With no comms and lost for options, he started driving to all his officer’s houses. He got no answer at Mark’s house or Samuel’s. When he arrived at Carmine’s, his shocked wife reported that he was missing; that he’d been asleep in his bed and now he was gone.
Next, he drove to Leo’s house. He saw his car out front, so he pulled over and knocked on the door. No one answered, but he heard voices inside, so he entered. He found Leo on the floor of his son’s bedroom, comforting his hysterical wife and daughter. His baby boy, Mickey, had vanished right out of his cot.
Blackstone’s heart struck pain through him at the sight of Claire’s wet, anguished face. Leo had just looked up at him, shocked and vacant, his face painted with one of those strange red welts, and he asked: “What the hell’s going on, Earl?”
He’d told Leo to stay put with his family, and he had hit the streets again with an even greater sense of dread.
Now, after twenty minutes of driving around, his radio finally picked up a communication. He swerved over to the road’s shoulder and snatched the receiver off its cradle.
“Chief Blackstone, Victoryville PD,” he said. His usual drawl, hinting at his southern childhood, wasn’t sounding quite as relaxed as it usually did. “Who is this?”
“Chief? This is Colonel Levin, US military.”
“Military?”
“Chief, we’re aware of your situation and we’re going to do what we can. Now tell us, what is the status of your town?”
“What is the status?” Blackstone asked, not sure what he’d meant.
“What is your status? Have there been any casualties? How many civilians are left alive?”
“Left alive?” Blackstone felt as though his blood had just rushed out of him.
There was a pause before the colonel responded. “Chief, are you aware of what happened to your town?”
“Er . . .” Blackstone tried to fight the blur in his mind. He scratched his forehead, wondering how the military already knew something had happened. “I—I don’t know exactly. Something’s happened . . . people blacked out . . . I—I think some are missing.”
“And are you aware of what caused this?” the colonel asked carefully. “Are you aware of how long you were blacked out for?”
A thousand thoughts rushed through Blackstone’s mind.
Why was the military asking him this? Had they done something? Did they cause these blackouts?
“I—I don’t know,” he answered. “I think it was just a second or two.”
Again there was a silence.
“Chief,” the colonel said, and from the tone of his voice Blackstone knew that what he was about to be told was not going to be good. “You need to listen to me carefully. You’ve been out for approximately twenty-four hours.”
Blackstone stared at the street before him. For a brief moment, it felt as though time stood still. Nothing moved, he wasn’t even sure he was breathing. Then he saw a gentle breeze lift the first of the fall leaves around in the air. One landed gently on the hood of his patrol car.
“Say again,” he said.
“An unidentified aircraft positioned itself in Victoryville airspace. It was there for twenty-four hours. We have no idea what it did to you and the town during those twenty-four hours. Do you understand this?”
“I’m sorry, what?” Blackstone said, glancing around at the near-empty streets. He noticed a couple of the teenagers from Roy’s Hardware standing on the street corner looking at him. Their faces held those strange red marks. “Say again.”
Silence was his only response.
“I said, say again!” he said more firmly.
“An unidentified aircraft positioned itself in Victoryville airspace. It was there for twenty-four hours. We have no idea what it has done to you. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
It was Blackstone’s turn for silence.
“We’re going to do everything we can to help you,” the colonel said. “It’s important that you understand this. But before we can help you, we need information. We need your help.”
Again Blackstone was quiet, his mind mulling over what had happened: waking up on the floor of Betty’s, his missing officers, Leo’s missing baby, seeing people with those red marks down their faces. The colonel’s words chased these images through his mind. “An unidentified aircraft . . . Victoryville airspace . . . twenty-four hours . . . We have no idea what it has done to you . . .”
“Chief,” the colonel said firmly, “I repeat, we’re going to do everything we can to help you, but in order to do that, we need your help. We need information. Do you understand this?”
Blackstone took a moment to focus his thoughts and get his mouth to move. “Er, yeah. Yeah, I understand.”
“Good. Now what is the status of your town? How many are missing?”
“I—I don’t know exactly,” he responded, looking around the streets again, studying the empty cars. “I think . . . I think there might be a lot.”
There was silence over the radio again for a moment.
“Is anyone hurt? Has anyone been killed? Anything unusual? Anyone acting strange? Anyone feeling ill?”
Blackstone looked at the teenagers again. He recognized one of them as Davey Ford’s kid, Trent. He eyed the red mark running down the young man’s chin. Noticed the boy next to him, Langdon Swann, had two welts.
“Well,” he said, pausing to swallow, “some people . . .”
“Yes?”
“Some people have these red marks on their faces. These red welts. But they’re different on each one. The number of ’em.”
Again, there was a period of silence over the radio.
“Alright, you need to listen to me,” the colonel said. “We’re working on bringing up the last of comms. But right now, you need to get everyone inside and off the street. Do you understand? When these comms come back on, what they see, people are bound to panic.”
“You got footage of the thing?”
“News crews filmed it the entire twenty-four hours. The footage is blurry because they had to film it from some distance away, but it has been airing all over the world.”
