Natalie had recently opened up the boutique clothing store a few miles from Alec’s original office. He was hesitant for her to open a boutique, not sure it was a sound investment, but Natalie had consistently supported him throughout all his business endeavors. He wasn’t about to deny her the same opportunity. If Alec was honest with himself, the boutique was doing much better than he ever expected it would. It turned out that Natalie’s sense of style was something that other young mothers in the area desired, even if Alec didn’t always understand the trends.
Winking at Natalie, Alec asked, “Were you guys able to finish writing the thank you notes from Alexa’s birthday party?” To his surprise, Natalie actually nodded yes. “Yes dad, we finished them last night,” Alexa said in a voice lined with irritation. “Wow, I’m impressed. Thanks for helping your mom get those finished.” She was still mean-mugging her phone. Alec brushed off her irritation, not believing they had just celebrated her first birthday as a teenager. He wondered where all the years had gone, missing those sleepless nights of diaper changes and feedings.
Their conversations continued as they ate oversized fish tacos and beef burritos. As they were finishing up, Natalie glanced down at her shiny silver watch, “Oh shoot, it’s almost time for Alexa’s dance recital practice. Where are her shoes, Alec?” She eyed him expectantly as he winced. “They’re...uhh, umm, in my car,” Alec mumbled, realizing that in his rush he must have left them in the vehicle. “I’ll run and grab them right quick if you want to ask for the ticket,” he said, handing Natalie his credit card. “Please hurry, I really don’t want to be late again,” and took the credit card. “Yes ma’am. Be back in a jiff.” He stood up, kissed Natalie on the forehead, grabbed his phone, and hurried out the door.
He shivered as a gust of wind passed through the tiny holes in his clothes like an unwelcomed guest. Trying to dress for winter in the south was about like picking the winner of the Super Bowl in June, you could listen to the experts all day long, but anything could happen come February. The sun was beginning to hide behind the tall historic brick buildings lining Main Street, causing Alec to squint as he started down the sidewalk to the parking garage.
The area was bustling with wandering shoppers, joggers, and suited businessmen leaving work. Alec noticed a particular family on the opposite side of the street with several young children. The little boy was wearing a baby-leash. His face coiled into an unpleasant expression at the site of the leashed child. He had never quite understood why people felt the need to treat their kids like pets, not that he was judging, it just didn’t quite seem quite necessary or…loving. In the parents’ defense, the little boy did seem quite rambunctious, nearly jumping into oncoming traffic on the passing thorough way. Alec shook his head, thankful that the boy wasn’t his, and continued onward.
As he continued to walk, Alec noticed an elderly couple walking their golden retriever on the concrete sidewalk, stopping to let the dog sniff the cold black steel of every light pole they passed. The elderly couple were bundled up like they were expecting the next ice age to sweep over the city at any moment, with matching earmuffs and red scarves perfectly positioned to drape over their shoulders. He was rangy but still stood straight as a board and she was a tiny thing hunched as if she were bending to pick up her crossword puzzle. The couple reminded Alec of one of those TV commercial ads for some magical pill or luxurious Florida home. Her head rested on his arm and they walked with clasped hands, gently swaying as they walked. Alec hoped one day that would be he and Natalie, spending their retirement together relaxing and enjoying long strolls talking about nothing and everything.
To his surprise, about a block from the parking garage, Alec saw a homeless man fumbling around in a hefty green sack, like something you would expect an Army man to carry. He was covered in dirt and grime and wore a tattered Starter jacket, the ones that were popular in the early nineties, and looked two sizes too big. While the homeless were quite common in the city, they usually didn’t wonder around this part of town thanks to the over-eager bicycle police that patrolled the streets. Alec adjusted his direction, being sure to walk several steps around the man, when he heard a gruff voice say, “spare some change young man?” Alec looked up to see the deeply wrinkled face of the homeless man, who had no doubt spent one too many days in the elements. The man had jarring light blue eyes, kind eyes. Purely for show or maybe out of habit, Alec patted his pockets, pretending to check for loose change. He didn't even carry a wallet much less cash, although he told himself he would have given the man a few dollars if he had cash. “I'm sorry sir, I don't have anything except a few credit cards,” he said apologetically. Alec half-expected the man to harass him, but instead the man simply replied “God bless you son,” and went back to rummaging through the hefty green sack. Alec was so taken back with the man’s response that he paused a few moments, staring, then finished the last bit of his walk. He squeezed through the narrow opening the passenger door allowed, and reached into the floorboard to grab Blakeley’s dance shoes.
