Nighthawks at the Mission (The Long Preview)

by Forbes West

  Near the back of the apartment, you spot a single white door that is partially ajar, revealing a bleak looking toilet, and make your way to the back in order to use it. Perhaps it’s every emotion you’ve had since arriving hitting you at once, or perhaps it’s your foolishness in doing drugs catching up to you, but now you feel sick to your stomach.

  You make it into the restroom and close the door behind you. You stare into the mirror for a long moment, seeing a slightly disheveled, tired looking young woman with brunette hair.

  You turn the cold tap on, running your hands through it and then splashing it onto your face. You keep this up for a good minute, feeling the water run over your hands, your face. The basin is filled with cool water now and you start to become fixated on it, staring at it, skimming your hand over its surface.

  Blackness. No sound. No feeling.

  There are strange tones, something not of this world; sounds that only the dead can hear, you fear.

  You stand up in a stupor, shaking your head. You stumble out of the bathroom, swinging the door wide open, feeling drugged.

  And then you see in a flash Dwelka Storma, same armor, same mask covering the bottom half of his face, the half-crown. The Ephor warrior is standing there, sword drawn. But then you hear these strange tones and you feel as if you are falling… But you are not. The vision of Dwelka Storma seems to fade for a moment, and disappears, to be replaced by your sister—a woman you haven’t seen for a very long time. You see Star in the Mountain for a brief second.

  The vision disappears. The two Counters are helping to your feet, and Jaime gets a cup of water for you.

  “We can go to sleep in a little bit. You okay, Sweetie McSweetums?”

  You shake your head.

  Chapter Eight: The Flashstorm (When the Levee Breaks)

  You wish the Counters an awkward goodbye as they leave your new home. You and Jaime watch from the front door as they walk down the hallway to the elevators.

  Jaime nudges you. “Want to get something to eat? There’s an observation area on the roof. And grills.” Jaime checks the refrigerator. “They’ve left us Network Beer. Alcohol, Sarah. Take a look. Oh and they left personal liquor license forms to fill out- in the refrigerator-” Jaime shakes his head. “I don’t know why they left them in the fridge…”

