Revelations (28 page)

Emily stared at the floor. “Harvesters? You mean the thing that killed Simon and Ben? That tried to kill Rhiannon and me? The thing I fucking crushed? Did you mean
that
Harvester?”

Emily laughed but there was no humor in it.

“So come on, use me for your great and wonderful fucking plan. Why waste more perfectly good ‘biological material’? Just get it over with, for fuck’s sake. I am so damn tired of listening to you talk.”

“That is no longer necessary.”

Emily slowly raised her head to Jacob’s eye level. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, right? You’re rejecting me?” This time a laugh that she could only describe as diabolical bubbled up from her throat.

Jacob did not seem to find it quite as ironic. His lips parted in a slight smile, the first hint of real human emotion she had seen from this Xerox copy of the original man. “There is no use for you now, Emily; the process of recreation is complete. It would be uneconomical to integrate you or your companions. But we do have another use for you.”

“Let me guess? You’re going to carry out more of your warped experiments on me? Turn me into one of your living machines? Is that it?”

“No, Emily,” Jacob said, seeming honestly offended by her remark. “We need you to take a message back to your people and the others that will join you.”

Jacob gestured with a hand and a map appeared in the air between him and Emily. It was so realistic she felt that if she wanted to she could reach out and touch the mountains and the coastline, run her fingers through the slowly moving waves of the ocean that washed over its surface.

It was a map of what had once been the southwest United States, red now, except for the occasional snowcapped mountain.

Then Jacob began to explain what it was he wanted from her, and with each word he spoke, Emily felt the anger begin to leave her.

“Do you have any questions, Emily?” Jacob asked when he was done explaining the message he wanted her to carry back with her to the other survivors at Point Loma.

“Why?” she asked finally. “Why would you do this?”

Jacob’s lids closed. Beneath them, Emily could see his eyes moving back and forth as though he was deeply asleep. A slight smile crossed his face and his eyes snapped open again.

“Because, despite what you think of us, what you
believe
us to be, we are not monsters, Emily.”

An opening appeared noiselessly in the curve of the wall to her left. Jacob stepped toward it, still flanked by the two aliens. “This way, Emily,” he said, gesturing toward the doorway.

Emily stood, ignoring the pins and needles she felt tingling through her legs from being seated for so long, and walked through the doorway, the floor warm against her bare feet. Beyond it lay another, larger room. This one was circular, with an oval ceiling that spiraled up to a point far above her head. The room was empty except for one wall where multicolored liquids gurgled and oozed through a row of thick, clear pipes on the opposite side of the room. They merged into a single larger pipe where the liquids mixed together and flowed onward to whatever destination and design the aliens had for it. She did not want to think what that goo might once have been.

Another opening appeared in the opposite wall. This time, beyond the second doorway, Emily could see the gentle swell of a hill, covered in the red lichen, but otherwise clear of the tangle of jungle that seemed to have sprung up everywhere across the planet.

A ramp led from the edge of the wall to the ground.

Emily glanced at Jacob. He held her stare wordlessly until she turned away and walked nervously through the opening and out onto the sun-drenched hillside.

As she stepped from the ramp Emily heard a soft pop behind her. She had expected to find herself next to whatever alien craft she had been held in, but when she turned to look back, she was alone on the hill. There was no sign of the ramp or the room that she had just left. Shading her eyes against the glare of the sun, Emily scanned the sky for any indication of a departing craft, but the air was empty of all but a few small clouds.

She allowed her gaze to follow the downward curve of the hill as it dropped away before eventually meeting and being swallowed up by the ubiquitous red jungle below. Beyond the jungle, in the distance, Emily could see the outline of what had once been Las Vegas. She had assumed that she had been within the aliens’ craft, but the truth was, she now understood, that “room” could have been anywhere on the planet or off it. The aliens—what had they called themselves, the Caretakers?—seemed more than capable of manipulating space, bending it to their needs. Still, it was a surprise to realize that they had stranded her on the opposite side of the city from where they had landed.

On the ground near to where she stood, Emily noticed her backpack, clothes, shotgun, and other belongings, neatly deposited in a small pile.

She dressed quickly, then undid the flap of the backpack and pulled it open, searching inside for the two-way radio MacAlister had insisted she take. It was still there, thank God. She pulled it out and switched it on. A burst of static exploded from the radio. She turned the volume down and held the radio in front of her mouth.

“Hello? Can anybody hear me?”

The quiet soughing of an afternoon breeze moving through the distant jungle was her only answer.

Emily pressed the talk button again, repeating her question, “MacAlister, do you read me?”