As Alec approached the homeless man again, he was relieved to see the man napping, and pondered how the man fell asleep so quickly. His cell phone dinged loudly in his pocket, causing him to flinch, but the homeless man didn’t budge. Holding the pink dance shoes in his left hand, Alec struggled to get the tablet-sized phone out of the pocket of his slim fit slacks. It was times like this that he wished he would have opted for a smaller phone.
Finally wrestling it free, he pressed his thumb onto the glass screen, unlocking the home screen and then brought up his email app. Alec began to scan the email notifying him about items that wouldn't be shipped on time, when his feet suddenly began to tingle. At first the tingle was the familiar sensation of pins and needles, like his feet were falling asleep. Although the sensation wasn’t unusual in itself, it did seem odd considering he was walking, not sitting cross-legged on top of his feet. Suddenly the tingling intensified, pulsing up his legs and even into his chest. It felt as if a thousand tiny spiders were crawling under his skin. Alec began to panic as the thousands of tiny spiders extended all the way to the very tips of his fingers. His brain was trying to make sense of it all. His first thought was a stroke. Alec stood still, examining his arms and legs, turning his hands over and over. He began tapping his foot on the ground, like that was going to circulate blood back down to them.
The tingling spiders were everywhere, creeping and crawling over every inch of his body. He wanted to scratch at them or hop into a shower and scrub them from under his skin. Suddenly the itching sensation took a turn for the worse. The spiders seemingly burst into a thousand balls of fire, igniting his blood like jet fuel, and causing him to drop his phone and shoes. He fell onto his knees in agony. His body was on fire. It felt like he would melt or combust at any moment, and then he heard something…a word, or at least he thought it was a word. It was hard to concentrate through the pain. Then over his own screaming voice, at least he thought he was screaming, he heard it again. It didn’t sound like it was coming from a person near him, but from a voice in his head. An authoritative whisper. “Infuse.” Just as Alec thought he was about to pass out, it stopped. The excruciating pain was gone, replaced by an intense feeling of comfort and serenity passed over him. It was so blissful that he could only compare it to the feeling he had on his wedding day or the day Alexa was born.
Opening his eyes, Alec realized he was burning hot, his clothes drenched with sweat. He pulled up his sleeves and lifted his shirt to see if there were any burn marks. He paused in disbelief at what he saw. His skin was faintly glowing a golden hue, like a light bulb just after you flip the switch off. He looked around to see if anyone had witnessed the odd occurrence. Would there have been anything to see? Then he noticed the wide blue eyes staring at him. Eyes of someone who saw a ghost. The homeless man was no longer sleeping. “Did you see...” Alec started to say but was interrupted mid-sentence as the ground beneath his feet began to tremble. The nearby buildings began to subtly shake
. The flagpole on a nearby building made a loud pinging noise as the metal wiring holding the American flag whipped against the metal pole. Alec stood bewildered, too shocked to move. It didn’t appear to be a ground cracking, building toppling earthquake. It was more similar to a semi-truck passing over a rickety wooden bridge.
Alec picked up his cell phone and Alexa’s shoes off the concrete sidewalk, using the side of his palms to push himself up when the sounds of the small tremor were suddenly drowned out by the overwhelming roar of a fleet of jets in the sky. Judging by the intensity of roar and the vibrations in his chest, the jets seemed to passing right overhead. As Alec lifted his head to the sky in search of the jets, he was not prepared for what he saw next.