  Your mood picks up a bit at that news, and you take a closer look at the refrigerator. “You’re the man now, dog,” you reply.

  ~~~~

  JAIME hands you a white fluffy towel with the crest of Solomon’s House University imprinted on it, and you take a shower in the second bedroom’s bathroom. You stand in the shower for a long time, maybe thirty minutes, running that hot water all over, scrubbing away the memories of the train trip and the day in the dungeon, cleaning underneath your fingernails, and washing and rewashing your hair with little hotel-style shampoo bottles.

  You look at yourself in the mirror. You don't know if this is possible but you look like you’ve lost more than a few pounds. You look like a skeleton with two red coals for eyes.

  Wearing an oversized Solomon’s House University sweater and sweatpants that smell of mothballs and were part of your move-in gifts, you walk out of the bedroom, looking for Jaime. You see a note on Network stationery—he is at the observation lounge at the top of Mission Friendship.

  After a long elevator ride to the top, you emerge on the rooftop to encounter not a single resident.

  There’s an incredible view—the mountains, the stars, Star in the Mountain, the walled village, and the train station far off. You watch as clouds drift across the night sky with all those different stars looking back down on you and the seven ethereal moons orbiting above. There are little, round, neon-green birds sitting on the railing. Behind you is a fire pit that burns steadily in a giant brass centerpiece, the fire crackling and puffing as the logs split from the heat. The air is tinged with fragrant smoke. A strange robot, skeletal and ancient-looking, beeps away, watching the fire and stoking it constantly.

  Jaime has found an old, portable transistor radio from somewhere.

  Jaime stands there, grooving along. His eyes are closed the whole time.

  You watch him awkwardly wiggle his knees back and forth before for a good few minutes before you touch him on the shoulder. He jumps a few feet straight up into the air.

  After turning down the radio, Jaime leads you to where a couple of wicker chairs are set up with a tray table next to each. “Found all this stuff up here.”

  Each tray table is complete with a sourdough sandwich, empty glass, and small bag of Doritos. The music is playing and no one is saying anything. In fact, you are almost sure that no one else is here at the Mission.

  “Quite the view here, hmmm?” You nod in response, looking at the dinner intently.

  “Glass of milk, uh, Earth cattle, perhaps? Water? Pre-mixed virgin pina colada?” Jaime says, opening a large plastic red and white cooler that he’s brought from downstairs. It has the Network symbol on it. The cooler is full of ice and beer bottles strangely covered with the hammer and sickle symbol and the words COMECON BEER, plus a few other beverages. The Network is not stingy when it comes to welcoming you to its Mission.

  “M-milk,” you say. “Still feeling a little loose from the whole train thing…”

  Jaime pulls out a bottle and brings it over to the wicker chair that he’s set up for you. Jaime gestures for you to come over and sit, which you do. He pours you a glass. You start to drink it, downing half of it in a moment. Jaime glances back at the cooler, then thinking better of it, leaves the bottle with you.

  Jaime sits down in his own wicker chair after grabbing a dripping bottle of the Hammer and Sickle. He takes a bottle opener from his pocket and pops off the bottle cap, which he then throws over the railing of the observation deck. You are too high up to hear the clink of it falling against the road. “This is fun; this is what couples do,” Jaime says, looking very content. “Boy, wait, I hope no one was down there…”

  You start to eat with relief. Jaime takes out an old Casio digital wristwatch, a cheap silver thing that would have looked dandy on any frugal gentlemen from the 1980s, and tosses it to you. You look confused. “Not really my style…”

  You toss back the watch, and Jaime immediately tosses it right back to you with a grin. “Keep it on, Sarah, and watch the clock. When the digital screen goes out, that’s because of the EMP blast. When you see a blank face on the watch, that’s when it happens.”

  “When what happens, Jaime?” you ask, looking over the watch.

  “When it happens, you will know it…” Jaime says with an evil laugh. “You ever see those David Lynch rabbit things? No? Well, well you should.”

  You nod, still looking at the watch, feeling weird. There seems to be a charge in the air, a sort of static heaviness over everything.

  The sandwich is great. It has meat inside that tastes like lobster, it’s buttery, somewhat hot, with a spicy mayo sauce all over it. The sourdough, interestingly, is fresh. “What’s in this sandwich? It’s so freakin’ good,” you say.

  Jaime shrugs. “Wish I knew… Something alien, I guess. Maybe like those trilobite meat things we saw back at Solomon’s? I got it from this little deli shop on fifteen.”

  That stops you from eating further.

  You are popping open the small Doritos bag and about to plop a chip into your mouth when you see Jaime stand up abruptly. Jaime walks away and comes back with that large, boxy transistor radio he had earlier.