Another burst of interference was followed by a momentary silence, then a familiar voice crackled from the radio’s speaker.

“Emily? Emily, can you hear me?” He sounded amazed to be speaking to her, and a little relieved too.

“MacAlister! Yes, it’s me.” She found herself almost yelling into the microphone.

“Are you okay? Are you injured?” The concern in MacAlister’s voice was touching. But it was a good question: Was she okay? She wasn’t sure. Looking down at herself, there didn’t seem to be any signs of injury, but her brain still felt fuzzy, almost as though she was drunk, but without the feeling of needing to throw up. She felt…different somehow.

“I’m okay,” she said hesitantly.

“Where are you?” MacAlister asked, his voice all business now.

She looked around the top of the hill. The sun was well past its zenith, and heading toward the western horizon to her right and she could see the remnants of Vegas poking up from the jungle in the distance, but almost directly ahead of her.

“I’m on a clear hilltop, about six, maybe seven miles north of where we landed,” she told MacAlister. She turned through 360 degrees. “It’s pretty much the only place here not covered by the jungle.”

“Just sit tight, Emily. We’re coming to get you, okay?”

“Okay,” she replied, feeling a steady pull of exhaustion begin to tug at her muscles.

She sat and waited.

Minutes later, as the afternoon sun beat down on the hilltop, the steady beat of the helicopter’s rotors chopping through the air echoed across the Las Vegas valley, arriving long before Emily spotted the dark dot of the Black Hawk as it sped toward her. She pulled off her jacket and stood, waving it above her head with as much energy as she could still muster until she saw the chopper adjust its vector and curve gracefully in her direction.

The helo circled around the hilltop as MacAlister searched for a safe place to put it down. Emily shaded her eyes from flying debris as the Black Hawk descended, and then she was moving to the helicopter before the wheels had touched down.

The passenger door slid open and a shape leaped from within and bounded toward her.

“Thor!” Emily yelled, her voice whipped away by the noise of the Black Hawk’s engines.

The malamute raced toward her, then hesitated and slowed, his head dipping down almost to the ground, but his eyes never leaving her as he sniffed at the air around Emily and let out a low half-whine, half-growl.

“What’s wrong with you, mutt?” she said. The malamute had never hesitated with her before. “It’s just me.” There must be some residual smell or essence of the creatures she had encountered on the ship that was making him nervous. “Come on. Come here,” she cooed, offering her hand out to her dog. He sniffed it once then licked it and that was enough. The malamute almost bowled her over, weaving around and between her legs, pushing up against her. She grabbed the dog by his collar and guided him back toward the waiting helicopter.

Reilly leaned out and yelled something that she couldn’t hear over the roar of the engines, then Burris’s head appeared over his shoulder as the two sailors beckoned her to get in.

Thor leaped inside the helo and Emily climbed in behind him. Reilly slid the door closed again. She could see MacAlister twisting in his seat toward her. He was mouthing something to her but she couldn’t hear him, the engines still too loud even with the cabin door closed. He tapped the headphones on his head and pointed above her head. She reached for the set of headphones, slipping them over her ears.

MacAlister’s voice filled her head, “—you okay? Emily, can you hear me? Are you okay?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m okay.”

“What the hell happened? We thought we had lost you. I thought I had lost you.”

“It’s a long story, Mac,” she sighed, her nervous-energy supply finally hitting empty. “Just get us out of here.”

MacAlister reluctantly turned his attention back to the console and Emily felt the Black Hawk lift off and begin to gain altitude.

“Home,” she said. “Take us home.”

The Black Hawk approached Point Loma just after sunset, the remnants of the day still smoldering on the horizon, spilling orange fire along its edge.

“So are you going to tell me what happened?” MacAlister said over the helo’s intercom.

Emily shook her head, “No, not here. It’s something everyone has to hear, and I don’t think I want to tell it more than once,” she told him. “Why don’t
you
tell me what happened after I was shot?”

MacAlister reluctantly allowed the subject to switch to him and Reilly.

“When you shot that one alien—God, that sounds weird said out loud, doesn’t it? Alien!—I thought maybe we’d be able to take on the others too, but then…” Emily heard a stutter in the Scotsman’s tone, a quiver to the usually strong voice that betrayed the emotion the man was feeling. “Then you went down. I started to move toward where you’d fallen while Reilly laid down some covering fire—”

“I think I hit one too,” Reilly chimed in.

“—but then you weren’t there anymore. The aliens did something with those weird cubes they had and all of you just vanished. Poof! Disappeared. The aliens and their mate you slotted, just gone. It looked like bubbles popping. Scared the crap out of me, to give you the God’s honest truth.”

