“Yeah, I think I’ll plan a night out with them. Can I?”
Even though he had lived on his own for three months, Kyle still felt he needed to ask permission from his mother.
She chuckled and nodded. “Of course.”
They talked for a few more minutes, mainly about life in the Pentagon and the extreme training program, before Lori kissed him on the forehead and wished him a good night. Kyle slept deep his first night home in his own bed, wishing his grandmother would come visit him in his dreams.
* * *
The next day was a Saturday and Kyle sent a text message to Jimmy and Mikey first thing in the morning to arrange plans for that night. They were all set to meet at Uncle Tony’s, their favorite pizzeria to grab a slice since middle school.
Kyle killed time during the day by raking the leaves in his mother’s backyard and stuffing them into Halloween trash bags that looked like pumpkins and ghosts. There was still over a month until Halloween, but she insisted he put the leaves into them now as there wouldn’t be enough later. It was refreshing for him to be out in nature. The Outside Room at the Pentagon did a phenomenal job of replicating an outdoor environment with its live animals and weather changes, but there was still the mental doubt that accompanied it by knowing you were still inside of a building.
He worked in the yard all morning, headphones in his ears as he charged through the day, anxious and excited to see his friends. Would they seem childish to him now, like his bedroom felt when he walked into it?
By the time six o’clock came around that evening, Kyle felt a churning in his stomach that he wasn’t sure was nerves or excitement. He made the quick ten-minute drive across town, horrified at the prospect of his life changing any more. He hadn’t talked to his friends since he left, and could only hope everything would feel normal upon their reunion.
When he pulled up to the restaurant, Kyle felt his inner teenage spirit crying through the depths of his soul, like a prisoner begging for release. Crew member or not, Kyle had changed a lot after the incident at his grandmother’s house four years ago. Her funeral was followed by his parents’ divorce a couple months later, a combination of events that put him into a dark place emotionally. So dark, he supposed, that he had yet to fully recover.
He recalled having suicidal thoughts one night, the melancholy of life too much to handle as he sat in his mother’s house alone while she went out on a date. It never grew into a serious thought, but the fact that he wondered what it might feel like to swallow thirty pain pills was enough to disturb him into going outside for a run to clear his head.
Those thoughts plagued his mind from time to time, but mostly stayed in the dark corners where they belonged. He supposed everyone went through this at some point in their lives, where the will to live was overshadowed by the desire to roll over and croak.
In a nutshell, Kyle had been turned cold by the events that happened to him. So cold that he made deliberate efforts to fend off emotions that boiled up within. He had cried in his old bedroom the night before, but something about being home made him feel like it was okay. He hoped sitting around with his old friends would have the same effect in letting him be himself.
Kyle jumped out of his car and entered the pizzeria, his senses struck by the fresh dough baking somewhere in the back of the building. It was Saturday night and the place was crowded with families gathering for the dinner rush. He spotted Mikey and Jimmy sitting at a booth along the side wall and pushed his way through the crowd to meet them.
“Well, well,” Mikey said. “Did you come here straight from the gym?”
Kyle looked down, still in the phase where it seemed everyone could see the growth in his body except for him. The countless hours in the Pentagon’s gym had added up, but he didn’t think he looked that much different.
“Funny,” Kyle said, every worry disappearing by the second. Just being in this restaurant with his friends helped him feel like a normal teenager again.
“You might have to come out for the football team with me,” Jimmy said, standing up and nearly hitting his head on the light hanging above their table. Jimmy had always been the tallest and most athletic of their group, and had now grown to six feet tall after a summer growth spurt. He hugged Kyle with a hard slap on the back before sitting down and letting Mikey do the same.
Mikey hadn’t changed one bit aside from growing a couple inches and getting a pair of glasses. He kept his hair buzzed and his face in the books as always.
“How have you guys been? Tell me everything,” Kyle said as they all settled into the booth.
“Smarty pants here is already getting ready for college,” Jimmy said, shooting Mikey a grin across the table.
Mikey nodded. “I’m only talking with our new counselor about places I should apply. She thinks I can get into places like Yale or Stanford.”
“He’s only talking to our new counselor because she’s hot,” Jimmy interrupted, cackling at himself.
“Fuck you, I do not!” Mikey snapped.
“Please. We all do. There isn’t a boy in school who hasn’t been caught staring at her legs. See, she wears these short skirts every day when it’s warm. It’s impossible to not look. I think she flies somewhere to tan on the beach every weekend – I just don’t understand how she can look so perfect.”
And just like that everything was normal again, as if they had jumped right back into their lives, never skipping a beat. There was no such thing as Exalls or an underground civilization beneath the Pentagon. They were just three teenage boys living in the moment, drinking soda, eating pizza, and talking about girls and sports. Nothing else mattered.
Kyle sat back and listened for the next half hour as Mikey and Jimmy caught him up to speed with who was dating who, what teachers they liked this year, and how their lives had been over the summer. The fact that Kyle had nothing to contribute to the discussion was the gentle reminder he needed to know that his life indeed had moved on from high school. In two weeks he’d be back on a plane to Washington with no idea what his schedule would look like. Meanwhile his friends would be back in history class, dreaming of the next summer break.