  Moving the tray table to the side with a scraping sound, Jaime puts the boxy radio on his lap with a groan, turns it on, and starts to fiddle with the dials. There is this funky popping noise, then a repeated buzzing noise. A warbling of static comes in and out of the transmission. You eat in silence for the next few minutes, listening to the noise, munching on chips as Jaime fiddles with the radio.

  Coming from the radio is an old Led Zeppelin song with a steady, thumping beat. Plant carries the tune:

  Wh
en the levee breaks I’ll have no place to stay.

  Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan…

  “Got it,” Jaime says. “Now we got music again.”

  “Old man rock ‘n‘ roll? Still? Good god, it’s like being on your dad’s boat back that one day in summer… You remember that? Shit, he put Jimi Hendrix’s greatest effing hits on loop for two hours, it was soooo annoying. I actually became happy after a while that Jimi choked on his own puke, and that’s a mean thought. ‘Hey Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand’. ‘Hey Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand’. Oh man.”

  Jaime laughs hard. You eye him, realizing something but not letting the thought hit the conscious surface of your brain at first. “Yep, I thought that too. Not the Jimi choking to death part, that’s really, really mean Sarah, but, you know…”

  As you are laughing, you notice the watch face goes suddenly blank. “It just went dead, Jaime…” you say.

  “Storm’s a coming,” Jaime says, rubbing his hands together.

  The Led Zeppelin song is interrupted as the radio cuts out into an eerie emergency band drone.

  The announcer, a woman with a crisp English-sounding accent, comes on. “We interrupt this radio broadcast to update you on the special flashstorm warning for the Super Sargasso Sea region. Any and all persons within five kilometers of the center of Sargasso-3 Antediluvian city must take immediate shelter. We repeat, this is a flashstorm warning for the Super Sargasso Sea region. Any persons within five kilometers of the center of Sargasso-3’s reactor complex must take immediate shelter…”

  And then the storm starts. The black sky, once cloudy and pockmarked with white stars and several moons, begins to be covered in a fast movement of clouds. The wind becomes stronger and there is a rich, droning sound. The roof of the building begins to shake so much that it rattles the glass of milk off your tray table and knocks it to the deck floor, shattering it. Neither you nor Jaime actually hear the glass break over the discordant warning sirens going off and the roar of the sky itself. The sky then begins to light up, red, then blue, then red again, and then it turns into an almost fiery orange.

  You stand up and walk to the edge of the observation deck, watching the fantastic display. A ring of white circles seems to be spreading out from some distant location. The ring swirls in and out of the clouds, making at first a chain of circles and then shooting downwards and upwards from the sky to the ground.

  You lose your footing for a moment due to the wind, stumbling to the side. Green lightning shoots out in all directions now and again. For moments at a time the entire world seems to light up in white flashes as bright as millions of flashbulbs popping at the same time.

  The sky turns a deep bluish-green and becomes incredibly thick with clouds. A sound like a thousand groaning screams comes forth from the sky.

  “You’re not who you say you are, are you?” you cry out to Jaime. Jaime seems not to hear at first.

  The wind becomes its strongest now, rattling the multi-paned windows in Mission Friendship with flashes of white that become more and more frequent. As you look up to the sky, it seems that the whole world is being bashed into whiteness.

  Jaime gives you a funny look and says nothing for an entire moment, his mouth moving. “I am Jaime Van Zandt,” he finally says.

  The storm stops. There is now utter stillness. The clouds begin to disperse. Stars once hidden begin to shine again. A dog barks in the distance and a crow caws back.

  You wonder about Jaime but let it go.

  Jaime speaks up for a moment. “I’ll get myself outfitted in the Funeral Breaks in the morning, and then I’ll be off to go check out my little modded bike. You remember me talking about that, right? I’ll be off doing what I want to do—sketch and salvage. God, can you believe we are standing on another planet?” Jaime shivers in excitement.

  “In the morning, I’ll be off to grab the bike and go. And the road leads ever on and on…” Jaime looks so happy. “You’ll be okay here, right? I mean, it looks like the Network don’t even know about our little, ah, excitement back in Solomon’s Bay. The Counters never mentioned it once.” Jaime crosses his arms. “Lord, we just started an adventure.”

  “Must you leave so soon, Jaime?” you say, looking over at Jaime, noticing once again how exactly he looks like Tyler.

  “This is what I’ve wanted to do my whole life, Sarah.” Jaime smiles. “Be myself, in a strange land. Thank you, Sarah. You helped make this happen.” He kisses you on the cheek. “I’m living my dream.”

  You stand on the deck with Jaime, listening to the radio return to When the Levee Breaks…

  Cryin’ won’t help you, praying will do you no good,

  No, cryin’ won’t help you, praying will do you no good…

  “Okay,” you say. “Okay. You go out there, and do your dream—and I’ll start mine here.” You manage a smile.