Neck craned up towards the sky, Alec was paralyzed with fear and awe. What he saw was difficult to describe, unlike anything he had ever seen before. In the sky, an enormous nebula of swirling deep purple and red clouds was devouring the vast skyline. The swarm of clouds blotted out the sinking sun, smothering the horizon into darkness. They were swirling down from the heavens above as if they were being sucked into a giant black hole at the center of the planet. Alec could only imagine the immense power held within, a force far greater than he dared fathom. Alec wanted to run, to cower somewhere safe, but he couldn’t. He was unable to move. Unable to so much as blink an eye. He knew this was the end, and waited for them to devour him as they had the sun. As they churned, he noticed something seeming to happen at the center of the nebula. The clouds were organizing into a sort of vortex, twisting and churning like the eye of a massive storm. Slowly a hole began to open at the center, preparing to reveal the awesome source of their power. Alec’s heart beat uncontrollably, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t take his eyes off the storm above. He stood terrified at what secrets, what hidden fury the red nebula would unleash unto them.
The massive sea of clouds continued its organized swirling until finally Alec saw what looked to be a a hole opening. Something like a sonic boom blasted his ears and simultaneously unnaturally blinding light covered him, like the sun itself had been cast down upon him. Alec could feel the heat on his face, the intensity of the light. He shielded his eyes with a raised arm, but even still waves of blazing light crashed into his retina like bolts from Zeus himself, temporarily blinding his vision. If he thought he was going to die earlier, he knew it now. His life didn’t flash before his eyes as people had always told him, instead he only thought of Alexa and Natalie. He could feel the warmth of their love, the joy they brought to his life. He wrapped himself in the thought of them, their love, and was content. Then, he felt the heat from the light dissipate and a cool breeze kiss his face. For a moment he wondered if he was dead. Perhaps he was being wisped away to some sort of afterlife. Alec tried to open his eyes but thousands of fluorescent stars distorted his vision. He tried to blink them away, but they were stubborn and refused to leave.
After a few minutes, the stars slowly began to fade and Alec’s vision finally cleared. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see, but was surprised to see…well, nothing unusual at all. The sun was setting in a perfectly clear sky that stared back at him, as if nothing had happened at all. Alec looked down at his hands and feet then back up at the sky. Still nothing unusual. Alec wondered what on earth was happening. Had it all been in his head? Had he imagined everything after the weird tingling sensation overcame him? He suddenly remembered the homeless man. Maybe he had seen it too. Alec turned to ask the homeless man, but he was gone. Not like he had picked up his stuff and ran, he was just gone. A messy pile of clothes with the Starter jacket on top lay next to the worn green sack.
Alec blankly scanned the area looking for the homeless man but he was nowhere to be found. His mind futilely attempted to comprehend the otherworldly events, but he was like a toddler trying to understand advanced biochemistry. A loud crash startled him from his thoughts, followed by panicked screams. His large brown eyes lifted, still a little fuzzy from the blinding light, and tried to focus on the scene several hundred feet down the road. Two cars sat mangled together, half on the sidewalk and half on the street. It was apparent the two cars had been in a head-on collision. Alec jogged towards the wreck and saw a thin middle-aged woman slowly stagger out of the large white SUV. Her blonde bangs were covered with the deep red of blood. She stumbled slightly as her feet met the pavement and then she collapsed to one knee in the street.
Alec looked to the other vehicle, a small truck that had evidently taken the brunt of the damage. The front bumper of the truck was crushed all the way into the front seat. Alec’s heart dropped as he thought of the driver and any passengers, but he couldn’t see anyone in or outside the truck. The doors were still closed as best he could tell, but no one was sitting in either of the two front seats. He looked all around the vehicles and on the sidewalk to see if maybe the passenger had already crawled out, but didn’t see anyone in the vicinity that could have possibly been in the truck at impact.
Not for the first time today Alec stood perplexed. He looked back at the injured woman who had made it to her feet only to pace in a circle beside the carnage of the accident. She seemed to be saying something but Alec was too far away to hear. He began to jog down the sidewalk towards the woman when he heard something else, a familiar buzzing sound. His mind was too jumbled to give the buzzing sound the attention it deserved. It continued to grow louder and louder, until it finally demanded his attention. Alec turned towards the direction of the sound, finally comprehending the buzzing sound was that of a small red compact car. The vehicle was speeding down the street right towards the injured woman. “Look out!” Alec tried to warn the woman, pointing towards the car but his words fell on deaf ears. Either she couldn’t hear him or was in no state to comprehend the weight of his words.