“Only Thor was left,” Reilly filled in. “We were sure he was dead, but when we got close, I could see he was still breathing. Couple of minutes after you disappeared, he was up and about again. Bit wobbly on his legs, but he didn’t seem none the worse for wear. Tough little fu…bugger. He’s a tough little bugger.”

“Why didn’t they just kill us?” Emily pondered aloud. “I mean, why would they just stun us? Doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe they didn’t know what you and Thor were?” Reilly suggested. “Maybe they thought you were one of their creatures, the ones that came after the rain. Think about it: If they’ve gone to such great lengths to ensure this world was changed to be exactly the way they wanted it, maybe they didn’t want to chance damaging one of their precious creations? Maybe that’s why they only stunned you. Just a thought.”

Emily thought it was probably an accurate one too. The aliens had been very particular in explaining why the change had overcome the Earth. This whole concept of massacring an entire planet’s ecosystem to ensure the continued viability of that planet as a life-producing system was, well, about as alien a concept as she could get her brain around. It was as good an idea as any other.

“Or maybe they just didn’t see you as much of a threat?” said Burris.

“She managed to blow one of the bastards in half. I’d call that pretty ‘threatening’ in my book,” said Reilly, jumping to her defense.

They all laughed. It was the kind of nervous laughter that only comes from a shared experience that no one had expected to survive, shot through with a vein of uneasiness that would come back to visit them late at night for the rest of their lives, Emily suspected.

“So, then what?”

MacAlister picked the story back up: “We sortied around the area looking for you or any clues to where you might have gone, but there wasn’t any sign of you.”

“Sergeant MacAlister was all set to storm that alien ship to get you back,” said Reilly. “I swear, if we hadn’t—”

“Son,” MacAlister interrupted, “if you don’t want to become a paratrooper anytime soon, I’d suggest you shut it.”

This time Emily’s laughter was pure mirth, albeit injected with a hint of embarrassment at the revelation of the depth of MacAlister’s dedication toward her recovery. “I’m sure Mac would have done the same for any of us.”

Reilly grinned wildly from the seat across from hers. “Not bloody likely,” he mouthed silently then said, “Yes, Miss. I’m sure he would have.”

Mac and Reilly had combed the area looking for her, but even Thor could not pick up a scent. So they had made their way back to the helo and waited. The way back to the Tacoma casino had been even more treacherous in the few hours since they had descended. “That place is being chewed away like nobody’s business. Won’t be nothing left but dust soon,” Burris had said.

There had been no argument from the sailors when Mac had told them they were going to be spending the night on the roof of the crumbling casino until he knew for certain what had happened to Emily. The plan was to wait until morning and then head out and see if they could spot any sign of her.

“Have to admit I was not looking forward to staying on that roof knowing there were all those creepy-crawlies below us,” said Reilly. “We all breathed a sigh of relief when you showed up.”

They had tried using the radio to contact her every fifteen minutes initially, but dropped to every thirty minutes to conserve power. They had been about to switch the radio off when her call had come in.

“We’re just glad you’re safe, Emily” was the last thing MacAlister told her before the cabin settled into a welcome silence.

Emily found herself nodding off, despite MacAlister’s occasional attempt during the return flight to drag what had happened out of her or to ask again if she was all right; her fatigue was just too overwhelming and she soon fell into a restless, exhausted sleep.

…And she dreamed. Dreamed of a presence hidden deep within the shadowy folds of her consciousness that observed her, looking out through her eyes as someone might use a spyglass to observe the inhabitants of a distant island. But the harder she tried to reach it, the deeper the presence seemed to burrow into her mind, slipping from her view like water running through her fingers. And did she truly want to catch this elusive sense of other fleeing so elegantly from her? She was unsure, it felt as though catching it would be like a secret might finally be revealed to her, about her; a secret too painful to withstand the light of her knowing. But still she chased after it through the maze of her thoughts and memories, down into ever deeper, ever redder areas until…

Emily jerked awake, her eyes snapping open at the gentle shake of her elbow by Reilly, and his crackling voice in her ear that told her: “Wake up, Emily, we’re almost home.”

“Okay,” she managed to say, as the memory of the dream itself slipped from her mind.

The Black Hawk circled over Point Loma, and through the dirt-stained cabin window Emily could see people far below caught in the dying light of the day.

They were all the family she had now, she thought as she watched each of them stop what they were doing and stare up at the helicopter buzzing toward them, craning their necks as they searched the sky at the sound of their approaching craft.

“Where the hell is that landing strip?” MacAlister asked over the intercom. The light was fleeing the world so fast it was becoming hard to make out the actual buildings of their camp from their shadows. “I don’t want to have to set us down on Coronado, if I can help it.”

