Contact

by Johnny B. Truant

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Raj turned back to the surveillance screens, staring at the explosion’s smoking aftermath as the door again clanged shut at the top of the spiral staircase.

  He was looking for bodies, sifting feeds from the still working cameras. Trevor’s temper tantrum had leveled the entire garage. And while the so-called directional explosives had been true to Terrence’s description and gone into the surface structure rather than the bunker, they’d decimated what was above.

  Raj zoomed in, centering on something that seemed to be a severed leg beside a blown-open head.

  Of course. The hippies kept coming, drawn by something that Lila and Heather claimed they could feel but that Raj — and everyone else; maybe it was a guy/girl thing — couldn’t. So they’d filled both the ground and the house. That’s why they’d smoked them out the first time, clearing the home with smoke alarms in order to sneak away. But this time they hadn’t made a delicate distraction. This had been a blitzkrieg, equivalent to hitting someone’s hand with a hammer to draw attention from pain in their foot. Sure, they’d look away from the kitchen when the garage blew. They’d be plenty distracted searching for gory bits and pieces of widowed wives and orphaned children.

  But what Raj had taken for a leg and a head were in reality a rolled-up mat of some kind and the crumpled shade from a shattered lamp.

  Lila appeared over his shoulder. She watched the second screen, following the exodus: Trevor in the lead, of course, followed at a respectful distance by Terrence and Christopher. Behind the latter was Lila’s mother, surely ranting and shouting about Trevor doing wrong if Raj cranked the volume.

  “Where is Piper?”

  Raj pointed at one of the minimized thumbnails.

  “Is that where they’re headed? Toward her?”

  Raj spun. He’d been angry, but hearing Lila’s voice — the dismissive, by-the-way questions — made him boil.

  “This was smart, Lila,” he spat.

  “What?”

  “What the hell is wrong with you? You have a problem, something’s bothering you, but instead of talking to me, you wire the fucking place with explosives. Now what are we going to do?” He pointed at the screen. “You ask me, your brother is losing his shit, and he’s got the trigger tucked into his belt. We might not even have to wait for him to get stupid. He’s being stupid now. The thing has a touchscreen. It’s going to rub against his skin and press the wrong button, and then it’ll be sayonara to us all.”

  Lila’s face changed. For a fraction of a second, he felt sorry for her. She looked more lost than awful, confused not vindictive. Just like over the past few months she’d seemed more distant than unfaithful, even though sometimes his gut prickled with paranoid instinct. But those were his issues. He knew she’d never cheat, especially now.

  “It felt like the only way.”

  Raj shook his head. “The only way. Great.”

  “Really, Raj. I don’t know how to explain it, but — ”

  “Then don’t try.”

  Lila seemed to consider apologizing but then wisely decided not to bother. You could say sorry for using someone’s toothbrush or forgetting an appointment, sure. But attempting to blow up the house was the kind of thing most couples didn’t need to face in even the most tumultuous relationships.

  After Lila was silent over his shoulder for a while and he’d pinched in and out looking for bodies in the rubble, he said, “Can you disarm it?”

  Raj looked up at Lila. Her lips pressed together.

  “Oh, I see. You won’t.”

  “I doubt I could if I wanted. I might blow it trying. Christopher set it up.”

  Christopher.

  “Nice fucking mess. But that’s not even the issue, is it? You don’t want to disarm it.”

  “There’s something under the bunker, Raj. Something they want. If we let them get it—”

  “Save it.”

  There was another moment of silence. In the background, Raj could hear Dan, the only other person left in the bunker, rattling around.

  Lila broke the quiet. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to figure out how many people your brother just killed.”

  “Oh.” A pause. “How many?”

  Raj didn’t want to admit he hadn’t found any yet. Doing so felt like a concession.

  “I don’t see any bodies,” Lila said.

  “Maybe it vaporized them.”

  “It didn’t vaporize that end table.”

  Raj said nothing. Lila’s hand extended in his peripheral vision. Without asking, she touched one of the thumbnails to enlarge it. A view of the lake swallowed the screen. A mass of people filled the space in front of the water. Maybe all the people, including those who should have been shredded in the explosion with their belongings. The explosion that by all appearances they hadn’t even noticed. The group appeared almost hypnotized, staring off into the distance.

  “What are they looking at?”

  Raj shrugged. The screen didn’t show. He only knew that they were looking upward. Probably at another kill-shuttle come to fry whomever Trevor’s blast had missed.

  “Dunno.”

  “Look. They’re almost to Piper. Why isn’t she coming toward the bunker?”

  “Probably wants to stay by the camera. She can’t know we’ve even noticed her out there.”

  They watched her for a second. Raj had turned her volume down. She wasn’t saying anything new. Just repeating the same lines over and over, like a robot.

  They watched the other thumbnail, showing Trevor’s approach.

  Raj sat back in the chair and looked up at Lila. She was standing; he was sitting. It hardly felt courteous, seeing as she was pregnant. But then again, she’d also tried to blow them all up without asking his opinion. The father of her baby. Talk about a lack of courtesy.