A gruesome image of the compact car smashing into the injured woman, shattering her thin bones and sending her flying through the air flashed through his mind. Not knowing what else to do, Alec dropped his belongings and began sprinting towards the woman. The compact car was still barreling down the street, less than a hundred yards away now. From this distance, Alec could see that there was no one driving the car. “What in the world is going on?” Alec huffed in between frantic steps. He looked at the car then back at the woman. He wasn’t going to make it in time. Alec silently prayed, asking God or any other deity that might be listening to intervene, to save the woman. He was still about fifty feet away. He urged himself to run faster. “You can make it,” he told himself. At the last second he dove at the woman, a last ditch effort to save her and avoid getting crushed by the vehicle himself. He closed his eyes and felt the impact of another body. He squeezed his eyes closed tighter as he braced for the impact of the red car, but it never came. He opened his eyes just as the empty car rocketed past them. Alec could feel the wind on his face as the car rushed past him and then he heard it smash into something just past the vehicles. Pain shot through Alec’s left elbow and knees from where they had struck the pavement hard. He slowly rolled off the woman as he heard another voice ask, “are you ok ma'am, sir?” Alec didn’t look up to find the source of the questioning voice, he couldn’t take his eyes off the woman beside him. The bloodied woman was staring blankly at the sky with a haunted look on her face, like he wasn’t even there. Then she spoke. “My son, my son. My son is... gone. They took him.” She muttered. Alec’s mind began to reel as he thought about the woman’s words. “He’s gone. They took him,” she had said. What could that mean? “Who took him?” Alec asked. The woman didn’t respond. She just stared blankly and repeated “They took my son.”
Alec tried to think about the last several minutes. He considered the pile of clothes where the homeless man had sat, empty truck from the head on collision, the speeding red car with no driver, and now this woman talking about her son vanishing. It didn’t make any sense. Had they really vanished? If so, where had they all gone? Was this somehow all tied to the strange storm clouds and the blinding light? Suddenly his stomach dropp
ed, the world suddenly shrank from seven billion people to two. The only two people that mattered, Natalie and Alexa. Were they OK? He told himself they were fine, but like the swift current of a rushing river, his mind flooded with questions, drowning him in worry.
He frantically stood up, shrugging off the pain in his elbows and knees and tugged the cell phone from his pocket. With trembling hands, he tried to unlock the phone with his fingerprint. The screen shook. He tried again and the phone refused again, shaking at him instead. “Come on!” he yelled in frustration. It wasn’t until he removed his finger from the phone that he saw the problem. His fingers were coated in blood. He wiped the blood on his pants and finally unlocked the screen, dialing Natalie. He hadn’t even realized that his legs were already in motion, sprinting the remaining three blocks back to the restaurant. Ring. Ring. Ring. “Come on, pick up!” He glanced down at the screen. Twenty seconds, twenty-two seconds… “Pick up, Natalie!” he yelled in a panic. Ring. Ring. “This is Natalie, sorry I can’t take your call…”
Chapter 3
It had all happened so quickly. Zoey and her friends were packed in with thousands of others in the so-called “safe zone.” They were waiting out the night in one of the last bastions in the city, a shelter the military had setup in the football stadium. It hadn’t taken long for the chaos to begin. The red-eyes had found them. Overran them. Zoey had never seen so much panic and anarchy, so much loss of life, so much blood.
They had been hearing rumors of small groups of the red-eyes attacking, but the soldiers wouldn’t say anything about it. There had been shots fired, however there was no way of knowing what or who the soldiers were shooting at. Rumors swirled that the shots must have been at a stray red-eye or two. Others suggested they were shooting at a lone scout, testing the stadiums defenses, but there was no way to know for sure. Not when the soldiers stood there like statues when you asked them, or gave the same militaristic answer over and over. “Can’t say ma’am. Sorry ma’am. Nothing to worry about ma’am. You’re safe inside these walls ma’am.” Half the refugees weren’t overly concerned with the shootings as long as the threat seemed far away and didn’t puncture their make-believe safety bubble. The other half of refugees were already broken. They were the ones with malfunctioning clockwork, second hand stuck ticking and ticking, but never moving. Or the ones so petrified by recent events that their brains had officially checked out, leaving behind mindless roaming bodies.
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