they entered the tree-line. Before, on the way here, they laid out a plan of what they would do when they got to it. Stay far enough away. Take pictures. Then leave and report it to the police. That was the plan. But when they got inside the forest…things changed. Michael didn’t know exactly how, couldn’t have told anyone if they asked him, but it was still there, that change. It stemmed from Bryan, from the way he led deeper and deeper into the woods. They should have been walking together, their strides matching one another. That was how it always was between the two of them, yet in here, Bryan was in charge. Or…and it sounded insane to even think it…something was in charge of Bryan. Something was pulling him into this place, causing him to walk faster, causing him to only care about one thing—about seeing whatever arrived last night.