  “What are we going to do next, Lila? Did you think of that? Your little coup failed. Trevor isn’t stupid. He’s not going to just blow the damned thing like you and your buddy were ready to.” She seemed to flinch a little at the mention of “your buddy” — something Raj filed away for later consideration. “So what happens when they get Piper and come inside? They’ll be able to walk right back in, by the look of it.” He clicked through screens, showing empty campsite after empty campsite. The garage bomb hadn’t been necessary. Everyone was at the lake, staring off into space like fools.

  “So what then, Lila? Do we go back to playing house? You with your hormones and visions, your crazy mother, your homicidal brother, Piper who’s been God knows where, Christopher, D — ”

  “Raj,” she said.

  Raj shrugged impatiently.

  “Raj, look.” Lila wasn’t shouting or raising her voice. But it was filled with fear. Deep fear. Two words dripping in urgent terror.

  Raj turned. The lake view was still maximized, but the people no longer appeared to be staring at nothing. There was the bottom of a silver sphere moving slowly overhead, big enough to block the sun.

  It wasn’t a shuttle. It was one of the motherships.

  There was a crackling from below the control panel. It took Raj a moment to locate the source. A static-filled voice gurgled from his communicator watch — the same watch Terrence had once successfully jury-rigged to reach Cameron and Piper while they were on the road. The same blocked communication channel, apparently, that someone on the other end had finally found a way to reactivate.

  “ … trap!” came Cameron’s voice between bursts of interference. “ … Piper … inside … t’s a trap!”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Piper seemed terrified.

  Trevor approached, struck by the change in her manner. It broke his heart. She’d left the bunker upright and strong — as buoyant as a woman could be when her mission was to find her abducted husband and save the world. People seemed to think that Piper’s beauty and small size made her fragile. Or maybe it was her giant blue eyes. And because she was usually set beside the dominating Me
yer Dempsey, people also thought her weak and servile. But it was not the case. In her element, Piper was capable of being a leader — even a hero, as she’d proved twice already.

  But this woman was broken. Not the Piper Trevor remembered at all.

  “Hey,” he said.

  She’d barely noticed him. Now she did. Terrence and Christopher stayed behind at enough of a distance to watch him while remaining wary of his trigger finger. Trevor could still blow the bunker as Lila and Christopher wanted or spare it for his mother (who was bringing up the rear, silent now that he’d glanced back) and Terrence. He was in a deliriously powerful position, able to cast a rather decisive final vote on the issue of “the hole” that may or may not need plugging. But he couldn’t appreciate any of that now. Even with his three pursuers at the rear, unarmed so as not to antagonize him into action, he could only focus on Piper.

  “Trevor?”

  “Where have you been? Where did you come from?”

  “Moab. Then somewhere else.”

  “Where else?”

  She blinked. Then she blinked a few more times, looking around as if trying to clear her head. Trevor watched a confused wash of emotions splash her face. In the space of a few seconds, her demeanor changed. Where she’d seemed lost, now she seemed justifiably nervous. Where she’d seemed broken, she now seemed at panic’s edge.

  “They told me something,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “He told me something.”

  “Who told you something?” Trevor asked. “Cameron?”

  “No.”

  “Where is Cameron?”

  “At the ranch.”

  “We’re at the ranch. We’ve been here all along.” Trevor looked around, scanning the trees. Where was Cameron? Had they walked all the way back? Had something awful happened? Had he been killed, and she’d had to make the last leg alone?

  “Not this ranch.”

  “Which ranch.”

  “In Utah. In Moab.”

  “So you made it to Moab? And you did whatever you needed to do?”

  “He told me something,” she repeated.

  “Someone at the lab?”

  Piper shook her head, as if unable to remember. The struggle for recall, painted on her pretty features, looked frustrating.

  “You, Trevor,” she said, blinking harder. “And Lila. Where is Lila?”

  “She’s in the bunker.” He reached for Piper, but she flinched back. “What about us?”

  “You’re his bloodline.”

  “Whose?”

  “Your father’s. And those before him. I’m supposed to … I’m supposed to … ”

  There was a shout in the distance, coming from behind. Trevor turned at the same time as Christopher, Terrence, and Heather. Lila was running as best she could with her large bouncing stomach, one hand to her abdomen, with Raj close behind, seemingly trying to hold her back. Lila kept shaking him away, pushing him, surging forward. Shouting for Trevor.

  “It’s a trap! It’s a trap! They sent her here as bait! Get back to the — ”

  There was a tremendous humming from the sky, stopping her. Trevor looked up and saw an enormous alien mothership blur into place overhead. The movement was almost instant. One moment it wasn’t there, and the next it was, not braking so much as stopping on a dime, exactly as the shuttle had moved in Terrence’s video. Christopher had said it crossed the horizon in less than a second. Trevor hadn’t believed it. But seeing the mothership move, he believed it now.

  The humming grew. And grew. And grew. A physical presence against Trevor’s eardrums. Between him and the ranch, between him and the ship, Trevor watched as the other five clamped their hands to their ears.

  There was a crack like lighting, and a beam of light lanced straight down from the bottom of the ship. It struck the remains of Meyer’s house, detonating it into splinters and debris. From somewhere far off, beyond the oppressive hum, Trevor heard screaming.