As if they had heard his complaint, Emily saw three bright-red lights burst into life one after the other on the ground. Flares. Whoever lit them had tossed them down to form a triangle that was obviously meant to define their landing point.

“Starboard, Mac,” Emily said into her microphone.

“Where?…Okay, got it.” He swung the helicopter around and dipped it down toward the improvised landing pad. They descended and Emily thought she heard all four of them let out a sigh of relief when the tires finally touched down.

“Terra firma,” Mac said as he cut the engines, then added with a grin, “The firmer it is the less bloody terror. Welcome home.”

Emily could see the beams of flashlights around the edge of the landing pad; they were moving toward them now, bouncing back and forth as their owners ran to greet the returning group, the Black Hawk’s rotor blades already slowing to a stop.

The door of the helo was opened from outside and Rhiannon’s face appeared, ghostly in the orange glow of her flashlight. Thor sidled over and licked the girl’s face, his tail beating against Emily’s leg.

“Hi,” Rhiannon said nonchalantly, as if they had just returned from a shopping trip rather than an exploratory mission to seek out new life and boldly go where no one had gone before, to quote Captain James T. Kirk. But Emily saw the girl’s eyes flit from person to person as she made sure everyone was accounted for. The kid had a caring heart. It was going to be difficult for her to keep it in the world Emily knew lay ahead of them.

Now, as Emily unbuckled her safety harness and jumped down to the waiting crew, for the first time in what seemed like years to her, she felt a real sense of hope. A sense of belonging. She threw her arms around Rhiannon and hugged her, welcoming the one she got in return.

“You okay?” she asked the girl.

“I’m good. Did you find the spaceship?” The question was asked so innocently, as if hunting for crashed aliens was something normal, another reminder of how topsy-turvy the world had become. Spaceships and aliens and the end of the world. Oh my!

“Yes, we found it,” Emily smiled.

“Cool!” Rhiannon said. “Come on, Thor.” The dog gave a deep bark and chased after Rhiannon as she headed back to the camp and the welcome warmth of its security lights.

“Everything okay, Em?” MacAlister said as he climbed down from the cockpit and joined Emily on the ground next to the rapidly cooling Black Hawk.

“I’m going to need everyone assembled in the canteen,” she said, ignoring the barrage of questions fired at them by the small group of sailors who greeted the four returning comrades. “Can we do that in about an hour?”

MacAlister nodded. “I’ll make sure everyone’s there.”

“Thanks, Mac.” She reached out and found his hand and squeezed it. “And thanks for waiting.”

He gently returned the squeeze. “Anytime.” Their hands lingered for another second then reluctantly drifted apart.

It took a little longer than the hour Emily had requested to get all the survivors into the same room together. But as the last stragglers walked in, Emily took a swig from her bottle of water and looked out at the rows of expectant faces staring right back at her.

When the last butt was in a seat, she stood and raised her hands to quell the hum of chatter.

Where to begin? Where to begin?

“I know most of you are probably only now coming to terms with the events following the rain. And I also know that most of you probably think I’m a little…nuts.” There were a couple of knowing smiles from the crowd and a scattering of polite smiles. “But I would also hope that you would at least accept that what I’ve told you up until now has been proven correct, in as much as it’s possible to prove. So, if you can give me the benefit of the doubt that I’m not completely crazy, it will make what I have to say next a little easier.”

She took another long pull from the water bottle. It was room temperature by now but it still felt good against the scratch of the sandpaper that had suddenly coated her throat. How best to say what she needed to say next? Straight to the point would be best, she supposed.

Okay, here we go
.

“During our expedition to discover what the object was that took out the ISS and crashed in Nevada, we discovered a spaceship. It had landed just outside Las Vegas, and during a…altercation…I was captured by the aliens that caused the red rain. I was taken somewhere, I don’t really know where it was, and they explained to me why everything that has happened since the day the rain occurred.”

God, that sounded ridiculous, but it was the truth
.

There was a smattering of embarrassed laughter from the crowd, but mostly Emily saw blank stares or faces twisted with incredulity looking back at her. She couldn’t blame them, of course; how would she react if she were in their place? How many kooks and crazies had she walked away from when she was working at the
New York Tribune
who insisted they had been abducted or seen a UFO? No, she couldn’t blame them, but still, she had to convince them.

Truth be told, it did not matter what they thought about this part of her story, because what she had to say next was going to be even more unbelievable to them.

“I know, I know. It probably sounds crazy to you—”

“Probably?” one of the sailors said from the back of the room. His remark was followed by a scattering of snickers.