Mikey finally shifted the conversation to Kyle. “How are you liking your new job?”
“It’s going good,” Kyle replied shyly, not wanting to go down this road. But they were his friends, and they had been by his side during the tragedy. He wasn’t the only one scarred for life from what they had witnessed that day. “It’s so busy. I wake up at six in the morning and don’t get back to my room until seven or eight at night.”
“Holy shit,” Jimmy cried. “Six in the morning?! That’s nuts.”
“What do you do all day?” Mikey asked.
“So far it’s been nothing but training. Time in the gym, shooting range, studying. I rarely leave the building.”
“So you’re really strong now?” Jimmy asked, leaning over the table to slurp the last of his soda.
“I wouldn’t say really strong. Not like you. But I’m definitely stronger than before I left.”
Kyle leaned back while he chewed his pizza and noticed Jimmy and Mikey exchange a suspicious look, looking away from Kyle, then immediately down to their plates as if avoiding eye contact.
“What’s going on?” Kyle asked.
“You tell him, Mike,” Jimmy said, stuffing more pizza into his mouth to avoid talking.
Mikey looked to his hands clasped beneath the table.
“We’ve been getting some strange messages,” Mikey said.
“Messages? From who?” Kyle sprung forward, planting his elbows on the table.
Mikey tossed his hands in the air as he shrugged. “Brian?”
“Brian? Impossible.”
Kyle knew it wasn’t impossible after his first few months with the Crew. Brian could still be alive somewhere—as his regular self—but that didn’t make it a likely scenario.
“That’s what I thought at first. In fact, I ignored the text messages—thought it was a pr
ank.”
“Well, what did the messages say?” Kyle asked.
Mikey pulled his phone out of his pocket, and scrolled over the screen, flipping it around for Kyle to see.
Kyle grabbed it and started reading.
Help me, Mike. I’m trapped in this body and can’t get out, was the first message. Mikey didn’t reply.
The following day: He leaves me alone for a couple minutes each day. Please help me get out!
This prompted Mikey to ask: Who is this?
Twenty-four hours later the response came: Brian
Can you help?
Please get me out of here. I’m so scared.
I want to go home.
Mikey never sent a response, and the last sequence of text messages lingered on the screen like a bug splatter on a windshield. Kyle could only see the timestamps of the messages and not the actual date they were sent.
“When did you get these?” he asked.
“Earlier this week. What do you think of them?”
Kyle didn’t know what to think. He was trained to fight Exalls, not study potential messages from old friends trapped within a body of one. He glared down to the phone, reading the sender’s number as Unknown.
If it was a prankster, how would they know what happened to Brian? The only people who knew were sitting at this table, plus Kyle’s parents. And the entire Crew, of course. Kyle wondered if the messages were sent from The Crew as a sort of test for him upon arriving home. Maybe they wanted to see if Mikey would even bother to say anything to test his sworn word of not discussing the matter any further.
Kyle rubbed his eyes out of frustration. He just wanted to come home and hang out with his family and friends. Why did this have to come up on his first night out?
I’m trapped in this body and can’t get out.
This particular message hung in his mind. Trapped. Kyle didn’t feel it was a prank, and the thought made him nauseous. He took a long sip of his soda before handing Mikey’s phone back and slamming down his empty paper cup.
“Guys, I think it’s real. Brian must still be alive.”
19
Chapter 19
At the Pentagon, an unsettling mood spread throughout the entire Crew’s underground offices. They were under attack and weren’t prepared. Attacks were supposed to occur every three decades. It was supposed to be a time of peace, according to tradition, but now every member looked over their shoulder when leaving the building. Some even refused to leave the confines of their underground fort once they heard what happened to their two comrades in Michigan.
Colonel Griffins called an emergency meeting with the department leaders, having them cram into his office with the blinds shut, huddled around his desk.
“Three attacks, now,” he said flatly. “Three attacks that we never saw coming. Three goddamn attacks with nothing to show on our tracking devices. What the hell is going on with those?!” He shot his question to their head of technology, Felicia Lewis, who slouched her shoulders and gazed to the ground. Colonel Griffins had made it clear that no one speak until he was done.
“No one in the public has suspected anything yet, we’ve got that much going for us, but it won’t last long at the rate we’re going. We need the tracking devices to track again or this war may as well be declared over. How can we stop what we can’t see coming?”
Even though he spoke in a low tone, an underlying rage still clung to every word that left his mouth. His face flushed a light shade of red as he clenched trembling fists. He didn’t give a shit if they saw him this pissed off. Maybe it would get everything back in order. He rarely showed emotion, he was impossible to rattle, but today was a new day and it almost seemed as if no one had been doing their job over the past several weeks.
“We need new training on combatting the Exalls. The two we lost in Michigan were ambushed. A full investigation is being conducted and we’ll be able to piece together what exactly happened. I want the scenario recreated and for every solider we have on this planet to go through a training for it.”