  There was no fire or smoke. The home had been smashed as if by a giant hammer. They were slightly up a hill, and Trevor could see the way the enormous beam had punched not just through the home, but through the bunker’s top. And then, as if to prove a point, the bunker itself seemed to detonate in a shower of stone. The air grew hot, and a wave almost shoved Trevor to the ground.

  The others swayed on their feet as the wave passed. The sound dialed down, moving from the roar of terrible feedback to the electric hum of overhead power lines. Every few seconds, something seemed to crackle, the beam sparking with thin trails of branched lightning.

  Trevor followed the line down to the destroyed bunker, counting bodies around him, seeing that Dan was missing, now gone forever.

  He looked up at the ship.

  “What’s it doing?” he asked, now finding himself able to hear.

  Behind him, Piper said, “Docking.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Piper watched the ship slowly lower its enormous belly closer to the ground, feeling a strange mixture of hope and abject terror. There was so much she understood, and so much she couldn’t fathom at all.

  In front of her, Trevor pulled a small tablet from the back of his pants, where he’d apparently stowed it for safekeeping, and ran his fingers over its surface, frenzied, breath leaving his lungs as if in flight. The four others behind him (absent the late Vincent and now Dan — where had Dan gone while she was away?) surged forward as Trevor worked, whatever restraint they’d been showing now gone. Piper couldn’t make sense of the melee. Terrence, Heather, and Raj seemed to be on one side, but Lila and Christopher seemed to be on the opposite side, actively batting the others away so Trevor could do his work.

  “Don’t!” Heather shouted.

  She reached. Christopher extended an arm and planted an undignified palm in Heather’s face, mashing her lips against her gums. She elbowed Christopher aside while Terrence reached and was elbowed in the throat — accidentally, it seemed — by Lila.

  Trevor yanked free, darting a few steps toward Piper before managing to mash his finger onto the screen’s big red button.

  Nothing happened beyond a line of red text in a black bar: an error message in any system.

  “The fucking bunker is gone, Trevor!” Terrence shouted, his cool entirely gone. “You can’t blow something up when it’s fucking gone!”

  A blur of motion wrapped them from front to back. Piper couldn’t tell what had happened until she turned to see several large, spherical shuttles nestled between the trees. She couldn’t help but look up. They must have descended from above. They were too big to squeeze between the trees, and would knock them over if they were forced to herd the humans forward.

  “What now?” Trevor asked.

  Lila nodded toward the waiting mothership. “I think we’re supposed to go to it. To the ship.”

  “No.” Christopher shook his head. “No fucking way.”

  Trevor walked to Christopher then slapped him companionably on the arm. He managed a small smile despite the situation, punctuated by the descending mother sphere’s steady electrical hum, and pointed at the shuttles that had descended at their rear.

  “You can stay here, I’m sure, but I don’t think they’ll like it if you do.” Trevor walked past Christopher, taking the lead beside his sister, as Lila fell into step beside him.

  Bloodline.

  Piper didn’t recall much from her trip here — or anything, really. On one level of her mind, she only remembered falling asleep in Utah then having an extremely vivid dream. There was a break at that point, in the way dreams sometimes splice from one place to another with nothing in between, and next she’d been aware only of the tree and the camera concealed there, along with the desperate need to get inside.

  Or, maybe, to make sure Trevor and Lila weren’t inside.

  Because yes, there did seem to be another layer to her thoughts, the more she considered it. Piper assumed from context that her trip must have been made inside the newly arrived mothership. That
in itself should have scared her, but it made sense. Of course Meyer was aboard. Of course he’d want to come home. And of course, given Meyer’s intense drive to reach this place during the exodus (not to mention his drive to build it in the first place), it made sense in retrospect that this plot of land had turned out to be special. There was something sacred below this mountain — very far down, hidden for an untold length of time — that Meyer wanted. That the aliens wanted. Necessary to end the first phase.

  But beneath her (lack of) factual knowledge and suppositions, Piper recalled something further down. Something that felt like collective consciousness. Something that even now felt like a gossamer thread connecting her mind to Lila, and Lila’s mind to the new life growing inside her. Connecting them all. But most of all, that thread ran between Lila and Trevor. Between the children and their mother as well, yes, because they were linked by blood.

  And to their father.

  Get the children out.

  Because just as the children had their descendants, Meyer had his.

  Duly connected to its source — to the network Benjamin had shown her and Cameron what felt like a thousand years ago — the mothership continued to descend. Beneath it, the blue column of light sparked and hummed. The aggregate thoughts of humanity flowing into the nexus. Into the ship. The ship itself “plugging the hole” as she’d sensed Lila thinking even from a distance — not with debris to destroy it, but like a plug in a socket.

  She comprehended without understanding.

  She knew that Meyer was aboard but didn’t believe she’d seen him or spoken to him or been near him.

  She knew that Lila and Trevor mattered. That Meyer mattered. That the other eight human cogs, simultaneously docking at their own nexuses around the world, mattered.

  They’ve been here before.

  And something else Benjamin thought, though Piper had no way to know it, other than through intuition and three months’ worth of cobbled discussions: