Before they could even open their mouths, they zoomed up the stairs and disappeared.
Maggie went to her room, and thought about her mother, Bobby and what she could do to help him grow.
Bobby went to his room to shoot more Zombies.
Seven
The small space underneath the football stands was a good hiding place. He had a clear view of the road leading up from town, but was hidden from view from any people who may stray over towards his direction. It was getting on for eight in the evening, and Blake was starting to feel tired.
He hadn’t done much cardio this year due to injury, and his body was feeling it. He was a great football player. Never the captain but always in the first team. He was set to have the pick of colleges and girls, but he got injured when a bad tackle ended up with another player landing across his knee and bending it sideways.
It took two operations and four months of physio to be able to run again.
That was two years ago. Now he is the assistant coach to the school team. Dean Bradley – that was a stupid tackle. Ruined my career.
But hey – you’ve gotta move on – right? I mean, no sense in feeling sorry for yourself. Just got to make the most of what you got.
Blake was a good looking guy – no; great looking. He couldn’t run so he spent most of the last year in the gym doing weights. And the results showed. He got spotted in a shopping mall earlier in the year by an agency scout looking for a new face for their poster campaign. So hey – can’t play football, so why not make some money wearing other people’s clothes being told you look great? There are worse things in life.
The only problem was his father. He was a military man who loved that his son played football, but was sceptical about a modelling career. He thought that men should be men, and play sports, or join the army. Get a decent haircut. Not parade around in skimpy clothes. That’s precisely why Blake took the job as assistant coach. To keep his father happy so he could go off and chase his dream of being a star. Besides, the old man might change his tune when the money starts rolling in. A free Rolex here and there is always good when it comes to changing someone’s outlook on life.
Blake’s phone buzzed in his pocket. “Hey man. Yeah under the seats like I told you. OK.” He put the phone back in his pocket. The trees next to him rustled and out stepped Gavin and Monika.
“What took you so long?” Blake stood to welcome his new guests.
“Sorry. Got held up.” Gavin and Monika looked flustered. Her hair was slightly unkempt, and she had flushed, red lips.
“Uh-huh” said Blake.
They were isolated where they were, but it didn’t stop Gavin looking nervously around before carrying on.
“You got it?” said Gavin. He cocked his head towards Monika. “For her too?”
Blake answered by unzipping his pack back and reaching inside. He pulled out a brown envelope and stopped short of handing it to Gavin. “And a little something for me?”
Gavin reached inside his jacket, looked over his shoulder, and then produced a wad of cash. The two men exchanged packages, and checked the contents were to their satisfaction.
“Just remember.” said Gavin. “Try and answer some wrong. One hundred per cent raises eyebrows. Just go for a solid B or B+. That way it looks normal.”
“Yeah yeah I know” said Gavin, pulling out the papers from the envelope, and handing one set to Monika. “Here you go babe – that’ll keep you out of detention.” She gave him a withering look.
Now the exchange was done, Gavin seemed to relax more. “Hey you coming to the lake on Saturday night? Gonna have some beers, some music. Girls. Ha ha!”
Monika pushed Gavin away by his shoulder. He looked at her aggrieved.
“Yeah, maybe – my old man’s got me doing chores all day, but I should be able to come down for an hour or two.”
“That’s cool.” They all began to walk away from the hideout – Gavin and Monika back towards the fields, Blake down to the road and his car.
Gavin turned as they walked away, and shouted back at Blake. “And remember – See you Saturday! And don’t be a pussy! Haha!”
Blake waved a hand and got into his car. He started the motor and gunned the engine. As he nosed the car back toward the road, the sun began to set over Fresno.
Eight
Over the hill, on the other side of the valley, Captain Tom Simpson was staring at a video monitor. It was a live feed from a camera mounted on the front of a radio controlled bomb disposal buggy. The boffins had given the all clear to send down a probe to investigate. The event range had dropped to safe levels (well safe enough for a robot probe anyway) and they were all eager to see what was down there.
It was slow progress. The buggy moved at about three miles per hour flat out and had to cover rough terrain. Also it was stopped every twenty meters to perform environmental and system checks. It was painfully slow progress. Tom started the day by being excited and intrigued, and perhaps a little apprehensive about what he was going to see. Now he was just plain bored. He was sitting in an office swivel chair with his legs sticking out in front of him crossed at the ankles. He had been spinning a pencil in his fingers for the last fifteen minutes, and now his hand ached.
Professor Brightside made him jump. “Captain.” He said.
Tom yelped and was instantly embarrassed. “Yes Professor.”
“We are at the perimeter of the crater. The next stage is to point down to the source and see what we can see.”
“OK then let’s do it.”
The atmosphere in the small white tent turned form bored to buzzing. The small video screen showed what looked like the edge of a cliff, but of course due to the small size of the buggy the camera was attached to, it was probably only about five or six meters down. The engineer at the controls grabbed the joystick in front of him, and eased it forward. As he did so, the image on the screen began to bounce and shake, drawing the edge of the crater towards it.
“Easy does it, easy does it.” said Professor Brightside.