Colonel Griffins paused, opened a drawer, and pulled out a flask to take a swig of whiskey, not offering it to anyone else. “A dark day is upon us, people. If we don’t get our shit together right now, it’s all over. Kiss it all goodbye. I suspect we’ll see one more attack. Our friends started their party in Colorado and are moving east. I think they’re coming here for the boy.”
The head of research, Damien Kurtz, raised a finger to make a counterargument, but was promptly ignored by the colonel.
“I’ve been in this business a long time, and I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve seen the ugliest from these assholes. I’ve even seen one of these gray fuckers vanish like dust through my fingers. But I have never seen the level of uncertainty that is plaguing our entire organization. I’m now getting daily calls from the White House wanting to know what the fuck is going on. We need drastic solutions. And quick. If anyone has any brilliant ideas, they need to come forward now.”
A momentary silence hung in the room as the department heads either looked at each other or looked around the office to avoid speaking.
“Sir,” Damien said, a squeaky man with circle-framed glasses. “I think we need to reallocate all of our resources to these two who are moving east. I believe Michigan was a fluke, more self-defense by the Exall. These other two are the aggressors and causing death for innocent civilians.”
“It’s not death!” Colonel Griffins shouted, slamming his fist on the desk. “They’re multiplying like fucking bunnies. This wouldn’t be as bad if they were killing people, but they’re not. We don’t even know how many have been turned after the attack in Kansas City.”
The room fell silent again, waiting for Colonel Griffins to have another outburst, but he spoke in a more relaxed tone.
“I don’t care what any of the research says. We’re dealing with uncharted territory. Throw out the playbook and start anew. They’re attacking us, we can’t track them, and no one besides me seems to realize just how terrible this situation can become. I need you all to lock yourselves in rooms with your teams today and report back to me with a status update. We need a plan going into tomorrow. It’s only a matter of time until these two strike again. And, Ms. Lewis,” Griffins turned his attention to their head of technology. She met his death stare with nervous eyes. “I don’t want to see your face until our tracking devices work again. I don’t care how long it takes.”
“Yes, sir,” she said softly.
“Anyone else have anything to say?” Griffins grumbled, impatience dripping from each word.
Everyone looked around to each other, but no one dared speak. The colonel had struck the fear he intended.
“Let’s have a good day,” he said, dismissing everyone with a wave of his hand toward the door.
They filed out of the office, leaving him alone at his desk. The weight of the recent attacks was starting to wear on him. As were the phone calls from the president and the scrolling headlines every week. Hopefully the two soldiers they lost at the cabin wouldn’t reach any news stations. It was a remote enough location for no one else to have heard about except for The Crew. But those two men had families to grieve their losses, and it was impossible to know how those families would react. They usually stayed quiet, even after a sudden death, but every now and then someone opened their mouth and had to be handled by The Crew.
Griffins opened the drawer where he kept his flask and pistol, but rummaged for something else, sighing when he grabbed the box of cigarettes as if it liberated him. He hadn’t smoked one in at least three years, but all the sudden his mind craved it. He popped the cigarette between his lips and lit it with a quick stroke of a match he kept taped to the box. The smoke filled his lungs in a long, relaxing draw before he picked up the phone to make his now daily call to the president, who demanded a solution to the latest attack on Crew members.
* * *
Over the next week, The Crew learned a lot more about the two Exa
lls who were traveling across the country. More importantly, they learned what had happened with all of those they had infected with their blood. Yes, they had been transformed into new Exalls, but none of the ones they found showed any signs of aggression typical in an Exall. Many of them seemed scared, afraid of their own shadows.
Colonel Griffins ordered a ground search in eastern Colorado and Kansas City, and everywhere in between. If the tracking devices wouldn’t work, they had to take an old school approach to finding the Exalls. Griffins was sure to include this information in a memo that went out to the department heads, happy to create more urgency for Lewis and her team to get the technology fixed.
It had been a week and she still hadn’t shown her face to the colonel, which both pleased and concerned him at the same time. Technology could take a day or several months to correct. Lewis had a team of twenty-five people, and word was that all of them were working around the clock, sleeping in the office, and pulling themselves through the days just to find a solution. If this group of some of the brightest minds in the world couldn’t crack the code in a week, then The Crew’s problems were about to grow much bigger than the scope of a few faulty tracking devices.
Every time Griffins let his mind roam, he thought about the mayhem that could unfold on Earth any day now. He could close his eyes and see the deserted world. Tall buildings demolished. Empty highways in the middle of rush hour. Playgrounds with no kids giggling and screaming as they ran around. All innocence in the world completely vanished.
The Exalls had the capability to do as they pleased. The Crew served as nothing more than a barrier to slow them down, but they could just as easily blow through them and rule the land. The Crew always operated in a defensive mode, unable to predict future actions from Exalls, and hoping to respond fast enough to each tragedy that popped up.
Griffins did have a handful of meetings with different department heads throughout the week. But no one offered suggestions on how to stop the onslaught of new attacks, and instead only provided newly learned information.
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