“It was just us? No one else?”
“Just Victoryville.”
“A—and it was here for twenty-four hours?” Blackstone furrowed his brow, still struggling to believe it. “But the clock . . .” He glanced at the digital display on the dash of his vehicle, then up at the midday sun. “What day is it?” he asked, confused.
“It’s Thursday. Trust me, that thing was over your town for a whole day.”
“Holy hell . . .” Blackstone muttered.
“I understand this is hard, chief, but you need to hold it together and keep the people calm, alright. Can you do that for us?”
Blackstone took another moment to clear his thoughts. “I’m going to need back-up. I think some of my officers are missing.” He paused, then rephrased the statement. “I think a lot of my officers are missing.”
“We’ll need to assess the risk of infection before we can send anyone in. If it’s feasible, we’ll send in bio-units to assist, but we need to assess the risk first. We’re trying to find someone on the ground who can help us. We need you to check the hospital, the local doctors, and see who’s left. Or anyone else who might be able to help us.”
Blackstone ran his hand over his face, trying to wipe away the shock that was trying to force its way into his body.
“Chief, there’re still plenty of people left alive, right?” the colonel said. “We need someone of medical or scientific background. Someone who can run some initial tests for us. The sooner we do this, the sooner we can send help in. Do you understand?”
Blackstone nodded to himself. “Yeah, okay.” He looked around the streets again, trying to force his mind to think, the morning’s events flooding through his mind.
“Try Bateson Dermacell,” he said. “They just opened their new research office this mornin
g, er, yesterday morning . . . whenever the hell it was. There might be someone there.”
“Good, chief,” the colonel said. “I want you to head there now, but put any officers you have out on those streets and get people indoors.”
Blackstone lowered his face into his hand, trying to wipe away the remnants of shock.
“Yeah, okay,” he said softly, picturing Leo holding his distraught wife.
“Chief? One last thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Are you marked? Do you have these welts?”
Blackstone glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror, eyed his dark skin. “No. I’m clean.”
“Good,” the colonel said. “Stay by the radio. We’ll be in touch.”
*
Richard Keene crossed the deserted lobby of his hotel and entered the bar. Searching for Benny and Lisa to see if they knew what had happened, he spotted Benny’s camera resting on an empty chair, but neither of his colleagues were there.
In fact, the bar was empty.
Richard’s skin prickled . . . Benny never left his camera unattended. He would get his butt kicked by the network if it got stolen. Maybe they just stepped out into the street to see what was going on?
He made his way to the door, but stopped as he heard a whimpering sound. He scanned the room and saw a distraught waitress crouching down, peering around the corner of the bar at him.
“Wh—what’s going on?” she said, looking at him, terrified.
He moved toward her, took her by her arms and helped her to stand. “It’s okay. You’re alright. What happened?”
“I don’t know.” She started crying. “I—I think I passed out. I woke up on the floor and everyone was gone.”
His grip tightened on her arms. “You what? You . . . passed out?”
She nodded. “And everyone was gone. They just disappeared!”
Richard felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
She passed out. She woke up on the floor . . .
Just like he did.
He glanced around the bar. “There was a man and a woman here. He has dark hair, chubby, with a beard. She’s petite and blond. Did you see them?”
The woman started crying.
“Did you see them? A man and a woman?” he asked again. “They were sitting with that camera.” He pointed to it.
She nodded, her body rattling in his grip. “They were all gone when I woke up.”
Richard’s heart kicked up a notch. He looked around again, unsure what to do. He moved the woman to a chair and sat her down, then walked out to the street to see what was going on. For a town of over 15,000 people, it sure was deserted.
Where the hell did Benny and Lisa go?
He was walking back into the bar toward the woman when the TV on the wall suddenly came to life, startling them both. They turned to focus on it.
It was set on the Sky News channel and what he saw made him pause.
There, filling up the entire screen, was a blurry, shaky image that looked like it had been shot from some distance and zoomed in on. As best he could make out, it was a large, dark, disklike structure hovering over a town. He read the caption on the image: Victoryville, Virginia, United States. His eyes widened, then jumped to the text scrolling at the bottom of the screen.
The unidentified aircraft positioned over the town of Victoryville for the past twenty-four hours has now vanished . . . Military remain on high alert and an exclusion zone around the town remains in force . . . Communications are being restored to the town . . . It is unknown yet if there are any survivors . . .
“U—unidentified aircraft?” the waitress said, staring at the screen. “There was a spaceship?”
“Twenty-four hours!” the young hotel clerk exclaimed as he stepped into the room. “Twenty-four hours have passed?”
Richard stood as still as a statue, unable to do anything other than stare at the screen, at the footage of the large black spaceship that had apparently been hovering over the very town in which he now stood. He saw something shimmer over the black shape, like liquid metal: silver, mirrorlike. Camouflage. Then the ship slowly rose into the atmosphere, barely visible in the way that heat waves roll off a desert highway, and vanished.