  ~~~~

  YOU and Jaime lie awake in your basement apartment with the lights off, trying to sleep but unable to. There is a note on your welcome basket about meeting for work tomorrow at 9:00am.

  Jaime can’t stand it any longer. You watch quietly as he gets dressed in the middle of the night. You watch as he throws on a leather jacket and a backpack. Jaime walks to the kitchen and comes back with a water bottle from the refrigerator. You get out of bed, studying what he is doing. “You are leaving now? It’s, it’s three in the morning, Jaime. You are taking off now?”

  Jaime shrugs. “Night-time is the right time. Can’t sleep, gotta walk.”

  “But it’s, it could be dangerous out there,” you squeak out. “Really, come on. Go to bed and go at daylight.”

  Jaime shrugs again. “Why? There are all-night inns in the Funeral Breaks. It’s a twenty-minute walk to that walled village. I’m up, I’m ready, and I’m going to go. I want to see that Triumph waiting for me in the Free Zone.”

  “Besides,” Jaime takes a sawed-off shotgun with a pistol grip out of his backpack. He stuffs it into his belt. “Counters had an extra shotgun just lying in the trunk, loaded.” Jaime breaks the gun open, takes out two red shotgun shells, and reloads it. “Loaded, right. If they come and ask, play dumb. But they won’t. My personal intellectual assessment of people like that, based on what I have read, is that they will be too embarrassed about having lost the gun to either report it or try to track it down. I’ll be fine. It’s time for the adventure to begin.”

  Jaime opens the apartment door slowly, peeking out. He whispers, “Look, Sarah, I think you came off-world with not the clearest and most rational reasons. I really do. So can I give you some advice?”

  “Give me advice? Call me irrational? Says the guy who makes a really big assumption and steals a shotgun?”

  Jaime smirks. “Look, what I am saying is this. We are here on another planet. Don’t end up doing the same thing you did back on Earth. This is, this is such a cool situation.”

  “Jaime?”

  Jaime looks you over and shrugs his shoulders. “You should come with me. Just leave. What are they going to do? This isn’t Earth. All the old rules of life just went out the window.”

  Jaime steps out the door, leaving you to spend the next five hours awake and alone in your new basement apartment home.

  Your phone, which you didn't even know you had next to your bed, rings and wakes you up just as you start to doze a little. It’s one of those old style rotary telephones, older than you, and the noise scares you to full consciousness. A woman on the other end yawns into the phone as you pick it up. “Dee Ricco, Mission Manager, how can I help you?”

  You state she called you, not the other way around. “I’m, I’m Sarah Orange, I’m the new Settler Service Rep.”

  “Oh, oh my god. I am so tired from last night! My apologies. Oh jeez, I just wanted to call you to check in. Did you and your husband have a good night’s rest?”

  You mention that yes, yes you did. “And you got our goodie basket and our note about today? Did you get
all of that?”

  You reply into the phone politely that yes, yes you did. “Oh joy! Great! We will see you at nine sharp!”

  You get slowly out of bed, bleary-eyed, and start to shower and dress. Your stomach rumbles from a lack of breakfast, and your legs and arms ache from all the tension of the last few days.

  Bored and over-tired, you start to sing that Led Zeppelin song to yourself. “Cryin’ won’t help, prayin’ will do you no good…”

  Chapter Nine: First Day

  You arrive at the downstairs lobby, smelling the hot coffee that’s brewing automatically in one of those glass-walled offices off to the side. A strong-looking woman, mid-thirties, blonde, is brewing a cup of coffee and it smells wonderful, the fragrance filling the large lobby. She wears the Network flight suit tightly, her breasts about to pop out, with a white scarf around her neck to show some individuality. You notice that the front glass doors are still locked—it isn’t officially start time. Ni-Perchta and human workers are starting up at McDonald’s, switching on fryers and grilling whatever needs to be grilled.

  The woman welcomes you into her office with a wave. She introduces herself as Dee Ricco, Mission Manager. She is still attractive in some ways, although the wrinkles and the over-tanning have caught up to her. She isn’t as thin as she perhaps once was; she mentions to you twice that she needs to get back into “fighting shape”. You are wearing your own blue wannabe NASA flight suit with the American flag on your right shoulder. She gives you a once over, seemingly sizing up the competition.

  “It’s really good to meet you. I understand, just loosely, you had some issues with immigration?” She sips her cup of coffee, her half-lidded eyes watching you closely.

  You sip on your own mug of coffee that she had made for you, nodding. “A little misunderstanding. Just a small delay. Thank you for understanding.”

  “Of course!” Dee says, tossing her long blonde hair to the side casually. “Of course, this isn’t America or even Europe. We have to operate on their time, not our own.” Dee subconsciously glances out the window of her office.