Nemesis: Box Set: Books 1 - 3 (7 page)

“
M
y dad asked
about you today,” Michael said.

Thera looked over at him from the driver’s seat. “That’s sweet. What did you say?”

“I was an asshole,” he said, not looking back over at her.

Thera saw he wasn’t kidding, and he wasn’t letting himself off the hook for whatever he told Wren. She turned back to the driving, not saying anything else.

The two of them were heading to Bryan’s house. Both had called him this morning, with no answer on his cellphone. They hadn’t tried Julie because Thera figured it might worry her unnecessarily. She wanted to talk to Bryan first before they spoke to anyone else about it. It might be nothing, what happened with Michael a few nights ago. It might have been a momentary lapse, and was completely taken care of now. Thera liked Julie, hell—the girl was one of their four, a best friend, but Thera also knew that Julie could overreact. And even that term might be an understatement.

They drove in silence, Michael obviously thinking about whatever he said to his dad, while Thera thought about exactly what they were going to say to Bryan.
Hey, Bry, had anymore times where your eyes went blank and someone might describe you as a shell?
It sounded absolutely crazy, but she didn’t doubt what Michael told her. Michael didn’t lie, at least not to her, and maybe not to anyone else either. Something happened out there last night, even if it did sound crazy.

She pulled into Bryan’s driveway, knowing as she did that what they came here for wouldn’t happen. Bryan’s car wasn’t in the driveway, and neither were his parents’. School was out today, but his parents still had to work, and that was why no one had answered the house phone.

Thera put the car in park and looked over at Michael. “What do we do?”

“Go up to the door and check. Already over here,” he said, then opened his door and got out of the car.

Whatever he said to Wren, it’s really bothering him
, Thera thought as she watched him walk up the driveway. She opened her own door and followed ten paces behind.

They stood there, and over the course of three minutes, rang the doorbell a dozen times. No one answered.

“It’s empty,” Michael said, finally looking over to Thera.

“Time to call Julie?” She asked.

He sighed. They both knew what that could start. She would call his parents’ cells if she couldn’t get in touch with Bryan, or drive over and insist she be involved in wherever else they went. Their little excursion would suddenly take on a much wider lens if Julie got involved. A much darker lens.

“I’d say no, but he might be with her. Otherwise, I’d just as soon not speak to her about it.”

Thera pulled her phone out and shot a message over to Julie—
You and Bryan together? I think he might have taken one of my pillows by accident from the bonfire.

Michael nodded at the text, but didn’t smile. There weren’t any smiles in him today. They walked back to the car and got inside, waiting on the text to come back. Finally,
Nope, haven’t talked to him yet.

“Where else could he be?” Thera asked. “Would he have gone back?”

“I don’t know,” Michael said. He waited a bit before saying, “Yeah, I think he probably would have.”

I
t wasn’t a good day
; that was probably the best way to put it. The shit this morning with his father and now this, Bryan practically missing—Michael didn’t know what to do. What to think. He dwelled on his father right up until Julie’s text came in, but now his mind attached itself to Bryan’s whereabouts. He should have checked on him last night. Even before that, he shouldn’t have let Bryan go home by himself, not after what he saw, not after what they did. He had though; Michael went home, got in bed and ended up calling Thera instead. Now…

Except he didn’t know how to finish that sentence, because there wasn’t any proof about anything. They had nothing, except that Bryan wasn’t at home, wasn’t at Julie’s, and wasn’t answering his cellphone. If it hadn’t been for Saturday night, when they went out there and saw that thing, Michael wouldn’t have thought anything of this—but they did go, and Bryan hadn’t been right when they were out there.

Thera’s car pulled up to the field, parking up on the hill instead of down next to the tree line. Michael looked at the field below them, something about it bothering him. He didn’t know why, but…he didn’t want to be here. Not at the site, necessarily, but here—parked here.

“Let’s go to the other side,” he said.

“Why?”