It wasn’t often Richard was left short of words, but this sure as hell seemed to do it.
He swallowed hard.
“Holy shit,” he eventually whispered. “Looks like I just got a new story.”
*
Dr. Lysart Pellan sat in Lab-One, studying the magnified skin sample on the screen before him. The image was being piped through from the adjoining lab where, inside, Dr. John Seevers sat at the Biological Safety Cabinet. Arms beneath the glass frontage, Dr. Seevers was studying the physical sample that he’d scraped off the red welt on his own chin.
“Dr. Pellan!” the young graduate, Cheung, said hopefully.
Lysart looked around at his only companion in Lab-One. Cheung stepped up and pointed to the bars on the cell phone he held. “Communications must be restored.”
Lysart looked up at the young man’s hopeful face, then at Dr. Seevers and the other two colleagues who peered back through the window of Lab-Two, all wearing their safety glasses, face masks, and caps.
“I’ll call Professor Meeks,” Lysart said to Cheung, as he moved to the wash station in a corner of the room. “I’ll see if I can find out what’s going on.” He carefully removed his gloves and threw them in the waste container, then washed his hands thoroughly. Once dried, he pulled down the surgical mask he wore, grabbed his cell and made the call.
“Lysart,” Meeks answered, “thank god you’re alright! Are you? Alright, I mean. I arrived in Washington and couldn’t believe it when I heard the news.”
“Harvey,” he breathed with relief, closing his eyes briefly. “Yes, I’m fine.”
“I can’t believe it! I mean, I was just there that morning. I must’ve gotten out just in the nick of time.”
“Yes,” Lysart said solemnly, “you must have.”
“I’m sorry, Lysart. Listen to me. Is everyone else alright?”
Lysart glanced at his colleagues and could see they were hanging on his every word. He turned away from their expectant eyes and walked into the corridor.
“Harvey . . . people are missing,” he said as he closed the door behind him.
“I know. I heard. The military have been in contact with me.”
“The military?”
“Yes. How many are left, Lysart? In the lab.”
Lysart felt the seriousness of the events around him suddenly intensify. It was one thing to have woken up on the floor of the lab, to have noted two of his colleagues had disappeared, and another thing to have seen that alien craft on the TV. Now, Meeks was talking of the military. “Five. Why?”
“Five from seven. Right. How many of the five have these marks?”
Lysart paused. “How do you know about the marks?”
“Like I said, the military have been in contact. They’re bringing in the CDC to help. How many in the lab are marked?”
“Three.”
“And you?”
“No. I’m fine.” Lysart began to walk down the corridor toward the facility’s entrance. He was craving daylight, needing to feel the natural sunlight of the world outside, despite the thought that the ship might be out there somewhere. He needed an escape from the past couple of hours since he’d woken up; since some of his colleagues had disappeared into thin air; since some had awoken with those strange red marks on their faces. He needed the movement to get the blood flowing through his brain so he could think.
Meeks exhaled lightly down the phone. “That’s a relief. Lysart, you need to enact protocol immediately and separate yourself—”
“We’ve already taken precautions,” Lysart told him. “We acknowledged the marks immediately upon waking, put on our protective gear and separated into different labs.”
“Good. Good. So who is left?”
“John, Mary, Grant, and Cheung.”
“And who else besides yourself is unmarked?”
“Just Cheung.”
“Lysart, the CDC are going to need our help. The local Victoryville hospitals, as you can imagine, are suddenly understaffed and inundated with people panicking about what’s happened and what those marks are. They don’t have the capacity or the equipment to assist the CDC with their needs. I’ve assured them that Bateson Dermacell will do what we can to help.”
“We don’t have the equipment either, Harvey. Our lab is designed for BSL-2 containment. This . . . this is going to need a biosafety level 4. I’ve collected samples already from the surviving staff, but we’re going to need to send them to someone on the Laboratory Response Network—”
“No, Lysart, you can’t do that.”
“No?”
“No. Nothing can leave the town. You . . . you saw what did this, right?”
Lysart paused, images flashing through his mind from what he’d seen on the TV in the break room, the alien ship hovering over the town. “Yes,” he said quietly.
“Then you know why the samples can’t leave. The whole town has been quarantined. Whatever caused those welts, it’s alien to this planet. It cannot get out. You’ve already been exposed to it. Your team is best placed locally to help the CDC. I’ve assured them Bateson Dermacell will do what we can to assist.”
“And that is?” Lysart asked, as he stepped into the sleek, minimalist foyer of the building. He pulled up suddenly when he saw a figure standing at the front door: a tall, bulky African-American man with a thick, graying mustache. Lysart recognized him from the opening ceremony. It was the Chief of Police.
“They want us to run initial tests on the survivors and figure out what those welts mean,” Meeks said. “They need us to advise if it’s contagious and how to combat it. I know this isn’t your specialty area, Lysart, but you can do this. The local chief is on his way to you now to make contact.”
“Yes, he just got here,” Lysart said, as the chief stepped through the front door and removed his hat.
The Time of the Stripes Page 4