It was rough terrain created by the impact. The police car that had crashed when it tried to get close had been removed, but the burn marks were still on the ground, which served as a vivid reminder of the danger everyone was in.
Every so often any one of the people on the site would catch themselves staring at the scorch pattern, as though it were drawing them in, reminding them of the morbid danger they were facing.
The buggy had reached the edge of the crater and started to tip forward, its wheels battling for grip on the loose surface. The tent was silent now, apart from the heavy breathing of the young man operating the remote control.
Down.
Down.
It seemed to take an age to get over the crest. As the image on screen started to drop and pull the contents of the crater into focus, necks craned forward in the control tent.
Suddenly the bottom of the crater came into view. Fuzzy at first, but as the camera’s auto focus adjusted, all they could see was light.
The buggy kept moving closer.
Closer.
Closer.
And with each turn of the wheels the image came into sharper and sharper focus. The men in the room all craned further and further forward to try and make out what they were looking at.
As the small explorer got closer to the source of the light, the on board microphones began to pick up the sound the men had first heard a week ago. A kind of pulsating rhythm. Not too dissimilar to what you get if you stand too close to electricity pylons.
Whuuuummm. Whuuuummm. Whuuuummm.
And with every pulse, the light at the centre of the crater seemed to shimmer, and get momentarily brighter.
Whuuuummm. Whuuuummm. Whuuuummm.
It was getting louder. The sound was hypnotic. Never ceasing, always gentle.
Whuuuummm. Whuuuummm. Whuuuummm.
The buggy was very close. It was clear that the light source was a sphere. Mainly white, but with a slight blue h
ue. It didn’t seem to be made of anything else, it wasn’t any kind of source or object that could be made out. There were no markings or glimpses of anything making the light.
Just pure light.
Whuuuummm. Whuuuummm. Whuuuummm.
The buggy stopped. Captain Tom was standing transfixed at the monitor. It was the Professor who spoke first. “OK. Time to take a measurement. Let’s go for a temperature check first.”
The young man at the controls let go of the joystick and began typing commands into the keyboard next to him. Down at the crater, a small arm began to extend out towards the light source, accompanied by an electronic whirr. As the probe got closer to its indented target, the young pilot began to read out the temperatures.
“Twenty feet away. Twenty two point five degrees.”
Whuuuummm. Whuuuummm. Whuuuummm.
The arm moved closer.
Whuuuummm. Whuuuummm. Whuuuummm.
“Minus Fifteen feet. Twenty three point six.”
The atmosphere was electric. The air was become silently tense.
“Minus ten feet. Twenty nine zero.”
“Twenty nine?” said Tom
“Yes sir. Temperature has increased exponentially. Shall I continue?”
“Go on.”
Whuuuummm. Whuuuummm. Whuuuummm.
“Minus five. Changing sensitivity.” The young man reached over to his keyboard and typed in more commands. “Forty seven point nine. Correction. Forty eight. No Nine. Temperature increasing.”
Whuuuummm. Whuuuummm. Whuuuummm.
The noise was getting louder.
WHUUUUMMM. WHUUUUMMM. WHUUUUMMM.
WHUUU...
The noise stopped. This made most of the men in the room stand up from their hunched positions over the screen, and start looking around like startled meerkats who heard a predator on the prowl. Captain Tom, however, was too transfixed to move. He was the about to speak, but the next noise cut him dead.
A high pitched screech came out of the crater.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
The men screamed and covered their ears. They fell to their knees into the foetal position; trying to protect their bodies from the pain they were experiencing. Anything glass in the tent instantly shattered with a loud pop. All of the electrical equipment fizzed and crackled, made a loud bang and started to emit acrid black smoke. The tent physically shook with the commotion. A few moments after the noise began, an earthquake rose up from the ground and shook the foundations to the core.
Captain Tom Simpson staggered outside with his hands clasped over his ears. He stumbled towards the light. The light source was now glowing intensely bright, so bright that the forest looked as though it was broad daylight.
Just as suddenly as it had begun, the shaking and noise stopped. At the same moment the ball of white-blue light kicked up a plume of smoke and earth, and powered its way down into the ground, as if it were a wounded animal burying itself into the soil. As it tunnelled, the surrounding rocks and earth followed suit, blocking the hole behind it, sealing it away from further intruders.
The Captain stood quietly for a moment, then without moving spoke to the room behind him.
“Now we have work to do.” He paused and looked around him.
“Lots of work to do.”
Nine
Gavin Clarke enjoyed picking on people. He had a group of friends that were popular – members of the football team, or future fraternity guys – and liked to show off in front of them.
He came from a broken family. His mother and father had split when he was young, and he lived with Mom and whatever boyfriend she brought home on any given night.
She had to work several jobs to keep up with the bills (Mr Clarke was nowhere to be seen) and Gavin was largely left to fend for himself.
With not much love and attention, he took it out on other kids.
Gavin and Bobby had been fairly close early on in their school years when Gavin tried to make a move on Maggie.