“I don’t like this, leaving our car here. If the cops do show up, they’ll come this way, and they’ll see our car right off the bat.”

“Okay,” Thera said, starting the engine. “You going to be able to find the crash site from the other side?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

They drove the five minutes to the west side of the woods, pulling off the shoulder of the road and parking ten feet from both the road and trees. They got out and started walking, Michael leading the way, trying to assess where they needed to walk to get there. It was easier now, with the sun shining instead of the tree canopy blocking out the moon. It should have felt better too, or at least that’s what Michael thought. It shouldn’t have felt…scary. That was the only word that worked in these woods, despite how childish it sounded. Scary. There weren’t any muggers here, shouldn’t be anything that could hurt either of them.

Except Michael knew that wasn’t true. He knew that may have been true a week ago, that without muggers and criminals, there wasn’t much to fear in this world. But he had been out here before, and he had seen something that he shouldn’t have. It wasn’t from this world, and that alone made it dangerous in Michael’s mind. There shouldn’t have been danger out here, that was true, and the sunlight should have made him feel it less, but it didn’t. Every step he moved closer to that ring of ash, he felt the weight of that white orb (
spaceship, it was a spaceship, Michael
) grow heavier.

“I don’t want to be here,” he said aloud, but didn’t slow down. He wanted Thera to know that, wanted her to feel some of his fear. She might feel some of her own already, but that was different than Michael’s. He had seen it; she hadn’t. He wanted her to know that this was dangerous, that they shouldn’t be doing this. “You need to go back.”

He didn’t turn around and she didn’t say anything, but he heard her feet still walking behind him, crunching the dead debris on the ground.

It took them longer this time, but after thirty minutes, they found the site.

The ash was untouched.

“It’s not here,” he said. “It was in the middle, right there in the middle.” He pointed, seeing the white globe in his mind.

Thera didn’t say anything, just crossed the barrier into the ash, and started walking toward the center.

“Thera!” Michael shouted, already thinking that whatever possessed Bryan had taken ahold of her.

“It’s okay; I just want to see it,” she said, stopping briefly to look at him.

Her eyes weren’t blank; they were Thera’s. Michael let out the breath trapped in his lungs.

Thera turned and started walking forward again, while Michael watched. He wasn’t going back in there, had no desire to touch that ash again. When she reached the center, she slowly did a three-sixty, looking at the entire landscape.

“You came in from over there?” She asked, stopping her turn.

“I don’t know,” Michael said, having to shout now.

“I think so. I can see your steps up around the start of the ring, two pairs. But, Michael, did he ever make it all the way to the center, or did you stop him up there?”

“He didn’t make it. I pulled him back.” Michael started circling the edge of the ash, walking to the top of the area that Thera was looking at.

“There are footsteps down here. There’s a path in the ash that comes all the way to me,” she said.

Michael stood at basically the same place he had when he came with Bryan, looking at the footprints he now saw, that he hadn’t been able to in the darkness. There were a lot of them, his, Bryan’s, and both of theirs turning around and heading back up to this spot. But there was another set too, one a few feet away from the original two pairs.

“Those aren’t ours,” Michael said.

“Over here, there’s more,” Thera said, turning again. Michael followed her around the edge, and saw them.

“I don’t know. I don’t know who made them.”

“You only came the once?” She asked, as if clarifying in her own mind, getting the story completely straight.

“Yes. Once on Saturday, and that’s it.”

“Spread another twenty feet!” Someone shouted from behind Michael. He spun around, looking into the woods, not yet able to see where the voice had come from. Just as fast, he turned back to Thera, her eyes wide and staring at him.

“Go,” he mouthed, his voice not making a sound, but Thera got the message.

She took off running back through her own footprints, and Michael followed around the ring’s edge. They ran, as fast as their legs could move, as fast as their lungs could fill their cells with the oxygen needed to move them. They didn’t care about the sounds they made; they only cared about getting out of that place, away from whoever was shouting behind them.