He had always liked her. He was surprisingly a shy child, but had to learn to be tough to stand up to one particularly abusive boyfriend of his mothers. When she was not around, he would try and bully Gavin by forcing him to tell where his mother kept her money, or make him run around the house fetching him beers or food.
One day Gavin had had enough. He plucked up the courage to say no to the guy, and he was beaten senseless.
Gavin’s Mum came home just in time to catch her then boyfriend in full rage – Gavin was curled up on the floor with his arms up protecting his face, while the sorry excuse for a man pounded him with his fists.
Gavin had lacerations on his forearms, and the left one was fractured from the force of the blows.
Blood poured from his nose. His was crying hard, and when he heard his mother enter the house he screamed out for her.
Mrs Clarke came running in and confronted the man attacking her son. He tried to claim he was disciplining the boy, but she was having none of it.
He went for her, grabbing her by the neck in an attempt to silence. Gavin went for the phone. He had dialled 9-1-1 before the boyfriend could reach him. In the violence that followed the dispatcher had sent a patrol car to the house and they had to taser the man in order to restrain him.
Gavin and his mother has sustained multiple injuries. Gavin had a fractured arm, broken nose and multiple bruising and cuts to his arms and legs. His mother had suffered similar with a bruised and blackened eye and swelling to the throat.
After the boyfriend had been taken away, Gavin’s mother promised never to bring another man home again. It would just be the two of them from now on.
She stopped relying on handouts from various lowlife guys, and instead took on extra shifts at work to make ends meet.
That’s when Gavin first saw Maggie. He was at school when they all filled into one of their science classes. She smiled at him when he let her go first into the room and sat next to him when he beckoned her over. They giggled and flirted during the class, and he sort her out at lunchtime in the cafeteria.
That’s when things went south. Maggie had only just lost her mother to cancer, and was not ready for the emotional commitment of a relationship just yet. She told him that she liked him, and maybe they could think about staying ‘just friends’, but as every teenage boy knows, ‘just friends’ is as good as torture as anything ever devised by the worst kind of terrorist if you really fancy a girl.
So Gavin reacted to her by being abusive. He wasn’t physical with her, but right then and there in the cafeteria he turned on her in a venomous way. No one dare reject Gavin Clarke and not suffer the consequences.
The problem was, was that his only male role models had been violent towards women; just ask Gavin’s Mother. So all he knew to do when he didn’t get his way was to abuse. The sad thing about it all was that Maggie was telling the truth when she said she liked him and that given time, she would come around. But after the lunchtime incident, that particular ship had sailed.
It was a few days later that Gavin’s friends pointed out Bobby (Robert as he then was) to him. The strong have and will always prey on the weak, and Gavin decided right there to make Bobby’s life a misery.
It is a truism that people who are unhappy are often jealous of people that are happy even if they are not consciously aware of it.
Even though Bobby had been through a traumatic time in his family life, he had a stable home life with his aunt and uncle, and a caring sister in Maggie.
So the bullying started. It was easy for Gavin and his friends because Bobby was a meek child with only one friend in school – Stuart – who was equally as small in character.
Expecting a fightback, Gavin was surprised when it turned into good sport. He and his friend would devise pranks they could pull on him. Anything from the classic ‘kick me’ sign on his back, to stealing his lunch and waiting for him outside school. That was the worst part for Bobby. The fear. The fear all day that would build towards the final bell. M
ost kids look forward to the end of school. But Bobby would dread it.
The worst occasion was one early summer when Bobby left class and headed home. He was halfway before he realised he was being followed. He turned to look over his shoulder when walking down a quiet street to see Gavin in pursuit. When Bobby started to run, one of Gavin’s associates stepped out from around the corner in front of him and cut him off. Three of the boys chasing Bobby were football players, so were used to running and tackling.
The beating Bobby received was brutal. He was punched repeatedly to the ground, and kicked in the side until he could take no more. Whether or not Gavin realised it, Bobby received a similar ordeal to Gavin’s by his Mum’s estranged boyfriend only a year before. It only stopped when a passer-by shouted at them and started threatening to call the police.
Bobby was treated in the hospital with stitches and released the same day. Steve and Karen involved the school and Gavin and his friends were pulled up in front of the headmaster.
In total the bullies all received a week’s suspension from school and an entry on their permanent record.
Gavin was forced to calm down or face permanent exclusion.
Bobby was relieved as at last the bullying seemed to have stopped, but spent the next few years constantly looking over his shoulder.
Ten
It was 6:30pm on Saturday night. Maggie was getting ready to go out when her friend Tina phoned. “Hey baby girl.”
“Hey babe. What time you coming over?”
“I was thinking maybe 7:30?”
“No way – that’s too early. I don’t wanna be the first one there. Why don’t we turn up late? I was thinking, like, nine or something. Whatever.” Maggie was lying on her stomach on the bed, resting on her elbows. One hand was holding the phone to her ear, the other was being used to swizzle her hair.
“Oh OK, well I’ll pick you up at 8:30 then.”
“T? Do you think he likes me? I mean, I had that talk one time in English class and he seemed really sweet. I mean I don’t think he has a girlfriend or anything. Do you think he is gay?”
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