“
P
eople have been here
,” Andrew said.

Will didn’t need him to say it—he could see the footprints all over this place. He hadn’t seen them the other night when he showed up, but the sunlight showed them everywhere. Multiple paths and multiple pairs. This wasn’t one person, but at least two, and probably more.

“Scan it,” Will said.

The three of them stood just inside the ash. The two scouts were named Andrew and Lane; Will never asked their last names. He didn’t even know, nor care, if their first names were legit. These two lived in the shadows, just as he did.

He watched as they each started their work, a work that Will didn’t understand fully. The world was changing, and fast. He’d been in this business thirty years, and every decade brought something new, but this last one felt different. This last one, the one where these two guys made their name, felt like it was leaving him behind.

Age, he knew that’s what did it. He wasn’t being left behind so much as he was just failing to keep up—but it all came to the same. He didn’t know what these two scouts were doing, though he thought he knew what the end result would be, what it was supposed to tell him. Would there come a time when he didn’t even understand that? Would there be a time when he couldn’t keep up at all, when he just stopped moving?

It wouldn’t come to that, he didn’t think.

Numerous people having shown up here. Whatever landed now missing, apparently. They were three days behind impact. The three of them here weren’t making it out of this, and Will understood that even if these two had no clue. They would soon enough, though.

He followed the footsteps as the two scouts put handheld computers to the ash. Will walked each path, including the one he thought was his own. He found a path that walked down slowly, and then the footsteps ran back after circling around the center for a bit. He followed them, walking out of the ash and into the woods, not looking back at the two men.

Will carefully traced where he thought the steps should lead, and after a few minutes, he saw evidence that there had been another person, too. Both of them running, pounding through the dead leaves and broken tree branches. Whoever had been here hadn’t cared about leaving a trail; they had cared about getting the hell out as fast as they could. He squatted down at one of the branches broken by a footfall. He picked it up, turning it over in his hand, not really looking at it, but just holding onto it. Whoever broke it had been running from one of two things: whatever made the impact, or him.

He stood and turned back around, walking to the ring of ash again.

The two scouts still knelt, at different spots now, picking up data points from as many places as they could.

“The ash here in the center, it’s showing someone here within the last five hours,” Lane said, not looking up.

“Not five hours,” Will said. “Probably ten minutes.”

“Possible,” Lane answered, moving to another place.

Will didn’t respond; it wasn’t just possible, it was the truth. Whoever was here had heard them coming in and ran through the woods, ran away, scared.

Will walked back down to the center and waited. Waited and thought. The hammer, that’s what Rigley had said. He didn’t know for certain—how could he?—but he felt fairly confident it would be necessary. That everything in this place, including him, would need to be eradicated to keep the human race alive. This wasn’t South America, wasn’t Bolivia, though that was the closest thing he could compare it to. Bolivia, they had a chance because they’d been lucky, because Rigley had been tough. Here, so far, there wasn’t any luck to speak of. He wondered if bad luck was just an absence of luck, like cold was the absence of heat? Rigley, hopefully, was still tough—though he wasn’t sure even that would be enough.

He smiled at the thought. Contemplating his own death and waxing philosophical.

Bolivia. It hadn’t been fun, but it was the closest to a hammer anyone had seen since the forties. It put his name on the mental maps of everyone in every intelligence agency across the world. It introduced him to Rigley and more or less made his career. Now, this place would end it.

“Extraterrestrial,” Andrew said.

Will heard him, but wasn’t listening. He was back in the past, back to a younger version of himself. Remembering what it had been like to be at the top of his game, to understand the technology and know how to use it for his advantage.

“You’ll want to look at this,” Lane said, finally standing up. Will snapped back to reality, seeing the black ash and the green forest surrounding it. He shouldn’t be going down that path, going into the past, not right now. Maybe at the end of all this he would have a chance to think about Bolivia, but now he needed to be here. The job wasn’t lost yet; he didn’t know anything about what arrived here—he was only speculating.